[WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
Here's why Citizendium is far better: * It's more open... everyone's identities are known, there are no sockpuppets, there is none of the absurd overhead that anonymity entails. * It's more serious... vital articles come first... Pokemon comes last. Only in many years from now will we begin to see trivial articles surface: obscure films, unknown actors etc. *This seriousness attracts Academics. Citizendium's slow growth is actually an incentive to serious-minded writers. It means the place is clear of the nutters and fans that Wikipedia has. *The place is in the hands of writers and not an army of 1600 administrators. Can you imagine writing for Wikipedia as an expert and knowing that your bosses are in high school, maybe university, and only occasionally over 35 years old? *Because real identities are used, less rules and guideline creep exists. It's more about the material. *All the computer guys are at Wikipedia because they like the technical aspects of Wikipedia where you have to master a lingo and comply with MOS (don't ask!). These guys see everything in terms of percents anyhow, and don't have the kind of discerning mind that understands concepts and themes etc. With them out of the way, you get a healthier bunch of writers who show up at Citizendium. *Citizendium's difficult entrance exam is not really all that difficult. It's a sure-fire way of keeping out those who are not prepared to edit an encyclopedia and frankly, I love that! Citizendium can just hang on, and stick around, because it's far less about its success over Wikipedia than it is about an environment in which serious-minded people with the werewithal can write about important subjects. Chet ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Lies, damned lies, and statistics
On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 4:20 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: I know some Wikipedians were asking Google wtf? Could you at least not rank us three pages behind our own mirrors? And Google complied, implementing a duplicate content penalty which eliminated mirrors and forks alike (and is probably hurting Citizendium right this very moment). My point exactly. But the thing is: huge popularity for the wikipedia.org website isn't necessarily a win for Wikipedia and writing an encyclopedia. Mostly it's been an expensive pain in the arse. Agreed, but the question this thread came from was implicitly equating popularity with success: Will Citizendium become a top 1000 website within the next five years? ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
2009/4/21 Chet Hoover chet.hoo...@yahoo.com: *This seriousness attracts Academics. Citizendium's slow growth is actually an incentive to serious-minded writers. It means the place is clear of the nutters and fans that Wikipedia has. I suspect this is only because it's in its early days. Keep in mind: when Clay Shirky wrote A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy, he used Wikipedia as an example of somewhere that had *avoided* these problems. http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html As of 2009, Wikipedia looks like it's hit its head on every step on the way down. Larry's clearly read this essay. But remember: a group being its own worst enemy is something every group complacently sleepwalks into. *Because real identities are used, less rules and guideline creep exists. It's more about the material. It's not clear those have anything to do with each other. Instruction creep is a problem in all organisations. See above re: complacency. *All the computer guys are at Wikipedia because they like the technical aspects of Wikipedia where you have to master a lingo and comply with MOS (don't ask!). These guys see everything in terms of percents anyhow, and don't have the kind of discerning mind that understands concepts and themes etc. With them out of the way, you get a healthier bunch of writers who show up at Citizendium. Thus resulting in spectacular successes like the Homeopathy article. *cough* Citizendium can just hang on, and stick around, because it's far less about its success over Wikipedia than it is about an environment in which serious-minded people with the werewithal can write about important subjects. Citizendium sticking around would be much better than it not, and most of the people involved are less bitter than Larry. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
2009/4/22 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com: So it's all about the writing? I would have though the important thing was the reading. Wikipedia is all about spreading free knowledge - if no-one reads what you write, there is no point writing it. If you don't reach a comparable size to Wikipedia (you don't have to be bigger, just within an order of magnitude or so) you won't attract many readers. Without readers, you won't attract more writers (pretty much all Wikipedians started out as readers, if Citizendium wants to attract a significant number of writers it needs to use the same source). Without more writers, the current writers will eventually get bored and move on and the project will cease to exist. Yes. This is a fallacy we see over and over: Wikipedia would be so much better if you did X for the writers. Whereas that doesn't serve the readers, so is why we don't do it. So other projects come along that will do X for the writers, and fail to gain traction. Knol is the highest-profile failure so far - untrammeled freedom for the writers has made it a spam repository. I think competition is fantastic and fully encourage people to start competitors to Wikipedia, but in my view Citizendium has failed. It wasn't sufficiently better than Wikipedia to attract enough writers and readers to kick off exponential growth, which is required to reach a useful size. Citizendium's not dead yet! But it'll get good in direct proportion to how much it forms its own positive identity, rather than one based on comparing itself to Wikipedia. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
Many of these very constraints are exactly what are likely to stop Citizendium from reaching critical mass. Whatever that phrase means Wikipedia has it and Citizendium does not. I think it's an interesting question whether Wikipedia would have been successful had these influences prevailed early on in its history (post-Nupedia). Many people are easily discouraged by barries to participation. That doesn't mean that the information contained inside their brains ceases to be useful to the project, it just means you'll have to come up with ways to help them participate in a constructive manner. These two constraints seem to be at odds - how can we get people who have information that is useful to us, but are perhaps a bit fickle when it comes to technology, to contribute that information without hurting the encyclopedia? The answer is not to weed them out - that would be to avoid the challenge entirely. The trick is to use that very technology to lower the barrier to participation to a level low enough to get them hooked. On Wikipedia this means allowing them to go ahead and submit their ideas and allow several thousand more technically minded contributors - or other anons - to clean up and polish the contribution. So far this technique has worked really, really well. Even fairly reasonable independent academic reviews show that Wikipedia's content is actually not that bad - definitely a good place to start. If we go by numbers of articles then its true that most of the encyclopedia is low quality. But if we look at the actual popularity of subjects we find that quality does indeed scale with public interest. This is not very surprising since we show an edit box to every member of the public. We expect that the articles that get looked at more get edited more as well and that quality might scale with number of edits. And this is true. So we see how Wikipedia and Citizendium are different: Citizendium thinks that fewer high quality edits made by exactly the right people is better than many low quality edits made by anyone who wishes. In this regard its hard for me to see a distinction between the relationships between Nupedia/Wikipedia and Citizendium/Wikipedia. Both of these less successful projects have gone to some length to weed out contributors, whereas Wikipedia takes a *totally* different approach to acceptance - everyone except the GDs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PBAGDSWCBY These are both projects to build an encyclopedia and despite the different approaches that Wikipedia and Citizendium take it seems reasonable to compare them on their successes and failures. So far Citizendium is not even close to Wikipedia's quality despite the hullaboo made by its community. In fact, it's not clear how it could possibly catch up given their choice of weeding out contributors. On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 12:43 PM, Chet Hoover chet.hoo...@yahoo.com wrote: Here's why Citizendium is far better: * It's more open... everyone's identities are known, there are no sockpuppets, there is none of the absurd overhead that anonymity entails. * It's more serious... vital articles come first... Pokemon comes last. Only in many years from now will we begin to see trivial articles surface: obscure films, unknown actors etc. *This seriousness attracts Academics. Citizendium's slow growth is actually an incentive to serious-minded writers. It means the place is clear of the nutters and fans that Wikipedia has. *The place is in the hands of writers and not an army of 1600 administrators. Can you imagine writing for Wikipedia as an expert and knowing that your bosses are in high school, maybe university, and only occasionally over 35 years old? *Because real identities are used, less rules and guideline creep exists. It's more about the material. *All the computer guys are at Wikipedia because they like the technical aspects of Wikipedia where you have to master a lingo and comply with MOS (don't ask!). These guys see everything in terms of percents anyhow, and don't have the kind of discerning mind that understands concepts and themes etc. With them out of the way, you get a healthier bunch of writers who show up at Citizendium. *Citizendium's difficult entrance exam is not really all that difficult. It's a sure-fire way of keeping out those who are not prepared to edit an encyclopedia and frankly, I love that! Citizendium can just hang on, and stick around, because it's far less about its success over Wikipedia than it is about an environment in which serious-minded people with the werewithal can write about important subjects. Chet ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
Re: [WikiEN-l] Lies, damned lies, and statistics
On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 8:35 AM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 4:20 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: I know some Wikipedians were asking Google wtf? Could you at least not rank us three pages behind our own mirrors? And Google complied, implementing a duplicate content penalty which eliminated mirrors and forks alike (and is probably hurting Citizendium right this very moment). My point exactly. I thought Citizendium had declined to copy any Wikipedia content. How then could such a algorithm tweak matter to them? (I will note that things have gotten much better. Back in 2004 or so if I had ran a Google search for [[Medici Bank]], the results would've been all cluttered up by mirrors of WP; but now it's pretty rare to run into a mirror, and I think the last one I found unbidden was Wapedia, which admittedly isn't exactly the same content as WP.) -- gwern ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
David Gerard wrote: Yes. This is a fallacy we see over and over: Wikipedia would be so much better if you did X for the writers. Whereas that doesn't serve the readers, so is why we don't do it. So other projects come along that will do X for the writers, and fail to gain traction. Knol is the highest-profile failure so far - untrammeled freedom for the writers has made it a spam repository. - d. Ultimately, I think this is true. Almost Wikipedia has cornered the market in huge coverage, but somewhat questionable reliability online encyclopedias. Whilst it is true that Wikipedia could be improved on and a Wikipedia+ system devised, it will fail. Just as surely as any new operating system will fail if it tries to sell itself as Windows but a bit better. The saturation of the established product will squash it. This is also why content forking is quite useless. The only hope for An Other is to offer an entirely different formula from huge coverage, but somewhat questionable reliability. (If you up the reliability by selecting your writers, then your coverage will be proportionately decreased anyway.) You would need to be able to offer a product which was *substantially* more reliable, but still wide and participatory enough not just to be another Veropedia. If you could do that, comparisons with wikipedia would be pointless - the point would be that people looking for reliable, citable, material on any core subject would use that encyclopedia in preference to/or alongside Wikipedia. That Wikipedia had 100 times more articles would be beside the point. (It is interesting to consider what would happen if Encarta had been made available and maintained free to use by Microsoft - perhaps ad funded - it might well have taken the business from Wikipedia on many core topics.) I'd say that the reader question is less pertinent for any start up than the writer question. Readers will not be interested until you have enough writers to produce the goods, and do so in a reliable way. So you really need to find a motivation to make qualified people want to contribute (or Wikipedia's best to switch). Ultimately, having a lot of readers will do that, but any start up needs initially to offer something else to the writer. There are two things which motivate people - fame and money. Wikipedia offers neither. It is not impossible that a formula could emerge that allows revenue to the writer or the writer to get the type of kudos that is bankable on a CV. Knowl and CZ have both realised this - but neither seems to have got the formula right. (If, indeed, it is possible to.) The Other does not need to think in terms of replacing Wikipedia - or scoring more Goggle juice. Success is where someone looking for a source they can quote in their school essay says better try Otherpedia.com. Indeed would it not be great if in ten years time I can google a subject, easily find the wikipedia article, and then, if the subject is not so obscure that only Wikipedia will cover it, follow the link to the academically respectable Otherpedia.com article (which, indeed, is reliable enough to have been allowed as a source for Wikipedia)! ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
2009/4/22 doc doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com: I'd say that the reader question is less pertinent for any start up than the writer question. I don't think the two questions can be separated. Without the feedback between the two (readers becoming writers) you'll never get exponential growth and without that you'll never reach a size where you are useful. I completely agree with you than new Wikipedia-like projects need to be substantially different to Wikipedia if they are going to get anywhere. However, achieving significant growth will still be a requirement for any such project. You mention a project 1/100 the size of Wikipedia. Citizendium is currently 1/250 the size of the English Wikipedia and at its current growth rate it won't reach 1/100 the size for another 3 years or so - I don't think the project will last that long unless there are major changes. People will just get bored and leave. At its current size, even if Citizendium was significantly more reliable than Wikipedia, it still wouldn't be useful. As for your otherpedia - I would like to think we can achieve something like that within Wikipedia. An enhanced version of Featured Articles, making use of FlaggedRevs and verified experts, could achieve the same goals are your otherpedia. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
2009/4/22 Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com And Citizendium's coverage is lacking in vital areas. I tried to look up Macedonia, but no article. One sentence article: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Mongolia One paragraph article: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Greece No articles on Chad, Bolivia, Malawi. I stopped looking. Oh boy. And Belgium is plain *wrong*. I applied for an author account just to be able to change the most egregious nonsense. Michel ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
2009/4/22 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org: On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 10:46 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/4/22 doc doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com: I'd say that the reader question is less pertinent for any start up than the writer question. I don't think the two questions can be separated. Without the feedback between the two (readers becoming writers) you'll never get exponential growth and without that you'll never reach a size where you are useful. What is the minimum size a project must be in order to be useful? I don't know. It depends on the intended breadth of the project, for a start. A general encyclopaedia needs to be bigger than a specialist one. A Wikipedia-like project becomes useful when you can be reasonably confident that it will have the information you seek (if that information is within its intended bounds). If you can't be reasonably confident of that then you would probably go somewhere else for the information. People may find useful information on a smaller project via search engines, but few people will go directly to the project as their first port of call, as people often do with Wikipedia (although a very large proportion of our readers still come from search engines). Perhaps useful is too strong a term, useful enough to rival Wikipedia would be better. Doc said, 'Success is where someone looking for a source they can quote in their school essay says better try Otherpedia.com.' That will never happen until that someone can be reasonable confident that they will find what they need on Otherpedia.com. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
Well, then I hope they tighten up the identity checks but with respect to an individual's privacy, of course. This is what makes the environment interesting, that everyone's using real names. As a reader I just don't like reading what the anonymites of the world have to say anymore. I'd like to know what serious people have to say about certain subjects. Who would edit the article about cyberspace and what would they write? http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Cyberspace Whenever someone has something to say, and wants their name to be attached to it, they can go to Citizendium. Chet From: Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2009 7:46:07 AM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia 2009/4/21 Chet Hoover chet.hoo...@yahoo.com: Here's why Citizendium is far better: * It's more open... everyone's identities are known, there are no sockpuppets, there is none of the absurd overhead that anonymity entails. The identities aren't generally verified, the only requirement is that you use a name which is plausibly a real one. It doesn't have to be your real name. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
[WikiEN-l] How students are actually taught to use Wikipedia
http://emmanugent.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/week-10a-summary/ A comment from someone comparing wikis as information sources. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] We've been overtaken.
Ian Woollard wrote: On 21/04/2009, Scientia Potentia est wrote: I'm not too concerned. Their notability standards seem to be very loose, and they have few of the trappings that we emphasize: BLP, neutrality, reliable sourcing, brilliant prose, etc. That's exactly the kind of thing that the Encyclopedia Britannica said about the Wikipedia! I wouldn't be too concerned about it either. This is a volunteer project so, unlike with the folks at EB, nobody's livelihood depends on it. Competition is a healthy development, and to everyone's benefit. Free culture principles should be the one unifying criterion for all these sites. In a free culture environment all such projects should be free to borrow from each other. The others would certainly not be bound by NPOV or the other listed features, but the right and ability of readers to compare different sites allows them the opportunity to determine for themselves exactly what is neutral. Ec ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 3:13 PM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: To be fair, I don't know how long it took Wikipedia to have an article for every country in the world - that would be an interesting question for someone to answer at some point - a standard list of countries with the date on which their Wikipedia articles were created (and a study of how the articles have increased in size since creation): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/User:Sam_Korn/countries A list generated from that page -- it's not perfect, but it's pretty good. The change in size is rather more difficult to study ;-) Sam -- Sam PGP public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sam_Korn/public_key ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] We've been overtaken.
Thomas Dalton wrote: 2009/4/22 Ray Saintonge: I wouldn't be too concerned about it either. This is a volunteer project so, unlike with the folks at EB, nobody's livelihood depends on it. That's not entirely true. Very few people's livelihoods depends on it, but we do have some paid staff. I'm glad to see you took the bait. :-) Does the paid staff exist to support the volunteer project, or is it the other way around? When essentially volunteer organizations feel obliged to protect the jobs of their paid staff by promoting monopolistic practices they become anti-competitive. It's difficult to know when the line is crossed. Ec ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] We've been overtaken.
2009/4/22 Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net: Thomas Dalton wrote: 2009/4/22 Ray Saintonge: I wouldn't be too concerned about it either. This is a volunteer project so, unlike with the folks at EB, nobody's livelihood depends on it. That's not entirely true. Very few people's livelihoods depends on it, but we do have some paid staff. I'm glad to see you took the bait. :-) Does the paid staff exist to support the volunteer project, or is it the other way around? When essentially volunteer organizations feel obliged to protect the jobs of their paid staff by promoting monopolistic practices they become anti-competitive. It's difficult to know when the line is crossed. Of course it is that way around, no one would question that. If the paid staff are no longer required to achieve our goals then they will be made redundant, but that doesn't mean those staff aren't dependent on their jobs for their livelihoods (hopefully they wouldn't have too much difficultly finding new jobs, though). ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 6:19 PM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 5:53 PM, Sam Korn smo...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 3:13 PM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: To be fair, I don't know how long it took Wikipedia to have an article for every country in the world - that would be an interesting question for someone to answer at some point - a standard list of countries with the date on which their Wikipedia articles were created (and a study of how the articles have increased in size since creation): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/User:Sam_Korn/countries A list generated from that page -- it's not perfect, but it's pretty good. The change in size is rather more difficult to study ;-) Thanks! http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%C3%85land_Islandsoldid=726060 Aland Islands is actually March 2003 - problem with redirects there. So it looks like all that low-hanging fruit went by 2002, with the outliers by 2004. A bit slower than I'd thought, really. Though Denmark is earlier than the date on your list. Not sure what is going on there. I went by the links on that page, and didn't check each one! I think the main problem is cutpaste moves or suchlike. But yes, the overall picture is most countries had articles by 2002, so within two years of the beginning. Sam -- Sam PGP public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sam_Korn/public_key ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
2009/4/22 Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com: So it looks like all that low-hanging fruit went by 2002, with the outliers by 2004. Some of those outliers aren't universally recognised countries. Transnistria, South Ossetia, etc. Some are regions of other countries with varying levels of autonomy. Udmurtia, Mordovia, etc. The most recently created article which is about something I recognise as a widely recognised country (I have never committed the list of countries to memory, so I may have missed one!) is Kenya, created in February 2003. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] We've been overtaken.
Thomas Dalton wrote: 2009/4/22 Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net: Thomas Dalton wrote: 2009/4/22 Ray Saintonge: That's not entirely true. Very few people's livelihoods depends on it, but we do have some paid staff. I'm glad to see you took the bait. :-) Does the paid staff exist to support the volunteer project, or is it the other way around? When essentially volunteer organizations feel obliged to protect the jobs of their paid staff by promoting monopolistic practices they become anti-competitive. It's difficult to know when the line is crossed. Of course it is that way around, no one would question that. If the paid staff are no longer required to achieve our goals then they will be made redundant, but that doesn't mean those staff aren't dependent on their jobs for their livelihoods (hopefully they wouldn't have too much difficultly finding new jobs, though). I am sure that if Larry Sanger is reading this mailing list, you just made him wince. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
2009/4/22 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com: 2009/4/22 Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com: So it looks like all that low-hanging fruit went by 2002, with the outliers by 2004. Some of those outliers aren't universally recognised countries. Transnistria, South Ossetia, etc. Some are regions of other countries with varying levels of autonomy. Udmurtia, Mordovia, etc. The most recently created article which is about something I recognise as a widely recognised country (I have never committed the list of countries to memory, so I may have missed one!) is Kenya, created in February 2003. And, looking at Kenya's early article history it is clear that the current article was a rewrite of a previously existing article, which I can't find any trace of. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
I don't see why the writing of an article on Plato has to conflict with the writing of one on say... Platomon (I'm sure it's only a matter of time before that's a real Pokemon). Nor do I agree that having an article on the former and not the later makes you a better reference work. --Falcorian On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 11:43 AM, Chet Hoover chet.hoo...@yahoo.com wrote: Here's why Citizendium is far better: * It's more serious... vital articles come first... Pokemon comes last. Only in many years from now will we begin to see trivial articles surface: obscure films, unknown actors etc. Chet ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of l...
On Wed, 22 Apr 2009 wjhon...@aol.com wrote: If they are not willing to type two sentences on an official site, but ARE willing to type a hundred in-project, than I submit it's *highly* unlikely to be the person in question in the first place. IF they write a blog where they complain about process, that is simply more free publicity for us. There is no such thing as bad publicity. This is exactly what's wrong with BLP. We care more about the process than we do about the people. If someone says that a relatively uncontroversial fact in an article about themselves is wrong, we should fix it. If our process says we shouldn't listen to them, then we need to fix both the process and the article. If you really doubt that the person themselves is sending you a correction, then fine. But that's only good if you really have some reason to doubt it's them. Saying what if it isn't them and then stretching it to cover all situations whether you believe it's them or not is just elevating process above people. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 6:50 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/4/22 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com: 2009/4/22 Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com: So it looks like all that low-hanging fruit went by 2002, with the outliers by 2004. Some of those outliers aren't universally recognised countries. Transnistria, South Ossetia, etc. Some are regions of other countries with varying levels of autonomy. Udmurtia, Mordovia, etc. The most recently created article which is about something I recognise as a widely recognised country (I have never committed the list of countries to memory, so I may have missed one!) is Kenya, created in February 2003. And, looking at Kenya's early article history it is clear that the current article was a rewrite of a previously existing article, which I can't find any trace of. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kenyaoldid=700553 Look at the main article links there. It seems the early articles were history of and geography of: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_Kenyaoldid=262268 (11 May 2001) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Geography_of_Kenyaoldid=262269 (11 May 2001) etc. Carcharoth ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 6:53 PM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 6:50 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/4/22 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com: 2009/4/22 Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com: So it looks like all that low-hanging fruit went by 2002, with the outliers by 2004. Some of those outliers aren't universally recognised countries. Transnistria, South Ossetia, etc. Some are regions of other countries with varying levels of autonomy. Udmurtia, Mordovia, etc. The most recently created article which is about something I recognise as a widely recognised country (I have never committed the list of countries to memory, so I may have missed one!) is Kenya, created in February 2003. And, looking at Kenya's early article history it is clear that the current article was a rewrite of a previously existing article, which I can't find any trace of. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kenyaoldid=700553 Look at the main article links there. It seems the early articles were history of and geography of: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_Kenyaoldid=262268 (11 May 2001) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Geography_of_Kenyaoldid=262269 (11 May 2001) etc. Which look in turn like they are from the CIA World Fact Book, or something similar. Carcharoth ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of l...
On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 6:55 PM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 6:52 PM, Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net wrote: On Wed, 22 Apr 2009 wjhon...@aol.com wrote: If they are not willing to type two sentences on an official site, but ARE willing to type a hundred in-project, than I submit it's *highly* unlikely to be the person in question in the first place. IF they write a blog where they complain about process, that is simply more free publicity for us. There is no such thing as bad publicity. This is exactly what's wrong with BLP. We care more about the process than we do about the people. If someone says that a relatively uncontroversial fact in an article about themselves is wrong, we should fix it. If our process says we shouldn't listen to them, then we need to fix both the process and the article. If you really doubt that the person themselves is sending you a correction, then fine. But that's only good if you really have some reason to doubt it's them. Saying what if it isn't them and then stretching it to cover all situations whether you believe it's them or not is just elevating process above people. And when you get two people contacting you, both claiming to be the same person? It does actually happen, with common names and articles that combine details of two people... Carcharoth ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
In a message dated 4/22/2009 6:59:26 AM Pacific Daylight Time, dger...@gmail.com writes: Knol is the highest-profile failure so far - untrammeled freedom for the writers has made it a spam repository. - Like Wikipedia was when it hit it's first 100,000 articles. I wouldn't call it untrammeled however, there are a few things I tried to do in Knol that were not allowed. Will Johnson ** Big savings on Dell XPS Laptops and Desktops! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1220433404x1201394533/aol?redir=http:%2F%2Fad.doubl eclick.net%2Fclk%3B214133109%3B36002181%3Bk) ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] We've been overtaken.
2009/4/21 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com: 2009/4/21 Ian Woollard ian.wooll...@gmail.com: Presumably the wikipedia can find out what proportion of its traffic actually comes from China, and compare that with the Alexa statistics. If they're close then it gives some evidence that Alexa have enough toolbars out in the wild in China to give reasonable accuracy. Yes, that would work. Or, perhaps more easily, we could compare the page views per subdomain with the percentages given by Alexa. Are those numbers available anywhere? I don't think there's a handy figure available, but you could probably get a quick-and-dirty first-order comparison using the viewing figures for a single high-profile target like the frontpage. Using this metric, hmm: en.wp [[Main Page]] - 192870187 in March en.wp [[Special:Search]] - 474835986 in March zh.wp [[Wikipedia:首页]] - 925156 in March zh.wp [[Special:Search]] - 1254441 in March ratio of pageviews for the main page, ~ 210:1 in favour of enwp; for search, 380:1 in favour of enwp. So this would suggest that zhwp, at a very rough estimate, gets about 0.5% to 0.25% of the traffic that enwp does. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
2009/4/22 Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com: Which look in turn like they are from the CIA World Fact Book, or something similar. Basically we dumped most of the CIA World Factbook into Wikipedia early on. 'Cos it's basically a geographical encyclopedia that's good quality and public domain. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
2009/4/22 wjhon...@aol.com: In a message dated 4/22/2009 6:59:26 AM Pacific Daylight Time, dger...@gmail.com writes: Knol is the highest-profile failure so far - untrammeled freedom for the writers has made it a spam repository. Like Wikipedia was when it hit it's first 100,000 articles. [citation needed] Really, that statement looks like complete rubbish. Spam repository? Please do justify that assertion. I wouldn't call it untrammeled however, there are a few things I tried to do in Knol that were not allowed. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] We've been overtaken.
2009/4/22 Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net: Been around for a while. I was expecting it to overtake en this year but not this soon. Would be interesting to know how they beat out Baidu Baike. It's not surprising that a gang of unilingual Anglos wouldn't notice a Chinese language development. Something that is currently causing me a great deal of amusement: our article at [[Hudong]] was created in April 2008 (when it had 2.4m articles). There was an earlier article at [[Hoodong]], created in November 2007 (when it had a mere 1.5 million articles) ... and deleted the same day as everyone's favourite, CSD A7. (...about a web site that does not assert significance) It seems after that, no-one got around to recreating it for six months. Ooops. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] We've been overtaken.
2009/4/22 Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk: So this would suggest that zhwp, at a very rough estimate, gets about 0.5% to 0.25% of the traffic that enwp does. And Alexa says it gets 1.1% of Wikipedia traffic and enwiki gets 54.0%. That means zhwiki gets 0.02% the traffic of enwiki. So the two measures get similar results. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
2009/4/22 wjhon...@aol.com: Is there a list of the top100 most popular Wikipedia pages? http://stats.grok.se/ - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
Very few people manage to acheive in their lives either fame in the world as a whole, or much money. What motivates people is the extent to which they can become a respected (or, if you will, famous) member of whatever their own circles are, at work and outside it. Both Wikipedia and Citizendium are large enough to offer this. To a certain extent its easier in a smaller community, but a large one offers more sub-groups. Large communities typically form as many subgroups as necessary to provide all the people after a period awaiting acceptance with an opportunity for this. Primates typically want to become alpha in their own band, not king of the jungle. The next step in self-respect is knowing that one's community has a role of some significance in wider circles--that one's band will come out ahead in conflicts with other such bands. Typically, the actual alpha primate in a band doesn't have much direct function here--it depends on the younger ones. This at present is why people come to Wikipedia: whatever small role one has with it will be seen much more widely. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 10:27 AM, doc doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com wrote: . There are two things which motivate people - fame and money. Wikipedia offers neither. It is not impossible that a formula could emerge that allows revenue to the writer or the writer to get the type of kudos that is bankable on a CV. Knowl and CZ have both realised this - but neither seems to have got the formula right. (If, indeed, it is possible to.) ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Lies, damned lies, and statistics
Anthony wrote: Agreed, but the question this thread came from was implicitly equating popularity with success: Will Citizendium become a top 1000 website within the next five years? heheh This raises a burning curiosity in my lower cogitative faculties, in finding out who the top websites holding on to placements 9996; 9997; 9998; , and 1000 1001 are at present... ( Wednesday, 22. 4. 2009 )? Heehee. Jussi-Ville Heiskanen P.S. ...and does anyone consider those sites parts of the zeitgeist? ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
dgerard wrote: Indeed. People speak of de:wp as more encyclopedia-like, better-written, etc. than en:wp, but I've asked a couple of German speakers about this and they tend to actually *use* en:wp as a reference ... because it seems that in practice, breadth counts more for usefulness than does looking like someone's ideal of an encyclopedia. Indeed, indeed, indeed. And yet, en:wp has backslid quite a bit there, too. A few years ago, in what I now think of as its heyday, Wikipedia was a useful one-stop-shopping place to look up *anything*. Today, it's still darn good, but you can only be sure of finding something if it's relatively mainstream. Deletionism (enabled, of course, by WP:RS) seems to have won out. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of l...
There are quite a number of people who like tinkering with birth years for the hell of it. it's one of the most common forms of vandalism. A good deal of the present BLP problem is the difficulty of preventing this on the more obscure articles. It would be counterproductive to have a policy to accept unsourced corrections of things like that, uncontroversial though they may seem. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG If someone says that a relatively uncontroversial fact in an article about themselves is wrong, we should fix it. If our process says we shouldn't listen to them, then we need to fix both the process and the article. If you really doubt that the person themselves is sending you a correction, then fine. But that's only good if you really have some reason to doubt it's them. Saying what if it isn't them and then stretching it to cover all situations whether you believe it's them or not is just elevating process above people. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of l...
In a message dated 4/22/2009 11:31:48 AM Pacific Daylight Time, arrom...@rahul.net writes: But if you're going to go that route, that means that once you have verified their identity, you should indeed let them fix the incorrect claim in their biography. That's not what you're saying. You're arguing for a policy that says that someone without a source can't correct errors about himself *at all*--whether you looked up the official site for his radio station or not. Verifying his identity is, in fact, completely irrelevant to this policy. -- No Ken. Because we do not require sources for non-controversial points in the first place. The subject however doesn't have a special position to makes those changes, anyone can make those changes without a source. WHEN a statement is fact-tagged, then a source should be provided. If a statement is offensive, outrageous, utterly silly, disgusting, etc. then anyone can remove it, provided it has no source. Again the subject doesn't have a special position there. The sole place where the subject may have a special position, is in providing a response to a well-sourced negative statement. If we have a statement like Britney Spears stabbed her husband and was arrested (L.A. Times, 12 Oct 2007), then she is quite welcome to provide an alternate version such as she stabbed him, but it was with a nail file and the skin wasn't even broken, he's just a big cry baby bitch. (Britneyspears.com, Why I was arrested last week) However, this does not mean that we remove the L A Times reference. That would be whitewashing the article. We are here to provide the reading public with the most consistent, neutral, inclusive view of pop culture. That isn't simply the glamour magazines, it has to include as well the news articles that have negative material. Will Johnson ** Big savings on Dell XPS Laptops and Desktops! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1220433404x1201394533/aol?redir=http:%2F%2Fad.doubl eclick.net%2Fclk%3B214133109%3B36002181%3Bk) ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 9:58 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/4/22 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com: I think competition is fantastic and fully encourage people to start competitors to Wikipedia, but in my view Citizendium has failed. It wasn't sufficiently better than Wikipedia to attract enough writers and readers to kick off exponential growth, which is required to reach a useful size. Citizendium's not dead yet! But it'll get good in direct proportion to how much it forms its own positive identity, rather than one based on comparing itself to Wikipedia. I'd say Citizendium's best chance for success (if not the same kind of success Sanger and other Citizens have been envisioning) will be as part of the broader Wikipedia ecosystem. After the license change, CZ content can be imported to Wikipedia. One possible evolution of the WP-CZ relationship will be a level of coordination, in which CZ writers are really writing with Wikipedia in mind, just in a little less of a free-for-all community environment. Already, there are probably several hundred Citizendium articles that are outright better than the Wikipedia counterparts, and many of them don't even have corresponding Wikipedia articles. We've recognized for a long time that, while Wikipedia's advantages are strong enough to attract many knowledgeable experts, there are some who try it out and find the editing environment unbearable. Citizendium could become a project that is actively supported by the Wikipedia community, where we encourage some editors to go so that they can work in relative peace and eventually have the chance to re-integrate their work in Wikipedia. For a while, it seemed that what ultimately tied together the CZ community was opposition (for a wide, sometimes incompatible range of reasons) to Wikipedia. But I don't think that's the case anymore, and just the fact that participation levels are remaining stable suggests that they've forged something of a self-sustaining community, even if the hoped-for critical mass never comes. -Sage (User:Ragesoss) ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
2009/4/22 doc doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com: However, Wikipedia is notoriously bad at attracting expects, and even the experts we have tend to run away from their specialist areas. I'd like something more than anecdotal evidence of this or repeated assertion. In my experience, you can hardly move on Wikipedia without bumping into a Ph.D. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
2009/4/22 doc doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com: Readership WILL eventually be the incentive for writing. But any startup begins with zero readers, and can't possibly attract any readers unless it has content, for which is needs writers motivated to write only in the expectation of future readers. You could seed your new project with content from an existing one (as Citizendium tried at one point), that can get around the issue of having no readers to start with - you can start attracting readers at the same time as you attract writers. It becomes very difficult to be sufficiently different from Wikipedia if you start with identical content, though, and I agree that that is required for any real success. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 3:28 PM, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com wrote: I think this is in fact a market opportunity for a Metapedia. Import the organizational / title trees of all the publically available freely licensed encyclopedias, merge, present readers with alternate views / options / approaches to a particular topic. Optionally, display in parallel, Wikipedia next to Citizendum next to Otherpedia. Click on a hyperlink in any and it works across all the panes. Click on a focus tab for a particular pane and get the wider navigation / editing / etc tabs for that particular encyclopedia. This is a wonderful idea! It could even make sense to have Metapedia as a Wikimedia project...an explicitly curatorial project that attempts to sort different kinds of content and evaluate strengths and weaknesses. It could also serve as a place to have general discussions about certain topics, without the necessity (as on Wikipedia talk pages, nominally) of focusing on content improvement; that's something that there's a need for, and something that causes specific projects to suffer because of the tendency of readers to try to start general discussions. -Sage (User:Ragesoss) ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
2009/4/22 George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com: On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 7:27 AM, doc doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com wrote: I'd say that the reader question is less pertinent for any start up than the writer question. Readers will not be interested until you have enough writers to produce the goods, and do so in a reliable way. So you really need to find a motivation to make qualified people want to contribute (or Wikipedia's best to switch). Ultimately, having a lot of readers will do that, but any start up needs initially to offer something else to the writer. I think that's a nice theory, but a number of new projects have in some sense (either people-wise or concept-wise) spun out of Wikipedia to try and do that, and in practice have not had readership follow them or build up on their own. I think you'll see the reader-writer synergy more clearly on the small specialist encyclopedia wikis that have sprung up in great numbers. Mostly using MediaWiki, because it is after all fundamentally built to run reference wikis. More people need to read MeatBallWiki. It's like Meta for the whole of wikidom. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
In a message dated 4/22/2009 12:43:31 PM Pacific Daylight Time, ragesoss+wikipe...@gmail.com writes: This is a wonderful idea! It could even make sense to have Metapedia as a Wikimedia project...an explicitly curatorial project that attempts to sort different kinds of content and evaluate strengths and weaknesses. It could also serve as a place to have general discussions about certain topics, without the necessity (as on Wikipedia talk pages, nominally) of focusing on content improvement; that's something that there's a need for, and something that causes specific projects to suffer because of the tendency of readers to try to start general discussions. - Chatopedia Discussopedia Jabberpedia I've noticed a number of news outlets allowing posts at the bottom of articles. You can't actually change the article itself yet, but why the heck not? They could easily set-up moderated changes. Better than some reporter slogging through 500 posts to find the one that complains about a spelling error. I noticed somewhere that Google was giving preferential treatment to Knol articles on some content collector, but then later they stopped doing that. So apparently they felt that was a bit unfair. There's no reason I can see why a Wiki project couldn't be setup to display a Wikipedia article, a few articles from Knol on the same subject, and allow a reader comments section as well. Will Johnson ** Big savings on Dell XPS Laptops and Desktops! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1220433404x1201394533/aol?redir=http:%2F%2Fad.doubl eclick.net%2Fclk%3B214133109%3B36002181%3Bk) ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
2009/4/22 doc doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com: You need to offer a writer something very different, if you are to motivate him to write in the early stages when readership will be low. Or indeed, you have to attract the type of writer who would be wholly disinterested in writing for wikipedia. More - you need people who are actually disinterested, not embittered. Note how many Wikipedia Review regulars have managed to get banned from Citizendium as well as Wikipedia in record time. It's entirely unclear why they don't start their own wiki encyclopedia, and thus demonstrate our evil and worthlessness. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
2009/4/22 wjhon...@aol.com: In a message dated 4/22/2009 1:21:53 PM Pacific Daylight Time, dger...@gmail.com writes: It's entirely unclear why they don't start their own wiki encyclopedia, and thus demonstrate our evil and worthlessness. In the early days I remember stumbling upon a sarcastic wiki that poked fun at everything. But I can't recall what it was called. Heh. Uncyclopedia had one excellent contributor who's a Wikipedia Review regular, though unfortunately he doesn't seem to write for it any more. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
David Gerard wrote: 2009/4/22 doc doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com: You need to offer a writer something very different, if you are to motivate him to write in the early stages when readership will be low. Or indeed, you have to attract the type of writer who would be wholly disinterested in writing for wikipedia. More - you need people who are actually disinterested, not embittered. Note how many Wikipedia Review regulars have managed to get banned from Citizendium as well as Wikipedia in record time. It's entirely unclear why they don't start their own wiki encyclopedia, and thus demonstrate our evil and worthlessness. - d. I suspect that most of such critics have reached the conclusion that a wiki is not a suitable way of creating an encyclopedia. It does seem to me that most of this discussion is predicated on the assumption that Otherpedia.org will be a wiki and will be free-use. I strongly suspect that anything that starts from that basis will be too much like wikipedia to be anything more than a small-player in some niche. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
George Herbert wrote: Or perhaps we're being too harsh, time and content will bring critical masses of readership. When would exponential growth of readership occur? In a phase when Web readership was growing exponentially (in the past now, it seems, and I do know what the term means); when the application is sufficiently new and different to distract people from what they were already doing online. Critical mass strikes me as a misplaced metaphor, really. Though it would do fine for social networking sites. Charles ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
2009/4/22 doc doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com: I suspect that most of such critics have reached the conclusion that a wiki is not a suitable way of creating an encyclopedia. It does seem to me that most of this discussion is predicated on the assumption that Otherpedia.org will be a wiki and will be free-use. I strongly suspect that anything that starts from that basis will be too much like wikipedia to be anything more than a small-player in some niche. Hmm. Wonder what a next model could look like. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
I don't think I can agree that a wiki is not suitable for a next class of encyclopedia project. Wikipedia, with verified identification for approved editors, with moderated updates still retaining anyone can edit, and with author credit for the top [say five] contributors to any article, I think would go a long way to that next model. You are approved as an editor merely by verifying your identification, not by credential. This is the way Knol does it, and I like that. It neatly cuts off, right at the head, any desire by editors to vandalize. Anyone can edit, still allows any reader/writer to feel special and needed. They should be able to view the approved-article with their new changes right away, people won't like needing to wait a day to follow their own line-of-thought further. Author credit tempts professional writers to stay and contribute, as opposed to drifting over to Knol. I wonder if Brittanica will adopt an author-credit model on moderated edits? That would be interesting. Will Johnson ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Schools Wikipedia
-Original Message- From: David Gerard dger...@gmail.com To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 1:23 pm Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia I suspect there's little market demand for a child safe fork of Wikipedia, or we'd have seen one. So far those pushing for such filtering try to enact it on Wikipedia itself, presumably because it's unsustainable elsewhere. (That said, the Schools Wikipedia has endeavoured to keep itself nice and filtered for classroom use, and teachers *love* it. Really love it. As in, write in for lots of DVD copies and are encouraged to run off DVD copies themselves. It's about the most successful repackaging of Wikipedia so far.) Never having heard of this, I googled it. http://www.google.com/url?sa=Ustart=1q=http://schools-wikipedia.org/ei=ko7vSe--LZHgsgO35dniAQusg=AFQjCNGHWVsmx1H5Rj9QmaaPUDR4kcovMw Why does Google add that funny bit at the front of this long URL, and that really odd bit at the end? What does it all mean Virginia? Anyone? Will Johnson ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
2009/4/22 geni geni...@gmail.com: 2009/4/22 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: 2009/4/22 wjhon...@aol.com: Is there a list of the top100 most popular Wikipedia pages? http://stats.grok.se/ http://wikistics.falsikon.de/2009/wikipedia/en/ http://wikistics.falsikon.de/latest/wikipedia/en/ Are more up to date. And no I can't explain why the article on the Beatles is as popular as it is. It should be popular yes but not that popular. Wounder if it is being used by something to check to see if it can access the net. Well, something happened on 21 November 2008 http://stats.grok.se/en/200811/The_Beatles Any guesses? Something checking a net connection is possible, but personally I use google.com for that, and so do most people I've looked over the shoulder of. That or bbc.co.uk. Why would someone use the Wikipedia article on The Beatles? ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
2009/4/22 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com: 2009/4/22 geni geni...@gmail.com: 2009/4/22 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: 2009/4/22 wjhon...@aol.com: Is there a list of the top100 most popular Wikipedia pages? http://stats.grok.se/ http://wikistics.falsikon.de/2009/wikipedia/en/ http://wikistics.falsikon.de/latest/wikipedia/en/ Are more up to date. And no I can't explain why the article on the Beatles is as popular as it is. It should be popular yes but not that popular. Wounder if it is being used by something to check to see if it can access the net. Well, something happened on 21 November 2008 http://stats.grok.se/en/200811/The_Beatles Any guesses? Something checking a net connection is possible, but personally I use google.com for that, and so do most people I've looked over the shoulder of. That or bbc.co.uk. Why would someone use the Wikipedia article on The Beatles? Someone on IRC has realised that it didn't start on the 21st, that's just when the hits moved from [[Beatles]] to [[The Beatles]]. It actually started gradually last September... ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of l...
The moment we start to take someones word because they claim it without a source we can link or point to,we've gone wrong. The argument well what if it's a small uncontroversial fact such as dobermans and poodles (above in this thread) is irrelevant and not for us to judge - what seems small to one person may not be to another. landmines ahead. I did once suggest another approach that might help, and would certainly be within usual norms too. I observed that in an article on a person, that person's view is, and always should be considered significant. Even if they are the only perosn on the planet saying it, I'd say that always, their claim about matters in their life is a significant view. What's usually missing is evidence of it in a reliable source. If we had one, we could cite from it easily. I once made a suggestion intended to address this. If the subject can either post the view that they'd like us to take note of, on some site formally connected to them (and where the poster's identity is not in doubt), then we can treat that as any primary selfpub source, it's good for claims of the form X says Y. If they don't have one, but will post it on the wiki and confirm via OTRS (eg by phone contact) it's their's, so that we can affirm we know it's genuine, then ditto, it's also citable as them being directly quoted. I'd explain it like this: You want us to put your view on this in your biography, but there are no sources we can rely upon where that is said. If you are willing to post that on your website, or else, to contact our volunteer team in a manner that allows them to verify that you really are who you say you are, and writethe points you would like referenced about yourself, in a manner that does not attack others but just discusses you, then we will cite it and use that as material toensure your stance is represented in the article. For matters where there really is genuine credible sources and NPOV does require us to note the issue,this would provide a handy and useful solution, since it's pretty much 100% within the spirit of existing norms -- represent all significant views; require a verifiable source for X says Y FT2 On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 6:52 PM, Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net wrote: On Wed, 22 Apr 2009 wjhon...@aol.com wrote: If they are not willing to type two sentences on an official site, but ARE willing to type a hundred in-project, than I submit it's *highly* unlikely to be the person in question in the first place. IF they write a blog where they complain about process, that is simply more free publicity for us. There is no such thing as bad publicity. This is exactly what's wrong with BLP. We care more about the process than we do about the people. If someone says that a relatively uncontroversial fact in an article about themselves is wrong, we should fix it. If our process says we shouldn't listen to them, then we need to fix both the process and the article. If you really doubt that the person themselves is sending you a correction, then fine. But that's only good if you really have some reason to doubt it's them. Saying what if it isn't them and then stretching it to cover all situations whether you believe it's them or not is just elevating process above people. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Schools Wikipedia
2009/4/22 wjhon...@aol.com: Never having heard of this, I googled it. http://www.google.com/url?sa=Ustart=1q=http://schools-wikipedia.org/ei=ko7vSe--LZHgsgO35dniAQusg=AFQjCNGHWVsmx1H5Rj9QmaaPUDR4kcovMw Why does Google add that funny bit at the front of this long URL, and that really odd bit at the end? What does it all mean Virginia? Anyone? What exactly did you google and where was that URL? It's a google URL pointing to the schools wikipedia URL, probably so they can monitor who clicks on external links, or something. The last bit is probably a session ID, it's like using cookies but puts the info on the end of the URL instead of in a separate file. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
It looks like it might be related to The Beatles: Rock Band which seems to be by far the worlds most expensive video game or something. It was announced last September or so and there were more news stories about it on the 20th/21st this month. It is a bit suspicious that the interest is staying so high though, usually the peaks die away more quickly, but I think that's it. On 22/04/2009, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/4/22 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com: 2009/4/22 geni geni...@gmail.com: 2009/4/22 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: 2009/4/22 wjhon...@aol.com: Is there a list of the top100 most popular Wikipedia pages? http://stats.grok.se/ http://wikistics.falsikon.de/2009/wikipedia/en/ http://wikistics.falsikon.de/latest/wikipedia/en/ Are more up to date. And no I can't explain why the article on the Beatles is as popular as it is. It should be popular yes but not that popular. Wounder if it is being used by something to check to see if it can access the net. Well, something happened on 21 November 2008 http://stats.grok.se/en/200811/The_Beatles Any guesses? Something checking a net connection is possible, but personally I use google.com for that, and so do most people I've looked over the shoulder of. That or bbc.co.uk. Why would someone use the Wikipedia article on The Beatles? Someone on IRC has realised that it didn't start on the 21st, that's just when the hits moved from [[Beatles]] to [[The Beatles]]. It actually started gradually last September... -- -Ian Woollard We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. Life in a perfectly imperfect world would be *much* better. Life in an imperfectly perfect world would be pretty ghastly though. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
2009/4/22 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com: 2009/4/22 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com: 2009/4/22 geni geni...@gmail.com: 2009/4/22 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: 2009/4/22 wjhon...@aol.com: Is there a list of the top100 most popular Wikipedia pages? http://stats.grok.se/ http://wikistics.falsikon.de/2009/wikipedia/en/ http://wikistics.falsikon.de/latest/wikipedia/en/ Are more up to date. And no I can't explain why the article on the Beatles is as popular as it is. It should be popular yes but not that popular. Wounder if it is being used by something to check to see if it can access the net. Well, something happened on 21 November 2008 http://stats.grok.se/en/200811/The_Beatles Any guesses? Something checking a net connection is possible, but personally I use google.com for that, and so do most people I've looked over the shoulder of. That or bbc.co.uk. Why would someone use the Wikipedia article on The Beatles? Someone on IRC has realised that it didn't start on the 21st, that's just when the hits moved from [[Beatles]] to [[The Beatles]]. It actually started gradually last September... When oddities have turned up in the most viewed before I assumed it was compromised computers useing the page to check if they had net access (wikipedia is not a very suspicious site for a computer to visit). Other options would be a popular site useing it for a leave this site link. But I wouldn't expect traffic on that level. It would be a very odd choice for a large organization homepage so I think we can rule that out. It's most odd. -- geni ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
2009/4/23 Ian Woollard ian.wooll...@gmail.com: It looks like it might be related to The Beatles: Rock Band which seems to be by far the worlds most expensive video game or something. It was announced last September or so and there were more news stories about it on the 20th/21st this month. It is a bit suspicious that the interest is staying so high though, usually the peaks die away more quickly, but I think that's it. No. It's not just high but in the daily top few for months. The Beatles have got more views this year than Barack Obama or in fact any article other than wiki. Its getting double the views of Watchmen which probably had far more geek and general internet appeal. 100K views week in week out is simply not possible for well anything conventional. Even Barack Obama doesn't manage that most months. -- geni ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
2009/4/23 geni geni...@gmail.com: 2009/4/23 Ian Woollard ian.wooll...@gmail.com: It looks like it might be related to The Beatles: Rock Band which seems to be by far the worlds most expensive video game or something. It was announced last September or so and there were more news stories about it on the 20th/21st this month. It is a bit suspicious that the interest is staying so high though, usually the peaks die away more quickly, but I think that's it. No. It's not just high but in the daily top few for months. The Beatles have got more views this year than Barack Obama or in fact any article other than wiki. Its getting double the views of Watchmen which probably had far more geek and general internet appeal. 100K views week in week out is simply not possible for well anything conventional. Even Barack Obama doesn't manage that most months. And it moved instantly from Beatles to The Beatles, that requires some kind of central organisation. Either all the hits come from one place, or it's people all following the same link. I've asked on IRC if someone can check the logs and see what is going on, but there were no volunteers. Only anonymised logs are made public, and that is no good for this. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
On second thoughts, yes, no single website could flick that many people across, and why would anyone do that? And the number of hits are so remarkably even over such a long period. News stories cause a peak, but this is sustained. It does indeed look like somebody is up to no good, a botnet or a worm or something. It could be wise to lock the page, it might be being used for communication of some kind; somebody may make an edit and trigger something, but probably not. On 23/04/2009, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/4/23 geni geni...@gmail.com: 2009/4/23 Ian Woollard ian.wooll...@gmail.com: It looks like it might be related to The Beatles: Rock Band which seems to be by far the worlds most expensive video game or something. It was announced last September or so and there were more news stories about it on the 20th/21st this month. It is a bit suspicious that the interest is staying so high though, usually the peaks die away more quickly, but I think that's it. No. It's not just high but in the daily top few for months. The Beatles have got more views this year than Barack Obama or in fact any article other than wiki. Its getting double the views of Watchmen which probably had far more geek and general internet appeal. 100K views week in week out is simply not possible for well anything conventional. Even Barack Obama doesn't manage that most months. And it moved instantly from Beatles to The Beatles, that requires some kind of central organisation. Either all the hits come from one place, or it's people all following the same link. I've asked on IRC if someone can check the logs and see what is going on, but there were no volunteers. Only anonymised logs are made public, and that is no good for this. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l -- -Ian Woollard We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. Life in a perfectly imperfect world would be *much* better. Life in an imperfectly perfect world would be pretty ghastly though. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of living people
2009/4/23 Andrew Turvey andrewrtur...@googlemail.com: I understood their statement as the opposite: they have expressly said that policies should distinguish between BLP articles and non-BLP articles. Yes: that we don't have the luxury of eventualism - with BLPs (and material on living persons in general), we really need to get it right immediately if we're to have material on them at all. Is there anyone here who actually disagrees with that in principle? - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of l...
What do we do about well-sourced information which turns out to be incorrect? I don't think policies cover this area particularly well, but the commonsense view is to word it something along the lines of: A national newspaper in 2007 reported that celebrity x had been arrested for taking drugsref /ref; however this was later shown to be untrue ref /ref If it's not that important you can always include the details in a footnote: Joe Blow (b. 15.1.74) refNote the New York Times stated he was born on January 14 - (ref). However, this source shows the actual date to be 14 Jan /ref The added advantage is it means editors don't add the incorrect information in again at a later date. - Original Message - From: Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, 23 April, 2009 01:11:39 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of l... On Wed, 22 Apr 2009 wjhon...@aol.com wrote: You're arguing for a policy that says that someone without a source can't correct errors about himself *at all*--whether you looked up the official site for his radio station or not. Verifying his identity is, in fact, completely irrelevant to this policy. -- No Ken. Because we do not require sources for non-controversial points in the first place. If he's correcting an error, another person disagrees with him, so it's by definition controversial to some degree. Also, remember that we're talking about BLPs. BLP subjects may be unfamiliar with Wikipedia and do things like publically complain--and once they do that, it's guaranteed that if they try fixing the article, someone will remember their complaint and automatically treat the change as controversial. WHEN a statement is fact-tagged, then a source should be provided. That doesn't work too well when the source is wrong. Remember that verifiability, not truth means that sometimes it will be verifiable, but not true. The sole place where the subject may have a special position, is in providing a response to a well-sourced negative statement. What if it's a well-sourced non-negative, but false, statement? If we have a statement like Britney Spears stabbed her husband and was arrested (L.A. Times, 12 Oct 2007), then she is quite welcome to provide an alternate version such as she stabbed him, but it was with a nail file and the skin wasn't even broken, he's just a big cry baby bitch. (Britneyspears.com, Why I was arrested last week) If it's not Britney SWpears, but the guy whose radio station you looked up, why should we require him to create guywithradiostation.com before he can correct facts? However, this does not mean that we remove the L A Times reference. That would be whitewashing the article. We are here to provide the reading public with the most consistent, neutral, inclusive view of pop culture. That isn't simply the glamour magazines, it has to include as well the news articles that have negative material. Ah. Joe Blow claims he was born on January 15, but the New York Times says he was born on January 14. Joe Blow insists this is a mistake. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of l...
In a message dated 4/22/2009 5:27:47 PM Pacific Daylight Time, andrewrtur...@googlemail.com writes: What do we do about well-sourced information which turns out to be incorrect? I don't think policies cover this area particularly well, but the commonsense view is to word it something along the lines of: A national newspaper in 2007 reported that celebrity x had been arrested for taking drugsref /ref; however this was later shown to be untrue ref /ref If it's not that important you can always include the details in a footnote: Joe Blow (b. 15.1.74) refNote the New York Times stated he was born on January 14 - (ref). However, this source shows the actual date to be 14 Jan /ref The added advantage is it means editors don't add the incorrect information in again at a later date. - I agree completely with the above. Will Johnson **Big savings on Dell XPS Laptops and Desktops! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1220433404x1201394533/aol?redir=http:%2F%2Fad.doubl eclick.net%2Fclk%3B214133109%3B36002181%3Bk) ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of l...
On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 6:00 AM, FT2 ft2.w...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 4:39 AM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: In a message dated 4/22/2009 5:27:47 PM Pacific Daylight Time, andrewrtur...@googlemail.com writes: What do we do about well-sourced information which turns out to be incorrect? I don't think policies cover this area particularly well, but the commonsense view is to word it something along the lines of: A national newspaper in 2007 reported that celebrity x had been arrested for taking drugsref /ref; however this was later shown to be untrue ref /ref If it's not that important you can always include the details in a footnote: Joe Blow (b. 15.1.74) refNote the New York Times stated he was born on January 14 - (ref). However, this source shows the actual date to be 14 Jan /ref The added advantage is it means editors don't add the incorrect information in again at a later date. - I agree completely with the above. Will Johnson In effect, this is suggesting an amendment a bit like this: Corrections to published information presented by the subject and not found in third party sources may be incorporated in the article or its footnotes to improve the quality of the article, subject to 1/ the correction must be carefully checked and confirmed to be from the subject or their appointed representative, 2/ such a statement corrects but does not replace the published information; it must be clear that this is a correction of cited and otherwise verified information as stated by the subject, and 3/ this does not override NPOV or the requirement to avoid undue weight, advocacy or use as a battleground. You still need a way for later editors to verify things. OTRS ticket? Carcharoth ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of l...
OTRS volunteer confirmation that ticket 123456789 contains the required confirmation (via note or otherwise), possibly with the relevant part of the cited text, would be enough I think. This sort of thing is bread and butter for OTRS, who have to confirm they are speaking with a person or someone authorized to speak for them every time they deal with image permissions (for example). Ie, I am John Doe, the copyright holder of this image and you may use it under GFDL is a claim that only has strength if you know you're speaking to John Doe and not someone else, so OTRS volunteers regularly have to confirm the third party is who is claimed, to a high standard. FT2 On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 6:02 AM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.comwrote: On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 6:00 AM, FT2 ft2.w...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 4:39 AM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: In a message dated 4/22/2009 5:27:47 PM Pacific Daylight Time, andrewrtur...@googlemail.com writes: What do we do about well-sourced information which turns out to be incorrect? I don't think policies cover this area particularly well, but the commonsense view is to word it something along the lines of: A national newspaper in 2007 reported that celebrity x had been arrested for taking drugsref /ref; however this was later shown to be untrue ref /ref If it's not that important you can always include the details in a footnote: Joe Blow (b. 15.1.74) refNote the New York Times stated he was born on January 14 - (ref). However, this source shows the actual date to be 14 Jan /ref The added advantage is it means editors don't add the incorrect information in again at a later date. - I agree completely with the above. Will Johnson In effect, this is suggesting an amendment a bit like this: Corrections to published information presented by the subject and not found in third party sources may be incorporated in the article or its footnotes to improve the quality of the article, subject to 1/ the correction must be carefully checked and confirmed to be from the subject or their appointed representative, 2/ such a statement corrects but does not replace the published information; it must be clear that this is a correction of cited and otherwise verified information as stated by the subject, and 3/ this does not override NPOV or the requirement to avoid undue weight, advocacy or use as a battleground. You still need a way for later editors to verify things. OTRS ticket? Carcharoth ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of l...
Easier than that. They are asked to comment on the talk page, and the OTRS volunteer signs under it that they confirm they have been in contact with the writer of the post and their identity is confirmed as being X, to usual OTRS standards. Reference: OTRS ticket #123456789. Prior to this as part of OTRS discussion they may well have helped the subject to understand what's needed for the purpose, or even reviewed the proposed wording of the post. The key is that the only thing private and off wiki, is the OTRS confirmation that the wiki writer is verified to be the subject or their representative. Their actual post can readily be on the wiki in most cases and cited via diff (a wiki diff is a reliable source that user X said Y; OTRS then confirms user X was checked and is indeed the subject). FT2 On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 6:10 AM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: I think the only way to address this, is to make presented by the subject be published by the subject. That is, as I've said, there has to be some sort of publicably accessible site, whether that's a blog or not, created by the subject, which later readers/editors can refer to, in order to verify the citation Britney Spears says this is not true. So we come back again to the same point. If the subject is so lazy they are not even willing to post some sort of rebuttal, then apparently they don't care enough to do something so simple. On another note, if OTRS tickets are now published than I'd certainly like to know where and how to access them. Perhaps the subject, who doesn't have their own web site, would be willing to release a ticket for publication at... Wiki...uh... Problems dot com? Will Johnson **Big savings on Dell XPS Laptops and Desktops! ( http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1219799634x1201361008/aol?redir=http:%2F%2Fad.doubl eclick.net%2Fclk%3B214133440%3B36002254%3Bj) ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of l...
In order for OTRS confirmation to be an acceptable subsitute, I would submit that we need some details on exactly what this means, what they do, how they do it. I'm not comfortable with creating even *more* black boxes than what we already have. It's much better, imho, for the community to know how this works. Rather than simply differ to an authority figure. Will **Big savings on Dell XPS Laptops and Desktops! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1219799634x1201361008/aol?redir=http:%2F%2Fad.doubl eclick.net%2Fclk%3B214133440%3B36002254%3Bj) ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
