HoraWiki:About

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ראו דף זה בעברית

The official goal

HoraWiki is intended to be a place where anyone can record interesting information about recreational Israeli dance (aka "Israeli folkdance"), information that might otherwise be lost and that isn't easily available elsewhere.

What exactly this means will be defined to a large extent by the contributors. On this page we'll take a stab at it.

This page is locked, but please record your opinions on the discussion page.

Content

It's not so easy to describe exactly what information is appropriate for HoraWiki. Here are some examples of what we're certainly looking for:

  • Fine points of dance steps, corrections to common mistakes in the way dances are done, explanation of variants as danced in the wild.
  • Little-known information or interesting anecdotes about dances, dancers, choreographers, sessions, camps.
  • History of individual dances, camps, or festivals.
  • Interesting connections between dances or groups of dances.
  • Analyses of dance themes, lyrics, or music.


On the other hand, the following material is currently *not* considered appropriate:

  • Individual dance facts: choreographer, lyrics, composer, translation, video, date, and generally anything already available at IsraeliDances.com. No point in duplicating their outstanding efforts. However, as a way of communicating with the Amazing Aussies, we do have a page where we can submit corrections or additions to them.
  • Opinions, argumentation, discussion. This is not a newsgroup or forum. However, each page has an associated "discussion page" to be used for comments about the page itself, for example whether it needs more references or has correct style.
  • Listings of session dates and times, or announcements of camps or special events. Again, this is all available elsewhere.
  • Personal attacks, privacy violations, false statements, fraud, anything in violation of the terms of use.
  • Copyrighted material posted without permission. See below.


Finally, here are some examples that might be in a grey area:

  • Choreographer biographies (or, sadly, obituaries). Although many such biographies are available, e.g. at Phantom Ranch, there seems to be no up-to-date and systematic collection for Israeli.
  • Articles on the general history of Israeli dance. This information is available elsewhere, but maybe this site would do a more thorough job.
  • Lists of resources for dancers not easily available elsewhere. For example, despite what we said above, a page collecting links to online history resources or "where to dance" sessions might be useful.
  • Dance humor. A page of Israeli dance jokes doesn't seem to be within the scope of an encyclopedia. On the other hand, where else can they be collected? On the other other hand, are there actually any funny ones?

Style

HoraWiki will probably take itself less seriously than does Wikipedia. However, one of the basic ideas is the same: we are trying to be more an encyclopedia than anything else. This means that a primary criterion for material is factual truth. We're not so much interested in opinions, except where those opinions are themselves facts worth recording. (An example might be Moshiko's opinion of his finest dances).

We adopt many of the other techniques that have worked for Wikipedia: articles should be written in encyclopedic tone, from a neutral point of view, and assertions should be verifiable and referenced to the extent possible.

Vetting and policing

Given that anyone can edit almost any page in the wiki, how are we going to avoid a descent into chaos? The answer is that we might not!

HoraWiki relies on the community as a whole to enforce its standards by self-policing. Specifically, we do not have specially-empowered "editors" or "vettors" or "supervisors" who moderate submissions, check facts, or bring articles up to our standards. Everyone is on an equal footing. The hope is that we will collectively factcheck and edit the wiki's content, producing something that is at once useful, reliable, and entertaining.

Even with the best intentions, there will probably be disputes of content and style, possibly even full-fledged edit wars. With mutual good will we should be able to resolve any such questions. It's not like we're writing about global warming, abortion, or the definition of "natural born citizen".

Of course there are some rules about conduct that can't be tolerated, and in extreme cases accounts can be turned off. See our terms of use for some severe language.

Copyrights and licensing

When you contribute material to HoraWiki you grant a license to others to use or modify the material, subject to certain restrictions that are explained in detail here. Let's just emphasize one thing: Please do not put anything onto the wiki that's copyrighted by someone other than yourself, unless you first get that person's permission. In particular, you must not copy material from any Yahoo group without permission from the original author.