Daniel Mayer declared that:
> ...Wikipedia is not a primary source. Once and /if/
> that person is able to get a real publisher to publish
> their autobiography, then and /only/ then do we use
> their autobiography as a source. We need some sort of
> filter.
How can you say that Wikipedia is not a primary source?
I thought our original aim was to have articles written by contributors
who actually know something about what they're writing. People are
always encouraging me to spend less time editing other contributors'
work or rewriting factoids I discover on-line on in books -- and more
time contributing my unique knowledge of my two areas of expertise: the
Unification Church and software development.
Last year and the year before that, a lot of the talk on this mailing
list was about how to attract experts in their fields; how to avoid
driving them away once we hooked them. Have we given up on that goal?
Is Wikipedia destined to be little more than an annotated collection of
web links and bibliographical references? If so, I'm going to continue
to lose interest in the project.
I want Wikipedia to become MORE authoritative, not less.
Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed
Hello,
I put some information on the "Foxtrot Class Submarine" And it left my computer number.
Could you delete it and put in my user name. I would really appreciate it.
Also I put in the info before I read your copyright material. I don't know if it is OK.
Send me a reply to both as soon as possible please.
by the by - nice site!
wringing my hands,
John L. McElravy
E-mail: mcelravy(a)uwtc.net
Nucleic acid is what the NA stands for. I've checked multiple credible sources, and they agree hole heartedly with me.
Original message:
I am requesting arbitration at [[DNA]]. I have attempted to submit that DNA is a form of [[nucleic acid]]. [[User:Peak]] (working in conjunction with an anon IP) has made it clear to me that he thinks I am a vandal (thus, mediation is not appropriate; since, discussion is impossible).
I request that the arbitration committee determine whether, or not, DNA is a nucleic acid.
---------------------------------
Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping" your friends today! Download Messenger Now
Ed Poor wrote:
>Is Wikipedia destined to be little more than an annotated collection of
>web links and bibliographical references? If so, I'm going to continue
>to lose interest in the project.
Oh, Ed, don't tempt me.... ;)
More seriously, I think Wikipedia is at a point where increasing the
_number_ of articles is less important than improving their
_quality_. I'm not sure what the best strategy is for doing this. One
possibility might be to seek funding for the purpose of hiring some
information specialists (such as librarians and/or or experts in
various fields) to help with cataloging, organizing and editing. The
model I'm thinking of here is OhMyNews, an online newspaper in South
Korea. About 20% of its content is written by its staff, while the
majority of articles are written by more than 10,000 other
contributors who are paid small amounts of money for their work.
Has anyone considered the possibility of some kind of creative
partnership with commercial encyclopedia companies? If IBM is getting
into Linux these days, it's not inconceivable that World Book or
Encyclopedia Britannica might develop an interest in getting involved
with Wikipedia before things advance to the point where their own
rationale for existence disappears.
--
--------------------------------
| Sheldon Rampton
| Editor, PR Watch (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
--------------------------------
At 09:43 AM 1/5/04 -0500, Ed Poor wrote:
>Daniel Mayer declared that:
>
> > ...Wikipedia is not a primary source. Once and /if/
> > that person is able to get a real publisher to publish
> > their autobiography, then and /only/ then do we use
> > their autobiography as a source. We need some sort of
> > filter.
>
>How can you say that Wikipedia is not a primary source?
>
>I thought our original aim was to have articles written by contributors
>who actually know something about what they're writing. People are
>always encouraging me to spend less time editing other contributors'
>work or rewriting factoids I discover on-line on in books -- and more
>time contributing my unique knowledge of my two areas of expertise: the
>Unification Church and software development.
When we say that Wikipedia is not a primary source, we mean that
information about the Unification Church--its organization, beliefs,
and so on--should not be *first* or *only* available in Wikipedia. You
as a member of that church know enough to write about it, which is
good; it would not be appropriate for the Reverend Moon to use Wikipedia
to publish sermons or proclaim doctrine. Similarly, if you have a new
and better method of software development, Wikipedia is not the place
to proclaim it.
Lir,
Mediation is possible when at least ONE party to a conflict expresses a
desire for mediation. The appointed Mediator can then invite the other
parties. I have seen this work, in the past.
Ed Poor
-----Original Message-----
From: A [name omitted for privacy reasons] [mailto:wikilir@yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 3:57 AM
To: wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for Arbitration at [[DNA]]
I am requesting arbitration at [[DNA]]. I have
attempted to submit that DNA is a form of [[nucleic
acid]]. [[User:Peak]] (working in conjunction with an
anon IP) has made it clear to me that he thinks I am a
vandal (thus, mediation is not appropriate; since,
discussion is impossible).
I request that the arbitration committee determine
whether, or not, DNA is a nucleic acid.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Find out what made the Top Yahoo! Searches of 2003
http://search.yahoo.com/top2003
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Nikola Smolenski wrote:
>I don't really understand what is the problem with
>autobiographies and why are they more unverifiable
>then biographies written by someone else.
Because Wikipedia is not a primary source. Once and /if/ that person is able
to get a real publisher to publish their autobiography, then and /only/ then
do we use their autobiography as a source.
We need some sort of filter.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
You'd have thought that our current policy list at "What Wikipedia is
Not" is clear enough on the matter of any old person off the street
adding an article about themselves to Wikipedia: self-published authors,
new prophets, and so on.
But with rising awareness of WP, this will be an increasing problem. See
for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:M.R.M._Parrott
On VFD he author argues that nothing in our policy forbids a biography
of him, even though we've found only two reviews of his books.
As well as being what we call "non-encyclopedic", these can't be NPOV
since the facts can't be verified.
Should we write a specific policy page about this, to expand the entry
on WWisNot, in a similar way to what I did recently for
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research ?