The big wars over linking to so-called "attack sites" have moved to
yet another venue... and this time, instead of just chilling
discussion on various and sundry talk and project pages (but being
pretty much peripheral to anything to do with maintaining an
encyclopedia, other than diverting energy away from it), they're
actually having a direct and negative effect on our quality as an
encyclopedia. It seems that, regarding the [[Essjay controversy]],
one of the Wikipedia-related conflicts that is notable enough to have
a mainspace article, a key part of the history of the unfolding of
this story took place on one of the "attack sites". (Our favorite
enemy Daniel Brandt played a big role in that.) So, naturally, some
people wanting a well-referenced historical record wish to include
the relevant link. Others are fighting it, making the same tired
arguments about ArbCom rulings and pseudo-policy. I was trying to
mellow out about this whole issue so that I could get back to doing
something actually relevant to the encyclopedia, but it seems like
the damn thing keeps intruding no matter what, like the monster in a
bad horror movie.
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
I see Wikipedia cited more and more as a possible first step for serious
research. I have seen more and more people suggest that Wikipedia should
encompass all or most of the articles included in specialist encyclopedias,
such as the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (my personal
favorite). I have also seen many more calls for working on quality of
articles, rather than quantity. I see a major lack in terms of using WP for
deeper research, rather than quick information gathering, when comparing
Wikipedia to these specialist encyclopedias. This lack is in well developed
and defined bibliographies.
I am not talking about people citing their sources and sticking them in
reference sections, which I also think is important. I'm talking about a
limited review of the literature, mentioning which works are considered
seminal, which are standard, which give the best overview for the
uninitiated, basically a good bibliography which is not too bloated and
which is not too biased.
We frequently talk about how students should not use Wikipedia as a sole
source, but as a starting point. I see the best way for Wikipedia to be a
starting point is to give the basic information, and then point people to
the very best information. The best books or journal articles will not
necessarily be the ones which were to hand when a person was first writing
the article, or when someone was getting rid of {{fact}} templates. In the
best of all possible worlds they were, but it's more likely they were the
most easily accessible, and may have been online resources which were not as
good as what would be available in your local library or with a subscription
to JSTOR or similar.
I would like to encourage everyone to think about how to create great
bibliographies, especially for subjects where you could easily be snowed
under with relevant works, or where the best literature is not necessarily
obvious.
And some questions about Bibliographies - should we create them in separate
pages or namespaces so they can be better controlled and saved from
spammers? Is ISBN really the best way to identify and find books? Should we
think about a partnership with OCLC/WorlCat or some other database so that
people can easily find the books mentioned locally? Can we simplify our
templates for citing books, or should we make them even more complex so they
fit with the MARC standards <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARC_standards> ?
Sorry for the long rant, but this is something which has been bothering me
about Wikipedia for the last year and a half, and where I don't feel like
much progress has been made in terms of quality.
Makemi
Is there anybody here who has a serious interest in accounts on
[[Metaweb]]'s Freebase project? They just gave me another tranche of
them, and there's no sense letting them just sit there.
I think the short description is that they would like to be the
Internet's machine-readable almanac. Where Wikipedia is about prose,
they're about data. For example, they've done some parsing of Wikipedia
extracts on things like movies and albums, so that you can make
database-like queries against that info. So you could build queries to
answer questions like, "What actors has Francis Ford Coppola worked with?"
Right now they're at an early stage, and are mainly looking for
developers who will build Freebase-backed tools and people likely to
spend time actually contributing content. If that's you, please drop me
a line off-list.
Thanks,
William
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Packer
This seems to be of a guy who's notable for getting himself
repeatedly interviewed in news coverage of various things as a non-
notable "man on the street".
In addition to the Wikipedia-internal issues of whether somebody like
that should have an article, this raises the point that, in the "real
world" as well as on Wikipedia forums, appearances of public
sentiment, opinion, consensus, and so on can be deceiving, as the
people (even when they seem like "just ordinary folks") who are seen
or heard expressing their views on something (on the TV news or on a
Wikipedia talk page or mailing list) are a self-selected bunch who
want to be heard, or want attention, or have other motives that set
them apart from the "masses".
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004665.html
Also, the availability of responsible discussion in alternative media
offers at least a small contrary force to the surge of misinformation
from traditional sources. As a result, those who consult Google or
Wikipedia -- with an open-minded and skeptical attitude, of course --
are likely to be better informed than those who rely on sources like
the BBC. Perhaps this is the best outcome that we will get, but it's
not the best that we could hope for.
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Gwern Branwen [mailto:gwern0@gmail.com]
>Sent: Saturday, June 30, 2007 01:16 PM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] A much neglected aspect of quality - Bibliographies
>What bothers me is the unclearness of the idea of a 'bibliography'. I've run into this in a number of my articles - in an article about an author, say, does a Bibliography contain a comprehensive listing of his works, a comprehensive listing of works about him and his work, a list like the previous but only containing the ones you haven't yet used a references (I've compromised and treated that kind of bibliography as a 'Further Reading' section thus far), or what?
>
>--
>gwern
In the case of an author there might be "Works" "Fiction" "Non-fiction" in addition to "Biographies" and "Literary criticism"
There could be a "Notes" section for references used. "External links" for cool web sites or articles available on line.
And a "Bibliography" containing recommended sources.
Fred