body:
Larry,

Thanks for your great commentary.  It is refreshing to get an infusion
of perspective from someone who understands what is going on here, but
also has some distance.

> If our encyclopedia project doesn't get an infusion of that
> expertise, the quality of the result will suffer accordingly,
> which is a lot.

I think you are right on target.  To write a world-class encyclopedia
requires expertise, period.

> The problem is that, with several notable exceptions, highly-educated
> people aren't drawn to Wikipedia.

Again I think you are dead on.  The people who are drawn to Wikipedia
at the moment are excited more by the concept rathet than by the
content.  If you take a bunch of people like me who believe in "free as
in freedom", there will be some experts in some fields just by random
chance, but the odds of our tiny band containing someone with the
expertise to write a top-notch article on, say, existentialism are
small.

> If we really want to make the best encyclopedia in the world (the
> original stated goal of Nupedia, by the way), we must discuss a
> pressing question that I suspect very few people on this list are
> disposed to take very seriously: how can we arrange for our free
> encyclopedia movement to be led by representatives of the creme de
> la creme among the world's scholars and scientists?

I can't speak for the rest of the list, but I am disposed to take this
question very seriously.  Wikipedia won't become world-class until it
is led by the best of the best.  We need to consider very carefully how
to get experts on board, or else suffer perpetually from mediocrity.

I also agree totally with the sentiment of you subject line, namely
that the free encyclopeida movement needs to be like the free software
movement.  By all means let us learn from success.  But your
suggestions on how Wikipedia might be moderated by experts would make
it LESS like the free software movement.  The free software movement
doesn't have anything analogous to what you suggest.  For example, look
at the way the Linux kernel is moderated.  If I understand correctly,
they did not say this:

"We need a first rate expert in asynchronous I/O to moderate all
patches that are being submitted, decide which to include and exclude,
and to do whatever extra coding is required to bring this area up to
snuff.  Let's sit down and think how we are going to get one.  What
incentives can we provide to draw Expert X into the project?"

On the contrary (again if I understand correctly) what happened was
more like this:

"Among the ranks of our current contributors, we have some guys who are
actively working to address this issue.  All other contributors in this
area, except for the most active and most expert, are contributing only
by tweaking and debugging the major contributions.  For clarity, let's
just give a semi-official status to what has naturally occurred, and
say that so-and-so is in charge of moderating submissions in this
area."

In short, the expertise was already there, and the moderation was
already occurring naturally.  I submit that the same thing will happen
with Wikipedia.  That is to say, in answer to the pressing question of
what we need to do to attract experts, I would say we need to do
exactly what we are already doing.  The current trajectory is
fantastic.  No course corrections are called for.

Why would free software naturally attract more expertise than a free
encyclopdia?  Obviously there is the maturity of the project to
consider.  The fact that Linux is an outstanding OS has much to do with
attracting outstanding contributors.  But what about contributions in
the infancy of a project?  Is there something that makes software
design inherently more of an expert activity than writing informational
articles?

I contend there isn't.  Having worked as a programmer for several
years, I can vouch for the fact that ninety percent of programmers
stink at programming.  It is decidely NOT an activity which, if you can
do it at all, you can do it well.  It boggles my mind that so many
crappy IT professionals are pulling down large paychecks, but I
consider it a temporary phenomenon of the transition to a society-wide
computer infrastructure.  The efficiences of automation are so great,
and expertise so scarce relative to society's needs, that idiot
programmers can still do well financially.

The question is why contributors to open source software projects are
overwhelmingly from the top ten percent of programmers that do know
what they are doing.  Is there something about software that makes
quality easily recognizable?  Is it an "objective discipline" and
therefore not analogous to writing encyclopdia articles?

My own opinion on this matter has shifted.  In the past I was curious
about the possible success of open-source-like tactics in non-objective
fields, but I couldn't quite persuade myself that they would work out.
Contributing to Wikipedia has taught me otherwise.  I can't explain to
you why Wikipedia is working, but I can directly observe article after
article getting better.  Objectively better!  Wherever people turn
their attention, good things happen.

Nor have I seen any asymptotic leveling out.  Yes, individual articles
temporarily plateau when the primary contributor runs out of steam.
Yes, there may be a pause when the driver of an article realizes that
that is about as far as a schmoe such as himself can take it.  But
those articles are routinely and naturally picked up later by new
people joining the project.

If you personally are distressed about your philosophy articles having
hit a brick wall, reflect that they are stalled only because you did a
reasonable job on them.  Had you done a shoddy job, you would have
likely seen more activity, but since your work was basically OK it goes
untouched for now.  This situation is only temporary.  As Wikipedia
snowballs, the rising tide will lift all boats.

Semi-decent articles are only immune to editing until someone with just
slightly more expertise comes along.  I say slightly more, because
contributors with vastly more expertise may well consider an article
not worth saving.  The person who is attracted is not the absolute
expert, but the relative expert who thinks, "Hmm, solid start, but X
needs to be added and Y needs to be fixed and the whole thing
refactored."  This contributor then makes the article as good as s/he
can, setting the stage for a slightly more expert person to be
attracted.  Eventually Wikipedia will rise to the level at a few of the
foremost experts in the world are duking it out in their respective
arenas.

My only counsel is patience.  The quality (not just the size) of
Wikipedia is improving as we speak.  Better quality attracts people
with more expertise.  It is a virtuous cycle.  I say that it will work
in the long run, not based on some wild hypothesis, but because IT IS
ALREADY WORKING in the short run.

Peace,
-Karl

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Why the free encyclopedia movement needs to be more like the free

body:
>> The problem is that, with several notable exceptions,
>> highly-educated people aren't drawn to Wikipedia.

> I don't know about everyone else but I think that statement
> was a bit insulting.

If you think so, then you don't know Larry very well.  I also
think he's entirely correct, and I can't imagine how anyone
can disagree.  We don't attract very many highly educated
people; I can think of maybe one or two dozen that would qualify.

What bothers me even more is that we don't even seem to be
attracting non-academic experts either.  Take a non-academic
subject like Poker, for example.  There is no formal field of
study in it, and almost no academic research (a little bit at
U of Alberta, but that's about it).  But there are certainly
dozens, if not hundreds, of professional and semi-professional
players who would qualify as experts at a level more or less
equivalent to a Ph.D. in some academic field.  We happen to have
one of them--me--and so we have at least the beginnings of some
good poker articles.  But where's our Bridge expert?  Where's our
cat breeder?  Where's our expert woodworker?  Our chef?  Our
basketball player?  Hell, we don't even have expert coverage of
most computer programming languages despite the number of serious
geeks around here.

But unlike Larry, I don't think there's any systemic reason for
our dearth of experts; I think it's just that the project is
still young and small compared to what it needs to be to achieve
our goals.  Yes, we need an approval/review mechanism, and that's
one of my goals for software development, but that in itself won't
attract the experts.  I think the only thing that will attract
them is a proven record of success.  And that will come with time,
and with the work of the experts we do have.  When the software
gets closer to completion, and I can finish adding all of my poker
stuff, and Magnus can add his wonderful biology stuff, and Axel
his great Math stuff, etc., then we'll have some things to point
to to say "look, this is what we've accomplished, and you can
help us do more".  That will draw the experts.

We may already be the largest Wiki in the world, but we simply
aren't big enough yet to do what needs to be done.  We need 5000
regular contributors, not 200.  And we need to make sure the system
can support them all, and do the things they need done to make
good articles.  For example, I really like the idea of having
"staff" specialists in things like image processing, copyediting,
and other tasks that we shouldn't necessarily expect subject
experts to be good at.  And we need to make it easy for authors
to contact and work with those other people (that's why I wanted
the e-mail and user talk page features, for example--I think
they're critical to the collaborative process).  If we build it,
they will come.


from_name: Jaap van Ganswijk

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Image Copyright questions

body:
Hi all,

First of all, I'm not a lawyer, but I have the Dutch law
book standing in reach and I know that the USA has since
1998 the same copyright law.

For details see the links on my site:
http://www.chipdir.org/about/ - legal stuff

My comments:

At 2002-08-30 22:55 -0700, Julie Hofmann Kemp wrote:
>"Yes, they're in the public domain because I've put them there now. I created them from works that were not under copyright, most of which (the paintings and such) were created 100s of years ago,

Copyrights will run until 70 years after the death of
the author or 70 years after making the work of art when
it was a collaborative work. Until recently this was
50 years, but the American movie-lobby wanted this
extended, because the earliest resellable movies
(from say 1940) were starting to loose their
protection.

Anyway, 100 years should normally be enough because
an individual artist is generally say 30 when he
makes something and doesn't get much older than 60.

Julie can put her version of the works in the public
domain as she says.

>and my work in creating and manipulating the digital images makes them my own work-product, just as a photographer owns the rights to the pictures he takes but not whatever he takes the picture of."

That is correct.

>Montrealis then asked about the use of videotape covers, etc, and this was the response:
>"They fall under the "fair use" doctrine for documenting sources in scholarly works

I agree. When you say something sensible about a
work you should be allowed to show it's cover.
That is indeed 'fair use'. You can even quote a
small part of the work itself.

>but, even if they didn't, the remedy for infringement is disgorgement of the profits, and there are none here.

I think she is (again) very correct here.

What she is saying: Even if there were rightful owners
and they should complain, they can only claim losses
and since we didn't make money on it, they (probably)
can't claim anything.

And how big do you think the market of product covers is?
Would be nice if they could just sell the covers instead
of the products. ;-)

>(The covers are like your face: When you're in public, anyone who wants to can take a picture of you, but if they try to use it to make money, you can either stop them from using it or make them pay you what they got from using it.) But the question is academic, because as a practical matter it's free publicity to entities that live on publicity.

She is correct again. And to expand the issue:
You can't claim 'privacy' as a reason not to
use 'fair use' of your face, because by becoming
a famous citizen you gave up the right to keep
your appearance private.

> And if you've ever tried to report bootleg tapes to the companies that own the rights, you know that they don't care." isis

This may be correct but doesn't prove much.
Copyright law is not a law between civilians
but of state versus crook, so you shouldn't
report these crimes to the copyright holder
but to the state.

(I'm not 100% sure if this is correct in the
Netherlands let lone in the USA, with it's
different federal and 52 (?) state laws.)

>The thing is, this just sounds wrong to me, based on personal experience.  When I wrote my dissertation, University Microfilms was very clear on using images from other sources.  I couldn't.  Not even my own re-workings from reproductions of old maps.

Whatever any private party (often with a vested
interest) says is not relevant. It's what the law
says, that counts.

>       Isis may be a lawyer and correct about all of this, but it just sounds iffy to me, especially in light of the second answer, which sounds like "it could be, but they won't prosecute".

Well, the second issue is what actually matters.

And regard it another way: Suppose the 'video-industry
of America' or the 'death painters society' would sue
Wikipedia and it would be mentioned for free in all
media? That should be worth a couple of $10,000 and
they wouldn't have a case, because we didn't make money.

Julie would probably handle the case for free (in
exchange for the opportunity to win a case of
world-fame).

>Does anyone have a definite answer?

Not definite, but close to it.

In the Netherlands we have the saying:
'Nooit geschoten is altijd mis'.
(If you don't shoot you'll always miss.)

Also consider that in the first phase of
a court case the parties will try to settle
the matter amongst themselves and then the
judge will try to make them settle it
amongst themselves.

And once Wikipedia is so big that it's sueable,
it will also have resources to survive it.

Greetings,
Jaap

PS. Legal disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, so all the
information above is nonsense and by closing the
window with this message or shutting down your
computer you acknowledge that and you promise to
forget everything that you read and you admit
that you're a sucker that doesn't deserve to live.

PS2. ;-)


from_name: Jeroen Heijmans

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Why the free encyclopedia movement needs to be more like the free software movement

body:
Larry Sanger wrote:

>In particular, the Wikipedia project has been defined in such a way that
>we have few official standards and no virtually requirements for quality
>of the rigorous sort that Linux had when it set out to rewrite Unix from
>scratch (and later remain compliant with stringent technical standards
>like the POSIX standard).  Linus Torvalds' task had well-defined
>parameters that absolutely required a lot of genuine expertise.  Our task,
>by contrast, is to write a very large, unbiased encyclopedia.  What this
>task entails is far more nebulous (though I and others have worked very
>hard to settle on and explain what it does involve), and many reasonable
>people reasonably think that this doesn't strictly speaking require
>genuine expertise.
>
>But it does.  If you think otherwise, you're living in a fantasy world.
>The fact that there is no organization like the IEEE staffed by
>world-class experts defining a standard that we must follow doesn't mean
>that our work doesn't require expertise to finish credibly.  I think
>writing *and finishing* a credible draft of an encyclopedia requires more
>and a wider range of expertise than the free software movement has.  If
>our encyclopedia project doesn't get an infusion of that expertise, the
>quality of the result will suffer accordingly, which is a lot.
>
So maybe I am living in a fantasy world, but my opinion is different.
First, I think many of the contributors to Wikipedia already have
genuine expertise. They have good knowledge about a number of topics (be
it because it's their hobby, work, study or interest) and - very
important - gain a lot of experience about how to write encyclopedia
articles from reading a lot of them, correcting them, talking about
them. And if there are more people needed for an article: they're there.
Next, "normal" encyclopedias are not written by the most highly regarded
experts either. There may be some, but in general these are not really
better qualified than many Wikipedians, in some cases there are
Wikipedians with better qualifications. In fact, the real experts will
not even bother to write encyclopedias, they'll work on topics in their
own field. Also, normal encyclopedias are usually written by a number of
people, where each person has his expertise. While his articles are
probably read by others, they're usually only written by one person.

So, while I think it would be great to draw some great minds to
Wikipedia, I do not think we have a problem just because we don't have
any (if that would be true). If these highly regarded experts think our
encyclopedia is bogus because they've read a lot of articles that are
bad, they are right and we can only hope these articles will be
rewritten (hopefully by these experts themselves). But if they judge it
to be a bad encyclopedia because there are no experts contributing
(which there are), it is these experts that are wrong, and not the
encyclopedia. Moreover, most people use an encyclopedia because they are
NOT a highly regarded expert. I find it much more important if they
think Wikipedia is useful. It is same as with the free software. If the
program is crap, nobody will download/use it, not even if it were made
by, say,  Linus Torvalds or some other famous guy. However, if my
completely programming-ignorant neighbour would create a great program,
it will be used. Most people judge by quality of the product, not of the
producer. True, Torvalds may draw more people to download his crappy
program at first than my neighbour, but when word gets out of the
quality, that changes.

So my opinion is that attracting expert contributors because they're
experts is wrong; we should attract any contributor because he's
contributions are of (high) quality, no matter if he's a high school
drop-out or a guy with seven master titles and three Ph.D's.

Jeronimo


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] "(film)" vs. "(movie)"

body:
Eddie Murphy in Bowfinger:
"we're making a movie, not a film"

;-)

Brion VIBBER wrote:

> lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>
>> I notice that we have about 50-60 pages titled "XXX (movie)",
>> and maybe a dozen titled "XXX (film)".  I'd like to see these
>> merged, and obviously it's less work to settle on "(movie)"
>> as our standard.  Are there any film buffs out there with a
>> good argument why our standard should be "(film)", or why there
>> might actually be a distiction?
>
>
> "Film" is slightly more highbrow. (But still below "pi?ce du
> cin?ma"...)  Using "movie" won't hurt nuthin' but my pride.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Box characters and question marks

body:
A simpler solution is to open that document *in the program that created it* and choose "save as" and select "text."  This converts the characters to unadorned text (quotes are simply " and apostraphes are simply ' ); it works for PageMaker, MS Word, etc.

kq

>I left Quercus a note about finding boxes with a hex editor. I use khexedit
>on Linux, but he's obviously not using Linux. Can you recommend a hex editor
>for him?
>
>phma


from_name: Pierre Abbat

body:
On Sunday 01 September 2002 12:48, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
> Character codes 128..160 don't exist in ISO-8859-1, or in
> Unicode.  They're empty, illegal codes that represent nothing.
> How some browser, OS, or font chooses to display them is
> entirely a matter of taste--some display boxes, some display
> question marks, some display nothing at all.  It doesn't
> matter, because their isn't any "correct" way to display
> codes that don't represent anything.
>
> The problem is that /some/ character sets, notably Microsoft
> Windows code page 1252, /do/ use those character codes for things
> like curly quotes and em dashes.  To be correctly encoded for
> Wikipedia, they should be changed to HTML entities referencing
> either the character name (e.g., "lsquo"), or the correct Unicode
> value.  Copying Windows text with those things directly into
> Wikipedia creates the illegal characters.  When we see that
> happen, we should try to figure out what they're supposed to be
> and replace them with correct ones.

The problem with doing that is that they all look alike to me, or to anyone
else who isn't running Windows. Generally if I see one box character that's
supposed to be, say, an apostrophe, I replace all the boxes with apostrophes.
If, however, there's a measurement in there in seconds, and I can't tell
whether it's supposed to be minutes, I'll put the wrong character in it.

I left Quercus a note about finding boxes with a hex editor. I use khexedit
on Linux, but he's obviously not using Linux. Can you recommend a hex editor
for him?

phma


from_name: Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Why the free encyclopedia movement needs to be
 more like the free software movement

body:
On Sat, 31 Aug 2002, Larry Sanger wrote:

> The problem is that, with several notable exceptions, highly-educated
> people aren't drawn to Wikipedia.  It's not surprising why not: I would
> like to suggest that this is similar to asking veteran programmers working
> on Linux and its applications to work with, supervise, and put up with
> rank beginners and script kiddies.  If they had had to do that, I doubt
> very much that the free software movement would have come a fraction of
> the distance it has.

> [ We're stuck with mediocracy. ]

Hi.

Every 16 months or so, some disappointed Linux fan will herald the doom of
Linux and perhaps even free software. This is generally because his
expectations, perhaps sober to begin with, have been tickled by dot com alike
impatience, and consequently left reality behind. I feel it is often combined
with a sense of powerlessness stemming from a failed sub project, a snubbing,
or perhaps general burnout.

  "Linux will be left behind."

  "The free software model is flawed."

  "There is no room for Linux on the desktop."

They point to relevant stats, pointing out tendencies and flat curves. There is
a lot of discussion, particularly at Slashdot, with CmdrNacho throwing in one
or two "Gotsta givit to him, he might on to smt...!!!1"

Depending on the issue, a year or a couple of years will pass, and the naysayer
will not only have been forgotten, but proven wrong. The people who work
instead of talk contiunue to churn out code. The inevitable rise of free
software has taken no notice:

* The driver problem is almost solved - many if not most devices are
  now supported in Linux.
* The desktop is complete - we have KDE, GNOME, word processors, spreadsheets,
  Wine.
* Mozilla made it.
* Countries are getting involved directly in free software, for all the right
  reasons.
* And so on.

So.

I think your comments are warranted. I showed Wikipedia to a litterature
undergrad the other day, and he was not impressed with the content. (The reason
he hadn't followed up the URL when I gave it to him, months ago, wasn't the
content however, it was his skepticism about about the openness - and this only
took 5 minutes to alleviate. Once he understood some of the mechanisms, and
that Wikipedia doesn't pretend to be absolutely neutral even thought it aspires
to be, he caught on.)

Do I agree that content today is often medicre? Yes.

Do I agree that with current mechanisms, this is our fate? No.

Wikipedia is hardly one years old (particularly if you subtract the lost time
when Phase II made it impossible to edit stuff). Linux after one year was
pathetic - nobody believed it would ever be anything than a toy kernel on a
386. GNU after one year was nothing at all (except source code on RMS'
computer). And I expect if they started from scratch, with sufficient
resources, the Britannica wouldn't have come very far in one year either.

I think we need a reality check. The article count may have made us dizzy.
We're not going to build the greatest encyclopedia in the world in three years.
Be prepared for 7 to 15 years. Free projects take a long time to mature, but
when they do, they're the best, and they're there forever.

Is it possible/wise to make course adjustments so early on? Sure.

But I also think it is dangerous to tell people here that what they're doing is
futile, because you're having a bad day (or week, or whatever) yourself.
Although I expect it to have little impact (much like the slashdotted "Linux
crises") - people will continue to work for their own reasons, and proving you
wrong as a side effect.

As for your specific complaint, sure we lack experts. But we _do_ have some. My
argument is that in any given field today, there are so many experts that it is
only a question of time until Wikipedia reaches that one of then who will
respond to our vision. The problem, then, is that not enough people know about
Wikipedia, and many of those who do haven't really understood it. The first is
solved by continuing to work hard like we do today, and our growth will
inevitably draw in the world. The second problem is not adressed today, and I
think we could certainly do better.

As for getting experts in right now, my response to that is: Use your
friendship, family bond, whatever clout you have with the experts you know, and
have them write one good and serious article for submission to Wikipedia. It
will not be Britannica material, but it will be better than most of what we
have today. This does not cost the expert very much, and being an intelligent
person, she will also appreciate the feeling of contributing to something that
will last forever, and be useful to so many people. In addition to some good
articles, we might even hook a new Wikipedia addict or two, as they keep watch
on their article for changes, contributions or praise.

I have five or six phd/professor level experts in my sights, and I expect I
could find more if I thought about it.

My conclusion: Things are going well. Let's not be carried away by the article
count. Continue working hard. Try to draw in the experts you know, by having
them write one good article (most will probably not become wikipedians, so use
this approach instead).

-- Daniel


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] proposal of quality controll system for wikipedia

body:
Giskart wrote:

> 1. "draft" : a new articel starts whit the draft-status. After 2
> months and modification by at least 3 different members the articel
> gets the "articel"-status automatic.  This way you exclude nonsense.
>
> 2. "articel-status": a normal wikipedia articel. Free to edit by
> everbody.
>
> 3. "stable-status":  For a articel to get the "stable-status" there
> must be a "vote-for-this-page".  After the first vote for a articel
> the software create a copy of the articel whit the status
> "candidate-stable". This gets listed on a special page.  . This stable
> version can not be edit.
>
> 4. "Expert Approved"-status:   approvel by a group of experts like on
> Nupedia. Only those members can change the content of the
> "expert-approved" articel.

That does not have my vote.  There is some sense to the first two
levels, if only to bring to everybody's attention that an article is
new.  Beyond that, multiple versions with different edit right seems
more chaotic than what we have now.  And what is the general public to
make of this, when they only visit to read about a subject but find
multiple versions on the subject?

Eclecticology


from_name: Giskart

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>
>Or we can simply revisit the idea of Beta/Stable; whereby some type of
>process validates an article. Having another level of validation through
>Nupedia would also be a good thing. In that way Nupedia would be a
>distribution of Wikipedia in the same way as Red Hat is a distribution of
>Linus' Linux and the GNU tools.
>
>

What do you think of this:
You give to the articels a classification. You can hide or exclude
articels whit a specific classification in your preferences.

1. "draft" : a new articel starts whit the draft-status. After 2 months
and modification by at least 3 different members the articel gets the
"articel"-status automatic.  This way you exclude nonsense.

2. "articel-status": a normal wikipedia articel. Free to edit by everbody.

3. "stable-status":  For a articel to get the "stable-status" there must
be a "vote-for-this-page".  After the first vote for a articel the
software create a copy of the articel whit the status
"candidate-stable". This gets listed on a special page.  There the
"candidate-stable" articel must get a certain amount of votes in a
certain time. ( 8 votes / 4 weeks ?) If it gets sufficient votes the
status of that copy changes from "candidate-stable" to "stable". This
stable version can not be edit. There are now 2 versions of a articel:
 a "stable"-status articel (static) and  the articel whit the
"articel-status" that you can edit.  To change somting on the "stable"
articel a new round of votes is nesseary.

4. "Expert Approved"-status:  to go from "articel-status"  to
"stable-status" you only need the votes of anybody. For a articel to get
the "Expert approved-status" the articel must be given approvel by a
group of experts like on Nupedia. Only those mebers can change the
content of the "expert-approved" articel. But besides the
"expert-approved" articel ypu have still (and always will) the
"articel-status" version free for everbody to edit. And possebly a
"stable" version.

At the end you have almost no articels that are compleet nonsens
("draft-status")
 From articels whit the "stable-status" you now is has been read by
different people and is probably right.
 From the articels whit the "Expert-approved" you now it has been under
serious attension of people that know that subject very good.

I think this way you have the best of Wikipedia and Nupedia together.
Every articel is still free to modify but you have also a layer of  more
static articels that are more trustworthy.

Giskart

"draft": a new articel gets the status of draft


body:
On Sun, 1 Sep 2002, Giskart wrote:

> group of experts like on Nupedia. Only those mebers can change the
> content of the "expert-approved" articel. But besides the

Hi. If we want to do stuff like this, we need to have branching, with an
approved "1.0" tracking an open-for-edit beta version. There can be no talk of
closing off articles for editing (except for vandalism protection, such as the
Main Page).

-- Daniel


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia.org request use of your modified 1913 dictionary definitions

body:
Mr Cassidy,

I'm sorry for the late reply but I've been very busy and had to do some
asking around to answer some of your questions.

On Tuesday 27 August 2002 05:43 am, you wrote:
> Mr. Mayer,
> Thanks for your inquiry about the modified Webster (copied below).
> To answer the main question, the GCIDE files available on the
> GNU server are freely usable under the GNU GPL.  Since it appears that
> you plan to freely distribute any materials taken from the GCIDE,
> I can't think of any reason why there should be any limit on your
> use of the contents of the GCIDE, or any part of it.

Unfortunately the GNU FDL and the GNU GPL are not compatible but small
quotations, particularly if marked as such and cited,
ought to be acceptable anyway under fair use (so say a couple of our
contributors that are - one of which specializes in IP law).

However the version of the modified Webster that I was talking about resides
at dict.org and that version's only requirement is that permission is needed
by MICRA in order to use more than 1% of the text. In order for us to use the
more current GPLd version we would need permission from everybody who has
contributed to the modified Webster in order to grant Wikipedia permission to
use their work under terms of the GNU FDL.

Yeah, I know it is complicated. However, we were just planning on using your
"first typing" of the Webster located at Dict.org and didn't even know about
a more up-to-date version (I assume that the version on dict.org is entirely
your own work under terms of the copyright notice located at:
http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict3&Database=web1913 ).

> From what I have seen thus far, it seems that there should
> likewise be no impediment to my copying and including any
> relevant articles from Wikipedia into future versions of the
> GCIDE (with references, of course) -- is this correct?

Again the difference in copyright licenses will not allow copying like this
without permission from copyright owners (it seems odd that the two licenses
are not compatible...). Theoretically it would be possible for Wikipedia
contributors to grant you permission to use their work under terms of the GNU
GPL but due to our development model this is not practical (although we have
200 regular logged-in contributors who would be more than happy to do this,
we have thousands of people who have dropped-in and edited articles
anonymously and are therefore near impossible to track down).

It might be easier to do it the other way around; have your contributors
agree to allow Wikipedia to use their work under terms of the GNU FDL. Better
yet would be to ask them to re-license their work under terms of the FDL (or
compatible license:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#DocumentationLicenses - a
dual license may be possible but I have to ask if a FDL/GPL dual license is
possible at all). Then the only requirement for either side would be
mentioning sources and providing link-backs where appropriate (see:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights ). The GNU FDL is also
recommended by Richard Stallman for documentation (see:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-gfdl.html ).

> The hypertext format of the Wiki differs from the present format of
> the GCIDE, and I would expect only some articles, or quotations
> from them, to be included in GCIDE.  In most cases it would be
> better to just have a reference to one of your pages, where
> appropriate.  I only include parts of materials already on the
> web where the relevant passages form only a small part of an
> article, or I am afraid that the site will disappear soon.

Wikipedia isn't going to go anywhere -- if I have to I will pay for the
bandwidth and hardware to keep it going. But that won't be necessary any time
in the forseeable future since Wikipedia is thriving and there are dozens of
people who would fork over cash to keep us going if need-be.

> ....
>     I will try to look further at Wiki and Nupedia to gain a better
> acquaintance.  If it appears that there are adequate quality controls,
> I may suggest to anyone willing to submit articles to GCIDE that they
> also submit them to the Wiki and/or Nupedia projects.

That would be great! Our development model may scare you at first; we allow
anybody to edit any article at any time - without even requiring them to
log-in. However, there are always a dozen or so regular contributors watching
all recent edits to pages at
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges in order to guard against
vandalism and copyright violations or for introduced inaccuracies. Believe it
or not but this works (any vandal or revisionist quickly gets their "work"
reverted into nothingness and if they are persistent they get their IP
blocked -- kinda like painting over graffiti as soon as it is put up).

Not much has happened with Nupedia in many months. There have been some ideas
thrown around for Nupedia (which has very rigid standards) to "validate"
Wikipedia articles and then present them in a distribution that can be
depended upon by those that don't like Wikipedia's development model.

> I am very
> occupied right now ....

As am I -- sorry again for the late reply.

>     I am also curious as to whether you have explored the possibility
> of submitting any of your articles to the Open Mind project at MIT?

I will have to research this - I've never heard of this project before.

> The GCIDE, Nupedia, Wikipedia and Open Mind all have the problem
> of getting volunteers to contribute serious effort.  It would be
> good if there were a mechanism to be sure that any such contributed
> effort would be available to all [projects to use, perhaps in
> slightly different ways.

Again - the major issue here is copyrights and incompatible licenses. But I'm
all for collaboration and have notified our mailing list of these ideas.

>     I am also curious to know how the Wiki project is supported, if
> at all. I have been working on the Webster as a personal effort,
> and it has no financial support from external sources.  Is
> this also true of Wikipedia and Nupedia?

Wikipedia and Nupedia are currently 100% funded by Jim Wales of Bomis
(http://www.jimmywales.com). He provides the bandwidth, pays for the domains
and just bought the Wikipedia project a new $3,000 server that is just for
Wikipedia (all languages).

However we (Wikipedia) plan on forming a non-profit corporation with paying
members. Jimbo says that his involvement as benefactor would not change much,
if at all, under this scenario though. Therefore any membership dues would
probably be used to start sister projects -- such as hosting complete public
domain texts that would have links to Wikipedia articles under appropriate
terms within the text (a dictionary similarly linked - and cross-linked -
would be a grand thing too).

>     I'm glad to see at last that there are others trying to get useful
> information organized into a free downloadable encyclopedia-format
> collection on the Web.   Congratulations on your progress so far.
> I am impressed that you have already obtained 40,000 articles --
> are these all recently written by volunteers?

Thanks! I joined the project in early January of this year and at that time
we had less than 20,000 articles. However we are seriously considering
revising our article count -- the "40,000" figure include about 10,000 very
short articles that really are little more than definitions or are
non-articles that slipped past our current automatic non-article detection
mechanisms (for more info
see:http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_is_an_article ). All of our
articles are written by volunteers.

>     I do hope that we can keep in touch and share any resources, so as
> to avoid any unnecessary duplication of effort.

I do hate duplication of effort too.

Thanks again for you time and energy!

-- Daniel Mayer

My user page is at: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Maveric149 )

PS I have CCd this message to our mailing list so if I didn't get something
right they will tell me (or maybe even you directly).

>
> ==================
>
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I am one of the administrators of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia
> > and would like to know if it would be permissable for us to use your
> > online dictionary database as one of our sources for article definitions
> > (this would be done one article at a time where needed). Succinctly
> > defining a term is oftentimes the most difficult thing to do when
> > generating encyclopedia articles from scratch and it is our goal to first
> > define each article before going into detail (creating a hybrid
> > dictionary/encyclopedia -- although we do not encourage covering topics
> > that can only be dictionary
> > entries).
> >
> > All of our contributors and administrators freely donate their spare time
> > in creating encyclopedia articles and these works are licensed under the
> > GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL) which encourages collaboration
> > and the sharing of ideas by ensuring content generated under this license
> > is made forever free for other people to do the same. A copy of GNU FDL
> > license can be accessed at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html#TOC2 and
> > a copy of Wikipedia's copyright policy is at
> > http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/wikipedia:copyrights
> >
> > We already have nearly 40,000 articles and I think both Wikipedia and
> > MICRA aim to create something similar given your own stated goals to
> > provide a "starting point for development of a modern on-line
> > comprehensive encyclopedic dictionary, by the efforts of all individuals
> > willing to help build a large and freely available knowledge base."
> >
> > We could make it a Wikipedia policy, enforced by our administrators, to
> > credit MICRA and the place where your version of the dictionary resides,
> > dict.org, for any content our contributors take from the 1913 dictionary
> > you provide.
> >
> > Daniel Mayer


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Median article size stablizes

body:
Karl Juhnke wrote:
> Date  Median article size in bytes
> ----  ----------------------------
> 8/30   990
>
> By the way, I love the new stats which have been posted in
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Statistics

Just to put things in perspective, here are a few articles which are
exactly 1000 bytes:
  * http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels
  * http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coatimundi
  * http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draco

Just a few brief paragraphs, but enough to give you a general sense of
what's being discussed.

For comparison, here are some 250 byte stubs:
  * http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnocentrism
  * http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Harrison
  * http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_magazine

some 500 byte articlettes:
  * http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glockenspiel
  * http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plane_geometry
  * http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_le_Breton

and some nice 2000 byte articles:
  * http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthage
  * http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maoism
  * http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein

About 46% of pages in the article namespace that are not redirects fall
between the 500 to 2000 byte range. 23% are larger than that, and 21%
fall between 250 and 500 bytes. The remaining 10% are minuscule stublets
under 250 bytes.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Tracking articles by anonymous contributors

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>> Would there be any objection to making the IP addresses as listed in
>>> Recentchanges and History be direct links to the contributions list?
>>>
>>> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>>>
> I presume that you are referring to the addresses for unregistered
> contributors.  That's fine.  But for registered users I'm just as happy
> to be able to go to the user page which links to "user contributions"
> anyway

Done. Where there is a link to the user page for logged-in users,
anonymous IP addresses now show a direct link to "user contributions".

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Karl Juhnke

body:
--- Brion VIBBER <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Done. Where there is a link to the user page for logged-in users,
> anonymous IP addresses now show a direct link to "user
> contributions".

This feature rocks my world.  Thanks! --Karl

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


from_name: Michael R. Irwin

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Why the free encyclopedia movement needs to be more
 like the free software movement

body:
Karl Juhnke wrote:
>
> Larry,
>

<snip excellent discussion>

> Semi-decent articles are only immune to editing until someone with just
> slightly more expertise comes along.  I say slightly more, because
> contributors with vastly more expertise may well consider an article
> not worth saving.  The person who is attracted is not the absolute
> expert, but the relative expert who thinks, "Hmm, solid start, but X
> needs to be added and Y needs to be fixed and the whole thing
> refactored."  This contributor then makes the article as good as s/he
> can, setting the stage for a slightly more expert person to be
> attracted.  Eventually Wikipedia will rise to the level at a few of the
> foremost experts in the world are duking it out in their respective
> arenas.

Perhaps multiple arenas differentiated on multiple axis will also
occur which form a weighted uncertainty zones around the solid/stable
mainstream view.   Thus revisionists and ideologues can be engaged
in flame war without disturbing the grade school kiddies researching
their "What I did last summer" papers or scholars are at the leading
edge
trying to figure out how to prove empiricially which self consistent
hypothesis matches reality closest to always skeptical generalists
at large.

In this extreme, Wikipedia becomes a somewhat continuous body of
knowledge which the browser can move through to review at their own
level as they are ready to absorb what is solidly "known", critically
assess or question  details, or add previously undocumented draft
tidbits.  One can look for what is reliably known and widely
accepted or for the chinks or messy remaining details or for the
better discussion addressing remaining questions and best judgment
of leading scholars regarding specific information.

>
> My only counsel is patience.  The quality (not just the size) of
> Wikipedia is improving as we speak.  Better quality attracts people
> with more expertise.  It is a virtuous cycle.  I say that it will work
> in the long run, not based on some wild hypothesis, but because IT IS
> ALREADY WORKING in the short run.

The positive feedback cycle driving growth (higher content quality and
quantity attracting contributers, more contributors create incrementally
higher local quality and more content) will stabilize at some point
from our system or community dynamics or environment.

Revision Control -  This issue is already substracting some growth
not only in new contributors but, even more dramatically, eroding
long standing contributors.   This means we are losing project
expertise developed locally from long time effective participation.
The question is can Edit War be replaced by a better mechanism?
If so, what is a better mechanism to try out?  At the other extreme
Nupedia's formal controls have apparently not worked out well.  I
suggest small increments of modification to the current wiki way.

Behavior Standards - What are the minimum standards of behavior
and how are they enforced?   This is more corrosive than many
believe because people inherently expect "fair" behavior.  Observing
community violation of personal expectations of fairness will
have impacts on the individuals observing or participating as well
as the victims.  As discomfort levels reach personal thresholds
and people leave what has become a stressful environment, the
community growth curve will negatively influenced.  It is the
expectations, not any specific absolute standard which must be
successfully articulated and met for the long term benefit of
the community.

Casual contempt of others efforts.  Our process of continuous
improvement of the material fundamentally relies on several
assumptions:

1.  Most people share the same goal priorities:  Highest overall
content quality possible is a higher priority than satisfaction of
personal agendas or ego.

2.  Poor material will be replaced on an opportunistic basis
in small and large chunks at the whim of random contributors
and fixated specialists alike.

3.  Brilliant, accurate, factual (or at least NPOV) information is
sticky.  It will tend to remain in the content as experienced
editors leave alone what they cannot improve.  Errors in judgement
will be reverted by subsequent editors.

4.  People are natively capable of applying sound editorial judgement
and this judgement will improve, relative to community standards
(articulated and implicit), with ongoing community interaction.

In summary:  In the aggregate, participation in good faith
results in steady improvement of the current and future value of
contributors efforts and in the accumulated value of the content.

Contempt for others' efforts breaks all of the above assumptions.

Mailing list volume.  As changes are accepted by the mailing
list, people who dislike them but do not choose to participate
in the mailing will either adjust, gripe, leave, be diverted to
meta, or join the mailing list.   Changes are thus a net negative
influence in the short term growth of content contribution.  Small
gradual change will have less short term impact.  Research exists
that show mailing lists to be a small group phenomenon which tend
to stabilize and mature in predictable life cycle patterns.   As
the mailing  list is currently our primary community governing
process it may be a limiting factor in the size of the community;
if we assume a fixed percentage of contributors like to participate
in self government.

If we assume that people like to ignore governing
issues unless controversy arises, at which time they like to
be heard, then the community may undergo a pattern of cyclic
growth.   Each consensus leading to a lull on the mailing list
with corresponding growth in contribution until the community
grows sufficiently that newcomers with new attitudes or size
magnifies the effect of previously negligable problems such
that the mailing list becomes overly active once again.

The above assumes the mailing list is primarily for consenus
building and discussion of meta issues.  If it also serves a
primary coordination role in community affairs then the steady
state volume may begin to scale exponentially with increased
group size.

Shifting leadership to an external panel of authorities potentially
eliminates the mailing list limitation and replaces it with another.
How many volunteers wish to work for nothing under the direction
or leadership of busy authorities with credentials they cannot
(at whim) compete with or influence?   At the moment all who choose
to contribute but not participate in the mailing list can, at
whim, join the pubic mailing list and attempt to influence
policy and/or custom.  Busy authorities in charge break this current
community consensus building model just as a governing or operational
distinction is forming:   If you will not collaborate nicely
(you have irritated several influential regulars by repeatedly violating
local customs and in their perception wasted their time because you will
not learn better fast enough) and will not come talk to the mailing
list to help build a better consensus (set of customs, implicit and
articulated) then you may be banned for the benefit of the project.

Meta.   This was an interesting experiment in diversion and
ignoring contentious issues and people.  Perhaps it will
eventually grow into a discussion forum.  It may or may
not scale better with large groups.  I have not run across
any scholarly review of wiki group dynamics online yet.
One problem it seems to have is that the articles there are
viewed as personal positions not to be edited rather than
as a starting point for consensus building or collaboration.
This may be because topics there are known to be controversial
and people wish to avoid ideological edit war or perhaps feel
that the original positions need to be preserved for newcomers
in the future.  Whatever the reason, participation at meta
has been fairly slow and much of it seems abandoned.

regards
Mike Irwin


from_name: Karen AKA Kajikit

body:
Pierre Abbat wrote:
>
> On Sunday 01 September 2002 01:52, koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> > The boxes/question marks are almost always a result of pasting in text from
> > Microsoft Word or some other program that uses "fancy" quotation marks etc.
> >  I always assume it to be the result of a copyright violation and
> > google-test it (which I'll go do now).  That would explain all three of
> > your questions below--where they come from, why the contributor doesn't see
> > them, and why they don't display.
>
> That answers one question: how they write boxes. It doesn't answer how to
> explain to them how to get rid of the boxes, or how the boxes turned into
> question marks.
>
> BTW, I tried googling for various terms on that page and didn't find it.

The simplest explanation for this would be that the person is writing
their article/s in word with 'smart quotes' etc turned on so it's
inserting the character coding that the browsers don't recognise. They
don't see them themselves because their computer is perfectly well
equipped to reproduce them. The other thing is that if your computer
does not have a particular font?character set installed, it might not
know how to display it so it'll use the question marks instead. When I
look at articles with Asian characters in them I just see a string of
question marks because my computer does not have the font to read them.
I'm assuming that the person creating these characters has the font
installed, so they see the intended result...

The only way to get rid of them is not to use the font...

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

And on the seventh day, God said 'What my world needs is a creature
that will truly appreciate it in all its facets' -
and so He made the kitten.

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

Love and huggles to all!


from_name: Larry Sanger

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Why the free encyclopedia movement needs to be more like the
 free software movement

body:
Thanks, everyone, for the replies!

Let me try to clarify several points--I now see that I should have written
a number of paragraphs completely differently.  I'm sorry about that,
really.

(1) Some people seem to have thought they were defending my view (or
expanding it) and others, that were attacking my view.  But (if you'll
read what I said) no part of my view is that we should change *Wikipedia*
at all.

In particular, my central suggestion (and sorry if I wasn't clear about
this) was *not* that we now try hard to design a Wikipedia-controlled
article approval system.  The idea is interesting, and it's something
we've discussed a lot (especially last fall, I think).  Presently, I am
pretty much neutral on the idea; in fact, I'm leaning a bit against the
notion.  Nor was my suggestion that we find a new individual leader for
*Wikipedia*.  (I said not long ago that I didn't think we needed one.)

In my post, I used the terms "free encyclopedia movement" several times,
to cover Wikipedia, Nupedia, and other similar projects extant and yet to
come.  Wikipedia is not coextensive with the free encyclopedia movement.

(2) In saying that most people weren't highly educated, I really *didn't*
mean to insult anyone, and moreover, what I meant (but didn't express
well) wasn't anything that anyone should feel insulted by.  (Some people
love to feel insulted, however.  I'm one of 'em, so I understand.)  What I
meant to say was something strictly factual and uncontroversial.  I should
have said: "There aren't many bona fide experts, leaders in their fields,
involved in Wikipedia right now."  For example, I am not a bona fide
expert about much of anything or leader in any of my "fields."

(3) My contention is that, for Wikipedia to succeed, we need experts
*guiding* the *free encyclopedia movement* (notice the key words).  This
must happen sooner or later, but I think it's very plausible to think it
must happen sometime if we're to succeed.  Now, in saying this, I am *not*
saying, or meaning to imply, that only experts can write credible
articles.  So it misses the point to insist strenuously that nonexperts
can write and make great progress on encyclopedia articles: obviously,
they can, and I'm sure I've said (and done!) so many times.

What I *am* saying is that, in the long run, unless a lot of experts are
involved and unless there is a process that holds *some* portion of the
free encyclopedia movement (not Wikipedia) up to extremely high standards,
the overall project won't succeed in producing a credible encyclopedia.
In some cases this might be because no one but an expert would be able to
write (or rewrite) an article on a topic properly.  In many more cases, it
will be because no one but an expert will be able to edit, supervise, and
otherwise whip into shape articles on subjects that many nonexperts think,
but mistakenly, they can write adequately about.  There are many such
subjects, at least if we want to compare ourselves to actual reliable
encyclopedias.

(4) I should have known better than not to spend at least a couple more
paragraphs explaining that I do not have a fetish for formal
qualifications.  I agree absolutely completely 100% that it is totally
possible for people who lack any sort of formal qualifications to write
(and edit and code) wonderful creative works of all sorts.  I also agree
that this is at the heart of the success of the open source movement.
But that mere possibility doesn't mean that we don't need a lot of experts
*guiding* a quality control process that Wikipedia benefits from.  Part of
the irony in my title was precisely this point: the open source movement
is full of all sorts of people with relatively few formal qualifications,
and no one cares.  But, IN FACT, the movement in general is guided by
people who are a lot more expert in coding than the average Wikipedian is
about what he or she writes about (and that couldn't be otherwise, given
its success).  There's nothing paradoxical about this--and it doesn't make
the free software movement into a cathedral rather than a bazaar.  It's a
bazaar *guided* by expert coders.  Kind of (but not entirely) like the
stock market, a more or less free market, being guided by Wall Street
gurus.

(5) I am not heralding the doom of Wikipedia, Daniel M., nor did I say (or
mean to imply) that what Wikipedia does is futile, and I'm sorry if I
wasn't clear about that.  In fact, I think that, eventually, Wikipedia
*will* get the loose direction (by example) it needs, by becoming an
independent part of an open encyclopedia movement that includes an (also
independent) expert-staffed review board.  Part of the purpose of my post
was to help move the movement in that direction.

(6) It is possible, as a few people seem to think, that by attracting many
experts *to Wikipedia* (and continuing to forget that Nupedia ever
happened) will result in the sort of excellent quality I hope we'll
achieve.  If that were to happen, I'd be delighted.  (I don't expect it to
happen; see (9) below.  But it wasn't my suggestion. My suggestion was for
Wikipedians to get behind a new or newly revitalized project (such as
Nupedia), officially independent of Wikipedia, that would be managed by
experts.

Roll out the red carpet.  Create a structure that will make the elite feel
welcome to be involved in a *leadership* role.  Get universities involved,
and major research institutions, and even businesses--just as is the case
with the open source movement.

(This, by the way, doesn't mean that they would set the standards for
*Wikipedia*.  I would strongly oppose that; Wikipedia should be
self-managing as it always has been.  But Wikipedia articles are open
content.  They might manage a different project that uses Wikipedia
content, as is their right.  Wikipedia would hugely benefit if this
happened.)

(7) Fred Bauder was right to point out that a lot of the people who could
help *Wikipedia* most just won't put up with arguing with people who they
think should be sitting down and taking notes.  A college professor who
has spent his life studying X would, at least in many cases, find it
absurd and ludicrous that he should have to argue with someone about X who
has maybe had a college course on the subject and read a few books.
There are exceptions, but they are *really* exceptions, and be grateful
for them.  You might hate this attitude, but it's a fact of life.  The
free stuff movement (how's that for a name) might be fantastic and
wonderful, but that doesn't mean it'll magically change this fact.

The free encyclopedia project--not Wikipedia, necessarily--needs these
people.  It's frankly a little silly to expect them to help us as long as
we continue to be wide open to everyone (except "24" and Helga,
perhaps...) and to follow the editing policies and practices that we all
know and love.  It's much *less* silly to expect a number of them to join
a free encyclopedia project advisory board of some sort, made up of
leaders in all fields, that would set standards and procedures for the
selection of *some free articles* (not to lead Wikipedia).  It's also
quite possible many of them will want to get on board as active parts of
the writing and vetting process--but on their own terms, not on Wikipedia.
We've already seen some potential for this with Nupedia.  But I think we
can do better, by getting behind the notion of a project led by, well,
*real* experts.  Not me, but Jacques Barzun, or someone of his stature.
Someone, or a group of people, that the best minds of the world can look
to and say, "This is fantastic.  They want to do this?  I want to be part
of it."

That's how academics and scientists think, hate it or not.  But it *is*
how they think.  Hard-headed problem-solvers will devise ways to work with
it, as a constraint.

(8) A few people think I misunderstand the source of open source's
success.

Stephen G., did I say that Linux Torvalds set out with exactly the goals
the free software movement has come to have?  If so, I apologize.  I'm
sure that most people got involved in the movement because it was fun
(challenging, inspirational, etc.).  I'm sure that freedom from
requirements of academic and other formal qualifications (and employer-
and client-defined standards) is an important element of what makes free
software attractive for many of its developers.  Moreover, I agree with
you that there are important analogies here to the present and future
success of Wikipedia.  But this doesn't contradict what I did say, which I
will refrain from reiterating.

Similarly, Karl J., I am sure the final decisions about what to officially
release are made as you say they are (by whatever experts are at hand, not
by the world's greatest expert about the thing).  It so happens, though,
that as the movement has growed in stature, those people who make the
decisions really *are* software experts.  If I'm wrong, please supply me
with an example.  How could the leaders of kernel releases, GNOME, etc.,
fail to be experts in what they do?  The success of their projects is
sufficient evidence.  This doesn't contradict anything I said, moreover.

The disanalogy between software and encyclopedia article writing is simply
that software has to work.  It has to do what it is supposed to do.  As
software grows in sophistication, this requires huge amounts of expertise.
But encyclopedia articles do not work or fail to work; still, very many of
them *do* require the attention, at *some* point, of an expert, in order
for anyone to be able to trust them reasonably.

(9) Now to address a point that at least three people made.  If Wikipedia
develops by itself, without any association with any sort of expert-
controlled approval mechanism, to the point where it is used regularly by
librarians and referred to as a good research source by college
professors, I would take that as prima facie proof that a *lot* of experts
are involved in Wikipedia.  But this is precisely what I predict will not
happen.  Wikipedians, in too many cases unduly confident (it seems to me)
of their project's modest successes, *need* a Nupedia.

Compare:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/25/103136/121

I know exactly what you guys are saying.  I used to think Wikipedia
*might* succeed on its own (but the involvement of Nupedia has always
seemed important to me); I now fear otherwise.  "Dreamworld" is hyperbole
--I have *never before* been given to hyperbole, though.  :-)

Axel and Lee both opined that Wikipedia might be able attract experts to
lead it (hopefully not in an official capacity but due to proper respect
to their expertise in their areas of expertise) all on its own, due to the
(eventual) strength of its material.  Bootstrapping, as many people have
observed.

I'm willing to admit that I could be wrong; I don't have a crystal ball.
But, looking at Wikipedia's contents now and comparing it to what I recall
from times past, I do have to say that I'm worried.  I don't think that in
terms of quality, overall, it's getting that much better.  But I also
admit the project is still very young and no trends can be reliably
predicted.  That doesn't stop me from being worried, and I think you
should be too.  There's nothing utterly magical about the Wikipedia
formula that *necessitates* that articles *on the whole* will not reach a
level of mediocrity they never excel *on the whole*.

Moreover, there's a reason to think far too many experts won't ever give
Wikipedia the attention it needs: it's just not a "form of life" that
they're interested in and used to.  It's important that we properly come
to grips with this fact.

My experience with Nupedia makes me strongly suspect that the ablest
possible contributors to the open encyclopedia project need their own
project with their own rules, and that it's unwise to expect most
academics and professionals anyway (I dealt with many dozens on Nupedia)
to be interested in joining a wiki and contributing in that fashion.

If Wikipedia gets behind the notion, it'll happen!

Larry


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Why the free encyclopedia movement needs to be more like the
 free software movement

body:
I agree with the assessment that the average level of expertise among
Wikipedia contributors is lower than that among Linux contributors or
Encyclopedia Britannica contributors.

However, I also think that an intelligent person with good writing
skills and no specific expertise can write an average quality (call it
"mediocre" if you want) encyclopedia article about pretty much
anything. So by following the current path, we have a good chance of
producing an average quality encyclopedia.

(In a certain sense, that "mediocre" encyclopedia will already be
"great", since it will be the only one you can burn on CD for free and
mail to a highschool in Tanzania.)

Now, producing the greatest encyclopedia in the world is a different
story. Maybe experts will show up in greater numbers as the project
approaches "mediocrity". Or maybe many of them will be put off by
constantly having to defend their writings against incoming idiots,
and we will need some sort of quality assurance process. Maybe we will
need a charismatic expert leader, or one will emerge.

But I think those are questions for the distant future. Right now, we
should focus on moving Wikipedia from crappyness to mediocrity.

AXel


from_name: Matthew Woodcraft

body:
On Sun, Sep 01, 2002 at 09:48:03AM -0700, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
> The problem is that /some/ character sets, notably Microsoft
> Windows code page 1252, /do/ use those character codes for things
> like curly quotes and em dashes.  To be correctly encoded for
> Wikipedia, they should be changed to HTML entities referencing
> either the character name (e.g., "lsquo"), or the correct Unicode
> value.  Copying Windows text with those things directly into
> Wikipedia creates the illegal characters.  When we see that
> happen, we should try to figure out what they're supposed to be
> and replace them with correct ones.

You might consider adding an
  accept-charset="ISO-8859-1"
attribute to the main content form. It won't do any good, but at least
you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that the characters are
officially someone else's bug.

-M-


subject: [Wikipedia-l] what was the eventual decision on citynames?

body:
Karen AKA Kajikit wrote:
> I'm not trying to restart the debate - it went on quite long enough as
> it was! But what was the consensus on naming wikipedia entries for
> cities? Did it come out to [[city, country]] or was that shouted down by
> the masses? The reason I ask is because I'm looking at a couple of
> entries that might be moved and I don't know whether they should...

See:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk%3ANaming_conventions_%28city_names%29

The basics are at least theoretically resolved.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Potential forking of Wikipedia

body:
Larry,

Thanks for clarifying your original posts and rebutting some responses.
 I didn't realize at first that you were talking about forking
Wikipedia.  That would be, as you say, a horse of a different color
from changing the way in which Wikipedia currently runs.

First let me reiterate what I think you are saying, so if I am again
missing the point, at least you will know what I am responding to.  You
want to have some articles taken out of the domain of the collectively
editable, and put into a space (say ExpertWikipedia) where they are
maintained exclusively by some expert or experts.  This would break
synchronization with Wikipedia, i.e. there would be no automatic
transferral of information in either direction.  If a Wikipedia article
evolved in a way the expert disapproved of, s/he wouldn't incorporate
the changes.  Similarly, if the expert article didn't satisfy members
of the Wikipedia community, they would modify it and evolve it into
something different.  In brief, the project would be forked.

Pursuing the free software analogy futher, there used to be much talk
about inevitable forking, and the potential of forks to kill off the
movement.  In practice, however, forks have been very rare.  The only
serious infrastructure fork was over libc/glibc, and that remerged
before long.  It turns out that two versions of the same program can
hardly ever survive.  Either one draws all the developers and comes to
dominate the field, or all the good ideas from one are merged into the
other, which obviates the necessity of having two.

My question for you, Larry, is why the same immense pressure against
forking wouldn't also apply in the free encyclopedia movement.  If
there is a Wikipedia/ExpertWikipedia split, why wouldn't whichever is
dominant gain all the momentum and all the contributions?

Suppose that ExpertWikipedia becomes the site that everyone uses as a
reference work.  Suppose that my contributions to Wikipedia are not
being incorporated into ExpertWikipedia.  In that case, I will become
frustrated and quit.  If I contribute further the free encyclopedia
movement, it will take the form of trying to influence the expert in
charge of the "official" version of the article.  I will submmit my
patches (edits) to her/him at ExpertWikipedia instead of wasting my
time at Wikipedia.

Conversely, suppose that Wikipedia becomes the site that everyone uses
as a reference work.  Why would experts want their work to languish in
obscurity on ExpertWikipedia?  They will either quit and go back to
writing scholarly books and articles, or they will wade into Wikipedia
and try to get there stuff to stick there.

You talk about experts in this way:

> Someone, or a group of people, that the best minds of the world can
> look to and say, "This is fantastic.  They want to do this?  I want
to
> be part of it."

There's the rub.  How can ordinary people be a part of the expert
project?  I think you need to spell out in more detail how you evision
a back-and-forth flow of information between the forked projects.  What
would make it different from the Wikipedia/Nupedia distinction that
exists today?  If an expert-led free encyclopedia is such a great idea,
why isn't Nupedia taking off by itself?

> (7) Fred Bauder was right to point out that a lot of the people who
> could help *Wikipedia* most just won't put up with arguing with
people
> who they think should be sitting down and taking notes.

Very true.  And many expert programmers do not suffer fools gladly, and
do not enjoy the frequent heated discussions which open source software
projects generate.  Those experts work for Microsoft, found their own
startup companies, or work in academic research where they can do their
own thing.

On the other hand, many academic experts *want* commentary and
contributions to whatever they write.  Participation in conversation is
as big a rush to established scholars as it is to schmoes like me.  Of
course nobody has much time for unsubstantiated fringe opinions and
idiotic assertions, but I'm talking about perceptive questions and
critiques.  I can imagine many situations where a pool of informed,
cooperative amateurs would not be a hassle for a leading expert, but
rather a positive draw.  And one thing I, an informed amateur, can do
to make an expert's life pleasant at Wikipedia, is to spare her/him
from the hassles of reverting vandalism, answering easy questions, etc.

> It so happens, though, that as the movement has grown in stature,
> those people who make the decisions really *are* software experts.
> [...]
> This doesn't contradict anything I said, moreover.

Quite so, the leaders of the big free software projects really are
experts.  But it does contradict the spirit of what you said, because
almost none of the free software projects are "experts only", and an
insignificant few projects have experts-only forks.  (e.g. Netscape is
a fork of Mozilla, but Mozilla is carrying the flag and drawing all the
volunteer participation.  Netscape is technologically insignificant; it
matters only as marketing.)  In almost all cases literally everyone can
submit incremental changes (i.e. patches) to every project.  If there
is a mechanism for ordinary schmoes to submit incremental changes to
the ExpertWikipedia in your proposal, I missed it.

The robustness of open source projects is vastly enhanced by the fact
that anyone can contribute to any extent they like.  Some of the expert
leaders have worked their way up through the ranks by submitting
numerous small patches, then maintaining a subsystem, then taking over
entirely when a leader steps down.  All this happen with no recruiting
and no official designation of who is expert.  It is allowed to happen
because there is no distinction such as you are proposing.

I can imagine Wikipedia evolving to the point that we semi-officially
designate subsystem experts (e.g. Axel Boldt as math czar), and maybe
give them power to protect a small number of pages.  But somehow
ordinary folks have to be able to get their oar in or the project will
suffer.  Even the main page, which we decided we had to protect, has a
talk page for making suggestions which our 39 administrators respond
to.

> The disanalogy between software and encyclopedia article writing is
> simply that software has to work.  It has to do what it is supposed
to
> do.  As software grows in sophistication, this requires huge amounts
> of expertise.  But encyclopedia articles do not work or fail to work;

I agree that there is some disanalogy there.  But how significant is
it?  Please note that open source projects often exclude submissions
that work perfectly well.  The grounds of exclusion can be that code is
unmaintainable and/or difficult for peers to review.  "How well does it
work?" is in fact sometimes less significant than "How beautiful is the
code?", as witnessed by incomplete patches with rough edges but
beautiful underlying structure trumping crufty code that gets the job
done with no errors.  Deciding which code is worthy is far from black
and white.

Anyway, the disanalogy only matters if the quality of encyclopedia
articles is not generally recognizable.  It will only harm Wikipedia if
people routinely fail to recognize the scholarship of experts who know
more and write better than they do.  So far I see some of this failure
to comprehend on Wikipedia, but not as much as I suspected, and not
enough to put a systematic brake on the success of the project.  In
fact, I think it would be very instructive to visit the discussions of
some open source projects, and see whether various proposed patches
generate more or less disagreement than edits on Wikipedia.  I suspect
you would find as much heat in the open source movement as in the
typical edit war on Wikipedia.

Peace,
-Karl

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

body:
--- Karl Juhnke <yangfuli at yahoo.com> wrote:

> First let me reiterate what I think you are saying,
> so if I am again
> missing the point, at least you will know what I am
> responding to.  You
> want to have some articles taken out of the domain
> of the collectively
> editable, and put into a space (say ExpertWikipedia)
> where they are
> maintained exclusively by some expert or experts.

No, not quite. He said that Wikipedia should remain
*unchanged*. The articles would be copied, not moved.

Stephen Gilbert

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

body:
On 01-09-2002, Giskart wrote thusly :
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
> >Or we can simply revisit the idea of Beta/Stable; whereby some type of
> >process validates an article. Having another level of validation through
> >Nupedia would also be a good thing. In that way Nupedia would be a
> >distribution of Wikipedia in the same way as Red Hat is a distribution of
> >Linus' Linux and the GNU tools.
> What do you think of this:
> You give to the articels a classification. You can hide or exclude
> articels whit a specific classification in your preferences.
[classification snip]
> Giskart
Some thoughts.
1. there's a potentially dangerous situation that :
   a) we will never have enough experts
   b) experts will go into lengthy disputes that will cause their number
   to become 0
2. there should/could be another phase - a "scientifically valid" article
   - properly _referenced_ and reflecting state-of-the-art in a given field
3. High brow and low brow - there's a huge gap between what is
   scientifically valid and what is comprehensible to lay public

All in all, I have doubts that this plan will work. I think Wikipedia would
be better off with enthusiasts than with experts. Have we learnt anything from the Nupedia vs Wikipedia lesson ?

Regards,
kpjas


body:
On Sun, 1 Sep 2002, Stephen Gilbert wrote:

>
> --- Karl Juhnke <yangfuli at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > First let me reiterate what I think you are saying,
> > so if I am again
> > missing the point, at least you will know what I am
> > responding to.  You
> > want to have some articles taken out of the domain
> > of the collectively
> > editable, and put into a space (say ExpertWikipedia)
> > where they are
> > maintained exclusively by some expert or experts.
>
> No, not quite. He said that Wikipedia should remain
> *unchanged*. The articles would be copied, not moved.

And, moreover, I'm bewildered at the suggestion that what I was proposing
was a "fork."  If anything, Wikipedia is a fork of Nupedia.  We started in
February 2000 with Nupedia.  It grew moribund for a variety of reasons,
not least of which was that my time in 2001 was increasingly spent on
Wikipedia instead of Nupedia.  You could say that I propose reviving a
version of Nupedia.

I recommend having a look at http://www.nupedia.com/ .  A lot of the
information is outdated (because the project is currently "on hold" at
best).

I'll have to observe what transpires on the list and reply to the rest
later!

Larry


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] Japanese Wikipedia

body:
Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> Hello everybody,
> I'm living in Japan and I know some japanese people very intrested to
> contribute to japanese Wikipedia.
> But with the actual software installed on japanese Wikipedia, there many
> problems using japanese caracters in links names and the interface is all
> english.
> I can ask to translate the Language.php file, but I'm afraid that when they
> will finish the translation, this file been up to date.
> The japanese Wikipedia is practically empty, so I think it will be easy to
> put the new software on japanese site. Then we will translate it in japanese
> while running.
> No convertion is need, I think it will take less than a hour to recreate the
> few pages actualy on http://ja.wikipedia.com.
> The new software using UTF8, isn't it ?

You're right, it can't hurt... I'll work on setting that up with an
empty dummy LanguageJa.php, as well as a test version of the Esperanto
wiki (which will also be UTF8; I'm going to have to tweak some things to
avoid breaking links in various directions).

And please, feel free to start adapting the French language file to the
new format too!
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/wikipedia/phpwiki/newcodebase/Language.php
Click the "download" link.

> If you would change the damain name, please choose www.wikipedia.co.jp (for
> commercial) or www.wikipedia.or.jp (for organisation).
> It would be a great idear to also create the Korean Wikipedia.
> Cheers,

For the moment we're planning to make the "official" location of all the
wikis (languagecode).wikipedia.org (with the possible exception of the
English one, which for now is still www., but en.wikipedia.org also gets
you there, so feel free to link that way.) Having redirects from various
local domains is a nice idea, as long as somebody (Jimbo or otherwise)
is willing to pay for them.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
--- Larry Sanger <lsanger at nupedia.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 1 Sep 2002, Stephen Gilbert wrote:
> > --- Karl Juhnke <yangfuli at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > > First let me reiterate what I think you are saying,
> > > so if I am again
> > > missing the point, at least you will know what I am
> > > responding to.  You
> > > want to have some articles taken out of the domain
> > > of the collectively
> > > editable, and put into a space (say ExpertWikipedia)
> > > where they are
> > > maintained exclusively by some expert or experts.
> >
> > No, not quite. He said that Wikipedia should remain
> > *unchanged*. The articles would be copied, not moved.
>
> And, moreover, I'm bewildered at the suggestion that what I was
> proposing was a "fork."

OK, now it is my turn to be bewildered.  I went back and re-read both
of your previous long e-mails, and I still don't understand what you
are suggesting.  Sorry for being so dense.

You speak of "a free encyclopedia project advisory board of some sort,
made up of leaders in all fields, that would set standards and
procedures for the selection of *some free articles* (not to lead
Wikipedia)."  So your proposal is to have a one-way flow of
information?  That is to say, some subset of Wikipedia articles would
be deemed of acceptable quality, and copied exactly as they are to some
place where they would be safe from further editing? (By the way, what
happens to all the broken links if only a subset of articles is copied
over?)

If this is what you are suggesting, then you are counting on Wikipedia
as it is now, prior to any contributions and revisions of your panel of
experts, to produce the quality articles, among which the experts
merely pick and choose the best.

But then you also say "In many more cases, [...] no one but an expert
will be able to edit, supervise, and otherwise whip into shape articles
on subjects that many nonexperts think, but mistakenly, they can write
adequately about."  So you obviously don't envision the experts merely
selecting articles, right?  They will be expected to actively edit
articles too.

Where do you envision the experts doing their editorial work?  Will
they contribute to Wikipedia for a while, and then when an article
becomes good enough, copy it over to a safe haven?  Yet you contend
that most experts could not be induced to be active on Wikipedia
itself.  If that is true, then they must be doing their editing
someplace else.  If they are doing their editing someplace else, how
does the information get back to Wikipedia?  Whatever appears in the
safe haven will have all the benefits of expert attention, but the
Wikipedia article won't have those benefits.  If the information starts
at Wikipedia, is modified and improved, and those improvements don't
get back to Wikipedia, then the project has forked.  That's how I came
to the shocking conclusion that you wanted to fork Wikipedia.

Finally, I did visit http://www.nupeida.com/, and as near as I can tell
the content there is not static, and thus not a safe haven as I have
been using the term.  Even if something were copied over to Nupedia
exactly as it is on Wikipedia, it might then evolve and be improved in
its Nupedia incarnation.  Again, that's a fork.  Yes, historically
Wikipedia was a fork of Nupedia, but whichever way a fork goes, the
free software movement gives us strong reason to believe only one
branch will survive.

Forgive me for not comprehending your proposal, and please believe that
I am not being intentionally obtuse.  I simply don't understand the
mechanism of what your panel of experts would do and how.  I, too,
would like to "create a structure that will make the elite feel welcome
to be involved in a *leadership* role", but I don't see what you think
that entails.

Apologetically yours,
-Karl

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


body:
--- Stephen Gilbert <canuck_in_korea2002 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Karl Juhnke <yangfuli at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > First let me reiterate what I think you are saying,
> > so if I am again
> > missing the point, at least you will know what I am
> > responding to.  You
> > want to have some articles taken out of the domain
> > of the collectively
> > editable, and put into a space (say ExpertWikipedia)
> > where they are
> > maintained exclusively by some expert or experts.
>
> No, not quite. He said that Wikipedia should remain
> *unchanged*. The articles would be copied, not moved.

Ah, sorry I expressed myself badly.  I did in fact understand that
nothing would be *removed* from Wikipedia.  My concern was not that
Wikipedia would lose anything by Larry's proposal.  He is happy to let
Wikipedia go as far as it can under its current structure, but doesn't
expect success beyond a certain level.  Similarly I am happy to let a
panel of experts skim the cream from Wikipedia and copy it to someplace
else, but I think it would be unlikely to help the free encyclopedia
movement.  That's all.

Peace,
-Karl

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


from_name: Jeroen Heijmans

body:
LDC wrote;

>>>The problem is that, with several notable exceptions,
>>>highly-educated people aren't drawn to Wikipedia.
>>>
>>I don't know about everyone else but I think that statement
>>was a bit insulting.
>>
>
>If you think so, then you don't know Larry very well.  I also
>think he's entirely correct, and I can't imagine how anyone
>can disagree.  We don't attract very many highly educated
>people; I can think of maybe one or two dozen that would qualify.
>
Well, I don't know Larry either - and that shouldn't matter - but I
think agree with Stephen Gilbert that the statement was slightly
insulting. If I look at many Wikipedians' user pages, I see a lot of
students, people with degrees, Ph.D's. If they're not highly educated,
who are? Only professors?

>What bothers me even more is that we don't even seem to be
>attracting non-academic experts either.  Take a non-academic
>
I think everybody is an expert. Everybody lives in a country, a city
worth writing about. Everybody likes some kind of music, movies (or
films, whatever). Most people practise a sport or have other hobbies.
OK, I may not be able to write about the social-economic effects of the
Reformation in the Netherlands, but I sure can tell you something about
the country that is required for encyclopedia. I know the main policital
parties, know what's going on. As an apparently not high-educated
person, I have had lessons at school about history, geography of my
country. Apart from that, there are some areas where I consider my self
to be an expert, or at least pretty close to it. And this holds for
most, if not all people that regularly contribute here. We surely don't
have experts yet on *all* areas - maybe we never will - but they can
still come.

>But unlike Larry, I don't think there's any systemic reason for
>our dearth of experts; I think it's just that the project is
>still young and small compared to what it needs to be to achieve
>our goals.  Yes, we need an approval/review mechanism, and that's
>one of my goals for software development, but that in itself won't
>attract the experts.  I think the only thing that will attract
>them is a proven record of success.  And that will come with time,
>
Yes, success is the only thing that will help us grow. And as I said,
success is based on quality, which is not dependent on the number of
people with a Ph. D. hanging round as a Wikipedian.

>We may already be the largest Wiki in the world, but we simply
>aren't big enough yet to do what needs to be done.  We need 5000
>regular contributors, not 200.  And we need to make sure the system
>can support them all, and do the things they need done to make
>good articles.  For example, I really like the idea of having
>"staff" specialists in things like image processing, copyediting,
>and other tasks that we shouldn't necessarily expect subject
>experts to be good at.  And we need to make it easy for authors
>to contact and work with those other people (that's why I wanted
>the e-mail and user talk page features, for example--I think
>they're critical to the collaborative process).  If we build it,
>they will come.
>
Yes, if we really want 5000 contributors, we need more infrastructure.
The current one is already insufficient for our 200 editors. I also see
that we may need SIGs or expert groups, who can take care of a specific
subject or groups of subjects. Such groups already informally exist, be
it small. If we could improve the infrastructure for such groups (making
communication and decision making easier, for example), it would be
easier to lift a certain subject to a high level.

Jeronimo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mutualistic symbiosis vs simple symbiosis (Nupedia/Wikipedia relationship)

body:
On Monday 02 September 2002 07:30 am, Magnus wrote:
> 5. As a result, these articles (or parts of them) can be integrated into
> the "free encyclopedia sources" from #1

How would this integration occur? Would it be automatic and thus overwrite
any modifications made the the Wikipedia version that have occurred since the
text was copied to start the Nupedia one? Or would this have to be done
manually for each article? I don't like either scenario. Under the first
scenario potentially valid edits to the Wikipedia version are lost and under
the second scenario somebody has to perform version control (I HATE version
control).

Who really would want to continue editing Wikipedia articles if their
perfectly valid edits are overwritten by a computer without notice or if they
have to perform version control after each release of Nupedia?

> What I'm trying to say is Wikipedia and Nupedia won't be a fork, because...

If version control isn't done by those taking the material to begin with
there is little chance this reintegration work will be done for most
articles Nupedia uses. Thus we have a fork -- pure and simple. The Nupedia
experts will work on their version and Wikipedia editors will work on their
own version (I do hate duplication of effort).

> they're not really competition; they could both benefit from a symbiosis.
>
> Magnus

But it is also true that the roundworm Trichuris trichiura is not in
competition with its human host -- it is in symbiosis (albeit a special case
of symbiosis called parasitism). So through an initial case of parasitism by
Nupedia the two projects would be competition in cases where reintegration
doesn't occur (for whatever reasons) and two different article versions are
being worked on at the same.

What I would like to see is some mutualistic symbiosis whereby edits to the
Wikipedia article are in effect suspended by placing a simple note at the top
of the article saying something to the effect that "This article is being
checked and possibly expanded for inclusion in the next version of Nupedia.
When that process is complete that version will replace this one. To see the
current progress of this process please visit {URL of where the Nupedia
version under development is}."

And at that location there would be some type of explanation on how the
Nupedia process works (probably by proposing suggestions to the expert
validation editor).

When Nupedia has done its thing with the article then that version would
replace the Wikipedia one by someone/computer from Nupedia (the entire
process should be short though -- no more than a week or so for any
particular article).

This is already being done to a large extent with the /Temp fad I helped
start (whereby an article that is being completely redone is copied to a
/Temp page title and worked on there). Although the /Temp page is being
replaced here by a Nupedia page where a different development methodology
prevails.

In this way Nupedia benefits from getting raw material and Wikipedia benefits
from periodically getting many of its articles reviewed, edited and expanded
by experts. I say that is a win-win scenario.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)