Benutzer:Dirk Franke/Nachbarsandkasten

ICD on the German Wikipedia. The Odes of March.

As some of you interested in professional editing might have read: Benjamin Mako Hill had some trouble with an institute from Berlin. I’d advise everybody to read Benjamin’s article in full (http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/the-institute-for-cultural-diplomacy-and-wikipedia). For German readers Netzpolitik.org has an article and for everybody here's a short overview:

• Mark Donfried from the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy sent legal threats to Mako Hill because he took part in a deletion discussion about the ICD on the English Wikipedia.
• Hill is also one of the few editors who edit under their full real name and can easily be found as a person.
• The article in case is now deleted (for two times). It seemed to be created by an account close to the institute, mainly written by anonymous users from Berlin and criticisms of the institute were deleted by anonymous users from Berlin.
• Several regular editors who tried to improve the article met their singe-mission-pro-ICD editors and finally gave up and moved on. So the article read mostly like an advertisement.
• Mako Hill was active in the discussion about the deletion, and while the discussion was going on, Donfried proposed a personal meeting – that finally never happened. Finally Mako Hill voted for deletion.
• Several months later a new account created a new article with basically the same content as the old one. It was deleted.
• Several months later an almost new account created a new article with basically the same content as before.
• Mako Hill did not participate in the new discussions about deletion but got legal threats from the ICD anyway. He finally resigned from editing this article.
• Conclusion: “But the general case still worries me deeply. If I can be scared off by threats like these, anybody can. After all, I have friends at the Wikimedia Foundation, a position at Harvard Law School, and am close friends with many of the world’s greatest lawyer-experts on both wikis and cyberlaw. And even I am intimidated into not improving the encyclopedia.”
• “I am concerned by what I believe is the more common case — where those with skin in the game will fight harder and longer than a random Wikipedian. The fact that it’s usually not me on the end of the threat gives me lots of reasons to worry about Wikipedia at a time when its importance and readership continues to grow as its editor-base remains stagnant.”

When unhappiness goes out from Berlin it kind of hits close to home. As I have no really good idea how to fix these matters, at least I can try to find out what happens, and I can tell what the ICDs “home” Wikipedia did and what happened.

• Wikipedia already had an article about the Amerika-Haus in Berlin. On October 1, 2008, an unregistered User (“IP”) wrote a paragraph about the collaboration of the ICD and the Amerika-Haus into that article, complete with Weblinks to the ICD. http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Amerika-Haus_(Berlin)&diff=51352736&oldid=51352349
• On March 21, 2009 an unregistered user set a Wikilink from the Amerika-Haus to the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Amerika-Haus_(Berlin)&diff=58149101&oldid=57125716
• The Wikipedia reaction to this edits was erratic. Some regular users deleted links, some put them back on, one user even deleted it for the first time and a year later reverted a deletion by somebody else.
• On February 21, 2012 an unregistered User from Berlin writes a new article about the International Culture Institute. After 3 minutes it is noted at the German “quality improvement” system by somebody doubting its notability, and after 25 minutes this article is proposed for deletion. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Löschkandidaten/21._Februar_2012#Institute_for_Cultural_Diplomacy_.28gel.C3.B6scht.29
• At the deletion discussion an unregistered User from Berlin (probably the author) cites the existing English Wikipedia article as proof of notability. There is a total rewrite of the article including some edit wars with regular editors and an emotional style of discussion.
• Meanwhile an unregistered User from Switzerland tries several times to speedy delete this article and gets reverted by long-time Wikipedians.
• After a lengthy discussion on March 12, 2012 the Article “International Culture Institute” gets deleted. http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Institute_for_Cultural_Diplomacy&action=edit&redlink=1
• On March 14, 2012 an unregistered user from Berlin writes the Article Institute for cultural diplomacy that has different spelling from the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy and so it doesn’t show up in the watchlists of the people already engaged in this discussion.
• After four hours it’s put into the German “quality improvement” category and after four hours and four minutes for deletion because of lacking notability.
• After two days, on March 16, there is a successful proposal for speedy deletion because we already had this article.
• On March 11, 2013 a new registered user sets the link in “Amerika-Haus” again and tried another time to establish the Article to the ICD. http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Amerika-Haus_(Berlin)&diff=prev&oldid=115262695 This article was put into the “quality improvement” system of the German Wikipedia by bot after ten minutes, got a proposal for quick deletion after 6 hours by user A and was deleted after 6 hours http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Institute_for_Cultural_Diplomacy&action=edit&redlink=1.

On all the other Wikipedias we have two deletions (Hungarian and Spanish). When a German user tried to get these articles deleted he got reverted on Polish, Portuguese, Finish, while people in Romanian, French are now discussing a deletion and the article get recently deleted in Russian.