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::::: One thing I've learned in the years of living with and working with code-geeks is that they LOVE a new technical toy. Doesn't matter if it's helpful or useful, if it's a bit of code, it's got to be good. [[User:Ealdgyth|Ealdgyth]] - [[User talk:Ealdgyth|Talk]] 17:46, 3 February 2010 (UTC) |
::::: One thing I've learned in the years of living with and working with code-geeks is that they LOVE a new technical toy. Doesn't matter if it's helpful or useful, if it's a bit of code, it's got to be good. [[User:Ealdgyth|Ealdgyth]] - [[User talk:Ealdgyth|Talk]] 17:46, 3 February 2010 (UTC) |
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::::::I took offence at your personal jibe on the page. [[User:Tony1|<font color="darkgreen">'''Tony'''</font >]] [[User talk:Tony1|<font color="darkgreen">(talk)</font >]] 22:11, 3 February 2010 (UTC) |
Revision as of 22:11, 3 February 2010
You mentioned this article to me before, but I finally took a look at it. I'm afraid you were right, and I've delisted it as a GA. I left a few notes in the review, but you know at least as well as me where it falls down, and probably a great deal better than me. --Malleus Fatuorum 03:38, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
- No argument at all (as you know). That article was fine three years ago, but hasn't been updated since and I have no intention of being the one to update it; their obsession with secrecy makes it almost impossible to source, and it's such a boring subject that I'm not going to spend time looking. – iridescent 17:23, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
New Year Metro
The Metropolitan |
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. Simply south (talk) 01:13, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
You'd be proud ...
I went looking for books on the rail network around Belle Vue Zoo, as per your comments, and got distracted by a lovely little book on Manchester's horse-drawn tram companies. What caught my eye was a photo of a terminus outside a pub very close to me, next to which is a timber merchant. I'd often idly wondered why a timber merchant would have such a grand entrance, and now I know it's because it was originally built as a depot to store the trams for the Manchester Carriage and Tramways Company. --Malleus Fatuorum 02:17, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- I've always liked these "echoes of the past" reminders of the old transport infrastructure; everything from bricked-up former tunnels; to earthworks for long-abandoned railway lines; to old station buildings long-since detached from their railways; to my personal favourite, the ruins of the half-built Brockley Hill tube station, built in preparation for a tube line which was cancelled following the introduction of the Green Belt legislation; because said legislation prevents the site being developed, it's been sitting there gradually decaying for the last 70 years.
- There's something peculiarly British about it; in the US and Canada all traces of the railroad lines were generally wiped out by redevelopment, while in continental Europe the war pretty much wiped all the old infrastructure back to a tabula rasa.
- Speaking of survivors from the industrial past, having stumbled across this oddity I think I know what the next project is going to be. – iridescent 16:27, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
- Actually, there are plenty of traces of the railroads around. Lots of train sheds, loco sheds, abandoned lines, and right of ways. Yes, in NYC, there aren't many traces (although even there staions and the like still exist) but out of the big big cities, there is plenty. I know, because my dad was a rail fan and I spent lots of time going with him taking pictures of buildings, etc. Most of the smaller towns in the US still have a passender/frieght station building in them, sometimes empty, sometimes being used for something else. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:34, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
- I'm going by personal experience of where I grew up (Goshen, NY - because of its horseyness, you may be one of the few people who actually know it), which may not be typical. In most of the towns there, the station buildings vanished (or in Goshen's case, became a police station) long ago and were replaced by strips of concrete, and the tracks themselves vanished when the Erie Lackawanna Railway closed in the 1970s. The combination of NYC commuters driving prices up, and the difficulty of building in the hills, means NY property prices are insanely high and the drive to demolish is maybe stronger then elsewhere.
- That said, the "knock it down and destroy all traces" attitude to the old railroads certainly isn't unique to NY; Who Framed Roger Rabbit is actually a pretty accurate picture of California's attitude to trains and streetcars in the 50s and 60s, and even places you'd expect to have kept their connections, like San Francisco and Las Vegas, have been wiped off the Amtrak map and had the station buildings levelled. – iridescent 16:51, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
- In the US town where I live, the old rail depots have been turned into restaurants, stores and a farmers market, while still maintaining the "look" of a railway depot. There is also a "rails to trails" program where unused tracks are removed and the railway beds turned into hiking, biking and equestrian trails, with plaques commemorating their railway heritage. Pretty neat, IMO. That's Michigan, though. Dana boomer (talk) 16:55, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
- Where I am (central Illinois) our train station is an antique store, and they did a very nice job restoring the inside to make it look period. We have the rails to trails thing here too, but a lot of the older railroad stuff here is still in use. We're a major hub and repair spot for Norfolk-Southern, and our rail yards are huge. It's probably a function of the fact that we don't have the pressing space needs of the East Coast. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:59, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
- The best of these "old station conversions" I've ever seen is, bizarrely, Indianapolis Union Station, which they did a fantastic job on, converting it to modern use while retaining the "cathedral to the modern age" feel of the 19th century mega-stations. (Closing the railroad lines in Indiana was one of the dumber decisions ever taken; its location at the crossroads of the NY-CA and Illinois-and-Toronto-to-the-South lines could have made it the hub of the entire continent's freight traffic and of any future high-speed rail network.) – iridescent 17:05, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
- My favourite conversion is Brooklands, a nice little bar cum restaurant conveniently close to what is now the Metrolink, so easy to get home from if you've had one or two too many.[1]
- Goshen is just a stone's throw away from here... –Juliancolton | Talk 19:53, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
- I'd be scared to live in small town America, although I guess modern technology now makes it less risky. I was seriously impressed some years ago on hearing a (Highway Patrol?) helicopter hailing a driver in front of us, telling him to slow down, and then landing on the hard shoulder to confront him. That's Top Gun stuff. It was in the days though when California had a 50 mph speed limit. Empty roads, but you had to crawl along them. --Malleus Fatuorum 01:05, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
- There was a reason for that speed limit; US cars were designed to be most fuel-efficient at 55mph, and that speed limit was introduced in the 1970s, when it was seriously possible that the entire Middle East could go up in flames.
- Since the net result was to drive people off the road altogether for long trips in favor of planes, the whole "fuel economy" thing didn't actually work out as planned. – iridescent 01:10, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
- (ec) Why would you be scared to live in a small town? They are some of the safer spots in America, actually...Ealdgyth - Talk 01:12, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
- Bakersfield. I just found the place scary, although I suppose it depends on how long your hair is and what sex you are. --Malleus Fatuorum 01:24, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
- (ec) Why would you be scared to live in a small town? They are some of the safer spots in America, actually...Ealdgyth - Talk 01:12, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
- (ec) Depends where you are, I think. Certainly small-town Texas has always really given me the creeps.
- Remember, small-town America has no equivalent in Britain with its ultra-high population density - a couple of Scottish islands excepted, even in the remotest outpost villages you're never more than a couple of miles from the next town, and everything is connected by frequent subsidised public transport. Additionally, the small-town gun culture has no equivalent elsewhere; while (despite what some Americans think) guns are legal here, carrying one in public would almost certainly get you hauled off by the police to explain your peculiar behaviour unless you could show you were on your way to hunt something. To someone in the UK, the midwest and west are as alien a culture as a South African township or Siberian industrial encampment. Even I feel it when I go back. – iridescent 01:32, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
- I think you will find there are nearly 100,000 people living on Scotland's islands and that much of mainland Scotland (see map) is defined as "remote rural". It's cold in them thar hills right now. Ben MacDui 11:35, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
- I think my point still stands; "remote rural" is defined as "more than 30 minutes from the nearest large town", but I'm talking about distance from the next village. AFAIK, even in rural Caithness (or the Yorkshire Moors, or the Fens, or Powys...) there's generally another settlement of some description relatively nearby, unlike somewhere like (say) Wheatland County, Montana where there are only three towns (populations 1,062, 164 and 76 respectively) in the entire county. Aside from the remotest parts of in Orkney and Shetland, the only British equivalent would be the Falklands. – iridescent 15:33, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
- Don't forget this documentary. --Malleus Fatuorum 17:52, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
- It's just a bit of fun at a weekend party. It is all relative of course, but some of us seem to live here. Now that's what I'd call scary. Ben MacDui 10:06, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
- Don't forget this documentary. --Malleus Fatuorum 17:52, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
- I think my point still stands; "remote rural" is defined as "more than 30 minutes from the nearest large town", but I'm talking about distance from the next village. AFAIK, even in rural Caithness (or the Yorkshire Moors, or the Fens, or Powys...) there's generally another settlement of some description relatively nearby, unlike somewhere like (say) Wheatland County, Montana where there are only three towns (populations 1,062, 164 and 76 respectively) in the entire county. Aside from the remotest parts of in Orkney and Shetland, the only British equivalent would be the Falklands. – iridescent 15:33, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
- I think you will find there are nearly 100,000 people living on Scotland's islands and that much of mainland Scotland (see map) is defined as "remote rural". It's cold in them thar hills right now. Ben MacDui 11:35, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
(outdent) Heh. Having lived for 20 years in Texas (although not small town, but in Houston) and the rest in the Midwest in a town of about 90,000... I can't say I've ever seen a handgun carried in public. I've seen some hunting rifles in pickups when deer season is on, but honestly, never ever seen a handgun out in public. Right to carry doens't mean you wear it like a old-west cowboy. I had a permit to carry a gun in Houston, mainly because I was working at stables in the evenings, but I generally left it in the glove compartment. Rarely, when it was really late and I was getting the creeps, I'd move it to the tack room. Yeah, there are guns in small towns, but they aren't like a western movie at all. Even Wyoming isn't like that.. honest! Ealdgyth - Talk 01:37, 15 January 2010 (UTC) Another point, when I do move to Wyoming, when I'm out in the wilderness horse-packing, I will indeed carry a gun out with me, because you never know when you're going to need it. But that's just common sense with going into the mountains with a big string of tasty looking bear treats, i.e. a pack string. Ealdgyth - Talk 01:38, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
- Depends where you are, I think. I've certainly been in towns in Texas (Midway springs to mind) where the general vibe is like something out of Thelma and Louise.
- I think my point got lost somewhere, though; it's not an anti-gun rant, but the fact that the concept of "carrying a gun" is totally alien to a European. Remember, the largest native predator in the British Isles is the badger and the crime rate even in British inner cities is negligible compared to anywhere in the US (the murder rate for the entire country is 600-700 per annum, roughly the same as New York City alone); the legitimate reasons for carrying a firearm in the US don't exist in the UK, so it makes the whole culture seem totally alien to British visitors. – iridescent 02:14, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
- We live in different worlds. That first became obvious to me when my wife's American cousin visited with her new husband. They met when she saved his life after he'd been bitten by a poisononous snake; he also had a Purple Heart. I've never even handled a gun, and I never want to, and we have no unreasonably dangerous animals here. --Malleus Fatuorum 02:20, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Belle Vue Zoo vs The Railway Company
Hi, I noticed on Nev1's page you commented on how you disbelieved that a railway company could cause money problems for the zoo. Ordinarily your assertion that they usually would have helped each other would be correct, however in this instance what caused the problem was that the proposed railway line would have cut the park in two, creating difficulties for park customers to access one side from the other. What made it worse was the bit of land that would have been cut-off had only recently been purchased by the Jennisons. What also should be understood is that this was relatively early in the zoo's history so their long-term future had neither been planned out nor even understood. They had no idea they were going to be so popular. At the time this was struggle for the Jennison family and situations like this had not been accounted for by what in effect was a family learning how to be a company. I hope that helps with your query. --The Pink Oboe (talk) 11:56, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
- Still not convinced, although I agree that's what the sources say, so verifiability not truth and all that. It may have been a new project for the Jennisons - and the first of its kind in Lancashire - but the concepts behind the design and planning of amusement parks was well understood by then; New Spring Gardens is mentioned by Pepys, so dates to at least the mid-17th century, and Ranelagh Gardens was so well established that "Ranelagh" briefly became a synonym for this kind of park, with "le Jardin Ranelagh" outside Paris and the New York Ranelagh Garden. Any landowner in the period with even the haziest knowledge of the entertainment industry would have been aware of the huge amount of time and effort the owners of Vauxhall Gardens, for example, had spent on lobbying for improved roads and bridges; presumably any family involved, or intending to become involved, in zookeeping would also have known that despite being sliced into strips by a (then) major road and the Regent's Canal, London Zoo, the granddaddy of them all and certainly the most successful zoo of the period, saw benefits from having the road and canal connections far outweighing the costs of erecting footbridges. Certainly I can see the Jennisons being annoyed at having part of their land compulsorily purchased, but even in these early days of railways they can't have actually been that disappointed at having a direct and convenient link to the then-developed part of Manchester, which would otherwise have been an inconvenient 2-3 miles away along what's now the A6 but was in those pre-asphalt days a glorified dirt track. – iridescent 2 20:40, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
- Aah, but isn't hindsight a wonderful thing. Ultimately though the railway did help the Jennisons, but at the time please remember that they were ex-gardeners who more than likely didn't have the "haziest" idea of what they were doing. The one thing I've realised about them when doing my research is they got by on a wing and a prayer and a gift for publicity. Financial and business management was not their forte. It was only later when the Iles were brought in that the business properly became a business. Most of the time the Jennisons didn't have a clue what they were doing and were just particularly lucky when they took the chances they did. --The Pink Oboe (talk) 22:38, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
Just a few words of advice...
Leave me alone. OK? I have never even talked to you untill a few days ago and yet your past time seems to be "Hey everyone, Coldplay just screwed up another thing, let's al point and laugh!" Im asking you to stop now. You are doing the same thing that schoolyard bullies do. Did'nt anyone ever tell you that the best kind of critisism is constructive critisism?--Coldplay Expért Let's talk 03:02, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
- Maybe you should just disengage, Coldplay, and think hard about whether Iridescent's criticism is just plain harsh or harsh but true. Nathan T 03:04, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
- I never said it was false. But Iridescent's goal is not to help me out with those issues. Rather to make me look like an idiot and to bash on me whenever the chance arises.--Coldplay Expért Let's talk 03:05, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
- Trust me. You don't need anyone's help to make yourself look like an idiot. --Malleus Fatuorum 05:01, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
- What in the world does this have to do with you Malleus? Why don't you all go off and create the "I hate CE" Cabal. Im sure your numbers will swell in less than a day. I don't really care what you do, just get off of my back and leave me alone.--Coldplay Expért Let's talk 11:31, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
- Trust me. You don't need anyone's help to make yourself look like an idiot. --Malleus Fatuorum 05:01, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
- I am not "bullying you", and AFAIK have made perhaps three comments about you in my entire history on Wikipedia. The post which I assume has provoked this rant from you is not a pointless attack on you, but an expression of my contempt for someone with virtually no contributions to the project, using what's at best a major misunderstanding of the facts, and at worst a deliberate distortion of the incident (if you look at Vintagekits' block log, you'll no doubt see that almost every block was immediately followed by some variation of "overturned, blocked inappropriately"), to use a pointless attack on one of Wikipedia's most prolific editors as ammunition for an attack on another of Wikipedia's most prolific editors. When you've written something of the standard of Michael Gomez, you're entitled to sneer at Vintagekits' contributions. Not before. No, I don't think "contempt" is too strong a word. It's contempt for your actions, not for you, and quite frankly from what I've seen of you you seem to have a serious problem distinguishing "criticism of your actions" from "personal attacks", as I think all the interaction I've ever had with you has been watching your massive overreactions to any and every perceived slight. And no, you don't have the right to dictate who I can and cannot reply to; as I think even those here who loathe me would concede, I won't shy away from criticising actions which in my opinion warrant criticism. Certainly not in the case of someone who's posted a string of pointless personal attacks on one of the most visible pages in Wikipedia space, but starts whining about "bullying" if someone dares to call them out for it. – iridescent 20:02, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
- Forget it. You'll never stop. Why even bother? I was not attacking anyone. I was only useing Vintagekit's block(s) as an example. I never de-valued his contribution to any article.--Coldplay Expért Let's talk 20:09, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
- You're a waste of space CE, but what's worse is that you're not learning anything. --Malleus Fatuorum 20:13, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
- Shut up malleus. This has nothing to do with you.--Coldplay Expért Let's talk 20:15, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
- You're a waste of space CE, but what's worse is that you're not learning anything. --Malleus Fatuorum 20:13, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
- Forget it. You'll never stop. Why even bother? I was not attacking anyone. I was only useing Vintagekit's block(s) as an example. I never de-valued his contribution to any article.--Coldplay Expért Let's talk 20:09, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
- I'll probably regret this, but I can't let this stand. Iridescent, this just isn't true. There are a few "bad blocks" in VK's log, but they're considerably outweighed by the ones where he did something disruptive, was unblocked on conditions or promises not to do it again, and then went on to find some new way of being disruptive. He was an excellent content creator in sports areas, and even his POV-pushing did some good (like getting the Peerage and Baronetage project to wake up to the notability rules and stop littering the place with substubs), but he definitely had flaws, and quite a bit of his block log was come by honestly. If you don't trust my judgment (and why should you?), Alison and SirFozzie, both of whom did yeoman service trying to resolve "The Troubles" pre-ArbCom, can confirm this. At the time, he was ready not only to mix it up over "The Troubles" proper, but to follow his opponents to other areas of the 'pedia and go at them there as well. (It must be said for him that when he wasn't in a temper, he was always scrupulous about making sure his actions were sanction by the letter, if not perhaps the spirit, of the rules.) Should CE have invoked his name as he did? I don't think it was proper—de mortuis nil nisi bonum, and it does feel rather like kickin the man when he's down—but if you're going to object to a flip characterization of VK as just some guy with a big block log, your own characterization should be candid about the shortcomings he did have. I wish his fuse had been a bit longer, and that he'd been able to resist the temptation to return to subjects that made him lose his temper. But it wasn't so, and that's why we lost him as a contributor, not because all the admins who blocked him were thin-skinned and couldn't take a frank opinion from him. Choess (talk) 06:26, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
- Oh, I know VK was no angel; I was there when the blue touchpaper was lit and I was there when the fireworks finally burned out. He was argumentative, arrogant, prone to flare-ups and wouldn't let go on an issue once he had his ire up. However, he was also subject to a relentless campaign of harassment for years by people who should know better, and there was a small group of the same few admins who had a dislike for him and would watch his contributions for a pretext to block him. He had much the same role in 2007 as Giano had in 2008, or Malleus in 2009. However (again, like Malleus and Giano), as you say, when he wasn't involved in his scorpions-in-a-bottle routine with KB and RP - which was most of the time - he was helpful, productive, hardworking and willing to get stuck into the boring minutiae which far too many of the Grand Actors of Wikipedia think is beneath them. There's a qualitative difference between a dog which is repeatedly poked with a stick and eventually bites its pokers, and a rabid dog who attacks people at random, even if the net result of both is "people get bitten and the dog gets shot".
- Yeah, I'd forgotten you had a front-row seat for most of the "fun," too. Now that I think about it, I suspect part of the circumstances you describe above was the blind-men-and-elephant problem. I had no idea who he was until the bullets starting flying in the baronets/Arbuthnots walled garden, and didn't become aware of his sports-related contributions for a long while. I think a lot of the feeling against him developed because many other editors only saw him when he was exercising his "bad side". Anyway, we seem to agree on main points—he was a complicated character, and casually writing him off as just a nationalist with a long block log doesn't do him justice. (And I take your interesting point on the block log.)
- Gah. Hopefully that's gotten wikipersonalities out of my system for another year or so. I'd rather debate the fate of abandoned rail infrastructure in the US vs the UK. (I tend to suspect different standards of construction and, in some cases, local property tax structures.) Choess (talk) 03:47, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
- I'll throw in:
- Most abandoned rail infrastructure in the UK remained in the ownership of the (state run) British Rail and its successors, which had such a huge budget that selling the odd plot of land here-and-there was an irrelevance, while most abandoned US infrastructure was owned by the private firms rather than Amtrak, and for small private firms linear plots of urban land were valuable assets;
- Most of Britain's abandoned railways were closed in the Beeching Axe program, which coincided with the start of the 40-year collapse of heavy industry in Western Europe, so the steady flow of abandoned factories, mills and warehouses provided a lot of sites for urban development that were better located than the old stations;
- The extremely influential and vocal rail-obsessive John Betjeman lobbying constantly for preservation of the abandoned infrastructure as a key part of Britain's national identity;
- US administrations in the 1970s and 1980s which were heavily connected with the aviation and automobile industries, and had a vested interest in making passenger rail transport non-viable (as no less a thinker than George Dubya has pointed out, the Great Plains and the Texas desert are dreadful conditions for driving but absolutely ideal conditions for high-speed rail);
- Vocal lobbying in British towns which lost their railway lines for a re-opening of the lines, which in turn caused planning blight, as nobody wants to build on land which may well be compulsorily purchased straight back for a re-opening of the lines (either as rail lines, or as that peculiar only-in-Britain-and-Adelaide chimera, the guided busway).
- Do I pass? – iridescent 16:19, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
- I'll throw in:
A piece of free advice from "been there, done that"
Take a week off.--Tznkai (talk) 03:14, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia II
(Two threads merged under a single subhead for future reference) – iridescent
Found anything better?
It's not the "free encyclopedia" concept that's fucked, it's this implementation (Wikipedia). Surely someone has created something similar that sucks far less. Have you found anything yet? --MZMcBride (talk) 04:52, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
- Easy enough to say what isn't it; the ones like Citizendium and Knol which put so much emphasis on ownership that it prevents people from doing the tedious but necessary drive-by cleanup, and consequently degenerate into messes. Personally, if it weren't for the fact that it's patently run by and for lunatics, in many ways Conservapedia is a model of how to run a wiki; they decide on what their line on an issue will be and stick to it, unless there's an obvious consensus to change, thus avoiding the endless editwars; they ruthlessly desysop admins for acting like assholes; they have a clear hierarchy when its necessary, but the hierarchy stays out of the way unless it's genuinely necessary to intervene; they block editors and desysop admins whose goofing around on their equivalents of ANI and the like exceed their mainspace contributions. Wikipedia could learn a lot in terms of management.
- In spite of the godawful name and Greg's occasional bursts of spectacular obnoxiousness holding it back, in some ways I think MWB could be the shape of things to come. The Mainspace/Directoryspace divide clearly separates NPOV articles from spam-pieces while allowing the two to co-exist peacefully and borrow appropriate material from each other, and I think it's actually done a fine job in taking the best of Wikipedia's model (which, even in its terminal decline, does have a lot of strengths) while identifying and eliminating the systemic weaknesses which are killing Wikipedia (domination by cliques, vocal fringes dominating a silent majority in the middle, massive social inertia, an inability to control social networking, systemic failure of the article assessment processes, the cult of anti-expertism, the obsession with "civility" beyond any reasonable limit, a self-appointing and self-policing hierarchy...). If Greg changed the name, relinquished most or all of his control to a committee which wasn't selected to agree with him (I think a committee including Alison, Durova, Malleus, Moni, yourself and Shankbone, for instance, would do a fine job at covering the significant bases while avoiding personalities so toxic that debate is impossible), was willing to import content from Wikipedia under GFDL, and managed to get a "name" industry backer (Apple, Cisco or the like), I wouldn't be surprised to see MWB overtake Wikipedia within two years.
- As someone (I forget who, I think it may have been Shalom) once said, Wikipedia now is worth more dead than alive, and someone able to take the existing content and improve it, instead of focusing on Jimbo's onward-and-upward drive for endless growth, could deliver the killer blow – basically what Danny tried and failed to do with Veropedia. – iridescent 20:30, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
- I have seen many depressing discussions like this, but never participated in one. (Depressing in the sense that there is no alternative to speak of at the moment, though I suppose one shouldn't worry about that too much if the information can be available in perpetuity. Maybe this is just the so-called Wikipediholism speaking.) First of all, what is MWB? I don't think I've ever heard of it; is that really its name? About Wikipedia, I share many of your concerns, but are you so sure that nothing will change until the project collapses? Perhaps once things start to tighten, consensus for improvement will be easier to reach (or harder, but I prefer the optimistic version). And what do you think about flagged revisions? The extension's implementation is bound to change a few things around here. Waltham, The Duke of 17:57, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
- I suppose that the emasculated version of flagged revisions proposed is probably better than nothing, and something certainly needs to be done, but I don't trust administrators as the final arbiters of which version of an article goes public; they have no special knowledge or experience. The first time an edit of mine has to be approved by an administrator I'll be out of here. --Malleus Fatuorum 22:07, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
- Reading through your comments, it seems like it's all a matter of trade-offs. You can have structure, order, and a proper hierarchy, but you end up with a non-neutral product (Conservapedia). You can have decent content separation, but it comes coupled with (yet another) problematic head honcho (MyWikiBiz).
- I'm curious about your views regarding things like sustainability. I'd argue that a large part of Wikipedia's success has come from the sizable user-base willing to contribute because the content is freely released and free of advertising. But this obviously comes with the trade-off of often poor content and no effective means to encourage editor participation in any meaningful sense. So the question I have is: how do you get people to participate while also maintaining sustainability so that things like the software and servers can be maintained? Do you go with Google ads? Find a corporate backer (as you suggested)? Would you, for example, be willing to contribute to an Apple-run wiki-like directory/encyclopedia? Would you be willing to for free? Would people have the same passion if they were getting paid?
- It also occurs to me that, in many ways, MediaWiki sucks. The single blob storage format makes things like categories and infoboxes impossible to separate from page content, for example. Because of the various shortcomings with MediaWiki, if you were to start moving the content from Wikipedia elsewhere, I'm of the view that you'd be best to do so while putting it inside software that sucks less. Which, of course, requires capital for developers and others to create such software (unless there's software that could do it already that's well supported).
- I'm curious why Veropedia and Knol failed so spectacularly and if there are any lessons to be learned from either.
- Feel free to reply or not. I'm mostly rambling aloud. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 20:01, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
- With commercial sites such as Veropedia, I suspect that the commercial nature would be a deterrent in the long run. The wholesome image of a non-profit advertising free and grassroots entity is a very strong one. However, more immediate was/is a critical mass issue. I just don't think any of the others are comprehensive or detailed enough to come close to wikipedia, so for the most part editors interested in editing find the size and readership advantages of WP outweigh the problems. I also find the GA and FA are good at functioning as stable versions to refer to, which was one of the claimed advantages of veropedia. As far as knol, I haven't looked at it for a long time, but recall that the idea of ten editors each offering up an article on, say, George Bush amusing. I can't imagine the casual reader who'd be interested in reading ten separate entries to gain an overview on a subject. The collaborative nature here forces folks to come to a consensus and single article, which is how dictionaries and encyclopedias have done so well for the past few hundred years. Any commercial link might end up with an impact on content. I am a doctor so am very familiar with the impact of pharmaceutical companies on the medical industry. The influence needn't be active either but very subtle. The paid angle is interesting, but again brings in big potential for COI and the costs would be astronomical. This is pretty labour intensive...The donation angle seems to be working well for the time being in any case. Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:45, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
- I agree that critical mass is important; it's certainly what's keeping me here. My contributions so far have mostly been maintenance-related (you will find that many of my older mainspace edits consisted of removing expired padlocks from articles), and I often like to fix things as I find them while browsing the encyclopaedia. And the English Wikipedia is the only place where I can generally expect to find what I'm looking for, for I am a very curious person. It's the basic reason why I'm not editing the Greek Wikipedia, even though it's in my mother tongue: when I started editing here, it only had 30,000 articles and did not seem interesting to me. Now, I don't know how representative my example is, but I can assume that most people doing maintenance work like getting something out of it in terms of knowledge. (I'd say the same goes for vandal-fighting to an extent, although people doing this seem to be motivated by the work itself.) And a large database needs many users to maintain it, which relies on a large readership both indirectly—passers-by helping out—and directly—some edit because they like working with others or even enjoy working for the "biggest encyclopaedia on the Internet".
- So, it may often be a problem, but I think the social-networking aspect of Wikipedia is crucial to is success. It is how editors usually get the only credit for their work, after all, and in this age we live in it is also much of a lure. For the Facebook generation, where chatting is not a means to an end but an end in itself, one cannot exclude this aspect without alienating them (even if some of them arguably have little to contribute that is not already here, considering our systemic bias). To return to my example, the relative lack of developed institutions was another reason that drove me away from the Greek Wikipedia. And I don't even chat.
- I also agree on the point of free content, and on not leaving approval to administrators. I haven't followed the development of flagged revisions very closely, but I was under the impression that more people than admins would approve edits. After all, they are too few for the task.
- And one last thing... "MyWikiBiz" really is an awful name. Waltham, The Duke of 00:39, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
Arbitrary break; Very Long Reply
I think the "corporate sponsorship" thing would work if it were properly targetted. As you (Casliber) say, the ad-free-charity thing is a powerful draw, but there's no reason it has to be the WMF. Picture (for instance), a hypothetical educational foundation, with the same arms-length relationship to its parent that Ronald McDonald House Charities has to McDonalds. It would benefit from the brand-recognition of its parent, while still being independent, and its parent would hopefully benefit from the association with a Wikipedia-style "place to go to find things out", while avoiding the mistakes which have made Wikipedia a dirty word in academic circles. Because the startup costs and barriers to entry are so low, this is a marketplace where it's possible for even the most established leader to collapse in weeks when something better comes along (remember Webvan? CompuServe? Boo.com? Napster?).
If I were a corporation going about it, I'd set up an independent charitable arm with enough of an endowment that server space and staffing wasn't a problem. Once done, I'd content-fork the entire existing content of Wikipedia and Citizendium; I'd then set about verifying every single article prior to putting them on the live system. It sounds daunting, but if every employee of (say) IBM were asked to verify one article a week, which isn't that unreasonable, the entire thing could be complete in a couple of months, or sooner if the more pointless Southborough, Bromley sub-stubs were deleted on sight. The end result would be a New Wikipedia with the same critical mass as the old, but with all the problems of inaccuracy, BLP etc miraculously solved. Assuming the new foundation had the same objects as the WMF ("to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally"), it could even absorb the WMF, thus keeping the (still powerful) Wikipedia name, and removing the bone-in-the-throat obstruction to competition which Wikipedia has become.
Re DoW: In fairness, while MyWikiBiz is an awful name, it was never intended to be a Wikipedia rival at first. It was established as a "feeder" site which would, for a fee, take press releases and carry out background research on companies, and write a neutral and Wikipedia-compliant article on them, which once complete would be moved under GFDL to Wikipedia itself, to give them the "legitimization" that a Wikipedia page provided, back in the days when not every company had their own website, while making it clear to them that once the article was released onto Wikipedia they'd have no further control over what anyone else did to it. It really wasn't a bad idea; WP:COI has always been a nutty policy (why is a fan of a band, for instance, "neutral", whilst the band's press agent reverting errors added by said fan "biased" and subject to immediate block-and-revert?).
Regarding "are you so sure that nothing will change until the project collapses"; yes, to be honest I am. Wikipedia's model was set up with a small group of people, all of whom knew each other, in mind, not a massive and changing group, and consequently has no checks and balances built into the system. The people who would have to take any decisions regarding radical changes on structure and governance are precisely those people who've spent years killing boars in the present setup to get to where they are, and thus have a powerful vested interest in stifling any drive to make things more accountable and controllable. There are honorable exceptions at the "top of the pile" - SandyGeorgia, Durova, Casliber, J.delanoy, Alison and the like would probably back radical reforms if they could be persuaded that it would lead to an improvement in quality - but they're always going to be outnumbered by those who've spent years carving out a niche for themselves in the current rotting tree and don't want to see it chopped down and replaced. (Cas, you've been on Arbcom; look me in the eye and tell me I'm wrong.) – iridescent 17:26, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
- Re last point - I think things are changing significantly in that regard. However the scale of wikipedia is such I am having trouble imagining a migration of material in the fashion you describe above - either it is large or quality based - let's just say I'd be really impressed if both were achieved..... ;) Casliber (talk · contribs) 17:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
- I think it's do-able. "Quality vs quantity" isn't an either-or case; especially if the endless flow of substubs from people who see WP:N as a mission statement, not a last-resort standard (you know who they are as well as I do) is throttled off. As you presumably know, the "this exists! it needs a separate page!" brigade are one of my pet peeves; there is no earthly reason why we need HMS E1, HMS E2, HMS E3 etc all the way through to HMS E56 when a single British E class submarines article would be neater, tidier, more informative and more useful. It's a symptom of the disease with which the "I have 100 DYKs!" mentality is infecting the project. On a quick flick through Special:Random, I'd estimate that 50% of Wikipedia's articles are totally unnecessary. – iridescent 18:56, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
Much thanks
Wow, a sincere and heartfelt thank you. That may well be the nicest thing I've seen written about me. Much appreciated. P.S. - if you do end up moving on from Wikipedia in the near future, I wish you the best in all your future endeavors. Useight (talk) 00:16, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
- You're welcome... (My attitude towards moving on is much the same as Malleus's above. I do believe the Wikipedia project in its current form is in terminal decline, for all the reasons listed in the thread above; it's simultaneously become unmanageably large, so overrun with vested interests that any proposals which could help it keep pace with technological and social change are invariably stifled, and has developed such a warped cult-like style of internal logic that its conventions are becoming ever more detached from reality. However, the alternative doesn't yet exist, and the unsung key point of GFDL/CC is that when the viable alternative does come along, picking up our toys and going to play with the new kids will just be a case of ctrl-c, ctrl-v.) – iridescent 02:00, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia II; key points
- OK, I'll bite.
- Preservation of "anyone can edit"; the fuel that stops Wikipedia stagnating is a flood of enthusiastic newbies;
- Immediacy or near-immediacy; part of the lure of Wikipedia is that people can make changes which are visible right away. What killed Citizendium is the fact that, by the time every edit is checked and approved, whoever added it has lost interest; it also makes it hard to do the string-of-minor-edits rewrites, which is how most of Wikipedia's best writers operate. The loss of "I did that!" immediacy is why I don't think Flagged Revisions will work;
- Far less focus on "civility". As has been pointed out ad nauseam, US standards of politeness are wildly at odds with the rest of the English-speaking world; what seems like politeness to an American often seems patronizing and offensive to a British/Canadian/Australian/Irish etc audience, comments which an Australian would consider friendly banter can come across to Americans and British as venomous insults; comments which a British or Canadian person would consider a blunt but accurate summary of facts can look to Americans like personal abuse; comments which an American would consider polite and respectful can appear patronizing and pompous to the rest of the world. It's not that any one group is in the wrong, but that different cultures are, well, different. What those who try to enforce "civility" don't seem to understand – and Jimbo's pet project to create an Internet Civility Police is a prime offender – is that trying to enforce the social mores of Florida and California onto the rest of the world itself seems like a patronizing and arrogant assumption of American cultural superiority (and not even American culture in general, but a particular West Coast subculture; I can't recall ever seeing any of the sizeable Illinois contingent, for instance, ever whining about "civility") and consequently extremely "uncivil" to the 95.5% of the world not living in the US. The irony of lectures on the importance of "civility" from the man who presides over one of the world's largest sources of defamation and misinformation does not escape me either;
- A systematic process for checking accuracy of existing articles, instead of the existing "infinite number of monkeys clicking Special:Random" setup. Work through all high-traffic articles, from A to Z, checking them for accuracy and relevancy, and be ruthless about removing uncited material. Yes, it might mean paid staff (although I'd bet one could find plenty of interns willing to do it for nothing). Personally, I don't think BLP is as much of a problem as some of Wikipedia's critics think it is – Wikipedia's reputation for inaccuracy means people don't generally take defamatory comments here seriously, and most high-profile figures will have their articles checked by their press agents periodically and anything problematic removed – but the more general problem of inaccuracy certainly is a problem;
- God help me, but I'm going to agree with the ever-annoying Fowler&fowler on something here. While I believe Wikipedia's strength lies in its ability to cover obscure topics in depth, it's nonetheless true that our coverage of key topics is generally awful, and those key topics are the ones with the most traffic and thus the ones that shape the public's perception of Wikipedia and – perhaps more importantly – shape new editors' idea of what Wikipedia articles "ought to look like". Even if it means (gasp) soliciting experts and paying them, every article listed here should be factual, accurate and comprehensive. There is no excuse whatsoever, after nine years of Wikipedia, for embarrassments like Information technology, Magazine, Dictatorship, Fiction, Oil or Worship;
- A governance structure that works. For various reasons, Wikipedia's structure has evolved over time into the present squabbling hierarchy, and it's obvious that it doesn't work. While I still believe Slim and myself strangling ACPD in the cradle was the right thing to do, I recognize that it was created in response to a genuine need; Jimmy Wales's abdication and the collapse of "consensus" as a mechanism has left Wikipedia with no body able to take strategic decisions, which in turn is directly leading to the present stagnation and decline into faction-fighting;
- It would never fly, but there's something to be said for the idea of professional administrators; all editors have the right to take users or pages for blocking or deleting, but a staff at the WMF (presumably the aforementioned interns) would carry out the actual actions. Yes, Wikipedia has 800 active admins, but they're really not needed; we have so many because most of them only "work" for a couple of hours a week. A dozen or so "professional" admins doing it full time could easily handle the load, and that would put a stop to the us-and-them divide. (For those who'll pop up to say such a divide doesn't exist, feel free to point out examples of admins being blocked for "incivility" for disagreeing with an admin on a talkpage; of admins having their contributions bulk-reverted as "does not appear to be here to build an encyclopedia"; of admins being issued with "cool down blocks" after getting in an argument with someone. No, thought not.);
- Discourage the social networking side. I take Duke of Waltham's point above, that for kids today chatter is not a means to an end but an end in itself, but disagree with it; while I wish people would drop the "encyclopedia" pretence, we're here to build a database of relevant and accurate information; we're not here to build Facebook II. Wikipedia isn't a public hosting service, it's a charitable body with a clear and legally defined object – "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally" – and everything anyone does here should be done with that in mind. Everyone's had off-topic chats with people on occasion, but among Wikipedia's better editors, even the most off-topic tangents can generally be traced back to show some relevance to the original point; we're far too tolerant of people who treat the place as a glorified chatroom. It's not harmless fun; chit-chat clogs watchlists and RecentChanges, makes it hard to hold or follow genuinely on-topic conversations on the talkpages of those involved, and adds to the public perception of Wikipedia as a site not to be taken seriously. Sure, goofing around can sometimes help people work toward the objects, but it shouldn't ever be an end in itself;
- A decent separation of neutral and non-neutral content. "Userspace" is a bodge-compromise; I do think MyWikiBiz's directoryspace/mainspace separation is a great idea. If the POV pushers and spammers were able to post their rants and ads in peace, on pages explicitly flagged as non-neutral, they'd hopefully leave the mainspace itself alone.
- Will that do? More (maybe) if I think of them. – iridescent 15:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
- OK, I'll bite.
Agree with alot of that, especially civility and immediacy issues - you talk about reducing social aspect - how specifically would you propose to do that? How much is acceptable and how does one judge? Casliber (talk · contribs) 17:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
- It's a value judgement. As Essjay was so fond of saying, every edit you make should be considered in terms of how it improves the project; every editor here should be prepared to justify how any given edit of theirs advances the WMF's objects, and if they can't do so they shouldn't be there. It's perfectly possible to justify pure chit-chat - Keeper's baseball talk or Ealdgyth's foal photos, for instance - in terms of creating an environment in which people work better. It's even possible to justify venomous flareups in terms either of letting off steam, or of "reasonable correction" to prevent people going against those objects. What it's not possible to justify is the sub-clique of users who appear to be here only to sign each others' guestbooks. The whole "vested contributors" thing is a crock of shit, quite frankly; people willing to put in the hard work to keep the site from degenerating into a morass of fanfiction and porn should be treated with more respect. – iridescent 19:07, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
- I really thing there ought to be some minimum percentage of mainspace edits that an editor should have to do over a time period. If less than, I don't know, 25-30% of your edits are to mainspace, are you providing enough value to outweigh any drama that you are causing? (and it's possible we'd have to count this in bytes rather than the number of times one clicked submit, as some people do lots of work in a single edit) I don't believe it's good for the project for anyone to have the bulk of their edits to WPspace or userspace. Karanacs (talk) 19:12, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
- The trouble is, editcount is such a blunt instrument. Something like this would have knocked my percentages haywire had I been on 1300 edits rather than 130000, and as you say it penalizes people like myself and Moni who work offline or in deletable sandboxes - this edit would only count as a single mainspace edit despite representing a good month of work. "Number of bytes" wouldn't work either; if I revert someone who's deleted a big chunk of text, it would only take the two seconds it takes to click "undo", but counts the same as a laborious rewrite in byte terms. – iridescent 19:20, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
- Those are good points, and I haven't figured out the "right" formula yet. I'm just so tired of the people who are seemingly only here to chat, to make meaningless comments (how I hate ANI), to create conflict, or to spend all their time trying to mold policy (including at AfD) without having a clue what it is like today to work in mainspace. Get rid of a lot of the nonsense and we may have an easier time attracting new editors who actually care about content. Karanacs (talk) 19:24, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
- The trouble is, editcount is such a blunt instrument. Something like this would have knocked my percentages haywire had I been on 1300 edits rather than 130000, and as you say it penalizes people like myself and Moni who work offline or in deletable sandboxes - this edit would only count as a single mainspace edit despite representing a good month of work. "Number of bytes" wouldn't work either; if I revert someone who's deleted a big chunk of text, it would only take the two seconds it takes to click "undo", but counts the same as a laborious rewrite in byte terms. – iridescent 19:20, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
- I really thing there ought to be some minimum percentage of mainspace edits that an editor should have to do over a time period. If less than, I don't know, 25-30% of your edits are to mainspace, are you providing enough value to outweigh any drama that you are causing? (and it's possible we'd have to count this in bytes rather than the number of times one clicked submit, as some people do lots of work in a single edit) I don't believe it's good for the project for anyone to have the bulk of their edits to WPspace or userspace. Karanacs (talk) 19:12, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
I have tried proposing something before about minimum mainspace edits and got howled down in vocal protests. I agree that editcount is a blunt instrument but it is better than none and the percentages of contribs are useful too. Casliber (talk · contribs) 19:26, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
- A useful list, for which it would be possible to create sub-groups (such as "improving content") for user-friendliness. However, I think the most interesting question is - if you could only chose one, which would it be? For example, do you think any of the others could be sorted out without addressing no. 6? Ben MacDui 10:59, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
- Pretty much all of them could be summarized as "professionalism" in one form or another. Wikipedia is run by enthusiastic amateurs; in many ways that's admirable, and it's something that holds the community together, but it's not appropriate for what is to all extents and purposes a major international corporation. At the moment, we have roughly the same structure as an early communist movement, with multiple overlapping councils composed of anyone interested in joining, and no clear jurisdictions; what we don't have, any more, is Jimmy and Larry serving as Lenin and Trotsky to hold the core together and mediate between the factions. The challenge is steering the enthusiasm of the "workers" into becoming a Labour Party, not an isolationist clique of ideological purists with ACPD or its successor as a rubber-stamp politburo.
- The comparison between Wikipedia's higher echelons and a religious cult isn't a new one, but it's valid; people argue over trivial policy points with the obsessiveness of theologians debating whether Adam was created with a beard, and those who "buy into" the whole belief system genuinely do see anyone who thinks the current system isn't working as a heretic. (A recent RFA candidate has the statement "It's truly shocking to me that there are people here who not only eschew the community, but actively hate it and seek to tear it down" on their userpage, which absolutely floored me, while someone with whom I've never had the slightest interaction – an admin, btw – recently appeared out of the blue for no apparent reason to describe me as "a person bitter about Wikipedia who really doesn't care anymore, and isn't afraid of breaking every civility rule because what will happen, a block?"; as has often been pointed out, Wikipedia's much-vaunted "civility rules" miraculously vanish when it's an admin doing the abusing.)
- I know I sound like a broken record on the matter, but "consensus" isn't working. We have 10,000 active editors, but it's rare for even the most hotly-debated discussion to get more than a hundred participants; however, the views of whichever small group happen to turn up then becomes "consensus". If Wikipedia's not going to go down the professional route, at the very least it needs a Govcom – independent of Arbcom – to act as Congress to Arbcom's Supreme Court (or as the Commons to Arbcom's Lords, if you prefer). Almost every problem on Wikipedia ultimately traces back to the power vacuum at the top. – iridescent 11:52, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
- I think we are agreed on that. I am a little tied up at present, and have very little time for any active involvement in anything new, but I am curious. I missed this unhappy cradle strangling episode (rumours of which failed to reach my rocky and distant homelands) but would I be right in thinking that you favour something along the lines of the ACPD if it were created from within the community rather than appointed from above? Ben MacDui 14:12, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
- You can see the flare-out that destroyed ACPD in all its glory here. The problems with ACPD weren't that we don't need some kind of body to make decisions - we obviously do - but that ACPD appeared to be a fairly obvious power-grab by Arbcom to make themselves judge-jury-and-executioners sole governing body of the project, with ACPD (which was explicitly hand-picked to be biased in favour of the existing setup) deciding on policy and Arbcom enforcing it. I'd have no problem with a Grand Governing Council if it were explicitly separate from Arbcom (I'd say noone who'd ever been on one is permitted to ever be on the other) and genuinely accountable, with none of this "three year terms" nonsense. – iridescent 15:47, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
Some interesting points
One of which particularly caught my eye – no, not the very well made critique of wikipedia's childish and insulting "civility policy". It was the vital topics list, which I don't think I'd looked at since its expansion.
A couple of articles listed there caught my eye, one of which, Death, demonstrates for me precisely why these are so hard to write. The supporting articles, like premature burial for instance, are so poor that it just makes a nonsense of the attempt to pull them together. As for Information technology, well, it's just a disgrace. As, amazingly, are almost all of the computer-related articles. Apart from a couple of old steam-driven ones anyway. --Malleus Fatuorum 21:42, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
- Nothing more frustrating than the (all too common) occurrence of linking a term when one is writing an article...to find the bluelinked article needs a complete overhaul...botany..coffee related and more...Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
- Tell me about it. I long ago lost count of the articles I've worked on because I stumbled across them after making a link to what (I'd hoped) would be a decent account of at least the basic facts. After having several times been accused of being a waste of space because I don't create enough new articles, I finally realised what was going on. New articles are all that matter; let the drones sort them out. Malleus Fatuorum 00:12, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
- I'm quite taken by the "seven ages of man, Wikipedia style" diagram on this template (from the Death article). I don't know whether to be amused, or just sigh at another symptom of Wikipedia's being Wikipedia, at the idea that there are 13 key stages in life before age 20, but the only things following age 21 are "adulthood" and "death". (The accompanying text is marginally better; in that, there are 12 stages to life before age 20, but after 21 one doesn't just have "adulthood" and "death" to look forward to, one also has "middle age", "ageing", "senescence" and "old age". Is it time for Lastday yet? – iridescent 00:41, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
- I feel like I'm always starting new articles or expanding old articles just to get a minimum coverage of topics for an FAC. And then, look at the FAC for Carucage, where I'm starting to feel like I'm being required to rewrite the entire medieval taxation subject ... It's funny, but you don't get those sorts of requests NEARLY as much with biographical articles, it's always the non-biography subjects that get the "link this, explain this more, more background" cries... It always amazes me I can run a Quarter horse biography through FAC with nary a call to expand on the background, but if I do s non-biographical subject, it's explain explain explain. And honestly, when we get highly technical science or math articles, are THEY required to be dumbed down to 10 year old level? It shouldn't apply to something highly technical in a non-science field either, honestly. Some things just require a LOT of background, which you cannot fit into one article. ARGH! Sorry to vent. Ealdgyth - Talk 01:06, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
- Perhaps biographies are simply easier to keep focused by nature, while concepts and events are more abstract. After all, you can provide background for a riot or scientific invention, but there isn't much background to give on the birth of a person (two people happened to get rather close one night), and the circumstances that shaped them into the man or woman they eventually became are described along the course of the article.
- But I do agree with everyone who complains about the need to expand on various relevant articles that one would hope would support the reader rather than cause them to despair. In Iridescent's list, #5 is one of my main grievances with Wikipedia: the lack of coverage on many subjects so general or important that they are encountered often and interest many people. And no matter how many excellent articles there are out there covering obscure subjects in such a fascinating way that one may find oneself interested in spite of expectations or desires, I still believe that one of the most exhilarating things for me as a reader is to read a perfectly written lead section on a subject I was already familiar with. The sense of memories and ideas falling into place and being incorporated into a coherent whole—while simultaneously being connected to the vast web of human knowledge and history—is more than I can describe. That we live in a world of information has only exaggerated the existing misinformation, and reading on what you (think you) know may often be more enlightening than reading on something new. Waltham, The Duke of 02:34, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
Possible solution to #5
"Anyone can edit" is a core principle, but it does bring problems. Wikipedia has somehow drifted over the last couple of years from "everyone potentially has something to add" to "everyone's opinion is equally valid". The problem is allowing everyone to edit, in general, while preventing every crank, crackpot, and just bad writer from insisting on adding their pieces.
As Sandy is so fond of saying, there's no such thing as a "perfect" or "finished" article on Wikipedia, and she's right. What there is, however, is a small but growing subset of articles which both say all they ought to say about their given topic, and which attract enough problems that it can reasonably be assumed that on the balance of probabilities, any substantial content change is likely to be a net negative.
I'd propose that for articles with this status, a new category is created and the articles are "locked into place". From then on, changes to the content need to be vetted by someone else before they go live (it would mean the creation of a new user right, but I'd suggest giving it automatically to anyone who's demonstrated they've the right amount of common sense). I'd propose getting every vital article up to GA/FA standard – even if it means paying professional writers to do it – and locking them into place in this way; I'd also at least consider "locking" those FAs where there's a clear consensus that there's no obvious scope for improvement and no realistic likelihood that new information is going to turn up necessitating a rewrite, and the more problematic biographical articles.
This all sounds anathema to the free-for-all which Wikipedia's become, but it's actually very close to Wikipedia's original plan. Jimbo and Larry never intended for Wikipedia pages to be the "definitive" articles; the plan was always that Wikipedia would serve as the incubator from which the best articles would periodically be harvested to WP:1.0 and Nupedia. Danny Wool tried something similar with Veropedia and failed, but that failure was more due to Wikipedia's overwhelming web presence (and the fact that PageRank automatically penalizes any site copying from Wikipedia) than to any flaw in the model. By keeping the material on Wikipedia, with a new class of "verified article", the "Google blindness" wouldn't be an issue, but it would vastly reduce the maintenance workload and help reduce Wikipedia's reputation for defamation and inaccuracy.
Yes, it would breach "anyone can edit", but we're talking a tiny number of articles. Even if every entry on the full Vital Articles list along with every single FA, FL and GA were locked, it would still only affect 0.794% of Wikipedia's articles, leaving 99.206% completely unaffected by the changes.
And yes, I do recognize that it would create a new level of bureaucracy and a new time sink. However, I think it would more than pay for itself. Yes, people would have to spend time vetting changes and granting user rights. However, in my opinion the time lost would be more than outweighed by the time saved through no longer having constantly to read and re-read articles to remove inaccuracy and vandalism.
This would cause such howls of protest from the "Anyone can edit" hardcore (and the non insignificant clique of boar-killers who rely on a continued flow of vandalism to give them something to revert) that it'll never be implemented on Wikipedia, but it's something that would go a long way to solving a number of Wikipedia's problems – from BLP to the reputation for amateurish inaccuracy to the failure to cover core topics well. – iridescent 16:52, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
Possible answer to your question to SuaveArt
I noticed the note you left on SuaveArt's talkpage regarding the WP:CHAT notice SA put on BlueGoblin7's talkpage. I think I may have an explanation. SA seemed to be targetting the users who posted in this thread. Another poster that posted in that thread got the chat warning. As you can see, SA also ummm...attempted to modify one respondent's user page (among several others) and brought another (American Eagle) to the inappropriate username board. Looks like BlueGoblin7 got caught in the crossfire along with some of the other project members. FYI... Auntie E. (talk) 01:46, 25 January 2010 (UTC) I think I found a better one. This conversation was probably the target.
SA seems to be uhhh...following Erwin Springer's edits. At least this kind of makes sense. Kind of. Auntie E. (talk) 02:23, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
Happy Iridescent's Day!
User:Iridescent has been identified as an Awesome Wikipedian, Peace, A record of your Day will always be kept here. |
For a userbox you can add to your userbox page, see User:Rlevse/Today/Happy Me Day! and my own userpage for a sample of how to use it. — Rlevse • Talk • 00:56, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
- I move for the inclusion of a featured user in the Community Portal. :-P Waltham, The Duke of 02:39, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
Primrose Day
Hi Iridescent. I see that last July you deleted an article called Primrose Day (I was surprised not to find such an article at Wikipedia). However, I found it on another site, which looks like it's cribbed from Wikipedia. Here's the contents from that site together with what I can only assume is the text you think it has been copied from:
Text from Wikipedia Primrose Day is the anniversary of the death of British statesman and prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield on 19th April 1881. The primrose was his favourite flower and Queen Victoria would often send him bunches of them from Windsor and Osborne House. She sent a wreath of primroses to his funeral. On this day Beaconsfield's statue in Parliament Square, London is decorated with primroses, as is his grave in Hughenden, Buckinghamshire.
Text from website Upon the death of the beloved British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield), on April nineteenth, 1881, Primrose Day was instituted in his honor, as the English primrose was his favorite flower. Queen Victoria sent bouquets of primroses to his funeral according to a contemporary account; The coffin lies on its bier in an alcove leading out of the modest hall of Hughenden Manor. But of its material, one might almost say of its dimensions, nothing can be seen. It is literally one mass of floral beauty. Here are wreaths from every member of the Royal Family in England bouquets of primroses sent by the Queen, with an inscription attached to them, saying that they came from Osborne Hill, and that they are of the sort which Lord Beaconsfield loved. Two years later, a bronze statue of Lord Beaconsfield was erected at Parliament Square, and it became customary to decorate it with primroses every year on the anniversary of his death. Ofttimes at Easter the woodlands of England are seen carpeted with wild primroses.
I'm at a bit of a loss to see how the first could be regarded as copyright violation of the second. Could you explain a little more - maybe reinstate the article here. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Northern Arrow (talk • contribs) 09:34, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
- I'm not sure where the first piece of text you quote has come from, but it's not the text of the deleted article. The only difference between the deleted Wikipedia article and the (copyrighted) website is the formatting of the date and the replacement of the archaic "ofttimes" with "often". This is about as blatant a copyright violation as it's possible to get. – iridescent 15:08, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
- Hi. I got it from here [2] which is a version of Wikipedia. Maybe this was overwritten by the text you deleted. I don't know because the link you provided didn't work. Also, I tried to recreate the article using the text from Statemaster but couldn't do that either. Could you do it - it's definitely not in violation of copyright. Thanks, Special:Contributions/Northern Arrow
- While I don't have the technical ability to perform an undelete (you need to try Wikipedia administrators who will provide copies of deleted articles for that) I'd still be inclined to say no, personally. Looking over every previous version, I stand by this deletion; every version is either a blatant copyright violation, or completely unreferenced and unsourced. Deletion on Wikipedia isn't a criticism of the topic and doesn't mean the topic isn't valid, but as a tertiary source Wikipedia has strict rules on sourcing and verification (basically, everything you write, you have to say where it came from so readers can check its accuracy for itself) which no version of this article complied with. – iridescent 16:06, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
- That's good! I didn't know that another website was keeping a history of Wikipedia articles. From that history I looked at the original version of the article and it seems fine. It just needs referencing to that website from which the more recent versions appear to have been copied. I tried starting a new article but I can't because you need to make 10 edits before you can create new articles. I'll make some random edits and then set up a new article for Primrose Day. Hope that's OK. Thanks, Northern Arrow. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Northern Arrow (talk • contribs) 21:07, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
- While I don't have the technical ability to perform an undelete (you need to try Wikipedia administrators who will provide copies of deleted articles for that) I'd still be inclined to say no, personally. Looking over every previous version, I stand by this deletion; every version is either a blatant copyright violation, or completely unreferenced and unsourced. Deletion on Wikipedia isn't a criticism of the topic and doesn't mean the topic isn't valid, but as a tertiary source Wikipedia has strict rules on sourcing and verification (basically, everything you write, you have to say where it came from so readers can check its accuracy for itself) which no version of this article complied with. – iridescent 16:06, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
Bravo
Me, too. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:48, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
- Don't get me started on LBRs. With some of these "improvements", I get the feeling people sit in a smoke-filled room at the MediaWiki Design Headquarters saying "you know, this user interface still isn't unfriendly enough, is there any way we can make it even less intuitive?". I'm very surprised to see Tony, who's usually a bastion of common sense (even when I don't agree with him), supporting what I consider arguably the most harebrained "improvement" ever made to the MediaWiki software – iridescent 16:57, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
- Tony doesn't do as much article writing as some others; I'd ban those dastardly things. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:59, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
- Another thought (which I'm putting here instead of WT:FAC, so as not to prejudice the discussion), editor convenience should not trump WP:V, and those damn things make it really hard (on me, at least) to verify text. They mean: one window open to see the text you're editing, a second window open to see the sources, and a third window open to view the source. Add that to my eyesight issues, and verifying text is misery. I want to see the source in the same window I'm editing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:07, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
- Tony doesn't do as much article writing as some others; I'd ban those dastardly things. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:59, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
- I'm with you two. I actually tried it out on a couple of (short) articles yesterday, just to get a feel for how it works. Admittedly it makes the editing box look a bit tidier, but the inconvenience of having to look for the citations in a different section to the one you're editing far outweighs any slight advantage in readability. It's a hare-brained idea that ought to have been strangled at birth, just like date autoformatting. What ought to be done is a modification to the editor, to allow citations to be collapsed or expanded, but of course that would mean someone doing a little bit of work, so it'll never happen. --Malleus Fatuorum 17:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC)