<rambling>
100.000 articles Will we have 100.000 articles in a few days? This depends on wether we do have *any* articles (like a magazine or newspaper) or entries (like an encyclopedia). I think the number itself is not the point. Stubs? Yes, we do have stubs. So what? Any encyclopedia has them. Opened one lately? I just went to my bookshelf and opened one of the "Brockhaus" (big German quality encyclopedia) volumes at a random page, and guess what I found? We're not saying "we have 100.000 complete, detailed, perfect, bullet-proof articles", we say "we have 100.000 articles". We even link directly to our definition of "article".
Vera Cruz Well, I never had any quarrel with him/her/it. I noticed some strange activity on Recent Chages, but that was it. On the other hand, I *am* tempted to ban "Vera Cruz" just to reduce the amount of incoming mails. If it's Lir (prove!), or harming the 'pedia (subtle or not), I say get rid of it.
Images After DW told me some weeks ago in a rather commanding tone that some images I uploaded were too large and to dark (images that I had already downsized, filtered and dust-removed), and started to replace them with tiny thumbs, I found myself rather displeased with the current image handling, both by software and by people. Did anyone notice that lots of our images have no source or PD explanation given? That we have double/triple images of the same thing/person? That there are "x.jpg", "x (small).jpg", "x (large).jpg", etc. and no handling of the different sizes?
Consensus Great thing. We talk about the different options, argue a little, and finally agree on the way to go. Except we don't. Anyone know a country or big company that is successfully run by consensus? I don't. Dictatorship or voting. Pick one.
</rambling>
That's it for today ;-)
Magnus
Round and round we go ..
We're not saying "we have 100.000 complete, detailed, perfect, bullet-proof articles", we say "we have 100.000 articles". We even link directly to our definition of "article".
The major problem was the import of ~30,000 articles, but there is a valid point to be made that these should be counted: Many of them *are* built upon, either by people using "Random page" to find articles to work on, or by people searching for their hometown etc. Then again, there are 10- person-towns which are likely never to be edited.
I suggested counting only articles with a minimum number of edits, but that wouldn't help us much here, as Rambot updates his own articles occasionally to change the wording. Neither would a specific article length. What would help us would be flagging particular users as bots and excluding them from the count. [No offense to Ram-Man: A lot of work went into the bot's design, but it is not equivalent to 30k human-written articles.]
But there's the problem that we're going to cross 100k articles in a few days, and nobody is going to rewrite the code until then. And after that, drastically reducing our article count would seem silly. It's not that the counter is *deceptive*, it just doesn't properly reflect the human attention that articles have been given.
So here's what we should do: Go ahead, put out the press release when we reach 100K. Work on a system to properly handle bots in the article count. Then, suggest this revised article count as a way to measure our *human* contributions and list it as an additional count in the stats. If we feel like it, we can put out another 100K press release when we hit that count, and hope that nobody remembers our first one ;-)
Vera Cruz Well, I never had any quarrel with him/her/it. I noticed some strange activity on Recent Chages, but that was it. On the other hand, I *am* tempted to ban "Vera Cruz" just to reduce the amount of incoming mails. If it's Lir (prove!), or harming the 'pedia (subtle or not), I say get rid of it.
Proof:
1) Vera Cruz appeared immediately after Lir's ban. Her edit behavior is virtually identical (mark everything as minor, don't use preview etc.). Her homepage style, listing all minor edits, is the same. She has worked on exactly the same articles and finished the work she started as Lir.
2) Brion checked the email address and it was Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons] (she has reportedly since changed it to another Hotmail account). A. [name omitted for privacy reasons] runs this blog: http://qwert.diaryland.com/ where she has written about her Wikipedia experiences as Lir. Lir has also posted to this list as "Bridget [name omitted for privacy reasons]", a name for which Google has no hits other than these archived mails.
Images After DW told me some weeks ago in a rather commanding tone that some images I uploaded were too large and to dark (images that I had already downsized, filtered and dust-removed), and started to replace them with tiny thumbs, I found myself rather displeased with the current image handling, both by software and by people. Did anyone notice that lots of our images have no source or PD explanation given? That we have double/triple images of the same thing/person? That there are "x.jpg", "x (small).jpg", "x (large).jpg", etc. and no handling of the different sizes?
See wikitech-l discussion - let's go ahead and redesign the image code to generate thumbnails on request.
Consensus Great thing. We talk about the different options, argue a little, and finally agree on the way to go. Except we don't. Anyone know a country or big company that is successfully run by consensus? I don't. Dictatorship or voting. Pick one.
You know I agree. The main problem I see is that we already *are* voting (votes for deletion, votes for NPOV, votes for www.wikipedia.org) without an ordered process to do so because, thanks to the anarchists who constantly decry voting, we are living in cognitive dissonance. This ordered process should actually be supported by the anarchists, because we could say "before any vote, we have an argument period of X days and try to collect all pro/con arguments on a wiki page; everyone who votes is encouraged to make a reasonable effort to read and understand these arguments". We can also set specific thresholds instead of the current guessing what the "not quite unanimous consensus" is.
Things will only change when Jimbo decides to let us officially use voting in some cases. He said to me that he thinks that voting may be necessary in a small number of cases, so perhaps it's possible to convince him. Drop him a mail.
Regards,
Erik
--- Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
The main problem I see is that we already *are* voting (votes for deletion, votes for NPOV, votes for www.wikipedia.org) without an ordered process to do so because, thanks to the anarchists who constantly decry voting, we are living in cognitive dissonance.
If you call the process on [[Votes for deletion]] "voting", then I'm all for it of course. That page doesn't operate in the way "Here's a question, who says Yes or No?", but instead "Here's a question, who has an argument for or against?". I have rarely seen people adding their names to a "vote" without providing a reason, and I have never seen anybody producing a tally there by simply counting names.
Axel
WikiKarma: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwagon_effect
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If you call the process on [[Votes for deletion]] "voting", then I'm all for it of course. That page doesn't operate in the way "Here's a question, who says Yes or No?", but instead "Here's a question, who has an argument for or against?". I have rarely seen people adding their names to a "vote" without providing a reason, and I have never seen anybody producing a tally there by simply counting names.
My impression is that pages which quickly gather "votes" (and yes, there are "votes" in the sense of a plain "~~~~") are deleted sooner than those which do not. Sysops are left to guess whether or not a page has received enough review from others or not (if a page has been up for a long time, does that mean there are no objections to deletion?), making these deletion decisions essentially arbitrary, which is reflected by the wording on the page that gives only rough recommendations. That you, as a mathematician, are satisfied by this imprecise process is a mystery to me. Furthermore, pages where only one person expresses dissent are often (but not always) not deleted for weeks. Some sysops are bold in determining what the "consensus" / vote result is, others aren't.
So, it's a bit like voting on crack: Decisions are eventually made based on the tabulated opinions, but the criteria are neither properly defined nor consistently followed. "Votes for deletion" is a mess because of it. If we used organized voting, that page would be down to 5 recent entries at most. We would set a high threshold, of course, something like 70-80%, but *everyone* could help in getting that page cut down to size simply by checking which entries still need votes and adding theirs. As is, the deletion process is an excellent example for the schizophrenia of "consensus" "decision making".
Regards,
Erik
--- Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
[About Votes for Deletion:]
That you, as a mathematician, are satisfied by this imprecise process is a mystery to me.
A self-selected sample of naked Yes/No votes only gives an illusion of precision. Wait what Lir does with that system. Many mathematicians prefer reasons over numbers.
As is, the deletion process is an excellent example for the schizophrenia of "consensus" "decision making".
The only schizophrenia I can detect is that it's called "Votes for deletion" while it should be called "Arguments for deletion".
Axel
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On Sun, Jan 19, 2003 at 02:09:45PM +0100, Magnus Manske wrote:
Anyone know a country or big company that is successfully run by consensus? I don't.
Would you accept NATO?
Jason Williams wrote:
On Sun, Jan 19, 2003 at 02:09:45PM +0100, Magnus Manske wrote:
Anyone know a country or big company that is successfully run by consensus? I don't.
Would you accept NATO?
No. First, they are representing countries whose leaders have been voted in (kind of an indirect vote). Second, they actually come to a decision, because there needs to be one; our version of consensus drags on without a due date or something. Third, I doubt there would be consensus in NATO without the US agreeing ;-)
Magnus
How about the EU? Zoe Jason Williams jason@jasonandali.org.uk wrote:On Sun, Jan 19, 2003 at 02:09:45PM +0100, Magnus Manske wrote:
Anyone know a country or big company that is successfully run by consensus? I don't.
Would you accept NATO?
On Sun, Jan 19, 2003 at 02:09:45PM +0100, Magnus Manske wrote:
Dictatorship or voting. Pick one.
I pick both. Benevolent dictatorship where the dictator listens to and respects the voice of his constituents works quite well. It amounts to concsensus; to retain power, the benevolent dictator has to come up with solutions that everyone can live with. When you have votes on the other hand, the will of the majority can make things so unlikeable for minorities that they just up and leave.
Did anyone ever notice that Kropotkin said Russian villages used to run entirely based on consensus, without any voting? Too bad the communists destroyed that lifestyle; I'd like to see firsthand how they managed it. I suspect it was because everyone shared a common culture, language, and religion, and had known each other all their lives.
Jonathan
Jonathan Walther wrote:
I pick both. Benevolent dictatorship where the dictator listens to and respects the voice of his constituents works quite well. It amounts to concsensus; to retain power, the benevolent dictator has to come up with solutions that everyone can live with.
Well, yes and no. I'm the benevolent dictator here, and I think I do a good job of listening and trying to work to address a variety of concerns as best as possible. But I don't have to do this to retain power, really, except insofar as if I do a sufficient bad job, everyone will run away and refuse to play with me anymore.
There are a number of problems with our current model:
1. Determining when there is a consensus is difficult. On most issues, we end up with a solution that approaches unanimity -- this is the wiki way. But on some issues, it's sort of hard to say. People end up going along because they have a commitment to the overall *process* (i.e., they like me, and like the job I do generally, to a degree that they are willing to put up with some decisions that I make that they don't agree with).
2. Our current process doesn't scale well outside English. When a controversy breaks out in English and the noise gets loud enough, I can spend a few hours going through edit histories to try to determine what happened. This gives good people an incentive to be on their best behavior, because they want to make it easy for me when I have to judge someone.
But I can't do this in Swedish, so I have to listen to two sides of an argument where it sounds like both sides have behaved badly at times, and I can't figure out who started it, who is likely to continue it, and so on.
When you have votes on the other hand, the will of the majority can make things so unlikeable for minorities that they just up and leave.
One of the things that Eric pointed out to me is that thinking of voting as a simple "majority rules" (i.e. 50% plus 1) is too simplistic. I _totally_ agree that 50% plus 1 would be a horrible rule, and likely to end up being a tool to close out minority voices.
But there are other forms of voting (Condorcet's method, approval voting, etc.) that don't suffer from all the same defects.
Having said that, I still have grave reservations about using voting, reservations that derive from the incentives to "political" behavior that voting almost surely involves. Under our current system, all parties are forced to look for solutions that will be satisfactory to almost everyone, as opposed to merely looking for solutions with a large enough constituency to pass a voting threshold (and screw the rest of them!).
Did anyone ever notice that Kropotkin said Russian villages used to run entirely based on consensus, without any voting? Too bad the communists destroyed that lifestyle; I'd like to see firsthand how they managed it. I suspect it was because everyone shared a common culture, language, and religion, and had known each other all their lives.
And of course this is precisely what we don't have.
Having said all of this, I think that I would find very useful a way that I could formulate alternatives and have people formally register preferences, with the understanding that it's an experiment. A tool for more formally recognizing consensus. And then that tool might eventually (with experience and changes as necessary) be more formalized.
I'm a big fan of the notion of a constitutional republic. Majority rule is morally repugnant. But some form of consensus voting, with the protection of a "constitution" or "bill of rights" for all wikipedians, rights that can't be taken away without some super-extraordinary voting procedure, will probably be the way to go, someday.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Having said all of this, I think that I would find very useful a way that I could formulate alternatives and have people formally register preferences, with the understanding that it's an experiment. A tool for more formally recognizing consensus. And then that tool might eventually (with experience and changes as necessary) be more formalized.
OK. Proposal (probably number 10^10, but anyway): * Have a special page (or another project?) for "consensus management" ;-) * Logged-in people only (just for ease of reading; user names are free...) * Anyone can create a topic that needs a consensus decision * Anyone can add solution proposals, as a wikipedia (meta) link, like "Difficult topic (proposal Magnus)" * Everyone can add (and remove) himself to the"decision finding" on any topic * Options on a topic are all proposals, "I don't like any of this", and "I don't know yet", the latter being the default * Anyone can change his vote (sorry: opinion) on the topic any time, and give a reason for prefering that option * For a topic, anyone can mark a checkbox "I think we should get this done now" * When some criteria are met (example: topic exists for 1 week, more than 5 people are signed up, more than 70% think it's done now), consensus is declared.
It has some voting elements (like actually deciding at one point), but also the "flow" of consensus making. And, we know where the participants stand at any moment.
Magnus
--- Magnus Manske magnus.manske@epost.de wrote:
OK. Proposal (probably number 10^10, but anyway):
- Have a special page (or another project?) for "consensus management" ;-)
- Logged-in people only (just for ease of reading; user names are free...)
- Anyone can create a topic that needs a consensus decision
- Anyone can add solution proposals, as a wikipedia (meta) link, like
"Difficult topic (proposal Magnus)"
- Everyone can add (and remove) himself to the"decision finding" on any topic
- Options on a topic are all proposals, "I don't like any of this", and "I don't know yet", the latter being the default
- Anyone can change his vote (sorry: opinion) on the topic any time, and give a reason for prefering that option
- For a topic, anyone can mark a checkbox "I think we should get this
done now"
- When some criteria are met (example: topic exists for 1 week, more than 5 people are signed up, more than 70% think it's done now), consensus is declared.
It has some voting elements (like actually deciding at one point), but also the "flow" of consensus making. And, we know where the participants stand at any moment.
I like this. It's plainly visible who voted how and why. I would hope though that the "reason for my vote" is not just a little textbox like the current edit summary, which many people would leave blank. Often, you would want to write a paragraph or two explaining your vote and trying to convince others, maybe to be revised later. So full wiki power would be nice there.
Axel
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