Hi all,
I would like to ask for some clarification of Wikimedia policy.
Is it considered acceptable to have spearate Wikipedias for different cultures and peoples rather than languages? Are any existing Wikipedias considered in this capacity?
Robin Patterson has asserted on mi: that rather than a Wikipedia in the Maori language, it's intended as a Wikipedia for the Maori people, and thus extensive usage of the English language is OK or even good, since only 5% of Maori people are fluent in Maori.
Similarly, he wanted to add English content to the Samoan Wikipedia because "tens of thousands" of Samoans speak English fluently. It should be noted that neither of these languages are his native languages. Maori, he lists as a Babel template level of 1 (his French and German are better), yet he is the sole administrator at the Maori Wikipedia. He noted on his Samoan userpage that he knows only a handful of Samoan words, yet he tried to apply there for sysop anyways.
Mark
Mark, so far Wikipedia's been organized around language, and not culture, because the latter would likely jeopardize the goal of NPOV.
NPOV works is because there can only be *one* article about abortion, Gdansk, Diaoyutai or scientology in English. Editors have to come to some type of consensus in that one article. Accommodating "different cultures" with different Wikipedias would be akin to forking and reduce the incentive to arrive at the consensus that makes Wikipedia useful.
-User:Fuzheado
On 7/8/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all,
I would like to ask for some clarification of Wikimedia policy.
Is it considered acceptable to have spearate Wikipedias for different cultures and peoples rather than languages? Are any existing Wikipedias considered in this capacity?
Robin Patterson has asserted on mi: that rather than a Wikipedia in the Maori language, it's intended as a Wikipedia for the Maori people, and thus extensive usage of the English language is OK or even good, since only 5% of Maori people are fluent in Maori.
Similarly, he wanted to add English content to the Samoan Wikipedia because "tens of thousands" of Samoans speak English fluently. It should be noted that neither of these languages are his native languages. Maori, he lists as a Babel template level of 1 (his French and German are better), yet he is the sole administrator at the Maori Wikipedia. He noted on his Samoan userpage that he knows only a handful of Samoan words, yet he tried to apply there for sysop anyways.
Mark _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
He's right. However Wikinfo welcomes this sort of thing. [[New Zealand from a Maori viewpoint]]. I would rather Wikipedia just changed its policy, but the position seems entrenched.
Fred
On Jul 7, 2005, at 7:27 PM, Andrew Lih wrote:
Mark, so far Wikipedia's been organized around language, and not culture, because the latter would likely jeopardize the goal of NPOV.
NPOV works is because there can only be *one* article about abortion, Gdansk, Diaoyutai or scientology in English. Editors have to come to some type of consensus in that one article. Accommodating "different cultures" with different Wikipedias would be akin to forking and reduce the incentive to arrive at the consensus that makes Wikipedia useful.
-User:Fuzheado
On 7/8/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all,
I would like to ask for some clarification of Wikimedia policy.
Is it considered acceptable to have spearate Wikipedias for different cultures and peoples rather than languages? Are any existing Wikipedias considered in this capacity?
Robin Patterson has asserted on mi: that rather than a Wikipedia in the Maori language, it's intended as a Wikipedia for the Maori people, and thus extensive usage of the English language is OK or even good, since only 5% of Maori people are fluent in Maori.
Similarly, he wanted to add English content to the Samoan Wikipedia because "tens of thousands" of Samoans speak English fluently. It should be noted that neither of these languages are his native languages. Maori, he lists as a Babel template level of 1 (his French and German are better), yet he is the sole administrator at the Maori Wikipedia. He noted on his Samoan userpage that he knows only a handful of Samoan words, yet he tried to apply there for sysop anyways.
Mark _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Mark Williamson wrote:
Is it considered acceptable to have spearate Wikipedias for different cultures and peoples rather than languages? Are any existing Wikipedias considered in this capacity?
In general, no, but there are many complications of course relating to ISO language codes, dialects, languages, etc.
Robin Patterson has asserted on mi: that rather than a Wikipedia in the Maori language, it's intended as a Wikipedia for the Maori people, and thus extensive usage of the English language is OK or even good, since only 5% of Maori people are fluent in Maori.
He's mistaken. I would recommend that the use of English be strongly discouraged there, although it could be tolerated there in the Wikipedia namespace if some people want to discuss things and they are more comfortable in English, etc.
--Jimbo
From: Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com
Hi all,
I would like to ask for some clarification of Wikimedia policy.
Is it considered acceptable to have spearate Wikipedias for different cultures and peoples rather than languages? Are any existing Wikipedias considered in this capacity?
Robin Patterson has asserted on mi: that rather than a Wikipedia in the Maori language, it's intended as a Wikipedia for the Maori people, and thus extensive usage of the English language is OK or even good, since only 5% of Maori people are fluent in Maori.
We have had thios talk before. I would discourage it. First of all: Wikipedia is intended to write from a neutral point of view, affected as little as possible by cultural matters. Second: allowing other content than language x just because the indigenous are no longer able to speak it fluently will weaken the position of the language in question. For many languages, Wikipedia is the first encyclopaedia ever created, so the boost they might get from this wonderful project my in no way be undone. Third: the view of what is a language may be deeply influenced by political matters, but is still much, much better to be mde out than the view of what makes one culture different from another. Forth: if e.g. the Maori wikipedia becomes for Maoris rather than in Maori, the Maori languge content will become unintelligible for the majority of the new target group. And finally: we should have to close a lot of existing Wikipedias because their cultures are too similar and duplicate efforts on the other hand by splitting the English, French and Spanish Wikipedias. So let's maintain the current situation.
Wouter
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Similarly, he wanted to add English content to the Samoan Wikipedia because "tens of thousands" of Samoans speak English fluently. It should be noted that neither of these languages are his native languages. Maori, he lists as a Babel template level of 1 (his French and German are better), yet he is the sole administrator at the Maori Wikipedia. He noted on his Samoan userpage that he knows only a handful of Samoan words, yet he tried to apply there for sysop anyways.
I don't think that's a good idea. On the Bambara Wikipedia I only added French to the Wikipedia: namespace. And my Babel template is bm-1. :)
When applying for Bambara Wikipedia administratorship I explicitely mentioned that I'll drop my administratorship as soon as there are some native speaking folks active as administrator. I think that should be a general policy for administrators who have only a very small knowledge of a language.
Guaka wrote:
I don't think that's a good idea. On the Bambara Wikipedia I only added French to the Wikipedia: namespace. And my Babel template is bm-1. :)
I think that's a very good way of going about it. Keep the article space clean, and of course the Wikipedia namespace should only use "other" languages if it furthers the overall goal of the encyclopedia.
In the case of Bambara/French, it may well be that the most active initial contributors will be more comfortable discussing things in French while they work to spread the word and get access to Bambara speakers. I see no reason to push them to discuss things in Bambara (esp if they are bm-1 speakers!) nor to push them to discuss their plans in (for example) French wikipedia user pages or whatever.
When applying for Bambara Wikipedia administratorship I explicitely mentioned that I'll drop my administratorship as soon as there are some native speaking folks active as administrator. I think that should be a general policy for administrators who have only a very small knowledge of a language.
That sounds perfect to me.
I don't think that's a good idea. On the Bambara Wikipedia I only added French to the Wikipedia: namespace. And my Babel template is bm-1. :)
When applying for Bambara Wikipedia administratorship I explicitely mentioned that I'll drop my administratorship as soon as there are some native speaking folks active as administrator. I think that should be a general policy for administrators who have only a very small knowledge of a language.
Not really necassary to drop it. Just do not use it, or barely use it. As long as you do not abuse it :) and stop others from growing I see nothing wrong with keeping it.
I once helped Thai wikipedia in a big vandalism attack. I got temp adminstatus for that from Angela. After it had had happened Angela took it away as per the rules. But the other admins were greatfull and put a vote on for adminship, for me and another user Ahoerstemeier. We are still admins there and keep an eye out sometimes on Thai wikipedia. No harm done.
Walter/Waerth
I mentioned this thread to Robin Patterson since he is not subscribed to the list and he has replied at http://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Robin_Patterson#More_lies_from_node-u...
Angela.
And yet he still didn't reply to anything I said -- just accused me of lying and dodged what I said.
Mark
On 12/07/05, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
I mentioned this thread to Robin Patterson since he is not subscribed to the list and he has replied at http://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Robin_Patterson#More_lies_from_node-u...
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