[Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian wikipedia

Mon Jan 9 00:53:59 UTC 2006

Dejan Cabrilo wrote:

>>The theory is fine, but unless we can read the language(s) we have no
>>way of knowing whether NPOV is in fact being followed.
>>    
>>
>Of course, we could go article for article, but some "interesting"
>stuff that is apparently acceptable on one of those "national"
>Wikipedias is:
>http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Свето_Јеванђеље_по_Матеју (Gospel of
>Matthew, full edition)
>[[Свето Јеванђеље по Марку]] (Gospel of Mark, also full edition)
>
>Not that big of a deal, but still, everybody thinks that it's OK to
>post the Holy Bible on Wikipedia.
>
My objection to that would have nothing to do with NPOV but with the 
principle that original texts belong in Wikisource.  Still it's up to 
each Wikipedia to decide for itself how it wants to handle that.

>This is a proposed policy, which resulted after I labeled a bunch of
>articles as POV:
>http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Википедија:Тачке_гледишта
>or, Wikipedia:Points of View
>
>Basically, it's a proposal to allow people to write from certain POVs,
>which would be labeled so. Here are the rules (my translation from
>that page):
>1. At least one editor wants to write about it.
>2. At least five editors support legitimacy of that POV.
>3. At least one of those five is an admin.
>4. At least five articles in user namespace describing that POV.
>5. That the POV does not promote racial, religious or other hate and
>doesn't call for violence. This is solemly a concern of such things as
>fascism or nazism.
>6. That the POV has local (i.e. is connected to Serbia somehow) or
>global importance.
>7. That the POV is described in a proper place on Serbian Wikipedia.
>
>Like I said, this was a proposed policy, from May 2005 (the last time
>I was active on Serbian Wikipedia, it was in part a response to the
>fact that I overnight labeled a bunch of articles as POV, because I
>found them to be essays on Orthodox Christianity, but obviously,
>others realized the POV in supporting this policy). Still, it got 5
>votes for, and 3 against. I think it describes the inherit POV of such
>national projects.
>
Without going into details, it is conceivable as a possible solution for 
dealing with NPOV problems.   Although NPOV is a broad policy that 
affects all projects, communities will sometimes need to find their own 
way of implementing it.

>That policy never made it thru, but for example, if you visit
>[[Категорија:Светитељи]], which is Category:Saints, you will notice in
>almost each and every article among those the following line at the
>bottom:
>"Велики део овог текст је преузет из охридског пролога светог владике
>Николаја Велимировића. Он не подлеже ауторским правима" - meaning "Big
>chunk of this text was taken from Ohrid's Prologue of St. Ruler (not
>sure about translation of his title) Nikolaj Velimirovic. It is not
>affected by copyright."
>
>Now, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolaj_Velimirovic was a part of
>Serbian Orthodox Church and writer of big part of its doctrine (or at
>least, what some say should be). So, it's much worse than copying
>stuff from some outdated encyclopedia, it's actually copying stuff
>from the source which is as POV as possible. And that seems acceptable
>on Serbian Wiki. Most of the articles are totally POV, as you can
>imagine coming from a church source.
>
I see that Velimirovic died in the US in 1956, and I assume that the 
copyright issue was properly researched.  Again, whole texts are more 
properly placed in Wikisource.  If Velimirovic is quoted then those 
quotes need proper attribution.  That doesn't stop others from quoting 
different authors with an opposite point of view.

>The reason I am writing this is to show that national wikipedias are
>inheritly biased - they can be very good on covering stuff like
>nature, science, etc. but when it comes to more touchy topics, it will
>be hard to get editors from different perspectives.
>
As much as I agree, if no-one accepts the responsibility of adding the 
opposing points of view, they won't be there.

>I am pretty much presented with a choice: should I use Serbian,
>Bosnian or Croatian wiki? I am not either a Serb, a Bosnian, or a
>Croat, and I communicate on daily basis with people from Serbia,
>Bosnia and Croatia, using my native language (whatever it is). I work
>together with Serbs, Croats and Bosnians on many en.wikipedia
>articles. And I chose to only edit, when I do edit in non-english
>wikipedias, Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia. Why would I go for anything
>else? If I am writing about World War 2, I will write a much better
>article if it's together with editors from all of those countries,
>than only one of them.
>
No argument from me there.

Ec