This would solve a lot of the problems that people are complaining about
now - over-cluttering of the manual delete queue, and non-use of the
'rewrite' page, and also possibly over-hasty deletion of stubs.
Please please PLEASE give us back the 'vote for this page' option. I
know we can put pages onto the delete queue or the 'vote for rewrite'
page manually but almost nobody does because it is such an incredible
HASSLE! People do things the simplest way, and that was by far the
simplest.
I know I've asked for this before but I really think it would solve a
LOT of the problems we're having just now... it's not creaping
featuritis - it's a major convenience.
--
Karen AKA Kajikit
To err is human... to really foul things up add kitten and stir.
Come and visit my part of the web:
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>We need a way to compile, based on lists of links
>(I guess),
>"Recent Changes" lists for all articles about a
>general topic.
>
>This has been doable since Magnus's software, and
>still is; the
>hard work is just compiling the list of links.
I've just had a go at compiling one of these lists, a list of articles on
economics at [[Economics articles (master list)]]. I think the page will be
useful, for me if noone else! I thought I was already watching pretty much
all the economics articles, but I uncovered a few more gems that I didn't
know about.
As Wikipedia gets bigger, I think categorisations like this will be
increasingly necessary - with 3000+ changes per day, scanning all of the
recent changes for articles that interest you is becoming an activity for
die-hard Wikipediholics only.
We could quite easily ensure that all pages get categorised like this,
provided of course that we put in the hard work. By running a query on the
database, we could generate a page of "Articles that haven't been
categorised yet" (in a similar way to the pages like [[Wikipedia:Most wanted
stubs]]. In this way, we could ensure that all new articles get put on a
categorisation page, and hence come to the attention of the experts who
monitor the "watch links" on that page.
Let me know if you would be interested in putting these lists together - if
we have a few volunteers I will put the "Articles that haven't been
categorised yet page" idea into practice.
Tim (Enchanter)
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This is idiotic. All this wasted effort over a damn 35
byte useless microstub. And Fred's comment that what I
and others have done is somehow vandalism is way over
the top: On the day in question I spent 2 and a half
freaken hours going through the new pages list fixing
dozens of stubs, half of which were on inane cartoon
characters, and wikified, NPOVed and added content to
many more short and full-blown articles. I also found
several copyright violations and added those to the
deletion queue. I do this type of thing every several
days. I'm sure they must have, but I don't recall the
last time Fred or Cunc did this.
And yes, I also deleted about a dozen micro-stubs
which /did not/ in my opinion meet the policy
definition of "at least a decent definition". The
article Cunc is battering about was the best of the
bunch -- that's why I included the entire text in the
deletion summary (that way if somebody disagreed then
they could recreate it). There is furthermore no
requirement that all pages that are to be deleted must
be on the votes for deletion page before they are
deleted -- the policy only states that if there is
some question, then post.
Vandal indeed. I'm sick of this whole episode. And
Cunc don't be surprised if I begin to ignore your
posts to my talk page in the same why you ignore my
post to your talk page (thinking of the tribute
article comments here).
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
PS I get the list on a digest, so if there was an
apology by Fred or if Fred misspoke then I apologize
for reacting in this manor.
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wikipedia-l-request(a)nupedia.com wrote:
>Great minds thinking alike, apparently.
>
...but fools seldom differ ;-) No seriously, I like this idea very much.
The benefit it has over the normal watchlist is that you can separate
topics. If you want focus on topic X, your list is not cluttered with
other topics.
I just realise that this feature is already available; simply create a
page with all the relevant links, and click "Watch links". Maybe there
could be some help in creating such lists, but I not much work should be
needed.
Jeronimo.
wikipedia-l-request(a)nupedia.com wrote:
>All right. The big deleters (Engels, Jheimens, Mav) have adopted a more
>aggressive policy for deleting pages than the stated one (on
>[[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]] and [[Wikipedia:Policy on permanent
>deletion of pages]]).
>
>Primarily, they delete stubs.
>
I - my username is Jheijmans - don't delete stubs. The pages I delete
contain:
* outright gibberish, such as
"afqweoriyqpwtha;sehfqpiugaigasgfas;lkfjzczvzzcvz1234"
* vandalism, such as "F*CK YOU", "Haha I can edit this page"
* "Put your text for the new article here"
* non-encyclopedia material, such as "Check my website at
http://www.geocities.com/thisiscool", or "For information on this
subject, check my website"
* copyrighted material - which I list first as such on the deletion
votes pages
* sub-stub information of the level "George Bush is the president" or
"Malawi is some sort of place in Africa, I think"
I also remove pages like the above, emptied or marked as such by other
Wikipedians
For a large part, the pages I delete have existed for less than a day. I
don't see that deleting such crap would hamper anybody to write a
serious stub or article about the topic.
On the topic of sub-stubs, this was discussed some weeks ago on the
list, and I believe the general opinion was that there's no need for
such sub-stubs.
Jeronimo
> Sorry if this is already in the hopper or (!) has already been
> done, but it seems long overdue:
> We need a way to compile, based on lists of links (I guess),
> "Recent Changes" lists for all articles about a general topic.
This has been doable since Magnus's software, and still is; the
hard work is just compiling the list of links. Once you have a
page of links, say, "Wikipedia:Major philosophy articles", then
you can just use the "watch links" feature of the sidebar to get
a list of recent changes to all pages linked from it.
Perhaps that feature could be added to, or tweaked to add
filters, etc.; but there's no point in wasting the effort to
do that until it has actual data to work with, and that will
take people creating those link pages.
I don't know if any of these would be show-stoppers, but they're points to
consider:
* Who counts as a "kid" for these purposes? I suspect 14-year-olds have more
in common--as Wikipedia users--with 44-year-olds than with 8-year-olds?\. If
someone wants to set up a Wikipedia based on age/reading level, they need to
define what that age and reading level are.
* It's a Wiki. That means *the users can edit it*. At a minimum, a kids'
wiki is
likely to be full of booger jokes and similar stuff that we'd immediately
edit out
on the English (and, I assume, the other language) Wikipedias. If this is
really
a kids' Wiki, can we-as-adults judge the proper content?
* I Am Not A Lawyer, but I believe there are real difficulties in having
even our
minimal-information registration for children under 13, since we're in the U.S.
There's nothing in theory to prevent an entirely-anonymous Wiki, but I suspect
it would change the environment.
Having thrown all this out, I'll note that I don't plan to work on this
project, if it
goes ahead, and my only *strong* feeling is that if it's going to happen,
it should have
its own defined namespace.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr(a)redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org
I think the thing to do is to test out the current capabilities as best
we can. To that effect, I'm setting up the "List of Philosophical
Topics" as a test case. The list is by no means complete, and some of
the links aren't disambiguated properly, but it is 1) a long list
(useful for testing performance issues) and 2) it already exists, and
helps Larry out directly with his current request.
Even if this shows that the current software solution doesn't provide
exactly what we need, it should at least help us to be more clear about
what features a better solution would possess.
Mark Christensen
-----Original Message-----
From: Axel Boldt [mailto:axelboldt@yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, September 23, 2002 10:40 AM
To: wikipedia-l(a)nupedia.com
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Feature request
--- lcrocker(a)nupedia.com wrote:
> > Sorry if this is already in the hopper or (!) has
> already been
> > done, but it seems long overdue:
> > We need a way to compile, based on lists of links
> (I guess),
> > "Recent Changes" lists for all articles about a
> general topic.
>
> This has been doable since Magnus's software, and
> still is; the
> hard work is just compiling the list of links.
Right. Here's the problem. I could easily spend the
next weekend compiling an [[Alphabetical list of
mathematics articles]]. This will allow me to cut down
on my time by simply doing a "Watch links" on that
page every morning. Cool. I update the list by
monitoring special:Newpages occasionally. Nice. Except
we need the same for all other major fields. Unless
you have somebody really active, these lists will
become obsolete and thus useless really soon. See [[Biographical
Listing]] for example. Once the list is out of date, somebody needs to
spend another weekend. And you never know whether the list is out of
date or not, unless you have just spent a weekend on it.
I still believe that all of this can and should be
done automatically, by tracing link paths from the
main page.
Axel
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[Wikipedia-l]
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The Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, any time. Even children can edit
an article, if they can figure out how to click on the "Edit" link. I
daresay my 6-year-old daughter could do it; and would, if sites like
pbs.org/kids weren't so absorbing.
However, this is an international wiki. Everyone in the world can see
what the child contributes, not just the other kids at their school. If
some 44-year-old adult decides to change the child's contribution, it
will get changed -- perhaps too quickly for the child's comfort. Well,
that's life in the grown-up world, and welcome to it, kid!
On the other hand, a school can have its own wiki. Its students can
write booger and fart all day long, and see how their classmates (or the
wiki administrator) responds. The lesson might be valuable for them. And
with the ability to undo peremptory deletes, a child could defend
whatever they deem valuable from techno-bullies.
If I ran a school's wiki, I would allow only signed-on contributors
personally known to me. If they didn't follow the rules, I'd kick them
off quickly. The word would get around: you can write anything you want,
unless you do X, Y or Z. Who knows such a wiki could lead? With the
proper guidance, the children might even create something wonderful.
Hmm, my father runs the website for a school in Lexington,
Massachusetts. Maybe I'll talk to him about setting up a wiki for that
school.
Ed Poor