I have followed the progress (or rather the lack of it) on the Serbo-Croatian wikipedia since its unlocking and I have to say that almost all of the "contributions" there were actually verbatim copies of articles from Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian Wikipedias done by 1-2 users. The articles were then left untouched, in many cases with empty picture links and original unopened red links for categories, while their originals on the other three wikis were changed, improved, re-categorized etc. The wiki has about 2400 articles today with almost no original articles longer than about a sentence.
Also, the other three Wikipedias which cover this same linguistic territory (Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian) have grown significantly in the past six months and now have a combined total of about 35,000 articles with many active contributors writing about topics as diverse as genetics, jumbo jets, Native American peoples, short-lived Roman emperors etc.
Wikipedia users who want to contribute in any of the three languages turn to either Bosnian, Croatian or Serbian wikipedias by default. The Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia hasn't really added any new active users since August or so. Many of the people who support it admit openly that they do so for ideological reasons but, as many Wikipedians know, encyclopedias are built by those who love encyclopedias and knowledge, not those who love ideologies.
To sum it up, I think that Wikipedia in Serbo-Croatian should be re-locked and then removed after an appropriate period, simply to remove interference with other projects when doing a Google search or similar.
Elephantus
from Croatian Wikipedia
Some of my thoughts on this: I of course, think that the vote is totally invalid. I voted just to show that you can't close a Wikipedia which is active.
Now, many people don't turn to Bosnian, Croatian, or Serbian Wikipedias, because they can't identify with any of those. They are all covering the same linguistic (or at least similar) region, but simply because they all exist, a bit of bias is assumed by many editors.
People like me don't identify their nationality nor the language with either Bosnia, Croatia or Serbia (I happen to be a citizen of one of those, but that doesn't make much difference). So, if we decide that we need three projects for something that everybody could understand, anyway, why don't leave a fourth one as well?
Creating Serbo-Croatian language, and identity to an extent, is as political as recreating Croatian and Serbian, Bosnian and possibly even Montenegrin.
Some people don't want Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia to exist, because they are very anti-Yugoslavian. Others don't want Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian to exist as separate editions because they are anti-cultural balkanization, and think that all of those regions share enough in language written to be able to cooperate without big problems.
Just for example, as Serbian Wikipedia was coming into existence, many of the articles had very strong Serbian Orthodox POV. This is getting much better now, and I applaud the hard work of few who are trying to fight that inherited POV. But still, it is enough for one person to run across an article on Serbian Wikipedia which is still that biased, see that it's in cyrillic (most Serbian websites use latin, because it's accessible to Croatian and Bosnian, as well as Slovenian audience that way, and using strictly cyrillic is a weak sign of nationalism - when people deliberately decide they don't want to be accessible to neighbours).
So, we can either have 4 Wikipedias, and upcoming Montenegrin should be ready. OR, we can make an overarching Wikipedia for all of those languages, or like Milosh proposed, a neo-Shtokavian centric one (which is fine really).
Also, regarding the numbers of Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian Wikipedias: They also often use each others contents, and many of those pages are really just date templates.
I think this really needs to be reformed somehow. If that software, which would transliterate between Cyrillic and Latin, appears, what's the reason not to have ONE SINGLE Wikipedia for all of those languages?
Most people who won't like it are POV pushers anyway (who simply don't want to cooperate with other ethnicities - I can't justify it otherwise).
Wikipedia is not a cultural project, it's an encyclopedia, aimed at bringing information to people.
On 1/8/06, Dejan Cabrilo dcabrilo@gmail.com wrote:
Now, many people don't turn to Bosnian, Croatian, or Serbian Wikipedias, because they can't identify with any of those. They are all covering the same linguistic (or at least similar) region, but simply because they all exist, a bit of bias is assumed by many editors.
Huh, "many"...
People like me don't identify their nationality nor the language with either Bosnia, Croatia or Serbia (I happen to be a citizen of one of those, but that doesn't make much difference). So, if we decide that we need three projects for something that everybody could understand, anyway, why don't leave a fourth one as well?
This is true, but this way is just forcing separation.
Some people don't want Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia to exist, because they are very anti-Yugoslavian. Others don't want Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian to exist as separate editions because they are anti-cultural balkanization, and think that all of those regions share enough in language written to be able to cooperate without big problems.
Term "anti-cultural balkanization" is culture-fascistic.
Just for example, as Serbian Wikipedia was coming into existence, many of the articles had very strong Serbian Orthodox POV. This is getting much better now, and I applaud the hard work of few who are trying to fight that inherited POV. But still, it is enough for one person to run across an article on Serbian Wikipedia which is still that biased, see that it's in cyrillic (most Serbian websites use latin, because it's accessible to Croatian and Bosnian, as well as Slovenian audience that way, and using strictly cyrillic is a weak sign of nationalism - when people deliberately decide they don't want to be accessible to neighbours).
Serbian Wikipedia doesn't have POV articles more then English Wikipedia (of course, proportional). It is possible that some ov POV pages are not marked, but this is only because NO ONE marked them (Dejan could do it, but he didn't).
Latin alphabet is needed only because of Croats. Bosnians know Cyrillics; if Slovenians know Serbian/Croatian, they know Cyrillics, too. As well as Macedonians use only Cyrillics.
A lot of sites are in Latin only because of a lot of xenophobia toward Cyrillics.
So, we can either have 4 Wikipedias, and upcoming Montenegrin should be ready. OR, we can make an overarching Wikipedia for all of those languages, or like Milosh proposed, a neo-Shtokavian centric one (which is fine really).
In present way, Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia is just fourth faction. Also, you can't build anything on personal fiction. Partial and/or full merging between Neo-Shtokavian Wikipedias are possible only if people are working on Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian Wikipedia. It is not possible if people who want that are working on separate factional project.
Also, regarding the numbers of Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian Wikipedias: They also often use each others contents, and many of those pages are really just date templates.
Serbian Wikipedia has more then 10.000 normal articles; Croatian has at least 6.000-8.000 normal articles.
I think this really needs to be reformed somehow. If that software, which would transliterate between Cyrillic and Latin, appears, what's the reason not to have ONE SINGLE Wikipedia for all of those languages?
If you want to work on such project, try to think a little bit deeper what is possible now, what would be possible in two years etc. And, start to work on it. The problem with you and Pokrajac is that you are full of your ideals in emails and talk pages without any consistent work.
We would be in much better situation now if both of you gave 10% of your efforts from mails/talks like this instead of reopening Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is not a cultural project, it's an encyclopedia, aimed at bringing information to people.
You can use a blog for spreading informations, too.
Serbian Wikipedia doesn't have POV articles more then English Wikipedia (of course, proportional). It is possible that some ov POV pages are not marked, but this is only because NO ONE marked them (Dejan could do it, but he didn't).
I did do it. And the storm rolled upon me. I was mostly quickly reverted, or even rolled back. In fact, if I remember correctly, I was the one to introduce POV and copyvio templates, no? Check out my contributions on sr.wiki (User:Dcabrilo). When I started doing it, you proposed that we allow POV articles to stay on the wiki, with a permanent template of: "This article was written from such and such POV". I said we should either get rid of them, or rewrite them. You said you thought they were just too good of essays to delete, and that you talked to Jimbo Wales while he was in Belgrade about that issue.
And Serbian Wikipedia has more POV than English one, for sure. For example, just until few hours ago, this thing was stuck on the top of the Home Page:
http://sr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%D0%A8%D0%B0%D0%B1%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%...
(MARRY CHRISTMAS)
Also, just for example, I noticed that article I labeled as POV (my mistake, it was not only POV, it was also a copyvio from http://www.svetosavlje.org/biblioteka/Recnik/A.htm), has been locked since I put a POV tag on it... May 2004. (http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%B4%D0%B0%D0%BC_%D0%B8_%D0%95%D0%B2%D0...).
So, yes, I did try to work on POV, but you and many others had no problems with POV (recognized as such) being included in the name space. As long as it had a tag...
Only on May 13th did I label about a dozen articles as POV (mostly Orthodox Christianity related). [[Википедија:Провера неутралности]]. Many of those were beyond repair (they were simply religious essays).
However, community than agreed that "We are a Serbian Wikipedia, so it's only normal to have that kind of bias".
Latin alphabet is needed only because of Croats. Bosnians know Cyrillics; if Slovenians know Serbian/Croatian, they know Cyrillics, too. As well as Macedonians use only Cyrillics.
Most Slovenes and Croats are not good with Cyrillic, and not comfortable enough with it to make edits. Many Bosnians as well. This is especially true for younger people. Most Macedonians, unlike most Slovenes, can read and write in both Cyrillic and Latin for that matter.
A lot of sites are in Latin only because of a lot of xenophobia toward Cyrillics.
Also because that way it's accessible to anyone.
Wikipedia is not a cultural project, it's an encyclopedia, aimed at bringing information to people.
You can use a blog for spreading informations, too.
And what do you think Wikipedia is for? Spreading what? Wikipedia is an attempt at encyclopedia, which is as simple as disseminating NPOV ecyclopedic information.
Cheers, Dejan
Dejan Cabrilo wrote:
However, community than agreed that "We are a Serbian Wikipedia, so it's only normal to have that kind of bias".
I certainly hope that's not a consensus opinion, because that's flatly unacceptable for any language's Wikipedia. That all Wikipedia articles must be written from a neutral point of view (which implies not from the point of view of any nationality, ethnicity, or culture) is one of the few absolutely non-negotiable Wikipedia policies.
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
Dejan Cabrilo wrote:
However, community than agreed that "We are a Serbian Wikipedia, so it's only normal to have that kind of bias".
I certainly hope that's not a consensus opinion, because that's flatly unacceptable for any language's Wikipedia. That all Wikipedia articles must be written from a neutral point of view (which implies not from the point of view of any nationality, ethnicity, or culture) is one of the few absolutely non-negotiable Wikipedia policies.
The theory is fine, but unless we can read the language(s) we have no way of knowing whether NPOV is in fact being followed.
Ec
The theory is fine, but unless we can read the language(s) we have no way of knowing whether NPOV is in fact being followed.
Of course, we could go article for article, but some "interesting" stuff that is apparently acceptable on one of those "national" Wikipedias is: http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%BE_%D0%88%D0%B5%D0%... (Gospel of Matthew, full edition) [[Свето Јеванђеље по Марку]] (Gospel of Mark, also full edition)
Not that big of a deal, but still, everybody thinks that it's OK to post the Holy Bible on Wikipedia.
This is a proposed policy, which resulted after I labeled a bunch of articles as POV: http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B... or, Wikipedia:Points of View
Basically, it's a proposal to allow people to write from certain POVs, which would be labeled so. Here are the rules (my translation from that page): 1. At least one editor wants to write about it. 2. At least five editors support legitimacy of that POV. 3. At least one of those five is an admin. 4. At least five articles in user namespace describing that POV. 5. That the POV does not promote racial, religious or other hate and doesn't call for violence. This is solemly a concern of such things as fascism or nazism. 6. That the POV has local (i.e. is connected to Serbia somehow) or global importance. 7. That the POV is described in a proper place on Serbian Wikipedia.
Like I said, this was a proposed policy, from May 2005 (the last time I was active on Serbian Wikipedia, it was in part a response to the fact that I overnight labeled a bunch of articles as POV, because I found them to be essays on Orthodox Christianity, but obviously, others realized the POV in supporting this policy). Still, it got 5 votes for, and 3 against. I think it describes the inherit POV of such national projects.
The following users supported the policy: http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B... http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B... http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B... http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B... http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B...
All of them are admins/bureaucrats, so people of trust there think that NPOV is not what Wikipedia is about.
Three people voted against, users Zocky (not an admin, not active), me (not an admin, not active) and Aleksandar (doesn't seem to be an admin, I don't know if he is active).
That policy never made it thru, but for example, if you visit [[Категорија:Светитељи]], which is Category:Saints, you will notice in almost each and every article among those the following line at the bottom: "Велики део овог текст је преузет из охридског пролога светог владике Николаја Велимировића. Он не подлеже ауторским правима" - meaning "Big chunk of this text was taken from Ohrid's Prologue of St. Ruler (not sure about translation of his title) Nikolaj Velimirovic. It is not affected by copyright."
Now, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolaj_Velimirovic was a part of Serbian Orthodox Church and writer of big part of its doctrine (or at least, what some say should be). So, it's much worse than copying stuff from some outdated encyclopedia, it's actually copying stuff from the source which is as POV as possible. And that seems acceptable on Serbian Wiki. Most of the articles are totally POV, as you can imagine coming from a church source.
The reason I am writing this is to show that national wikipedias are inheritly biased - they can be very good on covering stuff like nature, science, etc. but when it comes to more touchy topics, it will be hard to get editors from different perspectives.
I am pretty much presented with a choice: should I use Serbian, Bosnian or Croatian wiki? I am not either a Serb, a Bosnian, or a Croat, and I communicate on daily basis with people from Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia, using my native language (whatever it is). I work together with Serbs, Croats and Bosnians on many en.wikipedia articles. And I chose to only edit, when I do edit in non-english wikipedias, Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia. Why would I go for anything else? If I am writing about World War 2, I will write a much better article if it's together with editors from all of those countries, than only one of them.
So, if we can't have only one Wikipedia for all of us, than at least let the ones among us who are capable of working with everyone, work as we know best.
Dejan
On 1/8/06, Dejan Cabrilo dcabrilo@gmail.com wrote:
Not that big of a deal, but still, everybody thinks that it's OK to post the Holy Bible on Wikipedia.
You are lying again.
Like I said, this was a proposed policy, from May 2005 (the last time I was active on Serbian Wikipedia, it was in part a response to the fact that I overnight labeled a bunch of articles as POV, because I found them to be essays on Orthodox Christianity, but obviously, others realized the POV in supporting this policy). Still, it got 5 votes for, and 3 against. I think it describes the inherit POV of such national projects.
1. You marked articles as POV without any intention to work on them. If you do the same on English Wikipedia, POV tag would be removed through some time. 2. It didn't pass because of your voting (on Serbian Wikipedia 5:3 is not enough for introducing some new rule).
The following users supported the policy: http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B... http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B... http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B... http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B... http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B...
All of them are admins/bureaucrats, so people of trust there think that NPOV is not what Wikipedia is about.
You didn't translate the parts about NPOV.
Three people voted against, users Zocky (not an admin, not active), me (not an admin, not active) and Aleksandar (doesn't seem to be an admin, I don't know if he is active).
And admins/bureaucrats didn't introduced the rule because of voting non-admins.
Now, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolaj_Velimirovic was a part of Serbian Orthodox Church and writer of big part of its doctrine (or at least, what some say should be). So, it's much worse than copying stuff from some outdated encyclopedia, it's actually copying stuff from the source which is as POV as possible. And that seems acceptable on Serbian Wiki. Most of the articles are totally POV, as you can imagine coming from a church source.
And, again, you didn't mention that the article about Nikolaj Velimirovic is still under POV tag because the article doesn't include his relations toward anti-Semitism and Hitler.
It seems that you have a lot of personal problems in relation with Serbian Wikipedia...
The reason I am writing this is to show that national wikipedias are inheritly biased - they can be very good on covering stuff like nature, science, etc. but when it comes to more touchy topics, it will be hard to get editors from different perspectives.
And what about Piere de Cuberten's nazism? No one wrote anything about that on English Wikipedia.
I am pretty much presented with a choice: should I use Serbian, Bosnian or Croatian wiki? I am not either a Serb, a Bosnian, or a Croat, and I communicate on daily basis with people from Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia, using my native language (whatever it is). I work together with Serbs, Croats and Bosnians on many en.wikipedia articles. And I chose to only edit, when I do edit in non-english wikipedias, Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia. Why would I go for anything else? If I am writing about World War 2, I will write a much better article if it's together with editors from all of those countries, than only one of them.
Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian adjectives mean a language, not a nation. And it seems that you have a lot of Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian ethnicities and cultures. For you, they are "anti-civilized", they are "regressive", they are... This is a clear fascism.
Milos Rancic wrote:
On 1/8/06, Dejan Cabrilo dcabrilo@gmail.com wrote:
Like I said, this was a proposed policy, from May 2005 (the last time I was active on Serbian Wikipedia, it was in part a response to the fact that I overnight labeled a bunch of articles as POV, because I found them to be essays on Orthodox Christianity, but obviously, others realized the POV in supporting this policy). Still, it got 5 votes for, and 3 against. I think it describes the inherit POV of such national projects.
- You marked articles as POV without any intention to work on them.
If you do the same on English Wikipedia, POV tag would be removed through some time.
That would not be very good etiquette on his part. It seems inconsistant to want to work on SH and telling people on SR what to do at the same time. It seems to be a matter of deciding where he wants to put his energy.
The reason I am writing this is to show that national wikipedias are inheritly biased - they can be very good on covering stuff like nature, science, etc. but when it comes to more touchy topics, it will be hard to get editors from different perspectives.
And what about Piere de Cuberten's nazism? No one wrote anything about that on English Wikipedia.
Then it's not surprising that I had not heard about this until now. I know that he was associated with the Olympics but have nevers been interested in knowing anything about him. There are many topics like that.
Ec
On 1/8/06, Dejan Cabrilo dcabrilo@gmail.com wrote:
Not that big of a deal, but still, everybody thinks that it's OK to post the Holy Bible on Wikipedia.
You are lying again.
Milos, you first said that nobody tagged POV articles as such, and that I should've. We concluded that I did. Now you are saying that I didn't attempt to improve them, but did tag them. I did try to improve some, but I was constantly reverted and even rolled back by some admins (I can look into those). So, don't tell me I am not saying truth again, please.
This is not about Serbian Wikipedia per se. I am just saying that we should be happy that we have people of different religions and ethnicites who can contribute to same Wikipedia, and that it's only a positive thing.
Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian adjectives mean a language, not a nation. And it seems that you have a lot of Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian ethnicities and cultures. For you, they are "anti-civilized", they are "regressive", they are... This is a clear fascism.
Please, please, please, don't call me a fascist or a nationalist of any kind. It's kind of a personal attack, the way I feel it. I don't feel Serbian, Croatian or Bosnian, but I don't feel Yugoslavian either. Nationality is not important for me, but call me whatever you like. I do claim I, myself and perhaps nobody else, speak Serbo-Croatian, but it's not about the name of the language, it's about the encyclopedia.
I really can't reply to your accusations right now. I hope you understand how much it hurts me that anyone calls me fascist, but I never called different ethinicites and cultures "anti-civilized" or "regressive". I just said that we should all attempt at working together. If you want to join it, good. I am sure... no, I KNOW, that you and everybody else can perfectly well communicate to Bosnians and Croats, and we should use that as much as we can. After all, it's about creating an encyclopedia, not about building a community.
It doesn't matter if our edition is called Serbo-Croatian, or Neo-Shtokavian, or "our language". It's about not being country, or ethno-centric, but information centric.
Dejan
On 1/11/06, Dejan Cabrilo dcabrilo@gmail.com wrote:
Milos, you first said that nobody tagged POV articles as such, and that I should've. We concluded that I did. Now you are saying that I didn't attempt to improve them, but did tag them. I did try to improve some, but I was constantly reverted and even rolled back by some admins (I can look into those). So, don't tell me I am not saying truth again, please.
Try it again with ONE article, first (please, use some which where you are more familiar) and if you would have some problems, they will be solved. But, please, don't behave aggressive.
It doesn't matter if our edition is called Serbo-Croatian, or Neo-Shtokavian, or "our language". It's about not being country, or ethno-centric, but information centric.
Do you think that building one more community is a right way to make differences smaller? I don't think so. In this moment the right way is, as I see, to work inside of present communities. When sh: grows up to 10 people, we would have a lot more difficult situation because the space for possible merging would be filled with one more community.
However, as I said, one of the important reasons why I am not for closing sh: in this way is a possibility of deactivating couple of active sh: Wikipedians.
In other words, the only possible way for relocking of sh: is your (i.e. sh: Wikipedians) intention to do so; as well as your start to work in all of other three encyclopedias/communities on the long process of merging content. Is it possible?
From what I understand, at least of Miloš's view, he hopes one day to have a united Neo-Štokavian Wikipedia, perhaps called the "Wikipedia in Our Language" or something similarly uniting.
That means, I think, that everybody here has, ultimately, the same goals.
Whether or not sh.wiki would eventually be the breeding ground for a Neo-Štokavian Wikipedia is uncertain.
But one thing which is certain about sh.wiki: it has already served to unite people from different countries under the same goals. A large group? No. But, a group nonetheless. I know that among the main supporters of sh.wp, some are based out of Serbia and others out of Croatia. I don't think there are any Bosnians nor Montenegrins (nor Zlatiborians ;p) involved, though.
The main issue seems to be the current structure of sh.wiki.
If sh.wikipedians really dream that some day, all speakers of Serbo-Croatian "languages" can be united with one Wikipedia, I think it is up to them to take the first reconciliatory step, namely, form community ties with the Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian Wikipedias.
Also, a power structure needs to be formed. Although it should be OK to block a person who is unquestionably vandalising pages, anybody else should be blocked, but later it needs to be discussed with the other admins. A full agreement should be reached among admins before making a final decision.
Also, for better oversight, I think sh.wp should try to recruit people from other Wikipedias, or recruit non-Wikipedians to join sh.wp. With a larger community, there is a bigger diversity, and eventually more admins, which leads to better oversight of admin actions.
Really, sh.wiki is not in a position to be confrontational. In English, there is a saying, "you get more flies with honey than with vinegar", which means, you will get further by diplomacy and attempts at reconciliation and genuine goodwill, than petty bickering.
Someone will probably say, "Oh, well, *we're* not arguing, it's them." But this is never the case. For any argument, there are two people.
And it's obvious that many people here share the same ideals.
And let's get one thing straight -- NOBODY, again, NOBODY (save perhaps Mav) wants to FORCEFULLY unite projects without democratic agreement from all of them.
Mark
On 11/01/06, Milos Rancic millosh@mutualaid.org wrote:
On 1/11/06, Dejan Cabrilo dcabrilo@gmail.com wrote:
Milos, you first said that nobody tagged POV articles as such, and that I should've. We concluded that I did. Now you are saying that I didn't attempt to improve them, but did tag them. I did try to improve some, but I was constantly reverted and even rolled back by some admins (I can look into those). So, don't tell me I am not saying truth again, please.
Try it again with ONE article, first (please, use some which where you are more familiar) and if you would have some problems, they will be solved. But, please, don't behave aggressive.
It doesn't matter if our edition is called Serbo-Croatian, or Neo-Shtokavian, or "our language". It's about not being country, or ethno-centric, but information centric.
Do you think that building one more community is a right way to make differences smaller? I don't think so. In this moment the right way is, as I see, to work inside of present communities. When sh: grows up to 10 people, we would have a lot more difficult situation because the space for possible merging would be filled with one more community.
However, as I said, one of the important reasons why I am not for closing sh: in this way is a possibility of deactivating couple of active sh: Wikipedians.
In other words, the only possible way for relocking of sh: is your (i.e. sh: Wikipedians) intention to do so; as well as your start to work in all of other three encyclopedias/communities on the long process of merging content. Is it possible?
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
-- "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
Also, people are talking about Language vs Dialect. Does it matter?
Who cares if Serbian is a language separate from Croatian? It is entirely irrelevant. What *is* relevant, is that _IN WRITTEN FORM_ Croatians, Bosnians, and Serbians can all understand each other at maybe greater even than 99%. There is a question of writing system, but unlike some cases, there is a direct 1-to-1 symbol correspondence (sort of).
Wikipedia is NOT about petty politics. It is NOT about having a place to promote a culture or a country. It is NOT about whether or not a language is different enough from another. It is about Building an Encyclopaedia, first and foremost.
And every situation should be considered from THAT PERSPECTIVE. Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian Wikipedias are growing quite large now. Imagine how much bigger it would be if they shared a single Wikipedia? It would be among the largest!! That excites me, and that's why I copied a few dozen articles to sh.wp. And, if you put petty politics and patriotic feeling aside and remember that we're here to build an encyclopaedia, it should excite you too!!! Sure, maybe it will require a little more work to integrate such different communities. But will it be worth it? I think ultimately, the answer is "yes".
But such an outcome cannot be reached without the cooperation of each community.
Obviously, there are still strong divisions from the wars. But please, let's not let that divide us on Wikipedia. Wikipedia should be something that unites us.
The English Wikipedia unites Brits, Americans, Australians, Serbians, Italians, Christians, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, young and old. Yes, there is sometimes infighting -- the Ukrainians and Russians will disagree. But in the end there is fraternity, and the encyclopaedia is all the better for it!!!!!
Why, then, can't a Neo-Štokavian Wikipedia unite Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Metohijan, and Hercegovinian, Muslim, Catholic, and Orthodox?
Mark
On 13/01/06, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
From what I understand, at least of Miloš's view, he hopes one day to have a united Neo-Štokavian Wikipedia, perhaps called the "Wikipedia in Our Language" or something similarly uniting.
That means, I think, that everybody here has, ultimately, the same goals.
Whether or not sh.wiki would eventually be the breeding ground for a Neo-Štokavian Wikipedia is uncertain.
But one thing which is certain about sh.wiki: it has already served to unite people from different countries under the same goals. A large group? No. But, a group nonetheless. I know that among the main supporters of sh.wp, some are based out of Serbia and others out of Croatia. I don't think there are any Bosnians nor Montenegrins (nor Zlatiborians ;p) involved, though.
The main issue seems to be the current structure of sh.wiki.
If sh.wikipedians really dream that some day, all speakers of Serbo-Croatian "languages" can be united with one Wikipedia, I think it is up to them to take the first reconciliatory step, namely, form community ties with the Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian Wikipedias.
Also, a power structure needs to be formed. Although it should be OK to block a person who is unquestionably vandalising pages, anybody else should be blocked, but later it needs to be discussed with the other admins. A full agreement should be reached among admins before making a final decision.
Also, for better oversight, I think sh.wp should try to recruit people from other Wikipedias, or recruit non-Wikipedians to join sh.wp. With a larger community, there is a bigger diversity, and eventually more admins, which leads to better oversight of admin actions.
Really, sh.wiki is not in a position to be confrontational. In English, there is a saying, "you get more flies with honey than with vinegar", which means, you will get further by diplomacy and attempts at reconciliation and genuine goodwill, than petty bickering.
Someone will probably say, "Oh, well, *we're* not arguing, it's them." But this is never the case. For any argument, there are two people.
And it's obvious that many people here share the same ideals.
And let's get one thing straight -- NOBODY, again, NOBODY (save perhaps Mav) wants to FORCEFULLY unite projects without democratic agreement from all of them.
Mark
On 11/01/06, Milos Rancic millosh@mutualaid.org wrote:
On 1/11/06, Dejan Cabrilo dcabrilo@gmail.com wrote:
Milos, you first said that nobody tagged POV articles as such, and that I should've. We concluded that I did. Now you are saying that I didn't attempt to improve them, but did tag them. I did try to improve some, but I was constantly reverted and even rolled back by some admins (I can look into those). So, don't tell me I am not saying truth again, please.
Try it again with ONE article, first (please, use some which where you are more familiar) and if you would have some problems, they will be solved. But, please, don't behave aggressive.
It doesn't matter if our edition is called Serbo-Croatian, or Neo-Shtokavian, or "our language". It's about not being country, or ethno-centric, but information centric.
Do you think that building one more community is a right way to make differences smaller? I don't think so. In this moment the right way is, as I see, to work inside of present communities. When sh: grows up to 10 people, we would have a lot more difficult situation because the space for possible merging would be filled with one more community.
However, as I said, one of the important reasons why I am not for closing sh: in this way is a possibility of deactivating couple of active sh: Wikipedians.
In other words, the only possible way for relocking of sh: is your (i.e. sh: Wikipedians) intention to do so; as well as your start to work in all of other three encyclopedias/communities on the long process of merging content. Is it possible?
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-- "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
-- "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
Dejan Cabrilo wrote:
The theory is fine, but unless we can read the language(s) we have no way of knowing whether NPOV is in fact being followed.
Of course, we could go article for article, but some "interesting" stuff that is apparently acceptable on one of those "national" Wikipedias is: http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%BE_%D0%88%D0%B5%D0%... (Gospel of Matthew, full edition) [[Свето Јеванђеље по Марку]] (Gospel of Mark, also full edition)
Not that big of a deal, but still, everybody thinks that it's OK to post the Holy Bible on Wikipedia.
My objection to that would have nothing to do with NPOV but with the principle that original texts belong in Wikisource. Still it's up to each Wikipedia to decide for itself how it wants to handle that.
This is a proposed policy, which resulted after I labeled a bunch of articles as POV: http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B... or, Wikipedia:Points of View
Basically, it's a proposal to allow people to write from certain POVs, which would be labeled so. Here are the rules (my translation from that page):
- At least one editor wants to write about it.
- At least five editors support legitimacy of that POV.
- At least one of those five is an admin.
- At least five articles in user namespace describing that POV.
- That the POV does not promote racial, religious or other hate and
doesn't call for violence. This is solemly a concern of such things as fascism or nazism. 6. That the POV has local (i.e. is connected to Serbia somehow) or global importance. 7. That the POV is described in a proper place on Serbian Wikipedia.
Like I said, this was a proposed policy, from May 2005 (the last time I was active on Serbian Wikipedia, it was in part a response to the fact that I overnight labeled a bunch of articles as POV, because I found them to be essays on Orthodox Christianity, but obviously, others realized the POV in supporting this policy). Still, it got 5 votes for, and 3 against. I think it describes the inherit POV of such national projects.
Without going into details, it is conceivable as a possible solution for dealing with NPOV problems. Although NPOV is a broad policy that affects all projects, communities will sometimes need to find their own way of implementing it.
That policy never made it thru, but for example, if you visit [[Категорија:Светитељи]], which is Category:Saints, you will notice in almost each and every article among those the following line at the bottom: "Велики део овог текст је преузет из охридског пролога светог владике Николаја Велимировића. Он не подлеже ауторским правима" - meaning "Big chunk of this text was taken from Ohrid's Prologue of St. Ruler (not sure about translation of his title) Nikolaj Velimirovic. It is not affected by copyright."
Now, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolaj_Velimirovic was a part of Serbian Orthodox Church and writer of big part of its doctrine (or at least, what some say should be). So, it's much worse than copying stuff from some outdated encyclopedia, it's actually copying stuff from the source which is as POV as possible. And that seems acceptable on Serbian Wiki. Most of the articles are totally POV, as you can imagine coming from a church source.
I see that Velimirovic died in the US in 1956, and I assume that the copyright issue was properly researched. Again, whole texts are more properly placed in Wikisource. If Velimirovic is quoted then those quotes need proper attribution. That doesn't stop others from quoting different authors with an opposite point of view.
The reason I am writing this is to show that national wikipedias are inheritly biased - they can be very good on covering stuff like nature, science, etc. but when it comes to more touchy topics, it will be hard to get editors from different perspectives.
As much as I agree, if no-one accepts the responsibility of adding the opposing points of view, they won't be there.
I am pretty much presented with a choice: should I use Serbian, Bosnian or Croatian wiki? I am not either a Serb, a Bosnian, or a Croat, and I communicate on daily basis with people from Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia, using my native language (whatever it is). I work together with Serbs, Croats and Bosnians on many en.wikipedia articles. And I chose to only edit, when I do edit in non-english wikipedias, Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia. Why would I go for anything else? If I am writing about World War 2, I will write a much better article if it's together with editors from all of those countries, than only one of them.
No argument from me there.
Ec
Of course, we could go article for article, but some "interesting" stuff that is apparently acceptable on one of those "national" Wikipedias is: http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%90%C4%84%C4%90%CB%9B%C4%90%C4%BE%C5%83%C2%8...
ŃĐľŃŃ
(Gospel of Matthew, full edition) [[ХвоŃĐž ĐованŃĐľŃĐľ пО ĐĐ°ŃĐşŃ]] (Gospel of Mark, also full edition) Not that big of a deal, but still, everybody thinks that it's OK to post the Holy Bible on Wikipedia.
Is there no Serbian Wikisource?
Basically, it's a proposal to allow people to write from certain POVs, which would be labeled so. Here are the rules (my translation from that page):
- At least one editor wants to write about it.
- At least five editors support legitimacy of that POV.
- At least one of those five is an admin.
- At least five articles in user namespace describing that POV.
- That the POV does not promote racial, religious or other hate and
doesn't call for violence. This is solemly a concern of such things as fascism or nazism. 6. That the POV has local (i.e. is connected to Serbia somehow) or global importance. 7. That the POV is described in a proper place on Serbian Wikipedia.
Sounds like it's a Serbian edition of Wikinfo rather than Wikipedia...
Ausir
Dejan Cabrilo wrote:
However, community than agreed that "We are a Serbian Wikipedia, so it's only normal to have that kind of bias".
I certainly hope that's not a consensus opinion, because that's flatly unacceptable for any language's Wikipedia. That all Wikipedia articles must be written from a neutral point of view (which implies not from the point of view of any nationality, ethnicity, or culture) is one of the few absolutely non-negotiable Wikipedia policies. -Mark
While it is true, I also think that in some cases it's not that clear. For example, most articles in Polish Wikipedia, when discussing some matters often tend to focus on Poland (although it's more of a systemic bias than non-NPOV). We also have separate "events in Poland" and "events outside Poland" sections in all our year and day articles.
Ausir
On 1/8/06, Dejan Cabrilo dcabrilo@gmail.com wrote:
I did do it. And the storm rolled upon me. I was mostly quickly reverted, or even rolled back. In fact, if I remember correctly, I was the one to introduce POV and copyvio templates, no? Check out my contributions on sr.wiki (User:Dcabrilo). When I started doing it, you proposed that we allow POV articles to stay on the wiki, with a permanent template of: "This article was written from such and such POV". I said we should either get rid of them, or rewrite them. You said you thought they were just too good of essays to delete, and that you talked to Jimbo Wales while he was in Belgrade about that issue.
Between 27th July 2004 and 3rd March 2005 you made 53 edits on Serbian Wikipedia (including your translation of article about Kosovo and excluding any conflict).
More then two months after your last edit (13th May 2005) you started with marking a dozens of articles with POV tag (a lot of them was/are POV, but some of them wasn't/aren't POV, but your personal opinion) without any intention to work on them! Also, you came with a lot of bad faith. And I don't know what kind of feed back you expected?
You are talking now with a bad faith, too and you are misleading people on the list. The idea of the template "This article was written from such and such POV" was not to become permanent, but to stay there until we have someone who can change the article accord to NPOV. Because, unlike English Wikipedia, we don't have a number of experts and/or people who are interested in such fields AND our intention was to mark them with the same icons, but less offensive to prevent further edit wars. AND it didn't pass because you and Zocky was against that.
Just a little number of articles which you marked as POV are essays and they are marked as essays now on Serbian Wikipedia. We will keep them until we find some other place for them.
And Serbian Wikipedia has more POV than English one, for sure. For example, just until few hours ago, this thing was stuck on the top of the Home Page:
(MARRY CHRISTMAS)
You have some exact number of POV pages? Community started with idea to congratulate all important dates for all confessions which are related to Serbian cultural area (Christianity and Islam).
Also, just for example, I noticed that article I labeled as POV (my mistake, it was not only POV, it was also a copyvio from http://www.svetosavlje.org/biblioteka/Recnik/A.htm), has been locked since I put a POV tag on it... May 2004. (http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%B4%D0%B0%D0%BC_%D0%B8_%D0%95%D0%B2%D0...).
As well as people who put it also got permissions to do that.
So, yes, I did try to work on POV, but you and many others had no problems with POV (recognized as such) being included in the name space. As long as it had a tag...
No, you didn't try to work on POV, you just marked the articles without any intention to work on them.
Only on May 13th did I label about a dozen articles as POV (mostly Orthodox Christianity related). [[Википедија:Провера неутралности]]. Many of those were beyond repair (they were simply religious essays).
However, community than agreed that "We are a Serbian Wikipedia, so it's only normal to have that kind of bias".
Community agreed that it is normal that we would have more articles about Orthodox Christianity then about Hinduism now. You are lying again.
Latin alphabet is needed only because of Croats. Bosnians know Cyrillics; if Slovenians know Serbian/Croatian, they know Cyrillics, too. As well as Macedonians use only Cyrillics.
Most Slovenes and Croats are not good with Cyrillic, and not comfortable enough with it to make edits. Many Bosnians as well. This is especially true for younger people. Most Macedonians, unlike most Slovenes, can read and write in both Cyrillic and Latin for that matter.
All Bosnians are learning Cyrillic in primary school (unlike Croats). In general, young Slovenes doesn't know Serbian/Croatian.
But, the fact is that your xenophobia toward Cyrillic alphabet exists, but I didn't see any xenophobia toward it from editors of Croatian Wikipedia.
--- Milos Rancic millosh@mutualaid.org wrote:
I think this really needs to be reformed somehow. If that software, which would transliterate between Cyrillic and Latin, appears, what's the reason not to have ONE SINGLE Wikipedia for all of those languages?
If you want to work on such project, try to think a little bit deeper what is possible now, what would be possible in two years etc. And, start to work on it. The problem with you and Pokrajac is that you are full of your ideals in emails and talk pages without any consistent work.
An on-the-fly script converter is already working on the Chinese Wikipedia. It does not, I am told, require more than one version of an article and does not fork articles. What it does is display whatever script a person wants w/o needing separate articles written in the different scripts.
So it appears that there is no valid reason to have separate wikis for each country that was formerly part of Yugoslavia. One Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia will do, IMO.
We are here to build encyclopedias that everybody in the world can read and use. That does NOT mean that we need to have encyclopedias in every single dialect spoken in the world. In fact, doing that will only hamper our goals since it needlessly breaks-up communities that could combine their effort into creating one encyclopedia that respects all the various mutually-understandable dialects of a single language.
That Serbian, Croation, and Bosnian are separate languages appears to be a politically-convenient fiction that wants to enforce differences that don't really exist. That can only tend to enforce component-nation-specific POVs and thus violate NPOV (as would having separate Wikipedais for Simplified and Traditional Chinese).
It is very sad that the lack of a good policy on language creation and shutdown has resulted in this situation.
Shut down Serbo-Croatian? No. Shut down Serbian, Croation, and Bosnian and then merge them into Serbo-Croatian? Yes.
If need be we can reduce to just two wikis until/if a Latin/Cyrillic script converter and be created.
-- mav
__________________________________________ Yahoo! DSL Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less. dsl.yahoo.com
On 1/8/06, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
An on-the-fly script converter is already working on the Chinese Wikipedia. It does not, I am told, require more than one version of an article and does not fork articles. What it does is display whatever script a person wants w/o needing separate articles written in the different scripts.
It is not only a matter of scripts. Only Serbian Wikipedia will have FOUR variants, not two. Possible united Wikipedia would have at least TEN versions (maybe more). We are working on it.
So it appears that there is no valid reason to have separate wikis for each country that was formerly part of Yugoslavia. One Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia will do, IMO.
Until we would have a good implementation of software, separate Wikipedias are needed. Serbo-Croatian is, again, offensive term to 90% of inhabitants of Serbia and Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia.
We are here to build encyclopedias that everybody in the world can read and use. That does NOT mean that we need to have encyclopedias in every single dialect spoken in the world. In fact, doing that will only hamper our goals since it needlessly breaks-up communities that could combine their effort into creating one encyclopedia that respects all the various mutually-understandable dialects of a single language.
We (the community from Serbian Wikipedia) have very good cooperation with the community from Croatian Wikipedia and I am going to Zagreb in the first part of Februray to see them.
That Serbian, Croation, and Bosnian are separate languages appears to be a politically-convenient fiction that wants to enforce differences that don't really exist. That can only tend to enforce component-nation-specific POVs and thus violate NPOV (as would having separate Wikipedais for Simplified and Traditional Chinese).
POV is present on English Wikipedia, too. There are no chance to add free about USA foreign politics on English Wikipedia. For example, there are a number of articles named as "incidents" even US soldiers were killing a lot of civilians. Pushing POV is very usual on Wikipedia.
Shut down Serbo-Croatian? No. Shut down Serbian, Croation, and Bosnian and then merge them into Serbo-Croatian? Yes.
And shut down three communities and one formed local chapter and one local chapter in the process of forming.
If need be we can reduce to just two wikis until/if a Latin/Cyrillic script converter and be created.
You are not introduced in the problem well.
Milos Rancic wrote:
On 1/8/06, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
So it appears that there is no valid reason to have separate wikis for each country that was formerly part of Yugoslavia. One Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia will do, IMO.
Until we would have a good implementation of software, separate Wikipedias are needed. Serbo-Croatian is, again, offensive term to 90% of inhabitants of Serbia and Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia.
Perhaps patience is required at least until the software is working. My impression from the Yugoslave diaspora is that Serbo-Croatian is a preferred term if it saves them from having to identify themselves with one or another of the factions. That or they will use the vague phrase, "my language".
That Serbian, Croation, and Bosnian are separate languages appears to be a politically-convenient fiction that wants to enforce differences that don't really exist. That can only tend to enforce component-nation-specific POVs and thus violate NPOV (as would having separate Wikipedais for Simplified and Traditional Chinese).
POV is present on English Wikipedia, too. There are no chance to add free about USA foreign politics on English Wikipedia. For example, there are a number of articles named as "incidents" even US soldiers were killing a lot of civilians. Pushing POV is very usual on Wikipedia.
I'm sure that these problems are constant irritations in every project with more than one contributor.
Ec
On 1/9/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Perhaps patience is required at least until the software is working. My impression from the Yugoslave diaspora is that Serbo-Croatian is a preferred term if it saves them from having to identify themselves with one or another of the factions. That or they will use the vague phrase, "my language".
1. It seems that Serbia, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin diaspora needs their own Wikipedia.
2. This incident told me that it is impossible to work with fascists from Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia. The project of making one Neo-Shtokavian Wikipedia will be done without them, for sure.
Milos Rancic wrote:
On 1/9/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Perhaps patience is required at least until the software is working. My impression from the Yugoslave diaspora is that Serbo-Croatian is a preferred term if it saves them from having to identify themselves with one or another of the factions. That or they will use the vague phrase, "my language".
- It seems that Serbia, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin diaspora
needs their own Wikipedia.
- This incident told me that it is impossible to work with fascists
from Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia. The project of making one Neo-Shtokavian Wikipedia will be done without them, for sure.
If the sh-Wikipedians are as bad as you suggest, then isn't the demand to shut down their project a question of feeding the trolls taken to the level of whole wikis?
Ec
On 1/9/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
If the sh-Wikipedians are as bad as you suggest, then isn't the demand to shut down their project a question of feeding the trolls taken to the level of whole wikis?
The parts of English Wikipedia are controled by much worst people, even English is well known language. In other words, it is usual on Wikipedia, too.
Until we would have a good implementation of software, separate Wikipedias are needed. Serbo-Croatian is, again, offensive term to 90% of inhabitants of Serbia and Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia.
As I said, maybe a "Common Neo-Shtokavian" would be more appropriate and less politically loaded term?
Ausir
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