Re: [WikiEN-l] Atlantic on Wikipedia and PR

[Anthony]

Fred Bauder and The Cunctator!

Are we having a reunion?

Hi guys!

On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 4:33 AM, FRED BAUDER  wrote:

> On Mon, 17 Aug 2015 10:21:25 -0400
>  The Cunctator  wrote:
>
>>
>> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/08/wikipedia-editors-for-pay/393926/
>> The Covert World of People Trying to Edit Wikipedia—for Pay
>>
>
> Good to hear from you again Cunctator!
>
> The article goes on to point out that many of us, despite not being paid,
> nevertheless are trying to make points. True enough.
>
> Fred Bauder
>
>
>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Psychological correlates of deletionism/inclusionism?

[Anthony]

On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 9:31 AM, David Gerard  wrote:

> On 14 April 2013 14:29, David Gerard  wrote:
> > On 14 April 2013 14:21, Anthony  wrote:
>
> >> We have Wales to "thank" for the absurd "Articles for Creation" process
> (Is
> >> that still around?  I haven't checked in a long time.).  Seems to me
> that
> >> constitutes a "significant role in debates over inclusion deletion".
>
> > Only by a stretch. I'd call it an argument against top-down
> > intervention. There is no such thing as rescue by magic, and berating
> > someone for failing to do the impossible strikes me as pointless.
> > Pretty much everything that's fucked up about Wikipedia is emergent
> > behaviour of people being a problem, and top-down magic can't possibly
> > scale to fix that. It can cripple it, though.
>
>
> I'll also note that I suspect opening up article creation to anons
> again will be impossible within the community - because they actually
> wanted to lock it down even further, and the Foundation stepped in and
> said "no, keep it open".


I don't see what the stretch is.  Wales made it much more difficult for
Wikipedia neophytes to create new articles.  That's pretty clearly relevant
to the inclusion/deletion debate.

As far as what is possible/impossible, I think you're largely correct.  As
was suggested by Gwern, the "inclusionists" were largely driven out, and
the 2005/2006 time frame was probably the peak of that.

I'm certainly not suggesting that article creation be reopened to anons and
that this is going to solve anything.  Actually I'm not suggesting anything
at all as far as what should be done.  I make an occasional edit, usually
with a throwaway account or under an IP address, but I don't follow this
stuff that much any more.

I'm not even saying very much about whether or not the right choices were
made back in the 2003/2004/2005/2006 time-frame that I'm familiar with.  I
do think "Articles for Creation" is absurd, though even that is more a
comment on the technology/interface than on the idea (if you want to make
new articles go through a review process, there are much better ways to
design the interface).  But for the most part what caused me to comment was
to point out facts in the history which are relevant to others who wish to
make those evaluations.
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Psychological correlates of deletionism/inclusionism?

[Anthony]

Looking more at this, it seems that Wales has been given "credit" for
exactly this intervention:

"Wales has, in the past, instructed Wikimedia's system administrators to
implement software changes that constitute de facto Wikipedia policy
changes. For instance, in December 2005, in response to the Seigenthaler
incident, Wales removed the ability of unregistered users to create new
pages on the English-language Wikipedia. This change was proposed as an
"experiment", but has been in place ever since."

We have Wales to "thank" for the absurd "Articles for Creation" process (Is
that still around?  I haven't checked in a long time.).  Seems to me that
constitutes a "significant role in debates over inclusion deletion".
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Psychological correlates of deletionism/inclusionism?

[Anthony]

On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 8:59 AM, David Gerard  wrote:

> On 14 April 2013 13:41, Anthony  wrote:
>
> > He certainly could have intervened in the arb com cases where I was
> > vilified for my VfD comments, which I guess would be characterized as
> > "inclusionist".
>
>
> I think the overarching problem was that you spent several years being
> an unproductive pain in the backside. This tends to leave people less
> inspired to generosity.


Granted.  If I knew now what I knew then...  Well, I probably just would
have left sooner.  But the overarching focus of both arb com cases was
surrounding VfD.

As for the correlation of the "oh shit graph" to inclusionism/deletionism:

A restriction of new article creation to registered users only was put in
place in December 2005." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia
)

In December 2005, there is a sharp spike in "active editors", and a sharp
decline in 1-year retention.  I would say that is at least partially a
direct result.
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Psychological correlates of deletionism/inclusionism?

[Anthony]

On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 7:35 PM, Gwern Branwen  wrote:

> My own
> impression was that the debates were never resolved so much as the
> inclusionists driven out. Just look at the editor population numbers
> from the last 9 years, since 2006, or look at the article growth
> rates. Has the Foundation succeeded in keeping the editor population
> from dropping (never mind growing, or growing as fast as the
> Internet)? I've tracked some of the public goals and they've failed
> entirely.
>


IIRC, some key inflection points on the "oh shit graph" match up fairly
closely with the elimination of article creation by "anonymous" users.
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Psychological correlates of deletionism/inclusionism?

[Anthony]

On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 8:34 PM, David Gerard  wrote:

> On 14 April 2013 01:29, Gwern Branwen  wrote:
> > On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 7:54 PM, Fred Bauder 
> wrote:
>
> >> Jimbo and Angela did not play a significant role in debates over
> >> inclusion and deletion
>
> > Indeed, that was my point. I don't think they did anything, or
> > intended anything of the kind, but they chose not to intervene back
> > when the gradual slide could have been stopped and so the ultimate
> > effect was much the same. (Amusingly eventually leading to a nasty
> > surprise for Jimbo with Mzoli's.)
>
>
> You're assuming they could have



He certainly could have intervened in the arb com cases where I was
vilified for my VfD comments, which I guess would be characterized as
"inclusionist".
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Larry Sanger's new project

[Anthony]

On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 12:01 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 14 February 2013 13:51, David Gerard  wrote:
>
>> A commercial enterprise "a bit like a wiki or a blog" that's "a way to
>> crowdsource *high-quality* information".
>> http://columbus.craigslist.org/eng/3614099241.html
>
>
> Splash page up now:
>
> http://infobitt.com/

Like most descriptions of projects that give no details as to actual
implementation, so you fill in the blanks with your own wildest
dreams, it sounds awesome.  :)

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Re: [WikiEN-l] If someone gave you the entirety of Wikipedia from 100 years in the future for only 10 minutes, what would you read?

[Anthony]

Place of death:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycenae,_New_York

Make sure you stay away from [[Troy, New York]] too.  And don't bother
predicting its destruction.  No one will believe you.

On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 6:01 PM, Carcharoth  wrote:
> Yeah, like that would work! Some strange plot device involving
> disambiguation pages and arriving somewhere on the fatal day and
> discovering that a town has just changed its name, would lead to the
> inevitable denouement... (you know, like all those failed 'avoiding
> death' scenarios in the Final Destination film series - if you've not
> seen them, best avoided really).
>
> Carcharoth
>
> On 2/12/13, Newyorkbrad  wrote:
>> I would look up my obituary on the [[Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians]] page
>> and see what was listed as my place of death.  Then, I would make sure
>> never to go there.
>>
>> Newyorkbrad
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 2:09 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/18dcov/if_someone_gave_you_the_entirety_of_wikipedia/
>>>
>>>
>>> - d.
>>>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] If someone gave you the entirety of Wikipedia from 100 years in the future for only 10 minutes, what would you read?

[Anthony]

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dl Bt (752nd nomination)

On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 2:09 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/18dcov/if_someone_gave_you_the_entirety_of_wikipedia/
>
>
> - d.
>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] How to write about things that were once notable?

[Anthony]

On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 10:39 AM, Fred Bauder  wrote:
 If readers continue to want to read about it, then it continues to be
 notable, no?
>>>
>>> No, notablity was established by the amount of information published in
>>> significant reliable sources. Reader, and editor, interest is
>>> irrelevant.
>>
>> My bad.  My comment was based on the apparently mistaken premise that
>> we were speaking English when using words such as "notable".
>
> "Notable" is a term of art on Wikipedia defined by policy. As an English
> word it has a broader meaning.

Call me the Clarence Thomas of Wikipedia jurisprudence, I guess.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] How to write about things that were once notable?

[Anthony]

>> If readers continue to want to read about it, then it continues to be
>> notable, no?
>
> No, notablity was established by the amount of information published in
> significant reliable sources. Reader, and editor, interest is irrelevant.

My bad.  My comment was based on the apparently mistaken premise that
we were speaking English when using words such as "notable".

> However, we do need a mechanism for weeding out information which is no
> longer of interest to readers or editors.

Why?  Is it irrelevant, or is it relevant?

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Re: [WikiEN-l] How to write about things that were once notable?

[Anthony]

On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 5:57 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Citizendium#So_what_and_how_do_we_write_about_this_sort_of_thing.3F
>
> How to write about things like [[Citizendium]], [[Conservapedia]],
> [[Veropedia]] - things that were notable at the time and got lots of
> press coverage and hence articles, and which readers may well want to
> read about into the future - but which have fallen out of notice and
> so their decline (and, in the case of Veropedia, death) got no
> coverage and hence we can't answer the reader question "so, whatever
> did happen to X?"

If readers continue to want to read about it, then it continues to be
notable, no?

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Re: [WikiEN-l] "Stocking personal details"

[Anthony]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 6:32 AM, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
> Achim lives in Germany, so is very much subject to German law. He's
> equally subject to German law if he edits the English Wikipedia,
> though. There is no connection between a particular language Wikipedia
> and the law of a country that speaks that language.
>
> The OP said that the French Wikipedia was illegal, not that
> contributing to Wikipedia while in France could be illegal. They are
> very different things.

And you said "French law doesn't apply."  You didn't say "France is
unlikely to be able extradite people from the United States over the
issue."  They are very different things.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] on citing Wikipedia in U.S. court opinions

[Anthony]

On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 2:42 PM, Newyorkbrad  wrote:
> And the best post I've found on the current case:
>
> http://www.volokh.com/2012/08/16/citing-wikipedia-in-court-opinions/

Am I missing something?  That's just a cut and paste of the concurring
opinion and a paragraph of the ruling.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] on citing Wikipedia in U.S. court opinions

[Anthony]

On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 10:51 PM, Fred Bauder  wrote:
> In the court's opinion judicial notice was not taken, but information
> obtained about common usage of the term, "jet ski," used in the insurance
> contract. Judicial notice seems to be out of bounds under some reasoning;
> doubtless I do not fully understand what it means as a legal term.

http://www.utcourts.gov/resources/rules/ure/0201.htm

Wikipedia is certainly not a source "whose accuracy cannot reasonably
be questioned".

And if the fact "is generally known within the trial court’s
territorial jurisdiction", then Wikipedia isn't necessary.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] on citing Wikipedia in U.S. court opinions

[Anthony]

In the concurring opinion, Judge Voros says that "getting a sense of
the common usage or ordinary and plain meaning of a contract term is
precisely the purpose for which the lead opinion here cites Wikipedia.
 Our reliance on this source is therefore, in my judgment,
appropriate."

On this, he is grossly mistaken.  A Wikipedia entry may reflect the
common usage.  Most of the time, for most entries, it probably does.
On the other hand, it may not.  And an appeals court judge shouldn't
be digging through the edit history to figure out which one it is.
This type of analysis should, if at all, be done by an expert witness,
who could be cross examined by the opposing counsel.

As it stands, all the Wikipedia entry showed was that at one point one
person wrote what happened to appear there at the time when it was
accessed.

On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 10:23 PM, Mark  wrote:
> Making the blog-rounds, there was a Utah court case that includes
> surprisingly lengthy (and generally positive) discussion on whether and when
> to cite Wikipedia in court decisions:
>
> * http://www.utcourts.gov/opinions/appopin/fire_insurance081612.pdf
>
> See footnote 1 (page 5) in the majority opinion, and a separate concurring
> opinion filed by another judge solely on the Wikipedia-citation question
> (starts on the bottom of page 7). My favorite part is where they cite the
> Wikipedia article "Reliability of Wikipedia" as part of the analysis.
>
> Embarrassingly, the article of ours they cite, [[Jet Ski]], is actually in a
> sort of sorry state. But they seem to do so only for the relatively mundane
> usage note in the opening paragraph, which explains that "Jet Ski" is a
> trademark, but is often used imprecisely, in colloquial usage, to refer to
> other similar devices not manufactured by Kawasaki. I guess the OED doesn't
> have a note on that yet? Or maybe they don't have OED subscriptions over at
> the court? Alternately, maybe they just liked the way we worded the
> explanation and wanted to quote it rather than re-explaining the same thing
> in their own words.
>
> -Mark

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Massive AfC backlog

[Anthony]

On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 4:25 PM, Matthew Bowker
 wrote:
> Even through all that, I believe AfC needs to exist.  It does provide a
> great service to anon editors who won't create accounts for whatever reason.

The only reason that makes any sense would be that they don't realize
how easy it is to create a single-purpose account.

And that's better solved through a different method.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] "How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit", _The Atlantic_

[Anthony]

On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 3:54 PM, David Levy  wrote:
> Anthony wrote:
>
>> You certainly should revert Gwern's changes.  There's no dispute about that.
>
> Indeed, but that's a different context; we were discussing the
> appropriateness of Gwern's experiment and ones like it.

So we need to weigh the harm vs. the benefits, right?

>> What's a "consensus-backed experiment"?
>
> An experiment whose validity and appropriateness have been affirmed by
> the community.

I'm not letting you out that easy.  What does it mean to "have been
affirmed by the community"?

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Re: [WikiEN-l] "How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit", _The Atlantic_

[Anthony]

On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 2:23 PM, David Levy  wrote:
> Anthony wrote:
>
>> > > What established framework are you talking about, here?
>
>> > I'm referring to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines (and more
>> > importantly, the underlying principles).
>> >
>> > An editor, acting in good faith, might believe that creating pages
>> > for dictionary definitions or dessert recipes improves the
>> > encyclopedia.  Does this mean that we're required to refrain from
>> > intervening?  Of course not.
>
>> Of course not.  You should revert the editor's changes.
>
> Exactly.
>
> You stated that "trusting people to act in good faith in the way that
> they feel is in the long-term best interest of creating an
> encyclopedia is what Wikipedia is all about".  My point is that
> additional criteria are routinely applied.  Someone's good-faith
> belief that a particular act "is in the long-term best interest of
> creating an encyclopedia" doesn't automatically justify (let alone
> mandate) its acceptance by the community.

You certainly should revert Gwern's changes.  There's no dispute about that.

>> The data may still be useful.
>
> Agreed.  I don't assert that the experiment is invalid.  I note that
> *others* do.

Which others?  I thought you were referring to me as one of the others.

>> > Maybe the community cares.
>
>> Then the community can come up with its own experiment.  Or, they can
>> if you'll let them.
>
> If the community devises a consensus-backed experiment, of course I'll
> "let them".

Heh.  What's a "consensus-backed experiment"?

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Re: [WikiEN-l] "How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit", _The Atlantic_

[Anthony]

On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 5:45 PM, David Levy  wrote:
> Gwern Branwen wrote:
>
>> Anthony's complaint there is more one complaining about what he thinks
>> is a misleading summary.
>
> It's been asserted that your experiment's parameters were poorly
> selected (and therefore won't yield useful data).

The data may still be useful.  After discussing things with Gwern I
think he's mostly right that the problem was more his summary of the
experiment.  He intentionally tried to choose links which he felt were
more vulnerable, not random links.

Gwern asked me earlier "do you have a better summary in 7 words?"  I
think we're going to have to wait for the results before coming up
with a summary.  But if the results show this, something like
"Wikipedia is vulnerable to the unjustified removal of certain types
of external links." (13 words)  Before the results are released, maybe
"I removed 100 random external links of a certain type." (10 words)

Yes, it uses the weasel words "of a certain type", but these can be
clarified in the details.

>> I don't care about how well official links are defended,
>
> Maybe the community cares.

Then the community can come up with its own experiment.  Or, they can
if you'll let them.

>> because they tend to be the most useless external links around and
>> also are the most permitted by EL.
>
> You're acknowledging that you based your experiment's parameters on
> your personal biases.

His experiment's parameters was based on his beliefs.  This is how
experimentation is supposed to work.  You don't set up an experiment
to determine something you don't care about.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] "How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit", _The Atlantic_

[Anthony]

On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 5:43 PM, David Levy  wrote:
> Anthony wrote:
>
>> What established framework are you talking about, here?
>
> I'm referring to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines (and more
> importantly, the underlying principles).
>
> An editor, acting in good faith, might believe that creating pages for
> dictionary definitions or dessert recipes improves the encyclopedia.
> Does this mean that we're required to refrain from intervening?  Of
> course not.

Of course not.  You should revert the editor's changes.

> IAR is one of our most important policies, but it isn't a license to
> dismiss others' concerns.  Perhaps a one-off exception to our
> vandalism policy *would* improve the encyclopedia, but it isn't
> Gwern's place to unilaterally determine this and disregard requests to
> seek consensus.

It wasn't vandalism.  The vandalism policy is clear about this.  It is
not vandalism, but it is prohibited:  "What is not vandalism" "Editing
tests by experimenting users:  Users sometimes edit pages as an
experiment. Such edits, while prohibited, are treated differently from
vandalism. "

> "Obviously I did all my editing as an anon: if even an anonymous IP
> can get away this kind of blatant vandalism just by invoking the name
> WP:EL, then that's a lower bound on how much an editor can get away
> with."

Thanks for this.  I guess he called it vandalism.  Unless he's been
lying about his motive, he was wrong, though.

>> As I said before, the experiment wouldn't have been at all accurate if
>> he had consulted beforehand.  People would have been on the lookout
>> for the removal of external links by IP addresses.
> []
> If not, another option was to consult the WMF.  (I've noted this several 
> times.)

I doubt that would have worked.  And it's not a good use of WMF
employee time anyway.  The new TOS is pretty clear that WMF doesn't
want to get involved in such minutiae.

> You weren't aware that we generally frown upon edits intended to
> reduce articles' quality?

I believe the intent was to improve articles' quality.

> And again, we're quibbling over terminology.

Fair enough.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] "How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit", _The Atlantic_

[Anthony]

On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 8:02 PM, David Levy  wrote:
> Anthony wrote:
>
>> I believe I answered this above.  Trusting people to act in good faith
>> in the way that they feel is in the long-term best interest of
>> creating an encyclopedia is what Wikipedia is all about.
>
> I answered *that* by pointing out that we don't indiscriminately
> permit good-faith editors to do whatever "they feel is in the
> long-term best interest of creating an encyclopedia".  When they
> operate outside the established framework (without consensus that an
> exception is warranted), we intervene.

What established framework are you talking about, here?

>> There is a difference between not-condoning the behavior, and calling
>> it vandalism.
>
> _Gwern_ has called it "vandalism" continually (both in this discussion
> and on Jimbo's talk page) and even mocked a user for suggesting
> otherwise.

When, in this discussion (I haven't read the talk page), did he do
that?  I just did a search for "vandalism" in this thread, and I don't
see it.

>> Do I think Gwern made mistakes in his experiment? Absolutely.
>
> And those mistakes could have been prevented via consultation with the
> Wikipedia editing community.

As I said before, the experiment wouldn't have been at all accurate if
he had consulted beforehand.  People would have been on the lookout
for the removal of external links by IP addresses.

> Setting aside the issue of terminology (addressed above), our default
> position is to condemn the type of edit that Gwern performed and seek
> to counter it.  The onus is on Gwern to establish that a special
> exception should be made.

If you say so.  I'm not familiar with that part of the official handbook.

>> Assume good faith.
>
> At no point have I accused Gwern of acting in bad faith.

You accused Gwern, several times, of vandalism.  Good faith edits are
not vandalism.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] "How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit", _The Atlantic_

[Anthony]

On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 6:02 PM, Gwern Branwen  wrote:
> On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 5:32 PM, Anthony  wrote:
>> How could we do that?  You could have just cherrypicked the worst
>> links that were last links which are not official or
>> template-generated in External Link sections.  I'm not saying I think
>> you did that.  But you certainly could have.
>
> Cherrypicking even under this strategy would force me to do both >2x
> as much work and engage in conscious deception.

Yes.  I'm not saying I think you did that.  It never crossed my mind
that you might have intentionally tried to bias the sample, until you
said "anyone will be able to check whether I did".  We can't check.
We simply have to trust you that you picked the links in the way that
you claim to have picked the links.

In any case, it really doesn't matter, because your sample *was*
biased, regardless of your intention.

>> Anyway, the main thing I'd like to say about all of this is simply
>> that your selection is not random.  Your sample is biased.  Biased in
>> which direction, I don't know.  Biased intentionally, I doubt.  But
>> your sample is biased.
>
> Sheesh. Every sample is biased in many ways - but random samples are
> biased in unpredictable ways, which is why randomizing was such a big
> innovation when Fisher and his contemporaries introduced it. What's
> next, PRNGs are unacceptable for any kind of study because you can
> predict each output if you know the seed and run the PRNG
> appropriately?

You should read more about sampling bias.  Or talk to someone who has.

PRNGs are acceptable, though you do have to be careful to avoid
publication bias.

If you took a list of all external links, and then used a PRNG to pick
100 numbers between 1 and N (the number of links), and then removed
those external links, then you would have a random sample.  The fact
that you can predict each output if you know the seed and run the PRNG
appropriately would only come into play if you ran the test several
times, with different seeds, and selected one of the runs.

By picking articles first, then picking links, you introduce bias.
You are biasing your links toward those which are in articles with
fewer links.  These are probably less likely to be noticed when
removed, because articles with lots of links are more likely to be on
watchlists, and tend to have more objective criteria.  By limiting
yourself to links in the External Links section, you introduce bias.
These links tend to be the least useful, as they are essentially
miscellanea.  By limiting yourself to links which are not official,
you introduce bias.  This one is pretty obvious, I think, and it is
one introduction of bias which I think you did intentionally.  The
removal of official links is quite clearly more likely to be reverted.
 By limiting yourself to links in articles with more than one external
link, and only to links which are not template-generated, you
introduce bias.  You pretty much admit this, and admit that the bias
was intentional ("avoids issues where pages might have 5 or 10
'official' external links to various versions or localizations, all of
which an editor could confidently and blindly revert the removal of;
template-generated links also carry imprimaturs of authority").

All of this is fine, by the way, depending on what your intention was
to show.  If it was to show that a certain type of external link can
be removed without likely being reverted, then your methodology is
fine.  But then you shouldn't advertise your experiment as "the
removal of 100 random external links", because that is not what you
did.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] "How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit", _The Atlantic_

[Anthony]

>> > Again, what if hundreds or thousands of users, whose methodologies
>> > are undiscussed and potentially flawed, were to take it upon
>> > themselves to conduct such "experiments" without consultation or
>> > approval?  That's the hypothetical scenario to which I referred.
>
>> Yes, I know.
>
> And you believe that this would improve the encyclopedia?  (Please
> keep in mind that knowledge of a time frame and commitment to restore
> the links "that deserve to be added back" aren't actually included in
> the scenario; we would know little or nothing about the hypothetical
> users' plans.)

I believe I answered this above.  Trusting people to act in good faith
in the way that they feel is in the long-term best interest of
creating an encyclopedia is what Wikipedia is all about.

Anyway, the world would be drastically different if hundreds or
thousands of people were curious enough to conduct such experiments.
In my opinion, it would probably be a better place.

> An editor, acting in good faith, might believe that inserting original
> research and edit-warring to keep it in place improves the
> encyclopedia.  That doesn't mean that we're obligated to condone such
> behavior, let alone without discussion.

There is a difference between not-condoning the behavior, and calling
it vandalism.  Do I think Gwern made mistakes in his experiment?
Absolutely.  I've already said many times that I think his sample was
biased.

There's also a difference between temporarily removing 100 external
links, and edit-warring over the insertion of original research.
Gwern wasn't edit-warring at all.  What he did was much less
disruptive.

>> What doesn't make much sense is the simultaneous belief that 1) no one
>> cares;
>
> People obviously care about vandalism.  This simply isn't a glaring
> type, nor does it affect an element of the utmost importance.

It isn't vandalism.  He wasn't doing it for the purpose of hurting the
encyclopedia.

>> and 2) it is vandalism that absolutely *must be stopped* lest Kant
>> roll over in his grave.
>
> Our default position is to condemn vandalism and seek to counter it.
> The onus is on Gwern to establish that a special exception should be
> made.

It isn't vandalism.

Assume good faith.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] "How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit", _The Atlantic_

[Anthony]

On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 11:39 AM, Gwern Branwen  wrote:
> On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 8:15 AM, Anthony  wrote:
>> So, you are not removing random links at all.
>
>>.< I should just link XKCD here, but I'll forebear. I am reminded of an 
>>anecdote describing a court case involving the draft back in Vietnam, where 
>>the plaintiff's lawyer argued that the little cage and balls method was not 
>>random and was unfair because the balls on top were much more likely to be 
>>selected. The judge asked, "Unfair to *whom*?" Indeed.
---
>From the beginning you seem to be under the mistaken impression that I
am trying to defend Wikipedia or defend the current Wikipedia
processes or something.  I am not.  I find your experiment
interesting.  I think it would be more interesting if your selection
of links were truly random, though.

I don't think you should describe your experiment as "removal of 100
random external links by an IP", because your selection was not at all
random.  I don't say this because I am trying to prove something about
the results.  I say it because it is a flaw in your methodology.

> And I'd note that my methodology, while being quite as random as most
> methods, carries the usual advantages of determinism: anyone will be
> able to check whether I did in fact remove only last links which are
> not official or template-generated in External Link sections, and that
> I did not simply cherrypick the links that I thought were worst and so
> least likely to be restored.

How could we do that?  You could have just cherrypicked the worst
links that were last links which are not official or
template-generated in External Link sections.  I'm not saying I think
you did that.  But you certainly could have.

Anyway, the main thing I'd like to say about all of this is simply
that your selection is not random.  Your sample is biased.  Biased in
which direction, I don't know.  Biased intentionally, I doubt.  But
your sample is biased.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] "How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit", _The Atlantic_

[Anthony]

On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 8:11 AM, Anthony  wrote:
> On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 7:47 PM, David Levy  wrote:
>> Anthony wrote:
>>> Okay, I'm imagining it  Sounds like something that would
>>> improve the encyclopedia.
>>
>> Again, what if hundreds or thousands of users, whose methodologies are
>> undiscussed and potentially flawed, were to take it upon themselves to
>> conduct such "experiments" without consultation or approval?  That's
>> the hypothetical scenario to which I referred.
>
> Yes, I know.

Thousands of users all taking in upon themselves to act in in good
faith, without discussion and in ways which are potentially flawed, to
try to improve an encyclopedia in the way they see best.  We should
come up with a catchy name for that.  Maybe something based on a
Hawaiian word.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] "How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit", _The Atlantic_

[Anthony]

On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 2:57 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 20 May 2012 22:32, Gwern Branwen  wrote:
>
>> There's nothing to answer; and I've been copying the most informative
>> or hilarious quotes for posterity, such as an active administrator in
>> good standing wondering if it might actually increase article quality
>> and not constitute vandalism at all!
>> The whole thing was worth it just for that quote; I could not have
>> made up a better example of the sickness.
>
>
> So, your attempt to prove that no-one cares about external links that
> aren't references showed that ... no-one cares about external links
> that aren't references.

That aren't references, that aren't official, that aren't
template-generated, and that aren't the only external link on the
page,

> What I'm feeling about this *feels* just like hindsight bias, but I
> vaguely recall saying something just like that.

Certainly makes sense.

What doesn't make much sense is the simultaneous belief that 1) no one
cares; and 2) it is vandalism that absolutely *must be stopped* lest
Kant roll over in his grave.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] "How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit", _The Atlantic_

[Anthony]

On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 7:54 PM, Gwern Branwen  wrote:
> The procedure: remove random links and record whether they are
> restored to obtain a restoration rate.

> - To avoid issues with selecting links, I will remove only the final
> external link on pages selected by
>  which
> have at least 2 external links in an 'External links' section, and
> where the final external link is neither an 'official' link nor
> template-generated.

So, you are not removing random links at all.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] "How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit", _The Atlantic_

[Anthony]

On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 7:47 PM, David Levy  wrote:
> Anthony wrote:
>> Removing 100 random external links?  For a few weeks?  Then adding
>> back the ones that deserve to be added back?
>
> Where and when did Gwern specify a time frame and indicate that the
> appropriate links would be restored?

If this is done, then does it cease to be vandalism?

Where did you ask Gwern about this?

>> Okay, I'm imagining it  Sounds like something that would
>> improve the encyclopedia.
>
> Again, what if hundreds or thousands of users, whose methodologies are
> undiscussed and potentially flawed, were to take it upon themselves to
> conduct such "experiments" without consultation or approval?  That's
> the hypothetical scenario to which I referred.

Yes, I know.

>> [rolls eyes]
>
> That's unconstructive.

I disagree.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] "How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit", _The Atlantic_

[Anthony]

On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 7:31 PM, Gwern Branwen  wrote:
> On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 6:09 PM, David Levy  wrote:
>> Yes, there is.  Your methodology has been challenged
>
> I don't recall any challenges

You haven't gone over your methodology.  I highly doubt you've
selected the links randomly.  And you don't seem to have done any
analysis of whether or not the links should be there or not.

That was my point "what percentage of the links were actually good in
the first place".  Not to try to rationalize results which you hadn't
already presented, despite what you think.

> On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 6:22 PM, Anthony  wrote:
>> Removing 100 random external links?  For a few weeks?  Then adding
>> back the ones that deserve to be added back?
>
> I think it's less questionable to just re-add all the links, no
> questions asked about 'deserving'.

I have no idea which way would be less "questionable", nor even what
that is supposed to mean.  But the right way to do it is to only
re-add links which should be added back.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] "How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit", _The Atlantic_

[Anthony]

On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 4:37 PM, David Levy  wrote:
> Anthony wrote:
>
>> Oh c'mon, even the updated terms of use allow for limited
>> vulnerability testing which is not *unduly* disruptive.
>
> Firstly, that text pertains to "probing, scanning, or testing the
> vulnerability of any of our technical systems or networks".  It has
> nothing to do with article content.

I understand this.  I brought it up as something analogous.

> Secondly, if we *were* to condone such experiments, they shouldn't be
> devised and implemented unilaterally.

Being devised and implemented unilaterally is the only way to get
accurate results.

> As discussed in this thread, it
> isn't clear that Gwern's parameters are likely to yield useful
> information, so this might amount to nothing more than random
> vandalism.  Imagine if hundreds or thousands of editors took it upon
> themselves to conduct such "experiments" without consulting the
> community or the WMF.

Removing 100 random external links?  For a few weeks?  Then adding
back the ones that deserve to be added back?  Okay, I'm imagining
it  Sounds like something that would improve the encyclopedia.

> As Gwern (User:Gwern) continues to edit the English Wikipedia (today
> concluding a different "experiment") and appears to have stopped
> participating in this discussion (thereby ignoring questions about the
> acknowledged vandalism), I agree that the account and associated IP
> addresses should be blocked until such time as a promise to cease the
> disruption and evidence that the damage has been repaired are
> forthcoming.

[rolls eyes]

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Re: [WikiEN-l] "How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit", _The Atlantic_

[Anthony]

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 10:47 AM, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
> On 17 May 2012 12:54, WereSpielChequers  wrote:
>> Hi, unless I read this wrong you are admitting to 100 random vandalisms of
>> Wikipedia? If so please stop your experiment now and revert any vandalisms
>> not yet spotted.
>
> Indeed. Then read WP:POINT.

Oh c'mon, even the updated terms of use allow for limited
vulnerability testing which is not *unduly* disruptive.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] "How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit", _The Atlantic_

[Anthony]

On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 10:58 PM, Gwern Branwen  wrote:
> On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 10:49 PM, Anthony  wrote:
>> First shouldn't we guess as to what percentage of the links were
>> actually good in the first place?
>
> I must say, I didn't expect to see someone rationalizing the results
> even *before* they happened.

No need to get personal, I wasn't rationalizing anything.

> But no, you don't need to guess: you edit Wikipedia

I do?

> If you don't, you can go click on Special:Random 10 times and ask
> yourself, 'would I delete the last link in the External links
> section?' If you think 2 links are rotten, then perhaps you should be
> predicting that - since everything is well, and any result is
> acceptable, and the status quo is perfect - only 80% of the edits will
> be reverted.

I certainly wouldn't try to make a prediction about the percentage of
links which are bad based on a biased sample where each link was the
last one in the External links section.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] "How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit", _The Atlantic_

[Anthony]

On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 9:14 PM, Gwern Branwen  wrote:
> Incidentally, I have been finishing an experiment involving the
> removal of 100 random external links by an IP; I haven't analyzed it
> yet, so I don't know the outcome, but this gives us an opportunity!
>
> Would anyone in this thread (especially the ones convinced Wikipedia's
> editing community is in fine shape) care to predict what percentage or
> percentage range they expect will have been reverted?
>
> Or what percentage/percentage range they would regard as an acceptable
> failure-to-revert rate?

First shouldn't we guess as to what percentage of the links were
actually good in the first place?

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Re: [WikiEN-l] WR bites the dust?

[Anthony]

On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 8:12 AM, Daniel R. Tobias  wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Jan 2012 20:34:49 -0500, Anthony wrote:
>
>> Put 184.172.174.94 for wikipediareview.com in your hosts file.
>> (Fortunately, as SOPA has not passed, this is legal :)).
>
> Like I'm gonna go reconfiguring my own system just to get around the
> fact that those guys can't keep their act together well enough to
> properly manage their domain registration?

It has its alt.hackersesque charm :).

They've now publicized and promoted the url http://184.172.174.94/~wikipede/

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Re: [WikiEN-l] WR bites the dust?

[Anthony]

Put 184.172.174.94 for wikipediareview.com in your hosts file.
(Fortunately, as SOPA has not passed, this is legal :)).

On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 7:48 PM, Daniel R. Tobias  wrote:
> On the day that Wikipedia is temporarily blacked out, it seems like
> one of its most prominent groups of critics has had a possibly more
> permanent "blackout" of its own... the infamous BADSITE, Wikipedia
> Review, might be dead.  Going to its site today yields a GoDaddy
> parking page saying that its domain is expired.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] English Wikipedia blackout

[Anthony]

On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 9:35 AM, Risker  wrote:
> Ironically, Conservapedia seems to be in agreement with Wikipedia in
> opposing SOPA/PIPA.  Talk about strange bedfellows

Wikipedia Review has been down for more than 24 hours now.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Knol is dead (2007-2012); Re: 2 years & 9 months later, Re: 6 months later: Knol update

[Anthony]

On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 6:36 PM, Gwern Branwen  wrote:
> (Which is a good lesson that Jason Scott would also appreciate,
> anyway, about trusting the cloud with your content. Not that trusting
> your content to Wikipedia is much better, from the long-term point of
> view.)

Long term?  Plenty of Wikipedia content doesn't even last 2 hours.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler wars revisited

[Anthony]

On Sun, Aug 14, 2011 at 4:03 PM, Richard Farmbrough
 wrote:
> However they will obviously enjoy the spoiler more, since the warning
> has spoiled it.

They shouldn't be called "spoiler warnings", but "enhanced enjoyment notices".

Seriously though, this study is misleading.  Everyone knows the proper
way to watch Star Wars is 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] iCorrect

[Anthony]

On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 2:59 PM, Fred Bauder  wrote:
>> On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 11:05 AM, geni  wrote:
>> To wit, why not pay $1,000 to get someone else to deal with OTRS for
>> you?  For $1,000 surely you can hire an expert in the OTRS process to
>> draft up a letter, have a notary to come to your house, notarize your
>> signature on the document, and scan it in.
>
> Actually, that might not be possible. It seem simple to you because you
> are familiar with Wikipedia; the chances of a wealthy celebrity, or
> anyone they might hire, being so is slim.

If OTRS is so difficult to deal with that a wealthy celebrity can't
pay someone $1000 to navigate it, you've got much lower hanging fruit
than ICorrect to deal with.

I find that rather hard to believe, though.  At $20/hour that's 50
hours.  That'd have to be a pretty stupid secretary/publicist/whatever
not to be able to figure out to click on "contact us", then "report a
problem with an article" then "article about you" then
"info-e...@wikimedia.org" within 50 hours.

> And don't tell me they could hire some banned Wikipedian...

Why not?  Because you already know they could?

$1000 to navigate OTRS and fix a problem simple enough that you're
just going to take the celebrity's word on it?  I'll do it for $200.
And I'm not even banned.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] iCorrect

[Anthony]

On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 11:05 AM, geni  wrote:
> On 28 March 2011 15:34, Scott MacDonald  wrote:
>> E-mail OTRS and you're dealing
>> with a non-editorial non-authority, who might not believe who you are, and
>> probably won't accept your own testimony as other than worthless. Even if
>> you convince the OTRS person, he might well get reverted by someone who
>> can't see the e-mails.
>
> However if OTRS can't it through we are dealing with a situation more
> complex than setting the record strait
>
>> Now, along comes another way of people setting the record straight, and you
>> reject it because a) it doesn't comply with policy b) people may pay $1,000
>> to impersonate someone c) you choose to be cynical about their identity
>> checking d) it doesn't make sense to you.
>
> The kind of people who might normally be expect to spend that kind of
> amount on reputation management have better and cheaper options.

To wit, why not pay $1,000 to get someone else to deal with OTRS for
you?  For $1,000 surely you can hire an expert in the OTRS process to
draft up a letter, have a notary to come to your house, notarize your
signature on the document, and scan it in.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] iCorrect

[Anthony]

On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 10:50 AM, Fred Bauder  wrote:
> The main advantage is that we know that
> no one is likely to spend $1,000 to spoof an account.

It's even more unlikely that someone is going to spend $1,000 to
create a legitimate account.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Hello world! (was "Hello world?")

[Anthony]

On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 5:58 PM, Sam Blacketer  wrote:
> I have to report that I always believed the confusion over Jimmy Wales'
> birthdate to be a covert and ingenious attempt to demonstrate to the
> community the need to use the facts given in reliable sources, and not to
> prefer what might be honestly expressed views but which are not supported by
> reliable sources.

I don't know about ingenious.  Anyone who knows Wales and his
predilection for making misleading statements which are nonetheless
literally true (a la a hero/heroine in an Ayn Rand novel) would have
figured out what he was doing quite readily.  And then admonished for
not "assuming good faith" when they pointed it out.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Hello world! (was "Hello world?")

[Anthony]

On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 1:11 PM, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
> On 17 January 2011 16:55, Anthony  wrote:
>> That's what he said September 18, 2004.  So no, this wasn't an honest
>> mistake (which still would be reason not to trust what he says).  And
>> it wasn't even just Wales being misleading, as he so often does.  This
>> was an intentional lie.
>
> If he was intentionally lying, he must have had a motive. What motive
> could he possibly have for lying about his age by a day?

"having fun" 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Jimmy_Wales&diff=400685519&oldid=400683806)

Basically, the same reason most people try to get falsehoods inserted
into Wikipedia.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Hello world! (was "Hello world?")

[Anthony]

On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 1:11 PM, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
> On 17 January 2011 16:55, Anthony  wrote:
>> That's what he said September 18, 2004.  So no, this wasn't an honest
>> mistake (which still would be reason not to trust what he says).  And
>> it wasn't even just Wales being misleading, as he so often does.  This
>> was an intentional lie.
>
> If he was intentionally lying, he must have had a motive. What motive
> could he possibly have for lying about his age by a day?

He was definitely intentionally lying, either in 2004 and 2010, or in
2007.  So there is no "if", and that means he must have had a motive.
However, I don't see the point in speculating over what that motive
was, as we don't even know for sure which of the times he was lying.

> Do you think he was just doing it to be annoying?

No.

> Jimmy has plenty of faults (we
> all do), but being annoying for the sake of it isn't one of them in my
> experience.

Not mine either.  So why do you bring it up?

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Hello world! (was "Hello world?")

[Anthony]

On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 11:10 AM, Carcharoth
 wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 2:36 PM, Anthony  wrote:
>> On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 7:29 AM, Thomas Dalton  
>> wrote:
>>> Jimmy taking his birthdate as that which his mother tells him rather
>>> than that which is on his birth certificate doesn't sound like a lie
>>> to me. A lie is saying something that you know to be untrue, this is
>>> simply a disagreement regarding what is true.
>>
>> Assuming his *latest* story is the truth (and it seems to be), the
>> lies would be when he told the reporter that August 7 was incorrect,
>> when he told Encyclopedia Britannica that August 7 was incorrect, when
>> he told the reporter that Wikipedia got the date from Britannica, and
>> when he referenced the reporters story on his blog saying "for the
>> first time the world has a proper source".
>
> It sounds to me more like he didn't know the truth himself, and his
> mother later told him what the source of the confusion was. No need to
> accuse anyone of lying, as far as I can see.

No, he made a comment similar to the one he made in 2010, in 2004,
which he later had oversighted, to try to cover up his later lies.

---
"My actual birthday is August 7th, 1966. This is unverifiable
information, I'm sorry to say, since my driver's license and passport
say August 8. If we must revert on that basis, then I guess we must...
Maybe I'll have to upload a signed note from my mom as documentary
evidence; the only proof that I have is her sayso."
---

That's what he said September 18, 2004.  So no, this wasn't an honest
mistake (which still would be reason not to trust what he says).  And
it wasn't even just Wales being misleading, as he so often does.  This
was an intentional lie.

So I don't trust what he says about the first edit to Wikipedia.  It
may be true.  It may not be true.  We'll probably never know.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Hello world! (was "Hello world?")

[Anthony]

On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 2:36 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 17 January 2011 04:03, Anthony  wrote:
>
>> Or, if you need the whole story:
>
> I think you've just proven Tony's point.

Glad to be of service.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Hello world! (was "Hello world?")

[Anthony]

On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 7:29 AM, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
> Jimmy taking his birthdate as that which his mother tells him rather
> than that which is on his birth certificate doesn't sound like a lie
> to me. A lie is saying something that you know to be untrue, this is
> simply a disagreement regarding what is true.

Assuming his *latest* story is the truth (and it seems to be), the
lies would be when he told the reporter that August 7 was incorrect,
when he told Encyclopedia Britannica that August 7 was incorrect, when
he told the reporter that Wikipedia got the date from Britannica, and
when he referenced the reporters story on his blog saying "for the
first time the world has a proper source".

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Hello world! (was "Hello world?")

[Anthony]

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.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Hello world! (was "Hello world?")

[Anthony]

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/)

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Hello world! (was "Hello world?")

[Anthony]

On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 6:57 PM, Tony Sidaway  wrote:
> I remember that in 1992 I was stung by a wasp near the end of a day in
> York. I would happily take you to the precise location outside York
> station, I said "fuck". There is absolutely no documentation for this.
> It happened. My own first experiments with a wiki,  in 2002 or
> thereabouts, are not recorded either, but they led to my involvement
> here. There has to be a point at which we admit that assuming good
> faith might work, and in trivial matters like this surely it wouldn't
> be a bad idea.

If it's trivial, then it's adequate to say nothing about it.

Wales doesn't exactly have a track record of telling the whole truth
about himself (See
http://blog.oregonlive.com/siliconforest/2007/07/on_wikipedia_and_its_founders.html).

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Hello world! (was "Hello world?")

[Anthony]

On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 7:13 AM, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
> On 14 January 2011 12:01, Tony Sidaway  wrote:
>> 'So Jimmy's claim that the first edit was "Hello world!" isn't to be
>> taken literally?'
>>
>> I don't see why not. It's far from unusual for a tech-savvy user to
>> type that phrase into a document as a first test. I would be surprised
>> if anyone expressed a good reason to doubt it.
>
> Indeed. Jimmy says he did it. It's a very plausible claim. There is no
> evidence against it. Therefore, I suggest we assume Jimmy is being
> accurate.

Except that he doesn't say what it is he did, and that there is
evidence against it.

I'd assume nothing in this case.  It may have happened.  It may not
have happened.  As you say, "it's not a critical piece of information
so we don't need to try and verify the story".  At the same time, we
shouldn't be repeating it as though it is a verified fact.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is not a dictionary (was: Re: Old Wikipedia backups discovered)

[Anthony]

On Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 1:04 AM, quiddity  wrote:
> 1. Given that the majority of Wikipedians are not subscribed to this
> mailing list (or at least don't post to it), having decisive
> discussions here is not very practical.

I would think that fewer participants would make decisive discussions easier.

> The mailing lists are good for
> brainstorming, alerting, and sharing, (etc), amongst the small number
> of participants; they are not good for establishing a consensus on the
> "nature of Wikipedia".

Sorry, I couldn't resist plagiarizing Jimmy Wales and his widely
ignored principles from his user page.

> 2. Given that you infrequently participate on-wiki,* and your historic
> reticence to even communicate on-wiki,** I'm not surprised by this
> suggestion.

Yes, I find wiki talk pages to be a terrible form of communication.
There's no push notification, no decent threading, post-hoc
censorship, a requirement to release everything you write under
CC-BY-SA, etc.  And the silly memes regarding Wikipedia talk pages
don't even allow people to utilize the benefits of a wiki - non-signed
content, modification of content, multi-person collaboration on a
single paragraph.

Wikis make sense for collaboration, but not for communication.  ~~~
and  never made any sense.

> However, I would suggest that the mountain is unlikely to
> come to you; instead, you must go to the mountain.

In this particular case, the mountain had already come to me.  I was
just objecting to your suggestion that it go back.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is not a dictionary (was: Re: Old Wikipedia backups discovered)

[Anthony]

On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 4:48 PM, quiddity  wrote:
> Also, it might be helpful to move this discussion on-wiki, so that
> other interested parties can participate.

It would be more helpful to move the on-wiki discussion here.  Very
limited meta-discussion of the nature of Wikipedia should be placed on
the site itself.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is not a dictionary (was: Re: Old Wikipedia backups discovered)

[Anthony]

On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 10:35 PM, Fred Bauder  wrote:
> How about creating, within Wikimedia, a fork which incorporates some or
> all of the ideas we've been discussing. For example a dictionary which
> does discuss the development of concepts at length.

The Wiktionarians probably wouldn't like that.

Actually, the Wikipedians probably wouldn't either.

Which is not to say it's a bad idea.  But neither is world peace.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is not a dictionary (was: Re: Old Wikipedia backups discovered)

[Anthony]

On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 9:28 PM, MuZemike  wrote:
> We must also take into account the popularity factor when it comes to
> comparing WMF wikis. It is obvious of the advantage Wikipedia has over
> all the other wikis in that is immensely more popular and is received
> much more widely than all other wikis.

You think popularity is the cause of Wiktionary sucking?  I think it's
the effect.

David Levy doesn't quote like everyone else, so I've stripped the
attributions from the following:

>> It's quite explicitly banned by [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary]],
>> which doesn't mention anything about cultural/historical significance, isn't
>> it?
>
> The text in question (the wording of which could be improved) is
> intended to refer to the concept of having two articles about the same
> subject (a particular petroleum-derived liquid mixture, in this case).

That wouldn't make sense.  Dictionaries don't have two entries about
the same subject.  They have one entry about the word petrol, and one
entry about the word gasoline.

>> You seem to go back and forth on whether
>> [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary]] is stating that articles
>> should not be formatted as dictionary entries, or whether it imposes
>> notability requirements of its own.
>
> If you interpreted anything that I wrote to mean the latter, you 
> misunderstood.

I asked if it was an inclusion guideline or a formatting guideline,
and you said it was an inclusion guideline.

If you're now saying it is in fact a formatting guideline, then you
can ignore all my posts after you said it was an inclusion guideline.

If you're saying that it's an inclusion guideline, and not a
formatting guideline, because it states that articles which are
formatted as dictionary entries should not be included...then you can
ignore all my posts after you said it was an inclusion guideline.

> Taken as a whole, these articles fall somewhere between the the types
> of content found in conventional dictionaries and encyclopedias.  I
> don't assert that it inherently makes more sense to include them in
> Wikipedia than it does to include them in Wiktionary, and I probably
> would support a proposal to permit the latter and transwiki them en
> masse.

Doesn't transwiking still suck, or have the developers finally
delivered on the features which for so long were put off until "after
single user login is finished"?

>> Basically, if you took a dictionary, and removed the space
>> requirements, and then took an encyclopedia, and removed the space
>> requirements, the content of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger would
>> likely be in the former, and not the latter.
>
> For whatever reason, that isn't how things have turned out.  Perhaps
> we should shift our focus toward exploring the possibility.

That's fine with me.  I'm not actually all that sure whether or not
Wikipedians *should* ignore [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a
dictionary]].  I was just defending my statement that they do.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is not a dictionary (was: Re: Old Wikipedia backups discovered)

[Anthony]

>>> What counts as "beyond a dictionary entry".  Are you talking about
>>> length, or content?
>>
>> The latter.  The aforementioned "Nigger" article contains a great deal
>> of material that one would not find in any dictionary with which I'm
>> familiar.
>
> It also contains a great deal of material that one would not find in
> any encyclopedia with which I'm familiar.

And most of the material I think would be *more likely* to be in a
dictionary than an encyclopedia.  Meaning, etymology, usage,
derivatives.  These are all things more likely to be found in a
dictionary than an encyclopedia.

Basically, if you took a dictionary, and removed the space
requirements, and then took an encyclopedia, and removed the space
requirements, the content of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger would
likely be in the former, and not the latter.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is not a dictionary (was: Re: Old Wikipedia backups discovered)

[Anthony]

On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 7:42 PM, David Levy  wrote:
> Do you advocate that we redirect "Nigger" to "Black people"?

No, I don't.

> A "Petrol (word)" or "Gasoline (word)" article would be fine, provided
> that reliable sources and Wikipedia consensus back the assertion that
> the word itself possesses cultural/historical significance warranting
> an encyclopedia article.  This probably isn't the case.

What about having both?  Would that be fine?  It's quite explicitly
banned by [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary]], which doesn't
mention anything about cultural/historical significance, isn't it?

>> > Of course, for most words, nothing beyond a dictionary entry is
>> > appropriate.
>
>> What counts as "beyond a dictionary entry".  Are you talking about
>> length, or content?
>
> The latter.  The aforementioned "Nigger" article contains a great deal
> of material that one would not find in any dictionary with which I'm
> familiar.

It also contains a great deal of material that one would not find in
any encyclopedia with which I'm familiar.

>> > As I noted, a dictionary indiscriminately lists and defines terms
>> > from the language in which it's written.
>
>> Not all dictionaries.  In fact, most dictionaries are selective, not
>> comprehensive or random.
>
> My point is that a dictionary typically lists and defines terms with
> little regard for their societal impact.  "Door" is included because
> the object that it describes is a common, everyday thing, *not*
> because of any special attributes on the part of the word itself.

And this differs from Wikipedia how?

Yes, you stated a rule that articles about words (and only words?)
have to have "cultural/historical significance", but as far as I can
tell there's nothing about that rule in [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a
dictionary]].

You seem to go back and forth on whether [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not
a dictionary]] is stating that articles should not be formatted as
dictionary entries, or whether it imposes notability requirements of
its own.  I've mostly snipped that part of our discussion, because it
was getting far too circular.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is not a dictionary (was: Re: Old Wikipedia backups discovered)

[Anthony]

On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 5:51 PM, David Levy  wrote:
> Anthony wrote:
>
>> I agree with your point.  But it has nothing to do with whether or not
>> the "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" guideline is being widely ignored.
>
> In reference to the concept of an article about a word, its cultural
> history, associations, et cetera, you wrote: "Can you give an example
> of that in a traditional encyclopedia?"
>
> This appeared to imply that because entries about words are present in
> dictionaries and absent from traditional encyclopedias, Wikipedia's
> deviation from this convention can only be described as the inclusion
> of dictionary entries.

It was a question.  Not even a question which I posed to you.  I
certainly didn't mean the question as a statement that A implies B.
I'm still not even sure of the answer to the question.

>> > Are you suggesting that the content presented in
>> > http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nigger or another dictionary's
>> > "nigger" entry is comparable (or could be comparable, given
>> > revision/expansion in accordance with the publication's standards)
>> > to that of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger ?
>
>> It isn't comparable.  Could it be comparable?  I don't know.
>
> Unless I've badly misunderstood Wiktionary's scope, its current rules
> wouldn't allow this.

Wiktionary's rules wouldn't allow a comprehensive discussion of the
word?  Probably not.  And that's probably a big part of the reason why
Wiktionary is doing so poorly compared to Wikipedia.

>> By the way, how does that article and the article on [[black people]]
>> not violate "Articles whose titles are different words for the same
>> thing (synonyms): are duplicate articles that should be merged."
>
> Are you seriously suggesting that Wikipedia's "Black people" article
> and "Nigger" article cover the same subject?

No, of course not.  I'm suggesting that they are titles which are
different words for the same thing (synonyms).

An article about the word "gasoline" and an article about the word
"petrol" wouldn't cover the same subject either.

> One is about a racial classification of humans.  The other is about a
> word commonly used as an ethnic slur.

So if [[gasoline]] was about a petroleum-derived liquid mixture, and
[[petrol]] was about a word commonly used to refer to gasoline, it
would be fine?

>> That begs the question.  Wikipedia obviously only includes articles
>> about anything only when encyclopedia-formatted articles are
>> justified.  But what is it that's *different* about words, which
>> justifies the guideline, which you say is an inclusion guideline?
>
> As I said, the guideline addresses the inclusion (actually, the
> exclusion) of dictionary entries, *not* words.

Of course words aren't excluded!  As for "dictionary entries" being
excluded, do you mean articles formatted as dictionary entries, or do
you mean articles containing the content of dictionary entries (usage,
etymology, meaning)?

> Of course, for most words, nothing beyond a dictionary entry is appropriate.

What counts as "beyond a dictionary entry".  Are you talking about
length, or content?

>> What is a reliable source for a word?  Do dictionaries count?  If so,
>> then wouldn't pretty much all words have reliable sources on them?
>
> As I noted, a dictionary indiscriminately lists and defines terms from
> the language in which it's written.

Not all dictionaries.  In fact, most dictionaries are selective, not
comprehensive or random.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is not a dictionary (was: Re: Old Wikipedia backups discovered)

[Anthony]

>> Are you suggesting that the content presented in
>> http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nigger or another dictionary's "nigger"
>> entry is comparable (or could be comparable, given revision/expansion
>> in accordance with the publication's standards) to that of
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger ?
>
> It isn't comparable.  Could it be comparable?  I don't know.

By the way, how does that article and the article on [[black people]]
not violate "Articles whose titles are different words for the same
thing (synonyms): are duplicate articles that should be merged."

Because one of the unwritten exceptions to the guideline is that
articles on terms which shouldn't be used in encyclopedias (without
the quotation marks or italics) don't count.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is not a dictionary (was: Re: Old Wikipedia backups discovered)

[Anthony]

On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 4:49 PM, Stephanie Daugherty
 wrote:
> Reading it this way, and keeping in mind that our guidelines are just that,
> guidelines, that means that "not a dictionary" is it's own EXCLUSION test,
> aside from the INCLUSION test of notability. The same would go for any other
> exclusion test. Interpreting it as a guideline rather than a hard and fast
> rule, that means that "not a dictionary" stands on it's own. When it
> applies, the article probably doesn't belong here regardless of it's
> notability, but there may be the need to make exceptions.

I think that's roughly the way the guidelines is interpreted by most,
though with a special de facto exception for offensive terms (I think
the way it works is that no one wants to write an encyclopedia article
about the concept behind the offensive term, so the article becomes
one about the word, and not the concept).

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is not a dictionary (was: Re: Old Wikipedia backups discovered)

[Anthony]

On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 12:44 PM, David Levy  wrote:
> I wrote:
>
>> > My point is that each of those 144 "episode guide entries" is written
>> > as an encyclopedia article (despite the fact that no traditional
>> > encyclopedia includes such content).
>
> Anthony replied:
>
>> That point is not relevant, though.
>
> Your disagreement with my point (which I expound in the text quoted
> below) doesn't render it irrelevant.

I agree with your point.  But it has nothing to do with whether or not
the "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" guideline is being widely ignored.

>> What makes something an "encyclopedia article about a word"?  Sounds
>> to me like another way to describe a "dictionary".
>
> Are you suggesting that the content presented in
> http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nigger or another dictionary's "nigger"
> entry is comparable (or could be comparable, given revision/expansion
> in accordance with the publication's standards) to that of
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger ?

It isn't comparable.  Could it be comparable?  I don't know.

>> So "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" is a formatting guideline, and not an
>> inclusion guideline?  I didn't take it that way, but if you think that's
>> what it says, maybe I should reread it.
>
> No, it's an inclusion guideline; it explains that Wikipedia doesn't
> include dictionary entries.  This is tangentially related to
> formatting in the respect that Wikipedia includes articles about words
> only when encyclopedia-formatted articles are justified.

That begs the question.  Wikipedia obviously only includes articles
about anything only when encyclopedia-formatted articles are
justified.  But what is it that's *different* about words, which
justifies the guideline, which you say is an inclusion guideline?

> "This page in a nutshell: In Wikipedia, things are grouped into
> articles based on what they are, not what they are called by. In a
> dictionary, things are grouped by what they are called by, not what
> they are."

Sounds like formatting to me.

>> > We use the format "Foo (word)" or similar when the word itself is not
>> > the primary topic.  For example, see "Man (word)".
>
>> I guess that could work, though it would be nice to have something
>> more standard.  Instead I see:
>>
>> *troll (gay slang)
>> *faggot (slang)
>> *Harry (derogatory term)
>> *Oorah (Marines)
>> *Uh-oh (expression)
>
> That's why I wrote "or similar."

I wasn't disagreeing with you.

>> Anyway, not that big a deal.  So the next problem I have is that there
>> don't seem to be any notability guidelines.  Is the word "computer"
>> notable?  If so, why isn't there yet an encyclopedia entry for such a
>> common word?  There's certainly quite a lot that can be said about the
>> word.
>
> To my knowledge, we apply our general notability guideline
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability#General_notability_guideline]
> and conduct deletion discussions when disagreements arise.  If you
> believe that a subject-specific notability guideline is needed, feel
> free to propose one.

Wait a second.  If "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" is about inclusion,
isn't *it* that notability guideline?

What is a reliable source for a word?  Do dictionaries count?  If so,
then wouldn't pretty much all words have reliable sources on them?


On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 3:49 PM, Fred Bauder  wrote:
>
>>
>> Anyway, not that big a deal.  So the next problem I have is that there
>> don't seem to be any notability guidelines.  Is the word "computer"
>> notable?  If so, why isn't there yet an encyclopedia entry for such a
>> common word?  There's certainly quite a lot that can be said about the
>> word.
>
> Well, is there interesting or relevant material published in a reliable
> source?

Do dictionaries count as reliable sources?



On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 4:18 PM, Stephanie Daugherty
 wrote:
> For the most part, an encyclopedic article about a word is just a very 
> verbose dictionary
> entry - there's no need to have a word defined in both Wikipedia and
> Wiktionary.

So Wikipedia shouldn't have articles (verbose dictionary entries) about words?

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is not a dictionary (was: Re: Old Wikipedia backups discovered)

[Anthony]

On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 11:25 AM, David Levy  wrote:
> I wrote:
>
>> > The English Wikipedia contains individual articles about each
>> > of the 144 "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" television episodes.
>> > Can you give an example of that in a traditional encyclopedia?
>
> Anthony replied:
>
>> That might be a relevant question if we were discussing whether
>> or not has television episode guide entries.  As it stands we're
>> discussing whether or not it has dictionary entries.
>
> My point is that each of those 144 "episode guide entries" is written
> as an encyclopedia article (despite the fact that no traditional
> encyclopedia includes such content).

That point is not relevant, though.

> Similarly, we have encyclopedia articles about words.  The fact that
> these subjects traditionally aren't covered in encyclopedias and are
> covered in other reference works doesn't automatically mean that their
> presence in Wikipedia is purely duplicative of the latter's function.

What makes something an "encyclopedia article about a word"?  Sounds
to me like another way to describe a "dictionary".

>> > As implicitly acknowledged in your question, Wikipedia isn't a
>> > traditional encyclopedia.
>
>> And that's my whole point.  Wikipedia *does* contain lots of
>> dictionary entires, even though there is a page saying that it
>> shouldn't.
>
> Your opinion of what constitutes a "dictionary entry" differs from
> that of the English Wikipedia community at large.
>
> I certainly haven't seen the format in question used in any dictionary
> (including Wiktionary).

So "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" is a formatting guideline, and not
an inclusion guideline?  I didn't take it that way, but if you think
that's what it says, maybe I should reread it.

>> > > And if the concept is the word, shouldn't the title of the
>> > > article be [[the word "meh"]]?
>
>> > Why?
>
>> Disambiguation.  I guess [["meh"]] would be acceptable, though.
>> It's not so important with interjections, but any word which is
>> a noun would suffer from the problem.  [[shithead]] should be
>> about shitheads, not the word shithead, just like [[dog]] is
>> about dogs, not the word dog.
>
> We use the format "Foo (word)" or similar when the word itself is not
> the primary topic.  For example, see "Man (word)".

I guess that could work, though it would be nice to have something
more standard.  Instead I see:

*troll (gay slang)
*faggot (slang)
*Harry (derogatory term)
*Oorah (Marines)
*Uh-oh (expression)

Anyway, not that big a deal.  So the next problem I have is that there
don't seem to be any notability guidelines.  Is the word "computer"
notable?  If so, why isn't there yet an encyclopedia entry for such a
common word?  There's certainly quite a lot that can be said about the
word.

And I guess if "Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary" is more
explicit about being a formatting guideline, and not an inclusion
guideline, that would then reflect the de facto policy.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is not a dictionary (was: Re: Old Wikipedia backups discovered)

[Anthony]

On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 10:23 AM, David Levy  wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
>
>> > In this example, the concept *is* the word, with its cultural
>> > history, associations etc.
>
> Anthony replied:
>
>> Can you give an example of that in a traditional encyclopedia?
>
> The English Wikipedia contains individual articles about each of the
> 144 "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" television episodes.  Can you give an
> example of that in a traditional encyclopedia?

That might be a relevant question if we were discussing whether or not
has television episode guide entries.  As it stands we're discussing
whether or not it has dictionary entries.

> As implicitly acknowledged in your question, Wikipedia isn't a
> traditional encyclopedia.

And that's my whole point.  Wikipedia *does* contain lots of
dictionary entires, even though there is a page saying that it
shouldn't.

>> And if the concept is the word, shouldn't the title of the article be
>> [[the word "meh"]]?
>
> Why?

Disambiguation.  I guess [["meh"]] would be acceptable, though.  It's
not so important with interjections, but any word which is a noun
would suffer from the problem.  [[shithead]] should be about
shitheads, not the word shithead, just like [[dog]] is about dogs, not
the word dog.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is not a dictionary (was: Re: Old Wikipedia backups discovered)

[Anthony]

On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 9:55 AM, Steve Summit  wrote:
> Anthony wrote:
>> The failures of Wikinews and Wiktionary are probably due in large part
>> to imposition of too much structure - in Wiktionary the formatting
>> requirements...
>
> Not sure I'd call Wiktionary a "failure".  But if it is, it's
> arguably a failure of Mediawiki to adequately support that
> structure, which is necessary for a dictionary (especially a
> multilingual one).

If Mediawiki is keeping the Wiktionarians from succeeding, then they
should fork Mediawiki.  But I don't think that's the real problem.  A
better candidate would that the imposition of top-down structure in a
wiki just doesn't work.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is not a dictionary (was: Re: Old Wikipedia backups discovered)

[Anthony]

On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 9:13 AM, Steve Bennett  wrote:
> I think what I'm trying to say is: any word which is itself notable
> deserves an encyclopaedia article explaining why.

What makes a word notable?  Without looking in Wikipedia:  Is "argh"
notable?  Is "ahoy" notable?  Is "because" notable?  Is "awesome"
notable?  Is "anorexic" notable?  Is "shithead" notable?  Is "hungry"
notable?  How do we decide whether or not a word is "notable"?  What
are the guidelines that should be used?

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is not a dictionary (was: Re: Old Wikipedia backups discovered)

[Anthony]

> On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 9:13 AM, Steve Bennett  wrote:
>> Wiktionary: what does "meh" mean?

By the way, I just want to point out that Wiktionary, like most
dictionaries, contains more than just word meanings.  It also contains
usage and etymology, which seems to me to be exactly what that
Wikipedia article contains.  The only difference is that Wikipedia
contains it in a more free-form article, and that it is more complete.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is not a dictionary (was: Re: Old Wikipedia backups discovered)

[Anthony]

On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 9:13 AM, Steve Bennett  wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 12:39 AM, Anthony  wrote:
>> No, there isn't.  And that's why Wiktionary can work.  But articles
>> about words don't belong in an encyclopedia.  Encyclopedias talk about
>> the concept behind the word, not the word itself.
>
> I think your "meh" example is perfect.

Good, me too.

> Wiktionary: what does "meh" mean?
> Wikipedia: why is "meh" even a word?
>
> In this example, the concept *is* the word, with its cultural history,
> associations etc.

Can you give an example of that in a traditional encyclopedia?

And if the concept is the word, shouldn't the title of the article be
[[the word "meh"]]?

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is not a dictionary (was: Re: Old Wikipedia backups discovered)

[Anthony]

On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 8:32 AM, Steve Bennett  wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 9:56 PM, Fred Bauder  wrote:
>> "Wikipedia is not a how-to manual". The grinches did get rid of the
>> recipes though; not many left.
>
> I'm ok with that one because there can be many recipes for each dish,
> and it quickly becomes very arbitrary. But each word only has one
> etymology, so there isn't that problem.

No, there isn't.  And that's why Wiktionary can work.  But articles
about words don't belong in an encyclopedia.  Encyclopedias talk about
the concept behind the word, not the word itself.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is not a dictionary (was: Re: Old Wikipedia backups discovered)

[Anthony]

On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 5:10 AM, Steve Bennett  wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 4:53 PM, Anthony  wrote:
>> Interesting.  I came to accept the "Wikipedia is not a dictionary"
>> guideline/policy pretty soon after reading that page - and much to my
>> dismay I find it to be fairly widely ignored when it comes to
>> etymology, usage, and profanity.  I'm interested in seeing what the
>> original and/or newly rewritten language had to say about it.
>
> {{fact}}
>
> "Fairly widely ignored"? I see very few articles that could not be
> encyclopaedic.

What's very few?  Hundreds?  Thousands?  1%?  And what's "could not be
encyclopaedic"?

There are many articles about terms, phrases, slang, interjections,
adjectives, verbs, etc.  In most cases they could be turned into an
encyclopedia article - after all you can turn just about any topic
into an encyclopedia article - but they aren't encyclopedia articles,
they're long, well-written, interesting, dictionary entries.

> And, like Ian W points out, the policy is probably too
> strict anyway: a more seamless transition from encyclopaedia-space to
> dictionary-space would probably serve WMF's mission quite well.

That seems to be the prevalent attitude, which is exactly why I think
the policy is widely ignored.  If you make a dictionary entry which is
more than a few paragraphs long, suddenly it's accepted as an
encyclopedia article.

Maybe it's a good idea.  A with news articles in wikinews, Wikipedia
seems to do a better job at making dictionary entries than Wiktionary.
 But if that's what you want to do, at least make it explicit.

> Especially when you're talking about the etymology and usage of a
> word, there's a bit of a gap between the very terse etymology that
> Wikitonary allows, and the more flowing style found at Wikipedia.
> However, that more flowing style is only permitted in the context of
> *encyclopaedia* articles, so we have nothing like it for pure *word*
> articles.

Meh.

No, really.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meh

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Old Wikipedia backups discovered

[Anthony]

On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 12:25 AM, Tim Starling  wrote:
> I provided both versions of the XML if you want to muck around with
> that. I don't think there's much historical value in the control
> characters.

Probably not.  I was reminded again today that XML 1.1 (for a reason
I'm still not quite sure of) never really gained all that widespread
of support.

> Speaking of historical value, I found the argument between Lars
> Aronsson and Larry Sanger, which caused Lars to quit and found
> susning.nu. It happened on May 21.
>
> Lars had just spent several days writing dictionary-like articles, and
> he wrote [[Short words]] to organise the effort. At 12:48, Larry
> complained about this on [[LA2]], and at 12:53, he created [[Wikipedia
> is not a dictionary]], which was clearly an attack on what Lars was
> doing. At 12:54, Lars announced that he was leaving, as a comment on
> [[Wikipedia is not a dictionary]]. There were several responses.
>
> On July 24, Larry erased all the comments from [[Wikipedia is not a
> dictionary]], and on July 28, he rewrote the original text, toning
> down the language. Before I found this backup, the earliest version we
> had of this policy page was from August 17.

Interesting.  I came to accept the "Wikipedia is not a dictionary"
guideline/policy pretty soon after reading that page - and much to my
dismay I find it to be fairly widely ignored when it comes to
etymology, usage, and profanity.  I'm interested in seeing what the
original and/or newly rewritten language had to say about it.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] [Wiki-research-l] Old Wikipedia backups discovered

[Anthony]

On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 8:13 PM, Anthony  wrote:
> Have you tried escaping them?

By which I mean, using character references.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] [Wiki-research-l] Old Wikipedia backups discovered

[Anthony]

On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 7:51 PM, Tim Starling  wrote:
> In XML 1.1:
>
> "Char       ::=       #x9 | #xA | #xD | [#x20-#xD7FF] |
> [#xE000-#xFFFD] | [#x1-#x10]    /* any Unicode character,
> excluding the surrogate blocks, FFFE, and . */"

Where are you reading that?  At http://www.w3.org/TR/xml11/#charsets I read:

[2] Char   ::=  [#x1-#xD7FF] | [#xE000-#xFFFD] |
[#x1-#x10]  /* any Unicode character, excluding the surrogate
blocks, FFFE, and . */
[2a]RestrictedChar ::=  [#x1-#x8] | [#xB-#xC] | [#xE-#x1F] |
[#x7F-#x84] | [#x86-#x9F]

> Without this change, importDump.php gives a fatal error.

Have you tried escaping them?  Does importDump.php work with XML 1.1,
or only XML 1.0?  Is the file defined as XML 1.1 or XML 1.0?  If the
file is designated as XML 1.1 (*), the control characters are escaped,
and importDump.php still gives a fatal error, it sounds like a bug in
importDump.php.

"Finally, there is considerable demand to define a standard
representation of arbitrary Unicode characters in XML documents.
Therefore, XML 1.1 allows the use of character references to the
control characters #x1 through #x1F, most of which are forbidden in
XML 1.0.  For reasons of robustness, however, these characters still
cannot be used directly in documents.  In order to improve the
robustness of character encoding detection, the additional control
characters #x7F through #x9F, which were freely allowed in XML 1.0
documents, now must also appear only as character references.
(Whitespace characters are of course exempt.)  The minor sacrifice of
backward compatibility is considered not significant.  Due to
potential problems with APIs, #x0 is still forbidden both directly and
as a character reference."

(*) Ah, there's one problem.  It isn't.
http://www.mediawiki.org/xml/export-0.3.xsd starts with xml
version="1.0".

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Re: [WikiEN-l] [Wiki-research-l] Old Wikipedia backups discovered

[Anthony]

On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 10:02 AM, Tim Starling  wrote:
> I've uploaded my latest attempt at converting the backup to XML:
>
> http://noc.wikimedia.org/~tstarling/wikipedia-2001-08-xml.7z
>
> The archive contains an invalid XML file, with control characters
> preserved, and a valid XML file, with control characters filtered.

Which control characters?  Aren't control characters allowed in XML 1.1?

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Re: [WikiEN-l] CZ fork: Tendrl

[Anthony]

On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 4:27 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> Wikipedia is, of course, a miserable failure. How can we duplicate this 
> failure?

Huh?  Why would you want to duplicate a failure?

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Re: [WikiEN-l] CZ fork: Tendrl

[Anthony]

On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 12:21 PM, Daniel R. Tobias  wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 08:17:36 -0500, Anthony wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 12:02 AM, Steve Bennett  wrote:
>> > On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 10:15 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
>> >>Ensure that (administrators|wardens|whatever we decide to call them) feel 
>> >>no qualms
>> >>about >kicking out clearly disruptive people.
>> >
>> > If it was clear to everyone who the disruptive people were, there
>> > would never be any problems. But one person's troll is another
>> > person's misunderstood genius.
>>
>> It doesn't have to be clear to everyone, just to the people in charge.
>
> ...if you favor a top-down authoritarian model in which nobody
> outside a small ruling clique has any say in things.

You make it sound like a bad thing.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] CZ fork: Tendrl

[Anthony]

On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 12:02 AM, Steve Bennett  wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 10:15 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
>>Ensure that (administrators|wardens|whatever we decide to call them) feel no 
>>qualms about >kicking out clearly disruptive people.
>
> If it was clear to everyone who the disruptive people were, there
> would never be any problems. But one person's troll is another
> person's misunderstood genius.

It doesn't have to be clear to everyone, just to the people in charge.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Help Beat Jimmy! (The appeal, that is....)

[Anthony]

On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 1:20 AM, MuZemike  wrote:
> Apparently, Apple has gone
> against this concept of doing focus groups to make decisions so they can
> keep moving forward with various products (citation needed).

"On November 8, the Wikimedia Foundation will re-introduce banner ads.
 And you'll see why 2010 won't be like ''2010''."  (Cue shot of Erik
Möller staring at a monolith, which suddenly displays the
language-specific version of
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Support_Wikipedia on it.)

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[WikiEN-l] Fwd: Pedantry on privileges

[Anthony]

On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 7:10 PM, Gregory Maxwell  wrote:

> On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 6:37 PM, Anthony  wrote:
> > Wow, so he's able to delete content on *one* of the 200+ languages of
> > Wikipedia.  I'd still say the statement is substantially correct.  He
> used
> > to have unlimited power on every project to do anything.  Now he's
> > administrator on one project, and has the ability to view certain things
> > that other people can't view on every project.
> [snip]
>
> This is absolutely no different than any of the several other
> incidents where a sysadmin or the like had the technical ability to do
> something, did it, then were reminded that having the technical
> ability to do it doesn't actually equate to having the _authority_ to
> do it, and as a result they resigned that particular technical ability
> in order to end a perpetual argument that arises because 'okay I won't
> do it again' doesn't satisfy a broad enough swath of people.
> (I'll leave it to people to muckrake up these events for themselves,
> but there have been a couple that I can think of, I don't think it
> would be fair to the involved parties to remind people of them)
>

Well, it's different in that it's the founder of the organization, the
technical ability was the highest given to anyone, that it was used several
times in the past (even more boldly) with impunity, etc.

Probing the bounds of your actual authority in our environment is a
> necessary thing that all of us do with every BOLD action, it's a
> consequence of the generally non-hierarchical nature of the projects.
> So I don't think it's justified to flog someone forever when they
> cross a line that was apparently obvious to everyone except them,
> especially since these things tend to seem far more black and white
> after the fact.
>

What was the line that was crossed?  It wasn't unilateral deletion.  Wales
has done that and more in the past, blocking and deadminning people who
deemed to question his asserted authority, and he's gotten away with it.
But this time, it was different.

In any case, I'd say it's newsworthy, in a way that no other deadminship
ever came close to being.


> Keep in mind the history of the founder privileged. It's a very recent
> thing:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/confirm/2009/Jimbo_Wales
>
> For the longest time, Jimmy was just a steward— presumably with all
> the rights and restrictions that being a steward entails, such as
> having the technical ability to delete things anywhere but only the
> authority to do so with the consent (or, equivalently, complete
> indifference) of the involved community.
>

I'll have to check the records, but I believe Jimbo used his powers
"unilaterally", beyond that of a normal steward, before granting himself the
founder flag.  In fact, I seem to remember the founder flag being invented
in response to some questions over whether or not he had the authority to do
certain things.

But I'll have to check the records, unless you can remember what it is I'm
thinking of.

"19:10, 14 September 2008 Jimbo
Wales<http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales>
(Talk <http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales> |
contribs<http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Jimbo_Wales>
) blocked Moulton <http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User:Moulton>
(Talk<http://en.wikiversity.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Moulton&action=edit&redlink=1>|
contribs <http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Moulton>)with
an expiry time of
infinite (account creation disabled, e-mail blocked) ‎ (Incivility)"

That predates the founder flag, right?
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources— some of these bab ies are ugly

[Anthony]

On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 9:57 AM, Gregory Maxwell  wrote:

> Jimmy isn't the president of the Wikimedia foundation.


True, and that's the one really egregious error.


> Continuing the pattern, A majority of the non-trivial statement of
> fact in the article are incorrect.
>
> "has relinquished his top-level control over the encyclopedia's
> content... Wales is no longer able to delete files, remove
> administrators, assign projects or edit any content"
>
> He's still an administrator on the english Wikipedia, able to delete
> page and, like everyone else, edit content, though he'd has already
> long since voluntarily declined to perform blocking there due to the
> resulting drama.
>

Wow, so he's able to delete content on *one* of the 200+ languages of
Wikipedia.  I'd still say the statement is substantially correct.  He used
to have unlimited power on every project to do anything.  Now he's
administrator on one project, and has the ability to view certain things
that other people can't view on every project.

"their existence was revealed exclusively by FoxNews.com", Fox was
> only reporting on the letter by sanger which had been widely
> circulated its author, and was covered by the register. Not exactly an
> exclusive.
>

Eh, I guess.  The whole "revealed exclusively by X" has about as much
meaning in practice as "100% natural".


> "he'd ordered that thousands more be purged", that isn't correct. He
> performed a some deletions himself and indicated strong support for
> other persons who would delete things. This isn't an order.


I'd say that's a minor wording nitpick.  Yeah, it's sensationalized, but
it's certainly substantially correct.

"Wales had personally deleted many of the images" this is correct,


Yep.


> "Now many of those images have been restored to their original web
> pages."  Holy crap, a non trivial factual statement which isn't wrong
> or misleading.
>

Yep.

"Hundreds of listserve discussions among Wikimedia board members..."
> okay, well, hundreds of _messages_. This is basically accurate too,
>

Yep.


> "which legal analysts say may violate pornography and obscenity laws"
> No one competent would say it did after an analysis of the facts, but
> anyone can say "may"— so this isn't helpful or informative.


So another correct statement.  Yep.


> "The debate heated up when FoxNews.com began contacting high profile
> corporations"  This isn't accurate, it implies a chain of causality
> that doesn't exist. To the best of my knowledge, Jimmys first actions
> on commons happened before anyone at Wikimedia was aware of Fox's
> activities.
>

Do you have some sort of insider knowledge on that?  The deletions were
performed on the same day the news story broke.  Obviously the contacts were
made before that.  I find it hard to believe none of the donors would have
tipped off "anyone at Wikimedia".

If you do have some sort of insider knowledge, let's hear it.  When exactly
is the first instance of a donor contacting "anyone at Wikimedia" that you
are aware of?


> "Several of those donors contacted the foundation to inquire about the
> thousands of images" I know for a fact that some simply called to warn
> that Fox was trying to stir up trouble, though I suppose some could
> have inquired about images on the site.  I don't see how fox would
> have any factual way of knowing about the content of any calls placed
> by donors.
>

You don't?  It's certainly possible *they told them*.

Maybe this is factually correct, and maybe it isn't.

"There also are graphic photo images of(...)"  The word also implies
> that the "child pornography" they mentioned people asking about in the
> prior sentence was also hosted on the site— but they are very careful
> to avoid making that bogus allegation directly. No doubt they've been
> amply lawyer-slapped after their prior slanderous statements. That
> point is misleading, but the rest of the classes of images do exist
> and are accessible as they say.
>

I really can't figure out what you're talking about here.  Quoting the
entire paragraph:  "Several of those donors contacted the foundation to
inquire about the thousands of images on Wikimedia’s servers that could be
considered child pornography. There also are graphic photo images of male
and female genitalia, men and women or groups of people involved in sexual
acts, images of masturbation and other pornographic material — all of which
can be viewed by children at most public schools, where students are
encouraged to use Wikipedia as a source encyclopedia."  Okay, so we don't
know whether or not there were actually several donors that contacted the
foundation about the images.  The rest of it seems perfectly accurate.


> As a matter of rule commons does not host things which are illegal in
> the US, although it often doesn't stop much short of the limit of the
> law!
>

Just because there is a rule against hosting things which are illegal in the
US doesn't mean that rule is being followed.


> "When 

Re: [WikiEN-l] Jimbo on Commons

[Anthony]

On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 10:33 AM, David Gerard  wrote:

> On 11 May 2010 15:22, Ken Arromdee  wrote:
>
> > In that case removing private social security numbers or even dates of
> birth
> > is still censorship.  Removing the Brian Peppers page is censorship.
>  Even
> > removing illegal content is censorship.
> > The no censorship rule isn't, and never has been, an absolute 100% no
> > exceptions rule.  It's no different from any other rule in this regard.
>
>
> Well done, you've disproved the existence of the word "censorship". Or
> of the concept of editorial judgement. One or the other. I'm sure
> people will be convinced.
>

I thought his point was to disprove the particular definition of
"censorship" that David Goodman was using.

Of course censorship exists.  And of course editorial judgement exists.

I'd say the key distinction is that censorship is something that is done by
someone other than the authors.  Although by that definition, it can't exist
in Wikipedia, because everyone is an author.

I suppose "self-censorship" is done by the authors themselves, but still if
that is to have a meaning outside of that of editorial judgement, then it
must refer to omissions done due to the threat of outside censorship.  In
the context of Wikipedia, that basically means following the law, something
which I think everyone agrees is necessary at least with regard to the most
liberal laws available.
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Jimbo on Commons

[Anthony]

On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 2:08 AM, David Goodman  wrote:

> NOT CENSORED means in the image context that there is
> no image that we reject because of what it portrays.
>

Yes, and that's the policy that needs to be done away with.
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Flagged protection and patrolled revisions

[Anthony]

>Because I've run across a few IP editors that seemed to care, even if
>they don't edit on a consistent basis.

These type of editors are a pleasure to come across. I suspect more
than a few are current or former editors who can't help but fix an
error they come across when browsing an article. Sadly, they are very,
very rare. So no, not "most"; more like "virtually all". Like David
said: if they care that much, they will usually create an account.

AGK

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Flagged protection and patrolled revisions

[Anthony]

I don't see what why it is advantageous to not tell an anonymous
editor that their change will only be visible once it has been
approved. Some might even be glad that we're finally bringing in a
peer review system for the more bothersome articles.

AGK

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Flagged protection and patrolled revisions

[Anthony]

>If you haven't caught it— my strongly held and long standing recommendation is 
>that we make >the process as invisible as possible: By overloading the cookie 
>that is set when a user (inc. >anons) edits we can switch these people over to 
>the draft-by-default view, either in a full-on all >articles sausage making 
>mode like a logged in user, or just for the articles that they've edited.

Are you suggesting that the draft (that is, the unvetted) version of a
protected article be displayed by default to anonymous editors? Or
have I misunderstood you?

AGK

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Flagged protection and patrolled revisions

[Anthony]

>edit wars that break out over this if some aspects of flagged revisions or its 
>interface are >editable and changeable on-wiki (presumably in the Mediawiki 
>namespace, editable by admins >only).

I would have hoped that our project's administrators would be capable
of working on a project without resorting to edit or wheel warring.

AGK, ever the optimist.

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[WikiEN-l] Flagged protection and patrolled revisions

[Anthony]

I've been out of the loop since January-ish, so I was pleased to see
that some headway has been made on implementing FlaggedRevs. I see
that a two-month trial on enwiki has been approved by the community:

* 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Flagged_protection_and_patrolled_revisions/Poll

But I also see that the implementation has been languishing in
flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org pretty much since then. Mutterings on
foundation-l suggest that we're close to a finished product that can
be taken to trial on enwiki, with William Pietri from the tech team
saying this week that his "understanding is that [it] is almost done".

At risk of seeming impatient, my question is this: exactly _how_ close
are we? I'm quite certain that if the extension was installed today,
by tomorrow our community would have the interface and system-message
problems ironed out. What takes a team of ten or so a few months to
perfect would take a team of hundreds much shorter, surely?

We've waited so long for FlaggedRevs. I'm now struggling to see what
the delay is. Hoping that somebody who is a bit more knowledgeable on
this can provide an update.

AGK

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?

[Anthony]

On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 10:15 PM, David Gerard  wrote:

> In March 2010, about 90 people made even a single edit to Citizendium:
>
> http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Statistics#Number_of_authors
>
> Compare Conservapedia, which has 76 at the time I write this. The
> difference is, the latter is pretty much a personal website run by a
> gibbering fundie lunatic which gets pretty much all its traffic from
> sceptics making fun of it; the former was a serious project.
>
> This is terribly sad. What went wrong?
>

Lots of things.  They should have never imported Wikipedia in the first
place.  They should have never changed the license.  They shouldn't have
taken so long to decide to change the license.  They gave too much leeway to
irrational individuals (especially if they happened to have degrees).
Meanwhile, they (especially Sanger) alienated a number of productive
individuals by just not being nice enough.  They closed down the mailing
list just as it was starting to become heavily used.

Of course, change all this and they still likely would have never supplanted
Wikipedia.  Some sort of Wikiversity-like mission statement would have
probably been more achievable.
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Images that are PD in their country of origin

[Anthony]

On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 11:13 PM, Liam Wyatt  wrote:

> I agree that it is annoying to think of commons admins going to all this
> trouble just for the benefit of unknown people selling t-shirts, but if
> people *aren't* allowed to sell t-shirts then it's not free-culture
> project.
>

It's not a free culture project.  It's a free "educational content" (1)
project.

(1) http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission_statement
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Images that are PD in their country of origin

[Anthony]

On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 9:29 AM, SlimVirgin  wrote:

> Can anyone help with an authoritative opinion about this? The doubts about
> it are causing problems on a number of articles, including during featured
> article reviews.
>
> Where an image is in the public domain in its country of origin, and that
> country is not the U.S., I believe we still have to show that it is PD in
> the U.S. before we can use it, because the Foundation's servers are in the
> U.S..


Who is the "we"?  It's not clear to me how the location of the Foundation's
servers would be relevant.
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Anthony]

> >> 2) Delete all unreferenced BLPs - or BLPs referenced only to own website
> or IMDB etc
>
> What's the rationale behind this?
>

And why only BLPs?
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Google bows to censorship

[Anthony]

On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 10:00 AM, Gwern Branwen  wrote:

> > Google has agreed to take down links to a website that promotes racist
> views of indigenous Australians.
> > Aboriginal man Steve Hodder-Watt recently discovered the US-based site by
> searching "Aboriginal and Encyclopedia" in the search engine.
> > He tried to modify the entry on Encyclopedia Dramatica, a satirical and
> extremely racist version of Wikipedia, but was blocked from doing so.
> ...
> > Mr Newhouse said Google agreed to take the link down after he filed an
> official complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission.
> > "Lo and behold they agreed last night to take down the sites."
>
>
> http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/google-agrees-to-take-down-racist-site-20100115-maxd.html
>
> I'm so torn. On the one hand, the hypocrisy is blinding - filtering
> its search results is exactly what Google was doing in China. On the
> other hand, it's Encyclopedia Dramatica...
>

If censoring some things (like "the most offensive sorts of racial
vilification you could possibly find"), and refusing to censor other things
(like an historical account of a pro-democracy demonstration), is hypocrisy,
then let me be the first to say that I'm in favor of hypocrisy.
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[WikiEN-l] Mediation Cabal is recruiting

[Anthony Simone]

Hello, all.

I've just been named a Coordinator of the Mediation Cabal, and one of my 
first tasks is to drum up some new recruits. I was hoping there might be 
a few brave souls on the mailinglist who are willing to help resolve 
disputes with us. There's nothing that you need to do to apply for 
membership (indeed, we don't even have a list of cabalists) and there is 
no vetting procedure. We're also nor process wonks; each mediator has 
his or her own style, and that's fine. Nearly anyone can accept a case 
and just start doing it.

Mediation, especially informal mediation, isn't always easy. It can. 
however, be very rewarding when you help resolve a content dispute that 
had been plaguing an article for months (or even years).

What I would like to do eventually is have multiple mediators working on 
a case (Medcab actually started out as a sort of swarm that traveled 
around helping where needed). However, in order to do that, we need to 
have enough mediators to go around. We need a few good men (or women, or 
other) to help us out.

Thanks,
The Wordsmith

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Re: [WikiEN-l] WIKIPEDIA FOREVER

[Anthony]

On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 4:55 PM, William Pietri  wrote:
> I'm personally not a big fan of the ads either, but if they were
> substantially more effective, then I'd have to think about whether this
> is one of those many occasions where my personal tastes diverge from
> what makes a good ad campaign.

I found the ad which said "Ad-Free Forever" to be humorous.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Age fabrication and original research

[Anthony]

On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 3:24 PM, Daniel R. Tobias  wrote:
> I had
> actually had other bank accounts going back to the 1960s with no SS#,
> so I think the requirement of having one for every bank account was
> later than my earliest accounts.

:) Much later.  October 1, 2003.
http://www.ago.state.co.us/idtheft/ssn.cfm.html

Even then, there is some dispute over whether or not this federal
regulation is in compliance with the actual law (that wonderful
PATRIOT Act).

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Age fabrication and original research

[Anthony]

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 12:59 PM, Ray Saintonge  wrote:

> Anthony wrote:
> > And it's not a primary source.  "In historiography, a primary source
> (also
> > called original source) is a document, recording, artifact, or other
> source
> > of information that was created at the time under study, usually by a
> source
> > with direct personal knowledge of the events being described." Social
> > security didn't even exist in 1904, so clearly this information was not
> > created in 1904.
> >
>
> The requirement that Social Security Numbers of newborn children appear
> on a tax return is relatively recent.  Before 1989 the person applied
> himself.
>

I thought your parents could still apply for you back then, but maybe I'm
wrong.  Nowadays they don't quite force you to get them but you can't claim
any tax deductions/credits/etc without them.  But even today I'm not sure
it's a primary source.  It's generally a secondary source, which is based on
your birth certificate, which is the primary source.  (And there are plenty
of exceptions to that - not everyone has a birth certificate, after all.)
It's just a bad secondary source, because it presents conclusions without
backing those conclusions up with explanations.

Still, probably worthy of a mention if it contradicts others sources which
are presented in the article, and isn't proven to be incorrect by any of
those other sources.  (But how do you come up with a hard and fast rule
about that?  I don't think you can.)

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 1:11 PM, Rob  wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 12:58 PM, Anthony  wrote:
> > If they're available.  But what if they're not?  Is it okay to mention
> that
> > the contradictory information exists?
> >
> > I doubt you're going to come up with a hard and fast rule which doesn't
> have
> > any unintended consequences.  Ultimately, the fact that "everyone can
> edit"
> > ensures a system of "verifiability, not truth".
> >
>
> You're absolutely right, availability is an issue.  But if we have a
> hard and fast rule the other way and say sources like the SSDI are
> okay, then there's no incentive to look for that secondary source
> which does explain the issue.  We might, in rare cases, settle for the
> SSDI if absolutely necessary, but not without a reasonable search,
> which in this particular case clearly hadn't been done.
>

Right, the problem cuts both ways.  The best source, it seems, would be a
reliable secondary source which details the primary sources it relies upon
and explains why it has come to the conclusions it has come to about them.
But that's not always available.
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Age fabrication and original research

[Anthony]

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 12:31 PM, Rob  wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 12:02 PM, Ken Arromdee  wrote:
> > On Fri, 2 Oct 2009, Rob wrote:
> > In this context, the secondary source is "I found a reference to a
> newspaper
> > article which quotes the date".  It's not going to discuss the conflict
> the
> > way you describe--it's just more acceptable because it better fits the
> rule.
>
> I got the newspaper article today and it turns out it discusses the
> birth date discrepancy in detail, with references to interviews with
> family, a number of documents, and court testimony.  This is exactly
> the reason we should be using these kinds of sources as opposed to our
> own amateur database lookups, not the strawman of a rules fetish.
>

If they're available.  But what if they're not?  Is it okay to mention that
the contradictory information exists?

I doubt you're going to come up with a hard and fast rule which doesn't have
any unintended consequences.  Ultimately, the fact that "everyone can edit"
ensures a system of "verifiability, not truth".
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Age fabrication and original research

[Anthony]

On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 4:46 PM, Gregory Maxwell  wrote:

> If the you've understood a rule as some formality that
> you must comply with when it clearly does not help you've
> misunderstood something. (Either the rule, the applicability of the
> rule, or that it helps; Even a poorly drafted rule can't bind you to
> pointless mechanisations: thats part of the core purpose of WP:IAR)
>

I'm not sure about that.  The rule against original research is a good
example of a rule to which IAR can't really apply - at least not in all
situations.  The rule is there to protect the encyclopedia from crackpots.
 But no one thinks they're a crackpot.  So if you have an exception for
original research which improves the encyclopedia, you might as well not
have the rule in the first place.

If a secondary source isn't a synthesis and analysis of primary source
> material, then it's not really a secondary source.
>

[snip]

Part of your confusion probably stems from that fact that wikipedians
> often treat news reports like secondary sources.  Good reporting is a
> kind of scolarship, but good reporting is rare. More often news
> reporting is just a lossy regurgitation of primary source material (or
> wikipedia!) or even just barely informed speculation.  But thats a
> problem with Wikipedia's misunderstanding the general worthlessness of
> news-media, not a problem with preferring secondary sources over
> primary sources.  The whole notion of distinct classes of "primary
> source" and "secondary source" doesn't map especially well.


Right on.  Very well put.
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Age fabrication and original research

[Anthony]

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 7:58 PM, James Hare  wrote:

> You could phrase it like this:
>
> "The SSDI says 1904[source] while all these other publications say
> 1918[source]." Or you could discredit the reliability of the sources (which
> would be the right thing to do, since the SSDI is not likely to get birth
> dates wrong) and just say "Dixon was born in 1904.[source]"


SSDI might very well be wrong.  It's worth mentioning, but shouldn't be
taken as definitive.

And it's not a primary source.  "In historiography, a primary source (also
called original source) is a document, recording, artifact, or other source
of information that was created at the time under study, usually by a source
with direct personal knowledge of the events being described." Social
security didn't even exist in 1904, so clearly this information was not
created in 1904.

And primary sources aren't banned under OR.  "Primary sources that have been
reliably published (for example, by a university press or mainstream
newspaper) may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy
to misuse them."  There's nothing interpretive about this use.
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Google Books class action lawsuit

[Anthony]

On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 12:00 PM, Anthony  wrote:
>
> They could also try suing Google (again?).  Not sure if the terms of the
> settlement requires Google to actually keep non-US people away or if it just
> requires them to kinda try to keep non-US people away.
>

Or maybe the settlement just plain old doesn't apply outside the US.  Since
it's based on a US class action, that's probably it.

So yeah, if the book companies care about people outside the US getting free
copies of their books, they should probably start by suing Google in the
appropriate non-US jurisdictions.
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