Re: [WikiEN-l] Policies, notability et al, was Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
wjhon...@aol.com wrote: I just want to address this one quote. You also don't have an article if you have a lot of primary and tertiary sources, but very few secondary sources. Let's say that you have the tertiary (shudder) source EB 1911, Cleopatra. You are aware that an enormous number of our articles were created *solely* from the 1911 EB are you not? You seem to be labouring under the misapprehension this is my argument, rather than just one argument that I have heard put forwards. I'm not going to waste time defending it, since it isn't my argument to start with. You'd be better off looking at [[WP:NOR]] and working out how to amend it to reflect what you believe is consensus. I am well aware of the provenance of many of our articles. So in conclusion, I don't think we have any policy language that would say that tertiary sources without secondary ones would make an article subject to attack, except possibly a make this better please tag. I kind of like the idea that people will tag an article for clean up rather than nominate it for deletion. It makes me kind of warm and fuzzy and nostalgic. The thrust of the argument against tertiary sources is this: Third party sources don't provide any evidence of notability unless they contain some sort of commentary on their subject matter, othewise they are classed as tertiary sources. What's at issue is that there are good faith misunderstandings of policy and guidance out there, which it seems it is hard to correct. We seem to have created language which doesn't solve any problems at all. Look at this fragment from WP:NOR: Tertiary sources can be helpful in providing broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources. Some tertiary sources may be more reliable than others That's a tremendous weapon to charge any tertiary source not to taste as not as reliable as these other ones that I like. Look at this fragment: Deciding whether primary, secondary or tertiary sources are more suitable on any given occasion is a matter of common sense and good editorial judgment, and should be discussed on article talk pages. That leaves the whole issue to argument, with no onus on either side to budge from their position. We've probably entrenched the idea that it's better to stick to your guns than seek compromise. After all, why wouldn;t your opinion be the one that is common sense and good judgment. Who is going to admit having bad judgment. Add to this that arb-com won't touch content disputes, and you are left with an atmosphere where both sides try to act as nice as possible whilst trying to goad the other party into a mistake for which they can get blocked. Is it any wonder disputes can fester across 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] Policies, notability et al, was Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 2:21 AM, David Gerarddger...@gmail.com wrote:
2009/8/19 wjhon...@aol.com:
Well get busy I still once-in-a-while encounter articles whose only
source is EB1911. I would submit that if you actually put these up for
AfD you'd get a lot of backflack for SNOW. Sure the articles could be
fixed, but the previous point was that a single tertiary source isn't
sufficient for an article and I think it probably is.. depending.
I remember copyediting one article on a now-obscure 18th century
British parliamentarian. Basically I just rewrote for style. And,
y'know, I'm pretty sure it'd be a reasonable start on the article, and
certainly not a deletion candidate just for having 1911EB as its sole
source.
The big problem with 1911EB articles used to seed articles is that the
phrases and text used often survive through to later versions, and
when trying to critically assess an article, it is very difficult to
tell which bits were from the 1911EB article, and which bits were
added later (precise footnoting and referencing would help here).
Sometimes a comparison in page history, or with a wikisource page, can
help. Sometimes not.
There is a project that tries to clean these articles up, and lots of guidance.
The guidance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:1911_Encyclopaedia_Britannica
The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica is out of copyright and can in some
cases be used as a source of material for the English Wikipedia.
However, it is now quite old, and there are many problems with this
material in a modern encyclopedia. Even in 1917 it was seen as an
unreliable source when Willard Huntington Wright published his
scathing Misinforming a Nation, a 200+ page critical examination of
the problems with the encyclopedia. The myth of the EB1911 being the
best and greatest Encyclopedia is a testament to a successful
marketing campaign which usually doesn't hold up under critical
examination.
All those 10 points on that page are good, but how often are they followed?
As a brief aside, I loved Brion's comment on the talk page:
Well, even if the edit histories on the live server get cleared
again, I for one intend to have a century's worth of backups in my
petabyte storage crystal library when the times comes. :) --Brion
03:52 Sep 12, 2002 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:1911_Encyclopedia_topics
The only remaining task on Variation and selection is integrating
references, probably to their own authors' pages. That page is still
up for historical interest and to finish small amounts, but for all
intents and purposes, this article is merged. I'm taking it off the
1911 list, and thus declaring the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica to be,
at first draft level, merged into Wikipedia. Ladies, gentlemen, and
algorithms, it's been an honor. Alba 15:24, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
Impressive! How long did that take, I wonder?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles/1911_verification
Please verify that each of the articles is free of such errors, and
has updated coverage, before removing the item from the list. Also, if
the article does derive from the encyclopedia, make sure it has the
{{1911}} tag in its References section. It may be helpful to note on
the article's talk page any significant differences in the
comprehensiveness of our article as compared to the 1911 article.
New guideline June 2008: If the article is in the Wikisource
repository of EB1911, include a {{Wikisource1911Enc}} tag as the first
line of the References section.
Unfortunately: 4.5% complete.
So it looks like it will be slow progress there.
Carcharoth
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Policies, notability et al, was Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
Carcharoth wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:1911_Encyclopedia_topics The only remaining task on Variation and selection is integrating references, probably to their own authors' pages. That page is still up for historical interest and to finish small amounts, but for all intents and purposes, this article is merged. I'm taking it off the 1911 list, and thus declaring the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica to be, at first draft level, merged into Wikipedia. Ladies, gentlemen, and algorithms, it's been an honor. Alba 15:24, 27 February 2006 (UTC) Impressive! How long did that take, I wonder? It was of course a grossly overconfident statement. My latest EB1911 find was [[William Mure (writer)]], all of nine days ago. We have learned (I hope) that the dab factor - i.e. false-positive bluelinks in your list of articles - is something that has to be made more central to the merging effort. Compare the DNB missing articles project and how it is set up . (OK, OK, I know I have mentioned this before.) As for verifying EB1911 text, it can and should be done piecemeal. I found a case today where A. F. Pollard, a very respectable historian, seemingly made a slip in the DNB that transmitted to the EB1911; and I only noticed it by comparison with another DNB article. My over-checking theory says: - Yes, you should try to provide inline references where possible, for chunky copy-paste jobs; - but you should approach this as building up the article with further, verifiable facts; - and what usually happens is that you find errors and inconsistencies either because unverifiable facts eventually look like islands in a see of footnoted facts, or because the sources for the new facts indicate that something strange is going on. 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
Re: [WikiEN-l] Policies, notability et al, was Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
Of course I wouldn't put them up for AfD. There is no reason to make the previous text inaccessible--and conceivably some of it could be used. I could do much more rewriting if people put fewer acceptable (or at least fixable or mergeable) articles up for unwarranted AfDs, or did not try to change WP:N policy to justify deleting still more. Now, I came here to write, but I've ended up doing mainly rescuing. It's hard to say which should have priority--making existing articles better, or getting acceptable new articles. My choice was rescue because fewer people were doing that. A difficulty with the updated EB articles is that people did not normally indicate just what part was from the EB, so it is hard to tell from the face what part is unreliable. (It can of course be told by looking at the first versions in the history, or by checking the Wiksource link if present--or one of the other available online texts, or guessed at by looking for opinionated prose. ) As for the British parliamentarian, I can't identify him. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 10:30 PM, Andrew Grayandrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk wrote: 2009/8/19 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: 2009/8/19 wjhon...@aol.com: Well get busy I still once-in-a-while encounter articles whose only source is EB1911. I would submit that if you actually put these up for AfD you'd get a lot of backflack for SNOW. Sure the articles could be fixed, but the previous point was that a single tertiary source isn't sufficient for an article and I think it probably is.. depending. I remember copyediting one article on a now-obscure 18th century British parliamentarian. Basically I just rewrote for style. And, y'know, I'm pretty sure it'd be a reasonable start on the article, and certainly not a deletion candidate just for having 1911EB as its sole source. I've found that a lot of our material tagged as from EB1911 has now pretty much vanished entirely under three or four years of editing - it might be instructive to dig through them and see what needs rewriting anyway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:1911 -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ 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] Policies, notability et al, was Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
2009/8/19 David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com: As for the British parliamentarian, I can't identify him. This was 2004, I really do not remember :-) If anyone who cares more than me wants to grovel through my edits from five years ago ... - d. ___ 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] Policies, notability et al, was Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
wjhon...@aol.com wrote: I believe tantamount not to rules can be broken but rather to rules can change. I never advise people to be bold *against* policy, but rather to go to the policy discussion pages and see whether or not their situation might be an exception that we'd like to include *in* the policy. I agree, although I think it depends upon the case. It all depends upon which policy you are talking about. By the way, I dispute that notability guidelines were laid down to prevent advertising, spam and original research. For example I think in the Porn Actors notability it states something like that they must have appeared in at least five films or something of that sort. Yes, but the driving impetus was to stop vanity pages and advertising, if you look back at the discussions regarding drafting the porn guidance, you'll see advertising was a concern for those participating.The trouble with gaining consensus on anything for fiction is that there are people who won't even allow a bar like has to have appeared in five works of fiction. I've just had to point out to someone that their whole argument, which was based upon the fact that subject specific notability guidance couldn't extend or provide an alternative route to notability beyond that in the main notability guidance, actually contradicted the notability guidance itself, which emphatically states the opposite. I'm also concerned with a potential rewrite of the intro to our notability guidance being discussed on the talk page, because it looks like it might remove these subject specific routes. We're kind of losing sight of the argument that we don't have to think of Wikipedia as paper, and that each article is a different page and a different entry. We've kind of lost sight of the argument that because we aren't paper, our articles can be seen as sections of one large article. So like you say, or at least I'm assuming you're saying, our porn star coverage is allowed to go to as deep as possible to ensure our coverage is as broad, wide and encompassing. That means saying five films is enough, to sate the desire of those who become immersed in the field. (It's kind of hard to avoid double entendres with this subject) You can certainly create a list of porn actors who have only appeared in a single film *without* doing any original research. Remembering that source-based research is not original just because it's new to a major publication. Original research involves the *creation* of a new fact, not just the re-reporting of it no matter the source, provided it's been published in some format previously. A video box cover is a publication format. So reading names off it, is not original research. I'm aware of the arguments. The big flaw in the argument you are pushing is that our policies, especially no original research, call for articles to rely mainly on published reliable secondary sources. That's been in policy in some form or another for ages, I think it is one of Larry Sanger's additions to the rule book. It's currently coming into play in a number of places. So yes, fine, you can read stuff of a dvd box, but the argument is, if that's all you have, then you don't have an article. You also don't have an article if you have a lot of primary and tertiary sources, but very few secondary sources. I think the trouble is that very early on you'd have people interested in science subjects writing policies over here, and people interested in fiction subjects writing policies over there, and conflict has ensued when people discovered the other set of policies and started applying them to the wrong subject, if you see what I mean. And original research is really hard to apply to fiction, because a lot of it surprisingly does amount to interpretation. Now yes, we should let consensus determine content, but is that a consensus as defined in policy or by editors? And then we fall into arguments over what a local consensus is. Surprisingly few people appreciate the argument that a consensus enshrined in a policy can be just as localised as any other. I can never tell if that's small mindedness or political ignorance. I also find people are too busy arguing at article a in order to protect or advance positions at articles b, c and d. It would be so much easier if there was some way of just debating the merits of article a. Alternatively, I find the people I think of as my peers are increasingly avoiding debates and just editing the encyclopedia. I kind of appreciate and understand 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] Policies, notability et al, was Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
I just want to address this one quote. You also don't have an article if you have a lot of primary and tertiary sources, but very few secondary sources. I think this is a false reading of our intent. The entire structuring of the rely primarily on secondary sources and other discussion that primary sources can be included *when* the material was already introduced by a secondary source in some way and especially in those cases where it conflicts, etc etc. Doesn't really address and wasn't meant to address a situation where all you have is a teritary source (an expression I hate by the way). But let's play ball with it anyway. Let's say that you have the tertiary (shudder) source EB 1911, Cleopatra. You are aware that an enormous number of our articles were created *solely* from the 1911 EB are you not? You might say that makes them stubby but not in the normal sense of the WP:Jargon. We might say they rely on a single source but really the EB sort of sits above most uses of that condition. I would say that most of us consider is fairly authoritative on a summary view of any subject. So in conclusion, I don't think we have any policy language that would say that tertiary sources without secondary ones would make an article subject to attack, except possibly a make this better please tag. Will Johnson ___ 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] Policies, notability et al, was Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
Not that it's a single source. The problem is that it's a single outmoded source, never really balanced and NPOV, and by now wholly unreliable in almost all subjects, the ancient world included. About 95% of it was written over a century ago, and there is almost nothing for which new information and new interpretations have made the existing version inappropriate as the base for a modern encyclopedia. Essentially all text from there needs to be removed, except for some quotations to show how things were looked at historically, and the relevant portions or articles redone from what would now be considered reliable sources. To even know what parts can be rescued requires a sound knowledge of the subject and its development, and cannot be done mechanically. The situation is exactly comparable to what it would be if that EB had simply reprinted Diderot's 1770 Encyclopedie. It would have been a laughing stock to have presented that as a current work, and so with our articles derived from it. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 7:30 PM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: I just want to address this one quote. You also don't have an article if you have a lot of primary and tertiary sources, but very few secondary sources. I think this is a false reading of our intent. The entire structuring of the rely primarily on secondary sources and other discussion that primary sources can be included *when* the material was already introduced by a secondary source in some way and especially in those cases where it conflicts, etc etc. Doesn't really address and wasn't meant to address a situation where all you have is a teritary source (an expression I hate by the way). But let's play ball with it anyway. Let's say that you have the tertiary (shudder) source EB 1911, Cleopatra. You are aware that an enormous number of our articles were created *solely* from the 1911 EB are you not? You might say that makes them stubby but not in the normal sense of the WP:Jargon. We might say they rely on a single source but really the EB sort of sits above most uses of that condition. I would say that most of us consider is fairly authoritative on a summary view of any subject. So in conclusion, I don't think we have any policy language that would say that tertiary sources without secondary ones would make an article subject to attack, except possibly a make this better please tag. Will Johnson ___ 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] Policies, notability et al, was Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
Well get busy I still once-in-a-while encounter articles whose only source is EB1911. I would submit that if you actually put these up for AfD you'd get a lot of backflack for SNOW. Sure the articles could be fixed, but the previous point was that a single tertiary source isn't sufficient for an article and I think it probably is.. depending. I suppose someone could make a robot run through these, but my point is that even if your single source is Compton's 2009 edition, I wouldn't say that calls for the deletion of the article. Provided of course it's not a straight copyvio. -Original Message- From: David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, Aug 18, 2009 6:11 pm Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Policies, notability et al, was Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary Not that it's a single source. The problem is that it's a single outmoded source, never really balanced and NPOV, and by now wholly unreliable in almost all subjects, the ancient world included. About 95% of it was written over a century ago, and there is almost nothing for which new information and new interpretations have made the existing version inappropriate as the base for a modern encyclopedia. Essentially all text from there needs to be removed, except for some quotations to show how things were looked at historically, and the relevant portions or articles redone from what wou ld now be considered reliable sources. To even know what parts can be rescued requires a sound knowledge of the subject and its development, and cannot be done mechanically. The situation is exactly comparable to what it would be if that EB had simply reprinted Diderot's 1770 Encyclopedie. It would have been a laughing stock to have presented that as a current work, and so with our articles derived from it. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 7:30 PM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: I just want to address this one quote. You also don't have an article if you have a lot of primary and tertiary sources, but very few secondary sources. I think this is a false reading of our intent. The entire structuring of the rely primarily on secondary sources and other discussion that primary sources can be included *when* the material was already introduced by a secondary source in some way and especially in those cases where it conflicts, etc etc. Doesn't really address and wasn't meant to address a situation where all you have is a teritary source (an expression I hate by the way). But let's play ball with it anyway. Let's say that you have the tertiary (shudder) source EB 1911, Cleopatra. You are aware that an enormous number of our articles were created *solely* from the 1911 EB are you not? Yo u might say that makes them stubby but not in the normal sense of the WP:Jargon. We might say they rely on a single source but really the EB sort of sits above most uses of that condition. I would say that most of us consider is fairly authoritative on a summary view of any subject. So in conclusion, I don't think we have any policy language that would say that tertiary sources without secondary ones would make an article subject to attack, except possibly a make this better please tag. Will Johnson ___ 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] Policies, notability et al, was Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
2009/8/19 wjhon...@aol.com: Well get busy I still once-in-a-while encounter articles whose only source is EB1911. I would submit that if you actually put these up for AfD you'd get a lot of backflack for SNOW. Sure the articles could be fixed, but the previous point was that a single tertiary source isn't sufficient for an article and I think it probably is.. depending. I remember copyediting one article on a now-obscure 18th century British parliamentarian. Basically I just rewrote for style. And, y'know, I'm pretty sure it'd be a reasonable start on the article, and certainly not a deletion candidate just for having 1911EB as its sole source. - d. ___ 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] Policies, notability et al, was Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary
2009/8/19 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: 2009/8/19 wjhon...@aol.com: Well get busy I still once-in-a-while encounter articles whose only source is EB1911. I would submit that if you actually put these up for AfD you'd get a lot of backflack for SNOW. Sure the articles could be fixed, but the previous point was that a single tertiary source isn't sufficient for an article and I think it probably is.. depending. I remember copyediting one article on a now-obscure 18th century British parliamentarian. Basically I just rewrote for style. And, y'know, I'm pretty sure it'd be a reasonable start on the article, and certainly not a deletion candidate just for having 1911EB as its sole source. I've found that a lot of our material tagged as from EB1911 has now pretty much vanished entirely under three or four years of editing - it might be instructive to dig through them and see what needs rewriting anyway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:1911 -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
