Wikipedia:Self-claims

Wikipedia itself has some identity separate from that we try to impose on it. Self-claims (made deliberately in articles) and the self-image that the project develops socially from the tension between what Wikipedia is not and what it thinks it is. This is further confused by the fact that mention of wiki in articles often assumes that wiki and Wikipedia are synonyms. This project tries to be egoless but has many egos. So, it needs a little help to minimize the tendency of ego and groupthink to change "what it is":


 * What Wikipedia is not establishes what the consensus of editors and authors are trying to prevent Wikipedia from becoming. This is normative and belongs in the Wikipedia name-space, with a redirect from any language space.


 * mention of wiki in articles are guidelines and advice for any mention of the wiki process or tools, in any Wikipedia article - whether there is a someone's old comment at meta or not, there should be something said about this in the Wikipedia: space of EACH LANGUAGE, since each language will have its own things to say about this process. For instance if wiki code is written in English, non-English users may see the wiki process as less open and accessible than if wikis ran on code that non-English speakers could read.  So this is cautionary, versions may go in either Wikipedia: or the main EN: space.


 * mention of Wikipedia in articles are similar guidelines and advice for the narrower issue of writing self-claims into articles, e.g. if an author is saying Wikipedia actually "is" something that ideologically it is not supposed to be, we should explain that in the article fully. This is normative, and so belongs in Wikipedia: space.  A list of such mentions could go in the EN: space, though, without comment, although it probably makes more sense to preface such lists:


 * what it thinks it is is a carefully-introduced list of self-claims that this current Wikipedia language version has so far allowed to remain in its own text.  This is descriptive, not normative, it just points out that there is a contradiction between saying "it isn't this" and letting a claim stand that it is, in an article.  Since authors in each language make their own claims in their own articles, and can't necessarily read (and thus not correct) those in other languages, it would incorrect to say that this list is a "meta comment" about all wikipedias.  It is emergent from the structure of *each* Wikipedia, and it might be possible to list and compare all such claims on meta, but, translation is not neutral, so, that must be a different and less neutral version than the list from each language, which feeds into a common meta list.


 * what Wikipedia thinks it is, if Wikipedia "thinks", is just subjective, an attempt to knit together a self-conscious view of Wikipedia from Wikipedia. This may be inherently a meta project.  If anything redirects to meta, it's this, and there probably should NOT be separate ones on each language, unless we want Wikipedia to develop multiple personality disorder (thinking that it is something quite different in each language).

A collectively-authored What Wikipedia claims to be might eventually deal with "en:claims", "fr:claims" and so on in all languages simultaneously. This "m:claims" list is just a straight list of English claims in English, French claims in French, etc.. This may be a quite important list, but, almost no one could read it.

A collectively-authored What Wikipedia thinks it is might eventually evolve from this single all-language claims list, and What it thinks it is in each and every language. Let's not rush that or confuse the quite separate layers of "mere mention", "valid NPOV claims" per language, "language-specific thinking", and "whole-project all-language thinking". The structure above just lets that evolve as it must, without imposing any ideology not inherent in the claims made by Wikipedia, itself.

An extreme masochist might also try to assemble what wiki claims to be, but this would require assembling all claims about wiki process and tools made in the process using the tools, ANY tools. This can be someone's PhD perhaps. It makes less sense to talk about what wiki thinks it is since the process is not making self-claims, except maybe in documentation attached to code, and any collective intelligence there is there, is probably only about that code, and likely uninteresting.