On 17/08/06, Martin Uhlíř - týdeník Respekt <uhlir(a)respekt.cz> wrote:
You asked for a picture - I don't have a good press photo of myself! I
need to arrange one ... In the meantime, I hope you can use this:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/David_gerard_and_akardy_…
It's Arkady Rose (another Wikipedia user) and me at a Wikipedia meetup
in London in September 2005. The photographer is Caroline Ford and the
photo is freely reusable under any of GFDL, CC-by-sa 1.0, CC-by-sa 2.0
and CC-by-sa 2.5 - so if you note the photographer's name and that
it's licensed under Creative Commons by-sa 1.0, 2.0 and 2.5, that
should satisfy all copyright requirements at no cost to you.
(cc'd to Caroline)
> If you have time, please allow me one or two more questions:
> Do you think that Britanica considers Wikipedia to be serious competition?
> Are they afraid of Wikipedia?
I think they behave as though they are afraid of Wikipedia. This is
unfortunate, because they spend a lot of time and effort fighting
Wikipedia rather than working on and selling their own encyclopedia.
They don't have to act this way - compare to Brockhaus, which is the
German encyclopedia with the same quality and reputation as
Britannica. Brockhaus seem unsure of what to make of Wikipedia, and
don't seem to like it much, but they are at least talking to people
from the German Wikipedia and from Wikimedia Deutschland (the
German-based Wikimedia nonprofit).
The Encyclopedia Britannica reallly is the best in the English
language for both quality and consistency of quality - those of us who
work on the English Wikipedia are big fans of Britannica and aspire to
being as good as Britannica. It's the gold standard we work to.
It would be in the best interests of the readers for the high-quality
encyclopedias to continue to exist workably and coexist with the
Wikipedia model. And Britannica is very cheap on DVD now - they had a
special offer earlier this year where US customers could get the
DVD-ROM for US$25. Imagine that shelf of books for US$25!
> Then I would need to know you role in Wikipedia to characterize you. You are
> described as sysadmin, but I think that it is not your only role in
> Wikipedia. Is that right?
I'm a sysadmin in my day job, but I'm actually not one on Wikipedia!
My work on Wikipedia is editing and organisational.
My user page lists all my different jobs around Wikimedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Gerard
* I'm an editor and administrator on English Wikipedia, and I
administer several en:wp-related mailing lists.
* I'm a UK press contact for the Wikimedia Foundation.
* I'm one of the people working on starting Wikimedia UK - to be a
UK-based nonprofit for furthering the aims of Wikimedia. Wikimedia UK
has put in its application for charitable status and is currently
waiting to hear back from the Charity Commissioner.
- thanks, David.
Cool Cat recently created an article called Starfleet
Uniforms<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfleet_Uniforms>,
and it was nominated for deletion as cruft and OR.
The screencaps/promo photos in the article, IMO, acted as a reputable
source. I mean, how else (canonically) are you going to know about the
uniform switch between TOS and TNG? Using a book is not canonical, and
therefore is surely not [[WP:V]].
As for fancruft, how is an article about Starfleet uniforms fancruft. In
some people's opinion, any article to do with any fictional is fancruft. But
is the article on Jean-Luc Picard fancruft? I think not.
Your thoughts?
--
Joe Anderson
[[User:Computerjoe]] on en, fr, de, simple, Meta and Commons.
> From: "MacGyverMagic/Mgm" <macgyvermagic(a)gmail.com>
>
> I think it's only deletionist when you delete such claims that
> could be true
> instead of giving people the chance to verify it. Only when you can
> falsify
> it, it can be removed.
Once a "citation needed" tag is in place, there's no need to do
anything in a hurry. The reader is adequately warned, other editors
are informed.
Depending on the situation, I will usually let them sit for a week to
several months. I'll usually make at least a quick, half-assed effort
to find a source myself before removing it. And when I do remove it,
I don't just delete it, I put it on the talk page.
Not infrequently, someone will find a source and take it out of the
talk page and put it back in the article. I love it when that happens.
The people I don't understand are the people who object to the tag
being placed in the first place. I'd be all in favor of trying to
find a less obtrusive tag, but, yes, I sometimes think the people who
complain about "citation needed" tags are using it as a mask for
opposition to the verifiability policy itself.
For your interest - answers I just gave a journalist. Corrections welcomed.
Do we have a Czech Wikipedia press contact? If so, they should get in
touch with the journalist too - something about these questions leads
me to think the writer is thinking of Wikipedia is just the English
Wikipedia.
- d.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>
Date: 16-Aug-2006 16:27
Subject: Re: wikipedia interview
To: Martin Uhlíř - týdeník Respekt <uhlir(a)respekt.cz>
On 16/08/06, Martin Uhlíř - týdeník Respekt <uhlir(a)respekt.cz> wrote:
> I am a journalist working for the Czech political magazine Respect Weekly
> (www.respekt.cz), based in Prague, Czech Republic. I am working on a story
> about Wikipedia now and I would like to ask you few questions. Do you think
> you would have time to respond? Or should I rather call you? My deadline is
> Friday. The questions are:
I'll answer them as best I can right now, and will be happy to answer
in more detail as you need it.
> - The Wikimedia Foundation which runs Wikipedia has 5 paid employees. Is it
> true that all other participants of the Foundation's projects, e.g. all
> contributors to Wikipedia, work for free?
Yes, almost all Wikipedia contributors and administrators are
volunteers - including Jimmy Wales, who founded the project and still
leads it. I think some are paid by other companies (e.g. some of the
system administrators). But Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects are
built almost entirely on the work of volunteers.
> - Who created all the software which is needed to run Wikipedia? Were it
> paid programmers?
The Foundation employs Brion Vibber and Tim Starling as software
developers and Wikimedia system administrators. The Mediawiki software
itself is open source and is developed by a pool of mostly volunteer
contributors. The Foundation also has several volunteer system
administrators.
The wiki software is called MediaWiki. A page about its history is
here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_history
When Wikipedia started in January 2001, it ran on UseMod, a program
that already existed and was in use on many other wikis. (This is now
known as the "Phase I" software.)
In January 2002, a new version of the software (using PHP and with
data stored in a MySQL database) was written by Magnus Manske
specifically for Wikipedia, for greater scalability and functionality
(the "Phase II" software). This was used until late 2002 or early
2003, I think.
Around this time, Lee Daniel Crocker rewrote the software again, for
even more scalability and functionality (the "Phase III software").
Over 2003, Brion Vibber gradually became the lead developer. This
third version of the software was named MediaWiki in July 2003. The
software has been developed from this codebase since then.
The Mediawiki software is open source and free software, free for
anyone to use; and many websites use it, and many organisations and
companies use it internally. Its page is http://www.mediawiki.org/ .
> - What are the main incentives which drive so many contributors of Wikipedia
> to work for free? Some people say that for example admins and other
> high-ranking editors do it because they can exert control over others.
Most volunteers work on Wikipedia because they like the mission of the
project: to provide good free encyclopedias and other related
information sources, that others can freely reuse.
I do it because I like contributing to a collection of knowledge which
will be of use to others. I'm particularly pleased when something I've
written is used by others. Any project this size will also need
administration, an organisational structure, public relations and so
on.
An old Wikipedia page on why people edit it is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Who,_Why%3F
Sometimes people attribute an admin's actions against them to a sheer
wish for control over others, but I think this is largely erroneous in
assuming bad faith of the admins in question, who pretty much all
believe sincerely in the mission of the project. Of course, some
people are less good at working with others than other people might
be, and working with thousands of volunteers effectively is
intrinsically very difficult! Volunteer motivation is powerful but
very difficult to manage, because ultimately one doesn't have control
over a volunteer's actions - they have to want to do what you want
them to do. That is, you have to be convincing and motivating.
> - Do you consider having advertising on Wikipedia pages?
This is not expected ever to happen. The idea has been strongly
rejected by the community every time it is raised. In fact, a few
years ago, a lot of contributors to the Spanish Wikipedia left
Wikipedia.org to form another free encyclopedia project, Enciclopedia
Libre - because advertising on Wikipedia was even discussed!
Arguments for advertising are that we would make tremendous amounts of
money, and it would pretty much solve Wikipedia's funding problems.
Arguments against are that introducing advertising would lead to a lot
of the volunteers leaving immediately (I think this is the strongest
argument against) and that we want to keep ourselves completely
editorially independent of advertising.
The cost of no advertising for us is that we have trouble keeping up
with the server hardware demands of being the no. 17 website (Alexa
rating) in the world. All other organisations in the top 20 have
proper funding and a large technical staff! So instead of
inconveniencing the readers and editors with advertising, we end up
inconveniencing them with occasional server slowness, overload or
unavailability. The readers and editors seem to consider this a lesser
evil than advertising.
> - To improve the editorial control, Wikipedia has been thinking recently
> about having stable versions of articles that are considered to be finished,
> while further discussions about the content may happen elsewhere. Is it
> working this way now? I know that some articles are locked, but I am not
> sure if it is the same thing.
Locking is different from stable versions. Articles are locked to
prevent vandalism or other problematic editing. Although we prefer
semi-protecting articles rather than locking completely - this means
that people can only edit the article if they are logged in and have
had the account a few days. But we prefer to avoid even this where
possible.
It's possible for the Wikipedia model (free for all to edit, neutral
point of view) to produce a good finished product - the German
Wikipedia has done three released versions, on CD-ROM and DVD-ROM.
This proves that the Wikipedia model can produce a real encyclopedia
in product form that people will pay money for.
So the problem is then to get the other language Wikipedias to
releasable quality, or a subset of a given encyclopedia - for example,
not all of the English Wikipedia might be of release quality, but
perhaps a subset with good coverage of topics can be brought to
release quality.
Many models have been proposed for this, but I think it's unlikely the
volunteer community will want to have articles be locked for stability
- it's far too useful having the website be the live working draft
version of all articles.
Possibilities that have been proposed include having a separate
website for stable versions, or a link at the top of the article to an
agreed stable version - so that people wanting a good version can go
to that, or they can see the very latest version on the page itself.
I know that on the English Wikipedia it's still the subject of much
debate; I don't know what the state of debate is on other language
Wikipedias.
> Thanks a lot for your help.
I hope this has been of use to you! If you have any more questions,
please email me, or if necessary my phone number is +44 (7733) 223
584.
- thanks, David.
I have just completed an updated Talk page for the account MyWikiBiz. I
would very much like to see an intelligent, civil discussion of the whole
"Paid to edit" issue that MyWikiBiz.com seems to have set off. I have
constructed what I think is a good format for that dialogue at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:MyWikiBiz
I believe that this is an excellent opportunity to determine what is truly
best for the Wikipedia community, then to put it before the Arbitration
Committee and Jimmy Wales.
Kindly,
Greg
P.S. I hope that this post gets through moderation. If I've done something
wrong, please let me know.
--
Gregory Kohs
Founder, MyWikiBiz.com
thekohser(a)gmail.com
Cell: 302.463.1354
"maru dubshinki" wrote
> In comparison to normal human writing, this stuff's positively antipodean.
That would be why Gerard goes for it. I hear their screens scroll the other way, Down Under.
Charles
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Sorry if this is something I should know already.
I find it tedious to keep watch over my talk pages at en.wiki,
commons, wikiquote, etc. I was thinking that a nice facility would
be if all my talk pages could be in my watchlist at en.wiki.
Then whenever I'm in en.wiki, which is most of the time, I will
see that one of my other talk pages has been editted.
Is this possible? Plausible?
Zero.
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An article named [[Characters in the Animal Crossing series]], which
was crufty and about characters in a Nintendo video game, got listed
in June for deletion by [[User:A Man In Black]]. That user cited its
game-guide nature as a reason for its deletion. The article passed the
AfD with a consensus to "keep", about 7 users to 2.
Less than a month later, [[User:Aaron Brenneman]] replaced the
article's contents with a redirect to [[Animal Crossing]], the article
on the first game in the series. He cited on the talk page his reasons
for doing this as being: "no sources, multiple clean up tags, better
dealt with in parent article, unencyclopedic tone".
This redirection was left alone for almost a month, until [[User:A
Link to the Past]], one of the voters in the AfD, noticed the
redirection and reverted it. This led to a revert war with the
original deletion nominator, A Man In Black, who seemed keen to
enforce this redirection which had accomplished what his failed AfD
did not.
Upon my questioning of him about it, A Man In Black seemed nonchalant
about this redirection ignoring consensus reached on the AfD, saying
that the article is substandard (etc) and the AfD consensus should be
effectively ignored, in favour of his own personal opinion about its
encyclopedic nature (or lack thereof). I encouraged him to start
another AfD, but he said he did not want it to be deleted, simply
redirected.
Which brings me to the main reason for this email (thank you for
reading this far, all 3 of you!). Deleting an article with a strong
"keep" AfD vote is clearly against consensus and therefore a violation
of deletion policy. But is changing the article into a redirect to be
considered effectively the same as a deletion, for these purposes?
Stories about AfDs failing (for no consensus) because votes are evenly
split between "redirect" and "delete" are absurd, because all of the
voters clearly do not want the article to continue to exist in its
present form.
Surely the opposite can also be said of a "keep" consensus AfD: most
of the voters plainly want the article to continue to exist as an
article, not as a redirect and not deleted.
~Mark Ryan
The press concentrate on the wiki method and editability as the most
amazing thing about Wikipedia.
But I think NPOV is possibly a more important innovation. Other
sources aim to explain the view they hold or to be authoritative; NPOV
describes the views and has whatever authority that confers.
I'm sorely lacking in snappy quotes, though. I ask your assistance:
Explain NPOV in a sentence.
Two sentences if you have to. But we need something that's not only
accurate and complete, but shows it's obviously the right thing once
explained.
This is what I said in an email interview a few months ago. Note it's
horribly long-winded because I couldn't think of a short way to put
it. Your suggestions are most welcomed.
"One of the keys to Wikipedia's success in my mind is the Neutral Point
of View. I think this is actually our 'secret sauce.' Rather than
advocate something or hold it to be the Truth (capital T), it tries to
describe views of the truth per their relevance. This is an editorial
judgement call, and perfect neutrality is of course an unachievable
goal, but I do think it provides a good editorial compass for us. And
neutral-point-of-view writing on subjects seems to be drastically
rare. That's something Wikipedia does that no-one else in fact has as
a key goal. One of my specialist subjects is Scientology (I am
apparently what passes for an expert critic) and there's nearly no
neutral writing on the subject outside Wikipedia - critical sites are
detailed but really impassioned, Church sites are low-key but miss
lots of stuff the critics consider important; the coverage in
Wikipedia, by writing neutrally with high-quality and verifiable
references, is often very good. It's far from perfect, but it's an
interesting thing we do, other than the wiki work method, that is
actually *new*. NPOV is basically how 20,000 active editors with
wildly divergent views can keep from being at each others' throats.
(Most of the time ;-)"
- d.
