The 'added whitespace' flaw when category tags are
placed at the top of articles may be a way to solve
the template cruft problem, while still showing a
visible change on the article itself (i.e the extra
line of whitespace). In otherwords, corrections
templates (cleanup - merge - delete - etc) needing to
be made can be hidden in the article, and can be seen
by editors when they click the edit link.
If that's too subtle and difficult (ie links dont
work) a simple edit issues box (like a {{shortcut}}
box) could give everybody note that there are issues
regarding the article, and link to the talk page where
people can stick any number of templates they want.
SV
__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com
> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 16:20:25 +0000
> From: Timwi <timwi(a)gmx.net>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Article creation
> To: wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org
> Message-ID: <dk84ka$8q1$1(a)sea.gmane.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
>
> > How about the much simpler approach of restricting page creation to
> > logged-in users?
>
> Just because most junk creations are from IPs, doesn't mean most
> creations from IPs are junk.
>
> What is the name of that fallacy?
[[Affirming the consequent]] (more or less)
darin
Charles Matthews wrote:
>A striking number, i.e. 2000 per day. More than the amount of honest page
>creation. AfD is only around 5% of that. Presumably there is something
>behind the four-figure numbers some admins clocked up. My 20 or so seems
>strangely inadequate if not.
Go do [[Special:Newpages]] patrol some time. (Sunday afternoon and
evening US time are "good" for this.) MY GOD, THE AVALANCHES OF CRAP!
I can fully believe we have ~2000 shoot-on-sight new page creations a
day.
- d.
>>From: Timwi <timwi(a)gmx.net>
>> We promise that you can "edit this page," not
>> "create an article." The policy
>> is "zero-threshold editing," not
>> "zero-threshold article creation.'
>This is just hair-splitting. Just because we've never mentioned page
>creation in any sort of "promise", doesn't mean we should stop offering it.
We should stop offering it because IMHO a very small threshold for creating
an article--such as creating a free, anonymous account--would be more helpful
to our goal of building "a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" than a
zero threshold for creating an article.
And my point is that we would not breaking any explicit or implied promise by
so doing.
I heard Grace Hopper talk once, and she said "I am going to give you a gift.
For the rest of the life, every time you say the words 'because we have
always done it that way,' my ghost will appear and haunt you for twenty-four
hours.'"
>>Do we want people to try test edits of [[World War II]] rather than
>>creating
>>[[pancakesMMM!!!]] as a sandbox/test edit. No we don't.
>
>We don't know that this would be the effect. A great deal of logically
>plausible human behavior doesn't happen. For example, nothing in a
newspaper
>vending machine stops someone for paying for one copy and taking
several.
Let's put dpbsmith's insight about the newspaper vending machine on the
wiki somewhere. It's a variation of the "honor system" that can be used
to explain to CRITICS why we are so confident that Wikipedia can be
relied upon.
It all comes down to trust. Who is worthy of your trust? And how do YOU
decide this?
Uncle Ed
Fastfission wrote:
> Yes, but judges generally don't listen to philosophers (the legal
> realm generates its own implicit philosophical concepts, some of which
> are quite interesting). I think a judge would have a problem with a
> mathematician testifying that yes, his work was completely logical and
> worked from first principles, though he also wanted to count it as
> artistically creative. But I don't know for sure.
In the case of research papers, though, it wouldn't be the mathematician at
all...since the mathematician (or anyone writing for an academic journal, if
I understand correctly) doesn't actually personally have the copyright...the
publisher does.
> The difference is that I am perfectly willing to trust a known and
> "certified" authority (i.e. a guy with a real job) than some anonymous
> guy on the internet who claims to know what they are talking about.
> Hence the dominance of printed sources from well-respected publishers
> over testimonies of any miscellaneous user. Obviously in some cases
> these two communities are actually made up of the same people, except
> in the "real world" there are many checks and verification steps that
> we don't (and won't) have on an open project like Wikipedia.
Well, there are many people with "real jobs" here, and it's easy to verify
that. I am not talking about research-level material, I'm talking more
about basic skills, undergraduate-, or at most, beginning graduate-level
material. In the case of math, I really think there's less to worry about.
If a true crank does post some nonsense or even half-nonsense, it will get
viewed by many people quickly.
We allow people here to correct grammar and sentence structure, or at least
check that it's correct, without them having "certified" authority. You
don't have to submit a paper to Literary Criticism Quarterly to verify that
"Irregardless of what people think, the single most important criteria
determining there future success is whether they could care less." is a
sentence with a lot of mistakes in it. If you asked them how to fix it,
they would consider it a waste of their time. Similarly, you don't need to
contact a published print source to verify the mathematical equivalent -- a
routine computation of a limit, integral, or series; or even some
symbol-pushing in algebra or topology. Usually, you just ask a friend to
look over it. If worst comes to worst, you can give a reference to a
textbook explaining the concept.
The difference, of course, is that to a certain extent, knowledge of correct
grammar (or the potential knowledge of correct grammar) is something held by
everyone, so that everyone knows the difference between correcting grammar
and verifying sources, claims, and arguments in a particular domain, etc.
And of course, grammar is not considered to be "original research". Whereas
the mathematical equivalents are still only held by a relative minority, so
to the majority who aren't mathematical, there is no discernable difference
in appearance between the truly trivial and routine, and the genuinely
nontrivial and novel.
darin
Yes, I am Willy on Wheels.
Specifically, I am one of six people who have chronically trolled numerous
wikis, notably the English version of Wikipedia. Recently, Wikipedia saved
me from failing a research project horribly, and thus, I have decided to
repent for my past colourful actions.
This whole mess started as a prank in an IRC channel. One of our members
loaded Wikipedia pages in Firefox tabs, and performed a mass-move vandalism.
Normally, this wouldn't be funny, but we had just returned from the pub and
were thorougly sloshed by then.
After we saw the reactions that people made, the vandalism became a bad
habit. We would vandalize, or attempt to vandalize pages just to get a
frantic reaction from Wikipedians. Eventually, one of our group developed a
tool written in PERL script to automate the creation of usernames and page
vandalism. Eventually, we started hunting for proxies to continue the
vandalism.
I'm done for good, and will never again vandalize Wikipedia. After it proved
so useful to me, I realized what our vandalism was taking away from others.
If someone had vandalized the pages I needed, I would have likely failed out
of university. I hope to eventually contribute to this shared knowledge for
the benefit of more than just my warped humour.
I don't expect most of you to believe me, but at least I can rest easy
knowing that I've moved beyond this childish behavior.
--Alec
For the sake of non-repudiation:
126f060696ce9f41757052316647c3c7
_________________________________________________________________
De todo para la Mujer Latina http://latino.msn.com/mujer/
>From: "charles matthews" <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com>
>
>> How about the much simpler approach of restricting page creation to
>> logged-in users?
>
>No, no and three times no!
>
>Do we want people to try test edits of [[World War II]] rather than creating
>[[pancakesMMM!!!]] as a sandbox/test edit. No we don't.
We don't know that this would be the effect. A great deal of logically
plausible human behavior doesn't happen. For example, nothing in a newspaper
vending machine stops someone for paying for one copy and taking several.
>I find that many anons are graduate students very much able to help with
>developing WP. We need these guys! We need them to understand that 'libre
>et gratuit', as the French helpfully put it, is exactly that. We ask no
>more than that you come and edit; we put no barriers in place;
We promise that you can "edit this page," not "create an article." The policy
is "zero-threshold editing," not "zero-threshold article creation.'
Charles Matthews wrote:
>Neil Harris wrote
>> How about the much simpler approach of restricting page creation to
>> logged-in users?
>No, no and three times no!
>Do we want people to try test edits of [[World War II]] rather than creating
>[[pancakesMMM!!!]] as a sandbox/test edit. No we don't.
You have a point there ;-) The sandboxing will happen as long as anons can edit.
- d.
There are 661 admins on en.wikipedia. Of these, 461 were active during
the month of October, 2005. They deleted 60313 pages, blocked 12854
vandals, trolls, and socks, and protected 1227 pages. 691 pages were
undeleted.
User Delete Protect Block Unbl Unprot Undel Total
There are only a handful us who did more Unblocks of user accounts than
Blocks:
Piotrus
Ta_bu_shi_da_yu
MacGyverMagic
DESiegel
Kelly_Martin
Ed_Poor
Fvw
Dbachmann
Mindspillage
A few more of us did more page Unprotect's than page Protects:
Shanes
BrokenSegue
Dante_Alighieri
Tony_Sidaway
Ixfd64
RobertG
Mirv
Chuq
Cdc
Dmcdevit
Ed_Poor
Phroziac
...although quite a few did an equal number of Protect's and Unprotects:
Worldtraveller
Willmcw
Wikiacc
Trevor_macinnis
Thue
Theresa_knott
Snowspinner
Sn0wflake
Silsor
RedWordSmith
NicholasTurnbull
Neutrality
Magnus_Manske
Kelly_Martin
JYolkowski
Jredmond
Jondel
JesseW
Golbez
FCYTravis
Fawcett5
Evil_Monkey
Enchanter
Dragons_flight
Cyberjunkie
ChrisO
Bumm13
Bratsche
Bmicomp
Bishonen
Beland
BanyanTree
Interesting statistics, eh?
Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed