David Gerard notes that on wikien there are many such essays; and I believe there are also quite a number on de:wp. Are there any efforts to gathering/organizing these essays, similar to efforts to organize policy?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_essays (250+ entries)
SJ
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: SJ 2.718281828@gmail.com Date: Sep 5, 2006 9:27 AM Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Essays on the future of the projects To: wikipedia-l@wikimedia.org
On 9/5/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 05/09/06, SJ 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
Aaron Swartz has started a series of such essays. The latest one suggests something I have long suspected, that the huge body of new and anonymous contributors, who often make the first serious stab at an article or provide a needed injection of expertise, are as important to the 'pedias development (if not more so) than the core of dedicated editors. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/wikiroads http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia
Greg Maxwell is sceptical of the numbers (since Aaron doesn't give methodology); since Greg is very good at running interesting numbers on the database, I've suggested to each that they contact the other.
It's been a long-standing debate without numbers; hopefully we can throw data into the mix now. I know Greg and Aaron were
Is anyone else writing long essays these days? Where are they kept, and how categorized?
Probably and nowhere I can think of, but they should!
Indeed. It's a shame that some of the good long essays in recent memory are written off-wiki, in places where they can't be improved over time (even if it is a public mailing list). This is an interesting twist on wikification: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Who_Writes_Wikipedia%3F
I hope the text itself goes up there soon. Likewise, for anyone who has posted a great rant to mailing lists lately. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Essays is surprisingly sparse.
SJ
On 9/5/06, SJ 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
David Gerard notes that on wikien there are many such essays; and I believe there are also quite a number on de:wp. Are there any efforts to gathering/organizing these essays, similar to efforts to organize policy?
As I understand it, most essays used to be on meta, whereas nowadays they are often created on the "home" project of their author. My speculation is that its a function of meta becoming less of a place for broad, generalist discussion about the projects and more about coordination.
I'm not aware of any global efforts to gather essays, although some users do keep their own lists. MeatballWiki (http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?MeatballWiki) of course is a goldmine for this sort of thing.