Forgive me for spoiling the hopeful mood, but I'm not so sure the
uneditable review idea would work.
The obvious reason is that in order to write a review about a wikipedia
article, you'd have to be interested in wikipedia in the first place.
So if I'm an academic interested in moving wikipedia along, why should I
bother with a review? It would be less work to make the changes myself.
My name would automatically be associated with the edit on the article's
history page. And even if I write such a review, people would read it
and fix the mistakes and missing issues I found (talking about
duplicated effort here!). So, soon after my review is out, it won't fit
the article anymore, because the article changed. So, all people would
soon find is my outdated (=incorrect) review, with my name below it. No
thanks!
As a to-be-academic, I'd rather have a stable article that says
"...based on [[this article]] at wikipedia, edited by ..." (or "reviewed
by" or "streamlined by";) where there's a backlink to the wikipedia
article, maybe like "For a more current, but unreviewed version, see [[]]".
I might be wrong, and this is the "magic formula", but I don't see many
academics interested in that review function, certainly less than in the
original Nupedia (and even that didn't work...)
Magnus
Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2002 11:59:15 -0700
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga again
Reply-To: wikipedia-l(a)nupedia.com
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1. For the record, I don't think that Helga is particularly anti-Semitic
--
although she often comes off that way.
2. My take is that she pretty
much discounts anything that distracts from or in any way disproves her assertion that non-Jewish Germans were the biggest victims of WWII.
3. For her the Holocaust is minor -- as are the Stalinist purges that ran
into the tens of millions -- except those directed towards the Heimatvertriebene.
4. This also keeps her from seeing that there may
have been long-standing resentments caused by German actions over a long period of time and began well before Hitler -- not that this is a reason
for genocide or any other wartime or post-war atrocity.
5. She just seems incapable of seeing any of this in context because she's got her own
agenda that borders on obsession.
6. It's because she can't see context that the rest of us have to judge and weigh what she says in terms of the big picture, and then make sure that
it gets appropriate mention -- but sometimes not at all is appropriate.
Jules
--------------------
I just started the subscription and the first thing I read is this message, which seems to be in answer to some other message, which I do not know.
J Hoffmann Kemp probably means well.
However
1a.I have to reject even the hint of the "not particular anti-semitic" and replace it with "not at all".
2a.I reject also "My take is that she pretty
much discounts anything that distracts from or in any way disproves her
assertion that non-Jewish Germans were the biggest victims of WWII."
I have never said anything like this.
3a. Have never said anything like that either.
4a. I see and know a lot more about things that she could ever read in her school books. Her books tell onesided stories, war propaganda, but not the full truth.
For example : There was a Daily Express Newspaper declaration March 1933: Judea declares War on Germany. This militant Zionist group has in 1997 been verified by other religious Jewish groups http://www.jewsnotzionists.org/ and http://www.netureikarta.org/ (wikipedia article: Neturei Karta) as cause of WW II.
One has to wonder why any of this is being hidden ?
5a. If wanting to get answers and find out the truth is bordering on obsession, then I guess you could call it that.
However I believe I see the complete picture more clearly than she does.
6a. Editing or correcting etc is fine.
Control by censorship, keeping basic truth out, not mentioning it at all, leads to a warped picture. It becomes a lie.
I guess, one has to ask the question, does wipedia want to be like any other commercial enterprize, that
only tells you, what the general public wants to hear
or is there some commitment to be truthfull ?
H. Jonat
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On Monday 02 September 2002 07:15 am, David Levinson wrote:
> Each article, as it ages, presumably tends to get longer as
> people add content. New articles start small. People add facts, they
> get larger. They spawn incomplete links[?] and new articles are
> created, but start small.
You just gave me a great idea -- How about we have a population pyramid on
the statistics page? See http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
> our progress has not stalled (right?)
If you measure progress based on article numbers, active contributors,
edits per day, software quality etc., it certainly hasn't.
I would argue however that the most relevant measure is average
article quality. And Larry seems to think that on this front, we're
not doing too well:
> But, looking at Wikipedia's contents now and comparing it to what I
> recall from times past, I do have to say that I'm worried. I don't
> think that in terms of quality, overall, it's getting that much
> better.
While it is clear that pretty much every individual article improves
over time, it is still very possible that the average article quality
is stagnating, or even declining.
If I had an afternoon to burn, I'd hit the "Random link" button a
hundred times and would rate the articles on a scale of 0 - 10. Then I
would rate 100 article versions from three months ago (skip if the
article didn't exist then). Then compare the averages. Ideally, this
would be done in a "blind" manner, so that I didn't know whether an
article version is current or old.
Axel
> I am wary of this approach. It holds the "experts" up
> on a pedastal. Their material or comments are untouchable
> and essentially unrebuttable.
Of course! Their material SHOULD be uneditable and unrebuttable,
just like mine, and yours, and every other CREDITED article on
the net and every other publication. That's the whole point of
an author credit--to attach responsibility. What's editable is
the Wikipedia text that they're reviewing. I'm talking about
letting Roger Ebert write a movie review--you're certainly able
to disagree, but you can't change what /he/ said, because it's
supposed to be his ideas, his views, his opinions.
> We could easily double or triple our growth in experts reviewing
> with no further participation while decimating or worse our
> active community participation or stunting our participation
> growth of less credentialed participation.
How is adding reviews any less "participation" than writing
articles? Is not evaluation of ideas valuable information?
>If this approach is chosen to experiment with, I would propose
>that we add the review pages or a page of links to reviews and
>allow any account holder to publish the critiques. The critiquer
>can place what ever background information or credentials they
>feel appropriate on their personal page. The personal pages
>could be protected and administratively overridden if fraud is
>alleged and substantiated.
I'd be willing to relax the criteria for reviewers, but not
eliminate them entirely. The whole point of having reviewers
is to show expert opinion. I have as much disdain for formal
credentials as anyone--I write a lot of good articles here, and
a lot of good software, and I'm a college dropout. So I hope
the review board is set up to recognize real accomplishments as
well as formal training. As a non-reviewing writer, I think I'm
more than qualified to read an expert's review, and edit the
article based on it--and even to disagree with the expert if I
think his arguments are weak. But I wouldn't for a moment think
one should consider me a recognized expert on anything but my
one or two narrow fields of expertise that I've been studying
for over 20 years--microcomputer software and poker. And if I
can't convince an editorial board that I'm qualified to post
reviews on those two subjects, then I shouldn't be writing
reviews (of course in that case I'd think the review board has
problems, but I'm certainly free to express that opinion too).
>>>>[Re: having experts write reviews of Wiki articles]
>>Such reviews would be themselves fully credited and not
>>editable, and attached to the article they describe, but the
>>subject article itself would remain fully editable.
>Two good points about this idea strike me immediately:
>
>* there's no forking of articles -- no concurrent versions
>* there's a good chance that experts will dive in and make
> improvements to the Wikipedia articles they have reviewed :-)
...but they aren't _required_ to do so, so there's no bottleneck,
and the rest of us can edit /them/ (in the main articles, not
their reviews) if they get out of line. And those whose egos get
bent out of shape by amateurs editing their work can leave in a
huff, and we've still got their complete review, dated and signed,
with their views. The thick-skinned ones will remain, and those
are the ones we want anyway.
But the main thing I like about this idea is that it is /simple/.
It doesn't require a lot of software, a lot bureaucracy, three or
four levels of article approval, voting systems, or any of that
nonsense. It's just a simple, clean, obvious way for an expert to
say "here's what I think" in a way that can improve articles
without interfering too much with the existing process.
>I should also point out that "attaching an uneditable review" is
>doable right now--all one has to do is put an external link on the
>talk page.
I like the uneditable review idea; it's simple enough so that it could
actually work. I wouldn't put the links on talk though: nobody reads
old talk pages, and the reviews wouldn't be firmly associated with
individual versions of an article.
A review of an article version should show up as a link on the History
page, next to the reviewed version. That link could point either to a
wiki page only editable by the reviewer, or to an external web page,
whatever the reviewer prefers. It would also have a link to the
reviewer's user page, where they could convince us of their
brilliance, and where one would hopefully also find an automatic "this
person's reviews" link. Reviewer status should probably be by
invitation only.
With a bit of luck, some of these reviewers might end up as
Wikipedians in this evil scheme.
Axel
This is an unmoderated list, and I'm not about to moderate it to enforce
these ground rules. So these are unenforceable rules, but in the wiki spirit,
I think that if people see the rationale for them, they will be followed.
1. We aren't here to debate German history, the Holocaust, Poland,
etc. So let's not do that, except if ABSOLUTELY necessary.
2. We are here to discuss with Helga the problems people are having
with her biased writing.
3. We are not here (at this time!) to debate the NPOV policy. That
is, this particular discussion will not end with me saying "Oh, I
don't care, everyone just go nuts and write whatever you want." Or
anything similar.
4. While integrating Helga into our community would be nice, I don't
consider it a primary goal here. My current view is that Helga needs
to straighten up or go away, enforced by a ban if necessary.
5. A part of this needs to involve a solid commitment by all of us
that we DO NOT SEEK to cover up any valid information that Helga may
have and want to see treated in the wikipedia. If she wants to have
an article about the Daily Express thing, we should find a way to
accomodate her.
6. Helga should NOT accuse people of trying to cover anything up.
That's a personal insult. At the same time, of course, we should not
insult Helga in any way. She's been kind enough to come before a very
hostile court of opinion here, so we should be kind enough to listen.
--Jimbo
> I'm strongly inclined to say that we should just embrace the
> Casio effect for another year or so -- our progress has not
> stalled (right?) and in another few years, we'll be to a point
> where "most everything important" will have an article about it.
> At that time, either we can start working on new inventions,
> possibly mirroring new social customs, to attract "expert" help.
I don't think there's any immediate need for change either.
I should also point out that "attaching an uneditable review" is
doable right now--all one has to do is put an external link on the
talk page. Many talk pages have external links to "meta" pages,
for example.
I do share Larry's concern for the "big picture" of the free
encyclopedia movement as a whole, though. So I'm basically
proposing that we make it easier for experts to do that, and
for some community to identify which of these are real experts
worth listening to, and that we create a social norm of taking
them seriously.
But perhaps that too can be done entirely outside the auspices of
Wikipedia itself. For example, the review board could select
reviewers, select articles for review, publish the reviews on its
own site, and only then put external links to them on the talk
page of the article, with a strong suggestion that our editors
here take heed.
>> [Re: having experts write reviews of Wiki articles]
> That's an interesting proposition.
> Also, why would not near-expert wikipedians
> (considering the real experts are on Nupedia :-)) do a
> rather similar work of "reviewing" articles in which
> they have not been involved themselves but are
> interested and knowledgable. Maybe it could help make
> another 2%.
They certainly could, but only in their capacity as vetted,
recognized, and fully identified experts. Nupedia's function,
then, is precisely the selection of appropriate experts to review
articles in certain areas. This could be by reviewing academic
credentials in some areas, professional credentials in others, or
by whatever means are felt appropriate for things like games and
hobbies. Such reviews would be themselves fully credited and not
editable, and attached to the article they describe, but the
subject article itself would remain fully editable.