>That kind of corrosive supiciousness is the problem. For the most
>part our administrators, those who are involved in backchannel
>operations, are the best and the most trustworthy we have.
I suspect that people are far more suspicious than is warranted by what
actually goes on, but I think we can agree that suspicion is distracting and
damaging. If admins made it an explicit practice that they would communicate
privately only about certain, clearly defined issues; it might reduce some
fo the mystery (though I'm sure some suspicion and paranoia would always
persist).
I am curious, however, what is the measure of the "best and the most
trustworthy" admins. My observation is that being elected to an admin role
depends on not having too many detractors; and being deadmined is a result
of truly egregious offenses. The corollary to that is that an editor who
wants to be an admin must avoid contention in order to be elected; but can
let loose once he/she is in. I'm not saying that it's common, but it bothers
me to see how a lot of well-meaning editors can't bombarded when they ask to
become admins by people they've had content disputes with; and then see that
established admins more or less abandon the caution that got them their role
to begin with.
Leif
I'm almost speechless with rage at Jimbo's unilateral deletion of the encyclopedia article [[Brian Peppers]] - not to mention his locking (via [[User:Danny]] and [[WP:OFFICE]]) of [[Harry Reid]] for *five days*.
As I feared, userboxes have proven to be the canary in the coal mine. Now it's articlespace that is being jerked around.
Wikipedia ultimately must decide whether it wants to be Jimbo's personal fiefdom, or be "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit". The two are clearly mutually exclusive at this point.
Steve Block wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
>
>> Steve Block wrote:
>>
>>> I think they were advocates rather than experts, weren't they?
>>
>> This is not the case and does them a great injustice. Though it's
>> possible such an assumption of bad faith from outsiders was behind the
>> dedicated attempts to drive them off.
>
> That's not a bad faith assumption. Eric Burns is, on one level, a
> blogger who writes about webcomics. Are we suggesting any blogger is
> a reputable expert on a given field?
No, we're not, but in the field of webcomics, it's quite plausible for
the reputable experts to come from the world of blogging. Perhaps after
we've dealt with irrational prejudices against webcomics, we can move on
to the problems caused by irrational prejudices against bloggers.
> There's a real problem with deciding the reliability and reputability
> of online content. Eric Burns is also still an advocate on
> wikipedia. The history of webcomics has not yet been written, so how
> can he be anything but? And given his involvement in the webcomics
> field, how does one determine whether he is a partisan source?
If the history of webcomics has not yet been written, that would be a
good reason to write it on Wikipedia. Someone who understands the field
well enough to write a proper history can figure out who's a partisan
source, what information they're still useful for, and how to balance
their partisanship with other sources. It just requires critical
thinking and editorial judgment.
--Michael Snow
[cross-posted to gmane.org.wikimedia.textbook,
gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english which I hope are the correct
groups]
Special:Booksources on en:wikipedia has an Errata option, which takes you to
a special section on en:wikibooks where---obviously enough---errata
corresponding to various ISBNs are collected.
I am not aware of the history of this cooperative venture, but I am somewhat
disturbed by the fact that a group of people at Wikibooks are trying to have
this feature removed without apparently letting anybody at Wikipedia know.
This seems to be ostensibly on the grounds that whilst it is to do with
books, it's not to do with **wiki**books.
The bit that disturbs me is the impression I get from the discussion that
cooperation with Wikipedia is somehow distasteful to some Wikibookians, and
that they shouldn't have to help out just because we share a four-letter
prefix.
Where should this be discussed, and what is the official status of the
"Errata on Wikibooks" feature?
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]
On 27 Feb 2006 at 09:04, VeryVerily <veryverily(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Anyway, I feel like you're asking me to make a bunch of uncontroversial
> (frivolous?) edits (what did I say, on bunnies and flowers). Anyone can do
> that and it proves nothing, so yes it seems you're just telling me off for
> another length of time.
If there are certain contentious topics that you find you can't edit
without it turning into a nasty edit-war (no matter whose fault this
is), then perhaps it *would* be a good idea to get away from those
topics and do some more-productive and less-contentious edits on
different topics. I, for one, rarely even try to edit [[Anarchism]];
it's not worth it, given that anything anybody does there is likely
to be wiped out in the next round of the eternal edit war. It's much
more useful to find areas of interest that are under-covered and
improve them. I haven't tried to edit [[bunnies]] or [[flowers]],
however.
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
They look ugly and unprofessional. Can we get a policy or something to
suggest that they be renamed "Miscellaneous information" or merged into
the rest of the article?
And while we're at it, can we get rid of "{{PAGENAME}} in popular
culture" sections?
--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
Delirium wrote:
> Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> If the history of webcomics has not yet been written, that would be a
>> good reason to write it on Wikipedia.
>
> That seems directly contrary to the long-established "no original
> research" policy. When it comes to history articles, Wikipedia is not
> the place to publish novel historical narratives of any sort, whether
> they be on the Cold War or on webcomics, but a place to document
> *existing* historical narratives.
Broadly speaking, there are two possible kinds of historical narratives.
One is to bring together various facts about a subject in reasonably
coherent fashion, without imposing any interpretation on it. Done
Wikipedia-style and well-referenced, I don't see the problem with this.
I think as far as the "no original research" policy is concerned, this
kind of historical narrative "exists", to use your phrasing, no matter
that perhaps nobody has actually written it yet. I'm not sure how else
you can justify having argued so strongly for including the history of
the Brian Peppers phenomenon in Wikipedia. In fact, this is a great deal
of what some of our better articles on obscure topics do. A thorough
history of webcomics may not be possible until the secondary sources are
better developed, but certainly enough primary sources are available to
make a start at it.
The second kind of narrative is one structured to draw some particular
conclusion or advance a theory. In this scenario the history is written
with a specific thesis and attempts to show its validity. That approach
isn't really necessary to writing a history of webcomics, though it's
certainly a pitfall to watch out for.
--Michael Snow
John Lee wrote:
>Often? Please. Nobody denies it's abused. But "often"?
My main problem is "Nominate for deletion based on my own ignorance."
followed by several "I agree, delete based on my own ignorance."
>Even David Gerard
>confesses that 95% of the stuff on AfD is crap that needs to go, and
>it's difficult (to say the least) to justify deletion of articles (such
>as those on garage bands) without appealing to the concept (if not the
>phrase) of non-notability.
I have nothing against deleting the truly non-notable, and perusing
the ancient scrolls reveals that Jimbo has said pretty much the same
thing.
The problem is it's horribly subjective. Check [[WP:WEB]]'s recent
edit history and the attempts of arbitrary notability bar partisans to
make it policy by assertion, despite strong opposition.
- d.
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] "Trivia" sections in articles
> To: wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org
> Message-ID: <43FD53A3.7050804(a)gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> They look ugly and unprofessional. Can we get a policy or something to
> suggest that they be renamed "Miscellaneous information" or merged
> into
> the rest of the article?
>
> And while we're at it, can we get rid of "{{PAGENAME}} in popular
> culture" sections?
Much if not all of much of this content is unreferenced. People
apparently just toss in stuff off the top of their head. Like lists,
I think they become a game in which people try to think of something,
anything that isn't there already.
We should be proactive about putting {{unverifiedsect}} tags on these
sections, {{fact}} tags on the unreferenced items, and removing them
after a reasonable period of time and in a fair way. That will go a
long way to solving the problem.
I personally believe these items are valuable and interesting _if
referenced._ Incidentally insisting on reference is also a reasonable
filter against subtrivial cruft; if the Statue of Liberty appears _in
an important way_ in some movie, Ebert or someone is likely to have
mentioned it somewhere; if it is just a cameo appearance to establish
that a ship is approaching New York, nobody is likely to comment on
it outside of a personal blog or forum, and finding a reference will
be hard.