[Wikipedia-l] Translating the Five pillars

[Berto 'd Sera]

Hoi!

> There are languages in which their Wikipedia is the first encyclopedia
> *ever* written in the language.  I can hypothetically imagine such a
> Wikipedia allowing original research or even signed articles,
> Britannica-style.

This is our case and many other small communities'. Anyway, allowing
original content is a *very* risky move. Small cultures are often (at least
in some of their dwellers) close to political radicalism and such
politically oriented minorities MAY perceive that they need to rewrite
history from scratch...

I can name a number of such examples in post-soviet wikies, but my own is
pretty close to the same situation. The history of Italian unity is usually
told according to official proto-fascist (Italian unionist) opinions and
only a few historians move away from those grounds to quote (for example)
the number of southern Italians slain by means of the Pica Law (I believe
Del Boca says it could have been up to a million) or the number of loyalist
Neapolitan officers killed by our piedmontese army in the Fenestrelle
Fortress and whose bodies have been destroyed Auschwitz style, the bombing
of the civilian population in Genoa, the massacre of the Turinese population
when the capital was moved to Florence, etc etc.

Dealing with such events is in itself VERY dangerous. Italian schools keep
growing up kids telling them only the fascist version, so chances are that
just even mentioning these subjects would be intended as separatism by many
Italian wikeers (does such an expression exist?). How do you cope with this?

Opening wikipedia to planet-wide participation means that our "consensus
about what truth is" will often be conflicting with local visions/versions.
What happens with small European and post-soviet wikies is but the pale dawn
of a big upcoming tide. When I say that small cultures need to speak to each
other is because history is written by the winners, so chances are that most
of such problems originate in our small villages. It's no point in going
delirious, but maybe we can associate and produce a way to deliver "verified
content" and at that point impose the presence of our version at trans-wiki
level (not as a monopolistic way, obviously).

We can decide that we simply "don't give a damn" or we can ask ourselves
questions. I ask myself whether having such an incredibly wide access to
sources cannot be used to confront versions and at least start to catalog
these very conflicts. What about an international template marking that
"conflicting versions exist"?

We cannot simply repress. Many times people get nervous because when they
speak in a normal tone they only get laughed at. If we don't want people to
get mad we must give them a channel for them to speak plainly and be heard
(if and when they have real things to say).

Berto 'd Sera
Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html