User talk:Silas Ropac

Help request

My Question - When I'm editing a single section of an article, the "show preview" button shows me the little [1] number for references, but not the reference list itself. So I can't see how my reference is formatted or test that the link works. I would edit the entire article, but editing a single section seems much nicer in general, if it wasn't for this reference problem. Silas Ropac (talk) 03:12, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes that is a problem, especially when your editing a large article, that involves longer load times and having to scroll lots. Unfortunately there isn't a way to avoid it, since your only editing one section, and the {{Reflist}} isn't in that section. -- Patchy1 REF THIS BLP 03:38, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I sometimes temporarily add the {{reflist}} to the end of the section while I preview the ref formatting. But you have to remember to delete it again before saving. SpinningSpark 17:34, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

That is a good trick. Ideally the software would just put a virtual reflist at the end of the preview section. Such that you could see any footnotes you were working on, and you didn't have to remember to take it out. But adding one manually is a reasonable workaround. Silas Ropac (talk) 19:46, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Help Request

{{help me}} I created a potential new article: User:Silas Ropac/How to Create a Mind I clicked the "submit the page" link on the page. This leads to the Articles for Creation queue, which is weeks long. Reading about AfC it sounds like it's primarily for anonymous users. As a registered user is there a faster/better way to create a new article? Or is AfC still the best way?

As a registered user, you should be able to put the new article directly into mainspace rather than have it go through the AfC process. I can move the page into mainspace for you if you think that it is ready. --Skamecrazy123 (talk) 02:14, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! Yeah I guess I used the article wizard and that leaves a header which just says "submit this article" without mentioning you don't have to go through AfC. But anyway I tried it myself, I moved it to the article space so here it is: How to Create a Mind.

Congrats... You asked an awesome question in the Teahouse!

Hi! Thanks for your great question about citing plot summaries. You clearly want to get things right and follow best practices, which is awesome. I'm also a big Kurzweil fan and am happy to have you developing content related to AI, futurology, and singularitarianism. Drop by the Teahouse any time!

	Great Question Badge
	Awarded to those who have asked a great question on the Teahouse Question Forum. There are no stupid questions, but some are excellent! Good questions are those that reflect serious curiosity about editing and help others learn. Earn more badges at: Teahouse Badges

Ocaasi ^{t | c} 02:28, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the badge! That new page was fun to make, I'll be interested to see where it goes. Much grungier than new articles is trying to cleanup some of the existing Kurzweil related content. I asked on a more recent question on teahouse about that.

I'm realizing the merge part is just the tip of the iceberg. The deeper problem is that while the long lists of predictions from his books are super helpful to me as a reader, very convenient, as an editor they raise a lot of eyebrows. It's all a single source, basically an uber-detailed summary of the book. Is that even allowed, etc. I've just started thinking about this stuff. I'd love to see the Kurzweil book and prediction pages be high quality but still useful to people, not sure how to achieve that yet. Silas Ropac (talk) 02:58, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

The key is to describe without endorsing. Also, it helps to summarize what others have summarized about his work. So you could take a New York Times review of the book and use that as your guide, rather than trying to synthesize Kurzweil's actual writing. That's not strictly required if you're only doing a very straightforward review of the content, but it can certainly help guide you to what parts are important. Also, reception sections are great places to place or consolidate a variety of critical reviews of the work, both good and bad of course. Seriously, drop by my talk page any time. Cheers, Ocaasi ^{t | c} 14:32, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

That is good advice. In my first (and only) article from scratch (How to Create a Mind) I explicitly did not do that. The Content section is 100% from the book, and the Reception section is 100% commentary with no summary. That seemed to make sense, why go to a secondary source for the content? But I see what you mean, the secondary sources have already done a lot of work and may have a lot of insight, even just about the content.

But as for Kurzweil's predictions I'm still stumped. That article is about 5000 words of summary (of predictions from 3 books). I don't think any secondary source talks about the specific predictions in anywhere near the detail we have. Any change I see which makes the article balanced and reasonable would necessarily cut way back on the specific enumerations of predictions, which I think some people will really dislike. Anyway I don't meant to dump all these questions on you. I'm not in a rush on any of these, just trying to figure out how to proceed. Silas Ropac (talk) 15:24, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, this is one of the issues when you have passionate fans, hobbyists, devotees writing about content they know first-hand. A lot of it is unsourced because editors simply read about it themselves and are writing based on their reading of a primary source. That said, Kurzweil's own writings are a pretty good source of his own predictions, it's just that--as you've noted--how much attention and WP:WEIGHT to give to those views is left a bit unsolved. My advice, with most things on Wikipedia, is to ask for feedback (on the article's talk page); or, if you are a bit bolder, take a small change to a single section of the predictions article and fix it however you think best, then wait for other editors to respond. If no one objects, you might continue on, checking in periodically to see if there are new comments. A good article to read about this is Wikipedia:Writing_better_articles, also WP:PANDS for general policy background and editing tips. Take your time, play around, experiment. See what happens. I think you'll find your way just fine. Ocaasi ^{t | c} 17:57, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks again. Yeah I'm not getting much (any) response from the talk pages. I think starting with small changes is spot on. Then collaborative trying to work something out. I've been trying to figure out the answer ahead of time which is both too hard for me, and probably useless because people probably won't agree. So yeah good advice, thanks. Silas Ropac (talk) 20:27, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Feedback

Hey Silas! I'm starting to review the article. It looks to be approachable and well organized. There are two major issues with the article's tone which I've described here: Talk:The_Singularity_Is_Near#Feedback. Please let me know if I can explain them further. Addressing both of those issues would go a long way towards bringing the article up to C class. Cheers, Ocaasi ^{t | c} 03:29, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Grammar

A quick comment on grammar (sorry for the pedantry). The prose is great but there were some common mistakes using semicolons, commas, and colons.

If you have two independent clauses (sentences with a subject and verb that could stand alone), a comma is not sufficient to separate them. Example:

• I went to the store. There was no bread. (works: periods can separate independent clauses
• I went to the store; there was no bread. (works: semicolons can separate independent clauses)
• I went to the store, there was no bread. (doesn't work: at least not in encyclopedia writing; because)
• I went to the store, but there was no bread. (works: "but" properly connects the two independent clauses with the comma)

More reading if you're interested: [1], [2]. I hope you don't take this as a criticism or an annoying suggestion. I just want the great work you're doing to stand out and not be distracted by technical mistakes. You're awesome! Ocaasi ^{t | c} 16:30, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

No that is helpful. I knew the rule but I overruled it with another rule "avoid semi-colons and colons for fear of using them wrong; just use commas everywhere!" So yeah I will keep that in mind. Also I liked your copyedit, interseting to see how you can tweak things to read better. Silas Ropac (talk) 16:44, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Re: How to Create a Mind

I wrote an article How to Create a Mind, which I suspect could be added to WikiProject Transhumanism. The article is rated B, do I just put in B for the Transhumanism template? I'm new and I don't yet understand, if a project is in a bunch of WikiProjects, in theory it could have a different rating for each. But in practice how does it work, if someone is updating one do they update them all? I am probably going to ask for peer review for the article, to get a sense of what would need to be done for GA. So if you have any comments on those lines, let me know as well. Thanks! Silas Ropac (talk) 02:11, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

First, give the article the rating you think it should have. Then update the ratings for all of the WikiProjects on there to that rating. (The ratings need to be updated over time.) The single most important factor for article development is completeness. Is the article complete? What's missing? The Transhumanist 18:00, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

I think B, so I put the Transhumanism template on with B, and Wikiproject Books was already B. I requested a peer review exactly because I wasn't sure what should be added next, but I agree it's not GA or A yet. The Transhumanism template also needs importance, I put it down as Mid, but actually looking more carefully maybe it should be Low? Silas Ropac (talk) 18:52, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

If the book isn't a driving force of transhumanism (see The Singularity is Near), then "Low" is probably correct. The Transhumanist 19:49, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, I changed it to low. Silas Ropac (talk) 19:55, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Here's something I thought you might be interested in...

Taxonomical technology. (Outlines). Another type of (list) article on Wikipedia.

Here are a few outlines I thought you might be interested in:

• Outline of humanism
  • Outline of transhumanism
• Outline of human intelligence
  • Outline of thought
• Outline of artificial intelligence
  • Outline of natural language processing (new)

(In WP outlines, "outline" is short for "hierarchical outline", a tree structured list. Levels of the hierarchy are represented by headings and indented bullets, mostly.)

WP's outlines essentially map out two things at the same time: knowledge itself, and Wikipedia's coverage of it. (Outlines map subjects by topic. That is, outlines are lists made entirely of topics. They're topic outlines, as opposed to sentence outlines).

Taken together as a whole, Wikipedia's outlines form a massive outline of human knowledge (under construction). So far, we've outlined over 600 major subjects. Which means there are a lot more subjects to go.

Outlines help browse a subject, and are especially useful when the reader knows little to nothing about a subject. Newcomers to a subject are largely search engine blind to subject matter - they don't know what to enter into the search box. Outlines are a rich resource of search terms. They are also very helpful for reviewing.

From an encyclopedist's perspective, WP's outlines are valuable development tools. Each outline shows the status of its subject on Wikipedia: what's there, what its parts are called, how everything fits together, and what's missing. Each outline provides a bird's eye view of its subject. They are great for identifying gaps in WP's coverage, and for organizing what's there.

So please, have a look around and let me know what you think. If you see a subject you are interested in, feel free to dive in to do some outlining, whether we have an outline for it yet or not!

More information is available at Wikipedia:WikiProject Outlines.

If you ever have any questions or comments about outlines, feel free to drop by my talk page at any time. Sincerely, The Transhumanist 19:49, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks very interesting. I don't think I've come across one of these outlines before. So if an article gets too big it can be split into a tree of articles. And if you walk up the tree where you do end up? You want to be somewhere that covers your article, but other related stuff as well. Seems like you end up at an outline.

The outlines seem to vary a lot in quality or at least style. Some parts are bare lists with no text beyond the wikilinks themselves, to stuff like Outline of Buddhism with lots more details and exposition, pictures and timelines, even lists of stuff that aren't links at all. It starts to resemble an article really. Seems like it must be an issue how much detail to put in an outline. On the one hand it seems pointless to just paste in a bit of the lead from each referenced article, because duplication is bad, but on the other hand a little context is helpful beyond just a bare lists-of-links sometimes.

As a reader certainly they seem really valuable, it does really tie all these tons of scattered articles. Even though they consist mostly of links, in a way it feels like there is more original content in an outline, in the organization of it and the choice of what to include. Not OR I don't think, but yeah something different than a normal article.

Anyway those are my scattered thoughts. But thanks this is cool to know about, as a reader if nothing else, and I could see getting involved as an editor. A lot left to do. Silas Ropac (talk) 03:08, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

I'll answer point-by-point:

• Articles are split up independently of outlines. Outlines are also subject to splitting. Most of the outlines on Wikipedia are "reverse outlines" - because they summarize existing works (Wikipedia subject coverage).
• The Outline Department was developed by a skeleton crew, with a single editor doing the bulk of the work. Only a few outlines could be considered finished, but those provide models for editors to follow. (See Outline of forestry and Outline of cell biology). The goal is to include annotations and pictures in every outline. But providing all the relevant topics is a huge goal all by itself.
• Automatic annotation is in the works, which will speed up completion of the outlines, but I haven't been able to devote much time to it yet. Things should pick up speed soon.
• How much detail an outline receives depends on the dedication of the editors who work on it. Some outlines get adopted by editors who take care of just that outline. Those outlines tend to be much more detailed.
• I try to cycle through (work on) all the outlines each year, while still building new ones, but this gets harder and harder as the overall set of outlines grows.
• The lead is supposed to be in annotated format, to immediately differentiate the outline from the article. It is also supposed to be trimmed or condensed, to provide enough context for subject identification - so that the reader knows at a glance what the outline is about. On the country outlines, the whole lead was copied because it was fast. Eventually, they'll be updated and condensed.
• Outlines tend to be more comprehensive than the corresponding articles. As such, they are helpful for evaluating articles for completeness, and serve as useful planning/revision tools.

Thanks for the comments. I hope my answers have helped clarify things. I look forward to seeing any work you decide to put into them. Cheers. The Transhumanist 23:11, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks that's helpful. I read something you wrote elsewhere about outlines vs. portals vs. indexes, how they might be somewhat redundant but there are some advantages in redundancy. But then also how you just aren't going to get everyone to agree on one single style anyway, people like to think about stuff differently. I thought that was a very pragmatic observation. I can imagine people wasting a lot of effort trying to figure out the one true way to do things in WP, when in fact with the all-volunteer work force, you'll just never get everyone aligned to that one true way.

I think I read somewhere as the set of all articles gets closer to "complete" there will be a need for more and better "meta articles" like outlines. Because the individual content, the atoms, will all be there, but there are untold number of molecules you can build. I wonder besides outlines, indexes and portals what else there could be. I was thinking maybe "tours" or "tutorials" which have some content themselves, but mostly serve to tie a bunch of existing articles together in a novel way. Or maybe that's going beyond the encyclopedia mandate, I don't know.

Anyway getting off track. I will keep outlines on the radar, by putting a few on my watchlist to start. Silas Ropac (talk) 00:55, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

GA and FA

Good articles are judged on the basis of WP:WIAGA and Featured articles on the basis of WP:WIAFA. Neither set of criteria includes anything about subject - as long as the article meets notability requirements, then in theory it can become a GA or FA. GA criteria are less stringent, so it is less work to get an article to GA. In either case it is useful to have one or more model articles to look at and follow - it is also useful to watch a few articles at WP:GAN and WP:FAC and see what kind of issues arise. Hope this helps, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 05:54, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm building an edit visualization tool

A demo of the edit visualization tool I'm building. You could add your feedback or feature requests here--jeph (talk) 02:35, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:59, 24 November 2015 (UTC)