WikiEN-l December 2007

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153 participants
156 discussions

On spelling conventions
by Andrew Gray 22 Dec '07

22 Dec '07

I ran across this little anecdote today, buried in a biography of a moderately-unknown British general of the Second World War. It may amuse people, given the amount of time and stress we put into caring about The Correct Spellings and the equal amount of time and stress we put into caring about Not Antagonising People Over Them. "Churchill failed to understand the delicate balancing act involved in running an Allied staff. Had he fully appreciated the complete fusion of staff and working relationships which Wilson had managed to achieve he would not have objected, as he did in one of the many telegrams he sent to Wilson, to the spelling of the word 'theater' rather than 'theatre' sent out from Allied Forces HQ." - Michael Dewar One can draw two morals from this: a) If you get worked up over spelling differences, you're in good company, Churchill did too. b) Even Churchill ought to have remembered when to keep quiet for the good of consensus, so nyah. ;-) -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium on quality
by David Fuchs 22 Dec '07

22 Dec '07

So, in other words, stable versions. Hasn't that been thrown about a bit at en.? And if we were to use such a feature, does anyone know how it would work? > > On 20/12/2007, Brian Salter-Duke <b_duke(a)bigpond.net.au> wrote: > > On Wed, Dec 19, 2007 at 11:18:56PM -0800, Grease Monkee wrote: > > > > Wikipedia should be doing what Veropedia is doing. It's not a new > > > idea. I think Mav suggested (like five years ago, or something) > using > > > the Nupedia domain for exactly that. > >

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium on quality
by Monahon, Peter B. 22 Dec '07

22 Dec '07

> Earlier: "...We have talked about stable > versions for too long. We should be > doing it..." Peter Blaise responds: "Stable versions" of any so-called knowledge are the antithesis of knowledge, and are totally inappropriate for anything but tired religionists who want to stop thinking once and for all. Flat earth was stable. Blood letting was stable. Burning witches was stable. Wikipedia should be PROUD of it's article flow and instability - it means every new visitor is always welcome, and their contribution is valued to "edit every page". Otherwise, it's the Wikipedia of the dead. Now, if you can build a tool to list articles that haven't changed the longest, that might be cool. But, what does it mean? Does it mean that that article is "stable" or "stoopid" or "boring" or "arcane" or ... anyone guess! It's totally meaningless! The whole point of Wikipedia was trusting another source than academia, so-called authority, and so-called stability! People who say "it can't go into Wikipedia unless it's been published somewhere else first" drive me crazy - it's not "Book-report-a-pedia". Like the scene at the beginning of Stargate (where he corrects the translation of hieroglyphs saying "that textbook is wrong, but everyone still uses it anyway"), all those mindsets are doing is re-perpetuating the supremacy of the pedantic (and wrong) decisions of dead writers and dead publishers. Please leave them buried. Please bring life to Wikipedia. Wikipedia was supposed to breathe NEW LIFE into knowledge pooling, not just be a collective (ces)pool of the dead. The problem with Wikipedia is NOT the contributors who dump the most inane stuff into Wikipedia. The problem is the first arrivers thinking they now own Wikipedia, and are shocked, SHOCKED, at the messy, uncontrollable, naive contributions from people who had the poor lack of forethought to arrive second! > Earlier: "...we are very under-manned..." Peter Blaise responds: Actually, we are, Wikipedia is, inappropriately administered ... where does this thread belong? ... oh, it's part of EVERY thread, so why even bother with subject lines!!! Back to Veropedia ... Veropedia is a sham, sort of a Google archives via Wikipedia admin approval of the same crap and brick walls against new growth at Wikipedia (they get their blue links from Wikipedia anyway, so the site isn't really free-standing at all ...). From http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/29/1321247 "...no disambiguation links...candidates for inclusion are reviewed by recognized academics and experts..." Hahahahahah! Yet another mutual masturbation society! "...The wiki is written by the victors..." Lemme see, search for "photography" on Veropedia, 73 hits of which 2 are valid, then on Wikipedia, 27,630 hits of which ... well, I stopped counting after 5,000 valid hits! My point is NOT the Wikipedia is broken and valueless, but that some people are sequestering themselves on one or another side of a wall that they themselves built. That wall is built by some and is trying to be opened or torn down by others. But that wall is NOT Wikipedia, it is ONE PART OF Wikipedia. How important and definitive a part? I'll let "history" decide. My point is to grow Wikipedia to let go of wall building tools altogether, but until then, we'll have to deal with the "build a wall" versus "tear it down" dynamic. My proposal? Said it before, but until others figure out how to incorporate it, I just sound repetitive if I put in every post! Fight on! Eventually someone will exhaust themselves, and then Wikipedia will have lots of walls and wall maintainers, or... == PS - ad hominem simply means "to (ad) the man (hominem")" or, a personal attack, such as calling someone a name, ridiculing them, accusing them of some personality deficiency, or such. See http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=ad+hominem

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Another admin burnout
by Monahon, Peter B. 22 Dec '07

22 Dec '07

> Earlier: "...There's a difference between > people choosing to leave the project, and > a project where the usual mode of leaving > for experienced participants is an > antagonistic conflict incident blowing up..." Peter Blaise responds: I think the challenge is a total lack of "assume good faith" support from the Wikipedia community, especially admins, for anyone who tries to document what they see as something going wrong. Look at the experience of Judd Bagley and http://antisocialmedia.net/ - what we find is that anyone trying to identify problems gets labeled as "anti the project" and gets banned. That's my experience. Now, if I too were to document my experience, I'm confident that I'd get banned, too. We seem to have choices, don't we: - Stay, or Go ("on" or "off" energy) - (try to) Add, or Subtract ("plus" or "minus" energy) ... and any dynamic blend of those. I WANT to stay and contribute. I'm frustrated by those who stay and delete. I'd prefer that anyone who has a "problem" with my contributions put their energies into making them better, rather than "merely" deleting and banning (for what? to hurry through their to-do-list quicker?). > Earlier: "... is anyone paying attention?..." Peter Blaise responds: Yes, but not in the way we'd probably like: FROM: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/06/wikipedia_and_overstock/ "...We aren't democratic...The core community appreciates when someone is knowledgeable, and thinks some people are idiots and shouldn't be writing..." Let me look up "idiots shouldn't be writing" rule at Wikipedia ... > Earlier: "...In the case of our admins, > there are so many pressures now..." Peter Blaise responds: Not really. All anyone can do is one thing at a time, paying full attention to that one thing. In one sense, the "resignation" is the admin's way of saying that, for them, being an admin has dropped to #2 or lower on their to-do list. That's all. Is it their own "fault", or is it the "fault" of the Wikipedia so-called "community"? It hardly matters, as they are the same, essentially.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Google Knol: Move over Wikipedia?
by Monahon, Peter B. 22 Dec '07

22 Dec '07

> Earlier: "... there were articles for most > episodes from the "Scrubs" TV show... > spent an hour or so tidying everything > up...notice that category:Scrubs > episodes was up for speedy deletion... > it was empty...every episode article > has been wiped out...some group of > editors...cut a swath of destruction... > [yet] an article...on a much more > obscure play...[remains]...plays are > "literary"[?]...Why should...[anyone] >...spend[...]any further effort on > improving Wikipedia articles when > so much of their work is just being > arbitrarily swept away?...[how to > save] the content and the eyeballs > that Wikipedia's throwing away[?]..." Peter Blaise responds: Yes, the Wikipedia deletionists are driving away more contributors and readers than any other destructive thing. No vandal or spammer or off-topic posts are as overwhelmingly souring as the act of Wikipedia deletionists. Your example is perfect. Farscape and other such experiences are important cultural references for shared communication, just as Aesops fables or Greek mythology or "the parables" or that silly bard Shakespeare's stuff and so on. And, all of it was once contemporaneous. Another example: just as there will never be another "The Beatles", there will never be another "this is more important than anything else" thing, ever. Nowadays, obscure bands garner big audiences and way more album sales and royalties than The Beatles ever did, and to delete references to them because they are not equivalent to "The Beatles" is myopic, ethnocentric, and just plain mindnumbedness. Farscape and Galaxy Quest and so on are important - the proof is the Wikipedia visitors saying so by building the pages. For anyone to delete contemporaneous culture, especially anything so meticulously entered by other Wikipedia visitors, is a crying shame, and one of the top reasons I think Wikipedia is seriously crippled (regardless of page count growth), and now depends on endless newbies for the impedimentia (impacted admins) to feed on, and the Wikipedia middle class is fading away. Okay, here's my rubber stamp recommendations, please help simplify and polish these: Goal: Wikipedia is to be free and open to all, no banning, with multiple co-moderators who are here to provide support for contributors and readers, everything open, public, transparent. - there are no rules for contributors, only guidelines, npov and so on. - there are only rules for admins: - no banning - develop an open, public, transparent moderation system, - no deleting of anything that is not spam, not vandalism, or not off topic; suspect contributions and content go into a open, public, transparent moderation system - if you can't make an article better, move on and let someone else have at it, do not delete, do not delete, do not delete, - do not delete. Whiner responds: But there's a lot of crap on Wikipedia! WaaaaAAAAAhhhHHH! Peter Blaise responds: Yes, so either make it better, or move on and let someone else have a try. Do not delete, do not delete, do not delete. Do not delete. == http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Television_episodes == [EPOSIDES] is recommendation only, poorly founded, and horribly misguided. It makes no sense to include only supposedly externally "notable" things in an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia, being a place where people look up obscure things, is, by definition, a place where obscure, previously nun-noted things are stored for others to eventually take note. "Notability" is, by definition, in the eye of the beholder, and therefor, anyone who takes note of something enough to create or contribute to an encyclopedia article, is, by definition sharing something that is notable TO THEM, and the only way it will ever be notable to anyone else is if it STAYS in the encyclopedia. This entire "notability" thing is pure, unadulterated crap.

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Citizendium on quality
by David Gerard 22 Dec '07

22 Dec '07

http://blog.citizendium.org/2007/12/18/why-the-focus-on-creating-quality-co… Interesting thoughts on quality. - d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Former Wikimedia employee was a felon.
by Daniel R. Tobias 22 Dec '07

22 Dec '07

On Sat, 15 Dec 2007 13:16:27 +0000, "Thomas Dalton" <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote: > In my experience, it's the same in the UK. I think people are failing > to consider the fact that while Wikipedia is enormous, the WMF is > tiny. Yes, she had the title "COO", but that's because she was the > only person in her department, so she had to be in charge of it. There > is a big difference between the COO of a large multinational > corporation and a solitary bookkeeper of a one-office charity. But some involved in the foundation would seem to be trying to have things both ways; to expect their organization to be treated as a small private club when that suits them, and have it be treated as a huge multinational operation when *that* suits them. -- == 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/

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Messianic Judaism
by jayjg 22 Dec '07

22 Dec '07

Someone has conveniently deleted all the criticism from the lead, in violation of [[WP:LEAD]]. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Messianic_Judaism&diff=175803950&… I'm planning to go in tonight and do some re-adding and tagging. Will you be able to watch my back?

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Step right up and greet the Metz
by Daniel R. Tobias 21 Dec '07

21 Dec '07

Nobody's mentioned it here yet, but there's been yet another Cade Metz article on Wikipedia in The Register: Truth, anonymity and the Wikipedia Way http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/18/the_wikipedia_paradox/ (The subject line of this message comes from the 1962 promotional song for the New York Mets baseball team, [[Meet the Mets]].) -- == 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/

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium on quality
by Sheldon Rampton 21 Dec '07

21 Dec '07

joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu wrote: > Quoting David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>: > >> http://blog.citizendium.org/2007/12/18/why-the-focus-on-creating-quality-co… >> >> Interesting thoughts on quality. >> > Larry raises very good points. I think he overestimates how much > people prefer > quality to easy access but I might be cynical. I don't think it's so much "cynical" as "inaccurate" to say that people prefer quality to easy access. People want both, but they're realistic (not cynical) enough to realize that perfect information isn't always available. What they want, more than "quality" or "easy," is USEFUL -- meaning, usually accurate enough to answer their curiosity about whatever topic they're interested in, but also easy enough to use that they don't have to waste a lot of time finding finding the information. Right now, Wikipedia satisfies those needs most of the time. Citizendium, because it only has a few thousand articles, almost never answers those needs. Moreover, the rate at which it is adding new articles suggests that it is a long time before it will come close to matching WIkipedia for usefulness. For people to prefer Citizendium over Wikipedia, it has to massively increase the number of articles and topics it covers. If it can do that, while also providing higher-quality information, it will replace WIkipedia. However, it has a long way to go before it can meet that test. If I were running Citizendium, I would relax the user registration rules a little bit while still requiring user registration. I would also adopt a copyright scheme that allows Citizendium to freely copy over content from Wikipedia. I would then launch a campaign aimed at copying over the 100,000 best articles from Wikipedia and editing them to meet Citizendium's quality standards. Once that was completed, I would go for the next 100,000 articles, and so on until Citizendium had enough content to rival WIkipedia for actual usefulness, while also providing higher quality. -------------------------------- | Sheldon Rampton | Research director, Center for Media & Democracy (www.prwatch.org) | Author of books including: | Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities | Toxic Sludge Is Good For You | Mad Cow USA | Trust Us, We're Experts | Weapons of Mass Deception | Banana Republicans | The Best War Ever -------------------------------- | Subscribe to our free weekly list serve by visiting: | http://www.prwatch.org/cmd/subscribe_sotd.html | | Donate now to support independent, public interest reporting: | http://www.prwatch.org/donate --------------------------------

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WikiEN-l December 2007