One of the most famous antiwar songs of World War I didn't have an article. It's up to a stub now: "I Didn't Raise My Boy to be a Soldier". Feel like joining a DYK drive? Sources aren't hard to find. I'll be uploading the sheet music to Commons soon.

Cheers,
Wiki Witchery

I have some suggestions:

Did You Know... Wikipedia contains incorrect, misleading, and biased information. Whether through vandalism, subtle disinformation, or the prolonged battling over biased accounts, many of Wikipedia’s articles are unsuitable for scholarly use. Because of poor standards of sourcing and citation, it is often difficult to determine the origin of statements made in Wikipedia in order to determine their correctness. Pursuit of biased points of view by powerful administrators is considered a particular problem, as opposing voices are often permanantly banned from Wikipedia. Wikipedia’s culture of disrespect for expertise and scholarship (see below) make it difficult to trust anything there.

Did You Know... Wikipedia’s articles are used to spread gossip, abet character assassination, and invade the privacy of the general public. So-called “Biographies of Living Persons” are often the result of attempts by powerful but anonymous editors and administrators at humiliating or belittling those real-world people with whom they disagree. Wikipedia’s “anyone can edit” culture has allowed baseless defamation of various individuals to spread widely through the Internet. When the family, friends, associates, or subjects of these biographies attempt to correct errors or insert balance, they are often banned from Wikipedia for “Conflicts of Interest”. Subjects of these hatchet jobs usually must resort to legal action to get the articles removed or corrected, a course not available to all.

Did You Know... Wikipedia over-emphasizes popular culture and under-emphasizes scholarly disciplines. Wikipedia contains more articles, of greater depth, on television shows, toy and cartoon characters, and other emphemera of popular culture than on many prominent historical figures, events, and places. Massive effort is spent on documenting fictional places and characters rather than science, history, and literature.

Did You Know... Wikipedia violates copyrights, plagiarizes the work of others, and denies attribution to contributions. Wikipedia contains no provision to ensure that the content it hosts is not the work of another, or that content it hosts is properly attributed to its author. It contains thousands of photographs, drawings, pages of text and other content that is blatantly plagiarized from other authors without permission.

Did You Know... Wikipedia, frequently searched and prominently positioned among results, spreads misinformation, defamation, and bias far beyond its own site. Wikipedia is searched by Google and is usually one of the top results. Its database is scraped by spammers and other sites, so misinformation, even when corrected on Wikipedia, has a long life elsewhere on the network, as a result of Wikipedia’s lack of controls.

Did You Know... Wikipedia disrespects and disregards scholars, experts, scientists, and others with special knowledge. Wikipedia specifically disregards authors with special knowledge, expertise, or credentials. There is no way for a real scholar to distinguish himself or herself from a random anonymous editor merely claiming scholarly credentials, and thus no claim of credentials is typically believed. Even when credentials are accepted, Wikipedia affords no special regard for expert editors contributing in their fields. This has driven most expert editors away from editing Wikipedia in their fields. Similarly, Wikipedia implements no controls that distinguish mature and educated editors from immature and uneducated ones.

Did You Know... Wikipedia’s culture of anonymous editing and administration results in a lack of responsible authorship and management. Wikipedia editors may contribute as IP addresses, or as an ever-changing set of pseudonyms. There is thus no way of determining conflicts of interest, canvassing, or other misbehaviour in article editing. Wikipedia’s adminsitrators are similarly anonymous, shielding them from scrutiny for their actions. They additionally can hide the history of their editing (or that of others).

Did You Know... Wikipedia’s administrators have become an entrenched and over-powerful elite, unresponsive and harmful to authors and contributors. Without meaningful checks and balances on administrators, administrative abuse is the norm, rather than the exception, with blocks and bans being enforced by fiat and whim, rather than in implementation of policy. Many well-meaning editors have been banned simply on suspicion of being previously banned users, without any transgression, while others have been banned for disagreeing with a powerful admin’s editorial point of view. There is no clear-cut code of ethics for administrators, no truly independent process leading to blocks and bans, no process for appeal that is not corrupted by the imbalance of power between admin and blocked editor, and no process by which administrators are reviewed regularly for misbehaviour.

Did You Know... Wikipedia’s numerous policies and procedures are not enforced equally on the community — popular or powerful editors are often exempted. Administrators, in particular, and former administrators, are frequently allowed to trangress (or change!) Wikipedia’s numerous “policies”, such as those prohibiting personal attacks, prohibiting the release of personal information about editors, and those prohibiting collusion in editing.

Did You Know... Wikipedia’s quasi-judicial body, the Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) is at best incompetent and at worst corrupt. ArbCom holds secret proceedings, refuses to be bound by precedent, operates on non-existant or unwritten rules, and does not allow equal access to all editors. It will reject cases that threaten to undermine the Wikipedia status quo or that would expose powerful administrators to sanction, and will move slowly or not at all (in public) on cases it is discussing in private.

Did You Know... The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), the organization legally responsible for Wikipedia, is opaque, is poorly managed, and is insufficiently independent from Wikipedia’s remaining founder and his business interests. The WMF lacks a mechanism to address the concerns of outsiders, resulting in an insular and socially irresponsible internal culture. Because of inadequate oversight and supervision, Wikimedia has hired incompetent and (in at least one case) criminal employees. Jimmy Wales’ for-profit business Wikia benefits in numerous ways from its association with the non-profit Wikipedia.

Go on...

To Durova: What an idiotic nerd.

emesee is more interesting

It sounds like some of you guys are almost as disinterested in writing articles as the average Wikipedia admin.

Oh, yeah. Nice summary. Should be sent to all news services as a FAQ. Hope it's available in a prominant place for people comming here for the first time, to read.

Seconded!

Kato, that is far and away one of the best posts you've ever written on W-R, and one of the most important and comprehensive summaries of Wikipedia's fundamental flaws.

Well done.

You do realize that a considerable population of this site consists of indef blocked and banned editors? Your inquiry is the equivalent of asking a room full of paraplegics if they want to go for a walk.

Lots of us here write articles. We just don't choose to publish them on Wikipedia.

Also, beautifully done, Kato.

Beautifully said. Actually--should have made this clear--there's supportive work that could be done at two other WMF sites where probably any of the WR regulars could edit: the sheet music needs to get placed within the Commons category structure and the Wikisource page hasn't been started yet. The latter's easy: just create a gallery for the images and transcribe the lyrics.

Somebody helped a bit; wondering who Ottre is.

Indeed. If I remember correctly, that originally was a piece Kato did for the blog.

EDIT: While Kato may have chosen it for the blog, it appears that Gomi was the original author.

Maybe Ottre's one of my sockpuppets that you've missed.

Then applause, Gomi.

Agreed.

Quite the contrary. "Disinterested" means quite a different thing than "uninterested". Yet another in a long list of reasons why people like you two should not be allowed to write encyclopedia articles of any kind, at least without supervision.

Oh we have supervision. He's the fellow standing to my left.

Correct, as I note here http://www.wikipediareview.com/Directory:The_Wik..._-_A_Compendium in my copy of this piece. You may be interested in this set of links

http://www.wikipediareview.com/Directory:The_Wik...sm_of_Wikipedia

to criticisms of Wikipedia (let me know if I have missed anything). This includes a nice piece by Cedric http://www.wikipediareview.com/The_Six_Rotten_Pillars_of_Wikipedia .

Returning to the topic: learn to write English.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=317504747



What does that mean?

I guess showing up to help Durova is a blockable offense.

You would think all of Durova's proclamations about the good deeds that she and (apparently on this particular article) Joshua Zelinsky and Adam "Shoemaker's" Cuerden are doing in the service of Wikipedia are little more than an opportunity to create drama.

But, that can't be it, can it? Durova, Josh, and Adam are such dedicated encyclopedia builders. How could they possibly have time for deliberate trolling and drama generation?

Well, it's at DYK now. Not a great article by any means, but better than the redlink it used to be. Mainly the text was a side project when I realized the parody within the Puck illustration had absolutely no article to explain the context.

We may get a featured picture and a featured sound out of it; the audio up now is a rough edit. The DYK sound template needs a tweak because they've reduced the image size parameters.

I'm sure Jimmy Wales will be pleased, as you've helped to increase his credibility. I'm certain that he will mentally think of you and thank you, the next time he cashes a $75,000 speaker's fee check.

What's next, Durova? What will you help to improve next? Will it be to create Wikipedia's article about ethical accountability? Or, will it be to post a correct link to the next Wikivoices Skype chat, since the current link is wrong?

I must say I'm pleased. For once a pro-Wikipedan has started a fangirl thread and Reviewers have used it to good advantage.

So, hijacking threads and steering them to your own pet topics, even if totally irrelevant to the intended thread topic, is perfectly fine as long as it's your favorite topics that are getting flogged this way.

So now disagreeing with a topic starter is "hijacking threads?" They merely responded to the inappropriateness of starting such a topic. A little "meta"perhaps, but less so then your immediate post quoted above.

'Tis over. The DYK submission has been accepted. Whee! Wikipedia gets more content...

Resistance is futile.

Thanks for that. Can I get you your coat?

The joke is on you. You've just been mugged again.

Jimmy Wales benefits from your free labor. And he and the community have made it clear in the past what they think about you. They feel indifference bordering on contempt.

Meanwhile, the joke is also on those who dedicate their skill and labor in the real world expecting future compensation. Wikipedia has undercut that principle once again, and Jimmy Wales benefits once again.

Your addiction is not just your own problem, it is society's problem. While you make naive egotistical boasts, the light dims over another avenue of creativity, education and knowledge.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/2007/...rew_keen_1.html

Seems Durova fails to understand the distinct purpose of this forum, even more than she fails to understand that of wikipedia.

Guide in brief: the latter is for drama-whores who edit articles occasionally, the former also includes drama-whores who don't.

OK, I concede the difference is perhaps fairly obscure.

Durova seems to think that she somehow damages the purpose of this forum by creating yet more borderline useless content on Wikipedia; that somehow her scoring a few more points in the web's largest and most complicated MMORPG somehow strikes an effective blow to Wikipedia Review.

Everyone is entitled to his or her own personal delusions. I hope Durova is enjoying hers.

Well, she's got us commenting. So, whatever the logic, the troll is somewhat effective.

Nah, we fixed that with inline referencing...that guy is so...2005...



C'mon, that was a nice piece on that historical mill in Scotland, Scott.

Perhaps Durova would be interested in the suggestions in this thread?

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=24433

It's the year 2009, and no Wikipedia article about Gottlob Espenlaub!?!

For shame!

Keen is a pompous blowhard who only wants the forms of "creativity, education and knowledge" he endorses to be allowed to see the light of day. I don't put the slightest bit of stock in anything he says, even though he writes professionally as opposed to the amateur ranting being done in places like WR.

How many more books has that pompous blowhard sold than you, Dan? How many more times has he shared the stage with Jimmy Wales than you?

I don't think he wishes to suppress alternative forms of creativity, education, and knowledge; rather, he just wants us to be aware of the lamentable perils of those forms that don't meet his endorsement.

I dare say Jeffrey Archer has sold even more. Is that a valid metric of the value of his opinions?

It would be a valid metric of the comparative value of his opinions vis-a-vis those of a non-noteworthy armchair critic of Archer's.