[Foundation-l] It is high time we decided upon global Wikimedian principles

Mon Aug 4 16:17:12 UTC 2008

Hi,

As I said, we are not talking about a set of bureaucratic rules nor
about a "constitution". I also agree that guidelines should be different
for different set of projects, i.e. the Wikipedia guidelines won't be
the same as the Wikinews guidelines. We also have several global rules
that are already mandatory, most notably the GFDL rule, which is also
the easiest to enforce.

I have an experience in writing in several Wikimedia projects in
different languages. People often confuse the Wikimedia principles with
the English Wikipedia principles (I saw this confusion here too), and
due to a (strange) resentment towards the English Wikipedia, they reject
any recommendation published on the Meta claiming it is just another
idea of an American from the English Wikipedia.

We should stress that there are certain principles that must be shared
by all Wikipedias (or by all Wikinews projects etc.), first beacuase
these principles makes Wikipedia an open and reliable source, and second
because we wish to encourage cross-contributions, i.e. that contributors
will be able to easily write in several projects, and that articles
could be easily translated and adopted in other projects.

Here are some allegedly global rules, which are unclear:

1. Original research - what exactly does it include? Can a certain
Wikipedia redefine the notion of "state" and state: X is a state
according to its own criteria?

2. NPOV - Can the Dutch Wikipedia (for example) decide it defines a
state according to the EU recognition, and state X is a state only
according to EU diplomatic recognition, or is it a violation of NPOV?

3. Polling - can a Wikipedian community vote about excluding a certain
person from writing? Can it vote about whether to except a certain
source? Can the Spanish Wikipedia decide a source from Japan will never
be regarded reliable?

These are only a few questions that are not properly addressed, and the
system doesn't work well anymore. This kind of problems rise more often
as more people write in Wikipedia and as the communities grow, and we
fail to supply answers and solutions.

Dror