Wikipedia-l May 2007

wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

48 participants
34 discussions

Quality, audience and policies (apparently) colliding... what a mess!
by Massimo DZ8 09 May '07

09 May '07

Greetings everyone on the list! I am new! Being the list about problems with multiple wikis I guess it's the right one for a problem I noticed. This has been originally posted to the wp:HD but we then realized it was better to ask someone other. Just to start, I must say I haven't spent much time on searching - about half an hour - I apologize if this has been taken up in precedence. I see some people speaking about the 'quality' WRT stub ratio and about stubs becoming articles so I guess this (quality, audience and expertise) is a complex issue being dealt with. Sabine writes: > What is Wikipedia's audience? ... In my research, I found a previous post which seems to hit the problem perfectly: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikipedia-l/2002-September/004583.… Tarquin writes: > There are certain topic areas where amateurs *know* they are out of > their depth,and only the likes of Mr "relativity is wrong" Jones dare to > tread. > > In other areas, *everybody* thinks they know something. This is what's happening. I wrote a major edit some time ago which was hardly believed by most people - I guess they didn't found what they expected - however, it was referenced by the two highest autorities in the field. As the months passed, the "quality" went worse and worse. In the last few weeks, it basically became a stub again. Pointing the thing to the help desk, an editor originally suggested that according to WP:CON the new content was preferable. After examining the thing in more detail, he later agree the whole issue was definetly more complex... which takes us here. I plan to later summarize this discussion and post back to WP:HD the results. A first issue was about WP:CON, since my edits (referenced) seems to have met very little consensus so I've tried to pull out a few "focalized" questions. 1. Is WP:CON valid on different informations? In other words, WP:CON obviously applies when the information given is the same. Does WP:CON apply when the information is different? Does it make sense? 2. Is WP:CON allowed to "override" WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:RS? The implication of this are rather important: it means that if the average user is misinformed, the articles should spread this misinformation just because this is what's expected. It's definetly something that doesn't seem to make sense, especially when this badly collides with the references. 3. How is consensus evaluated in reference to audience? It obviously doesn't make any sense to count the number of votes, especially for highly specific readings (quantum physics? relativity? chemistry?) Moreover, I have a few additional questions regarding the issue I recently faced. A. The power of an hypermedia paradigm is allowing each reader to "follow its way". I have read a few about the need for introductions however doesn't this contradict the capabilities of hypermedia? Is it wrong to assume a reader would follow links? What is a "reasonable" assumption? This may imply that every article should include at least a part of others, something that doesn't seem optimal. B. How can editors be encouraged at writing something which is actually a redlink or stub? I have seen a user removing the redlink and maybe even complaining because there was one. C. Supposing two references collide with each other, what one takes precedence? This actually doesn't happen for careful readers but seems common for casual readers without in-depth knowledge, probably because they don't recognize the context is different. D. What's the way to deal with users that (good faith obviously intended) end messing up everything? E. How to deal with the above issue when the new version meets greater consensus? F. What to do when the above case contradicts sources? What if, to remove the contradiction, the sources are removed? (ykes!) G. What about "article attacks"? An user once wrote as an edit summary "...this seems stolen..." and then pointed out over 2000 pages to check! H. More generally, how are the "quality" and "audience" issues being addressed? Thank you very much, Massimo

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Goodbye and good luck to all
by Walter van Kalken 08 May '07

08 May '07

Anyway after this lowpoint in my wikipedia history in which after 3,5 years of editing , over 20.000 edits and over 500 articles on nl.wikipedia. 100's of hours spend in anti-vandalism actions, helping people everywhere etc etc. After all this I do not even get a chance by an arbcom to explain why I did what I did, and I get blocked without anyone even arsed to tell me about the fact it is time to go. I know when I am not appreciated somewhere. Waerth

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Trying to edit wikipedia on request Result: Strange arbcom ruling on nl.wikipedia, 1 month blocked
by Walter van Kalken 07 May '07

07 May '07

After months of people asking me on IRC, in mail on my Talkpage etc. if I would please please please contribute again to nl.wikipedia I decided to give it a try and started redoing some Thai provinces. Since I had stopped editting last year no-one had any interest in those articles. The only edits besides mine are "pimp my article edits" like cats and replacing the texts without any information adding! On average 50 edits like this per article! And no knowledge added! Within 2 hours I was mobbed by 3 users, with whom I have had conflicts previously and who stalk me on talkpages, who feel that the appearance of an article is more important than what is in it. I have a number of fans on nl.wikipedia who take turns in following me everywhere, or do groupattacks. This is why I decided to stop contributing knowledge in october last year as it was of no use. These people are in no way interested in the subjects I write about, but are more interested in attacking and harassing me and stopping me from contributing. Sadly enough I can only edit if I edit under another name. I have been requested multiple times by users on IRC to start editing under another wikinick. It is said that this has to be. The conflict resulted in a block which saw one of those 3 blocked for 1 hour and me for 3 days. This was later adjusted to me for 6 hours which was doubled again when I editted through TOR to protest the double standards. After this I was and still am so sickened by the way wikipedia and ALL wikimedia projects have become that I decided to stop editting on April 10th. Today I got an email from someone telling me I am now blocked for a month! It seemed that while I was away a procedure against me was started. I was not heard on anything, nor was I asked to give my view of anything that had happened! If you try someone someone gets a chance to defend themselves don't they? And now comes worst. I was "sentenced" to a monthlong block for editting through proxies. But no one told me I was sentenced! Someone who disagreed with the block mailed me. 2 weeks after THE BLOCK. This is a really odd procedure. You trial someone without giving him a DEFENCE and you sentence him but don't tell him of the sentence! Waerth

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Password security notes
by Brion Vibber 07 May '07

07 May '07

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 As noted in other threads on several mailing lists, a few admin accounts on en.wikipedia have been compromised recently, used to vandalize high-traffic protected pages. We're starting to roll out some additional protections against password-guessing attacks, including but not limited to: * Additional logging to better detect dictionary-style attacks * Speed-bump measures against multiple failed logins [But not that should DoS legitimate users. The traditional "lock out the account after three tries" would make it trivial to lock out all the site's sysops -- not wise. :)] * Weak-password checks on existing sysops on our largest sites. Several accounts have had their weak passwords invalidated and will need to reset by mail before logging in again. * Several targeted blocks against known cracking attempts. Over the coming days we will additionally be rolling out more automated password-strength checkers at login / set-password / change-password time to reduce the danger of guessable passwords. Please distribute this information as appropriate to your local projects/languages. - -- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGP6WDwRnhpk1wk44RApO6AJ9q8MXXhYbVAT9+YoTOZgFwv56YbwCdH2MU ysd+CDuI1knUHJaD1jd8wUo= =FGTh -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Passwords
by Andrew Gray 07 May '07

07 May '07

For those who haven't yet heard, someone has been hitting en.wikipedia with what appears to be an attack looking for admins with weak passwords - "password", "password1", "[username]", etc. Then they go on a predictable spree; deleting the main page, mostly. I think we're down four so far... It's possible someone might try this in the near future on other wikis - a lot of vandals tend to only go for en, but you never know, this one might be feeling multicultural! This might be a good time to spread the word and ask your admins to consider checking their passwords are good and secure - after all, it's good practice anyway. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

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research about virtual communities and Wikipedia
by Neni Pogarcic 07 May '07

07 May '07

Hi!! The internet is still a fairly recent phenomenon. Whereas communities and groups enjoyed thorough research, theories and knowledge about virtual communities are relatively limited. I am busy with researching how virtual communities communicate, interact and exchange knowledge and information. Most importantly, I am interested in the relation between virtual communities and knowledge creation. As Wikipedia is one of the biggest and most popular virtual communities, and as it is focused on knowledge creation and knowledge exchange is it perfect to contribute to this research. I can get lots of data and information from the site it self. But in this context, people are crucial. Crucial for understanding the motivators and visions which are necessary to have a website as successful as Wikipedia. I am therefore looking for people who are active on Wikipedia who would find it interesting to give interviews. These interviews are necessary to complete this research successfully. Obviously you will be able to express your own opinion and illustrate Wikipedia as you see it. If you are interested in helping please reply. Interviews will be either via email or phone (skype). Thank you in advance! Neni Pogarcic

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Asking for bot status
by Andre Engels 07 May '07

07 May '07

I am sometimes asked to request for bot status for my bot. I find this strange. Bot status is there for the normal users of the wiki, not for the bot operator. If you want my bot to have bot status, then you request it. I'd be happy to help you in that, but why should I request something just because someone else wants it? -- Andre Engels, andreengels(a)gmail.com ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels

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Wikipedia in Kabyle language created
by River Tarnell 06 May '07

06 May '07

hello, a new Wikipedia has been created in the Kabyle language. it can be found at <http://kab.wikipedia.org/>. - river.

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Re: [Wikipedia-l] Quality vs Quantity
by Craig Franklin 05 May '07

05 May '07

Hi Lars, I should have said, trying to make a qualitative comparison using quantitiative measures is quite difficult given the nature of Wikipedias. To illustrate using the "article count" used on www.wikipedia.org, I had a looksie at two Wikis, Quechua (2,166 articles), and Friulian (2,041 articles). Using this quantitative comparison, they should be about equal in comprehensiveness. However, after hitting "Random" five times on each, I got the following pages: Quechua: http://qu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chhukruna (stub) http://qu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk (stub) http://qu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yatawaki (stubby, most of the article is just a bullet-point list) http://qu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiru_ismu (stub) http://qu.wikipedia.org/wiki/T'aklla (stub) Friulian: http://fur.wikipedia.org/wiki/1622 (stub) http://fur.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timp_coordenât_universâl (short, maybe a Start class on en:) http://fur.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauc (full article, longer by word count than version on en:, about the same size at that on it: if you remove the large bar graph from the it: version) http://fur.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toponims_Talian_Furlan_D (list) http://fur.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam (full article) Anecdotal maybe, but clearly once you eyeball it, the Friulian Wikipedia has the edge in terms of comprehensiveness and quality over Quechua. Trouble is, I don't see how this can be algorithmically determined using an automated process. You're going to need humans to look at these things and make the determination, and really, who has time to do that for 200+ wikipedias? Not to mention the accusations of bias, poor article selection, and other such things that will be made. Using word counts is also going to be a problem too, languages like Norfuk that have lots of small particle words and the like will show inflated word counts compared to languages like Mandarin that don't have written words in the Western sense, languages like Gaeilge or Cymraeg where the very notion of "word" is a pretty nebulous one, or languages like Kalaallisut which compress many meanings and affixes into each and every word. Cheers, Craig Franklin > Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 11:30:53 +0200 (CEST) > From: Lars Aronsson <lars(a)aronsson.se> > Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Quality vs Quantity > To: wikipedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0705031128240.15940(a)localhost.localdomain> > Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > > Craig Franklin wrote: > >> You show me a way of quantitatively comparing two Wikis using an >> automated process, and I'll show you a language or Wiki that >> will break it. > > Today the front page www.wikipedia.org measures and compares the > number of articles. You can begin to "break" that method. And > then you can figure out some method that might perhaps be slightly > better. I've suggested two already. > > > -- > Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) > Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

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Big ... bigger ... the biggest ... encyclopaedic articles ... (was quantity vs. quality)
by Sabine Cretella 04 May '07

04 May '07

Just forwarding you what I wrote on my blog about this theme ... Ciao, Sabine -------- Original-Nachricht -------- I already wrote about this some time ago ... it is the never ending struggle and fight between two worlds: - any length is fine, also just one sentence because this sentence gives basic information - only long articles are good Uhmmm ... well: I would like to invite you to come into a book store <http://amazon.com/Encyclopedias-Reference-Books/b/ref=amb_link_10/002-95140…> ... wow ... more than 29000 entries there. You find anything there ... general encyclopaedias in just one volume and many of the entries have a lengths of just one sentence (like: Maiori is a city in the South of Italy, on the Amalfi Coast, in the province of Salerno, region Campania). There are specialised encyclopaedias with very specific articles let's take an example, maybe about biology. There are the really big ones like the Britannica. Now each of them has a certain kind of target audience. What is Wikipedia's audience? The general reader that could be happy enough with knowing that Maiori is a town in Italy, the highly specialised one that want to know all about a specific animal we maybe don't all know or those who want to read those huge articles? Who is our audience? All of them or just the "elite" of encyclopaedia readers that would say that one sentence about a town somewhere in the world is not enough? Uhmmm ... but what is Wikipedia's basic scope: "Provision of information in the field of general encyclopedic knowledge via the Internet." (I am quoting from the article about Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia> on the English wikipedia). Reading that and considering what a wiki is: all discussions about what is better, best, worse, worst etc. don't need to be discussed. If we are NPOV all of these versions are equally valuable and Wikipedia having its unique goal and being a wiki can combine all three of them in one. Isn't that incredible? So why limit what can be added? Even a small sentence can be of value ... and even a town or place that seems to be irrelevant to one can be relevant to somebody else. Who are we to say (just as an example): this city or river may not go into wikipedia as a stub since it is not relevant enough ... who tells us what is relevant or not? Wouldn't it be against the NPOV policy? Oh yes, now I hear some shouting: but there are then 5000 articles about cities that are just stubs and the wikipedia seems to be bigger as it is ... well: go to the library, take one of those general encyclopaedias and look into it ... remember: for a kid one sentence telling where a city is often is enough - if there is more: even better, but that sentence can be a huge help when they study. Imagine one thing, at the moment I am writing I don't have a clue on how many articles there are on nap.wikipedia ... I never really cared about numbers ... you don't believe it? Ask people who know me ... I simply don't look at that stuff. I contribute to wikis because I like to do it - it is irrellevant where and what and when. It is irrelevant how many edits I do ... I don't know how many there are around of mine. What counts is that we do what we do because we love to do it. I repeat: each article, even of only one sentence can be of high value for somebody searching for information ... don't exclude the small ones, please and stop counting numbers ... it will help you a lot. We are not in competition - we are co-operating projects, that's all there is to it. -- Posted By Sabine Cretella to words & more <http://sabinecretella.blogspot.com/2007/05/big-bigger-biggest-encyclopaedic…> at 5/03/2007 10:06:00 PM

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Wikipedia-l May 2007