> From: Michael Turley <michael.turley(a)gmail.com>
>
> I'm not a fan of random degeneration, but I also don't subscribe to
> the view that this is what is occuring. I think that just as people
> know good writing when they see it, you and I will know a good edit on
> articles on our watchlist.
I am troubled by what I'll call "persistent cruft injection" and I
think it is a real problem. Two that have impinged on me:
One is the use of names for large numbers--names that don't appear in
dictionaries, aren't in real use, and are neologisms or hypothetical
curiosities or useless extensions of systematic naming patterns. Back
in second grade all us nerdy types enjoyed knowing the names of
bigger numbers than our peers knew, but we ought to have outgrown
that. Nevertheless there is a persistent tendency to add
"googolquadruplex" and "brontobyte" and "zebibyte" and so forth. They
are added typically by anons, and, I think, different anons. They
don't care to read through previous discussions or reasons why
certain words should or should not be added or how they should be
described. They know (or think they know) the name of a bigger number
than any other contributor has yet added to the article, so in it goes.
Another is academic boosterism. Virtually every article about any
major university seems to have a continuing tendency to accumulate
more and more braggadocio. I see that Harvard, for example, now
contains as its second sentence "It is widely considered one of the
finest academic institutions in the world." U. S. News and World
Report rankings keep filtering in to university articles, and if an
institution does not rank high in that listing, then other listings
in which it does rank highly ("Washington Monthly," anyone?) will be
used instead. Conversely, any information that is perceived as being
negative gets removed. Sometimes you can get temporary agreement that
a particular paragraph has gotten a little over-the-top, but it
doesn't do much good because a few months later someone else decides
that if Yale is going to mention how many Nobel laureates it has
graduated, then they had better, too.
The contrast between university articles in Wikipedia and their
counterparts in traditional encyclopedias is dramatic. Ours read like
admissions-office brochures.
Jason Scott's comments were very unpleasant, but his reference to how
one moves from creating content to _defending_ content has a ring of
truth to it.
It is difficult to form a stable consensus when there isn't a stable
community within which to form one.
--
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/
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Can you trust Wikipedia?
> Since at least
> post-WW2, though, most encyclopedias would claim that their goal is
> unbiased presentation of information, not presentation of an
> Anglo-American or otherwise skewed viewpoint.
Oh? It was widely reported circa 1999 that the U. S. version of
Encarta says Edison invented the light bulb while the U. K.
U. K. version credits Swann.
Encarta no longer seems to be free-as-in-beer, so I can't
cast much light on the current situation of this heated topic.
--
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/
There was a lot of talk not too long ago about possibilities of
protecting certain high-profile articles which are reasonably "good",
in order to prevent various forms of content degredation which happen
even with well-meaning editors, much less from vandals and the
problems which come up in problematic reverts, etc.
Is there a designated place to discuss this sort of thing?
In my mind, it would make sense to have some sort of "Vote for
Freezing" page for articles of this sort. It would be almost the
opposite of something like VfD -- an advanced form of FAC, whereby
people would vote (and ply some attention on) as to whether an article
was good enough to qualify it for this sort of enshrinement. "This
article is good enough that it doesn't need people to be able to edit
it constantly without discussing changes first," the status of
"frozen" would imply. Some standards would need to be developed (a FA
which has already run on the main page, another round of peer review,
no major rewrites in the past two months, etc.) but it could work out
(hopefully). Requests for Unfreezing could be done as well for those
who think that an article was problematically frozen in a state which
would require more than just the sorts of line edits one can do from a
talk page.
So anyway, I'm not caught up on the latest status of this debate, but
I think something of this sort might be a good idea, and prevent the
sort of incoherence that sneaks into even good articles over a long
period of time.
(And before anyone points out that this would make it hard for new
users to edit such articles -- that would be the *point* of such a
policy, not an unintended consequence. And it would, ideally, focus
users away from such articles and onto the legions which still need
basic work).
FF
Fastfission said:
>>> Effort does not have anything to do with whether something is
copyrightable. If they don't have a copyrightable form of "creativity"
involved, then they aren't copyrightable. Now, again, I don't know if that
applies to mathematical proofs, but I would suspect that it might not -- at
least the strict mathematics of it.
Well, you raise some very interesting points. I know that research papers
in math have a copyright attached to them...I have always assumed that this
meant something along the lines of "don't photocopy this and sell it". (As
if that's going to happen.) The copyright of math research papers always
seemed bizarre to me -- mathematicians *WANT* their papers photocopied and
distributed without permission!! Maybe not their textbooks or monographs,
but certainly their research papers. It promotes their ideas. It gets
people interested in their field and problems. It advances their careers.
As far as researh papers are concerned, the entire copyright issue only
exists because of publishing houses. We'd be perfectly content to do our
own peer review, trade papers electronically, etc. And this is starting to
be done.
To be honest, the only thing math people really care about with regard to
research is attribution and rigour. I could take someone's paper and
paraphrase all their results and proofs, and then sell it to people. Is
that a copyright violation? Depends, I guess. If I'm just changing "x"'s
to "t"'s or what not, then yes. If I'm really giving a novel presentation
of the results, (e.g. presenting them in a pedagogically novel way) then no.
There is no easy answer.
>>>But if they are strictly "facts", as they claim to be, then they
aren't copyrightable. The catch-22 here is that if they are entirely
fanciful, then they are clearly copyrightable. But if they are just juggling
numbers (however intelligently), then I'm not so sure. But again, I don't
know for sure -- it would come down to a decision of whether or not a proof
was a fact of nature or whether it was an act of creativity. I don't know
how a court would rule.
It's an issue that philosophers of math aren't agreed upon, let alone
judges!!
I think this is a case of the community largely policing itself.
Mathematicians would intuitively have a sense of when something was just
"stealing" vs. an original contribution.
>>>I think part of the problem here is that much of what you are arguing
as the mathematical way of proof requires a certain level of mathematical
understanding to agree with. Things which would be self-evident to a
mathematician would not be so to me. So in the end it is tempting to see it
as a simple argument from authority, "This is right because I am right." Now
if we had two people saying that, I wouldn't honestly know which one to go
with, unless one of them could say, "And furthermore, this very formulation
appears in Pearson's Wonderful World of Math on page 54" which I could
easily verify.
>>>Now the obvious solution here, were I in this imaginary content
arbiter role (a nonsensical proposition in itself posited only for the sake
of argument), if such a citation was not able to be produced, would be to
either appeal to an established authority (have some professor type look it
over) or appeal to a number of mathematically adept Wikipedians with good
edit records to look it over for me.
Exactly! We agree! People get caught up in citations to the literature as
an end unto itself, rather than a *means* to an end. After all, why do we
cite the literature? Because when something is in the literature, it has
passed peer review and has been given the stamp of approval by qualified
experts. All it means is, "Someone sent this paper to a human being(s), who
read it, researched it, checked it, and proclaimed it good." Now, it's
possible to interpret this as merely an "argument from authority"! After
all, in a sense, *all* citations are just "arguments from authority"! They
just say, "This person checked it, thought about it, verified it, and we
should trust them." What is that, except an argument from authority?!? And
that's all that goes on when I say, "suppose a proof is easily verifiable by
any professional editor in the field at wikipedia". There's little
difference between that and submitting something for peer review -- it's the
same process.
>>>But it is an interesting question, either way, when it comes to
>>>things like NOR. I think a large part of the fear is that people will use
their "mathematical reasoning" to do things which are known to be impossible
(i.e. square the circle) and hide their clever trickery using the sorts of
tricks that mathematicians can do (I know a number of former mathematicians
who do such things for fun amongst themselves).
Well, that's what the experts are here for...to catch such things. Just
like they catch such things in peer reviewed journals.
This is an interesting discussion (IMO).
darin
>As the Board have been rather slow with publicising the new privacy
>policy, I have taken the step of adding a notice to the bottom of
>[[MediaWiki:Copyrightstext]] on the English-language Wikipedia (the text
>which is displayed when you click "Edit this page"), which mentions that
>if you are editing anonymously, your IP address will be publically and
>permanently associated with the edits, and if you're editing while
>logged in, your IP address will be stored for around 2 weeks.
Firstly, I must apologise for being so terse and shitty on IRC last night.
Secondly, the message (which is [[MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning]]) got this edit:
00:16, 27 October 2005 A Man In Black (rv - Why is a warning like
this necessary? Why is it being added to a MediaWiki page without
discussion?)
I did say that seeking outside opinion would be a good idea ... or
waiting to hear back from the Board, if this is of Board-level
importance.
Your added text was (at the top, not the bottom):
By editing Wikipedia, your [[IP address]] (which is [[personally
identifiable information]]) is recorded. If you are not logged in,
your IP address will be publicly associated with your edits. If you
are logged in, your IP address will not be publicly displayed. Please
read our [[wikipedia:privacy policy|privacy policy]].
This is terrible in all sorts of ways.
(a) it's too long and too wordy.
(b) It will either scare or be utterly ignored by people who don't
care, and will cause noisy stupidity from those who think the sky is
falling if we block Tor because of vandals.
(c) You can't educate people about what IP addresses are in an
apparently important warning message. That's what links are for, not
warning messages. If they don't know an IP address is personally
identifiable information, this really isn't the place to tell them
inline.
(d) No-one reads a sentence over five words. No-one reads past the
second sentence. No-one reads a word over two syllables unless they
have to. (This one is really hard to keep to ...)
(e) Probably more.
(Your previous version was: "Warning: By submitting edits to
Wikipedia, your IP address, which is personally-identifiable
information, will be associated with your edit. If you are not logged
in, your IP address will be permanently and publically associated with
your edits. If you are logged in, your IP address will not be
publically displayed, however it will be kept for around 2 weeks.")
My suggested wording is:
All edits to Wikipedia are recorded and visible, with the [[IP
address]] they are from. Your IP address is publicly visible on edits
where you are not [[Special:Userlogin|logged in]]. See
[[wikipedia:privacy policy|privacy policy]].
Says all we need, promises nothing.
If this is important enough to add for Foundation reasons, it's
important enough to get right. For *hundreds* of projects, not just
en:.
- d.
Hi all,
I think it's important to get some discussion started on the way the
arbitrators will be chosen at the end of this year, as Jimbo Wales has
recently altered the elections page[1], saying that this year there will
be a new system. As he hasn't decided, it's our responsibility as
Wikipedians to help pick the best arbitrators with the best possible system.
Currently his idea is on a appointments and confirmation procedure,
roughly equivalent to the process that judges become United States
Supreme Court members - i.e., Jimbo Wales picks a number of Wikipedians
and they go through for a confirmation vote from the community. This
obviously differs greatly from the previous system, where candidates put
their name forward and any candidate willing to stand was added to the
'ballot paper' (similar to an election in most democratic countries).
This idea has already come in for some criticism[2], such as Geni
suggesting it would be easier to make accusations of an "old boy's
club", and Michael Snow, Filiocht and jguk mentioning that they would
prefer the community to be trusted to make the right decision.
Therefore I propose that we remind ourselves of the advantages and
disadvantages that last year's elections showed, debate the merits of
the current line of thinking of Jimbo's idea and if possible come up
with a new system ensures that the English language Wikipedia is
arbitrated by the best Arbitrators who were chosen by the best possible
system.
Chris
1. http://tinyurl.com/c2ph9
2. http://tinyurl.com/7n88j
Also posted on the wiki at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_Dece…
Please direct comments there.
Several people have indicated that they dislike Jimbo's recent
intervention in the Arbitration Committee election process. Although the
alternative plan has not fully taken shape, I share some of the
concerns. For example, I don't think a situation where Jimbo appoints
the Arbitration Committee, and the election is simply to ratify these
appointments, is a good solution. However, I understand the concerns
about the community's ability to handle this on its own, based in part
on the last election. I think we need to find a reasonable compromise
position.
Meanwhile, the arbitration system itself continues to struggle. Too many
cases are going at once; the arbitrators cannot give them adequate
attention; the process moves too slowly. There are a number of other
problems, including arbitrator activity and burnout. I have a plan that
can address many of these issues. Here's my proposal.
Add a group of users called magistrates as a body below the Arbitration
Committee. The disputes that currently go into arbitration get handled
by smaller groups of magistrates and/or arbitrators, instead of going
before the full body. I would suggest that we keep the four votes to
accept a case rule, and simply make those four people the panel for that
case. The full Arbitration Committee can review specific cases when
appropriate, as a "court of appeal".
Magistrates are appointed directly by Jimbo. Since there is no fixed
number, the Arbitration Committee (or anyone else) can suggest names,
and people can volunteer directly to him.
While we get the magistrate system up and running, extend the
appointments of the arbitrators whose terms expire in December. Hold an
election in February (shortly after the next fundraising drive, which
should come in January) to fill these seats instead. The newly elected
arbitrators begin on March 1, which gives us time to observe the
magistrates in action, since I imagine a few of them would run for the
Arbitration Committee.
Arbitrators can be elected from the community at large, not just the
pool of magistrates. However, many of the best candidates will likely
have gained experience and proven their ability as magistrates beforehand.
Benefits of this system:
*The community gets to decide which of its members are on the main body,
which is in most cases the final port of call.
*New magistrates can be added at any time, without having to wait for an
election cycle.
*Magistrates are not chosen based on unsuitable criteria, such as
RfA-style "popularity contests".
*Elections to the Arbitration Committee should favor candidates who have
demonstrated ability (as well as approval from Jimbo).
*Magistrates who "lose" an election for arbitrator can still continue to
serve.
*Larger pool of people available for any given case.
*Number of magistrates can be scaled upward as community grows. (I think
we could start with around 20.)
*Decreases the workload for any individual arbitrator/magistrate.
*Reduce burnout accordingly.
*A panel can focus more attention on its specific case.
*Less overworked arbitrators/magistrates may also be able to resolve
cases more quickly.
*Since not everyone participates in a case, magistrates can voluntarily
avoid cases in which even a perception might exist that they have a
personal interest.
*In small panels, reaching any decision requires substantial agreement
(three out of four).
*Nevertheless, the Arbitration Committee can modify or reverse
problematic decisions from small panels.
*In cases before the full Arbitration Committee, members of the smaller
panel can organize and explain the often unwieldy evidence based on
their previous review.
*For all cases, the pool of magistrates not participating directly is
still available to handle housekeeping issues that are often neglected
currently.
For all these reasons and more, I hope we can move forward with this
proposal. I think this is the best way to balance Jimbo's input with the
need to develop responsible self-government by the community.
--Michael Snow
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>I don't care about the number of votes. If an expert can assert it
>meets notability criteria it should be kept. We should try to get such
>criteria for as many types of articles as possible.
Tell the people on AFD. (And I dare you to quote actual policy.) They
seriously argue that a consensus of the admittedly ignorant on a
subject beats a dissenting actual no-foolin' expert.
- d.