WikiEN-l May 2009

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

81 participants
88 discussions

Attn: RFC about reforming criteria for speedy deletion policy
by Ryan Delaney 23 May '09

23 May '09

There is currently an RFC in progress regarding proposed reforms to the [[Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion]] policy. The discussion is about reforming the prescriptive language of the policy to bring it into line with fundamental Wikipedia principles and policies such as [[WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY]] and [[WP:POLICY]]. All editors are welcome to add statements and participate in the discussion at [[Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Simplify_policy_RfC]]. Cheers, Ryan

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hyperlinks in Wikipedia rock!
by Shriram Getc 22 May '09

22 May '09

Interesting blog post - research guys investigate how knowledge in Wikipedia organizes itself as the effect of collaborative contributions: http://mint.typepad.com/blog/2009/05/poster-analysis-of-community-structure…

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Usability Study Results (Sneak Preview)
by Parul Vora 22 May '09

22 May '09

Hi All! Thanks for all of the feedback, comments, and support. I just wanted to let you know that our full report (including highlight videos!!) is now up our the Usability Initiative's project wiki: http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/UX_and_Usability_Study - The Usability Team Parul Vora wrote: > Hi all! > > The Wikipedia Usability Initiative conducted a user research study > with SF based Bolt Peters in late March to uncover barriers new > editors face. We are in the process of completing a full report on our > methodology, process and analysis, but wanted to share with you some > of the major themes and findings in the meantime.... > > > Some quotes from our participants that illustrate these findings: > > “Usually it’s the most information in the easiest spot to access. It > always looks very well put together….it boggles my mind how many > people can contribute and it still looks like an encyclopedia.” – ‘Galen’ > > “I like Wikipedia because it’s plain text and nothing flashes” – > ‘Claudia’ > > “Rather than making a mess, I’d rather take some time to figure out > how to do it right." > (later) "There sure is a lot of stuff to read.” – ‘Dan’ > > “ [I felt] kind of stupid.” – ‘Galen’ > > “It’d be nice to have a GUI, so you could see what you’re editing. > You’ve made these changes and you’re looking at it, and you don’t know > how it’s going to look on the page. It’s a little clumsy to see how > it’s going to look.” – ‘Bryan’ > > “[This is] where I’d give up.” – ‘Shaun’ > > > Check out the full post on the foundation blog: > http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/04/24/usability-study-results-sneak-preview/ > > > > We would love to hear any initial thoughts, opinions, and reactions. > If you have any similar or dissimilar experiences - either personally > or in your own work/research, we'd love to hear about that too! > > > Always on your side, > The Usability Team >

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(Active Voice) Where went the man?
by Jay Litwyn 22 May '09

22 May '09

Where did that donkey kick a man? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/politics_and_the_english_language Politics and the English language] is an essay where George Orwell takes issue with how little people know about what Democracy is. An essay says that wikipedia is not a democracy. The rest of us want it to resemble whatever we hav come to understand that Democracy is. "If language can corrupt thought, then thought can also corrupt language." At the end of the essay, he stated six rules for clear writing. Number four says write in the active voice. It is easy to forget that rule, and once a sentence is passive, someone might recognize it without knowing how to activate it. The vast majority of sentences containing "by" are passive. i.e. "The man was kicked by the donkey.". Another way to write it is "The will of the donkey caused the man to be kicked". That breaks rule number three. Forms of "to be" are other flag-words for passive voice. If a sentence introduces object before subject, then it is passive. In an active sentence, you can read cause and effect. In a passive sentence, things are more existential; things just happen, or they just are. "The man was kicked into the barn." is a passive construction. "Someone or something kicked the man" is active, even though it uses inspecific pronouns. Sometimes, finding the right pronouns is all you need for activating a sentence. A donkey kicked a man into the barn. _______ Spammerz suk Uranus tiL they're fuL uv politiks.

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Wikipedia:Advertising discussions
by Carcharoth 21 May '09

21 May '09

Please see [[Wikipedia:Advertising discussions]], a proposal I've made to formalise guidelines on where and how the largest discussions should be advertised around Wikipedia to ensure sufficient input to major discussions. Improvements to the page and input on the talk page would be appreciated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Advertising_discussions Carcharoth

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wow
by David Gerard 21 May '09

21 May '09

Apparently we're conspiring with Microsoft. http://www.flickr.com/photos/nike6/3457023387/ - d.

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Off-topic, but I must share this
by Phil Nash 21 May '09

21 May '09

Whilst Googling for some information, I've just come across this: http://www.wajoop.com/James-Robertson-Justice which is clearly a machine translation of our http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Robertson_Justice I'm particularly fond of "The Blow of Blow of Chitty of Chitty" in the filmography. I defy anyone to read it without laughing as it's just kept me in pleats for 20 minutes. Cheers

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Wikipedia in popular culture
by David Gerard 21 May '09

21 May '09

http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2009/05/the_broken.html - d.

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Fwd: [Wikitech-l] flagged revisions
by David Gerard 19 May '09

19 May '09

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Brion Vibber <brion(a)wikimedia.org> Date: 2009/5/19 Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] flagged revisions To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Quick update: * Yes, we do plan to roll out an English Wikipedia test setup for Flagged Revs. * There's not yet a fixed schedule for it, but I'd like to see it up and running in production before Wikimania. :) [August] * Right now we're running round tidying up general things, getting the 1.15 release set up, and prepping to get our live sites updated to development trunk -- nice things are afoot like a total upgrade to the preferences backend which Werdna has done, yay! * As we get back up to speed, we'll want to coordinate w/ Aaron to confirm that we've got a configuration planned and that it'll look good, and get that test config on en.labs.wikimedia.org and test.wikipedia for a while before we roll it to en.wikipedia. I'd also like to see folks ponder a bit on the final terminology for things -- we'd also like to roll out the Drafts extension (for saving your in-progress edit page in the background so you can return to it if you accidentally close it or your browser crashes), but Flagged Revs also uses the 'draft' terminology sometimes. We want to make sure we're not going to be looking too confusing having both of those things in the system. -- brion El 5/12/09 5:20 PM, private musings escribió: > Hi all, > > The 'flagged revisions' bug ( > https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18244 ) - has, by my reading > been 'reopened' for 2 weeks now. Being as this is a reasonably big deal in > the wiki scheme of things, I presume it's possible that matters are being > discussed, or otherwise moved forward in some way, behind the scenes, but at > this point, I thought it was probably worth making sure that this hasn't > just been sort of forgotten. > > I think the enabling of flagged revisions on the english wikipedia is a very > important, positive step for the project, and hope it might be acted upon in > reasonably good order as a high priority. > > Apologies if such prodding is not a great fit on this list - don't mean to > bug anyone (geddit?) ;-) > > cheers, > > Peter, > PM. > > > > On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 3:55 PM, private musings<thepmaccount(a)gmail.com>wrote: > >> Hi all, >> >> It seems to me that there's been sterling work on the 'flagged revisions' >> front - with the bulk of the credit due to User:Cenarium over on en, and the >> various folk working away over there. >> >> With that in mind, could I please encourage a dev.s attention to; >> >> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18244 >> >> Hopefully we can enable the extension as soon as possible :-) >> >> best, >> >> Peter, >> PM. >> > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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Google's new search options
by Nathan 13 May '09

13 May '09

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8047076.stm Options include "Google Squared" which mines for identifiable and related facts and presents them in a spreadsheet, Rich Snippets which gives useful previews of results and Skymap - which (as a cell phone app) uses GPS to see where you are and where you are pointing to identify stars and constellations. Neat stuff. Wish we could integrate this sort of thing into Wikipedia, half of it probably uses data mined from the projects anyway. Nathan

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WikiEN-l May 2009