I have followed this discussion from the beginning. My opinion to the bot created article is if the articles thus created have content, then we should welcome it. I don't see the necessaty for a human being to put on all the informations if a mashine can do it either. If the informations are there, people can use it for free, if they got later edited or not is not that interesting. Our goal is not to have people editing articles, but to provide free information. Ting. -- Der GMX SmartSurfer hilft bis zu 70% Ihrer Onlinekosten zu sparen! Ideal für Modem und ISDN: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/smartsurfer

sure, and not to mention the milliards of galaxies out there that are surely slowly cataloged by the current and future telescopes. None the less they are informations. Naturally we can consider if it is not better to let the most of them in the professional database and only list a few of them, which had made to the press in the last years. On the other side, if someone is willing to write a bot to transfer these informations into wikipedia, I don't see the reason against his effort. Ting -- Der GMX SmartSurfer hilft bis zu 70% Ihrer Onlinekosten zu sparen! Ideal für Modem und ISDN: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/smartsurfer

On the issue of scientific data knowledge in Wikipedia versus "specialist databases"... Magnus emphasizes a great point that the unstructured nature of Wikipedia (free-text, figures, diagrams, etc.) is very complementary to the structured databases of existing resources. Consider these two links: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=gene&Cmd=ShowDetailView&… ToSearch=5649 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reelin Clearly they have different goals in what information to present and how to present it. I'd also say that Wikipedia has an advantage of presenting data to a more diverse audience, having information of interest to both lay-people and scientists. -andrew look a talking expected.

I personnally don't think that most of articles need to be intensively maintained. Vandals tend to attack articles that are already hot, and these articles are watched carefully already. Vandals the other sort, who launch mass attack indiscriminally are also relatively easy to be detected and handled. I believe most of the say bot created gene oder molecule articles would simply stay there, much of them would probably no more be touched. They don't need maintainance. But if they have content and information, I feel comfortable if they are there. It often happens that I read about something in a magazine like Scientific American, I would look in Wikipedia after that something to get more information, and often I would then follow the links there to read more. If we reverse this logic, we must put up a policy, that if our dedicated contributors doesn't increase, we must at some point stopp allow people create new articles, because we cannot monitor them all. Personnally I dislike the ideal that my job on Wikipedia is to monitor articles. Ting -- GMX Kostenlose Spiele: Einfach online spielen und Spaß haben mit Pastry Passion! http://games.entertainment.gmx.net/de/entertainment/games/free/puzzle/61691…

look a [snip] this Chad, I'd be interested in hearing more about this. Has there been a systematic study of this? If this is a conjecture, then I'd suggest that it's possible that if you create really *useful* stubs, then that will actually increase your user base. The way I think of it, there are thousands of active biologists who had no interest in Wikipedia before because there wasn't anything there that they were passionate about contributing to. Now there is, and we hope that's reason for them to become contributors. Of course, that's conjecture too, but we can (will) do a retrospective analysis later to try to quantify that effect. screwed As of now, I manage to maintain an eye on all these articles without too much difficulty. For example, this link makes it quite simple: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChangesLinked&hi deminor=0&target=Template%3AGNF+Protein+box&showlinkedto=1 Right now, there's a few dozen edits a day, and most of them by established contributors I've come to recognize. It's actually quite easy to do a spot-check of new/anonymous edits. Of course, I hope that the number edits quickly grows beyond what I as one person can "oversee". In that case though, it will likely mean that the WP:MCB community has also grown, and there will effectively be a "Gene Wiki new page patrol" that can share this responsibility. -andrew

On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 10:22 PM, Chad <innocentkiller(a)gmail.com> wrote: More articles does not make the vandals more prolific, or more adept and agile. There will still be the same percentage of the little buggers, and their methods will not alter much. If anything, more accessible knowledge will mean there are less people that become vandals. -- John

Hoi, A few thousand articles is perfectly ok and will create no problems.. But what will the boundaries be.. How do you restrict to which few thousand articles? Once bots start creating articles it makes no difference to create 2.000 or 20.000 or 200.000 or 2.000.000 or 20.000.000 articles... The difference on the impact on the Wikipedia community is however profound. Without some clear ideas what we are talking about and what the criteria for inclusion will be, I would advice the English Wikipedia to think really hard if this is what they want and what they can absorb. Thanks. GerardM On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 7:04 PM, Andrew Su <asu(a)gnf.org> wrote:

I just received this press release from NASA. Since NASA images are mostly PD to my knowledhe we missed an opportunity here: July 24, 2008 David E. Steitz Headquarters, Washington 202-358-1730 david.steitz(a)nasa.gov Paul Hickman Internet Archive 415-462-1509, 415-561-6767 paul(a)archive.org RELEASE: 08-173 NASA AND INTERNET ARCHIVE LAUNCH CENTRALIZED RESOURCE FOR IMAGES WASHINGTON -- NASA and Internet Archive, a non-profit digital library based in San Francisco, made available the most comprehensive compilation ever of NASA's vast collection of photographs, historic film and video Thursday. Located at www.nasaimages.org, the Internet site combines for the first time 21 major NASA imagery collections into a single, searchable online resource. A link to the Web site will appear on the http://www.nasa.gov home page. The Web site launch is the first step in a five-year partnership that will add millions of images and thousands of hours of video and audio content, with enhanced search and viewing capabilities, and new user features on a continuing basis. Over time, integration of www.nasaimages.org with http://www.nasa.gov will become more seamless and comprehensive. "This partnership with Internet Archive enables NASA to provide the American public with access to its vast collection of imagery from one searchable source, unlocking a new treasure trove of discoveries for students, historians, enthusiasts and researchers," said NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale. "This new resource also will enable the agency to digitize and preserve historical content now not available on the Internet for future generations." Through a competitive process, NASA selected Internet Archive to manage the NASA Images Web site under a non-exclusive Space Act agreement, signed in July 2007. The five-year project is at no cost to the taxpayer and the images are free to the public. "NASA's media is an incredibly important and valuable national asset. It is a tremendous honor for the Internet Archive to be NASA's partner in this project," says Brewster Kahle, founder of Internet Archive. "We are excited to mark this first step in a long-term collaboration to create a rich and growing public resource." The content of the Web site covers all the diverse activities of America's space program, including imagery from the Apollo moon missions, Hubble Space Telescope views of the universe and experimental aircraft past and present. Keyword searching is available with easy-to-use resources for teachers and students. Internet Archive is developing the NASA Images project using software donated by Luna Imaging Inc. of Los Angeles and with the generous support of the Kahle-Austin Foundation of San Francisco. For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov Waerth http://fi.ndit.at http://www.archive.org

Since it says there is no cost to taxpayers, I'm guessing that IA probably is footing all costs and did most of the heavy lifting here. Were we even in the running for this on the Foundation side? Joe On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 12:11 PM, Waerth <waerth(a)asianet.co.th> wrote:

On Sat, Jul 26, 2008 at 5:39 PM, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler(a)gmail.com> wrote: We wouldnt know where to put them, and possibly couldnt even upload some of the content with our 20MB upload limit. IA, on the other hand, will barely notice this additional stream of PD content. -- John

Hoi, Possibly but we are talking about bot generation right ? Thanks, GerardM On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 5:44 PM, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: