From: Matt Brown morven@gmail.com
I'm also tired of the use of '<whatever>-cruft' as a reason for deletion. There's a certain mindset that seems to think that the existence of articles on minor but factual and verifiable topics detracts from Wikipedia. To that, I'd say: everyone's pet interest is a fringe interest to someone. Whether a Wikipedia article should exist on a topic should have nothing to do with how well one can disparage the subset of people interested in that particular topic.
That said, if there's not enough to say about a topic, it might not deserve an article of its very own. I'm all in favor of e.g. grouping minor fictional characters together in an article 'Minor characters in <novel>', or whatever.
-Matt
OK, this fool will walk in, donning asbestos suit, etc.
There are contributors, who enjoy contributing to Wikipedia, who do not embrace or understand the rudiments of scholarship.
Here's what I mean by "rudiments.
"List of people believed to have been affected by bipolar disorder" which was originally just a completely unsourced list of raw names; confirmed, plausible, asserted, and unlikely, all mixed together. It was nominated for deletion, and consensus was that it was OK _provided that_ the list confined itself to names for which there was _a verifiable source citation._ I.e. it is OK to tell the reader that the source was Kay Redfield Jamison's book and let the reader decide how credible Jamison is.
The opening paragraph was rewritten to say "This is a list of people accompanied by verifiable source citations," etc.
On a fairly regular basis, people will simply add names to the list with no explanation or citation. OR, they will add names accompanied with statements like "he has been very open about this" or "it's been in the news" or "One of his songs is entitled 'Lithium.'" I've been fairly pestiferous about removing unsourced entries, usually moving them to Talk with an explanation, and trying to half-coach the people who added them.
And indeed some of them have been surprised that I mean exactly what I say, and that while "Adam Ant: Has spoken openly on television about his condition" will not do, a web reference to an arts.telegraph article, "Adam and his fall," is just fine.
Other have felt that the onus was somehow on _me_ to research and provide references for the names _they_ had added, thought I was questioning their honesty when they asserted the existence of references, etc.
Now, all this is fine as far as it goes. There are some inexperienced contributors, I try to police the article a bit, I try to help a bit, I try to coach a bit, some of the inexperienced contributors "get it," some of them don't. The article slowly improves over time. All Wiki-good.
The problem occurs when you have a topic area that attracts a very large volume of contributions from editors who do _not_ get the idea of what it means for an article to be well-researched, thorough, and accurate.
Wikipedia depends on the notion that bad articles will get improved. That implies a certain kind of balance or equilibrium.
I believe the "cruft" label, which I don't like and try to avoid using myself, is shorthand for "topic area in which low-quality articles are being created faster than they are being improved."
Such topic areas _are_ problems. The solution isn't clear.
Wikipedia works only when _most_ articles are in at least a quarter-decent state, and articles that are really just drafts or placeholders or article _requests_ disguised as articles are a relatively small proportion of the whole.
-- Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith@verizon.net "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print! Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
I believe the "cruft" label, which I don't like and try to avoid using myself, is shorthand for "topic area in which low-quality articles are being created faster than they are being improved."
Such topic areas _are_ problems. The solution isn't clear.
Yeah, such areas are a problem, but I believe this doesn't really apply to a lot of the "cruft". Often it's just an easy starting point for newbies... it's much easier to write about a Harry Potter character than about most other topics, because the available knowledge about Harry Potter characters is very small and manageable. If it's easy to write the article, it's easy to improve it too.
But you mentioned a list of bipolar people. Yes, lists are deceiving to many editors: it looks easy to add to a list (Hey, I don't even have to write full sentences!), but if the list is to be useful, it has to have well-defined criteria for what can be included and what not, and suddenly things get much trickier.
Chl
On Sep 10, 2005, at 12:04 PM, Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
Such topic areas _are_ problems. The solution isn't clear.
I think the solution is perfectly clear. We fix the articles at a reasonable rate. We accept that referencing is hard, and that it's not going to be done as fast as any of us like. Those who are knowledgeable about the subject do what they can. But we're volunteers. And the job of going and finding references sucks. It's why I don't contribute to critical theory articles anymore. The push to reference has left it feeling too much like my job.
What do we really lose by having 100 mediocre-to-crappy articles on obscure Pokemon? I mean, yes, I lose sanity if I try to read them, but if they just sort of exist? The only thing I can think of that we might lose is some respect. Here's the thing, though - this project is four years old. We've built a pretty damn good encyclopedia in four years. But anyone who expects this project to be "done" (Whatever that means) or even close to "done" is being daft. Yes, Wikipedia is a cause celebre in the online world right now. But we can't let that push us into trying to sweep "cruft" under the carpet because we're kind of embarassed that we have more Pokemon articles than philosophy articles (Or whatever unfortunate statement that's actually true you want to put in here).
The answer is to just say, "Hey, glad you see the potential in the project. We agree, we're not there yet. Grab a keyboard and start helping if you like. Otherwise, well, we'll keep on it. Check back in another four years - we'll knock your socks off." And this is OK. We're not going anywhere. Even if we lose the cause celebre status and fall out of the top 100 on Alexa (Which I doubt we ever will), that's OK - it just means we work with a smaller base of contributors for a few years, and come back later with stories about how "Wikipedia, much maligned for having more information on Pokemon than philosophy, has finally come into its own."
And, honestly, I'd rather get it right in 2009 than decide in 2005 that wrong is good enough.
-Snowspinner
Anyone in favor of banning the word cruft from vfd? They might as well just be saying crap...
On 9/10/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Sep 10, 2005, at 12:04 PM, Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
Such topic areas _are_ problems. The solution isn't clear.
I think the solution is perfectly clear. We fix the articles at a reasonable rate. We accept that referencing is hard, and that it's not going to be done as fast as any of us like. Those who are knowledgeable about the subject do what they can. But we're volunteers. And the job of going and finding references sucks. It's why I don't contribute to critical theory articles anymore. The push to reference has left it feeling too much like my job.
What do we really lose by having 100 mediocre-to-crappy articles on obscure Pokemon? I mean, yes, I lose sanity if I try to read them, but if they just sort of exist? The only thing I can think of that we might lose is some respect. Here's the thing, though - this project is four years old. We've built a pretty damn good encyclopedia in four years. But anyone who expects this project to be "done" (Whatever that means) or even close to "done" is being daft. Yes, Wikipedia is a cause celebre in the online world right now. But we can't let that push us into trying to sweep "cruft" under the carpet because we're kind of embarassed that we have more Pokemon articles than philosophy articles (Or whatever unfortunate statement that's actually true you want to put in here).
The answer is to just say, "Hey, glad you see the potential in the project. We agree, we're not there yet. Grab a keyboard and start helping if you like. Otherwise, well, we'll keep on it. Check back in another four years - we'll knock your socks off." And this is OK. We're not going anywhere. Even if we lose the cause celebre status and fall out of the top 100 on Alexa (Which I doubt we ever will), that's OK - it just means we work with a smaller base of contributors for a few years, and come back later with stories about how "Wikipedia, much maligned for having more information on Pokemon than philosophy, has finally come into its own."
And, honestly, I'd rather get it right in 2009 than decide in 2005 that wrong is good enough.
-Snowspinner _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Phroziac wrote:
Anyone in favor of banning the word cruft from vfd? They might as well just be saying crap...
Seconded.
Oh, and top-posting should be made a bannable offence. :-)
~~~~ - -- James D. Forrester Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] E-Mail : james@jdforrester.org IM (MSN) : jamesdforrester@hotmail.com
Personally I hate the word "cruft". It has been said earlier. One person's cruft is another person's essential info. We don't neccessarily need to sweep it up and hide it, but I don't think we should have a bunch of mediocre stubs hanging around when in the case of Pokemon they can be put in a list and break out if there's actually a good amount of info for an article.
I'd also like the fact that there's a general page creation attitude. People prefer creating articles over improving existing ones, which means a lot of minor facts and bits of information are put in their own stubs when, really, they could be helpful in helping along an existing article.
We should encourage people to find a home for their factoids in existing articles and cut down on stubs where possible and needed.
True stubs can be improved, but when you're article ends up at AfD, you already made a mistake. Good stubs have enough info to show the subject can sustain a seperate article.
I've ranted enough for now, Sleep tight.
Mgm
On 9/10/05, James D. Forrester james@jdforrester.org wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Phroziac wrote:
Anyone in favor of banning the word cruft from vfd? They might as well just be saying crap...
Seconded.
Oh, and top-posting should be made a bannable offence. :-)
- -- James D. Forrester Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] E-Mail : james@jdforrester.org IM (MSN) : jamesdforrester@hotmail.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFDIzMzkn3kUxZyJx0RApAAAJ45+OFed7U4rohgutdyQP6+cVY7qQCgjeAn tGMvSEGIxHbUyIio8182Ob4= =BRg2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 9/10/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
Personally I hate the word "cruft". It has been said earlier. One person's cruft is another person's essential info. We don't neccessarily need to sweep it up and hide it, but I don't think we should have a bunch of mediocre stubs hanging around when in the case of Pokemon they can be put in a list and break out if there's actually a good amount of info for an article.
I'd also like the fact that there's a general page creation attitude. People prefer creating articles over improving existing ones, which means a lot of minor facts and bits of information are put in their own stubs when, really, they could be helpful in helping along an existing article.
We should encourage people to find a home for their factoids in existing articles and cut down on stubs where possible and needed.
True stubs can be improved, but when you're article ends up at AfD, you already made a mistake. Good stubs have enough info to show the subject can sustain a seperate article.
More on mergism and "cruft": what I don't quite understand is the opposition many people have to merging small articles into larger ones: schools into school district articles, fictional characters into book articles, city landmarks into city articles.
With some articles you suggest merging and the creators respond as if you wanted to delete the article entirely. I regard merging as an improvement: information wants context, in order to be useful; maybe it doesn't add to your article count, but it adds to the usefulness of the encyclopedia.
"Wiki is not paper" is often cited -- but it's a stronger argument for merging information than leaving small articles separate: since Wiki is not paper, redirects are easy, and we do not have to worry about someone having to pull out separate volumes and flip pages if directed elsewhere. We don't have to make sure there's a scrap of information at every conceivable search term; that's what redirects and the search function are for. Articles that are "cruft" on their own (and I do try to use the term only jokingly!) can be a helpful bit of detail in a larger picture.
It doesn't really *hurt* to have lots of small trivial articles (I'm deliberately ignoring referencing issues here; dpbsmith already made that position perfectly clear), but it's a case where the whole is indeed generally greater than the sum of its parts. Not only that, a large article which gets many visitors is far easier to maintain -- keep updated, patrol for vandalism, etc. -- than a collection of small articles which get relatively few visitors each.
Where such an article can't be merged into something larger, it's probably because it is too trivial for the next broader level of detail and probably shouldn't be included at all (for example, I wouldn't even be worth mentioning in my university's article: it would rightly get deleted were a sentence about me to be added) -- or if it should be included, indicative that we have a big gaping hole somewhere in our coverage and need to write the article for the next broader level (for example, an individual folk song from a country on which there is no "music of X" article yet).
(Actually, please point out cases where this is not the case, if you can: I'd like to see them.)
-Kat [[User:Mindspillage]]
"Wiki is not paper" is often cited -- but it's a stronger argument for merging information than leaving small articles separate: since Wiki is not paper, redirects are easy, and we do not have to worry about someone having to pull out separate volumes and flip pages if directed elsewhere. We don't have to make sure there's a scrap of information at every conceivable search term; that's what redirects and the search function are for. Articles that are "cruft" on their own (and I do try to use the term only jokingly!) can be a helpful bit of detail in a larger picture.
"Wiki is not paper" is such an unfortunate phrase. Not because of what it stands for -- the fact that we're actually *not* limited by physical informational constraints, which is a wonderful thing -- but because it is used in a way to imply that people who think things are not notable are basing the standard of notability on a notion of physical limitations. It becomes hollow and meaningless; it becomes synonymous with the error of thinking that just because you *can* have an article about every elementary school in the country means that you *should*.
Wikipedia is not paper... but it still is an encyclopedia!
FF
but because it is used in a way to imply that people who think things are not notable are basing the standard of notability on a notion of physical limitations. It becomes hollow and meaningless; it becomes synonymous with the error of thinking that just because you *can* have an article about every elementary school in the country means that you *should*.
Wikipedia is not paper... but it still is an encyclopedia!
Yes, but you do realize a lot of this "cruft", esp. the misc facts in articles are what helps make wikipedia popular/interesting :)?
Ryan
On 11/09/05, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
"Wiki is not paper" is such an unfortunate phrase. Not because of what it stands for -- the fact that we're actually *not* limited by physical informational constraints, which is a wonderful thing -- but because it is used in a way to imply that people who think things are not notable are basing the standard of notability on a notion of physical limitations...
What is this "standard of notability" anyway? I prefer Jimbo's guide to what should and should not be in: if the information is verifiable (ie it's been published somewhere, and most people who are going to interested in it can access it), and it's not original research, it deserves a place.
The point of [[m:wiki is not paper]] is that while it could be thought that including all that information would need a lot of resources to do, it doesn't: the Wikimedia servers have room for tens of *billions* words on their harddrives.
Dan
On Sun, 11 Sep 2005, Dan Grey wrote:
What is this "standard of notability" anyway? I prefer Jimbo's guide to what should and should not be in: if the information is verifiable (ie it's been published somewhere, and most people who are going to interested in it can access it), and it's not original research, it deserves a place.
As a criterion for new articles, I agree. But the trouble is that people use it for pushing junk into existing articles. Take [[Ark of the Covenant]] recently: should a sensible article like this include stuff about it being an extraterrestrial communications device and an early example of a capacitor, just because its verifiable that people have said it was? There is a junk science / psuedo science problem.
-W.
William M Connolley | wmc@bas.ac.uk | http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/wmc/ Climate Modeller, British Antarctic Survey | (01223) 221479 If I haven't seen further, it's because giants were standing on my shoulders
As a criterion for new articles, I agree. But the trouble is that people use it for pushing junk into existing articles. Take [[Ark of the Covenant]] recently: should a sensible article like this include stuff about it being an extraterrestrial communications device and an early example of a capacitor, just because its verifiable that people have said it was? There is a junk science / psuedo science problem.
If the sources are credible, then yes. If it gets too big, make a daughter article. Problem solved.
Ryan
On 11/09/05, William M Connolley wmc@bas.ac.uk wrote:
On Sun, 11 Sep 2005, Dan Grey wrote:
What is this "standard of notability" anyway? I prefer Jimbo's guide to what should and should not be in: if the information is verifiable (ie it's been published somewhere, and most people who are going to interested in it can access it), and it's not original research, it deserves a place.
As a criterion for new articles, I agree. But the trouble is that people use it for pushing junk into existing articles. Take [[Ark of the Covenant]] recently: should a sensible article like this include stuff about it being an extraterrestrial communications device and an early example of a capacitor, just because its verifiable that people have said it was? There is a junk science / psuedo science problem.
-W.
I think Jimbo once used the example of flat earthers - the view is so soundly rejected by the vast majority of the world that it doesn't deserve mention in [[Earth]] (I have no idea if it is mentioned or not - I just recall that being the example!).
But if we were to apply policy here - the NPOV covers this - it would tell us that we should present that point of view, but give it coverage proportional to how widely held that view is. So [[Ark of the Covenant]] would have a line or two saying "a small minority of [whoever] believe it's ET's telephone, and here's there 'evidence'" tucked away at the end. If the PoV pusher(s) want more than that, then put them through Dispute resolution, eventually culminating in an arbcom case if needed.
Dan
On 11/09/05, Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com wrote:
I think Jimbo once used the example of flat earthers - the view is so soundly rejected by the vast majority of the world that it doesn't deserve mention in [[Earth]] (I have no idea if it is mentioned or not
- I just recall that being the example!).
Actually it was Fred Bauder who started the example, and Jimbo had this to say:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-June/024609.html
Jimbo also made an interesting related comment:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-June/024607.html
Dan
The point of [[m:wiki is not paper]] is that while it could be thought that including all that information would need a lot of resources to do, it doesn't: the Wikimedia servers have room for tens of *billions* words on their harddrives.
Yes, I know that. My point is that *nobody is claiming otherwise*. We all KNOW that we COULD have articles about all of our individual iPod contents from a software and hardware point of view. That's not why people object to topics they think are unencyclopedic.
FF
Dan Grey wrote:
What is this "standard of notability" anyway? I prefer Jimbo's guide to what should and should not be in: if the information is verifiable (ie it's been published somewhere, and most people who are going to interested in it can access it), and it's not original research, it deserves a place.
Just to be clear, I'm not 100% sure this is my position. :-)
My position most certainly is that, *fortunately*, a lot of really difficult issues *are* resolved by verifiability and no original research. Those two rules knock out a huge swath of certifiable nonsense without even breaking a sweat.
There is now a magazine article (Florida Trend) which gives my mother's name, and tells about the school which she founded, where I attended as a child. This information is now verifiable (it is in a magazine) and the original research was done by a professional journalist (plus I can personally vouch for it being true, for whatever that may be worth).
Even so, I do not think we should have an article about my mother. She's a dear sweet wonderful person, to be sure, but not encyclopedic.
This is a case where I'm going to go with Kat Walsh (Mindspillage) and say that I'm a "merge-ist". Does the tidbit about my mom's school deserve a separate article? Absolutely not. Does it belong somewhere in the encyclopedia? Sure. Where? In the article about me.
--Jimbo
Merging is also good for a very important reason: It helps the reader find content. The problem w these stray "cruft" articles is that few people ever see them. They're rarely well linked together, and often a number of articles end up written on a very similar subject, all of them in some way redundant and difficult to find. The best thing for EVERYBODY is merging/redirecting tiny articles (w/o loosing good content) and then allowing them to spin off into their own articles again when the "hub" article grows too big
Jack (Sam Spade)
Just to be clear, I'm not 100% sure this is my position. :-)
My position most certainly is that, *fortunately*, a lot of really difficult issues *are* resolved by verifiability and no original research. Those two rules knock out a huge swath of certifiable nonsense without even breaking a sweat.
There is now a magazine article (Florida Trend) which gives my mother's name, and tells about the school which she founded, where I attended as a child. This information is now verifiable (it is in a magazine) and the original research was done by a professional journalist (plus I can personally vouch for it being true, for whatever that may be worth).
Even so, I do not think we should have an article about my mother. She's a dear sweet wonderful person, to be sure, but not encyclopedic.
This is a case where I'm going to go with Kat Walsh (Mindspillage) and say that I'm a "merge-ist". Does the tidbit about my mom's school deserve a separate article? Absolutely not. Does it belong somewhere in the encyclopedia? Sure. Where? In the article about me.
--Jimbo
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Some people also say that short articles are more likely to get edited. I say: 1) They have to be found first. 2) Sections can be edited just as easily.
--Mgm
On 11/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
Some people also say that short articles are more likely to get edited. I say:
- They have to be found first.
I just tried this as an experiment: completely at random, I decided to search for "sheep shearing", and was redirected (I pressed "Go" not "Search") to [[Sheep shearer]].
Now, this is where it gets interesting: a large part of that article describes something called "Blade shears". But if you put "Blade shears" into the search box and click Go, you're taken to a search page which doesn't list [[Sheep shearer]] anywhere on the first page. The top two results - [[Shearing]] and [[Shears]] - both lead to a disambiguation page that doesn't mention blade shears at all, either.
This is just one example, but it's something I've noticed a lot - if what you're looking for has its' own article, you're a lot more likely to find it than if it's part of another article.
This isn't, of course, due to mergism - if the article had been merged, the redirect would've remained. But it illustrates the limitations of the search engine, and highlights the danger of trying to write large articles covering lots of stuff, rather than seperate, interlinked articles.
Dan
This isn't, of course, due to mergism - if the article had been merged, the redirect would've remained. But it illustrates the limitations of the search engine, and highlights the danger of trying to write large articles covering lots of stuff, rather than seperate, interlinked articles.
Dan
I've seen lots of people unfamiliar with Wikipedia complain because the search engine doesn't list any close matches and the go button confuses them too.
Regardless of whether mergism is good or not, I think the search engine could use some upgrading.
-Mgm
I agree, and have often been annoyed that the option to use google (and now yahoo) to help you search is only available in certain situations.
Jack (Sam Spade)
On 9/12/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
This isn't, of course, due to mergism - if the article had been merged, the redirect would've remained. But it illustrates the limitations of the search engine, and highlights the danger of trying to write large articles covering lots of stuff, rather than seperate, interlinked articles.
Dan
I've seen lots of people unfamiliar with Wikipedia complain because the search engine doesn't list any close matches and the go button confuses them too.
Regardless of whether mergism is good or not, I think the search engine could use some upgrading.
-Mgm _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 12/09/05, Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com wrote:
I just tried this as an experiment: completely at random, I decided to search for "sheep shearing", and was redirected (I pressed "Go" not "Search") to [[Sheep shearer]].
Now, this is where it gets interesting: a large part of that article describes something called "Blade shears". But if you put "Blade shears" into the search box and click Go, you're taken to a search page which doesn't list [[Sheep shearer]] anywhere on the first page. The top two results - [[Shearing]] and [[Shears]] - both lead to a disambiguation page that doesn't mention blade shears at all, either.
On 12/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
I've seen lots of people unfamiliar with Wikipedia complain because the search engine doesn't list any close matches and the go button confuses them too.
Regardless of whether mergism is good or not, I think the search engine could use some upgrading.
Indeed. Personally, I only use Google site search on Wikipedia (which, incidently, had [[Sheep shearer]] as the first result for "Blade shears").
I've noticed that Wikicities has a google search box below the built-in search. I wonder if we could have the same?
Dan
Note that until recently that google search box on wikicities only searched the internet in general. Now it can do both. I would support this on wikipedia..make a proposal!
On 9/13/05, Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/09/05, Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com wrote:
I just tried this as an experiment: completely at random, I decided to search for "sheep shearing", and was redirected (I pressed "Go" not "Search") to [[Sheep shearer]].
Now, this is where it gets interesting: a large part of that article describes something called "Blade shears". But if you put "Blade shears" into the search box and click Go, you're taken to a search page which doesn't list [[Sheep shearer]] anywhere on the first page. The top two results - [[Shearing]] and [[Shears]] - both lead to a disambiguation page that doesn't mention blade shears at all, either.
On 12/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
I've seen lots of people unfamiliar with Wikipedia complain because the search engine doesn't list any close matches and the go button confuses them too.
Regardless of whether mergism is good or not, I think the search engine could use some upgrading.
Indeed. Personally, I only use Google site search on Wikipedia (which, incidently, had [[Sheep shearer]] as the first result for "Blade shears").
I've noticed that Wikicities has a google search box below the built-in search. I wonder if we could have the same?
Dan _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
The Wikipedia search option is a regularly returning topic with newbie question on the Help desk and info-en mailing list. A lot of people like the options Google has, but don't like going off-line to use them.
Go ahead and write that proposal. :)
On 9/13/05, Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com wrote:
Indeed. Personally, I only use Google site search on Wikipedia (which, incidently, had [[Sheep shearer]] as the first result for "Blade shears").
I've noticed that Wikicities has a google search box below the built-in search. I wonder if we could have the same?
Considering it pops a Google search box in whenever the search function has been disabled, the code for this must already be out there.
The only problem I have with Wiki-via-Google is that Google also indexes redirect pages. Not the end of the world, but it always looks a little sloppy, but it's not really Google's fault.
I'm not sure what the effect would be of having redirects add a meta robots noindex tag to them, but it might be worth thinking about.
FF
We also get continued requests, now even through the info-en mailinglist for the cursor to be automatically put in the search box.
Personally, I don't like it, but maybe it can be made optional?
--Mgm
Google indexes redirect pages? Could something be added to the code of redirect pages to tell the search engine spiders to skip over them? Would this make searching for pages on Wiki through google work better?
On 9/13/05, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/13/05, Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com wrote:
Indeed. Personally, I only use Google site search on Wikipedia (which, incidently, had [[Sheep shearer]] as the first result for "Blade shears").
I've noticed that Wikicities has a google search box below the built-in search. I wonder if we could have the same?
Considering it pops a Google search box in whenever the search function has been disabled, the code for this must already be out there.
The only problem I have with Wiki-via-Google is that Google also indexes redirect pages. Not the end of the world, but it always looks a little sloppy, but it's not really Google's fault.
I'm not sure what the effect would be of having redirects add a meta robots noindex tag to them, but it might be worth thinking about.
FF _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Google indexes redirect pages? Could something be added to the code of redirect pages to tell the search engine spiders to skip over them? Would this make searching for pages on Wiki through google work better?
Not really, it would give us less google hits. It would be better if Google indexed redirect pages and the target page as one page.
Pawe³ Dembowski wrote:
Google indexes redirect pages? Could something be added to the code of redirect pages to tell the search engine spiders to skip over them? Would this make searching for pages on Wiki through google work better?
Not really, it would give us less google hits. It would be better if Google indexed redirect pages and the target page as one page.
And it would, if the redirects were actual proper HTTP redirects. But people don't want to implement this because it would lose the "Redirected from <otherpagetitle>" message.
I don't know enough about the algorithm Google uses to make this call.
There are various meta tags you can add to a page which will make Google behave differently to it. Noindex makes it so that Google won't index a page; noarchive means it won't archive it in the Google cache; and nofollow means it won't follow any of the links on the page.
The problem is I'm not sure if they are mutually exclusive. Will a noindex automatically noarchive? Probably. But will a noindex automatically nofollow? I don't know. We would want them to follow -- that is, we want them to know that the redirect term links up with that specific page -- but we wouldn't want them to index.
But if noindex also implies a nofollow, then it wouldn't be worth doing -- not so much because it would hurt our Google pagerank, but more because it would not help people find the articles they were looking for, potentially. Again, it's hard to know how these things would affect things without experimentation.
Either way, it's not a crucial, needs-to-be-decidedly-immediately issue. It's a tiny piece of potential inelegance in a project which is often defined by its inelegance. ;-)
FF
On 9/14/05, Pawe³ Dembowski fallout@lexx.eu.org wrote:
Google indexes redirect pages? Could something be added to the code of redirect pages to tell the search engine spiders to skip over them? Would this make searching for pages on Wiki through google work better?
Not really, it would give us less google hits. It would be better if Google indexed redirect pages and the target page as one page.
-- Ausir Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia http://pl.wikipedia.org
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 10/09/05, Kat Walsh mindspillage@gmail.com wrote:
More on mergism and "cruft": what I don't quite understand is the opposition many people have to merging small articles into larger ones: schools into school district articles, fictional characters into book articles, city landmarks into city articles.
I would imagine because smaller articles are more likely to be expanded (people may look at a long article on lots of things and say "ooo, that's long enough already").
With some articles you suggest merging and the creators respond as if you wanted to delete the article entirely. I regard merging as an improvement: information wants context, in order to be useful; maybe it doesn't add to your article count, but it adds to the usefulness of the encyclopedia.
You don't have to merge articles to provide context!
"Wiki is not paper" is often cited -- but it's a stronger argument for merging information than leaving small articles separate: since Wiki is not paper, redirects are easy, and we do not have to worry about someone having to pull out separate volumes and flip pages if directed elsewhere. We don't have to make sure there's a scrap of information at every conceivable search term; that's what redirects and the search function are for. Articles that are "cruft" on their own (and I do try to use the term only jokingly!) can be a helpful bit of detail in a larger picture.
It doesn't really *hurt* to have lots of small trivial articles (I'm deliberately ignoring referencing issues here; dpbsmith already made that position perfectly clear), but it's a case where the whole is indeed generally greater than the sum of its parts. Not only that, a large article which gets many visitors is far easier to maintain -- keep updated, patrol for vandalism, etc. -- than a collection of small articles which get relatively few visitors each.
I'd argue the opposite - vandalism is harder to spot in oft-edited pages, as if it's not picked up quickly, it's hidden on watchlists by newer edits. It's well-known that collections of smaller articles are easier to maintain.
Also, readers would most likely only read the same pieces of information in a large merged article as they would have seperate smaller ones - there's no particular reason why larger articles should be updated more. If anything the opposite - larger articles often look more "complete".
Where such an article can't be merged into something larger, it's probably because it is too trivial for the next broader level of detail and probably shouldn't be included at all (for example, I wouldn't even be worth mentioning in my university's article: it would rightly get deleted were a sentence about me to be added) -- or if it should be included, indicative that we have a big gaping hole somewhere in our coverage and need to write the article for the next broader level (for example, an individual folk song from a country on which there is no "music of X" article yet).
What should and shouldn't be an article is covered by wp:verifiability and NOR.
Dan
I beg to differ, Dan. My local mailbox is verifiable but certainly not worth a place in Wikipedia.
On 9/11/05, Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/09/05, Kat Walsh mindspillage@gmail.com wrote:
More on mergism and "cruft": what I don't quite understand is the opposition many people have to merging small articles into larger ones: schools into school district articles, fictional characters into book articles, city landmarks into city articles.
I would imagine because smaller articles are more likely to be expanded (people may look at a long article on lots of things and say "ooo, that's long enough already").
With some articles you suggest merging and the creators respond as if you wanted to delete the article entirely. I regard merging as an improvement: information wants context, in order to be useful; maybe it doesn't add to your article count, but it adds to the usefulness of the encyclopedia.
You don't have to merge articles to provide context!
"Wiki is not paper" is often cited -- but it's a stronger argument for merging information than leaving small articles separate: since Wiki is not paper, redirects are easy, and we do not have to worry about someone having to pull out separate volumes and flip pages if directed elsewhere. We don't have to make sure there's a scrap of information at every conceivable search term; that's what redirects and the search function are for. Articles that are "cruft" on their own (and I do try to use the term only jokingly!) can be a helpful bit of detail in a larger picture.
It doesn't really *hurt* to have lots of small trivial articles (I'm deliberately ignoring referencing issues here; dpbsmith already made that position perfectly clear), but it's a case where the whole is indeed generally greater than the sum of its parts. Not only that, a large article which gets many visitors is far easier to maintain -- keep updated, patrol for vandalism, etc. -- than a collection of small articles which get relatively few visitors each.
I'd argue the opposite - vandalism is harder to spot in oft-edited pages, as if it's not picked up quickly, it's hidden on watchlists by newer edits. It's well-known that collections of smaller articles are easier to maintain.
Also, readers would most likely only read the same pieces of information in a large merged article as they would have seperate smaller ones - there's no particular reason why larger articles should be updated more. If anything the opposite - larger articles often look more "complete".
Where such an article can't be merged into something larger, it's probably because it is too trivial for the next broader level of detail and probably shouldn't be included at all (for example, I wouldn't even be worth mentioning in my university's article: it would rightly get deleted were a sentence about me to be added) -- or if it should be included, indicative that we have a big gaping hole somewhere in our coverage and need to write the article for the next broader level (for example, an individual folk song from a country on which there is no "music of X" article yet).
What should and shouldn't be an article is covered by wp:verifiability and NOR.
Dan _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Dan Grey wrote:
On 10/09/05, Kat Walsh mindspillage@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
Where such an article can't be merged into something larger, it's probably because it is too trivial for the next broader level of detail and probably shouldn't be included at all (for example, I wouldn't even be worth mentioning in my university's article: it would rightly get deleted were a sentence about me to be added) -- or if it should be included, indicative that we have a big gaping hole somewhere in our coverage and need to write the article for the next broader level (for example, an individual folk song from a country on which there is no "music of X" article yet).
What should and shouldn't be an article is covered by wp:verifiability and NOR.
Excuse me while I go and add articles on all the monsters from Dungeons and Dragons then...
No, I was talking about the public mailbox on the end of the street which everyone in the neighbourhood uses. It's very much accessible and verifiable.
On 9/11/05, Ryan Norton wxprojects@comcast.net wrote:
Excuse me while I go and add articles on all the monsters from Dungeons and Dragons then...
I fail to see a problem with this (besides copyright issues if you want to add stats, for example).... after all, we have an article for each pokemon.
Thanks,
RN
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
What is top posting anyway?
Posting above replies instead of below them. Eg:
Yes.
Are you sure?
Because it reverse the logical flow of conversation
Why is top posting frowned upon?
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
On 9/11/05, Ryan Norton wxprojects@comcast.net wrote:
Excuse me while I go and add articles on all the monsters from Dungeons and Dragons then...
I fail to see a problem with this (besides copyright issues if you want to add stats, for example).... after all, we have an article for each pokemon.
Thanks,
RN
No, I was talking about the public mailbox on the end of the street which everyone in the neighbourhood uses. It's very much accessible and verifiable.
That would be Original Research.
On 9/11/05, Alphax alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
On 9/11/05, Ryan Norton wxprojects@comcast.net wrote:
Excuse me while I go and add articles on all the monsters from Dungeons and Dragons then...
I fail to see a problem with this (besides copyright issues if you want to add stats, for example).... after all, we have an article for each pokemon.
Thanks,
RN
No, I was talking about the public mailbox on the end of the street which everyone in the neighbourhood uses. It's very much accessible and verifiable.
That would be Original Research.
-- Alphax | /"\ Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \ _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
OR? How so. I could say a lot of things about the box anyone going there could verify. No original research needed. Aren't articles about bus stops basicly the same?
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
On 9/11/05, Alphax alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
On 9/11/05, Ryan Norton wxprojects@comcast.net wrote:
Excuse me while I go and add articles on all the monsters from Dungeons and Dragons then...
I fail to see a problem with this (besides copyright issues if you want to add stats, for example).... after all, we have an article for each pokemon.
No, I was talking about the public mailbox on the end of the street which everyone in the neighbourhood uses. It's very much accessible and verifiable.
That would be Original Research.
OR? How so. I could say a lot of things about the box anyone going there could verify. No original research needed. Aren't articles about bus stops basicly the same?
We have articles on bus stops?
Are bus stops encyclopedic?
On 11/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
OR? How so. I could say a lot of things about the box anyone going there could verify. No original research needed. Aren't articles about bus stops basicly the same?
Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:V and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOR, and also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Fame_and_importance#Discussion_o... which specifically addresses your question.
Dan
On Sep 11, 2005, at 5:01 AM, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
OR? How so. I could say a lot of things about the box anyone going there could verify. No original research needed. Aren't articles about bus stops basicly the same?
"Anyone going there" is why it's original research. There's no published source. The only way to verify the mailbox is to go to your town and repeat your research on the mailbox.
It should also be noted that I, at least, consider lone websites to not be verifiable. That is, if you created a website all about your mailbox, I still wouldn't consider it verifiable, because it's too ephemeral a source. Verifiability, to me, requires some degree of permanence - multiple websites, or existence on a website that is extremely unlikely to fold without a trace like an online peer reviewed journal.
-Snowspinner
On 9/11/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/11/05, Alphax alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
No, I was talking about the public mailbox on the end of the street which everyone in the neighbourhood uses. It's very much accessible and verifiable.
That would be Original Research.
OR? How so. I could say a lot of things about the box anyone going there could verify. No original research needed. Aren't articles about bus stops basicly the same?
What you are proposing is primary source information. Wikipedia is not a primary source. It is basically a tertiary (and to a small extent, secondary) source. This is what no original research means: don't do research that no-one has done before. I'd say someone _doing_ research on a bus stop makes it fairly noteworthy...
Sam
What you are proposing is primary source information. Wikipedia is not a primary source. It is basically a tertiary (and to a small extent, secondary) source. This is what no original research means: don't do research that no-one has done before. I'd say someone _doing_ research on a bus stop makes it fairly noteworthy... Sam
The primary source of bus stop information is my local bus company's website. Basing articles on their schedule would not be original research.
On Sep 11, 2005, at 12:26 PM, Pawe³ Dembowski wrote:
What you are proposing is primary source information. Wikipedia is not a primary source. It is basically a tertiary (and to a small extent, secondary) source. This is what no original research means: don't do research that no-one has done before. I'd say someone _doing_ research on a bus stop makes it fairly noteworthy... Sam
The primary source of bus stop information is my local bus company's website. Basing articles on their schedule would not be original research.
There is also a practical, though I think unwritten, rule against articles that can never be anything more than stubs.
-Snowspinner
There is also a practical, though I think unwritten, rule against articles that can never be anything more than stubs. -Snowspinner
Sure, I'm just saying that it's not necessarily Original Research :).
Ryan Norton wrote:
Excuse me while I go and add articles on all the monsters from Dungeons and Dragons then...
I fail to see a problem with this (besides copyright issues if you want to add stats, for example).... after all, we have an article for each pokemon.
Grr... I'm seeing very few redlinks on [[List of species in fantasy fiction]]...
Alright, why do the Star Wars wiki and Memory Alpha exist? Can't the information in them go into Wikipedia (yes, I know that Memory Alpha is not GFDL-compatible)?
On Sep 11, 2005, at 4:50 AM, Alphax wrote:
Alright, why do the Star Wars wiki and Memory Alpha exist? Can't the information in them go into Wikipedia (yes, I know that Memory Alpha is not GFDL-compatible)?
--
I think this is an excellent point, actually - I think Memory Alpha is another example of a Very Bad Thing, and that the fact that they forked and used a different license is a devastating blow to our Star Trek coverage that will NEVER HEAL. Every article I have read on Memory Alpha would have made a fine Wikipedia article. And we get none of it.
I'd say we need to make up our mind on whether we want to be the sum total of human knowledge or the sum total of human knowledge that will get us mainstream respect, but there's nothing to make our mind up about. We want the former.
David is right. We would be better off with disks overflowing with band vanity, original research, and poo jokes. Those don't do damage to the community and to the long term success of the project. The fact that we have to share the volunteers on Star Trek articles with Memory Alpha, and that the work can never be merged does. So does every other fork.
-Snowspinner
On 9/12/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
I think this is an excellent point, actually - I think Memory Alpha is another example of a Very Bad Thing, and that the fact that they forked and used a different license is a devastating blow to our Star Trek coverage that will NEVER HEAL.
Memory Alpha was never a fork of Wikipedia. Please see http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Memory_Alpha:General_FAQ#What_are_the_goals_... and http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Memory_Alpha:History for details of how the project got started.
The founders were inspired by the collaborative nature of Wikipedia, but they were not intending on forking it, as evidenced by the fact the license they (wrongly) chose meant they could never use Wikipedia content. This was also not a fork of the Wikipedia community, but instead drew individuals from the various Star Trek communities, especially since this replaced the former Star Trek Encyclopedia project which had started in the mid 90s. Whether or not those people might have started editing Wikipedia is unknown, but it is simply wrong to claim that they forked either the content or community of Wikipedia.
Angela
Despite the well-deserved chastising from Angela, I stand by my assertion that Memory Alpha has a disastrous long-term effect on Wikipedia, and that these... I'm not sure what you want to call them. Other encyclopedias, I suppose. Regardless, I think they have a profoundly negative effect on the long-term success of Wikipedia.
-Snowspinner
On Sep 12, 2005, at 7:50 PM, Angela wrote:
On 9/12/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
I think this is an excellent point, actually - I think Memory Alpha is another example of a Very Bad Thing, and that the fact that they forked and used a different license is a devastating blow to our Star Trek coverage that will NEVER HEAL.
Memory Alpha was never a fork of Wikipedia. Please see http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/ Memory_Alpha:General_FAQ#What_are_the_goals_of_Memory_Alpha.3F and http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Memory_Alpha:History for details of how the project got started.
The founders were inspired by the collaborative nature of Wikipedia, but they were not intending on forking it, as evidenced by the fact the license they (wrongly) chose meant they could never use Wikipedia content. This was also not a fork of the Wikipedia community, but instead drew individuals from the various Star Trek communities, especially since this replaced the former Star Trek Encyclopedia project which had started in the mid 90s. Whether or not those people might have started editing Wikipedia is unknown, but it is simply wrong to claim that they forked either the content or community of Wikipedia.
Angela _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Despite the well-deserved chastising from Angela, I stand by my assertion that Memory Alpha has a disastrous long-term effect on Wikipedia, and that these... I'm not sure what you want to call them. Other encyclopedias, I suppose. Regardless, I think they have a profoundly negative effect on the long-term success of Wikipedia. -Snowspinner
And why is that? Memory Alpha is a project for creating a Star Trek encyclopedia that just happens to use the MediaWiki software. As seen in the history page, if it hadn't, it would just be another Star Trek database, not editable by everyone - and it allows for a level of details that would be just silly at Wikipedia. Same with other fan-wikis. For example, I wrote this article at The Vault: http://vault.duckandcover.cx/index.php?title=Two-headed_bear and I would definitely vote for the deletion of such article if it were created at Wikipedia.
On 9/13/05, Paweł Dembowski fallout@lexx.eu.org wrote "if it hadn't, it would just be another Star Trek database, not editable by everyone"
Mediawiki is NOT the only wiki software.
Mediawiki is NOT the only wiki software.
Yes, I know, but it is one best suited for writing an encyclopedia, since it was created specifically for that purpose.
On 9/13/05, Phroziac phroziac@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/13/05, Paweł Dembowski fallout@lexx.eu.org wrote "if it hadn't, it would just be another Star Trek database, not editable by everyone"
Mediawiki is NOT the only wiki software.
True but is has the largest pool of people who know how to use it
On Sep 12, 2005, at 8:42 PM, Paweł Dembowski wrote:
And why is that? Memory Alpha is a project for creating a Star Trek encyclopedia that just happens to use the MediaWiki software. As seen in the history page, if it hadn't, it would just be another Star Trek database, not editable by everyone - and it allows for a level of details that would be just silly at Wikipedia. Same with other fan-wikis. For example, I wrote this article at The Vault: http://vault.duckandcover.cx/index.php?title=Two-headed_bear and I would definitely vote for the deletion of such article if it were created at Wikipedia.
Although I am sure there are articles in Memory Alpha that would not be suitable for Wikipedia, I have not yet found one.
-Snowspinner
Although I am sure there are articles in Memory Alpha that would not be suitable for Wikipedia, I have not yet found one. -Snowspinner_______________________________________________
Well, I'm sure a lot of them would not be suitable as separate articles. Merged - maybe. I also doubt all Star Trek appearances would be allowed to be listed in every article about a real-world location or historical person that appeared there.
G'day Snowspinner,
<snip />
David is right. We would be better off with disks overflowing with band vanity, original research, and poo jokes. Those don't do damage to the community and to the long term success of the project. The fact that we have to share the volunteers on Star Trek articles with Memory Alpha, and that the work can never be merged does. So does every other fork.
Although I'm a Trekkie myself, I think Memory Alpha is a Good Thing. It's somewhere for /Star Trek/ fans to list all sorts of non-notable trivia that doesn't belong in Wikipedia.
So what if we have to share /Star Trek/ volunteers? Actually, as I write that, I can see a counter-argument brewing: Trekkies might come to Wikipedia to put in their two cents on some meaningless piece of cruft (cruft, I say!), and stay on to write about other stuff. If they go to Memory Alpha alone, we've lost them altogether. But I suspect that's not your actual argument.
Why is it a Bad Thing to lose /Trek/-only contributions? Not just for /Trek/, but for anything where fans get a little too enthusiastic to judge encyclopaedic worth. Do we need a separate article for every planet mentioned in passing in the /Star Wars/ movies (or in the novels, or cartoons, or comics, or --- it'll happen --- fanfic)? How about minor /Digimon/ characters? I've noticed that, despite the existence of an *entire project*, /Harry Potter/ is missing vital information on what happened in a paragraph of page 421 of the latest epic, /Harry Potter and the Thingy-Riddled Thing/.
Would it be such a great loss to lose all of this? We're not talking Elf-Only Inn, here.
On Sep 12, 2005, at 10:50 PM, Mark Gallagher wrote:
Why is it a Bad Thing to lose /Trek/-only contributions? Not just for /Trek/, but for anything where fans get a little too enthusiastic to judge encyclopaedic worth. Do we need a separate article for every planet mentioned in passing in the /Star Wars/ movies (or in the novels, or cartoons, or comics, or --- it'll happen --- fanfic)?
Fanfic is for the most part not verifiable, due to its extremely ephemeral nature, although I have supported a few highly notable fanfics getting articles - most memorably the Very Secret Diaries. Every planet mentioned in passing? No. I've also never said articles that are perma-stubs should be kept. I think perma-stub is a very good reason for deletion.
On the other hand, why not have full descriptions of every episode of Star Trek, and every character who's appeared in more than one episode? Why not have an article on every actor or actress who has had a substantive speaking part in a Star Trek episode? It harms nothing, and has a meaningful benefit.
Yes. I do believe that any article on a topic that is verifiable, reasonably assured to remain verifiable in ten years, and capable of having more than a stub written about it should have an article. What reason is there not to do this? Disk space isn't an issue. Naming conventions can and have been sorted out in the past. What's the reason not to do this?
-Snowspinner
Fanfic is for the most part not verifiable, due to its extremely ephemeral nature, although I have supported a few highly notable fanfics getting articles - most memorably the Very Secret Diaries. Every planet mentioned in passing? No. I've also never said articles that are perma-stubs should be kept. I think perma-stub is a very good reason for deletion.
Well, perma-stubs are certainly welcome at fan wikis.
On Sep 12, 2005, at 11:07 PM, Paweł Dembowski wrote:
Well, perma-stubs are certainly welcome at fan wikis.
Perhaps, but I don't think that the need to create perma-stubs is why people make fan wikis, and I think if this were the only issue, they mostly wouldn't.
-Snowspinner
On 11/09/05, Ryan Norton wxprojects@comcast.net wrote:
Excuse me while I go and add articles on all the monsters from Dungeons and Dragons then...
I fail to see a problem with this (besides copyright issues if you want to add stats, for example).... after all, we have an article for each pokemon.
And just make sure that the context is explained, eg http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Al%27kesh&diff=8993035&old....
(Yes, I had previoulsy edited the article and neglected to do this!)
Dan
The copyright issues might be the biggest pain in the neck in the end with this stuff, in the end. Some of our articles contain very detailed plot summaries, extended quotations, stat information, etc., of copyrighted sources which could plausibly be argued to infringe on the future marketability of the copyright holder. There's also the question of whether most of our Pokémon articles count as "criticism and analysis" or if they aren't just summaries and re-written stat sheets. But that's a bigger problem than the "cruft" one.
(I recently wrote a first draft of copyright policy on en.Wikiquote with this in mind, as I realized that it not having one of its own was probably a bad idea since it seems to me the second most likely of the Wiki projects to have major copyright infringement issues. Anybody who is interested and has some time to burn, feel free to take a look at [[Wikiquote:Copyrights]] when you get a chance.)
FF
On 9/11/05, Ryan Norton wxprojects@comcast.net wrote:
Excuse me while I go and add articles on all the monsters from Dungeons and Dragons then...
I fail to see a problem with this (besides copyright issues if you want to add stats, for example).... after all, we have an article for each pokemon.
Thanks,
RN
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
James D. Forrester wrote:
Phroziac wrote:
Anyone in favor of banning the word cruft from vfd? They might as well just be saying crap...
Seconded.
Oh, and top-posting should be made a bannable offence. :-)
Agreed.
Phroziac wrote:
Anyone in favor of banning the word cruft from vfd? They might as well just be saying crap...
Aye. A VfD that's justified on the basis of the article being "cruft" is completely inadequate, it's the same as saying "delete this 'cause I don't think it should be here." A "speedy keep" policy that invalidates VfDs where the nominator didn't adequately justify why he was proposing the article for deletion would be great.
On 11/09/05, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
A "speedy keep" policy that invalidates VfDs where the nominator didn't adequately justify why he was proposing the article for deletion would be great.
Start that policy then - if you see a silly listing, don't hesistate to remove it. It's only going to end with a gazillion keep votes.
Dan
I know it is bad form to quote an entire post just to say "me too" but I wanted to say that Daniel is right on the money here, and displays what I think of as true Wikipedia spirit. We have to have a passion to *get it right* or we'll be full of rampant nonsense.
A list like this can be useful and educational but it *has* to be approached in the way Daniel discusses: complete intolerance for additions that do not adhere to the rudiments of scholarship.
--Jimbo
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
OK, this fool will walk in, donning asbestos suit, etc.
There are contributors, who enjoy contributing to Wikipedia, who do not embrace or understand the rudiments of scholarship.
Here's what I mean by "rudiments.
"List of people believed to have been affected by bipolar disorder" which was originally just a completely unsourced list of raw names; confirmed, plausible, asserted, and unlikely, all mixed together. It was nominated for deletion, and consensus was that it was OK _provided that_ the list confined itself to names for which there was _a verifiable source citation._ I.e. it is OK to tell the reader that the source was Kay Redfield Jamison's book and let the reader decide how credible Jamison is.
The opening paragraph was rewritten to say "This is a list of people accompanied by verifiable source citations," etc.
On a fairly regular basis, people will simply add names to the list with no explanation or citation. OR, they will add names accompanied with statements like "he has been very open about this" or "it's been in the news" or "One of his songs is entitled 'Lithium.'" I've been fairly pestiferous about removing unsourced entries, usually moving them to Talk with an explanation, and trying to half-coach the people who added them.
And indeed some of them have been surprised that I mean exactly what I say, and that while "Adam Ant: Has spoken openly on television about his condition" will not do, a web reference to an arts.telegraph article, "Adam and his fall," is just fine.
Other have felt that the onus was somehow on _me_ to research and provide references for the names _they_ had added, thought I was questioning their honesty when they asserted the existence of references, etc.
Now, all this is fine as far as it goes. There are some inexperienced contributors, I try to police the article a bit, I try to help a bit, I try to coach a bit, some of the inexperienced contributors "get it," some of them don't. The article slowly improves over time. All Wiki-good.
The problem occurs when you have a topic area that attracts a very large volume of contributions from editors who do _not_ get the idea of what it means for an article to be well-researched, thorough, and accurate.
Wikipedia depends on the notion that bad articles will get improved. That implies a certain kind of balance or equilibrium.
I believe the "cruft" label, which I don't like and try to avoid using myself, is shorthand for "topic area in which low-quality articles are being created faster than they are being improved."
Such topic areas _are_ problems. The solution isn't clear.
Wikipedia works only when _most_ articles are in at least a quarter-decent state, and articles that are really just drafts or placeholders or article _requests_ disguised as articles are a relatively small proportion of the whole.
-- Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith@verizon.net "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print! Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l