User:Kleuske/IFC

In the last few months i've been instrumental in correcting a few facts in various wiki's and the expirience has got me thinking, since they involved an international response to a local question.

Cases in point

The Battle of Ciuna

In July it:Utente:Horatius and it:Utente:MM contacted members of the dutch wiki concerning an article on The Battle of Ciuna, which, they found, wasn't mentioned in any of the sources. I dug into it and passed the message on to en.wiki, where i nominated the article for deletion. Subsequently others on the english wiki looked into the matter and it was quickly established that the Battle of Ciuna was a hoax. References to that battle have now been removed from _all_ wiki's who carried the article.

Good Shepherd Image

As case in point, i'll mention the case of the Good Shepherd image. This image is shown (still) on Early Christianity, where doubt arose concerning it's source and date. It was User:Leinad-Z, a Brazilian who decided to do the obvious thing and contacted the author of the picture (me, Dutch) to get more detail. Since I could only rely on my notes (which were questioned and questionable, as it turns out), i then relayed the message to the italian wiki with a request to find out. My message was first translated into italian by it:Utente:Riccardov and subsequently it:utente:MM took it on himself to investigate and came up with the answer.

Conclusions from the above

In some cases finding facts and implementing the consequences takes the concerted effort of a number of people from different nations and actiuve on different wiki's. In the wto cases mentioned, networks arose spontaneously just to answer a single question or to spread the news. The speed at which that happened is rather impressive and has lead me to believe that

Many questions are easy to check for locals, while foreigners have great difficulties in doing so.
It is wastefull to depend on those networks forming spontaneously.

If User:Leinad-Z had not contacted me, the discussion on the source of the image would still rage on and no-one would have benefitted from it, since it was already well on it's way for weeks. That is wasted time and wasted effort. Also my own very limited knowledge of italian has lead me to the last conclusion:

It is beneficial to speak the local language properly, since that way information is more easily accessible.

Proposal

What i'd like to propose is a list of people, spread across the globe cooperating to get and check facts and spread the news of newly ermerged ones, each member working within his/her own country, speaking the local language and having easy access to monuments, musea and websites in their respective languages. This group of volunteers take requests from a list detailing the request.

What can the organisation do

We have a wikipedia organisation. What i'd like this organisation to do is provide some leverage for fact-finding volunteers in order to alleviate entrance fees for museums, zoos and what have you for factfinders on a mission. After all, we're an international volunteer organisation specializing in getting knowledge to people on a non-profit basis. This should chime well with organisations dedicated to preserving and gaining knowledge, especially if it does not come from one of the wiki-grunts like yours truly, but from the community as a whole and the organisation itself.

Informal Poll

Just to get an idea of how usefull people think this idea is, here's an informal poll.

I'd volunteer for such a group

Kleuske 19:44, 13 September 2006 (UTC) (nl:Gebruiker:Kleuske).
Great idea. I'd love the opportunity to help out by checking facts in my local metropolitan (Seattle) area. Deco 03:30, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
I could help in Italy --Jollyroger 08:10, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Great idea! I could help in Germany. FreddyE 10:42, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Good idea, but i don't have the time/motivation/skill/whatever

...

Yes, but

...

This idea SUCKS

...