http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x....
Talk amongst yourselves.
On Tue, 2005-11-29 at 22:45 -0500, Brian wrote:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x....
Talk amongst yourselves.
I hate to be the wet blanket to this man's Wikipedia-bashing party, but did he ever try correcting the article himself? Those who observe faults in Wikipedia and publicize them seem never to attempt fixing them, but are then amazed when the faults aren't fixed.
His comparison of Internet service providers to broadcast and print media is spurious. ISPs merely provide access to a computer network; they do not pre-approve the traffic as television stations and print media do.
But hey, what the Internet really needs is a body with legal authority over online speech, right? It's worked so well for broadcast television and radio.
Fred Bauder wrote:
What if he had never found it?
We need more fact checking.
The validation system will, no doubt, suffer from two "flaws" in the regard of offering reliability: 1. Anyone (at least, anyone with a username, if we turn off anons) can "validate" 2. Validations will have to be interpreted to simplify them to a good/suspicious/bad rating
There is a radical alternative, which I have begun to code a few weeks ago. It alters a MediaWiki installation to "import-only", replacing editing with an import function for an article version from wikipedia. As the imported articles are not editable at all, they do not represent a fork, merely a static wikipedia snapshot, alas per article and not for the whole wikipedia. Such a system would allow imports only for logged-in users, and be invite-only.
I am aware that this is the complete opposite of the wiki principle. But maybe this is what is needed here - a counterweight, to balance that dreadful freedom of the wiki ;-)
Individuals could then chose which "issue" to read, and mirrors could decide if they want to go for "slow quality" or "fast unreliability"...
Yes, a few people (compared to Wikipedia editors) will take a long time to check/fix/import all Wikipedia articles. Also, the imported versions will soon be outdated compared to Wikipedia. So what? This site will be for reliability; Wikipedia is for development and current events coverage.
I would see such a site working in parallel to the validation feature. Some might argue that this would "split out forces", with some people validating and some importing. OTOH, a little friendly compedition might do good for motivation.
Lastly, there is one major reason to deploy such a site: Because it will undoubtedly be deployed, by someone, sooner or later; I'd rather it's us doing it than some company.
Magnus
--- Magnus Manske magnus.manske@web.de wrote:
The validation system will, no doubt, suffer from two "flaws" in the regard of offering reliability:
- Anyone (at least, anyone with a username, if we turn off anons) can
"validate"
Reads outnumber edits at least 200 to 1. Thus there is a HUGE potential resource of readers we can draw on to validate articles. I therefore think that when/if this feature goes live it should allow anon validation. But validators should also be able to rate the ratings of others (ala 'did you find this rating useful'). I also assume that comments will be collected. If problems arise, we could implement a trust matrix system for validators (anons could be nothing more than lowest rated though; their only effect would be in numbers).
- Validations will have to be interpreted to simplify them to a
good/suspicious/bad rating
A simple star system for a few different areas: 1) Completeness 2) Accuracy 3) Readability
There is a radical alternative, which I have begun to code a few weeks ago. It alters a MediaWiki installation to "import-only", replacing editing with an import function for an article version from wikipedia. As the imported articles are not editable at all, they do not represent a fork, merely a static wikipedia snapshot, alas per article and not for the whole wikipedia. Such a system would allow imports only for logged-in users, and be invite-only.
Logged-in users should only be able to import the highest-rated version of articles that have at least x number of validations. That would negate the need to create a new user class. But if/when that is abused, then we may need to use a trust matrix system for users and only allow trusted users to import validated article versions. A hack would be to add a new user class and an admin-like community approval process. But I don't think that will scale fast enough.
Individuals could then chose which "issue" to read, and mirrors could decide if they want to go for "slow quality" or "fast unreliability"...
Heck - why not just automatically add a prominent link at the top of each page that says 'Read the highest-rated version of this article' and mark those versions in the database so mirrors can choose to just display those versions? Then there would be no need for manual import. But it still may be a good idea to have trusted humans doing final reviews of reader-validated content.
Either way works for me so long as the most up-to-date version of articles are displayed by default (as is now the case). Logged-in users should be able to change their preferences so they only see the highest rated version of articles if available.
Yes, a few people (compared to Wikipedia editors) will take a long time to check/fix/import all Wikipedia articles. Also, the imported versions will soon be outdated compared to Wikipedia. So what? This site will be for reliability; Wikipedia is for development and current events coverage.
A validation feature could feed an import queue: Article versions that reach a certain rating threshold could go into an RC-like list. Then a group of logged-in users check the queue and give the final go ahead for that article version to be marked as the 'Highest rated version' for that article.
I would see such a site working in parallel to the validation feature. Some might argue that this would "split out forces", with some people validating and some importing. OTOH, a little friendly compedition might do good for motivation.
Readers validate and editors import. I don't see how that is splitting out forces when readers do so little as is.
Lastly, there is one major reason to deploy such a site: Because it will undoubtedly be deployed, by someone, sooner or later; I'd rather it's us doing it than some company.
I completely agree. We need to control this.
-- mav
__________________________________ Yahoo! Music Unlimited Access over 1 million songs. Try it free. http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited/
Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Magnus Manske magnus.manske@web.de wrote:
The validation system will, no doubt, suffer from two "flaws" in the regard of offering reliability:
- Anyone (at least, anyone with a username, if we turn off anons) can
"validate"
Reads outnumber edits at least 200 to 1. Thus there is a HUGE potential resource of readers we can draw on to validate articles. I therefore think that when/if this feature goes live it should allow anon validation.
Absolutely. Remember, we're just gathering the data at this stage, so we don't want to restrict the pool unnecessarily. We can decide what applications make sense later. We'd probably separate the anon responses from the logged-in responses, but the anon responses are the reading public who made us top-40.
But validators should also be able to rate the ratings of others (ala 'did you find this rating useful'). I also assume that comments will be collected. If problems arise, we could implement a trust matrix system for validators (anons could be nothing more than lowest rated though; their only effect would be in numbers).
Nice idea - please put a note on [[m:Article validation possible problems]] :-)
- Validations will have to be interpreted to simplify them to a
good/suspicious/bad rating
A simple star system for a few different areas:
- Completeness
- Accuracy
- Readability
The current [[m:En validation topics]] is reminiscent of the [[:en:Oxford Capacity Analysis]] ... but I'm sure the number of questions can be cut for the next round, seeing which ones actually get responses usably.
There is a radical alternative, which I have begun to code a few weeks ago. It alters a MediaWiki installation to "import-only", replacing editing with an import function for an article version from wikipedia. As the imported articles are not editable at all, they do not represent a fork, merely a static wikipedia snapshot, alas per article and not for the whole wikipedia. Such a system would allow imports only for logged-in users, and be invite-only.
Logged-in users should only be able to import the highest-rated version of articles that have at least x number of validations. That would negate the need to create a new user class. But if/when that is abused, then we may need to use a trust matrix system for users and only allow trusted users to import validated article versions. A hack would be to add a new user class and an admin-like community approval process. But I don't think that will scale fast enough.
This is a bit like [[:en:Wikipedia:Good articles]]. Such a read-only wiki (if that's not too oxymoronic) would be a good place to put the stable "1.0" version.
Individuals could then chose which "issue" to read, and mirrors could decide if they want to go for "slow quality" or "fast unreliability"...
Heck - why not just automatically add a prominent link at the top of each page that says 'Read the highest-rated version of this article' and mark those versions in the database so mirrors can choose to just display those versions? Then there would be no need for manual import. But it still may be a good idea to have trusted humans doing final reviews of reader-validated content.
I'm beginning to think we need to start [[m:Article validation possible applications]] - or you could go now and do so, starting with the above!
Either way works for me so long as the most up-to-date version of articles are displayed by default (as is now the case). Logged-in users should be able to change their preferences so they only see the highest rated version of articles if available.
This is similar to the 10-minute delay idea - where logged-in users get the current version (with goatse, MR HENDERSON IS GAY, etc) and anons get the delayed version.
Yes, a few people (compared to Wikipedia editors) will take a long time to check/fix/import all Wikipedia articles. Also, the imported versions will soon be outdated compared to Wikipedia. So what? This site will be for reliability; Wikipedia is for development and current events coverage.
A validation feature could feed an import queue: Article versions that reach a certain rating threshold could go into an RC-like list. Then a group of logged-in users check the queue and give the final go ahead for that article version to be marked as the 'Highest rated version' for that article.
Please add to [[m:Article validation possible applications]]!
I would see such a site working in parallel to the validation feature. Some might argue that this would "split out forces", with some people validating and some importing. OTOH, a little friendly compedition might do good for motivation.
Readers validate and editors import. I don't see how that is splitting out forces when readers do so little as is.
Volunteers will do what they damn well please. More things to do is not a problem - the volunteers will choose to do whatever interests them and/or they feel is important.
Lastly, there is one major reason to deploy such a site: Because it will undoubtedly be deployed, by someone, sooner or later; I'd rather it's us doing it than some company.
I completely agree. We need to control this.
I think we'll do fine *if* we continue to do what makes sense for the wiki, the community and the resulting article base without being spooked by our popularity.
[wikien-l added back to cc:]
- d.
Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Magnus Manske magnus.manske@web.de wrote:
The validation system will, no doubt, suffer from two "flaws" in the regard of offering reliability:
- Anyone (at least, anyone with a username, if we turn off anons) can
"validate"
Reads outnumber edits at least 200 to 1. Thus there is a HUGE potential resource of readers we can draw on to validate articles. I therefore think that when/if this feature goes live it should allow anon validation. But validators should also be able to rate the ratings of others (ala 'did you find this rating useful'). I also assume that comments will be collected. If problems arise, we could implement a trust matrix system for validators (anons could be nothing more than lowest rated though; their only effect would be in numbers).
There's currently no "was this rating useful" feature. Brion is already worried about everyone voting for every revision of every page on a dozen or so topics bogging down the site; now if everyone can also rate every rating, we're in exponential hell ;-)
We'll have some more solid ground on this after we test-ran the validation system (with anons) for some time. "Trust matrix" sounds eerily like "Karma points", though :-(
- Validations will have to be interpreted to simplify them to a
good/suspicious/bad rating
A simple star system for a few different areas:
- Completeness
- Accuracy
- Readability
That's what the user should see in the end; but: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/En_validation_topics Try to automatically boil *that* down to a few stars. Problems I can see at a glance: * Are older revisions of an article considered for calculation the "stars" of the current one? If yes, it will falsify the result for vanalized pages. If no, every minor edit will reset the validation counter to zero for the current version, until a few people vote for that revision again. * For a range of 1-5 points, are a "1" and a "5" vote the same as two "3" votes? If yes, it hides an apparent controversy; if no, it opens the door for vandal votes getting an unusually weigth. And so on.
There is a radical alternative, which I have begun to code a few weeks ago. It alters a MediaWiki installation to "import-only", replacing editing with an import function for an article version from wikipedia. As the imported articles are not editable at all, they do not represent a fork, merely a static wikipedia snapshot, alas per article and not for the whole wikipedia. Such a system would allow imports only for logged-in users, and be invite-only.
Logged-in users should only be able to import the highest-rated version of articles that have at least x number of validations. That would negate the need to create a new user class. But if/when that is abused, then we may need to use a trust matrix system for users and only allow trusted users to import validated article versions. A hack would be to add a new user class and an admin-like community approval process. But I don't think that will scale fast enough.
That would make it dependent of the validation system (which I still want to see, don't get me wrong:-) The whole point of my proposal is to separate the new "user class" from wikipedia entirely; it will be a separate project, but based on wikipedia. The cathedral filtering the bazaar. The best of both worlds, hopefully. If this turns out to be a flase hope, it can be trashed easily enough without side effects for wikipedia.
Individuals could then chose which "issue" to read, and mirrors could decide if they want to go for "slow quality" or "fast unreliability"...
Heck - why not just automatically add a prominent link at the top of each page that says 'Read the highest-rated version of this article' and mark those versions in the database so mirrors can choose to just display those versions? Then there would be no need for manual import. But it still may be a good idea to have trusted humans doing final reviews of reader-validated content.
Either way works for me so long as the most up-to-date version of articles are displayed by default (as is now the case). Logged-in users should be able to change their preferences so they only see the highest rated version of articles if available.
We should definitely try something along those lines inside wikipedia. All I'm saying is that the possible gain from a separate project is high, the cost low, and a faliure will not affect Wikipedia in any way.
Yes, a few people (compared to Wikipedia editors) will take a long time to check/fix/import all Wikipedia articles. Also, the imported versions will soon be outdated compared to Wikipedia. So what? This site will be for reliability; Wikipedia is for development and current events coverage.
A validation feature could feed an import queue: Article versions that reach a certain rating threshold could go into an RC-like list. Then a group of logged-in users check the queue and give the final go ahead for that article version to be marked as the 'Highest rated version' for that article.
That could be a nice tool.For "importers", there could also be a display on each imported article how many versions have "passed" since the last import, and maybe the current validation rating, compared to the one of the imported version. Which leaves the question of how to determine a high-rating article.
I would see such a site working in parallel to the validation feature. Some might argue that this would "split out forces", with some people validating and some importing. OTOH, a little friendly compedition might do good for motivation.
Readers validate and editors import. I don't see how that is splitting out forces when readers do so little as is.
There's probably an overlap of wikipedians (in contrast to "mere" readers) who might be very active in either function; that's the source we'd be splitting.
The average reader who occasionally rates an article as good or bad won't do any importing, that's right.
Magnus
Magnus Manske wrote:
There is a radical alternative, which I have begun to code a few weeks ago. It alters a MediaWiki installation to "import-only", replacing editing with an import function for an article version from wikipedia.
This'll be a complete waste; no one will ever look at the "frozen" wiki and it'll be ignored. (Being 'wiki' or not is not relevant; it'll simply never ever been seen. To be useful, the stable versions need to be right out front and fully integrated into *.wikipedia.org where people are already looking.)
What we need is a tagging system within the wiki, for a review team to use to mark certain revisions in certain states.
Articles with verified revisions will show those by default to the public, with a notice at the top of the screen about their status and if there are newer edits available.
Articles without verified revisions will have a notice at the top that they haven't been reviewed, making clear the 'in-progress' state of the system.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
On 11/29/05, Brian brian0918@gmail.com wrote:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x....
Talk amongst yourselves.
I find it ironic that this guy founded the "Freedom Forum First Amendment Center". Sounds like he doesn't really care that much about the First Amendment.
Kelly
Give the guy a brake. He was accused of being involved in JFK's assaniation when he was one of the polebearers. He's understandablly hurt. It just isn't good enough. We need to do something about getting wikipedia 1.0 up and running.
-rjs.
On 11/30/05, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
On 11/29/05, Brian brian0918@gmail.com wrote:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x....
Talk amongst yourselves.
I find it ironic that this guy founded the "Freedom Forum First Amendment Center". Sounds like he doesn't really care that much about the First Amendment.
Kelly _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
-- DO NOT SEND ME WORD ATTACHMENTS - I *WILL* BITE! http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/sylvester-response.html
Hit me: http://robin.shannon.id.au [broken] Jab me: robin.shannon@jabber.org.au Upgrade to kubuntu linux: http://releases.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/breezy/ Faith is under the left nipple. -- Martin Luther
Robin Shannon wrote:
Give the guy a brake. He was accused of being involved in JFK's assaniation when he was one of the polebearers. He's understandablly hurt. It just isn't good enough. We need to do something about getting wikipedia 1.0 up and running.
Get the de: DVD and translate it to English! :-D
- d.
On 11/29/05, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
On 11/29/05, Brian brian0918@gmail.com wrote:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x....
Talk amongst yourselves.
I find it ironic that this guy founded the "Freedom Forum First Amendment Center". Sounds like he doesn't really care that much about the First Amendment.
Kelly _______________________________________________
The first amendment doesn't have anything to do with this. Assassinating someones character with malicious, unfounded rumors in NOT a first amendment right.
Christopher and Kelly,
I know what you're saying, and I don't think anyone on the Foundation-L list would endorse anything like regulation or being on the hook legally.
But this clearly should be added to the wake up calls -- "SOFIXIT" does not cut it anymore. Wikipedia cannot enjoy the bragging rights of a "Top 40" web site without changing its quality standards to match.
I'm not convinced the Article Rating feature that is waiting in the wings is the right or efficient way to do it. But we have to get closer to the "1.0" solution. It's time.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
On 11/30/05, Brian brian0918@gmail.com wrote:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x....
Talk amongst yourselves. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Andrew Lih wrote:
I know what you're saying, and I don't think anyone on the Foundation-L list would endorse anything like regulation or being on the hook legally. But this clearly should be added to the wake up calls -- "SOFIXIT" does not cut it anymore. Wikipedia cannot enjoy the bragging rights of a "Top 40" web site without changing its quality standards to match.
The problem is that we peaked way too early. The site is late-alpha or early beta at best, and should have big 1995-style yellow and black "UNDER CONSTRUCTION" GIFs with really bad aliasing on most pages.
There's no drastic solution that won't fuck up the community operations of the site. Running a hack'n'slash cull on the live site will lead to the current webcomics debacle times a thousand. We already have specialists in all sorts of areas saying they don't even want to bother starting to write up something they know for Wikipedia because (quote from Sunday's UK meet) "some idiot will delete it *because* they don't understand it." Imagine that outside attitude for a thousand specialist subjects.
I'm not convinced the Article Rating feature that is waiting in the wings is the right or efficient way to do it. But we have to get closer to the "1.0" solution. It's time.
There isn't a fast way and article rating isn't a fast way either. There is no silver bullet. We are early beta (usable and testable but mostly composed of bugs) and the real world will need to get used to that, because there is no way to change that in the next week or month.
I suspect we'll actually be able to work better if we're not flavour of the month.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
The problem is that we peaked way too early. The site is late-alpha or early beta at best, and should have big 1995-style yellow and black "UNDER CONSTRUCTION" GIFs with really bad aliasing on most pages.
I agree with this fairly strongly---Wikipedia is a work in progress, and not currently intended to be a drop-in replacement for traditional encyclopedias. It is already very useful, but nobody should assume it is done or even at some reasonable checkpoint (we're still, after all, trying to figure out how to set up a checkpointing/rating system).
Anything that would compromise the general principles that have made Wikipedia succeed for the sake of "right now" quality would be disastrous, IMO. Continuing to work on processes to produce levels of vetting for articles (like the sifting or rating features) is of course compatible with this.
-Mark
Hi!
But this clearly should be added to the wake up calls -- "SOFIXIT" does not cut it anymore. Wikipedia cannot enjoy the bragging rights of a "Top 40" web site without changing its quality standards to match.
Top30. Nearly. :) Anyway, from a majority view of non-contributing users (or AApatheticW) site is good as is. This is the content trade off and it will always be. Accepting possibility of being wrong is charm, and it attracts more and more users. Because they find information, even when it is wrong. It could be top3 website and still have accidental asspuss images on mainpage. It shows strength of a project, not weakness.
Our rating systems would always be public and open source, and if anyone wished, they could always abuse them.
People working on content shouldn't be forced to work on ratings or validation. It is a waste of time for what was nearly efficiently handled before. And there's something worse than non-rated content, it's wrongly rated content. Who is going to rate those who do ratings? A regular contributor may not have power and resources to establish ratings for his version, when a PoV pusher applies some new methodology of rating manipulation.
Personally I see it as a complex issue, in community, software and hardware. I'd be happy if anyone could change my views. ;)
Domas
P.S. We should better preach gospels: http://www.forbes.com/lists/ 2005/14/CH0027.html
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