2009/8/25 Carcharoth <carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com>om>: I don't want to confuse stuff at all. I just confused the hell out of the researcher on the phone trying to keep stuff simple ... so it's going to be REALLY DUMB SOUNDBITES ALL THE WAY. Studio. Black, black as my SOULLLL. It's 7:50pm and they haven't called back to confirm. Could be false alarm, I'll let you all know ;-) - d.

2009/8/25 Isabell Long <isabell121(a)gmail.com>om>: Looks like it's a happener. Just waiting for call re: cab. Apparently on ~9:45pm (BST), but times may change at short notice. - d.

2009/8/25 David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>om>: Hang on, Newsnight doesn't start until 10:30pm. Did you mean ~10:45pm?

On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 8:57 PM, David Gerard<dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: And at the end of the program as well. After the interesting feature on the Spanish Civil War legacy 70 years on. And the daily news round up, it was time for Wikipedia! How do you think it went, David? I like the bit you said right at the end about how it was a surprise that Wikipedia became so popular, but though I've got it recorded on DVD, I haven't re-watched it yet. I got the impression the presenter (Paxman must be on holiday) and the Guardian guy were saying quite a bit, and you were wanting to correct them on some points, but didn't get much of a chance. Carcharoth

2009/8/26 David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>om>: I'd been wondering who else they would have on. They usually like to have both sides of an issue represented, but really the two sides here are the media and people that know what is actually going on. They ended up getting someone from the media that knew what was going on! Probably not what they were actually aiming for, but it was inevitable that that is what they would get. Yes, I thought everything he said was broadly accurate and fair. Unfortunately, he was forced into saying it in response to leading questions that meant it ended up with a slant on it that I don't think he intended. I prefer "geek" myself, but I'll forgive you!

On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 12:38 AM, David Gerard&lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: <snip> :-) They used the example of Ted Kennedy in the intro, didn't they? I'm wondering how close you both came to being asked about that and how real death reports get handled (I think the news broke a few hours later). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kennedy Currently has a big "pp-semi-vandalism" template on it, as well as the "recent deaths" one. Carcharoth

Don't know if this has been posted yet (apologies if yes) Recording available on iplayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/newsnight (intro at the very start and then from 38:50). Not sure if non-UK people can view . ----- "Phil Nash" &lt;pn007a2145(a)blueyonder.co.uk&gt; wrote:

On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 6:32 AM, Michael Peel &lt;email(a)mikepeel.net&gt; wrote: That link worked for me, the whole show link about did not. Props to David who did a good job of addressing the questions and sounding very cogent (even though the host seemed to want to portray it as "THE END... Maybe?" of Wikipedia). --Falcorian

2009/8/25 David Gerard &lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt;om>: Points I'd try to remember, in no particular order: * this isn't locking down editing, it's more open than it sounds * it's to a large degree an anti-vandalism tool, to stop articles being degraded, rather than to limit them improving - it's not for content control, we have protection for that * it's worked on dewiki so far - some problems, mostly delays, we'll see if they recur, but it's not caused a complete collapse of everything * we've been thinking about this for a long time, unlike some past changes Final details will be announced soon, this is all provisional, maybe mention something about Wikimania as an ongoing conference where the details will emerge. The other thing, of course, is emphasising the BLP article part of it - we want to get these right, we have less room to screw up there - but I don't know how much we want to play that if it's still unclear what the final rollout is going to be! There's a bit over 400,000 BLPs out of 3m plus articles; that's a bit under 15% of all our articles. It's hard to say what proportion of our pageviews that represent, but I would put a small amount of money on "more than average". We certainly know they have a disproportionate effect in terms of the amount of complaints and corrections we get sent; around a third of articles we get contacted about are BLPs. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk