subject: [WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

body:
On 10/2/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com>
> >
> >On 9/30/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > It depends on judgement, which we are supposed to exercise. There is a
> > > difference between the Wikipedia article on Harry Truman, and David
> > > McCullough's 1120 biography of Truman.  Why not include every single
> >fact
> > > found in McCullough's book? And from Brian Burnes's and Margaret
> >Truman's
> > > and Ralph Keyes works, and Harry Truman's own autobiography as well?
> > > Because it is an encyclopedia article, and 3,000 page encyclopedia
> >articles,
> > > even if broken up into hundreds of smaller sub-articles, aren't useful
> >to
> > > the audience we are trying to serve.
> >
> >If all of these works are broken up into smaller sub-articles, good
> >editors will combine them into any number of different, useful and
> >comprehensive articles that include all the knowledge that all of
> >these works contain.  In other words, every verifiable fact from David
> >McCullough's book does not have to end up in the Harry Truman article,
> >but there's no reason every verifiable fact should not be included in
> >Wikipedia.
> >
> > > >Wikipedia is revolutionary and important because the level of detail
> > > >captured is beyond that of any prior work.  This is why many here
> > > >enjoy Wikipedia more than any other reference.  This is also why
> > > >Wikipedia is gaining editors every day.  The dominant cultural message
> > > >is "Your knowledge is useful, please add it.  We'll help you sort,
> > > >organize, and present it."  Filtering the input stream is helpful, as
> > > >is merging data to appropriate locations, but to actively work against
> > > >adding verifiable NPOV information is a fool's errand that can only
> > > >lead to frustration in the long term.
> > >
> > > The level of detail we *can* capture, and the level of detail we
> >*should*
> > > capture, are two entirely different things.  This is still intended to
> >be a
> > > general purpose encyclopedia for a general audience.  We are writing
> > > articles, not PhD dissertations, or multi-volume histories.  Again,
> >there is
> > > a reason why the History of England article does not contain the same
> >amount
> > > of information as Churchill's four volume "A History of the English
> >Speaking
> > > Peoples" that has nothing to do with "Wikipedia is not paper" and
> >everything
> > > to do with "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia".
> >
> >See my reply above for why I believe this is a specious argument.  Our
> >software-based encyclopedia is capable of presenting the general
> >audience whatever level of detail that they choose to suit their
> >interest.  Just as there is a "History of Malta" link in the "Malta"
> >article, we're capable of splitting articles as they become too large
> >for the general "first view".  I see no reason why this cannot
> >continue to scale much further than it has.
>
> Michael, Google.com states its mission as follows:
> "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it
> universally accessible and useful."
>
> How do you see that as differing from Wikipedia's mission?  How do you think
> the end products should differ?

Google doesn't seek NPOV.  Google doesn't look for verifiability.
Google doesn't collate similar information into individual articles to
provide understanding of the topic at hand.  Google doesn't direct the
readers to related topics and subtopics.

There are a lot of differences, but mainly, Google doesn't combine and
recombine information into articles on the subjects it indexes, it
merely presents them together. It sorts and collates sources, but
doesn't attempt to combine them to make them less redundant and more
useful.

Google provides information, but doesn't really provide any
understanding.  "Understanding" can be provided on any topic, no
matter how sub-trivial, and as long as we do it in a verifiable NPOV
way, I don't see any logical reason why we should not.

Before yesterday, I didn't know what a SPUI was.  Now I have a good
general understanding of a SPUI.  Now, some may say, no one but a
traffic engineer would be interested in that!  NN, DELETE!  Why
shouldn't we serve the traffic engineer as well as we serve the Dr.
Who fan, or the environmental scientist, or the pop culture buff?
It's all POV when you start throwing terms like "notability" rather
than relying on third party verifiability.

Wikipedia IS an encyclopedia, but because it's the most comprehensive
encyclopedia ever, it's actually many encyclopedias.  It's an
encyclopedia of Dr. Who, an encyclopedia of U.S. history, an
encyclopedia of British colonies, an encyclopedia of schools, an
encyclopedia of Egyptian regents, an encyclopedia of construction
equipment, an encyclopedia of Mariah Carey recordings, etc...   and we
don't have to limit it arbitrarily for some group of editors's POVs
regarding "notability".
--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Taking your eyes off the ball

body:
On 10/2/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/2/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Abkhazia
> >

short not enough references

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society_of_Wildlife_Trusts
> >
> short no references whatsoever

[etc]

Quite. All of these failings could be addressed in a five-day AfD-like
process where 100 articles are listed at random and either improved to
presentable standard or, if consensus exists to reject, marked as in need of
attention.

There are many, many articles that are nearly ready for the main page; a
process that produced more than 100 featurable articles per day would be
feasible and would probably be a better use of the copious resources
expended on AfD.

Afd is unnecessary. Hoax articles and other unverifiable stuff could be
listed and processed in a WP:CP-like system. Verifiability should be added
to the key policies of Wikipedia to facilitate this. An unverifable article
should not be retained on Wikipedia no matter how many people vote for its
retention.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Phroziac

subject: [Wikipedia-l] uh

body:
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I have not gotten any list mail for several hours. Is the list down?
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list: foundation-l

from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] wikiversity vote

body:
Anthere wrote:

> Hi
>
> Just a little comment to the organisers of the vote on wikiversity (or
> at least to the people interested in the matter).
>
> Currently, half of the votes are invalid, due to the user failing to
> link his meta user page to a wikimedia project user page.
>
> It would be best to inforce this a bit, or to strike all those votes
> from now on to make voters realise that without a valid link to a user
> page, their vote will count for nothing at all.
>
> Anthere
>
I realize that many of those "invalid" votes are from people who are not
regular participants at Meta.  Indeed, this is getting a much broader
group of participants that I ever anticipated, with many people coming
in from projects or users that have never really cast a vote like this
before.  Some of them do link back to their user page where they
normally participate, and perhaps they should "create" an account on
meta.  I havn't seen too many obvious "sock puppet" votes, however.

Yes, the voting instructions do say that you must be a "registered user"
on Meta, and I believe that instruction was translated correctly to the
other voting instruction pages that are in other languages.  There has
been some strikeout text applied to some of the votes already.  Thanks
to all who are helping with the verification on this vote.  We really
don't have an "independent voting observer" for this vote, even though
technically it was required by the new project policy.  I did ask for
one on the Bable page at Meta, and so far there havn't been any takers.

On this issue, I think it would be hard pressed to find somebody without
an opinion anyway.

--
Robert Scott Horning


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] wikiversity vote


from_name: Michael Turley

body:
On 10/2/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Your idea runs into the problem (that inclusionism makes worse) that
> people want to write about stuff they are interested in.

You're proposing that Wikipedia's greatest strength is a problem.  In
general terms, I couldn't disagree more strongly.

People write at Wikipedia because they want to.  First, we should
recognize that they want to write about what they're interested in and
strongly encourage them to do so.  This gets them involved here.

Then, we must recognize that volunteer editors will only write about
articles they aren't interested in if they're motivated by another
related interest.

I had no prior interest in [[Sigurd Syr]] before contributing to the
article on him.  What I did have an interest in, was improving
Wikipedia, and making an apology to User:Briangotts, and he selected
[[Sigurd Syr]] as my assignment when I offered to make a referenced,
content contributing, good faith edit to an article of his choice.

Although I think I did a pretty good job with Sigurd, I never would
have done so if I'd not been interested in the other goals of my edit.

A second example: in an edit summary on the [[FairTax]] article, I
thought I was a little harsh, so I apologized to User:Morphh, who
until that day, had only ever edited FairTax, FairTax talk, and the
talk pages of a few other editors on that single article.  Well, I
made my offer, and gently insisted that I wanted to do an edit for
him.  He assigned me my choice of articles in the topic of [[Life
extension]] or [[Transhumanism]] and I chose [[Roy Walford]].

As a direct result of this, he posted on his talk page, the following:
"Very nice. A side effect of your proposal is my own exploration of
wikipedia. I've added half a dozen sections to my watch list. I've
already made small edits. I don't have the time to make good
contributions to many articles but its fun to get involved. The amount
of information available on this site is amazing."

And now Morphh has begun to edit outside of FairTax.

So the puzzle is NOT to prevent people from writing about what they're
interested in, but to find newer and more creative ways to get them
interested in a broader range of topics.
--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


subject: [Wikipedia-l] uh

body:
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Gerrit Holl wrote:
> Phroziac wrote:
>
>>I have not gotten any list mail for several hours. Is the list down?
>
>
> We should have QOTW (Quote Of The Week) on this list, this one is great
> (-:
>
> Gerrit.
>

Heh. Well, thanks for confirming it's not. But that's weird to not get
any email for so long. Did someone ban some trolls?
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from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Information in advance about mowiki happenings

body:
Yes, an adversarial system does seem to be quite strange.

I am actually already sysop, having requested it for interface
translation months ago.

While I'm sure Dmitriid would have no problem nominating either me or
Jeorjika, and I would have no problem nominating either, I'm not sure
Jeorjika would nominate me as the whole purpose of his campaign seems
to have been to replace me because of my alleged hatred for Romanians,
and my failure to "satisfy the community", despite the fact that there
_is_ no community.

Mark

On 02/10/05, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2005/10/1, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Currently there is a sysop election on mowiki, where 3 candidates are
> > pitted against each other rather than being voted on separately: Me,
> > Dmitriid, and Jeorjika.
>
> This I find a strange situation. Especially when there is a situation
> with different parties, the best solution seems to be to have
> representers of all sides be made sysops rather than vote between them
> (unless there is a comromise candidate acceptable for all).
>
> Could you perhaps try to resolve the situation by promising that if
> you get elected, you will nominate the other candidates for sysophood
> as well, and ask them to make a similar promise in return?
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
>

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


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] wikiversity vote

body:
Hi

Just a little comment to the organisers of the vote on wikiversity (or
at least to the people interested in the matter).

Currently, half of the votes are invalid, due to the user failing to
link his meta user page to a wikimedia project user page.

It would be best to inforce this a bit, or to strike all those votes
from now on to make voters realise that without a valid link to a user
page, their vote will count for nothing at all.

Anthere


subject: [Foundation-l] wikiversity vote


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brian

subject: [Wikitech-l] A simple request for a server...

body:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Toolserver

On 10/2/05, Jason Y. Lee <jylee at cs.ucr.edu> wrote:
>
> The request for a server is simply a request for a central repository of
> Wikimedia scripts that are used in the maintainance of any of the
> Wikimedia servers, such as Wikipedia. As it current stands, it is
> contributors who run their own copy of their scripts located somewhere in
> the world. Should that person ever disappear from the project, it is
> likely that his/her useful source code that was written disappears
> forever. It is immensely difficult to classify this as a SourceForge
> project, especially when it is many different pieces of code running for
> different purposes. Additionally, there is a greater concern to not
> release some of the scripts to the general public for fear that they may
> be used for vandalism purposes. However, it should be noted that the code
> is still useful to someone else who wishs the time and effort to
> continuously update it, especially with the changing MediaWiki software.
> Furthermore, there is no easy collaborative way to update source code
> between contributors.
> For example, I have several scripts that run a specific purpose. If
> wished for someone else to take the task of improving my script, I would
> have to ask them personally and they would have to send the changes to me.
> There is no easy way to merge changes, like a CVS or SVN service. We
> have many programmers who contribute to the Wikipedia, who write in
> various languages, in order to perform a certain maintainance task. Their
> skills may not be up to par in order to become a developer for the
>
> MediaWiki software, but they, as do I, want to use their programming
> skills in some manner to help one of the Wikimedia projects. It would be
> immensively useful for a single Wikimedia server to be used as a place for
> trusted Wikimedia individuals to perform collaborative programming
> projects in the assistance of maintaining various Wikimedia pages.
>
> One of the things about source code that is so great is that it is
> universal and can be read by anyone who understands the programming
> language. Case in point, if I wrote a simple bot script that reset the
> Sandbox on the English Wikipedia, and someone from the Chinese Wikipedia
> wanted to adapt it for the Chinese Wikipedia, he or she, as long they were
> a long standing trusted Chinese Wikipedian user, could take my code, and
> readapt it for their purposes.
>
> Case in point, English Wikipedian User Kevin Rector wrote KevinBot to do
> some bot work, that is explicitly written in C++ (I think). But his code
> is now out of date due to the changes in MediaWiki code causing his bot
> code to break. Someone asked me to update his bot and send me the
> executable, but that doesn't help me since I can't make any changes to the
> source code to correct his bot.
>
> Part of the frustration of bot code writing is that the MediaWiki code
> changes to the point that bots break. And bot programmers are people who
> struggle to maintain their own scripts... they don't have a group of
> people assisting them in the effort. If bot scripts can be updated with a
> group of people just like the MediaWiki software, it would be less
> frustrating and the bot code would be updated faster.
>
> As it stands, bots are scripts and/or programs that run on individual
> computers and servers maintained by Wikipedians. If anything happens to
> them, that small piece of knowledge in which the script is written in
> disappears. And if, for any reason, their computer breaks or their server
> breaks... their bot is inactive for an unknown period of time. There is
> no fallback. Furthermore, their server specs may not be something that a
> university or this organization can get. The power, speed, and stable
> connectivity is something that individuals can not achieve on their own.
> Granted, if someone leaves, someone can rewrite the work that they did.
> But the point is that they are reinventing the wheel just for that to
> work.
>
> I don't know where else to ask this, so I figured to email it to this
> list.
>
> ----
> Jason Y. Lee
> AKA AllyUnion (English Wikipedia Administrator)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
Brian Mingus
AIM, Skype: BReflection
Google talk: reflection at gmail.com
Phone: (720) 771-2599
Web: http://www.qwikly.com


from_name: geni

body:
On 10/2/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Quite. All of these failings could be addressed in a five-day AfD-like
> process where 100 articles are listed at random and either improved to
> presentable standard or, if consensus exists to reject, marked as in need of
> attention.
>

Your idea runs into the problem (that inclusionism makes worse) that
people want to write about stuff they are interested in.

--
geni


body:
On 10/2/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Afd is unnecessary. Hoax articles and other unverifiable stuff could be
> listed and processed in a WP:CP-like system. Verifiability should be added
> to the key policies of Wikipedia to facilitate this. An unverifable article
> should not be retained on Wikipedia no matter how many people vote for its
> retention.

Then why do you expend so many rescources on it? Stop closeing AFDs
and let it fall over of it's own accord.

--
geni


body:
On 10/2/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/2/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Quite. All of these failings could be addressed in a five-day AfD-like
> > process where 100 articles are listed at random and either improved to
> > presentable standard or, if consensus exists to reject, marked as in
> need of
> > attention.
> >
>
> Your idea runs into the problem (that inclusionism makes worse) that
> people want to write about stuff they are interested in.
>

This isn't a problem. It's what has made English Wikipedia one of the
largest reference works in the English language.

Articles on subjects in which nobody shows any interest should probably not
be on our main page.


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Taking your eyes off the ball

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>so much of the best that Wikipedia has to offer
>comprises mediocrely written articles that tell you pretty much what you
>need to know, and generally do it in less than a screenful of information
>and without pointless fripperies such as pictures.
>
>
That seems to me a rather limited view of Wikipedia's strengths and
potential. You might as well say we're aspiring to nothing more than
creating exactly the same stuff you can find on virtually any website on
the internet.

--Michael Snow


body:
On 10/2/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/2/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Afd is unnecessary. Hoax articles and other unverifiable stuff could be
> > listed and processed in a WP:CP-like system. Verifiability should be
> added
> > to the key policies of Wikipedia to facilitate this. An unverifable
> article
> > should not be retained on Wikipedia no matter how many people vote for
> its
> > retention.
>
> Then why do you expend so many rescources on it? Stop closeing AFDs
> and let it fall over of it's own accord.

I have not closed any AfDs for some weeks and I have no plans to participate
in AfD, excepting a vote here and there, in the future.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: RE: Re: Taking your eyes off the ball

body:
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Ryan W. (Merovingian) wrote:
> I have to admit to being guilty of oppose-and-run.  :(
Why would you even consider that?

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body:
On 10/2/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> This isn't a problem. It's what has made English Wikipedia one of the
> largest reference works in the English language.
>

It is a problem becuase you run into the issue of not very good
articles. Your proposal won't work because only a very small number of
people want to work on subjects they are not interested in when they
could work on subjects they are interested in.

Most people have two driveing factors.1.) the desire to write stuff
2). the desire to write about stuff they are interested in. Now lets
see how inclusonism and deletionism work on this two factors.
Inclusonism plays to both factors but results in a large number of
articles that only one person cares about. Works against the second
but gains the advantage of encourageing colaberation since  A space is
smaller it means that editors are more likely to interact. This means
that the mean number of active editors per article increases. This
increase the mean amount of editor energy per article which in turn
increases their quality. Sure in time you may exauste A space at which
point it is time to enlarge it but until then there is no need to do
so.

> Articles on subjects in which nobody shows any interest should probably not
> be on our main page.

Really? Lets look at [[Algerian Civil War]]. Featured article. Look
how short it's talk page is. Go back to before it was on the main page
and you will find it was basicaly wirtten by [[User:Mustafaa]]. That
is how interested people were in the topic.

--
geni


body:
On 10/2/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have not closed any AfDs for some weeks and I have no plans to participate
> in AfD, excepting a vote here and there, in the future.

Good now we must work to spread the apathy.

--
geni


body:
On 10/2/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/2/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > This isn't a problem. It's what has made English Wikipedia one of the
> > largest reference works in the English language.
> >
>
> It is a problem becuase you run into the issue of not very good
> articles. Your proposal won't work because only a very small number of
> people want to work on subjects they are not interested in when they
> could work on subjects they are interested in.

We don't want "not very good articles" on the main page. I still don't see
how your observation of people's personal preferences supports your argument
that this is a "problem".

> > Articles on subjects in which nobody shows any interest should probably
> not
> > be on our main page.
>
> Really? Lets look at [[Algerian Civil War]]. Featured article. Look
> how short it's talk page is. Go back to before it was on the main page
> and you will find it was basicaly wirtten by [[User:Mustafaa]]. That
> is how interested people were in the topic.
>
>
If as you claim only one person is interested in it, what's it doing as a
FA?


from_name: Mark Pellegrini

body:
There's a frighteningly large amount of misinformation being thrown
around here, so let me attempt to inject some real information into the
discussion.

First, we're promoting slightly more than one article per day (after 280
something days in 2005, we've promoted something like 295 articles). So
at the present rate, we could have a new, different featured article on
the main page every day forever. (Oh, and Mero, last week, we promoted 9
featured articles, not 4)

Second, the FAC process is designed to expose flaws in an article.
That's why all objections have to be actionable (and, corrospondingly,
specific enough so as to be actionable). Someone has to fix the problems
in order for an article to be promoted, and that job usually falls to
the nominator. I do not like the idea of forcing the reviewers to fix
the article - that's just a bad idea.

As for Tony's idea - well, I don't want to put too fine a point of this
because I respect Tony, but his idea
(http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-October/029601.html)
is terrible. Unredeemably bad, in fact. The FAC is a sane, well-mainted
part of Wikipedia *THAT ACTUALLY GENERATES GOOD ARTICLES*. So, let's
scrap the process and make it more like Votes for Deletion, eh? Oh,
wonderful idea...
It introduce a massive bureacracy to what is a rather effecient process
(and don't take my word on that -- library science graduate students
studied the FAC process and concluded that it "is not ideal, but it does
seem relatively rigorous."-
http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~stvilia/papers/qualWiki.pdf -- remind me again
how many research studies have concluded that the VFD/AFD works well?)
Tony's proposed changes represent a huge step backwards. Consider the
example articles Tony pointed at. If those articles "Exemplify
Wikipedia's best articles", then he has rather low expectations. The
featured article criteria are the standards we hold articles to, and
every single one those articles is lacking (as Geni pointed out). Is
holding articles to a high standard a bad thing? I would hope not.

-Mark


from_name: charles matthews

body:
"Tony Sidaway" wrote

>If as you claim only one person is interested in it, what's it doing as a
FA?

Come now, it doesn't work like that.

Charles


from_name: Ryan Delaney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

body:
Philip Sandifer wrote:

>
> Didn't I read something about imagining a world where every person
> has free access to the sum of all human knowledge? And about that
> being what we're doing?

Somehow, I doubt that Jimbo was thinking about a small lump of green
putty I pulled out of my armpit one midsummer morning when he said that.
There are limits.

- Ryan


body:
On 10/2/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> If as you claim only one person is interested in it, what's it doing as a
> FA?

No. of people interested in it is not a featured article criteria.
Remember in thoery any article if it is of a high enough standard can
become a featured article

--
geni


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Portals

body:
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Daniel Ben Hoz wrote:
> Dear Wikipedia Group,
>         Do you think it would be a good idea if we had a wiki portal for a specific state/province/area of a country (examples could be: Madison, WI, Negev, Israel, Nunavut, Wales, and etc.)? Maybe even in other languages (like Tel-Aviv could also be in hebrew, yiddish, russian, arabic, not only in english, etc.). We could make it be like a hub, we have main events listed, etc. Write me back what you think.
>
> Sincerely,
> Daniel Hoz
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
I don't see why not, as long as you have more then just a few articles
to list there. Additionally, it should only be in English, on the
English Wikipedia. The other languages should go on the Wikipedia for
that language.

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from_name: Stephen Bain

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Becoming more encyclopedia-like: 1: Encephalon's
	comments

body:
On 10/2/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Time to rename AfD. AGAIN.
...
> The question is: What is The Bit of Wikipedia Formerly Known as AfD
> designed to do? Is it to get articles that you don't like deleted? Or is
> it to seperate the chaff from the grain?

Perhaps we can just come up with some kind of strange symbol for it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Princesymbol.png

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

body:
>From: Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com>
>
>Before yesterday, I didn't know what a SPUI was.  Now I have a good
>general understanding of a SPUI.  Now, some may say, no one but a
>traffic engineer would be interested in that!  NN, DELETE!  Why
>shouldn't we serve the traffic engineer as well as we serve the Dr.
>Who fan, or the environmental scientist, or the pop culture buff?
>It's all POV when you start throwing terms like "notability" rather
>than relying on third party verifiability.
>
>Wikipedia IS an encyclopedia, but because it's the most comprehensive
>encyclopedia ever, it's actually many encyclopedias.  It's an
>encyclopedia of Dr. Who, an encyclopedia of U.S. history, an
>encyclopedia of British colonies, an encyclopedia of schools, an
>encyclopedia of Egyptian regents, an encyclopedia of construction
>equipment, an encyclopedia of Mariah Carey recordings, etc...   and we
>don't have to limit it arbitrarily for some group of editors's POVs
>regarding "notability".

And yet, there are definitely notability clauses within various policies.
"What Wikipedia is not" implies notability, as do the requirements about
biographies, reliability of sources, etc.  And, of course, Jimbo's statement
about "extreme minority opinions" as regards NPOV is also all about
notability - if notability (and editorial discretion regarding it) were not
present, then all we'd really need would be the NPOV policy, and all it
would have to say was "all opinions are represented, and must be attributed
to their source".

I view the claims that Wikipedia has no notability requirements as an
extreme position, and one incompatible with creating an encyclopedia (as
opposed to a giant repository of all known facts).  While Wikipedia has no
*explicit* notability policies, I think notability requirements are implicit
in both its existing policies and its fundamental mandate.

Jay.


from_name: Philip Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

body:
On Oct 2, 2005, at 8:59 PM, JAY JG wrote:
>
> I view the claims that Wikipedia has no notability requirements as
> an extreme position, and one incompatible with creating an
> encyclopedia (as opposed to a giant repository of all known facts).
>

Didn't I read something about imagining a world where every person
has free access to the sum of all human knowledge? And about that
being what we're doing?

-Snowspinner


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 27, Issue 10

body:
On 10/3/05, *Tony Sidaway* <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:

"I have a different view of Wikipedia's strengths--I think we're really good
at producing so-so, useful but not perfect articles, and that we should
spend energy trying to maximise our production rate at this level. I view
the FA process as masturbatory, self-congratulatory, and of low impace on
the project as a whole."

While you are entitled to your opinion, you are simply wrong. The featured
articles have many-fold benefits. Not only are they wonderful for public
relations (because when people ask "How the hell can Wikipedia produce
something of quality?" we have a ready-made answer), but the featured articles
also encourage people to produce higher quality writing *instead* of medeocre
ones. In other words, it gives us a very visible way of "pushing" the manual
of style and other good writing habits onto people. (If it were not for the
featured articles, who would bother to cite references in an article?)

Turning the FAC into something like the AFD is a perfectly good way of
ruining a well-functioning system. We should instead be exploring ways
to make AFD (which is functionally broken) more like the FAC.

The thing is - let's face it - we have all the bases covered. We already have
articles on more-or-less all the topics you would expect in a traditional
encyclopedia. The big job from now on is going to be improving those articles
into something better. It's easy to write a stub; it's hard to write a
comprehensive, well referenced article (which is what we *should* be aiming for,
not medeocrity).

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

body:
>From: Philip Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com>
>
>On Oct 2, 2005, at 8:59 PM, JAY JG wrote:
>>
>>I view the claims that Wikipedia has no notability requirements as  an
>>extreme position, and one incompatible with creating an  encyclopedia (as
>>opposed to a giant repository of all known facts).
>>
>
>Didn't I read something about imagining a world where every person  has
>free access to the sum of all human knowledge? And about that  being what
>we're doing?

To begin with, I do not think we should insist that every policy in
Wikipedia be completely internally consistent, nor should we insist on that
requirement for every statement by our fearless leader.  There are natural
conflicts that arise when one simultaneously tries to provide maximal
knowledge at the macro level, and yet is faced with trying to put together
an informative and useful product at the micro level.

Equally importantly, many people view "knowledge" to be something rather
more refined than "compilations of facts".

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Proper response to "crap" AfD nominations

body:
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Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> No, that's way too hard of a thing to automate. I was able to keep it going
> for a while, but there are a lot of technical impediments and it just
> required way too much attention. Between the fact that VfD kept changing out
> from under me and the fact that some moron got the bright idea of creating
> blank pages over top of the deleted pages and then protecting them, I gave
> up on the bot. The cabal has spoken, they don't want me to be able to view
> deleted articles. In this case, information just didn't want to be free.

Who's creating blank pages over deleted pages and protecting them?

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from_name: SJ

body:
On 10/2/05, Mark Pellegrini <mapellegrini at comcast.net> wrote:

> While you are entitled to your opinion, you are simply wrong. The featured
> articles have many-fold benefits. Not only are they wonderful for public
> relations (because when people ask "How the hell can Wikipedia produce
> something of quality?" we have a ready-made answer), but the featured articles
> also encourage people to produce higher quality writing *instead* of medeocre
> ones. In other words, it gives us a very visible way of "pushing" the manual
> of style and other good writing habits onto people. (If it were not for the
> featured articles, who would bother to cite references in an article?)

I agree with Mark completely here.  Striving for perfection is one of
the things that subtlely drives the entire project.  Three glorious
things that I cherish that Wikipedia has pioneered are: the
distributed featured article, the distributed news essay, and the
distributed writing class.  Each is worthy of real praise.  All three
require talented individuals to produce model content for others to
emulate, and require the development of simple policies so that people
three steps removed from the models can still contribute productively.

I'd like to know at what point WP has produced half of the world's
"writers familiar with good encyclopedic style."  We're probably a few
years away from that yet.

SJ


from_name: Ryan W. (Merovingian)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Taking your eyes off the ball

body:
I can see that; it's not that I think the standards are too tough, more like the process is too slow.

> From: geni <geniice at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Taking your eyes off the
> 	ball
>
> On 10/2/05, Ryan W. (Merovingian) <bigwiki at earthling.net> wrote:
> > Blargh, I don't know.  I was talking more about AfD, though.
> >
> > Nevertheless, the FAC process needs to go faster.  Look at last
> > week: we gained four and >lost three FAs.  That comes out to a
> > total gain of one.  This is unacceptable.
>
> The standards for a FA are increaseing.
>
>
> --
> geni

--
___________________________________________________________
Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

body:
On Oct 2, 2005, at 9:35 PM, JAY JG wrote:
>
> To begin with, I do not think we should insist that every policy in
> Wikipedia be completely internally consistent, nor should we insist
> on that requirement for every statement by our fearless leader.
> There are natural conflicts that arise when one simultaneously
> tries to provide maximal knowledge at the macro level, and yet is
> faced with trying to put together an informative and useful product
> at the micro level.
>
> Equally importantly, many people view "knowledge" to be something
> rather more refined than "compilations of facts".
>
> Jay.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

But I think this is very important - inclusion doesn't mean
prominence. I don't think there's any body of information that, given
time and volunteers, can't be well organized. Especially if its
creation is incremental. I mean, take what I think is one of our
worst and most disjointed topics - the 2004 US Presidential Election
controversy - and I think it's still basically pretty well organized.
I look at other crufty things like Pokemon, and they're incredibly
well organized. Much better organized than the philosophy articles,
actually, which nobody seems to want to delete.

I'm not saying that [[Creationism]] should have every major
creationist "scientist" included in the article with extensive
summaries of all their publications. I'm not even saying that it
should include links to them all. Or any of them. I'm not even saying
it should have a link to [[List of creationists]]. But I see no
reason not to have all the articles linking upward. The fate of more
oddly esoteric articles doesn't need to be omission to succeed in
refining and clarity. It can just be that weird and esoteric topics
don't get linked to from many other topics.

-Snowspinner


body:
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geni wrote:
> On 10/2/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> Quite a few people when people wont stop recreating the page.

For some reason I don't think that's what he meant. Certainly we need a
way to stop delete wars. I protect blank pages occasionally. The way he
said it makes it sound like they're doing it just to keep people from
ever re-creating it, after an afd.
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body:
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> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> The easiest way to stop delete wars would be to desysop the admins who get
> involved in them.
I'm talking about the kind where users are repeatedly making attack
pages, or some other type of vandalism, hoax, or CSDable material..

> I'm not sure why people do it (protect blank pages), all I
> know is it helps make it damn near impossible to collect deleted pages so
> they can be distributed on another site. From what I gather legitimate
> speedy deletion has been expanded beyond just nonsense pages as well, so
> without any support from an admin or a developer I'd be fighting a losing
> battle.
It helps for the reason I just mentioned. Why does it make it impossible
to collect those pages?

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from_name: Mark Ryan

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Multilingual error messages

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Where do we edit this? How do we contribute more translations?

You can edit it by ripping the file off there, editing it, and giving
it to a developer to re-upload to the server :) If any developer wants
to make it more wiki, they can go right ahead. I'd just rather see
them preventing the error messages to begin with :)

As for the translations, I guess you could submit more at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multilingual_error_messages/Translations

However, considering at this stage all languages are all compiled into
the one file and the file is approaching 20Kb (despite my strenuous
efforts to mke the code as small as possible). So any other languages
that get added (in my opinion) won't be able to have as much text as
the current ones. Maybe we should drop the donation paragraph?

~Mark Ryan


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
On 10/2/05, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> "Tony Sidaway" wrote
>
> >If as you claim only one person is interested in it, what's it doing as a
> FA?
>
> Come now, it doesn't work like that.

I know how it works. I'm suggesting that articles of no interest to anyone
except the author (and I don't happen to think the example given comes
anywhere near qualifying for that particular condition) probably shouldn't
be FAs. Conversely, articles of wide interest, even though imperfect, should
probably take precedence over polished articles on less interesting
subjects. The main page isn't really the right place to showcase solely
writing and organisational skills, because really those are very much
subsidiary to making useful information accessible to all.

In short, the answer to worries about having too few featured articles is to
feature far more, many many times more, articles on the main page. Even
those ten randomly chosen articles wouldn't take much work to make them
perfectly acceptable for the main page.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

body:
On 10/2/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com>
> >
> >Before yesterday, I didn't know what a SPUI was.  Now I have a good
> >general understanding of a SPUI.  Now, some may say, no one but a
> >traffic engineer would be interested in that!  NN, DELETE!  Why
> >shouldn't we serve the traffic engineer as well as we serve the Dr.
> >Who fan, or the environmental scientist, or the pop culture buff?
> >It's all POV when you start throwing terms like "notability" rather
> >than relying on third party verifiability.
> >
> >Wikipedia IS an encyclopedia, but because it's the most comprehensive
> >encyclopedia ever, it's actually many encyclopedias.  It's an
> >encyclopedia of Dr. Who, an encyclopedia of U.S. history, an
> >encyclopedia of British colonies, an encyclopedia of schools, an
> >encyclopedia of Egyptian regents, an encyclopedia of construction
> >equipment, an encyclopedia of Mariah Carey recordings, etc...   and we
> >don't have to limit it arbitrarily for some group of editors's POVs
> >regarding "notability".
>
> And yet, there are definitely notability clauses within various policies.
> "What Wikipedia is not" implies notability, as do the requirements about
> biographies, reliability of sources, etc.  And, of course, Jimbo's statement
> about "extreme minority opinions" as regards NPOV is also all about
> notability - if notability (and editorial discretion regarding it) were not
> present, then all we'd really need would be the NPOV policy, and all it
> would have to say was "all opinions are represented, and must be attributed
> to their source".
>
> I view the claims that Wikipedia has no notability requirements as an
> extreme position, and one incompatible with creating an encyclopedia (as
> opposed to a giant repository of all known facts).  While Wikipedia has no
> *explicit* notability policies, I think notability requirements are implicit
> in both its existing policies and its fundamental mandate.

I think notability requirements have served well thus far to get where
we are, building a sturdy frame of credibility and a solid base of the
expected "typical encyclopedia" set of articles.  It's kept people
on-mission to date.  But I don't think they have anything to do with
Wikipedia's "fundamental mandate".

In my opinion, the root of the problem is that people have never seen
anything like Wikipedia prior to its creation, even those who started
it, so they fully don't know what to expect of it.  So they try to
impose their view of paper encyclopedias on it, without ever realizing
just how broad we can afford to be without the limits of paper.  Or in
thinking of it, they think that inclusivity precludes the ability to
remain an encyclopedia and therefore necessitates a mutation into a
"giant repository of all known facts" when in fact, one does not
necessarily follow the other.  It's a specious argument; an appealing
logical fallacy.

Yes, you are correct in that having no notability policies is
incompatible with a traditional encyclopedia.  This is not a
traditional encyclopedia.

Have you ever browsed the encyclopedia section of a major library?
How about searching on Amazon for "encyclopedia".  Sure, there's
Britannica, but there's an "Encyclopedia of Yacht Racing", an
"Encyclopedia of New England", the "ESPN College Football
Encyclopedia",  "The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding", "The
Encyclopedia of Window Fashions" and thousands of others.  We can be
all of these, and more.

If this project and its participants were content to simply mimic and
expand Britannica, I wouldn't be interested at all.  Yet that's what
many people at AfD are trying to do: confine a far more powerful
concept into their preconceived notions of what they expect from a
single encyclopedia.

And finally, regarding extreme minority opinion; we shouldn't fail to
cover the modern equivalents of phrenology, whatever they are.  We
should just leave those out of the mainstream articles and bury them
in obscurity at a depth proportional to the public acceptance of their
views.  If someone specifically searches for them here, they should
find them, perhaps in an article titled "non-mainstream views of X".
This is where editing skill is really most valuable: sorting the data
appropriately, not simply rejecting the uninteresting or unfamiliar.
--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote

>I know how it works. I'm suggesting that articles of no interest to anyone
except the author (and I don't happen to think the example given comes
anywhere near qualifying for that particular condition) probably shouldn't
be FAs.

But aren't you trying to make your point, by a confusion of two senses of
'interested'?  If there wasn't the fact that people can be interested in
articles (sense 1), in the sense of appreciating the content, without being
interested (sense 2), being prepared to author them at least in part, WP
would be a different animal.  Wikipedians support those who are not simply
doing work they might have done themselves, given time. So, a single-author
article can perfectly well be suitable for FA.  (If this is not relevant to
what you were saying, in some way, perhaps this thread is straying off
topic.).

Charles


body:
On 10/2/05, Mark Pellegrini <mapellegrini at comcast.net> wrote:
>  (If it were not for the featured articles, who would bother to cite references in an article?)

I would, and it has nothing to do with FA.  I've referenced every
significant content contribution I've made over the last few months.

Somewhere along the line, I realized that notability is simply a POV,
so third party verifiability is absolutely critical to good editing.
It's part of my writing style now.  I don't contribute any significant
unsourced content unless it's obvious common knowledge.  Even then, I
try to cite sources because it makes better articles.  We could
ingrain this into the culture of most of Wikipedia editors if we made
an effort of it.

Anyone have any good ideas of how better to encourage people to cite sources?
--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


from_name: Phroziac

body:
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Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> Judging from the large number of these pages, the kludge of a "solution"
> doesn't seem to be working.
I wasn't aware there was so many before you said so. There's a list on
[[WP:PP]] of those, which is *SUPPOSED* to be updated when you protect a
page for that. I suspect people have simply forgotten to delete the
pages again.

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body:
On 10/3/05, Mark Pellegrini <mapellegrini at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Consider the
> example articles Tony pointed at. If those articles "Exemplify
> Wikipedia's best articles", then he has rather low expectations. The
> featured article criteria are the standards we hold articles to, and
> every single one those articles is lacking (as Geni pointed out). Is
> holding articles to a high standard a bad thing? I would hope not.
>
>
Actually I don't claim that those articles exemplify anything except
acceptable content that would be okay on the main page. I don't think much
of featured article, as you're aware, and I regard the process as largely a
waste of time.

I have a different view of Wikipedia's strengths--I think we're really good
at producing so-so, useful but not perfect articles, and that we should
spend energy trying to maximise our production rate at this level. I view
the FA process as masturbatory, self-congratulatory, and of low impace on
the project as a whole.

I also feel that it's also a little dishonest to put such massage content on
the main page, when so much of the best that Wikipedia has to offer
comprises mediocrely written articles that tell you pretty much what you
need to know, and generally do it in less than a screenful of information
and without pointless fripperies such as pictures.


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

body:
On 03/10/05, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:

> > I view the claims that Wikipedia has no notability requirements as
> > an extreme position, and one incompatible with creating an
> > encyclopedia (as opposed to a giant repository of all known facts).
>
> Didn't I read something about imagining a world where every person
> has free access to the sum of all human knowledge? And about that
> being what we're doing?

Knowledge =/= information

(random analogy)

A list of seven-digit numbers is data. A nicely-arranged telephone
book is information. Observing that ~4% of the city appears to be
called Smith is knowledge...

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


body:
On 10/3/05, Mark Pellegrini <mapellegrini at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> (If it were not for the
> featured articles, who would bother to cite references in an article?)
>
>
I find this rhetorical question difficult to credit. Anybody who has ever
encountered a content dispute knows the value of references. The process
that produces referenced articles has absolutely nothing to do with the
featured article process.

And again, good writing isn't the product of the featured article process.
Ian Fleming's Thunderball, we're told today, was created "with the intention
of being turned into a film." A book with self-awareness? In any case, a
very weak sentence construction.

The article waits until the second paragraph to tell us that the novel was
filmed twice, first as Thunderball and then as Never Say Never. And then the
grammar bogey strikes again, telling us that Thunderball "was originally
scheduled to have been" the first Bond movie, and this was due to a lawsuit
"brought about" by one of Fleming's collaborators on the original
screenplay.

This is not terrible stuff, but you'd think that a decent peer review
process would pick up and remedy poor writing style. But the cast and
character list that follows the plot summary neglects to state which film it
applies to. Adolfo Celi's presence in the cast list as Largo suggests that
it was the 1965 version--Connery played Bond in both.

And "the famous Aston Martin
DB5<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aston_Martin_DB5>makes its second
appearance, previously in
*Goldfinger <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldfinger>*." That isn't even
good English grammar.

The article was apparently picked as a featured article mainly because it
has an interesting subject and some flashy pictures with pretty girls, guns
and explosions. There's nothing wrong with that, but let's be honest about
it. It certainly wasn't picked because it represented the best Wikipedia has
to offer, because the writing is pretty mediocre and in places is downright
embarrassing.


body:
On 10/3/05, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
> >so much of the best that Wikipedia has to offer
> >comprises mediocrely written articles that tell you pretty much what you
> >need to know, and generally do it in less than a screenful of information
> >and without pointless fripperies such as pictures.
> >
> >
> That seems to me a rather limited view of Wikipedia's strengths and
> potential. You might as well say we're aspiring to nothing more than
> creating exactly the same stuff you can find on virtually any website on
> the internet.
>

Absolutely not. We're the best encyclopedia there is. Isn't that enough?


from_name: Ryan Norton

body:
 > I know how it works. I'm suggesting that articles of no interest to
anyone
 > except the author (and I don't happen to think the example given comes
 > anywhere near qualifying for that particular condition)

I would argue that featured articles that, say, Worldtraveller, writes
(mostly dealing with advanced astronomy stuff)  are about as
interesting as watching paint dry - but they are obviously GOOD
articles - and that's the point. The whole "it's only interesting to
the author" argument is nonsense because its such a relative thing.

Thanks,
Ryan

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


body:
 >I'm going to grouse a bit.
 >
Very good. Now I'm going to just rant a bit (ok, a lot) :).

 >I think far, far too much attention gets paid to the worst articles on
 >Wikipedia - the studs, the vanity articles, the stuff of debatable
 >notability (schools!!) while not nearly enough effort goes into making
 >crappy articles into good ones.

YES. Finally someone says the real problem.

 >
 >People on AFD love to argue about the crappiest articles. (It also
tends
 >to spill over to this mailing list) On the other side of the spectrum,
 >the percentage of featured articles (number of featured articles /
total
 >number of articles) has been rapidly declining since March.
 >(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_statistics).
 >And yet no one seems care. Sometime this month, percentage of featured
 >articles will drop below 0.1% -- less than 1 article in 1000 being a
 >featured article.

OK, there are a lot of reasons with this. One are the new higher
standards that are being imposed. Between Me, Tony1, and SimonP the
standards are quite high - just look at the number of featured article
candidates (FACs) - now there is around 10 - just a few weeks ago there
were like 40 and then people were complaining because there were too
many!!!

Another thing is the inevitable controversy. When working on something
that a lot of people have opinions on you run into a lot of heated
debates. In addition, on many of those articles you're going to run
into obvious POV pushers who just don't get it - see my long response at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Redwolf24#Pop_singer_fancruft
to someone distressed because (s)he was trying to clean up pop singer
articles. It really is not a rewarding experience most of the time to
deal with articles like that.

For example, when I was trying to clean up the autism/asperger's
syndrome articles I was accused of a "premeditated act of malicious
child harm", equated to a Nazi more than once, and accused of
suppressing peoples' views. In addition, you run into people from
extreme internet groups that come to WP for the sole purpose of having
their group's POV pushed on any related wiki page in addition to the
group itself having a page for recognition. Then there are the daily
battles to keep it accurate and the original research people out (its
difficult to get original research deleted on AfD, ironically :)). Its
quite the circus and requires an unreasonable amount of time from
someone, and really isn't that satisfying at all. Plus, just editing
these articles often will give you the dooming "controversial" label,
giving you to many oppose votes on your RfA or what have you
(generalizing), so many people who are good editors just don't bother
running.

So, in the end its a lot easier just working on uncontroversial
articles that are usually highly techinical in nature (SimonP's
mercantalism masterpiece comes to mind).

I mean you look at a high-profile article like Microsoft. I remember my
first edit was to the talk page of that article complaining about the
obvious POV ranting on that page back in march - I didn't even have
another edit until late july because I thought it would get "fixed"...
- of course I ended up having to do it all myself... which seems to be
a common theme around here. I mean just yesterday I did a complete
rewrite of the hacker article because it was a mess and just wrong in a
lot of places. It only took me an hour, so I don't quite understand why
with 10,000 or so viewers of the page no one else bothered. Whatever
happened to WP:BOLD?

I really do think the FAC process itself is great though. It has two
real problems:
1)Hit and run opposers - if you are going to oppose you don't need to
help with the article but you need to pay attention to updated comments.
2)People who just nominate an article and never change it during the
FAC. For some reason this happens with like half of them and its really
annoying.
3)People who oppose because they don't like the article or don't like
the type of article.

There is also peer review - which as everyone who visits there knows
I'm rather prolific at :). I think people should be restricted to
nominating one article per person per two weeks - otherwise you have
the A Link to the past flood of 30 peer review requests in the same
day. As the point of peer review is to get the article to FA status -
which is not easy and is not supposed to be! It should take you at
LEAST two weeks to get one article up to FA status, maybe less with
help.

 >
 >Am I the only one who thinks we have our priorities out of order? We
are
 >we spending so much energy arguing about the horrible stuff that (for
 >all intents) will never be seen or noticed when our important articles
 >(think - Michael Brown, Tom DeLay, John  Roberts) are, well, not very
good?
 >

OK - there is a systemic problem with these pages as well. Its not all
that obvious - its that people seem to come to wikipedia to debate
politics instead of discuss actual content. Wikipedia is a horrible
place to debate politics - discussions are fractured and are archived
fast. People need to stick to content and stick to NPOV through
comprimises. Also, as evidenced by the Bush article, going back and
forth between various POVs doesn't work that well - that content needs
to be balanced and it needs to stick to neutral language and cite
reputable sources.

OK, sorry for the long rant :).

RN


from_name: Jei

body:
On Mon, 3 Oct 2005, Tony Sidaway wrote:

> On 10/3/05, Mark Pellegrini <mapellegrini at comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>> Consider the
>> example articles Tony pointed at. If those articles "Exemplify
>> Wikipedia's best articles", then he has rather low expectations. The
>> featured article criteria are the standards we hold articles to, and
>> every single one those articles is lacking (as Geni pointed out). Is
>> holding articles to a high standard a bad thing? I would hope not.
>>
> Actually I don't claim that those articles exemplify anything except
> acceptable content that would be okay on the main page. I don't think much
> of featured article, as you're aware, and I regard the process as largely a
> waste of time.
>
> I have a different view of Wikipedia's strengths--I think we're really good
> at producing so-so, useful but not perfect articles, and that we should
> spend energy trying to maximise our production rate at this level. I view
> the FA process as masturbatory, self-congratulatory, and of low impace on
> the project as a whole.
>
> I also feel that it's also a little dishonest to put such massage
> content on the main page, when so much of the best that Wikipedia has to
> offer comprises mediocrely written articles that tell you pretty much
> what you need to know, and generally do it in less than a screenful of
> information and without pointless fripperies such as pictures.

(I pretty much agree.)

How about just random articles?

Serving the "best" articles as features serves no purpose for me,
other than polishing our own shield, which serves us how?

The FAs are likely to be interesting and well written yes, but unlikely
to motivate any improvements to them through casual peer review,
unless a motivated expert with time happens along, which is rare.

This "average user" peer review could be better directed and generate more
feedback and improvements if the articles were instead randomly chosen
from the new stock. The probability that the random visitor would
contribute to them would be greater and the average "image" we give,
would reflect the actual truth of what an average wikipedia contribution
has to offer. A dip in our image perhaps, but also a rapid rise in
contributions?

Especially new, young articles should be "hardened" thus. When the fixes
per readers -ratio falls below a certain level, the articles should be
considered more mature, or "hardened", and be less exposed to random
visitors.

I would much rather expose the weaknesses of wikipedia content to the
eyes of masses, than just the crown jewels, as it is the masses that make
wikipedia what it is and this would get the maximum benefit. As for
striving for excellence and crown jewels, perhaps Google might sponsor
some competitions?

Not that any of this has a great deal of significance one way or the
other, IMO. :-)

// Jei


body:
On 10/3/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Anyone have any good ideas of how better to encourage people to cite
> sources?
>

Make verifiability a key policy, and egregious edit-warring to insert
unsourced statements a blockable offence.


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: LatexDoc.php - extensions unter Win XP ?

body:
FlaBot wrote:
> Hi ! I use MiKTeX unter Win Xp and want to use the LatexDoc-Extension.
>
> The DVI/PDF Buttons are shown but when pressing the buttions there is an
> error message :
>
> LaTeX error
>
> Command: pdflatex -interaction=batchmode -quiet \input
> "C:\htdocs\wiki/upload/latexdoc/ltd_2fe00d8bf090e354f95afd999a12711e.tex"
> 2>&1
> Output: entering extended mode

Try changing your backslashes to forward slashes. In LocalSettings.php:

$IP = "C:/htdocs/wiki";

By the way, mediawiki-l would have been more appropriate.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Alphax wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>The underlying assumption is that the article proposed for deletion is a
>>bad one, and since everybody knows that it's guilty why bother with a
>>trial?"  Let's proceed directly to the execution.  I'm sorry but the
>>rest of us are not so brilliant as to understand this swift logic, we
>>still need to be shown why it's a bad unencyclopedic article.
>>
>>
>Well, it's because it's listed at a page called "Articles for Deletion",
> isn't it!
>
>Time to rename AfD. AGAIN.
>
>When it was called "Votes for Deletion", people thought it was some kind
>of contest. Editcountitis crept into it and people would vote for the
>sake of voting. Extreme Article Deletion crept into it too. People would
>say "Damn! Pokemon is in! Better get rid of schools, bands, roads and
>all those Rambot stubs to make up for it! Double bonus points for
>deleting whole countries nobody's heard of!"
>
>The question is: What is The Bit of Wikipedia Formerly Known as AfD
>designed to do? Is it to get articles that you don't like deleted? Or is
>it to seperate the chaff from the grain?
>
>Hrm.... "Wikipedia:Article Threshing". I like it :)
>
I don't think that changing the tiger's stripes is going to make it any
less vicious.

What could be useful would be to leave all deletion votes open
indefinitely.  Even if the current trend is to delete with the relevant
threshhold being met, additional opinions could lead to an automatic
reversal of the deletion without having to go through a whole separate
undeletion process.  There could still be a difference in the margins to
prevent a rapid series of deletions and undeletions.  Thus if deletion
requires 90% support, it could be undeleted automatically if the
deletion support falls below 80%.

How did the deletion period get reduced from 7 to 5 days.  That seems
far too short, especially considering that many other deletions still
require 7 days.  A _minimum_ of a week seems most appropriate.  If
Little Johnny's mother only allows him a limited amount of time on the
computer after Sunday dinner when he has proven to her that his homework
is done.  Little Johnny, who is an A student with no homework problems
and a conscientious Wikipedian, will not have had the opportunity to
defend his efforts from deletionist attacks.

The other recommendation that I would make is that any substantive
change to an article after it has been nominated for deletion would
reset the clock for the deletion timetable.  Perhaps all "votes" made
prior to that change should be declared void, allowing those voters to
cast a new vote.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Three levels

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>On 10/2/05, Daniel P. B. Smith <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Users browsing the encyclopedia can set a default level of viewing on
>>
>>
>>>arrival, but bottom level articles are, by default, not included.
>>>
>>>
>>Ideological pure-Wiki advocates might suggest that by putting these
>>article on the bottom level you were preventing people from seeing
>>them and improving them.
>>
>>
>It's unclear what it means for bottom level articles to be "not included".
>Not included in search and in random page are obvious*, but there would
>almost certainly be a link there for anyone who typed in the exact term. We
>already have a link that says "View X deleted
>edits<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Undelete/Brian_Torby>?"
>For bottom level articles, you'd actually be able to view those edits by
>clicking on that link (the text of which would probably be rephrased).
>
Why not have these levels set by the long proposed article evaluation
scheme, based on th numbers which that process gives.  That carries no
deletion implication, but it warns the user that if he views articles
below a certain threshold he may just be viewing a lot of garbage.

>In that sense "deletion wars" would become a thing of the past, because
>simply editing a bottom level page would not in itself promote the page.
>There would thus be no more need for the kludge of creating a blank page and
>protecting it. I suppose this depends in part on whether or not
>promotion/demotion would be an admin task, though. If it were kept simple,
>for instance a "{{non-notable}}" link at the top of the page, then there
>might be some revert warring involved.
>
Believing that we can completely eliminate deletion wars is like
believing in the tooth fairy.

>I can only see two real arguments against it. The first can be fixed, the
>second can't. The first argument is that it's complicated. This is
>especially true if more than three levels are implemented, and personally
>I'd argue for two. The second argument is that it doesn't wipe "bad
>content/crap/cruft/whatever" off the face of the earth.
>
It shouldn't be complicated if it piggybacks on the evaluation scheme,
Working those results into the deletion criteria,  Having an article
drop below a pre-determined level would open up a deletion discussion.
On a scale from zero to ten, the original author should be presumed to
have rated his own article with a ten no matter what it says.  It's all
downhill from there. :-)

>* Actually, I just checked, and even deleted articles are already included
>in search.
>
This is a bigger problem that has effects on more than just the deletion
process.  It only adds to the need for a more sophisticated search
process, a request that our developpers are certainly aware of.

I often search single words in Wiktionary, but the problem could be
bigger in a much larger project such as en:Wikipedia.  The results give
me not only deleted articles but deleted versions of articles that still
exist.  I can't imagine that coming up with all this makes life any
easier on the servers.  For single word searches I can have 500 hits
when in reality only 50 of them still contain the word.  Those 50 are
scattered throughout the entire list rather than featured at the top of
the list.  Such an exaggerated historical search may be useful for some
people but they should need to check a box before they get it.

Ec


body:
Michael Snow wrote

> That seems to me a rather limited view of Wikipedia's strengths and
> potential. You might as well say we're aspiring to nothing more than
> creating exactly the same stuff you can find on virtually any website on
> the internet.

Well, we create stuff that is

(a) in a comprehensible, readable standardised format and neutrally written
(b) which uses hypertext intensively rather than randomly to 'footnote'
(c) and, very importantly for technical areas, filling in the background on
technical terms, not assuming expertise.

If all we did was to present such a sane, pre-chewed version of what already
exists on the WWW, it would already be a big deal.

I don't for a moment believe that _is_ all we do, and license into the
public domain.  For example, on bibliographies of authors, I think WP tends
to the systematic generation of lists of works that exists spottily
elsewhere.  The  systematic interwikiness cuts across the language bias of
the Web to English.

Charles


from_name: shivraj singh

subject: [WikiEN-l] brian0918 and tom radulovich

body:
Dear Wikipedia,
 Brian has blocked me from editing and Tom has been
reverting my edits.  Tom's knowledge of rajput history
is very shallow and when I corrected him he wants to
create a new page with my edits instead of the rajput
main page itself.
 I have given a list of more then 2 dozen books which
are my sources and Tom has not given any sources.  It
seems that he is relying on the internet for his data
or atbest(this is my guess because he has not provide
any bibliography) some disputed historians like Ms
Romila Thapar from India.

 This is unjust censoring of my argument.  I have
attached discussion between myself and Tom R.

 -Shivraj

>From Tom Radulovich:
POV pushing and speculation

Shivraj's claims on this page cannot be proven, and
don't belong here. The burden of proof in a Wikipedia
article is on the one who claims something to be a
fact, not on everyone else. If I write "it is proven
that the moon is made of green cheese", I should be
able to provide documentation that the moon is indeed
made of green cheese; it is not up to everyone else to
prove to me that it is not. To say that "if there were
no Rajputs in India then India would be just like
Iraq/Iran/Turkey/Pakistan in terms of religion" is not
a "fact", it is just speculation. There are many parts
of india--most of India, in fact--where there are few
or no Rajputs, yet the these regions do not have a
Muslim majority today; if Rajputs are the only thing
keeping a country from becoming Muslim, then why is
South India, with no significant Rajput presence,
still Hindu? What about Spain, or Serbia, or Bulgaria,
that were subject to centuries of Muslim rule, who, in
the absence of Rajputs, didn't become Muslim? And what
about Sind, which was ruled by Rajputs before the
Muslim conquest--why did it become Muslim, despite the
presence of Rajputs? If one wanted to prove one's
theory that the presence of Rajputs is the only thing
that prevented mass conversion to Islam, it would be
necessary to prove that 1) No region with Rajputs ever
became majority muslim; and that 2) all regions
without Rajputs became majority muslim. The historical
record doesn't support either claim; furthermore it is
extremely insulting to the vast majority of Hindus who
happen not to be Rajputs to claim that, but for the
Rajputs, they would have given up their religion. Lots
of non-Rajputs showed enormous bravery in keeping
Hinduism alive during periods of Muslim rule, and it
is also well documented that many Rajput leaders
showed less bravery in collaborating with their Muslim
rulers.

Second, to assert that "A point to note here is that
lot of Muslims and some hindu historians like Romila
Thapar think that Islam/Muslims did not do conversion
of Hindus by sword. The argument they give is that
there are so many hindus still today in India. This is
completely wrong because most muslim rulers in India
tried to convert as many as they could but it was the
strength of rajput sword that kept hinduism alive in
India." is patently absurd. What makes Shivraj the
definitive authority on Indian history, able to
dismiss scholars such as Romila Thapar as "completely
wrong"? It is totally fair to say that scholarly
opinions differ, or to avoid speculation altogether,
but to state that eminent historians "are completely
wrong" without offering some compelling evidence is
sloppy scholarship that has no place on Wikipedia. Tom
Radulovich 07:45, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

>From Shivraj:

Tom,

Fundamentally you do not understand Hinduism and
Rajputs. Hinduism is a religion which does not have
any way of making somebody a hindu. Once you are
converted to someother religion that is it. That said
in last few decades some organizations in India have
invented ways to make people Hindu primarily as a
backlash against christian missionaries who were
converting tribals.

Reason why Spain/Bulgaria/Hungary/Serbia are not like
Iraq/Iran etc is very simple. These regions were
conquered by christians after muslims and since
christianity preaches missionary zeal this led to
reconversion of muslims back to christianity. If u
look at DNA data muslim serbs and other serbs are the
same stock, similar thing in Hungary etc. Find out the
census towards the end of muslim rule in these
countries. Iraq/Iran/Turkey etc remained under muslim
rule for more then thousand years and the result is
that >90% of these countries are muslim. Now why did
this not happen in India? It was because of rajputs.
Muslims realised very early that rajput men, women and
children cannot be subdued at any cost and the wars
were constant between rajputs and muslims since the
birth of Islam till British came in India i.e almost a
1000 years. This was the resistance which kept
hinduism alive and not the benevolence of muslim
rulers in India. Though muslims would want you to
believe that no conversion ever happened in India on
the edge of a sword. If muslims had no resistance in
India, like they had none in Iraq/Iran etc India would
be like these countries. I do not understand why this
is speculation or POV (whatever that means).

Regarding South India the first real muslim empire
building that happened in deep south was under
Aurangzeb and he had his hands full with both Shivaji
and Rathores in the Indian heartland. Also what you do
not realise that his incursions into south India were
led by Hadas of Bundi and Kotah who are still regarded
as the bravest rajputs in rajasthan. Yeah Aurangzeb
was the emperor but he could not order these Hada
Chauhans to convert south indians into Islam and thus
south remained largely hindu, though there are pockets
in Karnataka (because of backstabber Haider Ali and
Tipu) and elsewhere where there are large number of
Muslims. (When Jodhabai died Akbar's generals said to
him that every man in his empire should shave there
moustache in honor of the departed soul and Akbar
agreed and he passed an order to this effect. Man
Singh and Akbar had just managed to befriend Hadas and
some Hadas were in Delhi during this time. The order
reached Hadas that they have to cut there moustaches
they laughed at the messenger and asked him to go
back. Then Akbar's muslim generals sent barbers with
muslim army to there palace. Hadas decided that they
are going to fight and to hell with Akbar and
Jodhabai. Realise Hadas are less then hundred in
number, sitting in Delhi which is teeming with Muslims
soldiers and they are defying Akbar's direct orders.
Word reached Akbar that Hadas are about to start
bloodshed in Delhi and Akbar was shellshocked. He
reached there palace and bowed to them and asked for
forgiveness. Akbar understood that if Surjan Hada was
alienated and if Surjan combined with Maharana Pratap
that would be the end of Akbar's rule).

Afghanistan/ Sindh was ruled by Hindus/rajputs since
time immeorial but after Dahir's death Sindh was
largely under unbroken muslim rule and no major wars
were fought in Sindh between rajputs and muslims
there. After Dahir's fall his son moved himself as
commander under the Mori prince of chittore and hence
Dahir's progeny were uprooted from Sindh and settled
in Rajasthan. As a consequence muslims did not
encounter resistance in Sindh after Dahir's fall and
hence the result of Sindh being largely muslim.

No Indian is insulted because rajputs helped preserve
hinduism in India. Perhaps Romila thapar and her ilk
might be. Yes there are a handful of non-rajputs who
fought well but that was an exception rather then the
rule. Fighting was only meant to be done by Kshatriyas
and nobody else.

Romila thapar, has written that Prithviraj Chauhan
begged Ghori after he lost. She has also written that
Ghazni broke Shivalinga at Somnath not because he was
against Hindus but some other bullshit.

You as a non-hindu and a non-rajput cannot comprehend
how insulting these statements are. When one of us
hears such untrue propaganda it makes our blood boil.
These things along with a whole bunch of other lies is
being taught to young Indians today in our shcools and
these history books have been edited by Ms Thapar. Why
does Romila behave like this? So that she can present
papers in western conferences and travel abroad. Make
westerners feel good yeah there was an Aryan invasion
and yes Indians and everything coming out of India is
inferior to the west. Porus lost, pythagoras
discovered the theorem, Pi (circle area constant)
invented in greece etc. If u have scientific
background read Donald Knuth's(Stanford Prof)
algorithm books where he has a done a better then
average job in telling the world these things were
known in India as common knowledge before Greeks even
knew what Maths was.

Sloppy scholarship is what I saw on wikipedia a few
weeks back when I first visited this site. A rajput
site bashing rajputs!! Reading history from books
written by biased historians does not make you a
scholar. It also does not give you free ticket to
spread the false propaganda to rest of the world. I
will not allow this to happen and I have been editing
the junk on wikipedia that existed before I looked at
this site.

If you truely want to learn more and are not arguing
for the sake of arguing as others on this discussion
are here is a brief list of books that are in my
library.

Maharana Kumbha : sovereign, soldier, scholar

Maharana Pratap

Maharaja Mansingh : the mystic monarch of Marwar

Maravara ka itihasa

The glory of Ranthambhor

Rathaura rajavamsa ke riti-rivaja : 1600-1850 I.

Maharana Hammir of Mewar : Chitor's lost freedom
restored

Maharana Pratapa : eka aise vira yoddha ki
jivana-gatha jisane svatantrata ke lie apani akhiri
samsa taka visala Mugala samrajya se janga ki

Maharana Pratapa : aitihasika adhyayana

The genealogical survey : Royal house of Marwar and
other states

Unveiling Ajitsingh's Sanskrit biography : issues in
Marwar history and Sanskrit poetics

Marwar-Jodhpur

The house of Marwar

Relations between Marwar and the Marathas, A.D.
1724-1843 A.D.

Maravara ke thikanom ki puralekhiya sampada

Durgadas Rathor : [national biography]

War strategy of Maharana Pratap, its evolution and
implementation

Maharana Pratapa

Poems of Mewar

The johur of Padmini : the saga of Chitor's deathless
heroine

Maharana Pratap : a biography

Maharana Pratap, the hero of Haldighati

Maharana Kumbha and his times : a glorious Hindu king

Maharana Pratap & his times

The luminous life of Maharana Pratap

Maharana Pratapa

Hindupati Maharana Sanga : sacitra

Rashtra-gaurava suravira Maharana Pratapa

Sirohi rajya ka itihasa

Essays on Bardic literature : Professor V.S. Bhatnagar
felicitation volume

Bhati vamsa ka gauravamaya itihasa

Annals of Jaisalmer : a pre-mediaeval history

Rajput tales : adapted and abridged from Tod's Annals
and antiquities of Rajasthan

Svatantrya vira Rava Candrasena : Jodhapura ka sasaka
1562-1581 I.

Maheca Rathaurom ka mula itihasa : Ravala Mallinatha
ke vamsaja - Maheca, Baramera, Pokarana, Kotariya aura
Khavariya Rathaurom ka sodhapurna itihasa

Amara Simha Rathaura

Folk tales of Rajasthan

Panna dhaya : prabandha kavya

Mevara jagiradaram ri vigata : Maharana Amarasimha
Dvi. evam Maharana Bhimasimha

Maratha confederacy : a study in its origin and
development

Vira siromani Rava Amarasimha Rathaura : Nagaura ka
sasaka, 1638-1644 I.

Vira Durgadasa Rathaurha

Svatamtrata-premi Durgadasa Rathaura

Prithiraja Rathaura

Bharata ka Liyonidasa, Sonigira Virama de Cauhana,
Jalaura = : Lionidas of India Sonigira Viram de
Chauhan,Jalore : a history of greatest patriotic saga
of Chauhan clan

Folklore of Rajasthan

Rise of the Maratha power

Studies on Maratha & Rajput history

Pranapala Durgadasa Rathaura

Rathaura rajavamsa ke riti-rivaja : 1600-1850 I.

Gogunda ki khyata

Rathaudam ri khyata

Early Chauhan dynasties : a study of Chauhan political
history, Chauhan political institution, and life in
the Chauhan dominions, from 800 to 1316 A.D.

Survey of Kheechi Chauhan history, with biographical
notes

Folklore of Rajasthan

Maharana Pratap & his times

Rashtravira Durgadasa Rathaura

The Mertiyo Rathors of Merto, Rajasthan (2 vols.)

Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan (2 vols.)

-Shivraj

>From Tom:
"POV" means point-of-view, and understanding the
"Neutral Point of View" is official policy at
Wikipedia. All wikipedia editors should be aware of
the three policies regarding content:
Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, Wikipedia: No
original research and Wikipedia: Verifiability.

I think part of the confusion here is the distinction
between the article and the article's talk page. To
say "Romila Thapar is a completely wrong" on the talk
page is rude and intellectually dodgy, but acceptable;
to say so in the article is another thing, since it
violates all three policies. It is not appropriate to
rebut theories about why Hindus converted to Islam and
advance your personal theory in the article, because
the article doesn't advance ANY theory on why Hindus
converted to Islam, and because 1) the NPOV policy
would require that competing theories be presented
dispassionately; and 2) it is your opinion (no
original research); and 3) it cannot be proved or
disproved (verifiability).

The Rajputs weren't able to prevent the conquest of
most of India by either the Sultans of Delhi nor the
Mughals, nor were they even able to prevent Muslim
domination of most of Rajasthan at the height of
Muslim power. The argument that Rajput military
prowess was the only thing that prevented India from
becoming Muslim is a pretty dodgy assertion, as the
record shows that the Kshatriyas weren't always
successful against Muslim armies (which were often led
by Rajputs, as you point out). Nor were the Rajputs
present everywhere in India. so some resistance (not
armed resistance, but cultural resistance) on the part
of non-Rajput indians was essential to preserving
India's Hindu character. I agree that Rajputs played a
very important role, but to say they were the ONLY
reason that India isn't now Muslim is a hightly
questionable assertion.

Also, your argument that "Regarding South India the
first real muslim empire building that happened in
deep south was under Aurangzeb" is factually
incorrect; the Muslim conquest of India south of the
Narmada began with Ala ud din Khilji in the early 14th
century, a little over 100 years after the defeat of
Prithviraj III. Rule by the Delhi Sultanate expanded
over the next half decade, and was followed
continuously by the Bahmani Sultanate and later by the
Deccan sultanates in the region between the Narmada
and the Tungabhadra, and extended further south after
1565. When Aurangzeb campaigned in southern India in
the late 17th century, it was mostly Muslim-ruled
kingdoms that he conquered. Tom Radulovich 22:49, 30
September 2005 (UTC)

>From Shivraj:
There are bugs in your logic regarding Romila. How is
it OK to spread one sided history of rajputs just
because historians like Romila have written it? What
is rajput history? Is it just what some westerners
wrote about rajputs and then some Indian historians
who towed the British line? Or is it what 99% of
rajputs beleive and has been passed down to them from
generation to generation? If one visits a rajput
village and talk to the elders on any topic that I
have written you would get much more data then I have
been able to collect so far from books I mentioned.
This is the history which is true and not the versions
of Romila and a few scholars from Rajasthan are
penning this correct history into books. Some of the
books have been mentioned earlier.

It is intellectual stagnation to not point the flaws
in history presented by Ms Thapar and other editors.
How can we trust there research when most of there
presentation is false.

Prithviraj could not beg a muslim for his life. Any
historian who claims that has a bias against rajputs
and it is unacceptable for us to beleive an iota
coming from there pen.

It is absolutely correct on my part to point out Ms
Thapar is completely wrong. (BTW this discussion is
akin to the aryan invasion theory which has been
completely debunked. Nobody in rajput country side
beleieved Aryan invasion theory ever. It is just
modern english educated Indians who were made to learn
this stupid theory and sadly is still the case in our
schools today thanks to Ms Thapar).

Conversion of Rajputs only happened due to a flaw in
there own character where they wanted to retain there
kingdom or remain an important general or the
relatives of this king or general who converted.
Rajput would not be converted by sword or how the
ordinary hindus were converted as explained below.

Conversions of ordinary hindus in India happened:

a) After a war was lost.

b) When a principality was ruled by a muslim ruler for
an extended period of time thru systematic pressure on
hindu population by threats of torture/inhumane
treatment/excessive taxation/women abduction/rape etc.
e.g. old delhi / mysore/ hyderabad/ rampur/ golconda/
saharanpur/ kashmir/ bengal/avadh (lucknow) etc. have
a very high density of muslim population. Wherever
there were hindu kings ruling there own kingdom these
mass conversion only happened if a war was lost on
there soil. I fail to understand why it is difficult
to judge the density of muslim population in muslim
ruled areas as an example of conversion by the sword.

Some Islamists say that Hindus converted to Islam
because of virtues in Islam. If that was the case we
should still see ordinary Hindus converting to Islam
today. But that is not the case.

Again you are wrong in stating that Rajputs could not
stop muslim invasions. This is myth that has been
created that somehow muslims were invincible and ruled
India for 800 years.

How Alluddin won has been mentioned in the "Battles"
section. Within 50 years of Chittore's fall Hammir
regained it by capturing Tughlaq and for next 250
years or so Muslims had no real success against ranas
of Mewar. Yes there were pockets where Muslims ruled
unopposed in India and these regions have highest
density of muslims. During Babur's time Rathores had a
completely independent kingdom which almost touched
borders with Delhi. During Akbar's time pretty much
entire rajasthan was ruled by rajputs. Akbar taxed the
ones who surrendered but his dictat did not run in
rajput strongholds. During his time and later also
there regions ruled by muslim generals of his and
these parts have a very high density of muslims.

This is another example of how the world has been fed
an incorrect assesment of history that muslims ruled
India for 800 years. This again shows how less people
understand rajputs, including all the non hindu/non
rajput editors of wikipedia. A rajput would only
conquer his paternal territories. Since Prithviraj's
direct lines ceased to exist there was nobody who
wanted to regain Delhi. It was not on any rajput's
radar screen. World has crowned muslims as Indian
rulers just because they were in delhi. Fact is Delhi
was just like Mewar another Indian state in middle
ages and happened to be ruled by Islam.

You talk about cultural resistance. Are you suggesting
zoroastrainism is culturally weaker then Hinduism? How
did Islamists convert entire Iran into a muslim state?
This was done on the edge of the sword because they
did not encounter a sustained resistance in these
countries as they did in India.

All Islamic rulers in India had experienced the might
of Rajput sword and this was the ONLY reason why India
remained largely a hindu country. We can keep arguing
about it but there is no other reason. I agree that
you have not read it in a book but it is the truth.

Regarding deep south exccursion I meant Mughal
excursions. Though some were launched under Man Singh
of Amber during Akbar's time but they were not
sustained operations as happened during Aurang's time.

-Shivraj

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


body:
geni wrote:

>On 10/2/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>This isn't a problem. It's what has made English Wikipedia one of the
>>largest reference works in the English language.
>>
>>
>It is a problem becuase you run into the issue of not very good
>articles. Your proposal won't work because only a very small number of
>people want to work on subjects they are not interested in when they
>could work on subjects they are interested in.
>
It's only natural to work on what interests you, and that's fine.  It
does mean that some areas get less attention than they should, but very
few people are able to write a superior article outside of their
interests.  They're often lacking the general background.

>Most people have two driveing factors.1.) the desire to write stuff
>2). the desire to write about stuff they are interested in. Now lets
>see how inclusonism and deletionism work on this two factors.
>Inclusonism plays to both factors but results in a large number of
>articles that only one person cares about. Works against the second
>but gains the advantage of encourageing colaberation since  A space is
>smaller it means that editors are more likely to interact. This means
>that the mean number of active editors per article increases. This
>increase the mean amount of editor energy per article which in turn
>increases their quality. Sure in time you may exauste A space at which
>point it is time to enlarge it but until then there is no need to do
>so.
>
>
The deletionist's anomaly is that he is often nominating articles that
are outside of his interests.  If a candidate article comes up in his
own field of interest he is in a better position to improve it.  I don't
have a lot of interest in rock bands, so apart from a very few very big
names none of them are notable to me.  Taking that further, even if I
were interested in such music how could I possibly evaluate the local
scene in some other large city.  Of course, if I participate in the vote
I expect my vote to be counted even if I have no idea WTF I'm talking
about.  If it's a matter of rock bands (and similarly for other
subjects), perhaps a vote should have less value if the person has done
no editing in that subject area.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

body:
JAY JG wrote:

> I view the claims that Wikipedia has no notability requirements as an
> extreme position, and one incompatible with creating an encyclopedia
> (as opposed to a giant repository of all known facts).  While
> Wikipedia has no *explicit* notability policies, I think notability
> requirements are implicit in both its existing policies and its
> fundamental mandate.

Implicit policies are only valid as long as everybody reads them the
same way.  Verbal contracts are recognized by courts, but establishing
the details of such contracts is full of difficulty because nobody
understands the situation in the same way.  That problem is at least
partially solved in an explicitly written contract.  If a notability
rule is so important it should be made explicit, but I suspect that any
attempt to do so with meet with significant resistance.

Ec