Wikitution talk:Community Portal

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Structure of Their Constitution

Hi. I am happy to join the project. For the first milestone, I would like to suggest a structured convention for the naming of pages. Right now, the title 2 of part 2 is called TITLE_II_-_FREEDOMS . Wouldn'it be better to call it PART_II_-_FREEDOMS ? This would make linking of pages of a same title or chapter in different languages easier, especially when other languages will join, that we might not know. JeromeDelacroix

BTW, a member page would be cool too, where all members of the project would be listed

Look here Special:Listusers Juh 09:40, 28 Jun 2005 (CEST)

As far as I understand their crap, it is structured like this:

-- PREAMBLE

-- 1st consecutive sequence:

448 Articles named "Article I-1 ... Article IV-448" (roman numbers refer to enclosing Part) All those Parts,Titles,(sub-)Sections are cluttered into this sequence for building a contents-table. So the beginning of "PART IV" takes the last articles (IV-438 to IV-448).

-- 2nd consecutive sequence: Another sequence of consecutive protocol-numbers (1 to 36) starts within "PART IV" at sublevel "A. PROTOKOLLS ..." with their own titles and articles (don't confuse with the main-articles before).

-- "Part IV", sublevel "B. ANNEXES..." has ANNEX I(list of products, referred by art. III-226) and ANNEX II (list of territories overseas referred by articles in Part IV, Title III).

-- 3rd consecutive sequence: "FINAL ACT" (could be "PART V") has 50 declarations in 2 subsections "A" and "B". They explain some "hows and whys" of the main-articles.

So my recomendation is this:

-- Leave their contents-table as is because this will keep the mental reference-map to their stuff.

-- Tag as anchor: preamble, all articles(1 to 448), protocol-numbers (1 to 36), both annexes, final acts(1 to 50).

-- Make links to all those anchors, wherever they are referred within the whole document.

-- Before a user clicks a link, she should get a hint if the link leads to to an article, protocol, declaration or what.

--Herr Rossi 18:15, 29 Jun 2005 (CEST)

Stupid Question

Can non-Europeans join the project? Zscout370 23:02, 27 Jun 2005 (CEST) (American)

Hey, the constitution of the United States were written by people from Europe. Why not try the same thing vice versa? ;-)

I did not think about this question, but why not? Any good contribution is welcome. The only drawback for you is, that you cannot participate in the final referendum, to accept the constitution. ;-) --Juh 09:38, 28 Jun 2005 (CEST)

I also had the same request from persons from Algeria or Canada, so Why not ? The great thing is if the "European dream" can also be a dream for non european, then let's work all together. Besides, many aspects covered by the constitution (like Human rights, Sustainable development, peace, etc.) go far beyond the borders od the EU.--Emmanuel Delannoy 10:17, 28 Jun 2005 (CEST)

Its alright that I cannot participate in the final voting, I got pals in the EU zone that can vote. I can just promote, see what happens. You guys can check my user page to see what I came up with so far on one section of the First Article/Chapter, in regards about the EU symbols. Zscout370 19:50, 28 Jun 2005 (CEST)

Languages and Milestones

Don't you think it would be better if we (all citizens of the EU) already wrote the first draft together? On the one hand am I kind of sure that the intersection of several different drafts would be pretty small, on the other hand would a cooperation and a discussion between people from all parts of Europe right from the start probably lead to a better understanding of the problems in and of the fears of the citizens of other countries. It also would avoid a formation of blocking factions based on nationality only (Maybe even nationalists would start to comunicate with at least there's foreign peers and thus it might make them realise how much of a European they actually are.). Bjoern 28 Jun 2005

A more general discussion would be good, to coordinate the work. But can you imagine to write a constitution in a language that is not your native language? I am very unsure, if we got enough impact, when we write only in English for example. --80.130.226.5 10:13, 29 Jun 2005 (CEST)

I agree. But maybe we can find a way in which we could have both. I do not have a brilliant idea yet, but what if there were more milestones. Maybe, depending on the chosen system, one each week or month or one every other day. Since a constitution should not be too long anyway, I think it would be possible to translate it within a short time once enough people are participating. All drafts, except for the one that originally was written in your language, could be put together in random order title by tiltle and then be open for you to change it and to make a new single draft out of them. Another more simple possibility would be that after such a milestone every draft gets randomly assigned to a language that it was not originally written in. The people could change that "foreign draft" in there language until the next milestone where it would be translated agein and then handed over to the next language. Bjoern 11:14, 29 Jun 2005 (CEST)

REAAAAADY!? Draft of the "European Constitutional Group"

Webpage of the European Constitutional Group: http://www.fnst.de/webcom/show_page.php/_c-1205/_nr-1/_lkm-1867/i.html

Look at the Drafts, over 100 University-employed people (Professors, Dr, Think Tanks) from all over Europe signed an official statement AGAINST the (failed) European Constitution Contract: http://admin.fnst.org/uploads/1207/LetterDD.pdf (April 2005)

- Draft abstract, A proposal for a European Constitution: http://admin.fnst.org/uploads/1207/abstract.pdf

- Draft, with comments (10 Articles): http://admin.fnst.org/uploads/1207/Draft2003withComments.pdf

Sorry for my crying headline *friendly eyes wide open*

Very interesting how many approaches has been made so far. But this group has a certain appproach, which sets the Council as the highest body: "The European Council composed of the heads of government or of state of the Member States is the highest body in the Union. It will set the direction of the internal and external policies in the Union, define the general political guidelines for the future development of the Union and supervise the Commission. It has the exclusive right to propose legislation at the request of a chamber of parliament and may veto laws passed by the Parliament." I am not sure whether this is, what I want. Juh 08:13, 30 Jun 2005 (CEST)

Should we even have a page on why the EU consitution even failed? I understand that some nations opposed it, but for what reasons, I do not know. Thanks. Zscout370 01:00, 1 Jul 2005 (CEST)

- Link to page with some reasons (german language) http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU-Verfassung_und_Frankreich#Argumente_der_Gegner

- Percentage rating of 3 reasons: http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/20/20390/1.html

"Diese dem nationalistischen Unbehagen und französischen Stolz sicherlich entgegenkommenden Deklarationen, 27% der "Nonisten" begründeten ihre Abfuhr mit Motiven der Souveränität, scheinen aber jenem nicht unerheblichen Teil der Wähler, welche eine Neuverhandlung des Konstitutionsvertrages wünschten (38%) und/oder ein liberales Europa ablehnten (32%), gegenüber taub und blind zu sein."

What about this? Everybody can make changes in his own language, but must translate it into english. Pro: We all can follow the changes in other languages. Contra: not very convenient to edit twice. Juh 10:29, 3 Jul 2005 (CEST)

Naming convention

Hi everybody :-) !

I'd like to post a second message about page naming convention : I think it should really be revised and made more homogeneous. For instance, while edititng SECTION3_CULTURE from the French TOC, I ended up the English version, just because "culture" is the same in English and French...

Naming conventions would also make it easier to shift from one language to the other.

JeromeDelacroix

What about Fr:SECTION3_CULTURE? Juh 09:52, 2 Jul 2005 (CEST)

Perhaps Fr/SECTION3_CULTURE would be better, since, if you enable subpages in the main namespace, this will provide an automatic link back to fr which can be (or can redirect to) the French home page. Angela 02:18, 3 Jul 2005 (CEST)

I agree with Angela on this one. Zscout370 07:35, 3 Jul 2005 (CEST)

Is it possible to bulk rename articles? The concept of subpages seems to be convenient. Please read my comment to the language problem above. If everybody must translate his editing into english, where shall he put this translation? In a subpage of the subpage? Juh 10:25, 3 Jul 2005 (CEST)

You could run a database query to update the page titles to the new ones. You'd need to do something to redirect from the old titles though to avoid breaking any links that are coming here from external sites. It might be easier to just move them manually to avoid that problem since there are only 75 articles. Can't the translations go on the original English page rather than a separate subpage? Angela 05:49, 10 Jul 2005 (CEST)

Length of the constitution

One of the reasons I voted against the current proposal, was that it's waaay to lenghty. In my opinion, we don't need a lot of the current articles, because member states are fit do handle a lot of stuff on their own. What do we do with this problem? I can't just delete whole sections of the text.

Shouldn't we try to build a treaty from scratch? It would better reflect the opinions of the eurominimalists such as myself.--Tijmen 19:30, 3 Jul 2005 (CEST)

Congress Abandons WikiConstitution

Today's Onion (http://www.theonion.com/content/node/40990) has a story titled "Congress Abandons WikiConstitution (http://www.theonion.com/content/node/40990)" that editors here might find amusing. :)

Congress scrapped the open-source, open-edit, online version of the Constitution Monday, only two months after it went live. "The idea seemed to dovetail perfectly with our tradition of democratic participation," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said. "But when so-called 'contributors' began loading it down with profanity, pornography, ASCII art, and mandatory-assault-rifle-ownership amendments, we thought it might be best to cancel the project." Congress intends to restore the Constitution to its pre-Wiki format as soon as an unadulterated copy of the document can be found.