[WikiEN-l] “Can you imagine the president of t he American Camellia Society having three stuffed bears in the courthouse?”
I just heard about this from Keith Olbermann's show. Rush Limbaugh's researchers apparently grabbed a story from Wikipedia about Judge Roger Vinson and used it in one of his rants against health care. The story, describing the judge as a keen hunter and taxidermist who hung stuffed bear heads above his courthouse in order to put the fear of God into defendants, turned out to be false. Apparently the judge doesn't hunt that much and prefes horticulture. “I’ve never killed a bear,” he told the New York Times on Wednesday, “and I’m not Davy Crockett.” He is the president of the American Camelia Society. The source cited in the Wikipedia article was dated June 31, 2003. Thirty days hath...June. The New York TImes also reported that the editor who added the bogus story to Wikipedia at the weekend recently removed it. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/us/16judge.html ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
[WikiEN-l] Little edits or big edits in the mainspace?
As the title indicates, when working on articles, do you prefer making a bunch of small edits or one or a couple of big edits? Personally, I started out making lots of small edits, but lately I've been the opposite of that. -MuZemike ___ 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] Little edits or big edits in the mainspace?
I prefer one giant edit. When I write new articles, I usually write everything in one edit - no matter if it's a stub or future good article. If after that one edit I have to re-edit the article (typos, categories, ect), I get annoyed with myself. Therefore I use preview button a million times. I also save drafts for big articles off-line. It's really bad for the edit count, but that's my personal preference. Renata On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 4:31 PM, MuZemike muzem...@gmail.com wrote: As the title indicates, when working on articles, do you prefer making a bunch of small edits or one or a couple of big edits? Personally, I started out making lots of small edits, but lately I've been the opposite of that. -MuZemike ___ 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] Little edits or big edits in the mainspace?
When using hotcat or eradicating a particular typo I make small or minor edits. Otherwise I try to remember to save frequently, but a couple of times I've been caught out and lost the odd hour or two of work due to a computer problem. I've also learned to save frequently when at newpage patrol or other places where edit conflicts are likely. The only time when I'd recommend making a really big edit in mainspace is when creating a new article. The risk of incorrect speedy tags is so high that it is worth the risk of not saving for an hour or so. WereSpielChequers On 17 September 2010 22:14, Renata St renataw...@gmail.com wrote: I prefer one giant edit. When I write new articles, I usually write everything in one edit - no matter if it's a stub or future good article. If after that one edit I have to re-edit the article (typos, categories, ect), I get annoyed with myself. Therefore I use preview button a million times. I also save drafts for big articles off-line. It's really bad for the edit count, but that's my personal preference. Renata On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 4:31 PM, MuZemike muzem...@gmail.com wrote: As the title indicates, when working on articles, do you prefer making a bunch of small edits or one or a couple of big edits? Personally, I started out making lots of small edits, but lately I've been the opposite of that. -MuZemike ___ 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] Little edits or big edits in the mainspace?
On 17 September 2010 22:14, Renata St renataw...@gmail.com wrote: It's really bad for the edit count, but that's my personal preference. Pfft, who cares about that? Literally, I mean: these days the focus (on enwiki at least) is on how many featured credits an editor has, or variants thereof like good article credits. Which is a far better system IMO. AGK ___ 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] Little edits or big edits in the mainspace?
Having been on Wikipedia since 2006 but with most of my significant work being described by a handful of read, read, read, write, write, write -- edit overhauls or creating new pages, I'm always a little self-conscious when non-Wikipedians ask how many edits I've tallied. Hundreds! OK, probably a thousand but surely not thousands... this is why my user page contains the userbox: *This user believes that a user's **edit counthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editcountitis **does not necessarily reflect on the **value*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_theory * of their contributions to **Wikipedia*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia *.* On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 7:58 PM, AGK wiki...@gmail.com wrote: On 17 September 2010 22:14, Renata St renataw...@gmail.com wrote: It's really bad for the edit count, but that's my personal preference. Pfft, who cares about that? Literally, I mean: these days the focus (on enwiki at least) is on how many featured credits an editor has, or variants thereof like good article credits. Which is a far better system IMO. AGK ___ 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] Little edits or big edits in the mainspace?
I always mean to do less edits but end up doing more. I try to get a new article *just right* and invariably find several typos, each after I've corrected the previous one. Fixing typos in articles I'm casually reading works much the same way. - 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] Little edits or big edits in the mainspace?
On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 9:31 PM, MuZemike muzem...@gmail.com wrote: As the title indicates, when working on articles, do you prefer making a bunch of small edits or one or a couple of big edits? Well, I'm not sure my answer will be interesting to anyone other than your good self but... When I'm starting a *new* article (which I don't do much) I tend to save every 10, 15 or no later than 20 minutes as I go along. It's fear of losing work. I know an answer to that is to edit in some other application but I've never really felt motivated to explore other working methods. When *copy editing* an existing article I tend to do one edit per change (but it could be three or four changes if one short paragraph needs a lot of help). Various reasons; partly because I don't trust myself to remember necessary edits at the start of a section if I carry on and find issues at the end of a section; I like - increasingly - to write long edit summaries (I find writing something pithy about inserting a comma helps my morale, keeps me in good humour). I confess I do still keep score with my edit count, though more for a little personal buzz I get when I get past each thousand mark than to compare myself to others (although I still take the occasional look at the league table to see if I've re-appeared on it: answer no ;o) ___ 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] Little edits or big edits in the mainspace?
On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 1:05 AM, William Beutler williambeut...@gmail.com wrote: I'm always a little self-conscious when non-Wikipedians ask how many edits I've tallied. *Non* Wikipedians are asking you about your edit count? I've never encountered nor heard of people outside the community talking about such a thing. I find your experience quite cheering; it seems to speak of Wikipedia seeping into the culture even more than I had presupposed. It's like my grandmother asking me how many beats per minute characterise [[UK hard house]]. ___ 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] Little edits or big edits in the mainspace?
Heh, well, among friends and associates, I'm the Wikipedia guy. (Notice the British / WP period-outside-the-sentence... never did that before Wikipedia.) I enjoy greatly trying to explain how Wikipedia works, but it can be a tall, tall task. Some of you here might know of my (occasional) blog, The Wikipedian, where the goal is to explain Wikipedia to outsiders. Not easy, I can tell you -- to get it right and also be concise enough to keep people interested. I do worry for the project that it requires such an intense commitment that few will ever get there. Few even know they can edit without logging in, frankly. More than one person, to me, on why they don't edit: Oh, I don't want to get involved... I like John Broughton's Missing Manual and the How Wikipedia Works book, but I think there needs to be something shorter, for absolute beginners. I've had the notion to pitch a Complete Idiot's Guide to Wikipedia to someone (actually tried, once; got a friendly note from an agent that it wasn't for [him]). I do think there is one to be written, whether I get to it or someone else does... On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 8:44 PM, Bod Notbod bodnot...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 1:05 AM, William Beutler williambeut...@gmail.com wrote: I'm always a little self-conscious when non-Wikipedians ask how many edits I've tallied. *Non* Wikipedians are asking you about your edit count? I've never encountered nor heard of people outside the community talking about such a thing. I find your experience quite cheering; it seems to speak of Wikipedia seeping into the culture even more than I had presupposed. It's like my grandmother asking me how many beats per minute characterise [[UK hard house]]. ___ 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] “Can you imagine the president of t he American Camellia Society having three stuffed bears in the courthouse?”
Yes, it's all over the blogosphere too. The spin is all about how stupid Rush Limbaugh is to be taken in by a hoax on Wikipedia, and not the least about how a hoax could be on Wikipedia in an article about a living person, complete with a forged/fictional citation. Apparently it is a given out in the world that one should not believe a word of what is written on Wikipedia, and no longer newsworthy. Crockspot On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 2:29 AM, Tony Sidaway tonysida...@gmail.com wrote: I just heard about this from Keith Olbermann's show. Rush Limbaugh's researchers apparently grabbed a story from Wikipedia about Judge Roger Vinson and used it in one of his rants against health care. The story, describing the judge as a keen hunter and taxidermist who hung stuffed bear heads above his courthouse in order to put the fear of God into defendants, turned out to be false. Apparently the judge doesn't hunt that much and prefes horticulture. “I’ve never killed a bear,” he told the New York Times on Wednesday, “and I’m not Davy Crockett.” He is the president of the American Camelia Society. The source cited in the Wikipedia article was dated June 31, 2003. Thirty days hath...June. The New York TImes also reported that the editor who added the bogus story to Wikipedia at the weekend recently removed it. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/us/16judge.html ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ 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] Little edits or big edits in the mainspace?
On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 1:57 AM, William Beutler williambeut...@gmail.com wrote: I've had the notion to pitch a Complete Idiot's Guide to Wikipedia to someone (actually tried, once; got a friendly note from an agent that it wasn't for [him]). I do think there is one to be written, whether I get to it or someone else does... Have you seen this? Have a look at the PDF: http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bookshelf And there's plenty more proposed publications that need input for the same series: http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Overview_of_Deliverables_(Bookshelf) Project home page: http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bookshelf_Project ___ 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] “Can you imagine the president of t he American Camellia Society having three stuffed bears in the courthouse?”
Reminds me of the situation last year where inflammatory but fake Limbaugh quotes were posted to Wikiquotehttp://maaadddog.wordpress.com/2009/03/04/quotation-attributed-to-rush-limbaugh-is-a-damnable-lie/ and became a big deal in the U.S. political blogosphere. This was around the time Limbaugh was interested in buying an NFL team, which ended up falling through. Although admittedly glib, I'll conclude with: Live by the wiki, die by the wiki... On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 9:14 PM, crock spot crocks...@gmail.com wrote: Can you cite a source for that Nathan? I'd like to read about that. Don't be surprised if this whole thing turns out to be a hoax perpetrated by Limbaugh himself, and bites Wikipedia in the ass. This bears a striking resemblance to something Rush has long complained about: sourced comments attributed to him that were on Wikipedia. Glenn Beck recently planted a small hoax on his radio show, expecting Media Matters to take the bait, and they did. I suspect Limbaugh will end up having the last laugh, and it will be at Wikipedia's expense. Crockspot According to Rush Limbaugh's people, the crack Limbaugh research time (the best money can buy) discovered the pertinent information in the cited source itself, not Wikipedia. No leading conservative light, beacons of rationalism and skepticism, would draw information directly from such as source as Wikipedia and then repeat it as true with his or her own imprimatur. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Little edits or big edits in the mainspace?
On Sep 17, 2010, at 4:31 PM, MuZemike muzem...@gmail.com wrote: As the title indicates, when working on articles, do you prefer making a bunch of small edits or one or a couple of big edits? When editing directly on the wiki, I like to save often, in case my browser crashes or freezes (lighter, less JS please) or in case of edit conflicts. In case of articles where I am essentially the primary editor, I might copy the text to my own local wiki on my computer and work locally. That way I can edit offline, its faster, I can have however much or little JS, can use the drafts extension, etc. Then, I can sync my changes once in a while with the wikipedia page, in a bigger edit Editing on a local wiki is newer for me. In the past, I have just copied article text to a local text file and simply work on editing the text file, then sync my edits. The text file approach still works perfectly fine and could use git to have revision control on text files. (would be neat to have more git-like functionality integrated w/ mediawiki and be able to do git push origin master of wiki articles) @aude Personally, I started out making lots of small edits, but lately I've been the opposite of that. -MuZemike ___ 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] “Can you imagine the president of th e American Camellia Society having three stuffed bears i n the courthouse?”
On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 9:14 PM, crock spot crocks...@gmail.com wrote: Can you cite a source for that Nathan? I'd like to read about that. Don't be surprised if this whole thing turns out to be a hoax perpetrated by Limbaugh himself, and bites Wikipedia in the ass. This bears a striking resemblance to something Rush has long complained about: sourced comments attributed to him that were on Wikipedia. Glenn Beck recently planted a small hoax on his radio show, expecting Media Matters to take the bait, and they did. I suspect Limbaugh will end up having the last laugh, and it will be at Wikipedia's expense. Crockspot Sure, I can cite a source. Kit Carson, a spokesman for Mr. Limbaugh, said a staff researcher had found the information in an article on the Pensacola newspaper’s Web site, and not on Wikipedia. But Ginny Graybiel, the paper’s managing editor, said it had never published such material.[1] ~Nathan 1: Link http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/us/16judge.html Kevin Sack, Sept 15 2010, New York Times. ___ 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] “Can you imagine the president of th e American Camellia Society having three stuffed bears i n the courthouse?”
On 18 September 2010 03:07, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: Sure, I can cite a source. Kit Carson, a spokesman for Mr. Limbaugh, said a staff researcher had found the information in an article on the Pensacola newspaper’s Web site, and not on Wikipedia. But Ginny Graybiel, the paper’s managing editor, said it had never published such material.[1] 1: Link http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/us/16judge.html Kevin Sack, Sept 15 2010, New York Times. Guess: Limbaugh's researchers got lazy and claimed they'd looked up the source. Failing to notice the date on the source was June 31. - 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] Little edits or big edits in the mainspace?
On high-traffic articles, or one where you are making complicated changes, it is often best to split things up and explain using edit summaries. It helps other editors follow what changes you have made. For new articles, or ones where you are the only editor or one of only a few editors, bigger changes and complete rewrites are less disconcerting. There may even be some readers who follow the edit summaries and step through the page history as well. Also, if you do things in stages, someone else, looking through the page history, can learn a lot about the different things that go into editing a Wikipedia article. The two extremes are: (1) Writing an article offline that is close to featured status and saving that in one edit (but there will always be a need to get the article reviewed by others before putting it forward for formal review, as others will always see things that you miss, or have valid improvements to suggest); versus (2) Writing an entire article in stages (with or without others) and building it up *logically*, step-by-step from a stub to a featured article (and then turning that into some sort of video presentation or animated slideshow so others can learn from it). I wonder how many discrete learnable steps and edits a featured article, or various standard types of articles, can be broken down into? Carcharoth On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 9:31 PM, MuZemike muzem...@gmail.com wrote: As the title indicates, when working on articles, do you prefer making a bunch of small edits or one or a couple of big edits? Personally, I started out making lots of small edits, but lately I've been the opposite of that. -MuZemike ___ 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] “Can you imagine the president of t he American Camellia Society having three stuffed bears in the courthouse?”
On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 2:14 AM, crock spot crocks...@gmail.com wrote: Don't be surprised if this whole thing turns out to be a hoax perpetrated by Limbaugh himself, and bites Wikipedia in the ass. This bears a striking resemblance to something Rush has long complained about: sourced comments attributed to him that were on Wikipedia. If Limbaugh or those working for him had perpetrated the hoax, they wouldn't have put June 31 as the date. What we can learn from this is setting up edit filters (if there are enough edits like this to justify it) to catch fake dates. Such edit filters may already exist. Failing that, we can search the live text for other fake (or mis-typed as impossible) dates that are in articles at the moment. 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
