Congratulations to the Italian, Finnish and Võro Wikipedias!
Another milestone is approaching: Hungarian Wikipedia is about to reach
50,000 articles today. (It has 49,958 right now. :-)
Just an idea: How about a wiki where each page is a search term? So under
[[Wikipedia]] we could have
1. www.wikipedia.org
2. en.wikipedia.org
.
.
.
.
.
See also
[[Criticism of Wikipedia]]
[[Jimbo Wales]]
etc
These could be automatically generated, and then edited as needs be.
Dunno if this is the right list
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%99%D0%B8%D1%84%D1%84
Any ru.wiki admin here willing to delete those images?
BTW, how come some Wikipedias from countries without a fairuse clause
in their copyright laws use such images?
Since I haven't seen it mentioned...
it.wikipedia broke 250,000 articles in the last few days; it's the
seventh one to pass the quarter-million mark. Portugese is close
behind - maybe this month for them? Finnish and Norwegian (Norsk, not
Nynorsk) are a couple of thousand away from 100,000, so they'll hit
their next milestone this month, too.
Congratulations to all involved.
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk
This is in relation to a concern a user brought to my attention on
en.wikipedia.org, and which I posted a note on Jimmy Wale's talk page
about. I was instructed that meta might deal with what I describe, and
I basically followed the links to mailing lists and to here.
Essentially, to distill this, a user on the hebrew wikipedia, Itay,
was blocked from editing his wikipedia over bad blood between him and
one of the admins (essentially he created a list where he detailed
what he believed were one admin's wrongful actions. It was deleted and
he was subsequently blocked.) Upon appealing to other admins, filing
and RfC, which was removed, filing another and another over various
"errors" in the filing process, and appealing directly to the
essential "head" of he.wiki, he went from being blocked for a week to
being permanently banned. I have corresponded with Itay on numerous
occasions and he has links to all the relevant info, and I believe he
has a strong case that the administrators, or at least four of them,
are acting in a totalitarian and outrightly frightening way to block
and remove edits they deem harmful. Even more worrisome is that there
is no way to appeal to have these admins reviewed on he.wiki. I have
received other emails from other users on he.wiki expressing their
similar concern, quote, "The Hebrew Wikipedia is rotten from the top
down. Plenty of wikipedians who could've contributed a lot to he have
been banned or scared off for either no reason or very minor reasons."
Or, to take part of a run-on sentence, "Several admins have even
clearly stated that "some users are more equal than others" (hinting
at admins > registered users > anonymous users). It's impossible to
have a vote within the community to revoke the admins' rights as
people who have opposed them have either been banned or aren't going
to vote against them because if they do and the rights aren't revoked
they'll be picked on".
Frankly, I'm stumped as to where to turn. This went from a simple AMA
request to a whirlwind of tossabouts. What I am sure I need is a
hebrew/english ambassador who's nuetral in this conflict, who I can
send the evidence to confrim (m Hebrew is pretty basic); I also have
trascriptions for anyone interested. I just have no idea what to do
now... I'm appealing to anyone who has an idea of what my action
should now be.
Sincerily,
David Fuchs
--
Ὦ ξεῖν', ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε
κείμεθα, τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.
(Go, stranger, and to Lacedaemon tell,
That here, obeying her behests, we fell)
-Epigram to the Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae
On the English Wikipedia (but this is coming on other ones) we have a
large amount of articles about individual highschools, most of which
have nothing special and are just like the next highschool.
These articles tend:
* to lack perspective
** give name of personnel who are private persons, which is
unencyclopedic (ex: there's a teacher called foobar)
** devote inordinate length to individual, non notable incidents
(exemple: some incident because of drunk students at a party 2 years ago)
* to be a magnet for vandalism, from disgruntled or bored students
** this vandalism can give details about the personal life of some minors
** it often also is demeaning
** and sometimes contains outright libel (accusing teachers or
principals of being pedophiles etc.)
* not to be patrolled much
** they interest few people
* to lack sources
** unique source tends to be the school's own cite; in theory we should
be able to have multiple sources, including independent ones
In short, they have little encyclopedic interest, are a target for
underage vandals, create lots of work for the OTRS folks and the Foundation.
However, when OTRS folks delete such articles as "non notable", they
often face angry remarks, accusations of lack of democratic process, and
what else; often from people who apparently feel strongly enough to keep
the article, but not strongly enough to patrol it for abuse.
Other users, including admins, seem to entirely ignore
[[Wikipedia:Schools]] as applicable policy.
In fact, I'll also suggest altering the policy in a way: the simple fact
that two "celebrities" from a school have an article on WP should not be
cause to create an article about this school.
Tons of non notable schools have had a celebrity go through. That does
not make them notable.
What would be relevant is: if many celebrities have gone through it. For
instance, Eton in England is notable because many upper class British
men, in high positions, have passed through it.
In any case, I think the Foundation should issue a clear statement that
admins, especially from OTRS, can CSD:A7 school articles that do not
demonstrate notability. Otherwise it's not manageable.