User making a choose-your-own-adventure under their userpage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:PrincessKirlia/Shop/The_book
Probably should be politely discouraged, and pointed at a free web hosting company that offers wikis, but I'm tempted to let them alone and see what they do with it.
On 19/01/2008, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
User making a choose-your-own-adventure under their userpage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:PrincessKirlia/Shop/The_book
Probably should be politely discouraged, and pointed at a free web hosting company that offers wikis, but I'm tempted to let them alone and see what they do with it.
The user has made a significant number of constructive mainspace edits, no real harm in letting her have some fun too...
On 19/01/2008, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
User making a choose-your-own-adventure under their userpage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:PrincessKirlia/Shop/The_book
New? Uncyclopedia has an entire namespace devoted to choose-your-own-adventures: http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Game:Game
Probably should be politely discouraged, and pointed at a free web hosting company that offers wikis, but I'm tempted to let them alone and see what they do with it.
Games Wikia (http://games.wikia.com/wiki/Wikigames) was created because of people using Wikipedia for play-by-wiki games.
- d.
I think that's excessive use of userspace. It has absolutely nothing to do with building an encyclopedia, and it's not an effective community-building tool like the Facebook. Little wonder we have articles on core topics that sit unimproved when people waste their time like that.
On Jan 19, 2008 6:12 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 19/01/2008, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
User making a choose-your-own-adventure under their userpage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:PrincessKirlia/Shop/The_book
New? Uncyclopedia has an entire namespace devoted to choose-your-own-adventures: http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Game:Game
Probably should be politely discouraged, and pointed at a free web hosting company that offers wikis, but I'm tempted to let them alone and see what they do with it.
Games Wikia (http://games.wikia.com/wiki/Wikigames) was created because of people using Wikipedia for play-by-wiki games.
- d.
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On Saturday 19 January 2008 16:44, Steven Walling wrote:
...and it's not an effective community-building tool like the Facebook.
Says you.
Little wonder we have articles on core topics that sit unimproved when people waste their time like that.
This is a volunteer project. If the people who participate in this wanted to be working on these articles, they'd already be doing that. Getting rid of this doesn't mean they'll spend that time working articles, not in the least.
What's so difficult to understand about that?
It's certainly not hurting anything. Leave it alone.
This is a volunteer project. If the people who participate in this wanted to be working on these articles, they'd already be doing that. Getting rid of this doesn't mean they'll spend that time working articles, not in the least.
yes, this is volunteer. People can do what they like. But it doesn't mean we have to host their loads of off-topic and unhelpful work. There are limits to be enforced on userspace for a reason: Wikipedia isn't a free web hosting service.
On Jan 19, 2008 2:48 PM, Kurt Maxwell Weber kmw@armory.com wrote:
On Saturday 19 January 2008 16:44, Steven Walling wrote:
...and it's not an effective community-building tool like the Facebook.
Says you.
Little wonder we have articles on core topics that sit unimproved when people waste their time like that.
This is a volunteer project. If the people who participate in this wanted to be working on these articles, they'd already be doing that. Getting rid of this doesn't mean they'll spend that time working articles, not in the least.
What's so difficult to understand about that?
It's certainly not hurting anything. Leave it alone.
Kurt Weber kmw@armory.com
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It's not about them wasting their time, as that is not for us to decide. It's not the way the community expects the hosting services provided by Wikipedia to be used. It's also not what we want people to associate Wikipedia with. That, in my opinion, is the point.
Ian [[User: Poeloq]]
On Sat, 2008-01-19 at 14:44 -0800, Steven Walling wrote:
I think that's excessive use of userspace. It has absolutely nothing to do with building an encyclopedia, and it's not an effective community-building tool like the Facebook. Little wonder we have articles on core topics that sit unimproved when people waste their time like that.
On Jan 19, 2008 6:12 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 19/01/2008, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
User making a choose-your-own-adventure under their userpage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:PrincessKirlia/Shop/The_book
New? Uncyclopedia has an entire namespace devoted to choose-your-own-adventures: http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Game:Game
Probably should be politely discouraged, and pointed at a free web hosting company that offers wikis, but I'm tempted to let them alone and see what they do with it.
Games Wikia (http://games.wikia.com/wiki/Wikigames) was created because of people using Wikipedia for play-by-wiki games.
- d.
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On 19/01/2008, Ian A Holton poeloq@gmail.com wrote:
It's not about them wasting their time, as that is not for us to decide. It's not the way the community expects the hosting services provided by Wikipedia to be used. It's also not what we want people to associate Wikipedia with. That, in my opinion, is the point.
German Wikipedia got hard-arsed on them and restricted them to Babel and location templates.
I think the big cull on en:wp came from ones that were obviously divisive or were being used for organised POV-pushing, i.e. things that were actively harming the project. Just being a dead weight on the project wasn't considered sufficient harm to kill the damn things off.
James Forrester is, by the way, *very sorry indeed* for inventing the things. I bet he wishes he'd invented something nicer, like herpes.
- d.
On Sat, 2008-01-19 at 22:53 +0000, David Gerard wrote:
On 19/01/2008, Ian A Holton poeloq@gmail.com wrote:
It's not about them wasting their time, as that is not for us to decide. It's not the way the community expects the hosting services provided by Wikipedia to be used. It's also not what we want people to associate Wikipedia with. That, in my opinion, is the point.
German Wikipedia got hard-arsed on them and restricted them to Babel and location templates.
I think the big cull on en:wp came from ones that were obviously divisive or were being used for organised POV-pushing, i.e. things that were actively harming the project. Just being a dead weight on the project wasn't considered sufficient harm to kill the damn things off.
James Forrester is, by the way, *very sorry indeed* for inventing the things. I bet he wishes he'd invented something nicer, like herpes.
David,
wrong thread I believe. This one is referring to games in userspaces, not the userboxes.
Ian [[User:Poeloq]]
On 19/01/2008, Ian A Holton poeloq@gmail.com wrote:
wrong thread I believe. This one is referring to games in userspaces, not the userboxes.
ah, d'oh!
I think games got more or less kicked off to the games wiki, in any case.
- d.
On Jan 19, 2008 5:44 PM, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
I think that's excessive use of userspace. It has absolutely nothing to do with building an encyclopedia, and it's not an effective community-building tool like the Facebook. Little wonder we have articles on core topics that sit unimproved when people waste their time like that.
Volunteers will spend their time how they choose, not how we dictate.
(I'm not making a judgment either way about this user's behavior, but I've seen the "they're wasting their time on X when they could be doing Y" argument enough that it makes me want to vomit.)
Games in userspace are a perversion of the purpose of WP. If its still there much longer, I expect to find it at MfD. There's self expression within our context, which is good, and there's general use as a personal website, and that's something different--even for out most active contributors. Of course spending their time on X isnt a good argument, because they'd still be playing games; but it just wouldnt be on WP.
On Jan 19, 2008 7:40 PM, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 19, 2008 5:44 PM, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
I think that's excessive use of userspace. It has absolutely nothing to
do
with building an encyclopedia, and it's not an effective
community-building
tool like the Facebook. Little wonder we have articles on core topics
that
sit unimproved when people waste their time like that.
Volunteers will spend their time how they choose, not how we dictate.
(I'm not making a judgment either way about this user's behavior, but I've seen the "they're wasting their time on X when they could be doing Y" argument enough that it makes me want to vomit.)
-- Chris Howie http://www.chrishowie.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Crazycomputers
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On 20/01/2008, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
Games in userspace are a perversion of the purpose of WP. If its still there much longer, I expect to find it at MfD. There's self expression within our context, which is good, and there's general use as a personal website, and that's something different--even for out most active contributors. Of course spending their time on X isnt a good argument, because they'd still be playing games; but it just wouldnt be on WP.
Does anyone have the details on the decision how the last lot of games got moved to the games Wikia? It would be better than just saying "DON'T DO THIS."
- d.
On Jan 21, 2008 9:46 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Does anyone have the details on the decision how the last lot of games got moved to the games Wikia? It would be better than just saying "DON'T DO THIS."
In general, they didn't get moved to Wikia. At the time I created games.wikia.com (May 2005), the consensus was that games in Wikipedia's sandboxes were ok, and a lot of them stayed there for the next year or two.
Wikipedia:Sandbox/Chess, Wikipedia:Sandbox/Diplomacy, Wikipedia:Sandbox/Checkers, and Wikipedia:Sandbox/Game_of_Go were all deleted without discussion in 2007 for being unutliised.
Others were moved to the user namespace. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chess_championship, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guitarmankev1/Chess/Jasz
Some, but not all were MfD'd. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Wikipedia:Hangman
Other still exist in the project namespace, and many exist in the user namespace. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sandbox/Word_Association/Ultra_Game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikistory_%28Sentence%29
The relevant wikis, if anyone does want to try moving anything are: http://games.wikia.com - for any games you can play on a wiki http://cyoa.wikia.com/wiki/Getting_Started - for 'create your own adventure' games http://guestbook.wikia.com/ for collecting signatures (though the consensus seems to still be that this is ok on Wikipedia)
Angela
On 1/21/08, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
Games in userspace are a perversion of the purpose of WP. If its still there much longer, I expect to find it at MfD. There's self expression within our context, which is good, and there's general use as a personal website,
What I think is important about the "nothing not project related" rule is that it affects everyone equally. It's not like we ban board games but allow collaborative novel writing or something. We're here for a purpose, so we stick to that purpose.
Interestingly, there is not, to my knowledge, a single off-WMF site where "the wikipedia community" hangs around and does non-Wikipedia things. Does that tell us someting?
Steve
On Jan 20, 2008 7:10 PM, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/21/08, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
Games in userspace are a perversion of the purpose of WP. If its still there much longer, I expect to find it at MfD. There's self expression within our context, which is good, and there's general use as a personal website,
What I think is important about the "nothing not project related" rule is that it affects everyone equally. It's not like we ban board games but allow collaborative novel writing or something. We're here for a purpose, so we stick to that purpose.
A shared purpose is fundamental to a healthy community. This is one of the reasons that I argue that common's community tends to be more healthy and less fragmented than enwp: The purpose(s) are more clearly and uniformly understood and shared by the regular participants.
Interestingly, there is not, to my knowledge, a single off-WMF site where "the wikipedia community" hangs around and does non-Wikipedia things. Does that tell us someting?
Because in the context of distance-less online interaction purpose *defines* community. Without the purpose, there isn't a community. So the only place I'd expect to more than a smattering of Wikipedians is on another competing Wikipedia like project, and that pretty much seems to hold true.
On the original subject, I thought the clear rule is that userspace material had to be arguably directly related to the users project involvement. A reasonable amount of background and socializing materials are okay since they help forge friendships and tighten the community, but ultimately Wikimedia != Free webhosting. Including too much outside the purpose risks diluting the community and creates more fragmentation.
If someone wanted to have userspace 'improve wikipedia' games, on the other hand...
On 21/01/2008, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
If someone wanted to have userspace 'improve wikipedia' games, on the other hand...
Chore Wars!
- d.
(Fixing top post.)
On Jan 20, 2008 1:45 PM, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 19, 2008 7:40 PM, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
Volunteers will spend their time how they choose, not how we dictate.
(I'm not making a judgment either way about this user's behavior, but I've seen the "they're wasting their time on X when they could be doing Y" argument enough that it makes me want to vomit.)
Games in userspace are a perversion of the purpose of WP. If its still there much longer, I expect to find it at MfD. There's self expression within our context, which is good, and there's general use as a personal website, and that's something different--even for out most active contributors. Of course spending their time on X isnt a good argument, because they'd still be playing games; but it just wouldnt be on WP.
I did say that I'm not condoning the behavior here, right? My point is that if you take away the ability to do X, volunteers won't magically rush to do Y.