From ArsTechnica
"The Wikipedia community, however, was not as impressed. One article didn't survive for 24 hours following its introduction, and four additional ones were ultimately deleted following extensive discussion, their contents merged into existing entries. Groom also noted that some of the comments in the ensuing discussions "were delivered rudely.""
Can anybody provide me with links to these discussions and (deleted) pages? I tried searching, but all I could find was Martha Groom's userpage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mjgroom.
On 10/30/07, Utkarshraj Atmaram utcursch@gmail.com wrote:
"The Wikipedia community, however, was not as impressed. One article didn't survive for 24 hours following its introduction, and four additional ones were ultimately deleted following extensive discussion, their contents merged into existing entries. Groom also noted that some of the comments in the ensuing discussions "were delivered rudely.""
Can anybody provide me with links to these discussions and (deleted) pages? I tried searching, but all I could find was Martha Groom's userpage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mjgroom.
I don't see any mention at [[Wikipedia:School and university projects]] -
but that's pretty hard to find anyway.
University assignments as Wikipedia articles are obviously problematic for us. The main problems I've come across with them: - They're on very specific topics that cut across some existing articles but not in any logical or useful way - They use totally different conventions for referencing etc - Since they're delivered monolithically, it's very hard to mould them into something more useful. We have no input until all 5000 words have been dumped in our lap. - The tone and goal of a student paper (often to argue a point, or to demonstrate some original research or amazing brilliance on the part of the student) isn't really compatible with our goals (to explain something as simply and usefully as possible).
The idea is noble, but without a bit of thought about how the paper is going to fit in with Wikipedia, it's a bit like donating an elephant to a charity.
Incidentally, the whole Category:Sustainable development is pretty bad. Lots of rather dubious articles on dubious topics, with apparent COI and general crackpottery.
Steve
On 30/10/2007, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
University assignments as Wikipedia articles are obviously problematic for us. The main problems I've come across with them:
- They're on very specific topics that cut across some existing articles
but not in any logical or useful way
- They use totally different conventions for referencing etc
- Since they're delivered monolithically, it's very hard to mould them into
something more useful. We have no input until all 5000 words have been dumped in our lap.
- The tone and goal of a student paper (often to argue a point, or to
demonstrate some original research or amazing brilliance on the part of the student) isn't really compatible with our goals (to explain something as simply and usefully as possible).
The idea is noble, but without a bit of thought about how the paper is going to fit in with Wikipedia, it's a bit like donating an elephant to a charity.
A white elephant, indeed. Except that it's counterproductive for the donor, as well...
In general, I'd go so far as to say that our first reaction to someone suggesting something like this should be to *discourage* it - it isn't that we don't like the idea of more contributions, but the fact that we have our own routine and our own direction means that the contributions tend not to get dealt with in a very helpful manner as far as the institution's concerned. They may be deleted out of hand, they may be swiftly rewritten, moved to a different name, reverted... any number of things that make it hard to determine if your students actually did the work.
On 30/10/2007, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 30/10/2007, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
The idea is noble, but without a bit of thought about how the paper is going to fit in with Wikipedia, it's a bit like donating an elephant to a charity.
A white elephant, indeed. Except that it's counterproductive for the donor, as well... In general, I'd go so far as to say that our first reaction to someone suggesting something like this should be to *discourage* it - it isn't that we don't like the idea of more contributions, but the fact that we have our own routine and our own direction means that the contributions tend not to get dealt with in a very helpful manner as far as the institution's concerned. They may be deleted out of hand, they may be swiftly rewritten, moved to a different name, reverted... any number of things that make it hard to determine if your students actually did the work.
Mmm. I do like the fact that significant numbers of the contributions actually stuck. And that the students got to deal with interacting with real people in the real world on a real project.
I can see something like this working if the area is carefully selected. There's little low-hanging fruit left, as we've noted here before - but any WikiProject will have endless lists of red links just waiting for someone to do the legwork to research and write an article. Someone with university-level research facilities should be able to do a much better job than from a mere Googling, in not much more time.
Possible approach: find a WikiProject that you know the research material will be there for. Set the students to work filling out those requested article links.
Another approach: see all those lists of missing encyclopedic articles? Same thing: research and summary.
This would add lots of good and useful encyclopedic content without running much risk of getting up Wikipedians' noses or horrifying the students or their professor.
- d.
On 10/30/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote: On 10/30/07, Utkarshraj Atmaram utcursch@gmail.com wrote:
Can anybody provide me with links to these discussions and (deleted) pages? I tried searching, but all I could find was Martha Groom's userpage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mjgroom.
I can see something like this working if the area is carefully selected. There's little low-hanging fruit left, as we've noted here before - but any WikiProject will have endless lists of red links just waiting for someone to do the legwork to research and write an article. Someone with university-level research facilities should be able to do a much better job than from a mere Googling, in not much more time.
Just got links to two articles, via "Students Find That Wikipedians Are Tougher Graders Than Their Professor"http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2497. The articles were created in December 2006.
Deforestation during the Roman period http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_during_the_Roman_period
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_Americas_Before_Co...
Both the articles are quite good.
Look at the first version of the article "Deforestation during the Roman period" (user's only mainspace edit) -- great work for a first edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Deforestation_during_the_Roman_per...
On 30/10/2007, Utkarshraj Atmaram utcursch@gmail.com wrote:
Just got links to two articles, via "Students Find That Wikipedians Are Tougher Graders Than Their Professor"http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2497. The articles were created in December 2006. Deforestation during the Roman period http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_during_the_Roman_period 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_Americas_Before_Co... Both the articles are quite good. Look at the first version of the article "Deforestation during the Roman period" (user's only mainspace edit) -- great work for a first edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Deforestation_during_the_Roman_per...
Oh yeah. I think Andrew Lih is being somewhat pessimistic of the potential of a properly-directed class project.
In any case, I suspect we'll be unable to stop professors from assigning Wikipedia article-writing as a project. So directing people to our many lists of red links may be a way to turn the unavoidable problem to our advantage.
- d.
Quoting David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
On 30/10/2007, Utkarshraj Atmaram utcursch@gmail.com wrote:
Just got links to two articles, via "Students Find That Wikipedians Are Tougher Graders Than Their Professor"http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2497. The articles were created in December 2006. Deforestation during the Roman period http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_during_the_Roman_period 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_Americas_Before_Co... Both the articles are quite good. Look at the first version of the article "Deforestation during the Roman period" (user's only mainspace edit) -- great work for a first edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Deforestation_during_the_Roman_per...
Oh yeah. I think Andrew Lih is being somewhat pessimistic of the potential of a properly-directed class project.
In any case, I suspect we'll be unable to stop professors from assigning Wikipedia article-writing as a project. So directing people to our many lists of red links may be a way to turn the unavoidable problem to our advantage.
Should someone maybe write an essay explaining to profs how would be the best to go about assigning things related to Wikipedia?
On 10/30/07, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
In any case, I suspect we'll be unable to stop professors from assigning Wikipedia article-writing as a project. So directing people to our many lists of red links may be a way to turn the unavoidable problem to our advantage.
Should someone maybe write an essay explaining to profs how would be the best to go about assigning things related to Wikipedia?
Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_university_projectsand the associated http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects_-_inst... .
Could probably do with more publicity...
-- phoebe
On 10/30/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I can see something like this working if the area is carefully selected. There's little low-hanging fruit left, as we've noted here
There's plenty for uni students. Biology and history have massive numbers of articles to be written. And hey, yesterday, I stumbled across [[Tommy Langan]], apparently one of the 15 best Gaelic footballers ever, who has one line on him. Maybe there's not much truly generalist low hanging fruit that could be attacked by a primary school student, but delve even slightly into a specialist area, and there is tons.
Possible approach: find a WikiProject that you know the research material will be there for. Set the students to work filling out those requested article links.
That's a much better idea than letting students pick their own topics.
Another approach: see all those lists of missing encyclopedic
articles? Same thing: research and summary.
That's what I do.
This would add lots of good and useful encyclopedic content without
running much risk of getting up Wikipedians' noses or horrifying the students or their professor.
The only challenge is finding topics that would be suitable for students
to write about...that would actually demonstrate research skills, knowledge of the subject etc. I guess they could submit proposals and the teacher could decide if they liked the topic.
I don't think any of the subjects I did at uni would have been very conducive to this. Maybe a first year essay "The history of English orthography", but after that it was always very particular analysis, argumentation etc.
Steve
David Gerard wrote:
I can see something like this working if the area is carefully selected. There's little low-hanging fruit left, as we've noted here before - but any WikiProject will have endless lists of red links just waiting for someone to do the legwork to research and write an article. Someone with university-level research facilities should be able to do a much better job than from a mere Googling, in not much more time.
If you pick the right subject, there are many not-too-obscure areas where the low-hanging fruit will bury you up to your neck. I've been doing some checking of our biography coverage and it's surprisingly weak despite our huge numbers of biographies, I guess because there are an even more huge number of notable people. Browsing through a PD version of _Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians_ (1919), we're missing articles on *almost all* of the people in it! From spot-checking I'd say we cover maybe 15-20% at best. Similar results can be found if you scan through the _Dictionary of National Biography_ (UK) or, even more strikingly, any of the major German biographical dictionaries. And those are all western examples; our coverage of Indian biographies is even worse---we don't even have articles on all *current* members of India's parliament, let alone those from even as recently as the 1990s. So if you pick the right area, like say "Indian politics", you should find most of the articles still waiting to be written, with the exception of a handful of the top-tier most famous people.
-Mark
On Tue, Oct 30, 2007 at 11:33:49PM -0700, Delirium wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
I can see something like this working if the area is carefully selected. There's little low-hanging fruit left, as we've noted here before - but any WikiProject will have endless lists of red links just waiting for someone to do the legwork to research and write an article. Someone with university-level research facilities should be able to do a much better job than from a mere Googling, in not much more time.
If you pick the right subject, there are many not-too-obscure areas where the low-hanging fruit will bury you up to your neck. I've been doing some checking of our biography coverage and it's surprisingly weak despite our huge numbers of biographies, I guess because there are an even more huge number of notable people. Browsing through a PD version of _Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians_ (1919), we're missing articles on *almost all* of the people in it! From spot-checking I'd say we cover maybe 15-20% at best. Similar results can be found if you scan through the _Dictionary of National Biography_ (UK) or, even more strikingly, any of the major German biographical dictionaries. And those are all western examples; our coverage of Indian biographies is even worse---we don't even have articles on all *current* members of India's parliament, let alone those from even as recently as the 1990s. So if you pick the right area, like say "Indian politics", you should find most of the articles still waiting to be written, with the exception of a handful of the top-tier most famous people.
Other areas are scientists. We still are not covering all Fellows of the Royal Society, the US Academy of Sciences or the Australian Academy of Sciences.
Brian.
-Mark
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On 31/10/2007, Brian Salter-Duke b_duke@bigpond.net.au wrote:
If you pick the right subject, there are many not-too-obscure areas where the low-hanging fruit will bury you up to your neck. I've been doing some checking of our biography coverage and it's surprisingly weak despite our huge numbers of biographies, I guess because there are an even more huge number of notable people. Browsing through a PD version of _Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians_ (1919), we're missing articles on *almost all* of the people in it! From spot-checking I'd say we cover maybe 15-20% at best. Similar results can be found if you scan through the _Dictionary of National Biography_ (UK) or, even more strikingly, any of the major German biographical dictionaries. And those are all western examples; our coverage of Indian biographies is even worse---we don't even have articles on all *current* members of India's parliament, let alone those from even as recently as the 1990s. So if you pick the right area, like say "Indian politics", you should find most of the articles still waiting to be written, with the exception of a handful of the top-tier most famous people.
Other areas are scientists. We still are not covering all Fellows of the Royal Society, the US Academy of Sciences or the Australian Academy of Sciences.
Do we have suitable red-link lists?
- d.
On Wed, Oct 31, 2007 at 03:07:53PM +0000, David Gerard wrote:
On 31/10/2007, Brian Salter-Duke b_duke@bigpond.net.au wrote:
If you pick the right subject, there are many not-too-obscure areas where the low-hanging fruit will bury you up to your neck. I've been doing some checking of our biography coverage and it's surprisingly weak despite our huge numbers of biographies, I guess because there are an even more huge number of notable people. Browsing through a PD version of _Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians_ (1919), we're missing articles on *almost all* of the people in it! From spot-checking I'd say we cover maybe 15-20% at best. Similar results can be found if you scan through the _Dictionary of National Biography_ (UK) or, even more strikingly, any of the major German biographical dictionaries. And those are all western examples; our coverage of Indian biographies is even worse---we don't even have articles on all *current* members of India's parliament, let alone those from even as recently as the 1990s. So if you pick the right area, like say "Indian politics", you should find most of the articles still waiting to be written, with the exception of a handful of the top-tier most famous people.
Other areas are scientists. We still are not covering all Fellows of the Royal Society, the US Academy of Sciences or the Australian Academy of Sciences.
Do we have suitable red-link lists?
Some. I think [[List of Fellows of the Royal Society]] is incomplete and it only has 8 redlinks, 7 of them interestingly in the "A"s.
[[List of members of the National Academy of Sciences]] lists current members only and is full of redlinks. The members who have died must also have a lot of people with no articles.
[[List of Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science]] is, I think, complete and is full of redlinks. That is a real mine for Australian educators to use.
I have been working through the list in [[International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science]] and there are still lots of redlinks there.
I find it rare for BLP issues to come up with biographies of not massively known scientists. Mind you, it is a good job [[Antoine Lavoisier]] is not alive as I and others are reverting vandalism on that article all the time. [[Louis de Broglie]] attracts more than one would think too.
Brian.
- d.
On 10/31/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 31/10/2007, Brian Salter-Duke b_duke@bigpond.net.au wrote:
If you pick the right subject, there are many not-too-obscure areas where the low-hanging fruit will bury you up to your neck. I've been doing some checking of our biography coverage and it's surprisingly weak despite our huge numbers of biographies, I guess because there are an even more huge number of notable people. Browsing through a PD version of _Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians_ (1919), we're missing articles on *almost all* of the people in it! From spot-checking I'd say we cover maybe 15-20% at best. Similar results can be found if you scan through the _Dictionary of National Biography_ (UK) or, even more strikingly, any of the major German biographical dictionaries. And those are all western examples; our coverage of Indian biographies is even worse---we don't even have articles on all *current* members of India's parliament, let alone those from even as recently as the 1990s. So if you pick the right area, like say "Indian politics", you should find most of the articles still waiting to be written, with the exception of a handful of the top-tier most famous people.
Other areas are scientists. We still are not covering all Fellows of the Royal Society, the US Academy of Sciences or the Australian Academy of Sciences.
Do we have suitable red-link lists?
The entries of the Dictionary of National Biography (1903), complete with partially wikified text now at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Magnus_Manske/Dictionary_of_National_Biogr...
Magnus
In addition, Almost all public libraries in the UK should have the full current http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography available to them. The list of entries in that dictionary is available to anyone at http://www.oup.com/oxforddnb/info/index/. Not all the names there have full articles; some are merely mentions or paragraphs. The ones with full articles have of course always been held notable for WP purposes.
On 11/1/07, Magnus Manske magnusmanske@googlemail.com wrote:
On 10/31/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 31/10/2007, Brian Salter-Duke b_duke@bigpond.net.au wrote:
If you pick the right subject, there are many not-too-obscure areas where the low-hanging fruit will bury you up to your neck. I've been doing some checking of our biography coverage and it's surprisingly weak despite our huge numbers of biographies, I guess because there are an even more huge number of notable people. Browsing through a PD version of _Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians_ (1919), we're missing articles on *almost all* of the people in it! From spot-checking I'd say we cover maybe 15-20% at best. Similar results can be found if you scan through the _Dictionary of National Biography_ (UK) or, even more strikingly, any of the major German biographical dictionaries. And those are all western examples; our coverage of Indian biographies is even worse---we don't even have articles on all *current* members of India's parliament, let alone those from even as recently as the 1990s. So if you pick the right area, like say "Indian politics", you should find most of the articles still waiting to be written, with the exception of a handful of the top-tier most famous people.
Other areas are scientists. We still are not covering all Fellows of the Royal Society, the US Academy of Sciences or the Australian Academy of Sciences.
Do we have suitable red-link lists?
The entries of the Dictionary of National Biography (1903), complete with partially wikified text now at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Magnus_Manske/Dictionary_of_National_Biogr...
Magnus
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
David Goodman wrote:
In addition, Almost all public libraries in the UK should have the full current http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography available to them. The list of entries in that dictionary is available to anyone at http://www.oup.com/oxforddnb/info/index/. Not all the names there have full articles; some are merely mentions or paragraphs. The ones with full articles have of course always been held notable for WP purposes.
If it weren't for the fact that it would be suggesting more work for more volunteers that we don't have I would be suggesting that we put the whole old version up to 1930 on Wikisource. But it's already slow going for those gradually adding in the 1911 EB.
Ec
On 31/10/2007, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
And those are all western examples; our coverage of Indian biographies is even worse---we don't even have articles on all *current* members of India's parliament, let alone those from even as recently as the 1990s. So if you pick the right area, like say "Indian politics", you should find most of the articles still waiting to be written, with the exception of a handful of the top-tier most famous people.
South African politicos, ditto. I'll try and put together a redlink list tonight...
On 31/10/2007, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
South African politicos, ditto. I'll try and put together a redlink list tonight...
And overwhelmingly red it is too! Time to start on redirects and see if we can get more than 10%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shimgray/South_Africa
I have blog-nagged on this topic:
http://davidgerard.co.uk/notes/2007/11/01/bored-policy-weary-write-something... http://reddragdiva.livejournal.com/445855.html
Note useful links.
- d.
On 10/31/07, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
I can see something like this working if the area is carefully selected. There's little low-hanging fruit left, as we've noted here before - but any WikiProject will have endless lists of red links just waiting for someone to do the legwork to research and write an article. Someone with university-level research facilities should be able to do a much better job than from a mere Googling, in not much more time.
If you pick the right subject, there are many not-too-obscure areas where the low-hanging fruit will bury you up to your neck. I've been doing some checking of our biography coverage and it's surprisingly weak despite our huge numbers of biographies, I guess because there are an even more huge number of notable people. Browsing through a PD version of _Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians_ (1919), we're missing articles on *almost all* of the people in it!
I have found only the 1st edition as full text (Google edition is searchable only). From that, I ran a quick script and extracted over 4000 names to [1]. I then ran another script to remove "blue links" [2], whicl leaves close to 2700 red links.
That would mean we're missing over 65% of the musicians; however, there are some bogus entries and lots'o' OCR error in there. Feel free to cleanup, redirect, and, of course, write articles!
Magnus
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Magnus_Manske/Baker%27s_Biographical_Dicti... [2] http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/filterdone.php
Magnus Manske wrote:
On 10/31/07, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Browsing through a PD version of _Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians_ (1919), we're missing articles on *almost all* of the people in it!
I have found only the 1st edition as full text (Google edition is searchable only). From that, I ran a quick script and extracted over 4000 names to [1]. I then ran another script to remove "blue links" [2], whicl leaves close to 2700 red links.
That would mean we're missing over 65% of the musicians; however, there are some bogus entries and lots'o' OCR error in there. Feel free to cleanup, redirect, and, of course, write articles!
Thanks! Looks like I was rather pessimistic with my 15-20% guess and the real number's 35-40%, though that's still lots of room for expansion. =]
-Mark
On 30/10/2007, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
In general, I'd go so far as to say that our first reaction to someone suggesting something like this should be to *discourage* it - it isn't that we don't like the idea of more contributions, but the fact that we have our own routine and our own direction means that the contributions tend not to get dealt with in a very helpful manner as far as the institution's concerned.
So we should help them plan their programs in ways that take this into account.
They may be deleted out of hand, they may be swiftly rewritten, moved to a different name, reverted... any number of things that make it hard to determine if your students actually did the work.
I think it is safe to assume that you are required to submit the work to the Dr as well as wikipedia.
On 30/10/2007, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
They may be deleted out of hand, they may be swiftly rewritten, moved to a different name, reverted... any number of things that make it hard to determine if your students actually did the work.
I think it is safe to assume that you are required to submit the work to the Dr as well as wikipedia.
I've known of cases - and listened to the yelling - where the teacher failed to realise that this might be a useful option. "But you can't delete my article! I need to have it up on Monday so it can be marked!"
Steve Bennett schreef:
University assignments as Wikipedia articles are obviously problematic for us.
Interestingly, there has been a lot of discussion on this subject over at our colleagues': http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Eduzendium and talk page.
For comparison, and without further comment (because I lack the knowledge to judge the articles), here are some of the articles they received from these assignments: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Leopards_as_taphonomic_agents http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Hyaenas_as_taphonomic_agents
Our coverage of taphonomy now doesn't even come close to theirs. hether that's a good thing, I don't know.
Eugene