Hi there,
i am having some difficulties understanding some decisions and need some
words of clarification from you people.
I am the lead developer of a project called ActiveQuant, which got
deleted recently. There was some notability discussion about this
software and i clearly pointed out that delisting ActiveQuant is not
only unfair but also unjust in my eyes. A very important other library
called QuantLib got delisted, too. The main problem these two projects
were suffering from is notability.
Now, as these two projects got deleted, i enforced the same rule
(missing notability) on other projects and marked them as to be deleted.
Someone with account HU12 therefore initiated a block against my account
and rolled back my delete requests without knowing that these projects
of course have exactly the same notability issues and must therefore be
deleted, too.
To go even further, he has now removed permission to modify my own talk
page, as he accuses me to abuse the method to request unblocking. I
still request unblocking of my account and deletion of these other
projects (actually most other open source listings on wikipedia suffer
from this notability rule), or get rid of this notability rule which
doesn't make much sense for most open source software distributed on the
internet.
Anyway, to the main point of my email:
Could someone please be so kind and explain to me
a) why has my delete-request been removed from those other projects,
although it is perfectly valid
b) why has my account been blocked
I really can't reason this, i also must admit that there are dozens of
other pages that have missing references or notability problems and why
has our page (ActiveQuant) been deleted, although there were other
people, not only me, complaining about this delete request. I do value
the hint from this other guy (can't remember his name right now), that
once ActiveQuant has reached notability by i.e. a book about it or a
magazine article as a backening it will have no notablity issues anymore
and is valid for resubmission! But again, why are other projects that
have even less text and information to learn from (software related,
i.e. architectural insight) still listed?
Thanks for any shared insight.
Ulrich.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us/Photo_submission
Has this been getting us any photos? How smoothly does the operation
run, if it does?
If the process (a) works (b) smoothly, I'd like to put together a
press release or something to start actively asking for these pics,
hopefully in a month or so.
(My next mission: get a decent free photo of [[:en:Stephen Fry]] ...)
- d.
I'm in agreement with Ned here. Looking through ANI and their own
wiki pages, it appears to me that they made every effort to abide by
policies, and did not intend to create a disruption. It was supposed
to just be a learning experience regarding online disputes, and they
got more experience than they bargained for.
They were polite and attempted to help us out with some current
disputes. I think the rude comments some of our community members
have made regarding them were way out of line.
Matt Jacobs
> Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008
> Ned Scott wrote:
>
> I strongly urge people on the mailing list to also look at that ANI
> link. Here's a perm link, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_notic…
>
> Unless we are changing the definition of a cabal, that hardly
> describes these groups of students. One group even self-identified,
> and stated that they were presenting opinions about a dispute, for a
> class assignment. The other groups might simply not have thought of
> this, or didn't think it was a big deal. They caused no harm, and
> actually provided us with many good solutions to some existing
> disputes, from fresh, neutral minds.
>
> They discussed things amongst themselves before hand, and carefully
> thought about how to present their ideas so that they would be best
> received. We do that on-wiki all the time, and not with the intent to
> manipulate, but simply understanding that how you present an idea is
> sometimes just as important as the idea itself. It's not much
> different than a micro-consensus being formed on one talk page, and
> then those editors going to a larger community discussion after having
> thought about what was discussed in the first discussion. It did not
> appear that any of them said anything they didn't actually believe,
> either as an individual or as a group.
>
> This dispute didn't happen from the students, but more from a fear
> that came after discovering that they collaborated off-wiki. As
> [[User:Gladys j cortez]] said:
>
> "I am of absolutely no consequence to this discussion, but the concern
> I see among the "regular" Wikipedians here is one of transparency. Had
> the participants announced their presence and intentions, as one group
> apparently did, I would imagine this would have been a non-issue.
> Gladys J Cortez01:42, 9 January 2008 (UTC)"
>
> -- Ned Scott
>
> On Jan 8, 2008, at 9:54 PM, Steven Walling wrote:
>
> > How natural for the Ivy League. Real life cabalists become virtual
> > ones.
> >
Folks,
When considering or referring to "The Wikipedia Community", many, if not
most, thoughts run in the practical direction of the concept of Community
(voting & other decision-making areas). Mine runs in a more intangible one:
Anyone who contributes in a positive way to advance the values and goals of
the Project.
Until recently, when I spoke of "The Wikipedia Community", I had been
thinking specifically of the body of persons who actually edit the
encyclopedia. And my goals have been to want this Community of persons to be
regarded with dignity, respect and trust: For them to have a reasonable
voice in the workings of the Project's administration and decision-making
processes; and for them to have some semblance of control over their own
fates within the Project.
This respect and trust must, of course, work both ways We must earn it
from each other.
I'm really just brainstorming without an umbrella here:
What I'm going for is more of a sense of community than a fact of community;
a sense of belonging and loyalty that can be instilled and held only though
the culture. It can begin by each person being honest and asking themselves
what they are doing here and why.
One outstanding positive effect this sense of community pride would have on
the Project itself is that persons are less likely to freely abuse a group
they truly feel they are a part of. Would you burn down your house if you
still felt it was your home?
A person who feels valued by a community is less likely to abuse or harm it,
or its members, if they feel they are still a part of it.
There needs to be a civility initiative in the Project that is reflected in
every interaction. People need to compliment each other more, and cut each
other some slack when they take risks and make some mistakes.
Take care of the new members of the Community, and remember they are
learning about the culture with every new encounter and interaction.
Words have power - use them wisely; in the mind of an impressionable person
they can be inspiring or deadly.
Also, there could be something similar to a Barnstar that we place on our
User Pages ourselves saying something like "I am a proud Member of the
Wikipedia Community" with a design such as a globe similar to the WP Globe,
but with a figure of a person at the N, S, E & W locations.
I would like to see placed at the top of the Wikipedia Main Page, a banner
that says something like, "Be honest - be fair - be assertive - be civil."
Wikipedia: A Community of persons building and refining an Encyclopedia of
knowledge - and trying to learn how to get along while doing it.
And these community values must be shared, practiced and reinforced every
single day, by every single member: This is how it is here & This is how we
are. And anyone not willing to share these values, must find a community
more to their liking.
For civility and a sense of Community to truly be a part of Wikipedia's
identity - they must first be a part of its bloodstream.
Be healthy in the New Year,
Marc Riddell
"Tony Sidaway" wrote
> On 04/01/2008, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > "because it's getting me through med school" ? Anon.
> >
> > Am I the only one to find that just a little discomfiting?
> When I first saw that, it conjured up for me a picture of a group of
> surgeons clustered around a wiki page panicking while on a table
> nearby a surgical nurse struggles with swabs to control a bleeding
> patient. On closer inspection, the wiki page says "YOU SUCK! LOL!"
The next thing after keyhole surgery will be reverting in the patient history if an operation goes wrong.
Charles
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Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam
Some time ago, we discussed the various articles on years, which are
invariably bald timelines of births, deaths and events; the
possibility of fleshing them out into prose was tossed around.
I've just been told someone finally did one of them :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1345
with the old content at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1345_timeline
Thoughts?
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk
"A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone
who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read."
<http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html>
The project is not collaborative like Wikipedia, but for many topics,
there will be competing knols on the same subject. The goal is to
cover all topics, from encyclopedic topics to how-to-fix-it
instructions. The control over the article will remain with the
author, who can also choose to display ads and get a substantial
revenue share. Most probably, the license won't be a free one, but
"Google will not ask for any exclusivity on any of this content and
will make that content available to any other search engine."
It's too early to say, but the success of Knol may spell extinction
for projects like Citizendium: most "experts" would prefer to retain
sole authorship of their articles and get paid for it.
And of course, it may spell doom for Wikipedia as well. Knol will
certainly provide a more authoritative, more reliable source of
knowledge than Wikipedia:
<http://www.google.com/images/blogs/knol_lg.png>
--
Utkarshraj Atmaram
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Utcursch
