This is in response to the somewhat silly English-language press we've
had lately. I'll be sending copies of this out to the sources of
recent articles on the subject that got it precisely backwards.
The following is, I understand, technically accurate, based on text
from Amgine, Phillipp Birkin (de:wp), Jimbo and Mathias Schindler (I
think), and comcom discussions (press relations being part of that
job). Corrections welcomed - you have about five minutes.
(and geni, I expect you to ask how this makes the new patrollers' jobs
easier - by having what's effectively a feed of new-editor and
anonymous edits, is what I was thinking of.)
- d.
"Approved" versions on Wikipedia FAQ
* What is changing?
We want to open up editing without damaging the reader's experience.
We want to be more wiki and let editors edit freely, which is where
all the good things come from. At present a small percentage of
articles (a few hundred out of 1.5 million on the English language
Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/) are locked or partially locked
from editing. We want to open these up. But Wikipedia is a top 20
website (Alexa ratings, no. 17 on 3 month average; no. 15 on 30 August
2006 - http://www.alexa.com/), so we must keep it good for the
readers.
The new feature will mean that edits from new or anonymous editors
will be delayed before being shown to readers - they will see a
'flagged OK' version by default, with a link to the live version. The
idea is to enhance the *reading* experience, and free us to enhance
the *editing* experience. If vandalism can't be seen by the general
public, there will be less motivation to vandalise.
Anonymous or new-editor edits will need to be approved by a logged-in
editor. Of the thousands of editors on the large Wikipedias, many
concentrate on checking revisions and dealing with odd changes and
vandalism - this will assist their work and we do not expect new
delays.
We are also considering a related feature to flag particular versions
of articles as being of high quality. This is to a different end: a
high-quality finished product. This will likely be tested first on the
German language Wikipedia (http://de.wikipedia.org/), which has
already had three stable editions released on CD and DVD, which have
sold quite well. If the feature works there, it may be used on other
language Wikipedias.
These features are not finished, so we don't have a lot of fine detail
as to how it will all work as yet. But we hope this change will allow
us to do things such as open up the George W. Bush article or even the
front page itself to full unrestricted editing.
* When was this proposed?
Jimmy Wales asked for a time-delay feature for casual readers in late
2004; after very fast editing on the Indian Ocean tsunami produced a
very high-quality article
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake) very
quickly, but with some highly visible vandalism; we've hotly discussed
how to achieve stable high-quality editions of Wikipedia since almost
the start of the project, in 2001.
"David Gerard" wrote
>
> arXiv.org is reputed to perform a useful role. How's it look from your
> view as an academic mathematician?
Experts writing for experts. Even within the field this stuff is hardly readable.
Charles
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On 30/08/06, Steve Summit <scs(a)eskimo.com> wrote:
> It really is a case of "be careful what you wish for", isn't it?
> We were quite pleased over at en.wiktionary when Leon turned
> stats on there for us a couple of days previously, but the joy
> is now mixed with rue as we learn that among our most popular
> entries, so far, are consistently MILF, penis, fuck, masturbate,
> and breasts.
What it tells us is that it is absolutely vital that said articles be
of the highest possible quality, and in fact should be brought to
Featured Article status as absolutely soon as possible. (Seriously.)
> (It's true, though; clearly we'll all want to wait weeks or
> months before we can imagine that the stats in general aren't
> swamped by fixations du jour.)
Fixations du jour are fine, at least spread over a month. If that many
people are interested in a given article over a whole month, that's a
significant topic and we have no real excuse for not having it be
featured or near-featured quality. We're no. 17 on Alexa 3-month
average, no. 15 today - that many readers are *significant*.
- d.
> Calls to CITE are too often just smokescreen for a weak
> or incivil or POV argument,
And objections to CITE are sometimes just smokescreens for
disagreement with the verifiability policy itself.
On 30/08/06, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On 30/08/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > I think the premise of the FAQ is off in its current form. I am
> > worried by the "we" part, meaning the mythical monolithic Wikipedia
> > community. (ie. Why not make this an opportunity to show that
> > Wikipedias have their distinct culture and are at different stages of
> > development?)
> In this case because it was an immediate response to the Bill Thompson
> and Platinax articles. I was trying very hard to keep it *really
> simple* and clear because journalists don't have time to read press
> releases closely - they have to be able to get your message by
> skimming.
Further, I should note: as far as the English-language press is
concerned, all of Wikipedia and all of Wikimedia is the English
Wikipedia, at http://www.wikipedia.com/ , no matter I do my best to
say otherwise every time I speak to them ...
I made a point of mentioning the de: release versions here so as to
put across that en: may be bigger, but de: is arguably more advanced
in some ways. Other press, I try to mention local language Wikipedias,
which are usually quite small and offer an interesting contrast to the
huge Wikipedias.
- d.
"David Gerard" wrote
> OTOH, I've often wondered if setting up an academic wiki would be
> something to attract people.
The concept is probably sound. The trouble would be that academia values (over-values, we might say) the expert in a strictly delimited area. So where would the good syntheses come from?
Charles
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> Message: 7
> Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 12:59:31 -0400
> From: "Gregory Maxwell" <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Does openness dull the bleeding edge?
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> <e692861c0608310959l42cc7210nf00670afbde9d7ee(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> On 8/31/06, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > We need a task force with a neutral name who will give these articles
> > some proper respect and make them not *just* dumping grounds. (See
> > [[Nuclear weapons in popular culture]] for a fantastic example - it's
> > all about the social effects.) Something like WikiProject Popular
> > Culture Lists. That way those who like them and those who hate them
> > can work together to make sure they at least don't suck.
>
> Ha! Because so many _in_popular_culture article are dumping
> grounds... I had assumed that all were.
>
> It's a good point though. Popular culture deserves respectable
> coverage too, it's not junk ... even if most junk is about popular
> culture.
A group of people who know what they're doing working on
in_popular_culture articles would be excellent (I might, ever so
humbly, suggest that I could be one such person... but maybe I'm just
a fancruft-adding idiot). The point is, these articles *could* be
something other than piles of feces. In some cases, just deleting them
and starting over might be the best solution... but most just need
pruning of subtrivia and otherwise cleaning up.
Part of the problem, of course, is a lack of people who know what
they're doing and have some expertise in the subject area... hey,
maybe Pokemon and particle physics articles aren't so different after
all. :P
~~Sean
> And besides, there's no point telling French people to "ignore all
> rules" - they do that by default anyway.
I notice there's no page on English Wikipedia titled "make up new rules", or
"tell other people what to do".
I'm just saying.
> <g,d,r>
Cheers.
Daniel
G'day Ian,
> I'm considering going postal and go on a rampage through the wikipedia
> arbitrarily deleting stuff; you know, entire articles, paragraphs,
> sentences. It's not vandalism if it's a POLICY, right? ;-)
Actually, following policy, if you do so in a particularly stupid
manner, can get you in far, *far* more hot water than ignoring it
completely. This is because ArbCom, for the most part, has a Clue.
Long may it continue so.
Cheers,
--
Mark Gallagher
"What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse