I agree with tarquin about cleaning up talk pages and refactoring. Some other wikis place the article text at the top of the page, with discussion following. And every once in a while someone will refactor EVEN THE TALK PART.
Of course, on Ward's Wiki there is or was a preponderance of programmers into XP which uses refactoring like Americans use ketchup!
Refactoring is a lot of work, but like archiving old talk it's usually appreciated.
Ed Poor
On Thursday 21 November 2002 12:44 am, Toby Bartels wrote:
> NPOV, of course, has nothing to do with this (despite what Lir says).
> As you know, NPOV doesn't mean the majority point of view.
> It means presenting every point of view in a manner fair to it.
Key words "in a manner fair to it". In my world view what is most "fair" in
terms of NPOV is to express majority opinions as majority opinions and
minority ones as minority. This also affects the amount of text we give to
any particular opinion in an article. So majority opinions get majority time.
Therefore if something is known by a particular name by the great majority of
English speakers we should reflect this fact in our choice of what to name
the article. So yes, NPOV does most certainly apply.
> A truly NPOV title would be [[The city known to its residents as
> "München" but commonly called "Munich" in English,
> and which some people argue that we should talk about
> in an article entitled "München" becuase <blah blah blah>
> but which others argue that we should talk about
> in an article entitled "Munich" because <yada yada yada>]].
> But we can't do this, so we pick one or the other.
> Either is an equally POV choice (since the majority POV
> is as much a POV as going to the original name is),
> which is why we use naming *conventions* instead.
Either is /not/ equally POV. See above. And the description of things go into
the articles themselves, not in titles so that anti-argument is no argument
at all.
> Under the current plan we also have to delve into linguistic usage
> (not *wars* that I can see, but I don't anticipate those in any case),
> to decide which usage is most common. That's an issue of linguistic usage.
Eh? Finding out what most English speakers actually use is much easier than
having to research what the residents of where the term is derived use it.
Their language evolves too, just like ours. Should we use what they call the
term now, back when the term was coined or some arbitrary date inbetween?
There will also be different spellings and different use of diacriticals to
deal with, not to mention competing terms. How in the world can an
English-only speaker sort this out? The proposed plan is asking way too much
and the more I argue about it the more I am convinced that it would be a very
very bad thing to do.
> I don't know about Lir, but I don't propose such a thing,
> because "mammal" is a common noun, not a proper noun.
> I certainly don't want to change all of our article titles
> back to Proto-Indo-European ^_^!
Well that is the road we will be heading down if this convention takes hold. I
for one will fight tirelessly to stop this from happening. Already there is a
continuum of opinion on how such a convention would work; Lir on the extreme
"all anglicization is bad" end, you in the middle and Ec on the more liberal
and IMO sane side.
> >There is also
> >article rankings by Google to take into consideration: Articles that have
> > the searched-for name in the title are ranked higher. Why should we
> > purposely reduce article rankings and therefore reduce the reach of our
> > content?
>
> This is definitely the best point that I've seen so far.
> You can tell, because I don't have any response to it ^_^!
> I'll have to think about that.
The "Google question" is an important point to consider.
Below are some questions that you haven't answered yet to my recollection.:
1) There is also the fact that the proposed change absolutely requires the use
of a technological fix to work (namely redirects). How is it less complicated
when redirects are absolutely required? Not to mention the fact that the
current display of redirects is rather ugly after following them. To fix this
would require yet another technological fix.
2) Google's language tools can be used as an objective measure of widest usage
whereas the proposed plan depends on subjective choices between different
more native transliterations and language sets.
3) How is it more NPOV when it shuns widest English usage for a minority
naming scheme?
4) What about the audience: How is it more useful for them to use words they
can't pronounce, spell or are familiar with?
6) What about the writers: How is it more useful for them to have articles
that they can't link to directly (or at all when redirects are not made)?
Also, most English speakers do not know how to make the more elaborate
diacrtic marks with their keyboard. So they will have to copy and paste to
make direct links. How is that at all user-friendly?
7) How would the proposed system not cause a chilling effect by favoring
titles that most English speakers don't know? Remember: "Otherwise somebody
will come by later and move the article and probably chide the original
author for their Anglo-centric based ignorance." Just because you won't do
it, doesn't mean that others will be so nice.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
It occurs to me that it is possible that some may have mistaken my
disagreement with Larry about the state of the wikipedia might be
misunderstood as a disagreement with his basic position, with which I
have very little disagreement at all.
I fully support his efforts to find ways to raise the quality of
wikipedia, and to make it more hospitable to experts. The only thing
I disagree with him in is his evaluation of how that debate is going:
I think he's winning, and has the support of almost every regular --
in goal, if not in all aspects of methodology.
I don't think there's a single regular on this mailing list who would
disagree that low quality contributions are bad, or that we should
find ways to minimize the pain that serious contributors have in
dealing with people who are obnoxious, stupid, trying to be funny,
biased, etc.
There is disagreement on methodology, and varying degrees of support
(from *zero* to *considerable*) for a more extensive use of banning.
But even within that disagreement, there is broad support for some
general principles, such as that banning is both undesirable (because
it would be better to let the wasps just fly out the window) *and* an
unfortunate necessity at times.
I think things are going pretty well, and that slow change is a good
thing.
--Jimbo
Everyone,
This is the kind of praise that makes me think my wikimoderation is a Good Thing:
<< Hi Ed - of course I know who you are ;-) Thanks for your words, although I don't think, that I deserve the praise. Now I feel like having overreacted in that case. At that time Mirsa just repeated her edit again and again without any comment - so I took her actions for vandalism, probably erroneously. Let me say, that I was really impressed about the way, you settled the yesterday dispute on the Wagner article. I really appreciate your tolerance and patience against other users - much more patience than I would use to have, unfortunately. In this case your way to settle the dispute was a nice success. I will learn my lesson and next time be less abusive against a newbie - I promise ;-) -- Cordyph >>
Ed Poor
O.k., I hereby proclaim the following:
> * We will not tolerate biased content. The neutral point of view is not
> open to vote; it's decided. If you don't like it, go somewhere else.
>
> * There are certain other policies as well that basically define us as a
> community. We have arrived at them by broad consensus, and they should be
> respected. Wikipedians working in good faith should feel empowered to
> enforce those policies. They shouldn't have to apologize for doing so!
>
> * We will not stop banning vandals. We should seek out the best ways we
> know how to make sure that non-vandals are not lumped in with the vandals,
> but please stop talking as if we'll just stop banning them, because it
> ain't gonna happen.
>
> * We try to help newcomers who want to contribute but don't quite
> understand the body of good habits (and rules) we've built up. But we
> should not and *will* not tolerate forever people who are essentially
> attempting to undermine the system. See below.
>
> * To whatever extent we are or are not, or should be, a democracy, the
> following is also true. We are a benevolent monarchy ruled by a
> "constitution" or, anyway, a developing body of common law that is not
> open to interpretation, but not vote. This has been the case from the
> beginning, and we aren't going to change that.
None of this is new.
> In addition to this, it would help a LOT for you to solicit draft
> statements of policy regarding clear circumstances in which people can be
> banned for being really egregiously difficult. There has to be a
> *reasonably* clear line drawn that distinguishes difficult but
> on-the-whole useful contributors, on the one hand, from contributors so
> egregiously difficult that the project suffers from their continued
> presence. The policy should codify, for example, the reasons why we did
> ban 24 and Helga, and the reasons why we might ban Lir. Let's have a
> discussion about this, bearing in mind that one option that is *not* on
> the table is that we might decide *not* to ban people for their trollish
> behavior at all. We definitely will, so let's make the policy clearer.
> You could start the discussion and make it clear that at some point soon,
> we *will* determine a policy.
>
> I don't mean to put words in your mouth of course. I'm just saying that,
> IMO, Wikipedia is really suffering, and even losing people. You're in a
> position to help embolden the most productive members of the project, who
> it seems to me are, in at least some cases, getting very discouraged.
I agree with all of this, except with your diagnosis of the current
situation. Can you show me examples of "anarchists" who are arguing
that we "we might decide *not* to ban people for their trollish
behavior at all"?
--Jimbo
On Thursday 21 November 2002 12:41 am, Magnus Manske wrote:
> With redirects, we can catch all common spellings. The idea is that when
> someone who doesn't know the "correct" spelling (if there is such a
> thing) links to a topic, (s)he will use, with some likelyhood, the most
> common spelling. On the English wikipedia, that's the most common one
> *in English*. So, we'd want to put the article under that spelling, as
> to avoid redirects as much as possible when reading the 'pedia.
Thank you Magnus, that is the main point I've been trying to get across for
some time now. It is also one of the main reasons why my preemptive city
naming convention was never adopted - It is simply stupid and not at all
useful for have an article about the Paris in France at [[Paris, France]]
when the great majority of links to it are through the redirect [[Paris]].
Redirects are also ugly and uninformative in the search results. Their byte
counts show up as tiny and no text is displayed below them. This isn't
useful. Articles should be where they are most likely to be searched for.
External search engines like Google will also rank an article lower at a
non-English title linked via an English redirect for searches for the English
term because our article will not have the H1 title in the searched for
English term (which is going to be the most common thing that English
speakers will be searching for).
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
It is my impression that too many intelligent people spend way too
much energy on this list arguing in circles. This energy would be
better spent improving Wikipedia articles, hence the New Rule.
The New Rule
============
1. For every posting on one of Wikipedia's mailing lists, a
substantial edit to a Wikipedia article has to be made.
2. Any substantial edit can only be used for one mailing list
message.
3. The substantial edit has to have occurred within 24 hours
of the posting of the mailing list message.
4. Proof of the substantial edit is to be attached to the posting,
as link to the corresponding diff.
Notes
=====
* The New Rule is fully enforced policy and goes into
effect immediately.
* There will be no discussion, and no voting.
* As always, everybody is free to ignore the New Rule.
* I do not have a definition of "substantial edit".
* No action by Jimbo is required at this time.
Axel
P.S. http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Hilbert%27s_Nullstellensatz&dif…
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Given the trashing of Lomborg by Scientific American and the faking of
data for grant money, there is plainly a need for NPOV in science as
well as in politics.
Researcher A says there's a warming trend; researcher B says there
isn't. And C says the sunspot cycle correlates with temperature more
closely than carbon dioxide level does; while agency D never mentions
the sunspot cycle in any of their reports.
So much of what "we all know" often turns out to be propaganda. My hope
is that by naming the voices in the clamor, we can give listeners a
chance to discern the voice of reason. We'll lead them to the water, but
we shouldn't force them to drink it.
Ed Poor
Anthere, vous avais raison.
Ah, excusez-moi, nous sommes chez wikipedia anglais.
What I mean, Anthere, is that you are right: there is controversy about life on Mars. The part all scientists agree on, is that Mars is a planet.
As for the battles and distortions, we need only look at the global warming issue.
Ed Poor (aka [[user:Edmond Le Pauvre]])