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

[Jimmy Wales]

The Cunctator wrote:
> A few points: that's not what we do on Wikipedia. We write [[Macintosh
> OS X]] with the goal of writing it from an omniscient perspective for an
> unknown audience.

Not "for an unknown audience" but "for readers of a given language".

And we should not pretend that we don't make assumptions aboout what
our readers know.  When we mention New York City, we don't normally
say "New York, a large city in the United States" because we can
naturally assume that English speakers know such a thing.  But if we
mention Tianjin, we might very well say such a thing, because we don't
naturally assume that English speakers would know.

> "Backgrounds and interests" is another way of saying "biases".

No, it isn't.  It's entirely different.  Backgrounds and interests can
lead to biases, of course.  But they aren't the same thing _as_
biases.

> I simply don't think it's possible to come up with an example of text on
> Wikipedia which would benefit from being substantively different in
> different languages. I'd love to be proven wrong.

Well, I think it's hard to come up with examples of articles that
could not, in some way, benefit from being substantively different in
some aspect, in at least some different languages.

Imagine an article about an event in World War II that happened in
Catalonia, Spain.  In English, that article ought to contain _within
it_ an explanation of where Barcelona is, how close it is to France,
or whatever.  Sure, we could leave it to a click for readers to figure
out for themselves, but the narrative is much more smooth if we
acknowledge that the typical "unknown" reader in English will need
that basic information in order to process the article.

That same section would be boring and stupid for speakers of Catalan,
and we can safely assume that a mere link will suffice for the
majority of readers in that case.

> (And one would expect the Wikipedia in English--or in any language--to
> discuss Chapman, Pope, Leconte de Lisle and Chen Minhua.)

Yes, we do agree about that of course.

> Now, when we're dealing with content that ideally is perfectly factual,
> that avoids implied meaning, a lot of the problem of judging translation
> goes away.
> 
> And guess what? At Wikipedia we strive to avoid implied meaning.

Yes, but at the same time, we frequently and wisely make assumptions
about our readers all the time.

> Do you believe that an article can be truly neutral?

Yes, very much so.  Neutrality is an ideal, but it is an achievable
ideal.

--Jimbo