Re: [WikiEN-l] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
(Composed yesterday, delayed by system crash) wjhon...@aol.com: It's a question of the amount of coverage we want to give to fiction details. Thomas Daltonthomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, that is one side of the argument. It doesn't explain why the argument exists and is so prevalent. The concept about whether or not to delete whole categories of articles doesn't fall under the stabilized concept of deletionism anyway - its an editorial concept regarding what's encyclopedic and what isn't (WP:ENC and WP:WEIGHT). The stable concept of deletionism isn't anything more than the waste management principle: 'any organism needs a waste removal system.' A fairly basic and agreeable idea. After that, inclusionism sort of became a misnomer - few disagree that all subjects need to be 'included' - the disagreements deal with how they are treated. Eventualism and integrationism sort of came along a bit later, and these are the acually operant philosophies today. On a side note, I don't recall who coined the terms deletionism and inclusionism in our context. I remember using deletionism sometime in early 2003 for its nicely pejorative characteristics: At the time it made little sense to just let people - typically people quite unskilled at actually improving articles - go around and just delete things they didn't like. The core issue here involves the differing concepts of an article or topic's actual or potential worth. -Stevertigo ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 6:59 PM, stevertigostv...@gmail.com wrote: The stable concept of deletionism isn't anything more than the waste management principle: 'any organism needs a waste removal system.' A fairly basic and agreeable idea. After that, inclusionism sort of became a misnomer - few disagree that all subjects need to be 'included' - the disagreements deal with how they are treated. Eventualism and integrationism sort of came along a bit later, and these are the acually operant philosophies today. I've found I've changed over the last 4 or 5 years that I've been on WP. When I first joined a fought against the deletion of an unremarkable street because my thought was isn't it amazing that someone can find their *own* street* on Wikipedia! It will inspire editors because if people can find their own street they'll go WOW! and want to join in and add to this remarkable project. Now, more experienced and more cynical, I view Wikipedia as an increasingly large carpet that multitudes want to urinate on... with no growth in the number of cleaners. ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 6:29 PM, Lunalunasan...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 3:07 PM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: OK the other side of the argument is Wikipedia is not paper. That is, presumably, that we have a virtually unlimited amount of space in which to describe whatever we want. Indeed. Our size limitations are not physical, but logical. We're no longer limited by the number of paper pages one can bind together, nor by the number of bound volumes one can distribute, but rather by more abstract concepts of readability, usability, maintainability, and so on. I've been meaning for a while, now, to write a project-space essay encouraging a shift from notability to maintainability as a primary inclusion guideline. Lack of suitable sourcing makes maintenance difficult, because it's that much harder for us to be sure of accuracy and NPOV. If nothing else, the two ideas might complement each other well. I wrote a post... er, wow, 4 years ago... on why I am a mergist saying just about the same thing: Wiki is not paper doesn't mean there should be a page for everything; it means there doesn't *have* to be a page for everything: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage/mergism I suppose my position is still similar; I don't think everything needs its own page as long as it's still easy to find what you're looking for. -Kat -- Your donations keep Wikipedia online: http://donate.wikimedia.org/en Wikimedia, Press: k...@wikimedia.org * Personal: k...@mindspillage.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage * (G)AIM:Mindspillage mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net * email for phone ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
The 'deletionists' (and I use that word somewhat ironically, we don't have meetings or leaders or even a philosophy beyond 'improve the encyclopedia') vs the 'inclusionists' (I always thought that word was chosen as a catch-all to cast the other side as slightly evil, much like you can't help but feel slightly guilty voting against 'pro-life', even though you know the label was picked for exactly those reasons) is, in my opinion, actually a shining example of the wiki process and I'm glad it was chosen as at least one of the topics. Deep seated disagreements over the project were solved by consensus building and community, resulting in sensible guidelines that helps us keep the vast majority of utter crap out of the 'pedia, while users who enjoy the work organize teams hunting for that diamond in the rough to polish and display. Everyone's happy, and the community solved it. Great subject. On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 10:29 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: 2009/8/17 Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com: On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 5:47 PM, Cathy Edwardscathy.edwa...@bbc.co.uk wrote: snip 1. The inclusionist / deletionist debate peaked a few years ago It did? Maybe I haven't been paying attention. I was under the impression that notability guidelines were still a topic of heated debate as regards articles on fiction topics. Or has a guideline finally been thrashed out? The original debate was global, there were people that believed our standards should be much stricter all over and there were people the believed our standards should be much more relaxed all over. That global debate finished years ago, there are now separate debates regarding different topics (BLPs and fiction are the two main ones, I think). Classifying people as inclusionist or deletionist doesn't work in the current environment since someone might be on one side for one topic and the other for others. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l -- -Brock ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
This is all so interesting - thanks. I think I have a good idea why BLP are a hot topic of debate in this area, but why do you think fiction is contentious - because it's in danger of unbalancing the encyclopedia? -Original Message- From: wikien-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Dalton Sent: 17 August 2009 18:29 To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary 2009/8/17 Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com: On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 5:47 PM, Cathy Edwardscathy.edwa...@bbc.co.uk wrote: snip 1. The inclusionist / deletionist debate peaked a few years ago It did? Maybe I haven't been paying attention. I was under the impression that notability guidelines were still a topic of heated debate as regards articles on fiction topics. Or has a guideline finally been thrashed out? The original debate was global, there were people that believed our standards should be much stricter all over and there were people the believed our standards should be much more relaxed all over. That global debate finished years ago, there are now separate debates regarding different topics (BLPs and fiction are the two main ones, I think). Classifying people as inclusionist or deletionist doesn't work in the current environment since someone might be on one side for one topic and the other for others. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l http://www.bbc.co.uk/ This e-mail (and any attachments) is confidential and may contain personal views which are not the views of the BBC unless specifically stated. If you have received it in error, please delete it from your system. Do not use, copy or disclose the information in any way nor act in reliance on it and notify the sender immediately. Please note that the BBC monitors e-mails sent or received. Further communication will signify your consent to 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
2009/8/18 Cathy Edwards cathy.edwa...@bbc.co.uk: This is all so interesting - thanks. I think I have a good idea why BLP are a hot topic of debate in this area, but why do you think fiction is contentious - because it's in danger of unbalancing the encyclopedia? Good question. I think it is because fictional topics are very polarising when it comes to the question of how interesting they are. Fans of that particular work find every aspect of it extremely interesting, people that don't watch that show/read that series of books/whatever find it all extremely boring. There isn't much of a middle ground. It is difficult for the extremes to move towards the middle when there isn't anyone there, and that is what is required to reach a consensus. ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
Cathy Edwards wrote: This is all so interesting - thanks. I think I have a good idea why BLP are a hot topic of debate in this area, but why do you think fiction is contentious - because it's in danger of unbalancing the encyclopedia? [[Wikipedia:Notability (fiction)]] indicates some of the sore points. It is not about whether Pride or Prejudice is notable: there is no problem establishing that to everyone's satisfaction. We do have an article [[Fitzwilliam Darcy]]. The kinds of problems that arise in general are: *What if the article on Mr. Darcy were written in an in-universe view, in other words not offering the perspective with the fourth wall removed? *What if [[Category:Jane Austen characters]] got out of hand, with very minor characters featuring? *What if there were not enough critical literature to make articles (yet), and people ended up improvising their own theories? Only the second of these is likely to matter with Janeite Wikipedians. We would then say merge the info back into [[Pride and Prejudice]]. That could get too long (it's actually only a sensible 36K). For fiction articles that are very long, we are supposed to apply [[Wikipedia:Summary style]], in other words put subtopics on separate pages. But the notability guide says notability is not inherited. This is where some people get stuck. Minor characters or lesser topics in a fictional universe get merged into a page, and can't get moved out again unless the subtopic itself is inherently notable. So (as I understand it, and I'm no expert on this) fiction in general can have problems with all three of the bullets; and only for the first is there necessarily a decent editorial solution that would satisfy all inclusionist views. 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
Thomas Dalton wrote: Well said. That debate was resolved back in the days when we actually reached consensus occasionally! There are too many people for that to work, these days. However hard you try, you never find a solution that everyone will accept. Hmmm, that seems to assume consensus = no yelling, rather than 80% support or whatever. As if special interest groups can always block change. (Now that rings a bell, but we need to be careful about the retrospective history.) 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
2009/8/18 Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com: *What if the article on Mr. Darcy were written in an in-universe view, in other words not offering the perspective with the fourth wall removed? I think we've pretty much reached a consensus there. While some people write from an in-universe perspective, there haven't been many objections recently to people going through a rewriting it. ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
2009/8/18 Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com: Thomas Dalton wrote: Well said. That debate was resolved back in the days when we actually reached consensus occasionally! There are too many people for that to work, these days. However hard you try, you never find a solution that everyone will accept. Hmmm, that seems to assume consensus = no yelling, rather than 80% support or whatever. As if special interest groups can always block change. (Now that rings a bell, but we need to be careful about the retrospective history.) Yeah, look up consensus in a dictionary rather than on [[Wikipedia:Consensus]], you will find the word actually means something quite different to what Wikipedians generally use it to mean (which is actually called supermajority). ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 12:42 PM, Charles Matthewscharles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: Thomas Dalton wrote: Well said. That debate was resolved back in the days when we actually reached consensus occasionally! There are too many people for that to work, these days. However hard you try, you never find a solution that everyone will accept. Hmmm, that seems to assume consensus = no yelling, rather than 80% support or whatever. As if special interest groups can always block change. (Now that rings a bell, but we need to be careful about the retrospective history.) Charles 4 out of 5 Wikipedians agree, consensus = 80%. What exactly counts as consensus is another industrial-sized can of worms. I think we slipped into rough consensus long ago, and are now drifting into supermajorities as a rough substitute, with occasional exceptions. Lots of people wanting something doesn't necessarily make them right, though it's often a decent guide to it... -Kat -- Your donations keep Wikipedia online: http://donate.wikimedia.org/en Wikimedia, Press: k...@wikimedia.org * Personal: k...@mindspillage.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage * (G)AIM:Mindspillage mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net * email for phone ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
2009/8/18 Cathy Edwards cathy.edwa...@bbc.co.uk: I think I have a good idea why BLP are a hot topic of debate in this area, It's because they're special, because they can cause (and have caused) damage to people in a way that other articles can't. (And the same applies to material about living people in other articles.) Basically, we don't have the luxury of eventualism with biographical material about living people - it has to satisfy the standard rules (neutrality, verifiability, no original research) but we can't have a bad article and wait for it to be better - it has to be not-awful at any given time. So people get really harsh on reference quality, whether a given incident is noteworthy, etc. And that extends to even having an article at all - for many subjects, having a Wikipedia article can be a curse. but why do you think fiction is contentious - because it's in danger of unbalancing the encyclopedia? Often the sourcing is awful, primary research, original research, etc. I think it's frequently it's that the articles themselves aren't really good enough to convince, so people are unconvinced about the topic area in general. (We had similar problems with articles on schools a few years ago - not notable, we don't need articles on every school, etc., but really I think it was that the articles were really not good or useful-looking. This is just in my subjective opinion.) Apart from that, some people just go WHAT ON EARTH at the idea of some topics being in the encyclopedia. - 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
2009/8/18 Kat Walsh mindspill...@gmail.com: 4 out of 5 Wikipedians agree, consensus = 80%. What exactly counts as consensus is another industrial-sized can of worms. I think we slipped into rough consensus long ago, and are now drifting into supermajorities as a rough substitute, with occasional exceptions. Lots of people wanting something doesn't necessarily make them right, though it's often a decent guide to it... I have had people tell me you can't do that, we reached consensus otherwise and I go look and it's a straw poll that's *literally* two people voting for, one against. So it's always useful to check what someone's calling consensus. - 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 12:54 PM, David Gerarddger...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/18 Cathy Edwards cathy.edwa...@bbc.co.uk: I think I have a good idea why BLP are a hot topic of debate in this area, It's because they're special, because they can cause (and have caused) damage to people in a way that other articles can't. (And the same applies to material about living people in other articles.) Basically, we don't have the luxury of eventualism with biographical material about living people - it has to satisfy the standard rules (neutrality, verifiability, no original research) but we can't have a bad article and wait for it to be better - it has to be not-awful at any given time. So people get really harsh on reference quality, whether a given incident is noteworthy, etc. And that extends to even having an article at all - for many subjects, having a Wikipedia article can be a curse. This is about 95% of the truth, actually. Other articles *can* cause harm in exactly the same way, but are not as obvious or attractive a target. -Kat -- Your donations keep Wikipedia online: http://donate.wikimedia.org/en Wikimedia, Press: k...@wikimedia.org * Personal: k...@mindspillage.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage * (G)AIM:Mindspillage mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net * email for phone ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
2009/8/18 Brock Weller brock.wel...@gmail.com: The 'deletionists' (and I use that word somewhat ironically, we don't have meetings or leaders or even a philosophy beyond 'improve the encyclopedia') vs the 'inclusionists' (I always thought that word was chosen as a catch-all to cast the other side as slightly evil, much like you can't help but feel slightly guilty voting against 'pro-life', even though you know the label was picked for exactly those reasons) is, in my opinion, actually a shining example of the wiki process and I'm glad it was chosen as at least one of the topics. Deep seated disagreements over the project were solved by consensus building and community, resulting in sensible guidelines that helps us keep the vast majority of utter crap out of the 'pedia, while users who enjoy the work organize teams hunting for that diamond in the rough to polish and display. Everyone's happy, and the community solved it. Great subject. Well said. That debate was resolved back in the days when we actually reached consensus occasionally! There are too many people for that to work, these days. However hard you try, you never find a solution that everyone will accept. ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
2009/8/18 Kat Walsh mindspill...@gmail.com: On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 12:42 PM, Charles Matthewscharles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: Thomas Dalton wrote: Well said. That debate was resolved back in the days when we actually reached consensus occasionally! There are too many people for that to work, these days. However hard you try, you never find a solution that everyone will accept. Hmmm, that seems to assume consensus = no yelling, rather than 80% support or whatever. As if special interest groups can always block change. (Now that rings a bell, but we need to be careful about the retrospective history.) Charles 4 out of 5 Wikipedians agree, consensus = 80%. What exactly counts as consensus is another industrial-sized can of worms. I think we slipped into rough consensus long ago, and are now drifting into supermajorities as a rough substitute, with occasional exceptions. Lots of people wanting something doesn't necessarily make them right, though it's often a decent guide to it... We completed the drift into supermajorities a year or two ago. Decisions on individual articles are still sometimes made by consensus because there aren't many people interested in them, but any decisions involving more than about a dozen people resort to a simple vote. Rough consensus only differs from supermajority when there is someone authorised to draw a conclusion from it and they are willing to do more than count votes. The only such authorisation is crats deciding RFAs and they stopped being willing to do more than count votes a while back. ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
2009/8/18 Kat Walsh mindspill...@gmail.com: This is about 95% of the truth, actually. Other articles *can* cause harm in exactly the same way, but are not as obvious or attractive a target. Mmm. BLPs became special (a) in the wake of the Siegenthaler foulup (b) when we became likely the top Google hit on any given minorly-noteworthy person's name who has an article or is *mentioned in* an article. But yeah, it can apply to other sorts of articles. The Arbitration Committee has advised that articles on companies can need similar caution applied, particularly when you have editors who confuse an encyclopedia with investigative journalism. (We have Wikinews for original journalism!) - 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 1:07 PM, David Gerarddger...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/18 Kat Walsh mindspill...@gmail.com: This is about 95% of the truth, actually. Other articles *can* cause harm in exactly the same way, but are not as obvious or attractive a target. Mmm. BLPs became special (a) in the wake of the Siegenthaler foulup (b) when we became likely the top Google hit on any given minorly-noteworthy person's name who has an article or is *mentioned in* an article. But yeah, it can apply to other sorts of articles. The Arbitration Committee has advised that articles on companies can need similar caution applied, particularly when you have editors who confuse an encyclopedia with investigative journalism. (We have Wikinews for original journalism!) Oh, I agree that everyone became aware that articles on living people needed special handling around then. It's just that people do not sufficiently appreciate that they are only the most easily-identifiable subset of the articles requiring that same care. -Kat -- Your donations keep Wikipedia online: http://donate.wikimedia.org/en Wikimedia, Press: k...@wikimedia.org * Personal: k...@mindspillage.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage * (G)AIM:Mindspillage mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net * email for phone ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
Although as I've said before WikiNEWS is for NEW not for old. So where do you put old investigative journalism ? In a message dated 8/18/2009 10:07:41 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, dger...@gmail.com writes: particularly when you have editors who confuse an encyclopedia with investigative journalism. (We have Wikinews for original journalism!) ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
It's a question of the amount of coverage we want to give to fiction details. Let's say we have an article on Superman, and also on each of the various Superman comic runs that have appeared in the past 50 years. Now make an article on *each* comic issue, and then in that article describe the plot, characters, moral, date, number of issues, etc. *Now* for each character make an article for them, describing each issue they were in, with the plot details, and link them all together. You'd have something like three to twenty thousand articles on Superman. Many people would see that as overwhelming in scope and most relevant for a specialist work. Will Johnson In a message dated 8/18/2009 8:56:15 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, cathy.edwa...@bbc.co.uk writes: I think I have a good idea why BLP are a hot topic of debate in this area, but why do you think fiction is contentious - because it's in danger of unbalancing the encyclopedia? ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
2009/8/18 wjhon...@aol.com: It's a question of the amount of coverage we want to give to fiction details. Let's say we have an article on Superman, and also on each of the various Superman comic runs that have appeared in the past 50 years. Now make an article on *each* comic issue, and then in that article describe the plot, characters, moral, date, number of issues, etc. *Now* for each character make an article for them, describing each issue they were in, with the plot details, and link them all together. You'd have something like three to twenty thousand articles on Superman. Many people would see that as overwhelming in scope and most relevant for a specialist work. Yes, that is one side of the argument. It doesn't explain why the argument exists and is so prevalent. ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 11:54, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: And that extends to even having an article at all - for many subjects, having a Wikipedia article can be a curse. Not that that has ever stopped anybody from creating an autobiography -- Jim Redmond [[User:Jredmond]] ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
wjhon...@aol.com wrote: It's a question of the amount of coverage we want to give to fiction details. Let's say we have an article on Superman, and also on each of the various Superman comic runs that have appeared in the past 50 years. Now make an article on *each* comic issue, and then in that article describe the plot, characters, moral, date, number of issues, etc. *Now* for each character make an article for them, describing each issue they were in, with the plot details, and link them all together. You'd have something like three to twenty thousand articles on Superman. Many people would see that as overwhelming in scope and most relevant for a specialist work. I've always found it to be a question of how hard people are prepared to look the other way, or perhaps look hard enough to find a problem. We seem to have lost sight of the fact that notability guidance was pretty much drawn up and widely accepted to prevent advertising, spam and original research. It's now being pushed places it doesn't need to go, by people who don't really understand what we're about. Some devoted souls seem to treat these policy pages as The Word, almost sacrosanct, which is starting to create real tension with the notion that they are descriptive and that consensus can change. I think the current battle is not between inclusionists and deletionists, but between those who believe rules should be followed and those who believe rules can be broken. That we have a rule which says we can break rules makes for the most perplexing conversations. I can't help but wonder, in amusement, if it isn't possible to fork the encyclopedia from the rules in some way. ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
2009/8/18 wjhon...@aol.com: I just explained why. Some people would find three thousand articles on Superman is be overwhelming. It's a similar situation to having separate articles on each subway stop in New York City or each Mayor of Santa Cruz. No, you just explained one side of the argument. An argument only exists if there are two sides and it is only a high profile argument if there is some additional factor. ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
The way I would phrase it, there are those who believe the policy pages are given down from on high and there are those who understand that those same pages were created from below. That is, I believe tantamount not to rules can be broken but rather to rules can change. I never advise people to be bold *against* policy, but rather to go to the policy discussion pages and see whether or not their situation might be an exception that we'd like to include *in* the policy. It's happened dozens of times, just within my own memory, that situations of this sort, get resolved by clarification and modification of the policy language. By the way, I dispute that notability guidelines were laid down to prevent advertising, spam and original research. For example I think in the Porn Actors notability it states something like that they must have appeared in at least five films or something of that sort. That seems more about setting a bar so we don't get people who have a trivial set of appearances i.e. they are notable in their field. You can certainly create a list of porn actors who have only appeared in a single film *without* doing any original research. Remembering that source-based research is not original just because it's new to a major publication. Original research involves the *creation* of a new fact, not just the re-reporting of it no matter the source, provided it's been published in some format previously. A video box cover is a publication format. So reading names off it, is not original research. -Original Message- From: Surreptitiousness surreptitious.wikiped...@googlemail.com To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, Aug 18, 2009 2:01 pm Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary wjhon...@aol.com wrote: It's a question of the amount of coverage we want to give to fiction details. Let's say we have an article on Superman, and also on each of the various Superman comic runs that have appeared in the past 50 years. Now make an article on *each* comic issue, and then in that article describe the plot, characters, moral, date, number of issues, etc. *Now* for each character make an article for them, describing each issue they were in, with the plot details, and link them all together. You'd have something like three to twenty thousand articles on Superman. Many people would see that as overwhelming in scope and most relevant for a specialist work. I've always found it to be a question of how hard people are prepared to look the other way, or perhaps look hard enough to find a problem. We seem to have lost sight of the fact that notability guidance was pretty much drawn up and widely accepted to prevent advertising, spam and original research. It's now being pushed places it doesn't need to go, by people who don't really understand what we're about. Some devoted souls seem to treat these policy pages as The Word, almost sacrosanct, which is starting to create real tension with the notion that they are descriptive and that consensus can change. I think the current battle is not between inclusionists and deletionists, but between those who believe rules should be followed and those who believe rules can be broken. That we have a rule which says we can break rules makes for the most perplexing conversations. I can't help but wonder, in amusement, if it isn't possible to fork the encyclopedia from the rules in some way. ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
OK the other side of the argument is Wikipedia is not paper. That is, presumably, that we have a virtually unlimited amount of space in which to describe whatever we want. So if we want individual articles on each episode of Gunsmoke we should have them. If we want individual articles on each chapter of War and Peace we should have them. There is no reason why 3 million articles today, could not be 300 million articles in ten years. So why all the fuss? Get busy and stop deleting my articles. The size and price of hard disk storage is dropping like a sinner to Hell. We have 1 Terabyte external's going for 30 bucks. The foundation just needs to invest in more cheap hardware and pound the pavement for more contributions. Will Johnson -Original Message- From: Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, Aug 18, 2009 2:06 pm Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary 2009/8/18 wjhon...@aol.com: I just explained why. Some people would find three thousand articles on Superman is be overwhelming. It's a similar situation to having separate articles on each subway stop in New York City or each Mayor of Santa Cruz. No, you just explained one side of the argument. An argument only exists if there are two sides and it is only a high profile argument if ther e is some additional factor. ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 3:07 PM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: OK the other side of the argument is Wikipedia is not paper. That is, presumably, that we have a virtually unlimited amount of space in which to describe whatever we want. Indeed. Our size limitations are not physical, but logical. We're no longer limited by the number of paper pages one can bind together, nor by the number of bound volumes one can distribute, but rather by more abstract concepts of readability, usability, maintainability, and so on. I've been meaning for a while, now, to write a project-space essay encouraging a shift from notability to maintainability as a primary inclusion guideline. Lack of suitable sourcing makes maintenance difficult, because it's that much harder for us to be sure of accuracy and NPOV. If nothing else, the two ideas might complement each other well. -Luna ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
sob You would delete all these articles I've created that no-one else has edited? :-( Carcharoth On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 11:45 PM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: Only if I can write a corollary, Any article 90 days old or more, with a single editor should be deleted. That would be a ground-level bar on notability. And also an interesting exercise in cobweb control. Will Johnson -Original Message- From: Luna lunasan...@gmail.com To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, Aug 18, 2009 3:29 pm Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 3:07 PM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: OK the other side of the argument is Wikipedia is not paper. That is, presumably, that we have a virtually unlimited amount of space in which to describe whatever we want. Indeed. Our size limitations are not physical, but logical. We're no longer limited by the number of paper pages one can bind together, nor by the number of bound volumes one can distribute, but rather by more abstract concepts of readability, usability, maintainability, and so on. I've been meaning for a while, now, to write a project-space essay encouraging a shift from notability to maintainability as a primary inclusion guideline. Lack of suitable sourcing makes maintenance difficult, because it's that much harder for us to be sure of accuracy and NPOV. If nothing else, the two ideas might complement each other well. -Luna ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
2009/8/18 wjhon...@aol.com: Only if I can write a corollary, Any article 90 days old or more, with a single editor should be deleted. That would be a ground-level bar on notability. And also an interesting exercise in cobweb control. What about new page patrollers tagging and categorising? Do they count as editors? It takes less than 90 minutes for a new article to get its first edits from other people. You would need to work out where to draw the line, which is never easy. ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
I'd start with you first! I've had a hard spot in my black heart for you ever since you deleted my article on the Varying Shapes of Pikachu's Ears from 1989 to 1993 and Its Correlation to the Japanese Stock Market. On a brighter note, I'm happy to report that I have *once again* made the news with my apparent wickedness. Bose 2.2 direct reflecting bookshelf speakers for sale on Knol http://knol.google.com/k/will-johnson/bose-22-direct-reflecting-bookshelf/4hmquk6fx4gu/277 Evidently my evil plans are finally gaining the international recognition they so richly deserve. Will Skeletor Johnson -Original Message- From: Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, Aug 18, 2009 3:49 pm Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary sob You would delete all these articles I've created that no-one else has edited? :-( Carcharoth On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 11:45 PM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: Only if I can write a corollary, Any article 90 days old or more, with a single editor should be deleted. That would be a ground-level bar on notability. And also an interesting exercise in cobweb control. Will Johnson -Original Message- From: Luna lunasan...@gmail.com To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, Aug 18, 2009 3:29 pm Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Request to W ikipedians for BBC Documentary On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 3:07 PM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: OK the other side of the argument is Wikipedia is not paper. That is, presumably, that we have a virtually unlimited amount of space in which to describe whatever we want. Indeed. Our size limitations are not physical, but logical. We're no longer limited by the number of paper pages one can bind together, nor by the number of bound volumes one can distribute, but rather by more abstract concepts of readability, usability, maintainability, and so on. I've been meaning for a while, now, to write a project-space essay encouraging a shift from notability to maintainability as a primary inclusion guideline. Lack of suitable sourcing makes maintenance difficult, because it's that much harder for us to be sure of accuracy and NPOV. If nothing else, the two ideas might complement each other well. -Luna ___ 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 ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
Ok... substantive change? Discount changes that only shift text around, fix grammar, add cats and so on. Or maybe any article where the sole sources have been added by a single editor. Sounds a bit WP:OWNish doesn't it? -Original Message- From: Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, Aug 18, 2009 3:58 pm Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary 2009/8/18 wjhon...@aol.com: Only if I can write a corollary, Any article 90 days old or more, with a single editor should be deleted. That would be a ground-level bar on notability. And also an interesting exercise in cobweb control. What about new page patrollers tagging and categorising? Do they count as editors? It takes less than 90 minutes for a new article to get its first edits from other people. You would need to work out where to draw the line, which is never easy. ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
2009/8/18 wjhon...@aol.com: Only if I can write a corollary, Any article 90 days old or more, with a single editor should be deleted. That would be a ground-level bar on notability. And also an interesting exercise in cobweb control. I'm really not sure that prohibiting cases where only one of our editors wants to work on something is really the best way to encourage finding notable topics, or indeed to counter our already huge systemic bias problem. -- - 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
On Tue, 18 Aug 2009, Surreptitiousness wrote: That we have a rule which says we can break rules makes for the most perplexing conversations. One problem is that the rule which says we can break rules is poorly worded. If you didn't already agree that you can break rules (and therefore didn't need it anyway), it's rather misleading and causes problems. ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 1:55 AM, Cathy Edwardscathy.edwa...@bbc.co.uk wrote: I think I have a good idea why BLP are a hot topic of debate in this area, but why do you think fiction is contentious - because it's in danger of unbalancing the encyclopedia? I'll offer two reasons: 1) Because editors are unable, in general, to distinguish between the desirability of including a topic, and the desirability of including the current article written on that topic. They see a crappy article and think crappy topic. 2) Because editors react rather viscerally and unhelpfully to certain topics. I don't like Pokémon, but I begrudingly accept the wisdom of articles on Pokémon characters. I find the difficult struggle to define the borders of the encyclopaedia very interesting, but dubbing it the deletionism/inclusionism debate is really oversimplifying it. It implies that there is some group that wants the encyclopaedia to have a certain number of articles (say, 2 million) and another group that wants it to have a larger number (say, 10 million). In practice, it's not like that, there are individual struggles in every area. These struggles have to take place because different people's instincts tell them different things, and there are no clear universal principles to define what's in and out. Nor, other than extreme positions like include everything about which there is at least one source, could there be. Personally, I'm much more convinced by arguments about the cost of maintaining articles in certain areas versus their value to end users - a cost/benefit analysis. But the debate is rarely framed in these terms. As an example, I wrote http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_deal_a_day in 2007. It attracts a fair bit of spam, and a reasonable amount of effort from editors to keep it clean. Is it worth it? By contrast, dozens of other stubs that I've written require very little maintenance effort, other than occasional recategorising, interwiki linking, geo coord linking etc. People seem very unwilling or uninterested in engaging in this kind of analysis. Steve ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
Thanks so much to everyone who replied to my email about finding a 'deletionist' (for want of a better word). It's been really useful to hear your takes on the subject. The main points that have become clear to me from this discussion on and offlist is that 1. The inclusionist / deletionist debate peaked a few years ago 2. BLPs are perhaps the area where the inclusionist/deletionist debate is most vibrant - for various reasons 3. A strong argument that remains for adopting a slightly more deletionist attitude is that some WP users go to it as a primary source for vital information (e.g. medical advice). To address these briefly: as I mentioned in my first mail the programme takes a historical look at the first 20 years of the World Wide Web - so hopefully the Wikipedia deletionist / inclusionist issue is legitimate from that perspective - would you agree? The timing of the PARC press release http://asc-parc.blogspot.com/ which triggered the Guaridan article coincidied unexpectedly with my request to you, but our programme won't go out until early next year, so for us it's not so much a question of seizing on a newsworthy story, as reflecting on how Wikipedia has been shaped since its inception. The feeling from the programme team is that debates over criteria for inclusion - all the issues that surround adding content/deleting/reverting edits/controlling vandalism - are really fundamental to an understanding of what Wikipedia is. It's great to hear about the issues surrounding BLPS, and thanks to all those who pointed me in this direction and explained the subject so lucidly. Deletionism is clearly a contentious term, but from what I've read and heard there are still arguments in favour of more rigurous control of what qualifies for inclusion. Libel/offence in BLPs, and the question of WP being used for medical advice are two big arguments in favour of this - are there others which some of you would also consider still current? It's be great to hear more of your thoughts on this - if you want to join the debate on our blog we're really really keen for people to contribute, precisely so we can try to include the issues that are important to you, and so you can help us NOT be misleading! There are several posts on the blog about Wikipedia - here's Jimmy Wales's post for example http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/digitalrevolution/2009/07/what-was-my-goal-wh en-i-came-u.shtml. Enjoy! Best wishes, Cathy Cathy Edwards Digital Revolution Room MC4 C6, BBC Media Centre, 201 Wood Lane, London, W12 7TQ T 0208 008 3985 digital revolution (working title) is an open and collaborative documentary about how the web is changing our lives join the conversation on the web at www.bbc.co.uk/digitalrevolution or follow us on twitter @BBCDigRev -Original Message- From: David Gerard [mailto:dger...@gmail.com] Sent: 13 August 2009 22:05 To: English Wikipedia Cc: Cathy Edwards Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary 2009/8/12 Cathy Edwards cathy.edwa...@bbc.co.uk: To add to and enrich the programme we'd really love to interview a UK Wikipedian. We're looking for a passionate Deletionist - someone who identifies with the goals of Deletionism to create a high quality encyclopaedia, and does a lot of this kind of quality control themselves - perhaps someone who is a member of the Association of Deletionist Wikipedians. Does such a person actually exist, self-identified? It appears from similar discussion on wikimediauk-l that it doesn't, in fact. (I suspect some corners of the media won't care, and we actually considered picking someone to claim to be a deletionist and go on programmes talking sense instead. This is an eample of the interests of the media *not* being the interests of the encylcopedia at al, and us having to work around that.) Some seem to call others deletionists for deleting stuff that they don't like. But as someone who's generally fairly inclusionist (and has been called a radical inclusionist and gone wtf at the notion), I can tell you that reviewing 24 hours of [[Special:Newpages]] will convince you that lots of pages deserve death by cleansing fire as absolutely quickly as possible. So we're talking about increasingly fine gradations. And basically, the media has seized upon this as an interesting and story-worthy idea about four or five years after anyone actually working on Wikipedia cared. - d. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ This e-mail (and any attachments) is confidential and may contain personal views which are not the views of the BBC unless specifically stated. If you have received it in error, please delete it from your system. Do not use, copy or disclose the information in any way nor act in reliance on it and notify the sender immediately. Please note that the BBC monitors e-mails sent or received. Further communication will signify your consent
Re: [WikiEN-l] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 5:47 PM, Cathy Edwardscathy.edwa...@bbc.co.uk wrote: snip 1. The inclusionist / deletionist debate peaked a few years ago It did? Maybe I haven't been paying attention. I was under the impression that notability guidelines were still a topic of heated debate as regards articles on fiction topics. Or has a guideline finally been thrashed out? In other areas, yes, I think the inclusionist/deletionist debate has stabilised. But maybe not. What may have happened is that people are now better at identifying and rescuing articles with potential, and that might have been due to increasing availability of sources online. During the existing lifetime of Wikipedia, it is interesting to note how certain areas of the internet grew at the same time. Was this serendipity (chosing the right time to start Wikipedia) or something more? 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
2009/8/17 Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com: On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 5:47 PM, Cathy Edwardscathy.edwa...@bbc.co.uk wrote: snip 1. The inclusionist / deletionist debate peaked a few years ago It did? Maybe I haven't been paying attention. I was under the impression that notability guidelines were still a topic of heated debate as regards articles on fiction topics. Or has a guideline finally been thrashed out? The original debate was global, there were people that believed our standards should be much stricter all over and there were people the believed our standards should be much more relaxed all over. That global debate finished years ago, there are now separate debates regarding different topics (BLPs and fiction are the two main ones, I think). Classifying people as inclusionist or deletionist doesn't work in the current environment since someone might be on one side for one topic and the other for others. ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
2009/8/12 Cathy Edwards cathy.edwa...@bbc.co.uk: Dear Wikipedians, We're making a 4-part documentary series marking 20 years of the World Wide Web, Digital Revolution. ). This comprises an interactive website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/digitalrevolution/), and four documentaries for broadcast on BBC Two at the beginning of 2010, in the UK and across the world. Our first programme, provisionally titled The Great Levelling, asks questions about the power shifts and democratisation the Web has brought about. A major part of this programme centres around Wikipedia - as a community project which really brings these kinds of issues alive. We're interviewing Jimmy Wales, as well as a couple of US Wikipedia contributors, one of whom has written a lot of articles as a lay expert, and another who has helped monitor dodgy edits by e.g. big business / politicians. To add to and enrich the programme we'd really love to interview a UK Wikipedian. We're looking for a passionate Deletionist - someone who identifies with the goals of Deletionism to create a high quality encyclopaedia, and does a lot of this kind of quality control themselves - perhaps someone who is a member of the Association of Deletionist Wikipedians. It sounds like this debate peaked a couple of years ago, but we are taking a historical approach - have you been involved in this debate in the past? Or, I understand a hot topic of debate at the moment is biographies of living people. Do you have strong feelings about how much this should be regulated - how high the threshold for inclusion should be? If you can help us, and would like to be involved in the debate, it'd be really great to hear from you. Either reply to the list, or to me at cathy.edwa...@bbc.co.uk, or by phone - 07800 794299. Best wishes, Cathy Cathy Edwards Digital Revolution Room MC4 C6, BBC Media Centre, 201 Wood Lane, London, W12 7TQ M 07800 794299 digital revolution (working title) is an open and collaborative documentary about how the web is changing our lives join the conversation on the web at www.bbc.co.uk/digitalrevolution or follow us on twitter @BBCDigRev If the Association of Wikipedians Who Dislike Making Broad Judgments About the Worthiness of a General Category of Article, and Who Are in Favor of the Deletion of Some Particularly Bad Articles, but That Doesn't Mean They Are Deletionists gets a mention, I'll be very happy :) http://snurl.com/pvcl8 Pete / the wub ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
Dear Wikipedians, We're making a 4-part documentary series marking 20 years of the World Wide Web, Digital Revolution. ). This comprises an interactive website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/digitalrevolution/), and four documentaries for broadcast on BBC Two at the beginning of 2010, in the UK and across the world. Our first programme, provisionally titled The Great Levelling, asks questions about the power shifts and democratisation the Web has brought about. A major part of this programme centres around Wikipedia - as a community project which really brings these kinds of issues alive. We're interviewing Jimmy Wales, as well as a couple of US Wikipedia contributors, one of whom has written a lot of articles as a lay expert, and another who has helped monitor dodgy edits by e.g. big business / politicians. To add to and enrich the programme we'd really love to interview a UK Wikipedian. We're looking for a passionate Deletionist - someone who identifies with the goals of Deletionism to create a high quality encyclopaedia, and does a lot of this kind of quality control themselves - perhaps someone who is a member of the Association of Deletionist Wikipedians. It sounds like this debate peaked a couple of years ago, but we are taking a historical approach - have you been involved in this debate in the past? Or, I understand a hot topic of debate at the moment is biographies of living people. Do you have strong feelings about how much this should be regulated - how high the threshold for inclusion should be? If you can help us, and would like to be involved in the debate, it'd be really great to hear from you. Either reply to the list, or to me at cathy.edwa...@bbc.co.uk, or by phone - 07800 794299. Best wishes, Cathy Cathy Edwards Digital Revolution Room MC4 C6, BBC Media Centre, 201 Wood Lane, London, W12 7TQ M 07800 794299 digital revolution (working title) is an open and collaborative documentary about how the web is changing our lives join the conversation on the web at www.bbc.co.uk/digitalrevolution or follow us on twitter @BBCDigRev http://www.bbc.co.uk/ This e-mail (and any attachments) is confidential and may contain personal views which are not the views of the BBC unless specifically stated. If you have received it in error, please delete it from your system. Do not use, copy or disclose the information in any way nor act in reliance on it and notify the sender immediately. Please note that the BBC monitors e-mails sent or received. Further communication will signify your consent to 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
On a spectrum of what belongs in Wikipedia, the majority of experienced editors these days probably fall in a similar area that agrees not everything belongs in Wikipedia. Not every building, person, business, fictional character, news item, minor band, aspiring politician, has a place. There are graduations around exactly where the specific line gets drawn in certain areas, but by and large that was an open issue long ago, mostly old and archaic these days. Ina manner of speech, we've agreed that the middle ages ended around 1500 - 1600. While occasionally its an issue which side should this item fall into, mostly the criteria are agreed, the broad conclusions drawn. FT2 On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 10:04 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/12 Cathy Edwards cathy.edwa...@bbc.co.uk: To add to and enrich the programme we'd really love to interview a UK Wikipedian. We're looking for a passionate Deletionist - someone who identifies with the goals of Deletionism to create a high quality encyclopaedia, and does a lot of this kind of quality control themselves - perhaps someone who is a member of the Association of Deletionist Wikipedians. Does such a person actually exist, self-identified? It appears from similar discussion on wikimediauk-l that it doesn't, in fact. (I suspect some corners of the media won't care, and we actually considered picking someone to claim to be a deletionist and go on programmes talking sense instead. This is an eample of the interests of the media *not* being the interests of the encylcopedia at al, and us having to work around that.) Some seem to call others deletionists for deleting stuff that they don't like. But as someone who's generally fairly inclusionist (and has been called a radical inclusionist and gone wtf at the notion), I can tell you that reviewing 24 hours of [[Special:Newpages]] will convince you that lots of pages deserve death by cleansing fire as absolutely quickly as possible. So we're talking about increasingly fine gradations. And basically, the media has seized upon this as an interesting and story-worthy idea about four or five years after anyone actually working on Wikipedia cared. - 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 ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
David Gerard wrote: 2009/8/12 Cathy Edwards cathy.edwa...@bbc.co.uk: To add to and enrich the programme we'd really love to interview a UK Wikipedian. We're looking for a passionate Deletionist - someone who identifies with the goals of Deletionism to create a high quality encyclopaedia, and does a lot of this kind of quality control themselves - perhaps someone who is a member of the Association of Deletionist Wikipedians. Does such a person actually exist, self-identified? It appears from similar discussion on wikimediauk-l that it doesn't, in fact. Closest I could find is [[User:Jfdwolff]], who is a member of Association of Deletionist Wikipedians since 2004. He's a dutch doctor but UK resident. ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
Something like deletionism/inclusionism would only really be useful in terms of phases Wikipedia has gone through or issues that its editors had to resolve on the way. There's a lot of those. On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 10:37 PM, Surreptitiousness surreptitious.wikiped...@googlemail.com wrote: David Gerard wrote: 2009/8/12 Cathy Edwards cathy.edwa...@bbc.co.uk: To add to and enrich the programme we'd really love to interview a UK Wikipedian. We're looking for a passionate Deletionist - someone who identifies with the goals of Deletionism to create a high quality encyclopaedia, and does a lot of this kind of quality control themselves - perhaps someone who is a member of the Association of Deletionist Wikipedians. Does such a person actually exist, self-identified? It appears from similar discussion on wikimediauk-l that it doesn't, in fact. Closest I could find is [[User:Jfdwolff]], who is a member of Association of Deletionist Wikipedians since 2004. He's a dutch doctor but UK resident. ___ 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
2009/8/13 FT2 ft2.w...@gmail.com: On a spectrum of what belongs in Wikipedia, the majority of experienced editors these days probably fall in a similar area that agrees not everything belongs in Wikipedia. Not every building, person, business, fictional character, news item, minor band, aspiring politician, has a place. There are graduations around exactly where the specific line gets drawn in certain areas, but by and large that was an open issue long ago, It's interesting to note that, on the whole, everyone is an inclusionist about something, and a deletionist about something else. There's hardly anyone so big on inclusion that they won't occasionally say god, no, please, delete that article on a collapsed band from 1973 which once opened for someone you've heard of; conversely, the people who spend a lot of time sending material to AFD as nn, delete will have their little pet hobbies of writing articles on a topic that you or I might consider insanely overspecific and not worth keeping. The way the deletionism-inclusionism debate *now* seems focused is things like minor BLPs. There's a thriving debate there, still, if you want to look for it. -- - 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] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
2009/8/13 Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk: The way the deletionism-inclusionism debate *now* seems focused is things like minor BLPs. There's a thriving debate there, still, if you want to look for it. Indeed, the debate have moved from general arguments about overall philosophy to specific arguments about where to draw the line in specific topics. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
