WikiEN-l April 2006

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

175 participants
238 discussions

Re: [WikiEN-l] Ian McKellen's article - a challenge
by Will (Zsinj) Bumgarner 23 Apr '06

23 Apr '06

Pete Bartlett wrote: >Fair use quote follows: > >"Empire: I looked you up on Wikipedia... > McKellan: I don't understand Wikipedia. I've looked myself up on it and it's thoroughly objectionable. It's just taken, as the basis of my career, an article that was written about five years ago, and why someone doesn't correct it.. is that how it's done? > Empire: Pretty much. If you want to change something, you can go on and correct it yourself. > McKellan: Oh... I suppose if you wanted to know someone's dates, or where they were born, it would be quite useful." What I don't understand is when people look themselves up and see erroneous information, they don't just go and fix it. It's as if they have something to prove by saying "Wikipedia sucks" instead of contributing to the effort and making Wikipedia better. --Zsinj

8 11

Wikipedia's two kinds of material: "derivative/compiled" and "original/group-authored."
by Daniel P. B. Smith 23 Apr '06

23 Apr '06

Wikipedia currently contains two different kinds of material. a) "Derivative/compiled." (Accurate and verifiable, but... boring). The developers of these articles act as editors, not as authors. This is material that is produced by synthesisizing, paraphrasing, and organizing published material from reliable sources. Ideally, those sources are cited. When they are, the articles are accurate and reliable. Editors play some creative role in synthesis, presentation, and deciding which facts are important. Some of the best examples of this kind of article--not the only ones, but reasonably pure illustrations of what I mean--are those that are produced by continously following unfolding news stories; for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-invasion_Iraq%2C_2003–2006. In theory, according to the verifiability policy, these are the only articles Wikipedia should contain. b) "Original/group-authored." The developers of these articles act as authors, not as editors. The result is an article that is _mostly_ written off-the-top-of-the-head from the personal knowledge of editors. When the process works, the community of editors is able to establish a meritocratic social pecking order in which the most knowledgeable manage to convince the less knowledgeable to respect their authority, and material that can muster group consensus is likely to be quite reliable _though unsourced_. (Valid _material_ does not "float to the top." In a social group, the most knowledgeable editors _may_ "float to the top.") In theory, Wikipedia should not contain any "original/group-authored" articles. They do not meet the verifiability policy, and no reader can be sure about the facts in them. On the other hand category "B" is where you find some of the material that can be found "only in Wikipedia," covering subject areas that aren't covered by other encyclopedias; you find some of the freshest and most interesting material, and some authoritative-SOUNDING and plausible answers to questions that are hard to answer elsewhere. Should we create a formal distinction between these two kinds of material? Label them separately? Have different policies coverning them?

3 2

Re: [WikiEN-l] Who wins
by Molu 23 Apr '06

23 Apr '06

Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2006 22:54:31 +0100 From: Guy Chapman aka JzG Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Who wins Message-ID: <2f0g4297pqislk26ve83lh5sgbtvaf9m8s(a)4ax.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On Thu, 20 Apr 2006 14:09:58 -0700 (PDT), you wrote: >So I wonder if it would be more pragmatic to drop these arbitary thresholds and just say "sources are required". >Each article has the best sources we can find for that topic. If the best sources are blogs then fine - >the reader is left to him/herself to determine notability based on their own frame of references. This has been suggested at WP:V but was soundly rejected as being functionally equivalent to "articles must cite sources unless you can't find any". There is a good reason that encyclopaedias typically do not document facts which cannot be verified from reliable sources: a significant proportion of them turn out to be false. Consider: you wish to promulgate a "Fred is Gay" meme (you are a not a friend of his, as we know friends of gays should not be allowed to edit Wikimedia projects). So, you set up your blogs on LiveJournal and Blogger, publish it, and then toddle off to Wikipedia to complete the writing into canon of your new shiny meme. Job done. Can you see how that might be bad? Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG Umm... No? What's so bad about it? Wikipedia has an article saying two blogs contain a sentence "Fred is Gay" and the reader draws the inference that the owner of those blogs is seriously retarded. Big deal. If it so happens that after a year T-shirts are selling reading Fred is Gay, Wikipedia was the first to document this rising star, good for Wikipedia. If it dies a quite death like so many others, Wikipedia has spent a few KBs writing an article few are interested in reading. So what? IMHO an extended interpretation of NPOV should not allow WP to judge particular sources as relaible and others as unreliable. Leave that to the reader. --------------------------------- Love cheap thrills? Enjoy PC-to-Phone calls to 30+ countries for just 2¢/min with Yahoo! Messenger with Voice.

5 5

Ian McKellen's article - a challenge
by Pete Bartlett 23 Apr '06

23 Apr '06

British actor Sir Ian McKellen has described his biography on Wikipedia as "objectionable" in an interview with film magazine Empire (full quote at end of mail). There are several things that are interesting about this case - The article used to be featured. Here is the featuring process: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Ian_McKe…. The process was a complete failure as it concentrated almost exclusively on how to correctly address him rather than the fact that article only had one source and that source was far too much about Sir Ian's sexuality rather than a true biography. - It recently got de-featured. Here is the de-featuring process: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_removal_candidates/…. Seems to be a success. Correctly identifying that biography was unbalanced and out-of-date. So we recognised that the article was poor but didn't fix it! Argh, wiki process failing! Now I see from the article talk page that we have had good correspondence with Sir Ian's webmaster in the past. So here is my challenge: Get someone or a group of people who know how to write and know about film to get the article back to Featured Status, and then get in touch with the Sir Ian through the webmaster to get his feedback on the improvements that have been made. Anyone up for the challenge? Pcb21, who will chip in where he can but can't help with the real meat of the article Fair use quote follows: "Empire: I looked you up on Wikipedia... McKellan: I don't understand Wikipedia. I've looked myself up on it and it's thoroughly objectionable. It's just taken, as the basis of my career, an article that was written about five years ago, and why someone doesn't correct it.. is that how it's done? Empire: Pretty much. If you want to change something, you can go on and correct it yourself. McKellan: Oh... I suppose if you wanted to know someone's dates, or where they were born, it would be quite useful."

2 1

Unjustified block for 3RR by User:Freakofnurture of user:SSS1108 and user:Andries regarding [[Sathya Sai Baba]]
by Andries Krugers Dagneaux 22 Apr '06

22 Apr '06

I admit that user:SSS108 and I [[user:Andries]] have been edit warring about the article [[Sathya Sai Baba]], but none of us violated the three revert rule. There are many disagreements between us, but the latest revert war was about a totally new addition and was only two reverts old, so the blocking by [[User:Freakofnurture]] with the stated reason of violating the three revert rule was completely unjustified. Can you please unblock us? Thanks in advance. Sincerely yours, Andries Krugers Dagneaux [[user:Andries]]

3 3

TONIGHT : New Haven meetup, Richter's, 9 PM
by SJ 22 Apr '06

22 Apr '06

Dear all, A few Wikipedians are at the "Access to Knowledge" conference @ Yale this weekend, and we're meeting at Richter's tonight for drinks after dinner, ca. 9 PM. Come join us! If you need directions, &c, you can reach me at (617) 529 4266. -- SJ

1 0

allow me to edit
by Siyabonga Khawula 22 Apr '06

22 Apr '06

hi Can you please allow me to edit in wikipedia because The computer says I am Blocked. can you mplease unblock me. my IP number is 146.230.128.29. Thank you -------------------------------------------------------------------- Please find our disclaimer at http://www.ukzn.ac.za/disclaimer -------------------------------------------------------------------- <<<<gwavasig>>>>

2 1

Re: [WikiEN-l] No Ethics, we do what we please, no warring, we always will win
by Thommandel＠aol.com 22 Apr '06

22 Apr '06

OK, Brad, let's see what happens. I went to the big bang, non-standard cosmologies and plasma cosmologies articles and added this: " The Doppler interpretation of the observed redshift is not without controversy. Non-standard cosmological theories dispute the Doppler assumption of the redshift, claiming instead, that the redshift is caused by intrinsic properties of interactions of light with matter. Supporting this conjecture, observations by W. Tifft show that the redshift has a periodic or quantized aspect which is not consistent with expansion.<ref>ttp://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/downloads/Tifft.pdf </ref> Previously, it has also been reported in the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, by A Sandage as his Centennial Celebration of Hubble's birth, that Hubble himself did not consider redshift as an indicator of expansion, Sandage wrote: "Hubble concluded that his observed log N(m) distribution showed a large departure from Euclidean geometry, provided that the effect of redshifts on the apparent magnitudes was calculated as if the redshifts were due to a real expansion. A different correction is required if no motion exists, the redshifts then being due to an unknown cause. Hubble believed that his count data gave a more reasonable result concerning spatial curvature if the redshift correction was made assuming no recession. " <ref>http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/diamond_jubilee/1996/sandage_hubble.html</ref> The controversy remains to be resolved. " It is now around 11:30pm CST, the test has begun. We've listened to the WikiNPOV, What will Wikipedia actually do? Tommy In a message dated 4/21/2006 2:51:10 A.M. Central Daylight Time, stevage(a)gmail.com writes: On 21/04/06, Thommandel(a)aol.com <Thommandel(a)aol.com> wrote: > Personally, I believe that the comment on the front page stating that anyone > can edit wikipedia is false advertisement. I did not find that to be the > case. What I found was that only copy that is approved by the admin and his > helpers will remain in the article. Is this the only article you've tried editing? If so, it looks like you've been very unlucky. Speaking for myself, I make fairly non-trivial changes to a large number of articles, and almost never hit resistance. And an admin using his status to enforce some particular POV would be a rare occurrence indeed... > There are no ethics in Wikiworld. Ethics to the Wikipedian is whatever we > damn well please? We don't usually talk about ethics, as ethics often refers to motivations, or whether one has properly thought through one's actions and so forth. Instead, we concentrate on actions, and the simple notion of "good faith". If you didn't get much of a response to a question about ethics, it's probably simply because we're not used to discussing Wikipedia in an "ethical" framework. > Now I read about a Wikipedian who done as much as anyone but yet was banned > forever for reverting an action of a fellow admin. In the real world that Not forever - the duration simply wasn't specified at the time. In the end it was 48 hours. > would be called Guilty until proven innocent and is in violation of every > principle America was founded on. Indeed, we spend trillions of dollars fighting Wikipedia is international - America's foundations are totally irrelevant. Also, you're incorrect - no country requires proof beyond reasonable doubt simply to lock someone up overnight. > Again I am not involved as an admin, I am a reader who cannot stand idly by > while an article in the Wikipedia is obviously slanted toward the opposing That's a pity. Sometimes it's better to let that article go, and focus your efforts on the other 900,000 or so articles sorely in need of your help. > view. It is clear to me however, that my quest is futile, Wikipedia is not > edited by the people, it is run by the admin, who take data given by the people > and tell the story their way. I see things going on that are illegal in the That's a totally unjustified impression of Wikipedia, and totally inconsistent with my experiences. I've edited around 1000 different pages, and with Wikipedia policy pages aside, I've never seen an admin throw his weight around. > real world. The admins, I suppose, are run by the office, which can take > have any suggestions for change, it is far too late for that. But Wikipedians > really should step back and look at what they are really doing. "We, here in > Wikiland, do not allow warring, therefore, when it comes to that, take > notice that we win, you lose, or else you will be banished forever." You're seriously exaggerating a lot here. Any community as large and complex as Wikipedia is likely to have a couple of sore spots. But the number of articles that work exactly as the good Wikipedian intended tham massively outnumbers them. See the "random page" link? Hit it. Now go and fix that article! Steve

1 0

Irony, noun: When a judge discovers the existence of disclaimers
by Mathias Schindler 22 Apr '06

22 Apr '06

http://www.uscfc.uscourts.gov/Opinions/Allegra/06/ALLEGRA.Campbell.pdf The articles that the Special Master culled from the Internet do not – at least on their face remotely meet this reliability requirement. Consider the item on "febrile seizures" that she added from the Dictionary of Neurology, www.explore-medicine.com. Although that website no longer exists, the exhibit introduced by the Special Master indicates that its information was drawn from Wikipedia.com, a website that allows virtually anyone to upload an article into what is essentially a free, online encyclopedia. A review of the Wikipedia website reveals a pervasive and, for our purposes, disturbing series of disclaimers, among them, that: (i) any given Wikipedia article "may be, at any given moment, in a bad state: for example it could be in the middle of a large edit or it could have been recently vandalized;" (ii) Wikipedia articles are "also subject to remarkable oversights and omissions;" (iii) "Wikipedia articles (or series of related articles) are liable to be incomplete in ways that would be less usual in a more tightly controlled reference work;" (iv) "[a]nother problem with a lot of content on Wikipedia is that many contributors do not cite their sources, something that makes it hard for the reader to judge the credibility of what is written;" and (v) "many articles commence their lives as partisan drafts" and may be "caught up in a heavily unbalanced viewpoint."

7 6

Stout monks found
by David Gerard 22 Apr '06

22 Apr '06

On 21/04/06, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Wikien-l needs two or three more mods. I think we had a pile of extra > volunteers last time, they would be most welcome first. I'll make it a > test with some requirements: The Cabal blesses and welcomes Phil Sandifer, Kelly Martin, John Lee and Steve Bennett to the hallowed sewage farms of wikien-l. All hail! I'll drop you all an email with instructions on shortly. You are now the happy recipients of any crap forwarded to wikien-l-owner as well, and let me tell you it gets special. - d.

6 7

← Newer
1
...
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
...
24
Older →

Jump to page:

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

WikiEN-l April 2006