Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2011 03:16:12 +0000
From: Ian Woollard <ian.woollard(a)gmail.com>
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Rating the English wikipedia
>This encyclopedia has been rated as C-Class on the project's quality scale.
>This encyclopedia has been checked against the following criteria for
>B-Class status:
<snip>
>2. Coverage and accuracy: criterion not met (currently 3.5 million
>of an estimated 4.4 million articles)
<snip>
You think there are only 4.4 million possible topics? Based on what criteria?
Stevertigo also thought this in the essay Wikipedia:Concept limit, which I
tagged as [citation needed]. There are probably tens of millions of potentially
notable topics, if not hundreds of millions. However, we're better at deleting
new articles than writing them and writing a new article that will survive these
days requires more detailed research than in years gone by.
"I dread to think how many megabytes of discussion are spent on discussing
nationalities."
So why are you discussing it?
Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2011 09:56:46 +0100
From: Carcharoth <carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com>
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Nationality in the lead of articles
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
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One thing that annoys me about some Wikipedia articles is the tendency
for editors to argue over the nationality of a person in the biography
article about them. The classic example is Copernicus, which has some
justification in that there is sourced discussion of the history of an
actual dispute (though the dispute was long after Copernicus). This
kind of dispute was seen again in the John Michael Wright article that
Scott MacDonald mentioned recently.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Michael_Wright
The wording there is fine, but it can lead to convoluted writing, such
as in the Descartes or Copernicus articles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descarteshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus
"John Michael Wright (May 1617 ? July 1694)[2] was a portrait painter
in the Baroque style. Described variously as English and Scottish"
"Ren? Descartes [...] was a natural philosopher and writer who spent
most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic"
The current solution on the Copernicus article seems to be to omit
mention altogether from the lead.
I can't see any reason myself why Descartes can's simply be described
in the lead as French. Go into detail later, yes, but people tend to
be too sensitive about what is said in the lead and sometimes require
too much detail in order to achieve precision and accuracy.
Another one is Robert Boyle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Boyle
Again, the question of whether he should be described as Irish or
British or Anglo-Irish (or whatever) is avoided in the lead. Extensive
discussions have taken place on the talk page. But this is an example
of an article where the rest of it should be improved, while
resolutely ignoring the storm going on around that one small part of
it. I dread to think how many megabytes of discussion are spent on
discussing nationalities.
Carcharoth
One thing that annoys me about some Wikipedia articles is the tendency
for editors to argue over the nationality of a person in the biography
article about them. The classic example is Copernicus, which has some
justification in that there is sourced discussion of the history of an
actual dispute (though the dispute was long after Copernicus). This
kind of dispute was seen again in the John Michael Wright article that
Scott MacDonald mentioned recently.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Michael_Wright
The wording there is fine, but it can lead to convoluted writing, such
as in the Descartes or Copernicus articles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descarteshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus
"John Michael Wright (May 1617 – July 1694)[2] was a portrait painter
in the Baroque style. Described variously as English and Scottish"
"René Descartes [...] was a natural philosopher and writer who spent
most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic"
The current solution on the Copernicus article seems to be to omit
mention altogether from the lead.
I can't see any reason myself why Descartes can's simply be described
in the lead as French. Go into detail later, yes, but people tend to
be too sensitive about what is said in the lead and sometimes require
too much detail in order to achieve precision and accuracy.
Another one is Robert Boyle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Boyle
Again, the question of whether he should be described as Irish or
British or Anglo-Irish (or whatever) is avoided in the lead. Extensive
discussions have taken place on the talk page. But this is an example
of an article where the rest of it should be improved, while
resolutely ignoring the storm going on around that one small part of
it. I dread to think how many megabytes of discussion are spent on
discussing nationalities.
Carcharoth
On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 10:34 AM, Scott MacDonald
<doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Geni, you are now being obtuse.
>
> Sometimes we publish false crap on people, sometimes we do it all on our
> own, and sometimes it's because we're following a source that is publishing
> falsehood.
>
> When a victim tries to get a correction, the whole deck is stacked against
> them. Edit Wikipedia and get hit with COI. E-mail OTRS and you're dealing
> with a non-editorial non-authority, who might not believe who you are, and
> probably won't accept your own testimony as other than worthless. Even if
> you convince the OTRS person, he might well get reverted by someone who
> can't see the e-mails.
>
> Now, along comes another way of people setting the record straight, and you
> reject it because a) it doesn't comply with policy b) people may pay $1,000
> to impersonate someone c) you choose to be cynical about their identity
> checking d) it doesn't make sense to you.
>
> The bottom line is that you are representative of the most cynical,
> irresponsible BLP attitudes on Wikipedia, and if we were serious about our
> responsibilities here, people with you cavalier attitude would be banned
> from BLPs, and BLP process, as a positive menace.
>
> Scott
>
I think you're going a bit overboard there, Doc. I agree that the
claims of the subject shouldn't be ignored, particularly if they spend
$1000 to publish a correction on a startup site (as long as we can
confirm it is them). But should it count as a reliable reference to
trigger a chance in our articles? Not necessarily. Geni and I have
both worked over the years on a particular BLP where the subject has
enormous financial resources and the apparent desire to
distort/falsify his record. If we were to credit his public statements
as fact, we'd be allowing him to hijack our content to suit his own
needs.
Nathan
On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 05:38, Scott MacDonald
<doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
> "It fails our reliable source requirement."-- geni
>
> Wow. Geni that's truly the remark that encapsulates exactly what's wrong
> with BLPs, and the irresponsible attitude of Wikipedia.
>
> Nevermind our many biased articles, factual errors, and stuff written from
> "reliable sources" (aka tabloid sensationalist hatchet jobs), we can dismiss
> the subject trying to set our record straight because it fails our
> Scriptural requirement. That's Wikipedia's myopic fundamentalism taken to
> its extreme.
>
> Ever considered the requirements just might occasionally be screwed?
>
The requirements are good if people apply them properly.
Self-published material by living persons is allowed in their bios, so
long as -- we know they wrote it; it's not unduly self-serving; and
they're talking about themselves, not others. See [[WP:SPS]] and
[[WP:BLPSPS]].
On 28 March 2011 15:34, Scott MacDonald <doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Geni, you are now being obtuse.
>
> Sometimes we publish false crap on people, sometimes we do it all on our
> own, and sometimes it's because we're following a source that is publishing
> falsehood.
>
> When a victim tries to get a correction, the whole deck is stacked against
> them. Edit Wikipedia and get hit with COI. E-mail OTRS and you're dealing
> with a non-editorial non-authority, who might not believe who you are, and
> probably won't accept your own testimony as other than worthless. Even if
> you convince the OTRS person, he might well get reverted by someone who
> can't see the e-mails.
However if OTRS can't it through we are dealing with a situation more
complex than setting the record strait
> Now, along comes another way of people setting the record straight, and you
> reject it because a) it doesn't comply with policy b) people may pay $1,000
> to impersonate someone c) you choose to be cynical about their identity
> checking d) it doesn't make sense to you.
The kind of people who might normally be expect to spend that kind of
amount on reputation management have better and cheaper options. So
the site would appear to be taking advantage of people who don't know
better.
It could well be argued that the ethical response on our part would be
to undercut them.
> The bottom line is that you are representative of the most cynical,
> irresponsible BLP attitudes on Wikipedia, and if we were serious about our
> responsibilities here, people with you cavalier attitude would be banned
> from BLPs, and BLP process, as a positive menace.
It has been suggested
--
geni
Well, there are articles that can be expanded beyond the basic stuff
found in places like Who's Who. An example is the article here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Mestel
But as soon as anyone become newsworthy, you get newspaper sources
jostling for room with all the other sources. Personally, I'd ban all
newspaper sources in BLPs.
Another BLP I tried was here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_W._Moore
Admittedly, one of the sources there is a book review (less than
ideal, and now a dead link, unsurprisingly).
I was going to include the Basil John Mason article as another one
where I tidied it up or one where an article can be written using
reliable non-newspaper sources, but if you go and look at the article,
you will notice a slight problem with using this one as an example...
(I left the sources on the talk page and left the job half-done).
But those are all examples of building biographies piecemeal. But
hopefully those were done in a responsible manner. I won't say
newspaper sources were avoided, but merely that newpapers didn't cover
these people.
Carcharoth
On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 6:11 PM, Scott MacDonald
<doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Good grief, Carcharoth, there it is!!!!! Brilliant!
>
> I've been stumbling about for years looking for a way to differentiate
> between legitimate encyclopaedic biography, which Wikipedia should do, and
> the problematic, armature-journalistic, selectively biased, originally
> researched, WP:NOTNEWS skirting, stuff that causes all the problems. If we
> could just agree on that definition you've given all would be well.
>
> No chance of that happening, unfortunately.
>
> Scott
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikien-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Carcharoth
> Sent: 28 March 2011 17:29
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] iCorrect
>
>>I've argued before that the minimum standard for any biographical
>>article should be a published biography of some sort, that at minimum
>>includes birth year (or some details on why the birth year is not
>>known). These can range from self-published on an official website, to
>>short bios in conference proceedings, to an actual published
>>book-length biography. What shouldn't be done is piecing together bits
>>from newspaper articles and primary sources - that is what official
>>and unofficial biographers do, and we shouldn't be doing it in their
>>stead.
>
>>Carcharoth
>
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On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 6:34 PM, Scott MacDonald
<doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
> When a victim tries to get a correction, the whole deck is stacked against
> them. Edit Wikipedia and get hit with COI. E-mail OTRS and you're dealing
> with a non-editorial non-authority, who might not believe who you are, and
> probably won't accept your own testimony as other than worthless. Even if
> you convince the OTRS person, he might well get reverted by someone who
> can't see the e-mails.
OTRS is not that bad, at least as far as I know. The volunteers there
are supposed to be friendly (at least polite) as long as the person
does not behave very aggresively. The only problem I am aware of is
backlog ([[m:OTRS/volunteering]] is the only answer here).
> Now, along comes another way of people setting the record straight, and you
> reject it because a) it doesn't comply with policy b) people may pay $1,000
> to impersonate someone c) you choose to be cynical about their identity
> checking d) it doesn't make sense to you.
It would have the same value as the statement published on the
person's own website; I see no reason to give it more value than any
other statement issued by the person in question themselves.
> The bottom line is that you are representative of the most cynical,
> irresponsible BLP attitudes on Wikipedia, and if we were serious about our
> responsibilities here, people with you cavalier attitude would be banned
> from BLPs, and BLP process, as a positive menace.
>
That sort of personal attack would do no good, please refrain from it.
--vvv
On 28 Mar 2011 at 12:00, Fred Bauder wrote:
> A site, where for $1,000, corrections to one's Wikipedia article can be
> posted:
Did Andrew Knight really pay $1000 to write "Wikipedia entry is
anodyne and largely accurate. Never mind, let's keep it that way"?
--
== Dan ==
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