[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia, a world without borders with borders?

[geni]

On 6/17/07, b m <shoombooly at gmail.com> wrote:
> L.S.
>
> I am a newly registered user, but not new to wikipedia, i registered to
> contribute. But i have noticed something that strikes me as quite odd. Being
> fluent in both my mothertongue, Dutch, and English, i traverse from one
> wikilanguage to another. While doing so i noticed some things. When i
> registered in order to be able to edit pages, i read an email by Jimbo Wales
> in which he notified everyone that citing references was very important, and
> another in which he stated that (negatively) biased writing is to be dealt
> with harshly. With this in mind (and seeing that it works well on the
> English wikipedia) i went back to Hollandipedia, where i saw a different
> picture. For example, search for Einstein on the English wikipedia, and
> you'll find a nice long article with (as of now) 55 notes and a long list of
> references. Now, for the sake of argument, click on "Nederlands" in the
> other language list. It doesn't matter whether you can read it or not, just
> scroll down (it's also a long article, right?) to where the references and
> notes ought to be. You'll find none. Not one reference or note on an article
> about Einstein. How is that possible when keeping in mind what Jimbo has
> said?
> It is possible because wikipedia has (for lack of a better word) cultural
> borders. On the Dutch wikipedia it's more about quantity than about quality.
> For such a small language it has a huge amount of articles. The downside is
> that i can find a factual error of spelling/grammar mistake in just about
> every article. They are hastily compiled and left that way. (however, there
> are of course plenty of well written articles by dedicated people who try to
> maintain a standard, but they are not the rule in my opinion)
> So there's a "quantity over quality" way of doing things on the dutch
> wikipedia...i was sure it was unintentional.

A couple of things going on here. First En has a lot more resources
than other projects and is a fair bit older. En articles well tend to
have been around for longer so have had longer to fix problems. This
doesn't mean there are not a lot of low quality articles on en.


> It appears though, that the gap between the Dutch and English wikipedia is a
> bit wider than that. The Dutch don't have a "citation needed" template, it
> was voted off or carried off by the admins, i haven't studied that topic too
> intensely. Either way, it was proposed, and it's not here now. So, instead
> of being able to flag unreferenced articles with "citation needed" or
> something similar, we are supposed to discuss it on the discussion page.
> Which is a pain, of course. My question is, how independent are
> wikicountries? If Jimbo says something, and the English wikipedia has a
> system for something, isn't it odd that the Dutch (or any other language)
> doesn't?

In theory languages can ignore anything below the level of board
resolution. In practice it would take a very determined community to
push things that far. The board and Jimbo tend to interfere with en
far more than they do in other projects partly because of it's profile
and partly because they all speak English and thus may have at least
some idea what is going on there.

For small projects below say 1K articles the stewards would hold
considerable power.

> One can see the result in the Einstein article. Overdoing it is one
> thing, but not one single reference? And on the discussion page they talk
> about a lot, but not about that. Is it desirable that a connected system
> like wikipedia has "autonomous zones" that make their own rules? Or is that
> freedom? But what about the basic rules the founder holds so dear? They
> don't apply to people who come from somewhere else? I would really like
> those questions answered by someone! There are more examples of things not
> overlapping when crossing a language barrier, but this struck me most.
> Also, as i understood, anyone can be elected to the wiki Board (if they
> qualify). So the country does not matter, but still the countries don't all
> play by the same rules?
>

The key rules are by tradition:

Neutral point of view
No original research
wikipedia is an encyclopedia

By board ruling:

Content shall be under a free licence except where there is an
approved Exemption Doctrine Policy.

> Another strange thing, which has less to do with wikiborders, and more with
> real ones, according to Dutch copyright law it is apparently forbidden to
> display album covers on the Dutch wikipedia (as stated int he Dutch image
> use policy). But the English one shows them just fine. My question is, since
> wikipedia is hosted and founded in the US, what does it matter that a
> Dutch-language article wants to have an album cover. Is it forbidden just
> because the language is different? One click away resides a nice hi-res
> album cover on the English wikipedia. I'm confused about the legal framework
> on this one.

A Wikipedia's content must be legal under the laws that apply in the
U.S. State of Florida.

The full foundation policy on copyright can be found at:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy


> One last thing!
> On the topic of keeping a neutral perspective in any article: If a muslem
> writes an article about Muhammad, and he adds "Peace be upon him", which he
> is required to do according to his beliefs, can that article still be
> (perceived as) neutral?

Not under en policy and such statements are removed.

-- 
geni