"Tony Sidaway" wrote
> There are still yawning gaps.
I used to spend time creating lists of names from specialised and academic books, in the humanties. Then en-WP used to have from 40%-60% of the names, when I put up a list hanging off my user page. If I did that now I'd expect a figure of, what, 45%-65%. There is a kind of an endless supply of things to do. As Jimbo apparently said at Wikimania, the coverage of arts subjects is not that hot. (Though the rest of the Web is, with a few honourable exceptions, hardly going to put us to shamae.)
Charles
-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information
Quote:
Death Phoenix wrote:
>* Hey Jimbo, can you confirm that you tried to unblock MyWikiBiz but had
*>* problems with your browser, per [[User talk:MyWikiBiz]]?
*>* _______________________________________________
*>*
*> > Yes, I and I did manage to unblock him properly just now.
I'm here to say that the MyWikiBiz account and IP addresses ever used are
STILL BLOCKED. My recommendation to Jimbo by direct e-mail is to "release
the hounds" -- let some of the Admins try to unblock me.
Kindly,
Gregory Kohs
> From: "David Gerard"
> http://thomas-lord.blogspot.com/2006/08/wikipedia-empire-based-on-open-sour…
> Is there something here that's the seed of a useful idea?
I quote: "Isn't each article a separate module, more or less?"
Well, no. WP is not a bunch of fairly independent essays. That is a common misconception, and one that seems particularly persistent, in external criticisms.
WP is hypertext: simple remark. What is more, Wikipedians who are up to speed actually conceive of it as hypertext. And one reason for WP's success is that it is an encyclopedia-like thingy with the hypertext aspects used in development, not bolted on afterwards.
Charles
-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information
I just got off the phone with MyWikiBiz and reached what I think is a
very favorable agreement about this sort of thing.
The big problem with paid editing on wikipedia is NOT that someone is
getting paid to write, but rather that this causes a rather obvious
conflict of interest and appearance of impropriety. This was my
problem, and they immediately saw why this was not in our interest or
theirs.
Rather, what we brainstormed about as a nice mutually beneficial ground
would be for them to charge customers for writing high quality NPOV
articles about their companies, with sources and verifiability, but for
them to work with well known and respected wikipedians who are NOT being
financially compensated to actually enter the articles into Wikipedia
upon their own independent judgment. This will avoid, for MyWikiBiz, a
lot of sad fighting with us which is likely to be ugly and unproductive
all around.
This preserves our independence as a volunteer editing body, while at
the same time supporting the creation of high quality NPOV content. I
am very pleased with this idea.--~~~~
Now that I've read the reasoning
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2006_July…)...
Here's the deal. I created this ISBN template {{ISBN}} which does
nothing very exciting. It simply substitutes the text "ISBN {{{1}}}".
However, my reasoning for creating it seemed sound: to provide an
abstraction layer so users don't have to learn the rather arbitrary
syntax that Wikipedia uses to deal with ISBN codes. Instead, they can
use the same syntax they use everywhere: {{template name|argument}}.
Is this a bad idea? Personally, I find the ISBN markup extremely
arbitrary and maybe not that well thought out. We apparently only
allow pure ISBN numbers, with no hyphens, spaces or slashes, although
they are usually presented that way in other contexts. By wrappering
this syntax in standard template syntax, we would clear the way for a
future, more forgiving ISBN syntax to be implemented.
Similarly, although the ISBN syntax is "simple" it may not be
"intuitive". What is the first reaction of people confronted with the
problem of inserting an ISBN number likely to be? "How do I make this
do that cool link thing?" What are they then most likely to try?
{{ISBN|34895342985}} maybe?
The arguments for deletion were interesting:
* How worse can we get? This perform exactly the same function as
typing ISBN+space+number, except with more characters. Let's burninate
it with fire.
In the same way that implementing getX() { return X; }} is a waste of space.
* Delete all text templates that take more characters to write than
what they produce.
I guess they wouldn't like {{--}} either. :)
* Subst but keep It's the sort of thing we'd create a redirect for if
it were an article, not a special piece of wikimarkup. It may be worth
checking 'what links here' every so often so that it can be susbted
and users who use it told the correct syntax.
The most enlightening - this person definitely thinks it's better that
we "educate" people on the "correct syntax", rather than admitting our
mistake at having a special syntax, and letting people not even have
to think about the question of formatting ISBN numbers.
* Comment This template was added to Maelor Way recently. I added a
notice to inform editors of the proper ISBN style.
Again - although the editors were using a template which took care of
"the proper ISBN style" for them, we choose instead to take away their
automatic transmission and tell them how to use a manual gearbox.
I'm just a bit dismayed by the kind of reasoning that goes on at some
of these deletion debates, where instead of "is this harmful?" we have
"is this needed?"
Comments very welcome, particularly if I'm completely misguided.
Steve
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,20080119%5E15318%5E%5Enbv%5…
A DETECTIVE involved in the prosecution of 13 accused terrorists has
told a court he gleaned much of his knowledge of terrorism from the
internet and admits he's no expert on the subject.
"The witness said he had used internet resources like Google and
Wikipedia to research terrorism and Muslim extremists."
In order to maintain the NPOV, we certainly need an islamic terrorist
to testify that he used Wikipedia for his evil purposes, right?
Sorry, I can't remember--anyone know the wikimedia email address for
confirming that an image is released under a free license by its creator
when it's uploaded by someone else? Is it permissions(a)wikimedia.org or
permission(a)wikimedia.com or what? I've looked around on various image
policy pages on en and commons and can't find the address anywhere.
Thanks.
Nathaniel
On 8/7/06, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Since late April, I've created [[Marc J. Rochkind]], [[Kumler,
> Illinois]], [[PALcode]], [[CYGM filter]], [[RGBE filter]],
> [[MySociety]], [[Envoy (WordPerfect)]], [[Smart terminal]], [[Smart
> Display]] and [[Ctelnet]]. (And a zillion redirectes.)
Ok, my turn. Recently I've created:
[[Adam Elliot]] (how did recent an Oscar-winning director not have an article?)
[[Adam Elliot (missionary)]] (well, I couldn't let the ambiguity go could I....)
[[Eric Harshbarger]] (builds lego stuff, I'm sure he'll get AfD'd)
[[Kate McTell]] - I did a lot of research on this almost totally
non-notable blues singer, who just happened to be married to a blues
legend. I was hoping to get paid for the article, but the person
offering the reward went AWOL 2 months ago :/
[[Mount Buggery]] - couldn't help myself
[[Smooth call]] (poker term)
[[Exposing to the right]] - photography term
[[John Long (climber)]]
And just to match your [[Smart Display]], I have [[Smartglass]]...
I notice that the common thread in all of these articles (except Eric
Harshbarger) was that I knew absolutely nothing whatsoever about the
topic when I started writing them. Kind of a disturbing trend when you
think about it, if Wikipedia is mostly written by people who know
nothing about what they're writing about...
Steve
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Gregory Kohs <thekohser(a)gmail.com>
Date: 08-Aug-2006 15:20
Subject: WikiEN-l commentary
To: dgerard(a)gmail.com
Dear David,
I appreciate your feedback. There has been a lot of "buzz" within the
Wikipedia admin community about our service, MyWikiBiz.com. I've
counted two different discussion pages where our intent has been
questioned, and now your mailing list. Thankfully, in each of these
discussions, it seems that we're getting "support" comments in about a
2-to-1 ratio to "disapprove" comments.
While I'd like to join your mailing list, honestly, I'm just too busy
right now trying to get the marketing side of the business working.
So far, the results of our efforts have been on the disappointing
side. All of the Wikipedians in a panic over what we're embarking on
may have nothing to worry about if we can't even get sales to come in
at a steady pace.
However, I'd like you to rest assured that MyWikiBiz.com does NOT
intend to write "press release" style articles for our clients. We
understand that Wikipedia is an ENCYCLOPEDIA, and not a advertising
flyer. (Granted, we will try to sell our prospects on the "traffic"
and "exposure" aspects of Wikipedia, but they are not going to get a
rose-colored-glasses, non-NPOV posting from MyWikiBiz.) Examples of
our articles can be found at "Norman Technologies" and at "The Family
and Workplace Connection". The "Farsight Hotel" article was intended
merely as a "mock" example. I meant to have it created in the
Wikipedia sandbox, but it went to the actual database by another
employee's mistake. I quickly deleted the article, once we had
captured the screen shots we wanted.
If you'd like, please re-post this message to WikiEN-l -- you have my
permission to act as our agent at this time. ;-)
Kindly,
Greg
--
Gregory Kohs
Founder, MyWikiBiz.com
Office: 484.840.4369
Home: 610.696.1644
Cell: 302.463.1354