Talk:Bomis/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Quality improvement project

I will embark upon a quality improvement project for this article.

First step will be to perform research to try to find the scope of coverage of this topic in secondary sources.

Also will try to format citations throughout the article so they are standardized to a format from WP:CIT as per WP:CITE to improve uniformity.

Will update here with more during the course of progress.

Cheers,

— Cirt (talk) 22:23, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Problems with current state of article prior to quality improvement project

There are multiple problems with the current state of the article prior to above-mentioned quality improvement project.

I haven't begun the quality improvement project to the article yet, still in the research stage to determine additional secondary sources.

However it appears the article's current text itself is tagged with citation needed tags throughout, and it may be best to simply gut most of that weaker material and either start from scratch, or just start by removing all the material that has problem tags associated with it, and also remove primary sourced material in favor of finding better stronger secondary sourced material.

Just placing some ideas here on the talk page first of how to move forward with the ongoing quality improvement project.

Cheers,

— Cirt (talk) 23:51, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Unsourced, moved from article to talk page

Intro lede section

As of 2006, Tim Shell was the CEO of Bomis, but it seems to have disappeared from the Internet around 2010 (the last date it was captured by the Internet Archive).

The "Adult", "Babe", and "Entertainment" categories were the most frequently updated and the most popular. In addition, Bomis hosted a copy of the Open Directory Project search directory. These search-related pages generated revenue from advertising and affiliate marketing.

Hosted content

In addition, Bomis has provided hosting to websites supporting Objectivist and other libertarian political views, including the "Freedom's Nest", a database of books and quotes, and "We the Living", a large objectivist community website which is now defunct.

Role in the creation of Nupedia and Wikipedia

Bomis hosted Nupedia in 2000, and Larry Sanger was hired to manage and edit that project. A year into the development of Nupedia, Bomis decided the project was too expensive, and a so-called "wiki" was set up as a way to solicit free new drafts for Nupedia.

Wiki as a word, as a concept, and as a software technology for websites that allows multiple users to edit and update a text or program quickly and easily, was an invention of and created and developed by Ward Cunningham in 1994. The new online-encyclopedia based on Ward's wiki-technology, was named Wikipedia and it looked exactly the same as Cunningham's websites. While originally intended as a "feeder" project for Nupedia, Wikipedia—with its much lower barriers to contribution, and its much lower costs for Bomis—rapidly outgrew its parent in size and attention.

The Wikimedia Foundation was formally announced on June 20, 2003. All intellectual property and domain name assets, including "Wikipedia", were transferred or donated over to the foundation, which was registered as a non-profit organization, but the server hardware was not transferred. Bomis CEO Tim Shell became the Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees of the foundation, with Jimmy Wales as another board member.

---

Above info was moved to talk page from main article page.

Please don't move back to main article space unless properly sourced conforming to both WP:RS and WP:V.

Some of above also violated WP:NOR.

Cheers,

— Cirt (talk) 01:32, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Emphasis shift to secondary sources

Noted already above but will add here for emphasis:

The article in its present state uses some primary sources.

For best durability and reliability, best to stick to secondary sources.

Will begin to shift to that format after a bit more research.

Cheers,

— Cirt (talk) 04:50, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Status update: All of the primary sources have been phased out in favor of secondary sources. There is only one primary cite remaining for the pronunciation of the word "Bomis" itself as noted in the first sentence. Should be pretty easy to find a lot more info sourced to secondary sources including the previous info from the article since moved to the talk page that had been sourced to primary sources (although a bunch of the material moved to the talk page was actually unsourced material). Next step will be additional research for more secondary sources. Cheers, — Cirt (talk) 04:26, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Update: Now all sources are secondary sources only. No more primary sources left in article. :) — Cirt (talk) 07:33, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Cites in lede ???

• Diff

Regarding edits by QuackGuru to the lede intro sect of the article:

Do we really need citations in the lede intro sect?

It's all sourced later on to secondary sources in the main article body text.

Thoughts?

— Cirt (talk) 06:45, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Generally refs aren't included in the lede sect of articles, but in cases where facts could be challenged or controversial topics, refs are included in those lede sects. I've got no objections if we want to keep refs in the lede of this article for any of those reasons. Cheers, — Cirt (talk) 07:00, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

QuackGuru made a comment above, that he later removed, about refs in the lede helping the reader to verify the text easier. This makes sense, and I agree with that notion for this article. — Cirt (talk) 07:05, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Next things to do

Some things on my To Do list related to additional quality improvement for this article:

1. Put together content from secondary sources for an Analysis section.
2. Research secondary source coverage for a section on the 2005 editing incident.
3. Trim down the Further reading sect after above is done.
4. Research additional images and media related to the subject, ideally free-use if possible.
5. Think about further steps in Quality improvement project.

Cheers, — Cirt (talk) 07:23, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Update on quality improvement project

Comparison of quality improvements so far:

1. 1 October 2013 = State of article prior to my research and quality improvement efforts.
2. 19 January 2014 = State of article at present after bulk of research and quality improvement.

Next up:

• I'll expand the lede so that, per WP:LEAD, the intro sect fully reflects an adequate summary of the entire article's contents.
• Perform a bit more research to make sure the article reflects the full corpus of a preponderance of secondary sources.
• I'll submit the article for copy editing from the Guild of Copy Editors.

Cheers,

— Cirt (talk) 06:18, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Nominated for GA

I've nominated this article for review at WP:GAN as a candidate for Good Article quality.

Cheers,

— Cirt (talk) 06:51, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Submitted to Guild of Copy Editors

I've submitted this article for copy edit by the Guild of Copy Editors through their request process at Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors.

Cheers,

— Cirt (talk) 06:54, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Promoted to GA quality

This article had a review and was successfully promoted to WP:GA quality. Review is at Talk:Bomis/GA1. — Cirt (talk) 01:19, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Aftermath sect should remain in article as per GA promoted quality version

1. Aftermath sect is highly relevant and should not be removed.
2. It was reviewed at WP:GA where it was already reduced greatly in size.
3. The article was subsequently promoted to WP:GA quality with this Aftermath sect info.
4. The article has been a stable WP:GA quality page since promotion to GA quality, with this info intact in the article.
5. Multiple secondary sources have discussed this aspect of the article's topic, over a sustained period of time.
6. Please let's keep this info in the article.

Thank you,

— Cirt (talk) 11:31, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Update: As a good faith attempt at compromise, I've further reduced the size of the Aftermath sect even more than was successfully done at the GA Review. I've moved some info from the sect to a Footnotes sect, instead. Please see diff and diff. The sect now looks better after this compromise. Thank you, — Cirt (talk) 11:47, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Reduced size of Aftermath sect even more, as further attempt at compromise, please see diff. Thank you, — Cirt (talk) 11:56, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Completion of Guild of Copy Editors pass

This article had a copy edit through the Guild of Copy Editors process.

Result here by Miniapolis.

My thanks for this copy edit by Miniapolis, the article looks much better for it!

Much appreciated,

— Cirt (talk) 20:05, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Drive-by reference tagging

I checked but failed to find any talk page discussion justifying this drive-by reference tagging -- so I removed those drive-by tags.

Cheers,

— Cirt (talk) 19:21, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Checklinks

Note to self: Go through status of links at Checklinks. — Cirt (talk) 02:59, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

 Done. Where possible all relevant links are active and/or have been archived if archives are currently available. Will have to remember to do this as well for any additional hyperlinks within other sources. — Cirt (talk) 17:50, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Using publisher field to note archive database

I'm using the publisher field in the citations to note the archival database used to access the article.

In most cases this is LexisNexis, it's possible if not there it was NewsBank.

Hopefully in the future people with bots and/or scripts won't come through and remove the publisher field, because that is very valuable and useful info namely the archive database name of which to access the article(s).

Placing here on the talk page in the hope that others will see this in the future in the event that information might (but hopefully not) get removed from those citation fields.

— Cirt (talk) 00:15, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

I placed a query at Template_talk:Citation#Where_to_put_archive_database_used_to_access_article.3F, hopefully we can get some clarity on this issue. — Cirt (talk) 00:20, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Their answer was to use the via field instead of the publisher field, and this is now  Done in this article. — Cirt (talk) 01:56, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

2014 book The Innovators mentions exact diff link to this Wikipedia article talk page

The 2014 book The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution cites a specific diff link to this particular article talk page:

• Isaacson, Walter (2014). The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution. Simon & Schuster. p. 520; Footnote 98. ISBN 978-1476708690. Talk:Bomis, revisions made by Jimmy Wales, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=11139857

Also a positive mention on page 440:

• Isaacson, Walter (2014). The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution. Simon & Schuster. p. 440. ISBN 978-1476708690. Tellingly and laudably, Wikipedia's entries on its own history and the roles of Wales and Sanger have turned out, after much fighting on the discussion boards, to be balanced and objective.

— Cirt (talk) 02:43, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Also an excerpt from the book published by The Daily Beast:

• Isaacson, Walter (October 19, 2014). "You Can Look It Up: The Wikipedia Story". The Daily Beast. Archived from the original on October 20, 2014. Retrieved October 25, 2014.

— Cirt (talk) 03:01, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Cite re-formatting

Did some cite re-formatting, modeled after WP:FAs including The General in His Labyrinth and Mario Vargas Llosa.

Will try to break those cites into more specific ones with smaller page ranges and/or individual pages.

However I don't (at the moment) have immediate access to all the sources I once had when successfully bringing this article to WP:GA quality as I did in the past.

Fortunately I made sure throughout the Quality improvement project, that multiple references back up most facts and most sentences.

— Cirt (talk) 20:05, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

If you want to link together the short citation with the long citation see Template:Harvard citation/doc#Wikilink to citation does not work. QuackGuru (talk) 20:14, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Good idea, QuackGuru, but still thinking over whether or not to link them all and make them bluelinks, because as you point out there in that link there are historically lots of problems with those links not working correctly. — Cirt (talk) 20:57, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

If it were only a few references it would be easy. There are way too many sources to turn blue. See Bomis#Notes. QuackGuru (talk) 21:12, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, good point, I'll give it some more thought. — Cirt (talk) 00:00, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Update: In process now of moving cites and also and perhaps more importantly checking accessibility of hyperlinks and archiving where necessary. Will update further with progress. — Cirt (talk) 02:47, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

I adjusted one reference. I think the bluelinks format is an improvement. QuackGuru (talk) 03:53, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Agreed, it'll be a slow and steady process converting them, however. — Cirt (talk) 11:37, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Update: All cites now moved to Notes/References sect formatting. No bluelinks between the two sects changes done yet. All references in article checked for either accessible hyperlinks or if not available online then noted where to access them through the via field in the citation. — Cirt (talk) 02:02, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

I fixed another ref. QuackGuru (talk) 20:42, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

External links modified

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Mundane claims

For mundane claims the WorldNetDaily is reliable. QuackGuru (talk) 19:25, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Pronunciation Source

The current source for Bomis rhyming with promise is a presentation from an Information Ethics class at U of Michigan which mentions the fact in a parenthetical when linking to this article, and although it's admittedly not 100% certain that he got this pronunciation from the wiki page, it seems likely, which would mean this source is circular. The oldest version of the article with the pronunciation present (or at lest the last time it was edited back in) was Damian Yerrick's Revision as of 23:10, 13 August 2009. At that time it was sourced to bomis.com itself, specifically to its FAQ page. Using the Wayback Machine, I looked at an image of bomis.com from June 12, 2000, and the FAQ page indeed confirms the pronunciation, although rhyming it with "Thomas" instead. Should the source be changed to the Wayback image of the FAQ? Why was it changed? Should we change the pronunciation reference word to "Thomas"? or into IPA? Maondoza (talk) 04:06, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

WorldNetDaily in the "Aftermath" section

In October 2017, Aquillion removed two bibliography citations of WorldNetDaily (RSP entry) from Bomis § Bibliography. However, content linked to those removed citations is still present in Bomis § Aftermath, and without the citations, the content is incompletely referenced. There are two options:

1. Remove all of the WorldNetDaily-related content from Bomis § Bibliography that does not reference a reliable source.
2. Replace the removed WorldNetDaily citations with more reliable sources.

Restoring the WorldNetDaily citations without the addition of reliable sources is not a valid option, since the source is deprecated and its published claims would constitute undue weight. ​— Newslinger talk 11:03, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Due to lack of comment, I've gone ahead and removed the WorldNetDaily-related content from Bomis § Aftermath. I note that the January 2014 version of this article that was promoted to good article status did not mention WorldNetDaily, even though the WorldNetDaily incident occurred in December 2012. If there is disagreement here, I will be happy to ask for additional input through a request for comment. — Newslinger talk 10:21, 24 February 2019 (UTC)