body:
On 27/02/07, sigmaman <sigmaman at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone!
>
> This is the first time I have responded to a thread. I am curious.. how
> common is dual licensing using the GDFL + (CC) license? Using the GFDL and
> CC-BY-NC-SA seems to be kind of a neat idea, for at least some uses. You
> could severly limit commercial uses with such a combo, while serving
> Wikipedia needs and demands. It's just a neat idea that I have not come
> across!

Well, you couldn't limit commercial uses any more than they were
limited simply by GFDL licensing. Remember that CC-NC plus GFDL
doesn't give you a combination of the both, just a choice. (in other
words, you end up with easier use for noncommercial, or commercial
only-if-they-use-GFDL, not some kind of GFDL-NC)

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


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Yonatan Horan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] a new free image!

body:
And if you release the photos under the GFDL rather than a Creative Commons
license it's highly unlikely there would be any commercial usage as the GFDL
would have to be attached (to the newspaper, book or photo) and it's a long
document. Newspapers and books (the two more likely uses of your pictures)
would probably rather pay you to use the picture as they're not going to
include the GFDL in their publication. We have a few professional
photographers on commons that do this to protect their living and still let
us use their pictures under the copyleft GFDL. In fact, in the case of the
person who this long thread is about, he is a professional photographer who
released the image under the GFDL so he can get some sort of compensation if
somebody wants to use it commercially.

-Yonatan

On 2/27/07, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Walter van Kalken wrote:
>
> >1) Non Thai people will not know them so they will probably be deleted
> >from commons in no time, it would take time for the Thai and other
> >communities to write articles on them as info on them is scarce and in
> >English virtually non existing.
> >
> Well, write Name Surname, Thai tv star. Just a couple of words to state
> they're notable
>
> >(of most I wouldn't even be able to give
> >their names, I know they are on tv regularly though)
> >
> >
> Hopefully you won't upload something like [[Image:The fat guy from Thai
> tv.jpg]], otherwise it would be very hard to search for them and making
> a use of them
>
> >2) I have seen people "upgrade" pictures resulting in horrible colours
> >on paintings and other pictures. Usually this means imho pictures get
> >maimed.
> >
> >
> That doesn't seem to happen often. Some people don't realise that colors
> on CRT and LCD monitors don't look the same, sometimes there is a real
> improvement. And of course you can always discuss.
>
> >3) I do not want these pictures to be used commercially (although I
> >could solve this by uploading low quality small pictures)
> >
> >
> Would YOU be able to earn money from copyright on your pictures? If you
> release them under a free license, no one will really make money by
> selling your picture, since it's available for free. Of course, a
> commercial application would be to include the picture on a book about
> the person; you may earn reputation as a photographer if someone sees
> the photo author: WVK so in the end commons could be a good way for
> photographers looking to self-promote themselves.
>
> Marco (Cruccone)
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
Also, I haven't seen too many photos being deleted for having "no use on any
existing or future Wikimedia project" and the worst case is your image(s)
get nominated for deletion and you comment and the discussion results in a
keep.

-Yonatan

On 2/27/07, Yonatan Horan <yonatanh at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> And if you release the photos under the GFDL rather than a Creative
> Commons license it's highly unlikely there would be any commercial usage as
> the GFDL would have to be attached (to the newspaper, book or photo) and
> it's a long document. Newspapers and books (the two more likely uses of your
> pictures) would probably rather pay you to use the picture as they're not
> going to include the GFDL in their publication. We have a few professional
> photographers on commons that do this to protect their living and still let
> us use their pictures under the copyleft GFDL. In fact, in the case of the
> person who this long thread is about, he is a professional photographer who
> released the image under the GFDL so he can get some sort of compensation if
> somebody wants to use it commercially.
>
> -Yonatan
>
> On 2/27/07, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Walter van Kalken wrote:
> >
> > >1) Non Thai people will not know them so they will probably be deleted
> > >from commons in no time, it would take time for the Thai and other
> > >communities to write articles on them as info on them is scarce and in
> > >English virtually non existing.
> > >
> > Well, write Name Surname, Thai tv star. Just a couple of words to state
> > they're notable
> >
> > >(of most I wouldn't even be able to give
> > >their names, I know they are on tv regularly though)
> > >
> > >
> > Hopefully you won't upload something like [[Image:The fat guy from Thai
> > tv.jpg]], otherwise it would be very hard to search for them and making
> > a use of them
> >
> > >2) I have seen people "upgrade" pictures resulting in horrible colours
> > >on paintings and other pictures. Usually this means imho pictures get
> > >maimed.
> > >
> > >
> > That doesn't seem to happen often. Some people don't realise that colors
> > on CRT and LCD monitors don't look the same, sometimes there is a real
> > improvement. And of course you can always discuss.
> >
> > >3) I do not want these pictures to be used commercially (although I
> > >could solve this by uploading low quality small pictures)
> > >
> > >
> > Would YOU be able to earn money from copyright on your pictures? If you
> > release them under a free license, no one will really make money by
> > selling your picture, since it's available for free. Of course, a
> > commercial application would be to include the picture on a book about
> > the person; you may earn reputation as a photographer if someone sees
> > the photo author: WVK so in the end commons could be a good way for
> > photographers looking to self-promote themselves.
> >
> > Marco (Cruccone)
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 27/02/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:

> > If it is, then I may have a decent chance of getting a Metric Shitload
> > of good video content for us under dual GFDL and CC-by-nc-nd ...
> >
> It believe it should be OK - we only care that a picture has *a* free
> license, we're not trying to control all possible licenses for it. But
> beware, the non-free CCs have templates that put them in "delete me"
> categories, so you might want an alternate template or just boilerplate
> text, so triggerhappy admins :-) don't blast the image before noticing
> its dual license.

Some kind of free-text option might solve this.

{{GFDL and|the Completely Free Use By Anyone With Red Hair license}}

It would mean our categorisation system wouldn't identify the other
licenses, but one could argue that's a feature not a bug!

> It *is* a clever idea to use GFDL to discourage casual commercial use...

Practically speaking, the GFDL makes single pieces of work free for
any major multi-component reuse (where you'd be reprinting the GFDL
once, covering all the pieces of work in it combined); but in many
ways makes them not-free for reuse of them singly, simply because of
the hassle invovled in complying with the GFDL for one individual
image...

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


list: wikien-l

from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 2/27/07, T P <t0m0p0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/26/07, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Please enlighten me - what does "No angry mastodons" have to do with
> > whether any field is significant enough to be covered in Wikipedia?
> > Either now or fifteen years from now?
>
>
> It means there's no hurry.
>
> As a sidenote, I would add that for any field due to become significant
> > fifteen years in the future, we should already be covering, right now,
> > the building blocks that field will ultimately study. For example,
> > there's a bit of a push these days for Hip hop studies to gain
> > recognition as an interdisciplinary academic field. Argue if you like
> > about its legitimacy - I'm sure Citizendium would reject it; I observe
> > that no Wikipedia article exists yet. But if you can imagine what
> > Wikipedia would have looked like in 1992, I can assure you that it would
> > have included detailed articles on Public Enemy and N.W.A, and the
> > articles we have might look better for it today.
>
>
> If you can predict which fields will become significant in fifteen years,
> as
> opposed to which will become forgotten and make Wikipedia look foolish,
> you
> can make a lot of money.
>
> Adam

So you are saying that if a field is completely forgotten or outmoded, even
if we have the secondary sources to back us up and our encyclopaedia is not
on paper, we should not be including articles on that field? I'd like some
concrete examples - but then again, these are all hypotheticals since
nobody's ever written an encyclopaedia and published it in realtime. Then
again, could you perhaps point to some topics fifteen years old which you
think would not be worthy of inclusion in an encyclopaedia today, but would
have been included in Wikipedia by experts at the peak of the topics' fame?

Johnleemk


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bot edit rates

body:
On 2/27/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sounds like there is a major desire to see some edit count stats. How
> about a special page, "Special:Editstats" that would just show the
> edit count, and in some future incarnation, could show all the other
> stats that people are obviously clamoring for?

Possibly.  The question is how long it would take to run all the
queries for a user with tons of edits.  How long does something like
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM revision WHERE rev_user=whatever AND
rev_minor_edit = 1 take, for instance?

> Incidentally, I tend to hit Special:Contributions quite a lot ? it's
> sort of my "home page" on WP. It's where I go first, and where I
> return to most frequently, to see if anything has happened to any of
> the pages I edited most recently. If it's such a heavy drain on
> resources, perhaps I should reconsider my behaviour.

It's certainly not a drain on resources unless you set edits per page
to 5000 and load it a lot.  Even then, it's not anything breathtaking,
I assume, or else it would be shut off user complaints or no.  It's
presumably excessive, but not grossly so.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 27/02/07, T P <t0m0p0 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On the other hand, a lot of pop culture is ephemeral. (...)
> Do we really want articles on the latest Paris fashions, each year
> and every year?

A set of articles on 'contemporary' fashions on an annual (or biannual
or quadrennial or decade or as appropriate) cycle is, perhaps
surprisingly, a very good thing to have, from a historical
perspective. They're not really something you can easily link out to,
but it's a very interesting field of study and one where (especially
as you get older) good overview print material can become flakier.

There are people scanning 1890s ladies magazines for the fashion
pictures and uploading them to Commons, incidentally. The raw material
is there to work with.

Even if not accepted as field of historica study in its own right,
it's a useful reference source; a reliable work discussing specific
fashions of the 1530s versus the 1550s is a godsend when, for example,
trying to work out supporting information for unsourced contemporary
portraits.

(And I suspect, to a lesser degree, it's true for more contemporary
photographs. Surprisingly often you can look at an undated image and
say "before 1985" because of some detail; clothing should be able to
factor into this as well, though I don't know if it's routinely done
by archivists)

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 27/02/07, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> I think our articles on recent topics
> provide an important enough service that it's worth muddling through the
> gray areas anyway, so long as they do eventually get returned to.

A reliable way of finding out articles which were "contemporary" two
years ago and coming back to clean, discard or polish them as
appropriate would be usefu;. Any ideas?

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


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 2/27/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 27/02/07, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > I think our articles on recent topics
> > provide an important enough service that it's worth muddling through the
> > gray areas anyway, so long as they do eventually get returned to.
>
> A reliable way of finding out articles which were "contemporary" two
> years ago and coming back to clean, discard or polish them as
> appropriate would be usefu;. Any ideas?
>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events go back 2 years
will pick up some. Other than that dig through
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:2000s_fads and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Internet_memes

--
geni


from_name: Frederick Noronha

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Expert: Wikipedia Won't Go Away,
	So Learn How to Use It

body:
Overall, how accurate is the view that a publication from a "large
house" would be more reliable? I live in a small part of India (Goa),
and know that the large and established publishing houses (both
national and international, including Britannica) are always either
promoting stereotypes of our region... or simply getting it wrong. And
there's nothing one can do to correct that either...

Are there any facts and figures about the accuracy levels of
Wikipedia? I remember Jimbo Wales was citing some figures about
Britannica versus Wikipedia. Wonder if there's some citation for that.
Academia, in particular, seems unnerved by an encyclopedia written in
the "baazar" model, rather than in "cathedral" mode (as Eric Raymond
would argue). FN

On 27/02/07, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> Misspellings or grammatical errors may also indicate non native speakers of
> a language. Certainly when the subject is foreign (from an English language
> pov) it may indicate that the factual quality is actually better....
--
FN M: 0091 9822122436 P: +91-832-240-9490 (after 1300IST please)
http://fn.goa-india.org  http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com
What bloggers are saying about Goa: http://planet.goa-india.org/


from_name: Edward Z. Yang

subject: [Wikitech-l] FLAC support

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

What would have to be done to enable FLAC uploads to Wikimedia projects?
This sort of support would be useful for things like "Spoken Wikipedia"
projects, where as of right now there is no way of uploading a lossless
version of the audio file for other people to edit. FLAC is a
free/open-source codec.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFF5NK1qTO+fYacSNoRAkfKAJsFqc1RcKnGaWuSLWrHHAoIu9zSfACdHfFT
xsYjZiJ7CQABkdzndWe4218=
=U0Qp
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikitech-l] FLAC support

body:
On 2/27/07, Edward Z. Yang <edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> What would have to be done to enable FLAC uploads to Wikimedia projects?
> This sort of support would be useful for things like "Spoken Wikipedia"
> projects, where as of right now there is no way of uploading a lossless
> version of the audio file for other people to edit. FLAC is a
> free/open-source codec.

When you encode use the -ogg option and upload away. Flac in ogg
stream is already permitted.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 2/27/07, T P <t0m0p0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/27/07, John Lee <johnleemk at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > So you are saying that if a field is completely forgotten or outmoded,
> > even
> > if we have the secondary sources to back us up and our encyclopaedia is
> > not
> > on paper, we should not be including articles on that field? I'd like
> some
> > concrete examples - but then again, these are all hypotheticals since
> > nobody's ever written an encyclopaedia and published it in realtime.
> Then
> > again, could you perhaps point to some topics fifteen years old which
> you
> > think would not be worthy of inclusion in an encyclopaedia today, but
> > would
> > have been included in Wikipedia by experts at the peak of the topics'
> > fame?
>
>
> I think our reliance on secondary sources does help a lot.
>
> On the other hand, a lot of pop culture is ephemeral.  Minor entertainers
> and video games come to mind.  Do we need an article on Michael Richards'
> racist tirade?  Britney Spears in rehab?  Do we really want articles on
> the
> latest Paris fashions, each year and every year?
>
> I suppose such information has a certain historical value, but it doesn't
> fit in with my conception of what an encyclopedia should cover.
>
> Adam

Well, I believe such incidents would be included in an encyclopaedia of
Michael Richards or Britney Spears-related things. And certainly,
biographies written about them in the future would mention the incidents. I
don't think they make a good example, though, because any articles about
such incidents would almost certainly be merged into another relevant
article - typically the main article on the celebrity in question - because
there's simply not much you can say about them. And as for the latest Paris
fashions, we have an article for every year of the Oscars - why not an
article for every year of a Paris fashion show, as long as the sources are
there?

Also, remember the great thing about Wikipedia is that information can both
be put in and taken out at the click of a mouse. If (let's say) this
information some day truly becomes an embarassment to WP, we can delete it -
and at the same time, the articles would have served their purpose
throughout their lifetime, by being a resource for the readers of an era
where the information was considered relevant and appropriate for an
encyclopaedia or other general reference tertiary source.

Johnleemk


list: commons-l

from_name: Florian Straub

subject: [Commons-l] Mayflower: Wikimedia Commons media search

body:
 "Gregory Maxwell" <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote on Tuesday, February 27, 2007
2:37 PM:

> The next step will be to raise awareness. Once more people know about
> this there will be less opposition to using categories as tags.

I say it again: What about categories without spaces or underscores (one
word a category) and article/catscans for the combinations?

Regards,

Flo


subject: [Wikitech-l] FLAC support

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

Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> When you encode use the -ogg option and upload away. Flac in ogg
> stream is already permitted.

Oh, cool! I forgot that ogg was a container and not an actual encoder.
Thanks for the tip.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFF5NdcqTO+fYacSNoRAvpWAJwJYJlx4RXBo9c6Nbf5w6DYNfsWXgCfVeAZ
7Iv/U5vmPD6MGvsZgzyzjxY=
=CDgn
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] US 2008 presidential candidates - please keep an eye on
	these

body:
There's a bit of attention around our US 2008 presidential election
candidates already. Apparently people are noticing that for some of
them, their Wikipedia article ranks higher than their own website ...

Could those of you attracted to keeping living bios usable please keep
a close eye on the following?

The list I have (from the article series box) of all prospective or
possible candidates is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_Clinton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_Clinton_presidential_campaign%2C_2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Dodd
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edwards
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Gravel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Kucinich
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_presidential_campaign%2C_2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Richardson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_Clark
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Sharpton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Brownback
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_H._Cox
    (deletion nomination ... yay)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Giuliani
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Giuliani_presidential_campaign%2C_2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Hunter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitt_Romney
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitt_Romney_presidential_campaign%2C_2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Charles_Smith
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Gilmore
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Huckabee
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Paul
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Tancredo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newt_Gingrich
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Hagel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Savage_%28commentator%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Kubby
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gail_Parker
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Phillies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Stanhope
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Koch_%28candidate%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Moriarty
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Schriner
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Weltman

Here's hoping the list is winnowed down over the ... next two years.

- d.


from_name: T P

subject: [WikiEN-l] What makes a good article?

body:
On 2/27/07, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> http://www.xkcd.com/c214.html

Every one of those links had to be clicked on.

Adam


from_name: Sage Ross

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 2/27/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> Shut AFD for a month. The article load will be negligible compared to
> the daily firehose of crap, and we can do without the poisonousness
> inside and outside the project.

This isn't as ridiculous an idea as it seemed (to me) at first glance.
 Maybe not a month, but a few days or a week where the process was
halted and a discussion about AfD took place instead might at least
move the community, and particularly the AfD regulars, closer to
consensus on what the proper purpose and methods of the deletion
process should be.

Nothing new is likely to be said, but at least it will make a larger
proportion of !voters aware of a larger proportion of the viewpoints.
And probably get some users to put some more thought into their own
positions.

-Sage


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
Since it is not coming throuh on foundation-l I put it here.

I personally have pictures of many Thai moviestars, comedians and
singers (I perform as a comedian almost everyday myself and meet them,
live in tv-shows and when I play in movies), and it would be easy for me
to make pictures on request (especially of all Thai comedians) as I know
where to find many of them. But what makes me hesitating from uploading
to commons is a couple of things ....

1) Non Thai people will not know them so they will probably be deleted
from commons in no time, it would take time for the Thai and other
communities to write articles on them as info on them is scarce and in
English virtually non existing. (of most I wouldn't even be able to give
their names, I know they are on tv regularly though)
2) I have seen people "upgrade" pictures resulting in horrible colours
on paintings and other pictures. Usually this means imho pictures get
maimed.
3) I do not want these pictures to be used commercially (although I
could solve this by uploading low quality small pictures)

I also have pictures of Indian moviestars: Dharmendra Deol, Bobby Deol ,
Sunny Deol, Shilpa Shetty and a lot of others with whom I played in the
movie Apne. But the above reason keeps me from uploading to commons. I
feel that many people have pictures of stars but they hesitate to upload
them for some of the same reasons.

Waerth


from_name: Gwern Branwen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

in_reply_to:
<C20A1826.1D09%michaeldavid86@comcast.net> (Marc Riddell's
	message of "Tue, 27 Feb 2007 17:17:26 -0500")

body:
Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> writes:

> on 2/27/07 3:51 PM, Gwern Branwen at gwern0 at gmail.com wrote:
>
>> If you want to force the community in a direction, then code is
   the
>> most effective way. It is not very polite or considerate, but
it certainly
>> works.
>
> Your entire post intimidated me ;-) and bullied me :-) into
reading more
> Lessig - thanks. The section I pulled out above intrigues the
hell out of
> me; I would love to know more.
>
> Marc Riddell

Well, I'm glad to hear that. And you certainly have no excuse not
to read the second edition <http://codev2.cc/>, given that it's
under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License!

To briefly expand on my comments: what the developers create is
the very fabric of Wikipedia. I am not even joking here: what they
write makes things possible and impossible to think on
wiki. Technical changes have definitely had their effects on the
wiki - the most crucial part of a wiki is technical, like anon
editing or wikimarkup - both subtly and overtly. We used to use a
lot of subpages; now subpages are practically an alien concept
except as applied in userspace and for archiving talk pages. (A
lot of people don't even bother to archive, though, or just
wikidelete their talk page every so often, or let a bot do all the
work). Why is this? I noticed the abandonment of subpages started
around the time a number of templates like {{main}} and
{{seealso}} were introduced. If this is true, then there didn't
even need to be official deprecation or restrictions to shift
editing habits in a significant way.

Again, 'code is law'. I hope the developers can keep this
perspective in mind when they try to understand why some people
get worked up about captchas for account creation, accounts for
page creation, restrictions on the newest 1% of accounts,
oversight and OFFICE, and so on.

--
Gwern
Inquiring minds want to know.


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
T P wrote:

> On 2/26/07, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> Please enlighten me - what does "No angry mastodons" have to do with
>> whether any field is significant enough to be covered in Wikipedia?
>> Either now or fifteen years from now?
>
> It means there's no hurry.

Funny, that's not at all the message I get from that essay. It looks to
me to be all about making sure you're not in a fit of "edit rage" or
otherwise lashing out at people. It's not a piece about eventualism.

To tie it back to the theme that started this, if we cover webcomics or
other forms of "cruft", whatever their merits otherwise the articles
probably aren't "trampling" anybody. And as several people have pointed
out, there are significant future benefits in recording information from
the present that will be the subject of later synthesis and study. So I
don't understand why we should hold off on documenting subjects of
interest now. While the field of interest may not be fully coherent, and
we should not declare it so prematurely, it's not wise to reject the
pieces needed for it to ultimately come together.

--Michael Snow


subject: [WikiEN-l] What makes a good article?

body:
"T P" <t0m0p0 at gmail.com> writes:
....
> I'm not sure this is the same issue, but I had an argument with
someone who
> wanted to include some loosely related material because it
"related [the
> subject] to people's lives".  Frankly I don't think we need to
"sell" a
> topic to the audience.  People look up articles in an
encyclopedia because
> they are already interested in the subject, it's not like a
magazine where
> you come across the topic randomly.
>
> Adam

http://www.xkcd.com/c214.html

--
Gwern
Inquiring minds want to know.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 2/27/07, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> ... as several people have pointed
> out, there are significant future benefits in recording information from
> the present that will be the subject of later synthesis and study. So I
> don't understand why we should hold off on documenting subjects of
> interest now. While the field of interest may not be fully coherent, and
> we should not declare it so prematurely, it's not wise to reject the
> pieces needed for it to ultimately come together.

Well, you may have noticed that I decided to agree with those people.

Nevertheless, my point was that whether something is "significant enough" to
be included in Wikipedia may not be apparent for some time.

Adam


from_name: Artur Fijałkowski

body:
Nice tool, awful logo ;)

Someone should draw something nicer ;)

AJF/WarX
-------------- nast?pna cz??? ---------
Za??????cznik HTML zosta??? usuni???ty...
URL:  http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/attachments/20070227/70982c10/attachment.htm


subject: [WikiEN-l] What makes a good article?

body:
On 2/27/07, Nick Wilkins <nlwilkins at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> True, but when I go on one of my reading sprees (and the three hours
> referenced in the comic isn't exactly unusual...) I'm not specifically
> looking for say, [[Taylor Hanson]].  If I get there from [[Tacoma Narrows
> Bridge]], there's a good chance I've never heard of Taylor Hanson before
> and
> followed a trail of "loosely related material" because I found connections
> interesting.  I have, in fact, gotten to [[Taylor Hanson]] fairly randomly
> (and even that's assuming I haven't been using the oh-so-wonderful random
> page button).
>
> If an article's lead isn't interesting, I'll close that browser tab and go
> on to the next one.  If it is interesting, I'll read the article and
> probably open a few new links.  In other words, I'll tend to go to
> whatever
> the article links to in much the same way that when reading a magazine
> I'll
> flip to whatever the magazine gives me.
>
> This is obviously merely my approach as a reader.  Does every reader take
> this approach?  Probably not.  Would I do this with the Encyclopaedia
> Britannica?  Heck no.  But without this aspect of Wikipedia, I'd probably
> use Wikipedia about as much as I do Britannica.

What I'm trying to say is an encyclopedia article should not be written like
a magazine article. A lot of what could be included to "relate something to
people's lives" is, frankly, trivia.

Adam


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Study finds that Wikipedia has evolved from an
	oligarchy to a democarcy

body:
On 2/27/07, Sage Ross <sage.ross at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> If someone comes up with the equation for that based on the paper's
> data, then we could do some measurements on the mechanisms by which
> edits beget edit.  The important question is, do edits really beget
> edits, or is the correlation between number of new edits and number of
> total edits simply an artifact of Wikipedia's overall exponential
> growth coupled with the relationship between article age and article
> popularity (i.e., more important articles are created earlier).

I know that an edit to something on my watchlist draws my attention and, in
the course of checking the edit, I may see other things that need fixing.
This is a wholly unscientific observation, of course.

Adam


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 2/27/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It's good that you're starting to admit that your desired conception
> of WIkipedia differs from what it actually is.
>

'Twas always so, though perhaps you did not notice.

Adam


subject:
[WikiEN-l] US 2008 presidential candidates - please keep an eye
	on these

body:
On 2/27/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> on 2/27/07 3:20 PM, David Gerard at dgerard at gmail.com wrote:
>
> > There's a bit of attention around our US 2008 presidential election
> > candidates already. Apparently people are noticing that for some of
> > them, their Wikipedia article ranks higher than their own website ...
>
> I just this minute saw this in a report on CNN regarding Wikipedia's
> prominence in this.
>
> Marc

Oh fec. I've been through them and cleared out all the lead unfree
images for now.

--
geni


from_name: Matthew Brown

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Tim Noah addresses the notion of notability in
	another Slate article

body:
On 2/27/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/27/07, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > *Not my intent, but also not my concern. I continue to believe that
> > Wikipedia should stop putting on airs about legitimacy
>
> We do what?

I think that Tim Noah misunderstands what's going on there.  A lot of
our notability guidelines appear to have been created out of a fear of
not looking legitimate and acceptable - "How can we be accepted as a
serious encyclopedia when we have articles about <xxx>?"

Wikipedia would do well to be less paranoid about external perception.
 For one thing, our articles on less conventional topics are very
useful to our readers.

-Matt


list: foundation-l

from_name: David A. Desrosiers

subject: [Foundation-l] [Wikitech-l] mwdumper does not work

references:
<45E468E5.1000004@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<e92136380702271008t5f2c18b2o94659d4921c648ba@mail.gmail.com>
	<45E46C09.5000507@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<e92136380702271010j6dfb266ar6fedc71b81462c1d@mail.gmail.com>
	<45E46CBB.7010201@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<45E4988E.9010207@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<1172614612.9560.12.camel@localhost.localdomain>
	<45E4AD4B.3000608@wolfmountaingroup.com>

body:
> The information you just posted to meta is wrong for Fedora Core 5.  If
> you have experience with Ubutnu and these other distros and wish
> to share it, that's great, please do not remove or revert the sections
> which apply to OS's you have not tested.  Thanks.

Have you filed these grave bugs with broken MySQL, Java and PHP packages
with the Fedora bugtracking facilities? The instructions I provided are
OS independent. I've only verified them on 5 separate boxes and 3 OS'.

If you wish, I can install FC5 and FC6 independently on separate boxes
to validate your assertions here, but I seriously expect you're going to
be wrong.

In either case, I see two possible outcomes:

        1. You're doing something wrong, and blaming the distribution
        for it

        2. There are critical bugs in core packages shipped with Fedora
        that need to be reported and fixed, ASAP.

So let's identify which one it is, and address it.

--
David A. Desrosiers
desrod at gnu-designs.com
Skype username: setuid
http://gnu-designs.com
?Always strive to silence the voices that oppose you."


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 27/02/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> on 2/27/07 3:20 PM, David Gerard at dgerard at gmail.com wrote:
>
> > There's a bit of attention around our US 2008 presidential election
> > candidates already. Apparently people are noticing that for some of
> > them, their Wikipedia article ranks higher than their own website ...
>
> I just this minute saw this in a report on CNN regarding Wikipedia's
> prominence in this.

See, we got a heads-up on the report this time ;-)

Can't see the story online yet...

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 2/27/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/28/07, Sage Ross <sage.ross at yale.edu> wrote:
> > This isn't as ridiculous an idea as it seemed (to me) at first glance.
> >  Maybe not a month, but a few days or a week where the process was
> > halted and a discussion about AfD took place instead might at least
> > move the community, and particularly the AfD regulars, closer to
> > consensus on what the proper purpose and methods of the deletion
> > process should be.
> >
> > Nothing new is likely to be said, but at least it will make a larger
> > proportion of !voters aware of a larger proportion of the viewpoints.
> > And probably get some users to put some more thought into their own
> > positions.
> >
> > -Sage
>
> People will wait it out. And during that period will likely respond by
> shoving more borderline stuff into CSD. Or in the case of admins
> outright out of process deletion.
>
> Neither of these two is a good outcome.
>
> Attacking the AFD regulars or irregulars head on wont work. They will
> react by viewing you as enemy and will likely oppose any reforms by
> default. This is basic wikipedia politics.

But if this suspension of AfD isn't driven by a specific reform
agenda, but merely a discussion aimed at increasing the uniformity and
predictability of the deletion process (in light of the waves of
negative press for the last few months), it might be possible to avoid
most of the potential backlash.

It would be more of a community-building exercise (as cheesy as that
sounds) than an attempt to impose outsider (with respect to AfD)
ideas.  Considering that you (geni) are the most forthright defender
of the current deletion system, you seem to have a very low opinion of
those who participate in it.  I'd like to think that Wikipedians who
are far enough into WP culture to be AfD regulars would be more likely
than the average editor to have internalized AGF.

-Sage


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 27/02/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> on 2/27/07 3:51 PM, Gwern Branwen at gwern0 at gmail.com wrote:

> > If you want to force the community in a direction, then code is the
> > most effective way. It is not very polite or considerate, but it certainly
> > works.

> Your entire post intimidated me ;-) and bullied me :-) into reading more
> Lessig - thanks. The section I pulled out above intrigues the hell out of
> me; I would love to know more.

Developers have inordinate power, so it's probably just as well
they're uniformly noble-spirited ;-) They shape the virtual world
we're working in here.

Also, it's a good way to lure people into coding - if there's just
this one feature that would make MediaWiki lovely, then writing it is
probably the best way to get it, because we're desperately short of
developers.

(I'm trying to think of good reading on the subject. The Cunctator
wrote quite a rant about it in the early days of Wikipedia which is
still up on nostalgia.wikipedia.org somewhere. There's undoubtedly a
pile of academic and semi-academic papers on the subject.)

- d.


from_name: teun spaans

subject: [Foundation-l] RfC: Draft licensing policy resolution

body:
One thing I am wondring myself is:

what is better: to define things in terms of "fair use", as the foundation
is unde US Law, or to define it with the term "fair practice", as used in
article 10 of the Berne Convention?

i wish you health and happiness,

teun spaans

On 2/26/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> On 2/21/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Does this implu that the Board ultimately does discourage the use of
> > such EDPs? At the moment the Board seems quite neutral on them, or
> > even encouraging them to be adopted. I know I am not the only person
> > who would like to see the Board *discourage* the adoption of EDPs, and
> > even indicate a very slow movement towards banning them. And yes I
> > know that gets enWP all huffy... but there are people there who
> > dislike fair use too.
>
> I think the recent example of the English Wikipedia using a "No free
> image" template is exactly the direction we should go:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Mamet
>
> (Incidentally, a very similar system is used by the IMDB, except of
> course they do not care if their images are freely licensed.)
>
> I am willing to support a licensing policy that is more strict than
> the current draft, i.e., which explicitly rules out the use of EDPs
> for purposes such as portrait photos, and limits them essentially to:
> - media about significant historical events
> - "identifying media" such as logos, jingles, etc.
> - excerpts of contemporary copyrighted works (low quality versions of
> comic book characters, album covers, music samples, screenshots etc.)
>
> I think we need to also have a vague "reasonable expectation" clause
> in the resolution that clarifies that, if we can reasonably _expect_
> that a free work will be made available, then a non-free one shouldn't
> be used. This allows us to, over time, shift out more of the above
> (especially the historical stuff, which I think we can definitely get
> under free licenses in the not too distant future).
>
> On the other hand, as long as copyrighted works are dominant in the
> information society, EDPs are the main method by which we can
> illustrate and excerpt contemporary cultural works. I do think this is
> a significant part of the mission of the WMF, and that we should make
> use of the few exemptions to copyright law that there are in order to
> do it.
>
> Characters from contemporary films or cartoons, for example, are not
> going to become "free content" anytime soon. Even if we could
> "liberate" them, this would hardly be our first priority. Those that
> scoff at Pokemon or Star Wars screenshots should acknowledge that, if
> we were to ban any such material from being illustrated, it would also
> exclude the great masters of film, music and painting from most of the
> 20th century. We should not even try to discriminate here between that
> which is "worthy" and that which is not; if the work is notable enough
> to be described in an encyclopedia, it is notable enough to be
> illustrated.
>
> Moreover, experience has shown that trying to ban non-free content
> completely tends to only lead to workarounds which are even worse
> (e.g. people photographing 3D toys of a cartoon character, carefully
> cropping out all the background, and proudly proclaiming that they now
> have created a "free work"; logos being flatly claimed to not be
> "copyrightable", etc.). So while I think we should promote free
> culture as much as possible, and while I can support a licensing
> policy which allows us a gradual shift towards that goal, I don't
> expect it to be fully achievable unless there are radical changes in
> copyright law throughout the world.
>
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
>
> DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
> the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
>
> "An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
> free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Works cited in Wikipedia

body:
On 2/27/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's actually not surprising though: references are often added
> "defensively" on Wikipedia, as an argument against deleting the
> article. Pokemon articles are more likely than others to be nominated
> for AfD.
>

Not quite that simple. If there are a standard set of references on
Pokemon once you have used them on one article you can probably use
them on all the others.

The classic counter case is European monarchs where you are likely
going to need a completely different set of refs every time (the
upshot of this is featured articles are likely to appear in families
where once someone has worked out the formulae for getting one such
article to FA status they can then do it to all the others).
--
geni


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
Matthew Brown wrote:

>Wikipedia decided to take the road of not controlling growth some time
>ago, and I think overall it has worked out well.  I think we cope with
>the mass of content well enough.
>
Absolutely.  One of the featres of a statistical system is that you can
never predict where the next growth spurt will happen, but there is
still an overall predictability.

>I see it as concentric circles, like a target; the center is the
>high-quality articles, and each ring outward is progressively lower
>quality.  All these rings are expanding.  The sum total of crap
>articles is inexorably expanding, but so is the total of useful stubs,
>the patchy but promising, the serviceable but short, and even the
>excellent ones.
>
I prefer a fractal geometry.  A circular growth pattern is too smoothly
predictable.It would also impose expectations on areas which are not
growing as expected.  We still have major areas that are only scantly
covered.

>Over time, the number of serviceable encyclopedia articles has
>steadily increased, and I see no signs of that stopping.  The
>percentage of articles that are high-quality may not go up, but the
>quantity and coverage of those articles is constantly increasing.
>
The good ones will remain in proportion ... just like the bad ones.

Ec


from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Wikitech-l] RTL-lang messages in a multilingual wiki

body:
Hello,

Please compare
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Userlogin&uselang=he&type=signup
to
http://he.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Userlogin&uselang=he&type=signup

On Commons, the messages appear RTL text direction which is correct,
but on the left, which I imagine is as unnatural as right-aligning for
English.

Evidently there is some sitewide setting for he.wp that tells it to
display messages right aligned. Commons default language is English
which is left aligned. I guess that using uselang=he is not enough for
it to display messages right aligned?

Should we (Commons) go and insert <span align="right"> around every /he message?
Would this solve it?
(Would this be a *good way* to solve it?)

thanks,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


subject: [WikiEN-l] JuryBot (was: Scott McCloud on Wikipedia)

body:
Michael Noda wrote:

>This is not to say that these admins aren't doing their jobs.  Indeed,
>Charles Matthews and Mindspillage are both in the first screenful of
>0.00% admins, and both are quite busy enough with more important
>things than deletions.  :-)  However, there might be plenty of admins
>(and non-admins, for that matter) who wouldn't mind doing a few
>deletion-related tasks a week, even if (especially if?) they don't
>want to focus on deletion full time.
>
>What might work is to have a process similar to jury duty: have a
>registry of volunteer admins who are assigned a very small, manageable
>number of tasks randomly by bot once per week.  This would clear
>backlogs, and take a lot of the pressure off the current top workers
>to clear backlogs.  Anyone who screws up, of course, would be stricken
>from the list of volunteers in minor cases, or could face desysopping
>in cases of flagrant error.
>
I don't even think that the random assignments.  A lot of the people who
might do a few without becoming hyper look at the RfA questions, and
quickly decide that it's not worth it to put themselves through that
process.  The other problem with random assignments is that unlike the
hypers many of these people will refuse to work on subjects that they do
not understand.

Ec


from_name: Nick Wilkins

subject: [WikiEN-l] What makes a good article?

body:
On 2/27/07, T P <t0m0p0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/27/07, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > http://www.xkcd.com/c214.html
>
>
> Every one of those links had to be clicked on.
>
> Adam

True, but when I go on one of my reading sprees (and the three hours
referenced in the comic isn't exactly unusual...) I'm not specifically
looking for say, [[Taylor Hanson]].  If I get there from [[Tacoma Narrows
Bridge]], there's a good chance I've never heard of Taylor Hanson before and
followed a trail of "loosely related material" because I found connections
interesting.  I have, in fact, gotten to [[Taylor Hanson]] fairly randomly
(and even that's assuming I haven't been using the oh-so-wonderful random
page button).

If an article's lead isn't interesting, I'll close that browser tab and go
on to the next one.  If it is interesting, I'll read the article and
probably open a few new links.  In other words, I'll tend to go to whatever
the article links to in much the same way that when reading a magazine I'll
flip to whatever the magazine gives me.

This is obviously merely my approach as a reader.  Does every reader take
this approach?  Probably not.  Would I do this with the Encyclopaedia
Britannica?  Heck no.  But without this aspect of Wikipedia, I'd probably
use Wikipedia about as much as I do Britannica.

-- Jonel


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-02-28

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r20077).

Reading tests from "maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

  18 still FAILING test(s) :(
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (single parameter)  [Has never passed]
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (multiple parameters)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: dt/dd/dl test  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.  [Has never passed]

Passed 493 of 511 tests (96.48%)... 18 tests failed!


body:
On 2/27/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Excellent find.  Thank you for posting that, Keith.
>
> The full paper's preprint is up at:
> http://xxx.arxiv.org/PS_cache/cs/pdf/0702/0702140.pdf
>

(I think this can be answered based on the preprint's data and
equations, but I'm not volunteering to figure out the answer.)

One of the central conclusions is "edits beget edits", though this is
in terms of correlation, not causation.  But assuming causation, how
many edits does an edit beget?  That is, as a function of total edits,
time since creation, and number of new edits in a recent time slice,
how many extra edits are edits are expected in the next time slice and
beyond?  If I make 50 edits in one day to a 1000-edit article of age
50 weeks, how many extra edits will others contribute the next day,
and how many extra over the next year?

If someone comes up with the equation for that based on the paper's
data, then we could do some measurements on the mechanisms by which
edits beget edit.  The important question is, do edits really beget
edits, or is the correlation between number of new edits and number of
total edits simply an artifact of Wikipedia's overall exponential
growth coupled with the relationship between article age and article
popularity (i.e., more important articles are created earlier).

I assume the answer is some of both.  But it could be tested by
individual editors choosing appropriate pairs of articles (of similar
quality, time-since-creation, and total edits), and editing one
heavily while leaving the other alone.  For each pair, measure how
many extra edits beyond that editor's work accrue to the edited one
compared to the control.

-Sage


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 2/27/07, T P <t0m0p0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/27/07, John Lee <johnleemk at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > So you are saying that if a field is completely forgotten or outmoded,
> > even
> > if we have the secondary sources to back us up and our encyclopaedia is
> > not
> > on paper, we should not be including articles on that field? I'd like some
> > concrete examples - but then again, these are all hypotheticals since
> > nobody's ever written an encyclopaedia and published it in realtime. Then
> > again, could you perhaps point to some topics fifteen years old which you
> > think would not be worthy of inclusion in an encyclopaedia today, but
> > would
> > have been included in Wikipedia by experts at the peak of the topics'
> > fame?
>
>
> I think our reliance on secondary sources does help a lot.
>
> On the other hand, a lot of pop culture is ephemeral.  Minor entertainers
> and video games come to mind.  Do we need an article on Michael Richards'
> racist tirade?  Britney Spears in rehab?  Do we really want articles on the
> latest Paris fashions, each year and every year?

Yes.

> I suppose such information has a certain historical value, but it doesn't
> fit in with my conception of what an encyclopedia should cover.

It's good that you're starting to admit that your desired conception
of WIkipedia differs from what it actually is.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
John Lee wrote:

>On 2/27/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>T P wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>There's nothing stupid about a prestigious reference work (as Wikipedia has
>>>
>>>
>>>become) waiting for a field to become significant before writing about it.
>>>
>>>
>>>If it becomes significant in fifteen years, we can write about it in fifteen
>>>
>>>
>>>years.
>>>
>>>
>>The world is moving faster than that.  One unique feature about
>>Wikipedia is that it is contemporaneous with its content. Some of the
>>details which make our time what it is are ephemeral, and may not be
>>researchable in fifteen years.
>>
>>
>Wait a minute...are you saying that all the secondary sources on a
>particular topic available now will no longer be available in fifteen years?
>It's difficult to imagine that being true, unless it's for some particularly
>rare topic. I can't imagine many ephemeral fields where many articles are
>allegedly unfairly being deleted.
>
>It's possible webcomics are one of those fields - and I'm not saying they
>aren't - but normally one argument in favour of waiting is that we rarely
>have the necessary perspective now, but that given a certain amount of time,
>we will be able to look back and better assess what is important, and what
>is not. The idea is that some subjects will no longer be researchable, but
>that this is a good thing, because of some form of darwinisim, i.e. the
>non-notable chaff will be separated from the wheat.
>
>I'm not saying I endorse this line of thought, but it's an interesting one
>that shouldn't be rejected out of hand.
>
I wouldn't say that they will _all_ disappear.  There is bound to be a
certain randomness about what disappears..  Using webcomics for the sake
of argument, some will almost certainly disappear, but we cannot know
now which will be notable fifteen years hense.  Many will reflect a
zeitgeist, but you are a least right when you say that we do not now
have the necessary perspective   We can still represent the basics of a
specific webcomic.  So too can someone else do that for another
webcomic  This sets up the building blocks for the more evaluative
article that will be written in 15 years.  This will be especially
important in pop culture articles.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] What makes a good article?

body:
T P wrote:

>On 2/27/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Making every word count is a matter of stylistics, and not everyone is
>>capable of the tight economical prose that would be thus required.
>>
>>
>Well what do we mean by "brilliant prose"?
>
Great question!

Ec


body:
On 28/02/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:

> Noah also appeared on NPR, which you can listen to here:
> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7620868
> They called David Gerard for a comment, but they didn't really let him
> speak fully and I suspect that they edited his part heavily. It's a
> shame that him and Noah wasn't interviewed at the same time, that
> would've been great.

They taped a few minutes of me explaining stuff, which they then used
for their purposes. Which is probably fine by me. Do they usually put
up transcripts of this stuff?

- d.


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 2/28/07, John Lee <johnleemk at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, my views may be skewed by the massive assumptions of bad faith I've
> constantly stumbled across - I can't say that my experiences represent an
> accurate sample. I just feel that there's a lot more assumptions of bad
> faith these days than there used to be. I recall a lot of nasty debates,
> especially over deletionism vs inclusionism, but I can't think of any
> (except trolls, of course) who assumed the other party was acting in bad
> faith. That's the kind of respect I'm talking about.
>

Look at the reactions to schoolwatch.

--
geni


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 28/02/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/28/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > They taped a few minutes of me explaining stuff, which they then used
> > for their purposes. Which is probably fine by me. Do they usually put
> > up transcripts of this stuff?

> According to http://www.npr.org/transcripts/ you have to buy them.

They used one sentence out of ten minutes ;-)

I favour Ben Lowe's response comment here:

http://www.slate.com/id/2160644/

- d.


from_name: Rich Holton

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Study finds that Wikipedia has evolved from
 an	oligarchy to a democarcy

body:
T P wrote:
> On 2/27/07, Sage Ross <sage.ross at yale.edu> wrote:
>> If someone comes up with the equation for that based on the paper's
>> data, then we could do some measurements on the mechanisms by which
>> edits beget edit.  The important question is, do edits really beget
>> edits, or is the correlation between number of new edits and number of
>> total edits simply an artifact of Wikipedia's overall exponential
>> growth coupled with the relationship between article age and article
>> popularity (i.e., more important articles are created earlier).
>
>
> I know that an edit to something on my watchlist draws my attention and, in
> the course of checking the edit, I may see other things that need fixing.
> This is a wholly unscientific observation, of course.
>

Additional anecdotal evidence: Sometimes I hit the random button and
find a page that has not been edited for many months. I may make a
simple change, perhaps do a bit of wikifying or fix a spelling mistake,
and put the page on my watchlist. Often times such a page will attract
other changes from other editors. I assume that these others were
watching recent changes, or had the page on their watchlist and their
attention was drawn by my edit (as Adam recounts, above).

-Rich


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 28/02/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> > especially over deletionism vs inclusionism, but I can't think of any
> > (except trolls, of course) who assumed the other party was acting in bad
> > faith. That's the kind of respect I'm talking about.

> Look at the reactions to schoolwatch.

Look at what invoked it. They formed into an organised group as the
only way to deal with evidently contemptuous mass-nominations of
school articles.

When AFD formed factions in this manner, it was evidently a deeply
broken process. Two years later, it's an even more deeply broken
process. There's gotta be a better way. More than that, there's gotta
be some resolution of the deeper assumptions.

It will not fix itself, because a group is its own worst enemy and
will not change from within. It will resist change from the outside,
on the assumption that they're so busy and vital that any outside
interference must be assumed negative until absolutely proven
otherwise. (A good example is how AFD resisted changing the page from
one single multiple-megabyte slab of HTML until the devs said it was
actually causing noticeable performance problems all on its own.)

Shut AFD for a month. The article load will be negligible compared to
the daily firehose of crap, and we can do without the poisonousness
inside and outside the project.

- d.


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

body:
Noah also appeared on NPR, which you can listen to here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7620868

I've been a fan of his for some time and I was a little.... peeved....
when I read his wikipedia articles (that is, his articles about
wikipedia, not the other way around). However, he comes off much
better when you hear him (and I really don't think he dislikes
wikipedia, I think he's fascinated by us ;)

They called David Gerard for a comment, but they didn't really let him
speak fully and I suspect that they edited his part heavily. It's a
shame that him and Noah wasn't interviewed at the same time, that
would've been great.

--Oskar


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 2/28/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> ?people had the common sense to respect each other, to accept different
> > viewpoints, to understand their limitations. That culture is gone.
>
> I believe it has more to do with emotional makeup than common sense. And,
> unfortunately, it appears I have come too late to the Community to have
> experienced the culture you say was.

Indeed - I noticed it was disappearing in 2005, and by 2006 it seemed to
have almost completely vanished. I recognise that part of my feelings about
this are just irrational wishing for the "good old days" (I have noticed
it's always the same with any online community people have been members of
for a long time - we tend to get nostalgic and hype up how good things once
were). But still, there was a culture of mutual respect for each other. Even
if you thought someone was dead wrong, you didn't get into a wheel war or
edit war with them. You just argued a lot and tried to find a solution to
the problem. I notice that the culture is not completely dead - many
relatively (to me) newer admins have the same kind of attitude. But many
more don't, and the same goes for the editorial community at large.

>
> > The reason I mentioned that we may have to resort to a software fix is
> > because I am very skeptical about the possibility of changing our
> culture.
>
> But wouldn?t that be like replacing the electrical system of a car whose
> engine is shot?

The perfect is the enemy of the good. I'm not proposing the software fix as
an ideal solution. I'm proposing it as a stopgap measure to deal with our
corroded culture to buy us time to work on ways to fix the culture - and
also reduce the distractions from the real work that needs to be done.

> It's not possible to do this without alienating a lot of longtime editors.
> > In the end, it's possible that we could massively purge WP of people who
> > don't share the common purpose of building an encyclopaedia, but it's
> highly
> > implausible. I believe we can survive without these people, because a
> lot of
> > edits are made by anonymous editors, but we will never drive them off,
> > because it's politically unacceptable to most Wikipedians, even those
> who do
> > share the common purpose of building an encyclopaedia.
>
> If the persons (editors) agree to a common purpose and a set of common
> cultural values, what could possibly be their argument to keep anyone who
> doesn?t?

People have this emotional bond to the idea that it's not fair to kick out
people just over a disagreement on ideals. Furthermore, many of these people
often are committed to writing an encyclopaedia - it's just that they tack
on other peripheral goals to this common purpose. The resulting
disagreements are difficult to solve.

I just think it's impractical to evict these kinds of people, especially
since it runs counter to things like assuming good faith. (Indeed, many of
these people act wholly out of good faith.) We hav to tolerate the big tent
- it's just that we also need to keep reminding people that our common
purpose must and should override whatever peripheral purposes others may
have. I think this is a better solution.

>
> > Therefore, what has to be done is to find ways to limit the damage our
> > corroded culture can do. We've tried the policy route, and it's failed
> > abysmally. It's time to see if article and editor ratings, together with
> a
> > more refined approach to blocking, can ameliorate the problem.
> >
> * John, I?m afraid it?s going to take more that mechanical fixes to halt
> the
> corrosion. It is going to take everyone from the top down finally coming
> to
> terms with the fact that there are flesh and blood, emotional, human
> beings
> at the core of this project ? each bringing their own learning, life
> experiences and day-to-day struggles into the mix. The larger culture we
> come from, and have learned from, doesn?t handle this emotional aspect of
> the human being very well. But, perhaps, with some work, the Wikipedia
> culture can.

I'm not going to comment on the culture of human society at large, but I
think that you can't change culture overnight, and that changing a culture
is very difficult without mass shedding of blood (in this case, it's a
metaphor). That's why I believe software fixes should be given priority for
the time being. They're just a bandaid, but they will hopefully ameliorate
several problems with our corroded culture until we can find long term
fixes.

Furthermore, some changes such as selective blocking/page protection could
be helpful towards developing a culture of greater respect for others'
viewpoints. If you constantly get blocked from editing a particular article
or joining a particular discussion because you're exhibiting a total lack of
common sense there, disrespecting others and resorting to last resorts like
reverting instead of discussion, at some point you'll either get fed up and
leave the project, or change your ways. (I think in older editors, it will
be the former; in newer editors, the latter.)

Marc Riddell

Johnleemk


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 2/28/07, Sage Ross <sage.ross at yale.edu> wrote:
> This isn't as ridiculous an idea as it seemed (to me) at first glance.
>  Maybe not a month, but a few days or a week where the process was
> halted and a discussion about AfD took place instead might at least
> move the community, and particularly the AfD regulars, closer to
> consensus on what the proper purpose and methods of the deletion
> process should be.
>
> Nothing new is likely to be said, but at least it will make a larger
> proportion of !voters aware of a larger proportion of the viewpoints.
> And probably get some users to put some more thought into their own
> positions.
>
> -Sage

People will wait it out. And during that period will likely respond by
shoving more borderline stuff into CSD. Or in the case of admins
outright out of process deletion.

Neither of these two is a good outcome.

Attacking the AFD regulars or irregulars head on wont work. They will
react by viewing you as enemy and will likely oppose any reforms by
default. This is basic wikipedia politics.

Deletion process has been talked about for years. So far the outcomes are:

prod ---> only works where the original creator doesn't dispute.

expand csd ---> I tend to feel we have reached the limit on that one
we are already asking for too much judgement.

Limit article creation ---> Adding a few extra days will have limited
effect. Preventing the creation of orphans might (generally most of
AFD and CSD are orphans) but that is hard to do without a software
change and may be a bit harsh.

Other than that the various suggestions have involved little more than
tinkering. Ultimately the only way we have of dealing with the hard
cases is to sit down and have a !vote.

--
geni


body:
On 2/28/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> They taped a few minutes of me explaining stuff, which they then used
> for their purposes. Which is probably fine by me. Do they usually put
> up transcripts of this stuff?

According to http://www.npr.org/transcripts/ you have to buy them.

--Oskar


body:
On 2/28/07, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
> G'day folks,
>
> Nature has published an article on studies on Wikipedia editing patterns.

<snip>

> They have looked at 4.7 million pages from the English-language Wikipedia,
> subjected to a total of about 58 million revisions, to see who was making
> the changes, and how.

When I first read this I was very confused since we don't have that
many articles. Did they look at non-article pages? Seems unlikely.
Then I read the abstract of the study which states:

"Despite the apparent lack of order, the 50 million edits by 4.8
million contributors to the 1.5 million articles in the
English-language Wikipedia follow strong certain overall
regularities."

It seems like the Nature people just confused the numbers (4.7 and 4.8
are very close after all). Seems like a silly mistake :)

Can I say it?!?! PLEASE!! I want to say it! Ok, I'm saying it!

Had this article been.....

All right, I won't say it :(

--Oskar


from_name: Jake Nelson

subject: [WikiEN-l] What makes a good article?

body:
On 2/27/07, John Lee <johnleemk at gmail.com> wrote:
> The problem with all our processes is that they cater to the lowest common
> denominator - be it the LCD of reader, or LCD of writer. (Of course, in a
> few cases, they cater to a very rarefied audience - I have in mind some
> science articles which are completely incomprehensible to anyone not
> familiar with the field.)

Hell, look at most of our math articles. Random example: [[Domain
(mathematics)]]. The very first section, before the TOC:

"
In mathematics, a domain of a k-place relation L ? X1 ? ? ? Xk is one
of the sets Xj, 1 ? j ? k.

In the special case where k = 2 and L ? X1 ? X2 is a function L : X1 ?
X2, it is conventional to refer to X1 as the domain of the function
and to refer to X2 as the codomain of the function.
"

That's terribly obscure terminology and symbols for something that I
learned in 7th-grade algebra class. It gets a little better when you
get down to the "Domain of a function" section, but a fair number of
people will have been scared off by then. What's worse is that the
links fail to provide information about what the various symbols and
phrases mean. When there is a linked article, it's often more
incomprehensible than the one it should be clarifying.

We need to work on readability, especially in the first sections of articles.

-- Jake Nelson
[[en:User:Jake Nelson]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 2/28/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> This has been happening two years. So, no new problem to deal with.

More than three years, really.

http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikien-l/2003-November/

See in particular the thread labeled "Rampant Deletionism", where much
of this was said almost verbatim. (And wherein I argued for a
moratorium on VFD.) Many of the other threads are about the state of
VFD at the time.

There's probably similar discussions from before I was an admin, but I
was barely able to remember that one.

-- Jake Nelson
[[en:User:Jake Nelson]]


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Moderation on this mailing list

body:
> Marc Riddell wrote:
>
>> on 2/22/07 4:28 PM, Marc Riddell at michaeldavid86 at comcast.net wrote:
>>
>>
>>> sighting my sources.
>>>
>>>
>> "sighting" my sources!?!
>>
>> This is an excellent example of why a writer needs an editor!

on 2/23/07 4:07 AM, Ray Saintonge at saintonge at telus.net wrote:

>>
> Not at all, you just need to pat yourself on the back for an effective
> metaphor and play on words. :-)
>
> Ec

Ray,

Thanks for the save ;-) - I'll take it! :-)

Marc


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] What makes a good article?

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 2/28/07, Jake Nelson <duskwave at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> We need to work on readability, especially in the first sections of articles.
>>
>
> Definitely. The first section of every article ought to summarise the
> whole topic for a lay person. The rest of the article can descend into
> geekdom.
>
> That said, I frequently have difficult with maths-ish articles.

Sometimes a proposed introduction rewrite to be more accessible to the
layperson will receive some resistance from people who know more about
the subject because it ends up being imprecise.  Compromises
occasionally get hammered out, usually consisting of an introductory
sentence or two that uses the word "informally" to signal that this
isn't technically the correct definition, but more of a hand-wavy
intuition about the subject.  I think that can be done for more
articles, but it's kind of a slow process, and the mathematicians do
have a point that we don't want to write inaccurate pop-math either.

Actually this happens a lot in political science articles too, in my
experience.  The first sentence defining a fairly simple topic will
often contain at least several jargon words I don't know, in the
interests of treating with extreme precision some legal obscurity
(especially legal fictions).

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
on 2/26/07 10:14 PM, John Lee at johnleemk at gmail.com wrote:

> At least we can reduce the possible points of failure,
> without resorting to Jimbo.

As far as the overall culture of the Wikipedia Community is concerned,
nothing is going to change until a recognition that it needs to change - and
a mandate to fix it - comes from the top. Without that it is all merely
theory to be debated.

Marc Riddell


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
on 2/26/07 11:34 AM, Marc Riddell at michaeldavid86 at comcast.net wrote:

> There seems to be a great deal of resistance to the idea that many of the
> problems within WP involve the very culture itself. This speaks to me of a
> great deal of denial on the part of the Community Members.
>
> Denial is saying ?anything but that?. To admit that the ?that? is the
> problem, might mean having to confront, and possibly get rid of, the ?that?.
> If a chemical dependent admits that the chemical is the ?that? that is
> killing them, they might have to give up that ?that?.  ?Anything but that!?

Cassandra rests.

Marc Riddell


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
on 2/28/07 7:28 AM, David Gerard at dgerard at gmail.com wrote:

> Mandates from the top sometimes don't work that well in practice. The
> community has told Jimbo to get knotted before ...
>
> These are volunteers. Volunteer motivation is a tricky one. Best thing
> to do is to think in terms of herding cats - you need to work out the
> local equivalent of tuna.

David,

I hear ya. It is just that it's been my experience with any type of
organization that motivation for any type of major change must come from
(and include) that person at the top. On their own, enough people need to
feel there is a problem before any work toward change can begin. In my work
as a psychotherapist, it is not my role to convince you that you have pain -
I can only help you to relieve it.

Marc


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 2/28/07, Sheldon Rampton <sheldon at prwatch.org> wrote:
>
> John Lee wrote:
>
> > Indeed - I noticed it was disappearing in 2005, and by 2006 it
> > seemed to
> > have almost completely vanished. I recognise that part of my
> > feelings about
> > this are just irrational wishing for the "good old days" (I have
> > noticed
> > it's always the same with any online community people have been
> > members of
> > for a long time - we tend to get nostalgic and hype up how good
> > things once
> > were). But still, there was a culture of mutual respect for each
> > other. Even
> > if you thought someone was dead wrong, you didn't get into a wheel
> > war or
> > edit war with them.
>
> I don't know how accurate your perceptions are on this point. I've
> been involved with Wikipedia since late 2002 and haven't noticed a
> huge change in the amount of respect that Wikipedians show for one
> another. The main thing I've noticed is that there seems to be a
> bigger corpus of formalized rules, and a correspondingly higher
> likelihood that disputes will turn into officious rule-wielding
> rather than debates directly about articles and their merits. I don't
> know whether this change is a good thing or a bad thing -- some of
> both, probably.

Yes, my views may be skewed by the massive assumptions of bad faith I've
constantly stumbled across - I can't say that my experiences represent an
accurate sample. I just feel that there's a lot more assumptions of bad
faith these days than there used to be. I recall a lot of nasty debates,
especially over deletionism vs inclusionism, but I can't think of any
(except trolls, of course) who assumed the other party was acting in bad
faith. That's the kind of respect I'm talking about.

As for the "culture of mutual respect," though, I remember some knock-
> down-dragout fights, ideological wars, and some incredibly nasty
> experiences with trolls, vandals and cranks. Moreover, this seems to
> have been going on at Wikipedia since its earliest days. Larry Sanger
> (who left Wikipedia before I got here) recalls its early history as
> follows:

I too can recall many contentious arguments - but none of them as
detrimental (I would say) to the community as the kinds of arguments we have
today. Today, instead of just arguing, people are more likely to take things
to the next level by assuming the other party is acting in bad faith, and
revert/wheel warring. I'm well aware of the acrimonious atmosphere
engendered by the earliest trolls, but putting the trolls aside (since they
rarely contributed much either to the project or the community), I think
there was a lot more good faith and mutual respect for other Wikipedians
(but not necessarily for the opinions of those Wikipedians).

I don't know whether the Wikipedia commmunity today is overall more
> or less successful than it was in the past at fostering a "culture of
> mutual respect," but if John Lee thinks it used to be better, I
> suspect that this may simply reflect his early good luck rather than
> an actual change. My own experience suggests that the overall culture
> hasn't changed much. If anything, it probably has gotten marginally
> better over the years.

Well, a sample of one (or two) is never a good foundation for any factual
findings. ;) I would note, however, that the mailing list has always been
full of acrimonious debates, and has generally been more confrontational
than the project as a whole. What concerns me is what actually goes on in
the project, because whereas last time, despite the discretion available to
all editors and admins courtesy of WP:BOLD, WP:IAR, etc., these powers were
rarely abused, today, they are the very first guns to be rolled out in an
argument. If you disagree with someone, increasingly the tendency seems to
be to revert them, despite our best efforts to contain such attitudes.

Johnleemk


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: Soft deletion

body:
I'd like to propose a simple approach to dealing with article subjects
of questionable notability, which may represent a solution to many of
the conflicts surrounding such articles. I apologize if this has been
debated before; if so, please point me to the relevant
thread(s)/page(s).

Our policy is simple: We demand reliable evidence for the notability
of a subject. While the scope of such evidence will certainly continue
to evolve, the principle is not negotiable.

We delete articles that fail to establish notability. Deletion hides
revisions from everyone but admins, a very small percentage of our
user base. Importantly, it even hides them from the authors of the
article.

As an alternative to hard deletion, I propose that we redirect a set
of articles, to be defined below, to a page "Wikipedia:Removed article
(notability)" or sth. similar. This page would explain our basic
notability principles, the procedure for adding sources, and how to go
back to the original article and retrieve an older version from the
history to edit.

By using a redirect, we prevent such pages from being counted as
articles. We also force anyone trying to look at the article to read
the notice we put on the page -- which could be much more effective
than user talk messages. We also make the process of restoring the
previous version somewhat non-obvious, which should reduce the number
of instant reverts. The redirects should be liberally semi-protected
if they do become a problem, which still allows for open history
review, debate, and editing by regular users.

The set of articles that would be treated this way would _exclude_:
- vanity articles (gushing style, created by the subject, utterly
obvious non-notability ..)
- anything that is not following the established encyclopedic format
- anything that is remotely problematic in content (legal risks, ethics)

The set would, however, include the typical non-notable computer
program, webcomic, journalist etc. Many of these articles are fairly
detailed when they get deleted, and in my opinion, soft deletion would
be a real alternative to allow people to continue to review the
content.

== Advantages ==

* Reduces AfD workload and admin burn-out; involves more people in deletion
* Allows open review and discussion of soft-deleted articles
* Engages people who are "hit" by deletion rather than putting them in AfD hell
* Encourages actual improvement when such improvement seems possible,
but inclusion is not yet justifiable
* Makes it easier to systematically track re-creation of non-notable articles
* Avoids the process wonkery of undeletion when notability can be
established and reduces the risk of the risk of duplicated effort (nn
article deleted=>someone else re-creates, now with more sources, but
as a non-admin they do not have access to the original text)

== Possible problems ==

* Could be used where it is not appropriate.

Response: By redirecting to a page which gives a _specific_ policy
reason -- Wikipedia:Removed article (notability) -- we would
implicitly whitelist the cases where soft deletion can be used. If the
risk of it growing out of hand is nevertheless perceived too great, we
could limit it to a specific test category at first, e.g. web comics.

* People can still link to non-notable material by linking to old revisions.

Response: This is already possible -- any revision from any article
can be linked to, regardless of the content it contains. The only
exception are revisions deleted for legal reasons. It hasn't been much
of an issue so far, and I doubt it will become one. If it does, we can
make the "old revision" notice at the top more prominent.

* Could lead to constant edit warring over non-notable topics.

Edit warring is usually quickly dealt with, and reverting redirects
without cause could be considered a bad faith act even without an
actual edit war taking place. In practice, it is unlikely to be a very
different problem from the re-creation of articles once they have been
deleted.

* Red links become blue.

If the subject is not notable, why is it linked to in the first place? :-)

Thoughts?
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
on 2/28/07 8:39 AM, John Lee at johnleemk at gmail.com wrote:

> Well, kind of the idea of creating a new class of users involved with the
> English WP was to create a new "top" so we wouldn't need to rely on the
> mandate coming from Jimbo who, I think, is a bit isolated from the things
> that go on in WP on a daily basis.

John,

I just don't see how a group can lead - without a group leader.

Marc


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
on 2/28/07 8:33 AM, David Gerard at dgerard at gmail.com wrote:

> We're basically agreeing, I think.

Yes, I believe we are.

The psychopathology of
> organisations is a fascinating area!

It has been a focus of my work for several years now. And, it's never dull!
>
> Volunteers are stroppy buggers. They do *ridiculous* amounts of work,
> though. As long as they want to.

And they will work so long as they are treated well - and believe in what
they are working for. You and I are doing it now.

Marc


subject: [WikiEN-l] JuryBot

body:
Delirium wrote:

>Part of the problem from my perspective is figuring out what to do in
>some of these tasks.  I typically do this "janitorial" work in
>bursts---I'll do a bunch of recent-changes patrolling for three weeks,
>because I'm in the mood for it, or clear out copyright violations for a
>day, then I won't do anything for two months.  When I come back to one
>of these tasks after an absence, it takes concerted effort to navigate
>the web of rules and templates and informal policies.  Even simple stuff
>like, "so what's the current policy on warning/blocking vandals, and
>which of the 100+ user warning templates should I use?".
>
It would seem that such a multiplicity of warning templates alone would
turn people off the task.  Are they all regularly used?  Could some be
combined?

Ec


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

body:
There are a couple of things that I think can be be done to address
in a positive way the concerns raised in Tim Noah's articles:

(1) Develop better, more comprehensive notability standards for more
topics.

(2) Improve the section of WP:N titled "Rationale for requiring a
level of notability."

==1. Develop better, more comprehensive notability standards for
different topics.==

With regard to journalists in particular, I think Wikipedia should
have a fairly inclusive standard. Tim Noah uses Wikipedia's
notability standard for porn stars to mock the concept of notability
standards at all. (He seems not to realize that the reason for a porn
star standard is precisely to *limit* the number of porn stars who
will be included.) Even so, however, Wikipedia's porn star standard
in practice has permitted quite a few entries. For example, it allows
an article about [[Dolores Del Monte]], whose sole criterion for
notabilty is that she was Playboy's 1954 Playmate of the Month (a
distinction so minor that she herself was unaware of until 1979,
because the photographer sold her pictures to Hefner without her
knowledge).

If simply having your picture appear in Playboy is sufficient
notability to merit an article, I think the standard for journalists
should allow inclusion of anyone who writes or reports regularly for
a notable publication. At present, however, the draft notability
policy for journalists says that they must be either a "SENIOR staff
writer" or the writer of a "nationally syndicated column." If a
publication itself is notable enough to include, its employment of a
writer (senior or not) on a regular basis constitutes sufficient
"note" having been made of the writer for him/her to be considered
noteworthy.

==2. Improve the section of WP:N titled "Rationale for requiring a
level of notability." ==

In Tim Noah's second article, he characterized the thrust of his
criticism as follows:

> [G]iven the seeming infinity of cyberspace and volunteer expertise
> available to Wikipedia?the only plausible reason Wikipedia's
> gatekeepers would exclude anyone or anything as insufficiently
> notable for an encyclopedia entry would have to be the secret
> thrill of exclusion itself

This argument is patently false, and Noah himself might have realized
this if the notability policy clearly explained the reasons why it
exists. Some of those reasons have been discussed just now on this
listserv. The most important, I think, are that (a) Wikipedia strives
to be accurate, and is difficult if not impossible to fact-check
articles on topics that are not sufficiently notable to have been
written about elsewhere, and (b) Wikipedia's popularity creates a
temptation for people to use it for self-promotional purposes by
creating articles about their small businesses, personal blogs,
garage bands, crank scientific theories, etc. The notability policy
provides a criterion for separating this self-promotional material
from information that has been deemed sufficiently interesting to
have been noted by someone other than the topic's own creator.

If these explanations for WHY the policy exists were stated more
explicitly in the notability policy itself, it might make it harder
for someone like Noah to imagine that the "secret thrill or
exclusion" (or some other fantasized motive) is "the only plausible
reason" for the policy to exist. However, the "Rationale for
requiring a level of notability" section currently doesn't do a very
good job of explaining why the policy exists. It contains the
following three points:

> 1.  In order to have a verifiable article, a topic should be
> notable enough that the information about it will have been
> researched, checked, and evaluated through publication in
> independent reliable sources.
>
> 2. In order to have a neutral article, a topic should be notable
> enough that the information about it will be from unbiased and
> unaffiliated sources; and that those interested in the article will
> not be exclusively partisan or fanatic editors.
>
> 3. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate directory of businesses,
> websites, persons, etc. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia

The language of points 1 and 2 ("a topic should be notable
enough ...") sounds more like a simple re-statement of the policy
than an explanation of its purpose. The explanation of "why" is
embedded in these points if you read carefully, but it is easy to
misread them as mere normative assertions rather than explanations.

Likewise, point #3 states that Wikipedia is not an indiscrimate
directory, but it doesn't explain WHY it would be bad for Wikipedia
to be an indiscriminate directory. Again, this point sounds more like
a mere description of Wikipedia policy than a rationale for why it
should be so.

I've taken a stab at rewriting this section, including changing its
subhead from "Rationale for requiring a level of notability" to "Why
Wikipedia has a notability policy." If you want to see my changes,
you can find them at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
title=Wikipedia:Notability&oldid=111589127

(I wasn't sure my change would meet the consensus test, so I made the
change and then rolled it back, pending comments and approval from
others.)

--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Research director, Center for Media & Democracy (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
|     Banana Republicans
|     The Best War Ever
--------------------------------
|  Subscribe to our free weekly list serve by visiting:
|  http://www.prwatch.org/cmd/subscribe_sotd.html
|
|  Donate now to support independent, public interest reporting:
|  https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?id=1118
--------------------------------


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 28/02/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> People will wait it out. And during that period will likely respond by
> shoving more borderline stuff into CSD. Or in the case of admins
> outright out of process deletion.
> Neither of these two is a good outcome.

This happens already.

> Attacking the AFD regulars or irregulars head on wont work. They will
> react by viewing you as enemy and will likely oppose any reforms by
> default. This is basic wikipedia politics.

This has been happening two years. So, no new problem to deal with.

> Other than that the various suggestions have involved little more than
> tinkering. Ultimately the only way we have of dealing with the hard
> cases is to sit down and have a !vote.

I propose shutting down the process for some hard thinking about what
lies underneath. So far we have a lot of people utterly convinced
they're right and that anyone who disagrees is an idiot at best.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 28/02/07, Sage Ross <sage.ross at yale.edu> wrote:

>   I'd like to think that Wikipedians who
> are far enough into WP culture to be AfD regulars would be more likely
> than the average editor to have internalized AGF.

I would too, but the evidence of their manner of comporting themselves
suggests otherwise.

- d.


from_name: Yury Tarasievich

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Translating the Five pillars

body:
I was thinking more along the lines of "any community pretending to
produce some meaningful result", actually.


body:
On 28/02/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/28/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Wikipedia would do well to be less paranoid about external perception.

> Yeah, a lot of our meta-comments like "Please expand this section"
> seem to be getting stripped out, and tags are being pushed onto the
> talk page, for fear of readers realising that our encyclopaedia is
> still a work in progress.

This is why in press relations I try to turn "Wikipedia is not
reliable" into a positive. It's not fact-checked sentence by sentence
like Britannica, but it's good and useful - just read critically. That
is, educating the readers.

(Most of the kerfuffle over students referencing Wikipedia is because
the students are doing something stupid by doing so.)

- d.


from_name: Travis Derouin

subject: [Wikitech-l] article get section count?

body:
Hi,

Is there a function that already exists in the codebase that returns
the # of sections in an article? I can't seem to find it.
article::getSection takes a parameter for the ith section, but if you
want to iterate over an article searching for a particular section,
it's not clear how many sections there are. Similarily, it'd be great
to have a function that return the section based on the section name,
like getSectionByName or similar.

Travis


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
Delirium wrote:

>IMO, this is part of the gray area of "original research".  Is writing
>an article on the war in Somalia directly from news reports original
>historical research?  It depends partly on how the article is
>written---the more synthesis of narratives and analysis of the overall
>situation, the more it's treading into research territory.  Once
>secondary sources do appear, it's important to try to get away from that
>gray area as much as possible and reduce our use of the contemporary
>news sources.  So I can see your view that it would be better to just
>wait until the sources exist before writing an article at all.  That
>would certainly be sounder, but I think our articles on recent topics
>provide an important enough service that it's worth muddling through the
>gray areas anyway, so long as they do eventually get returned to.
>
When speaking of original research we always need to remember why such a
rule arose: to prevent the more loony ideas from having a podium.
Articles on current events need to be layered.  For some of the of the
basic information such as who invaded, and on what date newspaper
reports are as reliable as anything.  People are anxious to find out
more about these things as they happen, and government sources and big
news media often leave the impression that they are biased.  If we put
up early information that is questionable it's easier for us to admit we
were wrong and make the necessary corrections than it is for governments
and big media.

Our coverage of events like the London subway bombing or the Indian
Ocean tsunami managed to keep on top of events better that the standard
news outlets.  This offered a degree of accountability that was not
generally available elsewhere.  Other aspects develop more slowly, like
the stranger conspiracy theories about the 9/11 events.  If those
theories are out there they need to be taken into account and a neutral
approach to such things requires a fair representation of both sides of
the story.

Media accountability could become a big issue.  The chasm between media
investment interests and government spin on one hand, and free-for-all
speculation on the other requires some kind of neutrality somewhere in
the middle.  NPOV provides a framework for accountability.  It is not
inimical to original research as long as there is ample room to correct
the errors in that are inevitable in original research.  Put in other
terms reliability is not as important as accountability.

Ec


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Works cited in Wikipedia

body:
On 2/27/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> ...well, works cited where the citation involves an ISBN, anyway.
>
> http://www.librarything.com/blog/2007/02/wikipedia-citatons-with-feed.php

Oh dear:
----
What's the most cited books? The most cited book on Wikipedia is...
The Official Pokemon Handbook. Surprised? Don't be. In fact, eighteen
of the top twenty most-cited works are Pokemon books. It boggles the
mind. Somebody, or a bunch of somebodies went ISBN-happy on all the
Pokemon entries. Fortunately, the existence of so many citations to
Pokemon does not impair the quality of the rest. It's just...
Wikipedia.
----

It's actually not surprising though: references are often added
"defensively" on Wikipedia, as an argument against deleting the
article. Pokemon articles are more likely than others to be nominated
for AfD.

Steve