2007/2/2, Berto 'd Sera <albertoserra(a)ukr.net>et>:
BTW, how many editions did even bother translating
those damn pillars??
How
many non-english wikipedians EVEN JUST KNOW that they exist?
Should all Wikipedias translate the pillars? Why? Would it necessarily work,
if they did?
Most of the projects probably have lots to learn from enwiki, since it is
the oldest project and with all its flaws still somehow works despite its
size. Most projects have at one stage or another imported policy pages and
similar from enwiki, or from another wiki that took it from enwiki. Today
however, whatever rules that should be imposed on all projects should come
from the WMF, not English Wikipedia.
The five pillars [1] is, to my knowledge, a compilation of basic policy
created on English Wikipedia. There are other enwiki policy compilations as
well, but it seems the pillars is the one most commonly referred to. I once
a board member ,what policy a Wikipedia has to follow, and got the answer
that probably these are only three: that the content should be free (GFDL),
encyclopaedic and neutral. You can compare the pillars with for instance the
foundation issues page at meta [2] which, interestingly, mentions the "wiki
process" - a badly defined concept that may or may not be identical to the
basic consensus based process of a wiki [3] and that is not mentioned in the
Pillars.
The project that I have been most active at has a compilation of "basic
principles" [4] very similar to the pillars with one exception. This wiki
never imported or reinvented "Ignore all rules", which is the fifth of the
enwiki pillars. I don't think there is anything that tries to make them, or
tells them they should, import that concept from English Wikipedia. I
personally believe they might gain from doing so, but that is another issue
- and a process of much larger scope, and much more painful, than simply
translating a page. Personally I believe the concensus process a.k.a. wiki
process is equally important as Ignore all rules, and deserves a central
place in whatever policy compilation you have. Others might disagree, of
course.
/habj
[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars
[2]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Foundation_issues
[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Consensus
[4]
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Grundprinciperna