Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia:Paradoxes
Steve Bennett stevag...@gmail.com wrote in message news:b8ceeef70908010746o42498809g41ad3c973fba9...@mail.gmail.com... moderator Does this thread have anything to do with this list? Does anyone care anymore? /moderator This list is about wikipedia and anything that goes into it or comes out of it. Hopefully, both of those things include sound logic, and if it verjez into Physics, then so be it -- better than having it verj into religion. IOW, it is unfortunate that gmane does not host the other fourty or eighty thousand newsgroups. I wonder if I could get http://news.individual.net (Berlin's Free University) to host gmane. ___ Pollytheism: The belief that God is a parrot. (Polly-Theism) ___ 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] Where does en:wp need most help?
Steve Bennett stevag...@gmail.com wrote in message news:b8ceeef70908020616j742cfe6es9f1d6b7fa04b3...@mail.gmail.com... On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 1:37 AM, David Gerarddger...@gmail.com wrote: Efforts like the Wikipedia Selection for Schools are important to help too (and feed into 0.7 and 1.0). Remember, that's a real actual encyclopedia DVD being used in actual schools and hugely popular with teachers, based on all our hard work over the years. *nod* Still working my way around the Wikipedia 1.0 stuff. There's so much of it, and not that well organised yet. But my point stands - we should really have a way of focusing efforts on the important articles first. Instead of random article we should have a weighted average thing that is more likely to send you to a high priority article. Or something. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:suggestbot ... See if the bot's author put weight ON articles in a selection process. The bot has tasks other than fact checking, which is really the most demanding task, so I think notbot might like some variety. ___ Ever notice the best taglines are always someone elses? ___ 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] If anyone ever says Wikipedia is too deletionist
2009/8/9 Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com: So all the biographies of women could be tagged woman? That would work, but only if the woman tag wasn't applied to other things as well. Maybe you would have to have woman + biography? Even then, it might not be exact. And then you would have adult, boy, girl, child, male, female. Tags and categories are different. Ideally, you would have both, or a clear of idea of what would be primary tags (what we call categories) and what are descriptive tags. This is similar to what de.wp use, I believe: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Tuchman [[Kategorie:Literatur (20. Jahrhundert)]] [[Kategorie:Literatur (Englisch)]] [[Kategorie:Autor]] [[Kategorie:Pulitzer-Preisträger]] [[Kategorie:Journalist]] [[Kategorie:Person im Spanischen Bürgerkrieg]] [[Kategorie:US-Amerikaner]] [[Kategorie:Geboren 1912]] [[Kategorie:Gestorben 1989]] [[Kategorie:Frau]] Note that in English, we'd consider most of these very high-level categories, and indeed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Tuchman [[Category:1912 births]] [[Category:1989 deaths]] [[Category:American Jews]] [[Category:American military writers]] [[Category:Historians of the United States]] [[Category:German-American Jews]] [[Category:Jewish American historians]] [[Category:Morgenthau family|Barbara Tuchman]] [[Category:Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction winners]] [[Category:Radcliffe College alumni]] [[Category:World War I historians]] Almost all of those are *much* more specific categories - you wouldn't get a Historians of the United States or American military writers category in German, and you wouldn't get Authors or Women in English. Though, that said, it's very interesting to note that they each reflect entirely different aspects. In German, being a writer is emphasised. In English, the writing is dealt with more by subject matter (...military writers / ...historians), and the Jewish background is emphasised as much if not more than the nationality. A German reader finds out about the Spanish Civil War; an English reader finds out about Radcliffe. -- - 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] If anyone ever says Wikipedia is too deletionist
2009/8/9 Bod Notbod bodnot...@gmail.com: On Sun, Aug 9, 2009 at 12:47 PM, David Gerarddger...@gmail.com wrote: The problem being discussed in this thread would be solved by the feature (much-desired by Commons) of turning categories into tags - so that e.g. [[Category:Left-handed dead Jewish lesbian presidents of the United States]] could become a query combining a pile of tags, rather than a ridiculously specific sub-sub-category as we have now. So would tags replace categories or work alongside? Ideally, they'd work much as cats do now, but you could easily run Boolean queries on them without MediaWiki falling over. The application for Commons is obvious - minute sub-sub-cats are not nearly as useful for an image database as tags. But the same thing could be applied to a text encyclopedia quite productively. Another useful aspect for Commons would be one tag having multiple names - which solves the present problem that most things on Commons are categorised in English, which is completely inadequate for an image repository for projects in any language, and particulary for ones like es:wp which store *all* their images on Commons. For a text encyclopedia that could resolve some arguments about what to call a category, or at least provide a working equivalent of category redirects. (I just looked through Bugzilla and tag appears to mean something else in internal MediaWiki jargon. But that's basically the idea. Extensive wishing about this in the commons-l and wikitech-l archives. No-one has a deployment-ready version of the feature yet - the closest anyone's come is using Lucene as the back end, which basically requires a server all to itself - so the whole thing's currently wishful vapour and probably awaiting a genius with MySQL tweaking to write it.) - 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] If anyone ever says Wikipedia is too deletionist
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 11:40 AM, Andrew Grayandrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk wrote: 2009/8/9 Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com: So all the biographies of women could be tagged woman? That would work, but only if the woman tag wasn't applied to other things as well. Maybe you would have to have woman + biography? Even then, it might not be exact. And then you would have adult, boy, girl, child, male, female. Tags and categories are different. Ideally, you would have both, or a clear of idea of what would be primary tags (what we call categories) and what are descriptive tags. This is similar to what de.wp use, I believe: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Tuchman [[Kategorie:Literatur (20. Jahrhundert)]] [[Kategorie:Literatur (Englisch)]] [[Kategorie:Autor]] [[Kategorie:Pulitzer-Preisträger]] [[Kategorie:Journalist]] [[Kategorie:Person im Spanischen Bürgerkrieg]] [[Kategorie:US-Amerikaner]] [[Kategorie:Geboren 1912]] [[Kategorie:Gestorben 1989]] [[Kategorie:Frau]] Note that in English, we'd consider most of these very high-level categories, and indeed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Tuchman [[Category:1912 births]] [[Category:1989 deaths]] [[Category:American Jews]] [[Category:American military writers]] [[Category:Historians of the United States]] [[Category:German-American Jews]] [[Category:Jewish American historians]] [[Category:Morgenthau family|Barbara Tuchman]] [[Category:Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction winners]] [[Category:Radcliffe College alumni]] [[Category:World War I historians]] Almost all of those are *much* more specific categories - you wouldn't get a Historians of the United States or American military writers category in German, and you wouldn't get Authors or Women in English. Though, that said, it's very interesting to note that they each reflect entirely different aspects. In German, being a writer is emphasised. In English, the writing is dealt with more by subject matter (...military writers / ...historians), and the Jewish background is emphasised as much if not more than the nationality. A German reader finds out about the Spanish Civil War; an English reader finds out about Radcliffe. Very interesting. Particularly that the German Wikipedia uses Woman as a category. It looks like my idea isn't so crazy after all. 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] If anyone ever says Wikipedia is too deletionist
Andrew Gray wrote: 2009/8/9 Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com: So all the biographies of women could be tagged woman? That would work, but only if the woman tag wasn't applied to other things as well. Maybe you would have to have woman + biography? Even then, it might not be exact. And then you would have adult, boy, girl, child, male, female. Tags and categories are different. Ideally, you would have both, or a clear of idea of what would be primary tags (what we call categories) and what are descriptive tags. This is similar to what de.wp use, I believe: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Tuchman [[Kategorie:Literatur (20. Jahrhundert)]] [[Kategorie:Literatur (Englisch)]] [[Kategorie:Autor]] [[Kategorie:Pulitzer-Preisträger]] [[Kategorie:Journalist]] [[Kategorie:Person im Spanischen Bürgerkrieg]] [[Kategorie:US-Amerikaner]] [[Kategorie:Geboren 1912]] [[Kategorie:Gestorben 1989]] [[Kategorie:Frau]] Note that in English, we'd consider most of these very high-level categories, and indeed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Tuchman [[Category:1912 births]] [[Category:1989 deaths]] [[Category:American Jews]] [[Category:American military writers]] [[Category:Historians of the United States]] [[Category:German-American Jews]] [[Category:Jewish American historians]] [[Category:Morgenthau family|Barbara Tuchman]] [[Category:Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction winners]] [[Category:Radcliffe College alumni]] [[Category:World War I historians]] Almost all of those are *much* more specific categories - you wouldn't get a Historians of the United States or American military writers category in German, and you wouldn't get Authors or Women in English. Though, that said, it's very interesting to note that they each reflect entirely different aspects. In German, being a writer is emphasised. In English, the writing is dealt with more by subject matter (...military writers / ...historians), and the Jewish background is emphasised as much if not more than the nationality. A German reader finds out about the Spanish Civil War; an English reader finds out about Radcliffe. Having had a conversation with a German Wikipedian who clearly thinks our way of doing it is broken, I'm interested in the arguments on the other side. In zoology, for example, following the Linnean classification in the category system just makes good sense: the experts have sorted through the various attributes of (say) a fish species for us, and come up with answers that make sense for classifying articles as well as species. In my own field of mathematics, good subcategorisation will be a great help to those who want to read around a subject, and I'm not very struck with [[de:K-Theorie]] as categorised by [[Kategorie:Algebra]] [[Kategorie:Topologie]] when [[en:K-theory]] is categorised as [[Category:Algebra]] [[Category:Algebraic topology]] [[Category:K-theory|*]] and [[Category:K-theory]] has over 20 specialised articles. Presumably one hopes to find those flopping around under the German system in algebra and topology categories. But the first example I found where there was an interwiki was [[de:Calkin-Algebra]] which lies in [[Kategorie:Funktionalanalysis]] [[Kategorie:Mathematischer Raum]]. Believe me on this: it looks like you'd have to search a big chunk of mathematical articles just to find those K-theory articles. Not so good. (Even if you could get algebraic topology by intersecting algebra and topology, which is a big stretch because topological algebra is not at all the same thing. Confusion of method and subject matter.) More comprehensibly (perhaps) [[Category:Puritanism]] was bugging me, as a fairly unverifiable concept in numerous cases. So I created 15 or more subcategories in the hope of having verifiable historical information the predominant factor in 17th century English religious history. I'd like to think I wasn't wasting my time on that. 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] If anyone ever says Wikipedia is too deletionist
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 1:42 PM, Charles Matthewscharles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: snip Nice example there of where en-wiki's classification systems are better. Some people would, of course, create a K-theory navbox template. Does de-wiki have those navboxes? More comprehensibly (perhaps) [[Category:Puritanism]] was bugging me, as a fairly unverifiable concept in numerous cases. So I created 15 or more subcategories in the hope of having verifiable historical information the predominant factor in 17th century English religious history. I'd like to think I wasn't wasting my time on that. It can be worrying to create lots of subcategories and then have people who have different views on categorisation come along and propose to tear down the structure. The most annoying thing is being unable to point to what a particular area of the category tree looked like before you spent a few days overhauling it. People only really see the end result, not the work done to produce that result. A while back, I overhauled this category: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Arctic I was most pleased with this category: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Arctic_research Mainly because I hadn't realised we had so many articles on Arctic research. Other ones I felt were interesting creations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Industry_in_the_Arctic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Military_in_the_Arctic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Transportation_in_the_Arctic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Environment_of_the_Arctic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:History_of_the_Arctic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Culture_of_the_Arctic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Protected_areas_of_the_Arctic Admittedly, this one might have been a step too far: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Arctic_in_fiction But people have been adding to it, so there is demand there. A similarly offbeat category is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Arctic_challenges One bugbear of mine is how terminology articles get mixed up with specific place and event articles, so I created this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Arctic_geography_terminology A different perspective on Arctic exploration is possible here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Arctic_exploration_vessels This all led to a portal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Arctic An excellent protal, in my view (though not created by me, I hasten to add). There was even a WikiProject started, which may hopefully gather steam again at some point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Arctic I'm particularly pleased that someone has taken on the task of tackling this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arctic_expeditions But to get back to categories, there was, at some point fairly soon after that big overhaul of the Arctic category, a discussion on how precise Arctic needed to be. The discussion is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2008_August_23#Category:Settlements_in_the_Arctic At one point, there seemed to be serious consideration given to deleting all the newly created categories because it was unclear what Arctic meant. there [are several definitions to what constitutes the arctic, which in itself is a ground for deleting this category [...] there is Category:Arctic with a host of subcats so the problem (if any) is widespread Some countering views were: The Arctic Circle demarcates a very real physical phenomenon, and as such is not, in fact, an arbitrary line. (Remember the Land of the midnight sun, etc.?) The fact that they're all categorized according to their countries doesn't address the fact of their extreme northern latitudes. So I think it's quite useful to have a catalog of all the settlements in this unique region. [...] I'll give the Arctic a good talking too and tell it to stop crossing national boundries. I made the rather pointed comment: It would be good if those skilled in categorisation could help out with constructive comments on how to organise Category:Arctic. A centralised discussion would be preferable to having numerous categories put up for deletion in separate debates. Then someone suggested a solution that led to this template being used on the categories: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:The_Arctic I would hope that the reason the categories were saved was because they were useful. But I fear it was only because the template satisfied those who wanted precision in category names and classification. And the rather obsessive need to subcategorise everything by country, even in a category that clearly is intended to be a trans-national, regional one, is something I still don't understand. The response to the queries I left at WikiProjects was varied, from nothing, to brief, to some very useful suggestions (I've only given three examples below):
Re: [WikiEN-l] If anyone ever says Wikipedia is too deletionist
2009/8/9 Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com: If anyone could hazard a guess at how many of the 725,635 biographies we have where there might be a dispute over gender, that would be good (note that for some reason that figure, from the WikiProject Biography statistics, includes music groups, and also some other group biographies, rather than single biographies). But really, if it is only a couple of hundred where the gender is disputed or not known, then there should be no objection to classifying the others by gender. Okay, estimate time! When LibraryThing began their common knowledge cataloging program - essentially an attempt to gather structured information on books and authors via a user-editable database - they tangled briefly with the problem of gender for authors. On the one hand, it's a very important detail to record, if only from a pragmatic perspective - hang around a bookshop or a library and see how long until someone starts looking for a female crime novelist, etc. For practical reasons, they wanted it a restricted this field has value X record rather than free-text, which was used for almost everything else. On the other hand, it's even more complex for books than for our biographies, as many books are authored by someone about whom even the most basic biographical information is unknown, or who isn't a real person at all, before we even worry about people who don't fit the normal classifications. In the end, they went with a fourfold structure: * male * female * other/contested/unknown * n/a The third was for those who are people who don't fit neatly into the first two, for whatever reason; the fourth was for corporate bodies, and so also served as a way to differentiate real people and not-real people. This is quite handy, because the ratio of the third to the first two gives us some idea of what we're likely to encounter in Wikipedia - it won't be the same, but it'll be the right order of magnitude. There are currently 8,736 n/a, 57,047 female, 118,069 male... and 431 other. Roughly speaking, that's 0.25% of catalogued people aren't defined neatly as male or female. Scaling that up to Wikipedia would mean we'd be looking at, at most, 1,500 to 2,000 biographies where we shouldn't simply do male/female. Given that not all the other cases are people who fall outside the binary - the data is a bit choppy and includes some who should be n/a, plus oddities like joint pseudonyms - our proportion would probably be lower. The chronological weighting of the two datasets complicates matters; a set of authors will skew towards modernity, but then again more than half our biographies are BLPs, so we ourselves also skew towards modernity. I can't say which of those is the stronger pull! So I think, all told, we're going to be looking at a few more than a couple of hundred, but perhaps not more than a thousand cases. If we're consciously trying to get good coverage of people who fall outside the usual classification, and addressing those articles rigorously - itself not a bad idea - we might end up pushing a couple of thousand. -- - 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] Usability testing (Try Beta)
I think Vector is the skin, and Acai is the usability initiative. A remember reading a blog post where Vector was described as the first element in Acai. Vector itself has been available as a skin for awhile. It's a neat skin, I like it, but I find that I rely (as an editor) on the many gadgets and .js tools attached to my Monobook/Modern skins. For readers and new editors, though, it should work well. I particularly like the left-hand navbar links to featured content. Nathan On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 1:10 AM, Steve Bennett stevag...@gmail.com wrote: I'm trying it. It looks a lot like Vector, which I was already using. Haven't really made up my mind about Vector/Acai. Seems like a step in the right direction, but it's not really earth shatteringly better. But then, usability is not really about helping experienced power-users... Steve On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 11:15 AM, Carcharothcarcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: I just noticed a new link appear next to the user page etc links at top right (in monobook skin): Try Beta ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l -- Your donations keep Wikipedia running! Support the Wikimedia Foundation today: http://www.wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ 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] Online Newspapers Considering Subscription Model
This conversation seems to be getting a little steeped in attack mode, doesn't it? I mean, if we take a step back, do we verify everything we read ever period? The fact that you just read this email seems to suggest no, actually we don't. So my question at this point in the debate would be to ask myself why someone who lives in a place where there isn't any library for hours (or days even) would be overly bothered about verifying right that second. Yes, sometimes you just don;t verify citations. Wikipedia is built up through a kind of trust net, we're relying on other people to have checked the info out. Personally I've always taken the stance that we should cite any source, with as much detail as possible, and let the reader make the judgement as to reliability, verifiability and so on. Anyone who accepts anything at face value needs shooting, you ask me. I'll let Fred translate again if need be. David Mitchell made a similar point a while back in The Observer. Emily Monroe wrote: Will, If I may ask a question. What if I live in a place where there isn't any library for hours (or days even) via whatever transportation I have available? What if I have a library...but it's under-resourced, under-paid and there's no way I can really get books or newsletter to help cite wikipedia? What would I do then? Do I just not verify citations? Emily On Aug 9, 2009, at 9:11 PM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: In a message dated 8/9/2009 6:40:56 PM Pacific Daylight Time, d...@tobias.name writes: So if I wanted to cite some rare book which I happened to know of only one copy in existence, located at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica, it would be up to you to arrange travel there to check it. - Items of this level of rarity fail our test that the item is publicly accessible. We never really set where the bar should be, but we all seemed to agree (at the time) that an item should be generally available in some way. It's too onorous to require a random editor to have to verify something against a single copy. By the way, you would think that if something this rare were really worth citing, that it would have already been published in a scholarly edition. Your example is a bit eccentric, I wonder if you have an actual case in mind. Will Johnson ** A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2 easy steps! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1222846709x1201493018/aol?redir=http://www.freecreditreport.com/pm/default.aspx ?sc=668072amp;hmpgID=115amp; bcd=JulystepsfooterNO115) ___ 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] If anyone ever says Wikipedia is too deletionist
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 11:53 AM, David Gerarddger...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/8/9 Bod Notbod bodnot...@gmail.com: On Sun, Aug 9, 2009 at 12:47 PM, David Gerarddger...@gmail.com wrote: The problem being discussed in this thread would be solved by the feature (much-desired by Commons) of turning categories into tags - so that e.g. [[Category:Left-handed dead Jewish lesbian presidents of the United States]] could become a query combining a pile of tags, rather than a ridiculously specific sub-sub-category as we have now. So would tags replace categories or work alongside? Ideally, they'd work much as cats do now, but you could easily run Boolean queries on them without MediaWiki falling over. http://toolserver.org/~magnus/catscan_rewrite.php?categories=1912+births%0D%0AWorld+War+I+historians Cheers, Magnus ___ 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] Online Newspapers Considering Subscription Model
This conversation seems to be getting a little steeped in attack mode, doesn't it? That was an honest, legitimate hypothetical question of mine. I addressed it primarily to Will, and secondarily to everybody. I never mean to attack anyone. I wouldn't live with my conscious if I had lived a life like that. If I did unintentionally attack *anyone*, then I owe an apology to Will and the list that I'm offering now. So my question at this point in the debate would be to ask myself why someone who lives in a place where there isn't any library for hours (or days even) would be overly bothered about verifying right that second. I didn't mean to imply that they would be bothered about verifying references right that second. I was starting to read into this debate (and maybe it's just me) that every Wikipedian should be bothered about verifying right that second. I was proven wrong when Will pointed out that that wasn't his point. Emily On Aug 10, 2009, at 9:18 AM, Surreptitiousness wrote: This conversation seems to be getting a little steeped in attack mode, doesn't it? I mean, if we take a step back, do we verify everything we read ever period? The fact that you just read this email seems to suggest no, actually we don't. So my question at this point in the debate would be to ask myself why someone who lives in a place where there isn't any library for hours (or days even) would be overly bothered about verifying right that second. Yes, sometimes you just don;t verify citations. Wikipedia is built up through a kind of trust net, we're relying on other people to have checked the info out. Personally I've always taken the stance that we should cite any source, with as much detail as possible, and let the reader make the judgement as to reliability, verifiability and so on. Anyone who accepts anything at face value needs shooting, you ask me. I'll let Fred translate again if need be. David Mitchell made a similar point a while back in The Observer. Emily Monroe wrote: Will, If I may ask a question. What if I live in a place where there isn't any library for hours (or days even) via whatever transportation I have available? What if I have a library...but it's under-resourced, under-paid and there's no way I can really get books or newsletter to help cite wikipedia? What would I do then? Do I just not verify citations? Emily On Aug 9, 2009, at 9:11 PM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: In a message dated 8/9/2009 6:40:56 PM Pacific Daylight Time, d...@tobias.name writes: So if I wanted to cite some rare book which I happened to know of only one copy in existence, located at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica, it would be up to you to arrange travel there to check it. - Items of this level of rarity fail our test that the item is publicly accessible. We never really set where the bar should be, but we all seemed to agree (at the time) that an item should be generally available in some way. It's too onorous to require a random editor to have to verify something against a single copy. By the way, you would think that if something this rare were really worth citing, that it would have already been published in a scholarly edition. Your example is a bit eccentric, I wonder if you have an actual case in mind. Will Johnson ** A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2 easy steps! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1222846709x1201493018/aol?redir=http://www.freecreditreport.com/pm/default.aspx ?sc=668072amp;hmpgID=115amp; bcd=JulystepsfooterNO115) ___ 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] If anyone ever says Wikipedia is too deletionist
Carcharoth wrote: Tags and categories are different. Ideally, you would have both, or a clear of idea of what would be primary tags (what we call categories) and what are descriptive tags. I asked about flickr tags years ago, but never understood the replies I got, see: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-January/021346.html http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-January/021348.html http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-January/021352.html http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-January/021374.html http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-January/021350.html Sam Wantman and Rick Block came up with [[Wikipedia:Category intersection]], which might be of interest. ___ 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] Wikipedia was founded for OR
On Friday 07 August 2009, Charles Matthews wrote: The story about Kira fills in something Jimbo mentioned before, though. I gave up a while ago on thinking the early history of WP was something a historian could completely elucidate. This story adds another layer to the question of the motivations of one of the principal actors (something the historians will eventually have to deal with). This question of when the first significant history of Wikipedia can be written very much intrigues me. I am not intending to slight Lih's book, nor my work of course, but when you look at award-winning historical biographies, the scholars typically had access to friends and family of the subjects, their personal papers and records, etc. There is this ironic tension that one typically never gets access to personal archives until after their death. And, I don't think we have yet seen a work on a subject in which the predominant media of discourse is digital. I know in my own work I would have loved to have access to some early e-mails that apparently do not exist anymore. ___ 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] Online Newspapers Considering Subscription Model
Emily Monroe wrote: This conversation seems to be getting a little steeped in attack mode, doesn't it? That was an honest, legitimate hypothetical question of mine. I addressed it primarily to Will, and secondarily to everybody. I never mean to attack anyone. I wouldn't live with my conscious if I had lived a life like that. If I did unintentionally attack *anyone*, then I owe an apology to Will and the list that I'm offering now. I apologise for making it unclear that I was talking about the tone of the conversation as a whole rather than your comments specifically. So my question at this point in the debate would be to ask myself why someone who lives in a place where there isn't any library for hours (or days even) would be overly bothered about verifying right that second. I didn't mean to imply that they would be bothered about verifying references right that second. I was starting to read into this debate (and maybe it's just me) that every Wikipedian should be bothered about verifying right that second. I was proven wrong when Will pointed out that that wasn't his point. My apologies for not having got to that point in the conversation at the time I replied. ___ 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] Online Newspapers Considering Subscription Model
I apologise for making it unclear that I was talking about the tone of the conversation as a whole rather than your comments specifically. I think you're right. You WERE talking about the conversation as a whole. However, I interpreted your comments as This whole debate is in attack mode, and Emilys' comments bought my attention to it. It's so serious that I need to bring the lists' attention to it, as well. That's why I was so defensive. This has happened to me in the past, with a previous list. People were even questioning whether or not I was who I said I was (I was a young, probably mildly gifted pre-teen at the time)! Not an excuse, but since I couldn't read your body language, I jumped to conclusions based on past experiences. Sorry about that. My apologies for not having got to that point in the conversation at the time I replied. My assumption was that you did. You need to think, read, think, and then write (and think some more afterward). Don't worry though, I forgive you, and I'll forget about it. Emily On Aug 10, 2009, at 9:47 AM, Surreptitiousness wrote: Emily Monroe wrote: This conversation seems to be getting a little steeped in attack mode, doesn't it? That was an honest, legitimate hypothetical question of mine. I addressed it primarily to Will, and secondarily to everybody. I never mean to attack anyone. I wouldn't live with my conscious if I had lived a life like that. If I did unintentionally attack *anyone*, then I owe an apology to Will and the list that I'm offering now. I apologise for making it unclear that I was talking about the tone of the conversation as a whole rather than your comments specifically. So my question at this point in the debate would be to ask myself why someone who lives in a place where there isn't any library for hours (or days even) would be overly bothered about verifying right that second. I didn't mean to imply that they would be bothered about verifying references right that second. I was starting to read into this debate (and maybe it's just me) that every Wikipedian should be bothered about verifying right that second. I was proven wrong when Will pointed out that that wasn't his point. My apologies for not having got to that point in the conversation at the time I replied. ___ 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] Usability testing (Try Beta)
2009/8/10 Nathan nawr...@gmail.com I think Vector is the skin, and Acai is the usability initiative. A remember reading a blog post where Vector was described as the first element in Acai. Acai is just the codename for the first release of the usability initiative. Vector is indeed the skin part of this, and there is also an enhanced editing toolbar which can be enabled in Special:Preferences (Editing tab). The next release will be called Babaco, and is in the design stage: ( http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Babaco_Designs). The plan is for four releases in total, all named after tropical fruits. ( http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Releases) I particularly like the left-hand navbar links to featured content. Monobook has this as well I believe. 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
Re: [WikiEN-l] If anyone ever says Wikipedia is too deletionist
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 3:54 PM, Carcharothcarcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: Is there a summary of what's changed? Well, it's completely new, so check out the manual link on the page, and the original requirements, which have been met or exceeded: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WMDE_contract_offers/Rewrite_CatScan (note that, once my beta did all that was required, this contract offer was retracted) One thing: when selecting depth, sometimes you want one category to be 0 depth, but the other category to be a different depth. Is that not possible? It's explained on the manual page - just append |2 to the category you want to use with a different depth (in this example, 2). Cheers, Magnus ___ 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] If anyone ever says Wikipedia is too deletionist
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 3:24 PM, Magnus Manskemagnusman...@googlemail.com wrote: http://toolserver.org/~magnus/catscan_rewrite.php? sigh I've been trying for 10 minutes to get it to locate articles in a category tree but missing a specific WikiProject tag, but either it's not working, or I'm not selecting the right options. Is there a way to run this scan tool over something like Category:J. R. R. Tolkien or Category:Middle-earth (to about a depth of 6) and see which articles *lack* the template ME-project (a redirect to the template WikiProject Middle-earth)? An example is this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Sigurd_and_Gudr%C3%BAn Not yet tagged, but none of the searches I do are detecting this. If the category depth is a problem, use the category Poetry by J. R. R. Tolkien. But no matter what I do, putting a single category name in the categories box, switching the tick box from article space to talk space, and putting a template name in the Has none of these templates bit, nothing works. But then it is still in beta! :-) I also noticed this: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WMDE_contract_offers/Rewrite_CatScan Ah, maybe... tries something silly - fails reads Magnus's next e-mail with link to manual... Aha! Thanks! :-) 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] If anyone ever says Wikipedia is too deletionist
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 5:04 PM, Magnus Manskemagnusman...@googlemail.com wrote: snip It's explained on the manual page - just append |2 to the category you want to use with a different depth (in this example, 2). blush Would you believe I completely missed that link to the manual? :-/ 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] If anyone ever says Wikipedia is too deletionist
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 5:04 PM, Magnus Manskemagnusman...@googlemail.com wrote: On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 3:54 PM, Carcharothcarcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: Is there a summary of what's changed? Well, it's completely new, so check out the manual link on the page, and the original requirements, which have been met or exceeded: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WMDE_contract_offers/Rewrite_CatScan (note that, once my beta did all that was required, this contract offer was retracted) One thing: when selecting depth, sometimes you want one category to be 0 depth, but the other category to be a different depth. Is that not possible? It's explained on the manual page - just append |2 to the category you want to use with a different depth (in this example, 2). On closer examination, I don't think I can do what I'm trying to do with that tool. I want to take a category tree of WikiProject tagged articles (containing pages tagged in the talk namespace), and compare to a category tree of articles tagged in the article space (normal, reader-facing categories). And see where the overlap or lack of overlap is. That requires some option to ignore namespaces when comparing page names, OR for the check for template bit to have an option to check the talk page of the articles in the category, rather than the actual pages in the category. Can this tool do that? 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] Usability testing (Try Beta)
Hey you're right. I suppose I forgot it was there and only noticed it again because I was actually paying attention to the interface. Thanks, Nathan On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 11:14 AM, Peter Coombe I particularly like the left-hand navbar links to featured content. Monobook has this as well I believe. 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 -- Your donations keep Wikipedia running! Support the Wikimedia Foundation today: http://www.wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ 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] Online Newspapers Considering Subscription Model
Why might it not become as reliable as any other magazine discussing media? It depends on the quality of the editing. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 2:22 PM, Ken Arromdeearrom...@rahul.net wrote: On Sun, 9 Aug 2009 wjhon...@aol.com wrote: The reason for my objection, is that we, our project, should not put ourselves into a position where we are becoming the main source of financial support for some newly-created effective auxiliary. I hope we can all see, how some obscure online subscription mag like Pokeman Today would get a tremendous boost just by being sourced to one of our articles. It's pretty unlikely that anything like that would be considered a reliable source. ___ 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] If anyone ever says Wikipedia is too deletionist
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 5:25 PM, Carcharothcarcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 5:04 PM, Magnus Manskemagnusman...@googlemail.com wrote: On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 3:54 PM, Carcharothcarcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: Is there a summary of what's changed? Well, it's completely new, so check out the manual link on the page, and the original requirements, which have been met or exceeded: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WMDE_contract_offers/Rewrite_CatScan (note that, once my beta did all that was required, this contract offer was retracted) One thing: when selecting depth, sometimes you want one category to be 0 depth, but the other category to be a different depth. Is that not possible? It's explained on the manual page - just append |2 to the category you want to use with a different depth (in this example, 2). On closer examination, I don't think I can do what I'm trying to do with that tool. I want to take a category tree of WikiProject tagged articles (containing pages tagged in the talk namespace), and compare to a category tree of articles tagged in the article space (normal, reader-facing categories). And see where the overlap or lack of overlap is. That requires some option to ignore namespaces when comparing page names, OR for the check for template bit to have an option to check the talk page of the articles in the category, rather than the actual pages in the category. Can this tool do that? Not in its current form. You can make category and template intersections only on a page or a talk page, not on page/talk in combination. I could try to build an option to collapse the talk namespace into the page namespace, but most of the stuff uses the internal page_id, which makes it difficult... Magnus ___ 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] If anyone ever says Wikipedia is too deletionist
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 5:25 PM, Carcharothcarcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 5:04 PM, Magnus Manskemagnusman...@googlemail.com wrote: On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 3:54 PM, Carcharothcarcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: Is there a summary of what's changed? Well, it's completely new, so check out the manual link on the page, and the original requirements, which have been met or exceeded: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WMDE_contract_offers/Rewrite_CatScan (note that, once my beta did all that was required, this contract offer was retracted) One thing: when selecting depth, sometimes you want one category to be 0 depth, but the other category to be a different depth. Is that not possible? It's explained on the manual page - just append |2 to the category you want to use with a different depth (in this example, 2). On closer examination, I don't think I can do what I'm trying to do with that tool. I want to take a category tree of WikiProject tagged articles (containing pages tagged in the talk namespace), and compare to a category tree of articles tagged in the article space (normal, reader-facing categories). And see where the overlap or lack of overlap is. That requires some option to ignore namespaces when comparing page names, OR for the check for template bit to have an option to check the talk page of the articles in the category, rather than the actual pages in the category. Can this tool do that? It can now :-) Try: http://toolserver.org/~magnus/catscan_rewrite.php?depth=6categories=Middle-earthshow_redirects=notemplates_no=ME-project%0D%0AWikiProject+Middle-earthtemplates_use_talk_no=1doit=1 One can now use template filters on talk pages instead of actual pages. Not the most generic option, but should cover many cases. Also, I found that your example query yield a rather astonishing amount of categorized redirects (750 out of 813). Therefore, I also implemented filtering the results by redirect (no redirects/only redirects/either). Cheers, Magnus ___ 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] Usability testing (Try Beta)
On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 4:36 AM, Casey Brownli...@caseybrown.org wrote: Which you can ignore. It's beta-testing, the whole point is to gather feedback and make things better, so I don't have a problem with it. :-) On the subject, when you click beta feedback, one of the questions is: What could we have done differently to keep you using the Beta? It seems misplaced. There's no reason to assume the person leaving feedback is going to stop using the beta interface... 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] Usability testing (Try Beta)
Steve Bennett wrote: On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 4:36 AM, Casey Brownli...@caseybrown.org wrote: Which you can ignore. It's beta-testing, the whole point is to gather feedback and make things better, so I don't have a problem with it. :-) On the subject, when you click beta feedback, one of the questions is: What could we have done differently to keep you using the Beta? It seems misplaced. There's no reason to assume the person leaving feedback is going to stop using the beta interface... Steve Good catch. Not sure how that question crept into the feedback survey. It was meant for leave beta survey. We will correct it. - Naoko ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l -- Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ 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] Where does en:wp need most help?
On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 10:06 AM, Carcharothcarcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: Either more accurate assessments, or the article standards are slipping. :-( Or the definitions of the standards are being raised. It's hard to tell which is the case though, as there's no obvious way to find out which were the 3 GA articles which have slipped down. Meanwhile, for the autodidacts among us, the 200 core biographies list is a pretty interesting place to start reading. There are quite a few entries on the list I've never heard of, but seem to deserve their place. [[Shaka]], [[Laozi]], [[Thucydides]], [[Margaret Sanger]] (questionable...), [[Cai Lun]]... I should make a book of these articles for the next long train trip... 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] If anyone ever says Wikipedia is too deletionist
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 11:05 PM, Magnus Manskemagnusman...@googlemail.com wrote: On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 5:25 PM, Carcharothcarcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 5:04 PM, Magnus Manskemagnusman...@googlemail.com wrote: On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 3:54 PM, Carcharothcarcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: Is there a summary of what's changed? Well, it's completely new, so check out the manual link on the page, and the original requirements, which have been met or exceeded: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WMDE_contract_offers/Rewrite_CatScan (note that, once my beta did all that was required, this contract offer was retracted) One thing: when selecting depth, sometimes you want one category to be 0 depth, but the other category to be a different depth. Is that not possible? It's explained on the manual page - just append |2 to the category you want to use with a different depth (in this example, 2). On closer examination, I don't think I can do what I'm trying to do with that tool. I want to take a category tree of WikiProject tagged articles (containing pages tagged in the talk namespace), and compare to a category tree of articles tagged in the article space (normal, reader-facing categories). And see where the overlap or lack of overlap is. That requires some option to ignore namespaces when comparing page names, OR for the check for template bit to have an option to check the talk page of the articles in the category, rather than the actual pages in the category. Can this tool do that? It can now :-) Try: http://toolserver.org/~magnus/catscan_rewrite.php?depth=6categories=Middle-earthshow_redirects=notemplates_no=ME-project%0D%0AWikiProject+Middle-earthtemplates_use_talk_no=1doit=1 One can now use template filters on talk pages instead of actual pages. Not the most generic option, but should cover many cases. Also, I found that your example query yield a rather astonishing amount of categorized redirects (750 out of 813). Therefore, I also implemented filtering the results by redirect (no redirects/only redirects/either). Wonderful! Thanks so much for doing that! :-) The redirects? I think most of them were left behind after merging. We wanted to keep track of them, so we used redirect templates to categorise them by type. At this point, I would pull out the guideline to categorising redirects, and give a tour of WikiProject-categorised redirects, but it's late here, so I'll go and look at the list you've provided, which has several untagged articles (some of which will be merged soon, in case anyone here goes all faint at the stubbiness and cruftiness of them). At least one of them is a redirect turned back into stub... 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] Lies, damned lies, and statistics
Durova nadezhda.dur...@gmail.com quoted Samuel Clemens in message news:a01006d90904151712x2e95f41r9c2dcf17a4dcb...@mail.gmail.com... There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. - Mark Twain In book called They never said it!, that is identified as apocryphal, which means that he did not write it (maybe I can find a finer criterion printed in the book). It is a lot of fun to say it, though, so if he said it once, then he probably said it a few times. Einstein said something like it on a sign that hung at his door: Not everything that can be counted counts. Not everything that counts can be counted. ___ 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] http://euobserver.com/883/28232
Subject-Was: GFDL compliance Speculative Addressee: webmaster at website in URL. The photo at the top, of Westminster Abbey? It is not carefully cited regarding the source. Could I ask you to pull the photo from wikipedia again to get a more ultimate source? If you click on the photo, then you should be able to find someone who knows their way around a camera. I wish I could say that all wikipedians were that dangerous. ___ 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] GDFL compliance
Steve Bennett stevag...@gmail.com wrote in message news:b8ceeef70906112226t56603352y27a9fc22fbea9...@mail.gmail.com... On Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 2:26 AM, Sam Kornsmo...@gmail.com wrote: (Photo: a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Houses_of_Parliament.jpg;Wikipedia/a) I imagine that would satisfy *almost* everyone. Hell no. You didn't even credit the author. Photo: WikiWitch at Wikipedia, under GFDL. That's about the minimum you could get away with. You could probably ditch the Wikipedia actually, maybe link to their Wikipedia user page though. If two people get the same idea, then I am thinking it is probably good. (In this case, the photo is actually PD, so it's all moot). In GB, it might be PD, and probably even in this Colony of Canada. I do not know about anywhere else. It is only moot if the policy does not apply differently to images that you can copyright. 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 ___ 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] GDFL compliance
Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote in message news:4a32892b.90...@telus.net... Sam Korn wrote: On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 6:26 AM, Steve Bennett wrote: On Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 2:26 AM, Sam Korn wrote: (Photo: a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Houses_of_Parliament.jpg;Wikipedia/a) I imagine that would satisfy *almost* everyone. Hell no. You didn't even credit the author. Photo: WikiWitch at Wikipedia, under GFDL. That's about the minimum you could get away with. You could probably ditch the Wikipedia actually, maybe link to their Wikipedia user page though. (In this case, the photo is actually PD, so it's all moot). Right. I certainly agree that it would be better to name the author. But when articles are reused, they generally link to the Wikipedia article without giving a list of usernames; I don't see why that would be different for images. You can put a lot of details into a free licence, but ss the number of details increases, compliance diminishes. Something like Courtesy Wikipedia may be the full extent of what you can realistically expect. Articles are relatively easier to link to than images, because articles have clear obvious plain-language titles, something which cannot always be said of images. In large measure the rules requiring detailed credits are completely unenforcible outside the WMF community. Almost every website has its terms of service, which people rarely read, and more readily ignore. It is foolish to believe that using a site implies that the Terms of Service imply some kind of contract between the site owner and user. I know that is how it seems sometimes, that ignorance is an excuse. Look at it this way, though: wikipedia is easier to learn than build your own website, or html made simple, or common terms of service for internet service, so if we do not get some people thinking about these things, then nobody learns. ___ Your rights end where mine begin. ___ 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] GDFL compliance
Andrew Turvey andrewrtur...@googlemail.com wrote in message news:5465232.561244846011734.javamail.sys...@atsl_laptop... - Unionhawk unionhawk.site...@gmail.com wrote: Well, I mean, what difference does it make? I guess it probably should have a link, but, honestly, with the number of Wikipedia images being reused these days, I don't think it would be worth it to attempt to track them all down... - --Unionhawk Good challenge! I'd offer the following thoughts: 1) Advertising If everyone using Wikimedia content acknowledged that fact, it would be good advertising for us. It creates good will - people might come and see what other images we have and might donate some images or money themselves. 2) Contributors People who contribute free content don't get much from it and presumably don't really expect to. The one thing they are entitled to is attribution - a core part of our license. If they knew they were going to be attributed on Wikimedia and across the internet, they might be keen to contribute more. I've spoken to a number of freelance news photographers on flickr asking them to release their stuff for WP - knowing they will get wide recognition for their images may increase the success rates on those requests! I wouldn't be surprised if using free images becomes widespread among print media - I mean why not? The main concern is copyright, so if we can give them an easy how to I'm sure they'd jump at the chance. I am remembering a time back in 1998, when I wrote a nasty song about an American president, and I wanted radio stations to play it, especially in D.C. I found one. I forget the name of it. The DJ recorded it over the phone: two minutes on my account. Beats me if he aired it. It was easy to figure out how to contact media centres on yahoo, back then. Maybe it still is, if you get that http://howto.wikia.com figured out. Subject: One Line Manual for Preferred Wikipedia Graphic Citations Text: Link To Wikipedia User who made your work more credible or more understandable. ___ 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] GDFL compliance
AGK wiki...@googlemail.com wrote in message news:a342424e0906051009g38d27b9dked2193916a6dc...@mail.gmail.com... If not, is there a group of people somewhere who chase up copyvios like this? I suppose the Free Software Foundation would be the body responsible for chasing up copyright violations, but, if they are anything like almost every other non-profit in the world, they probably don't have the time nor the resources to do so. The individuals whose work is the object of the violation (i.e., the editor who uploaded the photo) could also chase up the copyvio by means of a private lawsuit, but obviously that isn't going to happen. It happens. It should be a last ditch. Last decade, when I was chasing up problems on articles or encouraging standard HTML, most sites did hav a webmaster account, even if it was not serviced. On rare occasions, I could hit C on my browser (Lynx) and get the owner of a page addressed in my e-mail software. Lawyers should not enter the equation unless you hav no clue that the problem exists (and there are legal foundations that check these things if you read http://bit.ly/hZsWF -- RE: When copyright paranoia isn't ), or unless you ran out of clues about what to do about a problem. ___ 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] Report a Problem hack
The problem with popups is that even Explorer Six can completely disable them or enable them for specific sites (my setting approves about ten sites), so I ask what is wrong with the talk page? Maybe there should be an Add To Talk Page button or tab on the article, so that you do not need to download a talk page that is longer than the article in order to add to it. Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote in message news:b80736c80908061759n17c71374g9ff2b9080615b...@mail.gmail.com... The Polish Wikipedia has hacked together a neat little pop-up tool for reporting errors in articles. To see it, go to http://pl.wikipedia.org/ click around, and follow the Zglos blad link in the sidebar. If you click the middle button, it gives you a form that you can use to report an error with the page you're looking at. That report will then be appended to a problem reports page. It clearly requires a lot of maintenance of said error reports page to pull something like this off, but perhaps it would be worth trying out for a while? -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ 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] The end of donations
stevertigo stv...@gmail.com wrote in message news:7c402e010907301615q7f86e8a1v5edb56ced5a80...@mail.gmail.com... Sorry, thought this was going to foundation-l. -S On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 3:14 PM, stevertigostv...@gmail.com wrote: It occurs to me that when people donate money to something, it is to some degree with an expectation that the recipient entity grows to eventually gain a certain kind of financial self-sufficiency. Is this not also the case with Wikimedia and many charitable donations to it? Carcharoth answered that question in October or November: can't do it for reasons in 501(c) that give us tax advantages. For those tax advantages, we forfeit our ability to acquire self-sustaining amounts of investment wealth; forfeit becoming a donor institution like Carnegie was or is. Do not sweat it. It is more important to carve policy that is well understood, that serves to distinguish our standards from other channels, that is consistent, and that is therefore complied with. That alone would make us self-sustaining. ___ My mind is like a blotter: Soaks it up, gets it backwards, and if it is a mess to begin with, then you get a Rorshach. ___ 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] Wikipedia:Paradoxes
wjhon...@aol.com wrote in message news:cd5.55c9d341.37a65...@aol.com... I know you are trying to be rigorous, but your logic has far too many assumptions to be so. Firstly you assume that a property is eternal. Predicate logic would probably assume that if A exists, than that does not change, but the entire message I'm proposing is that this property can change. That is, God can create a stone and then make it uncrushable. Does God turning a stone from crushable into uncrushable imply that God has done something which God cannot do? I submit that no it does not because God can simply change that property back to crushable once more, and then crush the stone. That is like a different question altogether, like [Can God create a stone that only he can crush, and then crush it.] The answer to that is yes, and it is not a paradox, because it is no longer a contest between two beings with mutually exclusive power. God takes the sensible approach and does not make the stone totally uncrushable in the first place. You are assuming that God is singular, but nothing in your logic requires that. If you make God plural, then you get another story in The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramayana or a Hellenistic story of an interaction between two or more gods that is not a paradox. You are welcome to propose a way for three bodies to form a paradox, and it seems like going into the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_body_problem in binary mode. You are also assuming that God is omnipotent. Yes. Why would that be a problem? It is a definition in Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. I already had to show you why omnipotence does not mean any combination of things. An xor statement, which disallows the possibility of neither, was an error, so I am deleting that quotation of myself, starting with Either The xor operator is like a sea-saw: as long as such a toy in your imagination does not break, it is true. So that's at least three pre-requisites that you did not state clearly. If you want to be rigorous perhaps you should start from a more basic set of axioms. I do not see anything here that readily goes into http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizar_system language, and I hav already said a lot which does not. Proofs do not allow for a lot of tolerance that I might express on any topic other than logic. In a message dated 8/1/2009 7:45:12 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, brewh...@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca writes: Please allow me to start this proof from scratch and try to go from the paradox that is most interesting to the simple answer of no, and generalizing it to all paradoxes, refuting objections in a monologue, because it does not seem to contain equally powerful participants. Can God crush an uncrushable stone? In mechanically verifiable predicate logic notation, I can write exists(God) implies not exists(UnCrushableStone). Spelled out in plain English, that means God can do any thing, and that is singular, because if God can do any combination of things, then he can contradict himself and crush the stone, which does not allow for a self-consistent proof, because that allows God to prove that the uncrushable stone did not exist in the first place. exists(UnCrushableStone) implies not exists(God). Translation: If the uncrushable stone exists, then God does not, because the stone's existence implies something God cannot do and God can do any thing. For God to crush the uncrushable stone requires both God and the uncrushable stone to be present at the same time. not(exists(God) and exists(UnCrushableStone)). Their existence is mutually exclusive. In any true paradox that demands a contest between two beings with an ultimate power, and where those two beings exclude each other, the answer is no, because those two beings cannot exist at once. So, what happens if God creates the uncrushable stone? He cannot do that without changing himself in the same move. In creating the uncrushable stone, he creates something that is not possible, so God would no longer be omnipotent. If God is no longer omnipotent, then no God is. ___ Another round, Mr. Descartes? I think not, said Descartes, who promptly vanished. Can you think?, I asked, putting Descartes before the horse. We are Descartes of Borg: We assimilate, therefore we are. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l **A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2 easy steps! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1222846709x1201493018/aol?redir=http://www.freecreditreport.com/pm/default.aspx?sc=668072hmpgID=115bcd =JulystepsfooterNO115) ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
[WikiEN-l] IRC office hours - Strategic Planning
It's that time again - Strategic Planning IRC office hours! This week's office hours will be: Wednesday from 04:00-05:00 UTC, which is: Tuesday, 9-10pm PDT Wednesday, 12am-1am EDT For more information, go to http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_Office_Hours Hope to see you there! Philippe Beaudette Facilitator, Strategic Planning Wikimedia Foundation pbeaude...@wikimedia.org 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 ___ 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] The end of donations
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 11:23 AM, Jay Litwynbrewh...@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca wrote: stevertigo stv...@gmail.com wrote in message On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 3:14 PM, stevertigostv...@gmail.com wrote: It occurs to me that when people donate money to something, it is to some degree with an expectation that the recipient entity grows to eventually gain a certain kind of financial self-sufficiency. Is this not also the case with Wikimedia and many charitable donations to it? I normally expect this. Carcharoth answered that question in October or November: can't do it for reasons in 501(c) that give us tax advantages. For those tax advantages, we forfeit our ability to acquire self-sustaining amounts of investment wealth; This is untrue. You can qualify as a publicly supported charity as long as 10% of total support/revenue comes from government funds and from public donations. (If over a third comes from government and public contributions, you're golden; but if you are clearly a publicly supported entity such as a library or educational institution, organized to 'attract new [government and public] support' you can get by with just 10%) http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p557.pdf (see p.29) We simply need to define a basic set of features and services that will be covered entirely by a self-sustaining foundation; and can raise further government and public funds to support new projects, RD, creative PR or outreach schemes, or a print Wikipedia 1.0 in 1,296 volumes... SJ ___ 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] Report a Problem hack
On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 9:01 PM, Emily Monroebluecalioc...@me.com wrote: I'd like it. Good for new page patrollers'. +1 for neat little pop-ups and easy error reporting. Can we also do something like this to report general interface and software bugs? SJ ___ 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] Report a Problem hack
On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 10:59 AM, Erik Moellere...@wikimedia.org wrote: It clearly requires a lot of maintenance of said error reports page to pull something like this off, but perhaps it would be worth trying out for a while? Definitely. Now, perhaps I'm too old and cynical, but with all these things, my initial reaction is that would be great...oh wait, we have this big community of people who will come up with some reason to shout it down. Lots of the smaller wikipedias have cool features that we don't have, simply because of the difficulty of changing status quo in a consensus-driven environment. But hey, if Erik is backing it, maybe it will get through ;) 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] Report a Problem hack
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 9:08 AM, Jay Litwyn brewh...@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca wrote: The problem with popups is that even Explorer Six can completely disable them or enable them for specific sites. Unlikely, it's not a real popup. They use javascript to float a div which contains a form on top of the article. ___ 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] If anyone ever says Wikipedia is too deletionist
On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Steve Bennettstevag...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 12:21 PM, Carcharothcarcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: But still? A local library? I find it useful to look at things in context with other similar institutions. So, I try and think of famous libraries. The British Library, the Bodleian Library, the Library of Congress, and so on. And then I try and think where my local library fits in on that scale. And I conclude: no article. Well, WP isn't paper. If your world is your town, then the history of your local library - from how it raised the million dollars needed to break ground and build it to its design and placement in the town, to the special collections and the services it provides, are both useful to locals, educational to visitors, and free knowledge about an institution designed to last for centuries. A local library is certainly not must have or important. It's not really even contributes to depth of knowledge. Why would it not contribute to depth of knowledge? That seems like the definition of the phrase... just another layer of depth. I would dearly like to know the nuanced history of my city's landscaping, zoning principles, and architecture over the past 5 centuries -- and would be delighted if I could zoom into the specific details of any given building or greensway of significance. Would you prefer to spin off a separate project such as http://local-free-encyclopedia.org/en/cambridge; for this purpose? US. Now is your local library in the top 10,000,000 articles? Why should WP not have 30M topics instead of 3M? I wish that growth had not slowed; there is so much yet to be covered. It's useful to have a balance among articles, and not to have a million detailed articles on buildings and none on major cities in Africa, absolutely. But notability standards have been steadily shifting for years... SJ ___ 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] Lies, damned lies, and statistics
On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 1:29 AM, Anthonywikim...@inbox.org wrote: Is Wales sole founder? I don't think you can come up with a reasonable definition of founder by which that is true. I would make the following observations based on my reading: 1) Wales' role in the genesis of Wikipedia is much more significant than Sanger's. Co-founder is giving too much credit. The guy that has the idea, the inspiration and the drive to make it happen deserves more credit than the guy who implements it. Employee is probably giving too little. 2) Some statements Wales made about Sanger's involvement are demonstrably untrue - Sanger has produced emails that show this. I'm prepared to accept that this is human fallability and vanity rather than some mastermind scheme to diddle Sanger out of his place in history. 3) None of this really matters because we all love Jimbo and we don't like Sanger. I mean, all else aside, Jimbo contributed a huge amount to Wikipedia basically out of a desire to help the human race. Sanger made Citizendium out of a desire to piss off Jimbo. 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] http://euobserver.com/883/28232
Sorry, what? I see that the photo at the top of that URL is the same as this one: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Houses.of.parliament.overall.arp.jpg That one is listed as public domain - so they don't even have to credit it. It says an Adrian Pingstone took the photo in 2005 and released it into PD. What's the problem, exactly? Steve On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 11:24 PM, Jay Litwynbrewh...@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca wrote: Subject-Was: GFDL compliance Speculative Addressee: webmaster at website in URL. The photo at the top, of Westminster Abbey? It is not carefully cited regarding the source. Could I ask you to pull the photo from wikipedia again to get a more ultimate source? If you click on the photo, then you should be able to find someone who knows their way around a camera. I wish I could say that all wikipedians were that dangerous. ___ 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] Lies, damned lies, and statistics
None of this really matters because we all love Jimbo and we don't like Sanger. I mean, all else aside, Jimbo contributed a huge amount to Wikipedia basically out of a desire to help the human race. Sanger made Citizendium out of a desire to piss off Jimbo. Uh I wouldn't be so fast to assume who we love and who we don't like. They both seem to have a certain type of personality that doesn't really work well with a consensus approach which is a bit odd. Both are the type that do and damn the consequences, and slow to apologize or offer constructive solutions. That's my opinion ;) Not that I'm not exactly the same way myself. W.J. -Original Message- From: Steve Bennett stevag...@gmail.com To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Mon, Aug 10, 2009 10:40 pm Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Lies, damned lies, and statistics On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 1:29 AM, Anthonywikim...@inbox.org wrote: Is Wales sole founder? I don't think you can come up with a reasonable definition of founder by which that is true. I would make the following observations based on my reading: 1) Wales' role in the genesis of Wikipedia is much more significant than Sanger's. Co-founder is giving too much credit. The guy that has the idea, the inspiration and the drive to make it happen deserves more credit than the guy who implements it. Employee is probably gi ving too little. 2) Some statements Wales made about Sanger's involvement are demonstrably untrue - Sanger has produced emails that show this. I'm prepared to accept that this is human fallability and vanity rather than some mastermind scheme to diddle Sanger out of his place in history. 3) None of this really matters because we all love Jimbo and we don't like Sanger. I mean, all else aside, Jimbo contributed a huge amount to Wikipedia basically out of a desire to help the human race. Sanger made Citizendium out of a desire to piss off Jimbo. 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 ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
