Has anyone in a position to do so (i.e., a representative of the
Wikimedia Foundation) contacted Google to negotiate making Wikipedia an
"author" for Google's Knol service? This seems like a natural thing to
consider - we have a lot of good content, and could take a reduced ad
rate from them. On the other hand, they presumably need good content.
- Carl
Killing a mosquito with a hammer is not the proper approach however.
Most of, if not all the major issues NYB brought up, were addressed already.
In many cases, when I search for particular things in Google, I *do* in fact
want to see the Wikipedia information, that's for what in-fact I'm
searching. Our internal search engine does not do the same finesse and bag-of-tricks
that Google can do, so it's not really an adequate replacement.
IF the programmers had some way of creating a Google-internal-only search
engine, that is, it works exactly like Google and I mean exactly, and yet can
only be accessed from inside the Wikipedia frame, that could possibly work.
Often I simply know that there is some issue with a certain user, and I want
to know what it IS, since some nellies on here won't just come right out and
say it directly (read that tongue-in-cheek). My sole recourse is to Google
for the user. Many, but not all, of these hits are to internal Wikipedia
pages. How can a historian accurately track the meta-project if we're going to
suppress the very pages that are most needed?
The only thing that noindexing User and User Talk pages will do, is give
ammunition to those who already loudly trumpet that we hide actions of
malevolent editors.. admins.. bureaucrats.. and arbcom members. Because now, we've
made it 20 times harder to actually track those actions.
If there are cases, and I do mean relatively few, they can be handled with
oversight. If those with Oversight do not WISH those cases to vanish, then we
should not be back-dooring that very situation. If we don't have enough
oversighters to handle the vast volume (tongue-in-cheek) then we should promote
more.
This is not the solution to that problem.
Will Jhonson
**************Get fantasy football with free live scoring. Sign up for
FanHouse Fantasy Football today.
(http://www.fanhouse.com/fantasyaffair?ncid=aolspr00050000000020)
I expect that any site with as many active editors as English Wikipedia
should have good statistical data about members - age, sex, race,
nationality, and income distributions, among other things. Where can I
find these statistics for English Wikipedia? I expect the Foundation
has at some point retained an independent polling firm to obtain this
data, right?
- Carl
>
> From: Sheldon Rampton <sheldon(a)prwatch.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Knol goes live
>
> A blogger at the LA Times wonders when the "gold rush" will start for
> people to claim ownership of articles on Knol:
>
> http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/webscout/2008/07/knol-has-nothin.html
>
> In particular, he pointed out that Knol does not currently have an
> article about Wikipedia, so I decided to do my part and create one:
>
> http://knol.google.com/k/sheldon-rampton/-/8r9tdjdcsltq/2#
>
> I basically cut-and-pasted the existing Wikipedia article, although I
> did make one minor correction. The current version fails to credit me
> as Wikipedia's creator. It mentions some guy named Jimmy Wales
> instead. Anyway, I fixed it in my Knol version. ;-)
Heh. They don't appear to have a "talk" sorta' page. So I can't lambast
you about how Wikipedia was actually created by Al Gore, two years before he
invented the internet, with the assistance of space aliens from the planet
Rigel 7 and 1/3. And Bill Gates, can't forget him.
But that's gonna' be a major failing of it. People don't have the ability
to say something's crap except by rating it lowly, and people on the
internet tend to rate funny things highly instead of truthful things.
[[User:Lifebaka]]
A blogger at the LA Times wonders when the "gold rush" will start for
people to claim ownership of articles on Knol:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/webscout/2008/07/knol-has-nothin.html
In particular, he pointed out that Knol does not currently have an
article about Wikipedia, so I decided to do my part and create one:
http://knol.google.com/k/sheldon-rampton/-/8r9tdjdcsltq/2#
I basically cut-and-pasted the existing Wikipedia article, although I
did make one minor correction. The current version fails to credit me
as Wikipedia's creator. It mentions some guy named Jimmy Wales
instead. Anyway, I fixed it in my Knol version. ;-)
-------------------------------------------
SHELDON RAMPTON
Research director, Center for Media & Democracy
Center for Media & Democracy
520 University Avenue, Suite 227
Madison, WI 53703
phone: 608-260-9713
Subscribe to our free Weekly Spin email:
<http://www.prwatch.org/cmd/subscribe_sotd.html>
Subscribe to our Weekly Radio Spin podcasts:
<http://www.prwatch.org/audio/feed>
Read and add to articles on people, issues and groups shaping the
public agenda:
<http://www.sourcewatch.org>
Support independent, public interest reporting:
<http://www.prwatch.org/donate>
Hi,
I've been told that a large percentage of the EB1911 sits within the
history of English Wikipedia, and a during a recent discussion about
EB1911 here few checks indicate that this is possibly true, and that
the EB1911 text imported into Wikipedia is from a decent
transcription. In the following very long discussion, there are a two
tables consisting of five Wikipedia articles starting with "A" and
"B", a link to the Wikipedia revision consisting of the EB1911 text, a
link to the copy now on Wikisource, and a link to the pagescan (set up
by Tim Starling):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Plagiarism
I am interested in piecing together the history of the EB1911 import,
because if this was as extensive as some claim, hidden in Wikipedia is
possibly the best and most complete available transcription of EB1911,
and I would like to work out a good algorithm to pull it out and put
it on Wikisource, which has slowly been building an online copy that
is true to the original. Or maybe we can find whoever imported it,
and re-use the import files.
This will benefit Wikipedia, as it will allow readers and editors to
determine what parts of those Wikipedia article have not been altered
since 1911, which will act as a caution flag for readers, and a todo
item for editors. There is a WikiProject to go back and verify all of
the articles imported from EB1911; this task can be better distributed
if the task if the reader can see the original text without a degree
in wiki-archeology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:EB1911
The relevant Wikisource pages people may way to look at are:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/EB1911
and the "project page" for that effort is at
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/WS:EB1911
and the complete set of scans in TIFF and PNG; I recommend
installing the TIFF plugin, as those images are a joy to view and the
plugin has a nice zoom interface.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/User:Tim_Starling
Enjoy,
John
G'day fellow Wikipedians,
Google has announced that Knol has gone live.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/knol-is-open-to-everyone.html
"A few months ago we
announced<http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html>that
we were testing a new product called
Knol <http://knol.google.com/>. Knols are authoritative articles about
specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects. Today,
we're making Knol available to everyone.
The web contains vast amounts of information, but not everything worth
knowing is on the web. An enormous amount of information resides in people's
heads: millions of people know useful things and billions more could benefit
from that knowledge. Knol will encourage these people to contribute their
knowledge online and make it accessible to everyone.
The key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol will have an author
(or group of authors) who put their name behind their content. It's their
knol, their voice, their opinion. We expect that there will be multiple
knols on the same subject, and we think that is good."
(More in link)
The Knol website is live here.
http://knol.google.com/k#
The featured content ranges from How to backpack to Type 1 diabetes.
Regards
*Keith Old
*
In a message dated 7/23/2008 8:16:12 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
szilagyi(a)gmail.com writes:
What is the benefit to allowing Google to index DRV, talk pages, and
user/user talk pages?>>
----------------------------------------
Transparency. There is no benefit and a great drawback to not indexing.
Not indexing makes it appear we are hiding something. That belief is already
very prevalent among our critics, we don't want to feed them a ton of raw
steak.
Will Johnson
**************Get fantasy football with free live scoring. Sign up for
FanHouse Fantasy Football today.
(http://www.fanhouse.com/fantasyaffair?ncid=aolspr00050000000020)
As long as none of your links is of commercial nature (SPAMish) i support
your work Sheldon. Some knol editors link to family pictures from within
articles<http://knol.google.com/k/ryan-moulton/how-to-backpack/oggVvQ9h/aMOKbQ#>.
And as many people already know that articles there are full of urls
composed of "catalog", "productdetails", etc...
This is an example of a table of content with some commentaries:
* Why Backpack? --> because i do and here's my pic [link to Picassa album]"
* What to Wear? --> the content goes like... "I wear a pair of Lowa Banffs
[SPAM] that I bought a few years ago after losing my previous pair. My mom
wears a pair of Gore-tex lined Vasque Skywalker leather boots that are over
ten years old (similar to these[SPAM].)" "To care for your boots, wipe the
dirt off with a wet towel and oil them with a product such as Nikwax
[SPAM]."
* What to Pack? --> content... "ridge rests [SPAM] aren't bad ."
* What to Eat? --> no comment! But i am tempted, i just say it... "I don't
like rice."
* How to Hike? --> very little encyclopedic content
* How to Camp? --> seems good
* How to Be Safe? --> seems good
* How to Enjoy It? --> this is like saying "i'd like you enjoyed my article"
I guess knol readers will get bored with that soon or later. My search of NY
led me to "New York City Coffee (NYCC)." There probably will be an entry
about NY soon but i am sure it will be full of links to places like NYCC.
This means that knol will be more a place for all articles that find no
place here.
To respond to someone's comment in this thread... it is not for us to
precipitate or have Knol ideas. It is their problem for now. There are 2
different business models. As for the New Yorker cartoons, I believe that
some would prefer, say, Pravda's probably for cultural and/or political
reasons. And for this main reason, Wikipedia cannot be a platform for any of
them.
Fayssal F.
On Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:33:49 -0500 Sheldon Rampton <sheldon(a)prwatch.org>
wrote:
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Knol goes live
To: wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Message-ID: <AA980800-940C-4E74-A7CC-B90EEA1DF963(a)prwatch.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes
A blogger at the LA Times wonders when the "gold rush" will start for
people to claim ownership of articles on Knol:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/webscout/2008/07/knol-has-nothin.html
In particular, he pointed out that Knol does not currently have an
article about Wikipedia, so I decided to do my part and create one:
http://knol.google.com/k/sheldon-rampton/-/8r9tdjdcsltq/2#
I basically cut-and-pasted the existing Wikipedia article, although I
did make one minor correction. The current version fails to credit me
as Wikipedia's creator. It mentions some guy named Jimmy Wales
instead. Anyway, I fixed it in my Knol version. ;-)
-------------------------------------------
SHELDON RAMPTON
Research director, Center for Media & Democracy
Center for Media & Democracy
520 University Avenue, Suite 227
Madison, WI 53703
phone: 608-260-9713
Subscribe to our free Weekly Spin email:
<http://www.prwatch.org/cmd/subscribe_sotd.html>
Subscribe to our Weekly Radio Spin podcasts:
<http://www.prwatch.org/audio/feed>
Read and add to articles on people, issues and groups shaping the
public agenda:
<http://www.sourcewatch.org>
Support independent, public interest reporting:
<http://www.prwatch.org/donate>