2023:Program/ESEAP Region/F9K9ET-Wikimedia project policy - Cases from Sundanese and Indonesian Wikipedia

From Wikimania

Title: Wikimedia project policy - Cases from Sundanese and Indonesian Wikipedia

Speakers:

RXerself

I am a sysop in the Indonesian and Sundanese Wikipedia and regular contributor in Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. My focus topics range from geography to news, food and language. As a sysop and editor I like to do copy-edit and fact-checking references. You can see my interest to Indonesian geography and food in Commons.

Pretalx link

Etherpad link

Room: Room 325

Start time: Sat, 19 Aug 2023 11:25:00 +0800

End time: Sat, 19 Aug 2023 11:45:00 +0800

Type: Lecture

Track: ESEAP (East, South East Asia, and the Pacific) Region

Submission state: confirmed

Duration: 20 minutes

Do not record: false

Presentation language: en


Abstract & description[edit source]

Abstract[edit source]

Wikimedia has Cross-project policies but they may not be applied easily by local sysops who rely on more defined policy for a project. Some terms in the existing cross-project policies are vaguely defined, e.g. “vandalism”. Lack of a defined policy may lead to critiques of a ruling by a sysop or users using a loophole and stretching their capabilities to exploit. Cases from the Sundanese and Indonesian Wikipedia will be presented.

Description[edit source]

A policy as being talked here will be focused on day-to-day policies on Wikimedia projects, ranging from policies and guidelines for project content, language, namespace allocation, generally what edits someone can do or cannot do in a Wiki site. The Sundanese Wikipedia regularly experiences behavior such as vanity pages, machine-translated pages being created and then abandoned, or spams or non-encyclopedic content from anons or newly-created accounts. For a sysop to rule a page as worthy of deletion, we need a policy. The lack of such policy in a project with a relatively small community leaves the judgement to the sysops.

That may not pass easily in a bigger project like the Indonesian Wikipedia. Although more policies are available and enacted already, holes and absence are still there. A lot of Indonesian editors translate contents from English Wikipedia with good intentions but varying quality of translation. This leads several users to be banned. Vandalism as stated in the Indonesian Wikipedia policy only happens when the intention to the edit was malicious and the block policy never mentions well-intended behavior warranties a ban. The speaker may throw questions to the attendees and several other examples may be explained if enough time is left during the lecture. Participants/attendees are encouraged to share their ideas of project policies or their experience regarding the topic, not limited to their experience in ESEAP region languages/contributors.

Further details[edit source]

Qn. How does your session relate to the event themes: Diversity, Collaboration Future?

If this experience is shared with a lot of other people in the Wikimedia community, it needs further collaboration at perhaps a rough list of what policy a mature project or a developing project should have, what should be reviewed by sysops, what may be needed by newly released Wikis–particularly as our community grows larger and Wikimedia projects grow as a main reference work in the Internet.

Qn. What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?

Average knowledge about Wikimedia projects or activities

Qn. What is the most appropriate format for this session?

  • Tick Onsite in Singapore
  • Empty Remote online participation, livestreamed
  • Empty Remote from a satellite event
  • Empty Hybrid with some participants in Singapore and others dialing in remotely
  • Empty Pre-recorded and available on demand