How can anyone even ask this?
Only a few days ago, it was reported that "Breast cancer treatment
trials that are funded by drug companies are more likely to show
positive results than studies sponsored by other sources, new
research suggests."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/26/
AR2007022600728.html
It was also reported a few thousand years ago, in a study in which a
researcher reported: "where your treasure is, there will your heart
be also... No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the
one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise
the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."
I have just posted this on my talk page:
I have blanked my entire talk page to make sure this statement gets
adequate attention. Hopefully someone more clueful than me :-) can
archive things properly.
I have been for several days in a remote part of India with little or no
Internet access. I only learned this morning that EssJay used his false
credentials in content disputes. I understood this to be primarily the
matter of a pseudonymous identity (something very mild and completely
understandable given the personal dangers possible on the Internet) and
not a matter of violation of people's trust. I want to make it
perfectly clear that my past support of EssJay in this matter was fully
based on a lack of knowledge about what has been going on. Even now, I
have not been able to check diffs, etc.
I have asked EssJay to resign his positions of trust within the
community. In terms of the full parameters of what happens next, I
advise (as usual) that we take a calm, loving, and reasonable approach.
From the moment this whole thing became known, EssJay has been
contrite and apologetic. People who characterize him as being "proud"
of it or "bragging" are badly mistaken.
On a personal level, EssJay has apologized to me, and I have accepted
his apology on a personal level, and I think this is the right thing to
do. If anyone else feels that they need or want a personal apology,
please ask him for it. And if you find it to be sincere, then I hope
you will accept it too, but each person must make their own judgments.
Despite my personal forgiveness, I hope that he will accept my
resignation request, because forgiveness or not, these positions are not
appropriate for him now.
I still have limited net access... for a couple of hours here I will be
online, and then I am offline until I am in Japan tomorrow morning. I
beleive I will have a fast and stable Internet connection at that time,
and I will deal with this further at that time.
Wikipedia is built on (among other things) twin pillars of trust and
tolerance. The integrity of the project depends on the core community
being passionate about quality and integrity, so that we can trust each
other. The harmony of our work depends on human understanding and
forgiveness of errors.
--~~~~
In a message dated 3/4/2007 6:39:10 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
stanshebs(a)earthlink.net writes:
You're one in a million, and that's not flattery. :-) While it's
theoretically possible to have unbiased edits from a paid source, in
practice it hasn't gone well so far, and in these days of corporations
looking for every imaginable advertising venue, people are ultra-paranoid.
I think if a leading historian were to announce that he had received a
commission to work on a company's WP article, editing under his own
name, people would struggle with that one. The historian's overt
participation would be a boost to WP's credibility, and the historian is
putting personal reputation on the line, but it's also setting a
precedent to later accept paid edits from a less-leading historian, then
the underpaid instructor at the community college, then the "Company
Historian" in the marketing department.
Stan
Yes, I think that being paid to write articles should be against the rules.
It's ironic that I have gotten flak writing about a subject I don't get paid
for but work with.
Vincent
<BR><BR><BR>**************************************<BR> AOL now offers free
email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at
http://www.aol.com.
I'd like to propose a simple approach to dealing with article subjects
of questionable notability, which may represent a solution to many of
the conflicts surrounding such articles. I apologize if this has been
debated before; if so, please point me to the relevant
thread(s)/page(s).
Our policy is simple: We demand reliable evidence for the notability
of a subject. While the scope of such evidence will certainly continue
to evolve, the principle is not negotiable.
We delete articles that fail to establish notability. Deletion hides
revisions from everyone but admins, a very small percentage of our
user base. Importantly, it even hides them from the authors of the
article.
As an alternative to hard deletion, I propose that we redirect a set
of articles, to be defined below, to a page "Wikipedia:Removed article
(notability)" or sth. similar. This page would explain our basic
notability principles, the procedure for adding sources, and how to go
back to the original article and retrieve an older version from the
history to edit.
By using a redirect, we prevent such pages from being counted as
articles. We also force anyone trying to look at the article to read
the notice we put on the page -- which could be much more effective
than user talk messages. We also make the process of restoring the
previous version somewhat non-obvious, which should reduce the number
of instant reverts. The redirects should be liberally semi-protected
if they do become a problem, which still allows for open history
review, debate, and editing by regular users.
The set of articles that would be treated this way would _exclude_:
- vanity articles (gushing style, created by the subject, utterly
obvious non-notability ..)
- anything that is not following the established encyclopedic format
- anything that is remotely problematic in content (legal risks, ethics)
The set would, however, include the typical non-notable computer
program, webcomic, journalist etc. Many of these articles are fairly
detailed when they get deleted, and in my opinion, soft deletion would
be a real alternative to allow people to continue to review the
content.
== Advantages ==
* Reduces AfD workload and admin burn-out; involves more people in deletion
* Allows open review and discussion of soft-deleted articles
* Engages people who are "hit" by deletion rather than putting them in AfD hell
* Encourages actual improvement when such improvement seems possible,
but inclusion is not yet justifiable
* Makes it easier to systematically track re-creation of non-notable articles
* Avoids the process wonkery of undeletion when notability can be
established and reduces the risk of the risk of duplicated effort (nn
article deleted=>someone else re-creates, now with more sources, but
as a non-admin they do not have access to the original text)
== Possible problems ==
* Could be used where it is not appropriate.
Response: By redirecting to a page which gives a _specific_ policy
reason -- Wikipedia:Removed article (notability) -- we would
implicitly whitelist the cases where soft deletion can be used. If the
risk of it growing out of hand is nevertheless perceived too great, we
could limit it to a specific test category at first, e.g. web comics.
* People can still link to non-notable material by linking to old revisions.
Response: This is already possible -- any revision from any article
can be linked to, regardless of the content it contains. The only
exception are revisions deleted for legal reasons. It hasn't been much
of an issue so far, and I doubt it will become one. If it does, we can
make the "old revision" notice at the top more prominent.
* Could lead to constant edit warring over non-notable topics.
Edit warring is usually quickly dealt with, and reverting redirects
without cause could be considered a bad faith act even without an
actual edit war taking place. In practice, it is unlikely to be a very
different problem from the re-creation of articles once they have been
deleted.
* Red links become blue.
If the subject is not notable, why is it linked to in the first place? :-)
Thoughts?
--
Peace & Love,
Erik
DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic
Stan Shebs wrote:
> I find myself looking on it as "foolish" rather than "unacceptable".
> There *are* stalkers and freaks who go after WP editors, and our
> attitude has generally been that if it's not happening on WP itself,
> it's not our problem.
No, it's unacceptable. Essjay didn't merely misrepresent himself on
his user page (behavior that in and of itself might not be so bad).
He made the situation much, much worse by LYING TO A REPORTER while
acting as a spokesperson for Wikipedia. Moreover, he did this to a
reporter at The New Yorker, which is a famous stickler for factual
accuracy. No serious journalist will trust him ever again. I'm
frankly amazed that Jimbo would say he doesn't have a problem with this.
I've looked at Essjay's rationale and the rather weasely way he tries
to pretend he didn't quite lie, but the fact is that he did. Let's
call a spade a spade. By his own account, he spent eight hours being
interviewed by a reporter and knowingly led her to believe that he
possessed academic credentials which he did not in fact possess.
Moreover, the details of the original New Yorker story show that
during the interview, he elaborated on the fictions in his user page
so that he could perpetuate the deception. He told the reporter that
he was a teacher who "often takes his laptop to class, so that he can
be available to Wikipedians while giving a quiz."
As for the notion that this is somehow acceptable as a form of self-
defense against "stalkers and freaks," I don't buy it. I happen to be
a writer of controversial books, and I've even gotten a few threats
myself as a result, but nevertheless I write under my own name.
Moreover, someone who wants to conceal their identity with a
pseudonym can easily do so without assuming false academic
credentials. Pretending that he was a professor didn't help conceal
his identity. It was just a lie, and there's no excuse for it.
--------------------------------
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There is a straw poll going on to move the discussion of WP:N forward.
The main categories are:
Keep (with the possibility of promoting it to policy),
Discuss (to make slight adjustments and regain consensus)
Revise (to create a consensus version, which may never have existed)
Rebuild (either start over from scratch or demote it back to a
descriptive, rather than prescriptive, essay)
Discard (Notability? We don't need no stinkin' Notability)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Notability#Straw_Poll
A straw poll is neither a straw nor a pole. Discuss.
<C2F697EE-9AF5-4917-A376-51E9C43F8DFA(a)prwatch.org>
<45E765B8.5050601(a)earthlink.net>
<99c65f730703011756x711c74b5hf6835868850fd482(a)mail.gmail.com>
<38a7bf7c0703011828r2452ff82xf20143d55ef9520b(a)mail.gmail.com>
<c52819d30703011830x4c0782d8i2aed75ac219fed6e(a)mail.gmail.com>
<38a7bf7c0703011834x28ee9bc6pfb914a3c444b94a7(a)mail.gmail.com>
<52a8cf060703011842s2dca0df1qa405e56dda90650(a)mail.gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2007 01:33:28 -0500
In-Reply-To: <52a8cf060703011842s2dca0df1qa405e56dda90650(a)mail.gmail.com> (Rob
Smith's message of "Thu, 1 Mar 2007 19:42:58 -0700")
Message-ID: <86y7mgm9xj.fsf(a)elan.rh.rit.edu>
User-Agent: Gnus/5.110006 (No Gnus v0.6) Emacs/22.0.94 (gnu/linux)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
--text follows this line--
"Rob Smith" <nobs03(a)gmail.com> writes:
> On 3/1/07, George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 3/1/07, Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) <newyorkbrad(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
>> > >
>> > > anything you do related to Wikipedia may now
>> > > get viewed by a potentially hostile press and outside
community.
>> > >
>> >
>> >
>> > it's dinged us somewhat in the
>> press, based on the blogosphere at least.
>
> Actually this matter has been brewing for some time. Amazing it
took this
> long to bring attention to it.
True. It could've been discovered as far back as 7 January, if I
may recount the timeline of events. It was 7 February that Essjay
posted this:
<http://www.wikia.com/index.php?title=User:Essjay&oldid=66549>
On an interesting side note, it apparently wasn't until 21 January
that anyone noticed - that was when an anon user brought it up on
[[User talk:Essjay]]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Essjay&oldid=102161036>.
Given the anonymity, the name provided as a sig, and the linked
website, I think we can conclude it was in fact Daniel Brandt who
first noticed it
<http://www.whois-search.com/whois/216.60.71.100%20>.
It is also interesting to note that Essjay never replied as
[[User:Shanel]] quite quickly reverted it. (A lapse of judgement?
I suppose so, in the same way Yanksox had a lapse of judgement
deleting [[Daniel Brandt]]).
As it happened, I watch User talk:Essjay, and I saw Brandt's
comment, which worried me. I believe I discussed it on #wikipedia,
but there was little interest and so there the matter laid until
much later, 1 February, when [[User:Dev920]] apparently
independently noticed the discrepancy and left a note on the talk
page
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Essjay&diff=next&oldid=…>;
Essjay's reply was the first confirmation and first appearance of
the stalker defense
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Essjay&diff=next&oldid=…>.
Dev went away satisfied (interesting that Essjay's reply to Dev's
reply says that Essjay had been expecting these questions for some
time), and the conversation was archived, and there matters laid
(again) until later, in 5 February when [[User:Thatcher131]],
invoking Star Trek, brought up the archived conversation
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Essjay&diff=next&oldid=…>.
This was shortly followed by a message from an anon
<http://www.whois-search.com/whois/199.33.32.40>, who quoted from
the now infamous _New Yorker_ article and expressed skepticism
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Essjay&diff=next&oldid=…>.
I do not know whether this was Brandt following up his earlier
message - a whois traces back to Palo Alto's "City of Palo Alto,
Department of Information Resources", and I believe Brandt is
supposed to be using SBC IP ranges from San Antonio, although that
is not conclusive.
It was at this point that the merde began to hit the fan (for the
general section of the history, see
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Essjay&offset=200702121…>).
Another SBC IP <http://www.whois-search.com/whois/71.141.237.249>
chimed in
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Essjay&diff=prev&oldid=…>;
note his claim that Brandt was already actively spreading the
news. A *fourth* IP
<http://www.whois-search.com/whois/70.231.130.196> edited the
third's
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AEssjay&diff=106201706…>.
[[User:Musical Linguist]] then censored the two IP's post,
apparently assuming they were from Brandt
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Essjay&diff=next&oldid=…>.
Another aside: [[User:Stevietheman]] posted an odd message
referring to a Slashdot article
<http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/07/1442229>; if you read
the discussion, a prominent, moderated +5 comment by "Everyman"
(apparently well known as a pseudonym for Brandt) basically lays
out the issue.
By this point, you may be wondering just when things really start
happening. The first discussion that attracts any sort of
widespread attention was started by [[User:Purples]], two or three
days later on 10 February
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AEssjay&diff=107237564…>.
Purples's post started a discussion that included [[User:Peter M
Dodge]], myself ([[User:Gwern]]), yet *another* SBC IP
<http://www.whois-search.com/whois/68.90.179.253>,
[[User:Thatcher131]] again, [[User:Armedblowfish]],
[[User:Cbrown1023]], [[User:User:Grace Note]], [[User:Majorly]],
and well a lot of people. 13 and 12 February saw the majority of
posts on the topic and I believe brought it to the attention of
the wider community, eventually leading to the Signpost article,
community portal discussion, and the main Slashdot article.
I hope this chronology of events is helpful in showing that this
was in fact a slowly brewing PR crisis, however suddenly it may
seem to some to have arisen.
--
Gwern
Inquiring minds want to know.
G'day folks,
Nature has published an article on studies on Wikipedia editing patterns.
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070226/full/070226-6.html
I have added some highlights of the article:
*Highly edited*
Instead, there is an abnormally high number of very highly edited entries.
The researchers say this is just what is expected if the number of new edits
to an article is proportional to the number of previous edits. In other
words, edits attract more edits. The disproportionately highly edited
articles, the researchers say, are those that deal with very topical issues.
And does this increased attention make them better? So it seems. Although
the quality of an entry is not easy to assess automatically, Wilkinson and
Huberman assume that those articles selected as the 'best' by the Wikipedia
user community are indeed in some sense superior. These, they say, are more
highly edited, and by a greater number of users, than the less visible
entries.
Who is making these edits, though? Some have claimed that Wikipedia articles
don't truly draw on the collective wisdom of its users, but are put together
mostly by a small, select élite, including the system's administrators.
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has admitted that he spends "a lot of time
listening to four or five hundred" top users.
Aniket Kittur of the University of California, Los Angeles, and co-workers
have set out to discover who really does the
editing2<http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070226/full/070226-6.html#B2>.
They have looked at 4.7 million pages from the English-language Wikipedia,
subjected to a total of about 58 million revisions, to see who was making
the changes, and how.
The results were striking. In effect, the Wiki community has mutated since
2001 from an oligarchy to a democracy. The percentage of edits made by the
Wikipedia 'élite' of administrators increased steadily up to 2004, when it
reached around 50%. But since then it has steadily declined, and is now just
10% (and falling).
*Weight of numbers*
Even though the edits made by this élite are generally more substantial than
those made by the masses, their overall influence has clearly waned.
Wikipedia is now dominated by users who are much more numerous than the
elite but individually less active. Kittur and colleagues compare this to
the rise of a powerful bourgeoisie within an oligarchic society.
It concludes:
This diversification of contributors is beneficial, Ofer Arazy and
colleagues at the University of Alberta in Canada have
found3<http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070226/full/070226-6.html#B3>.
In 2005, when *Nature*'s news team arranged for expert comparisons between
articles in Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica online, the experts found
only a moderate excess of errors in the Wikipedia
articles4<http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070226/full/070226-6.html#B4>.
(The idea that the two sources were broadly similar was vigorously
challenged by the Encyclopaedia Britannica; see
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html and
http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060327/full/440582b.html.) Arazy's team says
that of the 42 Wikipedia entries assessed in the article, the number of
errors decreased as the number of different editors increased.
The main lesson for tapping effectively into the 'wisdom of crowds', then,
is that the crowd should be diverse. In fact, in 2004 Lu Hong and Scott Page
of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor showed that a problem-solving
team selected at random from a diverse collection of individuals will
usually perform better than a team made up of those who individually perform
best — because the latter tend to be too similar, and so draw on too narrow
a range of options5<http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070226/full/070226-6.html#B5>.
For crowds, wisdom depends on variety.
Regards
*Keith Old*
**
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.)
Best,
Phil Sandifer
sandifer(a)english.ufl.edu
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a
boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
>
The New Yorker recently added an editor's note to an article they
published in July:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060731fa_fact
This has been noted by Nicholas Carr and Stephen Dubner (of
Freakonomics), and I imagine it will be picked up by others:
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/02/never_trust_an.phphttp://www.freakonomics.com/blog/2007/02/28/wikipedia-oops/
This is the editor's note:
The July 31, 2006, piece on Wikipedia, “Know It All,” by Stacy
Schiff, contained an interview with a Wikipedia site administrator
and contributor called Essjay, whose responsibilities included
handling disagreements about the accuracy of the site’s articles and
taking action against users who violate site policy. He was
described in the piece as “a tenured professor of religion at a
private university” with “a Ph.D. in theology and a degree in canon
law.”
Essjay was recommended to Ms. Schiff as a source by a member of
Wikipedia’s management team because of his respected position within
the Wikipedia community. He was willing to describe his work as a
Wikipedia administrator but would not identify himself other than by
confirming the biographical details that appeared on his user page.
At the time of publication, neither we nor Wikipedia knew Essjay’s
real name. Essjay’s entire Wikipedia life was conducted with only a
user name; anonymity is common for Wikipedia admin-istrators and
contributors, and he says that he feared personal retribution from
those he had ruled against online. Essjay now says that his real
name is Ryan Jordan, that he is twenty-four and holds no advanced
degrees, and that he has never taught. He was recently hired by
Wikia—a for-profit company affiliated with Wikipedia—as a “community
manager”; he continues to hold his Wikipedia positions. He did not
answer a message we sent to him; Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of
Wikia and of Wikipedia, said of Essjay’s invented persona, “I regard
it as a pseudonym and I don’t really have a problem with it.”
William
--
William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri