WikiEN-l October 2007

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

124 participants
404 discussions

25 Jul '09

At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cool_Wall we had a complete list of cars which appear on the BBC Top Gear "Cool Wall". I removed this as being almost certainly a violation of copyright. It is now being argued that reproducing the list in full does not violate copyright, because it is not published in the show's magazine or on the website and has been compiled by collating the lists from numerous shows. It is further asserted that compiling the list from these shows does not constitute original research, although there is no known reliable secondary source for any of the data, let alone the complete collated list Original research? You decide. Copyright? I think so, but what do I know? Fancruft? Ooooh, tricky :-) Guidance appreciated. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

30 191

Our content gets *everywhere*
by Andrew Gray 23 Dec '07

23 Dec '07

It worries me a little that I can spot Wikipedia text a mile off - our house style isn't that obvious, is it? - but it seems to be one of those little skills you pick up after a while. Very useful for marking school essays, I'm sure. Anyhow, I was packing up some boxes today, and happened across the box for the Nokia 770 (a really useful little bit of kit, incidentally), which shows someone merrily using the device to chatter away to a friend on an instant messenger. For some reason, the friend is writing something to them about poetry. I looked at the sentence. Something went click. "Kim: A poem is a composition usually written in verse. Poems rely heavily on imagery, precise word choice, and metaphor, may be written in measures consisting of" [...] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Literature&oldid=3562677 I'm used to seeing our content reused all over the place, but somehow I didn't expect to see fragments used as lorem-ipsum filler on a box cover... -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

17 68

Attributing "attribution required" free images
by Steve Bennett 12 Nov '07

12 Nov '07

It's about time we had this debate again. Morally, ethically, legally: what are we required to do to meet the "attribution required" aspect of certain free images we acquire from Flickr or other sources, including our own contributors? Viewpoint #1: Provided the information is available on the image information page, which can be reached by clicking the image, then attribution information is available to anyone who wants it. Viewpoint #2: The attribution should be more visible, such as beneath the image in articles. This is the standard used by newspapers, for instance. People who licence their work under "attribution required" licences are expecting a bit more than a begruding source tag hidden behind a mouse click. Personally I am of viewpoint #2, and feel that we are short-changing photographers who generously release their work for virtually no recompense. I feel that if we are not willing to attribute the photo properly, by putting the owner's name at the same level as the photo, then we should bar the use of these kinds of images. Some powerful persuasive arguments for either of the above viewpoints, or any other, would be nice. (Why this has arisen now: I created a {{credit}} template for this purpose and used it in a couple of places. I was reverted. So more opinions are needed.) Steve PS http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/ states that "You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work)." but in practice no one seems to specify a particular method. The ramifications of that practice are open for discussion.

24 89

Ars Technica: Prof replaces term papers with Wikipedia contributions, suffering ensues
by Utkarshraj Atmaram 31 Oct '07

31 Oct '07

>From ArsTechnica <http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071030-prof-replaces-term-papers-wit…> "The Wikipedia community, however, was not as impressed. One article didn't survive for 24 hours following its introduction, and four additional ones were ultimately deleted following extensive discussion, their contents merged into existing entries. Groom also noted that some of the comments in the ensuing discussions "were delivered rudely."" Can anybody provide me with links to these discussions and (deleted) pages? I tried searching, but all I could find was Martha Groom's userpage <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mjgroom>. -- Utkarshraj Atmaram http://utcursch.wordpress.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Utcursch

14 23

Alfredo_Kraus citations
by Doug Henkle 31 Oct '07

31 Oct '07

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfredo_Kraus "This article needs additional citations for verification." However, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources doesn't say where the citations should be sent. Here are some books in date order where published biographies of Alfredo Kraus appear, but there is no "[edit] Bibliography" section on the page where they can be added. If they are needed, I will be happy to send photocopies of these articles to the author(s) of this Wikipedia entry. Rosenthal, Harold and John Warrack, 1979, p. 265 The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera http://www.folklib.net/index/discog/bibliog7.shtml#ko Hamilton, David, 1987, p. 182 The Metropolitan Opera Encyclopedia: A Comprehensive Guide to the World of Opera http://www.folklib.net/index/discog/bibliog7.shtml#kq Warrack, John and Ewan West, 1996, p. 271 The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera http://www.folklib.net/index/discog/bibliog7.shtml#kp Sadie, Stanley and John Tyrrell, 2001, Vol. 13, p. 874-5 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians http://www.folklib.net/index/discog/bibliog.shtml#km ____________________________________________________________ Doug Henkle - mailto:henkle@pobox.com P.O. Box 1447, Oshkosh, WI 54903-1447 http://www.folklib.net/opera/singers.shtml FolkLib Index - Opera Singer Index

2 1

Anonymous page creation will be reenabled on English Wikipedia.
by Gregory Maxwell 31 Oct '07

31 Oct '07

In December 2005 during the John Seigenthaler biography controversy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Seigenthaler_Sr._Wikipedia_biography_cont…) it was decided to require that users create an account and log in before starting a new article. The ability of people to make changes without logging in remained unchanged. Some people believed that Wikipedia's the high rate of growth may have outpaced its community's ability to monitor new articles, contributing to the Seigenthaler problem. It was hoped that the limitation of page creation would increase the quality of newly created pages, increase oversight over newly created pages, and avoid the creation of hoax articles. Since that point several attempts to study the impact of the change have been conducted. These studies have been unable to produce conclusive findings. Around the time of the Seigenthaler controversy Wikipedia underwent a dramatic and discontinuous increase in traffic and editing activity beyond the high rate of growth Wikipedia had long been experiencing. It is very likely that the press surrounding this incident contributed to this increase. This increase had made it impossible to make conclusive statements about the impact limiting page creation. Furthermore, if we ignore the growth effects the data suggests that the change has been harmful to the quality of Wikipedia. I must emphasize that all results have been inconclusive. We just can't tell. Numerous discussions with Wikipedians, Foundation leaders, and Foundation staff going back for more than a year have generally been positive about the idea of re-enabling anonymous page creation. In the time since late 2005 the English Wikipedia community has grown substantially. The nearly exponential growth rate in articles we previously experienced has stopped. Even if disabling anon page creation was beneficial then, there is no current evidence suggesting that the change continues to be beneficial. As such, barring complications, anonymous page creation will be re-enabled on English Wikipedia on Friday November 9th. After a one month period, on December 9th, we will re-evaluate this decision using previously established methods (average article lifespan, rate of deletion, manual quality classification, random samplings of newly created articles, and most importantly, community discussion). If there is evidence of harm, anonymous page creation will be disabled to collect more data and provide time for discussion. If there is no significant evidence of harm, the issue will be evaluated again after six months. Further milestones and actions may be proposed at that time. Finally the community will have the chance to make an informed decision on this subject. It would have been best if that had happened initially, but it wasn't possible then. I hope that we can all look at this matter with optimism. If you are aware of a strong factually-grounded reason why this should not be done please provide it as soon as possible, either as a response to this list or emailed to me privately. If you have ideas on additional measurements we can perform after making this change or if you'd like to volunteer your effort for helping to perform a manual new article quality study next month, please let me know.

35 90

Re: [WikiEN-l] Ars Technica: Prof replaces term papers with Wikipedia contributions, suffering ensues
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 30 Oct '07

30 Oct '07

"David Gerard" wrote > There's little low-hanging fruit left, as we've noted here > before - but any WikiProject will have endless lists of red links just > waiting for someone to do the legwork to research and write an > article. Bah. I still dispute this. >Someone with university-level research facilities should be > able to do a much better job than from a mere Googling, in not much > more time. A proper library for writing a proper article, OK. But let's not propagate the fallacy that one can't write a good stub any more. Charles ----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam

8 8

visual Wikipedia / WikipediaVision
by phoebe ayers 29 Oct '07

29 Oct '07

Sorry if this has already been posted... perhaps not useful, but certainly fun to watch! http://www.lkozma.net/wpv/index.html And good for a plasma screen party backdrop, as someone on the AIR list pointed out... perhaps for next year's Wikimania. -- phoebe

1 0

Wikipedia struggles, Mozilla set for life?
by Jason Calacanis 29 Oct '07

29 Oct '07

With the risk of sounding like a broken record... :-) Mozilla announced (confirmed) they are making over $50M a year from their search box while Wikipedia struggles over fund raising on a regular basis. Some thoughts: 1. Wikipedia would make $100M+ if they put on Google Adsense on every page--easily. 2. Wikipedia could let users choose to turn ads on or off. 3. Wikipedia would make at least 20M if Wikipedia used Google Adsense for just search (which, ironically is what many wikipedia folks do anyway... search google for site:wikipedia.com). 4. If Wikipedia folks were concerned about being beholden to just Google we could setup a system to rotate ads from Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. randomly (text ads of course). 5. If folks are concerned about the content of ads it is easy enough to block certain advertisers. More here: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/mitchell/archives/2007/10/beyond_sustainabil… Anyway, if folks from the foundation ever want help on these things I'm available to consult for free and have setup deals like these (i.e. between Netscape/AOL/Weblogs, Inc. and Google) Thoughts? Best j --------------------- Jason McCabe Calacanis CEO, http://www.Mahalo.com Mobile: 310-456-4900 My blog: http://www.calacanis.com AOL IM/Skype: jasoncalacanis My admin: admin(a)calacanis.com

34 101

Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia struggles, Mozilla set for life?
by Monahon, Peter B. 28 Oct '07

28 Oct '07

> Earlier: "... we were absolutely savaged by the editors..." Peter Blaise responds: Yes, that's it exactly. The editors admins sysops moderators developers whatever seem all too often in an angry mood, as if we mere contributors were interrupting their otherwise fine day. "If it wasn't for those dang customers, this job would run smoothly!" =8^o I keep harping on - patience, - tolerance, - acceptance - and equivalent consideration, ... but I do see them as the "count to 100 before replying" cool down opportunity. For instance, I suggested on another mediawiki list that folks could simply scroll-on if they're not interested in a post, or if they must take responsive action, they could set an example of the kind of post they would prefer, instead of merely complaining. One of "them" immediately ripped my head off for my insensitivity to the difficult job "they" have. I guess that was an example of the kind of post they prefer! Doh! "We have seen the enemy, and it's us" - Pogo

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WikiEN-l October 2007