[Wikipedia-l] Re: Advertisement on mainpage

[Anthere]

Mark Williamson a écrit:
> Hi, I have a question to put forth.


Hi

> I do not wish to have a disagreement with the members of a just
> recently active Wikipedia for fear of scaring them away, so it's
> better to discuss it here.

Thanks for doing this. I am just as embarrassed than you.


> Recently, I removed the spam/advertisement-ish text from the mainpage
> of the Wolof Wikipedia.
> 
> It was reverted, twice, by the currently active Wolof-speaking user,
> Yannick Duchesne.
> 
> I feel however that it violates policy.
> 
> A rough translation: «ANAFA (National Association for Literacy and
> Adult Education), an organisation in Dakar, Senegal is now working on
> the translation of open-source software like SPIP
> (http://www.spip.net) (a speedy Internet publisher to manage
> magazine-sites).
> 
> Cooperating with the Canadian organization "Alternatives
> (http://www.alternatives.ca)", we plan very soon to edit the Wolof
> (http://wo.wikipedia.com), Pulaar (http://ff.wikipedia.com) and
> Mandinke  Wikipedias and work with every NGO in Africa to promote
> African languages on the net.
> 
> This is within the category of a rebellion against linguistic
> discrimination and inequality (particularly bad online) and for the
> equality, solidarity, and diversity of cultures.
> 
> ANAFA and Alternatives ask academians - especially Africans - to
> upload here their original copyleft documentation in Wolof and any
> other African language.
> 
> More equality and freedom will come from it!»
> 
> I have emphasised that the mainpage is supposed to be an introduction
> to Wikipedia. I even tried removing the POV parts and moving it to a
> separate article at [[ANAFA]], but apparently this was not enough.
> 
> I'm not sure exactly what's going on here, or what is appropriate - is
> it OK to have such text on the mainpage at all?

> Also, Yannick claims to have read Wikipedia documentation extensively
> and so there is supposedly no issue with his understanding of NPOV.
> 
> Mark

Yannick intends to have some people work in wolof in the next few days, 
and requested adminship on meta, as most editors of new small wiki 
projects do.

I first went to the wo to check, and had the feeling Yannick was not 
entirely updated on our principles, so I talked to him by mail and 
thought we could give him a chance.

Yesterday, I went back to wo, and saw the comments left by Mark, and 
appreciated them. I thought it would probably be enough, and I further 
suggested that he comes over to the french wikipedia to "get the feeling".

I made him sysop for 3 weeks, in order to allow translation of 
interface. I limited it to 3 weeks, as I was a bit worried by his lack 
of understanding of our policies.

I may have made a mistake here...:-(

I reverted to your changes node, and unprotected the main page. I also 
let a message asking again that no ads for ANAFA is on the main page, 
and that the main page remains unprotected.

Mark, I trust you to maintain the NPOV principle. Could I rely on you to 
see what is going on over there in the coming days ? As well as to try 
to explain whatever is needed to explain to them ? They are all new and 
really are visibly not really aware of a couple of things.

Please, if you see that this really turns sour, leave a message on the 
steward page and ask that someone removes Yannick sysophood. I wish that 
this does not happen though until he had time to fix a couple of things. 
And PLEASE, no one make him bureaucrat. The last thing we want to do is 
to unsysop dozen of guys who just do not get it.

Anthere