subject: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium

body:
On 9/16/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/16/06, Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com> wrote:
> > What I do know is that experts have in
> > general a short life span at Wikipedia (if they join at all), and that
> > is not going to change.
>
> There are areas of Wikipedia where that generality is not true at all,
> and experts are quite actively involved and not being rejected or
> driven away at all.
>
> I keep wondering what's different about those, compared to the areas
> where they are being pushed out, and thinking if there's some way to
> change that.  I haven't figured it out yet.
>
> --
> -george william herbert

Short answer: the subject area should be obscure, or exceptionally ferocious.

Longer answer: there's an interesting *BSD phrase about "painting a
dog shed", which pithily expresses the idea that if the masses can
understand an idea/article/piece-of-software, they'll expect their
ideas on it to be heard seriously. Of course, on Wikipedia, to be
heard one must edit...
link: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/misc.html#BIKESHED-PAINTING

Clearly, what we need to do is set up a bot to run all Wikipedia
through a 1337 filter, or a pretentious Latinizing academic filter.
Ideally, the average reader will be able to read a lengthy 20 page
article on Britney Spears and have absolutely no idea what they just
read.

--Gwern


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: stvrtg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Board Elections

body:
On 9/16/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

I understand and appreciate this point.  In general, I try not to speak
> on such matters.  In this case, though, I think we have a unique
> opportunity.

I agree that in the past, given your position, you have been rather wise to
keep your opinions in check, as difficult as that must have been. This
approach has worked phenomenally well toward creating vast amounts of good
will within the community.

That said, it is my humble view that Eloquence is by far the most qualified
- in every respect - and even a cursory look at look at his five-year-long
Wikipedia rap sheet will make that plain.

I have not till now communicated this to him or anyone else, so its
gratifying to see Angela and others reply to this thread in his support,
even if it goes somewhat against the establishment. It is my sincere belief
the board needs someone who can speak for the open public interest, and that
Erik very much has his finger on the pulse in that regard. Always has.

Sincerely,
-sv.

PS: I dont  understand what "unique opportunity"  is supposed to mean in
this context.


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Expert editors

body:
On 9/17/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/17/06, Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com> wrote:
>
> > geni wrote:
> > Science determined by popular vote?
> >
>
> A popular vote of of scientists would not be the worst description of
> what goes on. Although of course the actual process is ar more
> complex.

Also varying wildly from scientific discipline to discipline, and
beyond that from subspecialty to subspecialty.  There are small fields
of science where there are no more than a handful of practitioners,
and those with thousands.

Some of the ones I am more familiar with, including planetary science,
are particularly consensus-driven.  Partly that is because experiments
(space missions to planets, with particular instruments) take years at
best and often decades to deliver results.

Physics has wandered off into an interesting consensus experiment,
looking for theories to solve the grand unification and related
problems, and so far finding little which is formally testable in many
of the fields under analysis.

Math seems different, but I only watch from a distance.

> > Or do you mean that scientists are human and resist changes like most
> > people and that paradigm shifts take time to filter through?
> >
> > Kim
> >
>
> I never really liked the paradigm shifts model becuase it lacked
> falsifiability (and yes I'm aware of the irony of that statement).

Hah.  Nice.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


list: foundation-l

from_name: geni

subject:
[Foundation-l] Citizendium, a new venture,
	will "fork" off from online encyclopedia Wikipedia

body:
On 9/17/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> Citizendium is serious business. We should be appreciating the efforts.
>

Putting out a press release?

The shear size of wikipedia means that even mentaining it takes a lot
of resources. The result of this is that forks are unlikely to suceed.

--
geni


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[WP:V]] and [[WP:RS]] are destroying Wikipedia

body:
Pardon my subject - it is only slightly exaggerated.

Obviously [[WP:V]] and (to a lesser extent) [[WP:RS]] are absolutely
vital policies that cannot be discarded. On the other hand, in their
current form they are abominations that fundamentally undermine key
aspects of Wikipedia's mission.

The problems with the pages are threefold.

1) They actively encourage removal of material that is accurate.
2) Their definitions of acceptable material were written with an eye
towards only a handful of Wikipedia's articles, and render large
portions of the site functionally un-editable.
3) They increase the burden of responsibility far beyond that which
can reasonably be asked of the casual editor who does most of the
heavy lifting for Wikipedia.

In order.

1) They actively encourage removal of material that is accurate

Admittedly, our standard for inclusion is "verifiability, not truth."
We ought not, however, fall into the trap of deciding that we are
therefore against truth. Our goal is to offer the sum total of human
knowledge. If information is true and significant, we ought be trying
to find a way to get it in.

Both policies direly need a basic common sense check - don't
challenge material you don't actually doubt the accuracy of. Editors
should read skeptically and critically, but they should not go
removing things for the sake of removing them. There should, of
course, remain the exception for BLP. We should be clear that this
exception is for legal reasons, and out of a desire to be respectful
citizens of the world we're offering Wikipedia to.

But to allow and endorse this sort of hatchet work as a general case
is far too much of a gift to the clueless. We need to codify that our
sourcing policies exist to improve Wikipedia - not to give the most
obsessive of us a job gutting Wikipedia.

2) Their definitions of acceptable material were written with an eye
towards only a handful of Wikipedia's articles, and render large
portions of the site functionally un-editable.

The majority of our policies in this area, and [[WP:RS]] is by far
the worse offender here, were clearly written to provide us needed
protection against nutjobs on our more pathological articles. They're
excellent policies for keeping the Israel/Palestine articles sane,
keeping the LaRouchies and Scientologists at bay, and telling Gene
Ray that he should take nature's four-sided harmonious time cube
elsewhere.

Unfortunately, that's a fraction of our articles. Most of our
articles do not need that kind of protection, and that kind of
protection is gravely dangerous to them. My favorite example is
[[Spoo]] - a featured article that we ran on the frontpage on 4/1/06.
Spoo is a fictional food source from the television show Babylon 5.
The thing about B5 is that there's a huge amount of information
availbale. J. Michael Straczynski, the creator of B5, has made a
great deal of stuff public about the show. The only problem is that
he did it on Usenet. Now, there is nobody in the world that doubts
that those Usenet postings were made by JMS. It's dead-on fact. But
[[WP:RS]] rules out such posts in all cases. Which means, by a rigid
definition of [[WP:RS]], we have to go scrag [[Spoo]].

This is not the only case of this. I remember a nasty fight over
[[Able and Baker]] regarding whether the website for Dayfree Press, a
webcomics syndicate, was a reliable source on Dayfree Press. Or, and
this is possibly the most ludicrous thing I've ever seen argued on
Wikipedia, the assertion that it is not verifiable that a post was
made to a talk page on Wikipedia. Not even raising the question of
the identity of the poster (Which would have been a sensible debate
to have) - someone was asserting that the existence of the post
itself was not verifiable.

The problem here is that the reliability of sources is a tremendously
subtle issue. When dealing with Babylon 5, Usenet posts are
tremendously reliable. When dealing with Scientology, a personal
website is one of the most important sources in existence. J. Michael
Stracyznski's news posts are reliable. Other people's aren't. It's
not a clear-cut matter, and we can't write policy that's meant to be
applied like a sledgehammer to cover it. The fact that blog posts
suck as sources on topic A does not mean they suck on topic B.

Every other policy we have on Wikipedia explicitly gives editors a
wide berth to interpret it on a case-by-case basis. This is, for
instance, the whole reason [[WP:NPOV]] works. But increasingly,
[[WP:V]] and [[WP:RS]] are written to be applied by machine. We need
to return to trusting that editors will be able to work out what a
reliable source is on a topic by topic basis, given a set of general
guidelines on the matter. I have in the past recommended basing these
guidelines on _The Craft of Research_, a book published by UChicago
Press. This has long been one of the standard academic research
manuals. It's flexible, sensible, and respected - exactly what we
want and need.

3) They increase the burden of responsibility far beyond that which
can reasonably be asked of the casual editor who does most of the
heavy lifting for Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is supposed to be editable by anyone, and we have
repeatedly stressed the importance of keeping it open. Unfortunately,
with our zeal for sourcing everything and placing ridiculously high
demands on our sources, we are increasingly threatening that ideal.
It is not, under the rules as written, possible to edit Wikipedia
without access to a substantial reference library. Someone who
stumbles upon an article and sees an omission is no longer encouraged
to just add it  - they're encouraged to go make a research trip to
add it.

This is, of course, not how it actually works. 99% of our content has
been and will always be people working from personal knowledge. It
was how Wikipedia was built, and it's how it will always remain, no
matter how we rewrite the rules. We need to remember that as editors,
though. The goal should not be to scrap 99% of the contributions. It
should be to remove things that are too troublesome to include
without reliable sources (As defined on a case by case basis), and to
try to find reliable sources for everything else.

In essence, we have written a set of policies that fail to reflect
how we do work, should work, or could possibly work. And, due to the
frighteningly large number of contributors who, given a piece of bad
policy, will follow it rigidly without thinking about it, this is a
solidly dangerous thing. (Something to remember: IAR is our most
ignored rule.)

What can we do to repair these policies to better reflect and engage
reality? Obviously, as I said, we cannot abandon the policies -
[[WP:V]] is essential, and [[WP:RS]] has the potential to be a vital
guideline. But the current approach clearly does not work. So we need
to rethink it.

-Phil


from_name: Kim van der Linde

subject: [WikiEN-l] Expert editors

body:
George Herbert wrote:

> Well, to some degree, there are legitimate reasons for using
> consensus: even within experts in the field, there often is not yet
> full agreement on the validity of newly developing science or
> technology.

Science works on arguments. Not by popular vote (Intelligent design and
creations would be true in that case!). It is not consensus what is
important, but the description of all relevant point-of-views based on
their relative scientific importance based on scientific sources. To
much is based on popular POV-sources, or pieced together quote mining.

> I've got slightly over a thousand en.WP pages on my watchlist, about
> 500 articles worth.  Even accounting for overlap, there are plenty
> enough active wikipedians on en to watch the important pages.

I had about +2000 articles. In my field of expertise, I have waited how
long it took on some high profile watched-by-many articles before
someone would correct some clear incorrect information, inserted by a
drive-by-editor. After a month, I changed it, as nobody did it. Now I do
not have those articles on my watchlist anymore (remove all items works
wonderful), if any of that gets reinserted again, it is very likely to
remain incorrect at Wikipedia for a long time.

Kim

--
http://www.kimvdlinde.com


from_name: freakofnurture

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Example of a user who should have been banned a
	long	time ago

body:
Redvers @ the Wikipedia wrote:
>
> I'm pretty sure it would mostly find IPs, which would be meaningless for
> most pre-planned blocking, as we would be unable to assess which were
> static and which were dynamic in the same way we generally are now.
>

Thankfully "IPs" lack the technical ability to upload images, regardless of
copyright status. Permitting them to do so would be sheer madness.

On a similar note I've heard talk about requiring e-mail address
confirmation prior to image uploading. This might be a safeguard for those
casual editors who check their e-mail inbox more frequently than their talk
page, and might help prevent a legitimate image from being deleted due to
failure to properly tag it (fringe cases). I do not know whether this has
been implimented or shot down for being too "unwiki-like", but I think the
"you have Wikipedia e-mail from OrphanBot" idea is a good one. It would give
the uploaders one less excuse, anyway.

However the point is probably moot now that image uploads are now stored for
fucking ever and can now be undeleted at will.

--f.o.n.
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Example-of-a-user-who-should-have-been-banned-a-long-time-ago-tf2236795.html#a6348137
Sent from the English Wikipedia forum at Nabble.com.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Expert editors

body:
geni wrote:
> On 9/17/06, Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com> wrote:
>> Science works on arguments. Not by popular vote (Intelligent design and
>> creations would be true in that case!).
>
> The history of science suggests otherwise (from what I've seen I can't
> help wondering if  Feyerabend had a point).

Science determined by popular vote?

Or do you mean that scientists are human and resist changes like most
people and that paradigm shifts take time to filter through?

Kim

--
http://www.kimvdlinde.com


from_name: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Board Elections

body:
On 9/16/06, Alison Wheeler <wikimedia at alisonwheeler.com> wrote:

> On Sat, September 16, 2006 09:02, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:

> > My personal strong feeling is that instead of choosing one appointed
> > member, the board should appoint two, and appoint them as *permanent*,
> > life members of the board .

> May I say, completely independent of this election and the composition of
> the current board, that I would consider the retention of *any* person as
> a "permanent" member of the Board of any business or foundation as a very
> dangerous situation. People change and people not previously considered
> may appear who have more appropriate skills, knowledge and connections,
> more importantly the *needs* of the Foundation will, as with any
> organisation that seeks to grow improve and thrive in the long term needs
> to have the regular ability to bring in new talent and 'retire' those who
> have served its former needs well but now need to move on so that the
> organisation improves.
>
> Just as Wikipedia has moved us all on from the 'dead-tree encyclopedia'
> age, I don't think we'd want to find ourselves stuck with a Board of 80
> year olds later in this century!

Writing this now, just as I have heard of the passing of Rob Levin, I
am very cognisant of the fleeting nature of time, and our passing
through it, only to be judged finally by posterity, but even in our
lifetimes, and in the context of the board of trustees, permanent is
of course only permanent in the sense of not being up for periodical
confirmation. I think the bylaws quite specifically make reference to
the boards ability to dismiss members of itself by an internal board
vote. So I think the larger point you make is moot.

--
--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, AKA. Cimon Avaro

Candidate for Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation in the
September 2006 elections.


from_name: Delirium

subject:
[Foundation-l] [Fwd: [Wmfcc-l] Citizendium, a new venture,
 will "fork" off from online encyclopedia Wikipedia]

body:
George Herbert wrote:
> On 9/16/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>> Sanger is out for payback. I just can feel this, and a wounded ego --
>> this is just IMHO, but it feels that way. Something built
>> on negative emotions is destined for failure from the start.
>>
>
>
> Larry is far from the only person who thinks that anonymity is
> ultimately a net negative for Wikipedia, or that having more experts
> openly involved is a good thing.
>
> That said, I hope that you're wrong, but I can see why you might be right.
>

It's less what he says than how he seems to go about saying it.  Based
on seeing his comments over the years and some subtle undertones of most
of what he writes, I'd agree with Jeffrey that Larry appears to have a
vendetta of sorts.  The ideal situation would be that he had a vision
for how to improve Wikipedia, and is starting a fork because Wikipedia
hasn't taken it up and he feels he can do better.  I don't get quite
that sort of vibe, though---there's definitely an active *dislike* of
Wikipedia, and also, I would venture, a desire that it be replaced by a
project headed by Larry Sangers, PhD.

There has been plenty of opportunity for Larry to participate
constructively to change Wikipedia over the years, but he has never made
an effort.  In fact he has never, since he stopped being paid to do so,
participated at all.  He could have subscribed to the mailing list and
made constructive proposals to improve Wikipedia, or made comments on
one of the wikis, or propose some concrete changes, preferably in
increments.  As far as I can tell he has never done anything like
that---his sole involvement has been writing two (three?) articles to
post on Slashdot and Kuro5hin, and then not even participate much in the
follow-up discussion (he does seem, to his credit, to be participating
much more in the Slashdot discussion of his new project).

Perhaps he has pure motives and really wants to improve the way
open-content encyclopedias are produced, but after years of not ever
seeing him show up *anywhere*, I'm skeptical.  That said, I'll be happy
to welcome any positive contributions, either in content or methodology,
that his project may produce.

-Mark


from_name: Florence Devouard

subject: [Foundation-l] Abuja Conference report

body:
Hello all,

This week, I was in Abuja (Nigeria) for the Digital World Africa 2006
Conference - ICTs for Education and Development. I presented our
projects, with a focus on "empoverment". Sj was also present at the
conference, along with the OLPC team and made a very insightful talk on
motivation.

The conference was attended by possibly 300-400 people, most of whom
where Nigerians. A big focus was given on OLPC (with a presentation by
Negroponte), with Nigeria being announced to be one of the first
countries to likely receive the laptops in the future.

The conference dealt with issues of
* Information and knowledge as human capital (this is where Sj and I
participated)
* Practical realities in Bridging the Digital Divide
* Role of capital, institution building, entrepreneurship in promoting
education and development
* Technical infrastructure (not surprisingly, the least nigerian panel)
* Local content
* Learning (I entirely missed this one)

I learned a lot from seeing how a conference was held over there and
more generally, about social relationships. I reported some of my
thoughts here
(http://blog.anthere.org/index.php/2006/09/17/76-laughing-not-to-show-happiness-but-to-share).
I believe some of those specific cultural characteristics will probably
be an issue in the participation of a project such as Wikipedia. The
pyramid of age/position seems to be very heavy weight in all their
activities (requirements of official agreement before doing anything.
High respect due to position and age etc...). It will be hard to
concilliate this with our flat-decision making system. However, I also
felt a huge desire to become active and to comment things.

Amazing moment though was the panel about local content. Most of what
has been discussed was of technical nature (the "content" was perceived
as being "hardware to build"). The only person who really talk about
"content" as text/image, simply explained that 1) creating content was a
terribly painful and tiring and boring activity. As such it 2) required
to be a for-benefit activity and 3) as is, needed serious protection in
terms of copyright.
As far as I can remember, he was the only person to ever mention
copyright issues. His presentation was quite depressing :-)
This said, later, a woman went to see me and blessed us for the projects
and what we are doing. I felt very moved from an emotional point of view.

Most of those people are currently struggling to simply have computer
and internet, issues such as "open source", "filtering internet for
kids", "cybercrime" (Nigeria being the highest in terms of cybercrime),
do not seem to be yet on their plates.

As usual, I asked in the room who knew about the project and I probably
do not need to say that the number of hands were amongst the lowest I
have ever seen. Maybe 1/5, probably less. And most being the
international visitors...
A government employee came to see me and said he had used Wikipedia, but
never realised he could edit it.
To make it short, this conference probably united the most technically
advanced people from the country. People amongst the few with nearly
unlimited computer and internet access. They are english speaking
people. They work on ICT issues. And YET, most had no idea of our
existence.

This suggests to me that one of the first thing we can do to increase
our audience over there is precisely being present at such conferences
to spread the word.

A couple of journalists attended the conference. I highjacked one of
them (who knew the project), working for specialised (technical) press
and "sold" him an article. We agreed to come in contact after the conf,
with developers input as well, and to have an article on Wikipedia in
his journal.

I also talked with many NGO, some being quite big. And potentially a
good way to increase awareness.

Another cool thing was to actually identify good and interesting
speakers or people we could invite to assist Wikimania next year.

Last, we talk about a project, which was presented at Wikimania, Wiki
voices. The idea is to list all languages spoken in Nigeria (over 250)
and to describe each of them. To define texts, to be recorded in top
quality in all those languages (the concept of merry christmas and happy
new year of Gerard and Sabine). It seems it could fit both in wiktionary
and to be a basis for a wikibooks. A clearer proposal should be written
in teh next few weeks, but would have to need to be approved by the
Nigerian gvt before any implementation.

This project would be both a cool way to bring content and one to get
more people to know about the project.

Overall, I was quite happy of the various outcome of my visit. It was
worth it and helped me understand what would be good to do to expand our
visibility over there, as well as participation rates... but also to see
what barriers we are likely to meet.

An old reference
*
http://www.vanguardngr.com/articles/2002/features/technology/tec319072006.html
---------

Some time ago, I also talked to you about a project I first heard about
2 weeks ago in Geneva
(http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-September/009707.html).
Since I was going through Geneva again to come back from Abuja, I took
one additional day to talk more in length about the RAFT project.

It is very likely to be started in january 2007. The concept is simply
to make a wikibook (in french) related to tropical diseases and various
ways to handle these deseases according to cultural and geographical
areas. The book would be in particular written by medical professional
staff (but it is perfectly understood it will be open to others as
well). During fall, one or more coordinators will outline the content of
the book and gather the information to be made available to future
participants. Then, just before a conference in Bamako, a training
session will occur, with participants from Mali and others countries
being presented the project and the wiki way.

I really look forward this project to happen (the organiser seems
reasonnably confident it will occur as of today), as it would both mean
a foot in several african countries and local content of quality.

----------

At the same time, I have discussed with the CEO of the HonCode (first
system of accreditation of medical information on the net). The
accreditation system is designed to label sites respecting a certain
code of deontology. Wikimedia projects can not currently get the HonCode
accreditation because of one unique element we can not respect
(identification of authors :-)), but the organisation would be
interested in crafting a Code for collaborative wiki systems. See
http://www.hon.ch/ for further reference.

best

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Abuja Conference report


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Development in Africa

body:
Since I am on it
(http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-September/010021.html),
I'd like us to think along what we could more or less easily do to push
our visibility and participation in African countries (may be the the
same in other parts of the world as well).

I have identified the following solutions. Are they others ?

1. Increase awareness in the project

1.1 Identification of conferences where our participation might be
relevant (focused on ICT, Education, Sustainable development, Culture)
Contact with organisers and proposal to participate and make presentations

1.2. Identification of big media group (make a list).
Contact and proposition of articles. Language focus: english, french,
arab, portuguese.
Of course, include them in the list of press release.

1.3. Identification of specialized press (make a list)
Focus: Linux fanatics :-) Contact and proposition of articles

1.4. Identification of major NGO working on education and woman groups.
Contact. Provide them with a bit of "advertisment"

1.5. Contact of all major universities.
propose them teleconference (if they are equipped) or irl presentation
(if that fit well with a formal conference or a trip)

2. Favor production of content in languages already developped
Cases such as RAFT or Wiki voices. If necessary, find money and someone
to help coordinating this to ensure success.

3. Favor production of content in local languages

* Help Beta Wiki
* Contact local NGOs for help in translation interface
* Identification (now) of major languages (according to read/write
coverage)

Here are some thougts. Are they others ?
Who feel like helping take care of some of those points ?

Anthere


subject: [Foundation-l] Development in Africa


subject: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium

body:
I am very much reminded of a folklore tale from my native Finland. It
is one of a series in a rich tradition of stories about a village of
idiots. Not village idiots, but a village of idiots. The name of the
village is "H?lm?l?" meaning literally "Dufus[locative]". The series
of vignettes concerns the life experiences of this village, the
canonical tale being of a man who built a house, and forgot to make
windows into it. His solution was to periodically come out of his
house with a sack, open it, to let daylight in, close the sack, and
quickly run back into his house.

Now maybe I am missing something...

Assuming that good content (if any) in sangers project will be added
to wikipedia, why would potential editors prefer to edit these
articles that are copied back to wikipedia too on sangers project,
rather than on wikipedia? There has to be some added value to editing
on sangers project, rather than on wikipedia, for his project to
flourish. What is it? I genuinely want to know.

On 9/16/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> On 16 Sep 2006 at 20:32, "Mathias Schindler"
> <mathias.schindler at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > What bothers me most is that Larry's fifth proposal for an
> > encyclopedia comes when plan 3 and 4 ("Encyclopedia of Earth" and the
> > "Digital Universe Encyclopedia") have not surfaced yet. Larry might or
> > might not use the argument that he does not bear responsibility in
> > having the EoE miss about three announced dates to be released. During
> > the talk, he did not mention those projects a single time (only after
> > I specifically asked him about this).
>
> That guy does seem to be creating a lot of "vaporware".  He seems to
> be of the school of thought that holds that the way to launch a
> project is to first get a lot of "buzz" going about how innovative
> it's going to be, and afterward start thinking about actually
> launching it someday.  In contrast, Wikipedia got started by actually
> getting started... the hype and chitchat came later.
>
> --
> == Dan ==
> Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
> Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
> Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, AKA. Cimon Avaro

Candidate for Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation in the
September 2006 elections.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium

body:
Kim van der Linde wrote:
> What I do know is that experts have in
> general a short life span at Wikipedia (if they join at all), and that
> is not going to change.
>

That's not my experience---hundreds, if not thousands, of Wikipedians
are experts in a variety of fields.  I'm a PhD student in one field, and
will presumably still be a Wikipedian when I have my PhD (and am already
an expert in some sub-areas).  I know professors, graduate students,
lawyers, game developers, engineers, and a variety of other
professionals and experts who edit Wikipedia.  In fact I'm often
surprised by how often I recognize the names of Wikipedians from elsewhere.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Expert editors

body:
Kim van der Linde wrote:
> George Herbert wrote:
>
>
>> Well, to some degree, there are legitimate reasons for using
>> consensus: even within experts in the field, there often is not yet
>> full agreement on the validity of newly developing science or
>> technology.
>>
>
> Science works on arguments. Not by popular vote (Intelligent design and
> creations would be true in that case!). It is not consensus what is
> important, but the description of all relevant point-of-views based on
> their relative scientific importance based on scientific sources. To
> much is based on popular POV-sources, or pieced together quote mining.
>
>
No, I can say quite confidently, as a scientist active in academic
publishing, that when reviewing a field (which is what encyclopedia
articles are), science works on consensus, unless you are specifically
writing a "critical review" unapologetically from a particular point of
view.  If you're claiming to be writing a review article that fairly
represents the current state of the string-theory debate, for example,
you must write a consensus article that represents all major camps.  If
you write an article representing your view of the "truth", then it
isn't a review article representing an accurate consensus about the
current state of the debate, so must be labelled as something else.

The only difference from your creationism/intelligent-design example is
that review articles generally review controversies *within* a specific
field rather than across or outside of them.  Encyclopedia articles, of
course, must take a broader view, and review the general state of debate
among society at large---including between scientific fields, between
scientific and humanities fields, and between academics and
non-academics.  The point is not to get at "truth", but to present a
fair summary of the current state of the debate.

If anything, highly focused specialists are a major enemy of that
endeavor, because many tend to see their view as the "right" view and
hamper writing broad summaries---for example, a statistician who thinks
all artificial intelligence is either statistics, badly done statistics,
or crap.

I have my own opinions on many areas I'm an expert in, but I hardly
object that Wikipedia doesn't document the truth as I see it, since that
isn't its job.

-Mark


from_name: David Mestel

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Board Elections

body:
On 16/09/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I understand and appreciate this point.  In general, I try not to speak
> on such matters.  In this case, though, I think we have a unique
> opportunity.
>
> --Jimbo

Fair enough.
--
David


body:
On 17/09/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> In essence, we have written a set of policies that fail to reflect
> how we do work, should work, or could possibly work. And, due to the
> frighteningly large number of contributors who, given a piece of bad
> policy, will follow it rigidly without thinking about it, this is a
> solidly dangerous thing. (Something to remember: IAR is our most
> ignored rule.)

I have to disagree with you on the IAR point - I just clicked on the
"random article" button five times, and not one of the resulting
articles had a single source.  I think that our problem may be that,
because we place such a great demand on our sources, people don't
bother to source articles at all.  Perhaps we need to demand less in
order to achieve more...
--
David


subject: [WikiEN-l] Names of places in unrecognized countries

body:
Bogdan Giusca wrote:
>
> The current naming policy for less-known placenames (those with no name in
> English) is to use the spelling in the language of the country where the
> place is located.
>
> Now there's a problem with unrecognized countries: i.e. countries which
> declared their independence, but which are not recognized internationally.
>
> I have an example in Transnistria:
>
> The town of Malaiesti (population ~5000) is officially in Moldova, but
> practically, it is under Transnistrian control.
>
> Which spelling should be used for its article name? The Romanian/Moldovan
> spelling (Malaiesti) or the Russian speling (Malayeshty)?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayeshty
>
>

Use the spelling most frequently used by english speakers, regardless of
local politics, and even if the spelling itself is of non-english origin.

--f.o.n.
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Names-of-places-in-unrecognized-countries-tf2286130.html#a6350550
Sent from the English Wikipedia forum at Nabble.com.


subject: [Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] Endorsement

body:
While we're weighing in, I'd like to support Erik Moeller's candidacy.
Though I don't agree with him on all specifics, I trust that he's
sincerely and idealistically committed to the core mission of the
Wikimedia Foundation.  As importantly, he has a long track record of
getting important things done, being the primary mover behind getting
both the Wikimedia Commons and WikiNews up and running.  Both involved
complex combinations of leadership, policy development, and community
support, and have turned out to be our two most successful recent projects.

 From the point of view of relations with overlapping communities, he
has significant credibility with the broader open-content community.
He's been active for many years in a variety of forums (I first ran
across him at kuro5hin, and he ran a well-known copyright-reform blog
for years), and his work with the Wikimedia Commons in particular has
made him known in open-media circles.  So having him on the board would
help cement our alliances with the wider group of people who have
similar aims.

There are a number of other candidates who I think would make good board
members, but Erik stands out as having a proven track record of getting
complex but important things done, along with a high level of
credibility in a wider community.

-Mark


from_name: James Hare

body:
I definitely agree with you, Delirium. But I am not a big fan of blatantly
endorsing candidates on the mailing list.

On 9/17/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
> While we're weighing in, I'd like to support Erik Moeller's candidacy.
> Though I don't agree with him on all specifics, I trust that he's
> sincerely and idealistically committed to the core mission of the
> Wikimedia Foundation.  As importantly, he has a long track record of
> getting important things done, being the primary mover behind getting
> both the Wikimedia Commons and WikiNews up and running.  Both involved
> complex combinations of leadership, policy development, and community
> support, and have turned out to be our two most successful recent
> projects.
>
> From the point of view of relations with overlapping communities, he
> has significant credibility with the broader open-content community.
> He's been active for many years in a variety of forums (I first ran
> across him at kuro5hin, and he ran a well-known copyright-reform blog
> for years), and his work with the Wikimedia Commons in particular has
> made him known in open-media circles.  So having him on the board would
> help cement our alliances with the wider group of people who have
> similar aims.
>
> There are a number of other candidates who I think would make good board
> members, but Erik stands out as having a proven track record of getting
> complex but important things done, along with a high level of
> credibility in a wider community.
>
> -Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Stephen Streater

subject: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium

body:
On 17 Sep 2006, at 04:01, George Herbert wrote:

> On 9/16/06, Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com> wrote:
>> What I do know is that experts have in
>> general a short life span at Wikipedia (if they join at all), and
>> that
>> is not going to change.
>
> There are areas of Wikipedia where that generality is not true at all,
> and experts are quite actively involved and not being rejected or
> driven away at all.
>
> I keep wondering what's different about those, compared to the areas
> where they are being pushed out, and thinking if there's some way to
> change that.  I haven't figured it out yet.

The experts I've seen being "driven away" leave
because they are used to and expect respect but
instead get treated as if they were arrogant know-it-alls.

I find this is less of an issue on the Mathematical articles
because it is hard to bluff and so easy for a layman editor
to tell when someone is an expert.


body:
James Hare wrote:
> I definitely agree with you, Delirium. But I am not a big fan of blatantly
> endorsing candidates on the mailing list.
>
To tell the truth I'm not either, which is why I sent this nearly at the
end of voting rather than a few weeks ago when voting opened.  But since
people were throwing out their opinions already, I figured that the
cat's out of the bag and we might as well all add in our views (although
hopefully people will avoid disendorsements, since that can become
acrimonious).

It might be worth deciding whether we want to follow any more organized
endorsement process in future elections (or avoid endorsements altogether).

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium

body:
On 17 Sep 2006, at 04:30, gwern branwen wrote:

> On 9/16/06, Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com> wrote:
>> As an expert who has left Wikipedia more or less, I can give you
>> an answer:
>> 1. I would write there for Citizendium, not for Wikipedia.
>
> And judging from the current success of Sanger's past endeavours (I'm
> thinking of Digital Universe here), you would be wasting your time.
> Remember, "the good is the enemy of the best", or better yet, "worse
> is better".

The expression I heard was "the better is the enemy of the good".
In this case, the "better" solution Citizendium may never appear,
whereas the "good" solution of Wikipedia is flourishing.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Name pages and disambiguation

body:
charles.r.matthews wrote:
>
> To be fair, the _given name_ lists are not apparently generally favoured.
> I'm entirely tigerish in my defence of lists by _surname_ .
>
> Charles
>

If somebody is willing to run a bot to peruse each database dump to keep
pages like a List_of_people_named_John sorted and up-to-date, I have no
objection whatsoever. Of course, Special:Prefixindex/John would be almost as
reliable, and would make this easier for humans than the surname lists,
even, though it might exclude names with obnoxious preceding honorifics, and
that scenario is, in itself, a Bad Thing.

--f.o.n.
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Name-pages-and-disambiguation-tf2249086.html#a6350664
Sent from the English Wikipedia forum at Nabble.com.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Expert editors

body:
On 9/17/06, Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com> wrote:
> Science works on arguments. Not by popular vote (Intelligent design and
> creations would be true in that case!).

The history of science suggests otherwise (from what I've seen I can't
help wondering if  Feyerabend had a point).

--
geni


body:
Bogdan Giusca wrote:
>
> Sunday, September 17, 2006, 5:35:39 PM, freakofnurture wrote:
>
> f> Use the spelling most frequently used by english speakers, regardless
> of
> f> local politics, and even if the spelling itself is of non-english
> origin.
>
> The English speakers usually never even heard of such village.
> Romanian/Moldovan sources in English use Malaiesti, while
> Russian/Transnistrian sources in English use Malayeshty. :-)
>

You may be jumping to conclusions. To paraphrase Lazlow, "English" is a big
place. But here's a loaded question, which sources are considered more
authoritative by english-speaking researchers?

--f.o.n.
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Names-of-places-in-unrecognized-countries-tf2286130.html#a6350734
Sent from the English Wikipedia forum at Nabble.com.


body:
On 9/17/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> Pardon my subject - it is only slightly exaggerated.
>
> Obviously [[WP:V]] and (to a lesser extent) [[WP:RS]] are absolutely
> vital policies that cannot be discarded. On the other hand, in their
> current form they are abominations that fundamentally undermine key
> aspects of Wikipedia's mission.
>
> The problems with the pages are threefold.
>
> 1) They actively encourage removal of material that is accurate.
> 2) Their definitions of acceptable material were written with an eye
> towards only a handful of Wikipedia's articles, and render large
> portions of the site functionally un-editable.
> 3) They increase the burden of responsibility far beyond that which
> can reasonably be asked of the casual editor who does most of the
> heavy lifting for Wikipedia.
>
> In order.
>
> 1) They actively encourage removal of material that is accurate
>
> Admittedly, our standard for inclusion is "verifiability, not truth."
> We ought not, however, fall into the trap of deciding that we are
> therefore against truth. Our goal is to offer the sum total of human
> knowledge. If information is true and significant, we ought be trying
> to find a way to get it in.
>
> Both policies direly need a basic common sense check - don't
> challenge material you don't actually doubt the accuracy of. Editors
> should read skeptically and critically, but they should not go
> removing things for the sake of removing them.

You realise process says exactly that?
>
> Every other policy we have on Wikipedia explicitly gives editors a
> wide berth to interpret it on a case-by-case basis. This is, for
> instance, the whole reason [[WP:NPOV]] works. But increasingly,
> [[WP:V]] and [[WP:RS]] are written to be applied by machine. We need
> to return to trusting that editors will be able to work out what a
> reliable source is on a topic by topic basis, given a set of general
> guidelines on the matter. I have in the past recommended basing these
> guidelines on _The Craft of Research_, a book published by UChicago
> Press. This has long been one of the standard academic research
> manuals. It's flexible, sensible, and respected - exactly what we
> want and need.

You want book length policy pages? No thankyou.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Board Elections

body:
On 9/16/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

I understand and appreciate this point.  In general, I try not to speak
> on such matters.  In this case, though, I think we have a unique
> opportunity.

I agree that in the past, given your position, you have been rather wise to
keep your opinions in check, as difficult as that must have been. This
approach has worked phenomenally well toward creating vast amounts of good
will within the community.

That said, it is my humble view that Eloquence is by far the most qualified
- in every respect - and even a cursory look at look at his five-year-long
Wikipedia rap sheet will make that plain.

I have not till now communicated this to him or anyone else, so its
gratifying to see Angela and others reply to this thread in his support,
even if it goes somewhat against the establishment. It is my sincere belief
the board needs someone who can speak for the open public interest, and that
Erik very much has his finger on the pulse in that regard. Always has.

Sincerely,
-sv.

PS: I dont  understand what "unique opportunity"  is supposed to mean in
this context.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Expert editors

body:
On 9/17/06, Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com> wrote:

> geni wrote:
> Science determined by popular vote?
>

A popular vote of of scientists would not be the worst description of
what goes on. Although of course the actual process is ar more
complex.

> Or do you mean that scientists are human and resist changes like most
> people and that paradigm shifts take time to filter through?
>
> Kim
>

I never really liked the paradigm shifts model becuase it lacked
falsifiability (and yes I'm aware of the irony of that statement).

--
geni


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikilinked dates in ISO-format and anon users

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 9/14/06, Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> {{date|2006-09-14}} is surely the wiki-way to go: it can then expand to
>> <date>2006-09-14</date> for the parser/renderer back end to deal with.
>>
>
> I totally agree with you for the syntax.
>
> Out of curiosity, when I proposed wrapping ISBN's in an {{ISBN|...}}
> template this way, no one liked the idea...but I'm not bitter.
>
> Steve
Hoi,
The difference is that there are several competing projects around books
/ publications / authors. Some have real drive behind it; Wikiauthors
will be developed. The result is that the enthusiasm for yet another
proposal in such a sphere becomes less even though having a solution is
a great idea.
Thanks,
     GerardM


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

body:
"Matt Brown" wrote

> I don't disagree that sources should be reliable ones.  I disagree
> with the idea that reliability can be so rigidly defined, against
> common sense.

Hear! Hear!

Phil Sandifer's original post on this is well-argued, though I don't particularly wish to follow him onto the ground of webcomics.

Common sense needs to apply, sooner rather than later. It indicates things like, oh, in religion and politics you are not going to have people 100% agreed onw what a reliable source is (do you believe the Bible or the BBC, sort of thing). Almost any source can be _fallible_ anyway. So we err generally in the direction of including sources, assuming a critical reader.

Common sense also says that policies that are written in very black-and-white terms do not necessarily trump others, which are apparently wishy-washy and aspirational and don't help you win your edit war on content.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information


body:
Anthere wrote:
> Mathias Schindler wrote:
>
>> On 9/16/06, Florence Devouard <anthere at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> WASHINGTON INTERNET DAILY
>>>
>> Hi Anthere.
>>
>> What you did was violating the copyright in most of the states (anyone
>> shouting "fair use! fair use!" here?).
>>
>
> Oh ?
>
> You mean that's why much of the interesting discussions are right now
> taking place on the comcom list where very little people have access ?
>
> Okay. I'll forward them to internal instead.
>
>   Foundation-l gets archived
>
>> publicly, as far as I know. You are responsible for this incident and
>> I would like you to
>>
>> 1. remove this message from the archive before the owner of the
>> copyright DMCAs you, me and the Foundation.
>> 2. try not to repeat this.
>>
>
> Right. You know where I live, if it is necessary, just tell them I am
> the guilty one. They can sue me, I own so little they won't make much :-)
>
>
>> As a board member, respecting copyright of third parties should not be
>> an optional skill :)
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Mathias
>>
>
>
> I think my role as a board member is increasingly becoming extremely
> boring and useless... I oscillate between being told to be a nice
> girly/pompom girl. And being a watch dog crying wolf. I look forward for
> someone else holding this roles with me.
Hoi,
I hope there will be a video. I hope it will be for me to see :) ..
Think about this fairy tale about this girly with a red riding hood..
She may have been eaten by the wolf but it was the wolf that ended up
down in the well with a belly full of stones.

A board member of a foundation has a responsibility to perform his/her
role When people are stupid enough to suggest a board member to be a
"girly/pompom girl", they do not understand the role and responsibility
of a board member and as sadly their own role. I would expect that much
of these "suggestions" happen because of a lack of communication and
miscommunication. From a community point of view, the observation that
one community board member leaves prematurely and another community
board member tells us that she is suggested to be a "girly/pompom girl"
makes me feel really upset about the current state of the Wikimedia
Foundation.

The suggestion that there is a lot of miscommunication is the
friendliest way of saying "who the fuck do you think you are" to the
people making such suggestions. A board member cannot be a watch dog
calling wolf. It is to a board member to ensure that the necessary
action is taken when wolfs are spotted. It is up to the organisation and
it's personnel to ensure that the board members are properly informed
and that appropriate and agreed upon measures are taken to keep the
wolves at bay. In this it is the organisation and it's personnel that
need board approval not the other way round.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Sage Ross

subject: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium

body:
On 9/17/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Kim van der Linde wrote:
> > What I do know is that experts have in
> > general a short life span at Wikipedia (if they join at all), and that
> > is not going to change.
> >
>
> That's not my experience---hundreds, if not thousands, of Wikipedians
> are experts in a variety of fields.  I'm a PhD student in one field, and
> will presumably still be a Wikipedian when I have my PhD (and am already
> an expert in some sub-areas).  I know professors, graduate students,
> lawyers, game developers, engineers, and a variety of other
> professionals and experts who edit Wikipedia.  In fact I'm often
> surprised by how often I recognize the names of Wikipedians from elsewhere.
>
> -Mark

I concur with Mark here.  Like most of the "expert rebellion," Kim is
an editor in one of the few areas (evolution) where even clear
argument and reliable sources deteriorate quickly, because so many
people feel they have more/better knowledge about it than they do AND
place a lot of metaphyiscal weight on that knowledge.  The situation
is similar in philosophy, the subject area of much of the expert
rebellion.

Many, many more expert editors do stick around, and their numbers are
growing.  They tend to be exopedians, so we don't notice them much
unless they're in our neck of the 'pedia.

-Sage (User:Ragesoss)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Template usage?

body:
Rory Stolzenberg wrote:
>
> Right, but it doesn't protect against vandals who registered, didn't edit
> for 4 days and the vandalized.  If they're vandalizing templates, they're
> not just people who come to Wikipedia and say "wow, i can delete this
> entire page lol!" - they're vandals who've been doing it for a while and
> are familiar with Wikipedia, so they probably know how to get around
> semi-protection.
>

I know you people have heard it all before from me (though not necessarily
in this forum), but that's a compelling argument for greater obscurity with
regards to the "auto-confirmed" status of registered user accounts, instead
of this time-based system that's bloody fuck easy to circumvent.

Four days is a joke. ANY fixed duration of time is a joke once somebody
figures it out.

Don't know if anybody remembers the "piss christ" vandal (in fact,
[[WP:DENY|policy will soon tell us]] that we aren't supposed to), but this
guy would typically launch an attack on each daily featured article shortly
after 00:00 (UTC). Not sure what happened to him, maybe he got a job at a
museum or something, but after a couple history pages full of vandal edits,
rollbacks, and no other activiity, somebody finally decides to be the bad
guy and semi-protect the page.

Fair enough, right, everybody knows Splash (bless his heart) will be along
shortly to make sure we're not ruining anybody's fun. I mean, people have
lawns to mow and cars to wax, we can't ethically make them wait around 15-30
minutes for the golden padlock to go away. Of course not, that would be
cruel and unusual, so it gets unprotected, and then it's business as usual,
ad nauseum.

But seriously folks, what do you do in a situation like this? Well, first
you create a damn good diversion of some sort, then, once you're confident
that the eyes of scrutiny are facing away from the protection log, you lock
the page again, because the situation there is reaching a pathological
state, the level which mother slashdot herself could never be blamed for.

And all the sudden your stomach turns and you're overcome by the same
shit-out-of-luck feeling you had back in April (you know, that time when
your brake pedal felt like a wet sponge) and you realize you're dealing
you're dealing with one hardcore motherscratcher here, he's got some four
dozen additional accounts to post from, fully matured ones, probably
leftovers from [[Cool (song)]]'s heyday.

So then you upgrade to full protection and wonder why nobody did that from
the get-go. You walk away from this experience, I don't know, maybe ten
percent more cynical than you were the day before. Well, half of your
buddies pat you on the back, but the others just tell you your too lazy to
revert shit, to say nothing of the cheap shots: "You never assume good
faith!"

Now, that's not necessarily bad thing, mind you, especially if you happen to
work in retail. But, then, your nametag doesn't say "Helen Keller" either,
presumably.

--f.o.n.
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Template-usage--tf2235780.html#a6351348
Sent from the English Wikipedia forum at Nabble.com.


body:
On 9/17/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Common sense needs to apply, sooner rather than later.

No thank you I'd rather not adopt a system within which calculus
doesn't really work (it appears that the intuitionist version of
standard reals may not even allow a working version of algebra).

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Expert editors

body:
On 9/17/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/17/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/17/06, Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com> wrote:
> >
> > > geni wrote:
> > > Science determined by popular vote?
> > >
> >
> > A popular vote of of scientists would not be the worst description of
> > what goes on. Although of course the actual process is ar more
> > complex.
>
> Also varying wildly from scientific discipline to discipline, and
> beyond that from subspecialty to subspecialty.  There are small fields
> of science where there are no more than a handful of practitioners,
> and those with thousands.
>

This rather describes wikipedia although hopefully people will spend
less time worrying about the philosophy of the wikipedia method (hmm
"what is this thing called wikipedia editing" doesn't quite have the
same ring).

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Board Elections

body:
On 17 Sep 2006, at 09:08, stvrtg wrote:

> On 9/16/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> I understand and appreciate this point.  In general, I try not to
> speak
>> on such matters.  In this case, though, I think we have a unique
>> opportunity.
>
> That said, it is my humble view that Eloquence is by far the most
> qualified
> - in every respect - and even a cursory look at look at his five-
> year-long
> Wikipedia rap sheet will make that plain.

It is conceivable that there is more than one
appropriate candidate. I don't see any reason
not to have more than one elected.


subject: [Foundation-l] Development in Africa

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Since I am on it
> (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-September/010021.html),
> I'd like us to think along what we could more or less easily do to push
> our visibility and participation in African countries (may be the the
> same in other parts of the world as well).
>
> I have identified the following solutions. Are they others ?
>
> 1. Increase awareness in the project
>
OLPC could have been extremely relevant here, sadly they only use the
Wikipedia content and provide it in a different format. There is a Yahoo
group called "Afrophonewikis" where many of the issues to do with
African languages are discussed. At Kasahorow work is done on a project
proposal to support MediaWiki in the Ghanaian languages. WiktionaryZ is
slowly but surely building portal pages for both countries and
languages; this is to make people feel that every language is considered
relevant.

For the Wikimedia Foundation it is absolutely essential that every
officer and employee supports the idea of our projects being
multilingual. This being a core value of what we do means that there is
no room to express the opinion that the English language is to be
preferred over "native" languages.
> 1.1 Identification of conferences where our participation might be
> relevant (focused on ICT, Education, Sustainable development, Culture)
> Contact with organisers and proposal to participate and make presentations
>
This would mean coordination of people who have something to contribute
here and making sure that there is a budget for people to go there. I
can effectively explain how many of the parts come together, I have
effectively involved NGO's and we are working on projects to create
content in (for Wikipedia) less developed languages.
> 1.2. Identification of big media group (make a list).
> Contact and proposition of articles. Language focus: english, french,
> arab, portuguese.
> Of course, include them in the list of press release.
>
I take it that you want to engage the media in the countries themselves,
this is more effectively done by local people. They will be able to do
so effectively when they know themselves empowered to do so. This means
that local chapters may be really relevant here. They are because they
can handle money and they provide a front to the people who do things on
the ground. If you want to stimulate local languages, learn how it is
done by others, what is done in Neapolitan is one good example but there
are more like it.
> 1.3. Identification of specialized press (make a list)
> Focus: Linux fanatics :-) Contact and proposition of articles
>
I think the Linux fanatics are overrated, they have many of the concepts
right, they have the fanatism wrong. We should reach out to everyone we
do not want to be associated and identified with a fanatic fringe. I
understand and appreciate the wink, but some of these people are fringe
and are more of a burden than of a help.
> 1.4. Identification of major NGO working on education and woman groups.
> Contact. Provide them with a bit of "advertisment".
>
When you want to get NGO's to work on our projects, you do not only want
to inform them, you also want to engage them. It means that a
substantial amount of time will be involved. The time frame in which
they operate is quite different, they work with budget cycles,
deadlines. NGO's are often really enthusiastic but for them wikis and
their methodology are new; they have to be initiated in the wiki way. It
takes time and perseverance.
> 1.5. Contact of all major universities.
> propose them teleconference (if they are equipped) or irl presentation
> (if that fit well with a formal conference or a trip)
>
I have not done that systematically yet, but it is extremely likely that
I will get many more contacts in universities soon.
>
> 2. Favor production of content in languages already developped
> Cases such as RAFT or Wiki voices. If necessary, find money and someone
> to help coordinating this to ensure success.
>
It is helpful if there is a place where these things are coordinated. A
language subcommittee of the SPC could do many of these things.. It is
just for this subcommittee to be allowed to start. Finding money is not
that hard. It just needs a plan that needs implementation. Approving
plans for funding and incorporation in the WMF would be a step towards
the notion of "donations, putting your money where your mouth is"
(details on Meta).
> 3. Favor production of content in local languages
>
> * Help Beta Wiki
> * Contact local NGOs for help in translation interface
> * Identification (now) of major languages (according to read/write
> coverage)
>
>
There is agreement between Brion and Nikerabbit that Beta Wiki will be
hosted on a more convenient place. This is an extremely important thing
and I am grateful to Brion to help out on this one.

Translating the User Interface only for our projects is a missed
opportunity. MediaWiki is extremely powerful software. When the
localisation is also seen as an opportunity to have this great tool
available, it becomes something that has relevance to an organisation
for itself. This is an extremely powerful argument. It also underlines
why the localisation in a wikipedia is not such a great idea; it's scope
is only that project and there is no added benefit.
> Here are some thougts. Are they others ?
> Who feel like helping take care of some of those points ?
>
It is important to be enthusiastic about what we do and it is as
important to have a good understanding what the WMF does and what it's
projects are. It is however also really relevant to tell that the WMF is
part of a growing ecosphere with many other projects like Wikitravel,
Yellowiki, Wikia being part of it. This shows that the wikiway is not
only the Wikipedia way.

I have been taking care of some of these points because it helps
WiktionaryZ. For WiktionaryZ it is relevant that we are part of this
whole wiki thing. The strength of what we do is achieved in the many
different things we do, try and achieve. We would be better served if we
cooperated more and bickered less.

Thanks,
     GerardM

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/afrophonewikis/ - Yahoo group on
supporting African language
http://www.kasahorow.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page - Wiki for a
project plan for supporting Ghanaian languages
http://wiktionaryz.org - Pre alpha project to do lexicology, terminology
and ontology has both language and country portals
http://nike.users.idler.fi/dev/index.php?title=ISO-639-3/gil


subject: [Foundation-l] Development in Africa


body:
On 17 Sep 2006, at 08:29, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:

> "Matt Brown" wrote
>
>> I don't disagree that sources should be reliable ones.  I disagree
>> with the idea that reliability can be so rigidly defined, against
>> common sense.
>
> Hear! Hear!
>
> Phil Sandifer's original post on this is well-argued, though I
> don't particularly wish to follow him onto the ground of webcomics.
>
> Common sense needs to apply, sooner rather than later. It indicates
> things like, oh, in religion and politics you are not going to have
> people 100% agreed onw what a reliable source is (do you believe
> the Bible or the BBC, sort of thing). Almost any source can be
> _fallible_ anyway. So we err generally in the direction of
> including sources, assuming a critical reader.
>
> Common sense also says that policies that are written in very black-
> and-white terms do not necessarily trump others, which are
> apparently wishy-washy and aspirational and don't help you win your
> edit war on content.

Common sense may be gaining ground.
Different articles are different, and while
we are generally cleaning up older articles,
creating too big a hurdle for new stubs could
take off the bottom rungs of the ladder.

One idea which has been mooted
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fresheneesz)
is that each sentence has a rating for reliability.

I haven't considered this in depth, but I could
imagine that we have a preference option
which used colour (a bit revolutionary I know!)
to show the status of different sentences.

So POV could be red, independently verified
source material could be black, unchallenged
but unsourced could be blue etc.

This would allow the benefits of truth without
disguising the need for reliable sources. It
would also discourage inexpert editors from
removing good stuff.


from_name: Michael Bimmler

subject: [Foundation-l] Wiki EMail

body:
If you're talking about contacting a user of a Wikimedia project, you
can do so (if the recipient-user has enabled this function) via
Special:Emailuser/USERNAME (insert the Username without the
"User:"-part instead of "USERNAME") on a project where the user has an
account.
If you have questions about Wikipedia (which are not answered in the
manuals / help pages of Wikipedia itself), you can address info-en at
wikipedia dot org
Hope that helps
Michael

On 9/17/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation does not use its domain names for
> e-mail (unless you're staff at Wikimedia, I think). Or were you talking
> about something else?
>
> On 9/16/06, ROSC Director <resourcesofsheboygan at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > How do I get an email address thru Wiki?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Thanks,
> >      Asher Heimermann
> >      "I Support A Recall"
> >      (920) 547-4934
> >      resourcesofsheboygan at yahoo.com
> >      aheimermann at netzero.net
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > Everyone is raving about the  all-new Yahoo! Mail.
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Wiki EMail


from_name: Christoph Seydl

subject: [Foundation-l] Verifiability: Constitution?

body:
Contrary: If the principle of verifiability is not defined in basic
principles, there is always discordance:

* There are people who say that it is just a recommendation to verify
facts. They don't source any fact because they think that footnotes are
ugly. And why checking something if one knows a fact? They say that
footnotes are counterproductive because they suggest an academic
standard which Wikipedia cannot provide; every quote can be faked. They
believe in the self-cleaning process of 100-eye-checks.

* On the other side, there are is the encyclopedia fraction. They say
that every material must be sourced. If there is no published source, it
is not a matter of an encyclopedia. And if something is important, there
is a source. An encyclopedia is about verifiability, not truth. Being
forced to check facts in reliable sourced before adding the material,
improves the quality of Wikipedia because it puts the kibosh on smattering.

* Between these two extremes, there are people who think that sourcing
is important, if is about disputed issues.

Actually, just stating "verifiability is a pillar" is not enough. It can
mean everything and nothing. In reality, not defining verifiability,
supports the "sources-are-only-a-recommendation-I-do-not-like-anyway"
attitude.

Jimbo Wales says: "I can NOT emphasize this enough.    There seems to be
a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative
'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs
a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be
sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of
negative information about living persons.    I think a fair number of
people need to be kicked out of the project just for being lousy
writers. (This is not a policy statement, just a statement of attitude
and frustration.)"
(http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-May/046433.html)

You see that there is a lot of discordance among Wikipedians. If there
is no policy, there is always dispute how to deal with verifiability.
The question is: Which information has to be sourced? I think that the
verifiability issue should be outlined, if it is a pillar.

/Chris

Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Saying that we follow the principle of verifiability should be enough.
> When you get too specific, we unfortunately have many people who are
> determined to take it to extremes at either end of the scale.  Some will
> accept the most ephemeral of data as verification, while others will
> insist that even the most broadly observed information must '''always'''
> show references.
>
> The urgency of verifiability also depends on the nature of the subject
> matter.  It is broadly accepted that the biographies of living persons
> require documentation, especially if what is said about the person can
> have negative overtones.  Verifying details about fictitious characters
> is much less urgent.  Another important factor about good verification
> is can I go to the source that is mentioned, now or at any time in the
> future, and confirm that it says exactly what it is supposed to say.
> This need not need to mean that I should be able to find the image
> directly on the Net.  I may need to travel to look at the book, or
> perhaps it is available by interlibrary loan.
>
> Ec


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Berto

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Endorsement

body:
----- ???????? ????????? -----
??: "Anthere" <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>
????: <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>
?????: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>; <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>;
<wikifr-l at wikipedia.org>
??????????: 16 ???????? 2006 ?. 20:49
????: [Wikipedia-l] Endorsement

>
> > On 9/16/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >
> >I personally strongly strongly support the candidacies of Oscar and
> >Mindspillage.
>
> Angela wrote
> "My view on who should be elected is already public, but for those who
> don't read meta, I believe Erik is the only candidate capable of
> having any positive influence within the current Board."

If you care about the POV of a user from the virtual street... I voted for
Erik, for the simple reason that I know him (although very superficially)
and I had a few chances to work in projects where he is involved, so I can
at least have a personal opinion about him. I do not even know WHO the other
candidates are, therefore I won't try to judge them at all. I believe that
such a lack of information is far from being uncommon among us voters.

When we have a flyer calling up people to vote, we should also have the very
same flyer point the people to SOME information about the candidates
(projects in which they were/are involved, personal background, etc). If the
info was there, I absolutely miss it, and many others may have missed it
much in the same way. I did not look for further info myself, but that's
just my own life style. I stopped voting for political elections *many*
years ago, because I won't choose anyone who I do not personally know and
trust. Nevertheless many people on this planet seem to vote anyway, even
just based on a supermarket-style approach. So possible any relevant info
would be useful for them, as a minimal consumer's rights protection.

>From a personal "political" POV I will add is that I shall not vote for
anyone working on *en-wiki only* or being limited to english only, as far as
communication is concerned. IMHO, the community needs bridges and
interlanguage co-operation, and anyone being uncapable to address this won't
be of any use in the WMF's Board, because he/she will biased from the very
start. He/she is welcome to be elected as the "emperor of en-wiki" and even
to be given the royal privilege to trasmit such a title to his/her son
(since life memberships have already been called for), but WMF has a much
larger set of activities and members, than just "en-wiki and a few weird
guests".

Even just by focusing on 3 main language areas as spanish, russian and
chinese we get the potential for multiplying our audience and communities by
3 or 4 times in the next decades. As a matter of fact, a board member unable
to address such an option will only play a purely conservative game. Too bad
that passive defense won't take us much far from where already we got to be,
while our competitors will not sleep at all. I invest my time in this thing,
and as an investor I want to make sure that the Board will produce
interesting dividends. Nothing personal, business is business.

My five-pence worth :)
B?rto


from_name: phoebe ayers

subject: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Board Elections

body:
On 9/16/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/16/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > It's very long, but well worth reading if you're serious about your
> > vote: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Eloquence/Platform_2006
>
> Personally, I found Erik's verbosity to be inconsiderate and something
> of strike against him in this election.
>
> I think my reasoning was best explained by Erik on Wikien-l a few months
> back:
>
> On 06/27/2006, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> >There are good votes and there are bad votes. A good vote is one where
> voters
> >are presented with a concise summary of the different arguments that have
> come
> >up in a discussion that preceded the vote, where the _options_ in the
> vote have been
> >developed through consensus, and where there is a strong culture that
> pressures
> >voters to read and understand all arguments before voting. A bad vote
> is one that is
> >done ad hoc, out of process, with poor methodology and no clear
> prerequisites.
>
> Erik may have some views on the value of voting which are perhaps
> unusual in our community, but here he has stated something that we all
> agree with: A vote where the voters do not understand their choices is
> not a good vote.
>
> Between Erik's lengthy platform, his candidate statement, and other
> directly linked campaign materials there was a grand total of almost
> 20,000 words.
>
> I think that it is safe to say all our candidates have a lot to say
> about the election.. but  if all 17 of our candidates used as many
> words as Erik there would be a grand total of around 330,000 words to
> read.
>
> Could anyone expect any of the voters to spend *14 hours* of
> continuous reading on the election?

<snip>

I completely disagree with this; I would much, much rather know *more* about
the people I'm voting for, rather than less. I would also like to know that
they are capable of writing well in at least one language, and that they
have interesting ideas about the projects and are willing to take the time
to express them. Remember: whoever is elected will be a very public
representative of the projects and the Foundation in many situations, and
thus that person needs to be articulate about them. So far Erik, and Aaron
Swartz through his series of essays on Wikimedia (which are well worth
reading), have done the best job of demonstrating this. I'd love to see the
same from other candidates, though it's late in the game. No one is forcing
anyone to read the candidate's statements... but since it's unlikely that
anyone has had sustained personal interaction with all of the candidates,
the statements are the only thing we have to go on in many cases.

Effe's idea of a debate is also not terrible, though it is also late in the
game: perhaps next election?

-- phoebe

--
phoebe ayers | user:brassratgirl | brassratgirl /at/ gmail.com


from_name: Ligulem

references:
<ee8j29$lsv$1@sea.gmane.org>	<45080D9F.8000701@pobox.com>	<eebmfo$t74$1@sea.gmane.org>	<200609141637.53928@bloodgate.com>	<eebtcs$q1p$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<45099FF8.7080507@tonal.clara.co.uk>

body:
Neil Harris wrote:
> {{date|2006-09-14}} is surely the wiki-way to go: it can then expand to
> <date>2006-09-14</date> for the parser/renderer back end to deal with.

 From my on-wiki experience (en wikipedia.org), I agree that template
call syntax {{..}} is very popular among Wikipedians (a real killer
syntax, I would say ;-)

Technically, if we'd be allowed to go for {{date|2006-09-14}} - a
template - we would end with yet another high use template just for the
sake of syntax (ad-hoc rule: "No syntactic sugar templates"? ;-), which
in this case I feel is a suboptimal idea as there aren't any editorial
display format decisions to isolate (There is no "moving target" about
the question how to display a date from an editorial viewpoint. There
are just culture/language dependent display formats to choose from.)

So if this is the preferred syntax, we really should think about sitting
onto http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ParserFunctions and implement:

{{#date:2006-09-14}} or {{#date:|2006-09-14}}, and additionally
{{#uldate:2006-09-14}} or {{#uldate:|2006-09-14}} (for unlinked date?)

How difficult would it be to extend ParserFunctions to implement
{{#date:2006-09-14}}?

--Ligulem


subject: [WikiEN-l] 100K challenge page up

body:
"Rory Stolzenberg" wrote

> Am I the only one who thinks this is absolutely impossible?  I'm thinking
> 2,500, and even that's ambitious.  Per WP:100K, each FA requires 50
> editing-hours- that's 5,000,000 editing-hours for 100,000 FAs. Dividing that
> by 8760 hours in a year, that's over 570 editors working 24/7/365.  More
> realistically, we'd have editors working on average maybe 2 hours a day at
> most, so multiply that number by 12. That's 6840 editors working 2 hours a
> day, 7 days a week for a year, solely on articles that they will make
> featured.

Yes, the numbers don't really add up. This of course is not the only issue: trying and 'failing' in a quality drive may not be so bad. Depends on "opportunity cost" and other things.

So in the light of [[WP:DC]], what are the main issues.

(1) Numbers to add up

If enWP were equivalent to 1000 full-time people and if they could be told to give this their main attention, then it could just be perhaps be done in the time.

(2) Ancient rights and entrenchment

What gets the attention? Small city in the USA on which we have an article, or city in India of many times the population which currently doesn't? An academic who has written a popular book, and has a stub now, or one of much greater distinction in the field who happens to be less well known.

(3) The fried egg

This was a metaphor from a talk I gave on WP, with which to make the point that there is a risk that we get 10% or so of good quality articles, and a whole lot more that become an intellectual wilderness.

(4) Actually, churn rate matters

The whole open source thing is predicated on the eyeballs being spread over the whole project, and not just concentrating on where there is current activity.

(5) What is the context, on balance of strengths and weaknesses?

I think we know this by now. Wiki in general, WP in particular, is very good at mapping out territories. E.g. Radio stations in the USA: they can all be covered. This is not what needs to be reined in. Media, academia, popular culture can be mapped out, and this is a USP for this wiki. There clearly is a weakness, also, in achieving uniformly high quality.

(6) Wot, no hypertext?

The focus on individual articles very clearly forgets that we are building a hypertext encyclopedia. It's not as if people really like scrolling down very long articles. A group of related articles on, say, heart disease, is actually a good solution, rather than cramming it all in one. Splitting topics across pages may expose weaker sections to greater scrutiny - which would be the whole point, though.

None of this says there need be no quality drive, just that there is a discussion here worth having.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information


from_name: Kim van der Linde

subject: [WikiEN-l] Expert editors

body:
Delirium wrote:

> No, I can say quite confidently, as a scientist active in academic
> publishing, that when reviewing a field (which is what encyclopedia
> articles are), science works on consensus, unless you are specifically
> writing a "critical review" unapologetically from a particular point of
> view.

Maybe that your field of expertise works by consensus, mine does not
(and honestly, students who think that science works by consensus need
to retake philosophy-of-science 101). Consensus is not the same as
agreement, and if a topic is really well explored, there might be
general agreement among scientists on that topic.

Kim
--
http://www.kimvdlinde.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium

body:
Stephen Streater wrote

> In this case, the "better" solution Citizendium may never appear,
> whereas the "good" solution of Wikipedia is flourishing.

Well, yes, WP's history in a nutshell. So far so good, not the hypothetical 'so much tighter, so much better' of Larry's alternate universe.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information


from_name: geni

subject: [Foundation-l] Verifiability: Constitution? Question for Jimbo!

body:
On 9/17/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> Dear Jimbo:
>
> I challenge you to find me a reference/citation for:
>
> ''When walking on the major street towards increasing soi numbers, all
> the even-numbered sois are on the right side and the odd-numbered ones
> on the left side of the street. If for instance a new soi is added
> between soi 7 and soi 9 it will get the number soi 7/1, the next one soi
> 7/2 etc. It is also possible that soi 20 is far away from soi 21 if
> there are more sois on one side of the street than on the other.''
>
>  From the article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soi

Probably somethinbg published by the local post office or city
planners would be the logical aproach.

--
geni


from_name: valdelli at bluemail.ch

body:
Do You know that not all could be verified and for some points is it
unnecessary the verifiability?

IMHO only disputed article MUST have references and MUST be
supported by verifiability to limit personal opinions and to avoid
the article to become a "drawing room". For other article this choice
could be optional.

In scientific editions all MUST be checked and confirmed by the
authority of others books or researches, but there is a limit... also
the books and researches could make a mistake. If a researcher  takes
care extremely on them, he has not chance.

And in any case not all could be found in references... after this
limit we cross in the research and this is this should be hoped
because without the research there is no progress.

The choice is here: Wikipedia looks to be a simple collector of
knowledge (verified and checked) or Wikipedia believes to be opened
also to the new researches?

At end one reflection, when Einstein was producing his new theories
all scientists judged him as a bizarre man also because there was
nothing to support his suppositions... now his suppositions are a
pillar in the Physic. This is a conclusion to display that references
don't assure the certitude and the truth.

There are men who need extreme verifiability and they like to call
themselves as "pragmatic", there are other men who need critic
verifiability to start a journey for new borders, to see over the
first ones.

Ilario

----Messaggio originale----
Da: Christoph.Seydl at students.jku.at
Data: 17.09.06 10.52
A: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"<foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Oggetto: Re: [Foundation-l] Verifiability: Constitution?

Contrary: If the principle of verifiability is not defined in
basic
principles, there is always discordance:

....

You see that there is a lot of discordance among Wikipedians. If
there
is no policy, there is always dispute how to deal with
verifiability.
The question is: Which information has to be sourced? I think that
the
verifiability issue should be outlined, if it is a pillar.

/Chris

Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Saying that we follow the principle of verifiability should be
enough.
> When you get too specific, we unfortunately have many people who
are
> determined to take it to extremes at either end of the scale.
Some will
> accept the most ephemeral of data as verification, while others
will
> insist that even the most broadly observed information must
'''always'''
> show references.
>


from_name: Phil Sandifer

body:
On Sep 17, 2006, at 3:00 AM, geni wrote:
>>> Both policies direly need a basic common sense check - don't
>>> challenge material you don't actually doubt the accuracy of. Editors
>>> should read skeptically and critically, but they should not go
>>> removing things for the sake of removing them.
> You realise process says exactly that?
>>

No, I don't. The closest thing [[WP:V]] says is "some editors may
object if you remove material without giving people a chance to
provide references."
>
> You want book length policy pages? No thankyou.
>

No - I want policy pages based on a book. Do try to read what I'm
saying before you respond. I know you like unhelpful one-line
replies, but they're not really my thing. The relevant sections of
Craft of Research are about ten pages long, and could easily be
summarized further.

-Phil


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Christoph Seydl wrote:

>Contrary: If the principle of verifiability is not defined in basic
>principles, there is always discordance:
>
What makes you think that elaborating will eliminate the discord?  There
will still be endless argument about what the rules mean.

>* There are people who say that it is just a recommendation to verify
>facts.
>
In *some* subject areas that is adequate.  In other areas fact-checking
should be very strict.

>They don't source any fact because they think that footnotes are
>ugly. And why checking something if one knows a fact? They say that
>footnotes are counterproductive because they suggest an academic
>standard which Wikipedia cannot provide; every quote can be faked. They
>believe in the self-cleaning process of 100-eye-checks.
>
I'm not arguing against this.  I even agree with you that every quote
can be faked; this only strenghthens the view that when quotes are given
a different person should track the quote to make sure that it is as
claimed.  Academic standards are built over an extended period of time,
and none of them can ever reach perfection.  Clearly we need more
references than none, but there is also the other extreme where people
are challenging fundamental concepts that betray their own lack of
familiarity with the topic.  In an article on the basic concepts of a
science it should be enough to show a broad sampling of common textbooks
in the bibliography.  The implication is that they all say basically the
same thing, and specific footnotes should only be needed when there is a
difference in the way that each treats the subject.  In an article on
climate change a link to a Wikipedia article on the chemistry of
combustion should be enough to establish that burning carbon based fuels
produces carbon dioxide.

>* On the other side, there are is the encyclopedia fraction. They say
>that every material must be sourced. If there is no published source, it
>is not a matter of an encyclopedia. And if something is important, there
>is a source. An encyclopedia is about verifiability, not truth.
>
This is not disputed.  There will continue to be disputes about what
constitutes a valid source, and just what people mean by "published"

>Being
>forced to check facts in reliable sourced before adding the material,
>improves the quality of Wikipedia because it puts the kibosh on smattering.
>
"Smattering"?  The original contributor can only add sources, which  he
hopefully does honestly.  He cannot be the one checking them; that is
the responsibility of others.  Put in terms of the scientific method,
the experiment must be repeatable to the point where any student can
verify the results.  When I write about a familar subject I bring a lot
of received wisdom to the table. Some of it may have just seemed obvious
from the way it was explained by a university lecturer; certainly nobody
else that was sitting in the class that day challenged it.

The learner cannot succeed without accepting some responsibility for the
process.  When references are so detailed that the reader can absolve
himself of any responsibility for the material then maybe there are too
many.

>* Between these two extremes, there are people who think that sourcing
>is important, if is about disputed issues.
>
True enough.  There is a greater urgency when the matter is disputed,
and disputed issues are plentiful enough to keep many people very busy,
but that is not enough to excuse totally ignoring undisputed material.

>Actually, just stating "verifiability is a pillar" is not enough. It can
>mean everything and nothing.
>
That is precisely where a pillar draws its strength.  Flexible
foundations survive earthquakes better than rigid pillars.

>In reality, not defining verifiability,
>supports the "sources-are-only-a-recommendation-I-do-not-like-anyway"
>attitude.
>
Not at all.  Detailed definitions are a backdoor for imposing Points of
View about verifiability.

>Jimbo Wales says: "I can NOT emphasize this enough.    There seems to be
>a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative
>'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs
>a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be
>sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of
>negative information about living persons.    I think a fair number of
>people need to be kicked out of the project just for being lousy
>writers. (This is not a policy statement, just a statement of attitude
>and frustration.)"
>(http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-May/046433.html)
>
The parenthetical portion is especially important.  Much of this is a
statement from the heart rather than from the head.  Jimbo's
pronouncementscan have strange effects on discussions because they tend
to be extrapolative.  Some of them need to be taken with a grain of salt.

There are obvious reasons for taking a hard line about the biographies
of living people.   A liberal interpretation of "random speculative ...
pseudo information" as applying to "all information" would paralyse the
entire project.  No contributor should be viewed as perfect, but some
latitude needs to be given to those who have long experience in the
subject they are writing about; there is little that is random about
writings.

>You see that there is a lot of discordance among Wikipedians. If there
>is no policy, there is always dispute how to deal with verifiability.
>The question is: Which information has to be sourced? I think that the
>verifiability issue should be outlined, if it is a pillar.
>
There is indeed a lot of discord about this, but no amount of policy is
going to change that.  The first tool for applying a pillar should be
common sense.  Without that no other tools will be effective.  The level
of verifiability can vary with the subject matter.  There should always
be room for the reader to accept his share of the responsibility.

Ec


body:
On Sep 17, 2006, at 2:14 AM, David Mestel wrote:

> On 17/09/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>> In essence, we have written a set of policies that fail to reflect
>> how we do work, should work, or could possibly work. And, due to the
>> frighteningly large number of contributors who, given a piece of bad
>> policy, will follow it rigidly without thinking about it, this is a
>> solidly dangerous thing. (Something to remember: IAR is our most
>> ignored rule.)
>
> I have to disagree with you on the IAR point - I just clicked on the
> "random article" button five times, and not one of the resulting
> articles had a single source.  I think that our problem may be that,
> because we place such a great demand on our sources, people don't
> bother to source articles at all.  Perhaps we need to demand less in
> order to achieve more...

It should be noted what IAR means, though. The heart of IAR is that
the rules are not and cannot be a substitute for actually thinking.
Carelessly leaving out sources is not following IAR. Citing J.
Michael Straczynski's web posts in a Babylon 5 article because you
know they're reliable no matter what [[WP:RS]] says is following IAR.

Put another way, following policy for policy's sake violates IAR.

-Phil


body:
geni wrote:

>On 9/17/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
><charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Common sense needs to apply, sooner rather than later.
>>
>>
>No thank you I'd rather not adopt a system within which calculus
>doesn't really work (it appears that the intuitionist version of
>standard reals may not even allow a working version of algebra).
>
Even algebra has its common sense empirical roots.  This is why we can
have different algebras.

Ec


body:
On Sep 17, 2006, at 9:51 AM, <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:

>
> I see I'm on #499 of my technical articles on mathematics. A high
> proportion of those were actually written straight out of my head,
> as I saw the need. I do have books to hand, Google at need, and so
> on. Of course it all used to be more free-wheeling.

And, let's note, it used to be better. Jimbo has previously noted
that the things we've done to open Wikipedia more (Semi-protection)
have worked better than the things we've done to close it off
(Prohibiting anonymous page creation). Our source fixation has served
to close us off substantially, and it hasn't worked.

People should not be made afraid to add information because they
remember being told it in class last semester, or because they know
it's somewhere in that book, but they don't really want to find the
page number, or because they read it in Rolling Stone a few months
ago. Our attitude should be "add information first, and if the
information looks dodgy we'll challenge it."

Which is surprisingly consonant with [[WP:BOLD]]. Remember that
policy? Those were the days...

-Phil


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
2006/9/17, Christoph Seydl <Christoph.Seydl at students.jku.at>:
> Jimbo Wales says: "I can NOT emphasize this enough.    There seems to be
> a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative
> 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs
> a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be
> sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of
> negative information about living persons.    I think a fair number of
> people need to be kicked out of the project just for being lousy
> writers. (This is not a policy statement, just a statement of attitude
> and frustration.)"
> (http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-May/046433.html)

But how do you define 'can be sourced'? The only way that you can show
that something can be sourced is by sourcing it. Does this mean that
we should remove all unsourced statements from all articles? If so,
there will be little Wikipedia left. If not, then what do we accept
without source and what not?

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels