[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on Adventure
I ran across this today, though it's a few years old. The Wikipedia article doesn't seem to have ever been fixed. Also a good example of how web sources sometimes do better research than acceptable Wikipedia sources. http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/history/history6.htm ___ 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] Yet another PR company busted ... apparently it's all our fault
On Mon, 12 Nov 2012, David Gerard wrote: The industry response? An apparently unanimous "our bad behaviour is totally Wikipedia's fault": http://www.prweek.com/uk/news/1159206/pr-industry-blames-cumbersome-wikipedia-finsbury-editing-issue/ Guys, this really doesn't help your case. Doesn't it? I've said for a while that paid editing is often similar to BLP editing. (And this one seems especially similar since it is indeed about a living person, not a company.) If the guy himself had come onto Wikipedia and done exactly the same thing himself that he hired someone to do, we might think his edits were bad but we wouldn't be complaining about his temerity in making them at all. It's basically a BLP except the guy is making the edits through an intermediary. Now, whether this is a justified or unjustified BLP edit depends on the details, but it sounds like a completely typical BLP subject complaint, and normally BLP subjects who edit like this are supposed to be treated with respect. And wikipedia is just not good at 1) making it easy for people to fix their own BLPs (or their own company's article) or 2) getting such things fixed at all. When they say that Wikipedia's proces for fixing articles is "opaque, time-consuming and cumbersome", they are *correct*. ___ 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] NPR on Roth-Library Link of the Day
On Tue, 11 Sep 2012, Charles Matthews wrote: The Roth situation was WP between a rock (celeb culture with its ohmigod you dissed X) and a hard place (academic credibility requires that, yes, you do require verifiable additions and don't accept argument from authority). It would tend to illustrate that celeb power can potentially be deployed against serious discourse. Countervailing "admin power" is always a questionable analysis. If someone who could reasonably be seen as speaking for Wikipedia told him that Wikipedia needed secondary sources for his claim, they are wrong, and Wikipedia failed. It completely misses the point to explain how Wikipedia's actual policies are reasonable. The policy that Roth was told about is not reasonable; if it doesn't match Wikipedia's actual policy, he shouldn't be expected to figure that out. It has nothing to do with celebrity power, except that when celebrities run into bad admins, people learn about it. ___ 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] Roth is an elderly man googling
On Mon, 10 Sep 2012, Charles Matthews wrote: Besides, once he is verified to be himself, he is a reliable source. The issue was that he was a primary source and the secondary sources had preference. The issue appears to be something different. Roth's biographer wanted the existing secondary sources zapped from the article as simply worthless, and we couldn't accept that. Roth's unpublished view as funnelled through his biographer might have had to have waited until the biography was published, in which case we would have cited it without trouble. Via what appears to be an OTRS mail Roth was given what appears to be the wrong advice, phrased in terms of secondary sources. Let me get this straight: He was given the wrong advice about secondary sources... and it's his fault? This is definitely Wikipedia's problem. Wikipedia's policy *as practiced* failed him, and failed us. ___ 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] Roth is an elderly man googling
On Sat, 8 Sep 2012, Charles Matthews wrote: You might be justified in saying this if he was really told he wasn't "credible". If he was told that he wasn't a "reliable source" in WP's terms, that is a different kettle of fish. How's he supposed to know the difference? Besides, once he is verified to be himself, he is a reliable source. The issue was that he was a primary source and the secondary sources had preference. ___ 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] Arcade screenshot resolutions and fair use
I just stumbled on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Polyplay_menu.png . The screenshot is 511x256. According to the article, the resolution of the screen is 512x256, which means that this is basically a full image. The fair use template requires that images be "web resolution" and there's boilerplate which specifically says that the resolution has been decreased from the original. I don't think trimming 1 pixel from 512 really counts as decreasing the resolution. Checking other video game screenshots shows that the majority of video game screenshots are original resolution. Most of them aren't dumb enough to say that the resolution is decreased when it's not, but still claim that they are "low resolution" because they are web resolution. I would personally just choose to define "web resolution" in a common sense way and say that the original resolution is already low, but I think this is clearly not the intent. I'm not going to go fixing any fair use rationales here, but this may be worth noting as an example of a broken fair use policy. ___ 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 as part of a social media strategy for hotels
On Sat, 30 Jun 2012, WereSpielChequers wrote: I'm not inclined to shed a tear for hotel articles, many of which are I suspect being created by spammers, but David makes an important point re cultural bias from our lack of sources in certain parts of the world. Wasn't there a probem where Jimbo wrote an article for a restaurant in South Africa and people tried to delete it for this reason? ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: The counterattack of the PR companies
On Thu, 19 Apr 2012, Andreas Kolbe wrote: As Sarah says, telling PR people whose day job it is to just present one side of the story to go right ahead isn't the solution. But we cannot close our eyes to the fact that there are editors who for whatever reason similarly have made it their job to only present one side of the story; that PR people may have a legitimate grievance when they come to Wikipedia; and that the restrictions we are applying to them are not applying to the anonymous editors on the "other side", for whom we prescribe "assume good faith", the right to edit anonymously, protection from having their motives questioned, and so forth. It's exactly the same problem as BLPs, except for companies. If someone tries to edit their own BLP, they're told they have a conflict of interest. Due weight problems? The article's been vandalized for years? Tough luck, deal with it, we have our own procedures for dealing with vandalism. We're sure they'll work out someday. If anything, it's worse for companies. Nobody tells BLP subjects that because they have a COI, they can't even remove incorrect statements about themselves. ___ 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] Fwd: The counterattack of the PR companies
On Thu, 19 Apr 2012, Charles Matthews wrote: If someone tells you to drive at 5 miles under the speed limit rather than to drive at the speed limit, he may be trying to keep you from getting too close to a line. If someone tells you *not to drive at all* rather than to drive at the speed limit, that no longer has anything to do with "getting close to a line". He's just making up his own rules. Or he may have noticed that you are off your face or otherwise not fit to drive, and is applying common sense. Good metaphor. If I'm not fit to drive, he can tell me "you're not fit to drive." Claiming that it's because it has anything to do with getting close to the line is a lie. And the analogy doesn't work with drunkenness because there's no conscious action you can do if you're drunk that will make you fit to drive. The analogy would require that he thinks I'm unfit to drive because I never learned how to drive, but he ignores that I passed the driving test. But you do seem hung up on "rules". Without the required understanding that there are indeed sub-sub-clauses, such as the requirement to "edit for the enemy" that is written into WP:NPOV, that are implicit in WP:COI, and without the idea that WP is a purposeful activity and has aims that should be appreciated (which is there in black-and-white in WP:COI), there is no way some people can do what we want. Rules can cause trouble, but they have one benefit: at least ideally, it's clear when you have or haven't violated them. (Many Wikipedia rules are not ideal, but that's a discussion for another day.) It's a lot harder to inject personal prejudice to the issue when the rule spells out what you're allowed to do. ___ 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] Fwd: The counterattack of the PR companies
On Wed, 18 Apr 2012, David Gerard wrote: If someone tells you to drive at 5 miles under the speed limit rather than to drive at the speed limit, he may be trying to keep you from getting too close to a line. If someone tells you *not to drive at all* rather than to drive at the speed limit, that no longer has anything to do with "getting close to a line". He's just making up his own rules. Ken, what's your practical solution to the problems on each side, and how will it work out well? I don't know, but whatever it is, it should be consistent. Having the policy say one thing and Jimbo say something completely different is stupid as well as increasing Wikipedia's reputation for incomprehensible rules. ___ 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] Fwd: The counterattack of the PR companies
On Wed, 18 Apr 2012, Charles Matthews wrote: Sorry, this is exactly the point. The conversation where we explain very patiently to someone what our definition of COI is and is not; and the response is "you're telling me that if I sail close to the wind on NPOV but don't quite go over the line, then whatever my potential conflict of interest is, then I'm not breaking your rules". That conversation is exactly why the whole business is arcane _to people who think they are paid to sail close to the wind and get away with it_. E.g. people with good legal advisers who are smart enough to listen to the advice and understand the fine print. If someone tells you to drive at 5 miles under the speed limit rather than to drive at the speed limit, he may be trying to keep you from getting too close to a line. If someone tells you *not to drive at all* rather than to drive at the speed limit, that no longer has anything to do with "getting close to a line". He's just making up his own rules. ___ 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] Fwd: The counterattack of the PR companies
On Wed, 18 Apr 2012, Charles Matthews wrote: Let me get this straight. You are arguing "It is okay to for Jimbo to tell the company something which contradicts policy because it's more likely the company will understand the non-policy than the actual policy". The COI guideline is not an official policy. That is the kind of distinction lost on many people, it seems. It's true that in some technical sense the COI isn't a policy either, but that's hairsplitting. If you're going to point to something and say "these are the rules", it would be the COI guideline, not Jimbo's pronouncements. People get blocked or banned because of violating COI, and disputes are settled by pointing to COI. The one that behaves like a policy and which Wikipedians are required to treat as a policy is the COI guideline, not Jimbo's pronouncements. Having Jimbo tell people something that contradicts COI and then claiming "sure, Jimbo doesn't make policy, but COI isn't policy either" is disingenuous. The counter-argument runs like this: we showed your guideline to our legal department, and we are told it doesn't say that. To which the answer is: show legal documents to your legal department, and you'll get good sense. Show documents drafted by our community, who aren't lawyers, to your legal department, and you'll get crud. We know what to make of wikilawyers. If we make it quite clear to ordinary folk what we really mean, and you go after weaknesses in the drafting by calling in your hired legal guns who are paid infinitely more an hour than our volunteers, just to prove we don't know what we are saying, then you are not respecting us, are you? We're not talking about some genuinely arcane thing like the definition of some term using a zillion clauses. We're talking about a case where (regardless of any internal Wikipedia hierarchy which says that guidelines aren't true policies) the policy says "you can do it" and Jimbo says "you can't". It doesn't take a legal department or even Wikilawyering to see the contradiction in that. To any normal person, this is simply a case of Wikipedia contradicting itself. The fact that it's not because Jimbo doesn't make policy is a piece of Wiki-arcana that the outsider really can't be expected to understand. The fact that we're deliberately trying to get the people to listen to Jimbo and ignore the actual policy just makes it worse. See above. Jimbo can leverage his celebrity status to communicate to people who only read business magazines and books. The fact is that there is a published literature on Wikipedia, and people who really have an interest in the site can read that, not the five-second version. So we have someone who does read it and says "wait a minute, that's a contradiction". And I've been somewhat familiar with Wikipedia policies for a long time and I *still* can't figure this out, so it's not true that anyone with an interest can figure it out. The best I can come up with is "ignore Jimbo", but that is clearly not what you think the answer is. ___ 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] Fwd: The counterattack of the PR companies
>> This directly conflicts with the Wikipedia FAQ/Article subjects (2012) page >> that specifically >> asks public relations professionals to remove vandalism, fix minor errors >> in spelling, >> grammar, usage or facts, provide references for existing content, and add >> or update facts >> with references such as number of employees or event details. >But the real-life situation is that someone paid to edit has a boss and/or >paymaster. Jimbo knows what he is doing here with sending out a soundbite, >rather than citing the page. The boss can understand the soundbite, and is >almost certainly not going to bother to understand the page. Let me get this straight. You are arguing "It is okay to for Jimbo to tell the company something which contradicts policy because it's more likely the company will understand the non-policy than the actual policy". >Yes indeed. Jimbo neither makes policy nor enforces it, of course. "Besides, it's their own fault for listening to Jimbo anyway. They should know enough about Wikipedia to understand that he doesn't make policy. I mean, he's just the public face of Wikipedia, why would anyone who needs to know about Wikipedia policy listen to him?" To any normal person, this is simply a case of Wikipedia contradicting itself. The fact that it's not because Jimbo doesn't make policy is a piece of Wiki-arcana that the outsider really can't be expected to understand. The fact that we're deliberately trying to get the people to listen to Jimbo and ignore the actual policy just makes it worse. ___ 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] "Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement"
On Mon, 16 Apr 2012, George Herbert wrote: The particular case here where the local radio personality objected so much, we're reading too much in to. They had an idiosyncratic reaction and did a bunch of actions that made the situation worse and called more attention to themselves. Their press campaign did not help. BLP subjects are not necessarily familiar with the ins and outs of Wikipedia and may not know how to best act so as to minimize their Wikipedia exposure. They should not be penalized for failure to do so. ___ 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] "Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement"
On Wed, 4 Apr 2012, Charles Matthews wrote: "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia" constantly gets misinterpreted to mean "we may never allow other concerns to take precedence over being encyclopediac". This is wrong. Mmm. There is a certain rather blinkered singlemindedness that can set in with some people, so perhaps I know what you are driving at. But why do you think such people would be better at interpreting other attempts to define the scope of the mission? The problem is surely not so much in the wording, as in the approach. In fact I'm in favour of the rearguard action that regards the pressure to define key concepts ever more precisely as the expulsion of common sense. Common sense is long gone. All we can do is try to make sure its replacement doesn't have too many holes in it. I didn't pull this out of thin air, after all--I was replying to someone who, with complete seriousness, said that we shouldn't delete a BLP because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. I think this is a specific case of the fact that we want the rules to be strict and not subject to dispute when going after troublemakers or settling arguments--but if you can tell a troublemaker "we don't want to hear your excuses, a rule violation is a rule violation", someone else can tell us 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
Re: [WikiEN-l] "Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement"
On Wed, 4 Apr 2012, George Herbert wrote: BLP is a good idea and we got it for good reasons. These recent developments, however, forget that we are *an encyclopedia*. It's into barking mad territory. No. We will not go to removing bios on demand on my watch. I would suggest as a modest proposal that we do away with "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia". I've already suggested that we do away with the IAR clause "to improve the encyclopedia". "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia" constantly gets misinterpreted to mean "we may never allow other concerns to take precedence over being encyclopediac". This is wrong. ___ 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] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles
On Tue, 27 Mar 2012, David Gerard wrote: The key point to remember about BLPs is: no eventualism. If an article about someone dead 200 years says something nasty and wrong, that's not great, but it's not urgent. If an article about a living person says something nasty and wrong, that is urgent, and we can't just assume the wiki process will on balance fix it in the fullness of time. It's the simplest possible way of doing it and it's a vast improvement over the previous situation. It's not perfection, but calling it a "failure" is hyperbolic. Anything which is *different* between BLP and policies for other articles, such as a no-eventualism policy, could conceivably be a benefit. My complaint is about BLP rules that do not do this. ___ 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] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles
On Tue, 27 Mar 2012, Charles Matthews wrote: Reading what you have written above, and then http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Chris Butler_(private investigator) and other serious discussions on that page, I'm unconvinced that you actually have a point here. Why? I clarified what I didn't think worked: BLP rules which say "do what you are required to do anyway according to other rules, but try really hard this time". How exactly can such a rule ever being a benefit, and how did it bring any benefits in this case? ___ 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] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles
On Mon, 26 Mar 2012, David Gerard wrote: "The policy doesn't work" doesn't mean that all BLPs are bad, it just means that they are *as* bad as they would have been without the policy. The cases you refer to as it "working" are cases where other policies work and these polices provide no extra benefit. You are ludicrously overstating the case. I'm not claiming the entire BLP policy provides no benefit. I'm claiming that clauses which basically say "do what you're supposed to be doing all the time anyway, but we really mean it here" bring no benefit.___ 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] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles
On Mon, 26 Mar 2012, David Gerard wrote: For some reason a lot of BLP policy is like that: "here we have the same policy we use for everything else, but we really mean it this time". This never works, of course. I think that's an overstatement - it sometimes doesn't work, which is quite distinct from "never works". "The policy doesn't work" doesn't mean that all BLPs are bad, it just means that they are *as* bad as they would have been without the policy. The cases you refer to as it "working" are cases where other policies work and these polices provide no extra benefit.___ 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] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles
On Sat, 24 Mar 2012, Andreas Kolbe wrote: In almost all cases, a stub with the basic information is better than a loose aggregation of factoids. The problem is that well-meaning people (and sometime less well-meaning people) come along later and try and 'expand' what is there. I'd be in favour of locking down BLPs once they reach a certain stage of development and requiring a very high standard of sourcing for new additions. These sound like sensible ideas. Doesn't work. Since we already require a high standard for sourcing for everything, this doesn't actually put any additional requirements on BLPs. For some reason a lot of BLP policy is like that: "here we have the same policy we use for everything else, but we really mean it this time". This never works, of course. ___ 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] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles
On Fri, 23 Mar 2012, David Gerard wrote: This is a rather broad and (as I've noted) hideously vague proposed solution to a very specific problem, viz. someone who is apparently well within notability guidelines wanting an article deleted because he doesn't have control of it, and is abusive towards anyone who tries to help. He's not "well within notability guidelines", he falls under BLPs of marginal notability. Marginal notability BLPs are supposed to take the wishes of the subject into account with respect to deletion. Moreover, this BLP has been violating BLP policy for years. It doesn't matter how abusive he is off-Wiki; Wikipedia has failed here. ___ 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] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles
n Fri, 23 Mar 2012, Carcharoth wrote: [Some say] "Notability, once attained, does not diminish." Unfortunately, WP:N says that too. What you're saying makes sense, but it is contradicted by our policies. If someone can meet the requirements for notability at one moment in time, they are notable according to our rules. Good luck changing the notability rules. ___ 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] Inclusionists vs deletionists
On Fri, 23 Mar 2012, Carcharoth wrote: *WP contributors will not start biographies on lesser-known living people without their permission. The project is full of three-sentence stubs on people of minor notability, more often than not started by contributors eager to increase their number of “articles created”. In the Did You Know discussion, someone brought up the possibility that a an inappropriate DYK (about a recent murder victim's body) was created to increase a user's Wikicup. I hadn't even heard of Wikicup, and when I checked it out it seemed like trouble waiting to happen. When you have an Xbox or Playstation game and people get Achievements on it, that's relatively harmless. Nobody cares if someone goes around trying to beat a monster in under 30 seconds in order to gain a bunch of ultimately useless points. (Though even then there have been cases where achievements disrupted multiplayer games.) But when you have a similar system on Wikipedia, you end up encouraging activity that would be considered OCD in other contexts. Regardless of how useless the points are, you have people concentrating more on points than on doing what Wikipedia is meant to do. Wikipedia is not an online multiplayer game, and it shouldn't encourage people to treat it as one. It shouldn't have scores, and it shouldn't judge contributors in ways that encourage treating it like it has scores.___ 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] Inaccuracy
http://www.pcenginefx.com/forums/index.php?topic=11381.30 The situation: 1) Wikipedia says game on PSP is emulated. 2) Person who looked at code himself says it's not emulated. 3) Since Wikipedia got its information from a "reliable source", wrong information remains on Wikipedia. (Actually, if you read the "reliable source" carefully, the company representative didn't even say it was emulated; the interviewer claimed that and the company representative just didn't contradict him. I am tempted to remove it on this basis, but someone might argue that we must assume that the interviewer's statements, being part of a published work, are fact-checked). Your call as to whether this is verifiable-but-false, or a problem with the reliable sources or original research rules. ___ 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] Blackout notice errors
Here's another big one: The message says "There are better ways, like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, to find the right approach to legitimate copyright enforcement without trampling on free expression. " However, the page links to an EFF summary which includes a mention of how the DMCA has been abused. ___ 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 and political statements
On Tue, 17 Jan 2012, Nathan wrote: > There are so many good candidates, in fact, we will need some way of > narrowing them down. A SOPA protest fits a somewhat narrow range - a United > States law that could effect a Wikimedia project. There you go. I don't see the point of coming up with a whole paragraph of obviously irrelevant examples when in your next paragraph you explain why they are irrelevant. > I > can't imagine we would get much opposition to a protest against censorship > and filtering in China... I can. You're displaying the literal-mindedness that's too common on Wikipedia: everything has to be reduced down to a rule which something either passes or fails and there's no such thing as nuance. The correct answer is that while many things affect Wikipedia, not everything affects Wikipedia to an equal degree. How do you figure out if a particular law affects Wikipedia to a sufficient degree? It's hard--you discuss it and maybe take a poll--but one thing you don't do is have an absolute rule which insists that we must protest it if it passes the rule and we must ignore it if it fails the rule. ___ 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] Rules on WP, was Re: Talk pages Considered Harmful (for references)
On Fri, 23 Dec 2011, Charles Matthews wrote: >> And the more you use "it's in the >> rules" as a club to hit bad users with, the more others can use it as a >> club >> to force bad ideas through; there's just no defense to "what I want >> follows the >> rules". You see this all the time for BLPs: "Don't you have any empathy? >> We're hurting a real person." "You're just trying to distract us from this >> rule. Your own personal feelings aren't an excuse to ignore our >> policies..." > We have IAR IAR doesn't help. IAR is useful only when you don't need it; if everyone is reasonable, you can ignore rules. But if there's a conflict between two sides, and one wants to obey the rules and one wants to ignore them, the side that wants to obey them wins every time. Besides, IAR has a problem for BLPs. It says the rules can be ignored to improve the encyclopedia. Helping a BLP subject doesn't improve the encyclopedia (and yes, I've seen this come into effect). So you can't use IAR-or at least, you face an unnecessary hurdle in using it. > BLPs are of course an obvious place where it may be hardest to argue that > rules should be ignored. Yes, but that can be bad as well--it also is hard to ignore rules *for the purpose of helping the BLP subject*. ___ 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] Talk pages Considered Harmful (for references)
On Wed, 21 Dec 2011, Gwern Branwen wrote: > I have just completed and written up a little research project of mine: > http://www.gwern.net/In%20Defense%20Of%20Inclusionism#the-editing-community-is-dead-who-killed-it The rest of that, about deletionism, may be at least as interesting. I wonder how the ban on canvassing is affecting deletion. Our system is set up so that informing the very people who would be affected most by deleting an article is not permitted. (And of coruse, we have WP:OWN, which prevents even *recognizing* that some people may have a particular interest in an article not being deleted.) And for the general problem is something I've often noted: Wikipedia is set up to force people to follow the rules. And the more you use "it's in the rules" as a club to hit bad users with, the more others can use it as a club to force bad ideas through; there's just no defense to "what I want follows the rules". You see this all the time for BLPs: "Don't you have any empathy? We're hurting a real person." "You're just trying to distract us from this rule. Your own personal feelings aren't an excuse to ignore our policies..." ___ 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] Ad banners are a bad user interface
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BLPN#Peggy_Meggars_.28archeologist.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard/Archive139#Henry_Hardy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard/Archive138#Stephen_O.27Doherty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard/Archive138#Ron_Carlson Four *separate* incidents where users mistook the fundraising banner ad for an illustration that is part of the article. As is usual for lousy user interfaces, a lot of us are probably going to blame this on the user being too stupid to read the page properly, as if there was no such thing as a bad user interface. Often the image in the banner is the most prominent thing on the page, and it's located directly above the article title in a place that in many other contexts would mean it really does go with the article. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Demi Moore BLP name
On Mon, 5 Dec 2011, Nathan wrote: Well, no. Common sense here is that she changed her name and, in the interests of keeping a consistent public image, has no interest in promoting the old one. Common sense is that the fact checkers at People magazine double-checked the name they listed as her birth name. When you said "fact checkers at People magazine" I laughed. Just saying. Ah, but our verifiability/reliable sources policy says that we use secondary sources because they do fact checking. This is a secondary source, therefore it must do fact checking. Considering whether the secondary source *actually* does fact checking is not Wikipedians' job--the policy says it does, so we have to assume it does!___ 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] Demi Moore BLP name
On Mon, 5 Dec 2011, Steve Summit wrote: > Even if Demi Moore is > perfectly reliable on the truth surrounding her birth name, > common sense tells you that a 140-character tweet (or two) is not > the sort of place where you can make nuanced distinctions between > "I was born Demi, which is to say, that's what everyone always > called me, even though it says 'Demetria' on my birth certificate" > versus "I was born Demi, and it even says that on my birth > certificate, but my parents always said it was short for > 'Demetria', and I always believed that, and told the story in a > People Magazine interview, too, and I only just recently learned > the truth." The trouble with this reasoning is that BLP subjects who are not specifically experienced with Wikipedia won't make statements with lawyer-like precision. If you reject the BLP subject's own statement on the grounds that there could be some nuance which makes it say other than what it seems to say, you end up with an excuse that pretty much lets you ignore all BLP subjects whenever you want. Furthermore, I can hypothesize that People Magazine left out a similar nuance. Of course they are not limited by the length of tweets, but it is routine for the news media (especially gossip-type media like People) to paraphrase, summarize, reword, etc. in ways that ignore nuances. The People interview doesn't say "birth certificate" either, after all, so by the "maybe they missed a nuance" argument it could still mean Demi is on her birth certificate. ___ 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] Demi Moore BLP name
On Sat, 3 Dec 2011, Steve Summit wrote: >> Summary: Demi Moore, in a tweet but verified as being her, says that her own >> birth name is Demi. Wikipedians do not want to use this statement because >> the "reliable sources" say otherwise. > And, per that talk page, they've got some pretty darn good arguments. Except for common sense. Common sense says that if someone tells you what their birth name is, you believe them, not something that's probably misinformation but which has been multiply repeated. Someone on BLPN is actually arguing that WP:IAR *doesn't allow you to ignore sourcing policy*. Of course it does. ___ 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] Demi Moore BLP name
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Demi_Moore Summary: Demi Moore, in a tweet but verified as being her, says that her own birth name is Demi. Wikipedians do not want to use this statement because the "reliable sources" say otherwise. ___ 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] Why Wikipedia Is Important.
On Sun, 27 Nov 2011, Ken Arromdee wrote: >> Without knowledge, myths are born. With myths, fear is born. With fear, >> intolerance is born. With intolerance, ignorance is born. With ignorance, >> nothing is born. > I recall a Scientific American article (I believe it was in Mathematical > Games or its successors) which showed that using a chain of synonyms about > as long as what you are using here it is possible to create a chain from > almost any word to its opposite. Here's a few I came up with myself: With ignorance, superstition is born. With superstition, religion is born. With religiou, culture is born. With culture, civilization is born. With civilization, strength is born. With freedom, revolution is born. With revolution, consolidation of power is born. With consolidation of power, dictatorship is born. With dictatorship, slavery is born. ___ 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] Why Wikipedia Is Important.
On Sat, 26 Nov 2011, Marc Riddell wrote: > Without knowledge, myths are born. With myths, fear is born. With fear, > intolerance is born. With intolerance, ignorance is born. With ignorance, > nothing is born. I recall a Scientific American article (I believe it was in Mathematical Games or its successors) which showed that using a chain of synonyms about as long as what you are using here it is possible to create a chain from almost any word to its opposite. One specific example they used was "reliable" being shown through a chain of synonyms to be the same as "unreliable". I can't Google paper, but this statement reminded me of that. ___ 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] Slashdot trolling phenomena
On Wed, 5 Oct 2011, Erik Moeller wrote: > I doubt that the responsible Slashdot editor was aware that they were > falling for a troll. Is there a lesson here somewhere? If so, it's > perhaps that documentation of subcultures in Wikipedia is very much > worth doing. Wikipiedia has a general problem with sourcing anything that mainly appears on the Internet, because anything that is written in a personal website, blog, etc. is not considered professionally published and fails the reliable sources and self-published tests. ___ 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] Facepalm?
On Tue, 4 Oct 2011, Phil Nash wrote: > That's an entirely different proposition from merely being vindictive for > its own sake, which seems to be the current modus operandi of ArbCom. Let's not forget "Arbcom doesn't make policy", which usually ends up meaning "Arbcom constantly makes de-facto policy while pretending not to, and you can't challenge it because since Arbcom doesn't make policy, any Arbcom-made policy you challenge doesn't exist". ___ 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] Facepalm?
On Mon, 3 Oct 2011, Scott MacDonald wrote: > I've never understood people's problem with WP:DICK. Because invokin g it is equivalent to calling the other person a dick. ___ 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] Front Page on BLPs
On Tue, 23 Aug 2011, Charles Matthews wrote: > But "bias" of the kind he works with is a really unhelpful concept for > us, in practice: especially when trivialised by being "metricated". What other way is there to claim bias than being "metricated"? Is he just supposed to give his subjective opinion, or just complain that a particular thing is being left out of the article? ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Front Page on BLPs
On Tue, 23 Aug 2011, WereSpielChequers wrote: > As for the Che Guevara article, as well as detailing his marital > infidelities it describes him as "feared for his brutality and ruthlessness" > and details why. The complaint isn't that it says nothing bad whatsoever about him, it's more like a complaint about undue weight. ___ 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] Spoiler wars revisited
On Sun, 14 Aug 2011, Richard Farmbrough wrote: > However they will obviously enjoy the spoiler more, since the warning > has spoiled it. Why don't we set up Wikipedia so that it's impossible to get certain information without watching a few episodes of Pokemon first? After all (if I was a fan of Pokemon) I'd conclude they'd enjoy themselves more if they watched the episodes, so we're actually doing them a favor. Seriously, it's our job to give people the information they are looking for. It's not our job to make it impossible to get that information without something they don't want, even if getting what they don't want is better for them. We're not here to give people things against their wishes just because we think they'd enjoy it more. ___ 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] Spoiler wars revisited
The major fallacy here is that spoiler warnings are not the opposite of spoilers. You can have a spoiler warning and a spoiler at the same time; people who see the warning can choose to ignore it and read the spoiler anyway. ___ 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] WP:RSs
On Fri, 12 Aug 2011, David Gerard wrote: That's a rather different claim than that it is standard and accepted practice, which is what Ken was clearly implying. I ran into it a number of times but didn't have a particular situation in mind. I was sure that sooner or later someone would find one (which indeed someone did) to cite, since it's fairly common. A quick search for "illegal scan" on talk pages turns up this: --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Anime_and_manga/Archive_45#SaiyanIsland.com_reliability "SaiyanIsland.com hosts illegal scans of various manga series. AFAIK such websites can never be used as general sources, no matter how reliable they are otherwise. 「ダイノガイ千？！」? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000 02:29, 30 May 2010 (UTC) That's correct, per WP:ELNEVER 1. --Andrensath (talk | contribs) 02:48, 30 May 2010 (UTC) WP:ELNEVER doesn't apply to inline citations or general references, only external links, so that guideline can't be used. In such a case, cite WP:VERIFY in that sources containing copyrighted material fail the criteria of a reliable source :) ADD NOTE: More specifically WP:SOURCES." --- and this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Angel_Munoz "Reference 6: This is an illegally scanned article from an unknown magazine, hosted on Mr. Munoz's website (the poster apparently finds himself quite clever in using the IP of the server instead of the DNS name). If this was linked to an official web site in a non-infringing manner, it would most likely be a legitimate press source. --- and this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Lydia_McLane "game-port.com" - do not 'reference' a scan of a DVD (or whatever it is) - it's probably an illegal copy of a copyrighted work anyway. You could reference the published DVD itself. The image is not an appropriate way of verifying the fact. --- Your reply, incidentally, illustrates another problem with RS: the rules encourage using a request for sources as a way of filibustering.___ 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] WP:RSs
On Fri, 12 Aug 2011, David Gerard wrote: > This is false. Print sources do not require a legal scan to be available. If you try using an illegal scan of a print source, you'll be told that you have no reason to believe the copy accurately represents the source. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] WP:RSs
On Fri, 12 Aug 2011, geni wrote: >> But things the white nerds who wrote Wikipedia care about, like comic >> books or MUDs or text games or anime which are underserved by RSs? >> Well, if they don't have RSs, they can go screw themselves. (If you >> care so much about fancruft, go work on a Wikia! We're busy trying to >> figure out how to deal with editor retention.) > That particular subgroup would probably be better served by setting up > a more conventional electronic open access journal. I would expect > being backed by the charity behind wikipedia would get it enough > profile to get some decent submissions. I hate this response, along with variations such as "convince the person to publish it himself" and "convince the source to publish a correction". It amounts to "we don't need to listen to your complaint about bad policy because you can work around the bad policy by jumping through a lot of hoops". Jumping through the hoops is often completely impractical, and even when it's technically possible it's orders of magnitude more difficult than just using the source would be if the policy was fixed. Imagine if we did this in other situations. "Yeah, it's the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. So if your date of birth is in error, just go get published in an electronic open access journal and we'd be glad to let you fix the entry." > Heh also paying for the scanning of the old time computer game > magazines would be a viable approach. Except in the rare cases where the owners give permission (or where you own a copy of the magazine and don't need the scan anyway), this solution doesn't work since illegal copies aren't considered reliable sources. We can't even link to them, never mind use them for sources. Of course, scanning them will result in a don't-ask-don't-tell policy where Wikipedians insert information based on scans they're not actually allowed to use as sources, but they don't volunteer the information that they used an illegal copy. ___ 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] WP:RSs
On Fri, 12 Aug 2011, Charles Matthews wrote: >> This fails to be a useful method when the self-published source is the >> personal >> experience of a professional in the industry. >> The standard Wikipedian's response to this quandry is "well, if they can't >> get a reliable source to quote them, it must not be that important in the >> first >> place", which ignores the realities of the modern Internet. > The standard Wikipedian's response to the standard Wikipedian's response > is that we have IAR for particular exceptions to a "rule of thumb". The > standard response to that is that the "community" has shown a drift over > time from people who like rules-of-thumb and IAR, to people who like rules, > period. The standard response to that is WP:CREEP. The standard response > to the comment that nobody reads what WP:CREEP says about "Editors don't > believe that nobody reads the directions" is that ... hey, there is a thing > called the "human condition" and we somewhat have to live with it. True, it's all been said before. But when you look at what actually *happens* in situations of this sort, the people who like the rules always win unless the article simply goes under everyone's radar. There are standard responses and counter-responses, but they don't all work. Wikipedia is based around rules to the point where if there's a dispute between a rule and IAR (even though IAR is technically a rule), the rule wins unless the person claiming the rule is just one guy. There are enough people looking for an excuse to get rid of Babylon 5, comics, webcomics, or MUDs that IAR is never going to win. ___ 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] WP:RSs
On Tue, 9 Aug 2011, Carcharoth wrote: > My rule of thumb for self-published sources is to see if they cite > their sources. If they do, then you can check what they say. If they > don't, then you can't, and that can be a problem even with so-called > 'reliable' sources. This fails to be a useful method when the self-published source is the personal experience of a professional in the industry. This happens a lot with Internet publications, such as J. Michael Straczynski's postings in the Babylon 5 newsgroup, or Jim Shooter's blog (jimshooter.com). The standard Wikipedian's response to this quandry is "well, if they can't get a reliable source to quote them, it must not be that important in the first place", which ignores the realities of the modern Internet. ___ 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] BLP extension suggestion
On Fri, 3 Jun 2011, Rob wrote: Part of it is that we're talking about different types of things. The Kerry controversy is ultimately about factual claims, and therefore whether our article harms John Kerry depends on whether we give undue weight to those claims. This one isn't about factual claims; it's about creating an unpleasant association, so avoiding undue weight isn't enough to keep it from doing harm. I don't understand this kind of hairsplitting. Documenting fabrications is acceptable, but only the right kind of fabrications? Aren't, say, the "factual claims" of Birthers about creating "unpleasant associations" with Obama? The last thing we need in Wikipedia is more systemic bias, and this is what that hairsplitting would lead to. "Person X is like shit" is unpleasant in a very different way from "person X is a liar". The latter creates an unpleasant association with that person only to the degree that that person is believed to have committed unpleasant activities. The former creates an unpleasant association on an emotional level. You can write a balanced article that reports the claim that Obama is a liar without making the audience think Obama is a liar. You cannot do this when the article is about comparing a person to shit.___ 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] BLP extension suggestion
On Sat, 4 Jun 2011, WereSpielChequers wrote: > But for "kerry swift boat" the first two hits are > both Wikipedia. Anyone searching for that is specifically searching for the controversy, not just searching for Kerry. If the santorum article only showed up when searching for "santorum sexual slang" there wouldn't be any problem. > if I was Rick Santorum I would be > hoping that the Wikipedia article on the neologism one day overtook > the article that currently comes up top in a "Santorum" or "Rick > Santorum" search. ... because the Wikipedia article is better than another page that's even worse. Talk about damning with faint praise. He might prefer the Wikipedia article over the other one, because even if it harms him, it doesn't harm him as much as the other one. Trying merely to be less harmful than other web pages is an abominably low standard. We can do better than that. ___ 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] BLP extension suggestion
On Fri, 3 Jun 2011, Rob wrote: > We're just recording what has already been discussed in 132 reliable > sources. We're not "victimizing" him any more than we are victimizing > Silvio Berlusconi > (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlusconi#Sexual_scandals) or John > Edwards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edwards_extramarital_affair) > or John Kerry > (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kerry_military_service_controversy) > or Anthony Weiner > (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Weiner#Twitter_controversy). > The Kerry example is especially pertinent as both it and the Santorum > article are an entire Wikipedia article about things that other people > made up about the subject of the article. Part of it is a matter of degree. The article on the John Kerry controversy isn't the #2 search for "Kerry" on the Internet. Part of it is that we're talking about different types of things. The Kerry controversy is ultimately about factual claims, and therefore whether our article harms John Kerry depends on whether we give undue weight to those claims. This one isn't about factual claims; it's about creating an unpleasant association, so avoiding undue weight isn't enough to keep it from doing harm. And there aren't 132 reliable sources; there was a post on BLPN which analyzed the problems with a bunch of sources (several were self-published, for instance. Of course they had to be left in as part of a "compromise"), but there are so many "sources" that nobody could possibly check them all. Furthermore, the large number of sources is itself part of the abuse of the system--sources are often links and raise the page's Google rank, just like including big templates. ___ 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] BLP extension suggestion
On Fri, 3 Jun 2011, WereSpielChequers wrote: > 8 letters, three syllables doth not a four letter word make, and the > term itself is somewhat more obscure. I suspect that unless further > flames are added to the fire, such as it provoking a sea change in > Wikipedia policy, it will fade into obscurity. How's it going to fall itno obscurity? 20 years from now a search for his name will still bring up our article about shit. Unless we do something to avoid an overinflated Google rank for the article, it can never fade away, ever, because of us. ___ 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] BLP extension suggestion
On Thu, 2 Jun 2011, Rob wrote: > I don't think BLP needs this kind of mission creep. It's important to > protect Santorum and others from malicious editing and bad sourcing > and undue weight, but it isn't our job to protect Santorum from Dan > Savage or the news media or the world. Santorum is not just being victimized by Dan Savage or the news media or the world--he's being victimized by *us*. That makes it our job. Just because it's an already existing campaign doesn't mean we have no responsibility when a search for his name brings up this article as the #3 hit (and #2 if you only search for his last name). ___ 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] BLP extension suggestion
On BLPN someone asked me what I'd suggest as a change to BLP policy to allow cutting down the santorum article. Here's my first attempt: Avoid victimization When writing about a person notable only for one or two events, *or writing about a person who is independently notable but where the biographical material is so prominent that it can significantly affect the subject*, including every detail can lead to problems, even when the material is well-sourced. When in doubt, biographies should be pared back to a version that is completely sourced, neutral, and on-topic. This is of particular importance when dealing with individuals whose notability stems largely or entirely from being victims of another's actions, *or writing about a topic that is largely or entirely about the person being a victim of another's actions*. Wikipedia editors must not act, intentionally or otherwise, in a way that amounts to participating in or prolonging the victimization. Additional material indicated by *s. It seems like the most common objection is that we can't determine who is a victim (to which my response is that I'm just extending an existing rule and we seem to have no trouble doing it for the existing rule). ___ 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 article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
Has anyone asked Jimbo what he thinks about this controversy? ___ 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 article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
On Thu, 26 May 2011, George Herbert wrote: > In this particular, I am vexed and confused. If the longer article > makes him look better, why in the flying spaghetti monster's name are > those advocating human dignity here asking to shorten it? The main negative effect of the article on Santorum is not that it makes negative factual claims, it's that associating him with shit is inherently negative. Shortening the article (and especially, shortening it in ways which mitigate the Googlebombing effect) helps against this negative effect. I'm sure an article about the Richard Gere gerbil rumor which devoted an extra page to explaining why the rumor is false would make him "look better"-- if by "look better" you mean "prevent negative factual inferences". But that's not the only way in which an article can make someone look more or less better. We don't have such an article no matter how many reliable sources describe the rumor, because merely having the article is bad for him. ___ 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 article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
On Thu, 26 May 2011, George Herbert wrote: > The *term* shows him in a negative light, but the *incident* actually > shows him responding maturely and responsibly. This is an artificial distinction that happens to fit Wikipedia rules, but not reality. Spreading the term automatically shows him in a negative light, in the same way that spreading a denial gives credence to the claim that is denied. I have a modest proposal: change the title to read "Dan Savage campaign against Rick Santorum" or something else which has Dan Savage's name in it. Some people have already suggested this, but I will bet that the same editors who want the 100 link template in will argue vehemently against this. ___ 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 article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
On Thu, 26 May 2011, Tom Morris wrote: > If there weren't a tea party movement, we wouldn't have an article on > the tea party movement. The tea party movement isn't mainly an Internet campaign, and even the aspects of it that are Internet-based don't involve attempts to increase its search engine rank. Wikipedia's effect on the Tea Party by having an article about it is much less direct and much less significant overall than it is for the anti-Santorum campaign, given the different natures of the two campaigns. ___ 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 article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
On Thu, 26 May 2011, Andreas Kolbe wrote: > As a matter of fact, it would help Wikipedia if the article were retitled, > [[Dan Savage Google-bomb campaign against Rick Santorum]]. The fact that it would help is exactly why it's not going to happen--all the people who are promoting the article because they want to participate in the campaign would resist such a name. ___ 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 article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
On Wed, 25 May 2011, George Herbert wrote: > We're reporting on the damage to Santorum, not causing it. Our > reporting is not making it better, but neither is it making it worse. We are reporting on the damage *and* causing it. Our reporting *is* making it worse, by being two of the top Google entries for his name. ___ 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 article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
On Wed, 25 May 2011, George Herbert wrote: > You are conflating the term (which associates someone with human > waste) and our coverage of the term (which describes the term, > descriptively, historically, and cultural and political contexts). No, I am not. I am conflating what the article says and the article does. What the article *does* is smear a human being. The fact that our rules don't consider it to be a POV violation as long as as the article doesn't state a position is a loophole in the rules. You can't neutrally discuss how a person is compared to shit. Not in any real-world sense. ___ 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 article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
On Wed, 25 May 2011, David Gerard wrote: > Except you did not say "PR style, with call-out box" - you said "gay > porn company", as if those three words were enough to make your point. > You lose. In this context, "gay porn company" is legitimate, because it implies a COI. ___ 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 article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
> Again - I am not Cirt, and I find the article reasonably balanced. Having an article that associates someone with human waste be "reasonably balanced" is like claiming that an article about the Richard Gere gerbil rumor (as long as it stated the rumor was false) would be reasonably balanced. The association of a living person with shit is inherently unbalanced; it spreads a negative POV towards that person, no matter how many disclaimers we add saying that we don't think he's really like shit. ___ 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 article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
On Tue, 24 May 2011, Tom Morris wrote: The reason: Wikipedia is on the Internet. If Wikipedia has an article about something whose promoter specifically intends to spread it on the Internet, it is impossible to separate reporting from participation. It's a loophole in the definition of neutrality that doing things which help one side of a dispute doesn't break neutrality, simply because our intentions are neutral--even though our effects are not. Using that logic, we should probably shut down every page on WP about politics, religion, alternative medicine and anything even vaguely controversial. There's a difference between helping someone who happens to find some publicity useful, and helping something that is mainly a publicity campaign. There's also a difference between spreading facts that are incidentally used in a publicity campaign but are independent of it, and spreading the campaign itself. If there weren't any anti-scientology campaigners spreading the word about Xenu, we'd still have a reason to have an article about Xenu. If there was no anti-Santorum campaign, we'd have no reason for the article--its entire existence depends directly on that campaign.___ 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 article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
On Mon, 23 May 2011, The Cunctator wrote: >> The reason: Wikipedia is on the Internet. If Wikipedia has an article >> about something whose promoter specifically intends to spread it on the >> Internet, it is impossible to separate reporting from participation. It's >> a loophole in the definition of neutrality that doing things which help >> one side of a dispute doesn't break neutrality, simply because our >> intentions are neutral--even though our effects are not. > I agree. Let's remove all content on Wikipedia about the Internet. "Is about the Internet" and "is mainly an Internet promotional campaign" aren't the same thing. Someone might write a book and want it promoted on the Internet, but the fact that it's being promoted on the Internet is way down on the list of important facts about that book. ___ 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 article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
On Mon, 23 May 2011, geni wrote: >> When you Google for Santorum's last name this Wikipedia article is the >> second result. This means that people who are looking for legitimate >> information about him are not going to find it right away - instead we are >> going to feed them information about a biased smear campaign rather than the >> former Senators BLP. > Google's search results are entirely their business. The fact that we need to be careful about BLPs because the BLPs rank high in Google is our business. This is not technically a BLP, and Santorum is known for more than one thing, but I'd think it'd at least fall under the *spirit* of "Wikipedia editors must not act, intentionally or otherwise, in a way that amounts to participating in or prolonging the victimization." ___ 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 article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
I'm skeptical that we should have an article. The reason: Wikipedia is on the Internet. If Wikipedia has an article about something whose promoter specifically intends to spread it on the Internet, it is impossible to separate reporting from participation. It's a loophole in the definition of neutrality that doing things which help one side of a dispute doesn't break neutrality, simply because our intentions are neutral--even though our effects are not. This brings to mind GNAA. GNAA is a troll group who intentionally gave themselves an offensive name so that even mentioning them helped them troll. Wikipedia had a hard time getting rid of the article about them, because we can't say "by using their name, we're helping their goals" in deciding whether to have an article. It was finally deleted by stretching the notability rules instead. And in a related question, I'd ask: Should we have an article "Richard Gere gerbil rumor"? (As long as our article describes the rumor as debunked, of course--otherwise we would be directly violating BLP.) Some of the justifications for that and for this sound similar. ___ 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] Encyclopedia Dramatica
On Tue, 17 May 2011, David Gerard wrote: > The new site has indeed had about 0 verifiable third-party coverage. But the problem is that it's being treated as a "new site" and therefore all the notability and such has to start from scratch. How do we determine that something remains the "same site" or is a "new site"? If the Washington Monument was torn down and rebuilt 2 miles to the west as "Washington Monument West", would we need to determine separate notability for the Washington Monument West and the Washington Monument? ___ 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] Encyclopedia Dramatica
Disclaimer: I don't actually use ED and what I know of it comes from mentions on the talk page and here, which seems to be quite enough to understand this: Summary: This site is a controversial site that is often considered an attack site, but we have an article about it anyway. The site shut down and the users of the old site restarted it at a different location. Wikipedia has decided that site should be considered defunct and the new site ignored because 1) the new site is for harassment and we shouldn't link to harassment (even though the same is true of the old site, yet we have an article about it), 2) the new site is a copyright violation of the old site and we're not supposed to link to copyright violations (even though the claim that it is a copyright violation is based on selectively using one of two contradictory copyright notices from the old site), and 3) we have no reliable source claiming the two sites are the same. It seems obvious to me that this is being excluded because either the editors don't want to link there and find this a good excuse, or else are simply blindly adhering to rules even when they make no sense (I recall a case where an open-source project was restarted by the same people under a new name and we couldn't have an article about it because we had to provide separate notability for the new version of the project). We also may want to rethink the rules about copyright violations. It's one thing to ignore a site because it contains a bootleg copy of Star Wars. It's another to ignore a site where there's a copyright dispute and Wikipedia has to actually decide the dispute in order to call the site a copyright violation. It especially makes little sense when the same people are involved in the "copyright violating" site who were involved with the original site--shouldn't it make more sense to treat it as the same site if it has the same content and the same people, even if its copyright status did change? ___ 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] Nationality on the lead of articles
On Thu, 31 Mar 2011, Fred Bauder wrote: > So, instead of working on the article, and adding something about > astrology, there has been a sterile POV conflict. Meanwhile the article > is piss poor with one of the POV warriors, now he's gotten rid of the > opposition, re-writing it and making it even worse. > > So big fight over nothing, while substantial work remains undone. > > "WikiProject Rational Skepticism High-importance)" Really? I don't think the article is skeptical enough. For instance, it says "In February, 2001, the science of vedic astrology, Jyotir Vigyan, was introduced into the curriculum of Indian universities". The reference shows the government of India saying that, but the government of India is not a reliable source for the claim that vedic astrology is a science or is being treated scientifically. The words "the science of" should be removed, or described solely as someone else's words without implying that they are true, for instance "vedic astrology, described as a science by the Government of India, was" ___ 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] iCorrect
On Mon, 28 Mar 2011, Fred Bauder wrote: > Wikipedia:Ignore all rules is still policy. Unfortunately, whenever there is a dispute between someone who wants to obey rules (possibly to the extent of obsessive/compulsive behavior) and someone who wants to ignore rules, the system is extremely slanted towards the person who wants to obey the rules. IAR is useless whever you actually need to invoke it. ___ 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] iCorrect
On Mon, 28 Mar 2011, Victor Vasiliev wrote: >> A personal note from the subject needs to be added, and accepted, as >> reference. It is by most authors and editors, for appropriate matters. > Where do you suggest to store it? There's no reason an ordinary comment on the talk page can't be used for this purpose. While it's true that talk pages can be edited by others, the history cannot be edited and will always show what text actually came from the subject. It will still have to be verified that it really is from the subject, but that's true for all such notes whether on the talk page or not. ___ 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] Koch brothers articles doctored says Think Progress
On Wed, 16 Mar 2011, George Herbert wrote: > It's not perfect, but it's balanceable. It's sometimes broken, but > SOFIXIT - within the system, not by introducing a new external entity > trying to subvert it. I don't even understand your answer as an answer, since it's so full of qualifications. Do you think that they (either the Koch's or CAMERA) were/are really trying to add bias and that their protestations that they want to remove it are lies? (And if you do *not* believe this, then why all the talk which assumes that they're adding bias, contrary to what they said?) Do you think that they're sincere about wanting to remove bias but they don't understand what bias is? Do you think they're sincere and know what it is, but you don't think their methods will work? And how exactly is being too good at doing something "subverting" it? > That does work. People demonstrate that every > day, even on the worst of hostile topics. Wikipedia's system manifestly does not work in a lot of places. Why should removal of bias be the one place where Wikipedia is perfection? ___ 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] Koch brothers articles doctored says Think Progress
On Wed, 16 Mar 2011, George Herbert wrote: > Someone organizing an off-wiki organized group intended to push > on-wiki bias one way or the other is an unfair advantage for their > viewpoint and biases. *If* someone was organizing a group to push bias, they'd have an unfair advantage against others without such a group. But is that what they're doing? Or are you just assuming "they say they're trying to stop bias, but they *must* really be trying to push bias, because they're too organized, and their opinions show they're evil, and besides, Wikipedia has no bias anyway"? The Kochs are one of the biggest left-wing targets around. (So is Israel.) They have plenty of reason to be legitimately concerned with bias against them. If someone claims to be stopping bias, saying "they're here to create it instead" is blatantly non-AGF unless you have some reason for that belief other than "they can't really mean it". ___ 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] Koch brothers articles doctored says Think Progress
On Tue, 15 Mar 2011, Will Beback wrote: > The article doesn't say that a conspiracy within Wikipedia tried to bias > articles. It says that a prominent industrialist and political contributor > paid professional writers to alter Wikipedia articles to change the > descriptions of his involvement in a political movement. > > It's a situation where organized professionals are working against > unorganized amateurs. Getting rid of bias is not an action movie. You don't try to give the other side a fighting chance. Professionals versus amateurs is perfectly legitimate if they really are trying to stop the amateurs from introducing bias. And of course the assumption "they may say they're getting rid of bias but they really want to add bias and they're lying about it" is just an assumption. We went over the same thing with CAMERA. A target of the left wing decided to try removing bias against their side from Wikipedia and was treated like they were trying to introduce it instead, with the main reasoning being "they couldn't possibly really want to remove bias, after all, they're too organized, and anyone who likes the cause that they like must be biased anyway. Besides, Wikipedia has no bias, so nobody could really want to remove it". CAMERA did make a few missteps (trying to become admins, for instance), but that's far from all they were blamed for. ___ 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] Koch brothers articles doctored says Think Progress
On Tue, 15 Mar 2011, Ian Woollard wrote: > The thing is, it takes a conspiracy within the Wikipedia's rank and > file to bias an article significantly over a long period; otherwise > normal editing and then RFCs and so forth will tend sort it out. Yeah, that Siegenthaler thing was corrected in a few hours. And the Brian Peppers one was deleted immediately. Believing that there is no such thing as a biased article on Wikipedia is an excessively optimistic point of view. It doesn't take a conspiracy; it just takes a group of editors willing to push the bias through, and maybe an admin or two willing to look the other way because it's not worth the trouble (also see: spoiler warnings). I suppose you could call anything which involves more than one editor a "conspiracy", but it's not a conspiracy in the sense of backroom meetings and evil plans to deliberately mess things up. ___ 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] Koch brothers articles doctored says Think Progress
On Mon, 14 Mar 2011, The Cunctator wrote: >> Oh, certainly, left wing blogs are attacking the Kochs. And awareness among > hard-core political activists and junkies is probably pretty high. There you go. > But we're talking a very small percentage of the US population. > > There are only a few thousand regular editors on en.wp. There really aren't > that many people who edit Wikipedia. And [[David H. Koch]] for example is > semi-protected. So we're talking about a handful of editors. > > There are big differences between the hypothetical potential pool of people > capable of editing Wikipedia, the pool of people interested in doing so, the > people with the experience and ability to do so effectively, etc. It's true that only a certain number of people would bias a Koch article against the Koch's. It's also true that this can be said for virtually any article where there is danger of political bias. By your reasoning nobody should ever have to worry about political bias anywhere on Wikipedia. Some people do like to believe that no outsider should ever worry about political bias on Wikipedia. If so, there's not much I can say to convince you except to point out that you have an inflated idea of how well Wikipedia works. But if there's ever any article which is a valid concern, surely the Koch article has to be one of them. It's a BLP on a subject that is routinely the target of the left; about the only way it could be worse is to be about Obama or Bush (and those are so high profile that the danger is probably less, anyway.) ___ 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] Koch brothers articles doctored says Think Progress
On Mon, 14 Mar 2011, The Cunctator wrote: > The Koch brothers are mostly unknown. ... > ... It is Ken's assertion that there are "many > people highly motivated to write misrepresentations and > unbalanced articles," though the evidence seems to point to there being > maybe a handful of such people. You've got to be kidding. The first page of Google results for them shows anti-Koch articles from alternet.org, Huffington Post, and Daily Kos. If you think that they are unknown to the extent that nobody would be likely to have an anti-Koch agenda, you are dead wrong; the Koch brothers are a current left-wing blog and activism target. ___ 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] Koch brothers articles doctored says Think Progress
On Mon, 14 Mar 2011, David Goodman wrote: > It is possible to provide arguments against the reliability of any > source whatever. (And in the other direction, it is possible to take > most sources and selectively quote them to provide evidence for > support for any position whatever.) It is possible to destroy the > integrity of any article by concentrating on finding weaknesses in the > sourcing combined with careful use of sources that appear reliable, > but are not really to the point. Even a single person doing this can > work havoc, and if this is done in a concerted way, it provides ample > scope for the expression of bias. The cruder forms of this technique > are of course widespread in politics--they tend not to work well in > Wikipedia, but slightly more sophisticated use of the method can be > quite successful unless the opposition is equally determined. This works both ways, though. You describe how an attempt to introduce bias can be painted as a genuine fix. But it also works the other way: a genuine fix can be painted as an attempt to introduce bias. And it's basically the same method: selectively quoting, finding weaknesses in the sources (this time the sources used by the fixer instead of the sources used by the article), etc. I know the Koch brothers are unpopular among a vocal segment of the political spectrum, and especially on the Internet. This means we should be very careful when claiming that they are trying to introduce bias, when they only claim to be fixing imbalance--the fact that they are so widely hated means that 1) there are many people highly motivated to write misrepresentations and unbalanced articles, making this concern legitimate 2) the claims that they are "really" trying to introduce bias may themselves be introduced by people with bias, using the exact same techniques against them that they claim are being used for them. I'm reminded of the CAMERA incident. If there's anyone with a bigger target painted on them than the Koch brothers, it's Israel. And Wikipedia basically listened to a pro-Palestinian group and completely accepted their spin about CAMERA. ___ 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] "Fixed our client’s Wikipedia page."
It's not clear if they understand Wikipedia's image licensing policy. The way that article is phrased, it sounds like they are licensing the picture to Wikipedia. The article also has this: To mitigate this, we wrote an official biography on our client’s site. This biography carried more weight than the online citations used by other Wiki editors. which sounds like a classic case of having to jump through hoops. since the information would be equally accurate whether they created a page for it or not.___ 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 Leadership (was NY Times article on gender gap in Wikipedia contributors} - repost
On Thu, 3 Feb 2011, Carcharoth wrote: > Which incident are you both talking about? If Ken's user page makes it > obvious, just say that, but I can't immediately remember what you are > both talking about here. Spoiler warnings. And no, it's not on my userpage. ___ 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] Tabloid sources (was Wikipedia leadership})
On Fri, 4 Feb 2011, Fred Bauder wrote: > Clearly there are issues. I'm on Jimbo's side with this though. Some of > my earliest edit wars were over whether The People's Republic of China > could be described in the introduction as a totalitarian dictatorship. > What has currently been hit on is "single-party state governed by the > Communist Party of China (CPC)." with a link to "single-party state" an > artificial construct for which there is little published authority. > > We can't get so picky and bound up in rules that stating the obvious is > forbidden. It's easy for someone who is a little too anal-retentive at following rules to cause trouble, because the fact that he *is* following rules makes it so much easier for him to push his demands. And if you rules-lawyer, it's still easy to get away with it. The reason is that having the rules on your side gives you one *heck* of an edge in any dispute. It's occasionally possible for common sense to triumph over rules, but only in the very obvious cases will this happen--if the person following the rules isn't demanding something so outrageous that anyone can see how bad it is instantly, it'll work. ___ 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 Leadership (was NY Times article on gender gap in Wikipedia contributors} - repost
On Wed, 2 Feb 2011, wiki wrote: > The notion that what new editors really value is the ability to participate > in policy discussions, and that any move away from that is "dangerous" is > just more nonsense of the libertine variety. We are building an encyclopedia > - remember that? The rest is just pragmatic sausage making. Well, I can tell you I left because of a policy decision (well, there were a whole bunch of things but the policy decision was one of the worst.) ___ 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 is not a dictionary (was: Re: Old Wikipedia backups discovered)
So does that mean we can restore the article on "the"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/The ___ 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] Alleged Liberal Bias
On Wed, 13 Oct 2010, Charles Matthews wrote: > #167 is the allegation that "we" fail to understand what the Tea Party > guys are all about. AFAIK we don't claim to understand anything much, > just to compile articles from sources. I think that as a serious response, this is disingenuous. People don't write with 100% precision, and they certainly don't use Wikipedia terminology. It may be literally true that we don't claim to understand anything, but that doesn't make the complaint invalid. It just means that you need to apply a bit more intelligence to understanding the complaint beyond literally parsing the words. (And there's *far* too much literalness among Wikipedia policy wonks). I would guess that a complaint that we don't understand something is a claim of undue weight and unreliable sources. Almost any claim about the Tea Party has been made by someone; whether it has been made by someone who we ought to pay attention to is another story. ___ 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"
On Mon, 30 Aug 2010, David Levy wrote: > Indeed, that's a different matter altogether. It's reasonable to > argue that Wikipedia articles should contain spoiler warnings for the > benefit of readers (though the English Wikipedia community has reached > consensus to the contrary). This is very different from the idea of > providing special editorial control to representatives of articles' > subjects. Using tools that are bots in all but name even when the tool is not supposed to be used for controversial subjects, is not "reaching consensus". ___ 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"
On Mon, 30 Aug 2010, Carcharoth wrote: > Actually, I'd like to read the article about the play without finding > out the ending. Is that an unreasonable thing to ask? (And yes, I know > this is a completely different argument to the one I used before). > With other things, I just read the articles anyway, and don't care > about knowing the ending in advance (or I avoid them, as I did when > the last Harry Potter book came out). But for some reason, here I find > myself (as a reader of Wikipedia) wanting to be able to read the other > parts of the article and would likely have read the article after > reading the newspaper story if I hadn't found out in advance (from the > newspaper story) that the article contained a spoiler. Put it this > way: my finding out that this article contains a spoiler means I have > avoided reading it - how many other people have avoided reading it for > the same reasons? If that is a feature and not a bug, fair enough, but > I find it strange that what articles I read on Wikipedia is being > decided by what a newspaper article has to say about them. To put it bluntly, Wikipedia used to have spoiler warnings but they were removed by a massive abuse of process (and exploiting of loopholes in the process), compounded by silence from the few people able to fix it. I complained at the time, but essentially nobody else did, so it was forced through. ___ 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] Another sourcing problem
On Sun, 18 Jul 2010, FT2 wrote: > So I would be okay with a solution that > extended and built upon SELFPUB. For example: It's a nice try, but it still has the limitation to not being about third parties. We clearly can't just do away with that completely, but it needs to be relaxed somehow. ___ 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] Another sourcing problem
On Fri, 16 Jul 2010, Charles Matthews wrote: > You are shifting ground there, of course. It is true that in a sense we > have subordinated NPOV to RS, by saying we are not going to allow vague > assertions that there is more than one side to a story, only things we > can verify. I'm disputing *whether verification polices make any sense*. Responding that anything not allowed by the policy is just a "vague assertion" because it hasn't been verified, is circular reasoning. ___ 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] Another sourcing problem
On Fri, 16 Jul 2010, Bod Notbod wrote: > Put the character on a comics Wikia with all the desired information > and have Wikipedia link to it. Presumably a Wikia on comics can > establish its own reliable sources list to allow comic fan journals We'd then have Wikipedia linking to something that's an unreliable source by Wikipedia standards. > If your desire is to overturn a central plank of Wikipedia policy - > verifiability - then it would probably be wise not to present a "joke > comic character" and a "fan fiction" dispute as plausible grounds to > do so. It's not a "fan fiction" dispute in the sense that you imply. It's about a published author claiming that there was a fan fiction dispute and being able to have only her side of the story on Wikipedia because the "fan fiction" author cannot publish her side in a reliable source. If you really think it's unimportant because it's about fan fiction, then we shouldn't mention it at all. That's no excuse to mention one side. ___ 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] Another sourcing problem
On Thu, 15 Jul 2010, Charles Matthews wrote: > Why is this any different from any other kind of "arcana"? And do people > really lose sleep over this sort of thing? There must be a huge amount > of insider-like knowledge associated with politics, sport, business, > whatever. If we wait until this becomes "information" - is documented in > at least some literature about the area - that should be fine. Most > specialist areas have at least a magazine. I don't think simply > multiplying instances where at the margin the content policy works as it > is intended to by itself undermines its purpose. The Internet is available to hundreds of millions people. I think that disqualifies anything on it from being insider information. And the policy isn't working as it's intended to. The reliable sources rule isn't supposed to rule out arcana. We have rules that are actually about arcana to handle that. (Though I'm not sure exactly what the reliable sources rule is for. It's not, of course, about truth.) And even this excuse doesn't work for the Bradley example. Having only one side of a dispute because one side of the dispute is a published author and can more easily get her side published in a reliable source certainly isn't "arcana". ___ 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] Another sourcing problem
On Thu, 15 Jul 2010, Ian Woollard wrote: >> And the real point is that our reliable source concept is utterly broken >> when >> it comes to using blogs and other modern sources. Saying "if it's not in a >> reliable source, there's nothing you can do" misses the point. Sure there's >> something you can do: fix the definition of reliable source. > Or, isn't this the point of IAR? I don't think IAR is for systematic problems. ___ 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] Another sourcing problem
On Thu, 15 Jul 2010, Carcharoth wrote: > But really, if something is obscure enough that it doesn't get > published in reliable sources, you are stuck. What I would support in > such cases is an external link to a page documenting this. Kind of > like further reading. The *character* is in a reliable source, it's just that the fact that it was based off a fandom joke or that the character's "creator" thought it was preexisting are not in reliable sources. And for the Marion Zimmer Bradley example, the *dispute* is present in reliable sources, it's just that *both sides* of the dispute are not (since only the side who is a professional author gets to publish her side professionally). And the real point is that our reliable source concept is utterly broken when it comes to using blogs and other modern sources. Saying "if it's not in a reliable source, there's nothing you can do" misses the point. Sure there's something you can do: fix the definition of reliable source. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
[WikiEN-l] Another sourcing problem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Fall_Off_Boy Summary: A joke character with a similar name existed in comics fandom. The writer who put this character in the comic book mistakenly thought he was a preexisting character, and it's possible he confused him with the character who had the similar name. The Wikipedia article is allowed to mention none of this because it assumes that reliable sources are professionally published and we can't use fanzines and blogs for information... and professionally publishing anything about a joke character whose superpower is that his arm falls off is not too likely. (Also, previous example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Zimmer_Bradley . Bradley had a dispute with a fan writer over "fan fiction" (whether it even counts as fan fiction is highly questionable). The fan's side of this dispute is available in blogs and fan sources; Bradley, being a published writer, could get her side described in sources that are reliable by Wikipedia standards. Therefore, Wikipedia only tells one side of the story.) ___ 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] Reliable sources— some of these babi es are ugly
On Thu, 20 May 2010, Carcharoth wrote: >> The combination results in a badly distended view of knowledge that has >> wrecked more than a handful of articles on Wikipedia. > Some examples may help. I already gave an example of the Marion Zimmer Bradley article: a published author has a dispute with a fan. The published author's side of the story is in normal sources. The fan's side of the story is self-published. Wikipedia won't accept self-published sources that make claims about other people; therefore, only one side of the story gets into Wikipedia. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources— some of these babi es are ugly
> But I can't say that these points really apply in many cases that we > appear to be applying them: We would reject as reliable sources many > hobbyist blogs (or even webcomics) with a stronger reputation to > preserve, less obviously-compromised motivations, and _significantly_ > greater circulation than some obscure corner of Fox News's online > product. What can be the explanation for this discrepancy? This is more an indication that we need to start using blogs as sources rather than that we have a problem with how we use major media. I recently had to leave a one-sided paragraph in [[Marion Zimmer Bradley]]: For many years, Bradley actively encouraged Darkover fan fiction and reprinted some of it in commercial Darkover anthologies, continuing to encourage submissions from unpublished authors, but this ended after a dispute with a fan over an unpublished Darkover novel of Bradley's that had similarities to some of the fan's stories. As a result, the novel remained unpublished, and Bradley demanded the cessation of all Darkover fan fiction. We have the fan's side of this. It puts a very different spin on things, but it's in a Usenet post in the thread at http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/browse_thread/thread/2649a35b264175b8/b91ef5c1e50f3439?#b91ef5c1e50f3439 and it's completely unusuable under Wikipedia sourcing policies (even as a self-published source, since it makes claims about other people). ___ 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] Reliable sources— some of these babi es are ugly
On Sun, 16 May 2010, Nathan wrote: > Obviously it would be an impossible task to study all potential > sources and make a proactive determination of reliability. We hope to > some extent that folks citing academic sources have vetted them in > some way as to their credibility, but with mainstream news sources > even that expectation is set aside. So instead, perhaps we could have > a reactive policy of reassessing the assumption of reliability for > specific sources based on a history of errors. When Fox News articles > are shown to be riddled with errors of basic fact, indicating that no > effort was made to verify claims, we should stop granting it the same > deference we extend to other institutions with more integrity. If "riddled with errors" means "has more (frequent) errors than other sources", then this makes some sense. If "riddled with errors" means "has errors that we have recently had our attention called to" or "has errors that happen to be about some subject we are personally pissed off about", then it's a very bad idea. ___ 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] Jimbo on Commons
On Tue, 11 May 2010, David Goodman wrote: > Censorship is normally used to mean a refusal to include something on > the basis of content, not on the basis of form or external > characteristics. Not including a picture because it does not have a > free license is not censorship, not including it because it's of poor > quality is not censorship, not including it because of what it shows > is censorship. NOT CENSORED means in the image context that there is > no image that we reject because of what it portrays. 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. ___ 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] Jimbo on Commons
On Mon, 10 May 2010, David Gerard wrote: > On the talk page, I mostly see people calling it out for the > censorship stalking horse it was. > > You can tag a goat "a very special sort of chicken," but people will > see through that. Well, it is a form of censorship, but just removing someone's private social security number is a form of censorship. The no censorship olicy isn't any mor eabsolute than any other policy, and never has been. Heck, removing an image that's fair use under law but not under policy is a form of censorship. ___ 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] Jimbo on Commons
It's obvious some of Jimbo's idea is ill-considered. But what bothers me is the responses that this violates some kind of blanket policy. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and we may not remove useful information for any reason. Wikipedia is not censored, we are not allowed to have exceptions. I suggest that this is a piss-poor way to create Wikipedia policy. There's a substantial contingent of policy wonks who take any blanket policy statement as gospel and use it as an excuse to avoid even *trying* to figure out if some suggested exception to that policy is a good idea on the grounds that we don't do such things, ever. It's a triumph of rules lawyering over common sense. Of course, when questioned they will admit that exceptions are allowed, but their attitude to any proposed exception remains the same. (And that's not related to whether this policy is a good idea. To use a less controversial example, BLP and privacy protections. You should see how some people resist any attempt to protect privacy on the grounds that "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia" and that therefore nothing which makes it even a tiny bit less of an encyclopedia can ever be removed.) ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
