from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
At 02:47 PM 23/09/02 -0700, Toby Bartels wrote:
>I wrote in very first part:
>
> >Here is my idea:
>
>And I seem to be at least the 3rd to suggest it.
>But I receive the messages in digest form,
>and I'd thought of it a couple of weeks ago anyway,
>so I don't feel bad about claiming it for my own.

Heh. I've suggested it at least twice myself, over the many months I've
been here. :)

Personally, I fall into the "delete pitiful stubs" camp; if there's no
useful content in an article then a great way to represent that fact is for
there to be no article there. Nothing of significant value is lost, an
unambiguous signal for new content is gained, and Wikipedia looks a lot
"nicer" for the casual browser.

Keeping deleted pages in an easily-retrievable form would make me feel a
lot more comfortable doing this sort of thing. I largely quit deleting
stuff after I ran out of 0-length articles and other obvious garbage to
clear-cut many months back.


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] A possible solution to the deletion problem.

body:
Stephen Gilbert wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>To make this really work well, we should include one more thing:
>>the ability to delete individual versions from a page's history.
>>This would be used to remove copyright violations, and for no other reason.
>>There are many copyright violations hidden in pages' histories now,
>>and we are technically in violation of copyright for having them,
>>however unobvious it may be for somebody to get to them.
>>So we need to do this anyway, as has been suggested before.
>>Only sysops would be able to do this, with a "del" link
>>next to the "diff" and "cur" links in each page's history.

>I agree with most of your proposal, but I'm not sure
>of this part. I do agree with the need to remove
>copyright  violations. I am concerned, however, that
>people may be too quick to use this function. We've
>had many cases where one Wikipedian believed a text to
>be under copyright, but it was actually contributed by
>the copyright holder. If such a feature was put in
>place, we would have to develop a fairly strict policy
>on why and how to use it.

Nowadays, nobody deletes a copyright violation quickly.
These form one of the types of deletions that nobody argues about;
they're blanked out, placed on the deletion queue,
and only deleted after several days have passed.
We can have a copyright violation deletion queue
which should be run the same way -- wait a few days.
Nobody is being quick on the trigger about these now,
only (it is alleged) about other things like microstubs.

>On the other hand, everyone could loosen up on
>deletions. :)

That's what I hope.
As Kajikit said, the issue is taking up too much of our time,
and making deletions "soft" like this should decrease the tension.

-- Toby


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] the REAL solution to useless stubs and micro-stubs

body:
On Mon, 2002-09-23 at 19:58, Karen AKA Kajikit wrote:
> If it's garbage delete it.
>
> Full stop.
>
> Deleting a pitiful little stub that contains no useful content is NOT
> vandalism, and I defend my right and Mav's right and anyone else's right
> to do it. If you have been around for more than a few WEEKS you probably
> know what's garbage when you see it... But most people are so afraid of
> being accused of vandalism that they won't touch them. It's not
> helping...

Let's tone down the rhetoric. a) There are no intrinsic rights on
Wikipedia; it is a benevolent dictatorship, not a civic nation-state. b)
Several of the detractors of rapid deletion of weak stubs have been
around for more than a few weeks.

> Having these pathetic microstubs doesn't make people write more - it
> just makes people think that 'oh, we have an article on 'X', so I'll
> look at it later...' instead of saying 'Oh! A red link to X! I'm
> surprised nobody's written anything yet - I'll go and make an article.'

As has been evidenced by the discussion on the list, people differ on
their reaction to "pathetic microstubs".

<snip examples of microstubs vs. sufficient entries>

> Let's get on with the important stuff now... we've wasted enough time on
> the subject of stubs.

Since there is evident disagreement on this issue, the topic is an
important one for the community.

Finally, rather than debating the merits of the various positions held
by people (and there is a spectrum), it would make sense to discuss the
technical changes that will potentially circumvent the basic sources of
disagreement.

I do hope you're willing to accept that everyone (however they formulate
their arguments) is attempting in good faith to express their point of
view, and that each point of view has some validity.

I have not seen anyone on this issue express a position that seemed
irrational.

So let's work together.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Red links

body:
Anthere wrote in parts:

>I am glad that everybody's seems SO happy by how
>quickly that issue was settled.

>I am not.

>That also triggers a few questions in my mind upon the
>position of international wikipedia in the existing
>community.

Although I agree with the change myself,
I'm sympathetic to Anthere's discomfort here.
It was not at all clear to me that a consensus was reached.
I would not be uncomfortable with the change if
we'd spent a couple more days beating its opponents into submission
with the vast weight of our numbers and our arguments
(which is probably what would have happened in the end),
but the change was pretty quick given that there were objections.

I also don't think that it's fair to say that
the English Wikipedians decide how things are run,
just because we're the only competent programmers.
If the others are outvoted, fine, but let them have a say.

-- Toby


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Red links

body:
First, the changes only affect the wikipedias running Phase III
software. Yes, Dutch will be one of them, probably soon. But
1. this could be set for every language differently
2. this shouldn't be set for every language differently. IMHO the
different language version should look alike. But, that's just my
personal, subjective opinion. And we have *lots* of time to decide on
that one. Will two days be OK? ;-)

2 days is absolutely ok.
thanks you very much

btw, the french community is done with the translation.

peace

anthere

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletion

body:
Jeronimo wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>I believe that this proposal would be very helpful to all of us.
>>The Cunctator will be able to rest easy knowing that
>>no information has been lost when Andre deletes a page,
>>and Andre will be able to delete truly useless pages

>Andr? is deleting truly useless pages, so is Mav and so am I.

I haven't been keeping up with the deletion log myself,
but from the example presented here (by both sides), I agree.
I just want Andr? et al to be able to do these deletions
without upsetting people (which results in these arguments).

FWIW, I do not agree with The Cunctator that,
should this soft deletion proposal be implemented,
a single restoration decides the question once and for all.
We still need to discuss policy for soft deletion
(along the lines of naming conventions etc),
and in that discussion I support deleting mere definitions
(much more what doesn't even amount to a real definition).

>If I have to explain every single move and
>deletion and addition I make here and have it approved by all
>Wikipedians, we might as well stop the entire project.

That's why I'm putting forward this proposal.
Right now, The Cunctator is coming to the list,
and he and Fredbauder are forcing you to defend yourself.
With my proposal, you'll give your reason for deletion
for the recent changes (as you do now for the deletion log)
and any objection to that properly goes on the deleted page's talk page.
And I really don't think that you'll get objections most of the time.
People should be embarrassed to revive a useless page without improving it,
and if they do improve it, then you'll be happy with it undeleted.

After all, The Cunctator's party argues that the existence of stubs,
even the pitiful microstubs, leads to the improvement of articles.
Let them show this by improving articles when they revive them.
If they do this, then they will have been proved right,
but the effect will be good and nobody will have any cause to complain.
If they don't do this, then they will have been proved wrong,
and those of us that are ambivalent will join your party and crush Cunc.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Truth in advertising

body:
maveric149 wrote:

>The Cunctator wrote:

>>To implement this we need two components:
>>* a way of denoting "insufficient" entries (or "sub-stubs" or
>>"micro-stubs", etc.) similar to the "watch this page" function
>>* a way of marking such entries in the text of the entries; e.g. different
>>link coloration or a "!" instead of a "?"

>This has already been suggested in one way or another by several people now,
>including me. This could in fact be married with the proposed 500
>byte/character article definition cut-off whereby any page that is less than
>500 characters yet meets the current criteria for automatic article detection
>would be marked as being a stub.

I said that I would probably follow orange links a lot with this proposal.
Actually, that may not be true if the threshold is as high as 500 bytes.
Lower than 500 B is certainly stubby, which is why I think
that 500 B is a good cutoff for estimating what an article is.
But 400 B isn't something that desperately needs attention,
lest we all be embarrassed when visitors look at the horrid little thing.
I'd prefer a cutoff of around 100 bytes.

Here I'm just arguing over details; I'm coming to like the idea.

While I'm on the subject of details, let's make them green instead of orange.
The difference between existent and nonexistent is much greater than
the difference between long and short.  "!" is great for the "?" style.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Red links

body:
LC, please...please...

Please, don't misinterpret my words. I have absolutely *no* wish to add to anybody's burden, be it *here* or in real life. Nor to unduly anger anybody either.

I'm sorry to hear that you are feeling pressured because two weeks behind schedule. I am aware you developpers are doing a lot of good quality work, and I hope you feel pride in feeling yourself an important link.

My question on that list was a very factual technical one, not by *any* means a request or an order for anybody to comply to. Whatever my wishes or my needs, I cannot help you for my programming skills are rather limited. I would be glad that other developpers from other wikis (french included) help with the soft development, but for sure, my can only be a wish and it happening or not is really none of my business.

My wish is not to open a war between a slightly overbearing en.wiki and a multitude of tiny childish wikis. But to raise the issue of whether minorities are granted a voice or not, whether they are allowed creativity themselves within an enlarged community or just to be nurtured in the shade. And given that minorities do not rely on the same channel of communications, asking how minorities voices could be heard.

I hope you will understand it goes slightly further than a red link issue.

This said, I think I can unfortunately consider you answered to my first question "Do we consider international wikipedias to be part of the actual wikipedia community ?" You said no. I feel very sorry about that. But it is your privilege.

I wish you a peaceful day

Anthere

 lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:> I read messages of your proposition to change this
> morning before leaving for work. No time to ask
> anything on the french wiki. And indeed, it would have
> been useless. By the time I got home, it was done.
> ...
> Question : if french or dutch decide they would prefer
> ? rather than red, is it technically possible ?

Absolutely. Just do it yourself. I'm already about
two weeks behind on changes I'd like to make to the
software (having a job really gets in the way); thank
goodness Brion has taken up some of the maintenance
slack for me. But I don't have the time or, for that
matter, much desire to deal with international wikis.
The code is available to anyone. Access to the server
is available to anyone who can demonstrate need and
competence. Just do it.

[Wikipedia-l]
To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] De-linking; the recycle bin alternative to deletion

body:
maveric149 wrote:

>But then there is the problem of badly named pages that resulted from
>typos or vandalism, such as the hypothetical [[DON QUIOTE LIKES CARROTS]] or
>[[When Derams May COme]]. It would be silly to keep a page history, even one
>hidden under an edit link, for a page title that will never become an article
>or even a redirect.

I don't think that these are really a problem.
Yes, it's certainly silly if these pages are kept around,
but it's also harmless, if we have plenty of room.
Since Wikipedia is faster now than when I first joined,
it seems to me that server speed increases faster than database size
(even though it increases discontinuously, in jumps),
so I'm not worried about loading the database with junk entries.

>There is also the problem of copyright violations that need to be removed for
>legal reasons.

Definitely.  But we need to deal with this anyway,
since many copyright violations are preserved in histories
of pages that were rewritten and thereby saved from deletion.
Instituting my proposal may exacerbate the copyright problem,
but that's good if it focuses our attention on it to get rid of it.
Thus, I suggested the feature of deletion of individual revisions
(to be used sparingly and slowly, as copyright violations are dealt with now).

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Stub color

body:
Maveric149 wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>I always thought that orange for tiny stubs proposal was ugly,
>>but to be honest, I would probably follow those links most readily.

>Whatever color we choose for stubs, it /should/ be a bit ugly. That way
>contributors will be that much more motivated to fix the sub-500 byte stubs.

Since there is no joking emoticon in your post, I clarify:
I didn't mean that the *colour* was ugly in a literal sense,
I meant that the *proposal* was ugly in a figurative sense.

-- Toby


from_name: Brion VIBBER

body:
Stephen Gilbert wrote:
> --- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
>>There are many copyright violations hidden in pages'
>>histories now, and we are technically in violation of copyright for
>>having them, however unobvious it may be for somebody to get to
>>them.So we need to do this anyway, as has been suggested before.
>>Only sysops would be able to do this, with a "del" link
>>next to the "diff" and "cur" links in each page's history.
>
> I agree with most of your proposal, but I'm not sure
> of this part. I do agree with the need to remove
> copyright  violations. I am concerned, however, that
> people may be too quick to use this function. We've
> had many cases where one Wikipedian believed a text to
> be under copyright, but it was actually contributed by
> the copyright holder. If such a feature was put in
> place, we would have to develop a fairly strict policy
> on why and how to use it.

Unusable content in particular revisions can be plucked out manually by
a developer (currently me, Lee, Magnus) if the appropriateness is
established. For instance, see the history for [[New Jersey Turnpike]].

I'm dubious that it's something we'd want to do all the time, though.
Permanent deletion isn't supposed to be easy.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Stub triage

body:
On Monday 23 September 2002 11:00 pm, you wrote:
> Andr? is deleting truly useless pages, so is Mav and so am I. We are
> trying to do what we think is good for Wikipedia - if we wanted to do
> harm, there's far easier and better was than to delete ultra-crappy
> pages with no content. If I have to explain every single move and
> deletion and addition I make here and have it approved by all
> Wikipedians, we might as well stop the entire project. I'm doing this
> while thinking reasonable. If you think that deletion was wrong: go
> ahead and write a great article about the subject - don't make such a
> noise out of it.
>
> Jeronimo

Of course I agree. I would also like to see /many/ more micro-stubs being
fixed by those people who think they are useful. But since the rate of
micro-stub creation is so high I think this is a hopelessly uphill and
ultimately futile battle. In a way the creation of unreviewed and unedited
stubs is an emergency situation now. I remember a time several months ago
when few pitiful stubs drooped off of Recent Changes without getting fixed.
Now that happens at an alarming rate daily.

It takes me less than 10 seconds to delete a useless stub that took somebody
else less then 10 seconds to write and submit, but it takes me at least 10
minutes to write a decent stub on a topic I know zippo about (let alone care
about). So when I come across a couple dozen of these useless micro-stubs in
my twice weekly clearing of the new page list I delete them and work on
fixing stubs that are easily fixable.

If the poster didn't bother working on their entry for more than 10 seconds
then there is /no/ reason I should spend 10 minutes of my time fixing their
"work" (or even 1 minute of my time posting it on the deletion queue for that
matter -- which BTW somebody else has to spend time reviewing and then either
delete or fix by starting from scratch). If all I did was fix every
micro-stub I saw then I wouldn't have time to do anything else.

If the micro-stub lovers aren't keeping up with fixing these useless pages
then I don't think they have much room to complain about others that are
taking care of the useless stub problem for them. I and the other micro-stub
deletors are just trying to keep up with this onslaught by doing some stub
triage; fixing the ones with decent definitions and deleting the ones that
don't have decent definitions.

However, due to the fact that whatever I say here will not convince a vocal
few, I support the compromise idea of having a type of recycle bin that keeps
a "de-linked" page's history intact and lists it on a log page. Any links to
that page title in the database will be replaced with an empty edit link.
This may be as easy as creating a user interface that would allow users to
see deleted pages and their histories and also allow users to edit those
pages (hitting save at that point would return the page, with its complete
history, to the database -- but please, don't return crap to the database).

This will give the micro-stub lovers more time to convert their cherished
useless pages into real stubs and will also give the rabid deletion death
squad peace of mind that the database is not being filled with useless crap.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Feature request

body:
Jens Frank wrote:
> Agreed so far. But instead of having automatic assignments of categories
> I would suggest to have a small number of perhaps 20 major categories:

That's _wayyy_ too limited. I want to be able to have, say, a category
of California-related articles so I can keep track of the pedia effort
on my home state; such as this manually tossed-together list:

   http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Topic_index_California

> Recent Changes might be extended to provide a filter so Larry
> can look for his Philosophy articles.

Automatic or semi-automatic maintenance of lists for using the existing
"Watch links" function is the main thing needed, as well as a
centralized location for them. (Wikipedia:Categories?) Having a magic
namespace, ie putting pseudo-links like [[Category:Philosophy]] or
[[Category:California]] into articles, is one possible way of sourcing
the lists, though I'm not sure it's the ideal way.

It might also be interesting to "combine filters"; ie, show everything
linked to from the California list _and_ everything from the Philosophy
list (or only those linked to from both...)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Red links

body:
On Tuesday 24 September 2002 01:15 am, you wrote:
> This said, I think I can unfortunately consider you answered to my first
> question "Do we consider international wikipedias to be part of the actual
> wikipedia community ?" You said no. I feel very sorry about that. But it is
> your privilege.
>
> I wish you a peaceful day
>
> Anthere

No, he said that he doesn't have "much desire to deal with international
wikis." He /did not/ at all, in any way say that the "international
wikipedias are not part of the actual wikipedia community".

Lee concerns himself with contributing to the the two languages he speaks
best; English and php. There is no reason for you to feel sorry about that.
Lee has created code which is translatable into different languages.

What more do you want when Brion seems to be doing a very good job with
international coordination and Phase III testing?

I will assume for the sake of international relations that you simply
misunderstood what he said.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Red links

body:
Anthere wrote:
> My question on that list was a very factual technical one, not by *any*
> means a request or an order for anybody to comply to. Whatever my wishes
> or my needs, I cannot help you for my programming skills are rather
> limited. I would be glad that other developpers from other wikis (french
> included) help with the soft development, but for sure, my can only be a
> wish and it happening or not is really none of my business.

It would be pretty easy and I think quite reasonable to set that and
other things up as site-specific (and ergo language-specific)
configuarable defaults, just as I've for instance set the default time
zone on the German wiki to match European local time since the user
community is overwhelmingly in the same time zone, and it was requested.

I'll try to set some more of these things up in the near future... I'm a
little behind on various things (I promised to set up a Danish test wiki
and haven't done it yet, sorry!)

> My wish is not to open a war between a slightly overbearing en.wiki and
> a multitude of tiny childish wikis. But to raise the issue of whether
> minorities are granted a voice or not, whether they are allowed
> creativity themselves within an enlarged community or just to be
> nurtured in the shade. And given that minorities do not rely on the same
> channel of communications, asking how minorities voices could be heard.
 >
 > I hope you will understand it goes slightly further than a red link
issue.

The more overlap there is between the active software developers and the
non-English wikis, the better I think this will be. (Since by definition
the developers are the ones implementing the changes to the software
being discussed; everything else is just sound and fury until fingers
touch the code.)

> This said, I think I can unfortunately consider you answered to my first
> question "Do we consider international wikipedias to be part of the
> actual wikipedia community ?" You said no. I feel very sorry about that.
> But it is your privilege.

Oh, Lee's often enough equally uncaring about the users of the English
wiki. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] I'm off...

body:
Karen AKA Kajikit wrote:
> I'm sick of the squabbling, and I don't have time to read it all. I'm
> going on holidays in a few days and I don't have the energy to go
> through this all again, so I've just switched mail to the 'off'
> position. I'll be back in a couple of weeks...

Oh, how I envy you. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Red links

body:
On Tuesday 24 September 2002 01:15 am, Magnus Manske wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
> >I am glad that everybody's seems SO happy by how
> >quickly that issue was settled.
>
> After the issue had been around for some days, and with a lots of "red
> links" against very few (two, I think I saw before I made the change),
> and the change being less work than this email, I just leaped into action
> ;)

I think that it was a /very/ important point that the two objections came
from members of different Wikipedia projects. Remember, this is the English
mailing list and just because we agree to do something doesn't mean that we
should force this decision upon the other projects against their wishes.

Even though we have numerical superiority in terms of users Anthere is right
in saying that the rights of minorities must be respected.

This is why it would be a good idea to have different default display setting
tables for each of the different Wikipedias. That way each project can decide
what defaults they want to set (big deal if the French use ?, the English use
red underlined links, and the Germans use red links that are not underlined
-- readers will figure it out).

Different cultures have different ideas about color and style so we should
have some flexibility in this regard. In the interim, this could be manually
set the way you changed it in CVS for each language Wikipedia as it goes
online. The default display settings table can come later (otherwise this
feature would have to be manually "patched" each time a language gets its
software updated).

I still /strongly/ support having red links as the default for the English
Wikipedia.

--- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletion

body:
--- Jeroen Heijmans <j.heijmans at stud.tue.nl> wrote:
> Andr? is deleting truly useless pages, so is Mav and
> so am I. We are
> trying to do what we think is good for Wikipedia -
> if we wanted to do
> harm, there's far easier and better was than to
> delete ultra-crappy
> pages with no content.

No one, including your opponants in this debate, think
you are trying to harm Wikipedia.

> If I have to explain every
> single move and
> deletion and addition I make here and have it
> approved by all
> Wikipedians, we might as well stop the entire
> project. I'm doing this
> while thinking reasonable. If you think that
> deletion was wrong: go
> ahead and write a great article about the subject -
> don't make such a
> noise out of it.

I don't think anyone wants every move and deletion
should be explained, but the undoable nature of our
current delete function makes people nervous.

Stephen G.

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from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] A little kindness (and common sense)

body:
>There's no reason for this; a little kindness, *please*!
>
>Larry

Precisely the point. An aggressive campaign against stubs and a policy
which results not only in deletion but them being irrecoverable is not
that. Stubs are not only a bit of information, but a seed planted, a part
of the more general structure of knowledge. I have been criticized for
occassionaly making stubs based on the Library of Congress Subject Index. I
suggest that if there is enough substantial material in a book on the
subject to justify a Library of Congress Subject Index entry, there is
enough material out there potentially to justify that subject being either
an article or a redirect. I know not everyone has a Subject Index, so it is
not practical for general use to generate article titles, but except for
the family geneology any entry based on it however short has value because
that is a generally recognized way in which knowledge is organized.

Fred


subject: [Wikipedia-l] A Different Thread

body:
At 09:57 PM 9/23/02 -0700, you wrote:
>Of course, I still argue that that 95+% of encyclopedia topics objectively
>can't be covered even as minimal articles with fewer than 500 characters. I
>would further argue that it is not possible to have a decent definition
using
>fewer than 100 characters, but that is a different thread....

>-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

I would suggest the opposite. Perhaps 5% of the hundred million or so
possible entries would justify an article of more than 500 characters. That
still leaves 500,000 potential articles of more than 500 characters.

Fred


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Red links

body:
--- Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at epost.de> wrote:
> To end at least part of this discussion, I updated
> the CVS so every
> wikipedia can now set its own default user options.
>
> The default is "red links", so until a wikipedia
> explictly decides
> otherwise... ;)

Great! Now throw together a soft delete function, and
I'll award you the Wikipedia Peace Prize. :)

Stephen G.

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Some Straw Men

body:
At 10:59 PM 9/23/02 -0700, you wrote:
>On Monday 23 September 2002 07:55 pm, Fred wrote:
>> No misunderstanding and no apology. But I do think putting deleted material
>> in history should solve the problem. As to evalating exactly what you have
>> done, that is your responsibility, Life is just too short to follow someone
>> around.
>>
>> Fred
>
>Do you ever have anything positive to say here or do you just enjoy
insulting
>people you don't like (mostly me)? Name calling is a childish game played by
>children and those with weak minds in an atempt to cheaply "win" an
arguement
>they feel they would otherwise lose.

Setting up a few straw men to knock down and a big smokescreen of
obfustication is not much good either. I suggest you leave legitimate short
articles alone and continue to deal appropriately with problems such as you
mention below.

Fred

>
>With that said, I wouldn't at all mind the replacement of the deletion
>function with a de-linking from the database function; When a page is
>de-linked from database then all links to it would be replaced by an empty
>link and the de-linked page would be listed on a log page (this would be
>similar to Microsoft's Recycle Bin).
>
>Then all the micro-stub lovers could pick and choose at their leisure the
>micro-stubs they wish to turn into stubs and the history of who first typed
>the epic prose of "fill in", or "Pete Rose was a ball player. Jesus rules!"
>or my favorite "I am the bomb and you all know that i am the bomb and you
all
>know that i will always be the bomb regardless of what anyy of you have to
>say about the fact that i am the bomb and about the fact that i will always
>be the bomb"  will be preserved.
>
>But then there is the problem of badly named pages that resulted from
>typos or vandalism, such as the hypothetical [[DON QUIOTE LIKES CARROTS]] or
>[[When Derams May COme]]. It would be silly to keep a page history, even one
>hidden under an edit link, for a page title that will never become an
article
>or even a redirect.
>
>There is also the problem of copyright violations that need to be removed
for
>legal reasons.
>
>So unless the developers or the software itself periodically clears-out the
>recycle bin by permanently deleting old de-linked pages, then there are
>significant draw-backs to this plan.
>
>-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>[Wikipedia-l]
>To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
>http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Steve Callaway

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RE: F***

body:
I hadn't realised we actually had an article on it, but would have got round
to it sooner or later: The f word has a fascinating history. The article
still needs more work though. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. There
are a number of other swear words which will probably need a similar
treatment.

rgds

Steve Callaway

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Parmenter" <tompar at world.std.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
Cc: <wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
Sent: Monday, September 23, 2002 10:46 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] RE: F***

> |content-class: urn:content-classes:message
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> |Thread-Topic: F***
> |Thread-Index: AcJjEBr1GQ6enRJrSfmkuR9aC0/GKAAFwWHg
> |From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
> |X-OriginalArrivalTime: 23 Sep 2002 17:34:35.0788 (UTC)
FILETIME=[7C2B44C0:01C26327]
> |X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by ross.bomis.com id
g8NHasZ24176
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> |List-Help: <mailto:wikipedia-l-request at nupedia.com?subject=help>
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> |List-Subscribe: <http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l>,
> | <mailto:wikipedia-l-request at nupedia.com?subject=subscribe>
> |List-Id: An unmoderated discussion of all things Wikipedia
<wikipedia-l.nupedia.com>
> |List-Unsubscribe: <http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l>,
> | <mailto:wikipedia-l-request at nupedia.com?subject=unsubscribe>
> |List-Archive: <http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/>
> |Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 13:34:35 -0400
> |
> |
> |I know I'll get in trouble for this, but in the spirit of "be bold" I
> |deleted the [[Fuck]] article. It just seemed pointless to have an
> |article called f***.
> |
> |If someone wants to write an article on obscenity or censorship, and
> |treat the problems the term f*** has had, fine. But I don't want to see
> |every dirty word (or word that's gotten the dirty end of the stick) have
> |its own article.
> |
> |Ed Poor
> |An "old fart"
> |[Wikipedia-l]
> |To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
> |http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> |
>
> It's not every dirty word, Ed, it's one important word, so important
> that one of the most distinguished American lexicographers wrote a
> whole book about it.
>
> It's back now, and is being edited.
>
> Tom Parmenter
> Ortolan88
>
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Some Straw Men

body:
At 02:32 PM 9/24/02 +0200, you wrote:
>> >Do you ever have anything positive to say here or do you just enjoy
>> insulting
>> >people you don't like (mostly me)? Name calling is a childish game
played by
>> >children and those with weak minds in an atempt to cheaply "win" an
>> arguement
>> >they feel they would otherwise lose.
>>
>> Setting up a few straw men to knock down and a big smokescreen of
>> obfustication is not much good either.
>
>Instead of complaining to maveric about setting up straw men, you might look
>at yourself and wonder whether it might be reasonable for people to think you
>insulted them if you call them a vandal.
>
>Andre Engels

Mav seems to give as good as he gets. I suppose we should all avoid
inflamatory language, but you know, "He started it..." Actually I don't
think anything I've ever written has been deleted. It has all, however
short, been either a base for a decent article or had links to further
information on the topic. I would simply like derogatory comments and
labeling to stop regarding legitimate "short", not "stub", articles. Maybe
I'm just asking for NPOV.

Fred


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Children's Wikipedia

body:
Andre Engels wrote:

>>Florian Konnertz wrote in small part:
>>
>>>Concerning the question how the wikipedia and the *wikidia* could be
>>>
>>We could call the children's Wikipedia "Wikipaedia",
>>unless you think that will be misunderstood ^_^.
>>
>
>No, I think that name should be reserved for the BE (British English)
>foreign-language version. ;-)
>

Sorry, but isn't "be" already the code for Belarusian?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Stub triage

body:
>On Monday 23 September 2002 11:00 pm, you wrote:
>-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

Tiage is a procedure used appropriately in medical emergencies and used
here by analogy.

Just what is the emergency? Who dies because patients that could have
safely awaited treatment or will die anyway receive treatment out of turn?
In other words, "Where's the fire?"

Fred


from_name: Khendon

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletions

body:
On Mon, Sep 23, 2002 at 10:19:51AM -0600, Fred Bauder wrote:
> >I'm not convinced it works that way, inexperienced wikipedian that I am.
> >Speaking personally, if I notice a "full" link then I'll likely as not
> >pass over it. If I notice an "empty" link then I'm much more likely to
> >consider whether I could write an article on the subject.
>
> I would say it is a good habit to check out articles on subjects of
> interest. Especially in areas of expertise.

Oh, definitely. But say I know a little bit about Little Bunny Foo Foo,
and think I could write a few useful paragraphs with the aid of google,
but I'm by no means a Bunny Foo Foo expert. If I see a Bunny Foo Foo
link to an article, unless I have more spare time than usual I'll
probably pass over it - after all, there's bound to be a few Bunny
Foo Foo expert wikipedians who know more about the subject than me.

But if I see a dangling link to Bunny Foo Foo, chances are better
I'll, uh, "hop" over and write something.

Just a point of view.

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletions

body:
On Mon, Sep 23, 2002 at 12:14:41PM -0400, The Cunctator wrote:
> Another suggestion: Automatic [[Mark this page a poor stub]], to give people
> an obvious option other than putting poor stubs on Votes for deletion or
> deleting them.

Better would be a generic "This Page Needs Attention" link (on the sidebar -
I presume that's what you mean).

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Children's Wikipedia

body:
On Mon, Sep 23, 2002 at 01:58:15PM -0700, Toby Bartels wrote:
> Florian Konnertz wrote in small part:
>
> >Concerning the question how the wikipedia and the *wikidia* could be
>
> We could call the children's Wikipedia "Wikipaedia",
> unless you think that will be misunderstood ^_^.

Spell it correctly, you mean? Could be a good idea ;-)

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


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] [Stephen.Thornton@mic.ul.ie: Popper Entry]

body:
Larry Sanger wrote:

>...
>
>Of course, if we were to implement the Nupedia system agreed upon last
>November, or some other simpler system, presumably this sort of problem
>wouldn't exist...
>
>
So far, I seem to be the only one working on a "rewritten" version
(http://nunupedia.sourceforge.net), as well on a "simple-as-it-can-be"
version (not yet available for testing). Any help is still appreciated :-)

Magnus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Red links

body:
On 9/24/02 6:36 AM, "Magnus Manske" <magnus.manske at epost.de> wrote:

> To end at least part of this discussion, I updated the CVS so every
> wikipedia can now set its own default user options.
>
> The default is "red links", so until a wikipedia explictly decides
> otherwise... ;)
>
You should set it so the default is "?" except for the English wikipedia.
Other wikipedias have already complained.


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RE: F***

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>Ed Poor wrote:
>
>
>
>>I know I'll get in trouble for this, but in the spirit of "be bold" I
>>deleted the [[Fuck]] article. It just seemed pointless to have an
>>article called f***.
>>
>>
>
>You're supposed to be bold about *updating* articles, not *deleting* them!!!
>
>
>
>>If someone wants to write an article on obscenity or censorship, and
>>treat the problems the term f*** has had, fine. But I don't want to see
>>every dirty word (or word that's gotten the dirty end of the stick) have
>>its own article.
>>
>>
>
>That may well be true.
>So did you copy the information on [[Fuck]] to [[Obscenity]]
>and then make [[Fuck]] a redirect to [[Obscenity]]?
>Or did you just delete the information?
>
>(Here I am assuming that [[Fuck]] did actually have information on it,
>and wasn't one of the "microstubs" that another thread is going on about.)
>
>
>-- Toby
>[Wikipedia-l]
>To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
>http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>
>
I agree. Link all the random obscenities to a single "obscenity"
article, which gives the whole subject a thorough treatment... and that
includes etymology, history and usage of the commonest / most vulgar as
in the [[Fuck]] article.

Neil


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletions

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

 >It's certainly the case that different people work different ways. That's
 >why this is an issue. If deletions were revertible this would be much less
 >of an issue. That way people who wished to could delete what they consider
 >useless stubs and those that don't consider them useless could undelete
 >them. (And that should be the end of it; no deletion wars--one veto
and the
 >issue is dead.) Of course there are still many problems with that.
 >
 >Another suggestion: Automatic [[Mark this page a poor stub]], to give
people
 >an obvious option other than putting poor stubs on Votes for deletion or
 >deleting them.
 >
 >[Wikipedia-l]
 >To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
 >http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
 >
 >
 >
 >
 >
How about [[Category:poor stubs]]?

Neil


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Red links

body:
Anthere wrote:

>I am glad that everybody's seems SO happy by how
>quickly that issue was settled.
>
After the issue had been around for some days, and with a lots of "red
links" against very few (two, I think I saw before I made the change),
and the change being less work than this email, I just leaped into action ;)

>I am not.
>
Sorry to hear that. You can still have the question marks for yourself,
of course, as can anyone who signs up.

>Don't get me wrong. If the majority of people here
>think it better to switch to red links, that's ok.
>
>But, since you were so quick, did you realise Giskart
>asked you a little bit of delay to have time to ask
>the dutch wiki ? Do you know at what time he asked the
>question ?
>
>Sun, 22 Sep 2002 20:42:22 +0200 (on my screen)
>
>Do you know what time it was when you posted it was
>all set, changes done, everybody happy ?
>
>Mon, 23 Sep 2002 15:12:30 +0200 (on my screen)
>
>That is less than 19 hours later
>
First, the changes only affect the wikipedias running Phase III
software. Yes, Dutch will be one of them, probably soon. But
1. this could be set for every language differently
2. this shouldn't be set for every language differently. IMHO the
different language version should look alike. But, that's just my
personal, subjective opinion. And we have *lots* of time to decide on
that one. Will two days be OK? ;-)

>I laid them down here
>http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=Future_of_international_Wikipedias_as_part_of_the_main_community
>
I'll read is soon...

Magnus


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Stubs as seeds

body:
The Wikipedia is a garden, and we are its cultivators. Sometimes
brilliant prose flows readily from one's pen, but many excellent
articles started from the most pathetic of stubs.

What is the purpose of creating, tolerating, and/or deleting a stub?

Do we hate stubs because they are not "real" articles? They pollute our
article count, so we can't claim to have 50,000 or 100,000 articles.
They're embarrassing, because something like '''Herman Melville''' is
the author of ''Moby Dick'' doesn't come up to par.

Do we love stubs because they get the ball rolling? Someone writes a
stub like '''Muggles''' are non-magical people in the [[Harry Potter]]
books, and someone else adds [[Hagrid]]'s first use of the term, and
someone else mentions the infringement suit; and the seed grows into a
tree bearing fruit.

I worry that excessive deletion of stubs is like birds pecking at the
seeds which the farmer had just planted. I also worry about stubs that
never blossom into full flower.

I don't think there is a suitable automatic way to deal with this. There
is no substitute for human judgment, and if Mav and Andre and others are
dedicated enough to devote 5 or 10 hours a week to pruning weeds, I'm
not going to complain about excessive zeal.

Ed Poor


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Children's Wikipedia

body:
> Florian Konnertz wrote in small part:
>
> >Concerning the question how the wikipedia and the *wikidia* could be
>
> We could call the children's Wikipedia "Wikipaedia",
> unless you think that will be misunderstood ^_^.

No, I think that name should be reserved for the BE (British English)
foreign-language version. ;-)

Andre Engels


from_name: Karen AKA Kajikit

body:
If it's garbage delete it.

Full stop.

Deleting a pitiful little stub that contains no useful content is NOT
vandalism, and I defend my right and Mav's right and anyone else's right
to do it. If you have been around for more than a few WEEKS you probably
know what's garbage when you see it... But most people are so afraid of
being accused of vandalism that they won't touch them. It's not
helping...

Having these pathetic microstubs doesn't make people write more - it
just makes people think that 'oh, we have an article on 'X', so I'll
look at it later...' instead of saying 'Oh! A red link to X! I'm
surprised nobody's written anything yet - I'll go and make an article.'

Examples of a useless stub: 'Walhalla is a town in Australia.' 'A
kookaburra is a bird.'

Examples of a useful stub: 'Walhalla is a small isolated town in
north-west Victoria. At one time a thriving gold town, it is now
virtually abandoned. There is only one road into Walhalla and at times
it is blocked by landslips or extreme weather.' etc. 'A kookaburra is an
Australian native bird. It was also known as the 'laughing jackass'
because of its unusual call. It is a member of the Kingfisher family.'
etc

If somebody deleted the second two, I'd be asking them what they were
playing at... but the first two do not deserve to exist.

If a stub merely restates the articles title it does not deserve to
exist. If a stub is part of a mutually-linked uninformative pair (eg.
'One flew over the Cuckoos Nest is a book by [[Ken Kesey]]' and 'Ken
Kesey is the author of a book called '[[One flew over the Cuckoos
Nest]]') then you do NOT need both of them, and the one with the least
potential for expansion needs to go. If a stub exists purely for the
purposes of directing you to a weblink with no explanation, it deserves
to go.

Let's get on with the important stuff now... we've wasted enough time on
the subject of stubs.

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

To err is human... to really foul things up add kitten and stir.

Come and visit my part of the web:
Kajikit's Corner: http://Kajikit.netfirms.com/
Aussie Support Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AussieSupport
Allergyfree Eating Recipe Swap:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Allergyfree_Eating
Ample Aussies Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ampleaussies/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] A request for the thousand-and-oneth time...

body:
This would solve a lot of the problems that people are complaining about
now - over-cluttering of the manual delete queue, and non-use of the
'rewrite' page, and also possibly over-hasty deletion of stubs.

Please please PLEASE give us back the 'vote for this page' option. I
know we can put pages onto the delete queue or the 'vote for rewrite'
page manually but almost nobody does because it is such an incredible
HASSLE! People do things the simplest way, and that was by far the
simplest.

I know I've asked for this before but I really think it would solve a
LOT of the problems we're having just now... it's not creaping
featuritis - it's a major convenience.

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

To err is human... to really foul things up add kitten and stir.

Come and visit my part of the web:
Kajikit's Corner: http://Kajikit.netfirms.com/
Aussie Support Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AussieSupport
Allergyfree Eating Recipe Swap:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Allergyfree_Eating
Ample Aussies Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ampleaussies/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l digest, Vol 1 #686 - 14 msgs

body:
>Fred Bauder wrote:
>
>>Precisely the point. An aggressive campaign against stubs and a policy
>>which results not only in deletion but them being irrecoverable is not
>>that. Stubs are not only a bit of information, but a seed planted, a part
>>of the more general structure of knowledge.
>>
>If you'd bother to read what we write, you'd see that we are NOT
>campaigning against stubs. I repeat: we are not campaigning against
>stubs. In my vocabulary, with the current context, a stub is something
>that is not the real thing, but that does perform some part of what the
>real thing is expected to do (in analogy with, for example, developing
>software). For an encyclopedia article, that means that a stub performs
>some of the required functionality (explaining some term) but not fully.
>In a sense, almost all Wikipedia articles are stubs, as they do not tell
>everything there is to be told about a certain topic. However, in normal
>usage, stubs are those articles that merely contain a short definition;
>but it is still an article. The pages that we are talking about here are
>not stubs. They're less than that.

Ok, sounds good to me.

Fred


from_name: Robert Graham Merkel

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RE: F***

body:
On Mon, Sep 23, 2002 at 01:34:35PM -0400, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>
> I know I'll get in trouble for this, but in the spirit of "be bold" I
> deleted the [[Fuck]] article. It just seemed pointless to have an
> article called f***.
>
> If someone wants to write an article on obscenity or censorship, and
> treat the problems the term f*** has had, fine. But I don't want to see
> every dirty word (or word that's gotten the dirty end of the stick) have
> its own article.
>
I happen to agree with you on this one, but could you put it on the deletion
queue next time?

--
------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Merkel	                           rgmerk at mira.net

Node FLY on Melbourne Wireless : http://www.wireless.org.au
------------------------------------------------------------


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Stub triage

in_reply_to:
<20020924084013.WERP28420.sccrmhc03.attbi.com@there> from Daniel
 Mayer at "Sep 24, 2002 01:43:57 am"

body:
> However, due to the fact that whatever I say here will not convince a vocal
> few, I support the compromise idea of having a type of recycle bin that keeps
> a "de-linked" page's history intact and lists it on a log page. Any links to
> that page title in the database will be replaced with an empty edit link.
> This may be as easy as creating a user interface that would allow users to
> see deleted pages and their histories and also allow users to edit those
> pages (hitting save at that point would return the page, with its complete
> history, to the database -- but please, don't return crap to the database).
>
> This will give the micro-stub lovers more time to convert their cherished
> useless pages into real stubs and will also give the rabid deletion death
> squad peace of mind that the database is not being filled with useless crap.

Until such time, anyone who is interested in the _contents_ of these stubs
rather than their having existed, can check them out on the Deletion log -
it seems to become a (good) habit to quote the entire text of the deleted
article in the 'reasons for deletion' if it is small enough.

Andre Engels


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RE: F***

body:
--- Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:

> Link all the random obscenities to a single
> "obscenity"
> article, which gives the whole subject a thorough
> treatment... and that
> includes etymology, history and usage of the
> commonest / most vulgar as
> in the [[Fuck]] article.

I don't think [[obscenity]] is the proper article
title though, since it has a specific definition in
law which does not include profanities. The general
overview should be at [[profanity]], which is where it
is already. Nevertheless, I think important words like
"fuck" and "nigger" deserve their own encyclopedic
treatment, especially since other encyclopedias shy
away from them.

Note that "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" does not
mean that we can't have encyclopedia articles about
certain words.

Axel

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


from_name: Larry Sanger

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RE: F***

body:
On Tue, 24 Sep 2002, Tom Parmenter wrote:

> |From: Axel Boldt <axelboldt at yahoo.com>
...
> |is already. Nevertheless, I think important words like
> |"fuck" and "nigger" deserve their own encyclopedic
> |treatment, especially since other encyclopedias shy
> |away from them.
> |
> |Note that "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" does not
> |mean that we can't have encyclopedia articles about
> |certain words.
> |
> |Axel
> |
>
> Axel is correct as to the need for articles on certain individual
> words.
>
> We can also have a constellation of articles like [[taboo]],
> [[profanity]], and, now, [[obscenity]] to cover different angles on
> the same basic subject.

I agree fully with all of the above.

I'd like to add that we should go out of our way to write the article as
if we were adults with a scholarly interest in the subject, rather than
immature eedjits who are snickering as they type, because they think
they're using the trappings of (pseudo-)  scholarship to put something
over on more mature people with sense and good taste.  Moreover, I'm
convinced this is actually possible with these topics.  :-)

Larry


body:
--- Brion VIBBER <brion at pobox.com> wrote:

> Permanent deletion isn't supposed to be easy.

Right, mainly because it destroys history information.
I have always felt somewhat uncomfortable with the
fact that the act of deletion has come to be an almost
normal everyday act, rather than an extreme exception
as it once was, when it was still technically
difficult to do.

I am wondering if we could go back to those old days:
take away deletion rights from sysops and let only
people with database access remove articles, and only
in  the case of copyright violations. Ordinary
deletions are then simply done by deleting all the
text of the article. Such an empty article would be
displayed with red/question mark when linked to, but
its history would still be accessible by clicking on
that question mark and then choosing History.

Axel

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


body:
--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:

> I have
> been criticized for
> occassionaly making stubs based on the Library of
> Congress Subject Index. I
> suggest that if there is enough substantial material
> in a book on the
> subject to justify a Library of Congress Subject
> Index entry, there is
> enough material out there potentially to justify
> that subject being either
> an article or a redirect. I know not everyone has a
> Subject Index,

Everyone has access to the Library of Congress website
which lets you browse the subject index. And no, I
don't think it is a good idea to litter the database
with stubs coming from those subject headings, because
stubs are useless and even harm the project's
perception by outsiders. Please follow the first rule
of the information age: "If you don't have anything to
say, don't say anything."

Axel

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Red links

body:
To end at least part of this discussion, I updated the CVS so every
wikipedia can now set its own default user options.

The default is "red links", so until a wikipedia explictly decides
otherwise... ;)

Magnus


from_name: Tom Parmenter

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RE: F***

body:
|From: Axel Boldt <axelboldt at yahoo.com>
|Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 11:05:33 -0700 (PDT)
|
|--- Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
|
|> Link all the random obscenities to a single
|> "obscenity"
|> article, which gives the whole subject a thorough
|> treatment... and that
|> includes etymology, history and usage of the
|> commonest / most vulgar as
|> in the [[Fuck]] article.
|
|I don't think [[obscenity]] is the proper article
|title though, since it has a specific definition in
|law which does not include profanities. The general
|overview should be at [[profanity]], which is where it
|is already. Nevertheless, I think important words like
|"fuck" and "nigger" deserve their own encyclopedic
|treatment, especially since other encyclopedias shy
|away from them.
|
|Note that "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" does not
|mean that we can't have encyclopedia articles about
|certain words.
|
|Axel
|

Axel is correct as to the need for articles on certain individual
words.

We can also have a constellation of articles like [[taboo]],
[[profanity]], and, now, [[obscenity]] to cover different angles on
the same basic subject.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


from_name: Gareth Owen

body:
Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> writes:

> An aggressive campaign against stubs

There is no aggressive campaign against stubs.

There is an aggressive campaign against really lousy stubs, and I'm all for an
aggressive campaign against really lousy anythings.
--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock.  By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
 are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Some Straw Men

body:
> >Do you ever have anything positive to say here or do you just enjoy
> insulting
> >people you don't like (mostly me)? Name calling is a childish game played by
> >children and those with weak minds in an atempt to cheaply "win" an
> arguement
> >they feel they would otherwise lose.
>
> Setting up a few straw men to knock down and a big smokescreen of
> obfustication is not much good either.

Instead of complaining to maveric about setting up straw men, you might look
at yourself and wonder whether it might be reasonable for people to think you
insulted them if you call them a vandal.

Andre Engels


from_name: Giskart

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Red links

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>On Monday 23 September 2002 11:00 pm, Anthere wrote:
>
>
>>Question : if french or dutch decide they would prefer
>>? rather than red, is it technically possible ?
>>
>>
>
>In order to preserve the good will of the non-English language Wikipedia's I
>propose that any change in default behavior like this /must/ be decided by
>each individual Wikipedia community.
>
>
>

I agree 100%. whit you.

For matters that have an impact on all wikipedias there must be a formal
request for discussion on Intlwiki-l whit enough time ( 7 days ?) so
that those wikipedians reading that list can organize a discussion
procedure on their on wikipedia and/or maillinglist.

After there local discussion procedure a representative of all
wikipedias kan give feedback in the name of that wikipedia on Intlwiki-l.

The part of the local discussion procedure is very important. There are
wikipedians  that have lives and do not read these maillinglists but
only work on the wikipedia and doing the real work. If a wikipedia finds
it is nessesary to include those people in the discession making proces
it must be possibel, even if it takes time.

If it goes about a change that effect all wikipedias this procedure
should be followed.
If it goes about a small change that can simple be done individually for
every wikipedia a simple announcement on Intlwiki-l should be enough.

Giskart


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletion

body:
Stephen Gilbert wrote:
> I don't think anyone wants every move and deletion
> should be explained, but the undoable nature of our
> current delete function makes people nervous.

Our current deletion function *is 100% undoable*. See the history of
[[Fuck]], which is all there again after being so rudely deleted.
However, it currently is cleanly undoable only by a developer, since the
data must be manually moved from one database table to another.

Any sysop can see the history of a deleted article by going to the
"Query the database" special page and doing this:

   SELECT * from archive where ar_title='Title_of_the_deleted_page'

If you then think it deserves restoration, complain to me, Lee, or
Magnus and we can drop it back in completely intact; or just
copy-and-paste yourself if there's no history (likely for most deleted
pages!)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Red links

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>You should set it so the default is "?" except for the English wikipedia.
>Other wikipedias have already complained.
>
>
Well, the German wikipedia is in favor of red links, judging from the
votes on deutsch-l.

I'd like to keep "red links" standard, so on switching the software,
people can judge wether they like it (or would like it as newcomers).
Some might not even have tested that option on the English wikipedia.
Others are probably afraid of a change, but with the new software, they
will be busy with other adjustments... ;)

Anyway, once other wikipedias get switched, any of the developers will
change it back to question marks if there is demand.

Magnus


from_name: Jeroen Heijmans

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>Precisely the point. An aggressive campaign against stubs and a policy
>which results not only in deletion but them being irrecoverable is not
>that. Stubs are not only a bit of information, but a seed planted, a part
>of the more general structure of knowledge.
>
If you'd bother to read what we write, you'd see that we are NOT
campaigning against stubs. I repeat: we are not campaigning against
stubs. In my vocabulary, with the current context, a stub is something
that is not the real thing, but that does perform some part of what the
real thing is expected to do (in analogy with, for example, developing
software). For an encyclopedia article, that means that a stub performs
some of the required functionality (explaining some term) but not fully.
In a sense, almost all Wikipedia articles are stubs, as they do not tell
everything there is to be told about a certain topic. However, in normal
usage, stubs are those articles that merely contain a short definition;
but it is still an article. The pages that we are talking about here are
not stubs. They're less than that.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] I'm off...

body:
I'm sick of the squabbling, and I don't have time to read it all. I'm
going on holidays in a few days and I don't have the energy to go
through this all again, so I've just switched mail to the 'off'
position. I'll be back in a couple of weeks...

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

To err is human... to really foul things up add kitten and stir.

Come and visit my part of the web:
Kajikit's Corner: http://Kajikit.netfirms.com/
Aussie Support Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AussieSupport
Allergyfree Eating Recipe Swap:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Allergyfree_Eating
Ample Aussies Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ampleaussies/


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RE: F***

body:
--- Axel Boldt <axelboldt at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I don't think [[obscenity]] is the proper article
> title though, since it has a specific definition in
> law which does not include profanities. The general
> overview should be at [[profanity]], which is where
> it
> is already. Nevertheless, I think important words
> like
> "fuck" and "nigger" deserve their own encyclopedic
> treatment, especially since other encyclopedias shy
> away from them.
>
> Note that "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" does not
> mean that we can't have encyclopedia articles about
> certain words.

I agree. There is so much material that can be written
on those two words in particular; if they were left in
a general profanity article, it would grow to an
obscene size.

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fwd: Re: Wikipedia/OneLook

body:
Wikipedia is now indexed by OneLook.com. I've asked
Doug to change the credit from my name to "the
Wikipedia project".

Stephen G.

--- Doug Beeferman <doug at dougb.com> wrote:
> Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 14:35:26 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Doug Beeferman <doug at dougb.com>
> To: Stephen Gilbert <canuck_in_korea2002 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: Wikipedia/OneLook
>
>
> Hi Stephen,
>
> Thanks for pointing me to that report page on
> Wikipedia.  It will work for
> the time being;  I configured my OneLook update
> engine to download the
> article names monthly using a limit of 1000 articles
> per fetch, so that
> amounts to just 80 or so requests per month, which I
> hope will be a pretty
> negligible burden on Wikipedia's server(s).  You're
> right that this isn't
> ideal as an export mechanism.  Something like a
> single XML/RDF feed would
> be best, I think.
>
> I think Wikipedia makes a great addition to OneLook,
> especially for its
> breadth in many categories (famous people, event
> names, places) that
> aren't well-covered by conventional online
> glossaries/dictionaries.
>
> In the import rules I excluded a handful of types of
> article names that
> aren't "lexicographic" in the sense that they're not
> written the way
> people would look them up.  Like "Academy
> Awards/Visual Effects" or the
> nodes beginning with "Talk:" or "Image:"  There were
> 61412 terms retained
> in total.
>
> I've credited you on the dictionary's "info" page on
> OneLook;  let me know
> if there's some person/entity that is more
> appropriate to credit.
>
> And by the way, lest I forget to give you the pitch
> I give to every
> dictionary provider I talk to -- OneLook might be a
> useful "fallback" site
> to reference when Wikipedia users do a search that
> comes up empty.  For
> example, while "Phil Hartman"  produces no article
> matches on Wikipedia,
> it does turn up in one of the 804 dictionaries
> indexed by OneLook, a
> biographical dictionary.  ( See
> http://www.onelook.com/?w=phil+hartman )
>
> Take care,
> Doug

__________________________________________________
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from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

body:
You Wrote:
>Wikipedia is now indexed by OneLook.com. I've asked
>Doug to change the credit from my name to "the
>Wikipedia project".
>
>Stephen G.

I see that he excluded subpages but included parenthetical titles.  That should be an incentive to desubpage the remainging entries.

Also, he included redirects (e.g. [[Film Noir]]).  Should we ask that those be excluded, or is it that pressing an issue?

Cheers,

kq


body:
No, the point is that [[film noir]] turns up 3rd on the search results, after [[Film Noir]], a redirect, and after the list of films noir.  It would be bestto follow but not index redirects, right?  Or is there a good reason to index them also?

kq

The Cunctator wrote:
>kq wrote:
>> Also, he included redirects (e.g. [[Film Noir]]).  Should we ask that those be excluded, or is it that pressing an issue?
>>
>We want him to include redirects. Ideally his software would know that
>they're redirects, but we want the result to come up if someone searches
>for an entry like "film noir".


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Red links

body:
> --- Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at epost.de> wrote:
> > To end at least part of this discussion, I updated
> > the CVS so every
> > wikipedia can now set its own default user
> options.
> >
> > The default is "red links", so until a wikipedia
> > explictly decides
> > otherwise... ;)

> I'll award you the Wikipedia Peace Prize. :)
>
> Stephen G.

I *deeply* thank you, Magnus

Right now, 4 people have given an answer. 4 votes for
the "?".

anth?re

__________________________________________________
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from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletion

body:
Well, I did check a little bit and found at least one article that had been
deleted.  Worked on it a bit and found a few interesting links that fit
into it.

I think most of the deletions being made are being done in good faith and
for good reasons and probably should be possible without any hassle.

But I don't think all of them are. Perhaps it is just due to inexperience,
I think some of our sysops perhaps have a bit more enthusiasum about
delection and other duties than is really comfortable for others.

Anyway, when you move beyond the appropriate bounds of your
responsibilities it's pretty ugly.

Ed Poor, he's pretty cool. If he does something drastic he's on here
talking about it and it's easily remedied, cause we all know about it.

Anyway, I think it is fair to say that there is some vandalism or let us
say abuse of their position by some sysops. I would suggest that if you are
not one of those responsible there is no need to take offense; and if you
are perhaps an examination of your motives is appropriate.

When a person first comes on they experiment with different things, some of
which seem not that good later. They name things wrong, don't take a
Neutral Point of View, perhaps write articles in an inappropriate way. I
don't suppose there is any perfect way to straighten them out and get them
on the right track, so I guess a lot of leeway needs to be given to anyone
who takes the trouble to try to correct an error.

I think at some point, however, you should realize that if someone keeps
trying, that they are trying to do something worthwhile.

My point is, that unless you can justify it and are prepared to make a
record of what you have done and why that you leave other peoples work
alone unless you are engaged in improving it. Eagerness to just get rid of
whatever doesn't please you is unseemly.

I find returning to Wikipedia and finding articles deleted (and
unrecoverable) quite unpleasant.

Fred


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On Tue, 2002-09-24 at 23:01, koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> You Wrote:
> >Wikipedia is now indexed by OneLook.com. I've asked
> >Doug to change the credit from my name to "the
> >Wikipedia project".
> >
> >Stephen G.
>
> I see that he excluded subpages but included parenthetical titles.  That should be an incentive to desubpage the remainging entries.
>
> Also, he included redirects (e.g. [[Film Noir]]).  Should we ask that those be excluded, or is it that pressing an issue?
>
We want him to include redirects. Ideally his software would know that
they're redirects, but we want the result to come up if someone searches
for an entry like "film noir".


body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> On Tue, 2002-09-24 at 23:01, koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
>>Also, he included redirects (e.g. [[Film Noir]]).  Should we ask that
 >>those be excluded, or is it that pressing an issue?
>
> We want him to include redirects. Ideally his software would know that
> they're redirects, but we want the result to come up if someone searches
> for an entry like "film noir".

I agree that redirects should be listed; many redirects exist because
they are alternate titles, alternate phrasings, alternate spellings,
etc. A perfectly valid search might pick one up but not another.

The particular case of [[Film Noir]] (a redirect to [[Film noir]]) is
perhaps less important if the search is case-insensitive, but I see
little point to excising it. You click it, you get the right article, no?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Fulltext Stoplist

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> The CVS contains FulltextStoplist.php, which is a list of the "common
> words" excluded from search queries. It contains only English words,
> which caused complaints on the German wikipedia, as they, at least,
> don't want to be kept from searching for "false friends" common in English.

My understanding was that the stopwords are implemented in MySQL's
indexing and search feature.

We have a list of them so that _our_ search system can filter stopwords
out before they hit MySQL's search, where they behave in a way that's
extremely unhelpful to us (searching a stopword by itself returns
nothing; we search each word individually and then return the
intersection of all the subsearches, so a word that returns no hits
kills the entire search).

So, changing that list wouldn't help with false friends, as you'd just
get empty search results; we'd have to change MySQL. (Which is entirely
doable, I'm sure.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletion

body:
We could continue the blow-by-blow, but it's really unnecessary. Steps
for action have become clear:

* Modify the deletion mechanism to make it "soft" in some way

* Modify the deletion mechanism to allow for purges of copyright
infringement (though of course there's potential for abuse there, so a
more formal confirmation/review mechanism would be necessary;
possibilities include community norms like not deleting that which you
nominate, and waiting some time period after nomination, or some other
technological mechanisms)

Meanwhile I ask, respectfully, everyone to attempt to wait at least a
few days, or even a day, or at least a few hours (rather than a few
minutes) before deleting nominated pages. It's a simple politeness to
those who see weak stubs as an invitation, not an affront.


body:
Brion wrote:
>The particular case of [[Film Noir]] (a redirect to [[Film noir]]) is
>perhaps less important if the search is case-insensitive, but I see
>little point to excising it. You click it, you get the right article, no?

Well, yes.  Ok, then I guess that solves it.  :-)

kq


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Naming Conventions (names and titles)

body:
At 09:34 AM 9/25/02 +0100, you wrote:
>At 04:44 23/09/02 -0500, Tesla Coil wrote:
>
>>In no case is it [[Edward Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby]] and
>>[[Edward Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby]]. "English-speakers do
>>not put family names as part of the title."
>
>...which is quite clearly untrue, at least when referring
>in formal terms to historical figures. The Dictionary of
>National Biography, for example, lists peers by their family
>name, as in: CAVENDISH, Spencer Compton, Marquis of Hartington
>and 8th Duke of Devonshire.
>
>There is an alternative proposal which may be more to Tesla
>Coil's liking at [[Wikipedia:History standards]], which is
>to use the full name, ordinal and title. I don't think this
>should take precedence over to "common names" rule in cases
>like [[Duke of Wellington]] or [[Bertrand Russell]], and it
>does tend to make entry titles rather long, but it is the
>best way to clearly identify a specific titled individual.
>Thus we would have [[Spencer Cavendish, 8th Duke of
>Devonshire]] for the chap named above, no matter what it
>says in [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles)]].
>This seems the best way forward to me (for UK peerages, at
>least), but while I'm willing to be bold in updating pages,
>I don't want to be too bold in updating conventions. I've
>only been in this thing for four days, after all.
>
>
>Rob

This seems correct, but as it is unlikely the odd person wandering into
this area is going to automatically conform to this reasonable, but obscure
convention, I suggest simply retitling pages and entries correctly would be
better than trying to point the convention out. Although a footnote, so to
speak, might be entered in [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and
titles)]]. I doubt that very many of the people in question deserve much of
an entry or mention and those that do are generally known by their common
names, although, for example, Elizabeth Windsor, is almost unrecognizable
by her common name.

Fred


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletion

body:
At 06:39 AM 9/25/02 +0200, Andre Engels wrote:

>Well, I don't know where I fall, but since my name seems to be one of those
>coming up in the debates - examining my motives doesn't change them. My
>motive is that there are some articles that in my opinion are worse than
>no article, and I keep with that opinion.

Yes you make many deletions, as I see from the log, most of which are fully
justified. I only found one or two deleted entries that seemed interesting
to me. (Although some substantial topics I'm not aware of the significance
of may be there). [[infant mortality (computer)]], fascinating topic
although it ought to be expanded to include all devices. [[Abermud]], the
father of them all, although not the grandaddy, that was Adventure. I guess
I want to see interesting topics remain, even if undeveloped.

>But we ARE justifying and we ARE not just prepared to make a record, the
>record is actually being made. Have you ever even looked at
>[[Wikipedia:Deletion log]]? You'll find EVERY deletion of the past three
>weeks there, with the justification given.

Since it is such a rich resource for good articles perhaps it might extend
back beyond 3 weeks and include an easy way to recover the text, small
though it may be.

>
>> I find returning to Wikipedia and finding articles deleted (and
>> unrecoverable) quite unpleasant.

I just need to remember to "watch" any short articles I guess.
>
>And I find coming to Wikipedia and seeing an article called "Bronx Zoo"
>with as its text "the zoo in the bronx" quite unpleasant.

A close case...the Bronx Zoo will be an article, but much more extensive
than that. Many deletions are of titles that will never make an article, I
would probably prefer titles that will remain, but we all have talked
extensively of that, I think without any real referent in experience other
than anecdotal, thus unconclusively. I guess what would suffice is to
ensure that somewhere, for example, in this case, in perhaps the article on
New York City, an empty link remains to [[Bronx Zoo]], just as a pointer to
encourage an article.

Fred


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletion

body:
> Anyway, I think it is fair to say that there is some vandalism or let us
> say abuse of their position by some sysops. I would suggest that if you are
> not one of those responsible there is no need to take offense; and if you
> are perhaps an examination of your motives is appropriate.

Well, I don't know where I fall, but since my name seems to be one of those
coming up in the debates - examining my motives doesn't change them. My
motive is that there are some articles that in my opinion are worse than
no article, and I keep with that opinion.

> My point is, that unless you can justify it and are prepared to make a
> record of what you have done and why that you leave other peoples work
> alone unless you are engaged in improving it.

But we ARE justifying and we ARE not just prepared to make a record, the
record is actually being made. Have you ever even looked at
[[Wikipedia:Deletion log]]? You'll find EVERY deletion of the past three
weeks there, with the justification given.

> I find returning to Wikipedia and finding articles deleted (and
> unrecoverable) quite unpleasant.

And I find coming to Wikipedia and seeing an article called "Bronx Zoo"
with as its text "the zoo in the bronx" quite unpleasant.

Andre Engels


body:
--- koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> I see that he excluded subpages but included
> parenthetical titles.  That should be an incentive
> to desubpage the remainging entries.
>
> Also, he included redirects (e.g. [[Film Noir]]).
> Should we ask that those be excluded, or is it that
> pressing an issue?

It's a moot point, as our Allpages function does not
show which pages are redirects. OneLook's update
engine can only filter based on the information that
page provides.

Jimbo mentioned setting up and RDF feed for external
indexing of Wikipedia articles. I hope there's some
interest in doing so.

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
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body:
--- koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> No, the point is that [[film noir]] turns up 3rd on
> the search results, after [[Film Noir]], a redirect,
> and after the list of films noir.  It would be
> bestto follow but not index redirects, right?  Or is
> there a good reason to index them also?
>
> kq

It's best to index them, I think. OneLook is designed
to look up the exact word(s) entered; if it followed
the redirect instead, the results from Wikipedia would
be different from every other source.

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
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from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] Fulltext Stoplist

body:
> So, why not make it "wikipedia:Fulltext Stoplist", and load the
> whole list from the database on each query? Might actually save
> some time in the long run, and the non-English wikipedias could
> easily develop their own lists. Or would that be too risky?

The stoplist is compiled into MySQL; it can't be changed without
recompiling the database software.


from_name: Rob Brewer

body:
At 04:44 23/09/02 -0500, Tesla Coil wrote:

>In no case is it [[Edward Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby]] and
>[[Edward Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby]]. "English-speakers do
>not put family names as part of the title."

...which is quite clearly untrue, at least when referring
in formal terms to historical figures. The Dictionary of
National Biography, for example, lists peers by their family
name, as in: CAVENDISH, Spencer Compton, Marquis of Hartington
and 8th Duke of Devonshire.

There is an alternative proposal which may be more to Tesla
Coil's liking at [[Wikipedia:History standards]], which is
to use the full name, ordinal and title. I don't think this
should take precedence over to "common names" rule in cases
like [[Duke of Wellington]] or [[Bertrand Russell]], and it
does tend to make entry titles rather long, but it is the
best way to clearly identify a specific titled individual.
Thus we would have [[Spencer Cavendish, 8th Duke of
Devonshire]] for the chap named above, no matter what it
says in [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles)]].
This seems the best way forward to me (for UK peerages, at
least), but while I'm willing to be bold in updating pages,
I don't want to be too bold in updating conventions. I've
only been in this thing for four days, after all.

Rob


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Fulltext Stoplist

body:
The CVS contains FulltextStoplist.php, which is a list of the "common
words" excluded from search queries. It contains only English words,
which caused complaints on the German wikipedia, as they, at least,
don't want to be kept from searching for "false friends" common in English.

It would be easy to just make it another array/function in the Language
files, but
1. AFAIK, it is only used in one function, namely search
2. It might be nice if updating this list would be easy for everyone,
not just developers

So, why not make it "wikipedia:Fulltext Stoplist", and load the whold
list from the database on each query? Might actually save some time in
the long run, and the non-English wikipedias could easily develop their
own lists. Or would that be too risky?

Magnus


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] "In memoriam"

body:
Jeroen Heijmans wrote:

> Last week I've tried to remove the "in memoriam" parts of the 9/11
> pages by putting them on meta. This move was reverted (twice, I
> countered) by The Cunctator. However, I have not heard any _good_
> arguments from him (or anybody else) for keeping them.
>
> The arguments were:
>
> * "I take it pretty personally" - Cunctator seemed to agree himself
> that this isn't a very good reason
> * "these are among the most popular pages on the site" - that is not a
> good reason. We are an encyclopedia, and no matter how many visitors
> we get for a page, if it's not an encyclopedia article, it must go. We
> could probably put some pornographic images here or music downloads -
> that would bring visitors - but they're not encyclopedia material.
>
> Some have mentioned the pages should go to some special wiki - that's
> fine with me, but I *very strongly* feel they should leave Wikipedia
> now. The meta is the best place for them now. I've already brought
> this up some months ago, and I agreed then to wait until after
> September 11, 2002. It is now September 25, and time to move on with
> these pages - there has been plenty of time to think of other/better
> solutions. As I've said before, I don't think we should give 911 any
> special treatment anymore - there's no reason for that.

I agree that most of these maudlin exercises should go elsewhere.  We
only need to keep whatever is there that is of true historical
interest..  An appropriately place link to the sentimental material is
all the reference we need to it.

The popularity argument is not a strong one.  Unlike the major TV
networks we do not need to appeal to the lowest common denominator just
to appease advertisers.

The "/Donations" sub-page would be my first candidate for deletion.
 What business to we have encouraging donations to help people who have
already been richly compensated?  The amounts collected in respect of
these about 3,000 victims are already many times what has been requested
to help the millions that have been affected by the AIDS epidemic in
Africa, yet these latter groups often cannot meet their funding targets.

Some of us are just plain tired of all this whining about 9/11.

Ec


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] "In memoriam"

in_reply_to: <200209251848.g8PImOI17696@ross.bomis.com>; from koyaanisqatsi@nupedia.com on Wed, Sep 25, 2002 at 11:48:24AM -0700

body:
I think they need to be NPOV, but I also am in favor of trying to keep
them.  Are those two goals incompatible?

Can someone give a specific example (URL) of a specific page, so that
we can narrow the discussion a bit?

The fact that the pages are popular is not _entirely_ irrelevant,
although it is also not _conclusive_ as to whether or not we should
keep them.  For the most part, the popularity of a page measures
traffic from google, our biggest traffic source.  If lots of people
are searching for 'X' on google, and finding our page 'X', then that's
good.  We should give them the NPOV on 'X'.

That's true even if 'X' is something that a normal encyclopedia
couldn't touch because of space constraints.

On the other hand, I do think that there are potential namespace
issues here if proper naming conventions aren't followed.

--------------------

I didn't say anything about it earlier, but I'm in favor of a page
named 'fuck', subject to all the things that others said already.  It
should be a serious page, not a snickering joke.  It's an important
word, with an interesting history, and that's that.

I feel the same way about the 'N-word', even if the fact that I'm an
upper middle class white guy with good ol' boy southern roots
precludes _me_ from even typing the word without feeling negative
emotional reactions. :-)

Someone could write a serious treatment of the word, and that's a good
thing.

--Jimbo


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletion

body:
On Wednesday 25 September 2002 08:24 am, Fred wrote:
> Yes [Andre] you make many deletions, as I see from the log,
> most of which are fully justified. I only found one or two deleted
> entries that seemed interesting to me. (Although some substantial
> topics I'm not aware of the significance of may be there). [[infant
mortality (computer)]], fascinating topic although it ought to be
> expanded to include all devices. [[Abermud]], the father of them
> all, although not the grandaddy, that was Adventure. I guess
> I want to see interesting topics remain, even if undeveloped.

Since many others think that undeveloped topics should remain edit links then
why don't write decent stubs for the topics that interest you yet are placed
in the deletion log?

> Since [the deletion log] is such a rich resource for good articles
> perhaps it might extend back beyond 3 weeks and include an
> easy way to recover the text, small though it may be.
>....
> A close case...the Bronx Zoo will be an article, but much more extensive
> than that.

In 90% of the cases, the entire text is placed in the deletion summary.
Simply copy this and start from there (or query the database and read the
history as Brion has suggested).

Although it would be a waste of time to copy "the zoo in the Bronx" since an
actual very short stub would look something like;

The '''Bronx Zoo''' is a world famous [[zoo]] in [[Bronx]] [[New York]]. It
opened on [[November 8]], [[1899]] with 22 exhibits and 843 [[animal]]s and
with the goal to "advance the study of [[zoology]], protect wildlife, and
educate the public.

==External link==
http://wcs.org/home/zoos/bronxzoo/

Now that is a decent definition and could serve as the foundation of an
actual article. "the zoo in the Bronx" is useless crap and if I saw that
amongst 20 other similarly useless microstubs I would probably have deleted
it rather than spend a few minutes creating a short and still pathetic stub.
But if I did do this, then what about the other 19? Aren't they also
deserving? Time ain't cheap.

When many of these things enter the database each day it is not possible to
spend even 3 minutes on each of these microstubs that took the original
submitter 10 seconds to write. Furthermore, WIkipedia is not a dictionary so
I tend to not create such short stubs unless they serve a specific purpose.
It takes me 10 minutes to create a decent stub on a topic I know nothing
about. But at the same time I don't delete decent definitions submitted by
others; I add to the definitions.

Simply bookmark the deletion log and use it as a place to get ideas on
starting new articles.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] "In memoriam"

in_reply_to: <200209251908.g8PJ8QE21456@ross.bomis.com>; from lcrocker@nupedia.com on Wed, Sep 25, 2002 at 12:08:26PM -0700

body:
It was suggested to me that they be moved to another domain, and if there's
consensus for that, I'd gladly host them on that domain.  Either something
like 911tribute.wikipedia.com or www.whatever.com, which I would gladly buy.

Even so, I'd like to keep as much as we can, if it can be made NPOV.

lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:

> > Some have mentioned the pages should go to some special wiki--
> > that's fine with me, but I *very strongly* feel they should leave
> > Wikipedia now.
>
> I'd be happy to host the pages on my site, and I don't think
> Jimbo would have any problem hosting them on the Wikipedia
> server either.  But yes, they certainly need to be removed from
> the main Wikipedia (though the articles about 9/11 can link to
> them).  That also seems like a good reason to keep "meta"
> around and to upgrade it to the new software.
>
>
>
>
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Khendon

body:
On Wed, Sep 25, 2002 at 09:34:44AM +0100, Rob Brewer wrote:
> Thus we would have [[Spencer Cavendish, 8th Duke of
> Devonshire]]

It seems to me a better alternative would be [[Spencer Cavendish]] (assuming
no other Spencer Cavendish has an article) and a [[8th Duke of Devonshire]]
redirect to it. It makes it easier to find the page.

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] "In memoriam"

body:
Jeronimo wrote:
>* "these are among the most popular pages on the site" - that is not a
>good reason. We are an encyclopedia, and no matter how many visitors we
>get for a page, if it's not an encyclopedia article, it must go.

I agree with this completely.  We should be careful about setting precendence for non-NPOV articles: what article will next get the privilege?  None, I hope.  If they can't be NPOV, they should go.

My $.015

kq


subject: [Wikipedia-l] "In memoriam"

in_reply_to: <200209251946.g8PJkCZ27832@ross.bomis.com>; from lcrocker@nupedia.com on Wed, Sep 25, 2002 at 12:46:12PM -0700

body:
lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
> Since you asked for references to specific pages, I went looking,
> and I'm now more ambivalent.  I think what people have a problem
> with is pages like "William M. Feehan", which is just effusive
> praise and tearful reminiscence.

http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/William_M._Feehan

You're description is accurate, but he's a famous enough person that
gathering a real bio ought to be easy enough.

>  But then there are also pages
> like "Brady Howell", which is a perfectly ordinary biography that
> I'd have no problem with at all.

http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Brady_Howell

> I'm already on record that I support allowing biographies of anyone
> at all in Wikipedia, with no regard to whether their accomplishments
> or fame would merit their inclusion in a more traditional reference.

I agree, except that I can see some problems with disambiguation and
namespace.  Howell, for example, sounds like a wonderful person, but
part of what makes his story poignant is that he was just a regular
joe like any of us.

> But I also think that some people used these pages not for
> "biography" but for "eulogy", and that's not appropriate here.

Seems easily fixable, if a bit "touchy".

Let's take an example sentence from the article you liked, Howell...
"He worked with newspaper carriers in Smithfield and Hyde Park, who
still remember him as a caring and fun-loving supervisor."  This is a
bit hagiographic, but presumably true, and deleting it seems pretty
pointless, without any information or indication or suggestion that it
might not be NPOV.

> I have nothing against eulogy--I created
> http://www.piclab.com/sasha for a friend of mine, for example--
> and I would like to see a biography of him here as well.
> But I wouldn't put the memorial comments from my site into
> the article.

Right.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] "In memoriam"

body:
> Some have mentioned the pages should go to some special wiki--
> that's fine with me, but I *very strongly* feel they should leave
> Wikipedia now.

I'd be happy to host the pages on my site, and I don't think
Jimbo would have any problem hosting them on the Wikipedia
server either.  But yes, they certainly need to be removed from
the main Wikipedia (though the articles about 9/11 can link to
them).  That also seems like a good reason to keep "meta"
around and to upgrade it to the new software.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: "In memoriam"

body:
On Wednesday 25 September 2002 12:01 pm, you wrote:
> Some have mentioned the pages should go to some special wiki - that's
> fine with me, but I *very strongly* feel they should leave Wikipedia
> now. The meta is the best place for them now. I've already brought this
> up some months ago, and I agreed then to wait until after September 11,
> 2002. It is now September 25, and time to move on with these pages -
> there has been plenty of time to think of other/better solutions. As
> I've said before, I don't think we should give 911 any special treatment
> anymore - there's no reason for that.
>
> Jeronimo

I agree the non-article 9/11 pages which including hundreds of tribute pages
should be moved (while still allowing Google to index them at their new homes
- we will still get traffic that way). But I do not agree that this should be
a hasty cut and paste effort. What I would like to see is a mechanism whereby
the move feature could move a page and its history in WIkipedia to Metapedia.

It would also be a very good idea to add "w:" link-backs where appropriate in
the moved pages. But to make this cross-linking work pages on Metapedia need
to look different than pages on Wikipedia. I've already suggested a light
gray background.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] "In memoriam"

body:
> It was suggested to me that they be moved to another domain,
> and if there's consensus for that, I'd gladly host them on that
> domain.  Either something like 911tribute.wikipedia.com or
> www.whatever.com, which I would gladly buy.
> Even so, I'd like to keep as much as we can, if it can be made NPOV.

Since you asked for references to specific pages, I went looking,
and I'm now more ambivalent.  I think what people have a problem
with is pages like "William M. Feehan", which is just effusive
praise and tearful reminiscence.  But then there are also pages
like "Brady Howell", which is a perfectly ordinary biography that
I'd have no problem with at all.

I'm already on record that I support allowing biographies of anyone
at all in Wikipedia, with no regard to whether their accomplishments
or fame would merit their inclusion in a more traditional reference.
As long as we take care with namespace issues, and those biographies
are not mere self-aggrandizement, I have no problem with including
any anyone cares to write--including those about 9/11 victims.
But I also think that some people used these pages not for
"biography" but for "eulogy", and that's not appropriate here.

I have nothing against eulogy--I created
http://www.piclab.com/sasha for a friend of mine, for example--
and I would like to see a biography of him here as well.
But I wouldn't put the memorial comments from my site into
the article.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] ads on user pages

body:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
> If you cannot comprehend that at SOME POINT money has to be
> made,

I think that the only person who could validly claim that "at SOME
POINT money has to be made" is me -- since I'm paying all the actual
cash bills around here.  But I don't say that, and in fact I say the
exact opposite -- no money is really NEEDED for the immediate future.

Perhaps he's planning to give the money for my kid's college education
fund?  *grin*

So, that argument is pretty much a non-starter.  On the other hand,
user pages have been, to a degree at least, been generally considered
the province of the user.  I'm inclined to say that the content of
those pages are subject to "raw wiki rules" which means, hey, delete
it and put it back until someone gives up.  But I'm not sure if that's
the most useful attitude.

The only concern I have about banning advertisements in user pages is
that it commits us to enforcing content-based restrictions on those
pages, which are generally NOT incluced in our NPOV mission.

--Jimbo