User talk:The Transhumanist/Archive 13

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Updates

I've removed the personal content that had been copied from my userpage, from User:The Transhumanist and Wikipedia:Tools/Optimum tool set/Navbox collection. I've also asked Utcursch to undelete or copy the Go for it! archive menu content that was deleted earlier. -- Quiddity (talk) 20:48, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm adapting the link lists, and am removing the links that lead to you. Sorry 'bout that - I forgot to customize it. The content of the deleted archive menu is on the corresponding talk page linked to in the archive page posted above, and isn't needed. The Transhumanist    21:44, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing that :) -- Quiddity (talk) 02:57, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

The maze of Wikipedia - another suggestion

As a recent reader of Wikipedia and a very recent editor, I have found it next to impossible to find my way around. Initially I only found articles. Then I realised what categories were, byt they are still more of a quagmire than a help. I only stumbled upon projects, and eventually came across portals. I only found your Lists of Topics by chance when I was browsing through "project stuff".

I must admit that the lists of topics as far as I can tell are just more prettily formatted categories. I did not find the topic lists beacause their titles do not come when you search for an article.

I presume you guys have spent a lot of time working on the Lists of Topics as they are, BUT I would like to suggest that you change in direction, to actually add knowledge content about the structure of the articles in the lists. Also, I would like to see all "list article"s banished and replaced by categories (becasue they have no encyclopedic content), and lists, as categories, properly referenced from the relevant encyclopedic articles.

I would like to suggest that List of Topics be evolved into Wikipedia knowledge maps.

I have put together what I think is starting point. Please have a look at my proposed knowledge map and let me know what you think. A simple example is the law enforcement knowledge map. I actually did all this before I stumbled across Topic Lists and your Contents projects!

It seems to me that there are too many lists and lists of lists, etc., which add no encyclopedic value.

Perhaps you projects' more experienced formatting style can be merged into my knowledge maps . . .

The one other thing I want to add is some short text outlines to subject areas in a knowledge map.

Comment?!

Pee Tern (talk) 04:31, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

We need to keep things simple. My eyes glazed over when trying to read the knowledge map instructions.

The "knowledge map" system you have proposed is simply too self-referential, and detracts from the knowledge contained in Wikipedia by focusing too much on Wikipedia itself. See WP:SRTA.

Have you checked out the Lists of basic topics? Your law enforcement knowledge map appears to have the same scope as a list of basic topics (except for the WikiProject section), and could be turned into one with minimal effort.

We've tried to place the contents system front and center by placing a link on the Main page and on Wikipedia's navigation menu on the sidebar, so that users wouldn't merely stumble across it by accident. Is there something about the word "Contents" that isn't obvious? We're always looking for ways to improve the navigability of Wikipedia, and if its tables of contents and indexes are not obvious and easy to find, then we need to fix this problem right away.

Removal of category-like lists en mass is not a good strategy, as rudimentary lists are an essential building block of enhanced lists. That is, you have to build a rudimentary list before you can build an "encyclopedic" list. To foster collaboration and the ability to share the work, rudimentary lists must be allowed in the encyclopedia. Erasing such lists is a step backward in list development, and disrupts list-building collaboration.

Lists, including rudimentary lists, add encyclopedic value because they assist directly in navigating and organizing the knowledge of the encyclopedia, they can detail the structure of knowledge in other ways, they are easier to find by beginners than categories, and their contents show up in search results which further aid the search box's functionality of assisting to find desired knowledge.

Concerning the whole categories vs lists issue, see Wikipedia:CLS.

I highly recommend you work on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Lists of basic topics. It needs new blood, and you appear to have a lot of energy and spare time.

To help you get started, I've constructed a List of basic law enforcement topics. It's incomplete, and maybe you could improve it. Please be sure to look at other basic topic lists in order to follow the somewhat standardized structure for ease of browsing.

The Transhumanist    09:44, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Yep. I have seen Wikipedia:CLS. While lists have some advantages, they should add some value either about the knowledge in the things listed, or about structure of the knowledge in the things listed. Both of these latter concepts are appropriately encyclopedic.

Yep. I did see both Topics and Basic Topics.

The knowledge map system itself is not self referential. It is aiming to describe meta knowledge about the subject area, the range and structure of knowledge in the subject area, which is universally encyclopedic by definition. I agree I have done this by referring to Wikipedia structures to do this. So the self referentiality can be fixed by deWikepidiaing it and making it universally encyclopedic. The main problem I have is that Lists as they stand do not add any information or knowledge. They only add data. We need to move from flat lists to semantic lists. I think we need to move away from lists to knowledge maps, still call them Lists if you like.

If I work on CLS, perhaps better referred to as knowledge navigation pages, then as "new blood" I will be pushing you guys away from flat lists to semantic lists.

Spare time - I am literally between projects at the moment, with two major projects being delayed, so my spare time could dry up any time.

The first thing I would insist on (can I?) is to change the naming covention for lists, to go from a data type convention to an information content type convention. For example List of basic law topics should be called Law (basic topics list). This will at least sort all the 'Law' "stuff" together. Currently, "no one" finds "Lists of anything". I tried typing in 'Index . . .', 'Law contents', etc. Normal readers type in 'Law . . .' People should not have to learn Wikipedia speak when it purports to be "the free dictionary for everyone".

How open are you / Wikipedia / Wikipedians to moving from flat lists to semantic lists ?

Pee Tern (talk) 22:25, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry an editing glitch of mine left out the following:

Contents does not appear anywhere if you come in via http://www.wikipedia.org/ ?

Perhaps I am missing something, but when I look at the Contents, and try to find 'Law enforcement' "stuff", it is all a bit overwhelming. Is there some way of Going to a List or Knowledge map much more directly?

Eyes glazing over - sorry - it was a first cut and very terse, without much softer background included.

Getting rid of list articles - I am about to kill off three, after two weeks of waiting for any complaint, and got none. Please see Federal police, National police, and Civil police, and convert them to categories . . . Any issue here? Note that I put flat list articles at the bottom of the heap. I do see the need to have Lists of topics, but they need to add more knowledge value.

Pee Tern (talk) 22:46, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

One of the main purposes of lists, covered in WP:LISTS is navigation. That and the classification of knowledge they provide are appropriately encyclopedic and add value to the encyclopedia. And in order to enable the addition of knowledge about the things listed or about the structure of the subject covered, such a list must exist in the first place. And in order to enable multiple people to work on lists and share in their development effectively, if you require that lists must be fully developed when initially posted you circumvent the whole collaboration process.

Lists do add more than data, in the way they are structured, and in the way they are linked together. How topics are related to each other is knowledge.

You suggested we "move away" from flat lists, to semantic (structured and contextualized) lists. A more appropriate approach would be to develop flat lists into semantic lists, or upgrade flat lists. "Moving away" fails to recognize that flat lists are a necessary component of semantic lists or of the development process of semantic lists, and may imply deletion of flat lists in favor of a procedure that will require the building of the flat list all over again (only as a hidden step in list development). In my view, in order to enable collaboration, the flat list can't be hidden.

Changing the list naming conventions and renaming lists en mass would require attaining community consensus first, for example at WP:VPR and WP:LISTS. One reason that lists are named starting with the word "list" is so that they all show up in the all pages index together. Otherwise, finding them all (all at once) would be more difficult. Lists on Wikipedia are developed and maintained as a system, and the components of the system need to be easily accessible as a group. Your naming convention idea has merit, and warrants further exploration and discussion. I'd be most interested in seeing how the renaming would affect the position of lists in search results.

I'm open to improving Wikipedia. You need to more clearly explain what you mean by "semanitic list" and "moving from flat lists" before I can decide how much I'd be willing to support your proposal. Flat lists are already subject to further development, so we are already "moving from" them to something more. If you mean removing flat lists from the encyclopedia, then you will find a great deal of opposition, including mine.

The point you seem to be missing or ignoring is that by removing flat lists, you are basically disallowing collaboration on part of the list development process. Some people may be very good at building flat lists. They should be allowed to provide those and place them in the encyclopedia as a starting point for others to improve upon. I have a problem with your "all or nothing approach" which fails to recognize rudimentary lists as a necessary step in the process of building more enriched lists. Removing simple lists is taking a step backwards in the list development process and disrupts teamwork and the list-based navigation system. The flat lists need to stay in place so that others can come along and improve them. With your approach, you are forcing a larger initial step of development and are disallowing the division of this labor. This is a wiki, after all.

The Transhumanist    23:25, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I think from what you say above we are probably on a similar wave length, even if not the exact same one yet. It is true that I might not have yet properly appeciated the type of collaboration available. I do not think that my approach is all or nothing. I was trying to suggest an evolutionary approach.

Perhaps an analogy to explain flat lists from a semantic list or map: To get from townA to townB a flat list would give you all the features you would encounter on the way. A map will tell you the order of the features and what is on the side roads, where to get help and supplies, and explain the topography, for example, that creeks are in valleys (everyone knows this about geography but not about knowledge).

I think that flat lists and categories are almost a complete duplication. Perhaps categories need to be made a bit more user, both editor and reader, friendly, and maintainable via both the article and the category (the simple list), to allow the full extent of collaboration. Manual semantic lists would then be free to evolve. It strikes me that simple lists have grown because categories have not done what they were intended to do and people have built a, now very extensive, work around.

One of my main gripes, is about all the intersection lists, for example law enforcement agency by country by type by both. There is so much duplicated information, which has to be maintained in two or three or four places, with the obvious dangers of update anomolies. All of these types of lists could be automatically generated. For example, from article1 in countryQ category and article1 in law enforcement agency category we know that article1 is a law enforcement agency for countryQ. Hence my asking about category intersection. For example {{Category:Intersect |CountryQ |Law enforcement agency}} would produce a category page of all law enforcement agencies in countryQ, {{Category:Intersect |Country |Law enforcement agency |groupby Country}} would produce a category page with all law enforcement agencies grouped by country (Country being the category of all country categories), and further, in an article [[:Category:Intersect |Country |Law enforcement agency |groupby Country]]. Perhaps the Contents project could become a major sponsor of category intersection, it seems it needs a formal sponsor. Category intersection would dramatically reduce the number of explicit lists, with redundant data in them, which have to be maintained manually, and allow a much broader and richer range of (virtual) categories / flat/simple lists than we could ever dream about maintaining manually.

Pee Tern (talk) 04:08, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Collaboration on a wiki is nothing more than multiple editors working on the same page. One person posts an initial paragraph (a stub), then someone else comes along and adds another paragraph, and so on, and the article grows. Flat lists are to lists as stubs are to articles. They're the initial stage of development. If stubs were disallowed, then what's the point of having the wiki? With lists, someone initially posts a flat list, then someone else comes along and adds annotations or other enhancements. The difference between the process of article and list development is that the list-building process is being disallowed because flat lists are often deleted at AfD because they duplicate categories. This has become a major problem for listbuilders and is reducing their opportunities to collaborate. It's screwed. The Transhumanist    11:07, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Adding the ability to edit categories directly (without removing how they are generated from article tags) would be infinitely more useful, and therefore should have the highest priority. The type of sponsor needed is someone with infinite energy and patience (like you) to push the issue. It will take MediaWiki's developers to implement, and so you would need to bug them persistently at bugzilla until they finally did it. They are sometimes influenced by the popularity of a proposal, and so if you drummed up support at WP:VPR, WP:VPT, Wikipedia:WikiProject Usability, etc. you could point to that support in your messages to the developers. The more developers you talk with one-on-one the better. If you make a particularly poignant argument for a feature, it might click with one of the developers and then you're in business. Follow-up is key - without it a project will often just fall by the wayside and be forgotten. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. I was involved in the sidebar redesign, and rather than wait on developers, we finally settled on a stop-gap work-around (the current design). It's been almost 2 years, and the complete redesign still hasn't been implemented, and probably never will. The "contents project" is just 3 users for the most part (RichardF, Quiddity, and me). Quiddity was the initial proponent of the sidebar redesign, but after it gathered dust for several months, I pushed for a quick fix at WP:VPR. The main change was the addition of the "Contents" link, and the fact that we accomplished so little after so many months left me cold. There'd be no advantage in having us push the proposal, and my guess is the other two have the same enthusiasm for dealing with developers as I do (none). Good luck. The Transhumanist    01:16, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Slow down on the leattrib template

I might be better if you made suggestions and I carried them out . . .

I see you have alrady had to roll back the subst: . . .

I still have more work to do anyway . . .

Pee Tern (talk) 02:19, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

What the hell?

What the hell happened to your old userpage? I and many others thought it was very resourceful. miranda 09:03, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I've been addressing the opposes at my various RfAs. The resource pages have been passed on to new hosts or moved into the Wikipedia namespace. People opposed the virtual classroom and my being a coach, so I resigned as coach and no longer host the Virtual classroom. Others opposed the Awards Center, so I no longer host that either. Another opposed smilies, so I removed them. I was accused of self-promotion, so I've removed all self-promoting elements (and have replaced them with a short description of my contributions). Another opposed my whole user page for being over-engineered so I removed the engineered features (menus, borders, colorful background, subpages). And many opposed "as per" the others, and still more opposed for my not addressing the previous opposes. So I'm back to the basics, and I'm starting over. I'll no doubt be opposed at the next one for trying to appease the opposers. I don't like it any more than you do. About the only thing I haven't changed is my signature, and I was opposed for that too. Call me a rebel, but I'm keeping it. The Transhumanist    23:22, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Just because some people are against you doesn't mean that you have to conform to their standards. This is true in Wikipedia and in life, because not everyone is going to like you because of your beliefs, what you do, etc. Having adminship tools, imho, distracts from the encyclopedia and in most cases assists in building drama. Feel free to e-mail me on this. miranda 04:01, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't care if they like me or not. It's all about meeting the qualifications set for the position. Yes, the qualifications are arbitrary and change like the wind and are applied inconsistently from applicant to applicant. And yes, the approval process resembles mob behavior. But adminship is an area of Wikipedia I haven't explored yet, and I feel I can make a contribution there. Delaying coaching until others feel I am qualified is temporary, and no longer displaying a few pages of art and text is a trivial sacrifice. Conforming in this way is no big deal. If you don't like the side-effects of RfA, change it. In the meantime, I have some more hoops to jump through.  :) Though it's screwed up that others can oppose you for following the guidelines (e.g., the admin coaching page specifically states that non-admins can be coaches there) - it's like stepping on a land mine. It's also a drag that others use RfA to push their personal agendas (such as the guy who objects to self-nomination, and therefore opposes all self-nominators; and others who oppose based on a conflicting wikiphilosophy), but that's RfA for you. The Transhumanist    09:41, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Okay. miranda 15:26, 23 February 2008 (UTC)