Through my participation in the schools debate, it has come to my attention that there are wikipedians who believe that we should include everything which is verifiable and NPOV, with no standard of notoriety applied. My perspective is that while that might be a good set of criteria for a dictionary of trivia, it is not a good criteria for an encyclopedia, even one made out of tiny bits of magnetized composits rather than paper.
I don't wish to bring the school debate to this list right now. However, I would like to discuss the include-everything view that I have seen being used to justify including schools.
When I have exchanges like this:
------------------- [[Wikipedia:Schools]] ** David, as we discussed on IRC, this rule would allow for the creation of articles for a huge number of roadway intersections in the US.. Plenty of official documentation at the city and state offices, and Federal records in many cases, plus newspaper reports of construction and accidents (just like schools). We could fill an article up with trivia such as the frequency of accidents, time of first construction... Photographs. Is this really acceptable in the inclusionist agenda? Sure intersections are verifyable and NPOV, but the vast majority of them are not notable. I encourage all who support David's proposed rules, or similar proposed rulesets to reply. :) --[[User:Gmaxwell|Gmaxwell]] 15:06, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
** Actually that sounds pretty cool. [[m:Wiki is not paper]]. Accident data on road intersections could be very, very encyclopedic. Not sure how feasible it would be, however. --[[User:Tony Sidaway|Tony Sidaway]]|[[User talk:Tony Sidaway|Talk]] 15:31, 18 May 2005 (UTC) -----------------------
I must question if I really understand the point of Wikipedia.
Already the next database dumb of cur will likely be too big to fix gzipped on my Zarus (a pocket sized computer. The prior one just fit it's 1gb SD card and I find it amazingly useful ... I'm going to need to come up with some kind of filter to reduce the size for the next one)..... Soon we will begin brushing the size of what we can fit on a DVD, so what of access to our work by people in disconnected communities and third-world nations? As our working-set grows past the amount of ram we can reasonably expect to put in our caches and database servers, our performance will become increasingly diskbound. I think that many people mistake the the claim that [[m:Wiki is not paper]] with a claim that we have boundless storage without compromise.
Most of the facts that are in Wikipedia (though to not all) were available elseware on the internet prior to Wikipedia, but often a quick google search wouldn't find them because they were in a wash of cruft, random inaccurate uncorrectable information, and advertisements. Today much of that information is easier to find because of Wikipedia, a beautiful accomplishment, but one which may be lost if we lower the barrier to entry to be sufficiently low as to include anything that anyone can cite.
I think it would be useful to have a universal repository for verifiable and neutrally reported trivia, but just as we use Wiktionary rather than Wikipedia for word definitions and wikisources for freely licensed reference works, we should put material which is not substantially notable in it's own project which can cater to the special needs of that material and the special costs of providing that service.
I didn't just choose the intersection example because I thought it was a good strawman, ( :) ), I also choose it because I'm aware of the level of information available, and could actually create a lot of these articles myself. Since I used to work for a county government in Florida, still have a copy of most of the GIS database, and know the right people in a few other counties, I could patch together a bot to create thousands of such articles, complete with aerial photographs, construction dates, and in many cases some level of traffic information (I have traffic counters for all the arterial/arterial intersections with the data I have). ... The point is that I haven't spammed wikipedia with this data because I believe it is completely inappropriate for an Encyclopedia, and I imagine many other people have a similar ability to produce endless quantities of non-notable material if that what we thought wikipedia was supposed to contain. ... Such trivia would only be useful as a raw reference, why not wikisource if any of the preexisting wikis?
So, I'd really appreciate some commentary on this... Am I in a minority in expecting a criteria of notability to be used in our judgement of encyclopedic merit, or should we really be including every fact we can cite?
[cc'd and reply-to wikien-l]
Gregory Maxwell (gmaxwell@gmail.com) [050519 02:51]:
I didn't just choose the intersection example because I thought it was a good strawman, ( :) ), I also choose it because I'm aware of the level of information available, and could actually create a lot of these articles myself. Since I used to work for a county government in Florida, still have a copy of most of the GIS database, and know the right people in a few other counties, I could patch together a bot to create thousands of such articles, complete with aerial photographs, construction dates, and in many cases some level of traffic information (I have traffic counters for all the arterial/arterial intersections with the data I have). ... The point is that I haven't spammed wikipedia with this data because I believe it is completely inappropriate for an Encyclopedia, and I imagine many other people have a similar ability to produce endless quantities of non-notable material if that what we thought wikipedia was supposed to contain. ... Such trivia would only be useful as a raw reference, why not wikisource if any of the preexisting wikis?
So what you mean is, you don't want to create the articles? Then don't create them.
So, I'd really appreciate some commentary on this... Am I in a minority in expecting a criteria of notability to be used in our judgement of encyclopedic merit, or should we really be including every fact we can cite?
The last time it was advanced as policy, it got a simple majority but failed to make consensus. Jimbo also explained why verifiability is good enough for *articles people actually want to write*:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Fame_and_importance#No
"'fame' and 'importance' are not the right words to use, they are merely rough approximations to what we're really interested in, which is verifiability and NPOV. I understand and appreciate where people are coming from on the 'Yes' vote, but feel that they will only get the unanimity necessary in a wiki environment if they rephrase the issue in those terms. Consider an obscure scientific concept, 'Qubit Field Theory' -- 24 hits on google. I'd say that not more than a few thousand people in the world have heard of it, and not more than a few dozen understand it. (I certainly don't.) It is not famous and it is arguably not important, but I think that no one would serious question that it is valid material for an encyclopedia. What is it that makes this encyclopedic? It is that it is information which is verifiable and which can be easily presented in an NPOV fashion. (Though perhaps only as a stub, of course, since it's very complicated and not many people would know how to express it clearly in layperson's terms.)"
Further down that page, he answers quite a lot of common contrived counterexamples much like yours.
This issue is being brought up in the context of high-school articles on en:, after someone started submitting thirty school articles at a time to VFD. Thankfully, there is now useful discussion rather than confrontative action, in progress at [[:en:Wikipedia:Schools]].
- d.
On 5/18/05, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
So what you mean is, you don't want to create the articles? Then don't create them.
I don't create them because it would disruptive to wikipedia. If you are going to reply to lists that my message wasn't directed to, you at least could have at least quoted my entire message.
The last time it was advanced as policy, it got a simple majority but failed to make consensus. Jimbo also explained why verifiability is good enough for *articles people actually want to write*:
I'm quite well aware of what Jimbo has stated and the previous decisions on the schools matter.
What I am asking about is a closely related but separate matter, which is does the moniker 'encyclopedia' indicate that we are generally using a criteria of notability to decide to include things.
There are wikipedians at the extreme end of the spectrum that think we should include an article with stats for every darn roadway intersection that we can prove exists, and I believe that either they are misunderstanding our intentions or I am.
I'd be quite happy with an answer like, 'We prefer things to be notable and discourage the creation of non-notable subjects... but if someone wants to create and maintain a page on something not meeting that we will permit it as long as it's verifiable and NPOV', which is how I suspected things actually were... But this doesn't fit with the small group of people determined to prevent any school (or quite a few other things, as long as they are verifiable and NPOV) from being deleted.
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
[...] does the moniker 'encyclopedia' indicate that we are generally using a criteria of notability to decide to include things.
The crux of the problem is that "notability" is a stubbornly subjective concept. For instance, we have articles on extremely obscure US Navy destroyers and submarines, with crews of under 100 and with only a couple of years in service, during peacetime, and then scrapped - yet these are never challenged, while a century-old high school with 3,000 students is likely to end up on VfD. So what exactly is it that makes one topic "notable", and another not?
In a way, the old print encyclopedias had it easier - the publisher could only afford to spend M months producing N volumes, so one started at "most important" and went down until the available space and time was used up.
Stan
Yes, why is that? I think we should put all of those up for deletion immediately. Notable? Hah.
Mark
On 18/05/05, Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
[...] does the moniker 'encyclopedia' indicate that we are generally using a criteria of notability to decide to include things.
The crux of the problem is that "notability" is a stubbornly subjective concept. For instance, we have articles on extremely obscure US Navy destroyers and submarines, with crews of under 100 and with only a couple of years in service, during peacetime, and then scrapped - yet these are never challenged, while a century-old high school with 3,000 students is likely to end up on VfD. So what exactly is it that makes one topic "notable", and another not?
In a way, the old print encyclopedias had it easier - the publisher could only afford to spend M months producing N volumes, so one started at "most important" and went down until the available space and time was used up.
Stan
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Also there is the problem of lack of timelessness.
In 500 years, will people care about [[w:en:Daigo Fukuryu Maru]]? Perhaps. What about [[w:en:Manchester United]]? If football doesn't last that long, chances are the 500-years-from-now-Wikipedians would want to merge all football teams into an article "List of famous football teams" or something like that.
What about [[w:en:Britney Spears]], [[w:en:David Beckham]], or [[w:en:Stefanie Sun]]?
Mark
On 18/05/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, why is that? I think we should put all of those up for deletion immediately. Notable? Hah.
Mark
On 18/05/05, Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
[...] does the moniker 'encyclopedia' indicate that we are generally using a criteria of notability to decide to include things.
The crux of the problem is that "notability" is a stubbornly subjective concept. For instance, we have articles on extremely obscure US Navy destroyers and submarines, with crews of under 100 and with only a couple of years in service, during peacetime, and then scrapped - yet these are never challenged, while a century-old high school with 3,000 students is likely to end up on VfD. So what exactly is it that makes one topic "notable", and another not?
In a way, the old print encyclopedias had it easier - the publisher could only afford to spend M months producing N volumes, so one started at "most important" and went down until the available space and time was used up.
Stan
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
-- SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM POSSIT MATERIARI ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
Mark Williamson said:
Also there is the problem of lack of timelessness.
In 500 years, will people care about [[w:en:Daigo Fukuryu Maru]]? Perhaps. What about [[w:en:Manchester United]]? If football doesn't last that long, chances are the 500-years-from-now-Wikipedians would want to merge all football teams into an article "List of famous football teams" or something like that.
What about [[w:en:Britney Spears]], [[w:en:David Beckham]], or [[w:en:Stefanie Sun]]?
This is all to the good. We *need* to give deletionists something to look forward to. The timelessness problem will be solved because Wikipedia is not a timeless publication, but an organically growing one. Seriously, though, if any twentieth century works of literature or film are studied in 500 years, someone will have to compile notes for the students so they'll know what Bridget Jones (or Harry Potter, or Homer Simpson) is talking about. There are academics who spend their entire working lives studying 80 million year old coproliths, so Bridget Jones' Big Knickers could well be on some future academic's literary excavation list.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
This is all to the good. We *need* to give deletionists something to look forward to. The timelessness problem will be solved because Wikipedia is not a timeless publication, but an organically growing one. Seriously, though, if any twentieth century works of literature or film are studied in 500 years, someone will have to compile notes for the students so they'll know what Bridget Jones (or Harry Potter, or Homer Simpson) is talking about. There are academics who spend their entire working lives studying 80 million year old coproliths, so Bridget Jones' Big Knickers could well be on some future academic's literary excavation list.
Linking coproliths and Bridget Jones' knickers in the same sentence is ominous. Cf. the interpretation of fallout shelters by future archaeologists in Walter Miller's "A Canticle for Leibowitz".
Ec
"'fame' and 'importance' are not the right words to use, they are merely rough approximations to what we're really interested in, which is verifiability and NPOV. I understand and appreciate where people are coming from on the 'Yes' vote, but feel that they will only get the unanimity necessary in a wiki environment if they rephrase the issue in those terms. Consider an obscure scientific concept, 'Qubit Field Theory' -- 24 hits on google. I'd say that not more than a few thousand people in the world have heard of it, and not more than a few dozen understand it. (I certainly don't.) It is not famous and it is arguably not important, but I think that no one would serious question that it is valid material for an encyclopedia. What is it that makes this encyclopedic? It is that it is information which is verifiable and which can be easily presented in an NPOV fashion. (Though perhaps only as a stub, of course, since it's very complicated and not many people would know how to express it clearly in layperson's terms.)"
Not as obscure as all of that, it's a theory by Dr. David Deutsch that attempts to find a version of quantum chromodynamics which looks as if all quantum operations are commutable, but which does not assume an infinite amount of information capacity at each point. It is the basis for several interesting ideas about the nature of the universe which far more people have heard of. I strongly doubt it only pops 24 hits on google, as more papers have referenced it than that.
The size problem will be solved by a distribution system, probably one that includes rating of articles. The local geography articles will get low ratings and thus not be in the "short" version of wikipedia.
Stirling Newberry (stirling.newberry@xigenics.net) [050519 03:48]:
The size problem will be solved by a distribution system, probably one that includes rating of articles. The local geography articles will get low ratings and thus not be in the "short" version of wikipedia.
Yes. VFD is supposed to be an immune system, to keep out the *shit*. It's far too blunt a tool to try to use as a general quality-control system, which is why people get so very upset when articles that are NPOV and verifiable get nominated for VFD on grounds that are, per the deletion policy, spurious.
(pointing to wikien-l - this is really en: related)
- d.
Thanks you David for forcing me to subscribe to a high volume list, just so I can receive all the responses to my non-language specific query about the intentions of wikipedia.
Here is the entire message which David quoted part of...
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com Date: May 18, 2005 12:51 PM Subject: Do I misunderstand Wikipedia? On notability and encyclopedic merit. To: wikipedia-l@wikimedia.org
Through my participation in the schools debate, it has come to my attention that there are wikipedians who believe that we should include everything which is verifiable and NPOV, with no standard of notoriety applied. My perspective is that while that might be a good set of criteria for a dictionary of trivia, it is not a good criteria for an encyclopedia, even one made out of tiny bits of magnetized composits rather than paper.
I don't wish to bring the school debate to this list right now. However, I would like to discuss the include-everything view that I have seen being used to justify including schools.
When I have exchanges like this:
------------------- [[Wikipedia:Schools]] ** David, as we discussed on IRC, this rule would allow for the creation of articles for a huge number of roadway intersections in the US.. Plenty of official documentation at the city and state offices, and Federal records in many cases, plus newspaper reports of construction and accidents (just like schools). We could fill an article up with trivia such as the frequency of accidents, time of first construction... Photographs. Is this really acceptable in the inclusionist agenda? Sure intersections are verifyable and NPOV, but the vast majority of them are not notable. I encourage all who support David's proposed rules, or similar proposed rulesets to reply. :) --[[User:Gmaxwell|Gmaxwell]] 15:06, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
** Actually that sounds pretty cool. [[m:Wiki is not paper]]. Accident data on road intersections could be very, very encyclopedic. Not sure how feasible it would be, however. --[[User:Tony Sidaway|Tony Sidaway]]|[[User talk:Tony Sidaway|Talk]] 15:31, 18 May 2005 (UTC) -----------------------
I must question if I really understand the point of Wikipedia.
Already the next database dumb of cur will likely be too big to fix gzipped on my Zarus (a pocket sized computer. The prior one just fit it's 1gb SD card and I find it amazingly useful ... I'm going to need to come up with some kind of filter to reduce the size for the next one)..... Soon we will begin brushing the size of what we can fit on a DVD, so what of access to our work by people in disconnected communities and third-world nations? As our working-set grows past the amount of ram we can reasonably expect to put in our caches and database servers, our performance will become increasingly diskbound. I think that many people mistake the the claim that [[m:Wiki is not paper]] with a claim that we have boundless storage without compromise.
Most of the facts that are in Wikipedia (though to not all) were available elseware on the internet prior to Wikipedia, but often a quick google search wouldn't find them because they were in a wash of cruft, random inaccurate uncorrectable information, and advertisements. Today much of that information is easier to find because of Wikipedia, a beautiful accomplishment, but one which may be lost if we lower the barrier to entry to be sufficiently low as to include anything that anyone can cite.
I think it would be useful to have a universal repository for verifiable and neutrally reported trivia, but just as we use Wiktionary rather than Wikipedia for word definitions and wikisources for freely licensed reference works, we should put material which is not substantially notable in it's own project which can cater to the special needs of that material and the special costs of providing that service.
I didn't just choose the intersection example because I thought it was a good strawman, ( :) ), I also choose it because I'm aware of the level of information available, and could actually create a lot of these articles myself. Since I used to work for a county government in Florida, still have a copy of most of the GIS database, and know the right people in a few other counties, I could patch together a bot to create thousands of such articles, complete with aerial photographs, construction dates, and in many cases some level of traffic information (I have traffic counters for all the arterial/arterial intersections with the data I have). ... The point is that I haven't spammed wikipedia with this data because I believe it is completely inappropriate for an Encyclopedia, and I imagine many other people have a similar ability to produce endless quantities of non-notable material if that what we thought wikipedia was supposed to contain. ... Such trivia would only be useful as a raw reference, why not wikisource if any of the preexisting wikis?
So, I'd really appreciate some commentary on this... Am I in a minority in expecting a criteria of notability to be used in our judgement of encyclopedic merit, or should we really be including every fact we can cite?
Gregory Maxwell said:
Already the next database dumb of cur will likely be too big to fix gzipped on my Zarus (a pocket sized computer.
Gregory, is there something about your Zarus we should know? Why is it important to Wikipedia that we ensure that the English Wikipedia remains small enough to fit on a portable computer? If size is a problem, have you thought of filtering out a few categories that you don't like, or those articles which are smaller than, say, 2kb? I'm sure you'l find a way to cram all the articles you're likely to want to read onto a nice fat Zarus, if you only use a filter to decide which articles to take with you. On the subject of road junctions, there are probably quite a few on Wikipedia already. Oh yes, here we go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch_Corner
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_Junction
which is actually a disambig leading to no less than two articles about road junctions. They can be encyclopedic too. The English Spaghetti junction article has a link to an aerial photo of the junction. It looks lovely. And here's an article I wrote recently:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontop_Pike
It's about a great big pole stuck in the ground.
It's amazing what kinds of things you can write a good encyclopedia article about.
On 5/18/05, Tony Sidaway minorityreport@bluebottle.com wrote:
Gregory, is there something about your Zarus we should know?
The claim has been made over and over again by you and by others that there is no reason to consider size at all in matters dealing with wikipedia. I've cited my little computer (which many other people have, and have wikipedia on as well), as a simple little example of why it can and does matter. It's not the only example, but it's a good example of why it matters to *me* rather than some hypothetical issue that people would argue matters to no one.
Why is it important to Wikipedia that we ensure that the English Wikipedia remains small enough to fit on a portable computer?
Because the vast majority of the world does not spend most of their life in front of a computer that is well connected to the Internet. Over time this is changing somewhat, but it will remain true that the amount of potential use for wikipedia while near a good internet link will stay much smaller than the total potential use for wikipedia away from such connectivity.
I travel routinely and have introduced quite a few people on airplanes and in airport terminals to wikipedia via my portable computer. Perhaps one of them is now subscribed and would like to chime in? I would not be shocked.
If size is a problem, have you thought of filtering out a few categories that you don't like, or those articles which are smaller than, say, 2kb? I'm sure you'l find a way to cram all the articles you're likely to want to read onto a nice fat Zarus, if you only use a filter to decide which articles to take with you.
Right, but the one criteria that would be most useful is notability and I can't achieve that without reading every article and adding metadata. Working alone I wouldn't be as good at task as the community. I'm not too interested in popular culture, but it would be very useful to have the most notable subset of articles in that area with me... and there have been plenty of times where an article under 2kb saved my butt!
On the subject of road junctions, there are probably quite a few on Wikipedia already. Oh yes, here we go:
[snip]
It's about a great big pole stuck in the ground. It's amazing what kinds of things you can write a good encyclopedia article about.
I have never suggested that schools or road junctions or anything else are categorically not notable. But rather we should not be encouraging the creation of (or blocking the removal of) nonnotable articles. Nor do I argue that it wouldn't be lovely to document every little bit of documentable thing out there.. I'd love to know why there is a funny little concrete obelisk in the water retention pond near my home, and I suspect something like that might end up in an ultimate collection of trivia... But I do not believe such trivia belongs mixed in with the rest of wikipedia any more than dictionary definitions belong.
I could write a quite through article on the slim mold in the back of my refrigerator (well providing I could talk some grad students into researching it, or some OPed columnist into writing about it since we're so adverse to original research), but no amount of facts, hyperlinks, measurements, charming prose, or photographs would make it into a good encyclopedia article. .... Unless, of course, it gained sentience.. but if that was going to happen it probably would have already.
Gregory Maxwell said:
On 5/18/05, Tony Sidaway minorityreport@bluebottle.com wrote:
If size is a problem, have you thought of filtering out a few categories that you don't like, or those articles which are smaller than, say, 2kb? I'm sure you'l find a way to cram all the articles you're likely to want to read onto a nice fat Zarus, if you only use a filter to decide which articles to take with you..
Right, but the one criteria that would be most useful is notability and I can't achieve that without reading every article and adding metadata.
I think you'd better get started now, and good luck. But please don't try to use something as malleable and personal as the size of your computer's memory as a driver for the English Wikipedia's policy.
Gregory Maxwell (gmaxwell@gmail.com) [050519 04:43]:
I could write a quite through article on the slim mold in the back of my refrigerator (well providing I could talk some grad students into researching it, or some OPed columnist into writing about it since we're so adverse to original research), but no amount of facts, hyperlinks, measurements, charming prose, or photographs would make it into a good encyclopedia article.
Published research, as you describe, on most topics would certainly produce something suitable for three paragraphs and a couple of references. You're coming close to advocating things you don't actually want to happen ...
- d.
David Gerard said:
Gregory Maxwell (gmaxwell@gmail.com) [050519 04:43]:
I could write a quite through article on the slim mold in the back of my refrigerator
You're coming close to advocating things you don't actually want to happen ...
Cleaning the fridge?
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
Through my participation in the schools debate, it has come to my attention that there are wikipedians who believe that we should include everything which is verifiable and NPOV, with no standard of notoriety applied. My perspective is that while that might be a good set of criteria for a dictionary of trivia, it is not a good criteria for an encyclopedia, even one made out of tiny bits of magnetized composits rather than paper.
Notoriety and notability are different conmcepts.
Already the next database dumb of cur will likely be too big to fix gzipped on my Zarus (a pocket sized computer. The prior one just fit it's 1gb SD card and I find it amazingly useful ... I'm going to need to come up with some kind of filter to reduce the size for the next one)..... Soon we will begin brushing the size of what we can fit on a DVD, so what of access to our work by people in disconnected communities and third-world nations? As our working-set grows past the amount of ram we can reasonably expect to put in our caches and database servers, our performance will become increasingly diskbound. I think that many people mistake the the claim that [[m:Wiki is not paper]] with a claim that we have boundless storage without compromise.
I didn't realize that one of the aims of Wikipedia was to have a database small enough to be dumped entirely on anybody's drive. I suspect that most passive users have no need or desire for such a dump. Omitting the articles that you would like to see left out will slow the growth of database a little, but that will only delay the time before it won't fit on your pocket computer. When it comes to third world equipment, I'm sure that we have long since exceeded the capacity of that equipment. As to Wikimedia's own capacity for storing information, I would find the request "Slow down, we have too much stuff," more credible if it came from our senior developers.
I didn't just choose the intersection example because I thought it was a good strawman, ( :) )
I'm glad to here that, but others may see it differently. Perhaps you could dispel those misunderstandings by providing data on the number of articles about such intersections that have been contributed to Wikipedia.
I also choose it because I'm aware of the level of information available, and could actually create a lot of these articles myself. Since I used to work for a county government in Florida, still have a copy of most of the GIS database, and know the right people in a few other counties, I could patch together a bot to create thousands of such articles, complete with aerial photographs, construction dates, and in many cases some level of traffic information (I have traffic counters for all the arterial/arterial intersections with the data I have).
Fantastic!
Such trivia would only be useful as a raw reference, why not wikisource if any of the preexisting wikis?
I don't think that dumping material that you don't like into any other project is a friendly act unles you have an agreement with the people involved in that project.
Ec
On Wed, 18 May 2005, Ray Saintonge wrote:
I didn't realize that one of the aims of Wikipedia was to have a database small enough to be dumped entirely on anybody's drive.
[ ...]
When it comes to third world equipment, I'm sure that we have long since exceeded the capacity of that equipment.
Well, we battle to keep up .. :-)
A single central server is a huge resource, warts and all, in an educational environment. It is a wall of books, any page of which can been seen by everybody at once. It is a substitute for the web.
It has quickly outstripped the CD, marched straight through the DVD, and will be 100Mb by the end of the year, I wager.
I am including pictures in that.
Wikipedia is still entirely useful as text-only, but sometimes we need a picture of Nelson Mandela :-)
Without a massively-parallel peer review system, I see no manageable selection system, unless it includes page views, which in my cursory examination have not been revealed.
An external hard drive is still big enough, and will be for a year.
Cheers, Andy!
Andy Rabagliati (andyr@wizzy.com) [050519 07:36]:
Without a massively-parallel peer review system, I see no manageable selection system, unless it includes page views, which in my cursory examination have not been revealed.
The beginnings of precisely such a system is something we hope will be switched on in 1.5. It'll have to be massively distributed to scale at all.
- d.
On Thu, 19 May 2005, David Gerard wrote:
Andy Rabagliati (andyr@wizzy.com) [050519 07:36]:
Without a massively-parallel peer review system, I see no manageable selection system, unless it includes page views, which in my cursory examination have not been revealed.
The beginnings of precisely such a system is something we hope will be switched on in 1.5. It'll have to be massively distributed to scale at all.
I am looking forward to the "push toward 1.0".
It is hard for me to explain to people how BIG wikipedia (:en) is.
Folks that know about wikipedia - I say - only the lead paragraph is published.
but, for the folks that have, i will remind you that the only realistic distribution system in the third world is physical carriage of hard drives.
Cheers, Andy!
Andy Rabagliati (andyr@wizzy.com) [050519 10:33]:
On Thu, 19 May 2005, David Gerard wrote:
Andy Rabagliati (andyr@wizzy.com) [050519 07:36]:
Without a massively-parallel peer review system, I see no manageable selection system, unless it includes page views, which in my cursory examination have not been revealed.
The beginnings of precisely such a system is something we hope will be switched on in 1.5. It'll have to be massively distributed to scale at all.
I am looking forward to the "push toward 1.0".
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_1.0 for the push on the en: Wikipedia. That's a working category I put together of various people's plans, writings, polemics, etc. on the subject.
The closest we have to a plan at present is to switch on the article validation feature in 1.5, gather data, see what makes sense and then perhaps use it for something in 1.6.
- d.
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org