WikiEN-l November 2006

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

121 participants
233 discussions

Bill Knapp's slaughter
by Gregory Kohs 06 Nov '06

06 Nov '06

I am interested to see what the expert community thinks about this scenario: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bill_Knapp%27s_Restaurant&diff=83… Relatively new user "Ipthief" (about 20 seemingly clueful edits between July 17 and October 25) decided that there ought to be an article in Wikipedia about the Bill Knapp's restaurant chain (now closed, but a verifiable "institution" in Michigan for decades -- and 900+ Google hits). So, Ipthief set out at 2:36 PM, writing the first forms of a stubby article. Two minutes later, user "Diez2" lands on the page, throws up a {{db-bio}} on the page. In the next moment, Diez2 informs Ipthief's Talk page of the advice, "If you can indicate why Bill Knapp's Restaurant is really notable, you can contest the tagging." Is it too much to expect someone to either (a) wait a little longer than 2 minutes before calling for a speedy delete, or (b) look up something on Google to get some gauge of notability . . . before making such an adversarial, deletionist move? Or, is everyone on such a red-alert for spam (even of companies that are now bankrupt and out of operation), that this will be the standard procedure? -- Gregory Kohs

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Bad And Wrong Policy/Procedure/Guideline
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 06 Nov '06

06 Nov '06

"Stephen Bain" wrote > That seems common sense to me too. All we need to say about conflicts > of interest is "try to recognise your own biases, be open to others > who apprehend biases, and don't let your biases get in the way of > editing neutrally". Entrenched POV editing is something which is a recognised problem from the early days, and for which we have no complete solution. The way it works now, roughly speaking, is that we can throw out POV editors who cannot/will not respect sourcing requirements, and who cannot/will not adhere to community norms of decent behaviour. If people can stick within those two things, then they probably are de facto of good standing here. Even if they use selective citation to make an article lie through its teeth, which is quite possible and the basis of all skilful propaganda. Adding a 'conflict of interest' guideline is a further way of cutting down on heavy POV slants. Like the other things, it works on an 80-for-20 basis: it will not deter the real agenda-pushers who wish to subvert our coverage, but it will have an impact, on people who came and cluelessly thought that open editing meant complete freedom to act here. 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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Re: [WikiEN-l] Bad And Wrong Policy/Procedure/Guideline Hitlist
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 06 Nov '06

06 Nov '06

Phil Sandifer wrote > But it's approach to all of its topics is that of a > general encyclopedia. So even when we have an article on, say, > Vermont State Highway 26, the approach is that of a general > encyclopedia, not a specialist one. This is a VITAL distinction in > terms of understanding what the content of an article should be. Maybe so, but not necessarily a tenable one. There are going to be articles on, say, string theory, where the content you need to approach the article at all will be behind some wikilinks. Same applied broadly across technical areas. Articles split out of general surveys, to cover something specialise in depth, should not be criticised for doing that and not something else. Not everyone likes the ten-second scroll to get to the meat. 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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Re: [WikiEN-l] Bad And Wrong Policy/Procedure/Guideline Hitlist
by dmehkeri＠swi.com 06 Nov '06

06 Nov '06

> On 11/3/06, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > What policies/procedures/guidelines on en:wp strike you as just awful? > > Please list and elaborate. > > > > This could be in any of purpose, current wording, ineffectuality or > > just being a completely bad idea. Or anything else that makes it just > > awful. > > > Parts of Wikipedia:Username Many parts of Wikipedia:Username, which has become a playground for overzealous vandalism patrollers. A good candidate for Gerardian Gehad. Dan

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Anyone want to summarise wikien-l weekly?
by David Gerard 06 Nov '06

06 Nov '06

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS Improv started doing this for foundation-l and wikipedia-l. Think something analogous to "Kernel Traffic" for Linux. Anyone want to do wikien-l weekly? - d.

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Fwd: [Wikitech-l] Changes to accesskeys and tooltips
by David Gerard 06 Nov '06

06 Nov '06

Forwarding here given en: users' fondness for js extensions. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech(a)gmail.com> Date: 31-Oct-2006 04:48 Subject: [Wikitech-l] Changes to accesskeys and tooltips To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)wikimedia.org> Pretty soon, likely within the next week, I'll be moving all accesskeys and tooltips out of Monobook.js and implement them server-side. This may affect personal scripts that implement custom accesskeys; they'll have to be revised a bit to find the elements themselves rather than relying on their presence in the "ta" array, but it shouldn't be difficult. Sites that have modified Monobook.js should not have their global changes affected by this directly, although they may have to rework them when the id's are changed. The tooltip for any given element that has a tooltip will be stored in a message "tooltip-x", where x is the element's HTML id, and can be modified as usual by sysops. The accesskey, likewise, will be stored in a message "accesskey-x". For developers: currently this is in a branch, branches/simetrical/. Help converting over the language files would be greatly appreciated (via commits or, for non-devs, patches), but I'll do it myself if necessary. I'll make this concurrent with reworking the id's/classes, just for simplicity. _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Bad And Wrong Policy/Procedure/Guideline
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 05 Nov '06

05 Nov '06

Ray Saintonge wrote > Why is it so necessary to have everything spelled out in such detail? > You are making "conflict of interest" an issue that is out of all > proportion to its importance. Hmmm. I remember some very long threads of discussion here, quite recently, about corporate interests. Are you just assuming those will go away? Isn't it more natural to assume that with every milestone Wikipedia passes, in terms of its audience, there is a corresponding increase in the number of those who will come to edit Wikipedia, without having WP's best interests at heart, because they put something else ahead of those? Think of the need to go into what we mean by that as part of the price of success in reaching a mass audience. 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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Re: [WikiEN-l] Bad And Wrong Policy/Procedure/Guideline
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 05 Nov '06

05 Nov '06

Ray Saintonge wrote >I do not > support your apparent view that Wikipedia's exponential growth is > somehow justification for an exponential growth in the corpus of its > policies and guidelines. That is not my view. I have scarcely had anything to do with policy/guideline pages, since arriving in 2003. You might note that [[Wikipedia:Spam]], which logically is only a subsection in the 'conflict of interest' area, is by itself a page of perhaps comparable length. The logic is to get the right high-level pages set up, so that the basic principles are put forward in a few places, and detailed material hangs off those. (I have actually also argued for a handbook approach, since it seems to me utopian to think Wikipedia in its current state is not easily comprehensible. I could have wished for more support on that front.) 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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Re: [WikiEN-l] Bad And Wrong Policy/Procedure/Guideline
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 05 Nov '06

05 Nov '06

Delirium wrote > Date: 2006/11/05 Sun PM 09:49:44 GMT > I suppose it depends on what you mean by COI---if you mean say merely a > financial conflict of interest then that's tenable, but there are plenty > of others that would seem to disqualify whole slews of editors, > especially experts in the subject. For example, artificial intelligence > (my area) is a very contentious field, and people within it disagree > strongly about what in the field is notable or worth pursuing, and even > disagree about how to narrate its history. I think it would be > reasonable to say that anyone who is an active AI researcher has a > conflict of interest when it comes to editing AI-related articles, and > yet our articles wouldn't get very far if all AI researchers had to > recuse themselves! The first business at [[WP:COI]] is indeed to define 'conflict of interest', as it applies to edits of WP. Given the heckling about having such a guideline at all, it is worth pointing out that there is now a simple definition available. If, in making an edit, you are putting your own interests ahead of Wikipedia's, you are evidently experiencing such a conflict. Later the guideline deals with the 'temptation' issue: if your outside interests are going to put you in temptations way, because you are seriously committed to something (anything) very likely to slant your edits, then it is deprecated that you go ahead and edit. Most academics are able to discuss views different from their own without their faces contorting with rage; but those who've been around the corridors and coffee times of academia know that it is not always the case that objectivity can be maintained. So there are cases where academics should stay away, and the ArbCom has had such a case where it ruled against the professor. 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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Re: [WikiEN-l] Bad And Wrong Policy/Procedure/Guideline
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 05 Nov '06

05 Nov '06

Steve Summit wrote > I'm sure this point got raised in the long thread, too, but: > if declaring an interest excludes you from editing the very > articles you want to edit, isn't that a sure-fire way of > guaranteeing that no one declares their interests? It doesn't do that. Editing with a real COI is strongly deprecated - what other line can we take? People may declare their interest with a user box, and then edit away; very common. There is such a large grey area, in which people say 'I have some interest here, but I'm not so conflicted that I can't edit straight', that it is de facto accepted that declarations of interest do not disqualify. The real position on the ground is that people with serious COI do not edit well, when put under the pressure of a real edit war/dispute. This is well established, I think. The point of the guideline is to say: "you don't actually know what you are getting into here". Some experienced Wikipedians do know exactly what they are getting into, but still crash and burn in terms of their reputations. 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 November 2006