I was looking at the RFK article, got to the article on his assination (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_assassination) and in the
process of doing some minor cleanup became astounded by the amount of cruft
in this article. Fully half of it is various conspiracy theories, badly
presented in varying manners, none of which comply with our standard format
and style guidelines, overstating proof and presenting opinion as fact
['television program on the Robert Kennedy case entitled "Conspiracy Test:
The RFK Assassination<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Conspiracy_Test:_The_RFK_Assassin…>,"
which provides powerful scientific evidence that Sirhan
Sirhan<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirhan_Sirhan>did not act
alone.'], and worse, it's spreading. The Sirhan Sirhan article (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirhan_Sirhan) is swelling with fringecruft as
well, a third of that article devoted to conspiracy theories. We have a
full, extremely large page devoted to 9/11 conspiracy theories, all of which
have been rather fully debunked.
Are articles with large kook sections an artifact of coverage, the more
literate 'pedia editors avoid them knowing their bunk and hence dont get
much cleanup, or are they being claimed by 'true believers' to box out
everyone else?
--
-Brock
On Wednesday 27 June 2007 18:28, Kurt Maxwell Weber wrote:
> On Wednesday 27 June 2007 11:01, Phil Sandifer wrote:
>>
*>> I'm not OK with us being the first thing on him his future employers
>> see when they Google him. He was a kid when he made his mistakes, and
>> we shouldn't be the ones to tar and feather him for life over them.
*> Why should the fact that he's "one of our own" entitle him to special
> consideration?
> He's not a "kid who made a mistake", he's an adult who knew fully well
> what he was doing and did it anyway.
It doesn't entitle him to special consideration, Kurt. Wikipedia is becoming
increasingly sensitive towards all human beings of borderline notability,
whose lives may be adversely affected by the existence of a Wikipedia
article about them. I don't think there's anyone who is arguing in favour of
deletion who would not argue in favour of deleting a similar article about a
non-Wikipedian of similar borderline notability. Certainly Phil Sandifer
didn't argue that Essjay deserves special consideration because he's "one of
our own"; you read it into his words.
What age was Essjay when he joined? Twenty? Twenty-one? Twenty-two? Many
people would consider that he *was* a kid.
Did he invent that persona with the intention of becoming an an
administrator, a bureaucrat, a checkuser, an oversighter? I doubt it very
much. I doubt if he even knew there were such things when he started.
It sounds to me like an immature kid, just out of his teens, finding it fun,
as an insignificant new user, to tell a few whoppers about being a Professor
of Theology, then, as a result of some genuinely good qualities, becoming
popular on Wikipedia, becoming an administrator, rising still higher, and
finding himself trapped in the lies that he had started as before he ever
suspected that he was going to rise to power. Obviously it was wrong, but it
wasn't a scheming, calculating, plan to gain positions of trust. As far as I
know, he gained those positions by being friendly and helpful, not by saying
that he had two doctorates.
Like Phil, I'm uncomfortable with having an article that puts Essjay's real
name at or near the top of Google. A mention of the event in the article on
[[Criticism of Wikipedia]] shows that we're not sweeping it under the
carpet. Essjay is only notable (and not even particularly so) because of a
single event, and the tendency at Wikipedia is to discourage articles about
non-notable people who became notable from being in the news over a single
event.
I wonder how many people on this mailing list never told lies between the
ages of twenty-one and twenty-four. What Essjay did was wrong, but it seems
that his punishment is out of proportion.
Can anyone quickly get me up to speed on when Redirects for
Deletion... sorry. Redirects for "discussion" became a toxic hellhole
of idiocy that makes the rest of our deletion procedures look sane?
Seriously. People are nominating perfectly sane if misguided
redirects for deletion because no articles use them. Things like
[[Cammy (Street Fighter)]] are up because there's no other Cammy
articles. Which is fine, but someone who doesn't know that and is
trying to guess our naming conventions could type in. Similarly, we
have people seriously suggesting that [[The Twilight Zone (pinball)]]
is not a reasonable redirect for [[Twilight Zone (pinball)]].
Seriously. When did we begin purging redirects, which are possibly
the most harmless thing imaginable on Wikipedia. These are not
offensive or POV redirects. They're sensible things that people might
well guess when trying to type in an article name.
-Phil
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Thomas Dalton [mailto:thomas.dalton@gmail.com]
>Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 07:20 AM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] BBC
>
>On 25/07/07, David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>> Journals are professionals, with specialized training and supervised
>> experience. They are taught how to work with things they do not
>> necessarily understand--in a sense, the very profession is the the
>> ability to go in and make sense out of something that is not
>> understood.
>> Some but not many WP editors have that skill also. A very few as
>> actual journalists, a few from related training (such as we
>> librarians), some from innate ability, but generally from experience
>> and attention.
>
>That's the theory. Go and read a few science articles in mainstream
>media and you'll soon realise that in practice things are very
>different. Journalists think they can write about things they don't
>understand and are generally wrong. Sound familiar?
It isn't so much that he's wrong, but how much can you learn about WIKIPEDIA by interviewing Larry Sanders and the management of Britannica? David Gerard had to show him the edit button... The piece reflects more on the reliability and integrity of the BBC than on that of Wikipedia. It was amateurish. However a nice note at the end encouraging people to edit, "It's your encyclopedia".
Fred
Andrew Cates wrote:
> Who does the footers at en?
>
> It would seem more sensible for the word "charity" on every page to link
> to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charitable_organization rather than to a
> disambiguation page and its a bit rubbishy putting "non-profit charity"
> as two separate tautologous links and would be better without the
> non-profit one at all.
Looking at it, I notice many more problems with it than just those. The
entire footer is a disorganised jumble of:
(a) links to other websites (e.g. wikimediafoundation.org),
(b) links to information _about_ Wikipedia (e.g. Wikipedia:About), and
(c) links to actual _articles_ (such as [[charitable organization]]).
I believe that out of those, the category (c) links are the least
useful. Not because I think the article is useless or anything, but
because the information linked to is not specific to Wikipedia or
Wikimedia, but the user would expect that. Someone added these links
gratuitously just because they can. It's bad design.
I think a first step of improvement would be to:
(1) remove the three links to actual articles
(2) make the link to [[wikimediafoundation:Deductibility_of_donations]]
more explicit; don't have it hanging in the middle of text, perhaps
add it to the third line after "Disclaimers"
(3) also remove the link to wikimediafoundation.org because there's
already the logo on the left linking to it.
Together, these three suggestions will cause the middle line to have no
links. This aids readability and structure, especially because the third
line is /only/ links.
Timwi
"Fred Bauder" wrote
> It isn't so much that he's wrong, but how much can you learn about WIKIPEDIA by interviewing Larry Sanders and the management of Britannica? David Gerard had to show him the edit button... The piece reflects more on the reliability and integrity of the BBC than on that of Wikipedia. It was amateurish. However a nice note at the end encouraging people to edit, "It's your encyclopedia".
The piece was fine. Radio 4 is the "Middle England" channel. It won't have put a single person off Wikipedia, and it struck me as more than fair to the site. 'Amateurish' - no, that mistakes the tone. I would hazard that the average age of listeners to Radio 4 might be over 50, so that technology is approached very gently and discursively.
Charles
-----------------------------------------
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The most interesting thing about his program is that he knows little about Wikipedia, thus interviews the usual people, exhibiting a sense of wonder all the way. In other words, he has no shame attempting to grapple as an amateur with a topic he is not expert in, in much the same manner as a typical Wikipedia editor.
This does not stop him from soliciting the usual criticism that Wikipedia is not edited by experts. Apparently he takes for granted that as a journalist, he need not be an expert himself, at least not in the subject matter he addresses.
Fred
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Steven Walling [mailto:steven.walling@gmail.com]
>Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2007 08:54 PM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] BBC
>
>quite. sorry. here it
>is.<http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/radioplayer_holding.shtml>
>
>On 7/24/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)waterwiki.info> wrote:
>>
>> A url would help
>>
>> Fred
>>
>> >-----Original Message-----
>> >From: Steven Walling [mailto:steven.walling@gmail.com]
>> >Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2007 08:11 PM
>> >To: 'English Wikipedia'
>> >Subject: [WikiEN-l] BBC
>> >
>> >Has anyone listened to the BBC's recent Wikipedia coverage? I'm on an
>> iBook
>> >and it's only available in RealPlayer format.
>> >
>> >Cheers, Steven
>> >_______________________________________________
>> >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
>> >
>> _______________________________________________
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>_______________________________________________
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A url would help
Fred
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Steven Walling [mailto:steven.walling@gmail.com]
>Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2007 08:11 PM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] BBC
>
>Has anyone listened to the BBC's recent Wikipedia coverage? I'm on an iBook
>and it's only available in RealPlayer format.
>
>Cheers, Steven
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
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>