Some have said that the advantage of having subpages
is that every subpage has a link to its parent page.
We could still keep that functionality, with a little
extra work, if we added a "#PARENT" command.
Suppose we have pages [[Afghanistan]] and
[[Afghanistan/History]]. Currently,
[[Afghanistan/History]] has a link back to
[[Afghanistan]] in it. But if we rename
[[Afghanistan/History]] to [[History of Afghanistan]],
the link back disappears.
That is why I propose a "#PARENT" command. The
"#PARENT" command would be placed at the beginning of
[[History of Afghanistan]], as follows:
#PARENT [[Afghanistan]]
Then, a link to [[Afghanistan]] will appear on the
[[History of Afghanistan]] page, just like a link to
[[Afghanistan]] appears on the [[Afghanistan/History]] page.
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I personally support abolishing support for subpages
in the software. But some people (GWO, AV) seem to
disagree. So I have a proposal: if there is a lack of
consensus on whether or not we should get rid of
subpages, why not have a vote on it? I have noticed
that nupedia-l has held votes on stuff to do with
Nupedia (although since I've never been involved in
that list, just had a quick peek at the archives, I
don't know the details of how they operate...)
We could simply appoint someone as returning officer
(hereafter RO) (I think LMS acted as RO for nupedia-l;
if he wants to he could do it for this as well;
otherwise I'd be willing to do it, or anyone else who
wishes to step forward can). We agree on precisely
what the question is, i.e. "the support for subpages
that exists in the current Wikipedia software shall
not be implemented in the new Wikipedia software", and
then everyone emails their vote (yes or no; I think we
should try to avoid maybes or "its more complicated
than that" votes) to the RO. The RO then tabulates the
votes and posts the result to the mailing list. (I'd
also recommend the RO posting who voted each way --
that way we can ensure against fraud.)
We could have the vote on Wikipedia itself, the only
problem there is that fraud would be far too easy.
Doing it by email is safer. But we still should notify
the election and the result on Wikipedia itself, for
the sake of Wikipedians who don't participate in this
mailing list.
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I had some images in wikipedia, but my website that was hosting them is gone.
(Something along the lines of "You left this university 2 years ago" :( )
Remind me how I get the Bomis dudes to host them.
--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock. By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001)
I have been thinking about how we have included the
CIA world factbook in Wikipedia. A lot of the
information given therein (who is President of such
and such a country, etc.) is subject to very frequent
change. Already several entries are out of date.
Now, we have added CIA world factbook 2000 edition,
but there will be new editions in the future -- how
are we going to integrate the new information into
Wikipedia? Doing it manually would be so time
consuming, but just replacing the pre-existing content
might loose valuable information or changes from other
sources...
I think that simple lists of facts for various
countries, like that contained in the CIA world
factbook, really isn't best suited to Wiki format. And
the CIA world factbook entries, although they have
been reformatted to some extent, really need a lot
more work done for them.
I was thinking maybe if we could create a parrallel
database to Wikipedia, just for countries of the
world, and other such information the CIA World
Factbook records. And we write a script to
automatically convert the CIA world factbook into the
database; and a script to turn the database into
Wikipedia-style format. We could then either link to
these Wikipedia-style pages from the database script,
or import their content into Wikipedia... so long as
we ask people only to change the original database.
We would still maintain Wikipedia articles for more
prosaic bits of information on each country, like its
history... only simple facts like "area", "who is its
President", etc., would be recorded. We would make
sure the database and the Wikipedia articles are
well-integrated.
I also think that several other bits of information
included in Wikipedia really could go in a database as
well. I am thinking here especially of such lists as
[[Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom]]. These lists
can be automatically updated to some extent from each
succesive release of the CIA world factbook.
And people's biographies we be another good candidate:
a database with peoples names, dates/locations of
birth and death, and a few other easily categorised
bits of information (nationality,
occupation/field/activities for which they are
principally remembered). Of course most of the details
on the person would be maintained in the associated
Wikipedia articles, but then we could easily
automatically generate listings like [[Poets]] or
[[Famous personages of 17th century Poland]].
I might try doing some work on such a database when I
finish my end-of-year exams (last exam is on Nov. 27).
I am also hoping to have a fiddle with Magnus' PHP
Wiki, maybe add some features I've had in mind (e.g.
the "#PARENT" command I proposed, improve the search
engine, add some (inoffensive) support for builtin
category schemes)...
Simon J Kissane
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<lsanger(a)nupedia.com> writes:
> But no one has explicitly said the latter. In fact, it looks like the
> discussion is neither--it just looks like you're arguing about whether we
> should have subpages
I'm not arguing anything :) I'm just stating that I like subpages, and will
continue creating them, and organising my input with them, up until the exact
moment that the software stops me.
> As soon as we move to Magnus' software, the obvious solution will be
> [[Nirvana (rock band)]], etc.
And [[Nirvana (grunge band)]], [[Nirvana (band)]], [[Nirvana (60s band)]]
> Well, it might be easier for somebody to remember [[Baseball/History]] if
> he created or worked on that page, but if he had created [[history of
> baseball]], he'd no doubt find *that* easy to remember
I guess what I'm arguing is this.
At the moment 'pedia contains the following articles
[[History of the United States]]
[[Chinese history]]
[[Baseball/History]]
[[Film history]]
[[History of the internet]]
Now I don't *really* mind which it is, but [0]
Similarly, I could forsee (since hypotheticals seem more important than
actualities these days) it having:
[[Battle of Stalingrad]] [[Siege of Leningrad]] [[Normandy landings]]
But if I'm writing [[World War II/Stalingrad]] and want to link to Leningrad,
I think I'm gonna be able to figure out [[/Leningrad]], rather than [[Battle
of Leningrad]] or [[Siege of Leningrad]]. I think that *is* easier to link,
if not accidentally, but with minimum thought and effort on my behalf.
> The fact is that having subpages doesn't make pagenames any easier to
> remember.
It doesn't make known pagenames easier to remember, it makes the unknown ones
easy to deduce.
Right, I've said my piece, so I'll go and libel [[Bud Selig]] a bit more.
[0] I mind anything, to be honest.
I'm just stating my case.
--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock. By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12 Jan 2001)
Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)bomis.com> writes:
> At least in my mind, there is no final decision. But I'm inclined to agree
> with the no subpages point of view.
In which case I'd like to express my vehement opposition to this view.
I believe that Television/Band, Nirvana/Band and Catatonia/Band are ideal
places for those articles. Similarly its far easier remember how to link to
[[Baseball/History]] (especially from [[Baseball/World Series]], say) than to
remember if its [[History of Baseball]] or [[The History of Baseball]] or
[[Baseball History]]...
Similarly /Talk pages are great, and handy, if they're used for discussing the
accompanying article rather than tedious meta-discussion best kept here,
which, a few vociferous eejits aside, they are.
The failing of subpages is that there is no clear policy for naming them.
--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock. By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12/1/01)
Tim Chambers <tbchambers(a)yahoo.com> writes:
> Television (band), Nirvana (band) and Catatonia (band) are all
> better page titles.
Why are they better? Are they even demonstrably different besides being
(a) harder to type
(b) Unimplemented
> > [[Baseball/History]] (especially from [[Baseball/World Series]]...)
>
> [[History of Baseball]]
as is [[Baseball History]]
> and [[Baseball World Series]] are synonymous.
>
> > Similarly /Talk pages are great...
>
> But the separate talk: namespace is even better.
I must admit I haven't been following this. What would replace
[[World War II/Talk]] ?
> I think the concept of subpages is flawed in an encyclopedia. Why
> limit ourselves to a primitive hierarchical structure?
Why limit ourselves to a flat non-structure?
> Eliminating subpages paves the way for the implementation of even better
> navigation features.
I don't see how subpages affect this one way or the other.
> any page with "baseball" in the title would get a link to the [[Baseball]]
> article, and the [[Baseball]] article would list links to all the other
> baseball articles.
I don't think this is dependent on the elimination of subpages one way or the
other...
--
Gareth Owen
"Wikipedia does rock. By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there
are 14 not-bad articles so far" -- Larry Sanger (12/1/01)
I earlier proposed something similar to the "#PARENT" idea,
but I'd like to warn against it as used here: just using to
creat the link is bad. We can already create links to parent
articles, and we _should_ do so with plain English sentences
that establish context. Remember the "establish context"
rule? The article "Generalisimo Francisco Franco is Still
Dead" shouldn't just have a hidden tag that puts a link to SNL
in the title bar rather than the article; it should begin with
a clear English sentence, "Late-night variety show [[Saturday
Night Live]] contained a news parody..." Sentences. Good.
My idea was "#CONTEXT", which was used to do the other thing
that subpages are useful for, and for which I currently use them,
and that's to simplify cross-linking among pages within a subject
area. See the Poker pages, for example; but the same thing could
be done with "Law", "Medicine", "Mathematics", etc. My idea was
that if a page contained a "#CONTEXT Law" tag, then any link in
that page like [[bar]] would, when the page was saved, search first
for a page "Bar (Law)", and only then "Bar". Likewise, under
"#CONTEXT Chemistry", [[deposition]] would look for "Deposition
(Chemistry)" and then "Deposition" (hopefully a disambiguating page),
but never "Depostion (Law)".
Regarding the mathwiki code: it is indeed GPL'd, but you have to
request it by email from Serge Winitzki who currently maintains it.
I have a copy of the code and I can send it to anyone who's
interested. It's perl. The code is a bit rough still and you have to
experiment to get it to work, but it does work.
It has a ParseTeX.pm perl module which we can probably reuse.
A life example is running at
http://www.mathcircle.org/cgi-bin/mathwiki.pl
Axel
I only discovered PlanetMath when I heard it mentioned
on this mailing list. I've participated in Wikipedia
for a while now, though I've only had a quick look at
PlanetMath.
PlanetMath and Wikipedia have similar goals -- they
both seek to produce a free, GNU FDL encyclopedia.
PlanetMath aims to cover only Mathematics, while
Wikipedia aims to cover just about everything.
PlanetMath is like Nupedia in that articles are
clearly owned by authors, while in Wikipedia the
authorship is much more collective.
PlanetMath also appears to have much better support
for mathematics in its software. (Articles are written
in LaTeX).
Now, I was wondering about the potential relationship
between Wikipedia and Planetmath. Maybe we could
establish some way of encouraging content from
Planetmath to be added to Wikipedia, or vice versa?
I also thought for a moment about some form of merger
between the two projects, or removing all the maths
content from Wikipedia and sending it to PlanetMath,
or something similar. I don't think these are good
ideas, since the two projects seem to be quite
different in culture (author-centric vs. anyone can
edit).
On the other hand, maybe some form of integration
between PlanetMath and Nupedia might be a good idea?
Maybe PlanetMath could be rolled into Nupedia, or
PlanetMath could become the maths section of Nupedia?
(Just a thought -- I don't participate in Nupedia, and
discussion of that sort of stuff really belongs on
nupedia-l)
Simon J Kissane
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