Harry Kroto.
'Kroto shared his views on what he calls the "GooYouWiki-Revolution" and spoke highly of Wikipedia as a resource. "In my field," said Kroto, "it's more reliable than the textbooks."'
http://www.reflector-online.com/life/wikipedia-not-all-bad-even-sexy-1.26650...
On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
Harry Kroto.
'Kroto shared his views on what he calls the "GooYouWiki-Revolution" and spoke highly of Wikipedia as a resource. "In my field," said Kroto, "it's more reliable than the textbooks."'
http://www.reflector-online.com/life/wikipedia-not-all-bad-even-sexy-1.26650...
Though his article has been tagged since May 2009 with {{BLP sources}}.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Kroto
I wonder if that is back of the backlog mentioned in other posts, or an example of over-zealous tagging?
I might try and tidy that article up if no-one else gets there first.
Carcharoth
I removed the tag. It was added in 2009 by a usually reliable editor, [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Harry_Kroto&diff=next&oldi...], at a time when the bio had only one indisputably reliable source, the Nobel biography, and a number of good sources marked as external links, such as a BBC interview with him, the profiles of him at his several universities, and a page listing him from the Royal Society . I consider the addditon of the tag more than a little hyper-critical, and I'm surprised none of the many who must have seen it did not take the opportunity to remove it. By now the p. has a number of additional formal references documenting particular aspects, but the basic facts are all in the Nobel bio.
On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 10:36 AM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
Harry Kroto.
'Kroto shared his views on what he calls the "GooYouWiki-Revolution" and spoke highly of Wikipedia as a resource. "In my field," said Kroto, "it's more reliable than the textbooks."'
http://www.reflector-online.com/life/wikipedia-not-all-bad-even-sexy-1.26650...
Though his article has been tagged since May 2009 with {{BLP sources}}.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Kroto
I wonder if that is back of the backlog mentioned in other posts, or an example of over-zealous tagging?
I might try and tidy that article up if no-one else gets there first.
Carcharoth
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Thanks for that. And for looking into the history of that. The fact that the tag stayed there for so long doesn't surprise me at all. Most casual editors, if they don't know how the system works, will assume that someone else will deal with the tag and eventually remove it. This is one reason backlogs got so big, because only a small proportion of editors actually use the tags and their workflows in a systematic manner, and this doesn't include the vast majority of casual editors.
One other thing has struck me about the reliability of tagging, and that is the fact that most of the articles I use to look up stuff most days (from high-traffic articles to relatively obscure stuff) tends not to have tags (though some do). I think this is an indication in same way that stuff that people look at and care about gets edited and improved enough that they don't get tagged (or the tags are removed), but that stuff that is tagged but not fixed may tend to be the stuff that readers and editors don't really care about enough (again, stats of article traffic for the backlogs would help immensely here). The few times I've dipped into the backlog, I've recoiled at the stuff being written about and then tagged as they are mostly borderline notable and I just can't bring myself to help out with stuff that frankly arouses no interest in me and I'm never likely to need to refer to as a reader.
The backlog I dipped into was:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_needing_sections
Selecting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_needing_sections_from_October...
And the articles I looked at were:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer_Pace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_J._Palackal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palamaneri
In all three cases, I struggled to convince myself that editing these articles would be a good use of my time. I then got briefly excited when I spotted this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulovsky_expedition
But then I realised that the expedition never took place (though to be fair, it is more interesting than it looks, and I might go back to that one). My point being that unless people are very disciplined, they will work best on what interests them, and I suspect large parts of the older bits of the backlogs are obscure articles of borderline notability that no-one can summon up enough motivation to work on.
Carcharoth
On Sat, Nov 5, 2011 at 4:33 AM, David Goodman dggenwp@gmail.com wrote:
I removed the tag. It was added in 2009 by a usually reliable editor, [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Harry_Kroto&diff=next&oldi...], at a time when the bio had only one indisputably reliable source, the Nobel biography, and a number of good sources marked as external links, such as a BBC interview with him, the profiles of him at his several universities, and a page listing him from the Royal Society . I consider the addditon of the tag more than a little hyper-critical, and I'm surprised none of the many who must have seen it did not take the opportunity to remove it. By now the p. has a number of additional formal references documenting particular aspects, but the basic facts are all in the Nobel bio.
On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 10:36 AM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
Harry Kroto.
'Kroto shared his views on what he calls the "GooYouWiki-Revolution" and spoke highly of Wikipedia as a resource. "In my field," said Kroto, "it's more reliable than the textbooks."'
http://www.reflector-online.com/life/wikipedia-not-all-bad-even-sexy-1.26650...
Though his article has been tagged since May 2009 with {{BLP sources}}.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Kroto
I wonder if that is back of the backlog mentioned in other posts, or an example of over-zealous tagging?
I might try and tidy that article up if no-one else gets there first.
Carcharoth
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- David Goodman
DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 11/04/11 11:24 PM, Carcharoth wrote:
Thanks for that. And for looking into the history of that. The fact that the tag stayed there for so long doesn't surprise me at all. Most casual editors, if they don't know how the system works, will assume that someone else will deal with the tag and eventually remove it. This is one reason backlogs got so big, because only a small proportion of editors actually use the tags and their workflows in a systematic manner, and this doesn't include the vast majority of casual editors.
I suppose this also has some relationship to the bystander phenomenon, where a victim will more likely be helped if there is only one witness to an accident than many.
One other thing has struck me about the reliability of tagging, and that is the fact that most of the articles I use to look up stuff most days (from high-traffic articles to relatively obscure stuff) tends not to have tags (though some do). I think this is an indication in same way that stuff that people look at and care about gets edited and improved enough that they don't get tagged (or the tags are removed), but that stuff that is tagged but not fixed may tend to be the stuff that readers and editors don't really care about enough (again, stats of article traffic for the backlogs would help immensely here). The few times I've dipped into the backlog, I've recoiled at the stuff being written about and then tagged as they are mostly borderline notable and I just can't bring myself to help out with stuff that frankly arouses no interest in me and I'm never likely to need to refer to as a reader.
When I look at an article as an ordinary reader looking for information I mostly don't notice if it has been referenced, and I've learned to ignore the tags that are there. I sometimes wish that they were at the bottom of the page where they are less visible. The information already there will usually satisfy me. Unless I want to look more deeply into the matter, or something sounds suspicious I have no need to look at the references.
The backlog I dipped into was:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_needing_sections
Sectioning is a kind of fix that can be done without seeking outside information. Those people who add this tag could just as easily fix it themselves.
Selecting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_needing_sections_from_October...
And the articles I looked at were:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer_Pace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_J._Palackal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palamaneri
In all three cases, I struggled to convince myself that editing these articles would be a good use of my time.
One possible test for notability is to ask whether they are more or less notable than our many articles on second string sports figures and entertainers.
Ray
On Sat, Nov 5, 2011 at 8:52 AM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
When I look at an article as an ordinary reader looking for information I mostly don't notice if it has been referenced...
I fall into the category satirised by XKCD (though I can't find the strip, unfortunately): if a sentence has a little blue number at the end of it I am satisfied that it is definitely true.
I really need to change.
But I certainly do notice if something is not referenced. Well, it's more nuanced than that. If something has NO references, I tend to read it without much critical judgement. If something is partially referenced I tend to feel dubious about the whole enterprise. And that shouldn't be.
On 05/11/2011 10:46, Bod Notbod wrote:
On Sat, Nov 5, 2011 at 8:52 AM, Ray Saintongesaintonge@telus.net wrote:
When I look at an article as an ordinary reader looking for information I mostly don't notice if it has been referenced...
I fall into the category satirised by XKCD (though I can't find the strip, unfortunately): if a sentence has a little blue number at the end of it I am satisfied that it is definitely true.
On 4 November 2011 14:24, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
Harry Kroto.
'Kroto shared his views on what he calls the "GooYouWiki-Revolution" and spoke highly of Wikipedia as a resource. "In my field," said Kroto, "it's more reliable than the textbooks."'
http://www.reflector-online.com/life/wikipedia-not-all-bad-even-sexy-1.26650...
In fairness his field is chemistry which has issues with its textbooks. Most of the best chemists are more interested in publishing in journals rather than text books and all but the most fundamental areas (and Atkins Physical Chemistry has rather a lot of that area locked down) move so fast that books are outdated within a year or so.
Throw in the academic publishing sector wishing to push out new editions of their organic and inorganic chemistry books each year and errors in proof reading are also an issue.
geni wrote:
On 4 November 2011 14:24, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
'Kroto shared his views on what he calls the "GooYouWiki-Revolution" and spoke highly of Wikipedia as a resource. "In my field," said Kroto, "it's more reliable than the textbooks."'
In fairness his field is chemistry which has issues with its textbooks. Most of the best chemists are more interested in publishing in journals rather than text books...
Well, sure, but "in fairness" to what? I bet there are plenty of fields (probably a majority) where there are various issues with the textbooks, where the best practitioners aren't interested in writing for them, where one commercial entity or another is trying to exert a stranglehold, etc., etc...
On 4 November 2011 16:02, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
Well, sure, but "in fairness" to what? I bet there are plenty of fields (probably a majority) where there are various issues with the textbooks, where the best practitioners aren't interested in writing for them, where one commercial entity or another is trying to exert a stranglehold, etc., etc...
Its more a sciences/humanity divide as far as I can tell.
On 11/04/11 8:45 AM, geni wrote:
On 4 November 2011 14:24, Tony Sidawaytonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
Harry Kroto.
'Kroto shared his views on what he calls the "GooYouWiki-Revolution" and spoke highly of Wikipedia as a resource. "In my field," said Kroto, "it's more reliable than the textbooks."'
http://www.reflector-online.com/life/wikipedia-not-all-bad-even-sexy-1.26650...
In fairness his field is chemistry which has issues with its textbooks. Most of the best chemists are more interested in publishing in journals rather than text books and all but the most fundamental areas (and Atkins Physical Chemistry has rather a lot of that area locked down) move so fast that books are outdated within a year or so.
Throw in the academic publishing sector wishing to push out new editions of their organic and inorganic chemistry books each year and errors in proof reading are also an issue.
Writing a long textbook may not be financially rewarding for the author. But I would also think that with undergraduate science there is not much incentive to investigate alternative approaches. That certainly keeps the textbook publishers happy.
If a student uses Wikipedia for an essay it's dishonest not to say so, so the present state of things only drives users into the closet. The real issue should not be about using Wikipedia as a source, but using it as the only source for the key concepts of the essay.
Ray