This has been discussed in a few places and the consensus that I have gathered is that most people would like to have a more conservative definition for purposes of software detection.
Could this be enacted before we hit our "50%" milestone of 50,000 "articles"?
Hitting that number could very well get us undeserved media attention and subsequent media articles that are critical of our article count and average article quality (based on byte size). That is not the type of media attention we need.
For starters, a 500-1000 byte minimum page size should be part of the current spec (keep this in mind though: there are many minor topics that can be considered to be minimal articles with only 500 bytes). Other more complicated criteria can be added later.
Having the default behavior of "Random pages" to be "Random article" would be nice to (that is, only pages that are automatically detected as articles would be displayed).
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Daniel Mayer wrote:
This has been discussed in a few places and the consensus that I have gathered is that most people would like to have a more conservative definition for purposes of software detection.
Could this be enacted before we hit our "50%" milestone of 50,000 "articles"?
Hitting that number could very well get us undeserved media attention and subsequent media articles that are critical of our article count and average article quality (based on byte size). That is not the type of media attention we need.
For starters, a 500-1000 byte minimum page size should be part of the current spec (keep this in mind though: there are many minor topics that can be considered to be minimal articles with only 500 bytes). Other more complicated criteria can be added later.
Having the default behavior of "Random pages" to be "Random article" would be nice to (that is, only pages that are automatically detected as articles would be displayed).
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) [Wikipedia-l] To manage your subscription to this list, please go here: http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
I vote for a 500 byte cutoff to be added to the existing rules. More conservative estimates can do us nothing but good. 1000 bytes is too brutal, though: as mav says, many simple topics can be dealt with in 500 bytes. This will have the effect of reducing the article count by about 30%, to around 31,000.
The [[Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia]] page graphs can be adjusted to deal with the change in index.
Oh, by the way, can I be please be granted administrator privileges?
Neil
What if each article had a flag for stub (or entry) vs. article. Then we populate all of these flags based on 1000 byte limit. Later the flag can be toggled for smaller articles that are complete in less then 1000 bytes. There could be logic behind the flag that would prevent it from being set if the article is under a certain size if that is a concern.
I agree that users should be given a default preference of random (or searching) stubs or articles. But they should always have the option of going against their default preference without having to change their preference.
At 12:21 AM 9/19/2002 -0700, Daniel Mayer wrote:
For starters, a 500-1000 byte minimum page size should be part of the current spec (keep this in mind though: there are many minor topics that can be considered to be minimal articles with only 500 bytes). Other more complicated criteria can be added later.
Maveric149 wrote in part:
Could this be enacted before we hit our "50%" milestone of 50,000 "articles"? Hitting that number could very well get us undeserved media attention and subsequent media articles that are critical of our article count and average article quality (based on byte size). That is not the type of media attention we need.
Hardly anybody has a clue that we exist. Frankly, we're at the stage where "Any publicity is good publicity.". We could issue a press release claiming to surpass Britannic now, and it would be an obvious lie, but still good publicity in the end.
Of course, there's something to be said for integrity, and definitely something to be said for your proposal on those grounds. But not, IMO, on PR grounds. Consider whether what we say is true, not whether it will look good in the headlines.
-- Toby
At 03:40 AM 9/21/2002 -0700, Toby Bartels wrote:
Hardly anybody has a clue that we exist. Frankly, we're at the stage where "Any publicity is good publicity.". We could issue a press release claiming to surpass Britannic now, and it would be an obvious lie, but still good publicity in the end.
If there were a press release that said we surpassed Britannica and a whole bunch of people came out and then someone makes a big fuss about how we don't really pass Britannica then people will remember Wikipedia in a bad way. Then when 100,000 articles is released then everyone will say "Oh yeah, I remember when they said they passed Britannica - what a disappointment - I won't bother checking them out again."
You always want any publicity to be modest so when someone comes they will be pleasantly surprised. They will remember us as being more then they expected which will keep us in a positive light.
Jim McKeeth wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
Hardly anybody has a clue that we exist. Frankly, we're at the stage where "Any publicity is good publicity.". We could issue a press release claiming to surpass Britannic now, and it would be an obvious lie, but still good publicity in the end.
If there were a press release that said we surpassed Britannica and a whole bunch of people came out and then someone makes a big fuss about how we don't really pass Britannica then people will remember Wikipedia in a bad way. Then when 100,000 articles is released then everyone will say "Oh yeah, I remember when they said they passed Britannica - what a disappointment - I won't bother checking them out again."
When the 100,000 article count is released down the line, most of the people on the Internet at that time won't have been on it at the time of the old release (that is now). Anything that gets our name in the air will be helpful, because people will hear rumours and want to check it out for themselves.
You always want any publicity to be modest so when someone comes they will be pleasantly surprised. They will remember us as being more then they expected which will keep us in a positive light.
I myself want publicity to be honest, because I'm an honest person. That's the reason that I wouldn't want this hypothetical lying press release. If we think about what will generate the best publicity, then we're thinking about the wrong bottom line.
We don't really need to discuss this to death very much, since nobody actually wants to send out that press release, and I agree with mav for my own reasons (our own integrity) that we should report as accurate an article count as practicable. The 500 byte minimum sounds reasonable to me.
-- Toby
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