On 8/10/07, Lars Aronsson <lars(a)aronsson.se> wrote: I would like to know what was in my statement like a religious dogma (private mail would be good enough; I just want to know what is wrong). I used "scientific" in very exact sense of "scientific method", not as a marketing. I agree that there is/were a lot of propaganda by of traditional encyclopedias. Also, Wikipedia has the best *encyclopedic* (and because of that scientific) principles in comparison to other encyclopedias (I think that a lot of articles in Britannica wouldn't pass our NOR, NPOV nor V conditions). (Of course, I don't know anything about some other, not well known encyclopedias; but according to Serbian, Croatian etc. encyclopedias, I may say that they have just a lot more problems then Britannica has.) It is good to think about successfulness of Wikipedia, but our primary goal is not to be successful, but to make encyclopedia. And encyclopedia is a scientific project, like astronomy is a science. While I don't think anything against trying to make something different, it is not possible to build encyclopedia outside of scientific method, like it is not possible to research physical laws outside of it. Yes, we started with another phase of building Wikipedia. For a couple of big projects it is not anymore important how big they are, but how encyclopedic are they. When you are building community, it is hard to be strict in using well known principles. (Actually, it very often goes to not imposing some principles because of community building.)

The wording of the section about foreign-language sources (in [[WP:V]]) is ambiguous. It needs to state that foreign-language sources are allowed, and even encouraged. Most Chinese speakers come from mainland China, where Wikipedia is banned. Open proxies are the only way to bypass such censorship, but we have a policy against editing from open proxies. However, discussion about this issue belongs in another thread. 2007/8/11, Lars Aronsson <lars(a)aronsson.se>se>:

I agree. 2007/8/11, Waerth <waerth(a)asianet.co.th>th>:

Hoi, It is a policy reasonably to comply with when you are aware of this other source in the English language. This is definetly not a given and it cannot be expected. So imho it is a policy based on wishful thinking, not really practical. Thanks, GerardM On 8/12/07, Milos Rancic <millosh(a)gmail.com> wrote:

2007/8/11, GerardM <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>om>: The policy also includes the creation of new usernames, so the difference is just academic. -- Andre Engels, andreengels(a)gmail.com ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels

On 11/08/07, J.L.W.S. The Special One <hildanknight(a)gmail.com> wrote: Not going to happen. Soft-blocked open proxies are a firehose of vandalism. en:wp recently had a rogue admin, User:Runcorn, who was making hard blocks into soft ones so their sockpuppets could go wild through them. (The same user is still, I think, an admin on en:wikiquote, only because there isn't actually any procedure to remove the sysop bit involuntarily from people on en:wq.) - d.

On 8/11/07, J.L.W.S. The Special One <hildanknight(a)gmail.com> wrote: Just a little hyperbole, don't you think? -Matt

On 12/08/07, J.L.W.S. The Special One <hildanknight(a)gmail.com> wrote: "over a billion people"? We're not blocking a billion people. The Chinese government, in their infinite wisdom, is blocking a billion people. There are ways for people to evade this block; a tiny fraction of those billion know about them. Of those ways, some happen to be using systems that we consider a systematic security problem. We block the systematic security problems not because we don't want China to edit, but because experience has shown they get massively abused. Yes, this sucks for all concerned. But throwng hyperbole around just makes it harder to rationally work out what to do... are there seriously a billion people who would ever be using these kinds of proxies? -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

On 8/11/07, Lars Aronsson <lars(a)aronsson.se> wrote: I still don't know for any other method except a scientific (with limitations, of course) which may give us a basis to work on an encyclopedia. If you know for someone, please let me know. Analyze of words etymology doesn't say a lot because astrology would be a science then. Today, encyclopedia is a sum of knowledge which is gathered using scientific method. Yes, it is used for education and it is her primary goal. However, any religious or political pamphlet may be used for education and education may be its primary goal. So, the main difference is in a method. I learned a lot from Wikipedia. Thanks to Wikipedia, I realized how much school system in my country was misleading me (it was socialist Yugoslavia, but the main problems were not related to socialism because it was easy to understand what was propaganda and what was not). And it is a nice feeling to imagine what amount of benefits from Wikipedia would have humans born at the beginning of this century. However, we mustn't mislead them! And the only way to do so is be strict with verifiability. For example, I may talk about linguistics. Outside of very well known linguistic theories and very well known linguistic features, Wikipedia articles are in a mass. One example is "distantive case". According to Google as well as according to one of the rare linguistic scholars on English Wikipedia (User:Angr), it is not a noun case, but a *verb form*. And such "fact" existed inside of [[Template:Case table]] for a long time. If we were strict about verifiability, such stupidity would never pass. However, we are not and it is always possible that Wikipedia actively misleading its readers. This is not scientific nor educational. * * * Notability is completely other question. I don't think that notability is a relevant criteria for one scientific project. If something passes verifiability rules, it should go in encyclopedia. Yes, we need a lot more articles. I have a number of similar examples. A couple of months ago, I had a couple of lecturers to teaching assistants and students of the Faculty for physical chemistry in Belgrade about work on Wikipedia. (Thanks to one professor who is Wikipedian, students of the final years have to write articles on Wikipedia as semester works.) I wanted to show them that English Wikipedia covered physical chemistry better then Serbian and that they are able to find some starting articles there. It was a kind of surprise when we realized that one basic concept of chemistry of proteins didn't existed on English Wikipedia. So, we wrote one little article in English even our main goal was to write on Serbian Wikipedia. It seems that we came into position where we need people who know matter more in depth. In your case, it seems that we need someone who is well introduced in contemporary literature. In my cases, we need people introduced in linguistics and chemistry. And after your statement, I may write that Sidney is the capital of Australia. Very simple, very logical, but false. Australia is a big country and every educated person knows that Sidney is not the capital of Australia. But, there are not so well known countries. Do you know what is a capital of random US state or a random Central Asian country? And do you think it is necessary to put a reference for that information? I explained that in Queen Victoria - Tolstoy - Broz case: for me there is no need to give a reference where Broz was born because it is well known truth to me; but it isn't to you. And, yes, there are people who use Internet and who are not familiar with the fact that Paris is the capitol of France. About original research: I don't think that WikiProject space is a good place for that, but I think that something like that should exist as a Wikimedian project. I am preparing one document which would deal with this issue: how to know what is a reliable source exactly. And Gerard Meijssen mentioned to me that OmegaWiki team is working on MediaWiki extension which would allow contributors to mark what is a reliable source and what is not.

On 8/11/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: It was about any source, not about sources related to Serbian culture. Of course that language should not play any role in relevancy of a source. In the contrast to UK, USA or Germany, Serbia doesn't have so developed Internet and so many people well introduced in Internet technologies. For example, it is usual that it is not possible to check data about some municipality because municipality doesn't have a website or website is saying just "This is a website of municipality XX, president of municipality is YY and you may send an email to webmaster@municipalityXX (municipality in Serbia has similar size to county in USA and it is a couple of times bigger then municipality in France). So, the point was that it is much harder to find some reference for a topic related to Serbia then for a topic related for Germany. No matter is it in English, Serbian or German. We don't diverge from scientific method, but we only have limits because of the type of scientific product. Someone who makes synthetic work shouldn't deal with experiments, too, but with arranging previous experiments into synthetic work. However, both of examples (encyclopedia and synthetic work) are using scientific method. It would be good if someone makes a good article (in Wikipedia name space or in the main name space) about methods of encyclopedic work. If there is article like this, we wouldn't spend a lot of time explaining what Wikipedia is. This was just an example for the statement that we need a source for every statement and not only for not so well known statements. We need a reference for Tolstoy and Broz as well as we need a reference for Queen Victoria. BTW, for every person born in former Yugoslavia before 1980 it is "well known truth" that Broz was born in Kumrovec and no one of such persons would ask for a reference. But, we are making a general encyclopedia, not an encyclopedia for particular culture.