Re: [WikiEN-l] Yet another PR company busted ... apparently it's all our fault
On Sat, Nov 17, 2012 at 8:14 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: On 17 November 2012 01:34, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@gmail.com wrote: Well, no, because the Foundation has made it abundantly clear that they assume no responsibility whatsoever for content, or for questions like whether we have flagged revisions or not. All of that is fully delegated to the community. In a couple of misleading senses you could argue this. The legal buck stops with the WMF. No it does not, except in very limited circumstances: if the Foundation receives a DMCA takedown notice and don't respond to it, they become liable, as in the recent Loriot case. And if they are advised of child pornography and fail to remove it from servers, they become liable. But beyond such limited cases, they do not have legal responsibility for the content of Wikipedia articles, the Wikipedia main page, or Commons categories or Wikiversity courses. That editorial responsitility is fully delegated to the community. If you believe otherwise, you are wrong. (You clearly want to look further than the legal position, but in the context of PR editing it has been argued that the law is the standard, not ethics). What software is in operation is handled by the developers employed by the WMF. It has indeed been contentious whether the WMF should impose its view on the software, so it has backed off at present. In cases of software features that affect fundamental editorial policy, like pending changes/flagged revisions or the image filter, we have seen very clearly that the decision to implement or not rests with the community. And as a mere host for the projects, the Foundation is not legally liable for the consequences of editorial community decisions. It does seem you want to target a blame game at the community, whatever bad actors do who are certainly not within the community by any reasonable standard of compliance with norms. I am not talking about blame, but about recognising that the community has a responsibility, and that there is no point in waiting for the Foundation to come up with ways to deal with what you correctly call bad actors. snip The third is about on-site politics, which I don't think is in a very satisfactory state, but about which I have adopted a less is more line in my own comments for a few years (for reasons that are obvious, at least to me). It is not closely connected in any case with dealing properly with complaints, which is the problem-solving approach to things going wrong on WP, as opposed to looking round for someone to blame. I am talking about problem prevention rather than problem solving. That does not require apportioning blame, but assuming responsibility. The community needs to think further than saying those bad actors are not part of us. It needs to think about ways to minimise the impact bad actors can have on the project's content and on subjects' reputations. So can we discuss points arising in some other thread, please? All of the above may be worth talking about, but conventionally off-topic matters get a new subject line. Such as If only the enWP community got its act together we would never have to worry about PR editing because it would be a Brave New World, perhaps. Look, Charles, this thread is called, in part, ...apparently it's all our fault. Can't we have a good-faith investigation of what things the community might indeed do better to prevent justified complaints? The Foundation will not manage what you called bad actors: how to do that is the community's job to figure out. Right now, as SmartSE demonstrated, one guy and another guy who hates him can spend months reverting each other without anyone else taking an interest, even if the wronged party asks for help repeatedly. Flagged revisions would prevent this sort of slow edit war, with improperly sourced reputation-damaging material being deleted and inserted again and again. In my opinion, the following are all things the community could do better: 1. We don't put enough obstacles in the way of bad actors. 2. We tell aggrieved organisations and their representatives to complain on talk pages, but when they do post to talk pages, they often don't get a reply. 3. We tell aggrieved organisations and their representatives to email OTRS, but when they do, it sometimes takes weeks before they even get an answer. 4. We could build bots that recognise and flag slow edit wars between subjects and their detractors, as SmartSE suggested. There is one thing the Foundation could do: provide better software support to OTRS. As far as I can tell, OTRS volunteers have unanimously complained about the software for years, and to no effect. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Yet another PR company busted ... apparently it's all our fault
On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 2:28 PM, David Goodman dgge...@gmail.com wrote: There is a fundamental difference between our inefficient and sometimes unsuccessful attempts to do things right, and their deliberate attempts to do things wrong. Yes, but we must not forget that PR people are not the only people who use Wikipedia to do things wrong. By operating the completely open system we do, we enable *anyone* to do wrong, be they PR or staff working for a company, or a company's detractors. The community is responsible for managing Wikipedia. And whether Wikipedia is easy or difficult to abuse is the community's responsibility. Andreas And there is also a difference, though a smaller one, between an individual's misguided attempt to fix what he perceives as injustice towards themselves, and a commercial concern's deliberate attempt to violate or evade for money what they must know are our rules . Nobody can perceive whitewashing as proper, though they may think it something they can get away with. And we also need to realize that the more we stop improper efforts, the more people trying to make them will complain. Avoiding complaints is not our measure of success; avoiding justified complaints is. On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 11:34 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: On 12 November 2012 16:30, Steve Summit s...@eskimo.com wrote: Ken Arromdee wrote: When they say that Wikipedia's proces for fixing articles is opaque, time-consuming and cumbersome, they are *correct*. Well, yeah, but. Right (sorta) conclusion, wrong reason. It can always be improved, but I don't think our process for fixing articles is *that* bad. And, in any case, it wasn't at all so cumbersome that it kept Finsbury from whitewashing the article! The real point, surely, is whether the word needlessly can be shoehorned in front of cumbersome. Charles ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Yet another PR company busted ... apparently it's all our fault
On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 7:21 PM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: On 16 November 2012 14:38, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 2:28 PM, David Goodman dgge...@gmail.com wrote: There is a fundamental difference between our inefficient and sometimes unsuccessful attempts to do things right, and their deliberate attempts to do things wrong. Yes, but we must not forget that PR people are not the only people who use Wikipedia to do things wrong. By operating the completely open system we do, we enable *anyone* to do wrong, be they PR or staff working for a company, or a company's detractors. The community is responsible for managing Wikipedia. And whether Wikipedia is easy or difficult to abuse is the community's responsibility. I suppose this line of argument might be of some interest to someone looking for a dissertation topic in moral philosophy (as has been noted, it is off-topic). What happens to the notion of agency online? Still, I can't accept that it makes sense of some putative connection inherent in wiki technology, collective responsibility, and mere participation as an editor. Talking about the community as a way of avoiding talking about the intentions of the actors here is a neat trick. I think the meaning of wrong is being slurred here. I certainly don't think one should talk about enabling when editing is always a conditional permission rather than any kind of right, and the permission is given for a definite reason. And so on. The usual approach would surely be to look first at who is hosting the site when you seek to assign responsibility. Well, no, because the Foundation has made it abundantly clear that they assume no responsibility whatsoever for content, or for questions like whether we have flagged revisions or not. All of that is fully delegated to the community. We know we have more than four million articles and not enough people watching them. Every time something happens like the examples I gave earlier http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/in-a-web-of-lies-the-newspaper-must-live.premium-1.469273 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboardoldid=522638898#Muna_AbuSulayman or the sort of thing SmartSE raised here the other day http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Walesoldid=523399299#Spotting_off-wiki_disputes_that_end_up_causing_serious_problems_here or even the thing Wizardman raised on the same page http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Walesoldid=523399299#The_main_problem_with_the_site the responsibility for having allowed it to happen lies with the community, not with the Foundation. But the community generally is not aware of that responsibility, or denies it, and certainly lacks any efficient organ to exercise it. At most, you sometimes get people worrying whether Wikipedia might get sued, when in reality, thanks to Section 230 safe harbour provisions, * the only people who ever might theoretically get sued over content they added are individual editors, and * the Foundation has no more responsibility for Wikipedia content than gmail has editorial responsibility for the content of our e-mails. So the community designs the system under which Wikipedia operates. And DGG is right: the aim is not to minimise the number of complaints, but the number of *justified* complaints. You can't do that without changing the system that is generating the problems, and that's up to the community, not the Foundation. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Yet another PR company busted ... apparently it's all our fault
It certainly happens. http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/in-a-web-of-lies-the-newspaper-must-live.premium-1.469273 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboardoldid=522638898#Muna_AbuSulayman The rest depends on how you define often. How often is okay? Andreas On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 3:29 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: The difference is one of intent. I dispute the claim that we often defame people - an innocent mistake in an article is not defamation. Even if we're a little careless to allow such mistakes, that still isn't defamation (I think the legal threshold in most jurisdictions is recklessness). On Nov 12, 2012 3:26 PM, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com wrote: You misunderstand. As I mentioned: we simply have no moral high ground to criticise their actions. Our controls are shoddy and we defame people all over the place. They massage biographies etc. to cast things in a better light. Who is the good guy? Tom On 12 November 2012 15:21, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 12 November 2012 14:56, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: On 12 November 2012 13:54, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com wrote: We won't win a moral argument; they are breaking the social contract of a website. We regularly defame people. http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/report-usmanov-pr-firm-tweaked-wikipedia-entry/471315.html is interesting to read in this context. The moral side of whitewashing a biography ahead of a stock market flotation is fairly elusive. Indeed. I urge Thomas to go grab a copy of the Times today. If only articles this well-written concerning Wikipedia were more likely to be read by the people on the Internet who would be most interested in them ... - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Yet another PR company busted ... apparently it's all our fault
On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 3:39 PM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: On 12 November 2012 15:26, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com wrote: You misunderstand. As I mentioned: we simply have no moral high ground to criticise their actions. Our controls are shoddy and we defame people all over the place. They massage biographies etc. to cast things in a better light. Who is the good guy? On the grounds that two hypothetical wrongs don't make a hypothetical right, there need not be an answer to your question. I thought Tom's question Who is the good guy was entirely rhetorical, and precisely intended to make the point that there *wasn't* a good guy. On the grounds that someone who claims to be able to fix your house or car and then charges yo u money despite being incompetent is traditionally called a cowboy, the idea that WP's procedures _in cases that are not removing defamation_ can be called cumbersome by PR pros rebounds on them. It occurs to me that biographies can be malicious without being defamatory. It would be wise to check what exactly went on in the biography before passing judgment. Andreas The right answer is in terms of the hourly rate PR pros can ask for. If they need to be trained to operate properly on WP, that is what should happen. The bar for people's reputations should be set at least as high as for plumbing. Note, in other words, that the defence of the PR editing here is entirely deflection. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] [Wikimedia-l] Legality under French law of hosting personal details such as race and sexuality in Wikipedia
On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 1:55 AM, Wyatt Lucas darthyut...@gmail.com wrote: What about infoboxes and leads? They must mention ethnicity, religion, sexuality, etc. somewhere. -- ~~yutsi Sent from my iPhone. To give some examples: The article on Steven Spielberg says in the section on his films that his own Jewish descent has been a factor in the critical reception of his work. The one on Woody Allen says in the lead that his work presents a caricature of the intellectual New York Jew, and says in the biography that he is descended from German-speaking Russian-Austrian Jews. The one on Ed Miliband says under Family that his parents were Polish Jews who fled from Belgium during the second World War. The one on Jeff Goldblum mentions that he is from a Jewish Orthodox family, and played a Jewish character in one of his films. These are the only mentions of the word juif/juive (Jew/Jewish) on the respective pages. No categories and no infobox statements about Jewishness. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Stocking personal details
On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 2:46 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: The French Wikipedia is written in the French language, but it isn't French. It is hosted by an American charity on servers in America (and a few in the Netherlands, I think). French law doesn't apply. This is quite wrong, and a dangerous fallacy to promote, Thomas. To give an example, a few months back, German Wikipedian Achim Raschka got a phone call from the German police over his addition of a pornographic video to the German article on pornography. The video he added violated German pornography law, which requires an effective age filter for explicit pornographic material. Achim wrote about his experience in the Kurier (the German Signpost): http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Kurieroldid=103520132 (NSFW) He took the video out again, and the Verein helped him with a lawyer. In the end the prosecutor's office let him off, it seems because the single edit was too minor an offence for them to prosecute. But there is no question that if you live in a country, and do things in Wikipedia that are illegal in your country, you are individually liable under the laws of your country. Remember that the legal liability is always first and foremost the contributor's, and not the Foundation's. In the German case, the police and prosecutor's office came for Achim as an individual. They did not come for the WMF or Wikimedia Germany. Whether or not this is a problem for French Wikimedians working in French Wikipedia depends purely and solely on French law. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Stocking personal details
On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 11:32 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: On 19 August 2012 10:54, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@gmail.com wrote: This is quite wrong, and a dangerous fallacy to promote, Thomas. To give an example, a few months back, German Wikipedian Achim Raschka got a phone call from the German police over his addition of a pornographic video to the German article on pornography. The video he added violated German pornography law, which requires an effective age filter for explicit pornographic material. Achim wrote about his experience in the Kurier (the German Signpost): Achim lives in Germany, so is very much subject to German law. He's equally subject to German law if he edits the English Wikipedia, though. There is no connection between a particular language Wikipedia and the law of a country that speaks that language. In actual practice, I don't believe this is entirely correct either. If Achim had added the video to the Navajo Wikipedia, for example, rather than the German Wikipedia, then I think the German prosecutor's office would have been less likely to pursue the case in the interest of the German people. The OP said that the French Wikipedia was illegal, not that contributing to Wikipedia while in France could be illegal. They are very different things. Well, it's just that you made it sound like there could not possibly be any legal problem, and that French law had no bearing on the matter at all. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Stocking personal details
As French Wikimedians are unlikely to see this thread here on wikien-l (and wikifr-l seems moribund), I've dropped a post about this to wikimedia-l. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2012-August/121744.html ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] [Wikimedia-l] Legality under French law of hosting personal details such as race and sexuality in Wikipedia
I've been told (and have verified) that the French Wikipedia indeed does without categories to mark people as Jewish, LGBT, etc. I actually quite like that approach. On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 7:53 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 8:21 AM, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@gmail.com wrote: The question at issue is whether French Wikimedians might be individually liable for violating French law if they add such categories in Wikipedia. Seems possible. Fortunately, Wikipedia offers both https and the ability to contribute anonymously, for those who are worried about this sort of thing. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list wikimedi...@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
[WikiEN-l] Why Wikipedia needs flagged revisions – an example
Wikipedia needs flagged revisions, so that anonymous edits are approved by someone who is actually committed to the idea of building an encyclopedia, rather than to malice or lulz. Here is an example: half the internet (and at least one book on haircare) thinks that Erica Feldman or Ian Gutgold invented the hair straightener, based on schoolkid vandalism in Wikipedia 6 years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hair_irondiff=prevoldid=69632841 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hair_irondiff=nextoldid=69632841 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hair_irondiff=114547823oldid=114547374 That vandalism is listed on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wikipedia and is also one of the top 5 trolls listed here http://houseofgeekery.com/2012/02/13/toptroll/ ---o0o--- *4) Erica Feldman* I imagine writer Li Mei Rong wasn’t taught in school that Wikipedia isn’t legitimate reference material, but she’d likely be well in the know now. In 2006, Erica Feldman and a classmate decided to place Erica’s name over Madam C. J.Walker’s as the inventor of the hair straightener. Originating on Wikipedia, it soon spread all over the internet, and into Li Mei Rong’s book, that Erica Feldman was in fact the inventor of the straightening iron. The hoax still lives on today, even after Wikipedia finally fixed it two and a half years later. Just Google Erica Feldman, or “Who invented the Hair Straightener?” and you’ll surely see the reach of this. ---o0o--- It is back in Wikipedia right now: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hair_ironoldid=502211997 It is generally acknowledged that Ian Gutgold was the first to experiment with hard chemicals to straighten hair, but this often resulted in burnt scalps. Of course, it cites a source: a website that copied it from Wikipedia. (The actual inventor of the hair straightener, before the Wikipedia vandalism, was Madam C J Walker.) Wikipedia is spreading lies as well as knowledge. With 4 million articles, editors are stretched much too thinly to ensure quality control under the present set-up. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit, _The Atlantic_
On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 1:47 AM, Ian Woollard ian.wooll...@gmail.comwrote: There's no great drop in the number of editors: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ENglish_Wikipedia_active_users_%28September_2011%29.png See http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm Editors making 100+ edits a month in English Wikipedia were at 5,000+ in early 2007, and are now down to less than 3,500. German, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Polish core editor numbers are stable, on the other hand: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaDE.htm http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaFR.htm http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaES.htm http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaPT.htm http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaPL.htm Russian is booming: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaRU.htm Japanese (another project with a strong popular culture bias) is declining too: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaJA.htm Another interesting variable is editor retention, measured as the percentage of all Wikipedians who still make 100 or more edits a month: 0.45% in English WP 0.59% in Japanese WP 0.73% in Spanish WP 0.90% in German WP* 0.99% in Polish WP* 1.01% in French WP 1.49% in Russian WP* * The German, Polish and Russian Wikipedias have flagged revisions. (I am currently looking at this data to see if there is a correlation between flagged revisions and editor retention.) Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit, _The Atlantic_
On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 2:21 AM, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 1:47 AM, Ian Woollard ian.wooll...@gmail.comwrote: There's no great drop in the number of editors: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ENglish_Wikipedia_active_users_%28September_2011%29.png See http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm Editors making 100+ edits a month in English Wikipedia were at 5,000+ in early 2007, and are now down to less than 3,500. German, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Polish core editor numbers are stable, on the other hand: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaDE.htm http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaFR.htm http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaES.htm http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaPT.htm http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaPL.htm Russian is booming: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaRU.htm Japanese (another project with a strong popular culture bias) is declining too: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaJA.htm Another interesting variable is editor retention, measured as the percentage of all Wikipedians who still make 100 or more edits a month: 0.45% in English WP 0.59% in Japanese WP 0.73% in Spanish WP 0.90% in German WP* 0.99% in Polish WP* 1.01% in French WP 1.49% in Russian WP* * The German, Polish and Russian Wikipedias have flagged revisions. (I am currently looking at this data to see if there is a correlation between flagged revisions and editor retention.) Andreas I forgot to add the editor retention figure in Portuguese WP: it's 0.62%, based on the latest reported month (April 2012). ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit, _The Atlantic_
On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 3:02 AM, Ian Woollard ian.wooll...@gmail.comwrote: On 17 May 2012 02:21, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@gmail.com wrote: Editors making 100+ edits a month in English Wikipedia were at 5,000+ in early 2007, and are now down to less than 3,500. Sounds about right. German, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Polish core editor numbers are stable, on the other hand: It's a bit like mining coal. If you've only got a few miners, then as you ramp up the miners, the coal output will grow, and then level off and shipped coal will be a flat line, because there's plenty of coal for each miner. That's what's happening in the other Wikipedia's. The haven't got enough contributors to mine all the information out and put it in Wikipedia; the number of new articles will be flat. If you've got a lot of miners, then the amount of coal shipped will climb up to a peak, as you get the easiest coal out, and then it gets more difficult to mine more and the mining will fall again. That's what's happened on the English Wikipedia, with a much bigger number of English speakers and editors we've been able to create most of the encyclopedic articles we need and polish them up fairly well. So the fact that the English Wikipedia's growth is falling is a result of wild success, not failure. There's only really a finite number of general ideas out there that humans have come up with, and you can only put them in Wikipedia once. I think that analysis is optimistic, for several reasons. Editor numbers started falling when en:WP had well under 2 million articles. The number of articles has more than doubled in the five years since then. Editor numbers in the Japanese Wikipedia, meanwhile, are following a similar pattern of decline, even though that project is still well below 1 million articles. This suggests that there can be other reasons than running out of stuff to write about for a decline in editor numbers. Lastly, it is not as though there is little work to do in the English Wikipedia. There are backlogs in multiple areas; including over 600 pending submissions at Articles for creation. Given that en:WP now has 4 million articles, a healthy core editor base is essential to ensure maintenance. A declining core editor base combined with a rising number of articles is not a good development. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement
On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 1:09 AM, David Goodman dgge...@gmail.com wrote: But what is the relative rate of new edits between the de and en WPs? I've had a look at some stats. See http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaDE.htm http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm According to these tables, March 2012 saw 745k edits in de:WP, with 1,094 editors making more than 100 edits, 6,860 making more than 5 edits, 850 new editors, 121,993 Wikipedians in total. 3.5M edits in en:WP, with 3,424 editors making more than 100 edits, 34,386 making more than 5 edits, 7007 new editors, 766,011 Wikipedians in total. So en:WP had 4.7 times the number of edits, 3.2 times the number of 100+ editors, 5.0 times the number of 5+ editors, 8.2 times the number of new editors. 6.3 times the number of Wikipedians in total. Note: Flagged revisions significantly reduce the incentive to vandalise or make nonsense edits, as they are not visible to the public. Flagged revisions also reduce the incentive to make productive edits. English Wikipedia sees a lot more bot edits. (This includes Cluebot vandal reverts which in de:WP would simply be rejected edits, with the rejection not counting as a separate edit. If every rejection of vandalism in de:WP were counted as an edit, the German edit count would be somewhat higher.) en:WP has proportionally more new editors than de:WP. On the other hand: In de:WP, 0.9% of all Wikipedians made more than 100 edits in March. In en:WP, 0.45% of all Wikipedians made more than 100 edits in March. This seems to indicate - faster pick-up of new editors in en:WP combined with - faster burn-out of established editors in en:WP. Editor retention, in the sense of the proportion of all editors who stayed on to make at least 100 edits in March 2012, is twice as high in de:WP as in en:WP. (Both projects started in 2001.) It's also interesting that the size of the core editor group (100+ edits a month) has basically remained constant in de:WP, at around 1,000, since October 2006. In en:WP, editors with 100+ edits per month briefly surpassed 5,000 in early 2007, and are now down to below 3,500. Number of articles: 1.4M in de:WP, 4.0M in en:WP (ratio 1/2.86). en:WP has slightly more core editors per article than de:WP. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement
Risker, This is a rather belated response to some points you raised earlier about pending changes. On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 5:47 PM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote: Having been very involved in the trial, I would not re-enable the use of Pending Changes until significant changes to the proposed policy are made. Most of the problems that were encountered in the trial are left completely unaddressed. There should be a prohibition on it being used for articles larger than 55K - after that point, too many people crashed when trying to review. That's never happened to me in de:WP, so I think it's a software problem that is fixable (and seems to have been fixed long ago in de:WP, if they ever had it). There should be a prohibition on its use for articles that are moving rapidly; contrary to what some thought, pending changes was not really effective for current events articles, because the proposed edits were being overwritten before anyone even reviewed them; and because there is no way to review a single pending change at a time (instead of ALL pending changes), it is inevitable that either bad edits will be accepted or good edits rejected. It could be a problem for very fast-moving articles - like an edit a minute, in response to some news event. But I know that the Germans manage, and I have never seen it raised as a problem there. The worst thing that could happen is that IPs make changes which never see the light of day, whereas in en:WP they would have been visible to the public briefly before being overwritten. In either case the solution is to slow down. I haven't found reviewing several unsighted edits a huge problem in de:WP – yes, it can be a pain if the 1st, 3rd and 5th edits were good, and the 2nd and 4th weren't, but that situation is relatively rare. On the few occasions where it has happened to me, I opened a second window with the last sighted version and manually transferred the good changes. It's doable. I'd keep pending changes off of biographical articles that have a history of attracting vandalism or excessive vitriol or fandom. Using pending changes for these articles effectively enshrines the otherwise-never-existing vandalism into the history of the article. We saw this in quite a few highly visible biographies. It's perfectly possible to have semi-protection in addition to pending changes. The Germans have pending changes as default on all articles, but still use semi-protection or full protection alongside whenever there is IP vandalism, or an edit war. Everyone needs to be clear what exactly the role of the reviewer is; this created a considerable amount of strife during the trial. I have been given various interpretations of the manner in which flagged revisions is used on German Wikipedia, so do not want to characterize their policies and practices; however, in the absence of good quality, confirmed information on their processes, it's not appropriate to say let's do it like they do. The German Wikipedia has passive and active reviewers. The main rules given at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sichten are as follows: Passive reviewers autoreview their own edits, but can't review others'. Passive reviewing rights are automatically given to users who have been registered for at least 30 days and have made at least 150 article edits (or 50 article edits subsequently approved by a reviewer). Active reviewer status (i.e. the right to approve others' edits) is automatically conferred on users who have been registered for 60 days and have made 300 article edits (or 200 article edits subsequently approved by a reviewer). There are some additional details (no blocks, use of edit summaries for at least, work spread out over a number of different articles, etc.), but these are secondary. The system works and keeps out a lot of nonsense. The only thing I would change is that I would set a higher standard for users wanting to approve BLP changes. Cheers, Andreas Until it's clear what the role of the reviewer is, editors have no way to know whether or not they are performing in the manner that the community expects. Further, there is no guarantee that reviewer permissions won't be removed for reasons that have nothing to do with the act of reviewing. The proposed policy essentially says you can use this instead of semi-protection, but it does not change the criteria for protection in any way. Therefore, the articles you propose to be covered by pending changes aren't eligible. What if you think something should be under PC, and another admin comes along and says hold on, doesn't meet the policy, off it comes? Right now, decisions about protections are rarely the subject of inter-admin disagreement. Is that going to change? If so, who wins? The RFC started from the wrong place. It should have been focused on what kind of PC policy we would want to have if we wanted to have one. I do see potential uses
Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: The counterattack of the PR companies
On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 8:17 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: On 18 April 2012 23:29, Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net wrote: On Wed, 18 Apr 2012, Charles Matthews wrote: Sorry, this is exactly the point. The conversation where we explain very patiently to someone what our definition of COI is and is not; and the response is you're telling me that if I sail close to the wind on NPOV but don't quite go over the line, then whatever my potential conflict of interest is, then I'm not breaking your rules. That conversation is exactly why the whole business is arcane _to people who think they are paid to sail close to the wind and get away with it_. E.g. people with good legal advisers who are smart enough to listen to the advice and understand the fine print. If someone tells you to drive at 5 miles under the speed limit rather than to drive at the speed limit, he may be trying to keep you from getting too close to a line. If someone tells you *not to drive at all* rather than to drive at the speed limit, that no longer has anything to do with getting close to a line. He's just making up his own rules. Or he may have noticed that you are off your face or otherwise not fit to drive, and is applying common sense. Good metaphor. But you do seem hung up on rules. Without the required understanding that there are indeed sub-sub-clauses, such as the requirement to edit for the enemy that is written into WP:NPOV, that are implicit in WP:COI, and without the idea that WP is a purposeful activity and has aims that should be appreciated (which is there in black-and-white in WP:COI), there is no way some people can do what we want. Continuation of conversation: Look, we're all impressed with Wikipedia. But you seem to be saying that to edit I have to put your project ahead of my day job; and so I think you guys are just a bit crazed. Right both times. And you're now telling me I have to flack for the opponents of the guy I am paid by, and put their criticisms into due form in the the way that, frankly, they are too dumb to do, using the skills I have but against the brief I have been given. Yup, that's what it says on the page about neutrality. Well ... where I come from ... words fail me ... This is really not the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Well, in reality the discussion may be more like this: Oy, Wikipedia is beating up on my client. What User:Geteven has written here is totally unfair. Can you believe, he goes on for 500 words about that product recall we had three years ago? The entire article on our company is only 600 words long. It is sourced. Don't delete negative material. You do realise that there have been over 5,000 newspaper articles on our company in the last 10 years, and only three of them mention that product recall? I don't know about this. [Thinks: That dude has a conflict of interest. He may be lying. PR people are paid to lie. He is probably lying.] Don't delete sourced negative material. We cannot allow you to censor the article. But why do you enable people to portray us in the worst light? It's totally unfair. We think this was written by a disgruntled employee, Gareth, whom we fired last year. He was involved with that issue. You have just outed one of our contributors. Wikipedia takes outing very seriously. Your comment has been oversighted, and you have been blocked for one week. You may appeal your block on your talk page. Please unblock me. Why have I been punished when it is User:Geteven who is abusing Wikipedia? We will only unblock you only when you show us that you realise what you did was very, very wrong. You clearly don't. Instead you continue to pretend it is everybody else's fault. Unblock denied. Etc. Not the beginning of a beautiful relationship either. For those interested, there is an ongoing court case involving a scenario somewhat similar to this: http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2012/04/whats-the-difference-between-stating-facts-or-opinion-online-wikipedia-contributor-faces-defamation-.html?utm_source=feedburnerutm_medium=feedutm_campaign=Feed%3A+LawLibrarianBlog+%28Law+Librarian+Blog%29 Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: The counterattack of the PR companies
On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 1:11 PM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.comwrote: On 4/19/12, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@gmail.com wrote: You do realise that there have been over 5,000 newspaper articles on our company in the last 10 years, and only three of them mention that product recall? That might seem like a good point, but really, articles shouldn't be constructed from surveys of newspaper articles. I know they are, in practice, but they really shouldn't be. What is needed is something beyond that, some indication that someone with the right credentials has sat down and sorted through things and come to some sort of independent conclusion. Some newspaper journalists do this, but not many do. Indeed, but there needs to be some measure of due weight, and for many companies, newspaper articles and primary sources are all there is. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: The counterattack of the PR companies
On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 1:41 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 19 April 2012 12:31, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 8:17 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: Continuation of conversation: Look, we're all impressed with Wikipedia. But you seem to be saying that to edit I have to put your project ahead of my day job; and so I think you guys are just a bit crazed. Well, in reality the discussion may be more like this: No, Charles has rendered the conversations I've had on the subject pretty accurately (if skeletally). I'm sure both scenarios occur. I don't know what the solution is. As Sarah says, telling PR people whose day job it is to just present one side of the story to go right ahead isn't the solution. But we cannot close our eyes to the fact that there are editors who for whatever reason similarly have made it their job to only present one side of the story; that PR people may have a legitimate grievance when they come to Wikipedia; and that the restrictions we are applying to them are not applying to the anonymous editors on the other side, for whom we prescribe assume good faith, the right to edit anonymously, protection from having their motives questioned, and so forth. Usually we let activists of every couleur fight things out for years, until they come to a bloody end in arbitration. (Traditional Wikipedia wisdom is of course that having people with opposite POVs collaborate leads to neutral articles, which works nowhere near as well as Wikipedia would like to pretend.) Yet in this scenario, we are turning the PR person with the obvious COI into a pariah, while shielding the anonymous activist editor whose COI is less easy to pin down, but indistinguishable in terms of editing result. As long as there is activist editing, Wikipedia cannot claim any moral high ground vs. the PR man, because we know that many people -- including the Anders Breiviks and Johann Haris of this world -- contribute to Wikipedia precisely for the reason of propagating their world view. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement
On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 5:18 AM, David Goodman dgge...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks for picking the topic up again, David. It would be better to have a rule to never take the views of the subject in consideration about whether we should have an article, unless an exception can be made according to other Wikipedia rules, in particular, Do No Harm. People have the right to a fair article, but not to a favorable one. I wish Do no harm were a Wikipedia rule. But the only essay I am aware of that formalises it has it marked as a rejected principle in its introduction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:HARM Under the present system, we do need to have some provision for the type of exception you mention. It's really firefighting though, rather than addressing the underlying cause. I agree that the ratio of editors to articles is much too low. What we need is not fewer bios, but more editors. Encouraging new people to work on BLPs is the solution. The problem is not the ratio between editors and biographies, but the ratio of editors editing within policy vs editors who come only to write a hatchet job or an infomercial. This is something that can be addressed by Pending Changes. Let all those who only edit an article to defame or advertise, to write hatchet jobs or infomercials, make their suggestions. And let an editor who understands what a coatrack is, and who is committed to core policy, decide what the public should see when they navigate to the page. The right to edit BLPs, and approve pending changes, should be a distinction that people are proud of, just like they are proud of rollback or adminship. And like rollback, it should be a privilege they will lose if they abuse it. The really hard calls on how much negative material to include in a BLP should be made by teams with a diverse composition. A whole new culture needs to be built around BLP editing. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: The counterattack of the PR companies
On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 1:42 PM, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com wrote: On 18 April 2012 13:38, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 1:02 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: They say you have to wait 2-5 days for a response after requesting changes as though that is a bad thing. I'm very impressed with that response time. How many commercial encyclopaedias can do better? I hope you're joking here. :) Just in case you weren't: commercial encyclopedias have a sophisticated editorial and legal process in place to ensure they do not print defamatory content. Sometimes subjects are sent a draft before publication, and are given an opportunity to make an input. Having dealt with such things before... That process takes* much much longer* than 2-5 days. Yes, but it takes place *before* publication. :P ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: The counterattack of the PR companies
On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 1:53 PM, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com wrote: That process takes* much much longer* than 2-5 days. Yes, but it takes place *before* publication. :P Not at all. My specific experience was while consulting on another matter for a firm; they were surprised to find their name had been noted in connection with some years-before legal action (quite a disturbing one) in a prominent printed encyclopaedia. I helped them get in touch and resolve the issue. It took about a week for initial contact to prove successful - the material was reviewed, taking another two weeks, and amended internally. The next years print run was currently happening, and they were unable to modify the problem. So all in all it took about 18 months for a correction to be published. I happen to know of several other examples where incorrect material is still being published years after the point has been brought up. Whilst you will get some material sent out for review I don't believe it accounts for much of the content. And, as such, is something of misdirection on the issue. I'm not arguing Wikipedia is the solution. But the argument that printed encyclopaedias are better at this I know to be false. Tom Well, it is still true that in a conventional encyclopedia, everything goes through vigorous professional fact checking *before* publication. We have nothing to compare to that. Not even Pending Changes. Surely that is a very, very significant difference indeed? As a result, the kinds of inaccuracies we have in Wikipedia can be in a whole different league than the sort of error you might find in Britannica; there is often active malice at work, as opposed to the occasional cock-up, and you are talking about the no. 1 Google link for a person or company, rather than something appearing on page 582 of a dusty tome that few people own, let alone read. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: The counterattack of the PR companies
On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 1:55 PM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: Yes indeed. Jimbo neither makes policy nor enforces it, of course. What we have here is an ongoing loop in being able to read WP:COI properly. I believe the guideline on COI to be the best available take on this issue. However - and it's a big however - we are learning that the limitation on COI to a universal statement makes it harder for those with particular types of COI to understand. This applies both to paid editing, and to activist editing (I think you will have no trouble understanding this, Andreas ...), as well as autobiography. That is one of the points the authors of the study picked up on, too: ---o0o--- There are problems with the “bright line” rule. By not allowing public relations/communications professionals to directly edit removes the possibility of a timely correction or update of information, ultimately denying the public a right to accurate information. Also, by disallowing public relations/communications professionals to make edits while allowing competitors, activists and anyone else who wants to chime in, is simply asking of misinformation. If direct editing is not a possibility, an option must be provided that can quickly and accurately update Wikipedia articles; as this study found, no such process currently exists. ---o0o--- Unfortunately, they do have a point. Positive bias and advertorials *can* be odious, but activist editing with a negative bent has traditionally been the greater problem in Wikipedia, in my view, and is the type of bias the Wikipedia system has traditionally favoured. Not doing harm is, in my view, more important than preventing the opposite. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement
On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 1:47 PM, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.comwrote: BLP is a good idea and we got it for good reasons. These recent developments, however, forget that we are *an encyclopedia*. It's into barking mad territory. No. We will not go to removing bios on demand on my watch. George William Herbert Sent from my iPhone Well, for many minor biographical articles, we are not an encyclopedia, but a collection of garbage. When Hari defamed the people he disliked, his stuff stayed in articles for weeks on end. Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cristina_Odonediff=307012625oldid=304006952 In this edit http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Richard_Littlejohndiff=403251514oldid=403077128 he manufactured a criminal record for acts of violence committed in Peterborough in the 1970s out of the fact that (according to Sam Blacketer) the guy had once, as a teenager, been fined £20 for involvement in a pub brawl. This type of BLP abuse, where some obscure, unflattering fact is inflated to vastly undue importance, and given its own section and headline, is absolutely typical of Wikipedia. One BLP I helped get deleted a few weeks ago had a section X's brushes with the law which took up 50 per cent of the entire article. The material was apparently put in by a former lodger whom she had evicted because he was allegedly doing -- and selling -- drugs in her house. Editing her biography was his revenge. Some of it was inaccurate, none of it was sourced adequately (court records rather than secondary sources), none of it was biographically relevant (traffic citations and a civil matter). Yet when the subject took the infringing material out, two experienced Wikipedians put it back in and warned her for COI editing. Encyclopedia? Let's not flatter ourselves. For borderline notable people, it's more like a defamation engine crossed with an infomercial generator. Here is another example: Klee Irwin. This is what the article looked like today: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Klee_Irwinoldid=479539626 This what it looked like six weeks ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Klee_Irwinoldid=478654615 In one version the guy is a crook, in the other he is a saint. Both versions are rampant coatracks. Neither article version is worthy of being called a biography in an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is nowhere near reliable if an article can flip-flop like that. If that is the quality level we are happy to settle for with minor biographies, where we either end up with hatchet jobs or infomercials, because nobody neutral can be BOTHERED to write about these obscure people, then I think it would indeed be better not to have biographies like that at all. Another example: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rande_Gerberdiff=416351133oldid=393382165 This turns a sexual harassment accusation into fact. Not even the tabloid sources the edit was based on presented the alleged harassment as fact. In fact, they presented statements calling the veracity of these allegations into serious doubt – none of which were reflected in Wikipedia. As far as I can tell, this court case has sunk without trace. But this edit stood like that for a whole year. An accusation obviously suffices for a conviction in the court of Wikipedia. When it comes to minor biographies, the site is riddled with stuff like that, just sitting there. It's shite, however many times you call it an encyclopedia. Absolute, incompetent, malicious or self-serving, shite. With editor numbers stagnating or declining, we need fewer biographies, not more. We need to restrict ourselves to biographies that are encyclopedically relevant, so that articles get tended and watched by more people than just the subjects themselves, and the people who hate them. Andreas On Apr 4, 2012, at 5:27, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: I noticed a thread on Jimbo's talk page that is partly related to this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#A_radical_idea.3B_BLP_opt-out_for_all Tarc suggested: Any living person, subject to identity verification via OTRS, may request the deletion of their article. No discussion, no AfD, just *poof*. In its place is a simple template explaining why there is no longer an article there, and a pointer to where the reader can find information on the subject, a link similar to Template:Find sources at the top of every AfD. What people there seem to be missing is that the template would explicitly say article removed at subject's request. The point being that this could well result in a big PR stink for either Wikipedia (the article was rubbish and rightly removed) or for the subject (they are (wrongly) trying to control what is said about them). [This is why it relates to the topic of this thread] This is why such a proposal might actually work. I am rather surprised at why some people miss that this is about
Re: [WikiEN-l] Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement
On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 10:17 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 29 March 2012 09:57, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com wrote: One of those would be me :) A suggestion I picked up on was to have a joint session with Wikipedians individuals from CREWE where we could have an actual dialogue (I sent an email to Daria about getting assistance for this last night). If your interested in helping out with the dialogue that would rock :) I've just blogged about this too: http://davidgerard.co.uk/notes/2012/03/29/the-public-relations-agency-problem/ I'm hoping that will circulate slightly in the PR sphere. Very good post. In particular, two observations stand out: sometimes our articles are in fact rubbish. How do you fix that? my comments are strictly advisory and based on watching the press absolutely crucify PR people who have edited clients’ articles, which becomes bad PR for the client — even if what they did was within Wikipedia rules and they arguably didn’t deserve it. I’ve been repeatedly amazed at just how upset the press and the public (e.g., people I talk to) get about this, much more than the actual Wikipedians do. I've been amazed at this as well. Papers will say so-and-so deleted negative material from their own Wikipedia biography, and that's it. Crime of the century! In these reports, there's not a peep about what kind of negative material the person deleted from their article – whether it was the sole reference to a notable criminal conviction or a ridiculous 500-word diatribe about their dispute with a neighbour in Solihull, added by a Solihull IP. The media just seem to love the chance to take a cheap shot – one reason why I think we give the press far too much credit as encyclopedic sources. At any rate, they need educating. Perhaps this a-priori assumption that if you delete criticism from a Wikipedia article you must be evil is a subconscious effect of the encyclopedia moniker, which makes people assume there must have been an editorial team involved, carefully vetting and balancing all this information. A similar thing happens in deletion discussions. Some anonymous person writes a hatchet job about a borderline-notable figure. The person is horrified and complains, and an AfD or some other type of community discussion ensues. Naturally, never having heard of the person, and in the absence of readily available alternative sources of information, everyone first of all reads the Wikipedia article that the subject says is the problem. And without really noticing, they form a mental image of the person based on that article. The article may, as in a recent case I was involved in, contain references to statements the subject never made, be cherry-picked to make them look like a crank, assign vastly undue weight to the anonymous hatchet wielder's bugbear, and so forth. But the reader laps it all up. It's got footnotes! And the standard Wikipedian response after perusing the article is: Well, this guy is complaining that our article makes him look like a crank. But according to our article, he *is* a crank. He just doesn't like the truth. And with that, truth is vanquished. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Manual Of Style
About four months ago, to check what the current rule was about image placement at the beginning of a subsection (before or after the header). On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 6:23 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: Just a quick straw poll: When was the last time you looked at the Wikipedia Manual of Style for use in your own writing? And not to tell someone else they were wrong about something. Me, I can't remember. I think I *have*, but it would have been years ago. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles
I've written an essay incorporating some of the ideas expressed here by David, Carcharoth, Charles and myself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ADAM I've also posted a link to the essay on WT:BLP, and suggested that it might be helpful to get the no eventualism principle anchored more firmly in BLP policy. Could we continue that part of the discussion there? Andreas On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 7:07 PM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.comwrote: On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@gmail.com wrote: No eventualism is one principle that I would like to see spelled out in BLP policy, in the Writing style section. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons#Writing_style People do tend to treat biographies like a research pad for all the things that an author might justifiably want to include in a five-volume, 2,000-page biography. The problem is, the other 1,999 pages never turn up, leaving something – often something trivial, titillating, or unflattering – that might be worthy of mention on page 1,547 as the biography's main point. That's a good point. I recently edited a BLP to help clean it up, and was struck by two points: 1) It was difficult to know where to start and when to stop, as there is a need to not leave a BLP in a half-finished state, even if you are stubbing it down and slowly expanding, as even slow expansion can still leave it somewhat skewed and looking 'unfinished' (even if better than before). Those making subsequent additions need to bear that in mind as well. 2) If no-one else has written substantially about that person, it is a very uncomfortable feeling that you might be the first person to be doing that, and you start to wonder what right *anyone* has to write about a living person without working with that person to make sure it is accurate. This veers into the realm of discussing authorised and unauthorised biographies. Doing an unauthorised biography of a famous person and getting it published can make the author money, and most publishing firms will only publish if it is accurate and non-libellous. But doing short pages on non-notable or borderline notable people is something entirely different, and the motivations are often entirely different. Motivation is something that should be looked at as well. In my case, the articles are people working in science and that interests me. But is that enough of a reason? What about someone who wants to write about the leader of some small obscure country on the other side of the world? (And then you have the classic case of the motivation being to do a hatchet job on someone). Sure, the mantra is to use reliable sources and be faithful to the sources, but it is still very different (and difficult) writing about a living person who can (in theory) turn up and object to what has been written. Carcharoth ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles
On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 6:00 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 27 March 2012 17:20, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: So you have been arguing that without the BLP policy, and without the noticeboard set up to help compliance with the policy, just the same close investigations of the actual reliability of sources that nominally fall within RS would be going on? I don't agree, and I wonder if anyone else does. I'm not the biggest fan of noticeboards, qua unchartered processes; but in this case it seems to be working, and having WP:BLP there fairly clearly has something to do with it. The key point to remember about BLPs is: no eventualism. If an article about someone dead 200 years says something nasty and wrong, that's not great, but it's not urgent. If an article about a living person says something nasty and wrong, that is urgent, and we can't just assume the wiki process will on balance fix it in the fullness of time. It's the simplest possible way of doing it and it's a vast improvement over the previous situation. It's not perfection, but calling it a failure is hyperbolic. No eventualism is one principle that I would like to see spelled out in BLP policy, in the Writing style section. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons#Writing_style People do tend to treat biographies like a research pad for all the things that an author might justifiably want to include in a five-volume, 2,000-page biography. The problem is, the other 1,999 pages never turn up, leaving something – often something trivial, titillating, or unflattering – that might be worthy of mention on page 1,547 as the biography's main point. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles
On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 9:22 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: I think a serious position paper on BLP is possible. There are several aspects: * We are currently not very good at recognising when biographical information is indiscriminate (see [[WP:INDISCRIMINATEhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:INDISCRIMINATE ]]). We could get better at that, as a way of addressing what Andreas is calling ADAM. *We can certainly look at special notability guidelines for classes of individuals (e.g. politicians, employees of the media, entertainers, sportspeople, reality TV stars). Some divide-and-conquer to understand the more problematic areas in their own terms would be good. *We are currently lousy at judging ephemeral notability, and issues around it seem to be classic time-sinks. There is a bigger picture here, and digging around in older biographical dictionaries can help to explain what is going on. *Certainly extending control of revisions to all BLP pages is an option to consider; naturally this is a major step requiring wide community support, and that in turn probably requires a reasonable amount of preparation, not phrased in too much immoderate language. There is currently another Pending Changes RfC underway at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pending_changes/Request_for_Comment_2012 Andreas *Tools and techniques. I'm a fan of the idea of using Related changes on chunks of BLP, so that patrolling say 1% at a time becomes easier. Hiving off BLP into its own community isn't a solution that is clearly going to work, let's say. Technical concentration on the material, on the other hand, might do quite a lot to highlight the difficult cases. Charles ___ ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles
On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 4:48 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 23 March 2012 14:04, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Jim_Hawkins_%28radio_presenter%29 This is a rather broad and (as I've noted) hideously vague proposed solution to a very specific problem, viz. someone who is apparently well within notability guidelines wanting an article deleted because he doesn't have control of it, and is abusive towards anyone who tries to help. That's a bizarre statement – and quite untrue – as well as absolutely appalling PR. I see someone linked to that comment of yours on Hawkins' Facebook thread yesterday. http://www.facebook.com/jimhawkinsltd/posts/303015339764646 (Not sure if that link will work for people who aren't on Facebook.) As for notability, Carcharoth posted a salient analysis of the article's sourcing: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AArticles_for_deletion%2FJim_Hawkins_%28radio_presenter%29diff=483663317oldid=483632586 Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles
On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 1:52 PM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.comwrote: ii) Be respectful of the article subject and be prepared to work with them if they raise concerns, and don't needlessly antagonise them. I wrote a couple of essays about this a while ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Hazing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notable_person_survival_kit I got a pat on the back from Jimbo on my talk page, but other than that, they never really caught on. Of course, what's in those essays only goes as far as it does. The systemic problem with notability and the accretion method is bigger than that. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles
I would second this. In addition, I believe we should allow borderline-notable people to opt out of having a biography, to prevent the sort of drama we are currently having with the Hawkins biography. Otherwise, we are digging our own graves. As we all know, editor numbers are stagnating, or positively diminishing, while the number of biographies rises daily. We are already too stretched to look after biographies. Johann Hari's slurs remained in the vandalised biographies for days and weeks on end. In addition, for little watched biographies, our biography writing process is often little more than dirt accretion – anonymous people who have no interest in producing a balanced biography adding derogatory information, or random stuff they read and found interesting. The results are not pretty: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Charles_M._Blowoldid=482965680 More than half of a biography about an alleged religious slur? This stuff is typical of the anonymous dirt accretion method (ADAM) of biography writing. It's the sort of process that's resulted in a 1,500 word biography about a US politician of which 1,250 words were about alleged complicity with Scientology (because she had once looked at a Scientology drugs rehabilitation programme), or a BLP of a UK member of parliament that was 50 per cent about expense investigations and cherry-picked to create the false impression he had financially profited to the tune of over £10,000 from an error in his expense claims. That's the sort of thing that will really endear Wikipedia to legislators. - We need fewer biographies. - We need to give borderline-notable people (people like Hawkins; not MPs) an easy opt-out. - We could probably benefit from making real-life name registration mandatory for BLP editing, and hosting them on a different project, or at the very least introducing flagged revisions for BLPs, and making the right to approve BLP changes one that requires familiarity with BLP policy, and a commitment to uphold it. - We need to abandon ADAM and make sure, somehow, that biographies are fair and balanced. We can't do that with the amount of biographies we currently have. Andreas On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 2:04 PM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.comwrote: I'm posting here an argument I made in a recent AfD, explaining why I think more stringent notability requirements are needed for biographical articles: The right point to assess someone's notability and write a definitive article about them is at that point (or sometimes when they retire). Any BLP is only a work in progress until that point is reached. [Some say] Notability, once attained, does not diminish. That might seem true, but what is being assessed is not the subject's true notability, but a fluctuating 'notability during lifetime' that can wax and wane over time, with the true level of notability not being established until someone's career or life is over. Some people gain awards and recognitions and have long and diverse careers and have glowing obituaries written about them, and pass into the history of the field they worked in. Others have more pedestrian careers. The point is that it is rarely possible to make an accurate assessment until the right point is reached. What you end up with if you have low standards for allowing articles on BLPs is a huge number of borderline BLPs all across Wikipedia (heavily weighted towards contemporary coverage [...]), the vast majority of the subjects of which will not have prominent (or any) obituaries published about them, and in 50 years time or so the articles will look a bit silly, cobbled together from various scraps and items published during the subject's lifetime, but with no proper, independent assessment of their place in history. It has been said before, but that is why specialist biographical dictionaries often have as one of their inclusion criteria that someone has to be dead before having an article. I'm not saying we should go that far, but there is a case for many BLPs of saying 'if there is no current published biography, wait until this career/life is over and make an assessment at that point', and until then either delete or have a bland stub. The above is why I rarely edit BLPs. It is far easier (and more satisfying) to edit about a topic once it is reasonably 'complete', not ongoing. The latter statements applies to more than BLPs (biographies of living people), for example it applies to any 'news' topic, but it does apply especially to BLPs as they are a minefield because they require careful maintenance. To give some examples of articles I've edited or created that are BLPs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Mestel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Lieberman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_W._Moore http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._M._Hedges Those aren't very good examples. What I'm really looking for is a way to illustrate how some people become
Re: [WikiEN-l] User:RickK2
Nice to talk to the real RickK for a change. :) Any chances of your making a genuine comeback? Best,Andreas (Jayen466) --- On Mon, 15/8/11, Rick giantsric...@yahoo.com wrote: From: Rick giantsric...@yahoo.com Subject: [WikiEN-l] User:RickK2 To: Wikipedia English wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Monday, 15 August, 2011, 0:50 If anybody recognizes this email address as coming from me originally (User:RickK), I would just like to say that the person calling themself User:RickK2 currently editing on Wikipedia is NOT me. Since my account has been locked from my access, I have no other way to address this problem. RickK ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] WP:RSs
There was an article in the New York Times a few days ago, on a related theme: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/business/media/a-push-to-redefine-knowledge-at-wikipedia.html?_r=2 One of its arguments was that there are whole cultures that lack published reliable sources. Quote: ---o0o--- In the case of dabba kali, a children’s game played in the Kerala state of India, there was a Wikipedia article in the local language, Malayalam, that included photos, a drawing and a detailed description of the rules, but no sources to back up what was written. Other than, of course, the 40 million people who played it as children. There is no doubt, he said, that the article would have been deleted from English Wikipedia if it didn’t have any sources to cite. Those are the rules of the game, and those are the rules he would like to change, or at least bend, or, if all else fails, work around. “There is this desire to grow Wikipedia in parts of the world,” he said, adding that “if we don’t have a more generous and expansive citation policy, the current one will prove to be a massive roadblock that you literally can’t get past. There is a very finite amount of citable material, which means a very finite number of articles, and there will be no more.” ---o0o--- Andreas --- On Wed, 10/8/11, Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net wrote: From: Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] WP:RSs To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wednesday, 10 August, 2011, 16:40 On Tue, 9 Aug 2011, Carcharoth wrote: My rule of thumb for self-published sources is to see if they cite their sources. If they do, then you can check what they say. If they don't, then you can't, and that can be a problem even with so-called 'reliable' sources. This fails to be a useful method when the self-published source is the personal experience of a professional in the industry. This happens a lot with Internet publications, such as J. Michael Straczynski's postings in the Babylon 5 newsgroup, or Jim Shooter's blog (jimshooter.com). The standard Wikipedian's response to this quandry is well, if they can't get a reliable source to quote them, it must not be that important in the first place, which ignores the realities of the modern Internet. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] BLP extension suggestion
If you try making the article more succinct, Carcharoth, you may well find editors reverting you and claiming that you are deleting reliably sourced material and censoring what you don't like. What policy would you cite in response? In a way that is a new problem. Most of our policies are arguably still biased against such deletions, reflecting a time when many articles were stubs and we were glad to have any material at all. We have no policy or guideline arguing for succinctness (except the COATRACK essay perhaps). People are traditionally free to write as much as they like about anything that has taken their fancy. We have an incredibly detailed article on toilet paper orientation and other obscure subjects that would never make it into a regular encyclopedia. Due weight only applies to subtopics within an article, not to notable topics as such. If the bulk of something is cut in an article, you just go and create a sub-article, pointing to the 100 sources that have written about it, and create an 8,000-word article about tail, while dog remains at 500 words. The trouble is, this in-depth coverage of obscure topics is also part of what people like about Wikipedia. That it can be and is abused for activism, just by sheer weight of coverage, is obvious. I just don't see an easy solution. We have no policy that an editor must not use every last source available, and I don't think instituting one is feasible. A. --- On Sat, 4/6/11, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote:From: Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] BLP extension suggestion To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Saturday, 4 June, 2011, 23:57 On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 6:51 PM, David Levy lifeisunf...@gmail.com wrote: I see no material distinction preventing us from documenting the matter in a balanced fashion. The trouble is, the article is overwritten. This is not a phenomenon restricted to this article, it is common in many political or activist articles, where some editors try to use *every* source out there to write an article several pages long (sometimes in an attempt to avoid arguments about what to include and what not to include, at other times maybe just by being carried away, or simply by not wanting or knowing how to exercise judgment on what to include and when less is more). I repeat, a shorter article (if done to high standards) would be *just as balanced* and would send the message that this is not a topic that really needs lots written about it. One of the fundamental elements of editorial judgment is to decide what to leave out and how to *summarise* parts of the topic rather than drawing in everything that has been written about the topic. You see many FA-level articles where the main writer has read numerous sources and made a judgment (based on the proportions of coverage given by the main source) on where and how to summarize. That needs doing here. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] BLP extension suggestion
--- On Sat, 4/6/11, Rob gamali...@gmail.com wrote: (start an RFC already and let's centralize this nonsense!) SlimVirgin started an RfC yesterday, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Santorum_(neologism)#Proposal_to_rename.2C_redirect.2C_and_merge_content A. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
--- On Wed, 25/5/11, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: From: Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net I don't want to get that clever, to the point that we take into account that even talking about the article on this list might affect ranking. What is needed is to improve the article; it is about a political act, not about lube. If it's about the political act, it should be covered under [[Santorum controversy regarding homosexuality]]. Linguistically -- the term has been included in one dictionary, and in one book on neologisms. Some erotic books have used it (and we have gleefully included full quotes from each in the article's references: She wads up the t-shirt, uses it to wipe a trickle of santorum from her ass, and throws it under the cot. Mark fucked his wife with slow, sure strokes that seemed to the panting Valerie to penetrate her more deeply than ever before. At each descent of the pouncing big prick into her sanctum santorum, Valerie thrust upward with all her strength until the velvety surfaces of her rotund naked buttocks swung clear of the bed Then, one of them broke ranks and rammed his blood-lubed fist straight up my ass and twisted hard, pulled it out and licked the santorum clean.) Is that enough for linguistic notability? Perhaps enough for a Wiktionary entry, but a whole article, on bona-fide *linguistic*, encyclopedic grounds? As for the template use: Including the term in *both* the sexual slang template and the political neologisms template, both custom-created for the occasion, seems a stretch to me. It is not a political neologism, rightfully listed along with terms like Adopt a Highway • Afrocentrism • And theory of conservatism • Big government • Chairman • Checkbook diplomacy • Children's interests • Collaborationism • Conviction politics • Cordon sanitaire • Cricket test • Democide • Dhimmitude • Eco-terrorism • Epistemocracy • Eurocentrism • Eurorealism • Euroscepticism • Eurosphere • Failed state • etc. in a 100-term template, causing it to appear in all of those articles. Listing it in the sexual slang template, based on less than a dozen appearances in print as an actual word -- as opposed to reporting about Dan Savage's campaign -- is a closer call, but still debatable. I don't like Santorum either, and sorry to be a spoil-sport, but it's unworthy of Wikipedia. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
--- On Wed, 25/5/11, The Cunctator cuncta...@gmail.com wrote: Let's just delete articles we don't like. It would simplify the wikilawyering. You see, I question whether if fulfils any encyclopedic (rather than Googlebombing) purpose to list santorum in a nav template of 100 political neologisms, and you come back with quips like that, and accuse people of wikilawyering (while exhorting me to Assume Good Faith, in capital letters: You are ascribing motive to Cirt's activities. Assume Good Faith.). Incidentally, I just noticed the following conversation on the political neologisms template's talk page: ---o0o--- ==Shouldn't this be a category?== I'm not sure what the purpose of this is. Why would anyone looking at (say) Euroscepticism want to navigate to an article about Soccer mom? Surely, this is why categories were invented. Bastin 08:46, 11 May 2011 (UTC) :It is most useful as a template. And yes, linguists and political scholars would indeed wish to navigate through these articles. -- Cirt (talk) 08:47, 11 May 2011 (UTC) ::They're completely unrelated terms. Why would you have a template on 'words invented since 1973'? Bastin 09:31, 11 May 2011 (UTC) :::Because they are of interest to those studying the subject matter from the perspective of many different varied fields. -- Cirt (talk) 15:27, 11 May 2011 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Political_neologisms ---o0o--- Most useful. A category doesn't add any in-bound links. And that was the end of that conversation. Andreas On 5/25/11, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com wrote: --- On Wed, 25/5/11, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: From: Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net I don't want to get that clever, to the point that we take into account that even talking about the article on this list might affect ranking. What is needed is to improve the article; it is about a political act, not about lube. If it's about the political act, it should be covered under [[Santorum controversy regarding homosexuality]]. Linguistically -- the term has been included in one dictionary, and in one book on neologisms. Some erotic books have used it (and we have gleefully included full quotes from each in the article's references: She wads up the t-shirt, uses it to wipe a trickle of santorum from her ass, and throws it under the cot. Mark fucked his wife with slow, sure strokes that seemed to the panting Valerie to penetrate her more deeply than ever before. At each descent of the pouncing big prick into her sanctum santorum, Valerie thrust upward with all her strength until the velvety surfaces of her rotund naked buttocks swung clear of the bed Then, one of them broke ranks and rammed his blood-lubed fist straight up my ass and twisted hard, pulled it out and licked the santorum clean.) Is that enough for linguistic notability? Perhaps enough for a Wiktionary entry, but a whole article, on bona-fide *linguistic*, encyclopedic grounds? As for the template use: Including the term in *both* the sexual slang template and the political neologisms template, both custom-created for the occasion, seems a stretch to me. It is not a political neologism, rightfully listed along with terms like Adopt a Highway • Afrocentrism • And theory of conservatism • Big government • Chairman • Checkbook diplomacy • Children's interests • Collaborationism • Conviction politics • Cordon sanitaire • Cricket test • Democide • Dhimmitude • Eco-terrorism • Epistemocracy • Eurocentrism • Eurorealism • Euroscepticism • Eurosphere • Failed state • etc. in a 100-term template, causing it to appear in all of those articles. Listing it in the sexual slang template, based on less than a dozen appearances in print as an actual word -- as opposed to reporting about Dan Savage's campaign -- is a closer call, but still debatable. I don't like Santorum either, and sorry to be a spoil-sport, but it's unworthy of Wikipedia. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
I've dropped Cirt a note and link to this thread, in case they weren't aware of it. As mentioned before, what is at the root of this is a wider problem though: to what extent we as a project are happy to act as participants, rather than neutral observers and reporters, in the political process. I'd say that neutrality is our best bet here, as anything else is likely to come back to us eventually. We should not make *undue* efforts to promote political or social campaigns. There is little in present policy to address this. WP:Activist is an essay. Andreas --- On Wed, 25/5/11, WereSpielChequers werespielchequ...@gmail.com wrote: From: WereSpielChequers werespielchequ...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]] To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wednesday, 25 May, 2011, 20:21 I'm not surprised that a Wikipedia article shoots to the top of Google searches, isn't that one of the reasons why we write here? I'm pretty sure I've seen Wikipedia articles come top on Google even if they lack templates and are practically orphans. Nor am I surprised that someone who writes an article then goes and creates associated templates. I don't do much with templates but I have a similar editing pattern - I was in the British Museum for the Hoxne Hoard challenge and wound up contributing a number of edits to articles about the sorts of spoons that were in the hoard. I am concerned at the risk of the mailing list degenerating into some sort of back channel and disrupting the wiki. People using it for off wiki complaints about an AFD and criticism of individual wikipedians who may not be subscribing to this list is in my view unhealthy. Have any of the people expressing disquiet about that editor notified them of this thread? WereSpielChequers On 25 May 2011 19:51, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com wrote: --- On Wed, 25/5/11, The Cunctator cuncta...@gmail.com wrote: Let's just delete articles we don't like. It would simplify the wikilawyering. You see, I question whether if fulfils any encyclopedic (rather than Googlebombing) purpose to list santorum in a nav template of 100 political neologisms, and you come back with quips like that, and accuse people of wikilawyering (while exhorting me to Assume Good Faith, in capital letters: You are ascribing motive to Cirt's activities. Assume Good Faith.). Incidentally, I just noticed the following conversation on the political neologisms template's talk page: ---o0o--- ==Shouldn't this be a category?== I'm not sure what the purpose of this is. Why would anyone looking at (say) Euroscepticism want to navigate to an article about Soccer mom? Surely, this is why categories were invented. Bastin 08:46, 11 May 2011 (UTC) :It is most useful as a template. And yes, linguists and political scholars would indeed wish to navigate through these articles. -- Cirt (talk) 08:47, 11 May 2011 (UTC) ::They're completely unrelated terms. Why would you have a template on 'words invented since 1973'? Bastin 09:31, 11 May 2011 (UTC) :::Because they are of interest to those studying the subject matter from the perspective of many different varied fields. -- Cirt (talk) 15:27, 11 May 2011 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Political_neologisms ---o0o--- Most useful. A category doesn't add any in-bound links. And that was the end of that conversation. Andreas On 5/25/11, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com wrote: --- On Wed, 25/5/11, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: From: Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net I don't want to get that clever, to the point that we take into account that even talking about the article on this list might affect ranking. What is needed is to improve the article; it is about a political act, not about lube. If it's about the political act, it should be covered under [[Santorum controversy regarding homosexuality]]. Linguistically -- the term has been included in one dictionary, and in one book on neologisms. Some erotic books have used it (and we have gleefully included full quotes from each in the article's references: She wads up the t-shirt, uses it to wipe a trickle of santorum from her ass, and throws it under the cot. Mark fucked his wife with slow, sure strokes that seemed to the panting Valerie to penetrate her more deeply than ever before. At each descent of the pouncing big prick into her sanctum santorum, Valerie thrust upward with all her strength until the velvety surfaces of her rotund naked buttocks swung clear of the bed Then, one of them broke ranks and rammed his blood-lubed fist straight up my ass and twisted hard, pulled it out and licked the santorum clean.) Is that enough
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
--- On Wed, 25/5/11, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: As mentioned before, what is at the root of this is a wider problem though: to what extent we as a project are happy to act as participants, rather than neutral observers and reporters, in the political process. I'd say that neutrality is our best bet here, as anything else is likely to come back to us eventually. We should not make *undue* efforts to promote political or social campaigns. There is little in present policy to address this. WP:Activist is an essay. Andreas It is addressed at: Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_soapbox_or_means_of_promotion One of our key policies. Advocacy, propaganda, or recruitment of any kind: commercial, political, religious, sports-related, or otherwise. Of course, an article can report objectively about such things, as long as an attempt is made to describe the topic from a neutral point of view. You might wish to start a blog or visit a forum if you want to convince people of the merits of your favorite views.[1] See Wikipedia:Advocacy. Again, this is NOT rocket surgery. Fred Maybe I should have said there is little to effectively address this. In my experience activists of either bent violate WP:Advocacy (and WP:BLP) for years with impunity (cf. global warming). Each side having POV supporters, there is never any consensus at ANI etc. that a violation has actually occurred. It usually goes on for years, until the matter goes to arbcom and swathes of editors from both sides end up topic-banned. Our consensus-forming process, which is effectively modeled on a chat-show phone-in, rather than thoughtful and team-based analysis, does not help here. This is why the outcome of arbitration is frequently so different from what the community does on its own. Ideally, it shouldn't be that way, but the only people I've ever seen implement WP:Advocacy are arbcom. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
--- On Mon, 23/5/11, Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net wrote: From: Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]] To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Monday, 23 May, 2011, 21:56 I'm skeptical that we should have an article. The reason: Wikipedia is on the Internet. If Wikipedia has an article about something whose promoter specifically intends to spread it on the Internet, it is impossible to separate reporting from participation. It's a loophole in the definition of neutrality that doing things which help one side of a dispute doesn't break neutrality, simply because our intentions are neutral--even though our effects are not. This brings to mind GNAA. GNAA is a troll group who intentionally gave themselves an offensive name so that even mentioning them helped them troll. Wikipedia had a hard time getting rid of the article about them, because we can't say by using their name, we're helping their goals in deciding whether to have an article. It was finally deleted by stretching the notability rules instead. And in a related question, I'd ask: Should we have an article Richard Gere gerbil rumor? (As long as our article describes the rumor as debunked, of course--otherwise we would be directly violating BLP.) Some of the justifications for that and for this sound similar. It's a good comparison. There are plenty of reliable sources to satisfy notability: http://www.google.co.uk/search?aq=fsourceid=chromeie=UTF-8q=%22richard+gere%22+gerbil#q=%22richard+gere%22+gerbilhl=entbm=nwssource=lnttbs=ar:1sa=Xei=3m7dTcizNYS08QPCjdUBved=0CBIQpwUoBQbav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.fp=fa06e4f4a78ee6ed We could summarise all of these, neutrally, in an article, quoting four dozen journalists on the controversy. However, we shouldn't. (No doubt someone will start an article now, and knowing Wikipedia, it will probably make DYK and GA. Ah well.) Interested readers are directed to: http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/celebrities/a/richard_gere.htm As well as our very own: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerbilling Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
--- On Wed, 25/5/11, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: From: David Gerard dger...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]] To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wednesday, 25 May, 2011, 22:38 On 25 May 2011 11:34, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com wrote: By the way, [author]'s GA articles include See, at this point you completely blew your credibility in this discussion by slipping into ad hominem. That's where you wiped out all gains from your previous posts in the thread. Don't do this if you want to be taken seriously. Then you've missed the point. The point is not that [[Corbin Fisher]] is about a gay porn company. The point is that it's written in PR style, complete with a blue call-out box: I've always had a lot of professional and personal admiration for [Corbin Fisher] because they really defined a new space in gay adult entertainment Read it. The common element is promoting a POV. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
--- On Wed, 25/5/11, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: From: David Gerard dger...@gmail.com Then you've missed the point. The point is not that [[Corbin Fisher]] is about a gay porn company. The point is that it's written in PR style, complete with a blue call-out box: Except you did not say PR style, with call-out box - you said gay porn company, as if those three words were enough to make your point. You lose. If you like. :) What I actually said was, include ***this highly flattering portrait*** of a gay porn company. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2011-May/109017.html It's not my fault if your eyes home in on the gay porn bit. :Þ Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
--- On Wed, 25/5/11, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: From: David Gerard dger...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]] To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wednesday, 25 May, 2011, 23:40 On 25 May 2011 23:39, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 25 May 2011 23:36, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com wrote: It's not my fault if your eyes home in on the gay porn bit. :Þ You are forum-shopping this issue, and it's blatant and obvious. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Political_neologisms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Sexual_slang#Santorum Forum-shopping is an attempt to synthesise consensus. Please stop it. Youu forgot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Dan_Savage Are you going to try to raise it there next? The discussion *started* here, two days ago. Then people said it should be addressed on-wiki. Frankly, I am not very keen to get much involved with it on-wiki. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
--- On Thu, 26/5/11, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com wrote: From: George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com George, Can you please address a couple of points that I believe have been brought up in this thread. You may want to read the previous emails that more clearly elucidated the points first, or not. They are as follows: 1) This term deserves a Wiktionary entry at best, not a Wikipedia entry. 2) Wikipedia is being used as a platform to damage Santorum. Thanks, Brian I don't agree with either statement. The event (Savage coming up with the term, the effects on Santorum) is notable. It's covered in reliable sources. The word itself would be a Wiktionary entry, but the incident overall is Wikipedia. We're reporting on the damage to Santorum, not causing it. Our reporting is not making it better, but neither is it making it worse. The damage was done by Savage and others and was widespread long before the article here. We do not censor topics that are damaging to individuals just because they are damaging. They have to be notable and covered in a NPOV way for us to cover them, but this passes both tests. You may be forgetting that we have an article on [[Santorum controversy regarding homosexuality]]. That's notable. The term, linguistically, is not. It's in one slang dictionary, and one book on neologisms. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
--- On Thu, 26/5/11, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com wrote: From: Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com From: George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com I don't agree with either statement. The event (Savage coming up with the term, the effects on Santorum) is notable. It's covered in reliable sources. The word itself would be a Wiktionary entry, but the incident overall is Wikipedia. We're reporting on the damage to Santorum, not causing it. Our reporting is not making it better, but neither is it making it worse. The damage was done by Savage and others and was widespread long before the article here. We do not censor topics that are damaging to individuals just because they are damaging. They have to be notable and covered in a NPOV way for us to cover them, but this passes both tests. You may be forgetting that we have an article on [[Santorum controversy regarding homosexuality]]. That's notable. The term, linguistically, is not. It's in one slang dictionary, and one book on neologisms. As a matter of fact, it would help Wikipedia if the article were retitled, [[Dan Savage Google-bomb campaign against Rick Santorum]]. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
--- On Thu, 26/5/11, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com wrote: From: George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com The Santorum controversy... article has 2 sentences on Savage and the neologism, no coverage of the consequences on Santorum's career, Santorum's comments regarding it, or critical or academic coverage of the incident. That by itself approximates sweeping it under the rug, which will not fly. If you want to propose a content merge of those two articles that's not grossly offensive to my sensibilities, as long as it actually merges the content and is not an excuse to delete one of the two articles. Retitling might not be a bad idea if it lessens the google focus. That's not grossly offensive to my sensibilities. Not sure that it would actually work. Well, [[Dan Savage Google bomb campaign against Rick Santorum]] could be a sub-article of [[Santorum controversy on homosexuality]]. That's essentially what the article is, at any rate. An exceptionally detailed article on Savage's campaign. It's not an article on a word. I could live with that. I don't think it would bring Wikipedia into potential disrepute, or open the project up to charges of partiality in quite the same way. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
--- On Tue, 24/5/11, GmbH gmbh0...@gmail.com wrote: From: GmbH gmbh0...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]] To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Tuesday, 24 May, 2011, 1:11 On May 23, 2011, at 7:58 PM, Andreas Kolbe wrote: We discussed this a couple of days ago at our meet-up. I agree with some of the other comments made here that this blurs and crosses the line between reporting and participation. I have no sympathy for Santorum or his views. But based on past experience, I also have little confidence that the main author's motivation in expanding the article is anything other than political. They've created puff pieces on politicians before (as well as hatchet jobs), in the service of outside political agendas. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Dickson (later deleted as a puff piece of a non-notable politician, but only after the election, in which he was said to have done surprisingly well) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Peralta Andreas I think this is an excellent analysis. I too have little sympathy for Santorum, but it strikes me that this neologism would have no real- world notability if it wasn't attached to Santorum's name. In any other circumstance, a concept or neologism that has no notability outside of a larger, overarching concept would be relegated to a decently sized portion of the main article. Here, it's been given its own article, seemingly to make a political point. I see that as the main thrust of the argument, not to delete, but to merge this back where it belongs-as an embarrassing but largely non- notable (in and of itself) episode of Rick Santorum's larger career. Before anyone says no, can they honestly answer the question Would this word have deserved an article without co-opting the name of a major celebrity? with a yes? If so, I'm wrong. But I don't believe a reasonable person can. Moreover, it is disingenuous to suggest that we can sit on our hands and pretend that our handling of this issue does not have broader implications on the standing of Wikipedia in the world. If we begin to be seen as a media outlet (that description being accurate or no is a discussion for a later time) that actively participates in lending undue weight to juvenile retribution, we're going to lose our claim to neutrality quickly. As it is, I think we need to (deliberately, there's no need for haste and conspiracy) start trimming this article to a reasonable size and merge it into Rick Santorum's article, in order to give it the larger context that the higher calling of fairness deserves. I believe that's the responsibility of Wikipedia, and I'd urge other editors, regardless of your politics (because I know most of us would probably not consider voting for the man, but that's immaterial) to consider the argument here and agree. If so, I'll be happy to take this discussion to the talk page, where we can iron out a way to do this without doing a disservice to our commitment to impartiality. Chromancer Well, as of today, [[Santorum (neologism)]] has taken over the no. 1 AND 2 spots in the Google results for Santorum. Both the old and new article title appear, in spots 1 and 2. It's even overtaken the original Googlebomb site set up by Savage, which is now back in fourth place. To wit: 1. Santorum (neologism) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santorum_(neologism) - Cached 2. Santorum (sexual neologism) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santorum_(sexual_neologism) - Cached - Similar 3. Rick Santorum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Richard John Rick Santorum (born May 10, 1958) is a former United States ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Santorum - Cached - Similar 4. Santorum www.spreadingsantorum.com/ - Cached - Similar I've no idea how the Wikipedia article manages to get itself represented twice, with two different titles (one of which redirects to the other). Personally, I think redirecting the thing to Santorum's BLP and covering it there would be the encyclopedic thing to do. The comparison to Bowdlerise, Orwellian etc. is IMO unrealistic. Those neologisms have stood the test of time, and have been used un-consciously in prose. Santorum is a conscious joke word. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
--- On Tue, 24/5/11, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com wrote: I don't know that it's been reviewed in analytical terms at that level. It's so offensive on one level that academics and political commentators seem to just shy away from it rather than addressing the rather deep Hey, what does this say about society/politics/etc. There is some academic analysis of this sort in Value war: public opinion and the politics of gay rights By Paul Ryan Brewer Pages 80ff, especially the chapter The rewards and risks of signaling starting on page 81 (covering the rewards and risks for political actors signaling their stance on gay issues to the electorate). Unfortunately, I can't see the relevant page in Google Books, and amazon has no preview. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=U34pJTdF-VcCpg=PA81dq=%22The+Rewards+and+risks+of+signaling%22hl=enei=RgPcTeeYH4f_-gbZwdypDwsa=Xoi=book_resultct=resultresnum=1ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepageq=%22The%20Rewards%20and%20risks%20of%20signaling%22f=false The work is actually cited in the article, but only for the frothy mixture quote. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
--- On Tue, 24/5/11, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: From: Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net I've no idea how the Wikipedia article manages to get itself represented twice, with two different titles (one of which redirects to the other). Personally, I think redirecting the thing to Santorum's BLP and covering it there would be the encyclopedic thing to do. The comparison to Bowdlerise, Orwellian etc. is IMO unrealistic. Those neologisms have stood the test of time, and have been used un-consciously in prose. Santorum is a conscious joke word. Andreas Well, too much. I'm on-board for fighting fascism, but not using Wikipedia as a vehicle. We need to have a policy discussion on-wiki about this. I've been actually reading the sources cited; this is interesting and useful information, but needs to be handled more appropriately by both Wikipedia and Google. We need to bring the creator, and protector, of the article into the discussion too. As was just pointed out to me on the article talk page, the article has survived three AfDs. Since the last one in December last year, however, it has grown from about 1500 words to 4800, as well as having captured the two top spots in Google. [[Santorum controversy]] covers the same ground as well. We do come across as just a *bit* partial here. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
--- On Mon, 23/5/11, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: From: Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com On 23 May 2011 02:24, Brian J Mingusbrian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: When you Google for Santorum's last name this Wikipedia article is the second result. This means that people who are looking for legitimate information about him are not going to find it right away - instead we are going to feed them information about a biased smear campaign rather than the former Senators BLP. Google's search results are entirely their business. Yes, I agree with that comment. As Google are aware, people try to game their algorithm; and their business model requires them to take action on that. Not our problem at all. The business of neologisms on WP was actually put into How Wikipedia Works (Chapter 7, A Deletion Case Study). At that time the example to hand was of the buzzword type, and the question was apparently whether WP's duty was to keep people informed of new jargon, or to be more distanced and only include a new term when it was clearly well established. To be a bit more nuanced about this instance: if there is a dimension in that article of a BLP, certain things follow at least at the margin about use of sources. And NPOV clearly requires that a successful campaign to discredit someone is reported in those terms. Here there is a fine line between mockery and smear, and saying the latter by default omits the element of satire. In other words, there are people who take US domestic politics very seriously, and media stories very seriously (I think enWP tends to take the media as a whole too seriously, BTW, which is the media's estimation of itself) , and regard Google now as part of the media, and so come to the sort of conclusion that Brian does. OTOH we have our mission, and our policies, and should do our job. I'm prepared to take the flak if our pages contribute to information (i.e. report within NPOV) on a biased smear campaign (or satirical googlebombing, whatever you prefer); as long as our article is not biased, and is not campaigning. Bear in mind that the COI is supposed to limit the use of enWP for activism of certain kinds. We do have the policies to prevent misuse of our pages. Charles We discussed this a couple of days ago at our meet-up. I agree with some of the other comments made here that this blurs and crosses the line between reporting and participation. I have no sympathy for Santorum or his views. But based on past experience, I also have little confidence that the main author's motivation in expanding the article is anything other than political. They've created puff pieces on politicians before (as well as hatchet jobs), in the service of outside political agendas. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Dickson (later deleted as a puff piece of a non-notable politician, but only after the election, in which he was said to have done surprisingly well) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Peralta Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Otto Middleton (a morality tale)
--- On Fri, 13/5/11, Mark delir...@hackish.org wrote: From: Mark delir...@hackish.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Otto Middleton (a morality tale) To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Friday, 13 May, 2011, 8:28 On 5/13/11 7:57 AM, Andreas Kolbe wrote: The job of WP:V is to make sure that assertions in Wikipedia are verifiable; it's not to ensure that verifiable stuff cannot be deleted. Hmm, I suppose I disagree, but then I'm a fairly strong inclusionist; if it's verifiable, it belongs in Wikipedia, cited to the source that verifies it. But I don't think that's incompatible with adopting a stronger line on WP:RS. The main problem here imo is that a certain class of sources (newspapers writing about celebrity rumors) does *not* actually reliably verify anything, therefore we shouldn't treat them as a reliable source that does. Are there any cases where editors should have discretion to delete *actually* solidly verifiable information, like some piece of physics information sourced to multiple well-respected physics review articles? I've certainly seen credible arguments made that specific articles would benefit from trimming. Again, this is partly a reflection of where Wikipedia is today, as opposed to 5 or 7 years ago. Where there was an almost blank canvas then, Wikipedia today has many articles that have attracted flotsam and jetsam, while still missing the essential stuff that an encyclopedia should have. It made sense then to safeguard every bit of sourced information, but not necessarily today, when you already have a 12,000-word article on a minor topic. Examples: There is a thread on Jimbo's talk page right now, about [[Jacques Derrida]]: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Walesoldid=428878178#Derrida_and_Wikipedia_.28reprinted_from_the_Jacques_Derrida_talk_page.29 One of the problems seems to be undue weight on trivia, while the essential stuff is missing. Here is what a scholar wrote to me some while ago about the Jehovah's Witnesses article: ---o0o--- To take an example of a topic with which I'm familiar - Jehovah's Witnesses - I would really need to start all over again, and I don't know whether it's OK to delete an entire article and rewrite another one, even if I had the time. It's a bit like the joke about the motorist who asked for directions, only to be told, 'If I were you, I wouldn't be starting from here!' The JW article begins with an assortment of unrelated bits of information, it fails to locate the Witnesses within their historical religious origins, it says it was updated in December 2010 yet ignores important recent academic material. The citations may look impressive, but they are patchy, and sometimes the sources state the exact opposite of what the text conveys. So what does one do? ---o0o--- If you include everything that is verifiable, you may end up with 100,000 words, and a poorly structured article that nobody will ever read. Coatrack articles are another example where removing sourced information may be necessary. They're also the type of article where undue content is typically defended using a WP:V or WP:RS argument. I've seen BLPs of notable people that discussed at length whether the person was gay/Jewish or not, and no one had much interest in writing about what made the person notable in the first place. A. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Otto Middleton (a morality tale)
--- On Fri, 13/5/11, Scott MacDonald doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com wrote: The problem is that Wikipedians like to make the complex world simple, in order to create nice rules and pretend that what we do is objective and editorial judgement and POV can be excluded. This is a myth and a dangerous one. We end up with people saying well, is the NYT a reliable source or not? That reminds me of the celebrated occasion when editors insisted that Gloria Gaynor was a former Scientologist, based solely on the fact that the Guardian had once published a piece called Listed Scientologists. The piece was on page G2, Diversions, next to the crossword puzzle and the TV programme. The piece was just a list of names, and it had an uncanny resemblance to Wikipedia's List of Scientologists at the time of publication (which also included Gaynor as a former member, based on a poor and misrepresented web source). Nevertheless, editors insisted that this was good sourcing, even though sources discussing her life in depth said nothing about that - except that she had at one time in her life looked at about a dozen different religions, including Scientology, to see if any would suit her. Jimbo said*, Do we imagine that the reporter interviewed a few dozen people to establish facts? No, the list obviously came from a quick look at something... could be Wikipedia, could be earlier news reports. If it's valid, then there should be some actual source to prove it (and so far no one has come up with one). That's exactly the kind of discrimination and judgment that needs to be applied. But editors were unwilling to give up on their scoop, and barricaded themselves behind The Guardian is a reliable source, verifiability, not truth, and not whether editors think it is true. What's worse is that any editor who loses an argument based on it's verifiable in a reliable source and not whether you think it's true learns that this is how you win arguments in Wikipedia, and will use the same method themselves next time round, creating new converts in those they defeat. A. * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard/Archive89#List_of_Scientologists_--_Gloria_Gaynor ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Otto Middleton (a morality tale)
--- On Fri, 13/5/11, Delirium delir...@hackish.org wrote: From: Delirium delir...@hackish.org Isn't this just a failure to actually think through what verifying information with a reliable source means, rather than a problem with the principle? It's quite possible for the Guardian to be a good newspaper in general, but for a random list in the Diversions section, with no apparent investigative reporting involved, to *not* constitute reliable verification of that point. I actually think it's malice, rather than a failure to think through what verification means. And it's malice in most cases where editors insist that some tabloid claim should stay in a biography, based on verifiability, not truth. They don't like the subject, and enjoy taking pot shots at them. I guess I see that kind of critical source analysis as completely in line with the idea of verifiable information cited to reliable sources, though. At least as I read it, the WP:V/WP:RS combination asks: is this given citation sufficient to verify the fact it claims to verify? So I wholeheartedly agree that bright-line rules like everything in The Guardian is reliable are wrong, but I don't think that ought to require abandoning the WP:V/WP:RS view, at least as I've understood it. Isn't there even some text on WP:RS (there used to be, anyway) about how reliable sources may be context-specific, e.g. a newspaper may be a reliable source for some claims but not for others? Yes, those sections are still there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NEWSORG I don't see editors quoting them much. A. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Otto Middleton (a morality tale)
--- On Fri, 13/5/11, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: From: geni geni...@gmail.com I actually think it's malice, rather than a failure to think through what verification means. And it's malice in most cases where editors insist that some tabloid claim should stay in a biography, based on verifiability, not truth. They don't like the subject, and enjoy taking pot shots at them. Not consistent with actual use You don't seem to have followed the discussion. We are not talking about the whole universe of tabloid references in Wikipedia. They do report news as well, and are sometimes cited for that. We are talking about poorly sourced gossip in BLPs that's in some way embarrassing to the subject. Like someone having -- allegedly -- cheated on his wife, allegedly not being able to read properly, allegedly having been a Scientologist, etc. If you believe that people's sympathies or antipathies vis-a-vis the subject and their activities do not play any role in their decision to add such content, you have led a sheltered life in Wikipedia. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Otto Middleton (a morality tale)
Mark, I agree that verifiability, not truth has done a good job in keeping out original research of the kind you describe. I just think that the situation with regard to OR is no longer what it was five years ago -- there has long been a critical mass of editors who know that Wikipedia is not the right place to add interesting bits of personal, but unpublished, knowledge. When I started editing Wikipedia, I had to think long and hard about that sentence, verifiability not truth, and I appreciated the insight. I just think its time has come and gone, and that it does more harm than good now. A. --- On Thu, 12/5/11, Mark delir...@hackish.org wrote: From: Mark delir...@hackish.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Otto Middleton (a morality tale) To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thursday, 12 May, 2011, 22:15 On 5/11/11 2:40 AM, Andreas Kolbe wrote: A while ago there was a discussion at WP:V talk whether we should recast the policy's opening sentence: The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth— whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true. (As usual, the discussion came to nought.) That sentence -- whose provocative formulation has served Wikipedia well in keeping out original research -- is a big part of the problem. I think that sentence serves a good purpose in the *opposite* direction, though. An opposite common source of Wikipedia-angst is people who have good first-hand knowledge that something is both true and notable, but sadly, lack any good sources to back that up. So it's worth emphasizing up front that our criterion is verifiability as a descriptive matter, not truth and notability in some sense of absolute truth. So, some legitimately interesting and important stuff may be excluded, at least for now, because it hasn't been properly covered in any source we can cite. We just aren't the right place to do original research on a person, music group, or historical event that the existing literature has somehow missed, *even if* it's a grave oversight on the part of the existing literature. I wrote a bit more about this elsewhere: http://www.kmjn.org/notes/wikipedia_notability_verifiability.html But it does get more problematic in the opposite direction, as you say. I see the motivation there too: there is a sense in which, if something is being discussed a lot, it becomes something we have to cover just by virtue of that fact. Meta-notability is also notability, so it would be absurd imo to claim that [[Natalee Holloway]] shouldn't be covered. Regardless of your opinion on the merits of her media coverage, she received such a large amount of it that her disappearance is an important event in early-21st-century popular culture. Heck, if we wanted *absolute* and philosophical rather than descriptive notability standards, I would delete almost every article on a 21st-century noble family as irrelevant nostalgic garbage (should anybody care who's the pretender to the French throne?). As one of the replies to your post notes (sorry, I seem to have misplaced who it was by), one of the problems is more pragmatic. Perhaps we *should* cover some such figures, but only in a limited sense. But once we have an article, there's a slippery slope where everything tangentially related now can flood in. Perhaps that's what we should tackle, though. Is it possible to improve our methods of keeping marginal junk out of an article, while stopping short of entirely deleting and salting the article? -Mark ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Otto Middleton (a morality tale)
--- On Fri, 13/5/11, Carl (CBM) cbm.wikipe...@gmail.com wrote: Verification not truth must not be a suicide pact and certainly not an excuse for sloppy publishing of gossip on BLPS. The idea that someone cannot challenge a source fact simply because they doubt its truth is very useful, though. It reduces many arguments where editors know they are right, when they are really wrong. Yes, it's useful, and I suspect that is why there is such resistance to changing even the not whether editors think it is true at WT:V right now, let alone verifiability, not truth. But as useful as it may be in shutting novice editors up: this is not the job of WP:V policy; it's the job of WP:NPOV and W:OR. If all mainstream science says that water boils at 100°, and one editor says he knows it's 98° because he measured it in his kettle, WP:OR and WP:NPOV is the proper way to address that. Not WP:V. The job of WP:V is to make sure that assertions in Wikipedia are verifiable; it's not to ensure that verifiable stuff cannot be deleted. Scott's argument is that many press reports publish shite, and that as a result we have lots of shite in our BLPs. My argument is that much of that shite is defended by editors saying, A reliable source wrote about it, and you wanting to delete it violates WP:V, because you see, policy says it does not matter whether editors believe it is true or not. If we can't use sources to judge truth, and we can't use expert knowledge without sources, what third option remains? Editorial judgment -- we have to be allowed to judge the reliability of sources, and the quality of their research. Otherwise we're just indiscriminate parrots, regurgitating a random mix of knowledge and crap. A. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Otto Middleton (a morality tale)
--- On Wed, 11/5/11, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com wrote: A while ago there was a discussion at WP:V talk whether we should recast the policy's opening sentence: The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth— whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true. (As usual, the discussion came to nought.) That sentence -- whose provocative formulation has served Wikipedia well in keeping out original research -- is a big part of the problem. A. Here is how this can play out in practice. This case has been discussed for the past few days on Jimbo's talk page. A tabloid accused a minor TV personality of cheating on his wife: http://mail-on-sunday.vlex.co.uk/vid/romeo-strolling-aficionado-bewitching-68703787#ixzz1LbDAtzox Two years later, the Telegraph states that the report was the result of poison penmanship, and that the originator, who first posted the false claim on Wikipedia, has since apologised. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/8498981/Mayfair-art-dealer-Mark-Weiss-in-disgrace-after-admitting-poison-pen-campaign-against-rival-Philip-Mould.html For two years the subject fought to save his reputation, and his marriage, as false allegations of infidelity and financial problems were planted in newspapers and on the internet by an unidentified enemy. ... It began with alterations to his online Wikipedia entry ... After one Sunday newspaper ran the story, Mr Mould’s wife Catherine temporarily left him. What happened in Wikipedia was that the editor trying to remove the spurious material was accused of conflict of interest, and of removing referenced material in contravention of WP:COI and WP:V policy. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Philip_Moulddiff=prevoldid=319397169 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Emmahenderson What should have happened in Wikipedia is that the fact that the subject's alleged infidelity was only reported in the Daily Mail, well known for its tabloid journalism and frequent inaccuracies, should have set off an alarm bell. Rather than being defended on the basis of WP:V, the material should never have been admitted. Our much-quoted verifiability, not truth mantra is partly to blame here. As long as we instruct editors, in policy, that -- The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is *verifiability, not truth*— whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true. we are teaching them a lazy and irresponsible mindset where they no longer have to think about the merits and real-life consequences of adding a particular bit of content. They can switch their minds off and simply respond mechanically: It's been published, therefore having the content is good. Anyone deleting it is a bad person. Even if it's untrue, it doesn't matter, because my job is simply to ensure that Wikipedia repeats whatever has been published. Life requires a bit more intelligence. Given that Wikipedia will come up as a person's first Google hit, and has a huge echo chamber effect, it's irresponsible to tell editors that truth does not matter. The point about OR can be made without denigrating truth, and absolving ourselves of any editorial responsibility, especially when it comes to salacious stories about living people's private lives. A. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
[WikiEN-l] Advertising a work depicting child sexual abuse
The [[Fan service]] article on en:WP has for some time included an image advertising Kogaru Diaries, a graphical work that features depictions of child sexual abuse (erotic spanking of prepubescent girls). The work is not notable; nor is its creator, beyond the fact that he is banned from Wikipedia (by ArbCom) and Commons, and allegedly also from DeviantArts. While we encourage the creation of original artwork, using free artwork to advertise non-notable -- and in this case likely illegal -- off-site content in Wikipedia seems a bit off. Is there anything in policy about this? Incidentally, the fan service article also features Wikipe-tan in a bikini to illustrate the fan service concept. Use of both images is being discussed on the fan service talk page. Links: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fan_serviceoldid=422954498 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fan_service http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kogaru1.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Kogaru1.jpg#File:Kogaru1.jpg_2 http://spankingartwiki.animeotk.com/wiki/Kogaru_Diaries http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/1466A.html http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_2256000-.html Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Leadership (was NY Times article on gender gap in Wikipedia contributors}
--- On Sat, 5/2/11, David Goodman dgge...@gmail.com wrote: Academic writing makes a judgement about what the most likely state of matters is, and gives a position. When I read an academic paper , in whatever field, I expect that there be some conclusions. (I am likely to skip ahead and read the conclusions, and, only if they seem interesting, then go back and read the evidence.) I don't see how community editing can do that, or any anonymous editing for which a particular person does not take responsibility: the reason is that different people will necessarily reach different conclusions. A skilled writer can write so as not to appear to have a POV, but nonetheless arrange the material so as to express one. I think all good reporting does that, and all good encyclopedia or textbook writing. Our articles usually manage to avoid even implying one, beyond the general cultural preconceptions, because of the different people taking part: their implied or expressed POVs cancel each other out. But it is difficult to write clearly without aiming at a particular direction. We try to write articles so the readers will have an understanding. An understanding implies a POV. This provides a fundamental limit to Wikipedia: it can only be a beginning guide, and give a basis for further understanding--understanding implies a theoretical or conceptual basis, not just an array of facts of variable relevance. So our present rules are right for the way we work: we can not aim for more than accuracy and balance. Let those who wish to truly explain things use Wikipedia as a method of orientation, but then they will need to find a medium that will express their personal view. David, as always with your posts, this is an interesting view, and there is much in it that I half-agree with. This said, here is the other half: the quality standard that we are aiming for is FA. FAs are not written in the way you describe; they typically are polished, they do explain things, apply discrimination in the selection of sources, and place appropriate weight on mainstream opinion, rather than focusing on tabloids and POVs from either end of the bell curve. The same is true about all good encyclopedia or textbook writing, to use your expression. FAs are typically written by single authors or small author teams. The process you describe rarely results in FAs. Once anonymous community editing takes over, with an opinion inserted here, and a factoid inserted there, articles usually degrade, and lose FA status. That for example is the way the Atheism FA seems to be going currently: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Atheismaction=history The question is if we want a jumble of POVs, with duelling extremist sources inserted by anonymous drive-by editors, or sober articles that give a balanced overview of the knowledge compiled by society's institutions of learning. The problem with the anonymous crowdsourcing process, as it stands, is that the attraction of a good, emotive soundbyte, motivating an anonymous editor to insert it in knee-jerk fashion, outweighs the attraction exercised by a wealth of well-researched published educational content. Researching the latter takes time and serious effort; inserting a soundbyte does not. FA writers do survey, access and reflect this educational content. I believe in good encyclopedia writing. I believe we should aspire to it, and do what we can to foster it. Andreas In teaching, I find even beginning students know this, and recognize the limitations. I think the general public does also, and it is our very imperfections that make it evident. If we looked more polished, it would be misleading. What we need to work for now is twofold: bringing up the bottom level so that what we present is accurate and representative, sourced appropriately and helpfully; and increasing our breath of coverage to the neglected areas--the traditional humanities and similar areas in one direction, and everything outside the current English speaking world, in the other . ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Tabloid sources (was Wikipedia leadership})
--- On Sat, 5/2/11, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: From: Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com wrote: Our article talks about her dalliances with communism, feminism, and sufism, and tells us that she was out shopping for groceries when the announcement of the Nobel Prize win came, but it tells us next to nothing about what she won the prize for. Human interest rather than encyclopedic? Yes. Though I wouldn't want to get rid of the human interest. I watched that interview with the royal flush quote, her sitting, with her shopping, on the steps of her house, talking to the assembled reporters. It was hilarious. But we need to recognise that our present system and demographics are biased towards adding spice to our articles, rather than meat. All spice and no meat is no good. Andreas talking to the assembled ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Leadership (was NY Times article on gender gap in Wikipedia contributors}
--- On Sat, 5/2/11, wiki doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com wrote: From: wiki doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com If we really wanted our core topic articles to be at FA standard, we'd need to adopt a totally different process. One where a writer was allowed to start from scratch and write a new article, and then demonstrate to the community that it was superior to the existing one. Good writers with expertise are always going to find it highly unattractive to begin with the mess they find, and argue with ignorance and POV pushers for every change they wish to make. That process will tend to drive experts, or indeed careful research/writers off. Precisely. FWIW, this is what I recommended to the scholar I mentioned earlier (who has written several books on the Jehovah's Witnesses): Go ahead, announce your intention on the article's talk page and at the relevant WikiProject, write the article, and then present it to the wider community for adoption. I assured him that Wikipedia would welcome the article, once it was formatted and referenced correctly, over the likely objections of both the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Witness-bashers frequenting the article. I haven't heard back from him ... :) If we want to have scholars contributing, this is an option that has to be on the table. Andreas The nub of the problem is what aim of this project and what is the (usually welcome) by-product. *Are we aiming at writing quality articles - and crowd sourcing and consensus are merely (often useful) means - but may be put aside if a certain article is better written a different way. In these cases we'll put up with the crowd-sourced amateur article, but only until and unless something better is offered. *Or are we aiming at crowd sourcing and consensus created articles. In which case, we are content to allow mono-authored FAs, but only in the gaps. If the crowd want to create their collaborative mess, then this is to be preferred, and the FA with his superior article must necessarily go elsewhere. I've always found the problem with Wikipedia is that it has components which usually work remarkably well together (wiki, open editing, no-privileged editors, neutrality, verifiability, quality) but since it has never defined which of these is core and which is the means to the end, on the occasions when there is a conflict between choosing one of the elements over another we are all at sea. Scott ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Tabloid sources (was Wikipedia leadership})
--- On Sat, 5/2/11, Mark delir...@hackish.org wrote: From: Mark delir...@hackish.org On 2/4/11 6:08 PM, Andreas Kolbe wrote: I do not permit any of my students to cite your encyclopedia as any kind of reliable source when they write papers for me. Wikipedia is too much a playground for social activists of whatever editorial bent wherein the lowest common denominator gets to negotiate reality for the readers. No thanks. I run into these kinds of reactions fairly frequently, but honestly I don't see how they're in tune with reality. There at least seems to be a bit of knee-jerk reactionary sentiment going on (and among academics, some turf-defending and credentialism). I certainly encourage my students to read Wikipedia, though I also encourage them to follow up the sources and consult alternative sources. There are indeed social activists of whatever editorial bent, but that's true of academic presses as well! A well-developed Wikipedia article in my experience is less likely than an academic book to completely ignore a large number of sources; academics are much more willing to decide field X is crap and ignore it entirely, e.g. if you look at how economists treat critical theorists and vice versa (and how economists treat economists from rival camps). Consider, say, our article [[History of U.S. foreign policy]]. It could be better, certainly could be more detailed (though some sections point to more detailed separate articles), but it's not bad overall imo. It covers some opposing views, both in terms of historiographic disputes and political disputes. Now compare it to a recently published Princeton University Press book on the history of U.S. foreign policy, Empire for Liberty: A History of American Imperialism from Benjamin Franklin to Paul Wolfowitz. The book is of course more detailed than our article, and includes some excellent material that we should cover. But if you were to ask which one is influenced more by social activists and which one more neutrally covers conflicting views of U.S. history and foreign policy, we beat the book by a large margin! And it's hardly an isolated example, if you look at the list of recent publications by academic presses, there is a whole lot of social activism going on. Not that that's even necessarily bad; academic presses don't serve the same role as an encyclopedia. But it's strange to criticize Wikipedia from that standpoint! -Mark Of course academic books engage in social activism, and represent a spectrum of opinions. But compiling an authoritative reference work is quite a different job from writing a book with a provocative thesis that stirs debate, as Immerman has done. Publishers of general-purpose and specialised encyclopedias realise that, and so do the scholars writing for them, who are accountable to the work's editors. We don't have any similar accountability. Perhaps that is another way scholars and universities could become involved, besides personal editing involvement and setting their students Wikipedia projects: by reviewing the material we have in their area of expertise, providing a quality rating similar to those of our own quality rating processes, and providing improvement suggestions that the community can then follow up on. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Tabloid sources (was Wikipedia leadership})
--- On Fri, 4/2/11, wiki doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com wrote: From: wiki doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com OK, let's take a case in point: Prem Rawat Jimbo recently added into the lead Rawat has often been termed a cult leader in popular press report, as well as [[anti-cult]] writings - stating This is, without a doubt, the most important thing readers need to know. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Prem_Rawatdiff=411493466oldid=40 5705319 The citations he provided for the popular press were from Brisbane Courier-Mail and The London Courier-Standard. Now, neither could be deemed expert sources. If we want to label the chap a cultist, we'd want a neutral academic or some authority. Not the writings of journalists who tend to recycle, sensationalise, and do little research. Anyone who's been involved in a newstory that's been reported even in quality papers, knows that daily newscycle journalists do piss-poor research, dreadful fact-checking, and drastic oversimplifications. Having said that, Jimbo's addition is perfectly true, he's often been termed a cult leader in the popular press. The question is, is Wikipedia in the business of reporting what is often said or what is reliably, authoritively, or neutrally said? I guess I'm unsure. The other half of Jimbo's insertion concerns [[anti-cult]] writings. Again, these sources are perfectly reliable as to what anti-cult people are saying. But they are also highly partisan sources. The sources in this case are Bob Larson and Ron Rhodes both evangelical Christians. (NB, the editor who pointed this out, has since been banned for his troubles: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcementoldid=411950776#Momento) Again, what the critics say isn't a bad thing to include. But perhaps the labels applied by Larson and Rhodes are given undue weight, when included so prominently in the lead. The effect of this inclusion in the first paragraph, is to invite the reader to conclude everyone says he's a cultist. That may be true, and the most important thing readers need to know - but is this really neutrality? Are we using sources appropriately? Again, I'm unsure. As the freshly-banned user pointed out on Jimbo's talk page, Bob Larson is famous for doing exorcisms on air: http://www.boblarson.org/ Have a look, it's good fun. I am not sure if that is in any way, shape or form an encyclopedic source though. Here is another example. The article on New Village Leadership Academy sources the following statement to this website: http://www.radaronline.com/ Again, have a look at the site. An encyclopedic source? This is the statement concerned that we have in our article: ---o0o--- Cales stated: Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, an admitted Scientologist, have opened this private school as a front for teaching the L. Ron Hubbard principles of 'Study Technology, his creation, and the school employs Scientologists. Our goal is to ultimately have the tax exemption status of the Scientology cult end, and the criminal deeds of Church leader David Miscaviage [sic] be exposed and prosecuted.[24] ---o0o--- Now, Jada Pinkett-Smith is on record as stating that she is not a Scientologist. Here is a quote: ---o0o--- Another subject she wants to set straight: persistent rumors that she and her husband are Scientologists, like their good friend Tom Cruise. She emphatically denies it, and she admits she thought it was a weird religion - - until she met Cruise. I'm not saying that I'm not a Scientologist because I think something's wrong with Scientology -- I want to be really clear about that, Jada says. But, she adds, In knowing Tom, I realize it is a religion just like other religions. Tom is happy. And he is one of the greatest men I know. http://www.usaweekend.com/article/20090628/ENTERTAINMENT01/91026005/Jada-sets-the-record-straight ---o0o--- Needless to say, Pinkett-Smith was listed for ages in our List of Scientologists, along with Chaka Khan, Gloria Gaynor and other non-Scientologists. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Tabloid sources (was Wikipedia leadership})
Note that the statement about Pinkett-Smith I quoted in the previous post was not sourced to radaronline.com, but to the West Australian, a Perth newspaper. What is sourced to radaronline.com http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2009/08/exclusive-will-jada-new-school-head-practiced-scientology in the [[New Village Leadership Academy]] article is the statement that the school principal, Piano Foster, has Scientology associations. Radar in turn sources this to what it calls an official Scientology list. In fact, this is a private website, truthaboutscientology.com, which since a recent AE thread is no longer considered a reliable source in Wikipedia. The site says the woman once did a Scientology course (Basic Study Manual). Sorry for the mix-up. Here are some other uses of radaronline.com: - Used in the [[Rachel Uchitel]] BLP to state that she was photographed entering Tiger Woods's room. - Used in [[Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew]] to state that On August 31, RadarOnline reported that Rachel Uchitel, who had been living at a sober living facility in Malibu, California, left the facility with Dr. Pinsky's permission in order to visit the World Trade Center site, where her fiance, James Andrew O'Grady, was killed during the September 11, 2001 attacks. - Used in [[Dancing with the Stars (U.S. season 9)]] to state that During rehearsal on September 28, Lacey Schwimmer severely strained her hip flexors and abductors. Her injuries required 3 weeks of physical therapy. She continued to dance on the show during her treatments. - Used in the [[Brian Gazer]] BLP, along with primary court sources, to provide a detailed financial breakdown of Gazer's divorce settlement. - Used in [[Suleman octuplets]] as a source for stating that the octuplets' grandmother has complained that her daughter does not contribute toward housing or food costs. - Used in the [[Brittany CoxXx]] BLP to state that 'Borat's producers first contacted [Stonie's Manager, David Forest] in June 2005, he tells Radar. They wanted to find someone who would look 13 or 14 but was actually of legal age and would do frontal nudity, he recalls. Cortez immediately sprang to mind, he says, because he's a small-framed boy but has a large organ. How large? About eight inches, and thick.' We have a policy about not spreading gossip, but I see little evidence that we adhere to it. Andreas --- On Fri, 4/2/11, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com wrote: From: Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Tabloid sources (was Wikipedia leadership}) To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Friday, 4 February, 2011, 13:25 --- On Fri, 4/2/11, wiki doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com wrote: From: wiki doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com OK, let's take a case in point: Prem Rawat Jimbo recently added into the lead Rawat has often been termed a cult leader in popular press report, as well as [[anti-cult]] writings - stating This is, without a doubt, the most important thing readers need to know. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Prem_Rawatdiff=411493466oldid=40 5705319 The citations he provided for the popular press were from Brisbane Courier-Mail and The London Courier-Standard. Now, neither could be deemed expert sources. If we want to label the chap a cultist, we'd want a neutral academic or some authority. Not the writings of journalists who tend to recycle, sensationalise, and do little research. Anyone who's been involved in a newstory that's been reported even in quality papers, knows that daily newscycle journalists do piss-poor research, dreadful fact-checking, and drastic oversimplifications. Having said that, Jimbo's addition is perfectly true, he's often been termed a cult leader in the popular press. The question is, is Wikipedia in the business of reporting what is often said or what is reliably, authoritively, or neutrally said? I guess I'm unsure. The other half of Jimbo's insertion concerns [[anti-cult]] writings. Again, these sources are perfectly reliable as to what anti-cult people are saying. But they are also highly partisan sources. The sources in this case are Bob Larson and Ron Rhodes both evangelical Christians. (NB, the editor who pointed this out, has since been banned for his troubles: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcementoldid=411950776#Momento) Again, what the critics say isn't a bad thing to include. But perhaps the labels applied by Larson and Rhodes are given undue weight, when included so prominently in the lead. The effect of this inclusion in the first paragraph, is to invite the reader to conclude everyone says he's a cultist. That may be true, and the most important thing readers need to know - but is this really neutrality? Are we using sources appropriately? Again, I'm
Re: [WikiEN-l] Tabloid sources (was Wikipedia leadership})
We have a policy about not spreading gossip, but I see little evidence that we adhere to it. Andreas After such examples are found they still need to be edited. The editing community varies in its tolerance, experience, and compliance. What in one context might slip though will not in another. BLP is an area of focus and for good reason; it is productive of nasty publicity and potential liability. These are not isolated cases. The presence of this type of material is systemic, arguably within present policy, and, it seems to me, supported by community consensus. The Sun is used as a source in several thousand articles on Wikipedia, including many BLPs: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Searchns0=1redirs=1advanced=1search=thesunlimit=500offset=0 We might consider generating a list of sources like radaronline and The Sun, identifying them as unwelcome, and creating a noticeboard where editors can apply for exceptions in the few cases where a source like that has something of encyclopedic value to say. I am fairly convinced though that a proposal like that would result in 2 MB of arguments and in the end come to nothing. For better or worse, Wikipedia in its present state is more of a news aggregator than an educational resource, and the reason is that the community likes it that way. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Tabloid sources (was Wikipedia leadership})
--- On Fri, 4/2/11, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com wrote: For better or worse, Wikipedia in its present state is more of a news aggregator than an educational resource, and the reason is that the community likes it that way. Parts of Wikipedia are more like a news aggregator, yes. Other parts are clearly not. Most obviously the stuff that newspapers don't cover, or where other sources exist. Has anyone tried to do one of those network diagrams showing correlations between types of articles and particular types of sources? Some interesting patterns might emerge there. Even parts of Wikipedia where other sources do exist frequently restrict themselves to aggregating news. There are no end of scholarly sources on [[Doris Lessing]], say. Our article on her cites (news and web sources listed left, book sources indented): NobelPrize.org The Guardian BBC News Toronto Star The Times Bloomberg The New York Times http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi The New York Times BBC News Online - A book by Harper Collins biography.jrank.org - A book by Broadview Press Newsweek Voices of America dorislessing.org Huffington Post BBC Radio rslit.org The New York Times Daily Mail Herald Sun The Telegraph CBS News New York Daily News BBC News Online dorislessing.org The New York Times dorislessing.org - Worldcon Guest of Honor Speeches otago.ac.nz hrc.utexas.edu/press/releases/2007/lessing.html lib.utulsa.edu/speccoll/collections/lessingdoris/index.htm gencat.cat/pic/cat/index.htm That's 32 media/web references (some of them with multiple citations), and 3 book references (each cited once). We've been doing this for ten years. We have always said, articles will develop eventually. But by now, some articles are actually degrading again, and on the whole we have failed to attract great numbers of competent experts with real-life credentials. There are some promising signs that this is changing, and I am glad of it. But we should remember that the image we project through the quality and seriousness of our articles has a lot to do with what sort of editors we attract. There are virtuous circles as well as vicious circles. Another scholar for example who I asked for advice a while back volunteered the information that ---o0o--- I do not permit any of my students to cite your encyclopedia as any kind of reliable source when they write papers for me. Wikipedia is too much a playground for social activists of whatever editorial bent wherein the lowest common denominator gets to negotiate reality for the readers. No thanks. ---o0o--- Reactions like that are our loss, and perpetuate the problems we have. Our efforts at outreach could be coupled with efforts to make Wikipedia a more reputable publication. Charles Matthews mentioned at a recent meet-up a BLP where editors were all focused on whether the subject was gay or not, while no one had any interest in adding information explaining what made the person notable. This seems rather typical. Our beloved media gossip, complete with divorce details from thesmokinggun.com http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Searchredirs=0search=thesmokinggun+divorcefulltext=Searchns0=1 may be keeping those editors away who we most need to turn articles like Doris Lessing's into something worthy of an actual encyclopedia. In other words, the more tabloid sources we cite, the more editors we attract who like tabloids, while turning off those potential contributors who don't read tabloids. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Tabloid sources (was Wikipedia leadership})
Also, some of those media references may be obituaries, which are a different sort of source to news articles. While Lessing was born in 1919, last time I looked she was still alive. ;) Tough old bird. Our article talks about her dalliances with communism, feminism, and sufism, and tells us that she was out shopping for groceries when the announcement of the Nobel Prize win came, but it tells us next to nothing about what she won the prize for. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Leadership (was NY Times article on gender gap in Wikipedia contributors}
--- On Fri, 4/2/11, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: snip one of the problems I have with WP:WEIGHT is the way some people take a percentage approach to it. My view is that the amount of weight something has in an article is a function not just of the *amount* of text, but also how it is written (and also the sources it uses). It may not be clear from the wording of policy, but if something is sourced to a lightweight source, then it should carry less weight (in the sense of being taken seriously) than something sourced to a really authoritative source. It might seem that this is not what WP:WEIGHT is talking about, but in some sense it is. Also, the wording used: if something is said in a weaselly, vague and wishy-washy way (*regardless* of the volume of text used), then that carries less weight than a strongly-worded and forceful sentence. Similarly, a rambling set of paragraphs actually weights an article less than a single sentence that due to the way it is written jumps up and down on the page and says this is the real point of the article. In other words, the *way* an article is written affects the weighting of elements within in, not just the volume. Which all come back to the tone used in writing, which often affects the reader more than the volume of text used. Ideally, a succinct, dispassionate, non-rhetorical tone will be used, and articles looked at as a whole. It is extremely depressing when arguments devolve into the minutiae of sentence structure in an effort to find a compromise wording. It often chokes the life out of the prose of an article. That's a valid and subtle point. It's compounded by the fact that the more heavyweight sources tend to be more restrained in their tone, and the more lightweight sources, more shrill and emotive. NPOV as presently defined does not help us there: we are duty-bound to reflect the shrill voices in their shrillness, and the authoritative sources in their restraint. I don't see this changing unless we can see our way clear to assigning more weight to authoritative sources, instead of the simple dichotomy of not reliable/reliable, where everything on the reliable side is given equal weight, regardless of whether it is a gossip site or an authoritative scholarly biography. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Leadership (was NY Times article on gender gap in Wikipedia contributors}
The key to avoid decision-making on Wikipedia being taken over by single-interest groups is to ensure wide-ranging and continued participation by a reasonable number of independent editors with new voices being added to the mix to avoid ossification stagnation. At various times, one or the other person will drive an initiative, and some will voice concerns about short-term and long-term issues, but overall, as long as the atmosphere doesn't drive people away, things will get done. If things aren't getting done, they should be identified and something done about them, but problems won't get solved if people walk away from them. Carcharoth Any culture is a function of the people participating in that culture, and the only way to change the culture is to change the people in it. We need a critical mass of mature, knowledgeable editors; people who participate because they are knowledgeable, and not because they have strong opinions. The next ten years of Wikipedia should be about multiplying the number of real-life scholars and experts participating. The Ambassadors program is a good start. Once the demographics change, the rest will follow; and until the demographics change, all the talking will avail nothing. Andreas (Jayen466) ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Leadership (was NY Times article on gender gap in Wikipedia contributors}
--- On Thu, 3/2/11, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: NPOV is IMO Wikipedia's greatest innovation, greater than just letting everyone edit the website. Yes and no. We haven't exactly invented the neutral point of view. Scholarly encyclopedias strive for an even-handed presentation that is akin to what we are attempting (and they often succeed better at it than we do). But the way NPOV is defined in Wikipedia may be new, and relatively few academic and expert writers will have contributed to an encyclopedia before. Most have published their own books and papers, in which they are free to present their original research and opinions. Any outreach to scholars and universities needs to communicate that idea clearly. The reality gap between our NPOV aim and the actual state of our articles may otherwise give new contributors the wrong idea. They shouldn't do as we do, they should do better. We should also recognise that our definition of NPOV is actually far from mature, and still beset with problems. First and foremost, we lack clarity on the topic of media vs. scholarly sources, and the weight to assign to each of them. We simply say, Editing from a neutral point of view (NPOV) means representing fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources. As the term reliable sources encompasses everything from gossip websites, The Sun and The Daily Mail to university press publications and academic journals, it is not easy to say what fair, proportionate representation actually ought to mean in practice. The other day, I discussed Wikipedia with a religious scholar. I had asked why there were no scholars contributing. His comments were illuminating. Here is what he said: ---o0o--- To take an example of a topic with which I'm familiar - Jehovah's Witnesses - I would really need to start all over again, and I don't know whether it's OK to delete an entire article and rewrite another one, even if I had the time. It's a bit like the joke about the motorist who asked for directions, only to be told, 'If I were you, I wouldn't be starting from here!' The JW article begins with an assortment of unrelated bits of information, it fails to locate the Witnesses within their historical religious origins, it says it was updated in December 2010 yet ignores important recent academic material. The citations may look impressive, but they are patchy, and sometimes the sources state the exact opposite of what the text conveys. So what does one do? ---o0o--- What we have going for us is that Wikipedia has become so big that it has become hard to ignore. And scholars have begun to notice that if their publications are cited in Wikipedia, this actually drives traffic to them. If our success and our faults can induce those who know better than our average editor to come along and help, then we might actually get to the point where Wikipedia provides free access to the sum of human knowledge. It would be no mean achievement. Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Leadership (was NY Times article on gender gap in Wikipedia contributors}
--- On Thu, 3/2/11, MuZemike muzem...@gmail.com wrote: From: MuZemike muzem...@gmail.com I'm sorry, but if I see somebody starting to source information from such tabloids you mentioned, especially information on biographies of living people regarding stuff that is not confirmed, there are going to be problems with me. See for example use of radaronline.com: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Searchsearch=radaronline.comfulltext=1 Andreas ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
