Jared Benedict bought all of the USGS maps for $1600 and then had a fund raiser to recoup the money. That has been done and now they are being uploaded to the Internet Archive. Project info is here http://ransom.redjar.org/
Just letting people know, I'm sure there are a lot of cartographers eager to get these into wikipedia :D
Judson
On 8/29/06, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
Jared Benedict bought all of the USGS maps for $1600 and then had a fund raiser to recoup the money. That has been done and now they are being uploaded to the Internet Archive. Project info is here http://ransom.redjar.org/
Just letting people know, I'm sure there are a lot of cartographers eager to get these into wikipedia :D
Judson
Since these are a work of the US Government, they are public domain, yes? In that case, fantastic!!!
--Oskar
On 8/29/06, Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
Since these are a work of the US Government, they are public domain, yes? In that case, fantastic!!!
--Oskar
Yes, according to him they are public domain, as works of the usgov. The cost, I think, is just for the USGS to scan deliver etc. The appropriate template for images would be [[Template:PD-USGov-Interior-USGS]]. :D
On 8/29/06, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
Jared Benedict bought all of the USGS maps for $1600 and then had a fund raiser to recoup the money. That has been done and now they are being uploaded to the Internet Archive. Project info is here http://ransom.redjar.org/
Just letting people know, I'm sure there are a lot of cartographers eager to get these into wikipedia :D
Judson
That's pretty neat. I wish it had been mentioned here or on Reddit - I may not be a big user of maps, but their value for Wikipedia is obvious enough I'd've donated.
~maru
On 8/29/06, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
Jared Benedict bought all of the USGS maps for $1600 and then had a fund raiser to recoup the money. That has been done and now they are being uploaded to the Internet Archive. Project info is here http://ransom.redjar.org/
How odd. Do you know which maps are included? Just the US?
Steve
The United States Geological Service tends to limit its activities to the United States, for some funny reason.
Kelly
On 8/30/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/29/06, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
Jared Benedict bought all of the USGS maps for $1600 and then had a fund raiser to recoup the money. That has been done and now they are being uploaded to the Internet Archive. Project info is here http://ransom.redjar.org/
How odd. Do you know which maps are included? Just the US?
Steve _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 8/30/06, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
The United States Geological Service tends to limit its activities to the United States, for some funny reason.
Ah, thought the G was Geographical. Not sure I think the logic is that self-evident, but anyway.
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 8/30/06, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
The United States Geological Service tends to limit its activities to the United States, for some funny reason.
Ah, thought the G was Geographical. Not sure I think the logic is that self-evident, but anyway.
Steve
It is actually called "United States Geological Survey" not service. In this case it is pretty self evident. If were called "Lunar Geological Survey" .....
SKL
On 8/30/06, ScottL scott@mu.org wrote:
It is actually called "United States Geological Survey" not service. In this case it is pretty self evident. If were called "Lunar Geological Survey" .....
Ah, Survey changes everything.
Steve
On 8/30/06, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
The United States Geological Service tends to limit its activities to the United States, for some funny reason.
Kelly
This is true however there are PD maps of britian availible for dates up untill 1956 (and a couple of bits of europe that were of significance during WW2). However you would need deep pockets and a big scanner (or a lot of grandparents/parents and a big scanner) in order to get hold of them.
On 8/30/06, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
The United States Geological Service tends to limit its activities to the United States, for some funny reason.
Kelly
Which branch of the US government releases the satellite images from around the world?
Anthony
Anthony wrote:
On 8/30/06, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
The United States Geological Service tends to limit its activities to the United States, for some funny reason.
Kelly
Which branch of the US government releases the satellite images from around the world?
NASA, although technically they're not a branch of the US Government, are they?
On 8/31/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Anthony wrote:
On 8/30/06, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
The United States Geological Service tends to limit its activities to the United States, for some funny reason.
Kelly
Which branch of the US government releases the satellite images from around the world?
NASA, although technically they're not a branch of the US Government, are they?
Well, they're definitely not a branch, as I used the wrong term :). I think they're considered a government organization though, and would be subject to the same copyright limitations.
Anthony
On 31 Aug 2006, at 20:12, Anthony wrote:
On 8/31/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Anthony wrote:
On 8/30/06, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
The United States Geological Service tends to limit its activities to the United States, for some funny reason.
Kelly
Which branch of the US government releases the satellite images from around the world?
NASA, although technically they're not a branch of the US Government, are they?
Well, they're definitely not a branch, as I used the wrong term :). I think they're considered a government organization though, and would be subject to the same copyright limitations.
I had heard that all NASA photos were public domain, but the actual rules are easy to find: http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.html
OK then, I've been finding a lot more out about this.
1) NASA "is an agency of the United States Government". [source:Wikipedia] 2) These maps that were bought are not satellite images, they are [[digital raster graphic]]s (i.e. topographic maps). (source: http://ransom.redjar.org/original_page.html) 3) They seem to cover only the United States (source: http://libre.redjar.org/maps/data/ and http://topomaps.usgs.gov/drg/duplicate_drg.html) 4) "USGS aerial photographs covering the United States since the 1950's and worldwide satellite data from the early 1970's to the present can be ordered directly from the USGS." (http://erg.usgs.gov/isb/pubs/booklets/aerial/aerial.html) I have no idea how detailed these are.
Anthony
On 8/31/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
- These maps that were bought are not satellite images, they are
[[digital raster graphic]]s (i.e. topographic maps). (source: http://ransom.redjar.org/original_page.html) 3) They seem to cover only the United States (source: http://libre.redjar.org/maps/data/ and http://topomaps.usgs.gov/drg/duplicate_drg.html) 4) "USGS aerial photographs covering the United States since the 1950's and worldwide satellite data from the early 1970's to the present can be ordered directly from the USGS." (http://erg.usgs.gov/isb/pubs/booklets/aerial/aerial.html) I have no idea how detailed these are.
It's the entire set of 1:24,000-scale USGS topo maps. These maps include every road, most hiking trails, and most buildings. They're possibly the most detailed maps of the United States available anywhere.
[ crossposting on wikien-l and commons-l ]
On 8/29/06, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
Jared Benedict bought all of the USGS maps for $1600 and then had a fund raiser to recoup the money. That has been done and now they are being uploaded to the Internet Archive. Project info is here http://ransom.redjar.org/
Just letting people know, I'm sure there are a lot of cartographers eager to get these into wikipedia :D
Judson
Is there any project on Commons to upload these maps?
g.
On 8/30/06, Guillaume Paumier guillom.pom@gmail.com wrote:
[ crossposting on wikien-l and commons-l ] Is there any project on Commons to upload these maps?
g.
Not that I know of, I don't think they are completely uploaded yet, but I would be glad to help if one gets started. I emailed the person that did this and said we might be interested :) Apparently when the upload is complete his project page will have more details about where they are. There are a lot, so a commons project might be a good idea :)
cohesion wrote:
On 8/30/06, Guillaume Paumier guillom.pom@gmail.com wrote:
[ crossposting on wikien-l and commons-l ] Is there any project on Commons to upload these maps?
g.
Not that I know of, I don't think they are completely uploaded yet, but I would be glad to help if one gets started. I emailed the person that did this and said we might be interested :) Apparently when the upload is complete his project page will have more details about where they are. There are a lot, so a commons project might be a good idea :)
For sure, if a project gets set up (or just instructions are made available) someon should drop a note on here. I'd be happy to help too.
SKL
On 8/30/06, ScottL scott@mu.org wrote:
cohesion wrote:
On 8/30/06, Guillaume Paumier guillom.pom@gmail.com wrote:
[ crossposting on wikien-l and commons-l ] Is there any project on Commons to upload these maps?
g.
Not that I know of, I don't think they are completely uploaded yet, but I would be glad to help if one gets started. I emailed the person that did this and said we might be interested :) Apparently when the upload is complete his project page will have more details about where they are. There are a lot, so a commons project might be a good idea :)
For sure, if a project gets set up (or just instructions are made available) someon should drop a note on here. I'd be happy to help too.
SKL _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I'm bugging a friend who works at the Internet Archive for information on when these will be done uploading and how they will be available, though it might go faster if Jimmy asks Brewster Kahle directly...
David Gerard dgerard at gmail.com wrote: http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=2006_proposed_approval_for_anony...
Damn. That is good.
-sv.
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
Deep thoughts:
Noting certain deficiencies in areas of advanced physics - bleeding edge stuff in particular seems to be a bit disorganised. Few qualified editors and things are no doubt lonely at the top.
Does the fact that Wikipedia is 1/10 Pokemon and sex/porn articles chase away scientists? What would WP look like if NOR was lifted for certain science articles?
-SV
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
On 8/31/06, stevertigo vertigosteve@yahoo.com wrote: [snip]
Does the fact that Wikipedia is 1/10 Pokemon and sex/porn articles chase away scientists? What would WP look like if NOR was lifted for certain science articles?
Eek, please separate these questions.. they are very different.
On the first part... I don't think the existence of articles is a problem. A more interesting subject is the escape of pop-culture content, often too trivial for the pop-culture articles into other pages. I believe this is a phenomena made more frequent due our bias towards pop-culture, especially in terms of what articles we select for the main page... which seem to be roughly half pop-culture, in some kind of misguided attempt to show the world what we have but Britannica doesn't..
How would you feel about adding beautiful and insightful prose to an article on a university, only to find that someone has later added: "In a 1999 episode ("Lovers' Walk," Season 3, Episode 8) of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Joyce (Buffy's mother) says to Buffy, "[[Carnegie Mellon]]has a wonderful design curriculum."" [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Carnegie_Mellon_University&old...] ... Delighted, no doubt!
What historian wouldn't want admit to his peers that he had involvement in an article on [[John Wilkes Booth]] that tells the reader more about Bart Simpson's schooling than John Wilkes Booth's?
... and could a serious nuclear physicist allow their audience to walk away without letting them know that the character "J. Frank Parnell" in the 1984 film Repo Man mentions the [[neutron bomb]]in the course of justifying voluntary lobotomies?
Surely an expert in matters of yesterdays culture can understand our reader's burning need to discover that in the HBO film Something The Lord Made a comment was made by Alan Rickman as Dr. Alfred Blalock when a comment was made by his assistant (Vivien Thomas, played by Mos Def) about the amount of coffee he was drinking, "[[Honoré de Balzac|Balzac]] once drank 300 cups of coffee in one day...then again, he died of a perforated ulcer..."
... and what linguist would be disappointed with an article on [[pejorative]] whos only in context example is a quote from The Simpsons?
And I'm sure that chefs everywhere will feel honored when they find that they add their wisdom along side Marge Simpson's in our article on [[Pressure cooking]].
Please note the linked words above are the articles the content came from. If you liked these examples hundreds more are only a "what links here" click away from your favorite pop-culture subject.
As far as relaxing NPOV... You must be kidding. In the absence of an authority structure to make decisions over disagreement NPOV is the only mechanism we have to reach a stable position in our articles.
On 8/31/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote: ...
And I'm sure that chefs everywhere will feel honored when they find that they add their wisdom along side Marge Simpson's in our article on [[Pressure cooking]].
Nice examples. But what's the best way to deal with this? In the past, when people created encyclopedia entries that were really dictionary definitions, we set up Wiktionary. When they started pasting the text of national constitutions, "Project Sourceberg" was set up. As quotations accumulated at the end of articles, Wikiquote was created.
I don't think Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia that connects everything to The Simpsons somehow. Do we need a "Wikitrivia" project (or perhaps this idea can be abstracted in a more useful fashion) to collect all the meaningless pop cultural crap, or is existing policy sufficient to remove it?
Some related discussion from 2003 at: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiTrivia
On Aug 31, 2006, at 4:17, Erik Moeller wrote:
I don't think Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia that connects everything to The Simpsons somehow. Do we need a "Wikitrivia" project (or perhaps this idea can be abstracted in a more useful fashion) to collect all the meaningless pop cultural crap, or is existing policy sufficient to remove it?
There's definitely a Simpsons wikia (http://simpsons.wikia.com/ - needs a good kick in the pants though), but I'm not sure what the community feels about linking to Wikia, etc. As far as I know/knew, Wikia is/was sort of meant to be a place for more... specialist... "encyclopedias", although it focuses more on communities, etc. It's also an entirely different can of worms, and often article quality is... less than good. But it's a thought. Maybe.
On 8/31/06, niht-hræfn nihthraefn@gmail.com wrote:
On Aug 31, 2006, at 4:17, Erik Moeller wrote:
I don't think Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia that connects everything to The Simpsons somehow. Do we need a "Wikitrivia" project (or perhaps this idea can be abstracted in a more useful fashion) to collect all the meaningless pop cultural crap, or is existing policy sufficient to remove it?
There's definitely a Simpsons wikia (http://simpsons.wikia.com/ - needs a good kick in the pants though), but I'm not sure what the community feels about linking to Wikia, etc. As far as I know/knew, Wikia is/was sort of meant to be a place for more... specialist... "encyclopedias", although it focuses more on communities, etc. It's also an entirely different can of worms, and often article quality is... less than good. But it's a thought. Maybe.
Well, I don't think the problem is specific to TS. The problem is largely that once an article gets a bullet point list with random crap, everyone feels justified to add their own random crap. (Sometimes the crap also creeps into the main prose, but there it is easier to remove as such -- trivia sections are tolerated and perhaps seen by many Wikipedians as charming additions to articles.)
Perhaps the solution is to build a single big RCA (Random Crap Aggregator) to prevent Wikipedia articles from turning into mini-RCAs. Each page would essentially be a set of bullet point lists about a topic where anyone can add their random facts. Some of those might be Wikipedia-worthy and find their way back into the article.
On 8/31/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
Well, I don't think the problem is specific to TS.
It's not, in fact.. last night was the first time I've run what-links-here on the simpsons.. Prior to that my favorite target was Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
The problem is largely that once an article gets a bullet point list with random crap, everyone feels justified to add their own random crap.
Yes. But it is worse than that... we have a social aversion to removing material which isn't *clearly* wrong or forbidden. Although there are a number of loud users, most users really don't want to get into edit wars... Especially over stuff like this, even if the result is feeling ashamed of their own articles.
(Sometimes the crap also creeps into the main prose, but there it is easier to remove as such -- trivia sections are tolerated and perhaps seen by many Wikipedians as charming additions to articles.)
Yes. Some Wikipedians see them as an example of how we're more complete than other encyclopedias.
Perhaps the solution is to build a single big RCA (Random Crap Aggregator) to prevent Wikipedia articles from turning into mini-RCAs. Each page would essentially be a set of bullet point lists about a topic where anyone can add their random facts. Some of those might be Wikipedia-worthy and find their way back into the article.
But who would move content to the RCA? I'm just not convinced.. We do see some success with creating "List of Foo in fiction" articles, but if people would be happy to place their Simpsons subtrivia into RCAs then why are they adding it to academic subjects rather than [[The Simpsons]]?
niht-hræfn wrote:
On Aug 31, 2006, at 4:17, Erik Moeller wrote:
I don't think Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia that connects everything to The Simpsons somehow. Do we need a "Wikitrivia" project (or perhaps this idea can be abstracted in a more useful fashion) to collect all the meaningless pop cultural crap, or is existing policy sufficient to remove it?
There's definitely a Simpsons wikia (http://simpsons.wikia.com/ - needs a good kick in the pants though), but I'm not sure what the community feels about linking to Wikia, etc. As far as I know/knew, Wikia is/was sort of meant to be a place for more... specialist... "encyclopedias", although it focuses more on communities, etc. It's also an entirely different can of worms, and often article quality is... less than good. But it's a thought. Maybe.
Wikia is a totally empty suggestion to the people adding this sort of content. It is basically saying "why don't you go put this somewhere (unassociated with wikipedia) where there will never be any Internet traffic to it." Wikipedia had passed some sort of tipping point and that draws editors who want to be involved. The original suggestion that when we needed it we created wikiquotes and wikisource etc was that if we could make a place with the same prestige as wikipedia where we could put the pop culture (And link to it form within wikipedia for those who want to see it (and trust me some people want to read the pop culture articles)) then we could solve this problem.
That said if you call it wikitrivia not a single one of your Buffy editors will touch it. If the goal is to move some of the lower notability, lower interest content somewhere then, you have to attract those editors there. It cannot sound ... well ... trivial, even if you think it is. I think it is a good idea, even though wikipopculture sounds dumb and wikiculture is misleading so I am not sure what you would call it. Either way the key is that it has to on some something that you can link to with one of those cute little boxes that we get for wikiquote, and it has to still basically be wikimedia in stile only with notability rules, and styling that are a bit different.
SKL
On 8/31/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/31/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote: ...
And I'm sure that chefs everywhere will feel honored when they find that they add their wisdom along side Marge Simpson's in our article on [[Pressure cooking]].
Nice examples.
Wikipedia makes it easy. :(
But what's the best way to deal with this? In the past, when people created encyclopedia entries that were really dictionary definitions, we set up Wiktionary. When they started pasting the text of national constitutions, "Project Sourceberg" was set up. As quotations accumulated at the end of articles, Wikiquote was created.
I don't think Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia that connects everything to The Simpsons somehow. Do we need a "Wikitrivia" project (or perhaps this idea can be abstracted in a more useful fashion) to collect all the meaningless pop cultural crap, or is existing policy sufficient to remove it?
I'm not sure about that.. Triva where the reader expects it is no problem.
Sub-trivia spread into random places, however, hurts our professionalism (it's about self respect, as I've argued a lot recently!), and is an easy target for vandalism (hard to cite subtrivia except as references to difficult to check primary sources).
If you buy my argument (mostly unsubstantiated) that our systemic bias towards popculture (and the trivia that goes along with it) is encouraging people to spread subtrivia about the project... then yes, a Wiki trivia *might* help. But I'd argue that wiki-trivia would best be served as a non-wikimedia project, and that wikimedia would best be served by not hosting such a project.
Further, the creation of a trivia project would still leave us with a hard situation... if it were easy to decide what belongs there (and thus not in Wikipedia) and if it were easy to actually move this content... Then we wouldn't have the problem we have on enwiki today.
On Thu, 31 Aug 2006 10:17:17 +0200, "Erik Moeller" eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
I don't think Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia that connects everything to The Simpsons somehow. Do we need a "Wikitrivia" project (or perhaps this idea can be abstracted in a more useful fashion) to collect all the meaningless pop cultural crap, or is existing policy sufficient to remove it?
Call it wikicruft :-)
Guy (JzG)
On 8/31/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
How would you feel about adding beautiful and insightful prose to an article on a university, only to find that someone has later added: "In a 1999 episode ("Lovers' Walk," Season 3, Episode 8) of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Joyce (Buffy's mother) says to Buffy, "[[Carnegie Mellon]]has a wonderful design curriculum."" [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Carnegie_Mellon_University&old...] ... Delighted, no doubt!
The solution isn't bad though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Mellon_University_in_popular_culture
Steve
On 31/08/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/31/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
How would you feel about adding beautiful and insightful prose to an article on a university, only to find that someone has later added: "In a 1999 episode ("Lovers' Walk," Season 3, Episode 8) of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Joyce (Buffy's mother) says to Buffy, "[[Carnegie Mellon]]has a wonderful design curriculum."" [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Carnegie_Mellon_University&old...] ... Delighted, no doubt!
The solution isn't bad though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Mellon_University_in_popular_culture
And it's even in [[Category:Education in popular culture]] !
- d.
On 8/31/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
The solution isn't bad though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Mellon_University_in_popular_culture
Indeed, although it's leaked back into the CMU article a couple of times...
We have 428 in_fiction and in_popular_culture articles... so only about a million to go!
On 31/08/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/31/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
The solution isn't bad though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Mellon_University_in_popular_culture
Indeed, although it's leaked back into the CMU article a couple of times... We have 428 in_fiction and in_popular_culture articles... so only about a million to go!
We need a task force with a neutral name who will give these articles some proper respect and make them not *just* dumping grounds. (See [[Nuclear weapons in popular culture]] for a fantastic example - it's all about the social effects.) Something like WikiProject Popular Culture Lists. That way those who like them and those who hate them can work together to make sure they at least don't suck.
- d.
On 8/31/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
We need a task force with a neutral name who will give these articles some proper respect and make them not *just* dumping grounds. (See [[Nuclear weapons in popular culture]] for a fantastic example - it's all about the social effects.) Something like WikiProject Popular Culture Lists. That way those who like them and those who hate them can work together to make sure they at least don't suck.
Ha! Because so many _in_popular_culture article are dumping grounds... I had assumed that all were.
It's a good point though. Popular culture deserves respectable coverage too, it's not junk ... even if most junk is about popular culture.
On 8/31/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
The solution isn't bad though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Mellon_University_in_popular_culture
While I think I'm on record as disliking 'in popular culture' spinoff articles, I am beginning to see them as a perhaps necessary evil. Keeping all that stuff a link away is generally an acceptable solution.
-Matt
On Thu, 31 Aug 2006 03:40:27 -0400, "Gregory Maxwell" gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On the first part... I don't think the existence of articles is a problem. A more interesting subject is the escape of pop-culture content, often too trivial for the pop-culture articles into other pages.
Very true. I recently had a fairly bitter fight with Nintendo fans who insist outright that the Nintendo character King Bowser Koppa is far and away the most common use of the word bowser, so should live at the [[bowser]] page, based on a "consensus" of Nintendo fans in a discussion on the Nintendo article's Talk page. Since bowser is the Australian and NZ term for gas pump, and most dictionaries list it as a tanker vehicle, and both are based on the genericisation of the S. F Bowser Company's trademark, I strongly dispute their assertion, but that did not result in them citing any actual evidence. Anything not flattering to pop culture is "elitist" and probably biggoted (always spelt with two gs). Look at the discussion on [[British shorthair]] for example. Keeping the cruft confined to its own articles is a never-ending task, and one which I sometimes think is doomed to fail. At which point, in my view, the entire project will have failed; the world has no need of another place to collect things which can be found with the most elementary Google search. It's the ''other'' stuff which we need Wikipedia for: bringing to the public domain knowledge which is otherwise impenetrably buried in inaccessible treeware.
Guy (JzG)
On 31/08/06, stevertigo vertigosteve@yahoo.com wrote:
Does the fact that Wikipedia is 1/10 Pokemon and sex/porn articles chase away scientists? What would WP look like if NOR was lifted for certain science articles?
No, no and furthermore definitely not. You've been around Wikipedia long enough to know that NOR was specifically invented to keep the physics cranks at bay. Anything that hasn't at least seen referenceable peer-reviewed publication doesn't belong here.
- d.
On 8/31/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 31/08/06, stevertigo vertigosteve@yahoo.com wrote:
Does the fact that Wikipedia is 1/10 Pokemon and sex/porn articles chase away scientists? What would WP look like if NOR was lifted for certain science articles?
No, no and furthermore definitely not. You've been around Wikipedia long enough to know that NOR was specifically invented to keep the physics cranks at bay. Anything that hasn't at least seen referenceable peer-reviewed publication doesn't belong here.
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I think that, quite often, professional physicists have a lower exposure and awareness of the pervasiveness and often quite insane energy levels some of the physics cranks project.
These people, while limited in number to probably the same magnitude as actual degreed practicing physicists, are often insanely publically active in forums which will let them. A lot of Usenet groups suffered greatly from their depradations over the years.
If someone can't get it into even one of the Letters journals... no, please, keep it far away.
Normal people generally see 9/11 conspiracy kooks for what they are, but often don't spot the physics kooks, and unwrapping the damage can take forever.
On 9/6/06, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
I think that, quite often, professional physicists have a lower exposure and awareness of the pervasiveness and often quite insane energy levels some of the physics cranks project.
I dunno I've herd professional physicists complain about clearing their inboxes of cranks every day.
Normal people generally see 9/11 conspiracy kooks for what they are,
Don't bet on it.
but often don't spot the physics kooks, and unwrapping the damage can take forever.
to be expected. Most people accept that modern physics is wierd so don't know how to screen out rubish.
On 06/09/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/6/06, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
I think that, quite often, professional physicists have a lower exposure and awareness of the pervasiveness and often quite insane energy levels some of the physics cranks project.
I dunno I've herd professional physicists complain about clearing their inboxes of cranks every day.
Oh hell yeah. Remember that the NOR policy originated because of physics cranks in particular.
- d.
On 8/30/06, stevertigo vertigosteve@yahoo.com wrote:
Does the fact that Wikipedia is 1/10 Pokemon and sex/porn articles chase away scientists?
IMO, probably not, and if it is, I don't think it's a bias we can change. I think that it's way too easy to claim that - Pokemon et al get too much blame for things that aren't their fault. I do agree with those further down the thread that pop-culture trivia spread into serious articles IS a problem.
What would WP look like if NOR was lifted for certain science articles?
Awful. WP:NOT a dumping ground for new theories, and that's entirely the point of NOR. Any reputable scientific theory should already be published.
I think that any issue with advanced physics articles is one common to any specialist subject where it's hard to write about it without good knowledge of the field.
-Matt
What would WP look like if NOR was lifted for certain science articles?
Er, "topics"
-SV
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On 8/31/06, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
I'm bugging a friend who works at the Internet Archive for information on when these will be done uploading and how they will be available, though it might go faster if Jimmy asks Brewster Kahle directly...
Out of curiosity, what do maps have to do with the Internet Archive? If they're public domain, why not just upload them to Commons?
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 8/31/06, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
I'm bugging a friend who works at the Internet Archive for information on when these will be done uploading and how they will be available, though it might go faster if Jimmy asks Brewster Kahle directly...
Out of curiosity, what do maps have to do with the Internet Archive? If they're public domain, why not just upload them to Commons?
The [[Internet Archive]] is more than just the Wayback Machine. Check out http://www.archive.org/ sometime.
On 8/29/06, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
Jared Benedict bought all of the USGS maps for $1600 and then had a fund raiser to recoup the money. That has been done and now they are being uploaded to the Internet Archive. Project info is here http://ransom.redjar.org/
Just letting people know, I'm sure there are a lot of cartographers eager to get these into wikipedia :D
Judson
This is awesome. I wonder how long it'll take before someone comes up with a Wikimapia (http://www.wikimapia.org/) that isn't "powered by Google".
I just got my GPS a couple months ago and I'm already starting to get back into the GIS thing. Rather detailed shapefiles for all of the US are available for free at http://www.esri.com/data/download/census2000_tigerline/index.html. I believe these are also exempt from copyright law as US government works.
I believe all that's left stopping people from making a copyright-free google maps would be the intersection/one-way street data. AFAIK the only data that exists for that is proprietary. Maybe it's time to push again for some sort of GIS-based Wikimedia project.
Anthony
On 31/08/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I believe all that's left stopping people from making a copyright-free google maps would be the intersection/one-way street data. AFAIK the only data that exists for that is proprietary. Maybe it's time to push again for some sort of GIS-based Wikimedia project.
c.f. http://okfn.org/geo/ and similar pages. People who wander London with a GPS and recorder. I remember the DorkBot I saw this discussed at and a friend who works at MultiMap dismissing the idea as ridiculous - I of course reminded her of a certain equally ridiculous open encyclopedia project I have some involvement with.
- d.