News

Enhanced control mode on German Wikipedia

Multilingual users are enthusiastically expanding the info of their home country in foreign Wiki. Often these are not scandalous personalities or contradictory facts, but general information on geography, culture, music, literature, etc. Today we will share our experience of editing articles in the German Wikipedia. Is German accuracy just a stereotype?

1. Extremely picky attitude to the smallest clarifications and edits
The lack of information or non-relevant information always has an advantage over information from insufficient authoritative sources, which includes wiki-articles in other languages. Edits should be based on encyclopedic knowledge, official databases, generally accepted textbooks, etc. Content edits can be canceled as not significant enough, in particular, in case they consist of a direct translation of an existing article. Information without references is doomed to failure. Wikipedia rules should be strictly kept.

2. The culture of communication and interaction between users is far from friendly
This is mostly the character of the German nation in general, but it is easy to notice in comments and discussions. The whole newly created section can be simply removed with the signature "I do not know why it is here." Also, you will be offered to visit the German course for a missed comma or preposition in a sentence, which is likely to be removed without checking its sense. The administrator often does not regret the time to write long instructions to you in relation to canceled edits, but rarely spend a minute to improve the quality of the content of the native language. The linguistic barrier, which is quite high in German, is expanded with emotional one and a feeling that you are not glad to be seen here.


3. A few administrators specializing in Ukrainian topics
The described impressions are intensified by editing articles related to Ukraine, when you interact with a small group of users and Wikipedia is even mre severe to you. For example, English-speaking Wikipedia is more heterogeneous and therefore can merge more experts and prospects around the topic.

If your article was approved by the German standard - this is a great reason for pride. Let our observations do not deprive you of motivation, but encourage to the creation of qualitative articles.