subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
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Justin Cormack stated for the record:

> Maybe I do have surprising expectations, but I do think that even 7 year
> olds are more interested in "Puppy" rather than "Dog" say. Big articles
> are just stopping off points for whatever you are really trying to find,
> the article about the particularly cute kind of puppy that just ran
> past.

The seven-year-olds you are thinking about are not like my
seven-year-old or any of her classmates.  Perhaps my daughter goes to a
lax school, but the reports she's assigned to write are on big subjects,
like "one of the planets" or "an Arctic animal" (actual examples).

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Never stand next to anyone throwing
 sean at epoptic.com | shit at an armed man. --Larry Niven
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list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Amruta Lonkar

subject: [Wikitech-l] (no subject)

body:
Hi,

Can someone please tell me where i can find the  wfEscapeJsString method. I
have added a button in the edit tool bar and now want to add the sample text
and tool tip for it. I am guessing its in this method.

Thanks,
--
Amruta


list: wikien-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
Fastfission wrote:

>But if we are truly worried about some articles being "bad
>representatives", it might be nice to really explicitly prioritize
>some of them. We do have that list of "100 articles which should be in
>every encyclopedia" or something like that for all of the new-language
>Wikis to consider as a starting point -- maybe we need to re-apply
>that to EN and really get out there to encourage people to find things
>on that list (or another list of some sort) which are important to get
>into a "featured" state *not* because the article is necessarily
>horribly flawed in some way, but because the *topic* of the article is
>of a high-enough priority to the world-at-large that if we goof on it,
>it'll look like a bad thing. It would also be a good way to march
>towards 1.0 if people are still interested in that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_articles_all_languages_should_have

I created the above page for this specific purpose - en: has all these
articles (or something like them), but very few are up to featured
quality.

One problem I see with the FA process is that a lot of the articles
are incredibly esoteric. If you're a specialist in a field, you're
highly motivated to write a REALLY GOOD article about something you
know well. There seems to be less motivation to get the *really
general* articles up to featured status. God help the person who tries
to get [[Earth]] past the present FAC process and keep it under 200KB.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Writing style (was: a valid criticism)

body:
Charles Matthews wrote:

>Reading this list,. anyway, you'd think driving out 'amateurism' was defined
>by NPOV, NOR and sources.  Not by Fowler, Gowers, Strunk-White.  We hardly
>hear about 'style crimes'; and it has been argued that lame, academic style
>is kind of OK.
>More subediting needed.

Oh goodness yes. We need *good writers* in general.

I have a pile of links on style on my user page:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Gerard#My_personal_style_guide

I will often see a badly-written article on something I know about and
do some rewriting with edit summary "tighten [section name]".

My favourite writing style is still that found in The Economist:
incredibly tight writing, giving simple sentences with a fantastic
density of information. They're not interested in NPOV - some of the
casual opinionation really makes me think of a friend's summary: "I
love The Economist. It's like a really rational guy on crack." - but I
think we have a *lot* to learn from their writing style.

- d.


from_name: steve v

subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
Yeah, I know what Cleanup is about -- I started the
dang thing (kind of commandeering it from Cimon Avaro
IIRC). DGMW, continued proper diversification is going
to help a lot. But that doesnt change the fact that
(as we were talking about before *all the OT about how
[[cute]] our tiny progeny are*) some wider reforms are
needed to scale up guidance to match growth:

Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_reform ( WP:DRR )

Its just a stub ATP and it and it needs a lot of work,
but when people get their ideas filled it I think
there will be something to talk about and base some
polls/votes on how to proceed.

(Parents may now continue their boasting.)
SV

--- Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:

> The only reason for specialization is that currently
> {{cleanup}} is
> applied to hundreds and hundreds of articles, many
> of which are not
> very high-profile and thus not high-priority. I
> don't think it's the
> end-all solution but it seemed like a reasonable
> change to make.
>
> It seems to me that cleanup in general has two
> purposes: one, to
> indicate that it is known that a particular article
> is in a state of
> disrepair and to help encourage people who stumble
> across that article
> to repair it. The second is to give people
> interested in generally
> improving Wikipedia the ability to find articles
> which could use
> attention.
>
> The advantage of a little specialization would, I
> believe, be to aid
> the latter usage more than the former. All of the
> characters and
> topics in the "priority" category are also so well
> known that there
> are literally dozens of books written on them, they
> are present in
> every other encyclopedia available, and there are
> hundreds upon
> hundreds of webpages on them. Writing a biography of
> [[Bill Gates]]
> takes no specialized knowledge or training. I was
> able to add a
> substantial amount to the article just by cutting
> and pasting content
> from the other articles we have relating to
> Microsoft (Microsoft,
> History of Microsoft Windows, and United States v.
> Microsoft,
> specifically). That took about 15 minutes worth of
> work. This is stuff
> *anyone* can do if they want to.
>
> "If they want to" is of course the operative part.
> Specialization can
> be enabling -- *if* someone wants to work on a
> general article, it's a
> good way to direct them to things which need
> attention -- but it does
> not compel action in and of itself. That's a bigger
> question, and
> worth thinking about seriously, though I don't have
> any specific ideas
> regarding it at the moment, personally.
>
> FF
>
> On 10/7/05, steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Further specialization in process may help, but
> thats
> > only part of it. Some would say its just more
> "process
> > creep", and I tend to think the truth somewhere in
> the
> > middle between process upgrades and guidance
> upgrades.
> >
> > IAC I think I need to apologise for my earlier
> > comment, "please forgive us..." which was indeed a
> bit
> > snippy (though quite edited down from what I had
> in
> > the draft :|).  Our traditional proper response to
> > anyone has traditionally been "{{sofixit}}" and it
> > should remain so, regardless of who makes the
> > criticism. There are in fact only two--exactly
> > two--kinds of people in this world: Those who edit
> > Wikipedia and those who dont.
> >
> > And furthermore, I think ATP focusing on
> particular
> > articles ("the pick on a crappy article game" -
> > Flcello) at this point is rather useless, when
> there
> > are indeed bigger fish to fry --considering my
> opening
> > point, namely that stuff needs' be done.
> >
> > Sincerely,
> > SV
> >
> > --- Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > That's the list I was thinking of. The cleanup
> > > process is currently so
> > > bogged down that it's hard to know what needs to
> be
> > > done, though. In
> > > the meantime, I've created a template --
> > > {{cleanup-priority}}, which
> > > currently is a cleanup tag for any articles
> which
> > > are of sub-par
> > > quality on that list (and should only be limited
> to
> > > that list, I
> > > think), hopefully it will help focus things a
> bit.
> > > (If people disagree
> > > with the "prioritization", well, they can argue
> that
> > > on the list
> > > itself -- if we have such a list, and take it at
> > > least partially
> > > seriously, then I think using it as a base for a
> > > prioritization scheme
> > > is a good idea).
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________
> > Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
> > http://mail.yahoo.com
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] wfEscapeJsString method

body:
Hi,

Can someone please tell me where i can find the  wfEscapeJsString method. I
have added a button in the edit tool bar and now want to add the sample text
and tool tip for it. I am guessing its in this method.

Thanks,
--
Amruta
_______________________________________________
--
Amruta


subject: [WikiEN-l] Response to Nick Carr on Wikipedia and Web 2.0

body:
Nick Carr mostly agrees with me! :-O

  http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2005/10/more_on_wikiped.php

- d.


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>>On 10/6/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>>
>>>http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2005/10/the_amorality_o.php
>>>
>>>I don't agree with much of this critique, and I certainly do not share
>>>the attitude that Wikipedia is better than Britannica merely because it
>>>is free. It is my intention that we aim at Britannica-or-better
>>>quality, period, free or non-free. We should strive to be the best.
>>>
>
>
>
> "It is my intention that we aim at Britannica-or-better quality, period,
> free or non-free." Geez, watch what you say. Before I noticed who made the
> statement I took it to mean that you don't care if we're free or non-free.

Right.  And here I am complaining about bad writing. :-)

No, what I mean is, I will never accept that we should use freeness as
an excuse for sucking.  We want to be free *and* better than Britannnica.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> You know, if it was anyone else complaining about article quality, the
> response would be something more like "{{sofixit}}".

Yes, and that's a valid response to me.  Except, when people tell me
{{sofixit}} I start thinking about broad policy, not about editing the
article itself. :-)

{{sofixit}} is what I intend to do, but at the level of policy.  We need
to take a serious look at why some high-profile articles are delightful,
and some are horrible.

I do not think that the fact that Jane Fonda and Bill Gates are
controversial figures is the real answer here, by the way.  They are,
but the problems I'm complaining about in the articles is not that they
are biased, nor that they focus too much on the controversies, etc.

It's that they are badly written.  A confusing mishmash of random facts
not shaped into a coherent whole.  Others have written eloquently on
this, and on why this might be the case.  The puzzle, though, is: what
can be done about it.

Project outsiders might suggest only allowing "expert writers" to work
on such articles.  I think any of us can explain how that's much easier
said than done.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
Fastfission wrote:
> If [[Bill Gates]] and [[Jane Fonda]] were wonderful, featured articles
> then he could have picked any of the dozens upon dozens of other
> biographies of major figures who haven't had a full editing treatment
> from many knowledgeable editors. The "find crappy articles on
> Wikipedia" game is not one we can ever win -- the person looking for
> crap will find it.

Yes, but these are not exactly obscure people.  If he went and found an
article on an obscure 13th century poet which was crap, I would be not
quite as bothered.  But Jane Fonda?  Bill Gates?

These entries could be contentious, heavily edited, prone to vandalism,
occassionally biased, etc., and I would be happier than I am right now.
 What I'm unhappy about is *bad writing*.

> When people do that -- okay, there might be a real cause for concern.
> But if they're looking at articles which just haven't had the benefit
> of a swirl of interested and informed attention -- well, that's always
> going to be the majority of the encyclopedia in the way things are
> done here. There's no point in which the numbers on that will ever
> really change. Wikipedia is not going to ever be valued for its
> "completeness" or its "coherency" -- it will be valued for its
> intellectual property model, its breadth, its concept, its speed, and,
> in the end, some aspect of its "usefulness", which is a moving target.

Well, I don't agree.  It is my intention that we be valued for
completeness and coherency and "brilliant prose" *as well as* for being
freely licensed, with magnificent breadth and speed and usefulness, etc.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:
> On 10/7/05, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>>2. We need a way to discourage well-meaning but less-able editors
>>from crumbling good articles. On my watchlist I see a lot of editors
>>(some logins, some anons) adding nonsequiturs or redundancies,
>>randomly rearranging text, adding useless templates en masse, etc.
>>They're not vandalism, but they're not improvements either, and
>>most of them I just let slide by because they're stylistic rather
>>than factual, and it's disheartening to argue with people about
>>style over and over. A vicious circle though, because if I feel
>>like an article is inexorably going downhill, I'm less and less
>>motivated to try to halt the slide. Not quite the same as article
>>rating, it seems more like we want articles to gradually get harder
>>to edit as they gradually get better.
>
> This is a great point by Stan, and something Wikipedia has to figure
> out. At least for English WP, it's no longer predominantly growth
> mode; it has entered an important maintenance-heavy mode.

I know this is lame, but I just want to say "me too".  Stan's point is
great.

> We'd like to think that it's inevitable we'll asymptotically approach
> high quality, as Tony defended with [[Eventualism]]. But I think it's
> too simplistc. As Stan observed, many articles have been or are
> sliding backwards, and unfortunately the techniques to prevent the
> regression are generally frowned upon - abrupt rejections of changes
> from newbies, repeated reverts, protecting articles.
>
> As we've moved from growth to maintaining the core set of articles
> that will be in "1.0", have we appropriately changed our expectations
> about community policies to get there?

I think that's exactly the right conversation for us to be having.

I'm a big fan of eventualism.  But Bill Gates and Jane Fonda are not new
articles, nor are they difficult or obscure subjects.  Nor are the
problems I'm _currently_ concerned about with these articles problems
resulting from a lack of knowledge.  They are stylistic problems which
are pretty awful.

--jimbo


list: textbook-l

from_name: Karl Wick

subject: [Textbook-l] Re: Wikibooks

body:
Italian? I must have gotten confused ... is that Laurent? Didn't
someone say he was French? Anyway, I apologize if I made you or anyone
feel bad for the mistake.

Karl

Or, you mean, you DO speak French, like Laurant, but DON'T speak
Italian, just by-the-way. I guess I am not going to worry about it, my
humor sensors are failing me this morning ... but have a great day
Anthere and talk to you soon.

On 10/6/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> http://www.ilsole24ore.com/fc?cmd=art&artId=581516&chId=30&artType=News&back=0
>
> I do not understand italian either :-)
>
> Ant
>
> Karl Wick wrote:
>
> > Yeah, and I wrote back to him and to Ryan. Thanks for the connection,
> > maybe we will be written up in a nice piece somewhere. I don't speak
> > any French though so I don't know if I will understand any of
> > Laurent's article.
> >
> > Karl
> >
> > On 10/6/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
>


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
On 10/7/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> > But who looks up "Earth" in an encyclopaedia?
>
> My seven-year-old daughter.  Wikipedia is an encyclopedia for everyone,
> not just geeks who are looking for hyper-specialized trivia.
>
> > I would expect more people to read [[Brutalist architecture]] than
> [[Architecture]]....
>
> You have surprising expectations.

I echo this.  I've got a two year old daughter.  One of the reasons
I'm so active in Wikipedia is that I want her to have a good reference
source for when we start teaching her.  She's already reading a
little, so it won't be too long before she starts visiting Wikipedia
(under careful supervision, mind you) and not log after that before
she starts editing.  (I'm not letting her serve on ArbCom until she's
25, though.)

Kelly

Kelly


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:

>On 10/7/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
>
>
>>>But who looks up "Earth" in an encyclopaedia?
>>>
>>>
>>My seven-year-old daughter.  Wikipedia is an encyclopedia for everyone,
>>not just geeks who are looking for hyper-specialized trivia.
>>
>>
>>>I would expect more people to read [[Brutalist architecture]] than
>>>
>>>
>>[[Architecture]]....
>>
>>You have surprising expectations.
>>
>>
>I echo this.  I've got a two year old daughter.  One of the reasons
>I'm so active in Wikipedia is that I want her to have a good reference
>source for when we start teaching her.  She's already reading a
>little, so it won't be too long before she starts visiting Wikipedia
>(under careful supervision, mind you) and not log after that before
>she starts editing.  (I'm not letting her serve on ArbCom until she's
>25, though.)
>
She should be ready by her third birthday. :-)

What interests a three-year old?  As adults we may like other material.
Let's hope that the kind of material that may interest her has not been
deleted as non-notable.

Ec


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>From: Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com>
>
>I like your idea of adopting the Economist house style, but a lot of kids
>are taught in schools to write unimaginably long, tedious essays on quite
>trivial subjects, so they have to learn how to trim out the waffle when
>they
>come to writing for real readers.

Is anything too trivial for Wikipedia, if it is to become "the sum of all
human knowledge"?

Jay.


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
Is it just me, or does Carr need a good editor?

"And so, having gone on for so long, I at long last come to my point."

Um, couldn't he have just trimmed his article, a teensy bit? All that
nonsense about quasi-religious longing, Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, gets in the way
of what he's really saying, which is that new groupware ventures like
Wikipedia, whatever else they may be, aren't engines for transforming the
work of masses of ordinary people into great writing.

Honestly if I'd been faced with a choice between thoroughly copy editing
Jane Fonda, and reading one of Carr's articles all the way through just
once, I'd go for Jane every time. He could have said it all in three
paragraphs. But I suppose that if you remove the references to mysticism and
evangelism you get down to an observation that's so commonplace that it can
only provoke the response: "so what?"


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
On 10/7/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_articles_all_languages_should_have
>
> I created the above page for this specific purpose - en: has all these
> articles (or something like them), but very few are up to featured
> quality.
>
> One problem I see with the FA process is that a lot of the articles
> are incredibly esoteric. If you're a specialist in a field, you're
> highly motivated to write a REALLY GOOD article about something you
> know well. There seems to be less motivation to get the *really
> general* articles up to featured status. God help the person who tries
> to get [[Earth]] past the present FAC process and keep it under 200KB.

That's the list I was thinking of. The cleanup process is currently so
bogged down that it's hard to know what needs to be done, though. In
the meantime, I've created a template -- {{cleanup-priority}}, which
currently is a cleanup tag for any articles which are of sub-par
quality on that list (and should only be limited to that list, I
think), hopefully it will help focus things a bit. (If people disagree
with the "prioritization", well, they can argue that on the list
itself -- if we have such a list, and take it at least partially
seriously, then I think using it as a base for a prioritization scheme
is a good idea).

I think it's important that, say, [[Bill Gates]] be a decent article
(he's on the list). [[Jane Fonda]] is in my mind less of a priority
(and is not on that list).

FF


body:
>Honestly if I'd been faced with a choice between thoroughly copy editing
>Jane Fonda, and reading one of Carr's articles all the way through just
>once, I'd go for Jane every time. He could have said it all in three
>paragraphs. But I suppose that if you remove the references to mysticism and
>evangelism you get down to an observation that's so commonplace that it can
>only provoke the response: "so what?"

He's a Harvard business professor. See http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/ -
restating the obvious is his stock in trade ;-)

But in fairness, look at what he's responding to. "Web 2.0" is a
Wired/Negroponte dot-com wank phrase.

I've chucked it on my LJ as well:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/reddragdiva/249008.html

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
On 10/7/05, Ryan Norton <wxprojects at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>
> Anyway, I cleaned up the Bill Gates article a bit - let me know you
> think :).

This doesn't belong in the opener:

"Bill Gates is often characterized as the quintessential example of a
super-intelligent nerd <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerd> with immense
power. This has in turn led to pop
culture<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_culture>stereotypes of Gates
as a
tyrant <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrant> or evil
genius<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_genius>commanding power over
an all-powerful
empire <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire> of technology and programming.
Several films and television shows have portrayed either the real Bill Gates
or a fictionalized version of him, often according to these cliches."

It gives far, far too much weight to a superficial caricature that sometimes
appears in yellow rags. The body of the article also reminds me in places of
a Citizen Kane-style caricature--I almost expect it to come complete with
sentences like "So onward marches the progress of the planet's greatest
plutocrat!"

The article downplays some of the major facts of Gates' career. IBM and
MSDOS are not mentioned. The word "antitrust" is not present in the article.
There is no mention of the fact that Gates founded Corbis, now owner of the
largest digital image collection in the world. It's still crap.


body:
On 10/7/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> But in fairness, look at what he's responding to. "Web 2.0" is a
> Wired/Negroponte dot-com wank phrase.
>

Well I never read that tripe, either.

I like your idea of adopting the Economist house style, but a lot of kids
are taught in schools to write unimaginably long, tedious essays on quite
trivial subjects, so they have to learn how to trim out the waffle when they
come to writing for real readers.


subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
On 10/7/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
> > It's still crap.
>
> Time to say what should have been said to Nicholas Carr in the first
> place:
>
> {{sofixit}}
>

That's one possible way to react. Another way would be to consult Encarta's
entry on the same subject.


from_name: Snowspinner

subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
On Oct 7, 2005, at 12:25 PM, Kelly Martin wrote:
>>
>
> I echo this.  I've got a two year old daughter.  One of the reasons
> I'm so active in Wikipedia is that I want her to have a good reference
> source for when we start teaching her.  She's already reading a
> little, so it won't be too long before she starts visiting Wikipedia
> (under careful supervision, mind you) and not log after that before
> she starts editing.  (I'm not letting her serve on ArbCom until she's
> 25, though.)
>
>

You're letting her date before she serves on the arbcom? Such
permissiveness in parents these days.

-Snowspinner


subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
On 10/7/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
> > On 10/7/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> {{sofixit}}
> >>
> >
> > That's one possible way to react. Another way would be to consult
> > Encarta's entry on the same subject.
> >
>
> I doubt they even have one.
>

Where do you think I got the information that was omitted from the Wikipedia
article?


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Александр Сигачёв

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RTFW

body:
In Russian Forum (Village Pump) it was offered to use RTFW for
Wikipedia, just like RTFM. It can be popular in some circles :)

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTFM

--
Alexander Sigachov
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:ajvol


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
On 10/7/05, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> 2. We need a way to discourage well-meaning but less-able editors
> from crumbling good articles. On my watchlist I see a lot of editors
> (some logins, some anons) adding nonsequiturs or redundancies,
> randomly rearranging text, adding useless templates en masse, etc.
> They're not vandalism, but they're not improvements either, and
> most of them I just let slide by because they're stylistic rather
> than factual, and it's disheartening to argue with people about
> style over and over. A vicious circle though, because if I feel
> like an article is inexorably going downhill, I'm less and less
> motivated to try to halt the slide. Not quite the same as article
> rating, it seems more like we want articles to gradually get harder
> to edit as they gradually get better.

This is a great point by Stan, and something Wikipedia has to figure
out. At least for English WP, it's no longer predominantly growth
mode; it has entered an important maintenance-heavy mode.

We'd like to think that it's inevitable we'll asymptotically approach
high quality, as Tony defended with [[Eventualism]]. But I think it's
too simplistc. As Stan observed, many articles have been or are
sliding backwards, and unfortunately the techniques to prevent the
regression are generally frowned upon - abrupt rejections of changes
from newbies, repeated reverts, protecting articles.

As we've moved from growth to maintaining the core set of articles
that will be in "1.0", have we appropriately changed our expectations
about community policies to get there?

-User:Fuzheado


from_name: Justin Cormack

subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
On 7 Oct 2005, at 12:25, Jack Lynch wrote:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> Wikipedia:List_of_articles_all_languages_should_have
>
> I created the above page for this specific purpose - en: has all these
> articles (or something like them), but very few are up to featured
> quality.
>
> One problem I see with the FA process is that a lot of the articles
> are incredibly esoteric. If you're a specialist in a field, you're
> highly motivated to write a REALLY GOOD article about something you
> know well. There seems to be less motivation to get the *really
> general* articles up to featured status. God help the person who tries
> to get [[Earth]] past the present FAC process and keep it under 200KB.

But who looks up "Earth" in an encyclopaedia? I would expect more
people to
read [[Brutalist architecture]] than [[Architecture]], although might
use
the general article as a navigation aid, just because the big things
are too
general. The list of articles all languages should have is a bit
mixed on
this - it doesnt have [[Art]], or even [[Novel]] (a rather good article
based on a quick skim). Mind you it doesnt have [[Agriculture]], only
the
most important invention the history of the human race (which needs
work).

Justinc


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Dispute resolution attempt in the Ashida Kim case

body:
On 10/7/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/7/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Not if they're just offered without justification. You have to
> > explain WHY you think they're notable or not notable, or you're just
> > offering an unsupported conclusion.
>
>
> I think this is a problem we'll always have with use of shorthand.
> Elsewhere
> on this mailing list today we've seen the action of informal community
> consensus during editing seriously mischaracterized by use of the
> shorthands
> "tag team" and "meat puppet".
>
> The specific problem with the shorthand "not notable" is precisely that it
> doesn't give a single clue to the person reading it, what would constitute
> notability.

 The problem is that we need shorthand in the first place. Issues like
whether or not articles on high schools are ever deletable, and if so what
factors should be taken into consideration, should be decided first. The
problem with VFD is that the same questions get raised over and over and
over again. That's why we need shorthand. If the issues were discussed on a
higher level, then the full arguments could be laid out.
 Of course, if issues were discussed on a higher level it'd be a lot harder
to get consensus for deletion. Most deletions would be speedy ones, although
there would be room for voting/discussion over grey areas in the
definitions.
 Erik had a proposal well over a year ago which would look something like
this. In essence, a nomination would have to give a clear reason (which was
already agreed upon by consensus), and the votes/discussion would be solely
limited to whether or not the nominated article fit within that reason.

Also as noted earlier by a number of editors: the fact that a subject may
> not be notable isn't in itself a good reason for deleting the article.
> Nearly all AfDs for notability are prima facie merge candidates upon which
> nobody has as yet attempted a merge.

 Apparently you're using the term "notable" to mean "extraordinary". In that
case, yes, a subject need not be extraordinary to be kept in the
encyclopedia.

I wonder if we could agree to change policy to permit an administrator to
> "speedy redirect" a merge candidate and close an AfD where notability is
> the
> sole or principal reason given for deletion, or no reason is given. This
> would be a good way of ensuring that the possibility of merging articles
> was
> not unreasonably neglected. An article could always be renominated if good
> faith attempts to merge had failed.

 Any user is permitted to "speedy redirect" a merge candidate. Whether or
not a clearly improper VFD entry can be removed is less clear, but if it can
be removed then it shouldn't be only administrators that can do it.


body:
On 10/7/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Not if they're just offered without justification. You have to
> explain WHY you think they're notable or not notable, or you're just
> offering an unsupported conclusion.

I think this is a problem we'll always have with use of shorthand. Elsewhere
on this mailing list today we've seen the action of informal community
consensus during editing seriously mischaracterized by use of the shorthands
"tag team" and "meat puppet".

The specific problem with the shorthand "not notable" is precisely that it
doesn't give a single clue to the person reading it, what would constitute
notability.

Also as noted earlier by a number of editors: the fact that a subject may
not be notable isn't in itself a good reason for deleting the article.
Nearly all AfDs for notability are prima facie merge candidates upon which
nobody has as yet attempted a merge.

I wonder if we could agree to change policy to permit an administrator to
"speedy redirect" a merge candidate and close an AfD where notability is the
sole or principal reason given for deletion, or no reason is given. This
would be a good way of ensuring that the possibility of merging articles was
not unreasonably neglected. An article could always be renominated if good
faith attempts to merge had failed.


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

> I like your idea of adopting the Economist house style, but a lot of kids
> are taught in schools to write unimaginably long, tedious essays on quite
> trivial subjects, so they have to learn how to trim out the waffle when they
> come to writing for real readers.

Jakob Nielsen's "Writing for the Web" is not ideal for this purpose
(highlighted promotional keywords?), but it's a useful start.

    http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/

- l,d.


from_name: Michael Turley

body:
On 10/7/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com>
> >
> >I like your idea of adopting the Economist house style, but a lot of kids
> >are taught in schools to write unimaginably long, tedious essays on quite
> >trivial subjects, so they have to learn how to trim out the waffle when
> >they
> >come to writing for real readers.
>
> Is anything too trivial for Wikipedia, if it is to become "the sum of all
> human knowledge"?

Subject wise?  If it's verifiable, perhaps not.  Too trivial for
inclusion in broader articles?  Certainly.

For example, someone cut out the links to Bill Gates' home from the
Bill Gates article.  Details of his home are trivial in the Bill Gates
article so cutting them out was probably the right thing to do, but
adding them back into Wikipedia elsewhere, in article about his home,
would be completely appropriate.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
Ryan Delaney wrote:

>Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>
>>2. We need a way to discourage well-meaning but less-able editors
>>from crumbling good articles. On my watchlist I see a lot of editors
>>(some logins, some anons) adding nonsequiturs or redundancies,
>>randomly rearranging text, adding useless templates en masse, etc.
>>
>
>I've actually had some luck with this. If someone makes an edit that
>doesn't hurt anything, but doesn't add anything either, I simply
>revert with the edit summary "rv: not an improvement". This seems to
>send a message to people that edits need to be constructive and have a
>plan behind them. Just moving stuff around isn't good for the Wiki,
>and a solitary edit like this could seem to have no effect, but in the
>aggregate they can make for a ridiculously disorganized article that
>is not at all a pleasure to read.
>
>
Heh, that's tougher than I've generally been willing to be. Seems all
too easy to trigger edit wars and accusations of newbie-biting, but
softening it by explaining the rationale takes time away from content
improvement. Explanations are worth the trouble if the person is going
to be a long-term contributor, but not if they're one of the "two-day
wonders" that are active for only a short time.

Another one of my hesitations in reverting is that oftentimes a good
edit, say a spelling fix, is intermixed with more ambitious tinkering,
as the editor starts with the obvious fix and then is emboldened to do
more. Then it gets time-consuming to undo only part of an edit.

This circles back to the back to the shortage of editors too; while
it can be engaging to do stylistic fixup, vandalism patrol, etc, I
find that it can easily suck up my entire available WP time, leaving
no cycles for contributing in the areas where I have unique expertise.
I see that happening with other editors too. WP being a volunteer
organization, people will always work on what they want to work on,
and many SMEs enjoy working outside their field, but if your goal is
to build the best possible encyclopedia, you want your Nobel laureates
to write about their research, not to feel like they have to mop
floors or scrape gum off the undersides of desks because otherwise
it won't get done.

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
The only reason for specialization is that currently {{cleanup}} is
applied to hundreds and hundreds of articles, many of which are not
very high-profile and thus not high-priority. I don't think it's the
end-all solution but it seemed like a reasonable change to make.

It seems to me that cleanup in general has two purposes: one, to
indicate that it is known that a particular article is in a state of
disrepair and to help encourage people who stumble across that article
to repair it. The second is to give people interested in generally
improving Wikipedia the ability to find articles which could use
attention.

The advantage of a little specialization would, I believe, be to aid
the latter usage more than the former. All of the characters and
topics in the "priority" category are also so well known that there
are literally dozens of books written on them, they are present in
every other encyclopedia available, and there are hundreds upon
hundreds of webpages on them. Writing a biography of [[Bill Gates]]
takes no specialized knowledge or training. I was able to add a
substantial amount to the article just by cutting and pasting content
from the other articles we have relating to Microsoft (Microsoft,
History of Microsoft Windows, and United States v. Microsoft,
specifically). That took about 15 minutes worth of work. This is stuff
*anyone* can do if they want to.

"If they want to" is of course the operative part. Specialization can
be enabling -- *if* someone wants to work on a general article, it's a
good way to direct them to things which need attention -- but it does
not compel action in and of itself. That's a bigger question, and
worth thinking about seriously, though I don't have any specific ideas
regarding it at the moment, personally.

FF

On 10/7/05, steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Further specialization in process may help, but thats
> only part of it. Some would say its just more "process
> creep", and I tend to think the truth somewhere in the
> middle between process upgrades and guidance upgrades.
>
> IAC I think I need to apologise for my earlier
> comment, "please forgive us..." which was indeed a bit
> snippy (though quite edited down from what I had in
> the draft :|).  Our traditional proper response to
> anyone has traditionally been "{{sofixit}}" and it
> should remain so, regardless of who makes the
> criticism. There are in fact only two--exactly
> two--kinds of people in this world: Those who edit
> Wikipedia and those who dont.
>
> And furthermore, I think ATP focusing on particular
> articles ("the pick on a crappy article game" -
> Flcello) at this point is rather useless, when there
> are indeed bigger fish to fry --considering my opening
> point, namely that stuff needs' be done.
>
> Sincerely,
> SV
>
> --- Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> > That's the list I was thinking of. The cleanup
> > process is currently so
> > bogged down that it's hard to know what needs to be
> > done, though. In
> > the meantime, I've created a template --
> > {{cleanup-priority}}, which
> > currently is a cleanup tag for any articles which
> > are of sub-par
> > quality on that list (and should only be limited to
> > that list, I
> > think), hopefully it will help focus things a bit.
> > (If people disagree
> > with the "prioritization", well, they can argue that
> > on the list
> > itself -- if we have such a list, and take it at
> > least partially
> > seriously, then I think using it as a base for a
> > prioritization scheme
> > is a good idea).
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
> http://mail.yahoo.com
>


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
On 07/10/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:

> You should see what we've done with [[Human]]. It will be ready for
> the FAC process soon enough.

It is possibly unfortunate that I went to look at that page and found
someone had edited in a *waving* animation of the Pioneer plaque...
;-)

(yes, I fixed it. First article I ever edited, that one. Correction's
still there)

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
On 10/7/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> > I would expect more people to read [[Brutalist architecture]] than
> [[Architecture]]....
>
> You have surprising expectations.

No, it's just that there are a number of ways of using Wikipedia. Some
people use it like an a general reference, while many others use it
for information about very specific topics.

I'd likely never read an article on [[Physics]] -- I have a feeling I
already know what it says. But I would definitely read up on [[General
Relativity]] or [[Quantum electrodynamics]] when my desire for that
knowledge comes up.

It's just a different way of approaching things, that's all, but I
think they are both perfectly valid modes of using the encyclopedia. I
think, however, that we should concentrate on getting those "general"
articles up to par before worrying about the more specific ones.
Nobody will ever write an article saying, "Ha ha, Wikipedia's article
on [[Stratovolcano]] is really incomplete!" because a large percentage
of the audience isn't going to know what a Stratovolcano is anyway.
But if we screw up on articles like [[Volcano]] -- something everybody
feels they know something about -- then we're a prime target. (If one
is worried about being a prime target, of course. I'm actually not
that concerned about it.)

FF


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Ray Saintonge stated for the record:

> What interests a three-year old?  As adults we may like other material.
> Let's hope that the kind of material that may interest her has not been
> deleted as non-notable.

Abandon that hope, all ye who edit here.
[[Wikipedia:WikiPogrom_Purge_All_Interestingcruft]]
has a lot of momentum.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Never stand next to anyone throwing
 sean at epoptic.com | shit at an armed man. --Larry Niven
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Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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from_name: Jack Lynch

subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_articles_all_languages_should_have

I created the above page for this specific purpose - en: has all these
articles (or something like them), but very few are up to featured
quality.

One problem I see with the FA process is that a lot of the articles
are incredibly esoteric. If you're a specialist in a field, you're
highly motivated to write a REALLY GOOD article about something you
know well. There seems to be less motivation to get the *really
general* articles up to featured status. God help the person who tries
to get [[Earth]] past the present FAC process and keep it under 200KB.

- d.

You should see what we've done with [[Human]]. It will be ready for
the FAC process soon enough.

Jack (Sam Spade)


subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
On 10/7/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> God help the person who tries
> to get [[Earth]] past the present FAC process and keep it under 200KB.
>

"Mostly harmless."

And for my next trick...

Seriously, though, I notice that Earth is currently only 32kb in length. If
the FAC process is so bad that it is likely to produce needlessly bulky
articles, maybe we should devise some kind of anti-FAC--perhaps something
that would take FAC votes and apply them in reverse.

As an off-the-cuff critique, I'd say that the intro contains too much
obscure astronomical stuff and absolutely nothing about earth in art and
culture, nothing about human population, and somehow omits the significant
facts that it's mostly covered with liquid water, has a nitrogen atmosphere
with 20% oxygen, and is home to countless trillions of protista.

Earth is said to be called "Terra" (actually you only see this in SF
stories) and we're treated to the obscure "Tellus", while the common
classical Greek name for earth, Ge, is nowhere to be seen in the article
(though oddly enough the less common variant, Gaia, is).

The writing style is the usual mediocre wiki-standard ("the third-closest
planet to the sun" instead of the idiomatic "third planet from the sun".)
Someone will say "sofixit". No thanks. Any obscure merkin academic
waffle-monger can have wikipedians haring off to fix articles left right and
center, but I instead have some ambitions that the tenor of my critiques may
influence some of them to think instead about their writing style.
 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun>


body:
On 10/7/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/
>

"The most notable difference between lower- and higher-literacy users is
that lower-literacy users can't understand a text by glancing at it. They
must *read word for word* and often spend considerable time trying to
understand multi-syllabic words."

Hey, that's me! I never believe people who claim that they can understand a
text without actually reading the words. Short words are easier to read than
long ones.


from_name: Bob

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Questions about Scott Burnside article -- unattributed
	quotes

body:
I was reading Scott Burnside's article,

  http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/preview2005/news/story?id=2172427

about top NHL rivalries, and I discovered that some passages appear to
have been directly lifted or slightly edited from The Sporting News and
Wikipedia articles. Who do I contact to address these concerns?

Thanks

-Bob
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Some examples are provided below:

 From the Sporting News

"Claude Lemieux, for instance, became Public Enemy No. 1 in Detroit
when, while playing for Colorado, he crashed Kris Draper facefirst into
the boards in the 1996 conference finals."

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1208/is_35_224/ai_65014730

 From Wikipedia:

"the Battle of Quebec intensified two seasons later with the "Vendredi
Saint" brawl. The following season, the two teams battled for the Adams
Division title, and the Habs won by three points. But the Nordiques
would get revenge in the playoffs with a seven-game victory, clinched by
Peter Stastny's overtime goal."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qu%C3%A9bec_Nordiques

Also from Wikipedia:

"While the teams played each other often, the teams became pronounced
rivals in the 1970s, when both were yearly contenders. The seminal
moment in the history of the rivalry was probably Game 7 of the 1979
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1978-79_NHL_season&action=edit>
Wales Conference finals. After a rough and tumble series, the Bruins
were ahead in the closing minutes. However, after the Boston bench was
charged with a minor penalty for "Too Many Men on the Ice
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penalty_%28hockey%29>," Guy LaFleur
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_LaFleur> scored the tying goal on the
ensuing power play, and Montreal won in overtime
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtime>. The win allowed Montreal to
advance to the Stanley Cup <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Cup> finals

The Bruins were defeated in both the 2002
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001-02_NHL_season> and the 2004
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003-04_NHL_season> Stanley Cup Playoffs
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Cup> in the first round by the
hated Canadiens"

[...]

"The traditional rivals of the Maple Leafs had always been the Montreal
Canadiens <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Canadiens>, but after
decades of not meeting in the playoffs and during a period when Toronto
failed to ice competitive teams for many years, that /rivalry began to
fade/."

"Many Senators fans were ex-Leaf supporters who had turned strongly
against their old team, while many Ottawa Valley hockey fans remained
loyal to the Leafs."

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


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] Created ilowiki

body: ilowiki has been created, you can access it at http://ilo.wikipedia.org/


subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
On 10/7/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Oct 7, 2005, at 12:25 PM, Kelly Martin wrote:
> >>
> >
> > I echo this.  I've got a two year old daughter.  One of the reasons
> > I'm so active in Wikipedia is that I want her to have a good reference
> > source for when we start teaching her.  She's already reading a
> > little, so it won't be too long before she starts visiting Wikipedia
> > (under careful supervision, mind you) and not log after that before
> > she starts editing.  (I'm not letting her serve on ArbCom until she's
> > 25, though.)
> >
> >
>
> You're letting her date before she serves on the arbcom? Such
> permissiveness in parents these days.
>
> -Snowspinner

Uh, she's not allowed to date until she's 30.

Kelly


subject: [WikiEN-l] Simple code for formatting lists in two colums

body:
On 10/7/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Be careful using this. Some people still browse Wikipedia on 800x600
> monitors, and I frequently use my Blackberry to access Wikipedia.
> Formatting like this may not transfer well to small-screen devices.
>
>
Actually it seems to be designed to scale according to browser page width (I
wish more pages did this!) A table may look slightly odd if the available
screen width isn't enough to contain all the text and it has to wrap the
columns, but at least you get to see the text without annoying horizontal
scroll. Wikipedia is actually quite good at this; some sites such as gmail
are utterly hopeless, apparently written by complete amateurs.


body:
On Fri, 2005-10-07 at 14:50 +0100, Tony Sidaway wrote:
> On 10/7/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Be careful using this. Some people still browse Wikipedia on 800x600
> > monitors, and I frequently use my Blackberry to access Wikipedia.
> > Formatting like this may not transfer well to small-screen devices.
> >
> >
> Actually it seems to be designed to scale according to browser page width (I
> wish more pages did this!) A table may look slightly odd if the available
> screen width isn't enough to contain all the text and it has to wrap the
> columns, but at least you get to see the text without annoying horizontal
> scroll. Wikipedia is actually quite good at this; some sites such as gmail
> are utterly hopeless, apparently written by complete amateurs.

But it is markup by layout not function, and therefore bad. There should
be a generic use as many columns as fit on the screen - this forces 2.

I try to use wikipedia on my phone too quite often. The main problem is
the amount of clutter around the information, which lays out very badly
on a small screen. AT some point I migth play around with how best to
fix this.

Justinc


from_name: Jeremy Dunck

subject: [Wikitech-l] MMCache vs. eAccelerator

body:
I see that MW 1.5 supports 2 object caching methods.

Is one preferred, or are they considered interchangable?


subject: [Wikitech-l] wikipedia local for testing

body:
On 10/7/05, Uwe Brauer <oub at mat.ucm.es> wrote:
> I apologise for this elementary question I searched meta.wikipedia for
> an answer without success:
> how could I download a certain page, edit it and see the result
> locally before submitting it?

Is the preview button not sufficient?


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Standalone wikipedia - one for the weekend

body:
Based on the tinyweb server, sqlite, PHP, MediaWiki and a self-written
XML-to-sqlite converter, I have created a package [1] for Windows that
can run a wikipedia without any installation required.

This package doesn't include any wikipedia data set, so you'll have to
generate your own from an XML dump. Instructions are dead easy, see the
included README file. Some drawbacks of this alpha-version:

* Conversion takes long
Took 6 hours to convert a recent XML dump on my 2.8GHz P4. So, start
this in the evening ;-)

* sqlite database gets huge
For the above mentioned dump, it is just below 3GB. However, as this is
mostly text, it should compress well, if someone wants to make a CD
image with a simple installer from it.
I might play with the whole setup, maybe keeping the actual text in the
zipped XML dump and just store titles etc. in the database. This will
speed up the conversion process and decrease database size considerably,
but will pose other problems and slow down the whole thing.

* Browsing is slow
Most pages render in under 10 sec, but some (like the Main Page, for
some unknown reason) get stuck somewhere and won't stop rendering. I'll
look into this. Meanwhile, the default start page is "Biology" ;-)

* Categories and interwiki links are broken
For categories to work, I'd have to regenerate all the links in the
database, which means rendering all articles, which would take too long.
I'm not sure why the interwiki links are broken. Looks like it forgot
the language codes, somehow.

* Links and articles with a single quote (') in them show as broken
This has something to do with sqlite quote escaping. I'm not sure how to
fix that, but basically shouldn't be a problem.

Other than that, you can read all (OK, most) of the pages, links work. I
did't dare try searching yet ;-)
It might be noteworthy that no MediaWiki code had to be patched for
this. The package actually includes the CVS info, so you can "cvs
update" MediaWiki. I only had to design a special LocalSettings.php and
write a DatabaseSqlite.php structure, containing some ugly hacks.
Strangely enough, I have to route all GET requests through a DOS batch
file, which is where I lose POST data. Otherwise, one could even edit
the wiki.

Please have a look at it and tell me what you think.

Magnus

[1] http://www.magnusmanske.de/wikipedia/standalonewiki.zip (about 6MB)


subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Kat Walsh stated for the record:

> On 10/7/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
>>Maybe I do have surprising expectations, but I do think that even 7 year
>>olds are more interested in "Puppy" rather than "Dog" say. Big articles
>>are just stopping off points for whatever you are really trying to find,
>>the article about the particularly cute kind of puppy that just ran
>>past.
>
> I disagree on this, and I wonder why so many people state it: a good
> encyclopedic article on a broad subject I am only casually acquainted
> with is very useful, and in fact Wikipedia is often the first place
> I'll turn.

It is often stated because it is far easier to write a specialized
article than a general one, primarily because the specialized article
can make assumptions about a reader's knowledge that a general one
cannot.  Personally, I find it much more enjoyable to dig into old
Soviet naval records and write about incidents involving their warships
than fix the mess that is [[Submarine]] (and we should be ashamed that
it was a featured article; it is a mess with numerous factual errors).
Trying to clearly explain what is wrong with the statement 'Submarines
designed for the purpose of attacking merchant ships or other warships
are known as "fast attacks", "hunter-killers", "fast boats", or "fleet
submarines"' (hint: three very different types of boats are listed) --
and then preserve that explanation against the hordes of editors whose
knowledge of submarines consists of having seen ''Crimson Tide'' three
times -- is exhausting and ultimately futile.  The mediocre always win,
simply by force of numbers.  It's much more fun to dig into what exactly
happened to [[Soviet submarine S-117]] -- the only people who dare to
disagree with you are knowledgeable enough to make the disagreement fun!

Nonetheless, we need a good article on [[submarine]]s, and when the
existing article's corruption once again becomes intolerable, I will
once again push it back toward correctness and readability, so that it
can start down its slide again.  The worst thing we could do is decide
that we don't need to work on the general articles because we think no
one will ever want to learn about [[submarine]]s -- that they'll only
use it as an index pointing to [[MARF reactor]].

</rant>

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Never stand next to anyone throwing
 sean at epoptic.com | shit at an armed man. --Larry Niven
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from_name: Delirium

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Oh goodness yes. We need *good writers* in general.
>
>I have a pile of links on style on my user page:
>
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Gerard#My_personal_style_guide
>
>I will often see a badly-written article on something I know about and
>do some rewriting with edit summary "tighten [section name]".
>
>My favourite writing style is still that found in The Economist:
>incredibly tight writing, giving simple sentences with a fantastic
>density of information. They're not interested in NPOV - some of the
>casual opinionation really makes me think of a friend's summary: "I
>love The Economist. It's like a really rational guy on crack." - but I
>think we have a *lot* to learn from their writing style.
>
>
I agree we need good writing, but I think trying to coerce everyone into
some common "Wikipedia house writing style" is not going to work, even
if we could agree on what it should be (which is not possible).  Some
people think many of our articles are too chatty and informal, and would
prefer we adopt a tone more like an academic work.  Others think we're
already too academic and should go more for a popular-press type of
tone.  I like the variety of writing styles myself.

That said, I do often edit for style, but I try to confine myself to
clarifying things that are confusing, or changing particularly bad or
anachronistic styles.  I certainly wouldn't go through and try to make
articles conform to my personal style preferences in general, though.

-Mark


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
On Fri, 7 Oct 2005, Magnus Manske wrote:

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> >
> >But it's really not joyful to see bad writing in two very prominent
> >articles.
> >
> >
> Just as a reminder, there *is* a validation/rating/whatever-you-call-it
> system sitting in MediaWiki for month, waiting to be tested.
>
I'm attaching this to Magnus' email not so much as a response, but to
throw out an idea for allowing us to put this into testing, & hopefully
production.

As I understand, the issue why this feature has not been enabled on
Wikipedia is because of the load it would put on the servers: keeping
track of another mesh of tables with the validation values for every
revision of articles would bring the system to its knees.

What about only allowing users to rate *ONE* version of an article at
a time. If someone makes changes to an article, & you think it decreases
the quality, you can keep your rating on the older version; if it
improves the article, you move your rating to the lastest version. And
users can monitor all of this by using their watchlist function.

The one drawback I see with this (besides that it might not solve the
problem with the processors) is that contributors can only watch so many
articles, due to our own grey processor limits: while I've heard of folks
having thousands of articles on their watchlists, I suspect more people
are like me, with less than 200 articles watchlisted. So if the
practical limit is that users can only rate 400 articles (to pick a number)
at a time, & we have 400-600 active users rating articles, then there
will be between 160,000 - 240,000 ratings. While that may look like
enough to cover a good chunk of Wikipedia's 750,000+ articles, we need
a minimum of ratings on each article to really make this system work:
if we need a minimum of 5 ratings (again, to pick a number), we will
have only 32,000 - 48,000 articles with ratings.

But we'd have 5% - 7% of our articles with some kind of rating, which
is more than the approximately 0.15% of articles we've labelled FA, & it
would allow us to at least start on this problem.

Geoff


from_name: Mark Ryan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Need help with ACLE vandalism

body:
On 10/7/05, ilooy <ilooy.gaon at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Earlier I'd asked how to get
> admin/sysop access to be
> able to administer the wiki
> but I haven't heard.
>
> Could someone help?

In case you didn't know, a technical problem has prevented the
Wikimedia stewards from making changes like this. You are not being
ignored. :) If you feel the situation is sufficiently urgent, I
encourage you to contact the Wikimedia system administrators, who may
be able to manually give you the permissions you seek.

~Mark Ryan


from_name: Kat Walsh

subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
On 10/7/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:

> Maybe I do have surprising expectations, but I do think that even 7 year
> olds are more interested in "Puppy" rather than "Dog" say. Big articles
> are just stopping off points for whatever you are really trying to find,
> the article about the particularly cute kind of puppy that just ran
> past.

I disagree on this, and I wonder why so many people state it: a good
encyclopedic article on a broad subject I am only casually acquainted
with is very useful, and in fact Wikipedia is often the first place
I'll turn. There are plenty of basic subjects for which I do not know
most of the information contained in a decent encyclopedia article;
I'd imagine this is true of most people. (Granted, I didn't go to a
particularly good school, but even so!)

But even if it is only a stopping-off point -- how will readers find
the niche subject they really want to find if the main article does
not lead them there by framing it with appropriate context and general
information to let them know which subtopic they are looking for? If
[[dog]] were so lacking as not to say that a young dog is a puppy and
that the breed that ran by was probably a retriever, it wouldn't be
much to step off from.

Not to mention that more people will be stepping off from them than
will ever see or want to see [[Criticism of wicker in advanced quantum
basket-weaving]].

(I say this knowing full well that my own area of interest, [[music]],
is a mess, and one I have barely touched: it's a daunting task...)

-Kat
[[User:Mindspillage]]

--
"There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily
escaped the chronicler's mind."  --Douglas Adams


from_name: Ryan Norton

subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
> It's that they are badly written.  A confusing mishmash of random facts
> not shaped into a coherent whole.  Others have written eloquently on
> this, and on why this might be the case.  The puzzle, though, is: what
> can be done about it.

Encourage people to become better writers?

I admit that even though I have a FA (autism) I'm not a very good
writer for an encyclopedia. Peer review and FAC are great except I
don't know how much they help in this part (and the criticism is rather
harsh sometimes for those who can't take it). I always have a tendency
to write novel-like for these articles, but of course I don't because
its an encyclopedia, so a lot of times its just a bunch of well
structured, but unconnected facts...

Thanks,
Ryan

[[User:RN]] at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:RN
Ryan Norton at wxforum: http://wxforum.org


subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
On 10/7/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/7/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Oct 7, 2005, at 12:25 PM, Kelly Martin wrote:
> > >>
> > >
> > > I echo this.  I've got a two year old daughter.
(...)
> > >  (I'm not letting her serve on ArbCom until she's
> > > 25, though.)
> > >
> > You're letting her date before she serves on the arbcom? Such
> > permissiveness in parents these days.
>
> Uh, she's not allowed to date until she's 30.

Why the difference? Both seem to be equally dangerous to one's sanity!
Besides, you know what happens when you forbid these things too long
-- do you think you'll hear about her sockpuppet arbitrator account or
her elopement in Vegas first? :-)

-Kat
[[User:Mindspillage]]

--
"There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily
escaped the chronicler's mind."  --Douglas Adams


subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
On Fri, 2005-10-07 at 11:25 -0500, Kelly Martin wrote:
> On 10/7/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> > > But who looks up "Earth" in an encyclopaedia?
> >
> > My seven-year-old daughter.  Wikipedia is an encyclopedia for everyone,
> > not just geeks who are looking for hyper-specialized trivia.
> >
> > > I would expect more people to read [[Brutalist architecture]] than
> > [[Architecture]]....
> >
> > You have surprising expectations.
>
> I echo this.  I've got a two year old daughter.  One of the reasons
> I'm so active in Wikipedia is that I want her to have a good reference
> source for when we start teaching her.  She's already reading a
> little, so it won't be too long before she starts visiting Wikipedia
> (under careful supervision, mind you) and not log after that before
> she starts editing.  (I'm not letting her serve on ArbCom until she's
> 25, though.)

Maybe I do have surprising expectations, but I do think that even 7 year
olds are more interested in "Puppy" rather than "Dog" say. Big articles
are just stopping off points for whatever you are really trying to find,
the article about the particularly cute kind of puppy that just ran
past.

Justinc


subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
On Fri, 2005-10-07 at 09:58 -0700, Sean Barrett wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Justin Cormack stated for the record:
>
> > Maybe I do have surprising expectations, but I do think that even 7 year
> > olds are more interested in "Puppy" rather than "Dog" say. Big articles
> > are just stopping off points for whatever you are really trying to find,
> > the article about the particularly cute kind of puppy that just ran
> > past.
>
> The seven-year-olds you are thinking about are not like my
> seven-year-old or any of her classmates.  Perhaps my daughter goes to a
> lax school, but the reports she's assigned to write are on big subjects,
> like "one of the planets" or "an Arctic animal" (actual examples).

I seem to remember from being that age that they dont care what you
write about. We were told that for "What I did in my holidays" you were
allowed to make entirely fictional accounts.

But typing "Planet" or "Arctic animal" into wikipedia gets you somewhere
(the second gives a search that gets a few animals at the top), and the
first suggests the cunning plan of writing about planets outside the
solar system to confuse your teacher, so you go to either [[Arctic Fox]]
or [[Extrasolar planet]], and write your article from their, supporting
my view that its not the big articles that matter.


subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
On 10/7/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> One problem I see with the FA process is that a lot of the articles
> are incredibly esoteric. If you're a specialist in a field, you're
> highly motivated to write a REALLY GOOD article about something you
> know well. There seems to be less motivation to get the *really
> general* articles up to featured status. God help the person who tries
> to get [[Earth]] past the present FAC process and keep it under 200KB.

The main problem I see is that's it's *hard* to cover a very general
topic both comprehensively and concisely, particularly when any one
person working on it probably knows only one or two areas of the topic
well -- whereas you can cover just about everything important for a
good encyclopedic treatment of a minor subtopic in a couple
screenfuls, and without having to read as many references to be sure
of getting a good picture.

In many cases a very general topic requires several people working
together who are all motivated to feature it, probably all at once if
you want to be able to address everyone's objections, where the niche
topic will only take one motivated obsessive specialist to push it
over the top. :-) Eventualism is nice, but it requires rather a bit of
patience...

-Kat
[[User:Mindspillage]]

--
"There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily
escaped the chronicler's mind."  --Douglas Adams


from_name: Alphax

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> Brian Haws wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I have to ask, you used the word notable a couple times in your reply
>>> but in the actual AFD entry description here you used verifiable
>>> information as a standard to judge inclusion.
>>>
>>> Do you see notablility as a inclusion standard? Or is notability just
>>> a another way to express that something can be verified. And as such
>>> doesn't have a separate meaning (in AFD debates) to judge Wilipedia
>>> inclusion standards?
>>>
>>
>> Yes, I very strongly think that notability is a valid inclusion standard.
>>
> What's frightening about this statement is the tendency of some members
> of this community to view it as an absolute ''ex cathedra"
> pronouncement.  In the light of your other comments on this matter, it
> is clear that your views are considerably more textured.  Some editors
> frown upon texture.  Idiotic as it may be, it is a fact of life that
> some editors will say, "Delete, not-notable," or "Keep, notable," as
> their entire justification for action with respect to some article.
>

Hence I started my RFC against such people (and I'm still waiting for
some more support on it):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RFC/AfD

I invite everyone who feels that people who simply say "nn, d." or
"keep, notable" or "keep, we are winning" or "delete, let's get rid of
all of these" are Pains in the Arse and Should Be Shot.

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
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from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikitech-l] approved requests for new wikipedias

body:
While I think Udmurt can be created immediately, I think it's best to
look for a better code for Samogitian, Banyumasan, and Ripuarian if
possible.

It seems very clumsy to have the "binomial" subdomains, as in roa-rup:
(which now has its own ISO code, rup), fiu-vro:... so I think it's
best to search for possible alternatives. Samogitian and Banyumasan
may not have good alternatives, but I would imagine that there's an
ISO/DIS 639-3 code for Riparian, which I hope we could use.

Cheers
Mark

On 07/10/05, Tucci <tucci528 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hi, there are currently four requests on
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Approved_requests_for_new_languages
> that meet all requirements for a new wiki.  They are:
>
> Udmurt - .udm
> Samogitian - .bat-smg
> Banyumasan - .map.bjk
> Ripuarian - .gem-rip
>
> All but one of these languages have a test wiki, they
> all have a number of native speakers willing to work
> on them and consensus for their creation.
>
> The persons behind the Udmurt request asked that it
> use the Russian interface.  If this is possible,
> please do so.  The others didn't specifically request
> it, but if it's easy to do so, it seems eminently
> reasonable for Samogitian to use Lithuanian,
> Banyumasan to use Javanese and Ripuarian to use
> German.
>
> Thank you, Tuf-Kat
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
On Friday, October 7, 2005, at 06:06  PM, Michael Turley wrote:

> On 10/7/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>>> You know, if it was anyone else complaining about article quality,
>>> the
>>> response would be something more like "{{sofixit}}".
>>
>> Yes, and that's a valid response to me.  Except, when people tell me
>> {{sofixit}} I start thinking about broad policy, not about editing the
>> article itself. :-)
>>
>> {{sofixit}} is what I intend to do, but at the level of policy.  We
>> need
>> to take a serious look at why some high-profile articles are
>> delightful,
>> and some are horrible.
>>
>> I do not think that the fact that Jane Fonda and Bill Gates are
>> controversial figures is the real answer here, by the way.  They are,
>> but the problems I'm complaining about in the articles is not that
>> they
>> are biased, nor that they focus too much on the controversies, etc.
>>
>> It's that they are badly written.  A confusing mishmash of random
>> facts
>> not shaped into a coherent whole.  Others have written eloquently on
>> this, and on why this might be the case.  The puzzle, though, is: what
>> can be done about it.
>>
>> Project outsiders might suggest only allowing "expert writers" to work
>> on such articles.  I think any of us can explain how that's much
>> easier
>> said than done.
>
> I would suggest a Wikiproject to write an "archtypical example" of
> each type of article we have significant problems with, complete with
> sidebar explanations of what is good about each section, both in what
> was included in the model article, and what was excluded.  We should
> start with "Biography".  An "annotated feature article" version would
> illustrate how to create a good article of each type.  Then it's just
> a matter of encouraging people to follow the examples or have a
> legitmate reason not to.
>
> Biographical articles on Wikipedia are often crap because biography is
> a somewhat specialized field of writing that few people are formally
> taught.  With thousands of users and probably only a few dozens who
> have formal education about to do it right, it's no wonder we get many
> that aren't very good.
>
> That said, my surprise is not how bad so many are, nor how many are
> bad, but instead, how many are actually pretty good.
>

That's a great idea! I'd follow it too since I've already had one
article that failed FAC because of a bad biography.

> Thanks,
Ryan

[[User:RN]] at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:RN
Ryan Norton at wxforum: http://wxforum.org


from_name: Michael Snow

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Merge vs. Keep/Delete (was: Dispute resolution attempt
 in the Ashida Kim case)

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>I wonder if we could agree to change policy to permit an administrator to
>"speedy redirect" a merge candidate and close an AfD where notability is the
>sole or principal reason given for deletion, or no reason is given. This
>would be a good way of ensuring that the possibility of merging articles was
>not unreasonably neglected. An article could always be renominated if good
>faith attempts to merge had failed.
>
>
I endorse that, although I don't see why the authority to
merge-and-redirect should be limited to administrators. I've always
found the resistance to merges puzzling. It's almost as bad as the
polarizing notion that deletion debates orbit the twin suns of Keep and
Delete, which are the only possible outcomes, and a "vote" to merge is
in reality to be reinterpreted as a vote for one of these binary stars
(which one depends on who's arguing). An argument for a merge is just
that, and in these cases it's often by far the best solution.

--Michael Snow


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Dispute resolution attempt in the Ashida Kim case

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

> Erik had a proposal well over a year ago which would look something like
>this. In essence, a nomination would have to give a clear reason (which was
>already agreed upon by consensus), and the votes/discussion would be solely
>limited to whether or not the nominated article fit within that reason.
>
>
When the question being debated or voted on leads directly to an outcome
(in this case, possible deletion of an article), it's virtually
impossible to get people to ignore the outcome and limit their
votes/opinions to the reasoning presented. Even in the appellate courts
of the United States, a system where the participants have devoted most
of their lives to this kind of approach, it only partly works. Many
cases are not decided by the arguments of counsel, or those set forth in
the court's opinion, but by things that are never put into words.

--Michael Snow


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: a valid criticism

body:
Kat Walsh wrote:

>I disagree on this, and I wonder why so many people state it: a good
>encyclopedic article on a broad subject I am only casually acquainted
>with is very useful, and in fact Wikipedia is often the first place
>I'll turn. There are plenty of basic subjects for which I do not know
>most of the information contained in a decent encyclopedia article;
>I'd imagine this is true of most people.
>
Also, for many basic subjects for which one is not a specialist, an
encyclopedia article is a very helpful place to turn for confirmation of
things you *think you know*, but aren't absolutely certain that you have
remembered correctly.

--Michael Snow


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Vacation for Uncle Ed

body:
Have a nice break. Don't you break anything either. You may take the
word too literally. ;)

On 10/7/05, steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Have a good one Tio Eduardo.
>
> SV
>
> --- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
>
> > I need a break. I'm going to take a week off from
> > Wikipedia. Try not to
> > break anything while I'm gone.
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> > Ed Poor
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: foundation-l

from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject:
[Foundation-l] Authoring on wikijunior : providing
	private	information.

body:
Nicholas Moreau wrote:

>On 10/6/05, foundation-l-request at wikimedia.org <
>foundation-l-request at wikimedia.org> wrote:What I am asking for is that if
>you want to claim copyright on your contribution, you need to give this
>minimum amount of information for legal protection and to give a realistic
>copyright claim on your contributions. As it stands right now, there is no
>way that you can realisticly claim copyright on any of your contributions
>right now, and certainly there is no way that you canresolve potential
>copyright claims on material if it goes to court in a dispute.
>
>
>Okay, suppose I didn't include my information, and I wanted to claim
>copyright on content in Wikijunior.
>
>I take the Foundation to court, saying "I CLAIM MY COPYRIGHT ON THIS!"
>
>The defendant's lawyer says "But, you can't. On the website, when you
>contribute anything to any Wikimedia project, it says that you're
>contributing this info to the Wikimedia Foundation."
>
>Like, seeing that I have my information on the "contributors" page, does
>that mean I own part of the Wikijunior project, and thus can profit from my
>"share" of the contribution? Every time one issue of the books is published,
>$0.02 come rolling into my PayPal account? What? If that's the case, I'm
>doing fifty edits under fifty different usernames.
>
>I honestly am dumb-founded on what you consider "claiming [my] copyright",
>on something solely copyrighten by the foundation.
>
>Nick/Zanimum
>
>
I think you miss the point.  The Foundation does not claim copyright on
anything for any Wikimedia project.  There is a legitmate reason to do
this, and a good one as well.  All the Wikimedia Foundation does is
claim trademarks on commonly used images and names that relate directly
to each one of the projects, and this is proper as well.  I can't set up
another web site and claim it is Wikipedia with Wikipedia content...that
is a violation of trademark.  In order to enforce copyright, it is up to
the individual authors for each web page to do the enforcement and keep
violators from getting away with breaking the law.

The real issue is if somebody, like Microsoft Press or Prentiss-Hall,
decides to claim copyright on something found on a Wikimedia Project,
like one of the Wikijunior books, and decides instead to claim copyright
on it for themselves.  They do some "minor" modifications of the
content, research the images to make sure they are free and clear to
reproduce, and then say "to heck with the GFDL... we don't care" and
publish the book anyway as if they wrote it themselves.

They can even go back and claim that the material on Wikibooks in this
case is violating their copyright even and force the removal of the
content on Wikibooks.

As far as the "contributors" page is concerned, who are they?  Where are
they from?  Can you certify that the author mentioned in the
contributors page even exist?  Really, are you sure it isn't somebody
else?  Are you sure they are in the USA/France/Germany like you claim
they are?  Are you sure that it wasn't some hacker in Mongolia where
international copyright doesn't apply?  Prove it.  What court has
juristiction on enforcing the author's wishes?  You can't even be sure
who the author is, so why do you think a particular court even has a
right to prosecute?  So you think the server is in the USA and therefore
the USA has original juristiction on prosecuting copyright because of
the foundation.  Guess what, the Wikimedia Foundation doesn't claim
copyright on any of the material, so that claim is thrown out.  Now what?

It gets even worse.  Because we can point to comments here on this
mailing list and on several talk pages that not only is this information
(about the country of birth and nationality of each author, together
with each full real name) is not collected but there seems to be
"official" opposition to even collecting it, all contributions can be
argued as anonymous contributions.  This wasn't just an oversight from
somebody not understanding copyright, but a deliberate policy of
removing identification related to user contributions even with
specifics of copyright law being explained.

In short, yes, we know who has contributed what stuff to each Wikimedia
article/module/entry but trying to prove authorship is going to be a
major headache if any single page is going to be challenged on its
copyright claim.  Already I've seen supposed copyright violations when
in fact it was the "other" website that was violating copyright of the
authors of a particular page.  It is just a matter of time before
something on one of the Wikimedia projects is going to be challenged and
"forced" to be removed, not because of an obvious copyright violation
from a previously published source but because the copyright of the
Wikimedia content is in doubt.

In addition, one of the reasons I asked for this information is that I
intend to do a formal copyright registration on Wikijunior books when I
send them into print format.  I've already taken one Wikijunior book
down to a printing company and made a copy that I can send around to
some people as the tangible results of these projects.  As a part of
this formal registration which I don't need any permission to do, I am
required by law when filing the registration to try and find all
copyright claims on the material that I am registering.  At least a
reasonable attempt at collecting the information.  In the case of the
Wikijunior Solar System book, there are over 50 different contributors,
and it would be nice to be able to give credit to all of them, and give
them all a "stake" in the book as it goes to press.  I was trying to be
polite and ethical as I can, and then I find people like you, Zanimum,
who not only object to me collecting this from people voluntarily, but
seek to stop me from trying to collect this information altogether.

I do think this information can and should be a part of the "user"
record for each Media Wiki user, and adding the information is very
trivial to accomplish from the viewpoint of a developer.  Like I said,
voluntary information only, and you don't have to include the
information if you don't want to, but why it shouldn't be listed as
another field on the user preferences page is beyond my comprehension.
 And it can save us some headaches in the future as well.

--
Robert Scott Horning


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: steve v

subject: [WikiEN-l] If Robert Henry was right (was:Writing style)

body:
I like DG's points too, though Delerium I think youre
only half right about "coersion" -- and thats mostly
due to coersion being a hugely loaded term. I prefer
"guidance," and the problem (if there is one) is lack
of guidance, and a lack for a system or structure and
authoritative guidance, whereby editors of
demonstrated ability in certain skills are tagged as
such, recognized as such, and given some degree of
authority in proactively guiding newbies or those
yet-uninterested or familiar with WP principles,
processes, and now --with success -- high standards.

If Robert Henry is right (and judging by a number of
fine articles now laying in ruins I suspect he is),
then WP, should it desire to get finer control on
article quality, needs to modify its "completely open"
model a little bit. Im as anti-credentialist as
anyone, and even I dont think that making this change
would be a failure --considering what Wikipedia has
thus far proven about the positive nature of human
beings working on a completely open project. But now
that the project is by any accounts extremely
successful, it is a thing of value--one which people
naturally want to touch and leave their mark on,
whether its a proper mark or not, and whether its
truly in the spirit of our principles or not.

I just took a new look at the A_Course_in_Miracles
article. After lots of back and forth with Scottperry,
an ACIM devotee, Im still not sure if he 1) doesnt get
NPOV 2) doesnt care, and just nodded "yes, OK" alot
before doing the same old thing. In all it doesnt
matter -- the lede of ACIM is completely unacceptable
according to my high standards, and I fear that after
I rewrite it a matter of Style and Content will become
a matter of Conduct and Personality. I have tried to
be reasonable, and Scottperry has appeared earnest to
accomodate, but in the end the article is still
watered down POV crap. (At a first glance)

SV

--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> David Gerard wrote:
>
> >Oh goodness yes. We need *good writers* in general.
> >
> >I have a pile of links on style on my user page:
> >
> >
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Gerard#My_personal_style_guide
> >
> >I will often see a badly-written article on
> something I know about and
> >do some rewriting with edit summary "tighten
> [section name]".
> >
> >My favourite writing style is still that found in
> The Economist:
> >incredibly tight writing, giving simple sentences
> with a fantastic
> >density of information. They're not interested in
> NPOV - some of the
> >casual opinionation really makes me think of a
> friend's summary: "I
> >love The Economist. It's like a really rational guy
> on crack." - but I
> >think we have a *lot* to learn from their writing
> style.
> >
> >
> I agree we need good writing, but I think trying to
> coerce everyone into
> some common "Wikipedia house writing style" is not
> going to work, even
> if we could agree on what it should be (which is not
> possible).  Some
> people think many of our articles are too chatty and
> informal, and would
> prefer we adopt a tone more like an academic work.
> Others think we're
> already too academic and should go more for a
> popular-press type of
> tone.  I like the variety of writing styles myself.
>
> That said, I do often edit for style, but I try to
> confine myself to
> clarifying things that are confusing, or changing
> particularly bad or
> anachronistic styles.  I certainly wouldn't go
> through and try to make
> articles conform to my personal style preferences in
> general, though.
>
> -Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
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Tony Sidaway wrote:
> On 10/7/05, Ryan Norton <wxprojects at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>>
>>Anyway, I cleaned up the Bill Gates article a bit - let me know you
>>think :).
>
<snip>
> It gives far, far too much weight to a superficial caricature that sometimes
> appears in yellow rags. The body of the article also reminds me in places of
> a Citizen Kane-style caricature--I almost expect it to come complete with
> sentences like "So onward marches the progress of the planet's greatest
> plutocrat!"
>
> The article downplays some of the major facts of Gates' career. IBM and
> MSDOS are not mentioned. The word "antitrust" is not present in the article.
> There is no mention of the fact that Gates founded Corbis, now owner of the
> largest digital image collection in the world. It's still crap.

Time to say what should have been said to Nicholas Carr in the first place:

{{sofixit}}

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body:
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Tony Sidaway wrote:
> On 10/7/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>But in fairness, look at what he's responding to. "Web 2.0" is a
>>Wired/Negroponte dot-com wank phrase.
>>
>
>
> Well I never read that tripe, either.
>
> I like your idea of adopting the Economist house style, but a lot of kids
> are taught in schools to write unimaginably long, tedious essays on quite
> trivial subjects, so they have to learn how to trim out the waffle when they
> come to writing for real readers.
>

Hehe, that last bit describes the guy's blog entry perfectly. It's 36kB,
11 pages long.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
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Tony Sidaway wrote:
> On 10/7/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>>
>>> It's still crap.
>>
>> Time to say what should have been said to Nicholas Carr in the
>> first place:
>>
>> {{sofixit}}
>>
>
> That's one possible way to react. Another way would be to consult
> Encarta's entry on the same subject.
>

I doubt they even have one.

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from_name: Michael Turley

subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

body:
On 10/7/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > You know, if it was anyone else complaining about article quality, the
> > response would be something more like "{{sofixit}}".
>
> Yes, and that's a valid response to me.  Except, when people tell me
> {{sofixit}} I start thinking about broad policy, not about editing the
> article itself. :-)
>
> {{sofixit}} is what I intend to do, but at the level of policy.  We need
> to take a serious look at why some high-profile articles are delightful,
> and some are horrible.
>
> I do not think that the fact that Jane Fonda and Bill Gates are
> controversial figures is the real answer here, by the way.  They are,
> but the problems I'm complaining about in the articles is not that they
> are biased, nor that they focus too much on the controversies, etc.
>
> It's that they are badly written.  A confusing mishmash of random facts
> not shaped into a coherent whole.  Others have written eloquently on
> this, and on why this might be the case.  The puzzle, though, is: what
> can be done about it.
>
> Project outsiders might suggest only allowing "expert writers" to work
> on such articles.  I think any of us can explain how that's much easier
> said than done.

I would suggest a Wikiproject to write an "archtypical example" of
each type of article we have significant problems with, complete with
sidebar explanations of what is good about each section, both in what
was included in the model article, and what was excluded.  We should
start with "Biography".  An "annotated feature article" version would
illustrate how to create a good article of each type.  Then it's just
a matter of encouraging people to follow the examples or have a
legitmate reason not to.

Biographical articles on Wikipedia are often crap because biography is
a somewhat specialized field of writing that few people are formally
taught.  With thousands of users and probably only a few dozens who
have formal education about to do it right, it's no wonder we get many
that aren't very good.

That said, my surprise is not how bad so many are, nor how many are
bad, but instead, how many are actually pretty good.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


from_name: Uwe Brauer

body:
Hello

I apologise for this elementary question I searched meta.wikipedia for
an answer without success:
how could I download a certain page, edit it and see the result
locally before submitting it?

Thanks

Uwe Brauer