Please excuse me, Gerad, for paroding your response to
my conncerns a few weeks ago below.
/parody
Most of the new page patrolers are volunteers. There
is certainly too much work in
the first place. It is a stellar performance what so
few people do with so
little investment.
Their first priority is to watch out for libel,
combine this with
the growth that we experience this is a big job. There
are several big jobs
that have been postponed time and again for many many
months (OK I don't know en.WP well enough to know what
these jobs are but surely these patrolers have to-do
list they haven't been able to get to).
When you find yourself another editor to patrol new
pages for you, it does not mean that
they will catch everything; the only thing achieved is
that you are
closer to getting it all. This is not to say that the
patrolling is busted,
it is that your expectations are not compatible with
reality.
/end parody
/sarcasm
Perhaps you should just adjust your expectations to
the reality of wiki and realize evetually this stuff
will be found (or maybe it won't) But just be patient
and realize people are doing their best and they will
eventually get to the articles you are concerned with.
/end sarcasm
I honestly don't know the answer to your problem
Danny. I do wonder whether you tried addressing this
on the wikipedia-l list and came here only after
getting an unsatifactory respose there. But you
should know better than to come to this list for
*solutions*. And so should I for that matter.
But what I really want to say is this. I think these
people in the larger Wikimedia community, whose help
you want coming up with creative solutions. I think
these people will be caring a great deal more to help
you with en.WP's problem when they start recieving
help with their own problems. Here is a very
incompetet list of questions/problems which did not
recieve the help looked for here.
*Wikibooks: How do develop policy to disallow
"unethical manual" (i.e. How to commit a crime)
*Wikibooks: (and many others) Information on
trademarks and how to correctly reprint Wikimedia
material because of trademarks.
*Wikibooks: Is Wikimedia a publisher per the GFDL?
*ru.WP: What does the WMF require/recommend a bare
minumum for Verifiability policy?
*general: when will we have new steward eletions?
*Wikiversity: NPOV & academic freedom for research
*hu.WP: The Foudation's position on non-free images
*nl.WP: MAny internal fights they seem to have
problems handling
*general: Foundation position on logo derivatives
All these things and many more were brought up on this
list by someone looking for help. No clear solutions
was arrrived at on this list. I hope the problems
were solved off-list in the original projects that
asked them. There are more people at en.WP itself
capable of solving "Porchesia" than there are on this
list. You should be talking to the people who
actually do new pages patrol and asking them what they
need to do a better job.
Birgitte SB
--- daniwo59(a)aol.com wrote:
While I generally agree with Birgitte, I have to
take exception here.
Porchesia appeared on one of our projects for ten
months. It was caught quite by
accident, when someone pointed it out to me. This
raises an important issue,
relevant to all major languages and projects--what
are we doing to ensure the
veracity of the information we provide. This is
especially relevant, given the
other discussion about spamming, which Brad raised.
If we can have a fake
island with 300,000 imaginary people get through
for ten months, we can
certainly have a fake company get through for 10
months. This company can even get
people to read up on them and take their money. And
if you look the company up,
it is on Wikipedia, Answers, and any other mirror.
This is a serious
problem. Wikipedia provides credibility.
There are two problems with this. Both are, in my
mind, serious ethical
issues.
1. Given our size and reputation, we are in the
process of transforming from
a medium that reports fact to a medium that can,
potentially, create fact.
Colbert and the elephants is symptomatic of that
(for people who don't know the
reference, see Jimmy's opening remarks at
Wikimania). In the particular case
of Porchesia, someone has just argued on the
mailing list that it should be
kept because it is now an internet meme. The fact
that it has been on
Wikipedia for ten months ensures that
(
_http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-October/054735.html_
(
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-October/054735.html)
). This is worrying. Are we now reporting on what
we
report? Where do we draw the line between reporting
information and creating
information? I believe that this issue is
sufficiently serious to warrant
discussion among all Wikimedia participants, not
just the people on WP:EN.
2. The second issue is more sinister. Several months
ago we received a call
in the office from a major police agency. Someone
created a false identity
and used it to extract money from unsuspecting
victims. When people questioned
how important he was, they were told, "Just look me
up on Wikipedia." Were
the people who gave him money stupid? Yes. So are
the people who answer tragic
emails telling them that their long lost but
fabulously wealthy relatives
were killed in car crash in Togo. And yet, people
continue to answer those
emails. The article on EN was quietly deleted, the
man was likely arrested, but
the problem remains. Given our position and the
respect we receive, Wikipedia
in all languages is an open target for spammers and
con artists. I believe
that this is also an issue that should be addressed
by the larger community, and
not just limited to WP:EN.
There is a tension between accuracy and openness.
Citizendium and
Everything2 are two extreme answers to that tension.
If, however, we are to maintain
both, we must address the tension when it occurs. We
must come up with creative
solutions. And that is something that involves more
than just the English
Wikipedia.
Danny
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