For a change, something on English usage. A trawl through some usage books tells me nothing much about "most well known", which I'm convinced is a solecism, and should be "best-known". The hyphenation I think is standard anyway. Sadly Google believes there are 11,000 instances for "most well known" on enWP, and I'd prefer none to be in article space.
Charles
Charles Matthews schreef:
Sadly Google believes there are 11,000 instances for "most well known" on enWP, and I'd prefer none to be in article space.
Yes... I guess there must be a few style guides that allow that phrase, but most well known style guides agree with you.
Eugene van der Pijll wrote:
Charles Matthews schreef:
Sadly Google believes there are 11,000 instances for "most well known" on enWP, and I'd prefer none to be in article space.
Yes... I guess there must be a few style guides that allow that phrase, but most well known style guides agree with you.
Touché. I should of course have been more specific. The adjective "well-known" has, IMO, the comparative "better-known" and superlative "best-known". So, John F. Kennedy was the better-known brother of Ted Kennedy, not "the more well known brother", and the best known of the children of Joe Kennedy. The hyphens actually are discussed in style guides.
Interesting, given the number of possible cases, to challenge bot programmers to automate this one. Examples:
From [[Shinto]]: "Of the many and diverse Shinto shrines in existence, some are more well known:" - not so sure From [[chart]]: "Some of the more well known named charts are:" - changed to "better-known" From [[Ayad Allawi]]: "Allawi established links and worked with the [[CIA]] in 1992 as a counterpoint to the more well-known CIA asset [[Ahmed Chalabi]]" - changed to "better-known" From [[gunfighter]]: "This respect for one another is why most famous gunfights were rarely two or more well-known gunmen matched up against one another" - this is correct From [[György Ligeti]]: "In more recent years, his three books of Études for piano have become more well-known" - changed to "better known" From [[Instant messaging]]: "The more well-known of these include the [[Sarbanes-Oxley Act]], [[HIPAA]], and SEC 17a-3" - changed to "better-known" From [[Gibson Guitar Corporation]]: "Pete Townshend of The Who, Angus Young of AC/DC, Frank Zappa of Mothers of Invention, Adrian Smith of Iron Maiden and Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath are some of the more well-known SG players" - changed to "better-known"
In general, pursuing grammar points can lead you to articles with other issues, which is one reason I find it interesting ... but here that doesn't seem to apply so obviously.
Charles
For a change, something on English usage. A trawl through some usage books tells me nothing much about "most well known", which I'm convinced is a solecism, and should be "best-known". The hyphenation I think is standard anyway. Sadly Google believes there are 11,000 instances for "most well known" on enWP, and I'd prefer none to be in article space.
Charles
Well, both expressions, both with and without hyphen, seem to be in general use. Now that you've mentioned it, I can't recall which of the four possibilities I habitually use. Right now "best known" seems best, but I wouldn't waste one second changing a most well known into a best known.
Fred
Fred Bauder wrote:
For a change, something on English usage. A trawl through some usage books tells me nothing much about "most well known", which I'm convinced is a solecism, and should be "best-known". The hyphenation I think is standard anyway. Sadly Google believes there are 11,000 instances for "most well known" on enWP, and I'd prefer none to be in article space.
Charles
Well, both expressions, both with and without hyphen, seem to be in general use. Now that you've mentioned it, I can't recall which of the four possibilities I habitually use. Right now "best known" seems best, but I wouldn't waste one second changing a most well known into a best known.
Ah ... I would. How about "much more well known", versus "better-known", because our general style tends to understatement? Anyway I have been zapping those. Any such trawl finds other problems to fix.
Charles
I suppose, as in matters of internet deportment, civility, we must also accept the burden of maintaining the standard for English usage, global English usage. It is a grim and dreary business, but I must admit it is our responsibility.
Fred
Fred Bauder wrote:
For a change, something on English usage. A trawl through some usage books tells me nothing much about "most well known", which I'm convinced is a solecism, and should be "best-known". The hyphenation I think is standard anyway. Sadly Google believes there are 11,000 instances for "most well known" on enWP, and I'd prefer none to be in article space.
Charles
Well, both expressions, both with and without hyphen, seem to be in general use. Now that you've mentioned it, I can't recall which of the four possibilities I habitually use. Right now "best known" seems best, but I wouldn't waste one second changing a most well known into a best known.
Ah ... I would. How about "much more well known", versus "better-known", because our general style tends to understatement? Anyway I have been zapping those. Any such trawl finds other problems to fix.
Charles
Have you ever read any of the more disputatious Manual of Style talk pages?
Carcharoth
On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 6:54 PM, Fred Bauderfredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
I suppose, as in matters of internet deportment, civility, we must also accept the burden of maintaining the standard for English usage, global English usage. It is a grim and dreary business, but I must admit it is our responsibility.
Fred
Fred Bauder wrote:
For a change, something on English usage. A trawl through some usage books tells me nothing much about "most well known", which I'm convinced is a solecism, and should be "best-known". The hyphenation I think is standard anyway. Sadly Google believes there are 11,000 instances for "most well known" on enWP, and I'd prefer none to be in article space.
Charles
Well, both expressions, both with and without hyphen, seem to be in general use. Now that you've mentioned it, I can't recall which of the four possibilities I habitually use. Right now "best known" seems best, but I wouldn't waste one second changing a most well known into a best known.
Ah ... I would. How about "much more well known", versus "better-known", because our general style tends to understatement? Anyway I have been zapping those. Any such trawl finds other problems to fix.
Charles
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Only in the context of arbitration cases where some horse's ass took a stand. Establishing a global standard is inevitably an ugly process, as in the old saying that compares the crafting of legislation to the making of sausage.
However, we can strive to maintain a high standard, high enough that if someone adapts our style, their writing won't seem eccentric or illiterate.
Fred
Have you ever read any of the more disputatious Manual of Style talk pages?
Carcharoth
On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 6:54 PM, Fred Bauderfredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
I suppose, as in matters of internet deportment, civility, we must also accept the burden of maintaining the standard for English usage, global English usage. It is a grim and dreary business, but I must admit it is our responsibility.
Fred
Fred Bauder wrote:
For a change, something on English usage. A trawl through some usage books tells me nothing much about "most well known", which I'm convinced is a solecism, and should be "best-known". The hyphenation I think is standard anyway. Sadly Google believes there are 11,000 instances for "most well known" on enWP, and I'd prefer none to be in article space.
Charles
Well, both expressions, both with and without hyphen, seem to be in general use. Now that you've mentioned it, I can't recall which of the four possibilities I habitually use. Right now "best known" seems best, but I wouldn't waste one second changing a most well known into a best known.
Ah ... I would. How about "much more well known", versus "better-known", because our general style tends to understatement? Anyway I have been zapping those. Any such trawl finds other problems to fix.
Charles
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On Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 3:54 AM, Fred Bauderfredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
I suppose, as in matters of internet deportment, civility, we must also accept the burden of maintaining the standard for English usage, global English usage. It is a grim and dreary business, but I must admit it is our responsibility.
Disagree. High quality, comprehensive, readable information is far more important than English grammar pedantry. "Most well known" or "best known"? Whichever one is currently in the article. Focus your efforts elsewhere.
Steve (Bias: Background in linguistics and technical writing.)
You can get a pretty accurate profile of someone through their writings.
So, for example, you can tell if somebody is on the autistic spectrum, and isn't neurotypical nor psychotic?
I know this is off-topic, but well, it's interesting.
Emily (bias: recent diagnosis of PDD-NOS) On Sep 8, 2009, at 9:41 PM, Marc Riddell wrote:
on 9/8/09 10:25 PM, Steve Bennett at stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
Steve (Bias: Background in linguistics and technical writing.)
Interesting. I've done quite a bit of in-depth work in psycholinguistics. You can get a pretty accurate profile of someone through their writings.
Marc
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on 9/8/09 10:44 PM, Emily Monroe at bluecaliocean@me.com wrote:
So, for example, you can tell if somebody is on the autistic spectrum, and isn't neurotypical nor psychotic?
I know this is off-topic, but well, it's interesting.
Emily (bias: recent diagnosis of PDD-NOS)
You would need to put this question to the person who diagnosed you, Emily.
Marc
Perhaps, but I was asking this in a general sense.
Oh, well. I made a mistake. Sorry about that.
Emily On Sep 9, 2009, at 7:11 AM, Marc Riddell wrote:
on 9/8/09 10:44 PM, Emily Monroe at bluecaliocean@me.com wrote:
So, for example, you can tell if somebody is on the autistic spectrum, and isn't neurotypical nor psychotic?
I know this is off-topic, but well, it's interesting.
Emily (bias: recent diagnosis of PDD-NOS)
You would need to put this question to the person who diagnosed you, Emily.
Marc
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2009/9/9 Emily Monroe bluecaliocean@me.com:
Perhaps, but I was asking this in a general sense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycholinguistics seems to mostly be about the scientific aspect rather than therapeutic uses. It also has a note asking for more and better references.
- d.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycholinguistics seems to mostly be about the scientific aspect rather than therapeutic uses.
That was what I was talking about. Thanks--I probably should've looked there to begin with! :-)
It also has a note asking for more and better references.
And yet it's B-Class.
Emily On Sep 9, 2009, at 11:45 AM, David Gerard wrote:
2009/9/9 Emily Monroe bluecaliocean@me.com:
Perhaps, but I was asking this in a general sense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycholinguistics seems to mostly be about the scientific aspect rather than therapeutic uses.
- d.
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Emily Monroe wrote:
And yet it's B-Class.
B-Class just means it is better than C-Class, unless the project is not using C-Class, which means it is just better than a start. A lot of people seem to make the mistake of thinking B-Class is nearly A-Class. We haven't got to that stage yet. At the minute, we're converting from when having references actually was a B to a point where having references means a C, and that having no clean-up templates is a B. At that point we may work out what A is. We're heading towards FA being A+, but it all gets a bit wobbly at that point. At least we've come a long way from when simply having sections was an FA.
On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 11:14 AM, Surreptitiousness surreptitious.wikipedian@googlemail.com wrote:
Emily Monroe wrote:
And yet it's B-Class.
B-Class just means it is better than C-Class, unless the project is not using C-Class, which means it is just better than a start. A lot of people seem to make the mistake of thinking B-Class is nearly A-Class. We haven't got to that stage yet. At the minute, we're converting from when having references actually was a B to a point where having references means a C, and that having no clean-up templates is a B. At that point we may work out what A is. We're heading towards FA being A+, but it all gets a bit wobbly at that point. At least we've come a long way from when simply having sections was an FA.
I've always thought of FA as very good, GA and A as good, and B as OK, C as something more complete than just a basic starting point, start as any reasonable expansion beyond a stub, and stub as short and stubby one-paragraph things. But the actual parameters do seem a vary a bit between projects and individuals.
I have a list of 12 articles that are either unassessed or need re-assessing, if anyone is interested in using that as the basis of a discussion about ratings. The articles all have one thing in common, in that they were started by me! Though in some cases they have been much expanded by others.
This is, of course, the problem with drives to get all articles in a project rated (e.g. WikiProject Biography with its hundreds of thousands of articles, many of which are stubs or starts). As soon as you have all articles rated, you then need to find a way to find out which ones need re-rating, and to avoid duplication of effort. How do you do that efficiently?
Carcharoth
Carcharoth wrote:
On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 11:14 AM, Surreptitiousness surreptitious.wikipedian@googlemail.com wrote:
Emily Monroe wrote:
And yet it's B-Class.
B-Class just means it is better than C-Class, unless the project is not using C-Class, which means it is just better than a start. A lot of people seem to make the mistake of thinking B-Class is nearly A-Class. We haven't got to that stage yet. At the minute, we're converting from when having references actually was a B to a point where having references means a C, and that having no clean-up templates is a B. At that point we may work out what A is. We're heading towards FA being A+, but it all gets a bit wobbly at that point. At least we've come a long way from when simply having sections was an FA.
I've always thought of FA as very good, GA and A as good, and B as OK, C as something more complete than just a basic starting point, start as any reasonable expansion beyond a stub, and stub as short and stubby one-paragraph things. But the actual parameters do seem a vary a bit between projects and individuals.
That's a pretty good breakdown. It gets wooly when you start wondering how many references a B-Class article needs, which was my badly made point.
I have a list of 12 articles that are either unassessed or need re-assessing, if anyone is interested in using that as the basis of a discussion about ratings. The articles all have one thing in common, in that they were started by me! Though in some cases they have been much expanded by others.
I wouldn't dream of assessing articles in subjects I have no expertise in. I would have no idea how complete they were, and I could end up giving an A-Class rating to an article about a five pound note which managed to detail in astonishing depth the appearances of the note over the years, but somehow forgot to mention that it was used as currency.
As soon as you have all articles rated, you then need to find a way to find out which ones need re-rating, and to avoid duplication of effort. How do you do that efficiently?
It is relatively easy to automate assessing at stub level, which really only leaves the rest to collaboration. Anyone can request a reassessment, and there's a sort of competitive streak in most of us that once we've rewritten an article, we usually want to see it moved up a notch. And most WikiProjects actively scour their articles for suitable FA and GA candidates, which tend to move them up. This is a situation the wiki process is designed to solve.
On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 1:34 PM, Surreptitiousness surreptitious.wikipedian@googlemail.com wrote:
Carcharoth wrote:
<snip>
I have a list of 12 articles that are either unassessed or need re-assessing, if anyone is interested in using that as the basis of a discussion about ratings. The articles all have one thing in common, in that they were started by me! Though in some cases they have been much expanded by others.
I wouldn't dream of assessing articles in subjects I have no expertise in. I would have no idea how complete they were, and I could end up giving an A-Class rating to an article about a five pound note which managed to detail in astonishing depth the appearances of the note over the years, but somehow forgot to mention that it was used as currency.
No expertise needed to do initial ratings! (Well, that's not strictly true, but some of the arguments over ratings could be avoided if some people made clear they were just doing initial assessments to help get the ball rolling). In my view, no single article should be assessed more than two or three times before it enters a formal review process (e.g. peer review, GA, FAC). More than that is just a waste of time that is better spent improving the article.
What I'm asking for is these initial ratings, to get things started. Are you sure you or anyone else don't want to take a quick look? I could just make "to do" lists for each of the 12 articles and steadily work through them and improve them, but getting people interested in something they are not interested in is quite a bad idea really.
As soon as you have all articles rated, you then need to find a way to find out which ones need re-rating, and to avoid duplication of effort. How do you do that efficiently?
It is relatively easy to automate assessing at stub level, which really only leaves the rest to collaboration. Anyone can request a reassessment, and there's a sort of competitive streak in most of us that once we've rewritten an article, we usually want to see it moved up a notch. And most WikiProjects actively scour their articles for suitable FA and GA candidates, which tend to move them up. This is a situation the wiki process is designed to solve.
Actually, I think people end up picking the articles they are most interested in, or which have the most potential. The vast majority or article languish unless people systematically work through them. As an example, look at how successful the plan to bring all the WP:CORE biography articles up to high (maybe even FA) standards has been (not very).
Sometimes you just need to take a load of stubs and set out with the aim of raising them a notch or so. And linking them from other articles if that hasn't been done. Getting more eyes on an article is sometimes the only way to get people editing that article.
Carcharoth
Carcharoth wrote:
Actually, I think people end up picking the articles they are most interested in, or which have the most potential. The vast majority or article languish unless people systematically work through them. As an example, look at how successful the plan to bring all the WP:CORE biography articles up to high (maybe even FA) standards has been (not very).
I think that depends upon your standards. From my perspective, when you consider we're staffed by a bunch of volunteers who usually have to learn about the subject before they can write about it, we ain't doing bad. I think what a lot of frustration and drama on Wikipedia boils down to is that a lot of people think we're very near, or that we ought to be very near being a finished product. Realistically, I think we're really only approaching the end of the middle of the initial stage. By which I mean the initial stage is to get as much written about as much as we can as possible. The trouble is, we have other people who think we're at the end of the end stage, which I tend to think is about fifty years away if we are lucky. SO I guess it depends on your timescale. I tend to find I interact better with people playing the long game. Even when we disagree, we don't fight about it, because what would be the point. Short game players are a nightmare though. Everything has to be done now! Someone might be watching now! At the end of the day we're a work in progress, and while it is great that the world wants to take us seriously, and it is important that we take ourselves seriously, we have to keep getting across the message that we are a work in progress, and our articles should never be used as a definitive source, but rather a pointer to a better understanding. Or something.
Surreptitiousness wrote:
Realistically, I think we're really only approaching the end of the middle of the initial stage. By which I mean the initial stage is to get as much written about as much as we can as possible.
I'd put it this way: the business of "flagged revisions" indicates a feeling that (for a physical book) would be that we have a "first draft", and should proceed editorially rather than magpie-fashion.
At the end of the day we're a work in progress, and while it is great that the world wants to take us seriously, and it is important that we take ourselves seriously, we have to keep getting across the message that we are a work in progress, and our articles should never be used as a definitive source, but rather a pointer to a better understanding. Or something.
That's OK as a caveat, but I think Carcharoth's point is also valid: that the "working over" of parts of the encyclopedia doesn't happen for top-down reason, necessarily. While it is essential for "adding value" that it should happen, even if only patchily. This has always implied people with a serious interest in the actual content ... doesn't imply that the formal review mechanisms should dominate.
Charles
Charles Matthews wrote:
Surreptitiousness wrote:
I'd put it this way: the business of "flagged revisions" indicates a feeling that (for a physical book) would be that we have a "first draft", and should proceed editorially rather than magpie-fashion.
Yeah, that's kind of where I was driving.
I think Carcharoth's point is also valid: that the "working over" of parts of the encyclopedia doesn't happen for top-down reason, necessarily. While it is essential for "adding value" that it should happen, even if only patchily. This has always implied people with a serious interest in the actual content ... doesn't imply that the formal review mechanisms should dominate.
Not quite sure I understand you here. You're talking about stuff getting reworked, and there is a top down reason that this doesn't happen? I think I've lost what the top down reason was. And I'm not sure how or why we're separating out the formal review mechanisms from people with a serious interest in the actual content. Where we're discussing assessments, it has been my experience that the people assessing are the people with a serious interest in the content. There was a big discussion over this issue with regards A-Class level, because the people who are most likely to know whether an article is A-Class or not are generally the people who wrote it, so we were looking for a way out of that loop, because a number of us had the view that it was "unfair" to rate an article as A-Class having put in a lot of work on it. That's why there's a valid case for subsuming A-Class and FA-Class. The counter argument is that an article can get to FA-Class without actually being A-Class, where a lone editor takes an article to FA status and it isn;t reviewed by the Project. Sometimes we kind of pull in different directions on Wikipedia, we haven't really found an effective way of pooling our review processes into one simple process. Mind, it could be an idea to have as standard a message posted to relevant WikiProjects when an article is up for FA.
On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 2:17 PM, Surreptitiousness surreptitious.wikipedian@googlemail.com wrote:
<snip>
Mind, it could be an idea to have as standard a message posted to relevant WikiProjects when an article is up for FA.
There is already an expectation that this is done, as far as I know. And when it is not done, someone usually does it and reminds people that this should have been done.
Hmm. Actually, FAR (featured article review) says this. FAC doesn't say it (at least not prominently).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_review
"Notify relevant parties by adding {{subst:FARMessage|ArticleName|alt=FAR subpage}} (for example, {{subst:FARMessage|Superman|alt=Superman/archive1}}) to relevant talk pages (insert article name). Relevant parties include main contributors to the article (identifiable through article stats script), the editor who originally nominated the article for Featured Article status (identifiable through the Featured Article Candidate link in the Article Milestones), and any relevant WikiProjects (identifiable through the talk page banners, but there may be other Projects that should be notified). The message at the top of the FAR should indicate who you have notified."
There might actually be a reason for this difference, but it would be buried in some archive somewhere.
It's quite interesting, actually, looking at "what links here" for the 5 FACs on top of the current list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:Featured_articl...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:Featured_articl...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:Featured_articl...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:Featured_articl...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:Featured_articl...
It seems some FACs get more publicity than others. Which can be both good (more eyes) and bad (the input gets skewed if the notices are only of certain groups of editors).
Carcharoth
Carcharoth wrote:
On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 2:17 PM, Surreptitiousness surreptitious.wikipedian@googlemail.com wrote:
<snip>
Mind, it could be an idea to have as standard a message posted to relevant WikiProjects when an article is up for FA.
There is already an expectation that this is done, as far as I know. And when it is not done, someone usually does it and reminds people that this should have been done.
Hmm. Actually, FAR (featured article review) says this. FAC doesn't say it (at least not prominently).
<snip>
It seems some FACs get more publicity than others. Which can be both good (more eyes) and bad (the input gets skewed if the notices are only of certain groups of editors).
I know they do it for FARC because I remember that's how we got involved with Superman and rewrote it per the then standards. Wonder why there are using that as the example, maybe it was the first time it happened. But they don't do it for FAC, no. I suppose it could get skewed, but from memory the person who promotes, it used to be Raul but I don't know who it is now has pretty much a free hand in promoting, there's no % rubbish like they have at RFA, it tends to be based on actually reading the debate and reading the article and seeing if it meets the standards. But the hardest criteria to test at the FA process is that of *comprehensive. *That's where the "conflict" between WikiProject assessing and FA assessing comes in, because a WikiProject is more likely to be able to assess comprehensiveness from an expert point of view, while someone with no knowledge of the subject is more likely to spot layman errors. By which, if we return to the idea of a £5 note article, an expert will know that the major redesign of whenever hasn't been mentioned, while the casual reader will spot that the article doesn't tell you the Queen is on the back (or front?). If you get my drift. So we kind of need input from both, and a good adjudicator who will be able to prevent skewing affecting the final decision. We probably have the latter in Raul, I don't know if we have the former across the board. I think I'll mention this at the FA process and see what the gen is.
Surreptitiousness wrote:
Charles Matthews wrote:
Surreptitiousness wrote: I'd put it this way: the business of "flagged revisions" indicates a feeling that (for a physical book) would be that we have a "first draft", and should proceed editorially rather than magpie-fashion.
Yeah, that's kind of where I was driving.
I think Carcharoth's point is also valid: that the "working over" of parts of the encyclopedia doesn't happen for top-down reason, necessarily. While it is essential for "adding value" that it should happen, even if only patchily. This has always implied people with a serious interest in the actual content ... doesn't imply that the formal review mechanisms should dominate.
Not quite sure I understand you here. You're talking about stuff getting reworked, and there is a top down reason that this doesn't happen? I think I've lost what the top down reason was.
No, I was trying to say it doesn't happen for any top-down reason ...
And I'm not sure how or why we're separating out the formal review mechanisms from people with a serious interest in the actual content. Where we're discussing assessments, it has been my experience that the people assessing are the people with a serious interest in the content.
Not really happy with that equation. But then I have a long-running argument with the "per-article" way of looking at our content, anyway. I would even argue that it is "serious" to worry about WP primarily as a piece of hypertext. Which cuts right across the talk about definitive treatments of certain topics (which in my blacker moments seem to me to be pretty much anglospheric and middlebrow in their interest). But no doubt I go too far.
Charles
2009/9/11 Surreptitiousness surreptitious.wikipedian@googlemail.com:
I think that depends upon your standards. From my perspective, when you consider we're staffed by a bunch of volunteers who usually have to learn about the subject before they can write about it, we ain't doing bad. I think what a lot of frustration and drama on Wikipedia boils down to is that a lot of people think we're very near, or that we ought to be very near being a finished product. Realistically, I think we're really only approaching the end of the middle of the initial stage. By which I mean the initial stage is to get as much written about as much as we can as possible. The trouble is, we have other people who think we're at the end of the end stage, which I tend to think is about fifty years away if we are lucky. SO I guess it depends on your timescale.
I think the shock was realising this is the product. Yes, that live working draft is the actual product. And this may actually be a feature.
Distributions of Wikipedia content turn out to be secondary - the working site turns out to be the actual product.
Flaged revs all through would separate "draft" and "public" copies, but at the expense of the motivational effects of the working draft being live and public.
There is no "inished". It's an eternal present.
I tend to find I interact better with people playing the long game. Even when we disagree, we don't fight about it, because what would be the point. Short game players are a nightmare though. Everything has to be done now! Someone might be watching now! At the end of the day we're a work in progress, and while it is great that the world wants to take us seriously, and it is important that we take ourselves seriously, we have to keep getting across the message that we are a work in progress, and our articles should never be used as a definitive source, but rather a pointer to a better understanding. Or something.
It's getting the world to understand that it's a work in progress, I suppose.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
I think the shock was realising this is the product. Yes, that live working draft is the actual product. And this may actually be a feature.
Distributions of Wikipedia content turn out to be secondary - the working site turns out to be the actual product.
Flaged revs all through would separate "draft" and "public" copies, but at the expense of the motivational effects of the working draft being live and public.
There is no "inished". It's an eternal present.
These are all good points I agree with. I hadn't actually considered the point about flagged revs, probably because I don't actually understand as yet what flagged revs are. I think I'll only understand once they actually happen, but in my head they're a bit like the yellow bar on the new page patrol, and you only get to see content in the yellow bar version of the page if you have that secret power turned on. Or something. This is probably wildly inaccurate and yet staggeringly close to actuality. Yes, the article will no longer be a working draft. Blimey, this really is a big change. Now I understand why I saw you on newsnight. Hmmm. So if the page is no longer a working draft, what does that mean for the consensus by editing method we've utilised until now? Is this why there is talk of 20 000 new editors needed, because there'll be a page like recent changes and we need people to sit there and manually sign off on every edit? I think from what I can make out certain groups of users are already signed off? Damn, if only my german was better I'd go see how it works. And this is important to the point we need to make it work, isn't it? Out of curiousity, is this similar to the switch IMDB made a few years back? Or am I misremembering that you used to be able to have more interactivity at that site? Sorry, this has all been done to death somewhere else, I'm sure, but it tends to start containing lots of words I don't grok like flagged and revisions and other stuff, rather than getting at the general philosophy and the general impact.
In simplest terms, the idea is "wouldn't it be nice if edits that weren't even /plausibly/ valid would get filtered out and not shown to the world as our work and as encyclopedia content?"
The other idea is "We have tens of thousands of well meaning editors, can we ask users who have shown they can be trusted, to filter out those edits that are completely idiotic, before they hit the main pages?"
Everything else is "how can we implement this without disrupting the positive flow of good edits, or holding them up minimally or transparently to check the rest?"
Nobody knows how it'll work out, or what the best approach is, how it needs to evolve to not disrupt our better editorial processes (hence the long discussions and trials), but in all the approaches, that's the basic idea.
FT2
On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 7:04 PM, Surreptitiousness < surreptitious.wikipedian@googlemail.com> wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
I think the shock was realising this is the product. Yes, that live working draft is the actual product. And this may actually be a feature.
Distributions of Wikipedia content turn out to be secondary - the working site turns out to be the actual product.
Flaged revs all through would separate "draft" and "public" copies, but at the expense of the motivational effects of the working draft being live and public.
There is no "inished". It's an eternal present.
These are all good points I agree with. I hadn't actually considered the point about flagged revs, probably because I don't actually understand as yet what flagged revs are. I think I'll only understand once they actually happen, but in my head they're a bit like the yellow bar on the new page patrol, and you only get to see content in the yellow bar version of the page if you have that secret power turned on. Or something. This is probably wildly inaccurate and yet staggeringly close to actuality. Yes, the article will no longer be a working draft. Blimey, this really is a big change. Now I understand why I saw you on newsnight. Hmmm. So if the page is no longer a working draft, what does that mean for the consensus by editing method we've utilised until now? Is this why there is talk of 20 000 new editors needed, because there'll be a page like recent changes and we need people to sit there and manually sign off on every edit? I think from what I can make out certain groups of users are already signed off? Damn, if only my german was better I'd go see how it works. And this is important to the point we need to make it work, isn't it? Out of curiousity, is this similar to the switch IMDB made a few years back? Or am I misremembering that you used to be able to have more interactivity at that site? Sorry, this has all been done to death somewhere else, I'm sure, but it tends to start containing lots of words I don't grok like flagged and revisions and other stuff, rather than getting at the general philosophy and the general impact.
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2009/9/11 Surreptitiousness surreptitious.wikipedian@googlemail.com:
Yes, the article will no longer be a working draft. Blimey, this really is a big change. Now I understand why I saw you on newsnight. Hmmm.
Yeah. I think it was on Newsnight because of journalistic August, but it's big news in the Wikipedia editing community ;-)
de:wp went to flagged revs on all pages. We'll be doing it by using it to open up editing on pages that would otherwise be protected, so that the flagging will be an increase of freedom from present rather than a decrease.
So if the page is no longer a working draft, what does that mean for the consensus by editing method we've utilised until now? Is this why there is talk of 20 000 new editors needed, because there'll be a page like recent changes and we need people to sit there and manually sign off on every edit? I think from what I can make out certain groups of users are already signed off?
I think that was a number pulled out of the air by one journalist who didn't understand how Wikipedia works and repeated by others. If you don't understand something, make some crap up! If you don't want to do that, copy some crap someone else made up!
(No-one who's ever dealt with the press in practice would assume "newspaper = reliable source." Anyone who does, I'll point at you and laugh.)
The reviewer power will be with the admins first and they can grant it to others. I don't think there's a criterion yet, I suspect it'll be pretty easy to get, like rollback.
Damn, if only my german was better I'd go see how it works. And this is important to the point we need to make it work, isn't it?
I'm a big, big fan of the idea and even I have trepidation it'll kill the immediacy of editing if overapplied. We run the trial and see if it seems okay.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
2009/9/11 Surreptitiousness surreptitious.wikipedian@googlemail.com:
Flaged revs all through would separate "draft" and "public" copies, but at the expense of the motivational effects of the working draft being live and public.
There is no "finished". It's an eternal present.
I tend to find I interact better with people playing the long game. Even when we disagree, we don't fight about it, because what would be the point. Short game players are a nightmare though. Everything has to be done now! Someone might be watching now! At the end of the day we're a work in progress, and while it is great that the world wants to take us seriously, and it is important that we take ourselves seriously, we have to keep getting across the message that we are a work in progress, and our articles should never be used as a definitive source, but rather a pointer to a better understanding. Or something.
It's getting the world to understand that it's a work in progress, I suppose.
The rest of the world sometimes finds it difficult to appreciate that it is a part of the world.
Ec
On 11/09/2009, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I think the shock was realising this is the product. Yes, that live working draft is the actual product. And this may actually be a feature.
It's getting the world to understand that it's a work in progress, I suppose.
Maybe we need to add (beta) to the front page or something?
I mean, that's what it is, and is likely to continue to be; for perhaps up to a decade.
Or, at least all the articles except FA/GAs are beta.
- d.
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Ian Woollard wrote:
On 11/09/2009, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
It's getting the world to understand that it's a work in progress, I suppose.
Maybe we need to add (beta) to the front page or something?
I mean, that's what it is, and is likely to continue to be; for perhaps up to a decade.
Or, at least all the articles except FA/GAs are beta.
Why should the FA/GAs be an exception?
Ec
on 9/9/09 12:45 PM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2009/9/9 Emily Monroe bluecaliocean@me.com:
Perhaps, but I was asking this in a general sense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycholinguistics seems to mostly be about the scientific aspect rather than therapeutic uses. It also has a note asking for more and better references.
As it should be. Psycholinguistics is one of the scientific tools that can be used by a therapist to make a diagnosis, and to formulate a treatment plan.
Marc
2009/9/9 Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
on 9/8/09 10:25 PM, Steve Bennett at stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
(Bias: Background in linguistics and technical writing.)
Interesting. I've done quite a bit of in-depth work in psycholinguistics. You can get a pretty accurate profile of someone through their writings.
Hmm. Writing styles - and editing styles - are indeed quite distinctive. If someone suddenly writes something out-of-character online, I'll tend to first assume someone else is using their account, because that's much more likely than suddenly changing writing style.
- d.
on 9/8/09 10:25 PM, Steve Bennett at stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
(Bias: Background in linguistics and technical writing.)
2009/9/9 Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
Interesting. I've done quite a bit of in-depth work in psycholinguistics. You can get a pretty accurate profile of someone through their writings.
on 9/9/09 4:50 AM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Hmm. Writing styles - and editing styles - are indeed quite distinctive. If someone suddenly writes something out-of-character online, I'll tend to first assume someone else is using their account, because that's much more likely than suddenly changing writing style.
Psycholinguistics involves a great deal more than style, David.
Marc
2009/9/9 Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
on 9/9/09 4:50 AM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Hmm. Writing styles - and editing styles - are indeed quite distinctive. If someone suddenly writes something out-of-character online, I'll tend to first assume someone else is using their account, because that's much more likely than suddenly changing writing style.
Psycholinguistics involves a great deal more than style, David.
Sorry, yes, I was going off on a tangent :-)
- d.
Steve Bennett wrote:
"Most well known" or "best known"? Whichever one is currently in the article. Focus your efforts elsewhere.
Hey, this is an amusing topic ...
Example for a beer-tasting FAQ (about American lagers):
*Budweiser, Coors, and Miller are the most well-known bad examples of this style. ... There is almost no difference in taste from brand to brand, especially after five or six.
And our own MoS says to avoid expressions like:
*Among the most well-known members of the fraternity include ...
But sadly it is objecting to the two "subset terms".
I still think it is a potential good indicator of poor style. Anyway, pursuing it got me into an area needing attention, including what is now [[first date (meeting)]].
Charles
On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 11:12 AM, Charles Matthewscharles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
<snip>
I still think it is a potential good indicator of poor style. Anyway, pursuing it got me into an area needing attention, including what is now [[first date (meeting)]].
{{merge}} with [[Dating (activity)]]?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dating_(activity)
Hey, nice template!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Close_relationships
And it is at the side of the article not hidden at the bottom. Thank goodness!
Carcharoth