Hoi,
I find it funny to be writing about this subject as I do not believe in
any God.
I am heavily involved in Wiktionary and one of the things that is a
constant issue is how to promote the things we think important. Not only
would we like to have a bigger community, we would also like more
sophisticated software to support what we do. Every now and again there
are things that make our life easier. One of these things was the
introduction of Commons as it allowed us to have soundfiles that can be
used in ANY project.
The wikimedia projects have a rule that the only soundfiles allowed are
the .ogg files. This is a handicap as many people do not have software
to play these files. So the only way to have people GET the necessary
software is by making these files more relevant. The next question is
HOW do you make them relevant. Sabine of the Italian wiktioanry had this
brilliant idea of asking people to contribute to a list she had with
Christmass wishes. A month ago we started to ask people to contribute
translations of *"Buon Natale e felice Anno Nuovo!" and record the
pronunciation as well using the .ogg format. It proved to be a struggle
to get translations and an even bigger stuggle to get soundfiles.
We have been really gratefull for the contributions that we got. In so
many ways we were happy with the responses that we had. We had people
explain about their Christmas, we learned that Happy Newyear is only
said in Japan once the new year has started. We learned that the
Armenian christmas is on another day from the Western and the Eastern
traditions. It was really good fun. Still, it was a wiktionary project
and religious contributions that were added were deleted from the pages
being not relevant to a lexicological project.
On Christmas eve, I added wishes to several projects among them the
en:wikipedia as this was the moment were we could expect a big amount of
people to help in our effort. This was not to be. Apparantly not only is
the American society very religious. They are also very "correct" about
it. Some said that because the "C" word was used (christmas) it could
not be on a wikimedia page. "Because it would have the wikimedia
organisation endorse Christmas". I was am and am utterly amazed. My
exhortions that it had little to do with christmas and everything to do
with the promotion of all these wikimedia values was to no avail.. This
was "SO WRONG".. :( So I found myself in a revert war. And was told that
because of Christmas I was not banned).
I am still amazed about this. Another thing that happened in this
timeframe was this "minkukel" (you can look the word up on the
nl:wiktionary) who added a picture of a pig and some foul language on a
template called "Islam" on the nl:wikipedia. Now THIS I knew to be
wrong; so I deleted the references to this template and put it up for
deletion for this is sacrilidge. I am still amazed about our community
that some find it necessary that we cannot, under the pretext of
neutrality, have a project like our Italian wiktionary project because
of the anti-religious ideas that they harbour.
I do not understand it. I do not care for these uptight attitudes. I
hope that next time when people ask for contributions like we did for
our **"Buon Natale e felice Anno Nuovo!" project that people will be
less rigid and more forthcoming. I am aware that some people will be
angry with me for saying all this. But hey, I am still reeling from this
experience.
Thanks,
GerardM
PS If you care to have a look at the Italian project,
http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/Buon_Natale_e_felice_Anno_Nuovo%21
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