>
> > > Plus it would slow down making redirects to cut boilerplate text. I do a
> lot of redirects ... I do mean thousands.
>
> > I was going to say, it should be possible to disable this feature for
> > experienced users.
>
>
> Maybe. OTOH, just have a look through [[Special:Newpages]] on a Sunday
> afternoon US time. You'll consider hitting Ctrl-A before typing
> #REDIRECT to be a small price to pay.
>
> - d.
Maybe the preformat should appear only when an IP address creates a page...
- another d.
"The Cunctator" wrote
> I'm mildly sorry for taking the shortcut of asking the list about things I
> could figure out by wading through the insanely complicated policy pages,
> but here goes-- if you think a page that went through the AfD process was
> wrongly deleted, what is the proper action?
There is a process, which is apparently full of twisty little passages, all of which sound the same.
> How wrong is it for an admin to undelete a page?
If you believe 0WW, it's wrong.
> Also, are we trying to get rid of all "list" pages?
This is actually a good question.
I'm not trying to rid enWP of lists, though in a sense they have to some extent had their day. Their functionality is still much superior to categories, in some important respects.
One of those respects is that one could _in principle_ annotate lists, entry-by-entry, justifying each claim. Something of the sort goes on at [[list of polymaths]], I gather, though I don't follow it in detail. No one knows what 'polymath' really means, so in the end we'd get out of that a fairly interesting article of who said of whom and when that polymath applied. That's OK, I think.
Another example in which I'm involved is [[editio princeps]]. I'm kind of staggered that I haven't just come across a list of when the classical Greek and Roman authors were first printed. So, anyway, there's a list being compiled there, mostly from internal enWP evidence. Technically it's fairly illegal to use other articles to source a list like that. In practice (a) the material, if from 1911 EB as it typically is, is highly reputable anyway; and (b) collating such a list is a very good first step, because checking an edition was produced in Venice in 1495 or something of a specific author is a short Google away. In other words, fact-checking something specific is convenient enough.
There have always been some really junky lists around, and some of those could reasonably be axed via AfD. It is not a solution just to use categories, certainly. That hides the problem, rather than solving it: categories look more trustworthy, but some are real rubbish. (Like the Erdos number fiasco ...)
Charles
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>> Should Wikipedia accept original research or use less-than-ideal sources
>> in
>> cases where there is little or no existing literature? Nope: the reader
>> would
>> have no way to establish whether they could trust an article's contents.
>> It
>> might work if you had those articles controlled by verifiable experts,
>> but
>> again, Wikipedia's not that encyclopedia.
>
> I feel that if I go to Wikipedia to look up something relatively
> notable, and Wikipedia's response is "We don't have an article on
> that", then Wikipedia has failed me. If Wikipedia's response is
> "GNAA's website is X, and we couldn't verify any information beyond
> that, but here are some blogs", then it has performed much better.
On a similar note . . . a fortnight ago there was a spate of AfDs for furry
fandom articles, including a few furry conventions. Many of these articles
were little more than "X is a furry convention in Y occuring at Z, it has
1000 people attend each year here's their website". Nobody was actually
disagreeing that this was the case, but there was a lot of "Furrycruft!",
"Wikipedia isn't a dictionary!" and "if you can't find a reliable 3rd party
published source, you must convict!" flying around.
What I ended up doing was creating [[furry convention]], which is
essentially "[here's all the stuff we know in general about furry
conventions from the reliable sources], if you want to know more about
PafCon in particular, you want to go look at their website and at WikiFur,
which is an encyclopedia that can contain original research and unverifiable
material".
Of course, PafCon doesn't have a website because it's a fictional
convention, but you get the idea. If Wikipedia doesn't want to write about
topics, a good alternative is to do some kind of portal to direct people to
those who *do* want to write about it, as long as they are doing so
competently. That's helpful for the user because they get the information
they're looking for, and it's helpful for Wikipedia because it avoids
repeated creation of pages about "non-notable" topics (which inevitably
result in a certain proportion of angst-filled AfDs that burn some of our
most dedicated contributors out).
---
Laurence "GreenReaper" Parry
http://greenreaper.co.uk - http://wikifur.com
I glanced yesterday at a recent dictionary 'of phrase and fable', which had a Pokemon article.
Here's a thought, addressed to one part of 'what do we do about popular culture articles?' A new wiki, Wikifable, could be a place to transwiki material which was basically narrative treatment of myths (Norse, manga, soap operas ...). WP itself should be left with analytical and scholarly treatment of myths. Wikifable would have to work out its own protocols (canon, fourth wall, sources ...) but they could be independent of WP's.
Anyway, this would follow a pattern and path going back to Wiktionary.
Charles
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On the subject of the unsourced... While looking up some info on
british coinage today I ran across a cruftlink to [[Money in Harry
Potter]]. Talk about unsourced! it runs wild with rampant speculation,
routinely slips into the fictional universe, and I especially enjoy
the bit towards the end where it lapses into first person (search for
" I "). It's bad enough that I'd probably check it carefully for
copyright violations before doing anything other than putting a
deletion notice on it.
Of course, no sources are provided for the stream of consciousness
analysis of books... although I bet someone will shove in a bunch of
fansite links. But fixing the sourcing won't make this an acceptable
article... and I think thats something we should keep in mind:
Although we have a number of articles which unsourced but otherwise
good, there are also many articles which are unsourced but also bad in
other ways.. We risk doing ourselves a great disservice in simply
'sourcing' such articles but failing to improve their quality
otherwise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Money_in_Harry_Potter&oldid=90241…
> You're reading a bit more into my words than I ever intended, but I'll lay
> off on the idealistic "we". I don't think Wikipedia is healthier without
> sourcing, but I'll allow for disagreement there. What we're dealing with
> is
> a conflict of visions of what Wikipedia ought to be. Do we strive for
> completeness and inclusiveness or for better sourcing and higher quality
> coverage? I identify more with the drive for quality, and I'm comfortable
> looking elsewhere for certain topics, which can't be covered in the way I
> think Wikipedia should.
I think a half-loaf is, for most purposes, better than no loaf at all. If an
article is sourceable, then it should be. It may be that there are no
"reliable" sources on an article, despite honest efforts. There are some
topics that are just not covered by the subset of sources that have been
defined as universally reliable. If Wikipedians are able to look for
themselves from the "unreliable" sources and judge without too much trouble
that, for the purpose of this particular article, those sources are
sufficient, then I think they should do that rather than delete it. The
historic argument against that is that Wikipedians are not experts on the
quality of sources in a particular topic area and cannot make that kind of a
call - but, really, I think this is getting less and less true all the time.
I disagree with your strong linking of "quality" and "better sourcing". For
most users of Wikipedia, quality is going to mean accuracy, combined with
actually covering the topic at all. Using only information from reliable
sources is one way to achieve this, but I feel strongly that is not the
_only_ way, and if Wikipedia's rules are such that it is, then they should
be changed. It is stupid when we have to delete articles that nobody
believes to be inaccurate on the basis of rules set up to ensure accuracy.
None of the above should be construed to imply that I support badly written,
inaccurate articles that don't help users. I just think that there are
plenty of topics out there that can't be "officially" sourced, but which we
could nevertheless be covering, and well. Apply all the warnings you want to
such articles, but give the users their half-loaf.
---
Laurence "GreenReaper" Parry
http://greenreaper.co.uk/ - http://wikifur.com/
I'm mildly sorry for taking the shortcut of asking the list about things I
could figure out by wading through the insanely complicated policy pages,
but here goes-- if you think a page that went through the AfD process was
wrongly deleted, what is the proper action?
How wrong is it for an admin to undelete a page?
Also, are we trying to get rid of all "list" pages?
The Cunctator wrote:
> On 11/28/06, Tony Jacobs <gtjacobs(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Of those that were independent, they fell into three classes: some made
>> only
>> a passing mention of GNAA, some were articles where GNAA was only
>> mentioned
>> in the message board responses at the bottom, and those that were
>> actually
>> *about* GNAA were blogs (there were one or two of those). We use plenty
>> of
>> internet sources (not the least of which is IMDb, and I've seen
>> plenty of
>> citations to online mags like Salon and Slate), but blogs have been
>> deemed
>> below the threshhold.
>
> Which is ridiculous, because blogs are a medium, not a particular source.
> Banning all blogs as sources is absurd. A much better policy, one which
> respects the reader rather than treating him like a child, is to
> source the
> articles properly. If the source is a blog, the reader can supply his
> judgment in how much credence to give the source. Similarly with say, the
> New York Times, CNN, or the Washington Times, or Pravda.
The reader can only supply judgment about the credibility of a source if
there is some information upon which to exercise that judgment. The
reason blogs get singled out as a category is not because they cannot
ever be useful sources, but because so few of them provide the
information a reader would need to decide how it stacks up against other
sources. (I assume that the reader won't make the decision based on the
fact that it's a blog, since as you rightly point out, that's only a
label for the medium in general.)
For example, the existence of independent sources is essential, both to
maintain a neutral presentation and to avoid gullibly repeating
falsehoods. But when you have a blog of unknown provenance, it's
impossible to know whether it qualifies as independent (Wal-Mart Across
America, anyone?). At some point, editorial judgment requires that
certain material should be rejected when offered as a source, and if
that's all the material available on a particular subject, then we have
to decline to write about it.
--Michael Snow
> From: "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp(a)gmail.com>
>
> On 11/30/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006(a)dpbsmith.com> wrote:
>>> From: "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp(a)gmail.com>
>>
>>> I don't think deleting accurate, high-quality, unreferenced material
>>> is in Wikipedia's best interests. Asking for a source, yes. Adding
>>> sources, yes. But *deleting* good material? No.
>>
>> Unsourced material is not high-quality material.
>
> I'll interpret that as "Uncited material can by definition never be
> considered 'high-quality material'."
Please don't.
> And then I'll strongly disagree. Newspapers, encyclopaedias and many
> other sources of high-quality information regularly do not cite their
> sources. If we take one of our best featured articles and remove the
> references section, it is still much better than a shorter article
> that does cite its sources. And streets ahead of an article which
> false cites its sources...
What I meant is that _in Wikipedia,_ uncited material is not high-
quality material.
_In Wikipedia,_ that's indeed by definition, and the "definition" in
question is Wikipedia's verifiability policy.
The New York Times and the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ don't have such
a policy.
Uncited material in The New York Times or the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_ is high-quality material, because their mechanism for
insuring quality is different. It involves a web of trust in which I
trust these sources because I believe the editors make informed
judgements on the credentials of contributors. It's not 100.000%
true, but I assume that the Britannica only assigns articles to
knowledgeable people--not to volunteers who walk in off the street
attracted by an arch over their entrance that says "Edit this page."
I assume that the New York Times accepts articles people with
credentials as "journalists," earned by past performance on
increasingly important assignments and/or training in a journalism
school and/or adherence to a code of ethics.
Wikipedia is different, because Wikipedia does not select or judge
the competence or credentials of its editors.