In a message dated 9/20/2010 12:41:36 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
peter.damian(a)btinternet.com writes:
> > I can read a book on the History of the Fourth Crusade, and adds quotes
> to
> > our articles on the persons and events, just as well as an expert in
> that
> > specific field.
>
> If this
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Margaret_of_Hungary&
> oldid=383882577
> is anything to go by, the answer is, no you can't. Sorry :(
What's the point of this sort of sniping?
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Margaret_of_Hungary&diff=prev&
oldid=383882577
I really don't see to what you're referring. This diff only shows the
addition of her third marriage, and one short sentence about "Boetia". If
you're claiming you want a source for the third marriage, than tag it! Otherwise
I don't know what you're saying.
You can respond to me privately on this point, since I doubt the list cares
about the intricate details of a rather obscure woman dead for 800 years.
Personally I think Nathan Salmon is wrong. Only in a single instance can I
recall being frustrated at the insistence of citing every tiny fact in an
article. Rather, in my experience, some rather outrageous claims stand, and
it's I who have had to come along and tag those claims, and then later
remove them. The problem, if we have a citation problem at all, is trying to
teach general editors who sort of things are credible sources and what sort are
not. In general I mean, not in particular.
Salmon makes the mistake of stating something like "known to those who
know". Excuse me? That's the very problem. We are not here to provide extra
details for experts to debate amongst themselves. We are a general work. We
need to talk to the general population, in a language they understand, with
citations that show the exact points we're making, at least when
challenged. That is how we show we are experts. Not in our use of jargonized
language and high-level sputterings, that few can get through. For Salmon to
declare that certain things "known to experts" cannot be challenged, is
frankly... outrageous. And highlights my point, that those sort of experts, the ones
who can't be cajoled into citing sources, and explaining points, simply do
not belong in this project.
Will Johnson
Image by FlamingText.com
Hi,
Just thought I'd tell you guys that's there's an upcoming Mozilla Drumbeat Festival this November in Barcelona whose theme is "Learning, Freedom and the Web". It's a festival that gathers librarians, creative commoners, wikimedians, hackers, open textbook authors, edupunks and people teaching web development from all over the world. Keynote guests include Mitchell Baker, Mozilla Foundation; Joi Ito, Creative Commons; to mention but afew. As far as I know, the only person from WMF will be SJ and Wikimedians from Catalan. Check: http://www.drumbeat.org/festival for more info. Also, Open Ed 2010 will be occuring during the same time. http://openedconference.org/2010/
Hope to see you guys there.
Regards,
Abbas Mahmoud
I suppose you may be interested:
http://espresso.repubblica.it/dettaglio/el-me-aristotil/2134379/18
But, don't expect it to be an actual usable judgement about those
projects, because it's more like a pretext to comment some recent
Italian events.
A Google translation to English contains "only" 2-3 completely wrong
sentences.
Nemo
In a message dated 9/19/2010 10:47:23 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
peter.damian(a)btinternet.com writes:
> You have made your view very clear. I've tried to be polite, and to
> avoid
> any talking-down, and I am sorry if it has appeared that way. You use the
>
> collective 'we', meaning you speak for all Wikipedians. To the other
> Wikipedians here: is there a problem with academics 'talking down'? Do
> they
> have a problem explaining their ideas in articles? Are they 'too
> rarified'
> to be included in Wikipedia? If so, can Wikipedia do without them? If
> not,
> how could they be encouraged to contribute better?
Your reading comprehension is lacking. If you again review my post you
will find that I was quoting and thus responding to the quote you made where
your colleague (or sock-puppet?) was stating that a particular article should
be written and edited only by experts. I find that it's never the case that
an encyclopedia article cannot be understood enough by myself, to be able
to add a word, or fix a usage, or add a source, at the least. To make a
claim like that is shocking to my senses, I fell right on the floor.
Some academics do not have a problem explaining their articles or edits,
*some do*. And some think they have an acknowledge high position from which
to dictate. That is false.
The point of view of an academic contributition, imho should be, "I'm in a
better position to EXPLAIN this article, paragraph, sentence, edit". Not
"I'm in a better position to ENFORCE same." The latter view is anathema to
the project and must be shunned by all right-thinking people (the rest will be
dealt with later by the re-education committee).
I hope my position is more clear now. If you can't support your posiiton
in such a way that most editors, non-experts, would say, "Oh I see, yes that
seems clear and seems to have evidence..." then you have failed, not the
reader and not the co-contributor who may not be an expert.
Before I put some or all on Commons, please review for any you hate:
http://reddragdiva.co.uk/temp/gallery.html
If you don't like a photo of you, please email me, not the lists ;-)
- d.
In a message dated 9/18/2010 10:10:56 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
peter.damian(a)btinternet.com writes:
> I think you misunderstand the meaning of 'enduring'.
I think you misunderstand the purpose of an 'argument'.
Your one-line remarks do not propel your purpose forward, they make it look
like you're being jocular.
(subject was: Cyn Skyberg joins Wikimedia as CTCO!)
On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 4:03 AM, Bod Notbod <bodnotbod(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 12:06 PM, Liam Wyatt <liamwyatt(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I've always
>> thought that if for some reason all of the Wikimedia projects suddenly
>> disappeared (and no one had any backups) we would be upset about it for a
>> couple of days but then we would just start again ...
>
> O RLY!?
This was my first thought as well. But as Liam said after that...
>> ... and we would do it better!
If this scenario ever did happen, I expect that the first step would
be to ensure it never happened again.
We, the people, should start planning for this worse case scenario now.
A mirror system would be great; that is how project gutenberg, linux
and sf.net do disaster recovery. It is simple, cheap and effective.
http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/sourceforge/wiki/Mirrorshttp://www.gutenberg.org/MIRRORS.ALL
English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portugeuse, Swedish and
Chinese Wikipedia all appear to have some mirrors, but are any of them
reliable enough to be used for disaster recovery?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:MIRRORhttp://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Weiternutzunghttp://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Sites_miroirshttp://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cloni
It would be nice to have an agreement with these mirrors that they
will make the most recent dump available if WMF is unable to provide
it.
I don't see any mirrors listed on the Spanish page about mirrors.
Are there mirrors of other Wikimedia projects?
The smaller projects are easier to backup, as they are smaller. I am
sure that with a little effort and coordination, chapters,
universities and similar organisations would be willing to routinely
backup a subset of projects, and combined we would have multiple
current backups of all projects.
--
John Vandenberg
Only wimps use tape backup: real men just upload their important stuff
on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;)
- Torvalds, Linus (1996-07-20).
If we wish to improve the quality of academic articles than we need to
increase Wikipedia's ties with academia. Poor coverage of topics exists in
all fields.
We need to figure out why the academics we have now do contribute and why
others do not. What do this group see as barriers to getting involved?
We need to liaison or partner more with Universities. Have Wikipedia used
more in class projects. So much student work is just filled away to never
be look at again after a term has ended. Wikipedia gives student a chance
to make lasting changes to an academic field.
We need to look at why other wikis are being created such as wikidocs,
medpeadia, and radiopedia (there are 87 dealing with science alone) rather
than they joining us. Others in academia obviously perceive some problems
with our system. Are this preceptions justified? Can we work with these
other 87 wiki in a collaborative way to reduce a duplication of effort on
similar content? Could we convince some of them to simply join us?
--
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, B.Sc.
Your position is flawed. What is "enduring" is not the same as what will
be "interesting" to future generations. Enduring to me means, "yet
existing". Some sex toys will be yet existing in 100 years, but I'm sure they will
all be "interesting" especially to researchers of the use of sex toys which
no longer exist.
And that is the very issue. We need to cover items of historical interest,
not just present. And in doing that, we must cover all items of present
interest because we cannot *presume* to discern what in the future may be of
interest.
The most frustrating thing in genealogy, and biography are those exact
points that persons of that day past, thought wouldnt' be of interest and on
which today major points of contention are yet turning. We should cover
whatever our authors *wish* to cover provided it is written in encyclopedic
language and is balanced in what is presented, not in what *ought* to be
presented. That is covered by SOFIXIT.
We don't have experts in every field, it's doubtful we ever will. We
shouldn't denigrate those articles in fields x y and z simply because no expert
in field a b or c is present.
In a message dated 9/18/2010 12:59:33 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
peter.damian(a)btinternet.com writes:
> "There will always be more television programmes, long playing records,
> popular beat combos and innovative sex toys than there will be Einsteins,
> paradigm shifting scientific discoveries and philosophical enquiries." -
> of
> course but don't confuse that point with the question of which of these
> subjects should be included in an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia should
> have
> a bias towards what is enduring.
As promised, the draft report on our study of Controversial Content on Wikimedia projects is now available at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Wikimedia_Study_of_Controversial_Content. We're actually planning to release the study on that page in three segments, with a day or two in between This first one discusses the general principles that animated our observations and recommendations. We are very interested in your comments, and will be monitoring them carefully. Your feedback will be built into the report we eventually make to the Board in early October. And thanks to all for the welcoming reception we've been given since our appearance in late June. These are difficult questions to deal with, as you all know -- your openness has made it easier for us to do so. Robert Harris and Dory Carr-Harris.