Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontent issues.

[John Vandenberg]

On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 5:16 AM, Peter Damian
 wrote:
>
> - Original Message -
> From: "John Vandenberg" 
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" 
> Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2010 12:21 AM
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontent
> issues.
>
>
>>Irony.  David Gerard disparaging CZ using a rationalwiki page as evidence.
>
> Actually David wrote the page.  I thought it was interesting ...

I agree it was interesting, and does include some valuable
observations which highlight problems facing the CZ project.
Credentialism is one of them, but David's assertion that it is a
"pseudoscience haven" appears to be selective observation, or maybe
selective writing in light of the CZ article about WP, which makes no
mentions of the long history of pseudo- problems on Wikipedia.

>>Pseudo-science, pseudo-humanities, etc are no stranger to Wikipedia,
>>and our processes have not always been victorious over it.  Simply
>>put, the rubbish on Wikipedia outweights the rubbish on CZ, and I
>>suspect that an academically sound study would indicate that,
>>proportionally speaking, Wikipedia pollutes the interweb more than CZ.
>>Compare the rationalwiki page for CZ and WP.  I wonder how large their
>>WP page would be if a similar level of critical analysis was applied.
>
> ... but as you say, byte for byte, there may be a similar level of
> 'pollution'.  I wonder if it was 'credentialism' that was the problem, or
> just the lack of editors.  I joined CZ when it was formed, with one other
> philosophy editor http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/User:Peter_J._King who had
> defected from Wikipedia.  He was a good philosopher but had some kind of
> stupid row with Larry and left. I found it difficult to edit in a vacuum so
> I left also.  And that was the end of "credentialled" philosophy on CZ.
> Larry is not a bad philosopher himself and has credentials but he was in a
> management role. He has this naive faith that academic philosophers would
> come flocking to CZ and fill the gap but they didn't. So in the end he
> lowered the entry barrier and the rest is history.
>
> In summary, the evidence as far as my discipline is concerned is that Sanger
> wrongly expected the project to attract credentialled academics. It didn't.
> He allowed a number of uncredentialled or 'less credentialled' editors in,
> and the results are much as David Gerard describes them.

An important distinction remains.  CZ requires real names, and as I
understand it, the credentials of the contributors are a known
quantity, which adds a dimension in 'patrolling' process.  This
obviously reduces the quantity of willing contributors, and
contributions.  I'm surprised you found the quietness of CZ (the
vacuum) to be a problem, as your content on MyWikiBiz is usually
written solely by yourself, and many of your WP pages have mostly been
written by yourself.

--
John Vandenberg

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Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals with content issues.

[David Gerard]

On 1 September 2010 00:27, John Vandenberg  wrote:

> You, and the RW article about WP, start from the assertion that
> Wikipedia is successful.  Successful at what?  Success at Google
> rankings/pageviews/popular culture?  Is that the only appropriate
> measure of an encyclopedia; an encyclopedia which is putting other
> encyclopedia's out of business?  What is it unsuccessful at?  The RW
> article about WP does little to demonstrate a rational persons
> observation of WP.  It reads like the writer(s) are drunk on coolaid.


This appears to be a very inefficacious way for you to edit the wiki
page you're talking about.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals with content issues.

[John Vandenberg]

On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 9:55 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 31 August 2010 00:21, John Vandenberg  wrote:
>>..
>> Pseudo-science, pseudo-humanities, etc are no stranger to Wikipedia,
>> and our processes have not always been victorious over it.  Simply
>> put, the rubbish on Wikipedia outweights the rubbish on CZ, and I
>> suspect that an academically sound study would indicate that,
>> proportionally speaking, Wikipedia pollutes the interweb more than CZ.
>
>
> Wikipedia has the help of LOTS of people to get closer to NPOV. CZ
> artificially limited its contributor pool in important ways.

Wikipedia has artificially increased its 'editor' base, structuring it
so that Randy Boise is on equal footing with the experts, and
resulting in lots of help in violating publishing ethics.

>> Compare the rationalwiki page for CZ and WP.  I wonder how large their
>> WP page would be if a similar level of critical analysis was applied.
>
>
> The WP article is about dealing with an imperfect successful thing,
> not analysing a failure. Your point is unclear.

You, and the RW article about WP, start from the assertion that
Wikipedia is successful.  Successful at what?  Success at Google
rankings/pageviews/popular culture?  Is that the only appropriate
measure of an encyclopedia; an encyclopedia which is putting other
encyclopedia's out of business?  What is it unsuccessful at?  The RW
article about WP does little to demonstrate a rational persons
observation of WP.  It reads like the writer(s) are drunk on coolaid.

--
John Vandenberg

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Re: [Foundation-l] Report to the Board (February and March)

[Samuel J Klein]

These reports remain some of my favorite reading.  Thank you, Sue!

You can also read, wikify, and comment on these reports on Meta:
  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports#The_Gardner_Report

SJ

On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 5:10 PM, James Owen  wrote:
> FEBRUARY
> Report to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
> Covering: February 2010
> Prepared by: Sue Gardner, Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
> Prepared for: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
>
> MILESTONES FROM FEBRUARY
> Wikimedia Foundation receives $2 million grant from Google
> Conducted Interviews and engaged candidates for the Chief Development
> Officer position.
> Beta roll-out of new features and updates to the usability initative
>
> KEY PRIORITIES FOR MARCH
> Finalize the Stanton Public Policy Grant
> Bi-annual all-staff meeting.
> Begin the business planning phase of the strategy process.
>
> THIS PAST MONTH
> KEY PROGRAM METRICS
> Reach of all Wikimedia Foundation sites:
> 345 million unique visitors (rank #5)
> +14.8% (1 year ago) / -5.3% (1 month ago)
> Source: comScore Media Metrics
> Pages served:
> 11.1 billion
> +5.8% (1 year ago) / +0.0% (1 month ago)
> Active number of editors (5+ edits/month): 101,730
> -1.5% (1 year ago) / -4.6% (1 month ago)
> Source: February 2010 Report Card
> 
>
> KEY FINANCIAL METRICS
> Operating revenue year to date: USD 14.1MM vs. plan of USD 8.8MM
> Operating expenses year to date: USD 5.5MM vs. plan of USD 6.2MM
> Unrestricted cash on hand as of March 24: USD 5.2MM while unrestricted
> CDs and US Treasuries were USD 8.3MM
>
> STRATEGIC PLANNING PROJECT
> Following the Board's endorsement of the Wikimedia Foundation's high-
> level strategic priorities moving forward, the strategic planning
> process has shifted into two parallel processes. The first is the
> Foundation's business planning process, led by The Bridgespan Group.
> The goal is to develop a five-year action plan for the Wikimedia
> Foundation and a more granular one-year business plan for 2010-2011.
> This process will run through May.
>
> The second is to complete the larger, movement-wide strategic planning
> process. Late in January, a Strategy Task Force formed, which started
> discussing and evaluating the recommendations and feedback from the
> Phase 2 Task Force process. That Task Force will continue to work in
> March to articulate and propose a set of movement-wide goals.
>
> The sign of a good open process is that certain surprising things
> emerge. The team was surprised by the success of the Call for
> Proposals process in Phase 1, and are looking for ways to use those
> proposals as a way to activate the volunteer community. They were also
> surprised by the success of the Task Force process and people's desire
> to apply the processes of the strategy project beyond its original
> scope. Three new Task Forces have formed (BLPs, NASA, and Analytics),
> and the
> team is looking forward to seeing others form as well.
>
> GOOGLE GRANT AND VISIT
> In February, the Wikimedia Foundation received a $2 million (USD)
> grant from the Google Inc. Charitable Giving Fund of Tides Foundation.
> This is the Wikimedia Foundation's first grant from Google. The funds
> will support core operational costs of the Wikimedia Foundation,
> including investments in technical infrastructure to support rapidly-
> increasing global traffic and capacity demands. The funds will also be
> used to support the organization's efforts to make Wikipedia easier to
> use and more accessible.
>
> Several Wikimedia Foundation staff members met with Google product and
> engineering managers in Mountain View to discuss possible
> opportunities to work together, ranging from infrastructure and open
> source technologies to public outreach programs. Google has designated
> a liaison contact for all future Wikimedia Foundation inquiries.
>
> TECHNOLOGY – CORE
> As noted in the previous report, Danese Cooper joined the Wikimedia
> Foundation as CTO, succeeding Brion Vibber. Erik Moeller and the
> Wikimedia Foundation technology team organized several orientation and
> transition meetings.
> The process for decommissioning old, out-of-warranty Wikimedia
> Foundation servers and donating them to non-profit organizations
> continued in February:
> http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/02/server-decommissioning-donations/
>
> A follow-up meeting took place between Wikimedia and Microsoft
> Research India regarding MSRI's efforts to develop wiki language
> collaboration tools.
>
> Wikimedia's BugZilla server was updated to version 3.4.5 with REST APIs:
> http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/02/wikimedia-bugzilla-upgraded-to-version-3-4-5-with-rest-apis/
> A bug that caused 1.3 million Wikipedia article revisions from 2005 to
> appear as blank pages was resolved.
>
> TECHNOLOGY - USABILITY
> The usability beta was enhanced on February 4 with the following
> features:
> Improvement in precision of navigabl

Re: [Foundation-l] A proposal of partnership between Wikimedia Foundation and Internet Archive

[Chad]

On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 5:31 PM, Ryan Kaldari  wrote:
> A real-time feed of external links is overkill. As mentioned by others,
> the chief problem is linkrot of old links. All we need to do is dump the
> contents of externallinks.el_to from the database once a year or so, run
> a hex to ASCII conversion on it, zip it, and email it to someone at the
> Internet Archive. Anyone with access to the databases should be able to
> do this fairly easily. Rather than trying to engineer a complicated
> system that will take a year to implement, why not take this simple
> approach that will take care of 90+% of the problem?
>
> Ryan Kaldari
>

Why once a year? We already get a successful externallinks dump
every dump cycle. Even the enwiki one is only half a month old[0].
If someone wants to work with Internet Archive or anyone else on
this, the data is already there.

-Chad

[0] http://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20100817/

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Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontent issues.

[Michael Snow]

Peter Damian wrote:
> You take exception, in 
> a thread which is explicitly about content issues in Wikipedia, with a post 
> that makes unfavourable comparison between Wikipedia and one of its 
> competitors. Why is this?
>   
The post I was responding to was nothing but an assessment of a 
Citizendium article. It made no comparison, favorable or unfavorable, to 
an equivalent article on Wikipedia. At most it engaged in some 
speculation about what Wikipedia *might* have. If your intent is to 
discuss content issues in Wikipedia, then you need to actually 
explicitly discuss them. (Although I might suggest that you should 
familiarize yourself with some of our other mailing lists and consider 
whether another list, like wikien-l, is better suited to have this 
conversation, since foundation-l exists for issues related to the 
Wikimedia Foundation and the overall movement surrounding its projects, 
not just Wikipedia.)

--Michael Snow

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Re: [Foundation-l] A proposal of partnership between Wikimedia Foundation and Internet Archive

[Rodan Bury]

A dump "once a year or so" is not enough: the average life span of a website
is 3 months. Kind regards, Dodoïste

2010/8/31 Ryan Kaldari 

> A real-time feed of external links is overkill. As mentioned by others,
> the chief problem is linkrot of old links. All we need to do is dump the
> contents of externallinks.el_to from the database once a year or so, run
> a hex to ASCII conversion on it, zip it, and email it to someone at the
> Internet Archive. Anyone with access to the databases should be able to
> do this fairly easily. Rather than trying to engineer a complicated
> system that will take a year to implement, why not take this simple
> approach that will take care of 90+% of the problem?
>
> Ryan Kaldari
>
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[Foundation-l] HR and Recruiting Feed on Identi.ca and Twitter

[Daniel Phelps]

Hello Everyone,

Recently we've been having some internal conversations regarding transparency 
for our hiring, recruiting and contracting.  In efforts to be more proactive 
about sharing this information we're moving to a system of tweeting short 
bursts of announcements.  This will be done in a "bot" style voice not unlike 
the WMF tech feeds.  The idea is that we'll get the information out on new 
hires and new contractors and consultants working with us along with new job 
openings etc.  Basically the streams will recap the comings and goings in a 
short and sweet format.

I invite you all to see these data streams - 
http://identi.ca/wikimediaatwork/all or http://twitter.com/wikimediaatwork.  
Eventually we also hope to find more ways to use this feed for recruiting and 
reaching out to a larger candidate pool and audience.  There will also be times 
where we link the streams or feeds to longer and more detailed blog postings.

-Daniel


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Re: [Foundation-l] A proposal of partnership between Wikimedia Foundation and Internet Archive

[Ryan Kaldari]

A real-time feed of external links is overkill. As mentioned by others, 
the chief problem is linkrot of old links. All we need to do is dump the 
contents of externallinks.el_to from the database once a year or so, run 
a hex to ASCII conversion on it, zip it, and email it to someone at the 
Internet Archive. Anyone with access to the databases should be able to 
do this fairly easily. Rather than trying to engineer a complicated 
system that will take a year to implement, why not take this simple 
approach that will take care of 90+% of the problem?

Ryan Kaldari

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Re: [Foundation-l] CHANGE TO OFFICE HOURS

[Thomas Dalton]

On 31 August 2010 21:56, Sue Gardner  wrote:
> They're not exactly technical issues: I just have a headache :-(

Go and have a lie down - by far the best headache cure. Get well soon!

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Re: [Foundation-l] CHANGE TO OFFICE HOURS

[Sue Gardner]

They're not exactly technical issues: I just have a headache :-(

Sorry for the short notice. James will get me rescheduled pretty soon
-- meanwhile, please enjoy Barry :-)

Thanks,
Sue


On 31/08/2010, Philippe Beaudette  wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Due to some technical issues, Sue will not be doing office hours
> today.  Taking her place will be Barry Newstead, the Chief Global
> Development Officer for the Wikimedia Foundation.
>
> Same time and location.  :)
>
> pb
>
>
>
> On Aug 31, 2010, at 5:06 AM, Philippe Beaudette wrote:
>
>> Just a reminder this is in about 11 hours :)
>>
>> Philippe
>>
>> On Aug 30, 2010, at 10:08 AM, Philippe Beaudette wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> Sue Gardner, the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation,
>>> will be having office hours this Tuesday (Aug 31)  at 23:00 UTC
>>> (16:00 PT, 19:00 ET) on IRC in #wikimedia-office.
>>>
>>> If you do not have an IRC client, there are two ways you can come
>>> chat
>>> using a web browser:  First is using the Wikizine chat gateway at
>>> .  Type a
>>> nickname, select irc.freenode.net from the top menu and
>>> #wikimedia-office from the following menu, then login to join.
>>>
>>> Also, you can access Freenode by going to http://
>>> webchat.freenode.net/,
>>> typing in the nickname of your choice and choosing wikimedia-office
>>> as
>>> the channel.   You may be prompted to click through a security
>>> warning,
>>> which you can click to accept.
>>>
>>> Please feel free to forward (and translate!) this email to any other
>>> relevant email lists you happen to be on.
>>>
>>> 
>>> Philippe Beaudette  
>>> Head of Reader Relations
>>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>>
>>> phili...@wikimedia.org
>>>
>>> Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in
>>> the sum of all knowledge.  Help us make it a reality!
>>>
>>> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

>>
>> ___
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>
>
> ___
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-- 
Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation

415 839 6885 office
415 816 9967 cell

Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge.  Help us make it a reality!

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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Re: [Foundation-l] CHANGE TO OFFICE HOURS

[Philippe Beaudette]

Hi all,

Due to some technical issues, Sue will not be doing office hours  
today.  Taking her place will be Barry Newstead, the Chief Global  
Development Officer for the Wikimedia Foundation.

Same time and location.  :)

pb



On Aug 31, 2010, at 5:06 AM, Philippe Beaudette wrote:

> Just a reminder this is in about 11 hours :)
>
> Philippe
>
> On Aug 30, 2010, at 10:08 AM, Philippe Beaudette wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Sue Gardner, the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation,
>> will be having office hours this Tuesday (Aug 31)  at 23:00 UTC
>> (16:00 PT, 19:00 ET) on IRC in #wikimedia-office.
>>
>> If you do not have an IRC client, there are two ways you can come  
>> chat
>> using a web browser:  First is using the Wikizine chat gateway at
>> .  Type a
>> nickname, select irc.freenode.net from the top menu and
>> #wikimedia-office from the following menu, then login to join.
>>
>> Also, you can access Freenode by going to http://
>> webchat.freenode.net/,
>> typing in the nickname of your choice and choosing wikimedia-office  
>> as
>> the channel.   You may be prompted to click through a security
>> warning,
>> which you can click to accept.
>>
>> Please feel free to forward (and translate!) this email to any other
>> relevant email lists you happen to be on.
>>
>> 
>> Philippe Beaudette   
>> Head of Reader Relations
>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>
>> phili...@wikimedia.org
>>
>> Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in
>> the sum of all knowledge.  Help us make it a reality!
>>
>> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
>>>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontent issues.

[Peter Damian]

- Original Message - 
From: "Michael Snow" 

You are this Michael Snow, correct?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Michael_Snow

You are currently on the Advisory Board of the Wikimedia Foundation and 
previously served as chair of the Board of Trustees.  You take exception, in 
a thread which is explicitly about content issues in Wikipedia, with a post 
that makes unfavourable comparison between Wikipedia and one of its 
competitors. Why is this?

Peter


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Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontent issues.

[Peter Damian]

From: "Michael Snow" 
> Peter Damian wrote:
>> Hoping I am not straying too far off-topic.
> You are. Are the Citizendium forum and mailing lists so completely dead
> that issues with its articles cannot be discussed there?
>
> --Michael Snow

Sorry.  It began with the David Gerard's assertion that 'credentialism' 
leads to crank-magnetism, and a link to an article he wrote (with some other 
RationalWiki editors) comparing Wikipedia with Citizendium. You think this 
is not relevant?  John Vandenberg also questioned whether a serious study 
comparing the quality of articles between the two projects would not find 
more problems with Wikipedia (I think he is right).

Peter 


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Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontent issues.

[Peter Damian]

From: "John Vandenberg" 

>Pseudo-science, pseudo-humanities, etc are no stranger to Wikipedia,
>and our processes have not always been victorious over it.  Simply
>put, the rubbish on Wikipedia outweights the rubbish on CZ, and I
>suspect that an academically sound study would indicate that,
>proportionally speaking, Wikipedia pollutes the interweb more than CZ.

I looked at the two following two pages

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Alice_Bailey
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Bailey

The first of which (the CZ version) is mentioned in the RationalWiki page as 
an abomination.  The CZ version is better.  It is still too long for such a 
silly subject, but minute in comparison to the Wikipedia page, which is 
endless.  So yes, a serious study comparing the "crank quotient" between the 
two encyclopedias would be interesting. I suspect WP would win (for 
crankiness, I mean) hands down.  I attempted to document some of it here

http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:The_Wikipedia_Point_of_View/Cranks

but gave up, there is just too much.  There are whole categories of it 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Theosophical_philosophical_concepts . 
And don't get me onto the subject of the gurus who are using the project to 
self-advertise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Wilber . That gets me very 
close to what got me banned in the first place.  (End of rant, sorry).

Peter


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Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontent issues.

[Michael Snow]

Peter Damian wrote:
> Hoping I am not straying too far off-topic.
You are. Are the Citizendium forum and mailing lists so completely dead 
that issues with its articles cannot be discussed there?

--Michael Snow

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Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontent issues.

[Peter Damian]

Hoping I am not straying too far off-topic.  I looked at the article on 
Young Earth Creationism in CZ 
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Young_earth_creationism . It comes in from 
some heavy criticism in the RationalWiki article 
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Citizendium for being "heavily (and "expertly") 
edited by Conservapedia sysop RJJensen".

But when I look at the article it is not so bad.  It is actually quite 
refreshing.  It is mercifully short, and tells me the basic facts I need to 
know about YEC, i.e. what it is, who has defended it and why, and a bit of 
history. I expect the same article in WP would come with a pack of 
disclaimers like the health warning on a fag packet, skull and crossbones 
and all, thousands of citations, statements that practically all scientists 
say it is complete rubbish, plus a few sentences later on by a rogue YEC 
that was not spotted by the police, together with other conflicting 
statements so it all reads like a confusing usenet thread.  As I say, the CZ 
article quietly says what it needs to, and does not attempt advocacy. Indeed 
it says

"The Biblical story was not a contentious issue until the 19th century, when 
theologians started reinterpreting the Bible as a historical document 
(rather than divine revelation), and geologists such as James Hutton and 
Charles Lyell developed evidence, based on their analysis of geological 
processes and formations, the earth was not a few thousand years old but, in 
fact, several millions of years old. The appearance of Charles Darwin's On 
the Origin of Species in 1859 and the associated Theory of Evolution, 
provided evidence that life was much older than 6,000 years. Most Protestant 
theologians by 1900, including those opposed to the theory of evolution, 
rejected the 4004 BC model and argued the earth was very old. Many 
evangelical theologians adopted a figurative interpretation of the first two 
chapters of Genesis."

Quite right.  I shall look at the Scientology article next.

Peter





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Re: [Foundation-l] Why do you contribute to Wikipedia?

[Bod Notbod]

On Sat, Aug 28, 2010 at 3:06 PM, Lennart Guldbrandsson
 wrote:

> Right now we in the Bookshelf Project are preparing a number of booklets and
> brochures and you are welcome to participate in the work. We look forward to
> any comments you may have to any of our deliverables:

> http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bookshelf_Project#Deliverables

[Also cross-posting from Foundation to English Wikipedia list]

I'll just add my voice to this.

At the moment participation on this project is low. The materials that
are developed in Bookshelf will likely be the first time students and
professionals see something from us in print form.

Now, there is a wonderful person taking a lead role in this project. I
am certainly not going to question their wonderfulness. Their
wonderfulness is not in doubt, as evidenced by their patient treatment
of some of my more snotty moments.

However, bless them, I draw the conclusion that their first language
is not English. I hope I need hardly press the point that this
presents something of a problem when generating readable, professional
literature for an English audience (albeit that the intention is to
translate the materials later).

I will try to mitigate issues arising from this. But there's more
material than I can handle. And, in any case, some of the literature
is aimed at audiences I know little about (such as marketing
professionals).

So please do come and investigate the Bookshelf project.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontentissues.

[Peter Damian]

From: "David Gerard" 
>> Actually David wrote the page. I thought it was interesting ...

> No, that section was substantially written by Trent Toulouse.

I did get the calculator out (sorry).  There are 608 edits to the article. 
252 were by you. I don't know what section you are referring to. I said 
'page'. I concede you didn't write all the page, though.

Peter 


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Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontentissues.

[Peter Damian]

- Original Message - 
From: "David Gerard" 
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" 
Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2010 8:23 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals 
withcontentissues.


> On 31 August 2010 20:16, Peter Damian  wrote:
>
>> Actually David wrote the page. I thought it was interesting ...
>
>
> No, that section was substantially written by Trent Toulouse.

A large number of edits to that article were by you.  If not the majority of 
edits, but I am not going to get out a calculator.

And this chunk of edits, about about expertise, seems to be by you.  Is that 
correct?
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Citizendium&diff=564956&oldid=564925



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Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontent issues.

[David Gerard]

On 31 August 2010 20:16, Peter Damian  wrote:

> Actually David wrote the page.  I thought it was interesting ...


No, that section was substantially written by Trent Toulouse.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontent issues.

[Peter Damian]

- Original Message - 
From: "John Vandenberg" 
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" 
Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2010 12:21 AM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontent 
issues.


>Irony.  David Gerard disparaging CZ using a rationalwiki page as evidence.

Actually David wrote the page.  I thought it was interesting ...

>Pseudo-science, pseudo-humanities, etc are no stranger to Wikipedia,
>and our processes have not always been victorious over it.  Simply
>put, the rubbish on Wikipedia outweights the rubbish on CZ, and I
>suspect that an academically sound study would indicate that,
>proportionally speaking, Wikipedia pollutes the interweb more than CZ.
>Compare the rationalwiki page for CZ and WP.  I wonder how large their
>WP page would be if a similar level of critical analysis was applied.

... but as you say, byte for byte, there may be a similar level of 
'pollution'.  I wonder if it was 'credentialism' that was the problem, or 
just the lack of editors.  I joined CZ when it was formed, with one other 
philosophy editor http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/User:Peter_J._King who had 
defected from Wikipedia.  He was a good philosopher but had some kind of 
stupid row with Larry and left. I found it difficult to edit in a vacuum so 
I left also.  And that was the end of "credentialled" philosophy on CZ. 
Larry is not a bad philosopher himself and has credentials but he was in a 
management role. He has this naive faith that academic philosophers would 
come flocking to CZ and fill the gap but they didn't. So in the end he 
lowered the entry barrier and the rest is history.

In summary, the evidence as far as my discipline is concerned is that Sanger 
wrongly expected the project to attract credentialled academics. It didn't. 
He allowed a number of uncredentialled or 'less credentialled' editors in, 
and the results are much as David Gerard describes them.

Peter 


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[Foundation-l] The Signpost – Volume 6 Issue 3 5 – 30 August 2010

[Wikipedia Signpost]

News and notes: Most linked websites on Wikipedia, New York
Wiki-Conference, and more
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-08-30/News_and_notes

In the news: Agatha Christie spoiled, Wales on Wikileaks, University
students improve Wikipedia, and more
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-08-30/In_the_news

WikiProject report: Studying WikiProject Universities
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-08-30/WikiProject_report

Features and admins: Featured article milestone: 3,000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-08-30/Features_and_admins

Arbitration report: What does the Race and intelligence case tell us?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-08-30/Arbitration_report

Technology report: Reusability of MediaWiki code, Google Summer of
Code: Interwiki transclusion, and more
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-08-30/Technology_report


Single page view
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signpost/Single

PDF version
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-08-30


http://identi.ca/wikisignpost  / https://twitter.com/wikisignpost

-- 
Wikipedia Signpost Staff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost

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Re: [Foundation-l] Office hours with Sue Gardner

[Philippe Beaudette]

Just a reminder this is in about 11 hours :)

Philippe

On Aug 30, 2010, at 10:08 AM, Philippe Beaudette wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Sue Gardner, the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation,  
> will be having office hours this Tuesday (Aug 31)  at 23:00 UTC  
> (16:00 PT, 19:00 ET) on IRC in #wikimedia-office.
>
> If you do not have an IRC client, there are two ways you can come chat
> using a web browser:  First is using the Wikizine chat gateway at
> .  Type a
> nickname, select irc.freenode.net from the top menu and
> #wikimedia-office from the following menu, then login to join.
>
> Also, you can access Freenode by going to http:// 
> webchat.freenode.net/,
> typing in the nickname of your choice and choosing wikimedia-office as
> the channel.   You may be prompted to click through a security  
> warning,
> which you can click to accept.
>
> Please feel free to forward (and translate!) this email to any other
> relevant email lists you happen to be on.
>
> 
> Philippe Beaudette
> Head of Reader Relations
> Wikimedia Foundation
>
> phili...@wikimedia.org
>
> Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in
> the sum of all knowledge.  Help us make it a reality!
>
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
>>

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