That's the classic concern, of course, and the reason the rule is written the way it
is. When we were just starting out, that was an appropriate concern, and is still an
appropriate concern if a given language area is still starting out in virgin terrain.
But I think the following is reality in most situations now. "Various povs"
already don't collaborate, because whoever was there first already dominates, and has
already established what constitutes the neutral pov. What the argument that James
articulates assumes is that by not allowing the second wiki, people will have to
collaborate. The reality, instead, is that by not allowing the second wiki, the original
owners of the first wiki get to keep their pov, and the people with a different pov are
frozen out entirely. That's the reality.
(This, MF-W, is why I was discussing POV the other day. If there were a central mechanism
to allow that second group to break in, we could do this. But there isn't, so we
can't.)
Steven
Sent from Outlook<http://aka.ms/weboutlook>
________________________________
From: Langcom <langcom-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org> on behalf of James Heilman
<jmh649(a)gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2019 10:00 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee <langcom(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki
My concern is having multiple wikis for nearly identical languages allows various povs not
to have to collaborate and we are more likely to end up with difficulties like in
Croatian.
On Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 07:56 Steven White
<koala19890@hotmail.com<mailto:koala19890@hotmail.com>> wrote:
My point is that these "politically-motivated claims" are already facts on the
ground, whether you like it or not.
Steven White
________________________________
From: Langcom
<langcom-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:langcom-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org>>
on behalf of MF-Warburg
<mfwarburg@googlemail.com<mailto:mfwarburg@googlemail.com>>
Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2019, 8:43 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki
Am Mo., 28. Okt. 2019 um 16:08 Uhr schrieb Steven White
<koala19890@hotmail.com<mailto:koala19890@hotmail.com>>:
Well, as I have said many times, the current rule as written is problematic, and we have
no business rejecting Montenegrin at this point.
No, Langcom has "every business" to do so.
The policy, as written, says "The committee does not consider political differences,
since the Wikimedia Foundation's goal is to give every single person free, unbiased
access to the sum of all human knowledge, rather than information from the viewpoint of
individual political communities." You have to read the whole sentence there, not
just the first phrase. By "not consider[ing]" political differences, the
committee in fact perpetuates the fact that existing projects may already have "the
viewpoint of individual political communities". In these cases, people in minority
communities are tremendously disadvantaged in that they have to overcome (possibly)
hostile political/cultural viewpoints—and may well not be able to do so.
Your interpretation is exactly the opposite of what is written. The intention of the
policy certainly was not to give every politically differing group their own wiki.
Thank you for your explanation in your other mail of why it is difficult to achieve a true
NPOV. However, who has claimed that Langcom should NPOVs on any wiki?
One of the purposes of Langcom is to prevent the multiplication of wikis due to
politically motivated claims that one language is actually two.
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