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On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 2:49 PM, Dror K <dror1975@icqmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> Currently we have very few global principles for the Wikimeian projects,
> namely the GFDL principle and maybe the NPOV principle. We have many
> recommendations listed on the Meta, which are not taken seriously in
> many projects. Wikimedia projects have grown tremendously, and in my
> opinion, it has become crucial that the list of principles governing all
> projects be a little more detailed.

Why? Things have worked pretty well so far, on many projects.

Also, ignore all rules ;-)

Magnus

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On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 4:49 PM, Dror K <dror1975@icqmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
> Currently we have very few global principles for the Wikimeian projects,
> namely the GFDL principle and maybe the NPOV principle. We have many
> recommendations listed on the Meta, which are not taken seriously in
> many projects. Wikimedia projects have grown tremendously, and in my
> opinion, it has become crucial that the list of principles governing all
> projects be a little more detailed. I suggest a few basic
> recommendations become obligatory. For example, [[meta:Polls are evil]]
> should become mandatory as a guideline to all projects. This article is
> very important as it put into practice the NPOV principle as well as the
> desicion-by-consensus and the differentiation between facts and views
> principles. I suppose there are other recommendation of this kind that
> should become mandatory guidelines. I am not suggesting a constitution
> or a full rule book. I do suggest to carefully single out several basic
> principles, since the projects' autonomy is a bit too wide, especially
> as we want to promote cross-contributions between projects.
> Dror
>
>
Like global policy pack that could be imported to new Wikipedias?

This is a good idea.

--
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On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 10:24 AM, Mohamed Magdy <mohamed.m.k@gmail.com> wrote:
> Like global policy pack that could be imported to new Wikipedias?
>
> This is a good idea.
>

I think Ziko was working on something like this...

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On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 10:24 AM, Mohamed Magdy <mohamed.m.k@gmail.com> wrote:
> Like global policy pack that could be imported to new Wikipedias?
>
> This is a good idea.

A good idea for new Wikipedias, maybe. It's only going to be useful if
it includes only the important fundamentals, and is not loaded up with
all sorts of bureaucratic cruft. The given example, [[meta:Polls are
evil]] seems to me to be a particularly poor choice because it's
unnecessary and seeks to impose behavior guidelines on a community
that might not need them. There's a difference between saying "This is
a list of requirements that a WMF project must satisfy" and "Here are
a list of principles that en.wikipedia has embraced and wants to push
onto other projects".

As for sister projects, I think it's a lousy idea. We can't have
global policies that affect all projects, because the various projects
are run so differently. A newly-created Wikibooks, for instance, would
need a different "starter pack" of policies and templates then a new
Wikiquote would. Even something such as NPOV, which seems to be such a
hallowed standard on Wikipedia is treated surprisingly different on
Wikiversity or Wikisource. Even Wikinews uses a different license that
isn't completely GFDL-compatible, at least not bidirectionally.

If I had to pick some guidelines which truely should be global to all
projects and languages, it would be a very short list (and some of
these are probably pushing it):

1) The project should allow some form of anonymous content contributions
2) The project should not prevent people from creating new accounts
(except from known vandal IPs, of course)
3) The project must follow the privacy policy, and the checkuser
policy (where applicable)
4) The project should use an acceptable free content license, must
obey the requirements of that license as best as is technically
possible, and must attempt to prevent the use of the project for
copyright violations (whatever that means, in whatever jurisdiction it
means it in)

I can't really think of much more then this that is truely "global",
and I'm certain even these are going to draw criticisms. My point here
being that there aren't any real policies that can be made global, at
least not when we consider the needs of all the sister projects.

--Andrew Whitworth

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On Aug 4, 2008, at 8:49 AM, Dror K wrote:

> Currently we have very few global principles for the Wikimeian
> projects,
> namely the GFDL principle and maybe the NPOV principle. We have many
> recommendations listed on the Meta, which are not taken seriously in
> many projects. Wikimedia projects have grown tremendously, and in my
> opinion, it has become crucial that the list of principles governing
> all
> projects be a little more detailed. I suggest a few basic
> recommendations become obligatory


I may be hopelessly naive about this, but my general experience would
seem to suggest that there's not really a need for this, because folks
who are attracted to Wikimedia projects tend to share our (deep down)
core values. If not, our various communities tend to push them in
that direction fairly strongly.

Attempting to impose en.wikipedia's worldview on things like this is
probably doomed to failure, in my opinion... it's almost the online
version of pushing a colonialist agenda.

Philippe

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We have some fundamental rules, that at least theoretically should be implemented on all projects. That all content are under GFDL and should thus be granted free for ever is one of these rules. NPOV is another such rule. Openness is also a foundamental rule of all WikiMedia projects.

And we have some rules that was issued by the foundation in the past. Only use free live person photographies is one of these rules that I can remember of now.

If the rules could and would be implemented on the individual projects is hard to say. It may be so that on some projects the rules are implemented more ridigly than on other projects. It is difficult, if not even impossible, to install a global mechanism to watch for the implementation of all these rules on all projects.

I don't think that we need other global rules at the moment. Im principle I think the selfgouvenment of the projects by themselves works quite well and I would like to keep global rules ordered by the foundation as few as possible.

Ting

-------- Original-Nachricht --------
> Datum: Mon, 4 Aug 2008 06:49:32 -0700
> Von: "Dror K" <dror1975@icqmail.com>
> An: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Betreff: [Foundation-l] It is high time we decided upon global Wikimedianprinciples

> Hello,
> Currently we have very few global principles for the Wikimeian projects,
> namely the GFDL principle and maybe the NPOV principle. We have many
> recommendations listed on the Meta, which are not taken seriously in
> many projects. Wikimedia projects have grown tremendously, and in my
> opinion, it has become crucial that the list of principles governing all
> projects be a little more detailed. I suggest a few basic
> recommendations become obligatory. For example, [[meta:Polls are evil]]
> should become mandatory as a guideline to all projects. This article is
> very important as it put into practice the NPOV principle as well as the
> desicion-by-consensus and the differentiation between facts and views
> principles. I suppose there are other recommendation of this kind that
> should become mandatory guidelines. I am not suggesting a constitution
> or a full rule book. I do suggest to carefully single out several basic
> principles, since the projects' autonomy is a bit too wide, especially
> as we want to promote cross-contributions between projects.
> Dror

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On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 11:15 AM, Ting Chen <Wing.Philopp@gmx.de> wrote:
> We have some fundamental rules, that at least theoretically should be
>implemented on all projects. That all content are under GFDL and should thus be
>granted free for ever is one of these rules. NPOV is another such rule. Openness is
>also a foundamental rule of all WikiMedia projects.

Again, and I really can't stress this enough: These "fundamental
rules" are not global! en.wikinews DOES NOT USE THE GFDL. It uses
CC-BY instead, which is still free but isn't the same thing.
en.wikiversity, en.wikisource, and en.wikiquote have very different
meanings for NPOV then en.wikiversity does. Do yourself a favor and
check out WV's policy page on the matter:

http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/WV:NPOV

--Andrew Whitworth

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On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 6:49 AM, Dror K <dror1975@icqmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
> Currently we have very few global principles for the Wikimeian projects,
> namely the GFDL principle and maybe the NPOV principle. We have many
> recommendations listed on the Meta, which are not taken seriously in
> many projects. Wikimedia projects have grown tremendously, and in my
> opinion, it has become crucial that the list of principles governing all
> projects be a little more detailed. I suggest a few basic
> recommendations become obligatory. For example, [[meta:Polls are evil]]
> should become mandatory as a guideline to all projects. This article is
> very important as it put into practice the NPOV principle as well as the
> desicion-by-consensus and the differentiation between facts and views
> principles. I suppose there are other recommendation of this kind that
> should become mandatory guidelines. I am not suggesting a constitution
> or a full rule book. I do suggest to carefully single out several basic
> principles, since the projects' autonomy is a bit too wide, especially
> as we want to promote cross-contributions between projects.
> Dror
>

What about if a community decides it likes straight voting? What if another
community decides it just really likes rules and IAR is a taboo over there?
Like someone mentioned below Wikinews doesn't do GFDL.

- Joe
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On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 10:13 AM, Philippe Beaudette
<philippebeaudette@gmail.com> wrote:
> Attempting to impose en.wikipedia's worldview on things like this is
> probably doomed to failure, in my opinion... it's almost the online
> version of pushing a colonialist agenda.
>
> Philippe

Also probably very harmful. Policy is not something that people should
have absent a need. Let policy grow organically based on the needs of
the users. You don't need to start people off with complex policy when
they don't need it. Polls are evil and other essays exist, and can be
referenced. No one starts a Wikipedia in a vacuum, and lessons learned
from one will flow to another. But we shouldn't expect all the lessons
learned on enwiki to be useful to everyone else.

Another way to think of this, Is there some problem that needs to be
solved by this? Are smaller wikis currently being hurt by not having
enough policy?

Judson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cohesion

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On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 10:15 AM, Ting Chen <Wing.Philopp@gmx.de> wrote:
> We have some fundamental rules, that at least theoretically should be implemented on all projects. That all content are under GFDL and should thus be granted free for ever is one of these rules. NPOV is another such rule. Openness is also a foundamental rule of all WikiMedia projects.
>

Not all content is GFDL. Wikinews, for instance, cOmmons another example

NPOV is not a global principle (doesn't apply to wikiquote or commons)

Whatever "global" principles mustbe, they shouldn't be taken from
Wikipedia, as each project has different issues and policies

> And we have some rules that was issued by the foundation in the past. Only use free live person photographies is one of these rules that I can remember of now.
>
> If the rules could and would be implemented on the individual projects is hard to say. It may be so that on some projects the rules are implemented more ridigly than on other projects. It is difficult, if not even impossible, to install a global mechanism to watch for the implementation of all these rules on all projects.
>
> I don't think that we need other global rules at the moment. Im principle I think the selfgouvenment of the projects by themselves works quite well and I would like to keep global rules ordered by the foundation as few as possible.
>
> Ting
>

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Ting Chen wrote:
> We have some fundamental rules, that at least theoretically should be implemented on all projects. That all content are under GFDL and should thus be granted free for ever is one of these rules. NPOV is another such rule. Openness is also a foundamental rule of all WikiMedia projects.
>
> And we have some rules that was issued by the foundation in the past. Only use free live person photographies is one of these rules that I can remember of now.

?

I do not remember such rule.

The nearest rule I can think of is
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy

Ant


>
> If the rules could and would be implemented on the individual projects is hard to say. It may be so that on some projects the rules are implemented more ridigly than on other projects. It is difficult, if not even impossible, to install a global mechanism to watch for the implementation of all these rules on all projects.
>
> I don't think that we need other global rules at the moment. Im principle I think the selfgouvenment of the projects by themselves works quite well and I would like to keep global rules ordered by the foundation as few as possible.
>
> Ting
>
> -------- Original-Nachricht --------
>> Datum: Mon, 4 Aug 2008 06:49:32 -0700
>> Von: "Dror K" <dror1975@icqmail.com>
>> An: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Betreff: [Foundation-l] It is high time we decided upon global Wikimedianprinciples
>
>> Hello,
>> Currently we have very few global principles for the Wikimeian projects,
>> namely the GFDL principle and maybe the NPOV principle. We have many
>> recommendations listed on the Meta, which are not taken seriously in
>> many projects. Wikimedia projects have grown tremendously, and in my
>> opinion, it has become crucial that the list of principles governing all
>> projects be a little more detailed. I suggest a few basic
>> recommendations become obligatory. For example, [[meta:Polls are evil]]
>> should become mandatory as a guideline to all projects. This article is
>> very important as it put into practice the NPOV principle as well as the
>> desicion-by-consensus and the differentiation between facts and views
>> principles. I suppose there are other recommendation of this kind that
>> should become mandatory guidelines. I am not suggesting a constitution
>> or a full rule book. I do suggest to carefully single out several basic
>> principles, since the projects' autonomy is a bit too wide, especially
>> as we want to promote cross-contributions between projects.
>> Dror
>


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I am divided about your email.

First, I think it should not be posted on Foundation-l. Foundation-l is
the list of the Foundation, and should deal with Foundation topics. I
believe the values (principles) related to Foundation have already been led.

1) in the mission statement :http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission
2) in the value statement: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Values

Either your email is about Wikipedia itself, and then, it should go to
wikipedia-l

or, it is about all projects, in which case it should go to the meta list

----------

Second, I do agree with you clarity of "pillar" principles is necessary.

Imho, clarity of the pillars of Wikipedia is already achieved.
Essentially, it is
* Wikipedia is an encyclopedia
* NPOV
* openness
* civility
* sources necessary / no original work
* free licence
* ignore all rules (except for the pillar rules)

If some projects ignore these pillar rules, they should be better
informed. That's only a *communication* issue

However, the pillar principles of other projects (eg, Wikinews,
Wikibooks etc...) do not seem to be clearly agreed, and sometimes differ
between linguistic versions. That's unfortunate, and I agree more
discussion is necessary. I remember that's a point I pushed in the past
as well (but I fear with not much impact :-))



----------

Third, I STRONGLY support the fact that all linguistic versions should
be left free of deciding the path they use to reach the global goal, as
long as they respect the pillar values. Polls (use or not) is not a
pillar value; as such, each community should be free to decide to use it
or not. At best, what we can help with is to favor sharing of
experiences and of best practices.


Ant

Dror K wrote:
> Hello,
> Currently we have very few global principles for the Wikimeian projects,
> namely the GFDL principle and maybe the NPOV principle. We have many
> recommendations listed on the Meta, which are not taken seriously in
> many projects. Wikimedia projects have grown tremendously, and in my
> opinion, it has become crucial that the list of principles governing all
> projects be a little more detailed. I suggest a few basic
> recommendations become obligatory. For example, [[meta:Polls are evil]]
> should become mandatory as a guideline to all projects. This article is
> very important as it put into practice the NPOV principle as well as the
> desicion-by-consensus and the differentiation between facts and views
> principles. I suppose there are other recommendation of this kind that
> should become mandatory guidelines. I am not suggesting a constitution
> or a full rule book. I do suggest to carefully single out several basic
> principles, since the projects' autonomy is a bit too wide, especially
> as we want to promote cross-contributions between projects.
> Dror
>
>
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> Again, and I really can't stress this enough: These "fundamental
> rules" are not global! en.wikinews DOES NOT USE THE GFDL. It uses
> CC-BY instead, which is still free but isn't the same thing.
> en.wikiversity, en.wikisource, and en.wikiquote have very different
> meanings for NPOV then en.wikiversity does. Do yourself a favor and
> check out WV's policy page on the matter:
>
> http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/WV:NPOV

Thank you very much for pointing out that. I didn't know that, but now I do, thus thank you again.

On the matter though, I don't see my statement wrong. All the projects you mentioned work on the same value like Wikipedia, despite having a different policy. en.wikinews doesn't use GFDL, but CC-BY, and it doesn't violate the value of free content. wikisource, wikiquote, commons and wikiversity have other definition about NPOV, because of the nature of the projects. The disclosure of bias on Wikiversity for example doesn't really works agains NPOV. It allows bias of view, but tells the user that here is a bias of view, and in the matter it shares the same value as the NPOV of wikipedia.

Your examples are very good examples against globally imposed rules.

Ting
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On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 9:08 AM, Magnus Manske
<magnusmanske@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 2:49 PM, Dror K <dror1975@icqmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello,
>> Currently we have very few global principles for the Wikimeian projects,
>> namely the GFDL principle and maybe the NPOV principle. We have many
>> recommendations listed on the Meta, which are not taken seriously in
>> many projects. Wikimedia projects have grown tremendously, and in my
>> opinion, it has become crucial that the list of principles governing all
>> projects be a little more detailed.
>
> Why? Things have worked pretty well so far, on many projects.

And on others, not so much. We have projects where the community is
dictated to by a vocal minority of administrators; we even have
editors organized into hierarchies based on the quantity and quality
of their contributions. I've had administrators on minor-language
Wikipedias stare at me blankly when I explained the concept of NPOV,
and it was less than a year ago that we had to explain the notion of
Free licensing to a not-so-minor language project, who, when informed
that their "used with permission" images weren't acceptable under the
GFDL, wanted the Foundation to pursue reusers after they re-tagged
them GFDL.

Back in Days of Yore, when our view was "if you build it, they will
come," we set up lots of Wikipedias without actual communities of
editors. What filled the vacuum wasn't always connected with the
broader Wikimedia community, and we shouldn't assume that everyone
falls in line with the "mainstream" culture of our European-language
projects.

Austin

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>We have many
>recommendations listed on the Meta, which are not taken seriously in
>many projects.

If you want a policy to be implemented in your local project you firstly have to translate it into your language.

Nemo
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On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 11:10 AM, Austin Hair <adhair@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 9:08 AM, Magnus Manske
> <magnusmanske@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 2:49 PM, Dror K <dror1975@icqmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>> Currently we have very few global principles for the Wikimeian projects,
>>> namely the GFDL principle and maybe the NPOV principle. We have many
>>> recommendations listed on the Meta, which are not taken seriously in
>>> many projects. Wikimedia projects have grown tremendously, and in my
>>> opinion, it has become crucial that the list of principles governing all
>>> projects be a little more detailed.
>>
>> Why? Things have worked pretty well so far, on many projects.
>
> And on others, not so much. We have projects where the community is
> dictated to by a vocal minority of administrators; we even have
> editors organized into hierarchies based on the quantity and quality
> of their contributions. I've had administrators on minor-language
> Wikipedias stare at me blankly when I explained the concept of NPOV,
> and it was less than a year ago that we had to explain the notion of
> Free licensing to a not-so-minor language project, who, when informed
> that their "used with permission" images weren't acceptable under the
> GFDL, wanted the Foundation to pursue reusers after they re-tagged
> them GFDL.
>
> Back in Days of Yore, when our view was "if you build it, they will
> come," we set up lots of Wikipedias without actual communities of
> editors. What filled the vacuum wasn't always connected with the
> broader Wikimedia community, and we shouldn't assume that everyone
> falls in line with the "mainstream" culture of our European-language
> projects.
>
> Austin

From what I've heard from others who work on smaller wikis it seems
like the core social policies are often the ones that break down, i.e.
if a group of admins decides to sieze control etc. So maybe we should
stop arguing about *content* policies (which are obviously different
from project to project, though not that different) and focus on a set
of core social policies for the projects that can and should be the
"norm" on anything the Foundation does. For instance:

* civility
* consensus
* openness -- by default anyone is welcome to participate,
unless/until they behave badly

this is pretty basic stuff, but it seems that they are sometimes these
qualities are in short supply. On a small wiki without of a lot of
guidance, it may be that these community principles do not in fact
develop "naturally", depending on the people involved. It would be
interesting to hear more about case studies from smaller projects.

phoebe

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> I may be hopelessly naive about this, but my general experience would
> seem to suggest that there's not really a need for this, because folks
> who are attracted to Wikimedia projects tend to share our (deep down)
> core values. If not, our various communities tend to push them in
> that direction fairly strongly.
>
> Attempting to impose en.wikipedia's worldview on things like this is
> probably doomed to failure, in my opinion... it's almost the online
> version of pushing a colonialist agenda.
>
>
Totally agree that this is not necessary - much paperwork, discussion,
!voting, etc and very very little actual benefit.

Most projects are quite mature and settled their own rules, standards, etc.
Coming in as a "big boss from foundation" and telling to change things
around will only cause resentment.

I think the only global principle that's true to all projects is FREEDOM.
Both in $ and (c) sense. So give the projects another freedom: decide its
own policies.

Renata3
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Hoi,
I am really interested to learn how you come to the conclusion that most
projects are quite mature. If anything given the statistics that are
available to us all I would come to exactly the other conclusion.

- For most languages the localisation is still abysmal
- Most projects have so little content, new content or changed content
that they hardly make a dent in butter
- More then half of our projects, probably two thirds are not involved in
issues that have to do with the Wikimedia Foundation, without their presence
we do not have a clue what we can do for these people these projects.

When you talk about freedom, you have to appreciate that freedom exists in
relation to others. When communities exist of single individuals or small
groups that dominate by pressing their point of view. Several of these
"freedoms" effectively prevent many other legitimate people joining these
projects because they do not recognise themselves in what should be their
project .

While I agree with you that freedom is an important ingredient for the well
being of projects and communities, many projects do not have the size and
the basic set of values that you would recognise as essential for the
success of those projects.

Thanks,
GerardM

On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 2:23 PM, Renata St <renatawiki@gmail.com> wrote:

> > I may be hopelessly naive about this, but my general experience would
> > seem to suggest that there's not really a need for this, because folks
> > who are attracted to Wikimedia projects tend to share our (deep down)
> > core values. If not, our various communities tend to push them in
> > that direction fairly strongly.
> >
> > Attempting to impose en.wikipedia's worldview on things like this is
> > probably doomed to failure, in my opinion... it's almost the online
> > version of pushing a colonialist agenda.
> >
> >
> Totally agree that this is not necessary - much paperwork, discussion,
> !voting, etc and very very little actual benefit.
>
> Most projects are quite mature and settled their own rules, standards, etc.
> Coming in as a "big boss from foundation" and telling to change things
> around will only cause resentment.
>
> I think the only global principle that's true to all projects is FREEDOM.
> Both in $ and (c) sense. So give the projects another freedom: decide its
> own policies.
>
> Renata3
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On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 2:23 PM, Renata St <renatawiki@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think the only global principle that's true to all projects is FREEDOM.
> Both in $ and (c) sense. So give the projects another freedom: decide its
> own policies.

The most important principle for any edition of Wikipedia is to build
an encyclopedia. So, it's not freedom. The most important principle
for any edition of Wikinews is to build a news agency (or whatever the
name is). Again, the most important principle is not freedom. ...

And there are some principles around building an encyclopedia, media
storage, news agency etc. -- which are not, again, freedom.

Again, we have our own principles which Florence quoted (in relation
to Wikipedia): Wikipedia is an encyclopedia NPOV; openness; civility;
sources necessary / no original work; free licence; ignore all rules
(except for the pillar rules). Somewhat different principles are
around some other Wikimedia projects.

So, any project, while hosted at WMF servers, mustn't to deviate
(significantly) from those principles. And there is no such freedom,
like, for example, building a repository of hate speech or a
repository of copyright infringements. There is no freedom to build a
project driven by closed group of persons, too. Etc. etc.

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Yeah social global norms may help, but I would like to point out a set
of brief words won't work.

For example, civility ... I have seen frequently civility was raised
as the rationale of proposed blocking *and* unblocking on the Japanese
Wikipedia: one can argue someone broke down civility so much as to
deserve being blocked and the guy on the contrary can argue it is
against civility to have him blocked. Anyway we need to explain to
some extent what the global community expect in each item. Accepted
wisdom may vary from culture to culture.


On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 3:28 AM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 11:10 AM, Austin Hair <adhair@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 9:08 AM, Magnus Manske
>> <magnusmanske@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>> On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 2:49 PM, Dror K <dror1975@icqmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Hello,
>>>> Currently we have very few global principles for the Wikimeian projects,
>>>> namely the GFDL principle and maybe the NPOV principle. We have many
>>>> recommendations listed on the Meta, which are not taken seriously in
>>>> many projects. Wikimedia projects have grown tremendously, and in my
>>>> opinion, it has become crucial that the list of principles governing all
>>>> projects be a little more detailed.
>>>
>>> Why? Things have worked pretty well so far, on many projects.
>>
>> And on others, not so much. We have projects where the community is
>> dictated to by a vocal minority of administrators; we even have
>> editors organized into hierarchies based on the quantity and quality
>> of their contributions. I've had administrators on minor-language
>> Wikipedias stare at me blankly when I explained the concept of NPOV,
>> and it was less than a year ago that we had to explain the notion of
>> Free licensing to a not-so-minor language project, who, when informed
>> that their "used with permission" images weren't acceptable under the
>> GFDL, wanted the Foundation to pursue reusers after they re-tagged
>> them GFDL.
>>
>> Back in Days of Yore, when our view was "if you build it, they will
>> come," we set up lots of Wikipedias without actual communities of
>> editors. What filled the vacuum wasn't always connected with the
>> broader Wikimedia community, and we shouldn't assume that everyone
>> falls in line with the "mainstream" culture of our European-language
>> projects.
>>
>> Austin
>
> From what I've heard from others who work on smaller wikis it seems
> like the core social policies are often the ones that break down, i.e.
> if a group of admins decides to sieze control etc. So maybe we should
> stop arguing about *content* policies (which are obviously different
> from project to project, though not that different) and focus on a set
> of core social policies for the projects that can and should be the
> "norm" on anything the Foundation does. For instance:
>
> * civility
> * consensus
> * openness -- by default anyone is welcome to participate,
> unless/until they behave badly
>
> this is pretty basic stuff, but it seems that they are sometimes these
> qualities are in short supply. On a small wiki without of a lot of
> guidance, it may be that these community principles do not in fact
> develop "naturally", depending on the people involved. It would be
> interesting to hear more about case studies from smaller projects.
>
> phoebe
>
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--
KIZU Naoko
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese)
Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD

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On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 9:59 AM, Milos Rancic <millosh@gmail.com> wrote:

> The most important principle for any edition of Wikipedia is to build
> an encyclopedia. So, it's not freedom.


That's not a principle, that's a goal. And Florence very nicely put it,
"left free of deciding the path they use to reach the global goal." That's
freedom I am talking about.
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> I am really interested to learn how you come to the conclusion that most
> projects are quite mature. If anything given the statistics that are
> available to us all I would come to exactly the other conclusion.

I did not mean language versions of whatever sister projects we have (or
their relative success or popularity). I mean sister projects themselves.
They been running for quite some time now. Correct me if I am wrong, but
Wikiversity is the youngest one and it's already 2 years old.

From my (very limited) experience language versions of the projects really
start with translating basic English policies, instructions, etc and then
based on this "template" continue to develop their own rules as the need
arise. So in a way we ~might~ have somewhat unified policies -- those of
English language (just dated at different times and amended afterward).

And when I wrote "freedom" I meant the right to amend, add, reject, re-write
(in other words, edit) those policies copied over from English version when
they need it and when the project organically grows up for the task. As
Florence said "left free of deciding the path they use to reach the global
goal."

<off-topic>

> - More then half of our projects, probably two thirds are not involved in
> issues that have to do with the Wikimedia Foundation, without their
> presence
> we do not have a clue what we can do for these people these projects.
>
Sorry to tell you, but as long as the website is running and the tools are
functioning, the projects do not really need the foundation... That is the
strength and weakness of all Wikimedia projects: the community has almost
total ownership of whatever is going on (there are of course oddball legal &
other issues that need to be overseen from above).

How many times a newcomer would post something on this mailing list relating
to one or the other local project (usually asking to resolve a dispute) and
would be referred back -- not a foundation issue? What could the foundation
do, say, regarding abysmally small Arabic Wikipedia (generating some press
after Wikimania)? or regarding a war between admins on x project? Very very
little (a local chapter could do much more).
</off-topic>


> many projects do not have the size and
> the basic set of values that you would recognise as essential for the
> success of those projects.
>
They (language editions) will start by copying goals and values from English
projects and then will build their own culture on it. Whenever they feel
like. Whenever they are big enough. And they will hold dear those principles
built by "we, the people" as opposed to those principles artificially
created by "he, the boss" and handed down as ten commandmends in stone to
Moses. That will take time, but I don't think we have a deadline.

Renata3
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On Sat, Aug 9, 2008 at 5:42 AM, Renata St <renatawiki@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 9:59 AM, Milos Rancic <millosh@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The most important principle for any edition of Wikipedia is to build
>> an encyclopedia. So, it's not freedom.
>
> That's not a principle, that's a goal. And Florence very nicely put it,
> "left free of deciding the path they use to reach the global goal." That's
> freedom I am talking about.

There is a set of relatively strict rules around building an encyclopedia, like:

- Encyclopedia is ideologically a positivist project. There is no such
thing like, for example, an encyclopedia based on post-modernist
(whatever that means) principles.
- A derivative of the scientific method, the encyclopedic method, has
to be applied strictly. There is no space for, let's say, applying
methods of some religion in building an encyclopedia.
- Encyclopedia is not an original research and, ideally, every claim
has to be sourced.
- While opinions are welcome if they are based on sources, one
encyclopedic article mustn't be biased.
- And so on. The most of basic principles described at the Wikipedia
in English describe such rules.

The point here is that we don't need to be ideologically positivists,
we don't need to apply scientific method in our personal lives, etc.,
but if we are building an encyclopedia, we have to apply those
principles on building it. Otherwise, we wouldn't build an
encyclopedia, but something else.

While our social relations should be free, there are a lot of rules
(and rules are not free) which lay behind building an encyclopedia.
And it is not possible to build an encyclopedia without following
those rules. So, yes, every project should have some level of freedom
(mostly related to the social relations), but every project has to
apply rules which are about building an encyclopedia (of course, if
the project is a Wikipedia; if it is, let's say, a Wikinews, it has to
apply rules related to building a news agency).

While it is problematic to talk about "freedom" because
interpretations of that word are not so consistent, it is dangerous to
try to apply the most of semantic space of the word "freedom" to any
kind of scientific (and thus, encyclopedic) work. Which means that we
are far from from your construction "I think the only global principle
that's true to all projects is FREEDOM.". You may define which
freedoms all projects have, but strong positions like your is are far
from reality, as well as they are dangerous.

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2008/8/9 Milos Rancic <millosh@gmail.com>:
> - A derivative of the scientific method, the encyclopedic method, has
> to be applied strictly. There is no space for, let's say, applying
> methods of some religion in building an encyclopedia.

The catholic encyclopedia?

> - Encyclopedia is not an original research and, ideally, every claim
> has to be sourced.

Not so for example some of the early work in deciphering hieroglyphics
was originaly published in the encyclopedia Britannica.

> - While opinions are welcome if they are based on sources, one
> encyclopedic article mustn't be biased.

EB1911 has some pretty clear biases.



--
geni

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