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Dear English Wikipedia community,
my name is Kurt Jansson, I have been a contributor to the German language Wikipedia right since its start in 2001. I am also the president of Wikimedia Germany, the German chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation.
I'm currently writing a diploma thesis about the Wikipedia project and its editions in different languages. It's a qualitative study based on interviews with six different Wikipedia communities. I hope you to answer eight questions concerning your community and the encyclopedia you've created. I have put the questions on a subpage of my user page and would like you to answer them there. You can use the discussion page to discuss your answers within your community and agree on your joint answers.
Obviously I would like you to answer my questions the wiki way: You may edit the existing answers that are already there, but try to find consensual answers that the core community can agree on. If there are controversial points of view: say so, elaborate on them and point out if one of them represents the majority's opinion.
Deadline for the answers is April the 29th. Of course I will make the results of my study public and publish them under a free license. I am sure this is a great opportunity for every Wikipedia community to tell others about their project and also to learn from others. But of course this will work best if the answers of other communities don't influence your own answers. So if you have to peek, please try nevertheless to focus on an answer that fits best for your own project.
I'm using mailing lists and village pumps to call attention to the interview questions. If you know other or more appropriate places to raise people's attention, please put this notice there.
Thanks for taking part!
Best wishes,
Kurt
Citizendium copying Wikipedia content?
Is it normal for Citizendium to directly copy content from Wikipedia? See Citizendium: Atheism, which is a direct copy of this older, poorer quality version of Atheism. — BRIAN0918 • 2007-04-22 16:15Z
- Yes. Citizendium calls itself a "responsible, expert-managed fork of Wikipedia", and about 662 of their articles are derived from Wikipedia (383 of which are "checklisted"), while about 1045 checklisted articles are internal to CZ. As for the Atheism article, it was copied on April 4, and that's why it doesn't reflect Wikipedia's newer revisions. Λυδαcιτγ 16:40, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- On the other hand, CZ says, "Citizendium is not a mirror of Wikipedia. Absolutely do not simply copy content from Wikipedia to Citizendium without working on it. If you wish to import material from Wikipedia, it must be because you have immediate plans to improve it [...] Articles copied from Wikipedia without any substantive revisions after one week ago are subject to deletion." The Atheism article should be deleted under that guideline, as it's only been de-Wikipediafied. Λυδαcιτγ 16:53, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- After a little more exploring, it appears that CZ is "unforking" from WP, though perhaps only as an experiment. Λυδαcιτγ 17:38, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- While it does look pretty unprofessional (what with all the redlinks, especially with images) they link back to the WP page and license it under the GFDL, so it is all legal. I did remember reading somewhere (Jimbo's talk page?) that some of their WP copies are not attributed to Wikipedia, which is a problem. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 21:10, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- There are more articles than are obvious that are "mirrors" of Wikipedia articles at Citizendium. You should remember that under the GFDL a contributor retains the copyright to their original work. If you start an article on Wikipedia, you retain copyright to that version of the article and can license that version of the article anywhere you want without attributing Wikipedia. Citizendium does take such articles without requiring that they be marked as being from Wikipedia. Dsmdgold 15:10, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Mr. Z-man: Citizendium doesn't license their material as GFDL. Pizzachicken 23:23, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
- While it does look pretty unprofessional (what with all the redlinks, especially with images) they link back to the WP page and license it under the GFDL, so it is all legal. I did remember reading somewhere (Jimbo's talk page?) that some of their WP copies are not attributed to Wikipedia, which is a problem. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 21:10, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Wall Street Journal article
The front page of today's Wall Street Journal has an article about me and Kaiser Permanente. This isn't the first time that there's been media coverage of this, but this article mentions my editing on Wikipedia, and I wanted to clarify that particular part of the story. This is the only place I could think of, so I apologize in advance if the Village Pump isn't quite the best place, and would welcome any suggestions on where it might better fit. That being said, the part of the article in question says:
- While at Kaiser, on his own initiative, he edited Kaiser's listing at the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.org -- until a public-relations manager asked him to stop. Known to embellish Kaiser's listing with positive fodder, he also got into skirmishes with a company basher who posted criticism about the HMO on the site.
I edited and wrote most of the Kaiser Permanente article before I was hired by Kaiser Permanente. It was never part of my job, whatsoever. It was a topic I was interested in, the article was a sentence or two stub when I came across it, and I had checked out some books from the library on KP and decided to put the information I had collected to good use.
As to "positive fodder." I always strived to achieve NPOV, and I think the same can be said for the "company basher." She and I certainly had our "skirmishes," but we were both interested in improving the article, and I think, ultimately, we had some success.
When KP's PR department became aware, early last year, that a KP employee had been involved in maintaining the article, I was asked to stop editing it. Their reasoning was that if I allowed to article to become overrun with criticism (some of which was factually inaccurate), then they could simply say the article was not trustworthy and outright incorrect. I knew Wikipedia didn't work that way, but I also knew it would take a while for others to notice the degrading state of the article and help fix it. Ultimately, I wanted to keep my job, and I knew Wikipedia's processes would ultimately prevail even without me (and the "company basher," incidentally).
I have continued to contribute Wikipedia to some extent, and I consider being NPOV a critical part of being a good editor. That particular part, of what was otherwise a very fair article, was a ways away from the kind of Wikipedia editor I consider myself and strive to be, and considering a lot of fellow Wikipedians will probably come across it, I wanted to try and be clear. Justen 08:07, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
- And I thought I had a stressful year. MoodyGroove 15:48, 1 May 2007 (UTC)MoodyGroove
Jimbo in poll for Time 100 Most Influential People list
See list of candidates with chance to vote on them here. So far he doesn't have all that many votes (not as many people seem familiar with his name as with the various celebs there). *Dan T.* 19:06, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
- He's at position #38 now, tied with Oprah Winfrey... maybe if he gives every Wikipedian a new car, his ranking will go up? *Dan T.* 23:08, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Research on demographic spread of Wikipedia users
Just published is a paper on the demographic spread of people who use Wikipedia conducted by the Pew Research Center. More than a third of American adult internet users (36%) consult it. 50% of those with at least a college degree consult it. See Pew Internet & American Life Project (pdf). Lumos3 07:59, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Brazil Collaboration was created!!! JoãoFelipe ( Let's talk! ) 18:24, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Reason
In the latest issue of Reason (Free Minds and Free Markets), Jimbo is on the cover, and there is an extensive article about him and Wikipedia. It's very positive in overall tone, though it mentions some of the controversies such as the Siegenthaler incident and the squabble between Jimbo and Larry over foundership credit. *Dan T.* 23:10, 28 April 2007 (UTC)