Tell us about Dutch Wikipedia

This page belongs to the project Tell us about your Wikipedia.

Questionnaire

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Contributors

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  • Wikimedia Statistics can be difficult to interpret. What is your impression, how many steady contributors do you have?
    • not much, compared to the people living in the country. It seams rather stable. Some new come and some older go or contribute less. I blame the rules and the community for creating with every new rule an environment where less and less people can feel comfortable. It also kills creativity. Alas this seems to continu, so I guess the community stays small. Thank God for the addiction: so many people develop an addiction, so they keep coming back. If not, the project would be dead by now. Pjetter 19:35, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • I think there is a stable "hard core" of 60 +/- 20 users that contribute very frequently, half of them being moderators. Frequently, an active contributor leaves because of conflicts or frustration about the way the Dutch Wikipedia deals with problematic situation. However, there are also frequently new users that become very active. Josq 20:36, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Agree with Josq. MartinD 12:23, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • I think there are around 200 contributors, but a lot of the only contributes to the articles instead of participating in the community, so not everybody knows these people.Cumulus 12:00, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • I agree with Cumulus' estimate. A lot of the steady contributors do not engage in community-activities. Although I am an admin I do not engage often in these activities since it mostly revolves around verbal fights and does not usually bring any results. We also see a lot of contributors with a conflict of interest, writing articles abolut their totally unknown band or a small company. And we see a lot of school-IP's that usually bring nothing but vandalism. EdBever 10:32, 19 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Are your contributors mostly native speakers?
  • Where do your contributors live (regions/country)?
  • How common is it that your contributors meet in real life?

Other Wikipedias

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  • Do you have special contacts with another Wikipedias (maybe in related languages)?
  • Do you translate a lot from other Wikipedias? Which ones?
    • I think mainly the English version, after that the German wiki. --82.95.107.74 18:09, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • The best is the German Wikipedia. I don't care much about translations. 1) I don't trust the content 100% 2) I don't think that translations done by people not being experts on the subject are particularly good. Pjetter 19:18, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • If you want to work out a topic and don't want to do all the thinking work yourself, I find the articles on the English Wikipedia a good starting point, although they need to be adapted. Josq 20:36, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • We do, mostly from the English, German and French wikipedia's, but also from other wiki's (e.g. Russian). Hanhil 21:34, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • I don't have contacts on other Wikipedias myself. But I do upload on Commons. MartinD 12:23, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • As written above: mostly from the English, German and French wikipedia's. But I also see quite a lot of translations from the Spanish (and Catalan) wikipedia. Sindala 16:22, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Mostly from the English and Russian ones, but for definitions and introductions to a subject I prefer the German wikipedia, which also often has more information about a subject. Occasionally I translate a little content from the Afrikaanse, French, Polish, Norwegian, and other wiki's when the others are failing in information. --Hardscarf 11:18, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • For translations I prefer the german wikipedia. It usually has a high quality. I try to avoid the english wikipedia, becaese a lot of the lemma's are spoilt by writers from the USA, a country with no intellectual basis. Sometimes I also use the french wikipedia.Cumulus 12:15, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • I contribute to fr:wikipédia (fr:Projet:Pays-Bas), translate fr-nl and nl-fr, and take info from english and german wiki as well (en->fr, de->fr); I do maintenance at commons.Havang(nl) 11:51, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Organization and support

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  • Is there a Wikimedia chapter in your country? How does your language relate to it?
    • Yes there is. The chapter is for Holland (i.e. The Netherlands), Dutch is spoken in more countries than in Holland. So there is a relation, but not fully. Pjetter 19:30, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Are there work groups in other organizations about Wikipedia?

Your Wikipedia and the linguistic community

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Content

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  • Did your edition enjoy text donations, for example from older encyclopedias?

Language

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  • Is there a generally accepted norm about your language (spelling, dictionary, pronounciation)?
  • How do you deal with different spellings, dialects etc. (like B.E. lift and A.E. elevator)?
    • Sometimes: make it pure/high Dutch (so from the Netherlands, which some people think is real dutch) and sometimes the Belgian particular words are left that way. It just depends. Pjetter 19:30, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • There are some regional differences in the use of the language, but the language is standardized on both sides of the Dutch-Belgian border. Hanhil 21:34, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • A compromise is sought after for geographical names from other countries: e.g. Beijing vs Peking with some guidelines from the Dutch language advisory commission, nl:Nederlandse Taalunie. --82.95.107.74 09:16, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • We have occasional discussions -which can be quite heated- about things like names of geographical locations. (Should it be Lille or Rijssel, for instance.) As to the Taalunie: yes, they do "lay down" norms about spelling, and change it with infuriation frequency, but unless you're a school pupil or a government official, this norm is as relevant as any individual person cares to let it have. For mee: not much.;) MartinD 12:23, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Usually, the users react very fiercely when language discussions arise. Most of the times we fight eachother to death until a few users are blocked and then moderators take a decision or sometimes the users with the most energy to keep going on with the discussion. Cumulus 12:04, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Kleverlandish

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