[Foundation-l] World Wikipedia project?

[Delphine Ménard]

On 10/26/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 10/26/06, luke brandt <shojokid at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I have mentioned this a couple of times, but as yet no one seems interested.
> > The idea is to coordinate Wikipedia policy over different languages as much
> > as possible, so it becomes easier to amalgamate, to the benefit of all, with
> > just translation needed. Then issues of formatting, layout, image policy etc
> > etc should already have been sorted. Comments?
>
> Documenting practices on Meta -- possibly combined with subjective
> analysis and commentary -- seems like a good idea to me. You don't
> need to start a new project or ask for anyone's permission to do this;
> just start writing and structuring your thoughts.


Yes, documenting differences would be an excellent idea. I believe
that informally, a lot of policies are derived from one project or the
other. But that many also originate in a project because they give an
answer to a need arising at one point in time.

As to why I personally believe that unifying the policies is a very
unpractical thing to do, just ask yourself and five other people from
different cultures what length of time they'd put behind the phrase
"It was a very long meeting".

I've done it in a room with 15 people and we came up with so many
different answers (a long meeting was from 20 minutes up to a 8 hours
meeting) that I started grasping the differences that culture (in the
case of Wikimedia, it would be national culture or project culture or
whatever other thing that makes people and communities different).

I believe that different people will give different answers to the
same issues. People may learn from each other, or may not. And that is
their choice. I don't believe that anyone should impose their
solutions on others. Translation is not only a language issue, it is
also an interpretation issue, so even in the unlikely case that all
communities would agree on policies, their translation in different
languages would probably already transform the policy just because it
refers to different concepts in the first place, although they have
the same name.

(hey, we should probably try to start with "what is the role and
definition of a sysop in your project". That one will probably show
the range of different understandings)


Delphine
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