If editors are supposed to take great writing seriously, we must give it the highest possible award.
Jimmy Wales, here's something you could make happen.
I *demand* that we have a guaranteed daily place on the main page, to be reserved solely for articles chosen for their great writing.
Anything less is a display of lack of commitment in our goal--to be as good as, or better than, any other encyclopaedia, free or otherwise, with digraphs or without.
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Tony Sidaway stated for the record:
I *demand* that we have a guaranteed daily place on the main page, to be reserved solely for articles chosen for their great writing.
Oh, my goodness! He *demands* it! With asterisks, no less!
- -- Sean Barrett | Never stand next to anyone throwing sean@epoptic.com | shit at an armed man. --Larry Niven
Tony Sidaway wrote:
If editors are supposed to take great writing seriously, we must give it the highest possible award.
Jimmy Wales, here's something you could make happen.
I *demand* that we have a guaranteed daily place on the main page, to be reserved solely for articles chosen for their great writing.
Anything less is a display of lack of commitment in our goal--to be as good as, or better than, any other encyclopaedia, free or otherwise, with digraphs or without.
This is totally to the community to 1) write very good articles and 2) agree that they are very good and 3) put them on the main page.
How can Jimbo make that happen more than you ???
On 10/9/05, Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
If editors are supposed to take great writing seriously, we must give it
the
highest possible award.
Jimmy Wales, here's something you could make happen.
I *demand* that we have a guaranteed daily place on the main page, to be reserved solely for articles chosen for their great writing.
Anything less is a display of lack of commitment in our goal--to be as
good
as, or better than, any other encyclopaedia, free or otherwise, with digraphs or without.
This is totally to the community to 1) write very good articles and 2) agree that they are very good and 3) put them on the main page.
How can Jimbo make that happen more than you ???
It isn't going to happen if he doesn't make it happen. The Featured Article process is tortuous and review-based, and the quality of writing it produces is at best mediocre.
If we really are going to take great writing seriously, we should try to identify editors who are capable of doing it and encourage them to do so. This means that an article may lack pictures, and even be a little short of references. The footnotes may be uneven. But the article will be a pleasure to read and provide good coverage of the topic.
It isn't going to happen if he doesn't make it happen. The Featured Article process is tortuous and review-based, and the quality of writing it produces is at best mediocre.
Then why not go there and oppose the ones with bad writing? I'm sure your comments would be appreciated, and will easily kill any chances of 90% of the FAs there from passing. As for review-based - what's the alternative?
Thanks, Ryan
[[User:RN]] at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:RN Ryan Norton at wxforum: http://wxforum.org
Then why not go there and oppose the ones with bad writing? I'm sure your comments would be appreciated, and will easily kill any chances of 90% of the FAs there from passing. As for review-based - what's the alternative?
I think Tony's point is that we need to recognise well written work entirely apart from the FA process. I think of FAs as Wikipedia 1.0 articles. It makes sense to recognise and reward good writing. Bringing an article up to FA status is something that people are willing to inves time and effort in. Improving the writing is something that people may be willing to do, but without a specific end-goal to work towards, it's likely to be one of the things that just gets put off. If I had to make a guess at the things that get my attention it would be
1. Vandalism 2. Content-related discussion on pages that I watch (think [[Evolution]], etc.) 3. AN/I and other disputes including RFAr, RFCs 4. Articles that I am expanding 5. Articles that I would like to bring to FA status 6. Everything else
The first three, the boring and mundane stuff, tends to consume most of my time. Which encyclopaedia-related tasks get done depends on how easy they are to do, and whether I am working towards some goal or other. Stylistic improvements just aren't a goal - they're something you do when you find something that's so horribly written that it makes you wince. If it were a goal, if I were to say "I want to bring [[An Article]] to "Great Writing" staus", then it might get done. As is, it will get done the day after I finish writing featured articles on every village in Trinidad :)
Ian
On 10/9/05, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
I think Tony's point is that we need to recognise well written work entirely apart from the FA process.
It's a good idea, Ian. Good writing is given too little attention, and yet it's the thing most likely to get us respected and read. No matter how accurate and neutral an article is, if it's badly written, we look silly. The greater the number of people editing an article, the faster the writing declines, which means our most popular articles are often not well written.
I've also noticed that many editors are quite happy to revert a copy edit if there's just one or two things in it they don't like, without realizing that a good copy edit is a lot of work and involves making changes all the way through the article, and is therefore a hard thing to go back and do again.
I'd welcome anything that brings the issue of good writing to people's attention and makes editors respect it more.
Sarah
On 10/9/05, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
I think Tony's point is that we need to recognise well written work entirely apart from the FA process.
This is it, really. Articles are making FA with mediocre writing, so there's no great head of pressure in the process to encourage people to polish the writing.
I'm sure you've all had enough of me pointing out errors of grammar, organisational problems such as omitting crucial facts from the opening paragraph, and just plain bad writing in Featured Articles that I've encountered on the front page. I recognise that my personal bias towards very short articles tends to make me perhaps unreasonably dismissive of the Featured Article process as a whole, but my criticism of the writing quality in those articles is soundly based.
I could go through Featured Articles and polish them; I'm not a great writer but I can get rid of the worst errors. There are great writers around, though.
Until recently, the opener of our article on Language was tantamount to a felonious act against English. It read in full:
"*Language* is a finite system of arbitrary symbolshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolcombined according to rules of grammar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar for the purpose of communication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication. Individual languages use sounds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound, gestureshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesture, and other symbols to represent objects, conceptshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept, emotions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion, ideashttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea, and thoughts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought."
This kind of writing might win a passing grade in an examination on theoretical linguistics, but it isn't really useful, or even very comprehensible, to the general reader.
The opener now reads:
"A *language* is a system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System of expression and communication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication. Individual languages use sound http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound, gesturehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesture, and other means to express and communicate conceptshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept, emotions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion, ideashttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea, and thoughts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought. Expressions of a language are analysable into words http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word, whose meanings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning are usually conventional http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention. The word "language" is also used to refer to the common properties of languages."
That isn't perfect, but it's a step in the right direction. The gobbledygook has been elaborated a little, and some nuances have been expanded. But there's still some jargon, which is unacceptable in an opening section. For instance "whose meanings are usually conventional" means, in standard English, "with meanings usually established by prior agreement and practice".
Both version suffer from overwikification-nearly all of the sentences contain wikilinked words. I've spoken to a few people about Wikipedia and most of them report that a sentence with wikilinks is much harder to read than a sentence without. This matches my own experience.
Now unless we pick up on improvements in writing style and give them recognition at the highest level of Wikipedia, I don't see how we'll focus attention on the quality of the writing in Wikipedia. As I've suggested in an earlier email, writing quality is especially vulnerable to entropy. While the quantity and quality of information in an article tends to improve with editing over time by many people, the quality of writing tends to degrade under the same conditions.
Now look at the introduction of the article on the same subject in MSN Encarta. it shows how far we have to go to make a great encyclopedia.
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761570647/Language.html#s1
That is professional writing. It's not the best, but it's readable, jargon-free, and provides good coverage. Professional writers do it for money. We need to find a way to motivate great writers to write into this palimpsest, knowing that their work may well be slashed to pieces in days, or even hours. Putting the best writing each day on the front page would be the least we could do to show them that we value them just as surely as we need them.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Both version suffer from overwikification-nearly all of the sentences contain wikilinked words. I've spoken to a few people about Wikipedia and most of them report that a sentence with wikilinks is much harder to read than a sentence without. This matches my own experience.
I've actually found the opposite, so long as the wikilinks are judiciously placed, and not just on all words. I tend to use wikilinks to help me skim sentences for the important subjects they refer to. They are particularly useful for that purpose in mathematical articles, where they usually mark technical terms being used in their technical sense (and the link is useful to quickly look up the definition if I'm unfamiliar with it).
-Mark
On 10/9/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote: I tend to use wikilinks to help me skim sentences for the important subjects they refer to.
I think the problem with the Language article is that it's far too heavily wikified. In some sentences nearly all words are needlessly peppered with blue link. As if someone would find himself unable to understand what was meant by "sounds" or "gestures" in the opener, and a link to the articles for those words would help.
On 10/9/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/9/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote: I tend to use wikilinks to help me skim sentences for the important subjects they refer to.
I think the problem with the Language article is that it's far too heavily wikified. In some sentences nearly all words are needlessly peppered with blue link. As if someone would find himself unable to understand what was meant by "sounds" or "gestures" in the opener, and a link to the articles for those words would help.
Perhaps you should choose (or design) a skin that doesn't highlight wikilinks unless you glide your cursor over them.
In general, I would agree that our blue wikilinks are a little too contrasting with the text body, making them a distraction, and would prefer something more subtle as the default.
-- Michael Turley User:Unfocused
There's no way to discern a 'good' (adding to the content) wikilink and a 'bad' (not adding to the content, such as [[sound]] or [[the]]...yes I suppose the latter is an extreme example) wikilink, and I believe that's what Tony Sidaway is talking about
On 10/9/05, Michael Turley michael.turley@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/9/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/9/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote: I tend to use wikilinks to help me skim sentences for the important subjects they refer to.
I think the problem with the Language article is that it's far too
heavily
wikified. In some sentences nearly all words are needlessly peppered
with
blue link. As if someone would find himself unable to understand what
was
meant by "sounds" or "gestures" in the opener, and a link to the
articles
for those words would help.
Perhaps you should choose (or design) a skin that doesn't highlight wikilinks unless you glide your cursor over them.
In general, I would agree that our blue wikilinks are a little too contrasting with the text body, making them a distraction, and would prefer something more subtle as the default.
-- Michael Turley User:Unfocused _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- ~Ilya N.
On 10/9/05, Ilya N. ilyanep@gmail.com wrote:
There's no way to discern a 'good' (adding to the content) wikilink and a 'bad' (not adding to the content, such as [[sound]] or [[the]]...yes I suppose the latter is an extreme example) wikilink, and I believe that's what Tony Sidaway is talking about
I am aware of the overlinked articles Tony is speaking of. But just as we cannot convince everyone to adopt a certain style of prose immediately, we cannot instantly convince everyone to follow our own ideas of what is overlinking and what is underlinking. We have to gradually negotiate our way, article by article, always pointing people to established examples to guide them.
We can't solve the problem all at once, so I've suggested an option to make it less troublesome in the meantime. If the default wikilink colors (blue and red) were closer to black unlinked text and less of a contrast, the articles would all be instantly much more readable.
-- Michael Turley User:Unfocused
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Michael Turley wrote:
On 10/9/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/9/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote: I tend to use wikilinks to help me skim sentences for the important subjects they refer to.
I think the problem with the Language article is that it's far too heavily wikified. In some sentences nearly all words are needlessly peppered with blue link. As if someone would find himself unable to understand what was meant by "sounds" or "gestures" in the opener, and a link to the articles for those words would help.
Perhaps you should choose (or design) a skin that doesn't highlight wikilinks unless you glide your cursor over them.
In general, I would agree that our blue wikilinks are a little too contrasting with the text body, making them a distraction, and would prefer something more subtle as the default.
I think that blue was initially chosen as the default for hyperlinks in browsers due to red/green colourblindness...
- -- Alphax | /"\ Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \
colored underlined links are the default on the web. Creating something more subtle may ease reading, but is no doubt going to cause confusion for people who don't keep their mouse in the link long enough, or for those who don't have scripts or other needed options enabled for them to see mouseover images.
--Mgm
On 10/10/05, Alphax alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
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Michael Turley wrote:
On 10/9/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/9/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote: I tend to use wikilinks to help me skim sentences for the important subjects they refer to.
I think the problem with the Language article is that it's far too heavily wikified. In some sentences nearly all words are needlessly peppered with blue link. As if someone would find himself unable to understand what was meant by "sounds" or "gestures" in the opener, and a link to the articles for those words would help.
Perhaps you should choose (or design) a skin that doesn't highlight wikilinks unless you glide your cursor over them.
In general, I would agree that our blue wikilinks are a little too contrasting with the text body, making them a distraction, and would prefer something more subtle as the default.
I think that blue was initially chosen as the default for hyperlinks in browsers due to red/green colourblindness...
Alphax | /"\ Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
iQEVAwUBQ0o/b7MAAH8MeUlWAQj7Vgf+NNfnyu4/tbmxfKJIke3e/QhF+vuS75h6 5rv7B1r098tgRH9i7zZc5a6K9r/Y+Yzy5H7WNt4KbXMhyMBqtNklOt99EQvef4H+ tH24WRGr2H7owPTn3wzP04bIoZkB++dstkv+y7gx9iaFIG7Li5A5fSJk1c3l02UR Q/x9JiynWwcs321XZEZzaxK6G6c3PE0d0SY2NhHTCalX5k+0cRTbFwhMaulffSzk 1N7Le3AqOdxgPWPcRXRIj1FX5ivdCQb7ePAEDV83fhuzyNrF9QarwnTrJTmNMg9a jU1PAiA/ixFkHQUFQITCBEFKWN5THVGmfgR5KbDy4+DXNDXYXDBBFg== =xSIh -----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
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MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
colored underlined links are the default on the web. Creating something more subtle may ease reading, but is no doubt going to cause confusion for people who don't keep their mouse in the link long enough, or for those who don't have scripts or other needed options enabled for them to see mouseover images.
Yes, that's probably why there was a lot of opposition to removing the underlining from links on en: - I'm not sure if it ever happened or not, because I've overridden it in my user css file.
- -- Alphax | /"\ Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \
On 10/10/05, Alphax alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, that's probably why there was a lot of opposition to removing the underlining from links on en: - I'm not sure if it ever happened or not, because I've overridden it in my user css file.
IE, not logged in, gives underlined red and blue links.
-- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
Perhaps you should choose (or design) a skin that doesn't highlight wikilinks unless you glide your cursor over them.
Well this gave me an idea.
As far as I understand CSS, it would be possible to make links entirely invisible (i.e. indistinguishable from normal text) unless the mouse cursor is somewhere within the article content box.
In other words: Imagine the article is just text, no links. As you finish reading the section you were looking for, you want to know if there is any further information, so you move your mouse into the text and all links go blue and underlined.
Just an idea. Timwi
Afaik you can only do it when you've hovered on the link by doing
a { color: #000000; text-decoration: none; } a: hover { color: #0000FF; text-decoration: underline; }
I don't think you can assign properties to a based on a div:hover pseudoelement
Personally I do this:
a { text-decoration: none; } a: hover { text-decoration: hover; }
it makes pages a lot cleaner
On 10/22/05, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Perhaps you should choose (or design) a skin that doesn't highlight wikilinks unless you glide your cursor over them.
Well this gave me an idea.
As far as I understand CSS, it would be possible to make links entirely invisible (i.e. indistinguishable from normal text) unless the mouse cursor is somewhere within the article content box.
In other words: Imagine the article is just text, no links. As you finish reading the section you were looking for, you want to know if there is any further information, so you move your mouse into the text and all links go blue and underlined.
Just an idea. Timwi
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- ~Ilya N.
G'day Ilya,
Afaik you can only do it when you've hovered on the link by doing
a { color: #000000; text-decoration: none; } a: hover { color: #0000FF; text-decoration: underline; }
I don't think you can assign properties to a based on a div:hover pseudoelement
You can do it with JavaScript, I think. Onmouseover, call something like this:
function makeLinks() { pL = document.getElementsByTagName('A'); for (var i = 0; i < pL.length; i++) { pL[i].style.color = "blue"; pL[i].style.textDecoration = "underline"; } }
This breaks visited/unvisited link colours, is utterly unnecessary and unintuitive, and rankles for ideological reasons. However, it's technically possible.
Personally I do this:
a { text-decoration: none; } a: hover { text-decoration: hover; }
it makes pages a lot cleaner
That's good. Personally I prefer having the links there, however, if'n you've a preferred way it's great that you're using your own CSS file to do it.
Ilya N. wrote:
Afaik you can only do it when you've hovered on the link [...]
I wouldn't have made the claim if I didn't have enough competency in CSS to know what I'm talking about. Furthermore, I tested it before posting (albeit only in Firefox).
Is anyone going to reply to the ACTUAL SUGGESTION?
Timwi
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Timwi wrote:
Ilya N. wrote:
Afaik you can only do it when you've hovered on the link [...]
I wouldn't have made the claim if I didn't have enough competency in CSS to know what I'm talking about. Furthermore, I tested it before posting (albeit only in Firefox).
Is anyone going to reply to the ACTUAL SUGGESTION?
Yes. The actual suggestion was:
Timwi wrote:
Perhaps you should choose (or design) a skin that doesn't highlight wikilinks unless you glide your cursor over them.
Well this gave me an idea.
As far as I understand CSS, it would be possible to make links entirely invisible (i.e. indistinguishable from normal text) unless the mouse cursor is somewhere within the article content box.
In other words: Imagine the article is just text, no links. As you finish reading the section you were looking for, you want to know if there is any further information, so you move your mouse into the text and all links go blue and underlined.
Ok, I just tested this:
#bodyContent * a { text-decoration: none; color: #000000; }
#bodyContent:hover * a { text-decoration: underline; color: #002BB8; }
External links still show up a different colour with the arrow next to them. It's a quick and dirty hack, but it does the job.
- -- Alphax | /"\ Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \
G'day Timwi,
I wouldn't have made the claim if I didn't have enough competency in CSS to know what I'm talking about. Furthermore, I tested it before posting (albeit only in Firefox).
Aw, good on yer.
I've just tested it myself, even going so far as to use "body a { etc. }", works beaut, if'n that's what you really want. Top job.
Is anyone going to reply to the ACTUAL SUGGESTION?
Righto. It's crap, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. It's unintuitive, it breaks in some browsers (IE will "hide" the link but won't show it again), it's unnecessary, it adds an extra step for users who're just browsing through article links, and it makes Jakob Nielsen cry, tho' that last one isn't necessarily cause for objection.
Nonetheless, I commend your initiative.
Cheers,
Aw, good on yer. [...]
Righto. It's crap [...]
it's unnecessary, it adds an extra step for users who're just browsing through article links, and it makes Jakob Nielsen cry [...]
I don't know why I always end up regretting having made any suggestions.
On 10/25/05, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
I don't know why I always end up regretting having made any suggestions.
Because as a general rule we don't ever change things untill we have completely and utterly exusested that posibilty of doing nothing
-- geni
G'day Timwi,
Aw, good on yer. [...]
Righto. It's crap [...] it's unnecessary, it adds an extra step for users who're just browsing through article links, and it makes Jakob Nielsen cry [...]
I don't know why I always end up regretting having made any suggestions.
I'm sorry. I quite earnestly disagree with your idea (for, amongst others, the reasons quoted above), but my language was unduly harsh.
Timwi wrote:
Is anyone going to reply to the ACTUAL SUGGESTION?
I don't like it. I'd like to keep links visible and never hidden.
Gerrit.
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Timwi wrote:
Perhaps you should choose (or design) a skin that doesn't highlight wikilinks unless you glide your cursor over them.
Well this gave me an idea.
As far as I understand CSS, it would be possible to make links entirely invisible (i.e. indistinguishable from normal text) unless the mouse cursor is somewhere within the article content box.
In other words: Imagine the article is just text, no links. As you finish reading the section you were looking for, you want to know if there is any further information, so you move your mouse into the text and all links go blue and underlined.
div a { text-decoration: none; color: #000000; } div:hover a { text-decoration: underline; color: #0000FF; }
Unfortunately, AFAIK only Gecko (and possibly KHTML) based browsers will accept the hover pseudo-class on anything other than anchor elements. I hope I'm wrong about that.
- -- Alphax | /"\ Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \