Talk:German Wikipedia

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Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on February 18, 2007. The result of the discussion was keep.

just an intersting thing: [1]

apparently the German Wikipedia was down for three days over a lawsuit. Is there a reason this hasn't been mentioned here yet? I don't know enough background on it to add it myself: [2]

That article has misunderstood the situation. It says "The Wikimedia Foundation... reached a temporary settlement with a Berlin court that will let users access the German-language version of Wikipedia at http://de.wikipedia.org, hosted in the United States, instead of its usual http://www.wikipedia.de", which isn't true. http://de.wikipedia.org has always been the usual address, and it was always available there. What was down for three days was the redirect from http://www.wikipedia.de. That address still doesn't redirect to German Wikipedia, although you can at least click through to German Wikipedia from there now. --Angr (tɔk) 17:57, 21 January 2006 (UTC)


Added a paragraph from my limited understanding of the situation and with help from other articles already discussing the event. Felt it was far too important to not being mentioned at all here. Chancemill 17:15, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Copyright Infringement

"A representative of Brockhaus pointed out the copyright infringement, and the list was deleted."

How is a list of their article titles a copyright infringement? Superm401 - Talk 05:37, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, presumably in the same way the table of contents of a book are copyrighted: the selection of topics is a creative act. AxelBoldt 01:51, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WP DVD versions

Can someone add more information about the impact of their offline publications. Were the DVDs/books sold in bookstores? Any public reaction, popularity? Responses from the media and Wikipedians? Criticisms? Just interested. I ask b/c I'm interested in helping out WP:1.0. Gflores Talk 19:48, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] dialect policy

I would like to read about how the German Wikipedia deals with the different dialects of German. Is their policy about the same as ours for American versus British English? -lethe talk + 06:47, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, dialects like Alemannic and Plattdeutsch have their own separate Wikipedias. Written standard High German is pretty consistent across German-speaking areas, except that in Switzerland ß is never used, so Switzerland-related articles use Swiss spellings (grosse Strasse instead of große Straße, etc.). Also, words that belong to the written standard in Austria (like Jänner for "January" instead of Januar) are also allowed in Austria-related articles. Angr (talk • contribs) 07:21, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
So basically, there is accommodation for some orthographic differences, but there is no place for dialects. No place for an article written in Bavarian or Swiss German, say? I guess the reasoning is that the places where those dialects are spoken use standard High German for the written language, so wikipedia should do the same? -lethe talk + 09:52, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
Well, Swiss German would be included in the Alemannic Wikipedia (Alemannic is a cover term for the dialects of Swabia, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Vorarlberg, Baden, and Alsace dialects). If enough people were interested, I suppose they could start an Austro-Bavarian Wikipedia. But you're right, those are primarily spoken rather than written dialects; in the areas where they're spoken, standard High German is the usual written language. Angr (talk • contribs) 10:01, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. -lethe talk + 10:36, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
German dialects are nothing like British vs. American English. Think ebonics gone wild. It's more like Dutch vs. German. In Swiss German, for instance, even the grammar is very different from German. Germans have a hard time understanding Swiss German, and some Swiss German dialects are hard to understand even for other Swiss German speakers. There is no standard way of writing those dialects and most native dialect speakers will find it much easier reading and writing standard German. Talking about "reasoning" suggests that this might have been seriously considered, but accepting dialect articles in the German wikipedia would be way beyond ludicrous. As Angr said, there are separate WPs for some German dialects, and at least the one in Alemannic German is – predictably – a mess (too many different dialects subsumed). – Mind you, I am not saying you asked a stupid question – actually, I will try and add something short to the article proper. Algae 10:38, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
So the article German language says at the outset that German is a pluricentric language. But this isn't true in the strictest sense. Now I actually see that the article on pluricentric languages describes the situtaion with German. Standard High German occupies a privileged position among dialects, and the choice to use it solely on wikipedia is an easy one. Integration like we do in English would not be possible. -lethe talk + 11:17, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
I am not a linguist, but it's really a matter of definition and IMO the German language article is quite correct. The differences between German in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland are small but exist: Slightly different vocabulary, subtle punctuation changes, minor spelling differences – just about enough to easily determine the country of origin for a newspaper article. It is really quite comparable to American vs. British English (although less distinct). The pluricentric language article exaggerates the differences.
German dialects, however, are a different world: They have evolved often quite independently for centuries, they are very different from German, and they are purely a regional thing (whereas in English, a dialect often relates to class). Think of (some of) them as separate languages; their speakers learn German as their second language in school. Algae 14:14, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for explaining. The new section looks good, it's exactly what I was looking for. Nice work, and thanks again. -lethe talk + 10:27, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Style guide

I removed this sentence:

  • The German Wikipedia lacks a detailed style guide comparable to the English Wikipedia:Manual of Style. Consequently, formatting is highly inconsistent even between featured articles.

Okay, our Styleguide and its adherent pages is not as long and detailed as the english, but "lack" is a strong word. Examples for inconsistent formatting are welcome. --Elian Talk 05:05, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Hm, yes, but Wikipedia:Manual of Style doesn't interwiki-link to de:WP:WSIGA. TZMT (de:T) 13:04, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Commons

  • The German Wikipedia has decided to phase out the use of local image uploads and will exclusively use Wikimedia Commons for images and other media.

This sentence is not completely true. Yes, there was a poll on this where the "support" side won, and the upload on German Wikipedia still works because of many opposers (94:79). However, they're planning to directly link to commons:Special:Upload, and de:MediaWiki:Uploadtext has a big box on the top saying: Attention! Uploading your files directly to Wikimedia Commons ins requested, because then they can be used from other language Wikipedias and other Wikimedia projects too. See the picture tutorial for a how-to. TZMT (de:T) 13:28, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] First article's day

Only a question, when was created the first article in German Wikipedia? --83.43.89.230 11:44, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

According to the wikipedia history, on May 2001. You can check it in:
--81.38.177.129 13:55, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
The oldest known article there was on May 12, created by an anon (and they still allow article creation by anons). See Polymerase-Kettenreaktion (probably a translation from english wp, since it contains the original text). The oldest known article sta by a registered user (LA2) was Daenemark on May 17, now a redirect to Dänemark. TZMT (de:T) 11:23, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] German nationalistic bias

Hundreds of articles describing the history of Germany ignore the existence of Polish minority, sometimes majority. The Nazi crimes, camps for the Poles aren't mentioned. It's typical colonialistic point of view. The examples can be found eg. in 45 articles in Kategorie:Ehemaliger Landkreis in Posen. Xx236 11:22, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Polish nationalists point of view - Nonsense! --172.183.61.213 15:35, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Biased articles can be found everywhere in the German WP. And conflicts are not decided by trying to reach a consensus but by blocking users and censorship. A native German who would like to see some changes and movement towards the standards in the English WP (e.g. neutrality disputed, facts disputed and similar warnings - nothing like this exists in the German WP. What you read in the German WP is nothing but the absolute and eternal truth)

[edit] Socialist bias

Well, I have edited Socialism-related stuff here in en.wikipedia, e.g: [3], [4], [5], which all remain in the articles as of now. But when I tried to do the same in de.wikipedia, my account (Benutzer:Proklos), got indefinitely blocked! Can you believe it! Ehis proves quite well, that whatever be said of en.wikipedia, the German Wikipedia is incomparably more biased, i'd say even: is becoming a parody, a disgrace to the project. Constanz - Talk 10:41, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Anyway, I've sent them a mail, suggesting investigation by their authorities. Hardly anything shall come out of it. The worse for them - I've quite experiences used, I'll suggest investigation from English-speaking line.Constanz - Talk 10:43, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

  • [[Category:German parties, which reject Agenda 2010]] (Dec 6, 2006) I created is still alive.
    • Kategorie:Parteien, die das Hartz-Konzept ablehnen in de.wikipedia was immediately deleted, and my account blocked for 2 hours.
      Why? Probably because regarding the Agenda issue, German far-left happened to share the views (once again!) with the neo-Nazis. But of course this fact is smth that must be hidden. And cursed be he that reveals it! Constanz - Talk 16:45, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

This page is for discussing improvements to the article German Wikipedia, not for airing grievances about how you're treated there. —Angr 19:26, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] article-free sunday

anyone know how this went? will this be done again in the near future? 70.104.16.146 01:05, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

If you can read German, take a look at de:Wikipedia Diskussion:Artikelfreier Sonntag. Of course the supporters have declared it a success, but since in fact there were about as many new articles created that day as every other day, I'd call it a failure (in addition to being the stupidest idea in the history of German Wikipedia). —Angr 08:42, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] German version of this article?

I wonder why there's no german language link of this article. Or does a german article not exist? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 89.55.33.74 (talk) 14:14, 27 March 2007 (UTC).

The German version has been deleted. Rl 20:14, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Which serves as an example for the greater strictness in the German Wikipedia; as it says here, "the German one tends to be more selective in its coverage"... indeed. In case anyone is wondering: the main points for deleting the article, according to the deletion discussion, was something like "the article is self-adulation, the Wikipedia shouldn't describe the history of its language versions in-depth in the article namespace, the general article de:Wikipedia is enough". Opinions were divided, though; I'm not sure that deletion was the right decision - if the general public would like to know something about the German Wikipedia, it will search for it like for other things in the article namespace - and will find nothing in the German Wikipedia (de:Wikipedia contains very little information about the German one). 01:05, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
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