Interesting... But the actual point of this thread remains unanswered. - White Cat On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 7:46 PM, Falcorian < alex.public.account+ENWikiMailingList@gmail.com<alex.public.account%2BENWikiMailingList@gmail.com> > Actually, the new version is out and allows us to start dual licensing. > Discussing is taking place on EN here: [[Wikipedia talk:Transition to > CC-BY-SA]] > > A final vote will be on Meta to move all the projects. > > --Falcorian > > > On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 1:11 AM, White Cat > &lt;wikipedia.kawaii.neko(a)gmail.com&gt;wrote;wrote: > > > Legal reasons. GFDL isn't compatible with it. GFDLs new version is said > to > > be compatible but the release of that has been delayed many times so far. > > - White Cat > > > > On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 11:09 AM, &lt;WJhonson(a)aol.com> > > > > > > > In a message dated 1/8/2009 1:08:02 AM Pacific Standard Time, > > > dgerard(a)gmail.com writes: > > > > > > I think these are all subclasses of the problem "the GFDL is horriby > > > vague and broken rubbish that even the FSF has given up on answering > > > questions about" and we can't move to CC by-sa fast enough.>> > > > > > > > > > > > > -------------------------- > > > > > > What is holding up the move? > > > > > > > > > **************New year...new news. Be the first to know what is making > > > headlines. (http://www.aol.com/?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000026) > > > _______________________________________________ > > > WikiEN-l mailing list > > > WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > WikiEN-l mailing list > > WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l >

Even so there exits people who mass remove (redirectify/merge/delete - take your pick) content. Mass creation isn't that big of a deal. Junk can always be dealt with. Junk has never been a serious issue as the definition of junk has been rock solid all along. A problem has emerged when people decided to expand the definition of junk to include entire categories of articles without securing a consensus for it. An elite group of self righteous users does not add up to such a consensus. If such people truly cared about the well being of the encyclopedia they would have spent the time to secure the consensus before taking action. The issue surrounding fiction related articles and other unimportant topics needs a resolution and I am willing to settle with any kind of resolution at this point. -- White Cat On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 6:50 PM, Ian Woollard &lt;ian.woollard(a)gmail.com&gt;wrote;wrote:

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 6:34 PM, Ian Woollard &lt;ian.woollard(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: <snip> I think that has been proposed before and reejcted. Could be proposed again, I suppose. That would mess up linking between articles. Userspace is generally used for article incubation in controversial cases. Having a Wikipedia project place or namespace for this is not a bad idea though. You might get arguments over links and redirections to or from or not (as the case may be) this namespace. Carcharoth

But it's very probable that that person clicked the article to actually read it/search it, not raise its quality, which would be in 2nd place, if the person happens to know about the topic. -- Alvaro On 11-01-2009, at 16:22, "Ian Woollard" &lt;ian.woollard(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

2009/1/11 Carcharoth &lt;carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com&gt;om>: This is all hypothetical, but I was thinking that if the article was, according to the values you had set, underwater, then the links to it would be red, and clicking on them would lead you, not to the article page, but to a page with a link to be able to see and edit the subpar article. -- -Ian Woollard We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. Life in a perfectly imperfect world would be much better.

Fiction articles do not deserve to be exiled into someones userspace. Them being in the article namespace is not disruptive as stub articles are not banned. If I am wrong in my assessment then all stub articles should be moved to someones userspace. I wager even the attempt of applying such a standard to all articles would face a serious resistance. Then again I may be wrong. Consensus can determine that and anyone can initiate such a discussion. If someone wants to hide certain articles in their search results they may use the minus tag on Google. For example searching "Topic" -anime -manga -movie -television would eliminate most of popular culture in your search results. Of course smarter search words can be chosen depending on what you are looking for. Here I am merely giving a general example. - White Cat On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 1:37 AM, Carcharoth &lt;carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com&gt;wrote;wrote:

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 8:34 PM, Ian Woollard &lt;ian.woollard(a)gmail.com&gt;wrote;wrote: Tens of thousands of articles were removed by one individual (User:TTN) via the means I listed in the past year and a half. This was done without securing a general consensus. He himself said that his motivation was merely to get rid of articles he feels are junk (which are practically every article on fiction). He was sanctioned for his conduct by the arbitration committee as he was revert waring among other things. In other words there is a lack of consensus. Meaning no mass action of any kind should be taken until a consensus is secured. Can you at least explain me how such a ranking would slow down or stop deletionism? Such types of ranking already exists. For example Googles results are based on popularity. If more people are going to the 'Beowulf 2007' article than the 'Beowulf' article, that is hardly the fault of the authors of the articles. More history related topics are featured than fiction related topics. That alone is a ranking difference if you ask me. Such a ranking may provoke deletionism more. Consider a case where a history related topic gets a rating lower than a fiction related topic. Instead of improving the poorly written history related topic deletionists pursue seeking the deletion of the fiction related topic (which may not necessarily be better in quality). It is much easier to delete something than improve it. - White Cat

On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 2:22 PM, Marc Riddell &lt;michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net&gt; wrote: I have been trying to write an essay on that for ages on that: see [[WP:TINCON]]

And since there is no effective means of community wide discussion, and after that, there is no means to determine that consensus has been reached, with a community so ill defined, we have a problem with consensus. On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 2:38 PM, White Cat &lt;wikipedia.kawaii.neko(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

When consensus is reached the relevant pages are updated accordingly. In general major changes (such as the one in discussion) is voted upon by the entire community. Not five or six editors but hundreds of editors. The voting happens after there is an agreement on the general principles - even if such an agreement is partial or temporary. During the vote people are given the option to support/oppose different approaches. In the course of the site many principles were adopted in this manner. - White Cat On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 3:22 PM, Marc Riddell &lt;michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net&gt;wrote;wrote:

Please see my prior reply. A policy RFC is a very good way to gauge communty thought. You can figure out if the coommunity is divided strongly or are there some points that everyone agrees on. You will be surprised... Heck the latest RFCs on linking dates found some common ground... Albit not enough to foestall the RFAR... But the RFAR is almost more about behavior issues. Regardless... Policy RFC will get a better idea of consensus then this mailing list. Be sure to advertise the RFC in all the places that editors meet... Perhaps even a notice when editors go to see their watchlists. On 1/13/09, Marc Riddell &lt;michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net&gt; wrote:

Well that is the best we have for community wide discussion about changes in policy. You could also try the village pump... But even that is only watched by a select few. By its very nature, the more people you put in a discussion the noisier and choatic a discussion gets. Really any discussion that you can have that has a large cross section of the community is likely to be a strong argument for changes in policy based on the results of the discussion. The trick is getting any meaningful agreement on principles or select parts of a change. If you can't get that then any changes you make to a policy that affects the whole encyclopedia as dramatically as this is always going to be contested as not enough people in the consensus. This issue is playing out now in an existing arbitration case. (changes were made on a discussion with 14 people... 11 supporting and 3 contesting... If I recall right) The point being large changes can't be made without bringing the changes up for the whole community to review. Right now I would say a well done policy RFC is your best option. Feel free to try something else... But that format seems to work best for lots of folks commenting. On 1/13/09, Marc Riddell &lt;michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net&gt; wrote:

On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 7:29 PM, White Cat &lt;wikipedia.kawaii.neko(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: One of my reasons (not stated at the time) for recusing from that case request that was ultimately not accepted was because I believe this kind of issue is best handled at the article and policy level and that work is needed on devising processes that work to bring large-scale change to policies and guidelines slowly but surely through the system, with the full input of the community throughout the process. Just a few basic principles for all such discussions of proposed changes would be: 1) Take things slowly - rushing will derail the process, moving slower ensures long-term stability 2) Draft a set of changes that reflect changes in actual practice 3) Advertise the proposed changes properly - this is no longer trivial on Wikipedia due to the project size 4) Provide a proposed overall timetable at the start, flexible enough to get broad support 5) Allow input and changes and full discussion at each stage - discuss and edit, do not vote 6) Judge the right times in the process to move from drafting to polling and back 7) Be prepared to repeat each stage several times and endure lots of hard work and false starts 8) Monitor the progress in terms of participation (growing numbers after each stage is good, declining numbers is bad) 9) Final straw poll to determine acceptance must have widespread advertisement and clear timetable for start and end 10) Neutral person or group of people need to be found to close the whole process and declare a result 11) Celebrate or prepare to start a new round of editing the proposal With many refinements from experiences other people have had of such processes. Carcharoth

On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 8:30 AM, White Cat &lt;wikipedia.kawaii.neko(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: There is a fiction-related questionnaire already by Pixelface (not everyone likes it though): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pixelface/Fiction_Survey_2008_draft Carcharoth

In general when a proposal achieves the state where it does not face serious opposition by the majority we consider that a "general agreement". In general votes are given a month or so to go on. It depends on how many votes are casted. The key problem is people are sick and tired of the deletionists-inclusionsist war. It has been going on for about 5 years now. A lot of people are "avoiding the drama" till the dust could settle. None of this has a fixed rule by the way... So I do not really have an easy answer. It may sound like I am rambling on without providing any answers which would accurately describe how I am right now. Full of questions without any real answers... - White Cat On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 4:00 PM, Marc Riddell &lt;michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net&gt;wrote;wrote:

Just thinking about it is enough to turn anybody insane! :o - White Cat On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 9:53 PM, Marc Riddell &lt;michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net&gt;wrote;wrote:

" does not face serious opposition by the majority " that's not an appropriate rule for policy, it should be "not face serious opposition for a substantial minority", or, more accurately, "when all but a few of the established editors involved are at least willing to live with it" I've seen people give various figures for the size of the necessary supermajority, but it should be more a matter of tolerance than a poll. On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 8:50 PM, Ray Saintonge &lt;saintonge(a)telus.net&gt; wrote: -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG