User:SHB2000/Big wiki-centrism

(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.

A few years back, I once came across a great saying on Just Step Sideways' Commons user page – and I must say that they really are on-point – well, to a certain extent at least. To quote exactly what's mentioned:

There's an extremely tiresome trend here among a small but vocal portion of "power users" to be openly hostile to users they perceive as being "from other projects" in particular the English Wikipedia. You may have had an account for a decade or more, and made a few thousand edits, over a hundred uploads, and participated in various prior discussions without it being a problem, but if you run afoul of these gatekeepers, you will be branded as an outsider and they will try to discount your opinion simply because Commons is not your "home wiki". Don't let them get away with it. The purpose of Commons is to support other projects with easily accesible free images, it is not supposed to be a members-only clubhouse only for those who consider Commons their home wiki. It's a nasty, underhanded way to discount valid opinions and should always be called out. Users from all projects should be welcome and valued here.

And I fully agree – I've seen this kind of behaviour on Commons countless times before. Even as someone with over 50k edits to Commons, I still occasionally get the "well, you're not part of Commons" treatment at times. But I must say that I don't think this is limited to Commons either – I've experienced similar treatment on almost all big wikis, especially the big Wikipedias. Getting the "new user treatment" when you've made thousands of non-automated edits globally and have a solid cross-wiki edit matrix (even with sysop on at least 1 project) has to be one of the worst feelings and is beyond mildly infuriating. I must say enwiki is often one of the worst offenders, but I won't delve too deep into enwiki specifically – see User:A09/Enwiki-centrism for the issues regarding enwiki. I intend to cover the broad underlying issues with such behaviour on bigger projects.

The issue at hand

We well and truly know that Wikimedia is global. Accounts aren't separate like they used to with the introduction of SUL, even though this was around a decade ago. But it is safe to say that most users who call a big wiki as their home wiki also rarely ever leave their home project – maybe the occasional addition of a Wikidata item or uploading photos to Commons (unless you call Commons your home wiki, which is an entirely different story) – but that's about it. A very small percentage of editors get involved with global matters like cross-wiki patrolling, maintenance or certain policy-related discussions that have global effects on Meta-Wiki other than maybe steward elections and the community wishlist survey. So in practice, other than these nitty-gritties, many large projects essentially exist in a bubble where a world outside of their home wiki and Commons is unheard of – and this stems part of the problem – some bigger wikis, if I may say, are too autonomous.

See also

• User:A09/Enwiki-centrism
• Special:PermaLink/27825185#Wikipedians don't trust the interwiki community anymore?
• c:Special:PermaLink/919183873#But you're not really a Commons user, are you? The ugly face of gatekeeping on Commons.