Folks,
Here's one way to avoid dealing with formatting the dates issue - don't include them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webster_Lewis
With this gem, the reader must go to the references to find the Birth & Death dates! :-(.
Marc Riddell
on 11/14/08 7:53 PM, Marc Riddell at michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Folks,
Here's one way to avoid dealing with formatting the dates issue - don't include them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webster_Lewis
With this gem, the reader must go to the references to find the Birth & Death dates! :-(.
Marc Riddell
And this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ji%C5%99%C3%AD_Stiv%C3%ADn
This is one of five different ways the Birth & Death dates are now being represented in the Project.
Most often a project or organization does not fail due to some catastrophic happening from without; these they are prepared for and can defend against. What does prove to be its final undoing is a corrosion of its product & culture from within. To put it plainly: The product this Project is putting out has become incredibly sloppy, both in content and presentation. There are clear symptoms, and if detected and corrected soon enough, such a collapse can be prevented. I sense a hubris regarding the Project that is disturbing; and can ultimately prove to be its undoing.
Marc Riddell
2008/11/15 Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
Most often a project or organization does not fail due to some catastrophic happening from without; these they are prepared for and can defend against. What does prove to be its final undoing is a corrosion of its product & culture from within. To put it plainly: The product this Project is putting out has become incredibly sloppy, both in content and presentation. There are clear symptoms, and if detected and corrected soon enough, such a collapse can be prevented. I sense a hubris regarding the Project that is disturbing; and can ultimately prove to be its undoing.
A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy (Clay Shirky):
http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html
Note that Wikipedia is given as an example of a group that had evaded this. Oh well.
In open source software, forking usually remedies the problem, with possible remerging. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(software_development) .
- d.
on 11/15/08 6:57 PM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2008/11/15 Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
Most often a project or organization does not fail due to some catastrophic happening from without; these they are prepared for and can defend against. What does prove to be its final undoing is a corrosion of its product & culture from within. To put it plainly: The product this Project is putting out has become incredibly sloppy, both in content and presentation. There are clear symptoms, and if detected and corrected soon enough, such a collapse can be prevented. I sense a hubris regarding the Project that is disturbing; and can ultimately prove to be its undoing.
A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy (Clay Shirky):
http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html
Note that Wikipedia is given as an example of a group that had evaded this. Oh well.
David, that speech was given five years ago. I am trying to present to today.
Marc
2008/11/16 Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
on 11/15/08 6:57 PM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy (Clay Shirky): http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html Note that Wikipedia is given as an example of a group that had evaded this. Oh well.
David, that speech was given five years ago. I am trying to present to today.
That's what I mean: it didn't evade this. I've seen the dynamics described in that paper myself over and over on the net in the past twenty years.
- d.
on 11/15/08 8:14 PM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2008/11/16 Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
on 11/15/08 6:57 PM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy (Clay Shirky): http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html Note that Wikipedia is given as an example of a group that had evaded this. Oh well.
David, that speech was given five years ago. I am trying to present to today.
That's what I mean: it didn't evade this. I've seen the dynamics described in that paper myself over and over on the net in the past twenty years.
David, are you content with the overall picture the (English) Wikipedia is presenting today? Do you believe it has enough stability, structure and strong leadership to sustain it?
Marc
2008/11/16 Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
David, are you content with the overall picture the (English) Wikipedia is presenting today? Do you believe it has enough stability, structure and strong leadership to sustain it?
I believe I've answered before in threads on this list on this topic before.
- d.
On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 3:59 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2008/11/16 Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
David, are you content with the overall picture the (English) Wikipedia is presenting today? Do you believe it has enough stability, structure and strong leadership to sustain it?
I believe I've answered before in threads on this list on this topic before.
For those new to the list, would you (or someone else) be able to point out where in the archives those threads are? Or are the archives searchable and what terms should I use to search for previous answers on this topic?
Carcharoth
On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 5:32 PM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.comwrote:
On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 3:59 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2008/11/16 Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
David, are you content with the overall picture the (English) Wikipedia
is
presenting today? Do you believe it has enough stability, structure and strong leadership to sustain it?
I believe I've answered before in threads on this list on this topic
before.
For those new to the list, would you (or someone else) be able to point out where in the archives those threads are? Or are the archives searchable and what terms should I use to search for previous answers on this topic?
Carcharoth
Archives are indeed searchable (Google is your friend!) There is actually a search function I believe which is in the list archives, but I always use Google to search things from mailing lists.
On 11/16/08, Al Tally majorly.wiki@googlemail.com wrote:
Archives are indeed searchable (Google is your friend!) There is actually a search function I believe which is in the list archives, but I always use Google to search things from mailing lists.
O rly?
http://lists.wikimedia.org/robots.txt
Maybe you mean you use the Google button to search through your old Gmail, which is harder when the desired messages are not in your possession.
Sadly the easiest way is to download the "Gzip'd Text" and then send it to yourself so you can actually "Google" it:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/
—C.W.
On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 12:49 AM, Charlotte Webb <charlottethewebb@gmail.com
wrote:
On 11/16/08, Al Tally majorly.wiki@googlemail.com wrote:
Archives are indeed searchable (Google is your friend!) There is actually
a
search function I believe which is in the list archives, but I always use Google to search things from mailing lists.
O rly?
http://lists.wikimedia.org/robots.txt
Maybe you mean you use the Google button to search through your old Gmail, which is harder when the desired messages are not in your possession.
Sadly the easiest way is to download the "Gzip'd Text" and then send it to yourself so you can actually "Google" it:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/
—C.W.
Well I've searched for it in the past, and it worked. There are mirror lists (I think Nabble?) that come up on Google.
2008/11/16 Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
David, are you content with the overall picture the (English) Wikipedia is presenting today? Do you believe it has enough stability, structure and strong leadership to sustain it?
on 11/16/08 10:59 AM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I believe I've answered before in threads on this list on this topic before.
David, that's not an answer, it's an evasion.
Marc
2008/11/17 Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
2008/11/16 Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
David, are you content with the overall picture the (English) Wikipedia is presenting today? Do you believe it has enough stability, structure and strong leadership to sustain it?
on 11/16/08 10:59 AM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I believe I've answered before in threads on this list on this topic before.
David, that's not an answer, it's an evasion.
No, it's fatigue at you asking the same question repeatedly despite having been answered at length. I don't find it useful to encourage you by going through it again.
- d.
2008/11/16 Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
David, are you content with the overall picture the (English) Wikipedia is presenting today? Do you believe it has enough stability, structure and strong leadership to sustain it?
on 11/16/08 10:59 AM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I believe I've answered before in threads on this list on this topic before.
2008/11/17 Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
David, that's not an answer, it's an evasion.
on 11/17/08 7:36 AM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
No, it's fatigue at you asking the same question repeatedly despite having been answered at length.
Another evasion, David.
I don't find it useful to encourage you by going through it again.
But many of us would find a straight and honest answer very useful.
Marc
Marc Riddell wrote:
2008/11/16 Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
David, are you content with the overall picture the (English) Wikipedia is presenting today? Do you believe it has enough stability, structure and strong leadership to sustain it?
on 11/16/08 10:59 AM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I believe I've answered before in threads on this list on this topic before.
2008/11/17 Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
David, that's not an answer, it's an evasion.
on 11/17/08 7:36 AM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
No, it's fatigue at you asking the same question repeatedly despite having been answered at length.
Another evasion, David.
I don't find it useful to encourage you by going through it again.
But many of us would find a straight and honest answer very useful.
You must forgive David. The many years he has now spent in the UK have undercut his natural Aussie frankness. He is saying you've become a bore on the topic: start at date formats and end up at "stability, structure and strong leadership". It will do as well as anything to bring up the same refrain.
Charles
Marc Riddell wrote:
2008/11/16 Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
David, are you content with the overall picture the (English) Wikipedia is presenting today? Do you believe it has enough stability, structure and strong leadership to sustain it?
on 11/16/08 10:59 AM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I believe I've answered before in threads on this list on this topic before.
2008/11/17 Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
David, that's not an answer, it's an evasion.
on 11/17/08 7:36 AM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
No, it's fatigue at you asking the same question repeatedly despite having been answered at length.
Another evasion, David.
I don't find it useful to encourage you by going through it again.
But many of us would find a straight and honest answer very useful.
on 11/17/08 12:32 PM, Charles Matthews at charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
You must forgive David. The many years he has now spent in the UK have undercut his natural Aussie frankness. He is saying you've become a bore on the topic: start at date formats and end up at "stability, structure and strong leadership". It will do as well as anything to bring up the same refrain.
Are you speaking for David now, Charles? The picture becomes clearer with every post.
Marc Riddell
Marc Riddell wrote:
on 11/17/08 12:32 PM, Charles Matthews at charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
You must forgive David. The many years he has now spent in the UK have undercut his natural Aussie frankness. He is saying you've become a bore on the topic: start at date formats and end up at "stability, structure and strong leadership". It will do as well as anything to bring up the same refrain.
Are you speaking for David now, Charles? The picture becomes clearer with every post.
No, just commenting from an oblique angle. We are short on benevolent dictators, and the one we had probably would be happy never to see another email in his life. Doesn't make all of us motherless children.
Charles
Marc Riddell wrote:
on 11/17/08 12:32 PM, Charles Matthews at charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
You must forgive David. The many years he has now spent in the UK have undercut his natural Aussie frankness. He is saying you've become a bore on the topic: start at date formats and end up at "stability, structure and strong leadership". It will do as well as anything to bring up the same refrain.
Are you speaking for David now, Charles? The picture becomes clearer with every post.
on 11/17/08 5:28 PM, Charles Matthews at charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
No, just commenting from an oblique angle. We are short on benevolent dictators, and the one we had probably would be happy never to see another email in his life. Doesn't make all of us motherless children.
Charles, I have no idea what you said, or meant to say, here.
Marc Riddell
On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 3:20 PM, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Marc Riddell wrote:
on 11/17/08 12:32 PM, Charles Matthews at charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
You must forgive David. The many years he has now spent in the UK have undercut his natural Aussie frankness. He is saying you've become a bore on the topic: start at date formats and end up at "stability, structure and strong leadership". It will do as well as anything to bring up the same refrain.
Are you speaking for David now, Charles? The picture becomes clearer with every post.
on 11/17/08 5:28 PM, Charles Matthews at charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
No, just commenting from an oblique angle. We are short on benevolent dictators, and the one we had probably would be happy never to see another email in his life. Doesn't make all of us motherless children.
Charles, I have no idea what you said, or meant to say, here.
Marc Riddell
I believe that he means many of us do not feel the same lack of leadership and/or crisis that you apparently do, and would indeed prefer if you stopped trying to "discuss" the topic of leadership by badgering individual people about it. It is impolite and unhelpful, and a waste of time for the vast majority of readers who read this list for information and only post themselves occasionally or not at all.
-- phoebe
On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 3:20 PM, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Marc Riddell wrote:
on 11/17/08 12:32 PM, Charles Matthews at charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
You must forgive David. The many years he has now spent in the UK have undercut his natural Aussie frankness. He is saying you've become a bore on the topic: start at date formats and end up at "stability, structure and strong leadership". It will do as well as anything to bring up the same refrain.
Are you speaking for David now, Charles? The picture becomes clearer with every post.
on 11/17/08 5:28 PM, Charles Matthews at charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
No, just commenting from an oblique angle. We are short on benevolent dictators, and the one we had probably would be happy never to see another email in his life. Doesn't make all of us motherless children.
Charles, I have no idea what you said, or meant to say, here.
Marc Riddell
on 11/26/08 3:29 PM, phoebe ayers at phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
I believe that he means many of us do not feel the same lack of leadership and/or crisis that you apparently do, and would indeed prefer if you stopped trying to "discuss" the topic of leadership by badgering individual people about it. It is impolite and unhelpful, and a waste of time for the vast majority of readers who read this list for information and only post themselves occasionally or not at all.
ok. :-)
Marc Riddell
On 11/26/08, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 11/26/08 3:29 PM, phoebe ayers at phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
I believe that he means many of us do not feel the same lack of leadership and/or crisis that you apparently do, and would indeed prefer if you stopped trying to "discuss" the topic of leadership by badgering individual people about it. It is impolite and unhelpful, and a waste of time for the vast majority of readers who read this list for information and only post themselves occasionally or not at all.
ok. :-)
Somebody once said leadership is like nuclear power. It can be used for good or evil, and you don't want to get any on you.
Speaking for myself I've been able to identify two types of leaders on Wikipedia: those who say "swallow your pride", and those who say "wash it down with kool-aid".
But don't let me feed you, Marc. Feed yourself. Leadership is for sheeps and other livestock.
—C.W.
On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 5:06 AM, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Are you speaking for David now, Charles? The picture becomes clearer with every post.
Please stop being a dickhead.
Steve
2008/11/15 Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
And this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ji%C5%99%C3%AD_Stiv%C3%ADn
This is one of five different ways the Birth & Death dates are now being represented in the Project.
There are probably more. They will be sorted in time wikipedia tends towards standardisation
To put it plainly: The product this Project is putting out has become incredibly sloppy, both in content and presentation.
Become? Quite the reverse in fact. Sure there are poor articles out there. Always have been always will be but fewer are critical articles and individual articles are tending towards improvement.
An example UK canal articles have across the board improved from the tiny stubs I was putting together 4 years ago.
There are clear symptoms, and if detected and corrected soon enough, such a collapse can be prevented. I sense a hubris regarding the Project that is disturbing; and can ultimately prove to be its undoing.
And I sense that some people have forgotten what things used to be like. We need objective assessments of weaknesses not emotionally driven non specific accusations of hubris.
geni wrote:
2008/11/15 Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
To put it plainly: The product this Project is putting out has become incredibly sloppy, both in content and presentation.
Become? Quite the reverse in fact. Sure there are poor articles out there. Always have been always will be but fewer are critical articles and individual articles are tending towards improvement.
An example UK canal articles have across the board improved from the tiny stubs I was putting together 4 years ago.
It has always depended where you look. In the bigger picture, you need a good model of content and quality.
From the FA standpoint the best content is no more than a handful of currants in a big cake.
From a WikiProject point of view, content is divided into around 1500 (?) "counties", surrounded by badlands. Counties differ greatly: this is the Wild West metaphor, I suppose, with us pushing out content as redlinks are turned blue.
From that simple idea of links filled in, you see plenty of [[ribbon development]], which is kind of ugly. Sort of railheads pushed out into wilderness, to continue on a geographical metaphor.
On ratings, it may be that the transition from B to A class is the big step in actual usability. Not enough attention is given to this transition.
The "stub" is a traditional idea (incomplete info flagged up). We could look at a more discriminating system for that.
My point would be that in some sense all these trends have been around for five years. Parts of the site still feel like 2003 to me.
Geni is right, certainly. And compliance with guidelines is a side issue, not central. Let us not get carried away by "production engineering" as a comparison. If people want more views, see Ayers-Matthews-Yates on the life cycle of an article.
Charles
On Sat, Nov 15, 2008 at 11:52 PM, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
<snip>
This is one of five different ways the Birth & Death dates are now being represented in the Project.
<snip>
I suspect you mean /style/ issues (i.e. "born" versus "*" vesus "b." and so on), but I might be wrong. Can you list those five ways you are talking about?
There is a similar profusion of different methods of dealing with biographical metadata.
See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographical_metadata
That is more concerning to me than inconsistent style. If you have the same information entered four or five times in the same article, you will end up with articles where the different entries are inconsistent, with different birth/death years in the lead, the main text, the infobox, the Persondata and the birth/death year categories. You would think that sort of thing gets checked, but it is surprisingly common for the birth/death date in an infobox to be mistyped or just plain wrong, compared to what is in the article.
What should happen is that the basic biographical data, with sources, should be entered *once* and then reused in the various locations where it is needed. But I haven't yet seen anyone able to come up with a way of doing this that still allows new editors to avoid using a horrendously complicated template or coding system (Template:Lifetime is a step towards such a system - for geography, the co-ord templates do similar things). I think the most workable solution would be to have the biographical information in the lead and main body of the text entered freehand, but to have the infobox, categories and Persondata all calling the biographical metadata from a dedicated place designed for that purpose.
Anyone have any ideas how to set up a system like that cleanly and get it working on Wikipedia? The relatively poor spread of Persondata suggests that it is harder than it looks to get something like this going.
Carcharoth
On 11/15/08, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
I suspect you mean /style/ issues (i.e. "born" versus "*" vesus "b." and so on), but I might be wrong.
I'm not a big fan of the asterisk either, but maybe I read a little too much Vonnegut in middle school. But it does seem a little awkward in this context, as if we're implying something rather negative about the subject's birth.
/me hides.
—C.W.
Carcharoth wrote:
On Sat, Nov 15, 2008 at 11:52 PM, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
This is one of five different ways the Birth & Death dates are now being represented in the Project.
There is a similar profusion of different methods of dealing with biographical metadata... That is more concerning to me than inconsistent style.
What should happen is that the basic biographical data, with sources, should be entered *once* and then reused in the various locations where it is needed...
Anyone have any ideas how to set up a system like that cleanly and get it working on Wikipedia? The relatively poor spread of Persondata suggests that it is harder than it looks to get something like this going.
There've been lots and lots of proposals to add explicit support for metadata within mediawiki. It's too bad none of them have gained any traction in the mainstream.
The approach I'd love to see would involve a table of name/value pairs associated with each page. There would be a separate interface on the edit page to display and edit these values. Values could be referred to anywhere on a page (including in infoboxes) using template-like syntax, probably {{{name}}} (i.e. just like template parameters).
Everything that, currently, is typically specified in infobox arguments would be moved to the page's name/value list. Infoboxes would be rewritten to use the enclosing page's named values instead of its own explicit parameters, and the infobox invocation would become drastically simpler. The editing interface for a page's name/value pairs could be made nicely user-friendly, removing a standard complaint about current infobox usage.
No functionality would be lost, much functionality would be gained, and everything would become much cleaner and easier. (IMO.) Someone could (and would) implement SQL-like queries on page data, letting you search Wikipedia for all pianists born in odd-numbered years and with names beginning with "P".
(Disclaimer: this certainly isn't my idea; see e.g. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Field-value_pairs .)
2008/11/15 Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
And this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ji%C5%99%C3%AD_Stiv%C3%ADn
This is one of five different ways the Birth & Death dates are now being represented in the Project.
"now being represented"? It was added exactly like that in 2006!
We've had dates represented like that for a long time - they usually get cleaned up to conform to the normal practice at some point, but I've seen quite long-established articles still using asterisk for born, dagger for died. It really isn't anything to do with the new date linking approach...