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Durova | 1 Apr 2010 02:41
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Re: PR consultants: perhaps Wikipedia is not the ideal promotional medium

Excellent piece.  Especially the close about how it's a difficult position
for PR professionals to report to the client that the article was deleted.

-Durova

On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 1:35 PM, David Gerard <dgerard <at> gmail.com> wrote:

>
> http://rushprnews.com/2010/03/31/pr-consultants-should-think-twice-before-using-wikipedia-to-promote-clients
>
> PR consultants should think twice before using Wikipedia to promote clients
> March 31, 2010
>
> Leicestershire, UK (RPRN) 03/31/10 — PR consultants are being advised
> to think twice before incorporating Wikipedia entries into campaign
> strategies after the site started cracking down on articles submitted
> by any public relations agency it considered to be using its resource
> to promote clients.
>
>
> (muwahaha. Spotted by Mathias Schindler. The article sets out en:wp's
> rationales and likely actions very well indeed.)
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l <at> lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
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Samuel Klein | 2 Apr 2010 02:06
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Re: A war on external links? Was: Inside Higher Ed: Does Wikipedia Suck?

On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 2:09 PM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud <at> fairpoint.net> wrote:
>> On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 6:10 AM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud <at> fairpoint.net>
>> wrote:
>>> Yes, that disposes of them. The point is to have external links and
>>> further reading available to users of the reference at the foot of the
>>> article. The consensus to routinely remove such material arose a few
>>> years ago and it diminishes the utility of Wikipedia as a reference
>>> work.
>>>
>>> Fred Bauder
>>
>> I don't think there's such a consensus, site wide.  I have seen
>> articles where someone OWNs it and there is a local consensus.
>>
>> Keep in mind that we risk ending up with our articles web link farms
>> which is are not maintained in any consistent manner.
>>
>> I support good links, and add them.  But there's a downside there too.
>>
>> -george william herbert
>> george.herbert <at> gmail.com
>>
>
> External links and further reading are content like any other content.
> They require maintenance and sound judgment. What I object to is the
> meataxe approach to editing with respect to external links and further
> reading as well as article content. We all understand the problem when
> it's done with article content.

I agree that this is a similar problem.   In theory, the 'external
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William Pietri | 2 Apr 2010 04:39
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Weekly Flagged Protection update

As requested, here's the weekly Flagged Protection update.

Feedback from users has dropped off, which we are taking as a sign that 
people are relatively happy with things.

If that's not the case, or if you'd like to test it for yourself, start 
here:

http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

To see what we've changed this week, there's a list here:

http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Flagged_Protection_updates#2010_Apr_1

To see the upcoming work, it's listed in our tracker,  under Current and 
Backlog:

http://www.pivotaltracker.com/projects/46157

The backlog was relatively stable this week, so we are definitely moving 
closer to launch.

We expect to release again next week, and each week thereafter until 
this goes live on the English Wikipedia.

William

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WikiEN-l <at> lists.wikimedia.org
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Charles Matthews | 2 Apr 2010 10:05

Re: A war on external links? Was: Inside Higher Ed: Does Wikipedia Suck?

Samuel Klein wrote:
> A feature to improve the curating and presentation of these links
> might be handy.  We have a few places were having a  "set of links" as
> a first class member of the wikiverse would be useful
>  * external links or further reading
>  * a list of images related to an article (which may not all fit
> neatly in the article)
>  * interlanguage and interproject links to a set of articles about the
> same topic
>   
On the final point, the "poster" style of interwiki link to sister 
projects begins to look dated, at least to me. It obviously doesn't 
scale well; or in other words it puts the onus on the project linked to, 
to organise the material relevant to one WP topic, in such a way that a 
single link can carry the whole weight. Innovation is at least possible.

Charles

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Samuel Klein | 2 Apr 2010 11:34
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Re: PR consultants: perhaps Wikipedia is not the ideal promotional medium

This article makes my week.

I generally feel we should blank articles more and delete them less,
but this is an area where the explicit rebuff of deletion has its
advantages.

SJ

On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 8:41 PM, Durova <nadezhda.durova <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> Excellent piece.  Especially the close about how it's a difficult position
> for PR professionals to report to the client that the article was deleted.
>
> -Durova
>
> On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 1:35 PM, David Gerard <dgerard <at> gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> http://rushprnews.com/2010/03/31/pr-consultants-should-think-twice-before-using-wikipedia-to-promote-clients
>>
>> PR consultants should think twice before using Wikipedia to promote clients
>> March 31, 2010
>>
>> Leicestershire, UK (RPRN) 03/31/10 — PR consultants are being advised
>> to think twice before incorporating Wikipedia entries into campaign
>> strategies after the site started cracking down on articles submitted
>> by any public relations agency it considered to be using its resource
>> to promote clients.
>>
>>
>> (muwahaha. Spotted by Mathias Schindler. The article sets out en:wp's
(Continue reading)

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Carcharoth | 2 Apr 2010 12:00

Re: A war on external links? Was: Inside Higher Ed: Does Wikipedia Suck?

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 9:05 AM, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews <at> ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Samuel Klein wrote:
>> A feature to improve the curating and presentation of these links
>> might be handy.  We have a few places were having a  "set of links" as
>> a first class member of the wikiverse would be useful
>>  * external links or further reading
>>  * a list of images related to an article (which may not all fit
>> neatly in the article)
>>  * interlanguage and interproject links to a set of articles about the
>> same topic
>>
> On the final point, the "poster" style of interwiki link to sister
> projects begins to look dated, at least to me. It obviously doesn't
> scale well; or in other words it puts the onus on the project linked to,
> to organise the material relevant to one WP topic, in such a way that a
> single link can carry the whole weight. Innovation is at least possible.

That's an interesting point. I presume you mean wikisource here. For
Commons and Wikiquote (I'm unsure about the other projects) it is
fairly easy to have a corresponding page or category or both. If the
Wikipedia article is a person who is an author, then a wikisource page
is possible, and if the Wikipedia page is about a book or other
published work that could be on wikisource, then again a single link,
page or category is usually possible. But there are some articles
where this system does fall down. I presume the place to put links to
editorially selected wikisource pages would be in the external links,
or as a courtesy link in a citation.

Carcharoth
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Charles Matthews | 2 Apr 2010 12:21

Re: A war on external links? Was: Inside Higher Ed: Does Wikipedia Suck?

Carcharoth wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 9:05 AM, Charles Matthews
> <charles.r.matthews <at> ntlworld.com> wrote:
>   
>> Samuel Klein wrote:
>>     
>>> A feature to improve the curating and presentation of these links
>>> might be handy.  We have a few places were having a  "set of links" as
>>> a first class member of the wikiverse would be useful
>>>  * external links or further reading
>>>  * a list of images related to an article (which may not all fit
>>> neatly in the article)
>>>  * interlanguage and interproject links to a set of articles about the
>>> same topic
>>>
>>>       
>> On the final point, the "poster" style of interwiki link to sister
>> projects begins to look dated, at least to me. It obviously doesn't
>> scale well; or in other words it puts the onus on the project linked to,
>> to organise the material relevant to one WP topic, in such a way that a
>> single link can carry the whole weight. Innovation is at least possible.
>>     
>
> That's an interesting point. I presume you mean wikisource here. For
> Commons and Wikiquote (I'm unsure about the other projects) it is
> fairly easy to have a corresponding page or category or both. If the
> Wikipedia article is a person who is an author, then a wikisource page
> is possible, and if the Wikipedia page is about a book or other
> published work that could be on wikisource, then again a single link,
> page or category is usually possible. But there are some articles
(Continue reading)

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Michael Peel | 2 Apr 2010 12:39

Re: A war on external links? Was: Inside Higher Ed: Does Wikipedia Suck?


On 2 Apr 2010, at 11:21, Charles Matthews wrote:

> Carcharoth wrote:
>> On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 9:05 AM, Charles Matthews
>> <charles.r.matthews <at> ntlworld.com> wrote:
>>> Samuel Klein wrote:
>>>>  * interlanguage and interproject links to a set of articles  
>>>> about the
>>>> same topic
>>> On the final point, the "poster" style of interwiki link to sister
>>> projects begins to look dated, at least to me. It obviously doesn't
>>> scale well; or in other words it puts the onus on the project  
>>> linked to,
>>> to organise the material relevant to one WP topic, in such a way  
>>> that a
>>> single link can carry the whole weight. Innovation is at least  
>>> possible.
>>
>> That's an interesting point. I presume you mean wikisource here. For
>> Commons and Wikiquote (I'm unsure about the other projects) it is
>> fairly easy to have a corresponding page or category or both. If the
>> Wikipedia article is a person who is an author, then a wikisource  
>> page
>> is possible, and if the Wikipedia page is about a book or other
>> published work that could be on wikisource, then again a single link,
>> page or category is usually possible. But there are some articles
>> where this system does fall down. I presume the place to put links to
>> editorially selected wikisource pages would be in the external links,
>> or as a courtesy link in a citation.
(Continue reading)

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Charles Matthews | 2 Apr 2010 17:47

Re: A war on external links? Was: Inside Higher Ed: Does Wikipedia Suck?

Michael Peel wrote:
>> There does seem to be a possibility for a bit of lateral thinking here.
>> If, say, the current external links and interwiki sections were done by
>> transclusion from something separately maintained (a set of pages
>> organised by both language and topic?), how could that be implemented,
>> and how could it relate to efforts to make hard-copy bibliography more
>> modular?
>
> That sounds like a way of adding confusion to those editing a page, 
> when they find that part of the page is stored somewhere else 
> completely. Interwiki (as in language) links seem to be dealt with 
> well nowadays by robots; expanding that to include wikisource links 
> might be good. External links are best done as project-specific ones 
> IMO, though.
Don't get me wrong - I'm a big fan of the undivided editing box and 
simplicity. I'm not also not really cut out to be a strategy wonk - too 
much to do right now, at least. But the "second decade" of WP is only 
around nine months off, and I hear various ideas circulating. Some of 
what is "up in the air" may be the future.

If I start thinking about the data structure that would support a bot 
putting in language interwiki links, it seems that (although it might be 
a bit untidy in practical terms) it is close to being something with 
interesting potential. If it wasn't private to a bot, but a WMF project 
in itself: wouldn't it provide a focus for all sorts of metadata 
collection, as well as collection of a web directory (Wikipedia doesn't 
do that, but it could happen elsewhere), bibliographical data, no doubt 
other things? Magnus Manske talks to me about such things every time we 
meet. We have got close to a standard "footer" organisation for WP pages 
(such as Works/See also/References/Further reading/External
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David Goodman | 2 Apr 2010 18:40
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Re: PR consultants: perhaps Wikipedia is not the ideal promotional medium

A PR agent should be able to learn how to write a neutral article, if
they see one aspect of their role as to provide information about
their client, not necessarily to directly promote them. In the fields
I work in, I have frequently worked with PR staff, and about half of
them have proved open to learning a new medium.  (The basic
instruction I give them is to write a dull an article as possible,
remove all possible adjectives, use the minimum number of words, give
the name of the company only once, list nobody but the successive
CEOs, provide specific sourced numbers about market share,  and give
no contact information beyond the principal web site.) And when I see
a promotional article for a notable company, if I have the time i
neither delete nor blank it, but rewrite it according to my just those
instructions.

And if we had a systematic campaign to provide basic information about
all companies that meet our notabiliity requirements, the way we do
for populated places, it would greatly diminish the tendency for
people to think they needed to write their own article.

David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 5:34 AM, Samuel Klein <meta.sj <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> This article makes my week.
>
> I generally feel we should blank articles more and delete them less,
> but this is an area where the explicit rebuff of deletion has its
> advantages.
>
> SJ
(Continue reading)

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Gmane