As we are slowly wading through the usual swamp that is consensus ;-)
towards Mordor, eh, wikipedia release 1.0, I was wondering: Is there any
(more or less) organized effort
* to find the gape wikipedia has, compared to *other* encyclopediae, and
* to fill them
Is there a (machine-readable?) list of all entries in Britannica,
Encarta, or any other major encyclopedia?
I remember putting lots of possible encyclopedia topics on the 'pedia,
but wer'de probably past that stage anyway (had a little more than
100.000 entries, IIRC).
Magnus
I have been thinking of trying to write some Encyclopedia articles but I
would like to discuss them with several other people while I am preparing
them for publication.
. Suppose I choose to write about Rose of Sharon. I could look in the
Wikipedia and not find it under that heading. Perhaps it is described
somewhere and I didn't find it.
I could take close-up pictures of the flowers with my digital camera and
describe it from what I know and what I can see. Should I include
pictures of the whole plant, the seeds, or the roots? I could look in
encyclopedias and books for more information. I could prepare a rough
draft. After reading the instructions for submitting articles I would
like to discuss it with other people and get their comments and
suggestions. Someone told me that Rose of Sharon was mentioned in the
Bible. Somebody may know where. Should I include that and quote the Bible
passage?
An historian may be able to tell what part it played in history like the
thistle in Scotland and the War of the Roses in England. A botanist may
be able to correct and add to my description. People in other parts of
the world may tell me that it is common there. Is it the national flower
of some country or does it appear on a flag? Should we include the name
in some other languages?
If someone else is writing an article on the same subject I might choose
to let him take my article and use parts of it in his article.
After I get tired of editing it I could submit it to be included in the
Encyclopedia.
Then the readers would have their opportunity to make changes.
I didn't find articles about Jesse Ramsden who made precision navigation
instruments or Count Rumsford who left Massachusetts and went to England
and founded the Royal Institution.
There are several other subjects that I might write about but I would
like to have other people participate. How can I do this?
This matter may have been discussed in e-mail but I have more than 450
e-mail on my computer so it is hard to figure out what conclusions have
been reached.
Merritt L. Perkins
Hi,
134 to 137 were put on the voting sheet after the
deadline, too, I believe.
This not being a problem seemed like a good example of
WikiLove, in my eyes.
See
[http://meta.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=International_logos_(126-150)&…]
for example of voting in place without them.
Bye, Till we *)
--------------
Sorry, but I did not understand what you meant above.
Do you mean it was not an act of wikilove to point out
to the problem ?
I just know one thing
When I looked the other day, I just saw a user had
replaced with *his* logo (submitted after the
deadline), the logo of *another* user (logo number
67).
I had no time to check if I had really understood the
problem, so I just mentionned it for others to check
Clearly, that was a mistake. But in any case, I think
it was *not* a good idea to let someone replace the
official logos of another by his own.
Perhaps my saying was not wikilove toward the author
of 138, but it was toward author of 67 :-)
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
Till Westermayer till at tillwe.de
Tue Sep 2 08:55:13 UTC 2003
* Previous message: [Wikipedia-l] Gaps in 1.0
* Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [
subject ] [ author ]
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
till we *) . . .
Hi Anthere,
there is no logo 138?!
Till
Hi Tillwe
How observant of you :-) (<- this is meant to be a
very friendly and cheerful irony)
Logo 138 (or rather logoS 138) were added after the
deadline, hence were removed by our foreman (err...the
organizer in case this word hold meanings I am not
aware of).
One of the logo 138 had the same name than another,
hence it replaced it. The previous saved state was
restored.
Logos 138 were kat-related logo. Very nice artwork,
but I fear they would not have been fit as logos
anyway, so it is sad for the author, but won't impact
the final choice.
Cheers Tillwe
I take the opportunity to report - as an ambassador -
the displeasure of some author, who feel there is
applied pressure to direct their creativity to another
direction than is their wish, and officially ask me to
help him as my english ability is better than his. (<-
this is a neutral report)
In my opinion, any logo proposition and any logo
versioning is a "free-of-choice" work, and
"free-to-display" work (except for
sex-race-color-political-religion related works
perhaps, though this might be controversial), and any
pressure on authors is out of bounds. Please. Thanks.
(<- This is a personal opinion. Please and thanks mean
please and thanks, and this part of my message is not
for you Tillwe dear :-))
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
I have no time to clean it up right now. Sorry.
But someone is messing with logos, replacing some old
logos with some cat related logo.
Logo 138 was not the initial logo. It was replaced
Ant
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
> Message: 9
> Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2003 20:49:17 +0100
> From: Kurt Jansson <jansson(a)gmx.net>
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] IBM analyzing Wikipedia page histories
> To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org
> Message-ID: <3F4FAE3D.2050103(a)gmx.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
>
> Fernanda Viegas wrote:
>
> > 3. Another poster asked about our diff method: I think the main
> > difference between ours and yours is that ours is operating at a finer
> > granularity (roughly at the sentence level, rather than the paragraph
> > level). We'd be happy to talk in more detail, if you want!
>
> I'd love to see MediaWiki use a smarter diff function, but I have no
> programing skills (well, TurboPascal, but that's long ago ...). Maybe
> one of our not-so-busy developers (are there any?) could talk with you
> about this.
>
>
> > 4. We have been finding some fascinating patterns about the different
> > ways in which people collaborate in Wikipedia. We are currently writing
> > a paper about this and would be happy to share it with the community
> > after we are done.
>
> Great!
>
>
> Kurt
>
>
Can you tell me what "diff" means?
[Wikipedia-l] Re:Culte, cult, secte, sect
Brion Vibber brion at pobox.com
Sun Aug 31 02:50:32 UTC 2003
Anthere wrote:
>It usually refer to groups which practice some of the
>following, mental manipulation, power centralization
>in the hands of a guru or a small group of people,
>with a pyramidal organisation,
>
[[There is no Cabal]] ...
> with money exactions,
>
[[Wikipedia:Donations]] ?
>and a doctrine that can not be disputed.
>
[[Wikipedia:Neutral point of view]] !
;)
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
LOL, yes !!!
You forgot
* rather new (he, less than 3 years)
* rather small number of members (eh, less than 10 000
certainly qualify)
* dangerous for their members (eh, wikipediholism)
* power in hands of one : Jimbo, or a small group : eh
the sysops
HELP !!!!!
WITHOUT NOTICING, I BECAME MEMBER OF A "SECTE" !!!!!!
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
I think one area where Wikipedia is not yet faring too well is in the
fine arts section (painting, ballet, architecture, drama, music, etc).
Of course exceptions exist. Just a gut feeling, no time to dig into it
now.
I filled a few gaps myself: articles on Rembrandt, van Gogh, Dutch
Golden Age and a few others in that area were non existent or very
meagre a few monthes ago. This in itself says enough. If these articles
were in a bad shape until recently, it means we are still charting the
tip of the iceberg, we are talking mainstream household name fine arts
in these cases.
If my assumption is well founded, we might discuss how to attract more
Wikipedians from art schools, schools of music and the like.
----
A quote from the talk page for
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Most_Referenced_Articles
"I don't know what it says about Wikipedia (I tell a lie, I '''do'''
know what it says about Wikipedia), but [[God]] gets only 886 links,
while [[Science fiction]] is linked 998 times. -- Cimon Avaro on a
pogostick
Erik Zachte
---
P.S. I checked: the article about Rembrandt dates from Oct 2002, not
exactly a few monthes ago, still Wikipedia was almost 2 years old then.
I'm a sysop, and I don't want people messing up certain pages under my user
page...would it be considered unfair if I protect them or am I allowed to do
so?
The reason I'm asking this is that I have a few friends who I want to see my
'article' under my user page and they're all anon's on wikipedia, and
there's a big chance that they'll mess it up and leave (never wanting to
come back so blocking isn't an option!)
I could just tell them to stop, but I'd feel much more comfortable with the
protection on it :)
Proposal for a Wikipedia Article "Approval" Process
Assuming there is support for a stable version of wikipedia, some
mechanism for stability is required.
Allow logged in users to approve any version of an article. Logged in
users could also disapprove any or every version of an article.
Articles would be scored based on number of users who approved
(weighted?) - number of users who disapproved (weighted?). The article
with the highest approval rating would be the released (approved)
article. This would be displayed somewhere distinct from the working
wikipedia (e.g. sifter.wikipedia.org, or something similar).
New users would be presented with Wikipedia Release edition. They
could still edit the article, but it would not be released until the
approvals on the new article exceed the approvals on the previously
released article. The under-edit version from which users are working
may differ from the release version if approvals have not yet been
found. The differences would be highlighted on the edit screen.
Edits would of course appear in Recent Changes. In addition, there
would be Recent Approvals tracking articles which recently were voted
on for approval.
An edit would of course count as a vote for approval (if preferences so
set).
Under the article (in view mode) (for logged in users) would be "vote
to approve" and "vote to disapprove" buttons. A vote to approve would
transfer a users vote to this version for approval and remove it from
previous versions. A vote to disapprove would remain even if another
version was disapproved.
Possible weight = 1 if under 100 edits, 2 if under 200 edits, 3 if
under 300 edits, 4 otherwise. Alternative weighting schemes are
possible as well, including weight=1 for all logged in users.
Comments?
-- DavidLevinson