User talk:Egmod

From dKosopedia

Are you planning to change things that you see as wrong? That would seem to me to be a better use of our time, to actually fix things. Just my take. Chadlupkes 20:19, 24 October 2006 (PDT)

I agree, but you have unwisely granted sysop status to people who abused others doing as we agree should be done. Until it is revoked, it seems safer to simply point out the errors without any changes. Also without sysop status I can't move the history with the pages, which is important to some people.

True enough about the page histories. Want to make a list of recommended page renames? That way we can see what you are seeing and if we agree and the page is popular enough, we can make the change. Chadlupkes 20:25, 24 October 2006 (PDT)

I'd rather stick it in a proper meta page like dKosopedia:pages to be renamed, so that the default is that it does happen if there is no objection. However it's nowhere near as good a solution as to be bold with proper conventions that everyone obeys and no one can be harassed (or having proper changes undone and even blocked, as User:BartFraden has done) simply for enforcing. If someone's going to write a bunch of pages on a topic, which is usually the case, they don't want to link to a bunch of provisional page names, and they shouldn't feel obligated to use the bad ones if they are really obviously bad. They should just fix them to meet the conventions - egmod

I think the debate is between organic growth, and directed growth. There's a balance between requiring something of everyone including new users who honestly don't know, and letting anything happen without guidance. That balance point moves as the user base changes in population and experience. Right now, there are few admins on dkosopedia to make sure that everything is done by conventions that come from somewhere else. I think the objective is to build the pages and actually accomplish something with the technology.

Well, sure. But there are very immediate impacts from not following conventions that can cause failure. For one thing, if articles don't have the names that are easy to fit into proper sentences with proper capitalization, then they just won't be linked to. This reduces the cohesion of the database. For another, that useless "index.php/" in the title just discourages people from linking - thankfully you already got rid of that. So these tend to be the things that you have to stomp on early. And inconsistencies are very obvious and noted instantly even by new users, who lose some confidence that things will be in a predictable place. Even if they don't really know why they feel that way.

I'm dealing with similar questions on Campaigns Wikia. We have a smaller user base right now, so it's easier for the admins to keep up with things. The user base on dkos is pretty high and active, so it's harder. It's a question of what people have time to do. When I first came on and started throwing categories on pages, I was blocked because the admins couldn't tell what I wanted to do. That got fixed by explaining my goal.

You can't explain your goal if you're "blocked". You were blocked because someone decided to engage in sysop vigilantiism - using technological means to solve their own personal emotional problem, rather than engaging you. There are also invariably fools who will block someone just because they think they were blocked before by someone else for no reason, as if it was some kind of precedent. So the problem you note is not "fixed", you just managed to get around it yourself in that one case.

I understand your goal in things, but I think it would be a better use of our time right now to focus on the content rather than the links. If you want to start making a list for us to look at after the election, that's probably fine. If the admins don't agree, no harm done. If they do agree, and start making changes, we'll be working together towards a common goal. That's the point after all. Chadlupkes 20:40, 24 October 2006 (PDT)

Nope, the links ARE the database. It's absolutely critical to get them right from day one. You can't change hundreds or thousands of page names later because they have inertia, and because people get attached to them, and once they develop the bad habit of linking to articles with Bad Names using Bad Anchor Text you can't fix them. You're going to have to convert them to Republicans and hope that they go screw up THEIR wikis so that nothing links to anything else and no one can remember the URLs! ;-)

Also remember that in this next few weeks before the election you're going to get a lot of new users who need to get trained in the right habits before they create more than one or two easily-fixed bad names

Also that whole DailyKos:tag cleanup is moving forward very fast. You have to get the page names right before they become a lot of bad tags in DailyKos!

There's a great story Peter Drucker told about the NY Times being the only paper to publish after a blackout, but using up 48 minutes of its 120 minute print run arguing about the proper way to hyphenate a single word. Drucker's point was that the Times could tolerate having only half as many papers on the street even on a day when it had no competitors able to print, but it could NOT tolerate losing its reputation as the arbiter of correct English. And that the editors acted correctly in spending that debating time at that critical moment. I submit that if dKosopedia itself wants to be an arbiter of correct DailyKos tags, it had better follow its own conventions absolutely strictly and encourage editors to have basically zero tolerance for deviations.

Tag Cleanup Project and Tag Editors Workspace

Centerfielder created the DailyKos Tag Cleanup Project page; I created the pages for the Tag Editors Workspace as just that - workspace to keep track of the tags I was working at DailyKos with at different times and where I could point other tag editors; I don't know about using Tag:namespace; you and Centerfielder can move anything you want where every you want, just so I have a place to work. --SarahLee 20:42, 24 October 2006 (PDT)

OK, thanks. We're debating above how aggressive to be about that. We'll all be very happy if you just read the conventions and try to follow them as best you can. Those who understand them better should generally clean up with no comment.

You will definitely always have a place to work, and the work is much appreciated.

Incompetence in tag cleanup project

egmod, you keep mentioning "wiki best practices." I do not think it means what you think it means.

Just copying it from other places where they do not make the kind of mistakes obviously made here. If you find the practices inapplicable, fix them. Change the wiki best practice list if you think some things aren't being done right. For instance, you could add some new practices to it.- egmod

Presumably you are not talking about very obvious best practices like conserve capitals, prefer singular, avoid new tags, be bold, and so on? If you are talking "being nice to people" well, it's hard to do that when they are literally vandalizing pages by re-inserting spelling errors. --egmod

You've jumped in to the tag cleanup project and made a number of rather radical changes with which those working on that project disagree.

It's not a question of who "disagrees", some of their initial mistakes are very obvious, such as writing pages in first person and sticking important information like the list of specialized tags down in the middle of the page. And using "Tags-" to create a pseudo-namespace. What's actually up for negotiation, and worth debating, is actually entirely determined by User:SarahLee. Even her foolish removal of linking from the tags (which makes it impossible to verify that a page with the name exists and will lead to many problems) has been allowed to stand, though her rationale is inability to use her mouse. In most wikis she'd be bounced for that. -- egmod

What is the reason for creating a "Tag" namespace? Seems silly to me.

Same reason as there's a dKosopedia:namespace, to deal with a major POV difference between the main namespace and the specialized one. A tag has a different scope than dkosopedia, it's a negotiation between Daily Kos and the whole blogosphere. And the rules for those pages are different. Read and edit namespace if you disagree, but then deal with FrameShop etc. consistently too.-- egmod

Please discuss structural changes on the discussion page with those working on the project before making changes.

I would if the changes were "structural", but they're not. They're shallow. Evidently you don't understand the constraints of the bad-names problem: several pages are being created per day. Talking about obvious errors just lets them pile up and create inertia. User:SarahLee seems to feel that the fact that she used Tag Editor Workspace as a name entitles her to keep using it forever and obscure the proper name of the page, the one that's compatible with the way mediawiki's community portals are named. You also seemed to let Iran Nuclear Crisis Timeline retain a very obviously inconsistent name simply because someone named it that to begin with. This is jsut wrong. You have a lot to learn about wiki. Once conventions are agreed, they must be followed, and anyone can correct errors without any sanction, consequence, or discussion. There is no other way to run a wiki. -- egmod

Stating that things should be a certain way and enforcing that view without justification or discussion is downright rude.

True, but it's User:SarahLee doing that. As for mine, there's explicit justification on every edit, usually an edit summary tag that makes it one-click to look up that justification. It's not my fault if people can't read page history.

Discussion regarding standing conventions isn't needed, and only minimal discussion is needed regarding complex interpretation of conventions where multiple answers are right. Names that are obviously wrong, with "Project" or "Workspace" in them for instance, which is exactly what namespaces are for, can be corrected by anyone "without justification or discussion", and should be.

Quoting Chadlupkes above: "Are you planning to change things that you see as wrong? That would seem to me to be a better use of our time, to actually fix things. Just my take. Chadlupkes 20:19, 24 October 2006 (PDT)". He's right. There was no "structural change", the pages retain exactly the scope they had, they are just correctly placed into a namespace instead of using "Tags-" as a page name prefix. - egmod

That which is obvious to you might not be obvious to others. You might even be wrong. -- Centerfielder 15:39, 10 November 2006 (PST)

Maybe. But some recent changes are definitely wrong, some of them near vandalism. It's obviously wrong to create or restore or un-redirect "Tags:Bush Family" when there is already a tag:namespace for this. You might be able to justify tags specifying the Bush family or even attempt to hold up the bad convention "Tags-Bush Family", but it's obvious to anyone that the name you chose is wrong. You should instead have redirected Tags-Bush and got with the program. - egmod

A wiki can be many things to many people, and serve different functions. There is a difference in function between "Tags:" and the other work. I intend the "Tags:" pages to be the resultant dataset of validated, ambiguous, and variant tags. The pages will be strictly structured, so that I can programmatically parse them up. A poor man's data entry system, if you will. SarahLee is using her pages as a free form workspace, to jot down ideas and keep track of work that has been done and that needs to be done.

A tag:namespace is not like other namespaces, agreed, that's why it's off on its own. One practice that's useful is to redirect tag:whatever to the category named "whatever": #REDIRECT [[category:whatever]]. That way it's clear that to use the tag is to put something in a category. However, the pages are not "free form" and certainly shouldn't pollute namespace by throwing in unnecessary plurals ("tags" vs. "tag"). - egmod

You said elsewhere that "no one needs to discuss this type of correction." You're wrong, this is exactly the type of "correction" that needs to be discussed. It's not a typo.

Using a plural when the singular form works just fine and allows for much more straightforward linking is an error, not a typo. Fixing it doesn't need to be discussed. Using "-" to create a non-namespace instead of ":" to actually indicate a different POV is also an error, not a typo. Fixing it doesn't need to be discussed. Things appear to be working just fine two months later. - egmod

If you want to work on a wiki that adheres to some arcane set of strict "best practices" then you should start your own wiki. Here on this one if someone wants to name a page "Iran Nuclear Crisis Timeline", and contribute mightily to it, they can.

That's ridiculous and utterly counter to wiki. Clearly it's also nonsense as you would object mightily if I created a page with the title "Centerfielder Knows Nothing About Wiki" or tried to monopolize the page "Dick Cheney" with only my own edits, but both are implied by the stupid policy you suggest. Namespace is not under the control of any wiki page author, it's a collective agreement in a wiki, no one can make up their own damn names and monopolize things and capitalize things and so on. It destroys the integrity of the whole namespace. That too is just an error, and fixing it doesn't need to be discussed. They can contribute like crazy but if you want timelines to have any consistent form or want to avoid bad framing in names, you need to be slightly more disciplined, and kick ass of clowns who insist on their own bogus naming conventions or inventing a "Crisis" where none exists. - egmod.

Above you say "once conventions are agreed, they must be followed." I agree with that statement, but no one here has agreed to your conventions, and to insist that they are better and that I have "a lot to learn about wiki" demonstrates the same arrogance which got you banned before under a different name. Keep your hands off the tag project. -- Centerfielder 07:05, 11 November 2006 (PST)

Since the corrections noted above, hands have been entirely off, and no one has seen fit to change from the correct conventions I "imposed" to the bad stupid ones that you invented. That is proof that there was nothing wrong with my conventions, and no reason to prefer yours.

As for speculation about identities, it remains speculation, and it's irrelevant.

Your error in allowing morons to have sysop powers in this wiki is your problem. Certainly no intelligent person should feel intimidated by it, rather, they should feel pity for those who actually believe that their decisions, or yours, have any particular rationale. I've demonstrated above that your policies aren't policies, and that if they were, you wouldn't actually stick to them, because they're stupid.

It's a long step however from that to the conclusion that YOU are also stupid. Please stop wasting the time of people who know what they are doing, and do it well, and stop giving sysop powers to other morons who think they know what is "arrogant". What's arrogant, is someone who doesn't know what they're doing, trying to lecture someone who does. I offer detailed rationale for my changes and detailed critique of your non-policies. That's much more than you have offered me.

Anyway tag:namespace is stable now and all the bad names have been removed, and tag:editor portal is comprehensible to anyone who wants to help. Those who want to just know what tags to use get the list of specialized pages up front. So this issue should be over unless User:SarahLee does another bald revert to her own error-containing page. Please consult with User:Chadlupkes on this, he seems to know what's going on and would understand the reasoning behind every change that I've made. -- egmod

namespace issue

That said, there's a legitimate namespace versus page name prefix question. Normally one that is resolved in favour of a prefix (obviously there should not be an "Iowa:namespace" for an Iowa point of view). So please review those practices / help pages to see if they state the case properly. Even if so, you may have to do some work on FrameShop which is creating weird names with spaces in them. -- egmod

Retrieved from "http://localhost../../../e/g/m/User_talk%7EEgmod_ff6b.html"

This page was last modified 05:28, 8 January 2007 by dKosopedia user Egmod. Based on work by Chad Lupkes and dKosopedia user(s) Centerfielder and SarahLee. Content is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.