On 26 Jul 2006 at 15:31, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:
> mboverload wrote:
>
> >I'm not sure why you're mentioning it, but I recently changed every mention
> >of Pokemon to Pok?mon.
[snip]
> A few years ago there was a big debate over whether names should include
> accents, and I believe that was settled back then. This doesn't meant
> that we don't have a few retro-luddites who would still believe that the
> results should have been different.
I guess whoever programmed the system that produces and distributes
the digest form of this list is among those "luddites", since the
digest is done in strict US-ASCII, and the accented letter above
shows up as a question mark.
--
== 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/
(I'm quoting from
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-December/033880.html)
Jimbo wrote once:
"Today, as an experiment, we will be turning off new pages creation for
anonymous users in the English Wikipedia."
This was way back in 5 Dec 2005. Has the experiment run long enough?
What sort of experiment varies the independent variable only one way?
Let's turn page creation back on for anons. We turned it off, so let's
see what happens when we turn it back on; otherwise we're simply
running on sheer blind inertia and unthinking myopia. Every month
since Dec. 2005 we should have been asking whether the costs have been
worth the benefits.
"1. Annoying anons may simply decide to create accounts and make annoying
nonsense pages anyway. This will certainly be true in some cases, but
it is an empirical question as to how many."
Quite a few. I haven't seen much of a reduction in PROD or AFD or
speedies ([[User:Dragons flight/Category tracker]] shows that Speedy
has at times reached 349 entries, and it tracks back to late July
2006).
"2. We will lose good new pages created by anons of good will. This may
cause the growth of English Wikipedia (in terms of the number of
articles) to slow a little bit. With 800,000+ articles, and
ever-increasing traffic to the website, this seems to be a worthwhile cost."
PR-wise, turning off page creation wasn't good, to say the least; it
has forced all sorts of ugly hacks to pages and annoyed many many
people (such as persons like me; one cannot even create a simple
redirect when not staging out of one's computer/account). Take a look
at the monumental failure that is AFC sometime, which turning off page
creation has forced on us. Valid, good articles are being entombed
there.
There's no time like the present. It's summer now, so dedicate
Wikipedians have plenty of time, and the September deluge is not yet
upon us; there are even more Wikipedians than ever, and more articles,
and better tools. How much have the anti-vandal tools (too many to
name now, even excluding bots) proliferated and improved since that
long-ago December?
"But preveneting [sic] anons from creating new pages is a different
matter, and it seems a worthy time to make an experiment of it."
Yes, let's. Experiments go both ways, remember...
~maru
Hi all,
I was wondering if we wanted to try and get some kind of one-sentence
slogan/summary/motto/mantra to explain exactly how authoritative
Wikipedia is and isn't, and how it should and should not be used. Two
thoughts that came to mind:
- Wikipedia is a tertiary source. (Not a primary source, not really
even a secondary source - we discuss and collate primary sources).
- Wikipedia is the first word on everything and the last word on
nothing. (We want to be the first place everyone comes to look up
*anything*, but we don't claim to be the final word on *anything*,
because we're always based on other sources which have more detail
than we do).
Comments?
Steve
On 23/08/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/23/06, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > The people who add this stuff to articles way out of proportion to the
> > actual subjects of the articles. Your task now: assume you can't hold
> > back the locust swarm with a policy edict; say something to *convince*
> > them this is not a good idea.
> Follow De's lead and retire the text that says 'anyone can edit' in
> favor of 'Good writers always welcome'?
OH YES PLEASE.
> ;)
Really! Really really!
- d.
> Yes, let's. Experiments go both ways, remember...
Oh good. I was wondering when this experiment was going to end. For purely
selfish reasons from the perspective of a mostly logged-out user, you see.
But as a rationalization, I can go with:
> > 2. We will lose good new pages created by anons of good will.
My first IP address was http://en.wikipedia.org/Special:Contributions/209.167.55.131
As you see, after briefly checking that I could, in fact, edit, I jumped right
in with article creation. What would happen if I wandered into Wikipedia today?
- The articles I created exist now, and that field has much better coverage now.
Would I have new articles to contribute?
Absolutely, there are many missing topics in that area still. Even some of the
red-links I created way back then I still haven't made blue (nor has anyone else).
- Wouldn't I just register an account?
Don't know. Hard to say what I would do. But, quite aside from the question of
whether anon creation of new articles should be allowed, have people actually
tried to logout (WHAT did he say? log OUT? Burn him!) then follow a red-link to
create an article, and follow the process through? There might be some
improvements to be made there. I have tried to be deliberately Wiki-naive, and
have wound up either lost in AfC, or correctly submitting to AfC which then
promptly gets ignored. And I don't think I was being unreasonably dense. Even if
I guess that the CORRECT choice from the article-not-found page is actually
"create an account", at the end of it I wind up back at the main page. The
obvious thing to do here is to back up in the browser history, but this doesn't
help, unless I guess that I have to back up one PAST the article-not-found page
to the original red-link page and click it again! An unlikely guess.
On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if it is precisely these obstacles
which also cuts down on the nonsense.
Regards,
Dan Mehkeri
On 25/08/06, Fastfission <fastfission(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Since I'm already writing long and unmanageable opinions about NPOV, I
> thought I'd append one more: the more I think through NPOV, the more I
> realize what a truly radical position it is.
Yes. This is what I mean when I say that it is Wikipedia's real secret
sauce, even more so than being something (almost) anyone can edit.
>It is often derided by
> people who claim that it is not possible or that it is not desirable,
> but it really does act as a powerful conceptual tool once you start to
> take it seriously as a goal. It is not the same thing as objectivity
> at all -- obviously one does not want to jettison an attempt for
> objectivity, but objectivity does not imply neutrality (I can be
> objectively non-neutral in my position on a given topic). In academic
> scholarship it is very rare that anybody tries to be, or wants to be,
> neutral: neutrality is seen as "not taking a side" in an important
> debate, and only the most disingenous or aloof intellectuals would
> think not taking a side on issues is a good, much less ethical,
> approach.
Which is what Stirling Newberry calls "POV experts" - that academics
frequently try to be bigger POV experts than each other.
> And yet I find myself trying hard to write for positions
> that I think are objectively wrong, or to point out the criticisms
> (without denigrating them) of things that I think are objectively
> correct. It is a strange exercise, one very contrary to most other
> forums for writing about and discussing issues. Beyond being a
> pragmatic tool for making a collective encyclopedia work -- which it
> does as well -- it is a very strong epistemological stance. I hadn't
> really quite realized that when I first started here, and I have only
> really begun to comprehend the depth of the stance in the last
> half-year or so. It does not surprise me that academics in particular
> have difficulty with it (and I say this as an academic).
- d.
Should there be a lower threshold for notability in cases of
disambiguation? A while ago I ran into an issue on the article for
Susan Blanchard. Here's the version I found:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Susan_Blanchard_%28actress%29&old…
As I worked on disambiguating, I found there were three American
actresses who could potentially be confused, so I split the two
mentioned above and made a disambig page:
-Susan Blanchard (actress): Notable for work on All My Children
-Susan Blanchard (socialite): Described as an actress in the press (no
credits listed) but better known for having married several famous
actors
-Susan Blanchard Ryan: Notable for the film Open Water
Susan Blanchard (socialite) was immediately nominated for speedy
deletion, under the argument that name confusion does not seem to be a
valid reason to create an article on someone who otherwise would not
merit one.
I understand the argument about Susan Blanchard (socialite) being
non-notable. However, more than half of the original article was about
her. That information didn't seem to belong on a disambiguation page,
but I didn't want to have it appear only on related pages (such as
articles on her notable husbands). Without a linked Susan Blanchard
article on the related pages, it seems the name confusion might
persist. I have run into the same problem where both people were
clearly notable, but this case seemed less clear.
I tend to be broadly inclusionist, so I would argue for separate
articles, even if one subject is far less notable, to help reduce
confusion. I can see where some would make a case for just a mention
on the disambiguation page, though. Thoughts?
Jokestress
To whomever,
I just want to tell someone how much I value the accuracy, the extent, the language choices, and the money Wikipedia has saved me (not having to go to university research libraries and paying for travel, parking and copier expenses) since I discovered Wikipedia.
To me, Wikipedia is the ultimate example of what extending the Internet to the public is all about.
Most thankfully yours,
Fr James B. D. Corbett
Akron, Ohio
FrJBDC(a)neo.rr.com
> No, you have to wait 4 days to create the new article anyway.
I do believe you can create immediately. You're maybe thinking of
semi-protection, or page moving. (Really, try logging out.)
Speaking of which, I understand the page move restriction on new accounts was a
temporary measure. Specifically, to protect against a certain person on wheels.
This person seems to have moved on, no?
> > On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if it is precisely these obstacles
> > which also cuts down on the nonsense.
> Damn straight. :) Seriously, what gets posted at AfC is sludge. And
> that's from the newbie editors who actually made the effort to wade
> their way through the process and make a submission!
>
> The only benefit in allowing anons to create articles is in stroking
> their egos long enough for them to become good editors (while deleting
> their creation in the meantime). We should attempt to quantify that
> benefit.
I assume this is based on the idea that new accounts can't create articles. If
that were true, it would be a very different story.
As it is, I don't see this as a choice between allowing or disallowing "anon"
page creation at all, since account creation is unrestricted. It's more of a
question of "how many clicks must an unregistered person go through to create a
page, and how obvious should we make it which clicks they should make?"
Regards,
Daniel Mehkeri