WikiEN-l November 2007

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134 participants
249 discussions

Re: [WikiEN-l] Pakistani politicians and systemic bias
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 08 Nov '07

08 Nov '07

"John Lee" wrote > Exactly; in this case it was a slam-dunk from the content alone. Yeah, well, when you have finished being sportsmen about it all, some may remember other uses ... could we cut out the brutal language? We have an encyclopedia to write here. Charles ----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam

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Punished by Rewards?
by William Pietri 08 Nov '07

08 Nov '07

Right now I'm reading through (and loving) Alfie Kohn's "Punished by Rewards". [1] I'm wondering if this had any influence on Wikipedia's early days, as our culture seems to fit well with his views. Kohn's basic thesis is that a lot of common reward mechanisms have perverse effects. In this he includes incentive pay, symbolic awards like gold stars, and even many kinds of praise. He believes that although those systems can work in the short term for mechanical tasks, they harm intrinsic motivation over the long term, corroding relationships and reducing creativity. He also suggests that reward and punishment are two sides of the same coin, and have a lot of parallel negative effects. And he cites a raft of research (none of which I've looked at). The relationship I see with Wikipedia is our near complete lack of a reward or approval system. There's no official merit ladder, no point-scoring system, no way to trade your edit count in for valuable prizes, no special goodies for the editor of the month. We do have barnstars, but those don't imply a power relationship between giver and receiver, and they're never dangled as bait. Just as interesting is the strong streak in our culture against incentive plans and formal scoring systems. People continually rail against editcountitis. We try hard to make sure people understand that adminship is no big deal. We even do a good job at making sure admins live that. The naive behaviorist view, which Kohn sees as pervasive in our society, is that people would never do a bunch of creative work for nothing; you'd have to reward them somehow. In my eyes, Wikipedia is a fantastic counter-example to that notion. I didn't really start paying close attention to Wikipedia's culture until 2004, at which point I think a lot of these norms were well established. Does anybody know the history, and whether there were external sources or inspirations for the things I mention? Was there an explicit decision to avoid reward systems? Or did it just happen? Thanks, William [1] http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm -- William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Pakistani politicians and systemic bias
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 07 Nov '07

07 Nov '07

"John Lee" wrote > In all fairness, [[Chaudhry Zahoor Elahi]] in its original state was > completely unsalvageable. You don't think that the fact that the article's creator also that day edited [[Pakistan Muslim League (Q)]] and [[General Pervez Musharraf]] was any sort of clue that we might want the article? Charles Charles In the case of [[Chaudhry Ghulam Ahmed Zamurrad]], > though, there was a clear assertion of notability; at the very least, the > onus is on the tagger and/or admin to do some basic Googling to see if > there's a prima facie indication that this isn't patent nonsense. > > These aren't the best examples to illustrate problems with the current > deletion system, though. Every now and then when I check up on [[C:CSD]], I > see articles like [[Maki Pulido]] tagged for speedying despite clear > *examples* of notability within the article itself. This is systemic bias at > its best; Pulido's article is especially interesting because after I removed > the speedy tag, the tagger tagged it for PROD under the dubious reason that > it had no sources (honestly, why is this a deletion criterion?) - something > easily refutable by the fact that the article linked to the Philippine TV > station's webpage on Pulido. > > Not related to speedy deletion in particular, I still remember the time that > someone insisted that the upper and lower houses of Malaysia's Parliament > were insufficiently notable to be separate articles, and proposed merging > them into [[Parliament of Malaysia]]. It's very clear to me that we have a > substantial systemic bias when it comes to new content, although I'm > reluctant to draw any wideranging and broad conclusions from this. > > Johnleemk > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > ----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Pakistani politicians and systemic bias
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 07 Nov '07

07 Nov '07

"John Lee" wrote > Hindsight is 20-20; in the first place, how many of us would look up a > contributing editor's edit history when considering an article's content? I do get discouraged. How are we going to solve this one of non-native English speakers having contributions speedied, if it is always argued that failures are somehow "OK"? A7 is mainly there to zap teenagers and totally clueless contributors. Deletion has become _ever so casual_. There is the page history (of course), there are the backlinks, there is the contribution history. In fact the contribution history cuts both ways: you find other junk and vandalism, or you find evidence of clue. Charles ----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Pakistani politicians and systemic bias
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 07 Nov '07

07 Nov '07

William Pietri wrote > John Lee wrote: > > Hindsight is 20-20; in the first place, how many of us would look up a > > contributing editor's edit history when considering an article's content? > > I must be weird. That's one factor I definitely look at while processing > CAT:CSD, most especially when it's an A7 request. Ditto when I prod > something. If I didn't do that, I'd feel like I could easily delete > something with the potential to be a perfectly good article. Do other > admins really not do that? Thanks for that. I think that's a matter of competence. And I said so, in this case. Charles ----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Pakistani politicians and systemic bias
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 07 Nov '07

07 Nov '07

Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote > As to zapping teenagers, the adult abusers of WP are much more > problematic than those promoting their garage band. And much more > likely to register [[User:JB196|500 sock puppets]] to get back at > us. Well, I don't know why this thread is being hijacked by some other gripe. The point is that CSD A7 is fine when any excuse to delete teenage nonsense will do. It is not fine when it treats badly-expressed contributions as an excuse for Space Invaders. Charles ----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Pakistani politicians and systemic bias
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 07 Nov '07

07 Nov '07

"Angus McLellan" wrote > > I imagine many people world-wide will be looking right now at our coverage of politics in > > Pakistan. I have a story about that. > > Well, perhaps, but when it comes to stuff about the subcontinent > mysteriously disappearing, there's more to it than you mention. A look > at the short, exciting history of [[Nellie massacre]] might suggest > something. I have only recently started editing in the subcontinent topics. It does remind me of how things were generally, three or four years ago. Msjor topics simply may not be there. People think skullduggery (this example) is possible. There is still a big battle to get basic content policies accepted by editors. Let me say one more thing: "low-hanging fruit" strikes me as the tabloid version of systemic bias. Charles ----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam

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Pakistani politicians and systemic bias
by Angus McLellan 07 Nov '07

07 Nov '07

[[Nellie massacre]] <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> writes: > I imagine many people world-wide will be looking right now at our coverage of politics in > Pakistan. I have a story about that. Well, perhaps, but when it comes to stuff about the subcontinent mysteriously disappearing, there's more to it than you mention. A look at the short, exciting history of [[Nellie massacre]] might suggest something. Angus McLellan

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Edit Wikipedia Week is coming. How not to bite the n00bs?
by Monahon, Peter B. 06 Nov '07

06 Nov '07

== Statistics are in: 123.6% of all threads are about deletionism == All other thread topics have apparently been subsumed. Wikipedia and the mailing list are soon to be renamed the "deletionist discussion forum". </sarcasm off> ---- == Wikipedia goals - accuracy or inclusiveness == No, we do not all agree. I want both accuracy and inclusiveness , and I am dissatisfied with what I perceive as inclusiveness being considered unimportant, almost dispensable. > Earlier): "...I think we all agree on the end/goal/aim "Wikipedia as accurate / correct / vandalism-free as possible" [choose what you like best from these terms] ... " No, we do not all agree. While I appreciate calls for accuracy, I prefer calls for inclusionism and no censorship. I'm not asking you to change your mind or back down. I'm only trying have my alternative opinion included. I'm just trying to maintain an alternative voice in the fray. Whether you call it "loyal opposition" or "minority view" or whatever, I want it clear that there are those of us in Wikipedia who disagree with the rampant deletionism . I appreciate some of us want an accurate encyclopedia. Me too. But not just also, but more important to me, I want an inclusive, integrated user community. You too? Do you want an inclusive, integrated user community ? In what way do you see accomplishing that goal? I disagree with those who think anyone who is not a spammer or vandal or off-topic contributor may be expendable at the whim of an impatient admin. I believe that the goals of the encyclopedia can NOT be achieved at the expense of inclusivity. We've already got exclusive encyclopedias: Britanica http://www.britannica.com/ Creationwiki http://www.creationwiki.org/ Conservapedia http://www.conservapedia.com/ ... even: Citizendium http://en.citizendium.org/ (Support the Citizendium! Funding drive goal: $10,000 - $620 raised so far) ... and so on. > Earlier: there is a big difference between "a necessarily imperfect work in progress" and http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_S._Patton&curid=42090&d iff=169628093&oldid=169618698 (first diff on English WP RC when I loaded it) ... At least this instance of vandalism is probably not going to [do?] material harm to anyone..." So, we agree about dispensing with spam and vandalism and off topic contributions. Now that we have that out of the way, perhaps we can agree to leave such irrelevant straw-men out of conversations about ... biting newbies. ----

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Essay
by James Farrar 06 Nov '07

06 Nov '07

I don't think I've come across this one before... but I think it's rather telling that it's not tagged with {{Humornotguideline}}... http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/How_to_win_an_argument

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WikiEN-l November 2007