Gerard,
No one is saying that only experts should contribute. We are saying that the
quality of our contributions should be excellent. They should be
unchallengable. They should be of the highest possible quality. They should be better
than other encyclopedias. After all, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a
bulletin board or dumping ground. As a collaborative effort, we can achieve that. X
can add a fact, Y can provide a source, If there are a lot of sources, we
can even create separate source pages, and even have articles about those
sources, as has been suggested. The sky is the limit. But under no circumstances
should we compromise on our quality.
Danny
In a message dated 12/3/2005 7:46:13 AM Eastern Standard Time,
gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com writes:
Being expert is not necessarily a bad thing. It is a bad thing when it
makes you think that you
The next Wikimedia fund drive will start on Friday 9 December and will end on Saturday 31
December. There is no specific goal, but we would like to at least cover the budget for the rest
of this year and the first quarter of next year. That means we need at least $500,000.
I therefore encourage all language communities to help make this drive a success by translating
the fund drive documents and placing fund drive notices on their wikis when the drive begins.
The translation coordination page is here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q4_planning/Translations
The General coordinate page is here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q4_planning
Thank you for any help you can offer. :)
Daniel Mayer,
Wikimedia CFO
__________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - Make it your home page!
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
Brian wrote:
> Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> SJ wrote:
>>
>>>> When you talk about "cite sources" never ever put it into
>>>> connection to people editing and adding contents - it must be seen
>>>> as something separate - many people are not able to "separate"
>>>> things themselves they will combine and make something different
>>>> out of all this.
>>>
>>> What does this mean? How can citations be separate from adding
>>> content?
>>> Only the person adding a fact actually knows where it came from;
>>> other people can do nothing but guess.
>>
>> Why does it matter where it came from? Except in cases where you're
>> dealing with a primary source and it's essential to check the
>> original, the choice of sources is just as subject to editing as the
>> content. If I add content and cite a pathetically bad source, the
>> source does not need to stay in the article even if it happens to be
>> right (if it happens to be wrong and represents a significant point
>> of view might be another matter). Other people can find other and
>> often better sources even if they're unable to determine what the
>> initial source was, and if the case involves a primary source then
>> the information inherently points to where you need to look.
>>
>> Many people don't seem to understand this and think there's some kind
>> of rule that once a source has been used in the writing of an
>> article, it must be cited or preserved in a References section for
>> all time. Even normal scholarly practice doesn't require this (else
>> probably most Wikipedia articles would need to cite other Wikipedia
>> articles as references), and we in particular should be able to get
>> past such limited ways of thinking. One of the virtues of our
>> collaborative system is that there is very little need to try and
>> divine the intent of an original author, and we needn't be beholden
>> to that person in terms of choosing sources either.
>
> On the contrary, any published books, such as.... Encyclopaedia
> Britannica, has every single one of the its facts checked against each
> individual source. This is a requirement of the publisher, and of the
> company. They don't make their sources public, so we have to trust
> them, but because they have checked each fact, it is usually alright
> to trust them. We, on the other hand, by default are accepting new
> information without any sources.
Perhaps I wasn't quite clear. I was addressing the separability of
citations from content, but I wasn't suggesting removing source
citations unless you're replacing them with better sources.
--Michael Snow
On Sat, 3 Dec 2005, Michael Snow wrote:
> SJ wrote:
>
>>> When you talk about "cite sources" never ever put it into connection to
>>> people editing and adding contents - it must be seen as something separate
>>> - many people are not able to "separate" things themselves they will
>>> combine and make something different out of all this.
>>
>> What does this mean? How can citations be separate from adding content?
>> Only the person adding a fact actually knows where it came from; other
>> people can do nothing but guess.
>
> Why does it matter where it came from? Except in cases where you're dealing
> with a primary source and it's essential to check the original, the choice of
> sources is just as subject to editing as the content. If I add content and
Don't misunderstand me; I mean that the original author can fairly effortlessly
add a line about his/her source; whereas the next reader to come along will
have to do significantly more work to find a relevant source and cite it.
Of course sources need to change, early sources should be replaced by better
ones, etc.
(On the other hand, if weh ave a separate sources page for each article,
it will be easier to cleanly see the history of sourcing -- which will also be
a good thing)
> to try and divine the intent of an original author, and we needn't be
> beholden to that person in terms of choosing sources either.
Yes, not beholden. But when adding content, mentioning your source should be
second nature, for all contributors. We should not try to 'separate' citing
from adding content.
SJ
This is certainly a step in the right direction.
In a message dated 12/3/2005 10:55:06 AM Eastern Standard Time,
2.718281828(a)gmail.com writes:
A layered suggestion:
Step 1 : Strongly promote the current recommended footnote system:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Footnotes
Step 2 : Strongly encourage the use of proper full cites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Template_messages/Sources_of_article…
eneric_citations
Step 3 : Add software features making each of these easier : add localizable
strings for each field-name for cites and footnotes; then add 'footnote' and
'cite' buttons to the edit toolbar; provide "footnote" markup that handles
autonumbering; add a keyboard-shortcut for footnoting; add footnote- and
citation-aware menu options to WP browser plugins.
Step 4 : Work on unifying "References"/ "Citations"/ "Sources"/
"Bibliography"/
"External link[s]"/ "Further reading" style at the end of each article.
Step 5 : Add separate 'references' pages for every article. These pages
should
include: the date the article was created; the date of the last non-minor
edit;
the list of users, ips, and flagged-bots that have edited the article; a
list
of sources and other references that had been added at some point to the
article; even a clear list of metadata about the article
(protection/pov/cleanup/quality- assessment status).
Step 6 : Add a namespace/project to store the best-known information about
every source used on any project, including user comments and trackbacks to
articles referencing each source. (Optionally: seed this project with
OpenCat
content.)
Step 6.5: Add a wikitext feature like "{{cite:ISBN 0518274822|pp 12-23}}"
which would subst: in the details of that work in proper citation format.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wikicite
If that is the attitude, then I really have nothing more to say here.
Danny
In a message dated 12/3/2005 10:34:43 AM Eastern Standard Time,
gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com writes:
Hoi,
Yes it is. Other sources can be wrong as well and as I mentioned before
you would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Thanks,
GerardM
daniwo59(a)aol.com wrote:
>
> Is it too much to ask that contributions to Wikipedia be correct? That is
> news to me.
On Sat, 3 Dec 2005, Kat Walsh wrote:
> This seems like a reasonable approach... Actually, strike that, it
> seems like what we already should be doing, in theory -- isn't it
> already true that every fact must be sourceable? We (myself included)
> just aren't so good at enforcing it by catching questionable
> statements and trying to source them.
I would say yes, this is what we should be doing... but it is only in theory
because it is so laborious to do right atm.
There's no simple visual/textual way to densely-source an article (though there
have been various attempts); serious footnoting is unsupported in software and
non-trivial to hack. And there's not yet a culture of footnoting / citing the
way there is a culture of stub-sorting -- the style guidelines for referencing
exists, but should be more popular.
Finally, there is currently no way to maintain information *about* references,
nor to maintain a single best-citation for each work. Every author has to
figure out the proper full cite for a work, and cannot simply find the other
pages/articles which used the same work.
A layered suggestion:
Step 1 : Strongly promote the current recommended footnote system:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Footnotes
Step 2 : Strongly encourage the use of proper full cites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Template_messages/Sources_of_article…
Step 3 : Add software features making each of these easier : add localizable
strings for each field-name for cites and footnotes; then add 'footnote' and
'cite' buttons to the edit toolbar; provide "footnote" markup that handles
autonumbering; add a keyboard-shortcut for footnoting; add footnote- and
citation-aware menu options to WP browser plugins.
Step 4 : Work on unifying "References"/ "Citations"/ "Sources"/ "Bibliography"/
"External link[s]"/ "Further reading" style at the end of each article.
Step 5 : Add separate 'references' pages for every article. These pages should
include: the date the article was created; the date of the last non-minor edit;
the list of users, ips, and flagged-bots that have edited the article; a list
of sources and other references that had been added at some point to the
article; even a clear list of metadata about the article
(protection/pov/cleanup/quality- assessment status).
Step 6 : Add a namespace/project to store the best-known information about
every source used on any project, including user comments and trackbacks to
articles referencing each source. (Optionally: seed this project with OpenCat
content.)
Step 6.5: Add a wikitext feature like "{{cite:ISBN 0518274822|pp 12-23}}"
which would subst: in the details of that work in proper citation format.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wikicite
SJ
Hoi,
I found a nice update on the ISO 639-3 website ..
http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/default.asp is where you can even find a
nice introductory page on the next version of this standard. For the
hardcore language nuts among us there is even a nice download available
including instructions on how to create an SQL table.
In the first public genuine Wikidata outing, we will show you the GEMET
data in a true Wikidata environment. For those who do not know, GEMET is
a thesaurus with ecological content produced for/by the European Union.
Our aim is to be able to have this on line before Christmas, it will be
a read only implementation.
We will also include the ISO-639-3 codes. As you may know, Wiktionary
has the explicit aim to include all words of all languages. Ultimate
Wiktionary (UW) shares this aim and shares the practice with the many
wiktionary that we explicitly intent to include all lexicological
content. As UW intends to eat its own dog food, we want to have
localised labels for the languages chosen by the user for the User
Interface. When localisation for a term is not available, we will have
English as the lingua franca of this day and age.
The consequence is that there will be a clear difference between the
user interface of Ultimate Wiktionary and the user interface of
Mediawiki. UW does not intent to endorse a language for new projects,
but it is likely that people will be stimulated to work on the Mediawiki
user interface in order to have a user interface that is completely
localised. I expect that people appreciate this difference.
In the ISO-639-3 codes there will be languages that have not been
recognised. Having ISO-639 recognition is not necessary for inclusion in
Ultimate Wiktionary.. There is only one thing that we will insist on,
the acceptance of a code for this language, dialect or orthography that
is acceptable for potential projects within the Wikimedia Foundation.
Again, it is not to be seen as an endorsement for a language to have a
project, it is intended to make sure that such a code has been
"future-proofed".
Thanks,
GerardM