6 ms·

The all-conquering Wikipedia?

29 points by Petiver 10y ago

tim333 10y ago
>An army of anonymous, tech-savvy people – mostly young... Bah ageist humbug. The 2010 survey had 51% over 30 and at Wikimania in London last year the biggest group were retired over 50s. I think because it involves tech people just assume it's youth. (I note the featured article today is The House of Plantagenet (1154–1485) and you have to scroll down half the page before you hit Justin Bieber.)
zyxley 10y ago
Wikis in general will be a part of human culture until, more or less, the end of time... but Wikipedia specifically feels like it's already begun a slow decline of bikeshedding, endless reverts, and territory claims by predatory editors.
- astrobe_ 10y ago
  If it is so one should move to a git/fork/pull request model instead?
- teh_klev 10y ago
  What I find frustrating are that things like this are permitted to happen by editors who've clearly no clue about the subject matter of the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Chocolatey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio... "Yet another piece of niche software without any evidence of notability." Upon looking up profile of the editor who proposed this deletion we discover: "I am an environmentalist, scientist and naturalist retired from a career spent working for the UK Government. By training I am an aquatic biologist" Absolutely no mention of any knowledge or expertise about the Microsoft development ecosystem, so how would they know anything about the notability of Chocolatey or whether the references are reliable or notable. I created the original NuGet article and got the go ahead to publish it from an experienced wikipedian. A few months later, despite being reasonably well fleshed out, a different editor trots by and sticks a "I'll delete this page because I don't think its notable enough" at the top. My problem is that I don't have the time or energy to jump through their bizarre argumentative hoops to challenge these kinds of things. It happens all the time. I've had two or three wikipedia articles bookmarked only to return some months later to discover they're gone because in the limited opinion of one or two editors the subject matter is not notable. I have since given up contributing time and money to wikipedia. Fuck them.
  - Symbiote 10y ago
    Was the editor wrong? The page on Chocolatey seems fine as a section on NuGet. Wikipedia is not a wiki specialised in software, so it seems reasonable enough that notability is considered in general terms.
    - elcapitan 10y ago
      That discussion (exclusionism vs inclusionism, i.e. making more decisions to exclude stuff that is below a threshold (as in space-limited traditional encyclopedias) vs letting as much in as people care about) is probably also as old as Wikipedia. The German Wikipedia tends to be relatively exclusionist, while I always found the English one more inclusionist. I almost completely abandoned using the German one for this reason and usually go straight to the English version of articles. I also don't want to spend time arguing with the bureaucratic caste what belongs there and what not, I'm happy to find more content in the English version.
  - snori74 10y ago
    So? The article you created lives on, it simply had a note about "dubious notability" for a year. That is a prompt to you - or anyone else that cares - to add references to reliable sources that demonstrate that it is notable.
  - cooper12 10y ago
    Wikipedia is written by amateurs and enthusiasts, credentials don't hold any weight compared to published sources. [0] You can't verify what's in someone's head, but you can do that for published information. Every now and then you'll hear about how "experts are scum" [1] on Wikipedia, but that comes from a lack of understanding of how it functions. Experts are more than welcome to contribute, as long as they back up their statements with sources. (One would expect academics to embrace this the most) About notability, Wikipedia's concept of notability [2] is quite different from what the average person might think it to be. Notability has nothing to do with popularity or usefulness, but rather significant coverage in multiple reliable sources. This way, you know you can write a verifiable [3] and comprehensive article on something without resorting to original research. [4] (To put it another way: pulling things out of your ass) While to you as a programmer, Chocately might seem to be one of the most essential things on the planet, to nearly every other person and publisher, it's nothing special. Have books been written on it? Has it received widespread coverage in the news? Would you expect to see it in a real encyclopedia? What is its actual impact and userbase? That is what notability is about, not because you personally find something important. Lastly, you often hear people complaining about other articles of the same type or more esoteric existing,[5] like Homebrew having an article [6] while Chocolatey doesn't. That doesn't mean those articles won't be deleted either, Wikipedia is entirely run by volunteers and the process focuses on an individual article's merits at a time. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ignore_all_credentials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ignore_all_credentia... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:SCUM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:SCUM [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Other_stuff_exists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Other_stuff_exists [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homebrew_(package_management_software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homebrew_(package_management_s...
- atdt 10y ago
  This claim is nearly as old as Wikipedia itself, and it is mostly false. There are over five million articles on English Wikipedia, and approximately 10,000 highly active editors (editors who make 25 or more edits a month). There is too much territory and too few claimants for your description to be true. I don't know what motivates people to repeat this trope, when it is simply untrue. I think it stems from the fact that many people expect editing Wikipedia to be easier than it is. It is in fact quite hard. Some of the difficulty is essential (writing good, well-sourced expository prose is challenging) and some of it is inessential, the result of technical and social debt. But most worthwhile things are difficult, and on balance, the rewards of editing Wikipedia are quite large in comparison to the effort required. You can go from a complete novice to a lasting (small) contribution to the project of civilization in an afternoon. You can't same the same for playing an instrument! And it can be hugely satisfying, really. Try it!
  - quanticle 10y ago
    The claim may be as old as Wikipedia itself, but it is true nonetheless. A study [1] performed using Wikipedia's own numbers showed that the Wikipedia community is in serious trouble. To quote the paper, "However, recent research has shown that the number of active contributors in Wikipedia has been declining steadily for years and suggests that a sharp decline in the retention of newcomers is the cause." To wit, there may be 10,000 active editors now, but there were 56,000 active editors in 2007. That's a nearly 80% decline in the number of active editors. That's not exactly what I would call a sign of a healthy community. The paper goes on to suggest that the reason for the active editors leaving is exactly what zyxley proposed. The amount of work needed to make an edit stick has grown to be an impossibly large burden for all but the most dedicated of volunteers. Even the terminology used by Wikipedians is opaque. Wikipedia has evolved its own legalese-like jargon to describe the actions that new editors can or cannot take. While that may be a fine shorthand for administrators to discuss policies amongst themselves, it is a problem when a new contributor is told that their edit doesn't meet "WP:V" or their new article was rejected because it didn't meet "WP:N". [1] http://abs.sagepub.com/content/57/5/664 http://abs.sagepub.com/content/57/5/664
    - 10y ago
TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
Wikipedia reminds me of Web 1.0: plain, informational text with minimal formatting, and liberal use of hyperlinks. But it's better than the old web. It has revision history, proper licensing, suffers less from link rot, uses consistent and readable styling and, of course, it is collaboratively edited. Shame about the centralisation, though.
- chris_wot 10y ago
  Except it does suffer from link rot, and often citations are to inaccessible sources.
  - adrianN 10y ago
    He said "less". Wiki-internal links usually remain valid. They can hardly help external links rotting away.
    - chris_wot 10y ago
      I'd consider external links more important than internal links. After all, the policy of no original research means you rely on the information you are given to be backed via verifiable sources.
  - iamgopal 10y ago
    I want them to cache atleast pdf version of the page, just in case. ( I think legality might be involve, but still, wish is a wish. )
    - chris_wot 10y ago
      It's not their content, it might fall under fair use but I'm very doubtful. And that doesn't help with restricted content, where they are almost certain to get a DMCA takedown notice.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    I tried to get deleted a page recently where all five citations were to a commercial website that required a login. Apparently this wasn't sufficient reason to get the page deleted. I was told the sources "deserved further scrutiny." I gave up on Wikipedia editing after that.
chris_wot 10y ago
Wikipedia is a toxic mess. If you try to contribute anything even slightly controversial and one of the page patrollers decide you are obnoxious, or wrong, then your work will be eviscerated. The funny thing is, even when you know the policies and follow them, it's irrelevant. For example, I was told by several people that primary sources are entirely verboten. I did a search to verify the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) company ownership of a number of companies, which is entirely non-controversial, I was told this was violating WP:OR, or more specifically [[WP:PRIMARY]] as this disallows primary sources. This, however, is a shortcut to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research#Primary.2C_secondary_and_tertiary_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research... This reads: Policy: Unless restricted by another policy, primary sources that have been reputably published may be used in Wikipedia; but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation. A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge. When I pointed this out, there was silence and my work was removed. The project is now completely impossible to contribute to in any meaningful way. There are literally users who do nothing but watch the incoming edit stream and revert or tweak edits as soon as they get made. Often they make mistakes or make it impossible for an editor to do any sort of extensive contributions. One editor I interacted with did this to me, and when I reviewed what happened after I found I couldn't go on further I realised they have made over 98,000 edits since 2009, yet there is literally no article they contributed to in any significant way whatsoever! It's all reverts, page moves, typo fixes, wiki link changed or the creation of small article stubs (they claimed to have created 500 articles, but when I checked they created over 500 pages, but about 450 are redirects or pages moves, and nothing else. Of the rest, about 25 article are 1 sentence stubs, albeit with a reference, and the rest are still very basic and not deeply researched articles - not really much better than stubs. It's really a lost cause now. I certainly know the quality is degrading very rapidly. Unless practices are drastically changed, it will degrade to the point where traditional sources will come back into fashion. Jimmy Wales once stated the grand vision of Wikipedia was summed up by asking people to "imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." [1] That was the goal, and for years that was what I and many others worked towards. For whatever reason, the project has now stagnated and that is no longer occurring consistently. This grand vision has been lost, and I don't see that there are any moves to bring it back. 1. http://m.slashdot.org/story/48267 http://m.slashdot.org/story/48267
eprime 10y ago
Wikipedia should get rid of the policy of notability. Anything should be written about, so long as it has truth. A Wikipedia article about the bench at the end of your road, a Wikipedia article about your first English teacher. The policing of notability implies that only those things that appear worthwhile to the police get admitted. Given that storage appears insanely cheap, perhaps the requirements should only include that the article has good sources.
weinzierl 10y ago
> As Lynch rightly notes [..] “Wikipedia, despite being noncommercial, still poses many of the dangers of a traditional monopoly, and we run the risk of living in an information monoculture.” Large parts of the media demonstrably use Wikipedia as their major or sole source of factual data; as a result, false or half-true claims (such as are found in any encyclopedia) can spread and take root with extraordinary speed. I used to have a teacher who used to say: "A single source is no source at all". I often wish I had a second encyclopedic source (in addition to the original sources cited in the encyclopedia). What I often do is read the article in another language, but this is just a workaround. Is there any alternative to Wikipedia?

29 points by Petiver 10y ago

>An army of anonymous, tech-savvy people – mostly young... Bah ageist humbug. The 2010 survey had 51% over 30 and at Wikimania in London last year the biggest group were retired over 50s. I think because it involves tech people just assume it's youth. (I note the featured article today is The House of Plantagenet (1154–1485) and you have to scroll down half the page before you hit Justin Bieber.)

zyxley 10y ago

Wikis in general will be a part of human culture until, more or less, the end of time... but Wikipedia specifically feels like it's already begun a slow decline of bikeshedding, endless reverts, and territory claims by predatory editors.

astrobe_ 10y ago
If it is so one should move to a git/fork/pull request model instead?
teh_klev 10y ago
What I find frustrating are that things like this are permitted to happen by editors who've clearly no clue about the subject matter of the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Chocolatey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio... "Yet another piece of niche software without any evidence of notability." Upon looking up profile of the editor who proposed this deletion we discover: "I am an environmentalist, scientist and naturalist retired from a career spent working for the UK Government. By training I am an aquatic biologist" Absolutely no mention of any knowledge or expertise about the Microsoft development ecosystem, so how would they know anything about the notability of Chocolatey or whether the references are reliable or notable. I created the original NuGet article and got the go ahead to publish it from an experienced wikipedian. A few months later, despite being reasonably well fleshed out, a different editor trots by and sticks a "I'll delete this page because I don't think its notable enough" at the top. My problem is that I don't have the time or energy to jump through their bizarre argumentative hoops to challenge these kinds of things. It happens all the time. I've had two or three wikipedia articles bookmarked only to return some months later to discover they're gone because in the limited opinion of one or two editors the subject matter is not notable. I have since given up contributing time and money to wikipedia. Fuck them.
- Symbiote 10y ago
  Was the editor wrong? The page on Chocolatey seems fine as a section on NuGet. Wikipedia is not a wiki specialised in software, so it seems reasonable enough that notability is considered in general terms.
  - elcapitan 10y ago
    That discussion (exclusionism vs inclusionism, i.e. making more decisions to exclude stuff that is below a threshold (as in space-limited traditional encyclopedias) vs letting as much in as people care about) is probably also as old as Wikipedia. The German Wikipedia tends to be relatively exclusionist, while I always found the English one more inclusionist. I almost completely abandoned using the German one for this reason and usually go straight to the English version of articles. I also don't want to spend time arguing with the bureaucratic caste what belongs there and what not, I'm happy to find more content in the English version.
- snori74 10y ago
  So? The article you created lives on, it simply had a note about "dubious notability" for a year. That is a prompt to you - or anyone else that cares - to add references to reliable sources that demonstrate that it is notable.
- cooper12 10y ago
  Wikipedia is written by amateurs and enthusiasts, credentials don't hold any weight compared to published sources. [0] You can't verify what's in someone's head, but you can do that for published information. Every now and then you'll hear about how "experts are scum" [1] on Wikipedia, but that comes from a lack of understanding of how it functions. Experts are more than welcome to contribute, as long as they back up their statements with sources. (One would expect academics to embrace this the most) About notability, Wikipedia's concept of notability [2] is quite different from what the average person might think it to be. Notability has nothing to do with popularity or usefulness, but rather significant coverage in multiple reliable sources. This way, you know you can write a verifiable [3] and comprehensive article on something without resorting to original research. [4] (To put it another way: pulling things out of your ass) While to you as a programmer, Chocately might seem to be one of the most essential things on the planet, to nearly every other person and publisher, it's nothing special. Have books been written on it? Has it received widespread coverage in the news? Would you expect to see it in a real encyclopedia? What is its actual impact and userbase? That is what notability is about, not because you personally find something important. Lastly, you often hear people complaining about other articles of the same type or more esoteric existing,[5] like Homebrew having an article [6] while Chocolatey doesn't. That doesn't mean those articles won't be deleted either, Wikipedia is entirely run by volunteers and the process focuses on an individual article's merits at a time. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ignore_all_credentials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ignore_all_credentia... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:SCUM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:SCUM [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Other_stuff_exists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Other_stuff_exists [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homebrew_(package_management_software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homebrew_(package_management_s...
atdt 10y ago
This claim is nearly as old as Wikipedia itself, and it is mostly false. There are over five million articles on English Wikipedia, and approximately 10,000 highly active editors (editors who make 25 or more edits a month). There is too much territory and too few claimants for your description to be true. I don't know what motivates people to repeat this trope, when it is simply untrue. I think it stems from the fact that many people expect editing Wikipedia to be easier than it is. It is in fact quite hard. Some of the difficulty is essential (writing good, well-sourced expository prose is challenging) and some of it is inessential, the result of technical and social debt. But most worthwhile things are difficult, and on balance, the rewards of editing Wikipedia are quite large in comparison to the effort required. You can go from a complete novice to a lasting (small) contribution to the project of civilization in an afternoon. You can't same the same for playing an instrument! And it can be hugely satisfying, really. Try it!
- quanticle 10y ago
  The claim may be as old as Wikipedia itself, but it is true nonetheless. A study [1] performed using Wikipedia's own numbers showed that the Wikipedia community is in serious trouble. To quote the paper, "However, recent research has shown that the number of active contributors in Wikipedia has been declining steadily for years and suggests that a sharp decline in the retention of newcomers is the cause." To wit, there may be 10,000 active editors now, but there were 56,000 active editors in 2007. That's a nearly 80% decline in the number of active editors. That's not exactly what I would call a sign of a healthy community. The paper goes on to suggest that the reason for the active editors leaving is exactly what zyxley proposed. The amount of work needed to make an edit stick has grown to be an impossibly large burden for all but the most dedicated of volunteers. Even the terminology used by Wikipedians is opaque. Wikipedia has evolved its own legalese-like jargon to describe the actions that new editors can or cannot take. While that may be a fine shorthand for administrators to discuss policies amongst themselves, it is a problem when a new contributor is told that their edit doesn't meet "WP:V" or their new article was rejected because it didn't meet "WP:N". [1] http://abs.sagepub.com/content/57/5/664 http://abs.sagepub.com/content/57/5/664
  - 10y ago

TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago

Wikipedia reminds me of Web 1.0: plain, informational text with minimal formatting, and liberal use of hyperlinks. But it's better than the old web. It has revision history, proper licensing, suffers less from link rot, uses consistent and readable styling and, of course, it is collaboratively edited. Shame about the centralisation, though.

chris_wot 10y ago
Except it does suffer from link rot, and often citations are to inaccessible sources.
- adrianN 10y ago
  He said "less". Wiki-internal links usually remain valid. They can hardly help external links rotting away.
  - chris_wot 10y ago
    I'd consider external links more important than internal links. After all, the policy of no original research means you rely on the information you are given to be backed via verifiable sources.
- iamgopal 10y ago
  I want them to cache atleast pdf version of the page, just in case. ( I think legality might be involve, but still, wish is a wish. )
  - chris_wot 10y ago
    It's not their content, it might fall under fair use but I'm very doubtful. And that doesn't help with restricted content, where they are almost certain to get a DMCA takedown notice.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  I tried to get deleted a page recently where all five citations were to a commercial website that required a login. Apparently this wasn't sufficient reason to get the page deleted. I was told the sources "deserved further scrutiny." I gave up on Wikipedia editing after that.

chris_wot 10y ago

Wikipedia is a toxic mess. If you try to contribute anything even slightly controversial and one of the page patrollers decide you are obnoxious, or wrong, then your work will be eviscerated. The funny thing is, even when you know the policies and follow them, it's irrelevant. For example, I was told by several people that primary sources are entirely verboten. I did a search to verify the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) company ownership of a number of companies, which is entirely non-controversial, I was told this was violating WP:OR, or more specifically [[WP:PRIMARY]] as this disallows primary sources. This, however, is a shortcut to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research#Primary.2C_secondary_and_tertiary_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research... This reads: Policy: Unless restricted by another policy, primary sources that have been reputably published may be used in Wikipedia; but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation. A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge. When I pointed this out, there was silence and my work was removed. The project is now completely impossible to contribute to in any meaningful way. There are literally users who do nothing but watch the incoming edit stream and revert or tweak edits as soon as they get made. Often they make mistakes or make it impossible for an editor to do any sort of extensive contributions. One editor I interacted with did this to me, and when I reviewed what happened after I found I couldn't go on further I realised they have made over 98,000 edits since 2009, yet there is literally no article they contributed to in any significant way whatsoever! It's all reverts, page moves, typo fixes, wiki link changed or the creation of small article stubs (they claimed to have created 500 articles, but when I checked they created over 500 pages, but about 450 are redirects or pages moves, and nothing else. Of the rest, about 25 article are 1 sentence stubs, albeit with a reference, and the rest are still very basic and not deeply researched articles - not really much better than stubs. It's really a lost cause now. I certainly know the quality is degrading very rapidly. Unless practices are drastically changed, it will degrade to the point where traditional sources will come back into fashion. Jimmy Wales once stated the grand vision of Wikipedia was summed up by asking people to "imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." [1] That was the goal, and for years that was what I and many others worked towards. For whatever reason, the project has now stagnated and that is no longer occurring consistently. This grand vision has been lost, and I don't see that there are any moves to bring it back. 1. http://m.slashdot.org/story/48267 http://m.slashdot.org/story/48267

eprime 10y ago

Wikipedia should get rid of the policy of notability. Anything should be written about, so long as it has truth. A Wikipedia article about the bench at the end of your road, a Wikipedia article about your first English teacher. The policing of notability implies that only those things that appear worthwhile to the police get admitted. Given that storage appears insanely cheap, perhaps the requirements should only include that the article has good sources.

weinzierl 10y ago

> As Lynch rightly notes [..] “Wikipedia, despite being noncommercial, still poses many of the dangers of a traditional monopoly, and we run the risk of living in an information monoculture.” Large parts of the media demonstrably use Wikipedia as their major or sole source of factual data; as a result, false or half-true claims (such as are found in any encyclopedia) can spread and take root with extraordinary speed. I used to have a teacher who used to say: "A single source is no source at all". I often wish I had a second encyclopedic source (in addition to the original sources cited in the encyclopedia). What I often do is read the article in another language, but this is just a workaround. Is there any alternative to Wikipedia?