4 ms·

Yes, a Wikipedia page is not on a physical resource like paper, so it does not have the resource costs that old-school encyclopedia's have. But I have always fe

by scott_s 11y ago

Yes, a Wikipedia page is not on a physical resource like paper, so it does not have the resource costs that old-school encyclopedia's have. But I have always felt that argument to be besides the point. There still is a limited resource at play, and that is time and effort for editors. I can see how including as much as possible by that rationale could lead to something that is not manageable. I am not certain that is true, but it seems reasonable that it could be true. That is the point to argue against, not the one about physical media.

DasIch 11y ago
It's also a question of maintanance. What does it matter, if you have articles on every little thing but 3/4 of them are outdated? People critizize Wikipedia based on the concept already quite a bit. If you can't maintain article quality for all articles to a reasonable level, it ends up hurting the project.
- snowwrestler 11y ago
  That argument falls down when one can point to a very well-maintained wiki hosted elsewhere. If the Star Trek wiki is well-maintained where it is, then it seems reasonable to assume that if were wholly incorporated within Wikipedia, it would be just as well maintained there.
  - scott_s 11y ago
    I sometimes visit such wikis, and my feeling is they often wouldn't fit in Wikipedia. It's mainly an issue of perspective. Take, for example, these two entries on the same fictional character: http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Aerith_Gainsborough http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Aerith_Gainsborough, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerith_Gainsborough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerith_Gainsborough The one from the Final Fantasy Wiki is from the perspective of a Final Fantasy fan, and is generally for a Final Fantasy fan. That is, it's explaining how Aerith relates to the rest of Final Fantasy. Some of it flirts with being in-fiction. The Wikipedia article is more about how Aerith the fictional character relates to the real world. My point is that the people who want to maintain the versions that are more in-fiction may not also want to maintain versions that are more focused to how this fictional thing relates to the real world.
    - snowwrestler 11y ago
      This is a very good point.
  - detaro 11y ago
    There is something to be said for different communities with differing standards or technical tools, and some separation from Wikipedia might be a good idea. Wikipedia has different projects for different topics, but in the end many decisions and guidelines apply globally. Also for legal reasons, many fan wikis by necessity include a lot of detail about and data from copyrighted franchises that wikipedia might not want to touch (Screencaps, audio snippets, ...). It would be nice if there were a set of reliable hosts and a standard for inter-wiki linking there, though. Prominently direct readers to reliable pokemon/Fallout/StarTrek wikis for details.
  - DasIch 11y ago
    That argument works well with the Star Trek wiki as example. I don't think it goes as well with the Minecraft wiki. Fan wikis like this are targeted at people that already have a fairly good understanding of what the article is about. This allows them to ignore certain aspects and assume a lot of things are already known. In case of Wikipedia you have to assume much less prior knowledge and you have to start at the very beginning with each article. If you're already in the know, this gets boring very quickly. This means that there is always going to be a space for separate wikis that cover specialized topics in detail for a different audience.
j-pb 11y ago
Then have a system that shows every article together with a measurement of quality. Number of references, actuality, estimated bias. Then people can switch between the different tiers they want to search in. Give me everything but potentially crap too, or just give me the hand selected meticulously crafted wonder articles that the deletionists crave.
- scott_s 11y ago
  That could easily be more work, and this argument posits that the quantity of work is the problem.
  - j-pb 11y ago
    All the metrics I gave could be completely automated. What is the problem then? There are certainly no technical limitations on storing an arbitrary amount of articles.
    - scott_s 11y ago
      People would argue over the fairness and accuracy of the metrics, resulting in changes and various kinds of work; the system itself would require development and maintenance. It is not a zero-cost solution.
      - j-pb 11y ago
        Compared to the effort of compiling an all encompassing encyclopaedia it's negligible. Especially compared to the price of scaring away a ton of contributors and contributions. Why does it have to be a zero cost solution anyways? It's probably that mindset that keeps wikipedia on its crappy centralised php codebase that requires it to beg for money ever other week.
        scott_s 11y ago
        We're at an impasse, as I disagree the effort is negligible. (I think that it could be an enormous time-sink arguing over the relative scores of articles, as well as coming up and changing the criteria used to come up with those scores.) But neither of us have any data, so we can't make any progress down that line of discussion. To your last question, the argument I don't see much discussion around is that editor time and effort is a limited resource; deleting articles is a way to manage that resource. So any solution that addresses this argument must not incur a large amount of editor time and effort.

by scott_s 11y ago

DasIch 11y ago

It's also a question of maintanance. What does it matter, if you have articles on every little thing but 3/4 of them are outdated? People critizize Wikipedia based on the concept already quite a bit. If you can't maintain article quality for all articles to a reasonable level, it ends up hurting the project.

snowwrestler 11y ago
That argument falls down when one can point to a very well-maintained wiki hosted elsewhere. If the Star Trek wiki is well-maintained where it is, then it seems reasonable to assume that if were wholly incorporated within Wikipedia, it would be just as well maintained there.
- scott_s 11y ago
  I sometimes visit such wikis, and my feeling is they often wouldn't fit in Wikipedia. It's mainly an issue of perspective. Take, for example, these two entries on the same fictional character: http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Aerith_Gainsborough http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Aerith_Gainsborough, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerith_Gainsborough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerith_Gainsborough The one from the Final Fantasy Wiki is from the perspective of a Final Fantasy fan, and is generally for a Final Fantasy fan. That is, it's explaining how Aerith relates to the rest of Final Fantasy. Some of it flirts with being in-fiction. The Wikipedia article is more about how Aerith the fictional character relates to the real world. My point is that the people who want to maintain the versions that are more in-fiction may not also want to maintain versions that are more focused to how this fictional thing relates to the real world.
  - snowwrestler 11y ago
    This is a very good point.
- detaro 11y ago
  There is something to be said for different communities with differing standards or technical tools, and some separation from Wikipedia might be a good idea. Wikipedia has different projects for different topics, but in the end many decisions and guidelines apply globally. Also for legal reasons, many fan wikis by necessity include a lot of detail about and data from copyrighted franchises that wikipedia might not want to touch (Screencaps, audio snippets, ...). It would be nice if there were a set of reliable hosts and a standard for inter-wiki linking there, though. Prominently direct readers to reliable pokemon/Fallout/StarTrek wikis for details.
- DasIch 11y ago
  That argument works well with the Star Trek wiki as example. I don't think it goes as well with the Minecraft wiki. Fan wikis like this are targeted at people that already have a fairly good understanding of what the article is about. This allows them to ignore certain aspects and assume a lot of things are already known. In case of Wikipedia you have to assume much less prior knowledge and you have to start at the very beginning with each article. If you're already in the know, this gets boring very quickly. This means that there is always going to be a space for separate wikis that cover specialized topics in detail for a different audience.

j-pb 11y ago

Then have a system that shows every article together with a measurement of quality. Number of references, actuality, estimated bias. Then people can switch between the different tiers they want to search in. Give me everything but potentially crap too, or just give me the hand selected meticulously crafted wonder articles that the deletionists crave.

scott_s 11y ago
That could easily be more work, and this argument posits that the quantity of work is the problem.
- j-pb 11y ago
  All the metrics I gave could be completely automated. What is the problem then? There are certainly no technical limitations on storing an arbitrary amount of articles.
  - scott_s 11y ago
    People would argue over the fairness and accuracy of the metrics, resulting in changes and various kinds of work; the system itself would require development and maintenance. It is not a zero-cost solution.
    - j-pb 11y ago
      Compared to the effort of compiling an all encompassing encyclopaedia it's negligible. Especially compared to the price of scaring away a ton of contributors and contributions. Why does it have to be a zero cost solution anyways? It's probably that mindset that keeps wikipedia on its crappy centralised php codebase that requires it to beg for money ever other week.
      - scott_s 11y ago
        We're at an impasse, as I disagree the effort is negligible. (I think that it could be an enormous time-sink arguing over the relative scores of articles, as well as coming up and changing the criteria used to come up with those scores.) But neither of us have any data, so we can't make any progress down that line of discussion. To your last question, the argument I don't see much discussion around is that editor time and effort is a limited resource; deleting articles is a way to manage that resource. So any solution that addresses this argument must not incur a large amount of editor time and effort.