Användardiskussion:Angela

Wikipedia

Welcome to Sweden! / Mats Halldin 29 april 2004 kl.13.37 (CEST)

Tack så mycket! :) Angela 2 maj 2004 kl.23.51 (CEST)

English speaking people always make a cute impression in Swedish! :) / Mats Halldin 2 maj 2004 kl.23.57 (CEST)

I'm impressed by your Swedish! And I welcome you to Swedish Wikipedia too. Den fjättrade ankan 3 maj 2004 kl.00.09 (CEST)

[redigera] Regarding policies: sv:WP / en:WP, Meta Foundation, and Jimbo

A couple of us are currently checking the possibilities of developing official policies for Swedish Wikipedia. We do have documents with guidelines of various kinds, but no one that is labelled official policy and it has emerged a need or a wish to establish what documents are truly important and essential. Regarding this, I have a few questions.

In several of the official policies on English Wikipedia - maybe all? the wording is about Wikipedia, not English Wikipedia. Taken at face value, the easy and logical interpretation is that these wordings are chosen because what it states in these documents is vaid in all Wikipedia projects, on all languages. Is that what was intended by these wordings? Also, in the guideline document at English Wikipedia en:Wikipedia:How to create policy there are two sections that mentions the involvement Jimbo and/or the Wikimedia board in creating policies. The first one is the section Difficulty of policy adoption, where it says that all four changes of policies since April 2003 had sponsorship or support by Jimbo Wales. The second one is How policies become official, where one of three ways mentioned for a policy to become official is Jimbo, or the Wikimedia board, pronouncing it as such.

This creates the questions: How can official policy on other Wikipedias than the English one be created? Do Jimbo and/or the Wikimedia board pronounce policies regarding all the Wikipedias, including the Swedish one? If so, which ones are these policies that we need to adhere to and can not change ourselves? Should all policy at Swedish Wikipedia be presented to and accepted by Jimbo and/or the Wikimedia Board? These questions are important, since the answers to them probably decide how policy should be developed at Swedish Wikipedia.

One extreme view on the matter would be that we don't need to develop our own policies at all - the English Wikipedia is the original Wikipedia, and so everything that is decided there is automatically valid in all other Wikipedias including ours. The documents at English Wikipedia is enough; we don't need anything else. We could possibly translate them, and then they are official policies right away. A less extreme version of this view, where the Swedish Wikipedians have more of a say, is that all documents should be translated and then voted on. This is a fast way of doing it.

The other extreme would be that a policy is only valid if accepted by the local Wikipedia community; we should build our own policy from the beginning. From there, policies should be adapted by working through the procedure described in the other three sections of the document: writing suggestions, making them known to the Wikipedia community by posting links to the suggestion, announcing the suggestion at Bybrunnen (the Village Pump), discussing, trying to reach consensus, and voting when necessary. A less extreme version of this view would be that we should build our policy ourselves, but having similar systems to the English Wikipedia is a plus; thus the English documents is a good place to start. We should begin by translating a couple of the most central of the policies at English Wikipedia; possibly we can use translations of the English policy documents as starting material for almost all official policy documents. However, it all needs to go through the time consuming process of reaching consensus within the Swedish Wikipedia.

I hope no one here at Swedish Wikipedia feel that I have given their view on the matter an unfair description; really, I haven't tried to describe the views currently represented by different individuals. I admit my personal taste is close to the last possibility mentioned, but the other variants mentioned are tries of going through the major possible variants of creating policy, as far as I can imagine, depending on the answers to the questions regarding the relationship between sv:WP versus en:WP, Wikimedia Foundation, and Jimbo.

/Habj 16 juni 2005 kl.01.39 (CEST)

I've copied part of your questions below so I could answer them inline.

We do have documents with guidelines of various kinds, but no one that is labelled official policy

It is only fairly recently that anything was labelled as official on the English Wikipedia. Often guidelines are more useful unless you need them as a reason for blocking people.

In several of the official policies on English Wikipedia - maybe all? the wording is about Wikipedia, not English Wikipedia.

Despite that wording, the policies have only been agreed upon by the English Wikipedia, so they only apply there. Of course, if a large community has agreed on them, they are likely to be a good starting point for other communities, but they need to be agreed on by the community here first. The only ones I would say apply across all projects are that the content must be free (GFDL) NPOV, and encyclopedic.

Also, in the guideline document at English Wikipedia en:Wikipedia:How to create policy there are two sections that mentions the involvement Jimbo and/or the Wikimedia board in creating policies.

Since Jimbo only speaks English, I don't think this so much applies to the other language Wikipedias.

How can official policy on other Wikipedias than the English one be created?

By community consensus. If someone proposes a policy and there is consensus for it, then the community can declare it official.

Do Jimbo and/or the Wikimedia board pronounce policies regarding all the Wikipedias, including the Swedish one?

Other than the Privacy policy, the Board is not involved in making policies. These things are really up to each community to decide upon. The Board doesn't get involved with policies, even on the English Wikipedia, such as the 3 revert rule, other than by voting or commenting on them like any other user is free to do.

One extreme view on the matter would be that we don't need to develop our own policies at all - the English Wikipedia is the original Wikipedia, and so everything that is decided there is automatically valid in all other Wikipedias including ours.

I think this is generally a bad idea. The English Wikipedia is very large, and therefore needs far stricter policies that simply wouldn't make sense on smaller Wikipedias. Over time, you will grow to need more complex policies, but I feel it is better to start off with the minimal amount and grow these naturally rather than attempt to adopt policies that may not be suitable here.

A less extreme version of this view, where the Swedish Wikipedians have more of a say, is that all documents should be translated and then voted on.

That could work, but be aware that there are a lot of policies that you may not need yet. For example, unless you are frequently having problems with constant edit wars, the 3 revert rule wouldn't be needed. It would be better to look at what problems you have here, and find policies that help to resolve those.

The other extreme would be that a policy is only valid if accepted by the local Wikipedia community; we should build our own policy from the beginning.

I do think they need to be accepted by the local Wikipedia community, but that doesn't mean starting from scratch. If another wiki has a good policy, it can be helpful to base your new one on that.

From there, policies should be adapted by working through the procedure described in the other three sections of the document: writing suggestions, making them known to the Wikipedia community by posting links to the suggestion, announcing the suggestion at Bybrunnen (the Village Pump), discussing, trying to reach consensus, and voting when necessary.

Yes, all those things should be done.

A less extreme version of this view would be that we should build our policy ourselves, but having similar systems to the English Wikipedia is a plus; thus the English documents is a good place to start.

I think policies on other Wikipedias will be good starting points. Not just the English one - have a look at some of the other large Wikipedias if you can read them since they might have come up with better solutions than the English one in some cases. It would also be useful to look for Wikipedias that are about the same size as Swedish to see what policies they have since they're more likely than English to be at the same stage of needing policies as you are.

We should begin by translating a couple of the most central of the policies at English Wikipedia; possibly we can use translations of the English policy documents as starting material for almost all official policy documents. However, it all needs to go through the time consuming process of reaching consensus within the Swedish Wikipedia.

Reaching consensus need not be time consuming. It might help to just label them as guidelines at first - then if people object to the guidelines, you can discuss them and find out if there is consensus. If no one objects, then it may be fairly easy to just move to being official policies without any discussion if everyone already agrees.

I hope that helps. Let me know if you need any clarification of my answers. Angela 29 juni 2005 kl.03.59 (CEST)

[redigera] How..

...do you found "länkens namn"? Chrizz 6 maj 2006 kl.18.26 (CEST)