Information worth knowing, from "cavechat" via the Western Region remailer:
Subject: [NSSwest] "Wikipedia poised to list coordinates for U.S. cave articles"
Seen on cavechat:
http://forums.caves.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=13155
"I'm an editor of dozens of articles at Wikipedia and a caver too. Naturally, I
am involved with the debate over cave articles at Wikipedia. And I'm here to
tell you why the National Speleological Society and it's members should be more
involved at the discussions over there.
1. Wikipedia is often one of the first results in any Google search. So its
information is instantly accessible and at the forefront.
2. Wikipedia is beginning to standardize its infobox (a template detailing
facts) on caves. That means they want to make it uniform across the board that
all cave articles have a coordinate field.
Here's my experience so far. Wikipedia does not like censorship nor does it
"cater" to "special groups" and their needs. Meanwhile they ignore that they
are a special group with default needs and censor the private information of
famous people. So they see that a cave infobox should not exclude the
coordinate field. The conflict is, until recently, the Cave infobox on
Wikipedia did not have a coordinate field. European (specifically the United
Kingdom) editors are naturally more open about their cave locations because
their culture is different, so they made a U.K. specific cave infobox with
coordinates. When it came for a consensus on Wikipedia, they talked about
making the U.K. infobox the worldwide standard, and U.S. the exception. Which
makes sense.
However! As it is now, the infobox making an exception for the U.S. caves could
be overturned at anytime and merged with the previously named U.K. Cave
infobox. Making it so that coordinates could be on any cave article. From all
my past experience at Wikipedia, I can tell you this is very likely what's
going to happen when it becomes a topic for Wikipedia editors and admins.
A few notes. Having coordinates for cave parks and commercial caves is not a
problem. But there are cave articles out there that are not commercial.
Privately held caves, sensitive eco-system caves, et al., have articles on
Wikipedia too. Because American culture does not respect mother nature very
well, this could prove disastrous for caves! Any one of you cavers familiar
with cave cleanups knows the impact human visitation has on these ecosystems.
Your cleanup work will only grow exponentially once a coordinate is listed for
previously undisclosed caves. It needs to be established that there must be
exceptions to what will be uniform measures to include a coordinate field for
all caves. A coordinate field only invites coordinates to be added, and
wikipedia bots can be tasked to fill in this information if it exists online.
So it's not very hard to do!
So my suggestion to you cavers: Spread the word that more attention needs to be
placed on Wikipedia. Register and go to these pages (and check the star at the
top so you can get updates on any changes):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... ject_Caves
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_ ... ject_Caves
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Infobox_cave
and you will probably eventually want to keep an eye on these pages too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... oordinates
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_caves
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_caves
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ca ... ted_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedian_cavers (not too many!)
You will also want to search for Wikipedia pages on any local caves in your
area and watch those pages too (check the star at the top of those pages) so
you can keep an eye on sensitive caves in your area, if there are any.
If you want to see how well I faired (not so good and for better or worse)
against the Wikipideans at large, read the lengthy discussion here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... ovember_22"
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