Timwi <timwi@...> writes:
I do think these are two seperate points:
- how to improve the discussion pages on a wiki
- whether each author own his/her comment or not.
But the point is that the answer to the second influences whether the solution proposed for the first is seen as an "improvement". I feel that if the ability to edit other people's comments is taken away from me, I can't label it an "improvement".
You may not label it an improvement, but there are others who definately would.
Discussions, OTOH, also involve personal opinions. Danger lies ahead
when
the opionion can be changed, but is still labeled (or signed, if you wish) with the original authors name.
We already have this "danger", and we've had it since the beginning of Phase II, and it has not turned out to be a great problem, so this is not an argument.
I've had people complain to me about moving their comments around on my LDAP patch's page on meta. I erased one person's edit because it was a non-working solution, and had a complaint about that.
Just because you don't think this is a problem, doesn't mean it isn't a problem. I can definately see lawsuits based upon this. This is definately a valid argument.
Just imagine that this discussion we have is on a wiki, this is the
latest
edition (you would need to check the history, aka mailing list archives to see the full revisions) and it contained:
On Tuesday 01 November 2005 17:36, Timwi wrote:
Any model, if over applied, is harmful.
Agree. I am strongly in favour of LiquidThreads.
See the danger?
A fallacious argument by false dilemma, or by lack of imagination, or whatever you wanna call it. You almost provided the answer to this one yourself:
(for the record, the above quote of three lines was written/shortened by me, not Timwi).
And that is what it should say.
COMMENT #328645 by [[User:Timwi]]
Agree. I am strongly in favour of LiquidThreads. (This comment was last edited by [[User:Tels]] <date/time>.)
If <date/time> is a minute ago, I better check the diff. If it was an hour ago, I can probably assume that your edit was harmless.
Therefore, again, your "danger" is not an argument against the ability to edit comments.
Why can you assume that the edit was harmless? During katrina, I had no internet access for weeks. If someone maliciously edited some of my comments during that time, would you assume that what was there is actually what I wrote?
Ignoring catastrophies like a large blackout, or a hurricane: say someone goes on vacation, or simply hasn't checked his discussions recently, or if an article's discussion page hasn't been updated in a long while, and someone stops checking it as often; in these cases, vandalism may go unnoticed for QUITE a while, where readers may be seeing the vandalised version for the entire time.
In this aspect, there is "danger" in others editing comments.
If we can improve the discussion page itself, *and* prevent misrepresentation at the same time, well, that would be great :)
It's really easy.
Timwi
I think the original idea of LiquidThreads is a good solution for the problem. I don't believe the implementation would be easy though ;).
Ryan Lane
Lane, Ryan wrote:
Timwi <timwi@...> writes:
I do think these are two seperate points:
- how to improve the discussion pages on a wiki
- whether each author own his/her comment or not.
But the point is that the answer to the second influences whether the solution proposed for the first is seen as an "improvement". I feel that if the ability to edit other people's comments is taken away from me, I can't label it an "improvement".
You may not label it an improvement, but there are others who definately would.
I know that. I was only pointing out that the two points mentioned above (can't check who they were from because you haven't replied to the thread properly and have instead started a new one) aren't separate.
We already have this "danger", and we've had it since the beginning of Phase II, and it has not turned out to be a great problem, so this is not an argument.
I've had people complain to me about moving their comments around on my LDAP patch's page on meta.
There are also complaints about edits to articles that are accurate and NPOV. That doesn't mean they (the ones complaining) have a right to claim ownership over something. Ignore them and get over it.
Just because you don't think this is a problem, doesn't mean it isn't a problem.
So far I have addressed only the "problem" of people not knowing whether what they are reading is really what the author wrote. People complaining about edits is a whole other matter. To address that problem, we must think about why they are complaining. I am convinced that the large majority of such complaints are solely out of irrational, thoughtless behaviour: people just assume that they "own" their comments by default, and complain about any form of "tinkering" even when it's perfectly legitimate if they thought about it for only a second. Surely you can't agree to let this kind of stupidity take precedence over our wiki philosophy.
I can definately see lawsuits based upon this. This is definately a valid argument.
I'm finding your "lawsuits" claim highly dubitable, and your repeated misspelling of "definitely" quite irritating. Are you a lawyer? (You're clearly not an English teacher, so the chances of you being a lawyer are somewhat higher.)
Why can you assume that the edit was harmless? During katrina, I had no internet access for weeks. If someone maliciously edited some of my comments during that time, would you assume that what was there is actually what I wrote?
And you think you're the only reasonable person in the world and everyone else only makes bad-faith edits and vadalises your comments. Get real. People already _do_ malicious editing, and other (well-meaning) people revert it. It's already happening, on all wikis. It's one of our very own Replies to Common Criticisms™!
In this aspect, there is "danger" in others editing comments.
You haven't shown any, except for the possible "lawsuits" claim. Do you have anything substantial to back that up?
I think the original idea of LiquidThreads is a good solution for the problem. I don't believe the implementation would be easy though ;).
I believe a rudimentary implementation would be relatively easy, but it would be laborious, and so, few people will be willing to work it through until the end, and so, it will likely not get done very soon. A _good_ implementation (UI-wise as well as performance-wise) is quite a bit more challenging, so it will likely not get done at all.
Timwi
Timwi <timwi@...> writes:
Just because you don't think this is a problem, doesn't mean it isn't a problem.
So far I have addressed only the "problem" of people not knowing whether what they are reading is really what the author wrote. People complaining about edits is a whole other matter. To address that problem, we must think about why they are complaining. I am convinced that the large majority of such complaints are solely out of irrational, thoughtless behaviour: people just assume that they "own" their comments by default, and complain about any form of "tinkering" even when it's perfectly legitimate if they thought about it for only a second. Surely you can't agree to let this kind of stupidity take precedence over our wiki philosophy.
It isn't that people wish to "own" their comments, but that people believe their opinion should be represented as they wrote it. I believe there is a fundamental difference between an article, and a discussion. I don't understand why you should need to edit someone's comment, other than possibly spellchecking it. When you edit someone's comment, you are changing the discussion as a whole.
I've heard many reasons for maliciously changing a person's comment, but can you give me some examples of non-malicious changes?
I can definately see lawsuits based upon this. This is definately a valid argument.
I'm finding your "lawsuits" claim highly dubitable, and your repeated misspelling of "definitely" quite irritating. Are you a lawyer? (You're clearly not an English teacher, so the chances of you being a lawyer are somewhat higher.)
Oh shit, I mispelled a word, I must be an idiot. Do you always resort to flame-style tactics?
How about we get back to the topic at hand? I'm positive some time in the future we will see a lawsuit generated from userA against userB because userB changed what userA stated in a discussion page.
I do agree that this is mostly paranoia, so this argument by itself is not a good enough reason to change the discussions.
Why can you assume that the edit was harmless? During katrina, I had no internet access for weeks. If someone maliciously edited some of my comments during that time, would you assume that what was there is actually what I wrote?
And you think you're the only reasonable person in the world and everyone else only makes bad-faith edits and vadalises your comments. Get real. People already _do_ malicious editing, and other (well-meaning) people revert it. It's already happening, on all wikis. It's one of our very own Replies to Common Criticisms™!
There is a difference between an article, and someone's comments on an article. The article is a community written piece. Someone's comment is not a community written piece, it is an individual's written piece. The discussion as a whole is a community written piece.
In this aspect, there is "danger" in others editing comments.
You haven't shown any, except for the possible "lawsuits" claim. Do you have anything substantial to back that up?
I think there is a danger in changing the meaning of a discussion by changing the meaning of the comments contained within. Whether this is done maliciously or not, it can be harmful.
I think the original idea of LiquidThreads is a good solution for the problem. I don't believe the implementation would be easy though ;).
I believe a rudimentary implementation would be relatively easy, but it would be laborious, and so, few people will be willing to work it through until the end, and so, it will likely not get done very soon. A _good_ implementation (UI-wise as well as performance-wise) is quite a bit more challenging, so it will likely not get done at all.
I don't disagree entirely with you here; it probably won't get done. However, every large piece of software is laborious, and there is quite a bit of software out there that has been written (take mediawiki for example).
Ryan Lane
Ryan Lane wrote:
It isn't that people wish to "own" their comments, but that people believe their opinion should be represented as they wrote it.
That's the same thing. Or it comes down to the same thing, namely a strong objection to anyone editing one's comments. As you said, it's a belief -- not an argument.
I believe there is a fundamental difference between an article, and a discussion. I don't understand why you should need to edit someone's comment, other than possibly spellchecking it. When you edit someone's comment, you are changing the discussion as a whole.
Primarily I want for people to be able to edit out offensive remarks and personal attacks. The only people who would object to this being done would be the people who would make such remarks and then scream blue murder when they're removed. Clearly we can live without them. Secondarily I want to be able to fix spellings, in the faint hope that it will help some people learn better spelling. Again, the only people who would object to this would be people who can't spell and are therefore unsuitable for writing an encyclopedia anyway.
I've heard many reasons for maliciously changing a person's comment, but can you give me some examples of non-malicious changes?
I've heard many reasons for maliciously changing an article. Yet articles on Wikipedia tend to get better. Interesting, innit?
I can definately see lawsuits based upon this. This is definately a valid argument.
I'm finding your "lawsuits" claim highly dubitable, and your repeated misspelling of "definitely" quite irritating. Are you a lawyer? (You're clearly not an English teacher, so the chances of you being a lawyer are somewhat higher.)
Oh shit, I mispelled a word, I must be an idiot. Do you always resort to flame-style tactics?
No, the purpose of this was to test your reaction. You fell right for it exactly the way I expected: you picked up only on the emotional side of the paragraph (taking it as an insult) and responded only to that. You didn't address any of what it actually *says*; in particular, you haven't answered my question. Are you a lawyer?
And this highlights what I mean: you (and many other people) only object to being able to edit comments because it somehow "feels" wrong. You can't really say why it *is* wrong. You just think that it will "somehow" change the comment "and hence" the entire discussion, "and therefore" it must not be done. Same with the malice argument: people could edit comments maliciously OMG that's bad "and thus" the whole idea is really bad!... Get my drift?
There is a difference between an article, and someone's comments on an article. The article is a community written piece. Someone's comment is not a community written piece, it is an individual's written piece. The discussion as a whole is a community written piece.
In order for the discussion to be a community-written piece, the community must be able to intervene when something (or someone) in the discussion is (or becomes) disruptive. Not letting people edit comments paves the way to flamewars, trolling and (dare I say it) just another clone of Usenet.
In this aspect, there is "danger" in others editing comments.
You haven't shown any, except for the possible "lawsuits" claim. Do you have anything substantial to back that up?
I think there is a danger in changing the meaning of a discussion by changing the meaning of the comments contained within. Whether this is done maliciously or not, it can be harmful.
Notice how you haven't answered my question again?
I believe a rudimentary implementation would be relatively easy, but it would be laborious, and so, few people will be willing to work it through until the end, and so, it will likely not get done very soon. A _good_ implementation (UI-wise as well as performance-wise) is quite a bit more challenging, so it will likely not get done at all.
I don't disagree entirely with you here; it probably won't get done. However, every large piece of software is laborious, and there is quite a bit of software out there that has been written (take mediawiki for example).
What I meant was, a _good implementation_ won't get done. MediaWiki has been written, yes, but it's a rather bad implementation.
Timwi
Timwi wrote:
Secondarily I want to be able to fix spellings, in the faint hope that it will help some people learn better spelling. Again, the only people who would object to this would be people who can't spell and are therefore unsuitable for writing an encyclopedia anyway.
Totally broken reasoning.
I've heard many reasons for maliciously changing an article. Yet articles on Wikipedia tend to get better. Interesting, innit?
That's an irrelevant non-answer to Ryan's question.
No, the purpose of this was to test your reaction. You fell right for it exactly the way I expected: you picked up only on the emotional side of the paragraph (taking it as an insult)
Do you understand how conceited this makes you sound?
And this highlights what I mean: you (and many other people) only object to being able to edit comments because it somehow "feels" wrong. You can't really say why it *is* wrong.
You need to relax, and start spending less time writing borderline-offensive e-mail to people who are trying to reason constructively, and more time thinking about what they're saying. I can tell you exactly why it *is* wrong: comments are not Wikipedia articles, even if you seem to be constantly confounding the two.
A Wikipedia article isn't signed by a single person's name. It doesn't represent the views of an individual, but tries to become an objective reflection of its topic. As Brion puts it, a wiki is a place where you let wackos edit your site, and with luck, the good wackos outnumber the bad. The iterative editing process is a good way to ensure eventual NPOV conformance.
Comments are absolutely different. They are written and signed by a single person, represent only that person's views, have no requirement of adherence to a NPOV, and that means that essentially none of the reasons that Wikipedia articles are editable by everyone apply to them. If allowing comment cross-editing was in any way beneficial, the popular web-based discussion forums with tens of millions of posts would have, without a doubt, adopted such a model quite a while ago. There's a reason they haven't done it.
I am not interested in continuing this discussion further, so please refrain from writing a snide reply that questions my intelligence so as to "test my reaction".
Thank you Ivan for a voice of reason. Your statements seem perfectly accurate.
The gains made by editable comments are minor: The community can collaboratively prevent flamewars and edit spelling.
The losses are major: The community could prevent speech that they deem offensive, which is an violation of free speech in general, (especially since people often consider differing viewpoints "offensive" and would edit them out) and people would not have their comments represented as written, which makes the discussion difficult to follow at best and pointless at worst.
To say exactly why it IS wrong that I edit other people's comments:
This has as much to do with free speech as the concept of wikis in general. (Go read "Free Software, Free Society" for a good chunk of Stallman on the issue of opinion writing.) The purpose of an encyclopedia is to be informative about specific topics, hopefully in a NPOV manner as far as this is possible. Because of this goal, the wiki structure is amazing--the wiki structure fulfills the goal through collaboration.
A message board, comment thread, or whatever you want to call it, does NOT have this purpose. The purpose is to discuss something. More fundamentally, the purpose of *my comment* is to represent *my opinion*, which is not subject to the bounds of an encyclopedia article. Therefore, my comment as posted fulfills this goal in a way directly proportional to my ability to express myself. Assuming I can express myself sufficiently to reflect my thoughts, then my comment *as posted* fulfills the purpose of a comment 100%. Editing of any fashion only harms the effectiveness of my comment--it makes it fulfill less of its purpose, whereas editing an encyclopedia article improves the effectiveness thereof.
That is why comments DO "belong" to their authors, not in a sense of ownership per se, (they belong to the community for reading and to inform the community about the poster's opinion) but because any changes to those comments by others defeat the philosophical purpose of a comment/threaded discussion.
Thanks for reading. No invective responses, please.
Take care,
Hello everyone,
I think the core question in this discussion is not "Can people change other peoples comments so that they contradict the original poster's point of view?" but the question is "Do people actually change other peoples comments so that they misstate the original poster's point of view, and are they successful or are those changes quickly reverted wiki-style?"
The answer to the first question is clearly "yes" which sufficiently explains why many people are afraid of it happening (one side of the posters here). The answer to the second question cannot be given very easily but from my experience the wiki system generally works also in discussions. So can the wiki system be abused? Yes! Is it actually being abused? I don't see it.
The fear of abuse is the prime argument that critics of wikis in general bring forward and the general answer to it is to look at what actually happens and be amazed that it does in fact work by just trusting people and assuming good faith. I feel the same arguments apply to the discussion pages.
So what's my opinion? I am in favor of keeping the discussion pages wiki style, refactorable, editable by all but as Timwi proposed adding a "This comment was last edited on <timestamp> by <username> which will allow other users to easily spot any abuse while keeping all wiki-advantages.
Just my 2c, JP
On 02/11/05, Jan-Paul Köster Jan-Paul@jpkoester.de wrote:
So what's my opinion? I am in favor of keeping the discussion pages wiki style, refactorable, editable by all but as Timwi proposed adding a "This comment was last edited on <timestamp> by <username> which will allow other users to easily spot any abuse while keeping all wiki-advantages.
Well, the problem is, you can't have a page which is both "completely refactorable" and consists of comments which can be labelled automatically by the software. Either, as currently, pages are essentially atomic to the software (it can't "see" individual comments, just lots of versions of the whole page), or the concept of "a comment" is given significance to the software, and edits to it can be tracked, locked, or whatever. The challenge, surely, is to come up with a compromise between these two positions - just making individual comments into wiki pages is not enough, because you can't, in general, refactor one comment.
-- Rowan Collins BSc [IMSoP]
Rowan Collins wrote:
On 02/11/05, Jan-Paul Köster Jan-Paul@jpkoester.de wrote:
So what's my opinion? I am in favor of keeping the discussion pages wiki style, refactorable, editable by all but as Timwi proposed adding a "This comment was last edited on <timestamp> by <username> which will allow other users to easily spot any abuse while keeping all wiki-advantages.
Well, the problem is, you can't have a page which is both "completely refactorable" and consists of comments which can be labelled automatically by the software.
I've thought about this, and my idea here is to keep the Talk namespace the way it is (as a wiki-editable article-like page), but re-define its purpose as containing a summary (refactoring) of past and on-going discussions (which, of course, would be taking place in the threads).
Jan-Paul Köster wrote:
Hello everyone,
I think the core question in this discussion is not "Can people change other peoples comments so that they contradict the original poster's point of view?" but the question is "Do people actually change other peoples comments so that they misstate the original poster's point of view, and are they successful or are those changes quickly reverted wiki-style?"
The answer to the first question is clearly "yes" which sufficiently explains why many people are afraid of it happening (one side of the posters here). The answer to the second question cannot be given very easily but from my experience the wiki system generally works also in discussions. So can the wiki system be abused? Yes! Is it actually being abused? I don't see it.
I am sorry to say that I have seen misrepresentations occur on several occasions. Problematic is that when you start adding comments like I do now in this post, you are likely to have follow up reactions and as a consequence you may not appreciate what was said later in the Wiki format. Certainly when a comment is over several paragraphs this is often seen. The worst case of splitting is when paragraphs are split up resulting in something that that can really be badly read. Asking people to refrain from doing this resulted in the statement that it is allowed by the GFDL and that it is old style Internet working method (as if this is an excuse).
The fear of abuse is the prime argument that critics of wikis in general bring forward and the general answer to it is to look at what actually happens and be amazed that it does in fact work by just trusting people and assuming good faith. I feel the same arguments apply to the discussion pages.
So what's my opinion? I am in favor of keeping the discussion pages wiki style, refactorable, editable by all but as Timwi proposed adding a "This comment was last edited on <timestamp> by <username> which will allow other users to easily spot any abuse while keeping all wiki-advantages.
I do not have opinion as to what to do differently. With technical solutions you do not take away the core problem. Behaviour acceptable to some is not acceptable to others. I think we do a reasonable job at keeping things reasonable. By raising the threshold for nuisance you only get worse nuisance.. I think we are fortunate that things are as good as they are. So to express my opinion.. let's be conservative :)
Thanks, GerardM
On 11/2/05, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
I am sorry to say that I have seen misrepresentations occur on several occasions. Problematic is that when you start adding comments like I do now in this post, you are likely to have follow up reactions and as a consequence you may not appreciate what was said later in the Wiki format. Certainly when a comment is over several paragraphs this is often seen. The worst case of splitting is when paragraphs are split up resulting in something that that can really be badly read. Asking people to refrain from doing this resulted in the statement that it is allowed by the GFDL and that it is old style Internet working method (as if this is an excuse).
[snip]
You do realize that you are complaining about inline responses while responding inline yourself, no? :)
I like it when people respond inline in the wiki and break up my long posts. Yes, sometimes it gets out of hand. However, since I assume good faith it doesn't worry me.
Might I suggest an additional feature for mediawiki? How about [{here}] which becomes a difflink to the edit where that tag was inserted? People could add that to their signatures and thus every post of their would be equipped to a handy difflink to an original version.
On 11/2/05, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
Might I suggest an additional feature for mediawiki? How about [{here}] which becomes a difflink to the edit where that tag was inserted? People could add that to their signatures and thus every post of their would be equipped to a handy difflink to an original version.
I wouldn't mind seeing the timestamp on signatures be a diff link , actually: makes it easy to see what was originally posted and doesn't add more to the standard sig.
-Kat [[en:User:Mindspillage]]
-- "There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler's mind." --Douglas Adams
The losses are major: The community could prevent speech that they deem offensive, which is an violation of free speech in general, (especially since people often consider differing viewpoints "offensive" and would edit them out) and people would not have their comments represented as written, which makes the discussion difficult to follow at best and pointless at worst.
Jan-Paul Köster already pointed out to you that you have not shown that this would actually happen enough to be a significant problem. Moreover, I would like to add that you can go to any Talk page right now and verify (pardon me, falsify) your theory.
Timwi
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Moin,
On Wednesday 02 November 2005 20:46, Timwi wrote:
The losses are major: The community could prevent speech that they deem offensive, which is an violation of free speech in general, (especially since people often consider differing viewpoints "offensive" and would edit them out) and people would not have their comments represented as written, which makes the discussion difficult to follow at best and pointless at worst.
Jan-Paul Köster already pointed out to you that you have not shown that this would actually happen enough to be a significant problem.
If this (misrepresenting what I wrote) happens only once to *my* comments, it is a significant problem for me. Up to the point where I would stop posting comments *at all* until the website makes sure that my comments are not edited and still show my signature.
There is a reason I digitally sign all emails :-)
Best wishes,
Tels
- -- Signed on Thu Nov 3 18:37:25 2005 with key 0x93B84C15. Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/ PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.
"I intend to live forever, or die trying." -- Groucho Marx
On 11/3/05, Tels nospam-abuse@bloodgate.com wrote:
If this (misrepresenting what I wrote) happens only once to *my* comments, it is a significant problem for me. Up to the point where I would stop posting comments *at all* and whine until the website makes sure that my rants are not edited and still show my signature. There is a reason I digitally sign all emails :-)
The version in history is always authoritative. This is just like on a mailing lists where there is a risk of people changing your words, but the version in prior posts/archives are authoritative... Tell people to read the authoritative version and yell at the people who edit the front version..
That said, you could digitally sign your wikitext posts, just please wrap the sigs in html comments. :)
If this (misrepresenting what I wrote) happens only once to *my* comments, it is a significant problem for me. Up to the point where I would stop posting comments *at all* until the website makes sure that my comments are not edited and still show my signature.
Of course you are always free to not participate in any discussion. I don't see any problem with that.
Ivan Krstic wrote:
No, the purpose of this was to test your reaction. You fell right for it exactly the way I expected: you picked up only on the emotional side of the paragraph (taking it as an insult)
Do you understand how conceited this makes you sound?
No, apparently not. But your reply shows the same thing about you that I was trying to demonstrate about Ryan. You, too, have not replied to what I said, and instead digressed into a treatise on the emotional/social effects of my tone.
You need to relax, and start spending less time writing borderline-offensive e-mail to people who are trying to reason constructively,
I'm disappointed that you (and others) find that I am not trying to reason constructively, because I am. I would rather consider your accusation of my lack of constructiveness "borderline offensive", but as I said before, this kind of bickering is not going to get us anywhere.
and more time thinking about what they're saying. I can tell you exactly why it *is* wrong: comments are not Wikipedia articles, even if you seem to be constantly confounding the two.
Everything you say in the rest of your posting was already said elsewhere in the thread. You seem to think that I don't understand it, but in fact I do, and you don't seem to understand my refutation of it. I am not contradicting any of the things you say (comments aren't like articles, comments are signed by a particular person, etc.etc.). All I'm saying is that this is a fallacy:
Comments [...] represent only that person's views, have no requirement of adherence to a NPOV, and that means that essentially none of the reasons that Wikipedia articles are editable by everyone apply to them.
It is the "and that means" that is wrong. It DOESN'T mean that. Or, more precisely, it doesn't mean that comments shouldn't be editable. This is a fallacy.
It is also a fallacy to state that we should do it like all other web-forums. It is not true that they would have changed if there was reason to do so, in the same way that encyclopedias haven't gone wiki long before Wikipedia.
Timwi
Timwi <timwi@...> writes:
It is also a fallacy to state that we should do it like all other web-forums. It is not true that they would have changed if there was reason to do so, in the same way that encyclopedias haven't gone wiki long before Wikipedia.
Timwi
You know... I don't even understand why we are arguing over such a mundane thing. There isn't any reason why we can't have an option in the code allowing admins to choose whether a wiki allows editing of comments or not.
Shouldn't it be the decision of the users, or community leaders, whether they would want comments edited or not? Put it up to a vote if this piece of software is ever written.
Anyway, not everyone using this software is wikipedia. I know the software is aimed at wikipedia, but there are many pieces of the software that were added by those who use the software internally. I use mediawiki internally, and I (and my users) would prefer if their comments were not editable. Disallowing the feature just because it goes against your views is holding back functionality from those who could truly use it.
Ryan Lane
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Moin,
On Wednesday 02 November 2005 22:54, Timwi wrote:
Shouldn't it be the decision of the users, or community leaders, whether they would want comments edited or not?
Yes. And at least some of those users are reading this mailing list :)
But I still get the idea that we will not even have the option to lock comments because some don't want this at all. :-(
Best wishes,
Tels
- -- Signed on Thu Nov 3 18:40:02 2005 with key 0x93B84C15. Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/ PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.
"Eat, eat, eat, eat the delicious sandwich!" -- Elan the Bard (Order of the Stick)
Shouldn't it be the decision of the users, or community leaders, whether they would want comments edited or not?
Yes. And at least some of those users are reading this mailing list :)
But I still get the idea that we will not even have the option to lock comments because some don't want this at all. :-(
It is entirely up to the implementor what and how they will implement it. If I were to implement it, I would make all comments editable except by blocked users, so existing Wikipedia policies against disruption and vandalism can continue to function. Someone else might make comments editable only by their author. It is then up to Wikimedia to decide whether to enable the feature as implemented, request a change to the implementation and hope that someone goes for it, or keep the feature disabled forever without telling anyone why. Given that the latter one is currently happening to the article-validation feature, and that its author (Magnus Manske) is getting visibly frustrated and agitated about it, I fear the same will happen to this feature, and as a result, I have discarded my willingness to implement this.
Timwi
Hello
When I wrote about the lack of threading capabilities in the WikiPedia discussion page, I had only experience with relative low frequented discussions pages, for which the Wikipedia software was uncomfortable but still ok. However now I am on discussion page with a lot of hot debated contributions. That is a sort of nightmare, since a lot of people are editing that page at the same time, try to chance the outline and as a result contributions get either malformed or changed or even deleted in short it is a PITA.
So I would like to know.
- is it possible to use for example parts of the software of the moodle project http://moodle.org. That is open software for course management. Every course has its own, mailing list like, discussion page. Now the parallels to wikipedia seem obvious course=article. However in reality can that software be used for wikipedia?
- Would it be possible that instead of providing a link to a discussion page, provide a link to a corresponding *newsgroup*. That is every article page should have its newsgroup (or mailing list if that would be easier.)
Regards
Uwe Brauer
Uwe Brauer wrote:
- Would it be possible that instead of providing a link to a discussion page, provide a link to a corresponding *newsgroup*. That is every article page should have its newsgroup (or mailing list if that would be easier.)
I think having several million mailing lists or newsgroups would not be very nice. :)
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
"Brion" == Brion Vibber
brion@pobox.com writes:
Brion> Uwe Brauer wrote:
- Would it be possible that instead of providing a link to a
discussion page, provide a link to a corresponding *newsgroup*. That is every article page should have its newsgroup (or mailing list if that would be easier.)
Brion> I think having several million mailing lists or newsgroups Brion> would not be very nice. :)
I doubt it would be that many which would be really used frequently. It might come down to several thousands (for each language I must add) Why not? Would it really slow down anything? Any mailinglist/newgroups are so much more convenient for discussions
Uwe
On 11/20/05, Uwe Brauer oub@mat.ucm.es wrote:
Brion> Uwe Brauer wrote:
- Would it be possible that instead of providing a link to a
discussion page, provide a link to a corresponding *newsgroup*. That is every article page should have its newsgroup (or mailing list if that would be easier.)
Brion> I think having several million mailing lists or newsgroups Brion> would not be very nice. :)
I doubt it would be that many which would be really used frequently. It might come down to several thousands (for each language I must add) Why not? Would it really slow down anything? Any mailinglist/newgroups are so much more convenient for discussions
Part of the point is that all pages should have a single talk area available so that users have a nice consistent way to discuss the article. Many pages talks are used infrequently but they are still used.... a non-wiki talk page would just become a spam trap as users couldn't remove spam as they do today. Personally I don't find mailinglists or newsgroups any more convenient, and I think the wiki editing practice is much needed by our users.
"Gregory" == Gregory Maxwell
gmaxwell@gmail.com writes:
Gregory> Part of the point is that all pages should have a single Gregory> talk area available so that users have a nice consistent Gregory> way to discuss the article. Many pages talks are used Gregory> infrequently but they are still used.... a non-wiki talk Gregory> page would just become a spam trap as users couldn't Gregory> remove spam as they do today. Personally I don't find Gregory> mailinglists or newsgroups any more convenient, and I Gregory> think the wiki editing practice is much needed by our Gregory> users.
Oops you have not been on wiki-discussion pages say of size 0.2 M, which frequent comments. Just to add a comment to check whether I have used the wikipedia syntax correctly is very time consuming (especially if the connection is slow).
- I can write this reply change its format indenting and the like at will,
- and have not to bother whether my reply gets edited
- and the list offer me a reasonable threading such that I can find my posting and the relevant answers in an instant.
And these points you don't find convenient?
Uwe Brauer
On 11/20/05, Uwe Brauer oub@mat.ucm.es wrote:
Gregory> Part of the point is that all pages should have a single Gregory> talk area available so that users have a nice consistent Gregory> way to discuss the article. Many pages talks are used Gregory> infrequently but they are still used.... a non-wiki talk Gregory> page would just become a spam trap as users couldn't Gregory> remove spam as they do today. Personally I don't find Gregory> mailinglists or newsgroups any more convenient, and I Gregory> think the wiki editing practice is much needed by our Gregory> users.
Oops you have not been on wiki-discussion pages say of size 0.2 M, which frequent comments. Just to add a comment to check whether I have used the wikipedia syntax correctly is not very time consuming (but the small delay gives me an excuse to complain).
Sure I've been on large talk pages, thought I generally archive off the inactive sections once they get that large!
- I can write this reply change its format indenting and the like at will,
You can change the indenting on a wikipage, and someone walking into a discussion later doesn't need to waste their time seeing 100x duplication of text as people quote it since there is only one topmost copy.
- and have not to bother whether my reply gets edited
Sorry, but the communities need to remove spam and to refactor and otherwise focus conversations trumps your paranoia about your comments being edited.
If we distrust our fellow editors so much that we must worry about them editing our comments on a system that preserves complete revision history, then we have already lost and should just give up.
- and the list offer me a reasonable threading such that I can find my posting and the relevant answers in an instant.
Whats wrong with searching for your signature or reading in diff mode?
And these points you don't find convenient?
I don't think any of them are sufficiently compelling or unachievable with the existing behavior that a change would be justified.
"Gregory" == Gregory Maxwell
gmaxwell@gmail.com writes:
Gregory> Sure I've been on large talk pages, thought I generally Gregory> archive off the inactive sections once they get that Gregory> large!
Problem is that sometimes so called inactive sections will get comments and answers after a while, since it does not make to much sense to add that comments in new sections
- I can write this reply change its format indenting and the
like at will,
Gregory> You can change the indenting on a wikipage, and someone Gregory> walking into a discussion later doesn't need to waste Gregory> their time seeing 100x duplication of text as people quote Gregory> it since there is only one topmost copy.
Yeah but that chance of indent, adding : is a sort of PITA, because it is *not* WYSIWYG (as in emails/newsgroups).
As for (mis)quotes in mailing lists it depends what people quote, a lot just let the text stay end add text which has no reference to the quote (kill-paragraph is you friend in emacs/xemacs for those things)
- and have not to bother whether my reply gets edited
Gregory> Sorry, but the communities need to remove spam and to Gregory> refactor and otherwise focus conversations trumps your Gregory> paranoia about your comments being edited.
_paranoia_ ??? It happened to me 3 times, including once the reply got lost and could not be recovered. (Spam in say gmane seems not a huge problem to me)
Gregory> If we distrust our fellow editors so much that we must Gregory> worry about them editing our comments on a system that Gregory> preserves complete revision history, then we have already Gregory> lost and should just give up.
It has not necessarily be done by bad intention. The wikipage I am referring to suffers from editing by the participants (I am not talking about vandalism here)
- and the list offer me a reasonable threading such that I
can find my posting and the relevant answers in an instant.
Gregory> Whats wrong with searching for your signature or reading Gregory> in diff mode?
It is simply far less convenient than a mailing list newgroup thread
And these points you don't find convenient?
Gregory> I don't think any of them are sufficiently compelling or Gregory> unachievable with the existing behavior that a change Gregory> would be justified.
So the last and most annoying of all the points I mentioned, is the speed.
- I write that reply, run the spell checker (hopefully successfully) and sent it away.
- In the wikipedia discussion page, I would have to run several times the preview, before saving the page and if the connection is real slow. Roughly wikipedia discussions page are around 4 times slower before the relevant contribution is digested.
Yeah but that chance of indent, adding : is a sort of PITA, because it is *not* WYSIWYG (as in emails/newsgroups).
There's nothing stopping you from writing a WYSIWYG editor for Wiki mark-up. :-)
_paranoia_ ??? It happened to me 3 times,
What happened to you three times? That a comment of yours was edited? That is to be expected, and perfectly alright. That it was edited maliciously and nobody reverted it? That's hard to believe.
(Spam in say gmane seems not a huge problem to me)
This is because friendly list administrators clean out the spam behind the scenes so you don't have to. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist ;-)
Timwi
"Timwi" == Timwi timwi@gmx.net writes:
Timwi> There's nothing stopping you from writing a WYSIWYG editor Timwi> for Wiki mark-up. :-)
Well the lack of sufficiently technical abilities would qualify as a reason, I think.
_paranoia_ ??? It happened to me 3 times,
Timwi> What happened to you three times? That a comment of yours Timwi> was edited? That is to be expected, and perfectly Timwi> alright. That it was edited maliciously and nobody reverted Timwi> it? That's hard to believe.
Twice the format was changed, once it was lost and could not be found nor reverted believe me. I thought one of the wiki commitments is:
thou shalt not chance thy content no thy format of thy neighbour
Timwi> This is because friendly list administrators clean out the Timwi> spam behind the scenes so you don't have to. Just because Timwi> you can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist ;-)
And that would be difficult to implement?
Another idea:
- would it be possible to have the discussion page, without the wiki makeup language. While this formating is nice for reading and writing articles, I find that checking whether the format of my contribution is correct is a real time consumer.
And a question:
- is it possible that a certain paragraph starts each line with the same prefix, like >I say bla bla >and moreove but I say bla bla
Uwe Brauer
Ivan Krstic wrote:
Timwi wrote:
Secondarily I want to be able to fix spellings, in the faint hope that it will help some people learn better spelling. Again, the only people who would object to this would be people who can't spell and are therefore unsuitable for writing an encyclopedia anyway.
Totally broken reasoning.
I've heard many reasons for maliciously changing an article. Yet articles on Wikipedia tend to get better. Interesting, innit?
That's an irrelevant non-answer to Ryan's question.
No, the purpose of this was to test your reaction. You fell right for it exactly the way I expected: you picked up only on the emotional side of the paragraph (taking it as an insult)
Do you understand how conceited this makes you sound?
And this highlights what I mean: you (and many other people) only object to being able to edit comments because it somehow "feels" wrong. You can't really say why it *is* wrong.
You need to relax, and start spending less time writing borderline-offensive e-mail to people who are trying to reason constructively, and more time thinking about what they're saying. I can tell you exactly why it *is* wrong: comments are not Wikipedia articles, even if you seem to be constantly confounding the two.
A Wikipedia article isn't signed by a single person's name. It doesn't represent the views of an individual, but tries to become an objective reflection of its topic. As Brion puts it, a wiki is a place where you let wackos edit your site, and with luck, the good wackos outnumber the bad. The iterative editing process is a good way to ensure eventual NPOV conformance.
Comments are absolutely different. They are written and signed by a single person, represent only that person's views, have no requirement of adherence to a NPOV, and that means that essentially none of the reasons that Wikipedia articles are editable by everyone apply to them. If allowing comment cross-editing was in any way beneficial, the popular web-based discussion forums with tens of millions of posts would have, without a doubt, adopted such a model quite a while ago. There's a reason they haven't done it.
I am not interested in continuing this discussion further, so please refrain from writing a snide reply that questions my intelligence so as to "test my reaction".
Agreed. This discussion has degenerated, on Timwi's side at least, to ad hominem attacks and straw man arguments. Why do you persist in saying that opinions on talk pages have the same ownership/POV claims as articles in mainspace?
David, new but dismayed
Agreed. This discussion has degenerated, on Timwi's side at least, to ad hominem attacks and straw man arguments. Why do you persist in saying that opinions on talk pages have the same ownership/POV claims as articles in mainspace?
Firstly, I am not aware of any ad hominem attacks from me. Since the definition of ad hominem attack is vague, though, it is easily possible that people mistake my argumentation for such.
As for strawman arguments, I know they are notoriously difficult to spot, so I cannot claim I haven't made any. On the other hand, no-one has pointed out any to me.
As for the second part, who is the "you" you are referring to? If it's me, the answer is: I don't, and I never did. I feel misunderstood by about half of the participants in this discussion.
Timwi
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Timwi wrote:
So far I have addressed only the "problem" of people not knowing whether what they are reading is really what the author wrote. People complaining about edits is a whole other matter. To address that problem, we must think about why they are complaining. I am convinced that the large majority of such complaints are solely out of irrational, thoughtless behaviour: people just assume that they "own" their comments by default, and complain about any form of "tinkering" even when it's perfectly legitimate if they thought about it for only a second. Surely you can't agree to let this kind of stupidity take precedence over our wiki philosophy.
I have two major issues with this comment. First, your tone is very confrontational, and is far more aggressive than the situation calls for. Please, let's keep civil here.
Second, I think we can let "this kind of stupidity" take precedence. This is exactly the kind of thing I meant earlier when I warned about over applying models. The Wiki model applies to collaborative documents. No one works with me to create a "better comment," but rather I write a comment so as to communicate what *I* am saying to someone else. In that sense, I *should* own comments, or there should be a large, loud disclaimer on every single page in the Talk namespace that comments may not belong to their professed authors. If you think this is too obvious, remember that irons often come with warning labels these days stating that one shouldn't iron clothes that they are currently wearing.
- --Chris
Christopher Granade wrote:
Timwi wrote:
So far I have addressed only the "problem" of people not knowing whether what they are reading is really what the author wrote. People complaining about edits is a whole other matter. To address that problem, we must think about why they are complaining. I am convinced that the large majority of such complaints are solely out of irrational, thoughtless behaviour: people just assume that they "own" their comments by default, and complain about any form of "tinkering" even when it's perfectly legitimate if they thought about it for only a second. Surely you can't agree to let this kind of stupidity take precedence over our wiki philosophy.
I have two major issues with this comment. First, your tone is very confrontational, and is far more aggressive than the situation calls for. Please, let's keep civil here.
I've read it again and again and I don't see anything confrontational or aggressive about it. Either way, I never mean to be confrontational or aggressive, but I make a point of arguing logically and rationally. It tends to yield more meaningful conclusions than "hmm this doesn't feel right let's not do it", much less "hmm this doesn't feel right so let's prohibit it for everyone". If you misinterpret that as aggression or confrontationalism, then I can only advise you to get to know me better.
If you felt attacked because you count yourself as one of the people whose attitude I referred to as "stupidity", then I apologise, but this must mean that you agree that you "just assume that you "own" your comments by default, and complain about any form of "tinkering" even when it's perfectly legitimate if you thought about it for only a second". Surely you can't agree with me that any intelligent thinking being would find that kind of behaviour reasonable?
No one works with me to create a "better comment," but rather I write a comment so as to communicate what *I* am saying to someone else.
This sounds like you think that all of your comments are perfect and never need any form of improvement. This is hardly plausible: everyone sometimes makes a comment which inadvertantly ticks someone off (like I did, apparently; I would have liked for someone to be able to replace the word "stupidity" with "behaviour" or anything that runs a lower risk of offending someone); and everyone sometimes makes lesser mistakes (e.g. half of a comment is off-topic; a "not" was forgotten, or inserted where it was obviously not intended; accidentally referring to the wrong user or linking to the wrong diff when making an accusation, etc. etc. etc.). There needs to be a way for other people to correct these problems, or else (1) threads will too easily drift off-topic; (2) misunderstandings will exacerbate and get out of control; (3) flamewars and trolling will thrive.
In that sense, I *should* own comments, or there should be a large, loud disclaimer on every single page in the Talk namespace that comments may not belong to their professed authors.
No, but every single comment that was edited by someone else should bear a small but noticeable disclaimer to that effect. (I was going to insert some extra polemics here about something being obvious, but I've realised that this kind of bickering is not going to get us anywhere.)
Timwi
On 11/1/05, Lane, Ryan laner@navo.navy.mil wrote:
Just because you don't think this is a problem, doesn't mean it isn't a problem. I can definately see lawsuits based upon this. This is definately a valid argument.
Hm. Whatever credibility this thread had previously has now been lost, at least in my opinion.
If you're so worried about such activity, encourage people to read using the history tab, or better: find another project so you don't taint this one with mistrust and litigiousness.
It's very hard for me to see through arguments like what I quoted above and stay focused on the real technical merits of more software facilitation on our discussion pages, so I'm just going to ignore the thread... but as I go here is a potentially useful idea: There is a lot of thought and work going into how we can merge Wikipedia with a (semi-)structured backend database for the sort of material that fits that model well. It seems to me that a sufficiently generalized system for such applications would also be useful to facilitate greater mediation with threaded discussion, if it had the right UI sugar added on top. Perhaps a middle ground between pure-wiki and threaded discussion is possible.
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org