from_name: Till Westermayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikispecies

body:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .

Hi Magnus,

there seem to be two obvious possible solutions: the one you described,
and the one I described (below). While thinking about my proposal, I
thought along the lines of your proposal (not in that general way,
rather in the form of: let there be a part commented out in the wiki
source, that is only interpreted in wikispecies). Your optional-tag is a
much more general and elegant solution to that problem. But I'm still
not sure if it is the best solution (even if it is relative easy to
hack). This is mainly because I think what project like WikiSpecies, or
maybe WikiStamps, WikiRamBotUSTowns, WikiElections etc. need in
additionto the free form text editable in Wikipedia is something like a
wiki-definable db (so Tim's general WikiDB approach seems to go more in
that direction). The other thing all these possible projects have in
common that they should continue to be anchored in Wikipedia, but they
also should have the db information. One could do that with the solution
I proposed, i.e. by using separate but somehow linked dbs and
interfaces, or one could invent a special markup for custom variable
fields in the wiki text (i.e. something like the Semantic Web people are
doing, if I understand their approach correctly). I'm not sure if using
markup for db fields to simulate a db in a db is such a good idea, but
it's easy editable, that much is sure.

A typical entry on, say, a totally bogus tiger, could maybe look like
this in a markup-db-solution:

  Tigers are [[mammal]]s living in the [[Sibiria|Sibirian]] [[Tundra]].

  ...

  == Species data ==

  [[kingdom]]: [[animal]]s <<TOL:kingdom=animalia>>
  [[family or whatever that is]]: [[mammal]] <<TOL:family=mammalia>>
  [[species]]: big cats (''felibigus'') <<TOL:species=felibigus>>

  ...

  == Trivia ==

  Tigers are a big issue in Winnie-the-Pooh, especially one tiger called
  Tigger. <<LIT:occurence=Tiger,book=Winnie-the-Pooh,name=Tigger>>

This would give the following pseudo db entries:

  in the Tree of life database (short: TOL)

    in the kingdom table the relation key:Tiger <-> kingdom:animalia
    in the family table the relation key:Tiger <-> family:mammalia
    in the species table the relation key:Tiger <-> species:felibigus

  in the Literatur database (short: LIT)

    in the occurence table the relation
      key:generated <-> occurence:Tiger,book:Winnie-the-Pooh,
                        name:Tigger

    ((key generated because the article name appears on the right side
      of the pseudo db entry in the wikipedia article -> brings to our
      attention the problem of n:m relations))

I don't know if it is possible to automatically parse changes in such
entries to maintan databases. One (rather brute force way) would be to
delete everything in such a database which has the article name key of
"Tiger" if the article is changed, then parse the article for pseudo-db
entries marked with <<...>> and insert the information anew.

There could be a / a lot of specialized interfaces for queries on this
database (which is something separate from the wiki article text db),
where on could say something like (in very pseudo SQL):

  SELECT
    from the TOL database
    from the kingdom table
    all entries where kingdom = animalia

  gives back formatted information on
    Tiger (see Wikipedia article, see all TOL information, see all
    information)
    Cat
    Shark
    Homo sapiens
    ...

Just some ideas, some thinking aloud.

----

>Alternate solution, which would require much less special cases:
>* introduce "<optional type=wikispecies>lots'o'data</optional>"
>tag, which will
>** show the data for everyone who has marked himself as a member
>of wikispecies project in user settings
>** show a link "More detail information" for everyone else; that
>link will then display the full thing
>* introduce "<categorytree>" tag, which will show a category tree
>for the current article
>** attribute "super=1" to show the category below, "super=all" to
>show everything down to the root
>** attribute "sub=1" to show the next subcategory, "sub=all" to
>show them all

>This is
>* relatively easy to hack (hide "optional" section unless
>this-and-that condition)
>* usable for many sub-projects like histroy etc.
>* allows everyone to get all the data without "average" users
>being squashed by it
>* fully transparent for searching (search will find keywords in
>the "optional" secation as well)

>If required, we can parse-out the "optional" part for editing. But
>that's optional ;-)

>Magnus

>Daniel Mayer wrote:

>>This sounds interesting...
>>
>>--- Till Westermayer <till at tillwe.de> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>How to implement this technically speaking, I don't know, but
>>>how about this:
>>>
>>>- The Wikispecies interface only shows article tagged with
>>>Category:Wikispecies (or whatever is the best category).
>>>
>>>- This project uses a specific parser, allowing for the
>>>implementation of tree navigation and a more "scientifically"
>>>looking output of data (that can be found in the taxabox).
>>>
>>>- Maybe other data is in the articles used as source for
>>>Wikispecies and hidden somehow (via a special comment mode or
>>>some other specialized tag in the article, or even as additional
>>>stored data in a separate db, accessed via the article name =
>>>scientific species name as key)
>>>- "Edit this entry" in the Wikispecies interface would bring up
>>>a window consisting of:
>>>
>>>        - the wikipedia edit window showing the source text
>>>        - additional data input fields
>>>
>>>- A user in the wikipedia proper will only see the wikipedia
>>>article, but not the additional data. The only thing other for
>>>them is the "Category:Wikispecies" tag (which would explain,
>>>when opened as article, what Wikispecies project is and how to
>>>access it in the "scientific" interface).
>>>
>>> __ .
>>> / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till
>>> we *)
>>>. .
>>>  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq
>>>  320393072 . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152
>>>  . 0160 96619179 . . . . .
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>>
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 __ .
 / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
. .
  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
  . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
  . . . . .


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia is a collection of many different
	encyclopedias with a non-specific audience

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Consequently, let me repeat I think Wikipedia SHOULD be a general
> encyclopedia, and articles thought for rather general public, ie, avoid
> going in length into jargon and very detailed information.

Of course. But that is not what I meant by saying that Wikipedia is not a
general encyclopedia. I have an encyclopedia about cats, for example, that
anybody with a junior high school education could grasp (it includes articles
on reproduction, anatomy, behavior, care, every breed, etc). It is a
specialized encyclopedia that is accessible to a general audience. See my
distinction?

> Which is why
> I am not entirely happy with the idea of filling up the article on the
> tiger with all the information we are talking about. An article on tiger
> should be kept relativement simple itself.

Who is going to do that? If the biology-related info starts to overwhelm an
article then that text should be summarized and a [[Biology of tigers]] article
created to host the more detailed information. No need for a separate project
to do that! :)

> I perfectly agree for detailed semi-professional articles to stay in
> Wikipedia. I wrote a couple of them. However, they should be rather in
> separate articles, the main one staying readable for most readers. The
> more detailed ones being seen as "to go further".

Yes! Exactly my point (see above).

> If you fill up the tiger article with very detailed information, you
> will flood the average reader. If the detailed information is in another
> article, more specialised, only the specialist will go and read it, and
> the casual reader will not get scared. The detailed article could be on
> Wikipedia or on another project, it does not matter very much, as long
> as the two projects are tightly linked. But all info in one article is
> just a bad idea. Imho.

Other than the 'other project' part, I agree with you 100%. I also apologize
for being curt - the prospect of a fork caused a great deal of worry in me and
I over-reacted by not watching the tone of my responses.

-- mav

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list: foundation-l

from_name: James R. Johnson

subject: [Foundation-l] Anglo-Saxon Wiktionary

body:
Hello,
	I'd like to propose an Anglo-Saxon wiktionary project.  It already
has a language code, ang, and several mailing lists of users, and many
websites devoted to the language, dictionaries (but not wiktionaries, and
not very search-friendly), and texts written in the language.  I think a
wiktionary in Anglo-Saxon would be a great resource to have.

James


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Anglo-Saxon Wiktionary


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Taxoboxes.

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Gerard Meijssen <gja.meijssen at chello.nl> wrote:
>
>
>>When it is an animal it should be [[Animalia]] and not [[Animal]]ia .
>>Vernacular names are also difficult to use. The point being we have to
>>discuss this and we have to be willing to cooperate. I would really
>>welcome one Taxobox that is acceptable and usable by all wikipedia.
>>
>>
>
>These are naming convention issues and are thus specific to each Wikipedia. On
>the English Wikipedia we use, well, English to name articles. Redirects should
>exist so that such a standardized taxobox would work on any language wiki.
>
>-- mav
>
>
>
>_______________________________
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>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>
mav,
This list is not about en:wikipedia, it is about cooperation between the
wikipedia's. Your rants and raves are about the en:ToL; how great it is.
Well, it is and it is provincial because the data in en:ToL is of
limited use.

Scenario:
WikiSpecies has a general usable and available Taxobox. There is a
parameter to the Taxobox function that is provided on call time by the
local wikipedia. The parameter holds the local vernacular name, it is
optional. Your choise. See my point? Nothing lost to en:ToL no problems
with naming conventions, big gains to all wikipedias.

Road ahead:
We have to discuss taxoboxes, how can we make taxoboxes more usable. If
you refuse to discuss it, it is not very wiki, not according to the
cooperative spirit of this wikiworld. So naming conventions need to be
discussed. Do you have a clue about why the French or German Taxoboxes
are as they are, what revisions they use of nomenclature? Might there be
something in there for en: too? Do you know ??

As you dismiss all arguments without seeing further than just en: you
invalidate all your arguments. To me it is all more of the same.
Unhelpfull, hiding what you stand for .. What do you stand for ? How is
it helpfull to others, to me ?

Thanks,
  GerardM


subject: Out of town (was RE: [Wikipedia-l] Summary & questions)

body:
Since I've been so involved in this list lately I should say this:

I'm going to be out of town until early (UTC) Monday.

My non-response to any post should not be interpreted as anything other than
the fact that I haven't read it yet.

-- mav

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list: wikien-l

from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Dartmouth follies

body:
"Having said the idea that "anybody is allowed to put whatever trash they
want to" in, is completely false and you know it.".  Exactly.  Because of those of us who feel the need to use the VfD page and its functionality, not because of those who feel that it's perfectly all right to leave garbage lying around for whenever somebody might, sometime, in the unknown future, decide that something needs to be done about it.

So, what happens when you search for "George Washington" and "George Washington's underwear" shows up?

RickK

Pete/Pcb21 <pete_pcb21_wpmail at pcbartlett.com> wrote:
Rick wrote:
> I've never understood the mentality that it's okay to keep trash
> articles around for some unknown period of time. Months, now?! Do
> you not understand what it says about Wikipedia when Google and
> Yahoo! mirror all of the crap and that's the face that Wikipedia
> presents to the world? How are we supposed to maintain even the idea
> that we're creating a real, useable encyclopedia if anybody is
> allowed to put whatever trash they want to put into it and nobody
> seems to be the least motivated to clean it up?

How does having articles of borderline interest make it unusable?
If I type "George Washington" into Google and end up at the excellent
Wikipedia article of the same name, Wikipedia has proved very usuable.
It is completely irrelevant whether a borderline article such as "George
from Rainbow" is also available *for those who search for it*

Having said the idea that "anybody is allowed to put whatever trash they
want to" in, is completely false and you know it.

Pete/Pcb21

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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Thomas Gries

subject: [Wikitech-l] REQUEST: variables {{PAGEEDITOR}} and more

body:
I need more variables than the current ones (see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Variable )
especially needed are:

{{{PAGEEDITOR}}}
{{{PAGEEDITTIMESTAMPUTC}}}
{{{PAGEEDITOREMAILADDR}}}
{{{PAGEEDITTIMELOCALTIMEOFEDITOR}}}

to be used in templates.

Imagine a Personal View Disclaimer template called Template:PVD . It can
be referenced on any page as {{PVD}} .

But this template shall end up with the current NAME OF THE PAGE EDITOR
who used this template on a page Z !

''[[PersonalViewDisclaimer|Personal View Disclaimer]]:''
The content of this page represents my personal opinions. It does not
represent the view of my employer, or any one else, for that matter, in
any way. My thoughts and opinions may change over time. Old entries do
not necessarily reflect my current thinking. {{{PAGEEDITOR}}}

I hope, that you understand, what I mean. I could not find a solution to
solve my problem. Reading the source of 1.3.1 and
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Variable I guess, the patch is not
that difficult, and the above mentioned variables can easily be
retrieved from the database tables and are an amelioration of MediaWiki.

Tom


from_name: Marco Krohn

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Summary & questions    was: Re: Taxoboxes.

body:
> > Unhelpfull, hiding what you stand for .. What do you stand for ? How is
> > it helpfull to others, to me ?
> [...]
> Since you have not provided a single example where ToL and Wikispecies will
> not overlap, I'd say that you are being very unhelpful.

Please don't bring it to a personal level who is more "unhelpful". I am sure
both sides (pro-/contra Wikipspecies) want the "best", in the sense that we
all want to create as much as possible high quality and free content in the
long run.

Since the discussion is tending to blur a bit, I'll repeat some of the
questions which I consider fundamental for finding a good solution for
achieving our overall goal.

1. "What is resp. will be the difference between Wikispecies and Wikipedia?"

this immediately leads to two other important questions, namely we have to
define what the scope of Wikipedia resp. Wikispecies is.

1.1 "What is the scope of Wikipedia?"

On [1] - the following is said about the scope of Wikipedia:

"Wikipedia's goals are ambitious: it aims
* to be an encyclopedia, in the normal sense of a collection of all human
knowledge
[...]
Since there is little in the way of space limitation on Wikipedia, it also
aims to subsume the functions of many specialist encyclopedias. Unlike a
paper encyclopedia, Wikipedia can encompass articles for both elementary and
advanced treatments of the same subject."

Jimbo called Wikipedia several times a "general interest encyclopedia".

1.1.b "What is the scope of Wikipedia w.r.t. species?"

The "Tree of Life" project" says the following:

"This WikiProject aims primarily to represent the taxonomy and relationships
of living organisms, as well as their extinct relatives, in a tree structure.
Since there are millions of species, not all will be included, but we aim to
handle as many as information, time, and interest permit."

In accordance with that Pete wrote: "The Tree of Life project's aim has always
been to write about all species. I think that ambitious aim has been part of
the reason for its success in becoming the largest wikiproject (tens of
thousands of articles), with the most contributors."

and Jimmy replied to that: "I fully support this, as I think it is an
absolutely excellent thing to be doing."

and further down Jimbo wrote:

"Why would we come up with guidelines to prohibit some species from wikipedia?
I do not support any such thing."

Partial answer to 1.1.b: since there seems to be perfect agreement between
Jimmy and the ToL members that all species can be part of the Wikipedia
project. As question remains

1.1.c "Is there a limit to what depth a species is allowed to be discussed
within Wikipedia?"

There is no definite answer to that I am aware of, especially not from Jimbo.

Jimbo noted that we are a "general interest encyclopedia", he also wrote that
he does not oppose the inclusion of any species and nevertheless states that
wikipedia and wikispecies do not overlap. Thus I only can conclude, that
Jimmy is in favour of limiting the amount of knowledge which is "allowed"
within an article.

An anwer from Jimmy about this would be interesting. In particular we in some
areas already have by far surpassed the borders of what _I_ consider a
"general interest encyclopedia", for instance the article about Mitchell's
embedding theorem is hardly useful for anyone who hasn't studied several
years of mathematics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell's_embedding_theorem
(there are many more of this type: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoneda_lemma )

1.2 "What is the scope of Wikispecies?"

Benedikt Mandl wrote the following: "What we should define as a target:
Wikispecies should become the most extensive directory of its kind and not
specialise exclusivly on a particular group of species (as fishbase does, for
example) nor users (NOT for scientists only, for example)."

back to question 1: I think we all agreed that there is no difference between
ToL and Wikispecies with respect to the number of species. Both projects
would accept _any_ species in their encyclopedia.

I think also most of us agree that there is a huge overlap of the projects.
Jimmy does not see this overlap, he explicitly wrote that "wikispecies is not
overlapping with the encyclopedia in any significant way".

If we do not limit the "depth" of the article, that means if we do the same in
ToL which was done in the above mathematics articles, then there is a huge
overlap between the two project. By that I don't say that this necessarily is
a bad thing, and this also does not mean that wikispecies and wikipedia are
identical. Another difference that was pointed out by Jimmy was the "trivia
information" which exists in Wikipedia articles, but surely will not part of
any wikispecies article.

If we strongly limit the Wikipedia "depth" for ToL articles, we still will at
some point have >100.000 articles, where - except trivia information - the
Wikipedia articles will be more or the less subset of the information which
is contained in wikispecies.

o.k. I'm afraid I'm out of time, but I hope this partial summary is
nevertheless helpful. It would be interesting if Jimmy could comment on
question 1.1.c

best regards,
  Marco

2. "What are the possible advantages of Wikispecies?" /
   "Why can Wikispecies not be identical to ToL project"

3. "What are possible disadvantages of a seperate Wikispecies project?"

4. "What options do we have?"

Mainly we have three options:
* support a fork / sister project within the Wikipedia family
* do not support  a fork / sister project within the Wikipedia family
* modify the mediawiki software in such a way that wikispecies seems to be an
project on its own. This also means that there only is one "article", but
that Wikipedia users and Wikispecies users see filtered versions of that
article.

[1]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/NEH_Reference_materials_grant_application/Narrative#Wikipedia
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Tree_of_Life


subject: [Wikipedia-l] What is the purpose of this mailing list ??

body:
--- Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Yes, I would rather draw scientists to a wikipedia sister project within
> the wikimedia realm than see them repelled by "cat religion" stuff and
> don't work on species in a free wiki project at all.
>
> For the record, yes, there are several scientists who work on wikipedia
> and are not scared away (myself included). But, at the moment, they are
> the minority of the scientific community. If we can attract the
> "remaining" majority to a wikispecies project, they might, in time,
> start working on wikipedia as well. Most of them will *not* directly
> jump on the wikipedia bandwagon.

Creating good content will attract more, not starting over. We have already
established that this would be a fork and nothing in this proposed project
could not be put into Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Commons.

-- mav

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Article - Librarian: Don't use Wikipedia as source

body:
"EBay.com - Save Money and Buy Wikipedia On Ebay!"

LOL

--- Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:

> It seems the blogosphere has taken it up and identified it for what it is:
> http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?rank=&url=wikipedia
>
> The only real offense is the way the writer said "If you know of other
> supposedly authoritative Web sites that are untrustworthy, send a note
> to technology at syracuse.com and let me know about them."
>
> Makes Wikipedia sound like a shady used car dealership exposed by the
> local evening news. :)
>
> -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
>
> On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 11:46:32 +0200, Peter Gervai <grin at tolna.net> wrote:
> > On Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 10:06:56AM +0800, Andrew Lih wrote:
> >
> > > I hesitate to even post this, because it's virtual flame-bait. :) But
> > > with all the accolades Wikipedia receives in the press, you have to
> > > take the knocks too.
> >
> > Why, this article is pretty fair. It states only the truth:
> > * Wikipedia is not reviewed by the academics
> > * Wikipedia does not guarantee validity or accuracy
> > * The author of the article is dumb enough not to notice the disclaimers,
> > the first paragraph of the main page, and to completely missing the point
> > about [[what Wikipedia is]].
> >
> > I see no bait. :-)
> >
> > Peter
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Andrew Lih
> andrew.lih at gmail.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rebranding VfD

body:
dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote:

> E.g. (GROSSLY caricaturing an actual VfD debate
> for purposes of illustration) instead of saying "I've never heard of Lehman
> Brothers, what do you know about them?" a nominator is more likely to say
> something like "Vanity, some non-notable insurance company, delete spam."
> Typically there will be a more comments like that until someone with _some_
> topic familiarity runs across the VfD entry. THEN someone chimes in "The firm
> is really quite large, unless I'm very much mistaken." Then there are follow-
> ups "It's a Fortune 500 company," "Definite keep," "Keep article on major
> financial force of the twentieth century," "Need more articles like this,"
> etc.

thanks for this summary ;-) the same happens on de: in the same style.
We even have a page for this kind of stuff:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ELKE
(is an acronym for Extreme Loeschkandidating ("Vfding") Excess Points)
where people can assign scores.

> Everybody understands the concept of submitting an article for review and
> possibly having it be rejected.  If newcomers perceive Wikiprocess as a
> variation of that model, fewer of them will be unnecessarily shocked or
> offended by the VfD process.

I think it's a rather good idea. Recently on de: we also thought about
creating a page where newbies can submit their articles for a general
review (help with formatting, encyclopedic style etc.) since some new
people asked for something like this.

greetings,
elian


from_name: Steven Melenchuk

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Blankfaze and proposed administrator policy

body:
[[en:User:Blankfaze]] is writing up a policy proposal which would
formalise actions to be taken against an abusive sysop at
[[Wikipedia:Administrators/Administrator_Accountability_Policy]]. Please
discuss this proposal on the talk page thereof between now and 00:00
August 29 2004 UTC (when voting on the policy is scheduled to begin).

~Grunt (Steven Melenchuk)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] User:Blankfaze and proposed administrator policy


from_name: Ivan Krstic

subject: [Wikitech-l] new sister project (off of home page) redux

body:
Edward Peschko wrote:
> That being said - I still think there is a big hole that could be
> filled in the wikimedia foundation, whilst providing good public service.
> And that is in the area of free-form research.

I would second Tim's suggestion to look at wiki hosting providers. If
the free ones don't cut it, one of the MediaWiki developers offers a
paid, supported service at http://www.wikidev.net. If you would like to
easily include links to wikipedia articles inside your wiki, your
installation of MediaWiki could be trivially extended to do so.

Cheers,
Ivan.


from_name: Sj

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia

body:
Much of what apogr wrote is beyond me, but I was moved by this distillation of
key problems:
> The problems, as I see them, include
> a) uneven use of "scale"
> b) no check for completeness on a particular level

I find these to be pervasive problems, both for WP as a whole (in
creating projects,
defining category-sets, identifying key subject areas), for each of
its subprojects
(in creating article-lists, identifying goals of equal importance,
covering an entire
topic), and for each individual article (in balancing detail across
aspects of an
article, maintaining consistent perspective, and maintaining a connection with
other articles at higher and lower levels of detail).

+sj+

> b) it is a semi-finished colouring book with clolours of uneven intensity
> c) it is a number of  diligent tube-sighted people caught in the process of
> lace-making

ps - these gems should surely go on the list of [[what wikipedia is]]...

 _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]


body:
Hello Ed,

This sounds like a fine idea.

> Hence, I'm trying to create a 'comprehensive energy picture' that is as
> free as agendas as possible. The idea is to get the 'big ideas and numbers'
> and put them in a format that makes it easy for the average educated
> reader to understand.

This could be said of the a great many Wikipedia articles and subprojects.

As for the "two parts" of your proposed project:

> The project would consist of two parts:
>
>     1) an open, public wiki that is in the form of hierarchical discussion pages
>        which sort out basic facts and principles.

I think the first part would make an excellent wikiproject
(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject ),
which you could promote on IRC, via the mailing lists as you are doing, or on
the individual user pages of contributors who are working on related subjects.

>     2) paper publication(s) based on the first wiki, also in wiki form (I'm in the
>        process of writing a wiki based on the media wiki schema which provides
>        services like pagination, typesetting and index support).

The second part seems like it should be its own separate affair, as your other
comments suggest this would veer towards original research/analysis, and as it
requires new software innovations for its realization..

+sj+


subject: [WikiEN-l] Dartmouth class project now on VFD

body:
This sounds great.  I didn't realize we had such a lovely page devoted
to the subject.
I was slightly bold and added a small sidebar-line to the Main Page.
Perhaps we
could coordinate a similar outreach effort on the other projects?  and
find out how
de, ja, and fr currently deal with interested teachers.

+sj+

> Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
> PS:
> ==Can WE learn from this?==
> Maybe we should think about how we can more prominently feature
> [[Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects]] -- Suggestion: Main Page
> link "Educators - click here".
> And then we should figure out what info we can write into
> [[Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects]] to avoid such fiascos in
> the future?
> Sounds good?

--


from_name: Anthere

body:
Daniel Mayer a ?crit:
> --- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>Just for the record, I think Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia. ant
>
>
> Just for the record, you are mistaken. Have you seen all the niche topics we
> cover in great detail?
>
> -- mav

It is *not* because they exist that I approve them. My thoughts still
have the right to be mine, and I do not believe you have the right to
tell me that my thoughts are mistakes. A personal opinion is never a
mistake, what would be a mistake here would be to force this opinion on
others.

My feeling is that Wikipedia *should* be a general encyclopedia, but I
am certainly not gonna remove great articles which go into details. Of
course not.

Allow me to not necessarily agree by default with what is currently done.

We obviously do not have the same feeling toward what Wikipedia should
be exactly. On some points, we have consensus, such as Wikipedia is not
a forum of discussion.
On others, it is not so obvious. The claim en.wikipedia is not a
dictionnary is not a claim I personnally recognise as valid, because the
french tradition is to mix dictionnaries and encyclopedia much more than
english-speaking people do. As far as I am concerned, all encyclopedic
articles should contain dictionnary information.

However, some people do not think so and I recognise they are benefits
to the existence of wiktionnaries as well, mostly for translation I
think. Still, the two projects, encyclopedia and wiktionnaries are
strongly overlapping sometimes, and *two* projects exist nonetheless.
And I saw very few people objecting to the wiktionary existence, nor to
the overlap.

Consequently, let me repeat I think Wikipedia SHOULD be a general
encyclopedia, and articles thought for rather general public, ie, avoid
going in length into jargon and very detailed information. Which is why
I am not entirely happy with the idea of filling up the article on the
tiger with all the information we are talking about. An article on tiger
should be kept relativement simple itself.

I perfectly agree for detailed semi-professional articles to stay in
Wikipedia. I wrote a couple of them. However, they should be rather in
separate articles, the main one staying readable for most readers. The
more detailed ones being seen as "to go further".

If you fill up the tiger article with very detailed information, you
will flood the average reader. If the detailed information is in another
article, more specialised, only the specialist will go and read it, and
the casual reader will not get scared. The detailed article could be on
Wikipedia or on another project, it does not matter very much, as long
as the two projects are tightly linked. But all info in one article is
just a bad idea. Imho.

Anthere


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Summary & questions    was: Re: Taxoboxes.

body:
Daniel Mayer a ?crit:
> --- Marco Krohn <marco.krohn at web.de> wrote:
>
>>Please don't bring it to a personal level who is more "unhelpful". I am sure
>>both sides (pro-/contra Wikipspecies) want the "best", in the sense that we
>>all want to create as much as possible high quality and free content in the
>>long run.
>
>
> Point taken. I apologize to everybody I've been rude to. This is not an excuse
> but I felt (and still feel) that the proposed version of Wikispecies would be a
> fork that would greatly harm our coverage of species info in Wikipedia.

Well, I think some people goal here is to work toward collecting, then
organising in the most useful way, then redistributing free information
to those interested... more than protecting Wikipedia against winds and
storms.

Anthere


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Article - Librarian: Don't use Wikipedia as source

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:

> This from the Syracuse Post-Standard and comes up with a very weak and
> uninformed criticism of Wikipedia. I'm sure one of Jimbo's wonderful
> standard letters will set this writer straight.

Agreed. However there are some positive things to take from the article
(see below).

 > [Article]
> It's not the online version of an established, well-researched
> traditional encyclopedia. Instead, Wikipedia is a do-it-yourself
> encyclopedia, without any credentials.

That the librarian is concerned that WP appears to be an "established,
well-researched traditional encyclopedia" when it is merely [gasp!] a
wiki, shows how well Wikipedia must look and read.

This is a testament to the ongoing increasing quality of the text, and
the great new professional look that 1.3 provided.

Re disclaimers: from Britannica's disclaimer page:
(http://account.britannica.com/usage.html, section 5)

NEITHER BRITANNICA, ITS AFFILIATES, NOR ANY OF THEIR RESPECTIVE
EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, THIRD-PARTY CONTENT PROVIDERS OR LICENSORS MAKES ANY
WARRANTY WHATSOEVER [...] AS TO THE RESULTS THAT MAY BE OBTAINED FROM
USE OF THE SERVICE OR AS TO THE ACCURACY, RELIABILITY, AVAILABILITY,
SUITABILITY, QUALITY, OR OPERATION OF ANY INFORMATION, SOFTWARE, OR
SERVICE PROVIDED ON OR ACCESSIBLE FROM THE SERVICE.

And of course virtually identical wording at:

Columbia : http://www.bartleby.com/sv/terms.html , section 3
Encarta  : http://privacy.msn.com/tou/ , section 9
Encyclopedia.com : http://www.encyclopedia.com/terms.asp, section 5


from_name: apogr

body:
May I join in and say what wikipedia "looks to me" after about a year of
trying to "synchronize" my thoughts with the views of the existing
authors/editors/reviewers.
In case of a debate on labels, headings and titles, in fact, all names (or
in other words, categories), such as this one on hand is, the resolution of
conflict comes from two steps:
a) move one level up, and use a term that covers the items below (this case
reference book - which can only be used figurativey here)
b) change over to defining the phenomenon first, that may be done again
differently, e.g.
bb) metaphoricaly
cc) using a simile
dd) changing scale, etc.

In case of wikipedia, after tracking a number of branches, you will have
pardoned me, it is
a) a table of contents on "nothing", except that some lines in the TOC are
further pointers to URLS, etc. out in deep space
b) it is a semi-finished colouring book with clolours of uneven intensity
c) it is a number of  diligent tube-sighted people caught in the process of
lace-making, etc. with a constantly moving target in mind.

The problems, as I see them, include
a) uneven use of "scale"
b) no check for completeness on a particular level
c) the prosecution of thoughts and ideas embeded in free-flowing texts by
wikifying such passages.

an encyclopedia should give you the impression of the "whole", which is a
circle, a circular (loop) arrangement of the constituents as opposed to
branches the current dwelling on a hierarchy (TOC view). The idea of
recursion applied on HL level cannot be bypassed, neither can the circular
(roll round in one level)arrangement of data be unwisely spared.
If you do not believe me, look at your cellular phone.

"rots of rock",

apogr

----- Original Message -----
From: "Anthere" <anthere9 at yahoo.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2004 7:29 AM
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia

>
>
> Daniel Mayer a ?crit:
> > --- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >>Just for the record, I think Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia. ant
> >
> >
> > Just for the record, you are mistaken. Have you seen all the niche
topics we
> > cover in great detail?
> >
> > -- mav
>
> It is *not* because they exist that I approve them. My thoughts still
> have the right to be mine, and I do not believe you have the right to
> tell me that my thoughts are mistakes. A personal opinion is never a
> mistake, what would be a mistake here would be to force this opinion on
> others.
>
> My feeling is that Wikipedia *should* be a general encyclopedia, but I
> am certainly not gonna remove great articles which go into details. Of
> course not.
>
> Allow me to not necessarily agree by default with what is currently done.
>
> We obviously do not have the same feeling toward what Wikipedia should
> be exactly. On some points, we have consensus, such as Wikipedia is not
> a forum of discussion.
> On others, it is not so obvious. The claim en.wikipedia is not a
> dictionnary is not a claim I personnally recognise as valid, because the
> french tradition is to mix dictionnaries and encyclopedia much more than
> english-speaking people do. As far as I am concerned, all encyclopedic
> articles should contain dictionnary information.
>
> However, some people do not think so and I recognise they are benefits
> to the existence of wiktionnaries as well, mostly for translation I
> think. Still, the two projects, encyclopedia and wiktionnaries are
> strongly overlapping sometimes, and *two* projects exist nonetheless.
> And I saw very few people objecting to the wiktionary existence, nor to
> the overlap.
>
> Consequently, let me repeat I think Wikipedia SHOULD be a general
> encyclopedia, and articles thought for rather general public, ie, avoid
> going in length into jargon and very detailed information. Which is why
> I am not entirely happy with the idea of filling up the article on the
> tiger with all the information we are talking about. An article on tiger
> should be kept relativement simple itself.
>
> I perfectly agree for detailed semi-professional articles to stay in
> Wikipedia. I wrote a couple of them. However, they should be rather in
> separate articles, the main one staying readable for most readers. The
> more detailed ones being seen as "to go further".
>
> If you fill up the tiger article with very detailed information, you
> will flood the average reader. If the detailed information is in another
> article, more specialised, only the specialist will go and read it, and
> the casual reader will not get scared. The detailed article could be on
> Wikipedia or on another project, it does not matter very much, as long
> as the two projects are tightly linked. But all info in one article is
> just a bad idea. Imho.
>
> Anthere
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [WikiEN-l] occidental pride and presumptuousness

body:
On 26 Aug 2004, at 04:31, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:

>> And if I may allowed to be chauvanistic for a moment, I think this
>> ideal
>> is a valuable part of Western Civilization that needs to be taught to
>> the
>> rest of the world. We should respect other people's POV, we should be
>> willing to explain our own POV, & that there should be a fair &
>> beneficial
>> exchange between them.

I'm not trying to get into a political argument here, but I would like
to note my objection to the above assumptions in the strongest possible
terms. I believe they are:

- historically untrue,
- (on balance) also absurdly false as regards the present,
- anachronistically missionaristic and
- the positive aspects favoured in this paragraph are the very
ANTITHESIS of how occidental civilization has historically conducted
and continues to conduct itself.

Occidental civilization as we know it is largely based on the
underlying morality of monotheistic religion(s). As such it is deeply
rooted in a moral code that has at its very heart the presumption of an
existing all-encompassing principle of GOOD and EVIL. This
ever-polarizing world view is one of dimensional reduction and not
particularly well suited to permit many faceted multi-aspect
deliberations and relations. In fact, among all world views and
civilizatory movements, it probably stands tall among the absolute
WORST suited ones.


from_name: Danavir Goswami (USA)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Image of Gandhi

body:
Dear Friends,				Aug. 26, 2004

Greetings. I am a monk writing a book on celibacy---the title is "Brain
Gain" (1,000 copies) and would like to use, within the book, an image of
Gandhi I found on your website.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi

If you could be so kind as to inform me A) whether the image is in the
public domain (copyright-free), or B) if you have the ability to grant
permission for its use, or C) you could suggest how I might seek permission.

The seminary is non profit and the publication is also not a profit
enterprise.

Thank you so much for your help.

With best regards,

Dr. Dane Holtzman

Rupanuga Vedic College (USA)
5201 Paseo, Kansas City, Missouri 64110
Tel: (816) 924-5619, (800) 340-5286, Fax: (816) 924-5640
E-mail: danavir.goswami at pamho.net  Website: www.rvc.edu


subject: [WikiEN-l] Germish

body:
On 26 Aug 2004, at 04:31, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:

<snip>

> (is an acronym for Extreme Loeschkandidating ("Vfding") Excess Points)
> where people can assign scores.

<snip>

> greetings,
> elian

"Extreme Loeschkandidating"???
Gosh, that [[Germish]] physically HURTS.
Ouch.

;-)

- Jens


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 02:05:30 +0200
  Thomas Gries <mail at tgries.de> wrote:
>I need more variables than the current ones (see
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Variable )
>especially needed are:
>
>{{{PAGEEDITOR}}}
>{{{PAGEEDITTIMESTAMPUTC}}}
>{{{PAGEEDITOREMAILADDR}}}
>{{{PAGEEDITTIMELOCALTIMEOFEDITOR}}}
>
>to be used in templates.
>
>Imagine a Personal View Disclaimer template called Template:PVD . It can be
>referenced on any page as {{PVD}} .
>
>But this template shall end up with the current NAME OF THE PAGE EDITOR who
>used this template on a page Z !
>
>
1px;">''[[PersonalViewDisclaimer|Personal View Disclaimer]]:''
>The content of this page represents my personal opinions. It does not
>represent the view of my employer, or any one else, for that matter, in any
>way. My thoughts and opinions may change over time. Old entries do not
>necessarily reflect my current thinking. {{{PAGEEDITOR}}}

>
>I hope, that you understand, what I mean. I could not find a solution to
>solve my problem. Reading the source of 1.3.1 and
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Variable I guess, the patch is not that
>difficult, and the above mentioned variables can easily be retrieved from
>the database tables and are an amelioration of MediaWiki.
>
>Tom

Isn't what you are looking for in {{{PAGEEDITOR}}} exactly what is already
given by ~~~?

Andre Engels


subject: [Foundation-l] Developer poll results

body:
>Anthere-

Hi Erik

>thanks for taking the time to poll the developers and summarize their
>opinions. It looks like it was a lot of work.

Hmmm, it was, but it was also extremely interesting to know more on what people do and think ;-)

>I think almost all of us agree that a developer conference/meetup would be
>a good idea.

Yes, I agree. This is something very important to do.

>> Second, money in exchange of tasks. This would be
>> money directly paid by the Foundation to thank some
>> developers for their work.
>> The board is willing to give it a try.

>I presume that means you, Angela and Jimbo agree. Have you also talked to
>Michael and Tim? Are they involved in these meetings?

Yes, Tim and Michael are aware of this discussion and did not oppose the trial.

>What amount of money do you anticipate can be allocated for this trial
>period, if we proceed further on this?

>I would suggest a setup wherein a team (committee) of two or three people
>within Wikimedia who
>a) do *not* want to be reimbursed for development work
>b) have a solid technical understanding
>decide upon tasks which they consider to be of high priority to the
>foundation. Developers can *propose* tasks to this team through a defined
>process (e.g. mailing list or board).

>I would then suggest that the current page "Development tasks" on Meta
>(which is presently somewhat redundant with the roadmap) be turned into an
>official Wikimedia page, where only the aforementioned team can put up
>tasks, and any developer can then state:
>- when they can start working on the task
>- how long they believe they will need to finish the task
>- under which conditions (for free/contract/etc.) they would be willing to
>complete the task.

>The committee could immediately *decline* certain offers, but they would
>have to wait at least about 7 days before accepting an offer for any
>particular task, so that all developers have a chance to volunteer.

>Money is paid depending on the conditions which the developers and the
>committee agree on. Validation may in some cases occur in stages, but
>again, this depends on the individual committee/developer relationship.

>Is this general process agreeable to you?

>Regards,

>Erik

Hummmm. What I will say below is my own opinion, which may or may not be the opinion of the board, but which I will give you anyway to get the ball rolling (so to speak).

You made an excellent comment when you suggested that the committee be made in good part of people not willing to ask for those contracts. I absolutely agree with this. It is potentially problematic that one be judge and party. Obviously, we also need the committee to be able to know the project in and out from a technical perspective, to be able to see what is feasible, how long the development will take, whether highly necessary or not...

Problem : most people likely to be part of the committee (ie, knowing very well the application) are potentially interested by contracts.
I would add that it seems much more reasonable, both for *social reasons* and as a *guarantee of quality*, that contracts be rather made with people who know the application well. Though not a mandatory requirement, that makes sense.

So... who would be in that committee ? Would you suggest that we pick up people knowing rather less the application or would you suggest that we ask some experienced developers to voluntarily refuse any contract to be able to be part of the committee ? That seems a bad solution to me.

I have another perspective to offer.

We are in a situation where the Foundation will give money to developers in exchange of work.

This should be beneficial to the developers themselves AND to the Foundation (given that the Foundation shall represent the interest of the project on its whole).
So, in terms of benefits, two parties are interested, and though I trust all the developers will also have in mind the benefits brought to the project itself, we must not neglect the fact that those accepting contracts will also do it for their own benefit.

With regards to this consideration, it was interesting to consider carefully the answers given to the question "what are to your opinion the benefits of the bounty or similar system ?". Many answers were given from the perspective of the developper only. Not from the perspective of the project. Which is just fair ;-)
But we should consider the proposal both from the developer perspective and from the Foundation perspective. A contract is of quality only if both parties have high certainties on the benefits they will get from the contract.

The potential benefits mentionned for the Foundation (ie, essentially for the project) are :
* Increasing well-being of the developper. Well-being meaning a developper able to pay the rent and buy food, and not needing to do small jobs to pay his studies, will have more time to do development job for Wikipedia
* Increasing happiness of the developper -> possibly more satisfaction and recognition feeling makes a developper more hard working, hence more work done and work done more quickly
* Getting things done which are rarely (if ever) done, because too boring, or too difficult or taking too much time (this essentially is about daily administration of servers, bug hunting, documentation writing, database and co)
* Prioritizing tasks (ie, orienting development toward certain directions supported by the Foundation, e.g. development of internationalization feature of fix of the database rather than fancy but not so necessary tasks)

If the Foundation gives a certain amount of cash to a committee, and have no lever on the money use decisions, then benefit 1 and 2 will probably occur, but benefits number 3 and 4 are absolutely not guaranteed. Even if the developers chosen to be the committee do not make contracts, we have no guarantee they will have the same priorities than the Foundation. No ?

Well... what does that suggest to you ?

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now.


subject: [Foundation-l] Developer poll results


body:
Edward Peschko wrote:

>On Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 04:16:41AM +0200, Ivan Krstic wrote:
>
>
>>Edward Peschko wrote:
>>
>>
>>>That being said - I still think there is a big hole that could be
>>>filled in the wikimedia foundation, whilst providing good public service.
>>>And that is in the area of free-form research.
>>>
>>>
>>I would second Tim's suggestion to look at wiki hosting providers. If
>>the free ones don't cut it, one of the MediaWiki developers offers a
>>paid, supported service at http://www.wikidev.net. If you would like to
>>easily include links to wikipedia articles inside your wiki, your
>>installation of MediaWiki could be trivially extended to do so.
>>
>>
>
>I understand that there are alternatives, but I don't get it... I'm asking for
>feedback on an idea (one that I think would do a lot of good IMO)
>
>In any case, in making a:
>
>	a) generic research platform inside of wiki
>	b) specific research platform on energy issues
>
>I think I would be doing a great public service. Why should I have to pay for
>it (more than any other contributor to wikipedia) I mean, I'd be willing
>to donate for equipment to the wiki foundation, but moving it to a paid
>supported service seems like the wrong place for it. And in any case, the subject
>covered is of utmost importance and should get as much traffic as it could possibly
>get IMO.
>
>What am I missing here?
>
>Ed
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>
>
The articles that you propose are imho relevant within Wikipedia. There
are two ways to create the identified content within Wikipedia.
One way is by using the category system. The other is to create a Portal
page as well. This would be a page to structure the information.

The benefit would be that it remains within Wikipedia and it would ease
people interested in the subject to create similar information in their
native wikipedia.

One objection is that wikipedia is not the platform for original
research. However you were talking about bundling the known facts. As
such it would not be research. Write some articles, get some people to
cooperate, link to your pages, categories where applicable and write
your "Main page".

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [Wikipedia-l] unnecessary "forks"

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>>Creating good content will attract more, not starting over. We have
>>
>already
>
>>established that this would be a fork and nothing in this proposed project
>>could not be put into Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Commons.
>>
>
>Of course, by this rationale, Wikimedia Commons itself is an unnecessary
>fork, since all the images in the Commons could be put into Wikipedia
>itself.
>
Tsk tsk, being English-centric. Don't you realize that the Italian
wikipedia can't refer to an English WP image directly, but has to
upload each one to it:WP specifically? We have thousands of cloned
images by now. The Commons is actually an anti-fork that will
make all the images accessible to all WPs equally.

Stan


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
>
>
>>* let scientists work on the cool, exciting data at wikispecies, amongst
>>their own where they are comfortable, and provide a link to the "other
>>stuff" at wikipedia
>>
>>
>
>Draw scientists away from Wikipedia you mean.
>
>
Yes, I would rather draw scientists to a wikipedia sister project within
the wikimedia realm than see them repelled by "cat religion" stuff and
don't work on species in a free wiki project at all.

For the record, yes, there are several scientists who work on wikipedia
and are not scared away (myself included). But, at the moment, they are
the minority of the scientific community. If we can attract the
"remaining" majority to a wikispecies project, they might, in time,
start working on wikipedia as well. Most of them will *not* directly
jump on the wikipedia bandwagon.

Magnus


from_name: Eric B. Rakim

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: tv schedules

body:
>Recently, on Wikisource, where I do follow such things someone enterred
>a scattering of Swedish daily TV schedules going back to 1969.  He seems
>to have stalled after very few.  This seems the sort of thing that could
>inspire even an ardent inclusionist to put weight on the delete button.
>I am, nevertheless, willing to be patient.  I might even be convinced to
>accept it if he can present things in a consistently informative.  In
>practical terms, I'm confident that the size of his project is well
>beyond his capacity, and that he will tire very soon.  In another month
>I may even suggest to him that this would be more beneficial if did a
>more thorough job.  I may then seek to delete it as a fragmentary and
>abandoned experiment, hopefully in a way that does not generate a lot of
>friction.

PLEASE dont! I've been looking for such a resource for a long time and it
would be very useful to me. Finding old and complete tv schedules is very
hard.

_________________________________________________________________
Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online
http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [WikiEN-l] Article - Librarian: Don't use Wikipedia as source

body:
I hesitate to even post this, because it's virtual flame-bait. :) But
with all the accolades Wikipedia receives in the press, you have to
take the knocks too.

This from the Syracuse Post-Standard and comes up with a very weak and
uninformed criticism of Wikipedia. I'm sure one of Jimbo's wonderful
standard letters will set this writer straight.

Andrew Lih (User:Fuzheado)
andrew.lih at gmail.com

----
http://www.syracuse.com/news/poststandard/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1093338972139211.xml

Librarian: Don't use Wikipedia as source
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
AL FASOLDT
STAFF WRITER

In a column published a few weeks ago by my companion Dr. Gizmo,
readers were urged to go to the Wikipedia Web site at www.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Main Page , an online encyclopedia, for more information on
computer history. The doctor and I had figured Wikipedia was a good
independent source.

Not so, wrote a school librarian who read that article. Susan
Stagnitta, of the Liverpool High School library, explained that
Wikipedia is not what many casual Web surfers think it is.

It's not the online version of an established, well-researched
traditional encyclopedia. Instead, Wikipedia is a do-it-yourself
encyclopedia, without any credentials.

"As a high school librarian, part of my job is to help my students
develop critical thinking skills," Stagnitta wrote. "One of these
skills is to evaluate the authority of any information source. The
Wikipedia is not an authoritative source. It even states this in their
disclaimer on their Web site."

Wikipedia, she explains, takes the idea of open source one step too
far for most of us.

"Anyone can change the content of an article in the Wikipedia, and
there is no editorial review of the content. I use this Web site as a
learning experience for my students. Many of them have used it in the
past for research and were very surprised when we investigated the
authority of the site."

Stagnitta gives two quotes from the Wikipedia site that illustrate the problem.

>From the home page:

"Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written collaboratively by its readers.
The site is a Wiki, meaning that anyone, including you, can also edit
any article right now by clicking on the edit this page link that
appears at the top of every Wikipedia article."

>From the disclaimer page:

"WIKIPEDIA MAKES NO GUARANTEE OF VALIDITY.

"Wikipedia is an online open-content encyclopedia, that is, a
voluntary association of individuals and groups who are developing a
common resource of human knowledge. Its structure allows any
individual with an Internet connection and World Wide Web browser to
alter the content found here.

"Therefore, please be advised that nothing found here has necessarily
been reviewed by professionals who are knowledgeable in the particular
areas of expertise necessary to provide you with complete, accurate or
reliable information about any subject in Wikipedia."

I was amazed at how little I knew about Wikipedia. If you know of
other supposedly authoritative Web sites that are untrustworthy, send
a note to technology at syracuse.com and let me know about them.

The best thing about the Web is also the worst thing: Information is
all over the place. You need to be careful about trusting what you
read.


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [WikiEN-l] another supposedly authoritative web sites

body:
Dear Mr. Fasoldt, Dear Ms Stagnitta,

I read your article in the Post-Standard "Librarian: Don't use Wikipedia
as source" at
http://www.syracuse.com/news/poststandard/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1093338972139211.xml,
where you wrote:
	I was amazed at how little I knew about Wikipedia.
	If you know of other supposedly authoritative Web
	sites that are untrustworthy, send a note to
	technology at syracuse.com and let me know about them.

Have you visited britannica.com?

http://corporate.britannica.com/termsofuse.html
> Disclaimer of Warranties
>
> Neither Britannica, its affiliates, nor any third-party content
> providers or licensors makes any warranty whatsoever, including
> without limitation: that the operation of the Site will be
> uninterrupted or error-free; that defects will be corrected; that
> this Site, including the server that makes it available, is free of
> infection, viruses, worms, Trojan Horses, or other harmful components
> or other code that manifest contaminating or destructive properties;
> as to the results that may be obtained from use of the materials on
> the Site; or as to the accuracy, reliability, availability,
> suitability, quality, or operation of any information, software, or
> service provided on or accessible from the Site or as to any
> information, products, or services on the Internet in any way. In
> addition, Britannica does not assume any responsibility or risk for
> your use of the Internet.

> THE SITE AND ALL INFORMATION, PRODUCTS, AND OTHER CONTENT (INCLUDING
> THIRD-PARTY INFORMATION, PRODUCTS, AND CONTENT) INCLUDED IN OR
> ACCESSIBLE FROM THIS SITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT WARRANTIES
>  OF ANY KIND (EXPRESS, IMPLIED, AND STATUTORY, INCLUDING BUT NOT
> LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF TITLE AND NONINFRINGEMENT AND THE
> IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
> PURPOSE), ALL OF WHICH BRITANNICA EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS TO THE FULLEST
> EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW. YOUR USE OF BRITANNICA.COM IS AT YOUR SOLE
> RISK.

Information at britannica.com can be edited by anyone who was given
permission from the company. It might be a PhD who hasn't done anything
else than writing about this specific topic. It might be someone else
who feels competent. You never know.

Just compare
http://www.britannica.com/eb/dailycontent?eu=422756#e%0Avent  "	Haile
Selassie" with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haile_Selassie

At wikipedia, you can see a) who wrote b) when c) which part of the
text, who changed it, who altered the order who removed parts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Haile+Selassie+of+Ethiopia&action=history&limit=500&offset=0

The authors, such as David Parker can be emailed or asked for
clearification in doubt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Parker

You and Susan Stagnitta are perfectly right to advise people never to
"trust" unreliable sources but I can't see a difference in this case
between a "black box" company and a group of academics and skilled
laymen who make the process of encyclopedic writing transparent.

Several wikipedians have created a document called "Making fun of
Britannica" http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Making_fun_of_Britannica,
which contains a list of "errors" (in a broader sense). This does not
change the level of trust towards Britannica.

If you spot a mistake in Britannica, what are the consequences? If it
was in a book, there is no chance to correct it and the risk might be
that a student relies on wrong information. She/He will not be able to
get a refund from Britannica or even a discount on the new and
(hopefully) corrected version.

Ms. Stagnitta said  "Anyone can change the content of an article in the
Wikipedia, and there is no editorial review of the content." Even if the
first part of that sentence is correct, the second part does not
describe the reality.

Just have a look at the procedures at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates. It
might be hard to get used to the fact that editorial review might be
ad-hoc or it might be a constant effort. If an article was found fit for
being a "Featured article", the process of improving that article does
not stop.

I would like you to encourage you to ask Britannica if they feel that
their content is "authoritative" in a sense that they will guarantee any
given fact in their Encyclopedia. Ask them if they are able to attribute
every sense to a specific author who can be contacted. Ask them if they
will make their decision transparent, which lemma does get into the EB
and which lemma does not get into it.

Yours,
Mathias Schindler
neubau at presroi.de

Ringelstr.50
60385 Frankfurt am Main
Germany


subject: [Wikipedia-l] another supposedly authoritative web sites


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [Wikipedia-l] unnecessary "forks"

body:
> Creating good content will attract more, not starting over. We have
already
> established that this would be a fork and nothing in this proposed project
> could not be put into Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Commons.

Of course, by this rationale, Wikimedia Commons itself is an unnecessary
fork, since all the images in the Commons could be put into Wikipedia
itself.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikispecies

body:
> That would work, but then, why don't we reduce this to an existing
> technology and use the templates:

Templates don't yet handle true parameters.  For instance, in a species
definition we have things like "endangered", which, when they exist, cause
an entirely new row to appear in the table.  For this to work it seems we
would need tables to act as miniature scripts.


body:
I'll also use this to reiterate my nit about the Main Page -

Having a link to the FAQ on the front page might have helped this situation.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 10:06:56 +0800, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> I hesitate to even post this, because it's virtual flame-bait. :) But
> with all the accolades Wikipedia receives in the press, you have to
> take the knocks too.
>
> This from the Syracuse Post-Standard and comes up with a very weak and
> uninformed criticism of Wikipedia. I'm sure one of Jimbo's wonderful
> standard letters will set this writer straight.
>
> Andrew Lih (User:Fuzheado)
> andrew.lih at gmail.com
>
> ----
> http://www.syracuse.com/news/poststandard/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1093338972139211.xml
>
> Librarian: Don't use Wikipedia as source
> Wednesday, August 25, 2004
> AL FASOLDT
> STAFF WRITER
>
> In a column published a few weeks ago by my companion Dr. Gizmo,
> readers were urged to go to the Wikipedia Web site at www.wikipedia.
> org/wiki/Main Page , an online encyclopedia, for more information on
> computer history. The doctor and I had figured Wikipedia was a good
> independent source.
>
> Not so, wrote a school librarian who read that article. Susan
> Stagnitta, of the Liverpool High School library, explained that
> Wikipedia is not what many casual Web surfers think it is.
>
> It's not the online version of an established, well-researched
> traditional encyclopedia. Instead, Wikipedia is a do-it-yourself
> encyclopedia, without any credentials.
>
> "As a high school librarian, part of my job is to help my students
> develop critical thinking skills," Stagnitta wrote. "One of these
> skills is to evaluate the authority of any information source. The
> Wikipedia is not an authoritative source. It even states this in their
> disclaimer on their Web site."
>
> Wikipedia, she explains, takes the idea of open source one step too
> far for most of us.
>
> "Anyone can change the content of an article in the Wikipedia, and
> there is no editorial review of the content. I use this Web site as a
> learning experience for my students. Many of them have used it in the
> past for research and were very surprised when we investigated the
> authority of the site."
>
> Stagnitta gives two quotes from the Wikipedia site that illustrate the problem.
>
> From the home page:
>
> "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written collaboratively by its readers.
> The site is a Wiki, meaning that anyone, including you, can also edit
> any article right now by clicking on the edit this page link that
> appears at the top of every Wikipedia article."
>
> From the disclaimer page:
>
> "WIKIPEDIA MAKES NO GUARANTEE OF VALIDITY.
>
> "Wikipedia is an online open-content encyclopedia, that is, a
> voluntary association of individuals and groups who are developing a
> common resource of human knowledge. Its structure allows any
> individual with an Internet connection and World Wide Web browser to
> alter the content found here.
>
> "Therefore, please be advised that nothing found here has necessarily
> been reviewed by professionals who are knowledgeable in the particular
> areas of expertise necessary to provide you with complete, accurate or
> reliable information about any subject in Wikipedia."
>
> I was amazed at how little I knew about Wikipedia. If you know of
> other supposedly authoritative Web sites that are untrustworthy, send
> a note to technology at syracuse.com and let me know about them.
>
> The best thing about the Web is also the worst thing: Information is
> all over the place. You need to be careful about trusting what you
> read.
>

--
Andrew Lih
andrew.lih at gmail.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Article - Librarian: Don't use Wikipedia as source


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikispecies

body:
That would work, but then, why don't we reduce this to an existing
technology and use the templates:

<<LIT:occurence=Tiger,book=Winnie-the-Pooh,name=Tigger>>

could easily become

{{LIT|occurence=Tiger|book=Winnie-the-Pooh|name=Tigger}}

where [[Template:LIT]] could be blank, or [[category:Book|{{{book}}}]]
or something you want to display in the article.

I *strongly* advice against any table hardcoding for species etc.
Instead, what you'd want to do is make a table with the fields
* article ID (of the imaginary tiger)
* type ("LIT", "TOL" etc.)
* key ("book")
* value ("Winnie-the-Pooh")

This will complicate the search query, but make it more flexible.

The parsing of the above is already done; what would be missing is
* the storage of the ID/type/key/value in a table (quick hack)
* a special page to retrieve the information from that table (longer hack)
* most important, a schema that we all agree upon *before* we store
anything in that table. Otherwise, we'll have "book=", "title=",
"volume=", all meaning the same thing.

Magnus

Till Westermayer wrote:

>. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .
>
>Hi Magnus,
>
>there seem to be two obvious possible solutions: the one you described,
>and the one I described (below). While thinking about my proposal, I
>thought along the lines of your proposal (not in that general way,
>rather in the form of: let there be a part commented out in the wiki
>source, that is only interpreted in wikispecies). Your optional-tag is a
>much more general and elegant solution to that problem. But I'm still
>not sure if it is the best solution (even if it is relative easy to
>hack). This is mainly because I think what project like WikiSpecies, or
>maybe WikiStamps, WikiRamBotUSTowns, WikiElections etc. need in
>additionto the free form text editable in Wikipedia is something like a
>wiki-definable db (so Tim's general WikiDB approach seems to go more in
>that direction). The other thing all these possible projects have in
>common that they should continue to be anchored in Wikipedia, but they
>also should have the db information. One could do that with the solution
>I proposed, i.e. by using separate but somehow linked dbs and
>interfaces, or one could invent a special markup for custom variable
>fields in the wiki text (i.e. something like the Semantic Web people are
>doing, if I understand their approach correctly). I'm not sure if using
>markup for db fields to simulate a db in a db is such a good idea, but
>it's easy editable, that much is sure.
>
>A typical entry on, say, a totally bogus tiger, could maybe look like
>this in a markup-db-solution:
>
>  Tigers are [[mammal]]s living in the [[Sibiria|Sibirian]] [[Tundra]].
>
>  ...
>
>  == Species data ==
>
>  [[kingdom]]: [[animal]]s <<TOL:kingdom=animalia>>
>  [[family or whatever that is]]: [[mammal]] <<TOL:family=mammalia>>
>  [[species]]: big cats (''felibigus'') <<TOL:species=felibigus>>
>
>  ...
>
>  == Trivia ==
>
>  Tigers are a big issue in Winnie-the-Pooh, especially one tiger called
>  Tigger. <<LIT:occurence=Tiger,book=Winnie-the-Pooh,name=Tigger>>
>
>This would give the following pseudo db entries:
>
>  in the Tree of life database (short: TOL)
>
>    in the kingdom table the relation key:Tiger <-> kingdom:animalia
>    in the family table the relation key:Tiger <-> family:mammalia
>    in the species table the relation key:Tiger <-> species:felibigus
>
>  in the Literatur database (short: LIT)
>
>    in the occurence table the relation
>      key:generated <-> occurence:Tiger,book:Winnie-the-Pooh,
>                        name:Tigger
>
>    ((key generated because the article name appears on the right side
>      of the pseudo db entry in the wikipedia article -> brings to our
>      attention the problem of n:m relations))
>
>I don't know if it is possible to automatically parse changes in such
>entries to maintan databases. One (rather brute force way) would be to
>delete everything in such a database which has the article name key of
>"Tiger" if the article is changed, then parse the article for pseudo-db
>entries marked with <<...>> and insert the information anew.
>
>There could be a / a lot of specialized interfaces for queries on this
>database (which is something separate from the wiki article text db),
>where on could say something like (in very pseudo SQL):
>
>  SELECT
>    from the TOL database
>    from the kingdom table
>    all entries where kingdom = animalia
>
>  gives back formatted information on
>    Tiger (see Wikipedia article, see all TOL information, see all
>    information)
>    Cat
>    Shark
>    Homo sapiens
>    ...
>
>Just some ideas, some thinking aloud.
>
>----
>
>
>
>
>>Alternate solution, which would require much less special cases:
>>* introduce "<optional type=wikispecies>lots'o'data</optional>"
>>tag, which will
>>** show the data for everyone who has marked himself as a member
>>of wikispecies project in user settings
>>** show a link "More detail information" for everyone else; that
>>link will then display the full thing
>>* introduce "<categorytree>" tag, which will show a category tree
>>for the current article
>>** attribute "super=1" to show the category below, "super=all" to
>>show everything down to the root
>>** attribute "sub=1" to show the next subcategory, "sub=all" to
>>show them all
>>
>>
>
>
>
>>This is
>>* relatively easy to hack (hide "optional" section unless
>>this-and-that condition)
>>* usable for many sub-projects like histroy etc.
>>* allows everyone to get all the data without "average" users
>>being squashed by it
>>* fully transparent for searching (search will find keywords in
>>the "optional" secation as well)
>>
>>
>
>
>
>>If required, we can parse-out the "optional" part for editing. But
>>that's optional ;-)
>>
>>
>
>
>
>>Magnus
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>>Daniel Mayer wrote:
>>
>>
>
>
>
>>>This sounds interesting...
>>>
>>>--- Till Westermayer <till at tillwe.de> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>How to implement this technically speaking, I don't know, but
>>>>how about this:
>>>>
>>>>- The Wikispecies interface only shows article tagged with
>>>>Category:Wikispecies (or whatever is the best category).
>>>>
>>>>- This project uses a specific parser, allowing for the
>>>>implementation of tree navigation and a more "scientifically"
>>>>looking output of data (that can be found in the taxabox).
>>>>
>>>>- Maybe other data is in the articles used as source for
>>>>Wikispecies and hidden somehow (via a special comment mode or
>>>>some other specialized tag in the article, or even as additional
>>>>stored data in a separate db, accessed via the article name =
>>>>scientific species name as key)
>>>>- "Edit this entry" in the Wikispecies interface would bring up
>>>>a window consisting of:
>>>>
>>>>       - the wikipedia edit window showing the source text
>>>>       - additional data input fields
>>>>
>>>>- A user in the wikipedia proper will only see the wikipedia
>>>>article, but not the additional data. The only thing other for
>>>>them is the "Category:Wikispecies" tag (which would explain,
>>>>when opened as article, what Wikispecies project is and how to
>>>>access it in the "scientific" interface).
>>>>
>>>>__ .
>>>>/ / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till
>>>>we *)
>>>>. .
>>>> . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq
>>>> 320393072 . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152
>>>> . 0160 96619179 . . . . .
>>>>_______________________________________________
>>>>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>>>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>_______________________________
>>>Do you Yahoo!?
>>>Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now.
>>>http://promotions.yahoo.com/goldrush
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
>>
>
> __ .
> / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
>. .
>  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
>  . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
>  . . . . .
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia must change with Googling (was: Dartmouth
	follies)

body:
On Wed, 25 Aug 2004 20:43:31 +0100, Pete/Pcb21
<pete_pcb21_wpmail at pcbartlett.com> wrote:

> How does having articles of borderline interest make it unusable?
> If I type "George Washington" into Google and end up at the excellent
> Wikipedia article of the same name, Wikipedia has proved very usuable.
> It is completely irrelevant whether a borderline article such as "George
> from Rainbow" is also available *for those who search for it*

In some sense I agree, but what has bothered me lately is the fact
that Googling for "wikipedia foo" likely brings up one of our mirrors
first, and not Wikipedia itself. So when I see a blatant error
magnified "n" times on the many mirrors on the Internet, it sends a
chill up my spine.

Worse, because those sites are mirrors, and don't accept changes, it
makes it easy for readers to walk off and say, "What a crackpot
project."

So increasingly, the dynamic is changing, and in large part it's due
to Google search results. Whether these mirrors are gaming the search
algorithm or whatever, increasingly "Wikipedia content" does not
reside in a true wiki, because the fruits of publishing are being
removed from the mechanisms of fixing errors. I feel the dynamic of
inclusionism/deletionism and the promptness of when things are fixed
must take this into account.

--
Andrew Lih
andrew.lih at gmail.com


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia must change with Googling (was:
	Dartmouth follies)


from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: WikiDB (was Re: Tabular data in Wikipedia
	(Wikispecies -> Wikicommons))

references:
<BAY10-DAV13cfYMoX9j0002705b@hotmail.com>	<cgh07i$70d$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<412D05FA.3020606@apple.com>

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> It would be cool if there was some way to differentiate language
> specific and language-neutral data. A 747's wingspan is the same
> irrespective of language, should be possible to record and edit in
> only one place, but the common name of Homo sapiens is per-language.

You could have a separate field for each language, and create display
templates which only display the local language.

An interesting extension which I forgot to mention in my original post
would be to bring in some aspects of RDBMS design. The obvious one is to
allow fields which contain a list of strings or article titles. This
could be implemented underneath as a many-to-many relationship involving
IDs. So if one of the items in the list is renamed, it appears to the
user to have been instantly changed in all lists. Searching for all
articles with a given item in its list would be a fast indexed
operation. This would be useful for categories, keyword searches, and
similar features.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Denni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Rebranding VfD

body:
Fuzheado wrote:

I'm all for reevaluating how VfD works, but I'd like to oppose the
name "Editorial Review."

Not only does it sound Nupedia-ish, but I have a strange image of a
salon with leather chairs, Ivy League professors smoking cigars and
sipping cognac while deciding the fate of articles from commonfolk.
The name "votes for deletion" makes the barrier high, meaning an
article stays unless you put yourself on the record for endorsing a
destructive act.

This may come as a surprise to those who've found me a "deletionist",
but I think adopting the "Editorial Review" moniker makes Wikipedia
less wiki-like. It makes Wikipedia sound really stuffy and formal,
which it really is NOT.

Names like "Author review" or Peer review" may fit the bill better. I used the term
"Authors' circle" when I was teaching writing; this neutral title allowed (and, by
my insistence, required) praise as well as criticism. It's nice to see us getting
back to this one. I also applaud the idea of having some process for screening new
articles as they come in. [[Wikipedia:Recent changes]] is flooded with modifications
to existing articles and additions to talk pages; while the new skin does offer
relief in identifying new articles, it would still be nice to have that list free of
other contributions.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rebranding VfD

body:
I'm all for reevaluating how VfD works, but I'd like to oppose the
name "Editorial Review."

Not only does it sound Nupedia-ish, but I have a strange image of a
salon with leather chairs, Ivy League professors smoking cigars and
sipping cognac while deciding the fate of articles from commonfolk.
The name "votes for deletion" makes the barrier high, meaning an
article stays unless you put yourself on the record for endorsing a
destructive act.

This may come as a surprise to those who've found me a "deletionist",
but I think adopting the "Editorial Review" moniker makes Wikipedia
less wiki-like. It makes Wikipedia sound really stuffy and formal,
which it really is NOT.

-Andrew

On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 03:27:44 +0200, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
> dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote:
>
> > E.g. (GROSSLY caricaturing an actual VfD debate
> > for purposes of illustration) instead of saying "I've never heard of Lehman
> > Brothers, what do you know about them?" a nominator is more likely to say
> > something like "Vanity, some non-notable insurance company, delete spam."
> > Typically there will be a more comments like that until someone with _some_
> > topic familiarity runs across the VfD entry. THEN someone chimes in "The firm
> > is really quite large, unless I'm very much mistaken." Then there are follow-
> > ups "It's a Fortune 500 company," "Definite keep," "Keep article on major
> > financial force of the twentieth century," "Need more articles like this,"
> > etc.
>
> thanks for this summary ;-) the same happens on de: in the same style.
> We even have a page for this kind of stuff:
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ELKE
> (is an acronym for Extreme Loeschkandidating ("Vfding") Excess Points)
> where people can assign scores.
>
> > Everybody understands the concept of submitting an article for review and
> > possibly having it be rejected.  If newcomers perceive Wikiprocess as a
> > variation of that model, fewer of them will be unnecessarily shocked or
> > offended by the VfD process.
>
> I think it's a rather good idea. Recently on de: we also thought about
> creating a page where newbies can submit their articles for a general
> review (help with formatting, encyclopedic style etc.) since some new
> people asked for something like this.
>
> greetings,
> elian
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Andrew Lih
andrew.lih at gmail.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Energywiki - new sister project (off of home page)

body:
Edward Peschko wrote:
> The second one(s) would be endorsed, supported, and if possible edited by
> as recognizable names as possibly can be found - hopefully due to the large
> public reach of wiki, we could get someone or someones *very* recognizable.
> Anything to make the public at large listen.

Wikimedia is not a wiki hosting service. For wiki hosting services, try:

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiFarms

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Eric Pierce

subject: [Wikitech-l] Transparent 8-bit PNG thumbnails

body:
I've been beating my head against the problem of
getting transparent and non-transparent PNG thumbnails
to be the same color depth as the source image, to
resolve a couple issues:

* Thumbnails of palette (8-bit) PNG images are
currently truecolor, meaning the thumbnail is often
close to the same size (in bytes) as the full-size
image. The thumbnail should be the same color depth as
the source.
* PNGs with transparency, as a consequence, have
varying degrees of transparency (rather than simply
transparent/opaque), wreaking havoc with Internet
Explorer, which does not support them.

There is currently some discussion on the Village Pump
about my attempts at fixing these problems, by editing
includes/Image.php where the thumbnailing function
resides. I do not know for sure whether the GD
libraries or ImageMagick are currently in use in the
live version (ImageMagick was default on my
installation, and from what I can tell that's what's
used on the WP site). Because of the constraints of
both ImageMagick (can't create palette images from
truecolor) and the GD libs (a number of minor
annoyances that add up to major problems), I was
wondering whether it'd be okay to use a combination of
the two. My very first attempt at putting them both
together resulted in exactly what I was looking for.
ImageMagick resizes the image (preserving any
transparency), and the GD libs convert to palette.

Since I do not yet have CVS access, I am attaching a
diff against the 1.19 revision of includes/Image.php.
Again, I don't know if it's appropriate to use
ImageMagick and GD together, but it may solve a
problem that has been bothering quite a few people.

Eric

=====
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body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sj" <2.718281828 at gmail.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2004 10:46 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia

> Much of what apogr wrote is beyond me,

 refer to dictionary.talk in en.wiki

 but I was moved by this distillation of
> key problems:
> > The problems, as I see them, include
> > a) uneven use of "scale"
> > b) no check for completeness on a particular level
>
> I find these to be pervasive problems, both for WP as a whole (in
> creating projects,
> defining category-sets, identifying key subject areas), for each of
> its subprojects
> (in creating article-lists, identifying goals of equal importance,
> covering an entire
> topic), and for each individual article (in balancing detail across
> aspects of an
> article, maintaining consistent perspective, and maintaining a connection
with
> other articles at higher and lower levels of detail).
>
> +sj+
>
> > b) it is a semi-finished colouring book with clolours of uneven
intensity
> > c) it is a number of  diligent tube-sighted people caught in the process
of
> > lace-making
>
> ps - these gems should surely go on the list of [[what wikipedia is]]...
>
>  _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 13, Issue 65

body:
Why not?  It's going to bring up every article with the term "George Washington" in it, and if [[George Washington's underwear]] begins ... [[George Washington]] wore white [[boxer shorts]], then Google will certainly pick it up.

RickK

"Eric B. Rakim" <eric_b_and_rakim at hotmail.com> wrote:
>So, what happens when you search for "George Washington" and "George
>Washington's underwear" shows up?
>
>RickK

It will not show up. Atleast not if google search is used. I can't test
whether it would show up with mediawiki's search algorithm, but if it does,
that algorithm would be very much broken.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Peter Gervai

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Article - Librarian: Don't use Wikipedia as source

body:
On Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 10:06:56AM +0800, Andrew Lih wrote:

> I hesitate to even post this, because it's virtual flame-bait. :) But
> with all the accolades Wikipedia receives in the press, you have to
> take the knocks too.

Why, this article is pretty fair. It states only the truth:
* Wikipedia is not reviewed by the academics
* Wikipedia does not guarantee validity or accuracy
* The author of the article is dumb enough not to notice the disclaimers,
the first paragraph of the main page, and to completely missing the point
about [[what Wikipedia is]].

I see no bait. :-)

Peter


from_name: Christiaan Briggs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anet Dartmouth

body:
On 25 Aug 2004, at 6:35 am, Geoff Burling wrote:

> Bah! If I don't recognize the contributor -- or even more clearly, if
> that person is editting from an IP number -- I'll just consider
> her/him/it a troublemaker, list the articles that person produces on
> VfD & revert all of her/his/its edits as "vandalism".

So who the hell do you think you are???

> And if I may allowed to be chauvanistic for a moment, I think this
> ideal is a valuable part of Western Civilization that needs to be
> taught to the rest of the world. We should respect other people's POV,
> we should be willing to explain our own POV, & that there should be a
> fair & beneficial
> exchange between them

*groan* spare us your offensive ethnocentric colonialist views, please.

A positive purchase maybe:
Lies My Teacher Told Me:Everything Your American History Textbook Got
Wrong
http://www.uvm.edu/~jloewen/liesmyteachertoldme/liesmyteacher.html

A book for everyone of the American Empire.

Christiaan


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 11:46:32AM +0200, Peter Gervai wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 10:06:56AM +0800, Andrew Lih wrote:
>
> > I hesitate to even post this, because it's virtual flame-bait. :) But
> > with all the accolades Wikipedia receives in the press, you have to
> > take the knocks too.
>
> Why, this article is pretty fair. It states only the truth:
> * Wikipedia is not reviewed by the academics
> * Wikipedia does not guarantee validity or accuracy

Neither are paper encyclopedias, but somehow he didn't have any problems with them.
This article is pure biased bullshit.


body:
CB low
On 26 Aug 2004, at 08:50, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:

> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 10:45:17 +0800
> From: Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com>
>
> (...) what has bothered me lately is the fact
> that Googling for "wikipedia foo" likely brings up one of our mirrors
> first, and not Wikipedia itself. So when I see a blatant error
> magnified "n" times on the many mirrors on the Internet, it sends a
> chill up my spine.
>
> Worse, because those sites are mirrors, and don't accept changes, it
> makes it easy for readers to walk off and say, "What a crackpot
> project."
>
> So increasingly, the dynamic is changing, and in large part it's due
> to Google search results. Whether these mirrors are gaming the search
> algorithm or whatever, increasingly "Wikipedia content" does not
> reside in a true wiki, because the fruits of publishing are being
> removed from the mechanisms of fixing errors. I feel the dynamic of
> inclusionism/deletionism and the promptness of when things are fixed
> must take this into account.
>
> --
> Andrew Lih
> andrew.lih at gmail.com

This is _one *more* reason_ why I think it is so important that we
implement our own domain name across the board:
I have in the past proposed -- and am proposing again -- that we use:

wikipedia.org -- as our main site

AND the following as redirects:

wikipedia.com (already active)
wikipedia.net (already active)
wikipaedia.org (cybersquatted by a German Wikipedia imposter)
wikipaedia.com (cybersquatted by the same German Wikipedia imposter)
wikipaedia.net (I recently registered this domain myself and am still
seeking to donate it to the Wikipedia Foundation)

In addition I believe we should also control the *important* ccTLDs,
such as:

wikipedia.de (German, already active)
wikipaedia.de (German, cybersquatted by the same German Wikipedia
imposter)
wikipedia.co.uk (owned by us, but _BROKEN_ "Wiki does not exist" error)
wikipaedia.co.uk (currently unregistered)
and possibly more

The ccTLDs should redirect to the respective language version of the
Wikipedia (not strictly applicable w/ .co.uk as AFAIK there isn't a
separate British English Wikipedia).

That should shut out the most disturbing cases of Wikiplagiarism and as
a side effect pimp us in terms of Google rankings.
I am very much for us moving ASAP to get the cybersquatted domain names
surrendered to us (which we're entitled to under the terms of the ICANN
UDRP).

NB: I have extensively discussed the aforementioned German
cybersquatter/WP imposter at
http://www.ropersonline.com/Area_51/wikipaedia.html (user: guest,
passwd: 1ns4nI+y)

- Jens [[User:Ropers|Ropers]]


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia must change with Googling (was:
	Dartmouth	 follies)


from_name: Pedro Fortuny Ayuso

body:
(...snip...)
>
> - historically untrue,
> - (on balance) also absurdly false as regards the present,
> - anachronistically missionaristic and
> - the positive aspects favoured in this paragraph are the very
> ANTITHESIS of how occidental civilization has historically conducted
> and continues to conduct itself.
>
> Occidental civilization as we know it is largely based on the
> underlying morality of monotheistic religion(s). As such it is deeply
> rooted in a moral code that has at its very heart the presumption of an
> existing all-encompassing principle of GOOD and EVIL.

This is quite wrong and is the basis of the forthcoming error...

> This
> ever-polarizing world view is one of dimensional reduction and not
> particularly well suited to permit many faceted multi-aspect
> deliberations and relations. In fact, among all world views and
> civilizatory movements, it probably stands tall among the absolute
> WORST suited ones.

Well, you may allow to say that you seem a bit biased in this statemeent,
a bit unjust as to the way Western Civilization has evolved and... well
just a bit too extreme. The mistake is at the beginning "the
all-encompassing
principle of GOOD and EVIL" is a misunderstanding which has led to more
misunderstandings...

Pedro.

>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
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from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Eric Pierce wrote:
[snip]
>  I do not know for sure whether the GD
> libraries or ImageMagick are currently in use in the
> live version

ImageMagick.

> Since I do not yet have CVS access, I am attaching a
> diff against the 1.19 revision of includes/Image.php.
> Again, I don't know if it's appropriate to use
> ImageMagick and GD together, but it may solve a
> problem that has been bothering quite a few people.

Binary attachments are stripped from the list to help keep virus mails
off. Best to open a bug report on bugzilla.wikipedia.org and post your
patches there...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Jens Ropers

body:
see below

On 26 Aug 2004, at 12:25, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:

> Message: 10
> Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 12:26:01 +0200
> From: "Pedro Fortuny Ayuso" <pfortuny at sdf-eu.org>
>
> (...snip...)
>>
>> - historically untrue,
>> - (on balance) also absurdly false as regards the present,
>> - anachronistically missionaristic and
>> - the positive aspects favoured in this paragraph are the very
>> ANTITHESIS of how occidental civilization has historically conducted
>> and continues to conduct itself.
>>
>> Occidental civilization as we know it is largely based on the
>> underlying morality of monotheistic religion(s). As such it is deeply
>> rooted in a moral code that has at its very heart the presumption of
>> an
>> existing all-encompassing principle of GOOD and EVIL.
>
> This is quite wrong and is the basis of the forthcoming error...
>
>> This
>> ever-polarizing world view is one of dimensional reduction and not
>> particularly well suited to permit many faceted multi-aspect
>> deliberations and relations. In fact, among all world views and
>> civilizatory movements, it probably stands tall among the absolute
>> WORST suited ones.
>
> Well, you may allow to say that you seem a bit biased in this
> statemeent,
> a bit unjust as to the way Western Civilization has evolved and... well
> just a bit too extreme. The mistake is at the beginning "the
> all-encompassing
> principle of GOOD and EVIL" is a misunderstanding which has led to more
> misunderstandings...
>
>
> Pedro.

My *typically wikipedian* response:

If you can give any reasons as to /why/ my statement as regards the
impact of bipolar morality was "quite wrong", then you are cordially
invited to continue this conversation on my talk page
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ropers) or via direct email to
ropers -at- ropersonline.com.

-- Jens [[User:Ropers|Ropers]]