Talk:German Wikipedia

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

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[edit] german wikipedia

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)

[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. TZM^T (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. TZM^T (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. TZM^T (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)

if you want to look for nationalistic bias search on the en:wp. as every nationalist of any country of the world starts flame wars about trivial stuff. kurds vs turks, greeks vs turks, polish vs germans and on and on and on. german wikipedia is quite calm.--Tresckow 10:45, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

In fact everything, which even smells slightly nationalistic is considered problematic in Germany. Interesting point on this is the naming for non-German cities: except a very very small group of names, especially the capital of each country and some of the big cities in poland, the current native names are used. This depends on the used name in German media, which tunes more and more to use only native names.--TheK 17:44, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

[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. —An gr 19:26, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

This explanation is way too late, but still: Such categories are considered superfluous in de:wp. --Gnom (talk) 10:26, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

And Fighters against the project policy will be blocked in every Wikimedia project. Marcus Cyron (talk) 17:57, 23 February 2008 (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). —An gr 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)

[edit] Language issues

I tagged the article as needing copy editing since I suspect that the recent additions/modifications made mainly by native German speakers (including myself) might seem at least a bit strange, stylistically, to native English speakers, and maybe there are some errors. If native English speakers think that there are no oddities hampering the article's readability, please remove the tag :-) Gestumblindi 01:13, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fictitious entries - excessive detail?

A recent addition to this article created, in my opinion, a rather distorted picture regarding the German Wikipedia's handling of fictitious entries. Added by Angr:

Yet despite its rejection of articles on fictional subjects, German Wikipedia does not reject fictitious entries; it has had an entry on the nonexistent insect "Leuchtschnabelbeutelschabe" since January 2003, which was kept after deletion discussions in January 2005 [6] and June 2006 [7] [8]; more recent requests for deletion are no longer even discussed [9].

"German Wikipedia does not reject fictitious entries" looks to me as if the German Wikipedia routinely accepts fictitious entries, which is not the case. As one can gather from the mentioned deletion discussions, the main point of those arguing for keeping the article was that it serves as a kind of mascot for the German Wikipedia comparable to Pschyrembel's (medical dictionary) Stone louse; the reason given for keeping by an admin was "Die LSBS ist Kulturgut. Es ist konsens, daß die LSBS als alleiniger Nihilartikel auf dewp bleibt" ("The LSBS is an object of cultural value. It is consensus that the LSBS stays as the only Nihilartikel [fictituous entry] in the German Wikipedia (dewp)"). Well, it's not really consensus, there were also many who said that the article should be deleted, but it's obviously still the prevailing opinion. Anyway, usually the German Wikipedia deletes fictitious entries. (de:Steinlaus is not a fictitious entry but a "real entry" about the fictional louse and Pschyrembel's fictitious entry.) There might be one or two more accepted fictitious entries, I can't remember right now, but certainly not much more. Therefore I modified Angr's addition to reflect this.

Still - is the whole issue worth mentioning at all in our article about the German Wikipedia? Four references for an issue that is not really of huge importance in the German Wikipedia's bigger picture? Gestumblindi 23:32, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I think the fact that at least one (if not more) fictitious entries are allowed at de-wiki but not at en-wiki, and indeed are generally unexpected and unwelcome in encyclopedias (except possibly as copyright traps, clearly not the case in a GFDL encyclopedia) makes it highly notable that the German Wikipedia has one and refuses to remove it despite the number of people who have asked for its removal. (In my opinion, it's also a perfect testament to the unreliability of German Wikipedia in general, but I wouldn't say so in the article.) —An gr 14:06, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Fictitious entries are not that uncommon in encyclopedias; in fact, they can almost be called a tradition - Fictitious entry#Official_sources and de:Fingierter Lexikonartikel#Fundstellen give many examples of reputable lexica/encyclopedias containing fictitious entries. The purpose of most of them is not a copyright trap but to show that the creators of an otherwise dead-serious work retain a sense of humor; for example, Pschyrembel's Steinlaus (stone louse) certainly doesn't work as a copyright trap (it was already well-known as the invention of German humorist Loriot) - still, nobody would call Pschyrembel's medical encyclopedia unreliable because of this. In fact it's a standard work one can see in most medical practices. Gestumblindi 19:54, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "West German libraries"

That sounds like that Germany is still divided. --Grandy02 17:17, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Not really; it just implies that most German Wikipedians live in West Germany and therefore didn't have access to libraries where the materials could be found. —An gr 17:40, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Such books are also in East German libraries often since 1989/90 not longer to find. And it's not easy to find a book, if you don't know waht exactly you looking for. And the term "West Germany" is not unusual today, but there's also East-, North- and South Germany, sometmes also Southwest, Northeast and so on. Marcus Cyron 10:14, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

"West Germany", "South Germany" and so on sounds like the name of the state for me (like "North Korea" and "South Korea"). I would prefer "western Germany", also the article is named "western Germany", while "West Germany" refers to the state. @Angr: Can you tell me whether there are statistics about the location of German Wikipedians? --Grandy02 19:31, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I hardly doubt there are. I doubt also that most german wikipedians live in western germany.--Tresckow 10:48, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't know of any statistics about the location of German Wikipedians, but considering that most Germans live in West(ern) Germany, it seems likely that also most German Wikipedians do. —Angr 11:12, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] External / Interwiki links

I noticed that the article uses interwiki links such as de:Foobar to link on the German Wikipedia. I don't think this should be the case, because the link to the German Wikipedia is (logically) an external one, just like the Link on Wikipedia in the article 'Wikipedia'. See also Wikipedia:Avoid_self-references. So, what do you think about this? Should the links be changed to external links? --Church of emacs 17:54, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

It's a rather unclear case, I'd say; links to the German Wikipedia are kind of "half-external" or "half-internal"; it's the same project after all. I think, however, that the interwiki solution is probably more elegant. The link to the multilingual Wikipedia portal http://www.wikipedia.org/ you mention isn't really comparable. As for self-references, well, this is an article about Wikipedia (one if its language versions) and I don't think this is what Wikipedia:Avoid_self-references applies to. Gestumblindi 19:09, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Ok, thank you for your opinion. I'm still a bit unsure about it, but on the other hand I did not find any rule that forbids that emphatically. @Gestumblindi: Nice museum of fakes. Interesting to read. :) --Church of emacs 16:27, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Introduction of editing restrictions

Could we have more information on that?--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk} 02:18, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Everything said in the paragraph Introduction of editing restrictions is basically wrong. Unfortunately, English-language media used as sources for this paragraph got the "Gesichtete Versionen" and "Geprüfte Versionen" projects of the German Wikipedia quite wrong. To me as a native German speaker, it's not easy to describe it correctly in English, and I still hope that someone more skilled in English as well as more involved in the projects can do it. (Well, I think I could - but it takes a long time to put things together in understandable English.) Anyway, the original project descriptions can be found at de:Wikipedia:Gesichtete Versionen and de:Wikipedia:Geprüfte Versionen. First and foremost, there will be no list of "trusted users" who will control the addition of new material and articles to the project. User P. Birken, who is an administrator at the German Wikipedia and secretary of Wikimedia Germany (see de:Benutzer:P. Birken) removed the whole paragraph here as "blatant bullshit"; he's certainly right, but I'm not surprised that what he did got reverted, since the paragraph looks tidy and nicely sourced to the uninformed... Well:

- "Gesichtete Versionen" means: any user who has been active for a certain period and done a certain amount of edits (to be determined) will be able to mark any article version where no obvious vandalism took place as "gesichtet". In this context, "sichten" is probably best translated as "to glance over"; it means that someone had a look at the article and deemed it free of obvious nonsense, but no in-depth review took place. The idea is that this "gesichtete Version" will be the one to be shown to users per default (if there is one), but any subsequent version can be viewed by anyone as well.

- Similarly, "geprüfte Versionen" will be shown first per default, the difference to "gesichtete Versionen" being that an in-depth review of the content itself took place and the article is not just marked as vandalism-free but as factually correct.

All this, however, means no restrictions on editing itself whatsoever. Believe it - a project such as described by the referenced reports just doesn't exist. You will not find it in German Wikipedia. I really don't trust my English a lot, but if nobody creates a correct paragraph soon, I will try to cobble together something along the lines of what I tried to explain here. Gestumblindi 18:24, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

You asked why I completely removed that paragraph. Today, this is still some time away on the german wikipedia and I think therefore not highly relevant for an encyclopedia article. There does exist a page in the english wikipedia anyhow, namely Wikipedia:Flagged Revisions. --P. Birken 18:45, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

And who will determine that a version of an article is factually correct? Sources are not usually cited at German Wikipedia, and requesting sources where they are lacking is strongly discouraged and usually met with derision. Unless each article is geprüft by an expert in the field who was not involved in writing it (i.e. peer reviewed in the normal sense, not the sense used at English Wikipedia), there's simply no telling whether any article there is factually correct. —An gr 18:49, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's the point. --P. Birken 19:09, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

That's the point? You realize of course that such experts will almost never be found, so articles will either almost never be geprüft at all, or will be geprüft by the people who wrote them, who will have a vested interest in declaring them factually correct. —An gr 19:19, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Angr, there you are wrong. Citing is strongly encouraged, see de:WP:Q. To get a "Lesenswert" or an "Exzellent" nearly everything needs to be sourced. And trust me, I got my fair share of critizism for not finding "proper" or enough sources while writing for it. --84.141.175.25 (talk) 20:52, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Language Vs. Nationality

Why the Article is named "German Wikipedia"? This is simply not true. It's the "German Language Wikipedia". There are People from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy and some more. Same problem is with the "English Wikipedia". It's the English Language Wikipedia". Marcus Cyron 10:26, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

The adjectives "German" and "English" can mean "pertaining to the German language" and "pertaining to the English language" respectively, as well as meaning "pertaining to Germany" and "pertaining to England" respectively. —An gr 10:55, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Subsidies

Source is the talk page of the project manager. I've added a reference. Budget ist 140K a year, total amount 140K*3 = 420K for 3 years. Heizer 20:06, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

A Wikipedia user talk page is not a reliable source. If this hasn't been discussed outside Wikipedia, it's probably not notable enough for us to mention here. —An gr 21:01, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Luxemburgisch

Luxemburgisch appears as a 'dialect' in this article. It is now in fact considered a seperate language and should not be demoted to a dialect here. I have therefore removed it. jimbo 02:51, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

low german (nds) also isn't. It's much more complicate: today there are 2 seperate languages in Germany, 'low german' (devided from that is 'dutch') and 'high german' (de) with tons of dialects both, sometimes slightly different in each village. --84.143.64.237 17:37, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Music

I've noticed of late that the German wikipedia seems to have flabbergastingly better coverage of music than the English wiki does; they've thousands more articles on art-music composers and jazz figures, and have even beat the English wiki to the punch on a rather large number of American and British pop musicians. I wonder whether this has been noticed by the outside world. Chubbles (talk) 01:26, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Parodies and forks

Facts about Stupidedia: [10] and here: [11]

Facts about Kamelopedia: [12] and here: [13] —Preceding unsigned comment added by H3ndrik (talk • contribs) 02:06, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

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