Re: [WikiEN-l] Alleged Liberal Bias
-Brock On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 8:47 PM, Guettarda guetta...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 3:26 PM, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 1:11 PM, Ian Woollard ian.wooll...@gmail.com wrote: On 13/10/2010, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com wrote: I am concerned not so much with the specifics they are pointing out, but at a general trend that we may include more negatives about conservative positions and people than about liberal positions and people, which would be worth some statistical analysis. The problem is that a good encyclopedia, such as the Wikipedia, tries to reflect reality and truth. But reality and truth... have a well known liberal bias. That's the second such reply, and it's a little disappointing. I want the encyclopedia to accurately and fairly represent things I personally disagree with, as well as the ones I agree with. The assumption that some bias is ok because we're right ... is Wrong. It's a fundamental failure of NPOV. Reality has a liberal bias doesn't mean that liberals are right. Rather, it means that any attempt to represent reality will, in the eyes of American conservatives, amount to displaying a liberal bias. Indeed. It's a line from Colbert's speech to Bush at the White House Correspondents Dinner playing up the 'you're either with us or against us' crock that was being peddled around. Reality is nuanced, but admitting that nuance, however slight, means you hate America and are a sworn enemy to our friends from the American Taliban who are out there either fighting for dinosaurs to be acknowledged and honored for giving their lives in Noah's Flood or protecting you from gay people getting a marriage license somewhere. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia committee member
I can't believe this idea is being seriously presented. We are an Encyclopedia. That is one of the Five Pillars ([[WP:5P]]). The job of a comprehensive encyclopedia is to facilitate access to information in an efficient manner. Putting extra barriers in front of that means you aren't looking at it as a comprehensive encyclopedia, which we are, but as TV Guide (or Playbill, in this case) which we are decidedly not. You want a teaser? You want a hook? Go read a preview. You want to read an encyclopedic article about the subject/play/episode/whatever? Congratulations, you've come to the right place. We aren't here to protect you from the big bad world, we're here to present information. If that information is made harder to get, then someone clearly made a mistake. -Brock On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 8:58 AM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.comwrote: That is very helpful. I wonder if there is room to suggest this in some guideline somewhere on how editors should set up the titles of sections in articles to aid not just readers reading through the article from beginning to end, but to aid readers looking at the contents and selecting (or omitting) bits they don't want to read. You could even (though this is a bit silly) provide the option for people to hide sections and then read the whole page and not have to beware of scrolling down too far. It wouldn't be a default option, I don't think, but people could have some optional overlay that would give them the option to select (or omit) bits of the article to create a customised article for them to read. Carcharoth On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 5:51 PM, Shane Simmons avicenna...@gmail.com wrote: Actually, I'd like to read the article about the play without finding out the ending. Is that an unreasonable thing to ask? Reading the article as it appeared on 26 July 2010, [1] there is an entire section called Identity of the murderer... If I did not want to learn the identity of the murderer, I would have skipped over this section.* That's what I did for years before I became an editor. If I suspected a section would contain spoilers, I skipped it. When looking up books I plan to read, I still do this. That's one of the reasons for sections - they can allow readers to quickly find just the info they are looking for. I can look up Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows [2], and if I didn't want a spoiler but wanted to read about pricing problems, there is a section in the Table of Contents, right at the top, called Price wars and other controversies. This allows me to bypass the Synopsis section, including the subsections Plot introduction and Plot summary. Perhaps this is not the way everyone reads, but I think context clues can give their own warning to the reader. I'm also not sure if there are any articles out there that have spoilers under a section you might not expect them to be. For example, I wouldn't expect to find a spoiler under the Release date section. But I also can't think of a good reason why it would be there anyways, and it should probably be moved to the plot section(s). Just my two cents. :) -User:Avicennasis [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Mousetrapoldid=375574290#Identity_of_the_murderer [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_and_the_Deathly_Hallows *A quick glance did not show this information to be listed in any other section, however I did not read the whole article word for word to double-check. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wired: Wikipedia to Color Code Untrustworthy Text
On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 8:31 PM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.comwrote: On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 4:10 AM, Brianbrian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 9:08 PM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: snip Is it not more likely that most long-term editors who have been active for years have had most of their text mercilessly edited into oblivion and have very low average trust levels? And more recent editors may have higher trust levels? With the disclaimer that I haven't read the paper since the 2006 Wikimania, no, the algorithm is smarter than that. Simply having your edits overwritten at some point in the future is not going to detract from the period of time that your edit lasted. Additionally, if some but not all of your words persist through rewrites that would contribute to your reputation. If you merely revert vandalism that removes a persistent piece of text, doesn't that unfairly contribute to your reputation as the text continues to persist and the algorithm thinks that anyone who added it was doing so independently? Carcharoth Why would it matter? If you did the right thing, thats all that there is to care about. This is what im worried about, Wikipedia: The RPG getting even more ingrained. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l -- -Brock ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
The 'deletionists' (and I use that word somewhat ironically, we don't have meetings or leaders or even a philosophy beyond 'improve the encyclopedia') vs the 'inclusionists' (I always thought that word was chosen as a catch-all to cast the other side as slightly evil, much like you can't help but feel slightly guilty voting against 'pro-life', even though you know the label was picked for exactly those reasons) is, in my opinion, actually a shining example of the wiki process and I'm glad it was chosen as at least one of the topics. Deep seated disagreements over the project were solved by consensus building and community, resulting in sensible guidelines that helps us keep the vast majority of utter crap out of the 'pedia, while users who enjoy the work organize teams hunting for that diamond in the rough to polish and display. Everyone's happy, and the community solved it. Great subject. On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 10:29 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: 2009/8/17 Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com: On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 5:47 PM, Cathy Edwardscathy.edwa...@bbc.co.uk wrote: snip 1. The inclusionist / deletionist debate peaked a few years ago It did? Maybe I haven't been paying attention. I was under the impression that notability guidelines were still a topic of heated debate as regards articles on fiction topics. Or has a guideline finally been thrashed out? The original debate was global, there were people that believed our standards should be much stricter all over and there were people the believed our standards should be much more relaxed all over. That global debate finished years ago, there are now separate debates regarding different topics (BLPs and fiction are the two main ones, I think). Classifying people as inclusionist or deletionist doesn't work in the current environment since someone might be on one side for one topic and the other for others. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l -- -Brock ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] NOR contradicts NPOV
On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 6:58 AM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.comwrote: On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 2:29 PM, Phil Sandifer snowspin...@gmail.com wrote: snip So basically, we have a phrase that mandates the violation of NPOV on a host of articles, that was inserted without discussion, and that has been controversial in every subsequent discussion. But we keep it, because it's consensus. Have you tried suggesting this change on the talk page and advertising the discussion at various relevant noticeboards and other project talk pages? Carcharoth Have you tried just removing the ridiculous clause that creates this 'paradox'? Or, better yet, just using the source anyway? Sometimes after all the squabbling over the years that makes it seem like a deadlocked controversy, all it really takes is standing up and pointing out when somethings just dumb. And doing the not dumb thing. And that makes policy. IAR is there for a reason... not to be silly, or meta, but because sometimes, when something keeps us from improving the encyclopedia for long enough we get fed up with it, we have a way to just step over it (the encyclopedia being the product of our core project values, not interplay between clauses of policy that gets progressively more wonky every year). There is no conflict between the policies. There's a conflict with whats written. That is not the same thing. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l -- -Brock ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
