On 2/20/25 8:06 PM, Nigel Johnson Ham via cctalk wrote:
On 2025-02-20 16:16, Alan Perry via cctalk wrote:
In these cases, did someone roll back your changes? Was discussion
added to the Talk tab?
I do enough Wikipedia edits that I get to vote on board membership.
Or used to. I have only done a few edits in recent years. The
trickiest edit has been the page for a woman who was a child actor in
the 70s but is now a doctor. The info in her page was wrong (and
unattributed) and she hasn't done any interviews in 20 years or
described in any media coverage what she has done since leaving the
entertainment business. I got her e-mail address and exchanged
messages with her. It was completely surreal. We discussed what she
wants the general public to know about her now. I asked if she was
sure on a few points, e.g., when I thought it might be too specific
on where she is now. What is on the page about her is what she felt
comfortable with (as of 2019-2020). To get around the "no original
research" thing, I added a Talk tab section explaining all of the
above and offered to make the email exchanges available (with her
contact info redacted). That was 5-6 years ago and no one has edited
the page since.
If someone has something they think should be in a Wikipedia page and
had it removed, I can help get it added to a Talk tab entry at a
minimum.
On 2/17/25 8:26 AM, David Wise via cctalk wrote:
In my case, the self-appointed gatekeeper rejected material from the
AES Disk Recording Anthology.
________________________________
From: Ken Seefried via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org>
Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2025 12:55 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
<cctalk@classiccmp.org>
Cc: Ken Seefried <seefr...@gmail.com>
Subject: [cctalk] Re: Elliott Algol
On Sun, Feb 16, 2025 at 1:53 PM Cameron Kaiser via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
I admit to a bit of pique here: I don't even bother updating Wikipedia
articles
anymore because they'll always get reverted by someone with less of
a life
than
me for any number of specious reasons.
This is an almost perfect description of my experience of Wikipedia.
My only experience in editing was frustrating and a complete waste of
time: Somebody posted that there is no legal definition of a pint in
Canada, and the fact that their moniker was "National Pist" may give
you an idea of their bona fides. So I got in touch with Measurements
Canada, an agency of Innovation, Science and Economic Development
Canada (previously Industry Canada). An inspector replied that a
pint is one eighth of a gallon, and a gallon if defined by metric
standards as 45609 ten-millionths of a cubic metre. Doing the math,
you can see that this works out to 568.26 cc. So I posted this with
reference to the specific regulation that the inspector had quoted to me.
One week later, it had been changed back to 'There is no legal
definition of a pint in Canada'. I tried to change it back to the
correct legal definition above, but I was locked out. Naturally the
contributor was 'National Pist' again!
Then they asked me for money! I got a [polite rpely to my outraged
comment, but still could not log in!
In my last ten years as a college professor, anybody quoting
wikipedia, despite having been warned,got a healthy dose of red ink
from my pen!
Did Measurements Canada indicate that it was a legal definition or a
definition established by the agency. If the definition isn't in enacted
legislation, Measurements Canada's statements may not be legal
definitions. It depends on the authority granted to them under the
legislation that created the agency.
But asking for money suggests something sketchy is happening.
I do a lot of general corrections in Wikipedia, usually when I am
watching old movies, looking up stuff about it and noticing something
wrong. But I reading up on the stuff that I used to work on at
Burroughs/Unisys that is clearly wrong (for example, I was working on
the product after the article says that work stopped on it) and haven't
yet come up with an attributable way to correct the page other than to
add something to the Talk tab.
