from_name: William Pietri

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> Philip Sandifer wrote:
>
>> McCloud is somebody who knows comics. He quite literally wrote the
>> book on them. In the course of the conversation it became clear that
>> he was pretty well completely fed up with Wikipedia. [...]
>>
>>
> It's amazing how quickly people have gone from "it can't possibly work"
> to grumbling about how we haven't solved every problem with it.
>

In one of Gerry Weinberg's books on consulting, he claims this is human
nature.

Suppose you come in and solve somebody's biggest problem. If you are
very lucky, there will be a 30 second period where they are excited and
thankful. Then they realize that their next-biggest problem is now their
biggest problem. And people will be shocked that what is now their
biggest problem has been ignored for so long.

I've taken three good things from this:

   1. I can and should be calm toward somebody coming to me with their
      biggest problem, because they will always have one. Not that I
      shouldn't take it seriously, but I don't let them get me wound up.
   2. I shouldn't burn myself out on this one, because there will always
      be a next one.
   3. I no longer worry about running out of things to do.

William

--
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 25/02/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/25/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:

> > No. It's not. It never has been, it never will be, it never can be.
> > Reliable sourcing is fundamentally a more complex issue than a black
> > and white guideline could ever portray.

> This is going to come as a serious shock to all those lecturers
> teaching the subject

You realise, of course, that Phil teaches a course on sourcing? That
is, he's more of an expert on sourcing than you are.

- d.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bot edit rates

references:
<445562e00702191954vd25b5cetb23c303addcf8073@mail.gmail.com>
	<erhukr$rmj$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<6faf39c90702211055w381e93f4pa8f55dcdc84a38bc@mail.gmail.com>
	<eri7c8$t6d$1@sea.gmane.org> <ern1iu$mpr$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<7c2a12e20702231042l7bb31e9bs3926850788e0dc22@mail.gmail.com>
	<erqptf$n0k$2@sea.gmane.org>
	<6faf39c90702242333w3aa9e585h3ec62a299ebd98fc@mail.gmail.com>
	<errsio$19a$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
2007/2/25, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net>:
>
> Andre Engels wrote:
> >
> >>Are you suggesting that because people want "more than just X", they
> >>shouldn't even have X?
> >
> > I think he's suggesting that giving them X through another means will
> not
> > stop them from using edit count bots if what they want is more than X.
>
> And how is that a reason not to let them have X?
>

It's not, but it might be a reason to spend time on other things rather than
on giving the users X. Developer time is not a commodity we have excess of.

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


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Daniel Brandt

body:
> For which there are far better and more destructive options. (My
> personal favorite choice is history merging vandalism. Which, to
> date, nobody has done, and which, to date, I remain surprised that
> nobody has done.)

RfA is working very well in that respect.


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-01-13

body:
On 1/16/07, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> In case you didn't notice, though, 18 of the 19 failing tests are
> actually unimplemented features, not regressions.  :)  Maybe it would
> be best if we removed the TODOs altogether.  Then we would get,
> appropriately, passes when we have no regressions, and failures on
> regressions.  People might actually even notice when regressions crop
> up!  (How long has that 1887 part 2 thing been regressed?)

Wouldn't it be fairly simple to take the TODO tests out of the regular
parserTests.txt and have them in another file, to be run alongside the
regular tests, as with the Cite parser tests?

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

>On Sun, 25 Feb 2007 14:59:49 -0500 (EST), "Jeff Raymond" wrote:
>
>
>>>No, no, no, a thousand times no.  Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, a
>>>tertiary source, a distillation of secondary sources, not a publisher
>>>of first instance.
>>>
>>>
>>And no one is REALISTICALLY disagreeing with this.  Something can be a
>>tertiary distillation without REQUIRING "multiple, non-trivial, secondary
>>sources" for inclusion.  Don't set up an argument I'm not making.
>>
>>
>How?  Have you ever looked at a paper encyclopaedia?  Every article is
>verifiable from numerous published sources.  We're not paper so we can
>extend to a huge number of articles, and that takes us to the edge of
>what can be referenced from numerous published sources, but if we step
>over that edge we cease to be an encyclopaedia and become something
>else.
>
I think we sometimes put too much weight on the distinction between
secondary and tertiary sources, or that the published sources must be
numerous.  For paper encyclopedias it's easy because of their space
limitations.  For us one reliable source should be plenty for an initial
article; more can be added later when they are found.  This construct of
an "edge" to step over is highly subjective, and that it should define
the limits of what is encyclopedic is an unwarranted limitation.

>>>>[[Ern Westmore]] - Oscar-winning makeup artist, second generation of the
>>>>famed Westmore family, had his own television show.  My research -
>>>>extensive for a non-wiki project I'm working on, but not *highly*
>>>>extensive (local news reports, etc) - does not uncover him as THE SUBJECT
>>>>of multiple secondary sources.  Many independent mentions in articles and
>>>>books, but never as the subject, and the best source I've found about him
>>>>so far was written by his brother, which calls into question
>>>>"independent."  Does this mean our general idea of "notability" is
>>>>working, or not?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>It means you haven't yet found the sources.  There will be sources.
>>>There will be, for example, the citations from the Academy Awards,
>>>describing his work.  Go to the library, look in Halliwell and other
>>>film guides.  Look in the trade magazines for the film industry.  Not
>>>on the net?  Who cares.
>>>
>>>
>>No, it means that it's highly likely they don't exist.  Your assumption
>>that they do when I can tell you first hand that they so far don't don't
>>in ways Wikipedia requires is coming from a place where the effort hasn't
>>been made.  I've taken more time than I should looking for information on
>>this guy - it's not there in the way we allegedly want it.
>>
>>
>So maybe there are no secondary sources and we can't have an article.
>Shame.  there are eight billion other things to work on...
>
If the conclusion from being only unable to find secondary sources is
that we can't have an article on a subject which many will agree to be
otherwise valid that indicates that there is something seriously wrong
with our criteria.

>There are people I consider significant and important.  No sources
>exist.  I can't document them.  Saxon Aldred, organ builder, for
>example.  Peter Collins, yes, and Noel Mander and others, but not
>Saxon.  I managed to find sources for Andrew Parnell, which was not
>easy.  I think we should have an article on Colin Slee, there may now
>be enough sources on him.  There will probably never be enough on
>Peter Moore, a predecessor of Jeffrey John as dean of St. Albans.
>These people are acknowledged as important by their peers.
>
I know nothing about the organists in an obscure English town.  If you
have one source for each of these people that's fine.  You may not find
a second source yourself, but that doesn't mean that no one else can.  A
strict interpretation of your view means that you can't add the article
because you have only one source, and some other editor can't write the
article because he also has only one (albeit different) source.  The
result is absurd.  How can either of you know of the other source unless
one of you first writes the article.

Wikipedia is a work in progress, and each article within it is a work in
progress.  When a policy inhibits the ability of two editors to
collaborate it frustrates our major objective of making all knowledge
freely available.  To collaborate those two editors must first be aware
of each other's existence.

>>>There seems to be an informal agreement that census data counts for
>>>places.
>>>
>>>
>>An informal agreement that doesn't reflect reality, though.  It's only an
>>agreement until people who disagree come along.
>>
>>
>Correct.
>
And when they disagree they should be trying to find a mutually
acceptable solution.  That is very difficult when the issue is phrased
in black and white keep/delete terms.

>>>My view is that we should change the subject-specific notability
>>>guidelines to be an indication of the types of sources which are
>>>considered reliable for that type of content.  But to say something is
>>>notable when it plainly has not been noted may be to misunderstand the
>>>definition of notability, in terms of an encyclopaedia.
>>>
>>>
>>Our views are somewhat similar in the first half, but not in the second.
>>Things are encyclopedic without being "notable," and our "notability"
>>guidelines do a piss-poor job reflecting that in many important cases.
>>
>>
>For values of important that may fall short of attracting the
>attention of reliable secondary sources :-)
>
We would do better diverting many of these debates to sub-groups like
the WikiProjects where a significant number of participants have a clue
about the topic.  This would also ease us away from the stilted and
artificial declarations of notability that have recently been demanded.

Ec


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Fwd: [Foundation-l] Status of Current MediaWiki
 Tools and Other Issues which affect the Foundation]

body:
Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:

>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: RIPEMD160
>
>
>
>
>>And here is another good one to look into on this problem. The
>>enwiki-20070206 imports FAIL with reports of
>>"NULL title detected" when running importDump.php from 1.8.2.
>>
>>
>
>Make sure you have a "+" character in your $wgLegalTitleChars
>
>
>
I have a "+" character in wgLegalTitleChars for hthe URL/space expansion
thing when I see the problem.
I am re-running the importdump with tracing enabled and a debug log. The
log is HUGE so far. When it crashes
again, I'll post the log.

Jeff

>- --
>Greg Sabino Mullane greg at turnstep.com
>PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200702250902
>http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
>iD8DBQFF4ZcevJuQZxSWSsgRA+12AJ9Lk8J4vc4tDkZNQX8L44CxJWeJwQCgwqNG
>po+HVYSq7XAwQ9m1z4PJLZk=
>=PzrW
>-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

references:
<8A513D85-1FF9-4784-B13A-15C297F01EFF@english.ufl.edu>
	<j0d3u297hid6q2i2d306v0ap6c26mtfhmb@4ax.com>
	<45E1B8A0.3060800@internationalhouseofbacon.com>
	<q1g3u21aqlp6mv3v1gi188e8ovnej9983t@4ax.com>

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

> For what value of notable?  If "notable" means it's been the primary
> subject of a few reliable secondary sources, which seems like a
> reasonable definition, then that should not happen.  I've said before,
> I'm all for a contextual definition of reliable.

Thus the problem.  If a "notable" thing is not the SUBJECT of multiple
reliable secondary sources, then our guidelines are improper and need to
be adjusted.  I mapped out a few examples at WP:N a while back, and a lot
of people poo-poohed it, but it's an interesting exercise to recap some of
them here for people who didn't watch the page:

[[Ern Westmore]] - Oscar-winning makeup artist, second generation of the
famed Westmore family, had his own television show.  My research -
extensive for a non-wiki project I'm working on, but not *highly*
extensive (local news reports, etc) - does not uncover him as THE SUBJECT
of multiple secondary sources.  Many independent mentions in articles and
books, but never as the subject, and the best source I've found about him
so far was written by his brother, which calls into question
"independent."  Does this mean our general idea of "notability" is
working, or not?

[[Jordanhill railway station]] - a favorite of many who question our
standards, I'm not sure if there's "multple, reliable secondary sources"
that have the station as the subject.

[[Mom and Dad]] - A "classic" exploitation film that was added to the
National Film Registry.  A troubling case - it *may* have been the subject
of one article in Reason Magazine (I think it's more about the producer,
but it's a reasonable disagreement that's not really relevant given the
rest), but is merely mentioned in passing in a number of texts about
exploitation filmmaking.  The reviews and press it got during its heyday
was almost entirely self-created by the producer and could not
realistically be called independent.  The film was the third highest
grossing film of the 1940s and is notable enough for the US government
(who, by the way, doesn't know what the ending of the film in its vault is
- I've asked - just to give an idea about this film), but not technically
"notable" enough for Wikipedia.

[["She Shoulda Said 'No'!"]] - If "Reefer Madness" is the apex of pot
films, SSSN is probably on the b-list.  The story that inspired it got
more press than the film itself, and the film was a dismal failure the
first few times it was sent out.  It's still the lead actress's most
infamous turn, it was important enough to be featured in a series by the
de facto expert on exploitation filmmaking (although he allegedly helped
with the presentation of it and made a heap of money from it once he got
his hands on it), the same situation as "Mom and Dad" applies.  Not quite
the shining star that "Mom and Dad" was, but still noteworthy - just not
enough for Wikipedia.

There's also plenty of the Rambot-style articles for small townships, etc.
 I'm really only scraping my contributions more than anything else, and
it's worth mentioning that three of those have ended up on the main page
and two are rated as "Good Articles," and one could be a serious FA
candidate with some extra work that I simply won't be doing at this point.

> The problem is that the entire process is polluted by crap like
> longcat, limecat, Brian Peppers, and determined efforts by fans of
> each and every anime, cartoon series, reality show, to have an article
> on every single tiny facet of every single episode of the object of
> their obsession.
>
> It is very hard to pull out the god ones from the endless torrent of
> crap.  And the judgment of good is in any case not objective, since
> you like things that I don't and - I am sure - vice versa.  Maybe you
> think we can do without an article on every single baroque composer.

On the contrary.  We can have both, and we can have standards.  The issue
is that we need to have senisble standards, and we clearly lack that.
Phil Sandifer is so completely on target with his commentary that last few
days, and we'd be very smart to listen to him.

-Jeff


from_name: Greg Sabino Mullane

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Fwd: [Foundation-l] Status of Current MediaWiki
	Tools and Other Issues which affect the Foundation]

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: RIPEMD160

> And here is another good one to look into on this problem. The
> enwiki-20070206 imports FAIL with reports of
> "NULL title detected" when running importDump.php from 1.8.2.

Make sure you have a "+" character in your $wgLegalTitleChars

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane greg at turnstep.com
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200702250902
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8
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po+HVYSq7XAwQ9m1z4PJLZk=
=PzrW
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
Delirium wrote:
> Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
>
>> How?  Have you ever looked at a paper encyclopaedia?  Every article is
>> verifiable from numerous published sources.  [...] if we step
>> over that edge we cease to be an encyclopaedia and become something
>> else.
>>
>>
>
> I'm not going to argue we should follow their lead, but this isn't
> universally the case.  Britannica, to pick only the most famous
> encyclopedia, is well known for hiring famous people to write original
> research for their articles. [...]
> The previous conception of an encyclopedia was that it be a compendium
> of *true* things, even if the truths flatly contradict the existing
> secondary literature (sometimes Britannica will explicitly say things
> like, "most commentators say [x], but this is false").  The
> justification for the truth was not sourcing to existing literature, but
> the combined prestige of the article's author and Britannica itself.
>

When I'm chewing over something I've read in some Wikipedia discussion,
I'll often go and flip through the reproduction I have of the first
edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. I take a certain pleasure in
entries like this one:

    BOTARGO, a kind of sausage, made with the eggs and blood of the
    sea-mullet, a large fish common in the Mediterranean. The best kind
    comes from Tunis in Barbary: It must be chosen dry and reddish. The
    people of Provence use a great deal of it, the common way of eating
    it being with olive oil and lemon juice. There is also a great
    consumption of botargo throught all the Levant.

    Botargo pays on importation 2 87/100d the pound; whereof 2 58/100d
    is repaid on exportation.

Shamelessly POV, with dollops of cookbook, dictionary, and tax guide.
But I think they were ok with that.

In the preface they open by saying, "Utility ought to be the principal
intention of every publication. Wherever this intention does not plainly
appear, neither the books nor their authors have the smallest claim to
the approbation of mankind." They then go on to say, "We will, however,
venture to affirm, that any man of ordinary parts, may, if he chuses,
learn the principles of Agriculture, of Astronomy, of Botany, of
Chemistry, &c, &c, from the Encyclopaedia Britannica."

William

--
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri


from_name: Geoffrey Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] A request for Comment

body:
I just updated my blog with an essay "Wikipedia burnout: an analysis", & with the expected
amount of tredipation I am soliciting feedback.

Although I suspect that some of you are already aware of my blog, & may actually have
enjoyed reading the occasional entry, for everyone else the URL is
http://original-research.blogspot.com/2007/02/wikipedia-burnout-analysis.html

Geoff


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
Delirium wrote:
>
> [...]  I would
> say that the idea that an encyclopedia should be a tertiary source based
> strictly on a neutral survey of the existing secondary literature is a
> fairly recent shift, and most encyclopedias don't fully implement it.
>
We have a more practical reason to base WP on secondary sources, which
is that we don't have big-name experts writing the articles, so we fall
back on amateurs acting as the experts' proxies, via published works. By
their nature, primary sources are full of traps for the uninformed; in
areas where I'm expert, I can look at a primary source and instantly
know what its defects are likely to be, while a random person not only
doesn't know about them, but doesn't even know that there *are* defects.
(A falsified birth date in government records? How is that possible?! :-) )

Stan


from_name: Rob Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Daniel Brandt

body:
The creator of the Daniel Brandt article stated he/she did not believe
Brandt to be a "credible source"

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Chip_Berlet&diff=prev&oldid=9161554

This was after two contentious Arbitration cases over an article that Brandt
was used as a reputable critic.  When Brandt reacted to the inclusions that
he and his organization were somehow aligned or associated with a
particularly reprehensible organization, Mr. Brandt perhaps justifiably
reacted with indignance.  Soon thereafter, Mr. Brandt as a source of
criticism was nolonger deemed reputable for an article in which two prior
Arbitration case he had been adjudicated as a valid and reputable critic..  The
problems is, and remains, the source of the criticism against Brandt does
not meet WP policies for inclusion.

Now, in examining this problem, we see both Brandt and his critic feel
dredging up old disputes from 16 years ago is unfair.  Nevertheless, the
source of Brandt's criticism simply has more friends in WP sympathetic to
his cause than Brandt does.  So others not knowing the dispute get caught in
the crossfire.  It appears now there is enough consensus among editors more
familiar with the locus of the dispute to just let it go, and let Mr. Brandt
have his privacy.   Wikipedia is not a battlefield, and this has been
allowed to go on long enough.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

references:
<8A513D85-1FF9-4784-B13A-15C297F01EFF@english.ufl.edu>
	<j0d3u297hid6q2i2d306v0ap6c26mtfhmb@4ax.com>
	<45E1B8A0.3060800@internationalhouseofbacon.com>
	<q1g3u21aqlp6mv3v1gi188e8ovnej9983t@4ax.com>
	<1237.69.21.252.114.1172429714.squirrel@www.internationalhouseofbacon.com>
	<cgp3u2tfmd8b5gesh2lcdubj4a1d7n991o@4ax.com>

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

> No, no, no, a thousand times no.  Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, a
> tertiary source, a distillation of secondary sources, not a publisher
> of first instance.

And no one is REALISTICALLY disagreeing with this.  Something can be a
tertiary distillation without REQUIRING "multiple, non-trivial, secondary
sources" for inclusion.  Don't set up an argument I'm not making.

>>[[Ern Westmore]] - Oscar-winning makeup artist, second generation of the
>>famed Westmore family, had his own television show.  My research -
>>extensive for a non-wiki project I'm working on, but not *highly*
>>extensive (local news reports, etc) - does not uncover him as THE SUBJECT
>>of multiple secondary sources.  Many independent mentions in articles and
>>books, but never as the subject, and the best source I've found about him
>>so far was written by his brother, which calls into question
>>"independent."  Does this mean our general idea of "notability" is
>>working, or not?
>
> It means you haven't yet found the sources.  There will be sources.
> There will be, for example, the citations from the Academy Awards,
> describing his work.  Go to the library, look in Halliwell and other
> film guides.  Look in the trade magazines for the film industry.  Not
> on the net?  Who cares.

No, it means that it's highly likely they don't exist.  Your assumption
that they do when I can tell you first hand that they so far don't don't
in ways Wikipedia requires is coming from a place where the effort hasn't
been made.  I've taken more time than I should looking for information on
this guy - it's not there in the way we allegedly want it.

> There seems to be an informal agreement that census data counts for
> places.

An informal agreement that doesn't reflect reality, though.  It's only an
agreement until people who disagree come along.

> My view is that we should change the subject-specific notability
> guidelines to be an indication of the types of sources which are
> considered reliable for that type of content.  But to say something is
> notable when it plainly has not been noted may be to misunderstand the
> definition of notability, in terms of an encyclopaedia.

Our views are somewhat similar in the first half, but not in the second.
Things are encyclopedic without being "notable," and our "notability"
guidelines do a piss-poor job reflecting that in many important cases.

-Jeff


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On Sat, 24 Feb 2007 17:16:02 -0500, Philip Sandifer
<sandifer at english.ufl.edu> wrote:

>McCloud is somebody who knows comics. He quite literally wrote the
>book on them. In the course of the conversation it became clear that
>he was pretty well completely fed up with Wikipedia. And it should be
>noted, this comes from someone who has been on the forefront of
>digital technology debates several times. He makes clear his
>admiration for the concept of Wikipedia. He makes clear his
>admiration for how Wikipedia got started. His problem is with how it
>works now.

>The problem he has? Notability. Specifically the arbitrary and
>capricious way in which AfD targets things, questions their
>notability, and uses guidelines that make no sense from the outside.

Well I admire Scott McCloud too, and I thought his piece "I can't stop
thinking" was visionary in its day, but in the end if the system does
not support a directory of webcomics because they fail to meet the
sourcing guidelines, is that strictly a problem with Wikipedia
processes, or is it a misconception about what Wikipedia is?

Or put another way, how exactly *are* we supposed to discern the
difference between unsourced articles on webcomics created by the
article author and being spammed, and legitimate comics?  I'd be happy
to rely on expert editors if it weren't for the fact that in at least
one case one such editor argued long and loud for keep but *no*
reliable secondary sources could be found at all.

Perhaps the solution is for known authorities like McCloud to sign up
and participate.  I for one would give significant weight to his
opinion in closing a deletion debate.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On Sat, 24 Feb 2007 19:10:57 EST, SonOfYoungwood at aol.com wrote:

>I agree that the deletionists are starting to act a little on the  ridiculous
>side, and something needs to be done soon. Wikipedia needs an  injection of
>common sense.

No, what it actually needs is for all vanity spammers and school kids
to be blocked on sight.  Sadly we don't have a good mechanism for that
yet.  But once the vanity spammers and kids go, the firehose of crap
will slow to a trickle and we will be able to see the wood from the
trees.

Right now we often get fifty REALLY REALLY LOUD fans of something
called in from the web forum and zero reliable sources.  What are we
supposed to do?

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
Philip Sandifer wrote:

>On Feb 25, 2007, at 5:31 PM, Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>
>
>>We have a more practical reason to base WP on secondary sources, which
>>is that we don't have big-name experts writing the articles, so we
>>fall
>>back on amateurs acting as the experts' proxies, via published
>>works. By
>>their nature, primary sources are full of traps for the uninformed; in
>>areas where I'm expert, I can look at a primary source and instantly
>>know what its defects are likely to be, while a random person not only
>>doesn't know about them, but doesn't even know that there *are*
>>defects.
>>(A falsified birth date in government records? How is that
>>possible?! :-) )
>>
>>
>
>Absolutely. Primary sources require skill. But the problem is that
>writing an encyclopedia entry requires skill. Wikipedia was never
>intended to be written by random people and idiots. It was intended
>to be written by volunteers. It's not idiot-proof. In fact, it
>depends on having experts on articles. The assumption is that someone
>who knows something about a topic will go to edit it.
>Yes, the system is succeptible to the clueless and the crazy.
>
When we begin to read a new article we need to begin with an assumption
of good faith that this individual is neither clueless nor crazy.
Usually we don't need to read very far before we find evidence that our
assumption was in error.  That's where the application of judgement
comes in.  The nutcases can generate citations just as easily as the
sane; screwball publications can have very autoritative sounding
titles.  Identical contents in "The Remote County Scamsheet" and "The
Journal of Remote County Criminology" will get different receptions.  Is
the latter really more reliable when you have seen neither.  If we need
multiple sources, that too can be accomodated.  You don't know how
reliable a source is until you have checked it out, and that's not
always easy.  We do ourselves a disservice when we salve our self-esteem
by adding a couple of references, and smugly go forward believing that
the article is now accurate, and delude ourselves by believing that
someone else's two references have brought the article to an apotheosis.

>And the
>fix is to use the talk page, get reasonable people to come have a
>look at it, etc, etc. In cases where the clueless/crazy are
>particularly intractable we have a system whereby intelligent, sane
>people are given bansticks. And in bad cases we have the arbcom.
>
I think that we have some people who feel that an early application of
the banstick will cure the problem more quickly without having to bother
with tedious discussion that could take days to resoplve. ;-)

>There is no good mechanism to have an encyclopedia written by idiots.
>If we do not assume that our userbase is primarily comprised of
>reasonably competent people who will follow the principles described
>we are screwed.
>
That's right.  Those reasonably competent people also know how to listen
to constructive criticism, and will easily adjust their thinking in the
face of rational comments.  Just because they have repeated a common
falacy on an article does not make them sockpuppets.  They deserve
discussion with the same respect that the first poster of the falacy
should have received.

Ec


list: foundation-l

from_name: Peter van Londen

subject: [Foundation-l] Support WMF via GoodSearch

body:
Hallo,

It seems that Wikimedia Foundation was removed from the charities list. Too
bad, I was using this site. If all the Wikians would do this, it would have
been a nice extra income.

Kind regards
Londenp

2007/2/20, min Sui <wm.suisui op gmail.com>:
>
> Hi.
>
> I made a quick javaScript hack for Special:Search
> from french wikipedia ->
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Monobook.js
>
> this shows like this -> http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search
> it's shows this way.
> 1. input word(s) to search box
> 2. click search
> and select search engine you like, will make
> result search from paticuler project.
> ( my script points to ja.wikipedia.org you can change it ;)
> and the source is here ->
> http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.js
> anyone can use it freely.
>
> thanks.
>
> suisui
> suisui op gmail.com
>
> 2007/2/15, the wub <thewub.wiki op googlemail.com>:
> > You can also use a link like
> > http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=812661<
> http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=xxx>that
> > links to the search page with WMF pre-selected, which will be good to
> > promote this.
> > ** <http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=xxx>
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l op lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l op lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


list: wikimedia-l

body:
Hallo,

It seems that Wikimedia Foundation was removed from the charities list. Too
bad, I was using this site. If all the Wikians would do this, it would have
been a nice extra income.

Kind regards
Londenp

2007/2/20, min Sui <wm.suisui at gmail.com>:
>
> Hi.
>
> I made a quick javaScript hack for Special:Search
> from french wikipedia ->
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Monobook.js
>
> this shows like this -> http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search
> it's shows this way.
> 1. input word(s) to search box
> 2. click search
> and select search engine you like, will make
> result search from paticuler project.
> ( my script points to ja.wikipedia.org you can change it ;)
> and the source is here ->
> http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.js
> anyone can use it freely.
>
> thanks.
>
> suisui
> suisui at gmail.com
>
> 2007/2/15, the wub <thewub.wiki at googlemail.com>:
> > You can also use a link like
> > http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=812661<
> http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=xxx>that
> > links to the search page with WMF pre-selected, which will be good to
> > promote this.
> > ** <http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=xxx>
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Parker Peters

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 2/25/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Speaking as an upper class gadfly, I have to say that Parker Peters
>>wasn't that bad and shouldn't have been banned.
>>
>>People need to learn how to killfile users they don't like, instead of
>>appealing to moderators.
>>
>>
>He repeatedly turned reasonable threads into trollfests, and started
>new ones. The quality of this list went noticeably down whenever he
>was participating. Individual killfiles don't help that situation.
>
>
His actions were not unilateral, and our levels of tolerance vary.

Ec


from_name: roman.spitzbart at liwest.at

subject: [Wikitech-l] Meta tags for keywords

body:
Hi,

I try to write an extension for Mediawiki that allows users to influence the keywords that are added as meta tags to the HTML code:

<meta name="keywords" content="Find out which table relates to a SYS LOB Segment" />

I already figured out that these tags are written OutputPage.php and are generated by the addKeywords function. I have found the 'OutputPageParserOutput' hook, that allows me to add more keywords (unfortunately it does not allow any access to the existing keywords to remove them). What I'm not sure if how to get the keywords the user entered into the function. What I thought of was a special tag that users can use to specific keywords that override the generated keywords...

Any ideas or hints where I should start looking?
Roman


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> How?  Have you ever looked at a paper encyclopaedia?  Every article is
> verifiable from numerous published sources.  We're not paper so we can
> extend to a huge number of articles, and that takes us to the edge of
> what can be referenced from numerous published sources, but if we step
> over that edge we cease to be an encyclopaedia and become something
> else.
>

I'm not going to argue we should follow their lead, but this isn't
universally the case.  Britannica, to pick only the most famous
encyclopedia, is well known for hiring famous people to write original
research for their articles.  They've toned that down a bit since the
heydey of their 1911 edition, but it's still very much present.  I would
say that the idea that an encyclopedia should be a tertiary source based
strictly on a neutral survey of the existing secondary literature is a
fairly recent shift, and most encyclopedias don't fully implement it.
The previous conception of an encyclopedia was that it be a compendium
of *true* things, even if the truths flatly contradict the existing
secondary literature (sometimes Britannica will explicitly say things
like, "most commentators say [x], but this is false").  The
justification for the truth was not sourcing to existing literature, but
the combined prestige of the article's author and Britannica itself.

-Mark


from_name: Bryan Tong Minh

subject: [Wikitech-l] Meta tags for keywords

body:
What you want to do is extending the Parser. You should take a look there.

Bryan

On 2/25/07, roman.spitzbart at liwest.at <roman.spitzbart at liwest.at> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I try to write an extension for Mediawiki that allows users to influence the keywords that are added as meta tags to the HTML code:
>
> <meta name="keywords" content="Find out which table relates to a SYS LOB Segment" />
>
> I already figured out that these tags are written OutputPage.php and are generated by the addKeywords function. I have found the 'OutputPageParserOutput' hook, that allows me to add more keywords (unfortunately it does not allow any access to the existing keywords to remove them). What I'm not sure if how to get the keywords the user entered into the function. What I thought of was a special tag that users can use to specific keywords that override the generated keywords...
>
> Any ideas or hints where I should start looking?
> Roman
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources (Guy Chapman aka JzG)

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
>>> Actually I think this is a good litmus test for whether an individual
>>> is encyclopaedically notable.  If there are no sources for basic
>>> biographical data other than the individual themselves, in other
>>> words
>>> if there has never been a reputably published biography or profile,
>>> then I don't believe we can have an article.
>>>
>
> I would see no problem with an article about a scientist which was
> entirely about his professional contributions, and didn't so much as
> mention a date of birth, middle name or anything vaguely personal. The
> article should be primarily about their work, and that "biographical"
> information is purely incidental.
>
> I suspect that for very early scientists (eg, 1700s or earlier) we may
> be in this situation anyway.
>
As it happens, contributors to the Dictionary of Scientific Biography
have done primary sources legwork for many of the earlies, digging
through parish and city records and the like. Result is kind of a
patchwork though, so for instance we know that a scientist was born in
one city, married on a specific date in another, and was later on a
university payroll in a third city, but we have no information on when
or why he moved.

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
Philip Sandifer wrote:
> There is no good mechanism to have an encyclopedia written by idiots.
>
I would looove to see that reminder posted on every edit page!

But practically speaking, one of the problems I see is that idiots are
not usually self-aware, and they will vociferously defend the extreme
cultural importance of the not-yet-in-production "Amazing Lost American
Idol Race" show or whatever. (If I've learned anything from WP, it's
that there are way more lame TV shows out there than I ever imagined.
:-) ) How do you get would-be editors to realize when they don't have
anything of value to add?

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

references:
<8A513D85-1FF9-4784-B13A-15C297F01EFF@english.ufl.edu>
	<j0d3u297hid6q2i2d306v0ap6c26mtfhmb@4ax.com>
	<45E1B8A0.3060800@internationalhouseofbacon.com>

body:
On Sun, 25 Feb 2007 11:26:08 -0500, Jeff Raymond
<jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:

>If there's a sitaution where notable things are *not* being included
>because of our guidelines, it's a problem on our end and not on the
>outside.  One size fits all simply doesn't work.

For what value of notable?  If "notable" means it's been the primary
subject of a few reliable secondary sources, which seems like a
reasonable definition, then that should not happen.  I've said before,
I'm all for a contextual definition of reliable.

If it means copying the latest "noise and fury signifying nothing"
from teh internets, then no, I don't think it's broken at all.  We
don't *actually* need an article on Limecat in order to be a credible
encyclopaedia :-)

The problem is that the entire process is polluted by crap like
longcat, limecat, Brian Peppers, and determined efforts by fans of
each and every anime, cartoon series, reality show, to have an article
on every single tiny facet of every single episode of the object of
their obsession.

It is very hard to pull out the god ones from the endless torrent of
crap.  And the judgment of good is in any case not objective, since
you like things that I don't and - I am sure - vice versa.  Maybe you
think we can do without an article on every single baroque composer.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Kurt Maxwell Weber

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On Sunday 25 February 2007 03:18, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Not long ago there was a proposal to relocate the items that appear on
> AfD to the various WikiProjects so that the requests could be looked at
> by people who have some understanding of the issue.  As usual that got
> nowhaere.
>

Yup.  I was the one who made that proposal (unless someone else proposed the
same thing independently).  As I recall, the primary objection to it was that
it was a bad idea because "the author of this proposal [me] is an extreme
inclusionist"--true, but irrelevant.
--
Kurt Weber
<kmw at armory.com>


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
Philip Sandifer wrote:

> Yes, the system is succeptible to the clueless and the crazy.

and

> If we do not assume that our userbase is primarily comprised of
> reasonably competent people who will follow the principles described
> we are screwed.

I find these two statements to be in considerable tension with each
other. The latter is not something I'm willing to assume, although it is
certainly something we should strive toward. In fact, most of the
community's social problems arise because people are too "clueless" or
"crazy" to recognize the limits of their competence. We need to figure
out how we can better push for more competent contributors.

Wikipedia's best contributors are those wise enough to know their own
limitations. They hardly ever cause a stir because they don't overreach
these limitations, or else they put the necessary effort into overcoming
them. Unfortunately, far too many people lack either the self-awareness
or self-control to respect their own limitations. That means we have to
apply external controls. This may range from deleting content that is
not helpful at all, to mercilessly editing poor-quality but salvageable
content, to evicting contributors who are an overall detriment to the
project. The proper uses of such remedies are tricky issues that require
an abundance of good judgment. The community's ability to cope with that
problem, the constant need for good and careful judgment, has not scaled
very well.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Stephen Streater

body:
On 19 Jan 2007, at 09:30, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

> On Fri, 19 Jan 2007 00:51:33 -0800 (PST), zero 0000
> <nought_0000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>> if there has never been a reputably published biography or profile,
>>> then I don't believe we can have an article.
>
>> This would include minor actors and exclude famous scientists.
>> Even scientists who have a large number of scientific achievements
>> are rarely the subjects of published biographies.  Being famous
>> enough to get a mention in newspapers doesn't help either, since
>> such articles rarely provide information like place of birth.
>
> Many notable scientists are profiled in pop science and other
> journals.  And a fair number of those who have not, really should not
> be on Wikipedia.  Take Piotr Blass, for example.  He re-created his
> article about ten times before we finally  banned him.

I've had some experience of this from the other end.
A lot of the content of the article about me is sourced
from my father's website. When you look at the list of
publications to his name you might conclude that he
is a reliable source for the information he gives, more
so than the official alternative, which is also available:

I have also had dozens of articles published about me
in the press and on the internet, which I can locate far
more easily than the average editor, particularly those
that predate Google and even the Web.

I have been toying with the idea of  whether to drop
some hints, or to let sleeping dogs lie.


from_name: Philip Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On Feb 25, 2007, at 4:19 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> If the conclusion from being only unable to find secondary sources is
> that we can't have an article on a subject which many will agree to be
> otherwise valid that indicates that there is something seriously wrong
> with our criteria.

Exactly.

Another important thing to recognize about the way print
encyclopedias use citations is that they not cite every statement.
They give a summary. If they're using data or something they'll
source the data - particularly if it's time sensitive. (i.e. "Top ten
oil producing countries" or something, to use an example where I had
the job of finding that data.)

But more often they summarize the situation and then put some "see
also" type links at the bottom.

That's the gap that gets crossed when you move from verifiability to
"cite sources." In verifiability, all I have to do is be able to
point to places where you can go look and learn more, confirm this
isn't a hoax, etc. Cite sources I have to tell you where you can find
each and every piece of information.

Verifiability is acceptable for most of the information on Wikipedia.
Claims that attract particular skepticism (and we can easily tell
these by the skepticism they attract) should be sourced directly. But
compare that to something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Oriel_College (our featured article from yesterday), where the name
of the college is sourced. Really. There's a citation two words in.
This was not a useful citation to add. Whoever added it is very silly.

Compare also to [[Jacques Derrida]]. Here the problem is different.
In the humanities, nobody writes a significant secondary source on
Derrida that is not A) nearly as impenetrable as the original, and B)
deeply involved in the same debates as the original in such a way as
to be dreadful resources for providing a general overview. I don't
mean this just in terms of NPOV issues either. I mean that the
secondary sources are not meaningfully distinct from the primary
sources in their quality or usefulness. There are sources intended
for novices, but they're crappy and would lead to an article of
questionable accuracy. And, really, there's something profoundly
silly about an article sourced to books like "Derrida for Beginners"
and "Derrida: A Very Short Introduction," or to introductory notes in
a textbook. That's just not reputable in the humanities, and would
make the article look laughable to any actual subject expert.

The way to write a good article on Derrida is to have a few people
who have done some work using Derrida (there are thousands) to hash
it out. The talk page should be used to smooth out debates. Good
faith should be assumed - when one person says "Actually, you should
really have another look at The Post Card where Derrida says X," the
other person should. Classically thorny points and controversies
should be sourced - especially the criticism section. But for the
most part, it should be written by some people who know a decent
amount about the subject going "OK, what needs to go into a general
overview here."

And then at the end you should have a bibliography of books on the
subject.

The problem is that somewhere along the line we went from a
definition of "good article" that was based on looking at what other
encyclopedias did to a definition of "good article" that was based on
an internally decided principle.

Somewhere along the line, [[WP:NOR]] lost what was a vitally
important line - that use of primary sources was acceptable so long
as it did not produce "novel interpretations." That is to say that we
never used to hold that the way to write an article was to consult
entirely independent sources. And thank God, because that's no way to
write an article, and not the way anybody else writes articles.

-Phil


from_name: Gwern Branwen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
Kurt Maxwell Weber <kmw at armory.com> writes:

> On Sunday 25 February 2007 03:18, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Not long ago there was a proposal to relocate the items that appear on
>> AfD to the various WikiProjects so that the requests could be looked at
>> by people who have some understanding of the issue.  As usual that got
>> nowhaere.
>>
>
> Yup.  I was the one who made that proposal (unless someone else proposed the
> same thing independently).  As I recall, the primary objection to it was that
> it was a bad idea because "the author of this proposal [me] is an extreme
> inclusionist"--true, but irrelevant.
> --
> Kurt Weber
> <kmw at armory.com>

I remember the objections being more along the lines of asserting that
such a change would allow the inmates to run the asylum - fancruft is
kept in check by nonfans, and if deletion debates are dominated (by
policy and not merely by practice) by fans/members of the relevant
Wikiproject, that check would be removed.

--
Gwern
Inquiring minds want to know.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On Feb 25, 2007, at 5:31 PM, Stan Shebs wrote:

> We have a more practical reason to base WP on secondary sources, which
> is that we don't have big-name experts writing the articles, so we
> fall
> back on amateurs acting as the experts' proxies, via published
> works. By
> their nature, primary sources are full of traps for the uninformed; in
> areas where I'm expert, I can look at a primary source and instantly
> know what its defects are likely to be, while a random person not only
> doesn't know about them, but doesn't even know that there *are*
> defects.
> (A falsified birth date in government records? How is that
> possible?! :-) )

Absolutely. Primary sources require skill. But the problem is that
writing an encyclopedia entry requires skill. Wikipedia was never
intended to be written by random people and idiots. It was intended
to be written by volunteers. It's not idiot-proof. In fact, it
depends on having experts on articles. The assumption is that someone
who knows something about a topic will go to edit it.
Yes, the system is succeptible to the clueless and the crazy. And the
fix is to use the talk page, get reasonable people to come have a
look at it, etc, etc. In cases where the clueless/crazy are
particularly intractable we have a system whereby intelligent, sane
people are given bansticks. And in bad cases we have the arbcom.

There is no good mechanism to have an encyclopedia written by idiots.
If we do not assume that our userbase is primarily comprised of
reasonably competent people who will follow the principles described
we are screwed.

-Phil


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

body:
On 2/25/07, Peter van Londen <londenp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hallo,
>
> It seems that Wikimedia Foundation was removed from the charities list. Too
> bad, I was using this site. If all the Wikians would do this, it would have
> been a nice extra income.

Mmhh... where the income generated until today (if there was any) will
go? Did WMF receive something?

Ciao,
Alfio


from_name: Peter Ansell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 25/02/07, Philip Sandifer <sandifer at english.ufl.edu> wrote:
> I just had dinner with [[Scott McCloud]], and, unsurprisingly, the
> conversation turned to webcomics, and, eventually, to Wikipedia's
> treatment of them. (This was partially spurred by the Kristopher
> Straub debacle, about which I will say only that it demonstrates the
> degree to which the bias is overwhelmingly towards deletion across
> many areas of Wikipedia right now)
>
> McCloud is somebody who knows comics. He quite literally wrote the
> book on them. In the course of the conversation it became clear that
> he was pretty well completely fed up with Wikipedia. And it should be
> noted, this comes from someone who has been on the forefront of
> digital technology debates several times. He makes clear his
> admiration for the concept of Wikipedia. He makes clear his
> admiration for how Wikipedia got started. His problem is with how it
> works now.
>
> The problem he has? Notability. Specifically the arbitrary and
> capricious way in which AfD targets things, questions their
> notability, and uses guidelines that make no sense from the outside.
>
> See also Timothy Noah's recent article on Slate for this - it gives a
> good view of how notability guidelines look to the outside. In this
> case, it's how they look to the subject of the article, but I assure
> you - they look similar to people who are familiar with the subject.
> In short, they appear a Kafka-esque absurdity.
>
> This is a new problem - these are major figures who are sympathetic
> to Wikipedia but fed up with its operation. And I can tell you, the
> tone among people I talk to in that real life thing I maintain is
> pretty similar - great respect for Wikipedia as a concept, reasonable
> respect for Wikipedia as a resource, no respect for Wikipedia as
> something anyone would ever want to edit. The actual editorial
> process of Wikipedia is rightly viewed as a nightmare. Hell, I view
> it as a nightmare at this point - I've given up editing it because
> the rules seem to have been written, at this point, with the
> intention of writing a very bad encyclopedia.
>
> Our efforts to ensure reliability have come at the cost of a great
> deal of respect - and respect from people we should have respect
> from. We are losing smart, well-educated people who are sympathetic
> to Wikipedia's basic principles. That is a disaster.
>
> And it's a disaster that can be laid squarely at the feet of the
> grotesque axis of [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:N]] - two pages that are eating
> Wikipedia alive from the inside out. (And I don't mean this in terms
> of community. I mean that they are systematically being used to turn
> good articles into crap, and have yet to demonstrate their actual use
> in turning bad articles into good ones.)

Unfortunately there is a nucleus of users who are able to endlessly
debate these particular issues, at both the policy pages and as AfD
"regulars", leaving people who just want to improve articles at a
complete loss when the articles they put a lot of work into are
deleted using what they see as arbitrary notions of what should be in
the free encyclopaedia which has been touted as containing all human
knowledge...

I feel like I have said all this before...

And its not a mysterious de ja vu in this case...

Peter Ansell


from_name: Matthew Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 2/25/07, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Philip Sandifer wrote:
> > If we do not assume that our userbase is primarily comprised of
> > reasonably competent people who will follow the principles described
> > we are screwed.
>
> I find these two statements to be in considerable tension with each
> other. The latter is not something I'm willing to assume, although it is
> certainly something we should strive toward. In fact, most of the
> community's social problems arise because people are too "clueless" or
> "crazy" to recognize the limits of their competence. We need to figure
> out how we can better push for more competent contributors.

I don't see that this is necessarily a tension; a reasonably large
proportion of our contributors are competent, well-meaning people
trying hard to do the right thing.

Unfortunately, one obnoxious person outshines three hundred good ones.

-Matt


from_name: Ken Arromdee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On Sun, 25 Feb 2007, geni wrote:
> >Straub identified more than a weakness - he
> >identified a complete failure of policy to meaningfully prevent
> >spurious deletions. Which has been clear to anyone who follows DRV
> >for a while.
>
> Policy assumes people play fair.

Then policy is broken.  Straub may be the only person who proposed spurious
deletions as an experiment, but there are plenty of people who propose
spurious deletions just because they like to propose spurious deletions.
These people don't play fair any more than Straub did, and the lesson that
Straub taught us applies to them too.

Just now, we've had
[[Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/El_Goonish_Shive]]
where I caught the same person trying to delete two webcomics articles using
the same boilerplate paragraph while obviously not having checked to see if
the claims made in the paragraph are valid for each specific article.  Please
don't tell me this person is playing fair.


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Matthieu

subject: [Wiktionary-l] [Logo] One True Wiktionary logo

body:
Ray Saintonge a ?crit :
> Has anyone bothered to check whether the Scrabble people have any IP
> issues with using that logo?
>
> Ec
>
>
It could be annoying...

Anyway, I'll ask what the people on fr.wikt thinks about this (I don't
think a lot of them read this list).

Dakdada

--
Matthieu Barba
M?l. matthieu_barba at yahoo.fr


from_name: Sage Ross

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 2/25/07, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Kurt Maxwell Weber <kmw at armory.com> writes:
>
> > On Sunday 25 February 2007 03:18, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >
> >> Not long ago there was a proposal to relocate the items that appear on
> >> AfD to the various WikiProjects so that the requests could be looked at
> >> by people who have some understanding of the issue.  As usual that got
> >> nowhaere.
> >>
> >
> > Yup.  I was the one who made that proposal (unless someone else proposed the
> > same thing independently).  As I recall, the primary objection to it was that
> > it was a bad idea because "the author of this proposal [me] is an extreme
> > inclusionist"--true, but irrelevant.
> > --
> > Kurt Weber
> > <kmw at armory.com>
>
> I remember the objections being more along the lines of asserting that
> such a change would allow the inmates to run the asylum - fancruft is
> kept in check by nonfans, and if deletion debates are dominated (by
> policy and not merely by practice) by fans/members of the relevant
> Wikiproject, that check would be removed.

If there is agreement about the value and neutrality of content among
a wide enough group of fans for there to be a WikiProject, that seems
like a good place to invoke "Wiki is not paper".  The nonfans should
keep such articles in perspective and correct for the systematic
biases of fans, but if a WikiProject wants an article and is willing
to invest the effort to correct for blatant POV and COI, why not let
'em have it?

For moving forward with the notability problem stepwise, I think we
should change the notability baseline from:
"A topic is notable if it has been the subject of at least one
substantial or multiple, non-trivial published works from sources that
are reliable and independent of the subject and of each other"

to:
"A topic is notable if it has been the subject of at least one
non-trivial published work from a sources that is reliable and
independent of the subject"

-Sage


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 25/02/07, Jake Nelson <duskwave at gmail.com> wrote:
> The entire deletion system is in a very bad state. This is nothing new
> - VFD has always had problems, and in the last 3-4 years, it's only
> gotten worse. It's our biggest PR problem. And I mean that: it's a
> bigger problem for our image than bad bios (though much less likely to
> cause legal trouble). Every use of "non-notable", "vanity", or
> "unencyclopedic" on VFD has hurt Wikipedia. Webcomics suffer the worst
> of it, but it's widespread and longstanding. Plus, the last few years
> have seen countless layers of procedure and rules encrustation on the
> original structure, making it more inconsistent and nonsensical. A
> newcomer can make no sense of the system at all, not even bringing the
> insanity of DRV into it.
>
> I increasingly think we need to just nuke the whole deletion system.
> Unless there's sensitive content (personal information, etc.) or
> copyright violations that need to be removed from article history,
> just fix, stub, substub, or blank it (in order of decreasing
> preference).
>

Of course by keeping an articles history available you respect the
GFDL, even if you do not appreciate it and wish not to have it
immediately available. You wouldn't want to actually do that now...
Would you? Afterall, the whole debacle relies on Wikipedia being able
to destroy GFDL'd content.

(With the exception of personally identifiable information which has
ethical and privacy implications of course)

Peter Ansell


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

references:
<8A513D85-1FF9-4784-B13A-15C297F01EFF@english.ufl.edu>
	<j0d3u297hid6q2i2d306v0ap6c26mtfhmb@4ax.com>
	<45E1B8A0.3060800@internationalhouseofbacon.com>
	<q1g3u21aqlp6mv3v1gi188e8ovnej9983t@4ax.com>
	<1237.69.21.252.114.1172429714.squirrel@www.internationalhouseofbacon.com>

body:
On Sun, 25 Feb 2007 13:55:14 -0500 (EST), "Jeff Raymond"
<jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:

>> For what value of notable?  If "notable" means it's been the primary
>> subject of a few reliable secondary sources, which seems like a
>> reasonable definition, then that should not happen.  I've said before,
>> I'm all for a contextual definition of reliable.

>Thus the problem.  If a "notable" thing is not the SUBJECT of multiple
>reliable secondary sources, then our guidelines are improper and need to
>be adjusted.  I mapped out a few examples at WP:N a while back, and a lot
>of people poo-poohed it, but it's an interesting exercise to recap some of
>them here for people who didn't watch the page:

No, no, no, a thousand times no.  Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, a
tertiary source, a distillation of secondary sources, not a publisher
of first instance.  These are some of the first things that were
decided about the project.  If there are no reliable secondary
sources, it almost certainly does not belong in an encyclopaedia.  How
can we verify, and verify the neutrality of, a subject without
significant critical commentary about it?

>[[Ern Westmore]] - Oscar-winning makeup artist, second generation of the
>famed Westmore family, had his own television show.  My research -
>extensive for a non-wiki project I'm working on, but not *highly*
>extensive (local news reports, etc) - does not uncover him as THE SUBJECT
>of multiple secondary sources.  Many independent mentions in articles and
>books, but never as the subject, and the best source I've found about him
>so far was written by his brother, which calls into question
>"independent."  Does this mean our general idea of "notability" is
>working, or not?

It means you haven't yet found the sources.  There will be sources.
There will be, for example, the citations from the Academy Awards,
describing his work.  Go to the library, look in Halliwell and other
film guides.  Look in the trade magazines for the film industry.  Not
on the net?  Who cares.

>[[Jordanhill railway station]] - a favorite of many who question our
>standards, I'm not sure if there's "multple, reliable secondary sources"
>that have the station as the subject.

Don't bet on it, I have a whole shelf full of books about British
railway lines and their history.  I can give you reliable secondary
sources for railway subjects down to the level of individual wagons.

--8<---------

>There's also plenty of the Rambot-style articles for small townships, etc.
> I'm really only scraping my contributions more than anything else, and
>it's worth mentioning that three of those have ended up on the main page
>and two are rated as "Good Articles," and one could be a serious FA
>candidate with some extra work that I simply won't be doing at this point.

There seems to be an informal agreement that census data counts for
places.  I don't know why, that's directory entries for my money, but
it is usually not hard to find sources.  My parents' village, for
example, had two or three books about it, plus lengthy mentions in
histories on the adjacent city, and discussions in respect of the iron
age settlements in the area.

>On the contrary.  We can have both, and we can have standards.  The issue
>is that we need to have senisble standards, and we clearly lack that.
>Phil Sandifer is so completely on target with his commentary that last few
>days, and we'd be very smart to listen to him.

I have listened to him.  I have also listened to him in deletion
debates and reviews.  And in one case, despite his assurances, we
could not find a single source.  It would be unwise to base policy
*only* on the writings of those who habitually find it hard to source
their preferred content, though.  That may mean that their preferred
content is not the stuff of a mainstream encyclopaedia.

My view is that we should change the subject-specific notability
guidelines to be an indication of the types of sources which are
considered reliable for that type of content.  But to say something is
notable when it plainly has not been noted may be to misunderstand the
definition of notability, in terms of an encyclopaedia.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> But practically speaking, one of the problems I see is that idiots are
> not usually self-aware

There is actually scientific support for this observation, in the
form of a study performed by psychologists Justin Kruger and David
Dunning. Their paper is titled "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How
Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated
Self-Assessments":

http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf

It states:

"Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make
unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the
metacognitive ability to realize it."

--------------------------------
|  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
--------------------------------


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

references:
<8A513D85-1FF9-4784-B13A-15C297F01EFF@english.ufl.edu>
	<j0d3u297hid6q2i2d306v0ap6c26mtfhmb@4ax.com>
	<45E1B8A0.3060800@internationalhouseofbacon.com>
	<q1g3u21aqlp6mv3v1gi188e8ovnej9983t@4ax.com>
	<1237.69.21.252.114.1172429714.squirrel@www.internationalhouseofbacon.com>
	<cgp3u2tfmd8b5gesh2lcdubj4a1d7n991o@4ax.com>
	<1812.69.21.252.114.1172433589.squirrel@www.internationalhouseofbacon.com>

body:
On Sun, 25 Feb 2007 14:59:49 -0500 (EST), "Jeff Raymond"
<jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:

>> No, no, no, a thousand times no.  Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, a
>> tertiary source, a distillation of secondary sources, not a publisher
>> of first instance.

>And no one is REALISTICALLY disagreeing with this.  Something can be a
>tertiary distillation without REQUIRING "multiple, non-trivial, secondary
>sources" for inclusion.  Don't set up an argument I'm not making.

How?  Have you ever looked at a paper encyclopaedia?  Every article is
verifiable from numerous published sources.  We're not paper so we can
extend to a huge number of articles, and that takes us to the edge of
what can be referenced from numerous published sources, but if we step
over that edge we cease to be an encyclopaedia and become something
else.

>>>[[Ern Westmore]] - Oscar-winning makeup artist, second generation of the
>>>famed Westmore family, had his own television show.  My research -
>>>extensive for a non-wiki project I'm working on, but not *highly*
>>>extensive (local news reports, etc) - does not uncover him as THE SUBJECT
>>>of multiple secondary sources.  Many independent mentions in articles and
>>>books, but never as the subject, and the best source I've found about him
>>>so far was written by his brother, which calls into question
>>>"independent."  Does this mean our general idea of "notability" is
>>>working, or not?

>> It means you haven't yet found the sources.  There will be sources.
>> There will be, for example, the citations from the Academy Awards,
>> describing his work.  Go to the library, look in Halliwell and other
>> film guides.  Look in the trade magazines for the film industry.  Not
>> on the net?  Who cares.

>No, it means that it's highly likely they don't exist.  Your assumption
>that they do when I can tell you first hand that they so far don't don't
>in ways Wikipedia requires is coming from a place where the effort hasn't
>been made.  I've taken more time than I should looking for information on
>this guy - it's not there in the way we allegedly want it.

So maybe there are no secondary sources and we can't have an article.
Shame.  there are eight billion other things to work on...

There are people I consider significant and important.  No sources
exist.  I can't document them.  Saxon Aldred, organ builder, for
example.  Peter Collins, yes, and Noel Mander and others, but not
Saxon.  I managed to find sources for Andrew Parnell, which was not
easy.  I think we should have an article on Colin Slee, there may now
be enough sources on him.  There will probably never be enough on
Peter Moore, a predecessor of Jeffrey John as dean of St. Albans.
These people are acknowledged as important by their peers.

>> There seems to be an informal agreement that census data counts for
>> places.

>An informal agreement that doesn't reflect reality, though.  It's only an
>agreement until people who disagree come along.

Correct.

>> My view is that we should change the subject-specific notability
>> guidelines to be an indication of the types of sources which are
>> considered reliable for that type of content.  But to say something is
>> notable when it plainly has not been noted may be to misunderstand the
>> definition of notability, in terms of an encyclopaedia.

>Our views are somewhat similar in the first half, but not in the second.
>Things are encyclopedic without being "notable," and our "notability"
>guidelines do a piss-poor job reflecting that in many important cases.

For values of important that may fall short of attracting the
attention of reliable secondary sources :-)

I have complete confident that the genuinely important ones will be
covered by such sources before the publishing deadline.

Incidentally, you should sign up for OTRS.  You'd be very helpful in
the vandalism queue.  Seriously.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: T P

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 2/25/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> T P wrote:
>
> >I think many people fail to realize that Wikipedia is and always will be
> a
> >work-in-progress.  We really don't know what our notability policy is,
> and
> >there are no easy answers.  Stan Shebs was quite right when he pointed
> out
> >that there are no known solutions to this problem.
> >
> That being the case editors and admins should stop pretending that there
> is a solution.

I should have said there are no good solutions.  This problem requires a
working solution, and we do have one.

Keeping those avenues open is scary business because it means accepting
> that a technique that you were long convinced was the only solution may
> suddenly be found wrong.  Validation does not come in the form of the
> immediate intangible reward of having your idea accepted and written in
> stone.  In a truly collaborative environment every policy or idea is
> permanently open to change.  It doesn't matter that at some point there
> was a vote to adopt a policy.  If someone disagrees at any time in the
> future he should have the right to add his negative vote, or change his
> previous vote.  If enough people do that the policy could be reversed.

I think we are agreeing here.

>People think Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia, but that's just an
> >analogy.  The truth is Wikipedia is something new and different and what
> it
> >is is a matter of negotiation within the Wikipedia community.
> >
> I don't think that this line of reasoning gets us anywhere.  It just
> gets us into a lot of semantic debate about the nature of an
> encyclopedia, a debate for which there is no firm answer.  This debate
> was largely superceded with the founding of the sister projects as
> spin-offs for ideas that did not really fit into the definition of an
> encyclopedia.  What is new and different then is Wikimedia.

Wikipedia is still different in substantial ways from a traditional
encyclopedia, and people who try to make it "more like an encyclopedia" are
going to be disappointed.

Pesonally I don't care whether webcomics are included or not.  I think it's
a shame that we have no articles on [[Dance in China]] or [[Media of
China]], and [[Military of China]] and [[Tourism in China]] are just stubs.

Adam


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
on 2/25/07 8:38 PM, Michael Snow at wikipedia at earthlink.net wrote:

>
> In fact, most of the
> community's social problems arise because people are too "clueless" or
> "crazy" to recognize the limits of their competence.

Emotional maturity includes "I know that I can not know".

We need to figure
> out how we can better push for more competent contributors.

Emotional or intellectual?
>
> Wikipedia's best contributors are those wise enough to know their own
> limitations. They hardly ever cause a stir because they don't overreach
> these limitations, or else they put the necessary effort into overcoming
> them. Unfortunately, far too many people lack either the self-awareness
> or self-control to respect their own limitations. That means we have to
> apply external controls. This may range from deleting content that is
> not helpful at all, to mercilessly editing poor-quality but salvageable
> content, to evicting contributors who are an overall detriment to the
> project. The proper uses of such remedies are tricky issues that require
> an abundance of good judgment. The community's ability to cope with that
> problem, the constant need for good and careful judgment, has not scaled
> very well.

Now you are presenting to the culture. It is long overdue here.

Marc Riddell


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
on 2/25/07 9:12 PM, Sheldon Rampton at sheldon at prwatch.org wrote:

> "Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make
> unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the
> metacognitive ability to realize it."

This is also what denial is all about.

Marc Riddell


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On Feb 25, 2007, at 8:00 PM, Stan Shebs wrote:

> Philip Sandifer wrote:
>> There is no good mechanism to have an encyclopedia written by idiots.
>>
> I would looove to see that reminder posted on every edit page!
>
> But practically speaking, one of the problems I see is that idiots are
> not usually self-aware, and they will vociferously defend the extreme
> cultural importance of the not-yet-in-production "Amazing Lost
> American
> Idol Race" show or whatever. (If I've learned anything from WP, it's
> that there are way more lame TV shows out there than I ever imagined.
> :-) ) How do you get would-be editors to realize when they don't have
> anything of value to add?

I find that most editors can be educated effectively with
[[Special:Blockip]].

Seriously. We cannot have an encyclopedia written by people who are
too stupid to write an encyclopedia. We have to either educate them
or dissuade them from contributing - not write a set of rules
designed primarily to polish turds.

-Phil


from_name: William Pietri

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> Philip Sandifer wrote:
>
>> There is no good mechanism to have an encyclopedia written by idiots.
>>
>>
> I would looove to see that reminder posted on every edit page!
>
> But practically speaking, one of the problems I see is that idiots are
> not usually self-aware [...]

For those interested in the topic, it turns out there's good evidence
for that:

http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf

It's titled "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in
Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments."

Particularly relevant is the graph on page 4.

William

--
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
on 2/25/07 9:36 PM, Philip Sandifer at snowspinner at gmail.com wrote:

> We cannot have an encyclopedia written by people who are
> too stupid to write an encyclopedia.

Are you sure you mean to use the term "stupid" here? "Stupidity" is doing
something wrong - and knowing better. "Ignorance" is not knowing in the
first place.

Marc Riddell


from_name: Bryan Tong Minh

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Day Art Contest

body:
Hi,

Just being curious, when will the winners be announced?

Bryan

On 1/15/07, ?ukasz Garczewski <lgarczewski at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yay! It's Wikipedia Day again! Rejoice!
>
> And just to give you a little help with that, Wikimedia Foundation and
> deviantART.com bring you the Wikipedia Day Art Contest:
>
> http://news.deviantart.com/article/25101/
>
> We ask deviantART users to submit an artistic representation of "a
> world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of
> all knowledge." If you couldn't visualize the idea till now, the
> entries in this contest are bound to change that!
>
> You will see the entries shortly (I hope) under:
> * http://browse.deviantart.com/projects/contests/2007/wikipediaday/wikipediaother/?order=5
> (images)
> * http://browse.deviantart.com/projects/contests/2007/wikipediaday/wikipedialit/?order=5
> (literature)
>
> Please, spread the word to your local Wikipedia communities and join
> the fun if you have an account on deviantART (if you don't you can
> easily create one for free).
>
> Hope you have a blast out of this! Happy editing and keep on dreaming!
>
> Questions? Ask away.
>
> --
> ?ukasz 'TOR' Garczewski
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject: [Wikitech-l] mwdumper does not work

body:
After running mwdumper downloaded from wikimedia.org and dated 1 feb 06
with either of the following commands:

java -jar mwdumper.jar --format=mysql:1.5
/wikidump/dump/enwiki-20070206-pages.articles.xml  |  mysql
--default-chracter-set=utf8 -u root -p chrpdb

java -jar mwdumper.jar --format=mysql:1.5
/wikidump/dump/enwiki-20070206-pages.articles.xml  |  mysql -u root -p
chrpdb

no pages show up in any of the edit histories for the wiki at all with
the new wiki.    In other words, it does not appear to work.  This has
also been
reported on several other blogs and wikis.

WIKI CONFIG:

This wiki is powered by *MediaWiki <http://www.mediawiki.org/>*,
copyright (C) 2001-2006 Magnus Manske, Brion Vibber, Lee Daniel Crocker,
Tim Starling, Erik M?ller, Gabriel Wicke, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason,
Niklas Laxstr?m, Domas Mituzas, Rob Church and others.

MediaWiki is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your
option) any later version.

MediaWiki is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for
more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
<http://chrp.wikigadugi.org/COPYING> along with this program; if not,
write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth
Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA. or read it online
<http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html>

    * MediaWiki <http://www.mediawiki.org/>: 1.8.2
    * PHP <http://www.php.net/>: 5.1.4 (apache2handler)
    * MySQL <http://www.mysql.com/>: 5.0.18
    * Extensions:
          o Parser hooks:
                + /Cite/ <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cite/Cite.php>,
                  adds <ref[ name=id]> and <references/> tags, for
                  citations, by ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason
                + /ParserFunctions/
                  <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ParserFunctions> by
                  Tim Starling
          o Extension functions:
                + wfSetupParserFunctions and wfCite
          o Parser extension tags:
                + <ref>, <references> and <pre>
          o Parser function hooks:
                + expr, if, ifeq, ifexpr, switch, ifexist, int, ns,
                  urlencode, lcfirst, ucfirst, lc, uc, localurl,
                  localurle, fullurl, fullurle, formatnum, grammar,
                  plural, numberofpages, numberofusers,
                  numberofarticles, numberoffiles, numberofadmins,
                  language, padleft, padright and anchorencode
    * Hooks:
          o LanguageGetMagic: wfParserFunctionsLanguageGetMagic
          o ParserClearState: (Cite, clearState)

Jeff


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Foundation-l] WikiSym 2007 Call for Papers

body:
Angela wrote:

>>Note that authors of accepted papers are expected to attend
>>
>>
>>>the conference and present the paper, otherwise publication will be canceled.
>>>
>>>
>>That seems like a good way to ensure it remains a strictly North
>>American affair...
>>
>>
>
>The same rule applied last year when WikiSym was held in what was
>possibly the worst place for international travelers to get to (37
>hours for me) yet certainly wasn't a Danish-only, or even
>European-only, affair. I don't think it's unusual for conferences to
>require that people attend the conference if they want to have their
>paper published in the proceedings is it?
>
>
Yeah, this is pretty much standard for academic conferences, for better
or worse.  Conferences want to ensure that: 1) they'll get paid the
registration fee, which supports their costs; and 2) that a conference
with presentations actually happens, rather than people just using the
proceedings as a place to publish a paper.

There's occasional debate in computer science, where conferences are
considered a major publication venue (unlike most other fields, which
mainly use journals) about whether this is good, bad, or neither.  On
the plus side, it promotes collaboration and more direct peer review by
encouraging/forcing annual face-to-face meetings with presentations,
panels, and question/answer sessions.  The annual nature with submission
deadlines also tends to promote more timely publication of results, even
preliminary ones, and researchers at academic institutions usually can
also get a grant or institution pay for the trip.   On the minus side,
it raises the financial cost of publication for independent researchers
(compared to journals, which are usually free to publish in).  Not a
debate we're likely to resolve on this mailing list, since it's been
going on (in CS anyway) for decades...

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On Sun, 25 Feb 2007 16:32:03 -0500, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org>
wrote:

>I'm not going to argue we should follow their lead, but this isn't
>universally the case.  Britannica, to pick only the most famous
>encyclopedia, is well known for hiring famous people to write original
>research for their articles.  They've toned that down a bit since the
>heydey of their 1911 edition, but it's still very much present.  I would
>say that the idea that an encyclopedia should be a tertiary source based
>strictly on a neutral survey of the existing secondary literature is a
>fairly recent shift, and most encyclopedias don't fully implement it.
>The previous conception of an encyclopedia was that it be a compendium
>of *true* things, even if the truths flatly contradict the existing
>secondary literature (sometimes Britannica will explicitly say things
>like, "most commentators say [x], but this is false").  The
>justification for the truth was not sourcing to existing literature, but
>the combined prestige of the article's author and Britannica itself.

We could not do that because we don't do original research, but we
certainly do challenge the orthodox view in a number of areas, where
that can be supported from the best and most current sources - in
essence we see the new, emerging consensus before the weight of old
literature is consigned to the dustbin of history.

However...

These authors were, even if not explicitly, drawing on a large pool of
published sources.  I have friends who are academics; they can write
from their own knowledge, but if pressed could cite every word to
research by them or others.  It's just that they don't need to because
of their reputation, it's a given that what they say form knowledge
*could* be referenced.  If they venture an opinion it is stated as
opinion.  We don't typically see opinions as opinion in
encyclopaedias.

I only knew one person who wrote an article for Britannica, though,
and he's sadly deceased so I can't ask him about it.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bot edit rates

body:
>From my experience, for every ten Special:Contributions requests made, eight
or nine are just to find out the raw edit count, and the rest are used to
find namespace distributions, edit summary and minor edit usage. So,
displaying user_editcount on Special:Contributions will cause scrape
requests to take a substantial hit...

Titoxd.

-----Original Message-----
From: Andre Engels [mailto:andreengels at gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2007 4:54 AM
To: Wikimedia developers
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Bot edit rates

2007/2/25, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net>:
>
> Andre Engels wrote:
> >
> >>Are you suggesting that because people want "more than just X", they
> >>shouldn't even have X?
> >
> > I think he's suggesting that giving them X through another means will
> not
> > stop them from using edit count bots if what they want is more than X.
>
> And how is that a reason not to let them have X?
>

It's not, but it might be a reason to spend time on other things rather than
on giving the users X. Developer time is not a commodity we have excess of.

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bot edit rates

body:
Ok, no clue why the other email came up empty, so trying again...

>From my experience, for every ten Special:Contributions requests made, eight
or nine are just to find out the raw edit count, and the rest are used to
find namespace distributions, edit summary and minor edit usage. So,
displaying user_editcount on Special:Contributions will cause scrape
requests to take a substantial hit...

Titoxd.

-----Original Message-----
From: Andre Engels [mailto:andreengels at gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2007 4:54 AM
To: Wikimedia developers
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Bot edit rates

2007/2/25, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net>:
>
> Andre Engels wrote:
> >
> >>Are you suggesting that because people want "more than just X", they
> >>shouldn't even have X?
> >
> > I think he's suggesting that giving them X through another means will
> not
> > stop them from using edit count bots if what they want is more than X.
>
> And how is that a reason not to let them have X?
>

It's not, but it might be a reason to spend time on other things rather than
on giving the users X. Developer time is not a commodity we have excess of.

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


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
T P wrote:

>On 2/25/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>T P wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I think many people fail to realize that Wikipedia is and always will be a
>>>
>>>
>>>work-in-progress.  We really don't know what our notability policy is, and
>>>
>>>
>>>there are no easy answers.  Stan Shebs was quite right when he pointed out
>>>
>>>
>>>that there are no known solutions to this problem.
>>>
>>>
>>That being the case editors and admins should stop pretending that there
>>is a solution.
>>
>>
>I should have said there are no good solutions.  This problem requires a
>working solution, and we do have one.
>
And a working solution need not be a panacea.  If it helps to solve some
problems it becomes a stepping stone to further solutions.

>>People think Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia, but that's just an
>>
>>
>>>analogy.  The truth is Wikipedia is something new and different and what it
>>>
>>>
>>>is is a matter of negotiation within the Wikipedia community.
>>>
>>>
>>I don't think that this line of reasoning gets us anywhere.  It just
>>gets us into a lot of semantic debate about the nature of an
>>encyclopedia, a debate for which there is no firm answer.  This debate
>>was largely superceded with the founding of the sister projects as
>>spin-offs for ideas that did not really fit into the definition of an
>>encyclopedia.  What is new and different then is Wikimedia.
>>
>>
>Wikipedia is still different in substantial ways from a traditional
>encyclopedia, and people who try to make it "more like an encyclopedia" are
>going to be disappointed.
>
If they start with preconceived notions about the nature of an
encyclopedia, certainly.  These are the people who are likely to try to
shape Wikipedia to those notions.  With a more open vision and fewer
expectations we are less likely to be disappointed

>Pesonally I don't care whether webcomics are included or not.  I think it's
>a shame that we have no articles on [[Dance in China]] or [[Media of
>China]], and [[Military of China]] and [[Tourism in China]] are just stubs.
>
Those people who are doing a good job with webcomics, by whatever
standard that sub-community sets, do so partly because the subject
interests them.  If we ban webcomics articles outright they are more
likely to go away than to start writing scholarly articles about
China..  Very few of them would know anything about the subject.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
I have snipped most of a very interesting post to add one small tangent:

John Lee wrote:
> In short, policy is a substitute for common sense.

I think I'd say this a little differently. If common sense is a road, I
think of policy as the rumble strips and crash barriers. They're not a
substitute, exactly, but they should follow similar contours and try to
limit the scope of problems.

In my field, Alistair Cockburn borrowed the Shu-Ha-Ri model of learning
martial arts and applied it to software teams learning new methods. I've
found it very useful. The actual model has a rich history, but my
cartoon of it goes like this. In going from beginner to master, there
are three stages:

   1. Follow the rules.
   2. Understand the rules.
   3. Transcend the rules.

In the first stage, novices have a real hunger for rules. They can't and
usually don't want to understand what's going on. They just want to
follow some simple steps and get the desired result. In the second
stage, they still follow the rules, but not mechanically; here they gain
an understanding of the purposes behind the rules. In the third stage,
one understands the principles so deeply that one has no need of the rules.

So I generally think of our various policies as a harm limitation device
for newbies, an educational tool for those settling in, and a convenient
focus of discussion for masters.

William

P.S. Sorry for the duplicate paper link earlier; I should have read all
the new posts before replying, not just the ones my mailer thought were
part of the thread.

--
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri


from_name: Edward Z. Yang

subject: [Wikitech-l] mwdumper does not work

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

Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
> MySQL <http://www.mysql.com/>: 5.0.18

MySQL 5.0.18 is only experimentally supported by MediaWiki, the
production sites use MySQL 4.0.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFF4lsfqTO+fYacSNoRAgvXAKCI8Wzsm8SlzVn/5+XqgolBl788ZQCdEkeM
36DwjxHlLPRJOl8sTaO0rCg=
=WjIn
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [Wikitech-l] mwdumper does not work

body:
Catch 22. Now I think we are getting to the bottom of the problems.
Modern Linux Distros which support php 5.1 are NOT on mysql 4.X at all.
These tools are designed for OS systems which no longer exist.

Jeff

Edward Z. Yang wrote:

>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
>
>
>>MySQL <http://www.mysql.com/>: 5.0.18
>>
>>
>
>MySQL 5.0.18 is only experimentally supported by MediaWiki, the
>production sites use MySQL 4.0.
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (MingW32)
>Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
>iD8DBQFF4lsfqTO+fYacSNoRAgvXAKCI8Wzsm8SlzVn/5+XqgolBl788ZQCdEkeM
>36DwjxHlLPRJOl8sTaO0rCg=
>=WjIn
>-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.9.3 bugs

body:
The install script for MediaWiki 1.9.3 points to

/wikiconfig/index.php

instead of just

/config/index.php

The tr.gz file on Sourceforce has a file system layout with the older
/config and not /wikiconfig directories.

This causes it to fail unless you manually type in
http://<site>/config/index.php

Jeff