wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org schrieb am 14.02.05 19:39:26:
On Feb 14, 2005, at 1:29 PM, Delirium wrote:
(We do seem to have blown everyone away in mathematics though, thanks in large part to a handful of very good and very prolific Wikipedian mathematicians.)
http://planetmath.org is far from being "blown away" by Wikipedia (IMVHO)
nevertheless I very much agree that the Wikipedia is very good concerning mathematical topics.
That and the meltdown of another similar math project.
which is?
best regards, Marco
______________________________________________________________ Verschicken Sie romantische, coole und witzige Bilder per SMS! Jetzt bei WEB.DE FreeMail: http://f.web.de/?mc=021193
On Monday 14 February 2005 21:03, Marco Krohn wrote:
nevertheless I very much agree that the Wikipedia is very good concerning mathematical topics.
Personally, one of the reasons I started the http://www.adapedia.org project (now being migrated to better software) was Wikipedia's terrible (NPOV: allegedly inadequate) coverage of Computer Science and Mathematics.
You don't have an article about quadratic classifiers. The Classifier article talks about linguistics. The Software agent article is as short as a kids' poem.
I have to recognise, however, that the naive bayes article is better. Perhaps because it's based on an excellent book, which I happen to possess for some years now.
Uhhm... {{sofixit}}...
Mark
On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 22:56:29 +0200, NSK nsk2@wikinerds.org wrote:
On Monday 14 February 2005 21:03, Marco Krohn wrote:
nevertheless I very much agree that the Wikipedia is very good concerning mathematical topics.
Personally, one of the reasons I started the http://www.adapedia.org project (now being migrated to better software) was Wikipedia's terrible (NPOV: allegedly inadequate) coverage of Computer Science and Mathematics.
You don't have an article about quadratic classifiers. The Classifier article talks about linguistics. The Software agent article is as short as a kids' poem.
I have to recognise, however, that the naive bayes article is better. Perhaps because it's based on an excellent book, which I happen to possess for some years now.
-- NSK http://portal.wikinerds.org _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On Tuesday 15 February 2005 02:08, Mark Williamson wrote:
Uhhm... {{sofixit}}...
You could fix it very easily if:
- You make Wikipedia more attractive for experts, academics, scientists - You make sure no article gets forgotten by encouraging people to concentrate on their own articles, instead of editing here and there in the whole wiki - You allow these people to put their names and biographies in the articles they write - You help these people collect some donations from their readership. Wikimedia Foundation collects some donations for the servers, but it could also give some of it to the editors, too. - You make the articles to have versions, and have a "frozen" (protected) article in the mainspace, so that new contributions (which may be vandalism or whatever) go to an "under construction" version.
In our projects, such as http://www.nerdypc.org and http://www.adapedia.org (now being migrated to better software), we are trying to find ways to implement these ideas. You can read some preliminary analysis for our IT wiki at http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/Help:Editing_process
NSK wrote:
On Tuesday 15 February 2005 02:08, Mark Williamson wrote:
Uhhm... {{sofixit}}...
You could fix it very easily if:
- You make Wikipedia more attractive for experts, academics, scientists
- You make sure no article gets forgotten by encouraging people to concentrate
on their own articles, instead of editing here and there in the whole wiki
- You allow these people to put their names and biographies in the articles
they write
- You help these people collect some donations from their readership.
Wikimedia Foundation collects some donations for the servers, but it could also give some of it to the editors, too.
- You make the articles to have versions, and have a "frozen" (protected)
article in the mainspace, so that new contributions (which may be vandalism or whatever) go to an "under construction" version.
In our projects, such as http://www.nerdypc.org and http://www.adapedia.org (now being migrated to better software), we are trying to find ways to implement these ideas. You can read some preliminary analysis for our IT wiki at http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/Help:Editing_process
The first, of course. The second, maybe. Depends on how well it jives with [[Wikipedia:Ownership of articles]]. The third, hell will freeze over before we do that. The fourth, there's a slight chance, but I doubt we could work out the logistics even if we wanted to. The fifth, the community is still deciding on that.
John Lee ([[en:User:Johnleemk]])
On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 18:55:55 +0800, John Lee johnleemk@gawab.com wrote:
NSK wrote:
On Tuesday 15 February 2005 02:08, Mark Williamson wrote:
Uhhm... {{sofixit}}...
You could fix it very easily if:
- You make Wikipedia more attractive for experts, academics, scientists
- You make sure no article gets forgotten by encouraging people to concentrate
on their own articles, instead of editing here and there in the whole wiki
- You allow these people to put their names and biographies in the articles
they write
- You help these people collect some donations from their readership.
Wikimedia Foundation collects some donations for the servers, but it could also give some of it to the editors, too.
- You make the articles to have versions, and have a "frozen" (protected)
article in the mainspace, so that new contributions (which may be vandalism or whatever) go to an "under construction" version.
In our projects, such as http://www.nerdypc.org and http://www.adapedia.org (now being migrated to better software), we are trying to find ways to implement these ideas. You can read some preliminary analysis for our IT wiki at http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/Help:Editing_process
The first, of course. The second, maybe. Depends on how well it jives with [[Wikipedia:Ownership of articles]]. The third, hell will freeze over before we do that.
Which is a pity, because it means we willfully go against the GNU/FDL.
The fourth, there's a slight chance, but I doubt we could work out the logistics even if we wanted to. The fifth, the community is still deciding on that.
Andre Engels
Andre Engels wrote:
On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 18:55:55 +0800, John Lee johnleemk@gawab.com wrote:
NSK wrote:
On Tuesday 15 February 2005 02:08, Mark Williamson wrote:
Uhhm... {{sofixit}}...
You could fix it very easily if:
- You make Wikipedia more attractive for experts, academics, scientists
- You make sure no article gets forgotten by encouraging people to concentrate
on their own articles, instead of editing here and there in the whole wiki
- You allow these people to put their names and biographies in the articles
they write
- You help these people collect some donations from their readership.
Wikimedia Foundation collects some donations for the servers, but it could also give some of it to the editors, too.
- You make the articles to have versions, and have a "frozen" (protected)
article in the mainspace, so that new contributions (which may be vandalism or whatever) go to an "under construction" version.
In our projects, such as http://www.nerdypc.org and http://www.adapedia.org (now being migrated to better software), we are trying to find ways to implement these ideas. You can read some preliminary analysis for our IT wiki at http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/Help:Editing_process
The first, of course. The second, maybe. Depends on how well it jives with [[Wikipedia:Ownership of articles]]. The third, hell will freeze over before we do that.
Which is a pity, because it means we willfully go against the GNU/FDL.
Signing people's names on articles? You've got to be kidding me. They get the history and their own user page already, and that's enough. We don't need to be cluttering our articles with this.
John Lee ([[en:User:Johnleemk]])
On Tuesday 15 February 2005 13:33, John Lee wrote:
Signing people's names on articles? You've got to be kidding me. They get the history and their own user page already, and that's enough.
No, it's not. Have you ever wondered why I rarely edit at Wikipedia? it's because I know that nobody will know that an article or paragraph was written by me.
On our projects, such as http://www.nerdypc.org , we give credit for every contributed paragraph or section. We even allow our authors to choose what licence they like (but contributing to an existing article means using the same licences).
For example, see at http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/Zsync :
"[...] requests from the server on a second round-trip transmission. This paragraph contributed by Antaeus Feldspar."
"[...] but the .zsync attribute file need not be on the same server as the actual file. This paragraph contributed by ssd."
(this text is GFDL1.2 and CC-By-SA-2)
On Feb 15, 2005, at 9:13 AM, Tony Sidaway wrote:
NSK said:
Have you ever wondered why I rarely edit at Wikipedia? it's because I know that nobody will know that an article or paragraph was written by me.
Good grief, is that what it's all about?
In my course of recruiting for wikipedia, this is a statement made by several academics. The nature of wikipedia as a "people's encyclopedia" stops them.
Now this is a serious question - people will work for free but not for nothing - and part of what will help wikipedia grow is finding ways of giving people the ability to get "something" for their work, particularly in the writing community, that is the body of editors who make large contributions. Right now we hand out the ability to POV push - which is why we are codependent on poves. Another ability which we are about to hand out is the ability to google bomb by pushing your favorite sites in links. Fights over these issues are among the most personal and stress inducing in wikipedia. It would be better if we could "pay" people in some other form, to induce more contributors of the kind who write good NPOV articles. We have a currency for people who can negotiate compromise - administrator status - but not for people who can create articles.
Where I disagree with NSK is that the required inducement is handing out "ownership", simply because the experience of wikibooks - namely that it isn't growing quickly - shows that "credit" is only worth something when it is attached to something else, like money. Handing out ownership stops other editors from working on something, which means that the economics moves back to "what a single editor can produce". At which point he might as well produce for money. Article ownership is the wrong currency to hand out.
However, "credit" of other kinds could given, one which did not attach "ownership" to a particular article. Wikipedia should look into ways to recognize its creative contributors, without attaching personal credit or ownership over articles.
Stirling Newberry (stirling.newberry@xigenics.net) [050216 01:22]:
On Feb 15, 2005, at 9:13 AM, Tony Sidaway wrote:
NSK said:
Have you ever wondered why I rarely edit at Wikipedia? it's because I know that nobody will know that an article or paragraph was written by me.
Good grief, is that what it's all about?
In my course of recruiting for wikipedia, this is a statement made by several academics. The nature of wikipedia as a "people's encyclopedia" stops them. Now this is a serious question - people will work for free but not for nothing - and part of what will help wikipedia grow is finding ways of giving people the ability to get "something" for their work, particularly in the writing community, that is the body of editors who make large contributions.
I use my full name (rather than a net handle) on Wikipedia because it seems more proper, and also the credit clearly then goes to ME ME ME ME ME. Have they seen the history pages? It's usually clear which two or three editors are primarily responsible for an article text.
However, "credit" of other kinds could given, one which did not attach "ownership" to a particular article. Wikipedia should look into ways to recognize its creative contributors, without attaching personal credit or ownership over articles.
I picture a future version of Mediawiki in which the history of particular sentences is visible.
- d.
On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 01:26:55 +1100, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
I use my full name (rather than a net handle) on Wikipedia because it seems more proper, and also the credit clearly then goes to ME ME ME ME ME. Have they seen the history pages? It's usually clear which two or three editors are primarily responsible for an article text.
Less clear than it might be. On a minor page you have to check about 10 edits to see that there are 1 or 2 people who wrote almost everything. On pages with much traffic it's more like checking 50 to find 5 of them.
Andre Engels
On Feb 15, 2005, at 9:29 AM, Andre Engels wrote:
On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 01:26:55 +1100, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
I use my full name (rather than a net handle) on Wikipedia because it seems more proper, and also the credit clearly then goes to ME ME ME ME ME. Have they seen the history pages? It's usually clear which two or three editors are primarily responsible for an article text.
Less clear than it might be. On a minor page you have to check about 10 edits to see that there are 1 or 2 people who wrote almost everything. On pages with much traffic it's more like checking 50 to find 5 of them.
Andre Engels
And in a few months the major edits will be buried under small changes a few revert wars over whether to include a particular link etc. More over, this is still article ownership, and creates an incentive to keep bits the same because they were "yours". Contribution doesn't equal bit persistence, but concept persistence, and while technical tools can help us find this, they cannot define it.
This is one reason why organizations in the analog world hand out awards and give out honorary posts, because they are a means of recognizing contribution without attaching it to present ownership or control, and without creating a perverse incentive to stop other people from doing work. There are already informal networks of recognition on wikipedia, what is needed is some way of making them more formal, and thus more transferable to the author's credit.
What we don't want is people trying to keep articles the same because the bits are "theirs", what we do want is people contributing material that the wikiprocess then goes to work on to produce "finished" product.
It would be wonderful and appropriate to list contributors at the bottom of each page. Wikitravel seems to have a nice patch for this, which also lists the latest contributor; I wonder if it would be easy to backport to the trunk of mediawiki. (wondering also if Evan is reading this :)
+sj+
On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 15:29:26 +0100, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 01:26:55 +1100, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
I use my full name (rather than a net handle) on Wikipedia because it seems more proper, and also the credit clearly then goes to ME ME ME ME ME. Have they seen the history pages? It's usually clear which two or three editors are primarily responsible for an article text.
Less clear than it might be. On a minor page you have to check about 10 edits to see that there are 1 or 2 people who wrote almost everything. On pages with much traffic it's more like checking 50 to find 5 of them.
Andre Engels
--
I strongly disagree.
Mark
On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 14:44:26 -0500, Sj 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
It would be wonderful and appropriate to list contributors at the bottom of each page. Wikitravel seems to have a nice patch for this, which also lists the latest contributor; I wonder if it would be easy to backport to the trunk of mediawiki. (wondering also if Evan is reading this :)
+sj+
On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 15:29:26 +0100, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 01:26:55 +1100, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
I use my full name (rather than a net handle) on Wikipedia because it seems more proper, and also the credit clearly then goes to ME ME ME ME ME. Have they seen the history pages? It's usually clear which two or three editors are primarily responsible for an article text.
Less clear than it might be. On a minor page you have to check about 10 edits to see that there are 1 or 2 people who wrote almost everything. On pages with much traffic it's more like checking 50 to find 5 of them.
Andre Engels
-- _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
I strongly agree.
Sj said:
It would be wonderful and appropriate to list contributors at the bottom of each page.
Might be better if this was a "Special:". Unless I see Marvin Minsky's name in the list of contributors to an article to AI, or whatever, the names of the contributors aren't going to help a lot, and I really can't see fripperies like that persuading tenured professors, published authors and so on, who aren't already interested in the concept, to contribute their bits. Having said that, the reason I got interested in Wikipedia was that I was looking up the firearms researcher John Lott. As it happened, a person on an IP number that corresponded to the institute that employs John Lott started to vandalize the John Lott article. An editor subsequently reported on [[WP:ViP]] that the person identified himself as John Lott. Now that was quite a fascinating introduction to the immediacy of Wikipedia and to the organic, self-repairing nature of the system. I was hooked.
It was also nice to see that one or two people I knew from Usenet had found their way here.
Why would John Lott vandalise his own article? Isn't that kind of the opposite of what most celebrities do to their own articles?
Anyhow, I think most academics that are somehow repelled by Wikipedia other than because of the basic concept (many of them complain about how chaotic it is) is because they don't want their work to be mixed and mashed with that of others.
The way it works in academia in general is John Smith writes "An Introduction To Introductions", with all his expertise and theses and opinions and all the basic information organised /his/ way, and then year or two later Jack Doe decides he could do it better (at least in his POV) and writes "Introductions: An Introductory Reader".
They will both have their ups and downs but what John Smith likes best about it is that he has one book that he wrote all by himself that he can brag about and Jack Doe has his own book too and can brag about it unceasingly.
If an article is edited by all the top experts in the field, unless there is some other purpose behind it (ie, a more generalised work where each expert contributes from their more specific area of interest and/or expertise), they will not get as much pleasure out of it, and there is a much smaller chance that they will write it.
This stems from the basic desire of everybody to be famous, at least a little bit in some way shape or form.
There is no Wiki solution to this problem.
Rather than us getting over their problems for them, we should stay exactly as we are and wait for them to change, which they probably will at some point (if we paid a couple of well-known academians in every field a little bit to tell everybody how great Wikipedia is and to contribute some, it would go a long way)
Mark
On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 21:46:29 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway minorityreport@bluebottle.com wrote:
Sj said:
It would be wonderful and appropriate to list contributors at the bottom of each page.
Might be better if this was a "Special:". Unless I see Marvin Minsky's name in the list of contributors to an article to AI, or whatever, the names of the contributors aren't going to help a lot, and I really can't see fripperies like that persuading tenured professors, published authors and so on, who aren't already interested in the concept, to contribute their bits. Having said that, the reason I got interested in Wikipedia was that I was looking up the firearms researcher John Lott. As it happened, a person on an IP number that corresponded to the institute that employs John Lott started to vandalize the John Lott article. An editor subsequently reported on [[WP:ViP]] that the person identified himself as John Lott. Now that was quite a fascinating introduction to the immediacy of Wikipedia and to the organic, self-repairing nature of the system. I was hooked.
It was also nice to see that one or two people I knew from Usenet had found their way here.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
So in other words, they are different than we are, so they are the ones that have to change.
Andre Engels
On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 17:42:09 -0700, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Why would John Lott vandalise his own article? Isn't that kind of the opposite of what most celebrities do to their own articles?
Anyhow, I think most academics that are somehow repelled by Wikipedia other than because of the basic concept (many of them complain about how chaotic it is) is because they don't want their work to be mixed and mashed with that of others.
The way it works in academia in general is John Smith writes "An Introduction To Introductions", with all his expertise and theses and opinions and all the basic information organised /his/ way, and then year or two later Jack Doe decides he could do it better (at least in his POV) and writes "Introductions: An Introductory Reader".
They will both have their ups and downs but what John Smith likes best about it is that he has one book that he wrote all by himself that he can brag about and Jack Doe has his own book too and can brag about it unceasingly.
If an article is edited by all the top experts in the field, unless there is some other purpose behind it (ie, a more generalised work where each expert contributes from their more specific area of interest and/or expertise), they will not get as much pleasure out of it, and there is a much smaller chance that they will write it.
This stems from the basic desire of everybody to be famous, at least a little bit in some way shape or form.
There is no Wiki solution to this problem.
Rather than us getting over their problems for them, we should stay exactly as we are and wait for them to change, which they probably will at some point (if we paid a couple of well-known academians in every field a little bit to tell everybody how great Wikipedia is and to contribute some, it would go a long way)
Mark
On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 21:46:29 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway minorityreport@bluebottle.com wrote:
Sj said:
It would be wonderful and appropriate to list contributors at the bottom of each page.
Might be better if this was a "Special:". Unless I see Marvin Minsky's name in the list of contributors to an article to AI, or whatever, the names of the contributors aren't going to help a lot, and I really can't see fripperies like that persuading tenured professors, published authors and so on, who aren't already interested in the concept, to contribute their bits. Having said that, the reason I got interested in Wikipedia was that I was looking up the firearms researcher John Lott. As it happened, a person on an IP number that corresponded to the institute that employs John Lott started to vandalize the John Lott article. An editor subsequently reported on [[WP:ViP]] that the person identified himself as John Lott. Now that was quite a fascinating introduction to the immediacy of Wikipedia and to the organic, self-repairing nature of the system. I was hooked.
It was also nice to see that one or two people I knew from Usenet had found their way here.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On Tuesday 15 February 2005 16:26, David Gerard wrote:
I picture a future version of Mediawiki in which the history of particular sentences is visible.
This will be possible in the software I will finish later this year, but I won't give details now. As I implement it I will include more info at http://maatworks.wikinerds.org/index.php/NGWP
Tony Sidaway (minorityreport@bluebottle.com) [050216 01:13]:
NSK said:
Have you ever wondered why I rarely edit at Wikipedia? it's because I know that nobody will know that an article or paragraph was written by me.
Good grief, is that what it's all about?
I am well known to have an ego comparable to a medium-size US city and I am fine with being able to say "I wrote most of that article" or "I wrote about half of that one" and being able to point at the history. I'm really not convinced that signing articles is an in-demand idea, let alone a good one.
- d.
NSK said:
Have you ever wondered why I rarely edit at Wikipedia? it's because I know that nobody will know that an article or paragraph was written by me.
Good grief, is that what it's all about?
And I thought /I/ was arrogant and self-centered....
Yeah.
If you don't want to edit Wikipedia, then just don't edit Wikipedia and leave us alone.
Mark
On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 12:49:23 -0800, the Epopt of Boskone sean@epoptic.org wrote:
NSK said:
Have you ever wondered why I rarely edit at Wikipedia? it's because I know that nobody will know that an article or paragraph was written by me.
Good grief, is that what it's all about?
And I thought /I/ was arrogant and self-centered.... _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On Feb 15, 2005, at 3:49 PM, the Epopt of Boskone wrote:
NSK said:
Have you ever wondered why I rarely edit at Wikipedia? it's because I know that nobody will know that an article or paragraph was written by me.
Good grief, is that what it's all about?
And I thought /I/ was arrogant and self-centered....
What is is all about is that the dispute resolution process on wikipedia is often unpleasant, particulary when dealing with organized groups of poves. One of the reasons that many people want article ownership is that it is very stressful dealing with cranks and others who have severely misguided views of the world. If people need an example, see CSTAR's trials on Bell's Theorum or Xtar's having to deal with a pove on the Australian Liberal Party. A large part of the problem is that often a knowledgeable person must, at length, explain basic concepts to people who are unwilling to listen - it moves the activity from "editing for lots of people", which is to say a high leverage of a writer's time - to "dealing with nasty ignorant people retail", which is to say a low leverage of a writer's time. A large part of the problem is that the general equation that someone is unpleasant when they are wrong is not a sound assertion from an epistemological stand point, and that numerical superiority of organized groups generates a great deal of hostility very quickly, simply because those with numerical superiority have much less incentive to engage in discussion, but, on the contrary, have every incentive to try and engage in time wasting behavior.
I feel that NSK is wrong on article ownership, but I do think he has a point, because it is one made to me by several other people who have considered editing wikipedia, and who use it as a resource, but are not willing to deal with some of the problems that it has currently.
There are many pages which are "owned" now by small cabals of editors, because they can revert away anyone who disagrees with them. In the spirit of "no formalized page ownership" this should be addressed. My proposal is tighten the revert rule to be content based, that is three reverts of particular content in a day is the limit, in each direction, and that after that people making further reverts are blocked. Then create categories for RFC and reverting, requiring that someone reverting an article place the article in one of the categories based on the reason for the revert. This isn't that much more work, and will automatically create a tracking system which is better than searching edit summaries and better than relying on RFC. The RFC process as is would remain in place as a way of giving a more detailed explanation of the source of the dispute. I feel the more "automatic" we make the process of "raising a red flag" on an article, the more it will be done rather than edit warring it out.
Commitment to an open process of consensus means, I think, that we examine where that process is not yet acceptable to people who are able, energetic and knowledgeable, and who we want as contributors.
Stirling Newberry wrote:
I feel the more "automatic" we make the process of "raising a red flag" on an article, the more it will be done rather than edit warring it out.
Something like this would help a great deal, I think. I've been in a few disputes where I was pretty certain that if the wider community was aware of the dispute, my position was pretty obviously the way to go, but the problem was that I was fighting with the very small group of people who cared about the page, who had very particular views. A common way to resolve this in the past has been emailing wikien-l (or the appropriate language list) asking people to take a look at the article, but as Wikipedia gets bigger this method doesn't scale very well, and also tends to result in a lot of content discussion on the list that should really be on the talk pages.
-Mark
On Feb 16, 2005, at 3:31 PM, Delirium wrote:
Stirling Newberry wrote:
I feel the more "automatic" we make the process of "raising a red flag" on an article, the more it will be done rather than edit warring it out.
Something like this would help a great deal, I think. I've been in a few disputes where I was pretty certain that if the wider community was aware of the dispute, my position was pretty obviously the way to go, but the problem was that I was fighting with the very small group of people who cared about the page, who had very particular views. A common way to resolve this in the past has been emailing wikien-l (or the appropriate language list) asking people to take a look at the article, but as Wikipedia gets bigger this method doesn't scale very well, and also tends to result in a lot of content discussion on the list that should really be on the talk pages.
-Mark
That list is, in fact, part of the problem.
--- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Stirling Newberry wrote:
I feel the more "automatic" we make the process of "raising a red flag" on an article, the more it will be done rather than edit
warring
it out.
Something like this would help a great deal, I think. I've been in a
few disputes where I was pretty certain that if the wider community was aware of the dispute, my position was pretty obviously the way to go,
but the problem was that I was fighting with the very small group of people who cared about the page, who had very particular views. A common way to resolve this in the past has been emailing wikien-l (or
the appropriate language list) asking people to take a look at the article, but as Wikipedia gets bigger this method doesn't scale very well, and also tends to result in a lot of content discussion on the list that should really be on the talk pages.
-Mark
How about a "Special:Active Pages" that would list the top 'n' most active pages -- where active would be defined as number of edits over a period of time, where adjacent edits by the same user are treated as one edit.
Would this help in the sort of situation you're referring to? Or is edit activity not a good measure?
-Rich Holton (en.wikipedia:User:Rholton)
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? All your favorites on one personal page � Try My Yahoo! http://my.yahoo.com
On Feb 16, 2005, at 7:46 PM, Rich Holton wrote:
--- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
How about a "Special:Active Pages" that would list the top 'n' most active pages -- where active would be defined as number of edits over a period of time, where adjacent edits by the same user are treated as one edit.
Would this help in the sort of situation you're referring to? Or is edit activity not a good measure?
-Rich Holton (en.wikipedia:User:Rholton)
I don't have a large enough sample size, but my experience - which is anecdotal - doesn't seem to confirm this. Very often "active" editing pages are ones that are going very well - because contributors are working with each others edits. Since the person reverting knows both what they are reverting and why, it seems reasonable to ask them to spend a few seconds to put in something like [[Category:Revert Test/Graphitti]] or [[Category:Revert Content Conflict]] as part of doing the reversion, particularly one for [[Category:3RR Limit Reached]]. We already have categories for NPOV disputes and so on, so all this proposal amounts to is:
1. Tightening the number of reverts to reversion by content, not by user/article-day, to three in each direction. 2. Creating categories for reversion. 3. Mandating their use. 4. Publicizing them so that editors interested in helping an article reach consensus and avoid an edit war have a place to look.
This removes the incentive to mobocracy, makes the notification system simpler, and halts revert wars in their tracks relatively quickly. Its intent is to reduce the amount of sturm and drang associated with such conflicts.
On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 14:59:43 -0500, Stirling Newberry stirling.newberry@xigenics.net wrote:
There are many pages which are "owned" now by small cabals of editors, because they can revert away anyone who disagrees with them. In the spirit of "no formalized page ownership" this should be addressed. My proposal is tighten the revert rule to be content based, that is three reverts of particular content in a day is the limit, in each direction, and that after that people making further reverts are blocked. Then create categories for RFC and reverting, requiring that someone reverting an article place the article in one of the categories based on the reason for the revert. This isn't that much more work, and will automatically create a tracking system which is better than searching edit summaries and better than relying on RFC. The RFC process as is would remain in place as a way of giving a more detailed explanation of the source of the dispute. I feel the more "automatic" we make the process of "raising a red flag" on an article, the more it will be done rather than edit warring it out.
Commitment to an open process of consensus means, I think, that we examine where that process is not yet acceptable to people who are able, energetic and knowledgeable, and who we want as contributors.
I don't see how your proposals are going to help. In some cases, yes, a new person can shed a new light on the matter and find a compromise. But in cases where there is, as you write, a "cabal" "owning" the page, getting more people in will only make the discussion being fought louder, not the solution being brought nearer. There is currently no way to decide what shape a page should have if there is no consensus. As long as we do not have that, bringing in more people will only cause the same arguments to be made over and over again.
Andre Engels
On Feb 16, 2005, at 7:20 PM, Andre Engels wrote:
On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 14:59:43 -0500, Stirling Newberry stirling.newberry@xigenics.net wrote:
I don't see how your proposals are going to help. In some cases, yes, a new person can shed a new light on the matter and find a compromise. But in cases where there is, as you write, a "cabal" "owning" the page, getting more people in will only make the discussion being fought louder, not the solution being brought nearer. There is currently no way to decide what shape a page should have if there is no consensus. As long as we do not have that, bringing in more people will only cause the same arguments to be made over and over again.
Andre Engels ____________________
More people not tied to the original dispute does two things. First, it takes personality conflicts off the table, which are a regrettable part of most edit wars. Second, it reduces the ability of groups to harden into place by getting closer to a statistical sampling of opinion. 2 people self selected to edit an article probably have views which are unusual, that's why they chose to edit the article. Ten or more is much more likely to reflect the broad range. Importantly, this would help to reduce the incentive for each side to bring in friends and continue the revert war.
If a larger group of wikipedians can't come to a consensus, then it clearly is time for a more formal RFC to be written. But again, the more people not party to the original dispute, the more likely that RFC is to focus on the actual issues.
As it is both the process of escalating an edit conflict, and the rules of editing conflicts, do not promote good resolution without a good deal of "drama processing". It is this drama processing that causes a disproportionate share of "wikistress", and creates a disincentive for knowledgeable people to contribute.
I can easily see other proposals designed to meet the same problems, but I do feel this issue needs to be addressed and current procedures refined in light of the experience so far.
On Tuesday 15 February 2005 12:55, John Lee wrote:
NSK wrote: You allow these people to put their names and biographies in the articles they write
hell will freeze over before we do that.
From non-legal moral standpoint, authors should get prominent credit, no matter the various copyright agreements. Perhaps you should pay more attention to the various moral rights issues. See http://portal.wikinerds.org/node/121
In our projects at http://www.wikinerds.org we fully respect authors' wishes. We even want to help our authors to become more famous and put their names and biographical notes in their articles. For example, see http://www.nerdypc.org
Marco Krohn wrote:
nevertheless I very much agree that the Wikipedia is very good concerning mathematical topics.
That and the meltdown of another similar math project.
which is?
MathWorld http://mathworld.wolfram.com/about/faq.html#shutdown http://mathworld.wolfram.com/about/erics_commentary.html
wouter vanden hove
That and the meltdown of another similar math project.
which is?
MathWorld http://mathworld.wolfram.com/about/faq.html#shutdown http://mathworld.wolfram.com/about/erics_commentary.html
It's up now, though, so what's the problem?
On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 20:03:22 +0100, Marco Krohn marco.krohn@web.de wrote:
http://planetmath.org is far from being "blown away" by Wikipedia (IMVHO)
Agreed. This is perhaps one situation where article ownership makes a bit more sense. (Which is not to say I advocate anything like this for Wikipedia anywhere.)
Nevertheless, I find PlanetMath frustrating at times. A few issues which are general to these sorts of ownership-oriented encyclopedias: *Ownership can create long lagtimes between edits *It's often more tedious to explain to someone what's wrong than to correct it yourself, plus you have the 'appeal to a human' factor to get over. *If I'm writing an article which covers topic Foo, but I notice it's been half-covered in another article, what do I do? I could ask the owner to remove the stuff about Foo and point at my article, but that could get personal.
The big area where I think PlanetMath has Wikipedia beat right now is support for math symbols and text. (I'm sure this has been expressed elsewhere.). The LaTeX support in MediaWiki is highly useful, but it needs to be more seamless, particularly for inline math.
A sign of this is that writers are constantly resorting regular textual italics and superscripts/subscripts for inline text because it looks better than using inline LaTeX. This is less than optimal because the fonts don't match (and this can be a big problem in math).
Finally, a scheme like PlanetMath's classification by AMS grouping, probably done through the category system, would be nice to have.
Steve
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