Re: [WikiEN-l] Hello world! (was "Hello world?")
On 17 January 2011 04:03, Anthony wrote: > Or, if you need the whole story: I think you've just proven Tony's point. - 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] Hello world! (was "Hello world?")
On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 9:50 PM, Anthony wrote: > On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 8:32 PM, Tony Sidaway wrote: >> And for the avoidance of doubt, I was referring to Anthony's decision >> to drag in a reference to pointless blog discussion thread about Jimmy >> Wales' birth date. > > I guess one person's "pointless blog discussion thread" is another > person's "proper source". > (http://blog.jimmywales.com/2007/08/08/my-birthdate/) > Or, if you need the whole story: In 2004 Wales says his birthdate is August 7 (http://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Board_of_Trustees&diff=prev&oldid=406). In 2006 he posts a message to Talk:Jimmy Wales asking for changes to be made to his article, stating among other things, that "My date of birth is not August 8, 1966." (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Jimmy_Wales&diff=63246911&oldid=63223187). Then, in 2007 he tells a reporter that the Wikipedia given date of August 7 is incorrect, that "They [Wikipedia] got it from (Encyclopedia) Britannica," "and Britannica got it wrong." (http://blog.oregonlive.com/siliconforest/2007/07/on_wikipedia_and_its_founders.html) He then posts to his blog that "for the first time the world has a proper source", linking to that reporters blog. (http://blog.jimmywales.com/2007/08/08/my-birthdate/) Then, in 2010, he posts to Talk:Jimmy Wales that "I was born on the 7th of August, according to my mother. My legal paperwork all says 8th of August, due to an error on my birth certificate." (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=prev&oldid=399961785) The point being that trusting Jimmy Wales when it comes to seemingly trivial matters is not a good idea, because Jimmy Wales lies about seemingly trivial matters. And putting unsubstantiated statements made by Jimmy Wales into a Wikipedia article, without properly attributing them to him, is also a mistake, for the same reason. ___ 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] Pew surveys, 2007 and 2010
Few organizations track Wikipedia usage. Pew has carried out a couple of surveys of American adults in recent years, listed below: 2007 http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2007/Wikipedia-users.aspx 2007 "36% of online American adults consult Wikipedia" Pew found that in America Wikipedia was more popular with wealthy people, white people and English-speaking hispanics, men, adults under 30, college graduates and home broadband users (obviously some of those factors correlate). Please note that Pew doesn't survey under-18s. Wikipedia was the most popular education and reference website by almost an order of magnitude. "Over 70% of the visits to Wikipedia in the week ending March 17 came from search engines, according to Hitwise data." But the web and the way people use it has continued to evolve. 2010 http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Wikipedia.aspx "53 percent of online Americans use Wikipedia" 'In the "scope of general online activities, using Wikipedia is more popular than sending instant messages (done by 47 percent of Internet users) or rating a product, service, or person (32 percent), but is less popular than using social network sites (61 percent) or watching videos on sites like YouTube (66 percent)."' ___ 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] Hello world! (was "Hello world?")
On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 8:32 PM, Tony Sidaway wrote: > And for the avoidance of doubt, I was referring to Anthony's decision > to drag in a reference to pointless blog discussion thread about Jimmy > Wales' birth date. I guess one person's "pointless blog discussion thread" is another person's "proper source". (http://blog.jimmywales.com/2007/08/08/my-birthdate/) ___ 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] Hello world! (was "Hello world?")
And for the avoidance of doubt, I was referring to Anthony's decision to drag in a reference to pointless blog discussion thread about Jimmy Wales' birth date. ___ 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] Hello world! (was "Hello world?")
On 17 January 2011 00:50, wiki wrote: > I don't think it helps to characterise any simple questioning of the leader > as a "deranged vendetta". Simple questioning isn't what I call a "deranged vendetta". Snide innuendo of the most slimy kind is what I refer to. As I said, I question the purpose and utility of leading the discussion down this rabbit hole. The discussion of a simple test statement typed during the first stages of the wiki, and its' possible applications as a motto for the project describing its purpose in a simple two-word phrase, somehow became a discussion about the truthfulness of an individual. That isn't helpful. ___ 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] Hello world! (was "Hello world?")
On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 11:50 AM, wiki wrote: > I don't think it helps to characterise any simple questioning of the leader > as a "deranged vendetta". I thought Tony was merely engaging in some gentle self-criticism. -- Peter in Canberra ___ 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] Hello world! (was "Hello world?")
I don't think it helps to characterise any simple questioning of the leader as a "deranged vendetta". Are you suggesting all criticism is a mark of either hatred or insanity - or both? That line of defending leaders against criticism has a somewhat unsavoury history. What happened here is that someone noted that the archives that have emerged didn't record Jimmy's "hello world" as the fist edit. That type of attention to detail is hardly surprising when Wikipedians are so keen to document their own history, and culturally sensitive to looking for verification of any claims. Now, it is quite possible that the archives omit "hello world" because they are incomplete. It is also possible (as I suggested) that the story may be more pictorial than literal: Jimmy began the thing: once Wikipedia was not, then Jimmy said hello to the world. To that degree it is a useful myth whose literal accuracy (or our ability to verify such) may be thought irrelevant. It is, of course, quite proper to say "it doesn't matter". However, in that case it neither matters to denounce Jimmy (even if he were misremembering) nor to defend him (even if he were literally correct about his edits). Those who don't care, don't want to know. Anyone who does care, probably will never know anyway. Scott Oh, I use 'myth' in the technical sense - not in the untruth sense - but therein lies another whole debate. -Original Message- From: wikien-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Tony Sidaway Sent: 16 January 2011 23:27 To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Hello world! (was "Hello world?") Does every thread referring to Jimmy Wales really have to become a venue for some deranged vendetta? How does this help us to write an encyclopedia? ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ 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] Long-term searchability of the internet
I think the point is being missed. Wikipedia does not set out to manipulate search engine results, that's just a happy accident of its content being pretty good and many search engines weighting its content appropriately. We make the internet not suck by putting the information on our website, maintaining it and permitting its re-use and modification subject to a reasonable licence. Our method of organization is thus an alternative to using a search engine. It's far more modest than google because it's not trying to aggregate everything that's out there. People work on what they find interesting and use the resources they know about. All anybody needs to know is: Wikipedia exists and it can be found by all decent search engines. Its content is indexed by the same search engines so it's easy to narrow down a search to prioritize content from Wikipedia. I remember talking to a TV journalist about 15 years ago, no stranger to online life. When I said how useful I found Altavista, the Google of its time, he lamented that it didn't work, because new websites were being created so quickly there was no possibility it could ever keep its indexes up to date. Again; completely missing the point. We don't need to be able to find every single thing on the internet, only the useful stuff. A huge amount of the useful stuff is on Wikipedia. ___ 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] Hello world! (was "Hello world?")
Does every thread referring to Jimmy Wales really have to become a venue for some deranged vendetta? How does this help us to write an encyclopedia? ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Long-term searchability of the internet
Interesting thread and questions. A related question though is whether unfettered eternal searchability of the Internet is unambiguously a good thing. Take the types of BLP, privacy, etc. issues we deal with everyday on Wikipedia, and extrapolate them to the rest of the 'net Newyorkbrad On 1/14/11, Carcharoth wrote: > (Following on from another thread) > > I have a theory that Wikipedia makes only *part* of the Internet not > suck. Wikipedians aggregate online knowledge (and offline as well, but > let's stick to online here), thus making it easier to find information > about something, especially when there are lots of ambiguous hits on a > Google search and you don't know enough to refine the search. But the > useful parts of the internet (i.e. not the social media and similarly > non-transient information-deficient areas of the internet) didn't stop > growing when Wikipedia came along. > > In theory, if the growth of the information-dense parts of the > internet has continued to outstrip the growth of Wikipedia and the > ability of Wikipedians to aggregate that knowledge base, then large > parts of that part of the internet should still "suck" (to continue > using that terminology) - i.e. be less amenable to searching due to > absence of information or poorly organised information. I base this on > many years of searching daily for information about topics ranging > from the well-known to the borderline obscure to the outright obscure. > > Over the years since Wikipedia started, the ability to find > information online has changed beyond recognition. Around about 2004-5 > (I need to check dates here), Wikipedia was rising rapidly up the > search rankings, and now comes top or near the top on most searches. > But there are still many, many topics on which no articles, or only > redlinks, exist. I come across these daily when searching, and see > that information on these topics is out there, scattered around if you > search on Google, but hasn't been aggregated yet. > > The question I have is whether the growth in the amount of > unaggregated information (and I include other information-organising > sites here, not just Wikipedia) will always outstrip the ability of > various processes (include the growth of Wikipedia) to aggregate it > into something more useful? If the long-term answer is yes, then > information overload is inevitable (and search engines will gradually > start to suck again). If the long-term answer is no, then at some > point the online aggregation (or co-ordination of data to form > information in the real sense) will start to overtake the flow of > information from offline to online, and order will continue to emerge > from the (relative) chaos. > > The key seems to be the quality of the information put online. > Well-organised and searchable sites and databases are good. Poorly > organised information sources, less so, as while they can in theory be > found by search engines, they may be less easy to distinguish from the > background noise, though it also depends greatly on the amount of > information you start with when carrying out a search for more > information. > > To take a specific example, I very occasionally come across names of > people or topics where it is next-to-impossible to find out anything > meaningful about them because the name is identical to that of someone > else. Sometimes this is companies that name themselves after something > well-known and any search is swamped by hits to that well-known > namesake. Other times, it is someone more famous swamping a relatively > obscure person - a recent example I found here is the physicist Otto > Klemperer. Despite having the name and profession, it is remarkably > difficult to find information about the physicist as opposed to the > composer. If I had a birth year, it would be much easier, of course. > > 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 > ___ 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] Long-term searchability of the internet
On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 6:45 PM, Ian Woollard wrote:
> On 15/01/2011, Carcharoth wrote:
>> To take a specific example, I very occasionally come across names of
>> people or topics where it is next-to-impossible to find out anything
>> meaningful about them because the name is identical to that of someone
>> else. Sometimes this is companies that name themselves after something
>> well-known and any search is swamped by hits to that well-known
>> namesake. Other times, it is someone more famous swamping a relatively
>> obscure person - a recent example I found here is the physicist Otto
>> Klemperer. Despite having the name and profession, it is remarkably
>> difficult to find information about the physicist as opposed to the
>> composer. If I had a birth year, it would be much easier, of course.
>
> That's the primary advantage of an encyclopedia of course. It doesn't
> rely much on the vagaries of English.
Yeah, but it only helps if there is an entry on the person you are
looking for information on! So far I have the date of his PhD (1923)
in Berlin from the maths geneaology site:
http://www.genealogy.ams.org/id.php?id=62580
And that he worked with Hans Geiger and was the author of a paper in
1934 ('On the Radioactivity of Potassium and Rubidium'):
http://www.jstor.org/pss/96293
Plug in "Geiger-Klemperer ball counter" to a search engine, and you
begin to get more details (there are a number of devices that are
'loosely' called Geiger counters, but are named for the people that
developed them, such as Geiger-Muller, Geiger-Klemperer, and
Rutherford-Geiger counters).
There is also a William Klemperer (who is a physicist and who has an
article on Wikipedia), who is apparently related to the Otto Klemperer
who is the famous conductor, but I wonder whether he is related to the
Otto Klemperer who is a physicist, and people are confusing the two?
I also found a patent here for an electron lens:
http://www.google.co.uk/patents/about?id=0ClhEBAJ
Filed by a "Otto Ernst Heinrich Klemperer" on 31 Mar 1944, and issued
December 1946.
Probably the same Otto Klemperer who was the author of "Electron
Optics", which is still in print:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Electron-Optics-Cambridge-Monographs-Physics/dp/0521179734
The patent I only just discovered, but that is all I have on this Otto
Klemperer at the moment.
Carcharoth
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