WikiEN-l August 2008

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

67 participants
80 discussions

25 Jul '09

At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cool_Wall we had a complete list of cars which appear on the BBC Top Gear "Cool Wall". I removed this as being almost certainly a violation of copyright. It is now being argued that reproducing the list in full does not violate copyright, because it is not published in the show's magazine or on the website and has been compiled by collating the lists from numerous shows. It is further asserted that compiling the list from these shows does not constitute original research, although there is no known reliable secondary source for any of the data, let alone the complete collated list Original research? You decide. Copyright? I think so, but what do I know? Fancruft? Ooooh, tricky :-) Guidance appreciated. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

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XKCD in Popular Culture
by Sean Barrett 25 Sep '08

25 Sep '08

http://xkcd.com/446/ -- Sean Barrett sean(a)epoptic.com

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thefreedictionary.com
by Andrew Famiglietti 08 Sep '08

08 Sep '08

Hey everybody! I've been lurking around here for awhile, but haven't posted before. I just wanted to bring something to the attention of this list. It seems the website thefreedictionary.com, which has been mirroring wikipedia content for awhile now, has produced some sort of widget that gives an "article of the day" with a link back to a wikipedia they are mirroring. Here's the thing, the widget doesn't credit wikipedia. It just says "Free content provided by The Free Dictionary." Isn't the widget a derivative work based on the wikipedia article (it includes a preview paragraph of text)? As such, shouldn't it have to credit wikipedia under the terms of the GFDL? What do people think about this? Is it a bad thing? Is it a GFDL violation? You can see lots of examples of the widget in action if you google "Free content provided by The Free Dictionary." Or you can go to: http://www.malaspina.com/home.htm to see one example. -Andy

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Deletion of articles, archival, etc.
by Flameviper Velifang 07 Sep '08

07 Sep '08

In regards to the "wikiunderground" site, I have a couple questions. Is it directly tied-in to the Wikimedia software? Or is it just a fast-refreshing crawler? If the latter, is it sufficiently equipped to handle all article deletions? Secondly, this concept raises a lot of possibilities. First of all, the question of deletion itself. Is there a need to permanently delete pages so that only administrators can view them? Or could we have another userlevel (somewhere between autoconfirmed and admin) called "Pageview" where you could view deleted pages? I mean, this might be a bad idea because it would remove the importance of deletion (why bother deleting a page if some users will be able to view it) but this level might require 6 months and 500 edits. Thirdly, a developer might even want to automate this process, wherein all deleted pages are transfered to a subdomain, perhaps deleted.wikipedia.org or something to that effect. Just some thoughts. Just a thought.

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Closed wikis
by White Cat 05 Sep '08

05 Sep '08

It has came to my attention that closed wikis can be the source of problems particularly for IW links. When a wiki is locked down (generally for inactivity) edits to the site are completely blocked. This is a problem because IW links can no longer be fixed meaning there is a permanent invalid IW linkage which may mislead bots and humans (visitors reading articles) alike. In addition it creates a backlog as the wikis in question will be unlocked eventualy. Admittedly the locked wikis are small so backlog isnt exactly too big of a deal. In adition locked wikis also need to be edited for SUL unifications, username renames (can relate to SUL), leftover spam deletions and etc. I really think certain usergroups and/or global usergroups should be allowed to edit such wikis. - White Cat

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NYT flattery
by Steve Summit 31 Aug '08

31 Aug '08

[If "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery", I'm thinking close paraphrase is a pretty good second.] Liberal commentators are of course having a field day with the nomination of [[Sarah Palin]] for the U.S. vice-presidency. The NYT's dishy Maureen Dowd compared the situation to a deliciously hokey chick flick, including this description of the heroine's kids: Track (named after high school track meets), Bristol (after Bristol Bay where they did commercial fishing), Willow (after a community in Alaska), Piper (just a cool name) and Trig (Norse for "strength.") [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/opinion/31dowd.html] Now, was this fantastic satire, or based on truth? A quick check of our article reveals not only that it's truth, but also where Dowd got her facts from.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia and Free Culture at Large
by WJhonson＠aol.com 30 Aug '08

30 Aug '08

In a message dated 8/29/2008 4:11:38 PM Pacific Daylight Time, snowspinner(a)gmail.com writes: Again, the larger problem here, to me, is that it's unclear Find A Grave is free content.>> ------------------ But of couse that goes back to your desire that we should be promoting free content in a way that "quality" content is not. Personally I think our readers would be more inclined to favor us, if we were to promote the highest standards of quality, not just the free-est ones. Find-a-grave is free in the sense that a reader doesn't have to pay to use it, and an editor doesn't have to pay to edit it. As to whether its free in the sense that the contents can be copied and re-hosted elsewhere, or sold for a profit, I'm not sure. I'm a bit ambivalent about templating find-a-grave. On the one hand, it's nice to promote sites which aim to be, or have the potential to be, comprehensive (even if they are not currently), and sites which allow readers free-access to all the content. I would, for example have been against a template for EB except their new policy allowing deep-linking direct-to-content for "bloggers" (which means any online mass linker in their view). I would be against any template for JSTOR for example or Lexis-Nexis or Ancestry which all require payment. On the other hand, I can't help but wonder where the line would be drawn toward this sort of "preferential" (if you will) approach. Template for Rootsweb's World Connect? Template for Marvel Universe ? Template for Huffington Post Articles ? I'm not sure how we'd justify some against others. Or do we need to? Just allow the free creation of any priveledged link that can stand scrutiny. **************It's only a deal if it's where you want to go. Find your travel deal here. (http://information.travel.aol.com/deals?ncid=aoltrv00050000000047)

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia and Free Culture at Large
by WJhonson＠aol.com 29 Aug '08

29 Aug '08

In a message dated 8/29/2008 2:30:05 PM Pacific Daylight Time, snowspinner(a)gmail.com writes: I'm open to other ways of distinguishing the two, but the basic functionality - interfacing ourselves with other free content projects - still seems to me valuable.>> ---------------- Well for example see _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Find_A_Grave_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Find_A_Grave) An interesting problem or solution depending on how you look at it. Find A Grave is created by thousands of "entries" submit by anyone, just like Wikipedia. Supposedly or hopefully, the entries are accurate and relatively detailed. It's not a wiki program however, but then neither is IMDb. So what about that? Will Johnson **************It's only a deal if it's where you want to go. Find your travel deal here. (http://information.travel.aol.com/deals?ncid=aoltrv00050000000047)

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Wikipedia and Free Culture at Large
by Philip Sandifer 29 Aug '08

29 Aug '08

One of the positive things to come from our prominence has been the rise of similar subject-specific resources - many clustered around Wikia, but not all. For any supporter of free culture it is a deeply heartening thing to see a genuine focus on creating free content for a variety of purposes. There are obvious benefits to finding ways to work closely with these projects. For one thing, it promotes free culture, and that is our goal. For another, these projects often fill in gaps in our coverage. It's a simple fact of life that our most-read articles are often ones on fictional subjects. And we have major controversies in this area as people seek to restrain our coverage due to notability. If we can interface ourselves with fan wikis for various shows we can also better police the boundary between what we want to cover and what we don't want to cover without leaving our readers short-changed. In fact, this is often a major argument raised in notability discussions - if people want plot summaries they should go to X Wiki. Years ago, I created http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:FreeContentMeta to help with this - it was a base template that could be used to create sister-project like boxes for other wikis. This let us, on fictional characters, have a link much like we have for Wikiquote or Wikisource that basically said "If you want detailed in-universe information, here's where to go." This struck me as common sense - it helped with the problem of getting readers to expect us to provide what we actually provide, it helped editors have a better sense of where to put different types of information, and it helped free content by creating prominent and crawlable links to free content resources (since Wikia is on the interwiki map, and thus links are not nofollow). Unfortunately, the templates are pretty near to being deprecated with no real replacement in mind. This strikes me as very, very unfortunate - the attitude, which seems to be that we ought never promote anything, ever, and that we have no obligation to help other free content resources, seems to me both a case of pulling up the ladder and of situating ourselves as a walled garden. We want people to go to other resources instead of us, but we are unwilling, it seems, even to tightly integrate with those resources to make that leap easy for readers. The idea that we have an obligation to help free culture is roundly and dismissively rejected, and the very idea of providing prominent links to free content sites is decried as an NPOV violation (though nobody, to date, has explained what viewpoint it unfairly advances...) What can or should we do in this area? How can we best use the existence of a much larger galaxy of free content resources to improve ourselves and improve them? What role do we play in the larger free culture community? Are we a walled garden that is only to be imitated? Or are we the leaders who can and should use our prominence and our muscle to help create free sources of knowledge for anything that people want to know? For me, this is a no-brainer. So how do we do it? Best, Phil

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia and Free Culture at Large
by WJhonson＠aol.com 29 Aug '08

29 Aug '08

In a message dated 8/29/2008 1:24:06 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, wilydoppelganger(a)gmail.com writes: the correct answer is probably "Propose a new project". Wikicompendium, or something. -------- If by this you mean something like, a wiki which includes (at least links) to fan details, non-notable characters and episodes, obscure rock rocks, authors of single papers, etc etc The only way a wiki like this would survive as an "overview" is if one of the core policies were stated at the outset to be "We we never have any notability requirement". In addition imho we would need to drop the requirement that only third-party sources be used, since the vast majority of fancruft for example, is first or second party, but not third. And then what about BLP? I just don't see the possibility of being a "compendium" *with* a blp. There are just too many things that certain "focus groups" want to exclude on the basis of BLP. If the people of San Francisco know the Mayor cheated on his wife, we can't include it, unless 35 other newspaper pick it up and he appears on 5 talk shows denouncing it. If I find something in a newspaper 30 years ago, but no one since has mentioned it, I can't include it, because no one else has mentioned it? That's a ridiculous bar that bears no relationship to standards of journalism and writing. By the way, "Nikko" was King of the Flying Monkeys. The *sole* place you will find this, is in old newspapers. Obviously everyone since then has suppressed the information. My biography of Henry Fonda, corrects dozens of inaccurate statements, some appearing in otherwise good print biographies, based on contemporary newspaper quotes. IN Biography, this sort of source-based research would be considered what we *want* to present, not what we want to suppress. And that's exactly the way other print encyclopedias do it. If they find evidence outside of print biographies, yet published, they include it. I'm venting :) Will Johnson **************It's only a deal if it's where you want to go. Find your travel deal here. (http://information.travel.aol.com/deals?ncid=aoltrv00050000000047)

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WikiEN-l August 2008