Fwd: Re: [WikiEN-l] Proposed changes (Trojan War)

Wed Nov 20 15:17:10 UTC 2002

This is my reply to Zoltan. Consider it public domain, if you want to re-use
any of my explanations elsewhere.

Regards,

Erik

--- Weitergeleitete Nachricht / Forwarded Message ---
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 16:10:03 +0100 (MET)
From: Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de>
To: "zoltan simon" <zasimon at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Proposed changes (Trojan War)

> Hello Zoltan,
> 
> we are well aware of the criticisms that can be brought against an attempt
> such as ours. Quite a while ago some of us have written this page:
> 
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AOur_Replies_to_Our_Critics
> 
> Briefly, we try to avoid bias and sabotage by several means:
> 
> - The "Neutral point of view" policy. If someone adds new information to
> an
> article, it should be attributed. Unattributed information that is
> considered
> controversial is either attributed or deleted.
> 
> - The "Recent changes" list. This page displays edits that have recently
> been made to Wikipedia, and many contributors review it when they have
> time. It
> not only allows users to view the changes, it also makes it possible, by
> clicking on the "diff" link, to show the differences between a new page
> and its
> previous version. If someone edits a page and inserts four letter insults
> all
> over the place, we recognize this as vandalism and correct it. If a vandal
> persists, he is banned from the Wikipedia.
> 
> - The personal watch lists. Users who work on articles usually add these
> articles to their individual watch lists. If they view this watch list,
> they see
> a list of all changes that have been recently made to these specific
> articles. So a user who has worked on an article that was vandalized or
> changed in a
> bad way and who hasn't noticed that on the Recent Changes page can still
> see
> it weeks later in his Watch List and fix anything that hasn't been fixed
> yet. This works rather well.
> 
> - The discussion pages. Each article has a "Talk" page attached to it,
> which
> makes it possible for collaborators to work out conflicts, ask questions
> and
> agree on solutions.
> 
> There's more, and it all works amazingly well. Generally speaking,
> articles
> that are viewed a lot are edited a lot and are typically of higher
> quality,
> more balanced, less "crankish" etc. Articles on fringe or exotic subjects
> that
> few people care about can be of lower quality or less balanced. Some of us
> are thinking about implementing an additional certification scheme to
> detect
> high quality articles. Currently, some of our best articles are collected
> on a
> special page:
> 
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ABrilliant_prose
> 
> Sorry for being a bit verbose in this explanation, but the Wikipedia
> concept
> is so different from what people are used to that it takes a while to
> explain why it works ;-)
> 
> As for incorporating your material, feel free to send me anything you
> have,
> but note that I'm currently quite busy with various stuff (including some
> Wikipedia articles I'm working on, such as Library of Alexandria and
> Hypatia of
> Alexandria), so it may take some time for me to get to evaluating them,
> especially if they are long. I can read DOC files, but only in English and
> German.
> 
> But if the only reason you don't want to work on Wikipedia is that you're
> scared you might do something wrong, that's not a very good reason :-) We
> have
> a policy that's called "Be bold in updating pages". If people don't like
> what
> you do, they will tell you how it can be improved, or do it themselves.
> Our
> "Neutral point of view" policy makes it possible for many different views
> on
> a subject to coexist, if they are all attributed properly and without
> bias.
> 
> I have noticed myself that much of the research about the ancient world
> and
> the Middle Ages is flawed. What I'm missing the most is critical
> examination
> of sources -- if a text by a Catholic monk says that evil Jews massacred
> good
> Christians, many historians like to take it at face value, without any
> critical perception whatsoever. In Germany we have Karl-Heinz Deschner,
> who has
> done excellent work with his "Criminal History of Christianity", and in
> the
> 19th century, there were many critical historians, but nowadays more
> relativistic interpretations tend to prevail. 
> 
> Few people have any realistic idea of the greatness of the ancient world
> in
> comparison to what followed it -- ancient Rome at its peak was on a
> technological level comparable in most ways to 19th century Europe. I'm
> very
> interested in developments surrounding the Antikythera device and other
> findings of
> technologically advanced ancient artififacts. The most emotionally
> impressive
> way to view the cultural difference is, in my opinion, to look at the
> development of art from Pompeii and the Fayum portraits to the primitive
> medieval
> paintings that lacked any sense of perspective or beauty and again to the
> art of
> the Renaissance, very similar to the ancient art.
> 
> We have a Hungarian Wikipedia, but it doesn't have any contributors (other
> foreign language Wikipedias are quite active: the German one has 7,000
> articles, and the Esperanto Wikipedia has 4,000 -- the English Wikipedia
> has
> 90,000). Note that the English Wikipedia is not even 2 years old, and some
> of the
> non-English ones are much younger! 
> 
> If you are interested in helping to build a Hungarian Wikipedia from the
> ground up, there's a mailing list here:
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intlwiki-L
> where interested people from the international Wikipedias coordinate their
> development.
> 
> Please note that Wikipedia does not have a real power hierarchy, so I
> can't
> speak for the entire project. There are no special "editors", although we
> do
> have sysops who can delete pages and ban users, but they have to follow
> strict rules in doing so. For the most part, Wikipedia is a  democratic
> project
> where everyone can participate.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Erik
> 
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> 

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