[Foundation-l] wikinews requirement

Fri Feb 18 10:47:46 UTC 2005

So, to summarize

Until a little while ago, the only requirement was that 5 people show interest.
It did not matter that these 5 were trolls, or were regulars, or even voted 3 months ago.

I suggested a change in policy, requiring that amongst these 5 people, at least 2 are regular editors of at least one of our projects.
You agreed with this suggestion.

One week later, you would like to change it again, and change the 2 regular editors requirement to a at least 2 editors are creating/translating policies on meta.

When I object that a project started by 5 totally unknown editors is likely to have problems respecting our basic principles, you answer that the requirement of being a long term editor is not a proof that the editor is well versed in our policy.

Though I agree with this statement, I consider it a fallacy. There is much much more chance that an editor having been for a while on a project is aware of our policies, and the fact he might NOT be is NO argument to support people with no experience is better than people with experience.

We do have three major points to consider

* understanding that the project is a collaboration, that a sysop is not the boss, and that being the sysop of a project absolutely does not mean that the sysop should restrict access to pages such as the main page.

* understanding our neutrality policy, which is not always easy for a newbie, and results sometimes in main page being covered with advertisement

* understanding our copyright policy; though less visible, it is for wikinews the more tricky one, and very likely the one most likely to get us in trouble. 

When someone will start a new wikinews, it is VERY likely a wikipedia will already exist in that language, so there is no need to translate ANYTHING. THe editor can just go to the relevant projet language, and COPY the NPOV rules, copy the COPYRIGHT rules. Just copy and past text does not mean this text is understood, nor that it is applied.

If you mean by COPYING rules, just going to the english version and copying the rules of the english version, I will object that no project should exist which has no community able to make their own rules. 

If you do want an example of what I mean, I invite you to visit http://wo.wikipedia.org

This is a new project.
A group of editors from an african NGO want to work on it.
For it to start, one of those guys asked me to be sysop on it (needed for decent start).

In his country, french is widely spoken, so he just copied french wikipedia rules.
Then, as soon as he was sysop, he put some advertisement for his NGO on the main page, then when the main page was restored to a more neutral situation, he put back the advertisement (in good faith I am sure) and protected the main page.

In 24 hours, this editor, who want to nurture a group of at least 5 people, 
* broke the rule of neutrality (though he had copied them from fr)
* broke the rule of collaborative writing (restricting access to main page to him only)
* broke the rule of admin just being no more powerful than another editor (in reverting and protecting the page to his preference)

For all I know, the text he put on the main page could be under copyright as well.

In short, what you are asking is basically that we remove the requirement we just agreed upon, which was frankly not very demanding. Why did you agree on it to immediately remove your agreement ?

Anthere-

>
> * activity shows interest, so avoid missed launches such as the french 
> wikinews one

Actually, it doesn't. French Wikinews would have passed the edit count 
requirements (haven't checked user duration); as you yourself said, 
Greudin is a very active user on fr.wikipedia and has pledged support 
for the French Wikinews, yet he has only made a handful of edits there.

Translating/creating policies seems to be a much better test of actual 
interest in doing work. Once you do that, that shows a commitment to the 
project.

>
> * past activity of at least 2 editors on a wikipedia (for example) 
> indicates that at least 2 editors are aware of our basic principles 
> and in particular NPOV requirement.

What better test could there be for people understanding a policy like 
NPOV than requiring them to translate it?

> Again, the is a security measure. If 5 people, not even one oldby on 
> one of our project, decide to  launch a wikinews with no experience at 
> all, there is rather high risk that some of our principles are not 
> respected; 

I don't see it that way. Just because someone has been on Wikipedia for 
months doesn't mean that they respect policies at all. Quantity is not 
quality, and measuring quality is almost impossible while keeping the 
process scalable and fair. One could even argue that malicious trolls or 
otherwise harmful users who know how to manipulate policies in their 
interest are more likely to come from our existing user base. In fact, 
Wikinews will especially attract people who are fed up with Wikipedia 
and want to work on another wiki.

> and since it is not in a language we necessarily manage, it might go 
> on for a long time.

This is more likely if key policies like NPOV are *not* translated. If 
we can agree on which parts of our policies are not negotiable, we can 
make sure that they are in place. One of these policies can even include 
instructions on what to do if your wiki doesn't follow the Wikimedia 
spirit (contact stewards etc.).

Future projects don't necessarily match our current userbase. To tie the 
process for creating new language editions directly to that userbase 
seems needlessly restrictive. Building a small community on Meta and 
writing key pages before launching the project is also simply good 
planning -- exactly the kind of thing that could have helped to prevent 
the current fr.wikinews.org situation, much more so than algorithmic 
requirements whose actual predictive value is very low, as that 
experience has shown.

Regards,

Erik

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