On Sat, 28 Aug 2004 16:46:10 +0200, Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw(a)users.sf.net> wrote:
>
>Imagine a wiki without a Recent Changes page - the error can stay in it for
>days or even weeks before it gets corrected. Such a wiki wouldn't work well.
>But that's almost the situation in Wikipedia today - because the Recent Changes
>is so huge, very few people will check all articles, and as the topics of articles
>become more specialized, chances that non-trivial error will be spotted in RC
>are getting lower and lower.
That's a legitimate concern. Perhaps we could have per-category
Recent Changes pages.
--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)
I have been following the discussion of Wikipedia being reliable as a
source for information. Here are my suggestions. I have seen that
there is a Wikia.com, which is meant to be another human edited web
directory such as DMOZ. Unfortunately DMOZ, while freely
downloadable, has a copyright policy incompatable with Wikipedia.
However, having a human edited web directory has its bonuses, and
incorporating the categorization system of Wikia into Wikipedia can
help to increase our reliability and credibility.
For example, the two could be coded into eachother, in such a manner
that when you create or edit an article, you could enter a template
command that pulled information from the directory database and
displayed the related external web links from that category at the
bottom of the article, in a nicely formatted manner. Perhaps a maximum
of ten websites could show. I imagine an article on The Madness of
King George could contain {{Directory: Movies: Historical Fiction}} at
the bottom of the article. This has an added bonus of not being an
unnatractive listing of hyperlinks as it would come in a preformatted
flavor preferably created by a designer.
When one creates an article, they would also be asked to scour the web
for reliable (i.e. preferably .gov and .edu sites) and other sources
of information. What does this do? This emphasizes our advantage
over the EB, and it also advances Wikia at the same time.
Wikipedia is getting big. As everyone has said, recent changes is
simply too large and some of the rifraf is getting through. Perhaps
there could be a form of checkboxes with categorizations of
information (Think: Google Personalized categories), and I can only
monitor the directories of my choice.
This sort of a system would quiet the noisemakers by making the
information in our articles easily verifiable. All of this stands
apart from the fact, though, that these noisemakers simply do not
understand the concept of "Wiki".
/Alterego
Just an embryo of idea: seems some idiots/spammers spam their URL to
wikipedias they guess unmaintaned, and I suspect that they usually do it to
more than one: maybe one of them are is not maintaned, and thus raise their
ranks on google (cos' that's what it's all about).
Would be maybe useful to be able to put an IP (and its approximate modification
date) into the SpamExaminer queue, which could cehck every wikipedia for the
same IP (only not logged in IP's as it's unlikely that they log in to
several wikipedias they don't even get the language in) modifications, and
make it easier to rollback them (or even help non-maintaned wikipedias to
get rid of them, I don't yet know how).
Maybe a link somewhere on the contribs of a not logged in IP page could
help. Or when watching their diffs (it turns out to be spam in the diffs
usually, except when the moron creates a new article just for the spam).
I guess this could work effectively since not many non-logged-in people
makes changes to several wikipedias at once, and even if they would, sysops
probably wouldn't flag them as spammers.
Or maybe we already have such checks. Dunno. If there is, sorry for wasting
your time.
http://hu.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Speci%C3%A1lis:Contributions&tar…
[[user:grin]]
> >Of course, by this rationale, Wikimedia Commons itself is an unnecessary
> >fork, since all the images in the Commons could be put into Wikipedia
> >itself.
> Tsk tsk, being English-centric. Don't you realize that the Italian
> wikipedia can't refer to an English WP image directly, but has to
> upload each one to it:WP specifically? We have thousands of cloned
> images by now. The Commons is actually an anti-fork that will
> make all the images accessible to all WPs equally.
As the same could be said of Wikispecies (right now we have redundant
species information in every language Wikipedia), this is precisely my
point.
> That would work, but then, why don't we reduce this to an existing
> technology and use the templates:
Templates don't yet handle true parameters. For instance, in a species
definition we have things like "endangered", which, when they exist, cause
an entirely new row to appear in the table. For this to work it seems we
would need tables to act as miniature scripts.
CB low
On 26 Aug 2004, at 08:50, wikien-l-request(a)Wikipedia.org wrote:
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 10:45:17 +0800
> From: Andrew Lih <andrew.lih(a)gmail.com>
>
> (...) what has bothered me lately is the fact
> that Googling for "wikipedia foo" likely brings up one of our mirrors
> first, and not Wikipedia itself. So when I see a blatant error
> magnified "n" times on the many mirrors on the Internet, it sends a
> chill up my spine.
>
> Worse, because those sites are mirrors, and don't accept changes, it
> makes it easy for readers to walk off and say, "What a crackpot
> project."
>
> So increasingly, the dynamic is changing, and in large part it's due
> to Google search results. Whether these mirrors are gaming the search
> algorithm or whatever, increasingly "Wikipedia content" does not
> reside in a true wiki, because the fruits of publishing are being
> removed from the mechanisms of fixing errors. I feel the dynamic of
> inclusionism/deletionism and the promptness of when things are fixed
> must take this into account.
>
> --
> Andrew Lih
> andrew.lih(a)gmail.com
This is _one *more* reason_ why I think it is so important that we
implement our own domain name across the board:
I have in the past proposed -- and am proposing again -- that we use:
wikipedia.org -- as our main site
AND the following as redirects:
wikipedia.com (already active)
wikipedia.net (already active)
wikipaedia.org (cybersquatted by a German Wikipedia imposter)
wikipaedia.com (cybersquatted by the same German Wikipedia imposter)
wikipaedia.net (I recently registered this domain myself and am still
seeking to donate it to the Wikipedia Foundation)
In addition I believe we should also control the *important* ccTLDs,
such as:
wikipedia.de (German, already active)
wikipaedia.de (German, cybersquatted by the same German Wikipedia
imposter)
wikipedia.co.uk (owned by us, but _BROKEN_ "Wiki does not exist" error)
wikipaedia.co.uk (currently unregistered)
and possibly more
The ccTLDs should redirect to the respective language version of the
Wikipedia (not strictly applicable w/ .co.uk as AFAIK there isn't a
separate British English Wikipedia).
That should shut out the most disturbing cases of Wikiplagiarism and as
a side effect pimp us in terms of Google rankings.
I am very much for us moving ASAP to get the cybersquatted domain names
surrendered to us (which we're entitled to under the terms of the ICANN
UDRP).
NB: I have extensively discussed the aforementioned German
cybersquatter/WP imposter at
http://www.ropersonline.com/Area_51/wikipaedia.html (user: guest,
passwd: 1ns4nI+y)
- Jens [[User:Ropers|Ropers]]
Hi,
in case you havn't read my initial e-mail: I am currently trying to
establish a wiki-based, open species directory at www.wikispecies.org/,
which is meant to become a wikimedia project.
I got some support for contents by a range of wikipedia writers, but what I
really need now are developers who set up a basic structure so that we can
get started. Jimbo Wales suggested that the inital wikispecies would be
basically the same as the one of wikipedia.
I evaluated some species data bases and based on that I worked out a basic
structure: a main page with search functions and sub-pages for an individual
species/genus/family and so on, whith different features that can be
searched for (for details see bottom of this e-mail).
If you think you can help, please let me know - every support is much
appreciated! Thanks,
Benedikt
-------------------------------------------------------
MAIN PAGE AND SUBPAGE STRUCTURE
Best viewed at: www.fishbase.org (though for a rather professional user,
therefore a bit extensive). Main page would need to be a search page that
provides a determination key as well.
Search terms
A general division in standard search and advanced search with details
would be good.
NAME (common name, scientific names, synonyms, taxonomic number, etc.)
CLASSIFICATION KEY (classification, would be perfect if we could get a PDA
compatible one for field applications)
GLOSSARY
FAMILY (loads of detail search functions, see at fishbase)
DISTRIBUTION (loads of detail search functions see at fishbase: country)
ECOSYSTEM (loads of detail search functions, see at fishbase)
TOPIC (special topics and articles)
TOOLS (loads of detail search functions, see at fishbase; including a
reference/literature search)
BIODIVERSITY MAP (once again: see at fishbase)
MEDIA (maps, films, pictures, if available)
Subpage for species:
CLASSIFICATION (as tree diagram, looks like a path)
NAMES
MORPHOLOGY (incl. picture or illustration)
BEHAVIOUR
RESILIANCE / REPRODUCTION
HABITAT / ENVIRONMENT
MEDIA (images, maps, diagrams, videos, etc.)
CLIMATE
ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE
DISTRIBUTION (geographically and in terms of countries)
CONSERVATION STATUS
DANGERS
REFERENCES
entered/checked/modified
--
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According to the article [[meta:mailinglist]] the purpose of the
Wikipedia-I mailing list is: "for issues concerning more than one
Wikipedia, but not concerning the sister-projects".
Therefore I fail to see why the ToL, which is an en: resource, would
serve as reason _not_ to start WikiSpecies. When people think that it
takes away from the ToL, they fail to consider that the effort that goes
into WikiSpecies may not be effort that does not go into en: but that it
may take effort away from nl: or de: or fr:
They fail to remember that the first taxobox with the {{regnum}},
{{species}} syntax was brought to you in [[nl:Pos]] and translated for
you as [[en:Ruffe]]. The point being that the potential for better
cooperation with other wikipedia was brought to the en:ToL. When it was
asked to discuss the look and feel of the Taxobox to make it pallatable
for the de:, fr:, nl: and other wikipedia, the answer was NO, see our
history we do not want that, democratic decision.
One argument used is that: forking is not wanted. The argument that a
server with loads of diskspace exists that can be used to host something
like WikiSpecies will propably only get a "well that is ok, because it
is outside wikimedia, nothing to do with us".
Conclusion:
*The arguments against are en: based have little or no relevance to
other wikipedia and are, because of its purpose, of litle relevance to
this list.
*WikiSpecies will be a sister-project and as such it is not for this
mailing list to decide what is going to happen.
*The danger of forking outside Wikimedia is real, this to happen is the
worst case scenario, because it will mean that a potentially valuable
resource will be lost to all wikipedia not just to en:.
*When a fork happens, ask yourself did it have to do with you, and are
you comfortable with it?
Thanks,
GerardM
Dear Mr. Fasoldt, Dear Ms Stagnitta,
I read your article in the Post-Standard "Librarian: Don't use Wikipedia
as source" at
http://www.syracuse.com/news/poststandard/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1093338972…,
where you wrote:
I was amazed at how little I knew about Wikipedia.
If you know of other supposedly authoritative Web
sites that are untrustworthy, send a note to
technology(a)syracuse.com and let me know about them.
Have you visited britannica.com?
http://corporate.britannica.com/termsofuse.html
> Disclaimer of Warranties
>
> Neither Britannica, its affiliates, nor any third-party content
> providers or licensors makes any warranty whatsoever, including
> without limitation: that the operation of the Site will be
> uninterrupted or error-free; that defects will be corrected; that
> this Site, including the server that makes it available, is free of
> infection, viruses, worms, Trojan Horses, or other harmful components
> or other code that manifest contaminating or destructive properties;
> as to the results that may be obtained from use of the materials on
> the Site; or as to the accuracy, reliability, availability,
> suitability, quality, or operation of any information, software, or
> service provided on or accessible from the Site or as to any
> information, products, or services on the Internet in any way. In
> addition, Britannica does not assume any responsibility or risk for
> your use of the Internet.
> THE SITE AND ALL INFORMATION, PRODUCTS, AND OTHER CONTENT (INCLUDING
> THIRD-PARTY INFORMATION, PRODUCTS, AND CONTENT) INCLUDED IN OR
> ACCESSIBLE FROM THIS SITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT WARRANTIES
> OF ANY KIND (EXPRESS, IMPLIED, AND STATUTORY, INCLUDING BUT NOT
> LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF TITLE AND NONINFRINGEMENT AND THE
> IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
> PURPOSE), ALL OF WHICH BRITANNICA EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS TO THE FULLEST
> EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW. YOUR USE OF BRITANNICA.COM IS AT YOUR SOLE
> RISK.
Information at britannica.com can be edited by anyone who was given
permission from the company. It might be a PhD who hasn't done anything
else than writing about this specific topic. It might be someone else
who feels competent. You never know.
Just compare
http://www.britannica.com/eb/dailycontent?eu=422756#e%0Avent " Haile
Selassie" with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haile_Selassie
At wikipedia, you can see a) who wrote b) when c) which part of the
text, who changed it, who altered the order who removed parts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Haile+Selassie+of+Ethiopia&actio…
The authors, such as David Parker can be emailed or asked for
clearification in doubt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Parker
You and Susan Stagnitta are perfectly right to advise people never to
"trust" unreliable sources but I can't see a difference in this case
between a "black box" company and a group of academics and skilled
laymen who make the process of encyclopedic writing transparent.
Several wikipedians have created a document called "Making fun of
Britannica" http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Making_fun_of_Britannica,
which contains a list of "errors" (in a broader sense). This does not
change the level of trust towards Britannica.
If you spot a mistake in Britannica, what are the consequences? If it
was in a book, there is no chance to correct it and the risk might be
that a student relies on wrong information. She/He will not be able to
get a refund from Britannica or even a discount on the new and
(hopefully) corrected version.
Ms. Stagnitta said "Anyone can change the content of an article in the
Wikipedia, and there is no editorial review of the content." Even if the
first part of that sentence is correct, the second part does not
describe the reality.
Just have a look at the procedures at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates. It
might be hard to get used to the fact that editorial review might be
ad-hoc or it might be a constant effort. If an article was found fit for
being a "Featured article", the process of improving that article does
not stop.
I would like you to encourage you to ask Britannica if they feel that
their content is "authoritative" in a sense that they will guarantee any
given fact in their Encyclopedia. Ask them if they are able to attribute
every sense to a specific author who can be contacted. Ask them if they
will make their decision transparent, which lemma does get into the EB
and which lemma does not get into it.
Yours,
Mathias Schindler
neubau(a)presroi.de
Ringelstr.50
60385 Frankfurt am Main
Germany
> > Unhelpfull, hiding what you stand for .. What do you stand for ? How is
> > it helpfull to others, to me ?
> [...]
> Since you have not provided a single example where ToL and Wikispecies will
> not overlap, I'd say that you are being very unhelpful.
Please don't bring it to a personal level who is more "unhelpful". I am sure
both sides (pro-/contra Wikipspecies) want the "best", in the sense that we
all want to create as much as possible high quality and free content in the
long run.
Since the discussion is tending to blur a bit, I'll repeat some of the
questions which I consider fundamental for finding a good solution for
achieving our overall goal.
1. "What is resp. will be the difference between Wikispecies and Wikipedia?"
this immediately leads to two other important questions, namely we have to
define what the scope of Wikipedia resp. Wikispecies is.
1.1 "What is the scope of Wikipedia?"
On [1] - the following is said about the scope of Wikipedia:
"Wikipedia's goals are ambitious: it aims
* to be an encyclopedia, in the normal sense of a collection of all human
knowledge
[...]
Since there is little in the way of space limitation on Wikipedia, it also
aims to subsume the functions of many specialist encyclopedias. Unlike a
paper encyclopedia, Wikipedia can encompass articles for both elementary and
advanced treatments of the same subject."
Jimbo called Wikipedia several times a "general interest encyclopedia".
1.1.b "What is the scope of Wikipedia w.r.t. species?"
The "Tree of Life" project" says the following:
"This WikiProject aims primarily to represent the taxonomy and relationships
of living organisms, as well as their extinct relatives, in a tree structure.
Since there are millions of species, not all will be included, but we aim to
handle as many as information, time, and interest permit."
In accordance with that Pete wrote: "The Tree of Life project's aim has always
been to write about all species. I think that ambitious aim has been part of
the reason for its success in becoming the largest wikiproject (tens of
thousands of articles), with the most contributors."
and Jimmy replied to that: "I fully support this, as I think it is an
absolutely excellent thing to be doing."
and further down Jimbo wrote:
"Why would we come up with guidelines to prohibit some species from wikipedia?
I do not support any such thing."
Partial answer to 1.1.b: since there seems to be perfect agreement between
Jimmy and the ToL members that all species can be part of the Wikipedia
project. As question remains
1.1.c "Is there a limit to what depth a species is allowed to be discussed
within Wikipedia?"
There is no definite answer to that I am aware of, especially not from Jimbo.
Jimbo noted that we are a "general interest encyclopedia", he also wrote that
he does not oppose the inclusion of any species and nevertheless states that
wikipedia and wikispecies do not overlap. Thus I only can conclude, that
Jimmy is in favour of limiting the amount of knowledge which is "allowed"
within an article.
An anwer from Jimmy about this would be interesting. In particular we in some
areas already have by far surpassed the borders of what _I_ consider a
"general interest encyclopedia", for instance the article about Mitchell's
embedding theorem is hardly useful for anyone who hasn't studied several
years of mathematics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell's_embedding_theorem
(there are many more of this type: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoneda_lemma )
1.2 "What is the scope of Wikispecies?"
Benedikt Mandl wrote the following: "What we should define as a target:
Wikispecies should become the most extensive directory of its kind and not
specialise exclusivly on a particular group of species (as fishbase does, for
example) nor users (NOT for scientists only, for example)."
back to question 1: I think we all agreed that there is no difference between
ToL and Wikispecies with respect to the number of species. Both projects
would accept _any_ species in their encyclopedia.
I think also most of us agree that there is a huge overlap of the projects.
Jimmy does not see this overlap, he explicitly wrote that "wikispecies is not
overlapping with the encyclopedia in any significant way".
If we do not limit the "depth" of the article, that means if we do the same in
ToL which was done in the above mathematics articles, then there is a huge
overlap between the two project. By that I don't say that this necessarily is
a bad thing, and this also does not mean that wikispecies and wikipedia are
identical. Another difference that was pointed out by Jimmy was the "trivia
information" which exists in Wikipedia articles, but surely will not part of
any wikispecies article.
If we strongly limit the Wikipedia "depth" for ToL articles, we still will at
some point have >100.000 articles, where - except trivia information - the
Wikipedia articles will be more or the less subset of the information which
is contained in wikispecies.
o.k. I'm afraid I'm out of time, but I hope this partial summary is
nevertheless helpful. It would be interesting if Jimmy could comment on
question 1.1.c
best regards,
Marco
2. "What are the possible advantages of Wikispecies?" /
"Why can Wikispecies not be identical to ToL project"
3. "What are possible disadvantages of a seperate Wikispecies project?"
4. "What options do we have?"
Mainly we have three options:
* support a fork / sister project within the Wikipedia family
* do not support a fork / sister project within the Wikipedia family
* modify the mediawiki software in such a way that wikispecies seems to be an
project on its own. This also means that there only is one "article", but
that Wikipedia users and Wikispecies users see filtered versions of that
article.
[1]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/NEH_Reference_materials_grant_application/Na…
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Tree_of_Life