Phil Sandifer wrote
> As long as that is the case, we're in the unfortunate position where
> it's entirely likely the god-given common sense a user comes to the
> project with is going to do them more good than our policy pages.
"Plus ça change" versus "nous avons changé tout celà", IOW. Amateurs can draft encyclopedic pages with greater ease than legalistic documents. All true, but this comes with the territory.
I think the right conclusion is not so much that the way things are done just fundamentally sucks; but that this issue, of accessibility of 'policy', preferentially will put off those who want solid understanding of everything involved in editing. I have never felt I understood all aspects of enWP.
Charles
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Steve Summit wrote
> Phil Sandifer wrote:
> >On Oct 1, 2006, at 4:50 AM, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> >> I hear you. Perhaps that long discussed speedy criterion for
> >> "advertisements masquerading as articles" should be introduced.
> > Oh God, please no.
> > You have no idea what that would become in the hands of some of our
> > admins.
>
> Is there anything we can do about *that* problem? If we can't
> at least document our norms for fear of the documentation being
> misused, that sounds like a precarious situation.
In general, I agree. Reprimand and then cull admins who can't get it right, rather than distort policy in defensive mode. Recall that most admin actions are reversible. (Not against people, true, but that's where we have been hardest in the past.)
Charles
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Given the number of people who seem to use Alexa 'rankings' as the basis
of an Afd decision on website articles, I thought you guys might be
interested in this article:
http://www.johnchow.com/index.php/why-alexa-is-worthless/
It has been clear for a long time that Alexa 'rankings' are utter crap,
as they are based not on website visitors and links (as Google or Yahoo
rankings are) but on the activities of those infected with Alexa's
spyware-esque toolbar.
Cynical
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"Peter Jacobi" <peter_jacobi(a)gmx.net>
> In the unlikely case anyone interested has missed it: There
> are some troubles re mandatory in-line citing and science
> articles.
>
> It all started with a warning put at large number of "good
> articles" that they will be delisted soon for lack of
> in-line cites. This immediately got the response, that standard
> textbooks facts are not and should not be in-line cited, the
> references section will name selected textbooks and one cannot
> judge the correctness without having some context anyway.
It is certainly foolish in many cases, and make-work, to reference specific and uncontroversial well-known facts. What is more it will tend to make articles unreadable, and effectively unwriteable also. This style is essentially only fit for very careful writing in doctoral dissertations with particularly terrifying examiners in mind.
It seems clear that enWP could get overrun by nutty lawyering types, if a firm line is not taken. Is there not a 'statute of limitations' of sorts appropriate? When a piece of science is over 50 years old, one expects to read about the details of the original papers in a historical article. And the chances are that there are so many textbook citations that picking just one isn't a great help to students.
Charles
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Two arguments are frequently made which I think have no merit.
1) "It interferes with readability of the articles." Sure it does,
but that's a technical issue, and _if we wanted solutions_ we could
deal with it through tehnical means. We could define better visual
apparatus for references. One of the examples I keep pointing to is
Laura Hillenbrand's book, "Seabiscuit: An American Legend," not
because it's the only book that uses this style but because it is an
extremely readable bestseller. It is densely cited, but there is not
a single mark within the text. Instead, the references are placed at
the end. They are indicated by chapter, page number, _and phrase_.
This would require modifications to work with Wikipedia, but that can
be discussed.
Wikipedia has a unique _requirement_ for very dense references,
_denser_ than those found in research papers or nonfiction books, so
it is not surprising that traditional solutions are not perfect for
Wikipedia, and that we will need to think of better approaches.
2) "If it appears in numerous textbooks it does not need a citation."
This is silly. The problem is that there is no way the reader or
anybody else can tell the difference between a sentence which lacks a
reference _because somebody has checked_ to make sure that it appears
in numerous textbooks, and a sentence which lacks a reference
because_ someone just typed it in off the top of their head_. They
look the same.
Even if someone goes over an article with a fine-toothed comb today
and has made sure that none of the unreferenced material needs
references, without any sort of markup apparatus there's no way
anyone can tell a week later which portions of the text have been
reviewed.
In other words, if we don't drop something into the article to leave
a breadcrumb trail to where the fact was found, then any work we do
in fact-checking will be wasted effort because it will be obsolete a
week later. We need some kind of marker to where the fact was found.
And the marker needs to be readily visible... at least to those
interested in seeing it... so that anyone can see how carefully the
article has been fact-checked and _which facts in it_ have been checked.
Finally, which is easier to do: check to make sure that a fact is
contained in _three_ textbooks and say "good, it doesn't need a
reference" and not put one in? or check to make sure it's in ''one''
textbook and cite the source?
I sometimes think that at least some people who object to citations
do so because what they really want is to _establish themselves as
authorities_ through social interaction with other page editors. That
is, they want their Wikipedian colleagues to recognize _them_ as
reliable sources, and agree that any fact inserted by
[[User:Pantomath]] does not need a citation because everyone agrees
that User:Pantomath knows everything.
David Gerard wrote:
> On 01/10/06, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>> Whether we are talking about companies or fictitious islands, I do not
>> believe "block, nuke, and salt the Earth more aggressively!" is the
>> answer. That's partially because blocking is a very, very flawed tool
>> (it's very easy to circumvent), and "hard" security measures in a
>> fundamentally open environment tend to only inspire people to find
>> clever ways to circumvent them and to make themselves even more of a
>> PITA than they already are. Of course we should block individuals
>> where appropriate, but I'm not convinced that increasing the amount of
>> blocking and nuking is going to help us much right now.
>
> Yes.
>
> Danny, Brad: please understand that making up a new special rule every
> time there's a new problem is a *really bad* thing to do.
Which is why neither Danny nor Brad made up a new special rule, nor did
either of them advocate it. They advocated strengthening and/or changing
our attitudes and culture. An admittedly difficult task, but one we need
to work on.
Part of the problem is the many people who sort of get the message, but
immediately translate these calls into the "new special rule" that will
"solve everything for all time". I understand a new speedy deletion
criterion has already been proposed. With my tongue in my cheek, I'm
somewhat inclined to take a page from Ed Poor's book and speedily delete
the speedy deletion criteria.
Erik's message cautions about how we shouldn't misuse the tools we have
in achieving this cultural change. That's a perceptive observation as
well. He went on to advocate working on a better annotation feature,
which might be of some help with this problem. (Though it must be noted
that new features lend themselves particularly well to this problem of
"new special rules".) But the thing is, we can't really wait around for
all these promised, or merely even conceived-of, features. We need to
address problems when they come to our attention, not simply say we'll
get around to dealing with them later.
--Michael Snow
Dear Community:
The volume of corporate vanity/vandalism which is showing up on
Wikipedia is overwhelming. At the office, we are receiving dozens of
phone calls *per week* about company, organization, and marketing edits
which are reverted, causing the non-notable, but self-aggrandizing
authors, to scream bloody murder. This is as it should be. However, I
am issuing a call to arms to the community to act in a much more
draconian fashion in response to corporate self-editing and vanity page
creation. This is simply out of hand, and we need your help.
We are the #14 website in the world. We are a big target. If we are to
remain true to our encyclopedic mission, this kind of nonsense cannot be
tolerated. This means the administrators and new page patrol need to be
clear when they see new usernames and page creation which are blatantly
commercial - shoot on sight. There should be no question that someone
who claims to have a "famous movie studio" and has exactly 2 Google hits
- both their Myspace page - they get nuked. Ban users who promulgate
such garbage for a significant period of time. They need to be
encouraged to avoid the temptation to recreate their article, thereby
raising the level of damage and wasted time they incur.
Some of you might think regular policy and VfD is the way to go. I am
here to tell you it is not enough. We are losing the battle for
encyclopedic content in favor of people intent on hijacking Wikipedia
for their own memes. This scourge is a serious waste of time and
energy. We must put a stop to this now.
Thank you for your help.
-Brad Patrick
User:BradPatrick
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
Apologies for the bias and frustration evident here.
At DRV right now is a debate regarding Finger Lakes Christian School.
The sources for this article are: a diary date and a quote form the
principal; and the school website. The school is a private church
school with 75 students.
The problem with the article itself was established at AfD: absence of
non-trivial coverage in reliable secondary sources. We cannot verify
anything much other than its existence, so the article contents was a
simple directory entry, but of course [[WP:NOT]] a directory does not
apply to schools.
The problem with the deletion debate is obvious; it has the S-word in
the title so the subject is "inherently notable" (whatever that might
mean, no sources were cited to back this claim). Obviously if one
were to substitute "company" for "school" in the article title it
would have been snowballed into the bitbucket, with its 75 unique
Googles outside Wikipedia and mirrors.
The problem with the DRV is that the existence of a number of votes
from obdurate "all schools are inherently notable" types means that
vote counting gives no consensus, whereas a comparison of arguments
from policy - specifically verifiability and hence the ability to
cover the subject objectively - shows a clear delete.
The problem with the whole argument is that the quasi-religious belief
that every school article must be kept because all schools are
inherently notable appears to override all concerns of verifiability
and neutrality, to the point where nobody arguing to keep has even
tried to fix the major issue raised at AfD, that the contents of the
article cannot be formally verified per policy. Folk memory has it
that one outright hoax was nearly kept as a result of this line of
reasoning.
I'm rather hoping that someone on this list will care enough and have
sufficient resources to actually find the reliable sources the article
needs, since I have little doubt that the school inclusionists will
see to it that it is kept one way or another, and the last thing we
need is yet another unverifiable promotional article on a private
Christian school. I can't find much other than directory entries, and
I find I lose the will to live after reading a certain number of them.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.ukhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote
>Perhaps that long discussed speedy criterion for
> "advertisements masquerading as articles" should be introduced.
Oh. Where it says above the edit box that ''Promotional articles about yourself, your friends, your company or products; or articles created as part of a marketing or promotional campaign, may be deleted in accordance with our deletion policies'', I kind of assumed we meant it. And that blatant puffs would be speedied by admins. Don't tell me that this has always been ex-process. Gasp!
Charles
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