On 29/08/2007, michael west <michawest(a)gmail.com> wrote: Not sure about Wikipedia 0.5 (~2000 articles), but SOS's press release for the Wikipedia Selection for Schools (~4000 articles) says it's equivalent to 15 volumes: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/SOSChildrenUK2007 "The Selection DVD has the content of a 15 volume encyclopaedia - with 24,000 pictures, 14 million words and articles on 4,625 topics." - d.

Vee wrote: Why? I don't see any such need. If it helps to bridge the gap between the popular and the academic it is providing a fantastic service. Ec

Vee schrieb: Stan Shebs schrieb: Of course everyone writes about what they're interested in, and that's a good thing, it's the natural thing. The difference is where fan enthusiasm outweighs professional enthusiasm. The funny thing is that there is a strong trendency to turn "x in pop culture" sections into articles, and to decry anyone who disagrees as being deletionist (which I'm clearly not, btw). Stan, in theory, you're right. In practice, I see a tendency to the opposite. Take a look at the SA link, in case you don't know it yet. It's an old story, but the examples of article pairs, although many of them are chosen tongue-in-cheek, speak for themselves. http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/wikigroaning.php But the problems of fan-writing go much deeper. On many sportspersons' articles, there's an unreferenced statement "the greatest X-player of all time". Remove the statement, and a fan is going to revert you. Over and over. Or try appropriately tagging some Star Wars Expanded Universe articles as {{in-universe}} and {{primarysources}}. Chances are, the crowd is going to remove them sooner or later. Better yet, try and nominate a bunch of the worst for deletion, and you will be shouted down as a deletionist. Or, to give a more subtle example, I recently changed the sentence "Neil Armstrong was the first man to have set foot on an extraterrestrial world" to "[...] on the moon". http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neil_Armstrong&diff=prev&… Also, there are too many users primarily interested in social networking, with signature collections and all. Btw: Mr. Wales, if you are reading this, there are some users you could make very happy by signing their pages. Really. But what makes me pessimistic (at least right now) is that while Wikipedia already has an increasing anti-intellectual systemic bias already, as more and more Web2.0 spoiled users arrive and others quit, there are still complaints about too much elitism. Wikipedia should be much less democratic than it currently is. Seriously, democracy is a purely idealistic concept. No state in the world ever was or ever will be truly democratic. Some dimwits on certain websites keep complaining about how Jimbo is "God King". I wish he and others would actually take on that responsibility, because it's necessary. Self-governing on a project as large as Wikipedia is ludricous period. To abuse the words of Tom Lehrer: "The reason most folk songs are so atrocious is that they were written by the people." Wow. Sorry for that rant. I fell bitter already. I mean better. -Adrian

William Pietri schrieb: That's not my reading of it. Pop culture articles should be just as well-referenced and consistently written as all other articles. Why not compare pop culture articles with *better* pop culture articles? There's always room for improvement, and maybe a bit more of that for some specimen of the pop culture article. No, but we wouldn't want them to spend time on [[Optimus Prime]] either if they -for all their undoubtedly good intentions- can't curb their fan enthusiasm for the sake of actually improving the article and thereby Wikipedia. I respect that as your opinion. I'd say the *better* editors we have involved in Wikipedia, the better. I wouldn't necessarily agree on any of that. William (Mr. Pietri?), yes they do look this stuff up and I believe it is not only an advantage to have articles on pop culture topics, but Wikipedia has them as a matter of course. But how about encouraging users interested in a certain topic *to improve on their improvements* of their favourite articles? Yes, many are doing a decent job or die trying, but there's always room and also the willingness --eagerness, ideally-- to learn something more, at least for someone I'd want as an editor. I wouldn't e.g. want a mature Star Wars fan --hard to believe, but there are those-- reading all those unreferenced articles lacking any real world perspective. So why not improve our structures of giving helpful advice to editors, and yes, forcing the concept some? We need a culture of mutual teaching and learning, of improving not only the articles according to one's pwn ideads, but also one's own contributions -- a culture of welcoming criticism by others as a chance of learning something new. And you don't get that by simply letting everything slide because it's "just" (not my opinion!) pop culture articles. We shouldn't shy away from raising a well-meaning educational finger where it's necessary and potentially useful. Much better than either using said finger to klick the block button or living with lesser articles. The assumpton that the majority of editors are mature people and willing to go out of their way to improve Wikipedia not according to their own private ideas and preconceptons, but according to Wikipedia's standards is, well, possibly true but I wouldn't take a bet.

William Pietri schrieb: Haha. Ok, good point. I see your point here as well. Full agreement. Incidentally, I'm currently working on an advisory page related to issues of style and policy when "writing about one's favourite topic" (working title).

Bryan Derksen wrote: That depends if the second topic is a valid one in the first place. Deletion, cutting, and merging are excellent ways to deal with articles which aren't covered significantly in secondary, independent sources. Editors edit. Part of that is to cut. That's not a bad thing.

I agree with Bryan, not Todd. The content of WP is a compromise among the things different people think important. I joined primarily to increase the traditional academic content. I soon saw it was equally a matter of radically improving it, such content as there was especially in history and the humanities tending to come unaltered from century-old reference books. And I saw that many WPedians tried to delete content for academics--even members of the US National Academy of Sciences or the Royal Society -- on the sometimes stated grounds that nobody who did not win a Nobel prize was important. I gradually learned how to help others defend such material--though there is still the astounding situation that less than half the current members of these bodies have articles, cf. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_National_Academy_of_Sci…] and compare [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fellows_of_the_Royal_Society] with [http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/fellowsindex2.cfm]. And I was properly scandalized not as much by the excessive detail of the popular culture sections, but by the policies for complete coverage of numbered highways and the like. So I have realized that the practical way of building an encyclopedia is mutual tolerance. If there is enough content to write articles, and if the subjects of of any recognizable importance within their area, let the people who want to write articles do so. It's the only way to get what I consider the serious stuff included. And with respect to popular culture, the current problem seems to be that the current proponents of these deletions do not recognize the significance of creative works on each other, or the importance of themes and setting in books and moviesThis is as much a subject of literary criticism as the description of the plot and the characters, and academic sources and popular reviews are available for many of the genres. So in a sense it comes down to anti-intellectualism, in a way. And again the problem is the quality of the articles--in almost no cases has anyone bothered to source this content, even when the sources can readily be found online. It's the same amateurish superficial approach as with the historical subjects: write down what comes immediately to hand and stop there.. Adding this content is not made easier by the current rash of deletions. it takes many hours of work with print and electronic library resources to source one of these articles properly, often with material not available except in large academic libraries. An article can be nominated for deletion in about 2 minutes, less if one uses the same deletion rationale for all. it is also not made easier by the opinion of some of the deletion proponents that whatever articles are found are not relevant, the opinion of some that list formats are inherently suspicious, and the opinion of a few that the content would not be encyclopedic even if sourced. The typical rationale given is loosely associated items--if for movies to have a common theme is a loose association, I don't know what would count as a tight one. The name of "trivia" doesn't help of course. But popular culture is a serious field of study, and about half the people at WP will not believe it--and, even here, make fun of the name. Even were it only a field of popular interest, it would equally deserve treatment. And then there is the expressed preference of war rather than reason for making decisions, and the general unwillingness to compromise, both characteristic of WP process. On 8/30/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca> wrote: -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.

On 02/09/07, John Lee <johnleemk(a)gmail.com> wrote: Because he wasn't. Currently wikipedia has articles on every mayor of New York City from 1700 onwards. Probably a copyvio -- geni

I couldn't resist commenting on this, because I read this email the same time I came across http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_presidential_election%2C_1988 In the speedy deletion bin (little or no context). Now, I just want to bitch a little bit here - certain articles should never be deleted, only expanded. "Russia is a country" provides very little context, but it requires expansion, not deletion. No reasonable person would advocate the general deletion of articles on real presidential elections of any country. Deletion should be reserved for unsalvagable articles, either articles with no value (and this had a bit of value) or articles on subjects that can never hope to be encyclopaedic. But a Haitian presidential election? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? WilyD On 9/2/07, John Lee <johnleemk(a)gmail.com> wrote:

John Lee wrote: If you don't delete they get the tagging to add to their edit count.

Correction--it does show the presidential result. I think that does make sense, and that such a stub is acceptable. (I note the original version entered did not have the box). On 9/4/07, David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.

David Goodman wrote: Even that small change shows that there is movement toward making the article more useful. Ec

geni wrote: "Probably" doesn't make it so. If you didn't see the page that John refers to then your comment is pure bullshit. Ec

On 0, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> scribbled: Ironically, they are in some jurisdictions; see [[Database right]]s. Thankfully, the US has not adopted protection for databases - if ever it did, we might have some problems then. -- gwern mania SEMTEX NFLIS H.N.P. AMME LRTS bce codes MK12A EDI

On 02/09/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote: It would depend on how the list of made up. In any case its not particularly relevant just an observation that poorly formatted pages tend to be copyvios and people tend to pick the deletion criteria they think requires the least effort and most likely delete rather than the one they think is most true. See all the cooperate adverts killed as copyvios. -- geni

Peter Ansell wrote: In that case, Citizendium will be a stunning success, WP will fade away, and CZers will someday debate over whether WP was ever notable enough to warrant an article in CZ. :-) But in reality, I know many of those 99 professionals, and most are not very good at large collaborative projects anyway; too used to having their pronouncements accepted uncritically, only want to interact with the "right" people (defined as "good for career"), and so on. I used to be more solicitous of professionals getting involved, but they are often far more trouble than they're worth; I just want a college student that sticks to faithfully reporting what the sources say, doesn't try to inject personal opinions dressed up to sound authoritative. Stan

On 8/29/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net> wrote: He probably is - but the point's valid - quite often the true experts need someone else to filter their material into a good encyclopedia article. The ideal Wikipedian isn't the person who writes the seminal papers, but someone who knows enough about the subject to be able to read them and apply them in context. -Matt

Marc Riddell wrote: Taking it further, a working-class layman whose universe is built on watching TV, and who has a limited education is not likely to be interested in academic articles. He can, however, read articles about his favorite TV programmes, and walk away satisfied from his Wikipedia experience. If when here he clicks on a link and gets unexpected information he has exceeded our expectations. Sure, we want the information to be accurate, but to whom are we appealing with our demand for sources? Our TV proletarian doesn't give a damn; he's spent a lifetime being taught to believe. Sometimes I'm inclined to think that for some sourcing derives from a fear of being wrong or inferior. Any error takes on the proportions of a major loss of face when it is publicized, but when viewed in the context of Wikipedia's size the level of error is not that bad. Ec

On 8/30/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca> wrote: Good point. It's theoretically possible that a lot of the "in popular culture" junk people complain about is in tacked-on trivia sections at the end of articles, or gigantic "X in popular culture..." articles. The number of articles may not necessarily reflect the actual composition of the 'pedia. Johnleemk

On 8/29/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca> wrote: The closest thing I know of is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Carnildo/The_Living_100_Biography, which, despite the name, is a limited survey of 405 articles. Based on the numbers there, as of April: 16% biographies of living people 14% biographies of dead people 1% biographies of fictional people 13% pop culture, which breaks down into 6% music (bands, albums, songs) 2% movies 2% television (stations, shows, episodes) 3% other 2% schools (all levels) 9% geographic articles 45% other An older, smaller, but more detailed survey is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Carnildo/The_100. As of November 2005, using an expanded definition of "geography": 27% biographies 26% geographic articles 25% pop culture 10% history 2% science 2% schools 6% other -- Mark

Ray Saintonge schrieb: That was a rhetorical. I know it's not just me. But I do like popular culture. And it's an important area, not least because it holds some of WP's most popular pages. I favour well-referenced articles on popular culture topics well-written by intelligent people. And I wish those people wouldn't have to meddle with mediocre zealots as much as they sometimes have to. Of course there are exceptional examples of pop culture FAs, but is it the tendency? Yes, well, no. Not if those preferences run contrary to what Wikipedia is about. Or should be, in my opinion.

On 8/29/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: And that proves that pokemon are more often mentioned by sarcastic deletionists in unrelated AFD discussions ("less notable than a jigglypuff", "fails the pokemon test", "delete") than written about. —C.W.

On 0, Andrew Gray <andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk> scribbled: I think it'd be amusing if some philanthropist (or a geek with money burning a hole in their wallet...) took a dump, had a printer do a run and bound up all the scores of volumes and donated it to the Library of Congress. Actually, it wouldn't even have to be an arbitrary dump. I understand the 2 millionth article is going to be written Real Soon Now. It would be nice if we had some commemoration of the milestone a little more concrete than some news coverage and a Wikinews article or two. -- gwern VIP F-22 Chobetsu 1071 O Infrastructure spook DIA JOTS ASIC