User:Grenavitar/wikipedia

We have a page on Little Green Footballs but not Local Initiatives Support Corporation. Someday I should fix this.

Life on Google Images
Google Images is now hosting a collection of images from Life at this address. Many of the images are from before 1923 and therefore in the public domain in the United States. (20:47, 18 November 2008 (UTC))

Wikipedia as Firefox
Firefox made a great deal with Google, securing funding and not limiting its product by making Google the default searchbar. I think Wikipedia could try something similar. I am generally against advertising because of the many reasons other users have addressed--but I have also never given nor plan on giving money to the project. I edit, that's enough. But with the fears of last funds driving falling short I tried to think of acceptable ways of earning revenue. Grants are nice but not reliable over time. Donors are also unpredictable in giving patterns. And, of course, AdSense type ads give the incentive to manipulate articles.

Why not forge a deal like with Firefox? Google could be the default non-media wiki search. Amazon could be the default ISBN retailer. Hell, Amazon should already thank us for the IMDb link given on almost every movie article. Of course, all of this can be changed and re-ordered in user preferences and any mention of these companies will only appear on "Special:" type pages. But, with Wikipedia on the top 10 sites this should be good for some revenue without harming editorial integrity. I have no idea if this has been proposed before or how much it could actually bring in or whatnot. But, I think this is an acceptable, non-obtrusive means of advertising which could deal with important funding issues. (00:10, 10 May 2008 (UTC))

Flagged Revisions
When will flagged revisions be ready?

Drama
Wikipedia is for drama! (02:21, 27 January 2008 (UTC))

Passwords
Being in Europe I am using internet cafes and unsecured wireless connections a lot. I had worried about my password close to my home but I normally knew the computers I was using. Here, using all types in all kinds of shady places, I realize that having one password that controls your account is no good. I remember from the days when I used Linux a bit of the program that gives you a few single use passwords for the day for when you login remotely. Then there are other strategies like 'sub-passwords' which would maybe only not allow deletion or modification of pages (makes more sense for e-mail than Wikipedia). Then there are timed passwords--ones that work for X hours. Why don't more sites implement some of these things? I'd rather people not steal my e-mail account password but, if it expired then it wouldn't be that big of a deal. Even on Wikipedia it could be of use. Many users have 'on the road' accounts but this would streamline it. How easy is it to code? Do you think sites will do it? (15:28, 31 July 2007 (UTC))

Elections
The elections are crazy.

WP:BLP
I am not really sure I understand what's going on with WP:BLP. By way of Conservapedia I was linked to our old friends Wikitruth after many months of forgetting their existence. The menyioned David Gerard's deletion of Crystal Gail Mangum... which, seemed a little odd to me since Wikitruth themselves have an article despite being far less notable. It reminded me of something I had just seen on User:Kelly Martin's blog in the posting "Change of pace." In a comment to that post Gerard stated, "I'm also discovering that if I really want to upset stupid people, spoilers and fair abuse are just for practice. BLP enforcement is so the way forward. Particularly since I wrote the second version of WP:BLP that has more or less survived." I bring this up because I see a lot of changes to Wikipedia. Lots of them are good, like the drive for better referencing. Some are a little unsettling like the use of WP:BLP to summarily remove certain criticism like was done at Bat Ye'or (talk page). I agreed with their decision--but it was just that, a consensus decision, not just something that can be removed using BLP as a vague justification claiming the author is not notable enough.

Oh right, so what was my point? That Wikipedia is going somewhere and I'm not 100% sure about it. Wikipedia's inclusion policies have been pretty uneven for a long time and I'm not sure this new BLP stuff helps. In terms of the Duke girl, there may not be great sources about her but many credible news sources have reported about her so I don't really understand the deletion. I don't tend to get involved in big policy skirmishes but... the future of Wikipedia may be interesting. (12:25, 28 May 2007 (UTC))

Citing Wikipedia
Over at ACID user BlueLotas had posted a link to "A History Department Bans Citing Wikipedia as a Research Source", an article which I found interesting... yet completely silly. A ban is only useful insofar as it educates the student. That is, why are students citing Wikipedia in the first place? What does that say about our academic system that students cite from sources they do not know or understand. A minute of investigating (and a look at the "edit this page" button) and you will notice that Wikipedia can be edited. I think this is the real problem. If students are incapable or unwilling to identify credible sources then this should be reflected in their grades. If I cite Jew Watch as an authoritative source about anything—regardless of if it is true or not—a professor should lower my grade and explain to me that I need to use credible sources. This goes for any source—not just Wikipedia.

I should retract my statement about citing Wikipedia. I have done it in a graduate school paper and contrary to Jimmy Wale's statement about use of encyclopedias I think my citation was legitimate. It was done in the context of a brief historical overview. The Wikipedia page 1) originally provided me with the answer and 2) put it all on the same page for me. Not citing Wikipedia in this case would almost have seemed dishonest or, at least like a silly attempt to seem more credible. I checked the citations that Wikipedia gave for the figures—they checked out—so I cited Wikipedia with the note that I had checked the sources. This is not a particularly special move; but, I think it was a legitimate use of Wikipedia in an unimportant-policy paper-historical summary-academic work. And it illustrates my point. The issue is not that students are citing Wikipedia—it's that they are uncritical of the sources they select. The popularity of Wikipedia brought it to prominence but this is an age old issue. Teach students what types of sources are proper for what types of papers and Wikipedia will be a non-issue. (11:58, 22 May 2007 (UTC))

Fair use
I am opposed to some of the anti-fair use stuff going on. I have always been for citing images (obviously) and keeping them out of templates; but, I think the removal of fair use images from episode lists is taking away a legitimate fair use right. I agree with our permission to promote free use material but it is not preferable to use nothing in places where there are obviously no free use images avaiable. This goes doubly when it's in situations where there is actually a plot description next to the image which (I think) helps to bolster a fair use claim.

The same basic feeling goes for the fair-use-resizing committees who have been resizing images to overly restrictive sizes when it is not necessary. Maybe this isn't a proper example; but, looking at Amazon.com got me to thinking. Their book preview shows covers larger than any we have uploaded onto Wikipedia. I may be wrong (if anyone ever reads this tell me if I am) but I don't think that they have any specific licensing agreement that allows them to display the book covers. If they can do this as a commercial entity then why can't we at least keep 500px wide posters--especially when they are horizontal. It may be that because they are trying to sell the product they have a right to do it. But... observations. (00:12, 16 May 2007 (UTC))

Criticism of
"Criticism of" articles are the cesspool of Wikipedia. They have no well defined definition of what criticism means and end up being polemic pieces of editors. Criticism has a wide array of meaning and these articles tend to mix them. They are a way for editors with a chip on their shoulder to force feed readers moral opinions rather than letting them make their own decision. The biography for Mr. X will say "Mr. X beheaded Mr. Y in the year 4444" Is that good? Is that bad? You decide. The criticism article will say "Mr. Z think it's bad that Mr. X killed Mr. Y in the year 4444". Wikipedia is a funny place. 18:54, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Stable versions
Opions on the recent debates: I think that we should have a version with a slightly more open policy than currently implemented and then a more discussion based version that utilizes the open version to provide content and stabilize it. This should be a software solution and users would specify whether they want to view the stable versions or open ones by default. I don't particularly care what anonymous users are exposed to first. Maybe there should be a warning at the top until they have set a cookie marking their preference. (20:45, 2 August 2006 (UTC))

Modernity bias
This struck me today as I came across Waqt. Before my edits it was a page on the 2005 film... which, as far as I can tell was pretty non-notable... just another Bollywood film out of the mill. The 1965 version, however, came upon some critical acclaim and seems to be a classic. This would be kind of like us having a page for the new version of Psycho but not Hitchock's. (12:49, 3 April 2006 (UTC))

Bad user thesis
I think there is one simple-ish way to tell a bad user. If you fix someting in during an edit war, say, add an obvious category while person A's POV is represented and Person B reverts to their version removing your work that was outside of the edit war then person B sucks. That's all. ~_~ (08:55, 27 January 2006 (UTC))

Disclaimer
I am a university student. In many of my group discussions I mention wikipedia because I find it to be useful resource on many articles and one of the better link repositories. So many times my classmates have no comprehension that wikipedia can be edited by anyone! I really believe that the disclaimed about validity needs to be prominently linked even if only for anonymous editors. I believe that even if people are missing something they should read we need to force people to be more responsible about wikipedia usage. (10:04, 23 January 2006 (UTC))

Systemic bias
Lately I have been slightly worried about systemic bias. It happens here in many ways. Mosy obviously there is a lot more about Western cultural material than African or other countries. Much of it is linguistic since English language press doesn't report as much on foreign language material because of the obvious difficulties. It is more problematic when it is inter-religious. Part of the problem comes from the different groups working among different religions. When this happens it makes for different voting patterns on related articles when they come up for AfD. Fascists in Christian Clothing: The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy was deleted when The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism was not. The former had a higher Amazon ranking and gave every sign of being as notable. All of those type of books are non academic pieces but I do think there should be some uniformity if we are to keep them. The same goes for 'persecution by' articles. They are all terribly written but the Judaism one was written even more improperly and was deleted. It isn't good when the article is created to slander Jews but it could also be bad if legitimate talk about persecution is left out when its kept for other religions. I am beginning to think the problems with systemic bias are more worrying than I had first thought. (06:47, 23 January 2006 (UTC))

Wheel war
We are creeping towards it. :(

Quality
What wikipedia editors lack is expertise. Some of our best editors will take the time to research what they can but it is in the rarest cases that editors have a knowledge of the breadth of academic content needed to write neutrally on a subject. It's easy to summarize a work, but it's much more difficult to know all that is out there and give a feel of the academic discourse. Another part to this problem is that when a user nears that level he has to contend with POV warriors and each has the same say. Wikipedia may not be anti-elitist in principle but in practice it is. This is a problem I see no way to fix. Even if (when?) a review system is implemented the fact that those with expertise do not have more say will still come into play. But, that's wikipedia and I must say despite this hindrance we still get some pretty decent featured articles. (06:52, 11 December 2005 (UTC))


 * Agreed in general, but consider... that what we most lack is not expertise (because experts come and go); I know I have, and do repeatedly. What W. lacks is a system to reward accuracy, verifiable content entry, and the expertise these reflect. If EJ Corey were to contribute one 1000 word article on "Total Synthesis", he (a Nobel laureate, and Prof Emer at Harvard), could be reverted in minutes, and would lose out on any conceivable path to resolve the edit conflict (for lack of editorial status, at E=1, and for lack of any network he could call upon in a battle for consensus). Yet no real chemist would argue that this site needs more articles of the sort that would come, if the likes of Prof Corey (or his team) would write for Wikipedia. One must contemplate why they do not... LeProf, see also your WikiMedia talk page

John Seigenthaler issue
Today I was reading this story about John Seigenthaler Sr. and how wikipedia was his pillow. Now, it's pretty bad how someone wrote that he had been involved in assassination of JFK and RFK. However, I tend to not be worried and I think others shouldn't be worried. The way I see it wikipedia is inherently unreliable in that sense and people should realize it. When you look at wikipedia you should not assume the good research that there is about Britannica and therefore if there was an article about me that said I was with Juhayman al-Otaibi when he took over Masjid al Haram but escaped the Saudi security forces I would laugh it off. You should expect that things like that can and will happen on wikipedia... it's just something that will always plague wikipedia. Therefore, we shouldn't go on a hunt for every anonymous editor but realize these things happen on wikipedia and not judge anyone by what is written if we haven't backed it up some. He says "[m]ajor communications Internet companies are bound by federal privacy laws that protect the identity of their customers, even those who defame online" and blames Congress for this protection. This seems pretty stupid in my book. Yes, that protection is so that we don't finger the wrong person. Just like with my view on Guantanamo Bay... the issue is finding out they are terrorists (or libelous). So, for detainees in U.S. custody that involves getting a trial at some point to prove they are terrorists and for whomever they find as the anonymous editor, being tried as a John Doe is good, so that we don't get another Richard Jewell, someone who was not involved that gets a bad name because of being prematurely blamed. I also see no point in pursuing the anonymous editor, but, I suppose that's another issue entirely.

I suppose where most will disagree with me is on my belief that while accepting such circumstances as a part of wikipedia we can also call it a good source. Wikipedia is so incredibly fractious that some articles are great and some are horrible... and this needs to be realized and to a reader with any power of discernment it is. I think wikipedia should be the first place that anyone comes for information. Not because it't the most reliable and should be taken as fact, but because it's a good source for linking to information and you can check the validity of much of the writing. I forget my point. Oh, Wikipedia is a great source if you know how to use it and take it with a grain of salt. If you don't, then you probably shouldn't even be using sources as consistently reliable as Encyclopedia Britannica. (18:24, 30 November 2005 (UTC))

Noticing
Users don't notice edits to obscure pages. Most recently I found that history of Qatar had been given a really bad, smaller article from some user on his first of two edits and for almost a month remained in its altered forms until I changed it. I understand that these things happen on John Seigenthaler... because he doesn't matter to anyone. But, history of Qatar is an article that you'd find in Brticannica or other encyclopedia. I am sure that this has happened on other article where good information has been lost because the maintainer left or didn't notice and others didn't look at the history or weren't expert. The good news is that it's still in the history. The bad news is that it often isn't found for a long time, if ever. (18:00, 2 December 2005 (UTC))


 * He perhaps matters to Mrs. Seigenthaler? His children?  Careful with language, please, lol.