Wikipedia talk:Pushing to 1.0

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WP1.0 editorial team discussions – Core topics discussions – Wiki sort discussions – FAs first discussions – Work via WikiProjects discussions

I've created this page to catalog some of my ideas for our push towards 1.0. But rather than it being an essay or bullet points written just by me, I'd like for people to treat it as a place where we can come to some community consensus about what to do. - Jimbo Wales

Contents

[edit] Frozen online versions

Is it possible to get a frozen online version of Wikipedia in parallel with the open (editable) version? The frozen version will only contain selected articles of good quality, which have been subject to peer review. The frozen version will be released as of a particular date and will no longer remain open for edit by anyone. Outdated frozen versions will be archived and newer versions will replace them. The purpose of having such a version is allowing researchers to quote Wikipedia as a reference. Otherwise Wikipedia has no credibility as a source of reference since anyone can edit it anytime.-Arman Aziz 08:22, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

It's in the works, and last I heard, being coded. That said, there are already frozen versions in a way, as you can click "permanent link" to the left of any page and retrieve a permanent, immutable URL that points to a particular revision of a page. Titoxd(?!?) 08:25, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing this out. I tried the "permanent link" feature for a couple of articles and found that I can edit even the permanent link article. If that is the case, then how is it different from the current Wikipedia? Further, the permanent link doesn't have any specific version name. What I'm proposing is - can we have link to a frozen version (Say Wikipedia 0.5) available online in such a way that when I say I'm quoting this from Article ABC of Wikipedia 0.5 - anyone can go to that page of that version and find the quoted line, and cannot change it.
If there is more discussion on this topic (permanent link / online frozen version) on some other page of wikipedia can someone please point out the page name. -Arman Aziz 10:42, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, you can edit it, but that edit affects the current revision. That URL will always point to the revision it originally did. Even if you edit on top of the revision, the link to the revision never changes. As to page, the only thing that comes somewhat close is this page from Wikimania 2006. Titoxd(?!?) 05:05, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I conducted a small experiment and found out that what you said is not entirely true. The "Permanent Link" button always direct to the "Latest" edit - which is same as the live wikipedia. You can check yourself - go for the Permanent link for Tagore - you'll see the revision I made just a few minutes back! - Arman Aziz 09:31, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Anyways, even if this is a bug and it is fixed - this permanent link feature is not giving me the benefit I was looking for. I am looking for a "permanently frozen" version which the wikipedia community certifies to be of "reasonably acceptable standard" - so that I can safely quote it and be confident that anyone can go back to that version and "verify" the correctness / authenticity of my quote. - Arman Aziz 09:31, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Opposition

I am opposed to a CD/DVD version or any other version other than online. Wikipedia1.0 ought to an online encyclopaedia, a subset of Wikipedia, with articles which are certified as complete and accurate and then protected from vandalism. I am not interested in working on any other kind of WP1.0. Adam 15:02, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Fine, but I think there's plenty of people who are interested in CD/DVD/paper versions of Wikipedia. Look at it this way; regardless of whether 1.0 is a set of "locked" Wikipedia articles or a publication on fixed media, the process of selecting and improving articles to a "complete" standard is a common goal, right? — Matt 13:35, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Why is someone opposed to a version on removable media? I can't see the problem, I plain simply can't see it. I'm lost here. Samboy 14:41, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • I'm sure there are people interested in a CD/DVD version but I'm not sure there's a market. I would expect that more computers are connected to the net than have have DVD drives, for one. Plus it seems odd to be putting effort into a 'hardcopy' encyclopedia when all the others are dead/dying, precisely because of the online versions. Dan100 12:02, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)
    • There definitely is a market. The German Wikipedia CD was published in September 2004 and has already sold out all 40,000 produced CD (and was downloaded for free about 100,000-200,000 times). The second edition, which is a CD bundled with a DVD, is being prepared. There would be even more demand for the English edition - not everyone has broadband Internet access at all times. - Marcika 05:19, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
      • Out of interest what tech was used to make that CD? anyone can download the dumps and ram them on a CD/DVD but setting up a full mw install is kinda overkill for personal use. Plugwash 18:14, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Extension?

I don't understand "extension" as used on the project page. Maurreen 17:00, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

By extension it is meant that the publishing standards (i.e. electronic (CD/DVD) and print) must take a usable (0.5) or featured (1.0) article as their basic building block. However, for publishing reasons things like format may need to change; and there may be changes needed for legal reasons. I think Mandrake want us to remove all fair use images for their forthcoming DVD release of Wikipedia. I'll amend the project page to make it clearer. :ChrisG 12:32, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Basic topics

Today I created User:Maurreen/Basic topics to list a small selection of core topics. Maurreen 00:58, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Is this even possible?

Before I start, let me just point out that I think the basic idea is great - the more people that use us/know about us, the merrier.

HOWEVER, I just don't see this as being possible. For starters, if one of the goals are to spread knowledge to places where Internet access is uncommon/very poor, how will we spread the word? We can't count on people to walk into a book/software store, see it, and be curious. And advertising on TV/in papers in every country is unlikely too.

Secondly, who's to say what is used and what isn't? Sure, stubs and the like would undoubtedly be excluded, but unless we have enough "editors" to form a (at least somewhat) representative group of Wikipedia users, how do we avoid excluding articles that really SHOULD have been included? And continuing along that line, how do we avoid forgetting an article that gives a (highly needed) definition of a term used in another article?

Thirdly, a book/CD version of the English Wikipedia would appeal mostly to those who speak a rather well English, of which most will have a way of accessing the Internet. Although this could be remedied by making similar editions of the international Wikipedias, I don't think many of those are ready for that.

On a final note, if we make a printed edition (on paper, that is), we will need some way of converting the hyperlinks so readers can tell that there is an article on that particular topic elsewhere in the book. Otherwise, much of the usefulness of Wikipedia is gone. --Pidgeot 15:44, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The short answer is that we won't know whether it's possible unless we try. Maurreen
On the hyperlink issue, I do believe there has been work done in this area- there are already several wiki to PDF convertors, and people are working on different ways of dealing with that issue. Lyellin 19:51, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

There already are at least two German-language WikiReaders. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:47, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

Sorry to burst everyone's bubble, but I think that creating a version 1.0 on a storage medium of any kind is not possible at all. This encyclopedia gets bigger every second. It's like the joke on Futurama when they all went to Mars University. Their library had all the information in the universe and all you saw were Disk 1 and Disk 2. You can compare it to the task of putting the internet on a disk. Even if you forgot that no way would a storage medium ever come close to the capacity necessary, it still isn't possible because the the internet changes less than every millisecond.

Now if you want to put only important articles on a disk, then you have another issue. How will people determine what's important? Wikipedia could set up a voting system and people who visit pages can vote for them. And then you could pick like the top 1000 or so voted sites and put them in the on a disk or on paper. (The vote would have to be by some given date since the sites will change in position in the polls every day.) That would work, but would it be what people want? You'd get random stuff put in the encyclopedia that most other people would think is not important and should not be in encyclopedia. (It will be like clicking "Random page" 1000 times. Check out Ingoolemo's 45 articles in the m:List of articles all languages should have under the "New goal idea" section. Now, you see what I mean by "random.") In addition, things that are current and ephemeral will probably be voted higher the things that have always been important, but just aren't interesting. What's important to me may not be important to you and vice-versa. And what's important to me today may not be important to me next week.

If people want to make an encyclopedia called "1000 Random and Possibly Interesting Things from Wikipedia as of May 28 2005", then I believe that could be made. -Hyad 08:14, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

  • I think there would be a general trend from more-important to less-important topics, which would be acceptable, although there might be a problem with systemic bias. meta:En validation topics has some discussion on rating pages by their "Encyclopedic general interest". Kappa 08:44, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Watchlists

OK, so this may seem to be a non-related point, but how many articals are there that arnt on anyones whatchlists ?

I ask this because, corect me if im wrong, people only put articals on there whach lists that they are intrested in, and are therefor up to some kind of standerd that they set, othewise they wouldent be intersted on having it in there whatchlist. just a quick thought, might this be a way of seeing if n articals likly to be good or not? tooto 02:12, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

even if it dosnt help with this, then it would still be intresting to know ;-)

We currently have no way to know the number of people watchlisting an article.
And as one example contradicting your hypothesis, I sometimes watchlist articles that are so desparately in need of help that I need to spend some time with them at a later point, and "stash" them on my watchlist so I remember to go back later. Bantman 01:11, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)
I also tend to watch any article that I notice getting regularly vandalized or POV'd. Mr. Billion 18:31, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Long-term archival

Maybe this is kind of silly, but are there any plans to make archives of the wikipedia that will be able to survive for a long time? I'm talking nuclear wars, solar flares, collapses of empires, dark ages, etc. CDs, hard drives, and the like, even if there are thousands of copies distributed all over the world, don't really cut it. Imagine if we had the equivalent from 5000 years ago. (Then again, maybe we do. I'm no archaeologist. I imagine most of the records from that far back were destroyed or degraded to dust, though.) Just a thought. - Omegatron 02:17, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

I think it is kind of silly - we have no idea what sorts of weapons will be made in the future. It will also run against the laws of thermodynamics unless we can come up with a really clever way of harnessing useful energy. But also see Category:Time capsules. Brianjd 13:51, 2005 Jan 29 (UTC)

the single most succesful method of preserving information over millennia is to inscribe it in stone. so get a chisel and start chipping away beginning with the featured articles. dab (ᛏ) 08:07, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Clay is good too, but I hear you need to burn a building down on top of it. silsor 08:25, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

Hey, it's not that silly. Wikipedia is an excellent project, and longevity is a reasonable thing to want. I don't know of any current actual efforts in the direction described by Omegatron, but it's a good thing to think about.
Here's some related topics:

I don't know how KEO has determined that their data disks will last 50,000 years, but if they're right, Wikipedia could be backed up on the same sorts of disks. User:Jose_Icaza even suggested using Wikipedia itself as their "modern Library of Alexandria," but I don't know if anything became of that.
So there you go. If Jean-Marc Philippe can put 50,000-year-durable data disks with enormous amounts of information on a satellite with a decaying orbit, concievably so could we. Or we could try a more down-to-earth approach and try just keeping the disks on earth, eh? Maybe if Wikipedia becomes a sizeable enough phenomenon, the Smithsonian or some other organization might preserve a few disks for us.
PS: Another related topic: James Lovelock (the Gaia Theory originator) has apparently proposed that a "startup manual for civilization" be kept handy somewhere in the event of a global catastrophe. --Mr. Billion 19:16, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I have no idea how you'd doi t, and I think it's a good idea. But there's flaw: Wikipedia will be much more advanced by the time this backup is needed. The world isn't going to collapse as soon as this archive is made. HereToHelp 21:40, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Baseline revision

I have started a "baseline revision" experiment. I figure it overlaps with this effort. I have started off our first attempt to find a baseline revision for Common Unix Printing System. The proposal is here and is locked in to stop vandals from editing the URL to the revision: Common Unix Printing System/Proposed baseline. See the talk page to see the objections and review for the proposed baseline revision. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:14, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC) |

[edit] Audio articles

User:Fbd has made a suggestion on Village pump proposals (at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Audio Article) of creating audio versions of wikipedia articles, i.e. an edition accessible to the blind. This would obviously require static versions of the articles, so 1.0 would be ideal for this. I don't know how we would go about co-ordinating this or whether anyone has already tried. What do people think? --—Preceding unsigned comment added by User:SteveW (talk • contribs) 14:17, 8 Apr 2005

I think this is a good idea, but do we necessarily need static versions of the artices; what's the argument for this? Wouldn't a reasonably fresh version of a Featured Article suffice? — Matt Crypto 20:22, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I just meant that we obviously couldn't redo audio versions for every page update - we'd have to base it on a specific version. SteveW | Talk 20:28, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Someone else clearly had this idea as well: I've just found Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia

Wikipedia 1.0 pretty much requires static versions. A problem even found with featured articles is, how do you know exactly which version is considered "validated" enough to be chosen to be the static version? I was just about to comment on this and suggest that Spoken Articles and their corresponding texts are excellent criteria for static versions, but y'all beat me to it. This is one pretty good way of determining the quality of an article, anyway: somebody who took the time to read an entire article aloud and then upload it as an .ogg would very likely pick a safe and reliable version. You can't easily change an audio file, so being a spoken article is a very good "safety" marker. All the average vandal wants to do is spend two seconds inserting OMG PWNED into an article to get a weird thrill.
Two problems, though: One, there are currently relatively few spoken articles, so this criterion wouldn't be widely applicable; and two, if spoken articles do become much more common, the chances of somebody either mistakenly or maliciously uploading a bad or flawed audio file will increase, reducing the value of this safety marker.
So as time goes on and there are multiple possible spoken article versions, we'll run into much the same problems that we have with text articles, although on a smaller scale. You'll still have to balance up-to-dateness, bias, and reliability. Mr. Billion 18:11, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] New goal idea

It occured to me a few hours ago, and I think it's totally brilliant (why wouln't I?).

A good milestone in the push to 1.0 might be this: every article in the m:List of articles all languages should have should be featured. Since these ~1000 articles represent, theoretically, some of the most important topics for us to cover, if they're all featured, it means good things for the quality of our encyclopaedia.

Current progress: we have 600 featured articles, 45 of which are on the list. The rest of the items on the list have not been promoted.

The featured articles that are on the list are: Abraham Lincoln - Albert Einstein - Algorithm - Bahá'í Faith - Baseball - Bicycle - Big Bang - Black hole - Buddhism - Byzantine Empire - Chess - Christianity - Coca-Cola - Comet - Diamond - Economics - Elizabeth I of England - Elizabeth II of England - Euro - European Union - Evolution - Ferdinand Magellan - Galileo Galilei - Glass - Go (board game) - Greek mythology - Helium - Hinduism - Jazz - Julius Caesar - Mahatma Gandhi - Niagara Falls - Olympic Games - Poetry - Quantum mechanics - Richard Feynman - Supply and demand - Tank - Tea - The Beatles - Tony Blair - Tuberculosis - Victoria of the United Kingdom - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - World War I

→Iñgōlemo← talk 07:00, 2005 May 19 (UTC)

[edit] Mandrake

"For instance, Mandrake requires us to remove all fair use images for legal reasons for their intended DVD release of Wikipedia."

Who is Mandrake? I haven't heard of this organization. Mr. Billion 19:42, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Mandrake Linux now Mandriva. Ericd 20:18, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Current status

Anyone knows what the current status is of this project? I think if we could get a Wikipedia 1.0 DVD/book it would create an amazing public awareness. The featured articles would be a good place to start since there's already 700 of them. Then we could create a list of topics of which articles we want to include (ie. all countries, history articles on every period, all science topics, etc) and work on the missing articles to get the best 10,000 or 100,000 or whichever. Also since all text is free, it doesn't have to be Jimbo behind the project, anyone with the time and resources could start making this happen. Elfguy 16:54, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Be happy with a snapshot of Wikipedia

Elfguy, I like your recent comments (good one on 1.0 Editorial Team, too). I have two main things to say:

  1. Take a snapshot and work from there - First of all, Wikipedia online will never be a very reliable source of information[1]; I don't see why we would expect a print or CD version to be any better (that's what Encarta and Britannica, etc. are for). Would it take too long to take a full (or a limited number of featured articles) "snapshot" of Wikipedia, distribute the static documents either on a separate wiki or on CD to a group of editors, and simply scan through the articles making sure spam and copyrighted material is kept to a minimum? Otherwise, don't worry about checking all the facts and grammar - it's our wonderful Wikipedia, scrapes, bruises, and all it's living glory!
  2. Who is in charge? - Is there actually someone who is going to take the reigns and work through all the legal and logistical details of this project? I've found a flurry of different topics on Wikipedia 1.0, but there doesn't seem to be a central meeting point. Category:Wikipedia_1.0 is a good starting place, but Wikimedia's meta:Wikipedia_on_CD/DVD initiative seems to be divorced from this discussion. See also meta:Wikimedia_and_Mandriva.

I don't want to sound adamant and pouty about this, but I wanted to get something out there to get this thing rolling faster!

  • 1. ^  This is not saying that we shouldn't try to make it as reliable as possible. I'm just saying that Wikipedia is inherently imperfect.

--J. J. 19:23, 2005 August 12 (UTC)

"Take the reigns" ==> "Take the reins". Unless it was a clever pun. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:36, August 13, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Manageable size

I'm not sure all of WP will fit on a disk. How about starting with something much smaller, perhaps along the lines of this list? It could be the "alpha" version, as a stage to grow and learn from, something that might build momentum for a larger effort. Maurreen (talk) 09:09, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

  • I think it would be just too hard to get all 700k articles out, and take too much space. But a DVD could hold the best 10k or even 100k of them if we limit the images to just public domain / GDFL ones. Elfguy 17:07, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion on quality standards

I think this idea of a DVD and/or paper copy of Wikipedia is a great idea. I for one would buy a copy- like many others I can't afford to have the internet at home, and also I prefer to read a book than a monitor.

The quality issue seems to have been (quite rightly) a perennial one here - may I suggest the use of a system we use in WP:Chem? We have over a thousand chemical compounds we are sifting through and trying to improve to what we call "A-class" standard. We set ourselves a list of around 400 compounds, this is our equivalent of List of articles all languages should have. We track overall progress at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Chemicals, but the nitty-gritty work is done at our worklist where we periodically assess each article according to our assessment criteria as "stub", "start", "B-class" or "A-class". Once articles reach or get close to "A-class" they get discussed in detail on the A-class articles page. The system is still fairly new, and there are only a handful of us, but we have already seen a lot of progress, because people can easily see what needs to be done and there is a sense of achievement when we get there.

One problem with limiting things to featured articles is that it will only be a handful of articles. I expect that within a couple of years we will have at least 300 good articles on the most significant chemical compounds. If this were matched across Wikipedia as a whole (and there are a LOT of very good non-FA articles out there) we would probably have at least 10-20,000 really good articles, perhaps more. If we set up a broader system of goals, assessment and tracking we would know what was out there. Could this system of goals, assessment and tracking used on WP:Chem be adapted for this project too? Walkerma 21:11, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good in theory. But as with many ideas, I think we lack two things to pull it off -- the right leader and a critical mass of energy. Maurreen (talk) 05:59, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Alternative 1.0 Idea

I was just thinking about the current criteria for Wikipedia 1.0, and it seems slightly unrealistic. More importantly, I think I may have come up with a way for us to achieve most of those current goals (and some new ones) with much less effort. My idea is basically that instead of Wikipedia 1.0 being a subset of certified articles, we should just slap everything onto DVDs and have the software check the internet for the newest version. That is, the veiwing software would automagically download only the differences between the online copy and the local copy, or if no internet connection is available, simply revert to the local copy. That would simultanously minimize the need for certified articles, and potentially greatly reduce the amount of server bandwidth needed. What do you think of this idea? I know many people would like to see certified articles, but the task of doing this for anything but an extreme subset of Wikipedia is immense, and in my opinion the effort would be better served improving the online version. Also, I am strongly against the idea of a paper version, as that would A. cost money, and B. lack all the editing advantages of the electronic version.the1physicist 04:31, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

This has merit. Maurreen (talk) 05:57, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
We have to assume that the "static" version (whether paper or DVD) would appeal mostly to people without regular internet access. Therefore, most copies would be updated seldom or never. Whatever was shipped would be what most users would read. A snapshot of Wikipedia at any given moment includes vandalism, heavily POV passages, English so garbled it barely seems like English, and perhaps even an outright hoax or two. I'd hate to send out something like that in a comparatively static format. JamesMLane 09:05, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
  • People without internet access would rather have access to a flawed encyclopedia than nothing at all. Kappa 14:42, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
I like this idea, though I would see it not as an alternative to 1.0, it is something different altogether. Sure, it would be full of errors, but no more so than the fully online version! I think it's more work than the poster suggests, however- at least as much as producing a paper version. Walkerma 14:35, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Kappa's comment, but the choice isn't between publishing a complete snapshot and doing nothing at all. I prefer the alternative of issuing a DVD in which there's been some form of screening/certification. If 1.0 were published on paper, of course, the exercise of some selectivity would be a practical necessity. Errors in a static version are much different from the same errors in the online version, because the latter are readily subject to correction (through the "enough eyeballs" principle that's at the heart of the wiki approach). JamesMLane 17:53, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Could somebody knowledgeable on the topic above comment on the feasability of my proposed bandwidth-saving technique? Perhaps we could satisfy those of the 'certified articles' persuasion and just call this Wikipedia 0.1 and limit it's distribution. Also, as previously mentioned, a DVD/Bluray copy of Wikipedia would sell like hotcakes and help wikipedia become less dependant on donations. Better yet: you could bundle a 'free' set of disks with each donation. That way you're not 'selling' anything.the1physicist 00:07, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

  • I think this would create a lot of overhead. If the wikipedia servers need to publish changes of articles to tons of computers everywhere it would increase traffic a lot. The alternative idea I proposed a while ago was to simply implement a checkbox next to each revision of each article in the history page inside the mediawiki software, and admins could set a "golden" or "featured" version of the article that would basically be free of vandalism and obvious pov, and any viewer could set a personal preference either "see latest revision" or "see featured version". Would be quick and effortless. Elfguy 19:22, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps you didn't read my initial post. Unless articles have been edited to the point of not resembling the original, transmitting only the difference would definitely save bandwidth. It may be more computationally intensive, but I can't think of a scenario where transmitting less that the whole article would take more bandwidth than transmitting the whole article.the1physicist 04:41, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

This sounds like encarta whereby you purchase the CD's and then the subscription so you can always get an updated version...it works, but not the direction I see this Wiki going in. Prefer completely web-based resource, no paper, no plastic.--MONGO 17:32, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not

It says, clearly, on the fist section of Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not says that Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia. The reason Wikipedia is great is because of the flexability, links, and contributions from all over the globe. I try to be open minded--but this seems a direct breach of rule numero uno. I don't see how this is even being considered, it seems so outragous. But you're welcome to try to prove me wrong, I dutifuly check my talk page. HereToHelp 21:36, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

"Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia", yes, but this does not mean no paper version of it may ever be made. The rule means we do not have space restrictions, and it stops people condensing or removing articles unnecessarily. Having a paper version will not stop the editing of the "boundless" electronic version. You have to consider the reasons behind the NOTs (which are detailed on that page), and those reasons do not contradict having a paper version of Wikipedia in tandem with the electronic version.
Perhaps you were thinking Wikipedia is not printed on dead tree for environmental conservation reasons. This is unfortunately is not a consideration I have seen brought up. —Pengo 23:33, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup request vs. fill rate

See Wikipedia talk:Cleanup for a discussion of our article cleanup backlog, which is currently growing at a rate of about 1,000 articles a month (out of 2,000 cleanup requests per month). -- Beland 04:56, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Modified Rating Proposal

I think I have come up with an improved variation on Jimbo's proposed rating system. I propose that each article have two ratings. One would be for the scope of the topic, and one would be for how well the article filled that scope. For example, an article on George W. Bush would naturally entail much more information than an article on frozen wooly mammoths. However, if the article on wooly mammoths contained most everything there is to know about wooly mammoths, then it's comprehensiveness rating would be higher than an less detailed article on 'W. The advantage of this method is that it would facilitate an automated means of determining what to include in 1.0. For example, the computer could know that article A is of sufficient scope, yet it is poorly written. Alternatively, the computer could identify a well written article on the-lump-on-that-lady's-face-on-the-public-access-channel which would also be rejected. You'll have to excuse my examples: they are rather poor. The idea is that with this information, highly accurate selection algorithms can be developed that would automate the task of choosing what to include in each version of wikipedia. (A crude method would be to choose all articles with a rating of 8 or higher, which would then be skimmed over for final verification.) Think beyond 1.0, folks. I don't want to manually select articles for every release. Now on to the details.

Any rating system (as the pages themselves are) is subject to vandalism. A way to minimize that threat is to keep a short rating history (say the last 50 votes) and average them. If the new vote is with X standard deviations of the average (it it's an outlier), chances are good that it's vandalism and it can be ignored. You don't want to keep a complete history because pages will naturally improve over time, so previous ratings would no longer correlate to the state of the article at the time of voting. There is also the chance that an editor will substantially improve an article with one edit, so the vandalism algorithm can check to see if the page has been improved and take that into account before passing judgement on the editor's rating. (A simple method would be to compare the average page length for a given rating to the new article length/rating and only THEN do the deviation test.) Also, new articles could be given default ratings of either some predetermined value or based on my length algorithm. These methods (combined with a few I probably haven't thought of) will allow for an expanded voting range (relative to Jimbo's 0-3 scale) while minimizing vandalism. I put emphasis on a higher range because it will make life a LOT easier for said algorithms.

Another advantage of any rating system is that it will eliminate the need for stubs. I personally devote a decent chuck of my time to identifying and properly categorizing stubs. Once articles are rated, anything below a certain threshold (say 3) could automagically be labeled a stub. More importantly, once an article is improved, you would not need to remove the stub tag. Let's also talk about the expert tag. If an article is both highly specialized (scope rating < 3) and in need of attention (comprehensiveness rating < 3 or NPOV/factual accuracy tag), the computer could automatically give the article an expert tag that would similarly vanish when the article is augmented. This is but one example. The possibilities are endless.

In conclusion, it is my firm belief that whatever system we use to validate articles for publication MUST be of a collaborative nature. A small group of people selecting articles could never think to include all possible subgenres of information. More imporantly, a rating system would boost editors' productivity on wikipedia by leaps and bounds, regardless if it is used as selection criteria. Anyhow, I put some thought into this one, so some feedback would be very nice.the1physicist 02:25, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I like this idea, it seems workable. Titoxd(?!?) 02:56, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
At the WP 1.0 team we are are starting to use this assessment system, which has the advantage of simplicity and flexibility. Any specific weaknesses like POV problems, copyrighted images etc. are addressed in a comments column (e.g. see here). This system is good for a manual assessment of a lot of articles by a small group of people (such as the WP 1.0 team). If you have to assess a hundred articles in an afternoon (as I have done at WP:Chem) you need something simple and fast.
However your proposal relates to user-based assessments, and at present we do not have a system in place for this. If your proposed system makes it easy, then Wikipedia could have a user-based ratings system just like Amazon.com does for books. The project is currently called "Sort via Wiki", and is listed as such on the main WP 1.0 team page, but as yet no one has got it going. You seem to have a lot of well thought-out ideas, and I would encourage you to join the team to implement your ideas. We currently need someone to get the Sort via Wiki project started (rename it if you wish), and I think everyone would be delighted if you could take the lead on this! I would set some goals, then lay out a strategy for how to achieve those goals, then lay out the infrastructure of work pages to track the progress towards the goals - this is the approach I have adopted for example with the WVW project page and daughter pages such as this one. In short- please go do it! Good luck, and thanks for your ideas, Walkerma 16:56, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
I would suggest an automatic system built into the Mediawiki software, in which a box appears at the end of the article randomly after an edit, until enough unique users have chimed in (say, 10 or 20). It would be a clickable form for ease of use: "How well written did you find this article? Is it of general interest, or more specific? How well does it cover its scope?" with a 1-5 rating or letter grade option for each of these categories. It would appear only for registered users, who would be able to turn it off in their settings, and it would appear at random to minimize vandalism, and more often to users whose ratings haven't been outliers in the past.--Joel 23:14, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I have created the WikiSort project page, so let's take further discussion there.the1physicist 01:34, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Semi-Protection?

After dealing with the constant deluge of vandalism at George W. Bush, a few users and myself decided to create Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy as a way to combat this problem. Titoxd wondered if this might assist Wikipedia in Pushing to 1.0, which I believe it might. While there are issues that could be improved, the baseline of it would keep articles more or less stable, and keep bad things from being posted by new users to high profile pages. Very rarely does massive shock vandalism take place on less popular articles, simply because there's noone there to revert it. We're spending too much time reverting content on George W. Bush and not enough time writing. If you could help, or offer any comments, it would be greatly appreciated. To 1.0 and beyond! -Mysekurity 06:18, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] A warning

With or without controversy, this sort of thing will inspire derision that will cripple it before it gets going. --VKokielov 05:51, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Can you explain what you are referring to, and why do you think it will inspire derision? If you are referring to the WP 1.0 project as a whole, that is in fact now really getting going. Walkerma 06:25, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Royalties

Would authors from Wikipedia be paid royalties like they deserve for the time they invested in Wikipedia once it is published?

As far as I know, no one owns Wikipedia. When you make contributions, you release ownership of them (assuming you're not adding copyrighted material, which is not allowed). Also, please sign your contributions with four tildes (~~~~) and add new sections at the bottom of a page.the1physicist 04:32, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
To say that nobody owns Wikipedia is incorrect. Wikipedia is owned by the Wikimedia Foundation that is a non-profit foundation under US tax law. See also http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home ≈ jossi fresco ≈ t • @ 05:31, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Well, I actually meant the content itself, but thanks for the info.the1physicist 05:43, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Where is 1.0?

Its almost 2006. where is version 1.0? Wikipedia is getting IMMENSE bad press. 1.0 is needed! Where is it! TastemyHouse Breathe, Breathe in the air 11:57, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

You mean you haven't finished it yet? -- Jmabel | Talk 03:31, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
According to the recent Nature article, the new user-based assessments will be tested early next year, take a look at this meta page and the WikiSort subproject of the WP 1.0 team. Jimbo also mentions the "stable" versions of articles getting under way. Meanwhile I and others are spending several hours a week on this stuff, but we are only a handful of people. My opinion is that we will have a beta testing version by around September 2006, assuming more people get involved. I couldn't have put it better than Jmabel, please speed things along by joining us and signing up for one of the four subprojects! Cheers, Walkerma 05:41, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Tastemyhouse on the paramount importance of getting to 1.0. Why is there no big banner on the main page to tell people you're working on this and to request for assistance? I don't think most visitors are even aware of it. Piet 15:35, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
The publication of Wikipedia 1.0 is still many months away. We need to get things in order before we appeal to the wider Wikipedia community, otherwise things will be an uncoordinated mess. Also, there are people on Wikipedia who disagree with the idea of an offline version, and our talk page will get bombarded with objections all over again. We are at present in "Phase 1", namely trying to identify decent articles. This phase will be very drastically affected when the WikiSort system comes on stream (supposedly very soon), currently we don't know exactly how things will work out. A lot also depends on whether WP:GA and WP:Stable get accepted as policy - if both of these could be extremely useful in supplying us with decent versions of articles, especially if used in combination. Fairly soon I think we will need to start on "Phase 2", I will post something soon on this on the Editorial team talk page. Once we reach a milestone such as "2000 articles identified as suitable for WP1.0" we should perhaps post something on the Signpost. So in summary, I agree that we need publicity, but we need to have our ducks in a row first. Please join us, and help us get those ducks lined up! Please sign up for one of the four subprojects and help us. Thanks, Walkerma 18:43, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the info. I'm on my way. Piet 08:52, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Offline publication efforts of German Wikipedia documented

For those of you interested in publishing an offline Wikipedia snapshot, validating articles or moving towards Wikipedia-1.0, I have documented the quite successful efforts of the German team at German Wikipedia. AxelBoldt 01:34, 22 December 2005 (UTC)de:Wikipedia-CD

[edit] Just An Idea

If we want to start pulling out articles that we are pretty sure that should be used, perhaps templates could be put on archived pages that would be small and unintrusive, such as:

0.5


and

1.0


to indicate that the article meets either 0.5 or 1.0 standards. -AtionSong 01:49, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure about this in practice, although the basic idea is a very good one indeed. I see one problem with the 0.5/1.0 standard. When I studied all the discussions for this project in detail, I found that the 0.5 and 1.0 standards seemed ambiguous, and there was some confusion about exactly what they meant. I also noted that no assessments at all were done using this system over a period of about 9 months. Therefore when we needed to assess articles I proposed the use of this assessment system instead, since this method has been used successfully elsewhere. We have since done all of the Core Topics assessments this way, as well as the Work via WikiProjects article listings such as this one. Walkerma 06:04, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
The benefit of your idea as I see it is that we would have an easy list of all 0.5 or all 1.0 articles. It would also give an indication to the reader that "this article meets such and such standard." A problem with it is that it rather duplicates the FA and GA tags already in use. The GA people took a lot of flak at the start for putting their template on talk pages, people disparagingly called it a "barnstar for articles". I think we might get a lot of flak for duplicating the existing tags. Roughly speaking, our A-Class corresponds to the GA standard, though a few GAs are closer to B-Class. (We will probably plunder the GA list for suitable articles at some point, BTW) If you can see a way round this problem, let us know, it would be a useful addition. Walkerma 06:04, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
A very similar idea to this one was just suggested over at the Work via WikiProjects subproject of WP1.0. It refers to this assessment scheme that I mentioned before, and more specifically only to B-Class articles, which do not typically reach the GA or FA standard. Is this version of AtionSong's idea a more viable one? Or do people prefer the 0.5/1.0 system? Any comments/suggestions, folks? Walkerma 06:03, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Free Encyclopedia for Poor Students

Hi,

I'm in Toronto, Canada. I want to distribute a CD-based version of Wikipedia for free to urban schools. Poor students need a free Encyclopedia -- while many may have some sort of Windows based computer at home, quite a number don't have the money to pay for the internet. Additionally the schools and libraries can install this on their computers and save on bandwidth fees. As well, a condensed version can be distributed with laptops from the One Laptop Per Child Program (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$100_laptop)

I have read through this thread and really it will be quite simple to create a CD that works on most computers.

1. The CD will be in iso9660 format.

2. Each article be in standard html format, with multimedia in a subfolder for each article.

3. A third-party table of contents and searchable index program will be used. For example Macrmedia Robo Info does a decent job and produces an html-based interface that is redistributable and royalty-free.

Please comment here, and/or email me at at rick@cybernomics.net

Amigaguy 17:54, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Rick, producing a free paper/CD/DVD version to help poorer folks is one of the goals of this project. Your proposals look to be in line with our plans. We are well into our initial phase of validating/assessing articles, and so we will be starting to plan the layout in the next couple of months, I expect. Please join us and help get the work done as soon as possible! Walkerma 03:46, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Roadmap to publication

I am trying to gather consensus on a "roadmap to publication" for WP:1.0, please take a look at this discussion and leave your comments there (not here!). I am hoping that this consensus will guide us the rest of the way. Thanks, Walkerma 19:10, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 1.0 "Release Version Qualifying"

I'm interested in feedback on Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Release Version Qualifying. It's essentially an idea to use a process similar to WP:FAC to identify and handle articles and lists that would go in a release version. Maurreen 18:25, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reporting errors

Hi! I strongly suggest that the DVD should contain software so that errors can be reported back to a standard email address, if they are spotted when reading. This could massively help to clean up the encyclopedia after the release of 1.0. Of course, people could simply send an email describing the problem, but it's much easier to have a one-click interface that does it, *and* it tells us where exactly is that error (i.e. a diff with correction or a line number/context where the error is). Hope we implement this feature! Msoos 21:29, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Why create a second system of editing? If users have access to email, chances are they also have the ability to come online and edit normally. —Pengo 23:36, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
This suggestion sounds like a good idea to me. The version on the CD will differ from the online version. I wouldn't see it as a second system of editing, merely a system of reporting. Many people I know are unwilling to edit Wikipedia, but they might well click on a link that says "report an error to Wikipedia." Walkerma 07:02, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] An idea for 1.0: keeping it Wiki

I'll start with this: I think 1.0 is a brilliant idea, I can't wait till we're finally there. Wikipedia is foremost about free knowledge, so in any format 1.0 will be able to do that. But Wikipedia is also about being a dynamic, constantly improving source. This suggestion is way before it's needed, but I want to make it now in case I forget; forgive me if this is ridiculously obvious or has already been said before.

The suggestion is: on any electronic version of Wikipedia 1.0, most obviously, there should be a direct link to the online Wikipedia article (it can be labelled "suggest improvement"). The main idea though is this: there should be a system to update the pages stored with newer versions online that have been marked out as stable. The CD/DVD should come with a bit of (updatable) software that checks the online articles automatically. These stability markers would be present anyway as part of the creation of Wikipedia 1.1. If it finds one, the software will download the newer version to the hard-drive, and the software will re-reference that article title from the CD/DVD-stored version to the hard-drive version. This will effectively create, between 1.0 and 1.1, thousands of 1.0/1.1 intermittent versions, or in other words keep people as up-to-date as possible with Wikipedia quality articles. When 1.1 is ready for release, installing the new CD/DVD will wipe the hard-drive stored versions and the process starts again until 1.2. I don't know if I explained that well but you probably get the drift. This will effectively mean that getting 1.0 will entail getting every Wikipedia after it - but that's good, right?

The second suggestion refers only to a paper encyclopedia, which I think is more exciting. Publishing in paper I think would really get people to respect Wikipedia as a referencable source. To keep the paper version Wiki - a very simple idea - publish it with a small box after each article entitled "Notes" - a space for the reader to write in. -- Alfakim --  talk  02:01, 15 April 2006 (UTC)