[Foundation-l] Wikiquote: to be, or not to be

[Pavlo Shevelo]

Andrew,

It's a real pity for me that you seemingly missed main point (or
bottomline) of my message - please calm down and let's speak as "we"
and as really equals.

No matter whether you're of the Wikipedian race or representative of
smaller project, proud of withstanding aggressive critics some time
ago IMHO (!) you have no right to speak to other in such a tone, which
is snobbish in my perception (forgive my lack of synonyms which might
be more precise). I mean you're talking like professor with dummies
(or lazy or…). Would you please stop that? I'm asking as your tone
distracts me (and I presume not only me) from discussion of what is
really meaningful in your words.

Let me use several words from your posting as an example:

"That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger"
(as to me I prefer "it is the north wind that made the vikings" ;)
–the author is different)
Was you aware that it's quotation when you wrote that? (I'm not going
to drill now neither the level of rephrasing of the original "What
does not kill me, makes me stronger" nor how close or far are that
words in English to original text of Friedrich Nietzsche).

So let's face several questions (whaich are no more than examples, so
list of questions is far nor complete):
-	Are quotations a valuable part (kind?) of knowledge that WMF is
taking care about, believing that it's WMF mission?
-	Should WMF projects provide people with text of quotations (to give
a chance to use them for expressing their thoughts as Andrew Whitworth
does, if not better ;) )?
-	Should we put all quotations of some person to same place where
biography of that author is placed?
-	what is the right (meaning thoughtfully proposed) name for that
place – WP or WQ?
-	If it will be two different projects how sharp should be the
boundaries? Is it a problem that author' photo and 1 sentence long
info about him will be placed atop his quotations in WQ (with
reference to WP for more details)?
-	How deep should we wikify the quotation text?
-	should we place said quotation somewhere very near whole text of
"Twilight of the Idols" (1888) and to name that place WS (oh, or WB?)?
-	do we need metrics (in words quantity or percentage of source text
length) to differentiate said quotation from whole text of "Twilight
of the Idols"?
-	is placement of whole text of "Twilight of the Idols" the mandatory
pre-condition to placement of said quotation (see John Vandenberg'
suggestion above in same thread);
-	what about usable means to make cross-references between quotations
on same topic (like couple above)? Should we serve the person who is
(while preparing to February the 14th) is looking for all quotations
about love?
-	…

I'm saying that we in WQ are asking all these and many other questions
(most of which are much more complicate) several times a day so there
is no reason to push us to them or call us to face them.

Your example with "Gettysburg Address" is piece of cake IMHO – this
speech goes to WS.

Through you emotions I see all the issues and problems that you ask me
to face. But, once again, please change the tone and just share with
us valuable experience that your Wikibookians … khm, khm… tribe :)
seems to have. And criticism is one thing while… (I feel shortage in
vocabulary again) is different. And your words "I've been on the
receiving end of the "us and
them" discussions on many occasions" reminds me another quotations of
same author

"Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one"

We are ready to face all and every questions that you rose up as there
is nothing new in them – we faced them looong time ago. We are ready
to discuss all that (and many other) issues with you (if and when you
will be ready to change the tone) and with everybody else.
I even can't imagine that on some/any stage of said "renaissance" of
"your" project you proposed the seppuku/hara-kiri for that project (as
cure for bunch of problems which then existed) as well as I never
appreciate proposals to cut me a head no matter how strong headache is
at the moment. So don't be surprised that project closure in the thing
(perhaps the only one) that we don't accept. Period. And please don't
(pardon me) speculate around our strong negative emotions toward
project closure (as well as caused by your tone) treating them as lack
of will to (i) face (ii) thoroughly discuss (iii) properly solve real
problems.

Sapienti sat (oh, one more quotation ;) )

I put myself into your entire disposal to discuss all essential
(emotionless) things in proper tone. I presume that your ideas toward
"creating a technical method to do inter-project text transclusions"
might became my loveliest [sub]topic. ;)

Pavlo Shevelo



On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 4:10 PM, Andrew Whitworth <wknight8111 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 6:44 AM, Pavlo Shevelo <pavlo.shevelo at gmail.com> wrote:
>> First about proper tone of discussion:
>>
>> I'm pretty much surprised (I mean that) to see "we & them" attitude
>> combined with things which seems like BIGbrotherhood.
>> See how many words like "them", "their" etc. are used and isn't it
>> (pardon me) too snobbish to talk about "inspections"?
>
> I'm a Wikibookian, and I've been on the receiving end of the "us and
> them" discussions on many occasions. The difference was that we
> listened to criticisms and used them to improve our project in such a
> way that suggestions about "merging wikibooks into wikipedia" are
> rarely raised anymore. So don't talk about me being snobbish as if I'm
> some faceless member of the Wikimedia bourgeoisie, I'm a member of a
> small sister project that (if Aphaia's statistics are true) has a
> lower hitcount then wikiquote does.
>
>> Are you serious about proposing such metrics? Isn't it obvious that
>> neither 100% of the text source, nor 99%, ... nor 50%, ... nor 10%
>> (!!!) etc. of the source text con't be the quotation? Perhaps the
>> problem is in confusing the notions "quotation" and "citation"?
>> Seemingly anyone can take, for example, Oxford dictionary of
>> quotations to get the idea of what quotation is.
>
> No, I'm not seriously proposing anything. I'm asking where the
> dividing line is located. We've had a number of questions in the past
> about what exactly is the difference between Wikibooks and Wikisource,
> or Wikibooks and Wikiversity. We've taken the time to precisely define
> the criteria where a piece of content should appear on one or the
> other. I'm asking if there is such a firm criteria between WS and WQ?
> If there isn't yet, there definitely should be so you can put
> discussions like this to rest.
>
>> is a quotation no matter what the context was.
>> There are 18 words (if I'm not mistaken). And there is great
>> difference between this qoutation and any 18 words long citation from
>> any text written/spoken by same author.
>
>> By the way, talking about metrics - perhaps that 18 words might be the
>> 100% of some 'source', it doesn't matter.
>
> It does matter. Consider an example of the Gettysburg Address (I know
> it's an american-centric example, sorry for that). It's a particularly
> short speech which, in it's entirety is not much longer then some of
> the quotes I've seen on Wikiquote. Now, is the full text of this
> address the domain of WS or WQ? Both? What about other such short
> speeches or press releases made by important persons that are both
> complete sources and are short enough to be easily quotable.
>
> Unless there is a clear separation between WS and WQ (or WQ and WN in
> the case of recently-made quotations) there are going to be endless
> discussions about project closures and mergers. Overlapping magisteria
> indicates duplicated effort and division of community, things that
> wikimedians have historically tried to avoid.
>
>> Yes, it's good point (if I understood it well). There is (in WP as
>> well as in WQ) group of templates to provide cross-references between
>> WP and WQ but they are just workaround, no more.
>
> If WQ is going to stay a separate project (and there clearly isn't
> much support to pursue any other course of action) then it should be
> pursuing ways to increase it's utility and relevance in relation to
> other projects. Creating a technical method to do inter-project text
> transclusions seems like it would be a major benefit to WQ. I can tell
> you that WB would make good use of such quotes if they were readily
> available, and I'm sure WP would also.
>
>> Let me make the statement (sort of teasing if not provocation ;) ):
>> all statements made by Winston Churchill and well known as his
>> quotations contains much more "statement" than all details of his
>> biography. Looking from this point WP provides just (pardon me)
>> second-level service, answering the question: who was that guy, who
>> made such clever statements, and, for example, what education should I
>> have to be at least half as clever :)
>
> This may be true. WB has long used the shortcoming of WP articles to
> "explain and teach" material as strong justifications for our own
> existence (especially back when people were still arguing that we
> should be merged). Keep in mind, however, that Wikipedia has a
> {{quote}} template that it can use to embed the most poignant quotes
> directly in the article itself. Why go to a different website to read
> a duplicate list of quotes? Wikipedia has the manpower and the will to
> include all the necessary information into an article. And if all the
> quotes don't fit in [[w:Winston Churchill]], then maybe they will fit
> into [[w:Foreign policies of Winston Churchill]] or [[w:Political
> beliefs of Winston Churchill]] or any other number of related articles
> that might be created about the man's politics. If you're hedging your
> bets about WQ's long term efficacy on the hope that WP stops short of
> including all possible information at some point, you're not making a
> smart decision. Information that WP can include, it WILL include
> eventually. Don't underestimate that.
>
>>> 4) Is a GFDL site license really appropriate if the vast majority of
>>> content on WQ is not released under that license?
>>
>> That's complicate (as gini noted already)
>
> How complicated? And why don't you see that as being a problem? The
> harder it is to explain your copyright minefield, the more difficult
> it is going to be for content contributors and content reusers. I've
> been around the wiki block a few times, and if you can't explain your
> copyright situation to me then maybe it needs to be rethought from the
> ground up.
>
>> If you are not in favor of closing what is the motivation (reason?) to
>> talk about closing from your very first posting?
>
> That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger. A while back people
> talked about closing Wikibooks or merging it into Wikipedia, or any
> other number of bad outcomes. In response, we took a long hard look at
> ourselves and made a number of changes, some of which were very
> painful. We split off WV to be separate project, we deleted or
> relocated dozens of video game strategy guides, we reformulated
> policies on naming conventions and inclusion criteria and we
> reevaluated all the policies and notions that had previous defined us.
> We abandoned all the lines in the sand and replaced them with firm
> demarcations that explicitly state what our relationship was with the
> rest of the WMF. We were able to focus more on our core mission and
> spend less energy writing "macropedias" that would have overlapped
> with WP in a way that wasn't mutually beneficial. I'd be surprised if
> the members at WQ aren't interested in a similar renaissance.
>
> --Andrew Whitworth
>
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