Fast Fission wrote,
>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
The only thing I can imagine is this: when a page has reached this state it
is usually through the hard work of a few editors (and I am not trying to
deny the contributions of countless other people). I suggest those editors
save that version of the article as sub-pages to their user pages. If
there is ever major vandalism of the article, or if it seriously degrades
over a long period of time, those editors have a point of reference
(without having to go back through the edit history) of when they thought
of it as "done."
(consider this a supplement to providing links to pages you are proud of,
on your user page)
I understand if those editors have left wikipedia in the meantime, such
saved pages may go with them. I do not consider this a tragic loss as far
as the articles go, since there always is the edit history (although if
this happens a lot it would be worth thinking about why contributors to
great articles are leaving).
But let's assume most don't go away. What constitutes a great version of
an article is subjective; my suggestion allows versions that are great from
at least one person's point of view to be preserved, without in anyway
undermining the wikiness of the article itself. By the way, I think some
users already do this or something like this anyway.
Steve
Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
Hello,
Maybe someone can help. I was offered a book for
hu.wikipedia which is in .PM5 files and the author
does not have PM5 anymore so we cannot get the
text. It is a binary format and I do not have any
converter under Linux, so I cannot read it either,
and it's supposed to contain pictures too (which
may or may not be useful for commons).
If anyone could convert it to anything readable
please contact me by email.
Thank you!
Peter
>From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net>
>> The Guardian has a story entitled "Can you trust Wikipedia?" in which
>> various specialists rate Wikipedia articles in their field of
>> knowledge: http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1599116,00.html
>> [and gave ratings of 0, 5, 6, 6, 7, and 8 out of 10]
>One distinctive feature of Wikipedia is the ability to self-correct. A
>simple issue like the Wheatley/Wheatly spelling in the Pepys article can
>be checked, and if need be corrected, very quickly. What would be more
>interesting would be to have these same critics review the same articles
>a month later to comment on the changes that have taken place as a
>result of their criticism.
Jam tomorrow.
To readers, Wikipedia is exactly as good as it is on the day they consult it,
not a month later.
Do you go to a newsstand and buy the late edition of a newspaper in case
something has been updated from the edition they delivered to your porch?
>
>Message: 10
>Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2005 00:26:04 +0100
>From: Chris Jenkinson <chris(a)starglade.org>
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Privacy policy and editing anonymously notice.
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org>, Wikipedia
> <wikipedia-l(a)wikimedia.org>, Wikimedia Foundation
> <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org>
>Message-ID: <4360108C.5070803(a)starglade.org>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
>Hi all,
>
>As the Board have been rather slow with publicising the new privacy
>policy,
What new privacy policy? Is there a new one?
>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.
I don't like this message. It is an extremely stern and harshly worded
message that might scare away potential contributors. Isn't a link to the
policy enough? Most websites don't write out their entire Terms of Service
(TOS) directly on the page; there's a link to the ToS at the bottom instead.
(Sidenote: if you've ever taken the time to read the ToS for some major
websites, they're quite scary...)
>Someone has also added a link to the privacy policy on the bottom of
>every page.
I like that - nice and simple link to the policy, similar to the
aforementioned ToS links.
><snip>
>Chris
I just don't think that the notice there is appropriate. When I clicked edit
today, I went "What the...?!" A link at the bottom is enough, in my opinion.
What do all of you think?
Regards,
Flcelloguy
>From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.
_________________________________________________________________
On the road to retirement? Check out MSN Life Events for advice on how to
get there! http://lifeevents.msn.com/category.aspx?cid=Retirement
>From: Fastfission <fastfission(a)gmail.com>
>I think a good line of work with NOR is to say that every fact which
>could be reasonably contested should be cited. That is, if I write an
>article the History of X, and I say that on such-and-such a date,
>so-and-so did something, I might from the get-go assume that this is
>common knowledge (at least among specialists). If someone comes to the
>talk page and says, "Hey, I don't know about that," then it is my duty
>to pull out some other source which says it. I think citation is
>allowed to be an evolving thing.
I think this is _exactly_ right. And ought to apply
to other situations involving "common knowledge" among people
reasonably knowledgeable about the topic.
> >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
I think including this information in the privacy policy and linking
every project to that would make more sense that putting people off
editing by having all this text on the actual edit page. Addressing
whether we should be publicly displaying these IPs forever might be a
better option than just trying to scare users into logging in. If the
privacy policy is linked, please link to the official version on
wikimediafoundation.org rather than to non-updated local copies.
Angela.
> > I want to write an article which relies heavily on scientific
> > publications. (I will of course cite the relevant articles at the end
> > of `my' wikipedia article). What I have in mind is a summary of their
> > work, maybe one of ten sentences copied literally. Do I need the
> > permissions of the authors of these article (one author is already
> > dead) or could I avoid that problem in simply not copying even a
> > single sentence verbatim?
> >
> >
> > Or without their explicit permission I simply could not write about
> > the subject?
> >
>
> You may quote these authors without their permission, to some extent.
> >From [[WP:Wikipedia:Fair use]];
>
> "Brief, attributed quotations of copyrighted text may be used to
> illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or
> idea. In general, extensive quotation of copyrighted news materials
> (such as newspapers and wire services) is not fair use and is
> prohibited by Wikipedia policy. Extensive quotation from copyrighted
> media such as movie scripts is also prohibited, as previous "fair use"
> case law has established that such usage may infringe on the future
> earnings of the copyright holder (i.e. on their ability to publish a
> book of said quotations)."
>
> In general, try not to use copyrighted work under fair use unless
> really necessary. You can present the same facts as a copyrighted text
> using your own words without violating copyrights. It's the creative
> work that is protected, not the facts. Also, remember that Wikipedia
> requires attribution whenever fair use is used.
But in many fields, esp. mathematics and some scientific fields, the
distinction between "facts" and "creative work" or "ideas" isn't so
clear-cut. A previous poster seemed to imply, if I understand correctly,
that one cannot write, e.g. "E = mc^2" without attributing fair use to
Einstein. This seems ridiculous to me. In mathematics, there often is no
way to "paraphrase" a result, so that you are presenting "the facts" but not
the "creative work". For example, suppose someone in analytic number theory
proves yet another technically tedious result on the zeta function. Just
imagine an expression full of integrals and special functions that goes on
for an entire line (or more). By the above interpretation, how is one to
present this result without violating copyright? After all, there is no way
to "paraphrase" the equation. And what about a proof? One can always
paraphrase a proof, but at the end of the day, you're really violating
copyright in spirit under the above interpretation as much as if you copied
verbatim.
The math community generally approaches things from a different angle -- the
issue is not viewed as a copyright issue (no one is making tons of money off
their research papers) so much as a research, peer review, and intellectual
respect issue. If someone uses another's result in their paper, you must
reference them -- not so much for copyright as for rigour and peer review.
If you are using someone's proof in a textbook, it's generally good to
attribute it, but this is a matter of subjectivity -- most proofs that are a
notch or two below research-level have saturated the collective
consciousness (at least among some handful of people), and no attribution is
given at all. Even on relatively recent topics which are no more than 50
years old, (within the span of copyright) a typical textbook has few direct
references, except when a result or argument is sufficiently novel or
original. No one is running around getting express "permission" from anyone
whose work they want to quote. Providing references to every single
statement made would just be ridiculous.
This brings me to another point that I don't think was addressed when I
brought it up -- many people seem to think that NOR means that every single
mathematical argument in wikipedia requires a reference to the published
literature. Again, this is ridiculous. Some arguments are simply not
special enough to warrant publication. We know how to integrate, take
limits, find upper bounds, play with inequalities, etc. We don't have to
publish everything like this to know it's right. If an argument can be
easily verified to be true _by a professional in the field_, it should be
acceptable at wikipedia, without reference to the literature.
darin
geni wrote:
>Except If you look at my actual history on AFD you will find that I
>tend not to be a particularly heavy deletionist. I'm an eventualist. I
>take the view that sooner or latter wikipedia will have to tighten
>it's inclusion criteria or fall over. In the meantime I'm simply
>interested in preventing the worst excesses of the pro content lot.
>Aside from that I have created articles. They just tend not to be very
>good (OTOH only one has ever been listed on VFD and that got voted in
>as a keep).
Ah, OK. Sorry. My apologies if I appeared to have been smearing your name.
(And you're doing better than me. I have had one nomination [that I
know of - I haven't looked at my watchlist in over a year, and that's
good] and it got deleted ;-)
- d.
Slimvirgin wrote:
>I'm pretty sure he's a sock puppet but I can't prove it. His
>contributions include blanking [[Jesus]] and redirecting it to
>[[Muhammad]]. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jesus&diff=prev&oldid=18429618
After a pile of requests I just went through the oppose votes on
Anonymous editor's RFA. Muwaffaq = Deeptrivia, and I've blocked the
former indefinitely as a sock used abusively and the latter for a week
for using a sock on an admin poll.
There were not in fact any others I nailed. There's a few I'm
wondering about but I'd need to know more about how often the networks
in question change dynamic IPs. I probably won't chase it for the
moment because none have used the socks for duplicate votes on the RFA
that I could see.
I haven't looked through the 'support' votes and probably won't
without a request from someone who isn't an abusive sockpuppet.
- d.
geni wrote:
>What's the problem? My abilty to write articles is hardly top notch.
>Good editors and good admins are not the same thing.
Someone as heavily interested in deleting articles as yourself not
actually creating articles as well is something I find disquieting.
- d.