WikiEN-l October 2005

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160 participants
455 discussions

RE: In The News - new name needed
by Fl Celloguy 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

How about if we just add a redirect (as proposed) called [[WP:NEWS]] and ask people not to call it ITN? I'm sure that would suffice if nobody used that abbreviation any more. Flcelloguy >From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/

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Guardian article about Wikipedia
by slimvirgin＠gmail.com 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/opinion/story/0,16541,1599325,00.html Sarah

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Re: Policy on breaches of bans
by Lisa Thurston 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

On the topic of Skyring... I think I've had my IP address blocked too many times because it is dynamically allocated to me by Agile and someone using that IP before me has vandalised WP. It used to be frustrating to always have to email the admin to get unblocked. Now I worked out a new method though. I simply reset the internet connection and the IP gets changed quickly, so I'm sure it's no difficulty for Skyring to do the same. I remember once asking Internode (Agile) if they'd do anything about someone using a specific IP to misbehave on Wikipedia. They said not without a request (or subpoena) from local police! If Wikipedia wants to rule with an iron fist then it would have to make agreements with local authorities. But I don't think this would really be a good thing for Wikipedia in the end. I'm certain their are other approaches to managing bad faith edits. The problem seems to actually be the use short term sockpuppets by experienced vandals. I'm not sure if I like the idea that one of us suggested (that users gain "experience points" like in a MUD) because it is just another way for newbies to be discriminated against even for good faith edits. But perhaps a "edit faith quality level" could be maintained for each user and it would take only say 5 days with at least 5 good faith edits or 50 good faith edits for a new user to be ramped up to 100%. Presumably it would be easy to profile the behaviour of an experienced user who creates a sockpuppet vs an inexperienced user who creates a new account for the first time. And based on matching this profile, the software would delay the increase of "edit faith level". This might delay legitimate good faith sockpuppets for a few more days or so before their "faith quality level" would reach 100%, but would help keep control on shortterm sockpuppets created specifically to be used for bad faith edits. Lisa Anthony wrote: > How is he able to do this? Is there a particular ISP which uses these IPs, > or is he going from multiple IPs, or what? Can the ISP be contacted? > That'd > be the first step. Failing that, I'd actually suggest trying to get some > sort of injunction through the legal system (Australia, I suppose, and one > of the other editors claims to actually have known the person). "Don't > touch > Wikipedia again, or you'll go to jail." That'd probably work. > I honestly don't think blocking is a very useful long-term solution, > especially in an environment where the blocks are implemented by > semi-trusted volunteers. If Wikimedia had an employee with full developer > access who knew the ins and outs of the Internet and whose job it was to > block vandals (using both technical tools and well-placed phone calls to > established contacts at ISPs), that might work. Of course, there are 168 > hours in a week, so even working 42 hour weeks it'd take 4 employees to > handle the job 24/7. Those employees would certainly have time to do other > things as well, but even so it's probably too expensive for now (rough > guesstimate $150,000/year). Hopefully the new deal with > answers.com <http://answers.com/><http://answers.com>will start bringing > in some serious > revenue and something like this can be > considered. > Anthony >

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Find-A-Grave's founder provides us with list of famous people
by TGGG85＠aol.com 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

FindaGrave was established out of Salt Lake City by Jim Tipton years ago. He takes the scholarship on his website very seriously. I am a member and find a lot of painstaking work displayed. It is a very valuable resource on the lives and deaths of "famous" and not-so-famous people.

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So, you think you're a good writer? The "Fix Crappy Prose" Challenge
by David Gerard 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

I've just put the following text on my userpage. If you think you're hard enough, you take the challenge and then put this on your own userpage. ===The "Fix Crappy Prose" Challenge=== I'd like everyone reading this who thinks they're a pretty good writer to middle-click<sup>'''*'''</sup> "Random page" twenty times and rewrite any crappy prose you find without sacrificing any factual content. Do this at least once a week. Detail and accuracy beat elegant prose, if you're forced to make the choice. But that doesn't make crappy prose a good idea. <small>'''*''' You do use [[Mozilla Firefox|Firefox]], right?</small> - d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Guardian article about Wikipedia
by David Gerard 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

Snowspinner wrote: >On Oct 24, 2005, at 12:06 PM, David Gerard wrote: >> I would say not in the least, because we're primarily writing for the >> Web. 32 kilobytes (which used to be a hard technical limit but I still >> think is a very good *stylistic* limit) is 6000 words, which is a LOT >> of text to read on a screen. It's really quite a lot even if you print >> it (about ten or so pages). Anything longer than 32k really needs some >> attention to what can possibly be spun out. >On the other hand, I've seen many an article that starts spinning out >stuff well before it's sensible - mysteriously, it's the "criticism >of" sections that always are the first to go. Wonder why that could be. Gosh! etc ;-) There's nothing wrong with spinning out "criticism of" sections as log as a good summary is left behind in the main article, so that the split is main/sub rather than POV/POV. This is of course an editorial matter. - d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Our quality could rival Encyclopedia Britannica
by David Gerard 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

Charles Matthews wrote: >There are these other challenges: >- quality writing (doesn't come easy) I'd like everyone here who thinks they're a pretty good writer to middle-click "Random page" twenty times and rewrite any crappy prose you find without sacrificing any factual content. I'll be doing this tonight. >- get the other breaking-new media to say 'uncle' So far, asking nicely is much more Wikimedia-ish ;-) >- put hard-copy encyclopedias out of business Nah. I'd rather see if we can synergise with them. I understand Brockhaus is trying to work out how the heck to work *with* de: Wikipedia instead of getting economically trampled by [[worse is better]]. Britannica has really quite a lot to be arrogant about, but when you're already haemorrhaging red ink, then arrogance is just that close to hubris. OTOH, any Wikipedian who runs down the general quality of Britannica is IMO being foolish. They do set a *consistently* very high standard. I suspect Wikipedia will always have about the same percentages of great/good/mediocre/rubbish articles as it expands, we need to find ways to get people to find the good stuff more easily. - d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Guardian article about Wikipedia
by David Gerard 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

Charles Matthews wrote: >The only thing that stands out is that we should send for a fashion victim, >right now, to fix up [[haute couture]]. >Might be a little harder than finding a Linux wizard ... 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. It's the same problem [[George W. Bush]] has. Some topics have *entirely too much* interest for editors, to the detriment of readers. - d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Oour quality could rival Encyclopedia Britannica (was: Guardia...
by Koltwills＠aol.com 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

In a message dated 10/24/2005 11:53:44 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, Edmund.W.Poor(a)abc.com writes: 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. I don't know about conclusions. Nor do I really know what kind of checks and balances exist for catching the garbage that all too often finds its way into articles on the site. A few weeks back, I came across a passage that flat-out said that the only contact the outside world had with sub-Saharan Africa in pre-modern times was related to the spread of diseases like malaria. This incredibly ignorant language had been in the article for almost a year and-a-half, completely undisturbed. And there supposedly is a effort of some sort to beef up/improve/contribute articles on Africa. The contributor was anonymous -- probably a racist troll. It surprises me not one whit that the reviewers found Wikipedia to be an unreliable source of information. I've found it to be rife with mis/disinformation. In fact, it's about the only thing that keeps me coming back to edit. It's a noble effort, but some of the things I've read are nothing short of shameful. deeceevoice

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Guardian article about Wikipedia
by David Gerard 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

Cormac Lawler wrote: >On 10/24/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote: >> (This is something to watch out for when you're overly proud of your >> writing - if someone adds new information to the article in clunky, >> horrible prose, you have to resist the urge to remove the blemish!) > Work with it - the zen of the wiki :-) I know, I know. I didn't realise explicitly that content beats prose quality until I was doing an interview where I was asked about prose quality and content. I answered, thinking out loud, that articles will tend to go in a quality cycle of excellent prose, then a clunky lump of important information added, then smoothed out to excellent prose, rinse and repeat. And that if forced to choose, information beats elegant prose, though the latter is always a good idea. In particular, I realised guiltily that I have reverted clunky new information because it broke up elegant prose. Bad! Wrong! Don't do that! I swore to grit my teeth and resist in future. - d.

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WikiEN-l October 2005