Hi everyone,
This Friday's office hours will feature Mike Godwin, the Wikimedia
Foundation's Legal Counsel. If you don't know Mike Godwin, you can
read about him at <http://enwp.org/Mike_Godwin>.
Office hours this Friday are from 2230 to 2330 UTC (3:30PM to 4:30PM
PDT). Mike will also be taking the following Thursday from 1600 to
1700 UTC (9:00AM to 10:00AM PDT).
The IRC channel that will be hosting Mike's conversation will be
#wikimedia-office on the Freenode network. If you do not have an IRC
client, you can always access Freenode by going to
http://webchat.freenode.net/, typing in the nickname of your choice and
choosing wikimedia-office as the channel. You may be prompted to click
through a security warning. Go ahead.
--
Cary Bass
Volunteer Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Folks,
Would someone help me here? What is the current policy regarding linking
dates such as Birth and Death in biography articles?
Thanks,
Marc Riddell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-07-06/Featur…
I couldn't help but notice:
* Five articles were promoted to featured status this week
* Four articles were delisted this week.
* Twelve lists were promoted to featured status this week
* Eight lists were delisted this week
What a lot of churn. So the overall rate was merely +1 FA, +4 FL (and
also 3 topics and three images).
Is it always this bad?
Steve
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/6250515/Wikipedia-20-articl…
When a friend forwarded this I assumed it was going to be a
depressing read, filled with useful gems which had been lost due
to the cruel symbiosis between processmongering and deletionism,
but you know, in these 20 cases at least, I think we got it right.
G'day folks,
Google has announced that it has developed a custom search skin for
Wikipedia.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/contextual-search-within-wikipedia.h…
We are excited to announce that we've built a Custom Search Wikipedia
skin<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Csewiki> that
makes it easier for you to complete your research on Wikipedia. Wikipedia
allows users to register and personalize their Wikipedia environment via the
configuration of options and the use of styles or skins. Just log in to
Wikipedia, enable the Custom Search
skin<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Csewiki> and
you'll have quick access to relevant Google Custom Search results from
Wikipedia. With the Custom Search skin, your search results are conveniently
placed inline on the page. After you've reviewed the results, you can
dismiss them and return to the current article of interest without having to
switch to a different tab on your browser; you can access the relevant
Wikipedia articles right within the Wikipedia interface.
The Custom Search skin also features contextual search — searching across
different sets of pages as you navigate Wikipedia. For Wikipedia pages with
a lot of information and links, contextual search lets you limit your search
to only those Wikipedia pages that are linked from the current article,
focusing the results on the topic of the article. So, in addition to getting
all matching Wikipedia articles, you can quickly drill down to contextually
relevant results using the Linked Wikipedia Pages tab.
For example, searching for [sequence] from a Wikipedia page on
DNA<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA> provides
a list of relevant results about DNA sequences and DNA sequence alignment,
instead of the many pages about
sequences<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequence_%28disambiguation%29>
(in
mathematics, poetry, music, games, etc.) that aren't relevant. Similarly,
searching within the DNA page for [bonds] gives you results in chemistry and
biochemistry, instead of other information about financial instruments and
social sciences. This will help you perform more directed research, often
with shorter queries, and get to relevant Wikipedia articles faster.
More in story
--
Keith Old
62050121 (w)
62825360 (h)
0429478376 (m)
Checking the Village Pump today I discovered
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29#autocon…
This is an ingenious new way of getting rid of newcomers while officially
welcoming them to contribute. A newcomer who wants to create a new article
would be sent through a 7+ page procedure with no less than 21 buttons, a
number of dead ends and trap doors and about 2500 words of instructions for
a typical path from start to end.
Isn't it time to be honest with ourselves and nominate "Wikipedia is not a
bureaucracy" for deletion?
This email describes my impression. See for yourself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WIZ2
I'm hoping that we won't have too many "trick" articles in this
process, or articles that should be deleted but not by CSD (the
criteria are "write an article that doesn't meet the deletion
criteria".
So far we've had a range from Battleships and miniaturists to Monarchs
and a winger. I think we've tested the charge that a new article
submitted to Wikipedia will be tagged for deletion in two minutes and
is guaranteed not to last seven days. But it would be a Pyrrhic
victory to respond to the press that It is still possible for a good
article to be added to Wikipedia by a newbie, as we'd have to concede
that enough get deleted by over-enthusiasm at CSD to constitute a
problem - the press exaggerated the problem, but they didn't entirely
invent it. We've also established that neither welcoming nor
wikification are currently keeping up with the flow of newbies and
their articles.
My own contribution has in the first sentence "was king of ****** from
***** to ***". It has yet to be marked as patrolled and I anticipate
it reaching those who patrol the back of the unpatrolled newpages at
some point this week.
Regards
WereSpielChequers
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:52:18 -0400
> From: David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] How friendly are we to Newbies? Update on the
> create an article as a newbie challenge
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> <480eb3150910290952i5afcb259qadfdd6751246d1b3(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> It's not hard to do. Mention the unspectacular factor that claims
> notability in an obscure position in the middle without any details,
> add some foolish spam about how good they are & how they will change
> the world, include an email address to contact for more information,
> and omit references. For models, check CSD.
>
>
> David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
>
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 4:17 AM, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 11:32 AM, WereSpielChequers
>> <werespielchequers(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
>>> The idea is to test the speedy deletion process with articles that
>>> shouldn't be speedy deleted.
>>>
>>> Links to several of the articles in the process and their fates have
>>> been posted to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WereSpielChequers/Newbie_treatment
>>
>> Hey, that's really cool. I've made my own lame newbie attempt to join
>> the experiment. It's hard to write a convincing newbie stub article
>> that you think deserves to exist, but could be dissed by a patroller
>> acting in a hurry.
>>
>> Steve
>>
Last week George Herbert requested that I update this list on the
progress of my test [[User:WereSpielChequers/Newbie treatment]] where
I and other volunteers create new accounts which submit new articles
to Wikipedia.
The results so far, with 5 editors creating 7 "newbies" who've
submitted 9 articles.
Firstly the guarantee that someone would tag your new article for
deletion within two minutes. Well six out of nine were tagged for
deletion, though with times ranging from one minute after creation to
almost an hour; so the good news is that most survived their first two
minutes untagged. The bad news is that yes we do have a problem with
overenthusiastic speedy tagging, there are various possible solutions
to this including
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Speedy_deletion_-_24_hour_pause…
As for surviving seven days, three have gone, three had to be rescued,
and three have survived the week unscathed. Again, not as bad as our
critics may think, but yes we have a problem.
Of our newbies, one has received a template welcome, two "welcome
warnings" for their unloved offerings, and four have not been
welcomed. My own unloved alter ego whose unpatrolled article has yet
to be edited by anyone else, still has a redlinked talkpage as does
his article. Possible responses to this include
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Welcome_all_useful_new_users,_i…
On the plus side one editor declined a speedy and rescued one of these
articles, so I gave them a Barnstar.
WereSpielChequers
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 18:21:58 -0400
> From: Gwern Branwen <gwern0(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Accepting the challenge to create a new
> article as a newbie and see if it lasts 2 minutes - or 7 days
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> <cbf55b100910081521v1923edd1k5682ed9e7ceb551a(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 4:55 PM, WereSpielChequers
> <werespielchequers(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
>> Apologies for reviving a thread from three weeks ago. But the idea
>> that we had degenerated into a newbie biting place where one could
>> "challenge a newbie to create an article on Wikipedia and have that
>> article exist for an entire week. Guaranteed, your article will be
>> marked for ?speedy deletion? within about two minutes of its
>> creation." bugged me, so I thought I'd unscientifically test it.
>>
>> I made a suggestion at
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/new_users#Lets_…
>>
>> Nobody including myself knows how many articles have so far been
>> created as part of the test, and yes one has already been deleted
>> under the novel speedy deletion criteria of "the wikilinks did not
>> have the proper markup".
>>
>> But there are at least two other articles that have survived more than 24 hours.
>>
>> Anyone else who is interested in following the test is welcome to
>> watch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WereSpielChequers/Newbie_treatment
>>
>> Two articles at least should be unveiled in the next few days.
>>
>> WereSpielChequers
>
> I particularly enjoyed WilliKing's comment:
>
>> My bad...I sincerely apologize. If I knew about the "challenge", I would have kept the article. It did have, though, words without proper wikilinks. Willking1979 (talk) 02:32, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
>
> I sympathize with him entirely; if I had known about the cop around
> the corner, I wouldn't've casually shoved that woman off cliff. In my
> defense, though, she was ugly.
>
> --
> gwern
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 16:04:17 -0700
> From: George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Accepting the challenge to create a new
> article as a newbie and see if it lasts 2 minutes - or 7 days
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> <38a7bf7c0910081604t551d26fbu2f7f0ea13d434999(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
>
> This is very good data in the "how friendly are we to newbies" question.
>
> Thanks for running the test.
>
> Please send another update in a couple of more days at least, I am too
> busy to follow on-wiki but I want to see more of the results of this.
>
>
> -george
>
> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 3:21 PM, Gwern Branwen <gwern0(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 4:55 PM, WereSpielChequers
>> <werespielchequers(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
>>> Apologies for reviving a thread from three weeks ago. But the idea
>>> that we had degenerated into a newbie biting place where one could
>>> "challenge a newbie to create an article on Wikipedia and have that
>>> article exist for an entire week. Guaranteed, your article will be
>>> marked for ?speedy deletion? within about two minutes of its
>>> creation." bugged me, so I thought I'd unscientifically test it.
>>>
>>> I made a suggestion at
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/new_users#Lets_…
>>>
>>> Nobody including myself knows how many articles have so far been
>>> created as part of the test, and yes one has already been deleted
>>> under the novel speedy deletion criteria of "the wikilinks did not
>>> have the proper markup".
>>>
>>> But there are at least two other articles that have survived more than 24 hours.
>>>
>>> Anyone else who is interested in following the test is welcome to
>>> watch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WereSpielChequers/Newbie_treatment
>>>
>>> Two articles at least should be unveiled in the next few days.
>>>
>>> WereSpielChequers
>>
>> I particularly enjoyed WilliKing's comment:
>>
>>> My bad...I sincerely apologize. If I knew about the "challenge", I would have kept the article. It did have, though, words without proper wikilinks. Willking1979 (talk) 02:32, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
>>
>> I sympathize with him entirely; if I had known about the cop around
>> the corner, I wouldn't've casually shoved that woman off cliff. In my
>> defense, though, she was ugly.
>>
>> --
>> gwern
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>
>
>
> --
> -george william herbert
> george.herbert(a)gmail.com
>
>
>
Great minds discuss ideas.
Mediocre minds discuss events.
Small minds discuss other people.
--Eleanor Roosevelt
Mathematics: Can't get enough original research or validation or exceptions, and please state your assumptions. If you can explain loops and equations in English, then you might serve on [wikisophia] indefinitely. You might serve a longer and definite term if you can animate math.
Physics: No perpetual motion machines, please. Original research in nuclear science is covered by treaties and your local American army base.
Biology: Please restrict your original research to photographs.
Chemistry: This department actually has a policy regarding notability and what you can say about compounds that are not synthesized.
Biochemistry: No man's land. There's big pharma, there's governmental collusion, cover-ups, smear campaigns, drug promotions and oodles of tobacco funding. Wanna meet spooks and royalty? Then make a name for yourself in this field.
Arts: um...anything goes...sorta...not on wikipedia, though...just sorta writing about arts, like policy making and other methods of screwing you, is there. Try to make it artful, anyway, just so nobody forgets. If I bored you to tears, then I am sorry. Forget that I told you to ignore all rules until you really need to do that.
Biographies of Living People: This is a rat's nest of politics and corruption, starting with who writes the rules, who is a credible authority, and it does not end with those who enforce the rules. It is not safe to talk about dead people on wikipedia. No induction, really, especially if it is bad news.
History: News is the first rough draft of history. Your news and my news are different things, and they are both anthropocentric if not wrong. Try to understand that before you make wikipedia into a discussion forum.
Handy Guide to Modern Science:
1. If it is green or it wiggles, then it is Biology.
2. If it stinks, then it is Chemistry.
3. If it does not work, then it is Physics.
--"MURPHY.EXE 123"
BrewJay's Babble Bin