6 ms·

Perhaps Wikipedia should approach this from another angle: loosen their baseline criteria, and then treat "notability" like Twitter's "verified" tag. Let the de

by redler 10y ago

Perhaps Wikipedia should approach this from another angle: loosen their baseline criteria, and then treat "notability" like Twitter's "verified" tag. Let the debate be whether or not an article should have the notability checkmark, not whether or not it should exist at all (within reason).

tptacek 10y ago
Because of the way Google prefers Wikipedia articles over other sources in its SERPs, this would ultimately have the effect of turning Wikipedia into a UGC version of AOL: it would be overrun with crud (because the Internet incentivizes Wikipedia articles), and the project would have to expend significant effort at retraining the Internet to look for "verified" stickers on the things that actually were encyclopedia articles. For what benefit? Wikipedia's response to this problem is the right one: there's a whole big wide Internet out there, and if Wikipedia isn't the appropriate place for your article, surely there are many other places that are. UGC sites are falling over themselves to get people to write on them. Why force them on the one Internet project that doesn't want them?
- jessedhillon 10y ago
  Google can easily retrain itself to weight verified Wikipedia topics higher than unverified. There is a lot of benefit to having these articles maintained by a non-profit; Wikia's load time on a phone browser is stupid long, mainly because of ads and tracking scripts. It is several seconds before they are loaded, then you start getting bombarded with full-screen ads. There are dozens of Wikia apps in the Play store, so effectively that means that, unless this is a topic that I have a deep and pre-existing commitment to, I can't have the accelerated app experience. Wikia is just not a replacement for Wikipedia. Yes, UGC sites are clamoring for content: so they can monetize the shit out of it with no respect for the content, community, creator, or reader. Your comment makes it seem like there's no merit to keeping the content on WP, but if you actually use some of these other sites I don't know how you can even compare the two.
- redler 10y ago
  Good point on SERPs, and certainly nobody should force Wikipedia to act against what they believe is their strategic best interest. But isn't "the way Google prefers Wikipedia articles over other sources in its SERPs" an epiphenomenon? In an alternate universe where Wikipedia was more inclusive and used some kind of "notability" flag, Google could just as easily prefer those "notable" articles the way it prefers Wikipedia articles more generally in this universe. Edit: clarity.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    I think it is indeed the case that if Wikipedia was subjected to less entropy, so that its editors could work on building up the encyclopedia in a sort of secluded peace, the project would be far less itchy about notability. But remember that minimizing error is only half the argument for notability. The other half is, again, definitional: an article about a non-notable topic is almost by definition original research, and "no original research" is one of Wikipedia's oldest rules. The project's charter is to be a tertiary source.
    - Natsu 10y ago
      > an article about a non-notable topic is almost by definition original research, and "no original research" is one of Wikipedia's oldest rules While I understand it as a means to keep random cranks out of the science pages, all it has ever incentivized is to have people 'launder' their research via some 'reliable source'. But which sources are 'reliable' is quite often purely a matter of editorial bias and there are other wiki projects with a very different take on the matter, for example: https://infogalactic.com/info/Infogalactic:Reliability https://infogalactic.com/info/Infogalactic:Reliability
      - tptacek 10y ago
        Could you be more specific about this "laundering" of research through reliable sources? I definitely saw savvy Wikipedia spammers lawyering their way into the encyclopedia, sometimes successfully, for instance by citing marginal trade press cites as evidence of notability ("my client is notable because one time a trade press writer got a quote from them on the importance of FCIP products for disaster recovery programs"). What I don't see is a lot of bogus research hiding in the secondary sources of major articles. Whatever you might think about WP's policies on what does or doesn't constitute a "reliable" source, I think it's difficult to argue that any community outside of Wikipedia has spent more time thinking about this problem.
pwdisswordfish 10y ago
Something sort of like it already exists; it's called a 'Featured Article' badge. But since there is an expectation that every article should eventually reach 'featured' status (or at least it should be possible in principle), it doesn't have the result you'd expect. And why wouldn't people have this expectation? Why keep an article at all if it's just going to lie there and gather dust, unmaintained and exposed to vandalism?
- tptacek 10y ago
  Here's the list of FAs, to get some sense of what the bar is here. The overwhelming majority of WP articles --- including the important ones people care about --- aren't FA's; an FA is essentially a very high quality professional grade encyclopedia article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_articles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_articles
- Sir_Substance 10y ago
  >unmaintained and exposed to vandalism? Well written articles that contain no speculation shouldn't rot. >Bill cosby is a well respected television figure Would be badly written content that, left unmaintained, would now be inaccurate. >Bill cosby is a television figure who was held in high regard during the 70's-90's Is better written, because it hinges on verifiable information that will not change. It would become incomplete if no one added to it, but I would argue that it is better to have incomplete information than no information. Vandalism issues are a problem with the wikipedia software, not a problem with the concept of having lesser-trafficked pages. If this is an issue for low-traffic pages, then there should be an anti-vandalism queue where edits to articles that receive less than a certain amount of traffic should be put in a queue to be reviewed for vandalism (and just vandalism, not content accuracy etc). It might take a while for edits to bubble through, but that's basically ok if the page receives that little traffic. Eventual information is better than no information.
  - pwdisswordfish 10y ago
    > Well written articles that contain no speculation shouldn't rot. And who is going to ensure that they are well-written and contain no speculation? > Vandalism issues are a problem with the wikipedia software, not a problem with the concept of having lesser-trafficked pages. If you mean to say that any software explicitly written for the purpose of letting random people publish content instantaneously with no supervision is bad software, I might agree. Otherwise, no. Vandalism is a social problem resulting from lack of article oversight. And I'm not just talking about inserting 'PENIS' into pages, because that is basically solved already with edit filters. I am talking about hoaxes, I am talking about presenting speculation as fact, I am talking about fabricated citations, I am also talking about well-meaning people who inadvertently turn carefully written technical articles into Potato Jesus. A while ago, I've looked at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Blue_Screen_of_Death&oldid=754328375 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Blue_Screen_of_De... which contains this lovely sentence: > Windows 98 and early builds of Windows Vista displayed the red screen from a boot loader error raised by ACPI.[19][20][21] Cited to three sources. Looks great, doesn't it? But if you know anything about boot loaders, about ACPI or just about Windows, you understand this sentence is complete nonsense. You don't even need to look at the citations which obviously don't say any such thing. This is no doubt a result of shoddy copyediting by someone who didn't understand the subject. What is your answer to that?
crdoconnor 10y ago
Totally coincidentally Jimmy Wales makes money from wikia, which is a convenient home for all of those articles deleted from Wikipedia. Plastered in advertising of course.
- rangibaby 10y ago
  Wikia is the reason Wikipedia's constant begging for money really annoys me.

by redler 10y ago

tptacek 10y ago

Because of the way Google prefers Wikipedia articles over other sources in its SERPs, this would ultimately have the effect of turning Wikipedia into a UGC version of AOL: it would be overrun with crud (because the Internet incentivizes Wikipedia articles), and the project would have to expend significant effort at retraining the Internet to look for "verified" stickers on the things that actually were encyclopedia articles. For what benefit? Wikipedia's response to this problem is the right one: there's a whole big wide Internet out there, and if Wikipedia isn't the appropriate place for your article, surely there are many other places that are. UGC sites are falling over themselves to get people to write on them. Why force them on the one Internet project that doesn't want them?

jessedhillon 10y ago
Google can easily retrain itself to weight verified Wikipedia topics higher than unverified. There is a lot of benefit to having these articles maintained by a non-profit; Wikia's load time on a phone browser is stupid long, mainly because of ads and tracking scripts. It is several seconds before they are loaded, then you start getting bombarded with full-screen ads. There are dozens of Wikia apps in the Play store, so effectively that means that, unless this is a topic that I have a deep and pre-existing commitment to, I can't have the accelerated app experience. Wikia is just not a replacement for Wikipedia. Yes, UGC sites are clamoring for content: so they can monetize the shit out of it with no respect for the content, community, creator, or reader. Your comment makes it seem like there's no merit to keeping the content on WP, but if you actually use some of these other sites I don't know how you can even compare the two.
redler 10y ago
Good point on SERPs, and certainly nobody should force Wikipedia to act against what they believe is their strategic best interest. But isn't "the way Google prefers Wikipedia articles over other sources in its SERPs" an epiphenomenon? In an alternate universe where Wikipedia was more inclusive and used some kind of "notability" flag, Google could just as easily prefer those "notable" articles the way it prefers Wikipedia articles more generally in this universe. Edit: clarity.
- tptacek 10y ago
  I think it is indeed the case that if Wikipedia was subjected to less entropy, so that its editors could work on building up the encyclopedia in a sort of secluded peace, the project would be far less itchy about notability. But remember that minimizing error is only half the argument for notability. The other half is, again, definitional: an article about a non-notable topic is almost by definition original research, and "no original research" is one of Wikipedia's oldest rules. The project's charter is to be a tertiary source.
  - Natsu 10y ago
    > an article about a non-notable topic is almost by definition original research, and "no original research" is one of Wikipedia's oldest rules While I understand it as a means to keep random cranks out of the science pages, all it has ever incentivized is to have people 'launder' their research via some 'reliable source'. But which sources are 'reliable' is quite often purely a matter of editorial bias and there are other wiki projects with a very different take on the matter, for example: https://infogalactic.com/info/Infogalactic:Reliability https://infogalactic.com/info/Infogalactic:Reliability
    - tptacek 10y ago
      Could you be more specific about this "laundering" of research through reliable sources? I definitely saw savvy Wikipedia spammers lawyering their way into the encyclopedia, sometimes successfully, for instance by citing marginal trade press cites as evidence of notability ("my client is notable because one time a trade press writer got a quote from them on the importance of FCIP products for disaster recovery programs"). What I don't see is a lot of bogus research hiding in the secondary sources of major articles. Whatever you might think about WP's policies on what does or doesn't constitute a "reliable" source, I think it's difficult to argue that any community outside of Wikipedia has spent more time thinking about this problem.

pwdisswordfish 10y ago

Something sort of like it already exists; it's called a 'Featured Article' badge. But since there is an expectation that every article should eventually reach 'featured' status (or at least it should be possible in principle), it doesn't have the result you'd expect. And why wouldn't people have this expectation? Why keep an article at all if it's just going to lie there and gather dust, unmaintained and exposed to vandalism?

tptacek 10y ago
Here's the list of FAs, to get some sense of what the bar is here. The overwhelming majority of WP articles --- including the important ones people care about --- aren't FA's; an FA is essentially a very high quality professional grade encyclopedia article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_articles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_articles
Sir_Substance 10y ago
>unmaintained and exposed to vandalism? Well written articles that contain no speculation shouldn't rot. >Bill cosby is a well respected television figure Would be badly written content that, left unmaintained, would now be inaccurate. >Bill cosby is a television figure who was held in high regard during the 70's-90's Is better written, because it hinges on verifiable information that will not change. It would become incomplete if no one added to it, but I would argue that it is better to have incomplete information than no information. Vandalism issues are a problem with the wikipedia software, not a problem with the concept of having lesser-trafficked pages. If this is an issue for low-traffic pages, then there should be an anti-vandalism queue where edits to articles that receive less than a certain amount of traffic should be put in a queue to be reviewed for vandalism (and just vandalism, not content accuracy etc). It might take a while for edits to bubble through, but that's basically ok if the page receives that little traffic. Eventual information is better than no information.
- pwdisswordfish 10y ago
  > Well written articles that contain no speculation shouldn't rot. And who is going to ensure that they are well-written and contain no speculation? > Vandalism issues are a problem with the wikipedia software, not a problem with the concept of having lesser-trafficked pages. If you mean to say that any software explicitly written for the purpose of letting random people publish content instantaneously with no supervision is bad software, I might agree. Otherwise, no. Vandalism is a social problem resulting from lack of article oversight. And I'm not just talking about inserting 'PENIS' into pages, because that is basically solved already with edit filters. I am talking about hoaxes, I am talking about presenting speculation as fact, I am talking about fabricated citations, I am also talking about well-meaning people who inadvertently turn carefully written technical articles into Potato Jesus. A while ago, I've looked at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Blue_Screen_of_Death&oldid=754328375 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Blue_Screen_of_De... which contains this lovely sentence: > Windows 98 and early builds of Windows Vista displayed the red screen from a boot loader error raised by ACPI.[19][20][21] Cited to three sources. Looks great, doesn't it? But if you know anything about boot loaders, about ACPI or just about Windows, you understand this sentence is complete nonsense. You don't even need to look at the citations which obviously don't say any such thing. This is no doubt a result of shoddy copyediting by someone who didn't understand the subject. What is your answer to that?

crdoconnor 10y ago

Totally coincidentally Jimmy Wales makes money from wikia, which is a convenient home for all of those articles deleted from Wikipedia. Plastered in advertising of course.

rangibaby 10y ago
Wikia is the reason Wikipedia's constant begging for money really annoys me.