> Perhaps the ISBN number might link to a dynamically generated
> page which will explicitly link to several such sites, listed
> by name?
That's what I expected to do; looks like that priority should
be moved up.
I'd like to give readers the choice of where the ISBN links go to.
If the ISBN link goes to amazon.com I can see a fuller description, which helps me decide whether to buy the book.
The Wikipedia might even make money on referrals. I think Amazon has a program that permits referrers to collect a small percentage if a buyer follows the referrer's link.
Couldn't the User Preferences page contain an option letting the reader choose Price Scan, Amazon, or whatever?
Ed Poor (like when you have no money)
Hi all -- I can't speak to the more modern stuff, but I am very leery of
using this for Late Antiquity (what the author calls the Dark Ages) and
the Middle Ages. It's not so much that he's wrong, but what he's done
is often a bit misleading and *not right*. I think the basic problem is
that he's tried to do what a lot of folks do -- force a more modern idea
of a boundaried kingdom on a geographical area, and then try to make a
list of rulers that fit a preconceived notion of what a kingdom (or
duchy) was like. Then, you try to create some kind of coherent dynasty,
generally based on rights of primogeniture that did not exist among
Germanic people at the time.
I'm probably saying more than is necessary, but this is stuff I'm pretty
comfortable with. I'd better be! This rigidity often gets in the way
of good scholarship.
By the way -- as an interesting aside, for those of you who have been
keeping up with the Oda von Haldesleben front, a couple of things I have
no way of proving (no documentary sources in the manner of land
transactions, necrologies, etc to hand -- probably not in this country)
have popped into my head. Otto is what is known as a "leading name" in
the (most likely) Frankish family we call the Liudolfinger
(Liudolfings). We know that they held lands in what became Saxony (then
around the Saxon and Northern marches. Oda's father was Theoderic,
Count of the Northern March (not strictly an inherited position at this
time, but often held by successive members of a family). Some (mostly
genealogical) sources call him Count of Saxony -- making little sense,
because if anybody's claiming connected, heritable lands and titles in
"Saxony", it's the Liudolfinger. But -- Oda is the feminine form of
Otto -- a Liudolfinger leading name. My guess, based on very little
evidence, is that Oda was a peripheral member of the Liudolfinger -- a
distant cousin of Otto the Great (I say distant, because I don't think
Theoderic is a name found much among the L's, but he could have married
a female liudolfing, and it would have been normal to give a leading
name to strengthen the impression of connection to this really important
family). So, via marriage, Mieszko I may have been trying to
ameliorate relations with the Ottonians (by the late tenth c. the name
more commonly used for the Liudolfinger). Or, I could be totally off
base. Still, I think it explains why Miesko would kidnap a nun.
Thanks for putting up with my mad rantings --
Jules
Regards,
Julie Hofmann Kemp
253-638-1944
206-310-3461
On Thursday 29 August 2002 03:56 pm, you wrote:
> is it just me or has anyone else noticed the sheer
> amount of lists that we have? running a title search
> for the word 'list' will come up with such bizarre
> pages as [[List of places and things named Oxford]].
>
> I know list can be usefull but isn't this going a bit too far?
> (especially that we've got a decent search function now).
> Shouldn't the lists be simply attached to the main article
> without creating a new page for each and every on of
> them?
>
> regards,
> [[list of people and things named WojPob]]
Long lists are not appropriate for encyclopedia articles (why force somebody
on dial-up to download a 20 KB list just to read a 1 KB article?). Wikipedia
is not paper and many almanac-like lists do add peripheral content to
particular subjects. When a list in an encyclopedia article gets
distractingly long it is then necessary to create a "list of" subarticle.
These lists are almost always only linked from their parent article so I
don't see what the fuss is about. On
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Statistics I've already proposed
that almanac-like entries (such as lists) be included in a separate total
article count (I once didn't even consider lists to be articles but have
since accepted the fact that this type of almanac-like info has always and
will always be with wikipedia).
If you don't like lists, then don't contribute to their creation or better
yet make them more useful by adding some content to naked lists (that is;
birth and death dates by names, major attributes, etc.). Different people
contribute in different ways and it is interesting to sometimes see a list of
biologists after reading the article on biologists -- the search function
yields messy results for this type of thing.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
PS [[List of places and things named Oxford]] is a disambiguation page that
is only linked from a disambiguation block in [[Oxford]]. I just gave it a
better name; [[Oxford (disambiguation)]] (disambiguation pages is another
thing I have proposed to treat differently in the total article count).
Lars wrote:
> I think you should add 200 articles that are not yet written to each
> 20 that you found. [...] there is also a great need to add more
> articles, and in my personal opinion it is better to add a stub than
> not.
I disagree. If you spend a weekend researching a topic on E2, EB,
Google or in a library and then write a well-rounded 4 paragraph
article on it, you will have improved the world and yourself. If you
spend the weekend creating 200 stubs instead, you will have
accomplished precisely nothing.
A stub does not tell the reader anything that they didn't know already
or that they couldn't have found out in 2 minutes on the internet. If
the stub ever shows up at the top of a Google result list, it will
actually waste the reader's time and lower the general perception of
Wikipedia's quality. I can't see any possible use for stubs.
Axel
I would like to go on record saying that ISBN numbers are utterly
useless. Consider this:
* older books don't have ISBN numbers,
* the hardcover and softcover version of the same book have
completely unrelated ISBN numbers,
* different editions of a book have completely unrelated
ISBN numbers,
* even different printings of one and the same edition get
different ISBN numbers.
Because of this, it is impossible to reliably locate a book by ISBN in
a library or bookstore. The system is broken by design. A much more
rational way to code book references would be with the Library of
Congress classification codes (which can be found inside the front
cover of every book, right above the ISBN).
Axel
I think it should be good to be able to make searches
in any on the namespaces, specially the wikipedia
namespace. In the meantime, could someone make a
list of all the pages on the wikipedia namespace,
and put it somewhere visible? (Yes, I know that I
could do it myself with a SQL query, but I haven't
gotten into that yet).
AstroNomer
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Hello all,
I have some exciting news! I have written a short article
on Wikipedia that is to be published in "The Canadian
Writer's Guide 13th Edition", a reference for Canadian
writers. The publisher's page is at
http://www.canauthors.org/pubs.html, which describes the
12th edition. The book should be in print by the end of
September 2002.
The full text of the article is also available on my web
site at
http://jeays.net/files/wikipedia.htm. My angle was to
introduce Wikipedia as a way of practicing one's writing
skills while, as a happy side-effect, creating encyclopedia
articles. I tried to capture the flavour of Wikipedia
(including the NPOV, don't worry...) in 1100 words (not
easy!).
As with any Internet-related article there are a couple of
things that have changed over time (like the URL...except
www.wikipedia.com still works, and Larry Sanger's
involvement). This piece was written in early 2002 and the
book publishing process seems to take substantially longer
than the wiki process :)
Regards,
Mark Jeays ([[user:Dze27]])
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Your new software is up and running. I think it looks o.k., but I'm often wrong
about such things. :-)
If this goes well, then which language is next? :-)