WikiEN-l October 2005

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160 participants
455 discussions

Re: [WikiEN-l] The 3RR is an electric fence, not an entitlement.
by actionforum＠comcast.net 08 Oct '05

08 Oct '05

> If we should want to use edit-warring as a tool to achieve this end, we > should do so in full awareness that its over-use is ill-regarded by the > community and may land us with a block. In particular, we should not > complain when over-zealous use of reverts in the face of multiple opposition > lands us with a 3RR block. Those who edit war are still entitled to a fair assessment of the alleged 3RR violation evidence, and to a fair implementation of the block based upon that assessment, and to complain if there were problems with either of these. -- Silverback

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Re: [WikiEN-l] The 3RR is an electric fence, not an entitlement.
by actionforum＠comcast.net 08 Oct '05

08 Oct '05

> Seconded. The 3RR is an electric fence, not an entitlement. It *really > doesn't matter* if the article is on [[m:The Wrong Version]] for a > while longer. It really doesn't. Consistently running up 3 reversions > every 24 hours is prima facie evidence of failure to work with others. It only takes one motivated party for failure to work together. Sometimes reverting is a way to bring them to the table. -- Silverback

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Fix "auto-IP blocks last past the original block" (Bug 856 in Bugzillar)
by Ting Chen 08 Oct '05

08 Oct '05

Hello folks, I have just submitted a patch to the problem, that sometimes a user is blocked longer than is intended. The problem is described as following and is submitted as Bug 856 in Bugzillar: If a user is blocked, say for 2 hours. And he tries to make some edit though. Then the IP he uses would be also blocked for the timespan. If he tries to make some edit a second time, then his IP would be blocked for another day, exceeding the priviosly defined 2 hours. The patch I submitted should fix this bug. The auto-block should never exceed the user-block in any case. Thanks Ting -- Lust, ein paar Euro nebenbei zu verdienen? Ohne Kosten, ohne Risiko! Satte Provisionen f�r GMX Partner: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/partner

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Response to Nick Carr on Wikipedia and Web 2.0
by David Gerard 08 Oct '05

08 Oct '05

>Honestly if I'd been faced with a choice between thoroughly copy editing >Jane Fonda, and reading one of Carr's articles all the way through just >once, I'd go for Jane every time. He could have said it all in three >paragraphs. But I suppose that if you remove the references to mysticism and >evangelism you get down to an observation that's so commonplace that it can >only provoke the response: "so what?" He's a Harvard business professor. See http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/ - restating the obvious is his stock in trade ;-) But in fairness, look at what he's responding to. "Web 2.0" is a Wired/Negroponte dot-com wank phrase. I've chucked it on my LJ as well: http://www.livejournal.com/users/reddragdiva/249008.html - d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Fvw's abuse of admin powers
by actionforum＠comcast.net 08 Oct '05

08 Oct '05

> On 10/6/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote: > > If the autoblocker causes so much problems for 3RR blocks, then we > > could ask the developers to make autoblocking optional. Have a nice > > clickable 3RR box in the block screen which switches off autoblocking > > for 3RR blocks. > > > > Of course, if one would follow a 1 or 2RR this wouldn't even be an issue. > > I'm not inclined to care a whole lot. People who hit the 3RR have > already gone beyond reasonable editing. Whether they get blocked for > 24 hours or a week is not that great of a concern to me. > > Kelly You don't care about the length of the block, yet on August 7th, you didn't think blocking was punitive, and you thought a violation 24 hours in the past was no longer significant. Now the violation is so unreasonable that the length of the block is no concern. Care to explain the change of heart? Blocking this editor at this point would not serve the purpose of the 3RR as the edits are nearly 24 hours old anyway and the article is currently protected. Please note that the purpose of the 3RR is as a tripwire to stop edit warring; it is not punitive. I therefore recommend against blocking him. Kelly Martin 14:27, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

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Writing style (was: a valid criticism)
by David Gerard 08 Oct '05

08 Oct '05

Charles Matthews wrote: >Reading this list,. anyway, you'd think driving out 'amateurism' was defined >by NPOV, NOR and sources. Not by Fowler, Gowers, Strunk-White. We hardly >hear about 'style crimes'; and it has been argued that lame, academic style >is kind of OK. >More subediting needed. Oh goodness yes. We need *good writers* in general. I have a pile of links on style on my user page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Gerard#My_personal_style_guide I will often see a badly-written article on something I know about and do some rewriting with edit summary "tighten [section name]". My favourite writing style is still that found in The Economist: incredibly tight writing, giving simple sentences with a fantastic density of information. They're not interested in NPOV - some of the casual opinionation really makes me think of a friend's summary: "I love The Economist. It's like a really rational guy on crack." - but I think we have a *lot* to learn from their writing style. - d.

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Re: a valid criticism
by Michael Snow 08 Oct '05

08 Oct '05

Kat Walsh wrote: >I disagree on this, and I wonder why so many people state it: a good >encyclopedic article on a broad subject I am only casually acquainted >with is very useful, and in fact Wikipedia is often the first place >I'll turn. There are plenty of basic subjects for which I do not know >most of the information contained in a decent encyclopedia article; >I'd imagine this is true of most people. > Also, for many basic subjects for which one is not a specialist, an encyclopedia article is a very helpful place to turn for confirmation of things you *think you know*, but aren't absolutely certain that you have remembered correctly. --Michael Snow

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Re: Dispute resolution attempt in the Ashida Kim case
by Michael Snow 08 Oct '05

08 Oct '05

Anthony DiPierro wrote: > Erik had a proposal well over a year ago which would look something like >this. In essence, a nomination would have to give a clear reason (which was >already agreed upon by consensus), and the votes/discussion would be solely >limited to whether or not the nominated article fit within that reason. > > When the question being debated or voted on leads directly to an outcome (in this case, possible deletion of an article), it's virtually impossible to get people to ignore the outcome and limit their votes/opinions to the reasoning presented. Even in the appellate courts of the United States, a system where the participants have devoted most of their lives to this kind of approach, it only partly works. Many cases are not decided by the arguments of counsel, or those set forth in the court's opinion, but by things that are never put into words. --Michael Snow

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Re: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism
by actionforum＠comcast.net 08 Oct '05

08 Oct '05

-------------- Original message -------------- > http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2005/10/the_amorality_o.php > > I don't agree with much of this critique, and I certainly do not share > the attitude that Wikipedia is better than Britannica merely because it > is free. It is my intention that we aim at Britannica-or-better > quality, period, free or non-free. We should strive to be the best. > > But the two examples he puts forward are, quite frankly, a horrific > embarassment. [[Bill Gates]] and [[Jane Fonda]] are nearly unreadable crap. > > Why? What can we do about it? > > --Jimbo I haven't looked at the criticism or the articles, but your comment about readability, reminds me of several other articles. However, I think you may be emphasizing the wrong standard of quality. Instead of the type of quality you can only get with a uniform editoral staff, I think instead you should emphasize value and information. Even an poorly written article can be more valuable than an encyclopedia Brittanica article. The article may have useful links to other information, it may be a crystalization of a controversy or conflict, i.e., in some kind of compromise state. There is information there. Also, don't underestimate the value of the talk page, there are arguments, POVs and other information there that increase the total value. I would not hesitate to send students to wikipedia for this reason, I would have them also take advantage of the talk page, etc. They are more likely to get all POVs on wikipedia. They should also learn to view information with a healthy dose of skepticism, and to verify information themselves. Wikipedia's state of flux, conflict and poor readability, will all be heathy reminders of this, while Britannica may lull the student into an uncritical trust. -- Silverback

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Re: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism
by David Gerard 08 Oct '05

08 Oct '05

Fastfission wrote: >But if we are truly worried about some articles being "bad >representatives", it might be nice to really explicitly prioritize >some of them. We do have that list of "100 articles which should be in >every encyclopedia" or something like that for all of the new-language >Wikis to consider as a starting point -- maybe we need to re-apply >that to EN and really get out there to encourage people to find things >on that list (or another list of some sort) which are important to get >into a "featured" state *not* because the article is necessarily >horribly flawed in some way, but because the *topic* of the article is >of a high-enough priority to the world-at-large that if we goof on it, >it'll look like a bad thing. It would also be a good way to march >towards 1.0 if people are still interested in that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_articles_all_languages_shoul… I created the above page for this specific purpose - en: has all these articles (or something like them), but very few are up to featured quality. One problem I see with the FA process is that a lot of the articles are incredibly esoteric. If you're a specialist in a field, you're highly motivated to write a REALLY GOOD article about something you know well. There seems to be less motivation to get the *really general* articles up to featured status. God help the person who tries to get [[Earth]] past the present FAC process and keep it under 200KB. - d.

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WikiEN-l October 2005