Welcome all!
I am a 25 year old Belgian living in Chicago. I was born in [Ghent] but have lived most of my life in [Brussels].
I think Wikipedia is a great tool and when I finally overcame my fear I decided to join the effort. I think my main skills here will be nittpicking and removing POV or biased content. I also have a strong dislike for people who want to censor Wikipedia or want to be too politically correct.
I am still learning about how this all works, but allready some stuff rubs the wrong way... The fake consensus building is one. Another thing is the fact that hte reasoning behind decisions made in the past are very hard to find. The internal Wikipedia stuff is a bit o a mess in my oppinion.
The American and British bias is huge and the Western bias even bigger. This is very hard t fight, but I think I might join one of the Wiki projects.
If one of you could help me figure these things out, please answer on my talk page!
-Why does Jim Wales still 'owns' or has some kind of special authorithy over Wikipedia? This seems completely against the whole spirit of the project. I acknowledge thta he has done good work (and probably still does) for Wikipedia, but the principle idea seems wrong.
-Why is Wikipedia based in the US? If there is a good reason for it, fine. But has there been a serious discussion about this? I would think a country where there is less risk of getting sued for some bogus copywright issue or who knows what would be a better place for the servers and the WikiMedia Foundation.
-How does consensus-builing work here? I hear a lot of people talk about "this is consensus" or "it has been decided that the WP consensus is...", but are new users supposed to just accept evrything? Can five people just decide somthing and call it consensus or a WP policy?
Example: A says "this should be X". B says "No! Because blabla." C says: "Yeah A, you are dumb. It should be as B says" D says: "On this site they do what B says". A then says: " No , it should be X because". Is there a consensus because B,C,D happen to have the same opinon? Three people is not enough to make a majority, might just be accidental. There doesn't seem to be statistical weight behind the whole dicissionmaking process here. Is it just the group that screams louder wins and screw "the thruth"?
HichamVanborm 02:36, 9 September 2006 (UTC)