MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
You shouldn't judge a group based on the rantings of a single clueless individual.
Three or four years ago, Jimbo ranted about all of the external links he was finding in articles. IIRC, his point was that we didn't need any external links, that a Wikipedia article ought to stand on its own, and be better than any other website on the subject.
Maybe we should have listened to him.
Geoff
on 1/24/07 8:50 PM, Geoffrey Burling at llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
Three or four years ago, Jimbo ranted about all of the external links he was finding in articles. IIRC, his point was that we didn't need any external links, that a Wikipedia article ought to stand on its own, and be better than any other website on the subject.
Maybe we should have listened to him.
At least one value of external links that I can think of is that they provide access to additional information which, for a variety of reasons, cannot be included in the Article's text.
Marc Riddell
Marc Riddell wrote:
on 1/24/07 8:50 PM, Geoffrey Burling at llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
Three or four years ago, Jimbo ranted about all of the external links he was finding in articles. IIRC, his point was that we didn't need any external links, that a Wikipedia article ought to stand on its own, and be better than any other website on the subject.
Maybe we should have listened to him.
At least one value of external links that I can think of is that they provide access to additional information which, for a variety of reasons, cannot be included in the Article's text.
Yes, I think this is important, but I also think external links are overused. It would be weird to have an article on Amazon without a link to amazon.com, or an article on the Embassy of France in the United States without a link to ambafrance-us.org. But that doesn't mean the article on the card-game hearts should link to some random website giving opinions on good and bad strategies (as it did until recently).
-Mark
On 1/25/07, Geoffrey Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
Three or four years ago, Jimbo ranted about all of the external links he was finding in articles. IIRC, his point was that we didn't need any external links, that a Wikipedia article ought to stand on its own, and be better than any other website on the subject.
It's a value trade-off. For many stubs, there's already a perfect article out there on the subject. Linking to it is great. What's the additional value in spending hundreds of hours trying to get that one obscure article up to the same quality?
Have a look at [[Club skifield]] (which I wrote). Follow the external link. Is it really worth our (my) while attempting to write something that surpasses the link in terms of quality, depth, comprehensiveness of coverage? Practically speaking, who is going to be reading Wikipedia that doesn't have access to the net, but needs that information?
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
Have a look at [[Club skifield]] (which I wrote). Follow the external link. Is it really worth our (my) while attempting to write something that surpasses the link in terms of quality, depth, comprehensiveness of coverage? Practically speaking, who is going to be reading Wikipedia that doesn't have access to the net, but needs that information?
Wikipedia is not a web directory. There are (or were, at least) people who condense Wikipedia on CD/DVDs for use by those who don't have (reliable) internet access. This sort of distribution is a fundamental objective of the project. Suggesting that we don't need to include information because it's available elsewhere on the web suggests a misunderstanding of the project.
-Rich
On 1/27/07, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
Wikipedia is not a web directory. There are (or were, at least) people who condense Wikipedia on CD/DVDs for use by those who don't have (reliable) internet access. This sort of distribution is a fundamental objective of the project. Suggesting that we don't need to include information because it's available elsewhere on the web suggests a misunderstanding of the project.
"Don't need to" is terribly simplistic. We don't have infinite resources, or infinite time. If we did, everything would be simple. But given that I can spend only finite per time working on Wikipedia, where would you, the hypothetical pointy-haired boss of Wikipedia want me to spend my time? Creating 10 stubs with 1 external link each, or creating 1 article with 10 lines of text?
There are endless ways of contributing to Wikipedia. Just because one chooses not to take up one of them doesn't mean one isn't contributing...
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 1/27/07, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
Wikipedia is not a web directory. There are (or were, at least) people who condense Wikipedia on CD/DVDs for use by those who don't have (reliable) internet access. This sort of distribution is a fundamental objective of the project. Suggesting that we don't need to include information because it's available elsewhere on the web suggests a misunderstanding of the project.
"Don't need to" is terribly simplistic. We don't have infinite resources, or infinite time. If we did, everything would be simple. But given that I can spend only finite per time working on Wikipedia, where would you, the hypothetical pointy-haired boss of Wikipedia want me to spend my time? Creating 10 stubs with 1 external link each, or creating 1 article with 10 lines of text?
There are endless ways of contributing to Wikipedia. Just because one chooses not to take up one of them doesn't mean one isn't contributing...
I don't care whether you add stubs, "micro-stubs", or featured-article quality articles. This isn't about what _you_ decide to work on.
Going back to your post that I was replying to:
<quoted text> Have a look at [[Club skifield]] (which I wrote). Follow the external link. Is it really worth our (my) while attempting to write something that surpasses the link in terms of quality, depth, comprehensiveness of coverage? Practically speaking, who is going to be reading Wikipedia that doesn't have access to the net, but needs that information? </quoted text>
I took this to be a suggestion that it isn't worth your (our) effort to include or better content that is found elsewhere on the net. And I wanted to make sure that you (we) understood that there _are_ people who will use Wikipedia without having access to the web.
And I don't appreciate your painting me as some sort of self-appointed Wikipedia manager. There was nothing in my post to suggest that I objected to your efforts. What I objected to was what I perceived as your limited understanding of the nature of the project.
-Rich
Rich Holton wrote:
And I don't appreciate your painting me as some sort of self-appointed Wikipedia manager. There was nothing in my post to suggest that I objected to your efforts. What I objected to was what I perceived as your limited understanding of the nature of the project.
I don't mean to put words in Steve's mouth, but... my understanding of what he wrote was that he was asking you (Rich) to put yourself in the hypothetical/pretend role of a Wiki-Manager, not that he meant you were already in such a role. Or to stick with the Dilbert analogy: he was asking you to put on a Pointy-Haired wig for a minute. He was not implying your hair was already pointy. :)
Cheers, - PeruvianLlama
PeruvianLlama wrote:
Rich Holton wrote:
And I don't appreciate your painting me as some sort of self-appointed Wikipedia manager. There was nothing in my post to suggest that I objected to your efforts. What I objected to was what I perceived as your limited understanding of the nature of the project.
I don't mean to put words in Steve's mouth, but... my understanding of what he wrote was that he was asking you (Rich) to put yourself in the hypothetical/pretend role of a Wiki-Manager, not that he meant you were already in such a role. Or to stick with the Dilbert analogy: he was asking you to put on a Pointy-Haired wig for a minute. He was not implying your hair was already pointy. :)
Hmmm...Perhaps you're right. In which case, I apologize to Steve for misunderstanding his intentions there.
-Rich
Steve Bennett wrote:
Have a look at [[Club skifield]] (which I wrote). Follow the external link. Is it really worth our (my) while attempting to write something that surpasses the link in terms of quality, depth, comprehensiveness of coverage? Practically speaking, who is going to be reading Wikipedia that doesn't have access to the net, but needs that information?
The external link in question is: http://forum.ski.com.au/scripts/ultimatebboard/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;...
It leads to a post on a web-based forum. That's potentially pretty ephemeral, isn't it? What happens if the site goes down, the forum gets discontinued, they change forum software and the old posts aren't compatible, or they simply decide to prune old posts to "save space"? The post is copyrighted and not under a free licence, so an interested party can't just save a copy and post it somewhere else if that happens.
Also, what happens if the information in that post turns out to have an error, or becomes obsolete with time? There's no way to update it. It was written by someone who claims the title "Broken River Advocate", and I presume "Broken River" is the name of some ski facility somewhere. What if the post is POV?
So even assuming everyone reading Wikipedia's contents has full live access to the rest of the web (an assumption Rich Holton questioned in another post), there's still a major benefit in bringing this information into Wikipedia's database and under Wikipedia's free licence.