Wikipedia talk:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards

Archiving

I know that a lot has been archived very rapidly: we've generated something like 200KB of discussion in a little over a week. I encourage anyone who thinks that their good idea may have been lost in the shuffle to dig it out of the archive, put it on a wikipedia:-space page of its own (or add it to a relevant one), and link it from Wikipedia:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:01, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

Recommended archive locations

Referencing: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check
- Also Wikipedia:Cite sources Maurreen 09:53, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC) I think there's something else similar, but I don't remember the name. Maurreen 13:49, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- Also Wikipedia:Footnotes. Maurreen 08:26, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia 1.0: User:Jimbo Wales/Pushing To 1.0
- If Jimbo wouldn't object, could we move this to Wikipedia namespace instead of User namespace? -- Jmabel | Talk 20:30, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)
  - I think that would make sense. Looking at the page it only ever got comments from people other than Jimbo. If we created a Wikipedia 1.0 page, we could use the talk page for discussion and the project page for a description of the project, related pages, and minimum standards for articles. :ChrisG 20:57, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
    - I'll ask him if we may move it. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:12, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)
      - Done. Jmabel | Talk 19:52, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)
Approval mechanisms: Wikipedia:Approval mechanism
Article validation: meta:Article validation
Research difficulties with Wikipedia: Wikipedia_talk:Researching_with_Wikipedia
- If the difficulties are important enough, they belong in Wikipedia:Researching_with_Wikipedia -- Jmabel | Talk 20:30, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)
Systemic bias: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Countering_systemic_bias

Are these okay? Any other suggestions? :ChrisG 19:25, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Brief summary

The following builds on views expressed by Maurreen, now on Wikipedia talk:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards (archive4). -- Jmabel | Talk 23:30, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

We seem to be starting to generate at least a list of topics and areas of concern:

Sourcing and citing
Schemes for editorial approval
1. Interest in best-of-both worlds approach toward flagging "approved" articles while preserving openness
Schemes for dispute resolution
1. Can we build on RfC?

The main controversies so far seem to be:

What is acceptable sourcing?
1. Will we be able to come up with encyclopedia-wide standards, or will we need different standards for different types of subject matter?
Who is qualified to make approval-related judgments?
1. How does this relate to formal education?
2. How does this relate to indentifiability of the individual in the outside world?
3. How does this relate to previous involvement in a particular article or subject-matter area?
Where to start
1. Do we start by working on uncontroversial or controversial articles?
2. Can we identify some pilot projects?

Mission statement

Wikipedia:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards is a place where discerning Wikipedia editors can "meet" to discuss, develop and promote encyclopedic standards.

We envision developing or refining:

A set of goals for articles,
A system to indicate articles or article versions that have attained those goals, and
A quality-based method of resolving editorial disputes.

Maurreen 09:10, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Think tank?

Perhaps we should think of this forum as a "think tank" and incubator for ideas, many of which should promptly move out onto project pages of their own, linked from here. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:57, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

I think you are entirely correct. The benefit of having a central forum is that we will achieve sufficient interest to keep the discussion going, generate good ideas and hopefully develop some consensus that we could put forward as new policy.

Good projects like Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check and Wikipedia 1.0; and mechanisms for meta:Article validation and Wikipedia:Approval mechanism do not get enough attention to sustain them. Besides which there is enormous crossover of ideas and contributors (the same usual suspects) and so we duplicate the same points and don't move forward enough.

When we archive we need to identify where the relevant discussions needs to go; and if there isn't a project page for that type of discussion start one. :ChrisG 18:54, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Again, I think this is a great idea and one we should be focusing on developing. Slrubenstein

I agree. Maurreen 13:29, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

RfC

I think at least some of the editorial disputes could be addressed through more effort in available processes. For example:

listing them on RfC,
summarizing the dispute on the talk page, to help anyone who visits the talk page from RfC, and
anyone who lists anything on RfC trying to help out at least at a couple other disagreements.

I've only listed on RfC a couple of times, and the second was only today. But I believe my first RfC listing didn't bring any comment. RfC or a similar mechanism I think is especially needed or useful when the disagreement is between just two people. Maurreen 00:36, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

What I'm doing (Jmabel)

I hope no one wants to shoot me for what I'm doing here, but we seem to have hit a wall and I'm trying to see whether I can get us moving again. The following section, "Proposed strategies (moved from project page)" consisted of three proposals that really helped to get discussion rolling here, but were nowhere near getting consensus. I'm moving them to the talk page here, and then going back to the project page to try coming at this from a higher level, and see if we can give this more focus. If someone thinks I'm really headed the wrong way, please let's discuss; we can always revert the project page to before I got there. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:01, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

I think you did a great job! Maurreen 04:08, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Standards

(moved from project page)

I still only have a rough idea as to what these standards might be and how they would be enforced. This page, though, will hopefully spark a discussion that will lead a large number of users to collaborate and eventually create a detailed draft proposal. 172 02:56, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think there is a consensus that we desire to develop some standards.

Also, at least some people think the standards should be developed before any possible "approval" mechanism.

Given the wide range on Wikipedia, I'm thinking it might be good to have at least a couple of sets of standards, such as for different levels.

Here are some ideas from other people. Maurreen 13:29, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This was copied from "Article candidacy" at Wikipedia talk:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards (archive4). Maurreen 13:29, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Articles should be suggested as candidates, similar to FAC. Candidates should meet certain criterion which differ from the criteria applied for FAC - while quality of writing/readability should be emphasized, verifiability would be the primary focus of this process.

citations/footnotes for statements of fact
ascribe opinions
quotes footnoted
bibliography of supportive and relevant source items, articles, texts, websites.

In short, articles should report rather than state. - Amgine 17:03, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Copied from "Goal and process" at Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team: Maurreen 13:29, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It's probably more useful to start by defining what we want 1.0 to be, and then discuss what means might be adopted for getting there. My definition of 1.0 is an online (not paper) encyclopaedia which consists of a body of articles which are (a) comprehensive (b) reliably accurate (c) properly edited and proofread and (d) stable (ie, don't change all the time). One way to achieve this is to have a class of articles which are declared to be finished and then protected from general editing. There may be other ways to achieve this objective. Perhaps other users can suggest some. Adam 06:34, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I can think of four useful standards to define:

Usable articles - Lets call that Wikipedia 0.5. I suppose if we bothered a substub would be 0.1, and a stub would be 0.2.
Featured articles - Wikipedia 1.0
Extension standard required for a CD or DVD publication
Extension standard required for a paper publication

Half the reason discussions of these issues goes round and round but doesn't get anywhere is that we argue about different standards at the same time. BTW We don't need to define a clean up standard, because that is an article which depending on length meets none of the standards. I suppose in open source terms it is an experimental branch. :ChrisG 15:07, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Adam's points (a), (b), and (c) above, but have reservations re: (d). Although good articles often stabilize to a degree, to declare them finished and protected is anti-wiki. The dynamic nature of Wiki is its major strength. Perhaps declare a certain version of an article to meet a standard and create a copy called Culture (finished) for use as a reference or whatever and keep the Culture article as is - open to editing. Culture (finished) could be updated by the group when and if a better edit of Culture appears. Maybe Culture (snobbish) would be better :-). Then there could exist a sub-parallel Wikipedia_snobbish or Wikipedia 1.0 for those finished articles. -Vsmith 15:55, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Referencing in Wikipedia articles

I created Template:Unsourced. Comments? [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (hopefully!)]] 05:52, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)

Well from Wikipedia:Cite sources, the section should be called references. That is what we have been more or less standardizing on at FAC since that is one of the FA criteria now. But I suppose we could have a discussion about what the best section title is. Further comments on the talk page. - Taxman 18:44, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)

I agree that better referencing is critical to Wikipedia's credibility. I would like to see every article have at least 2 book references, 2 journal references, and 2 Web references. In addition, at least half the references should be cited in the body of the article. A well referenced article (such as Strategic management which has about 120 references and about 110 of them cited in the article) allows the reader to check the source(s) of all the major points made in the article. I see this as the inevitable next step in Wikipedia's growth and maturity. mydogategodshat 16:48, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Again, how can this be possible on pop culture topics or recent events? -- Jmabel | Talk 23:53, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

I would oppose a requirement for "at least 2 book references, 2 journal references, and 2 Web references." That appears to put form over function. Maurreen 09:56, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

What is the function of a bibliography? There are two: first, if provides legitimacy. Second, it is a resource for people who want to do more in depth research. I think we can encourage both of thee functions, and we do not need some rule like two books or two journal articles. I suggest some kind of template which allows editors to explain very succinctly how they researched the article. This might include mentioning articles or books, but in some cases, where that's not appropriate, it would include other things. The point is, it wouold provide transparency and legitimacy. Another template would allow editors to suggest to readers how they can learn more. Again, this might mention books but may not, it all depends. In both cases, thought, I suggest a template that is NOT a list (whether of books or of web-sites). Many encyclopedia articles in other encyclopedias, and many books, end with "bibliographic essays" or "suggestions for further research" and I am thinking of something more along these lines. Those articles and books, rather than providing lists, provide narratives that help explain the particular value of different resources -- information that really helps readers. Slrubenstein

I'm basically for this. I've often been frustrated that our current approach does not (for example) readily allow us to remark on the shortcomings of particular sources. On the other hand, I can imagine this becoming a POV mess, especially in controversial areas. Does anyone have an idea how to reconcile this? -- Jmabel | Talk 20:38, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

One approach is to have an article on the source and its author, as for example there is on The Great Terror and its author, Robert Conquest. Fred Bauder 22:45, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

I like Fred's approach. I think if its worth referencing its worth writing an article about it, whether in the main article space or a new source or reference article space. I understand Jmabel's concerns about NPOV; but that is the same problem we have across the whole encyclopedia; and one I think we do quite well with. If a article on a source is biased, we can stick a NPOV warning on the article, and thus readers are warned to think about the material critically. BTW I like the template; but it only needs to go on the serious articles; its not necessary on the pop culture articles. :ChrisG

Source category

I think we need to look at creating a categorisation scheme for Wikipedia articles which are 'source' articles. I've had a look through the categorisation system and I can't find any such scheme. I think that would be a worthy endeavour; because then editors could look for suitable source articles and reference from them. It would also reveal the huge gaps the obviously exist and it would suggest a whole new set of articles. :ChrisG 14:06, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Off the top of my head please amend:

Sourcing
- Primary
  - Experiments
- Secondary
- Tertiary
Peer review
- Type of peer review
Journals
- By subject
- By peer review
Academic articles or scientific papers
- By subject
- By type of peer review

Non-Fiction Books
- By subject
- ( By critical reception?
Government reports
- By subject
- By nation
- Source type
Newspapers
Websites

Standards

Current useful categories

category:Journal
Category:Wikipedia_sources
Category:Science_experiments

I think this idea has a lot of potential. But I wonder if it might be better as a list, or combined with a list. Also, you mean articles about sources, and not articles themselves that are appropriate as sources, right? Maurreen 14:33, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes, sorry categories of articles about sources! Obviously we would use categories to create lists of current articles, because the software does the work for us in terms of updating the lists. But, we would need an associated list(s) of articles that Wikipedia ought to have because they are landmark books, research papers, experiments etc. :ChrisG 14:56, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Editorial arbitration

My idea for accomplishing these ends for a while has been a setting up alternative channels in the conflict resolution process focusing on specific subject areas. In practice, this could mean setting up a committee for editorial arbitration-- at least on an experimental basis. A committee set up along the lines of the Arbitration Committee but with editorial discretion could be established for arbitrating disputes on articles pertaining to modern history and politics, which tend to dominate each step of the existing conflict resolution process. Such a committee could consist of committed Wiki editors who are PhDs or graduate students (examples that come to mind are Slrubenstein, Adam Carr, Danny, Jtdirl, El C, and John Kenney). The experts could be hired by the Foundation, which has in the past reviewed resumes by users applying for Wikimedia positions. So, whereas the Arbitration Committee focuses on behavior and process, the sort of editorial review committee that I am proposing can focus on disputes concerning point of view, language, sources, factual accuracy, etc. (By the way, if such a committee were to be set up, I would not apply to serve as an editorial arbitrator for history, given my choice to contribute anonymously.) If anyone is interested, please see Wikipedia talk:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards. 172 20:11, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I contine to see this is a crucial and desperately needed function. I myself asked for such help recently. I don't see why we cannot start forming small teams now to start offering such services. UNLIKE other committees, we should not claim the power to anything binding; we shouldn't try to "resolve" (i.e. end) a conflict, but rahter make constructive and well-informed interventions with a focus on encyclopedic standards. Slrubenstein

This was copied from "Groups" at Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team. Maurreen 13:29, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

About Jmabel's suggestion of building up a "web of trust": A page for that was started somewhere on Wikipedia. But it is general, and doesn't indicate areas of expertise.

About that and Slim's idea of an advisory group: Another way to do that or something similar could be to use or build off the Lists(s) of Wikipedians (where people are listed by interest, etc.). Maurreen 10:25, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Software assisted citation?

As briefly mentioned here, I think it would help a lot if we had a reference manager functionality in our software. I don't know if there are any projects underway or if there is any opensource code that we might use, but I think the idea as such should be discussed. My idea in brief: bibliographic information for any source of information should be entered only once and then automagically be quoted by some simple inline command in the wikitext. The software should the make this a reference and organize a literature list for each article in a consistent format. Online query of scientific databases (like PubMed) should also be possible to access bibliographic information and possibly abstracts and/or fulltext. In a word, we should a have an open source EndNote (TM) clone. Ideas? Kosebamse 18:20, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've had similiar ideas to this. I want references to be reusable throughout Wikipedia. That is, once a reference is set up within Wikipedia that particular reference could be used wherever appropriate. Another major benefit of this is that discussion of the appropriateness of a reference would be consolidated in one place. And if that reference is updated or identified as inaccurate this would amend the reference in all the articles it is used.

I would like the software to automatically create the endnotes or bring up a tooltip (perhaps depending on user configuration), pulling the information from wherever in Wikipeda it sits. :ChrisG 20:46, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Related software, such as EndNotes, exist and exemplify some of the shortcomings of such tools. On the other hand, it would be very useful to be able to use a {{ref|reference id}} which would automatically build a ==References== section with the footnoted resources, or even simply a link to a reference citation page. The problem would be to make the list of references browseable in any reasonable fashion would require a considerable development and editing effort. (I have myself spent more than 3 weeks doing nothing but keying citations into EndNotes, just for my personal article collection.) - Amgine 02:26, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Can I suggest you add this idea into the bugzilla database? Feature suggestions lodged there have a much better chance of getting worked on. Shane King 04:02, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

I would suggest to refine the concept (much) further before making it a feature request. At the least there should be an idea of

what the user interface should look like
what should go into the database
how is the output integrated into wikitext
should there be a category system for references (any librarians around to give advice on this?)
and what should be demanded of an online query for bibliographic information

If done, this project may have implications for several other Wikimedia projects, so it might be appropriate to move the discussion to meta and set up a project page there. And, of course, keep integrated with the general thrust of the encyclopedic standards project. Kosebamse 06:33, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think there's also some merit in getting something up and running, and working to iteratively improve on it. That's the wiki way after all, I see no reason why the mediawiki software can't be included in that ideal. Anyway, it was just a thought. Shane King 06:46, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

I agree that there is no reason not to work in that way. However, as this could have implications far and wide, we should have some kind of concept before we approach the developers; also, I imagine that a developer would prefer to see some kind of concept instead of just an idea. Kosebamse 12:09, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Personally I think we need to work out what kind of references we want. I would like to remove as many external links as possible. I would like to see every reference source being given a wikipedia article. The article can then comment on the credibility of the reference, provide an abstract of the article or book and provide a standard format reference for the endnotes of the article referencing it. We can create links to specific parts of articles so there is no reason we couldn't create a reference to endnote reference within the reference source article. If we started setting up such articles as agreed policy, the eventual software solution would be able to do various smart things with the reference.

Any obvious exclusion to that policy would be newspaper reports, because you wouldn't write an article about a specific article, though you would like to link to it. But you would want an article about the newspaper. :ChrisG 13:44, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"Every reference source being given a wikipedia article" sounds good, however I would rather call it a critical review plus info for automated referencing that should come in a standard format. Something like a template saying "New Wikipedian Journal of Medicine // general medicine // peer-reviewed scientific journal // so and so many points in this and that citation database // quote as: NWJM-volume-year-page // etc. //etc." and for a specific article: "NWJM, volume, pages, year // authors // title //abstract // quote as: //etc. // etc." Of course there should be discussion about the merits of a source, but it would be fine to keep that out of the reference info itself. We should however not duplicate the efforts of professional institutions. E.g. in medicine, you can't beat PubMed, and it's online for free. So, retrieve what can be retrieved from elsewhere and concentrate on evaluation. If then we could sort all of this in to a category system, even better. (Like "cat:peer-reviewed journal, cat:general medicine, cat:ten points for reliability") Kosebamse 14:44, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I also mean critical review/abstract; but as I see it that is eminiently encylopediac and so it is correct to say we want a wikipedia article on it. If we start creating large numbers of articles which are critical reviews of reference sources we will make Wikipedia useful in a whole new way. I think it would be an excellent way to bring more students and serious academics into Wikipedia and I think it would majorly enhance our percieved reliability. It would also support the reliability of our normal articles, because debates about the reliability of references would take place in the critical review and its talk page.

I also think we should use categorisation to list all these sources. It sounds like it would be a worthy addition to our categorisation system, and would help identify useful sources for wikipedia articles and research.

With regard to querying existing databases, what would be nice would be an extension of the template system, so that if you put say, for instance, a pubmed template in an article it would use the critical review article title or some metadata stored in that article to hunt for that information in pubmed.

I didn't quite follow your idea for a template, could you elaborate further? :ChrisG 16:31, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Do we need to reinvent the wheel? There are a number of standards for references which could be used as the database template (APA for example). There is no way to standardize a valuation for a given resource, since the quality of articles in a given journal fluctuates based on available submissions and the members of their review panels. However, the method by which articles are reviewed - editorial reviewed, juried, blind juried, etc. - is usually indicative of quality. (But not entirely, for example some journals are known for having biased review panels for a specific POV; e.g. New England Journal of Medicine once known for refusing to even review naturopathic medicine articles, and their review panels are still believed biased against such.)

One other comment - An encyclopedia is not a research articles index. Critiques are regularly published in the research journals. A student/researcher shouldn't be looking to Wikipedia to find resources, but to a relevant index (such as Medline, in the example above.) Having a brief synopsis of content or focus may be useful, but more than that is redundant, imo. - Amgine 16:42, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

--I agree that we should not reinvent the wheel. If there are standards for references that we could use, that would be fine and possibly would help for interoperability with other databases. --Regarding evaluation of sources, that will certainly not be easy. One first step however would be to categorise sources according to what they are, not how good they are (as mentioned by Amgine). --Regarding the "template", I just realised that "template" has a specific meaning WRT MediaWiki. That's not what I was thinking of, rather a standardised format for data about a source (bibliographical and other). --Wikipedia should indeed not try to be a research articles index. There are professional institutions who can do that better. --One more thought: There have been several suggestions for evaluation systems for users ("trust metrics") and article content ("sifter project" and related ideas). Would it make any sense to create a "Grand Unified Evaluation Standard" for all similar purposes? So that, in the end, a reader would just click a button for an article/user page/reference to see that the content/quality-of-contributions/reliabilty-of-source has been reviewed and is thought to have such and such a quality? Kosebamse 17:39, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting that Wikipedia would replace these research indexes. Though as far as I was aware, most of the good ones are only avaliable if you are a student or an academic (though I would be happy to learn that things have changed in the last few years). So for the reader there is an access issue, and even more saliently, most of our readers would not go near a research index to get their information, because they are not looking of that level of specificity. What I am trying to say is if for the purposes of an encyclopedia we need to reference a specific research study, then by definition that probably makes it an important study; then there should be an article about in on Wikipedia that is accessible to the general reader (and just as importantly our general editor). Currently Wikipedia only has articles on a few landmark studies, and I think that is a huge gap. Wikipedia's role is to produce accessible knowledge; we are always going to be behind the start of art in academic research, but we should be summarising the status quo. Achieveing that would enhance Wikipedia in a number of ways and would be incredibly useful to the non-academic.

With regard to your standard template, or in Wikipedia terms format of data. You might want to look at the Wikidata project. The basic idea of this project is store all the data which is currently located in infoboxes on Wikipedia, in a database format avaliable for all, so making it reusable for multiple projects and circumstances. In the Wikipedia articles we would pull the appropriate Wikidata into our infoboxes.

I don't think we can give a metric for credibility across the board. Wikipedia can just provide a NPOV article about a study or set of studies; or source and we have to trust the reader to come to an intelligent opinion. :ChrisG 22:36, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

On the "every source should be an article" idea, I've got what I think is a better idea: make a "Source:" namespace. Some sources aren't worth an article of their own, and others may get deleted etc, but if we had a namespace for it, then different standards could apply. Then in the references section, you could just link to the source page.

One additional benefit of this would be that the "what links here" page would tell you what articles are using something as a source. The talk page for the source could be used specifically for discussing the source's credibility and such, instead of all the other disucssion that would happen at normal articles.

The format of things in the source namespace is the question: we could have a specific set of fields, or it could be freeform and done by convention, I don't know.

What do people think? I think it would be pretty easy to do, and integrate well with the rest of wikipedia. If people are interested in the idea and want to flesh it out, I'm willing to write the code to make it happen. - ShaneKing

I think this could be an excellent idea. ~~The only issue would be when does a source deserve a wikipedia article; and thus possible duplication.~~ If we used id's or headings people could link to specific reference discussions within a source. Anything that moves such discussions away from the Wikipedia articles to a central place would be beneficial; it also would mean the discussions would be reusable. :ChrisG 18:37, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Just realized that isn't a problem. If a source article deserves an encyclopedia entry in the article namespace, we can transclude that entry into the source namespace using a template. :ChrisG 00:10, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The code has been written already. See Bug 192 for discussion. -DanKeshet

Dan's comment has no relevance to the source namespace suggestion. Dan is referring to m:Footnotes, which was put in forward in January 2004. It deals with creating an autogenerated list of references at the bottom of the page, and creates an intermediate stage before going to a web address so the reader gets more detailed information. When and if it is included in the media wiki software is unknown. Personally I think it is clearly a major improvement; and would like to see it sooner rather than later. Whether it would be compatible or amended to be compatible with a source namespace is a open question. :ChrisG 10:08, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Maybe such software would be better if it were preceeded by further development of reference guidelines.

Any software should be easy for those who aren't technically inclined. Such as me. J

Maurreen 13:29, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Version 1.0 Editorial Team

Maybe I was hasty, or maybe I just followed advice about being bold and the think tank idea. But you're invited to Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team. Maurreen 08:13, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The validation feature on the test wiki

There is a validation feature on the test wikipedia. [1] I think anyone interested in standards should consider how useful it will be. And if implemented how it could best be used. :ChrisG 08:47, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Clarifying: Test wiki is a wiki to test stuff, and not a test of a wiki or something else? Maurreen 13:29, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I am lost at that page. Maurreen 17:03, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The test wiki is a place where developers experiment with new versions of the software, and where users can experiment with creating and renaming pages (as suggested at Template:Sandbox). Depending on what is being tested, sometimes the user interface is not in english, and many things might not make sense. —AlanBarrett 20:01, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. It was in English, but maybe English jargon. Maybe I'll figure it out slowly eventually. :) Maurreen 20:19, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The test wiki is basically a playground for developers to test new features. But we can also test content there as well; though I'm not sure whether the database is ever refreshed and so there is a possibility we might lose the data. Ancheta's talk page request will clarify matters.:ChrisG 12:58, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Alan, might you be suggesting that Version 1.0 encyclopedic content be copied over to the Test wikipedia? That would imply that more stable content might live in peace on the Test wikipedia. A self-fork, as it were. The live wikipedia would grow, and the Version 1.0 articles could be stable. But we would need a way to diff between Test Wikipedia and Wikipedia. That implies that we could also beta-test people policies and procedures on the Test wikipedia. You could put your Browse by Category there and we would be in business. Then the additional Extension Standards, etc. might be tried, evaluated, etc. Ancheta Wis 22:14, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I have a message on the Main Page Talk of Test Wikipedia asking if it is all right to put a link to Browse by Category in the Test Wikipedia. I put Alan's Template:Categories into Test Wikipedia and have created the Category entries for the top-level articles. These categories might be treated in several ways depending on the consensus:

A bookkeeping location for validation comments
A location for stable content or perhaps content suitable for release to 0.9, 0.99, 1.0 etc.
A place for procedure validation
A place to test out Extension standards, etc.

Ancheta Wis 01:14, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As a concrete example you can try a simulated Browse by Category on Test Wikipedia; I have populated the Culture article under the Culture Category with the en.Wikipedia content. You can check out the Validate tab at the top of the Culture article. Ancheta Wis 03:13, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC) I am ignoring the error messages that come up as items for the developers, because we are thinking about the usage of the validate tab.

Maybe the validation check should also include writing quality, NPOV, and references or sources. Maurreen 14:24, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Reorganizing?

I'm thinking that most or all of what's under "Reviewed" articles draft proposal" and "Endorsements" can go on the "Approval mechanisms" page.

The sections "Referencing in Wikipedia articles" and "Software-assisted citation" can be combined with the "Cite your sources" talk, although perhaps with a better name, such as "Referencing in Wikipedia articles", with at least a very prominent link to the Wikipedia footnotes page. Maurreen 13:29, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Also, discussion of standards could perhaps be combined somehow with the pages on Featured Article standards, perfect articles, brilliant prose and the like. Maurreen 13:36, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm moving things around a bit on this page, to keep similar topics together. I might see if I can do more. Maurreen 14:03, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)