>From: wikipedia-l-bounces(a)Wikimedia.org
>[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Tomasz
>> However, I like numbers... they can mislead but they can
>also be food
>> for thought. Keep in mind we don't current recommend that anyone use
>> the email this user to contact inactive uploaders simply because few
>> of the images which are eligible for deletion have a confirmed user.
>>
>> There were 57,472 images uploaded to enwiki in march.
>> *21,000 come from uploaders with confirmed emails.
>> *36,472 come from uploaders without confirmed emails
>>
>> There were 30,981 total images deleted on enwiki in march.
>> *5,149 were uploaded by users who had confirmed emails.
>> *25,832 were uploaded by users who did not have confirmed emails.
>>
>> I think the policy makes sense based both on my experience and based
>> on the numbers.
>
>So about 40% of useful contributions come from users without
>confirmed emails, and we would be throwing them away ?
32% is closer to 30% than to 40%...
As the OP says - the numbers can be misleading - you see 40% of useful
contributions, I see that 70% of uploads by the "unconfirmed" users are
deleted as opposed to just 24% of the "confirmed" users uploads. For me
that clearly says it's a good policy.
>The numbers prove clearly that the proposed policy is really stupid.
No, they don't. Numbers rarely prove anything as they can be very
easily twisted in any way that seems suitable for a particular point of
view.
Cheers,
Michal (roo72)
On 6/28/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf(a)gmail.com> wrote
> On 6/28/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>> By talking about it as if there is a crisis, you make it a crisis; it
>> seems as if we are at war.. I am not convinced AT ALL.
> I would be interested to know on what data you rest your conclusions.
> GMaxwell will back up his statements about the nature of the problem with
> actual numbers (won't you Greg?) =)
I don't know about Greg, but I certainly can:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-March/041534.html
As of last March, approximately 2000 images were uploaded to the
English Wikipedia each day. Of those, roughly 50% had clearly
incorrect license information. Of the images claimed as "fair use",
roughly 35% of the claims were immediately obvious as being invalid.
I haven't seen any sign of the ratios changing since then.
Based on a random sampling of 50 talk pages of users uploading images
without source information or license information, 80% of these users
have no talkpage traffic other than notices about image problems, and
maybe a welcome message.
--
Mark
[[en:User:Carnildo]]
Please forgive me if I'm formatting this post wrongly, this is my first
comment to this group.
I am involved with the Wikipedia 1.0 team on en, both the Version 0.5
project and the contact with WikiProjects. It might help to let folks know
what we're up to, since much of the validation work you mention goes hand
in hand with our mission at Wikipedia 1.0.
1. We are putting together an "alpha test" version of the most important
articles of Wikipedia (with vetting for quality), with a planned release in
the autumn of 2006. For this version, each article is simply nominated by
one person, then reviewed by another from a "review team". Anyone can sign
up for this team, though in practice only a few who sign up seem to review
much.
2. We hope to go on to do further expanded versions after V0.5, but these
will almost certainly include review by several independent reviewers, not
merely one.
3. Oleg Alexandrov has worked miracles with a bot that uses categories, and
this is now generating lists daily with the title "XXXX articles by
quality," summarised here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Index_of_…
Anything from our "core topics" list or our Version 0.5 list is tagged on
the article talk page, the bot picks this up every night. Delirium may be
interested to note that the bot stores a link to the version it found on
the day the assessment was done. We will compare this with the current
version, allowing us easily to check for a quality decline when we go to
press.
4. This bot was mainly designed to help WikiProjects provide us with
information on their articles. This is proving a great success, with new
projects being added to the bot's list every couple of days. We recently
began a "second round" of contacting projects, and this will bear fruit
over the summer and autumn. The Military History project, for example, now
has over 4000 articles assessed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Military_…
It is my hope that once these assessment schemes become established right
across Wikipedia, we will end up with a large body of assessments BY
SUBJECT EXPERTS. People who know a subject well are much more likely to
know, "This biography should also discuss X's work on Y."
5. This contact we are building with projects will help greatly if we
institute a system of expert peer review (no. 2 of Delirium's list) of
selected articles - we already have people we know in most subject areas.
Regarding Delirium's comments in detail, I don't like option 1 for the same
reasons as others. I think option 2 is possible, indeed many groups like
Chemistry and Military History are already well down that road, and within
a year I expect us to have most areas of en:Wikipedia covered. Giving the
work, responsibility and tools to the people who know and care about the
particular articles is a very powerful way to do this, and extremely
scalable. As for option 3, as Sj points out this is partly what projects
like Version 0.5 are doing.
Overall, I think it is crucial to distinguish between VALIDATION and
ASSESSMENT. Validation is often used rather loosely here, but my previous
career in the pharmaceutical industry forces me to consider validation to
mean, "How do we know this article is completely accurate?" It goes much
deeper than assessment (as done at V0.5), which is merely a 10-15 minute
scan of the article- "does it seem complete, are the sources cited, is it
written well, etc.?" My favourite example is an article I wrote on
gold(III) chloride, listed as a "Good Article." How do you KNOW that the
magnetic susceptibility is minus 0.000112 cc/mol, i.e., can you validate
this article? I would like to see Wikipedia move towards having validated
versions of articles available, articles that have been rigorously checked
by subject experts. I'd like to see the standard version of each article
still fully available, but for all validated articles I'd like a tab at the
top saying "validated" that would allow any user to see a non-editable,
validated version of the article. It might be necessary to create a new
namespace on Wikipedia to do this. This approach in effect combines
options 1 & 2. There is a proposal sitting on Wikipedia that suggests much
of this - I don't agree with all of it, but it's a very good start:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:TidyCat/Achieving_validation_on_Wikipedia
I am helping to organise a discussion on this very topic at Wikimania in
August, I hope some of this group will be there. I think this is a nettle
we have to grasp if Wikipedia is to move forward and receive the respect it
deserves. The only way to achieve this IMHO is to get a group of people
around a physical table (not a virtual one!) who can come to a workable
consensus view, and to have people at that table who can also say, "I can
write the code" and "I will authorise the changes." Please be there!
Martin A. Walker (User:Walkerma)
Apologies if this has come up before; this is an article from April
2006, published in "Campaigns and Elections" magazine, which describes
itself as a magazine for campaign consultants.
(http://www.campaignline.com/). I've excerpted the article below,
leaving in the important part where he tells campaign managers how to
influence Wikipedia, for better or worse. Hmm.
If you have access to the Expanded Academic database, the full text is
in there.
-- phoebe
------
The Wikipedia dilemma. Michael Cornfield.
Campaigns & Elections 27.3 (April 2006): p50(1).
Full Text :COPYRIGHT 2006 Campaigns & Elections, Inc.
"Congressional staffers have tried to airbrush and deface it. The
Chinese government has tried to block access to it. Old-line
journalists resent it, while new-line journalists rely on it."
"'It'" is Wikipedia, the real-time online encyclopedia with close to
one million English-language entries that any Internet user, more or
less, can contribute to and edit. Wikipedia is the latest addition to
the online campaigning toolbox. While it has been around for five
years, its readership has now reached critical mass. According to
Alexa.com, it has been the 22nd most visited site on the Web in the
last three months."
[more introductory materia]
....
"It's the composition along with the size of the mass that makes
Wikipedia increasingly important for campaigners. People who go to
Wikipedia often do so to put themselves in a position to say something
knowledgeable to others. In other words, Wikipedia users are opinion
leaders."
....
[goes on to describe the Wikipedia entry for Mark Kennedy, noting one
biased paragraph, where Kennedy is noted as a supporter of the war on
Iraq]
"No such biased paragraph (pro or con) appeared on the entry of
Kennedy's leading opponent at the moment, DFLer Amy Klobuchar. And no
warning box appeared at the top of Kennedy's entry, as may be found at
the entry "Minnesota U.S. Senate Election 2006," which advises users
that what follows is "likely to contain information of a speculative
nature."
....
"The paragraph attacking Kennedy is accurate and mild compared with
some things that have surfaced on political entries. Some may
interpret it as a sign of Wikipedia's liberal media bias. To me, it's
a sign that the Kennedy campaign hasn't been as active on Wikipedia as
it should be. The Kennedy entry ranked eighth on the Google search
return page for his name, by the way.
"The rule of thumb on using Wikipedia as a campaign research tool
ought to be that you: get a second source to ascertain the accuracy of
what you read. Wikipedia links you to a few sites where you can find
that second source, but there are facts which need offline
investigation too. Wikipedia does not post original research, and
professional campaigners need to conduct that sometimes, especially
regarding a client's bio and signature issues.
"The rule of thumb on using Wikipedia to influence the influencers is
to: get in early and stay active. Make sure you consult the "talk" and
"history" tabs to learn who is in the editorial room for an entry and
what they are saying. Insert indexing categories to cross-link crucial
entries; every category is a potential portal to additional
supporters. (The "What Links Here" link in the "Toolbox" is a good
guide to these geographic, demographic, issue-related and other
intellectual bridges; there were 40 in-links for Kennedy's entry.) If
you detect a flaw in the entry of a client, opponent or key topic,
change it. If the change doesn't stick, enter a dispute notice at the
top of the entry, follow the prescribed rules for content, and perhaps
alert mainstream media gatekeepers in your campaign arena to the fact
that you're involved in a Wikipedia dispute.
"The community of self-titled "Wikipedians" really strives for a
neutral point of view. They have established a Counter Vandalism Unit.
They freeze entries, excise content, expose malefactors and most
importantly maintain a public record of what gets said and done on the
site. Wikipedia is, over time and with your cooperative input, less
susceptible to personal, institutional and monetary biases than just
about any other forum in campaignland. It is dull and picayune in
places, but a force for moderation, truth and reason in politics."
ADVICE BY MICHAEL CORNFIELD
Our own article on Literate programming on en wikipedia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming
...has had a link to that excellent wiki site since late April.
Cheers
Derek
----- Original Message ----
From: "Erik Moeller" <eloquence(a)gmail.com>
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Literate Programs wiki
To: wikipedia-l(a)wikimedia.org, "Wikimedia textbook discussion"
<textbook-l(a)wikimedia.org>
Message-ID:
<b80736c80606182003r80f85e6vdc471110d7764f51(a)mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
A very interesting wiki I just discovered:
http://en.literateprograms.org/LiteratePrograms:Welcome
<Snip>
Erik
Uploaded files which are deleted can now be undeleted; admins can also view the
deleted files without actually undeleting them. This is integrated into the
existing Special:Undelete in what I hope is a fairly clear and intuitive manner.
It's my hope that this will encourage admins to tackle the deletion backlogs a
little more aggressively, since mistakes will be easier to undo.
I've tested it both offline and on the live servers and everything seems fine so
far, but if you do encounter problems please report them at
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
So far, we only have one person proposed to be on the committee with any type of professional
fundraising experience (volunteering for Wikimedia does not count). I would therefore like to make
one last plea to anybody reading this that has any experience with fundraising for a non-profit.
We *really* need at least a few people with relevant knowledge about any major aspect of this
topic (seeking funds from individuals/companies/trusts, tax/reporting requirements, technical
aspects of online fundraising systems and donor/sponsor management).
Please sign up below (in the 'People interested in participating' section) and state what
experience/training you have along with your preferred level of participation in the committee
(full member, advisor, consultant or volunteer):
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_committee#People_interested_in_p…
NOTE: Signing up does not guarantee any role above volunteer.
-- mav
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
A very interesting wiki I just discovered:
http://en.literateprograms.org/LiteratePrograms:Welcome
They allow you to post source code of any computer program in any
language, comment it, etc. They have a very neat extension which
allows you to download a tarball of all the programs documented on a
particular page. The code can be broken up into pieces so that
individual sections of a program can be discussed in more detail. The
pieces on a page can then be associated with files using an internal
transclusion.
The extension pieces the stuff together again. It also does syntax
highlighting for a lot of languages.
I'm posting this to textbook-l and wikipedia-l because I know there
are a lot of computer programming related pages on both wikis that
could make use of this resource. Given the URL, the project also seems
to be aiming for multilinguality. I actually think it would make a
nice addition to the Wikimedia project family, if a bit specialized.
Erik
On 6/17/06, Samuel Klein <meta.sj(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The main arguments against a membership model last time around were that
> it was too *limiting* in requiring a contribution, and too unclear in not
> demanding that potential members opt in... are there other reasons not to
> do this?
>
> SJ
>
I must confess this conversation has, to me, been completely bizarre.
Membership organizations (open your wallet and see which of them you belong
to) involve a quid pro quo - you give something, you get something. You
give dues, you get to "belong" and call yourself a member. You attend a
meeting of other members, maybe, and perhaps you are part of a particular
local organization of that group. Churches, civic organizations, soup
kitchens, environmental groups, etc., all exist in this paradigm for good
reason; they include as part of their fundamental mission a dichotomy
between those who *are* in the group and those who *are not* in the group.
Part of the worldwide appeal of Wikimedia projects is their egalitarianism
and respect for the contributions of *everyone*. There is no us and them -
if you want to be a Wikimedian, you can be; you edit, you are. It's simple,
and only goes in one direction. If you edit enough, you can vote for a
person you want to see on the board. Without money changing hands, you have
the same representation you would under any other circumstances. The
Wikimedia you would see with stark membership requirements is a dark place
indeed. What happens to members who don't pay? Are they prevented from
editing? If there is no meaningful distinction in categorization of either
one or the other, what exactly is the point in the first place, except to
give those who are interested and active another membership ID in their
wallet - and this is the point - which confers no additional rights or
privileges?
As to the suggestion above by SJ that "Real name" is a field to be filled
in, required or otherwise, I think recent history has shown that part of the
lingering appeal to many in the community is that anonymity will be
respected. As soon as you cross the line into a "real world" membership
situation, that is undermined substantially, if not eliminated. To be sure,
we have anonymous donors now. But that is a quid without a quo - it is a
gift from an unknown individual to an organization they want to support.
Membership cannot be sustained the same way for any valid reason...there is,
again, no meaningful distinction.
The essence of this openness to all will be lost as soon as an us/them
dichotomy is established. It does not exist today, except as a relic of the
bylaws which are long overdue to be changed. The badges of "membership" -
if you give money, if you contribute to projects, if you volunteer for
various positions in the organization - all exist independent of that.
Other than providing a political means for takeover of the organization
directly (and that's a whole other conversation), I don't see the point.
The Apache model has some strengths, but my personal opinion is that the
difference between producing software alone and producing encyclopedias,
news, etc. yields a gap that is difficult to close. My hats are off to the
Apache folks. But they have a much more narrow mission and fewer moving
parts to achieve that mission. Different parts of the free culture movement
are more or less affected by each undertaking of the Foundation, and are of
varying degrees of interest to many. I think the Foundation's mission is
simply too broad to decide to govern it through direct reliance on
formalized elected constituencies. Creating representation from the
existing pattern of projects is also inherently political. If the
Foundation is successful, the massive trend will be towards languages and
projects with many fewer articles and users now, and millions more speakers
and writers worldwide yet to be connected. So, there is a shift ahead no
matter which way you look at it, provided the projects continue to grow as
they have.
Those who are concerned about this kind of governance issue would be better
served, I think, by focusing attention on board composition and expansion,
as some have done. Jimmy and the other board members are of an open mind as
to what the future of the board will be, what it will/should/could look
like, and there is a lot of discussion about all this. We may disagree on
various points for legitimate reasons, but I hope everyone agrees the
conversation is healthy and beneficial to the organization.
-Brad
--
Brad Patrick
General Counsel & Interim Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
bradp.wmf(a)gmail.com
727-231-0101
As announced earlier, the Communications committee is coordinating the
use of the site-wide notices on Wikimedia Foundation sites. Right now,
we need to call attention to Wikimania and encourage people to register,
so starting sometime tomorrow we will be putting up a brief project-wide
notice about this. We expect the notice to run for about a week.
When this use of the site notice ends it should be blanked again (except
for any separate notices to anonymous users being used for fundraising).
We don't want these to be overused, so an extended silent period for the
site notice should follow. After that, the next use will probably be for
the fundraiser, assuming that committee is organized and a date settled on.
--Michael Snow