Re: [WikiEN-l] We've been overtaken.

[Apoc 2400]

From my limited checking, most of the text and images on Hudong seems
to be copied from other websites: news sites, government sites, the
official site of the subject, etc.

They have managed to make an interesting user interface though, a
working WYSIWYG wiki.

2009/4/21 Ian Woollard :
> Yeah:
>
> "total of 3,050,203 entries, 3,270,000,000 words."
>
> If the translation service I just used is giving me an accurate feel,
> it seems a bit more facile than the wikipedia right now, and even less
> well referenced and less accurate. But it's got more articles, and
> it's still pretty new.
>
> The Alexa traffic rank is a 'healthy' 281,588 though ;-) but I don't
> know how accurate Alexa would be for a chinese site though, it's
> possible Alexa isn't used much in China which would skew the
> statistics.
>
> On 20/04/2009, geni  wrote:
>> Hudong.com is now bigger than us:
>>
>> http://www.jlmpacificepoch.com/newsstories?id=139049_0_5_0_M
>>
>> In fact they may have broken 3 million but I can't read
>>
>> 全球最大中文百科由全球1,016,360位网民共同编写而成。共计3,050,203词条，32.7亿文字
>>
>> and I'm not totally certain their definition of article is the same as
>> ours. Still I think we need to get a clearer idea of what is going on
>> at Hudong.
>>
>> --
>> geni
>>
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>
> --
> -Ian Woollard
>
> We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. Life in a perfectly
> imperfect world would be *much* better. Life in an imperfectly perfect
> world would be pretty ghastly though.
>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Lies, damned lies, and statistics

[Seth Finkelstein]

> geni
>> Seth Finkelstein wrote:
>>  It's also pretty common for those two type to have conflicts,
>> and that usually ends with the business/marketing type working-over
>> the academic/creative type. Wikipedia is NOT an original story there :-(.
>
> Of course the problem with that description was that Larry was
> involved in conflicts with other wikipedians.

And Jimbo has been involved in conflicts too (note I'm not
talking about V-wag stuff, but higher-level matters). Don't think the
present is somehow inevitable. If Sanger had stayed on, those early
conflicts would be minimized or forgotten.

>>Depends on if Google does something to boost that sort of site.
>>(I think the *real*, crucial, irreplaceable, founder of Wikipedia, is Google)
>
> No. Looking at yahoo and MSN it's pretty clear that anything close to
> a normal search algorithm will tend to favor wikipedia for certain
> types of searches.

Yahoo and Microsoft have copied Google's weighting and factors
somewhat, in what seems to be a deliberate strategy that people have
been trained by Google to "expect" that sort of result, and it would
be too risky to deviate radically. But this does not prove any
"normal" search algorithm will do that. Many sites - Open Directory,
technorati, blog aggregators - have found themselves ranked highly for
a time ... and then not.

One reason I think projects such as _Citizendium_ are
important is that they provide at least some practical
counter-argument to the monopolistic tendencies of Wikipedia-hype.
Which comes back to the original question about the success of
_Citizendium_, and that being bound up in some very subtle decisions
about Google's algorithm.

>>  Speaking here just as a very interested observer, apart from
>> matters of personal injustice or formal relevance, there's many issues
>> at the bottom of this about Wikipedia itself. ...
>
> Except several years behind the times. The community has dealt with
> the issue and from what I've seen Jimbo has been back peddling of late.

Well, let's see if this issue has indeed been "dealt with".
It's only been a few days from the most recent skirmish.

-- 
Seth Finkelstein  Consulting Programmer
Web site - http://sethf.com/
Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Lies, damned lies, and statistics

[Anthony]

On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 8:50 AM, Daniel R. Tobias  wrote:

> Netscape (presumably the "for-profit company" you're talking about
> here) spun off the Mozilla Foundation as a nonprofit entity way back
> when they first open-sourced what was originally the partly-completed
> Netscape 5 version of their browser.


Netscape formed the "Mozilla Organization", which was an unincorporated
entity (if you want to call it an entity at all, it was more an open source
project than an entity) much like Nupedia/Wikipedia when it was before the
WMF was formed.  The Mozilla Foundation was incorporated much later, after
Firefox was already started.

I just recently read a great story about the birth of Firefox (by Ben
Goodger, one of the lead developers), which unfortunately seems to be the
only insider perspective in existence:
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/009698.html

Good reading if you are interested in the history of the Mozilla project (it
only covers a narrow portion of the topic, but it does so well).
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Lies, damned lies, and statistics

[Anthony]

On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 10:06 AM, Anthony  wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 8:50 AM, Daniel R. Tobias  wrote:
>
>> Netscape (presumably the "for-profit company" you're talking about
>> here) spun off the Mozilla Foundation as a nonprofit entity way back
>> when they first open-sourced what was originally the partly-completed
>> Netscape 5 version of their browser.
>
>
> Netscape formed the "Mozilla Organization", which was an unincorporated
> entity (if you want to call it an entity at all, it was more an open source
> project than an entity) much like Nupedia/Wikipedia when it was before the
> WMF was formed.  The Mozilla Foundation was incorporated much later, after
> Firefox was already started.
>

By the way, Blake Ross was an intern at AOL/Netscape, and David Hyatt was an
employee at AOL/Netscape, when Firefox was born.  They didn't work for the
Mozilla Foundation, which didn't yet exist, and they didn't work for the
Mozilla Organization, which probably didn't even have a bank account.
Moreover, I bet they had a boss, and I bet they worked under the direction
of that boss.  Should we call that boss the "sole founder" of Firefox?
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Lies, damned lies, and statistics

[Anthony]

On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 9:18 AM, Charles Matthews <
charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com> wrote:

> Seth Finkelstein wrote:
> >> 2. Will Citizendium become a top 1000 website within the next five
> years?
> >>
> >
> >   Depends on if Google does something to boost that sort of site.
> > (I think the *real*, crucial, irreplaceable, founder of Wikipedia, is
> Google)
> >
> I think you left out "inadvertent".  And in any case, let's look at the
> proposition.  Google could turn off Wikipedia's high hits tomorrow if
> they wanted to.  So far they haven't wanted to.  They could privilege CZ
> pages tomorrow, also, if they wanted to.  They might actually lose money
> on the first? They would then gain money on the second?  (Really?)
>
> Assuming the reality is that WP's high page ranking is because that is
> not an artefact but a situation of compatibility of Wikipedia's content
> model and Google's business model, you're not really expressing it the
> best way.  It is more like symbiosis.


I think you were better off characterizing it as "inadvertent", though
"inadvertent" only on the part of Google.  Wales is no stranger to SEO, many
of the early Wikipedians engaged in intentional google-bombing during the
early years, and the strong suggestion at Wikipedia:Copyrights to provide a
link back was quite intentionally meant to boost pagerank (and rank in other
search engines).  Furthermore in my opinion, Google far overvalues internal
links (and did so even more during the exponential growth phase of
Wikipedia), which is another factor which caused, and, to a much lesser
extent continues to cause, Wikipedia to be so highly ranked.  I think Google
would be a better company, and make more money, if they could fix these
problems, but 1) they're difficult problems to fix without introducing other
problems; and 2) it's unlikely to significantly effect Wikipedia anyway -
the cat's already out of the bag there.
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Lies, damned lies, and statistics

[David Gerard]

2009/4/19 Anthony :

> I think you were better off characterizing it as "inadvertent", though
> "inadvertent" only on the part of Google.  Wales is no stranger to SEO, many
> of the early Wikipedians engaged in intentional google-bombing during the
> early years, and the strong suggestion at Wikipedia:Copyrights to provide a
> link back was quite intentionally meant to boost pagerank (and rank in other
> search engines).  Furthermore in my opinion, Google far overvalues internal
> links (and did so even more during the exponential growth phase of
> Wikipedia), which is another factor which caused, and, to a much lesser
> extent continues to cause, Wikipedia to be so highly ranked.  I think Google
> would be a better company, and make more money, if they could fix these
> problems, but 1) they're difficult problems to fix without introducing other
> problems; and 2) it's unlikely to significantly effect Wikipedia anyway -
> the cat's already out of the bag there.


Whuh? Wikipedia's Google ranking was ridiculously bad through
2004-2005. A search on a piece of text from Wikipedia would typically
list three pages of mirror sites before it listed Wikipedia itself.
It's dubious that Jimbo really caused such fantastic SEO, or that he
could effectively apply it so late.

I know some Wikipedians were asking Google "wtf? Could you at least
not rank us three pages behind our own mirrors?"

But the thing is: huge popularity for the wikipedia.org website isn't
necessarily a win for Wikipedia and writing an encyclopedia. Mostly
it's been an expensive pain in the arse.


- d.

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[WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of living people

[David Gerard]

-- Forwarded message --
From: Michael Snow 
Date: 2009/4/21
Subject: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of living people
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List 


As I mentioned in my previous message, the Board of Trustees prepared a
statement at its meeting related to biographies of living people. It
touches on the major considerations in this issue, but also how this
relates to our fundamental objectives. The statement was unanimously
approved by the board. The text of the statement follows:

The Wikimedia Foundation takes this opportunity to reiterate some core
principles related to our shared vision, mission, and values. One of
these values which is common to all our projects is a commitment to
maintaining a neutral point of view.

In our efforts to offer a source of knowledge that is valuable and
useful to all, we have a responsibility to uphold these values by also
providing accurate information. Participants in Wikimedia projects have
created resources of vast size and scope. As we have emphasized for
several years, in addition to the quantity of knowledge that is
available, its quality is also an essential matter. The generally high
quality of information in Wikimedia projects has been confirmed by a
number of studies, but it is important that we always strive to improve.
As with any endeavor that provides educational and informational
material, errors need to be avoided, especially when they have the
potential to cause harm. One area where this applies is when writing
about living people.

Increasingly, Wikimedia articles are among the top search engine results
for just about any query. That means that when a potential employer, a
colleague, friend, neighbor or acquaintance looks for information about
a person, they may find it at the Wikimedia sites. As the popularity of
the Wikimedia projects grows, so does the editing community's
responsibility to ensure articles about living people are
neutrally-written, accurate and well-sourced.

As our popularity has grown, some issues have become more prominent:

* Many people create articles that are overly promotional in tone: about
themselves, people they admire, or those they are paid to represent.
These are not neutral, and have no place in our projects. Generally, the
Wikimedia community protects the projects well against this common
problem by deleting or improving hagiographies.
* People sometimes vandalize articles about living people. The Wikimedia
community has developed tools and techniques for counteracting
vandalism: in general they seem to work reasonably well.
* Some articles about living people contain small errors, are
poorly-written or poorly-sourced. Articles about people who are only
marginally well-known are often neglected, and tend to improve much more
slowly over time, if at all.
* People sometimes make edits designed to smear others. This is
difficult to identify and counteract, particularly if the malicious
editor is persistent.

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees urges the global Wikimedia
community to uphold and strengthen our commitment to high-quality,
accurate information, by:

1) Ensuring that projects in all languages that describe living people
have policies in place calling for special attention to the principles
of neutrality and verifiability in those articles;

2) Taking human dignity and respect for personal privacy into account
when adding or removing information, especially in articles of ephemeral
or marginal interest;

3) Investigating new technical mechanisms to assess edits, particularly
when they affect living people, and to better enable readers to report
problems;

4) Treating any person who has a complaint about how they are described
in our projects with patience, kindness, and respect, and encouraging
others to do the same.

--Michael Snow


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Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of living people

[doc]

David Gerard wrote:
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Michael Snow 
> The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees urges the global Wikimedia
> community to uphold and strengthen our commitment to high-quality,
> accurate information, by:
> 
> 1) Ensuring that projects in all languages that describe living people
> have policies in place calling for special attention to the principles
> of neutrality and verifiability in those articles;
> 
> 2) Taking human dignity and respect for personal privacy into account
> when adding or removing information, especially in articles of ephemeral
> or marginal interest;
> 
> 3) Investigating new technical mechanisms to assess edits, particularly
> when they affect living people, and to better enable readers to report
> problems;
> 
> 4) Treating any person who has a complaint about how they are described
> in our projects with patience, kindness, and respect, and encouraging
> others to do the same.
> 
> --Michael Snow
> 


And?

Where's the beef?

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of living people

[David Gerard]

2009/4/21 doc :

> And?
> Where's the beef?


I was thinking more "where's the catch?" I still can't see one. A
lollipop for each catch anyone can spot!

Think of a Wikimedia where [[:en:WP:BLP]] and its associated
infrastructure is doing the best at tackling the problem. Does the
Board note make more sense then?


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] We've been overtaken.

[Ian Woollard]

On 21/04/2009, Scientia Potentia est  wrote:
> I'm not too concerned. Their notability standards seem to be very loose, and
> they have few of the trappings that we emphasize: BLP, neutrality, reliable
> sourcing, brilliant prose, etc.

That's exactly the kind of thing that the Encyclopedia Britannica said
about the Wikipedia!

-- 
-Ian Woollard

We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. Life in a perfectly
imperfect world would be *much* better. Life in an imperfectly perfect
world would be pretty ghastly though.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] We've been overtaken.

[Apoc 2400]

It seems the moderator ate the text of my message.

>From my limited checking, most of the text and images on Hudong seems
to be copied from other websites: news sites, government sites, the
official site of the subject, etc.

They have managed to make an interesting user interface though, a
working WYSIWYG wiki.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] We've been overtaken.

[Carcharoth]

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 1:46 PM, Apoc 2400  wrote:
> It seems the moderator ate the text of my message.

It got through to me first time.

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Lies, damned lies, and statistics

[Charles Matthews]

Seth Finkelstein wrote:
> One reason I think projects such as _Citizendium_ are
> important is that they provide at least some practical
> counter-argument to the monopolistic tendencies of Wikipedia-hype.
> Which comes back to the original question about the success of
> _Citizendium_, and that being bound up in some very subtle decisions
> about Google's algorithm.
>
>   
Certainly CZ is potentially important: if it manages a "proof of 
concept" success for a somewhat different model of encyclopedia-wiki 
writing, then the whole debate moves on a notch.  And you could say the 
same thing about Google knols: these things are field-tests of ideas 
that differ in some significant ways from the WP model.  CZ ducked the 
issue of forking WP, which remains a major possibility that has not been 
tried. 

I'm not really following you, though, in that "counter-argument" I see 
(plenty enough of it in the archives of this list), and "practical" as 
in field-test I also see as just stated.  If you think of Sanger as 
producing a "practical counter-argument" over at Citizendium, then I 
guess you buy his whole side of the story.  In our (WP) terms we would 
wonder: is there not a CZ community that has a mind of its own?  Where 
are the Citizens in this discussion?  Do they see the Wales-Sanger 
foundation spat as something fundamental (as you seem to)? Or would they 
see it as something quite aside from the main reason CZ is there? In 
this light, if I may quote from Wikipedia article [[founder syndrome]]: 
"Without an effective decentralized decision making process there will 
be growing conflict between the newcomers, who want a say in how the 
organization develops and the founder who continues to dominate the 
decision making process." Interesting to ponder where this hits home harder.

I wouldn't know about the more subtle aspects of PageRank, and I suppose 
Google doesn't want me to. It might be coarse, of course.  We learned at 
Wikipedia to write as hypertext from early on (mav and summary style 
comes to mind).  We had many short articles instead of one big one one.  
Wikipedia is shrubland rather than a grove of sequoias.  I imagine this 
all matters.

Charles




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Re: [WikiEN-l] We've been overtaken.

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/4/21 Carcharoth :
> On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 1:46 PM, Apoc 2400  wrote:
>> It seems the moderator ate the text of my message.
>
> It got through to me first time.

Ditto.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] We've been overtaken.

[Nathan]

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 7:51 AM, Ian Woollard wrote:

> On 21/04/2009, Scientia Potentia est  wrote:
> > I'm not too concerned. Their notability standards seem to be very loose,
> and
> > they have few of the trappings that we emphasize: BLP, neutrality,
> reliable
> > sourcing, brilliant prose, etc.
>
> That's exactly the kind of thing that the Encyclopedia Britannica said
> about the Wikipedia!
>
> --
> -Ian Woollard
>

Exactly what I thought. Better integration and support for wikiprojects
(have to say, I sort of prefer "task groups" as a name...), better
recognition on the wiki of top contributors to various articles -- those are
things we could really learn from. And if we could approach the proprietor,
and encourage a more compatible licensing scheme, our Chinese language
projects could really benefit (and their project could benefit from
Wikimedia content).

Did this thing just appear out of nowhere? Suddenly a collaborative online
reference site larger than the English Wikipedia?

Nathan
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Re: [WikiEN-l] We've been overtaken.

[Sherool]

On Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:13:46 +0200, Nathan  wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 7:51 AM, Ian Woollard  
> wrote:
>
>> On 21/04/2009, Scientia Potentia est  wrote:
>> > I'm not too concerned. Their notability standards seem to be very  
>> loose,
>> and
>> > they have few of the trappings that we emphasize: BLP, neutrality,
>> reliable
>> > sourcing, brilliant prose, etc.
>>
>> That's exactly the kind of thing that the Encyclopedia Britannica said
>> about the Wikipedia!
>>
>> --
>> -Ian Woollard
>>
>
> Exactly what I thought. Better integration and support for wikiprojects
> (have to say, I sort of prefer "task groups" as a name...), better
> recognition on the wiki of top contributors to various articles -- those  
> are
> things we could really learn from. And if we could approach the  
> proprietor,
> and encourage a more compatible licensing scheme, our Chinese language
> projects could really benefit (and their project could benefit from
> Wikimedia content).
>
> Did this thing just appear out of nowhere? Suddenly a collaborative  
> online
> reference site larger than the English Wikipedia?

Well they have been around for 2-3 years. I'm a bit fuzzy on the details I  
have to admit. I'm under the impression that it came about as a  
"replacement" for the Chinese Wikipedia since the Chinese government kept  
blocking access to it because it didn't conform to the party line when it  
came to scertain aspects of history and political borders (Taiwan etc.).

Although looking at our articles I might be thinking of [[Baidu Baike]],  
wich "only" have about 1,5 million articles aparently despite operating  
for about a year longer than [[Hudong]].



-- 
[[:en:User:Sherool]]

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Re: [WikiEN-l] We've been overtaken.

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/4/21 Nathan :
> Exactly what I thought. Better integration and support for wikiprojects
> (have to say, I sort of prefer "task groups" as a name...), better
> recognition on the wiki of top contributors to various articles -- those are
> things we could really learn from. And if we could approach the proprietor,
> and encourage a more compatible licensing scheme, our Chinese language
> projects could really benefit (and their project could benefit from
> Wikimedia content).
>
> Did this thing just appear out of nowhere? Suddenly a collaborative online
> reference site larger than the English Wikipedia?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudong

It was founded in 2005, apparently. The "Censorship and controversy"
section of that article makes me question whether we want to get too
involved with it. Their values seem to be significantly different to
ours.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] We've been overtaken.

[geni]

2009/4/21 Nathan :
> Exactly what I thought. Better integration and support for wikiprojects
> (have to say, I sort of prefer "task groups" as a name...), better
> recognition on the wiki of top contributors to various articles -- those are
> things we could really learn from.

Historically wikiprojects getting hold of too much power or thinking
they have has tended to cause problems.

> And if we could approach the proprietor,
> and encourage a more compatible licensing scheme, our Chinese language
> projects could really benefit (and their project could benefit from
> Wikimedia content).

I suspect they already take it.


> Did this thing just appear out of nowhere? Suddenly a collaborative online
> reference site larger than the English Wikipedia?

Been around for a while. I was expecting it to overtake en this year
but not this soon. Would be interesting to know how they beat out
Baidu Baike.


-- 
geni

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Re: [WikiEN-l] We've been overtaken.

[geni]

2009/4/21 Scientia Potentia est :
> I'm not too concerned. Their notability standards seem to be very loose, and 
> they have >few of the trappings that we emphasize: BLP, neutrality, reliable 
> sourcing, brilliant prose, >etc. The software is also much more focused on 
> social networking. Furthermore, Hudong >is not free.
>

Apart from the neutrality our readers and most of our writers tend not
to care about that. The integration with a degree of social networking
tools is also interesting They have a forum linked off their main page
among other things.

-- 
geni

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Re: [WikiEN-l] We've been overtaken.

[Ian Woollard]

So far as I can tell from percentage breakdowns by country in Alexa,
the Chinese go to hudong and zh.wikipedia.org equally often- virtually
the same number of page hits. However, hudong ranks 112 and
wikipedia.org ranks 66 in China, which tells you that a lot of people
are reading the other languages more than Chinese.

On 21/04/2009, geni  wrote:
> 2009/4/21 Scientia Potentia est :
>> I'm not too concerned. Their notability standards seem to be very loose,
>> and they have >few of the trappings that we emphasize: BLP, neutrality,
>> reliable sourcing, brilliant prose, >etc. The software is also much more
>> focused on social networking. Furthermore, Hudong >is not free.
>>
>
> Apart from the neutrality our readers and most of our writers tend not
> to care about that. The integration with a degree of social networking
> tools is also interesting They have a forum linked off their main page
> among other things.
>
> --
> geni
>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of living people

[Carcharoth]

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 9:48 AM, David Gerard  wrote:

> Subject: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of living people



Is this being announced/discussed anywhere on en-Wikipedia?

*Is* there anywhere on en-Wikipedia to discuss WMF statements?

I think it just missed this week's Signpost (but that's more news than
discussion).

Someone suggested Village Pump, but I'm thinking more of when the
Non-Free Content resolution was passed. That resolution prompted
revamping and discussion of the corresponding pages on en-Wikipedia (I
think). This doesn't seem to be a resolution (maybe it should have
been), though it was passed unanimously, but it should at least be
announced and discussed at the talk page of the policy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Biographies_of_living_persons

Anyone want to post something there? Or is it best to wait until there
is a page at the WMF wiki to link to?

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of living people

[Ken Arromdee]

On Tue, 21 Apr 2009, David Gerard wrote:
> I was thinking more "where's the catch?" I still can't see one. A
> lollipop for each catch anyone can spot!

Some catches:

1) Glosses over how you reconcile the conflict of interest policy and allowing
people to fix their own biographies.

2) It gives a cursory, vague, reference to human dignity, but in general it
emphasises accuracy and verifiability too much.  Some BLP problems aren't
really about that, and painting them as such is trying to fit a square peg
into a round hole.  Privacy problems aren't about either one.  Undue weight
problems *could* be called accuracy, but that gives the wrong impression.
Someone who shares a name with a child molester and finds Wikipedia the first
Google hit for his name can't really complain about accuracy or verifiability.
And this doesn't even touch the issue of what to do with information is
verifiable but false.

3) And then there's this:
# Treating any person who has a complaint about how they are described
# in our projects with patience, kindness, and respect, and encouraging
# others to do the same.
The problem here, as with so many things in Wikipedia, is that Wikipedia
is set up so that in a conflict where some of us want to use a rule and some
want to use human judgment, the rule wins.  If someone who complains
ends up violating a rule, it doesn't matter how many times we say he
needs to be listened to with patience, kindness, and support; he'll probably
get treated as a rule violator.


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Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of living people

[James Farrar]

2009/4/21 doc :
> David Gerard wrote:
>> -- Forwarded message --
>> From: Michael Snow 
>> The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees urges the global Wikimedia
>> community to uphold and strengthen our commitment to high-quality,
>> accurate information, by:
>>
>> 1) Ensuring that projects in all languages that describe living people
>> have policies in place calling for special attention to the principles
>> of neutrality and verifiability in those articles;
>>
>> 2) Taking human dignity and respect for personal privacy into account
>> when adding or removing information, especially in articles of ephemeral
>> or marginal interest;
>>
>> 3) Investigating new technical mechanisms to assess edits, particularly
>> when they affect living people, and to better enable readers to report
>> problems;
>>
>> 4) Treating any person who has a complaint about how they are described
>> in our projects with patience, kindness, and respect, and encouraging
>> others to do the same.
>>
>> --Michael Snow
>>
>
>
> And?
>
> Where's the beef?

Are you disappointed that the Foundation has rejected the concept of
applying different standards to BLPs?

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Re: [WikiEN-l] We've been overtaken.

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/4/21 Ian Woollard :
> So far as I can tell from percentage breakdowns by country in Alexa,
> the Chinese go to hudong and zh.wikipedia.org equally often- virtually
> the same number of page hits. However, hudong ranks 112 and
> wikipedia.org ranks 66 in China, which tells you that a lot of people
> are reading the other languages more than Chinese.

I seriously doubt that Alexa rankings at all meaningful for Chinese
page views. I'm not sure if it is still the case, but I seem to recall
that at some point the Alexa toolbar was only available in English,
that would explain why wikipedia.org does better - people that don't
speak good English are more likely to use the Chinese sites and less
likely to use the Alexa toolbar.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] We've been overtaken.

[David Gerard]

2009/4/21 Thomas Dalton :
> 2009/4/21 Ian Woollard :

>> So far as I can tell from percentage breakdowns by country in Alexa,
>> the Chinese go to hudong and zh.wikipedia.org equally often- virtually
>> the same number of page hits. However, hudong ranks 112 and
>> wikipedia.org ranks 66 in China, which tells you that a lot of people
>> are reading the other languages more than Chinese.

> I seriously doubt that Alexa rankings at all meaningful for Chinese
> page views. I'm not sure if it is still the case, but I seem to recall
> that at some point the Alexa toolbar was only available in English,
> that would explain why wikipedia.org does better - people that don't
> speak good English are more likely to use the Chinese sites and less
> likely to use the Alexa toolbar.


Alexa is a rough guide only - their userbase (I heard it was ~70,000
somewhere, but don't recall where - I see no number in the Wikipedia
article) is large enough to provide a statistical sample, but has all
sorts of obvious systemic biases in the sampling (IE-only,
English-only, etc).

So we're #7 on Alexa, which indicates we're popular, but not a whole lot more!

(We're #4 on comScore because comScore aggregates different sites from
the same company, but Alexa does it strictly by domain name, e.g.
listing Google and YouTube separately.)


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of l...

[WJhonson]

In a message dated 4/21/2009 11:37:12 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
arrom...@rahul.net writes:


> And this doesn't even touch the issue of what to do with information is
> verifiable but false.>>
> ---
> 
> 

Biographical details aren't "True" or "False".
They are reported, repeated, cited, confirmed, evidenced, and so on.

Biography is no longer under the Dewey Decimal system.  The idea that a 
biography, or even an auto-biography (or especially) is reporting "Truth" is an 
old fiction itself.

If the subject of a Wiki-article feels that something is "false" the best 
way to combat that is to publish themselves, on their own official website, 
the "truth" of the matter and then link it in, or cite it.

We do not give BLP's control over what we report.  We give them equal 
access.  If that person cannot be bothered to do that simple simple thing than 
apparently they don't really care enough about the matter.

Will Johnson




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Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of living people

[George Herbert]

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 11:36 AM, Ken Arromdee  wrote:

> On Tue, 21 Apr 2009, David Gerard wrote:
> > I was thinking more "where's the catch?" I still can't see one. A
> > lollipop for each catch anyone can spot!
>
> Some catches:
>
> 1) Glosses over how you reconcile the conflict of interest policy and
> allowing
> people to fix their own biographies.
>
> 2) It gives a cursory, vague, reference to human dignity, but in general it
> emphasises accuracy and verifiability too much.  Some BLP problems aren't
> really about that, and painting them as such is trying to fit a square peg
> into a round hole.  Privacy problems aren't about either one.  Undue weight
> problems *could* be called accuracy, but that gives the wrong impression.
> Someone who shares a name with a child molester and finds Wikipedia the
> first
> Google hit for his name can't really complain about accuracy or
> verifiability.
> And this doesn't even touch the issue of what to do with information is
> verifiable but false.
>
> 3) And then there's this:
> # Treating any person who has a complaint about how they are described
> # in our projects with patience, kindness, and respect, and encouraging
> # others to do the same.
> The problem here, as with so many things in Wikipedia, is that Wikipedia
> is set up so that in a conflict where some of us want to use a rule and
> some
> want to use human judgment, the rule wins.  If someone who complains
> ends up violating a rule, it doesn't matter how many times we say he
> needs to be listened to with patience, kindness, and support; he'll
> probably
> get treated as a rule violator.



I'm going to put forwards a theory...

I think that this is the Foundation basically saying in as neutral a way
possible "The underlying idea behind the Enwiki BLP policy is good and
should be a standard throughout WMF projects".

I think this is NOT an attempt to interject "Enwiki BLP sucks and needs to
be enhanced/changed/warped"

I think that the problems we're having with Enwiki BLP emphasize how
problematic it is to determine a right solution and how to enforce it.  The
Foundation can acknowledge that, and ask that other projects begin to
unversally adopt the concept, while accepting that we have a ways to go
before the policy is perfect.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herb...@gmail.com
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of l...

[WJhonson]

In a message dated 4/21/2009 12:42:47 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
george.herb...@gmail.com writes:


> I think that this is the Foundation basically saying in as neutral a way
> possible "The underlying idea behind the Enwiki BLP policy is good and
> should be a standard throughout WMF projects".>>

---

I don't see that.  Sites like Wikinews and that Cities site (I can't 
remember the name) really quite heavily and perhaps exclusively on first-person 
reporting.  There is almost no way to have the sort of BLP policy we have in 
Wikipedia when you have that situation.

Will Johnson




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Re: [WikiEN-l] We've been overtaken.

[Ian Woollard]

Presumably the wikipedia can find out what proportion of its traffic
actually comes from China, and compare that with the Alexa statistics.
If they're close then it gives some evidence that Alexa have enough
toolbars out in the wild in China to give reasonable accuracy.


On 21/04/2009, David Gerard  wrote:
> 2009/4/21 Thomas Dalton :
>> 2009/4/21 Ian Woollard :
>
>>> So far as I can tell from percentage breakdowns by country in Alexa,
>>> the Chinese go to hudong and zh.wikipedia.org equally often- virtually
>>> the same number of page hits. However, hudong ranks 112 and
>>> wikipedia.org ranks 66 in China, which tells you that a lot of people
>>> are reading the other languages more than Chinese.
>
>> I seriously doubt that Alexa rankings at all meaningful for Chinese
>> page views. I'm not sure if it is still the case, but I seem to recall
>> that at some point the Alexa toolbar was only available in English,
>> that would explain why wikipedia.org does better - people that don't
>> speak good English are more likely to use the Chinese sites and less
>> likely to use the Alexa toolbar.
>
>
> Alexa is a rough guide only - their userbase (I heard it was ~70,000
> somewhere, but don't recall where - I see no number in the Wikipedia
> article) is large enough to provide a statistical sample, but has all
> sorts of obvious systemic biases in the sampling (IE-only,
> English-only, etc).
>
> So we're #7 on Alexa, which indicates we're popular, but not a whole lot
> more!
>
> (We're #4 on comScore because comScore aggregates different sites from
> the same company, but Alexa does it strictly by domain name, e.g.
> listing Google and YouTube separately.)
>
>
> - d.
>
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-- 
-Ian Woollard

We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. Life in a perfectly
imperfect world would be *much* better. Life in an imperfectly perfect
world would be pretty ghastly though.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] We've been overtaken.

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/4/21 Ian Woollard :
> Presumably the wikipedia can find out what proportion of its traffic
> actually comes from China, and compare that with the Alexa statistics.
> If they're close then it gives some evidence that Alexa have enough
> toolbars out in the wild in China to give reasonable accuracy.

Yes, that would work. Or, perhaps more easily, we could compare the
page views per subdomain with the percentages given by Alexa. Are
those numbers available anywhere?

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Re: [WikiEN-l] wow

[Durova]

[off list]

While you all were getting drunk on the yacht and smoking those Cohibas I
brought up from Mexico, you must have blacked out on the Latest Evil Scheme.

The government of Kiribati has agreed to sell all claims to Kiritimati
Island for $30 million.  I couldn't talk them down to 25, but Chad and
Uzbekistan went lower than expected on their deals to recognize the
Independent Republic of Wikipedia so we almost come out even.

It's going to be hard to get UN membership while refusing to sign on to
international copyright treaties, but things are looking solid for opening
an independent banking system and developing tourism.  This place has some
of the world's best fishing.

And dudes, our second yacht needs larger berthings and a smaller wet bar.

-Durova

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 10:26 AM, David Gerard  wrote:

> 2009/4/20 Angela Anuszewski :
>
> > OMG, I actually edited the Pokemon article after the weekend. I feel so..
> > .dirty ;-)
>
>
> Don't worry, Windows 7 will fix that! [citation needed]
>
>
> - d.
>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] wow

[Thomas Dalton]

[offlist]

2009/4/21 Durova :
> It's going to be hard to get UN membership while refusing to sign on to
> international copyright treaties, but things are looking solid for opening
> an independent banking system and developing tourism.  This place has some
> of the world's best fishing.

If we don't sign the copyright treaties we can't claim copyright to
all of Wikipedia and sell it for several billion dollars. I thought
that was our exit strategy.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] wow

[George Herbert]

[off list]

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 1:11 PM, Durova  wrote:

> And dudes, our second yacht needs larger berthings and a smaller wet bar.
>

Have I mentioned yet that I'm a Naval Architect?


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Re: [WikiEN-l] We've been overtaken.

[Casey Brown]

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 3:31 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> (We're #4 on comScore because comScore aggregates different sites from
> the same company, but Alexa does it strictly by domain name, e.g.
> listing Google and YouTube separately.)

For those interested in our comScore standings, check out this page:


-- 
Casey Brown
Cbrown1023

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Re: [WikiEN-l] wow

[Michel Vuijlsteke]

2009/4/21 Durova :

[off list]]

> It's going to be hard to get UN membership while refusing to sign on to
> international copyright treaties, but things are looking solid for opening
> an independent banking system and developing tourism.  This place has some
> of the world's best fishing.

No copyright treaties? Huh?

*blink*

Whee! I'm off to make me some Wikipedia Logo t-shirts to sell!! Yay!!

Michel

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Re: [WikiEN-l] wow

[Carcharoth]

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 9:23 PM, George Herbert
 wrote:
> [off list]
>
> On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 1:11 PM, Durova  wrote:
>
>> And dudes, our second yacht needs larger berthings and a smaller wet bar.
>>
>
> Have I mentioned yet that I'm a Naval Architect?

Can you put kennels on the yacht. And an aviary and some water tanks?
We have a rather large menagerie we need to house:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Radiant!/Classification_of_admins

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] wow

[Durova]

Okay, the straw poll went 59% in favor of staying off the treaties, 35% in
favor of joining them, and 6% votes are evil.

Our parliament is going to be hell.

-Durova

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 1:22 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:

> [offlist]
>
> 2009/4/21 Durova :
> > It's going to be hard to get UN membership while refusing to sign on to
> > international copyright treaties, but things are looking solid for
> opening
> > an independent banking system and developing tourism.  This place has
> some
> > of the world's best fishing.
>
> If we don't sign the copyright treaties we can't claim copyright to
> all of Wikipedia and sell it for several billion dollars. I thought
> that was our exit strategy.
>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of l...

[doc]

wjhon...@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 4/21/2009 11:37:12 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
> arrom...@rahul.net writes:
> 
> 
>> And this doesn't even touch the issue of what to do with information is
>> verifiable but false.>>
>> ---
>>
>>
> 
> Biographical details aren't "True" or "False".
> They are reported, repeated, cited, confirmed, evidenced, and so on.
> 
> Biography is no longer under the Dewey Decimal system.  The idea that a 
> biography, or even an auto-biography (or especially) is reporting "Truth" is 
> an 
> old fiction itself.
> 
> If the subject of a Wiki-article feels that something is "false" the best 
> way to combat that is to publish themselves, on their own official website, 
> the "truth" of the matter and then link it in, or cite it.
> 
> We do not give BLP's control over what we report.  We give them equal 
> access.  If that person cannot be bothered to do that simple simple thing 
> than 
> apparently they don't really care enough about the matter.
> 
> Will Johnson

This is the typical silly response that lies behind the BLP problem.

A few things need taken on board:

1) Having a fair and balanced BLP is not simply a matter of sources and 
verification. The most damaging BLPs I've seen, are the ones that select 
sources, spin facts, omit counterbalance to create a picture that looks 
neutral on a quick glance, but is actually a total distortion of truth.

2) Whilst it is very difficult to distinguish between the subject who is 
intent on getting his own hagiography or whitewash on his article, and 
the innocent subject who has been genuinely and unfairly maligned, that 
is NOT the damaged subject's fault. We need to assume all subjects have 
a genuine grievance until we are sure they don't. It is a bit like an 
asylum seeker argument - many/most may be "bogus" but you really can't 
initially treat them as such because some will be the victims of 
horrible torture and your system must not perpetuate that.

3) There ought to be NO onus on a BLP victim to do anything other than 
say "this article is wrong". Once the victim has complained, the onus is 
on Wikipedia to fix it. Does that make our job difficult? Yes. But we 
are the ones who opened a wiki and let someone write about him, not him. 
  It is useful if he works with us, has patience and learns our system - 
but we cannot expect this or demand this. It is a perfectly 
understandable response for a maligned person to blank, change, and 
spout legal threats. That's what I'd do.




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Re: [WikiEN-l] wow

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/4/21 Durova :
> Okay, the straw poll went 59% in favor of staying off the treaties, 35% in
> favor of joining them, and 6% votes are evil.

That's No Consensus. We'd better do nothing.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] wow

[Durova]

No consensus defaults to status quo = not signing.  Or do you want to DRV
it?

(mutters at the decision to establish parliament by wiki)

-Durova

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 1:39 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:

> 2009/4/21 Durova :
> > Okay, the straw poll went 59% in favor of staying off the treaties, 35%
> in
> > favor of joining them, and 6% votes are evil.
>
> That's No Consensus. We'd better do nothing.
>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of l...

[WJhonson]

And as a counter-balance, your approach is flawed.

Any person who says "this article is Wrong", needs to show why it's wrong, 
not just say it.  Even the subject.  There is no such thing as "Right" and 
"Wrong" when dealing with biographies.  That is why hard scientists should 
not try to stick their toes into biography, they just do not comprehend the 
distinction between Non-Fiction and Biography.

Right, Wrong, True, False, White, Black, and so on do not exist.  They 
don't.  No existence.  They aren't there.  Nowhere.  Ok ...

Now on to step B.


Will Johnson





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Re: [WikiEN-l] wow

[FT2]

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 9:28 PM, Carcharoth wrote:

> We have a rather large menagerie we need to house:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Radiant!/Classification_of_admins
>
> Carcharoth
>

And various kinds of bridges needed too. Some bridges are needed between
people and others are needed for Certain Non-Fed Entities to skulk
beneath.
FT2
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of l...

[doc]

wjhon...@aol.com wrote:
> And as a counter-balance, your approach is flawed.
> 
> Any person who says "this article is Wrong", needs to show why it's wrong, 
> not just say it.  Even the subject.  There is no such thing as "Right" and 
> "Wrong" when dealing with biographies.  That is why hard scientists should 
> not try to stick their toes into biography, they just do not comprehend the 
> distinction between Non-Fiction and Biography.
> 
> Right, Wrong, True, False, White, Black, and so on do not exist.  They 
> don't.  No existence.  They aren't there.  Nowhere.  Ok ...
> 
> Now on to step B.
> 
> 
> Will Johnson
> 
> 
>

Not so.

If I say, "you (wikipedia) have an article about me and it is libellous".

Then, given that we know anyone could have written it, and it may well 
say "Joe is a brothel-keeping cocksucker, who murders children", 
Wikipedia has an obligation to check the article and ensure that it is 
defensible.

If, having done that, Wikipedia cannot see any libel. Then it may ask 
the subject "can you specify what your problem is with the article"

Then the onus is on us to double-check that the material he has a 
problem with is fair, sourced and accurate.

Whilst many shades of grey exist, that isn't an excuse for saying that 
some things are not "wrong".



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Re: [WikiEN-l] wow

[Carcharoth]

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 5:36 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> 2009/4/20 Carcharoth :
>
>> Recently, I've wanted the ability to edit the BBC webpages.
>
> Considering they've fired almost all the subs, they could probably do
> with, how you say, "crowdsourcing" their proofreading.

Er, well, they might not want me for that job. I seem to have confused
the Liverpool and Arsenal managers. The BBC article was in fact
correct. Hmm. This egg on my face tastes nice...

Carcharoth

PS. The US Masters example was right, but that too is gone now.
Strange website structure at the BBC.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of l...

[wjhonson]

-Original Message-
From: Anthony 
To: English Wikipedia ; wjhon...@aol.com
Sent: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 6:04 pm
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding  
biographies of l...

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 5:05 PM,   wrote:


Right, Wrong, True, False, White, Black, and so on do not exist.  They

don't.  No existence.  They aren't there.  Nowhere.  Ok ...
Is that why the standard for Wikipedia is verifiability, and not 
truth?>>
-

If I can cite to the New York Post stating that "Britney Spears likes 
to walk her poodles every morning at 8 AM" then I've done my job.  I do 
not have to interview Ms Spears myself to confirm that.  I do not need 
three separate sources to confirm it.  And if she were to show up, or 
some imposter and claim face-to-face that it's wrong and it should say 
"Dobermans" not poodles, not *only* should I do nothing to remove the 
sourced claim, but rather if I were to, that itself would be original 
research.  There is no way I can know if the imposter is truly Britney 
Spears and there is no way I can know if she has poodles or dobermans 
directly.

It is impossible to "take the word" of some random passerby and use 
that to modify content.  Any viewer can *contest* any article without 
sources.  We add a {{fact}} tag.  They can as well spout off20on the 
Talk page.  We however cannot be in the position of second guessing who 
anyone is or isn't.  If they feel strongly about it, they can post a 
rebuttal.  If they are not willing to type two sentences on an official 
site, but ARE willing to type a hundred in-project, than I submit it's 
*highly* unlikely to be the person in question in the first place.

IF they write a blog where they complain about process, that is simply 
more free publicity for us.  There is no such thing as bad publicity.

Will Johnson




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