from_name: SJ

subject: [Foundation-l] Bangkok bid

body:
And I suppose Wikimania 2011 will end up being at McMurdo Station.  It
will take some working up to.  [Then 2012 : in orbit?  There was
something about a sub-orbital bid.  And depending on what the next
World Age brings -- Revelation...  Apokemon... Xists -- 2013 may be
something completely different.]

-- sj

On 12/15/05, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> oscar wrote:
>
> >are you serious? i'd love the idea!
> >
> >oscar
> >
> >
> Yes I am,
>
> We had a wikipedia presentation last week on a congress for teachers. We
> were invited there by a wikipedian (Korakot) who works for the Thailand
> Knowledge Management Institute (KMI) ... kinda the Thai version of
> Kennisnet ... who sponsored us for that congress. He says he is sure he
> can find sponsors from KMI and thinks others are sure. It all started
> with a discussion on how to get Jimbo to Thailand. Another Thai
> wikipedian (TouTou) who is a university teacher and was also helping
> with the presentation then said she had organised congresses already and
> that her university has facilities but that congressspace is cheap and
> aplenty in Thailand anyway. So we have two persons who have experience
> in the field. And one village idiot (me) so that seems enough to start a
> serious bid because people will always offer help once the train starts
> rolling.
>
> Waerth/Walter
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
++SJ


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Bangkok bid


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Closer look at Nature's results

body:
It would be great if we could leverage this to get groups of academics
to adopt small parts of Wikipedia -- without getting turned off by
disputes.  Perhaps drawing on the experiences of academics in our
midst to help them get their bearings; or offering help with
synchronizing local wiki-shards with WP proper.

SJ

On 12/15/05, Scott Keir <scottkeir at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> On Thursday, December 15, 2005, at 08:03  pm,
> foundation-l-request at wikimedia.org wrote:
> > I think that the "Nature" article was largely sympathetic.  Our best
> > response would be to review the articles surveyed to make whatever
> > corrections are needed, or even to make corrections that they failed to
> > notice as well.
>
> The Nature article is very sympathetic - and there's an editorial in
> the current issue of Nature encouraging scientists to contribute to
> Wikipedia.
> http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/index.html#Editorial
> "Wiki's wild world p890
> Researchers should read Wikipedia cautiously and amend it
> enthusiastically.
> doi:10.1038/438890a"
>
> (apologies if this has been discussed already - I just get the digest,
> so may be a bit behind)
>
> Scott
>
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________
> To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
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> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
++SJ


list: wikien-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Next experiment: switch off AFD for a month. (was
	Guardian in defense of Wikipedia)

body:
It sounds like your sensitivity on this is a little over the top.
    1) I don't see the point of playing semantic games between facts and
articles.  Any article bigger than a sub-stub is going to be composed of
a series of facts or alleged facts.  So whatever ...
    2) You're the one that suggested the 24 hour period before
deleting.  Even AfD allows 5 days; you're proposing to make this an even
bigger fuck-up.  If these articles absolutely have to be deleted instead
of being fixed, a month would be a more reasonable period.  For those
who don't spend a lot of time on their editing a 24-hour period is a joke.

Ec

Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>I find it hard to believe that you read anything that I actually said.
> You've completely misrepresented my points in two substantial ways.
>1) You talk about "non-referenced facts", while I am talking about
>non-referenced articles.  Not just facts that don't have sources,
>entire articles without a single reference to anything outside the
>encyclopedia.  2) You talk about how it's impossible for us to fix
>"every unreferenced article" within 24 hours.  But I am not talking
>about *old* unreferenced articles, I'm talking about *new ones*.
>Fixing all the unreferenced articles we currently have will be hard,
>and it will take a long time.  But we'll never get finished if we keep
>creating new ones.
>
>This isn't a quick fix.  It's the first step in a long process.
>
>Anthony
>
>On 12/15/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On 12/15/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>The crux of the problem is in what the endgame should be for an
>>>>unreferenced article.  Is it deletion or improvement?  I would easily
>>>>support improvement.  If an article is unreferenced that does not imply
>>>>that it is wrong; we just don't know if it's right.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>There's no question over the endgame.  The question is over what to do
>>>in the meantime.  If we don't know whether or not something is right,
>>>it shouldn't be in an article.  Doesn't mean it can't be in user
>>>space, or on a talk page, or in the edit history, or in the deleted
>>>articles history.  That's my interpretation of
>>>[[Wikipedia:Verifiability]], anyway.
>>>
>>>
>>We can begin with some kind of "unreferenced" tag, maybe even a flashing
>>red "CAUTION" sign. :-)
>>Beyond that, we need to remember that most of our non-referenced facts
>>aren't controversial at all.  Look at how long it has taken to put
>>category tags on all articles.  That's a much simpler task than
>>referencing.  Of your four suggestions only putting material on the
>>article's talk page will even give a sporting chance for review.  If you
>>outright delete an unreferenced article there will not even be a link to
>>Xxxx's talk page so that the material can be reviewed and documented.
>>Have fun finding it!
>>
>>Assuming good faith needs to be extended to the articles themselves.  It
>>recognizes that a contributor who was himself deceived by the
>>information was probably acting in good faith.  Fact checking an article
>>is a tedious process that needs to apply to every statement in an
>>article.  It may be easy enogu to have a bot tag every unreferenced
>>article with a notice that if it is not referenced in 24 hours it will
>>be deleted.  If ALL of us were to devote ourselves to that task for that
>>24 hours without sleeping there would still not be enough of us for the
>>job.  So when your second bot comes along and clears out the still
>>referenced articles what would we have left?  We need common sense, not
>>impatience.
>>
>>
>>>>Actions based on a deletion endgame consistently attract bitter disputes
>>>>and needless stress.  In planning new strategies this should be
>>>>considered from the beginning. in the hope of avoiding the stress.
>>>>Without that this will be no different from AfD.
>>>>
>>>>Ec
>>>>
>>>>
>>>The endgame in either case is a well referenced article.  The question
>>>is how do we get there.
>>>
>>>
>>Of course, but we can't depend on any kind of quick fix.
>>
>>Ec
>>
>>


from_name: Chris Owen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Improve quality by reviewing all new articles

body:
If we're going to improve the quality of new articles,
we'll going to need an actual quality check, not just
a block on anonymous editors' ability to start
articles. Most of new articles don't meet basic
quality standards. A significant number are so bad
that they need to be speedily deleted, or put on AFD.

I suggest that we tackle this by putting all new
articles into an approval queue - they shouldn't
appear on Wikipedia unless they meet basic quality
standards. If a reviewing editor judges that the
article meets an objective set of criteria, it should
be "published". If not, the submitted new article
should either be deleted or sorted into a "needs
improvement" category outside the main namespace.

Here's some background data on the problem. I checked
50 new articles tonight, all created between 22:46 and
23:03. I graded them into five categories as follows:

* Speedy deletion fodder (falling into the categories
set out in [[WP:CSD]]):
- 10 articles (20% of the total)

* Sufficiently poor to warrant a deletion vote
([[WP:AFD]]):
- 2 articles; 1 of them a copyvio, 1 a probable
spamvertisement (2% of the total)

* Serious content problems (no wikilinking or
references, badly written, non-English; generally
these were just plain blocks of text dumped into
Wikipedia):
- 7 articles (14% of the total)

* No obvious problems with content, but problems with
the formatting, spelling or layout:
- 12 articles (24% of the total)

* No obvious problems
- 19 articles (38% of the total)

Note that I didn't check whether the content was
*accurate*, merely whether it was organised, formatted
etc in accordance with Wikipedia standards. As these
figures indicate, the majority of new articles created
during this period failed the quality check. Nearly a
quarter failed so badly that they were worth deleting.
This certainly accords with my previous experiences in
monitoring [[Special:Newpages]].

We already have a huge amount of crap in the database,
as we all know. Unfortunately the problem is getting
bigger all the time. No amount of work to fix existing
articles is going to help if we don't also fix the
problem of poor-quality new articles being published.
We're effectively trying to bail out a leaky boat
while the water is still entering.

Note also that quite a few of the speedy deletions
were things like personal attacks, patent nonsense,
tests etc (e.g. "wow, hey carly, i cant believe i can
put this on a site! :O its so cool!"). I strongly
suspect that people wouldn't submit this sort of thing
if they knew that they wouldn't see it appearing
instantly on a Wikipedia page.

So how could we deal with this? Three measures, I
think:

1) New articles should go somewhere outside the main
namespace until reviewed and passed. They should *not*
immediately enter the main namespace.

2) We need a simple, clearly defined set of criteria
for assessing whether an article passes the grade. Is
it wikilinked? Written in English? Correctly
formatted? Includes references? etc etc...

3) Reviewing editors should assess newly created
articles against these criteria. If the article
passes, the article should be cleared to enter the
main namespace. If not, it should be sorted into a
queue to deal with whatever the problem is. For
instance, an article lacking any wikilinks and
incorrectly spelled should first be sorted into a
"needs links" queue, then moved to a "needs spelling
corrections", then finally moved to the main
namespace.

Because reviewing editors would necessarily need to be
people with a bit of experience of editing, I would
limit the ability to review and approve new articles
to editors with a certain number of edits - say 500+.
However, any editor should be able to work on
improving a queued article.

Any thoughts on this idea?

- ChrisO

___________________________________________________________
NEW Yahoo! Cars - sell your car and browse thousands of new and used cars online! http://uk.cars.yahoo.com/


from_name: Heinz

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: BBC News Online Story.

body:
Gordon Joly schrieb:

 > The free online resource Wikipedia is about as accurate on science as
 > the Encyclopedia Britannica, a study shows.

There is one mistake in that sentence. It's not THE wikipedia. It's (?)
only the en.wikipedia according to that test.

Heinz


subject: [WikiEN-l] SPOV threatens NPOV

body:
Karl A. Krueger wrote:

>On Thu, Dec 15, 2005 at 04:58:51PM -0800, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>David Gerard wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Because you had to characterize it as pseudoscience in the first place.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>This resembles a circular argument.
>>>
>>>Is there any word or phrase in *common usage* (i.e., we can't coin a
>>>Wikipedia-only neologism) that covers what is meant by "pseudoscience"?
>>>
>>>
>>"Alternate science" is such a term which does not carrry the same
>>negative baggage as "pseudoscience".
>>
>>
>
>"Alternate science" suggests that a type of science is being done, which
>is (a) not always the case, and (b) adopts the practitioner's POV.
>
"Alternate science" is science that deviates from the mainstream in
significant ways. As long as there are some involved in good faith
experiments which attempt to adhere to scientific principles they are
scientists.  If their experiments fail they go back to the drawing board
to alter the hypothesis or experimental design.  Repeated failure of
experiments is not enough to make their efforts unscientific.

Are engineers, lab technicians and other practitioners of applied
science really scientists, when they simply apply predetermined
protocols to deal with certain circumstances.  They read the building
codes and apply its rules.  If the building falls down it is a more
serious offence not to have followed the code than to have a perfectly
reasoned argument for having done things the way they were done.  The
average astrologer is no scientist either; he just follows the rules set
down in his textbooks..

I would not say that using the term "alternate science" implies adopting
the practitioner's POV.  It may be adopting his terminology, but by
itself naming things is not science.  Definitions are not science; they
are just a framework upon which to build discussions, and can neither be
proven not disproven.  When we define "charm" in the context of quarks
we are not bound by what that word means to the ordinary person.  The
naming of things is primarily the domain of the proponents.  No-one can
meaningfully oppose a concept until it is proposed.

Here we are not concerned with any particular subject by itself, but a
wide range of subjects with varying degrees of support or hostility,
including mutual hostility.  "Alternative science" may appear
sympathetic to the proponents, but not outrageously so.

>Regarding (a), see e.g. the NYT article of December 7 regarding the
>Templeton Foundation's attempts to fund "Intelligent Design" research.
>The foundation, which funds work to reconcile science and religion, went
>to ID advocates -- including the Discovery Institute -- and tried to get
>research proposals.  They got ... nothing.  The ID "scientists" don't
>want to _do_ science, even for a sympathetic audience like Templeton.
>
Sorry, but I'm not at all sympathetic to intelligent design.  There are
other subjects in this category that I find more interesting, but I'm
willing to allow it to be called "alternate science" in order to be able
to have meningful discussions.

>Science is not just a field of knowledge -- it's a field of endeavor; a
>range of organized human behavior.  It isn't ideas or subject matter
>that constitute science, but rather scientific _practice_ -- research,
>experimentation, observation.  If there isn't any science _practice_
>being done, then the field isn't scientific.
>
If we interpret "science" strictly that's true.  Nevertheless, others
use the word "science" to refer to any kind of disciplined approach to a
subject, as in the science of Texas Hold'em.

>You don't get to be a scientist by having opinions about the same sort
>of matters that scientists study.  You have to actually do the work and
>participate in the process.  Science isn't something scientists believe
>in, it's something scientists _do_.
>
Then there are very few scientists! ;-)

>"Alternate science" suggests that there's science being done, but that
>it simply comes to different conclusions than mainstream science.  But
>in this case (and many others) there isn't actually any science there;
>there's only the *assertion* of science.  That's what makes ID not an
>"alternate science" but rather a pseudoscience.
>
That could be the case with ID, but that's an issue of what gets
included in the category.  To me the important feature of "alternate
science" is not variant conclusions but variant premises. and
fundamental hypotheses.

Ec


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability

body:
> Some sort of referencing should be possible. For TV or movie
> synopses, the text itself as an implicit reference is obvious
> and sufficient, for example.

How far do you want to extend this?  For computer games, is unreferenced
description of characters ok? What about of cheats and secrets? Of
songs, is discussion of lyrics ok? What about chord changes? Etc.

The big question: When is an unreferenced text better than no text?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability

body:
Hi,
> Ideally, a good
> editor should not add a new thing to an article without being
> able to say exactly where it came from.

What would be good is if we started by forcing people to specify, in
broad terms, where things came from. But we didn't punish them for
choosing bad sources - we would just fix it later.  But at least you
would know that the original writer thought it was a) common knowledge,
b) personal experience, c) read it somewhere but don't remember where,
d) heard it on TV, e) actually know the source, but it's dubious, f)
actually know the source and it's reliable.  Currently we're basically
saying, if it's not f), don't bother telling us.  Whereas the great
majority of additions are probably in a)-d), and are being added with no
source at all.

Currently we just don't know how unsourced we really are, or where the
hell all those millions of edits actually came from.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability

body:
Hi,

>warrants deletion.  But my point is this: I believe
> verifiability should
> and will be achieved through a collaborative process.

You make some very good points.  One concern I have is that we lack the
tools for users to share their tentative sources.  Where exactly would a
user note "Think I this in one of Chomsky's earlier works"?  In the
comment? In a <!-- comment -->?  Starting a separate section on the talk
page just for a single sentence?

It would be good to have some kind of understood process for how claims
are first described as verifiable/unverifiable, then become
verified/unverified.  This process is extremely haphasard at the moment.

Steve


from_name: oscar

subject: [Foundation-l] Bangkok bid

body:
are you serious? i'd love the idea!

oscar

On 12/16/05, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
>
> >
> >
> > Can I start pushing the POV that Wikimania 2007 should be in Africa?
> >
> > Ec
>
> Ermmmmm Bangkok is already busy launching a bid for 2007 ;) just to
> inform you ....  I finally found some Thai wikipedians interested in the
> idea. One of whom has organised conferences before. Asia is host to some
> big languages and a few of the larger wikipedia's. Bangkok has direct
> flights to all continents but South America. Visas are absolutely no
> problem for almost any nationality. Local costs are extremely low. Meals
> can be had for 1 or 2 euros, also every major cuisine and many "minor"
> ones are catered for, so even if you do not want to eat Thai food you
> have choices aplenty. The price if the youthhostel in Frankfurt will put
> you in a great hotel here. Rooms are available from 3 euro's and up, you
> usually pay per room not per person! And last but not least we do not
> need to hold the conference in Bangkok. Many beachresort have excellent
> facilities. So we could have a wikimania at the beach!
>
> Waerth/Walter
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Bangkok bid


body:
Hello,

> Note that I didn't check whether the content was
> *accurate*, merely whether it was organised, formatted
> etc in accordance with Wikipedia standards. As these
> figures indicate, the majority of new articles created
> during this period failed the quality check. Nearly a
> quarter failed so badly that they were worth deleting.
> This certainly accords with my previous experiences in
> monitoring [[Special:Newpages]].

Nice (original) research! I considered doing something similar with AfC.
There, the vast majority of pages fail on the grounds of "already exists
under another name", "not noteworthy", "not a dictionary", "silly" etc.
Let's face it - newbies should be not be making new pages. They just
don't have the concept of what belongs in Wikipedia and what doesn't.

> 1) New articles should go somewhere outside the main
> namespace until reviewed and passed. They should *not*
> immediately enter the main namespace.

Why stop at new articles? Why not do the same with newbie edits, or
edits detected by the system to be possible vandalism. (Massive
reductions of text, swear words, etc.)

>
> 2) We need a simple, clearly defined set of criteria
> for assessing whether an article passes the grade. Is
> it wikilinked? Written in English? Correctly
> formatted? Includes references? etc etc...

Passes the grade to be published? Add "contains sufficient definition
and context". Wikilinking maybe less important?

> 3) Reviewing editors should assess newly created
> articles against these criteria. If the article
> passes, the article should be cleared to enter the
> main namespace. If not, it should be sorted into a
> queue to deal with whatever the problem is. For
> instance, an article lacking any wikilinks and
> incorrectly spelled should first be sorted into a
> "needs links" queue, then moved to a "needs spelling
> corrections", then finally moved to the main namespace.

Are you proposing "reviewing editors" as being a particular class of
editor, akin to a "moderator"?

> Because reviewing editors would necessarily need to be
> people with a bit of experience of editing, I would
> limit the ability to review and approve new articles
> to editors with a certain number of edits - say 500+.

Woot, I qualify.

> However, any editor should be able to work on
> improving a queued article.

Wholly concur. I amigane a situation where some article is up to version
1593, and its *published version* is 1589.  You edit the article, see
version 1593, save your changes, it becomes 1594.  Eventually a reviewer
reviews it and publishes it - now the two versions are in sync at #1594,
and can be distributed to mirrors etc.

Libel considerations aside, it might be worthwhile making "unpublished"
versions available to the general public underneath massive spammy
WARNING UNVERIFIED banners.

Steve


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] The a7 speedy

body:
On 12/15/05, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
> But just because a band fails to meet the "notability guidelines" doesn't mean we
> should delete it.  It's not a bad argument for doing so, admittedly.

I believe such guidelines are effectively a good guide for keeping,
not deletion.  If we could have a speedy keep criterion for the topic,
and so forth.

In other words, if the WP:MUSIC guidelines spit out 'Yes, is notable',
we should pretty much always keep the article.  However, if the
article fails WP:MUSIC, it is not an automatic delete, since other
factors might make the article worthwhile.

-Matt


subject: [Foundation-l] Bangkok bid

body:
On 12/16/05, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> What on earth did I deserve such an answer for.

Hm?   Just thinking ahead to what happens when you run out of
continents... no ridicule here.  A Thai bid would be exciting.  There
really was already discussion of having Wikimania in sub-orbit.

> No in response to a suggestion by you to make Africa the predestined
> continent I already put up a bid for bangkok.

I think you're taking Ec the wrong way... it sounded to me as though
he wanted to encourage a serious Africa bid, though maybe not in a
position to make one himself.

But Ec wrote:
> Could we book early for someone like Eric Idle or John Cleese to be a
> guest speaker? :-)

If we have /really/ out of this world contacts by then, maybe we could
book Douglas Adams...

++SJ


subject: [Foundation-l] Bangkok bid


subject: [Foundation-l] a novel space-wiki

body:
Maybe it's my lack of sleep, but talk of orbits made me hallucinate
that rarest of finds -- a wikiproject that has yet to be suggested.

With the regular discussions about different sorts of wikimaps for the
surface of the earth, chats with space agencies, &c, has there been
discussion of an universe-map wiki for annotating outer space?

SJ


subject: [Foundation-l] a novel space-wiki


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
On 12/16/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 12/15/05, Chris Owen <ronthewarhero at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> > 1) New articles should go somewhere outside the main
> > namespace until reviewed and passed. They should *not*
> > immediately enter the main namespace.
> >
> I never understood the purpose of having a queue.  It takes just as
> much time to delete something from the queue as it does to delete an
> article.  Move the articles with problems (that aren't speedy deletes)
> *into* the queue(s).  Keep the ones that don't have problems right
> where they are.
>
> Anthony
Yes, it won't necessarily lower the workload, but it would certainly
improve the quality of our articles.

Mgm


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 12/16/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/16/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > On 12/15/05, Chris Owen <ronthewarhero at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> > > 1) New articles should go somewhere outside the main
> > > namespace until reviewed and passed. They should *not*
> > > immediately enter the main namespace.
> > >
> > I never understood the purpose of having a queue.  It takes just as
> > much time to delete something from the queue as it does to delete an
> > article.  Move the articles with problems (that aren't speedy deletes)
> > *into* the queue(s).  Keep the ones that don't have problems right
> > where they are.
> >
> > Anthony
> Yes, it won't necessarily lower the workload, but it would certainly
> improve the quality of our articles.
>
> Mgm

How?  The quality of the articles is exactly equal if someone puts
them into a queue and you delete it or someone creates it and you
delete it.

The question is whether or not to keep substandard articles.  The meat
of the proposal is to keep unreferenced, unlinked, and/or unformatted
articles out of the article namespace.  I agree with that.  What I
don't agree with is the crappy implementation of it.

Instead of building queues and restricting editing and moving good
articles out of the queues, just move the bad articles into the
queues.  Start [[Wikipedia:Articles without references]], and move new
articles without references to a subpage.  Start [[Wikipedia:Articles
without formatting]], and move new articles without formatting to a
subpage.  Start [[Wikipedia:Articles without wikilinks]], and move new
articles without wikilinks to a subpage.  You accomplish all the same
things without forcing the good articles to go through a queue.

Anthony


body:
On 12/16/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> It sounds like your sensitivity on this is a little over the top.
>     1) I don't see the point of playing semantic games between facts and
> articles.  Any article bigger than a sub-stub is going to be composed of
> a series of facts or alleged facts.  So whatever ...

The difference between removing all unreferenced facts and removing
all unreferenced articles is a huge one, and it is more than just
semantics.  Yes, articles consist of facts, but not all unreferenced
facts are in an unreferenced article.

>     2) You're the one that suggested the 24 hour period before
> deleting.  Even AfD allows 5 days; you're proposing to make this an even
> bigger fuck-up.  If these articles absolutely have to be deleted instead
> of being fixed, a month would be a more reasonable period.  For those
> who don't spend a lot of time on their editing a 24-hour period is a joke.
>
> Ec

That wasn't my point.  Try reading what I said again.  Take a few
breaths first.  Read all the sentences.  Don't just look at the number
24 and then start ranting.

This would only apply to brand new articles.  And the time you have to
add a single reference is unlimited.  The article would simply be
deleted (or moved somewhere) in the mean time.  24 hours is plenty of
time for one person to find one source for all but the most obscure of
topics.  For those obscure topics the burden of proof should be on the
article creator, not on the rest of us.

Alternatively, look at it this way.  If we are creating new articles
so quickly that we don't have time to find a single source for each
one, then we should slow down new article creation and beef up on
quality control.

Anthony

> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> >I find it hard to believe that you read anything that I actually said.
> > You've completely misrepresented my points in two substantial ways.
> >1) You talk about "non-referenced facts", while I am talking about
> >non-referenced articles.  Not just facts that don't have sources,
> >entire articles without a single reference to anything outside the
> >encyclopedia.  2) You talk about how it's impossible for us to fix
> >"every unreferenced article" within 24 hours.  But I am not talking
> >about *old* unreferenced articles, I'm talking about *new ones*.
> >Fixing all the unreferenced articles we currently have will be hard,
> >and it will take a long time.  But we'll never get finished if we keep
> >creating new ones.
> >
> >This isn't a quick fix.  It's the first step in a long process.
> >
> >Anthony


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: More Seigenthaler fallout

body:
On 12/15/05, Conrad Dunkerson <conrad.dunkerson at worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> Phil Boswell wrote:
>
> > Would it maybe be possible to fix it so that "deleted edits" show up in user
> > contributions, labelled in some way, with restricted access?
>
> A way of simultaneously viewing 'contributions', 'deleted edits', and
> 'log' entries such as image uploads and page moves would be exceedingly
> useful. The more clever vandals perform page move vandalism or replace
> pictures used in articles with vandalism images... and if you are just
> checking 'contributions' you would never see these things.

I agree. Clearly our software is not up to our requirements in this
respect, in a number of ways.

Kelly


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>>Yes, it won't necessarily lower the workload, but it would certainly
>>improve the quality of our articles.
>>
>>Mgm
>
>
> How?  The quality of the articles is exactly equal if someone puts
> them into a queue and you delete it or someone creates it and you
> delete it.

Without making any comment on the merits of the specific proposal at
hand (it sounds great to me, but then again I haven't thought it through
enough yet), I can answer this question...

The question is what happens in the case of an overlooked article?  What
happens when the New Pages Patrollers get behind or there is a gap in
coverage?

The default failure mode of the patrolling process today says "Anything
we don't look at, we assume is good enough to go on the site" ->
Seigenthaler.  The proposed failure mode of the patrolling process says
"Anything we don't look at, we leave it in the queue until someone gets
around to it."  If the queue of new articles by newbies is time-stamp
sorted, then we will often be only a few minutes behind, sometimes maybe
an hour.

Now, this need not necessarily be done with a queue or a gateway model.
 Another idea in the same general area is the long-desired 'check off'
model for collaborative RC/new pages patrolling.

--Jimbo


from_name: Taco Deposit

body:
On 12/15/05, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Would it maybe be possible to fix it so that "deleted edits" show up in
> user
> contributions, labelled in some way, with restricted access?

For those who don't know, there is a tool that does this at
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~kate/cgi-bin/archive_contribs. And while it isn't
exactly why Phil asked for, it's better than nothing.

TD


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Foundation-l] Bangkok bid

body:
>
>
> Can I start pushing the POV that Wikimania 2007 should be in Africa?
>
> Ec

Ermmmmm Bangkok is already busy launching a bid for 2007 ;) just to
inform you ....  I finally found some Thai wikipedians interested in the
idea. One of whom has organised conferences before. Asia is host to some
big languages and a few of the larger wikipedia's. Bangkok has direct
flights to all continents but South America. Visas are absolutely no
problem for almost any nationality. Local costs are extremely low. Meals
can be had for 1 or 2 euros, also every major cuisine and many "minor"
ones are catered for, so even if you do not want to eat Thai food you
have choices aplenty. The price if the youthhostel in Frankfurt will put
you in a great hotel here. Rooms are available from 3 euro's and up, you
usually pay per room not per person! And last but not least we do not
need to hold the conference in Bangkok. Many beachresort have excellent
facilities. So we could have a wikimania at the beach!

Waerth/Walter


subject: [Foundation-l] Bangkok bid


from_name: charles matthews

body:
 "Steve Bennett" wrote

> Let's face it - newbies should be not be making new pages. They just
> don't have the concept of what belongs in Wikipedia and what doesn't.

You left out 'and they make wild generalisations'.

Charles


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Giuseppe DAngelo

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Comparison

body:
Hi Sabine (y todo mundo)
  For all Australian wikipedians, in particular, for Melburnians, this week's Thursday edition of the Age had two articles on wikipedia, one of which was this comparison with Britannica.  There was one story in the main body of the Age, and another story in the Live Wire pull out (an IT supplement) - I can't remember which was which.
  Salutamu
  pippu d'angelo

    Message: 9
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 12:44:05 +0100
From: Sabine Cretella
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] comparison between Encyclopaedia Britannica and
Wikipedia (German)
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List ,
wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Message-ID: <43A15705.2020605 at yahoo.it>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

http://www.golem.de/0512/42221.html

well ... this is why page creation by anonymous users is not so bad ...

And why it is impossible that Encyclopedia britannica needs to proof and
reproof each single word it writes

http://www.golem.de/0512/42221.html

"both" encyclopeadias - this means even that one that according to our
infos needs to proof every single word - has the same amout of critical
errors in the same articles only in different places ... - hmmmmm .....

considering that Encyclopedia Britannica is 237 years old and Wikipedia
only 5 .... hmmmmm ....

(sorry I don't have time to translate this article - maybe there's an
English one around as well???)

Well I suppose it is time to go "back to ordinary" functioning of
Wikipedia (anonymous users can create articles - this is even easier to
check to my opinion - just switch off all registered users and have
special regard to anonymous page creations).

Ciao, Sabine

___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it

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

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi, antispam, antivirus, POP3


from_name: Hendon Chubb

subject: [WikiEN-l] Congratulations for a good article

body:
I want to compliment the article on the French Republican Calendar. It
is accurate and incredibly detailed. There has since the eighteenth
century been controversy about the way to establish the first day of the
year. I have always said that I need to figure out exactly what the
problem is, but I've always put it off. Now I won't have to take the
trouble as it is fully and clearly discussed in the Wikipedia article.
Hats off!

Whoever


from_name: Jonathan Leybovich

subject: [Foundation-l] cite markup - take 2

body:
All-

Here is a second attempt at citation mark-up based
upon your comments from last time.  The new syntax is
intentionally very footnote-like, since wiki-text has
most of the visual and editing characteristics of
regular print text.  The mark-up is used to create
"citation points" within an article to which
references to evidence can then be attached.  The
following is the syntax for the 3 basic types of
citation points:

Explicit Block: '++' ... '++fn'  (fn for footnote);
applies to all text between the opening '++' and the
closing '++fn'

Implicit Block: '++fn' ; extends backwards, ending at
the first occurrence of a preceding citation point or
the beginning of the current sentence

Immediate: +fn ; applies only to the preceding word
or, if next to quoted text, the entire quotation

Each citation point within an article will have a
unique number associated with it- e.g. '++fn6' .  An
editor can explicitly assign citation point numbers
themselves, or else let the software automatically
generate the numbers for them.

Going back to Anthony's example from last time, let's
say an editor opens article [[Roy Orbison]] and sees
the following:

'''Roy Kelton Orbison''' ([[April 23]], [[1936]]
– [[December 6]], [[1988]]), nicknamed "The Big
O" ...

The editor is not an expert on the article's subject,
but can still create stub citation points for each of
the article's factual assertions:

'''Roy Kelton+fn Orbison''' (++[[April 23]] [[1936]]
– [[December 6]] [[1988]]++fn), nicknamed "The
Big O"+fn, ++was an influential [[United
States|American]] [[singer-songwriter]] and a pioneer
of [[rock and roll]]++fn, whose recording career
spanned more than four decades++fn. By the
mid-[[1960s]] Orbison was internationally recognized
for his ++ballads of lost love++fn,  rhythmically
advanced melodies++fn, three-[[octave]] vocal
range++fn, characteristic dark [[sunglasses]]++fn, and
sometimes distinctive usage of [[falsetto]]++fn,
typified in songs such as "[[Only The Lonely]]",
"[[Oh, Pretty Woman]]", and "[[Crying
(song)|Crying]]". In [[1989 in music|1989]], he was
inducted posthumously into the [[National Academy of
Popular Music/Songwriters Hall of Fame]]++fn.

Hitting the preview button, the editor sees the
following:

'''Roy Kelton+fn1 Orbison''' (++[[April 23]] [[1936]]
– [[December 6]] [[1988]]++fn2), nicknamed "The
Big O"+fn3, ++was an influential [[United
States|American]] [[singer-songwriter]] and a pioneer
of [[rock and roll]]++fn4, whose recording career
spanned more than four decades++fn5...

Below the wiki-text article text area on the preview
page there will be input fields for every citation
point/footnote within the article, with fields for
such things as ISBN number/URL, page number, and cited
(as opposed to paraphrased- i.e. inside the article)
text.  The editor can then provide values for all,
some, or none of these citations before saving the
article.

I will come up with some more detailed mock-ups of
this design once you let me know there are no major
usability issues with it.  Thanks.

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


subject: [Foundation-l] cite markup - take 2


body:
On 12/16/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> >>Yes, it won't necessarily lower the workload, but it would certainly
> >>improve the quality of our articles.
> >>
> >>Mgm
> >
> >
> > How?  The quality of the articles is exactly equal if someone puts
> > them into a queue and you delete it or someone creates it and you
> > delete it.
>
> Without making any comment on the merits of the specific proposal at
> hand (it sounds great to me, but then again I haven't thought it through
> enough yet), I can answer this question...
>
> The question is what happens in the case of an overlooked article?  What
> happens when the New Pages Patrollers get behind or there is a gap in
> coverage?
>
> The default failure mode of the patrolling process today says "Anything
> we don't look at, we assume is good enough to go on the site" ->
> Seigenthaler.  The proposed failure mode of the patrolling process says
> "Anything we don't look at, we leave it in the queue until someone gets
> around to it."  If the queue of new articles by newbies is time-stamp
> sorted, then we will often be only a few minutes behind, sometimes maybe
> an hour.
>
> Now, this need not necessarily be done with a queue or a gateway model.
>  Another idea in the same general area is the long-desired 'check off'
> model for collaborative RC/new pages patrolling.
>
> --Jimbo

You're right in theory, but in practice I don't think new articles are
coming in fast enough that there are some that no one looks at at all.
 Someone *did* look at the Seigenthaler article, it's just that the
mistakes were subtle enough to not be obvious.  I don't know if it
contained any references or not, but it certainly could have, just not
references for every single fact.  If you're going to require
*extensive* fact checking before releasing something from the queue,
then I could see the purpose.  But this proposal was about "basic
quality standards", standards which the Seigenthaler article
apparently met (I haven't actually seen it, I'm going by the
statements of you, Seigenthaler, and others, here).

A "check off" model might help a little, but it would be rather easy
to search the database for articles which were created and not edited
by some subset of "trusted users" within a certain timeframe.  This
would accomplish pretty much the same thing as a check off model, and
it'd allow for different people to have different definitions of who
is trusted.

Say you defined "trusted user" as a user who has at least 500 edits.
It would be no problem to present a list of articles that haven't been
edited by such a "trusted user".

Anyway, I guess a properly implemented queue wouldn't be a bad thing.
For instance if "publishing" and "unpublishing" were a simple toggle
switch.  But I see it as rather unnecessary.

As an aside, would the user who clicks the "publish" button find
herself legally liable for the content of that article?  I certainly
could see an argument for that being the case.  Whether or not that'd
be a good thing or a bad thing is another unanswered question.

Anthony


body:
Phil Boswell wrote:
> Am I right in thinking that we're not talking about expunging these history
> entries from the database, simply deleting them.
>
> So they will still show up as "deleted edits" which admins could restore if
> necessary.
>
> Would it maybe be possible to fix it so that "deleted edits" show up in user
> contributions, labelled in some way, with restricted access?

I think a part of the resistance to being more aggressive about cleaning
up article histories comes from our inappropriate use of the term
'deleted' here.  The edits aren't actually deleted, they are actually
'unpublished' or 'hidden' or 'dark'.

--Jimbo


body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> You're right in theory, but in practice I don't think new articles are
> coming in fast enough that there are some that no one looks at at all.
>  Someone *did* look at the Seigenthaler article, it's just that the
> mistakes were subtle enough to not be obvious.

I think the mistakes were blatantly obvious and if the person who wikied
the article had had enough time, the article would have been:
-tagged as a stub
-placed into a category
-edited down to uncontroversial claims

Any good editor _with enough time_ who looks at an article about a
living person which makes claims as transparently outlandish as these
will know to remove those claims and insist on a source.  It would have
taken 15 seconds of googling to see that the claims were in no way
supported by any obvious source.

>  I don't know if it
> contained any references or not, but it certainly could have, just not
> references for every single fact.

If you don't know if it contained references or not (it didn't, it was
just a short series of spectacularly wrong fabrications), then why do
you feel qualified to say that "the mistakes were subtle enough to not
be obvious."

This would not have been a news story around the world if the mistakes
were subtle.  Subtle mistakes are possible in every medium.  The problem
here, and no one should be complacent about this in any way, shape or
form, is that this article was spectacularly jaw-droppingly wrong, and
sat on the site for 4 months without us noticing it.

> But this proposal was about "basic
> quality standards", standards which the Seigenthaler article
> apparently met (I haven't actually seen it, I'm going by the
> statements of you, Seigenthaler, and others, here).

The Seigenthaler article didn't pass _any_ basic quality standards.

--Jimbo


body:
On 12/16/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> >  I don't know if it
> > contained any references or not, but it certainly could have, just not
> > references for every single fact.
>
> If you don't know if it contained references or not (it didn't, it was
> just a short series of spectacularly wrong fabrications), then why do
> you feel qualified to say that "the mistakes were subtle enough to not
> be obvious."
>
If the mistakes were obvious, the edit patroller who edited the
article would have caught them.

I also read the USA Today article, and the paragraphs that were quoted
were not obvious mistakes.  "John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant
to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960's. For a brief
time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy
assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever
proven."  "John Seigenthaler moved to the Soviet Union in 1971, and
returned to the United States in 1984," Wikipedia said. "He started
one of the country's largest public relations firms shortly
thereafter."

None of those mistakes are obvious.  Now maybe there were others which
were more glaring and Seigenthaler just decided not to mention them.
But I doubt it.

> > But this proposal was about "basic
> > quality standards", standards which the Seigenthaler article
> > apparently met (I haven't actually seen it, I'm going by the
> > statements of you, Seigenthaler, and others, here).
>
> The Seigenthaler article didn't pass _any_ basic quality standards.
>
> --Jimbo

The original post said this: "Note that I didn't check whether the
content was *accurate*, merely whether it was organised, formatted etc
in accordance with Wikipedia standards."

The proposal was specifically *not* about accuracy.

Anthony


body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> On 12/16/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>>
>>> I don't know if it
>>>contained any references or not, but it certainly could have, just not
>>>references for every single fact.
>>
>>If you don't know if it contained references or not (it didn't, it was
>>just a short series of spectacularly wrong fabrications), then why do
>>you feel qualified to say that "the mistakes were subtle enough to not
>>be obvious."
>>
>
> If the mistakes were obvious, the edit patroller who edited the
> article would have caught them.

That's a spectacularly bad bit of reasoning.  The mistakes *were*
obvious, and the edit patroller *did not* catch them.  Those are the
simple facts of the case.  The question we must ask ourselves is: why?

Simply pre-defining "obvious mistakes" as "anything an edit patroller
catches" in a tautological fashion is absurd and in my opinion mere
trolling.

Imagine this conversation:

Q: "How does wikipedia police new articles?"
A: "We have new pages patrollers who catch all the obvious errors."
Q: "What happened with Seigenthaler?"
A: "The errors weren't obvious."
Q: "?!?!! What makes you say that."
A: "If they were obvious, we would have caught them, since we have new
pages patrollers who catch all the obvious errors."

*cough*

This line of thought completely ignores ALL the important questions
like: are human errors possible?  Are our systems well-designed to
minimize human error?  How did this error happen?

> I also read the USA Today article, and the paragraphs that were quoted
> were not obvious mistakes.  "John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant
> to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960's. For a brief
> time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy
> assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever
> proven."  "John Seigenthaler moved to the Soviet Union in 1971, and
> returned to the United States in 1984," Wikipedia said. "He started
> one of the country's largest public relations firms shortly
> thereafter."
>
> None of those mistakes are obvious.

Anthony, I'm not normally one to state harsh opinions.  But frankly, if
you don't find those errors to be blindingly obvious, you need to find
another hobby.  Writing an encyclopedia is quite frankly beyond you.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)

body:
Mike Finucane wrote:
> The only objection I have is to allowing others to make profits from my
> work.  That definition of freedom isnt in my dictionary.

Mike, there are probably dimensions to this which you have not considered.

Right now, African schools (for example) suffer under a situation in
which proprietary textbooks generate absurd profits for publishers who
keep prices high.  They therefore cannot afford new up-to-date textbooks
and generally go without or use very old used textbooks.

A non-commercial-only license does not help them nearly as much as a
free license, because a free license makes possible a competitive
marketplace.  Enterpreneurs can find an opportunity in taking your
freely licensed photos and freely licensed
wikipedia/wikibooks/wiktionary/etc. content and building it into
something useful, at a *far lower cost*.

If you think it's dishonorable to make money by providing a useful
service in a non-proprietary way, then of course we'll never agree.

But it sounds to me like what you are opposed to is not *profit* per se,
but *locking things up*.  If you said, "I don't want to contribute my
work to the commons if that means that some company can make a
proprietary version and not give any changes they make back to the
community" then I would agree with you completely: this is why I like
copyleft.

--Jimbo


body:
On 12/16/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > On 12/16/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> >>> I don't know if it
> >>>contained any references or not, but it certainly could have, just not
> >>>references for every single fact.
> >>
> >>If you don't know if it contained references or not (it didn't, it was
> >>just a short series of spectacularly wrong fabrications), then why do
> >>you feel qualified to say that "the mistakes were subtle enough to not
> >>be obvious."
> >>
> >
> > If the mistakes were obvious, the edit patroller who edited the
> > article would have caught them.
>
> That's a spectacularly bad bit of reasoning.  The mistakes *were*
> obvious, and the edit patroller *did not* catch them.  Those are the
> simple facts of the case.  The question we must ask ourselves is: why?
>
> Simply pre-defining "obvious mistakes" as "anything an edit patroller
> catches" in a tautological fashion is absurd and in my opinion mere
> trolling.
>
I'm defining "obvious mistakes" roughly as "a mistake that anyone
looking at something would notice".  If something is obvious, then
someone looking at it would notice it.  I guess I'm presuming that the
edit patroller actually looked at the article.

I really think you need to take a step back here and consider that the
definition of obvious that I was using is quite reasonable.  It might
not be exactly the right definition, and it might not be how you
thought I was using the word.  But it wasn't trolling.

> Imagine this conversation:
>
> Q: "How does wikipedia police new articles?"
> A: "We have new pages patrollers who catch all the obvious errors."
> Q: "What happened with Seigenthaler?"
> A: "The errors weren't obvious."
> Q: "?!?!! What makes you say that."
> A: "If they were obvious, we would have caught them, since we have new
> pages patrollers who catch all the obvious errors."
>
> *cough*
>
> This line of thought completely ignores ALL the important questions
> like: are human errors possible?  Are our systems well-designed to
> minimize human error?  How did this error happen?
>
I don't think Wikipedia should settle for only catching obvious errors.

> > I also read the USA Today article, and the paragraphs that were quoted
> > were not obvious mistakes.  "John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant
> > to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960's. For a brief
> > time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy
> > assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever
> > proven."  "John Seigenthaler moved to the Soviet Union in 1971, and
> > returned to the United States in 1984," Wikipedia said. "He started
> > one of the country's largest public relations firms shortly
> > thereafter."
> >
> > None of those mistakes are obvious.
>
> Anthony, I'm not normally one to state harsh opinions.  But frankly, if
> you don't find those errors to be blindingly obvious, you need to find
> another hobby.  Writing an encyclopedia is quite frankly beyond you.
>
> --Jimbo

In order to determine whether or not those statements are true, one
would need to do research.  Do you dispute this?  Do you think if I
asked an average person on the street whether or not it was true that
John Seigenthaler was thought, for a brief time, to have been directly
involved in the Kennedy assassinations, that they'd say "no, of course
that isn't true"?  Personally I think they'd say "John who?"

You seem to like conversations:

Person 1: John Seigenthaler didn't move to the Soviet Union in 1971.
Person 2: Obviously.

Do you think that's a reasonable conversation?

Anthony


from_name: billy mills

subject: [WikiEN-l] SPOV threatens NPOV

body:
David Gerard write:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
> > Chris Jenkinson wrote:
> >> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> >>> Your request is illogical.  It asks for something right  when it is
> >>> wrong by definition.  If I see something as "right" I would not call
> >>> it pseudoscience.
>
> >> Exactly - so how is it POV to demonstrate in an article why a
> >> pseudoscience is wrong?
>
> > Because you had to characterize it as pseudoscience in the first place.
>
>
> This resembles a circular argument.
>
> Is there any word or phrase in *common usage* (i.e., we can't coin a
> Wikipedia-only neologism) that covers what is meant by "pseudoscience"?
>
>
> - d.

Yes. Problem is that it's "pseudoscience"

User Filiocht


from_name: steven l. rubenstein

subject: [WikiEN-l] verifiability

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>t would be good to have some kind of understood process for how claims
>are first described as verifiable/unverifiable, then become
>verified/unverified.  This process is extremely haphasard at the moment.
>
>
>Steve

I agree.  Do you have any concrete suggestions?  You and a number of other
people have made some fine points; perhaps we can move this discussion to
the Verifiability talk page and start discussing how to put these ideas
into practice?

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
>>I also read the USA Today article, and the paragraphs that were quoted
>>were not obvious mistakes.  "John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant
>>to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960's. For a brief
>>time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy
>>assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever
>>proven."  "John Seigenthaler moved to the Soviet Union in 1971, and
>>returned to the United States in 1984," Wikipedia said. "He started
>>one of the country's largest public relations firms shortly
>>thereafter."
>>
>>None of those mistakes are obvious.
>>
>
>Anthony, I'm not normally one to state harsh opinions.  But frankly, if
>you don't find those errors to be blindingly obvious, you need to find
>another hobby.  Writing an encyclopedia is quite frankly beyond you.
>
I have to admit I probably wouldn't have flagged these as out of
the ordinary either. There are hundreds of JFK conspiracy theories,
many involving unlikely-seeming people, and there are many USians
who have lived in the Soviet Union for long periods, people working
at the embassy for example. WP has a long tradition of "strange but
true" material, as witness [[crushing by elephant]] and the whole
exploding animals series, so strangeness alone does not trigger
many alarms.

RC patrol sometimes seems a little like a checkpoint in Iraq; the
volume of oncoming traffic is such that you only get a few seconds
to assess each edit as "plausible" or "bogus", and either pull the
trigger or let it pass. Just the other day somebody reverted as
vandalism an anon's mention of a proposal for a maglev train from
Los Angeles to Las Vegas. But I remembered reading about it in the
paper, and a moment of Googling turned up all the details. I only
noticed this deletion because the article happened to be on my
watchlist because I had added a picture to it once.

If you really want to keep the vandals and pranksters from getting
through, you either need more volunteers on patrol (Shinseki says
300,000 at least :-) ), or use them more efficiently, or cut down
on the inflow somehow.

Stan


subject: [Foundation-l] Bangkok bid

body:
oscar wrote:

>are you serious? i'd love the idea!
>
>oscar
>
>
Yes I am,

We had a wikipedia presentation last week on a congress for teachers. We
were invited there by a wikipedian (Korakot) who works for the Thailand
Knowledge Management Institute (KMI) ... kinda the Thai version of
Kennisnet ... who sponsored us for that congress. He says he is sure he
can find sponsors from KMI and thinks others are sure. It all started
with a discussion on how to get Jimbo to Thailand. Another Thai
wikipedian (TouTou) who is a university teacher and was also helping
with the presentation then said she had organised congresses already and
that her university has facilities but that congressspace is cheap and
aplenty in Thailand anyway. So we have two persons who have experience
in the field. And one village idiot (me) so that seems enough to start a
serious bid because people will always offer help once the train starts
rolling.

Waerth/Walter


subject: [Foundation-l] Bangkok bid


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] SPOV threatens NPOV

body:
Fastfission wrote:

>On 12/16/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>"Alternate science" is science that deviates from the mainstream in
>>significant ways. As long as there are some involved in good faith
>>experiments which attempt to adhere to scientific principles they are
>>scientists.  If their experiments fail they go back to the drawing board
>>to alter the hypothesis or experimental design.  Repeated failure of
>>experiments is not enough to make their efforts unscientific.
>>
>>
>...
>
>
>>Here we are not concerned with any particular subject by itself, but a
>>wide range of subjects with varying degrees of support or hostility,
>>including mutual hostility.  "Alternative science" may appear
>>sympathetic to the proponents, but not outrageously so.
>>
I was about to launch int the question of favouring "alternate" to
"alternative" science, but a review of the matter in my Oxford
Dictionary informs me that this is really a British vs. American usage
issue with "alternate" being favoured in North America.  Traditionally
the adjective "alternate" in British usage is restricted to situations
where there are only two choices.  To whatever extent it may be relevant
this aspect should be guided by our usual policies regarding British and
American usages.

>The sumpathetic aspect is calling it science at all. Things labeled
>pseudoscience are not alternative interpretations of scientific
>theories, but are things which are contended to not even be science
>itself.
>
Are we prepared to enforce a strict definition of the word "science".
Searching on Wikipedia tells me that we have 50,211 articles with the
word "science" We have an article called [[Icelandology]] which says
"Icelandology comprises the wide range of scientific problems and topics
concerning this specific insular country."  And later: "Icelandology
also covers tourism".  If we are going to be strict about using the term
"science" what do we do about this sort of article?  What do we do about
the broad area of social sciences where many of us would agree that
there is very little hard science involved

>Pseudoscience is defined as a non-scientific methodology which
>calls itself a scientific methodology. The POV problem with it is not
>the definition, but the assignment of fields to it. Similarly with
>Soviet spies, the problem is not that the idea of the category is
>inherently flawed (the idea of a Soviet spy is certainly
>comprehensible), but in saying that one person or another actually was
>a Soviet spy (versus accused of spying by the U.S. intelligence
>community, or something like that).
>
>In analogic form about applied POV... Pseudoscience : Soviet spying ::
>Scientists : U.S. intelligence services.
>
I agree, and many of the mainstream scientists who are quick to attach
the "pseudoscience" label have likely done little or no study of the
field that they want to label.  In doing so they are themselves acting
pseudoscientifically.  In one of my earlier go-rounds with this topic
when it was about the [[List ...]] of such topics there were some
editors who would strongly support the idea of the list, but would balk
at putting cryptozo?logy, exobiology, and the SETI Project on the list.
If someone wants to apply the term "pseudoscience" he should carry the
burden of verifiability in a manner consistent with what that term means.

>>If we interpret "science" strictly that's true.  Nevertheless, others
>>use the word "science" to refer to any kind of disciplined approach to a
>>subject, as in the science of Texas Hold'em.
>>
>>
>Okay, but that's not the sense of "science" used when talking about
>alternative science or pseudoscience. You can't just decide
>arbitrarily when something is a strict or a loose sense of the term.
>
It may not be the sense that some are talking about, but that will not
be evident from a simple title.  Some others will use a much broader
broader meaning.  We really can't say how users will interpret it.  The
Oxford Dictionary that I cited does not make specific mention of
alternat[iv]e science.  It does refer to an "alternate universe" in the
context of distinguishing the two forms.  It does have an entry for
"alternative medicine" which it defines as "any of a range of medical
therapies that are not regarded as orthodox by the medical profession,
such as herbalism, naturopathy and crystal healing."  Even if we limit
discussion to these three topics there would be disputes, and I suspect
that crystal healing may have relatively less respectability than the
other two.

Is medicine anything other than a branch of science?  "Unorthodox
science" anybody?

Ec


from_name: Brian

body:
>
> Are you perhaps discussing different meanings of "obvious"?

I think so.  It's now obvious to me and pretty much anyone following
this discussion that the article was false.  I mean, the person who
wrote it even admitted it.  I don't think it was obvious to the
average edit patroller at the time.  That's all I was saying.  Poor
phrasing, I suppose, but not trolling.

Anthony
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list

And I agree for whatever it's worth, as someone who does RC patrol a lot,
that edit would not have set off any alarm bells. I would have looked at it
and tried to make a decision whether it's worth chasing it down and letting
a page or two of CDFV screens roll by....we see lot's of stuff added to
articles, vandal fighting would grind to a halt if we started fact checking
everything. I assume that a subject matter expert catches that stuff on the
flip side. Obviously not all the time...


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Verifiability

body:
"Steve Bennett" <stevage at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:000301c601df$013a2380$ea01a8c0 at minou...
>> Some sort of referencing should be possible. For TV or movie
>> synopses, the text itself as an implicit reference is obvious
>> and sufficient, for example.
>
> How far do you want to extend this?  For computer games, is unreferenced
> description of characters ok? What about of cheats and secrets? Of
> songs, is discussion of lyrics ok? What about chord changes? Etc.
>
> The big question: When is an unreferenced text better than no text?

When it provides enough information for someone else to find a citeable
reference to back it up, or in the alternative to demosntrate satisfactorily
that there is no such reference.

Maybe it's time that, instead of having to do everything, people were made
comfortable acting in the roles of "editors" and "researchers": the former
tidy up articles to make them readable, the latter back up articles to make
them credible.

HTH HAND
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: BCorr at NEAction.org

subject: [WikiEN-l] Boston Globe editorial about Wikipedia

body:
Just in case people hadn't seent this -- more today on the Seigenthaler issue
from the Boston Globe's editorial board -- Brian (Bcorr)

GLOBE EDITORIAL
A free, but fair, Web
<http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2005/12/16/a_free_but_fair_web?mode=PF>
December 16, 2005

THE VENERABLE NEWSMAN John Seigenthaler had it about right when he explained
last weekend why he decided not to take legal action against a rogue Internet
user who had posted defamatory -- and false -- claims about him in the popular
open-source research tool, Wikipedia. ''I still believe in free expression,"
Seigenthaler said. ''What I want is accountability."

Seigenthaler has been badly maligned by charges added to the Wikipedia entry
about him, saying that he ''was thought to have been directly involved" in the
assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy. The 78-year-old former editor of the
Nashville Tennessean, who has won numerous awards for courage in publishing, was
a pallbearer at RFK's funeral.

On Friday the man who posted the addendum, Brian Chase, confessed -- once he
realized his identity was about to be unveiled by a cyber-sleuth -- claiming it
all was a prank. Seigenthaler's response was more principled than Chase had any
right to expect, sticking to his First Amendment principles but calling on
Wikipedia to do a better job policing its own content.

The incident touched off the always-simmering debate over the limits, if any, of
material posted on the Web. Champions of a freewheeling Internet often claim
that it is self-correcting, since hundreds of ''editors," or readers, visit
websites and will catch errors. But the slander against Seigenthaler sat on the
Wikipedia site for four months.

Other supporters say the Web is more transparent than other anonymous sources,
because postings can be traced -- with enough diligence or with a subpoena. The
very fact that an Internet watchdog was able to track Chase's electronic
fingerprints to his workplace shows the system is working, they claim. But
Wikipedia seems to thrive on drive-by postings; its guidelines offer hints for
how users can shield their identities, including avoiding company computers.

Wikipedia, a non-profit, all-volunteer effort, is a phenomenal success, with
millions of listings in 82 languages. But its idealistic mission to be a
''global digital commons" is easily undercut by sloppy or unscrupulous
contributors. Given its immense reach, a disclaimer notice and caveat emptor
don't seem good enough.

One step in the right direction is Wikipedia's decision to require all of its
contributors to register with the site. Another would be to give better play to
''editors" who are willing to sign their work.

Rather than holding Wikipedia or other sites liable for the actions of the
unruly masses, which could chill the vigorous, free exchange the Internet
should be, websites need to find ways to be more accountable. Even the global
village needs to police its town common.
? Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company


from_name: Snowspinner

subject: [WikiEN-l] SPOV threatens NPOV

body:
On Dec 15, 2005, at 7:58 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>
> "Alternate science" is such a term which does not carrry the same
> negative baggage as "pseudoscience".

544 Google hits, 295 unique. Does not pass the neologism requirement.

-Phil


subject: [Foundation-l] cite markup - take 2

body:
This looks like a good option to consider. Can you explain how the same
footnote can be cited multiple times in an article? In other words, if
the software automatically marks 3 different citations as "fn1", "fn6",
and "fn17", how can I have them all point to the same source? Or do I
have to copy the source info for each separate footnote?

Jonathan Leybovich wrote:

>All-
>
>Here is a second attempt at citation mark-up based
>upon your comments from last time.  The new syntax is
>intentionally very footnote-like, since wiki-text has
>most of the visual and editing characteristics of
>regular print text.  The mark-up is used to create
>"citation points" within an article to which
>references to evidence can then be attached.  The
>following is the syntax for the 3 basic types of
>citation points:
>
>
>Explicit Block: '++' ... '++fn'  (fn for footnote);
>applies to all text between the opening '++' and the
>closing '++fn'
>
>Implicit Block: '++fn' ; extends backwards, ending at
>the first occurrence of a preceding citation point or
>the beginning of the current sentence
>
>Immediate: +fn ; applies only to the preceding word
>or, if next to quoted text, the entire quotation
>
>
>Each citation point within an article will have a
>unique number associated with it- e.g. '++fn6' .  An
>editor can explicitly assign citation point numbers
>themselves, or else let the software automatically
>generate the numbers for them.
>
>Going back to Anthony's example from last time, let's
>say an editor opens article [[Roy Orbison]] and sees
>the following:
>
>'''Roy Kelton Orbison''' ([[April 23]], [[1936]]
>– [[December 6]], [[1988]]), nicknamed "The Big
>O" ...
>
>The editor is not an expert on the article's subject,
>but can still create stub citation points for each of
>the article's factual assertions:
>
>'''Roy Kelton+fn Orbison''' (++[[April 23]] [[1936]]
>– [[December 6]] [[1988]]++fn), nicknamed "The
>Big O"+fn, ++was an influential [[United
>States|American]] [[singer-songwriter]] and a pioneer
>of [[rock and roll]]++fn, whose recording career
>spanned more than four decades++fn. By the
>mid-[[1960s]] Orbison was internationally recognized
>for his ++ballads of lost love++fn,  rhythmically
>advanced melodies++fn, three-[[octave]] vocal
>range++fn, characteristic dark [[sunglasses]]++fn, and
>sometimes distinctive usage of [[falsetto]]++fn,
>typified in songs such as "[[Only The Lonely]]",
>"[[Oh, Pretty Woman]]", and "[[Crying
>(song)|Crying]]". In [[1989 in music|1989]], he was
>inducted posthumously into the [[National Academy of
>Popular Music/Songwriters Hall of Fame]]++fn.
>
>Hitting the preview button, the editor sees the
>following:
>
>'''Roy Kelton+fn1 Orbison''' (++[[April 23]] [[1936]]
>– [[December 6]] [[1988]]++fn2), nicknamed "The
>Big O"+fn3, ++was an influential [[United
>States|American]] [[singer-songwriter]] and a pioneer
>of [[rock and roll]]++fn4, whose recording career
>spanned more than four decades++fn5...
>
>Below the wiki-text article text area on the preview
>page there will be input fields for every citation
>point/footnote within the article, with fields for
>such things as ISBN number/URL, page number, and cited
>(as opposed to paraphrased- i.e. inside the article)
>text.  The editor can then provide values for all,
>some, or none of these citations before saving the
>article.
>
>I will come up with some more detailed mock-ups of
>this design once you let me know there are no major
>usability issues with it.  Thanks.
>
>__________________________________________________
>Do You Yahoo!?
>Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
>http://mail.yahoo.com
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


subject: [Foundation-l] cite markup - take 2


subject: [Foundation-l] Bangkok bid

body:
SJ wrote:

>And I suppose Wikimania 2011 will end up being at McMurdo Station.  It
>will take some working up to.  [Then 2012 : in orbit?  There was
>something about a sub-orbital bid.  And depending on what the next
>World Age brings -- Revelation...  Apokemon... Xists -- 2013 may be
>something completely different.]
>
>-- sj
>
What on earth did I deserve such an answer for.

Waerth/Walter


subject: [Foundation-l] Bangkok bid


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] SPOV threatens NPOV

body:
On 12/16/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> "Alternate science" is science that deviates from the mainstream in
> significant ways. As long as there are some involved in good faith
> experiments which attempt to adhere to scientific principles they are
> scientists.  If their experiments fail they go back to the drawing board
> to alter the hypothesis or experimental design.  Repeated failure of
> experiments is not enough to make their efforts unscientific.
...
> Here we are not concerned with any particular subject by itself, but a
> wide range of subjects with varying degrees of support or hostility,
> including mutual hostility.  "Alternative science" may appear
> sympathetic to the proponents, but not outrageously so.

The sumpathetic aspect is calling it science at all. Things labeled
pseudoscience are not alternative interpretations of scientific
theories, but are things which are contended to not even be science
itself. Pseudoscience is defined as a non-scientific methodology which
calls itself a scientific methodology. The POV problem with it is not
the definition, but the assignment of fields to it. Similarly with
Soviet spies, the problem is not that the idea of the category is
inherently flawed (the idea of a Soviet spy is certainly
comprehensible), but in saying that one person or another actually was
a Soviet spy (versus accused of spying by the U.S. intelligence
community, or something like that).

In analogic form about applied POV... Pseudoscience : Soviet spying ::
Scientists : U.S. intelligence services.

> If we interpret "science" strictly that's true.  Nevertheless, others
> use the word "science" to refer to any kind of disciplined approach to a
> subject, as in the science of Texas Hold'em.

Okay, but that's not the sense of "science" used when talking about
alternative science or pseudoscience. You can't just decide
arbitrarily when something is a strict or a loose sense of the term.

FF


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 12/16/05, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> > Anthony, I'm not normally one to state harsh opinions.  But
> > frankly, if you don't find those errors to be blindingly
> > obvious, you need to find another hobby.  Writing an
> > encyclopedia is quite frankly beyond you.
>
> Are you perhaps discussing different meanings of "obvious"?

I think so.  It's now obvious to me and pretty much anyone following
this discussion that the article was false.  I mean, the person who
wrote it even admitted it.  I don't think it was obvious to the
average edit patroller at the time.  That's all I was saying.  Poor
phrasing, I suppose, but not trolling.

Anthony


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unwanted bio - editorial help needed

body:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Palmer_%28Avatar%29

Mr Palmer has emailed User:Shanel to complain and demand his article
be deleted - see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Strange_email

He deserves an article (whether he wants one or not), and it's now got
something approaching usable references, but if there's anyone bored
for a project, it could do with much better prose and the para-by-para
(or sentence-by-sentence) approach to referencing.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] SPOV threatens NPOV

body:
One slight refinement...

> In analogic form about applied POV... Pseudoscience : Soviet spy ::
> Mainstream scientific community : U.S. intelligence services.

Or, put bluntly, "pseudoscience" is a designation given by the
mainstream scientific community (to certain fields of study), "Soviet
spy" is a designation given by U.S. intelligence services (to certain
individuals).

Now the problem with both is that such designations are often highly
disputed -- ID claims it is not a pseudoscience and indeed claims that
often evolution is pseudoscientific. In labeling ID a pseudoscience
and evolution not one, we're implicitly taking a side in this debate.

Again, I think in some circumstances such leaning is not bad -- I
would rather Wikipedia be known for supporting the mainstream
scientific position on such small details as categorization than known
for supporting the fringe position. We're an encyclopedia, after all,
and the scientific community POV is easy to understand and relatively
transparent for people to look at and evaluate (not the case in terms
of U.S. intelligence services POV, which is very purposely closed and
obscured). But that's just one take on it.

FF


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] why doesn't the internal editor break lines at column
	72

body:
Uwe Brauer wrote:
> Hello
>
> Wouldn't it be possible that the internal editor would break lines say
> at column 72 as do most mail applications.

Forced line wrapping is a huge difficulty when you do something like resize your
window. This isn't the 1970s anymore; we don't work on fixed-size teletypes.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: SJ

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Bangkok bid

body:
On 12/16/05, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Walter van Kalken wrote:

> First, I agree with Waerth that, Samuel, your comments appear quite
> offending. It may be that you did not mean them to be and that it was
> humor, but I fear it will not appear that way to many readers of the list.

Well, to be clear : I thought Waerth's proposal, and the discussion of
other continents, was bold and great.  There was no offense meant; Ray
caught it in precisely the spirit intended.  As a member of the
community, and not as a "Wikimania organiser", I would love to see
more event planning in Thailand, and in Asia and Africa in general,
and think that Ec and Walter talking about this well in advance was
pretty neat.

The discussion of whether to rotate Wikimanias across continents has
been proposed before; and it was noted then too that we would run out
of continents just before the next Mayan World Age...

Dariusz : If you do something in Poland, I'll have to finish learning
Polish by then ;-)

Pozdrawiam, SJ


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Bangkok bid


subject: [Foundation-l] cite markup - take 2

body:
> This looks like a good option to consider. Can you
> explain how the same
> footnote can be cited multiple times in an article?

Brian-

Each "footnote" is really a place for the editor to
attach their evidence.  Thus in almost all cases 2
footnotes will share nothing more than the book or
article which is cited, while having different index
points into the work (e.g. page numbers), and evidence
texts (i.e. the text the paraphrased assertion in the
article is based upon).  The user will need only
provide a key to the work they are citing (usually the
ISBN number) and the rest of the information (title,
author, etc.) can automatically be queried from either
a Wikidata catalog which we build or some other online
reference service.  Thus I don't think there is any
duplicate work which we need to spare the user.

Looking at it from the other side, though, I think it
would be useful to allow multiple works/citations to
be associated with each footnote (user would click a
button to add more citation input fields for that
footnote), though this is a feature we might want to
consider adding in later.

>
> Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 12:00:58 -0500
> From: Brian <brian0918 at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] cite markup - take 2
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
>
> This looks like a good option to consider. Can you
> explain how the same
> footnote can be cited multiple times in an article?
> In other words, if
> the software automatically marks 3 different
> citations as "fn1", "fn6",
> and "fn17", how can I have them all point to the
> same source? Or do I
> have to copy the source info for each separate
> footnote?
>

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


subject: [Foundation-l] cite markup - take 2


from_name: Rob

body:
I'm sorry, but if you don't think that the assertion
that someone was involved in both the JFK and the RFK
assassination is not some sort of lunatic fringe claim
that at least deserves some sort of cursory
verification, then I don't think the suggestion that
you should not be editing an encyclopedia is all that
outrageous.

The articles that get a lot of Wiki attention are
great, but on the fringes we take too much on faith
and too much slips through the cracks.  Collectively,
we need to develop more of a critical eye and letting
these sorts of things can be slipped through without
acting upon them is, as we have already seen, going to
cause lasting harm to the usefulness, reliability, and
public image of this project.

In the end, it does not matter if this error was
"obvious" or not, though it clearly was.  However you
define obvious, it is a definition that needs to
include this sort of claim, otherwise new pages patrol
will be an exercise in uselessness and futility.

Delirium delirium at hackish.org:

This was not (except in retrospect) obvious to me
either, because I am
not an expert in the Kennedy assassination.  I have a
vague
recollection
that it took a long time to come up with the official
determination of
what happened, so for all I know there may have been
hundreds of
suspects in the earlier stages of the investigation,
and I do not know
offhand all their names, or whether Mr. Seigenthaler
was one of them.

Quite frankly, if you have nothing better to do than
insult Wikipedians
and tell us we are not fit to participate in your
project, I should
think we need new leadership.

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


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Bangkok bid

body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Walter van Kalken wrote:
>>
>>> SJ wrote:
>>>
>>>> And I suppose Wikimania 2011 will end up being at McMurdo Station.  It
>>>> will take some working up to.  [Then 2012 : in orbit?  There was
>>>> something about a sub-orbital bid.  And depending on what the next
>>>> World Age brings -- Revelation...  Apokemon... Xists -- 2013 may be
>>>> something completely different.]
>>>>
>>>> -- sj
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> What on earth did I deserve such an answer for.
>>
>>
>>
>> Shouldn't you mean "What NOT on earth ..." :-)
>>
>> Ec
>
>
> No in response to a suggestion by you to make Africa the predestined
> continent I already put up a bid for bangkok. I treated you with respect
> I like to be treated back with respect it could be my lack of sleep but
> I am pretty pissed at SJ's answer especially in the light of him being
> at the current wikimania organising committee I find him ridiculing
> someone else's idea totally inappropriate and uncalled for.
>
> Waerth/Walter

Hello

Three little points here.

First, I agree with Waerth that, Samuel, your comments appear quite
offending. It may be that you did not mean them to be and that it was
humor, but I fear it will not appear that way to many readers of the list.

Second and possibly more important point. There is currently no
organising committee per se. There is a group of interested individuals,
more or less involved in organising Wikimania 2006. Organisation, and in
particular leadership, will probably be clarified in a couple of days.

Third point. Sj being part of the "current" most involved individuals
will not necessarily mean he will be in 2007. Nor any of the current
"organisers". I'd say, go your way and prepare a good bid for 2007 if
you think it is doable.


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Bangkok bid


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity - courses

body:
Cormac Lawler wrote:

>If the board is
>nervous about the didactic model (eg. as Angela said that she was
>concerned that Wikimedia would be ridiculed if Wikiversity was widely
>advertised and (I presume) wasn't ready for incoming students), then
>it could still allow for the remaining two models (which ironically
>are at polar ends of the pedagogical spectrum), without too much fear
>of backlash from the press or wider public. However, I would add that
>excluding the didactic model for now would bitterly disappoint some
>contributors.
>
>
>
I want to add my $0.02 here asking for clarification about this issue as
well, and an understanding if the concern about no on-line courses is to
be something temporary (just during the start-up phase of Wikiversity)
or if this is a permanent exclusion on the part of the board.  It also
cuts deep into some major differences between Wikiversity and Wikibooks,
as Wikibooks is a place to create instructional materials (particularly
textbooks), but not appropriate to schedule a class and display syllibi
for a particular course (more of what Wikiversity is about).  The
reasoning for why on-line courses is to be excluded IMHO has not been
satisfactorily explained to the participants on existing parts of
Wikiversity other than just a simple whim or suggestion, nor what
philosophical camp is pushing for that concept.

Obviously there are hundreds of different opinions on what Wikiversity
ought to be, just based on the participation of the voting process of
Wikiversity in the first place.  Nobody is advocating that we create
instantly a multi-college advanced degree-granting research university.
 Even the best universities started with a simple foundation, and I can
give countless examples of even relatively "new" universities with
humble origins, and I think Wikiversity should be no different.  In the
case of Wikiversity, there is also an existing community that has
already gone off into some interesting directions, so any exclusions or
restrictions are also going to have to address current content that has
already been created and try to fit within the current framework that
already exists at Wikibooks and de.wikiversity.  The minutes of the
board meeting didn't seem to address that issue at all.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity - courses


subject: [WikiEN-l] SPOV threatens NPOV

body:
Karl A. Krueger wrote:

>On Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 11:55:08AM -0800, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>"Parascience" or "alternate science" are often used, and do not carry
>>the same emotional baggage as pseudoscience.  I have also seen
>>"traditional science" in relation to subjects like astrology or alchemy
>>that predate the development of the modern scientific method.
>>
>>
>We should probably avoid coining new terms or encouraging the use of
>terms which are very likely to be misunderstood.  To me, "traditional
>science" sounds like the opposite of "alternative science", whereas the
>above suggests that they would include many of the same fields -- for
>instance, current practitioners of "scientific astrology".
>
I don't think any of these are "new" terms, but the more I think about
the more it seems that "parascience" and "traditional science" would
have more restrictive usages.  For that reason alone I am disinclined to
advocate for their usage in the present context.

>There's one overarching reason, it seems to me, that Wikipedia aligns
>itself more strongly with science than with faith or other "systems of
>knowledge": one of our principles is _verifiability_, which is also a
>principle of scientific research.  When a scientist propounds results
>that are not verifiable -- such as Pons & Fleischmann's cold fusion --
>the resulting smackdown from the rest of the scientific field is
>*exactly* the sort of thing we want for unverifiable wild claims on
>Wikipedia, too.
>
Absolutely.  I have no problem with verifiability, but that also implies
that the statement "Xxxx is a pseudoscience" is subject to
verifiability.  Obviously a category tag must be short to be effective,
but any article that has the "pseudoscience" tag needs to have
verification in the article for being put there.

>Proposed systems of knowledge which do not include verifiability as
>a criterion will necessarily, it seems to me, do worse on Wikipedia than
>science does.  That doesn't exempt us from reporting their claims
>accurately when relevant; but it -does- mean that we're less likely to
>accept their standards of evidence for describing the world.
>
We can only say, "These are the premises of their ideas."  We can say
that many scientists (whom we name and cite) call them "pseudoscience",
but we can't call them pseudoscience ourselves unless we are prepared to
go much further on the road to verifiability.

We also need to avoid the temptation to disprove everything that follows
from a suspect premise.  If a premise is false then everything that
depends on it is probably false.  Disproving all these consequences
leads to poor style and unreadable articles; that can only diminish the
impact of the original finding.

>It's tricky.
>
Indeed!

>I think we really do want to describe the Earth as a
>roughly spherical planet in orbit around a yellow-white star.  It isn't
>enough to say that most scientists and astronomers believe this, while
>various other people think it's a flat plane or a hollow sphere:  we
>really do want to accept the scientific standard of evidence here rather
>than just treating it as a "Scientific Point of View".
>
Most of science still depends on a number of intuitive notions which are
only questioned when the results are counter-intuitive.  At one time in
history a flat earth was the intuitive reality

>The thing is, the same set of standards likewise lead us to say that:
>
>	* Homeopathic preparations made according to Hahnemann's method
>	  contain none of the "potentized" substance.
>
>	* Dogs, bears, apes, and humans descended from a common
>	  ancestral population of small furry creatures resembling
>	  shrews, which lived around the same time as the dinosaurs.
>
>	* The Sun is in the constellation of Ophiuchus, not Sagittarius
>	  or Scorpio, for the first half of December.
>
>People who believe in homeopathy, creationism, or astrology are likely
>to denounce these claims as belonging to a "Scientific Point of View" or
>something similar.  Nonetheless they are based on the same standards of
>evidence that entail that we may describe Earth as a planet rather than
>a plane, disc, hollow ball, or carrot-shape.
>
Hahnemann needs to be viewed in the context of his own time.  He didn't
know about bacteria and virusus because they weren't discovered yet, but
unwittingly his thinking foreshadows the discovery of vaccines.  Your
comment is still phrased negatively.  Burdens of proof remain with the
person making the claim; requiring proof that something does not exist
can be an impossible task.  If it doesn't exist you won't find it; if it
does exist you may not find it.

I have no comment about your example from evolution.

The astrological example is a question of definition.  Astrologers will
say that the sun is in a sign rather than a constellation.  These signs
are predetermined 30 degree segments which need not correspond with the
constellations of the same name.  The real issues in astrology are quite
different, and have more to do about the relationship of planetary
positions to what happens here on earth.

>We need to take those standards seriously, though.  We should be sure
>not to embrace a claim simply because it is made by a scientist or other
>professional, for instance.  Likewise we need to make sure that claims
>of doubt or disproof are *also* verifiable:  when someone goes to list
>something in a "criticisms" section (be it on [[Homeopathy]] or on
>[[Evolution]]) we need to be sure that the so-called criticism actually
>addresses the subject at hand.
>
We agree, but as in the astrology example above it's very easy to get
off on an explainable tangent that is not a real part of the problem at all.

>Consider also the related case of the law, which -- like science -- has
>some kind of standards of evidence.  We start the article on [[Ted
>Bundy]] with the claim that he _was_ a serial killer and rapist ... not
>merely that the court _claimed_ that he was a serial killer and rapist.
>We don't apply this standard uncritically; there are certainly courts
>whose opinions we would not take in evidence.  But where we do, we are
>generally not wrong to do so.
>
I essentially agree, but there will still be a problem with deciding
which court decisions can be used as valid evidence.  We can doubt the
validity of Trotsky's conviction by Stalin's show trials, but even
countries with suspect governments will need to deal with common criminals.

>>When you look at the abortion debate there seems to be somewhat of a
>>truce in that the primary name for the two sides are "pro-life" and
>>"pro-choice".  Each of these is a term that the respective sides feel as
>>acceptably representing what they stand for.  If the pro-life people
>>start by calling the other side "baby killers" there is no room for
>>dialogue.
>>
>>
>I certainly agree that we need to refrain from epithets.  I'm not sure
>where the term "pseudoscience" falls, though.  I personally would use it
>very narrowly, to refer to fields whose practitioners make a point of
>calling the field scientific, but where nothing like scientific practice
>is being done ... or, perhaps by extension, where there are not actually
>any data upon which to do scientfic study.
>
I too prefer a narrow usage, tending to not at all.  "Nothing like" and
"not any data" both depend on negative findings.

>In short, you can't be doing pseudoscience if you don't claim to be
>doing science, or more generally try to adopt the mantle of science.  If
>you teach dance and tell your students that it's good for their souls,
>this isn't a claim to science -- so it can't be pseudoscientific.
>
Some people in the dance community might dispute your findings.  I sit
as a parent member on a stakeholders' committee of our local school
board, and we heard a recent presentation on learning and the arts.
Their point was that dance activity can help to improve student
achievement iover a range of more traditional subjects.

>I recognize that some "skeptics" like to call various practices "pseudo-
>science" even when they don't aspire to science.  I don't think we
>should accept that usage in Wikipedia.  We should use the term narrowly
>to refer to specific cases where claims of science are made without the
>actual scientific practice to back them up.
>
Fine.

>>Whatever term we choose for what saome call "pseudoscience" must be
>>acceptable to both sides, but especially to the side so named.
>>
>>
>I'm not so sure this makes sense.  There are lots of labels that we are
>willing to apply to people who do not themselves accept the labels.  The
>most obvious are those drawn from fields such as science and law, which
>have reasonably credible standards of verifiability.
>
When it comes to naming issues I tend to favour proponents rather than
opponents.  In our situation there is no dispute about the naming of
most individual fields, only about what we call them collectively.  It's
important that the term which we choose carry no implication about the
truth or falsity of the contents, or carry in anyway that something is
personally wrong with the practitioners.  To me "alternat[iv]e" only
suggests that it's different.

>>"Fraud" would be worse because of the implications of criminality.  The
>>profit motive is often totally absent in the minds of most believers in
>>a "pseudoscience".  The people who develop these ideas are usually doing
>>so in good faith, and they were effectively applying GFDL long before it
>>was invented.  They, no more than Wikipedia, could not control
>>commercial applications by downstream users..
>>
>>
>I'd limit "fraud" the same way as "murder" -- it's basically a legal
>claim that needs reference to some sort of juridical decision.  But
>there are other terms, such as "quackery" in the practice of medicine,
>which refer to deceptive claims more specifically.  It's perfectly
>reasonable to refer for instance to the [[Violet Wand]] as a quack
>medical device that gained popularity as a fetish toy.
>
Was it always a quack device?  I think that Tesla was basically honest
in his work, much of which is still being questioned.  "Quackery"
doesn't enter the conversation until the marketting starts to happen.
It's modern use as a sexual fetish toy is a whole other story.

Ec


body:
On 12/16/05, BCorr at neaction.org <BCorr at neaction.org> wrote:
> THE VENERABLE NEWSMAN John Seigenthaler had it about right when he explained
> last weekend why he decided not to take legal action against a rogue Internet
> user who had posted defamatory -- and false -- claims about him in the popular
> open-source research tool, Wikipedia. ''I still believe in free expression,"
> Seigenthaler said. ''What I want is accountability."
>
He wants accountability, but he doesn't want Chase to be held
accountable.  I must be missing something.

> One step in the right direction is Wikipedia's decision to require all of its
> contributors to register with the site. Another would be to give better play to
> ''editors" who are willing to sign their work.
>
If Chase was logged in, his identity would have probably never been discovered.

Anthony