I have been arguing for a while that the disambiguation by surname is a very special case. Now, a rash of users misapplying the WP:MOSDAB 'rules' (they are merely suggestions) are starting to delete and prod lists by surname.
I need hardly say that this kind of pedantry is completely negative for the navigation of enWP. Please can we urgently have some guidelines that apply so that what is going on at [[Allen (surname)]] and its Talk need not be repeated.
Charles
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Sorry for the late notice, but this may be interesting to folks on this list.
I will be hosting a live Skypecast of a conversation/interview with
Brad Patrick and Danny Wool of the Wikimedia Foundation on Friday,
August 25, 2006 at 11 am EST. All are welcome to join (using Skype),
and also to chime in with questions. Find details on the Skypecast
here.
Full details:
http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2006/08/24/skypecast-wikipedia-conversation-f…
Skypecast details:
https://skypecasts.skype.com/skypecasts/skypecast/detailed.html?id_talk=290…
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
LONG: I'm in St. Petersburg, Florida, as part of research on a book
about Wikipedia, and wanted to interview both Brad and Danny. I
figured, why don't we do a "radio-like" show with us in the Wikimedia
Foundation offices, and community members can chime in as well? Brad
Patrick is the general counsel and interim executive director of the
WMF, and Danny Wool is a longtime Wikipedian and holds the position of
grants officer. Among the things we'll discuss (but we want audience
participation):
What does the WMF office do? Who are the people in the office?
What is the difference between Wikimedia and Wikipedia?
What happens on a day to day basis in the office?
Where are the Wikimedia servers?
What can the WMF staff do to help the Wikimedia projects?
What are the challenges for the future for WMF?
Please feel free to add comments/questions here, or listen live via
Skype and you can "Request the microphone" just like a radio call-in
show. We will try to let as many participants chime in.
The time was chosen so that it occurs when most folks are awake - 11pm
in East Asia, 9pm in Moscow, 4/5pm in Europe, 11am in Eastern US, 8am
in Western US. If you cannot join online, I plan to make a podcast
available.
Caveat: This is the first Skypecast we're hosting so please be patient
if at 11am we are still working out some kinks.
I think we need to be very clear in a lot of different places that PR
firms editing Wikipedia is something that we frown upon very very
strongly. The appearance of impropriety is so great that we should make
it very very strongly clear to these firms that we do not approve of
what they would like to do.
It is all well and good to say, well, it is ok so long as they remain
neutral, but if they really want to write neutral articles, they can do
so, on their own websites, and release the work under the FDL, and
notify Wikipedians who are totally independent.
Additionally, it is always appropriate to interact on the talk pages of
articles. If a PR firm is not happy about how something is presented
about their client, they can identify themselves openly on the talk
page, and present well-reasoned arguments and additional information and
links.
Of course it is always going to be the case that unethical practitioners
may get involved in inappropriate behavior, but I think this is no
argument for simply accepting it. Rather, it is a strong argument for
asking people to do this the right way: transparently and allowing
independent editors to make the actual editing decisions.
--Jimbo
The Cunctator sez:
> I have to say that this:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Curry%27s_paradox&oldid=458475
>
> is pretty clearly the work of a troll, trying to convince us that
> black is white and that God doesn't exist.
I was nearly killed by a speeding cab at a zebra crossing.
I am not making this up.
en:wp article 1,000,000 was four months ago. en: is already over
1,300,000. Two million will happen by April at latest, probably
earlier.
:-O
This may be a useful number to mention when asked about Jimbo's
comments on quality rather than quantity!
What's the new stuff been? Is there any broad characterisation we can
apply? I've been doing a lot of article work recently and may be
responsible for ten or twenty of them ;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics
- d.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succubus
I quite like the tidy "References to succubi in modern times" section.
There's just a single sentence on each reference, with the name of the
TV show or whatever in bold. I would not be ashamed to see more
sections like this.
Steve
On 19/08/06, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I do so wish people would stop trying to legislate cluefulness. Read
> [[m:Instruction creep]] until you understand why.
And I see someone has added a beautiful and oh so apposite quote to
[[m:instruction creep]]:
Process is an embedded reaction to prior stupidity. When I was CTO
of a web design firm, I noticed in staff meetings that we only ever
talked about process when we were avoiding talking about people. "We
need a process to ensure that the client does not get half-finished
design sketches" is code for "Greg fucked up." The problem, of course,
is that much of this process nevertheless gets put in place, meaning
that an organization slowly forms around avoiding the dumbest
behaviors of its mediocre employees, resulting in layers of gunk that
keep its best employees from doing interesting work, because they too
have to sign The Form Designed to Keep You From Doing The Stupid Thing
That One Guy Did Three Years Ago.
- Wikis, Grafitti, and Process, Clay Shirky, 2003-08-01
- d.
"David Gerard" wrote
>I think even strong supporters of [[David Icke]]
> would have a hard time seriously arguing the point, for example.
It was once pointed out to me that, pedantically speaking, pejorative implies position B in an A/B pair, where the denotation is roughly the same but the connotation is that B is worse. Or something. Well, it wasn't explained like that, but 'pejorative' once was like a worse type of comparative.
In that light, anyway, I think 'conspiracy theorist' is not necessarily a pejorative. It applies to anyone who postulates a (successful, hidden) conspiracy. Would 'cartel theorist' be a bad thing to call someone who postulates cartels? All those non-Stratfordian Shakespeare theorists postulate unlikely, hidden things; but accept labels saying that they think conventional literary history is just wrong.
I think the pejorative forms of 'conspiracy theorist' include 'barking conspiracy theorist', 'anti-Masonic nutter and conspiracy theorist' and so on.
Charles
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Hi Kelly,
I've read your email on wikien-l. I'd be very interested in your
presentation. Is there a way I could access it online?
Thanks,
nyenyec
On 8/21/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> At my Wikimania presentation ("Does Consensus Scale?") one participant
> brought up the consensus building methodolgy used at Apache; someone
> else during Wikimania (Lessig, perhaps) mentioned IETF "rough
> consensus". My counterpoint to both of these suggestions (and which I