Re: [Foundation-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
A tool which pops up asking for a URL, author and date would be a rich source of bad references. We should rather be looking at ways to get references to books and journal articles. Web references should be the exception rather than the rule, because the vast majority of websites are not WP:RS. How about a wizard-like tool which asks did you read this in a book, in a newspaper, a journal article or on the web? and if the answer is on the web asks the user how they know it's true. Compare for example Commons's image uploader. Users who care about references should be taught how to extract good refs from Google Books and Google Scholar - both quite easy to use. If you paste the ISBN of a book into Citation Expander, it fills in the whole citation for you, and the same for pubmed IDs. Now we just need a tool which will do this for major newspapers on the web. -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
2011/11/3 David Richfield davidrichfi...@gmail.com A tool which pops up asking for a URL, author and date would be a rich source of bad references. We should rather be looking at ways to get references to books and journal articles. Web references should be the exception rather than the rule, because the vast majority of websites are not WP:RS. How about a wizard-like tool which asks did you read this in a book, in a newspaper, a journal article or on the web? and if the answer is on the web asks the user how they know it's true. Compare for example Commons's image uploader. Users who care about references should be taught how to extract good refs from Google Books and Google Scholar - both quite easy to use. If you paste the ISBN of a book into Citation Expander, it fills in the whole citation for you, and the same for pubmed IDs. Now we just need a tool which will do this for major newspapers on the web. -- David Richfield e^(ði)+1=0 I like this approach, but it is also possible to do this the other way around - that is, on OTHER websites which are frequented by well educated and (potential) good quality Wikimedians Let me explain... Click on the cite button near the top-left here: http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/628050 Scroll to the bottom here: http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/?irn=207936 The first of these is the National Library of Australia's Digitised Newspaper collection, the second of these links is the database of objects in the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. They have both now implimented across their entire database a system to automatically generate correctly formatted citation code to that specific newspaper article/object that the reader can copy+paste into Wikipedia. This both legitimises working on wikipedia to their users and also increases the likelihood that their content will be used by us - a win-win situation. I believe that the kind of people who are spending their time looking at museum catalogues and looking at very old newspapers are EXACTLY the kind of people that we would like to encourage to work on Wikipedia adding citations. Furthermore, the generate the correct citation code clearly already works (e.g. there are 6 such citations used here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_sandstone#References ). Whilst the effort to move towards WYSIWYG code in MediaWiki continues behind the scenes, perhaps it would be relatively easy for the WMF (or a dedicated individual) to produce some documentation (and sample code?) that clearly and easily explains to other similar organisations how to implement this system on their own site. I can see this being particularly useful on newspaper websites too. I imagine that this would be much simpler, cheaper and faster to do than building a new Wizard/tool ON WIKIPEDIA because that would require all sorts of community debates, browser testing, localisation etc. etc. Just a thought, -Liam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Ideas for newbie recruitment
On 11/01/11 4:43 PM, Béria Lima wrote: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cite4wiki/ (in wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cite4Wiki ) right click and paste in the article. Easier than that can't be ;) The newbie still has to find out from somewhere that he should download the software. Even something as simple as needing to right click isn't obvious. Ray ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
Hi, Making referencing easier on Wikipedia with optional tools is a good thing, but there is a parallel activity of educating old hands to be aware that there is no requirement or policy for ref tags to be used in an article. If a new user wishes to stick sources as plain text at the bottom of an article, this is not actually a failure against the manual of style or our verification policy. So long as the user is adding verifiable and reliable sources they can do this in any format they prefer and in fact our policies encourage a discussion and local consensus rather than forcing standard but arbitrary styles and templates onto such an article. This should be kept in mind (particularly for bot design) when many new articles such as biographies are *incorrectly* tagged for speedy deletion or as unsourced when sources are present in the article, they just do not use the citation template or ref tag. By the way, many of us old hands routinely give simple advice on footnotes, I have http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fae/help/refs which explains the ref tag in a very simple way, and points to other help including a demonstration video I prepared some time ago. Cheers, Fae ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
there is no requirement or policy for ref tags to be used in an article. If a new user wishes to stick sources as plain text at the bottom of an article, this is not actually a failure against the manual of style or our verification policy. This may be true, but it is a policy that an individual article's style should be consistent. This should be kept in mind (particularly for bot design) when many new articles such as biographies are *incorrectly* tagged for speedy deletion or as unsourced when sources are present in the article, they just do not use the citation template or ref tag. Does this seriously happen? The only tag that is appropriate to this situation is refimprove or cleanup or maybe wikify. -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
My guess about how to go about doing that would be to write up the documentation for how to use the relevant parts of the API for this specific purpose. I think it would not be possible to give a solution that worked for everyone because each external website would have a different database structure that would need to be mapped to. Nevertheless I'm sure that as long as we make it perfectly clear what needs to be done, the 3rd party website's admins will know how to make that happen. I also assume that it would need to be different kinds of formatting for different language editions to make it work with the local template parameters. Not being a techie though, I've no idea if the kind of documentation is really hard to produce or is really simple. Nevertheless I strongly suspect that it would be easier/faster/cheaper to do that than to introduce major usability improvements to the citation system on Wikipedia(s). -Liam wittylama.com/blog Peace, love metadata On 3 November 2011 07:57, David Richfield davidrichfi...@gmail.com wrote: [Suggestion to encourage other website to generate pastable citation code] I like it a lot! How do we go about promoting this idea? David ___ 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] Newbie recruitment: referencing
On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 6:57 PM, David Richfield davidrichfi...@gmail.com wrote: [Suggestion to encourage other website to generate pastable citation code] I like it a lot! How do we go about promoting this idea? I dont like it. Websites should provide citations as COinS, or another standardised format. Then tools can be built around importing and exporting them into Wikipedia formats. (include different code for different language Wikipedia) e.g. http://www.zotero.org/blog/zotero-wikipedia-perfect-together/ That does create a barrier to entry, however I would prefer someone adds * Author, Book title, p. num in the References section rather than pasting in syntax code from another website without much clue about the process. If they get the former wrong, someone will help them. If they get the latter wrong, they will probably be reverted for breaking the article. We could create a zotero plugin which allows the ref to be added to the end of paragraph. We could go even further and integrate mediawiki and a zotero server so that Wikipedia can use named refs throughout. http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/20026/zotero-plugin-for-mediawiki/ -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
On 3 November 2011 09:26, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: We could create a zotero plugin which allows the ref to be added to the end of paragraph. We could go even further and integrate mediawiki and a zotero server so that Wikipedia can use named refs throughout. Oh yes please! :-) -Liam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
On 11/02/11 2:32 PM, David Gerard wrote: On 2 November 2011 21:28, Nathannawr...@gmail.com wrote: To explain what I mean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:QUICKREF YES. We need this horribly urgently. It should also pop up when someone clicks on a [citation needed] tag - that's a blue link that looks like a direct invitation, after all. At present clicking on that leads to a page that explains why we need citation, but says nothing about how to do it. That's useless. Linking to a usable box would be a big improvement. Also can the expression citation needed be changed to something that is more inviting to newbies, like Please add citation? Ray ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 8:29 PM, Liam Wyatt liamwy...@gmail.com wrote: On 3 November 2011 09:26, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: We could create a zotero plugin which allows the ref to be added to the end of paragraph. We could go even further and integrate mediawiki and a zotero server so that Wikipedia can use named refs throughout. Oh yes please! :-) Other wikis have this. ;-( http://doc.tiki.org/Zotero -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Ideas for newbie recruitment
Well, no newbie will wake up and say: I want to place references in
Wikipedia articles today - they do because one of us asked them to do. And
all (maybe not all but most of) us know the software, and don't cost more
of our time ask them to use it. In fact a message explaining how to use
the software is far more simple than one explaining how to insert the
{{cite web}} template (and I know because I already send both to newbies).
_
*Béria Lima*
http://wikimedia.pt/(351) 925 171 484
*Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter
livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. É isso o que
estamos a fazer http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Nossos_projetos.*
On 3 November 2011 08:40, Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote:
On 11/01/11 4:43 PM, Béria Lima wrote:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cite4wiki/ (in wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cite4Wiki )
right click and paste in the article. Easier than that can't be ;)
The newbie still has to find out from somewhere that he should download
the software. Even something as simple as needing to right click isn't
obvious.
Ray
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Re: [Foundation-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
2011/11/3 David Richfield davidrichfi...@gmail.com: This should be kept in mind (particularly for bot design) when many new articles such as biographies are *incorrectly* tagged for speedy deletion or as unsourced when sources are present in the article, they just do not use the citation template or ref tag. Does this seriously happen? The only tag that is appropriate to this situation is refimprove or cleanup or maybe wikify. Yes, helped by tools that encourage dealing with new users to be treated like a first-person shooter. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
On 3 November 2011 09:31, Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote: Also can the expression citation needed be changed to something that is more inviting to newbies, like Please add citation? We may be late for that - citation needed is entering English. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Ideas for newbie recruitment
On 3 November 2011 09:45, Béria Lima berial...@gmail.com wrote:
Well, no newbie will wake up and say: I want to place references in
Wikipedia articles today - they do because one of us asked them to do. And
all (maybe not all but most of) us know the software, and don't cost more
of our time ask them to use it. In fact a message explaining how to use
the software is far more simple than one explaining how to insert the
{{cite web}} template (and I know because I already send both to newbies).
Wikipedia should be a more or less complete web application.
Suggesting people who've never edited before download software first
strikes me as an effective way to reduce the new user pool
drastically.
- d.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 21:41, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: I knew it looked so obvious someone must've already tried to do it. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ProveIt.jpg and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ProveIt_GT. This is a GUI reference adding interface that shows up while editing (i.e., after you click edit this page.) It's a gadget currently available to everyone. A lot of us aren't using ProveIt because of the slowness in loading. You click edit, then you start editing, only for ProveIt to start loading, bouncing the edit box around and generally making things slow. Personally, I just use the built in 'Cite' buttons and I also use Reftag, a tool that lets you paste in a Google Books URL and which then spits out a copy-pasteable citation - see http://reftag.appspot.com/ -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
On 11/02/11 11:27 PM, David Richfield wrote: A tool which pops up asking for a URL, author and date would be a rich source of bad references. We should rather be looking at ways to get references to books and journal articles. Web references should be the exception rather than the rule, because the vast majority of websites are not WP:RS. How about a wizard-like tool which asks did you read this in a book, in a newspaper, a journal article or on the web? and if the answer is on the web asks the user how they know it's true. Compare for example Commons's image uploader. Users who care about references should be taught how to extract good refs from Google Books and Google Scholar - both quite easy to use. If you paste the ISBN of a book into Citation Expander, it fills in the whole citation for you, and the same for pubmed IDs. Now we just need a tool which will do this for major newspapers on the web. This demands far too much of newbies. We can sometimes be very cult-like in our demand for references and sources. If you want to scare away newbies you do that very well by thrusting him into a highly subjective debate about the nature of reliable sources. I too would prefer books and articles. I'm also sure that some of the references provided will be bad. A reference is what it is, but it would be badgering newbies to ask them how they know that something is true. What we want to instill here is the good habit of references, and out of good faith trust that editors are not inventing their references. *Keep it simple.* A tool that ask whether the reference is from a book, a journal, the web or something else is good for a different reason. The choice would lead to different drop-down boxes where only the relevant questions would be asked. A lot of the books that I have are pre-ISBN. Ray ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
Tom's point on lag is an important consideration, I tend to use tools such as greasemonkey (see the wiki citation generator direct from Worldcat entries - http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/59173 - Google, The Guardian and others also available) and my local scripts using iMacro to scrape key information from a website and format a neat citation (see attached iMacro javascript for the NY Times). Such tools being client side ensures a quick response and I have had such poor experiences with server site user scripts causing problems that I have invariably switched them off. Though not an obvious solution for new users, having a standard tool for Google books/news, WorldCat, leading newspapers etc. and possibly working with partners such as Zotero might be a useful alternative path to consider rather than limiting our thinking to the Wikipedia edit box interface. Cheers, Fae ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
On 11/02/11 2:11 PM, Nathan wrote: A button or link that says Add a reference? that brings up a box with several lines, labelled URL Source Author Date. Click Ok and the reference is inserted, no ref syntax or other ugly interface necessary. Put it automatically at the end of a paragraph or somewhere else, maybe even include a section selector as step 1 of the box. Allow it to be manually inserted, so if a reference is needed but someone doesn't have one, they can make it easy for someone else to add it. We do have the important rule of leaving something for others to do. Your last sentence strikes at an important point. The difficulty is that too many people shoot first, and ask questions of the corpse later. Deleting the unsourced statement is easier and cleaner that having a citation needed link to clutter the appearance of the page. While there are circumstances where that approach is justifiable, for most articles it isn't. For the non-editing reader, the notice puts him on alert to apply his own judgement to what he reads. As we drill further down into knowledge sources that corroborate each other will become fewer and more scattered. Ray ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Ideas for newbie recruitment
On 10/31/11 1:31 PM, Michael Snow wrote: For me, the most common reason why an edit click is not followed by a save is because I end up not having the time to complete the work, or the edit I had in mind becomes more complicated than I thought (sometimes the latter partly explains the former). To put it idiomatically, it's a reaction to biting off more than I can chew. That may not be entirely typical, but in the sense of editing proved more difficult than anticipated it probably explains many abortive attempts at editing. I suppose it's been suggested before, but I think more fine-grained section editing capability, so you can simply highlight any portion of an article and open an edit window for just that portion, could be helpful. This is completely understandable. I recently looked at a 13-page article in the Bullletin of the Pan American Union for 1933 on Hipólito Unánue. Our stub article shows him as president of Peru in 1825-6. He wasn't. I had to ask myself how much time am I prepared to use for sorting this out. Ray ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
On 11/03/11 2:49 AM, David Gerard wrote: On 3 November 2011 09:31, Ray Saintongesainto...@telus.net wrote: Also can the expression citation needed be changed to something that is more inviting to newbies, like Please add citation? We may be late for that - citation needed is entering English. Be that as it may, is it inviting to the newbie? If a change is going to draw them in it's still worthwhile. Ray ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
On 3 November 2011 10:47, Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote: On 11/03/11 2:49 AM, David Gerard wrote: On 3 November 2011 09:31, Ray Saintongesainto...@telus.net wrote: Also can the expression citation needed be changed to something that is more inviting to newbies, like Please add citation? We may be late for that - citation needed is entering English. Be that as it may, is it inviting to the newbie? If a change is going to draw them in it's still worthwhile. Ray Whilst we're discussing newbie recruitment [and retention] I saw an interesting comment from John Broughton, author of [[Wikipedia - The Missing Manual]], on the WMF blog today that I thought was worth sharing: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/11/02/new-comparative-study-to-re-examine-the-quality-and-accuracy-of-wikipedia/#comment-29077 [quoting the blogpost] “A comparative analysis of the quality of Wikipedia’s articles and other popular alternatives is crucial to identifying avenues for improvement.” Actually, NO. What is crucial to improvement is to reverse the continuing decline in the number of active Wikipedia contributors – to get more new editors, and to keep active editors longer. There are already known enormous backlogs – see for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-10-31/Opinion_essay(including its comments), because the number of contributors is declining in absolute terms, not to mention in respect to the ever-increasing size of the encyclopedia. Every major Internet commercial website spends millions of dollars every month testing and implementing changes to make their websites easier to use. But the Foundation – which depends far more on its contributors to create content than any other organization except social media sites like Facebook – has never put the user experience of *editors* as anything close to its number one priority. And the result is that people with time – because more people spend more time on the Web every year – commit less and less time as editors on Wikipedia and other WMF websites. Readership goes up, inexorably, but the people who create the content continue to be fewer and fewer, inexorably. The Foundation has some initiatives ongoing that will help – a WYSIWYG editor and an analysis of why editors leave being potentially the most useful. What is missing is a commitment by the Foundation to make editing EASIER. That means not only the user interface, but such matters as creating a separate Table namespace (in the same way that there is a separate, and different, namespace for media files); a one-click or two-click way of creating a fully-formatted footnote citation from any source page on the web; a hash total for article versions so that reverts can be easily removed from watchlist reports (for those who don’t care about what is typically vandalism removal); a functional help system for less-experienced editors; a professionally created and edited set of screencasts for new and intermediate-level editors, showing how to perform various tasks; edit options beyond just all-or-nothing opening of an article or article section (for example, “add a footnote”; “improve a footnote”); and more. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
This demands far too much of newbies. We can sometimes be very cult-like in our demand for references and sources. Verifiability is central to Wikipedia, and it should not be otherwise. If we have editors who do not understand what a reliable source is, they need to be educated. If they don't care about that kind of thing, and are scared off by our demands for reliable sources, we might be scaring away the people who should be scared away. Where do I go to join the cult? If you want to scare away newbies you do that very well by thrusting him into a highly subjective debate about the nature of reliable sources. Sure, it's subjective. Reinforcing the common misconception that a URL is a citation is not what we should be doing, though. I too would prefer books and articles. I'm also sure that some of the references provided will be bad. A reference is what it is, but it would be badgering newbies to ask them how they know that something is true. Perfectly true - a better wording is needed. What we want to instill here is the good habit of references, and out of good faith trust that editors are not inventing their references. *Keep it simple.* Made-up references are not a big issue: it's wildly unreliable references taken from a cursory google web search that are the problem. A tool that ask whether the reference is from a book, a journal, the web or something else is good for a different reason. The choice would lead to different drop-down boxes where only the relevant questions would be asked. A very useful advantage; true! A lot of the books that I have are pre-ISBN. Also true - at that point I'd always just filled in the form, but of course now I know about reftag... David ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
2011/11/3 David Richfield davidrichfi...@gmail.com: A tool which pops up asking for a URL, author and date would be a rich source of bad references. We should rather be looking at ways to get references to books and journal articles. Web references should be the exception rather than the rule, because the vast majority of websites are not WP:RS. Problem is a lot of books are rather questionable. However dead tree worship means people generally ask fewer questions. The reality is that your average person is unlikely to access to journals and only have books to hand on a narrow range of subjects. Under those conditions the web is by far the most likely viable source of citations. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 1:55 PM, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/11/3 David Richfield davidrichfi...@gmail.com: A tool which pops up asking for a URL, author and date would be a rich source of bad references. We should rather be looking at ways to get references to books and journal articles. Web references should be the exception rather than the rule, because the vast majority of websites are not WP:RS. Problem is a lot of books are rather questionable. However dead tree worship means people generally ask fewer questions. People should question book sources, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be encouraging people to find them and use them. The reality is that your average person is unlikely to access to journals and only have books to hand on a narrow range of subjects. If you have the web to hand, you have Google Books and Google Scholar (which shows you which of the articles are full-text). Under those conditions the web is by far the most likely viable source of citations. A much richer source of citations, true, and easy to use badly, but very hard to use well: it's easy to get rubbish sources off the web, but it takes experience and expertise to find good ones. -- David Richfield e^(ði)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
On Thursday, November 3, 2011, David Richfield davidrichfi...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 1:55 PM, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: Problem is a lot of books are rather questionable. However dead tree worship means people generally ask fewer questions. People should question book sources, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be encouraging people to find them and use them. The reality is that your average person is unlikely to access to journals and only have books to hand on a narrow range of subjects. If you have the web to hand, you have Google Books and Google Scholar (which shows you which of the articles are full-text). That brings an idea to mind: would it be useful to have a way of trying to encourage people to find useful prospective book and journal sources that they don't necessarily have access to, and then having some uniform way of flagging them for review. Lots of people in and around academia can probably help here: librarians, Ph.D students etc. All that is needed is a way of basically encouraging people to put up sources we're not sure about on the talk page, and putting a flag on them (like enwp has for edit protected and edit semi-protected). Perhaps this could be part of the article feedback tool: is this article missing a source? could you tell us what it is? - this would automatically dump a new section on the talk page with whatever they type in, along with a template called something like potential ref which would add a category so someone could go and check up on it. And, yes, I do know that this may seem like I'm coming up with a solution to the huge backlog of unreferenced articles by creating a new backlog of articles which need a reference check. ;-) -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
On 3 November 2011 12:22, Tom Morris t...@tommorris.org wrote: Perhaps this could be part of the article feedback tool: is this article missing a source? could you tell us what it is? - this would automatically dump a new section on the talk page with whatever they type in, along with a template called something like potential ref which would add a category so someone could go and check up on it. And, yes, I do know that this may seem like I'm coming up with a solution to the huge backlog of unreferenced articles by creating a new backlog of articles which need a reference check. ;-) I suggest that backlogs don't matter nearly as much as involvement and drawing new people in. Backlogs as a concern translate directly to newbies are inherently a problem. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
It would be handy to have sites usable as references build-in code for easy Wikipedia citations, but it seems pretty unlikely that such an effort will ever recruit enough sites to be really useful. A greasemonkey script of some sort would be easier and would allow users basically the same functionality. On the other hand, the OP is about recruiting newbies. While probably many references added using a QuickRef style tool would be of dubious quality, it would make it *a lot* easier to add refs, work as a draw for new editors, and reinforce the need for references generally. I wish we didn't always have to dispense with this tired argument that making editing easier will inundate the projects with idiots. Easy and open editing is the ethos that built the whole project. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
On 3 November 2011 12:53, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: I wish we didn't always have to dispense with this tired argument that making editing easier will inundate the projects with idiots. Easy and open editing is the ethos that built the whole project. Yes. All arguments of this form are saying newbies are fundamentally a problem. This is what I mean by the newbie hostility of the incumbents as the big barrier. Making editing easier will lead to backlogs! = newbies are a problem Making adding references easier will lead to backlogs! = newbies are a problem Letting people create pages will make work! = newbies are a problem As Kim notes, it's project-wide adminitis. I don't have a ready solution - you can't just demand people be more welcoming and expect it to happen - but I think this is the key to the problem. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 2:53 PM, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: I wish we didn't always have to dispense with this tired argument that making editing easier will inundate the projects with idiots. Easy and open editing is the ethos that built the whole project. I just want to point out that I didn't say that we should not make it easier to add references, but that we shouldn't create the impression that adding citations means pasting the URL of any old website that supports the claim I'm making into Wikipedia, and that we should work harder to make it easier to reference books and articles. -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
On 3 November 2011 12:27, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: Backlogs as a concern translate directly to newbies are inherently a problem. I don't get the point being made here, I would have thought that backlogs are a good way to attract new editors into teamworking and community. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/DER and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unreferenced_BLP_Rescue are examples that attracted many new editors Cheers, Fae ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
On 3 November 2011 13:27, Fae f...@wikimedia.org.uk wrote: On 3 November 2011 12:27, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: Backlogs as a concern translate directly to newbies are inherently a problem. I don't get the point being made here, People who say But x would lead to a backlog! as a counterargument to making something easier, as if backlogs are inherently a problem. I would have thought that backlogs are a good way to attract new editors into teamworking and community. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/DER and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unreferenced_BLP_Rescue are examples that attracted many new editors Well, yeah. Some article maintenance backlogs are just horrible to deal with, though. I just went through new article wizard creations. I checked about ten, cleared a few as OK enough to live and just don't want to look at another one. I suppose, look at the biggest article maintenance categories and think: how can I turn this into an opportunity to recruit? Surely we haven't recruited and burnt out all the world's pedants ... - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Translations of September 2011 Wikimedia Highlights available in العربية (Arabic), Deutsch (German), Italiano (Italian), 日本語 (Japanese)
Hi, as mentioned in last week's announcement of the September 2011 Wikimedia Foundation report, this time we published a separate Highlights summary, combining excerpts from the general report and the engineering report. It's an experiment, a format which might be useful for those who might find the full reports long to read, and it facilitates translations. Several translations are now available (help is welcome in spreading them): مجموعة من أهم ما جاء في تقرير مؤسسة ويكيميديا وتقرير هندسة ويكيمييديا لشهر سبتمبر 2011 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Highlights,_September_2011/ar Höhepunkte aus dem Monatsbericht und dem technischen Bericht der Wikimedia Foundation für September 2011 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Highlights,_September_2011/de I punti salienti presi dal Wikimedia Foundation Report e dal Wikimedia engineering report del mese di Settembre 2011 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Highlights,_September_2011/it 2011年9月のウィキメディア財団報告書及びウィキメディア技術報告より抄録 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Highlights,_September_2011/ja Thanks to all translators! Translations can still be added at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Highlights,_September_2011 As said above, this is an experiment, so it would be nice to hear how useful the result is to people, and what could be improved. I would also like to take the occasion to draw attention to Wikimedia:Woche, an new weekly newsletter run by the German Wikimedia chapter, summarizing news from the whole movement in German language (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/vereinde-l/2011-September/005121.html ). To my knowledge it is the first initiative of its kind by a chapter (of course there are already volunteer-run publications such as the Signpost, Wikizine and Kurier). -- Tilman Bayer Movement Communications Wikimedia Foundation IRC (Freenode): HaeB ___ Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Foundation-L, the public mailing list about the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects. For more information about Foundation-L: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list wikimediaannounc...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia ideology
You know it would in most cases have been considered an act of good faith to mention your long standing antipathy to wikipedia. But perhaps I'm just old fashioned. I'm sorry about that - I assumed everyone knew who 'Peter Damian' was. I don't understand what you mean about 'antipathy to Wikipedia'. There are many things I am critical about, of course. I support the core vision of what *I* regard as the Wikipedia ideology, which is that knowledge should be free to all. What is the origin of *Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.* ? Are there any other aspects to the 'Wikipedia ideology'? Richard Stallman, who I will be interviewing early in November, has a lot to say about 'community'. Edward ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia ideology
What license(s) will the book be released under? MZMcBride Very funny :) I have just completed my book on Scotus, which will be submitted to the Catholic University Assocation Press next week. Assuming it gets through their lengthy approval process,it will be published under whatever license they use - I imagine the 'evil' one. So to for the Wikipedia book, but it is early days to approach a publisher. If you ask why, I reply that no method has yet been devised to give attribution to the author of a work in a way that advances their career. I will earn little or no money from either work, I imagine. Note that Andrew Lih's book, which I have ordered from Waterstone's, is also under a standard copright license. At least I assume - I paid good money for it, because it was not available any other way. However, I do publish material on my own website, the Logic Museum. I fund this myself, and the translation work such as here http://www.logicmuseum.com/wiki/Authors/Ockham/Summa_Logicae is published under a 'free' license. http://www.logicmuseum.com/wiki/The_Logic_Museum:Copyrights I don't get any formal recognition for this. I do it because I want this material, which is very hard to get access to, even for subject matter experts, to be freely available to everyone on the planet. Edward ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
The Signpost – Volume 7, Issue 43 – 24 October 2011
From the editors: A call for contributors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-10-24/From_the_editors Opinion essay: There is a deadline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-10-24/Opinion_essay Interview: Contracting for the Foundation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-10-24/Interview In the news: Are Wikipedians reluctant journalists?; Wikipedia:The Musical http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-10-24/In_the_news WikiProject report: Great WikiProject Logos http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-10-24/WikiProject_report Featured content: The best of the week http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-10-24/Featured_content Arbitration report: Abortion; request for amendment on Climate Change case http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-10-24/Arbitration_report Technology report: WMF launches coding challenge, WMDE starts hiring for major new project http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-10-24/Technology_report Single page view http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signpost/Single PDF version http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-10-24 http://identi.ca/wikisignpost / https://twitter.com/wikisignpost -- Wikipedia Signpost Staff http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost ___ Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Foundation-L, the public mailing list about the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects. For more information about Foundation-L: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list wikimediaannounc...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
The Signpost – Volume 7, Issue 44 – 31 October 2011
Opinion essay: The monster under the rug http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-10-31/Opinion_essay Recent research: WikiSym; predicting editor survival; drug information found lacking; RfAs and trust; Wikipedia's search engine ranking justified http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-10-31/Recent_research News and notes: German Wikipedia continues image filter protest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-10-31/News_and_notes In the news: Citizendium on the rocks, Shankbone celebrated, and the week in vandalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-10-31/In_the_news Discussion report: Proposal to return this section from hiatus is successful http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-10-31/Discussion_report WikiProject report: 'In touch' with WikiProject Rugby union http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-10-31/WikiProject_report Featured content: The best of the week http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-10-31/Featured_content Arbitration report: Abortion case stalls, request for clarification on Î, discretionary sanctions streamlined http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-10-31/Arbitration_report Technology report: Wikipedia Zero announced; New Orleans successfully hacked http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-10-31/Technology_report Single page view http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signpost/Single PDF version http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-10-31 http://identi.ca/wikisignpost / https://twitter.com/wikisignpost -- Wikipedia Signpost Staff http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost ___ Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Foundation-L, the public mailing list about the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects. For more information about Foundation-L: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list wikimediaannounc...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Ideas for newbie recruitment
I don't think simple text or link changes will really do the trick. I think popup bubbles could be more successful. On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 4:55 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.comwrote: David Gerard, 31/10/2011 12:29: I’ve been into Wikipedia for several years, and all my friends know this. I *still* find myself having to explain to them in small words that that “edit” link really does include them fixing typos when they see one. So my suggestion: tiny tiny steps like this: things people can do that have a strong probability of sticking. Anyone else got ideas based on their (admittedly anecdotal) experience? [inspired by Oliver Keyes' blog post: http://quominus.org/archives/524 ] What's the impact of changes like https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Taglinediff=20130615oldid=17050524 ? (Probably minimal, readers don't actually read our invitations to edit anyway, usually.) Nemo ___ 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] Wikipedia ideology
On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 1:58 PM, Peter Damian peter.dam...@btinternet.com wrote: If you ask why, I reply that no method has yet been devised to give attribution to the author of a work in a way that advances their career. I will earn little or no money from either work, I imagine. Note that Andrew Lih's book, which I have ordered from Waterstone's, is also under a standard copright license. At least I assume - I paid good money for it, because it was not available any other way. There is a fundamental difference between publishing a book and publishing an article (or part thereof) on an encyclopedia. When you publish a book, your name is on the cover, you are clearly indicated as the author (or one of the authors). When you write an article for an encyclopedia, your name is not necessarily at the end of the article, it could be in the credits somewhere, and in any case the article will be attributed to the encyclopedia Xyz. Note that this is independent of the license. A publisher and an author may have a very good reason to reserve rights and refuse a free license - we all need to pay our bills. Cruccone ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 9:49 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:
On 2 November 2011 21:41, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote:
I knew it looked so obvious someone must've already tried to do it.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ProveIt.jpg and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ProveIt_GT. This is a GUI reference
adding interface that shows up while editing (i.e., after you click
edit this page.) It's a gadget currently available to everyone.
A gadget is certainly handy and I'll be using ProveIt from now on,
but... it doesn't help people who are not logged in or have never
edited before, it's not widely publicised, etc. etc.
This needs polishing into some sort of newbie-usable tool and
deployment as soon as can be managed. (i.e. before the WYSIWYG of our
dreams.)
Go to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MyPage/common.js
and insert
importScript('User:Magnus Manske/insertref.js');
You'll get an Insert reference link in your toolbox. Select some
(best plain, unique) text in the normal page (not the edit page!),
click the link, paste the reference, choose to insert left or right of
the selection, in edit mode click save, done.
This has been sitting there since March 2009. It's probably not what
you want as is, but the concept could be married up with the Proveit
interface, and the save could be done via API, so you never ever see
the edit page.
Cheers,
Magnus
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