Jimmy Wales wrote: Just as a reminder, there *is* a validation/rating/whatever-you-call-it system sitting in MediaWiki for month, waiting to be tested. Emphasis on /waiting/. Magnus

On 10/7/05, Ryan Norton &lt;wxprojects(a)comcast.net&gt; wrote: This doesn't belong in the opener: "Bill Gates is often characterized as the quintessential example of a super-intelligent nerd <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerd> with immense power. This has in turn led to pop culture<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_culture>stereotypes of Gates as a tyrant <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrant> or evil genius<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_genius>commanding power over an all-powerful empire <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire> of technology and programming. Several films and television shows have portrayed either the real Bill Gates or a fictionalized version of him, often according to these cliches." It gives far, far too much weight to a superficial caricature that sometimes appears in yellow rags. The body of the article also reminds me in places of a Citizen Kane-style caricature--I almost expect it to come complete with sentences like "So onward marches the progress of the planet's greatest plutocrat!" The article downplays some of the major facts of Gates' career. IBM and MSDOS are not mentioned. The word "antitrust" is not present in the article. There is no mention of the fact that Gates founded Corbis, now owner of the largest digital image collection in the world. It's still crap.

On 10/7/05, Alphax &lt;alphasigmax(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: That's one possible way to react. Another way would be to consult Encarta's entry on the same subject.

On 10/7/05, Alphax &lt;alphasigmax(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Where do you think I got the information that was omitted from the Wikipedia article?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_articles_all_languages_shoul… I created the above page for this specific purpose - en: has all these articles (or something like them), but very few are up to featured quality. One problem I see with the FA process is that a lot of the articles are incredibly esoteric. If you're a specialist in a field, you're highly motivated to write a REALLY GOOD article about something you know well. There seems to be less motivation to get the *really general* articles up to featured status. God help the person who tries to get [[Earth]] past the present FAC process and keep it under 200KB. - d. You should see what we've done with [[Human]]. It will be ready for the FAC process soon enough. Jack (Sam Spade)

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Justin Cormack stated for the record: My seven-year-old daughter. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia for everyone, not just geeks who are looking for hyper-specialized trivia. [[Architecture]].... You have surprising expectations. - -- Sean Barrett | Never stand next to anyone throwing sean(a)epoptic.com | shit at an armed man. --Larry Niven

On Oct 7, 2005, at 12:25 PM, Kelly Martin wrote: You're letting her date before she serves on the arbcom? Such permissiveness in parents these days. -Snowspinner

On 10/7/05, Kelly Martin &lt;kelly.lynn.martin(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: (...) Why the difference? Both seem to be equally dangerous to one's sanity! Besides, you know what happens when you forbid these things too long -- do you think you'll hear about her sockpuppet arbitrator account or her elopement in Vegas first? :-) -Kat [[User:Mindspillage]] -- "There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler's mind." --Douglas Adams

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Justin Cormack stated for the record: The seven-year-olds you are thinking about are not like my seven-year-old or any of her classmates. Perhaps my daughter goes to a lax school, but the reports she's assigned to write are on big subjects, like "one of the planets" or "an Arctic animal" (actual examples). - -- Sean Barrett | Never stand next to anyone throwing sean(a)epoptic.com | shit at an armed man. --Larry Niven

On 10/7/05, Justin Cormack &lt;justin(a)specialbusservice.com&gt; wrote: I disagree on this, and I wonder why so many people state it: a good encyclopedic article on a broad subject I am only casually acquainted with is very useful, and in fact Wikipedia is often the first place I'll turn. There are plenty of basic subjects for which I do not know most of the information contained in a decent encyclopedia article; I'd imagine this is true of most people. (Granted, I didn't go to a particularly good school, but even so!) But even if it is only a stopping-off point -- how will readers find the niche subject they really want to find if the main article does not lead them there by framing it with appropriate context and general information to let them know which subtopic they are looking for? If [[dog]] were so lacking as not to say that a young dog is a puppy and that the breed that ran by was probably a retriever, it wouldn't be much to step off from. Not to mention that more people will be stepping off from them than will ever see or want to see [[Criticism of wicker in advanced quantum basket-weaving]]. (I say this knowing full well that my own area of interest, [[music]], is a mess, and one I have barely touched: it's a daunting task...) -Kat [[User:Mindspillage]] -- "There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler's mind." --Douglas Adams

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Kat Walsh stated for the record: It is often stated because it is far easier to write a specialized article than a general one, primarily because the specialized article can make assumptions about a reader's knowledge that a general one cannot. Personally, I find it much more enjoyable to dig into old Soviet naval records and write about incidents involving their warships than fix the mess that is [[Submarine]] (and we should be ashamed that it was a featured article; it is a mess with numerous factual errors). Trying to clearly explain what is wrong with the statement 'Submarines designed for the purpose of attacking merchant ships or other warships are known as "fast attacks", "hunter-killers", "fast boats", or "fleet submarines"' (hint: three very different types of boats are listed) -- and then preserve that explanation against the hordes of editors whose knowledge of submarines consists of having seen ''Crimson Tide'' three times -- is exhausting and ultimately futile. The mediocre always win, simply by force of numbers. It's much more fun to dig into what exactly happened to [[Soviet submarine S-117]] -- the only people who dare to disagree with you are knowledgeable enough to make the disagreement fun! Nonetheless, we need a good article on [[submarine]]s, and when the existing article's corruption once again becomes intolerable, I will once again push it back toward correctness and readability, so that it can start down its slide again. The worst thing we could do is decide that we don't need to work on the general articles because we think no one will ever want to learn about [[submarine]]s -- that they'll only use it as an index pointing to [[MARF reactor]]. </rant> - -- Sean Barrett | Never stand next to anyone throwing sean(a)epoptic.com | shit at an armed man. --Larry Niven

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Ray Saintonge stated for the record: Abandon that hope, all ye who edit here. [[Wikipedia:WikiPogrom_Purge_All_Interestingcruft]] has a lot of momentum. - -- Sean Barrett | Never stand next to anyone throwing sean(a)epoptic.com | shit at an armed man. --Larry Niven

On 07/10/05, Jack Lynch &lt;jack.i.lynch(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: It is possibly unfortunate that I went to look at that page and found someone had edited in a *waving* animation of the Pioneer plaque... ;-) (yes, I fixed it. First article I ever edited, that one. Correction's still there) -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

On 10/8/05, Geoff Burling &lt;llywrch(a)agora.rdrop.com&gt; wrote: Perhaps someone could explain to me, from the point of view of a developer, why it would affect wikipedia *at all* if there was a javascript function to send an encrypted response carrying a user's rating of an article to a *separate* server. The rating function would not have to operate in real time. With good design, it wouldn't ever even have to be synchronized. As long as the article name, wikipedia language, and datestamp for the rating were recorded, the two servers could be on different continents.