WikiEN-l October 2006

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135 participants
206 discussions

Re: [WikiEN-l] Editors, who are not editors
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 23 Oct '06

23 Oct '06

Fastfission wrote >The notion that we should be > micromanaging other people's editing habits, or really entertain the > notion that one sort of editing is more "real" than the other, seems > totally counterproductive to me. Well said. The problems with division of labour aren't significant at the sort of level that has been implied. Charles ----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.ntlworld.com Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information

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David Gerard is off on holiday
by David Gerard 23 Oct '06

23 Oct '06

Right, I'm off to Wales and Whitby for the next week and a half or so. Try not to have any really stupid userbox RFCs or whatever the currently fashionable equivalent is while I'm away. - d.

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"Why Wiki?" - Online Video Presentation
by John Hubbard 23 Oct '06

23 Oct '06

http://www.uwm.edu/Libraries/courses/wiki/ This a free online screencast -- designed to review Wiki basics, the pros and cons of Wikipedia, and how you can use Wikis or set one up. It's likely a review for most of the people on this list, but with the continued media flurry over Wikipedia's truthiness and the upcoming launch of Citizendium, it could be a useful pointer for fielding questions you may get about Wikipedia as a reliable information source. Please pass this along to anyone you think might be interested. Cheers, John -- John Hubbard Web Services and Electronic Resources Coordinator UWM Libraries Webmaster University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 414-229-6775

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Comic book articles and fancruft (was: Pattern copyvios involving...)
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 22 Oct '06

22 Oct '06

Phil Sandifer wrote > The problem is... well, let's pull up a solid midlist Marvel > character - Speedball. 1603 word article. Only 500 words of that > pertain to the real world instead of the fictional world of the > comics. That's the problem. Fancruft is in many ways a poor choice of > terms for this. Fair point. I think what Phil is saying is like this: people tend to write without 'breaking the fourth wall', in a voice that suspends the disbelief. But this is surely a larger issue, anyway. Just take a Greek myth. You can read it in an integrated account; or sourced to the texts. Robert Graves's notorious 'Greek Myths' basically gives you the choice. I guess most people read the fluent versions, not the notes (which ironically are full of the most flagrant OR, as is well known ...). Charles ----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.ntlworld.com Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information

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School of Hard Knocks, or, what I learnt from my RfA
by Earle Martin 22 Oct '06

22 Oct '06

After reading David Gerard's post "RFA has gone weird"[1] two weeks back, I decided on a whim to nominate myself for adminship. [2] My principle was that I would largely ignore the existing process for the calcified barnacle that it is and apply a no-nonsense stance towards self-important questioning. The process has just closed, and I was of course unsuccessful. I would note that I did not enter into this process with the realistic expectation of success. (Although I was pleased to discover that I polled almost as many positive votes as negative, most of which seemed to agree with my take on the situation.) What I learnt from reading (and occasionally replying to) comments were: 1) ZOMG how dare you not answer the questions??!!1!!1 2) One has to have "a specific reason" for wanting admin tools. Being generally concerned for the good of the project is not enough to satisfy the razor minds of the RfA voters. 3) Editcountitis is actually a mindset of self-improvement, not a pointless obsession. You must have as many edits as is humanly possible before even considering being an admin. ("Storkk" lays it out straight: "390 mainspace edits isn't really evidence of gnoming. I am really looking for something like 3000 - 4000.") 4) You must participate in all existing processes whether you like it or not. You must also get into discussions with people on their talk pages. Why? Shut up with your questions already. You just have to. I don't qualify, notes "(aereopagitica)", because I have "less than 100 XfD discussions participated in and less than 50 user Talk contributions". 5) Answering questions, and replying to critical comments, bluntly and to the point is "arrogant", "contemptuous", "insulting", "proud", and "incivility of [a high] magnitude". Also symptomatic of needing "self-improvement" and "a thicker skin", advises "Dlohcierekim". 6) Life as an admin is a hellish, Kafka-esque nightmare of continuous inquisition from a swollen, all-powerful bureaucracy. ("[W]hat you experience here is only a taste of what one will face as an admin", comments "Physicq210".) 7) It is somehow useful for people to cast a "neutral vote", rather than just leaving a comment, which is of equivalent logical value. 8) Despite there being over a thousand administrators already, one bad egg is enough to cause havoc, disaster, dogs and cats living together, and mass hysteria. The solution to this is obviously to keep the number of administrators as small as possible, thus maintaining the status quo and preventing more potential bad people from becoming admins. 9) Even stating "I promise not to go batshit" and signing it with your real name is not enough to sway the high muck-a-mucks. Consider taking classes in advanced boot-licking before responding to comments. ("[C]andidate is... plainly in that class of admin who would immediately set out causing grief and bloodshed.", declares "Splash".) 10) This is all going to go on your permanent record, son. Don't let your mouth write a check that your butt can't cash. ("Would recommend not returning to RfA in future", adds "Splash", ominously.) So I guess it's back to the edit mines for this particular peon.... [1] http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-October/054960.html [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Earle_Martin -- Earle Martin http://downlode.org/ http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/

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Comic book articles and fancruft (was: Pattern copyvios involving...)
by Earle Martin 22 Oct '06

22 Oct '06

On 20/10/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca> wrote: > Earle Martin wrote: > > I think Phil is speaking from having read numerous fictional character > > articles, not implying that his feelings stem from this incident. (I > > happen to agree with him; the amount of blithering fancruft is > > astonishing.) > > Yet he's using this incident as his "excuse" for it. If this incident > itself had nothing specifically to do with his proposal and he was just > tossing in an old dream of his, why was it initially focused on just > Marvel comics characters? Because a wise man once said, "Pick the low-hanging fruit." Everything has to start somewhere, jihad on fancruft included. > There's reasons why BLP is "ruthless" with > regard to biographies of living people and those reasons are completely > inapplicable to biographies of fictional characters. If you want to > propose being equally "ruthless" for fictional characters I want to see > a reason that's just as strong. I thought having an encyclopedia that didn't suck was a pretty strong reason. Do I need to elaborate on what I think that entails? I hope not; I would have thought it was fairly self-evident. > Also, the definition of "fancruft" is far less clear than the definition > of "libel." I'd want to see something solid and widely accepted for that > as well. Okay, then, I'd like to throw that one out to the list, but I'll start with: unnecessarily verbose, gushing and hyper-detailed recitation of trifling details about a fictional element, contributed with a reverence better reserved for factual information. (Or, in the terms that I prefer, the dull and witless prattling of socially-impaired nerds, but that's only my opinion, and not a recommendation for policy wording.) -- Earle Martin http://downlode.org/ http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/

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Editors, who are not editors
by Peter Ansell 22 Oct '06

22 Oct '06

I have been increasingly worried about one editors contribution history lately. The vast majority (possibly over 90%) of their last 500 edits have been in Wikipedia/Wikipedia talk space. It is my understanding that Wikipedia: space is for editors to use to organise the development of articles. My question is how does an editor--who spends all their time in Wikipedia space--know what they are trying to achieve? Peter Ansell

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Fwd: [Wikitech-l] major accessibility problem recently introduced to MediaWiki
by David Gerard 22 Oct '06

22 Oct '06

Someone's been playing silly buggers with Mediawiki: messages and CSS. - d. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Graham Pearce <grahamwp(a)optusnet.com.au> Date: 22-Oct-2006 06:27 Subject: [Wikitech-l] major accessibility problem recently introduced to MediaWiki To: wikitech-l(a)wikimedia.org I'm user:Graham87 on the english wikipedia. I use a screen reader called JAWS from Freedom Scientific at: www.freedomscientific.com It is the most popular Windows screen reader at the moment. My problem is that it appears that the edit link has become part of the title of each section created with wiki markup. This problem is compounded when using quick navigation keys to navigate between sections; in this case, JAWS will stop reading a heading title when it encounters a link. Therefore, each heading title will be read as either "left bracket" or "edit" when I navigate between editable sections on a MediaWiki page. I tested this with JAWS 5.1 and 6.0, which aren't the most recent versions but are still widely used and the problem appears on both of them. I am using Windows XP with IE 6 (Firefox only works well with the latest versions of JAWS). The headings were working fine late last night my time (about 15:30 UTC on 21 October). I would like this fixed as soon as possible so only the section title is spoken when navigating through headings. Thanks, Graham _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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gingerbread chalkboards
by David Gerard 22 Oct '06

22 Oct '06

Not quite entirely on topic, but here's a real case from the earlier thread: http://www.expressandstar.co.uk/2006/10/14/gingerbread-persons-backlash/ Now, one that would be interesting would be to trace the phrase "political correctness gone mad" in a proper and encyclopedic manner ... - d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Comic book articles and fancruft (was: Pattern copyvios involving...)
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 22 Oct '06

22 Oct '06

Ray Saintonge wrote > An encyclopedia that doesn't suck recognizes that different people have > different ideas about what is important, and respects them for that. > What could be more self-evident than that. Oh, quite a few things, really. Conflating comprehensiveness with pluralism: I think enWP does this quite well. If someone tells me that the German WP has its head clearer about that (which I believe to be the case, though not from a huge personal experience), I'm not going to write it off for that reason. Charles ----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.ntlworld.com Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information

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WikiEN-l October 2006