Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Summer Vacation (talk | contribs) at 16:46, 12 March 2011 (→A note to any Wiki Administrator:). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Creative Commons ~ Summer Vacation

I am currently working on wiki articles for Amusement Parks and Summer Camps. If you would like to help, or have any suggestions, please let me know.

My Public Domain webpage is at http://sites.google.com/site/creativecommonssummervacation/

My Public Domain photo library is at http://picasaweb.google.com/CreativeCommonsSummerVacation and http://creativecommons.smugmug.com

So far I have 444 photo albums. You can add photos to any album, or create an album, by sending an email to: creativecommonssummervacation@gmail.com

You can also find Summer Camps serving children with special needs, a page that I created. If you want to add your summer camp to this list, just add the category Summer Camps serving disabled children to your Misplaced Pages article.

A note to any Wiki Administrator:

• If you look at: Amusement Parks and Summer Camps you will find more defunct parks than active parks in many states. Since there is a category for defunct amusement parks and for summercamps, and since it is a great waste of time for people looking for active parks to click on all the dead parks, I would like permission to move all inactive parks and camps to the defunct categories.

• Nearly every state has a subcategory of waterparks, which creates confusion, redundant entries and tiny categories. For example, Hawaii has only 1 amusement park, and a sub-category with only one waterpark. People have over-categorized to the extent that the average category has only 1 or 2 entries (75 waterpark Wikis for 50 states). Disney World in Florida has sub-parks, which need to be listed together instead of spread out in sub-categories. Another problems is the constantly changing attractions, where an amusement park adds wet rides and splash parks, and a water park adds dry attractions like mini-golf and go-karts. And just to complicate matters, safari-parks and castles are adding amusements and water attractions. And even more confusion comes when somebody splits up a combo park like Dollywood into 2 parks, leading people to believe that Dollywood is just an amusement park. So, I am merging all waterparks into the state or country level amusement park category. And now it gets worse, because the word waterpark is only used in the United States to mean a water-themed amusement park. Elsewhere in the world it means a nature park with lots of water. You will find this confusion on photo sharing services like Flickr, Smugmug and Picasa. Some examples are Chorlton_Water_Park in the UK Flickr, Parque das Águas de Caxambu in Brazil Flickr and Tianjin_Water_Park in China Flickr. I think the smart thing to do is eliminate the waterpark categories and stop the confusion. And combo-amusement park articles like Dollywood need to be merged with the article for the waterpark, like Splash Country Waterpark.

• Wiki commons has a single category of summer camp photo albums for all states, and that list is going to get huge, with over 1,000 traditional summer camps (not including scouting, day camps, dude ranches etc). So I will be creating a set of wiki commons sub-categories for each state, identical to the wiki categories for amusement parks, but not until the list is too big for a single page or at lease 5 camps per state. Note that photo albums may eventually outnumber wiki articles since many wikis are deleted, and photos are not.

• With over 850 traditional summer camps (not including scouting, day camps and special needs camps) it gets confusing to have summer schools in the list. I would like to utilize the category for Summer Schools, and clean out the traditional camps directories. Far too many summer schools are posing as camps, which is misleading if not outright fraudulent. These schools are typically located on university campuses and private schools. I will be very careful not to move any summer school program that does offer summer camping activities, even if they do not have the typical summer camp facilities.

• I am doing all of this in preparation for a massive 2011 update to the summer vacation wiki categories. Thousands of photos will be uploaded to WikiCommons, all CC3.0, and hundreds of Wikis will be created. After that I am going to walk on water and ascend to heaven.

• I will be adding links to Photo Albums and YouTube (as allowed under the Wiki-Rules) this summer as I upgrade or create Wiki articles, but ONLY if the link is to the 'official' photo or video library, or to a Public Domain (Creative Commons 3.0) library like Wiki-Commons.

• I will try and write articles that comply with the fuzzy rules of Wiki, but it is proving to be a nightmare. Perhaps I should write like this:

"According to reliable sources, who refused to identify themselves lest they get a spanking from their moms, the miscreants who started the food fight in the new dining hall on 4 July 2004 were from the bohemian tribe of Bunga-Wanga in New Jersey, and not from the Blue Team in the Color Wars, as earlier reported on Fox News..." (see also Red vs Blue in US politics.)

• So, if nobody objects, I will proceed with my changes.

• Regarding the List of Waterparks on Misplaced Pages:

• The Misplaced Pages organization does not like lists with external links, claiming that Misplaced Pages is not an internet directory. OK, fine. But a list of all waterparks (and the list of amusement parks, and the list of summer camps) can actually serve a greater purpose. When we see what Wiki articles are missing, we might be tempted to create a Wiki article for that location on Google Earth. Please note that, contrary to popular opinion, the earth does not belong to Google. The point is that the items on these lists are all locations on the planet, and are all businesses. Those that have a Wiki article appear as an icon on Google Earth/Maps, and those that do not have an article on Misplaced Pages do not have an icon on the map. These listings of businesses creates a problem for Wiki-Freaks, who absolutely hate business related articles on Misplaced Pages. They delete them as fast as you can write them. This issue has to be resolved by the owner of this organization.

• Now, I think we may have overlooked the fact that many authors are one-shot wonders, as they have only one article to write. Some examples are summer camp or amusement park articles, written by the owners of the business. Then you have the editors who are fans of the amusement parks, and who make small contributions across a wide range of articles. And lastly you have the administrators who can be either very helpful or very destructive. I see this as 3 distinct groups, and each has problems and needs.

• When a newbie creates an article, the first thing they see is extremely negative notices about what they did wrong. And some of these notices make no sense for that particular article. Instead of threatening to delete the article, why not notify the author that an editor will probably update the text to meet Wiki standards. In other words, offer positive feedback instead of condemnation. For example, instead of You do not have sufficient references. Does anybody want to delete this trash? use a more positive approach like Thank you for your contribution. Do you have any references that you would like to add in support of this article? As for the editors who help to clean up Misplaced Pages, the Wiki-Administrators might do more to encourage or reward good work, and do more to monitor editors who are morons or fools. When an author has their work trashed by an editor or administrator, you need a better method of recovery and dispute resolution.

• Now to the heart of the matter. Misplaced Pages is too big in scope to fit into one set of standards and procedures. Or to put it another way, not all articles can comply with one set of rules. For example, a business wants to use Wiki to promote something, and so an article looks like an ad, which violates Wiki-Rules. But, the article has some noteworthy history, or perhaps incidents of public concern, like a drowning in a wave-pool. So an ad becomes an approved Wiki-Article. Along comes a competitor, and their Wiki article gets deleted, only because nobody died in their brand new wave-pool. Now you have some really pissed off businesses, authors, editors and administrators. They see this as unfair tyranny. The solution is simple, and comes from my 35 years experience in the computer consulting industry.

• Divide and Conquer. Split up Misplaced Pages.

• Let's start with WikiEarth.org

• All articles dealing with a business location on the planet will be moved to WikiEarth.org and must have a geotag (coordinate) location that Google Earth uses to place an icon on maps. One article for one location, no exceptions. This would include Schools, Parks, Resorts, Amusement Parks, Zoos, Castles, Summer Camps etc. Now you can create a new set of rules for quality assurance, and give the zoo or school administrative authority over their own Wiki article to prevent vandalism. This new service would also allow us to add articles for noteworthy beaches, campgrounds, archeological sites etc.

• Also: WikiThoughts.org Religion, philosophy, politics, psychology, etc

• If you do not like this idea, then suggest a better one, because I am only correct 99.9% of the time. Hey, nobody is perfect.

SV

Status Report as of 10 March 2011

Cleaned up summer camp categories in articles, added missing states.

140 locations added to articles.

102 photos uploaded

The attempt to clean up the amusement park / waterpark mess has been undone by a child who has just discovered that mommy cleaned up his room, and he liked the mess the way it was.

Whatcha gonna do? This is Misplaced Pages. Welcome to hell.

Wiki Articles I created

Belvoir Terrace Summer Camp

Camp ASCCA

Gillians Wonderland Pier and Island Waterpark

Kentucky Splash Waterpark

Wiki Articles I Upgraded From Stubs

Aquapark Tatralandia

Camp Lohikan

Maine Teen Camp

Camp Farwell 4 Girls

Wiki Articles I Re-wrote to Prevent Deletion

Camp Moshava (still needs work, waiting for author to edit)

Barnstar

		The Minor Barnstar
		For being an upstanding new editor, who has Boldly added geocordinates to articles about theme parks. Keep it up!Sadads (talk) 14:41, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

FYI, WP:Barnstars are awards which community members give to eachother to pat each other on the back for good contributions. Keep up the tireless careful reading and minors edits, they are important, Sadads (talk) 14:41, 24 February 2011 (UTC)