This is my reply to Zoltan. Consider it public domain, if you want to re-use
any of my explanations elsewhere.
Regards,
Erik
--- Weitergeleitete Nachricht / Forwarded Message ---
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 16:10:03 +0100 (MET)
From: Erik Moeller <erik_moeller(a)gmx.de>
To: "zoltan simon" <zasimon(a)hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Proposed changes (Trojan War)
Hello Zoltan,
we are well aware of the criticisms that can be brought against an attempt
such as ours. Quite a while ago some of us have written this page:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AOur_Replies_to_Our_Critics
Briefly, we try to avoid bias and sabotage by several means:
- The "Neutral point of view" policy. If someone adds new information to
an
article, it should be attributed. Unattributed information that is
considered
controversial is either attributed or deleted.
- The "Recent changes" list. This page displays edits that have recently
been made to Wikipedia, and many contributors review it when they have
time. It
not only allows users to view the changes, it also makes it possible, by
clicking on the "diff" link, to show the differences between a new page
and its
previous version. If someone edits a page and inserts four letter insults
all
over the place, we recognize this as vandalism and correct it. If a vandal
persists, he is banned from the Wikipedia.
- The personal watch lists. Users who work on articles usually add these
articles to their individual watch lists. If they view this watch list,
they see
a list of all changes that have been recently made to these specific
articles. So a user who has worked on an article that was vandalized or
changed in a
bad way and who hasn't noticed that on the Recent Changes page can still
see
it weeks later in his Watch List and fix anything that hasn't been fixed
yet. This works rather well.
- The discussion pages. Each article has a "Talk" page attached to it,
which
makes it possible for collaborators to work out conflicts, ask questions
and
agree on solutions.
There's more, and it all works amazingly well. Generally speaking,
articles
that are viewed a lot are edited a lot and are typically of higher
quality,
more balanced, less "crankish" etc. Articles on fringe or exotic subjects
that
few people care about can be of lower quality or less balanced. Some of us
are thinking about implementing an additional certification scheme to
detect
high quality articles. Currently, some of our best articles are collected
on a
special page:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ABrilliant_prose
Sorry for being a bit verbose in this explanation, but the Wikipedia
concept
is so different from what people are used to that it takes a while to
explain why it works ;-)
As for incorporating your material, feel free to send me anything you
have,
but note that I'm currently quite busy with various stuff (including some
Wikipedia articles I'm working on, such as Library of Alexandria and
Hypatia of
Alexandria), so it may take some time for me to get to evaluating them,
especially if they are long. I can read DOC files, but only in English and
German.
But if the only reason you don't want to work on Wikipedia is that you're
scared you might do something wrong, that's not a very good reason :-) We
have
a policy that's called "Be bold in updating pages". If people don't
like
what
you do, they will tell you how it can be improved, or do it themselves.
Our
"Neutral point of view" policy makes it possible for many different views
on
a subject to coexist, if they are all attributed properly and without
bias.
I have noticed myself that much of the research about the ancient world
and
the Middle Ages is flawed. What I'm missing the most is critical
examination
of sources -- if a text by a Catholic monk says that evil Jews massacred
good
Christians, many historians like to take it at face value, without any
critical perception whatsoever. In Germany we have Karl-Heinz Deschner,
who has
done excellent work with his "Criminal History of Christianity", and in
the
19th century, there were many critical historians, but nowadays more
relativistic interpretations tend to prevail.
Few people have any realistic idea of the greatness of the ancient world
in
comparison to what followed it -- ancient Rome at its peak was on a
technological level comparable in most ways to 19th century Europe. I'm
very
interested in developments surrounding the Antikythera device and other
findings of
technologically advanced ancient artififacts. The most emotionally
impressive
way to view the cultural difference is, in my opinion, to look at the
development of art from Pompeii and the Fayum portraits to the primitive
medieval
paintings that lacked any sense of perspective or beauty and again to the
art of
the Renaissance, very similar to the ancient art.
We have a Hungarian Wikipedia, but it doesn't have any contributors (other
foreign language Wikipedias are quite active: the German one has 7,000
articles, and the Esperanto Wikipedia has 4,000 -- the English Wikipedia
has
90,000). Note that the English Wikipedia is not even 2 years old, and some
of the
non-English ones are much younger!
If you are interested in helping to build a Hungarian Wikipedia from the
ground up, there's a mailing list here:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intlwiki-L
where interested people from the international Wikipedias coordinate their
development.
Please note that Wikipedia does not have a real power hierarchy, so I
can't
speak for the entire project. There are no special "editors", although we
do
have sysops who can delete pages and ban users, but they have to follow
strict rules in doing so. For the most part, Wikipedia is a democratic
project
where everyone can participate.
Regards,
Erik
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