Yeah, we suck. However, we must be doing *something* right, otherwise
Wikipedia wouldn't have achieved the success it is currently enjoying. I
think that was what Jimbo was referring to in his last interview with
Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.
-MuZemike
On 1/19/2011 2:33 PM, George Herbert wro
On 19/01/2011 20:33, George Herbert wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 11:56 AM, David Gerard wrote:
>> On 21 December 2010 19:58, Tony Sidaway wrote:
>>
>>> http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2006/12/wikipedia_will_1.htm
>>
>> Prof Goldman has followed up saying he was wrong, though we still of
On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 11:56 AM, David Gerard wrote:
> On 21 December 2010 19:58, Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
>> http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2006/12/wikipedia_will_1.htm
>
>
> Prof Goldman has followed up saying he was wrong, though we still of
> course suck, though he still consults Wikipedi
On 21 December 2010 19:58, Tony Sidaway wrote:
> http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2006/12/wikipedia_will_1.htm
Prof Goldman has followed up saying he was wrong, though we still of
course suck, though he still consults Wikipedia daily:
http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2011/01/my_2005_pr
On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 6:09 PM, Samuel Klein wrote:
>
> Those examples are also widely used all over the world, including in
> regions where the Internet is still new.
>
> Most highly popular services start by letting each participant define
> themselves, and the default contribution that people
On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 7:40 AM, David Gerard wrote:
>
> There's various levels here, all of which need to be removed:
>
> * What doesn't fit on a single-page printed cheat sheet isn't basic.
> * What doesn't fit in a pop-up box on a single screen isn't basic.
> * What doesn't fit in a line under
On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 5:16 PM, George Herbert
wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 4:47 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>> On 12/23/10 1:31 PM, George Herbert wrote:
>>>
>>> The social stuff which is complex is something which is a barrier, but
>>> one that all western society members who are modern commu
On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 4:47 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> On 12/23/10 1:31 PM, George Herbert wrote:
>>
>> The social stuff which is complex is something which is a barrier, but
>> one that all western society members who are modern communications
>> literate are fundamentally equipped to handle. S
> On 12/21/10 4:17 PM, Carcharoth wrote:
>> Has anyone ever suggested a way for people to highlight a mistake and
>> click to bring it to someone else's attention? But without logging any
>> IP address. I suppose that sort of system would get overwhelmed by
>> trolls very quickly. Maybe an off-wiki
On 12/27/10 9:04 PM, Fred Bauder wrote:
>> On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 3:07 AM, Ray Saintonge
>> wrote:
>>> On 12/21/10 1:12 PM, David Gerard wrote:
I can't speak for anyone but myself - but I think, and I've seen many
others who express an opinion think, that competition would be good
a
On 12/23/10 1:31 PM, George Herbert wrote:
>
> The social stuff which is complex is something which is a barrier, but
> one that all western society members who are modern communications
> literate are fundamentally equipped to handle. Some will fail at it
> but you really just need to be good at
On 28 December 2010 12:33, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Wasn't the whole idea of wiki markup to have something simple that
> anybody can learn? It should continue to be the case that the essential
> wiki markup can fit onto a single page that an editor can print ans pin
> to the wall beside his comput
On 12/23/10 12:41 AM, David Gerard wrote:
> On 23 December 2010 02:37, Tony Sidaway wrote:
>> I have to disagree strongly with the calls for WYSIWYG editing, not
>> that it's likely to materialize anytime soon. Wikipedia needs to
>> encourage people to concentrate on meaningful content, not dick a
On 12/22/10 11:36 PM, Carcharoth wrote:
> I tend to try and not leave the public-facing page incomplete, but
> sometimes that is inevitable (not enough sources or an incomplete
> list), but put requests for help and suggestions for further editing
> on the talk page. A plea to future readers and Wi
On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 3:17 AM, Carcharoth wrote:
> Has anyone ever suggested a way for people to highlight a mistake and
> click to bring it to someone else's attention? But without logging any
> IP address. I suppose that sort of system would get overwhelmed by
> trolls very quickly. Maybe an o
On 12/22/10 3:02 PM, Andrew Gray wrote:
> I had an interesting discussion a year or two ago with someone about
> the absence of redlinks in "high-quality" articles - in the past few
> years, there's been a definite trend to arguing that redlinks are
> detrimental to a finished article, and should b
On 12/22/10 2:55 AM, Tony Sidaway wrote:
> The single best way to improve usability of Wikipedia would be to
> scale back the use of jargon.
>
> if you look at early discussions in those days they were usually held
> in plain English, with very little jargon. I've tried to keep up that
> style, bu
On 12/22/10 1:53 AM, Peter Coombe wrote:
>
> I do think there are fewer opportunities for such "easy" edits on
> Wikipedia now. Typos seem to be far less common thanks to
> semi-automated tools such as AWB, and most articles are generally more
> mature. Plus the wikicode of articles grows ever more
On 28 December 2010 05:04, Fred Bauder wrote:
> There has to be a vision though, of
> something better. Maybe something that is an actual wiki, quick and easy,
> rather than the template coding hell Wikipedia's turned into.
That's not the mission statement for a thousand forks - but it does
so
On 12/21/10 4:17 PM, Carcharoth wrote:
> Has anyone ever suggested a way for people to highlight a mistake and
> click to bring it to someone else's attention? But without logging any
> IP address. I suppose that sort of system would get overwhelmed by
> trolls very quickly. Maybe an off-wiki syste
> On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 3:07 AM, Ray Saintonge
> wrote:
>> On 12/21/10 1:12 PM, David Gerard wrote:
>>>
>>> I can't speak for anyone but myself - but I think, and I've seen many
>>> others who express an opinion think, that competition would be good
>>> and monopoly as *the* encyclopedia is not
On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 3:07 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> On 12/21/10 1:12 PM, David Gerard wrote:
>>
>> I can't speak for anyone but myself - but I think, and I've seen many
>> others who express an opinion think, that competition would be good
>> and monopoly as *the* encyclopedia is not intrinsic
On 28 December 2010 03:07, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>> (I think reaching this state was predictable. I said a few years ago
>> that in ten years, the only encyclopedia would be Wikipedia or
>> something directly derived from Wikipedia. I think this is the case,
>> and I don't think it's necessarily a
On 12/21/10 1:12 PM, David Gerard wrote:
>
> I can't speak for anyone but myself - but I think, and I've seen many
> others who express an opinion think, that competition would be good
> and monopoly as *the* encyclopedia is not intrinsically a good thing.
I can't agree more. To this end, Wikiped
On 12/22/10 3:49 AM, Carcharoth wrote:
> On jargon, I still think "Neutral point of view" was a terrible name
> that confused neutrality with lack of bias. You cannot sum up a policy
> like NPOV in a single phrase,
That last fact is precisely why it was such a good choice.
Ec
On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 2:44 AM, Carcharoth wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 3:18 AM, Stephanie Daugherty
> wrote:
>
> > Of further concern to me is that we have far exceeded the limits of a
> > wiki as an effective collaboration platform. Collaboration at small
> > scale remains possible but tal
On Sun, Dec 26, 2010 at 1:34 PM, Stephanie Daugherty
wrote:
> Maybe it would be better to try to define what the features we need for
> better communication are. I'm not quite awake yet, but here are a few
> thoughts:
>
> - Ability to follow conversations without having to jump around across
>
Just to add, If we go with a new markup, make it XML based, please, and
validate. There are existing tools for working with XML that can be
leveraged both in building a parser, and in building interfaces and tools.
XML assures that the markup is machine readable AND writable in all cases,
which eli
I think trying to bolt on WYSIWYG to the current parser is a mistake. Even
if it "works" there will be complex markup cases still that are beyond a
WYSIWYG editor (and way beyond 99% of potential editors). Either replace the
current parser, or strip out the complicated parts systematically.
If you
Maybe it would be better to try to define what the features we need for
better communication are. I'm not quite awake yet, but here are a few
thoughts:
- Ability to follow conversations without having to jump around across
multiple talk pages.
- Ability to be notified of conversations tha
On 26 December 2010 00:28, geni wrote:
> TVTropes has forums which see some use:
> http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/topics.php
Yep. Note that those are running on separate forum software, rather
than something added to their wiki software. (Also that TVtropes pages
have talk pages too, though they ge
On 22 December 2010 12:44, David Gerard wrote:
> On 22 December 2010 12:15, WereSpielChequers
> wrote:
>
>> Liquid threads is an interesting idea in principle, but the reality is
>> at best unfortunate. I've pretty much stopped editing on the Strategy
>> Wiki because of it - I have broadband and
On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 3:51 AM, David Gerard wrote:
> On 23 December 2010 11:48, Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
>> Not everybody works that way. Most of us don't. To those people the
>> buttons I find annoying may be the only thing they *do* understand,
>> they're the most accessible way of using a comp
On 23 December 2010 11:48, Tony Sidaway wrote:
> Not everybody works that way. Most of us don't. To those people the
> buttons I find annoying may be the only thing they *do* understand,
> they're the most accessible way of using a computer, and a user
> interface lacking those buttons is alien
On 23 December 2010 10:55, David Gerard wrote:
> On 23 December 2010 10:43, Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
>> To clarify my skepticism, the complexity of Wikipedia doesn't arise at
>> the user interface level at all but at the level of social
>> interaction. This is unavoidable because you're dealing with
On 23 December 2010 10:43, Tony Sidaway wrote:
> To clarify my skepticism, the complexity of Wikipedia doesn't arise at
> the user interface level at all but at the level of social
> interaction. This is unavoidable because you're dealing with other
> human beings, not a machine. The complexity
On 23 December 2010 10:33, Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
> Personally I find that kind of stuff hopelessly confusing and
> off-putting, and I would hate to have to use it, but I take your point
> that it might improve takeup for people who find to messing with
> complex toolbars easier than learning half
On 23 December 2010 10:33, Carcharoth wrote:
> What do people here think of this method? Might not scale:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mirror_thread
A solution to a problem that doesn't exist. If you start a discussion
somewhere, interested people will tend to pick it up. If you ge
On 23 December 2010 08:41, David Gerard wrote:
>
> I don't have WMF numbers, but one contributor on mediawiki-l, who runs
> an intranet covering a large public service organisation in the US,
> reported a remarkable uptake in wiki participation just by going to
> FCKeditor. The users are smart, ca
On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 9:24 AM, Amir E. Aharoni
wrote:
> 2010/12/23 WereSpielChequers :
>> I don't use talkback templates myself, and find them somewhat
>> irritating, but I can live with them if that keeps liquid threads at
>> bay.
>
> Talkback templates are incomparably more bogus than LiquidT
2010/12/23 WereSpielChequers :
> I don't use talkback templates myself, and find them somewhat
> irritating, but I can live with them if that keeps liquid threads at
> bay.
Talkback templates are incomparably more bogus than LiquidThreads.
Something like LiquidThreads is the future. Currently th
On 23 December 2010 02:37, Tony Sidaway wrote:
> I have to disagree strongly with the calls for WYSIWYG editing, not
> that it's likely to materialize anytime soon. Wikipedia needs to
> encourage people to concentrate on meaningful content, not dick around
> with cosmetic matters.
I think our c
On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 3:18 AM, Stephanie Daugherty
wrote:
> Of further concern to me is that we have far exceeded the limits of a
> wiki as an effective collaboration platform. Collaboration at small
> scale remains possible but talk pages dont scale well at all to tens
> of thousands of users.
On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 11:02 PM, Andrew Gray wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Always_leave_something_undone
>
> "Whenever you write a page, never finish it. Always leave something
> obvious to do: an uncompleted sentence, a question in the text (with a
> not-too-obscure answer som
Right. The issue is, in practice large talk pages in threadmode are as
much or more of a mess. Archives dont solve it because they break
conversation flow and bury conversations. Refactoring would but its a
lost art that seems to be at odds with a culture that treats a signed
comment as invioably s
I would honestly say that the existing markup has long outlived its
usefulness. Editors should not only be free from dealing with
intricate markup, they should actually lack the tools and markup to do
such complex formatting because it is detremental to writing an
encyclopedia.
Instead of wysiwyg
If we decide we want a bulletin board discussion instead of a talk
page it would not be difficult to do this from scratch (actually we'd
probably want to import code from existing licence-compatible open
source BBS projects--many BBS packages seem to be coded in PHP, which
would make integration a
While i am not happy with the current status of liquidthreads i still
see it as a way forward. Its far from perfect but it solves some huge
communication problems that exist with large busy talk pages. Right
now we tend to address those issues with agressive archiving, which i
have seen some major
I have to disagree strongly with the calls for WYSIWYG editing, not
that it's likely to materialize anytime soon. Wikipedia needs to
encourage people to concentrate on meaningful content, not dick around
with cosmetic matters.
Inline citations seriously hamper editing, however, and ways of
keeping
I don't use talkback templates myself, and find them somewhat
irritating, but I can live with them if that keeps liquid threads at
bay.
Watchlists have some limitations, I would like to be able to watchlist
a section and have that watch transfer to the archive when the section
moves. I'd also li
On 22 December 2010 09:53, Peter Coombe wrote:
> I do think there are fewer opportunities for such "easy" edits on
> Wikipedia now. Typos seem to be far less common thanks to
> semi-automated tools such as AWB, and most articles are generally more
> mature.
I had an interesting discussion a year
On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 4:42 AM, David Gerard wrote:
> On 22 December 2010 12:29, wiki wrote:
>
>> 1) WYSIWYG would be fantastic, but I've no idea what that would meet in
>> practice.
>
>
> It's been desperately wanted for years and is no closer now than it ever was.
I am not 100% convinced of
On 22 December 2010 12:29, wiki wrote:
>
> 5) I see the growing use of {{talkback}} templates. Personally, I hate them.
> However, the assumption that everyone masters watchlists and knows how to
> find discussions - and sees replies people make to them in any one of 27
> noticeboards, talk pages
on 12/22/10 7:42 AM, David Gerard at dger...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> I have on occasion thought the best thing to do about the Wikipedia
> community would be for it to implode as fast as possible. I've thought
> this since about 2006 and the encyclopedia has vastly improved in that
> time, so I might
On 22 December 2010 12:15, WereSpielChequers
wrote:
> Liquid threads is an interesting idea in principle, but the reality is
> at best unfortunate. I've pretty much stopped editing on the Strategy
> Wiki because of it - I have broadband and a reasonably fast machine
> but I don't have the patienc
On 22 December 2010 12:29, wiki wrote:
> 1) WYSIWYG would be fantastic, but I've no idea what that would meet in
> practice.
It's been desperately wanted for years and is no closer now than it ever was.
> Just some thoughts. I suspect to solve these problems would need some
> serious investme
y Sidaway
Sent: 22 December 2010 10:55
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia
The single best way to improve usability of Wikipedia would be to
scale back the use of jargon.
if you look at early discussions in those days they were usually held
in plain English, wit
On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 12:15 PM, WereSpielChequers
wrote:
> It is also a pain that one can't just quickly alter one's talkpage
> comments even to strike out a resolved point.
Some bulletin board software allows you to do this, leaving a note
that the post was edited after it was originally post
Liquid threads is an interesting idea in principle, but the reality is
at best unfortunate. I've pretty much stopped editing on the Strategy
Wiki because of it - I have broadband and a reasonably fast machine
but I don't have the patience to wait for Liquid threads to load even
when it works.
It i
On jargon, I still think "Neutral point of view" was a terrible name
that confused neutrality with lack of bias. You cannot sum up a policy
like NPOV in a single phrase, so in that case, I think NPOV is better
than saying "neutral" something. Sometimes a Wikipedia "term of art"
can be misleading an
The single best way to improve usability of Wikipedia would be to
scale back the use of jargon.
if you look at early discussions in those days they were usually held
in plain English, with very little jargon. I've tried to keep up that
style, but it is now quite rare.
I don't see why this should
On 22 December 2010 07:27, David Gerard wrote:
> On 22 December 2010 00:17, Carcharoth wrote:
>
>> Actually, I often see things that need fixing, but I'm in "look up"
>> mode and using Wikipedia as a starting point for finding some
>> information I'm after, and often don't have the time to even m
On 22 December 2010 00:17, Carcharoth wrote:
> Actually, I often see things that need fixing, but I'm in "look up"
> mode and using Wikipedia as a starting point for finding some
> information I'm after, and often don't have the time to even make a
> note to come back to the article later. If I s
On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 12:58 AM, Ian Woollard wrote:
> On 21/12/2010, Carcharoth wrote:
>> I've had similar thoughts, but more general, thinking that the
>> internet in general has more potential for people to "waste their
>> time" than ever before. How many scientific theorems and great books
>
On 21/12/2010, Carcharoth wrote:
> I've had similar thoughts, but more general, thinking that the
> internet in general has more potential for people to "waste their
> time" than ever before. How many scientific theorems and great books
> and works of art are going to be left undone because people
I think viewing competition from the standpoint of "competition for
people's time" can be very useful. There has been some data that's
pointed to how Internet users as a whole have been shifting their time
towards social networks (namely Facebook) and gaming at the expense of
other sites/ac
On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 11:58 PM, David Gerard wrote:
> I was chatting with User:Ciphergoth the other week about getting
> people involved in stuff. He occasionally asks people "if you see a
> typo in Wikipedia, do you fix it?" And people *just don't do that*.
> This is something that needs remed
On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 3:58 PM, David Gerard wrote:
> On 21 December 2010 23:55, Carcharoth wrote:
>> On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 11:04 PM, wiki wrote:
>
>>> But. where we are in competition with others is for the time of the
>>> undergraduate/graduate who sits down to squander some time on the
On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 3:55 PM, Carcharoth wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 11:04 PM, wiki wrote:
>
>> But. where we are in competition with others is for the time of the
>> undergraduate/graduate who sits down to squander some time on the internet.
>> He's got any number of choices - what w
On 21 December 2010 23:55, Carcharoth wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 11:04 PM, wiki wrote:
>> But. where we are in competition with others is for the time of the
>> undergraduate/graduate who sits down to squander some time on the internet.
> I've had similar thoughts, but more general, t
On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 11:04 PM, wiki wrote:
> But. where we are in competition with others is for the time of the
> undergraduate/graduate who sits down to squander some time on the internet.
> He's got any number of choices - what we draw him to Wikipedia and make him
> stick around? I won
kimedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of George Herbert
Sent: 21 December 2010 22:09
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia
There are two schools of thought here -
One, that competition is always great and effective.
Two, that someti
On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 1:47 PM, FT2 wrote:
> Pride matters, arrogance is harmful. What we have achieved is to demonstrate
> that legitimate, free, open, collaborative knowledge is to be taken
> seriously, and some knowhow about its creation and maintenance. That's not a
> reason for arrogance and
Pride matters, arrogance is harmful. What we have achieved is to demonstrate
that legitimate, free, open, collaborative knowledge is to be taken
seriously, and some knowhow about its creation and maintenance. That's not a
reason for arrogance and does not mean we are "best" or have some kind of
gua
On 21 December 2010 20:51, George Herbert wrote:
> Wikipedia NG discussions are a perennial favorite, and always hit a
> tactical wall. Strategically, I feel that's a mistake. Not that I
> can wave a magic wand and fix it, but it always worries me.
It's annoying, because we need competitors.
On 21 December 2010 19:58, Tony Sidaway wrote:
> Reading the references Joseph Reagle's book I encountered this:
> http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2006/12/wikipedia_will_1.htm
> Wikipedia, it appears, was destined to die within four years--by
> December 5, 2010, because it would be involved
On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 12:36 PM, wiki wrote:
>[...]
> If I dare to be a seer, I worry about software that looks increasingly 2004
> in a Facebook world.
Let me focus that a bit, if you don't mind -
Craigslist looks like 1997; other than the occasional image change for
the logo, Google's main se
-Original Message-
From: wikien-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of MuZemike
Sent: 21 December 2010 20:05
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia
I thought I read somewhere that Rupert Murdoch seeks to
On Tuesday, December 21, 2010, Tony Sidaway wrote:
> Reading the references Joseph Reagle's book I encountered this:
> http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2006/12/wikipedia_will_1.htm
Yes, I've been thinking that it would be neat to have an online debate or
something over this, as I write in the
I thought I read somewhere that Rupert Murdoch seeks to shut down
Wikipedia because of its "free information" threat to his and other
similar media empires.
-MuZemike
On 12/21/2010 1:58 PM, Tony Sidaway wrote:
> Since Wikipedia grew and became more ambitious in its scope, there
> have been pred
Since Wikipedia grew and became more ambitious in its scope, there
have been predictions of its downfall, many of them giving an estimate
for the timescale of its demise. If you hunt around you may find a
prediction by me that Wikipedia was unlikely to survive much beyond
2010 because I thought it
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