Message: 4 Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 12:49:12 -0000 From: "charles matthews" charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias (was How did thishappen (comixpedia??)) To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Message-ID: 005f01c5e9e2$fc09d270$7cac0656@NorthParade Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original
Filtering: make a 24 hour wait before nominations go public at AfD, so that admins can do speedy deletes and keeps.
Mediated: sort noms with admin sponsors to delete from those which are not speedied but have no support either way.
Sort: by relevant WikiProject for example. Nominator's responsibility. Make sorted noms a crisper process.
Categorise: why this nomination?
All excellent suggestions! Have these ideas been raised before? It seems these *could* go a long way to smoothing things out at AfD.
All this is without Sangerising and having people arguing that other people don't know what they're talking about.
Sangerising is one thing. I'm certainly not in favor of worshipping expertise, credentials, degrees, or elitism. But it's one thing to be anti-credentialist and anti-elitist, where you're throwing out the *requirement* that people have credentials to voice an opinion. It's quite another to *boast* about how ignorant you are on a subject, and still make decisions based on the ignorance you just declared. I don't consider being against *that* behaviour to be Sangerising.
Put it this way: I guess I'm "elitist" in the sense that I'm willing (I hope) to listen to and possibly defer to people on subjects, when they know more about them or are better informed about them. Where I'd like to think I'm "anti-elitist" is that I don't hold formal credentials as the only way to establish expertise. There are many roads to Rome. If someone demonstrates, by repeated contributions, discussions, and comments, that they're knowledgeable and informed, then I will listen and tend to defer to them on that subject. I know I'm not perfect and I don't always hold to this in practice, but it's what I aim for.
When someone openly boasts their ignorance on a particular subject, but still insists their voice should carry equal weight on that subject, it seems to me their not just being anti-credentialist, they're eschewing any kind of expertise at all, whether it's based on credentials or community reputation or individual worthiness. So, I don't see being *against* that kind of behaviour as being pro-credentialist or elitist.
darin
Some of those suggestions have merits. The Australian Deletion Project sorting is working out quite well because we have editors who make sure that relevant notices are listed when appropriate.
It is often quite useful to list articles at the appropriate discussion point to get the viewpoint of those people who know more about the subject. The other day I listed Britlist, a website with a lot of Google results but with an article written by an employee of the company, on the British Wikipedian noticeboard. I wanted to determine whether it was a notable company or just someone trying to get free advertising. As an Australian, I didn't know this. After contributions from 4 or 5 British Wikipedians, it was determined that it was a non-notable website with just 39 unique Google hits and listed on AfD. This sort of prediscussion amongst interested people can be useful.
As to expertise, the best way is to show that you know what you are talking about is to demonstrate by casting considered votes. It is easy to claim expertise over the web but more difficult to show it.
Regards
Keith Old
On 11/16/05, Brown, Darin Darin.Brown@enmu.edu wrote:
Message: 4 Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 12:49:12 -0000 From: "charles matthews" charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias (was How did thishappen (comixpedia??)) To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Message-ID: 005f01c5e9e2$fc09d270$7cac0656@NorthParade Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original
Filtering: make a 24 hour wait before nominations go public at AfD, so that admins can do speedy deletes and keeps.
Mediated: sort noms with admin sponsors to delete from those which are
not
speedied but have no support either way.
Sort: by relevant WikiProject for example. Nominator's responsibility. Make sorted noms a crisper process.
Categorise: why this nomination?
All excellent suggestions! Have these ideas been raised before? It seems these *could* go a long way to smoothing things out at AfD.
All this is without Sangerising and having people arguing that other people don't know what they're talking about.
Sangerising is one thing. I'm certainly not in favor of worshipping expertise, credentials, degrees, or elitism. But it's one thing to be anti-credentialist and anti-elitist, where you're throwing out the *requirement* that people have credentials to voice an opinion. It's quite another to *boast* about how ignorant you are on a subject, and still make decisions based on the ignorance you just declared. I don't consider being against *that* behaviour to be Sangerising.
Put it this way: I guess I'm "elitist" in the sense that I'm willing (I hope) to listen to and possibly defer to people on subjects, when they know more about them or are better informed about them. Where I'd like to think I'm "anti-elitist" is that I don't hold formal credentials as the only way to establish expertise. There are many roads to Rome. If someone demonstrates, by repeated contributions, discussions, and comments, that they're knowledgeable and informed, then I will listen and tend to defer to them on that subject. I know I'm not perfect and I don't always hold to this in practice, but it's what I aim for.
When someone openly boasts their ignorance on a particular subject, but still insists their voice should carry equal weight on that subject, it seems to me their not just being anti-credentialist, they're eschewing any kind of expertise at all, whether it's based on credentials or community reputation or individual worthiness. So, I don't see being *against* that kind of behaviour as being pro-credentialist or elitist.
darin _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Filtering: make a 24 hour wait before nominations go public at AfD, so that admins can do speedy deletes and keeps.
Mediated: sort noms with admin sponsors to delete from those which are not speedied but have no support either way.
Sort: by relevant WikiProject for example. Nominator's responsibility. Make sorted noms a crisper process.
Categorise: why this nomination?
All excellent suggestions! Have these ideas been raised before? It seems these *could* go a long way to smoothing things out at AfD.
All excellent suggestions, but keep in mind that nominating something for deletion is already a strenuous process for a lot of people. We have to make sure it's still manageable to do so for a newbie.
--Mgm
"MacGyverMagic/Mgm" wrote
All excellent suggestions, but keep in mind that nominating something
for deletion is already a strenuous process for a lot of people. We have to make sure it's still manageable to do so for a newbie.
I'd like to see a form to fill in for that. Radio buttons, check boxes, all that. No too many compulsory fields.
So that anyone can cope with making a nomination, because it is clear _how to submit_ a page to AfD. But such that those who have a clear idea that page X is vanity can quickly submit it: just by doing radio button 'I'm logged in', copying the page name into a box, pull-down menu to click on 'Vanity page', put tag on the page itself, you're done.
Charles
On 11/16/05, charles matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
"MacGyverMagic/Mgm" wrote
All excellent suggestions, but keep in mind that nominating something
for deletion is already a strenuous process for a lot of people. We have to make sure it's still manageable to do so for a newbie.
I'd like to see a form to fill in for that. Radio buttons, check boxes, all that. No too many compulsory fields.
So that anyone can cope with making a nomination, because it is clear _how to submit_ a page to AfD. But such that those who have a clear idea that page X is vanity can quickly submit it: just by doing radio button 'I'm logged in', copying the page name into a box, pull-down menu to click on 'Vanity page', put tag on the page itself, you're done.
Charles
That'd make things easier, but we should watch out for oversimplification. People would still need to explain WHY they think it's vanity.
--Mgm
G'day Mgm,
That'd make things easier, but we should watch out for oversimplification. People would still need to explain WHY they think it's vanity.
Indeed. There's a very real risk something like this could bring in the "automated script" idea through the back door.
Please click on your reason for AfDing this article: * NN * Vanity * Never heard of him * Only 900 Google hits * Article needs to be wikified * Offensive to children * My article on a Pokémon fanfic's minor character was deleted this morning * PMS * Entire article content is "He won the nobel prize!"
WE'RE IN THE WORLD CUP FINALS!
Mark Gallagher wrote:
G'day Mgm,
That'd make things easier, but we should watch out for oversimplification. People would still need to explain WHY they think it's vanity.
Indeed. There's a very real risk something like this could bring in the "automated script" idea through the back door.
Please click on your reason for AfDing this article:
- NN
- Vanity
- Never heard of him
- Only 900 Google hits
- Article needs to be wikified
- Offensive to children
- My article on a Pokémon fanfic's minor character was deleted this morning
- PMS
- Entire article content is "He won the nobel prize!"
But they're all perfectly valid reasons for deleting! :-P
WE'RE IN THE WORLD CUP FINALS!
HELL YEAH! IT'S AUSSIE TIME!
On 11/17/05, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Mark Gallagher wrote:
Indeed. There's a very real risk something like this could bring in the "automated script" idea through the back door.
Moreover, it would send much of the process behind the scenes (forms need processing somwehere), requiring it to be embedded in MediaWiki, which would increase complexity and reduce transparency. The more control that ordinary users have over the process, the better.
I don't think listing something on AfD is necessarily that complex anyway. And if the first suggestion above (24 hour wait before voting) were to be implemented, then users could simply tag an article {afd}, much like they would tag it {db}, and the complicated part could be finished off by an admin at the end of the 24 hours.
WE'RE IN THE WORLD CUP FINALS!
HELL YEAH! IT'S AUSSIE TIME!
BUT WE'RE STILL NOT GOING TO CALL IT FOOTBALL!
-- Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com
On 11/16/05, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
And if the first suggestion above (24 hour wait before voting) were to be implemented, then users could simply tag an article {afd}, much like they would tag it {db}, and the complicated part could be finished off by an admin at the end of the 24 hours.
Because we all know that admins are short of things to do.
-- geni
On 11/16/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Because we all know that admins are short of things to do.
Compared to closing AfDs, that's no work at all.
Sam