On Jul 23, 2005, at 6:21 PM, wikien-l-request(a)Wikipedia.org wrote:
> Impressive responses. One point: OR is often used as a
> an excuse to squash certain debated points, without
> allowing them to devlop (including citing sources).
> A silly example might be something like "go find some
> source for your notion that the world is round, and
> come back when you do so." Such source can then be
> debated for a while.
I, and everyone else, frequently insert stuff that is "well known"
without citing sources. "Beethoven is widely regarded as one of the
greatest of composers..." "f = m * a"...
However, whenever a statement, however obvious, is seriously
challenged, I take it seriously.
IF something is TRULY well known, it is usually EASY to find a
source. When someone says cite a source, I just find one and cite it.
And the article is the better for it.
Let's take "The world is round." I have just spent ten minutes
browsing my bookshelves looking for the clearest citation. A popular
book by Menzel entitled Astronomy... nope. "A Field Guide to the
Stars and Planets?" Nope. "Norton's Star Atlas?" Nope. All of them
give the radius of the earth... but fail to say in so many words that
the world is round, because, well, everybody knows that.
Aha. I have it.
"The earth is approximately an oblate spheroid (a sphere flattened at
the poles.... For many navigational purposes the earth is assumed to
be a sphere, without intolerable error."
There you go. _American Practical Navigator: An Epitome of
Navigation_, originally by Nathaniel Bowditch, LL. D. 1966--Corrected
Print. Published by the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office. U. S.
Government Printing Office, 1966. Pp. 62-63.
And that settles it. Nobody can argue that _that_ book doesn't
contain _that_ sentence. Anyone can check it out. It does. Any
argument about the authority of the book is beside the point. It's an
objective fact that that book contains that sentence.
Once I've cited the source, I can replace the sentence in the article
that says "the world is round" with the sentence "The U. S. Naval
Oceanographic Office states that for many navigational purposes the
earth is assumed to be a sphere, without intolerable error." Problem
solved.
It's now up to anyone who disagrees with it to cite _their_ source.
It's up to the reader to judge which sources are reliable. If the
reader trusts John Cleves Symmes, Jr. more than he or she trusts the
U. S. Naval Oceanographic Office, that's their prerogative.
--
Jean is going to be bicycling 83 miles in the Pan Mass Challenge in
August, raising money for cancer research. Her profile is at http://
www.pmc.org/mypmc/profiles.asp?Section=story&eGiftID=JS0417
> But we aren't, and I suspect more than one person was incredibly
> confused. Think of all the pages that link to VfD, and how many
> newbies stumble across it; all the policies that mention it.
I don't know about that.
I suspect that very FEW newbies stumble across it. I am trying to
remember how long I was editing Wikipedia before I ran into VfD or
even knew that pages got deleted. I believe it was several months.
I mean, it really takes a lot of... something... to create an
encyclopedia page about yourself in the first place. And it takes a
lot more of that to do it when it says right above the editing box
that you shouldn't.
The self-promoters, the original researches, and the POV warriors
"stumble" across VfD. Good-faith contributors with even a faint idea
of what an "encyclopedia" can retain their innocence for quite a while.
--
Jean is going to be bicycling 83 miles in the Pan Mass Challenge in
August, raising money for cancer research. Her profile is at http://
www.pmc.org/mypmc/profiles.asp?Section=story&eGiftID=JS0417
I never like the creation of a central page to list prospective
deletions. Admins have deletion power, they should simply use it.
If we need a "guidelines" page, fine. Make a guidelines page, so that if
50 articles a day fail to meet the "worthiness criteria" an Admin knows
to delete them. For example:
* Nothing but a URL to a foreign language website.
* Nothing but graffiti about some school chum of yours: Jack is a prat,
or loves Mary (or maybe even Sam ;-)
Oh, yes, we have that already, don't we? It's called speedy delete ...
I propose something radically different:
* If an article is off to a good start, let it remain a stub. Even help
it along by expanding it.
* If a TOPIC is inappropriate for Wikipedia, tag it and bag it (more
about this below)
* If content is hopelessly poor, but it's a good topic (like graffiti
about a notable person, place or thing) - then blank the page. I believe
this makes it fall below the threshold for "red linking"; stubs under a
certain minimum number of characters appear as "non-existent", right?
Tag and bag:
We should be able to label or "move" articles out of the main namespace,
so that they do not appear to the ordinary reading public. Let's find a
way to do this other than ACTUALLY DELETING each version of the page
from a database table and copying those versions into a "deleted page"
table. That is too much server overhead, I guess.
Just make it "hidden" or something. But let it be visible on some page
(like a category page?) which lists "bad articles" in various categories
and sorted in various convenient ways.
One more thing: voting
Don't say that "voting is astonishingly rare" at Wikipedia, and then
turn around and insist that no page can be deleted (or RETAINED) without
first counting and abiding by the Votes For Deletion. This is
breathtakingly stupid, and we deserve all the bad press we get for it -
and for what it does to the deletion process.
Timing
There is tension between the Process of creating an encyclopedia and the
hurry to present the Product.
* Process => development of new articles, along with continuous revision
(i.e., improvement) of old articles
* Product => the display of finished articles
We also insist on displaying "works in progress", which provides the
tension. I think this is what provides the vector which spreads the
poison which David Gerard was talking about (like mosquitoes carrying
malaria).
Uncle Ed
I'm working with Visviva (on WikiProject Deletion sorting) to find a way
to sort all this out.
It's based on an idea developed at another encyclopedia wiki - one which
actually PAYS ME to flounder around and flummox things up!
It uses templates for transclusion. Details forthcoming, as it will take
at least the rest of this week to document and test this.
Note that I put "document it" first! I write software in the following
stages:
1. Document what the software is intended to do.
2. Write the system tests and unit tests for the source code.
3. Oh, yes, when we have time ... Write the source code!
I think this is discussed at greater length at Wikipedia, either at
[[refactoring]] or [[test-first development]]. It's amazing how many
bugs you can KEEP FROM coming to life, merely by writing the tests
first. It also reduces total development time. Oh, why did I ever quit
the Wikipedia Development Team? (Because you didn't want to learn PHP,
remember? Shut up, I'm not going to have a MPD on the mailing list! Why
not? JRM had one on your user talk page. Oh, please!)
Somewhat distractedly,
Uncle Ed
Developer Emeritus
Admin Provisional
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alphax [mailto:alphasigmax@gmail.com]
> Sent: Thursday, August 04, 2005 9:54 AM
> To: Phroziac; English Wikipedia
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Shrinking VFD (was I better shut up)
>
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: RIPEMD160
>
> Phroziac wrote:
> > If VFD were kept, how about un-inlining the closed vfds, and giving
> > links to them instead? Would make the CSDs clutter it somewhat less.
> >
>
> Several people use combinations of Javascript and CSS which
> allow this to be done. With one click they can hide all closed VFDs.
soz guyz i fixed it i wont do it again
wikipedia rox cyas :)
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i accidentally removed the data on a subject but i cant remember what one.
my friend knows though and ill ask him tomorow. i didn'tknow that it
affected all computers let allone any computres sorry
your daily user
nic
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Angela wrote:
> We currently have no method of blocking only
unregistered users or
> only logged in users.
I guess I am suggestin you should have this option in
the software.
> If a registered user is blocked, it blocks their
> name and IP.
Why block the IP? What if it's from a library or
school? This sounds like a too harsh response. Could
you not make new account user creation a a bit more of
an effort/time (at least from the open proxies) to
discourage abuse?
> See
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=550
OK, I will vote for that bug. But it is not enough to
have the software, you have to use it too.
> Angela.
Thanks for the response, Torville
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
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"Re: Your user name or IP address has been _blocked_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy) by _CryptoDerk_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:CryptoDerk) .
The reason given is this:
vandal
You can _email CryptoDerk_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Emailuser/CryptoDerk) or one of the other _administrators_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_administrators) to discuss the block. You may also edit
_your user talk page_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Mytalk) if you
wish. If you believe that our _blocking policy_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy) was violated, you may discuss the block publicly on
the _WikiEN-l mailing list_
(http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l) . Note that you may not use the "email this user" feature unless you
have a Wikipedia account and a valid email address registered in your _user
preferences_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences) .
Your IP address is 207.200.116.195. Please include this address, along with
your username, in any queries you make."
-----
This type of block happens repeatedly, not because of anything I do but
because AOL assigns me an IP number that is frequently used by vandal(s). Please
see my User Page - WBardwin/AOL Block Collection. The admin responses I
get on these occasions are generally positive and helpful, and many times they
have been able to release the block so I can get some work done. Today,
however, I am not able to access any administrators pages and have resorted to
e-mail. I would like to see this problem resolved as these undeserved blocks
are very annoying and time consuming. However, my discussions with AOL do
not lead me to believe that they would be willing to block or even chastise the
guilty vandals. Would the community of administrators please discuss and
address this ongoing problem? I'm sure I'm not the only "good" user being
impacted by this policy. Thank you.
WBardwin.
This is an advert for a new javascript tool which you may find
helpful. When you hover the mouse over wikilinks, a list of links pops
up. These link directly to pages relevant to the link, such as edit,
editTalk, contribs, count (a link to Kate's tool), image thumbnails
for image links and so on. I think it's quite nifty! There's a
description here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tools#Navigation_popups
Installation is a matter of adding a few lines to your monobook.js (or
standard.js - this is skin-agnostic).
Let me know what you think! It's still in development so I'd welcome
suggestions for improvements.
Lupin
PS I don't know if it works in IE - it's been developed in firefox.