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
Hi everyone,
The next strategic planning office hours are:
Wednesday, 04:00-05:00 UTC, which is:
-Tuesday (8-9pm PST)
-Tuesday (11pm-12am 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
The number of admins on the English Wikipedia may possibly have
peaked, and the number of active admins is 20% down on its peak of a
couple of years ago.
Dec 2009, Jan 2010 and February 2010 had only 19 successful RFAs
between them, with December and January both equalling the previous
all time low of 6. March 2010 is not yet over, but with less than 7
days left and no-one running, it looks like 2 is a new record monthly
low for RFA, and 15 a new record low for a quarter.
Those who are becoming admins are mostly the tale end of the classes
of 2006/7, as we currently have only 34 admins who started editing in
2008, and only 4 from the class of 2009.
Are other projects experiencing a similar phenomena?
What are the likely results of a dwindling number of admins, and a
growing wikigeneration gap between admins and other editors?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WereSpielChequers/RFA_by_month
Regards
WereSpielChequers
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
http://rushprnews.com/2010/03/31/pr-consultants-should-think-twice-before-u…
PR consultants should think twice before using Wikipedia to promote clients
March 31, 2010
Leicestershire, UK (RPRN) 03/31/10 — PR consultants are being advised
to think twice before incorporating Wikipedia entries into campaign
strategies after the site started cracking down on articles submitted
by any public relations agency it considered to be using its resource
to promote clients.
(muwahaha. Spotted by Mathias Schindler. The article sets out en:wp's
rationales and likely actions very well indeed.)
- d.
On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 3:24 PM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote:
>> And
>> further reading sections can point the way for future expansions of
>> the article, or for the reader to go and find out more about the
>> topic.
>>
>> Carcharoth
>
> That is why I despise the war on external links and further reading some
> editors seem to think is appropriate.
I don't think I've seen much evidence of a "war on external links"
... what there is is, however, is pressure against an unfiltered flood
of external links.
Anyone capable of using Wikipedia is also capable of using Google,
Bing, or any of a number of other search engines. Beyond a point
adding links reduces the value that Wikpedia provides over these
resources.
Even if you held the position that the world needed another
unselective source of links, Wikipedia isn't especially well
structured to provide it: There is little to no automation to remove
dead or no longer relevant things, no automation to find new
worthwhile links, and a lot of vulnerability to manipulation by
interested parties.
I think that at its best Wikipedia should be directly including all
the information available up to Wikipedia's coverage depth, linking
only for citations, then it should have links to the most valuable
external resources which go deeper into the subject than Wikipedia
reasonably can. If you need a raw feed of sites related to some
subject area this is what the search engines do well.
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htm
<http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htm>It's obvious of the
peak in January of 2007.
What I'm interested in is thoughts of why New Contributors has statistically
declined sharply, but the list of active contributors has much less of a
slope and even less so for very active contributors.
What happened in the first six months of 2007? Did we change template
systems? Did we reword some policies relating to new users?
This relates to an OTRS project I have going on and I got looking into the
userbase question to prep.
~Keegan
--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
> Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2010 12:49:26 +0100
> From: Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] A war on external links? Was: Inside Higher
> Ed: Does Wikipedia Suck?
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>
>
> Carcharoth wrote:
> > That probably misses the flux. How many links are added and then
> > almost immediately removed? That won't be picked up in something like
> > that, I don't think.
> >
> Anyway, the point is not that external links are systematically
> persecuted (they may be patchily persecuted); but that they now have few
> actual rights.
>
> Charles
>
And why should links have any particular "rights"? External links should be
justified in the same way as any addition to the article. They may not
require the same verifiability standards, but they should be judged to be a
recommended place for further reading. In some way or another, they should
add content the editors judge to be useful, and not simply be about the
subject. Considering that for every good link I've seen inserted, I've also
seen one that was useless or even misleading or libelous, why would they
need any special protection?
I see no reason why we need additional policy and bureaucracy specifically
for links.
Sxeptomaniac
>
> Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2010 20:16:48 +0100
> From: Carcharoth <carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] A war on external links? Was: Inside Higher
> Ed: Does Wikipedia Suck?
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>
> On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 8:02 PM, Matt Jacobs <sxeptomaniac(a)gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> > ?I see nothing unwiki-like in suggesting that a person should defend
> their
> > additions to an article when disputes arise. ?That's a pretty standard
> > expectation in any collaborative environment. ?There's no lack of
> assumption
> > of good faith involved in an editor removing an addition if they have
> reason
> > to believe it is not beneficial to the article.
>
> But what if the editors can't agree on whether the link benefits the
> article?
>
> To get specific, I found a resource and was getting ready to add links
> to lots of articles, but pulled back after others didn't seem as
> excited as me about the resource:
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28miscellaneous%29/Arc…
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links/Noticeboard/Archive_2…
>
> It now has 359 links:
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LinkSearch&limit=250&offs…
>
> Back in January, there were 130 links (you will have to take my word
> for that, as posted in that discussion, as I didn't take a
> screenshot). So it seems the use of such links (to archived news reel
> clips) can spread without too much pushback or people worrying about
> spamming.
>
> But if someone had added 200 links in just a few days, that would have
> worried some people.
>
> Should they have been worried?
>
> Carcharoth
>
When a high volume of links to one place are inserted, I can understand why
some people would tend to take a close look: spammers are a major
annoyance. However, a spammer is usually not going to be able to make a
solid argument for why those links belong, and it will quickly become
apparent if the link offers little in the way of benefit to the articles.
The slightly panicky anti-spam response seems to be more of a problem with
poor judgment, and not easily addressed through rule changes.
Sxeptomaniac
> Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2010 21:57:25 +0100
> From: Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] A war on external links? Was: Inside Higher
> Ed: Does Wikipedia Suck?
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>
>
> Matt Jacobs wrote:
> > I see nothing unwiki-like in suggesting that a person should defend
> their
> > additions to an article when disputes arise. That's a pretty standard
> > expectation in any collaborative environment. There's no lack of
> assumption
> > of good faith involved in an editor removing an addition if they have
> reason
> > to believe it is not beneficial to the article.
> >
> But if they remove it from a generally anti-spam ideological point of
> view, or on the grounds of "conflict of interest", then there is such a
> problem of good faith being disregarded. Quiddity has now gone into this
> in greater detail, and WP:EL is _very clearly_ drafted from an anti-spam
> perspective.
>
> Charles
WP:COI is the most-abused of all the guideline/policy pages on WP, in my
opinion. It should never, ever be used to win a content disagreement, yet
it frequently is. Spam is a problem when the links are misleading, not
directly relevant, duplicate more well-known or less commercialized sites,
direct to very unreliable sources, etc. However, if an editor can't argue
why the link is not useful, then they shouldn't be labeling it spam/COI.
Perhaps WP:EL could stand to be edited, but I consider it more a matter of
poor judgment than anything else.
Sxeptomaniac