Mailing List Archive

--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller@gmx.de> wrote:
> > I agree with Anthere and strongly disagree with
> eliminating personal essays
> > from meta. If POV material isn't allowed on meta
> then where should it go?
> Um .. how about just getting rid of it? Why is it
> within Wikipedia's
> mission to somehow provide storage space for
> personal essays? We're an
> encyclopedia, not a hosting provider.
>
> Taku is correct in that this only makes Meta hard to
> use, especially for
> other people who want to help working on the
> Wikipedia software. While it
> is possible to better organize meta, the Recent
> Changes list is cluttered
> by this stuff. There are literally hundreds of
> entries like this:
>
> ...
> # diff) (hist) . . MN Meta-symbiosis; 15:25 . .
> Saprtacus
> # (diff) (hist) . . M User talk:Saprtacus; 15:43 . .
> Saprtacus
> # (diff) (hist) . . M User talk:Saprtacus; 15:39 . .
> Saprtacus
> # (diff) (hist) . . M User:Saprtacus; 15:38 . .
> Saprtacus
> # (diff) (hist) . . MN Meta-etiology; 15:33 . .
> Saprtacus
> # (diff) (hist) . . M User talk:Saprtacus; 15:31 . .
> Saprtacus
> ...
>
> Now try to find the critical "How Wikipedia can be
> really, really fast"
> development proposal hidden deep within this
> idiosyncratic nonsense.

Meta is not only about software development, so don't
try to restrict his use for that matter.

Besides, you'll have to define what a "personal" essay
is. So not only would we need a consensus for removal
of pages from the meta, but we'll need a consensus
about what a personal essay is, and we'll need to
decide whether each and other page a personal essay
is.

All that to make a couple of articles more visible
(some on software development) or rather some less
visible (those you think are trashing meta).

A simpler way could be to implement a little something
which would allow a user to hide changes made by
another given user.

This was asked on the french wiki btw (not by me). I
think it would for example make sense to hide all the
automatic generation of bots (after it is checked
these are correct). That option sounds to me feasible,
and more desirable than just arbitrarily removing
other people stuff and upsetting them.

(oh crumbs, another feature to reject...)


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> Meta is not only about software development, so don't
> try to restrict his use for that matter.

I did not. But I don't think it's about personal essays either.

> Besides, you'll have to define what a "personal" essay
> is.

That's not so hard to do - anything outside the scope of Wikipedia's /
meta's defined mission is, by definition, personal stuff. I still think
that it should be deleted, but because people will cry "censorship" if it
is, the creation of a Crap:, excuse me, Scratch: namespace might satisfy
those who need Meta for mental masturbation, while it still allows us to
filter the RC accordingly. (If you think I'm harsh here, read the stuff
that Saprtacus puts on meta.)

I would prefer it if Jimbo would just state categorically that Wikipedia
is not a hosting provider, and give us authority to clean it up according
to the criteria I have outlined in:
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-January/008747.html

But if Jimbo wants meta to be our general wiki for everything, then we
should at least be able to filter that defined subset.

> This was asked on the french wiki btw (not by me). I
> think it would for example make sense to hide all the
> automatic generation of bots (after it is checked
> these are correct).

We already have that feature. See Wikipedia:Bots. Any registered bot is
hidden by default from RC. Currently, Brion is our bot-registrar.

Regards,

Erik

(This is a policy discussion and should be on wikipedia-l, not
wikitech-l.)

Erik Moeller wrote:
> Um .. how about just getting rid of it? Why is it within Wikipedia's
> mission to somehow provide storage space for personal essays? We're an
> encyclopedia, not a hosting provider.

Right, but...

It's pretty easy to say, with no insult or offense offered, or taken,
that a particular piece is "not encyclopedic". So it's easy to boot
stuff out of the article namespace into somewhere else.

But the next step, i.e. we allow meta discussion of some kinds, but
not if it's "personal", is problematic. People want to write about
their own views of how wikipedia should operate, etc. And that's
fine, that's what meta is for. If that tends to allow people to also
write about other topics, well, I'm reluctant to get into policing it
at that level.

As you've surely noticed, I have a rather full plate just trying
to keep the murder rate law around here. :-)

--Jimbo

Erik Moeller wrote:
> Rename - yeah, makes sense. When I suggested Wikipedia in some
> contexts, people were frightened by the encyclopedia-notion, which
> would not be appropriate for their project.

We should name it "Phase III, Version 1.0". Because that's what we
call it anyway, Phase III.

--Jimbo