WikiEN-l September 2005

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135 participants
230 discussions

Another Dead End
by DOJOPRESS＠aol.com 22 Sep '05

22 Sep '05

Been trying to appeal your block. This page says you will get back to me within 24 hours, but no one has. All I was asking is that you not publish the names of my friends, but you insist doing it and ignoring any attempt by people who actually know me to lobby in my favor. I find this terribly unfair. I remain, Ashida Kim For a complete listing of _Ashida Kim_ (http://ashidakim.com/) books and tapes go to _DOJO Press_ (http://dojopress.com/)

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Re: WP Credibility watch
by dpbsmith＠verizon.net 22 Sep '05

22 Sep '05

>From: Andrew Lih <andrew.lih(a)gmail.com> >- Wikipedia pounds other 'pedias when it comes to current events coverage One of the things Wikipedia does best, IMHO, is to cover "history in the making" by synthesizing and integrating news stories. There are large numbers of Wikipedians with interest in the news, and large numbers of detailed news articles available. It's much easier to research the story of pre-Katrina hurricane preparation in New Orleans than it is to research what happened to Liberal Arts Inc. in Pittsfield, MA in 1947. You actually do have collaboration between many editors and the stories end up well-written, well-balanced, with concise summaries of developing events and facts supporting the main points of view. I used to find that the weekly newsmagazines did a more consistent job of following and following UP stories than the daily newspapers. Wikipedia does a better job than the newsmagazines. Three months after an event, when the news stories are no longer available in Google News, Wikipedia has good, detailed yet selective summaries of what the news was. Of course, it's a little scary if Wikipedia is relying on the press as its source while the press is relying on Wikipedia!

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AfD
by Taco Deposit 22 Sep '05

22 Sep '05

Am I way off here, or does this article I wrote about a much-discussed website http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuck_the_South really not belong on Wikipedia? If it's deleted I want to be assured that it's because of community consensus to do so, and not just consensus of a cadre of deletionists active of AfD. Thanks, TD

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Re: FW: [WikiEN-l] Improper speedy taggings
by Worldtraveller 22 Sep '05

22 Sep '05

> I'll go one further, in fact. I think everyone who has been main or > sole author on a publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal > deserves a Wikipedia article. Yes, this would include a whole lot of > grad students. But if they're making or have made verifiable > contributions to their field, we should be including them. No question. > > -Snowspinner Nah, I disagree with that. I've written several papers in astronomy, and a referee's report has even described me as a world leader in my field, but I'd hate to see an article about myself. The specific field I am allegedly a world leader in does not even deserve its own article, although it gets a mention in [[planetary nebula]] (because I wrote that) and one of my papers is cited in [[Cat's Eye Nebula]]. Wikipedia readers are far better served by a brief mention of my field in the appropriate context than they would be by any article on my personal contribution to that field, and I suspect the same is true for 90% of published academics. WT

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Improper speedy taggings
by David Gerard 22 Sep '05

22 Sep '05

Anthony DiPierro wrote: >Why isn't Wikipedia best served by both? If someone comes across one of your >papers and wants to know more about the author, isn't that useful, even if >they just find out that the author is no one special? >There's clearly a potential benefit, and I just don't see what the negative >is. As long as you stick to insisting that everything in the article is >easily verifiable, anyway (which is already a rule outside of notability). >I suppose you could argue that such an article is best served by a dedicated >wiki, one for all authors, for instance. But that would mean either creating >a fork or taking all articles on authors out of Wikipedia entirely. The >other alternative, to have notable authors in Wikipedia and non-notable ones >out of Wikipedia, would likely cause way too many problems in >implementation. Taking all articles on authors out of Wikipedia is very >unlikely to happen, so you're basically ensuring a fork. I second all of the above. - d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] WP Credibility watch: stats of WP and EB citations in news press:
by David Gerard 22 Sep '05

22 Sep '05

Andrew Lih wrote: > - Lots of tech sites are in Google News, and Wikipedia excels at tech > entries. I would say that as far as computer stuff goes, we've largely achieved quality. Wikipedia is the *first* place I look at concerning some technical thing I've never heard of and need to quickly get up to speed on. Google tends to give you mailing list posts. (If it isn't there, I'll write it ;-) > - Wikipedia pounds other 'pedias when it comes to current events coverage This is a new and magical excellent thing we do, by the way. - d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Potential Wikipedian growing pains
by David Gerard 22 Sep '05

22 Sep '05

Ray Saintonge saintonge at telus.net wrote: >David Gerard wrote: >>Nowadays I pretty much tell new contributors "just write a few >>paragraphs and INCLUDE REFERENCES and don't worry about the fancy >>markup for now. Just INCLUDE THE REFERENCES and people will know it's >>a real article about a real thing." >Absolutely! Speaking as the one who has been pushing the POV on >Wiktionary that even vocabulary needs to be referenced, I am amazed by >the people who consider some number of Google hits as evidence. Some of >the most common offending terms are those that seek to rename sexual >practices, or characterize some kind of on-line activity. A large >proportion of these terms may indeed be valid, but that requires some >kind of documentation to distinguish them from something that the >contributor just made up for the occasion. I've just edited [[Wikipedia:Your first article]] accordingly. By the way, that page was UNRELENTINGLY negative before I did. Jeez, we want to *encourage* good new editors. And it needs a severe tightening of the writing. It's a perfect example of instruction creep. Could a good writer please hack it up? - d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Again, TINC (Was: Potential Wikipedian growing pains)
by David Gerard 22 Sep '05

22 Sep '05

steve v wrote: >The use of clique should not be considered a >pejorative, and may refer just as much to a "web of >trust" as to a "cabal." I dont make any judgements, >but rather chose a term which is neutral, and which >critics as well as core members of the "cabal" (you >and I ;)) may find agreeable. God forbid editors should talk to each other and get along and discover each other to be decent people in practice, rather than being eternally at loggerheads on discussion pages. - d.

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Re: WP Credibility watch: stats of WP and EB citations in news press:
by Michael Snow 22 Sep '05

22 Sep '05

Jeff Kinz wrote: >>I haven't done any comparisons for "leadership" press use of citations. >>For example it will probably be a long time before the NY Times, or the >>Washington Post are willing to cite WP rather than EB in any articles. >> >> Having followed this closely for some time, but without crunching numbers in the same fashion, my anecdotal observation is that citations to Wikipedia are increasingly penetrating leading news media. Early on, it came more from smaller, local media. The bigger fish have gradually joined in, usually starting with specialty topics where we clearly perform better (does Britannica have an article on podcasting yet?). By now, I think one of the major papers in just about every large American city has cited Wikipedia as a source, and not just via recycled wire copy. With the current cycle of cuts in personnel, which will probably hit hard in terms of resources devoted to background research, I expect the scope and volume of Wikipedia citations to increase further. >>One publication, "the Jurist" has appeared relatively recently and is >>probably the source of about half (or more) of the recent WP cite counts. >>It may be necessary to eliminate them from future counts since their >>extremely high rate of WP cites are not a normal pattern for a news >>publication. Of course "the Jurist" is not a normal news publication >>anyway. I'm surprised Google indexes them for Google news. Well, its a >>reputable publication anyway. >>http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/ >> >> Within the realm of what Google News does, which includes a lot of specialty news, the Jurist site certainly qualifies and their inclusion is not that surprising. They are one of the first to make a systematic rather than occasional habit of linking to Wikipedia articles for background information, but I expect to see more places adopt this practice in the future. --Michael Snow

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WP Credibility watch: stats of WP and EB citations in news press:
by Jeff Kinz 22 Sep '05

22 Sep '05

FYI, FWIW, YMMV: The "credibility battle" has a distinct trendline: Since November 2004 I've been capturing two automated news feeds generated by Google News alerts on citations of the Wikipedia and "that other encyclopedia"(E. Britannica). As the items dribbled in, I eliminated those which were "about" the 'pedias and kept those which "cited" the pedias. ** Here are the results : >From 11/7/2004 to 9/21/2004, citations appearing in an arbitrarily selected group of news publications [Pubs indexed by Google News] count as follows:*** Wikipedia: 412 **** Encyclopedia Britannica: 73 Ratio of roughly 5.6 to 1. Call it 11 to 2 for integer only CPU's :) WP is leading handsomely. This is a crude measure. A more meaningful analysis would have to analyze the "status" of which pubs were citing and how often etc... I may follow up with some of that if someone gives me a carrot... I haven't done any comparisons for "leadership" press use of citations. For example it will probably be a long time before the NY Times, or the Washington Post are willing to cite WP rather than EB in any articles. If anyone wants to examine the collection of Google alerts just let me know.***** ** There is some double counting as some of the alerts contained multiple items which could be either a citation or an article "about" "some"pedia. Since the keep/delete selection has to be made on the entire alert transmission (an email) some "abouts" may be counted as cites. Since it occurs for both it balances out to some extent. *** Some of the citations referenced very early versions of the EB, like 1853! **** One publication, "the Jurist" has appeared relatively recently and is probably the source of about half (or more) of the recent WP cite counts. It may be necessary to eliminate them from future counts since their extremely high rate of WP cites are not a normal pattern for a news publication. Of course "the Jurist" is not a normal news publication anyway. I'm surprised Google indexes them for Google news. Well, its a reputable publication anyway. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/ ***** No, I don't really have a thing for footnotes, just thought I'd do it this once. Distribute as desired. -- speech recognition software was used in the composition of this e-mail Jeff Kinz, Emergent Research, Hudson, MA. Â¡Ya no mas!

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WikiEN-l September 2005