subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Biographies of unimportant people (was: "In
 memoriam")

body:
Just a point-by-point reply.

On Fri, 27 Sep 2002, Lars Aronsson wrote:

> I thought that Wikipedia would be self-regulatory in this liberal
> manner,						    ^^^^^^^

I think this is a misuse of the word.  "Liberal" yes; "anarchical" no.
The *mere* having of standards does not *in itself* militate against
having a maximally liberal project.

> but the flood of messages on this list in the last month has
> focused on what should *not* be in the Wikipedia (stubs etc.).
> I think this is sad and destructive.

I respectfully disagree.  Wikipedia has succeeded as well as it has, and
Susning has arguably benefitted indirectly thereby, by carefully defining
what it is--and what it ain't.

> I wanted the liberal approach,
> where anybody could write what they liked as long as Jimmy could
> afford the disk space.

As Jimbo never tires of telling people, this is true: if you want to write
a wiki about such-and-such, by golly he'll set it up for you.  But if you
want to participate in Wikipedia, pitch in and help support the basic
standards that at least define the project *as* an encyclopedia.

> Wikipedia is a radically new approach to creating a useful knowledge
		 ^^^^^^^^^
Radical in the sense of being radically collaborative and democratic; not
necessarily radical in the sense of being anarchical.  That's an important
difference.

> occupied with reaching some obsolete 19th century ideals of what an
> encyclopedia should be.     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Since there are hundreds, or thousands, of very fully 21st-century people
pursuing and supporting this project, calling the basic defining
characteristics of our project (well, that's what it sounds like you're
saying) "19th-century" and "obsolete" is a little odd.

> This could be the Memex or project Xanadu or
> your own Interpedia, which should be so much more than an old printed
> encyclopedia.  Wikipedia should not be compared to Britannica.  We
> should aim for 100 million articles, not 100 thousand.

Yes!  Who could disagree with that?

> [...]  We're only seeing the beginning yet.  This should
> not be the time to discuss how to reduce the amount of contents.

I personally agree with this in spirit.  After all, who couldn't be all
for the rapid expansion of the availability of all sorts of information
online?  (OK, other than certain governments.)

We can agree strongly with this while grudgingly admitting that at times,
in order to keep a certain well-defined project on course, we've got to
trim a little fat.  *Very* little.

======

As to the issue at hand, I'm in Axel's camp, though I could be convinced
otherwise.  At *present*, most people are not appropriate subjects for
encyclopedia articles.  The vast majority of people live out their lives
impacting only their immediate family, friends, and workmates.
Admittedly, quite obviously they are very important people to those around
them.  Admittedly, in the large scheme of things it is quite arguable that
distinguished politicians, scientists, etc., are no more important than
any of the rest of us.

We can admit that and still maintain that the scope for encyclopedia
biographies should not be expanded to include biographies of every person
on Earth.  That's not to deny that that would be an interesting project
worth some consideration.  But it's not *our* project--which is to say,
expanding the scope of possible biographies to include everyone's implies
that we'd be engaged in a completely different project than the one we are
now engaged in, one that is not even very much like our project.

I also agree with Axel that where the line should be drawn is not one that
we need to work out right now, if we ever do.

One last point: as Wikipedia expands, I can see the line being pushed in
the direction of admitting greater and greater obscurity.  Suppose, for
example--what, admittedly, is pretty absurd, but it's not unimaginable
--that Wikipedia becomes *the* central reference work for the entire
world, such that everybody who's anybody and many bodies who are nobody is
working on it, improving it, etc.  In such a case, I can imagine that
everyone who wanted one could have an entry about him- or herself; in that
case, the notion of a universal biographical database would be feasible.

We aren't quite to that point yet, however.

Larry


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Stephen Gilbert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletions and respect.

body:
--- The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:

> > > --- The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:
> > > > * 14:56 Sep 26, 2002 Jheijmans deleted
> > > > "Talk:Knocking her dead one on the
> > > > nose each and every double trey" (talk of
> removed
> > > > page)
> > > > * 14:56 Sep 26, 2002 Jheijmans deleted
> > > > "Talk:Gamefoolz" (talk of removed
> > > > page)
> > > >
> >  pages to the Votes for
> > > Deletion page. Jheijmans saw them, agreed, and
> deleted
> > > them, thus following the deletion policy.
> >
> > Jheijmans only waited two (or, in the case of
> Gamefools, 4) hours. That
> > is not nearly sufficient. Rather, it is a problem.
> >
> I erred. Jeihmans only waited four minutes (for
> "Knocking") and two
> hours (for "Gamefoolz").
>
> Waiting four minutes is not following the deletion
> policy.

It should be pointed out that both talk pages have
been around for many months. If anyone felt they were
important, the material could have been moved sometime
after the subject pages were deleted.

I really don't have anything else to say, other than I
hope the soft delete function is implemented very
soon.

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Proposed solution to deletion dilemma

body:
--- Brion VIBBER <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> If I go do that right now, will everyone SHUT THE
> FARDELS UP? :)

Yes, and I will send you flowers. Now go. GO!

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


from_name: Imran Ghory

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Biographies of unimportant people (was: "In memoriam")

body:
On 25 Sep 2002, at 19:53, Axel Boldt wrote:

>A biography of
> an unimportant person is interesting/useful to almost no one,
> therefore it doesn't belong either.

How do you measure the importance of someone ?

Imran


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] embassies and diplomats

body:
On Thursday 26 September 2002 06:21 pm, you wrote:
> Yes, that may be. ?I do still think it's worth the effort, though. ?:-)
> ?... If I spoke Spanish any better, I would be an ambassador to the Spanish
> wikipedia.
>
> kq

Speaking of which, is anybody speaking with the Seville Encyclopedia Libre
about them upgrading to Phase III and us pointing our interlanguage links to
their articles?

I wouldn't trust my Spanish skills to such an important thing -- especially
given the fact that they forked over a previous misunderstanding to begin
with. Anybody fluent in Spanish on this mailing list?

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
On Thursday 26 September 2002 06:21 pm, you wrote:
> Andre Engels wrote:
> >?Alternatively - since the old versions appear to be saved at the system
> >?anyway, what about creating a 'restore' function on the Deletion log?
>
> If I go do that right now, will everyone SHUT THE FARDELS UP? :)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Would it be possible to simply view what was contained in the page without
restoring it?

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
On Thursday 26 September 2002 06:21 pm, you wrote:
> What is "almost no one", one, two, ten, a hundred people ?
>
> Should we get rid of any articles which get less than X hits a year
> as they're "interesting/useful to almost no one" ?
>
> Imran

Like everything else, each new submission is unique and its relevance to what
we do here has to be weighed individually. So no you can't draw a distinct
line, you can only have general guidelines in this regard. Therefore we can
have the minor players of the human story, but they must be players and not
just some guy who works and McDonald's, watches basketball on the weekends
and is related to some other ordinary guy.

We are building an encyclopedia, not a genealogical database. The above
example is the type of entry that could go into a
http://tribute.wikipedia.org website along with the 9/11 pages.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

body:
I'll send you flowers too.

kq

You Wrote:
>--- Brion VIBBER <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>> If I go do that right now, will everyone SHUT THE
>> FARDELS UP? :)
>
>Yes, and I will send you flowers. Now go. GO!
>
>Stephen G.


subject: [Intlwiki-l] [Wikipedia-l] embassies and diplomats (fwd)

body:
On Thursday 26 September 2002 06:21 pm, Anthere wrote:
> - is it possible to watch several wikis from the same
> place ? I know there's the issue of confusion if it's
> a common list, or the issue of the multiplication of
> lists (could be solved by a drop-down (?) menu anyway.
> The core question is just, is it possible ?

This was proposed before by me and somebody else months ago. It was generally
thought at that time that it would be too confusing and too difficult to get
to work right (not to mention it would majorly add to feature creep). Maybe
things have changed since then.

Slight aside;

I still think Metapedia is practically useless because there is too much
emphasis on this blasted mailing list and because Metapedia has a separate
Recent Changes.

Of course wiki isn't the best way to have back and forth discussions....

I'm rambling. Estoy muy cansado. Opps, wrong list....

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
On Thursday 26 September 2002 12:01 pm, Brion wrote:
> Giskart wrote:
> >?Brion VIBBER wrote:
> >>?Pursuant to KQ's suggestions, I've started a page on the English
> >>?wikipedia:
> >>
> >>? ?http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Embassy
>
> and now Esperanto:
> ? ? ? http://eo.wikipedia.com/wiki/Vikipedia_Ambasadorejo
>
> >?A good idea be would ?it not be better to use the meta-wikipedia for
> >?this ? Now it is used to put stuff on that is out of please on the
> >?English wikipedia. ?I see a future for the Meta - wikipedia as the
> >?central conectionpoint between all wikipedias. A truly international,
> >?multi-lingual wiki for essays and other non-encycopedia stuff but also
> >?as the centre for international co-ordination. For Embassys or some
> >?respresantation. ?You can make different "Main Page"s on the same wiki.
> >?Somthing like this;
> > http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=Hoofdpagina
>
> ?>
>
> >?I think there will be more active in the Embassy pages if the are all on
> >?1 wiki. Then there are only ?only 2 wikipedias to monitor. . If the
> >?Embassy pages are all on the home-wikipedias i think some will be
> >?forgotten and the traffic, if any, will only be downstream from the
> >?English to the others but not upstream.
>
> My experience with Meta has been that I check it somewhere between very
> rarely and never, which makes it useless for me for discussion or site
> announcements. On the other hand, the wikis I participate in *editing* I
> check rather regularly (en, eo quite frequently, fr at least few times a
> week; I check de for the bug reports page), and so I'm much more likely
> to notice big news / help requests / policy discussions there. Likewise
> the mailing lists (eg intlwiki-l) come directly to my inbox once I've
> subscribed, so it's tough to ignore them.

Sorry Brion, but your logic here fails me (chicken and the egg scenario). The
Meta is practically useless for what it was made for because nobody uses it
for much of anything but a dumping ground of POV material. So by ignoring it,
you are extending its uselessness.

I really like the idea of having the meta be the neutral ground for all the
different Wikipedia projects and I am glad to see that several alternate
homepages in different languages have already popped-up. This trend should be
encouraged. Why not have the same setup for the Embassy pages? Isn't this
/exactly/ what the meta was made for?

If the software made it possible for people to see changes made to Metapedia
in their own language's Recent Changes then I can forsee much more activity
over at the Meta.

I'm with Giskart on this one.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Jeroen Heijmans

subject: [Wikipedia-l] re: Deletions and respect

body:
>
>
>Both Talks were of real interest, from a meta perspective. They should have
>been moved to meta, or moved to the Wikipedia:Historical Wikipedia pages
>space. Or at least so the argument goes. An argument/move which I was unable
>to make, since they were deleted summarily.
>
I don't see that if the talks were of any use why they weren't moved to
meta along with their articles. Somebody apparently found that
necessary, I was just cleaning up.

>I have trouble with the idea that people who are incapable of respecting the
>uncomplicated and clear deletion policy, after having been reminded of the
>basic procedures, should be allowed to delete pages.
>
And I don't really like people keeping a list of "Bias Talk". But that's
personal.


from_name: Larry Sanger

subject: [Intlwiki-l] [Wikipedia-l] embassies and diplomats

body:
On Sat, 28 Sep 2002, The Cunctator wrote:

> On 9/27/02 12:19 AM, "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> <snip> > Of course wiki isn't the best way to have back and forth
> discussions....
> > But it is a better way to develop consensus.

I'm not so sure.  Discussions on wiki, when they take the form of an
attempt to formulate a consensus document, are extremely susceptible to
one party framing a problem that is prejudicial (explicitly or subtly)
toward one point of view.  Then, if another party attempts to reframe the
problem posed by someone who insists strongly on getting his way, an edit
war ensues.  If that were how we settled all our policy issues, it would
be way too easy for a single person to have undue influence over the
policy-making process, and for an alleged consensus actually to be bogus.

Of course, this isn't the case when one uses the page basically as a
mailing list thread, as talk: pages often are.  But then it's the fact
that the wiki page resembles a mailing list that "levels the playing
field."

The nice thing about a mailing list is that nobody gets to frame a
problem; each participant is free to contribute and analyze.  (And other
participants are also free to delete messages without reading them; their
length doesn't dominate the page the way that enormous replies on a wiki
page does.)

So, while I still think Meta-Wikipedia still has a useful function (e.g.,
I'm glad I have an appropriate place for all my 'pedia-related essays),
I'm rather glad that a lot of the discussion has moved onto the mailing
lists.

Larry


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Deletions and respect.

body:
Maveric149 wrote:

>The Cunctator wrote:

>>Waiting four minutes is not following the deletion policy.

>If the page is question was junk then there is no time
>limit. And the "policy" you speak of is the "one week
>rule" for listed items which you know very well that
>you wrote yourself on the votes for deletion page and
>I later bolded. I stated in the edit summary that I
>agreed with it but that it "needed to have list
>approval". I don't remember getting this approval.

Does The Cunctator have a habit of modifying policy?
He edited [[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not]] a while back
to make it seem less likely that articles like
[[Stock market downturn of 2002]] are what Wikipedia is not.
(I mentioned it here, and later modified his modification,
but it got lost here amongs other things that I mentioned
at the same time.)

I myself would write something along the lines of
"Do not delete pages that are listed here
without waiting a reasonable period to allow for responses.".
And if pages that Cunc wants to save are deleted
before he's had a chance to make his response,
then ipso facto the period of waiting wasn't reasonable
(since Cunc, I believe, makes a point of checking the queue).
Nevertheless, mav is right that this should get list approval,
and then be mentioned here:

>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_policy_on_permanent_deletion_of_pages

-- Toby


body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>Axel Boldt wrote:

>>Imran Ghory wrote:

>>>How do you measure the importance of someone ?

>>Like I just did: a person is unimportant if his or her biography
>>is interesting/useful to almost no one.

>What's your quantifiable metrics of "interesting", "useful", and "almost
>no one"?

Not that we could ever measure this in practice with any precision,
but for a definition that we could officially attempt to estimate:
Ask each person to rank, on a percentage scale,
to what degree they find the biography interesting and useful.
Average these, and you have a percentage measure of importance.

I'd say that we should try to stick to important people now,
gradually adding the less important as we grow to insane size;
this is what I think that we should do in *every* field.
We cover the basics first; we eventually cover everything.

-- Toby


body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

>I thought that Wikipedia would be self-regulatory in this liberal
>manner, but the flood of messages on this list in the last month has
>focused on what should *not* be in the Wikipedia (stubs etc.).  I
>think this is sad and destructive.  I wanted the liberal approach,
>where anybody could write what they liked as long as Jimmy could
>afford the disk space.

Do you doubt that Wikipedia will end up like this?  I do not.
For myself, I only want to control the growth, keep it centred.
Those that would keep Wikipedia forever within traditional bounds
are doomed to failure in the end.  Yet Wikipedia is still small,
and in that respect still like the Encyclopaedia Britannica,
and we can learn from them how to keep such a small reference work
focused and balanced.  By 2005, we will be far beyond this, however.

-- Toby


body:
Maveric149 wrote:

>Brion VIBBER wrote:

>>Andre Engels wrote:

>>>Alternatively - since the old versions appear to be saved at the system
>>>anyway, what about creating a 'restore' function on the Deletion log?

>>If I go do that right now, will everyone SHUT THE FARDELS UP? :)

>Would it be possible to simply view what was contained in the page without
>restoring it?

If there is a "view" button next to each deletion on the log page
that pulls up the page, including its history, as if it were still alive,
then this would have all of the functionality of a soft delete
(for the purposes of The Cunctator's party), yet be less transparent,
so that naive readers are all the less likely to accidentally stumble
across material that was deleted for (usually, at least) a good reason.

Something like [[Special:Restorepage&title=...&timestamp=...]]
(the latter parameter in case of multiple deletions of the same page).
If you view this page while logged in as a sysop,
then it'd be really cool to replace the "Delete this page" link
with an "Undelete this page" link.  So pretty ^_^.

As for flowers, give me an address and a favorite colour.

-- Toby


from_name: Brion VIBBER

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> I should continue: everyone has a habit of modifying policy through their
> actions on Wikipedia. I have a habit of modifying policy explicitly. As
> should everyone else.
>
> I have changed policy pages to reflect de facto policies that I disagree
> with as well as ones that I agree with.
>
> The policy pages aren't sacred and shouldn't be considered as such; but they
> should be followed. If you (being a reasonable and good person) think it is
> unreasonable or detrimental to follow something on a policy page, then you
> should change the policy page.

IOW, the policy pages _describe_ project policy, they don't _define_ it.

It's been frequently noted that policy and documentation pages aren't
always consistent with practice. Sometimes this means the pages should
be changed, sometimes this means practice should be changed, sometimes
it means both.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> On Thursday 26 September 2002 06:21 pm, I wrote:
>>Andre Engels wrote:
>>> Alternatively - since the old versions appear to be saved at the system
>>> anyway, what about creating a 'restore' function on the Deletion log?
>>
>>If I go do that right now, will everyone SHUT THE FARDELS UP? :)
>
> Would it be possible to simply view what was contained in the page without
> restoring it?

I already explained how to do that via an SQL query*, but yes, that will
be possible in the interface too. I'll try to have it ready and online
sometime tonightish.

*For those who have just joined the class, see:
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-September/005359.html

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> On Thursday 26 September 2002 12:01 pm, Brion wrote:
>>My experience with Meta has been that I check it somewhere between very
>>rarely and never, which makes it useless for me for discussion or site
>>announcements. On the other hand, the wikis I participate in *editing* I
>>check rather regularly (en, eo quite frequently, fr at least few times a
>>week; I check de for the bug reports page), and so I'm much more likely
>>to notice big news / help requests / policy discussions there. Likewise
>>the mailing lists (eg intlwiki-l) come directly to my inbox once I've
>>subscribed, so it's tough to ignore them.
>
> Sorry Brion, but your logic here fails me (chicken and the egg scenario). The
> Meta is practically useless for what it was made for because nobody uses it
> for much of anything but a dumping ground of POV material. So by ignoring it,
> you are extending its uselessness.

Is that why it's useless, or do people use it that way _because_ it's
useless for what it was made for? Can you really say you know the answer?

> I really like the idea of having the meta be the neutral ground for all the
> different Wikipedia projects and I am glad to see that several alternate
> homepages in different languages have already popped-up. This trend should be
> encouraged. Why not have the same setup for the Embassy pages?

Because people need to be able to _find_ the multilingual meta paradise
first! That means having a page on your local wiki which can link to it
and report on important issues that have come up there that people
should check out... and that page, by any name, is the embassy. I see no
conflict here.

 > Isn't this /exactly/ what the meta was made for?

I always got the impression it was for pointing kooks at to keep them
out of our hair on the encyclopedic wiki. If we're all watching it,
where will we put them now? ;)

> If the software made it possible for people to see changes made to Metapedia
> in their own language's Recent Changes then I can forsee much more activity
> over at the Meta.

Seriously though, every time some method of merging meta-wiki changes
into the regular recentchanges is suggested (either by showing multiple
wikis' RC in one list, as I suggested in April, or by integrating it in
the main wiki(s) meta as a namespace) somebody says that the point of a
separate meta wiki was to keep meta stuff *out* of the regular RC.

> I'm with Giskart on this one.

You act as though I'm not. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On 26 Sep 2002, at 13:53, Axel Boldt wrote:

>
> --- Imran Ghory <ImranG at btinternet.com> wrote:
> > On 25 Sep 2002, at 19:53, Axel Boldt wrote:
> >
> > >A biography of
> > > an unimportant person is interesting/useful to almost no one,
> > > therefore it doesn't belong either.
> >
> > How do you measure the importance of someone ?
>
> Like I just did: a person is unimportant if his or her biography
> is interesting/useful to almost no one.

What is "almost no one", one, two, ten, a hundred people ?

Should we get rid of any articles which get less than X hits a year
as they're "interesting/useful to almost no one" ?

Imran


from_name: The Cunctator

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Biographies of unimportant people (was: "In
	memoriam")

body:
On 9/27/02 12:02 AM, "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> On Thursday 26 September 2002 06:21 pm, you wrote:
>> What is "almost no one", one, two, ten, a hundred people ?
>>
>> Should we get rid of any articles which get less than X hits a year
>> as they're "interesting/useful to almost no one" ?
>>
>> Imran
>
> Like everything else, each new submission is unique and its relevance to what
> we do here has to be weighed individually. So no you can't draw a distinct
> line, you can only have general guidelines in this regard. Therefore we can
> have the minor players of the human story, but they must be players and not
> just some guy who works and McDonald's, watches basketball on the weekends
> and is related to some other ordinary guy.

This, of course, is Mav's opinion, not a consensus policy.


body:
On 9/27/02 12:19 AM, "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

<snip>
> Of course wiki isn't the best way to have back and forth discussions....
>
But it is a better way to develop consensus.


body:
On 9/27/02 12:37 AM, "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Thursday 26 September 2002 12:01 pm, Brion wrote:
>> My experience with Meta has been that I check it somewhere between very
>> rarely and never, which makes it useless for me for discussion or site
>> announcements. On the other hand, the wikis I participate in *editing* I
>> check rather regularly (en, eo quite frequently, fr at least few times a
>> week; I check de for the bug reports page), and so I'm much more likely
>> to notice big news / help requests / policy discussions there. Likewise
>> the mailing lists (eg intlwiki-l) come directly to my inbox once I've
>> subscribed, so it's tough to ignore them.
>
> Sorry Brion, but your logic here fails me (chicken and the egg scenario). The
> Meta is practically useless for what it was made for because nobody uses it
> for much of anything but a dumping ground of POV material. So by ignoring it,
> you are extending its uselessness.
>
> I really like the idea of having the meta be the neutral ground for all the
> different Wikipedia projects and I am glad to see that several alternate
> homepages in different languages have already popped-up. This trend should be
> encouraged. Why not have the same setup for the Embassy pages? Isn't this
> /exactly/ what the meta was made for?
>
> If the software made it possible for people to see changes made to Metapedia
> in their own language's Recent Changes then I can forsee much more activity
> over at the Meta.

The original purpose of Meta was to balkanize discussion about the project
from the Wikipedia Recent Changes page. It was clear to me that would
inevitably lead (with the alternative of the mailing list) to the decay and
disuse of meta-discussion in the WikiWiki Way. And it has.

This can be repaired by unbalkanizing it and by unbalkanizing the mailing
list. Users should be able to include both meta and the mailing list updates
into the Recent Changes functionality.


body:
On 9/27/02 12:58 AM, "Toby Bartels" <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:

> Maveric149 wrote:
>
>> The Cunctator wrote:
>
>>> Waiting four minutes is not following the deletion policy.
>
>> If the page is question was junk then there is no time
>> limit. And the "policy" you speak of is the "one week
>> rule" for listed items which you know very well that
>> you wrote yourself on the votes for deletion page and
>> I later bolded. I stated in the edit summary that I
>> agreed with it but that it "needed to have list
>> approval". I don't remember getting this approval.
>
> Does The Cunctator have a habit of modifying policy?

Yes, I do. And so should everyone else.


body:
On 9/27/02 12:58 AM, "Toby Bartels" <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:

> Maveric149 wrote:
>
>> The Cunctator wrote:
>
>>> Waiting four minutes is not following the deletion policy.
>
>> If the page is question was junk then there is no time
>> limit. And the "policy" you speak of is the "one week
>> rule" for listed items which you know very well that
>> you wrote yourself on the votes for deletion page and
>> I later bolded. I stated in the edit summary that I
>> agreed with it but that it "needed to have list
>> approval". I don't remember getting this approval.
>
> Does The Cunctator have a habit of modifying policy?

I should continue: everyone has a habit of modifying policy through their
actions on Wikipedia. I have a habit of modifying policy explicitly. As
should everyone else.

I have changed policy pages to reflect de facto policies that I disagree
with as well as ones that I agree with.

The policy pages aren't sacred and shouldn't be considered as such; but they
should be followed. If you (being a reasonable and good person) think it is
unreasonable or detrimental to follow something on a policy page, then you
should change the policy page.


body:
On 9/27/02 1:01 AM, "Toby Bartels" <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> I'd say that we should try to stick to important people now,
> gradually adding the less important as we grow to insane size;
> this is what I think that we should do in *every* field.
> We cover the basics first; we eventually cover everything.

As long as you let others have different strategies, then that's great.

I say that each individual should do what they enjoy and are good at doing;
if someone wants to focus on one topic, and make it incredibly precise and
comprehensive, then I think that person should do that.

It's important to recognize that we have the law of large numbers on our
side; we can have individual goals that are not identical to collective
goals.


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Recent Changes extension

body:
Can this be added to the User Preferences panel?

Note; this is just a texty version.

Default Recent Changes page
Number of titles:            [100]
Number of hours:      [1|12|24|72]
Show minor edits:              [x]
Namespaces to display:
All [x]
Main: (encyclopedia entries)      [x] +Talk [x]
Wikipedia: (pages about the site) [x] +Talk [x]

The hidden motive is to prep for

Meta:
List:

or other languages, etc.


from_name: Lars Aronsson

body:
Axel Boldt wrote:
> Like I just did: a person is unimportant if his or her biography
> is interesting/useful to almost no one.

If a contributor finds it worth the while to write a bio on a person,
then that person is apparently interesting to that contributor.

I thought that Wikipedia would be self-regulatory in this liberal
manner, but the flood of messages on this list in the last month has
focused on what should *not* be in the Wikipedia (stubs etc.).  I
think this is sad and destructive.  I wanted the liberal approach,
where anybody could write what they liked as long as Jimmy could
afford the disk space.  Wikipedia is a radically new approach to
creating a useful knowledge resource, but everybody seems to be fully
occupied with reaching some obsolete 19th century ideals of what an
encyclopedia should be.  I wouldn't be surprised if next week somebody
suggests that Wikipedia articles should be arranged in alphabetic
order (yet another obsolete notion). I think putting "pedia" in the
name was a mistake.  This could be the Memex or project Xanadu or
your own Interpedia, which should be so much more than an old printed
encyclopedia.  Wikipedia should not be compared to Britannica.  We
should aim for 100 million articles, not 100 thousand.

Some new ideas that are coming out of the deletion discussion are
really useful, such as deleting a single version of an article rather
than the entire article.

However, I don't want to be the one to just complain.  I run my own
wiki in Swedish, completely liberal, without the pedia ambition and
without "pedia" in the name.  Now in its 11th month of existence, it
has become the world's 3rd biggest wiki after the English Wikipedia
and Ward Cunningham's c2.com, with 10,000 articles (comma count) out
of 16,000 pages.  In August it had 112 logged-in active contributors
to 11,000 edits (minor and major).  Page deletion is not allowed, and
nobody urges me to implement it.  Edit wars are under control.  It
gets media attention and everybody thinks it is fun, relaxed, and not
overly serious.  I've had no problems with copyright violations, which
is probably explained by the fact that file uploads are not allowed.
I have no mailing list, so discussion about policies and software are
kept to a minimum, and everybody can focus on writing articles.

Mine might be the world's 3rd biggest wiki, but my other website is
ten times larger, with 100,000 web pages full of Nordic literature,
and ten times older, since it started in December 1992.  Still, that
is a small hobby website with only 300 electronic books, only 100 of
which in facsimile, when compared to the big American "digital
library" websites.  We're only seeing the beginning yet.  This should
not be the time to discuss how to reduce the amount of contents.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Brion VIBBER wrote:
> IOW, the policy pages _describe_ project policy, they don't _define_ it.
>
> It's been frequently noted that policy and documentation pages aren't
> always consistent with practice. Sometimes this means the pages should
> be changed, sometimes this means practice should be changed, sometimes
> it means both.

Very well stated.  And policy is policy-by-consensus with only in rare
rare rare exceptions me stepping in to set something as definitive
(wikipedia is an encyclopedia, for example, as opposed to a joke
collection).

The nature of wiki is that there is often no final judge on matters
like these.  That's a problem, but it's also a huge benefit.

One thing it does ask of us: to work in a spirit of love.

--Jimbo


body:
Axel Boldt wrote:
> > What's your quantifiable metrics of "interesting", "useful", and
> > "almost no one"?
>
> Did I say I have or need one?

I actually tend to agree with Axel here.  I think it would be difficult to
specify a quantifiable metric, but I also think that this doesn't preclude us
from acknowledging the general point.

For the 9/11 victims, if someone were to challenge an entry by saying
"Who is this person?  Why is this person's biography interesting or
useful?  Who cares?" then there's an answer: "This person is one of
many _otherwise_ ordinary people who was a victim of an event of
first-rank historical importance.  Part of what makes his story
interesting is precisely that he was so uninteresting (from a
encyclopedic perspective, not, obviously to his friends and loved
ones) before."

I do think that if someone starts writing dozens of biographies of
random people who are not of any encyclopedic importance, not even
tangentially as in the present case, we'll have to worry about how to
deal with it.

But this is surely just a specific example of a more general problem
we will face eventually, i.e. as all of the 'important' topics are
covered, we will find that people are more and more writing on
'unimportant' topics, moving from the histories of big cities to the
histories of small towns to the histories of each particular anonymous
bland subdivision, to the history of Del Boca Vista West Phase III.

It'll be pretty exciting if we get to the point where the only things
left to do are have ideological fights over existing articles on
controversial subjects, add articles on new inventions, and add
articles on useless topics.  At that time, I think a significant
proportion of volunteer energy will turn naturally towards "packaging"
the raw content for various purposes.  (For example, a paper version
would have space constraints which would demand that we leave things
out that are in the raw version.)

--Jimbo


body:
The Cunctator wrote:
>The original purpose of Meta was to balkanize discussion about the project
>from the Wikipedia Recent Changes page. It was clear to me that would
>inevitably lead (with the alternative of the mailing list) to the decay and
>disuse of meta-discussion in the WikiWiki Way. And it has.
>
>This can be repaired by unbalkanizing it and by unbalkanizing the mailing
>list. Users should be able to include both meta and the mailing list updates
>into the Recent Changes functionality.

That's not an idea I would like at all.  I go to wikipedia when I want to write or edit articles, or do mindless updates like on the year or country articles.  I go to the mailing list expecting policy discussion or explanation of motives, etc.  I go to metapedia expecting hopelessly POV essays which typically don't merit response.

In my eyes, wikipedia is the workplace, the mailing list is the lounge, and metapedia is the storage closet.  I don't think that's a bad thing.  When I want to work, I don't always want to chitchat, and when I want to chitchat, I usually don't want to work.

kq


subject: [Wikipedia-l] wilwheaton.net

body:
--- Adam Williamson <aw280 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> Noticed something pretty cool while surfing around
> at random - Wikipedia
> got a plug by Wil Wheaton on 19th September.
> (www.wilwheaton.net is one
> of the most widely-read blogs on the internet, so
> hopefully that gave us
> a few new users...)

Yes, it did bring in a few new contributors. If you
swing by [[Wil Wheaton]], you'll see that Mr. Wheaton
himself added a brief bio.

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


body:
Brion VIBBER wrote:
> If I go do that right now, will everyone SHUT THE FARDELS UP? :)

I myself might my quietus make.

--Jimbo


body:
On Fri, 27 Sep 2002, The Cunctator wrote:

> > If the software made it possible for people to see changes made to Metapedia
> > in their own language's Recent Changes then I can forsee much more activity
> > over at the Meta.
>
> The original purpose of Meta was to balkanize discussion about the project
				      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> from the Wikipedia Recent Changes page.

But that's not how I and the vast majority of people who supported the
creation of Meta-Wikipedia would put it.  The fact of the matter is that
discussion of policy matters was beginning to dominate the Recent Changes
log and the article creation process, and nearly everyone (Cunctator at
least excepted) thought it was a problem.  The word "balkanize"  might
make it sound as if those of us in favor of creating Meta-Wikipedia wanted
to eliminate discussion of policy altogether.  Well, speaking for myself
anyway, that certainly wasn't the reason.  Keeping policy discussions
separate from article creation was a good thing, and I at least think it
still is.

But I do like the idea of having separate "Recent Changes" pages for
articles, for other established namespaces, *and* for a meta: namespace
and mailing list: namespace.

> It was clear to me that would
> inevitably lead (with the alternative of the mailing list) to the decay and
> disuse of meta-discussion in the WikiWiki Way. And it has.

It isn't clear to me that that has been altogether a bad thing.  The
WikiWiki Way is a grand Way, but it is not the only Way.  For purposes
of conversational back-and-forth, and arriving at consensus, the mailing
list format is arguably better.  Web pages can be used to summarize
conclusions.  Obviously I'm not saying this is the only way or that one
way is clearly better--just that our experience seems to indicate that
using the mailing list is better.

> This can be repaired by unbalkanizing it and by unbalkanizing the mailing
> list. Users should be able to include both meta and the mailing list updates
> into the Recent Changes functionality.

Yes, a separate Recent Changes page listing recent mailing list postings
would be a very nice feature!

Notice, I've been saying "separate" Recent Changes pages, because I think
it would be nice if these different discussion continued, by default, to
be *kept* separate, so that we can concentrate on creating encyclopedia
articles unmolested by totally different concerns.

What would be even nicer is if we had a Recent Changes page that could
combine different Recent Changes lists at the user's preference.  For
example, it would be nice if I could view the recent changes from
Philosophy, Psychology, Classics, and Religion, as well as the Wikipedia
namespace, the (to be created) Meta namespace, and the (to be created)
Mailing_List namespace, all on one page.  Then, if it became too much to
deal with, one could unselect a few of the namespaces on the preferences
page and blissful silence would descend.

Larry


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] embassies and diplomats

body:
Brion VIBBER wrote:

>
> (And really, those links should be able to vary by language.)

I did that already some days ago; look at the German site for an example
(http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin-Literatur has some).

I kept addall and pricescan, since they seem to cover German bookstores
as well.

Magnus


body:
On 9/27/02 9:03 AM, "koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com" <koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com>
wrote:

> The Cunctator wrote:
>> The original purpose of Meta was to balkanize discussion about the project
>> from the Wikipedia Recent Changes page. It was clear to me that would
>> inevitably lead (with the alternative of the mailing list) to the decay and
>> disuse of meta-discussion in the WikiWiki Way. And it has.
>>
>> This can be repaired by unbalkanizing it and by unbalkanizing the mailing
>> list. Users should be able to include both meta and the mailing list updates
>> into the Recent Changes functionality.
>
> That's not an idea I would like at all.  I go to wikipedia when I want to
> write or edit articles, or do mindless updates like on the year or country
> articles.  I go to the mailing list expecting policy discussion or explanation
> of motives, etc.  I go to metapedia expecting hopelessly POV essays which
> typically don't merit response.

Note that I write "Users should be *able* to..." They wouldn't have to. And
note that meta used to have a more useful purpose.


body:
On Fri, 27 Sep 2002, The Cunctator wrote:

> BTW, did you take a gander at
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:The_Cunctator/ByTopic (and then, for
> example, click on Philosophy)? It's not quite as effective as
>
> http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Recentchangeslinked&targ
> et=List_of_philosophical_topics
>
> but since it can be generated automatically, it's a good complement.

I did.  Both are good examples of the sort of thing we need, but I'd like
to see something more complete.  But these are both nice to have!

Larry


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Stub detector

body:
On 9/27/02 9:44 AM, "Magnus Manske" <magnus.manske at epost.de> wrote:

> An initial version of "stub detection" is running at Lee's test site.
> Links to stub articles (less than 500 chars) are shown in green.
> REDIRECTs are shown as normal links. For example, try
>   http://www.piclab.com/wikitest/wiki.phtml?title=Biology
>
> I suggest to
> * make the minimum size for a "real" article a user option
> * set it to zero as standard
> which means nobody gets this special mark-up, except they choose it in
> their prefernces. That would avoid confusion, especially among newcomers
> (blue links? and red ones? and green ones?).
> Also, everybody can decide how large an article has to be at least...
>
> PLEASE, gimme feedback, or I'll implement it as is! (just so the "hate
> it" can register in time, for once...)
>
* They need to be underlined.

* The color should be closer to blue. If you want to go nuts, you could see
what it looks like when the color is proportional to the length. That could
be pretty cool (perhaps useful?)

* For people who don't use color-links, there should be a "!" at the end,
perhaps.


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Stub detector

body:
At 03:44 PM 9/27/02 +0200, Magnus wrote:
>An initial version of "stub detection" is running at Lee's test site.
>Links to stub articles (less than 500 chars) are shown in green. REDIRECTs
>are shown as normal links. For example, try
>    http://www.piclab.com/wikitest/wiki.phtml?title=Biology
>
>I suggest to
>* make the minimum size for a "real" article a user option
>* set it to zero as standard
>which means nobody gets this special mark-up, except they choose it in
>their prefernces. That would avoid confusion, especially among newcomers
>(blue links? and red ones? and green ones?).
>Also, everybody can decide how large an article has to be at least...

I'd like an option to have the stubs in green, as they are, and the
nonexistent pages
with question marks instead of red. Red is attention-getting, but I read it
as "hey! Look!
Something cool!" rather than as "Hey! Help with this!"

--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


from_name: Gareth Owen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The Logo

body: What is the quote embedded in the logo?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Stub detector

body:
Magnus wrote:
> PLEASE, gimme feedback, or I'll implement it as is! (just so the "hate
> it" can register in time, for once...)
>
> Magnus
>
> P.S.: Same goes for the "Special:Maintenance" page at the same place,
> while you're at it :-)

Two comments about the "stub" links: they're green, ok, that's cool, but they're not underlined.  All other links, regardless of color, are.  At first it just looks like colored text and is not immediately apparent as a link.

[[Talk:]] pages should be excluded, probably.  I go there if I need to talk about something, regardless of how many people have talked there before me.

The maintenance feature is cool.  Will it be a simple matter to add to this page when a new feature comes about?

Best,

kq


from_name: Rob Brewer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The Logo

body:
At 11:16 27/09/02 +0100, Gareth Owen wrote:
>What is the quote embedded in the logo?

by a strange coincidence, I stumbled across this earlier today. See
[[Thomas Hobbes]] for the answer.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Stub detector

body:
On Friday 27 September 2002 10:47 am, Magnus Manske wrote:
> An initial version of "stub detection" is running at Lee's test site.
> Links to stub articles (less than 500 chars) are shown in green.
> REDIRECTs are shown as normal links. For example, try
> ? ? http://www.piclab.com/wikitest/wiki.phtml?title=Biology

This is way cool! Magnus to the rescue again. :) What about the total article
count? It has also been suggested that {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} should exclude
anything less than 500 bytes. Perhaps we could then have {{NUMBEROFENTRIES}}
that would use the current, far too permissive detection criteria.

> I suggest to
> * make the minimum size for a "real" article a user option
> * set it to zero as standard
> which means nobody gets this special mark-up, except they choose it in
> their prefernces. That would avoid confusion, especially among newcomers
> (blue links? and red ones? and green ones?).
> Also, everybody can decide how large an article has to be at least...

I could definitely see the utility of making this a user modifiable
preference. But having the global default set to zero kinda defeats the
"truth in advertising" argument that started this whole thread. New
contributors and readers quickly figure out what edit links are and I think
they will be able to quickly figure out what green (or !) links are.

Something that could state this very clearly would be a non-editable
boilerplate on each sub-500 byte article that said something like; "This is a
[[Wikipedia:How to write the perfect stub article|stub]] (very short page)
and is therefore not counted in our total article count."

But that would be icing on the cake.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
On 9/27/02 11:31 AM, "Larry Sanger" <lsanger at nupedia.com> wrote:

>
> What would be even nicer is if we had a Recent Changes page that could
> combine different Recent Changes lists at the user's preference.  For
> example, it would be nice if I could view the recent changes from
> Philosophy, Psychology, Classics, and Religion, as well as the Wikipedia
> namespace, the (to be created) Meta namespace, and the (to be created)
> Mailing_List namespace, all on one page.  Then, if it became too much to
> deal with, one could unselect a few of the namespaces on the preferences
> page and blissful silence would descend.

I agree totally. Those who want them separate can keep them separate, those
together, together.

BTW, did you take a gander at
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:The_Cunctator/ByTopic (and then, for
example, click on Philosophy)? It's not quite as effective as

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Recentchangeslinked&targ
et=List_of_philosophical_topics

but since it can be generated automatically, it's a good complement.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Stub detector

body:
On Friday 27 September 2002 10:47 am, you wrote:
> But please make the default setting say 250 chars. This will find the
> most gratuitous stubs, without affecting many real articles.
>
> Neil

250 is way too low to be at all useful and can never be consider to be
anything other than (at most) a definition. At 500 chars there is far more
space to actually start having encyclopedia articles.

Compare;
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subnational_entity   250 chars

With;
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hecale 500 chars

The first is just a definition, but the second actually has a definition
/and/ some encyclopedic information.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Adam Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] wilwheaton.net

body:
Noticed something pretty cool while surfing around at random - Wikipedia
got a plug by Wil Wheaton on 19th September. (www.wilwheaton.net is one
of the most widely-read blogs on the internet, so hopefully that gave us
a few new users...)
--
adamw


from_name: tarquin

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>On 9/27/02 12:19 AM, "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
><snip>
>
>
>>Of course wiki isn't the best way to have back and forth discussions....
>>
>>
>>
>But it is a better way to develop consensus.
>

A wiki discussion has the huge advantage of refactoring -- we can draw a
line and say "this is what we're up to" -- "this is what the question
boils down to: A,B or C? reasons for or against"; and then let the
discussion continue from there on.

I would be in favour if using Meta instead of this list, but a certain
honest ruthlessness in reducing pages of debate to simple principles
would be required.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Stub detector

body:
rose.parks at att.net wrote:
>      In regard to Mr. Manske proposed "stub dtector" scheme, below, I really thought
> that color coding was out - because it is inaccessible to blind people. I think this scheme is not a
> good idea without some alternative "stub detector" detectable by blind people.

Same problem as with the red links. Most simply, a stylesheet trick
could be pulled; in phase II, red links still contained the question
marks, just hidden. (The rendered HTML was cached, and only the style
sheet was changed according to user preferences, showing or hiding the
question marks, making the links black or red.)

>      In addition, I
> am reading the test page in Opera and there are no green underlining or words, only blue and red. Are
> we coding for Opera??

Waitaminute... in mozilla 1.2a I don't see any green; the stub links are
dark red. (BTW you have to log in, go to your preferences, and put in a
"stub threshold" to activate the feature.)

I find that I automatically interpret the dark red as "visited link", so
I tend to ignore any link so colored. Perhaps not the best choice for
what should be "I'm a stub! Fix me now!"

Green, of course, might not be the best choice for users with red/green
color-blindness.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Khendon

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Stub detector

body:
On Fri, Sep 27, 2002 at 03:44:15PM +0200, Magnus Manske wrote:
> An initial version of "stub detection" is running at Lee's test site.
> Links to stub articles (less than 500 chars) are shown in green.
> REDIRECTs are shown as normal links. For example, try
>    http://www.piclab.com/wikitest/wiki.phtml?title=Biology

Oooh, shiny. Except the green links aren't underlined, but the rest are.

As an aside, I'd forgotten the default was to underline links. How intensely
ugly. Urgh.

> I suggest to
> * make the minimum size for a "real" article a user option
> * set it to zero as standard
Sounds good - I don't see how somebody could have grounds for complaint...

--
Khendon  (Jason Williams)
khendon at khendon.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Stub detector

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> An initial version of "stub detection" is running at Lee's test site.
> Links to stub articles (less than 500 chars) are shown in green.
> REDIRECTs are shown as normal links. For example, try
>    http://www.piclab.com/wikitest/wiki.phtml?title=Biology
>
> I suggest to
> * make the minimum size for a "real" article a user option
> * set it to zero as standard
> which means nobody gets this special mark-up, except they choose it in
> their prefernces. That would avoid confusion, especially among
> newcomers (blue links? and red ones? and green ones?).
> Also, everybody can decide how large an article has to be at least...
>
> PLEASE, gimme feedback, or I'll implement it as is! (just so the "hate
> it" can register in time, for once...)
>
> Magnus
>
> P.S.: Same goes for the "Special:Maintenance" page at the same place,
> while you're at it :-)
>
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
Excellent! I like it.

But please make the default setting say 250 chars. This will find the
most gratuitous stubs, without affecting many real articles.

Neil


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Stub detector

body:
An initial version of "stub detection" is running at Lee's test site.
Links to stub articles (less than 500 chars) are shown in green.
REDIRECTs are shown as normal links. For example, try
    http://www.piclab.com/wikitest/wiki.phtml?title=Biology

I suggest to
* make the minimum size for a "real" article a user option
* set it to zero as standard
which means nobody gets this special mark-up, except they choose it in
their prefernces. That would avoid confusion, especially among newcomers
(blue links? and red ones? and green ones?).
Also, everybody can decide how large an article has to be at least...

PLEASE, gimme feedback, or I'll implement it as is! (just so the "hate
it" can register in time, for once...)

Magnus

P.S.: Same goes for the "Special:Maintenance" page at the same place,
while you're at it :-)


from_name: Giskart

body:
Larry Sanger wrote:

>[cut]
>It isn't clear to me that that has been altogether a bad thing.  The
>WikiWiki Way is a grand Way, but it is not the only Way.  For purposes
>of conversational back-and-forth, and arriving at consensus, the mailing
>list format is arguably better.  Web pages can be used to summarize
>conclusions.  Obviously I'm not saying this is the only way or that one
>way is clearly better--just that our experience seems to indicate that
>using the mailing list is better.
>
>

There is also still "Wikipedia Chat" .
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Chat
irc://opennet/wikipedia

Is there anybody who use it ?
There never seems to be any wikipedians online  there.

Giskart


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Stub detector

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>On Friday 27 September 2002 10:47 am, you wrote:
>
>
>>But please make the default setting say 250 chars. This will find the
>>most gratuitous stubs, without affecting many real articles.
>>
>>Neil
>>
>>
>
>250 is way too low to be at all useful and can never be consider to be
>anything other than (at most) a definition. At 500 chars there is far more
>space to actually start having encyclopedia articles.
>
>Compare;
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subnational_entity   250 chars
>
>With;
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hecale 500 chars
>
>The first is just a definition, but the second actually has a definition
>/and/ some encyclopedic information.
>
>-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>
>
>
Ok, you've convinced me. I change my vote for the default to 500.

Neil


from_name: rose.parks at att.net

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Stub detector

body:
Members,

     In regard to Mr. Manske proposed "stub dtector" scheme, below, I really thought
that color coding was out - because it is inaccessible to blind people. I think this scheme is not a
good idea without some alternative "stub detector" detectable by blind people.
     In addition, I
am reading the test page in Opera and there are no green underlining or words, only blue and red. Are
we coding for Opera??

              As Ever,

                Ruth Ifcher

--

On Fri, Sep 27, 2002 at 03:44:15PM +0200, Magnus Manske wrote:
> An initial version of "stub detection" is running at Lee's test site.
> Links to stub articles (less than 500 chars) are shown in green.
> REDIRECTs are shown as normal links. For example, try
>    http://www.piclab.com/wikitest/wiki.phtml?title=Biology

> I suggest to
> * make the minimum size for a "real" article a user option
> * set it to zero as standard


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Biographies of unimportant people

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>I'd say that we should try to stick to important people now,
>>gradually adding the less important as we grow to insane size;
>>this is what I think that we should do in *every* field.
>>We cover the basics first; we eventually cover everything.

>As long as you let others have different strategies, then that's great.

Certainly I do, grudgingly though I may do it ^_^.
I will argue against including biographies of every 9/11 victim,
but I won't argue for removing them Wikipedia
(as opposed to removing the eulogies, but that's an NPOV issue of course).

>I say that each individual should do what they enjoy and are good at doing;
>if someone wants to focus on one topic, and make it incredibly precise and
>comprehensive, then I think that person should do that.

Yes, and I myself am doing that with certain math articles.
I do think (as advice, not as anything that should be enforced)
that within this topic, the individual shoul start with the basics.

>It's important to recognize that we have the law of large numbers on our
>side; we can have individual goals that are not identical to collective
>goals.

This is true; while I'm doing many other things on the side here,
the reason that I joined was the opportunity that I saw
to write a comprehensive mathematics encyclopaedia.
That this is incorporated within a general encyclopaedia,
allowing for cross references to nonmathematical topics,
is a bonus.

-- Toby


body:
Brion VIBBER wrote:

>The Cunctator wrote:

>>I should continue: everyone has a habit of modifying policy through their
>>actions on Wikipedia. I have a habit of modifying policy explicitly. As
>>should everyone else.

What was being discussed was your modifying policy *pages*.
That doesn't change what the policy *is*, implicitly or explicitly.
Implicit change in policy: change over time in de facto behaviour.
Explicit change in policy: discussion that results in a policy decision.
Editing policy pages is an appropriate response to either of these,
but it is not either of these.

>>I have changed policy pages to reflect de facto policies that I disagree
>>with as well as ones that I agree with.

This would be an edit that responds to an implicit change in policy.
Very reasonable.  It would not be a change in policy itself.

>>The policy pages aren't sacred and shouldn't be considered as such; but they
>>should be followed. If you (being a reasonable and good person) think it is
>>unreasonable or detrimental to follow something on a policy page, then you
>>should change the policy page.

If you edit a policy page to say that something is policy when it isn't,
then you're not changing policy, you're lying about policy.
And this paragraph quite at odds with your previous paragraph.
After you edit a policy page to reflect a policy that you disagree with,
do you then change it right back since you think that
it would be detrimental to follow the policy that you disagree with?
Presumably not, because you *are* a reasonable (and good) person.

>IOW, the policy pages _describe_ project policy, they don't _define_ it.

That doesn't seem to be the same as what Cunc said at all.
More precisely, it seems to be the same as Cunc's second paragraph,
and antithetical to his first and third paragraphs.

My understanding is that policy is to be decided (or defined if you will)
by discussion on talk pages and the mailing list (and in theory meta).
People have said as much here before without confrontation.
Once that has been done, the policy page should reflect the decision;
that much should be obvious.

Mav described an edit that Cunc made to (not a policy page as such but)
the part at the beginning of [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]]
that describes (or should describe) the policy for using that page.
Mav didn't think it had been discussed properly
(and it certainly didn't reflect de facto practice),
which is why he thought that it should be confirmed by the list.
So if mav was right about the lack of discussion,
and I've been right about how policy is decided,
then mav was right that the edit was premature.

I would like to be able to cite policy pages when I want to cite policy.
Thus, it's important that these pages (and the policy sections of other pages)
be accurate about what the policy actually is.
In particular, if policy is in the process of being discussed
(and thus decided, or defined), policy pages shouldn't be edited
to reflect the opinion of one side of the discussion.

>It's been frequently noted that policy and documentation pages aren't
>always consistent with practice. Sometimes this means the pages should
>be changed, sometimes this means practice should be changed, sometimes
>it means both.

Right.  But editing the policy page is not the way to decide the issue.
I hope that you agree.

-- Toby


from_name: Tom Parmenter

subject: [Wikipedia-l] generic markup and miscoded templates

body:
|From: Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu>
|Content-Disposition: inline
|Sender: wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
|Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 21:36:09 -0700
|
|Tom Parmenter wrote:
|
|>I have started a conversation in [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject
|>U.S. Counties]] about the fact that the templates for country, state,
|>county, and city all use the wrong markup, that is, sections headed
|>with === instead of ==.  I think this is important, but god knows
|>there are going to be a lot of erroneous articles.  I wish I'd noticed
|>before there were so many counties done by the redoubtable Ram-Man.
|
|I think that having good HTML produced is moderately important.
|And I think that making editing easy and intuitive is very important.
|What is not important, however, is that the number of equal signs
|in the latter match up precisely with the number in the tag in the former.
|
|When rendering a page, we should first measure all of the header markups
|and then render the shortest as <h2>, the next as <h3>, and so on.
|(Anybody that really needs a header of a specific size
|can still create this by putting the HTML tag in directly.)
|Then you can start with == or ===, or even = or =========,
|and it will still render as <h2> if it's the shortest one.
|
|Best of all, the code to do this detection already exists in PediaWiki;
|it's being used to decide what style of automatic header numbering to use.
|(Not that I've ever looked at the code), but this should be an easy one.
|
|Tom is happy, because good HTML is being produced.
|[I forget who the principal opponent is] is happy,
|because current articles don't have to be rewritten.
|At least I hope that y'all're happy; responses?
|

Tom is unhappy because Tom doesn't care about good HTML; Tom wants
good generic markup in the Wikipedia that will permit various
processors, HTML and otherwise, including future processors that we
know nothing about, to produce output that is organized and presented
as it was originally designed to be presented in the Wikipedia.

Spaghetti code is spaghetti code, even when it's text.

Put garbage in, and garbage comes out, even when it's text.

Each article in the Wikipedia is an entry in a database.  Entries in
databases ought to be organized so that they will be interpreted
correctly by whatever application is looking at them.  That means
putting things in the right slots, which is why we use templates for
common forms of articles, and why we attempt to follow a regular
style, and what is the real purpose of generic markup.

In the specific case of the == and === and ====, that means that not
only will the headlines be presented in appropriately sized faces, but
that the organization of the article can be "understood" by an
application that is, say, looking only for External Links, or, say,
creating an outline from a Wikipedia article, or, who knows what some
future application might be able to do with properly organized
material that it can parse according to some well established rules.

Of course, that is all an ideal and there are thousands of articles
that don't conform, but if new articles conform and old articles are
fixed by people who understand that the present Wikipedia is not the
only way the articles in the Wikipedia will or can be used, then the
Wikipedia will be better, worth more, used more, and last longer.

The genial and hardworking Ram-Man, by the way, has already fixed all
the city, county, state, and whatever templates to work correctly in
the future without any fuss.

That naive and cranky guy,

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Policy

body:
On Fri, 2002-09-27 at 23:59, Toby Bartels wrote:

> My understanding is that policy is to be decided (or defined if you will)
> by discussion on talk pages and the mailing list (and in theory meta).
> People have said as much here before without confrontation.
> Once that has been done, the policy page should reflect the decision;
> that much should be obvious.

This is where you're wrong. In general, policy is decided by editing the
policy pages. If there's contention, then it moves to the talk pages.
Only in the rare case where this is somehow "dangerous" (because the
policy has sweeping and immediate consequence) or the process breaks
down horribly does it need to go to the mailing list.

This is how it's worked historically, and how it should work in the
future. The alternative is entirely too hierarchical and bureaucratic.

<snip>
>
> Right.  But editing the policy page is not the way to decide the issue.
> I hope that you agree.

Nope! I hope you'll be able to understand why editing policy pages is
(as a general rule of thumb) the way to decide the issue.

In general, policy pages benefit from direct editing in the same way as
article pages do; where the cumulative edits on articles influence them
towards comprehensiveness and objectivity, the cumulative edits on the
policy pages influence them toward robustness and fairness.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Policy

body:
On Sat, 2002-09-28 at 01:24, The Cunctator wrote:
> On Fri, 2002-09-27 at 23:59, Toby Bartels wrote:
> > Right.  But editing the policy page is not the way to decide the issue.
> > I hope that you agree.
>
> Nope! I hope you'll be able to understand why editing policy pages is
> (as a general rule of thumb) the way to decide the issue.

Side note: I do agree, if by "decide the issue" one means "make an
immutable decision". Under that definition, no policy issue should ever
be decided. Thus editing the policy page is not the way to decide the
issue, but neither is anything else. Now if "decide the issue" means to
come up with a mutable decision, with some acceptable degree of error,
then editing the policy page is the way.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] order of lists of works & prizes

body:
tarquin wrote:

> I'll work on the Nobel lists at some point -- one of them (physics I
> think) is *really* nicely laid-out, with details of *what* the prize
> was awarded for, as well as the recipient. I'd like to make the others
> look the same.

Physics and Peace.  The latter also shows where the winners came from,
which is another bit of information that people like to know.

>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Policy

body:
On 9/28/02 7:42 AM, "Andre Engels" <engels at uni-koblenz.de> wrote:
> > This is how it's worked historically, and how it should work in the
> > future. The alternative is entirely too hierarchical and bureaucratic.

> Doing it your way would either lead to dictatorship of the most bold ones,
> or to edit wars.

That's as absurd as saying, Doing it your way would either lead to
dictatorship of the most bold subscribed ones, or to flame wars.

> Suppose I want A and you want B. You change the policy page. There are two
> possibilities:
> 1. I decide to live with the policy even though I do not agree with it, and
>  you have single-sidedly decided the issue. Not fair.
> 2. I change it back, and perhaps someone else who is of yet another opinion
>  changes it again. Thus, we get into an edit war. Not robust.

First, those choices are not the only ones; second, your reasoning with #2
is flawed. Your other choices:

  3. You can simply ignore the policy, as you have done in practice.
  4. You can express your disagreement on the Talk page or on meta or on
   your user page or on the mailing list.

The flawed reasoning with #2 is simply that changes to a page do not an edit
war necessarily make. If that were so, then Wikipedia wouldn't work. A quote
from the FAQ: "We assume that the world is full of reasonable people and
that collectively they can arrive eventually at a reasonable conclusion,
despite the worst efforts of a very few wreckers. It's called optimism."


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [Wikipedia-l] A question about "Crown copyright"

body:
Various *.gov.uk sites have material that would be useful in Wikipedia
articles.  However, HM Government claims "Crown copyright" to that
material, and specifies:

:The material featured on this site is subject to Crown copyright
protection unless otherwise indicated. The Crown copyright protected
material (other than the Royal Arms and departmental or agency logos)
may be reproduced free of charge in any format or medium provided it is
reproduced accurately and not used in a misleading context. Where any of
the Crown copyright items on this site are being republished or copied
to others, the source of the material must be identified and the
copyright status acknowledged.

:Images on this site may not be reproduced without payment of a fee to
the Image Library.

:The permission to reproduce Crown protected material does not extend to
any material on this site which is identified as being the copyright of
a third party. Authorisation to reproduce such material must be obtained
from the copyright holders concerned.

:The Public Record Office encourages users to establish hypertext links
to this site.

My question is this: can we use their material, as long as we reproduce
it accurately and not in a misleading context, and credit it like we
credit FOLDOC and other sources?  The license does not say anything
about derivitive work.

--~~~ the Epopt

--
 Sean Barrett
 sean at epoptic.com


from_name: Larry Sanger

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Policy

body:
A few more things need to be said about this:

(1) Most, if not all, of the most important policy decisions have already
long since been (at least tentatively) settled upon and formulated.

(2) Most statements of policy, especially if they've been around for long,
have been looked at again and again by Wikipedians new and old.

(3) Unlike the case in the first few months of the project, when a lot of
the most basic policy was being decided on, there are now scores of people
who are *very* familiar with the finer points of policy, and with their
justification.

Each of these points individually implies that any significant change to a
long-standing statement of policy *probably* demands some prior
discussion.  And such prior discussion probably should happen on the
mailing list, mainly because that's where those who know and care about
policy happen to expect policy decisions to be made.  I can think of some
exceptions; for example, if some (for whatever reason) clearly and
uncontroversially defunct policy statement still hasn't been updated, it's
just a public service that the policy be changed, and a talk: page comment
is probably all that's needed.

Larry


body:
This has been hanging around for some time, with most people in favour,
and only 1 1/2 objections.

In answer to Toby, I think we should choose a standard because
consistency of presentation is important in a body of work such as an
enclyclopedia. (The information itself is more important, of course.)
If I found in a paper encyclopedia that the list of Nobel Laureates went
one way, but Pulitzer Prizes went the other, I would be pretty unimpressed.

In asnwer to LDC, chronological lists are a form of potted history. The
Nobel lists give a quick overview of developments in a field such as
Physics; sports records such as the 100m show how human sporting
achievement has progressed over the last century.
Likewise, lists of novels or films show the development of the artist in
question.
I think the difference with film biog sites that give lists starting
from today is that these sites seek to give a "current snapshot" -- the
star as they are *today*.
An encyclopedia, though, seeks to show the complete history of that
person, how they develop to become who they are at the time of writing.

Anyway, we have bigger fish to fry on this list, so since this had only
minor objections, I think we can say it's Manual of Style policy
(allowing for exceptions, of course), and move on.

I'll work on the Nobel lists at some point -- one of them (physics I
think) is *really* nicely laid-out, with details of *what* the prize was
awarded for, as well as the recipient. I'd like to make the others look
the same.

Toby Bartels wrote:

>tarquin wrote at last:
>
>
>
>>IMO lists of prize awards or works are in a sense timelines, and as such
>>should go forwards.
>>what are your opinions?
>>
>>
>
>Why must we choose a standard?
>Since we're mixed up now, and either method is clearly usable,
>let this be like British vs American spelling.
>We could even add to the Manual of Style that either is OK,
>to help head off edit wars and arguments in Talk pages.
>(One can still argue in a Talk page why that particular article is special,
>and needs to go one way or another.)
>
>That said, I prefer going forward, if we do pick something.
>
>


from_name: Toby Bartels

body:
Ortolan88 wrote in part:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>When rendering a page, we should first measure all of the header markups
>>and then render the shortest as <h2>, the next as <h3>, and so on.
>>(Anybody that really needs a header of a specific size
>>can still create this by putting the HTML tag in directly.)
>>Then you can start with == or ===, or even = or =========,
>>and it will still render as <h2> if it's the shortest one.

>>Tom [Ortolan88] is happy, because good HTML is being produced.
>>[I forget who the principal opponent is] is happy,
>>because current articles don't have to be rewritten.
>>At least I hope that y'all're happy; responses?

>Tom is unhappy because Tom doesn't care about good HTML; Tom wants
>good generic markup in the Wikipedia that will permit various
>processors, HTML and otherwise, including future processors that we
>know nothing about, to produce output that is organized and presented
>as it was originally designed to be presented in the Wikipedia.

Ah, so it was the *wiki* code that you wanted to be robust,
not so much the resulting HTML; that's a good attitude.

>In the specific case of the == and === and ====, that means that not
>only will the headlines be presented in appropriately sized faces, but
>that the organization of the article can be "understood" by an
>application that is, say, looking only for External Links, or, say,
>creating an outline from a Wikipedia article, or, who knows what some
>future application might be able to do with properly organized
>material that it can parse according to some well established rules.

Why can't these other parsers (which I agree will exist in the future)
parse the header markup according to the same rule that I just suggested?

>Of course, that is all an ideal and there are thousands of articles
>that don't conform, but if new articles conform and old articles are
>fixed by people who understand that the present Wikipedia is not the
>only way the articles in the Wikipedia will or can be used, then the
>Wikipedia will be better, worth more, used more, and last longer.

And in the meantime, these thousands of articles are rendered badly.
If we change the HTML rendering (thereby changing the standard
for any future parsers) to make the primary header always <h2>,
then these thousands of articles will be rendered correctly.
And then you and Ram-Man -- and me for that matter, for I do this too --
can put the wiki code in specific pages in a consistent style at our leisure.

-- Toby


from_name: Jim McKeeth

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Historical anniversaries

body:
Looking at the historical anniversary pages for days I think it would be
more logical to order them like this:

Day of the year
Holidays
Events
Births
Deaths

With holidays moved up to the second item from the last.  The reason is
that the holiday is celebrated every year, so it makes more sense to have
it nearer the top so it is easier to find.  You could argue that everyone
knows December 25th is Christmas, but to those who celebrate Christmas,
that is the most significant thing about that, and you would be surprised
how many people don't know that it is Christmas.

I am more then willing to start making the changes, but I would like some
comments on this first so I don't start a format war.

I posted this to
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Historical_anniversaries/Example as well
and welcome comments there.

-Jim McKeeth


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Policy

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>My understanding is that policy is to be decided (or defined if you will)
>>by discussion on talk pages and the mailing list (and in theory meta).
>>People have said as much here before without confrontation.
>>Once that has been done, the policy page should reflect the decision;
>>that much should be obvious.

>This is where you're wrong. In general, policy is decided by editing the
>policy pages. If there's contention, then it moves to the talk pages.
>Only in the rare case where this is somehow "dangerous" (because the
>policy has sweeping and immediate consequence) or the process breaks
>down horribly does it need to go to the mailing list.

I don't know about "is" decided.  I've only noticed you doing this;
others at least mention the edit in the policy page's talk page,
thus explicitly inviting discussion.

>This is how it's worked historically, and how it should work in the
>future. The alternative is entirely too hierarchical and bureaucratic.

I don't see what's hierarchical about the mailing list, much less talk pages.
I do agree that discussing every policy change is bureaucratic,
but that's because I forgot to mention that most policy changes
are the implicit kind, changed because of a change in actual practice.
But these are the policies that are rarely written down;
we discuss policy that's written up on pages, these days.

>In general, policy pages benefit from direct editing in the same way as
>article pages do; where the cumulative edits on articles influence them
>towards comprehensiveness and objectivity, the cumulative edits on the
>policy pages influence them toward robustness and fairness.

The problem is that policy pages will be inaccurate
if they are changed to what policy should be but is not.
(Unless you think that policy is defined to be whatever's on the page,
an unlikely position if a vandal replaces the text with "This is stupid.".)
OTOH, policy proposals can be edited in the wiki way on talk pages
(which is the best place for it; I don't like the mailing list format either).
While I've only noticed you edit major policy pages without discussion,
I've noticed several occasions where text was edited on a talk page
before being incorporated into the policy page itself,
so that agreement could be established for the new text
before it appeared on the page.

This is an encyclopaedia; we strive for accuracy ^_^.

-- Toby


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Policy

body:
> On Fri, 2002-09-27 at 23:59, Toby Bartels wrote:
>
> > My understanding is that policy is to be decided (or defined if you will)
> > by discussion on talk pages and the mailing list (and in theory meta).
> > People have said as much here before without confrontation.
> > Once that has been done, the policy page should reflect the decision;
> > that much should be obvious.

The Cunctator wrote:

> This is where you're wrong. In general, policy is decided by editing the
> policy pages. If there's contention, then it moves to the talk pages.
> Only in the rare case where this is somehow "dangerous" (because the
> policy has sweeping and immediate consequence) or the process breaks
> down horribly does it need to go to the mailing list.

That's where I disagree. A policy is first discussed, then implemented.
Implementation is done by putting it on a policy page. If I am of the opinion
that a certain thing should be policy, I put it on the talk page or the
mailing list. Then people react to it, and if there is sufficient agreement
without much disagreement, it can be stated as policy. If there is
disagreement, it is discussed and hopefully a conclusion is reached.

You don't first include a policy, then discuss it, that's the wrong way
around.

> This is how it's worked historically, and how it should work in the
> future. The alternative is entirely too hierarchical and bureaucratic.

Doing it your way would either lead to dictatorship of the most bold ones,
or to edit wars.

> > Right.  But editing the policy page is not the way to decide the issue.
> > I hope that you agree.
>
> Nope! I hope you'll be able to understand why editing policy pages is
> (as a general rule of thumb) the way to decide the issue.

No, I don't.

> In general, policy pages benefit from direct editing in the same way as
> article pages do; where the cumulative edits on articles influence them
> towards comprehensiveness and objectivity, the cumulative edits on the
> policy pages influence them toward robustness and fairness.

Suppose I want A and you want B. You change the policy page. There are two
possibilities:
1. I decide to live with the policy even though I do not agree with it, and
   you have single-sidedly decided the issue. Not fair.
2. I change it back, and perhaps someone else who is of yet another opinion
   changes it again. Thus, we get into an edit war. Not robust.

Andre Engels


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
On Saturday 28 September 2002 05:33 am, you wrote:
> The genial and hardworking Ram-Man, by the way, has already fixed all
> the city, county, state, and whatever templates to work correctly in
> the future without any fuss. ?
>
> That naive and cranky guy,
>
> Tom Parmenter
> Ortolan88

I kinda prefer the simpler and more obvious syntax of == meaning H2. However
I have used === because == is rendered way too big.

I will change === to == whenever I see it is wrongly used if and only if ==
is rendered smaller.

Whatever we do it should be consistent and decided upon -- either way there
are thousands of pages that need to be fixed.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia is not Usenet (was Re: Re: Policy)

body:
On Saturday 28 September 2002 05:33 am, The Cunctato wrote:
> This is where you're wrong. In general, policy is decided by
editing the
> policy pages. If there's contention, then it moves to the talk pages.
> Only in the rare case where this is somehow "dangerous" (because the
> policy has sweeping and immediate consequence) or the process breaks
> down horribly does it need to go to the mailing list.

Where is this written? Policy has to be decided first before being changed.
Period. I think you are pretty much alone in your assertion that policy
can be changed unilaterally and then must be challenged if somebody
disagrees. This may seem logical to you because you are so accustomed to
confrontation (being an old Usenet guy) but for others that just want to work
in harmony under a consistent (yet evolving) set of guidelines, this is not
the way to do things.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
On Saturday 28 September 2002 05:33 am,  tarquin wrote:
> This has been hanging around for some time, with most people in favour,
> and only 1 1/2 objections.
>
> In answer to Toby, I think we should choose a standard because
> consistency of presentation is important in a body of work such as an
> enclyclopedia. (The information itself is more important, of course.)
> If I found in a paper encyclopedia that the list of Nobel Laureates went
> one way, but Pulitzer Prizes went the other, I would be pretty unimpressed.

Perhaps LDC is so used to logs (where it is logical to have new items at top)
that this is clouding the issue at hand.

My vote is to have list chronological with the earliest item listed first. If
the list gets too long thus forcing readers to page through old items to get
to new ones, then it is time to break up the list into / pages.

Of course, anything with the explicit word "log" in the title should list new
items at the top. This should make it clear.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Historical anniversaries

body:
Vicki wrote:
>[snip] and I think more people go to such pages for
>"what happened today" than for "is it a holiday". Newspaper lists of this
>sort don't
>usually bother with holidays at all.
>
>Also, yes the holiday is celebrated every year, but it's also the
>anniversary of
>Isaac Newton's birth every year.

I also don't agree that the holidays should go at the top of the page.  I'm generally not as interested in what holiday it might be as I am in more historical events such as rebellions, battles, assassinations, etc.

kq


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Historical anniversaries

body:
At 01:34 PM 9/28/02 -0600, Jim wrote:
>Looking at the historical anniversary pages for days I think it would be
>more logical to order them like this:
>
>Day of the year
>Holidays
>Events
>Births
>Deaths
>
>With holidays moved up to the second item from the last.  The reason is
>that the holiday is celebrated every year, so it makes more sense to have
>it nearer the top so it is easier to find.  You could argue that everyone
>knows December 25th is Christmas, but to those who celebrate Christmas,
>that is the most significant thing about that, and you would be surprised
>how many people don't know that it is Christmas.
>
>I am more then willing to start making the changes, but I would like some
>comments on this first so I don't start a format war.
>
>I posted this to
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Historical_anniversaries/Example as
>well and welcome comments there.

I disagree. The holidays aren't all fixed (there are entries about
Christian movable
feasts on some days, for example), and I think more people go to such pages for
"what happened today" than for "is it a holiday". Newspaper lists of this
sort don't
usually bother with holidays at all.

Also, yes the holiday is celebrated every year, but it's also the
anniversary of
Isaac Newton's birth every year.

I posted an expanded version of this on the Wiki page in question.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


from_name: Jens Frank

body:
On Sat, Sep 28, 2002 at 10:29:54AM -0700, Sean Barrett wrote:
> Various *.gov.uk sites have material that would be useful in Wikipedia
> articles.  However, HM Government claims "Crown copyright" to that
> material, and specifies:
>
> :The material featured on this site is subject to Crown copyright
> protection unless otherwise indicated. The Crown copyright protected
> material (other than the Royal Arms and departmental or agency logos)
> may be reproduced free of charge in any format or medium provided it is
> reproduced accurately and not used in a misleading context. Where any of
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I think this forbids derivative works. So I don't think we might use it.

JeLuF


from_name: Jeroen Heijmans

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Policy

body:
Cunctator wrote:

>>First, those choices are not the only ones; second, your reasoning with #2
>>is flawed. Your other choices:
>>
>>  3. You can simply ignore the policy, as you have done in practice.
>>
Why have a policy in the first place, then?

>
>  4. You can express your disagreement on the Talk page or on meta or on
>   your user page or on the mailing list.
>
I thought your point was that everybody should just be editing the
policy if they disagreed ("policy is decided by editing the policy
pages"), so then this would not be an option.

>The flawed reasoning with #2 is simply that changes to a page do not an edit
>war necessarily make. If that were so, then Wikipedia wouldn't work. A quote
>from the FAQ: "We assume that the world is full of reasonable people and
>that collectively they can arrive eventually at a reasonable conclusion,
>despite the worst efforts of a very few wreckers. It's called optimism."
>
There's a big difference between Wikipedia articles and policy pages.
The articles are about things that we do not have control of. We may
have opinions about them, but it's been agreed that we try to present
these opinions neutrally. However, we DO have control over the Wikipedia
policies, and our own opinions DO count. Even if I'm reasonable, my
opinion on many issue may be completely different with that of other
Wikipedians (it frequently is), but there is no NPOV to "neutralise" our
policies. The only way to change or formulate policy is by discussing it
first. The policy pages are meant for Wikipedians to use as a reference.
If I'd just go and change it to my personal opinion, that gives a wrong
picture (unless that personal opinions happens to be the de facto
policy) and things could get really messed up.


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikipedia-l] View and restore deleted pages

body:
I've added a (presently for sysops only) Special:Undelete, which should
appear as "View and restore deleted pages" in the special pages list. It
lists the archived deleted pages (the majority of which are pure drivel
and should be flushed at some point), and you can view the archived
pages and their histories and optionally restore them to life.

Restoring a page with the same title as one that currently exists will
tack the deleted page's history onto the end of the existing one's.

The interface is still rather rough and not yet fully integrated with
the deletion log (ie, links to undelete perhaps should appear next to
deletion notices, and restorations should definitely be listed in the
same log), and I probably haven't tested it as thoroughly as I ought to
have.

It is to be considered experimental, so please be gentle with it. If Lee
wants to set it up on the piclab server, less gentle testing is I'm sure
welcome there. :)  I'd offer my own test server, but it's currently
behind a modem (wah!)

(File is in CVS.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] View and restore deleted pages


subject: [Wikipedia-l] OneLook

body:
Andre Wrote:
>> I have found a problem with the Wikipedia entries on Outlook: If one tries
>> to get a Wikipedia page with a name that is made of more than one words, it
>> tries to get the page with spaces instead of underscores. Could that be
>> improved?
>
>Sorry, 'Outlook' should be 'OneLook' of course...

I tested it out, and it's still resulting in the right address ... are there times when it doesn't?

kq


subject: [Wikipedia-l] OneLook

body:
>Andre wrote:
>Well, whenever I try it, things go wrong. For example, when I try to search
>"George Bush" on OneLook, the second hit is Wikipedia. If I click on it, it
>brings me to
>"http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/George Bush", which gets interpreted as
>[[GeorgeBush]] rather than [[George Bush]].

For me, using Mozilla 1.0 or IE 5.5 for WinME, that results in http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/George%20Bush , with the space encoded as %20.  What browser are you using?

Maybe there's a way to force the links to send with underlines instead of spaces, so the results will work in all browsers?

kq


subject: [Wikipedia-l] OneLook

body:
koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
>>Andre wrote:
>>Well, whenever I try it, things go wrong. For example, when I try to search
>>"George Bush" on OneLook, the second hit is Wikipedia. If I click on it, it
>>brings me to
>>"http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/George Bush", which gets interpreted as
>>[[GeorgeBush]] rather than [[George Bush]].
[..]
> Maybe there's a way to force the links to send with underlines instead of spaces,
 > so the results will work in all browsers?

(Netscape 4.x is the most common offender here, it gets confused about
spaces.)

I expect that replacign space with underscores in the title list they're
searching through will do the right thing; I assume their search is
already built to deal with underscores (such as we required in our
incoming URLs pre-February).

Alternatively, Onelook can properly URL-encode their URLs before
dropping them in an HTML page. In either case, that's something to deal
with at their end.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] OneLook

body:
--- Andre Engels <engels at uni-koblenz.de> wrote:
> > Andre Wrote:
> > >> I have found a problem with the Wikipedia
> entries on Outlook: If one tries
> > >> to get a Wikipedia page with a name that is
> made of more than one words, it
> > >> tries to get the page with spaces instead of
> underscores. Could that be
> > >> improved?
> > >
> > >Sorry, 'Outlook' should be 'OneLook' of course...
> >
> > I tested it out, and it's still resulting in the
> right address ... are
> > there times when it doesn't?
>
> Well, whenever I try it, things go wrong. For
> example, when I try to search
> "George Bush" on OneLook, the second hit is
> Wikipedia. If I click on it, it
> brings me to
> "http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/George Bush", which
> gets interpreted as
> [[GeorgeBush]] rather than [[George Bush]].

I just tried your example, along with other multi-word
searches, and they worked fine for me. What browser
are you using?

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


from_name: James Zitzmann

subject: [Wikipedia-l] OneLook

body:
OneLook can suck the big d.

---
Earn free ringtones - go to:
http://www.earnfreeringtones.com/?src=jzcool
James's Domain - Your source for Nintendo, Sega, Playstation, Anime, Manga, and more! http://www.jzcool.net

On Sun, 29 Sep 2002 15:37:28
 koyaanisqatsi wrote:
>>Andre wrote:
>>Well, whenever I try it, things go wrong. For example, when I try to search
>>"George Bush" on OneLook, the second hit is Wikipedia. If I click on it, it
>>brings me to
>>"http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/George Bush", which gets interpreted as
>>[[GeorgeBush]] rather than [[George Bush]].
>
>For me, using Mozilla 1.0 or IE 5.5 for WinME, that results in http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/George%20Bush , with the space encoded as %20.  What browser are you using?
>
>Maybe there's a way to force the links to send with underlines instead of spaces, so the results will work in all browsers?
>
>kq
>
>
>
>
>[Wikipedia-l]
>To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
>http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

____________________________________________________________
Tired of all the SPAM in your inbox? Switch to LYCOS MAIL PLUS
http://www.mail.lycos.com/brandPage.shtml?pageId=plus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] OneLook

body:
--- James Zitzmann <jzcool at lycos.com> wrote:
> OneLook can suck the big d.
>

Welcome back, Jzcool. I hope you're not reverting to
your original, vandalizing self. :)

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] OneLook

body:
--- Brion VIBBER <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> (Netscape 4.x is the most common offender here, it
> gets confused about
> spaces.)
>
> I expect that replacign space with underscores in
> the title list they're
> searching through will do the right thing; I assume
> their search is
> already built to deal with underscores (such as we
> required in our
> incoming URLs pre-February).
>
> Alternatively, Onelook can properly URL-encode their
> URLs before
> dropping them in an HTML page. In either case,
> that's something to deal
> with at their end.

I'll write to Doug an ask him about it.

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] OneLook

body:
I have found a problem with the Wikipedia entries on Outlook: If one tries
to get a Wikipedia page with a name that is made of more than one words, it
tries to get the page with spaces instead of underscores. Could that be
improved?

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikipedia-l] OneLook

in_reply_to:
<200209291813.g8TID4800987@chakotay.uni-koblenz.de> from Andre Engels
 at "Sep 29, 2002 08:13:04 pm"

body:
> I have found a problem with the Wikipedia entries on Outlook: If one tries
> to get a Wikipedia page with a name that is made of more than one words, it
> tries to get the page with spaces instead of underscores. Could that be
> improved?

Sorry, 'Outlook' should be 'OneLook' of course...

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Image maps

body:
I've been working on creating a template for locator maps for use in the
element articles at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium .

The trouble is that much of the feedback I've been getting about the locator
maps is that users' first instinct is to use the image as if it were an image
map (clicking on the position for helium for example and expecting to be
brought to that article). And the feedback I've gotten is from old-hand
Wikipedians who know our standard image behavior.

I could forgo the image and have an HTML table embeded in the element's table
but the perio HTML table is huge (15,000+ bytes of text) even without the
element names and symbols (I'm also not sure it would render correctly).

Q: Is it desirable to have image maps? Would having image maps in some places
(like the element locator maps) be confusing when they are not available in
others (such as geographic maps)?

It would be neat to have this ability but I'm not sure if it would be
desirable given our current non-standard image behavior (that is, clicking on
the image brings you to the image description page).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)