On 04/09/06, maru dubshinki marudubshinki@gmail.com wrote:
"Who Writes Wikipedia?" ( http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia )
"This fact does have enormous policy implications. If Wikipedia is written by occasional contributors, then growing it requires making it easier and more rewarding to contribute occasionally. Instead of trying to squeeze more work out of those who spend their life on Wikipedia, we need to broaden the base of those who contribute just a little bit. Unfortunately, precisely because such people are only occasional contributors, their opinions aren't heard by the current Wikipedia process. They don't get involved in policy debates, they don't go to meetups, and they don't hang out with Jimbo Wales. And so things that might help them get pushed on the backburner, assuming they're even proposed."
This means that if we want the content to grow and be *good*, we need to be more newbie-friendly.
This is also a BIG stick to use on Byzantine overengineered processes and policy. Excessive process is actively newbie-hostile.
Look at Debian, bogged down in process, to the point where Richard Stallman failed to make it in as a Debian maintainer for his own software because of excessive process. Look how it took Ubuntu to give it a much-needed rocket up the arse. Without Ubuntu, we'd still be waiting on Etch. Will it take someone doing a successful fork to decalcify Wikipedia policy?
Greg - you might want to ask Aaron for what he ran, in case you can run better numbers across the whole database more easily.
- d.
On 9/4/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 04/09/06, maru dubshinki marudubshinki@gmail.com wrote:
"Who Writes Wikipedia?" ( http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia
)
"This fact does have enormous policy implications. If Wikipedia is written by occasional contributors, then growing it requires making it easier and more rewarding to contribute occasionally. Instead of trying to squeeze more work out of those who spend their life on Wikipedia, we need to broaden the base of those who contribute just a little bit. Unfortunately, precisely because such people are only occasional contributors, their opinions aren't heard by the current Wikipedia process. They don't get involved in policy debates, they don't go to meetups, and they don't hang out with Jimbo Wales. And so things that might help them get pushed on the backburner, assuming they're even proposed."
This means that if we want the content to grow and be *good*, we need to be more newbie-friendly.
This is also a BIG stick to use on Byzantine overengineered processes and policy. Excessive process is actively newbie-hostile.
Look at Debian, bogged down in process, to the point where Richard Stallman failed to make it in as a Debian maintainer for his own software because of excessive process. Look how it took Ubuntu to give it a much-needed rocket up the arse. Without Ubuntu, we'd still be waiting on Etch. Will it take someone doing a successful fork to decalcify Wikipedia policy?
Answering "Who Writes Wikipedia?" in terms of number of surviving words is, no doubt, better than using edit counts. But it is also may not be the best approach for the future, if we are really switching to a "quality over quantity" mentality. At the least, there should be careful choices about what kinds of articles to analyze, before we put too much weight on results like these. My intuition is that Featured Articles and Good Articles have a significantly larger portion of established editors as the main contributors, even by the word count metric.
-Ragesoss
On 04/09/06, Sage Ross ragesoss+wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
Answering "Who Writes Wikipedia?" in terms of number of surviving words is, no doubt, better than using edit counts. But it is also may not be the best approach for the future, if we are really switching to a "quality over quantity" mentality. At the least, there should be careful choices about what kinds of articles to analyze, before we put too much weight on results like these. My intuition is that Featured Articles and Good Articles have a significantly larger portion of established editors as the main contributors, even by the word count metric.
That's because it's bloody impossible to get through them without being fabulous at the politics, even for experienced editors. FAC in particular is a great example of gratuitous requests for shrubberies BY POLICY!!!
- d.
On 9/4/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 04/09/06, Sage Ross ragesoss+wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
My intuition is that Featured Articles and Good Articles have a significantly larger portion of established editors as the main contributors, even by the word count metric.
That's because it's bloody impossible to get through them without being fabulous at the politics, even for experienced editors. FAC in particular is a great example of gratuitous requests for shrubberies BY POLICY!!!
True enough, to some extent. Maybe instead of using process-dependent criteria, choose well-cited articles and/or long articles... or articles also present in Britannica (i.e., mainstream significant topics). The real issue is, adding new content is only the first stage in an article's life. At some point, most of the significant information is there, but to improve beyond a somewhat disorganized collection of unverified information (probably true, but unverified nonetheless) and become a decent article, it often takes rewriting, reorganizing, fact-checking/citation, etc. Using AaronSW's metric, mature articles will likely be more the product of established editors than the example in the blog article. And at a minimum, I don't think we can consider an article mature without a high level of citations. The point is valid that much of what anons do is NOT typos and vandalism, but it doesn't (necessarily) mean the head of the Wikipedia editors distribution doesn't still create the majority of Wikipedia's content value.
It's not very easy to write a coherent article on a complex topic several paragraphs at a tiime (with a different person adding each chunk). The people who become involved enough to do research, track down citations, and re-write and re-organize articles have to spend a fair amount of time on Wikipedia (and, naturally, rack up a fair number of edits). -Ragesoss
On 05/09/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 04/09/06, Sage Ross ragesoss+wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
Answering "Who Writes Wikipedia?" in terms of number of surviving words is, no doubt, better than using edit counts. But it is also may not be the best approach for the future, if we are really switching to a "quality over quantity" mentality. At the least, there should be careful choices about what kinds of articles to analyze, before we put too much weight on results like these. My intuition is that Featured Articles and Good Articles have a significantly larger portion of established editors as the main contributors, even by the word count metric.
That's because it's bloody impossible to get through them without being fabulous at the politics, even for experienced editors. FAC in particular is a great example of gratuitous requests for shrubberies BY POLICY!!!
Do we have to run the gauntlet of knights who say "ni!" ?
Peter Ansell
On 9/4/06, Sage Ross ragesoss+wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
Answering "Who Writes Wikipedia?" in terms of number of surviving words is, no doubt, better than using edit counts.
If you rank Wikipedia editors by edit count, the bots win; in second place are the editors who function in a very bot-like manner, by constantly fixing small issues here and there, often with software assistance.
I also bet that if you ranked editors by surviving words in the encyclopedia (not project or talk) you might be quite surprised to see who ranks high. People get noticed on Wikipedia for participating in project-space, for one reason or another, not for their article contribs.
But it is also may not be the best approach for the future, if we are really switching to a "quality over quantity" mentality.
Are we? Because there are huge swathes of important stuff as-yet undocumented in Wikipedia. (Of course, we're probably close if not there in terms of covering every topic covered in traditional general encyclopedias, but Wikipedia is not just a general encyclopedia; it's all the specialist encyclopedias too).
At the least, there should be careful choices about what kinds of articles to analyze, before we put too much weight on results like these. My intuition is that Featured Articles and Good Articles have a significantly larger portion of established editors as the main contributors, even by the word count metric.
David points out correctly that FA is a political game and thus favors the established. Good Articles started off as an idea to get away from this and actually identify informally what's actually pretty well done, but it has now turned into mini-FA.
I do see the point of identifying which articles are established vs. text dumps or the like - perhaps looking at articles over N edits, or over N months old?
-Matt
On 05/09/06, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
David points out correctly that FA is a political game and thus favors the established. Good Articles started off as an idea to get away from this and actually identify informally what's actually pretty well done, but it has now turned into mini-FA.
I had an article rejected from GA on two grounds, its statistics weren't referenced, which is fine, I will have to look into that. And two, it didn't have a picture!!! Of all things you think they would be lenient on a picture. Not to sound overly harsh on the policy stuff but thats going a bit too far.
Peter Ansell
On 9/5/06, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
I also bet that if you ranked editors by surviving words in the encyclopedia (not project or talk) you might be quite surprised to see who ranks high. People get noticed on Wikipedia for participating in project-space, for one reason or another, not for their article contribs.
Not so, I primarily know Violetriga for his/her odd-ball yet encyclopedic article creations. People with multiple FA's to their name are recognized for it. No doubt will I know most people for their project edits, but people who spend a lot of time creating good articles are very much noticed.
But it is also may not be the best approach for the future, if we are really
switching to a "quality over quantity" mentality.
Are we?
Yes, it's one of the things Jimmy mentioned at the latest Wikimania.
Mgm
On 5 Sep 2006, at 03:28, Matt Brown wrote:
On 9/4/06, Sage Ross ragesoss+wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
Answering "Who Writes Wikipedia?" in terms of number of surviving words is, no doubt, better than using edit counts.
If you rank Wikipedia editors by edit count, the bots win; in second place are the editors who function in a very bot-like manner, by constantly fixing small issues here and there, often with software assistance.
I also bet that if you ranked editors by surviving words in the encyclopedia (not project or talk) you might be quite surprised to see who ranks high. People get noticed on Wikipedia for participating in project-space, for one reason or another, not for their article contribs.
In [[Mathematics]] we actually discuss important changes and reach consensus. Who actually puts up the definitive version is fairly random and depends on who happens to be around at the time. So measures of changes to the article are not an accurate measure of contributions.
Sage Ross wrote:
On 9/4/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 04/09/06, maru dubshinki marudubshinki@gmail.com wrote:
"Who Writes Wikipedia?" ( http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia
)
"This fact does have enormous policy implications. If Wikipedia is written by occasional contributors, then growing it requires making it easier and more rewarding to contribute occasionally. Instead of trying to squeeze more work out of those who spend their life on Wikipedia, we need to broaden the base of those who contribute just a little bit. Unfortunately, precisely because such people are only occasional contributors, their opinions aren't heard by the current Wikipedia process. They don't get involved in policy debates, they don't go to meetups, and they don't hang out with Jimbo Wales. And so things that might help them get pushed on the backburner, assuming they're even proposed."
This means that if we want the content to grow and be *good*, we need to be more newbie-friendly.
This is also a BIG stick to use on Byzantine overengineered processes and policy. Excessive process is actively newbie-hostile.
Look at Debian, bogged down in process, to the point where Richard Stallman failed to make it in as a Debian maintainer for his own software because of excessive process. Look how it took Ubuntu to give it a much-needed rocket up the arse. Without Ubuntu, we'd still be waiting on Etch. Will it take someone doing a successful fork to decalcify Wikipedia policy?
Answering "Who Writes Wikipedia?" in terms of number of surviving words is, no doubt, better than using edit counts. But it is also may not be the best approach for the future, if we are really switching to a "quality over quantity" mentality. At the least, there should be careful choices about what kinds of articles to analyze, before we put too much weight on results like these. My intuition is that Featured Articles and Good Articles have a significantly larger portion of established editors as the main contributors, even by the word count metric.
-Ragesoss
FA's and to some extent Good Articles are not the reason that we are #17 on the most visited sites. If those were the only articles we had I doubt we would have 1% of the readership that we currently enjoy. I think articles past a specific size or maybe size and age woudl be a better metric, though a random sampling of 10k non-stub articles woudl probbly give us what we want.
SKL
Answering "Who Writes Wikipedia?" in terms of number of surviving words is, no doubt, better than using edit counts. But it is also may not be the best approach for the future, if we are really switching to a "quality over quantity" mentality. At the least, there should be careful choices about what kinds of articles to analyze, before we put too much weight on results like these. My intuition is that Featured Articles and Good Articles have a significantly larger portion of established editors as the main contributors, even by the word count metric.
-Ragesoss
FA's and to some extent Good Articles are not the reason that we are #17 on the most visited sites. If those were the only articles we had I doubt we would have 1% of the readership that we currently enjoy. I think articles past a specific size or maybe size and age woudl be a better metric, though a random sampling of 10k non-stub articles woudl probbly give us what we want.
SKL
I think (as I said in the reply that seems to have gotten lost in the flood) that level of citation (citations per unit length, or similar) would be a good parameter for choosing the sample. With regard to what makes us the #17 most-visited site, you are right (of course). It's defintely not the FA's and GA's. But high-quality articles (by whatever idiosyncratic measure each reader uses) are going to be responsible for future growth in readership and attracting the the most capable and knowledgable editors, (probably) more so than continued growth in the number and size of the unverified articles and content that good anons typically add.
As anecdotal evidence, I was talking to a new professor at my school yesterday (a historian of molecular biology) who was gushing over the Rosalind Franklin article (props to User:Wobble). He's now thinking about coordinating some of his course assignments with WikiProject History of Science.
To repeat what I say on the "expert rebellion" pages, I think we are handling the transition from a quantity-emphasis to a quality-emphasis the right way (i.e., slowly). The leaving experts either have a different set of priorities (i.e., they think that the real-life authority of editors should matter), or are leaving because of problems that we are working on (i.e., edit creep and the inability to preserve a "good" version). But metrics like AaronSW's are important for determining how fast we should change policy/software to favor ease of participation vs. verifiability and/or stability.
I guess ideally, we could have a measure based on each type of sample: random articles, FA's, GA's, long articles, old articles, high-citation articles, most-visited articles. -Ragesoss
Sage Ross wrote:
Answering "Who Writes Wikipedia?" in terms of number of surviving words is, no doubt, better than using edit counts. But it is also may not be the best approach for the future, if we are really switching to a "quality over quantity" mentality. At the least, there should be careful choices about what kinds of articles to analyze, before we put too much weight on results like these. My intuition is that Featured Articles and Good Articles have a significantly larger portion of established editors as the main contributors, even by the word count metric.
-Ragesoss
FA's and to some extent Good Articles are not the reason that we are #17 on the most visited sites. If those were the only articles we had I doubt we would have 1% of the readership that we currently enjoy. I think articles past a specific size or maybe size and age woudl be a better metric, though a random sampling of 10k non-stub articles woudl probbly give us what we want.
SKL
I think (as I said in the reply that seems to have gotten lost in the flood) that level of citation (citations per unit length, or similar) would be a good parameter for choosing the sample. With regard to what makes us the #17 most-visited site, you are right (of course). It's defintely not the FA's and GA's. But high-quality articles (by whatever idiosyncratic measure each reader uses) are going to be responsible for future growth in readership and attracting the the most capable and knowledgable editors, (probably) more so than continued growth in the number and size of the unverified articles and content that good anons typically add.
As anecdotal evidence, I was talking to a new professor at my school yesterday (a historian of molecular biology) who was gushing over the Rosalind Franklin article (props to User:Wobble). He's now thinking about coordinating some of his course assignments with WikiProject History of Science.
To repeat what I say on the "expert rebellion" pages, I think we are handling the transition from a quantity-emphasis to a quality-emphasis the right way (i.e., slowly). The leaving experts either have a different set of priorities (i.e., they think that the real-life authority of editors should matter), or are leaving because of problems that we are working on (i.e., edit creep and the inability to preserve a "good" version). But metrics like AaronSW's are important for determining how fast we should change policy/software to favor ease of participation vs. verifiability and/or stability.
I guess ideally, we could have a measure based on each type of sample: random articles, FA's, GA's, long articles, old articles, high-citation articles, most-visited articles. -Ragesoss
I cannot disagree with anything you have said, and for the long term I think you are right about the focus and what is important. I would add however, that I think a very significant portion of our popularity is totally unrelated to verification and the accuracy to the finest detail of our articles. About 80% of the searches I do when looking on wikipedia are only for reading the first 1-5 sentences. I encounter a name or a term or a place that I do not recognize and I want to find out what it is.
This is obviously not something that we should take to mean that the criticisms about fact checking and references should be disregarded, but I think it is worth keeping in mind (especially when editing opening paragraphs).
SKL
On 9/4/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
This is also a BIG stick to use on Byzantine overengineered processes and policy. Excessive process is actively newbie-hostile.
So is excessive randomness. Policy protects new users.
Incerdentaly is there a reason why [[Etch-A-Sketch]] is coated in (r)s?
On 04/09/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/4/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
This is also a BIG stick to use on Byzantine overengineered processes and policy. Excessive process is actively newbie-hostile.
So is excessive randomness. Policy protects new users.
Oh, absolutely. Process is important. But too much is stifling and dangerous.
Incerdentaly is there a reason why [[Etch-A-Sketch]] is coated in (r)s?
Stupidity, I presume. (Rather than malice. See the assumption of good faith!)
- d.
On 9/4/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 04/09/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/4/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
This is also a BIG stick to use on Byzantine overengineered processes and policy. Excessive process is actively newbie-hostile.
So is excessive randomness. Policy protects new users.
Oh, absolutely. Process is important. But too much is stifling and dangerous.
depends how it is structured. I don't think new users are going to be to worried about [[Wikipedia:Bots]] and the ones we wan't don't normaly have a problem with no legal threats or [[Wikipedia:Undeletion policy]] (since when did we have an undeletion policy I have enough trouble trying to remeber our deletion policy).
Stupidity, I presume. (Rather than malice. See the assumption of good faith!)
I was woundering if it was a slightly odd case of use common names.
On 9/4/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/4/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
This is also a BIG stick to use on Byzantine overengineered processes and policy. Excessive process is actively newbie-hostile.
So is excessive randomness. Policy protects new users.
....
-- geni
Is AFC protecting new users? I'd say that and AFD are what burn the most new users.
~maru
On 9/4/06, maru dubshinki marudubshinki@gmail.com wrote:
Is AFC protecting new users? I'd say that and AFD are what burn the most new users.
~maru
Well I didn't support turning article creation off . AFD and other parts of deletion policy prevents their stuff from summarily deleted without a reason.
On 9/4/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 04/09/06, maru dubshinki marudubshinki@gmail.com wrote:
"Who Writes Wikipedia?" (
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia )
"This fact does have enormous policy implications. If Wikipedia is written by occasional contributors, then growing it requires making it easier and more rewarding to contribute occasionally. Instead of trying to squeeze more work out of those who spend their life on Wikipedia, we need to broaden the base of those who contribute just a little bit. Unfortunately, precisely because such people are only occasional contributors, their opinions aren't heard by the current Wikipedia process. They don't get involved in policy debates, they don't go to meetups, and they don't hang out with Jimbo Wales. And so things that might help them get pushed on the backburner, assuming they're even proposed."
This means that if we want the content to grow and be *good*, we need to be more newbie-friendly.
This is also a BIG stick to use on Byzantine overengineered processes and policy. Excessive process is actively newbie-hostile.
Look at Debian, bogged down in process, to the point where Richard Stallman failed to make it in as a Debian maintainer for his own software because of excessive process. Look how it took Ubuntu to give it a much-needed rocket up the arse. Without Ubuntu, we'd still be waiting on Etch. Will it take someone doing a successful fork to decalcify Wikipedia policy?
Greg - you might want to ask Aaron for what he ran, in case you can run better numbers across the whole database more easily.
You can't expect a site the size of Wikipedia to run without a serious amount of policy. If we stop adding policies things like living person bios would have degenerated into flame wars with no way out. Newbies do face a steeper learning curve, but in the end it is best for Wikipedia and it is the project rather than the newbies we should care about. -
Mgm
On 05/09/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/4/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
This means that if we want the content to grow and be *good*, we need to be more newbie-friendly. This is also a BIG stick to use on Byzantine overengineered processes and policy. Excessive process is actively newbie-hostile.
You can't expect a site the size of Wikipedia to run without a serious amount of policy.
No, which is why process is important.
If we stop adding policies things like living person bios would have degenerated into flame wars with no way out.
It's a good thing AFD has never done that. Oh, wait.
Newbies do face a steeper learning curve, but in the end it is best for Wikipedia and it is the project rather than the newbies we should care about. -
The point of this is some indication that if we don't explicitly care about the newbies then it will in fact be damaging to the project. Please read the thread.
- d.
On 9/5/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 05/09/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/4/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
This means that if we want the content to grow and be *good*, we need to be more newbie-friendly. This is also a BIG stick to use on Byzantine overengineered processes and policy. Excessive process is actively newbie-hostile.
You can't expect a site the size of Wikipedia to run without a serious amount of policy.
No, which is why process is important.
If we stop adding policies things like living person bios would have degenerated into flame wars with no way out.
It's a good thing AFD has never done that. Oh, wait.
Newbies do face a steeper learning curve, but in the end it is best for Wikipedia and it is the project rather than the newbies we should care about. -
The point of this is some indication that if we don't explicitly care about the newbies then it will in fact be damaging to the project. Please read the thread.
True, we should care for newbies, but we should have the good of the project at number one. I can't find a single policy that we don't need (can you?). Policies we don't need probably won't get promoted to policy to begin with.
AFD is only as toxic as you make it. We should all start by quiting 2-letter nominations (NN) using lone jargon words (cruft, non-notable, etc) and start explaining or reasoning based on references, google searches and specific reasons that can be argued. If newbies come across reasonably argued discussions in AFD the process would work a lot better.
Mgm
On 05/09/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
True, we should care for newbies, but we should have the good of the project at number one. I can't find a single policy that we don't need (can you?). Policies we don't need probably won't get promoted to policy to begin with.
Policy probably. I'm taking about process in general too. There's plenty of process that should be culled regularly, per the wisdom of [[m:instruction creep]].
AFD is only as toxic as you make it. We should all start by quiting 2-letter nominations (NN) using lone jargon words (cruft, non-notable, etc) and start explaining or reasoning based on references, google searches and specific reasons that can be argued. If newbies come across reasonably argued discussions in AFD the process would work a lot better.
Which is precisely what I mean by using it as an example. I still get contacted by people upset that "Wikipedia called me a vanity writer, what can I do short of taking legal action?" and trying to explain that it's a jargon term ... one which the AFD regulars were kindly asked not to fucking use for this precise reason. Nuke from orbit, rebuild from scratch.
Policy: We delete some stuff. Process: something Kafka would have found implausible.
- d.
On 9/5/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Which is precisely what I mean by using it as an example. I still get contacted by people upset that "Wikipedia called me a vanity writer, what can I do short of taking legal action?" and trying to explain that it's a jargon term ... one which the AFD regulars were kindly asked not to fucking use for this precise reason. Nuke from orbit, rebuild from scratch.
Policy: We delete some stuff. Process: something Kafka would have found implausible.
Well, yes -- because, unlike policy (which, at least in theory, gets some wide review from a variety of editors), process tends to drift towards what the regular participants find most convenient. The AFD regulars qute naturally resist any change to AFD that might make it less usable for the regulars; and, at the same time, the people who *become* AFD regulars are, for the most part, those attracted to the way the process functions. It's a self-reinforcing system.
On 9/5/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Policy probably. I'm taking about process in general too. There's plenty of process that should be culled regularly, per the wisdom of [[m:instruction creep]].
Do you want to tell the people trying to outlaw the CVU through guidelines and process this?
Which is precisely what I mean by using it as an example. I still get contacted by people upset that "Wikipedia called me a vanity writer, what can I do short of taking legal action?" and trying to explain that it's a jargon term ... one which the AFD regulars were kindly asked not to fucking use for this precise reason. Nuke from orbit, rebuild from scratch.
What happened to blanking all AFDs?
On 05/09/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/5/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Policy probably. I'm taking about process in general too. There's plenty of process that should be culled regularly, per the wisdom of [[m:instruction creep]].
Do you want to tell the people trying to outlaw the CVU through guidelines and process this?
And to think I almost answered the second part of the question without noting that "outlaw the CVU" is a straw man characterisation itself, and gets more meaningless as a statement the closer you look at it.
What happened to blanking all AFDs?
Good bloody question. Presumably it was voted out with a HUNDRED PERCENT CONSENSUS of three against and no for.
- d.
On 9/5/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
And to think I almost answered the second part of the question without noting that "outlaw the CVU" is a straw man characterisation itself, and gets more meaningless as a statement the closer you look at it.
Not remotely. We have two policies writen by people who appear to be in favor of the destuction of the CVU
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RBI http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vandalism_is_not_a_game
Both were writen after the attempt to speedy the CVU had failed. The only difference between these pages and [[WP:DENY]] is they also attempt to outlaw the CVU directly ([[WP:DENY]] has some effect on some of it's aactivies but nothing of significance).
What happened to blanking all AFDs?
Good bloody question. Presumably it was voted out with a HUNDRED PERCENT CONSENSUS of three against and no for.
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
CVU?
geni wrote:
On 9/5/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
And to think I almost answered the second part of the question without noting that "outlaw the CVU" is a straw man characterisation itself, and gets more meaningless as a statement the closer you look at it.
Not remotely. We have two policies writen by people who appear to be in favor of the destuction of the CVU
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RBI http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vandalism_is_not_a_game
Both were writen after the attempt to speedy the CVU had failed. The only difference between these pages and [[WP:DENY]] is they also attempt to outlaw the CVU directly ([[WP:DENY]] has some effect on some of it's aactivies but nothing of significance).
What happened to blanking all AFDs?
Good bloody question. Presumably it was voted out with a HUNDRED PERCENT CONSENSUS of three against and no for.
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 9/5/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
True, we should care for newbies, but we should have the good of the project at number one. I can't find a single policy that we don't need (can you?).
Wikipedia:Editing policy doesn't appear to be doing much and is probably better delt with through help pages
Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories) needs to be shorted and merged into Wikipedia:Naming conventions
Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary needs to be de-expanded and pushed back into Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not
Wikipedia:Category deletion policy needs to be merged into our other deletion policies
Wikipedia:Libel could prbably be merged into various other policy pages
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
True, we should care for newbies, but we should have the good of the project at number one. I can't find a single policy that we don't need (can you?). Policies we don't need probably won't get promoted to policy to begin with.
:-D This statement was obviously meant as a joke
AFD is only as toxic as you make it. We should all start by quiting 2-letter nominations (NN) using lone jargon words (cruft, non-notable, etc) and start explaining or reasoning based on references, google searches and specific reasons that can be argued. If newbies come across reasonably argued discussions in AFD the process would work a lot better.
Why should we expect newbies to have a doctorate in wiki-lawyering? Reasonable arguments should not depend on the ability to cite policy cruft.
Ec
G'day Ray,
AFD is only as toxic as you make it. We should all start by quiting 2-letter nominations (NN) using lone jargon words (cruft, non-notable, etc) and start explaining or reasoning based on references, google searches and specific reasons that can be argued. If newbies come across reasonably argued discussions in AFD the process would work a lot better.
Why should we expect newbies to have a doctorate in wiki-lawyering? Reasonable arguments should not depend on the ability to cite policy cruft.
Nononononono! *Regulars* should do this. When a newbie comes along to an AfD subpage he will then, hopefully, see a reasonable argument for why his article should be deleted (rather than "vanispamcruftisement by nn scoundrel, and my vote as nominator is speedy delete without references ~~~~").
On 9/5/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
The point of this is some indication that if we don't explicitly care about the newbies then it will in fact be damaging to the project. Please read the thread.
I agree with this postulate (and I hope that most here either already knew or felt this to be true), but your interpretation that increasing process is hostile to newbies is a different assertion than the initial point.
There are lots of things which are more likely to bite newbies than process stuff which most of them never have to see or interact with, in my opinion.
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
On 9/4/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
This means that if we want the content to grow and be *good*, we need to be more newbie-friendly.
This is also a BIG stick to use on Byzantine overengineered processes and policy. Excessive process is actively newbie-hostile.
Look at Debian, bogged down in process, to the point where Richard Stallman failed to make it in as a Debian maintainer for his own software because of excessive process. Look how it took Ubuntu to give it a much-needed rocket up the arse. Without Ubuntu, we'd still be waiting on Etch. Will it take someone doing a successful fork to decalcify Wikipedia policy?
You can't expect a site the size of Wikipedia to run without a serious amount of policy. If we stop adding policies things like living person bios would have degenerated into flame wars with no way out. Newbies do face a steeper learning curve, but in the end it is best for Wikipedia and it is the project rather than the newbies we should care about. -
Spoken like a true religious zealot! It's characteristic of straw man arguments to take a situation where there is a clear policy need, and extrapolate that to apply to all sorts of unrelated matters.
Saying that living person bios must be verifiable is a simple and straightforward statement of policy. How does one get from there to "a serious amount of policy"?
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
On 9/4/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
This means that if we want the content to grow and be *good*, we need to be more newbie-friendly.
This is also a BIG stick to use on Byzantine overengineered processes and policy. Excessive process is actively newbie-hostile.
Look at Debian, bogged down in process, to the point where Richard Stallman failed to make it in as a Debian maintainer for his own software because of excessive process. Look how it took Ubuntu to give it a much-needed rocket up the arse. Without Ubuntu, we'd still be waiting on Etch. Will it take someone doing a successful fork to decalcify Wikipedia policy?
You can't expect a site the size of Wikipedia to run without a serious amount of policy. If we stop adding policies things like living person bios would have degenerated into flame wars with no way out. Newbies do face a steeper learning curve, but in the end it is best for Wikipedia and it is the project rather than the newbies we should care about. -
Spoken like a true religious zealot! It's characteristic of straw man arguments to take a situation where there is a clear policy need, and extrapolate that to apply to all sorts of unrelated matters.
Saying that living person bios must be verifiable is a simple and straightforward statement of policy. How does one get from there to "a serious amount of policy"?
Ec
The thing that alarmed/amused me the most was "If we stop ***adding*** policies ...." (my stars obviously). That combined with the notion that all policies (and I presume processes) are needed gives me much fear for the future.
SKL
On 06/09/06, ScottL scott@mu.org wrote:
The thing that alarmed/amused me the most was "If we stop ***adding*** policies ...." (my stars obviously). That combined with the notion that all policies (and I presume processes) are needed gives me much fear for the future.
Process must remain endlessly malleable. Of course, this is a golden opportunity for people here to play [[Nomic]] rather than to write an encyclopedia. But then, so is everything. There is no possible set of rules that can (a) cure cluelessness (b) guard against malice.
- d.