Community
![]() |
(English) This is an essay. It expresses the opinions and ideas of some Wikimedians but may not have wide support. This is not policy on Meta, but it may be a policy or guideline on other Wikimedia projects. Feel free to update this page as needed, or use the discussion page to propose major changes. |
This page is about community, about interactions between users through wiki projects. Formerly this page opened with the question “Is Wikipedia really a community?” Now, the situation is much broader.
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20220320003352im_/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3b/2004_WMF_Election_participation2.png/220px-2004_WMF_Election_participation2.png)
Body risk[edit]
An early claim was that Wikipedia is not a community because it does not share body risk. The pseudonyms and IP addresses do not correspond to real people; it is unlikely a community could be built on virtual people maybe. Because the not-Wikipedia projects also allow pseudonyms and IP addresses, they have the same situation.
One idea for Wikipedia is to build a free encyclopedia together through the common goal of building a free encyclopedia. However, a community goes beyond the simple sharing of a simplified vision, and includes common community values. In 2012, English Wikipedia appears to have common values as well: assume good faith, no personal attacks, NPOV disputes, and user talk templates. Wikinews also has those four attributes, but not in the same manner. In not-Wikipedia, not-Wikinews projects, NPOV disputes and user talk templates appear to be much less important.
Perhaps Wikipedia and Wikinews are more like families than communities. One does not choose a family, but belongs to it. However, a family is a cultural idea that varies worldwide, so this paragraph may be incomprehensible to some peoples.
Some users remain bothered by the notion that Wikimedians cannot constitute a community because they do not share body risks. If we only consider those Wikimedians who are humans, we are all part of at least one community: the human community. Right now, we are all sharing the risks of being hurt or killed, by war, AIDS, or by poor atmospheric quality. In biological terms, a community is a group from one species living together and strongly interrelated. Communities cause a mixture of benefits and disadvantages; communities are stable when, over time, both the whole community and the individuals that make it up benefit. Diversity and communality both play roles in community.
Wikibooks and partition[edit]
Wikibooks is a special case. The project divides itself into multiple, autonomous book projects. English Wikibooks, in particular, is lacking a mechanism to repel new book projects that are outside the scope of Wikibooks, given by a official enforced policy.
Wikisource likes uniformity: a single standard Header template on English Wikisource introduces most texts.
Can the Wikipedia community become a Wikimedia community?[edit]
It is already so. For example, we have IRC channel cloaks for different Wikimedia projects, and we also have "wikimedia/" cloaks. At least on Freenode, we can have a Wikimedia community.
See also[edit]
- The Wikipedia Community
- False community
- IRC channels
- Image:2004 WMF Election participation2.png image showing "community"