WikiEN-l August 2008

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Who was saying quantity vs quality?
by David Gerard 08 Aug '08

08 Aug '08

Here's some numbers: http://oc-co.org/?p=124 - d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] an interesting article
by WJhonson＠aol.com 08 Aug '08

08 Aug '08

In a message dated 8/8/2008 1:24:22 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, wikimail(a)inbox.org writes: Yes, there are examples of newsworthy events being covered in Wikipedia which are written poorly. But I don't see how that's an excuse not to write about any of them at all.>> ------------ So when dozens of us pour days of effort into the Shawn Hornbeck article, and then it's deleted because... he's a minor? What a lame ass excuse that one was. And today you can Google Shawn Hornbeck and guess what? He hasn't vanished. The number of hits is still growing. And our Shawn Hornbeck article? Doesn't exist. So much for writing news on Wikipedia :) Will "I just had my coffee can you tell?" 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… )

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Anthrax subject edit-warred on Wikipedia
by Matthew Brown 08 Aug '08

08 Aug '08

... according to released documents from the investigation posted online by The Smoking Gun: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/0806081anthrax6.html -Matt

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Re: [WikiEN-l] an interesting article
by WJhonson＠aol.com 07 Aug '08

07 Aug '08

Yes I agree that news stories are snippets, and they unveil over long periods of time sometimes. This is the standard model of news coverage in newspapers and television news. The exception might be an in-depth article in a magazine or like the Biography channel or something like that. But then that's not "News" because it isn't "New" which is one requisite I'd think to being news. Contrariwise, some Wikipedians work vigorously to suppress part of what we'd call news, and label that censorship "BLP issue" or "potential libel" or "not encyclopedic." And so yes, there really should be something that is a middle ground. An everything article, with a policy that BLP will not stand in the way of reporting, and also centralized articles. Maybe knol will become this. They still need to work on it. I wrote a few knols last week and they still don't appear in Google searches, although they appear if you're already on the knol site. Knol also tackles the issue of credit more nicely than Wikipedia does. For professional writers one big drawback to Wikipedia is the no-credit issue. Most professional writers would like to be credited, at least in part, esp. if they were the single or main writer on the article. Knol handles this nicely, and I suppose their intent is that those articles deemed most useful will percolate to the top by being voted up. We'll see. Will Johnson http://www.countyhistorian.com **************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… )

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The problem with a lack of community
by David Gerard 07 Aug '08

07 Aug '08

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/aug/07/searchengines.spam - d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Where are the basic demographics on contributors?
by Jonas Rand 07 Aug '08

07 Aug '08

Carl Beckhorn <cbeckhorn(a)fastmail.fm> wrote: > 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 I don't want to seem rude, but I don't think that anyone cares about the demographics of Wikipedia. It doesn't matter. Jonas

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Sociology of Trolls
by Alex Sawczynec 07 Aug '08

07 Aug '08

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=… Extremely interesting read; includes interviews from the founders of ED, 4chan, and a hacker that pulls in 10 million a year. - GlassCobra

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Re: [WikiEN-l] No-indexing of project-space pages
by WJhonson＠aol.com 05 Aug '08

05 Aug '08

Hypothetical arguments aren't very convincing to me. If someone were willing to point out a "real world" case where our indexing of user, user-talk and article-talk pages is doing some horrible damage that is not already existing in-fact then fine, do so. So far I haven't seen it. I like fixing problems that actually exist, versus ones who only exist potentially. 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… )

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Community discussions about en arbcom elections... input and expertise to the talk page!
by private musings 05 Aug '08

05 Aug '08

Community discussions about how to best organise the December arbcom elections are underway here; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_Dece… Basic questions such as franchise, voting system, and whether or not to have a secret ballot are all under discussion, and any and all input and expertise is welcomed either here or there! cheers, Peter PM.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] No-indexing of project-space pages
by WJhonson＠aol.com 05 Aug '08

05 Aug '08

In a message dated 8/4/2008 12:16:06 PM Pacific Daylight Time, cdhowie(a)gmail.com writes: > A ridiculous claim. How does this play out for people who have not > used, heard of, nor care about Wikipedia and yet are the subject of an > existing article with a history of heated debate?>> > ---------------- Heated debate is not libel. Heated debate does not require oversight. And heated debate is not necessarily personally negative. I'm trying to keep this thread *on track* :) All these excursions make me wonder exactly what people think is really going on here. We are not trying to put out the fires. We want the fires. The fires are part of normal debate on controversial subjects. That is simply a part of real life. I had *thought* the point here in this thread, that we'd want to address, are those situations where libelous, scandalous, unwarranted accusations are being thrown about willy-nilly (which is quite rare). For which we have oversight. So far I've seen no valid, logical argument that we need anything more than oversight. I'm quite sure that subjects of "heated debate" already know how to handle "the press" (which includes biographers like us) and that we don't need brand-new mechanisms to address that. There are old mechanisms, which are working just fine. 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… )

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WikiEN-l August 2008