User:Pcb21

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Shy

One rejection of the slippery slope argument (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-November/008266.html)

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Preference-based display of AD/CE date preferences

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General

If an article is incorrect without a certain usage, always use the correct usage (e.g. direct quotes)
If it is natural for a particular topic area to have a certain usage, use that usage. (e.g. American topics should use American English spellings. This also makes sense for BC/AD. Consensus on what is "natural" should be determined preferably at the WikiProject level. If no appropriate WikiProject exists, the article level (but bearing in mind that the decision should carry over to adjacent topics).

- Includes borrowing usages from academia for academic topics? Other external sources?

If several usages make sense, continue to use the one adopted by the original author.

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Specific

User:Pcb21/ADCE testing page

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Useful things to subst:

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Stub categories; any use?

Has anyone got any evidence of stub categories being used usefully - i.e. as an aid to creating content? Or are they just another means of filling the time of wikifiddlers? Pcb21| Pete 13:12, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

I have no idea why you doubt with the project, but it's actually quite useful. Articles which went unnoticed for years start getting content months or weeks after we add them to categories, most of the time.[Snowflake]

- This always used to happen before there was a stub-sorting project, you know. Pcb21| Pete 20:05, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

If it didn't show results it wouldn't be an active project with so many members, would it? I am not asking you to change your views, but would you mind not bringing up unfounded questions and spamming our Discussion page? I assure you the partitipants of the project would be grateful. --Sn0wflake 19:13, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

- It could be an active but also pointless project, if the members were wikiaddicts but had run out of things that they know about (this is a perfectly possible phenomenom, and is meant as no slight against the members of that project). Unfounded questions? I don't think they are unfounded. Regular categories can be used to find articles on particular topics, with the stub threshold user preference used to identify stubs within those categories. I think characterizing my message as spam is unfair, since spam is bulk commercial email, and this was a single talk page message. Pcb21| Pete 20:05, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

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A stick to beat deletionists with

I just noticed that VfD denizens voted to keep the article on Angela some weeks ago. That is final proof, if it were needed, on the "systematic bias/deletion" problem. If notability threshold can be so low for self-referential topics, then it *must* be low for topics the outside world might actually care about. Pcb21| Pete 13:03, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

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Missing rivers

--upto number 11

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Still brilliant

On August 13, 2001 (the oldest date for which data exists) there were 110 articles on Brilliant prose. Standards have risen (a lot). Here I present the noble few articles (25 of them) that are still featured articles today. Good job on these articles guys!

Interesting as at August 13, 2001 had just over 4000 articles. Thus 1 article in 160 started then is of featured standard today. Nowadays roughly 1 article in 1000 is featured. A lot less. What are the reasons?

Articles that have existed longer have had more time to become good?
Topics started early are more likely to unimpeachably encyclopedic and thus more likely to be featurable?
An artefact of the featuring process - e.g. once an article is featured, it is less likey to be de-featured, even with the FARC vultures?
We wrote articles then, and cared less about trivia like formatting?

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Unpopular articles - negative value?

I recently heard an argument (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Belarus_mental_hospital_fire&diff=prev&oldid=11999776) that an unpopular article increases our maintenance load without adding enough value to the encyclopedia. This is a logical fallacy:

The natural metric of "damage due to vandalism" is number_of_page_views_of_vandalised_page. This is equal to the ratio of "won't-edit" page views to "will edit" page views. (We require a "will edit" page view to rollback the vandalism. Is there any evidence whatsoever that this ratio is higher for unpopular pages (i.e. those with a lower total number of page views)? If I had to guess, I would say the ratio is actually lower for these subjects - vandals, in their stupidity, tend not to have the wherewithal to get to arcane subjects at the same rate as less dumb individuals.

In short, I think this is just another way for deletion-minded contributors to try and get things that are not notable to them deleted.

Original comment: Comment: Is the topic significant enough that it will attract the critical mass of knowledgable reader/editors to keep the article safe from subtle vandalism? Can the article ever be expanded past this sub-stub stage in a way that will also be verifiable? If not, then the article increases the maintenance load on our population without adding enough value to the encyclopedia. That is, of course, a value judgement but I think a reasonable one.

NB the answer re expandability is of course "yes", but we may require an belarussian speaker! Pcb21| Pete 16:09, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

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Open notice (2)

This is a Wikipedia user page. If you are reading this on a site other than Wikipedia, click here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pcb21).

For your great services to the cause of toilet paper holders, you are hereby awarded the Blenheim Holder of the Third Degree.

Deletion on the grounds of non-notability achieves nothing. Deletionists tend to make some vague argument that deleting content somehow improves the encyclopedia. I am seeking evidence that this is the case. If you have any evidence at all - such as journalist saying "Wikipedia would be quite good except it has too many articles on non-notable topics" I would be very interested to see it. In my experience, Wikipedia critics are much more interested in verfiability not notability.

(Addendum: We have Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not ... but this page reads like a fait accompli. It would be great if one of the smarter inclusionists could write Why Wikipedia is not, and be convincing.

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Open notice

Please feel free to contact me if you see an article on vfd threatened with deletion when deletion policy states in should be kept. I do not consider such messages "spam" (which Wikipedia defines as "unsolicited commercial email" but the language is abused by some wikipedians.

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Wikispecies

The following is the part of Jimbo's March 2005 interview with Nature that relates to Wikispecies (http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050314/full/050314-17.html).

We have an encyclopaedia article on sharks, and the article discusses the movie Jaws, shark attacks, culture and so on. That's fine, because it's a general interest encyclopaedia article. But Wikispecies is supposed to be a reference work of species information for biologists, so it needs to be structured, with the scientific information and nothing else. There is some overlap and that's what was controversial, but it's a separate type of work.

Also, there are 1.8 million named species. We don't want to flood Wikipedia with 1.8 million articles that just say, "This species is a member of this genus, and that's all we have." That is more appropriate for Wikispecies: it's a starting point for dumping in data.

I'd like to respond to the inaccuracies in what Jimbo says about his own encyclopedia.

We have an encyclopaedia article on sharks..'

Well, no. We don't have an article on sharks. There are at least 50 articles in Category:Sharks.

, and the article discusses the movie Jaws,

No shark doesn't actually. Great White Shark might do.

shark attacks, culture and so on. That's fine, because it's a general interest encyclopaedia article

Indeed but the article has a great deal more biology than this stuff, and the shark is the least biological of all the shark articles. Jimbo deliberate paints a misleading picture of what Tree of Life articles are like to suit his own ends.

But Wikispecies is supposed to be a reference work of species information for biologists, so it needs to be structured, with the scientific information and nothing else. There is some overlap and that's what was controversial, but it's a separate type of work.

Tree of Life articles are heavily structured. That is the whole point of taxoboxes. Any material that could go in Wikispecies fits right at home at Wikipedia. Several people said this to Jimbo when Wikispecies was starting up but he chose to ignore it. It is only a "separate type of work" as much as a listing of towns in America is a separate work or biographies of French Presidents are a separate type of work. Picking on species in this way makes no sense.

This smacks of FUD. Notice the classic choice of language - "flood" - designed to conjure up an image of a Wikipedia overrun by stubs. Same language that politicans use to describe immigration, as it happens. Even if 1.8m million species articles appeared overnight, they would not affect the usefulness of 450,000 other articles not about species. Wikipedia isn't a printed book, you can use one part of it without going anywhere near other areas.

Secondly we saw how hard it was for 30,000 gazetter entries to get imported, by the time we have all species described in Wikipedia, there will be millions of other articles.

Notice also Jimbo's change of tack. Firstly he says that our species articles just contain pop trivia, now he says that there is nothing pop about the vast majority of species - just the scientific stuff. Thus for the vast majority of articles, Wikipedia and Wikispecies will contain exactly the same thing. Jimbo chooses to build his argument about a few oddities like the Great White Shark.

Finally the comment also completely ignores the fact that when nothing more than a species name is known, we don't create a whole page for it - we describe the whole genus in a single article (with a species listing), just like actual biological works do.

Of course we had this debate before when wikispecies was first mooted. Jimbo chose to ignore these rebuttals and continue with his mischaracterization of the ToL project. That he is still doing so makes me presume that it is deliberate rather than accidental.

My guess, and I should stress that this is only a guess, is that Jimbo privately agreed with Benedikt to set up wikispecies and it was a done deal before we ever had the "community debate" on the issue. For if the decision had gone with the consensus we'd have one ToL project, not two.

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Back

So I am coming back a little earlier than the originally intended (I think the block was a month). But I still think my views about how to create Wikipedia were once mainstream and are now the wiki equivalent of whacky lefty liberal. Some thoughts among many:

Too many processes, bits of bureaucracy and arbitrary numerical guidelines.
Having stewards and bureaucrats and admins and arbitrators and board members and votes is too much.
Honest but ignorant people killing articles in the name of NPOV (but not the spirit).
Metadata; overbearing focus on the editor rather than the reader.
Lack of respect for the wiki-concept. The idea that a keep vote should carry as much weight as a delete. Or more frighteningly, the existence of a culture that means that people don't even think that that idea is peculiar.
A lack of a fun atmosphere. Lack of back-slapping for writing good articles, barnstars are given out for fighting trolls.

I think one of the most amusing examples of this disagreeable culture was my own blocking - "self-blocks are against policy". Have you read the talk page that gave rise to that policy? Should we laugh, should we cry?

Anyway the break is over. I've removed all non-main-namespace stuff from watchlist. I will try just writing and editing non-controversial articles again and see if it is enjoyable. If it is, great! - stuff the wider project I am having fun providing a free resource. If it is not, then I can leave again in good conscience.

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Mirrors

Fact of the day: thefreedictionary.com, a semi-compliant user of wikipedia material, receives nine million unique visitors per month. Anecdotal evidence suggests it is by far the most successful clone. I wonder how much Nick Simonov who owns and runs the site makes from it, and whether he feels any guilt about the shoddy manner he treats copyright compliance. Current project: find out how much he donates to the wmf. Pcb21| Pete 16:12, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thefreedictionary to be more popular than Wikipedia? http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=2y&size=large&compare_sites=wikipedia.org&y=t&url=http://www.thefreedictionary.com/

GOOD NEWS: Thefreedictionary seems to have lost its lofty place at the top of Google search, and its Alexa rank is falling accordingly. Did Google change their algorithm? Either way Wikipedia is riding high compared to its mirrors. This is a good thing for the ongoing sucess of the project.

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Deletion today

Deletion today: I was truly amazed to see the debate at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/La La. How on earth have we got ourselves into the situation where there is actually a reasonable number of people wanting to delete that?

It was kept, thank goodness. Though I see there is now a push to delete tv guides. We really should keep them. The logic to get rid of them is beyond me. I saw one person arguing that Wikipedia would get lost in a sea of Star Trek articles if we carried on. Errr... how daft can you be... there have been what a couple of hundred star trek episodes.... they will not drown out 400,000 other articles!

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Metadata

Metadata: Just noticed that on template_talk:cleanup I have been waging war against metadata clutter since at least March '04, and have mentioned the metadata/references tab repeatedly since June '04... I guess that makes it a hobby horse.... but I still strongly believe in it....

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Deletion

If the links below here are red, the corresponding articles have been deleted, but probably shouldn't have been

List of incidents famously considered great blunders
JT's Stockroom (I don't understand why WP not being commercial prohibits encyclopedia articles about commercial entities (except geek-related ones)
ScottMoonen
Caretaker Gazette, Allan Jenkins, Belarus mental hospital fire, TSG (valid redirect)
Saklan Valley School
Choice One Communications
Blake Junior High School
Media:Dennis Taylor 0001.jpg
Full Nice Handbag Co -- personal copy kept at User:Pcb21/Full Nice Handbag Co as a symbolic protest. The margin in favour of deletion and failing to undelete was very slight in both cases. Pcb21| Pete 00:37, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

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My articles

FAs:

London Congestion Charge -- Sperm Whale -- Hutton Inquiry -- James Bulger -- Humpback Whale -- Orca -- Blue Whale -- Whale song

Main page:

Hypergraph -- Minke Whale -- Ian Huntley -- Hutton Inquiry -- Whale song -- High North Alliance -- Stella McCartney -- Kimberley Process -- Aboriginal whaling

Wrote:

Atlantic Northern Right Whale -- Pacific Northern Right Whale -- Southern Right Whale -- Bowhead Whale -- Fin Whale -- Sei Whale -- Bryde's Whale -- Pygmy Bryde's Whale -- Blue Whale -- Northern Minke Whale -- Southern Minke Whale -- Balaenoptera omurai -- Humpback Whale -- Eobalaenoptera harrisoni -- Gray Whale, Eschrichtius robustus -- Pygmy Right Whale -- Amazon River Dolphin -- Chinese River Dolphin -- Ganges and Indus River Dolphin -- La Plata Dolphin -- Narwhal -- Beluga -- Finless Porpoise -- Harbour Porpoise -- Vaquita -- Spectacled Porpoise -- Burmeister's Porpoise -- Dall's Porpoise -- Sperm Whale -- Dwarf Sperm Whale -- Pygmy Sperm Whale -- Cuvier's Beaked Whale -- Arnoux's Beaked Whale -- Baird's Beaked Whale -- Tasman Beaked Whale -- Indo-Pacific Beaked Whale -- Northern Bottlenose Whale -- Southern Bottlenose Whale -- Hector's Beaked Whale -- True's Beaked Whale -- Gervais' Beaked Whale -- Sowerby's Beaked Whale -- Gray's Beaked Whale -- Pygmy Beaked Whale -- Andrew's Beaked Whale -- Bahamonde's Beaked Whale -- Hubb's Beaked Whale -- Ginko-toothed Beaked Whale -- Stejneger's Beaked Whale -- Layard's Beaked Whale -- Blainville's Beaked Whale -- Commerson's Dolphin -- Chilean Dolphin -- Heaviside's Dolphin -- Hector's Dolphin -- Rough-toothed Dolphin -- Atlantic Humpback Dolphin -- Indian Humpback Dolphin -- Pacific Humpback Dolphin -- Tucuxi -- Bottlenose Dolphin -- Indian Ocean Bottlenose Dolphin -- Pantropical Spotted Dolphin -- Atlantic Spotted Dolphin -- Spinner Dolphin -- Clymene Dolphin -- Striped Dolphin -- Short-beaked Common Dolphin -- Long-beaked Common Dolphin -- Arabian Common Dolphin -- Fraser's Dolphin -- White-beaked Dolphin -- Atlantic White-sided Dolphin -- Pacific White-sided Dolphin -- Dusky Dolphin -- Black-chinned Dolphin -- Hourglass Dolphin -- Northern Right Whale Dolphin -- Southern Right Whale Dolphin -- Risso's Dolphin -- Melon-headed Whale -- Pygmy Killer Whale -- False Killer Whale -- Orca -- Long-finned Pilot Whale -- Short-finned Pilot Whale -- Irrawaddy Dolphin -- Girsanov's theorem -- Radon-Nikodym derivative -- Cyril Stanley Smith -- World's busiest airport -- Kangerlussuaq -- Transportation in Greenland -- Love Actually -- Cyril Smith -- Ian Huntley -- Perverting the course of justice -- Continental shelf -- Her Majesty's Prison Service -- Executive Agency -- Virginia Water -- Gavyn Davies -- Greg Dyke -- Trevor Kavanagh -- I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! -- John Fashanu -- Rod Hull -- Kerry McFadden -- Katharine Gun -- Ant and Dec -- Richard and Judy -- Vic and Bob -- Danny Baker -- Keith Chegwin -- Ulrika Jonsson -- Jamie Bulger -- Child's Play -- Liverpool Daily Post & Echo -- Peter Henry Goldsmith, Baron Goldsmith -- Parole Board -- Peter Murray Taylor -- Criminal Justice Act -- Manchester Evening News -- Press Complaints Commission -- 1985 World Snooker Championship final -- Clements Markham -- Ranulph Fiennes -- British referendum on EU constitution -- Sara Cox -- Ainsley Harriot -- Jeremy Spake -- Johnny Vaughan -- Gordon Ramsay -- Judith Chalmers -- Jo Moore -- Craig David -- Kate Adie -- Ian McShane -- Celebrity chef -- Human Rights Act -- Human Rights Act (UK) -- John O'Farrell -- Andrew Neil -- major chunks of Whaling -- Agreement on Cooperation in Research, Conservation and Management of Marine Mammals in the North Atlantic -- North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission -- The Big Breakfast -- Beluga -- Gaby Roslin -- Denise Van Outen -- Kelly Brook -- Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society -- highest snooker break -- Sharron Davies -- Rick Adams (television presenter) -- Fathers 4 Justice -- Fathers 4 Justice House of Commons protest -- Fathers 4 Justice Tower Bridge protest -- Contact centre -- The Company -- The Great Dictator -- British Film Institute -- Brian Moore (novelist) -- Brian Moore (commentator) -- David Blaine -- Whale -- British Board of Film Classification -- London Heathrow Airport -- Hutton Inquiry -- Referendum Party -- Steve Davis -- Dead cat bounce -- whale song -- Francesco Crispi -- Catherine Gore -- Francis Beaumont -- Charles Ruggles -- High North Alliance -- Category:Cetaceans -- Red Dragon -- Jason Lee -- Speak English Or Die -- Jason Lee (footballer) -- Orthogastropoda -- Sammy Fain -- La Grande Arm�e -- Easy -- Thoroughly Modern Millie -- Mack Gordon -- Whale behaviour -- Heather Langenkamp -- Baise-moi -- Ned Washington -- John Nott -- Robert Falcon Scott -- Robert S. Scott -- 2001 UK foot and mouth disease -- Thomas-Everard family -- Public inquiry -- LVMH -- FRED (jeweller) -- Luxury good -- Hennessy -- Moet and Chandon -- Stella McCartney -- Straits of Malacca -- Geoff Boycott -- Nguyen Dan Que -- Kimberley Process -- World Diamond Council -- Aboriginal whaling -- Whaling in Japan -- Whaling in the Faroe Islands -- Northern Fur Seal -- Antarctic Fur Seal -- Subantarctic Fur Seal -- Lancelet -- Protopterus -- Ilulissat -- Bob Kiley -- Guadalupe Fur Seal -- Juan Fernandez Fur Seal -- Galapagos Fur Seal -- Children in Need -- yield curve -- short rate model -- Hull-White model -- Foreign exchange option -- Time Out -- Monte Carlo methods in finance -- Feltham Young Offenders' Institute -- Newton Vineyard -- Twinflower -- Kenilworth -- Nicholas Witchell -- Tinkisso River -- Lofa County -- Striped Polecat -- The Minch -- Tiger snake -- National Marine Mammal Laboratory -- and a whole stack of short articles as part of the Wikipedia:2004 Encyclopedia topics project.

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Cetacea

There is to be a German WikiReader about cetacea based partly on translations of my articles. There has also been talk of an en wikireader.

.: Commendation :.

Pete,

For your leadership and abounding contributions to Project Cetaceans, I present to you this Original Barnstar! The whales and dolphins on Wikipedia have a bigger home because of your work!

Congratulations, Pete!

- by KJen74 on 2 January, 2005.

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Licencing

Dual licencing magic:

	Multi-licensed with the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License versions 1.0 and 2.0
I agree to multi-license my text contributions, unless otherwise stated, under the GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) and the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license version 1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0/) and version 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/). Please be aware that other contributors might not do the same, so if you want to use my contributions under the Creative Commons terms, please check the CC dual-license and Multi-licensing guides.

Retrieved from "http://wikipedia.cas.ilstu.edu/index.php/User:Pcb21"

Categories: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0 Dual License | Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Dual License

User:Pcb21

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Preference-based display of AD/CE date preferences

General

Specific

Useful things to subst:

Stub categories; any use?

A stick to beat deletionists with

Missing rivers

Still brilliant

Unpopular articles - negative value?

Open notice (2)

Open notice

Wikispecies

Back

Mirrors

Deletion today

Metadata

Deletion

My articles

Cetacea

Licencing

Views

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