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
Hi everyone,
The next strategic planning office hours are:
Tuesday from 20:00-21:00 UTC, which is:
Tuesday, 12-1pm PST
Tuesday, 3pm-4pm EST
There has been a lot of tremendous work on the strategy wiki the past
few months, and Task Forces are finishing up their work.
Office hours will be a great opportunity to discuss the work that's
happened as well as the work to come.
As always, you can access the chat by going to
https://webchat.freenode.net and filling in a username and the channel
name (#wikimedia-strategy). You may be prompted to click through a
security warning. It's fine. More details at:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours
Thanks! Hope to see many of you there.
____________________
Philippe Beaudette
Facilitator, Strategy Project
Wikimedia Foundation
philippe(a)wikimedia.org
mobile: 918 200-WIKI (9454)
Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
So, on a lighter note, I recently got sick & tired of running site:
search after site: -wiki search in Google, and began looking for some
way to automate it.
I discovered that one can make a 'custom' Google search:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Google_Co-op
It allows one essentially to tell Google to increase the score of any
hits in certain domains, and blacklist other domains. It has a number
of neat features - for example, I can tell it to blacklist any domain
on https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks/…
. You might think that a parameter like '-wiki' or '-wikipedia' would
do the same thing, but alas!
In particular, I've created a CSE focused on anime & manga topics:
http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=009114923999563836576:1eorkzz2gp4
I started with all the links listed in
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Anime_…
and then began running searches on random topics and pruning based on
that - chucking sites into the blacklist sinbin, or finding good sites
omitted from the list and adding them to the whitelist. At last count,
I had 200 sites on the nice list and 311 on the naughty list (but this
counts things like the Mirrors page as a single link, though they ban
dozens or hundreds of sites).
The results are *much* better. To take my most recent use, finding
material on [[Amanchu!]] for its AFD
(https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_delet…!),
compare the regular Google search:
http://www.google.com/search?q=amanchu
with the CSE search:
htp://www.google.com/cse?cx=009114923999563836576%3A1eorkzz2gp4&q=amanchu
All the blogs & scanlations & forums in the former are great for
someone who just wants to read _Amanchu!_, but for a Wikipedian? It's
terrible. Notice that the ANN launch article, which is apparently the
most substantive English coverage in a RS*, is the first hit in the
CSE but the fifth in the regular Google search, and you can keep
scrolling down and find mostly chaff. And the weekly sales ranking
that puts _Amanchu!_ at #8 nationally, that shows up in the first page
in the CSE? I've no idea where it is in the regular Google hits.
Or take a critical classic: _The Wings of Honneamise_
(https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Royal_Space_Force:_The_Wings…).
Google:
http://www.google.com/search?q=wings%20of%20honneamise
CSE:
http://www.google.com/cse?cx=009114923999563836576%3A1eorkzz2gp4&q=wings+of…
Google has on its first page WP, IMDb, Amazon, video links, Tucows
(!), ads, and just 2 reviews a Wikipedian might find useful.
CSE has 9 or 10 good review sources from respectable publications like
Ex.org or the New York Times, and even the questionable hits like
RottenTomatoes have their good points - RT would lead one to the
famous critic Roger Ebert's *very* flattering review of _Wings of
Honneamise_. And it'll take you straight to Ebert's review on page 2,
whereas in regular Google search, you have to go to page 7 or 8.
Further examples can be multiplied, but I hope this shows that CSEs
can be very useful for finding online sources; I'm sure it would work
as well for other subject-areas!
(And since I can't let recent events go, I'll mar my little essay with
a final remark: *this* is the sort of thing that will lessen issues
like BLPs - not fanaticism like "Caedite eos! Novit enim Dominus qui
sunt eius".)
* Unsurprising, really. _Amanchu!_ is Japanese only and likely will
stay that way for years; even the anime media can be very
language-parochial.
--
gwern
Hi all,
just toolspamming my latest...
I read the announcement for "Britain Loves Wikipedia", was sad to find
no museum in or immediately around my place participates, and tried to
look for the nearest one. Harder than it sounds, if you're not very
familiar with British geography.
So I wrote a tool to show all "related" places.
First, you need a wikipedia page that links to all the objects you are
potentially interested in. I quickly made [1].
Then, go to my new tool [2] and enter that location there. Click on the button.
Then, you get a link to a google maps page (shortened at [3]).
Which is when I realized there is potential for more. Wanna see places
important to The Beatles? Go [4]!
Enjoy!
Magnus
P.S.: I couldn't quickly figure out how to do the same for
openstreetmaps. If anyone could point me to that...
P.P.S.: Yes, using backlinks are an option as well. Is there interest in that?
[1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/User:Magnus_Manske/BLW
[2] http://toolserver.org/~magnus/related_places.php
[3] http://tinyurl.com/ycncg2f
[4] http://tinyurl.com/y92rgo2
Hey, folks.
The Living Person task force should get rolling mid-week, we're finalizing
the core and last plans (<
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Living_Persons>)
We hope to hold weekly public meetings on IRC with the entire Wikimedia
community, and we will be publishing the logs on strategy.
I'm tossing together an informal "what do you care to see?" meeting at 3:00
UTC, 1 Feb, six hours from this post. I'll be keeping this list updated
with meeting times, it should be at that time weekly I think. That's open
to tweaking as well.
Take care.
~Keegan
--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
The first of four films has just been screened - this is a documentary
series by Aleks Krotowski for 20 years of the Web.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution/
is the website, with footage from the interviews.
Charles
I would be uncomfortable with about blanking articles, if it couldnt
do better in telling whether or not something is referenced than the
last week or so of deletion nomination has done.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 1:32 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
<abd(a)lomaxdesign.com> wrote:
> At 11:06 AM 1/28/2010, Samuel Klein wrote:
>>On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 7:27 PM, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>> > On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 2:45 PM, phoebe ayers
>> <phoebe.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> Running a mass deletion does have the unfortunate effect
>> >> that there's no time for anyone to scramble for sources, which folks
>> >> will do at least some of the time if given a chance. On the other
>> >> hand, if *all* unsourced bios are deleted, at least no one can claim
>> >> theirs was singled out for deletion! And hey, it gives a clean slate
>> >> to start with (she says, somewhat tongue in cheek).
>> >
>> > You're right that these are all very bad problems.
>> >
>> > Pure Wiki Deletion would be an elegant solution to this, and many
>> > other similar snafus.
>>
>>You and Abd ul-Rahman are right about that.a While PWD is simple and
>>effective, its very lack of process means that it can be less
>>satisfying for frustrated editors (an important engine behind
>>passionate bulk actions). I wonder if there is some way to get the
>>best of both hard and soft solutions.
>
> Thanks. As far as I can see, blanking the article content,
> particularly with appropriate tags, would satisfy both approaches. It
> isn't something strange and new, it is how Wikipedia already deals
> with unsourced information in articles of all kinds, including
> biographies, it is simply deleted or possibly moved to Talk (by any
> editor). This is simply applying it the same principle to an article
> as a whole.
>
> "Satisfying for frustrated editors"? Sure. But deletion must be done
> by an administrator, and the dubious pleasure of deletion (take that,
> fancruft!) is not quite respectable for admins, and ordinary editors
> (or bad-hand accounts for "frustrated" administrators) tend to get
> themselves banned for indulging too much or too openly in this
> pleasure.... I'd think that blanking would be reasonably satisfying,
> while doing much less damage in terms of eventual growth of the
> project. If a deletionist wants to indulge his or her frustration at
> cruft and unsourced BLPs by blanking the articles, I'm not offended.
> It's actually much better and much simpler and much less disruptive
> than speedy tags and AfDs and all that.
>
> In fact, that was part of the point of WP:PWD, to eliminate the often
> silly contention over notability at AfD, and instead convert
> "deletion" into an ordinary editorial decision that can, if conflict
> arises, go through the gradual escalation of WP:DR, which can, in
> theory, resolve disputes less disruptively than holding a community
> discussion right at the outset. For sure, with BLPs with no reliable
> sources, the content should go, immediately, as long as it goes in a
> way that makes it easy to recover.
>
> And a bot can do it, very quickly and efficiently. The community is
> almost certainly not going to allow bots to delete articles! I'm a
> radical inclusionist, actually, but would have no trouble accepting
> mass blanking under decent conditions. Particularly conditions where
> the article, as-is, would not withstand AfD!
>
>>PWD also gets harder as speedy deletion criteria expand; now articles
>>are sometimes speedied because they are blank.
>
> That problem would not get worse with PWD as an approach. As
> unsourced BLPs, they are already totally vulnerable to speedy deletion.
>
> First of all, blanking would create an intermediate option that
> addresses the BLP issues as well as notability issues. I'd really
> encourage looking at how PWD could be made effective for all the
> legitimate purposes behind the various factions in the present flap.
> The article might not be blanked, it could be redirected to a page on
> the kind of blanking that was done, giving instructions for how to
> bring the article back. If problems developed with articles returning
> without sourcing, the page could be semiprotected and that could even
> be bot-assisted.
>
> Placing speedy tags should not be done by bot, at least not merely
> for lack of sourcing, and I see no harm in a blanked article
> remaining indefinitely; deletion would be requested by a blanked
> article reviewer who finds that the blanked material was actually of
> no use whatever, a hoax, or so radically incorrect that it will waste
> the time of someone who wants to recreate the article. In that case,
> deletion is exactly appropriate so that a new article starts fresh.
> But an article where it is easy to verify that the topic exists and
> some information can be found that is independent, though not
> necessarily of high quality? The only difference, really, between PWD
> and standard deletion is the reservation of the ability to read the
> history of the article to administrators only, which, in fact,
> increases the load on administrators without a corresponding benefit.
>
> Bots should only do things that are relatively harmless and that can
> be easily reversed. Deletion cannot be so easily reversed, and
> overwhelming the speedy deletion system with piles of speedy tags
> isn't a great idea. Blanking (or blanking with redirection as I'm
> suggesting) fixes the serious problem immediately, and opens the door
> to improvement and invites it at the same time. Those who work on
> improvement will notice useless versions and if they don't have time
> to improve the article, they can place a speedy tag on it, and a
> special speedy tag might be created for this situation. The purpose
> there of deletion is clear: to avoid other editors wasting time
> trying to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse.
>
> Note, however, that someone who finds old content to be useless could
> remove the content, or if it was partly useless, but something might
> be salvaged, remove the useless part, save the article, then reblank
> pending further work.
>
> WP:PWD added an additional feature: redlink display of PWD'd
> articles. That would require a software change, and it might not be
> done exactly that way. But this is unnecessary, even if it is
> possibly desirable. I'm not actually sure which would be better,
> redlink display or something else, it's possible that redlink would
> be best. But a person following the redlink, inspired to fix it,
> would quickly find and be able to read the blanked article, and go from there.
>
>
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