[WikiEN-l] Contributing to Wikipedia brochure draft
We're nearing the completion of a project to create a new introductory brochure for helping newcomers to get started on Wikipedia. It's the new version of the old Welcome to Wikipedia brochure. There are still some refinements being made, and there's still time to make changes based on feedback, but it's starting to come into its final form. Check it out and leave suggestions, please! I'll keep this page updated with the latest PDF as we get new revisions from the designer we're working with: https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Welcome_to_Wikipedia_%28Bookshelf%29/2013_edition/draft Cheers, Sage Ross Communications Contractor, Wikipedia Education Program Wikimedia Foundation ___ 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] Did you like Wikipedia:Spotlight? Try Editing Friday!
On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 2:22 PM, Elias Friedman elipo...@gmail.com wrote: I didn't want to be the party-pooper, but since Thor's blazed that trail for me already grin I should mention that Friday night rather excludes those of us who are observant Jews. (c.f. [[Shabbat]]) That's a good point. Certainly, we could rotate the day and/or time for future Editing Fridays if there's interest for people who can't do Fridays. If that's you, say so on the wiki. -Sage ___ 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] Did you like Wikipedia:Spotlight? Try Editing Friday!
Wikipedia:Spotlight [1] is an inactive project that many of you are probably familiar with. The concept is, real-time collaboration on building a specific article. When it worked well, Spotlight was a great project; it gave participants a taste of the best of Wikipedia and the feeling of community and common purpose. Relative newcomers could learn from old hands, and with many people pitching in, major articles could see huge improvements in a short time. The downside is that it was hard to keep momentum up, and most of the time there was simply nothing happening. Some of the Wikipedia Ambassador Program participants are trying to revive the best parts of Spotlight with Editing Fridays [2]. Instead of one collaboration after another, we set a specific time to collaborate: late Friday to early Saturday UTC. Please join us this Friday! -Sage [1] = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Spotlight [2] = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Editing_Fridays ___ 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: [Foundation-l] Do you want to write pages that thousands of people see every day?
Since it's a WMF holiday and I can do whatever I want with my time, I made one too. ;) http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Account_Creation_Improvement_Project/Testing_content/Landing_page/Video_walkthrough Like FT2, I welcome any edits to make it look better. And feedback about the content is of course welcome too. I can always do more takes with revised scripts. -Sage On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 9:16 AM, Lennart Guldbrandsson wikihanni...@gmail.com wrote: This is good. I'll make sure we'll test this as well. Best wishes, Lennart 2011/2/21 FT2 ft2.w...@gmail.com I'm not usually one for graphic design, so this could probably do with improving and relevant links adding. I've added a version that could be helpful at http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Account_Creation_Improvement_Project/Testing_content/Landing_page/mod2 What I'm hoping to address are: 1. Layouts original version and redesign are too close to wall of text for many newcomers. Even though they are simple short bullet lists with icons, I'm concerned they'll skip it. A better layout and a few brief bullets may do better and also be more informative. 2. The audience is people who want to get involved, so an overview they can come back to might be helpful. I have assumed this page is linked from the toolkit so they can always find it. 3. It might be better to have a link for editing, and save the mention of policies there. At the start a user needs to know the basics, that some stuff will be ok and some won't, and click here to find out which. Then they are reading it *by choice* and it'll probably be more sticky as a result. Words like policies may tend to overwhelm or frighten many of those we want to engage. 4. The section for readers also includes* Reading, or want to make improvements and corrections? *The *unstated thought *is that a reader will also be someone who might want to make a small correction. Gut feel says that a major route is readers who are then tempted to make their first correction, or who need to know they *can *think of it. I'd like to see the effect of including making a small improvement or correction *as part of info for end-users*, not just keeping it separate. Not technically accurate but may be effective this way, as editing could be felt as overwhelming (initially) where make a small correction may be perceived as empowering. Many people may think someone should fix that and despite all our pages, not fully realize the someone is allowed to be *them*. 5. *I have not put links in yet.* I would not make individual words, lines, or sentences a link. Link proliferation is a distraction, we found that out in the record 2010 fundraiser. Make each section (except the last) to be *one* link clickable anywhere. Unfortunately (bug 18640https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18460) the a href... html tag can't be used yet in markup, otherwise I'd make the entirety of each cell a single link to some (short) relevant subpage. I'd actually like it done via a popup, that appears when you click a cell for information. That's more classy and suited to the richer interface of other modern websites, but outside my skills. Anyone else know where I can find a basic click this and get a dismissible popup DIV class? :) 6. Should contain something interesting and engaging too :) Feedback and any design-related questions welcomed! Not sure where to link this from/to though. FT2 ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l -- Lennart Guldbrandsson, Fellow of the Wikimedia Foundation and chair of Wikimedia Sverige // Wikimedia Foundation-stipendiat och ordförande för Wikimedia Sverige ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Do you want to write pages that thousands of people see every day?
On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 3:30 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 21 February 2011 20:19, Sage Ross ragesoss+wikipe...@gmail.com wrote: http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Account_Creation_Improvement_Project/Testing_content/Landing_page/Video_walkthrough The person in the video frame that comes up in my browser (Firefox 4.0b11) looks very dismayed :-) http://oi51.tinypic.com/9zufsy.jpg I did a quick fix, setting the thumbtime to a second later when I'm smiling. I'll upload a different version that starts with smiling frames when I get a chance. -Sage ___ 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 libraries
On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 11:04 AM, Joseph Reagle joseph.2...@reagle.org wrote:
On Tuesday, February 08, 2011, Carcharoth wrote:
[Bit off-topic, but has anyone read that book?]
Yes, here's my summary:
Numerous Wikipedian vignettes and debates are used to explore issues
including reliability, verifiability, neutrality, and criticism. Also
includes historical parallels. Very charming and detailed, but does not
advance any particular theories. \acite{Dalby2009wah}
And here's my review:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-05-03/Book_review
And here's David Shankbone's:
http://blog.shankbone.org/2009/11/02/andrew-dalby-wikipedia-and-the-worl/
-Sage
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[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Ambassador Program looking for new ambassadors
The Wikipedia Ambassador Program is expanding for the coming term, and we're having 5 regional Campus Ambassador training events in the US: *San Francisco, 7-8 January *Washignton, DC, 8-9 January *New York City, 11-12 January *Baton Rouge, 13-14 January *Indianapolis, 15-16 January (Alex Stinson, User:Sadads, will also be working to get the program started in the UK over the next few months, while he's studying at Oxford.) With a few exceptions (we need some more Campus Ambassadors in the Boston/Cambridge area and in Houston) it looks like we'll have enough local ambassadors to support the 25-30 courses we'll be working with between January and May. But if you're near one of the training events and would be free for the scheduled days of training, and you want to help spread the Wikipedia Ambassador Program to new campuses and disciplines or to try to start a Wikipedia club on your campus, please apply to be a Campus Ambassador: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Steering_Committee/Campus_Ambassador_selection_process/Application (I can provide a .doc version of the application by email, upon request.) I also want to invite people to join the ambassador program as Online Ambassadors. We may be working with upwards of 500 students who needs experienced Wikipedians to serve as mentors. If you're comfortable giving reviews of articles in development, and want to be a friendly face/username for newcomers, please apply: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Online_Ambassadors Being an Online Ambassador is also a good way to get some experience with the ambassador program if you're interested in doing in-person outreach as a Campus Ambassador or similar role down the line; by the end of the Public Policy Initiative grant, expansion of the ambassador programs to new campuses and beyond will be driven by the ambassadors, and WMF will mostly or completely step back. Cheers, Sage Ross Online Facilitator, Public Policy Initiative Wikimedia Foundation ___ 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] Medpedia
On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 3:29 PM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: I recently came across this wiki: http://www.medpedia.com/ It seemed a lot better than Wikipedia for what I wanted to look up. Has anyone else come across this wiki before? It launched to modest fanfare last year, but I hadn't seen much about it since. It looks like their main focus has been batch imports of content from other sources, including lots of full journal articles automatically quasi-formatted for the wiki. Actual human edits seem to be minimal, though. Compare all edits (dominated by automatic imports) versus mainspace edits (which trickle in slowly): http://wiki.medpedia.com/Special:RecentChanges?namespace=0limit=500title=Special%3ARecentChanges http://wiki.medpedia.com/Special:RecentChanges?namespace=limit=500title=Special%3ARecentChanges -Sage ___ 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] Wanted: Wikipedia Online Ambassadors
Yes, the Online Ambassadors program is open to people anywhere. It's about helping people online, so there's no need to limit it. The Campus Ambassadors, at this point, are limited to the handful of US universities that we've been working with so far (but that should expand in the future). I suspect later on there will be more crossover, so if you're interested in being a Campus Ambassador but aren't at one of the current schools, doing the Online Ambassador thing might be a good idea so that you can see how the program works and help roll it out to new schools when we get to that point. -Sage On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 6:20 AM, Bejinhan bejin...@gmail.com wrote: I thought that this is open to anyone, regardless of where they live, as long as they fulfill the requirements. Bejinhan On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 3:34 PM, Peter Coombe thewub.w...@googlemail.comwrote: You haven't mentioned it, but I guess this is only open to people in the US? Pete / the wub ___ 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] Wanted: Wikipedia Online Ambassadors
The Wikimedia Foundation is now recruiting Online Ambassadors for the Public Policy Initiative. (The Initiative is a new program in which university students will contribute meaningful work to Wikipedia as part of their classes -- but we need a corps of Wikipedia Ambassadors to help professors and students throughout the semester and to lay the groundwork for new, more effective, and more systematic ways of helping new users.) We are finalizing a list of Wikipedia Campus Ambassadors who will be available in person on the college campuses, but we also want Wikipedia Online Ambassadors who can coordinate with professors and assist students via email, on the wiki, and on IRC. We need experienced Wikipedians with a track record of helping newbies who will be able to commit at least 2 hours per week in the fall semester to join. We want the Online Ambassadors program to be something that continues on and expands after the Public Policy Initiative concludes, as a more systematic way to help new users and put Wikipedia's friendliest face forward. So the idea is to develop a community, and best practices, for focused welcoming of new editors, especially students assigned to edit. If you're interested, please visit our Online Ambassadors page for more details on the position and how to apply: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Policy/Online_Ambassadors -Sage Ross (aka ragesoss) Online Facilitator, Public Policy Initiative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sross_%28Public_Policy%29 ___ 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] UIC Journal: Evaluating quality control of Wikipedia's feature[d] articles
On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 2:30 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 19 April 2010 18:46, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: I wonder if there might be a subtle bias playing into these reviews. Perhaps if reviewers begin with the assumption that the article was written by amateur hobbyists, that influences the outcome. If Lindsey went back to them and let them know that the articles had been written or comprehensively reviewed by recognized experts, would that alter the results? This is why the useful reviews of quality (e.g. Wikipedia vs Britannica for Nature) were done at least single-blind. I don't think blinding could make much difference; I doubt the results of the Nature study would have been any different without it. Several reviewers (including ones who rated Wikipedia articles favorably) commented that they could easily tell stylistically which articles were from Wikipedia. Comparable tertiary sources are different enough from Wikipedia that experts are generally going to be able to tell which articles are from Wikipedia regardless of how accurate and comprehensive they are. -Sage ___ 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] Is a book cover in a Signpost book review an acceptable exemption from the non-free content policy?
I'd like to get a little wider input on this issue. Tony1 is reviewing a recent academic book about Wikipedia for the Signpost, and we'd like to include an image of the cover in the review: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Book_cover_O%27Sullivan.jpg Unfortunately, since the Signpost is project space, this violates the letter of the policy, but (in my view) neither the letter nor the spirit of the Foundation-level directives for non-free content. Is this (and other Signpost book reviews in the future, perhaps) a valid case an exemption to the non-free content policy? It's being discussed on-wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Non-free_content#Book_cover_images_in_critical_reviews_of_books_on_WP_in_The_Signpost http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Non-free_content_criteria_exemptions#Book_cover_images_in_critical_reviews_of_books_on_WP_in_The_Signpost -Sage (user:ragesoss) ___ 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] Is a book cover in a Signpost book review an acceptable exemption from the non-free content policy?
Greg, I agree with much of your analysis, but depart at a few points. On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 5:17 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: snip The only justification for including any non-free works on english wikipedia is that doing so is widely accepted to be a necessity (on EN, at least) to accomplish our stated mission as an encyclopaedia, and it so happens that kind of necessity has long been understood by the lawmakers and the courts, so that it's clearly permitted. Both of these aspects are necessary components of the reasoning, and it's not at all clear that the signpost is itself essential, even less so that signpost being hosted by Wikimedia is essential, and I think it would be patently ridiculous to say that the signpost being able to use particular images is essential for the project mission... It's true that the Signpost itself, much less non-free images in the Signpost, are not strictly essential to the mission of Wikipedia. But then, neither are most non-free images that we do allow. Some images are more essential than others; [[Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima]] is quite a different matter from the typical article about a book or album where the cover isn't explicitly discussed. And for that matter, many articles themselves aren't strictly necessary, insomuch as inclusion policy is under-determined by the project mission and in some ways arbitrary. Essential-ness is relative. I would argue that reviews of Wikipedia-related books are at least as important to furthering the mission of the project as a lot of the article space content that we categorically allow. snip Part of the notion behind being particular about non-project usage is that it fosters a culture of being particular about copyright— without an acute awareness of the restrictions that copyright can place on usage, we couldn't hope to minimize problems which would diminish the usefulness of the project. The tighter rules outside of project space give us an opportunity to hone our skills on alternatives and dispense some nit-picking energy in a place where it doesn't harm the end project. It also helps make it more clear that the state of the rest of the project is a reasoned compromise between extremes. (See, our acceptance of non-free works doesn't mean we hate freedom. We have a hard prohibition against it everwhere else!) It seems to me that book reviews are one area where both legally and culturally, fair use has been pretty well carved out such copyright isn't much of a restriction on freedom. We're curtailing our own freedom for the sake of painting a lot of different situations with the same brush. Nevertheless, I see that there's enough pushback from people who recognize that an exception could be made in a case like this but don't think it should be that I'll drop it. -Sage ___ 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] Google bows to censorship
On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 10:00 AM, Gwern Branwen gwe...@gmail.com wrote: Google has agreed to take down links to a website that promotes racist views of indigenous Australians. This story says the SMH one is misleading: http://www.inquisitr.com/57105/aus-media-gets-ed-story-wrong/ The statement from Google in that story is We respond to complaints and review them by reference to local law. In this case, we have removed the search results on google.com.au linking to the pages identified to us by a legal request. In the interest of transparency, the search results now provide notice that pages have been removed in response to a legal request and in their place is a link to Chilling Effects. The complaint was sent it the Australian Human Rights Commission, and it appears they decided the links were against Australian law and asked Google to remove them. -Sage ___ 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] How friendly are we to Newbies? Update on the create an article as a newbie challenge
On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 4:40 AM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: Have you written that essay with this sort of advice in it yet? :-) Carcharoth That would make a good topic for an opinion essay in the Signpost, I think. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Opinion -Sage On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 2:47 AM, David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com wrote: The important part of salvage work is not keeping the articles, but keeping the new contributors. This is done not just by refraining from deleting their articles, but helping the new editors to improve them. What encourages me to patrol is when I get a talk page comment after I've deleted (or drastically reworked) an article: I see where I did it wrong--now I know what to do better. or Many people left notices but you gave me specific advice. Maybe I'll stay here after all. The reason for saving rather than deleting, not matter the extra work it takes, is that a greater proportion of the people will keep on trying. This applies not only to immature editors, but also to people who wander in from the commercial or academic world where expectations are different. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 9:50 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: Carcharoth wrote: On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 7:43 PM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: snip I created a journal article in the end. Not part of this experiment, but my point below (which may have got lost), is valid, I think: To try and bring this post back on-topic, I suppose my point is that stub articles on obscure topics would probably fare even worse if a new editor submitted them. Is that a valid point? That obscure topics need experienced Wikipedians to start the articles going, as opposed to new editors trying to do the same? Anyone agree that the high-hanging fruit are more likely to get new editors bitten? If that's a way of saying that experience is helpful in knowing what makes for a good stub, I think that's uncontestable. If it's a way of saying that the patrolling that goes on is basically a filter by notability of topic first, and excuse for deletion afterwards, then that might be factually accurate, if something that also has its darker side (judging the notability of a topic by what is written in a stub, or even on the basis of quick googling, is obviously flawed). If it's an encouragement to post more stubs that are clearly needed to develop the site, then I'm in complete agreement, and would add that we need more infrastructure directed towards missing articles and at least turning the redlinks blue with adequate stubs. (To answer part of what David Goodman has been arguing consistently, adding new articles prompted by the needs of the site, rather than spending a corresponding amount of time on salvage work, seems to me a defensible priority on content grounds. Which is not the whole point, though.) Charles ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ 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] Sidewiki
On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 2:33 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: Does anyone actually use this in ways relevant to WP? I rather like the first (most helpful) sidewiki comment from the main page: Sidewiki provides what Wikipedia has long needed. A place for people to discuss an article or its topic without discussing the editing of it. This gives people an outlet without cluttering discussion pages with what amount to forum posts. I think we should have done this a long time ago ourselves, in the same way that Wikinews does it with a third tab after the article and the talk page for venting and non-editing-related discussion. But I haven't seen anything really compelling about sidewiki in particular yet. It seems like a crippled alternative to the blog comments Firefox plugin Google used to have but then disabled. -Sage ___ 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] Things to do with your home movies
On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 11:43 AM, Durova nadezhda.dur...@gmail.com wrote: Congratulations! And thanks for your dedication to the project. You realize when he turns thirteen he's going to die of embarrassment over this...? That's the idea. We're stocking up on embarrassing things we can show to his first girlfriend/boyfriend. :) I'd be surprised (and disappointed) if someone doesn't put up a better video of the Moro reflex by the time he's 13, though. It's finally becoming easy to make videos for Wikimedia projects. -Sage ___ 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] Things to do with your home movies
On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 6:51 PM, Steve Bennett stevag...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 7:56 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: Put 'em on Wikipedia! Is it still super complicated and like a lot of hard work? It's not too hard now if you're running Firefox 3.5. Just edit your video in whatever video software is easiest on your machine (e.g., Windows Movie Maker) and save a high quality version in a convenient format (e.g., AVI, MPEG, other common formats), then go firefogg.org, install the plug-in, click make ogg, and use the default encoding settings. If you're feeling especially ambitious, you can add metadata and/or fiddle with the resolution and bit-rate settings (all through firefogg). Converting to Commons-ready ogg with firefogg is actually easier than uploading a file to Commons. -Sage ___ 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] Things to do with your home movies
On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 9:12 PM, Steve Bennett stevag...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 9:38 AM, Sage Ross ragesoss+wikipe...@gmail.com wrote: It's not too hard now if you're running Firefox 3.5. Just edit your video in whatever video software is easiest on your machine (e.g., Windows Movie Maker) and save a high quality version in a convenient format (e.g., AVI, MPEG, other common formats), then go firefogg.org, install the plug-in, click make ogg, and use the default encoding settings. If you're feeling especially ambitious, you can add metadata and/or fiddle with the resolution and bit-rate settings (all through firefogg). Converting to Commons-ready ogg with firefogg is actually easier than uploading a file to Commons. Hmm, sounds like that would make a good extension to Commonist. Firefogg is part of the add media wizard that (I think) is being refined for default deployment on Commons. (It's already available if you add a bit of code to your javascript page.) So yeah, sooner or later it will be possible for many users to simply upload their non-free format videos have them seamlessly transcoded. Along the same lines, hopefully Commonist will simply become unnecessary and batch uploads possible without extra software. On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 7:42 PM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote: See now...when I read Steve's question, I was thinking about the hard work of taking care of the star of the film... All the jokes I thought of in response require too much familiarity with me to be unambiguously non-sexist to WikiEN-l subscribers, so I'll just say... that's how I read the question at first, too. -Sage ___ 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] Wikimedian image restorations exploited on eBay
On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 1:43 PM, Durova nadezhda.dur...@gmail.com wrote: ...I have already stated that the best thing to do at this point is step back and examine the differing assumptions that made this thread nonproductive. On that note, you stated in the second post of the thread that The vendor violates moral rights on all the items it offers for sale. This confused me and is probably one of those differing assumptions that derailed the thread. As I understand it based on the moral rights Wikipedia article you linked, moral rights only exist for copyrighted works (and are not part of U.S. copyright law). That, at least, is the technical legal scope of moral rights as I understand it. So as I understand it, moral rights would not apply to either public domain works or restorations that do not generate a new copyright. You seem to mean something different by moral rights, perhaps a broader philosophical concept. The Wikipedia article lists a number of different moral rights (including the right to the integrity of the work, which in some formulations is in conflict with the concept of free culture). Explaining what you meant by moral rights (which moral rights, and whose--creator and/or restorationist?) might help clear up the differing assumptions issue. -Sage ___ 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] Newbie and not-so-newbie biting
This isn't a new issue by any means, but here's a nice post by someone who's been contributing occasionally since 2004, about how daunting wikibullying can be for newbies and other editors who aren't well-versed in the procedures and processes. http://travel-industry.uptake.com/blog/2009/09/04/bullypedia-a-wikipedian-whos-tired-of-getting-beat-up/ Unfriendliness is built into the system, even when admins and others who enforce the rules are perfectly civil and try to be friendly at an individual level. -Sage ___ 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] Imagine if Wikipedia was printed
On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 7:00 PM, KillerChihuahua pu...@killerchihuahua.com wrote: Perhaps the image is intended to be the TOC or INDEX. -kc- Here's the original source for those images: http://www.rob-matthews.com/index.php?/project/wikipedia/ According to the artist who created it, it's 5000 pages printed from featured articles (only a small subset of which would fit). -Sage ___ 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] [Wikitech-l] Fwd: Wired: Wikipedia to Color Code Untrustworthy Text
On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 12:33 AM, Samuel Kleinmeta...@gmail.com wrote: The name strikes me as the biggest drawback of the current system. I think de Alfaro put it well himself in his quote from Information Week: 'Despite its name, WikiTrust can't directly measure whether text is trustworthy. It can only measure user agreement, said de Alfaro. That's what it does. ' http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=219500669 -Sage ___ 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] Positives to publicity
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 9:12 PM, Emily Monroebluecalioc...@me.com wrote: Do we have a welcome mat rolled out and some magic pixie dust to tell people to please not be BITE-y? *pixie dust pixie dust* ;-D We don't want a large influx of editors arriving to help after reading about things in the news, only to run into someone unfriendly or rules-bound. I agree. Maybe have a Signpost-like note to everyone subscribed to Signpost? Maybe have that actually in the Signpost? Something like Editors note: There's an influx of newbies, so please be patient. How will that work? Is there, in fact, an influx of newbies going on? Has anyone compiled the numbers for recent days to find out whether newbies are signing up faster than usual and if so by how much? I think it's a good idea to point to such an influx in the Signpost if it actually happening, and to highlight the various pages and recommendations we have for enculturating newbies, but doing so based purely on anecdote and second-hand information... that seems more like Daily Mail than Signpost. -Sage ___ 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] Blog post on FlaggedRevs
On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 11:01 PM, Erik Moellere...@wikimedia.org wrote: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/08/26/a-quick-update-on-flagged-revisions/ Please reference if there's any further confusion about this. This post says that the Flagged protection and patrolled revisions trial will put biographies of living people under flagged protection. But the proposal itself says there's no consensus to do that and that only passive patrolled revisions will be used on the whole BLP class. -Sage ___ 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] Flagged Revisions
On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 4:58 PM, Brion Vibberbr...@wikimedia.org wrote: The exact details of what to ask and how many levels to request are configurable. Is there a page to discuss the configuration(s) of ReaderFeedback? I notice the test wiki has the categories Usefulness, Presentation, and Neutrality, while the extension documentation uses four example categories, Reliability, Completeness, NPOV, and Presentation. I hope something more specific than Usefulness is what gets deployed on en-wiki. -Sage ___ 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 approaches its limits - Technology Guardian
On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 4:58 AM, Charles Matthewscharles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/aug/12/wikipedia-deletionist-inclusionist Much familiar argument from threads here. Some of the usual suspects commenting, and everyone putting in their two cents. Somewhere in the middle is a debate struggling to get out: is the volume of reversions indicative of good gatekeeping (poor edits to popular and well-developed articles have little chance of sticking), or bad gatekeeping (established editors assert ownership)? Stats from 2007 and 2009 show a step-change of some sort, as we know, but don't really prove that there is a current trend (we could be going sideways). Charles Regarding the familiar arguments related to this... should the Signpost be a venue for discussing thing stuff? See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions#.22Wikipedia_enters_a_new_chapter.22 -Sage ___ 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] Rorschach wars continue
On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 9:52 AM, Ken Arromdeearrom...@rahul.net wrote: On Fri, 31 Jul 2009, FastLizard4 wrote: The concern is legitimate, if for no other reason than Wikipedia is usually in the top ranks of any Google search. But, Wikipedia is one site out of God-knows-how-many on the Internet, and /someone/ has to take the top search ranking on Google. If it just so happens that that top ranked page has the same information as the Wikipedia article, it's the same problem, the only difference being that the problem is not Wikipedia's. The same argument can be made about any issue which just involves privacy and not even danger to lives. If you search for Brian Peppers on the Internet, you can still find all the information you want; that's not an excuse for Wikipedia to have the article. Someone else who is thinking of putting the information up can easily think even if I didn't put it up, Wikipedia would have the top search ranking. You end up with everyone passing the responsibility to everyone else to stop it first. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility This is very different from Brian Peppers. The rich body of research on these tests (too much for anyone to easily digest) actually points to the need for a Wikipedia-style summary of the relevant data. It's one thing to say that the general public shouldn't be exposed to that data arbitrarily; it's quite another to say that it should be kept from people who are searching for it (which is how people end up reading the Wikipedia article on it). One can think of many classes of information where plausible arguments could be made that society would be better of if such-and-such were not widely known. In this case, the argument would be that psychologist (and interested non-patients/non-test-subjects?) should have access to the accumulated data about these tests but those who may be subjected to the tests should not. Maybe that would be good for society, maybe not. But that clashes with core Wikimedia values in ways that tabloid topics of borderline notability do not. There is no question that the information about the tests is important and valuable knowledge (whether the tests themselves are clinically useful is another matter). In contrast to Brian Peppers, here the argument is that the info should be removed *because* it's important and valuable. So we're being asked to impoverish the commons for the sake of protecting the gatekeeping privileges of professional psychologists, at the expense of interested non-psychologists. -Sage ___ 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] At last, a new stats run for en:wp!
On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 7:20 AM, Carcharothcarcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: Cool! I'm too lazy to look. Anything there worth discussing? To me, the data is really encouraging. Take a look at the charts for New Wikipedians vs. Active Wikipedians. We knew before that both of those peaked in early 2007. But now it seems that the decline has more or less stabilized, and the decline in active Wikipedians was less severe than new Wikipedians. Edits per month, and maybe new articles per month, look to be stabilizing as well. Broadly speaking, there are two possible explanations for why community activity level peaked and then declined: market saturation (just about everyone likely to edit was exposed to Wikipedia by mid 2007) or project maturity (activity declines because people can't find things to do). Obviously there are elements of both at work, but comparing the new and active charts suggests to me that market saturation has been the dominant factor, and that editors are not having too much trouble finding things to work on. That's much more cause for optimism than if people were leaving simply because they were satisfied with a 'good enough' Wikipedia (which everyone here knows has a long way to go yet). In another thread, Will Johnson (I think) argued that activity levels (new articles, in particular) would continue to decline rapidly in the next few years and that by Christmas we would have fewer than 1000 new articles per day. Looking at the new stats, I'm more confident that en-wiki can maintain a steady state of activity something close to the present level (especially as the usability efforts begin to make it easier for newbies to edit, after years of increasingly complex markup that did the opposite). -Sage ___ 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] Featured churn
On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 11:50 AM, David Gerarddger...@gmail.com wrote: Here's a question: how many articles are created and deleted within 24 hours? In early 2007, I did a quick and dirty estimate that about 2400 articles were deleted per day, at a time when the net gain per day was around 1800. Activity of anons, new registered users, and established editors have all declined (roughly proportionally to each other) since then, so the ratio kept to deleted I would guess is similar. Therefore, by my utterly unscientific calculation, around 1750 newly created articles are deleted each day. -Sage ___ 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] Featured churn
On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 12:00 PM, genigeni...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/7/14 Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com: Are you saying the numbers could go negative?? Contraction in real-terms? :-/ Carcharoth It's happened at least once. Long term it would be unlikely since most deletions are of new articles. Was that when the faulty bot-created algae articles were deleted? There were about 4000, so that would definitely be a net negative day if they were deleted at once. -Sage ___ 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] Featured churn
On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 5:26 AM, Carcharothcarcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: There are long-term stats somewhere, and they could be updated if you asked. I suggest identifying which of the featured areas you want to see long-term stats for, and asking at the relevant talk pages. An approximation to these stats could be obtained by going through the Signpost summaries. If you don't need week-by-week stats, then the best place is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_statistics The total number of featured articles has been rising fairly steadily, but the ratio of featured articles to total articles (a little under 0.1%) has remained more or less steady over the years. In contrast, the percentage of articles that are Good Articles has been rising for some time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Good_article_statistics I think the main reason why this week stands out is the unusually low number of FA promotions; sometimes the process hits a lull, and sometimes a bunch of pending promotions don't get processed until after the Signpost reports its numbers, which can make the week-to-week numbers a fun tea leaf reading exercise but they don't necessarily mean much. -Sage (User:Ragesoss) ___ 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] Quality of community-created help pages (was: Recommending a Browser...)
Cross-posting to Wikien-l... On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 9:01 PM, Erik Moellere...@wikimedia.org wrote: Unfortunately, community-created help pages tend to accumulate vast amounts of instruction cruft that distracts from simple high-level information. Maybe it's time English Wikipedia (at least) created a set of standards for help pages and a process for identifying good ones. Manual of Style (help pages), Helpful help page candidates and What is a helpful help page?, anyone? (The latter two are only half facetious; the first is probably a good idea, although I would have no idea where to start.) -Sage (User:Ragesoss) ___ 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] News agencies are not RSs
On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 2:47 PM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: So we're now going to set a higher moral position than any other information outlet does? Because I'm pretty darn sure that they would report it, if they had a reliable source from which to do so. No. In fact, the New York Times contacted a wide range of mainstream media organizations (NPR, other national papers, etc.) to coordinate the media blackout. See http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105775059 -Sage ___ 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] News agencies are not RSs
On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 7:26 PM, George Herbertgeorge.herb...@gmail.com wrote: The balance we're using is working for our public reputation among readers, the media, media critics and internet critics, policymakers. In this particular case, the controversy seems limited to our own internal review. That's not the case. See: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/8wnzh/jimmy_wales_cooperated_with_the_new_york_times_to/ (150+ comments on reddit) http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/06/29/was-wikipedia-correct-to-censor-news-of-david-rohdes-capture/ (Christian Science Monitor blog suggests that what is ethical for a traditional news organization may not be for Wikipedia) http://michellemalkin.com/2009/06/29/the-nytimes-wikipedia-whitewash/ (Michelle Malkin links this to the whole 'liberal media' meme: Would Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales have done this for Fox News or the Washington Times? ) -Sage ___ 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] Google Starts Including Wikipedia on Its News Site
On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 12:45 PM, Thomas Daltonthomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: Do we have any stats on how often people click the links in references? I suspect not. It would be good if we could get some, though. Slightly tangential, a few days ago I was trying to figure out how this Google News listing algorithm works and how much traffic it's driving to us. The most interesting thing I found was this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_and_state_funeral_of_Omar_Bongo It was linked from the World News section of Google News; I noticed it in the last few hours of 16 June UTC (and at the time it was listed, it had only a single author and had been created that day). According to http://stats.grok.se/en/200906/Death_and_state_funeral_of_Omar_Bongo , it only got 35 hits for 16 June. The next day it got over 300 hits, but I suspect most of these were internal hits, from the editors discussing whether to include it on the main page for In the news, from the current events portal, and from [[Omar Bongo]]. I'm not sure if the Google News link persisted into 17 June or not. Based on what I've seen of articles with multiple links to recent news stories, regardless of when they were created or how many people have contributed, I suspect that inclusion in Google News is based on traffic and/or links *from* Wikipedia to the stories Google News has identified as a group. I haven't seen any cases where an article was listed with only a single link to a current news story. It might be worthwhile to do some tests by creating articles in a controlled manner with different numbers of links to news stories, to get a better sense of what it takes for Google News to pick up a new article. -Sage (User:Ragesoss) ___ 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] I love SEOs
On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 6:57 PM, Thomas Daltonthomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/6/16 Luna lunasan...@gmail.com: As the project gains popularity, it's inevitable that more people will try to subvert our aims, but I did find one thing a bit amusing: Top of post: Personally I’m not a fan of Wikipedia... Later in post: ...in chess we call this [zugzwang]... (note link to Wikipedia) Even our critics can't help but use our services. Well spotted! That made my day. I guess he's still keeping true to his SEO principles though: it's a nofollow link. -Sage (User:Ragesoss) ___ 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] Google thinks Wikipedia is a news source
On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 2:45 PM, Andrew Turveyandrewrtur...@googlemail.com wrote: Just seen my first Wikinews link from Google news. Uploaded it to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/24667...@n04/3626171622/ Wikinews has been included in Google News listings for a while now, since shortly after Stable Revisions went into operation. I also saw a google news link from the main World news linking to an article I'd created less than 24 hours previously - Harith al-Obeidi. Makes you wonder - what kind of criteria are they using? I'm extremely flattered, of course, but I wonder if they do a manual look through the article before deciding whether to link. Inclusion of Wikipedia articles in Google News appears to be based on a) having been created recently, and b) having as its title a term that is part of the core topic of a collection of articles that Google News determines to be related. Also, it looks like Wikipedia links have been rolled out to more (all?) Google users. A few days ago, I wasn't getting the Wikipedia link yet; now I am. Does anyone NOT get links to Wikipedia articles now? http://www.google.com/news?pz=1topic=wict=ln -Sage (User:Ragesoss) ___ 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] Google thinks Wikipedia is a news source
On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 3:30 PM, Sage Rossragesoss+wikipe...@gmail.com wrote: Inclusion of Wikipedia articles in Google News appears to be based on a) having been created recently, and b) having as its title a term that is part of the core topic of a collection of articles that Google News determines to be related. Strike that. Creation date doesn't seem to figure in. [[Murder of Meredith Kercher]] was created quite a while ago, but is linked from Google News results about the recent related developments. -Sage ___ 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] An interesting book
On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 6:03 AM, Andrew Grayshimg...@gmail.com wrote: The Future of Reputation: gossip, rumour and privacy on the internet http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/dsolove/Future-of-Reputation/ Chapter 6 has a few pages on the Siegenthaler incident (as well as Wikipedia more generally), but a lot of the second part of the book deals in more general terms with thorny topics we regularly encounter and find it hard to draw firm rules on: * how to respond to requests to remove material * the ethical issues of unrestrained publication; * the dilemmas of defining whether information is public or private, and how to deal with that enormous fuzzy grey middle ground between them. May well be of some interest to many of you. Thanks! It's definitely a relevant issue in terms of the evolving public/private landscape. (The Twitterscape has been buzzing about similar issues today, with insightful bits from danah boyd and Clay Shirky. Habermas FTW.) I'm adding this book to the list at the Signpost Review desk. If anyone wants to review it for the community, please sign up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom/Review_desk -Sage (User:Ragesoss) ___ 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] Google thinks Wikipedia is a news source
Nieman Journalism Lab has some more about what's going on, including details direct from Google: http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/06/google-news-experimenting-with-links-to-wikipedia-on-its-homepage/ “Currently, we’re showing a small number of users links to Wikipedia topic pages that serve as a reference on current events,” as an experiment. The post also does a nice job of explaining why Wikipedia (and not something like Wikinews, which is striving to do the same sorts of datelined stories as traditional newspapers) is what Google wants to promote. -Sage (User:Rageoss) ___ 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] The London Review of Books on Wikipedia
On Mon, Jun 8, 2009 at 2:03 PM, Charles Matthewscharles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: ... encyclopedias have been made better by the advent of the internet, but newspapers have been made worse: the cumulative impact of the readers’ comments that can now be appended online to almost any article tends to diminish most forms of human understanding. Worth reading for that insight alone. I don't buy the premise that reader comments have much, if anything, to do with newspaper woes. The internet has thrown newspapers' business model under the bus, but reader comments and other forms of participation have mostly been good developments. Major newspapers have bigger audiences than they ever had even while ad revenue declines, and they have generally been late on the bandwagon for allowing reader comments. At New York Times, for instance, there still aren't comments on regular news articles and comments on editorials and op-eds are (as of pretty recently) curated, meaning that editors can identify and highlight the most insightful comments. The decline in newspaper quality also started well before the Internet became ubiquitous and had more to do with business-minded editorial decisions than anything else. ___ 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] Google thinks Wikipedia is a news source
On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 2:15 PM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: In a message dated 6/7/2009 7:15:03 AM Pacific Daylight Time, wiki...@googlemail.com writes: Unsurprising indeed. I get the impression, from projects such as Knol, that Google is something of an admirer of the Wikipedia model. - Knol however is only collaborative on the meta-level. And even then only spottily. The articles are not typically collaborations, but rather independent creations of a single individual. Knol is an intermediate platform between a blog and a wiki... it's not primarily a collaborative platform (so in terms of authorship, it's blog-like), but what's relevant here is it's wiki-like structure: the permalinked, timeless topic-based pages rather than the scrolling timeline of a blog. -Sage (User:Ragesoss) ___ 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] Intellipedia
On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 9:43 AM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 7:36 AM, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: Linking to wikipedia pages would be kinda risky. One leak of what CIA IPs are and we can then use server logs to track what the CIA and simular are interested in. The IP addresses used by the CIA are not secret. It would, nevertheless, be an abuse of checkuser to run those searches, without cause. Maybe all the checkusers have been served National Security Letters (or double-secret International Security Letters) and are themselves under surveillance. Any checkusers who are under gag orders from the US intelligence community, just say nothing to acknowledge it. -Sage ___ 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] [Wikinews-l] Wikipedia's 'In the news'
There was a bit of discussion about Wikinews on Foundation-l a few weeks ago, which those of you don't follow that list might be interested in. The thread starts here: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-May/051762.html The gist of the discussion was that Wikinews doesn't have a model that is compelling enough for users to create the sort of critical mass that would be necessary for it to be truly successful, in the face of all the competition in the online news sphere. My contribution to the discussion started with a blog post I wrote recently, Rethinking Wikinews: http://ragesossscholar.blogspot.com/2009/05/rethinking-wikinews.html -Sage (User:Ragesoss) ___ 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] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 9:58 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/4/22 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com: I think competition is fantastic and fully encourage people to start competitors to Wikipedia, but in my view Citizendium has failed. It wasn't sufficiently better than Wikipedia to attract enough writers and readers to kick off exponential growth, which is required to reach a useful size. Citizendium's not dead yet! But it'll get good in direct proportion to how much it forms its own positive identity, rather than one based on comparing itself to Wikipedia. I'd say Citizendium's best chance for success (if not the same kind of success Sanger and other Citizens have been envisioning) will be as part of the broader Wikipedia ecosystem. After the license change, CZ content can be imported to Wikipedia. One possible evolution of the WP-CZ relationship will be a level of coordination, in which CZ writers are really writing with Wikipedia in mind, just in a little less of a free-for-all community environment. Already, there are probably several hundred Citizendium articles that are outright better than the Wikipedia counterparts, and many of them don't even have corresponding Wikipedia articles. We've recognized for a long time that, while Wikipedia's advantages are strong enough to attract many knowledgeable experts, there are some who try it out and find the editing environment unbearable. Citizendium could become a project that is actively supported by the Wikipedia community, where we encourage some editors to go so that they can work in relative peace and eventually have the chance to re-integrate their work in Wikipedia. For a while, it seemed that what ultimately tied together the CZ community was opposition (for a wide, sometimes incompatible range of reasons) to Wikipedia. But I don't think that's the case anymore, and just the fact that participation levels are remaining stable suggests that they've forged something of a self-sustaining community, even if the hoped-for critical mass never comes. -Sage (User:Ragesoss) ___ 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] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia
On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 3:28 PM, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com wrote: I think this is in fact a market opportunity for a Metapedia. Import the organizational / title trees of all the publically available freely licensed encyclopedias, merge, present readers with alternate views / options / approaches to a particular topic. Optionally, display in parallel, Wikipedia next to Citizendum next to Otherpedia. Click on a hyperlink in any and it works across all the panes. Click on a focus tab for a particular pane and get the wider navigation / editing / etc tabs for that particular encyclopedia. This is a wonderful idea! It could even make sense to have Metapedia as a Wikimedia project...an explicitly curatorial project that attempts to sort different kinds of content and evaluate strengths and weaknesses. It could also serve as a place to have general discussions about certain topics, without the necessity (as on Wikipedia talk pages, nominally) of focusing on content improvement; that's something that there's a need for, and something that causes specific projects to suffer because of the tendency of readers to try to start general discussions. -Sage (User:Ragesoss) ___ 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] Citizendium
On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 5:05 AM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: When I signed up for Knol, one thing they did was allow verification. So one way to verify you was that you gave them a phone number and your name as it was listed in the phone book. They check that it's really there, they CALL you and give you a code. You have to type that code back in. So what that verifies is that whoever answered the phone at that number was the same person who asked them to call that name and number (listed in the phone book) in the first place. I'd call that *fairly good* verification. Not perfect, but at least it pins the typist down to a particular phone number and phone book listing. At any rate, I don't see how a 50-word biography which could be anything I choose to make up, would satisfy any kind of identify verification. To be an *Editor* that ask that you submit a CV which I suppose if you were so inclined you could check against some college database or whatever. They've had some discussion on the CZ forum about the onerousness of the sign-up process before, and in addition to rejections, they have quite a few where they basically write back, we need more information, because we don't have enough to verify your identity. Most of those people never get back to them, from what I gather. CZ sign-up is slightly problematic for people without institutional email addresses, but they place a high premium on better verification than just 'fairly good'. In part, I think this is because they really, really want to avoid letting any vandals through; the lack of that particular aspect of Wikipedia is a major selling point for many of their users and potential users. A related observation: presumably because of the delayed sign-up process, only about half of new users ever make a first edit on CZ: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Image:New_users.png -Sage (User:Ragesoss) ___ 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] Citizendium
On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 11:10 AM, doc doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com wrote: Sage Ross wrote: A related observation: presumably because of the delayed sign-up process, only about half of new users ever make a first edit on CZ: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Image:New_users.png -Sage (User:Ragesoss) I wonder what percentage of new accounts make a *useful* first edit on wikipedia? Smaller, no doubt, than on CZ. But their registration process has already imposed a moderately intense selection process; most people who successfully register are people whose edits are very likely to be useful, so they view the fact many of them never begin editing as serious loss. And, of course, at this stage they are much more concerned with getting new people involved than we are (which is, perhaps, shortsighted on our part, but it's tough to see participation levels as a critical problem when the scale of the user base is so big that we can't get a real sense of it on an interpersonal level) -Sage (User:Rageoss) ___ 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] Flagged revs poll take 2
On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 6:32 PM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 11:29 PM, Alex Sawczynec glasscobr...@gmail.com wrote: With all due respect, this isn't exactly new: it's been open for almost two weeks now. Is there a particular reason it's being posted to the list at this point? I didn't hear of the new poll until well after it was open. Was there a watchlist notice? Carcharoth No, it was argued that a watchlist notice wasn't needed because the previous poll, with wide participation, had indicated the overall balance of opinion on flagged revisions, and this was just a modified, compromise proposal meant to address the concerns expressed in the first poll and associated discussions. -Sage (User:Ragesoss) ___ 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] Now that's putting faith in Wikipedia
On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 3:23 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/digital/e3i615140fc749e4798425e1349881c51f3 Of course, at this moment it's a Twitter search on the word skittles instead. Leading to: http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/03/02/skittles-the-cause-of-all-world-evil-or-just-clever-marketing/ The site is broken with Firefox and possibly other browsers. In IE, at least, there is a floating flash box; clicking on products will take you to Wikipedia content. -Sage (User:Ragesoss) ___ 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] The Role of Experts In Wikipedia
On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 11:05 AM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: I might try and do a personalised listing at some point, bringing out the areas I'm interested in and slicing up the FA cake in a different way. Such as identifying the more general ones and the more niche ones, and the specific items such as games, films, books, events, and paintings (as opposed to genres, histories and stuff like that), and biographies and suchlike. But with so many articles, it's difficult to do that. That would be interesting. I wonder if this could be something that could be integrated into the 1.0 rating scheme... another, parallel rating for scope or generality. Naturally, any such determinations will be subjective, but so are article ratings and yet the semi-codified Stub-Start-C-B ratings tend to work out pretty well. It would be great to have the breakdown of general vs. specific articles not just for FAs, but for everything. -Sage (User:Ragesoss) ___ 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] The Role of Experts In Wikipedia
On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 2:42 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: They've been going for over two years, if they were going to have a big recruitment push wouldn't they have done so by now? But really, trying to recruit writers is the wrong way round, they need to recruit readers, that's where the writers come from for exponential growth (which they need if they are going to get anywhere). However, I can't see how they can recruit readers until they have enough articles to be useful - it's a catch-22 and that's why I don't think any similar project will ever rival Wikipedia, simply because we got there first. I don't disagree. I'm just saying we should think of Citizendium as another (small) place for people to produce free content similar to the kind Wikipedia produces, as a potential collaborator with Wikipedia rather than a competitor (which isn't realistic, if it ever was). That's a very real possibility once the license change happens. -Sage (User:Ragesoss) ___ 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] The Role of Experts In Wikipedia
On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 3:40 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: I'm just going by the statistics, I'm not making any judgements based on anything else. At the moment, we seem to be following a logistic curve which levels out at around 3.5 million articles in around 2013-14. (It's asymptotic, but it will be pretty much there by then.) So far, low-hanging fruit has dominated the growth pattern of Wikipedia. Rather than approaching a horizontal asymptote, we're probably approaching a stable growth rate (i.e., an oblique asymptote), since it's obvious that the number of potential articles yet to be written is not the limiting factor. Rather we're limited by a product of potential articles and users interested in those articles. But statistically it's probably impossible to know that just from the data, since low-hanging fruit swamps longer-term trends. -Sage (User:Ragesoss) ___ 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] What is an orphan?
On Sat, Feb 7, 2009 at 1:03 PM, Charlotte Webb charlottethew...@gmail.com wrote: But even though you'll find disagreement about how many links are enough for a certain article. Five is right out. After a couple hundred you'll find people fighting the other way with their auto-delinking scripts/bots. —C.W. What I took from distribution of links (with a whole lot of highly-linked articles) is that the shape of that curve seems to fit with other patterns that happen, e.g., in scientific literature, and that this is in some sense natural.In writing that article, I tried to emphasize the different numbers for certain classes of under-linked articles without dwelling on any particular definition of orphan. WikiProject Orphanage's definition seems useful for drawing attention to the fact that proper linkage is more complex than just does anything link here, yes or no?. But it seems like there may naturally be a significant number of articles that ought to have only one incoming link, just based on the nature of topics and their relationships to each other and on the notion of preferential attachment, which seems to describe the natural structure of knowledge. -Sage ___ 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] Announcing Epistemia, a new wiki encyclopedia
On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 8:48 PM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: I would have thought metaphysics and ontology are closer to the philosophical underpinning of an encyclopedia, but I guess it is harder to come up with names from those (Ontopedia??). The nature of knowledge is a bit different from the actual knowledge itself. I think of the capsule definition of epistemology as (the study of) how we know things. The -ology part is gone from Epistemia, so it works quite well: Epistemia: How we know things. -Sage (User:Ragesoss) ___ 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] Subscription idea
On Fri, Dec 26, 2008 at 10:35 PM, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: But since half the people involved complain about not being able to get anything done on Wikipedia now we can politely explain to them that they are a part of the problem. Nathan Sorry to jump in so late in the thread... At least in my experience, it's very easy for editors without the subscriptions they need to get articles from other Wikipedians, and quickly. Maybe a large (and free) part of the solution could be to make better use of the systems we've already developed on our own: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Resource_Exchange I think there are a lot of priorities for WMF funds that rank higher than buying institutional access to sources. Before we try to make Wikipedia more like a university this particular respect (journal access), we should improve the editing experience (socially and technically) so that it's a place where more editors will stay for 4 years. Giving editors less reason to rely on others (to obtain sources, in this case) may even be counterproductive to that end. As someone with institutional access to many hard-to-find things, I know I get a warm feeling whenever I'm able to provide another editor with the source they were looking for. Those kinds of interactions, I think, keep me tied to the project more than work I do in my own little corner. -Sage (User:Ragesoss) ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
