Will Johnson says:
> The reason I'd argue against pre-emptive blanking and/or pre-emptive
No_Index'ing is that we essentially take
> what I consider the arrogant and condensending position that we know
better than the target what would or wouldn't
> be embarrassing to that target.? I've never felt that it's our mandate to
be the guardians of other people's privacy.?
> If so-and-so blp feels that we shouldn't mention that they were arrested
for drunk driving they can come forward with
> their request.? Some people don't care.
> The same goes for our own editors.? Do we put ourselves in the position of
deciding what to oversight *without
> any request* from the target party?? If someone did that ostensibly in my
favor, I would be offended by that
> action personally.? I certainly wouldn't thank them, or find their actions
productive, helpful or even polite.
> Our project should not be attempting to pre-emptively solve all issues,
because we cannot.? We have mechanisms
> in place to handle each issue that's been mentioned already.? We don't
need more creeping.
I think this is, in general, the wrong way round. Rather than saying we
should be waiting for people who have been harmed to come forward, we should
be trying to avoid harm. By not indexing by default, we avoid harm. I think
it's rather presumptuous to say "people need to come forward to us"... when
we're the ones doing harm. I think it's rather short sighted and perhaps
even mean spirited to say "only those who complain should be offered
relief"...
But then my view of what is arrogant and condescending may differ somwhat
from Will's
Larry Pieniazek
Hobby mail: Lar at Miltontrainworks dot com
"Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia)" wrote
> Given the visibility of Wikipedia results on Google and other searches, and
> consistent with the overall intent of [[WP:BLP]] on En-Wiki (and what I hope
> is its equivalent on other projects), we have a serious responsibility to
> ensure that the overall effect of Wikipedia content is a responsible one.
This is problematic - I mean highlighting Google. They deliberately conceal details of PageRank, preventing us using any technical tuning that isn't simply ad hoc. I don't think it is helpful to make us responsible for how Google ranks our pages.
> This includes eliminating the likelihood that the first hit on the Google
> search for a living person is not (for example) a deletion discussion on how
> insignificant and non-notable that individual is, or a page discussing the
> ban of that individual (who might be a minor, for example) who chose to edit
> Wikipedia under his or her real name and made some mistakes in doing so and
> was criticized or even banned as a result.
Admin blanking works for that.
>
> There has been discussion from time to time about implementing a technical
> modification such that only mainspace pages (or such other pages as the
> community might consciously choose) would be visible to searches. In view
> of the number of concerns raised about the current situation where
> everything is searchable, it seems to me that the necessary changes should
> be developed and implemented quickly.
Well, maybe we should discuss the downside first. Not having project pages on Google would certainly impede my work. You know, some of us still develop articles, and so on.
> The main argument in opposition to this change that I have seen is that the
> internal Wikipedia search capability is not as strong as the external search
> engines, so that it is desirable that the ability to conduct a complete
> external search be maintained. I know that I have sometimes found it useful
> to be able to search all spaces within the site in, for example, looking for
> precedent cases while drafting EnWiki arbitration decisions. It therefore
> would probably be desirable to upgrade our internal search capability.
> However, in view of the number of third parties affected by the current
> practice, I do not believe that implementation of the non-search capability
> should await this development.
Ah, but I do. Isn't it a better solution to blank some AfDs, than to say "the mission has to come second"? After all, really negative material should be off the site, not just harder to find.
Charles
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In a message dated 4/28/2008 11:52:46 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
morven(a)gmail.com writes:
Page blanking and oversight are generally only done AFTER problems are
identified. Marking our non-product pages as non-indexable reduces
the likelihood of problems in the first place - what generally bothers
someone is not that things are written about them but that they show
up on the first page of Google results.>>
-----------------
It is in the very nature of the internet that you discover problems after
they've been typed out. I mean I don't even understand this issue. We in
order to preempt a few specific, isolated cases, want to blank a few *million*
pages of data?
That doesn't sound like over kill?
**************Need a new ride? Check out the largest site for U.S. used car
listings at AOL Autos.
(http://autos.aol.com/used?NCID=aolcmp00300000002851)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24297320/
"In the noble words of Wikipedia, which might well be described as the
Renaissance Man of Web sites ..."
I like that.
(Observation: Wikipedians around a table in a pub will exchange all
manner of erudite rubbish they've read in their editing, while normal
humans look on somewhat bewildered. This is greatly assisted by the
excellent beer at the Pembury Tavern.)
- d.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Robert Stojnic <rainmansr(a)gmail.com>
Date: 2008/4/29
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] [WikiEN-l] Searchability of non-mainspace pages
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>Is there documentation on the available prefixes? Because they are
damn useful.
>
>
There used to be documentation on the old extension page [1], but I
guess that wasn't very clear. It used to be possible to define your own
subsets of namespaces as separate prefixes, but that somehow didn't get
ported when we switched to MWSearch. Here is an overview of current
functionality:
Prefixes:
* all - searches all namespaces,
e.g. all:kurt vonnegut
* <namespace name> - search one particular namespace,
e.g. wikipedia:deletion
* <ns1>,<ns2>,<ns3>,... - search a list of namespaces,
e.g. help,help_talk:tables
* incategory - search articles in category (when category is added
directly by the article and *not* via template),
e.g. incategory:"Living people" incategory:"University of California,
Berkeley faculty"
the last one gives a limited mock-up category intersection capability
(don't trust the highlight there :), which could be useful for testing
if someone would want to make the category intersection frontend.
r.
[1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:LuceneSearch
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Magic!
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Robert Stojnic <rainmansr(a)gmail.com>
Date: 2008/4/29
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] [WikiEN-l] Searchability of non-mainspace pages
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>> First step should be to add a single checkbox to Wikipedia's internal
>> search to search *all* namespaces, without having to check every
>> single box. (Or is there already a way to do that?)
>>
>>
>
>
>OH YES PLEASE.
>
>
There is no checkbox, but you can use the all prefix. Type into the
search box:
all:douglas adams
and this will search all namespaces. If you wish to search one
namespaces, use it as prefix:
wp:douglas adams
r.
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"Judson Dunn" wrote
>
> On Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 8:41 PM, Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > Why is it overkill? What is there on non-encyclopedia pages that should be
> > searchable?
> >
> > Risker
>
>
> Policy pages, guidelines, essays.
List of redlinks: anyone who doesn't realise that should get back to writing articles. The onsite search is rather poor, for example at showing versions without diacritics.
Charles
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In a message dated 4/28/2008 7:16:37 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
cohesion(a)sleepyhead.org writes:
Page blanking does work almost all the
time, but what about areas that have a high likelihood for problems?
Should we not index from the start, or only blank as needed for the
sake of transparency? I kinda like both solutions equally. :P>>
----------------------
I'm in agreement with Judson here.
Any specific, exact, identified, particular... issues could be solved with
oversight.
There is no need to wipe the entire board white to solve a few
particular-case concerns.
Will Johnson
**************Need a new ride? Check out the largest site for U.S. used car
listings at AOL Autos.
(http://autos.aol.com/used?NCID=aolcmp00300000002851)
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/27/death-of-the-sitcom.html
Clay Shirky has a unit of attention called the Wikipedia: 100 million
person-hours of thought. Television takes up 200 billion hours of
thought every year.
(And here I was thinking Wikipedia time came out of work time. Er, I
didn't say that.)
- d.