WikiEN-l August 2008

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

67 participants
80 discussions

Re: [WikiEN-l] The dangers of not citing Wikipedia

by WJhonson＠aol.com

In a message dated 8/11/2008 3:31:05 PM Pacific Daylight Time, ansell.peter(a)gmail.com writes: Good point. I do the "as cited by" thing for published papers, but for wikipedia with its mix of anonymous, and pseudonymous users, and its continual evolution, it just doesn't look right to say "as cited by Wikipedia user 204.23.144.2 at 13:00 UTC on August 12, 2008" (if you even feel like taking the time to figure out which user it was that actually put the citation in given how many revisions are on many articles).>> ---------- I don't think you really have to go that far. But I would say something like "Hippo of Carthage is supposed to have said 'I've had enough' right before he died of food poisoning" (''Annals of Tacitus, Book 12'' as cited by Wikipedia "Hippo of Carthage"). It would be a bit complex if we felt we had to actually cite the individual author of a polygamous work, instead of the work cited. I think a citation of that sort should be sufficient. It would be at least better than presenting a situation where it would *appear* that you yourself read Tacitus directly. Now IN THOSE CASES where you merely spot that one source cites another one, and then you *actually do* read the underlying source seperately, it's probably more common to simply cite that underlying source. Personally I don't like that, but I'm sure it happens. It detracts from the effort the author(s) went to, merely to collect and extract the sources relevantly, and makes it appears like you yourself made that effort. For example, I'm today working on a new biography of Henry Fonda, from scratch. I'm sure that bits and pieces of the *new* data I find will worm their way into here-and-there without citing my work, but its fairly discourteous to approach sources in that fashion imho. Will Johnson **************Looking for a car that's sporty, fun and fits in your budget? Read reviews on AOL Autos. (http://autos.aol.com/cars-BMW-128-2008/expert-review?ncid=aolaut00050000000… )

14 years, 7 months

The dangers of not citing Wikipedia

by David Gerard

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/09/AR200808090… - d.

14 years, 7 months

proposal regarding pm editing restrictions

by Jon

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Just cross posting here and on ANI for greater visibility. No recommendation however. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Proposal_to… - -- Best, Jon [User:NonvocalScream] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkifDi0ACgkQ6+ro8Pm1AtW/FwCeNmqH5wg80Rm+Um1aXCfAdk/s p0QAoIlb72TlKRWLWwosNYRYsPqYLsAz =CYwi -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

14 years, 7 months

Questions regarding Wikipedia users' motivation

by Mehrotra, Niki (US - Chicago)

Hi all, I am new to Wikipedia and am involved in an organization that wishes to incorporate wiki-style features into an existing internal collaboration tool. I have looked into Wikipedia's structure and understand that all processes related to quality control are completely self-driven on the part of its contributors. What do you think motivates the average user to contribute as much as he or she does? What incentive do the individuals have to devote much of their time to monitor pages? One of our challenges will be getting our organization's members to use the wiki once we roll it out. Thank you for your time and help. Regards, Niki Niki Mehrotra Enterprise Applications Deloitte Consulting LLP Tel: +1 312 486 1746 Fax: +1 312 247 1746 Mobile: + 1 847 946 2225 nmehrotra(a)deloitte.com www.deloitte.com <http://www.deloitte.com/> 111 S Wacker Dr. Chicago, IL 60606 USA This message (including any attachments) contains confidential information intended for a specific individual and purpose, and is protected by law. If you are not the intended recipient, you should delete this message. Any disclosure, copying, or distribution of this message, or the taking of any action based on it, is strictly prohibited. [v.E.1]

14 years, 7 months

Re: [WikiEN-l] an interesting article

by WJhonson＠aol.com

In a message dated 8/9/2008 8:37:30 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, toddmallen(a)gmail.com writes: In this case, the reporting over time on the subject has made it quite encyclopedic, and the fact that -even the sources the article cites- give the name really eliminate any privacy concerns.>> ----------------------------------------- Which matches my issue with "Genie : The Wild Child" i.e. Susan M Wiley. *That* someone was a famous *victim* should not restrain us from re-reporting what everyone else has already reported. *That* someone or some other ones have tried to blot out the name, should not restrain us either. Perhaps you might Knol it. Knol may possibly, due to their privileged position, beat out Wikipedia in position. Perhaps that's what for which they are aiming ? Will Johnson **************Looking for a car that's sporty, fun and fits in your budget? Read reviews on AOL Autos. (http://autos.aol.com/cars-BMW-128-2008/expert-review?ncid=aolaut00050000000… )

14 years, 7 months

an interesting article

by private musings

Here's an interesting article; http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/by-the-people/2008/07/29/1217097249794.html?… interesting that the author notes "Wikipedia came into its own on July 7, 2005, at 8.50am, when four synchronised bombs exploded in London's transportation system." - I'd be interested to hear thoughts in general about this article - but on this point specifically... should the en-wiki be encouraging the 'news' type items over to Wikinews, or embracing them as a core strength of the project.... cheers, Peter PM.

14 years, 7 months

Knowledge web, the James Burke institute

by Ian Woollard

This is quite interesting: http://www.k-web.org/ It's the James Burke institute which is related to James Burke who wrote the famous 'Connections' documentary from back in the 70s. Basically, they're trying to build webs of connections between things, and plotting them in 3D, so you could pick something, like the computer and trace backwards and find out what things led to its creation. They're doing it the hard way, but it struck me that the wikipedia might be mined for this kind of thing- that many connections may already be there and that the dates contained in articles might allow a creation of an interactive graphic for looking at the wikipedia in a new way. It also struck me that perhaps the wikipedia doesn't value antecedents very highly. I think that history sections tend to cover the first example of something, but not so much things that lead up to it, that weren't it, or forces that helped create it or make it practical or economic to do that way. -- -Ian Woollard We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. If we lived in a perfectly imperfect world things would be a lot better.

14 years, 7 months

Re: [WikiEN-l] Who was saying quantity vs quality?

by WJhonson＠aol.com

In a message dated 8/8/2008 2:10:09 PM Pacific Daylight Time, bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca writes: Or alternately, that articles on pop culture subjects more frequently have people gunning for their deletion, and lack of references is an easy way to try accomplishing that. Few people are going to challenge an article on a 19th century poet.>> -------- You'd be surprised. Typically pop culture subjects don't fail from a lack of references. Although at first people might try to use fan sites or other poor web sites, typically you can find any number of newspaper articles about some pop culture item. I have had articles on older subjects challenged based on not being to find much in Google. One in particular which springs to mind dealt with a teacher/doctor who was important in the history of Seattle. This particular person had an elementary school named *for* him and yet was challenged on notability grounds. IIRC the article actually went through an AfD. Which begs the question of whether we need to make it clear that "If someone has a large structure named FOR them, then obviously they are *notable* no matter what you can or can't find in Google." Google is heavily weighted toward the last ten years, Google Books will change that, but only '''very'''' gradually. Will Johnson **************Looking for a car that's sporty, fun and fits in your budget? Read reviews on AOL Autos. (http://autos.aol.com/cars-BMW-128-2008/expert-review?ncid=aolaut00050000000… )

14 years, 7 months

Re: [WikiEN-l] Who was saying quantity vs quality?

by WJhonson＠aol.com

In a message dated 8/8/2008 7:30:35 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net writes: My suggestion was to spend more time on improving the quality of the Articles that exist now.>> --------- I'm doing my part by going through our Category of claims uncited since.... 2006! (yes they exist and there are hundreds of them) Trying to pare them down. In some cases the claims have been fulfilled, just the tag remains. In other cases it's the wrong tag. At any rate. Wikipedia is heavily heavily weighted toward modern pop culture references. Which probably just shows that the majority of editors are not relying on print sources, but on googley sources. It's a great help that Google Books now exist, but that still represents a very tiny percentage of references. The other day, just as a few examples. I was looking for references to Eba Anderson Lawton and we have nothing on her. She was an author and socialite at the turn of the century and her father was relatively famous. At any rate, I had to make up my own article on my own site, just to prove to myself that she was someone of some importance in her day. As another example we have no article on "Richer of Rheims" whose work is quite important in filling the gap we had had (before he was re-discovered) on exactly how the Carolingian era ended. Again I had to write my own article just to inform myself. It would be instructive for some poor volunteer to go through say the first 50 pages of the DNB and compare the articles there to whether we even have an article or not. The sheer number of biographical articles we now have swamps what the DNB tried to do, so you'd think we'd have most of them, but somehow I think the true answer would be surprising. Will Johnson **************Looking for a car that's sporty, fun and fits in your budget? Read reviews on AOL Autos. (http://autos.aol.com/cars-BMW-128-2008/expert-review?ncid=aolaut00050000000… )

14 years, 7 months

Re: [WikiEN-l] Who was saying quantity vs quality?

by WJhonson＠aol.com

In a message dated 8/8/2008 11:39:30 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, geniice(a)gmail.com writes: Ensuring they are about things other than chemicals and astronomical objects may be more of a challenge.>> ----------------------------- How about characters and episodes? No but seriously folks take my wife please! The other day as I was working on my Alice Ghostley article I just happened to notice exactly the same five lines used in two different episodes of Bewitched seperated by four years. Odd isn't it? Maybe I'll write an article about it. Makes me wonder who wrote the scripts and whether we have articles about those writers. **************Looking for a car that's sporty, fun and fits in your budget? Read reviews on AOL Autos. (http://autos.aol.com/cars-BMW-128-2008/expert-review?ncid=aolaut00050000000… )

14 years, 7 months

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WikiEN-l August 2008