"Steve Bennett" wrote
> When someone can come up with a reasonable policy that can
> distinguish between dictionary entries and encyclopaedia entries,
> without using the self-referential terms "dictionary definition" or
> "encyclopaedic", then perhaps it will serve some purpose.
Is is so bad? A dicdef is in some sense a kind of stub. The problem comes when it is incapable of being more than that. If [[ouch]] were just an article saying it was an exclamation associated with feeling pain, then that would be a valid criticism.
Charles
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Delirium write
>Gathering, interpreting, cross-referencing, and
> checking the validity of the primary sources on an individual like, say,
> Thomas Jefferson, in order to write a biography about him, is original
> historical research, and best left to reputable historians.
Right, well put. We 'sift' in writing articles, inevitably, but we 'settle' nothing. This aspect of NPOV, excluding too much source criticism, has probably been neglected.
Charles
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"David Gerard" wrote
> As I understand from your Guardian piece, your theory is more or less
> (and correct me word by word as needed): Wikipedia is a cult of
> Jimbo's personality, where he gets everyone to write stuff for him for
> free, so that he can profit from it using Wikia. Please correct and/or
> expand as needed; alternately, actually flesh out your theory from the
> one-line synopsis.
Mmmm, this all seems to be an expansion of the Charles Arthur theory (that WP ought to be a source of innocent amusement, at least, with all that eager beavering and evangelism). I'm on goodish terms with C. Arthur, and have never thought that his musings were hostile. (He's Grauniad Technology Editor.)
Charles
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Anthony wrote:
> That's not exactly jargon specific to Citizendium. At pretty much any
> magazine, newspaper, or other publication, authors write articles, and
> editors edit them. That's plain English, not jargon.
On the other hand, "constables" is jargon (rather unfortunate jargon,
IMHO) that they've coined themselves to replace "admins."
Personally, I wish them well. It would be a great thing if
Citizendium actually succeeds in producing a better free encyclopedia
than Wikipedia -- or even if it just achieves some partial success
that merely illuminates ways Wikipedia itself can improve. Of course
it will take years before Citizendium can hope to match, let alone
surpass Wikipedia. Nevertheless, I look forward to the day when
Wikipedia's great SunGodKing and paternal protector kneels in fealty
before Larry Sanger and acknowledges Sanger's primacy as the one
true, holy and encyclopedic GalacticDietySupremeCommander.
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>-----Original Message-----
>From: Ruud Koot [mailto:r.koot@students.uu.nl]
>Sent: Sunday, March 25, 2007 03:30 PM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] ArbCom pages and Google
>
>Do we want ArbCom pages where the accused's real identity is revealed
>(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Carl_Hewitt)
>to appear on Google, especially given the fact that searching for the
>accused's name will result in this page appearing as the second entry
>(just after the Wikipedia article on him?)
>
>--Ruud
Probably not. You have picked a good example, but there are others.
Fred
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Rob Smith [mailto:nobs03@gmail.com]
>Sent: Sunday, March 25, 2007 06:32 PM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] ArbCom pages and Google
>
>I would like to formerly request an unblock for the limited purpose to
>Appeal before ArbCom making a separation of the unfounded smears that my
>name is associated with he Lyndon LaRouche movement. <
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:AMA_Requests_for_Assistance/Req…
> >
>
>Google Nobs01+LaRouche brings up 226 Google hits. <
>http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Nobs01%2BLaRouche >
>
>ArbCom has twice failed to rectify this injustice, despite (a) Mr. Fred
>Bauder admitting five times the smear is unfounded; (b) the perpetrator
>himself has made statements that the allegation is false. <
>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitratio…
> >
>
>
>Thank you,
>
>Rob Smith
>aka User:Nobs01 and Nobs02
We already know this. You got lumped together in the arbitration case, but there was no connection.
Fred
First of all, I hope they succeed.
Wikipedia is one of a kind, at this point, we have no
real competitors in the field of free wiki
encylopedias, and having another out there could do us
a lot of good. Having another group out there doing
what we do, but better in some ways (inevitably) would
spur us on to improvement, unstick us from whatever
policies and habits we might have which are producing
suboptimal results, and I'm all for this.
However, in looking at their website, I think they're
in for some major trouble.
First of all, the bitter anti-wikipedia attitude is
rather over the top. Nearly every single page on
Citizendium contains attacks on us. This is not an
exaggeration. Look at the top of any of their pages,
and you see "The world needs a better free
encyclopedia". Better than what? Better than
Wikipedia, of course. Not to mention their policy
pages and statements and discussions, which are all
about how much better they're going to be than we are,
how they'll do right every terrible thing we do wrong.
Secondly, their claims that they're going to be able
to avoid vandalism, and avoid something like the
Essjay situation happening to them, are quite dubious.
They've already been extensively vandalized. Look at
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki?title=Special:Contributions&target=Peter+Lac…
for a bit of amusement. 10% of their articles
vandalized by one person, and it took an hour for
anyone to notice it was happening! Had this vandal
used a bot, instead of apparently doing it by hand, he
could have gotten their entire 1000 article database.
Something like the Essjay situation is vastly MORE
likely to happen on Citizendium. This is because
Citizendium forces all editors to give a name and
upload a bio, and it gives experts broad authority
over articles on their area of expertise.
If you force everyone to give a name and enter a bio,
you will get large numbers of fake names and fake
bios. If you give experts the ability to
automatically win every edit conflict in articles in
their category, you give a strong incentive for people
to fake credentials. Imagine how many cranks we have
of various sorts who would love to be able to say,
"Look at my credentials, I'm a particle physicist and
a Doctor of Alienology, therefore my edits on
[[Anti-gravity machine hidden in Area 51]] must stay".
That having been said, if they can stop driving away
3/4 of their potential editors with their real name
policy, and start being Citizendium instead of
Anti-Wikipedium, they may well manage to be a success,
to rival us, and to force us to better to avoid losing
many of our best editors to them.
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Do we want ArbCom pages where the accused's real identity is revealed
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Carl_Hewitt)
to appear on Google, especially given the fact that searching for the
accused's name will result in this page appearing as the second entry
(just after the Wikipedia article on him?)
--Ruud
Wikipedia has no policy on articles about words. We
have "Wikipedia is not a dictionary", and that's it,
and that only states that we shouldn't have articles
that are merely dictionary definitions.
This still leaves open the possibility of having vast
numbers of articles about words which go beyond a mere
dicdef, but our current vague nonsensical practice
mostly puts a stop to this.
Our current practice is as follows: an article is made
about a word. If the article can be rewritten into
one on a topic (that is, an article on the word "shoe"
becomes an article on the subject of shoes), we
rewrite it, and it's no longer an article on a word.
If the article cannot be rewritten into an article on
the topic the word represents, and if the article is
SHORT, we transwiki to wiktionary and delete it for
being a dicdef or redirect somewhere. However, if the
article is LONG, and well written and wikified, we
generally keep it as being "more than just a dicdef",
and if there are no sources we hope some are
eventually found.
This is a bizarre and ridiculous and totally
unintentional way of handling articles on words, but
it is exactly what we do.
Imagine if this were our policy or practice on
astronomy articles. "If at all possible, rewrite to a
non-astronomical topic. If none exists under this
title, and if the astronomy article is short, redirect
to a non-astronomical article or delete. If rewriting
is not possible, but the article is long and
well-written, only then do we keep it".
Obviously we do want some articles about words,
though. We have "Thou", which is a featured article,
we have "Truthiness", and many other well sourced and
well written articles. We don't want to delete all of
these, so we must want some articles on words.
But which ones? There are probably tens of thousands
of english words which have been written about by
etymologists, meaning we have sourced content on them.
Furthermore, Wikipedia is supposed to be global in
perspective, and has articles on people, places, and
things from non-english speaking countries, so why
would we not have articles on non-english words?
But this could end up with us having hundreds of
thousands of articles on foreign words, do we want
that?
One way or another, some sort of policy would be
better than "Rewrite into a non-word article. If not
possible, delete if short, keep if long and nice looking".
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