Hi there. When reading http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mission/Unstable&oldid=52124..., I ask myself if this Mission Statement covers Wikisource, Wikiquote and Wikimedia Commons, as they may lack neutrality (with a good reason). In a new version, this has already been fixed, however, the "official" version appears to be the neutral one (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Mission_and_Vision_statement).
I guess everyone wants to keel those three projects.
Mathias
Mathias Schindler wrote:
Hi there. When reading http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mission/Unstable&oldid=52124..., I ask myself if this Mission Statement covers Wikisource, Wikiquote and Wikimedia Commons, as they may lack neutrality (with a good reason). In a new version, this has already been fixed, however, the "official" version appears to be the neutral one (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Mission_and_Vision_statement).
I guess everyone wants to keel those three projects.
Mathias
I think I see your point. However, it seems to me that quoting a non-neutral statement is still "neutral" in the context of a collection of quotations. The same applies to source documents. Thus, both Wikiquote and Wikisource would be "neutral educational content", so long as there was not systematic bias (and remember that they are always works in progress).
Similarly, a particular image, video, etc. can be non-neutral, but an open collection of them would still be neutral, so long as there is not systematic bias.
Certainly, we don't want any of those projects to be collectively biased. If we only kept quotations that supported one position, and eliminated those that did not support that position, it would be a "bad thing", and would go against our mission, right? Thus, I do think we want to keep the concept of "neutral" in our mission statement.
-Rich
On Tue, 1 May 2007, Mathias Schindler wrote:
Hi there. When reading http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mission/Unstable&oldid=52124..., I ask myself if this Mission Statement covers Wikisource, Wikiquote and Wikimedia Commons, as they may lack neutrality (with a good reason). In a new version, this has already been fixed, however, the "official" version appears to be the neutral one (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Mission_and_Vision_statement).
I guess everyone wants to keel those three projects.
"Keel haul them, I say!"
You can quote or source me on this, or store the sound of my POV words in a file... I don't see how that makes the place that stores such data POV. Raw works, like points of view, may not be NPOV. Tales told to make sense of them, and ways used to show off a work or write of where it came from, should be.
Quotes and raw works should be sourced. They do not live in a void. This puts the N in their POV state...
SJ
On 5/1/07, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
Hi there. When reading http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mission/Unstable&oldid=52124..., I ask myself if this Mission Statement covers Wikisource, Wikiquote and Wikimedia Commons, as they may lack neutrality (with a good reason). In a new version, this has already been fixed, however, the "official" version appears to be the neutral one (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Mission_and_Vision_statement).
I do not see why Commons, Wikiquote, and Wikisource cannot be neutral repositories. There are just different ways in which neutrality is implemented there, e.g., the metadata, the arrangement, the selection, and so forth. Moreover, all these projects are embedded (through sister project links) into the overall educational context of the Wikimedia universe.
I would, in fact, argue that neutrality in these projects is just as essential as in any other, so I cannot support the removal of "neutral", but we might think about other ways to phrase this requirement to be more generic ("to collect and develop .. in a neutral fashion"?) .
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