WikiEN-l February 2006

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184 participants
279 discussions

Re: [WikiEN-l] Here's an interesting one
by David Gerard 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

>It depends on what you mean by "junk article". If it's an article that >cannot possibly prove useful to a future editor, then yes, it should be >deleted. Most stubs aren't in this category, though. >If it's an article that is not good *now* as an article, but might be >useful to a future editor, then it shouldn't be deleted---instead we >should develop some sort of labeling system so a reader who stumbles >onto it is properly notified that this article is very much a >work-in-progress and not yet ready for serious use as a reference. Perhaps we could put a template of some sort on it. How about {{stub}}? We could develop a system of subtypes if that category gets too full to work with. - d.

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A quick references survey
by Steve Bennett 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

[also originally sent yesterday but didn't seem to get through the moderator, perhaps due to my mail server?] Hi all, I'd like to undertake a more thorough survey of wikipedia referencing standards, but I've started with a quick "pilot" study. Methodology: Click "random article". Discard results which are not articles. Count the number of "external links", "references", "paragraphs". Terms: A bit fuzzy, I'm treating a web page which gives more information as an "external link", and a page or book or whatever which is claimed to be the source of the information (or is clearly the source) as a "reference". Paragraphs are, well, paragraphs, but it must be said that longer articles generally have longer paragraphs than shorter ones do. So lines would probably be better... Preliminary results: Sample size:30 pages, of which 17 were stubs. Number with no links: 21 Number with no references: 24 Average number of links: 0.67 Average number of references: 0.54 I found very few book references, one of which was patently false ("James Maxwell's book of James Maxwells not as cool as me, by James Maxwell"). Similarly a list of newspaper articles turned out to all have been written by the subject (a journalist). One page (out of 30) actually gave ISBN references (Chepstow Bridge). Conclusions: None yet, really, since the methodology isn't very solid and the sample set is small. But notably: More than half the articles were stubs. Hardly any articles had any real "references". Most of the external links were band websites, company websites etc. Of the few refernces, one was blatantly false and a few were "bad". So it's probably a little early to be claiming that all material added to Wikipedia MUST be sourced or it will be removed. Because based on this, only around 15% of Wikipedia would survive. (Which is more than I would have predicted). Any suggestions for improved methodology? It might be nice to harness the wikipedia population to collect some more general article quality metrics... Steve

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Using material on Wiki with permission, but with restrictions
by STEFAN CLAUDIU TIULEA 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

This will be a rather long e-mail and probably boring to many. I would like to know two things: 1. As I was reading an article about the murder of Kitty Genovese, I encountered a term called "Prosocial behavior". This was, supposedly, different from altruism in the sense that it was the very act of doing good - unless I misunderstood it wrong. Anyhow, I wanted to check this on Wiki, but couldn't find any info. I then googled the term using quotes and found 117,000 hits and another 23,000 for the British spelling for "behavior" - with an "u". That makes it 140,000 hits for the exact term -- and not the words by themselves. I decided to create a stub until I came across an article that described the term in a very detailed matter. At the end of the article, it said: "This paper was developed by a student taking a Philanthropic Studies course taught at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. It is offered by Learning To Give and the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. This page may be reproduced for educational, noncommercial uses only, all other rights reserved." I then thought of Wiki that is using articles from Britannica prior to 1911, or so, but I understood the difference being that the material released by Britannica was released without any copyrights reservations, whereas this article did reserve their copyrights. However, this doesn't seem to violate anything on Wiki per se, because Wiki qualifies as both non-commercial and educational -- however, other sites that mirror Wiki and are commercial (Answers, etc), do not qualify to those terms. To my ears, this sounds as a dilemma. Can we publish material that is restricted as non-commercial, but which will be made "commercial" by other mirror sites, such as Answers? I know that certain photos are uploaded on Wiki and which have similar restrictions on them as this one. 2. Another thing that I would like to know, and which relates to this case, is whether we can credit the article to the author who wrote it. I know this is an unusual procedure, but think of the benefits: it could encourage great editors, who may want to have their work publicized, to make their great work available on Wiki! It would probably come with troubles, too, as many others would also want recognition for their articles, but perhaps exceptions can be made? I know, for instance, that on E. Britannica, they have articles written by different people which sometimes are being credited at the end of the article. Any thoughts? User:Anittas __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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RE: [WikiEN-l] US Congress Staff Editing Wikipedia
by Steve Bennett 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

My reaction seems to be unique so far. I would think it much better for the Wikipedia project that we do not publicise that we know exactly who is doing this. It is fascinating to watch the congress staffers at work. It is just a pity that shortly they will smarten up and be doing this with proper accounts via different IPs. If there have only been a thousand changes so far, most of which were positive, this does not seem to be a "major" problem. Certainly not compared to the information we're gleaning from this. So, by all means, let's continue to revert the particularly obnoxious changes, but asking them to "stop it" will simply make it invisible. Steve

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The deletion paradox
by Steve Bennett 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

[originally sent yesterday but didn't seem to get through the moderator, perhaps due to my mail server?] Hi all, This is the deletion paradox as I see it: 1) Wikipedia has nearly a million articles. A very large number of them are crap. The more articles we delete, the better. 2) Deleting articles causes unhappiness and tension. The more articles we delete, the more unhappiness and tension. Anyone have a solution? Steve

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Re: US Congress Staff Editing Wikipedia
by Michael Snow 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

Tim Starling wrote: >Michael Snow wrote: > > >>Tim Starling wrote: >> >> >>>Michael Snow wrote: >>> >>> >>>>Bryan Derksen wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>>>My secret dream is to see the United States Congress hauled up before >>>>>the Arbitration Committee. Maybe we could get them to pass clearer >>>>>fair-use legislation as part of their parole. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>Clearer fair use legislation is not likely to do us any good. What we >>>>want is *more generous* fair use legislation. >>>> >>>> >>>US fair use legislation is already among the most generous in the >>>world. Coupled with US-centric >>>Wikipedia policy, this has the effect that anyone attempting to >>>distribute Wikipedia offline outside >>>the US risks being sued for copyright infringment. I'd prefer it if US >>>fair use legislation was >>>brought into line with the rest of the world, i.e. made more >>>restrictive not less. >>> >>> >>You mean this seriously? You'd rather make fair use in the US more >>restrictive than make fair use/dealing/practice/whatever in other >>countries less restrictive? >> >> >We were talking about what we'd like the Congress to do, not WIPO. Come to think of it, there's a >step Congress could take towards harmonization that would be more useful for us: to reduce the term >of copyright to the Berne Convention minimum of life + 50 years. > > Indeed, that I could go for, even if it isn't hardly enough. We could really do without Sonny Bono's legacy. --Michael Snow

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IMG/ALT double vision etc.
by Dan Jacobson 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

Your IMG/ALT code produces double vision for users who don't use the images: $ lynx http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_stop A typical bus stop in Singapore. These bus stops are all flag stops. Enlarge A typical bus stop in Singapore. These bus stops are all flag stops. P.S., Often one must have to click a link to find out what some acronym is all about. E.g., ASBO on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-circuit_television. But we might already be offline so can't click. This 'star of life' is confusing for non image using users: $ lynx -dump http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_hormone|grep -i star [47]Star of life This [48]medical article is a [49]stub. You can 47. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Star_of_life2.png

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Here's an interesting one
by Daniel R. Tobias 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

On 31 Jan 2006 at 15:13, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: > I don't agree with your perception of the balance. An incorrect > deletion of an article is nearly nothing to us -- it can be undeleted > instantly by any admin. ...and then likely re-deleted by yet another admin, and then precipitate a big, acrimonious battle between proponents and opponents of keeping the article, possibly with attempted action taken against the undeleting admin as being a "rogue" who disrespected rules and process. -- == 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/

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Policy on putting email addresses on wiki pages
by Daniel R. Tobias 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

On 31 Jan 2006 at 13:04, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On 1/31/06, Tom Steinberg <tom(a)tomsteinberg.co.uk> wrote: > > > > Is it permissable to put email addresses on wikipedia, if they're > > already public? > > Of course it is! How on earth are people to be able to communicate > with one another if their email addresses are hidden? > > I profess profound distaste for the practice of concealing, mangling, > and distorting email addresses. I myself have had an email address on > my userpage for well over a year and can count the amount of spam that > has gotten though on the fingers of one hand, so there's no excuse. Me too... I've got a strong dislike of all the various types of address munging used online, which I find extremely bothersome and unaesthetic; and I haven't changed this opinion despite getting spam by the ton (metric or imperial). This includes the whole panoply of techniques from turning it into an image, spelling it out in increasingly creative ways (people seem to find "user at something dot net" too simple, so they come up with ever more convoluted ways of saying it, like "username 'user' with an at sign followed by the hostname in the top level domain 'net' of 'something'), or messed-up addresses where they have to tell you to "Remove the NOSPAM", and so on. -- == 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/

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WikiEN-l February 2006