Misplaced Pages

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• Larry Sanger (talk · contribs) / Sanger, Larry This user has not edited the article.

• Yermi Brenner (24 June 2013). "Taking On Misplaced Pages's Bias". Medium. Archived from the original on 28 July 2013. Retrieved 28 July 2013.

Option A (proposed draft)

• Yes, as proposer. I support replacing the current version with the proposed draft. There are many discrepancies or imprecise content in the lede and body. This proposal includes replacing misinformation in the lede and body and restoring the citations and the wikilinks to the lede. The current version contains inaccurate content in the lede that is not supported by any source in the body. After the rewritten content was challenged, no verification was presented. The lede is poorly written because it contains opaque or ambiguous content, while the proposed draft is accurate and succinct. QuackGuru (talk) 00:55, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
• Yes The proposed draft is superior. HAL333 23:20, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Option B (current version)

• Oppose current version per 'Comments on proposed draft' below. QuackGuru (talk) 00:55, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Option C (new proposal)

(place third option here)

Comments on proposed draft

Background: The rewriting of history (re-interpretation of the historical record) has happened on Misplaced Pages. For example, this edit in March 2009 added the date "in 1991". That edit led to this investigation about a decade later in regards to the date "1991".

Several examples of the current issues:

See current wording in this article: Sanger later grew disillusioned with Misplaced Pages,… It is misleading and vague. The sentence goes on to state: …saying by mid-2001 its community… It is a WP:SYN violation to combine different statements in this way.

See news article: "Freed from Nupedia’s constraints, Misplaced Pages took off quickly. Yet to hear Sanger’s version of events, things started to go off the rails just months after it was launched."

See accurate content in proposed draft: Misplaced Pages grew rapidly, but according to Sanger only months after it was launched things began to go astray. That's accurately written content.

See current wording in this article: While studying at college, Sanger developed an interest in using the internet for education and joined the online encyclopedia Nupedia as editor-in-chief in 2000. It was not because Sanger had an interest in the Internet that he "joined" Nupedia. He also did not "join" Nupedia. He started Nupedia.

See accurate content in proposed draft: In college he became interested in the Internet and its potential as a publishing outlet.

See accurate content in proposed draft: Seeking employment online, Sanger joined Bomis to start an online encyclopedia called Nupedia as editor-in-chief in 2000.

See current wording in this article: Besides the Internet, Sanger's interests have been focused mainly on philosophy—in particular epistemology, early modern philosophy, and ethics. This is fails verification content. I can't find any source in the body where it supports he focused "mainly" on philosophy outside of his interest in the Internet. The part "...early modern philosophy, and ethics..." also fails verification.

See accurate content in proposed draft: Sanger's philosophical interests has focused on epistemology.

See current wording in this article: Wales had interacted with Sanger on mailing lists.

See accurate content in proposed draft: Sanger had first come into contact with Wales in 1994 when he subscribed to Wales' mailing list entitled "Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy." Also see Wales, who had gotten the idea from DMOZ, wanted it to be a free-content encyclopedia, using volunteer editors.

See current wording in this article: He founded Citizendium in 2006 to compete with Misplaced Pages. This is mentioned in the lede but not the body. Sanger did not start Citizendium "to compete" Misplaced Pages.

See accurate content in proposed draft: The issue over the accuracy of Misplaced Pages's articles led Sanger to unveil plans for a new wiki-based encyclopedia called Citizendium, a "citizens' compendium of everything".

See accurate content in proposed draft: Sanger started an alternative online encyclopedia to Misplaced Pages called Citizendium in 2006. The body states Sanger started a pilot version of Citizendium on October 17, 2006. Citizendium officially launched on March 25, 2007.

I also added new content to the lede and body:

One example of the new content in the lede: "He ended his participation in Misplaced Pages in 2002 because of a lack of quality control." This new content replaces "...but became increasingly disillusioned with the project and left it in 2002."

One example of the new content in the body: "After a few failed attempts to assemble experts to review articles, he eventually left Misplaced Pages in January 2003."

You may be thinking why I didn't revert the changes. I tried before. I was reverted by Bastun.

There are numerous more examples of problematic content. For example, on 19:06, 17 August 2019 content about Critics of child-porn allegation was added. But there are no "Critics" accusing Sanger and it is a blog website. The content fails verification and the source is unreliable.

Another recent example: on 19:55, 17 August 2019, John M Wolfson added the co-founder debate to the lede. The previous month on 05:42, 28 June 2019, user Johnuniq stated: "There is no reason to mention Wales in the lead. This is an article about Sanger and what he did, and the lead should focus on that. Also, mentioning Wales introduces the founder drama, but the lead should not focus on that." On 05:46, 28 June 2019 user John M Wolfson agreed it should not be in the lede: "...there's no reason to bring it up in the lead...".

There is also the problem with incoherent wording. See Larry Sanger#Nupedia and Misplaced Pages. This section disorganised and hard to follow. It also contains WP:SYN violations. For example, see "While such issues..." and see "Sanger responded to these trends...".

Unsupported weasel words or misleading weasel words such as "accused" should be replaced with more neutral words. See Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Words to watch. See MOS:ACCUSED. One of the words to look out for is "accused".

Numerous news articles were deleted and replaced with a book written by Andrew Lih. The entire book is not freely available to read online, while the news articles are freely available to read. I also noticed that there is the content cited to the book that fails verification. For example, see "At the Wizards of OS conference in September 2006, Sanger announced the launch of a new wiki-based encyclopedia called Citizendium—short for "citizens' compendium"—as a fork of Misplaced Pages. " Sourced content should not be replaced with failed verification.

Because anyone can edit any page, there are people who write skewed articles. Opaque or overgeneralised content in the lede is counterintuitive for our readers who may be unfamiliar with the subject. There is currently content in the lede as well as the body that is misleading or biased. I think it would be best to expunge the content not found any source. This is in accordance with core policies WP:V and WP:NOR, as well as WP:RS. It is best to restore the citations in the lede for this article, especially when cited content was replaced with unsourced biased content.

See MOS:LEADCITE: "The lead must conform to verifiability, biographies of living persons, and other policies. The verifiability policy advises that material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, and direct quotations, should be supported by an inline citation. Any statements about living persons that are challenged or likely to be challenged must have an inline citation every time they are mentioned, including within the lead." The current lede does not conform to Verifiability and other policies.

Content likely to be challenged must have an inline citation, according to MOS:LEADCITE. This is not my rule. This is Misplaced Pages's consensus. Good articles contain citations in the lede such as Lily Cole and Bomis. It is better to eliminate guesswork and stick to verifiable content. This is best accomplished with inline citations in the lede for articles that have a history of problematic content. There is a lot to read for this proposal because there is a lot of problematic content. QuackGuru (talk) 00:55, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

• Nope, for now Neutral, for now, as many of the proposed edits do improve the page. Just wanted the lede sentence to focus on Sanger's remarkable historical achievements with Wikipdia, where the "meat" of his notability lies (previous added December 31, as the roaring '20s can be heard quickly approaching) (EDIT: more comments needed, my objection is biased toward historical importance), right off the bat the most notable things Sanger has done is co-founding, naming, and setting much of the policy for Misplaced Pages. one of which is now slightly buried in the first sentence in back of another thing he's done and the naming and policy descriptor is not included. That's all I've read so far, but the present lede sentence is much better. Randy Kryn (talk) 01:10, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

• As I mentioned above, my "nope" was "for now" because Sanger's co-founding, naming, and creating much of Misplaced Pages's policy is his most notable work. Not saying that QuackGuru's rewrite isn't first-rate and accurate, and that the page needs such a rewrite, only that Sanger's accomplishments with Misplaced Pages are his most notable to date and deserve first-sentence focus. Keeping those points first and foremost seem appropriate and, as QuackGuru has pointed out on my talk page (which I've asked them to continue here and not there) they are not cited. Did Sanger co-found Misplaced Pages (the idea to act on creating a collaborative encyclopedia was Wales's idea for Nupiedia, not Sangers, but he and Sanger put the thing together and "launched" it)? did he name it?, and did he create much of the original policy? Since I added those points I should say that besides the co-founding I was going off background knowledge from Sanger's and others blog and comments and not generally cited media material, and from the BLP policy this is probably heresay, not cited, and should be tossed out with the bathwater. If so, there is little connecting Sanger to these major historical accomplishments, and including them may be more of an ignore all rules inside-baseball addition. In this case, ignoring all rules seems to me to be the better approach. Yet as QG points out, those of us who know the history may overemphasize it when it comes to Misplaced Pages-related articles. Since I am biased towards inclusion of these points up front, without being able to cite reliable sources, I wanted to expand on my reasoning. Keeping Sanger's naming of the project and the extent that he formulated initial policy may come down to "ignore all rules", so there is policy-based reason to change it. Hopefully more editors will weigh-in to sift through these differing points of view. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:31, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose pending input from others. We were over this several months ago; LEADCITE does not mandate citations in the lead, and none of what is currently in the lead rises to the standard of requiring any. (The current version still has a citation in the lead where the content is not in the body.) I did replace those news articles with Lih as Lih is a much more reliable source (still imperfect, looking at it, but he's been at least published, helping verifiability a lot); indeed, quite a few news articles are still in the article. I personally think that the current lead is better written than the proposed draft, but that's just me. Of course, if you do have useful content that can go into the body please do feel free to add it in. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 02:03, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
  • @Johnuniq and Bastun: sorry to drag you two back into this, but I think you would have something to say.. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 18:35, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Also, this article was demoted from Good Article status in 2015 due to pro-Sanger/Citizendium bias. Sanger's reporting the images did indeed cause quite a controversy, as Sanger himself acknowledged. It would violate NPOV to not include criticism of Sanger's decision to report them. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 18:55, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
• Option B (oppose) the vast majority of these don't strike me as improvements. Is the Michael Miller link supposed to be a joke? Horse Eye Jack (talk) 09:51, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
• Option B. What, seriously? "I don't like it when I can't win consensus, so I'm going to write my own version from whole cloth"?! No. That's not how Misplaced Pages works. Some of the proposed changes are good, some are no better are or actually worse than what's here now. No. (Also, the way the "vote" has been set up is... confusing. QG seems to be suggesting we comment under each option. Nope, not doing that, either. Bastun 19:58, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Agreed that some of the proposed changes are good, and improve the page. Let's concentrate on those and give Quack Guru credit for putting so much attention on those particular improvements. And agreed that this type of set-up is confusing, but it can be worked through (maybe after New Year's). Randy Kryn (talk) 22:34, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
    • @Randy Kryn: I agree with you as well that some modifications to the body are improvements and should be included into the main article. What I'm less sure on is QG's motivations of requesting this RfC. In case you don't know, QG and I, along with others such as Bastun and Johnuniq, were engaged in a fairly heated editing dispute a couple of months ago that lasted for a couple of weeks and ended up with an (ultimately inconclusive) visit at the edit-warring board. The nexus of the dispute was my attempts to improve the lead to remove the unnecessary LEADCITEs (standard practice for FAs is to not have them unless needed, and only the first one is needed, IMO); QG did not react appropriately to my attempted changes, accusing me of spreading "false information" and trying twice to get the page fully protected. He archived the discussions just before requesting this RfC. I believe that his attempts with forcing this whole draft through an RfC is an attempt to sidestep the consensus that had developed in those discussions. While global consensus does override local consensus, and QG's unacceptable behavior is not grounds for rejecting the draft per se, I cannot assume good faith on QG's part in introducing this RfC. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 23:59, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I wasn't aware of the previous discussion. One of their main points is that Sanger is not being given enough credit for his role in the creation and development of Nupedia (important historically as the direct precursor of Misplaced Pages). If that information is accurate and cited would that be a place to include some of their edits? Randy Kryn (talk) 15:05, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

According to The Misplaced Pages Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia by Andrew Lih, Wales hired Sanger to head up the project, which is exactly what our article says. Sanger is far better known for his work on Misplaced Pages than on Nupedia for the simple reason Misplaced Pages is far better known. It still exists and is an ongoing, high-profile project, while Nupedia is a historical footnote. YoPienso (talk) 19:46, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose simply because the present version is better. It flows, whereas the proposed Option A is choppy. It focuses on Misplaced Pages while acknowledging his other projects. One improvement to the current opening sentence would be, "is an American internet project developer best known as the co-founder (with Jimmy Wales) of the internet encyclopedia Misplaced Pages." Also, Option A has way too many citations. YoPienso (talk) 20:27, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose replacing current version with a whole new one. Misplaced Pages works incrementally, respecting the work of previous contributors. It is an unfair burden to ask editors to rate a whole new version that may contain any variety of changes that in isolation could be better understood and possibly not seen as improvements. Dicklyon (talk) 22:31, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose all efforts to replace current article with a unilateral version mostly per WP:OWN. Dicklyon and others above speak well, and as much as I don't think there are any impure motives, I think this is a poorly conceived effort. QG, I admire your dedication to the project, but you truly need to learn to back away and allow others to edit your pet project articles. I don't doubt your good intentions, but the tenacious efforts you often display don't really help the project in the "big picture" sense. The never give in, never back down, never give up qualities can be admirable traits for many things - but they tend to hinder our project when applied to collaboration in the long run. It forces people to say "what's the use" and walk away when they bring good efforts to the table. — Ched (talk) 02:21, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Keep the discussion in one place

@QuackGuru: I see you're discussing this on Randy Kryn's talk page in the section titled "Lede". Please keep all relevant comments together on this page. Thanks! YoPienso (talk) 22:21, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, we've had a semi-long discussion, and best wishes for the holidays, and I've just suggested that Quack Guru "nom" just one sentence and offer suggested changes in that one sentence. To see how it flies. The above discussion asks for large-scale controversial changes which seem to be too much to nominate at one time. Few have made a cohesive mental map of the whole thing and its contrasting points of view, I know I haven't. Randy Kryn (talk) 01:53, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, Randy, and season's greetings to you, too. YoPienso (talk) 03:35, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I am really not a fan of having improvements/edits to this page decided at some other unannounced venue, with two participants. It's almost like QG doesn't believe in collegiate, incremental improvements and it makes it really hard to WP:AGF... Bastun 21:09, 3 January 2020 (UTC)