http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Fanning
This article said that "She is the sister of [[Powderfinger]] frontman and solo artist, [[Bernard Fanning]]."
Not true.
She asked me about this on television. I danced around it as best I could, but basically it was not fun. :(
Fortunately, this bit of incorrect information was not negative. But it made it hard for me to make a positive image for us.
I edited out the bad bit, but I left in the previous line:
"Ellen Fanning is married and has two young sons."
There is no source. Is it even true? Well, I asked her, and it is true. But there is no source.
I hope the horse I am beating is still alive: we have to be absolutely ruthless about removing "I think I heard it somewhere" pseudo-information from Wikipedia, and especially from biographies.
People who are fighting the good fight here are sometimes threatened with a trip to ArbCom. They need our support, though.
--Jimbo
On 3/29/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
I hope the horse I am beating is still alive: we have to be absolutely ruthless about removing "I think I heard it somewhere" pseudo-information from Wikipedia, and especially from biographies.
We don't have the resources to this without straight deleting about 95%+ of bios. <i>And that still wouldn't solve the problem</I>
People who are fighting the good fight here are sometimes threatened with a trip to ArbCom. They need our support, though.
If the people dealing with copyvios can stay within the rules and be effective so can the BLP people. If they want extra powers they can get them through the normal means.
geni wrote:
If the people dealing with copyvios can stay within the rules and be effective so can the BLP people. If they want extra powers they can get them through the normal means.
This is exactly the attitude I am trying to combat. It's this idea that the people fighting for BLPs are somehow violating the rules while the people inserting crap are not. This is total nonsense.
--Jimbo
On 3/30/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
geni wrote:
If the people dealing with copyvios can stay within the rules and be effective so can the BLP people. If they want extra powers they can get them through the normal means.
This is exactly the attitude I am trying to combat. It's this idea that the people fighting for BLPs are somehow violating the rules while the people inserting crap are not. This is total nonsense.
--Jimbo
Nyet. We have our deletion policies. The people dealing with BLP are known to ignore them. While doing this as a one off may not be a problem doing this on any scale is.
geni wrote:
On 3/30/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
geni wrote:
If the people dealing with copyvios can stay within the rules and be effective so can the BLP people. If they want extra powers they can get them through the normal means.
This is exactly the attitude I am trying to combat. It's this idea that the people fighting for BLPs are somehow violating the rules while the people inserting crap are not. This is total nonsense.
--Jimbo
Nyet. We have our deletion policies. The people dealing with BLP are known to ignore them. While doing this as a one off may not be a problem doing this on any scale is.
I'm sorry, with due respect to Geni, this is the type of myopic response that drives me crazy. Let's worry about our policies, in house-rules, and that the rights of Wikipedians are respected - because that's obviously more important than doing the Right Thing, unharming real people, or otherwise focusing on article quality? (That was sarcasm).
The problem with deletion process is that people tend to !vote "ah, she's sort of notable so keep - the POV problems are a matter for clean-up not deletion" and then walk away. This eventualism is useless for BLP. Often we need to say - "unless someone cleans up this bio RIGHT NOW it must die." If it is just a matter of removing a bit, then OTRS folk can do that, but often the thing is intrinsically POV and the sources are all biased.
On 3/30/07, doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:
I'm sorry, with due respect to Geni, this is the type of myopic response that drives me crazy. Let's worry about our policies, in house-rules, and that the rights of Wikipedians are respected - because that's obviously more important than doing the Right Thing, unharming real people, or otherwise focusing on article quality? (That was sarcasm).
Wikipedians are real people. You are not an infallible judge of what would improve an article. The community at the present time has not indicated a willingness to trust you in that sense and you should respect this.
Memento mori
The problem with deletion process is that people tend to !vote "ah, she's sort of notable so keep - the POV problems are a matter for clean-up not deletion" and then walk away. This eventualism is useless for BLP. Often we need to say - "unless someone cleans up this bio RIGHT NOW it must die." If it is just a matter of removing a bit, then OTRS folk can do that, but often the thing is intrinsically POV and the sources are all biased.
I belive the correct place to debate that kind of policy change would be [[WP:VPP]] ot [[WT:CSD]].
On 3/30/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/30/07, doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:
I'm sorry, with due respect to Geni, this is the type of myopic response that drives me crazy. Let's worry about our policies, in house-rules, and that the rights of Wikipedians are respected - because that's obviously more important than doing the Right Thing, unharming real people, or otherwise focusing on article quality? (That was sarcasm).
Wikipedians are real people. You are not an infallible judge of what would improve an article. The community at the present time has not indicated a willingness to trust you in that sense and you should respect this.
Maybe it's time to clarify briefly what the ultimate goal of the project "Wikipedia" is:
A. To write a encyclopedia (with the labels associates such as "quality", "accuracy" and "neutrality" B. To have a nice little community thing, where we have endless votes and discussions about the (inclusion of the) messed-up divorce of John Doe, biologist.
Of course, certain internal policies (or house-rules) are necessary and should also be applied, but there are certain things on the world which overrule house rules. These "certain things" are not limited to legal aspects but also our aim to have an **encyclopedia** which is as accurate as possible, as neutral as possible and which does not seek to destroy somebody's life by bringing up every dirty little fact about their life that can be found. Remember, our guides (and competitors) should be encyclopediae as the EB and neither tabloid papers as The Sun nor investigative bloggers which dig through court records et al. to find out interesting things about George W. Bush's former life. Both of these have their merits (the latter maybe more than the former) but this is not what an encyclopedia should do. And if somebody tries to insert not properly sourced harmful material into a biography of a living person, this should just be deleted on sight. If a policy cannot cope with a) reality amd b) the absolute goal of the project, you should change neither reality nor the goal of the project but the policy.
Michael
Michael Bimmler wrote:
On 3/30/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/30/07, doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:
I'm sorry, with due respect to Geni, this is the type of myopic response that drives me crazy. Let's worry about our policies, in house-rules, and that the rights of Wikipedians are respected - because that's obviously more important than doing the Right Thing, unharming real people, or otherwise focusing on article quality? (That was sarcasm).
Wikipedians are real people. You are not an infallible judge of what would improve an article. The community at the present time has not indicated a willingness to trust you in that sense and you should respect this.
Maybe it's time to clarify briefly what the ultimate goal of the project "Wikipedia" is:
A. To write a encyclopedia (with the labels associates such as "quality", "accuracy" and "neutrality" B. To have a nice little community thing, where we have endless votes and discussions about the (inclusion of the) messed-up divorce of John Doe, biologist.
Of course, certain internal policies (or house-rules) are necessary and should also be applied, but there are certain things on the world which overrule house rules. These "certain things" are not limited to legal aspects but also our aim to have an **encyclopedia** which is as accurate as possible, as neutral as possible and which does not seek to destroy somebody's life by bringing up every dirty little fact about their life that can be found. Remember, our guides (and competitors) should be encyclopediae as the EB and neither tabloid papers as The Sun nor investigative bloggers which dig through court records et al. to find out interesting things about George W. Bush's former life. Both of these have their merits (the latter maybe more than the former) but this is not what an encyclopedia should do. And if somebody tries to insert not properly sourced harmful material into a biography of a living person, this should just be deleted on sight. If a policy cannot cope with a) reality amd b) the absolute goal of the project, you should change neither reality nor the goal of the project but the policy.
Michael
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Which is precisely why we have IAR. Doc
On 30/03/07, Michael Bimmler mbimmler@gmail.com wrote:
Maybe it's time to clarify briefly what the ultimate goal of the project "Wikipedia" is:
A. To write a encyclopedia (with the labels associates such as "quality", "accuracy" and "neutrality" B. To have a nice little community thing, where we have endless votes and discussions about the (inclusion of the) messed-up divorce of John Doe, biologist.
Wikipedia doesn't have constitutional or fundamental goals. We have certain goals which have primacy over others, but none can be described (or rejected) as our ultimate goal.
It seems that Wikipedia's worth arises from its practical use (eventualistically), not from what we initially determined Wikipedia to be (prescriptively). That is, that our goals can be described based upon pragmatic use of Wikipedia presently, not theoretical projections into the future.
On 3/30/07, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
On 30/03/07, Michael Bimmler mbimmler@gmail.com wrote:
Maybe it's time to clarify briefly what the ultimate goal of the project "Wikipedia" is:
A. To write a encyclopedia (with the labels associates such as "quality", "accuracy" and "neutrality" B. To have a nice little community thing, where we have endless votes and discussions about the (inclusion of the) messed-up divorce of John Doe, biologist.
Wikipedia doesn't have constitutional or fundamental goals. We have certain goals which have primacy over others, but none can be described (or rejected) as our ultimate goal.
Well, maybe this is a language-specific issue, but in the german Wikipedia we have basically three principles (okay, actually 4, but the 4th deals with "No personal attacks"), which are called "unalterable", viz. "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia", "Neutrality" and "Free Content". These principles (imho, correct me if I am wrong here) supersede and overrule all other policies and guidelines.
Actually, I thought that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines#Key_policies and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars were talking about the same kind of rules, but I may be wrong here. Still, it is my (humble and) personal opinion, that they should.
Michael
On 30/03/07, Michael Bimmler mbimmler@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/30/07, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
On 30/03/07, Michael Bimmler mbimmler@gmail.com wrote:
Maybe it's time to clarify briefly what the ultimate goal of the project "Wikipedia" is:
A. To write a encyclopedia (with the labels associates such as "quality", "accuracy" and "neutrality" B. To have a nice little community thing, where we have endless votes and discussions about the (inclusion of the) messed-up divorce of John Doe, biologist.
Wikipedia doesn't have constitutional or fundamental goals. We have certain goals which have primacy over others, but none can be described (or rejected) as our ultimate goal.
Well, maybe this is a language-specific issue, but in the german Wikipedia we have basically three principles (okay, actually 4, but the 4th deals with "No personal attacks"), which are called "unalterable", viz. "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia", "Neutrality" and "Free Content". These principles (imho, correct me if I am wrong here) supersede and overrule all other policies and guidelines.
Actually, I thought that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines#Key_policies and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars were talking about the same kind of rules, but I may be wrong here. Still, it is my (humble and) personal opinion, that they should.
These principles, rules, pillars and limitations all serve to further our goals, but they are not goals themselves. Certainly not the "ultimate goals" Michael Bimmler was seeking to clarify.
On 30/03/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Nyet. We have our deletion policies. The people dealing with BLP are known to ignore them. While doing this as a one off may not be a problem doing this on any scale is.
If our deletion policies are regularly ignored with good reason, we need to rewrite the deletion policies to describe reality.
On 3/29/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/29/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
I hope the horse I am beating is still alive: we have to be absolutely ruthless about removing "I think I heard it somewhere" pseudo-information from Wikipedia, and especially from biographies.
We don't have the resources to this without straight deleting about 95%+ of bios. <i>And that still wouldn't solve the problem</I>
Why wouldn't it solve the problem?
Personally I'd lean toward "deleting" (in reality the information is still there) 95%+ of bios (by hand, not automatically), if that's really what's necessary.
People who are fighting the good fight here are sometimes threatened with a trip to ArbCom. They need our support, though.
If the people dealing with copyvios can stay within the rules and be effective so can the BLP people.
So you think it's possible to remove "95+ of bios" without violating the three revert rule? Yeah right.
Anthony
On 3/30/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 3/29/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/29/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
I hope the horse I am beating is still alive: we have to be absolutely ruthless about removing "I think I heard it somewhere" pseudo-information from Wikipedia, and especially from biographies.
We don't have the resources to this without straight deleting about 95%+ of bios. <i>And that still wouldn't solve the problem</I>
Why wouldn't it solve the problem?
Because there would still be problems in the remaining bios and plenty of false stuff about people in articles on towns and schools.
So you think it's possible to remove "95+ of bios" without violating the three revert rule? Yeah right.
Given the number of images removed without hitting the 3RR yes.
On 3/30/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/30/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 3/29/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/29/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
I hope the horse I am beating is still alive: we have to be absolutely ruthless about removing "I think I heard it somewhere" pseudo-information from Wikipedia, and especially from biographies.
We don't have the resources to this without straight deleting about 95%+ of bios. <i>And that still wouldn't solve the problem</I>
Why wouldn't it solve the problem?
Because there would still be problems in the remaining bios and plenty of false stuff about people in articles on towns and schools.
Ah, I now understand that you were talking about deleting entire articles, and not merely removing the unsourced statements from them.
With that in mind, I do think we have the resources, and accomplishing it would be really simple. Just set a hard and fast rule that everything in an article must be sourced, and then make it clear that removal of unsourced statements is exempt from the three revert rule.
Pass those two rules, and I think Wikipedia will get rid of the vast majority of unsourced statements in articles very quickly.
The problem is, I think there are a significant number of Wikipedians who don't *want* that. That probably makes it a board edict or nothing.
Anthony
On 3/30/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
With that in mind, I do think we have the resources, and accomplishing it would be really simple. Just set a hard and fast rule that everything in an article must be sourced, and then make it clear that removal of unsourced statements is exempt from the three revert rule.
OK, apparently this is already the case, at least for biographies of living people, according to wp:3rr.
So I guess I'm wrong.
Anthony
Anthony wrote:
On 3/30/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
With that in mind, I do think we have the resources, and accomplishing it would be really simple. Just set a hard and fast rule that everything in an article must be sourced, and then make it clear that removal of unsourced statements is exempt from the three revert rule.
OK, apparently this is already the case, at least for biographies of living people, according to wp:3rr.
So I guess I'm wrong.
And also in this particular instance the false information _was_ sourced. :)
Jimmy Wales wrote:
I hope the horse I am beating is still alive: we have to be absolutely ruthless about removing "I think I heard it somewhere" pseudo-information from Wikipedia, and especially from biographies.
About the only way to keep up with the drivel is to insta-revert unsourced stuff. It just takes too long to find a source for somebody else's edit, or ask about each one on a talk page; while you're doing all that, ten other pages are picking up garbage.
Just today I got a congratulatory email from someone praising us for quickly finding his hoax article, and bragging a little about what he did to make it seem more plausible, fake picture and all. What does one do about people for whom WP is just another online game?
There's always the option of refusing TV interviews - then you could be the "mysterious recluse". :-)
Stan
On 3/29/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
I hope the horse I am beating is still alive: we have to be absolutely ruthless about removing "I think I heard it somewhere" pseudo-information from Wikipedia, and especially from biographies.
About the only way to keep up with the drivel is to insta-revert unsourced stuff. It just takes too long to find a source for somebody else's edit, or ask about each one on a talk page; while you're doing all that, ten other pages are picking up garbage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ellen_Fanning&diff=next&ol...
The statement that she is related to Bernard Fanning was added at the same time as two external links. In this case, insta-reverting unsourced stuff wouldn't have done any good. You would have actually had to have checked the sources (neither of which mention Bernard Fanning, incidentally). One of them, however, does provide a source for her being married with one son.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=88383
In fact, that source is '''still''' in the article, as of Jimbo's e-mail and edit to the article (though the link wasn't quite working, due to an extraneous /).
-- Jonel
Nick Wilkins wrote:
On 3/29/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
I hope the horse I am beating is still alive: we have to be absolutely ruthless about removing "I think I heard it somewhere" pseudo-information from Wikipedia, and especially from biographies.
About the only way to keep up with the drivel is to insta-revert unsourced stuff. It just takes too long to find a source for somebody else's edit, or ask about each one on a talk page; while you're doing all that, ten other pages are picking up garbage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ellen_Fanning&diff=next&ol...
The statement that she is related to Bernard Fanning was added at the same time as two external links. In this case, insta-reverting unsourced stuff wouldn't have done any good.
Heh. In practice though, that's an exceptional case.
Even asking for volunteers to vet a bio ahead of interview isn't going to catch everything. (Isn't it interesting how nobody ever complains about inaccuracies in articles other than the ones about themselves? Egos, geez...) Nope, avoiding interviews is the way to go here. :-)
Stan
On 3/29/07, Nick Wilkins nlwilkins@gmail.com wrote:
The statement that she is related to Bernard Fanning was added at the same time as two external links. In this case, insta-reverting unsourced stuff wouldn't have done any good. You would have actually had to have checked the sources (neither of which mention Bernard Fanning, incidentally). One of them, however, does provide a source for her being married with one son.
She's married to her son? That doesn't sound right.
Mgm
On 3/30/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
She's married to her son? That doesn't sound right.
The direct quote from the source is "She is married with a young son." I would imagine that a more up-to-date version would add bigamy to the various things wrong with being married to your own young child...
-- Jonel
On 30/03/07, Nick Wilkins nlwilkins@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/30/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
She's married to her son? That doesn't sound right.
The direct quote from the source is "She is married with a young son." I would imagine that a more up-to-date version would add bigamy to the various things wrong with being married to your own young child...
I think you just made my day. The funniest post to this mailing list in a long time - a relief considering the amount of tension that builds up here.
Nick Wilkins wrote:
On 3/30/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
She's married to her son? That doesn't sound right.
The direct quote from the source is "She is married with a young son." I would imagine that a more up-to-date version would add bigamy to the various things wrong with being married to your own young child...
There are less ambiguous ways of expressing that without breathing life back to the Ptolomaic dynasty.
Ec
On 3/29/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
I hope the horse I am beating is still alive: we have to be absolutely ruthless about removing "I think I heard it somewhere" pseudo-information from Wikipedia, and especially from biographies.
This is a step up from what you have previously requested, namely that we must be ruthless about removing *harmful* unsourced information from biographies.
Which of these statements most closely matches what you want us to do: 1) Remove all unsourced[1] material from all articles 2) Remove all unsourced material from all biographies, and unsourced harmful material from all articles 3) Remove all unsourced harmful or slightly dubious sounding material from biographies and other articles 4) Remove all unsourced harmful or extremely dubious sounding material from biographies, and unsourced harmful material from other articles ...etc.
If the claim made was not harmful (as I don't believe a fictitious family member normally is), and was not implausible (I wouldn't have known), then why would we have removed it? How would we have known?
Steve [1] I don't even know how we determine if a claim is sourced, short of tracking down and reading every source mentioned on the page and looking for it.
Steve Bennett wrote:
Which of these statements most closely matches what you want us to do:
- Remove all unsourced[1] material from all articles
- Remove all unsourced material from all biographies, and unsourced
harmful material from all articles 3) Remove all unsourced harmful or slightly dubious sounding material from biographies and other articles 4) Remove all unsourced harmful or extremely dubious sounding material from biographies, and unsourced harmful material from other articles
It's a question of priorities, isn't it? It's also a question of default attitudes around various interesting questions.
Clearly, our goal should be to source just about everything. Granted that it would be impossible to do that in one fell swoop. Therefore, the quality of Wikipedia will improve in stages.
The key is that the community of good editors needs to give good strong firm social support to people who are doing this.
Imagine there is a small wikipedia out there which is just starting up, an important language in the developing world which is just getting a community. They might choose to be incredibly tolerant of someone who would write something like "Tokyo is the largest city in Japan with a population of 40 million." It is not a harmful statement, but it is wrong. But it is better than nothing.
English Wikipedia is not at that stage anymore. We should not accept random "I heard it somewhere" information nearly as easily as we would when we were young... even information that is not harmful per se.
On 3/30/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
English Wikipedia is not at that stage anymore. We should not accept random "I heard it somewhere" information nearly as easily as we would when we were young... even information that is not harmful per se.
Does that apply only to [[Tokyo]] or does it apply equally to [[Bumsville]], a tiny town of 300 people which has the highest per-capita rate of hamburger consumption in Canada?
I don't think that *all* of English Wikipedia has now matured in the way you describe. The core has. We would not accept crap in an article about a major, major city. But I think we do still accept crap in new stubs, although we could change that.
Steve
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Clearly, our goal should be to source just about everything. Granted that it would be impossible to do that in one fell swoop. Therefore, the quality of Wikipedia will improve in stages.
Most ideals are completely impossible. This doesn't mean that we stop striving in that direction. The improvements can only come in stages.
The key is that the community of good editors needs to give good strong firm social support to people who are doing this.
Not all good editors support a hard-assed approach. Clearly some feel that all these problems can be solved by more and better policies that can be strictly enforced. At the other end of the scale there is the belief that the best way to accomplish this is through polite negotiation and consensus building. Both are likely acting in good faith, and both can easily feel that the other side operates only to thwart their efforts. There needs to be more effort put to bringing these sides together rather than driving them apart.
Using an obviously contrived example: If the strict people propose to ban anyone who adds the word "shit" to an article, there will be an immediate response that there are circumstances where including the word "shit" is perfectly appropriate. It's important to find a neutral point somewhere between these two views.
Imagine there is a small wikipedia out there which is just starting up, an important language in the developing world which is just getting a community. They might choose to be incredibly tolerant of someone who would write something like "Tokyo is the largest city in Japan with a population of 40 million." It is not a harmful statement, but it is wrong. But it is better than nothing.
We need to be more sophisticated than that. Just as small wikipedias need time and room to grow, so too do broad subject areas within a Wikipedia, narrower specialties within a broad subject area, and individual articles within a specialty. This is necessary for maintaining growth, and ensuring that the general right for everyone to edit is protected.
English Wikipedia is not at that stage anymore. We should not accept random "I heard it somewhere" information nearly as easily as we would when we were young... even information that is not harmful per se.
Clearly, "I heard it somewhere," is the stuff that urban legends are made of. I agree that we should be more strongly disinclined to reject that kind of argument, but some lattitude still needs to be given to new and plausibly valid articles. It takes time before other editors take note, and start adding alternate views, expanding the scope of the article and adding sources. Remember too that the vast majority of articles are not about controversial subjects. It is understandable that editors who narrowly engage in these peaceful areas would resent having some rigid rule thrust upon them when their right to even participate in the making of that rule was seldom more than theoretical.
Ec
Ec
Jimmy Wales wrote:
I edited out the bad bit, but I left in the previous line:
"Ellen Fanning is married and has two young sons."
There is no source. Is it even true? Well, I asked her, and it is true. But there is no source.
I hope the horse I am beating is still alive: we have to be absolutely ruthless about removing "I think I heard it somewhere" pseudo-information from Wikipedia, and especially from biographies.
But even you, even now in this very instance you're using as an example of what you think should be done, _didn't_ ruthlessly remove the unsourced information. If you really believe that we have to be absolutely ruthless about removing all unsourced information why did you deliberately leave the married-with-two-young-sons thing in?
I think the reason is that our one truly fundamental goal is to write a good, free encyclopedia, and that while attempting to source everything is a good means to that goal if we were to take it to the extreme it would actually start to move us farther away from it. If we were to actually follow through with the absolute full extent of the only-sourced-statements ideal it would devastate Wikipedia's current contents and IMO raise such a barrier to editing that new work would slow to a crawl. We have to consider these costs and find a compromise position that tries to minimize them.
Bryan Derksen wrote:
But even you, even now in this very instance you're using as an example of what you think should be done, _didn't_ ruthlessly remove the unsourced information. If you really believe that we have to be absolutely ruthless about removing all unsourced information why did you deliberately leave the married-with-two-young-sons thing in?
I asked her personally and she said it was true, and at that moment I assumed we can find a source quickly enough and and I know that bringing the section in question to the attention of good editors will bring about quick positive change.
I am not advocating some kind of weird radical knee jerk attempt to take out every single thing in Wikipedia TODAY that does not have a source.
I am advocating that we give stronger support to people who are fighting the good fight on quality issues.
I think the reason is that our one truly fundamental goal is to write a good, free encyclopedia, and that while attempting to source everything is a good means to that goal if we were to take it to the extreme it would actually start to move us farther away from it. If we were to actually follow through with the absolute full extent of the only-sourced-statements ideal it would devastate Wikipedia's current contents and IMO raise such a barrier to editing that new work would slow to a crawl. We have to consider these costs and find a compromise position that tries to minimize them.
Well, yes, of course I agree with that.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
But even you, even now in this very instance you're using as an example of what you think should be done, _didn't_ ruthlessly remove the unsourced information. If you really believe that we have to be absolutely ruthless about removing all unsourced information why did you deliberately leave the married-with-two-young-sons thing in?
I asked her personally and she said it was true, and at that moment I assumed we can find a source quickly enough and and I know that bringing the section in question to the attention of good editors will bring about quick positive change.
I am not advocating some kind of weird radical knee jerk attempt to take out every single thing in Wikipedia TODAY that does not have a source.
Sorry, I interpreted "we have to be absolutely ruthless about removing "I think I heard it somewhere" pseudo-information from Wikipedia" to mean something along those lines. I guess I'm a bit knee-jerk about reacting to knee-jerk reactions.
Thanks for clarifying your position, it sounds much more reasonable this way (ie, more like my own philosophy :)
On 3/30/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
But even you, even now in this very instance you're using as an example of what you think should be done, _didn't_ ruthlessly remove the unsourced information. If you really believe that we have to be absolutely ruthless about removing all unsourced information why did you deliberately leave the married-with-two-young-sons thing in?
I asked her personally and she said it was true, and at that moment I assumed we can find a source quickly enough and and I know that bringing the section in question to the attention of good editors will bring about quick positive change. --Jimbo
That's an odd assumption. I've come across plenty of facts I knew to be true, but at some point the source that backs them up disappears without ever returning. And naturally those are the sources that aren't archived by the internet archive.
Mgm,
Bryan Derksen wrote:
I think the reason is that our one truly fundamental goal is to write a good, free encyclopedia, and that while attempting to source everything is a good means to that goal if we were to take it to the extreme it would actually start to move us farther away from it. If we were to actually follow through with the absolute full extent of the only-sourced-statements ideal it would devastate Wikipedia's current contents and IMO raise such a barrier to editing that new work would slow to a crawl. We have to consider these costs and find a compromise position that tries to minimize them.
In certain measure this ties back to our old argument about whether we are "free as in beer" of "free as in speech". The former is relatively simple, even if we haven't yet reached perfection in that; copyright policy falls into it. Free as in speech is more elusive. The right of free speech is not the absolut right to sy anything you damn well please without regard to consequences, but if there are to be exceptions to that right those exceptions must be explicit. We cannot knowingly allow defamation or lies. As a private organization we are not confined to only those exceptions that are sanctioned by law; we can also disallow other kinds of speech. We are within our legal rights to impose some kind of notability criterion, but legislating cluefullness remains an impossibility and not an illegality.
We need to constantly remind ourselves about what made this project grow into the giant that we now have. Important as it may be to strive for total reliability, that was not the most important factor in our phenomenal growth. Nor has that growth been based on having only biographies od "notable" people. If these individuals are really so -unnotable, very few people are likely to read those articles anyway.
Ec
On 29/03/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
She asked me about this on television. I danced around it as best I could, but basically it was not fun. :( --Jimbo
Ignoring the underlying issue here for the moment, just about nobody watches Sunday nowadays anyway. It's not a mainstream Australian program. It averages about 200,000 viewers. So it's not a huge public relations drama in Australia for us.
Are we sure the inaccuracy wasn't inserted by Fanning herself, in order to find something to complain about in the interview?
~Mark Ryan
On 3/30/07, Mark Ryan ultrablue@gmail.com wrote:
On 29/03/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
She asked me about this on television. I danced around it as best I could, but basically it was not fun. :( --Jimbo
Ignoring the underlying issue here for the moment, just about nobody watches Sunday nowadays anyway. It's not a mainstream Australian program. It averages about 200,000 viewers. So it's not a huge public relations drama in Australia for us.
Are we sure the inaccuracy wasn't inserted by Fanning herself, in order to find something to complain about in the interview?
~Mark Ryan
The IP carried out the edits a while back and hit a few other articles. I think we can be pretty sure that Ms Fanning was not the person who performed the edits.
Mark Ryan wrote:
Are we sure the inaccuracy wasn't inserted by Fanning herself, in order to find something to complain about in the interview?
I think that's more or less irrelevant and not a very helpful line of inquiry in either the current case or with respect to the broader issue.
I chatted with her, on the air, and on the phone afterwards. She was friendly and funny and a bit bemused by it. So, I am sure she did not add it herself. And I think trying to cast doubt back on her is not at all what we should be doing here: the error was ours.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Mark Ryan wrote:
Are we sure the inaccuracy wasn't inserted by Fanning herself, in order to find something to complain about in the interview?
I think that's more or less irrelevant and not a very helpful line of inquiry in either the current case or with respect to the broader issue.
I chatted with her, on the air, and on the phone afterwards. She was friendly and funny and a bit bemused by it. So, I am sure she did not add it herself. And I think trying to cast doubt back on her is not at all what we should be doing here: the error was ours.
I agree. Assuming that someone would insert things into her own biography for the purpose of facilitating this sort of mischief is to assume bad faith. I don't doubt that there are people who would do this kind of thing, but the burden of proof is on the accuser.
Ec
On 02/04/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I agree. Assuming that someone would insert things into her own biography for the purpose of facilitating this sort of mischief is to assume bad faith. I don't doubt that there are people who would do this kind of thing, but the burden of proof is on the accuser.
Assuming good faith comes easily to some people. I'm just naturally suspicious. I don't assume bad faith, I just don't assume good faith readily. There needs to be a balance between gullibly believing everything any random tells us, and disbelieving everything anyone tells us until they show proof.
Fanning is an esteemed journalist in Australia, but there are other television journalists in this country who would do such a thing as vandalising an article then lambasting us about it.
~Mark
Mark Ryan wrote:
Assuming good faith comes easily to some people. I'm just naturally suspicious. I don't assume bad faith, I just don't assume good faith readily. There needs to be a balance between gullibly believing everything any random tells us, and disbelieving everything anyone tells us until they show proof.
For what it's worth, I don't think assuming good faith prevents us from watching for potential troublemakers. It's like "trust, but verify". Checking things out allows us to turn our assumption into a sincere belief.
Even when people are clearly up to something, I think it's still worth assuming the best possible motives. A great example is {{uw-joke1}} and related templates:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Uw-joke1
Yes, after the eleven millionth reversion on [[Bong]] or [[Dildo]], their jokes aren't remotely funny. Ditto for those "testing" Wikipedia by inserting junk. But both are mistakes I well could have made once upon a time, and with the best of intentions.
William
Mark Ryan wrote:
On 02/04/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I agree. Assuming that someone would insert things into her own biography for the purpose of facilitating this sort of mischief is to assume bad faith. I don't doubt that there are people who would do this kind of thing, but the burden of proof is on the accuser.
Assuming good faith comes easily to some people. I'm just naturally suspicious.
I don't think the two are incompatible.
I don't assume bad faith, I just don't assume good faith readily. There needs to be a balance between gullibly believing everything any random tells us, and disbelieving everything anyone tells us until they show proof.
Absolutely. Nevertheless the bad ones develop patterns of behaviour that are very hard to change. They will quickly give themselves the opportunity to screw up;.
Fanning is an esteemed journalist in Australia, but there are other television journalists in this country who would do such a thing as vandalising an article then lambasting us about it.
That's not very flattering for the journalists of Australia. ;-)
Ec
Jimmy Wales wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Fanning
This article said that "She is the sister of [[Powderfinger]] frontman and solo artist, [[Bernard Fanning]]."
Not true.
She asked me about this on television. I danced around it as best I could, but basically it was not fun. :(
Fortunately, this bit of incorrect information was not negative. But it made it hard for me to make a positive image for us.
I'm all for a push for improving biographies, but were there alternatives to dancing?
It seems to me that an interviewer will for years to come be able to easily find something in Wikipedia that is obviously wrong. Treating that a a problem is accepting a negative premise, which I understand to be a PR mistake.[1] When people catch us in errors, aren't we better off going with positive responses that begin with, "Yes, exactly..."?
That's what I do when people grumble to me about something on Wikipedia, although admittedly I've never tried it with a TV reporter.
William
[1] for example, http://www.transmediagroup.com/crisismgmt.asp
On 30/03/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
It seems to me that an interviewer will for years to come be able to easily find something in Wikipedia that is obviously wrong. Treating that a a problem is accepting a negative premise, which I understand to be a PR mistake.[1] When people catch us in errors, aren't we better off going with positive responses that begin with, "Yes, exactly..."?
You got it. "Of course. Wikipedia is not *reliable* in the sense it's all checked. It can't be by the process it's written by. You have to think when you're reading. But if you do, it's good and useful."
("But what if people take it as gospel?" "We can't and don't promise to think for people. You have to do that for yourself.")
I take this line every time this comes up - live radio, if not TV - and it works fine. It would have worked here too.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 30/03/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
When people catch us in errors, aren't we better off going with positive responses that begin with, "Yes, exactly..."?
You got it. "Of course. Wikipedia is not *reliable* in the sense it's all checked. It can't be by the process it's written by. You have to think when you're reading. But if you do, it's good and useful."
("But what if people take it as gospel?" "We can't and don't promise to think for people. You have to do that for yourself.")
I take this line every time this comes up - live radio, if not TV - and it works fine. It would have worked here too.
Exactly.
In that first bit, I like to say, "Just like anything else on the internet, you can't turn your brain off." That's awfully hard to deny. And then I can point out Wikipedia's advantages over almost anything else on the Internet, like a comprehensive record of every edit, an attached discussion page, a way to check out the record of any contributor, and transparent policies that you can help shape.
Another approach is to point out that errors and omissions are the engine that has driven Wikipedia's growth. People see a mistake and they fix it. Then they realize with amazement, that this isn't an encyclopedia produced by some mysterious "them"; it's us!
And it's always fun to toss the complaint back in their lap. "Well if you knew it was a mistake, why didn't you fix it?" That's not entirely fair, of course. But neither is the expectation of perfection that underlies a lot of those grumbles.
William
David Gerard wrote:
On 30/03/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
It seems to me that an interviewer will for years to come be able to easily find something in Wikipedia that is obviously wrong. Treating that a a problem is accepting a negative premise, which I understand to be a PR mistake.[1] When people catch us in errors, aren't we better off going with positive responses that begin with, "Yes, exactly..."?
You got it. "Of course. Wikipedia is not *reliable* in the sense it's all checked. It can't be by the process it's written by. You have to think when you're reading. But if you do, it's good and useful."
("But what if people take it as gospel?" "We can't and don't promise to think for people. You have to do that for yourself.")
I take this line every time this comes up - live radio, if not TV - and it works fine. It would have worked here too.
Well, it more or less DID, and that's what I call dancing.
Jimmy Wales wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
On 30/03/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
It seems to me that an interviewer will for years to come be able to easily find something in Wikipedia that is obviously wrong. Treating that a a problem is accepting a negative premise, which I understand to be a PR mistake.[1] When people catch us in errors, aren't we better off going with positive responses that begin with, "Yes, exactly..."?
You got it. "Of course. Wikipedia is not *reliable* in the sense it's all checked. It can't be by the process it's written by. You have to think when you're reading. But if you do, it's good and useful."
("But what if people take it as gospel?" "We can't and don't promise to think for people. You have to do that for yourself.")
I take this line every time this comes up - live radio, if not TV - and it works fine. It would have worked here too.
Well, it more or less DID, and that's what I call dancing.
Are you sure you aren't mentally accepting the premise of their question? It seems to me there's no need for feeling like you're dancing around something.
My take is that outsiders who look at Wikipedia and demand perfection have a fundamental misunderstanding about participatory culture. It's like bringing nothing to a church potluck and then getting sniffy because haute cuisine restaurants have nicer tablecloths. Of course they do; $150 per head pays for a lot of pampering.
Sorry, I accidentally clicked send. Here's the rest of what I was trying to say:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
You got it. "Of course. Wikipedia is not *reliable* in the sense it's all checked. It can't be by the process it's written by. You have to think when you're reading. But if you do, it's good and useful."
("But what if people take it as gospel?" "We can't and don't promise to think for people. You have to do that for yourself.")
I take this line every time this comes up - live radio, if not TV - and it works fine. It would have worked here too.
Well, it more or less DID, and that's what I call dancing.
Are you sure you aren't mentally accepting the premise of their question? It seems to me there's no need for feeling like you're dancing around something.
My take is that outsiders who look at Wikipedia and demand perfection have a fundamental misunderstanding about participatory culture. It's like bringing nothing to a church potluck and then getting sniffy because haute cuisine restaurants have nicer tablecloths and people who bring you the food. Of course they do; $150 per head pays for a lot of pampering.
The engine of Wikipedia's advancement is people noticing something that could be better. That somebody has done that isn't a problem, it's an opportunity. It's reasonable and natural that they would misunderstand that, but I believe it is a fundamental misunderstanding.
Basically, I think you have created the world's biggest pot of stone soup. When people say it could use some carrots, I don't think we should apologize for a deficiency. I think we should say, "Great idea! Here, you can borrow my knife and cutting board."
William
On 3/29/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Fanning
This article said that "She is the sister of [[Powderfinger]] frontman and solo artist, [[Bernard Fanning]]."
Not true.
She asked me about this on television. I danced around it as best I could, but basically it was not fun. :(
Fortunately, this bit of incorrect information was not negative. But it made it hard for me to make a positive image for us.
I edited out the bad bit, but I left in the previous line:
"Ellen Fanning is married and has two young sons."
There is no source. Is it even true? Well, I asked her, and it is true. But there is no source.
I hope the horse I am beating is still alive: we have to be absolutely ruthless about removing "I think I heard it somewhere" pseudo-information from Wikipedia, and especially from biographies.
People who are fighting the good fight here are sometimes threatened with a trip to ArbCom. They need our support, though.
--Jimbo
It would help if we could get people to agree that subjects themselves are suitable sources for non-controversial bio information.
Mgm
If OTRS is backed up and not working 'fast enough', how do more people get into it? What are the requirements and entry threshold? Who decides who gets in? How do you get in? If it's understaffed, staff it up. Is it volunteer? Paid?
- Den
On 3/30/07, Denny Colt wikidenny@gmail.com wrote:
If OTRS is backed up and not working 'fast enough', how do more people get into it? What are the requirements and entry threshold? Who decides who gets in? How do you get in? If it's understaffed, staff it up. Is it volunteer? Paid?
OTRS is voluntary, and by and large they do a tremendous, thankless task, but as with all voluntary things, there can be problems. I saw one OTRS volunteer actually post to a talk page that a named journalist was a liar. Someone had complained to OTRS that certain material was being kept out of a BLP. The complainant made the point that the main source in the BLP was (instead of the dodgy sources he wanted to use) a well-known journalist who was "probably lying through his teeth."
The OTRS volunteer posted this statement on the talk page along with the journalist's name, and the claim that he was "probably lying through his teeth."
Sarah
Den,
Quoting Denny Colt wikidenny@gmail.com:
If OTRS is backed up and not working 'fast enough', how do more people get into it? What are the requirements and entry threshold? Who decides who gets in? How do you get in? If it's understaffed, staff it up. Is it volunteer? Paid?
You can read about it at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS
Jkelly
On 29/03/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Fanning
This article said that "She is the sister of [[Powderfinger]] frontman and solo artist, [[Bernard Fanning]]."
Not true.
She asked me about this on television. I danced around it as best I could, but basically it was not fun. :(
Fortunately, this bit of incorrect information was not negative. But it made it hard for me to make a positive image for us.
OK, here's my personal take on it.
Really, it seems to me that you are a politician; politics is the art and science of decision making and you are involved in that with regards the wikipedia.
You probably need to use the tricks that politicians use in interviews more (fortunately or unfortunately), such as having a message, staying on the message, and not necessarily directly answering any questions that deviate from that message etc. etc.
For example, try not to get drawn too much into specifics on errors; there's inevitably going to be lots of errors, or if you do point out that the particular example violates the processes of the wikipedia (which is pretty much guaranteed or if it doesn't then the fault lies elsewhere in an external source). And explain where these processes come from and how these processes are inculcated and how they are improved etc. etc. Boring (so don't overdo it!) but they can't nail you on it. To be honest the wikipedia could probably pass ISO 9001 with a bit of care.
Try to point to the *general* facts that the wikipedia is growing hugely in size and increasing greatly in overall accuracy with time (it has to be provided the average effect of an edit is positive, which it is right now). And point out that all the other sources of information have lots of errors in as well and usually are far worse at correcting them.
I mean that's really what *you* are trying to do isn't it, to improve the wikipedia in *general*?
I think that you shouldn't be getting hammered; but interviews with the press are often not going to be a bundle of laughs.
These are all only my own personal views.
--Jimbo