Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the '80s (video)
Hmm, Compton's Multimedia Encyclopaedia *was* created in the '80s... On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 12:27 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embeddedv=tqD9OCa8ywQ The title music is particularly frightening. - 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 -- -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]] ___ 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] If someone gave you the entirety of Wikipedia from 100 years in the future for only 10 minutes, what would you read?
On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 4:41 AM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote: On 13/02/13 10:41, David Gerard wrote: On 12 February 2013 23:05, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: PS. You might find that the page(s) you chose to read had been protected for years, or was in the middle of an edit war. Or that the entire encyclopedia had been 'checked' and published and was 'finished'? Would that be a cause for celebration or not? OK, I suppose this is all missing the point of the question... It's interesting. If you were in 1890, and you got ten minutes' access to an Encyclopedia Britannica from 1990 - what would you look up? Maybe some disease of local concern. Water-borne diseases like typhoid or cholera would be a lucky choice, since ten minutes would just about give you time to follow a q.v. to chlorination and make the relevant discovery some 4 years early. Calcium hypochlorite was already widely available, all you've got to do is mix it with your drinking water. As many of the articles I currently regularly check to see how badly vandalized or not they are... Probably given that the scale of time is such, the relative amount of active editing in them wouldn't be a concern, so I would go for pure degree of concern in general. Mother Theresa, Martin Luther, Solon, List of Occultists, Isaac Newton's Occult Studies. -- -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]] ___ 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 to write about things that were once notable?
I think you are all dancing around the real subject. Is wikipedia meant to help people have access to knowledge, to apportion access to knowledge, or to be a gate-keeper on which knowledge and at which rates do people have access to it? On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 3:46 PM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: On 6 February 2013 13:06, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: On 2/6/13, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: Notability is *supposed* to be timeless, not perishable, let's recall. Yeah. But that is a bit of a canard in some cases. It is a question of whether coverage endures and continues or peters out. i.e. Whether people/sources (the right sort) write about something over time, and in what manner. Coverage of something when it starts is very different to coverage after it is gone. The former is news, the latter starts to become history (whether a footnote or not). Yes, the point about reducing notability to reliable sources is that making GNG depend on RS assumes we know what we are talking about in RS. Which is questionable. So I cordially hate GNG. Precisely because it takes more to write history of lasting value,, than journalism that informs and sells, reducing things to RS is basically a bust. But, absent a catchy replacement, it is what we are stuck with. Which is exactly the status of notability, anyway. Pownce is clearly a footnote by now. One of WP's purposes is to host such footnotes. So the writing issue boils down to reducing froth to footnote coverage. Ultimately everything becomes a footnote if you take the long view. With some things being more a footnote than others. Getting the balance right as something goes from having lots of coverage at inception, to either increasing or decreasing coverage thereafter is tricky, but an important consideration. It is something that I don't think those engaged in debates about notability consider enough, especially when considering that living people get coverage because they are living. Whether they get coverage when or after they are dead (which we won't know until that happens) *should* be a consideration, but often isn't. Sometimes when something comes to en end, new coverage will prompt updates here, but sometimes even that doesn't happen. It all results in a large mass of articles that are poorly maintained and look increasingly out of date as time goes by. Nothing at all wrong with footnotes, though. I once had a project to go through the footnotes of Gibbon's Decline and Fall. I had an interesting hour with the first, on Jordanes, but got no further, though it produced an article. Articles from 6 or 7 years ago are often essentially unimproved from their early days. Now with much better online resources I often find I'm improving a very stubby one from 2007. There isn't an actual problem, though. in that I feel motivated now to do that improvement. I think the right attitude is that it has taken longer than we thought to start eating our tail and upgrade old stubs. To get back on topic, if a stub really is on a notable topic, then there isn't much of a problem. I'll agree that a certain kind of transience isn't well expressed in basic policy. 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 -- -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]] ___ 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 to write about things that were once notable?
On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 9:33 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 6 February 2013 18:46, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: On 2/6/13, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: Nevertheless something that is never mentioned in a nonfiction book or journal article over 250 years could be said to have dropped from the canon of knowledge and could then be archived. Maybe, but I don't think you can generalise. You have to inspect each individual case. It *is* important that contemporary coverage exists as a check and balance to past coverage, but past coverage can provide historical context in other articles, even if it ultimately is insufficient to support a stand-alone article. The real problem is that Wikipedia's sourcing rules *mostly* work *most* of the time - they are not philosophically watertight, and trying to treat them as if they were leads to silliness and frustration. So I'm just expressing my frustration. And probably being silly. - d. It is actually worse than that. Wikipedias rules taken as a whole used to be about enabling editors to work, even in areas of dispute. I seriously doubt that is a tenable defense of the rules as enforced these days. -- -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]] ___ 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 to write about things that were once notable?
On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 6:58 AM, Matthew Brown mor...@gmail.com wrote: I don't think you need a *notable* source for all information, though, just a reliable one. If the project officially shut down, a notice from the project itself should suffice, right? I suspect in most of these cases, though, the project never officially died, just petered out. If the project's software gives such a thing, you can cite the information its edit history shows: As of date, the last contribution to the project was back in long-ago date. or from a high of edit rate in long ago, the rate of contributions has slowed to rate as of now. If the site is gone, can you cite e.g. the Internet Archive's last cached date as an approximate for when it vanished? Or DNS registration records, if the name expired? -Matt On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 3:36 PM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: It's a problem. Information about the current status of these projects may have fallen off so much that little or nothing can be obtained from a notable source. So you are left with the splash and little else. No obituary available. Fred https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Citizendium#So_what_and_how_do_we_write_about_this_sort_of_thing.3F How to write about things like [[Citizendium]], [[Conservapedia]], [[Veropedia]] - things that were notable at the time and got lots of press coverage and hence articles, and which readers may well want to read about into the future - but which have fallen out of notice and so their decline (and, in the case of Veropedia, death) got no coverage and hence we can't answer the reader question so, whatever did happen to X? (Anyone who wants to reply saying Citizendium is alive and well and will rise again! or similar needs to check the most recent WP:RS-suitable coverage from 2011: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/10/five-year-old-wikipedia-fork-is-dead-in-the-water/ and particularly the comments, where people have never heard of this thing and in two weeks no-one even defends the project.) - 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 Statistics special page on citizendium states they have 31 active editors. (have made an edit in the last month) -- -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]] ___ 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 6:54 PM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: On 19 April 2012 16:01, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: I liked Andreas's way of putting this earlier: 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. [[Primum non nocere]] is worth reading, but of course it is about medicine, and is only an aspiration, and does not mean physicians have to treat conservatively. It means they have justify medical intervention. Assuming that do no harm in the sense of journalism is supposed to be applied to WP, it does fall under WP:NOT to some extent. Indiscriminate information ought to be a reason to delete. We do have to justify intervening in people's lives by hosting an article about them. On the other hand, we very often can give that justification. It doesn't have to be in the terms an investigative journalist would use. Historically this is inaccurate, as the article states, the original phrasing was to abstain from doing harm, which is significantly different insofar as it implies a willed action. This didn't at all refer to medical treatement, but to the common practise of the time for people who healed to have a sideline in selling poisons for people who were willing to pay for them. -- -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]] ___ 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 Sat, Apr 21, 2012 at 7:13 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 21 April 2012 17:07, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: Historically this is inaccurate, as the article states, the original phrasing was to abstain from doing harm, which is significantly different insofar as it implies a willed action. This didn't at all refer to medical treatement, but to the common practise of the time for people who healed to have a sideline in selling poisons for people who were willing to pay for them. You mean, don't have a co=nflict of interest? Would Do not willfully edit to a Point of View. work for you? There is a difference between those who are blind to the fact that their viewpoint is not universally accepted, and those who really should know better, and do, but for ulteriour motives edit to a certain bias. -- -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]] ___ 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] sad news
On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 8:52 PM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 3:27 AM, Bob the Wikipedian bobthewikiped...@gmail.com wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deceased_Wikipedians Oh dear. I see from reading that page that not only have we lost Ben Yates, but also Slrubenstein. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Rubenstein The death of both these Wikipedians was mentioned briefly in the Signpost: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-03-12/News_and_notes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-03-19/News_and_notes Very sad news in both cases. My condolences to those that knew them. Slrubenstein was a rock. Never could be trolled or drawn into a hostile exchange. He did have very strong disagreements with people. The one I remember him best by was over the proper expression of dates, and over whether or not Wikipedia should show religious preference between the the various candidates (my memory is hazy on what the various alternatives were, but that might be because it wasn't one of my battles, though I did read the arguments with interest and occasional amusement and may just have made very minor comments on issues of fact). He had a particular dry wit about him. Not of the emblematically British sort, but more of the What are you going to do to me? I am not going to fall into the trap of hating you! variety. -- -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]] ___ 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
If we have this in place, cool to have a link... My thinking is that a constructive and asymptotically approaching perfection (hopefully as rapidly as humanly possible) way of doing a good bit of easing of some of the tensions, would be to start compiling a list of criterions which make someone absolutely 100% a chinch to need a wikipedia article about them, no matter what. Not a list of articles every wikipedia should have or anything like that, but a list of no-brainer wikipedia inclusion criteria, and add to the list of criteria as fast as possible. If something is blindingly obvious it is often very easy to get consensus, and a great deal can be achieved in a very short amount of time. Once the low hanging fruit have been collected, the experience of working on that part of the task, often makes for a much more congenial atmosphere to hew out some modus operandi for the cases where things are not so clear as to be universally agreed upon by the editorship. Here are some I can think of: * Heads of states of all countries which are official full members of the United Nations, after they have been admitted. * Actresses/Actors who have star billing in a movie released by Universal, MGM, 20th/21th Century, Lucasfilm, (... purposefully leaving this list short to be absolutely ironclad not to step into any point of contention or cheap shots ...) * Nobel Prize winners. * Fields Medal winners. * Medal winners in the Modern Olympics in those sports that currently are part of the Olympic Games, in either winter or summer games. * Military leaders of the armed forces in any conflict between two countries who are currently official full members of the United Nations. * All Popes the Holy Roman Catholic Church currently recognizes as having been valid popes. * All winners of the Booker Prize. * All winners of the Turner Prize. * All presenters of the Royal Society Christmas Lecture. * ... * ... * ... You get the idea...? -- -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]] ___ 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] Article Landing Pages - functional prototype to test and comment on
After all that fine talk, i feel almost hesitant. But let's be real here. It isn't the threshold getting in you need to worry about in terms of editor retention. It is the threshold of getting tossed out either as content or editor or both! -- -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]] ___ 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] Why Wikipedia Is Important.
On Sun, Nov 27, 2011 at 3:00 AM, Marc Riddell michaeldavi...@comcast.net wrote: Without knowledge, myths are born. With myths, fear is born. With fear, intolerance is born. With intolerance, ignorance is born. With ignorance, nothing is born. MR There is no way to create myths without knowledge. There is no way to create fear without intolerance. There is no way to create intolerance without ignorance. Ignorance is the cradle of creation. Knowledge is the grave of creation. -- -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]] ___ 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] Linkage bloat
On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 12:36 AM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 09/11/11 22:29, Peter Jacobi wrote:
Perhaps the usefulness of portals and categories can be combined.
For example, but unrealistic in the short term, clicking to a
standard category link should open the portal page of the same name
if it exists.
You could just put {{Portal:{{PAGENAME}} }} at the top of the category
page, although I appreciate how difficult it is to change the relevant
policy.
I came to the conclusion many years ago that the easiest way to make a
policy change on Wikipedia is to spend 6 months writing and deploying
software that requires or implements the change. It's a lot easier to
get a majority in a software deployment vote than it is to build
consensus behind an editorial policy.
Not really. Two sofwareside attempts on Finnish Wikipedia crashed and burned,
despite me trying to nurse them along.
--
--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
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Re: [WikiEN-l] I like this
On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 2:17 PM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: 10:20, 29 April 2011 Jimbo Wales (talk | contribs) m (37,376 bytes) (moved Kate Middleton to Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge over redirect: Marriage to the Duke of Cambridge) (undo) He must have had his finger on the button waiting for Beardie[*] to pronounce them man and wife... [*] I can call him that; my mother knows him reasonably well Jimbo's getting into British issues in a big way; won't be long before he picks up a posh accent. Fred And I get stuck with the Irish Republican and Billy Connolly Scottish ones. Lucky me. -- -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]] ___ 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] So ...
On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 6:41 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: ... written anything good on the encyclopedia lately? - d. Mostly cogent notices on talk pages, hoping that years from now somebody with more in-subject expertice will address those concerns. Eventualism isn't fun but it gets there eventually. -- -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]] ___ 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] User:RickK2
On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 8:33 AM, Rick giantsric...@yahoo.com wrote: I've done some anonymous editing here and there, but I doubt I'll be doing anything major. That is genuinely nice to hear. The first part, not the latter one. There was a time when we needed tireless warriors for quality, and against the yahoos (the wild and crazies, not the competitor to google ;). The community now is so robust, that it no longer needs such superheros as you were back then. Personally I felt a good deal of hidden satisfaction when I was unceremoniously stripped of my admin rights on the Finnish Wikipedia (my real home wiki), and the next day came as it always did, with a sun rising and all. -- -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]] ___ 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] Get payed $150 for writing an article!
On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 3:06 AM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: http://www.freelancer.com/projects/Copywriting/Wikipedia-Experience-Write-Needed.html Someone should send him some discouraging words. I don't have time to figure that website myself right now. I have to admit to being very tempted... but, integrity prevailed. I've been following the site for some time now. And have bid on jobs. However, if you tell them you will follow Wikipedia policies they don't hire you, for some reason. Fred Just out of interest, have you followed the pages the contracts would have been on, to see if there were any takers? -- -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]] ___ 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 committee member
Michel Vuijlsteke wrote: On 31 August 2010 16:51, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: How do you objectively and neutrally determine what is and isn't a spoiler? You don't. Just like you can't objectively and neutrally determine if someone is fit to be an administrator, or if a picture is really beautiful, stunning, impressive, or informative enough to be featured. It's a call you make. You do something you believe will get a consensus. Most of the time there won't be much discussion: Crowe was dead himself the whole time and Tyler Durden is the narrator's alter ego probably could have a spoiler warning; The Titanic sinks and Jesus dies on the cross but not really probably don't need one. If you do get discussion, there's oodles of mechanisms to resolve things. A likely edge case would be 'Rosebud' is the name of the childhood sled of Kane. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Admin / experienced user flameout - how do we talk people down off the ledge?
Fred Bauder wrote: It is likely the reason he got into trouble was because he wasn't confident that others would back him up, so he did it himself. Which is, of course, the third rail. What is missing is the knowledge that sometimes, even if you are right, others will not, for one reason or another, not back you up and you will fail. And can't do anything about it. Fred IOW, Wikipedia isn't a suicide pact? Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Community ready for Pending Changes (nee Flagged Protection)?
William Pietri wrote: At the end, if there is no decision to extend the trial or to permanently adopt Pending Changes, the community will probably need to go and switch all Pending Changes articles to something else. (Unless they'd like us just to switch them en masse to, say, semi-protection, but that seems a bit crude.) You say crude, I say simple. If there are articles there needing full protection, nature will take its course, and they will end there in due time. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Community ready for Pending Changes (nee Flagged Protection)?
Cenarium sysop wrote: To Risker: *Pending changes will help to reduce visibility of vandalism and BLP violations Yes, classic protection is way too rigid for Wikipedia today, and has always been too rigid. The flexibility of pending changes protection will allow to use protection where needed, and only where needed, more than classic protection would have ever allowed on its own. The protection policy allows for a considerable amount of discretion, and it is evident that administrators in general would be more willing to apply pending changes protection on articles subject to vandalism or BLP violations than they would otherwise have been with the rigid semi-protection. As long as we can keep up with the backlog, this is a win-win situation. This is a very dangerous view on the issue. This is what people who strenously opposed the new mechanism were most afraid of, and the supporters originally said would not be a danger. If this really happened, I could easily see many of the people originally in support of the new mechanism, could do a full volte-face and come strongly in opposition of the mechanism. Supporters of the original agreement often voiced the proviso that using the mechanism for semied/BLP's or whatever their personal threshold was, would never ever be a thin end of the wedge to spread things out to things we wouldn't semi currently. That is the *old* *agreement* on this issue. A huge drive by any tiny group of blow-hard editors to expand use of the mechanism beyond what we currently semi, could back-fire spectacularly. I don't dispute that in the fullness of time; years or decades from now, it might eventually go that route, but that is a completely different issue, and I suspect there would be many more important community supported initiatives that would have to be accepted in the interim, before that could remotely be acceptable. *Pending changes will help with disputes. No, and it was clearly stated in the proposal, and now clearly stated in the trial policy (scope section), that pending changes protection, level 1 or 2, should not be used on pages subject to disputes. I agree with your point here. The mechanism shouldn't be used as a damper in edit wars. That way, madness lies. You could have hundreds of reverts back and forth never going live, and a Stygian Stable for the person sorting out through all that which revisions and edits to go live finally. Just a total Charlie Foxtrot in other words. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Pending Changes: first press
Gregory Maxwell wrote: On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 10:19 PM, William Pietri will...@scissor.com wrote: I agree completely that the outcome is really up to the community. But personally, it's my hope that this will open things up. Certainly the articles selected for initial trial of this represent an opening, in that all the users who could edit before still can, and the ones that couldn't can now easily propose edits, ones that are likely to be accepted. People should really avoid the poisonous propose language. An edit is an edit. An act in completion by itself. For it to not stick it must be _reverted_, another act— not something passive. Perhaps it might sit unflagged for some time... but even in the worst case someone with the authority will eventually want their own changes to be displayed and at that point they must choose: revert or accept. Words matter, at least sometimes, and I fear propose presents problems both for the motivation of new users to contribute and in the personal restraint experienced users must display by avoiding the trap of OWNing articles. +1 Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] One-sentence explanation of pending changes
Gregory Maxwell wrote: That kind of limitation was dropped from the community discussions fairly early on as morphed from the More aggressive way of regulating articles of flagged protection to the Less disruptive way of protecting pages of flagged protection. Limiting it to BLP articles also has the problem that BLP issues very frequently extend out of BLP articles. On the gripping hand, limiting it to BLP's got a consensus. Trying it on for a wider array of articles is really asking for someone to punch you on the nose. Not recommended, but hey, you can do it if you feel proud enough. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] declining numbers of EN wiki admins - The theory that making it easier to get rid of admins is a solution to the decline in their active numbers
Risker wrote: Procedural note to moderators: Perhaps it is time to consider a length limit on posting? While I understand where you are coming from, it bears noting that some people would like a limit of length both on the short and the long side, and you would in the eyes of some, fail on the short side of the limit -- as I do often too, not being too particular either way. Not passing judgement long or short, but just noting that both are annoying, even I admit to have rarely done both... ...And I suspect I will do both again. Do note that the current person in charge of the staff serving the foundation, very specifically commended a very long post by Gregory Maxwell that in her view nicely summarised the situation on commons -- albeit that post was at the foundation-l. I don't actually agree with Sue on that particular summary being all that insightful. (Sorry Greg!) But a lengthy summary did in fact please Sue in that particular instance. So making the moderators bar posts like the one by Greg, I think serves no one. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] declining numbers of active EN wiki admins
David Gerard wrote: On 28 May 2010 23:21, David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com wrote: With new contributors, we can both improve the articles and gain new ones. It does not matter how someone gets here: if they care enough to create nonsense, they can be persuaded to create sensible material. The key hurdle is not persuading people to contribute usefully, but of persuading them to contribute at all. +1 Those who speak of trying to restrict contributions because we haven't got the admins have it completely arse-backwards. Without wanting to re-inforce a message just on its merits, which is certainly something worthy in itself; my preferred phrasing is bass-ackwards. Yours, in such deep suplication, it hurts my tippy toe shoes. Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Reliable sources— some of these bab ies are ugly
Philip Sandifer wrote: On May 15, 2010, at 10:12 AM, Gregory Maxwell wrote: But I can't say that these points really apply in many cases that we appear to be applying them: We would reject as reliable sources many hobbyist blogs (or even webcomics) with a stronger reputation to preserve, less obviously-compromised motivations, and _significantly_ greater circulation than some obscure corner of Fox News's online product. What can be the explanation for this discrepancy? Two reasons. 1) Egregious anti-expert bias. 2) A fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the written record of humanity. 1) Our policies are explicitly and deliberately written to try to allow content decisions to be made without any actual knowledge of the subject. That is, we have actively tried to write policy that rejects any thinking about sources beyond the surface level readings, and that take as a premise that, given a large enough pile of books, anybody can adequately write or edit an article on any topic. This premise is dubious at best. 2) We also make the actively false assumption that all significant knowledge is written down, and that the written record is simply a transcription of human knowledge. Neither statement is true - in virtually every field of knowledge, because fields of knowledge organize around communities, there is a substantial oral tradition of disseminated knowledge that is often crucial to understanding the overall subject. The contents of this oral tradition may be written down, but not in a systemic and organized way, while in practice the oral tradition often is fairly systemic. At its most basic level, this translates to There are things in any field that everybody knows, and since everybody knows them nobody has bothered to write them down. The combination results in a badly distended view of knowledge that has wrecked more than a handful of articles on Wikipedia. Second try at sending this... here goes nothing. (gmail, man up!) While this is not a reply specifically to what Greg raises, it is a fact that we aren't just giving the cold shoulder to silent knowledge, but also stuff written down in a language not our own, when it happens to exist. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Expert feedback on Featured Articles
of experts doing the reviewing and I am sure everybody understands how heavy such a system would be. One interesting idea though, would be in some far future, to actually *hire* fact-checkers for that elusive printed on paper (or other fixed media), which would be genuinely of a higher consistency than the raw product we daily see and will continue to forevermore see on our unending construction site. I wouldn't hold my breath to seeing it quite next year though. The money just isn't going to be there soon to hire people to even attempt that monumental task, in its entirety. Yours (sorry about the length of the post), Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Cuil launches CPedia.com, the robotically generated encyclopedia.
David Gerard wrote: On 13 April 2010 17:05, Ryan Delaney ryan.dela...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 5:31 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: Remember Cuil, the worst search engine of last decade? This is what they've done with the left over hardware: an automated encyclopedia. http://www.cpedia.com/ It's like Wikipedia read by Mark V. Shaney. Lmao. http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/bov5t/cuil_relaunches_as_cpedia_the_encyclopedia/ If a computer could stand on a street corner shouting abusive gibberish at passers-by while wearing a tinfoil hat and smelling of stale urine, it would be CPedia. You may be thinking you were joking, but plugging in my own user name, Cimon Avaro, I got: The claim by Cimon and Maveric is spurious. They should retract their statements. The issue is being ignored previous discussions led to the conclusion that philosophy, religion and politics inspired by Gaia should appear in one article, and science should be in another. Rk is persecuted for following the original agreement. This is a POV violation. ...nothing whatsoever else, even remotely comprehensible. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Cuil launches CPedia.com, the robotically generated encyclopedia.
geni wrote: On 12 April 2010 01:31, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: Remember Cuil, the worst search engine of last decade? This is what they've done with the left over hardware: an automated encyclopedia. http://www.cpedia.com/ It's like Wikipedia read by Mark V. Shaney. - d. Well in theory an automated system that created articles on order would be a reasonable replacement for wikipedia. Unfortunately 1)This won't be possible until we crack the natural language processing problem and 2) even with existing technology Cuil's attempt is just horrifically bad. For If whatever is left of the powerset team at microsoft tried something similar I would expect results to be better if still fairly useless. Agreed. Given that powerset seems to be out of the game indefinitely, the current target to beat is likely Wolfram|Alpha, and clearly cpedia -- or whatever it is officially called -- doesn't come within the proverbial country mile of being even a contender, at least so far. Someday something will come down the pike, it is only a matter of time. And when it does, we really will have A Logic Called Joe (or Mike if you prefer Heinlein), but I for one won't be holding my breath. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] 100 free Credo accounts for Wikipedia editors
Erik Moeller wrote: Credo Reference ( http://www.credoreference.com/ , formerly Xrefer) has generously agreed to provide up to 100 free accounts to their reference library (more than 2 million articles from countless reference works), for research purposes. If you might find this useful, please go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Credo_accounts and follow instructions to apply. There's a minimum requirement of 600 edits and six months participation. These accounts will be given on a first come, first serve basis. There's no bigger underlying master plan - I've met with them a couple of times, and they want to help. First, let me say this is simply awesome. I can't help but note some mildly humorous points; which should not be taken to denigrate or floccinaucinihilipilificate the value of this wonderful offer... They have classified Devil's Dictionary (by Ambrose Bierce) under Language. I am sure it is a common slip up. I know for a fact a library I ran for a spell, had prior to me put Edwin A. Abbott's Flatland in the non-fiction section under mathematical science. As a more personal note, there is a very quirky synchronism at play, as I just noted this morning that moored in the harbor outside my window, is a cargo ship which appears to be bringing coal for the power plant there. The name of the ship: http://www.eslshipping.com/portal/en/fleet/m.s._credo/ Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen P. S. I wonder if somebody who worked on my spell-checker has a sense of humor... doing the spell check, it made the suggestion that floccinaucinihilipilificate should be replaced with antidisestablishmentarianism. Oh well, sesquipedalian is as sesquipedalian does. ___ 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] The Curious Incident of the Fans in the Night
Gwern Branwen wrote: On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 2:58 AM, Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net wrote: On Mon, 18 Jan 2010, David Gerard wrote: If they want to filibuster the reliability of this source, it speaks of some child being Robert Heinlein's great-grandson ... Heinlein didn't have any children. I wonder where they got that from. Wikipedia's article on Heinlein nowhere says he didn't have any children. It's generally accepted that he and Virginia didn't have any children, but Virginia was his third wife, and he was married to his second for 15 years. True, but the New York Times obituary says he was survived only by his third wife. If he had children by either 1 or 2, wouldn't they have mentioned it? And try googling around a bit; you'll find nothing, and even the occasional hit specifically claiming there were no children (http://www.nitrosyncretic.com/rah/rahfaq.html#0106) As someone who has researched this particular topic pretty thoroughly (even to the point of discovering Heinlein's involvement in EPIC well before it was published in reliable sources)... ...I would posit you have to allow that wife number 1. is still a complete mystery. Literally. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen P. S. Never mind William Proxmire, a shot of T.B. vaccine on a navy ship, Heinlein could have been a congress-critter if just Konrad Henlein hadn't been making headlines in the Sudetenlands as a tiny fuhrer the particular election year Robert A. Heinlein decided to stand up for election. ___ 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 smart people fail to share
Ray Saintonge wrote: When sourcing and original research rules start to exemplify a phobia about being wrong the system has come around to bite us in the ass. The trickster/raven has come home to roost. My personal bugbear is cite tags on facts that are attributed in plaintext rather than within ref tags. In my opinion when the work or the expert voicing her opinion is independently notable in itself/herself, attributing in plain text is not an unreasonable burden on the readability of the text. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Climate change on Wikipedia
Nathan wrote: On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 3:52 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: Mmmm, no. William's fuse is shorter than ideal. Obvious enough to many people, and over the years there has been much provocation over at the climate change articles. Now what was that word they use on the Internet for a provocateur? Charles Sprite? Spriggan? Boggart? Ogre? Hmm... Can't quite put my finger on it. This may not be the best time to bring this up, but I am sort of annoyed that perfectly fine mannered (relatively speaking) mythological beings have been smeared in this manner. Vandals being used as a smearword for folks who show disrespect for places where they pass through, is really borderline understandable, though I have it on good authority that they are getting a serious bum rap on that deal. The historical Vandals were nothing like what their name has been put to carry as significance. The Trolls of mythology, however, totally got the shaft. In internet terms. Trolling was always a verb, originally, and never a pronoun; and it referred to techniques of fishing. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] The Internet? Bah!
David Gerard wrote: 2009/11/17 Nathan nawr...@gmail.com: On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 1:07 PM, stevertigo stv...@gmail.com wrote: http://www.newsweek.com/id/106554 Linked and digged from a current article. Quite chuckleworthy. Now that it is what it is, any idiot can look back and say it was obvious what would happen. Far more people got it wrong 15-20 years ago, and I guess its good for a chuckle (especially since this particular writer was so condescending) - but hindsight is as perfect as foresight is rare. And at least Clifford Stoll actually knew what the heck he was talking about, unlike most media pontificators at the time. - d. Amusingly enough I met both Clifford Stoll and Stallman when they were in the same weight class (I think that dates me). (RMS has gained some weight, lol) I shook Stallmans hand in Boston in that early year when even Marvin Minsky attended a Worldcon, and asked him when HURD would come out of the closet. RMS came out with his classic line of not owning crystal balls... Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] fictional categories
Ian Woollard wrote: On 04/11/2009, Steve Bennett stevag...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 12:37 PM, Ian Woollard ian.wooll...@gmail.com wrote: Schroedinger's cat very definitely is fictitious; it's not an experiment you can actually do and get an alive/dead cat that you can actually see, you would get either an alive cat, or a dead cat. I agree with the statement that it should not be in that category. Essentially, because schrodinger's cat is not a cat. So a tree that falls in the wood, without nobody recording it isn't really a tree. Schrodinger's cat is a fictitious cat that is in the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment. It is fictitious because it is not a factual cat; it is countrafactual. There is no notable fiction in which Schrodinger's cat features heavily, for example. This is actually very prominently false. Just off hand I can think of Fred Pohl using it quite prominently, in his Heechee universe stories, and there are most likely any number or very more crucial uses of the particular metaphor or its more corporeal instantiations. In fact it would not be grossly unfair to say that featuring Schrodingers cat in science fiction was more of a rite of passage, rather than a perversion. It is notably in Schroedinger's cat thought experiment. That's what a thought experiment is; it's a made up story about what would happen if you did X,Y,Z which is used to illuminate aspects of physics. Sorry for replying on such a silly issue, but I too am just human... (and not feline)... Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] So what does Flagged Revs feel like?
Gregory Maxwell wrote: On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 6:20 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: If you want to know how Flagged Revisions feels from an unprivileged position, go to Wikinews and fix typos. I just did this on http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Geelong_win_2009_Australian_Football_League_Grand_Final - check the history. I'm not an admin or reviewer on en:wn. What did it feel like? Curiously unsatisfying. The fix not going live immediately left me wondering just when it would - five minutes/? An hour? A day? It felt nothing like editing a wiki - it felt like I'd submitted a form to a completely opaque bureaucracy for review at their leisure. UI fail. There is no reason for you to know or care that your edit isn't being displayed to the general public. It's being displayed to you, it's being displayed to all the other editors, it's being displayed to anons who click a link to see the latest. I hope you won't feel bad about me saying that I most deeply and soundly disagree with the above view. The thing that -- at the very least used to -- attracts newbies to wikipedia is the positive astonishment factor: 'What, I just edited this web-page, and everybody all over the world saw the result immediately! That can't be right, there has to be a catch somewhere! Wow, there isn't! That is what *really* happens! Awesome!' For this reason, I won't ever agree that being visible for in house 'editors' or casual folks sophisticated enough to check and see if there are new non-approved edits, as a default, is good universally, rather than as a last resort. It's our own damn fault for making the UI say the equivalent of NOW YOU MUST WAIT WHILE OUR TRIBE OF ELDERS SCRUTINIZES YOUR PATHETIC EDIT … we don't have to do it this way, and we shouldn't do it this way. The process can and should be made mostly invisible to casual editors. Like I said, you don't want the process to be 'invisible' to casual editors, you want it to be *transparently open*. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Notability and ski resorts (was: Newbie and not-so-newbie biting)
Andrew Gray wrote: I think a good analogy here is explicit general history articles. We view it as quite normal to go from [[History of something]] and then, when it gets too large, split it out into [[History of something]] * [[History of something in the Bronze Age]] I know this is mildly on a tangent, but I find it interesting nevertheless... Wouldn't that most likely be: * [[Prehistory history of something in the Bronze Age]] ? Or something like that... IOW, doesn't the Bronze age kind-of straddle the boundary between prehistory and history? * [[History of something in the Middle Ages]] * [[History of something in World War I]] etc. PS. Feel free to moderate me if this is found to be too far from being of the topic of this list ;-D Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Another Media and Wikipedia blackout on NYT reporter in Afghanistan
George Herbert wrote: On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 6:54 PM, Bryan Derksen bryan.derk...@shaw.ca wrote: At the very least consensus can't be said to be obvious on this, IMO. The we should conceal information that could potentially harm people argument didn't hold much weight in the recently-concluded Rorschach Wars. There is no reasonable comparison between potential reduced effectiveness of psychological tests and potentially provoking the beheading of a human being. It may not actually be as clear cut as you assume. Psychological tests may for instance be crucial in deciding issues in criminal cases, and as such may have a very remote chance of affecting life and death issues. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Another Media and Wikipedia blackout on NYT reporter in Afghanistan
David Gerard wrote: I think there's actually not much we need to do. The most recent case was entirely covered by BLP: be extremely conservative about potentially extremely harmful information. We're an encyclopedia, not investigative journalism - we have wikinews for that. If we wait a few days until we're absolutely sure and there are really good and reliable sources, that's fine. Once it's all over the media, it's not our problem; when it isn't, it shouldn't be in the article. People shouting censorship! have mistaken the encyclopedia for a venue for investigative journalism. I do agree that it is a bit more than a bit silly to expect wikipedia to not only surprise occasionally with scooping other more established news organizations, but in fact be there before all the other major news orgs with the full nitty gritty. However the source of why critics of these two stories about suppression have focused on wikipedia, likely stems from the fact our articles edit histories are out there for most people to see, if they have a bit of savvy. The story would almost certainly be different if most major newsorganisations out there had a public paper-trail of what decisions about which stories were made in the newsrooms at which time, and who was on which side about which story... Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Another Media and Wikipedia blackout on NYT reporter in Afghanistan
Keith Old wrote: Folks, From the Huffington Post: Last November, David Rohde was kidnapped in Afghanistan and held for several months, before managing to escape with his interpreter. Media around the world, at the request of the *Times*, kept silent about the kidnapping, and later drew criticism for this from some quarters. It has just happened again -- with my magazine, *Editor Publisher*, among those not writing about it -- in the case of another well-known *New York Times*reporter in Afghanistan, but for a much shorter period of time. Stephen Farrell, with his aide Sultan Munadi, were seized on Saturday and freed just hours ago in a daring raid by British commandos. Munadi and a commando were killed. Farrell is fine. I saw some indications that Farrell had been snatched in my regular Web searches for media scoops over the weekend. As in the case of Rohde, a handful of not prominent blogs, along with very scattered media abroad (in their original language) reported that something was up, but confirmation was slight, given the silence of the *Times* and U.S. military. This went on for two days, as I kept searching -- and finding that, once again, the media apparently were not rushing anything into print or online. Also, as in the case of Rohde, I noticed that Farrell's Wikipedia entry had been scrubbed -- some user kept trying to post the kidnapping and the news kept getting deleted, before the entry was put under protected status and the cat and mouse game stopped. You can see it in the history there along with complaints of this censorship crap occurring again. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/again-media-and-wikipedia_b_280233.html BTW, I think TFA is remarkably even handed about how it describes what happened. This doesn't surprise me personally since I have read Greg Mitchell's book The Campaign of the Century, which I recommend strongly for anyone who is interested in how it came to be that politics and the media became to be so closely entwined, or anyone wanting to just get an amazingly wide canvas snapshot of both the world at large and California of 1934 vintage in particular. The book recounts Upton Sinclair's attempt to run for governor of CA. Arguably that year was epochal in the development of media-politics, as the studios really took a unified stance to oppose that run. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if Greg Mitchell didn't have to battle with his own BLP issues when writing that book. While I can't prove that Greg Mitchell knew of Robert A. Heinlein's heavy involvement in the EPIC movement at that time, it would be quite astonishing if he was not aware of it, considering he notes much thinner connections to lesser Science Fiction authors and EPIC and Sinclair. Heinlein was still alive at that time and very adamant that his involvement with EPIC was not made explicitly public, at least in his own writings. I can well imagine that Heinlein or his wife Ginny might have asked Mitchell to with-hold mentioning Heinlein in his book on BLP grounds. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Positives to publicity
FT2 wrote: The reason for this is, when Flagged Revisions got into the press last week, a number of sources reported that Wikipedia would be recruiting 20,000 unpaid expert editors as staff to check the articles I am actually curious as to where precisely did they pull that particular figure of 20 000 from. It looks awfully specific, like somebody might have actually used that number in some context or another, and the media just completely fumbled at understanding what the number referred to. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Annoying exonyms (was: hatnotes)
Carcharoth wrote: On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 1:36 AM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: snip You silly goose. Don't you realize that when we all have brain implants that retain a quintabyte that the internet won't exist at all. We'll be in constant streaming twitter mode all the time. There won't be articles per se, and you won't get input from a single page, you'll get continuous input from a million sources simultaneously in twitt-bits. look of abject horror I wouldn't be so horrified if that didn't sound so plausible. Is it too late to try the 'Culture' route? (Iain M. Banks) Banks' is the utopian version. The dystopian/nihilist version is the One True multiverse of John Barnes. I really hate the fact that the author I love above all others wrote such a disgusting, horrifying, and inescapably compelling vision of the future. And yes, I know that 'Culture' is only utopian if you ignore the fnords. Abject apologies for contributing to the worrisome trend of this channel to descend to non-wikipedia related non sequiturs, but there are times when one simply has to let ones pop cult. erudition get the better of oneself. wide smirk Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Annoying hatnotes
David Gerard wrote: 2009/8/21 Tony Sidaway tonysida...@gmail.com: On 8/19/09, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: Does anyone else get annoyed by certain hatlinks? I don't see the problem here. Be bold and remove crap, whether pointless hatnotes or anything else. It's an editorial issue. The two-item disambig is one workaround, though more than two items is nice. To be perfectly frank, many English Wikipedia articles look way too busy. Not just with front matter but with end matter and many other kinds of ancillary tables and charts, which are genuinely useful all, in their intended circumstances, but do have a visual effect -- regrettably -- not a million miles away from those caused by advertisements. If I were a cartoonist, and had to draw a caricature of a wikipedia article, it wouldn't look anything like wikipetan, but would be reminiscent of something like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Onemanband.jpg There is absolutely no chance of a silver bullet to fix this. The best we can do is to be aware of the issue, and keep reminding ourselves that it is going to ever be a trade-off; and a huge problem is that people want cookie-cutter solutions, but also regrettably wish to mold the cookie- cutters around the most monstrous cases, not the cases where applying the rigid framework is way too draconian. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Policies, notability et al, was Request to Wikipedians for BBC...
wjhon...@aol.com wrote: I submit that there is no such language in any of our policies. If there is, then whoever wrote it has no clue what we meant when we were discussing tertiary sources many years ago. Tertiary sources are just summaries of notable secondary sources. So they quite obviously provide notability, in fact perhaps the ultimate form of it, trouncing secondaries quite roundly, since they in-fact pick the most notable topics to report out of those! Will Johnson Out of curiosity... would you class Slashdot and Digg as tertiary sources ? Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Board Elections
Gwern Branwen wrote: On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 10:51 PM, Casey Brownli...@caseybrown.org wrote: Keep in mind that that's not a requirement, he's well within his own rights to not post a picture. And given majorly's link, I'd say that's a canny move on his part! I'll take that as a compliment on my campaigning acumen, I think! Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] In development--BLP task force
Bod Notbod wrote: On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 6:38 AM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: Of course, and that's why we have other rules which moderate the other rules. And the BLP policy itself is a rule. However if a piece of evidence is both verifiable, and widely reported and yet negative about a person, and that person vociferously objects to it's inclusion... than what? That is the problem here. We should not white-wash a piece of negative, verifiable, widely reported bit simply because it might affect a person, or even if they claim it does or has. We're not the nicey-nice patrol and shouldn't be forced to become it. We're encyclopediasts and sometimes you have to say that Hitler was bad. Hitler's a BLP? Man, my education sucks. I know there are those who would claim that even Elvis is dead. ;-) No matter, Wikipedia knows. (taps nose) [...]Hitler was in Shambhala, an underground centre in Antarctica (formerly at the North Pole and Tibet), where he was in contact with the Hyperborean gods and from whence he would someday emerge with a fleet of UFOs to lead the forces of light (the Hyperboreans, sometimes associated with Vril) over the forces of darkness (inevitably including, for Serrano, the Jews who follow Jehovah) in a last battle and thus inaugurating a Fourth Reich. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esoteric_Nazism#Miguel_Serrano Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] In development--BLP task force
Bod Notbod wrote:
On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 2:20 PM, Steve Bennettstevag...@gmail.com wrote:
And:
John Smith is an engineer best known for his award winning [[John
Smith Bridge]]. In 1999 he admitted to being a prostitute.[1]
{{bio-stub}}
Well, I guess you could invoke Wikipedia:UNDUE at that point :o)
Sorry about injecting real examples to such a wonderful
discussion of hypotheticals, but how would you each deal
with an article like [[Leslie Fish]]?
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Rorschach wars continue
Ken Arromdee wrote: On Fri, 31 Jul 2009, Ray Saintonge wrote: So what if there have been tens of thousands of papers on the Rorschachs! The geocentric universe was impervious to criticism for much longer. If the tests are truly scientific they will be just as scientific when exposed to open criticism. It's not our role to protect the incomes of those psychologists who are in denial about their game of follow-the-leader. NPOV is contrary to such occult practices. I think that AGF requires that we take the psychologists at their word when they claim that they want the pictures removed because they cause harm, rather than to help their income. Methinks that posting was a smiley facey wanting. I sincerely hope you weren't in dead earnest. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] If anyone ever says Wikipedia is too deletionist
geni wrote: Not that I am in the slightest manner interested in any type of pet being added to wikipedia, but is this decision transitive? That is, are (presidential/head of state) pets of any nation notable on the English language wikipedia, Not sure if he actually had any famous pets, but I have it on good authority that Hitler was kind to dogs. Aargh! Self-inflicted Godwinning... More seriously - relatively speaking - I think we actually do have quite a few emperors and the like favorite rides as articles of their own. Granted horse are not generally considered pets. If we don't have [[Bukefalos]] etc. as articles; I, for one, am appalled. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Request for help: Strategic Planning
Casey Brown wrote: Was there something missing that you noticed? Not really on-topic, but I couldn't let it go un-remarked-upon that that is of course one of the classic one-liners, whether deliberate or not. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Rorschach wars continue
Ray Saintonge wrote: Ken Arromdee wrote: It's too bad that the people saying that publishing the inkblots is harmful are professionals instead of New York Times editors. If it was the New York Times, they would have been unceremoniously deleted without even a WP:OFFICE. Does this dispute put us in league with the Scientologists? On this issue, the Scientologists can swing either way. They can go with the old doctrine of an enemy of my enemy is my friend, or they can figure: Okay, we hate the psychologists and all, but we gotta stand shoulder to shoulder with them, when it comes to revealing trade secrets. We do want Xenu to only be revealed for those who are ready for it? Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] a site that falls on its face when tested
WereSpielChequers wrote: I'd say it is a site that falls on its face when tested. I ran several searches in it for minor articles in Wikipedia, in some cases the ads that came up were relevant but there was no relevant information. Then I tried their Easter Island article, which in my view gives more info than we do on some of the fringe theories The stones were moved from quarry to ahu using ancient secrets known to the Lemurians, perhaps involving levitation or the secret for liquifying stone. And omits some of the info we have as to how archaeologists believe the statues were carved. Well, just to be fair, most of the archaelogists theories have nearly zero corroborating evidence in support, merely being OR by people supposedly better positioned to argue the case. That is to say archeologists beliefs are supported by very scant genuine evidence, just by educated hunches, which should'nt be the the thing that wikipedia reifies any more than tinfoil hattery. The standard on reporting should be the widespreadedness of theories, precisely because the most widespread theories that are based on fallacious premises should have as reasonable and authoritative rebuttal as possible at a website as reliable as possible (in some cases that would be Wikipedia). Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Copyright question
Carcharoth wrote: Most of that is the sale of contemporary copyrighted photographs (by living photographers earning money from their trade). But some of that will be the commercial sale of scans of PD stuff that gets free culture people up in arms. The root of this issue is the commercial exploitation of the public domain. My view is that if people are prepared to spend time, money and effort in finding, collecting, keeping and conserving public domain material, and then scanning it and digitising it, then there is nothing to prevent people selling the end product of such labours. And people will pay for that service. Whether it is morally right to exploit the public domain (by selling such scans for money), and whether it is morally right to appropriate the scans made by others (by insisting the scans are also public domain), is something I can see arguments for on both sides of this divide. What is most striking to my mind in this issue of use of images, is how the status quo differs from that with regard to _texts_. With texts, what you have are Project Gutenberg, The Internet Archive, Wikisource etc. pretty much all of them with some form of copyleft, or at least not asserting silly Copyprotect rationales (total PD in the case of PG, with merely the proviso of *not* attributing if you don't include the full disclaimer of the license) I do know there have been cases of good quality scans of texts being hoarded, or being totally disallowed in the past, such as the case of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but I don't quite see them as being relevant in this context. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Copyright question
FT2 wrote: I just got curious and read up on Bridgeman vs. Corel. To my complete surprise, though heard in the US, it cites UK precedent (Privy Council, House of Lords) in forming its opinion -- it is /not/ purely a case based upon US law. It turns out the case was heard under UK law (!). It cites as authorities a Privy Council case ruled by the UK Law Lords, *Interlego v Tyco Industries*(on which we have an article): (snip some very interesting stuff, well worth reading from the parent in this thread) Given that Bridgeman has been cited as a purely US based precedent, this could be quite a major change in my understanding of the legal position :) Purely on grounds of curiosity (never mind the legal niceties) personally I would like to know what the photographer who actually was there in the gallery, pulling the trigger of the camera for NPG thinks today about all this stuff going on about the work she/he is/was doing. Did they think they were engaged in a noble act without revenue streams flickering in the back of the retinas of the people who actually hired that photographer for the job. That is, if one were to even provisionally stipulate, purely arguendo, that there was even a vanishingly small possibility that the NPG's case had even a rickety leg to stand on, what would the view of the author whose creativity the NPG is claiming to use as a justification for trying to Dredd Scott works already escaped into PD, back south into Copyright Protected dominion, be? Did the photographer get payed a proper artists dues? Or did they do this ever so creative work in largely conveyor-belt fashion, without much thought into what it was precisely that they were *reproducing*? Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Copyright question
Carcharoth wrote: Remember that the number of (highly skilled) staff required to operate that sort of process may not show up on the NPG payroll, as they may contract that sort of work out to others. Granted without a question. But that just begs the question. If they are claiming a creative act in producing the image, and not being satisfied in acknowledging they are just copying it, is it not really even best practices for them to acknowledge the authorship to the person doing the creativity? Personally I think aggressive approaches by them for some purported creative function they have provided, when not even supplying the name who might have standing to declare their creative contribution was being impinged upon, is frankly ludicrous! And my guess is that the photographer or scanners or other people paid to do this were doing nothing more nor less than as professional a job as they could do, to earn the money they were contracted to be paid. Not everyone has noble thoughts about free culture and freeing public domain material, running through their minds all the time. Just being professional doesn't mean you aren't being creative. I want to be very clear about that. But even if you are being very inventive in the solutions you employ in producing a good and professional _result_; the result would in most cases aim to be faithful to the original image, and not to impart some creative spark from the forehead of the photographer themselves, which would forever mark the image as the work of that and no other fungible photographer, I rather suspect. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Copyright question
Carcharoth wrote: Not everyone has noble thoughts about free culture and freeing public domain material, running through their minds all the time. I hope you will forgive me. I know that is likely to be a brain fart of the type that I personally suffer from more than most, but I did smile at the thought of freeing public domain material. :-D Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Grape Lane (euph.)
Tim Starling wrote: I suspect frequent editors of Wikipedia have long since become desensitized to obscene language, thanks to the constant stream of it that gets inserted into articles as vandalism, and written all over their user talk pages as revenge for reverting that vanadalism. I for one enjoy reading about history and etymology, and have read articles on obscene words and euphemism sequences with interest. A good recommendation on those lines, is our article on the man who coined the phrase Make love, not war. That phrase is not all he is known for. [[Gershon Legman]]s brick sized work on dirty jokes is one of the most cherished treasures I found as a pre-teen, while playing hookie from school, and spending leisurely days combing through the bookshelves of the Helsinki University Library. The featured article choices that really rile me are the pop culture trivia, like individual episodes from TV series. But whatever offends you about a feature article choice, regular Wikipedians probably know that there's not much point trying to convince Raul654 of anything. +1 Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Bible websites
Charles Matthews wrote: The use of transclusion by section on Wikisource would make it technically simple to bring the existing verses (or chapters) together on pages for parallel reading. Of course it would be a lot of work ... and I suppose it should be done chapter-wise. (Verses are at best a convenience - chapter divisions have I think a wider acceptance, and are at least historically older.) The really glaring exception to the chapter divisions tradition being hard and fast fixed is Book of John. In that case there is a scholarly argument that not only are the chapters not unambiguously divided, but that there is plausible evidence that the order of textual passages has been re-arranged. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] News agencies are not RSs
geni wrote: 2009/6/29 Gwern Branwen gwe...@gmail.com: “We were really helped by the fact that it hadn’t appeared in a place we would regard as a reliable source,” he said. “I would have had a really hard time with it if it had.” ... The question is though is is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pajhwok_Afghan_News genuinely not a reliable source? If it isn't perhaps it should be removed from the four other articles that use it as a source. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] News agencies are not RSs
Sam Blacketer wrote: On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 4:55 PM, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/6/29 Gwern Branwen gwe...@gmail.com: “We were really helped by the fact that it hadn’t appeared in a place we would regard as a reliable source,” he said. “I would have had a really hard time with it if it had.” ... The question is though is is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pajhwok_Afghan_News genuinely not a reliable source? What was that underlying principle which was codified after the Brian Peppers deletion debates? Ah yes, 'basic human dignity', now to be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Basic_dignity. This case is more about basic common sense. If someone's life may be endangered by what is on their wikipedia biography but is not widely reported elsewhere, I would expect that anyone sensible would find some way of applying policy so as to keep the life-endangering stuff off it. And that would take precedence over secondary arguments over whether obscure news agencies were reliable. Apparently the news agency is the top of its local area (Afghanistan), so how you spin that into obscure is frankly beyond me. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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 slags off Palmerston North
Ken Arromdee wrote: It's like a BLP except that the subject isn't a person. The same problems come up--ultimately, if a city can't attract professionals because of a bad Wikipedia article, it's still real people being hurt in real-life ways by us. Just not one at a time. It's also like BLP in that the city's marginally notable and probably isn't on a lot of watchlists. Maybe we should expand the BLP concept to include organizations, cities, etc.? Like BLP, it's most needed when the group is small. There won't be Biography of Living Organization problems on Coca-Cola any more than there will be BLP problems on Bill Gates. But BLO problems on small cities (or small companies, etc.) where the Wikipedia entry is the top search result, can wreak havoc. I would call it AOSO, or Articles on Organizations Still in Operation. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] NY Times: Wired Editor Apologizes for Copying from Wikipedia in New Book
Steve Bennett wrote: On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 8:16 AM, Durovanadezhda.dur...@gmail.com wrote: Any suggestions what to do about this? After my recent perusals of reuses of my images, here's my take: No one is ever going to pay attention to, let alone understand, let alone respect, let alone follow the CC-BY or GFDL requirement for credit. Soon, we will stop asking for it. In order for it to happen, we would have to: a) Make the requirement really really prominent b) Respect it ourselves c) Vehemently complain in a very public manner when a few individuals fail to do so. when d) we have far bigger fish to fry. I think ultimately most organisations divide media into two categories: properietary or free. We can certainly label all our material as proprietary and tell people not to reuse it. Or we can tell people they can reuse it. But our message of please reuse it, but is not going to get through. And why do you care anyway? Vanity? Curiosity? Is it that important? Is a little piece of text on some idiot's webpage the difference between you contributing your time next time and not? Is the gratification of your name in cyberspace your primary motivation for producing useful free images? (These questions are rhetorical and deliberately inflammatory. Take the bait with caution.) I won't take the bait. I will throw in a larger and tastier bait into the water instead. ;-) Clearly we cannot take in GFDL only content any more, but to what extent if any, should we prevent people from adding in content previously published under CC-BY-SA? Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] NY Times: Wired Editor Apologizes for Copying from Wikipedia in New Book
Steve Bennett wrote: And why do you care anyway? Vanity? Curiosity? Is it that important? Is a little piece of text on some idiot's webpage the difference between you contributing your time next time and not? Is the gratification of your name in cyberspace your primary motivation for producing useful free images? Heh, thinking about it, I *will* swallow the bait. :-) Let me tell you a real story from my own life... But before I do that, let me sort of eviscerate a bit of the rhetoric there above. Primary motivation is a bit of a red herring in terms of phrasing. There is absolutely no need for something to be a primary motivation, for it to be a net plus when put into the scales as to it's utility. ...but now to my tale: I committed the cardinal sin of writing a little bit about the school I was attending at the time, albeit as staff, not as a student. And in my defence the school was one with a special mission (The Natural Sciences, to be clear). One of the teachers in the school brought up the wikipedia article and who were in its history fully unprompted by me, while we and some other people were at the coffee table. I sort of mentioned the last editor she mentioned, was me. I did not make my initial edit to the article because I thought somebody in the school would be impressed, but when she clearly showed she was sort of impressed to find out the editor was me, I have to admit, I do feel a sort of heightened responsibility for that article and am definitely motivated to look after it. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] NY Times: Wired Editor Apologizes for Copying from Wikipedia in New Book
David Gerard wrote: 2009/6/24 Durova nadezhda.dur...@gmail.com: Well, taking a first stab at this. Here's my letter to Wired: Per the recent New York Times admission that one of your editors plagiarized content from Wikipedia uncredited, I respectfully request credit for media work of mine that Wired has reproduced without credit. Restoration is painstaking work on behalf of the cultural commons and well worth encouraging and crediting. It's a different question whether it can use the same big stick of copyright that CC or GFDL can. Possibly not in the US, per Bridgeman vs Corel. (Though any actual statement on the subject would have to be in court.) I would expect that asking nicely and encouraging credit of restorers is the best that can be done at this stage, and that it strikes me as worth doing. I'm not entirely sure that I'd agree that not crediting a restorer (when crediting the original) would count as plagiarism. That's a different kettle of fish, I think. I agree. But on the moral rights angle, it does breach the inalienable right of paternity to a work. Paternity is there even for modifications. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Google Starts Including Wikipedia on Its News Site
David Gerard wrote: 2009/6/22 Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com: DG, lighten up on Noam Cohen a bit - he seems more disposed to be fair to us than when I met him in Taipei in 2007, and seemed surprised that any Wikipedians were actually, like, serious. His point was factual even if you may think it is misdirection. I took it as a direct message of his employer's stance. It's 100% indicative of the industry stance. Have you seen this *batshit insane* bullshit? (forwarded to me by Mike Peel): http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1storycode=43823c=1 The Newspaper Licensing Agency has announced it is to begin regulating its customers' use of hyperlinks to newspaper articles on the web. These people were trying to email me bills for WMUK to pay for the use of newspaper links at all on Wikipedia. I told them to try the Foundation. I think that falls squarely into the category of You couldn't make this stuff up! Incredible, simply incredible. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Google Starts Including Wikipedia on Its News Site
Charles Matthews wrote: David Gerard wrote: 2009/6/22 Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com: DG, lighten up on Noam Cohen a bit - he seems more disposed to be fair to us than when I met him in Taipei in 2007, and seemed surprised that any Wikipedians were actually, like, serious. His point was factual even if you may think it is misdirection. I took it as a direct message of his employer's stance. So we should be understanding ... It's 100% indicative of the industry stance. Have you seen this *batshit insane* bullshit? (forwarded to me by Mike Peel): http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1storycode=43823c=1 Interesting. They're attempting to raise money by circulating people saying you should send us money. We should try that. Oh ... Category error. We aren't billing anyone. Donations are a completely different animal. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Hi there, everybody!
Fred Bauder wrote: Hey! I'm new here! Just joined today! I'm known as I dream of horses on Wikipedia. My real name is Emily, but a lot of people call me Em for short. I am 19 years old. I like music, particularly rock, and instrumental music. I also like to exercise, and to fidget. I am a lacto-ovo vegetarian. I am in the uncategorized and stub sorting wikiproject. i have also recent changes and new pages patrolled. However, I am becoming more interested in the social aspect of wikipedia, which is why I joined the list! Would anyone like to introduce themselves? Is there any kind of mailing list etiquette I should be aware of? Emily Emily, You sound like a wonderful addition to our community. One of the problems we might have (others may disagree) is that the social side of Wikipedia is somewhat underdeveloped. That is certainly a legitimate topic of discussion on this list: how we might make Wikipedia a friendlier, more welcoming place. I first found Wikipedia in 2002, back in the days when articles like Colorado had not even been started. There was this guy, Larry Sanger, who while not in charge, had a lot of clout. And Jimmy Wales, was very hands on, following developments closely. I've posted on the mailing lists quite a lot, nasty habit, takes up way too much time. I still edit a little bit, although most of my Wikipedia work these days is on a list unblock-en-l which tries to handle requests to bypass blocks. It sounds like you are off to a good start. Fred I agree. Emily, I first found wikipedia in April of 2003, at a point when a cadre of old hands had already developed, and for a very long time kept being very deferential and apologetic and even when I thought somebody was being very rude, usually went to other people to ask if it was okay for them to be that way. The first time I really got more seriously involved with wikipedia was when Tim Starling did an analysis of peoples editing patterns and found that I and 19 other people on the wiki had edits pretty much around the clock, in each hour of the day. (For me the reason was that I had just been layed off, and my previous job was one that kept me at odd hours, so I had developed a completely mixed up daily routine of sleep cycles), so Tim asked if we 20 could be sort of paladins of making sure the Single Server (yes there was a time when wikipedia ran on a single computer , Virginia - even a time it didn't even have a computer of its own), was always up and running. It was my exciting task to in fact be the first person of us to make the alert that it had fallen - and later an embarrassing task to infact make a transcontinental phone call to inform the same to Jimbo himself, only to realize later that I had woken him up in bed 6 AM in the morning (timezones, ouch). Since then, I have tried to be a lubricant where I can, and grit where that is needed. Currently I have been most active in doing translations and localisation work for the finnish language MediaWiki messages. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Hi there, everybody!
geni wrote: 2009/6/18 Emily Monroe bluecalioc...@me.com: That is certainly a legitimate topic of discussion on this list: how we might make Wikipedia a friendlier, more welcoming place. So, not a place to socialize, but nonetheless a welcoming place to be? Socialising generally takes place though the likes of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IRC For sufficiently vague definitions of the word socializing. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Docs look to Wikipedia for condition info: Manhattan Research
Thomas Dalton wrote: 2009/5/28 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com: Actually my life experience using wikipedia for self medication does not bear that out. There have been situtations where I was in dire straits, and without a doctor within easy reach, where simply consulting wikipedia provided me with the necessary information of which medicines I had been prescribed for completely different ailments, was a multipurpose drug workable in the situation I found myself. and that is a fact. I am sure there are phone-line services I could have consulted, but wikipedia worked ok. And my grandmother is 100 years old and has smoked 40 a day. _ Touche! :-DDD Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Docs look to Wikipedia for condition info: Manhattan Research
Thomas Dalton wrote: 2009/5/26 wjhon...@aol.com: Actually I think providing dosage information would *avoid* much more harm than it would cause. Most people use books on drugs to check up on their prescriptions and educate themselves. If the doctors mistakenly prescribed 200mg tablets when the standard dosage is 20mg, then I'm sure you'd want the person to be able to know that. I would hope the pharmacist that filled the prescription would spot something like that. I'm not sure people second guessing their doctors will have a net benefit... Actually my life experience using wikipedia for self medication does not bear that out. There have been situtations where I was in dire straits, and without a doctor within easy reach, where simply consulting wikipedia provided me with the necessary information of which medicines I had been prescribed for completely different ailments, was a multipurpose drug workable in the situation I found myself. and that is a fact. I am sure there are phone-line services I could have consulted, but wikipedia worked ok. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Knol - Our first major scandel
Anthony wrote: Free licenses are generally written from the point of view that modifications to works constitute derivative works, and not works of joint authorship. Either is certainly possible. The key legal question is whether the authors intended to collaborate on a single work (Lennon/McCartney), or if one author created a work which was then modified by another author (a movie created from a screenplay). It's by no means clear which better fits what happens on Wikipedia. I could see things going either way, but considering the use of the GFDL I'd lean toward believing that the *intent* of most authors was for each subsequent edition to be a derivative work, and not a work of joint authorship. And that's what matters, the intent of the authors (unfortunately, some authors probably intended different from other authors). Purely on the question of what extra-wiki artistic analogue would be most apposite to the current state of affairs, might I propose: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_of_the_Rising_Sun Wikipedia is very much jamming on each others contributions, with participants being variously incensed or exhilarated by others appropriating, re-using, re-invigorating old content. Personally I am glad that very few of my early contributions have remained in any form at all as live content. What supplanted them has been much better. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] We've been overtaken.
Thomas Dalton wrote: 2009/4/22 Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net: Thomas Dalton wrote: 2009/4/22 Ray Saintonge: That's not entirely true. Very few people's livelihoods depends on it, but we do have some paid staff. I'm glad to see you took the bait. :-) Does the paid staff exist to support the volunteer project, or is it the other way around? When essentially volunteer organizations feel obliged to protect the jobs of their paid staff by promoting monopolistic practices they become anti-competitive. It's difficult to know when the line is crossed. Of course it is that way around, no one would question that. If the paid staff are no longer required to achieve our goals then they will be made redundant, but that doesn't mean those staff aren't dependent on their jobs for their livelihoods (hopefully they wouldn't have too much difficultly finding new jobs, though). I am sure that if Larry Sanger is reading this mailing list, you just made him wince. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Lies, damned lies, and statistics
Anthony wrote: Agreed, but the question this thread came from was implicitly equating popularity with success: Will Citizendium become a top 1000 website within the next five years? heheh This raises a burning curiosity in my lower cogitative faculties, in finding out who the top websites holding on to placements 9996; 9997; 9998; , and 1000 1001 are at present... ( Wednesday, 22. 4. 2009 )? Heehee. Jussi-Ville Heiskanen P.S. ...and does anyone consider those sites parts of the zeitgeist? ___ 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] An open letter to Jimmy Wales
Sheldon Rampton wrote: Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: Let's be clear that, especially after the failure of Nupedia to take off, Wikipedia's success was a surprise both to Sanger and Wales. Neither of them expected that this would happen and can therefore not take full or too much credit for it. The fact that they were surprised by its success does not mean that they don't deserve credit for it. History is full of ideas whose success surprised their creators. I'm sure the Beatles were surprised when they soared to the top of the music charts (especially after they had spent years grinding away with only modest success in Hamburg and Liverpool). I agree with the above, and in fact consider it a partial refutation of the views I myself floated previously in this thread, as far as it is an accurate characterization of what really happened (which I cannot judge). When Linus Torvalds released the first version of Linux, he had no way of knowing that it would take off the way it did. That doesn't mean the Beatles don't deserve credit for their music or Torvalds doesn't deserve credit for Linux. This is a more interesting case though. Minix did not take off. Somewhere along the way, well after the first version of Linux, Torvalds displayed a form of agility that Tannenbaum clearly appears to have lacked. And that was nothing about the initial idea, but all about what followed, each decision along the route. If anything, the failure of Nupedia shows that Sanger and Wales deserve *more* credit, not less. Rather than giving up on the idea of an online encyclopedia after their first attempt, they persevered, retooled and came up with an alternative approach that did work. Of course they had no way of knowing what a success it would become. They got lucky, and a huge community of other people has contributed in various ways. But they still deserve credit for the original innovation. This brings to mind another point I have been mulling over... To what extent were Wales and/or Sanger in fact coming up with an idea out of nothing? And in fact was the idea ever an alternative approach (until it was abundantly clear that Nupedia would never pan out), rather than a complementary one? In fact; and I realize I am getting into really bold and speculative territory here, which might get me into some trouble here, if people don't realize I am merely just speculating... how much, if at all, was the creation of the scratchpad influenced by the wildly more freewheeling GNUpedia project of Richard M. Stallman? Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] An open letter to Jimmy Wales
Brian wrote: I say this because I get the feeling that Wales and Sanger both believe there is a lot at stake here and at the same time I feel that they both take too much credit for what has happened. What they did is akin to writing an academic paper that first introduces an idea. They cannot claim authorship or credit for all of the publications that cite their initial publication - just the initial idea. It seems clear that this initial idea was authored and implemented by Sanger Wales (2001?). It would be a grave injustice to just cite Wales (2001) if the idea was only part, or not even, his. Since you frame your analogy in terms of scientific ideas, I think it would be much more accurate to put it in terms of Sanger Wales putting forth a later discredited theory, which however was tangential and part of the broader scientific thread of inquiry that eventually brought forth a tenable theory. To put it in more concrete terms, visualize Sanger Wales (2001) as being Lamarckianism. Something close, but not quite on point. Wikipedia, as it stands now, would be Darwinism, very well established as the most robust theory out there, but with important wrinkles that still need to be ironed out. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] An open letter to Jimmy Wales
Larry Sanger wrote: If you don't like my message, that's fine, but do not try to deny my right to get it out there. You Are JoeM, And I Claim My Five Pounds. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Jimbo interview
David Gerard wrote: 2009/4/4 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com: The only regret I personally have about that one, is that Jimbo missed the one big opening at a knock-out punch vis a vis citizendium. I don't. Citizendium can't harm Wikipedia, but Wikipedia could harm Citizendium. And that would be bad. I think you vastly over-rate the influence wikipedia has on anything. Specifically what influence words by Jimbo have. If pressed I would say that wikipedia does not gain from diminution of citizendium, even though it unfortunately won't even gain from having an effective loyal opposition in the form of citizendium. My judgment is that citizendium is vastly more dysfunctional than wikipedia, and as such largely irrelevant, even as a check and balance. I do however in the larger scheme of things think that having a credible fork of the English wikipedia at this stage of its life-cycle wouldn't be counter-productive, ghod knows somebody needs to keep it honest. But I have very little hope of that happening in a form that is genuine, and not just a mocker. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Jimbo interview
David Gerard wrote: http://www.bigoakinc.com/blog/interview-with-wikipedia-founder-jimmy-wales/ A very nice and reflective interview, waxing philosophical. The only regret I personally have about that one, is that Jimbo missed the one big opening at a knock-out punch vis a vis citizendium. Citizendiums narrative and engaging the reader style does in fact sound good in theory, and it could work, if the people writing citizendium were actually good at narratives; but in fact they are not. Mostly it falls flat in a stupendously comic fashion. Witness for instance the citizendium article on imaginary numbers. The narrative voice there grates as if there was a Sunday school supervisor reading text to wee bairns and smiling every three words, to emphasize that we so love this stuff, ain't it cute and cuddly, these imaginary numbers, stuff and golly-winks. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Microsoft kills Encarta
Nathan wrote: On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 4:45 AM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.comwrote: Agreed. Though is it annoying when you see people working on things to address this, and then see critics, who inspired some people, carry on criticising the meta-processes, instead of supporting efforts made to improve those meta-processes. Cynicism on your part, maybe, but please don't infect people trying to change things. There's change, and then there is the seeming of change. I don't think its cynical to oppose processes that appear to be helpful, but may actually set progress back. On the particular issue I assume you refer to, that Scott of all people opposes it should be a major cause for reflection on the part of those who support it. On the Library of Alexandria - the failure of a community to protect a knowledge resource is something that seems to take a form appropriate to the age. I don't think Wikipedia will find such a dramatic end, though; the problems we face are ultimately common ones. We're organized as an unlimited number of committees, and all the downfalls of governance by committee and direct democracy are thus multiplied. Even the founders of the U.S., as afraid as they were of the power of a monarch, understood the need for an executive leadership. Nathan ___ 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] Microsoft kills Encarta
On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 11:51 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: I think this casts a new interesting perspective on the decision by Microsoft to buy out powerset.com. I will be watching with interest, how they will develop that product, and whether they intend to incorporate it more extensively into their other product offerings. I have to admit I was skeptical initially when I heard powerset.com would be gobbled up. But should it turn out that Microsoft were to really seriously put effort into powerset.com, any relief Encyclopaedia Britannica may have gained from the reduction of competition for number two spot, may prove a little short lived. That is unless of course Microsoft/Powerset make some kind of deal with EB that they can use powersets semantic search engine on also EB product. Of course it is possible that MS have made the judgment that the whole sector is not good for them, but actually I would prefer to be hopeful that this means they would give more impetus to powerset now. I personally think powerset is currently the best interface for wikipedia, bar none. On the gripping hand, if developing powerset is not on the cards for Microsoft, perhaps now that they have decided to not hold onto encarta, they might be persuadable to sell powerset off, since holding on to it is not fending off a competitor to encarta. The question of course then would be, who would be willing to buy powerset off their hands? David Goodman replied: Britannica in its various incarnations and Encarta were excellent and useful reference works. Britannica remains useful. Encarta I think could have remained useful also. I really regret that we had a role in killing it. Why should we be pleased? The commercial organizations need to compete. We do not. The more encyclopedias the better. I think the answer is that we should be pleased that we became so much *more* useful. This is the _sentimentally_ sad, but logically *glorious* facet of competition as a concept. You won't find a world record holder in any sport that will not admit to a sadness when somebody surpasses theirs, and likely the fans of that particular sportsman will feel a pang in sympathy. But ask the sportsman squarely if they don't feel that their result being an inspiration for others to excel and surpass that result is and was a source of pride for them too, and I guarantee 99,9 % of record holders will say they genuinely thought their record was there to be broken, and as an inspiration for others to go faster, higher, stronger. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Microsoft kills Encarta
David Gerard wrote: [spotted by Mathias Schindler] http://encarta.msn.com/guide_page_FAQ/FAQ.html Important Notice: MSN Encarta to be Discontinued On October 31, 2009, MSN® Encarta® Web sites worldwide will be discontinued, with the exception of Encarta Japan, which will be discontinued on December 31, 2009. Additionally, Microsoft will cease to sell Microsoft Student and Encarta Premium software products worldwide by June 2009. We understand that Encarta users may have questions regarding this announcement so we have prepared this list of questions and answers below. Please keep reading if you would like more information about these changes to Encarta. - d. I think this casts a new interesting perspective on the decision by Microsoft to buy out powerset.com. I will be watching with interest, how they will develop that product, and whether they intend to incorporate it more extensively into their other product offerings. I have to admit I was skeptical initially when I heard powerset.com would be gobbled up. But should it turn out that Microsoft were to really seriously put effort into powerset.com, any relief Encyclopaedia Britannica may have gained from the reduction of competition for number two spot, may prove a little short lived. That is unless of course Microsoft/Powerset make some kind of deal with EB that they can use powersets semantic search engine on also EB product. Of course it is possible that MS have made the judgment that the whole sector is not good for them, but actually I would prefer to be hopeful that this means they would give more impetus to powerset now. I personally think powerset is currently the best interface for wikipedia, bar none. On the gripping hand, if developing powerset is not on the cards for Microsoft, perhaps now that they have decided to not hold onto encarta, they might be persuadable to sell powerset off, since holding on to it is not fending off a competitor to encarta. The question of course then would be, who would be willing to buy powerset off their hands? Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] [Slashdot] The Role of Experts In Wikipedia
Charles Matthews wrote: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote: In that sentence there are buried assumptions as follows: 1. There are people on wikipedia who will not permit quality. 2. People who won't permit quality are aggressive. 3. There is a clear unambiguous metric for quality. 4. Aggressive people who won't permit quality will follow an article. 5. Over the long term, the dynamics of wikipedias practices will not prevent editors who will not allow quality on wikipedia from dragging it down to the level that they aggressively and persistently insist on bringing it down to. There are no working heuristics to allow it to transcend that attractor. *Understanding* the logical flaws of those 5 statements is left to the student. It would be rash to say you couldn't find any examples where this is true - there is a large selection of articles. It might be a fair model for the article about, for example, a controversial Governor of Alaska who didn't get chosen as a candidate for Vice-President. But you could click Random Article for a little while before you came up with an article to which this argument really would apply. I disagree that even Mrs. Palins article will fulfill the claim of my 5th paraphrase. Long term, (think 5 years down the line, or even say twice the current age of wikipedia itself) those little problems will be transcended. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] [Slashdot] The Role of Experts In Wikipedia
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote: Charles Matthews wrote: Thomas Dalton wrote: 2009/2/16 Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com: I believe we have another decade before Wikipedia lives up to its potential as a comprehensive reference. My main hope is that life around the wiki stays dull enough so that the job largely gets done. Indeed. Current predictions show growth in terms of article numbers pretty much ending in around 4 or 5 years time. We'll then need several more years to actually get all the articles up the scratch. A decade may even be optimistic. Yeah, well, my reaction to the whole fruit discussion is that it is systemic-bias-lite. I'll settle for five years to start most of the articles of interest to those with a fairly parochial view of what constitutes an interesting topic, and 25 years more to catch up with the rest of the planet. You're not telling me that we'll have articles correspording to all the other language versions - total interwiki converage - by 2014? Personally I think this is a very interesting point. You will forgive if I have asked this before, and not gotten a reply. (I honestly forget if I have broached this subject before, I know I have often thought I should ask the question.) Does anyone know how many unique (that is not reproduced around other languages) articles there are in toto in the non-English language wikipedias, which do not have a corresponding English language wikipedia article? Can even a rough estimate be made? Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] [Slashdot] The Role of Experts In Wikipedia
Thomas Dalton wrote:
2009/2/17 Matthew Brown mor...@gmail.com:
On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 3:31 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com
wrote:
Those sources will give you stubs, will they give you much more? I
guess it depends on how specific a field guide you have.
Stubs aren't bad things.
Indeed, but there are far more topics that it is easy to write a stub
about than there are topics that it is easy to write a whole article
about.
Erk... this is what we have the template {{notastub}} for.
A short article is not a stub. Repeat 10 times under your
breath.
sarcastic aside
Otherwise, why would the 1975 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Micropaedia article on Monastery consist of 12 words?
/sarcastic aside
But completely seriously, a subject that can be exhaustively
covered briefly, is not a stub. Period.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
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Re: [WikiEN-l] A wide selection of Drama
Ray Saintonge wrote: Kevin Wong wrote: But is it a tragedy or a comedy? That depends on your proximity to the events. From within it is high gothic; from without it is pure slapstick. Heh, remembering the epic battle between you and Angela over the redirects of years (which curiously enough is not even currently present at [[WP:LAME]] despite richly deserving it - involving me at teh sidelines and finally bringing in both Tim Starling and Brion VIBBER), I can attest that your sentiment is better phrased: From within it is high Gothic; from without it is Greek tragedy, and far removed in either concern or time, it is pure slapstick. Yours, Jussi-Ville ___ 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] [Slashdot] The Role of Experts In Wikipedia
Gwern Branwen wrote: On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 9:05 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: Personally I think this is a very interesting point. You will forgive if I have asked this before, and not gotten a reply. (I honestly forget if I have broached this subject before, I know I have often thought I should ask the question.) Does anyone know how many unique (that is not reproduced around other languages) articles there are in toto in the non-English language wikipedias, which do not have a corresponding English language wikipedia article? Can even a rough estimate be made? Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen [[User:Piotrus/Wikipedia interwiki and specialized knowledge test]] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/User:Piotrus/Wikipedia_interwiki_and_specialized_knowledge_test Might be of interest. It is. If I read that correctly the upshot seemed to be that just by translating articles from the non-English language wikipedias (presuming they would not be deleted immediately because of a lack of English language web-sources :-( that is) there would be fertile ground for an addition of around two million new articles to the English language wikipedia. Would there be any workable way to create a big (huge?) Missing Articles project by somehow mass generating a list of the various non-English language articles still not translated to the English language wikipedia? smirk At least the creation of such lists from those various language projects wouldn't be problematic in terms of database copyright. /smirk Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] [Slashdot] The Role of Experts In Wikipedia
Carl Beckhorn wrote: Regardless of the history, Sanger does have a viewpoint that would be worth reading even if the author were anonymous. In particular, the following claim is quite accurate to my experience: Over the long term, the quality of a given Wikipedia article will do a random walk around the highest level of quality permitted by the most persistent and aggressive people who follow an article. It is a nice use of rhetoric, but accurate? NOWAI! Let me paraphrase it in a way that will make the logical flaws more apparent. In that sentence there are buried assumptions as follows: 1. There are people on wikipedia who will not permit quality. 2. People who won't permit quality are aggressive. 3. There is a clear unambiguous metric for quality. 4. Aggressive people who won't permit quality will follow an article. 5. Over the long term, the dynamics of wikipedias practices will not prevent editors who will not allow quality on wikipedia from dragging it down to the level that they aggressively and persistently insist on bringing it down to. There are no working heuristics to allow it to transcend that attractor. *Understanding* the logical flaws of those 5 statements is left to the student. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] (Off Topic) Re: Biography of Living persons
toddmallen wrote: People are readily identifiable by the information given about them anyway. How hard is it to find the Star Wars kid's name, even from our article, where all the sources we use readily publish it, or a google search on the article title brings it right up? If something is in public already (which it by definition is, if reliable sources available to the public have published it), it is no longer private. You can say that's good, or bad, or simply inevitable, but it's still the fact, and to think we can stuff genies back in bottles (even provided that to do so would be desirable, an odd position for a project specifically dedicated to making information available to take) is monumental hubris. We're big, but we're not -that- big. (Off-Topic): And yet, see [[illegal prime]], and [[AACS encryption key controversy]]. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Journal of Biblical Literature is also requiring a Wikipedia entry
David Gerard wrote: http://ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com/ancient_hebrew_poetry/2009/01/new-guidelines-for-jbl-contributors-publish-in-wikipedia-or-perish.html Similar journals are apparently likely to do the same. So. When will this become standard? - d. I guess you missed the sentence: I made this up of course,[...] and pretty broad clues along the way... Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] General versus specific names/scope for articles
Ian Woollard wrote: There's recently been a change to the naming disambiguation guideline. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conflict#Common_subsets_versus_less_common_supersets_with_shared_names I'm interested in whether that is considered a good idea or not. For example the term 'internal combustion engine' usually refers to piston engines and wankel engines, but the term technically actually covers gas turbines and jet engines as well, in a less common sense. This is actually the way the Encyclopedia Britannica defines the term, it defines it in the most general sense. If you try to define the everyday sense you end up with an arbitrary definition that is difficult to defend, it's this or that only. Presumably that's why the EB does it the general way. Another example is jet engine, again, it normally covers turbojets and turbofans, but also ramjets, and in the most general (less common sense) it covers rockets and water jet powered boats. That's the way the jet engine article currently goes. The term 'aircraft engine' very often refers to, in aviation usage, just piston engines and Wankel engines used for aircraft, but not to jet engines, however it's easy to find jet engine manufacturers that refer to their jet engines as 'aircraft engines' as well, and the term would lead you to expect it to be more general than just piston engines. The same discussion has in the last two weeks or so recently cropped up in 'glider'. A lot of people use the term to refer to what can be termed sailplanes, and some don't even really consider, for example, 'hang gliders' to be gliders. I agree that people will usually imagine a sailplane when they are asked what a glider is, but I find that they will also usually agree that other things are gliders also. I'm not sure there's a right or a wrong exactly, but the wikipedia is probably a general publication and therefore, it seems to me, gets forced in a lot of cases to use general terms, (and this is the catch) even if they're somewhat less common, because the general term is synonymous with the specific term but a superset and usually easier to define. I'm just wondering what people here think about this issue in general and the ongoing 'glider' one in particular. Is 'glider' more or less anything/an aircraft that glides, or is it specifically a (for want of a better name) a sailplane. This is probably not the response you are looking for, but for me a glider is the hacker emblem, or any one of ASCII, or graphical representations of the pattern oxo oox xxx Being a representation of a pattern in John Conway's game of Life, which will travel in a diagonal line, unless it comes up on territory with other content. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ 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] Scientists told publish in Wikipedia or else
David Gerard wrote: 2008/12/19 The Cunctator cuncta...@gmail.com: This looks like a genuinely positive experiment that could lead to very good results. Indeed. I'm mostly worried about the possibilities for Olympic-scale n00b-biting. - d. _ Hey, if you are really worried, and not just actually joking, why not suggest they go Citizendium way? As far as I can see, Citizendium went to the lengths of erasing the whole talk page of Medical Contraception, without any sign there ever was an extended discussion of that pages idiocys including a silly spelling error that couldn't be corrected because the owner of that page couldn't be arsed to edit it. And the page you personally lauded on the BSD Daemon, still has the Daemon wielding a Triton which does not exist as any kind of implement (hint: it is a trident) Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
