No, my argument is not spurious - it's to the point. We operate in a community, and there are plenty of things I would do differently too if I had my way with everything. There's zero point in pursuing proposals that are strongly opposed by a significant section of the community. "Majority" (50%+1) is not good enough for something as important as this.
As another poster said: "Dont break the community". Flagged revisions and the increasing trend towards deletionism are the two developments that have the greatest risk of doing exactly that.
----- Original Message ----- From: "doc" doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, 31 March, 2009 23:45:19 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Flagged revs poll take 2
Your argument is spurious.
It may well be that this proposal is the only one that would pass - but that neither means that it is good, nor that it is a good thing that it is passing.
The proposal IMO is damaging to the cause of using flagged revisions in a manner that will help BLP victims.
Doing nothing would be better than this.
Your argument is the logical fallacy that because "something must be done" means "anything is better than the status quo", or that "any movement is a step in the right direction" - which does not consider that one can move, and move in the wrong direction.
Andrew Turvey wrote:
And yet this poll seems to have significantly more support across the board than any other proposal that has been put forward. If there's another way of taking it forward that would have sufficient support, let's hear it.
----- Original Message ----- From: "doc" doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, 30 March, 2009 23:23:31 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Flagged revs poll take 2
Nathan wrote:
Two more problems:
- This just barely made it on the watchlist notice, with a whopping one day
for further participation.
- None of the details on how the trial will actually work have been
determined. Questions and opposition along these lines have been primarily met with "We'll work that out when the poll closes."
Nice.
Nathan
(expanded opinion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Avruch/FlaggedRevs_vs._NPP) _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
First sensible response I've seen to this. I thought I was on my own as being a determined BLP warrior (or worrier) who opposed this ridiculous thing.
It seems to be a victory of "something must be done - and this is something" over common sense.
This does nothing at all for BLP subjects, screws flagged revisions, and introduces a nightmare, all at once.
Nice indeed.
Scott
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No, you argued that I should not oppose the current measure because it was all that could pass.
My response is, better than nothing passes.
Now you are arguing something else.
Andrew Turvey wrote:
No, my argument is not spurious - it's to the point. We operate in a community, and there are plenty of things I would do differently too if I had my way with everything. There's zero point in pursuing proposals that are strongly opposed by a significant section of the community. "Majority" (50%+1) is not good enough for something as important as this.
As another poster said: "Dont break the community". Flagged revisions and the increasing trend towards deletionism are the two developments that have the greatest risk of doing exactly that.
----- Original Message ----- From: "doc" doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, 31 March, 2009 23:45:19 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Flagged revs poll take 2
Your argument is spurious.
It may well be that this proposal is the only one that would pass - but that neither means that it is good, nor that it is a good thing that it is passing.
The proposal IMO is damaging to the cause of using flagged revisions in a manner that will help BLP victims.
Doing nothing would be better than this.
Your argument is the logical fallacy that because "something must be done" means "anything is better than the status quo", or that "any movement is a step in the right direction" - which does not consider that one can move, and move in the wrong direction.
Andrew Turvey wrote:
And yet this poll seems to have significantly more support across the board than any other proposal that has been put forward. If there's another way of taking it forward that would have sufficient support, let's hear it.
----- Original Message ----- From: "doc" doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, 30 March, 2009 23:23:31 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Flagged revs poll take 2
Nathan wrote:
Two more problems:
- This just barely made it on the watchlist notice, with a whopping one day
for further participation.
- None of the details on how the trial will actually work have been
determined. Questions and opposition along these lines have been primarily met with "We'll work that out when the poll closes."
Nice.
Nathan
(expanded opinion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Avruch/FlaggedRevs_vs._NPP) _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
First sensible response I've seen to this. I thought I was on my own as being a determined BLP warrior (or worrier) who opposed this ridiculous thing.
It seems to be a victory of "something must be done - and this is something" over common sense.
This does nothing at all for BLP subjects, screws flagged revisions, and introduces a nightmare, all at once.
Nice indeed.
Scott
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Sorry, I meant "better that nothing passes"
doc wrote:
No, you argued that I should not oppose the current measure because it was all that could pass.
My response is, better than nothing passes.
Now you are arguing something else.
Andrew Turvey wrote:
No, my argument is not spurious - it's to the point. We operate in a community, and there are plenty of things I would do differently too if I had my way with everything. There's zero point in pursuing proposals that are strongly opposed by a significant section of the community. "Majority" (50%+1) is not good enough for something as important as this.
As another poster said: "Dont break the community". Flagged revisions and the increasing trend towards deletionism are the two developments that have the greatest risk of doing exactly that.
----- Original Message ----- From: "doc" doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, 31 March, 2009 23:45:19 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Flagged revs poll take 2
Your argument is spurious.
It may well be that this proposal is the only one that would pass - but that neither means that it is good, nor that it is a good thing that it is passing.
The proposal IMO is damaging to the cause of using flagged revisions in a manner that will help BLP victims.
Doing nothing would be better than this.
Your argument is the logical fallacy that because "something must be done" means "anything is better than the status quo", or that "any movement is a step in the right direction" - which does not consider that one can move, and move in the wrong direction.
Andrew Turvey wrote:
And yet this poll seems to have significantly more support across the board than any other proposal that has been put forward. If there's another way of taking it forward that would have sufficient support, let's hear it.
----- Original Message ----- From: "doc" doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, 30 March, 2009 23:23:31 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Flagged revs poll take 2
Nathan wrote:
Two more problems:
- This just barely made it on the watchlist notice, with a whopping one day
for further participation.
- None of the details on how the trial will actually work have been
determined. Questions and opposition along these lines have been primarily met with "We'll work that out when the poll closes."
Nice.
Nathan
(expanded opinion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Avruch/FlaggedRevs_vs._NPP) _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
First sensible response I've seen to this. I thought I was on my own as being a determined BLP warrior (or worrier) who opposed this ridiculous thing.
It seems to be a victory of "something must be done - and this is something" over common sense.
This does nothing at all for BLP subjects, screws flagged revisions, and introduces a nightmare, all at once.
Nice indeed.
Scott
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Is it perhaps time, that we started to demand that basic sourcing was a pre-requisite of creating an article on any living person?
This proposal aims (without causing any deletion spree of backlogs) to instigate the idea that basic sourcing is necessary for any BLP to remain on wikipedia. People are given time to source it (and can even do so retrospectively) - but we set time limits on unreferenced BLPs.
We've currently got 30,000 of these unreferenced things - that needs sorting (preferably by sourcing rather than deletion) - but stemming the tide is the first step.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Con...
on 4/1/09 11:16 AM, doc at doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:
Is it perhaps time, that we started to demand that basic sourcing was a pre-requisite of creating an article on any living person?
Absolutely! The basis for any encyclopedia article should be: This is what I learned about the subject, and this is where I learned it. The only other issue would then be the balance of the sources.
Marc Riddell
On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 5:16 PM, doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:
Is it perhaps time, that we started to demand that basic sourcing was a pre-requisite of creating an article on any living person?
This proposal aims (without causing any deletion spree of backlogs) to instigate the idea that basic sourcing is necessary for any BLP to remain on wikipedia. People are given time to source it (and can even do so retrospectively) - but we set time limits on unreferenced BLPs.
We've currently got 30,000 of these unreferenced things - that needs sorting (preferably by sourcing rather than deletion) - but stemming the tide is the first step.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Con...
I'll tell you why I like this proposal: it's very binary, and there's very little room for interpretation. If it's an article on a living person, and it has no sources, then it should be speedied. Very little wiggleroom there.
I'm totally pro.
--Oskar
2009/4/1 doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com:
Is it perhaps time, that we started to demand that basic sourcing was a pre-requisite of creating an article on any living person?
Nope. Reason being that sourcing is no more than a sop to the media to pretend we are doing something.
I've seen no evidence that the unsourced BLPs are more prone to subtle vandalism at the time of creation than the sourced ones.
If it's unsubtle vandalism, speedy already takes care of it just fine. If it happens later, this proposal doesn't do any good towards solving the problem.
Maybe there will be a miracle, and flagged revisions will actually prove workable.
On 4/1/09, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
2009/4/1 doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com:
Is it perhaps time, that we started to demand that basic sourcing was a pre-requisite of creating an article on any living person?
Nope. Reason being that sourcing is no more than a sop to the media to pretend we are doing something.
-- geni
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2009/4/1 doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com:
Is it perhaps time, that we started to demand that basic sourcing was a pre-requisite of creating an article on any living person?
Without commenting on this specific proposal, I thought it interesting that the de.wikipedia.org community implemented a fairly simple way to drive more sourcing on all articles: They made the edit summary field mandatory for new users, and have renamed it to "Summary and Sources", making it clear in lots of places that edits without sources aren't acceptable. If you look at anon recent-changes on de.wp, you'll notice that this has led to lots of people including URLs, etc., directly in their edit summaries. [1] This makes it at least a bit easier for other users to decide on whether the edit was legitimate.
[1] http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spezial:Letzte_%C3%84nderungen&... - As an interesting side note, the mandatory summary script doesn't seem to trigger on section edits, and those are still very frequently unexplained.
On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 12:54 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
- As an interesting side note, the mandatory summary script doesn't
seem to trigger on section edits, and those are still very frequently unexplained.
Perhaps it should check whether there is content outside of /* section indicators */ rather than checking for an empty field (which I presume is what it does).
On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 6:54 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
2009/4/1 doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com:
Is it perhaps time, that we started to demand that basic sourcing was a pre-requisite of creating an article on any living person?
Without commenting on this specific proposal, I thought it interesting that the de.wikipedia.org community implemented a fairly simple way to drive more sourcing on all articles: They made the edit summary field mandatory for new users, and have renamed it to "Summary and Sources", making it clear in lots of places that edits without sources aren't acceptable. If you look at anon recent-changes on de.wp, you'll notice that this has led to lots of people including URLs, etc., directly in their edit summaries. [1] This makes it at least a bit easier for other users to decide on whether the edit was legitimate.
[1] http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spezial:Letzte_%C3%84nderungen&...
- As an interesting side note, the mandatory summary script doesn't
seem to trigger on section edits, and those are still very frequently unexplained.
This is pretty great, and could be an easy, painless way to up sourcing across the board. Certainly, footnote syntax is so confusing that many people just don't bother; and this would probably help with identifying copyvios as well.
A while (years?) ago the idea came up of using some sort of semantic form for new articles that included, explicitly, a box for sources; and I think that is a great idea as well. In the meantime, what about a link at the top of the create an article box to the code for a basic article that could be pasted in, including a refs section? Or a link to a step by step article creation tutorial, like on Articles for creation?
I am all in favor of seeing if we can change people's behavior in subtle ways; it will take many solutions all working together to fix blp's.
-- phoebe
2009/4/4 phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com:
This is pretty great, and could be an easy, painless way to up sourcing across the board. Certainly, footnote syntax is so confusing that many people just don't bother; and this would probably help with identifying copyvios as well.
I generally don't bother with the various {{cite}} templates. I don't usually sort my {{stub}}s either. It's a wiki, someone who cares can.
- d.
phoebe ayers wrote:
I am all in favor of seeing if we can change people's behavior in subtle ways; it will take many solutions all working together to fix blp's.
-- phoebe
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A very simple and non-controversial start might be to ask New Page patrolers, when they see a new unsourced BLP (or indeed any unsourced article) to put a polite message on the creator's talk page saying
"Thanks for your article [XYZ]. Wikipedia asks that all material be verifiable from reliable sources, it is important that readers and other users can check what's been writen. You don't seem to have told us the source you used for this article. Please can you edit the article to indicate what the source is? (Click here for help if you don't know how.) Unsourced material about living people may be removed if challenged."
That doesn't bite or threaten any newbies, although if established editors keep getting these on their talk pages, threats might be warranted.
On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 2:39 PM, doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:
phoebe ayers wrote:
I am all in favor of seeing if we can change people's behavior in subtle ways; it will take many solutions all working together to fix blp's.
-- phoebe
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A very simple and non-controversial start might be to ask New Page patrolers, when they see a new unsourced BLP (or indeed any unsourced article) to put a polite message on the creator's talk page saying
"Thanks for your article [XYZ]. Wikipedia asks that all material be verifiable from reliable sources, it is important that readers and other users can check what's been writen. You don't seem to have told us the source you used for this article. Please can you edit the article to indicate what the source is? (Click here for help if you don't know how.) Unsourced material about living people may be removed if challenged."
That doesn't bite or threaten any newbies, although if established editors keep getting these on their talk pages, threats might be warranted.
Yes, definitely -- I try to do this whenever I dabble in new page patrolling, and it depresses me to no end that everyone doesn't do this. It's common politeness. The majority of new articles aren't suitable for wp, but they aren't spam or pure vandalism either -- and we need to do a much better job of interacting with these potential good contributors.
For a template, I think you're looking for something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Welcomeunsourced, only less wordy and not only for reverted edits.
p.s. per my previous msg, I guess I'm showing my age -- I think I was thinking of the new page template proposal from 2005: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:New_article_template
-- phoebe
I use the somewhat shorter message,
Do not create articles without references. If you have the information to write the article, you got it from somewhere. Say where . Articles without references are likely to get deleted. I advise you to do this the moment you create the article, to avoid problems.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 5:52 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 2:39 PM, doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:
phoebe ayers wrote:
I am all in favor of seeing if we can change people's behavior in subtle ways; it will take many solutions all working together to fix blp's.
-- phoebe
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
A very simple and non-controversial start might be to ask New Page patrolers, when they see a new unsourced BLP (or indeed any unsourced article) to put a polite message on the creator's talk page saying
"Thanks for your article [XYZ]. Wikipedia asks that all material be verifiable from reliable sources, it is important that readers and other users can check what's been writen. You don't seem to have told us the source you used for this article. Please can you edit the article to indicate what the source is? (Click here for help if you don't know how.) Unsourced material about living people may be removed if challenged."
That doesn't bite or threaten any newbies, although if established editors keep getting these on their talk pages, threats might be warranted.
Yes, definitely -- I try to do this whenever I dabble in new page patrolling, and it depresses me to no end that everyone doesn't do this. It's common politeness. The majority of new articles aren't suitable for wp, but they aren't spam or pure vandalism either -- and we need to do a much better job of interacting with these potential good contributors.
For a template, I think you're looking for something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Welcomeunsourced, only less wordy and not only for reverted edits.
p.s. per my previous msg, I guess I'm showing my age -- I think I was thinking of the new page template proposal from 2005: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:New_article_template
-- phoebe
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On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 2:21 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 6:54 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
2009/4/1 doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com:
Is it perhaps time, that we started to demand that basic sourcing was a pre-requisite of creating an article on any living person?
Without commenting on this specific proposal, I thought it interesting that the de.wikipedia.org community implemented a fairly simple way to drive more sourcing on all articles: They made the edit summary field mandatory for new users, and have renamed it to "Summary and Sources", making it clear in lots of places that edits without sources aren't acceptable. If you look at anon recent-changes on de.wp, you'll notice that this has led to lots of people including URLs, etc., directly in their edit summaries. [1] This makes it at least a bit easier for other users to decide on whether the edit was legitimate.
[1] http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spezial:Letzte_%C3%84nderungen&...
- As an interesting side note, the mandatory summary script doesn't
seem to trigger on section edits, and those are still very frequently unexplained.
This is pretty great, and could be an easy, painless way to up sourcing across the board.
p.s. I put this on the Village Pump for discussion as well -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#changing_tex...
-- phoebe