[Foundation-l] wikinews requirement

[Aphaia]

Summary:
my arguments are 
-basic rules should be established *before* the project should start
-and it means a enough number of people who are experienced at the aim
of project and/or
our policies and ideals, like NPOV, but with some modifications and
adoptations, if necessary
-it is strongly recommanded the newly created community has a good
preperation, specially if they had a waiting time before their reqeust
would be approved.

On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 13:34:05 -0800, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:


> >If you mean by COPYING rules, just going to the english version and copying the rules of the english version, I will object that no project should exist which has no community able to make their own rules.
> >
> Exactly!  It makes me wonder about those people who feel that they
> cannot function unless they have previously adopted a complete system of
> rules.  Except for broad questions of fundamental principles communities
> must preceed rules.  

Agreed. The question is what are those "fundamental principles". We
see each Wikimedia project has different opinion except NPOV and GFDL.
Some communities count only board and the Founder's former
instructions, other include other community based idea like "Be bold".
So for saving a mess on some projects - wolof wp and ja wiktionary are
unfortunate cases among ours - and for helping newly being created
projects, it would be helpful to show what are our fundamental
principals.

It is more than those principals are written in letters. It is true
here "letters kill you,  but the spilit makes you alive". Avoiding wo
wp case, the community could understand those principals and apply to
their actual cases. In my opinion this assertion has two corollaries:
1) those principals could be modified applying the actual experiences
on the community and 2) for this purpose, that is, its good
understanding  there should be people who know the aim and mechanism
of the project to some extent.

So it seems to me a reasonable requirement that a new project should
be began by a certain number of experienced people who have been
already active on some project. In most cases 50 edits are enough show
their behaviour and their and understanding to the policies in my
opinion, and it is different from shutting out newbies: it takes two
days to make 50 major edits, if they spent whole a weekend for
activity on wiki. (well I however admit it might be a view of heavy
wikiholics prausibly ...)

On the other hand, I agree with Ray on that most of rules would
however be developed on the community through their activities, not
preceeding its creation. But to manage difficult cases experience on
other projects is helpful: the people who commit a project and/or the
entire Wikimedia project, if possible, with sufficient understanding
of policies and its mechanism. So here we expect experienced people at
the beginning point of a certain project. Or

> Perfectly predictable when the rules are nothing but words.

such a situation would come up again, I assume.

> >Translating/creating policies seems to be a much better test of actual
> >interest in doing work. Once you do that, that shows a commitment to the
> >project.
> >
> People need to do both.  Mere translation is a mechanical act.  There is
> a need to discuss how those policies guide our activity.  Policies
> beyond fundamental principles can and should vary between projects

So the question is what are "fundamental principles". I think we must
make it clear and provide a set of those principles in a form as
neutral as possible (not depending on a certain project but also
refertable to some concrete cases for further understanding). For
example, NPOV guidelein in NPOV (not depending on a certain language
project matters) ... as a startpont for each participants who want to
create a new project.
 
> Maybe that would have prevented the total shutdown that is taking place
> on the japanese wiktionary.

We can point out some factors of  JA wikt shutdown, though I myself
was not wholely clear the situation; I had been  very inactive there
during some months. And after I was back, I was surprised there were
no changes or progress on policies' drafting  before I had left it.
There were almost no discussion on Beer Parlour (VP of wiktionary). It
makes me convince strongly a new project need both people who concern
policies and administrative issues (though it is not so fun than
submission of new entires) and eager submitter of contents.

-- 
Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com