[Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

[Jimmy Wales]

This is a great question!

Kurt Jansson wrote:
> But what guarantee do you have that e.g. the German Wikipedia is "doing
> things the wikipedia way"? And what would you do if you knew we aren't?

Let's say that we found out that sysops on the German wikipedia were
banning people for minor disagreements.  Let's say, for example, that
a group of German libertarians (I use this example because my
political sympathies lie in this direction) started banning Marxists
and socialists.  And they did so, not because of vandalism, but in an
effort to maintain a pro-libertarian and pro-capitalist slant to
various important articles.

Then, I would remove their sysop privileges for abuse.  (Only after
considerable discussion, of course, and efforts to get them to
straighten up.)  But if that same group had legal, technical, and
practical control over the server, I could do nothing.

> I think it's very important that the people (often just one or two)
> working on a new international Wikipedia are already indoctrinated with
> our ideals (or have a social Wp-habitus, if that sounds nicer ;-).
> Otherwise a new Wikipedia could become totaly tendentious, and it would
> be very unattractive for others to participate. I fear this will happen
> in the future, but hopefully enough multilingual "old hands" will
> allways keep an eye on upcoming Wikipedias.

I think that's right.

--Jimbo