On 06/09/05, Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
The conclusion that I take away from this thread is that yes, each wikipedia has its own culture and preferred practices, and it would be extraordinarily useful to have articles describing all that. Even just a translated summary of distinctive policy pages would be helpful to people who are not fluent in the other WP's language. For instance, if I were interested in whether the Russian WP accepts "fair use" images, an English WP article on the Russian WP would probably be a more reliable way to find out than by posting an English-language question on the Russian equivalent of village pump.
I've just - entirely by coincidence - encountered [[en:Japanese Wikipedia]]; I suspect this is pretty much an excellent example of what you want. Contains the usual history section - milestone articles, media coverage, awards - but also a "Characteristics" page, which tells us they don't accept fair use, they delete copyvios out of the history, and - interestingly - that "An article will be deleted if it countains the name of a private citizen unless they are a public figure."
The last is certainly one an external user wouldn't have expected, and this is the sort of thing these pages could be very useful for generally...