Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2006 10:49:01 -0600 (CST)
From: "Jeff Raymond" <jeff.raymond(a)internationalhouseofbacon.com>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Handling unreferenced but likely-valid
material
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
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<4588.63.151.8.141.1165423741.squirrel(a)www.internationalhouseofbacon.com>
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"Jeff Raymond" <jeff.raymond(a)internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
>
> In the spirit of this, I did my own Special:Random sample of 30. I found:
>
> Unsourced: 13
> 1 Working External link/reference: 6
> Printed only: 2
> Multiple References: 8
>
> Of the 13 unsourced articles, 3 were lists (and I didn't check the
> articles they were linking to for sources) 9 stubs, and only one was a
> full-blown article lacking sourcing. I may be in a minority on this one,
> but I find unsourced stubs much less problematic than unsourced
> ''articles'', so my personal findings gave me a lot more hope than I
> thought.
>
> -Jeff
Well, this was an interesting exercise. Out of a sample of 25 consecutive
random articles:
9 had no sources whatsoever (well, one linked to a youtube video, but that
is equivalent to no source at all)
2 I felt were *very* weakly sourced -- one fairly long article on a
proprietary treatment listed only a self-published web site and an article
of "research" published in an unrefereed journal--the other had a single
link that did not provide any support for most of the article
9 were weakly sourced, in that I had little confidence that it would be able
to verify more than a small fraction of the content with only the sources
provided
4 appeared to be moderately well-sourced, in that there were multiple
sources provided and reasonable confidence that much, if not all, of the
content could be verified from the provided sources
Only 1 was really well-sourced, in that I had a pretty high confidence that
nearly every detail in the article could be verified with the provided
sources.
So 9/25 (36%) is unsourced or 44% if you include the very weakly sourced.
Of the 25, 11 were marked as stubs (a couple of the others probably
qualified as stubs, possibly even for deletion). If we exclude the marked
stubs, 4 remaining had no sources or 4/14 (29%).
I any case, no support for the 80% unsourced cannard.
Bkonrad
"Sage Ross" wrote
> A little grist for the mill, blog posts by feminist academics who are
> Wikipedia outsiders or near outsiders:
>http://badgerbag.typepad.com/badgerbag/2006/08/feminist_histor.html
> http://smg.typepad.com/smg/2006/09/wiki_wiki.html
The second strikes me as more thoughtful. It does illustrate a few general points (not specific to feminist issues).
People who scan WP and say 'change that, or that, or that ...' may never actually get into the pool and edit. The learning curve is probably much less steep on the non-core articles, rather than articles on the 'major topics' (I wouldn't advise anyone to start on any of the top few hundred articles by hits.)
Another thing: this collection of comments does pick up on the spottiness of the 'notability' criteria.
Charles
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Evidently someone has decided that fair use doesn't apply to
images of living people, that any image of a person (legitimately
fair use or not) can be speedily deleted, on the grounds that a
free image could be found or created.
I'm sure this issue has been hashed out at length somewhere, and
I'm not trying to reopen the argument here on the mailing list.
I just want to point out two things, in case someone here feels
like trying to straighten them out.
1. [[Template:Replaceable fair use]] says, "If this image is
determined to be replaceable within one week from <today>,
the image may be deleted by any administrator. Do not remove
this tag." This leaves me wondering what is supposed to happen
if, after a week, the image is not determined to be replaceable.
2. [[Template:Speedy-image-c]], which is being added to pages
which use images falling into this category, says "The image
above is a candidate for speedy deletion. It will be deleted
seven days after being nominated". But this conflicts with the
above -- there is no "if" or "unless".
Also, if someone could let me know where this new policy has been
discussed, I'd appreciate it, so that I can register my (belated)
opinion on it.
Robth wrote
> The problem is this: the volume of contributions to Wikipedia by
> one-time or occasional contributors who "pass-by", as it were, and add
> something, is far too great for the community of steady
> maintenance-oriented contributors to keep up with "fixing" all of it
> as it comes in. If we're going to place the onus on these steady
> contributors to fix all this stuff, then we're going to end up with a
> huge pile of stuff waiting to be "fixed" that is broken in very basic
> ways; articles with no sources, images without specific enough
> information, etc. This is the approach we have taken up till now, and
> huge piles of stuff waiting to be fixed is exactly what we have.
Well, you'll notice that the _unselective_ wish o have everything sourced to the hilt is aggravating this.
We have always had the 'piles'. The question is more like: are the quality initiatives proposed fit for purpose?
Labelling with [[Category:Living persons]] is good, because it addresses a serious issue. Fretting about the quality of pop-culture articles is fairly pointless, on that scale. Deleting dodgy images is good (my take - I'm a text person first and foremost); it is quite true that images are worth at least 1000 words, but getting the text straight is the foundation. 100K 'featured articles' - did nothing for me. Getting a page up per surname, i.e. at least 10000 dab pages of the kind most people pay no attention to: very useful, because it inherently opens up the navigation and checking.
And so on. Just let's acknowledge that quality beefs should be prioritised.
Charles
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> From: David Boothroyd <david(a)election.demon.co.uk>
>
> I agree with this. A few days ago I created [[338171]]. Being rather
> bored at the time I gave a facetious edit summary which claimed the
> article was all about the number 338,171. It was swiftly tagged with
> a speedy delete tag, and then deleted (despite me having quickly put
> a {{hangon}}).
>
> The article was actually a redirect to T.E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of
> Arabia"). Wanting privacy, in later life Lawrence re-enlisted in the
> RAF as an Aircraftsman (equivalent of Private in the Army), and was
> given 338171 as his service number. He often signed himself "338171
> A/C Shaw", prompting Noel Coward to ask him "May I call you 338?".
>
> It was quite obvious on reading the article that it was actually a
> redirect. If the admin had checked the article to which it was
> redirected he would have found the reason explained there. So while
> it's legitimate to claim to have been misled by the edit summary,
> that really doesn't justify mistakenly speedying a perfectly good
> redirect. I appreciate that speedy deletion patrollers are often
> overworked but overwork is not an excuse for lack of common sense.
Good intentions are not an excuse for disrupting Wikipedia to
illustrate a point.
> > And please stop asserting 80% of our articles are unsourced, when my
> > informal check suggests that the number is more like 20%.
>
> Ah how great random page is for sampling articles... Here's my 10
> article "study":
[...]
> 40% no sources or external links, 30% one external link, 10% one
> broken external link, 10% one ISBN link, 10% two external links. Of
> the working external links, 3 were to primary sources, and 2 were to
> secondary sources.
>
> Of course, 10 articles is hardly a scientific sample size.
>
> Anthony
Bah. I'll stick my neck out and say 50% of our articles have no sources or
external links. Give or take 40%. 19 times out of 20. SCIENCE!!
No really, I think people doing their own small samples of Special:Random is a
great idea. Truly random sampling is more "scientific" than you might realize. I
am not a statistician, so someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but if all
you're trying to do is rule out the <20% and/or the >80% claim, then 25 clicks
on Special:Random ought to be more than enough, 19 times out of 20.
Dan
Hello Jimmy, i`m just a small writer from the Netherlands, and trying to
contribute in a category about fossils, and was always very happy to do so,
i have used immages from various sources, almost always products from
official institutes, like educational - and governemental, like Geological
Survey`s and state museums an d University`s from various countrys and
States of Amerika, I`m very surprised to hear that these images, no longer
are accepted, just because they are released in to the public for common
benefit, excluding the commercial ones, commercial in this optic says:
benefit from trade by one person or company, very disappointing, because i
don`t have any pictures left, never the less,
I realy would appriciate if you could tell me the reason of this "non
acception" because i really don`t undersand this, i do understand that
pictures have to be released from copyrights, so called copyleft, ok,
otherhands i understand that institutes who have putt a lot of energy and
probably even more money to get these pictures (as a result of
investigations and / or studies, they have released these images for the
benefit of the common, and do not ask a payment for these, otherhands they
"protect" the product of these hard work, from another making a profit out
of it, i think this is judgeable, to release they work and protecting it
from "abusing" it, all institutes work like this from Moskow to Mexico,
Universitys, researchcenters, and so-on,
At the other hand i always understand that wiki projects are a part of a
"non - commercial" institute, so by not accepting "non - commercial"
releases, I realy don`t understand this, about 120.000 images are to be
deleted ?? only in the Netherlands ther are no sustitutes for these pictures
because they are very specialised, it will cost a lot to make them
oureselves, I realy don`t see any explanation to this not-accepting, unless
somehow a part of the wiki concern do have a commercial benefit???? i`m very
concerned about this, because a lot of writers like myself - have no images
left, or have seen them "disappering" , if there are no images there is
nothing to write about................
like i said, i`m just a simple writer in the Netherlands, and teacher,
my English is not that well, i hope yoyu can read this,
best regards Henk Klaverkamp
h.klaverkamp(a)chello.nl
I can't find a reference for where the community blocks were supposed
to be logged to. Can it be tagged onto the Blocking Policy article or
some such?
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com
Wikichix should not be on the wikimedia servers.
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Date: Dec 5, 2006 5:59 AM
Subject: Request to mailing list Wikichix-l rejected
To: cunctator(a)gmail.com
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Fl Celloguy <flcelloguy(a)hotmail.com>
Date: Dec 5, 2006 3:36 PM
Subject: RE: Wikipedia e-mail
To: Nobs02 <nobs03(a)gmail.com>
That's because I hadn't sent it yet: I had meant to send it (I had a rough
draft ready) after I logged off yesterday, but inadvertantly didn't get
around to it. My apologies for that; I've copied and pasted the response
below. Thanks for your understanding.
Hello, nobs, good to hear from you again! Before I undelete the pages, I
would just like to know what you intend to use them for; I know you cited an
appeal of your ArbCom case, but I would like to know some more details of
your intended use, given that *the topics we discussed were unrelated to
Cberlet's and your Arbitration case *[emphasis mine]. Because of
confidentiality issues, I have to be careful when undeleting any of these
pages; I will be happy, though, to fulfill your request if it is
appropriate and necessary.
Thanks again for your understanding.
Flcelloguy
>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
-----
It appears some negotiation may be necessary here. I thought this was
moreless a done deal when Fred Bauder personally restored the main page;
Flchelloguy now reserves some right to act at his own discretion "if" and
when he decides it is "appropriate and necessary". I don't know how to
proceed from here.
As to your draft, yes I like it; no problem with mentorship. The big
question is, how much eividence of good faith on my part is necessary. Let
me clarify the question: in the omitted evidence do we want to show more
that I acted in good faith, or that I was the victim of bad faith?
As to #12, I believe that ends 23 Dec 2006 cause it has been one year; see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Probation#List_of_users_where_normal…
which refers to it as "dormant probation". Does this need to be clarified?
Thanks again,
nobs
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