WikiEN-l February 2009

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

78 participants
74 discussions

Re: [WikiEN-l] "A short article is not a stub."
by WJhonson＠aol.com 22 Feb '09

22 Feb '09

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. > > > **************Need a job? Find an employment agency near you. > (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=employment_agencies&ncid=emlcntusye…) > _______________________________________________ > 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 > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG _______________________________________________ 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 **************Need a job? Find an employment agency near you. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=employment_agencies&ncid=emlcntusye…)

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Re: [WikiEN-l] "A short article is not a stub."
by WJhonson＠aol.com 22 Feb '09

22 Feb '09

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 _______________________________________________ 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 **************Need a job? Find an employment agency near you. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=employment_agencies&ncid=emlcntusye…)

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Re: [WikiEN-l] "A short article is not a stub."
by WJhonson＠aol.com 22 Feb '09

22 Feb '09

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...) **************Need a job? Find an employment agency near you. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=employment_agencies&ncid=emlcntusye…)

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Re: [WikiEN-l] "A short article is not a stub."
by WJhonson＠aol.com 22 Feb '09

22 Feb '09

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. **************Need a job? Find an employment agency near you. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=employment_agencies&ncid=emlcntusye…)

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Re: [WikiEN-l] "A short article is not a stub."
by WJhonson＠aol.com 22 Feb '09

22 Feb '09

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. **************Need a job? Find an employment agency near you. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=employment_agencies&ncid=emlcntusye…)

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Re: [WikiEN-l] "A short article is not a stub."
by WJhonson＠aol.com 22 Feb '09

22 Feb '09

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. **************Need a job? Find an employment agency near you. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=employment_agencies&ncid=emlcntusye…)

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Wikimania 2009: Call for Participation
by Casey Brown 22 Feb '09

22 Feb '09

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 * '''Deadline for submitting posters, open space discussions, and 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. * '''"Free Knowledge,"''' including open access to information; ways to gather and distribute free knowledge, use of the Wikimedia projects in education, journalism, research; ways to improve content quality and usability. * '''"Latin American challenges,"''' centering on efforts and 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. * '''"Technical infrastructure,"''' including issues related to 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 * '''Workshops''' (60–120 minute session with a discussion leader and more audience involvement) :* This type of submission is appropriate for sessions designed to teach a specific subject or explore it in depth * '''Panels''' (group of 2-5 speakers to discuss aspects of a topic with audience questions, 45-90 minute sessions) :* This type of submission is appropriate for discussions on a topic of wide interest among community members, with several participants who may be presenting their work. For less formal discussions of limited interest, consider an open space discussion instead. * '''Open space discussions''' (informal discussion on a specific 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 * '''Posters''' (printed visual displays that can stand on their own, with no associated presentation) :* This type of submission is good for presenting research in progress, or smaller community projects * '''Artistic works''' (plays, competitions, comedy, visualizations, displays or other representations of some aspect of the projects) :* This type of submission is good for showing creativity or 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. # '''Abstract:''' a short English or Spanish abstract of your event in 50 to 100 words. The abstract will be used for the public schedule. # '''Themes and track:''' list the track you wish to submit to (Casual or Academic) and the single theme you think your submission fits in best (Wikimedia Communities, Free Knowledge, Latin American challenges, Technical infrastructure). Note that posters and artistic works have their own track in the submission system. # '''Information about the speaker:''' full name, email, and a short biography. # '''Submission file:''' A plain text, PDF or OpenDocument file, in English or Spanish, containing: #* '''A long description of the submission''', in English or Spanish that can be used for reviewing, not to exceed 1000 words. Please give an overview of the areas to be covered or taught. State clearly the relevance to the Wikimedia projects and whether submission concerns a specific wiki project. You can also include links, Include graphics an diagrams if they do not exceed one page. #* '''Event type:''' please state if the event is a presentation, workshop, panel, open space discussion, poster, or artistic work; if a presentation or panel, whether the presentation is expected to be a certain length. #* '''For panel submissions only:''' name of a suggested moderator and short biographies of each suggested panelist #* '''Language:''' list the language you plan to present in. The conference will be bilingual in English and Spanish. #* '''Special requirements:''' list any special requirements, including any equipment. In the "Comments for conference director" field you should tell us whether you will attend to Wikimania (a) surely, (b) probably, (c) only if your submission is accepted, or (d) only if we provide travel and/or accommodation. You can also add yourself to the public list of attendees at the Wikimania 2009 wiki: http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org/wiki/Attendees Please note that all submissions must be dual licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 or later ''and'' the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 3.0! By submitting for Wikimania 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''': http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submission If you have further questions, email wikimania-program(a)wikimedia.org (in English or Spanish).

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Dealing with disappearing online sources
by Michel Vuijlsteke 21 Feb '09

21 Feb '09

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

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Dealing with disappearing online sources
by nsk 21 Feb '09

21 Feb '09

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/

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Re: [WikiEN-l] [Slashdot] The Role of Experts In Wikipedia
by Jussi-Ville Heiskanen 21 Feb '09

21 Feb '09

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

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WikiEN-l February 2009