Wikipedia

Paradoctor

Joined 10 April 2007


In many of the more relaxed civilizations, the Wikipedia has already supplanted the great Encyclopedia Britannica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it is free; and secondly it has the words Come as You Are inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover. — with apologies to the D. A.


Welcome to the Land of Confusion

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A Paradox May Be Paradoctored.

— the 4th By-Law of Time from Robert Anson Heinlein, "—All You Zombies—", 1958

The Literature

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Fashioning articles is the goal. But this tends to overlook the fundamental value added by an encyclopedia through its encyclopedic research (ER (is) not OR). Collecting bibliographic information, and reviewing the quality of the sources establishes the factual basis from which articles derive their utility. The use or non-use of statements in the article is determined by the result of encyclopedic research. Consensus (other than that on WP:V) is secondary to that. NPOV is determined from the literature, anything else is madness. Notability is an arbitrary cutoff for pragmatical reasons. Many, if not most notability discussions are moot when viewed from WP:V.

What is the first step in writing an article about X? Finding the literature on X. This means that every article needs a comprehensive commented bibliography. The rest of the article should follow mechanically.

Random wikiquotes

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Yeah, why free for workers?

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Why free for workers?

I don't accept the Wikimedia/Wikipedia project as the educator's starvation. It has to be discussed, before anything. The knowledge free for everyone, ok. But must the price be no-pay teachers, professors, writers, educators, experts? Yesterday was the Worker day, and the Wikimedia gift for workers in EDUCATION should be payment. If not, the rising "knowledge society" or "information society" will promote a "Wealth of Educations", but also the "misery for educators".

The Wikifoundation has million and million dollars for too several things, but for users? Users support the Wikimedia, it's deeply reasonable to pay who MAKES the Wikifoundation projects, like Wikipedia.

This subject is also about License, that means also Copyrights. PAY AUTHORS NOW!!!

— Camillo Cavalcanti 23:29, 2 May 2009 (UTC), found on Meta

The World and Wikipedia by Andrew Dalby

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With encyclopedic modesty Pliny has named his sources; but; with the insouciance of a second-rate Wikipedian, he provides no inline citations.

— Andrew Dalby, The World and Wikipedia, chapter 2 "Where it came from", page 20

Wikilulz

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Education.
  • (found on Category:Education) isn't that a teensy bit tautological?
  • We had a virgin, now the other half speaks: Sean Joseph O'Reilly. (2001). How to Manage Your DICK: Redirect Sexual Energy and Discover Your More Spiritually Enlightened, Evolved Self. Maryland: Auriga Pub. Group. ISBN 1580083501. (spotted this while researching a claimed RS)
  • Fell nearly out of my chair when I noticed this link on the page on hotel toilet-paper folding.
  • leakage, indeed :-))
  • can't argue with that
  • Goya and Wikipedia: finally someone has courage to tell the real story.
  • Gargamel's musings
  • "The forces throng in this one."
  • Templates that I sorely miss
  • Adler's laws
  • Nothing to laugh about. Seriously, they will come for you if you do.
  • Spotted at Wikisource. Unremarkable? Sure, as long as you don't speak both English and German. It might be interpreted as "making love to a consanguine relative". ^_^
  • Always, always put spaces after your commas!
  • Ssymmety is important
  • No uncited material, please!
  • Britannica vindicated (refers to alleged copyvios of Macmillan Dictionary for Children and Scrabble)
  • I think this explains everything about Microsoft.
  • Overdue spelling reform, or just a case of clairvoyance?
  • So that's how they financed the pyramids!
  • I understand his enthusiasm.
  • Everyone was a newbie once (first messages). ^_^
  • But it's notable!
  • The mad translator has struck again!. Though I'm not sure why. ^_^ International cooperation, I love it.
  • Wikipedia is making progress. (noticed via this edit)
  • An inquiring mind
  • DVDm is taking his own advice ;)
  • I think that explains it.
  • Some Mathematicians enjoy dirty jokes so much that they write an entire paper just to make a horrible pun. ^_^
  • Over!
  • that's right
  • understandable complaint
  • Par(adox) for the course.
  • The long version of TL;DR.
  • Edit summary: true story.
  • Didn't see that one coming. :D
  • That is how you add verifiable content.

Another fine mess

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In arguments opposed to this, a primary one was of "code reuse". Our longstanding principle of not using templates for article content stands in stark contrast to this. We, as a wiki, have chosen to sacrifice the benefits of consistency and elimination of redundancy in exchange for ease of editing and the idea that hitting "edit" on an article actually allows you to edit the article, not just the meta-structure of the article. This is also somewhat a failing of our current editor UI, which doesn't have IDE type functionality that would be required if our articles were written more like computer source code.

— Template talk:Cite doi/Archive 1#RfC: Should Template:cite doi cease creating a separate subpage for each DOI?

Dinosaur droppings

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The oldest edit I have reverted, so far. Timestamped 2002-07-25, almost 23 years ago.

Director's dashboard

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