[Foundation-l] Umberto Eco's interview
Thank for the interview, very interesting. However, Eco is not uncritical about Wikipedia. The computer in general, and the Internet in particular, is good for the rich and bad for the poor. That is, Wikipedia is good for me, because I am able to find the information I need; I do not trust it, because everyone knows that as Wikipedia grows, the errors also grow. I found steep follies written about me, and if no-one had pointed me to them, they would be there still. look at the Italian Wikipedia; I'm not sure that the news is correct, so I go to check the English version, then yet another source, and if all three tell me that this gentleman died in 371 AD, then I begin to believe it. - Indeed! If he went to look for the birthdate of Duns Scotus when until quite recently he would have found at least three different dates. But at least he is an expert on Duns Scotus. Wikipedia, like the whole Internet, has the problem of filtering the news. It keeps both false and real news; but the rich know filtering techniques at least for the areas they know how to check. If I have to do a search on Plato, I have no problem immediately identifying the sites written by madmen, but if I am researching stem cells it's not certain that I can identify the wrong sites. I noticed that in a certain period of Berlusconi's triumph people went looking for information about me in right-wing books and placed it in Wikipedia: as propriety prevents me from changing it directly, I left it. But obviously it was an entry made by the winners of the moment. Collective control is therefore useful up to a certain point: it is conceivable that if one gives a false length of the equator, sooner or later someone will come along and fix it, but correction of more subtle and difficult issues is more complicated And it seems to me that the internal control is minimal, that is, it cannot control the millions of new changes flowing in. At most, it can check if a madman wrote that Napoleon is a racehorse, but there's not too much it can do. But I keep saying that I am increasingly exposed to the risk of my inability to filter the news. Lately I started writing down some false information, some errors that one can find in Wikipedia. In the same article, for example, there were two contradictory reports, a sign that there had been an amalgam. Peter ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Umberto Eco's interview
Oh dear, I see my last message did have a line wrap. Some time since I subscribed to a list like this, I know there is a way round the problem, can anyone help? Best Peter ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals with content issues.
Gerard writes: The trouble is that attempts to make something that lures experts but keeps idiots out of their faces have so far failed and/or attracted no attention, even from the experts (Citizendium, Scholarpedia). That is, they sound like a good idea; but in practice, Wikipedia has so far been the least worst system. True. But is there not some way of making Wikipedia just a little more attractive to people who have studied the subject? I used to propose things like credentials based on trust earned on Wikipedia (which would require getting trust from other trusted editors, much like in financial markets). These all naturally got shot down, and silly of me to have tried. But is there not some way of just making it a little easier? The problem is that until someone sits up and notices the serious errors that are propagated through Wikipedia (and which are now becoming part of the folk wisdom of the internet), no one will be bothered. The problem is that no one *knows* there are problems, and so no one can be bothered. I've started documenting the problem in a small way, e.g. here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/william-of-ockham.html and here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/avicennian-logic.html , but this is only in my own area of expertise. What is the very smallest thing that could be done, I wonder? Peter ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals with content issues.
On Sun, 29 Aug 2010 15:38:34 +0100, Peter Damian peter.dam...@btinternet.com wrote: The problem is that until someone sits up and notices the serious errors that are propagated through Wikipedia (and which are now becoming part of the folk wisdom of the internet), no one will be bothered. The problem is that no one *knows* there are problems, and so no one can be bothered. I've started documenting the problem in a small way, e.g. here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/william-of-ockham.html and here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/avicennian-logic.html , but this is only in my own area of expertise. What is the very smallest thing that could be done, I wonder? Peter These issues have been discussed at length at the Strategy wiki and made to the five-how year strategic plan. The question is how they would be implemented now. But it is not really correct that nobody bothers. Cheers Yaroslav ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals with content issues.
On 29 August 2010 15:38, Peter Damian peter.dam...@btinternet.com wrote: The problem is that until someone sits up and notices the serious errors that are propagated through Wikipedia (and which are now becoming part of the folk wisdom of the internet), no one will be bothered. The problem is that no one *knows* there are problems, and so no one can be bothered. I've started documenting the problem in a small way, e.g. here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/william-of-ockham.html and here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/avicennian-logic.html , but this is only in my own area of expertise. What is the very smallest thing that could be done, I wonder? Probably just documenting problems, as you note. It is helpful that on Wikipedia the editorial process is largely transparent, so the question how did it get like this? can actually be answered. Wikipedia is not reliable, but it turns out that how paper encyclopedias and newspapers were written was similarly susceptible - with Wikipedia we can see inside the sausage factory rather than pretending that the mass media is a happy unicorn-filled fairyland of scrupulous fact-checking and expert supervision. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals with content issues.
On 29 August 2010 16:45, Yaroslav M. Blanter pute...@mccme.ru wrote: These issues have been discussed at length at the Strategy wiki and made to the five-how year strategic plan. The question is how they would be implemented now. But it is not really correct that nobody bothers. Awareness of our systemic problems - the ones that are deeply part of our structure - on the part of the editors on the ground is probably the best thing that springs to mind. I suspect there is no complete solution while humans are imperfect, but we can keep trying. NPOV is a journey. Etc. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontent issues.
It is helpful that on Wikipedia the editorial process is largely transparent, so the question how did it get like this? can actually be answered. Wikipedia is not reliable, but it turns out that how paper encyclopedias and newspapers were written was similarly susceptible In the case of newspapers probably yes. In the case of encyclopedias, I think not. There are severe problems with the Wikipedia coverage of philosophy which you wouldn't find here, for instance. And so for the humanities generally. When I make this point on Wikipedia, the answer is usually that Wikipedia is for pop culture, whereas encyclopedias are for 'proper culture' or 'high culture' or whatever. I don't really understand this distinction. Meanwhile, a quick test for line wrap. asdf asdf asdf sadf sadf asdf asdf asdf sadf sadf asdf asdf asdf sadf sadf asdf asdf asdf sadf sadf asdf asdf asdf sadf sadf asdf asdf asdf sadf sadf asdf asdf asdf sadf sadf asdf asdf asdf sadf sadf asdf asdf asdf sadf sadf asdf asdf asdf sadf sadf asdf asdf asdf sadf sadf asdf asdf asdf sadf sadf Peter ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals with content issues.
*The problem is that until someone sits up and notices the serious errors that are propagated through Wikipedia (and which are now becoming part of the folk wisdom of the internet), no one will be bothered. * I think my problem with suggestions like this is that the assumption at the heart of all of them--that experts with degrees are preferable as information authorities to nonexperts without--is deeply problematic, and I'm not convinced it won't create more problems than it solves. I am not myself an academic, but I've worked in an academic setting for over a decade (I'm in college textbooks), and I work closely with college faculty and ... quite frankly the number of them I would trust to edit an article I wanted to read is very small. Academic qualifications generally just mean you stayed in school long enough to get them, and little else. I'm not trying to spout anti-intellectual nonsense, I'm just saying that academia churns out an awful lot of people with degrees every year, a really astonishing number actually, and an awful lot of those people are no more deserving of the term expert than the guy driving the 2 train that took me to work this morning, or the girl who served me coffee at Dunkin' Donuts. I'm worried we'd give the imprimatur of extra scholarly specialness to the edits of a bunch of people who honestly would not deserve it. I don't really see this as a problem with Wikipedia anyway. Wikipedia's detractors do, but that's generally because they object to the mission in general, and its democratic nature in particular. Here we value the quality of the work, not the letters on a piece of paper obtained in exchange for $100,000 in tuition. FMF On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 10:38 AM, Peter Damian peter.dam...@btinternet.comwrote: Gerard writes: The trouble is that attempts to make something that lures experts but keeps idiots out of their faces have so far failed and/or attracted no attention, even from the experts (Citizendium, Scholarpedia). That is, they sound like a good idea; but in practice, Wikipedia has so far been the least worst system. True. But is there not some way of making Wikipedia just a little more attractive to people who have studied the subject? I used to propose things like credentials based on trust earned on Wikipedia (which would require getting trust from other trusted editors, much like in financial markets). These all naturally got shot down, and silly of me to have tried. But is there not some way of just making it a little easier? The problem is that until someone sits up and notices the serious errors that are propagated through Wikipedia (and which are now becoming part of the folk wisdom of the internet), no one will be bothered. The problem is that no one *knows* there are problems, and so no one can be bothered. I've started documenting the problem in a small way, e.g. here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/william-of-ockham.html and here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/avicennian-logic.html , but this is only in my own area of expertise. What is the very smallest thing that could be done, I wonder? Peter ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals with content issues.
On 29 August 2010 17:19, David Moran fordmadoxfr...@gmail.com wrote: I think my problem with suggestions like this is that the assumption at the heart of all of them--that experts with degrees are preferable as information authorities to nonexperts without--is deeply problematic, and I'm not convinced it won't create more problems than it solves. I am not myself an academic, but I've worked in an academic setting for over a decade (I'm in college textbooks), and I work closely with college faculty and ... quite frankly the number of them I would trust to edit an article I wanted to read is very small. Academic qualifications generally just mean you stayed in school long enough to get them, and little else. I'm not trying to spout anti-intellectual nonsense, I'm just saying that academia churns out an awful lot of people with degrees every year, a really astonishing number actually, and an awful lot of those people are no more deserving of the term expert than the guy driving the 2 train that took me to work this morning, or the girl who served me coffee at Dunkin' Donuts. I'm worried we'd give the imprimatur of extra scholarly specialness to the edits of a bunch of people who honestly would not deserve it. Take care not to conflate expertise with credentials. At best, credentials are a shortcut to finding an expert; at worst, they're a union card that people without workable expertise use to get a job anyway. Clay Shirky noted this important distinction: http://many.corante.com/archives/2006/11/20/social_facts_expertise_citizendium_and_carr.php In practice, academics who are really interested in their field will happily listen to the uncredentialed on their topic, even if only for a moment, just in case they have something interesting to say. Academics who are not all that good will be very credentialist. Cranks, having no accepted expertise, will attach especial store to what credentials they can scrape up. This, btw, is how Citizendium became a pseudoscience haven: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Citizendium#The_concept_of_expertise_on_Citizendium - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals with content issues.
Well, right. That's kind of what I mean. These things happened to Citizendium because credentialism is the natural outcome of trying to create a system of valuing a certain class of contributors more than others. DM On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 12:35 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 29 August 2010 17:19, David Moran fordmadoxfr...@gmail.com wrote: I think my problem with suggestions like this is that the assumption at the heart of all of them--that experts with degrees are preferable as information authorities to nonexperts without--is deeply problematic, and I'm not convinced it won't create more problems than it solves. I am not myself an academic, but I've worked in an academic setting for over a decade (I'm in college textbooks), and I work closely with college faculty and ... quite frankly the number of them I would trust to edit an article I wanted to read is very small. Academic qualifications generally just mean you stayed in school long enough to get them, and little else. I'm not trying to spout anti-intellectual nonsense, I'm just saying that academia churns out an awful lot of people with degrees every year, a really astonishing number actually, and an awful lot of those people are no more deserving of the term expert than the guy driving the 2 train that took me to work this morning, or the girl who served me coffee at Dunkin' Donuts. I'm worried we'd give the imprimatur of extra scholarly specialness to the edits of a bunch of people who honestly would not deserve it. Take care not to conflate expertise with credentials. At best, credentials are a shortcut to finding an expert; at worst, they're a union card that people without workable expertise use to get a job anyway. Clay Shirky noted this important distinction: http://many.corante.com/archives/2006/11/20/social_facts_expertise_citizendium_and_carr.php In practice, academics who are really interested in their field will happily listen to the uncredentialed on their topic, even if only for a moment, just in case they have something interesting to say. Academics who are not all that good will be very credentialist. Cranks, having no accepted expertise, will attach especial store to what credentials they can scrape up. This, btw, is how Citizendium became a pseudoscience haven: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Citizendium#The_concept_of_expertise_on_Citizendium - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals with content issues.
On 29 August 2010 17:52, David Moran fordmadoxfr...@gmail.com wrote: Well, right. That's kind of what I mean. These things happened to Citizendium because credentialism is the natural outcome of trying to create a system of valuing a certain class of contributors more than others. I was amazed just how actively negative credentialism could be - Shirky posited it as merely putting a dead weight on the project, not actually driving it backwards. Did anyone actually predict it would result in CZ becoming a crank magnet? If anyone wanted to advocate credentialism on Wikimedia projects, they'd first have to work out how to fix the pseudoscience problem on CZ. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals with content issues.
On 29/08/2010 16:46, David Gerard wrote: On 29 August 2010 15:38, Peter Damianpeter.dam...@btinternet.com wrote: The problem is that until someone sits up and notices the serious errors that are propagated through Wikipedia (and which are now becoming part of the folk wisdom of the internet), no one will be bothered. The problem is that no one *knows* there are problems, and so no one can be bothered. I've started documenting the problem in a small way, e.g. here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/william-of-ockham.html and here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/avicennian-logic.html , but this is only in my own area of expertise. What is the very smallest thing that could be done, I wonder? Probably just documenting problems, as you note. It is helpful that on Wikipedia the editorial process is largely transparent, so the question how did it get like this? can actually be answered. Wikipedia is not reliable, but it turns out that how paper encyclopedias and newspapers were written was similarly susceptible - with Wikipedia we can see inside the sausage factory rather than pretending that the mass media is a happy unicorn-filled fairyland of scrupulous fact-checking and expert supervision. I've mentioned before that this was wrong for almost 2 years, and it went through various edits and reformatting over that time: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Non-uniform_rational_B-splineaction=historysubmitdiff=124576209oldid=18078134 I got three of my coleagues with Phd's in maths to look at it independently and all three said something to the effect of I'm going to pretend I've never read that because otherwise I'll have to correct it and I'm not prepared to spend the evening argue the toss with a teenager. and they weren't alone, because other geometric modelers had drawn my attention to it in the first place. Now whether they would have had to or not isn't the point. The point was that all had experience onwiki aguements, and all had independently decided that they're time was better spent in ways other than agueing with a wikieditor. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontent issues.
- Original Message - From: David Moran fordmadoxfr...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2010 5:19 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontent issues. I don't really see this as a problem with Wikipedia anyway. Do you mean the problem of experts being generally discouraged? I was talking about the problem of there being serious errors in articles, particularly in the humanities. I agree with David that when it comes to facts and figures, Wikipedia is pretty good. For many of the hard sciences, also good. But it's a disaster zone in the humanities. That's the problem I am referring to. On credentials, I agree, but I wasn't talking about credentials. I was talking about people with a reasonably good knowledge of their subject. In philosophy, all the editors who have made good contributions have some background in the subject. I was emailed by one today, complaining how it was descending into complete chaos. I told her not to bother and just to step back from the whole thing. Then the problems would become more obvious and perhaps people would be motivated to improve the way the system works. I've mentioned before that this was wrong for almost 2 years, and it went through various edits and reformatting over that time: yes I documented a similar problem here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/08/argumentum-ad-baculum.html which still haven't been fixed. all three said something to the effect of I'm going to pretend I've never read that because otherwise I'll have to correct it and I'm not prepared to spend the evening argue the toss with a teenager. Quite. How does Wikipedia improve its rules, or governance, or software to resolve the current problems with the *articles*? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals with content issues.
On 29 August 2010 18:16, wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote: Now whether they would have had to or not isn't the point. The point was that all had experience onwiki aguements, and all had independently decided that they're time was better spent in ways other than agueing with a wikieditor. Yes: the problem with keeping idiots out of experts' faces. Unfortunately, credentialism doesn't work. Embarrassing Wikipedia in blog posts seems to work, one factoid at a time - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontentissues.
- Original Message - From: David Gerard dger...@gmail.com The answer is probably that we're not finished yet and need more participation from people interested in writing encyclopedically in the area. Basically, the answer is interested contributors bothering to put in the effort, same as any other area. Hard work over the course of years, as usual. I would have bought the 'not finished yet' argument 5 years ago. Perhaps even 3 years ago. But now? Every article in my area of expertise has stagnated. The only changes are vandalism followed by reverts from administrators who sometimes don't understand what they are reverting to, and who let other sorts of vandalism creep in. My benchmark is this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence which I rewrote 3 years ago and has since degenerated into a mess. See e.g. the 'Dharmic Middle way view' section towards the end which is incoherent and strange, immediately followed by the 'formal languages' section which clearly belongs in another article. You really need people with some sense of the subject to edit an article like this. Perhaps credentials are not the answer. All I am saying is that there is a serious and growing problem and that someone needs to recognise it for what it is. Peter ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontent issues.
Unfortunately, credentialism doesn't work. And I wasn't suggesting it would. Embarrassing Wikipedia in blog posts seems to work, one factoid at a time Well I hope so. However when I wrote this http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/william-of-ockham.html The only correction was to remove the plagiarised material and one eccentric section and slap a template on the article. And that was only because I personally knew the guy who made the correction. And the problem I noted in the post here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/07/truth-versus-equality.html 'the puppet Turkish administration' is still there. I expect someone from here will fix it now. But as someone else noted, it's like when a politician publicly helps a needy family for the sake of the newspapers, leaving millions of other needy families in a needy state. That's how I feel about fixing Wikipedia entries. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontent issues.
*I would have bought the 'not finished yet' argument 5 years ago. Perhaps even 3 years ago. But now? Every article in my area of expertise has stagnated.* SNIP *All I am saying is that there is a serious and growing problem and that someone needs to recognise it for what it is.* The problem you mention is actually the stagnation of edits. Any article that has some common public interest will be read and corrected by many people, which will generally be good for its quality. Sure, more interested people will equally mean a larger share of vandals and nonsensical edits, but a fairly small group of productive editors can keep a much larger group of vandals at bay without to much effort; Huggle is a proof of concept for this, since only a handful of editors are required to keep out most of the obvious vandalism. However, in cases where an article stagnates lower quality edits may go unnoticed for a longer time. Take our article's on faily unimportant secondary schools for example - most people interested in these article's are students and teachers of that institution, which means that the quality of the edits is likely to be fairly low (Students add themselves or attack the school, while teachers try to promote the school). Hence, the existence article was edited about 500 times in 3 years, which means that fairly little people are correcting changes or adding content. As a result it is more prone to degeneration then an article that is edited several thousands of times. More attention is better - even an edit war can be a good thing in this context, since both sides of the issue will try as hard as possible to keep their prefered version, eventually balancing the article into a version which adheres admirably to a neutral point of view. *But as someone else noted, it's like when a politician publicly helps a needy family for the sake of the newspapers, leaving millions of other needy families in a needy state. That's how I feel about fixing Wikipedia entries.* That is of course one way to view it - but i would argue that the politician example (hopefully) isn't accurate as it would suggest that people only edit in case they receive a personal benefit. Personally i hope that most people edit and improve for less selfish reasons. Or to phrase it as another comparison: A singular brick cannot build a house, and as of such people may deem carrying one futile, since would have to carry many times many bricks in order to build anything useful (Let alone fight decay). Yet if thousands of people carrying a single brick they can build a castle. There are many problems in the world, but is the amount a reason to say that fixing one of them is futile, just because there are many others? ~Excirial. On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 7:42 PM, Peter Damian peter.dam...@btinternet.comwrote: Unfortunately, credentialism doesn't work. And I wasn't suggesting it would. Embarrassing Wikipedia in blog posts seems to work, one factoid at a time Well I hope so. However when I wrote this http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/william-of-ockham.html The only correction was to remove the plagiarised material and one eccentric section and slap a template on the article. And that was only because I personally knew the guy who made the correction. And the problem I noted in the post here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/07/truth-versus-equality.html 'the puppet Turkish administration' is still there. I expect someone from here will fix it now. But as someone else noted, it's like when a politician publicly helps a needy family for the sake of the newspapers, leaving millions of other needy families in a needy state. That's how I feel about fixing Wikipedia entries. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals with content issues.
We need to set up a regular mechanism which analyzes and searches for errors. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Error_management We need to make a science of it, Wikipedia:Error_management Fred Gerard writes: The trouble is that attempts to make something that lures experts but keeps idiots out of their faces have so far failed and/or attracted no attention, even from the experts (Citizendium, Scholarpedia). That is, they sound like a good idea; but in practice, Wikipedia has so far been the least worst system. True. But is there not some way of making Wikipedia just a little more attractive to people who have studied the subject? I used to propose things like credentials based on trust earned on Wikipedia (which would require getting trust from other trusted editors, much like in financial markets). These all naturally got shot down, and silly of me to have tried. But is there not some way of just making it a little easier? The problem is that until someone sits up and notices the serious errors that are propagated through Wikipedia (and which are now becoming part of the folk wisdom of the internet), no one will be bothered. The problem is that no one *knows* there are problems, and so no one can be bothered. I've started documenting the problem in a small way, e.g. here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/william-of-ockham.html and here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/avicennian-logic.html , but this is only in my own area of expertise. What is the very smallest thing that could be done, I wonder? Peter ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontent issues.
On 08/29/2010 10:25 AM, Peter Damian wrote: Do you mean the problem of experts being generally discouraged? I was talking about the problem of there being serious errors in articles, particularly in the humanities. I agree with David that when it comes to facts and figures, Wikipedia is pretty good. For many of the hard sciences, also good. But it's a disaster zone in the humanities. That's the problem I am referring to. Purely my personal take, but I've noticed problems on both the expert and non-expert sides in the humanities more than in science-related articles. On the one hand, people seem to more naturally understand that they need good sources in science, that a newspaper article needs to be used carefully (and weighted relative to better sources), etc. People don't always seem to sufficiently realize that, say, philosophy or sociology should also be treated similarly. On the other hand, though, I've noticed science and especially math experts to be generally more friendly in working with non-experts, though there are plenty of exceptions. I've *very* rarely seen a math professor resort to credentialism or looking down on inexpert contributors, even though we have some very well-credentialed mathematicians. Some have nearly saintly patience in explaining their edits and why the article should be changed in the manner they propose. But I've noticed depressingly many ugh, as a PhD in [thing], I can't believe I have to argue with these idiots elitist huffs from humanities professors and grad students. -Mark ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Report to the Board (February and March)
FEBRUARY Report to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Covering: February 2010 Prepared by: Sue Gardner, Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation Prepared for: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees MILESTONES FROM FEBRUARY Wikimedia Foundation receives $2 million grant from Google Conducted Interviews and engaged candidates for the Chief Development Officer position. Beta roll-out of new features and updates to the usability initative KEY PRIORITIES FOR MARCH Finalize the Stanton Public Policy Grant Bi-annual all-staff meeting. Begin the business planning phase of the strategy process. THIS PAST MONTH KEY PROGRAM METRICS Reach of all Wikimedia Foundation sites: 345 million unique visitors (rank #5) +14.8% (1 year ago) / -5.3% (1 month ago) Source: comScore Media Metrics Pages served: 11.1 billion +5.8% (1 year ago) / +0.0% (1 month ago) Active number of editors (5+ edits/month): 101,730 -1.5% (1 year ago) / -4.6% (1 month ago) Source: February 2010 Report Card http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC_2010_02_detailed.html KEY FINANCIAL METRICS Operating revenue year to date: USD 14.1MM vs. plan of USD 8.8MM Operating expenses year to date: USD 5.5MM vs. plan of USD 6.2MM Unrestricted cash on hand as of March 24: USD 5.2MM while unrestricted CDs and US Treasuries were USD 8.3MM STRATEGIC PLANNING PROJECT Following the Board's endorsement of the Wikimedia Foundation's high- level strategic priorities moving forward, the strategic planning process has shifted into two parallel processes. The first is the Foundation's business planning process, led by The Bridgespan Group. The goal is to develop a five-year action plan for the Wikimedia Foundation and a more granular one-year business plan for 2010-2011. This process will run through May. The second is to complete the larger, movement-wide strategic planning process. Late in January, a Strategy Task Force formed, which started discussing and evaluating the recommendations and feedback from the Phase 2 Task Force process. That Task Force will continue to work in March to articulate and propose a set of movement-wide goals. The sign of a good open process is that certain surprising things emerge. The team was surprised by the success of the Call for Proposals process in Phase 1, and are looking for ways to use those proposals as a way to activate the volunteer community. They were also surprised by the success of the Task Force process and people's desire to apply the processes of the strategy project beyond its original scope. Three new Task Forces have formed (BLPs, NASA, and Analytics), and the team is looking forward to seeing others form as well. GOOGLE GRANT AND VISIT In February, the Wikimedia Foundation received a $2 million (USD) grant from the Google Inc. Charitable Giving Fund of Tides Foundation. This is the Wikimedia Foundation's first grant from Google. The funds will support core operational costs of the Wikimedia Foundation, including investments in technical infrastructure to support rapidly- increasing global traffic and capacity demands. The funds will also be used to support the organization's efforts to make Wikipedia easier to use and more accessible. Several Wikimedia Foundation staff members met with Google product and engineering managers in Mountain View to discuss possible opportunities to work together, ranging from infrastructure and open source technologies to public outreach programs. Google has designated a liaison contact for all future Wikimedia Foundation inquiries. TECHNOLOGY – CORE As noted in the previous report, Danese Cooper joined the Wikimedia Foundation as CTO, succeeding Brion Vibber. Erik Moeller and the Wikimedia Foundation technology team organized several orientation and transition meetings. The process for decommissioning old, out-of-warranty Wikimedia Foundation servers and donating them to non-profit organizations continued in February: http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/02/server-decommissioning-donations/ A follow-up meeting took place between Wikimedia and Microsoft Research India regarding MSRI's efforts to develop wiki language collaboration tools. Wikimedia's BugZilla server was updated to version 3.4.5 with REST APIs: http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/02/wikimedia-bugzilla-upgraded-to-version-3-4-5-with-rest-apis/ A bug that caused 1.3 million Wikipedia article revisions from 2005 to appear as blank pages was resolved. TECHNOLOGY - USABILITY The usability beta was enhanced on February 4 with the following features: Improvement in precision of navigable table of contents Enhanced dialogs for links, tables, and search and replace Language-specific icons for Bold and Italics This release introduced an HTML iFrame element as a new technological foundation for richer editing features. Despite extensive cross- browser testing, the release introduced problems in editing such as extra line breaks, and the
Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that dealswithcontentissues.
From: Andrea Zanni zanni.andre...@gmail.com It seems that Humanities are overall a problematic area for Wikipedia, because less involved in consensus building, and much focused in the stratification of different interpretations. No quite untrue. My background is analytic philosophy and I have worked on many articles and have made friends with those working in the 'European' tradition of philosophy. We settled our differences (indeed ignored our differences from the beginning) and worked to defend philosophy articles from the endless vandalism. There was never any disagreement. But most of them have given up by now. From: Excirial wp.excir...@gmail.com The problem you mention is actually the stagnation of edits. You snipped the bit where I talked about the benchmark article which is gradually eroded into chaos. Unless the articles are well looked after by those that care and understand, they deteriorate and rot away. Do you propose any solutions for this? I'm interesting in solutions. From: Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net We need to set up a regular mechanism which analyzes and searches for errors. Well I'm working through articles and writing them up and reporting them (I'm not correcting them, obviously). But there are many thousands of errors, and I am one person :( ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals with content issues.
From: Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2010 8:05 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals with content issues. We need to set up a regular mechanism which analyzes and searches for errors. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Error_management We need to make a science of it, Wikipedia:Error_management How would this system correct the obvious error in this article? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro_hominem Which has been there 3 years. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that dealswithcontentissues.
I believe it was in history (or perhaps textual criticism) where the distinction between primary and secondary sources was first made. The idea of NPOV is fundamental to the humanities. I'm not really a humanist, but I have a little background both in Humanities and STM (if you consider mathematics as STM) and in the interview with Eco I tried to focus on the differences between these two domains and their approach to collaboration. I'm not saying that Humanities do not struggle for an objectivity/consensus, but I just wanted to emphasize the difference between STM studies, in which I do think it is easier to understand and comprehend the procedures, ideas and mechanisms of Wikipedia (for many reasons). From what I've experienced, it is generally more difficult to explain these things to humanities scholars that stm scholars. And I was wondering if Wikipedia, limiting the article to one, single and neutral version, is enough to some Humanities scholars, who maybe would prefer the possibility of many articles/monographies, one for interpretation. Aubrey ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia thatdealswithcontentissues.
From: Andrea Zanni zanni.andre...@gmail.com I do think it is easier to understand and comprehend the procedures, ideas and mechanisms of Wikipedia (for many reasons). From what I've experienced, it is generally more difficult to explain these things to humanities scholars that stm scholars. I'm very surprised at this. When I started editing Wikipedia in 2003 I immediately read the NPOV rules and was struck by their similarity to the way I was taught to approach writing a paper. Not surprising actually, as I think Larry drafted the original rules, and he has the same background as I. The same would be true for someone with a background in textual criticism or history. I think the real problem is that a subject like philosophy *appears* easier to learn and to write about than mathematics. I remember from teaching students they would write acres of self-indulgent rubbish and you had to gently explain that there were clear rules and principles, just like the hard sciences. I'll quote this again from a well-known philosopher who left Wikipedia some years ago Philosophy: I'm a philosopher; why don't I edit the article on my subject? Because it's hopeless. I've tried at various times, and each time have given up in depressed disgust. Philosophy seems to attract aggressive zealots who know a little (often a very little), who lack understanding of key concepts, terms, etc., and who attempt to take over the article (and its Talk page) with rambling, ground-shifting, often barely comprehensible rants against those who disagree with them. Life's too short. I just tell my students and anyone else I know not to read the Wikipedia article except for a laugh. It's one of those areas where the ochlocratic nature of Wikipedia really comes a cropper. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals with content issues.
From: Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2010 8:05 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals with content issues. We need to set up a regular mechanism which analyzes and searches for errors. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Error_management We need to make a science of it, Wikipedia:Error_management How would this system correct the obvious error in this article? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro_hominem Which has been there 3 years. It's a simple error that most proof-readers would find. It looks right at first glance but is not. It is a type of error. The obvious solution is to proof-read Wikipedia in a systemic way. Fred Bauder ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Umberto Eco's interview
Peter Damian wrote: Oh dear, I see my last message did have a line wrap. Some time since I subscribed to a list like this, I know there is a way round the problem, can anyone help? You need to set your e-mail client to use plaintext mode (instead of HTML or rich formatting mode). Usually there's a toggle somewhere above the main input area when drafting an e-mail. MZMcBride ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Kafkaesque story on the English Wikipedia
Ive double checked with multiple sources and cross referenced both unblock-en and OTRS (in case you mixed up your emails) and can find no record of a request or email from you to either group. So Unless your using even more sockpuppets than your claiming, (or used an unknown email address, failed to state your IP address, user account or blocking admin. Which is very unlikely) You are full of bullshit. Please stop lying, or admit to all your sock puppets, because with the information that you have provided, the logs for both unblock-en-l and OTRS prove that you did not send or get a message from either group. John On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 12:32 AM, Seventy Nine ip791819...@gmail.comwrote: Hello, I am sending this letter to this mailing list after several failed attempts to address administrators in the Arbitration Committee and the Unblock mailing list. Apparently this is a Kafkaesque story which no one wishes to handle. I have recently started to edit on the English Wikipedia. I wished to remain anonymous, which, to my best knowledge, is legitimate on the English Wikipedia, therefore I contributed under my IP address. Later on, and after several pleas on behalf of other editors, I opened an account. In order to keep my edits under the same attribution, I called the account User:KnownAs-79-181-9-231 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:KnownAs-79-181-9-231). My edits on the article Golan Heights were reverted. I was asked to explain them, and so I did, in details, on the Talk Page affiliated with the article. This explanations were contested in a lengthy discussions. Some of the comments were good, and I addressed them. Some, especially from two users whose aliases I won't mention in this message, offered comments which seemed to be politically motivated. One of these users posted questions on my personal Talk Page, which included threats (not real life threats, but threats to act against me within the English Wikipedia editors' community). I refused to answer his personal questions. Then, one morning, and without any previous notice, I found myself banned for being a sock puppet of some editor. The person who submitted the request to ban me (a request which I found after searching many administrative pages), is one of the two aforementioned users who objected my edits. The editor who posted threats on my personal Talk Page second him. The evidences were my edits, which, according to them, resembled the edits of another editor who had been previously banned for one reason or another. Apparently, my ban was sweeping, i.e. I couldn't comment on the allegations against me, nor post a request to overturn the ban. I sent a letter to the Arbitration Committee with copy to the Unblock mailing list. I asked to revoke the ban immediately, as it was based on sheer speculations. The committee can ask me questions if it deemed it necessary, but their first task is to lift a ban which was imposed without due process. I received an outrageous response, suggesting my ban was legitimate until I could prove otherwise. How exactly can I disprove far-fetched speculations? Furthermore, after searching the administrative pages a bit more thoroughly, I found out that the two users who asked my ban, where banned themselves several times for making problematic edits on articles related to Middle East issues. This makes the allegations against me even more peculiar. Thank you very much for your attention. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list wikie...@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
