WikiEN-l October 2005

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

160 participants
455 discussions

Oour quality could rival Encyclopedia Britannica (was: Guardian article about Wikipedia)
by Poor, Edmund W 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

I have only skimmed the Guardian article, but it seems fair and balanced. I bet the "grades" rating the reviewed articles on a scale from 1 to 10 are realistic indicators of quality. I have the ear of the Editor in Chief of the IIFWP's Encyclopedia Project (EP). He has praised my attention to quality (no one else seems to care as much as me!) and urged me not to shut up about it. I hope to be able to bring over some additional, pre-publication articles from EP to Wikipedia. So far I've only exported [[abstinence]]. (It came early on in the alphabet, I'm not trying to be subversive or anything :-) We at Wikipedia like claiming that our quality rivals Encyclopedia Britannica, but our readers don't think so. As a software engineer, I think the "end users" are the ones I have to satisfy: THEY have to think it's a good computer program; it doesn't matter much what my team thinks. As encyclopedia editors, I think our readers are the ones we have to satisfy. Let's stop patting ourselves on the back and telling each other what wonderful writers we are, merely because we have a daily "featured article" (FA). EVERY article on a major topic should be up to FA standards. I won't feel we will have "arrived" until our readers start telling us that our quality level rivals Encyclopedia Britannica. And if our [[Atom]] article is any indicator, we have a long way to go. I've mentioned "atom" repeatedly over the last few weeks, but no one did a thing to it until recently. It then suddenly got a lot better. This tells me two things: (1) We don't pay enough attention to quality. Lousy articles can lie around for months or years, collecting dust. (2) When we put our minds to it, we can polish one of these decaying relics and out-do Britannica! What conclusion can we draw from this? I'd like to hear some discussion on this, please. Ed Poor Wikipedia Liaison and Technical Consultant Encyclopedia Project IIFWP -----Original Message----- From: David Gerard [mailto:dgerard@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 24, 2005 11:32 AM To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Guardian article about Wikipedia

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Working towards balance on controversial topics (was: Guardian article about Wikipedia)
by Poor, Edmund W 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

From: David Gerard [mailto:dgerard@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 24, 2005 12:10 PM > Thank goodness for that. In a Wikipedia with otherwise really > very good and *useful* computer articles (i.e., I use it as > my standard reference in real life), [[Linux]] is a POV- > pushing dog's breakfast of advocacy. This happens with a lot > of open source-related articles, because too many > contributors really do not understand NPOV in any context > whatsoever, only advocacy. I've tried fixing it in the past, > but the effort of holding back the tide made me wish I was > working on more peacable areas of the wiki, like Israel- > Palestine topics. I have concentrated more on "balance" than on any other aspect of quality, during my nearly 4 years of volunteer service here at Wikipedia. Holding back the tide of advocacy is exhausting work, David, let me tell you! Fortunately, the editor in chief at EP is an expert in Israeli-Palestine peace efforts. He drafted the [[Jerusalem Declaration]], for one thing. And at a small meeting he arranged last Thursday, I got to meet the Development Director of "Children of Abraham". We need more dialogue and understanding. We also need to identify and celebrate what we have in common. I believe that an encyclopedia can provide reliable knowledge that helps people realize that "underneath our differences, we all are one". Anyway as a Unificationist, that's my dream. Uncle Ed

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Re: Crappy prose isn't the main "quality" problem.
by Daniel P. B. Smith 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

The quality problem in our articles isn't "crappy prose." Sure, a sentence like "Implicit order means a system has hidden information which is not apparent based solely on direct observation." makes me wince. But improving the quality of an article is more than just rewriting crappy prose. Or checking facts. Or adding references. Or fixing typos. Or removing inaccuracies. As the -paedia root implies, a good encyclopedia article should teach. That means it should go beyond Gradgrind, facts, facts, facts. It should convey not data, not information, but knowledge. It should integrate and synthesize; it should be comprehensible to a wide range of readers, for example by having a progressive structure that gives the basics quickly without sacrificing detail later. It should be well balanced, giving suitably proportioned weight to all aspects of its subject. It should be analytical. It takes a _lot_ of work to do that. If you look at the Guardian criticisms, Mike Barnes complains that some of the writing in an article is "unhelpful." He thinks encyclopedia articles should be helpful. Alexandra Shulman complains that an article "inaccurate and unclear" and that "every value judgment it makes is wrong." She thinks encyclopedia articles should be not only accurate but clear, and that they _should present value judgements--sound ones._ Mark Kurlansky complains of some factual details. No comment on the prose. Anthony Julius complains that an article is "purely factual and not in any way analytical." He thinks encyclopedia articles should be analytical. Claire Tomalin complains of minor accuracies, complains more about major _omissions_, and by the failure of the article to comment on the literary merit of Pepy's diary. She thinks an encyclopedia should provide balanced coverage of a topic. Like Shulman, she thinks it should present sound value judgements. Derek Barker indeed complains of prose style. Robert McHenry complains that an article shows "no understanding of the cultural and historical contexts involved. In other words, it is a school essay, sketchy and poorly balanced." Most complain of inaccuracies, but characterize them as minor. Only one complains of bad prose. The others complain of articles that fail to be helpful; clear; present sound value judgements; be analytical; and provide balanced coverage of their subject. -- Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith(a)verizon.net "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print! Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/

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A microthreshold for article _creation?_
by dpbsmith＠verizon.net 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

The Wikipedia promise is "edit this page." But I don't think the promise of zero-threshold _editing_ should automatically be a promise of zero-threshold article _creation._ _Most_ people get their feet wet with simple edits, giving a chance to get acculturated before taking the leap to creating an article. People whose first edit is the creation of an article are, I think, showing _too_ bold a temperament. Many online communities have a provision whereby new users' messages are automatically moderated initially and only removed from moderation after they've posted a small number of acceptable messages. Suppose we had a level of privilege called, say "contributor." Anons and non- contributors could edit articles just as they do now, but only contributors could create an article _and have it appear immediately in the main namespace._ Articles contributed by non-contributors would go to a "moderated" area. These article would not appear in the namespace until a contributor made at least one edit to them. That is, an article is approved by making a single edit to it. The reason for requiring one edit for approval would be to strongly encourage contributors not to mindlessly approve marginal articles. I'm thinking that it should be extremely easy to become a contributor. I'm thinking that the requirement should be a) contributors must have user names, and b) users with accounts get contributor status automatically as soon as their first new article is approved.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Repeated blocks -- collateral damage
by Koltwills＠aol.com 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

In a message dated 10/25/2005 3:16:22 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, geniice(a)gmail.com writes: On 10/25/05, Koltwills(a)aol.com <Koltwills(a)aol.com> wrote: > > How does this happen? You are on AOL your IP changed when you went to a new page > Is there something I or someone else can do to > prevent it from occurring again? Stop useing AOL. Well, I suppose I have another reason to go to Mozilla! AOL just sux. Thanks. dcv

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The listing of redirects on [[WP:SFD]]
by SPUI 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

Recently I have noticed some redirects like {{NYCS stub}} to {{NYCS-stub}} listed on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Stub_types_for_deletion . The stub sorters, typically the only people to frequent SFD, are voting for their deletion on the grounds that they are "incorrectly named". What? That is in fact NOT a reason to delete a redirect. I don't think template redirects even have the performance problem of nested templates; there is no reason to delete these redirects. If someone wants them deleted, they can be listed on [[WP:RFD]] like all other redirects. Grutness now says I'm vandalizing SFD by removing the redirects and his change in the scop[e of the page to include redirects. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ASPUI&diff=26146174&ol… http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Stub_types_for_deletion… (and the rest of the recent history of SFD)

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Been blocked, HELP!
by Martin Richards 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

[[User:Curps]] blocked my new unused bot [[User:Bluebot]] and now I ([[User:Bluemoose]]) have been autoblocked, For some reason I can't log back in and unblock myself, when it does log in I get server erros, I can't e-mail curps because he/she doesnt have an email. Please can someone sort this out. This is REALLY pissing me off now. thanks Martin

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Re: [WikiEN-l] NTL
by David Gerard 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

Tony Sidaway wrote: >On 10/17/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote: >> Note that the NTL problem has been solved (presumably through some >> horribly ugly special cases in the MediaWiki code) - >My understanding is that NTL passes the client IP via a standard >protocol and MediaWiki simply interprets it in the standard manner. >The only place where it gets hairy is that, as I understand it, some >anonymizing proxies also use this protocol and forward a spoofed IP, >so you do need to maintain a list of proxies that can be trusted. Semi-standard - it uses an X-Forwarded-From header and sometimes it reverses the order of the octets (for no good reason). That said, I just spotted a MARMOT sock (User:Captain Kreuk and a few others) with his IP showing as the NTL proxy address, not his actual address. Bother. (cc'd to wikitech-l - is this a reportable bug, or hadn't the NTL-checking code kicked in at that point?) - d.

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NTL (was ANON watchlist?)
by David Gerard 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

jtkiefer wrote: >If you are even pseudo anonymous using an IP and it isn't because you're >using AOL or NTL or another ISP that uses sick and twisted router Note that the NTL problem has been solved (presumably through some horribly ugly special cases in the MediaWiki code) - now, NTL users should see their real IP, the one they see with ipconfig or ifconfig. Could some NTL users please test this? - d.

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Re: Quality
by dpbsmith＠verizon.net 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

>>From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor(a)abc.com> >>I have only skimmed the Guardian article, but it seems fair and >>balanced. I bet the "grades" rating the reviewed articles on a scale >>from 1 to 10 are realistic indicators of quality. I agree. >>We don't pay enough attention to quality. This is what bothers me most about Wikipedia. Low-quality articles are tolerated on the assumption that every low-quality article is the nucleus around which a pearl will coalesce. Unfortunately, one of the things that seems to be scaling, possibly increasing, is the ratio between the rate at which irritating grains of pollutant are introduced and the rate at which nacre is being deposited. The de facto situation here seems to be that we would _rather_ have more article than better articles. I thought the Guardian article was very fair and accurate. And speaks quite well of Wikipedia. We have consciously chosen to produce an encyclopedia in which most articles are "almost good enough." But if we want them to be better, we have got to do something to direct more nacre around fewer nuclei. Quality is not one of the "five pillars of Wikipedia." And only a certain level of quality results from the natural operation of the Wiki process. If we want Wikipedia to be not just a "free encyclopedia," but a "high- quality free encyclopedia," something needs to change.

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WikiEN-l October 2005