Re: [WikiEN-l] Nationality on the lead of articles
I dread to think how many megabytes of discussion are spent on discussing nationalities. So why are you discussing it? Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2011 09:56:46 +0100 From: Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com Subject: [WikiEN-l] Nationality in the lead of articles To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: aanlktikboynem7we4ud6gpyjsxypcgzqundv7kjmr...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 One thing that annoys me about some Wikipedia articles is the tendency for editors to argue over the nationality of a person in the biography article about them. The classic example is Copernicus, which has some justification in that there is sourced discussion of the history of an actual dispute (though the dispute was long after Copernicus). This kind of dispute was seen again in the John Michael Wright article that Scott MacDonald mentioned recently. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Michael_Wright The wording there is fine, but it can lead to convoluted writing, such as in the Descartes or Copernicus articles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus John Michael Wright (May 1617 ? July 1694)[2] was a portrait painter in the Baroque style. Described variously as English and Scottish Ren? Descartes [...] was a natural philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic The current solution on the Copernicus article seems to be to omit mention altogether from the lead. I can't see any reason myself why Descartes can's simply be described in the lead as French. Go into detail later, yes, but people tend to be too sensitive about what is said in the lead and sometimes require too much detail in order to achieve precision and accuracy. Another one is Robert Boyle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Boyle Again, the question of whether he should be described as Irish or British or Anglo-Irish (or whatever) is avoided in the lead. Extensive discussions have taken place on the talk page. But this is an example of an article where the rest of it should be improved, while resolutely ignoring the storm going on around that one small part of it. I dread to think how many megabytes of discussion are spent on discussing nationalities. Carcharoth ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Missing Wikipedians: An Essay
Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2011 15:40:35 +0100 From: Mike Dupont jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] [Foundation-l] Missing Wikipedians: An Essay Well this is a similar problem I am having with adding details to, or new articles about Kosovo, even my attempts are getting deleted. Mike, certainly this would be a systemic bias issue, but some of your editing needs refining to avoid running into problems. Having problems even getting the Turkish, Bosnian or Albanian alternative names added without being deleted, even if sources Why should all these alternate names by included in the English Wikipedia? I've seen you raising these name disputes repeatedly on this list and at various noticeboards; you need to stop forum-shopping and instead open an RfC so this can be centrally discussed. You're looking a bit like a single-purpose account on this issue and such issues have been taken to ArbCom before, see [[WP:ARBMAC]]. Tread carefully. let alone a coverage of members of parliament (list of them deleted as not notable). That list was 1) formatted in a very unusual way, with each person having a heading and with almost no wikilinks 2) almost entirely unsourced. It wasn't deleted as non-notable, it was deleted as being a directory. If you want lists of living people to stay you need to format them according to the manual of style for lists and source them properly. Particularly for such a controversial area as Kosovan politics we cannot be cavalier about making claims to do with living people. I have restored the history to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Mdupont/List_of_politicians_in_Kosovo and I have begun cleanup. If you want such a list back in mainspace, it needs formatting and sourcing properly. Also local pop-stars who are not notable by English newspapers are deleted, even if they are well know and unavoidable. If you can provide reliable sources in non-English languages, such articles can certainly be kept. I've done so before. The key is to actually provide the sources and not merely assert notability. p.s. The format of my emails tends to come out weird on this list - sorry. ___ 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] Rating the English wikipedia
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2011 03:16:12 + From: Ian Woollard ian.wooll...@gmail.com Subject: [WikiEN-l] Rating the English wikipedia This encyclopedia has been rated as C-Class on the project's quality scale. This encyclopedia has been checked against the following criteria for B-Class status: snip 2. Coverage and accuracy: criterion not met (currently 3.5 million of an estimated 4.4 million articles) snip You think there are only 4.4 million possible topics? Based on what criteria? Stevertigo also thought this in the essay Wikipedia:Concept limit, which I tagged as [citation needed]. There are probably tens of millions of potentially notable topics, if not hundreds of millions. However, we're better at deleting new articles than writing them and writing a new article that will survive these days requires more detailed research than in years gone by. ___ 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] Avoiding Trouble
Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2011 08:55:17 -0700 (MST) From: Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net From today's newspaper: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/01/health/01care.html?ref=todayspaper Creating positive emotional experiences diminishes distress and behavior problems. Fred Bauder Fred, surely you're not intending to compare Wikipedians with patients with Alzheimer's? That advice is about how to care for people with dementia, I think it would be more than a stretch to extrapolate from that to how our editing community should function. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
