Delphine Ménard wrote:
> On another note, I am sorry to tell you that you
have, > on top of playing with people's feelings,
failed to
> make your point. At least, *I* have failed to see
where > you were leading.
Delphine a vraiment raison ici! Me neither, I wasn't
able to figure out what you really mean. To me it
looked like a bizarre mix of serious arguments and
comedy, without being able tell which part is what.
Arbeo
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[[ http://reagle.org/joseph/blog/culture/wikipedia/citation-and-trustworthines…
2005 Nov 02 | Can you trust the Wikipedia?
In the past week the perennial question of "Can you trust the Wikipedia?"
arose while I was working on the tedious -- though oddly compelling for an
obsessive like myself -- task of reviewing the early period of Wikipedia
history. I slowly worked through the Wikipedia timeline ensuring each event
was dated and sourced. I realize that if I'm ever to trust this timeline, I
need more than a bald claim. And, my appreciation is so much greater when I
can peruse the primary source. For some sources, such as the Nupedia list
archives, I was able to find copies of messages on the Internet Archive.
Another source, Jimbo's explanation about Stallman's proposal for a
competing project, is seemingly lost forever. Fortunately, Stallman was
kind enough to tell me of his recollection of the incident and allow me to
publish it. Most frustratingly, I encountered a tantalizing mention of
Internet encyclopedia proposals from the UN's Millennium Project but failed
to find any source or corroboration; that information is stricken from the
article. Which brings me back to the question of trusting the Wikipedia. I
have addressed the broader question of epistemological authority before,
but now I want to focus on the role of sources.
Simply, Wikipedia is only as trustworthy as its links. Actual scholarly
authority is similar. A critical part of scholarly training is learning why
and how to cite (link to) others. Expert authority is also generated from
experience in the field, and theoretical and methodological training. Yet,
as I've noted many times "'We can never know everything.' We all can't be
experts on everything, so we often need to rely upon credible authority
while remaining critical and skeptical, but never dismissive."
Consequently, the tokens "Ph.D." and "professor" become proxies for an
assessment of trust that very few people are able to substantively test,
but, to which many are willing to defer. Because Wikipedia lacks such
reputation mechanisms Wikipedia is, again, only as trustworthy as its
links. For educational purposes, the implication of this is profound.
Should we teach students to trust a claim because it was simply uttered by
a credentialed person? Or, should we encourage them to click a link and
teach them how to investigate for themselves?
The consequent of this for Wikipedia culture is that it doesn't link enough.
Perhaps my experience with Wikipedia history is exceptional since
Wikipedians take the sources for granted. But, as I found, that's a poor
historical assumption. I also share the concern that articles might become
overly busy or dense with citations. There is a tension here, but one I
think the technology can handle. It's why I believe the trustworthiness of
Wikipedia is in part dependent upon the citation project and furthering a
culture of "if you claim, you cite" as implied by the Verifiability policy.
]]
Hi,
I am one of the admins in the Kurdish Wikipedia (ku). A user from Iran
informed me today that the ku.wikipedia.org
<http://ku.wikipedia.org>subdomain is blocked in Iran. He receives the
following error message:
***
Access Denied!
This page will not be accessible for the reason that in our database it has
been assinged to the category of blocked contents .
In the event the URL does not contain materials that are forbidden by laws,
please fill this form out then hit send.
***
He assured me that this is a standard message for blocked contents. There is
no such problem with other subdomains of wikipedia.org<http://wikipedia.org>.
He did NOT fill out the form.
Before we start any bigger protest, could someone else from Iran please
verify this issue? There was a similar issue with Turkey before, I don't
want to start anything without a clear verification.
Regards,
Erdal
Angela wrote:
>>Another point is, right now, all stewards have check user access. But no
>>steward was approved by a developer or by Tim himself (who is at the
>>origine of the steward status creation), nor by Jimbo.
>>So, do you suggest that stewards are asked not to use this tool ? Or
>>should they be allowed only after approval by Jimbo or Tim ? Or should
>>stewards be only nominated by Jimbo or Tim in the future ?
>
>
> It isn't true that all stewards have CheckUser access. Stewards have
> the ability, though not the right, to assign themselves this access.
> It's unfortunate that some have violated their privileges by assigning
> themselves CheckUser access without approval of the communities
> they're using it on. I thought stewards could be trusted not to do
> that, but seemingly not.
>
> Angela
> A steward with no checkuser access
Correct. They have the ability, not necessarily the rights. The requests
I fulfilled were done per request of french editor and french arbcom.
They were legitimate.
Ant
> Another point is, right now, all stewards have check user access. But no
> steward was approved by a developer or by Tim himself (who is at the
> origine of the steward status creation), nor by Jimbo.
> So, do you suggest that stewards are asked not to use this tool ? Or
> should they be allowed only after approval by Jimbo or Tim ? Or should
> stewards be only nominated by Jimbo or Tim in the future ?
It isn't true that all stewards have CheckUser access. Stewards have
the ability, though not the right, to assign themselves this access.
It's unfortunate that some have violated their privileges by assigning
themselves CheckUser access without approval of the communities
they're using it on. I thought stewards could be trusted not to do
that, but seemingly not.
Angela
A steward with no checkuser access
>But right now, we do NOT have this log. And people are ASKING for the
>check user status to go live !
I would really like to know who thought voting for checkuser was a
good idea and why.
- d.
Direct contribution is indeed very important, but I
think supporting endangered languages is something we
can do without too much pain and is something that
should be done.
As to the 250 Wikipedias are better than 40 argument,
what I was referring to is the fact that what sets
Wikipedia apart from other encyclopedias - one of the
things that sets is apart - is that it is available in
so many languages, many of which don't normally
receive Internet exposure. I find it amazing that
there's a Wikipedia in Voro, or that there's a
Wikipedia in so many Filipino languages, or in Breton,
or in Cornish!
Of course, having a Wikipedia in dialects or accents
shouldn't be done at all. The things that's worrying
me is that people are now starting to say that as long
as we reach all people with the languages we've got,
that's OK. In Europe, if you have a Wikipedia in every
national language, you've reached 99.99% of people.
But is that the climate we want at Wikipedia?
That's why I say that for every new proposal, we need
concensus on whether that proposal is a language, but
nothing else - none of this "is it necessary?"
business, which I think sets a dangerous precent. The
Low Saxon Wikipedia is useful, the Frisian Wikipedia
is useful, the Voro Wikipedia is useful. All of these
Wikipedias should stay and similar cases should be
approved in the future.
As I said before, there's a difference with proposals
such as Zlatiborian, "Bostonian", etc. In fact, I am
also against languages being renamed for political
reasons, like Moldovan, Montenegrin, etc. I'm also not
particularly favourable to projects like Bavarian,
etc. *However*, as long as we force speakers of
legitimate regional languages like Samogitian, Vlax
Romany, Megleno-Romanian, Sorbian, etc, that haven't
yet got a Wikipedia, to go through an over-rigorous
proposal phase, we're going too far.
I think most of us here are smart enough to
distinguish before languages which are never mentioned
on the internet and have no written standard - and are
therefore "invented" by the person who proposes them -
and legitimate minority languages that need all the
help we can get (if for every paragraph typed arguing
about the Zlatiborian hoax someone wrote one
template-based article at the Voro Wikipedia, we would
have had about 40 articles extra and helped save a
wonderful part of Europe's lingustic heritage...)
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Hi,
I think the recent discussion here shows a very
worrying recent trend in Wikipedia: growing
intolerance towards the diversity of the community and
a growing distancing of Wikipedia's original community
structure: a free community that was known for doing
things differently.
Ever since I came here, one of the reason why I loved
the Wikimedia community was because it was tolerant
and it was very inclusive and respectful of minority
rights. The support for endangered and minority
languages is very important, and must be maintained.
While not being the primary aim, supporting endangered
languages is one way through which Wikipedia is
contributing to human knowledge... it's preserving a
very important element of human culture. As soon as we
stray away from that goal, Wikipedia loses its special
status, by becoming yet another encyclopedia.
Raphael Wiegand said, "We are (or
better we want to be) a project trying to set up an
encyclopedia
everyone can access and understand and nothing else."
This is wrong, in my opinion. While writing an
encyclopedia is the primary aim, I think we can also
achieve the secondary aim of protection for minority
languages, all of which contribute to Wikipedia's
breadth of knowledge. Having a complete encyclopedia
in 40 languages is a good thing. Having an
encyclopedia in 250 languages is an excellent one.
The other thing that makes me worried is the growing
pressure on new language contributors. We must
remember that Wikipedians are *volunteers* and most,
except vandals, are always adding knowledge to the
community. Pressuring them into reaching a certain
guideline for their language is abuse, in my opinion.
If only because we're abusing their love for their
language - their desire to promote it - by forcing
them to meet ever more stringent guidelines for
setting up Wikipedias in new languages. New
contributors must be encouraged, not discouraged. I
think making a subdomain a privelege is nonsensical.
Wikipedia is not like free web hosting - it's not the
one giving away free stuff. The contributors are
giving away their time and knolwedge freely for
Wikipedia!
Which is why I propose that we take a second to look
into the problem with a bit of perspective, and
realise the depth that minority languages have added
to Wikipedia. As I said before, it's one thing to say
you've got an encyclopedia in German, and another to
say you've got one in Samogitian, or in Voro, or in
Aromanian.
For a new language to be formed, I think the present
policy is good enough. A community should be
demonstrated, and a test wiki should be founded, but
nothing more than that. Otherwise, we risk
discouraging new contributors who are insipring people
that are full of enthusiasm. Otherwise Wikipedia
becomes elitist (or is that word too controversial to
use in the Wikipedia context!?!)
Thanks,
Ronline
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Delphine wrote:
>Mark,
>When the matter goes as far as Milos saying that the Serbian and
>Montenegro Chapter does not want to be part of Wikimedia, I think you
>should really try to evaluate what damage you have caused.
When the Serbian and Montenegro chapter decides it does not want to be
part of Wikimedia because of one person's comments on a mailing list,
it is they who desperately need a sense of proportion. What a
ridiculous tantrum.
- d.
Anthere wrote:
>David Gerard wrote:
>> Anthere wrote:
>>>* on a project with no arbcom, the community will have to vote for its
>>>editors with checkuser access. A limit of votes number has been set on
>>>purpose. I recommand avoiding using sockpuppet for voting. A wiki
>>>community with 10 editors and 30 voters is likely to be frowned upon.
>> And next, we'll be voting for root, database access and CVS access.
>> Get your votes in now! Brion, Tim or Lir for Mediawiki lead? It's a
>> hot contest!
>I think it should be possible to discuss without using fallacious
>arguments David. There is no comparison between a checkuser access and a
>root access.
There is, really: neither is a voting matter. I raised this before,
but you appear to regard the objection as (to quote you) "no real
opposition". Not to mention Tim's quote when voting for checkuser was
floated: "Users would vote themselves root if they could."
What I said was that users need:
- the technical knowledge to know what they're seeing (which a network
admin was one example of);
- the trustworthiness that they won't break the privacy policy
>The main problem I see here is that it seems you consider that check
>user access should only be given to sysadmins. I do not think the
>majority of editors would agree with you.
Please don't misrepresent my words. I said that was not what I thought
and I meant that was not what I thought. You therefore have no
justification to say that that's what I said or meant. I ask you to
retract it.
>I see your argumentation aiming only at restricting the use of this tool
>to a very limited number of editors, approved by Jimbo or Tim. Right
>now, Jimbo has approved the access to a half dozen english editors, none
>of whom are actually sysadmins.
>What is your feeling toward these nominations ?
As you FULLY KNOW BECAUSE I CC'D YOU ON THE EMAIL IN QUESTION, I am
fine with all of those.
Why are you pretending I am saying things I didn't or not saying things I did?
>But I would like to know why you have not made any comments this week
>while I have indicated a week ago that unless there was opposition, this
>policy would go live this week.
After you complained on arbcom-l of people not commenting, I went and
checked that I had in fact commented ... and had already pointed out
the ridiculousness of voting on the matter.
As Chris Jenkinson said:
>Surely the enforcement of the Foundation's privacy policy is the
>responsibility of the Foundation, and thus access to personal
>information (such as IP addresses) should be given out upon approval by
>the Board, rather than by some kind of election system?
Indeed. Anthere, I originally understood this was your position.
- d.