Jun 20, 2009

Wirtland in Wikipedia

The article on Wirtland has now appeared in the English-language Wikipedia, following up to the first Wirtland article published in Bulgarian Wikipedia several months ago. As an internet-based community, Wirtland attaches high importance to being properly represented in the internet encyclopedia.

The Wiki editors are generally known to be rather strict towards the micronations, so soon after publication they inserted a "considered for deletion" notice. The notice said everyone is welcome to share thoughts on the matter of deletion at special page. The editors also inserted a notice accusing "The Times of Wirtland" in causing "meatpuppeting" ("a Wikipedia term meaning the recruitment of (typically, new) editors to join a discussion on behalf of or as proxy for another editor, usually with the aim of swaying consensus in that discussion"). We considered such accusation groundless and regrettable, and expressed hope that Wikipedia's traditional objectiveness and goodwill would prevail over any biased individual attitudes. The final decision was to preserve Wirtland article. However, one of editors changed our article's title (and hyperlink) from Wirtland to Wirtland (micronation), and created a new article (about a historic building in rural USA) under the title "Wirtland", previously used by our entry. Nonetheless, Wirtland is grateful to Wikipedia for inclusion.

Everyone is welcome to improve and edit the Wirtland article. Latest addition: article is banned again. And the ground is... use of copyrighted text from www.wirtland.com! While article itself is "blanked" (unavailable), the article's discussion page hosts some heated disputes. Latest latest addition: the article is approved again, and its original link restored. Now it's again at its original place: Wirtland.

Article on Wirtland is now also available in Spanish and Russian Wikipedia, after Bulgarian and English versions. Proposals about translation to other languages will be most welcome.