Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Recommendations/Principles

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All knowledge systems?

"Structures to be developed must respect all knowledge systems"... Hello, does this include e.g. the "knowledge systems" of religious groups or adopters of "alternative medicine"? Should a Wikipedia community respect the "knowledge system" of homeopathy in the same way as evidence-based medicine? --Ziko (talk) 18:59, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Good point for clarification. --- FULBERT (talk) 02:17, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. I would like to see some people from the team give some explanations. Maybe they find this self-explicatory. I don't know what they mean by "knowledge system". Ziko (talk) 18:47, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

"inclusive language"

Hello, given the recent discussions on de.WP, I would like to know what a "inclusive language" is and who will define it. Is it the intention of the strategy recommendations that there will be an authoritatve definition that will be forced by the WMF on the communities? --Ziko (talk) 19:01, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Interesting question. Do you think this should be defined in a singular way across the Movement, or leave as-is to allow for flexibility and changing mores? --- FULBERT (talk) 02:19, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Hey FULBERT, I strongly suggest removing this as there's a clear consensus among the contributors to the German Wikipedia that this is unacceptable. If this stayed, the German Wikipedians would interpret this as an sneaky attempt to circumvent their overwhelming community consensus. I'm assuming good faith here, as always, but even I found this very alarming when Ziko pointed it out. --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 02:40, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

To make sure I understand, do you mean removing the use of the term "inclusive language" from the "Inclusive community development" Principle? Frank Schulenburg? --- FULBERT (talk) 02:47, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

From a German perspective, we're talking about linguistic concepts that don't translate well into English, because the English language only has "the" instead of the German "der, die, das". So, I realize, this is difficult to explain, unless you're a native speaker of German or had some German in school. In German, the male grammatical gender includes all biological genders. A tiny minority in Germany ignores this fact and tries to change our language. The community on the German Wikipedia clearly decided that we'll continue to reflect how the overwhelming majority uses our language (the same way that Wikipedia's content reflects reality and doesn't try to create a new reality) and not use Wikipedia as a battleground for this specific discussion. --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 02:57, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello @FULBERT:, thank you for asking, and sorry, indeed there is some context necessary. I have tried to explain the recent conflict on de. WP in this video.

Let me put it this way: in the modern German language, there are two different systems how to deal with gender. Let's call them system A and system B. System A is the traditional system used by the large majority in the German speaking countries, by most authors, most newspapers etc. System B is the choice of a vocal minority that states that system A is sexist. In 2019, a science-fiction-author initiatied a petition "#wikifueralle" and a Request for Comments on German Wikipedia (a kind of referendum). The result: 80 procent of the voters rejected the proposed introduction of system B.

Now we read in the recommendations ("Principles" -> "Inclusive community development"):

"Policies and procedures adapted for use in the Movement must ensure the safety and security of all participants and must be designed with a focus toward equity, which should include the use of inclusive language, embracing all participants."

So we (me, Frank and some others) are afraid that the WMF will follow the example of WMAT and force system B on German Wikipedians. Therefore, I think that the sentence or part of the sentence should be removed.

Kind regards, Ziko (talk) 08:18, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Translation

Hi!

I noticed that only the titles and short-brief of the principles were marked for translation, and in the translated version the in-full is correctly marked as "in english". It’s a long document, so I understand the necessity to prioritize for impact ( ;-) ) but would it be okay to mark these bits for translation nevertheless? Worst thing that could happen is that they stay in English, but speaking for myself I would be keen to translate some of it to French.

Thanks, Jean-Fred (talk) 11:24, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Dear Jean-Fred, I believe it is ok as it might indeed be helpful to have more context available than just one liner. Go ahead and thank you!--KVaidla (WMF) (talk) 14:03, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you KVaidla, this is now Done Special:Diff/19754558. :-) Jean-Fred (talk) 14:41, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

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