[Wikipedia-l] Death to the comma count!

Tue Mar 11 16:29:06 UTC 2003

>I am sorry Takuya but I didnot understand what you
>meant there...
>Do you mean we should stop to try to set a common
>policy all together, and just all of us go our own
>way, with policy defined on each wiki separatly ? This
>could cause trouble in terms of software development
>if only.

Sorry. I see what I mean was not so clear. Some policities 
such as NPOV are inalienable. We are buliding a sole 
international, multilingual encyclopedia not the collection 
of encyclopedias in different languges.

>Sure.
>We can also claim we don't have exactly the same goals
>as they were defined on the english wiki; we can claim
>we don't use the same means; we can claim the
>community doesnot function the same way. We can claim
>each wikipedia has a set of individual references. We
>may.
>But, still, we share common software, that requires
>common agreement on some points.

No, the goal should be the same, that is, building free 
encylopedia, which is under GFDL and edited by everyone.

I have come to see some people fear allowing more automity 
might undermine the coherence in the whole project of 
wikipedia. I totally agree with that.

What I don't like is that it seems to me non-English edition 
tends to replicate the English edition. Non-english editions 
should not be translation version of English edition. Comma 
is a good example that we simply applied English system to 
Japanese edition. And worse, the problem remains unsolved 
for long time. Something wrong. No?

Oh, I got. Maybe first we should write a conrete mission 
statement writtin in every language we support. It should 
not be a translation from mission statement in en wikipedia 
but multilingual one. Or is there any already? Writing new 
one should not be a snap because there is already a draft.

> Now there is you
>and Aoineko on the Japanese to speak up, we are quite
>a bunch from the french, germans and polish are quite
>present also; there's Elian and Giskart, and others...

Please don't include me. I rather write an article, which is 
much more fun.

And there is almost none of Chinese, Korean and never talked 
about Arabic and so on.

>You know...guy's stuff...car race...naked women (or
>men...no offense meant) ...football...beers...that's
>is not something I understand very well...;-)

Yeah, I understand while some don't care at all, some does 
much. This is a personal preference rather than debatable 
subject.