Hello all,
Recently, I announced Epistemia (http://epistemia.org/), a new wiki encyclopedia, on WikiEN-L (see my e-mail at http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2009-January/098140.html). Essentially, Epistemia was launched by Richard Austin and myself in response to perceived flaws inherent in Wikipedia's culture and structure.
You can read more at http://en.epistemia.org/wiki/Epistemia:Frequently_asked_questions (which still in development) and at http://en.epistemia.org/wiki/Epistemia:About.
We now have 25 contributors and 118 articles. I invite you to register an account there (see http://en.epistemia.org/wiki/Special:UserLogin) and participate in the development of a new wiki encyclopedia without having to suffer incivility and tolerate disruptive people.
Cheers!
—Thomas Larsen
2009/2/3 Thomas Larsen larsen.thomas.h@gmail.com:
We now have 25 contributors and 118 articles.
How many of those are copied from Wikipedia (I've checked and at least some are)? What are your plans for using Wikipedia content, assuming the licenses become compatible?
Your initial announcement was fine. Continuing to spam is not.
Fred
On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 1:34 PM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
Your initial announcement was fine. Continuing to spam is not.
Fred
Agreed, please don't spam here further.
on 2/3/09 11:07 AM, Al Tally at majorly.wiki@googlemail.com wrote:
On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 1:34 PM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
Your initial announcement was fine. Continuing to spam is not.
Fred
Agreed, please don't spam here further.
This place becomes less civil, more unfriendly and more inconsequential with every passing day. It is no wonder more and more persons are avoiding it like The Plague. The universes-of-one are sealing its fate.
Marc Riddell
I don't think Thomas Larsen needs to remind us about Epistemia regularly, although I can't say it really bothers me. It isn't spam, though.
I'm not sure anyone who is interested in the wider goals of Wikimedia should describe any other free content project as "destined to fail." That someone is trying a different tack isn't an insult to Wikipedia - nothing says the English Wikipedia (which is, incidentally, not the subject of this list) has it perfectly right.
Constructive criticism is fine. Disparaging comments with no redeeming value are not.
Nathan
2009/2/3 Nathan nawrich@gmail.com:
I don't think Thomas Larsen needs to remind us about Epistemia regularly, although I can't say it really bothers me. It isn't spam, though.
I don't think this email was spam - it was informing a larger audience (foundation-l rather than just wikien-l) of the project now that it is up and running. That seems reasonable to me. Any more after this (unless it gets to the point where there are notable announcements like "We've just created our nth article", what value of 'n' is considered notable is somewhat subjective) would probably be spam.
Basically you've just said "we're going to be just like wikipdia except we won't let incivlity, personal attacks and other bad stuff like that happen". How will you stop it? Blocking? Then you're just like wikipedia.
On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 5:35 PM, Patton 123 pattonabc@gmail.com wrote:
Basically you've just said "we're going to be just like wikipdia except we won't let incivlity, personal attacks and other bad stuff like that happen". How will you stop it? Blocking? Then you're just like wikipedia.
No, removing uncivil editors will stop incivility.
Basically you've just said "we're going to be just like wikipdia except we won't let incivlity, personal attacks and other bad stuff like that happen". How will you stop it? Blocking? Then you're just like wikipedia.
Actually, no. Wikipedia no longer enforces civility. At least not against aggressive well-established players like Giano. Actually, it never did much. So, whoever is aggressive and persistent can determine the content of the information on the 8th largest website.
Fred
Hi all,
On 2/4/09, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
Basically you've just said "we're going to be just like wikipdia except we won't let incivlity, personal attacks and other bad stuff like that happen". How will you stop it? Blocking? Then you're just like wikipedia.
Actually, no. Wikipedia no longer enforces civility. At least not against aggressive well-established players like Giano. Actually, it never did much. So, whoever is aggressive and persistent can determine the content of the information on the 8th largest website.
Fred Bauder has it exactly right. Wikipedians now accept incivility and rudeness as part of their daily operations. Worse, some of them seem to believe that it's actually a _good_ thing.
Epistemia's culture, from the very start, will be one where incivility and rudeness are rejected without question. Indeed, our policy (found at http://meta.epistemia.org/wiki/Policy, and it's all on one page, by the way!) states that "[i]n order to maintain a positive community and a productive environment in which to work, users who deliberately engage in serious or repeated violations of these standards may be banned indefinitely from participating, regardless of the quality or extent of their work on the project". That's a far cry from Wikipedia's civility policy, which states that "[a] pattern of incivility is disruptive and unacceptable, and may result in blocks if it rises to the level of harassment or egregious personal attacks"—Wikipedia is so keen to attract contributors that it only blocks people for incivility if that incivility rises to the level of harassment or personal attacks.
I invite you to step up, create an account at Epistemia, and start contributing—or, at least, offer your views and give constructive criticism. We're open to improvement.
—Thomas Larsen
Thomas Larsen wrote:
Hi all,
On 2/4/09, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
Basically you've just said "we're going to be just like wikipdia except we won't let incivlity, personal attacks and other bad stuff like that happen". How will you stop it? Blocking? Then you're just like wikipedia.
Actually, no. Wikipedia no longer enforces civility. At least not against aggressive well-established players like Giano. Actually, it never did much. So, whoever is aggressive and persistent can determine the content of the information on the 8th largest website.
Fred Bauder has it exactly right. Wikipedians now accept incivility and rudeness as part of their daily operations. Worse, some of them seem to believe that it's actually a _good_ thing.
I must be editing in the wrong places, because I make thousands of edits yet rarely encounter incivility. On the mailing lists, sure, but rarely on the wiki. Where I do, it's extremely limited cases that are almost entirely predictable.
One is deletion. I generally these days write in areas where it doesn't come up. But when I tried covering pop culture it was pretty annoying to deal with (despite meticulous sourcing), and made it pretty easy to get into conflicts.
The other is controversial topics with clear partisans --- Israel/Palestine, Hindu nationalism, Balkan nationalism, topical political issues, religion-related articles, etc. But it'd tricky to figure out how to avoid *that*. I personally would argue for expansive conflict-of-interest rules: when writing about a Croatian-Serbian conflict, for example, anyone who is connected with Croatia or Serbia or their cultures should recuse themselves when discussion gets heated. But generally Wikipedia's declined to consider this a conflict of interest on par with editing your own business's article. If that isn't going to be done, I think the only effect of civility rules will be to create simmering passive-aggresive conflicts, which to some extent already happens (the 3RR just means partisans revert 3x per day every day for months on end).
But the vast majority of the encyclopedia isn't either of those, so I'm not sure why people are seeing incivility everywhere?
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
conflict-of-interest rules: when writing about a Croatian-Serbian conflict, for example, anyone who is connected with Croatia or Serbia or their cultures should recuse themselves when discussion gets heated. But
The only thing you will achieve is that people will pretend to not be connected with Croatia or Serbia when they want to edit these articles. So you will have only the most stubborn people, willing to edit nothing else but these articles, editing them.
generally Wikipedia's declined to consider this a conflict of interest on par with editing your own business's article. If that isn't going to
In my dealing with humans I came to understanding that every action has a reaction, and that this reaction can lead to the opposite of what you want to achieve.
In this example: * Desired outcome: prevent business articles from being filled with propaganda. * Action: forbid people to edit articles about their business. * Reaction: people pretend that they are someone else when editing articles about their business. * Actual outcome: business articles are filled with propaganda, covertly.
I would also like to say that a community run by a http://meta.epistemia.org/wiki/Council is a community destined to fail...
I would also like to say that a community run by a http://meta.epistemia.org/wiki/Council is a community destined to fail... _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
That is just a knockoff of the arbitration committee and performs more or less the same function.
Fred
Hi,
On 2/4/09, Patton 123 pattonabc@gmail.com wrote:
I would also like to say that a community run by a http://meta.epistemia.org/wiki/Council is a community destined to fail...
I beg to differ. A community run by a democratically-elected council of active community members seems, to myself at least, a step forwards from the largely-autocratic, detached management committees that are so prevalent in this day and age among Internet community projects.
—Thomas Larsen
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org