The former Yugoslavia is one of the most difficult spots in the entire WMF universe.
If we were starting from scratch right now, the tradeoff, as always, would be whether
Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin are different enough to warrant separate
projects, or whether a single Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia could cover the whole ground. The
current policy has potentially contradictory biases. On one hand, there is a bias TOWARD
projects in individual languages, and AWAY from projects in macrolanguages. (In this case,
Serbo-Croatian is a macrolanguage, and the others are considered constituent languages of
that macrolanguage.) On the other hand, there is a bias TOWARD consolidated projects where
the languages are mutually comprehensible, both to help prevent POV bias and to reduce
unnecessary duplication. I frankly don't know which way we'd go if we were
starting from scratch now.
(Technical interlude: the Cyrillic-Latin converters work just fine. That does not need to
be a consideration for any of this.)
But in any event, we most assuredly are not starting from scratch. Each of these projects
already has a community, a political point of view, and a bias. Those conflict IRL, and
they conflict here, too. Again, if we were starting from scratch, there would be at least
a fighting chance of setting up neutral ground rules in a Serbo-Croatian project. But
we're not, and the ground rules and communities are already well established. Given
the current conditions, I think the following questions, and the following questions only,
are within the purview of LangCom:
1. Do we shut down all three individual projects, and require everything to be
consolidated into Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia? (I recommend against this. There would be
constant content wars, almost impossible to regulate, that would take energy away from the
routine business of creating the encyclopedia. The communities would scream bloody murder.
But if we want to go there, I want a Board vote on that, not just our vote.)
2. Do we shut down Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia as redundant (which it basically is),
making sure that appropriate content goes to one or more of the other projects? (We could
put up a trial proposal on Meta and see what people say.)
3. Do we let all of of these operate in parallel as they are now? (Action by inaction)
4. Do we allow a Montenegrin Wikipedia? (As people know, I favor this. If #2 above were
to happen, I think we'd really have to allow this. If #3 happens, in theory you could
say that Montenegrin is part of Serbo-Croatian and can contribute there. But Serbians
still control that project, and the Montenegrin POV is routinely ignored or overturned. So
in any world where the three grandfathered parallel projects [Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian]
exist, one has to concede that the rule on parallel projects is already not in force in
the world of Serbo-Croatian, and therefore allowing a Montenegrin project simply allows a
Montenegrin POV the same footing the others already have.)
Any other question, such as whether Croatian Wikipedia currently so violates WMF's
overarching practices, principles and rules for intervention, is something for the
stewards, T&S and the Board.
Steven
Sent from Outlook<http://aka.ms/weboutlook>
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In my personal opinion, We the Stewards are only authorized to act on a community
consensus and are not responsible to decide whether WMF principle, practices, and/or rules
are violated.
(Again, I am not speaking on behalf of Stewards, just my POV.)
2019. 9. 4. 23:55, Steven White <Koala19890(a)hotmail.com> 작성:
Any other question, such as whether Croatian Wikipedia
currently so violates WMF's overarching practices, principles and rules for
intervention, is something for the stewards, T&S and the Board.
--
Yongmin (용민)
Sent from my iPhone
https://reviwiki.info/
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