WikiEN-l March 2012

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

39 participants
18 discussions

"Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement"
by David Gerard 10 May '12

10 May '12

Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement.Here's the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/crewe.group/ I see a pile of Wikimedians engaging with them, which is promising. I visited WMUK on Tuesday and chatted with Stevie Benton (the new media person), Richard Symonds and Daria Cybulska about this topic. The approach we could think of that could *work* is pointing out "if you're caught with *what other people* think is a COI, your name and your client's name are mud." Because in all our experience, even sincere PR people seem biologically incapable of understanding COI, but will understand generating *bad* PR. - d.

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sad news
by phoebe ayers 18 Apr '12

18 Apr '12

Those of you who have been around for a few years may remember user:Tlogmer, aka Ben Yates -- co-author with Charles Matthews and I on "How Wikipedia Works." I got an email from his mother this morning with the very sad news that Ben passed away yesterday. I do not know the details. He was in his 20s and lived in Michigan, USA. There will be a memorial service in Michigan on Friday; contact me if you want that information. His userpages are http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tlogmer and http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Tlogmer For several years Ben wrote a blog about Wikipedia that was incisive and widely read. Older posts can be found here: http://wikip.blogspot.com/ He also designed the Wikimania logo with the two "w"s; originally designed for Wikimania 2006, we use it to this day: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimania_%28spacing%29.png Ben was a skilled artist and designer and was responsible for all of the figures in "How Wikipedia Works." He also designed posters and graphic materials for Wikimania and proposed many other merchandise designs to promote Wikipedia. He was funny, smart, and shy; I never had a bad interaction with him. I worked with him intensively for many months but never got a chance to meet him in person, but I counted him as a friend long after we finished the book. He will be missed. If you have any comments that you would like to be given to his family or read at the service, please post them on Ben's talk page or send to me directly. Wikimedia was meaningful to Ben, and it would mean a lot to let his mom that people cared about her son as a colleague and friend. thanks, -- Phoebe

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Manual Of Style
by David Gerard 01 Apr '12

01 Apr '12

Just a quick straw poll: When was the last time you looked at the Wikipedia Manual of Style for use in your own writing? And not to tell someone else they were wrong about something. Me, I can't remember. I think I *have*, but it would have been years ago. - d.

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More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles
by Carcharoth 29 Mar '12

29 Mar '12

I'm posting here an argument I made in a recent AfD, explaining why I think more stringent notability requirements are needed for biographical articles: "The right point to assess someone's notability and write a definitive article about them is at that point (or sometimes when they retire). Any BLP is only a work in progress until that point is reached. [Some say] "Notability, once attained, does not diminish." That might seem true, but what is being assessed is not the subject's true notability, but a fluctuating 'notability during lifetime' that can wax and wane over time, with the true level of notability not being established until someone's career or life is over. Some people gain awards and recognitions and have long and diverse careers and have glowing obituaries written about them, and pass into the history of the field they worked in. Others have more pedestrian careers. The point is that it is rarely possible to make an accurate assessment until the right point is reached. What you end up with if you have low standards for allowing articles on BLPs is a huge number of borderline BLPs all across Wikipedia (heavily weighted towards contemporary coverage [...]), the vast majority of the subjects of which will not have prominent (or any) obituaries published about them, and in 50 years time or so the articles will look a bit silly, cobbled together from various scraps and items published during the subject's lifetime, but with no proper, independent assessment of their place in history. It has been said before, but that is why specialist biographical dictionaries often have as one of their inclusion criteria that someone has to be dead before having an article. I'm not saying we should go that far, but there is a case for many BLPs of saying 'if there is no current published biography, wait until this career/life is over and make an assessment at that point', and until then either delete or have a bland stub." The above is why I rarely edit BLPs. It is far easier (and more satisfying) to edit about a topic once it is reasonably 'complete', not ongoing. The latter statements applies to more than BLPs (biographies of living people), for example it applies to any 'news' topic, but it does apply especially to BLPs as they are a minefield because they require careful maintenance. To give some examples of articles I've edited or created that are BLPs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Mestel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Lieberman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_W._Moore http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._M._Hedges Those aren't very good examples. What I'm really looking for is a way to illustrate how some people become notable, and then fade into obscurity, while others maintain notability and accumulate coverage in reliable sources throughout their lives, rather than only briefly. The latter are good topics for encyclopedia articles, but the latter tend not to be. Is there a way to argue for more stringent notability requirements that won't get shot down? Essentially, what I'm saying Wikipedia needs to avoid is bequeathing a lot of stubby articles to future generations of editors who will get stuck trying to find out anything more about people who have faded back into obscurity and for whom it is often difficult to ascertain if they are still living. Carcharoth

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List of articles censored in Saudi Arabia
by Osama Khalid 28 Mar '12

28 Mar '12

Hello, Saudi Arabian authorities censor certain articles on the English and Arabic editions of Wikipedia. A Saudi volunteer did a great job making a list of these articles. On the English Wikipedia, all currently-known articles are related to sex education, but notability on the Arabic Wikipedia, the article about evolution is censored! Here is the list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_articles_censored_in_Saudi_… --Osama Khalid

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This is entirely accurate
by David Gerard 24 Mar '12

24 Mar '12

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedian.png By Guillaume Paumier. - d.

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Wikipedia not responding
by Carcharoth 24 Mar '12

24 Mar '12

Wikipedia seems to be down... http://wikistatus.ezyang.com/ Anyone know what's happening? Carcharoth

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Inclusionists vs deletionists
by Alan Liefting 23 Mar '12

23 Mar '12

Does anyone agree with me that the inclusionists are more numerous than the deletionists around the deletion discussions? A

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First results from Article Feedback v5
by Dario Taraborelli 22 Mar '12

22 Mar '12

I wanted to give everybody the heads up that we shared the first results from Article Feedback v5 – the new version of AFT which we started testing in December on a small sample of articles of enwiki [1]. The complete report of the different studies is available on Meta [2]. We look forward to hearing from you, you can get in touch on the WP:AFT5 talk page or (if you wish to get involved and discuss with the AFT team) join us for the AFT office hours that we host on a regular basis on IRC. Dario [1] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/03/21/helping-readers-improve-wikipedia-firs… [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Article_feedback/Stage_1

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Article dabs and category dabs
by Charles Matthews 21 Mar '12

21 Mar '12

There are reasons to disambiguate article titles, and reasons to disambiguate categories. But should the category system simply mimic what the articles do? I was surprised to find at a current CfD discussion (on Category:Matrices) that there are supporters of this idea, which I don't see mentioned on [[Wikipedia:Category names]]. We don't disambiguate article titles until we have to, as a general rule. It seems to me a major shift in thinking that we should not apply the same logic to categories. Charles

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WikiEN-l March 2012