Hi,
I'm curious about two things: one, the proper forum to discuss mass minor edits (a user or a few users who make a lot of small, related changes to lots of unrelated articles), where using the talk pages for the individual articles would be impractical (owing to the sheer number).
If that was too vague, here's what prompted it: A user named Alice9 has gone through what looks like every article for every company mentioned in the "100 Best Companies for Working Mothers" list published by "Working Mothers Magazine" and added a reference to that accolade in the article.
Now, I don't think that Alice9 isn't spamming Wikipedia (there's no link to the magazine). Nor do I think this is any sort of vandalism -- Alice9 has far more contributions to Wikipedia than I do. I do, however, question the necessity of adding this accolade to 100 articles (some of which, like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University, are long enough as it is). A list of every accolade bestowed by every women's magazine would make the Ford article unreadably long, let alone the Ben and Jerry's article. It would be unfair to exclude the others, but impossible to include them all.
Normally, I'd post my concerns on the talk pages, but with hundreds of articles affected, that's impractical.
So, two questions: one, what's the best forum for matters like this? Obviously, the talk pages would be inefficient, since the same arguments affect hundreds of articles. Second, assuming this is the best forum, what do people think of the issue at hand?
--Joe
On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 00:24:49 -0500, Joseph Barillari jbarilla@cs.princeton.edu wrote:
Hi, I'm curious about two things: one, the proper forum to discuss mass minor edits (a user or a few users who make a lot of small, related changes to lots of unrelated articles), where using the talk pages for the individual articles would be impractical (owing to the sheer number).
Two places spring to mind: 1) The user in question's User_talk: page, where you could ask the user for their own opinion on the importance of this particular award and the possible consequences of doing this for every similar award. 2) The Village pump - although I haven't "frequented" it so much recently (since it was split into sub-pages, but also due to changes in my own commitments), this still seems a good place to get "mass opinion" on general issues (like "should we add this kind of information"). If there's an article being linked to which lists the winners (which would make sense, if we are going to include the information) then that page's talk page offers a third forum where the question can be raised (and of course, two of these three locations could simply contain pointers to the third, if that seemed easier to manage).
"RC" == Rowan Collins rowan.collins@gmail.com writes:
RC> On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 00:24:49 -0500, Joseph Barillari RC> jbarilla@cs.princeton.edu wrote: >> Hi, I'm curious about two things: one, the proper forum to >> discuss mass minor edits (a user or a few users who make a lot >> of small, related changes to lots of unrelated articles), where >> using the talk pages for the individual articles would be >> impractical (owing to the sheer number).
RC> Two places spring to mind: 1) The user in question's RC> User_talk: page, where you could ask the user for their own RC> opinion on the importance of this particular award and the RC> possible consequences of doing this for every similar award. RC> 2) The Village pump - although I haven't "frequented" it so RC> much recently (since it was split into sub-pages, but also due RC> to changes in my own commitments), this still seems a good RC> place to get "mass opinion" on general issues (like "should we RC> add this kind of information"). If there's an article being RC> linked to which lists the winners (which would make sense, if RC> we are going to include the information) then that page's talk RC> page offers a third forum where the question can be raised RC> (and of course, two of these three locations could simply RC> contain pointers to the third, if that seemed easier to RC> manage).
That seems like the best idea: ask the question at the user's talk page, and add a pointer at the village pump. I'm not convinced that it would be encyclopediatic to simply reproduce the magazine's list in an article (as we're not adding any value besides linking to the companies in question), but then again, we do the same thing with the Academy Awards.
--Joe
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org