User:Fuzheado

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WikipediaWeekly
Wikipedia:WikipediaWeekly
Episode 50:Wikipedia Story
May 28, 2008
A call by Andrew Lih to have Wikipedians write the final chapter of his book, The Wikipedia Story (How a bunch of nobodies created the world's greatest encyclopedia).
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See also: m:User:Fuzheado


Andrew Lih is currently researching a book about Wikipedia and its community. He's currently a regular host of the Wikipedia Weekly podcast.

Do you have a great story about how you joined Wikipedia or what you've done in the community? He's currently writing a book about Wikipedia, due to be published in Fall 2007. Please feel free to drop him a note and tell him.

He formerly taught at the University of Hong Kong, where he studied participatory journalism in the form of blogs and wikis, and at Columbia University where he helped start the new media program. See the Wikipedia:School and university projects page for more information. Sometimes he can be found at the Chinese Wikipedia.

He has been an editor since July 2003, and was made an admin/sysop October 3, 2003, when he passed the RfA process with a grand total of six yes votes. [1]

Meetups

I've been to meetups with Wikipedians all over the world, including:

Classes

I was one of the first to use Wikipedia in the university setting for instruction (Summer 2003), and CNN did a story about it. A full list of projects can be found at the Wikipedia:School and university projects page. Latest work can be found here:

Creations

While he's started many articles and pages on Wikipedia, here are ones that are notable, and that he's (sort of) proud of creating:

Useful pages

This episode of The Simpsons always reminds of me of Wikipedia.

Quotes

"You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is: Never get involved in a land war in Asia." -Vizzini, from The Princess Bride

Media

"Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock." ~Ben Hecht

"Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for that rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge." ~Erwin Knoll

"The reporter is the daily prisoner of clocked facts. On all working days, he is expected to do his best in one swift swipe at each story." Jim Bishop

"A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself." ~Arthur Miller

"Journalists cover words and delude themselves into thinking they have committed journalism." ~Hedrick Smith

"With all the mass media concentrated in a few hands, the ancient faith in the competition of ideas in the free market seems like a hollow echo of a much simpler day." ~Kingman Brewster, Jr.

"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." ~Malcolm X

"The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they allow. Bigness means weakness." ~Eric Sevareid, "The Press and the People," television program, 1959

Others

"Fate is just what you call it when you don't know the name of the person screwing you over." Lois, from Malcolm in the Middle

"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organised violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non westerners never do." -Samuel P Huntington

"Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried." -Winston Churchill

"When you are the good guys, you've got to act like the good guys." -Lindsey Graham, Republican Senator from South Carolina, on the reported abuses at Abu Ghraib prison

"Among all the things I'm going to tell you today about being a journalist, all you have to remember is two words: governments lie." - US journalist I.F. Stone, to journalism students

"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." -Jimmy Wales, July 2004

Would Martin Luther King like Wikipedia?

Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve.... You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. -Martin Luther King, Jr.

Think Wikipedia is too combative?

Maybe not as much as you think. See some statistics for how many actual NPOV disputes there are in Wikipedia. User:Fuzheado/NPOV disputes (20 Sep 2003)

Shared watchlists

The idea of "shared watchlists" often comes up. You can do this type of thing by convention using normal pages, and the "Related changes" option. Example created as an experiment under my user page, but now a generally used page:

and the related list:

Experiences

Here's a running log of what I've experienced so far in setting 80 students loose on Wikipedia:

  • Namespaces. Some students were confused by the different namespaces, so one group created their entry as "Wikipedia:Victoria_Peak" and wound up editing that for a while before moving to "Victoria_Peak"
  • Plagiarism. One student mistakenly thought that breaking one Wikipedia entry into two was 'plagiarism' because she was copying the information onto another page. I had to convince her that because it was internal to Wikipedia, it was like rearranging furniture inside your home, not stealing someone else's sofa. So to speak.
  • Copying. Many had to adjust to what they were used to doing - copying. Some students lifted entire sections from tourism or government Web sites. Showing the power of collaborative editing, Wikipedians struck them out, or removed copyrighted photos. Good for Wikipedians. Students were warned before the project and were warned sternly once again -- no material can be copied into Wikipedia without permission. The practice still persists, however.
  • Moving around. Changing names of entries confused some, but they got it eventually. The Apple Daily was the original entry, and was changed to Apple Daily. Discussion ensued on the boards, until people realized what happened, and it was resolved.
  • Writing style. Folks were unaccustomed to using disinterested, third person, NPOV style. Having been first-person writers most of their lives, most used "I" and "we," as well as the imperative, "Let us talk about the car industry..." Because the content was about something they knew and loved - Hong Kong - many took up the role of cheerleader, and could not resist using phrases such as "the most beautiful" or "the excellent efficiency." I welcome theories to help explain this tendency. Some have said Chinese language speakers tend to the more flowery and expressive terminology.
  • Enthusiasm. Students got enthusiastic after a critical mass of information was put into their entries. They started building on each others' work and picked up momentum on their progress. Some got quite carried away with photos, like on the MTR article.

Know when to finish

畫蛇添足 (pinyin: hua4 she2 tian1 zu2) Literally: Adding legs when painting a snake. Moral: Don't ruin your work by unnecessary additions

List of Chinese proverbs

Templates

{{fairuse}} - {{stub}} - {{disambig}} - {{vfd}} - {{spoiler}} - {{NPOV}} - {{Disputed}} - {{protected}} - {{delete}} - {{copyvio2}} - Thanks for experimenting with Wikipedia. Your test worked, and has now been removed. Please use [[Wikipedia:Sandbox]] for any other tests you want to do, since testing material in articles will normally be removed quickly. Please see the [[Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers|welcome page]] if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. Thanks.

For images

[[image:Octopus card.jpg|thumb|250px|An Octopus Card, used in Hong Kong]]

Madanmohan Rao's 8C's

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