[Foundation-l] Compulsory policies for all Wikipedias

[Fred Bauder]

> On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 8:01 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 2009/4/9 Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com>:
>>> On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 7:49 PM, Jaska Zedlik <jz53zc at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>> So, does an all-Wikipedias rules list exist, or if not, what are
>>>> there
>>>> global rules which all the Wikipedias must follow?
>>
>>> No.
>>
>> NPOV. Wikipedias which refuse it have been shut down.
>
> The question was about a list which should exist somewhere (at Meta).
>
> BTW, probably I missed that some Wikipedia was shut down because of
> violating NPOV. Which Wikipedias were shut down because of NPOV
> violation?
>
> As well as I know for many community supported NPOV violations through
> various Wikipedias. As I don't want to point to the projects, here is
> the list of possible excuses for NPOV violation:
>
> * Something is ugly.
> * Something is not according to some moral norms.
> * Too many references (~20 references for two pages text; page deleted).
> * Various ethnicist and nationalist reasons with well or not so well
> rationalizations.
>
> Note that I am not talking about some edit war, but about a dominant
> opinion of not so small number of communities. And those are just
> dominant and generic excuses. A lot of others are well rationalized
> excuses used by many communities and defined (or not) inside of the
> policies. Sometimes the policy is a problem, but in much more cases
> systematic policy interpretation is a problem.

There will always be a residual area of failure to live up to ideals. The
English Wikipedia has all of the problems you list, although perhaps in
subtler forms. Those shortcomings are the source of continual discussion
and, occasionally, serious conflict. It is up to those who edit in each
language to work on resolution of these perennial problems. Only gross
failure, or deliberate forking, would result in repudiation of a
Wikipedia.

Fred Bauder