Reviews here, reviews elsewhere...

[Bill Spight]

SL would benefit if it had fixed articles as another type of pages. This would prevent expert contribution from being "improved" to become destroyed, weak contents. Of course, articles should still have discussion subpages so that the author can be motivated to correct and should have a page name that does not lock the topic for the public. E.g., PageName/UserName. Quite like PageName/Discussion.

This would totally destroy the wiki model, and is impossible to manage. You have to manage who are experts, in what field they are experts, and decide which pages can be edited by which experts. And what if the experts do not agree? Bureaucratic nightmare.

Let me bring up again my suggestion that a Wiki Master Edit, after a decent interval, like one week, not be locked, but made more difficult to edit. For instance, an edit would appear as a suggestion and not be implemented for a day or two. That would give knowledgeable users a chance to improve or delete the proposed edit.

If you want static pages, make them sub-pages of your homepage. Those are generally considered off limits to editing by others (other than for questions or comments not altering the main text, which you are free to remove). That way you also automatically provide context on who the author is.

Do you have any examples of expert contribution being destroyed, BTW?

Geez, over the years I have seen many examples where knowledgeable contributions were directly marred or destroyed by ignorant editing, or where context was changed so they became meaningless or misleading. For quite some time my main activity on SL has been to try to preserve the quality of content that I know something about. It requires eternal vigilance.

Let me mention two examples. In one a beginner engaged in massive edits, bringing up ideas that he thought were better, but always saying, "Correct me if I am wrong." The best thing to have done for the content would have been to revert to the previous pages, but that seldom happened. It was a nightmare while it lasted. In another one someone asked a question about something I happened to be expert in. It turned out that someone else had copied something that I had written and changed it to make it clearer, in his opinion. The trouble was that he did not understand it. Hence the other user's question. I corrected the material and gave a link to my original text (which I think should have been done, anyway). In response the copier accused me of not understanding Wiki!

[tapir]

Bill, exactly how many book reviews have been cut apart, master edited, huh? Oh yes, it was a thread about book reviews. Never mind.

[kirkmc]

Let me mention two examples. In one a beginner engaged in massive edits, bringing up ideas that he thought were better, but always saying, "Correct me if I am wrong." The best thing to have done for the content would have been to revert to the previous pages, but that seldom happened. It was a nightmare while it lasted. In another one someone asked a question about something I happened to be expert in. It turned out that someone else had copied something that I had written and changed it to make it clearer, in his opinion. The trouble was that he did not understand it. Hence the other user's question. I corrected the material and gave a link to my original text (which I think should have been done, anyway). In response the copier accused me of not understanding Wiki!

That's exactly why I won't spend any time on SL. I do, as I said, edit some articles on Wikipedia, and they already require vigilance, but there are other editors. I don't want to get involved in SL, where it seems that the protection is less solid.

[HermanHiddema]

That's exactly why I won't spend any time on SL. I do, as I said, edit some articles on Wikipedia, and they already require vigilance, but there are other editors. I don't want to get involved in SL, where it seems that the protection is less solid.

This is just nonsense, IMO.

At Wikipedia, it completely depends on what page you are editing. Articles that are in the watchlist of active knowledgeable editors are generally reasonably safe. With other articles, you can do pretty much whatever you want (except straight vandalism or spam which gets picked up by bots). Unlike SL, there is no way to keep track of all changes at WP, there's just too many.

[kirkmc]

That's exactly why I won't spend any time on SL. I do, as I said, edit some articles on Wikipedia, and they already require vigilance, but there are other editors. I don't want to get involved in SL, where it seems that the protection is less solid.

This is just nonsense, IMO.

At Wikipedia, it completely depends on what page you are editing. Articles that are in the watchlist of active knowledgeable editors are generally reasonably safe. With other articles, you can do pretty much whatever you want (except straight vandalism or spam which gets picked up by bots). Unlike SL, there is no way to keep track of all changes at WP, there's just too many.

Seriously? On WP, you see each change, and you can undo them as you wish. I have my pages in an RSS feed, which, while it's not updated correctly, allows me to follow them regularly.

[HermanHiddema]

That's exactly why I won't spend any time on SL. I do, as I said, edit some articles on Wikipedia, and they already require vigilance, but there are other editors. I don't want to get involved in SL, where it seems that the protection is less solid.

This is just nonsense, IMO.

At Wikipedia, it completely depends on what page you are editing. Articles that are in the watchlist of active knowledgeable editors are generally reasonably safe. With other articles, you can do pretty much whatever you want (except straight vandalism or spam which gets picked up by bots). Unlike SL, there is no way to keep track of all changes at WP, there's just too many.

Seriously? On WP, you see each change, and you can undo them as you wish. I have my pages in an RSS feed, which, while it's not updated correctly, allows me to follow them regularly.

On SL on the other hand: You can see each change, undo the last one, put pages in your watchlist, have the RecentChanges page color coded by whether they are on your watchlist, or whether you recently edited them, choose to see only changes to pages in your watchlist, or only changes to pages you recently edited (or both). Oh, and you can get RecentChanges in an RSS feed.

Sure there are some differences, but the same basic functions are there.

[RobertJasiek]

This would totally destroy the wiki model, and is impossible to manage. You have to manage who are experts, in what field they are experts, and decide which pages can be edited by which experts. And what if the experts do not agree? Bureaucratic nightmare.

I disagree but lack time to discuss this.

If you want static pages, make them sub-pages of your homepage.

As such they are useless because readers do not find them easily. Readers search for topics - not for unknown author names of possibly existing pages.

Do you have any examples of expert contribution being destroyed, BTW?

Some pages that rested destroyed for many years have finally been improved. So I cannot find lots of new candidates quickly. Currently the Haengma page has very improper contents though; it keeps readers weak and desinforms them; every broader meaning of haengma was destroyed.

[HermanHiddema]

This would totally destroy the wiki model, and is impossible to manage. You have to manage who are experts, in what field they are experts, and decide which pages can be edited by which experts. And what if the experts do not agree? Bureaucratic nightmare.

I disagree but lack time to discuss this.

Some other time then.

Note, btw, that SL does sort of have this option now. Librarians can lock pages, which prevents normal users from editing them. This function is currently really only used to protect core pages (Front Page, Privacy Policy, Copyright). The only other locked pages are those of the RGG FAQ, which are an SL version of the relevant rec.games.go FAQ, and therefore edited externally.

I think there are situation where this mechanism can be used, though we might disagree on specifics. Certainly any external text copied to SL, such as, for example, official rules texts, could be locked in this way.

If you want static pages, make them sub-pages of your homepage.

As such they are useless because readers do not find them easily. Readers search for topics - not for unknown author names of possibly existing pages.

If you make a page like, say: "Robert Jasiek / Mathematical Term Force", that will be picked up by a title search for "force".

The full title then should make it immediately clear what this page is about, and who wrote it.

Do you have any examples of expert contribution being destroyed, BTW?

Some pages that rested destroyed for many years have finally been improved. So I cannot find lots of new candidates quickly. Currently the Haengma page has very improper contents though; it keeps readers weak and desinforms them; every broader meaning of haengma was destroyed.

Can you pinpoint which version still contained a good definition, and which edits destroyed it? Haengma seems to be a notoriously difficult concept to describe easily, and since the first version is from 2001, many changes may have been in response to new books or new information as it became available. Certainly this concept does not as yet seem to be widely understood in the western go scene.

[Bill Spight]

Do you have any examples of expert contribution being destroyed, BTW?

Geez, over the years I have seen many examples where knowledgeable contributions were directly marred or destroyed by ignorant editing, or where context was changed so they became meaningless or misleading. For quite some time my main activity on SL has been to try to preserve the quality of content that I know something about. It requires eternal vigilance.

Let me mention two examples.

{snip}

I want to be clear that I do not mean to bad mouth SL. It is a valuable resource on go. However, it is written and edited by amateurs, and there does seem to be a ratchet effect, where material that is too difficult or at too high a level gets debased.

Also, in the case I mentioned of massive edits by a beginner, I think that that was handled well by the SL community. Simply reverting to a previous page would have been insensitive.

[kirkmc]

Just another point about comparing SL to WP. Everyone on SL knows something about go; while not everyone knows something about every aspect of the game, they are familiar with it. That means that, potentially, a much larger percentage of people on SL are "eligible" to edit any given article. (With, of course, the caveat, as Bill points out above, about high-level stuff.)

On WP, on the other hand, people know only a tiny number of the subjects present; most likely, a minuscule percentage of them. For this reason, very few people are qualified to edit any given article. This means that few people - other than vandals - do edit any given article. It means that edits are more apt to be related to the article.

On SL, a lot of people post "comments" in articles showing that they don't know much about the topic. This dilutes the quality of many articles, and, as I've said elsewhere, makes reading articles very difficult.

SL is a good resource, and has a lot of information. But much of that information is simply garbled at best, and bad at worst. The decision to allow anyone to edit (as opposed to posting on discussion pages) is very egalitarian, but leads to a lowest-common-denominator result.

[HermanHiddema]

On SL, a lot of people post "comments" in articles showing that they don't know much about the topic. This dilutes the quality of many articles, and, as I've said elsewhere, makes reading articles very difficult.

Yes, this is a real problem, and as I mentioned is mainly the result of a lack of manpower.

But I don't understand the reasoning: This page is hard to read, therefore I will not edit it.

The whole idea behind SL, WP and all wikis in general is that anyone can edit, so that anyone can fix it if something is wrong.

[kirkmc]

It's pretty simple: I don't want to spend the time editing a page that is, indeed, very hard to read, and, what's more, potentially offending people whose contributions I would remove. I have no qualms about this on WP, because the articles I edit are subjects I know enough about, and about which I can offer citations. But on SL, the lack of citations means that much of the content is personal opinion. If one person starts deleting a bunch of stuff that one could, arguably, say is not good, I think the reaction may not be positive. And I simply don't want to get into that. I'd just as soon ignore SL for the most part than work with inferior content, and end up being criticized because I'm not strong enough to be making edits.

Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people feel the way I do, and this results in SL as it is. The selection of "experts" to do editing, and the removal of discussion threads from main pages, while difficult, could go a long way toward making it a much more valuable resource.

I have a feeling that you don't understand what I see as the key difference between the two: the breadth vs depth question of one subject on SL vs many on WP, and what that leads to.

[judicata]

I find Sensei's to be a wonderful resource. Although many pages have several errors, quirks, and poor structure, and some pages are just downright unreadable, most of the pages I've looked at (and I'm only speaking for myself) are adequate to get much of the information I'm looking for. (A special credit to our own Bill Spight in this regard.) This is especially true for most beginner-oriented pages, which I found helpful as a DDK.

When I look for book reviews, I go to Sensei's. The book entries are usually easy to find, usually exist, and quite often either have a review or link to one. I also read reviews as they pop up here on L19. Although no one should feel obligated to contribute to SL--and I see a good many reasons one wouldn't want to--I appreciate it when people allow links to their reviews to be added to the respective Sensei's page.

[hyperpape]

Just another point about comparing SL to WP. Everyone on SL knows something about go; while not everyone knows something about every aspect of the game, they are familiar with it. That means that, potentially, a much larger percentage of people on SL are "eligible" to edit any given article. (With, of course, the caveat, as Bill points out above, about high-level stuff.)

On WP, on the other hand, people know only a tiny number of the subjects present; most likely, a minuscule percentage of them. For this reason, very few people are qualified to edit any given article. This means that few people - other than vandals - do edit any given article. It means that edits are more apt to be related to the article.

Funny, I'd always framed this very differently. I'd always thought that with wikipedia, everyone had something they were competent to contribute to, because of the breadth of topics. Whereas with Sensei's most of us have nothing we know about. I almost never edit theory or problem pages for that reason.

I think that the difference in frames is just interesting and not particularly important, mind you.

P.S. Judicata: I don't think linking to a publicly posted book review really requires permission for any reason (legal, ethical, politeness), except in some kind of extreme circumstance. Notification is probably nice. The real issue is about copying book reviews in their entirety.

[John Fairbairn]

Yes, this is a real problem, and as I mentioned is mainly the result of a lack of manpower.

But I don't understand the reasoning: This page is hard to read, therefore I will not edit it.

This is the problem with logic. It only works if you accept the premise. I don't think the problem is lack of manpower. It's lack of knowledge, as Bill and Kirk and Robert all also point out.

And even if it were lack of manpower, it doesn't follow that anyone who finds a page hard to read should edit it. In any human system there has to be an incentive. To overcome the problems of time required, possibility of offending people, having your work unravelled, etc, the incentives have to be pretty powerful. Starting as they do, at present, from close to zero, there's little likelihood of change.

I'm not much of a Wikipedia fan myself - just because something is alleged to be "democratic" doesn't make it good, as mob rule illustrates - but even I can acknowledge that WP at least betrays pleasing elements of structure and presentation that SL lacks.

SL began well, but is now a mess. Not the creator's fault, but the fault of the sort of people Bill describes. Out of habit, I still look at SL every day, but horrible mistakes hit me every time. (For info, the one that made me scunner today was yougo kojiten instead of yougo shoujiten.)

SL needs a firmer structure, which must include signed contributions. Because go is a mainly Oriental activity, citations from literature are hard to apply or rely on. That is why contributions need to be signed. It's nothing to with vanity. In my case, I have no intention of posting long contributions on SL anyway, so I'm not pleading on my own behalf as a poster. I am pleading on my own behalf as a reader, as I want to know which articles to trust.

The new structure should also have a rapidly diminishing amount of discussion. That's what L19 is for.

I personally think a new style is also called for. I would like to see an end to the sort of tweeism that leads to items such as "added a comma" to the list of Recent Changes. I would also encourage an end to the posturing which bedevils WP (and thus SL) whereby posters or editors play at being scholars or impose PC. I came across a good example today on WP. A page on the book "Crime and Punishment" had a sentence something like: "Raskolnikov, a mentally unstable [citation needed] former student". For heaven's sake, hasn't the editor read the book? SL equivalents of this include inserting useless hiragana for characters when no Japanese would ever use kana.

To come back to the original topic of this thread, I believe that a very good way for SL to embark on this sorely needed new structure and style would be to start on a small, manageable and important project, and the obvious one is to set up a revised section on book reviews (signed, of course). This would, I suggest, be a popular item and so would bring more readers to SL, with the possibility that some will be inspired to take responsibility for another discrete area. It is still very difficult to provide incentives, but it is well known that people are more likely to volunteer to be part of a project that is visibly moving forward.