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Posted: March 12th, 2006, 1:12 pm
by hugh
let's wait till mr. wales has his say, and then we'll see what happens. I don't think we'll have to remove any links. and hopefully mel_etitis will become a LV volunteer, and add the links himself.
Posted: March 12th, 2006, 1:36 pm
by kri
Posted: March 12th, 2006, 3:36 pm
by hugh
If we get this resolved, Heart of Darkness is complete
are you referring to my mood after spending all day on this?
...
Jimbo Wales weighed in:
I wonder
On the Librivox thing, they seem like good people, and good links, I wonder if you could give some advice on how we all (you, me, them) might all work together to have a group of disinterested Wikipedians go through as a project adding any and all relevant links?--Jimbo Wales 21:02, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
the admin guy proposed:
Is it not possible for you to ask your volunteers to place the links on the relevant Talk pages (with a copied-and-pasted boilerplate introduction)? It will involve them in no more work, the extra being spread across all those editors who edit the individual articles. I'll undertake to go through and deal with any cases of neglected articles. That way everyone is happy ? the links go on the articles, you and your volunteers don't violate Wikipedia guidelines... --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 21:34, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
to which I responded:
LibriVox & talk pages
The proposed solution is OK by me - i just hope that useful links get up there. I still think it's a bit of a...complicated...way to go about things: if librivox links are agreed to be useful and acceptable links, then we are now creating 4 jobs, where there need only be one (one for a LV volunteer to add links to Talk; one for a non-LV wikipedia editor to move the links from Talk to the wikipedia article; one for a LV volunteer to check to see whether the Talk link was added & contact Mel_Etitis in the case that the link is not made; and one for Mel_Etitis to ensure that any relevant links are made). However if this is the only way to stay within wikipedia guidelines, well, certainly we'll oblige.
The one fringe benefit I see in this is that more wikipedians might learn of LibriVox, and then volunteer to help us reach our stated objective: to make all public domain texts available in audio, for free, on the internet. (the invite is still open, Mel_Etitis, and the tech/quipment side is easier than you might think! LV volunteers are a helpful bunch & you'd be up & running in a jiff I am sure).
Now, my preferred solution would be to find some way propose a "pre-approval" of LibriVox links within the wikipedia/literature editing community. but I am only an occasional (and lapsed, at that) wikipedist so I don't know if this is possible within the structures of the community.
Also: LibriVox is and always will be non-commercial. I make my personal pledge to remove all wikipedia links to LibriVox recordings in the case that LibriVox betrays itself and does "go commercial"- which will never happen, or will only happen when I am dead; and I suspect only after the deaths of a 100 or so hard-core librivoxers. This also reminds me that our "core values" are not yet displayed prominently enough on our about page, and I will remedy that today. This might have helped solve some of the misconceptions about our motivations. But for the record, here is the relevant part of our FAQ:
http://librivox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=878
(And in just a quick defence of Kri, the tireless LV wikipedia link-adder who got caught in this process, I think she was upset to see her hard work of perhaps a couple of hours of adding links removed and with a linkspam/block warning to boot... which reminds me as well to make sure that our volunteers log in when they post on wikipedia).
so: we'll go the Talk route, but is there any way/place to propse a non-linkspam pass on LibriVox recordings? And then let the wider community decide on the value of the whole LibriVox collection, rather than on a case-by-case basis? As I imagine was done with Gutenberg? Mackinaw 22:25, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
so solutions on the way... (by the way I'll erase all this stuff here shortly - reproduced just for interest sake). the relevant links, if you are interested are:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Mel_Etitis
again sorry to put all this stuff up here, but after spending all day on it i'd like someone to read all this (paula does this count for your writing weekend?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Mackinaw
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#librivox
Posted: March 12th, 2006, 5:31 pm
by hugh
and hold off on adding links for now - I need to digest the new procedure which seems to be what we will have to do not to run afoul of wikipedia rules.
I must say that whole episode made me happy that I reside in the land of librivox more than the land of wikipedia these days: you guys seem much nicer and much less ... um ... pedantic.
Posted: March 12th, 2006, 6:28 pm
by thistlechick
yes, that solution does seem a bit convoluted... since the whole point of wikipedia is that the content is supposed to be provided by "everyone" ... but it now sounds to me like the content is monitored and evaluated in a way that may make it very biased...
there are other online encyclopedias online, perhaps we need to explore other options for contributing our content?
Posted: March 12th, 2006, 7:00 pm
by hugh
i agree - though the rules are there for a specific reason: to avoid people promoting, say, their blog posts about cats on the "Cat" page etc. so the general rule seems to be: you can't post about a group etc in which you are involved. a bit crazy that there's not more flexibility - but if we keep sending mel emails about links he'll get bored soon enough.
Posted: March 12th, 2006, 8:29 pm
by kri
hugh wrote:i agree - though the rules are there for a specific reason: to avoid people promoting, say, their blog posts about cats on the "Cat" page etc. so the general rule seems to be: you can't post about a group etc in which you are involved. a bit crazy that there's not more flexibility - but if we keep sending mel emails about links he'll get bored soon enough.
It seems to me they're very much following the letter of the law. Not a community that I want to be a part of.
Posted: March 12th, 2006, 8:56 pm
by kayray
I realize that it's sorta mostly resolved, kinda happily, if stupidly, but I must say that this whole ridiculous issue leaves a sour taste in my mouth and makes me think much less of wikipedia.
And if it turns out to be too time consuming and complicated for us to make links anymore, whatever. It doesn't hurt librivox if we're not allowed to link on wikipedia. It hurts wikipedia's users. No skin off our nose.
Sigh.
Posted: March 12th, 2006, 9:02 pm
by kri
I should just let be, but I need to say this too. I don't understand what makes them think that we're massing links. We don't complete very many projects in a week, and we don't do nearly 100 edits in a week. The reason there were so many edits from that IP is that I have DSL, and the IP resets when I reset my connection (very rarely). Bah. I guess I'm just ranting, but I've lost some of the respect I had for Wikipedia, and have had a hard lesson in one of its limitations.
Kayray wrote:I realize that it's sorta mostly resolved, kinda happily, if stupidly, but I must say that this whole ridiculous issue leaves a sour taste in my mouth and makes me think much less of wikipedia.
And if it turns out to be too time consuming and complicated for us to make links anymore, whatever. It doesn't hurt librivox if we're not allowed to link on wikipedia. It hurts wikipedia's users. No skin off our nose.
Sigh.
I feel very much the same way.
Posted: March 12th, 2006, 9:10 pm
by LibraryLady
I was thinking the same thing, my opinion of Wikipedia is much less right now than it was yesterday. It seems like some of the folks there are more concerned about following each rule exactly and exercising their admin powers than getting good content to people. I'm tempted to say that if they won't let us add the links ourselves, then just forget it, we're doing fine on our own without another hassle in the cataloging process.
Posted: March 12th, 2006, 9:16 pm
by kri
Bah, and I just counted. I've done 37 edits in all of February and March since I last reset my IP in February. This is supposed to be "en masse" as that......admin said. I have been doing a lot of Wikipedia edits, correct?
Posted: March 12th, 2006, 9:42 pm
by BradBush
Back from vacation. Boy did I miss some Wikipedia fireworks. Well, if this thing works the way it should, some "non-interested" party, should put all of our links back, right? That is my dream at least.
Oh well, what was easy has now become convoluted and hard. When someone figures it out and its final, I guess we should edit the first post in the thread.
B
Posted: March 12th, 2006, 9:45 pm
by LibraryLady
kri wrote:Bah, and I just counted. I've done 37 edits in all of February and March since I last reset my IP in February. This is supposed to be "en masse" as that......admin said. I have been doing a lot of Wikipedia edits, correct?
37 over the course of two months is very helpful for us but seems like a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of Wikipedia. In the meantime, that admin claimed in one of his posts that you did more than 50 in one sitting.
Posted: March 12th, 2006, 9:47 pm
by kri
LibraryLady wrote:37 over the course of two months is very helpful for us but seems like a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of Wikipedia. In the meantime, that admin claimed in one of his posst that you did more than 50 in one sitting.
I remember reading like, 100 somewhere. There's no way I would do more than 50 in one sitting. The reason I do them is that I can do one here and there when I have a minute or two!!
Bahh!
Posted: March 12th, 2006, 10:18 pm
by hugh
And if it turns out to be too time consuming and complicated for us to make links anymore, whatever. It doesn't hurt librivox if we're not allowed to link on wikipedia. It hurts wikipedia's users. No skin off our nose.
Sigh.
you know, I was thinking the same thing to be honest. sour taste. not happy.