>"If you have an idea that you think should become part of the corpus of
>knowledge that is Wikipedia, the best approach is to arrange to have
>your results published in a peer-reviewed journal or reputable news
>outlet, and then document your work in an appropriately non-partisan
>manner."
http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/
See what I mean about the dangers of reasoning from personal
ignorance? Now I eagerly await objections that don't boil down to "but
webcomics are worse for Wikipedia than Pokemon."
(Part of the webcomics debacle was an attempt to get Snowspinner
excluded from webcomics deletion discussions because as an expert he
was obviously biased on the subject. Not in any particular direction,
but *by being an expert*.)
- d.
John Lee wrote:
>Information in trivia sections should not be there at all -- it either
>belongs elsewhere in the article, or it does not belong there at all.
>While I accept that people will just add the trivia section back (with
>more indiscriminate information), that doesn't mean the section should
>be kept. Ideally the information in it should be merged with another
>section of the article (or used as the basis for a new section), or
>removed entirely. I've never found a piece of trivia that didn't fall in
>either of the latter categories.
[[Mitchell Baker]]. Her fondness for the trapeze is in "Trivia"
because it is (it's a hobby, and it's completely irrelevant to why she
has an article). But it's trivia that keeps getting into press
articles about her. You could kludge it somewhere else, but leaving
trivia pending such kludging is IMO a much better option than just
trashing it.
On popular culture sections, I suggest a look at [[Lilith]] and
[[Lilith (disambiguation)]]. I shoved the popular culture into the
latter and, when people kept adding it to the article, I placed an
explicit pointer there ;-)
People are going to keep adding this stuff. I don't think it detracts
horribly from the encyclopedia, providing it's kept stylistically
readable within the article. Much as [[List of Pokémon by National
Pokédex number]] makes me lose the will to live, but I can tolerate
its existence in Wikipedia.
- d.
MGM wrote:
>It's not you Hall Monitor banned, but someone using the same IP address as
>you do and vandalising articles
>(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/24.66.94.140)
>Unfortunately, you get blocked because your ISP issues you the same IP every
>once in awhile. This IP has been blocked for the 12th time because it keeps
>vandalising articles. The only way you can avoid being banned too is get
>another IP address or contact your ISP abuse address internet.abuse
at sjrb.ca (or
>forward any conversation you had with them to Hall Monitor).
Do the whois - this is a shaw.ca proxy. Shaw Cable route all their
customers' web access through transparent proxies - hence GeekyBroad
seeing a different IP for her PC than for the editing: Wikipedia sees
only the proxy address.
As a wide-ranging ISP proxy, this IP should *never* be blocked for
more than very short times.
- d.
Jimmy Wales wrote:
>I think I'm going to have to take a serious look at AfD, because if it
>is this far broken, there's something seriously seriously worse about it
>than I thought.
Well, uh, yeah, that's what I've been saying for a year ;-)
I suggest first going to and participating in [[WT:AFD]], outlining
the problems and asking for AFD regulars to come up with in-house
solutions.
- d.
Hans Schroder wrote:
>Your IP address is 64.136.26.235. Please include this address, along with
>your username (if you are a registered user), in any queries you make. …."
This is the proxy address for Juno LA, and is used by 32,768 different
addresses ... I've unblocked as collateral damage, and left a
{{sharedip}} tag on the address's user page. You should be free to
edit now. Sorry about that.
- d.
Steve Bennett wrote:
>An excellent argument for why AfD should never be democracy-based (or
>believed to be that way). In these situations, you almost need someone
>to step up, say, "Look, I actually know something about entomology. I
>believe this insect is notable", wipe all the existing votes, and say
>"now, does anyone actually disagree?"
>It also seems to me that "ignorance-based debates" are not in
>themselves harmful, provided that there are mechanisms such that they
>don't drown out the informed. Everyone's worst nightmare is the 10
>pokemon fans drowning out the tenured professor in his own field. But
>does it actually happen?
It has already happened, on webcomics - a dedicated few editors worked
hard to alienate and drive off actual experts (while an actual
academic expert who's a Wikipedian tried to stop it happening), and
tried to force through that an expert could be outvoted by the proudly
ignorant. This led to Comixpedia forking the contributor base. Others
have seen this debacle and declared they want to have nothing to do
with Wikipedia while it perpetrates this sort of jawdropping idiocy,
and I'm having a very hard time convincing them otherwise. They don't
even want to use the GFDL because (2) it's complicated and unobvious
(1) it's too closely associated with Wikipedia. See past discussion on
this very list.
- d.
An editor took strong exception to my request for sources for
"popular culture" items in the article on the Statue of Liberty. One
of these items was:
"The New York Liberty, New York's professional women's basketball
team, has the Statue of Liberty as their mascot."
The editor said: "The fact that the NY Liberty b-ball team uses the
SoL as its mascot does NOT need an outside citation, for Pete's sake."
I replied that if it was all that obvious it shouldn't be that hard
to paste in a link from the team's website. Since I try to play fair,
I proceeded to go to the team's website myself to get the link.
Well, whaddaya know.
The team's mascot is, in fact, NOT the Statue of Liberty, but a dog
named Maddie, for Madison Square Garden.
According to the source, http://www.wnba.com/liberty/news/
maddie.html , Maddie is a "loveable dog... known for a unique
personality among the Liberty faithful." Now, to be honest, Maddie
does wear a verdigris-colored crown, but you will have to judge for
yourself whether it resembles the statue's; it looks to me much less
spiky, like a green version of the Burger King's crown. In any case,
my opinion is Maddie is quite canine, and not at all statuesque.
Statue-of-Libertyesque? Statue-of-Libertarian?
(The statue is indeed depicted in the team's _logo_, which probably
is why everyone assumes that it must also be the team's _mascot._)
On 27 Feb 2006 at 00:27, "Steve Bennett" <stevage(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> It also seems to me that "ignorance-based debates" are not in
> themselves harmful, provided that there are mechanisms such that they
> don't drown out the informed. Everyone's worst nightmare is the 10
> pokemon fans drowning out the tenured professor in his own field. But
> does it actually happen?
It can cut both ways... would you want a bunch of tenured professors
passing judgment as to the notability of a Pokemon-related article?
One hopes that, in general, people of all levels of expertise and
interest use some common sense in their AfD participation and pay
some heed to the writings of others with more knowledge and interest
in the particular topic on which the article is written.
--
== 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/
Absolutely. Much better than:
"the free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit" *
* Offer does not apply to vandals, trolls, people who cannot refrain
from personal attacks, people who cannot play by the rules of an
online community, blocked users, banned users or people who share an
IP with them etc...
Except s/author/editor:
"Welcome to Wikipedia, where good editors are always welcome".
-- nyenyec
Musch better than
On 2/22/06, Steve Bennett <stevage(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/22/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher(a)student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
> > We were just discussing that ... Wikipedia *doesn't* want to be "the
> > free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit". There's too much abuse, too
> > much ranting from trolls with a sense of self-entitlement, encouraged by
> > that tagline.
> >
> > I quite like the idea of "Welcome to Wikipedia, where good authors are
> > always welcome".
>
> Oh, very well said. '''Support'''
>
> Steve
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