I have noticed that when you create an imperfect article (no stub tag, no categories, or something badly wrong), someone tends to show up and fix it. Often they add something else in the process. But at least you get a tiny bit of feedback.
However, when you create a "perfect" article in one go (referenced, with categories, links and incoming links), you actually get no feedback. No one is drawn there to fix some automatically detected fault. In short, no one even seems to see it.
This strikes me as slightly sad. But then, I haven't had my coffee yet.
Steve
Always Leave Something Undone used to be a Rule To Consider, didn't it.
Dan
On 1/24/07, dmehkeri@swi.com dmehkeri@swi.com wrote:
Always Leave Something Undone used to be a Rule To Consider, didn't it.
Yes, but it got {{rejected}}. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Always_leave_something_undone
Angela
Angela wrote:
On 1/24/07, dmehkeri@swi.com dmehkeri@swi.com wrote:
Always Leave Something Undone used to be a Rule To Consider, didn't it.
Yes, but it got {{rejected}}. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Always_leave_something_undone
I will say, though, feedback has gotten to be the most frustrating experience I have. My tendency of late has been to edit articles that few are interested in. It took a really contentious FAC to get feedback on one FA I eventually finished up, and only because the three people who were so great to me during that process were great to me this time that another article I'm working on for FA has gotten any outside feedback. I doubt it's just me, but if your areas of interest aren't in the mainstream, it's a constant struggle to even find someone to check your grammar, let alone improve something.
Peer review is fairly close to a waste, GA doesn't really review much of anything, and FAC is the only place I've ever gotten decent feedback from a group, and that's not what FAC is for. Extremely frustrating.
I don't know the answer to this, by the way, but if anyone's had any better luck, I'd love to hear it.
-Jeff
Jeff Raymond wrote:
Angela wrote:
On 1/24/07, dmehkeri@swi.com dmehkeri@swi.com wrote:
Always Leave Something Undone used to be a Rule To Consider, didn't it.
Yes, but it got {{rejected}}. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Always_leave_something_undone
I will say, though, feedback has gotten to be the most frustrating experience I have. My tendency of late has been to edit articles that few are interested in. It took a really contentious FAC to get feedback on one FA I eventually finished up, and only because the three people who were so great to me during that process were great to me this time that another article I'm working on for FA has gotten any outside feedback. I doubt it's just me, but if your areas of interest aren't in the mainstream, it's a constant struggle to even find someone to check your grammar, let alone improve something.
Peer review is fairly close to a waste, GA doesn't really review much of anything, and FAC is the only place I've ever gotten decent feedback from a group, and that's not what FAC is for. Extremely frustrating.
While feedback is nice, and sometimes you would like the intellectual stimulation of having some points challenged it can also be a question of how much you expect out of your writing. It is evidently important for you to bring an article into feature status, but I prefer to move on when I'm satisfied with what I've done. I can leave bringing an article to that status to others.
Ec
On 1/25/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
I will say, though, feedback has gotten to be the most frustrating experience I have. My tendency of late has been to edit articles that few are interested in. It took a really contentious FAC to get feedback on one FA I eventually finished up, and only because the three people who were so great to me during that process were great to me this time that another article I'm working on for FA has gotten any outside feedback. I doubt it's just me, but if your areas of interest aren't in the mainstream, it's a constant struggle to even find someone to check your grammar, let alone improve something.
Yeah, I tend to be in obscure places too. Mostly because I start articles when I see redlinks, so by definition if no one has created an article in the 5+ years that Wikipedia has been going, it's going to be fairly obscure.
Peer review is fairly close to a waste,
Yeah, there are a few peer review systems and they don't seem to operate well. Peer review for featured picture is another one.
GA doesn't really review much of anything, and FAC is the only place I've ever gotten decent feedback from a group, and that's not what FAC is for. Extremely frustrating.
Yeah, GA almost overnight turned from something useful into something as bureaucratic as FA. Ultimately I guess feedback comes from large numbers of people stumbling upon an article, and a lot more people pass through FAC than other processes.
Often I don't even want proofing or feedback or whatever - but just the occasional recognition that all the stubs or shortish articles I've written are worth something. Or maybe I'm just gripey at people who award dozens of barnstars for having a nice userpage while other more constructive contributions get overlooked.
Steve
On 1/24/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/25/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
I will say, though, feedback has gotten to be the most frustrating experience I have. My tendency of late has been to edit articles that few are interested in. It took a really contentious FAC to get feedback on one FA I eventually finished up, and only because the three people who were so great to me during that process were great to me this time that another article I'm working on for FA has gotten any outside feedback. I doubt it's just me, but if your areas of interest aren't in the mainstream, it's a constant struggle to even find someone to check your grammar, let alone improve something.
Yeah, I tend to be in obscure places too. Mostly because I start articles when I see redlinks, so by definition if no one has created an article in the 5+ years that Wikipedia has been going, it's going to be fairly obscure.
There are large swaths of technical topics which are not computer-geek technical stuff which are covered extremely poorly, if at all.
Engineering materials, for example - aluminum, steel, composite materials, others. I went through and it seemed like doubled the structural and aerospace materials article count 2-3 months ago, and I haven't even gotten started properly...
Structural design concepts that anyone in an industry knows from school and are common professional knowledge, and still have no WP coverage.
This is just off the top of my head. I've got a to-do list somewhere else.
On 1/24/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
There are large swaths of technical topics which are not computer-geek technical stuff which are covered extremely poorly, if at all.
Engineering materials, for example - aluminum, steel, composite materials, others. I went through and it seemed like doubled the structural and aerospace materials article count 2-3 months ago, and I haven't even gotten started properly...
I recall saying this before in a prior thread, too, and it didn't prompt anyone to show up and help with the subject matter, either. ;-)
Have you ever tried to get feedback through relevant WikiProjects?
Mgm
On 25/01/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
There are large swaths of technical topics which are not computer-geek technical stuff which are covered extremely poorly, if at all.
Engineering materials, for example - aluminum, steel, composite materials, others. I went through and it seemed like doubled the structural and aerospace materials article count 2-3 months ago, and I haven't even gotten started properly...
Structural design concepts that anyone in an industry knows from school and are common professional knowledge, and still have no WP coverage.
This is just off the top of my head. I've got a to-do list somewhere else.
Mmm. Could you put it on-wiki? The enormous redlink farms are occasionally a decent incentive to do something, and if nothing else they help give an idea of what's still out there.
On 1/25/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 25/01/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
There are large swaths of technical topics which are not computer-geek technical stuff which are covered extremely poorly, if at all.
Engineering materials, for example - aluminum, steel, composite materials, others. I went through and it seemed like doubled the structural and aerospace materials article count 2-3 months ago, and I haven't even gotten started properly...
Structural design concepts that anyone in an industry knows from school and are common professional knowledge, and still have no WP coverage.
This is just off the top of my head. I've got a to-do list somewhere
else.
Mmm. Could you put it on-wiki? The enormous redlink farms are occasionally a decent incentive to do something, and if nothing else they help give an idea of what's still out there.
You want a redlink farm? Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:TUF-KAT/Topics_by_country
--
- Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Guettarda wrote:
On 1/25/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 25/01/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
There are large swaths of technical topics which are not computer-geek technical stuff which are covered extremely poorly, if at all.
Engineering materials, for example - aluminum, steel, composite materials, others. I went through and it seemed like doubled the structural and aerospace materials article count 2-3 months ago, and I haven't even gotten started properly...
Structural design concepts that anyone in an industry knows from school and are common professional knowledge, and still have no WP coverage.
This is just off the top of my head. I've got a to-do list somewhere
else.
Mmm. Could you put it on-wiki? The enormous redlink farms are occasionally a decent incentive to do something, and if nothing else they help give an idea of what's still out there.
I just added about 20 to my userpage this morning.
Jeff
On 25/01/07, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
Mmm. Could you put it on-wiki? The enormous redlink farms are occasionally a decent incentive to do something, and if nothing else they help give an idea of what's still out there.
You want a redlink farm? Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:TUF-KAT/Topics_by_country
Cor, that's demoralising. (Though I think their name-syntax may be a little off in some cases)
FWIW, the lists I was thinking of were on Charles Matthew's page: see the huge list of lists near the bottom of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Charles_Matthews
On 1/25/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 25/01/07, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
Mmm. Could you put it on-wiki? The enormous redlink farms are occasionally a decent incentive to do something, and if nothing else they help give an idea of what's still out there.
You want a redlink farm? Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:TUF-KAT/Topics_by_country
Cor, that's demoralising. (Though I think their name-syntax may be a little off in some cases)
FWIW, the lists I was thinking of were on Charles Matthew's page: see the huge list of lists near the bottom of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Charles_Matthews
Hey, I've learned about two great places to go to find things to do just today on the mailing list...
Demoralizing if you think we're already complete. Invigorating if you think there's a lot more to be done and want to do it 8-)
On 1/26/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Cor, that's demoralising. (Though I think their name-syntax may be a little off in some cases)
Heh, yeah, I just "fixed" a huge number of redlinks by changing "Religion of X" to "Religion in X" :)
Steve
On 26/01/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/26/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Cor, that's demoralising. (Though I think their name-syntax may be a little off in some cases)
Heh, yeah, I just "fixed" a huge number of redlinks by changing "Religion of X" to "Religion in X" :)
As an aside, this is the other use for redlink farms - they're a really good way to find places to put sensible redirects.
On 1/26/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
As an aside, this is the other use for redlink farms - they're a really good way to find places to put sensible redirects.
Yeah. I can't help but feel that there ought to be an organised front end to all of this, though. Like a committee that says "There shall be a "Religion in X" article for every country. The list of countries is stored [[here]]. Redirects of the following forms will be set up for every country..."
I mean I know Wikipedia isn't run top-down, but would it hurt to have a little management? Or should I say "leadership".
Steve
I get feedback on my new articles by posting a request in the edit summary. This way my stalkers know I've posted something new, go to it, and beautify it for me. It works well for me, as I'm spelling-challenged (I swear I use my word processor and spell check before posting, it doesn't help) and couldn't format a picture if my life depended upon it. Also I'm code-challenged (although I once wrote an operating system and can debug anyone else's code). People correct my formats, format my articles, add details where necessary.
From looking at my edit-summary, though, I see I've been doing nothing
lately but being contentious in AfD. Time to move back to the sciences, and FACs.
It does help to join a Wiki project, though, that's how you get personal stalkers who know you're likely to use turgid prose that should be corrected even when you don't make a spelling error.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brown_algae&diff=prev&oldi... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Don%27t_stuff_beans_up_y... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Silas_Kopf&diff=prev&oldid...
KP
On 26/01/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/26/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
As an aside, this is the other use for redlink farms - they're a really good way to find places to put sensible redirects.
Yeah. I can't help but feel that there ought to be an organised front end to all of this, though. Like a committee that says "There shall be a "Religion in X" article for every country. The list of countries is stored [[here]]. Redirects of the following forms will be set up for every country..."
I mean I know Wikipedia isn't run top-down, but would it hurt to have a little management? Or should I say "leadership".
That's exactly what we have wikiprojects for! Perfect textbook example of a good role for them - organising coverage on a specific subject, getting the infrastructure (names, redirects) in place that they can then come back and work on content
On 1/28/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 26/01/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/26/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
As an aside, this is the other use for redlink farms - they're a really good way to find places to put sensible redirects.
Yeah. I can't help but feel that there ought to be an organised front end to all of this, though. Like a committee that says "There shall be a "Religion in X" article for every country. The list of countries is stored [[here]]. Redirects of the following forms will be set up for every country..."
I mean I know Wikipedia isn't run top-down, but would it hurt to have a little management? Or should I say "leadership".
That's exactly what we have wikiprojects for! Perfect textbook example of a good role for them - organising coverage on a specific subject, getting the infrastructure (names, redirects) in place that they can then come back and work on content
It doesn't need a project; one sufficiently motivated individual can populate a matrix of needed stubs rapidly by hand, for n up to 100 or so.
On 1/29/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
It doesn't need a project; one sufficiently motivated individual can populate a matrix of needed stubs rapidly by hand, for n up to 100 or so.
Better if some sort of record exists to define the naming conventions, general format of articles etc exist. Even if the grunt work is carried out by one nutter.
Steve
On 1/29/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
That's exactly what we have wikiprojects for! Perfect textbook example of a good role for them - organising coverage on a specific subject, getting the infrastructure (names, redirects) in place that they can then come back and work on content
Ah, yes, this is true to an extent. WikiProjects are definitely better than nothing. Their two weaknesses are their self-inflicted lack of teeth (that obsequiously inoffensive nonsense "We're just a bunch of people who came up with some ideas that we would love you to just ignore, thanks!") and the lack of a meta-WikiProject.
That is, WikiProjects are self-declared managers of a particular domain. But who manages the WikiProjects? Who decides "Our coverage of Iranian dung beetles is inadequate, let's fix that?" Also, where is it written that all WikiProjects should obey a couple of defined conventions? And what happens to articles that aren't covered by any WikiProject at all?
I have a feeling that the Wikipedia 1.0 project is supposed to answer some of these questions but I haven't heard from them much lately. Probably because they're actually getting on and doing good work rather than being noisy and annoying like AfD. :)
Is this true? Is W1.0 doing what I described?
Steve
On Jan 28, 2007, at 23:10, Steve Bennett wrote:
That is, WikiProjects are self-declared managers of a particular domain. But who manages the WikiProjects? Who decides "Our coverage of Iranian dung beetles is inadequate, let's fix that?" Also, where is it written that all WikiProjects should obey a couple of defined conventions? And what happens to articles that aren't covered by any WikiProject at all?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council
Eh, they're trying, but it's a bit too bureaucratic for my tastes. --keitei
On 1/25/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
There are large swaths of technical topics which are not computer-geek technical stuff which are covered extremely poorly, if at all.
Engineering materials, for example - aluminum, steel, composite materials, others. I went through and it seemed like doubled the structural and aerospace materials article count 2-3 months ago, and I haven't even gotten started properly...
Yeah, that's true actually. On a slight sidetrack, I've also started to notice that while we have many articles about individual products in certain categories (cameras and phones, for example), in non-geeky fields such articles are often quickly designated "spam". This may be fair enough, if we think about sales volume, but I'm going to pay closer attention and see if it's actually reasonable.
Structural design concepts that anyone in an industry knows from school and are common professional knowledge, and still have no WP coverage.
In IT as well...our articles on stuff like data warehousing, business intelligence, database design etc are pretty rudimentary and not very well organised. Even someone sitting down with a first year textbook and getting some basic, even coverage would be a great help. As opposed to the very evident biases (often just caused by particular interests of contributors) causing lopsided coverage atm.
Steve
On 1/25/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/25/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
There are large swaths of technical topics which are not computer-geek technical stuff which are covered extremely poorly, if at all.
Engineering materials, for example - aluminum, steel, composite materials, others. I went through and it seemed like doubled the structural and aerospace materials article count 2-3 months ago, and I haven't even gotten started properly...
Yeah, that's true actually. On a slight sidetrack, I've also started to notice that while we have many articles about individual products in certain categories (cameras and phones, for example), in non-geeky fields such articles are often quickly designated "spam". This may be fair enough, if we think about sales volume, but I'm going to pay closer attention and see if it's actually reasonable.
Structural design concepts that anyone in an industry knows from school and are common professional knowledge, and still have no WP coverage.
In IT as well...our articles on stuff like data warehousing, business intelligence, database design etc are pretty rudimentary and not very well organised. Even someone sitting down with a first year textbook and getting some basic, even coverage would be a great help. As opposed to the very evident biases (often just caused by particular interests of contributors) causing lopsided coverage atm.
I'll try and migrate the to-do onto my userpage or some such; I agree that it would be useful.
I'd definitely second the data warehousing, business intelligence, database design and architecture, etc. We have the academic theory side of some of that, and product *cough* not-marketing, but not the "how does this work in practice" level stuff in the middle.
On 1/24/07, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/24/07, dmehkeri@swi.com dmehkeri@swi.com wrote:
Always Leave Something Undone used to be a Rule To Consider, didn't it.
Yes, but it got {{rejected}}. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Always_leave_something_undone
Not before it was merged with a somewhat unrelated idea, about what to do if you don't know a relevant piece of information.
This touches on a basic contradiction that we haven't really come to terms with -- on the one hand, this is an open collaboration, intended to let people see when something is unfinished, help them verify its accuracy, and quickly contribute what they know. On the other hand, many want the project to "look professional", to have a certain polish, to be respected as a brilliant resource.
It would be awfully nice if there were some simple differentiation in skin that could distinguish articles at different stages of development, so that leaving questions and unfinished statements in an article would not be unexpected or 'unprofessional' in an article written on lightly crumpled recycled paper; and unfinished ideas would not be unespected on some slightly grenapkin paper...
++SJ
On 1/26/07, SJ 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
It would be awfully nice if there were some simple differentiation in skin that could distinguish articles at different stages of development, so that leaving questions and unfinished statements in an article would not be unexpected or 'unprofessional' in an article written on lightly crumpled recycled paper; and unfinished ideas would not be unespected on some slightly grenapkin paper...
I suggested something like this once, whereby there are classes of articles, and what you can do to do an article depends on what class it is. Add an unsourced statement to an FA? No way, José. Add "(Probably similar situation in Europe, but I'm not sure.)" to a stub class article? Sure.
Then the idea is that articles should over time ratchet up from low quality to high quality, and can't be dragged down by adding poor quality material.
Steve
On 1/24/07, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/24/07, dmehkeri@swi.com dmehkeri@swi.com wrote:
Always Leave Something Undone used to be a Rule To Consider, didn't it.
Yes, but it got {{rejected}}. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Always_leave_something_undone
More evidence of Wikipedia's inexorably tendency towards lameness.
It may be getting better, but also more tediously humorless and bureaucratic.
So goes the world...
On 24/01/07, dmehkeri@swi.com dmehkeri@swi.com wrote:
Always Leave Something Undone used to be a Rule To Consider, didn't it.
See also: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WabiSabi