"I believe Larry Sanger's explanation for the lack of highly-educated experts in the ranks of Wikipedia is a grave misconception."
I believe his assertion of a lack of highly-educated experts is defective. There's a lot of whining about how mean Wikipedia is to experts, but this notably fails to explain why there are any experts on Wikipedia... when it's loaded with real actual expert academics with Ph.Ds. Why are they there if it's so horrible to experts?
(My theory is that editing Wikipedia requires you to be able to work productively with complete idiots, and that's a social skill most people, not just experts, have trouble bothering with.)
Um, yeah. I know a lot of Ph.D-holding experts who contribute to Wikipedia. But the key point is they're capable of working with others even when the others are stupid. This is a necessary skill on Wikipedia - it's not optional - and it's something non-experts as well as experts have problems dealing with. Citizendium will get idiots for sure, but they'll be expert idiots, and non-idiot academics are quite used to working with or around expert idiots.
(Perhaps Citizendium will get the expert idiots and Wikipedia will keep the expert non-idiots who can work with their lessers...)
"Not to mention that without any legally-defined standards"
Which, of course, exist.
Re:Almost sounds like KDE 3... MOD INSIGHTFUL
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GNOME 2.16 Released
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· Score: 1
I circumvented the problem with GNOME by entering sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop and now I'm much happier;-)
This is entirely personal preference, of course - many people hate KDE and prefer GNOME. But I find it easier to tolerate sKillions of irritatinK shiny rotatingK iKons (in SVG of course) than GNOME's attitude of "We know where you're going today. Stop trying to reach the straps."
Re:Almost sounds like KDE 3... MOD INSIGHTFUL
on
GNOME 2.16 Released
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· Score: 1
Compiling your own carburetor was insufficiently n00b-friendly, not to mention the requirement to have the entire text of the GFDL printed on the device.
And some say this already happens;-) There's a remarkable array of anti-vandalism bots watching the recent changes feed and flagging stuff for human review.
The job is to watch a firehose for bad drops of water... but I'm amazed it works so well.
Nah. We have a lot of people whose main contribution to the project is manning the floodgates and checking the recent changes feed. They're there already, and this will make their jobs a lot easier.
Ultimately, there's only so much Wikipedia' can do for readers who refuse to think. Have you read the disclaimer linked from every page? I suppose we could put it at the top...
The agenda is still there. Note that the German Wikipedia has done three stable releases so far, and the English Wikipedia is trying various methods. The German stable releases were pushed by an outside company (whose stroke of genius was that what they needed for the release was stuff that would improve the encyclopedia anyway, so volunteers did the heavy lifting), I fear we'll need one to get a stable release from the English edition.
On the mailing lists - mediawiki-l is the list for the software, wikitech-l is the Wikimedia technical issues list - or on irc.freenode.net #mediawiki or #wikimedia-tech, where the developers hang out.
"It's like DVD region coding on everything. You know what a pain in the ass that is? Whoops, your computer's a different region to your iPod's a different region to your PVR! Nothing works together, and the only reason is so they can get you to pay three times. DRM is a way to rip people off."
It is a tricky one - regular editors will have a much easier time of things, but casual editing will be two clicks instead of one, and many may not bother. And our anonymous edits are mostly good. So any effect on casual edits will be one of the things people will be watching for, and is a reason not to have flagging on all pages.
Possibly, but I don't think the present behaviour reflects such a tendency. English Wikipedia presently has about 800 locked pages and about 200 semi-protected. If a tendency to overapply softer protection did exist, I'd expect that second number to be higher.
Further, there are many admins on en: who are fiercely opposed to any locking down whatsoever, want it kept as absolutely open as possible and regularly patrol locked or semi-locked pages to get them unlocked. I'd expect them to do the same with this option.
One idea was to make approval of anonymous and new-editor edits automatic after some length of time (a few days). So if no-one gets around to flagging a good edit or fixing a bad one, it doesn't sit in limbo forever.
Please note, again, that almost all details of these new functions are undecided as yet. The story is hardly news... it's just that the Bill Thompson piece, despite being unfortunately silly [*], has been spreading like wildfire. Yay.
[*] and you should have seen the prima-donna email I got from him for calling his silly article silly.
There are various ideas along these lines. The important thing is not to foul up the normal Wikipedia creation and editing process. See Category:Wikipedia release version work for some ideas on the English language Wikipedia. Like this proposal, most of the workable ones tend toward flagging or listing particular articles or article versions on the existing wiki, rather than bothering with a fork.
Yes, this is a problem some have mentioned in the discussions about the plan - that it makes regular editing of Wikipedia easier, but casual editing (anon typo fixing) two clicks instead of one, and that will be enough for people not to bother. Since most of our anonymous edits are in fact perfectly good edits, this is an effect that the experimental period will be watching for.
I compare them as a DVD-ROM encyclopedias. Whether the 10 euros goes on profits, costs or beer and hookers is irrelevant — it's still 10 euros being paid by the consumer for a DVD-ROM encyclopedia.
Britannica frequently has sales, by the way, where US readers can buy the DVD for US$25.
The German Wikipedia (where this experiment is being run) has done three release versions on CD and DVD, and sold over 20,000 of the third one at 10 euros (US$12) a copy. That's real people paying real money for wiki-generated content, and is directly comparable to DVD editions of Encyclopedia Britannica or Encarta.
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I believe his assertion of a lack of highly-educated experts is defective. There's a lot of whining about how mean Wikipedia is to experts, but this notably fails to explain why there are any experts on Wikipedia ... when it's loaded with real actual expert academics with Ph.Ds. Why are they there if it's so horrible to experts?
(My theory is that editing Wikipedia requires you to be able to work productively with complete idiots, and that's a social skill most people, not just experts, have trouble bothering with.)
You may wish to look at wikinfo's GetWiki software, a fork of Mediawiki, which includes this functionality.
(Perhaps Citizendium will get the expert idiots and Wikipedia will keep the expert non-idiots who can work with their lessers ...)
Which, of course, exist.
This is entirely personal preference, of course - many people hate KDE and prefer GNOME. But I find it easier to tolerate sKillions of irritatinK shiny rotatingK iKons (in SVG of course) than GNOME's attitude of "We know where you're going today. Stop trying to reach the straps."
Used KDE.
Compiling your own carburetor was insufficiently n00b-friendly, not to mention the requirement to have the entire text of the GFDL printed on the device.
If they could just embrace this one-line definition wholeheartedly, it'd be fantastic. As is, they don't.
The job is to watch a firehose for bad drops of water ... but I'm amazed it works so well.
Nah. We have a lot of people whose main contribution to the project is manning the floodgates and checking the recent changes feed. They're there already, and this will make their jobs a lot easier.
Ultimately, there's only so much Wikipedia' can do for readers who refuse to think. Have you read the disclaimer linked from every page? I suppose we could put it at the top ...
The agenda is still there. Note that the German Wikipedia has done three stable releases so far, and the English Wikipedia is trying various methods. The German stable releases were pushed by an outside company (whose stroke of genius was that what they needed for the release was stuff that would improve the encyclopedia anyway, so volunteers did the heavy lifting), I fear we'll need one to get a stable release from the English edition.
On the mailing lists - mediawiki-l is the list for the software, wikitech-l is the Wikimedia technical issues list - or on irc.freenode.net #mediawiki or #wikimedia-tech, where the developers hang out.
"It's like DVD region coding on everything. You know what a pain in the ass that is? Whoops, your computer's a different region to your iPod's a different region to your PVR! Nothing works together, and the only reason is so they can get you to pay three times. DRM is a way to rip people off."
It's always had simple version control (click an article's History tab). It doesn't have branches and this change won't implement branches either.
Mediawiki needs coders! Get YOUR code into running a Top 20 website! http://www.mediawiki.org/
It is a tricky one - regular editors will have a much easier time of things, but casual editing will be two clicks instead of one, and many may not bother. And our anonymous edits are mostly good. So any effect on casual edits will be one of the things people will be watching for, and is a reason not to have flagging on all pages.
Actually, Jimbo is hoping this will eventually allow us to unlock even the Main Page.
Protection won't be "eliminated", but we're hoping this will let us apply it way less.
Further, there are many admins on en: who are fiercely opposed to any locking down whatsoever, want it kept as absolutely open as possible and regularly patrol locked or semi-locked pages to get them unlocked. I'd expect them to do the same with this option.
Please note, again, that almost all details of these new functions are undecided as yet. The story is hardly news ... it's just that the Bill Thompson piece, despite being unfortunately silly [*], has been spreading like wildfire. Yay.
[*] and you should have seen the prima-donna email I got from him for calling his silly article silly.
There are various ideas along these lines. The important thing is not to foul up the normal Wikipedia creation and editing process. See Category:Wikipedia release version work for some ideas on the English language Wikipedia. Like this proposal, most of the workable ones tend toward flagging or listing particular articles or article versions on the existing wiki, rather than bothering with a fork.
Yes, this is a problem some have mentioned in the discussions about the plan - that it makes regular editing of Wikipedia easier, but casual editing (anon typo fixing) two clicks instead of one, and that will be enough for people not to bother. Since most of our anonymous edits are in fact perfectly good edits, this is an effect that the experimental period will be watching for.
Britannica frequently has sales, by the way, where US readers can buy the DVD for US$25.
Yes, it's called third party verifiability: can it be shown that anyone else cares?
The German Wikipedia (where this experiment is being run) has done three release versions on CD and DVD, and sold over 20,000 of the third one at 10 euros (US$12) a copy. That's real people paying real money for wiki-generated content, and is directly comparable to DVD editions of Encyclopedia Britannica or Encarta.