[Wikimedia-l] Attention needed for Croatian Wikipedia issue

Mon Nov 4 17:04:51 UTC 2013

I think that the problem is not present only in hr.wikipedia but it's
present in several projects and mainly in en.wikipedia and in fr.wikipedia.

I know this problem and I faced it directly several years ago, so it's an
old problem, and I have seen several people leaving Wikipedia projects for
this reason or to be blocked because in opposition of this group of users.

The discussions were very much difficult because they disagree with
"official" sources saying that they are non neutral sources (even if they
are official documents of the European Union or well know encyclopedias).
It was sufficient to have a small source in Croatian language to forget all
other sources.

Any escalation was really difficult because into the group of administrator
there was an impartial support and several editors knew it and tried
frequently to put it in evidence with the result to be blocked.

Even if Wikipedia is not primary source, the justification to keep some
content not modified was always that to have en.wikipedia as primary
source, basically the editors said that en.wikipedia defines the
nationality, so in other wikipedias (like fr.wikipedia) the content has to
be kept as it was in en.wikipedia.

An example is here:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussion:Francesco_Laurana

The support of this discussion is that en.wikipedia defines a nationality
(en.wikipedia used as primary source) and that Italy is a concept born in
XIX century, even if there is a kingdom of Italy still in the X century.

These arguments have been widespread in all Wikipedias except in the German
one.

This is only one example, I suggest to have a look in other sources not
derivative of Wikipedia and to check what is happened after the 2006 with
sources derivative of Wikipedia.

Someone may call it "Croatization".

I suggest to have a look in any Wikipedia articles involving people born
and in the history of the current territory of Croatia before the XIX
century.

Regards

On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 6:38 PM, Dalibor Bosits <dalibor.bosits at gmail.com>wrote:

> Dear fellow Wikipedia and Wikimedia contributors and users,
>
> The issue at hand that has forced me to compose this address are the
> pressing circumstances surrounding the Croatian language branch of
> Wikipedia, which has become notoriously well known in the broader Wikipedia
> community in recent months.
>
> For some years now, a part of the administrators at Croatian language
> Wikipedia have been operating as a cabal of sorts; the exact number of
> members, the shape of this community and the extent of their doings
> difficult to discern. For the last couple of months on Wikipedia there has
> been an on-going prolonged dispute underway about abuse of administrator
> privileges and breach of Wikipedia rules.
> Three days ago, on 26 October 2013 and as a result of this dispute, one of
> the contributors (Frano Milić[1]), who can safely be figured among those
> who had avoided previous conflicts, called for a desysopping vote for the
> three admins that seem to be have been the most involved with the current
> issues regarding the project.
>
> [2] Immediately after this, SpeedyGonsales, one of the admins whose
> privileges were about to be put to vote and who had already been reported
> for promotion of fascism, breach of rules and abuse of administrative
> tools, now being in a conflict of interests, brought to a halt the voting
> process on his own initiative on the pretext of "lack of evidence" [3].
> After the part of the admins who were not members of the cabal expressed
> their support for the mechanics allowing the community to express their
> opinions in a process of vote, a revert war broke out on the vote page and
> sitenotice.
>
> [4] SpeedyGonsales, the administrator whose work was under scrutiny and
> privileges put to the vote, now with other admins who we believe are
> members of the cabal, initiated the process of "admin poll request" (a
> process somewhat unique to Croatian Wikipedia, which is aimed at gathering
> opinions and decisions of the college of admins). It was an attempt to use
> orchestrated voting to silence those admins who supported the continuation
> of the desysopping vote. The presumed purpose was to attempt to win enough
> votes to either block those opposing him or desysop them in order to
> disable the continuation of the desysopping vote against him and the two of
> his colleagues.
> The overall sentiment of the community was evidently strongly inclined to
> vote which became clear when the voting recommenced as soon as the lock on
> the vote page had been lifted. However, under the current circumstances the
> process has been severely disturbed and it is not certain that the wish of
> the community would be respected.
>
> For the picture to be complete, one piece of information is crucial. The
> administrators who have expressed their resistance against the spirit of
> the cabal and the dictatorship are under a lot of pressure as they are
> harassed by e-mails and texting. The messages vary in content but as a
> general rule they contain little niceties.
>
> If the issue we are dealing with is not resolved very soon, if not
> immediately, a large number of contributors will simply leave the project.
> As we are all aware, the admins are hobbyists and not activists and their
> capacity for conflict and unpleasantries are limited. They are unable to
> resolve the problems without your assistance.
>
> And the problems they face have been in the making for many years, but it
> has taken a while for the community to unite and gather strength to deal
> with these issues. Now we are witnessing an almost unique situation on
> Wikipedia - that the community has made a decision and gained the required
> strength to get rid of all internal cabals. Stopping the process now would
> spell a disaster for the entire project - it would send a message of
> encouragement to anyone willing to usurp sysop privileges in the future.
> Additionally, the admins who have expressed dissent over the accumulated
> problems at Croatian Wikipedia have managed to accurately pinpoint the
> administrators responsible for the ridiculously low quality of certain
> articles, and the public and the media have recognized the overall
> soundness of the Wiki project and that the work lacking in quality is to be
> attributed to the minority of administrators-usurpers. However, we fear
> that the positive momentum might be lost now, if the process is stopped,
> and the critical public and media eye might see the current situation as
> reflective of the entire Wiki project's quality.
>
> Please, lend aid any way you can
>
> Dalibor Bosits
>
> [1] https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posebno:Doprinosi/Frano_Mili%C4%87
> [2]
>
> https://hr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedija:Administratori/Prijedlozi_za_ukidanje_ovlasti/SpeedyGonsales,_Kubura_i_Zeljko&oldid=4190612
> [3]
>
> https://hr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedija:Administratori/Prijedlozi_za_ukidanje_ovlasti/SpeedyGonsales,_Kubura_i_Zeljko&oldid=4190722(SpeedyGonsales
> has initiated full protection of the page, trying to stop
> the voting)
> [4]
>
> https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedija:Zahtjev_za_mi%C5%A1ljenje_administratora
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-- 
Ilario Valdelli
Wikimedia CH
Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens
Association pour l'avancement des connaissances libre
Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera
Switzerland - 8008 Zürich
Tel: +41764821371
http://www.wikimedia.ch