| Revision as of 19:38, 14 February 2007 view sourceZingostar (talk | contribs)4,406 editsNo edit summary← Previous edit | Revision as of 19:40, 14 February 2007 view source Zingostar (talk | contribs)4,406 editsNo edit summaryNext edit → | ||
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| I think its wrong that on the Swedish version of Misplaced Pages you can't say what you want to with out being blocked for let say 24 hours or so. And you be blocked for no appearent reason like if you tell that you dont agree on something toally silly the other person or someone else of that persons allies block you. | I think its wrong that on the Swedish version of Misplaced Pages you can't say what you want to with out being blocked for let say 24 hours or so. And you be blocked for no appearent reason like if you tell that you dont agree on something toally silly the other person or someone else of that persons allies block you. | ||
| There is something wrong with the wikipedia system it makes people powerhungry and people block each other just becuase they can. But i dont think their is a way to improve it because it has already fallen apart at least in the Swedish version. |
There is something wrong with the wikipedia system it makes people powerhungry and people block each other just becuase they can. But i dont think their is a way to improve it because it has already fallen apart at least in the Swedish version. And i think the english wikipedia is heading towards the same situation, where all conversations is about "you are doing this, and you are doing that wrong " and so on.This should be a happy and fun place to be, but thats also the problem when people get even power over something as small as other people on a article writing page it goes out of hand. | ||
| ], 19:18, 14 February 2007 | ], 19:18, 14 February 2007 | ||
Revision as of 19:40, 14 February 2007
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"Meta"
Thumperward, your description of certain parts of the article as "meta-advertising" puzzles me. You removed from the introduction a simple sentence outlining Misplaced Pages's core content policies, which is entirely relevant to the subject of the article, and fits with the guidelines that state that the lead section should summarize the rest of the article. The references to the project pages are there simply to confirm their existence — our policies don't allow unsourced statements in articles, and especially in an article such as this one we should be particularly careful to source every statement. Stating that "Misplaced Pages has a policy on such-and-such" is all very well, but while we as contributors know it's true, the reader may not. Proof that this is in fact the case, and that we haven't just made it up, is therefore required — just as it would be if we were discussing, say, company policy in an article about a corporation. We can't let the fact that we are Misplaced Pages detract from the need to source statements – Qxz 11:18, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
- It is not necessary to endlessly point out random Misplaced Pages policy pages in the introduction in order to make this point. The intro is overly-long as it is, and Misplaced Pages's internal policies need only be referred to with a single ref: not padded out with a half-dozen policy links. Even the article body goes into such excruciating detail over this that it reads like a site map at points.
- As for the "information may be retrieved by..." section, such banal commentary doesn't belong in the article at all. I mean, wow, a website can be searched by visiting a search engine. Categories bear a note in the organisation section in the article body, but not in the intro.
- I'm planning on removing these again, as part of a larger mission to reduce this article to a length which makes it readable. There's no rule which says that just because this is the article about the project that it need project more importance on Misplaced Pages relative to any other article. It should be presented with a NPOV as if it was just some random website, which means removing the buffing which comes from dozens of reference links to the same domain. Chris Cunningham 11:32, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
- I assume you're referring to the statement that says "Information can be found on Misplaced Pages by using search engines, article hyperlinks, or Misplaced Pages's topical organization of categories and portals"? This may be obvious to us, as regular users of both Misplaced Pages and the Internet, but remember that our articles should cater for a much wider audience. We all know what a search engine is, yet Search engine has to explain it in full.
- I'm opposed to lowest-common-denominator editing. Chemistry articles assume some level of knowledge from the reader. So should website articles. Chris Cunningham 11:57, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
- 78 kilobytes is a little lengthy, but it's by no means excessive, and we shouldn't be removing useful content purely for that reason. Remember that much of that 78Kb figure comes from the references, and the actual amount of text to be read is significantly smaller. This doesn't mean we should be getting rid of references, though.
- The value in a large number of references to interlinked pages on the same domain is questionable. Regardless, my primary point is that such information doesn't belong in the intro. Misplaced Pages's governance model is not so interesting that the user is going to need to consult multiple sources over the subject of three lines in the intro. Chris Cunningham 11:57, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
- Misplaced Pages's content policies are important because they define the whole nature of the project, and are also both the percieved solution to and the subject of most of the criticism of the project, of which there is a lot. They deserve a mention for this reason, and as I said above, such a mention requires sourcing – Qxz 11:39, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
- Regarding the size of the lead section, WP:LEAD suggests anything from one paragraph for a short article to four paragraphs for a long article. This is a long article, and there are four paragraphs; I don't see the problem with that – Qxz 11:44, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
- This is self-reinforcing. The article is so long because of inclusionistic editing. This has to be tackled in chunks. However, if you don't think this article is overly-long and therefore tedious to read at the moment, there's obviously little that I can do to it. I don't think the article is a particularly good model for Misplaced Pages articles right now, primarily because its perceived importance has made people think that duplicating large portions of the site's meta-commentary is necessary to present a complete picture. I'd like to see the article presented more neutrally, and cutting the length down would improve the article's flow and readability. Chris Cunningham 11:57, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
- All I can say is it's better than it was — I've trimmed down the "Criticism and controversy" section by over 10 Kb. The "Encyclopedic characteristics" section has since been introduced, thus bringing the size back up, but I think that's OK because it contains useful information that was lacking before. It could still use a trim and a check for biased material, though – Qxz 12:14, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
- Also, if you think this page is too long and full of meta-commentary you should try looking through the four sub-articles (listed in the to-do list); they're a lot worse — but we can only do so much at one time, and it's probably better to get the main article into shape first and then work on those – Qxz 12:18, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
- This is self-reinforcing. The article is so long because of inclusionistic editing. This has to be tackled in chunks. However, if you don't think this article is overly-long and therefore tedious to read at the moment, there's obviously little that I can do to it. I don't think the article is a particularly good model for Misplaced Pages articles right now, primarily because its perceived importance has made people think that duplicating large portions of the site's meta-commentary is necessary to present a complete picture. I'd like to see the article presented more neutrally, and cutting the length down would improve the article's flow and readability. Chris Cunningham 11:57, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
- I assume you're referring to the statement that says "Information can be found on Misplaced Pages by using search engines, article hyperlinks, or Misplaced Pages's topical organization of categories and portals"? This may be obvious to us, as regular users of both Misplaced Pages and the Internet, but remember that our articles should cater for a much wider audience. We all know what a search engine is, yet Search engine has to explain it in full.
Policy
Policy information should really be concentrated into one section as much as possible. Currently policy links are littered all over the article, which is part of the reason there are so many of them. The "features" section, for instance, devolves into policy talk after the first paragraph.
I'm going to try to come up with a new logical layout for the article first rather than shuffling things about incrementally. Chris Cunningham 12:08, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
- I've rewritten the last paragraph of the introduction so that it doesn't enumerate all the policies, just explains they exist and refers to Misplaced Pages:List of policies and guidelines. That better? – Qxz 12:12, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
- I also added this to the to-do list – Qxz 12:16, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
- The lead section is now 3,608 characters, down from 4,492 earlier this morning – Qxz 13:55, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
- Following pruning of the External Links and rewording of the "Encyclopedic characteristics" section, the size of the whole article is now 72Kb rather than 78Kb, which is hopefully more acceptable – Qxz 14:40, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
- Though evidently not acceptable enough. Someone decided to attack it with a meat cleaver, and it's now 50Kb... – Qxz 09:44, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Thoughts on improvement
I started to edit the current "features" section, the content of which I find rather odd, but in the process I started to think the article needs more reorganization. Thoughts on my thoughts?
- I'm not sold on including our policies in the last paragraph of the first section; are policies a "feature"? I'm especially not fond of mentioning only NPOV here; if anything, it should be the five pillars or Foundation issues that get top billing. NPOV is mentioned separately three times in this article... which is, ironically, arguably POV. Especially the "objective truth" sentence; do any current encyclopedias claim that?
- I know it fits logically in the sentence, but putting the single sentence about fair use under the header "free content" is awkward.
- Careful about using Misplaced Pages jargon to describe its functions; for example, I reworded a sentence that mentioned article "protection" and referred to "edit wars". The latter, I imagine, is pretty obvious, but "protecting" isn't. (I might've thought so, but in describing the features of MediaWiki, I got confused responses to the term.)
- On statistics as POV: the sentence "For comparison, the index of the 2007 Encyclopædia Britannica contains 700,000 terms, less than half the number of articles in Misplaced Pages" reads like one of those contrived comparisons people use to make rhetorical points, like "if you took all of the french fries eaten by Americans in a day and stacked them end to end, they'd stretch from the earth to the moon" or "if the length of the football field represents the age of the universe, a ribosome in a cell in a blade of grass in the end zone represents human history" (all statistics from the Insitute of Opabinia's Ass ;).
- In general, I do think the encyclopedic characteristics section spends too much time comparing to Britannica. A lot of this material is very well written and would make an excellent essay in project space comparing and contrasting the advantages of the two models, but it's a bit awkward here - it sort of sounds like we've got something to prove?
- Getting back to the example I posted above: Misplaced Pages "does not shy" from covering controversial issues - the implied comparison here is that Britannica "ignored" and did "shy awat from" covering sexual harassment (truth movement, whatever). While Britannica was criticized for not covering sexual harassment, we don't know why they didn't (unless they've made a statement on it?). Maybe they thought it didn't merit a top-level article, or was adequately covered in subsections of other articles, or they commissioned an article three years ago and are still waiting for the author to send them the final draft. (I'm also not sure sexual harassment as a topic is especially controversial, though individual cases may be.)
- The first paragraph of "biases" is. (Sorry, couldn't resist, though that doesn't quite work.) This should be about Misplaced Pages's biases or lack thereof, not about famous errors Britannica made - those go in the Britannica article. Also, NPOV violations/tendentiousness is "usually" dealt with "swiftly"? There's a lot of people who've dragged or been dragged through ArbCom who would disagree with that.
- On statistics as POV, part 2: in the breadth and depth section, there's mention that the number of FAs has been increasing, but not that the ratio of FAs to total articles has been decreasing.
- Why are there two reliability sections? One or the other needs to be renamed, if only because repeating header titles makes it more difficult to link to a subsection from outside.
- The information about use in court cases and being plagiarized, which is currently in the first reliability section, ought to have its own section - perhaps a "use in culture and media" section (or somesuch) that could subsume the "in popular culture" title, which as I understand it is deprecated. I'm personally shocked that court cases refer to Misplaced Pages articles.
- Since the encyclopedic characteristics section is explicitly organized according to the criteria from the Kister study, it should mention Kister by name and refer to his study as an authoritative attempt to judge the quality of encyclopedias (assuming it is).
- On statistics, part 3: "approximately one-quarter of Misplaced Pages's traffic came from users without accounts, most of whom were not regular editors" - I can't think of an interpretation for this sentence that doesn't make it bunk. The meta page says "Statistics suggest that anonymous viewers make up one fourth of total readership.", which is almost certainly misstated; three quarters of readers have accounts? Not a chance. One quarter of Misplaced Pages's editing traffic might be from anons, but that's not what meta claims. Maybe worth taking up there, because there's no way that what they say is what they mean.
- "Authorship and management process" is mostly a more specific version of the previous "editing" section. I may be biased, but I think editing is a sufficiently notable quality of Misplaced Pages that it could get its own top-level section that merges the existing two.
Hm, I intended this post to be less specific and more organizational, but apparently I can't see the forest for the trees. I'm only being this nitpicky because I was asked to point a critical eye this way. I'll let Chris above make any reorganizational suggestions he has in mind. Opabinia regalis 05:16, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
- Following Thumperward's edits, I cut down on references to policies a bit yesterday, at least in the lead section, "Features" and "Encyclopedic characteristics" — though yes, NPOV is still mentioned too many times. NPOV is one of the five pillars, but perhaps they should all get equal weight. How about making a new subsection that deals with policies, and removing mention of them elsewhere?
- "Free content" could perhaps be renamed to "Licensing" or similar.
- If the Insitute of Opabinia's Ass has any better statistics they would be welcome, failing that just get rid of them.
- I trimmed a good 3Kb off "Encyclopedic characteristics" yesterday precisely because it was somewhat essay-like. Perhaps we should cut it down to a few paragraphs, then fish the original version out of the history and post it in WillowW's userspace as an essay. :)
- The mention of an increasing number of FAs but not a decreasing FA-to-article ratio is probably semi-intentional; the latter statistic seems to me to be going into a bit too much detail (and sounds like another one from the IOA, to be honest).
- One of the reliability sections covers criticism of reliability, whereas the other just discusses reliability. I agree this isn't optimal; perhaps it would be best to just get rid of the subsections of "Criticism and controversy" and squash it up a bit — it does have it's own whole article, after all. Mind you, so does reliability, another reason not to have two sections on it.
- "In popular culture" is deprecated? What should happen to Misplaced Pages in popular culture, then (of which that section is basically a one-paragraph summary)?
- "Encyclopedic characteristics" was organized under the criteria from the Kister study, but then we decided that was too many subsections (I think there were seven or eight) and cut some out. So describing it as such would be misleading. Perhaps the best thing is to reorganize that section further so that it bears no resemblence to the study. :)
- Most meta statistics are hopelessly outdated, sadly. This is a shame, as statistics such as that one can be useful. While as editors we can only say what sources tell us, in this incidence I think we can make a good case that the source is not a reliable one, and remove it.
- Yes, the "authorship" bit has sort of been left in the middle of things where it doesn't really belong. It's probably better off under "editing" or "features" or something.
- Bascially the article needs to be reorganized somewhat, though I'm not quite sure how. Hopefully we can come up with something – Qxz 08:36, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
- Many thanks for everyone's work on this. I'm busier than I expected to be right now, so not as free to contribute as I'd like to be. Chris Cunningham 10:41, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
- I'm not sure I can make a suggestion on what to do with Misplaced Pages in popular culture, though it's so bad and full of cruft at the moment that I'm tempted to say get rid of it and put the useful information back in this article. I haven't thought through yet what Willow posted below (though I generally agree that the writing desperately needs one person to go through and regularize), but I'll think about a more useful organization for this article. Unfortunately the IOA is mostly in the business of producing statistics with laughably small sample sizes, so nothing much of use there. Also, see the featured article statistics; the FA-to-total ratio has indeed been dropping of late. I agree it's not worth mentioning in this article, but then, I don't think "the number of FAs is increasing" is very useful either. Opabinia regalis 08:16, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
"Encyclopedia characteristics"
I mistagged this because I was in a hurry. This is an essay. The section should be disassembled. As-is it's disrputing the flow of the article by essentially trying to be its own comparative essay. Chris Cunningham 14:21, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
- Well, now things have completely changed. I'm not entirely satisfied with things yet, though; some of the sections about editing are in a mess, and the stuff that was in this section — which is useful ?— has been broken up and in many cases seems to have gone altogether (it was a little essay-like, but I removed most of the problematic stuff earlier) – Qxz 15:56, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
- I have to withdraw from editing Misplaced Pages regularly for the time being, due to sudden external factors. In parting, let me offer some friendly advice.
- Misplaced Pages is first and foremost an encyclopedia; everything else — the software, the policies, etc. — is secondary to that goal. Encyclopedias are judged by a standard set of criteria that were listed previously; I cited Kister (1994) for convenience but, if you wish it, I can upload several other standard citations, such as the Association of Librarians. Therefore, I think you are making a mistake by not discussing WP as an encyclopedia, and how it fulfils (or not) those standard criteria. It's unimportant whether you like or use any of my contributions, but those criteria should be discussed, ideally early in the article. I believe that the encyclopedic qualities of WP are far more important (and interesting to readers) than its sociology, policies or software; I hope that you agree with that.
- Other small suggestions. Two "s"'s in "timeliness". Add Paris to lead as server location, and fix the number of server locations ("three other locations", right?). Mention that WP tries to limit the length of articles, so that they can be read at one sitting, but that it compensates with having daughter articles, "See also"'s, categories and portals.
- Umm, please try to keep your paragraphs and sections logically integrated. Ideally, there'd be a topic sentence, followed by cogent sentences that follow from one another. Ditto on organizing the paragraphs, and the overall architecture of the article.
- Forgive me if I've had to write tersely; I have a lot to do today. :( The constructive criticism is kindly meant, and I hope that you will pause to consider it fairly. Willow 17:03, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
F: I say never say never, to comment in reference to not using an Encyclopedia as a source in academic research. There are many questions over all kinds of new and ever-changing technologies in education. Certainly, questions may be raised over the validity and reliability of a citation from Misplaced Pages in an academic paper. However, whether doing so is deserving of an "F" should itself be questioned and addressed. My opinion is that instructors should encourage students to think critically and examine the reliability of content for themselves rather than making the absolute statement of NEVER! --Kenneth M Burke 19:54, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Please fix the link that calls Misplaced Pages a "non profit organisation" and change it to the correct spelling, "organization"
Page requests
The current article states, "Misplaced Pages receives over 2000 page requests per second.". Last time I heard, the number was 30,000. Who is correct? Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 19:37, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
- I imagine that 2,000 figure has been in the article for a long time (i.e. years). Anyway, according to the stats (which we can cite in the article if necessary), it just about reaches 30,000 requests at peak times — though it falls below 10,000 during the quietest part of the day – Qxz 10:52, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
- I've updateed the image caption – Qxz 10:56, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
So how do you pronounce Misplaced Pages?
Is the reason why it isn't listed here because of different cultures, nationalities, etc, pronouncing it different? I say Wick-kuh-peed-dee-uh (like Wicca) instead of Wee-kee-peed-dee-uh. Just curious. Disinclination 20:06, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
- Huh. Now that you mention it, there used to be an IPA guide for pronouncing Misplaced Pages. I guess it got lost somewhere along the way. I'll restore it from a previous version... —msikma (user, talk) 09:18, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
- Well, there are at least three different ways in which it is pronounced; arguably the "correct" way to say it is the way that "wiki" is said in Hawaiian — "Wee-kee". Some people (e.g. Disinclination) say "Wick-kuh"... and others (such as me) say "Wick-ee". This being a written project I don't think anyone ever bothered to try to establish a standard pronounciation – Qxz 10:50, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
- You forgot "wih-kih", the way I usually pronounce it :) but yeah, there's no official version and unlike certain projects the way it's pronounced isn't any kind of community shibboleth. Chris Cunningham 12:03, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
- It would be interesting to gather audio recordings of people around the world saying "Misplaced Pages". I bet there would be tens of different pronunciations.--Pethr 04:56, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
- You forgot "wih-kih", the way I usually pronounce it :) but yeah, there's no official version and unlike certain projects the way it's pronounced isn't any kind of community shibboleth. Chris Cunningham 12:03, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
- Well, there are at least three different ways in which it is pronounced; arguably the "correct" way to say it is the way that "wiki" is said in Hawaiian — "Wee-kee". Some people (e.g. Disinclination) say "Wick-kuh"... and others (such as me) say "Wick-ee". This being a written project I don't think anyone ever bothered to try to establish a standard pronounciation – Qxz 10:50, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
I always pronounce the e like in egg whereas many English speakers pronounce it like in pea, SqueakBox 04:58, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
One assessment and one suggestion
I'm just one person, but I hope that you will consider this constructive criticism. I know that there can be differences of writing style, some preferring a richer 19th-century style while others favor a terse Hemingway-like style. Likewise, I know that there may be differences of opinion on what should be included here, or how much weight or background any given facet of Misplaced Pages should be given.
That said, in my assessment, the ACID has been disastrous for this article. I hope that no one will accuse me of being disloyal to Misplaced Pages or its ideal of open collaboration, but the present state of this article seems like wonderful supporting evidence for Jorge Cauz's statement that WP is a mass of random trivia, poor organization and wretched writing. The single-sentence paragraphs, the lack of flow within paragraphs, the broken connections between paragraphs, the weak large-scale architecture in the article, the huge number of references for a paltry amount of data, the lack of distinction between important and trivial facts, interesting and boring...one could go on and on and on. Does anyone think that this is presently a good article that reflects well on Misplaced Pages?
It's not clear how it happened, but it seems to be a "too many cooks spoil the broth" kind of problem: severe systemic disagreements among editors on what should be covered and how. My suggestion is that the active editors agree on an overall size and structure of the article (and its lead) first, and then integrate the far-flung factoids into well-written paragraphs within that structure. It seems like 4 major sections would be good, say, Goals and Implementation, History, Encyclopedic assessment, and Impact. "Implementation" would cover the editorial policies, practices and sociology, along with the hardware/software. If the active editors could agree on a detailed article organization first, that might forestall others from massively rearranging and disemboweling their collective hard work afterwards; they could explain their rationale by pointing to an agreed-upon organization. That would give us the hope of building a stable article by consensus, rather than something that will be torn down over and over again.
I'm very sorry to be so negative about the state of the article, but it's my honest assessment and I'm only saying it with the hope and goal of its eventual improvement. Sometimes it's healthier to acknowledge problems, so that we can deal with them and make progress. However, I also understand that others may not have the same perspective. Willow 13:44, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
- I don't think the writing is that bad (although the single sentence paragraphs are a concern, and I see some redundancy), but I agree that this article needs a good massage to reattain featured status. I don't think I've ever even made an edit to this article, and I can't add it to my plate, but I'd like to see some improvement. For the record, I prefer the terse style :) — Deckiller 13:57, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
- I agree with you, Willow. I actually made this same comment, except less concisely stated, in the peer review section. The prose of this article is terrible in some parts. What happened to explaining things along the way? We're an encyclopedia, which means that we must attempt to educate our audience by catering them with information. Simply stating the truth along with a reference and then running away is not the right way to go about this. References are only used for providing a reliable source of the claims made in the article, but currently most of them are used as though they're external links. What this article needs at this moment is a thorough copyediting process that will bring the fun of reading back into it. I think that perhaps rewriting the article from a new basis might be a bit extreme, since the current order of headers would likely not be changed very much. But whatever we do, we must do something. —msikma (user, talk) 07:20, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
- Make some changes, be bold, and see how people receive it. No harm done. ~ Rollo44 08:00, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
The difficulty of not having an agreed-upon outline and space-budget, as I see it, is that editors may have sincerely-felt differences of opinion about the writing and coverage; since the work of a week can be undone in an hour, editors may despair of ever reaching a stable version. Despair is harm indeed. We all must accept that Misplaced Pages's words are written in water, and shouldn't hold our own work too dear, but it's hard to devote yourself whole-heartedly to an article if one imagines that someone is waiting for you to finish so that they can incinerate your efforts. If we agree and plan in advance, the article will be better organized and better written, and would allow us to explain to eager newcomers why they should be conservative in reverting, what the organizational rationale was. Given a topic as complex and controversial as Misplaced Pages, a plan would also help us to cover everything without being redundant, and to understand each other's perspectives re:writing and coverage. That would be my suggestion, at least, for making a more stable and better written article. Willow 11:39, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Citation format
Shouldn't we be using the cite templates in this article? It gives the references more semantic information, and standardizes them. Any objections to changing the citation format? CloudNine 13:31, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
- They're used in some cases, but mostly (where {{cite web}} would be used) they aren't. I think people have left it the way it is because it's simpler and because there are so many of them that it would take forever to change. But feel free to change them if you wish – Qxz 16:34, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
- I too strongly agree with using {{cite web}} for references. MediaWiki's syntax is limited, and templates like that were made specifically to address such limitations. Plus, they offer a consistent interface for the references as well. It shouldn't be too difficult to convert them on a mass scale. I'll see if I can write a converter to do it for me for at least most of them. —msikma (user, talk) 07:13, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Editorial management and control of Misplaced Pages
I don't know if there is already, but there should be an article on how Misplaced Pages is managed editorially. For instance, I don't know how one becomes an editor with certain powers, or how this authority has evolved over time. I know that there is a whole editorial world that many Misplaced Pages contributors know nothing about. I came to the Misplaced Pages article to see how this hierarchy is managed to find only general explanations. There must be a pyramidal hierarchy that we can elucidate and define. ~ Rollo44 21:46, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
- Every user has the same status on the wiki. Being a sysop is just getting some extra tools and doing some housecleaning that only trusted users can do. ffm 21:48, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
- Also, see WP:ADMIN#Trivial_matter. ffm 21:50, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
- For instance, you have to be relatively initiated to find out about that term sysop and go through the Misplaced Pages subpages. It doesn't appear at all in the Misplaced Pages article. ~ Rollo44 22:25, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
- "Sysop" doesn't actually mean anything; it is merely another word for "administrator", which is mentioned in the article. "Sysop" was the more common term in the early days of Misplaced Pages but has now been replaced by a less jargon-like word; "administrator" appears in the interface (by default the MediaWiki interface refers to administrators as "sysops" and it still does internally, but has now been customized) and on policy pages – Qxz 00:40, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
- For instance, you have to be relatively initiated to find out about that term sysop and go through the Misplaced Pages subpages. It doesn't appear at all in the Misplaced Pages article. ~ Rollo44 22:25, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Would anyone mind the creation of an article which explains fully the powers of adminship, how policy is formed at the top, what kind of tensions over policy there have been, etc, etc? While I find the explanations in the article Misplaced Pages acceptable, I think there should be a more detailed article available. It's just too difficult for the average person to navigate the Misplaced Pages subpages to learn about this stuff. And since Misplaced Pages has become so popular and important, information regarding the above is no longer esoteric and of concern only to those involved. ~ Rollo44 22:19, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
- It is already there in the project namespace as WP:ADMIN and WP:CON. I do not see why that is hard to find. ffm 22:24, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
- Feel free to be bold and make it. ffm 22:30, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
- Honestly, I would love to, but ugghhh... I'd have to learn all the ins and outs to create that article. And the deletionists and anti-eventualists would eat me alive if I did a half-asked job. But if no one else is up to it, I'll do it at some point. ~ Rollo44 23:27, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
- The details of Misplaced Pages's policies and procedures, including those related to administrative tasks, are insignificant outside of Misplaced Pages, and hence do not merit a separate article, or anything more than a brief reference in this one. As Firefoxman mentioned, we have project pages (those in the "Misplaced Pages:" namespace) that explain these things. While it is important that Misplaced Pages makes information about its own procedures easily accessible, it is equally important that it does it internally and not as part of the enyclopedia. Suggestions as to how the organization of project pages could be improved are welcome, though this discussion page is not the place for them; Misplaced Pages:Village pump would be a better starting point – Qxz 00:44, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
- Honestly, I would love to, but ugghhh... I'd have to learn all the ins and outs to create that article. And the deletionists and anti-eventualists would eat me alive if I did a half-asked job. But if no one else is up to it, I'll do it at some point. ~ Rollo44 23:27, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
- Feel free to be bold and make it. ffm 22:30, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I see that there are some people who don't like the idea. Is there anyone who thinks it may be a good idea? ~ Rollo44 04:53, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Not Notable
If the editors of Misplaced Pages are going to determine that webcomics are "Not Notable" with followings for individual webcomics number in the thousands, then I suppose that Misplaced Pages itself should then be classified as NOT NOTABLE.
72.84.62.114 00:28, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
- Misplaced Pages recieves over twenty thousand page views per second. Assuming "followings" can be equated with the number of page views a website gets, Misplaced Pages is several orders magnitude more notable than the webcomics to which you refer. Page views, however, are not Misplaced Pages's metric of notability; rather, it is the ability to construct an article with reference to reliable, independent published sources. Misplaced Pages has been mentioned in many such sources; most webcomics have not. – Qxz 00:36, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
- I second that. Misplaced Pages is NOT NOTABLE thanks to the B.S. admin shielding their non neutral POV behind the wikipedia philosophy. 86.147.110.137 12:13, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
- Please read our notability criteria for websites. The relevant criterion here is "The content itself has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the site itself." A cursory glance at the References section of Misplaced Pages will demonstrate that this is indeed the case. The issue which you raise is irrelevant to notability, and indeed irrelevant to this article; if you have a genuine concern regarding Misplaced Pages's internal processes, please bring up the issue in a mature fashion on an appropriate project discussion page. This is not the correct place to discuss such issues. Thanks – Qxz 12:20, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Image
Where is the image for our logo? I have looked all over and have not found it. Thanks, Megalodon99 (Talk) 13:01, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
- It is Image:Misplaced Pages-logo-en.png (see also: Misplaced Pages:Logos and slogans). El_C 13:04, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
pronunciation
is not /ˌwɪːkiːˈpiːdi.ə/ (with an /ɪ/ in the place of the first /i/) also acceptable/commonly used? I realise the original Hawaiian is /, but I think a more naturalised english pronunciation would use /ɪ/. --Krsont 22:38, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
- See Talk:Misplaced Pages#So how do you pronounce Misplaced Pages? – Qxz 12:55, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Graph
There used to be a graph of Misplaced Pages's growth on this page. A few months ago, it got out of date, and apparently it's been removed. I would really like to see it back. Any suggestions? 66.250.190.112 20:00, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
- I think that it was impossible to update beyond a certain point due to software limitations. Maybe they'll fix it sometime. —msikma (user, talk) 20:33, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Vadalsim
Why would anyone vandalize a article about the site if there on it.Themasterofwiki 19:10, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
- Probably because it's consistently one of the most viewed pages on Misplaced Pages. CloudNine 19:19, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
You could equally ask why do people vandalise wikipedia at all. The sad and frustrating partial answer is that 95% at least is kids, perhaps much higher than that though there are a few deliberate adult vandals, see Misplaced Pages Watch, SqueakBox 05:03, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Censur on Swedish wikipedia is very usuall
I think its wrong that on the Swedish version of Misplaced Pages you can't say what you want to with out being blocked for let say 24 hours or so. And you be blocked for no appearent reason like if you tell that you dont agree on something toally silly the other person or someone else of that persons allies block you. There is something wrong with the wikipedia system it makes people powerhungry and people block each other just becuase they can. But i dont think their is a way to improve it because it has already fallen apart at least in the Swedish version. And i think the english wikipedia is heading towards the same situation, where all conversations is about "you are doing this, and you are doing that wrong " and so on.This should be a happy and fun place to be, but thats also the problem when people get even power over something as small as other people on a article writing page it goes out of hand. matrix17, 19:18, 14 February 2007
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