I've made some noise in this direction in the past, but I'm working on
a proper proposal to this effect that I think will really help fix
some of our deletionism/mergism issues in a way that both preserves
the unique content we have and keeps articles clean and informative.
I have a version of this proposal at [[User:Phil Sandifer/Extensions]]
that I invite people to hammer at. Once I have it in more detail I
intend to take it to the Village Pump.
==Purpose==
Wikipedia, as we often note, is not paper. But Wikipedia is
fundamentally organized like paper - individual articles are still
linear stretches of text that are organized, essentially, for
printability. And that's good - the idea of an encyclopedia article
is, structurally, linear. But it does lead to problems with a lot of
information that is accurate, informative, and seems to be viewed as
valuable by our readers. This information often does not fit in well
with the linear structure of articles, and the system of sub-articles
leads to mixed results (as evidenced by waves of deletionism, mergism,
etc)
The Extensions namespace is intended to house information on articles
that is relevant, accurate, and interesting, but that does not fit
into a traditional encyclopedic overview of the subject.
==Precedents==
Citizendium has a version of this, which you can see on any of their
articles. They call it subpages, and have a separate tab for each
subpage. This is very sleek and nice, but probably unsuitable for our
purposes. User-editable interface aspects would probably spiral out of
control in a categories-esque fashion.
The idea of pages that organize subtopics, of course, is similar to
the Portal namespace, but that seems unsuitable to this task for two
reasons - first, it's really designed for top-level topics, whereas an
Extensions page makes sense for smaller topics. Second, it's not well-
integrated into the site interface, and so it's not really a concept
accessible to the casual user.
==Scope==
My intention is that this would be used for information that is beyond
the scope of articles of any sort. That includes a large amount of
stuff that is often slammed as "cruft" but also things that are
routinely included without question. Among the things that would be
suitable:
*Plot summaries
*Lengthy tables
*Bibliographies, filmographies, and other such lists
*Trivia and "In Popular Culture" sections
*Derivations and figures (i.e. the "axioms" section of [[Zermelo–
Fraenkel set theory]])
*Lists of characters, actors, etc.
The Extensions namespace could also include full-fledged sub-articles
- things like [[Early life of George W. Bush]] - but they do not have
to, and it may not be preferable for them to. See also "Unsolved
issues" below.
==Implementation==
Imagine an article such as [[The weather in London]], which is assumed
to have an accompanying talk page. The Extensions namespace would also
implement [[Extensions:The weather in London]], and this would be
linked to with a tab next to the Discussion tab - perhaps called "More
information," or simply "Extensions."
Clicking the tab would lead you to the relevant Extensions page, which
would be an organized list of links to individual extensions - perhaps
tables of individual months and years of weather, the weather in
London in popular culture, etc. All of these would be subpages of the
extensions page - so, for instance, [[Extensions:The weather in London/
In popular culture]].
Breaking up the individual Extensions like this does increase our
vandalism targets significantly, but it means that the main Extensions
page can be carefully and neatly organized and scannable, and that
individual figures, tables, and sections can, where relevant, be
directly linked from within articles.
==Unsolved issues==
Some of these would need to be smoothed out before the namespace was
launched:
*What should the namespace be called?
*What should the tab in the site interface read?
*Should watchlisting an article automatically watchlist the extensions
(as is the case with talk pages)?
*Are there more issues we need to solve?
Others are things we'll want to think about, but that decisions about
will probably need to be field-tested, and that should therefore
should be left to the community to decide and create norms on.:
*Where should the line between sub-article and extension be drawn?
Obviously, for instance, [[I Robot]] should not become an extension of
[[Isaac Asimov]]. But should [[Early life of George W. Bush]] be an
extension of [[George W. Bush]]? Doing so would probably wreck a
number of featured articles. But on the other hand, does it really
make sense to have those be separate articles?
*What are our content policies for extensions? Obviously notability
gets blurrier here. Plenty of people have expressed concerns about,
for instance, plot summaries and trivia sections in terms of
verifiability. Others have disagreed that either pose a serious
complication or problem to these policies. Ideally extensions would
provide a middle ground for such things - allowing a place where we
can be more permissive without hurting our overall quality. But how
much more permissive?
*How should the main extensions pages be organized?
*How should individual extensions be linked to within articles? (In
the form of "Main article: Topic" or through small sidebar boxes, for
instance.)
*What extensions should be linked to from within articles, and what
extensions should be linked only from the extensions page?
-Phil
Please translate this announcement into other languages and forward it
to other mailing lists and village pumps. (The translators list has
already been notified and will help with this process.)
The Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Germany have collaborated, with
financial support from Wikimedia France, to support development of a
new extension to our software
which makes it possible to flag versions of wiki articles as having
reached a certain quality. This new toolset could mark the beginning
of a new era for Wikipedia and its sister projects, giving readers
more transparency than ever about the quality of a given article. A
special note of thanks to Aaron Schulz, who has developed much of the
functionality as a volunteer -- we would not be where we are today
without him. The ongoing support and patience of Philipp Birken from
the German chapter was also critical.
Before this functionality will be enabled on any Wikimedia project, it
needs to be tested thoroughly for usability, bugs, security and
performance. Test wikis have been set up in English and German
(because the German Wikimedia community has been driving the
development of this functionality from the beginning).
http://en.labs.wikimedia.org/http://de.labs.wikimedia.org/
These wikis contain a copy of the Wikibooks database. This copy is
completely separate from the "real" Wikibooks, so do not worry about
destroying anything of value. Please follow the instructions on the
Main Pages to participate. If you do not speak English or German, we
encourage you right now to
- set up test wikis independently using the open source extension
available from http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:FlaggedRevs ,
or
- change the user interface preference, and create pages in the
English test wiki in your language.
This is due to our limited capacity to set up additional wikis. If you
feel you really, absolutely, strongly need a test wiki in your
language, please file a request through:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/
Wikimedia communities will also have to decide what kind of
configuration to use for their project. Key questions to answer
include:
- What quality attributes should there be?
- Who should be permitted to flag changes as having been reviewed for
vandalism, or for other quality attributes?
- Should the default view for unregistered users change to the "stable
version" on all pages, some pages, or no pages?
The German Wikimedia community has implemented a particular
long-standing community proposal and will probably go live the soonest
with this configuration; other communities will still have to develop
consensus.
== What's next? ==
The test will run at least until April 10, 2008 before the extension
is implemented live on any wiki. This is to allow any serious problems
to be surfaced by the community. If there are no critical open issues
as of April 10, any language/project community will be permitted to
file a request through https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/ to activate the
extension. This request will have to point to pages in the project
indicating a consensus to move forward. Detailed instructions to do so
will be posted on the test wikis.
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
I've only been a participant in one ArbCom case. The one about Matt
Sanchez. The one resulting strong measure, banning Matt for one year, was fine. I
would have liked to see more strong measures esp. after some of the emails
between him and other Wikipedians were made public. But that's life. You don't
always get what you want.
Will
**************Create a Home Theater Like the Pros. Watch the video on AOL
Home.
(http://home.aol.com/diy/home-improvement-eric-stromer?video=15?ncid=aolhom0…)
http://www.abyssandapex.com/200710-wikihistory.html
Good for a laugh, but interesting too.
--
Brian Salter-Duke b_duke(a)bigpond.net.au
[[User:Bduke]] mainly on en:Wikipedia.
Also on fr: Wikipedia, Meta-Wiki and Wikiversity
I am posting this here because there is no wikisimple-l list to post on.
Please don't get into the BADSITES dispute because WR is pointless (you can
see my opinion on the BADSITES issue here:
http://encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php?title=User:Quodealis/Badsites)
User:Iamandrewrice had a medical condition called body dysmorphic disorder,
which is a very rare, but treatable, condition. This disorder is an
explanation of his sometimes weird behavior. I believe he should be
unblocked.
On the Simple English Wikipedia, Iamandrewrice was banned (after he changed
his username there to User:Benniguy). He created a sockpuppet,
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Inkpen2 and after it was discovered
who he was, he made an unblock request at
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Inkpen2 and said his condition
was much better now that he was on medication for his illness.
Although Gwib doesn't believe he is any better because of a recent incident
with User:Crystalclearchanges on english Wikipedia, I do. His writing on
User talk:Inkpen2 seems like a completely different person. He seems more
mature, sensible, and comprehensible.
I think he should be unblocked. What do you think?
-------
Ionas68224
Jonas Rand
joeyyuan at cox dot net
----- Original Message -----
From: <wikien-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
To: <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2008 8:11 PM
Subject: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 56, Issue 124
> I think - no. There is a number of threads about this guy in the archives
> of
> AN/I, with a number of creatively different excuses for his behavior.
> There is
> absolutely no reason to unblock him on English Wikipedia, and this is the
> wrong mailing list for
> unblocking on Simple English.
>
> Nathan
>
> On 3/18/08, Jonas Rand <joeyyuan(a)cox.net> wrote:
>>
>> I am posting this here because there is no wikisimple-l >>list to post
>> on.
>> Please don't get into the BADSITES dispute because >>WR is pointless (you
>> can see my opinion on the BADSITES issue here:
>> http://encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php?title=User:Quodealis/Badsites)
>> User:Iamandrewrice had a medical condition called body dysmorphic
>> disorder, which is a very rare, but treatable, condition. This disorder
>> is an
>> explanation of his sometimes weird behavior. I believe he should be
>> unblocked.
>>
>> On the Simple English Wikipedia, Iamandrewrice was banned (after he
>> changed his username there to User:Benniguy). He created a sockpuppet,
>> http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Inkpen2 and after it was discovered
>> who he was, he made an unblock request at
>> http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Inkpen2 and said his condition
>> was much better now that he was on medication for his illness.
>>
>> Although Gwib doesn't believe he is any better because of a recent
>> incident with User:Crystalclearchanges on english Wikipedia, I do. His
>> writing on
>> User talk:Inkpen2 seems like a completely different person. He seems more
>> mature, sensible, and comprehensible.
>>
>> I think he should be unblocked. What do you think?
>>
>> -------
>> Ionas68224
>> Jonas Rand
>> joeyyuan at cox dot net
He's changed, like I said.
There is no list for Simple English Wikipedia, I am calling for his unblock
on both wikis. (<offtopic>And I definitely did _not_ mean to say WR is
pointless, I put the word pointless and wanted to put "involved in this
case, and drama here is" between "is" and "pointless" and I forgot to do it.
Sorry, but I think WR is okay, it isjust some of the posters.</offtopic>) If
you mean unblock-l, I thought that was for unblocking yourself.
-------
Ionas68224
Jonas Rand
joeyyuan at cox dot net
In a message dated 3/18/2008 3:37:19 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
cdhowie(a)gmail.com writes:
I choked on my soda when I read this. It's a pity this bit of
hyperbole wasn't intended to be satire, cause it's funny as hell.>>
-------------------
Thank you, thank you.
I'll be passing the tip jar at the end of the show.
W
**************Create a Home Theater Like the Pros. Watch the video on AOL
Home.
(http://home.aol.com/diy/home-improvement-eric-stromer?video=15?ncid=aolhom0…)