In a message dated 10/25/2005 5:28:50 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
ilyanep(a)gmail.com writes:
Agreed...and it could be argued that some of our policies prohibit such an
article from being created.
~Ilya N. (User:Ilyanep)
*applauding Daniel Smith's analysis of the comments in the Guardian article"
Policies such as?
dcv
Kelly Martin wrote:
>Anyone who doesn't realize that there are influence structures in
>Wikipedia isn't paying attention. If you want to move up in
>influence, it helps to be known, and known well, to those who already
>have it. This is true whether people with influence are selected by
>appointment or by election.
And those who think this is a bad thing, an avoidable thing or
something we should pretend doesn't happen are blinding themselves and
heading for trouble. A hierarchy will happen whether you like it or
not, because humans are involved; politics starts with two or more
people in a room, anywhere. Pretending it's not there makes it
poisonous, not nonexistent.
This article, 'The Tyranny Of Structurelessness' talks about the myth
of no hierarchy in the 1970s feminist movement and the demons it
raises, and reading it I find it vastly applicable in genera to ad-hoc
and activist movementsl:
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/structurelessness.html
If you don't have a structure then one will form out of your sight and
bite you in the arse. "If the movement is to move beyond these
elementary stages of development, it will have to disabuse itself of
some of its prejudices about organisation and structure. There is
nothing inherently bad about either of these. They can be and often
are misused, but to reject them out of hand because they are misused
is to deny ourselves the necessary tools to further development. We
need to understand why 'structurelessness' does not work."
If you don't want cabals, you don't achieve that by acting as though
any three editors talking to each other are OMG WTF BBQ CABAL!1!!!
- d.
Encylopedia articles have structures. And encyclopedias taken as a whole have
structures. They are not simply loose conglomerations. (The means Wikipedia
uses to produce an encyclopedia means that in progress it tends to look more
like loose conglomeration than other encyclopedias, but that is not the
goal).
I doubt that many people actually use the Britannica "Propaedia" but the
quality of the Britannica is probably due in part to its existence.
Conversely, the value of the "yearbooks" that encyclopedia publishers hawk to
"keep your encyclopedia up to date" is low because even though the individual
articles in it may match those of the rest of the encyclopedia in quality,
the "yearbooks" do not fit into the structure of the main encyclopedia. This
is not simply a matter of indexing them; successive editions of encyclopedias
are _not_ produced by incorporating the yearbook articles into them in
alphabetical order.
The effect of editing within an article affects the structure of a single
argle. The effect of creating or deleting an article affects the structure of
the encyclopedia as a whole and is therefore a more significant event than
edits within an article.
Alphax wrote:
>Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
>
>
>>On a trustworthiness scale of 0 to 10, I'd pesonally score the Register
>>as 3, the Guardian as 9.5.
>>
>>And Slashdot as 2, Drudge as 4, and Wikipedia as, um, about a 7?
>>
>>
>I'd actually give Wikipedia an 8-8.5 on trustworthiness. Writing quality
>is another thing entirely.
>
>
It would be foolish in the extreme to try and rate Wikipedia as a whole,
since unlike these other places it lacks anything like a uniform
editorial hand. Rating individual articles makes sense, and I suppose
you could generate various averages as approximations, but this only
goes so far.
(as we await the debut of an article rating feature)
--Michael Snow
crossposted to Foundation-L list
To the board,
I just wanted to let you know how stunned and disappointed I was to hear
that the board with very little input made this deal to advertise on
wikipedia. I feel that this is a sellout and a betrayal of the trust
that us the users place in the board and I urge you all to terminate
this deal as soon as possible. I understand that it would be nice to
have an extra income source for misc.projects however that too is
unecessary since there is most likely a better way. I'd also like to
point out that the community has expressed overall disapproval for the
idea and is as well disappointed in the board for this at Wikipedia
TAlk:Tools/1-Click_Answers
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Tools/1-Click_Answers#I.27m_sor…>.
I urge you all to reconsider this before you alienate and isolate many
of the good editors and contributors that Wikipedia has.
Respectfully,
User:Jtkiefer <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jtkiefer>
VfD was renamed to AfD because it was supposed to be less about voting.
Yet people still vote.
People should instead bring forward arguments; some pro-keep and some
pro-delete. Someone who has several arguments for or against a
particular article, should mention them all. Someone who just agrees
with an already-posted argument should not post because they wouldn't be
adding anything.
Example:
Someone nominating an article might write:
== [[Dr. Norma Nated]] ==
=== Arguments for deletion ===
* The article is badly written.
* The article does not establish notability.
=== Arguments against deletion ===
Someone else may come across the article and think it should stay. They
should be made to think about why they think it should stay, example:
=== Arguments against deletion ===
* Dr. Norma Nated has published scientific papers [1] as well as
at least one book [2], which establishes her notability.
Another person might discover an argument as being fallacious. They
should move it to a new section:
== [[Dr. Norma Nated]] ==
=== Arguments for deletion ===
* The article does not establish notability.
=== Arguments against deletion ===
* Dr. Norma Nated has published scientific papers [1] as well as
at least one book [2], which establishes her notability.
=== Fallacious arguments ===
* (for) The article is badly written.
** Can be improved, thus not a criterion for deletion.
Arguments why I think this system is better:
* Voting merely expresses a single individual's opinion, but AfD should
establish the community concensus.
* It is more wiki-like. In the same way as nobody "owns" an article,
nobody should embody an argument (but people do embody an opinion and
hence a vote). Everybody should be able to edit every argument, such
that the valid ones remain.
* You can disagree with the sentiment to keep or to delete, but to do
so, you have to explain why (by bringing forward a counter-argument).
* You can't just disagree with a valid argument; you have to expose a
fallacy in it, or provide a valid counter-argument.
* AfD items no longer need to be "closed". The article can be deleted if
after five days there are good arguments to delete, but if after 10
days a new argument comes along (e.g. the article has been improved
and referenced in the meantime, the person has suddenly gained
notability, etc.) the same discussion can be resumed (and "previously
deleted as per AfD" would not work as a pro-deletion argument,
thereby increasing focus on content and decreasing focus on process).
* It reduces workload because you don't need to do anything in order to
show you agree.
* It reduces workload because you have to put more effort into a
nomination, reducing the amount of nominations.
Discuss. :)
Timwi
I've deleted the scabrous template [[Template:Twoversions]] as a
blatant encouragement to violate NPOV and substitute Sympathetic Point
Of View. It was voted "keep" on TFD, which is complete rubbish
because eight people can't vote to violate NPOV on Wikipedia.
Currently protected blank.
Voting is not only Evil, it's Stupid. Think, dammit.
- d.
> From: Puddl Duk <puddlduk(a)gmail.com>
> Lets not delude ourselves. We have a long way to go. I was just
> looking at some old EB articles the other day; Guerrilla [warfare],
> written by .......... T. E. Lawrence. And Space-time, written by
> .......... Albert Einstein.
I was thinking the other day that mature Wikipedia articles are
usually at about the level of a _really good_ college term paper,
written by a very competent, bright, student who has spent some time
in the library.
Guess what? I'm not the first person who's had that idea:
http://www.termpapertopic.org/ja/japanese-toilet.htmlhttp://www.termpapertopic.org/ex/exploding-whale.html
--
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/
geni wrote:
>On 10/28/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Put yourself forward
>> as someone who will ignore the typical "d nn" and "keep we need all
>> articles" votes, and wow! They all get mad and shoot you down in flames.
>Sure anyone who states that they are going to go against common
>practice (and probably policy) to such a degree should be opposed.
>Adminship does not exist to further political causes.
*ahem* Against common AFD practice, *with* policy.
Tony Sidaway got RFCed for following policy in deletion debate
closings, remember.
- d.