WikiEN-l September 2006

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

137 participants
216 discussions

process essay nearly cooked
by David Gerard 25 Sep '06

25 Sep '06

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Gerard/Process_essay I want to move it to [[Wikipedia:Practical process]] fairly soon, relinquishing all ownership and leaving it to the community's tender mercies. I'd most welcome you all looking over it and letting me know of: 1. Anything that's clearly missing from what it says about how to do process on Wikipedia. 2. Anything that makes you cough up a hairball. 3. - and this is the good bit - anything you think will make any other particular editor cough up a hairball. Talk page or hack on the essay or email to me. Thank you! - d.

2 2

Help collecting data for a study about Web authorship
by Einat Amitay 25 Sep '06

25 Sep '06

Hello, My name is Einat and I'm a researcher with IBM. I'd like to ask for your help with a study I'm conducting. I want to study the way people choose to express themselves in their blogs, personal homepage, work page, wiki, shared tagging, etc. In order to do this I need people to send me back a list of the URLs that they have authored on the Web. Sending this message to a widely distributed mailinglist may help me reach many people with similar interest. If you are willing to help me collect this information please send me a list that looks like this: personal homepage: [url] blog: [url] professional homepage: [url] family album: [url] anything else: [url] When the study is over I will send a report to those who will help me collect this data (i.e. to those who sent me their list). Thanks, Einat --- Einat Amitay, PhD. Information Retrieval Group IBM Research Lab in Haifa, Israel Alter ego: http://WebIR.org http://einat.webir.org http://groups.yahoo.com/group/webir/

1 0

cc-by-nw (Encyclopedia of Earth)
by Daniel P. B. Smith 25 Sep '06

25 Sep '06

I have to wonder whether the combinatorial plethora of creative commons licenses is a problem of some kind. Believe it or not, I didn't figure out until yesterday that the license names are strings of two-letter tokens identifying modular characteristics of the license. All this time, I had been reading "by," not as an indicator, but as a preposition... I kept thinking it was something like "by" as in "when the wind is north-by-northwest, I can tell a hawk from a handsaw," or "passed by reference," or "two-by- four." The general public doesn't understand the concept of a free license to begin with, how are they ever going to understand the zoo of possible licenses and what can and can't be done with them?

9 10

Is Wikipedia a News Portal (among other things)?
by Peter Jacobi 25 Sep '06

25 Sep '06

[[September 2006 Thailand coup attempt]] Sorry to ask the obvious rhetorical questions here: * Wasn't WikiNews designed to be for news? * Why is [[Wikipedia:Recentism]] only an essay? * Is at a good idea to write an encyclopedia article based a news tickers and CNN? Regards, [[User:Pjacobi]] -- NEU: GMX DSL Sofort-Start-Set - blitzschnell ins Internet! Echte DSL-Flatrate ab 0,- Euro* http://www.gmx.net/de/go/dsl

15 47

Re: [WikiEN-l] [Wikipedia-l] Extension to [[MediaWiki:Bad image list]]
by Alphax (Wikipedia email) 25 Sep '06

25 Sep '06

Tim Starling wrote: > I've implemented an extension to the [[MediaWiki:Bad image list]] feature. > You can now specify a list of exceptions, i.e. articles where the image is > allowed to be displayed inline. The typical format is: > > * [[:Image:Penis.jpg]] except on [[Penis]] > > The text "except on" is ignored, it is not special. Only the links are relevant. > > I've documented the format at: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Bad_image_list > /me imagines that this will be quite useful for enforcing "fair use" restrictions (cc-ed to wikien-l) -- Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

2 1

Re: [WikiEN-l] Schools, notability, inclusionism, deletionism, etc.
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 25 Sep '06

25 Sep '06

Stephen Streater wrote > Some of us are working on a new notability guideline: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOTABILITY > > The key to me is that the content is reliable, > which is covered by the first two points under > Rationale: > In order to have a verifiable article, a topic must be notable enough > that it will be described by multiple independent sources. > In order to have a neutral article with minimal errors, a topic must > be notable enough that there will be non-partisan editors interested > in editing it. It all sounds much like what Jimbo took to saying on the subject. It helps to exclude some promotional and journalistic froth. Does it do much else? Example (has happened on the site), some science competition winner, a no doubt bright teenager, gets plenty of media coverage for a ho-hum bit of work. The press release adds the usual kinds of hype (e.g. anything at all to do with a prime number gets related to public key crypto, gasp). We can cut this out as not notable, because unless it warrants the learned journal route to publication it's below threshold. That's OK; but the learned journals contain an immense amount of the truly tedious and the me-too. Saying 'verifiable' just ducks the issue, really. Years of debate have only proved that, while we may know what we are doing, that's not because we have a theoretical criterion for inclusion. We have numerous operational criteria. Charles ----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.ntlworld.com Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information

3 2

I've Kicked the Process Habit
by Phil Sandifer 24 Sep '06

24 Sep '06

[[Wikipedia:Policy trifecta]] makes it sound so easy... So I figured why not try it? After all, I've been here for two and a half years. I've got a pretty good idea of what we're doing here. Why not just stop worrying about what all the policy pages say today, and about what the process to list something on AfD is? So I'm not anymore. I understand [[WP:NPOV]], [[WP:DICK]], and I especially understand [[WP:IAR]]. I understand what an encyclopedia is. I understand how to do good research. (I'm a professional academic - I teach people how to do good research. I know this stuff.) So as of today, I'm just going to go ahead and edit. Lord knows the rules are making me nervous and depressed. So I'll follow all the stuff I can remember, and not try too hard to learn the other stuff. If I can't remember how to list something for AfD today, I'll just use PROD. If I can't get it deleted via PROD, I just won't delete it. Someone who remembers how to use AfD can do it. If I can't remember how many warnings a vandal gets, I'll just zap 'em for 24 hours two warnings early, and call it a day. If I can't remember the status of blogs and personal websites as they apply to a specific topic, well, I'm a professional researcher. I teach people how to research. I'll trust my judgment. Note that this means that if you cite a policy page to me and expect me to carefully divine the meaning of section 14, paragraph 3, clause 2 of it, odds are I'll just say "Yeah, but what's ''wrong'' with what I'm doing?" "It violates policy" isn't enough. If it's against policy, it must be bad for some reason, so just explain to me what it does that's bad. Otherwise... well, you might drive me off the page, but you sure ain't gonna convince me. In the meantime, I'll be keeping [[User:Phil Sandifer/Process blog]] updated with anything I run into that's just impossible to handle without checking lots of policy pages. I'm doing this not so much because I'm trying to find the essential policies as because I'm trying to find the broken ones. I figure anything so complex an admin who's been editing for two and a half years can't do it is fundamentally broken. Not that I'll be the one to fix it. I've got an encyclopedia to write. -Phil

13 60

Re: [WikiEN-l] Schools, notability, inclusionism, deletionism, etc.
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 24 Sep '06

24 Sep '06

Stephen Streater wrote > PS Congratulations on getting so many > approval votes in the election! Why, thank you. On my first stab at the ArbCom, I came one place behind Ed Poor. Moving up a notch, I come one place ahead of the Esperantist. Could be progress. Charles ----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.ntlworld.com Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information

1 0

Re: [WikiEN-l] Schools, notability, inclusionism, deletionism, etc.
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 24 Sep '06

24 Sep '06

Stephen Streater wrote > I thought the biggest problem was > that they didn't implement policy. If you look at admins doing speedy deletion, particularly under A7, and at prod deletions, you actually see people pushing the envelope in trying to implement it. The problem comes at the crunch point: what _is_ an assertion of notability? I have had at least one futile-type argument over this: if I write that X is 'known' for work in area Y, is that not an assertion of notability? By the way, this is just the sort of criterion we should actually use. A reference work should contain information on 'known' things that are worth knowing, in the opinion of those who know. It is no good asking in the abstract whether proving the Fronckensteen Conjecture makes you notable, without knowing whether the FC is a long-standing issue, or something the guy next to you in lectures wondered about yesterday. Charles ----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.ntlworld.com Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information

2 1

Re: [WikiEN-l] Schools, notability, inclusionism, deletionism, etc.
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 24 Sep '06

24 Sep '06

"Daniel R. Tobias" wrote > So, should we be just as complete for schools, albums, songs, TV > shows, and so on? Would that just be duplicating IMDB, etc., or > would it be helping to make Wikipedia a one-stop resource for more in- > depth info (including links where appropriate to other sites like > IMDB) on everything in each of these fields? Do the flames of the old inclusionist/deletionist wars really need fanning? I worked out my position long ago: pretty much deletionist on the science side, for anything suspect; pretty much inclusionist in the humanities; pretty much indifferent as to pop culture where it really doesn't much matter one way or the other whether we have articles on soap actors or not. On schools, they can be hacked back to stubs if they are full of unverifiable stuff, or, more likely, promotional material. Charles ----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.ntlworld.com Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information

6 8

← Newer
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
...
22
Older →

Jump to page:

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 September 2006