On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 4:16 PM, Ting Chen wing.philopp@gmx.de wrote:

Amir Elisha Aharoni wrote:

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On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 21:09, Yoni Weiden yonidebest@gmail.com wrote:

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The question is - shouldn't there be one set of standards for all Wikipedias?

Perhaps for issues so important that they demand standardization. We roughly try to do this for truly core policies, legal updates, &c. Are TV-program-episode notability guidelines are one of those highly important standards? I'm not so sure.

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I do think that there should be one set of standards for all languages. But it may be hard to enforce it on an existing community.

No, because we are not able to reach a concensus across all the language communities. Thus each project community should reach their own concensus. Personally I find this diversity also a very good thing because one can always get ideas from other projects, good ones to follow, bad ones to avoid or to change.

Yes. I do think that over a longer period of time good policies for which there is some benefit to standardization can become standard for the larger global community. We should probably have a more definite process for this. So far it hasn't been a critical issue (though freeness of images has made as good an argument as any discussion I've seen so far).

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implications, but it is next to impossible to enforce Notability or Verifiability policies.

Again, this is also true within one project. It is only 1-2 magnitudes harder across projects, not necessarily different in quality. [this process would be easier if the cross-wiki policy pageson meta were clearer and easier to add to, it is true. I copy the underused wikimediameta list for the sake of propriety...]

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Few he-wikipedians care about it, but he.wikipedia did quite well for several years without a clear written policy on any of the following: Living People, Notability, Original Research and Verifiability. All decisions on these matters are made ad hoc. To our friends from en.wikipedia it must seem surreal :)

No, this is the ideal state. Actually I don't like written rules. Rules are dead things and often they don't really fit to the actual situation. If one can discuss every case and reach a concensus without a fix rule this is for me the best case. But this only works in a relatively small community and doesn't fit a very big and diverse community.

+1 (this is true whether the unwritten rules are 'across many wikis' or just 'for your one wiki'... or just understood among editors in a given subject area.)

SJ