In a message dated 4/21/2009 11:37:12 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
arromdee(a)rahul.net writes:
> And this doesn't even touch the issue of what to do with information is
> verifiable but false.>>
> -------------------
>
>
Biographical details aren't "True" or "False".
They are reported, repeated, cited, confirmed, evidenced, and so on.
Biography is no longer under the Dewey Decimal system. The idea that a
biography, or even an auto-biography (or especially) is reporting "Truth" is an
old fiction itself.
If the subject of a Wiki-article feels that something is "false" the best
way to combat that is to publish themselves, on their own official website,
the "truth" of the matter and then link it in, or cite it.
We do not give BLP's control over what we report. We give them equal
access. If that person cannot be bothered to do that simple simple thing than
apparently they don't really care enough about the matter.
Will Johnson
**************
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In a message dated 4/21/2009 12:42:47 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
george.herbert(a)gmail.com writes:
> I think that this is the Foundation basically saying in as neutral a way
> possible "The underlying idea behind the Enwiki BLP policy is good and
> should be a standard throughout WMF projects".>>
-----------
I don't see that. Sites like Wikinews and that Cities site (I can't
remember the name) really quite heavily and perhaps exclusively on first-person
reporting. There is almost no way to have the sort of BLP policy we have in
Wikipedia when you have that situation.
Will Johnson
**************
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Michael Snow <wikipedia(a)verizon.net>
Date: 2009/4/21
Subject: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of living people
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
As I mentioned in my previous message, the Board of Trustees prepared a
statement at its meeting related to biographies of living people. It
touches on the major considerations in this issue, but also how this
relates to our fundamental objectives. The statement was unanimously
approved by the board. The text of the statement follows:
The Wikimedia Foundation takes this opportunity to reiterate some core
principles related to our shared vision, mission, and values. One of
these values which is common to all our projects is a commitment to
maintaining a neutral point of view.
In our efforts to offer a source of knowledge that is valuable and
useful to all, we have a responsibility to uphold these values by also
providing accurate information. Participants in Wikimedia projects have
created resources of vast size and scope. As we have emphasized for
several years, in addition to the quantity of knowledge that is
available, its quality is also an essential matter. The generally high
quality of information in Wikimedia projects has been confirmed by a
number of studies, but it is important that we always strive to improve.
As with any endeavor that provides educational and informational
material, errors need to be avoided, especially when they have the
potential to cause harm. One area where this applies is when writing
about living people.
Increasingly, Wikimedia articles are among the top search engine results
for just about any query. That means that when a potential employer, a
colleague, friend, neighbor or acquaintance looks for information about
a person, they may find it at the Wikimedia sites. As the popularity of
the Wikimedia projects grows, so does the editing community's
responsibility to ensure articles about living people are
neutrally-written, accurate and well-sourced.
As our popularity has grown, some issues have become more prominent:
* Many people create articles that are overly promotional in tone: about
themselves, people they admire, or those they are paid to represent.
These are not neutral, and have no place in our projects. Generally, the
Wikimedia community protects the projects well against this common
problem by deleting or improving hagiographies.
* People sometimes vandalize articles about living people. The Wikimedia
community has developed tools and techniques for counteracting
vandalism: in general they seem to work reasonably well.
* Some articles about living people contain small errors, are
poorly-written or poorly-sourced. Articles about people who are only
marginally well-known are often neglected, and tend to improve much more
slowly over time, if at all.
* People sometimes make edits designed to smear others. This is
difficult to identify and counteract, particularly if the malicious
editor is persistent.
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees urges the global Wikimedia
community to uphold and strengthen our commitment to high-quality,
accurate information, by:
1) Ensuring that projects in all languages that describe living people
have policies in place calling for special attention to the principles
of neutrality and verifiability in those articles;
2) Taking human dignity and respect for personal privacy into account
when adding or removing information, especially in articles of ephemeral
or marginal interest;
3) Investigating new technical mechanisms to assess edits, particularly
when they affect living people, and to better enable readers to report
problems;
4) Treating any person who has a complaint about how they are described
in our projects with patience, kindness, and respect, and encouraging
others to do the same.
--Michael Snow
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
I have set up a highly experimental (read: pre-pre-alpha) tool on the
toolserver to search for combinations of key/value pairs in templates.
Like TemplateTiger, but for the live site (one day...)
URL:
http://toolserver.org/~magnus/knights_template.php
(as in "Knights Templar", sorry, couldn't resist)
What does it do (or should do):
Find actors on Wikipedia that have a book by publisher McFarland cited
as source? No problem:
http://tinyurl.com/chadva
(will take a few seconds)
All templates used on [[Roy Scheider]], with key/value pairs:
http://tinyurl.com/dkpbh7
Things that need fixing (like, everything):
* Slooow
* Only en.wikipedia
* Only 16K pages indexed at the moment (some Recent Changes snapshots)
* Only templates used directly in the article are indexed
* Needs continuous update (can run on cron, but disabled because text
retrieval and DB storage too slow to keep up with RC)
* Needs better query interface
* Might cause database size problems
All in all, it would be much better directly integrated into MediaWiki
(no need for text retrieval/parsing, no bulk updates). But I've been
saying that for years, at least this is a first attempt.
Cheers,
Magnus
I'm sure some people who aren't on commons-l are still interested in
this. Please vote! :-)
--
Casey Brown
Cbrown1023
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Michael Maggs <Michael(a)maggs.name>
Date: Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 1:00 PM
Subject: [Commons-l] Final of the Commons Picture of the Year competition 2008
To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List <commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Voting is now open in the Final of the Commons Picture of the Year
competition 2008.
Please visit
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2008/Voting
regards
Michael
_______________________________________________
Commons-l mailing list
Commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
On Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:29:56 -0400, cimonavaro(a)gmail.com wrote:
> and I think it's the same reason I wouldn't
> feel comfortable calling Hyatt and Ross "co-founders" of Firefox. Firefox,
> like Wikipedia, was a side project sponsored by a for-profit company which
> eventually supplanted the main project, and a non-profit organization was
> later formed to take ownership of it (sort of, in the sense that one can
> "own" an open source project in the first place).
>From my own (admittedly limited) knowledge of the history of the
Mozilla project, I don't think the above is a correct description.
Netscape (presumably the "for-profit company" you're talking about
here) spun off the Mozilla Foundation as a nonprofit entity way back
when they first open-sourced what was originally the partly-completed
Netscape 5 version of their browser. Development then proceeded as
an independent open-source project with both volunteers and Netscape
employees doing it as a side project, first to try to finish
"Netscape 5", then to scrap that and rewrite the rendering engine as
"Gecko" and make it part of a new "Mozilla suite". Ultimately, the
Mozilla suite was released by the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, and
Netscape also made it the basis for its own Netscape 6 version (they
skipped Netscape 5 for marketing reasons, though the "5.0" is stuck
apparently permanently in the user agent string, while M$IE has *its*
user agent string stuck permanently at 4.0, because everybody's
afraid to change it due to ignorant browser-sniffing sites... but I
digress).
Then, later on, a side project spun off of Mozilla to create a
"leaner, cleaner" browser without all the application-suite stuff;
this was first called Phoenix, then Firebird, then (after name
conflicts with both of those names) Firefox. At some point the
Mozilla foundation (which pre-existed Firefox) decided to make this
the primary browser of their project, so that's the point where a
"side project" became the "main project" for them. But that's within
the context of a nonprofit operation.
Still later, the Mozilla Foundation decided to launch a wholly-owned,
for-profit Mozilla Corporation that's in charge of actually releasing
and marketing products based on what is developed by the project, and
trying to make money on it to fund the project.
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
In a message dated 4/16/2009 4:02:18 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
wikimail(a)inbox.org writes:
> Once you've released your writing, it can be "edited mercilessly" in
> ways which are directly counter to your intent, and you're left with the
> choice between abandoning credit for your work and being considered
> responsible for the modifications of others (or, in the case of
> Citizendium,
> you're forced to choose the latter).>>
>
I dont' understand about this "responsible" part.
Even though I've started many articles in-project that were later put in a
state that I wouldn't want, I don't feel responsible for the current state
of the article.
Will Johnson
**************
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It's is funny that you mentioned the Wild West (etc), as I was just
thinking yesterday of a new way to describe the difference between Wikipedia and
Knol.
Wikipedia is like moving into a city where all the inhabitants are helping
to build all of the buildings, and you have some organized and disorganized
crime elements like in any city.
Knol is like living on the vast prairies, where you rarely encounter your
neighbors, but you are free to build your own barn, town or city as you
choose.
See my stab at building my first city here.
http://knol.google.com/k/will-johnson/chairpotato-presents-full-movies-on/4h
mquk6fx4gu/45#
Will Johnson
**************
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http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/3540166/stop-being-sanctim…
He was upset it was in what he considered an unsuitable state, tried
fixing it, was reverted and started putting silly stuff in other bios.
I didn't comment on that, but I did leave a comment on how to get bad
living bio issues dealt with effectively - talk page,
info(a)wikimedia.org, BLP Noticeboard. Hopefully will be out of the mod
queue soon.
Goddamn, living bios are an eternal pain in the arse.
- d.
In a message dated 4/17/2009 12:24:54 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
dgerard(a)gmail.com writes:
> So Citizendium is Milton Keynes?>>
Hmmm Citizendium.. I'm thinking somewhere between self-appointed snobs like
the Blue Book or Social Register crowd (now since defunct evidently), or
else a University Committee deciding on whether to grant you tenure.
Either case it's a very rareified group. Scientific journals are read by
only the smallest minority of persons except for popularized magazines
written to the eighth grade level, and *even they* have perhaps one tenth of one
percent infiltration in the general populace.
Will Johnson
**************
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