WikiEN-l November 2008

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

81 participants
62 discussions

Re: [WikiEN-l] Ayn Rand and Wikipedia
by WJhonson＠aol.com 12 Nov '08

12 Nov '08

In a message dated 11/12/2008 7:26:53 PM Pacific Standard Time, dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com writes: anyone who really cares about credit for the authorship of his text, should really pick some other medium than wikipedia. myself, I always thought that was the implication of not own, and our warning about what can happen to what you write. Its not as if it cost money to set up a blog.>> --------------------- A blog isn't an encyclopedia however. Your argument works, until you realize that Knol is doing this already. They are not a blog, but more like an encyclopedia, albeit just starting out. Perhaps someone could address the similarities and differences in the approach of WP as against Knol. We already have a form of attribution, in the history and the tools already pointed out. All I'm suggesting is that it could be made more apparent. **************Get the Moviefone Toolbar. Showtimes, theaters, movie news & more!(http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1212774565x1200812037/aol?red… p://toolbar.aol.com/moviefone/download.html?ncid=emlcntusdown00000001)

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Ayn Rand and Wikipedia
by WJhonson＠aol.com 12 Nov '08

12 Nov '08

In a message dated 11/12/2008 3:30:09 PM Pacific Standard Time, wikimail(a)inbox.org writes: Did you look at wikiblame? It does a lot more than just list a few names. The preamble to the GFDL says as a secondary purpose, "this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others." Just listing three names and "with numerous other contributors" doesn't preserve for *all* authors (or any publisher) a way to get credit for their work, and makes no effort to keep authors from being considered responsible for modifications made by others. >> --------------------------- And my idea is not to *replace* the history tab, it's to allow attribution. The requirement of the license is satisfied by the history tab details. **************Get the Moviefone Toolbar. Showtimes, theaters, movie news & more!(http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1212774565x1200812037/aol?red… p://toolbar.aol.com/moviefone/download.html?ncid=emlcntusdown00000001)

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Ayn Rand and Wikipedia
by WJhonson＠aol.com 12 Nov '08

12 Nov '08

I'm not sure what you mean by "it's not usable by print media" If an article says, writen by Tom Jones, Brandy Cooper and Mike Wallace with numerous other contributors.... why wouldn't that be usable by print media? **************Get the Moviefone Toolbar. Showtimes, theaters, movie news & more!(http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1212774565x1200812037/aol?red… p://toolbar.aol.com/moviefone/download.html?ncid=emlcntusdown00000001)

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Intellipedia presentation at LISA conference
by WJhonson＠aol.com 12 Nov '08

12 Nov '08

link? In a message dated 11/12/2008 11:10:22 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, george.herbert(a)gmail.com writes: One ancedote - they had an incident where they imported a Wikipedia page that turned out to have information that another agency / department insisted was special compartmented information, and that they had to take down the Intellipedia page on it.... **************Get the Moviefone Toolbar. Showtimes, theaters, movie news & more!(http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1212774565x1200812037/aol?red… p://toolbar.aol.com/moviefone/download.html?ncid=emlcntusdown00000001)

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Ayn Rand and Wikipedia
by WJhonson＠aol.com 12 Nov '08

12 Nov '08

In a message dated 11/12/2008 2:21:46 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, wikimail(a)inbox.org writes: In order to deprive us of honor that you may then deprive us our wealth, you have always regarded us as slaves who deserve no moral recognition.>> --------------------- I.E. you do the work and your boss gets the credit. I think Dolly Parton said it as well. That's the shining light of Knol, or at least the theory. That those who write the articles *do* get attribution, but so-far it's not quite working out as I'd thought. I have two Knols where I actually have *minor* co-contributors, but the majority just seem to be read without comment. Maybe I'm just that perfect of a writer. I wonder if there is some measurement in Wikipedia of the *average number of contributors per article* ? Perhaps it's only something small like 1.5. Maybe most articles are written by a single author. Maybe one way to improve Wikipedia would be a two-tier approach where articles start out with attribution but once an article achieves "critical mass", the list of contributors just becomes "a bunch of people" instead of specifying the names. (Don't try to convince me that the History link is "attribution", people who write for a living know that it's almost unusable for that.) Will Johnson **************Get the Moviefone Toolbar. Showtimes, theaters, movie news & more!(http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1212774565x1200812037/aol?red… p://toolbar.aol.com/moviefone/download.html?ncid=emlcntusdown00000001)

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Intellipedia presentation at LISA conference
by George Herbert 12 Nov '08

12 Nov '08

One of the CIA folks involved in Intellipedia just gave the opening invited talk at the Usenix LISA conference. Interesting view into what they are doing with some of the tools, some of the obvious problems, some tool gaps, having to figure out how to deal with compartmented, normal top secret, and secret networks and information, importing from Wikipedia, etc. One ancedote - they had an incident where they imported a Wikipedia page that turned out to have information that another agency / department insisted was special compartmented information, and that they had to take down the Intellipedia page on it.... -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Ayn Rand and Wikipedia
by WJhonson＠aol.com 12 Nov '08

12 Nov '08

In a message dated 5/8/2008 5:47:17 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, anirudhsbh(a)gmail.com writes: *To say that "Ayn gave the impression that a work created by committee would never achieve any degree of excellence" is simply untrue. It was her belief that when man was driven by rational self-interest towards achieving his end. For that purpose, he could function within a committee or an organization as efficiently as an individual would have. One of the features of strong capitalist societies are the huge multinational and transnational corporations, which are more effective and efficient in their zeal to achieve excellence driven by free competition in free markets.>> -------------------- But that isn't a counter argument. The reason is because, even in that multi-national corporation, if *you* are allowed to do your own work, without undue influence (micro-managing) then you can still produce excellence. However, if your work is developed by committee, where your best ideas are watered down and changed to the point where they don't resemble what you had in mind whatsoever, that is the thing that Ayn was against. I have worked for companies where I was allowed to create excellent computer programs that were really years ahead of our competitors. And I've worked for companies where I was not. In order for me to achieve excellence, I require the looser management style that Ayn would probably approve. Will Johnson **************AOL Search: Your one stop for directions, recipes and all other Holiday needs. Search Now. (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1212792382x1200798498/aol?redir=htt… -aol-search/?ncid=emlcntussear00000001)

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NYT: Updating a Reference Site on the Fly
by Chris Howie 11 Nov '08

11 Nov '08

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/technology/internet/10link.htm Not sure if this made the rounds already but thought I'd mention it. -- Chris Howie http://www.chrishowie.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Crazycomputers

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Ayn Rand and Wikipedia
by WJhonson＠aol.com 11 Nov '08

11 Nov '08

In a message dated 11/11/2008 11:40:46 AM Pacific Standard Time, charlottethewebb(a)gmail.com writes: which went completely dead the moment I asked a question.>> Ask me. I'll at least give you a flip and obnoxious response if nothing else ;) That's a joke. **************AOL Search: Your one stop for directions, recipes and all other Holiday needs. Search Now. (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1212792382x1200798498/aol?redir=htt… -aol-search/?ncid=emlcntussear00000001)

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Two main page FAs per day.
by Gregory Maxwell 10 Nov '08

10 Nov '08

For some time now featured articles have been promoted at an average rate exceeding one per-day. The undeniable consequence of this is that unless the rate of FA promotions drops off most featured articles will *never* make it to the main page. I see no reason to expect the promotion rate to fall, an several arguments why we should expect it to increase. Yet, being featured on the main page is still cited by users as a big motivator behind their work on featured articles. There is a simple measure that we could take which would substantially reduce this gap: We could regularlly run two featured articles on the main page like we are doing today. By doing so we could also have more flexibility in our choices. When two interesting things fall on a single day, we could possibly run both. We could run similar articles for comparison, or dramatically different articles for contrasting. With the order randomization that we're using for today's two articles we could compare differential click through rates and learn more about what people will click on. We could offer readers additional choices. To me this seems like a lot of advantages, at the cost of a little less attention on a single article. (When we're done with this discussion we could move onto the fact that both of today's articles are hard-full-protected and how nice it would be if we were using revision flagging with display-flagged instead...)

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WikiEN-l November 2008