But you're not disagreeing with anything I said.
The amount of balance in an article between "accomplishments" (that is, what
makes the person notable) and "biography" (that is, the story of their life)
is handled by UNDUE. It doesn't really have anything to do with notability.
And it doesn't enforce, nor preclude, including whatever biographic details
the editors think is warranted.
If someone was a great lawyer, involved a number of famous cases, and their
article is half discussing their descent from the King of Portugal or
something, that is undue. It's also OR unless it is well-sourced, and even so those
sources might be unreliable ones.
A person's biography becomes important because they are, not the other way
round. Once the person has become important, that is when people want to read
their biography. Pick any biography in the Encyclopedia Brittanica and they
include mundane details that could apply to thousands of non-notable people
(born in London, married at an early age, slain in battle, blah blah) and yet
they include them. Those details are each not notable. It is because they
happened to a *person* who is notable, that is what makes those mundane
details encyclopedic.
Will Johnson
In a message dated 2/22/2009 5:31:15 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com writes:
Couldn't disagree more. Articles about people are intended to give the
information that readers want. What they want ito know is what is
important about them. What is important about them is what they are
notable for. The personal life is not the important part. The
professional (artistic, political ,scientific, business,...) life is
the important part.
Please excuse my putting it almost all in words of one syllable, but
it's that basic.
For an example, look at Shakespeare: the textual part of the article
is 2/3 about the works, 1/3 about the biography. Same ratio for the
lede paragraphs. About the same ratio for the illustrations. About the
same ratio for the bibliography.
And this is for a literary author, the sort of personal where the
facts of the personal biography are generally thought especially
relevant to the work. And not any literary author, but one whose
disputed personal life has been of particular public interest for
centuries. It will be even higher for most other personal subjects.
Just for fun, I checked Bob Dylan, an article where the personal and
professional material is presented together, and it seems to be about
he same ratio. For Einstein, it's about 50-:50--I think because the
work needs to be discussed more technically, so it's mostly in
separate articles.
We write about what's notable. The personal life of a person is only
notable in relation to his accomplishments--if it were not for the
person's accomplishments, we wouldn't care about the life & we
wouldn't have an article i the first place. According to your
principal , we'd have the fullest articles for he people about whose
personal lives more was known, not the one's with the most
accomplishments.
On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 7:53 PM, <WJhonson(a)aol.com> wrote:
> An article about a person (i.e. a biography), should be about their life.
> That is what biography means. The story of a life.
> Paris Hilton is not "notable" for going to jail, lots of people go to
jail.
> She is notable, and also she went to jail.
> Once a person is notable enough to have an article here at all, then we
> should present their biography.
> If we wanted to only present, in a person's article, what they are notable
> for, then we shouldn't have an article on the person at all, but rather on
the
> incident, mentioning the person with that incident-article.
>
> Notability is used to establish whether or not the person gets an article.
> It doesn't establish what all goes into that article.
>
> Will Johnson
>
>
>
> In a message dated 2/22/2009 3:09:56 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
> dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com writes:
>
> An article about a person should primarily be about what the person is
> notable for.
>
>
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Ben "notable" is not the same as "encyclopedic."
Encyclopedic is a style of writing, so we don't get things like "I love
Britney Spears, isn't she great?" or "Everyone agrees that Paris Hilton is
super-fabulous." Even though these people are notable, that does not mean that
each sentence within their articles has to separately pass some "notability"
bar. Each sentence should be sourced and cited. It's up to the authors who
work on the article to create an article they can all pass.
Our standards on notability define what articles we include, not what is
within those articles.
Two separate concepts.
In a message dated 2/22/2009 5:37:20 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
bkovitz(a)acm.org writes:
On Feb 22, 2009, at 7:53 PM, WJhonson(a)aol.com wrote:
> Paris Hilton is not "notable" for going to jail, lots of people go to
> jail.
> She is notable, and also she went to jail.
I can agree with this: some facts about a person become notable simply
because the person is notable. As David Goodman mentioned, Einstein's
children are notable simply because they are Einstein's.
> An article about a person (i.e. a biography), should be about their
> life.
> That is what biography means. The story of a life.
> Once a person is notable enough to have an article here at all, then we
> should present their biography.
Here's an opposing idea: A full-blown biography of a person, such as a
book, should indeed tell a vast number of details, in order to present
a full picture of the subject's life. But a biographical article in an
encyclopedia does not aim at giving such a full picture. It's much
shorter than and doesn't try to go as far as a full-blown biography.
Also, telling the story of a life in rich detail requires a kind of
literary finesse that we can't likely achieve on a large-scale wiki. A
serious, rich biography requires the personal touch of an author to,
among other things, select thousands of extremely fine-grained facts
and weave them into a textured narrative. No other biographer would do
it the same way. Stylistic choices blur with content. That's not
compatible with a large number of authors, and it's especially
incompatible with the way coarse guidelines enable authors to resolve
editing disputes.
> Notability is used to establish whether or not the person gets an
> article.
> It doesn't establish what all goes into that article.
I'm very surprised to read this. It seems to me that every fact
reported on Wikipedia must meet an encyclopedic standard for
notability--a standard much higher than, say, the standard for a
newspaper article or a book about that topic or even a chapter about
that topic. Exactly where that line is cannot be defined precisely and
must be continually negotiated, but in order to have a sense of common
purpose, we need to understand that the "encyclopedic bar" for
notability is much higher than those other bars.
I'd like to hear some other folks' opinions about this. I had taken
what I just said as "goes without saying" among Wikipedians for a long
time. WP:NNC?
Ben
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It was mentioned in this thread earlier as something we shouldn't do, and
I'm countering that, because I personally think it's very germane to the writing
of a biography. If I read a biography which did not mention at all a
subject's marriage, children, parents, I would think it was quite sub-standard.
People do not spontaneously appear fully formed and they don't die that way
either. That way of writing is 19th century.
In a message dated 2/22/2009 5:13:03 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk writes:
(Why are we having this discussion for the thousandth time, anyway?
It's not desperately germane to the issue of how to define stubs...)
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I disagree. Our obligation should be to report what is reported. Not to
obscure merely for the sake of some rather ill-defined notion of "privacy" or
some such thing.
Do you think we should not report the names of the children of Edward III
who died as infants?
I think it's interesting to see what he and his wife named each of his
children.
In addition, if a biography subject had no children, one child, or 12
children, is very important to presenting a full picture of the person.
Children have a great impact on parents. If our sources discuss the
children, then we should as well.
If they don't, then we shouldn't either.
Will Johnson
In a message dated 2/22/2009 1:23:12 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com writes:
Why do you say that? In most cases we should not mention children by name.
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It would worry me if people are leaving out the names of children long long
dead over some sense of notability.
Notability does not apply to each sentence within an article. It applies to
the article as a whole.
If anyone is concerned about cluttering the bandwidth, it might be good to
look at the list of largest articles, some exceed 100K.
That a subject had children is quite important in my view, in writing a
biography.
In a message dated 2/22/2009 5:05:04 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
bkovitz(a)acm.org writes:
This worries me. As Charles Matthews said, it would terrible to make a
rigid, general rule about this, but most mentions of subjects' children
strike me as unnotable. That is, they clutter the bandwidth. Sources
tell much, much more than is suitable for an encyclopedia. We are
summarizing the highlights, not attempting to report every fact.
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The names of the subject's children are encyclopedia-worthy.
I'm sure you must have meant something else.
In a message dated 2/22/2009 6:08:10 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
bkovitz(a)acm.org writes:
Often, especially in biographical articles,
I've been seeing facts tossed in that seem way below the bar for
encyclopedia-worthiness: names of the subject's children, birthplaces
of people they know (!), etc.
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Apologies in advanced for the cross-posting. :-)
Please circulate this call among Wikimedia communities, researchers
and other people that may be interested! This call is also online at
http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org/wiki/Call_for_Participation
== Call for Participation ==
Wikimania is an annual global event devoted to Wikimedia projects
around the globe (including Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikisource,
Wikinews, Wiktionary, Wikiversity, Wikiquote, Wikispecies, and
Wikimedia Commons). The conference is a community gathering, giving
the editors and users of Wikimedia projects an opportunity to meet
each other, exchange ideas, report on research and projects, and
collaborate on the future of the projects. The conference is open to
the public, and is a chance for educators, researchers, programmers
and free culture activists who are interested in the Wikimedia
projects to learn more and share ideas about the Wikimedia projects.
This year's conference will be held from '''August 26-28''' in Buenos
Aires, Argentina at '''San Martín Cultural Center'''.
For more information, please visit the official Wikimania 2009 site at
http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org.
We are accepting submissions for presentations, workshops, panels,
posters, open space discussions, and artistic works related to the
Wikimedia projects or free content topics in general. Please carefully
follow the submission guidelines below.
=== Important dates ===
* '''Submissions will open on:''' March 1
* '''Deadline for submitting workshop, panel, and presentation
submissions:''' April 15
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artistic works:''' April 30
* '''Notification of acceptance of workshops, panels, presentations:''' May 15
* '''Notification of acceptance of posters, discussions, and artistic
works:''' May 31
* '''Conference dates:''' August 26-28
=== Themes and tracks ===
There are two tracks for submission: the '''Casual Track''', for
members of wiki communities and interested observers to share their
own experiences and thoughts and to present new ideas; and the
'''Academic Track''', for research based on the methods of scientific
studies exploring the social, content or technical aspects of
Wikipedia, the other Wikimedia projects, or other massively
collaborative works, as well as open and free content creation and
community dynamics more generally.
Submissions to either track should address one or more of the following themes:
* '''"Wikimedia Communities,"''' including the topics of conflict
resolution and community dynamics; reputation and identity;
multi-lingualism and languages and cultures.
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to gather and distribute free knowledge, use of the Wikimedia projects
in education, journalism, research; ways to improve content quality
and usability.
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limitations for expanding the reach of Wikimedia projects in Latin
America; promotion of projects in Native American languages; specific
problems of the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking Wikimedia communities.
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MediaWiki development and extensions; Wikimedia's technical
infrastructure; and new ideas for development.
Papers should be of interest to members of the Wikimedia communities,
and fit within one of the themes above.
=== Types of Submissions ===
We are seeking submissions for:
* '''Presentations''' (10–30 minute talks with discussion afterwards)
:* This type of submission is appropriate for presenting substantial
research or community projects
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more audience involvement)
:* This type of submission is appropriate for sessions designed to
teach a specific subject or explore it in depth
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with audience questions, 45-90 minute sessions)
:* This type of submission is appropriate for discussions on a topic
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topic; the discussion leader helps moderate the conversation but the
session is open to anyone interested to join in)
:* This type of submission is good for a topic that several
participants want to discuss or brainstorm about in an informal
setting
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with no associated presentation)
:* This type of submission is good for presenting research in
progress, or smaller community projects
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displays or other representations of some aspect of the projects)
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showcasing beautiful work about the projects.
In addition there will be the chance to give lightning talks, which
are 5-minute short presentations. Lightning talk sessions will be
organized on the Wikimania 2009 wiki shortly before the conference
begins, without any need to submit them via the submission system.
These talks are best for those who want to quickly present an idea or
project without giving a formal presentation. These are informal talks
that are open to everyone to participate in.
=== Submission Guidelines ===
Wikimania is organized by volunteers, so please help us minimize
wasted effort by submitting via the submission system and following
these guidelines. All submissions MUST include the following:
# '''Event title:''' an English or Spanish title.
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50 to 100 words. The abstract will be used for the public schedule.
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or Academic) and the single theme you think your submission fits in
best (Wikimedia Communities, Free Knowledge, Latin American
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In the "Comments for conference director" field you should tell us
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Please note that all submissions must be dual licensed under the GNU
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2009 you agree to this condition.
===Submissions===
Once you are sure you have included all of the required information,
please send your submission before the respective deadline through our
'''submission system''':
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If you have further questions, email wikimania-program(a)wikimedia.org
(in English or Spanish).
The other day I noticed an editor replacing multiple references to a website
that has disappeared with {{fact}}, in different articles.
The other day I noticed an editor removing a number of references to a
website, with a "this site is gone" edit summary. The site has indeed left
the building, so to speak, but I'm not sure what the rule is here.
Question for the panel: is it better to just leave the links as is (with a
note that the site does not exist anymore), remove them altogether, or
replace the links with archive.org links?
In these particular instances the links were replaced by {{fact}}, which
is--to my mind--the worst of all options: it makes it look as if there never
were proper sources for the statement, or actually worse: the "citation
needed" make it look as if the statements are somehow controversial. Not to
mention that they now run the risk of being deleted.
(The issue that made me think about this is clouded by the fact that the
editor effectively removing the sources deems the originally referenced site
untrustworthy, but that's beside the larger point, really.)
Michel Vuijlsteke
On Fri, 2008-10-17 at 19:23 +0000, wikien-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org
wrote:
> From: Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com>
> multiple references to a website
> that has disappeared
> Question for the panel: is it better to just leave the links as is
> (with a
> note that the site does not exist anymore), remove them altogether, or
> replace the links with archive.org links?
I, for one, would say that yoy should just do what you would do with
offline sources, there is no reason to treat online sources in a
different way: when you cite a journal it is the reader's responsibility
to go and find it in a library, not yours, as long as you give all
necessary information to locate a copy of the journal if one exists at
all, and if the journal goes out of print and all libraries of the world
somehow decide to burn all copies of that journal then it is still not
your responsibility, as an author or editor.
A dead link is like a book which is out of print. It is hard to find,
but it was published someday, so it is appropriate to cite it as long as
you include the access date (a short quotation would help too).
Your responsibility as an author is to provide proper references that
would enable one to spot the source if copies exist and to provide the
information in a correct manner (eg if the source says "a bit of it"
don't write "lots of it"). For links, as long as you cite the pages for
information that is correct and truthful and you provide proper
citations (URL, access date, etc) then you have done what is expected of
you. Noting that a link is dead or providing a link to a web archiver
is a good thing, too.
There are some systems where you can go and keep a snapshot of a webpage
for future reference. Using them is a good thing, but not necessary:
when you reference a book you don't make a snapshot of it, so you
shouldn't be required to take snapshots of webpages just because
webpages may go dead (books can be burned or become out of print, too).
However, do note that placing citations to dead webpages, or to live
webpages that soon afterwards go dead, is a way to commit undetectable
vandalism. There is no easy solution against this, unless one is
willing to not include any dead links.
Furthermore, the responsibilities of the author have to be balanced with
the rights of the reader: the reader has a right to be able to check
your work for accuracy, and citations are supposed to satisfy that
right, but with the web this system appears to be broken now (with books
and journals it was very unlikely for a paper source to disappear from
all over the world and from all libraries at once), so one could say
that dead links do not appear to be very useful for readers,
particularly those not familiar with citation systems. While the author
has a responsibility to provide sources and assist one in finding them
by providing proper publication and access dates or other information,
they are not responsible for actually keeping a copy of them or of
actually finding them themselves after an article is written, but the
reader has a right to be able to check the author's accuracy and
therefore the volatility of the web appears to be a diservice to
readers.
Perhaps the best solution would be to build a web archiving platform in
Wikipedia itself, so that all referenced webpages are stored for later
retrieval.
--
Thanks,
NSK Nikolaos S. Karastathis, http://nsk.karastathis.org/
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
> Charles Matthews wrote:
>> Thomas Dalton wrote:
>>
>>> 2009/2/16 Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com>:
>>>
>>>
>>>> I believe we have another decade before Wikipedia lives up to its
>>>> potential as a comprehensive reference. My main hope is that life
>>>> around the wiki stays dull enough so that the job largely gets done.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Indeed. Current predictions show growth in terms of article numbers
>>> pretty much ending in around 4 or 5 years time. We'll then need
>>> several more years to actually get all the articles up the scratch. A
>>> decade may even be optimistic.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> Yeah, well, my reaction to the whole "fruit" discussion is that it is
>> systemic-bias-lite. I'll settle for five years to start most of the
>> articles of interest to those with a fairly parochial view of what
>> constitutes an interesting topic, and 25 years more to catch up with the
>> rest of the planet. You're not telling me that we'll have articles
>> correspording to all the other language versions - total interwiki
>> converage - by 2014?
>>
>>
Personally I think this is a very interesting point. You will
forgive if I have asked this before, and not gotten a reply.
(I honestly forget if I have broached this subject before, I
know I have often thought I should ask the question.)
Does anyone know how many unique (that is not reproduced
around other languages) articles there are in toto in the
non-English language wikipedias, which do not have a
corresponding English language wikipedia article? Can
even a rough estimate be made?
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen