I just had dinner with [[Scott McCloud]], and, unsurprisingly, the conversation turned to webcomics, and, eventually, to Wikipedia's treatment of them. (This was partially spurred by the Kristopher Straub debacle, about which I will say only that it demonstrates the degree to which the bias is overwhelmingly towards deletion across many areas of Wikipedia right now)
McCloud is somebody who knows comics. He quite literally wrote the book on them. In the course of the conversation it became clear that he was pretty well completely fed up with Wikipedia. And it should be noted, this comes from someone who has been on the forefront of digital technology debates several times. He makes clear his admiration for the concept of Wikipedia. He makes clear his admiration for how Wikipedia got started. His problem is with how it works now.
The problem he has? Notability. Specifically the arbitrary and capricious way in which AfD targets things, questions their notability, and uses guidelines that make no sense from the outside.
See also Timothy Noah's recent article on Slate for this - it gives a good view of how notability guidelines look to the outside. In this case, it's how they look to the subject of the article, but I assure you - they look similar to people who are familiar with the subject. In short, they appear a Kafka-esque absurdity.
This is a new problem - these are major figures who are sympathetic to Wikipedia but fed up with its operation. And I can tell you, the tone among people I talk to in that real life thing I maintain is pretty similar - great respect for Wikipedia as a concept, reasonable respect for Wikipedia as a resource, no respect for Wikipedia as something anyone would ever want to edit. The actual editorial process of Wikipedia is rightly viewed as a nightmare. Hell, I view it as a nightmare at this point - I've given up editing it because the rules seem to have been written, at this point, with the intention of writing a very bad encyclopedia.
Our efforts to ensure reliability have come at the cost of a great deal of respect - and respect from people we should have respect from. We are losing smart, well-educated people who are sympathetic to Wikipedia's basic principles. That is a disaster.
And it's a disaster that can be laid squarely at the feet of the grotesque axis of [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:N]] - two pages that are eating Wikipedia alive from the inside out. (And I don't mean this in terms of community. I mean that they are systematically being used to turn good articles into crap, and have yet to demonstrate their actual use in turning bad articles into good ones.)
Best, Phil Sandifer sandifer@english.ufl.edu
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
You're criticizing how Wikipedia is working right now? You must be insane, or a fool, or a spy.
LONG LIVE WIKIPEDIA!
On 2/24/07, Philip Sandifer sandifer@english.ufl.edu wrote:
I just had dinner with [[Scott McCloud]], and, unsurprisingly, the conversation turned to webcomics, and, eventually, to Wikipedia's treatment of them. (This was partially spurred by the Kristopher Straub debacle, about which I will say only that it demonstrates the degree to which the bias is overwhelmingly towards deletion across many areas of Wikipedia right now)
McCloud is somebody who knows comics. He quite literally wrote the book on them. In the course of the conversation it became clear that he was pretty well completely fed up with Wikipedia. And it should be noted, this comes from someone who has been on the forefront of digital technology debates several times. He makes clear his admiration for the concept of Wikipedia. He makes clear his admiration for how Wikipedia got started. His problem is with how it works now.
The problem he has? Notability. Specifically the arbitrary and capricious way in which AfD targets things, questions their notability, and uses guidelines that make no sense from the outside.
See also Timothy Noah's recent article on Slate for this - it gives a good view of how notability guidelines look to the outside. In this case, it's how they look to the subject of the article, but I assure you - they look similar to people who are familiar with the subject. In short, they appear a Kafka-esque absurdity.
This is a new problem - these are major figures who are sympathetic to Wikipedia but fed up with its operation. And I can tell you, the tone among people I talk to in that real life thing I maintain is pretty similar - great respect for Wikipedia as a concept, reasonable respect for Wikipedia as a resource, no respect for Wikipedia as something anyone would ever want to edit. The actual editorial process of Wikipedia is rightly viewed as a nightmare. Hell, I view it as a nightmare at this point - I've given up editing it because the rules seem to have been written, at this point, with the intention of writing a very bad encyclopedia.
Our efforts to ensure reliability have come at the cost of a great deal of respect - and respect from people we should have respect from. We are losing smart, well-educated people who are sympathetic to Wikipedia's basic principles. That is a disaster.
And it's a disaster that can be laid squarely at the feet of the grotesque axis of [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:N]] - two pages that are eating Wikipedia alive from the inside out. (And I don't mean this in terms of community. I mean that they are systematically being used to turn good articles into crap, and have yet to demonstrate their actual use in turning bad articles into good ones.)
Best, Phil Sandifer sandifer@english.ufl.edu
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 2/24/07, Philip Sandifer sandifer@english.ufl.edu wrote:
I just had dinner with [[Scott McCloud]], and, unsurprisingly, the conversation turned to webcomics, and, eventually, to Wikipedia's treatment of them. (This was partially spurred by the Kristopher Straub debacle, about which I will say only that it demonstrates the degree to which the bias is overwhelmingly towards deletion across many areas of Wikipedia right now)
As a general rule attempting to prove anything from an n=1 sample is a really really bad idea.
If we accept those I can show that people are adding webcomic articles to wikipedia in order to promote them.
McCloud is somebody who knows comics. He quite literally wrote the book on them. In the course of the conversation it became clear that he was pretty well completely fed up with Wikipedia. And it should be noted, this comes from someone who has been on the forefront of digital technology debates several times. He makes clear his admiration for the concept of Wikipedia. He makes clear his admiration for how Wikipedia got started. His problem is with how it works now.
His problem is that wikipedia isn't what he wants it to be. Wikipedia is the second or third to document things not the first.
The problem he has? Notability. Specifically the arbitrary and capricious way in which AfD targets things, questions their notability, and uses guidelines that make no sense from the outside.
Treating those outside wikipedia as a single homogeneous group is illogical. Different groups will have different views about whether or not certain guidelines make sense. can find plenty of groups that think including any webcomics at all make us inferior and think that our inclusion of such non entities as penny arcade.
See also Timothy Noah's recent article on Slate for this - it gives a good view of how notability guidelines look to the outside. In this case, it's how they look to the subject of the article, but I assure you - they look similar to people who are familiar with the subject. In short, they appear a Kafka-esque absurdity.
Almost any set of rules can be made to appear that way.
This is a new problem - these are major figures who are sympathetic to Wikipedia but fed up with its operation. And I can tell you, the tone among people I talk to in that real life thing I maintain is pretty similar - great respect for Wikipedia as a concept, reasonable respect for Wikipedia as a resource, no respect for Wikipedia as something anyone would ever want to edit. The actual editorial process of Wikipedia is rightly viewed as a nightmare. Hell, I view it as a nightmare at this point - I've given up editing it because the rules seem to have been written, at this point, with the intention of writing a very bad encyclopedia.
No they are written with the objective of avoiding an extremely bad encyclopedia.
Our efforts to ensure reliability have come at the cost of a great deal of respect - and respect from people we should have respect from. We are losing smart, well-educated people who are sympathetic to Wikipedia's basic principles. That is a disaster.
You would have to show that we would not have lost respect from them anyway and that any net change in respect levels is worse than what would have happened if we had not taken steps to try and ensure reliability.
And it's a disaster that can be laid squarely at the feet of the grotesque axis of [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:N]] - two pages that are eating Wikipedia alive from the inside out. (And I don't mean this in terms of community. I mean that they are systematically being used to turn good articles into crap,
systematically?
and have yet to demonstrate their actual use in turning bad articles into good ones.)
Various articles with fridge fanatics would be an example.
On Feb 24, 2007, at 7:48 PM, geni wrote:
As a general rule attempting to prove anything from an n=1 sample is a really really bad idea.
Geni, with all due respect, stop being dense and actually listen to people. Your continual attitude of putting your fingers in your ears and reducing all opposition to pithily described straw men is insulting and counterproductive. I did not say that the Straub incident proves that our deletion is flawed. I said it's a demonstration of the flaws. There's a difference, and you know it.
If we accept those I can show that people are adding webcomic articles to wikipedia in order to promote them.
I don't deny that such articles exist. Never have - it would be stupid to. But I've always thought that articles are better judged on their own merits than by speculating about the motives for their creation. If the article is unduly self-promoting it should be fixed (deletion being one means of fixing it.) But that can be evaluated (and is best evaluated) through means other than trying to guess the motives of authors.
His problem is that wikipedia isn't what he wants it to be. Wikipedia is the second or third to document things not the first.
No. His problem is that Wikipedia is documenting things inconsistently, arbitrarily, and in a manner that is not meaningfully predictable not only to an outsider but to one of the most respected figures in the field. If Scott McCloud cannot figure out the rhyme or reason to what is and isn't a notable comic (webcomic or print) on Wikipedia, odds are the rhyme or reason is shit.
Treating those outside wikipedia as a single homogeneous group is illogical. Different groups will have different views about whether or not certain guidelines make sense. can find plenty of groups that think including any webcomics at all make us inferior and think that our inclusion of such non entities as penny arcade.
You're misunderstanding. I'm not using sense in terms of "is a good idea." I mean it in terms of "is actually recognizable as an idea as opposed to a set of arbitrary rules." I'm not saying that McCloud's objection is that our notability guidelines are unreasonable. I'm saying that his objection is that they're nonsensical.
No they are written with the objective of avoiding an extremely bad encyclopedia.
Strange. Because we were doing a fine job of writing a good encyclopedia before we had them, so I'm not exactly sure what we accomplished there.
You would have to show that we would not have lost respect from them anyway and that any net change in respect levels is worse than what would have happened if we had not taken steps to try and ensure reliability.
No. I have to show that Wikipedia has a problem in the eyes of people who are disposed to be sympathetic to it. This isn't a double blind study to establish beyond a scientific doubt that Wikipedia has a problem. Such studies don't exist, and if they're a prerequisite for change then change is impossible. Which, admittedly, seems like the situation you want most of the time.
systematically?
Yes.
Various articles with fridge fanatics would be an example.
I must be remembering the two years I spent editing Wikipedia before [[WP:N]] and [[WP:RS]] were codified wrong, because I'm pretty sure we were capable of dealing with such groups before we had them.
-Phil
On 2/25/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
No. His problem is that Wikipedia is documenting things inconsistently, arbitrarily, and in a manner that is not meaningfully predictable not only to an outsider but to one of the most respected figures in the field. If Scott McCloud cannot figure out the rhyme or reason to what is and isn't a notable comic (webcomic or print) on Wikipedia, odds are the rhyme or reason is shit.
Scott McCloud appears to be an expert on comics. Not data sorting.
You're misunderstanding. I'm not using sense in terms of "is a good idea." I mean it in terms of "is actually recognizable as an idea as opposed to a set of arbitrary rules." I'm not saying that McCloud's objection is that our notability guidelines are unreasonable. I'm saying that his objection is that they're nonsensical.
WP:RS is pretty solid
There are a few conditions where it breaks down but is otherwise pretty solid.
Wikipedia:Notability has a solid base in the: has been the subject of at least one substantial or multiple, non-trivial published works from sources that are reliable and independent of the subject and of each other.
However working out if a certain article passes or fails this every time is hard. This in common cases people use shortcuts (just as chemists don't use MO theory to work out roughly what an organic chemical will look like) as long as people understand that these are approximations and what the underlying assumptions are that should be possible to deal with.
Of course none of this matters as long as people continue to use AFD for campaigning.
Strange. Because we were doing a fine job of writing a good encyclopedia before we had them, so I'm not exactly sure what we accomplished there.
Things change. Before we had them they tended to exist as de-facto standards in any case. And frankly once you take off the rose tinted specs the quality was not that high.
No amount of policy can ensure really good articles but they can reduce the amount of total dross.
No. I have to show that Wikipedia has a problem in the eyes of people who are disposed to be sympathetic to it.
Claim they are.
This isn't a double blind study to establish beyond a scientific doubt that Wikipedia has a problem. Such studies don't exist, and if they're a prerequisite for change then change is impossible. Which, admittedly, seems like the situation you want most of the time.
Pretty much. Nine times out of ten doing nothing is a surprisingly good solution.
It's easy to find tales of woe and then say that this requires total change right now. Much harder to do a proper examination of the situation which would allow you to have some idea what the correct changes are.
I must be remembering the two years I spent editing Wikipedia before [[WP:N]] and [[WP:RS]] were codified wrong, because I'm pretty sure we were capable of dealing with such groups before we had them.
We didn't have the 9/11 twoothers. We did rather badly with the aether people. In the early days of wikipedia we were rather tech heavy and other than certain audiophiles most tech people tend to be fairly sceptical. That isn't the case any more.
geni wrote:
On 2/25/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
No. His problem is that Wikipedia is documenting things inconsistently, arbitrarily, and in a manner that is not meaningfully predictable not only to an outsider but to one of the most respected figures in the field. If Scott McCloud cannot figure out the rhyme or reason to what is and isn't a notable comic (webcomic or print) on Wikipedia, odds are the rhyme or reason is shit.
Scott McCloud appears to be an expert on comics. Not data sorting.
Are you suggesting that it's ok that an expert in a topic, especially one who is known for his technological savvy and ability to write for the general public, can't understand our notability guidelines for his field?
That puzzles me, as I'd think that if Scott McCloud can't understand our comic guidelines, there's no hope that your average comic fan will be able to get them. And unless we're restricting AfD and article creation to information architects and people with Master of Library Science degrees (which I'm assuming is what you mean by experts in data sorting), that seems like a big minus to me.
William
On 2/25/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Are you suggesting that it's ok that an expert in a topic, especially one who is known for his technological savvy and ability to write for the general public, can't understand our notability guidelines for his field?
Given that we don't have any for his field ([[Wikipedia:Notability (fiction)]] doesn't really cover it and [[Wikipedia:Notability (web)]] only mentions a small part of it in passing) it seems not unreasonable that he does not understand them.
That puzzles me, as I'd think that if Scott McCloud can't understand our comic guidelines, there's no hope that your average comic fan will be able to get them. And unless we're restricting AfD and article creation to information architects and people with Master of Library Science degrees (which I'm assuming is what you mean by experts in data sorting), that seems like a big minus to me.
I would like those people to go over our guidelines yes.
geni wrote:
On 2/25/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Are you suggesting that it's ok that an expert in a topic, especially one who is known for his technological savvy and ability to write for the general public, can't understand our notability guidelines for his field?
Given that we don't have any for his field ([[Wikipedia:Notability (fiction)]] doesn't really cover it and [[Wikipedia:Notability (web)]] only mentions a small part of it in passing) it seems not unreasonable that he does not understand them.
Ok. Who do you believe can understand them then?
That puzzles me, as I'd think that if Scott McCloud can't understand our comic guidelines, there's no hope that your average comic fan will be able to get them. And unless we're restricting AfD and article creation to information architects and people with Master of Library Science degrees (which I'm assuming is what you mean by experts in data sorting), that seems like a big minus to me.
I would like those people to go over our guidelines yes.
I agree that would be great, but from your response I feel like you miss my point.
If it's ok that an expert in the field can't figure out what we would and wouldn't keep under our guidelines, why would we expect anybody else to be able to apply them usefully or, on the receiving end, feel like they are being applied fairly?
It seems to me like you're saying that only a data sorting expert could understand our guidelines, and that's ok by you. I'm saying that that if that's the case, then we are guaranteed that our deletion process would not just look capricious but actually be capricious, because it's not data sorting experts who are doing most of the adding of articles or the removing of them on AfD.
Is that something you're also content with? I'm not saying that's necessarily unreasonable. Although I wouldn't agree, I can see people just writing this chaos off as an acceptable cost. But I want to be sure I understand what you're saying.
William
On 2/24/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/25/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Are you suggesting that it's ok that an expert in a topic, especially one who is known for his technological savvy and ability to write for the general public, can't understand our notability guidelines for his field?
Given that we don't have any for his field ([[Wikipedia:Notability (fiction)]] doesn't really cover it and [[Wikipedia:Notability (web)]] only mentions a small part of it in passing) it seems not unreasonable that he does not understand them.
So we need to have a specific notability guideline about each and every topic in order for anyone to understand what we're going to consider notable?
-- Jonel
On Feb 24, 2007, at 9:25 PM, geni wrote:
Scott McCloud appears to be an expert on comics. Not data sorting.
A+ for snippyness, D for actual content there. What makes you believe that our notability guidelines appear coherent and consistent to the outside? Particularly in light of, in the last week, three separate instances of people showing inconsistencies in three very different approaches (Straub, McCloud, and Noah).
WP:RS is pretty solid There are a few conditions where it breaks down but is otherwise pretty solid.
No. It's not. It never has been, it never will be, it never can be. Reliable sourcing is fundamentally a more complex issue than a black and white guideline could ever portray. This page is not flawed in any particular manifestation - it is flawed at the most fundamental level imaginable - it's a policy page trying to perform an impossible task.
Wikipedia:Notability has a solid base in the: has been the subject of at least one substantial or multiple, non-trivial published works from sources that are reliable and independent of the subject and of each other.
Yes. We took our notability guidelines, which used to be a vague sense of "if things like it survive VfD, it probably will too" and yoked them to our sourcing guidelines. This isn't so much throwing the baby out with the bathwater as drowning the baby in the bathwater.
However working out if a certain article passes or fails this every time is hard. This in common cases people use shortcuts (just as chemists don't use MO theory to work out roughly what an organic chemical will look like) as long as people understand that these are approximations and what the underlying assumptions are that should be possible to deal with.
I don't think this describes the problem. It's not that we have rules that make sense but follow them badly. It's that we have rules that don't really make sense and that we follow them pretty well.
Things change. Before we had them they tended to exist as de-facto standards in any case. And frankly once you take off the rose tinted specs the quality was not that high.
The quality still isn't that high. But I don't think it's gone up much since Siegenthaler. I think it's stuck in a situation where it can't actually improve. Which might explain why 1.0 has stalled.
No amount of policy can ensure really good articles but they can reduce the amount of total dross.
No. Policy does not reduce dross. Good editors reduce dross. Policy reduces good editors.
No. I have to show that Wikipedia has a problem in the eyes of people who are disposed to be sympathetic to it.
Claim they are.
[[WP:AGF]]
This isn't a double blind study to establish beyond a scientific doubt that Wikipedia has a problem. Such studies don't exist, and if they're a prerequisite for change then change is impossible. Which, admittedly, seems like the situation you want most of the time.
Pretty much. Nine times out of ten doing nothing is a surprisingly good solution.
And 10% of the time Rome burns. That's a high enough error rate to deserve more care than the pithy dismissals you've perfected.
It's easy to find tales of woe and then say that this requires total change right now. Much harder to do a proper examination of the situation which would allow you to have some idea what the correct changes are.
Aside from an admittedly polemical call to nuke RS I've not demanded total change right now. In fact, total change right now is what got us into this mess. (Oh no, we got panned in USA Today. We'd better overhaul the system!) If anything, my position is more conservative than yours.
We didn't have the 9/11 twoothers. We did rather badly with the aether people. In the early days of wikipedia we were rather tech heavy and other than certain audiophiles most tech people tend to be fairly sceptical. That isn't the case any more.
And I'm wearing rose-coloured glasses? I remember when I could be advancing two or three arbcom cases against POV pushing lunatics at once. And those were just the ones I knew about, which, we ought remember, was almost certainly a minority as I've only looked at around .5% of the articles on Wikipedia in my life. We've always had dreadful POV problems. And we've always dealt with them the same way - by going "OK, you're nuts" and blocking the person.
-Phil
On 2/25/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
A+ for snippyness, D for actual content there. What makes you believe that our notability guidelines appear coherent and consistent to the outside?
Given that the outsiders is unlikely to have taken time to study them I have no reason to think they do appear so. But then many things in this world are incoherent to outsiders.
Particularly in light of, in the last week, three separate instances of people showing inconsistencies in three very different approaches (Straub, McCloud, and Noah).
Noah didn't, we don't know what McCloud said and Straub identified a weakness in our system that has little to do with policy.
No. It's not. It never has been, it never will be, it never can be. Reliable sourcing is fundamentally a more complex issue than a black and white guideline could ever portray.
This is going to come as a serious shock to all those lecturers teaching the subject
This page is not flawed in any particular manifestation - it is flawed at the most fundamental level imaginable - it's a policy page trying to perform an impossible task.
For an impossible task it appears to have been done an awful lot of times. Anyone writing a review article will establish what is and is not a reliable source.
It generally fairly well known which journals can be trusted and which ones need to be used with caution that the reactions they describe may only work one time in 10.
Yes. We took our notability guidelines, which used to be a vague sense of "if things like it survive VfD, it probably will too" and yoked them to our sourcing guidelines. This isn't so much throwing the baby out with the bathwater as drowning the baby in the bathwater.
You were the one objecting to stuff being done "inconsistently, arbitrarily, and in a manner that is not meaningfully predictable"
Now you object to an attempt to create a single unified rule set.
I don't think this describes the problem. It's not that we have rules that make sense but follow them badly. It's that we have rules that don't really make sense and that we follow them pretty well.
Just because you don't agree with the rules and don't agree with people's actions it does not mean that one flows from the other.
The quality still isn't that high. But I don't think it's gone up much since Siegenthaler. I think it's stuck in a situation where it can't actually improve. Which might explain why 1.0 has stalled.
Depends on the area you are looking at. I'm seeing a lot more citations.
No. Policy does not reduce dross.
G11
Good editors reduce dross. Policy reduces good editors.
Dealing with dross doesn't exactly help them.
[[WP:AGF]]
We are talking about stuff off wikipedia here. AGF does not apply. Thus there is no reason to make assumptions of any type.
And 10% of the time Rome burns. That's a high enough error rate to deserve more care than the pithy dismissals you've perfected.
However after it has burned you know what the real problem is and can fix it. As a bonus you haven't spent time fixing it against attacks from giant geese.
Aside from an admittedly polemical call to nuke RS I've not demanded total change right now.
Aside from that Mr Lincoln how was the play?
In fact, total change right now is what got us into this mess. (Oh no, we got panned in USA Today. We'd better overhaul the system!) If anything, my position is more conservative than yours.
I never claimed to be conservative.
And I'm wearing rose-coloured glasses? I remember when I could be advancing two or three arbcom cases against POV pushing lunatics at once.
And those made up a significant percentage of their population.
Now you might just clean half the lunitics out of one subject area.
And those were just the ones I knew about, which, we ought remember, was almost certainly a minority as I've only looked at around .5% of the articles on Wikipedia in my life. We've always had dreadful POV problems. And we've always dealt with them the same way
- by going "OK, you're nuts" and blocking the person.
No because that only works with the more incompetent POV pushers.
On 2/24/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/25/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
No. It's not. It never has been, it never will be, it never can be. Reliable sourcing is fundamentally a more complex issue than a black and white guideline could ever portray.
This is going to come as a serious shock to all those lecturers teaching the subject
Something that everyone, Wikipedian or not, needs to understand - and that good teachers inform their students of - is this:
There is no such thing as a reliable source.
No single source of information can ever be trusted, and no set of sources, no matter how complete, can ever be trusted completely. All sourcing should reflect that "source 1 says A, source 2 says B" - leaving the veracity of their claims up to the reader's trust of said sources. Now, I'm not fond of having a footnote after every word in an article, so much of our content becomes "a rough consensus of persons who have recently edited this article says A" (which I would hope readers have a suitably low trust of, but is sufficient for uncontroversial data).
-- Jake Nelson [[en:User:Jake Nelson]]
On Feb 24, 2007, at 10:26 PM, geni wrote:
Given that the outsiders is unlikely to have taken time to study them I have no reason to think they do appear so. But then many things in this world are incoherent to outsiders.
Yes, but the project is written for outsiders. If our logic doesn't make sense to them, we did it wrong.
Noah didn't, we don't know what McCloud said and Straub identified a weakness in our system that has little to do with policy.
Noah showed that our sense of notability is absurd. I've given a pretty good account of what McCloud said, and so I'm not sure why you say you don't know. Straub identified more than a weakness - he identified a complete failure of policy to meaningfully prevent spurious deletions. Which has been clear to anyone who follows DRV for a while.
No. It's not. It never has been, it never will be, it never can be. Reliable sourcing is fundamentally a more complex issue than a black and white guideline could ever portray.
This is going to come as a serious shock to all those lecturers teaching the subject
I doubt it. Nobody in a rhetcomp position I have ever talked to has said that reliable sourcing is black and white. None of them ever would. We teach whole courses on this subject. It's not something that can be condensed into a usable single policy page. Otherwise we'd be throwing out our textbooks and just assigning [[WP:RS]]. We're not.
For an impossible task it appears to have been done an awful lot of times. Anyone writing a review article will establish what is and is not a reliable source.
Yes. But they don't do it in an absolute, black and white sense that is proscriptive for all other review articles.
It generally fairly well known which journals can be trusted and which ones need to be used with caution that the reactions they describe may only work one time in 10.
But [[WP:RS]] lacks a list of those. And no such list readily presents itself in the humanities.
You were the one objecting to stuff being done "inconsistently, arbitrarily, and in a manner that is not meaningfully predictable"
Now you object to an attempt to create a single unified rule set.
The previous system was more consistend and predictable than the current one. Hell, it solved the schools debate. It was an ugly, torturous debate, but it eventually shook out to "Look, stop nominating schools, because they clearly get kept." That's a heck of a better system than the current one.
Just because you don't agree with the rules and don't agree with people's actions it does not mean that one flows from the other.
Huh?
Depends on the area you are looking at. I'm seeing a lot more citations.
Citations != quality. And are, in fact, at times antithetical to it. The more citations to secondary sources [[Jacques Derrida]] has, the worse of an article it will be. Guarantee it.
No. Policy does not reduce dross.
G11
Strange. I remember deleting such articles on sight before that policy came into being. Nobody ever complained, so I have trouble imagining that the policy is what caused that to be OK.
[[WP:AGF]]
We are talking about stuff off wikipedia here. AGF does not apply. Thus there is no reason to make assumptions of any type.
We're talking about well-intentioned critiques of how Wikipedia is working. The prerequisite for assuming good faith is not an account - it's a contribution to the conversation. Noah, McCloud, and Straub have all contributed to the conversation and deserve at least an assumption of good faith.
However after it has burned you know what the real problem is and can fix it. As a bonus you haven't spent time fixing it against attacks from giant geese.
Geni, I'm sorry, but this is stupid and a blatant straw man that, frankly, strains the limits of good faith. I am pointing to a problem. I am pointing to evidence that the problem is causing concrete, describable negative effects. This is not [[WP:BEANS]]. This is "Uh-oh, it smells like smoke."
I am not advocating going and implementing solutions randomly. I'm advocating actually looking and seeing that we have a problem. You're opposing with insulting pithiness even bringing the problem up. You imply that I misrepresent what people said, you refuse to assume good faith on the part of external critics of Wikipedia, you reject prima faciae the idea that someone has looked at our deletion and notability debates and gone "WTF."
I'm not calling for radical solutions to every problem that arises. Anything but - I think that's how we broke the system. I'm calling for actually thinking through whether we have a problem. I would think this practice would be uncontroversial enough to be allowed to go by without the unhelpful pithiness.
Aside from an admittedly polemical call to nuke RS I've not demanded total change right now.
Aside from that Mr Lincoln how was the play?
The post began "Consider this another entry in that time-tested genre of "obviously futile suggestions to nuke things that nobody is ever going to nuke, but probably should anyway" posts." If that doesn't flag this as "not an entirely serious suggestion" I don't know what to tell you.
In fact, total change right now is what got us into this mess. (Oh no, we got panned in USA Today. We'd better overhaul the system!) If anything, my position is more conservative than yours.
I never claimed to be conservative.
No, just to be opposed to changing things.
No because that only works with the more incompetent POV pushers.
Strange - the block system has always seemed to me to work pretty well no matter who you block. [[WP:AN]] sometimes doesn't work as well, but that seems intimately related to the "fix it with policy" approach.
-Phil
Yes, but the project is written for outsiders. If our logic doesn't make sense to them, we did it wrong.
It is written to be read by them. If you think it goes much beyond that look at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Isle_of_Wight&action=edit
Noah showed that our sense of notability is absurd.
I beg to differ. He showed he disagreed with it.
I've given a pretty good account of what McCloud said, and so I'm not sure why you say you don't know.
You've given a couple of very condensed versions padded by your POV. Given what we know of confirmation bias it don't feel that that is a very reliable source.
Straub identified more than a weakness - he identified a complete failure of policy to meaningfully prevent spurious deletions. Which has been clear to anyone who follows DRV for a while.
Policy assumes people play fair.
I doubt it. Nobody in a rhetcomp position I have ever talked to has said that reliable sourcing is black and white. None of them ever would. We teach whole courses on this subject. It's not something that can be condensed into a usable single policy page. Otherwise we'd be throwing out our textbooks and just assigning [[WP:RS]]. We're not.
WP:RS isn't completely black and white either. You admit is it possible to judge the validity of a source. WP:RS is just a very very condensed set of instructions on how to do that.
For an impossible task it appears to have been done an awful lot of times. Anyone writing a review article will establish what is and is not a reliable source.
Yes. But they don't do it in an absolute, black and white sense that is proscriptive for all other review articles.
But [[WP:RS]] lacks a list of those.
Issue doesn't come up often enough to put one together. Chemicalcruft doesn't appear to have entered the lexicon yet.
And no such list readily presents itself in the humanities.
WOK has an index of Social science papers going back the 50s. It would be fairly trivial to compile an outline of such a list based on citation rates (although you then have to adjust for publication type which is always a pain).
The previous system was more consistend and predictable than the current one.
Not if you threw something new at it.
Hell, it solved the schools debate. It was an ugly, torturous debate, but it eventually shook out to "Look, stop nominating schools, because they clearly get kept." That's a heck of a better system than the current one.
I understand people are following aprox that approach with webcomics ( "Look, stop creating article's on webcomics, because they clearly get deleted."). I suspect you would object if they ever looked like succeeding (and the schools issue isn't over).
Citations != quality. And are, in fact, at times antithetical to it. The more citations to secondary sources [[Jacques Derrida]] has, the worse of an article it will be. Guarantee it.
How do the one's there lower the quality of the article
Strange. I remember deleting such articles on sight before that policy came into being. Nobody ever complained, so I have trouble imagining that the policy is what caused that to be OK.
Strangely copyvio most of the time but the OTRS people are getting a bit fed up with people doing that.
It also helps the deletion rates are so high that no one checks the logs.
I the meantime people used to tag suck articles with cleanup rather than CSD and their they rotted.
We're talking about well-intentioned critiques of how Wikipedia is working.
Or well-intentioned critiques that wikipedia isn't what they want it to be. Although to be fair since it appears no one really worked that hard on defining encyclopedia before wikipedia came along that is hardly a position that is impossible to support.
The prerequisite for assuming good faith is not an account - it's a contribution to the conversation. Noah, McCloud, and Straub have all contributed to the conversation and deserve at least an assumption of good faith.
I'm assuming they are not out to destroy wikipedia.
Geni, I'm sorry, but this is stupid and a blatant straw man that, frankly, strains the limits of good faith. I am pointing to a problem.
No. You are claiming there is a problem
I am pointing to evidence that the problem is causing concrete, describable negative effects.
Given that you are yet to properly describe the problem it is quite hard to establish a case of cause and effect.
I am not advocating going and implementing solutions randomly. I'm advocating actually looking and seeing that we have a problem.
I've looked. I see people unhappy that wikipedia isn't what they want it to be.
You're opposing with insulting pithiness even bringing the problem up. You imply that I misrepresent what people said,
I imply that you are a human. I've spent too long dealing with reports of psychics and the like to trust reported conversation. Especially when the person reporting it has a stake in the outcome.
you refuse to assume good faith on the part of external critics of Wikipedia, you reject prima faciae the idea that someone has looked at our deletion and notability debates and gone "WTF."
I'm sure they have done. Certainly it would be in keeping with a popular response to our copyright policy. Quite a few preditions of ruin there. Is that some I should be worried about?
I'm not calling for radical solutions to every problem that arises. Anything but - I think that's how we broke the system. I'm calling for actually thinking through whether we have a problem. I would think this practice would be uncontroversial enough to be allowed to go by without the unhelpful pithiness.
You assetion is that we have a problem. I'm throwing the normal battery of tests at it.
The post began "Consider this another entry in that time-tested genre of "obviously futile suggestions to nuke things that nobody is ever going to nuke, but probably should anyway" posts." If that doesn't flag this as "not an entirely serious suggestion" I don't know what to tell you.
That you have forgetten Ed Poor.
No, just to be opposed to changing things.
I tend to oppose changeing things that would involve going over old ground into the middle of a long running fire fight. There are better ways of changeing things.
On Sun, 25 Feb 2007, geni wrote:
Straub identified more than a weakness - he identified a complete failure of policy to meaningfully prevent spurious deletions. Which has been clear to anyone who follows DRV for a while.
Policy assumes people play fair.
Then policy is broken. Straub may be the only person who proposed spurious deletions as an experiment, but there are plenty of people who propose spurious deletions just because they like to propose spurious deletions. These people don't play fair any more than Straub did, and the lesson that Straub taught us applies to them too.
Just now, we've had [[Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/El_Goonish_Shive]] where I caught the same person trying to delete two webcomics articles using the same boilerplate paragraph while obviously not having checked to see if the claims made in the paragraph are valid for each specific article. Please don't tell me this person is playing fair.
Ken Arromdee wrote:
Then policy is broken. Straub may be the only person who proposed spurious deletions as an experiment, but there are plenty of people who propose spurious deletions just because they like to propose spurious deletions. These people don't play fair any more than Straub did, and the lesson that Straub taught us applies to them too.
Just now, we've had [[Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/El_Goonish_Shive]] where I caught the same person trying to delete two webcomics articles using the same boilerplate paragraph while obviously not having checked to see if the claims made in the paragraph are valid for each specific article. Please don't tell me this person is playing fair.
And now despite the AfD having come down quite strongly on the side of the webcomic being "notable", I find that there's a great big notability dispute template at the top of the page. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=El_Goonish_Shive&oldid=110456316 I also note that there don't appear to be any guidelines provided in the template for how to go about removing it. So for good measure I'm throwing in a few external links that were raised in the AfD, despite it being somewhat awkward shoehorning them into the lead paragraph, and just plain taking it out.
Articles shouldn't have to have a paragraph beginning with "<subject> is notable because..." just to survive. It's like we're tailoring our writing style specifically for an AfD audience - I've actually seen an article recently with a whole _section_ titled "Notability".
Phil Sandifer wrote:
On Feb 24, 2007, at 10:26 PM, geni wrote:
For an impossible task it appears to have been done an awful lot of times. Anyone writing a review article will establish what is and is not a reliable source.
Yes. But they don't do it in an absolute, black and white sense that is proscriptive for all other review articles.
Sorry to breach etiquette, but did you not mean "prescriptive" instead of "proscriptive"? There's a big difference.
It generally fairly well known which journals can be trusted and which ones need to be used with caution that the reactions they describe may only work one time in 10.
But [[WP:RS]] lacks a list of those. And no such list readily presents itself in the humanities.
Taking this to it's logical conclusion, a claim that a source is reliable is a statement that should itself be reliably sourced.
Depends on the area you are looking at. I'm seeing a lot more citations.
Citations != quality. And are, in fact, at times antithetical to it. The more citations to secondary sources [[Jacques Derrida]] has, the worse of an article it will be. Guarantee it.
An excess of citations can have the appearance of a snow job.
[[WP:AGF]]
We are talking about stuff off wikipedia here. AGF does not apply. Thus there is no reason to make assumptions of any type.
We're talking about well-intentioned critiques of how Wikipedia is working. The prerequisite for assuming good faith is not an account - it's a contribution to the conversation. Noah, McCloud, and Straub have all contributed to the conversation and deserve at least an assumption of good faith.
Yes! Geni's rejection of Assume Good Faith gives the impression that this maxim was newly invented for Wikipedia. It has long been a fundamental principle for anyone to get along.
Ec
On 2/25/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Taking this to it's logical conclusion, a claim that a source is reliable is a statement that should itself be reliably sourced.
In certain areas where there are disputes over the reliability of sources (religion some political stuff) that is broadly correct although it is more often that people will be required to provide sources showing X is not a reliable source
On 25/02/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/25/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
No. It's not. It never has been, it never will be, it never can be. Reliable sourcing is fundamentally a more complex issue than a black and white guideline could ever portray.
This is going to come as a serious shock to all those lecturers teaching the subject
You realise, of course, that Phil teaches a course on sourcing? That is, he's more of an expert on sourcing than you are.
- d.
geni wrote:
On 2/24/07, Philip Sandifer sandifer@english.ufl.edu wrote:
The problem he has? Notability. Specifically the arbitrary and capricious way in which AfD targets things, questions their notability, and uses guidelines that make no sense from the outside.
Treating those outside wikipedia as a single homogeneous group is illogical. Different groups will have different views about whether or not certain guidelines make sense. can find plenty of groups that think including any webcomics at all make us inferior and think that our inclusion of such non entities as penny arcade.
Who's saying that the outside is a single homogeneous group? At least try to argue against what is said. Saying that what matters to others is inferior is an act of pomposity. Who has the right to arrogate such decisions to himself. I am not so special as to pass judgement on someone else's interest in webcomics. Are you?
See also Timothy Noah's recent article on Slate for this - it gives a good view of how notability guidelines look to the outside. In this case, it's how they look to the subject of the article, but I assure you - they look similar to people who are familiar with the subject. In short, they appear a Kafka-esque absurdity.
Almost any set of rules can be made to appear that way.
It's more than just appearing. Rules can be a refuge from thinking.
Ec
On 2/25/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Who's saying that the outside is a single homogeneous group? At least try to argue against what is said. Saying that what matters to others is inferior is an act of pomposity.
I didn't say that
Who has the right to arrogate such decisions to himself. I am not so special as to pass judgement on someone else's interest in webcomics. Are you?
If that interest translates into writing scholarly articles and books on the subject then I judge that I would make the whole subject less problematical to deal with. Given enough time.
Hmm one would think "bob's big book of webcomics" would make quite a good coffee table book.
geni wrote:
On 2/25/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Who's saying that the outside is a single homogeneous group? At least try to argue against what is said. Saying that what matters to others is inferior is an act of pomposity.
I didn't say that
Reinserting what I was responding to:
[I] can find plenty of groups that
think including any webcomics at all make us inferior and think that our inclusion of such non entities as penny arcade.
If that's not what you said then what did you mean?
Who has the right to arrogate such decisions to himself. I am not so special as to pass judgement on someone else's interest in webcomics. Are you?
If that interest translates into writing scholarly articles and books on the subject then I judge that I would make the whole subject less problematical to deal with. Given enough time.
You're attaching too much weight to being scholarly. Sometimes people just want to know what the webcomic is about.
Ec
On 2/25/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
If that's not what you said then what did you mean?
Exactly what I said that such groups exist. Personally I disagree with them but they do exist.
You're attaching too much weight to being scholarly. Sometimes people just want to know what the webcomic is about.
Then may I recommend comixpedia.org to them. Some things are better delt with outside wikipedia or even wikimedia.
Thanks for taking the time to write that; it was very interesting. One question, in hopes that I can better understand your perspective, and feel free to point me at the archives if you've covered this before.
Philip Sandifer wrote:
The problem he has? Notability. Specifically the arbitrary and capricious way in which AfD targets things, questions their notability, and uses guidelines that make no sense from the outside.
Suppose we create a scale that runs from -10 to 10. At 10 are things we obviously have to have in the encyclopedia, like [[Oxygen]] or [[France]]. At -10 we have things like [[The 237th raindrop that just hit the puddle outside my bathroom window]]. Let's further suppose that 0 is the current point where something is just as likely to be kept as not.
If I understand rightly, you're saying that around zero, we're unpredictable. We might keep a -2 one time and delete a 2 other times, yes? And that although on a long time-scale that may work out adequately for our readers, for those who peek inside the process see that area of the scale as messy and chaotic, and judge us by that?
If so, how far up and down the scale do your concerns go?
See also Timothy Noah's recent article on Slate for this - it gives a good view of how notability guidelines look to the outside. In this case, it's how they look to the subject of the article, but I assure you - they look similar to people who are familiar with the subject. In short, they appear a Kafka-esque absurdity.
For those wondering, the article is here:
http://www.slate.com/id/2160222/
Thanks,
William
On Feb 24, 2007, at 8:52 PM, William Pietri wrote:
Suppose we create a scale that runs from -10 to 10. At 10 are things we obviously have to have in the encyclopedia, like [[Oxygen]] or [[France]]. At -10 we have things like [[The 237th raindrop that just hit the puddle outside my bathroom window]]. Let's further suppose that 0 is the current point where something is just as likely to be kept as not.
If I understand rightly, you're saying that around zero, we're unpredictable. We might keep a -2 one time and delete a 2 other times, yes? And that although on a long time-scale that may work out adequately for our readers, for those who peek inside the process see that area of the scale as messy and chaotic, and judge us by that?
If so, how far up and down the scale do your concerns go?
It's tough to say, mostly because I have trouble conceiving of notability as a linear thing. But I'd say -2/2 is a good bet, and we can peak out around -4/4. I'll also note, that gap has been expanding, and if you go all the way out to where notability tagging is happening you get solidly out to the -4/4, -5/5 range. ([[Timothy Noah]] and [[Oni Press]] being two recent egregious examples of bad notability tagging.) Obviously notability tagging is a less destructive practice than deletion, but it does still fall into the larger problem of making our criteria look byzantine and impenetrable - in fact, possibly even moreso, as a notability tag stays visible for longer than five days.
-Phil
Phil Sandifer wrote:
It's tough to say, mostly because I have trouble conceiving of notability as a linear thing.
Yeah. That's probably because it isn't. :-)
But I'd say -2/2 is a good bet, and we can peak out around -4/4. I'll also note, that gap has been expanding, and if you go all the way out to where notability tagging is happening you get solidly out to the -4/4, -5/5 range. ([[Timothy Noah]] and [[Oni Press]] being two recent egregious examples of bad notability tagging.) Obviously notability tagging is a less destructive practice than deletion, but it does still fall into the larger problem of making our criteria look byzantine and impenetrable
- in fact, possibly even moreso, as a notability tag stays visible
for longer than five days.
Yep. That's a hard one. The tagger in question looks curious to me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/REtwW
That tag was his third edit, made an entire eight minutes after joining. That's pretty unusual for an actual newbie, but I don't see anything that makes me think malice is involved.
Setting aside the painful topic of notability, is this a sign that we could use a different division between what restaurants call "front of house" and "back of house"? I'm looking at the various maintenance templates:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_maintenance_templates
Some are important warnings that really belong at the top of pages, either because they are about unreliable content or because it's only fair to let people know that an article might be axed.
Putting them all at the top of an article made sense early on, when the ratio of editors to readers was higher. But at some point, wouldn't we want to hide more of the plumbing where the average reader never sees it unless the go looking?
William
On Feb 24, 2007, at 9:35 PM, William Pietri wrote:
Putting them all at the top of an article made sense early on, when the ratio of editors to readers was higher. But at some point, wouldn't we want to hide more of the plumbing where the average reader never sees it unless the go looking?
Yes - absolutely. But on the other hand, we should take a long, hard look at the plumbing - I'm unconvinced that it would pass health inspections, to continue your restaurant metaphor.
-Phil
As evidence that the webcomic community is fed up with this.
Basically a webcomic encyclopedia. Started in response to en.wikipedia.orgabritary deletions.
I think the problem is experts/lack of experts. Experts probably know the subject area and can probably make better judgement calls than the layman. But we got mostly layman who don't know much about webcomics saying delete, non-notable.
On 2/24/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 24, 2007, at 9:35 PM, William Pietri wrote:
Putting them all at the top of an article made sense early on, when the ratio of editors to readers was higher. But at some point, wouldn't we want to hide more of the plumbing where the average reader never sees it unless the go looking?
Yes - absolutely. But on the other hand, we should take a long, hard look at the plumbing - I'm unconvinced that it would pass health inspections, to continue your restaurant metaphor.
-Phil _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
The entire deletion system is in a very bad state. This is nothing new - VFD has always had problems, and in the last 3-4 years, it's only gotten worse. It's our biggest PR problem. And I mean that: it's a bigger problem for our image than bad bios (though much less likely to cause legal trouble). Every use of "non-notable", "vanity", or "unencyclopedic" on VFD has hurt Wikipedia. Webcomics suffer the worst of it, but it's widespread and longstanding. Plus, the last few years have seen countless layers of procedure and rules encrustation on the original structure, making it more inconsistent and nonsensical. A newcomer can make no sense of the system at all, not even bringing the insanity of DRV into it.
I increasingly think we need to just nuke the whole deletion system. Unless there's sensitive content (personal information, etc.) or copyright violations that need to be removed from article history, just fix, stub, substub, or blank it (in order of decreasing preference).
-- Jake Nelson [[en:User:Jake Nelson]]
On 2/24/07, Han Dao wikipediankiba@gmail.com wrote:
As evidence that the webcomic community is fed up with this.
Basically a webcomic encyclopedia. Started in response to en.wikipedia.orgabritary deletions.
I think the problem is experts/lack of experts. Experts probably know the subject area and can probably make better judgement calls than the layman. But we got mostly layman who don't know much about webcomics saying delete, non-notable.
On 2/24/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 24, 2007, at 9:35 PM, William Pietri wrote:
Putting them all at the top of an article made sense early on, when the ratio of editors to readers was higher. But at some point, wouldn't we want to hide more of the plumbing where the average reader never sees it unless the go looking?
Yes - absolutely. But on the other hand, we should take a long, hard look at the plumbing - I'm unconvinced that it would pass health inspections, to continue your restaurant metaphor.
-Phil _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 25/02/07, Jake Nelson duskwave@gmail.com wrote:
The entire deletion system is in a very bad state. This is nothing new
- VFD has always had problems, and in the last 3-4 years, it's only
gotten worse. It's our biggest PR problem. And I mean that: it's a bigger problem for our image than bad bios (though much less likely to cause legal trouble). Every use of "non-notable", "vanity", or "unencyclopedic" on VFD has hurt Wikipedia. Webcomics suffer the worst of it, but it's widespread and longstanding. Plus, the last few years have seen countless layers of procedure and rules encrustation on the original structure, making it more inconsistent and nonsensical. A newcomer can make no sense of the system at all, not even bringing the insanity of DRV into it.
I increasingly think we need to just nuke the whole deletion system. Unless there's sensitive content (personal information, etc.) or copyright violations that need to be removed from article history, just fix, stub, substub, or blank it (in order of decreasing preference).
Of course by keeping an articles history available you respect the GFDL, even if you do not appreciate it and wish not to have it immediately available. You wouldn't want to actually do that now... Would you? Afterall, the whole debacle relies on Wikipedia being able to destroy GFDL'd content.
(With the exception of personally identifiable information which has ethical and privacy implications of course)
Peter Ansell
On 2/25/07, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
Of course by keeping an articles history available you respect the GFDL, even if you do not appreciate it and wish not to have it immediately available. You wouldn't want to actually do that now... Would you? Afterall, the whole debacle relies on Wikipedia being able to destroy GFDL'd content.
The GFDL doesn't require anyone to distribute the texts that it covers, and Wikipedia is no different from anyone else in this respect - it's under no obligation to continue to distribute the articles which are contributed to it. All that the GFDL requires of Wikipedia is that it keep track of who's contributed to the text that's available.
zetawoof wrote:
The GFDL doesn't require anyone to distribute the texts that it covers, and Wikipedia is no different from anyone else in this respect
- it's under no obligation to continue to distribute the articles
which are contributed to it. All that the GFDL requires of Wikipedia is that it keep track of who's contributed to the text that's available.
There is one significant area where deletion breaks this, cases of "merge and delete." That result should never be implemented, there should only be "merge and redirect" if merging is to be done.
On 2/24/07, Jake Nelson duskwave@gmail.com wrote:
I increasingly think we need to just nuke the whole deletion system. Unless there's sensitive content (personal information, etc.) or copyright violations that need to be removed from article history, just fix, stub, substub, or blank it (in order of decreasing preference).
Yes. This has the benefit of simplicity (meaning it has a chance of working) and of utility.
On Feb 24, 2007, at 9:35 PM, William Pietri wrote:
Setting aside the painful topic of notability, is this a sign that we could use a different division between what restaurants call "front of house" and "back of house"? I'm looking at the various maintenance templates:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_maintenance_templates
Some are important warnings that really belong at the top of pages, either because they are about unreliable content or because it's only fair to let people know that an article might be axed.
Putting them all at the top of an article made sense early on, when the ratio of editors to readers was higher. But at some point, wouldn't we want to hide more of the plumbing where the average reader never sees it unless the go looking?
Another thought on this topic.
What if we replaced all of our problem tags with something generic - {{notverygood}} or something. I'm thinking wording along the lines of:
"This article isn't very good yet. If you came here to learn about this topic, we apologize that we aren't able to help you as well as we'd like. If you know a bit about this topic already, please feel free to help to fix it. Some concerns people have are probably located on the talk page."
And then the mass of other stuff - {{npov}}, {{unverified}}, {{notability}}, etc could all move to the talk page. This puts a reader-friendly face forward, while retaining the information about what's wrong for editors.
-Phil
On 2/26/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
What if we replaced all of our problem tags with something generic - {{notverygood}} or something. I'm thinking wording along the lines of:
"This article isn't very good yet. If you came here to learn about this topic, we apologize that we aren't able to help you as well as we'd like. If you know a bit about this topic already, please feel free to help to fix it. Some concerns people have are probably located on the talk page."
And then the mass of other stuff - {{npov}}, {{unverified}}, {{notability}}, etc could all move to the talk page. This puts a reader-friendly face forward, while retaining the information about what's wrong for editors.
I think this is a very good idea.
Adam
Phil Sandifer wrote:
On Feb 24, 2007, at 9:35 PM, William Pietri wrote:
I'm looking at the various maintenance templates [...] wouldn't we want to hide more of the plumbing where the average reader never sees it unless the go looking?
Another thought on this topic.
What if we replaced all of our problem tags with something generic - {{notverygood}} or something. I'm thinking wording along the lines of:
"This article isn't very good yet. If you came here to learn about this topic, we apologize that we aren't able to help you as well as we'd like. If you know a bit about this topic already, please feel free to help to fix it. Some concerns people have are probably located on the talk page."
And then the mass of other stuff - {{npov}}, {{unverified}}, {{notability}}, etc could all move to the talk page. This puts a reader-friendly face forward, while retaining the information about what's wrong for editors.
Nice. That's even better. I'd probably make {{notverygood}} less visually intrusive than some of the existing templates. Perhaps a paler blue with no border and italic text rather than roman.
Cons:
* More manual labor when tagging and untagging articles * Possibility for main page and talk page to be out of sync * Easier to forget to remove a tag after cleaning things up * Won't work well with in-section warnings
Pros:
* Less cruft for readers to deal with * Less confusion and upset when something is inappropriately tagged * Draws concerned parties into the talk page rather than arguing through templates
Another possibility that occurs to me. Could we do a little stylesheet and JavaScript magic to hide the specific warning templates unless people click on something in the {{notverygood}} box? That would let us keep them as part of the main article, but make them invisible to casual readers. Further magic would make them by default available to logged-in editors.
William
On 2/26/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Another possibility that occurs to me. Could we do a little stylesheet and JavaScript magic to hide the specific warning templates unless people click on something in the {{notverygood}} box? That would let us keep them as part of the main article, but make them invisible to casual readers. Further magic would make them by default available to logged-in editors.
William
I really like the idea of hiding the specific warning templates in the {{notverygood}} box at the top of the article. It could work similarly to {{Template:WikiProjectBanners}}. It would have some standard message concerning how the article is not quite up to par, with all the specifics hidden inside it. It would be far more visually attractive for those articles that have three or four maintenance templates at the top, but would still keep those templates on the main article page.
On 27/02/07, darthvader1219@gmail.com darthvader1219@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/26/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Another possibility that occurs to me. Could we do a little stylesheet and JavaScript magic to hide the specific warning templates unless people click on something in the {{notverygood}} box? That would let us keep them as part of the main article, but make them invisible to casual readers. Further magic would make them by default available to logged-in editors.
I really like the idea of hiding the specific warning templates in the {{notverygood}} box at the top of the article. It could work similarly to {{Template:WikiProjectBanners}}. It would have some standard message concerning how the article is not quite up to par, with all the specifics hidden inside it. It would be far more visually attractive for those articles that have three or four maintenance templates at the top, but would still keep those templates on the main article page.
Hmm. I like it.
"The Wikipedia community has identified issues with the quality of this article; [click here] to show more specific details or [see the talk page] for discussion regarding the issue"
First link brings a dropdown as with the banners template; second takes you to talk. If you were particularly clever, "the quality" could be changed on the fly to reflect the specific tagging...
On 27/02/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 27/02/07, darthvader1219@gmail.com darthvader1219@gmail.com wrote:
I really like the idea of hiding the specific warning templates in the {{notverygood}} box at the top of the article. It could work similarly to {{Template:WikiProjectBanners}}.
Hmm. I like it.
"The Wikipedia community has identified issues with the quality of this article; [click here] to show more specific details or [see the talk page] for discussion regarding the issue"
It should probably have a different header message depending on the severity of the problem: i.e. "serious issues" for major stuff like {{npov}} {{inappropriate tone}}, etc., "minor issues" for {{cleanup}} and so on.
On Feb 27, 2007, at 8:06 AM, Andrew Gray wrote:
Hmm. I like it.
"The Wikipedia community has identified issues with the quality of this article; [click here] to show more specific details or [see the talk page] for discussion regarding the issue"
First link brings a dropdown as with the banners template; second takes you to talk. If you were particularly clever, "the quality" could be changed on the fly to reflect the specific tagging...
This is, of course, an even better idea. The only quibble I have is that I dislike the use of "the Wikipedia community," which seems to me to go too far in the other direction in establishing a split between reader and editor.
Perhaps "It has come to our attention that this article may not be as good as we'd like it to be. [click here] to see more specific details..." and so on.
-Phil
On 27/02/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps "It has come to our attention that this article may not be as good as we'd like it to be. [click here] to see more specific details..." and so on.
I'm not sure I see that much of a difference from the current tag soup. Perhaps rewording the tags would suffice.
- d.
On 27/02/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
This is, of course, an even better idea. The only quibble I have is that I dislike the use of "the Wikipedia community," which seems to me to go too far in the other direction in establishing a split between reader and editor.
Perhaps "It has come to our attention that this article may not be as good as we'd like it to be. [click here] to see more specific details..." and so on.
Yeah, something like that would work well.. I'm trying to get across a tone not of "This article is bad, beware", but rather "Someone's flagged an issue with this article, we're working on it".
On 28/02/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Yeah, something like that would work well.. I'm trying to get across a tone not of "This article is bad, beware", but rather "Someone's flagged an issue with this article, we're working on it".
I think the present pile of tags send the second message, and sending the first is often appropriate ;-)
- d.
Andrew Gray wrote:
On 27/02/07, darthvader1219@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/26/07, William Pietri wrote:
Another possibility that occurs to me. Could we do a little stylesheet and JavaScript magic to hide the specific warning templates unless people click on something in the {{notverygood}} box? That would let us keep them as part of the main article, but make them invisible to casual readers. Further magic would make them by default available to logged-in editors.
I really like the idea of hiding the specific warning templates in the {{notverygood}} box at the top of the article. It could work similarly to {{Template:WikiProjectBanners}}. It would have some standard message concerning how the article is not quite up to par, with all the specifics hidden inside it. It would be far more visually attractive for those articles that have three or four maintenance templates at the top, but would still keep those templates on the main article page.
Hmm. I like it.
"The Wikipedia community has identified issues with the quality of this article; [click here] to show more specific details or [see the talk page] for discussion regarding the issue"
First link brings a dropdown as with the banners template; second takes you to talk. If you were particularly clever, "the quality" could be changed on the fly to reflect the specific tagging...
I think basically that our software has not kept up with the kind of innovation that has been suggested in messages like this. Our current developers are doing what they can, but keeping the site operational needs to be a priority. I can imagine all manner of schemes for evaluating the worth of an article, but I'm totally incapable of coming to terms with the software needed to make it happen. Such conceptually simple ideas as single login, improved search functions, and stable version have all been kicking around for a while, and I often wonder whether it's the technology or the politics that is holding these ideas up.
Ec
On 2/27/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
Another thought on this topic.
What if we replaced all of our problem tags with something generic - {{notverygood}} or something. I'm thinking wording along the lines of:
"This article isn't very good yet. If you came here to learn about this topic, we apologize that we aren't able to help you as well as we'd like. If you know a bit about this topic already, please feel free to help to fix it. Some concerns people have are probably located on the talk page."
And then the mass of other stuff - {{npov}}, {{unverified}}, {{notability}}, etc could all move to the talk page. This puts a reader-friendly face forward, while retaining the information about what's wrong for editors.
-Phil
I suggested this about a year ago. The main problem is that non specific warnings are not very useful. Thus things like {{NPOV}} {{hoax}} really do need to be at the top of the article.
Things like {{notability}} whatever the tags are for cats needed and total lack of citations tags can go on the talk page but ah it didn't catch on last time so I assume there is some oposition somewhere or that people don't really care about the problem.
On 27/02/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Things like {{notability}} whatever the tags are for cats needed and total lack of citations tags can go on the talk page but ah it didn't catch on last time so I assume there is some oposition somewhere or that people don't really care about the problem.
Total lack of references should be noted on the article itself. It's useful to the reader to know.
"Notability" warnings are part of the ongoing AFD conflict. I predict that putting them on talk will be seen as an attempt to encourage deletion by stealth.
- d.
One or two templates are rarely a problem. It gets ugly when an article has 3 or more problem templates stuck to it. Perhaps we can have some non-obstrusive box like "ArticleHistory" to cut down on too many templates, and somehow get that template to show what's wrong in a more concise manner?
Mgm
On 2/27/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 27/02/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Things like {{notability}} whatever the tags are for cats needed and total lack of citations tags can go on the talk page but ah it didn't catch on last time so I assume there is some oposition somewhere or that people don't really care about the problem.
Total lack of references should be noted on the article itself. It's useful to the reader to know.
"Notability" warnings are part of the ongoing AFD conflict. I predict that putting them on talk will be seen as an attempt to encourage deletion by stealth.
- d.
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On 2/27/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Total lack of references should be noted on the article itself. It's useful to the reader to know.
It is?
"Notability" warnings are part of the ongoing AFD conflict. I predict that putting them on talk will be seen as an attempt to encourage deletion by stealth.
Notability "warnings" are quite different to other warnings. They don't warn the reader (does the reader of an article about a trivial pub in Bumsville need to be warned that the topic is trivial?) - they warn editors.
Steve
How many readers become editors after seeing a cleanup template on an article they're interested in and so have a go at fixing it? I honestly have no idea. If it's a large number, though, we should probably leave the template where they are.
On 2/26/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
And then the mass of other stuff - {{npov}}, {{unverified}}, {{notability}}, etc could all move to the talk page.
This addresses a certain pet peeve of mine. I'm reading an article, the link to the talk page is blue so I go there to see what's being said about the article and the only thing there is a project template. This would become a bigger problem if talk pages become peppered with a metric assload of "plumbing" templates.
I know this is probably not possible with the current software but it would be nice to have a separate link color for talk pages without user comments. That way the link to a talk page would only be blue if there is actual "talk" there.
On 2/28/07, Ron Ritzman ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/26/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
And then the mass of other stuff - {{npov}}, {{unverified}}, {{notability}}, etc could all move to the talk page.
This addresses a certain pet peeve of mine. I'm reading an article, the link to the talk page is blue so I go there to see what's being said about the article and the only thing there is a project template. This would become a bigger problem if talk pages become peppered with a metric assload of "plumbing" templates.
I know this is probably not possible with the current software but it would be nice to have a separate link color for talk pages without user comments. That way the link to a talk page would only be blue if there is actual "talk" there.
Or perhaps another "namespace" for tags, which manifests as another tab to list WikiProjects the article is associated with, the current assessment status, etc of the article. I suppose it could be termed the metadata for the article, and it has nothing to do with discussing the article, and is only put in the Talk: namespace to keep it off the article. I think it's come time to stop with the workarounds and begin the innovating. And I know you await my patch, but it's not forthcoming. Maybe somebody else will do it. :]
Philip Sandifer wrote:
The problem he has? Notability. Specifically the arbitrary and capricious way in which AfD targets things, questions their notability, and uses guidelines that make no sense from the outside.
One of the big things that rankles me is the large swaths of content that are in clear violation of WP:N and the more specific guidelines, but that are de facto acceptable.
Television episodes are the clearest examples I know of. We have a guideline for fiction notability and there's been a centralized discussion that more or less follows WP:N: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Centralized_discussion/Television_epi...
But this is blatantly disregarded for many series. See, for example, all the articles linked from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Battlestar_Galactica_%28re-imagined_ser...
For most episodes, there is nothing to establish notability. For this particular series, there is a moderate amount of information available about production through podcasts and blogs by the creators, but that stuff isn't in the episode articles for the most part.
Standard practice has diverged considerably from the official line, and I agree with Phil that we need to amend WP:N in particular to be more accommodating of content where the subject can at least be verified to exist (e.g., webcomics, Battlestar Galactica episodes, marginally notable real people).
I developed this line of argument a little further in a recent blog post: http://ragesossscholar.blogspot.com/2007/02/wikipedia-original-research-and-...
-Sage
On 2/25/07, Sage Ross ragesoss+wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
Standard practice has diverged considerably from the official line, and I agree with Phil that we need to amend WP:N in particular to be more accommodating of content where the subject can at least be verified to exist (e.g., webcomics, Battlestar Galactica episodes, marginally notable real people).
I can confirm that 30 million chemical elements exist.
Given that old enough census data is published with can confirm rather a lot of people exist as well. Confirming somthing exists doesn't mean much.
There is another problem with what you propose. Check out the talk pages of articles releated to [[Watchmen]] (or the trivia secetion on a lot of our lower quality articles). These fans likely know a lot about the subject but the conflicting interptritiations. The sexuality section on [[Rorschach (comics)]] can be a fine source of black humor.
On Feb 24, 2007, at 9:37 PM, geni wrote:
There is another problem with what you propose. Check out the talk pages of articles releated to [[Watchmen]] (or the trivia secetion on a lot of our lower quality articles). These fans likely know a lot about the subject but the conflicting interptritiations. The sexuality section on [[Rorschach (comics)]] can be a fine source of black humor.
Here's the problem: what fixes that breaks [[Jacques Derrida]]. What fixes [[Jacques Derrida]] breaks [[Rorschach (comics)]].
Solution: Stop trying to implement a fix that applies to both articles?
-Phil
On 2/24/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/25/07, Sage Ross ragesoss+wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
Standard practice has diverged considerably from the official line, and I agree with Phil that we need to amend WP:N in particular to be more accommodating of content where the subject can at least be verified to exist (e.g., webcomics, Battlestar Galactica episodes, marginally notable real people).
I can confirm that 30 million chemical elements exist.
Huh?
Given that old enough census data is published with can confirm rather a lot of people exist as well. Confirming somthing exists doesn't mean much.
I said "be more accommodating"; I don't mean to imply that existence is sufficient. A measure of common sense when assessing an article's reliability combined with a little looser official standards for notability is the main thing (i.e., accepting that some topics that people want to see in Wikipedia will have few good sources but keeping rather than deleting them is still a plus to the overall quality of Wikipedia).
There is another problem with what you propose. Check out the talk pages of articles releated to [[Watchmen]] (or the trivia secetion on a lot of our lower quality articles). These fans likely know a lot about the subject but the conflicting interptritiations. The sexuality section on [[Rorschach (comics)]] can be a fine source of black humor.
The problem I see there is failure to follow WP:WAF. Forcing that material into an out-of-universe perspective would bring out the best from what is indeed rough going in its present form; it would bring out the fact that conflicting interpretations exist and get much closer to NPOV than it is now.
-Sage
On 2/25/07, Sage Ross sage.ross@yale.edu wrote:
On 2/24/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/25/07, Sage Ross ragesoss+wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
Standard practice has diverged considerably from the official line, and I agree with Phil that we need to amend WP:N in particular to be more accommodating of content where the subject can at least be verified to exist (e.g., webcomics, Battlestar Galactica episodes, marginally notable real people).
I can confirm that 30 million chemical elements exist.
Huh?
Should have been compounds.
Anyway that would be pretty minor compared to the couple of hundred million articles on stars.
Given that old enough census data is published with can confirm rather a lot of people exist as well. Confirming somthing exists doesn't mean much.
I said "be more accommodating"; I don't mean to imply that existence is sufficient. A measure of common sense
[[Wikipedia:There is no common sense]]
Common sense has no requirement to be logical or to be based on evidence and thus has no place in a rational system.
Of course we live in a world where there are huge social pressures to accept <s>bellyfeel</s> common sense
If you want a system that outsides have a hope of figuring out you will set up system that includes as little common sense as possible.
when assessing an article's reliability combined with a little looser official standards for notability is the main thing (i.e., accepting that some topics that people want to see in Wikipedia will have few good sources but keeping rather than deleting them is still a plus to the overall quality of Wikipedia).
[[WP:NOR]]
The problem I see there is failure to follow WP:WAF. Forcing that material into an out-of-universe perspective would bring out the best from what is indeed rough going in its present form; it would bring out the fact that conflicting interpretations exist and get much closer to NPOV than it is now.
-Sage
The "is Rorschach gay?" and the "did Rorschach survive?" sections were written from an out of universe perspective. As was the "interpretations by random people" section. [[Comedian (comics)]] if you look at the The "Smile" section a couple of those are pretty questionable.
On Feb 24, 2007, at 10:50 PM, geni wrote:
Common sense has no requirement to be logical or to be based on evidence and thus has no place in a rational system.
Of course we live in a world where there are huge social pressures to accept <s>bellyfeel</s> common sense
If you want a system that outsides have a hope of figuring out you will set up system that includes as little common sense as possible.
Wikipedia is not a rational system.
Wikipedia is not designed and should not be designed to be written by robots.
Wikipedia depends on subjective judgment, case by case evaluation, and adherence to general principles, not to white line rules.
Your desire to systematize the world is admirable, but the era of natural philosophy has long passed.
-Phil
On 2/24/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The "is Rorschach gay?" and the "did Rorschach survive?" sections were written from an out of universe perspective. As was the "interpretations by random people" section. [[Comedian (comics)]] if you look at the The "Smile" section a couple of those are pretty questionable.
I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. In [[Rorschach (comics)]], the "Sexuality" section is mostly in-universe; though it makes reference to "through the entire series", its main concern is characterizing Rorschach as if he were real. I'm not sure what the "did Rorschach survive" section is. In any case, the biggest problem with the article is poor writing and presentation, not wacky original research. It attempts to unpack some of the possible meanings of the fiction; I'd much rather see that than the sterile plot-summary-only of the other extreme.
-Sage
geni wrote:
On 2/25/07, Sage Ross sage.ross@yale.edu wrote:
Given that old enough census data is published with can confirm rather a lot of people exist as well. Confirming somthing exists doesn't mean much.
I said "be more accommodating"; I don't mean to imply that existence is sufficient. A measure of common sense
[[Wikipedia:There is no common sense]]
A questionable essay, but just an essay.
Common sense has no requirement to be logical or to be based on evidence and thus has no place in a rational system.
I suppose that that is technically correct, but such a strictly rational system exists only in theory. The logical extension of your rational system is personified in Mr. Bean.
Of course we live in a world where there are huge social pressures to accept <s>bellyfeel</s> common sense
There are even more pressures to conform to established structures such as government bureaucracies and an endless flow of useless forms.
If you want a system that outsides have a hope of figuring out you will set up system that includes as little common sense as possible.
This has got to be one of your more idiosyncratic pieces of sophistry. Imagine! Purporting to logicaly disprove the existence of common sense. There's a famous scene from a Jack Nicholson movie ("Five Easy Pieces"?) where he orders something slightly different from what is on the restaurant menu. The waitress cannot comply because it's not written on the menu. I've had a similar experience at breakfast in a restaurant. My then wife wanted one egg, but the menu only specified two eggs. In the establishment's mind serving only one egg was impossible.
Common sense is what keeps things from being stupid.
when assessing an article's reliability combined with a little looser official standards for notability is the main thing (i.e., accepting that some topics that people want to see in Wikipedia will have few good sources but keeping rather than deleting them is still a plus to the overall quality of Wikipedia).
[[WP:NOR]]
Taking refuge in rules doesn't solve very much.
Ec
On 2/25/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I suppose that that is technically correct, but such a strictly rational system exists only in theory. The logical extension of your rational system is personified in Mr. Bean.
Not really.
Technically it was personified by one of the more extreme Greek sceptics but given his followers kept having to pull him out of the way of carts and things I suspect there are limits.
There are even more pressures to conform to established structures such as government bureaucracies and an endless flow of useless forms.
Common sense tell the civil servant that one extra form wont matter.
This has got to be one of your more idiosyncratic pieces of sophistry. Imagine! Purporting to logicaly disprove the existence of common sense.
No. Something exists that people describe as common sense. The definition shifts from person to person mind (try reading the editorial columns in any news paper to the right of you).
The problem is that all these systems of common sense have a tendency to break down if asked to do anything as mildly complex as calculus.
There's a famous scene from a Jack Nicholson movie ("Five Easy Pieces"?) where he orders something slightly different from what is on the restaurant menu. The waitress cannot comply because it's not written on the menu. I've had a similar experience at breakfast in a restaurant. My then wife wanted one egg, but the menu only specified two eggs. In the establishment's mind serving only one egg was impossible.
Because they were not applying logic to the situation
Common sense is what keeps things from being stupid.
Going by what happens when people try to apply common sense to quantum physics I beg to differ.
Taking refuge in rules doesn't solve very much.
Saves me haveing to go over old ground.
William Pietri wrote:
Philip Sandifer wrote:
See also Timothy Noah's recent article on Slate for this - it gives a good view of how notability guidelines look to the outside. In this case, it's how they look to the subject of the article, but I assure you - they look similar to people who are familiar with the subject. In short, they appear a Kafka-esque absurdity.
For those wondering, the article is here:
Thanks for the link. Noah does a good job showing what a joke the notability criterion has become.
Ec
on 2/24/07 5:16 PM, Philip Sandifer at sandifer@english.ufl.edu wrote:
I just had dinner with [[Scott McCloud]],
Best, Phil Sandifer
Phil,
Thank you for this entire post. It is educational on many fronts. It needs to be taken by all at Wikipedia as a heads up - a wakeup call. If it is treated lightly, trivialized, or worse, ignored - the denial within the Community is deeper and more profound than I thought.
Marc Riddell
Philip Sandifer wrote:
See also Timothy Noah's recent article on Slate for this - it gives a good view of how notability guidelines look to the outside. In this case, it's how they look to the subject of the article, but I assure you - they look similar to people who are familiar with the subject. In short, they appear a Kafka-esque absurdity.
I'd have to say this is how it looks to many academics as well. Even biographies of extremely famous researchers are routinely hauled into AfD with piles of ignorant "d, nn" votes. There's a reason we almost never have an article on a Nobel Prize winner before he or she actually wins a Nobel Prize---because any researcher whose fame is even a bit short of "won a Nobel Prize" is deleted as non-notable.
-Mark
On 2/25/07, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
I'd have to say this is how it looks to many academics as well. Even biographies of extremely famous researchers are routinely hauled into AfD with piles of ignorant "d, nn" votes. There's a reason we almost never have an article on a Nobel Prize winner before he or she actually wins a Nobel Prize---because any researcher whose fame is even a bit short of "won a Nobel Prize" is deleted as non-notable.
-Mark
[[Wikipedia:Notability (academics)]]
Seems fairly well fleshed out.
On Feb 24, 2007, at 9:40 PM, geni wrote:
Wikipedia:Notability (academics)]]
If we didn't have a notability guideline on porn stars, this would be our worst one. It's ridiculously selective, and fails the sniff test in the humanities. It should be a slam dunk that anybody who has published in PMLA or Critical Inquiry should, at the very least, have an article outlining that work. Absolute dead-on common sense, and if this were true it would immediately boost the quality of articles in this area astronomically. If I didn't suspect that it would get ripped out by a mob of deletionists, I'd work my way through the last decade of Critical Inquiry putting in summaries of the work published in it. But I won't, because I'm not willing to invest that kind of time in order to have someone tag it for deletion.
-Phil
Philip Sandifer wrote:
McCloud is somebody who knows comics. He quite literally wrote the book on them. In the course of the conversation it became clear that he was pretty well completely fed up with Wikipedia. And it should be noted, this comes from someone who has been on the forefront of digital technology debates several times. He makes clear his admiration for the concept of Wikipedia. He makes clear his admiration for how Wikipedia got started. His problem is with how it works now.
It's amazing how quickly people have gone from "it can't possibly work" to grumbling about how we haven't solved every problem with it.
What he think will happen if he visits EB? "Scott who? Our board of expert editors have already determined that webcomics aren't worth writing about." Encarta? Probably wouldn't get even that much of an answer. CZ? I think we can guess Larry Sanger's response, ha ha. As the world's largest encyclopedia, every day we deal with scaling problems that have *never* been solved before. Of course it's going to be messy - we can't just go offline while a bunch of eggheads ponders solutions. I've actually spent time in the university library learning what other people have done for large-scale knowledge organization, in the hopes of getting useful ideas for WP, and I tell you, the state of the art is just pathetic.
I think people like Scott McCloud, and other experts, just assume that there are fellow experts out there who have solved problems like how to assess notability, and we're just a bunch of stupids because we're not using their solutions. We need to get the word out - *there* *are* *no* *known* *solutions*. Every day we have to wing it, because we have no other choice.
I don't like to think about it too much, because it starts to p*ss me off a little - the expert is saying "I don't want to work on WP because you're all a bunch of amateurs who don't know how to do things right". Well gee, Mr. Expert, if no experts ever participate, what do you think you're going to end up with? And if you guys have all these amazing solutions to our problems, how come we can't ever seem to find where they are published?
And it's a disaster that can be laid squarely at the feet of the grotesque axis of [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:N]] - two pages that are eating Wikipedia alive from the inside out. (And I don't mean this in terms of community. I mean that they are systematically being used to turn good articles into crap, and have yet to demonstrate their actual use in turning bad articles into good ones.)
I can relate to this - just today I had an uninformed editor claim one of the world's famous postage stamps is "non-notable" because the article only has one reference - apparently the part where the reference is a page in the most authoritative works in philately doesn't matter, because he couldn't manage to find it mentioned more than once online. The mind boggles at the multiple incompetences, but since it's all done with templates, even the least capable of editors is enabled to cast aspersions on good content.
Even so, I understand why the guidelines were created, to close loopholes that have been discovered and exploited. Alternate ideas that don't rely on magical thinking are still welcome.
Stan
On 2/25/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
The mind boggles at the multiple incompetences, but since it's all done with templates, even the least capable of editors is enabled to cast aspersions on good content.
It really is time we moved those kind of templates to the talk pages.
Stan Shebs wrote:
Philip Sandifer wrote:
And it's a disaster that can be laid squarely at the feet of the grotesque axis of [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:N]] - two pages that are eating Wikipedia alive from the inside out. (And I don't mean this in terms of community. I mean that they are systematically being used to turn good articles into crap, and have yet to demonstrate their actual use in turning bad articles into good ones.)
I can relate to this - just today I had an uninformed editor claim one of the world's famous postage stamps is "non-notable" because the article only has one reference - apparently the part where the reference is a page in the most authoritative works in philately doesn't matter, because he couldn't manage to find it mentioned more than once online. The mind boggles at the multiple incompetences, but since it's all done with templates, even the least capable of editors is enabled to cast aspersions on good content.
Not long ago there was a proposal to relocate the items that appear on AfD to the various WikiProjects so that the requests could be looked at by people who have some understanding of the issue. As usual that got nowhaere.
Even so, I understand why the guidelines were created, to close loopholes that have been discovered and exploited. Alternate ideas that don't rely on magical thinking are still welcome.
The sad part is that many who quote or apply the rules have absolutely no understanding of what went into producing those rules.
Ec
On Sunday 25 February 2007 03:18, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Not long ago there was a proposal to relocate the items that appear on AfD to the various WikiProjects so that the requests could be looked at by people who have some understanding of the issue. As usual that got nowhaere.
Yup. I was the one who made that proposal (unless someone else proposed the same thing independently). As I recall, the primary objection to it was that it was a bad idea because "the author of this proposal [me] is an extreme inclusionist"--true, but irrelevant.
Kurt Maxwell Weber kmw@armory.com writes:
On Sunday 25 February 2007 03:18, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Not long ago there was a proposal to relocate the items that appear on AfD to the various WikiProjects so that the requests could be looked at by people who have some understanding of the issue. As usual that got nowhaere.
Yup. I was the one who made that proposal (unless someone else proposed the same thing independently). As I recall, the primary objection to it was that it was a bad idea because "the author of this proposal [me] is an extreme inclusionist"--true, but irrelevant. -- Kurt Weber kmw@armory.com
I remember the objections being more along the lines of asserting that such a change would allow the inmates to run the asylum - fancruft is kept in check by nonfans, and if deletion debates are dominated (by policy and not merely by practice) by fans/members of the relevant Wikiproject, that check would be removed.
On 2/25/07, Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
Kurt Maxwell Weber kmw@armory.com writes:
On Sunday 25 February 2007 03:18, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Not long ago there was a proposal to relocate the items that appear on AfD to the various WikiProjects so that the requests could be looked at by people who have some understanding of the issue. As usual that got nowhaere.
Yup. I was the one who made that proposal (unless someone else proposed the same thing independently). As I recall, the primary objection to it was that it was a bad idea because "the author of this proposal [me] is an extreme inclusionist"--true, but irrelevant. -- Kurt Weber kmw@armory.com
I remember the objections being more along the lines of asserting that such a change would allow the inmates to run the asylum - fancruft is kept in check by nonfans, and if deletion debates are dominated (by policy and not merely by practice) by fans/members of the relevant Wikiproject, that check would be removed.
If there is agreement about the value and neutrality of content among a wide enough group of fans for there to be a WikiProject, that seems like a good place to invoke "Wiki is not paper". The nonfans should keep such articles in perspective and correct for the systematic biases of fans, but if a WikiProject wants an article and is willing to invest the effort to correct for blatant POV and COI, why not let 'em have it?
For moving forward with the notability problem stepwise, I think we should change the notability baseline from: "A topic is notable if it has been the subject of at least one substantial or multiple, non-trivial published works from sources that are reliable and independent of the subject and of each other"
to: "A topic is notable if it has been the subject of at least one non-trivial published work from a sources that is reliable and independent of the subject"
-Sage
On 2/26/07, Sage Ross sage.ross@yale.edu wrote:
On 2/25/07, Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
Kurt Maxwell Weber kmw@armory.com writes:
On Sunday 25 February 2007 03:18, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Not long ago there was a proposal to relocate the items that appear on AfD to the various WikiProjects so that the requests could be looked at by people who have some understanding of the issue. As usual that got nowhaere.
This is already happening to a certain degree with the Deletion sorting project, but that effort is sporadic, probably due to the excessive number of articles being listed on Afd.
A simpler solution would be to require that any Afd that does not meet CSD must be listed on a deletion sorting list for 5 days before closure to ensure adequate exposure and time to resolve issues.
Yup. I was the one who made that proposal (unless someone else proposed the same thing independently). As I recall, the primary objection to it was that it was a bad idea because "the author of this proposal [me] is an extreme inclusionist"--true, but irrelevant. -- Kurt Weber kmw@armory.com
I remember the objections being more along the lines of asserting that such a change would allow the inmates to run the asylum - fancruft is kept in check by nonfans, and if deletion debates are dominated (by policy and not merely by practice) by fans/members of the relevant Wikiproject, that check would be removed.
If there is agreement about the value and neutrality of content among a wide enough group of fans for there to be a WikiProject, that seems like a good place to invoke "Wiki is not paper". The nonfans should keep such articles in perspective and correct for the systematic biases of fans, but if a WikiProject wants an article and is willing to invest the effort to correct for blatant POV and COI, why not let 'em have it?
This sounds like it would improve how subject matter experts view Wikipedia; their contributions would not be initially subjected to Afds conducted by random people, and project members could spot new contributors more readily and ensure they are treated more respectfully.
It would be nice to see Afd headers on the articles replaced with pretty subject specific alerts that indicate to the reader that the article is currently "under review".
If Afds at the project level are being called into question or are not timely, the review could then be relisted on each project up the hierarchy of projects in search of consensus before needing to end up on the top level Afd. This would probably result in more action on DRV, but at least the DRV would have more carefully considered comments on the review discussion.
While it is possible that some projects may end up like an asylum run by inmates, other parts of Wikipedia can and will take on the added responsibility and use it appropriately.
-- John (aka Jayvdb)
Stan Shebs wrote:
Philip Sandifer wrote:
McCloud is somebody who knows comics. He quite literally wrote the book on them. In the course of the conversation it became clear that he was pretty well completely fed up with Wikipedia. [...]
It's amazing how quickly people have gone from "it can't possibly work" to grumbling about how we haven't solved every problem with it.
In one of Gerry Weinberg's books on consulting, he claims this is human nature.
Suppose you come in and solve somebody's biggest problem. If you are very lucky, there will be a 30 second period where they are excited and thankful. Then they realize that their next-biggest problem is now their biggest problem. And people will be shocked that what is now their biggest problem has been ignored for so long.
I've taken three good things from this:
1. I can and should be calm toward somebody coming to me with their biggest problem, because they will always have one. Not that I shouldn't take it seriously, but I don't let them get me wound up. 2. I shouldn't burn myself out on this one, because there will always be a next one. 3. I no longer worry about running out of things to do.
William
Philip Sandifer wrote:
I just had dinner with [[Scott McCloud]], and, unsurprisingly, the conversation turned to webcomics, and, eventually, to Wikipedia's treatment of them. (This was partially spurred by the Kristopher Straub debacle, about which I will say only that it demonstrates the degree to which the bias is overwhelmingly towards deletion across many areas of Wikipedia right now)
Deletion to the point of sterility.
McCloud is somebody who knows comics. He quite literally wrote the book on them. In the course of the conversation it became clear that he was pretty well completely fed up with Wikipedia. And it should be noted, this comes from someone who has been on the forefront of digital technology debates several times. He makes clear his admiration for the concept of Wikipedia. He makes clear his admiration for how Wikipedia got started. His problem is with how it works now.
The problem he has? Notability. Specifically the arbitrary and capricious way in which AfD targets things, questions their notability, and uses guidelines that make no sense from the outside.
I know nothing about webcomics. That's enough to qualify me to stay away from any specific deletion debate about any of them.
Our efforts to ensure reliability have come at the cost of a great deal of respect - and respect from people we should have respect from. We are losing smart, well-educated people who are sympathetic to Wikipedia's basic principles. That is a disaster.
It has the appearance of a project that has lost its way. Time was that the public mantra was, "Wikipedia is not reliable." The "Nature" article showed that we weren't so bad, but by then a lot of editors (and perhaps Jimbo himself) had been spooked into an obsession for accuracy. We have now gone to the opposite extreme. Our size has brought us into seriously uncharted territory about the nature of collaboration and inclusivity, and many of our editors schooled in old hierarchical structures have yet to make the leap into an environment which cannot be subject to the controls with which they are familiar.
Reliability does matter. Still there will always be issues where reliability remains uncertain or unattainable. Are we to pretend that that world of uncertainty does not exist because we are missing Reliable Sources? Sometimes we need to simply admit that the information has not been verified or cannot be verified. We warn the reader that he uses the information at his own risk.
And it's a disaster that can be laid squarely at the feet of the grotesque axis of [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:N]] - two pages that are eating Wikipedia alive from the inside out. (And I don't mean this in terms of community. I mean that they are systematically being used to turn good articles into crap, and have yet to demonstrate their actual use in turning bad articles into good ones.)
Notability has been a consistent thorn in the side for as long as I can remember. Reliable Sources started later as one more of many means to deal with the notability problem. None of these means has succeeded.
Ec
I think many people fail to realize that Wikipedia is and always will be a work-in-progress. We really don't know what our notability policy is, and there are no easy answers. Stan Shebs was quite right when he pointed out that there are no known solutions to this problem.
This is kind of related to the whole "Wikipedia is Failing" controversy, in that so many people have such different ideas of what Wikipedia should be, and a lot of them conclude that Wikipedia doesn't measure up.
People think Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia, but that's just an analogy. The truth is Wikipedia is something new and different and what it is is a matter of negotiation within the Wikipedia community.
I wouldn't worry about Wikipedia failing to live up to your expectations or someone else's expectations. Wikipedia is what it is. The fact that it is useful enough to be in the top ten websites is success enough.
Adam
T P wrote:
I think many people fail to realize that Wikipedia is and always will be a work-in-progress. We really don't know what our notability policy is, and there are no easy answers. Stan Shebs was quite right when he pointed out that there are no known solutions to this problem.
That being the case editors and admins should stop pretending that there is a solution.
This is kind of related to the whole "Wikipedia is Failing" controversy, in that so many people have such different ideas of what Wikipedia should be, and a lot of them conclude that Wikipedia doesn't measure up.
That conclusion is not the only possible one to derive from your premise. People do indeed have different ideas of what Wikipedia should be, and some of us would conclude that that is a good thing. "Measuring up" implies having predetermined notions about what would be a standard for success. The standards for a collaborative environment have yet to be defined. Applying the old hierarchical standards contradicts the collaborative model Wikipedia fails when it closes off avenues to innovation and collaboration.
Keeping those avenues open is scary business because it means accepting that a technique that you were long convinced was the only solution may suddenly be found wrong. Validation does not come in the form of the immediate intangible reward of having your idea accepted and written in stone. In a truly collaborative environment every policy or idea is permanently open to change. It doesn't matter that at some point there was a vote to adopt a policy. If someone disagrees at any time in the future he should have the right to add his negative vote, or change his previous vote. If enough people do that the policy could be reversed.
"Ignore All Rules" was never meant as a convenient drop-dead tool for excusing misbehaviour. The notion should precede the action rather than follow it. It requires that one has carefully considered the relevant rule and found it wanting.
People think Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia, but that's just an analogy. The truth is Wikipedia is something new and different and what it is is a matter of negotiation within the Wikipedia community.
I don't think that this line of reasoning gets us anywhere. It just gets us into a lot of semantic debate about the nature of an encyclopedia, a debate for which there is no firm answer. This debate was largely superceded with the founding of the sister projects as spin-offs for ideas that did not really fit into the definition of an encyclopedia. What is new and different then is Wikimedia.
I wouldn't worry about Wikipedia failing to live up to your expectations or someone else's expectations. Wikipedia is what it is. The fact that it is useful enough to be in the top ten websites is success enough.
Absolutely. Expectations come from a What-do-the-neighbours-think? kind of mentality. We want accuracy and reliability, but on our own terms, not on terms which we imagine have been set by others. If our neighbours complain that we are being unreliable about some specified issue we will examine it and change it as circumstances require; sometimes we will find no need to change it at all. We should never be panicked into action by vague general claims of unreliability, though I fear that some editors feel flea-bitten by such repetitive comments.
Ec
On 2/25/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
T P wrote:
I think many people fail to realize that Wikipedia is and always will be
a
work-in-progress. We really don't know what our notability policy is,
and
there are no easy answers. Stan Shebs was quite right when he pointed
out
that there are no known solutions to this problem.
That being the case editors and admins should stop pretending that there is a solution.
I should have said there are no good solutions. This problem requires a working solution, and we do have one.
Keeping those avenues open is scary business because it means accepting
that a technique that you were long convinced was the only solution may suddenly be found wrong. Validation does not come in the form of the immediate intangible reward of having your idea accepted and written in stone. In a truly collaborative environment every policy or idea is permanently open to change. It doesn't matter that at some point there was a vote to adopt a policy. If someone disagrees at any time in the future he should have the right to add his negative vote, or change his previous vote. If enough people do that the policy could be reversed.
I think we are agreeing here.
People think Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia, but that's just an
analogy. The truth is Wikipedia is something new and different and what
it
is is a matter of negotiation within the Wikipedia community.
I don't think that this line of reasoning gets us anywhere. It just gets us into a lot of semantic debate about the nature of an encyclopedia, a debate for which there is no firm answer. This debate was largely superceded with the founding of the sister projects as spin-offs for ideas that did not really fit into the definition of an encyclopedia. What is new and different then is Wikimedia.
Wikipedia is still different in substantial ways from a traditional encyclopedia, and people who try to make it "more like an encyclopedia" are going to be disappointed.
Pesonally I don't care whether webcomics are included or not. I think it's a shame that we have no articles on [[Dance in China]] or [[Media of China]], and [[Military of China]] and [[Tourism in China]] are just stubs.
Adam
T P wrote:
On 2/25/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
T P wrote:
I think many people fail to realize that Wikipedia is and always will be a
work-in-progress. We really don't know what our notability policy is, and
there are no easy answers. Stan Shebs was quite right when he pointed out
that there are no known solutions to this problem.
That being the case editors and admins should stop pretending that there is a solution.
I should have said there are no good solutions. This problem requires a working solution, and we do have one.
And a working solution need not be a panacea. If it helps to solve some problems it becomes a stepping stone to further solutions.
People think Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia, but that's just an
analogy. The truth is Wikipedia is something new and different and what it
is is a matter of negotiation within the Wikipedia community.
I don't think that this line of reasoning gets us anywhere. It just gets us into a lot of semantic debate about the nature of an encyclopedia, a debate for which there is no firm answer. This debate was largely superceded with the founding of the sister projects as spin-offs for ideas that did not really fit into the definition of an encyclopedia. What is new and different then is Wikimedia.
Wikipedia is still different in substantial ways from a traditional encyclopedia, and people who try to make it "more like an encyclopedia" are going to be disappointed.
If they start with preconceived notions about the nature of an encyclopedia, certainly. These are the people who are likely to try to shape Wikipedia to those notions. With a more open vision and fewer expectations we are less likely to be disappointed
Pesonally I don't care whether webcomics are included or not. I think it's a shame that we have no articles on [[Dance in China]] or [[Media of China]], and [[Military of China]] and [[Tourism in China]] are just stubs.
Those people who are doing a good job with webcomics, by whatever standard that sub-community sets, do so partly because the subject interests them. If we ban webcomics articles outright they are more likely to go away than to start writing scholarly articles about China.. Very few of them would know anything about the subject.
Ec
On 2/25/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I should have said there are no good solutions. This problem requires a working solution, and we do have one.
And a working solution need not be a panacea. If it helps to solve some problems it becomes a stepping stone to further solutions.
I would never claim our current solution is the final one. But we do need to take the criticism of people like Scott McCloud with a grain of salt.
Pesonally I don't care whether webcomics are included or not. I think it's
a shame that we have no articles on [[Dance in China]] or [[Media of China]], and [[Military of China]] and [[Tourism in China]] are just
stubs.
Those people who are doing a good job with webcomics, by whatever standard that sub-community sets, do so partly because the subject interests them. If we ban webcomics articles outright they are more likely to go away than to start writing scholarly articles about China.. Very few of them would know anything about the subject.
No, of course not. I'm just saying we all have different priorities for Wikipedia.
Adam
On 2/26/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/25/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I should have said there are no good solutions. This problem requires a working solution, and we do have one.
And a working solution need not be a panacea. If it helps to solve some problems it becomes a stepping stone to further solutions.
I would never claim our current solution is the final one. But we do need to take the criticism of people like Scott McCloud with a grain of salt.
Because he's a best-selling author and respected expert in his field?
On 26/02/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/26/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
I would never claim our current solution is the final one. But we do need to take the criticism of people like Scott McCloud with a grain of salt.
Because he's a best-selling author and respected expert in his field?
Exactly. Obviously, if you ask his expert opinion on comics, you have to Assume Bad Faith and assume he'll ... I dunno, do something obviously bad. You know those comics experts. Far better to ask obnoxious teenage nerds who have no subject-area knowledge at all but sure can't tolerate grey areas.
- d.
This is insane. Is it impossible to imagine that Scout McCloud might have a bias towards assuming the whole field of webcomics is more important than it really is?
Adam
On 2/26/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 26/02/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/26/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
I would never claim our current solution is the final one. But we do
need
to take the criticism of people like Scott McCloud with a grain of
salt.
Because he's a best-selling author and respected expert in his field?
Exactly. Obviously, if you ask his expert opinion on comics, you have to Assume Bad Faith and assume he'll ... I dunno, do something obviously bad. You know those comics experts. Far better to ask obnoxious teenage nerds who have no subject-area knowledge at all but sure can't tolerate grey areas.
- d.
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David Gerard wrote:
On 26/02/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/26/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
I would never claim our current solution is the final one. But we do need to take the criticism of people like Scott McCloud with a grain of salt.
Because he's a best-selling author and respected expert in his field?
Exactly. Obviously, if you ask his expert opinion on comics, you have to Assume Bad Faith and assume he'll ... I dunno, do something obviously bad. You know those comics experts.
Yeah. Comic experts are funny that way. :-)
Ec
Because he's an expert in the field of webcomics and no existing encyclopedia has an article on any of them.
Adam
On 2/26/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/26/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/25/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I should have said there are no good solutions. This problem
requires a
working solution, and we do have one.
And a working solution need not be a panacea. If it helps to solve
some
problems it becomes a stepping stone to further solutions.
I would never claim our current solution is the final one. But we do
need
to take the criticism of people like Scott McCloud with a grain of salt.
Because he's a best-selling author and respected expert in his field?
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All right, I didn't know that. But the point stands that experts in their fields routinely overestimate the importance of their fields.
Adam
On 2/26/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 26, 2007, at 7:09 PM, T P wrote:
Because he's an expert in the field of webcomics
That's not true. He is clearly an expert on comics in general.
-Phil _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 27/02/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/26/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 26, 2007, at 7:09 PM, T P wrote:
Because he's an expert in the field of webcomics
That's not true. He is clearly an expert on comics in general.
All right, I didn't know that. But the point stands that experts in their fields routinely overestimate the importance of their fields.
The point also stands that you're clearly assuming that if you don't know about it (as you just showed you didn't) then it must not be important or relevant. This is the fundamental stupidity at the heart of the AFD problem.
- d.
I think assuming that Scout McCloud's POV outweighs mine is bad.
I am not claiming that the field is not important. I am claiming that we shouldn't take Scout McCloud's word for it that it is important.
This is what "a grain of salt" means, that you should not swallow someone's opinion whole. It doesn't mean that you should ignore their opinion entirely.
Adam
On 2/26/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 27/02/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/26/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 26, 2007, at 7:09 PM, T P wrote:
Because he's an expert in the field of webcomics
That's not true. He is clearly an expert on comics in general.
All right, I didn't know that. But the point stands that experts in
their
fields routinely overestimate the importance of their fields.
The point also stands that you're clearly assuming that if you don't know about it (as you just showed you didn't) then it must not be important or relevant. This is the fundamental stupidity at the heart of the AFD problem.
- d.
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On 2/26/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
I think assuming that Scout McCloud's POV outweighs mine is bad.
I am not claiming that the field is not important. I am claiming that we shouldn't take Scout McCloud's word for it that it is important.
Right, and I'm asking you why we shouldn't, considering that he is one of the world's top experts on sequential art.
I'd take Lonnie Thompson's word for what's important with respect to glaciology.
This is what "a grain of salt" means, that you should not swallow someone's opinion whole. It doesn't mean that you should ignore their opinion entirely.
Were you being ironically didactic, or do you actually think I didn't understand you?
On 2/26/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 27/02/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/26/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 26, 2007, at 7:09 PM, T P wrote:
Because he's an expert in the field of webcomics
That's not true. He is clearly an expert on comics in general.
All right, I didn't know that. But the point stands that experts in
their
fields routinely overestimate the importance of their fields.
The point also stands that you're clearly assuming that if you don't know about it (as you just showed you didn't) then it must not be important or relevant. This is the fundamental stupidity at the heart of the AFD problem.
- d.
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You know, I don't feel the need to talk to you anymore.
Adam
On 2/26/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/26/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
I think assuming that Scout McCloud's POV outweighs mine is bad.
I am not claiming that the field is not important. I am claiming that
we
shouldn't take Scout McCloud's word for it that it is important.
Right, and I'm asking you why we shouldn't, considering that he is one of the world's top experts on sequential art.
I'd take Lonnie Thompson's word for what's important with respect to glaciology.
This is what "a grain of salt" means, that you should not swallow
someone's
opinion whole. It doesn't mean that you should ignore their opinion entirely.
Were you being ironically didactic, or do you actually think I didn't understand you?
On 2/26/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 27/02/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/26/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 26, 2007, at 7:09 PM, T P wrote:
Because he's an expert in the field of webcomics
That's not true. He is clearly an expert on comics in general.
All right, I didn't know that. But the point stands that experts in
their
fields routinely overestimate the importance of their fields.
The point also stands that you're clearly assuming that if you don't know about it (as you just showed you didn't) then it must not be important or relevant. This is the fundamental stupidity at the heart of the AFD problem.
- d.
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On 27/02/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
You know, I don't feel the need to talk to you anymore.
Or you could, you know, actually address the points raised.
AFD's endemic attitudes and the almost entirely spurious, subjective and arbitrary notion of "notability" as it's applied are a major and ongoing disaster for relations between Wikipedia and the outside world it's supposedly serving, and you can't pretend otherwise. It's spent about two years now singularly failing to get its own house in order and I think I'll happily start encouraging whatever needs to be done to force it to. You can ignore this if you like.
- d.
Sorry, I don't think it's that important. Certainly not important enough for me to participate in a conversation where I am being insulted.
Adam
On 2/26/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 27/02/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
You know, I don't feel the need to talk to you anymore.
Or you could, you know, actually address the points raised.
AFD's endemic attitudes and the almost entirely spurious, subjective and arbitrary notion of "notability" as it's applied are a major and ongoing disaster for relations between Wikipedia and the outside world it's supposedly serving, and you can't pretend otherwise. It's spent about two years now singularly failing to get its own house in order and I think I'll happily start encouraging whatever needs to be done to force it to. You can ignore this if you like.
- d.
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T P wrote:
I think assuming that Scout McCloud's POV outweighs mine is bad.
I don't. I stay away from all science discussions because I don't know science. People may be smart to do the same regarding webcomics, especially when we have people who DO know webcomics who have more significant input.
I am not claiming that the field is not important. I am claiming that we shouldn't take Scout McCloud's word for it that it is important.
The idea that an "expert" (I put it in quotes for a reason) wouldn't better understand the importance of something is somewhat insane, Adam. This isn't our traditional content debate, where we're discussing whether something is verifiable - verifiability doesn't really change depending on whether a person is an expert or not - but it's a discussion as to something's significance in the absence of traditional reference. Maybe in 15 years, people will write books and papers on webcomics, and we'll be able to refer to seminal webcomics the way we can with seminal emo bands now - bands that were significant 15 years ago, but only got written about recently. Until then, do we look stupid and ignore it, or invite input from people who know better than us? We talk about "common sense" here, this seems like a no-brainer to me.
-Jeff
There's nothing stupid about a prestigious reference work (as Wikipedia has become) waiting for a field to become significant before writing about it. If it becomes significant in fifteen years, we can write about it in fifteen years. [[WP:MASTODON]]
Adam
On 2/26/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
T P wrote:
I think assuming that Scout McCloud's POV outweighs mine is bad.
I don't. I stay away from all science discussions because I don't know science. People may be smart to do the same regarding webcomics, especially when we have people who DO know webcomics who have more significant input.
I am not claiming that the field is not important. I am claiming that
we
shouldn't take Scout McCloud's word for it that it is important.
The idea that an "expert" (I put it in quotes for a reason) wouldn't better understand the importance of something is somewhat insane, Adam. This isn't our traditional content debate, where we're discussing whether something is verifiable - verifiability doesn't really change depending on whether a person is an expert or not - but it's a discussion as to something's significance in the absence of traditional reference. Maybe in 15 years, people will write books and papers on webcomics, and we'll be able to refer to seminal webcomics the way we can with seminal emo bands now - bands that were significant 15 years ago, but only got written about recently. Until then, do we look stupid and ignore it, or invite input from people who know better than us? We talk about "common sense" here, this seems like a no-brainer to me.
-Jeff
-- Name: Jeff Raymond E-mail: jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com WWW: http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com IM: badlydrawnjeff Quote: "As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else." - Sen. Rick Santorum on the war in Iraq.
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T P wrote:
There's nothing stupid about a prestigious reference work (as Wikipedia has become) waiting for a field to become significant before writing about it. If it becomes significant in fifteen years, we can write about it in fifteen years. [[WP:MASTODON]]
The world is moving faster than that. One unique feature about Wikipedia is that it is contemporaneous with its content. Some of the details which make our time what it is are ephemeral, and may not be researchable in fifteen years.
Ec
On 2/27/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
T P wrote:
There's nothing stupid about a prestigious reference work (as Wikipedia
has
become) waiting for a field to become significant before writing about
it.
If it becomes significant in fifteen years, we can write about it in
fifteen
years. [[WP:MASTODON]]
The world is moving faster than that. One unique feature about Wikipedia is that it is contemporaneous with its content. Some of the details which make our time what it is are ephemeral, and may not be researchable in fifteen years.
Ec
Wait a minute...are you saying that all the secondary sources on a particular topic available now will no longer be available in fifteen years? It's difficult to imagine that being true, unless it's for some particularly rare topic. I can't imagine many ephemeral fields where many articles are allegedly unfairly being deleted.
It's possible webcomics are one of those fields - and I'm not saying they aren't - but normally one argument in favour of waiting is that we rarely have the necessary perspective now, but that given a certain amount of time, we will be able to look back and better assess what is important, and what is not. The idea is that some subjects will no longer be researchable, but that this is a good thing, because of some form of darwinisim, i.e. the non-notable chaff will be separated from the wheat.
I'm not saying I endorse this line of thought, but it's an interesting one that shouldn't be rejected out of hand.
Johnleemk
John Lee wrote:
On 2/27/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
T P wrote:
There's nothing stupid about a prestigious reference work (as Wikipedia has
become) waiting for a field to become significant before writing about it.
If it becomes significant in fifteen years, we can write about it in fifteen
years.
The world is moving faster than that. One unique feature about Wikipedia is that it is contemporaneous with its content. Some of the details which make our time what it is are ephemeral, and may not be researchable in fifteen years.
Wait a minute...are you saying that all the secondary sources on a particular topic available now will no longer be available in fifteen years? It's difficult to imagine that being true, unless it's for some particularly rare topic. I can't imagine many ephemeral fields where many articles are allegedly unfairly being deleted.
It's possible webcomics are one of those fields - and I'm not saying they aren't - but normally one argument in favour of waiting is that we rarely have the necessary perspective now, but that given a certain amount of time, we will be able to look back and better assess what is important, and what is not. The idea is that some subjects will no longer be researchable, but that this is a good thing, because of some form of darwinisim, i.e. the non-notable chaff will be separated from the wheat.
I'm not saying I endorse this line of thought, but it's an interesting one that shouldn't be rejected out of hand.
I wouldn't say that they will _all_ disappear. There is bound to be a certain randomness about what disappears.. Using webcomics for the sake of argument, some will almost certainly disappear, but we cannot know now which will be notable fifteen years hense. Many will reflect a zeitgeist, but you are a least right when you say that we do not now have the necessary perspective We can still represent the basics of a specific webcomic. So too can someone else do that for another webcomic This sets up the building blocks for the more evaluative article that will be written in 15 years. This will be especially important in pop culture articles.
Ec
The problem is that you've made multiple assertions that could be described as "Scott McCloud is A, so B", but as has been shown, you don't know enough about him to accurately state A, and B does not necessarily follow from the A you have stated. [[Scott McCloud]] is a good brief summary. I suggest reading it.
I don't think anyone's claimed he has some special power to rate the importance of, say, webcomics in relation to the whole of human knowledge. He is, however, the single most qualified person I can think of to rate the relative importance of topics within the field of comics, and among the most qualified in the broader field of sequential art. It's up to the community as a whole to determine how much importance that field has in Wikipedia. I think you'd find it to have a fair amount of support.
-- Jake Nelson [[en:User:Jake Nelson]]
On 2/26/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
I think assuming that Scout McCloud's POV outweighs mine is bad.
I am not claiming that the field is not important. I am claiming that we shouldn't take Scout McCloud's word for it that it is important.
This is what "a grain of salt" means, that you should not swallow someone's opinion whole. It doesn't mean that you should ignore their opinion entirely.
Adam
On 2/26/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 27/02/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/26/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 26, 2007, at 7:09 PM, T P wrote:
Because he's an expert in the field of webcomics
That's not true. He is clearly an expert on comics in general.
All right, I didn't know that. But the point stands that experts in
their
fields routinely overestimate the importance of their fields.
The point also stands that you're clearly assuming that if you don't know about it (as you just showed you didn't) then it must not be important or relevant. This is the fundamental stupidity at the heart of the AFD problem.
- d.
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There's nothing wrong with taking into account the opinions of people who know nothing about webcomics. They have the advantage of objectivity, which Scout McCloud does not.
Adam
On 2/26/07, Jake Nelson duskwave@gmail.com wrote:
The problem is that you've made multiple assertions that could be described as "Scott McCloud is A, so B", but as has been shown, you don't know enough about him to accurately state A, and B does not necessarily follow from the A you have stated. [[Scott McCloud]] is a good brief summary. I suggest reading it.
I don't think anyone's claimed he has some special power to rate the importance of, say, webcomics in relation to the whole of human knowledge. He is, however, the single most qualified person I can think of to rate the relative importance of topics within the field of comics, and among the most qualified in the broader field of sequential art. It's up to the community as a whole to determine how much importance that field has in Wikipedia. I think you'd find it to have a fair amount of support.
-- Jake Nelson [[en:User:Jake Nelson]]
On 2/26/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
I think assuming that Scout McCloud's POV outweighs mine is bad.
I am not claiming that the field is not important. I am claiming that
we
shouldn't take Scout McCloud's word for it that it is important.
This is what "a grain of salt" means, that you should not swallow
someone's
opinion whole. It doesn't mean that you should ignore their opinion entirely.
Adam
On 2/26/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 27/02/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/26/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 26, 2007, at 7:09 PM, T P wrote:
Because he's an expert in the field of webcomics
That's not true. He is clearly an expert on comics in general.
All right, I didn't know that. But the point stands that experts in
their
fields routinely overestimate the importance of their fields.
The point also stands that you're clearly assuming that if you don't know about it (as you just showed you didn't) then it must not be important or relevant. This is the fundamental stupidity at the heart of the AFD problem.
- d.
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On Feb 26, 2007, at 8:19 PM, T P wrote:
There's nothing wrong with taking into account the opinions of people who know nothing about webcomics. They have the advantage of objectivity, which Scout McCloud does not.
I tend to think that someone who knows nothing about webcomics is just as biased as someone who knows a lot, just in the other direction.
If somebody doesn't know anything about the subject, I'm unconvinced they have anything useful to say on the subject beyond, perhaps, some attention to style, structure, etc.
This sort of "experts are worse than clueless people" attitude pops up occasionally. It is, I think, worth ignoring entirely.
-Phil
On 27/02/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
This sort of "experts are worse than clueless people" attitude pops up occasionally. It is, I think, worth ignoring entirely.
It verges on policy at AFD and DRV, which is a big problem with those areas. Our friend T P typifies the attitude: apparently proud of knowing nothing rather than the curse of subject area expertise.
- d.
Thanks for the insult.
Adam
On 2/26/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 27/02/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
This sort of "experts are worse than clueless people" attitude pops up occasionally. It is, I think, worth ignoring entirely.
It verges on policy at AFD and DRV, which is a big problem with those areas. Our friend T P typifies the attitude: apparently proud of knowing nothing rather than the curse of subject area expertise.
- d.
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On 27/02/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks for the insult.
You appear to be unable to support your attitudes when they are described back to you. Perhaps you need to communicate better. Particularly having claimed excellence in writing.
- d.
On 2/26/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
You appear to be unable to support your attitudes when they are described back to you. Perhaps you need to communicate better. Particularly having claimed excellence in writing.
You appear to be unable to understand what I say. If you responded politely, I would try explaining to you. Since you choose to respond with insults, I have no desire to talk to you.
Adam
On Feb 26, 2007, at 8:34 PM, T P wrote:
On 2/26/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
You appear to be unable to support your attitudes when they are described back to you. Perhaps you need to communicate better. Particularly having claimed excellence in writing.
You appear to be unable to understand what I say. If you responded politely, I would try explaining to you. Since you choose to respond with insults, I have no desire to talk to you.
I've read David's replies, and honestly, I don't think he's insulting you. I think he has no respect for your viewpoint as it's presented thus far. That's a valid response, albeit one that you're probably not that fond of.
Truth be told, I can't find many points in your last few e-mails that I agree with on any level either.
-Phil
On 2/26/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
I've read David's replies, and honestly, I don't think he's insulting you. I think he has no respect for your viewpoint as it's presented thus far. That's a valid response, albeit one that you're probably not that fond of.
Truth be told, I can't find many points in your last few e-mails that I agree with on any level either.
He clearly has no respect for me. But it is possible to disagree on things while still respecting each other. That is precisely what you are doing, and it is why I am still talking to you.
Adam
On 2/26/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 26, 2007, at 8:19 PM, T P wrote:
There's nothing wrong with taking into account the opinions of people who know nothing about webcomics. They have the advantage of objectivity, which Scout McCloud does not.
I tend to think that someone who knows nothing about webcomics is just as biased as someone who knows a lot, just in the other direction.
If somebody doesn't know anything about the subject, I'm unconvinced they have anything useful to say on the subject beyond, perhaps, some attention to style, structure, etc.
This sort of "experts are worse than clueless people" attitude pops up occasionally. It is, I think, worth ignoring entirely.
I don't have a lot of patience, so I hope you give me credit for trying.
I never said "experts are worse than clueless people" and I never will.
Everybody has biases. Wikipedia deals with that by forcing people with different biases to come to consensus.
If you want a project where experts have more say than the rest, go to Citizendium.
Adam
On Feb 26, 2007, at 8:27 PM, T P wrote:
If you want a project where experts have more say than the rest, go to Citizendium.
This misunderstands something kinda fundamental.
The difference between Wikipedia and Citizendium is not that Citizendium wants to be respected by experts and Wikipedia doesn't. Both projects aim to write encyclopedia articles that experts can look at and say "Yeah, that's pretty good."
The difference is in approach. Citizendium believes that the best way to do this is to have only or primarily experts write the articles. Wikipedia believes that we can write good articles without having to worry about credential checking.
That doesn't mean that "what do the experts say" loses its validity as a test. It's just that our solution to the problem that our coverage of comics (not just webcomics, it should be noted) is crap is not to say "Oh, well let's just have Scott McCloud write all the articles." It's to say "OK, the experts say we blew this. Let's go back and fix it."
-Phil
On 2/26/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
That doesn't mean that "what do the experts say" loses its validity as a test. It's just that our solution to the problem that our coverage of comics (not just webcomics, it should be noted) is crap is not to say "Oh, well let's just have Scott McCloud write all the articles." It's to say "OK, the experts say we blew this. Let's go back and fix it."
I noted elsewhere that, as a volunteeer effort, Wikipedia is primarily written to satisfiy the needs of the writers. "Our coverage of comics is crap" is an opinion. It may be an expert opinion, but it's still just an opinion. Whether that is important or not is still just an opinion. Practically speaking, what matters is the opinions of the people working on Wikipedia, because you sure as hell aren't going to "fix" Wikipedia just because outsiders think it's broken.
Adam
On Feb 26, 2007, at 8:40 PM, T P wrote:
I noted elsewhere that, as a volunteeer effort, Wikipedia is primarily written to satisfiy the needs of the writers.
and
Practically speaking, what matters is the opinions of the people working on Wikipedia, because you sure as hell aren't going to "fix" Wikipedia just because outsiders think it's broken.
There's not much to say here. Both of these statements are, I think, 100% wrong. They are the polar opposite of how Wikipedia should work. They represent the exact instinct that causes many of the problems I've been describing here. I think it is vital that we do everything we can to resist these attitudes on every conceivable level.
-Phil
On Feb 26, 2007, at 8:40 PM, T P wrote:
I noted elsewhere that, as a volunteeer effort, Wikipedia is primarily written to satisfiy the needs of the writers.
and
Practically speaking, what matters is the opinions of the people working on Wikipedia, because you sure as hell aren't going to "fix" Wikipedia just because outsiders think it's broken.
on 2/26/07 8:44 PM, Phil Sandifer at Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
There's not much to say here. Both of these statements are, I think, 100% wrong. They are the polar opposite of how Wikipedia should work.
Absolutely!
They represent the exact instinct that causes many of the problems I've been describing here. I think it is vital that we do everything we can to resist these attitudes on every conceivable level.
This is also much of what I have been trying to say.
Marc Riddell
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On 2/26/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
On Feb 26, 2007, at 8:40 PM, T P wrote:
I noted elsewhere that, as a volunteeer effort, Wikipedia is primarily written to satisfiy the needs of the writers.
and
Practically speaking, what matters is the opinions of the people working on Wikipedia, because you sure as hell aren't going to "fix" Wikipedia just because outsiders think it's broken.
on 2/26/07 8:44 PM, Phil Sandifer at Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
There's not much to say here. Both of these statements are, I think, 100% wrong. They are the polar opposite of how Wikipedia should work.
They represent the exact instinct that causes many of the problems
I've been describing here. I think it is vital that we do everything
we can to resist these attitudes on every conceivable level.
I think you need to distinguish between the way Wikipedia works and the way you think it should work. My comments relate to the former. Yours relate to the latter.
If you can think of a way to make a volunteer organization like Wikipedia work the way you think it should work, more power to you.
Adam
On 2/27/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/26/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
On Feb 26, 2007, at 8:40 PM, T P wrote:
I noted elsewhere that, as a volunteeer effort, Wikipedia is
primarily
written to satisfiy the needs of the writers.
and
Practically speaking, what matters is the opinions of the people working on Wikipedia, because you sure as hell aren't going to "fix" Wikipedia just because outsiders think it's broken.
on 2/26/07 8:44 PM, Phil Sandifer at Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
There's not much to say here. Both of these statements are, I think, 100% wrong. They are the polar opposite of how Wikipedia should work.
They represent the exact instinct that causes many of the problems
I've been describing here. I think it is vital that we do everything
we can to resist these attitudes on every conceivable level.
I think you need to distinguish between the way Wikipedia works and the way you think it should work. My comments relate to the former. Yours relate to the latter.
If you can think of a way to make a volunteer organization like Wikipedia work the way you think it should work, more power to you.
Adam
Correction: that's the way *AfD* works. You note that WP exists to serve the writers, but most (if not all) of those commenting on certain nominations may have never written on the topic concerned. That's not to say they should be ignored, because WP works by consensus, but if the people who know most about a field are writing about something, or saying that something deserves an article, then generally shouldn't it be included, unless it fails certain guidelines/policies, e.g. verifiability?
Johnleemk
On 2/27/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
Correction: that's the way *AfD* works. You note that WP exists to serve the writers, but most (if not all) of those commenting on certain nominations may have never written on the topic concerned. That's not to say they should be ignored, because WP works by consensus, but if the people who know most about a field are writing about something, or saying that something deserves an article, then generally shouldn't it be included, unless it fails certain guidelines/policies, e.g. verifiability?
Johnleemk
Problem is that those argueing for deletion are baseing thier arguments on the article failing [[Wikipedia:Attribution]].
On 2/26/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
Correction: that's the way *AfD* works. You note that WP exists to serve the writers, but most (if not all) of those commenting on certain nominations may have never written on the topic concerned. That's not to say they should be ignored, because WP works by consensus, but if the people who know most about a field are writing about something, or saying that something deserves an article, then generally shouldn't it be included, unless it fails certain guidelines/policies, e.g. verifiability?
I don't see how to fix AfD to address your concerns. We'd have to evaluate the relative worth of different commentators based on their expertise, which is a big can of worms.
Adam
On 2/26/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/26/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
On Feb 26, 2007, at 8:40 PM, T P wrote:
I noted elsewhere that, as a volunteeer effort, Wikipedia is primarily written to satisfiy the needs of the writers.
and
Practically speaking, what matters is the opinions of the people working on Wikipedia, because you sure as hell aren't going to "fix" Wikipedia just because outsiders think it's broken.
on 2/26/07 8:44 PM, Phil Sandifer at Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
There's not much to say here. Both of these statements are, I think, 100% wrong. They are the polar opposite of how Wikipedia should work.
They represent the exact instinct that causes many of the problems
I've been describing here. I think it is vital that we do everything
we can to resist these attitudes on every conceivable level.
I think you need to distinguish between the way Wikipedia works and the way you think it should work. My comments relate to the former. Yours relate to the latter.
If you can think of a way to make a volunteer organization like Wikipedia work the way you think it should work, more power to you.
I think it's important to keep in mind that the goals and desires of the individuals contributing are not the same as the goals and desires of the collective organization.
An individual will contribute what they want to, true, but we can structurally set things up and guide them at the organizational level (policies, participation in meta-discussions, etc) to encourage or discourage individual behaviors among admins.
In general, if an expert in a field tells someone in Wikipedia leadership (loosely, anyone who's participating actively... if you post to Wikien-L you probably count) that they think that WP covers their area of expertise poorly, the leader should inquire further to find out if they understand Wikipedia (many won't, and engagement there will be helpful).
If they do basically understand Wikipedia, then we might want to listen to them.
In particular, criticism from outside that our processes are opaque or too complicated or too arbitrary should be listened to. Some of the most insightful comments on our processes come from new users who have just encountered them for the first time.
Process evolves for reasons, both internal and external. Process is largely but not exclusively executed by insiders who have high degrees of knowledge of the system. If we intend to form an oligarchy of the insider, we can ignore outside complaints about the process, but that's sort of antithetical to the project's goals in the first place.
My two cents: out current AFD suffers from lack of consistent notability guidelines. Our notability guidelines suffer from lack of consensus - we're in a dynamic tension between inclusionism and deletionism. They are not clearer and more precise because we don't fundamentally agree about what we're trying to do with them.
This is no doubt baffling to the uninitiated.
The only real way to seriously improve things is ultimately to pick a set of notability pillars from whence topic-specific notability guidelines can be derived. I do not know if there is enough common ground for a consensus be develop on what those could be; it might have to be imposed from without (or Jimbo fiat, or some such) to succeed.
On 2/26/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
In particular, criticism from outside that our processes are opaque or too complicated or too arbitrary should be listened to. Some of the most insightful comments on our processes come from new users who have just encountered them for the first time.
I would never argue that we should ignore outside criticism. But there's no need to panic.
The only real way to seriously improve things is ultimately to pick a
set of notability pillars from whence topic-specific notability guidelines can be derived.
Stan Shebs' point (which is how I got involved here in the first place) is that deriving a notability policy from first principles is impossible.
Adam
On 2/26/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/26/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
On Feb 26, 2007, at 8:40 PM, T P wrote:
I noted elsewhere that, as a volunteeer effort, Wikipedia is
primarily
written to satisfiy the needs of the writers.
and
Practically speaking, what matters is the opinions of the people working on Wikipedia, because you sure as hell aren't going to "fix" Wikipedia just because outsiders think it's broken.
on 2/26/07 8:44 PM, Phil Sandifer at Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
There's not much to say here. Both of these statements are, I think, 100% wrong. They are the polar opposite of how Wikipedia should work.
They represent the exact instinct that causes many of the problems
I've been describing here. I think it is vital that we do everything
we can to resist these attitudes on every conceivable level.
I think you need to distinguish between the way Wikipedia works and the way you think it should work. My comments relate to the former. Yours relate to the latter.
If you can think of a way to make a volunteer organization like Wikipedia work the way you think it should work, more power to you.
I think you need to distinguish between the way Wikipedia works and the way you think it should work. My comments relate to the former. Yours relate to the latter.
If you can think of a way to make a volunteer organization like Wikipedia work the way you think it should work, more power to you.
T P wrote:
I think assuming that Scout McCloud's POV outweighs mine is bad.
I am not claiming that the field is not important. I am claiming that we shouldn't take Scout McCloud's word for it that it is important.
This is what "a grain of salt" means, that you should not swallow someone's opinion whole. It doesn't mean that you should ignore their opinion entirely.
If all we are arguing about is whether the field is important,and whose word is strong enough to attest to that we might as well grow tails so that we can have something to chase. The subject is at least important enough for us to have a debate about it.
Since I have not studied the subject I have no basis for attributing weight to anybody's opinion within the field. but recognized "experts" would be a good starting place. If you dispute a specific opinion of his I would take that into consideration; eventually experience would let me know whose views to believe. I have always been cautious about expert opinion, but I am not inclined to prejudicially reject their views.
Ec
On 2/27/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I have always been cautious about expert opinion, but I am not inclined to prejudicially reject their views.
I've said it several times now, I am not advocating prejudicially rejecting anyone's views.
Adam
On 2/27/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
The point also stands that you're clearly assuming that if you don't know about it (as you just showed you didn't) then it must not be important or relevant. This is the fundamental stupidity at the heart of the AFD problem.
Sadly it isn't that simple (there are various ways that problem could be solved). Most people don't know about [[Titanium tetrachloride]] but I doubt you could get it through AFD.
geni wrote:
On 2/27/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
The point also stands that you're clearly assuming that if you don't know about it (as you just showed you didn't) then it must not be important or relevant. This is the fundamental stupidity at the heart of the AFD problem.
Sadly it isn't that simple (there are various ways that problem could be solved). Most people don't know about [[Titanium tetrachloride]] but I doubt you could get it through AFD.
Yeah, I think you're right. My guess is that, since most people can read and at least at some level appreciate a comic, they begin to develop opinions about the comics they read in specific, and all comics in general. On the other hand, with a topic like [[Titanium tetrachloride]], most people will have no particular opinion about it or it's relatives. Most people may have heard of some chemical names, may know a thing or two, but also realize that there's a whole bunch of important chemical names they've never heard of.
Besides, Titanium tetrachloride sounds so much more important than "Sparky the Wonder Flea" (made up name, I hope).
-Rich
You do realize that Wikipedia is NOT PAPER, right?
On 2/26/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
All right, I didn't know that. But the point stands that experts in their fields routinely overestimate the importance of their fields.
Adam
On 2/26/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 26, 2007, at 7:09 PM, T P wrote:
Because he's an expert in the field of webcomics
That's not true. He is clearly an expert on comics in general.
-Phil _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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Don't insult me.
Adam
On 2/26/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
You do realize that Wikipedia is NOT PAPER, right?
On 2/26/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
All right, I didn't know that. But the point stands that experts in
their
fields routinely overestimate the importance of their fields.
Adam
On 2/26/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 26, 2007, at 7:09 PM, T P wrote:
Because he's an expert in the field of webcomics
That's not true. He is clearly an expert on comics in general.
-Phil _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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T P wrote:
On 2/26/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/26/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
All right, I didn't know that. But the point stands that experts in their fields routinely overestimate the importance of their fields.
You do realize that Wikipedia is NOT PAPER, right?
Don't insult me.
Although it was poorly put, I think there's a point in there. EB, due to space limitations, is a general-purpose encyclopedia. But there are plenty of special-purpose ones out there, too. I'm not immediately seeing why Wikipedia can't include just EB topics, but every other special-purpose encyclopedia out there.
Sure, the team who made the Encyclopedia of Polymeric Materials or the Encylopedia of International Political Economy or the Encyclopedia of Fashion Accessories (all real, I swear) think that their topic is pretty important, or they wouldn't have spent years making an encyclopedia. But why would that matter?
If Scott McCloud were making the Encyclopedia of Sequential Art, wouldn't we want an entry on every single topic he thought important enough to include?
William
Not everything in the "Encyclopedia of Sequential Art" belongs in Wikipedia.
Adam
On 2/26/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 26, 2007, at 8:10 PM, William Pietri wrote:
If Scott McCloud were making the Encyclopedia of Sequential Art, wouldn't we want an entry on every single topic he thought important enough to include?
Exactly.
-Phil _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Hi, Adam. I know you're in a rush to reply to various parties here, but could you avoid top-posting? It makes it hard on readers, and as a correspondent it means I have to do more cleanup to reply to one of your posts.
On to your point.
T P wrote:
If Scott McCloud were making the Encyclopedia of Sequential Art, wouldn't we want an entry on every single topic he thought important enough to include?
Not everything in the "Encyclopedia of Sequential Art" belongs in Wikipedia.
Ok.
Would you mind fleshing that out for me? I've just leafed through a couple special-purpose reference works I have around. I'm not seeing an obvious dividing line between topics. What would you leave out from special-purpose encyclopedias? If possible, I'd like a rule that applies to the Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy just as well as the Encyclopedia of Fashion Accessories.
It's also be great if you could ground your rule in some practical reason why it's bad.
Thanks,
William
On 2/26/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
T P wrote:
Not everything in the "Encyclopedia of Sequential Art" belongs in
Wikipedia.
Would you mind fleshing that out for me? I've just leafed through a couple special-purpose reference works I have around. I'm not seeing an obvious dividing line between topics. What would you leave out from special-purpose encyclopedias? If possible, I'd like a rule that applies to the Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy just as well as the Encyclopedia of Fashion Accessories.
It's also be great if you could ground your rule in some practical reason why it's bad.
I should have been more clear that that is my personal opinion. As I mentioned in another post, if the Wikipedia community decides, in fact, that everything included in any encyclopedia belongs in Wikipedia, then that's fine.
Adam
T P wrote:
On 2/26/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
T P wrote:
Not everything in the "Encyclopedia of Sequential Art" belongs in Wikipedia.
Would you mind fleshing that out for me? I've just leafed through a couple special-purpose reference works I have around. I'm not seeing an obvious dividing line between topics. What would you leave out from special-purpose encyclopedias? If possible, I'd like a rule that applies to the Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy just as well as the Encyclopedia of Fashion Accessories.
It's also be great if you could ground your rule in some practical reason why it's bad.
I should have been more clear that that is my personal opinion. As I mentioned in another post, if the Wikipedia community decides, in fact, that everything included in any encyclopedia belongs in Wikipedia, then that's fine.
That's great. But the way the community decides is, at least on the good days, through discussions like these. If you're hoping to have your opinion affect others, you'd do well to explain what you mean and how it would work. Maybe you're not ready to do that now, in which case feel free to start the thread up again when you have a more detailed way to explain what your opinion is, and how you see Wikipedia working based on it.
William
On 2/26/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
T P wrote:
I should have been more clear that that is my personal opinion. As I mentioned in another post, if the Wikipedia community decides, in fact,
that
everything included in any encyclopedia belongs in Wikipedia, then
that's
fine.
That's great. But the way the community decides is, at least on the good days, through discussions like these. If you're hoping to have your opinion affect others, you'd do well to explain what you mean and how it would work. Maybe you're not ready to do that now, in which case feel free to start the thread up again when you have a more detailed way to explain what your opinion is, and how you see Wikipedia working based on it.
In my case it's not such a strongly held opinion that I want to spend a lot of time explaining it. But if I think of anything I'll let you know.
Adam
On 27/02/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
In my case it's not such a strongly held opinion that I want to spend a lot of time explaining it. But if I think of anything I'll let you know.
Although I expect you won't answer, I'm now wondering what the hell you thought the point of participating so avidly in this thread was.
- d.
On 2/26/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 27/02/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote: Although I expect you won't answer, I'm now wondering what the hell you thought the point of participating so avidly in this thread was.
I participated in this thread for the same reason I participate in IRC.
And I think it's about as important.
Adam
That depends on what we want Wikipedia to be. If we want it to be the elaborated union of all existing encyclopedias, no matter how specialized, fine. But what we want Wikipedia to be is not to be decided strictly based on the opinions of experts. Citizendium is --> that way.
I think people are jumping to conclusions about my point. My point is not that webcomics should not be included. My point is that Scout McCloud's evaluation of notability should not carry more weight than the consensus of the people writing Wikipedia. If he wants to change Wikipedia he's welcome to join us in writing it.
Adam
On 2/26/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
T P wrote:
On 2/26/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/26/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
All right, I didn't know that. But the point stands that experts in their fields routinely overestimate the importance of their fields.
You do realize that Wikipedia is NOT PAPER, right?
Don't insult me.
Although it was poorly put, I think there's a point in there. EB, due to space limitations, is a general-purpose encyclopedia. But there are plenty of special-purpose ones out there, too. I'm not immediately seeing why Wikipedia can't include just EB topics, but every other special-purpose encyclopedia out there.
Sure, the team who made the Encyclopedia of Polymeric Materials or the Encylopedia of International Political Economy or the Encyclopedia of Fashion Accessories (all real, I swear) think that their topic is pretty important, or they wouldn't have spent years making an encyclopedia. But why would that matter?
If Scott McCloud were making the Encyclopedia of Sequential Art, wouldn't we want an entry on every single topic he thought important enough to include?
William
-- William Pietri william@scissor.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 27/02/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
I think people are jumping to conclusions about my point. My point is not that webcomics should not be included. My point is that Scout McCloud's evaluation of notability should not carry more weight than the consensus of the people writing Wikipedia. If he wants to change Wikipedia he's welcome to join us in writing it.
This again completely dodges the point that the row is between the writers on the subject and those who want to discourage them from writing on the subject by, apparently, any means necessary.
- d.
That may be your point. By now I no longer care what your point is.
Adam
On 2/26/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 27/02/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
I think people are jumping to conclusions about my point. My point is
not
that webcomics should not be included. My point is that Scout McCloud's evaluation of notability should not carry more weight than the consensus
of
the people writing Wikipedia. If he wants to change Wikipedia he's
welcome
to join us in writing it.
This again completely dodges the point that the row is between the writers on the subject and those who want to discourage them from writing on the subject by, apparently, any means necessary.
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 2/27/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
This again completely dodges the point that the row is between the writers on the subject and those who want to discourage them from writing on the subject by, apparently, any means necessary.
- d.
More discourage them from writing on wikipedia before writing somewhere else.
Incerdentaly has anyone thought of contacting Mr McCloud and asking what he thinks standards of notability should be (and I don't more general I mean specific criteria). At the moment we seem rather to be guessing.
On 2/26/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Incerdentaly has anyone thought of contacting Mr McCloud and asking what he thinks standards of notability should be (and I don't more general I mean specific criteria). At the moment we seem rather to be guessing.
This is a productive suggestion.
Adam
On 2/27/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
That depends on what we want Wikipedia to be. If we want it to be the elaborated union of all existing encyclopedias, no matter how specialized, fine. But what we want Wikipedia to be is not to be decided strictly based on the opinions of experts. Citizendium is --> that way.
I think people are jumping to conclusions about my point. My point is not that webcomics should not be included. My point is that Scout McCloud's evaluation of notability should not carry more weight than the consensus of the people writing Wikipedia. If he wants to change Wikipedia he's welcome to join us in writing it.
Adam
I think something's been missed in the rush here. First of all, many of us (including myself, a longtime member of the Association of Deletionist Wikipedians - not that it means anything) have always thought that Wikipedia exists as an encyclopaedia. Not a general encyclopaedia, not a specific encyclopaedia, an encyclopaedia. If you can find published sources about something, then it's in. There's not really a much better way to solve the problem of deciding what's in and what's out, except through the question of notability.
Now, regarding notability, I think it's become a bit outmoded. Notability as a concept stems from the VfD days when we could not find valid reasons to delete an article, but the community agreed that it was not suitable for WP. Nowadays, almost any article that deserves to be deleted can be deleted without resort to notability. Typically, the article is unverifiable, innately biased, or whatever.
I think one of the worst things that has happened WRT deletion is the codification of notability - ironically as an attempt to make something subjective objective because inclusionists kept demanding that we have objective criteria for deletion. Notability is a placeholder concept for common sense. The trouble is, as WP scaled up, we got a lot more contributors without enough common sense to think about what they're doing, and so we decided to codify notability instead of either getting rid of it as outmoded, or finding some other way to keep common sense around for those who can use their noggins.
I really can't see the argument against including something that a specialist encyclopaedia (which is often a tertiary source) has an article about, unless the encyclopaedia itself is a primary source on the subject. Sure, a lot of the crap is trivial - I couldn't care less about some vintage postage stamp of which only half a dozen were ever made, or about some ridiculous Pokemon character. But if they're verifiable, they're in. The only question is whether we can keep enough common sense about ourselves, and get our editors to write these articles as they should be written, instead of dribbling over them like crazed fans (as happens so often with fiction-related articles).
As for the question of experts, I think this notion that WP is completely egalitarian is totally fictitious. From day one, some Wikipedians have been considered more qualified and worthy of having their opinions heard than others. WP is not a vote, and not all WPians have equal standing. This is just how it has always been, because if everyone is equal, if everyone has the same voice, then we are effectively an anarchy - which, contrary to what some might think, is not what WP is. We have some hierarchical structure - it's just very loose because often we don't need to rely on it.
When it comes to borderline issues, though, I think there has to be some external force acting on people to ensure we don't go overboard. This goes for whether we are having a content dispute, edit war, or yes, a borderline AfD. Until now, the only people whose voices have counted more have generally been Wikipedians. But I see no reason to exclude experts completely either from having a voice in how things go.
The demand that experts participate in WP is, I think, a little excessive. Many of these people don't have the time to participate, or don't think of it as a fruitful use of their time. That's not a reason to ignore them, however. The voices of experts should be given a little gravity, instead of completely ignored. In the past, we have deferred to the interests of people with a vested interest in the outcome of things, even when they have not said a word - Brian Peppers comes to mind. Here, someone without a vested interest - an objective observer - is commenting on an article, and yet we choose to ignore him. I don't see the logic in that.
If an article truly does not belong on Wikipedia, there are usually much better arguments to be made than "delete, nn". One problem I can think of with webcomics is verifiability - how many of them have been written about in a secondary source? There shouldn't be a need to apply notability except in the real borderline cases which a policy/guideline has never encountered before (i.e. the real outliers). Notability should always be a last, not a first resort, and experts ought to be given weight. We shouldn't blindly accept anything they say, but neither should we reject them out of hand simply because of this false notion that WP is egalitarian and that you need to be a Wikipedian to have a say in what goes on here.
Johnleemk
On 2/26/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
If Scott McCloud were making the Encyclopedia of Sequential Art, wouldn't we want an entry on every single topic he thought important enough to include?
Well...maybe. If he had already written said encyclopedia, thus creating a very solid (printed, even!) source, then sure. Otherwise, it would depend on the degree to which we could do so while maintaining some sort of across the board standards. I know there are some folks here who don't like the notion of across the board standards, but as I've explained before on this list I think there are good reasons to limit ourselves to subjects on which something has been independently published, with some kind of editorial process or at least some sort of putting-a-reputation-on-the-line-ness to it. Wikipedia is a general project, and I think this means that we will inevitably leave some degree of envelope-pushing in specific areas to specialist projects; this is the niche that the countless specialist wikis around the web look to fill, and that works well, I think; there is a forum for forms of content that are problematic to fit into a big general system, but its differentiated to mitigate spillover issues. We can't be all things to all people
The above is an argument for some form of reliable sources guideline, obviously, and not a notability guideline. The latter I'm more up in the air on; in the long run, I see no real need for one, but in the short run there is something to be said for limiting our size sheerly for reasons of manageability (although realistically we crossed the borders of where we had any really effective quality control long ago); some sort of rolling notability guideline that we could progressively loosen over the years as our ability to cope with more and more content developed would be an interesting possibility.
On 2/26/07, Robth robth1@gmail.com wrote:
The above is an argument for some form of reliable sources guideline, obviously, and not a notability guideline. The latter I'm more up in the air on; in the long run, I see no real need for one, but in the short run there is something to be said for limiting our size sheerly for reasons of manageability (although realistically we crossed the borders of where we had any really effective quality control long ago); some sort of rolling notability guideline that we could progressively loosen over the years as our ability to cope with more and more content developed would be an interesting possibility.
Wikipedia decided to take the road of not controlling growth some time ago, and I think overall it has worked out well. I think we cope with the mass of content well enough.
I see it as concentric circles, like a target; the center is the high-quality articles, and each ring outward is progressively lower quality. All these rings are expanding. The sum total of crap articles is inexorably expanding, but so is the total of useful stubs, the patchy but promising, the serviceable but short, and even the excellent ones.
Over time, the number of serviceable encyclopedia articles has steadily increased, and I see no signs of that stopping. The percentage of articles that are high-quality may not go up, but the quantity and coverage of those articles is constantly increasing.
-Matt
Matthew Brown wrote:
Wikipedia decided to take the road of not controlling growth some time ago, and I think overall it has worked out well. I think we cope with the mass of content well enough.
Absolutely. One of the featres of a statistical system is that you can never predict where the next growth spurt will happen, but there is still an overall predictability.
I see it as concentric circles, like a target; the center is the high-quality articles, and each ring outward is progressively lower quality. All these rings are expanding. The sum total of crap articles is inexorably expanding, but so is the total of useful stubs, the patchy but promising, the serviceable but short, and even the excellent ones.
I prefer a fractal geometry. A circular growth pattern is too smoothly predictable.It would also impose expectations on areas which are not growing as expected. We still have major areas that are only scantly covered.
Over time, the number of serviceable encyclopedia articles has steadily increased, and I see no signs of that stopping. The percentage of articles that are high-quality may not go up, but the quantity and coverage of those articles is constantly increasing.
The good ones will remain in proportion ... just like the bad ones.
Ec
And a reading of his books (well, at least his first and third) shows he's an expert in communication and media and the arts in general; it takes a significant degree of expertise to create a language of discourse for an art form.
On 2/26/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 26, 2007, at 7:09 PM, T P wrote:
Because he's an expert in the field of webcomics
That's not true. He is clearly an expert on comics in general.
-Phil _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 25/02/07, Philip Sandifer sandifer@english.ufl.edu wrote:
I just had dinner with [[Scott McCloud]], and, unsurprisingly, the conversation turned to webcomics, and, eventually, to Wikipedia's treatment of them. (This was partially spurred by the Kristopher Straub debacle, about which I will say only that it demonstrates the degree to which the bias is overwhelmingly towards deletion across many areas of Wikipedia right now)
McCloud is somebody who knows comics. He quite literally wrote the book on them. In the course of the conversation it became clear that he was pretty well completely fed up with Wikipedia. And it should be noted, this comes from someone who has been on the forefront of digital technology debates several times. He makes clear his admiration for the concept of Wikipedia. He makes clear his admiration for how Wikipedia got started. His problem is with how it works now.
The problem he has? Notability. Specifically the arbitrary and capricious way in which AfD targets things, questions their notability, and uses guidelines that make no sense from the outside.
See also Timothy Noah's recent article on Slate for this - it gives a good view of how notability guidelines look to the outside. In this case, it's how they look to the subject of the article, but I assure you - they look similar to people who are familiar with the subject. In short, they appear a Kafka-esque absurdity.
This is a new problem - these are major figures who are sympathetic to Wikipedia but fed up with its operation. And I can tell you, the tone among people I talk to in that real life thing I maintain is pretty similar - great respect for Wikipedia as a concept, reasonable respect for Wikipedia as a resource, no respect for Wikipedia as something anyone would ever want to edit. The actual editorial process of Wikipedia is rightly viewed as a nightmare. Hell, I view it as a nightmare at this point - I've given up editing it because the rules seem to have been written, at this point, with the intention of writing a very bad encyclopedia.
Our efforts to ensure reliability have come at the cost of a great deal of respect - and respect from people we should have respect from. We are losing smart, well-educated people who are sympathetic to Wikipedia's basic principles. That is a disaster.
And it's a disaster that can be laid squarely at the feet of the grotesque axis of [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:N]] - two pages that are eating Wikipedia alive from the inside out. (And I don't mean this in terms of community. I mean that they are systematically being used to turn good articles into crap, and have yet to demonstrate their actual use in turning bad articles into good ones.)
Unfortunately there is a nucleus of users who are able to endlessly debate these particular issues, at both the policy pages and as AfD "regulars", leaving people who just want to improve articles at a complete loss when the articles they put a lot of work into are deleted using what they see as arbitrary notions of what should be in the free encyclopaedia which has been touted as containing all human knowledge...
I feel like I have said all this before...
And its not a mysterious de ja vu in this case...
Peter Ansell
On Sat, 24 Feb 2007 17:16:02 -0500, Philip Sandifer sandifer@english.ufl.edu wrote:
McCloud is somebody who knows comics. He quite literally wrote the book on them. In the course of the conversation it became clear that he was pretty well completely fed up with Wikipedia. And it should be noted, this comes from someone who has been on the forefront of digital technology debates several times. He makes clear his admiration for the concept of Wikipedia. He makes clear his admiration for how Wikipedia got started. His problem is with how it works now.
The problem he has? Notability. Specifically the arbitrary and capricious way in which AfD targets things, questions their notability, and uses guidelines that make no sense from the outside.
Well I admire Scott McCloud too, and I thought his piece "I can't stop thinking" was visionary in its day, but in the end if the system does not support a directory of webcomics because they fail to meet the sourcing guidelines, is that strictly a problem with Wikipedia processes, or is it a misconception about what Wikipedia is?
Or put another way, how exactly *are* we supposed to discern the difference between unsourced articles on webcomics created by the article author and being spammed, and legitimate comics? I'd be happy to rely on expert editors if it weren't for the fact that in at least one case one such editor argued long and loud for keep but *no* reliable secondary sources could be found at all.
Perhaps the solution is for known authorities like McCloud to sign up and participate. I for one would give significant weight to his opinion in closing a deletion debate.
Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
Well I admire Scott McCloud too, and I thought his piece "I can't stop thinking" was visionary in its day, but in the end if the system does not support a directory of webcomics because they fail to meet the sourcing guidelines, is that strictly a problem with Wikipedia processes, or is it a misconception about what Wikipedia is?
If there's a sitaution where notable things are *not* being included because of our guidelines, it's a problem on our end and not on the outside. One size fits all simply doesn't work.
-Jeff
On Sun, 25 Feb 2007 11:26:08 -0500, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
If there's a sitaution where notable things are *not* being included because of our guidelines, it's a problem on our end and not on the outside. One size fits all simply doesn't work.
For what value of notable? If "notable" means it's been the primary subject of a few reliable secondary sources, which seems like a reasonable definition, then that should not happen. I've said before, I'm all for a contextual definition of reliable.
If it means copying the latest "noise and fury signifying nothing" from teh internets, then no, I don't think it's broken at all. We don't *actually* need an article on Limecat in order to be a credible encyclopaedia :-)
The problem is that the entire process is polluted by crap like longcat, limecat, Brian Peppers, and determined efforts by fans of each and every anime, cartoon series, reality show, to have an article on every single tiny facet of every single episode of the object of their obsession.
It is very hard to pull out the god ones from the endless torrent of crap. And the judgment of good is in any case not objective, since you like things that I don't and - I am sure - vice versa. Maybe you think we can do without an article on every single baroque composer.
Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
For what value of notable? If "notable" means it's been the primary subject of a few reliable secondary sources, which seems like a reasonable definition, then that should not happen. I've said before, I'm all for a contextual definition of reliable.
Thus the problem. If a "notable" thing is not the SUBJECT of multiple reliable secondary sources, then our guidelines are improper and need to be adjusted. I mapped out a few examples at WP:N a while back, and a lot of people poo-poohed it, but it's an interesting exercise to recap some of them here for people who didn't watch the page:
[[Ern Westmore]] - Oscar-winning makeup artist, second generation of the famed Westmore family, had his own television show. My research - extensive for a non-wiki project I'm working on, but not *highly* extensive (local news reports, etc) - does not uncover him as THE SUBJECT of multiple secondary sources. Many independent mentions in articles and books, but never as the subject, and the best source I've found about him so far was written by his brother, which calls into question "independent." Does this mean our general idea of "notability" is working, or not?
[[Jordanhill railway station]] - a favorite of many who question our standards, I'm not sure if there's "multple, reliable secondary sources" that have the station as the subject.
[[Mom and Dad]] - A "classic" exploitation film that was added to the National Film Registry. A troubling case - it *may* have been the subject of one article in Reason Magazine (I think it's more about the producer, but it's a reasonable disagreement that's not really relevant given the rest), but is merely mentioned in passing in a number of texts about exploitation filmmaking. The reviews and press it got during its heyday was almost entirely self-created by the producer and could not realistically be called independent. The film was the third highest grossing film of the 1940s and is notable enough for the US government (who, by the way, doesn't know what the ending of the film in its vault is - I've asked - just to give an idea about this film), but not technically "notable" enough for Wikipedia.
[["She Shoulda Said 'No'!"]] - If "Reefer Madness" is the apex of pot films, SSSN is probably on the b-list. The story that inspired it got more press than the film itself, and the film was a dismal failure the first few times it was sent out. It's still the lead actress's most infamous turn, it was important enough to be featured in a series by the de facto expert on exploitation filmmaking (although he allegedly helped with the presentation of it and made a heap of money from it once he got his hands on it), the same situation as "Mom and Dad" applies. Not quite the shining star that "Mom and Dad" was, but still noteworthy - just not enough for Wikipedia.
There's also plenty of the Rambot-style articles for small townships, etc. I'm really only scraping my contributions more than anything else, and it's worth mentioning that three of those have ended up on the main page and two are rated as "Good Articles," and one could be a serious FA candidate with some extra work that I simply won't be doing at this point.
The problem is that the entire process is polluted by crap like longcat, limecat, Brian Peppers, and determined efforts by fans of each and every anime, cartoon series, reality show, to have an article on every single tiny facet of every single episode of the object of their obsession.
It is very hard to pull out the god ones from the endless torrent of crap. And the judgment of good is in any case not objective, since you like things that I don't and - I am sure - vice versa. Maybe you think we can do without an article on every single baroque composer.
On the contrary. We can have both, and we can have standards. The issue is that we need to have senisble standards, and we clearly lack that. Phil Sandifer is so completely on target with his commentary that last few days, and we'd be very smart to listen to him.
-Jeff
Jeff Raymond wrote:
On the contrary. We can have both, and we can have standards. The issue
is that we need to have senisble standards, and we clearly lack that. Phil Sandifer is so completely on target with his commentary that last few days, and we'd be very smart to listen to him.
I sometimes have the impression that we have too many AfDers whose knowledge of webcomics is indistinguishable from their knowledge of brain surgery. :-)
Ec
On Sun, 25 Feb 2007 13:55:14 -0500 (EST), "Jeff Raymond" jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
For what value of notable? If "notable" means it's been the primary subject of a few reliable secondary sources, which seems like a reasonable definition, then that should not happen. I've said before, I'm all for a contextual definition of reliable.
Thus the problem. If a "notable" thing is not the SUBJECT of multiple reliable secondary sources, then our guidelines are improper and need to be adjusted. I mapped out a few examples at WP:N a while back, and a lot of people poo-poohed it, but it's an interesting exercise to recap some of them here for people who didn't watch the page:
No, no, no, a thousand times no. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, a tertiary source, a distillation of secondary sources, not a publisher of first instance. These are some of the first things that were decided about the project. If there are no reliable secondary sources, it almost certainly does not belong in an encyclopaedia. How can we verify, and verify the neutrality of, a subject without significant critical commentary about it?
[[Ern Westmore]] - Oscar-winning makeup artist, second generation of the famed Westmore family, had his own television show. My research - extensive for a non-wiki project I'm working on, but not *highly* extensive (local news reports, etc) - does not uncover him as THE SUBJECT of multiple secondary sources. Many independent mentions in articles and books, but never as the subject, and the best source I've found about him so far was written by his brother, which calls into question "independent." Does this mean our general idea of "notability" is working, or not?
It means you haven't yet found the sources. There will be sources. There will be, for example, the citations from the Academy Awards, describing his work. Go to the library, look in Halliwell and other film guides. Look in the trade magazines for the film industry. Not on the net? Who cares.
[[Jordanhill railway station]] - a favorite of many who question our standards, I'm not sure if there's "multple, reliable secondary sources" that have the station as the subject.
Don't bet on it, I have a whole shelf full of books about British railway lines and their history. I can give you reliable secondary sources for railway subjects down to the level of individual wagons.
--8<---------
There's also plenty of the Rambot-style articles for small townships, etc. I'm really only scraping my contributions more than anything else, and it's worth mentioning that three of those have ended up on the main page and two are rated as "Good Articles," and one could be a serious FA candidate with some extra work that I simply won't be doing at this point.
There seems to be an informal agreement that census data counts for places. I don't know why, that's directory entries for my money, but it is usually not hard to find sources. My parents' village, for example, had two or three books about it, plus lengthy mentions in histories on the adjacent city, and discussions in respect of the iron age settlements in the area.
On the contrary. We can have both, and we can have standards. The issue is that we need to have senisble standards, and we clearly lack that. Phil Sandifer is so completely on target with his commentary that last few days, and we'd be very smart to listen to him.
I have listened to him. I have also listened to him in deletion debates and reviews. And in one case, despite his assurances, we could not find a single source. It would be unwise to base policy *only* on the writings of those who habitually find it hard to source their preferred content, though. That may mean that their preferred content is not the stuff of a mainstream encyclopaedia.
My view is that we should change the subject-specific notability guidelines to be an indication of the types of sources which are considered reliable for that type of content. But to say something is notable when it plainly has not been noted may be to misunderstand the definition of notability, in terms of an encyclopaedia.
Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
No, no, no, a thousand times no. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, a tertiary source, a distillation of secondary sources, not a publisher of first instance.
And no one is REALISTICALLY disagreeing with this. Something can be a tertiary distillation without REQUIRING "multiple, non-trivial, secondary sources" for inclusion. Don't set up an argument I'm not making.
[[Ern Westmore]] - Oscar-winning makeup artist, second generation of the famed Westmore family, had his own television show. My research - extensive for a non-wiki project I'm working on, but not *highly* extensive (local news reports, etc) - does not uncover him as THE SUBJECT of multiple secondary sources. Many independent mentions in articles and books, but never as the subject, and the best source I've found about him so far was written by his brother, which calls into question "independent." Does this mean our general idea of "notability" is working, or not?
It means you haven't yet found the sources. There will be sources. There will be, for example, the citations from the Academy Awards, describing his work. Go to the library, look in Halliwell and other film guides. Look in the trade magazines for the film industry. Not on the net? Who cares.
No, it means that it's highly likely they don't exist. Your assumption that they do when I can tell you first hand that they so far don't don't in ways Wikipedia requires is coming from a place where the effort hasn't been made. I've taken more time than I should looking for information on this guy - it's not there in the way we allegedly want it.
There seems to be an informal agreement that census data counts for places.
An informal agreement that doesn't reflect reality, though. It's only an agreement until people who disagree come along.
My view is that we should change the subject-specific notability guidelines to be an indication of the types of sources which are considered reliable for that type of content. But to say something is notable when it plainly has not been noted may be to misunderstand the definition of notability, in terms of an encyclopaedia.
Our views are somewhat similar in the first half, but not in the second. Things are encyclopedic without being "notable," and our "notability" guidelines do a piss-poor job reflecting that in many important cases.
-Jeff
On Sun, 25 Feb 2007 14:59:49 -0500 (EST), "Jeff Raymond" jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
No, no, no, a thousand times no. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, a tertiary source, a distillation of secondary sources, not a publisher of first instance.
And no one is REALISTICALLY disagreeing with this. Something can be a tertiary distillation without REQUIRING "multiple, non-trivial, secondary sources" for inclusion. Don't set up an argument I'm not making.
How? Have you ever looked at a paper encyclopaedia? Every article is verifiable from numerous published sources. We're not paper so we can extend to a huge number of articles, and that takes us to the edge of what can be referenced from numerous published sources, but if we step over that edge we cease to be an encyclopaedia and become something else.
[[Ern Westmore]] - Oscar-winning makeup artist, second generation of the famed Westmore family, had his own television show. My research - extensive for a non-wiki project I'm working on, but not *highly* extensive (local news reports, etc) - does not uncover him as THE SUBJECT of multiple secondary sources. Many independent mentions in articles and books, but never as the subject, and the best source I've found about him so far was written by his brother, which calls into question "independent." Does this mean our general idea of "notability" is working, or not?
It means you haven't yet found the sources. There will be sources. There will be, for example, the citations from the Academy Awards, describing his work. Go to the library, look in Halliwell and other film guides. Look in the trade magazines for the film industry. Not on the net? Who cares.
No, it means that it's highly likely they don't exist. Your assumption that they do when I can tell you first hand that they so far don't don't in ways Wikipedia requires is coming from a place where the effort hasn't been made. I've taken more time than I should looking for information on this guy - it's not there in the way we allegedly want it.
So maybe there are no secondary sources and we can't have an article. Shame. there are eight billion other things to work on...
There are people I consider significant and important. No sources exist. I can't document them. Saxon Aldred, organ builder, for example. Peter Collins, yes, and Noel Mander and others, but not Saxon. I managed to find sources for Andrew Parnell, which was not easy. I think we should have an article on Colin Slee, there may now be enough sources on him. There will probably never be enough on Peter Moore, a predecessor of Jeffrey John as dean of St. Albans. These people are acknowledged as important by their peers.
There seems to be an informal agreement that census data counts for places.
An informal agreement that doesn't reflect reality, though. It's only an agreement until people who disagree come along.
Correct.
My view is that we should change the subject-specific notability guidelines to be an indication of the types of sources which are considered reliable for that type of content. But to say something is notable when it plainly has not been noted may be to misunderstand the definition of notability, in terms of an encyclopaedia.
Our views are somewhat similar in the first half, but not in the second. Things are encyclopedic without being "notable," and our "notability" guidelines do a piss-poor job reflecting that in many important cases.
For values of important that may fall short of attracting the attention of reliable secondary sources :-)
I have complete confident that the genuinely important ones will be covered by such sources before the publishing deadline.
Incidentally, you should sign up for OTRS. You'd be very helpful in the vandalism queue. Seriously.
Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Sun, 25 Feb 2007 14:59:49 -0500 (EST), "Jeff Raymond" wrote:
No, no, no, a thousand times no. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, a tertiary source, a distillation of secondary sources, not a publisher of first instance.
And no one is REALISTICALLY disagreeing with this. Something can be a tertiary distillation without REQUIRING "multiple, non-trivial, secondary sources" for inclusion. Don't set up an argument I'm not making.
How? Have you ever looked at a paper encyclopaedia? Every article is verifiable from numerous published sources. We're not paper so we can extend to a huge number of articles, and that takes us to the edge of what can be referenced from numerous published sources, but if we step over that edge we cease to be an encyclopaedia and become something else.
I think we sometimes put too much weight on the distinction between secondary and tertiary sources, or that the published sources must be numerous. For paper encyclopedias it's easy because of their space limitations. For us one reliable source should be plenty for an initial article; more can be added later when they are found. This construct of an "edge" to step over is highly subjective, and that it should define the limits of what is encyclopedic is an unwarranted limitation.
[[Ern Westmore]] - Oscar-winning makeup artist, second generation of the famed Westmore family, had his own television show. My research - extensive for a non-wiki project I'm working on, but not *highly* extensive (local news reports, etc) - does not uncover him as THE SUBJECT of multiple secondary sources. Many independent mentions in articles and books, but never as the subject, and the best source I've found about him so far was written by his brother, which calls into question "independent." Does this mean our general idea of "notability" is working, or not?
It means you haven't yet found the sources. There will be sources. There will be, for example, the citations from the Academy Awards, describing his work. Go to the library, look in Halliwell and other film guides. Look in the trade magazines for the film industry. Not on the net? Who cares.
No, it means that it's highly likely they don't exist. Your assumption that they do when I can tell you first hand that they so far don't don't in ways Wikipedia requires is coming from a place where the effort hasn't been made. I've taken more time than I should looking for information on this guy - it's not there in the way we allegedly want it.
So maybe there are no secondary sources and we can't have an article. Shame. there are eight billion other things to work on...
If the conclusion from being only unable to find secondary sources is that we can't have an article on a subject which many will agree to be otherwise valid that indicates that there is something seriously wrong with our criteria.
There are people I consider significant and important. No sources exist. I can't document them. Saxon Aldred, organ builder, for example. Peter Collins, yes, and Noel Mander and others, but not Saxon. I managed to find sources for Andrew Parnell, which was not easy. I think we should have an article on Colin Slee, there may now be enough sources on him. There will probably never be enough on Peter Moore, a predecessor of Jeffrey John as dean of St. Albans. These people are acknowledged as important by their peers.
I know nothing about the organists in an obscure English town. If you have one source for each of these people that's fine. You may not find a second source yourself, but that doesn't mean that no one else can. A strict interpretation of your view means that you can't add the article because you have only one source, and some other editor can't write the article because he also has only one (albeit different) source. The result is absurd. How can either of you know of the other source unless one of you first writes the article.
Wikipedia is a work in progress, and each article within it is a work in progress. When a policy inhibits the ability of two editors to collaborate it frustrates our major objective of making all knowledge freely available. To collaborate those two editors must first be aware of each other's existence.
There seems to be an informal agreement that census data counts for places.
An informal agreement that doesn't reflect reality, though. It's only an agreement until people who disagree come along.
Correct.
And when they disagree they should be trying to find a mutually acceptable solution. That is very difficult when the issue is phrased in black and white keep/delete terms.
My view is that we should change the subject-specific notability guidelines to be an indication of the types of sources which are considered reliable for that type of content. But to say something is notable when it plainly has not been noted may be to misunderstand the definition of notability, in terms of an encyclopaedia.
Our views are somewhat similar in the first half, but not in the second. Things are encyclopedic without being "notable," and our "notability" guidelines do a piss-poor job reflecting that in many important cases.
For values of important that may fall short of attracting the attention of reliable secondary sources :-)
We would do better diverting many of these debates to sub-groups like the WikiProjects where a significant number of participants have a clue about the topic. This would also ease us away from the stilted and artificial declarations of notability that have recently been demanded.
Ec
On Feb 25, 2007, at 4:19 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
If the conclusion from being only unable to find secondary sources is that we can't have an article on a subject which many will agree to be otherwise valid that indicates that there is something seriously wrong with our criteria.
Exactly.
Another important thing to recognize about the way print encyclopedias use citations is that they not cite every statement. They give a summary. If they're using data or something they'll source the data - particularly if it's time sensitive. (i.e. "Top ten oil producing countries" or something, to use an example where I had the job of finding that data.)
But more often they summarize the situation and then put some "see also" type links at the bottom.
That's the gap that gets crossed when you move from verifiability to "cite sources." In verifiability, all I have to do is be able to point to places where you can go look and learn more, confirm this isn't a hoax, etc. Cite sources I have to tell you where you can find each and every piece of information.
Verifiability is acceptable for most of the information on Wikipedia. Claims that attract particular skepticism (and we can easily tell these by the skepticism they attract) should be sourced directly. But compare that to something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Oriel_College (our featured article from yesterday), where the name of the college is sourced. Really. There's a citation two words in. This was not a useful citation to add. Whoever added it is very silly.
Compare also to [[Jacques Derrida]]. Here the problem is different. In the humanities, nobody writes a significant secondary source on Derrida that is not A) nearly as impenetrable as the original, and B) deeply involved in the same debates as the original in such a way as to be dreadful resources for providing a general overview. I don't mean this just in terms of NPOV issues either. I mean that the secondary sources are not meaningfully distinct from the primary sources in their quality or usefulness. There are sources intended for novices, but they're crappy and would lead to an article of questionable accuracy. And, really, there's something profoundly silly about an article sourced to books like "Derrida for Beginners" and "Derrida: A Very Short Introduction," or to introductory notes in a textbook. That's just not reputable in the humanities, and would make the article look laughable to any actual subject expert.
The way to write a good article on Derrida is to have a few people who have done some work using Derrida (there are thousands) to hash it out. The talk page should be used to smooth out debates. Good faith should be assumed - when one person says "Actually, you should really have another look at The Post Card where Derrida says X," the other person should. Classically thorny points and controversies should be sourced - especially the criticism section. But for the most part, it should be written by some people who know a decent amount about the subject going "OK, what needs to go into a general overview here."
And then at the end you should have a bibliography of books on the subject.
The problem is that somewhere along the line we went from a definition of "good article" that was based on looking at what other encyclopedias did to a definition of "good article" that was based on an internally decided principle.
Somewhere along the line, [[WP:NOR]] lost what was a vitally important line - that use of primary sources was acceptable so long as it did not produce "novel interpretations." That is to say that we never used to hold that the way to write an article was to consult entirely independent sources. And thank God, because that's no way to write an article, and not the way anybody else writes articles.
-Phil
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
How? Have you ever looked at a paper encyclopaedia? Every article is verifiable from numerous published sources. We're not paper so we can extend to a huge number of articles, and that takes us to the edge of what can be referenced from numerous published sources, but if we step over that edge we cease to be an encyclopaedia and become something else.
I'm not going to argue we should follow their lead, but this isn't universally the case. Britannica, to pick only the most famous encyclopedia, is well known for hiring famous people to write original research for their articles. They've toned that down a bit since the heydey of their 1911 edition, but it's still very much present. I would say that the idea that an encyclopedia should be a tertiary source based strictly on a neutral survey of the existing secondary literature is a fairly recent shift, and most encyclopedias don't fully implement it. The previous conception of an encyclopedia was that it be a compendium of *true* things, even if the truths flatly contradict the existing secondary literature (sometimes Britannica will explicitly say things like, "most commentators say [x], but this is false"). The justification for the truth was not sourcing to existing literature, but the combined prestige of the article's author and Britannica itself.
-Mark
On Sun, 25 Feb 2007 16:32:03 -0500, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
I'm not going to argue we should follow their lead, but this isn't universally the case. Britannica, to pick only the most famous encyclopedia, is well known for hiring famous people to write original research for their articles. They've toned that down a bit since the heydey of their 1911 edition, but it's still very much present. I would say that the idea that an encyclopedia should be a tertiary source based strictly on a neutral survey of the existing secondary literature is a fairly recent shift, and most encyclopedias don't fully implement it. The previous conception of an encyclopedia was that it be a compendium of *true* things, even if the truths flatly contradict the existing secondary literature (sometimes Britannica will explicitly say things like, "most commentators say [x], but this is false"). The justification for the truth was not sourcing to existing literature, but the combined prestige of the article's author and Britannica itself.
We could not do that because we don't do original research, but we certainly do challenge the orthodox view in a number of areas, where that can be supported from the best and most current sources - in essence we see the new, emerging consensus before the weight of old literature is consigned to the dustbin of history.
However...
These authors were, even if not explicitly, drawing on a large pool of published sources. I have friends who are academics; they can write from their own knowledge, but if pressed could cite every word to research by them or others. It's just that they don't need to because of their reputation, it's a given that what they say form knowledge *could* be referenced. If they venture an opinion it is stated as opinion. We don't typically see opinions as opinion in encyclopaedias.
I only knew one person who wrote an article for Britannica, though, and he's sadly deceased so I can't ask him about it.
Guy (JzG)
Delirium wrote:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
How? Have you ever looked at a paper encyclopaedia? Every article is verifiable from numerous published sources. [...] if we step over that edge we cease to be an encyclopaedia and become something else.
I'm not going to argue we should follow their lead, but this isn't universally the case. Britannica, to pick only the most famous encyclopedia, is well known for hiring famous people to write original research for their articles. [...] The previous conception of an encyclopedia was that it be a compendium of *true* things, even if the truths flatly contradict the existing secondary literature (sometimes Britannica will explicitly say things like, "most commentators say [x], but this is false"). The justification for the truth was not sourcing to existing literature, but the combined prestige of the article's author and Britannica itself.
When I'm chewing over something I've read in some Wikipedia discussion, I'll often go and flip through the reproduction I have of the first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. I take a certain pleasure in entries like this one:
BOTARGO, a kind of sausage, made with the eggs and blood of the sea-mullet, a large fish common in the Mediterranean. The best kind comes from Tunis in Barbary: It must be chosen dry and reddish. The people of Provence use a great deal of it, the common way of eating it being with olive oil and lemon juice. There is also a great consumption of botargo throught all the Levant.
Botargo pays on importation 2 87/100d the pound; whereof 2 58/100d is repaid on exportation.
Shamelessly POV, with dollops of cookbook, dictionary, and tax guide. But I think they were ok with that.
In the preface they open by saying, "Utility ought to be the principal intention of every publication. Wherever this intention does not plainly appear, neither the books nor their authors have the smallest claim to the approbation of mankind." They then go on to say, "We will, however, venture to affirm, that any man of ordinary parts, may, if he chuses, learn the principles of Agriculture, of Astronomy, of Botany, of Chemistry, &c, &c, from the Encyclopaedia Britannica."
William
Delirium wrote:
[...] I would say that the idea that an encyclopedia should be a tertiary source based strictly on a neutral survey of the existing secondary literature is a fairly recent shift, and most encyclopedias don't fully implement it.
We have a more practical reason to base WP on secondary sources, which is that we don't have big-name experts writing the articles, so we fall back on amateurs acting as the experts' proxies, via published works. By their nature, primary sources are full of traps for the uninformed; in areas where I'm expert, I can look at a primary source and instantly know what its defects are likely to be, while a random person not only doesn't know about them, but doesn't even know that there *are* defects. (A falsified birth date in government records? How is that possible?! :-) )
Stan
On Feb 25, 2007, at 5:31 PM, Stan Shebs wrote:
We have a more practical reason to base WP on secondary sources, which is that we don't have big-name experts writing the articles, so we fall back on amateurs acting as the experts' proxies, via published works. By their nature, primary sources are full of traps for the uninformed; in areas where I'm expert, I can look at a primary source and instantly know what its defects are likely to be, while a random person not only doesn't know about them, but doesn't even know that there *are* defects. (A falsified birth date in government records? How is that possible?! :-) )
Absolutely. Primary sources require skill. But the problem is that writing an encyclopedia entry requires skill. Wikipedia was never intended to be written by random people and idiots. It was intended to be written by volunteers. It's not idiot-proof. In fact, it depends on having experts on articles. The assumption is that someone who knows something about a topic will go to edit it. Yes, the system is succeptible to the clueless and the crazy. And the fix is to use the talk page, get reasonable people to come have a look at it, etc, etc. In cases where the clueless/crazy are particularly intractable we have a system whereby intelligent, sane people are given bansticks. And in bad cases we have the arbcom.
There is no good mechanism to have an encyclopedia written by idiots. If we do not assume that our userbase is primarily comprised of reasonably competent people who will follow the principles described we are screwed.
-Phil
Philip Sandifer wrote:
On Feb 25, 2007, at 5:31 PM, Stan Shebs wrote:
We have a more practical reason to base WP on secondary sources, which is that we don't have big-name experts writing the articles, so we fall back on amateurs acting as the experts' proxies, via published works. By their nature, primary sources are full of traps for the uninformed; in areas where I'm expert, I can look at a primary source and instantly know what its defects are likely to be, while a random person not only doesn't know about them, but doesn't even know that there *are* defects. (A falsified birth date in government records? How is that possible?! :-) )
Absolutely. Primary sources require skill. But the problem is that writing an encyclopedia entry requires skill. Wikipedia was never intended to be written by random people and idiots. It was intended to be written by volunteers. It's not idiot-proof. In fact, it depends on having experts on articles. The assumption is that someone who knows something about a topic will go to edit it. Yes, the system is succeptible to the clueless and the crazy.
When we begin to read a new article we need to begin with an assumption of good faith that this individual is neither clueless nor crazy. Usually we don't need to read very far before we find evidence that our assumption was in error. That's where the application of judgement comes in. The nutcases can generate citations just as easily as the sane; screwball publications can have very autoritative sounding titles. Identical contents in "The Remote County Scamsheet" and "The Journal of Remote County Criminology" will get different receptions. Is the latter really more reliable when you have seen neither. If we need multiple sources, that too can be accomodated. You don't know how reliable a source is until you have checked it out, and that's not always easy. We do ourselves a disservice when we salve our self-esteem by adding a couple of references, and smugly go forward believing that the article is now accurate, and delude ourselves by believing that someone else's two references have brought the article to an apotheosis.
And the fix is to use the talk page, get reasonable people to come have a look at it, etc, etc. In cases where the clueless/crazy are particularly intractable we have a system whereby intelligent, sane people are given bansticks. And in bad cases we have the arbcom.
I think that we have some people who feel that an early application of the banstick will cure the problem more quickly without having to bother with tedious discussion that could take days to resoplve. ;-)
There is no good mechanism to have an encyclopedia written by idiots. If we do not assume that our userbase is primarily comprised of reasonably competent people who will follow the principles described we are screwed.
That's right. Those reasonably competent people also know how to listen to constructive criticism, and will easily adjust their thinking in the face of rational comments. Just because they have repeated a common falacy on an article does not make them sockpuppets. They deserve discussion with the same respect that the first poster of the falacy should have received.
Ec
Philip Sandifer wrote:
There is no good mechanism to have an encyclopedia written by idiots.
I would looove to see that reminder posted on every edit page!
But practically speaking, one of the problems I see is that idiots are not usually self-aware, and they will vociferously defend the extreme cultural importance of the not-yet-in-production "Amazing Lost American Idol Race" show or whatever. (If I've learned anything from WP, it's that there are way more lame TV shows out there than I ever imagined. :-) ) How do you get would-be editors to realize when they don't have anything of value to add?
Stan
On Feb 25, 2007, at 8:00 PM, Stan Shebs wrote:
Philip Sandifer wrote:
There is no good mechanism to have an encyclopedia written by idiots.
I would looove to see that reminder posted on every edit page!
But practically speaking, one of the problems I see is that idiots are not usually self-aware, and they will vociferously defend the extreme cultural importance of the not-yet-in-production "Amazing Lost American Idol Race" show or whatever. (If I've learned anything from WP, it's that there are way more lame TV shows out there than I ever imagined. :-) ) How do you get would-be editors to realize when they don't have anything of value to add?
I find that most editors can be educated effectively with [[Special:Blockip]].
Seriously. We cannot have an encyclopedia written by people who are too stupid to write an encyclopedia. We have to either educate them or dissuade them from contributing - not write a set of rules designed primarily to polish turds.
-Phil
on 2/25/07 9:36 PM, Philip Sandifer at snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
We cannot have an encyclopedia written by people who are too stupid to write an encyclopedia.
Are you sure you mean to use the term "stupid" here? "Stupidity" is doing something wrong - and knowing better. "Ignorance" is not knowing in the first place.
Marc Riddell
Stan Shebs wrote:
Philip Sandifer wrote:
There is no good mechanism to have an encyclopedia written by idiots.
I would looove to see that reminder posted on every edit page!
But practically speaking, one of the problems I see is that idiots are not usually self-aware [...]
For those interested in the topic, it turns out there's good evidence for that:
http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf
It's titled "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments."
Particularly relevant is the graph on page 4.
William
On 2/25/07, Philip Sandifer sandifer@english.ufl.edu wrote:
I just had dinner with [[Scott McCloud]], and, unsurprisingly, the conversation turned to webcomics, and, eventually, to Wikipedia's treatment of them. (This was partially spurred by the Kristopher Straub debacle, about which I will say only that it demonstrates the degree to which the bias is overwhelmingly towards deletion across many areas of Wikipedia right now)
McCloud is somebody who knows comics. He quite literally wrote the book on them. In the course of the conversation it became clear that he was pretty well completely fed up with Wikipedia. And it should be noted, this comes from someone who has been on the forefront of digital technology debates several times. He makes clear his admiration for the concept of Wikipedia. He makes clear his admiration for how Wikipedia got started. His problem is with how it works now.
The problem he has? Notability. Specifically the arbitrary and capricious way in which AfD targets things, questions their notability, and uses guidelines that make no sense from the outside.
See also Timothy Noah's recent article on Slate for this - it gives a good view of how notability guidelines look to the outside. In this case, it's how they look to the subject of the article, but I assure you - they look similar to people who are familiar with the subject. In short, they appear a Kafka-esque absurdity.
This is a new problem - these are major figures who are sympathetic to Wikipedia but fed up with its operation. And I can tell you, the tone among people I talk to in that real life thing I maintain is pretty similar - great respect for Wikipedia as a concept, reasonable respect for Wikipedia as a resource, no respect for Wikipedia as something anyone would ever want to edit. The actual editorial process of Wikipedia is rightly viewed as a nightmare. Hell, I view it as a nightmare at this point - I've given up editing it because the rules seem to have been written, at this point, with the intention of writing a very bad encyclopedia.
Our efforts to ensure reliability have come at the cost of a great deal of respect - and respect from people we should have respect from. We are losing smart, well-educated people who are sympathetic to Wikipedia's basic principles. That is a disaster.
And it's a disaster that can be laid squarely at the feet of the grotesque axis of [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:N]] - two pages that are eating Wikipedia alive from the inside out. (And I don't mean this in terms of community. I mean that they are systematically being used to turn good articles into crap, and have yet to demonstrate their actual use in turning bad articles into good ones.)
Best, Phil Sandifer sandifer@english.ufl.edu
Okay, instead of bickering over whether there is a problem with the status quo, let's assume there is a problem. What should we do to solve this problem? I haven't seen many ideas about what ought to be done to resolve the ostensible issues.
I'm not saying there isn't a problem, nor am I saying it's impossible to solve it. However, I think it's important to recognise that you can't expect perfection from an innately imperfect project. When you have something on the scale of Wikipedia, involving so many mortals, the errors multiply by each other pretty quickly, and add up to some massive problems. We need to solve them, and the status quo is what we came up with. It's clunky, it sucks, but it's better than nothing.
The problem, as I see it, is that there's just far too little common sense. Defining common sense is of course an ordeal I am not about to delve into, but the point of our policies and guidelines is to enforce a semblance of common sense on people lacking it. Why do we have a guideline for reliable sources even though it's impossible to establish in black and white what constitutes a reliable source? Because a lot of editors don't have the sense necessary to discern what is a reliable source and what is not. Why do we have notability guidelines? Because otherwise deletionists and inclusionists without common sense would simply do whatever they like on AfD, and never be able to reach agreement by arguing from the same premises.
In short, policy is a substitute for common sense. Phil seems to suggest that we ought to block people who exhibit a deficit of common sense. The problem is that an editor who is insane in one area may turn out to be a very reasonable and sensible chap in other fields. Since selective blocking is impossible, it's an all-or-nothing proposition.
Another problem you run into is the obvious controversy that would result if admins had discretion to block people without common sense. The problem is that one or two admins themselves would lack the sense to identify who has common sense, and thus block the wrong people. We'd have a huge debate about whether this discretion is warranted, and thus further distract us from the point of WP - to write an encyclopaedia.
The clunky status quo sucks, but it tries to strike a balance to minimise timewasting controversy. It's erratic, it's inconsistent, and it's far from ideal - but the idea is to have something that works. Just like WP, I suppose.
Now, if we want to move beyond the status quo, how are we to resolve the problem of people lacking the sense to know their limits? If people had some common sense about their limits on things like webcomics or postage stamps or content management systems, we wouldn't need policy - we probably wouldn't even need AFD.
Phil's solution is to liberally apply the banstick. I don't know if this is the right way to go about things, but I would like to see a way to make the banstick selective. Other ideas, like article and editor ratings, would also be very good. In the end, this may come down to the software rather than writing/destroying policy.
Johnleemk
I have snipped most of a very interesting post to add one small tangent:
John Lee wrote:
In short, policy is a substitute for common sense.
I think I'd say this a little differently. If common sense is a road, I think of policy as the rumble strips and crash barriers. They're not a substitute, exactly, but they should follow similar contours and try to limit the scope of problems.
In my field, Alistair Cockburn borrowed the Shu-Ha-Ri model of learning martial arts and applied it to software teams learning new methods. I've found it very useful. The actual model has a rich history, but my cartoon of it goes like this. In going from beginner to master, there are three stages:
1. Follow the rules. 2. Understand the rules. 3. Transcend the rules.
In the first stage, novices have a real hunger for rules. They can't and usually don't want to understand what's going on. They just want to follow some simple steps and get the desired result. In the second stage, they still follow the rules, but not mechanically; here they gain an understanding of the purposes behind the rules. In the third stage, one understands the principles so deeply that one has no need of the rules.
So I generally think of our various policies as a harm limitation device for newbies, an educational tool for those settling in, and a convenient focus of discussion for masters.
William
P.S. Sorry for the duplicate paper link earlier; I should have read all the new posts before replying, not just the ones my mailer thought were part of the thread.
on 2/25/07 10:29 PM, John Lee at johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
Okay, instead of bickering over whether there is a problem with the status quo, let's assume there is a problem. What should we do to solve this problem? I haven't seen many ideas about what ought to be done to resolve the ostensible issues.
I'm not saying there isn't a problem, nor am I saying it's impossible to solve it. However, I think it's important to recognise that you can't expect perfection from an innately imperfect project. When you have something on the scale of Wikipedia, involving so many mortals, the errors multiply by each other pretty quickly, and add up to some massive problems. We need to solve them, and the status quo is what we came up with. It's clunky, it sucks, but it's better than nothing.
The problem, as I see it, is that there's just far too little common sense. Defining common sense is of course an ordeal I am not about to delve into, but the point of our policies and guidelines is to enforce a semblance of common sense on people lacking it.
Johnleemk
Common sense or common purpose? What common sense needs to be applied to accomplish this common purpose?
I see a great deal of the problem being many persons with many different agendas and purposes for being in WP itself. If a degree of common sense is needed to accomplish the common goal of ³A² then all persons must be trying to accomplish ³A². If others are there to accomplish ³B², their ³common sense² will be applied and measured differently.
Solutions? That is going to take some creative, collaborative thinking with all participants working toward the same common goal. But first, there must be an agreement about what the problem - and its cause - really is.
There seems to be a great deal of resistance to the idea that many of the problems within WP involve the very culture itself. This speaks to me of a great deal of denial on the part of the Community Members.
Denial is saying ³anything but that². To admit that the ³that² is the problem, might mean having to confront, and possibly get rid of, the ³that². If a chemical dependent admits that the chemical is the ³that² that is killing them, they might have to give up that ³that². ³Anything but that!²
Marc Riddell
Marc Riddell wrote:
I see a great deal of the problem being many persons with many different agendas and purposes for being in WP itself. If a degree of common sense is needed to accomplish the common goal of ³A² then all persons must be trying to accomplish ³A². If others are there to accomplish ³B², their ³common sense² will be applied and measured differently.
Solutions? That is going to take some creative, collaborative thinking with all participants working toward the same common goal. But first, there must be an agreement about what the problem - and its cause - really is.
Well, I think the first step is to stop thinking that common sense is universal. Look at what happened over the weekend - common sense apparently told people that we did and didn't need an article on Daniel Brandt, and did and didn't need to discuss it. Some people feel common sense is to simply do what you think is best (WP:IAR, which should be destroyed with heat seeking nuclear missiles after the way February has gone on this project), some people feel common sense is giving people the due process they crave.
There's obviously no such thing as "common sense" here, so we need to get out of that frame of mind and come to a conclusion as to what's best - not what's favored by any specific group of people, not what the people who show up on a given afternoon believe, but what makes the most logical sense for the project to continue to succeed as opposed to looking like morons to outsiders.
There seems to be a great deal of resistance to the idea that many of the problems within WP involve the very culture itself. This speaks to me of a great deal of denial on the part of the Community Members.
Damn skippy. You nailed it with this paragraph.
Denial is saying ³anything but that². To admit that the ³that² is the problem, might mean having to confront, and possibly get rid of, the ³that². If a chemical dependent admits that the chemical is the ³that² that is killing them, they might have to give up that ³that². ³Anything but that!²
I mean, an easy short term fix has two steps:
1) Stop giving administrators carte blanche to do as they please when they please based on their version of common sense.
2) Remove the admin bit from the worst offenders, in which there are more than enough to cause major problems and further destroy a culture that's been rotting for a long time.
This solves - in the short term - 90% of our problems, and gives us the opportunity to fix the problems, heal the wounds, put up the necessary boundaries, and start as fresh as possible. We're in a good *position* - Citizendium, the most capable fork to challenge Wikipedia long-term, is not ready for prime time, or even cable access - but we're very close to teetering off the edge. We can unbecome a top 15 website quicker than we became one, and that can be headed off at the pass by amputating the diseased aspects - users, administrators, policies, guidelines, and even articles.
But I remain pessimistic. Even now, after three weeks of consistent abuses from many administrative forces, the only time Jimbo feels the need to step in is due to a wheel war. It tells me that the perspective on the top end is lacking regarding the problems this project is facing on the interior, which, while a legitimate perogative, is unfortunate for those of us who are/were doing the legwork to keep the articles coming and the cash flowing. And the sickness will still remain.
-Jeff
On 2/26/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
But I remain pessimistic. Even now, after three weeks of consistent abuses from many administrative forces, the only time Jimbo feels the need to step in is due to a wheel war.
Have you considered that Jimbo may not want to have to do this - that he does not wish to micro-manage?
I'm not sure what you mean by 'three weeks of consistent abuses', either. I've been reading this mailing list and have not got that sense of things.
-Matt
Matthew Brown wrote:
On 2/26/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
But I remain pessimistic. Even now, after three weeks of consistent abuses from many administrative forces, the only time Jimbo feels the need to step in is due to a wheel war.
Have you considered that Jimbo may not want to have to do this - that he does not wish to micro-manage?
I'm sure that's the problem. The point is that, somehow, an instance of wheel-warring is his line. I won't speak for him, and if he chooses to speak for himself, he will, but that's very frustrating.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'three weeks of consistent abuses', either. I've been reading this mailing list and have not got that sense of things.
Not everything that goes on on-wiki gets spammed here, too. Three weeks was misleading by me, anyway - it's more of a spike in activity that's been continuous for as long as I can remember.
-Jeff
Matthew Brown wrote:
On 2/26/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
But I remain pessimistic. Even now, after three weeks of consistent abuses from many administrative forces, the only time Jimbo feels the need to step in is due to a wheel war.
Have you considered that Jimbo may not want to have to do this - that he does not wish to micro-manage?
I concur with this view. Most of the time when Jimbo involves himself in these disputes it tends to create more confusion. We need to learn to figure it out among ourselves. The best use of Jimbo's time is not in mucking about with these disputes, but in broader service to WMF such as promotion and public speaking. For him to be able to solve disputes would also require him to spend more time monitoring these things, and for a traveller that is not always possible. As you know many of these disputes flare up quite suddenly without any forewarning; that alone makes them better handled by people with a more regular presence.
Ec
I think before we can really deal with questions of what should and shouldn't be sourced, what a good source is, and what is and isn't worth having articles on, we have to go back to brass tacks and answer "What is a good article?"
Once we understand what an article should be it becomes easier to write guidelines that point to that. And I mean this on a more basic level than what we have at [[Wikipedia:What is a good article?]]
To my mind there are three parts of a good article: it must be comprehensive, accurate, and interesting.
What do I mean here?
By comprehensive I mean that it covers what it should. We could write lots of tests for this (several present themselves), but for now, let's leave it at that. It's not missing anything. Note that NPOV is an aspect of comprehensiveness. This also covers excluding stupid trivia, to my mind. It also means that it provides a good start to research. This includes providing further places to look, i.e. "If you want to know more about Derrida, go read..."
By accurate I mean that nothing in it is incorrect. Currently we try to achieve this by sourcing, and in some cases that's obviously going to be necessary. Where those cases are is something we need to determine better. Sourcing should be used to back up things a reasonable reader might doubt.
Interesting is more intangible. We've unfairly demonized [[WP:ILIKEIT]], but usually what people are trying to say when they say that they like it is that they learned something from the article that they think is interesting. That's the point. (Incidentally, [[WP:INTERESTING]] is total shit. Seriously - somebody nuke that section stat. Actually, all of arguments to avoid in deletion discussions is crap - the page gives no sense of what an argument for keeping could possibly be other than the negative "it doesn't seem deletable to me.")
Interesting articles will establish context. They should be able to show why the subject is interesting to someone who isn't already a fan/scholar/whatever of the subject. I would particualrly note that I think we'd be in much better shape if we stopped talking about notability and started talking about interestingness. This would put us in a position to give more of a pass to well-written, thorough articles on odd but cool topics. This is good - it has demonstrably proven itself to be something people expect from Wikipedia. [[Heavy Metal Umlaut]] anybody?
Are there any problems that people can see with this formulation?
Best, Phil Sandifer sandifer@english.ufl.edu
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
On 2/26/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
By comprehensive I mean that it covers what it should. We could write lots of tests for this (several present themselves), but for now, let's leave it at that. It's not missing anything. Note that NPOV is an aspect of comprehensiveness. This also covers excluding stupid trivia, to my mind. It also means that it provides a good start to research. This includes providing further places to look, i.e. "If you want to know more about Derrida, go read..."
Comprehensiveness sounds good, but there is a lot of room for disagreement about what "should" be included. Articles also need to be focused and balanced, because on the Web they can't be very long. We have links so excessive detail and tangents can be linked to. And too many articles have long sections on one aspect while giving short shrift to other aspects.
By accurate I mean that nothing in it is incorrect. Currently we try
to achieve this by sourcing, and in some cases that's obviously going to be necessary. Where those cases are is something we need to determine better. Sourcing should be used to back up things a reasonable reader might doubt.
I despise the current FA practice that "everything needs an inline citation". Basically all you need to pass FA is a lot of citations.
Interesting articles will establish context. They should be able to
show why the subject is interesting to someone who isn't already a fan/scholar/whatever of the subject. I would particualrly note that I think we'd be in much better shape if we stopped talking about notability and started talking about interestingness. This would put us in a position to give more of a pass to well-written, thorough articles on odd but cool topics. This is good - it has demonstrably proven itself to be something people expect from Wikipedia. [[Heavy Metal Umlaut]] anybody?
I'm not sure this is the same issue, but I had an argument with someone who wanted to include some loosely related material because it "related [the subject] to people's lives". Frankly I don't think we need to "sell" a topic to the audience. People look up articles in an encyclopedia because they are already interested in the subject, it's not like a magazine where you come across the topic randomly.
Adam
On Feb 26, 2007, at 7:06 PM, T P wrote:
Comprehensiveness sounds good, but there is a lot of room for disagreement about what "should" be included. Articles also need to be focused and balanced, because on the Web they can't be very long. We have links so excessive detail and tangents can be linked to. And too many articles have long sections on one aspect while giving short shrift to other aspects.
I tend to think that, of the many things to worry about in an article, length is a secondary concern.
I'm not sure this is the same issue, but I had an argument with someone who wanted to include some loosely related material because it "related [the subject] to people's lives". Frankly I don't think we need to "sell" a topic to the audience. People look up articles in an encyclopedia because they are already interested in the subject, it's not like a magazine where you come across the topic randomly.
Most of what I've seen suggests that we have a pretty high number of people who browse around and learn new things. We should endeavor to teach things that are interesting.
-Phil
On 2/26/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
I tend to think that, of the many things to worry about in an article, length is a secondary concern.
As a writer, I endeavor not to waste the reader's time. If they want to know more, it's easy to click on a link. Clearly large topics need long articles, but every word should count.
Most of what I've seen suggests that we have a pretty high number of
people who browse around and learn new things. We should endeavor to teach things that are interesting.
That's what links are for.
Adam
T P wrote:
On 2/26/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
I tend to think that, of the many things to worry about in an article, length is a secondary concern.
As a writer, I endeavor not to waste the reader's time. If they want to know more, it's easy to click on a link. Clearly large topics need long articles, but every word should count.
Making every word count is a matter of stylistics, and not everyone is capable of the tight economical prose that would be thus required.
Ec
On 2/27/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Making every word count is a matter of stylistics, and not everyone is capable of the tight economical prose that would be thus required.
Well what do we mean by "brilliant prose"?
Adam
T P wrote:
On 2/27/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Making every word count is a matter of stylistics, and not everyone is capable of the tight economical prose that would be thus required.
Well what do we mean by "brilliant prose"?
Great question!
Ec
T P wrote:
I despise the current FA practice that "everything needs an inline citation". Basically all you need to pass FA is a lot of citations.
I was a history major, so that requirement doesn't really bother me except when people somehow think a statement isn't sourced even though there's a reference at the end of the topic. Anyhow...
Can we slay this myth once and for all? Sources are a quick and easy way to get junked or lose FA status, but it's not all you need. My first real FA try ended up being twice as long as the article I was nominating because of the "brilliant prose" requirement - talk about subjective. I have no hard numbers, but I bet a lot more struggle due to that then because of inadequate sourcing.
I'm not sure this is the same issue, but I had an argument with someone who wanted to include some loosely related material because it "related [the subject] to people's lives". Frankly I don't think we need to "sell" a topic to the audience. People look up articles in an encyclopedia because they are already interested in the subject, it's not like a magazine where you come across the topic randomly.
Yeah, but I have a feeling we're heading in a direction where we're going to begin failing at this. Part of Wikipedia's awesomeness (and why I started contributing originally) was because...
a) Wikipedia probably has an article on what you're looking for. b) If Wikipedia doesn't have an article on what you're looking for, you can probably make it.
If we lose that, we lose our audience. Long tail, or something.
-Jeff
On 2/26/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
T P wrote:
I despise the current FA practice that "everything needs an inline citation". Basically all you need to pass FA is a lot of citations.
Can we slay this myth once and for all? Sources are a quick and easy
way to get junked or lose FA status, but it's not all you need. My first real FA try ended up being twice as long as the article I was nominating because of the "brilliant prose" requirement - talk about subjective. I have no hard numbers, but I bet a lot more struggle due to that then because of inadequate sourcing.
This is an exaggeration, of course. What I really mean to say is that all "I" need to pass FA is a lot of citations (which I hate doing).
Believe me, if I had my way, a lot more articles would fail the "brilliant prose" requirement.
Adam
On 2/27/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/26/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
T P wrote:
I despise the current FA practice that "everything needs an inline citation". Basically all you need to pass FA is a lot of citations.
Can we slay this myth once and for all? Sources are a quick and easy
way to get junked or lose FA status, but it's not all you need. My first real FA try ended up being twice as long as the article I was nominating because of the "brilliant prose" requirement - talk about subjective. I have no hard numbers, but I bet a lot more struggle due to that then because of inadequate sourcing.
This is an exaggeration, of course. What I really mean to say is that all "I" need to pass FA is a lot of citations (which I hate doing).
Believe me, if I had my way, a lot more articles would fail the "brilliant prose" requirement.
Adam
The problem with all our processes is that they cater to the lowest common denominator - be it the LCD of reader, or LCD of writer. (Of course, in a few cases, they cater to a very rarefied audience - I have in mind some science articles which are completely incomprehensible to anyone not familiar with the field.) The FA process demands citations because it assumes incompetence/bad faith on the part of the writer. Whether this is good or bad is subjective - I certainly don't mind it.
The trouble I have with the citation fetish is that it goes overboard. For example, let's say that I have two or three core sources for an article - webpages written by published and respected authors and experts in the field. Does it make sense to cite these pages for every little detail in the article, or does it make sense to collate them in one section titled as references? I would argue that it is the latter that matters, but the inline citation fetishists have succeeded in making the typical reading of our guidelines closer to the former. As Phil (I think) noted not too long ago, one article even has a footnote for the name of the article's subject! This only makes sense if the name is a disputable/unique detail (e.g. [[Jeff Ooi]] is always known as Jeff Ooi to most Malaysians, but his legal name is Ooi Chuan Aun, so it makes sense to provide a citation for the latter in the lead).
The problem with citations is that in attempting to prevent the LCD from corrupting the encyclopaedia, we've made ourselves lose sight of the purpose of [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:V]]. And that's terrible.
Johnleemk
On Feb 27, 2007, at 5:19 AM, John Lee wrote:
The trouble I have with the citation fetish is that it goes overboard. For example, let's say that I have two or three core sources for an article - webpages written by published and respected authors and experts in the field. Does it make sense to cite these pages for every little detail in the article, or does it make sense to collate them in one section titled as references? I would argue that it is the latter that matters, but the inline citation fetishists have succeeded in making the typical reading of our guidelines closer to the former. As Phil (I think) noted not too long ago, one article even has a footnote for the name of the article's subject! This only makes sense if the name is a disputable/unique detail (e.g. [[Jeff Ooi]] is always known as Jeff Ooi to most Malaysians, but his legal name is Ooi Chuan Aun, so it makes sense to provide a citation for the latter in the lead).
I think we need to distinguish among three tiers of information.
1) Needs a citation 2) Would be nice if it had a citation 3) Doesn't need a citation.
Remove all of #1 that lacks a citation. Leave #2 and #3 alone, adding them if you have them handy. But it's non-essential.
-Phil
On 2/28/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
- Needs a citation
- Would be nice if it had a citation
- Doesn't need a citation.
Remove all of #1 that lacks a citation.
Rather than remove it, can't we just step up our highlighting of uncited material? I, as a reader, would rather see "The late[1] John Smith was a member of the Nazi party." with a big red underline or something indicating that it lacks a source, than not see it at all.
Steve [1] For living people we should still err on the side of not defaming them.
Phil Sandifer wrote:
I think we need to distinguish among three tiers of information.
- Needs a citation
- Would be nice if it had a citation
- Doesn't need a citation.
Remove all of #1 that lacks a citation. Leave #2 and #3 alone, adding them if you have them handy. But it's non-essential.
Good! ... as long as people are smart enough to understand that applying these tiers to one piece of information is not itself a green light for applying it to the whole article.
Ec
On 2/27/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
The problem with all our processes is that they cater to the lowest common denominator - be it the LCD of reader, or LCD of writer. (Of course, in a few cases, they cater to a very rarefied audience - I have in mind some science articles which are completely incomprehensible to anyone not familiar with the field.)
Hell, look at most of our math articles. Random example: [[Domain (mathematics)]]. The very first section, before the TOC:
" In mathematics, a domain of a k-place relation L ⊆ X1 × … × Xk is one of the sets Xj, 1 ≤ j ≤ k.
In the special case where k = 2 and L ⊆ X1 × X2 is a function L : X1 → X2, it is conventional to refer to X1 as the domain of the function and to refer to X2 as the codomain of the function. "
That's terribly obscure terminology and symbols for something that I learned in 7th-grade algebra class. It gets a little better when you get down to the "Domain of a function" section, but a fair number of people will have been scared off by then. What's worse is that the links fail to provide information about what the various symbols and phrases mean. When there is a linked article, it's often more incomprehensible than the one it should be clarifying.
We need to work on readability, especially in the first sections of articles.
-- Jake Nelson [[en:User:Jake Nelson]]
On 2/28/07, Jake Nelson duskwave@gmail.com wrote:
We need to work on readability, especially in the first sections of articles.
Definitely. The first section of every article ought to summarise the whole topic for a lay person. The rest of the article can descend into geekdom.
That said, I frequently have difficult with maths-ish articles. I don't know whether to call it a problem, but there often seems to be more maths than is justified. Look at the mathematical derivations on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poker_probability for example. But it would be harsh to criticise this: the mathematications who wrote that have done a lot of good work for Wikipedia, and obviously they find the derivations and proofs very interesting.
Maybe we need a little hideable "Warning: This section contains extreme, possibly offensive use of mathematical formulae." template. :)
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 2/28/07, Jake Nelson duskwave@gmail.com wrote:
We need to work on readability, especially in the first sections of articles.
Definitely. The first section of every article ought to summarise the whole topic for a lay person. The rest of the article can descend into geekdom.
That said, I frequently have difficult with maths-ish articles.
Sometimes a proposed introduction rewrite to be more accessible to the layperson will receive some resistance from people who know more about the subject because it ends up being imprecise. Compromises occasionally get hammered out, usually consisting of an introductory sentence or two that uses the word "informally" to signal that this isn't technically the correct definition, but more of a hand-wavy intuition about the subject. I think that can be done for more articles, but it's kind of a slow process, and the mathematicians do have a point that we don't want to write inaccurate pop-math either.
Actually this happens a lot in political science articles too, in my experience. The first sentence defining a fairly simple topic will often contain at least several jargon words I don't know, in the interests of treating with extreme precision some legal obscurity (especially legal fictions).
-Mark
On 28/02/07, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Sometimes a proposed introduction rewrite to be more accessible to the layperson will receive some resistance from people who know more about the subject because it ends up being imprecise. Compromises occasionally get hammered out, usually consisting of an introductory sentence or two that uses the word "informally" to signal that this isn't technically the correct definition, but more of a hand-wavy intuition about the subject. I think that can be done for more articles, but it's kind of a slow process, and the mathematicians do have a point that we don't want to write inaccurate pop-math either.
The "In [subject]," introductory phrase can act as a suitable warning. If an article starts "In computer science," that's enough fair warning to the non-technical reader.
I'm a big fan of good intros. The intro section of an article should be a concise summary article in itself. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lead_section .
- d.
- d.
On 2/28/07, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
occasionally get hammered out, usually consisting of an introductory sentence or two that uses the word "informally" to signal that this isn't technically the correct definition, but more of a hand-wavy intuition about the subject. I think that can be done for more articles, but it's kind of a slow process, and the mathematicians do have a point that we don't want to write inaccurate pop-math either.
Hmm. Readability is more important than accuracy and precision for the first few sentences. Why not something like: "Smith's theorem states that there are no six digit prime numbers. More precisely, it states that there is no real number n, 100000<= n <= 999999 such that...."?
Actually this happens a lot in political science articles too, in my experience. The first sentence defining a fairly simple topic will often contain at least several jargon words I don't know, in the interests of treating with extreme precision some legal obscurity (especially legal fictions).
As long as there is both a readable summary and an accurate, concise summary in the opening paragraph, everyone's interests are served.
Steve
On 2/26/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
T P wrote:
I'm not sure this is the same issue, but I had an argument with someone
who
wanted to include some loosely related material because it "related [the subject] to people's lives". Frankly I don't think we need to "sell" a topic to the audience. People look up articles in an encyclopedia
because
they are already interested in the subject, it's not like a magazine
where
you come across the topic randomly.
Yeah, but I have a feeling we're heading in a direction where we're going to begin failing at this. Part of Wikipedia's awesomeness (and why I started contributing originally) was because...
a) Wikipedia probably has an article on what you're looking for. b) If Wikipedia doesn't have an article on what you're looking for, you can probably make it.
If we lose that, we lose our audience. Long tail, or something.
This was a featured article. Which passed.
One of the unusual characteristics of Wikipedia is that, as a volunteer effort, articles are primarily written to satisfy the needs of the writers, not the readers. Where those needs overlap (and usually they do) everything is fine. But a lot of problems come up when they don't.
Adam
On 27/02/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
One of the unusual characteristics of Wikipedia is that, as a volunteer effort, articles are primarily written to satisfy the needs of the writers, not the readers. Where those needs overlap (and usually they do) everything is fine. But a lot of problems come up when they don't.
I think the problems we're talking about in this thread are some of the writers versus some of the other writers. Or non-writers.
- d.
On 2/27/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
Interesting articles will establish context. They should be able to
show why the subject is interesting to someone who isn't already a fan/scholar/whatever of the subject. I would particualrly note that I think we'd be in much better shape if we stopped talking about notability and started talking about interestingness. This would put us in a position to give more of a pass to well-written, thorough articles on odd but cool topics. This is good - it has demonstrably proven itself to be something people expect from Wikipedia. [[Heavy Metal Umlaut]] anybody?
I'm not sure this is the same issue, but I had an argument with someone who wanted to include some loosely related material because it "related [the subject] to people's lives". Frankly I don't think we need to "sell" a topic to the audience. People look up articles in an encyclopedia because they are already interested in the subject, it's not like a magazine where you come across the topic randomly.
Adam
I would say it's not really the same issue. Making an article interesting should not entail sexing it up. Some subjects are naturally boring, so it's key to write in a style that can maintain the reader's interest and focus. That's more important than adding in irrelevant minutiae in an attempt to keep the reader interested, which loses the point of the article - to focus on its subject, and to focus on it in a way that keeps the reader's attention.
Johnleemk
On 2/27/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
topic to the audience. People look up articles in an encyclopedia because they are already interested in the subject, it's not like a magazine where you come across the topic randomly.
Bulldust.
Steve
"T P" t0m0p0@gmail.com writes: ....
I'm not sure this is the same issue, but I had an argument with
someone who
wanted to include some loosely related material because it
"related [the
subject] to people's lives". Frankly I don't think we need to
"sell" a
topic to the audience. People look up articles in an
encyclopedia because
they are already interested in the subject, it's not like a
magazine where
you come across the topic randomly.
Adam
On 2/27/07, Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
Every one of those links had to be clicked on.
Adam
On 2/27/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/27/07, Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
Every one of those links had to be clicked on.
Adam
True, but when I go on one of my reading sprees (and the three hours referenced in the comic isn't exactly unusual...) I'm not specifically looking for say, [[Taylor Hanson]]. If I get there from [[Tacoma Narrows Bridge]], there's a good chance I've never heard of Taylor Hanson before and followed a trail of "loosely related material" because I found connections interesting. I have, in fact, gotten to [[Taylor Hanson]] fairly randomly (and even that's assuming I haven't been using the oh-so-wonderful random page button).
If an article's lead isn't interesting, I'll close that browser tab and go on to the next one. If it is interesting, I'll read the article and probably open a few new links. In other words, I'll tend to go to whatever the article links to in much the same way that when reading a magazine I'll flip to whatever the magazine gives me.
This is obviously merely my approach as a reader. Does every reader take this approach? Probably not. Would I do this with the Encyclopaedia Britannica? Heck no. But without this aspect of Wikipedia, I'd probably use Wikipedia about as much as I do Britannica.
-- Jonel
On 2/27/07, Nick Wilkins nlwilkins@gmail.com wrote:
True, but when I go on one of my reading sprees (and the three hours referenced in the comic isn't exactly unusual...) I'm not specifically looking for say, [[Taylor Hanson]]. If I get there from [[Tacoma Narrows Bridge]], there's a good chance I've never heard of Taylor Hanson before and followed a trail of "loosely related material" because I found connections interesting. I have, in fact, gotten to [[Taylor Hanson]] fairly randomly (and even that's assuming I haven't been using the oh-so-wonderful random page button).
If an article's lead isn't interesting, I'll close that browser tab and go on to the next one. If it is interesting, I'll read the article and probably open a few new links. In other words, I'll tend to go to whatever the article links to in much the same way that when reading a magazine I'll flip to whatever the magazine gives me.
This is obviously merely my approach as a reader. Does every reader take this approach? Probably not. Would I do this with the Encyclopaedia Britannica? Heck no. But without this aspect of Wikipedia, I'd probably use Wikipedia about as much as I do Britannica.
What I'm trying to say is an encyclopedia article should not be written like a magazine article. A lot of what could be included to "relate something to people's lives" is, frankly, trivia.
Adam
On 2/28/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
What I'm trying to say is an encyclopedia article should not be written like a magazine article. A lot of what could be included to "relate something to people's lives" is, frankly, trivia.
Yeah that "relate something to people's lives" could mean "include mindless trivia", or it could mean "express something in layman's terms" or it could mean "explain the broader context"...
Steve
Phil Sandifer wrote:
I think before we can really deal with questions of what should and shouldn't be sourced, what a good source is, and what is and isn't worth having articles on, we have to go back to brass tacks and answer "What is a good article?"
[...]
To my mind there are three parts of a good article: it must be comprehensive, accurate, and interesting. [...]
Are there any problems that people can see with this formulation?
I think it's a good start, but it's hard to say for sure without seeing the implications. I'm sure you'll get more reaction as you connect it to policy changes.
There are two other qualities I'd like in a good article: readable and useful. I think the first one is somewhat out of scope, as you're focusing mainly on sourcing. Although as Adam points out, readability and comprehensiveness are at somewhat at odds, so it's not entirely irrelevant.
As for utility, I think like interestingness, it's a hard one to pin down because it's more about the reader's reaction. It's also somewhat in competition. [[Period table]] and the conversion chart on [[Ring size]] aren't so interesting, but they sure are useful. Personally, I'd rank utility higher than interestingness as a criterion for article goodness, with accuracy higher still.
William
On Feb 26, 2007, at 7:35 PM, William Pietri wrote:
As for utility, I think like interestingness, it's a hard one to pin down because it's more about the reader's reaction. It's also somewhat in competition. [[Period table]] and the conversion chart on [[Ring size]] aren't so interesting, but they sure are useful. Personally, I'd rank utility higher than interestingness as a criterion for article goodness, with accuracy higher still.
I figure interesting should be broadly construed. "Useful" falls under my conception of it.
-Phil
On 2/27/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
Marc Riddell wrote:
I see a great deal of the problem being many persons with many different agendas and purposes for being in WP itself. If a degree of common sense is needed to accomplish the common goal of ³A² then all persons must be trying to accomplish ³A². If others are there to accomplish ³B², their ³common sense² will be applied and measured differently.
Solutions? That is going to take some creative, collaborative thinking with all participants working toward the same common goal. But first, there must be an agreement about what the problem - and its cause - really is.
Well, I think the first step is to stop thinking that common sense is universal. Look at what happened over the weekend - common sense apparently told people that we did and didn't need an article on Daniel Brandt, and did and didn't need to discuss it. Some people feel common sense is to simply do what you think is best (WP:IAR, which should be destroyed with heat seeking nuclear missiles after the way February has gone on this project), some people feel common sense is giving people the due process they crave.
There's obviously no such thing as "common sense" here, so we need to get out of that frame of mind and come to a conclusion as to what's best - not what's favored by any specific group of people, not what the people who show up on a given afternoon believe, but what makes the most logical sense for the project to continue to succeed as opposed to looking like morons to outsiders.
There seems to be a great deal of resistance to the idea that many of
the
problems within WP involve the very culture itself. This speaks to me of
a
great deal of denial on the part of the Community Members.
Damn skippy. You nailed it with this paragraph.
Denial is saying ³anything but that². To admit that the ³that² is the problem, might mean having to confront, and possibly get rid of, the ³that². If a chemical dependent admits that the chemical is the ³that² that is killing them, they might have to give up that ³that². ³Anything but that!²
I mean, an easy short term fix has two steps:
- Stop giving administrators carte blanche to do as they please when they
please based on their version of common sense.
- Remove the admin bit from the worst offenders, in which there are more
than enough to cause major problems and further destroy a culture that's been rotting for a long time.
This solves - in the short term - 90% of our problems, and gives us the opportunity to fix the problems, heal the wounds, put up the necessary boundaries, and start as fresh as possible. We're in a good *position* - Citizendium, the most capable fork to challenge Wikipedia long-term, is not ready for prime time, or even cable access - but we're very close to teetering off the edge. We can unbecome a top 15 website quicker than we became one, and that can be headed off at the pass by amputating the diseased aspects - users, administrators, policies, guidelines, and even articles.
But I remain pessimistic. Even now, after three weeks of consistent abuses from many administrative forces, the only time Jimbo feels the need to step in is due to a wheel war. It tells me that the perspective on the top end is lacking regarding the problems this project is facing on the interior, which, while a legitimate perogative, is unfortunate for those of us who are/were doing the legwork to keep the articles coming and the cash flowing. And the sickness will still remain.
-Jeff
I think some perspective is necessary. Common sense isn't necessarily the same amongst different people, but I think there are some elements that tend to be the same. Common sense is the ability to know your limitations, to respect other people's opinions, and to deal with different opinions in a peaceful manner. Despite some of the worst and most turmoiled debates I can imagine occurring in 2004, we didn't have a problem with "rouge admins" or such other issues. It was because the overall culture then was one of common sense. As we scaled up, many newer editors were not assimilated into this culture, and thus people resorted to policy and red tape to solve things instead.
I don't believe there's carte blanche for admins, nor that there ever has been. Even though in the early days, admins could have been said to have a sort of blank cheque, it was much like the powers the Queen theoretically has - the blank cheque was hardly ever exercised except where truly necessary, in the borderline outliers. Today's culture in newer admins, however, is that the blank cheque exists to be used in any case. The elements of common sense that once were a core part of our culture are gone.
The blank cheque is *very* useful for handling the outlying cases, and that's why I've always maintained that it's necessary. The problem with these reserve powers, however, is that they are so easily abused, despite their necessity. More red tape only creates more loopholes through which "rouge admins" can abuse their powers, so I would prefer a slightly more structured hierarchy which permits, say, some people to oversee the exercise of admin powers. At least we can reduce the possible points of failure, without resorting to Jimbo.
And I've always favoured getting serious about desysoping people. Adminship is no big deal, and taking it away shouldn't be that big a deal either. The problem is that the arbcom works too slowly, and so we constantly require Jimbo to step in. That shouldn't be the case.
Johnleemk
On 2/27/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
I think some perspective is necessary. Common sense isn't necessarily the same amongst different people, but I think there are some elements that tend to be the same. Common sense is the ability to know your limitations, to respect other people's opinions, and to deal with different opinions in a peaceful manner.
This is not consistent with what has been common sense for most of human history. Generally killing people with different opinions (heretics foreigners) has been more popular.
And I've always favoured getting serious about desysoping people. Adminship is no big deal, and taking it away shouldn't be that big a deal either.
Knocking out even 10 of the hyperactives would lead to serious problems unless you can find replacements (and if you can could you do so now? The backlogs are getting anoying again).
on 2/26/07 10:24 PM, geni at geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Knocking out even 10 of the hyperactives would lead to serious problems unless you can find replacements (and if you can could you do so now? The backlogs are getting anoying again).
Are you saying that the quantity of the product is more important than the quality of the people? If so, that type of thinking is what has seriously contributed to the cancer in the culture.
Marc Riddell
On 2/26/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 2/26/07 10:24 PM, geni at geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Knocking out even 10 of the hyperactives would lead to serious problems unless you can find replacements (and if you can could you do so now? The backlogs are getting anoying again).
Are you saying that the quantity of the product is more important than the quality of the people? If so, that type of thinking is what has seriously contributed to the cancer in the culture.
This is a common operations problem - it's hard to say "we need to slow down" when people start screaming that problem reports or issues requiring resolution are backing up and not getting dealt with in a timely manner.
It is, as far as I know, practically impossible to significantly slow down operational responses in the process of resolving structural issues. It's almost always easier to make structural changes in a nondestructive in-line manner, and work to diminish the inflow of requests.
This is one of those organization-destroying growth phases, like the "founder needs to hire a management team now and stop trying to do it all directly himself" growth phase and the "we need to formalize process now" phase. You have to figure out how to respin the process and policy in flight, or you tend to fall down and implode.
George Herbert wrote:
This is a common operations problem - it's hard to say "we need to slow down" when people start screaming that problem reports or issues requiring resolution are backing up and not getting dealt with in a timely manner.
It is, as far as I know, practically impossible to significantly slow down operational responses in the process of resolving structural issues. It's almost always easier to make structural changes in a nondestructive in-line manner, and work to diminish the inflow of requests.
This is one of those organization-destroying growth phases, like the "founder needs to hire a management team now and stop trying to do it all directly himself" growth phase and the "we need to formalize process now" phase. You have to figure out how to respin the process and policy in flight, or you tend to fall down and implode.
That's very well put.
When I deal with this problem with clients, one option we look at is temporary help. Is there some way we could alleviate the problem enough in the short term to give people the space to find long-term solutions?
William
On 2/27/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 2/26/07 10:24 PM, geni at geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Knocking out even 10 of the hyperactives would lead to serious problems unless you can find replacements (and if you can could you do so now? The backlogs are getting anoying again).
Are you saying that the quantity of the product is more important than the quality of the people? If so, that type of thinking is what has seriously contributed to the cancer in the culture.
I'm saying that if you want a situation where the maintenance side continues to remain in any way shape or form under control you cannot afford to follow any course that would result in the loss of the hyperactive admins.
This is simply a description of the current sitution.
geni wrote:
On 2/27/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 2/26/07 10:24 PM, geni at geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Knocking out even 10 of the hyperactives would lead to serious problems unless you can find replacements (and if you can could you do so now? The backlogs are getting anoying again).
Are you saying that the quantity of the product is more important than the quality of the people? If so, that type of thinking is what has seriously contributed to the cancer in the culture.
I'm saying that if you want a situation where the maintenance side continues to remain in any way shape or form under control you cannot afford to follow any course that would result in the loss of the hyperactive admins.
This is simply a description of the current sitution.
How may "hyper-active" admins are there? And if I'm following things corrects (and maybe I'm not), it seems that you're assuming that these hyperactives are likely candidates for losing their admin status. Am I right about that?
-Rich
On 2/27/07, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
geni wrote:
On 2/27/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 2/26/07 10:24 PM, geni at geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Knocking out even 10 of the hyperactives would lead to serious problems unless you can find replacements (and if you can could you do so now? The backlogs are getting anoying again).
Are you saying that the quantity of the product is more important than the quality of the people? If so, that type of thinking is what has seriously contributed to the cancer in the culture.
I'm saying that if you want a situation where the maintenance side continues to remain in any way shape or form under control you cannot afford to follow any course that would result in the loss of the hyperactive admins.
This is simply a description of the current sitution.
How may "hyper-active" admins are there?
100 maybe 150 closer to 100. About 45 admins carry out 50% of our deletions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dragons_flight/deleterlist
And if I'm following things corrects (and maybe I'm not), it seems that you're assuming that these hyperactives are likely candidates for losing their admin status. Am I right about that?
Probably. The less active you are the harder it is to upset people.
On 2/26/07, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
geni wrote:
On 2/27/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 2/26/07 10:24 PM, geni at geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Knocking out even 10 of the hyperactives would lead to serious problems unless you can find replacements (and if you can could you do so now? The backlogs are getting anoying again).
Are you saying that the quantity of the product is more important than
the
quality of the people? If so, that type of thinking is what has
seriously
contributed to the cancer in the culture.
I'm saying that if you want a situation where the maintenance side continues to remain in any way shape or form under control you cannot afford to follow any course that would result in the loss of the hyperactive admins.
This is simply a description of the current sitution.
How may "hyper-active" admins are there? And if I'm following things corrects (and maybe I'm not), it seems that you're assuming that these hyperactives are likely candidates for losing their admin status. Am I right about that?
-Rich
I would argue that hyper-active admins are more likely to have a short admin career (whether that be because of desysopping or just leaving), and further that the likelihood is greater than proportional to their edits. As you take on herculean backlogs and amounts of work, your stress level increases and the attention you give to each instance is less. This is a case both of giving them less time (even if you double your time spent on Wikipedia, it is easy to inadvertently increase your workload by an even greater factor - new pages alone is basically almost uncatchable these days), and of making more mistakes. So, you wind up more stressed, with disproportionately more mistakes and thus complaints, which are easy to react badly to (after all, aren't you practically single-handedly holding at bay backlogs at CSD/New pages/ANI/Requested Moves/PROD/AfD/etc.? Don't you deserve a little gratitude or at least understanding?). One may well be able to handle it perfectly fine most of the times, and not add to one's stress by becoming too addicted to Wikipedia or damaging your regular life - but it only takes one blow up or major mistake.
You hyper-active admins on the list - am I entirely wrong here?
My ideal situation would be that admins would be very active initially so they can learn the ropes, and that they would then settle down to an activity level more characteristic of the long tail, where they are not so much admins but editors with admin powers who regularly (but not excessively) help out the current batch of very active new admins and once in a while clear out backlogs.
-- Gwern
Gwern Branwen wrote:
On 2/26/07, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
geni wrote:
On 2/27/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 2/26/07 10:24 PM, geni at geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Knocking out even 10 of the hyperactives would lead to serious problems unless you can find replacements (and if you can could you do so now? The backlogs are getting anoying again).
Are you saying that the quantity of the product is more important than
the
quality of the people? If so, that type of thinking is what has
seriously
contributed to the cancer in the culture.
I'm saying that if you want a situation where the maintenance side continues to remain in any way shape or form under control you cannot afford to follow any course that would result in the loss of the hyperactive admins.
This is simply a description of the current sitution.
How may "hyper-active" admins are there? And if I'm following things corrects (and maybe I'm not), it seems that you're assuming that these hyperactives are likely candidates for losing their admin status. Am I right about that?
-Rich
I would argue that hyper-active admins are more likely to have a short admin career (whether that be because of desysopping or just leaving), and further that the likelihood is greater than proportional to their edits. As you take on herculean backlogs and amounts of work, your stress level increases and the attention you give to each instance is less. This is a case both of giving them less time (even if you double your time spent on Wikipedia, it is easy to inadvertently increase your workload by an even greater factor - new pages alone is basically almost uncatchable these days), and of making more mistakes. So, you wind up more stressed, with disproportionately more mistakes and thus complaints, which are easy to react badly to (after all, aren't you practically single-handedly holding at bay backlogs at CSD/New pages/ANI/Requested Moves/PROD/AfD/etc.? Don't you deserve a little gratitude or at least understanding?). One may well be able to handle it perfectly fine most of the times, and not add to one's stress by becoming too addicted to Wikipedia or damaging your regular life - but it only takes one blow up or major mistake.
You hyper-active admins on the list - am I entirely wrong here?
My ideal situation would be that admins would be very active initially so they can learn the ropes, and that they would then settle down to an activity level more characteristic of the long tail, where they are not so much admins but editors with admin powers who regularly (but not excessively) help out the current batch of very active new admins and once in a while clear out backlogs.
I can think of a few types of organizations/businesses that are heavily reliant on a small group of over-worked people...but I don't think Wikipedia should be one of them.
FWIW, I think that decreasing the average workload of the "hyperactives" should be a major priority. The quality of their work will improve, the number of fatigue-related problems will decrease, and there may be less hesitation in de-sysopping one of them.
-Rich
Gwern makes many a point here I agree with. In many respects, the hyperactive admins are a problem, for entirely the reasons he makes. These are the people who burn out. These are the people who are most likely to fall victim to 'Wik's disease' - the I Am Irreplaceable conviction.
They're also the people who are most likely to be cut too much slack on account of all their efforts, so that they're not checked early on, and only face censure when they do something incredibly bad.
Some of them will have the strength to resist the stress; many will not.
-Matt
On 2/27/07, Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
I would argue that hyper-active admins are more likely to have a short admin career (whether that be because of desysopping or just leaving), and further that the likelihood is greater than proportional to their edits.
Not exactly whuile the burn out rate is high (2-3 of the top ten on that list I posted are gone) most are not that new.
My ideal situation would be that admins would be very active initially so they can learn the ropes,
You can't inforce this
and that they would then settle down to an activity level more characteristic of the long tail, where they are not so much admins but editors with admin powers who regularly (but not excessively) help out the current batch of very active new admins and once in a while clear out backlogs.
There are not enough new admins. Throw in the rate of rule shift and you have a problem with the older admins.
The long tail isn't doing enough with the result that the head has to.
geni geniice@gmail.com writes:
t> On 2/27/07, Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
I would argue that hyper-active admins are more likely to have
a short admin
career (whether that be because of desysopping or just
leaving), and further
that the likelihood is greater than proportional to their
edits.
Not exactly whuile the burn out rate is high (2-3 of the top ten
on
that list I posted are gone) most are not that new.
Perhaps. Without a longer-term comparison, we might be seeing a [[survivorship bias]] there. And I think a 30% burn out rate is fairly high - I don't think the burnout rate of the full cohort of 1,132 admins is so high.
My ideal situation would be that admins would be very active
initially so
they can learn the ropes,
You can't inforce this
No, not really. It's just what would be a better way of doing things.
and that they would then settle down to an activity level more characteristic of the long tail, where they
are not so
much admins but editors with admin powers who regularly (but
not
excessively) help out the current batch of very active new
admins and once
in a while clear out backlogs.
There are not enough new admins. Throw in the rate of rule shift
and
you have a problem with the older admins.
The long tail isn't doing enough with the result that the head
has to.
-- geni
on 2/26/07 10:45 PM, geni at geniice@gmail.com wrote:
I'm saying that if you want a situation where the maintenance side continues to remain in any way shape or form under control you cannot afford to follow any course that would result in the loss of the hyperactive admins.
Geni,
I a stumbling over - and struggling with - the use of the term, "hyperactive" here. In my line of work hyperactivity in a person is a disorder, and something to be corrected because it is harming the person. I am not being facetious. Please clear this up for me in the context of WP.
Marc
I think geni just means admins who are significantly more active than the general population of admins.
On 2/27/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 2/26/07 10:45 PM, geni at geniice@gmail.com wrote:
I'm saying that if you want a situation where the maintenance side continues to remain in any way shape or form under control you cannot afford to follow any course that would result in the loss of the hyperactive admins.
Geni,
I a stumbling over - and struggling with - the use of the term, "hyperactive" here. In my line of work hyperactivity in a person is a disorder, and something to be corrected because it is harming the person. I am not being facetious. Please clear this up for me in the context of WP.
Marc
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on 2/27/07 12:44 PM, The Cunctator at cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
I think geni just means admins who are significantly more active than the general population of admins.
I was hoping that was what Geni meant, but I didn't want to assume. But what happens when these more active admins simply don't have the interpersonal skills necessary to function within a community?
Marc
On 2/27/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 2/26/07 10:45 PM, geni at geniice@gmail.com wrote:
I'm saying that if you want a situation where the maintenance side continues to remain in any way shape or form under control you cannot afford to follow any course that would result in the loss of the hyperactive admins.
Geni,
I a stumbling over - and struggling with - the use of the term, "hyperactive" here. In my line of work hyperactivity in a person is a disorder, and something to be corrected because it is harming the person. I am not being facetious. Please clear this up for me in the context of WP.
Marc
On 27/02/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
I was hoping that was what Geni meant, but I didn't want to assume. But what happens when these more active admins simply don't have the interpersonal skills necessary to function within a community?
Then we see lots of the sort of complaints about admins we see here. Same as when users without social skills meet admins who would. When neither has social skills, it's FUN FOR EVERYONE!!
Politics starts happening with two or more people in one place. When you have a few thousand, it's amazing when anything gets done ...
- d.
On 2/27/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 2/26/07 10:45 PM, geni at geniice@gmail.com wrote: I a stumbling over - and struggling with - the use of the term, "hyperactive" here. In my line of work hyperactivity in a person is a disorder, and something to be corrected because it is harming the person. I am not being facetious. Please clear this up for me in the context of WP.
Marc
It's one of the various groups I tend to devide admins into admins fall into
paper admins slightly active active hyper active
most admins fall into the first two groups with most of the work being done by the actives and hyper actives.
on any given day we have a little over 200 active admins:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jim182/adminstats2
200 is also pretty close to the number that average over 100 deletions per month. I don't think the current sitation is sustainable in the long run.
on 2/27/07 1:14 PM, geni at geniice@gmail.com wrote:
It's one of the various groups I tend to devide admins into admins fall into
paper admins slightly active active hyper active
most admins fall into the first two groups with most of the work being done by the actives and hyper actives.
on any given day we have a little over 200 active admins:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jim182/adminstats2
200 is also pretty close to the number that average over 100 deletions per month. I don't think the current sitation is sustainable in the long run.
Thanks for this, Geni. I'm not usually a nitpicker, but when you separate the two words (hyper active) my alarms don't go off and I'm on the same page. I still believe that, no matter how "productive" an admin is, they still need to be able to function in a healthy way with the people they are engaging.
I can be relentless ;-)
Marc
Marc Riddell wrote:
on 2/26/07 10:45 PM, geni wrote:
I'm saying that if you want a situation where the maintenance side continues to remain in any way shape or form under control you cannot afford to follow any course that would result in the loss of the hyperactive admins.
Geni,
I a stumbling over - and struggling with - the use of the term, "hyperactive" here. In my line of work hyperactivity in a person is a disorder, and something to be corrected because it is harming the person. I am not being facetious. Please clear this up for me in the context of WP.
Sometimes I'm inclined to believe that the disorder is relevant to our context. Can ADHD be channeled into productive activity rather than suppressed?
Ec
Marc Riddell wrote:
In my line of work hyperactivity in a person is a
disorder, and something to be corrected because it is harming the person.
on 2/28/07 2:42 PM, Ray Saintonge at saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Sometimes I'm inclined to believe that the disorder is relevant to our context. Can ADHD be channeled into productive activity rather than suppressed?
Ray
Are you really serious with this question?
Marc
Marc Riddell wrote:
on 2/28/07 2:42 PM, Ray Saintonge at saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Sometimes I'm inclined to believe that the disorder is relevant to our context. Can ADHD be channeled into productive activity rather than suppressed?
Are you really serious with this question?
It's not an unreasonable question.
Some people argue that ADHD is an adaptive trait, just not in the modern context. And as Jameson shows pretty well in "Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament," even things that we clearly consider maladaptive can be channeled into outlets with substantial societal value, even when they are personally harmful. Another good example is Temple Grandin, a high-functioning autistic whose substantial successes are rooted directly in her autism. And in my own field, top-performing computer people are notoriously quirky.
I would be unsurprised to learn that a disproportionate share of Wikipedia contribution comes from people with traits considered diagnosable by what the Aspberger's community somewhat sneeringly refer to as "neurotypicals". And not in spite of their differences, but because of them.
William
on 2/28/07 5:27 PM, William Pietri at william@scissor.com wrote:
Some people argue that ADHD is an adaptive trait, just not in the modern context. And as Jameson shows pretty well in "Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament," even things that we clearly consider maladaptive can be channeled into outlets with substantial societal value, even when they are personally harmful. Another good example is Temple Grandin, a high-functioning autistic whose substantial successes are rooted directly in her autism. And in my own field, top-performing computer people are notoriously quirky.
I would be unsurprised to learn that a disproportionate share of Wikipedia contribution comes from people with traits considered diagnosable by what the Aspberger's community somewhat sneeringly refer to as "neurotypicals". And not in spite of their differences, but because of them.
William,
Please be careful how seriously you take Jameson¹s book. But that¹s a thread for a different Mailing List.
As for ADHD: it is obscene how some therapists and the pharmaceuticals have exploited this condition. ADHD used to be called by another name: boredom.
The focus of my work is the treatment of human psychosocial disorders, regardless of the person¹s profession or occupation. The disorders you refer to are blocks to creative expression and productivity; they are not conditions to be exploited for the benefit of some end product.
A great many of the persons I have worked with over the years have been artists of various disciplines; many of which have been stage and screen performers - some of these developed into actors. These persons came to me seeking help with specific problems occurring in their lives. As it is most often with the persons I work with, it wasn¹t so much the present issues, but their inability to cope with the feelings and emotions these issues elicited. During the course of our work together, not only did their personal lives improve, but they also found that their work had vastly improved the performer had become an artist. And, even more importantly, the person had become pain free. These artists found the emotions required by the honest rendering of their characters were more honest and believable. They did, through their own personal confrontation with these emotions, no longer fear, and, therefore, block them. To be more honest and effective the artist must confront their own personal issues (blocks) with the feelings and emotions required by the scene (or role). The person must be able to accept and allow those feelings without fear or reservation. This presents to the person not to the artist, who is first a person. If a person allows them self to feel the feelings that elicit that emotion, the result can be infinitely more believable. Indeed, in any work toward a goal, if the person is preoccupied with the feelings and emotions the journey toward that goal is producing, the goal itself takes a back seat.
Marc Riddell
on 2/26/07 10:14 PM, John Lee at johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
At least we can reduce the possible points of failure, without resorting to Jimbo.
As far as the overall culture of the Wikipedia Community is concerned, nothing is going to change until a recognition that it needs to change - and a mandate to fix it - comes from the top. Without that it is all merely theory to be debated.
Marc Riddell
On 28/02/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 2/26/07 10:14 PM, John Lee at johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
At least we can reduce the possible points of failure, without resorting to Jimbo.
As far as the overall culture of the Wikipedia Community is concerned, nothing is going to change until a recognition that it needs to change - and a mandate to fix it - comes from the top. Without that it is all merely theory to be debated.
Mandates from the top sometimes don't work that well in practice. The community has told Jimbo to get knotted before ...
These are volunteers. Volunteer motivation is a tricky one. Best thing to do is to think in terms of herding cats - you need to work out the local equivalent of tuna.
- d.
on 2/28/07 7:28 AM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Mandates from the top sometimes don't work that well in practice. The community has told Jimbo to get knotted before ...
These are volunteers. Volunteer motivation is a tricky one. Best thing to do is to think in terms of herding cats - you need to work out the local equivalent of tuna.
David,
I hear ya. It is just that it's been my experience with any type of organization that motivation for any type of major change must come from (and include) that person at the top. On their own, enough people need to feel there is a problem before any work toward change can begin. In my work as a psychotherapist, it is not my role to convince you that you have pain - I can only help you to relieve it.
Marc
On 28/02/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 2/28/07 7:28 AM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Mandates from the top sometimes don't work that well in practice. The community has told Jimbo to get knotted before ... These are volunteers. Volunteer motivation is a tricky one. Best thing to do is to think in terms of herding cats - you need to work out the local equivalent of tuna.
I hear ya. It is just that it's been my experience with any type of organization that motivation for any type of major change must come from (and include) that person at the top. On their own, enough people need to feel there is a problem before any work toward change can begin. In my work as a psychotherapist, it is not my role to convince you that you have pain - I can only help you to relieve it.
We're basically agreeing, I think. The psychopathology of organisations is a fascinating area!
Volunteers are stroppy buggers. They do *ridiculous* amounts of work, though. As long as they want to.
- d.
on 2/28/07 8:33 AM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
We're basically agreeing, I think.
Yes, I believe we are.
The psychopathology of
organisations is a fascinating area!
It has been a focus of my work for several years now. And, it's never dull!
Volunteers are stroppy buggers. They do *ridiculous* amounts of work, though. As long as they want to.
And they will work so long as they are treated well - and believe in what they are working for. You and I are doing it now.
Marc
On 2/28/07, Puppy puppy@killerchihuahua.com wrote:
Translation request from American - what is a "stroppy bugger", please?
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stroppy : ornery, fractious, belligerent, or obstreperous, and hence difficult to deal with
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bugger : an insulting term for a person or thing
Angela
Hrm... I was thinking perhaps I was missing some subtlety, but apparently not. thanks much -
-kc-
Angela wrote:
On 2/28/07, Puppy puppy@killerchihuahua.com wrote:
Translation request from American - what is a "stroppy bugger", please?
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stroppy : ornery, fractious, belligerent, or obstreperous, and hence difficult to deal with
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bugger : an insulting term for a person or thing
Angela
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 2/28/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 2/26/07 10:14 PM, John Lee at johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
At least we can reduce the possible points of failure, without resorting to Jimbo.
As far as the overall culture of the Wikipedia Community is concerned, nothing is going to change until a recognition that it needs to change - and a mandate to fix it - comes from the top. Without that it is all merely theory to be debated.
Marc Riddell
Well, kind of the idea of creating a new class of users involved with the English WP was to create a new "top" so we wouldn't need to rely on the mandate coming from Jimbo who, I think, is a bit isolated from the things that go on in WP on a daily basis.
Johnleemk
on 2/28/07 8:39 AM, John Lee at johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
Well, kind of the idea of creating a new class of users involved with the English WP was to create a new "top" so we wouldn't need to rely on the mandate coming from Jimbo who, I think, is a bit isolated from the things that go on in WP on a daily basis.
John,
I just don't see how a group can lead - without a group leader.
Marc
On 2/28/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 2/28/07 8:39 AM, John Lee at johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
Well, kind of the idea of creating a new class of users involved with
the
English WP was to create a new "top" so we wouldn't need to rely on the mandate coming from Jimbo who, I think, is a bit isolated from the
things
that go on in WP on a daily basis.
John,
I just don't see how a group can lead - without a group leader.
Marc
Well, a small committee would surely be more effective than total anarchy - which is sort of what we have now. Criticisms of group leadership would be applicable if we asked the admins to lead - that's simply ridiculous - but a small committee, perhaps akin to the arbcom, would be better, IMO. Every CEO needs a COO, CTO, etc. after all.
Johnleemk
On 28/02/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
Well, a small committee would surely be more effective than total anarchy - which is sort of what we have now. Criticisms of group leadership would be applicable if we asked the admins to lead - that's simply ridiculous - but a small committee, perhaps akin to the arbcom, would be better, IMO. Every CEO needs a COO, CTO, etc. after all.
This is sorta what happens now. Experienced people with a clue show it. (This is how they get sucked into various Foundation functionary jobs and projects. In any volunteer organisation, the reward for a job well done is another three jobs.)
- d.
On 28/02/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/28/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 2/28/07 8:39 AM, John Lee at johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
Well, kind of the idea of creating a new class of users involved with the English WP was to create a new "top" so we wouldn't need to rely on the mandate coming from Jimbo who, I think, is a bit isolated from the things that go on in WP on a daily basis.
I just don't see how a group can lead - without a group leader.
Well, a small committee would surely be more effective than total anarchy - which is sort of what we have now. Criticisms of group leadership would be applicable if we asked the admins to lead - that's simply ridiculous - but a small committee, perhaps akin to the arbcom, would be better, IMO. Every CEO needs a COO, CTO, etc. after all.
I look forward to you convincing the community to accept a Privy Council, then. :-)
Yours,
Marc Riddell wrote:
on 2/28/07 8:39 AM, John Lee at johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
Well, kind of the idea of creating a new class of users involved with the English WP was to create a new "top" so we wouldn't need to rely on the mandate coming from Jimbo who, I think, is a bit isolated from the things that go on in WP on a daily basis.
John,
I just don't see how a group can lead - without a group leader.
Maybe we're getting a little off topic, but it works pretty well for me. I started and still participate a couple of cooperatives with no formal leadership structure. When somebody gets a bee in their bonnet, they might lead the charge on something. Or they might form a small cabal that makes something happen. There's no leadership in the conventional sense, just a bunch of people who have enough respect they can get something done when it matters.
Which, honestly, was always how I'd assumed that Wikipedia worked.
William
On 2/28/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 2/28/07 8:39 AM, John Lee at johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
Well, kind of the idea of creating a new class of users involved with the English WP was to create a new "top" so we wouldn't need to rely on the mandate coming from Jimbo who, I think, is a bit isolated from the things that go on in WP on a daily basis.
John,
I just don't see how a group can lead - without a group leader.
It doesn't have to be leader-singular in the appointive sense. People who are leaders in some sense just rise to the top; participation in WP:AN, WP:ANI, these mailing lists, policy discussions at the Village Pump, etc.
A rough consensus democracy can evolve among such leaders if they play nicely together and feel empowered to do things. Someone will probably end up as more equal than the rest, but that doesn't have to be a formal executive power position, it can be consensus-leader soft power.
This is not a necessary or natural evolution of empowered leader groups, though. Some are dysfunctional or just don't rise to that level of leadership due to personal or organizational issues.
on 2/28/07 8:39 AM, John Lee at johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
Well, kind of the idea of creating a new class of users involved with the English WP was to create a new "top" so we wouldn't need to rely on the mandate coming from Jimbo who, I think, is a bit isolated from the things that go on in WP on a daily basis.
On 2/28/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
John,
I just don't see how a group can lead - without a group leader.
on 2/28/07 5:48 PM, George Herbert at george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
It doesn't have to be leader-singular in the appointive sense. People who are leaders in some sense just rise to the top; participation in WP:AN, WP:ANI, these mailing lists, policy discussions at the Village Pump, etc.
A rough consensus democracy can evolve among such leaders if they play nicely together and feel empowered to do things. Someone will probably end up as more equal than the rest, but that doesn't have to be a formal executive power position, it can be consensus-leader soft power.
This is not a necessary or natural evolution of empowered leader groups, though. Some are dysfunctional or just don't rise to that level of leadership due to personal or organizational issues.
George,
What I am talking about is the case where the recognized leader of an organization (and WP has one) says, "I see there is a problem within this organization. Someone come up with some solutions. I will back you."
Marc
On 2/27/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 2/25/07 10:29 PM, John Lee at johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
Okay, instead of bickering over whether there is a problem with the
status
quo, let's assume there is a problem. What should we do to solve this problem? I haven't seen many ideas about what ought to be done to
resolve
the ostensible issues.
I'm not saying there isn't a problem, nor am I saying it's impossible to solve it. However, I think it's important to recognise that you can't
expect
perfection from an innately imperfect project. When you have something
on
the scale of Wikipedia, involving so many mortals, the errors multiply
by
each other pretty quickly, and add up to some massive problems. We need
to
solve them, and the status quo is what we came up with. It's clunky, it sucks, but it's better than nothing.
The problem, as I see it, is that there's just far too little common
sense.
Defining common sense is of course an ordeal I am not about to delve
into,
but the point of our policies and guidelines is to enforce a semblance
of
common sense on people lacking it. ŠŠŠŠŠŠ
Johnleemk
Common sense or common purpose? What common sense needs to be applied to accomplish this common purpose?
I see a great deal of the problem being many persons with many different agendas and purposes for being in WP itself. If a degree of common sense is needed to accomplish the common goal of ³A² then all persons must be trying to accomplish ³A². If others are there to accomplish ³B², their ³common sense² will be applied and measured differently.
Solutions? That is going to take some creative, collaborative thinking with all participants working toward the same common goal. But first, there must be an agreement about what the problem - and its cause - really is.
There seems to be a great deal of resistance to the idea that many of the problems within WP involve the very culture itself. This speaks to me of a great deal of denial on the part of the Community Members.
Denial is saying ³anything but that². To admit that the ³that² is the problem, might mean having to confront, and possibly get rid of, the ³that². If a chemical dependent admits that the chemical is the ³that² that is killing them, they might have to give up that ³that². ³Anything but that!²
Marc Riddell
It's a question of whether we want a "big tent" of people with different but similar purposes working together to achieve a result that approximates what all of them desire, or whether we want a smaller but more dedicated group to achieving a particular common purpose. I have always been torn between the two, but I am of the opinion that it wouldn't hurt to turn Wikipedia more to the latter direction. At times, there's been a great deal of misunderstanding about what exactly Wikipedia is. It's not an attempt to use a democracy or anarchy to organise information. It's not an attempt to prove that a decentralised approach to organising information works. It's not an attempt to make information egalitarian by being anti-expert. It's not a social networking site. It's an encyclopaedia, and everything about Wikipedia, directly or indirectly, should be related to the purpose of writing an encyclopaedia.
Regarding the issue of culture, I'm not sure if that was meant to directly rebutt anything I said, because I implied that the problem is one of culture. We've turned to more red tape and more policy in order to approximate the common sensibility that was shared in earlier days. The inclusionist and deletionist debates were in full swing around 2004, but you didn't see complaints about "rouge admins" or things like that, because people had the common sense to respect each other, to accept different viewpoints, to understand their limitations. That culture is gone.
The reason I mentioned that we may have to resort to a software fix is because I am very skeptical about the possibility of changing our culture. It's not possible to do this without alienating a lot of longtime editors. In the end, it's possible that we could massively purge WP of people who don't share the common purpose of building an encyclopaedia, but it's highly implausible. I believe we can survive without these people, because a lot of edits are made by anonymous editors, but we will never drive them off, because it's politically unacceptable to most Wikipedians, even those who do share the common purpose of building an encyclopaedia.
Therefore, what has to be done is to find ways to limit the damage our corroded culture can do. We've tried the policy route, and it's failed abysmally. It's time to see if article and editor ratings, together with a more refined approach to blocking, can ameliorate the problem.
Johnleemk
on 2/26/07 9:57 PM, John Lee at johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
It's a question of whether we want a "big tent" of people with different but similar purposes working together to achieve a result that approximates what all of them desire, or whether we want a smaller but more dedicated group to achieving a particular common purpose. I have always been torn between the two, but I am of the opinion that it wouldn't hurt to turn Wikipedia more to the latter direction.
Terrific post, John.
I agree with how you are leaning. I don¹t believe it matters how large the group - although it would seem that a smaller one would be easier to coordinate. But it does matter a great deal that this group have a common, specific, and mutually agreed upon purpose or goal. In the case of Wikipedia, I believe that goal should be to create and maintain a reliable, unbiased encyclopedia of human knowledge.
At times, there's been a great deal of
misunderstanding about what exactly Wikipedia is.
For the record, I differentiate between Wikipedia and the Wikipedia Community. Wikipedia (the encyclopedia) is created and maintained by the Community (the people). Wikipedia needs specific policies and guidelines to govern its characteristics so should the Community. If there is ambivalence or downright disagreement about either of these, you have confusion actually, you have a mess.
It's not an attempt to use
a democracy or anarchy to organise information. It's not an attempt to prove that a decentralised approach to organising information works. It's not an attempt to make information egalitarian by being anti-expert. It's not a social networking site. It's an encyclopaedia, and everything about Wikipedia, directly or indirectly, should be related to the purpose of writing an encyclopaedia.
Well put. And, yes, it is that simple.
Regarding the issue of culture, I'm not sure if that was meant to directly rebutt anything I said, because I implied that the problem is one of culture.
No rebuttal was intended.
people had the common sense to respect each other, to accept different
viewpoints, to understand their limitations. That culture is gone.
I believe it has more to do with emotional makeup than common sense. And, unfortunately, it appears I have come too late to the Community to have experienced the culture you say was.
The reason I mentioned that we may have to resort to a software fix is because I am very skeptical about the possibility of changing our culture.
But wouldn¹t that be like replacing the electrical system of a car whose engine is shot?
It's not possible to do this without alienating a lot of longtime editors. In the end, it's possible that we could massively purge WP of people who don't share the common purpose of building an encyclopaedia, but it's highly implausible. I believe we can survive without these people, because a lot of edits are made by anonymous editors, but we will never drive them off, because it's politically unacceptable to most Wikipedians, even those who do share the common purpose of building an encyclopaedia.
If the persons (editors) agree to a common purpose and a set of common cultural values, what could possibly be their argument to keep anyone who doesn¹t?
Therefore, what has to be done is to find ways to limit the damage our corroded culture can do. We've tried the policy route, and it's failed abysmally. It's time to see if article and editor ratings, together with a more refined approach to blocking, can ameliorate the problem.
* John, I¹m afraid it¹s going to take more that mechanical fixes to halt the corrosion. It is going to take everyone from the top down finally coming to terms with the fact that there are flesh and blood, emotional, human beings at the core of this project each bringing their own learning, life experiences and day-to-day struggles into the mix. The larger culture we come from, and have learned from, doesn¹t handle this emotional aspect of the human being very well. But, perhaps, with some work, the Wikipedia culture can.
Marc Riddell
--
You can dream of a moment for years, and still somehow miss it when it comes. You¹ve got to reach through the flames and take it - Or lose it forever.
On 2/28/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Špeople had the common sense to respect each other, to accept different
viewpoints, to understand their limitations. That culture is gone.
I believe it has more to do with emotional makeup than common sense. And, unfortunately, it appears I have come too late to the Community to have experienced the culture you say was.
Indeed - I noticed it was disappearing in 2005, and by 2006 it seemed to have almost completely vanished. I recognise that part of my feelings about this are just irrational wishing for the "good old days" (I have noticed it's always the same with any online community people have been members of for a long time - we tend to get nostalgic and hype up how good things once were). But still, there was a culture of mutual respect for each other. Even if you thought someone was dead wrong, you didn't get into a wheel war or edit war with them. You just argued a lot and tried to find a solution to the problem. I notice that the culture is not completely dead - many relatively (to me) newer admins have the same kind of attitude. But many more don't, and the same goes for the editorial community at large.
The reason I mentioned that we may have to resort to a software fix is because I am very skeptical about the possibility of changing our
culture.
But wouldn¹t that be like replacing the electrical system of a car whose engine is shot?
The perfect is the enemy of the good. I'm not proposing the software fix as an ideal solution. I'm proposing it as a stopgap measure to deal with our corroded culture to buy us time to work on ways to fix the culture - and also reduce the distractions from the real work that needs to be done.
It's not possible to do this without alienating a lot of longtime editors.
In the end, it's possible that we could massively purge WP of people who don't share the common purpose of building an encyclopaedia, but it's
highly
implausible. I believe we can survive without these people, because a
lot of
edits are made by anonymous editors, but we will never drive them off, because it's politically unacceptable to most Wikipedians, even those
who do
share the common purpose of building an encyclopaedia.
If the persons (editors) agree to a common purpose and a set of common cultural values, what could possibly be their argument to keep anyone who doesn¹t?
People have this emotional bond to the idea that it's not fair to kick out people just over a disagreement on ideals. Furthermore, many of these people often are committed to writing an encyclopaedia - it's just that they tack on other peripheral goals to this common purpose. The resulting disagreements are difficult to solve.
I just think it's impractical to evict these kinds of people, especially since it runs counter to things like assuming good faith. (Indeed, many of these people act wholly out of good faith.) We hav to tolerate the big tent - it's just that we also need to keep reminding people that our common purpose must and should override whatever peripheral purposes others may have. I think this is a better solution.
Therefore, what has to be done is to find ways to limit the damage our corroded culture can do. We've tried the policy route, and it's failed abysmally. It's time to see if article and editor ratings, together with
a
more refined approach to blocking, can ameliorate the problem.
- John, I¹m afraid it¹s going to take more that mechanical fixes to halt
the corrosion. It is going to take everyone from the top down finally coming to terms with the fact that there are flesh and blood, emotional, human beings at the core of this project each bringing their own learning, life experiences and day-to-day struggles into the mix. The larger culture we come from, and have learned from, doesn¹t handle this emotional aspect of the human being very well. But, perhaps, with some work, the Wikipedia culture can.
I'm not going to comment on the culture of human society at large, but I think that you can't change culture overnight, and that changing a culture is very difficult without mass shedding of blood (in this case, it's a metaphor). That's why I believe software fixes should be given priority for the time being. They're just a bandaid, but they will hopefully ameliorate several problems with our corroded culture until we can find long term fixes.
Furthermore, some changes such as selective blocking/page protection could be helpful towards developing a culture of greater respect for others' viewpoints. If you constantly get blocked from editing a particular article or joining a particular discussion because you're exhibiting a total lack of common sense there, disrespecting others and resorting to last resorts like reverting instead of discussion, at some point you'll either get fed up and leave the project, or change your ways. (I think in older editors, it will be the former; in newer editors, the latter.)
Marc Riddell
Johnleemk
On 2/27/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 2/26/07 9:57 PM, John Lee at johnleemk@gmail.com wrote: ....
The reason I mentioned that we may have to resort to a software fix is because I am very skeptical about the possibility of changing our
culture.
But wouldn¹t that be like replacing the electrical system of a car whose engine is shot? ....
Marc Riddell
(To be utterly pedantic, the problem with the engine might be that all its problems are because the circuits are being messed up by an irregular flow of electricity.)
But seriously. When it comes to a wiki, code is law. Of Lessig's four pillars (see [[Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace]]), only two are really active. The marketplace rarely affects us - it trivially affects in so much as it is possible to pay for hosting and other tech costs - and only late in the game does the market become interested in us as something which can be productivized. The law does affect us some more than the marketplace, but we generally run a clean shop and are doing something fairly normal and obviously productive (we aren't an illegal pedopedia operating through Freenet, for example), so we generally just have to worry about copyright and libel. The two most important pillars are the community and the code. The community can work around the code to a limited extent, but if the code says no pictures, then there's little that can be done (except fork, and there are all sorts of reasons why a fork can't really replace Wikipedia). If you want to force the community in a direction, then code is the most effective way. It is not very polite or considerate, but it certainly works. For example, I gather that quite a few people and possibly a significant part of the active community isn't convinced that turning off anonymous page creation has had any salutary effect, or a effect more salutary than the negatives of that decision, but nevertheless, the code still stands and prevents anon page creation.
-- Gwern
on 2/27/07 3:51 PM, Gwern Branwen at gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
If you want to force the community in a direction, then code is the most effective way. It is not very polite or considerate, but it certainly works.
Your entire post intimidated me ;-) and bullied me :-) into reading more Lessig - thanks. The section I pulled out above intrigues the hell out of me; I would love to know more.
Marc Riddell
On 27/02/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 2/27/07 3:51 PM, Gwern Branwen at gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
If you want to force the community in a direction, then code is the most effective way. It is not very polite or considerate, but it certainly works.
Your entire post intimidated me ;-) and bullied me :-) into reading more Lessig - thanks. The section I pulled out above intrigues the hell out of me; I would love to know more.
Developers have inordinate power, so it's probably just as well they're uniformly noble-spirited ;-) They shape the virtual world we're working in here.
Also, it's a good way to lure people into coding - if there's just this one feature that would make MediaWiki lovely, then writing it is probably the best way to get it, because we're desperately short of developers.
(I'm trying to think of good reading on the subject. The Cunctator wrote quite a rant about it in the early days of Wikipedia which is still up on nostalgia.wikipedia.org somewhere. There's undoubtedly a pile of academic and semi-academic papers on the subject.)
- d.
Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net writes:
on 2/27/07 3:51 PM, Gwern Branwen at gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
If you want to force the community in a direction, then code is
the
most effective way. It is not very polite or considerate, but
it certainly
works.
Your entire post intimidated me ;-) and bullied me :-) into
reading more
Lessig - thanks. The section I pulled out above intrigues the
hell out of
me; I would love to know more.
Marc Riddell
Well, I'm glad to hear that. And you certainly have no excuse not to read the second edition http://codev2.cc/, given that it's under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License!
To briefly expand on my comments: what the developers create is the very fabric of Wikipedia. I am not even joking here: what they write makes things possible and impossible to think on wiki. Technical changes have definitely had their effects on the wiki - the most crucial part of a wiki is technical, like anon editing or wikimarkup - both subtly and overtly. We used to use a lot of subpages; now subpages are practically an alien concept except as applied in userspace and for archiving talk pages. (A lot of people don't even bother to archive, though, or just wikidelete their talk page every so often, or let a bot do all the work). Why is this? I noticed the abandonment of subpages started around the time a number of templates like {{main}} and {{seealso}} were introduced. If this is true, then there didn't even need to be official deprecation or restrictions to shift editing habits in a significant way.
Again, 'code is law'. I hope the developers can keep this perspective in mind when they try to understand why some people get worked up about captchas for account creation, accounts for page creation, restrictions on the newest 1% of accounts, oversight and OFFICE, and so on.
on 2/26/07 11:34 AM, Marc Riddell at michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
There seems to be a great deal of resistance to the idea that many of the problems within WP involve the very culture itself. This speaks to me of a great deal of denial on the part of the Community Members.
Denial is saying ³anything but that². To admit that the ³that² is the problem, might mean having to confront, and possibly get rid of, the ³that². If a chemical dependent admits that the chemical is the ³that² that is killing them, they might have to give up that ³that². ³Anything but that!²
Cassandra rests.
Marc Riddell