In a message dated 10/3/2010 8:14:18 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
peter.damian(a)btinternet.com writes:
> Will, can you try and focus on the three questions and keep this
> on-topic.
>
> 1. Is there a quality problem in certain areas. Yes or no?
>
> 2. If there is a problem, are there any underlying or systematic reasons?
>
> 3. If there are any underlying or systematic reasons, can they easily be
> addressed?
1. One of the foundational works that was used to create Wikipedia was the
1911 EB. Wherever that was flawed, we started out flawed. I'm sure there
are some who would say that this never occurred, because they can't remember
that far back. However should anyone wish to add any article from the
1911EB, say on Truth or Avicenna or even to incorporate or restructure such an
article based on that, they are quite free to so do.
2. Wikipedia has grown like a crystal grows in the midst of impurities.
There are impurities perhaps at the heart of the crystal, and it's also not
uniform and spherical. When I do a search on some medieval person (my area on
concentration) of import, I expect more often than not, to find..
something. In almost every single case, almost every, the article is lopsided,
unsupported, has wild claims and specific years which we do not in fact know... I
don't blame the project for these flaws, I see them as a way to contribute.
I remember with what we started.
3. I would suggest Peter, should you think it possible, to start a new
project which is devoted to Philosophy or even to the Humanities, which I think
is too broad personally, and build it up and use it as a basis from which
others can make additions to Wikipedia. That's what I do. If I encounter, as
I sometimes do, an article that is so utterly lacking, that I cannot simply
make a few changes to it, I start fresh, from primary and secondary sources
and built my own article, in one of my own projects. Then sometimes, when
I'm satisfied at the thing of great beauty I've created, I will adds bits of
it back to Wikipedia.
Flaws in Wikipedia are areas of opportunity for other projects to fill. At
the present time. Wikipedia is not the sole project which exists in this
area.
W
In a message dated 9/19/2010 9:38:37 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
peter.damian(a)btinternet.com writes:
> "I would strongly urge you to leave the editing of articles
> concerning philosophy and/or philosophers to genuine experts. You simply
> lack the understanding and expertise required to assess whether an edit is
> a
> genuine improvement or an obvious and cowardly sniper attack (as with the
> insertion in question)."
Yes I now see the problem :)
Ivory tower eggheads who think they have the right now, to talk down to
other contributors instead of educating them.
If you, as an academic, cannot explain your edit/article/sentence to a
person who isn't already an expert in your field, then you simply are too
rarified to find a home here at Wikipedia and good riddance, in my opinion.
We don't need *more* huffing and puffing, put-out little boys fingering our
project.
Articles which can only be understood and thus edited by those with IQs
over 165 should probably be consigned to specialist (read read by few)
periodicals.
I'll take your one-sentence snipe as abject agreement :)
Will Johnson
In a message dated 10/2/2010 3:01:47 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
slimvirgin(a)gmail.com writes:
> Academics don't have the time or patience to explain basic points for
> years on end to people who feel that reading books or papers about the
> subject is unnecessary. I'm sure the biology experts would give up too
> if their area of expertise were undermined in such a basic way. >>
But are mission is to explain things to that level. So those academics who
don't have the time or patience to do that, should cede the floor to the
"journalists" who do, shouldn't they?
When I read an encyclopedia article on Number Theory for example, I should
be able to use just that work, perhaps other articles, to get all the
information I need to *understand* the article. Although I might want more depth,
I shouldn't need to refer to any outside work to get the breadth.
By saying what you did above, you are essentially stating that in order for
our readers to even understand an article they need a background in it. I
can't agree.
W.
Just to let you know that Part 3 of the Study on Controversial content is now up on its own Meta page http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Wikimedia_Study_of_Controversial_Conten…. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the discussion so far -- it has been expectedly passionate, but very interesting, and illuminating. All three parts of the study, combined together, will be presented to the Wikimedia Foundation Board on Friday, Oct. 8 at their next meeting. Either the Board or we will be following up on that presentation. Thanks again to all for allowing us to enter your "house" as a guest; we've been treated very civilly, and appreciate it. Robert and Dory Harris
Prishtina Hosts Second International Conference on Software Freedom
For the second year running the Kosovar Association for Free/Libre and
Open Source Software
(FLOSSK) and the University of Prishtina are organizing a conference
dedicated to free software - Software Freedom Kosova Conference
2010.
This conference follows upon the success of SFK09 held in August last
year attended by more than 500 participants and over 40 national and
international speakers and professionals.
SFK10 will take place on 25 and 26 September starting at 9:00 in the
venues of the
Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the University of
Prishtina. This year the conference will host several notable hacker
keynotes.
Leon Shiman will speak on the use of FLOSS in public administration;
Rob Savoy of Gnash project will talk about network protocols; Mikel
Maron will speak on the geopolitical use of open maps and Peter Salus,
historian of operating systems, will lecture on the history of
development of GNU/Linux.
Overall, over 20 topics will be discussed, ranging from issues
associated with the Free Encyclopedia Wikipedia, GNU/Linux,
intellectual property licenses, building of communities,
OpenStreetMap, Sugar, and many other topics in the field of free
software.
Topics to be discussed and the quality of lecturers, along with the
success of last year's conference make SFK10 the largest conference of
its kind in Southeast Europe.
The conference is held under the auspices of the Office of the Prime
Minister of the Republic of Kosovo and is supported by a number of
donors from whom it is worth mentioning: the Ministry of Energy and
Mining, Mozilla, Rrota, PC World Albanian and the University of
Prishtina Student Center.
The conference is free to participants during the two days. The
presentations and detailed information on the conference can be found
at www.kosovasoftwarefreedom.org
------
For Immediate Release
FLOSS Kosova
info(a)flossk.org
On Sep 22, 3:04 pm, "jamesmikedup...(a)googlemail.com"
<jamesmikedup...(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
> here is a rough translation of the press release :
> Pristina is the conference host software
> ***On 25 and 26 September Pristina will be hosted for the second time
> Freedom Conference Software Kosovo.*** *FLOSS SFK10 Kosovo, organized by
the
> Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering (FIEK) of the University of
> Pristina.*
>
> SFK09 held last year was attended by about 500 people who attended about
40
> lectures of 25 lecturers. This time the conference will be focused: the 24
> lectures will be from Kosovo, region and world.
>
> The main and guest lecturers at the same time honor of this conference
are
> renowned as hackers Leon Shiman, Rob Savoye, Mikel Maro and Peter
> Salus.Shiman's Foundation board member who oversees the development of
> graphical
> system for Linux and BSD - x.org, and the owner of Shiman Associates
> consulting firm. Savoye is the primary developer of Gnash as previously
> developed for Debian, Red Hat and Yahoo. Savoye has been programming since
> 1977. Maron specializes in programming applications based on geography and
> location. Maron is OpenStreeMap Foundation board member, a service
similar
> to Google Maps. Salus is a linguist, computer scientist and historian of
> technology. He worked a professor and dean at several universities. But
this
> is only the result of the work of the organizing committee which is
> preparing the conference program for almost a year .
>
> Other topics will provide for all the little: Milot Shala will directly
> demonstrate the Qt Framework development of Nokia's, Martin will tell
> Bekkelund Norwegian practices with open source code (open source) in state
> administration, Baki Goxhaj will talk about WordPress, Marco Fioretti will
> show how programming languages can be used in schools. Other topics are
> Wikipedia, CAD, use of EU's funds in Open Source, Sugar platform for
> children, CMS systems for universities, Android platform, etc..
>
> The conference will be held on the premises of FIEK-regulation. Free
> Registration begins on Saturday at 9:00 pm and during the two days program
> starts at 10:00. The conference is supported financially by the Office of
> the Prime Minister, Wheel, PC World and New OpenWorld.al.
>
> For more visit the official website of Kosovo Organization free software
and
> open - FLOSS Kosovo <http://kosovasoftwarefreedom.org/> . */ telegraph /*
>
> *
> *
>
> On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 12:57 PM, Luca Paolo Pescatore <
multiva...(a)gmail.com
>
>
>
> > wrote:
> > Ehm.... great... should I send to TechCrunch and other EN/US websites in
> > Albanian ? :)
>
> > Is it possible to have a PR in English ?
>
> > Luca
>
> > On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 12:54 PM, jamesmikedup...(a)googlemail.com <
> > jamesmikedup...(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> >> Bernard Writes :
>
> >> The attached notice has been published today in Gazeta Express and I
have
> >> sent it to: Telegrafi, Koha Ditore and RTKlive.com. You can use this to
send
> >> to other media and maybe invite them to come. Also Arianit has written
a
> >> similar text that we can also use...(
> >>http://arianit2.wordpress.com/2010/09/21/kete-vikend-prishtina-behet-...
> >> )
>
> >> As I said yesterday, it would be good if somebody knows people in the
> >> media and talks to them to come.
>
> >> --
> >> Group homepage:http://groups.google.com/group/foss-al?hl=en
> >> Send messages to: foss-al(a)googlegroups.com
> >> Unsubscribe: foss-al+unsubscribe(a)googlegroups.com<foss-al%2Bunsubscribe(a)googlegroups.com>
<foss-al%2Bunsubscribe(a)googlegroups.com<foss-al%252Bunsubscribe(a)googlegroups.com>
>
>
> > --
> > Group homepage:http://groups.google.com/group/foss-al?hl=en
> > Send messages to: foss-al(a)googlegroups.com
> > Unsubscribe: foss-al+unsubscribe(a)googlegroups.com<foss-al%2Bunsubscribe(a)googlegroups.com>
<foss-al%2Bunsubscribe(a)googlegroups.com<foss-al%252Bunsubscribe(a)googlegroups.com>
>
>
> --
> James Michael DuPont
> Member of Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova and Albania flossk.org
> flossal.org
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James Michael DuPont
Member of Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova and Albania flossk.orgflossal.org
For those who haven't been following the movement roles work on
meta[0], I wanted to take a minute for blatant self-promotion.
Of particular note is the initial proposal[1], which we're trying to
wrap up before the WMF Board meeting in just over a week. Those of
you thinking that this is happening a bit close are absolutely
correct—it's an uncomfortable deadline, to be sure; as we get more
participation in the coming months, this should get a lot smoother.
I also want to draw attention to a draft questionnaire[2], which is
meant to informally gather opinions and hopefully produce some
insightful commentary. As a draft, of course, everyone should feel
welcome to discuss and edit.
I'll continue to send periodic updates to Foundation-l, but the actual
work's happening on meta—anyone interested is encouraged to
participate there. It's a community process, and it won't happen by
itself.
Austin
[0] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_roles_working_group
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_roles_working_group/Proposal
[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_roles_working_group/Questionnaire