[Wikipedia-l] Re: Press release : Logo putsch onthe FrenchWikipedia !

[Andre Engels]

On Fri, 12 Dec 2003, The Cunctator wrote:

> > I see what you're getting at, but I'm not so sure that it's right.
> >
> > Consider an article on the [[Statue of Liberty]], which was a gift
> > from France to the United States.  Both articles will state that fact,
> > and give some details, but the French language article might quite
> > naturally and properly say more about some of the particularly French
> > aspects of the story.
>
> > Readers in different languages will have somewhat different
> > backgrounds and interests.  Different backgrounds mean that we must
> > take into account different assumptions on what the reader will
> > already be familiar with.  Different interests mean that we must take
> > into account different emphasis on what the reader will expect to
> > learn from an article.
>
> I'm not convinced that we should have as a goal that the articles
> reflect the biases of the readership. I would expect both entries on the
> Statue of Liberty to tell the complete story. I have trouble seeing this
> as anything other than a defense of provincialism.

I don't agree. "The full story" is always much too long to tell. Instead,
we give a summary of it. And that might well be different for different
languages. The Dutch page on [[Stabilisation Force Iraq]] has a separate
section on the Dutch presence in it, and the opinion of the Dutch political
parties on that subject. I'd expect the English language version to mention
that there are Dutch in SFIR, but not that it takes half of the first
paragraph, or the discussion in the Dutch parliament.

Likewise, in the above Statue of Liberty example, I'd expect that the French
version might more about the French reasons to give it, and the political
opinions about it, while the English version might tell more about the
reaction that the gift got in the U.S.

We cannot tell the whole story, telling the whole story is cumbersome,
unreadable and laughable. Instead, we have to summarize it. Give a good
deal of relevant information, so that at the end people actually get
informed. Information is more important than facts. And when deciding
at what level we are going to summarize, what would be better than to
watch at what our readership would _want_ to read?

Andre Engels