Re: [Foundation-l] Improving Wikipedia Information graphics
Can we please also have information on how to update them, and source files? It's good to have brilliant graphics, but also very important to be able to recreate them. I guess not all students followed the best practice (and more will next time): some of those images are SVG. That's a good first step, but beyond just saving them as SVG, which is important, it would be great to have instructions on how they were made: what software was used? How can one create a new, updated version when the data changes? For example, see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_with_Gnuplot_source_code - these pictures can be recreated easily. Kind regards, -- David Richfield [[:en:User:Slashme]] +27718539985 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Improving Wikipedia Information graphics
Very good stuff! Can we please also have information on how to update them, and source files? It's good to have brilliant graphics, but also very important to be able to recreate them. By the way, in the same breath, let me plug my basic, simple, parliament diagram creator (which writes svg files). I'd be very excited to hear from people who want to use and improve it, or even have a better free tool which supersedes it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Slashme#Parliament_diagram_tool ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Will Beback
Mailing list posts are the wrong place to complain about ArbCom rulings. They provide one point of view in a way that favours one side of the story, while ArbCom has a full process of evidence and debate. As others have said, en.wikipedia can take care of this stuff, and it isn't appropriate for WMF to micromanage. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia (from the Chronicle) + some citation discussions
Relevant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Haymarket_affair#.22No_Evidence.22 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Haymarket_affair#Dubious -- David Richfield [[:en:User:Slashme]] +27718539985 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Journal Boycott
If I understand the suggestion properly, the idea was not to stop linking to articles in closed journals, but to find some meaningful way to support the efforts of the researchers who are boycotting closed journals (i.e. they are not publishing in them). -- David Richfield [[:en:User:Slashme]] +27718539985 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] ACTA analysis?
I found two sentences unclear, but didn't know how to fix them; see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Legal/ACTA -- [[:en:User:Slashme|David Richfield]] ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Adding a comment section under every Wikipedia article
I would like to add my voice to the list of those who say that this is a very bad idea, for reasons already listed. One kernel of truth is that users who are unfamiliar with Wikipedia expect discussion at the bottom of EVERYTHING on the web. Blog posts, videos, facebook posts. Maybe at the bottom of the page, put a big fat link to the talk tab? I would not mind social media buttons at the bottom of a page, but I think I'm the minority here. I certainly don't think it's strategically necessary, but I'm no strategy expert. David Richfield [[en:User:Slashme]] ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 93, Issue 61
I see following wikis hold secred information: http://internal.wikimedia.org http://office.wikimedia.org http://board.wikimedia.org Imagine a world in which every single human being can NOT freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment. Having access to some of these secret Wikis, let me assure you that the content of most of them is banal, dull, and there are no juicy chunks of conspiratorial information in there. But they also contain the sort of information that can't go into the public sphere, such as private contact details and other information. But then again, I suppose that's just what I *would* say, right? Actually, I can confirm from my psychic review of those databases, that they hold the secrets of the Illuminati, the Freemasons, Area 51, and the Knights Templar. And also 25 more puppy-eyed Jimbo pics. -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Talk pages Considered Harmful (for references)
About external links, the real question is: what is a good number of links to have at the end of an article? Everyone will surely agree that an article with 100 external links at the end is not ideal. What people want from Wikipedia is a site where others have sifted through the chaff to present the most relevant information. I would not agree. On an extremely complex topic, perhaps 100 links is perfectly justifiable. Figure 5 sub-divisions, that's only 20 links a piece. (No one looks at an article with 5 sections with 20 references a piece and goes 'everyone will surely agree this is not ideal!') Context is king, and you are immediately trying to make dangerous generalizations. So tell me, what failure rate would you find acceptable? You apparently are not disturbed at a 90% failure rate to use external links; would you be disturbed at 95%? At 99%? Before trying to put me onto a slippery slope, explain where on the original topic you would finally agree, 'yes, this is too bad a failure rate, something must be done'. Until you present some principled reason or specifics, you read like a blind defense of the status quo. As Kevin said, this is in no way a failure rate. An external link provided as a formatted inline citation to support or expand on the text of the article is very helpful to the reader. A huge list of external links at the end of the article is just here's a bunch of stuff you might like to read. It's unlikely to be well used or maintained, and quickly becomes a magnet for spam. What article needs more than about 5 to 10 external links to cover the issues that haven't been addressed in the inline citations and the text? Any article where the editors are largely absent and will not use even gift-wrapped excerpted references; as is the case for 400 articles with hundreds of thousands/millions of readers, which I just spent a great deal of time demonstrating. So maybe what you actually demonstrated is that dumping a site onto external references is much less useful to readers or other editors than finding a place in the text where it would actually be relevant and typing ref[http://www.example.com/index.html The editing community is alive and well - Example.com]/ref -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Talk pages Considered Harmful (for references)
This article starts as a complaint about external links being moved to talk pages and never making it back to the main page, and then becomes a rant against deletionism. About external links, the real question is: what is a good number of links to have at the end of an article? Everyone will surely agree that an article with 100 external links at the end is not ideal. What people want from Wikipedia is a site where others have sifted through the chaff to present the most relevant information. What article needs more than about 5 to 10 external links to cover the issues that haven't been addressed in the inline citations and the text? As for deletionism, I understand that it's a serious issue, but for a quick and dirty random sample, let's take a look at the last 20 closed deletion discussions: Deleted: * Bill Batstone - non-notable musician * Stefan Duncan - non-notable visual artist * Jason Gagliardi - non-notable author * Bosnianism - supposedly original research. I know nothing about the topic, but it sounds dubious at best. * Anton Strastev - No keep opinions - Poorly written page on non-notable person. * Hoarding (Psychology of) - duplicates info in Compulsive hoarding, not notable on its own. * Jamie Hanley - failed political candidate who didn't achieve public office, not notable in any other sense. * Esh (Unix) - non-notable minor unix shell. * Hannibal Reitano - socialite journalist * Byron Rakitzis - programmer, musician, student, one-time winner of Obfuscated C contest. * Trent Evans - A person whose only claim of notability is that he put a coin under the ice before a hockey game. * Reading My Eyes - A song which never charted. * Jorge Castro (actor) - A Puerto Rican Theatre actor. Doesn't have an article on es.wikipedia. * BRINK (magazine) - No comments in support of keeping the article, apparently fails notability criteria. Kept: * Yaesu FT-1000MP - discontinued amateur radio receiver: no consensus for deletion. Merged / Redirected: * Martin County Sheriff's Office - redirected toMartin County, Kentucky * Ladies Masters at Moss Creek - wrong name, relisted at redirects for discussion * No More Sorrow (Linkin Park) - Song was never released to radio: redirected to album article. * Animals on the Underground - Merged to Tube Map * List of historically significant Michigan Wolverines football games - Merged to Michigan Wolverines football. I think this is an example of a working immune system. Which of the deleted articles do you think we needed to preserve on Wikipedia, as opposed to someone's blog? -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Smurfs Movie is infringing on wikipedia copyright
It's disgusting that a megacorporation which has a predatory, legalistic attitude towards intellectual property doesn't play by its own rules. On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 11:33 AM, Mike Dupont jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com wrote: The smurfs move disturbed me when I watched it, Not only does the actor in the movie lift an image off the wikipedia and use it in his advertising campaign, but the movie itself gives no credits to wikipedia on the webpage etc. http://rdfintrospector2.blogspot.com/2011/12/smurfs-movie-wikipedia-copyleft.html mike -- James Michael DuPont Member of Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova http://flossk.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The Mediawiki 1.18 image rotation bug on Commons and on all Wikimedia projects
A thought to those posting in this thread (especially some of the earlier posts): What effect would a less aggressive tone have had? Would you have been more likely to convince your audience? less likely to alienate people? This list often has too high a heat:light ratio. You can help fix this. -- David Richfield ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Poland to start a travelling POTY pictures exhibition in Warsaw (an announcement)
This is a really nice idea! I think Wikimedia South Africa should consider doing something like this to advertise ourselves as soon as we're incorporated. -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
I'd disagree. Newbie treatment is important, but having quarter of a million articles without a single reference is also important given WP:V. It's also valuable to avoid giving undue weight to WP:V. My opinion (and it's just an opinion) is that it's really hard to give undue weight to WP:V. -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
My opinion (and it's just an opinion) is that it's really hard to give undue weight to WP:V. WP:V is not equal to verifiability itself. You may have adminitis. I think verifiability carries a lot of weight. WP:V is different from verifiability in various important ways, which have been discussed on this list before - Wikipedia's epistemology breaks down really badly and stupidly at the edges. Distinction noted. I'm not an admin, though, just a pedant. -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
A tool which pops up asking for a URL, author and date would be a rich source of bad references. We should rather be looking at ways to get references to books and journal articles. Web references should be the exception rather than the rule, because the vast majority of websites are not WP:RS. How about a wizard-like tool which asks did you read this in a book, in a newspaper, a journal article or on the web? and if the answer is on the web asks the user how they know it's true. Compare for example Commons's image uploader. Users who care about references should be taught how to extract good refs from Google Books and Google Scholar - both quite easy to use. If you paste the ISBN of a book into Citation Expander, it fills in the whole citation for you, and the same for pubmed IDs. Now we just need a tool which will do this for major newspapers on the web. -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
there is no requirement or policy for ref tags to be used in an article. If a new user wishes to stick sources as plain text at the bottom of an article, this is not actually a failure against the manual of style or our verification policy. This may be true, but it is a policy that an individual article's style should be consistent. This should be kept in mind (particularly for bot design) when many new articles such as biographies are *incorrectly* tagged for speedy deletion or as unsourced when sources are present in the article, they just do not use the citation template or ref tag. Does this seriously happen? The only tag that is appropriate to this situation is refimprove or cleanup or maybe wikify. -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
This demands far too much of newbies. We can sometimes be very cult-like in our demand for references and sources. Verifiability is central to Wikipedia, and it should not be otherwise. If we have editors who do not understand what a reliable source is, they need to be educated. If they don't care about that kind of thing, and are scared off by our demands for reliable sources, we might be scaring away the people who should be scared away. Where do I go to join the cult? If you want to scare away newbies you do that very well by thrusting him into a highly subjective debate about the nature of reliable sources. Sure, it's subjective. Reinforcing the common misconception that a URL is a citation is not what we should be doing, though. I too would prefer books and articles. I'm also sure that some of the references provided will be bad. A reference is what it is, but it would be badgering newbies to ask them how they know that something is true. Perfectly true - a better wording is needed. What we want to instill here is the good habit of references, and out of good faith trust that editors are not inventing their references. *Keep it simple.* Made-up references are not a big issue: it's wildly unreliable references taken from a cursory google web search that are the problem. A tool that ask whether the reference is from a book, a journal, the web or something else is good for a different reason. The choice would lead to different drop-down boxes where only the relevant questions would be asked. A very useful advantage; true! A lot of the books that I have are pre-ISBN. Also true - at that point I'd always just filled in the form, but of course now I know about reftag... David ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 1:55 PM, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/11/3 David Richfield davidrichfi...@gmail.com: A tool which pops up asking for a URL, author and date would be a rich source of bad references. We should rather be looking at ways to get references to books and journal articles. Web references should be the exception rather than the rule, because the vast majority of websites are not WP:RS. Problem is a lot of books are rather questionable. However dead tree worship means people generally ask fewer questions. People should question book sources, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be encouraging people to find them and use them. The reality is that your average person is unlikely to access to journals and only have books to hand on a narrow range of subjects. If you have the web to hand, you have Google Books and Google Scholar (which shows you which of the articles are full-text). Under those conditions the web is by far the most likely viable source of citations. A much richer source of citations, true, and easy to use badly, but very hard to use well: it's easy to get rubbish sources off the web, but it takes experience and expertise to find good ones. -- David Richfield e^(ði)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing
On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 2:53 PM, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: I wish we didn't always have to dispense with this tired argument that making editing easier will inundate the projects with idiots. Easy and open editing is the ethos that built the whole project. I just want to point out that I didn't say that we should not make it easier to add references, but that we shouldn't create the impression that adding citations means pasting the URL of any old website that supports the claim I'm making into Wikipedia, and that we should work harder to make it easier to reference books and articles. -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Blackout at Italian Wikipedia
On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 1:00 PM, Domas Mituzas midom.li...@gmail.com wrote: Regardless, what's done is done, for the moment. Except that WMF as steward of the open information can roll any of that blackout crap back. Primary mission is spreading the knowledge, and now it.wikipedia obviously fails at it. it.wikipedia is not failing at spreading knowledge. it.wikipedia is taking all steps it can to make sure that it can succeed at that aim in future. -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] All human knowledge, by Jimmy Wales (?)
And I think that there is a huge difference between the sum of all... and all By the way, the traditional encyclopedias described themselves by the sum of all... Can you explain this perceived difference? Is the whole more than the sum of its parts, so that the German claim is too ambitious for you, or is it less than the sum of its parts, making the German claim too modest? -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Minor projects withering and dying? Really?
In the discussion of the Wikinews fork (may they thrive), I picked up some comments predicting the death of Wiktionary and Wikiquote, referring to the low numbers of regular contributors. I don't think that means the projects are dying: I'm an infrequent contributor to both of those projects, and every time I go there, they're better. Wikiquote is continually improving in coverage and accuracy, and Wiktionary has recently gotten new features (e.g. a separate citations tab) and is also going forward. People are checking recent changes: last time I edited Wiktionary, I was adding citations to an article where the current list was in reverse chronological order, and I was too lazy to change it, thinking someone else can fix this. Before I got to the third citation, someone had fixed the sequence. The fact that progress is slowing isn't a sign of impending death. As long as the wikis don't stagnate to the extent that they start to get taken over by spammers and trolls, I'm not going to hold a wake. As for Wikiquote being one of our less useful projects, that's possibly true, but only because the other projects are so awesome! The web is awash with crap quotation websites of with the same misattributed quotes being incestuously copied around - Wikiquote is one beacon of sanity in that whole mess. -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Minor projects withering and dying? Really?
I am not a Wictionary contributor but I was never able to understand why we have Wictionaries in different language, though a big part of those seem to be translations on other languages, and they overlap. Would it not be advantageous to have just one Wictionary (as we have just one Commons)? Sorry for the ignorant question, there might be obvious reasons why they should not be the same. A valid question, and one I've asked myself. I'm not actually deep enough into the project to say for sure, but it would look a bit different from the way it currently looks if you wanted to make a Grand Unified Project: not only the user interface, but also the policies would have to be multilingual: if a fr-ca user logs in, she should see a project in her language. I don't think you can do this with the current setup. -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Minor projects withering and dying? Really?
It's possible. The interface part is even quite easy. The hard part is defining a data model to contain all the words in all languages, with definitions in all languages, with morphology tables, etc. Something like this is slowly being done at www.omegawiki.org and there are other projects, too. OK, I didn't realize the depth of that problem. -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] On curiosity, cats and scapegoats
Hey Milosh, I think we all say things in private mails that we wouldn't post on public lists. If I posted any of a number of my private emails to our office mailing list I'd be at risk of getting fired. I think highly of you, and I'm sure most of the people here do, even when they disagree with you. Anyway, to the issue: I understand the attitude of being against censorship at any costs - it is a very important fight. But as H.L. Mencken said: Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority ... The thing is, even if a lot of Wikipedia is written by a disreputable minority, we want it to go to the great masses. I completely get what Sarah is saying here: not everyone wants that hard uncompromising focus on uncensored liberty: it's inconvenient in polite society. Sure, the image hiding feature is a compromise, but it's not a bad one. It's not intended to remove any images from Wikipedia, just to allow users to make Wikipedia SFW (or SFL, depending on who you are) as required, and is totally reversible, so I support it. -- David Richfield ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia creator Jimmy Walker - wikileaks
Maybe whoever wrote the cable had been drinking too much Johnny Walker? -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] a funny story about wikipedia's strange power
2011/8/24 Newyorkbrad newyorkb...@gmail.com: I'm glad I finally found you. I have a silly walk, and I'd like to apply for a government grant to help me develop it. Newyorkbrad OK, first step: post a video of your walk to Commons under a free license. -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Forkability, its problems and our problems
You say that we exclude significant material on the basis of notability? That seems almost contradictory. If it has been the subject of non-trivial, reliable, 3rd party coverage, it's notable. If it hasn't, how 'significant' is it really? As for childish, trivial, offensive stuff: is it an encyclopedic topic and notable? If so, it's hardly trivial. If not, it should go. If we chuck out everything which offends some significant group, we lose NPOV and balanced coverage. That doesn't mean I don't believe we have non-notable offensive articles, just that we should use our policies effectively to get rid of them. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] We need to make it easy to fork and leave
On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 6:04 AM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote: On 12/08/11 20:55, David Gerard wrote: THESIS: Our inadvertent monopoly is *bad*. We need to make it easy to fork the projects, so as to preserve them. I must have missed the place where you actually made this case. I tried reading your blog posts but I didn't see it there. In 2005 you said that the point is to insure the data against the financial collapse of the Foundation. It's not just financial collapse. When Sun was acquired by Oracle and they started messing about with OpenOffice, it was not hard to fork the project - take the codebase and run with it. It's not that easy for Wikipedia, and we want to make sure that it remains doable, or else the Foundation has too much power over the content community. Let me make it clear that I currently am happy with the Foundation, and don't see a fork as necessary. If the community has a problem with the board at any point, we can elect a new one. If things change, however, and it becomes clear that the project is being jeopardised by the management, we need a plan C. -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge
On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 9:16 PM, whothis whoth...@gmail.com wrote:
Looks like an excellent waste of effort.
Maybe the problem of publishing non-publishable oral sources occurred to
someone on the team. Anyway the english wikipedia seems to be the
appropriate place for your original research. I can't wait to read all about
it.
I still think a research project in emesis in the global south or something
would have suited english wikipedia better but that's just me.
Your fan
Elizabeth
This was obviously just a puerile troll posting, and doesn't deserve a
response on its own merit, but I still think it's worthwhile to give
an ordinary Wikipedian's view of the general uncertainty about oral
sources in terms of notability and original research.
One of the most frequent complaints about Wikipedia, which I have seen
in contexts such as the Wikipedia overview of World History and on
websites that are critical of Wikipedia, is that it has an endemic
bias towards Western, English-language information. As long as
Wikipedia is completely reliant on paper sources, this is unlikely to
change. The Oral Citations project is a brave attempt to light a
candle instead of just cursing the darkness.
Lots of ethnographic work is very strongly based on interviews with
people who have an oral tradition. This is then published and, quite
correctly, cited in Wikipedia: the view is that it is then a secondary
source, and hence appropriate. When we directly source oral
interviews and host them on a sister project, the complaint is that
this is a primary source: prone to small sample sizes, unscientific
data gathering, and hidden biases on the part of the interviewers.
The key response to this objection in my opinion is that we have to be
clear about the kind of claim that can be supported by these
interviews, and the strength of the evidence.
Where there is no written discussion of a specific cultural practice,
endemic knowledge, minor language or whatever, an oral citation is
better than nothing. As long as it's given in context, I don't see
the problem. Something like Interviews with members of the Sk8r
tribe in 2011 indicated that they have a deep animosity towards the
neighbouring Emos,ref name=Interview36 / ref name=interview38 /
and have several tribal songs in this regard ref name=Interview44.
When the oral citations disagree with written sources, the authority
of the interviewee becomes relevant. If a recognized elder of a
specific cultural group (whose identity can be verified) is on video
making a specific claim, that's notable and verifiable in itself, and
can be discussed as such in a Wikipedia article.
An example of such a claim might be Although Ringo's Ethnography of
Eastern River-dwellers mentions their ritual use of torpedoesref
name=Ringo83 /, Chief Tom of the Wilbury tribe has claimed in an
interview that none of the tribes ever had access to such weapons, and
believes this belief to be due to a confusion with the local
militia.ref name=Petty2011 /
This way, no reader can be misled about the source and weight of the claim.
Of course, that's just, like, my opinion, man.{{cn}}
--
David Richfield
e^(πi)+1=0
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Re: [Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 88, Issue 62
I know this mailing list isn't Wikipedia, but Elizabeth could do well to read WP:CIVIL. As it stands, the post was unhelpful and argumentative, without adding any real substance to the discussion. Talking about a research project in emesis in the global south makes a diagnosis of trolling almost unavoidable, despite my attempts to WP:AGF. On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 10:01 AM, Craig Franklin cr...@halo-17.net wrote: God forbid that someone should have an opinion contrary to the fashion of the day (in this case, oral citations)! Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:21:18 -0700 From: M. Williamson node...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: canyvhossvju6n30zmpxis3ktqousuibynovznag9hnu6a2f...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 What is your intention here, Elizabeth, besides trolling? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge
I agree with your assessment that problems with interpretation and lack of independent review can definitely make it problematic for editors to cite these interviews directly, and we'll have to see whether it is in any way feasible under any circumstances, and if so, what guidelines can be set up. *What I do think is incredibly important though is that this material has huge value in itself - and every effort to encourage more of the same should be taken! * In fact we should get as much material such as this as possible, host it, translate it, make it accessible - and encourage secondary academic sources to make use of it. This could work both as a hack to get around the issues of citing oral material directly as well as contributing to the effort to expand knowledge of these areas of study. A very useful suggestion! That should address the concerns quite well, as well as improving the contacts between Wikipedia and Academia. Kind regards, -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Black market science
The system of charging readers for distribution of scientific information is fundamentally flawed. Wikipedia demonstrates that it is cheap to host data. Reviewers don't get paid. Companies pay plenty to advertise in journals. Why do I have to pay $50 to read someone's research? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Commons-l] Commons as an art gallery?
How on earth can this become the POTD on any Wikipedia? It's tolerably well executed art, but utterly non-notable. -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Commons-l] Commons as an art gallery?
Ah, sorry, I missed the point that it was on the Wikipedias solely as a Commons POTD, and that it hadn't been selected by the wikipedias themselves. On 16 May 2011 10:10 PM, Robert Rohde raro...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/5/16 David Richfield davidrichfi...@gmail.com: How on earth can this become the POTD on any Wikipedia? It's tolerably well executed art, but utterly non-notable. The Commons Picture of the Day process allows photos / illustrations of a very high technical quality to be promoted even if they have no claim to notability at all. In general, notability has very little to do with Commons at any level. -Robert Rohde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Multiplayer High
Wikipedia has long been described as a specific form of MMORPG in some corners. It definitely involves a lot of grinding Wait, how do you grind on Wikipedia? Well, I guess fixing typos and reviewing new articles and recent changes would be examples. -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia, The Book
On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 7:42 AM, teun spaans teun.spa...@gmail.com wrote: If i interpret the link correctly, these are only featured articles? Exactly: I was asking how big it would be if you added the good articles as well. 2011/3/30 David Richfield davidrichfi...@gmail.com On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 7:34 PM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: http://www.rob-matthews.com/index.php?/project/wikipedia/ Rob, May I direct your attention to: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/wiki/Commons:Upload Fred This is quite cool! I've seen those diagrams of how many shelves en.wikipedia would fill if printed, but now I'm wondering: if you only printed the nearly 17 thousand featured articles and good articles, how big would that be? -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia, The Book
On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 7:34 PM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: http://www.rob-matthews.com/index.php?/project/wikipedia/ Rob, May I direct your attention to: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/wiki/Commons:Upload Fred This is quite cool! I've seen those diagrams of how many shelves en.wikipedia would fill if printed, but now I'm wondering: if you only printed the nearly 17 thousand featured articles and good articles, how big would that be? -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
