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Thanks to pedantic rules, Wikipedia and StackOverflow are the two most useful sites online right now.

by knowuh 8y ago

zellyn 8y ago
Until you try to correct simple mistakes on Wikipedia a couple of times, and learn that you should just give up, and accept things like broken grammar, repeated sentence fragments, etc. I believe they are surfing on the strength of past contributions, and very dedicated in-group contributors, not by harnessing the world.
- hk__2 8y ago
  > Until you try to correct simple mistakes on Wikipedia a couple of times, and learn that you should just give up, and accept things like broken grammar, repeated sentence fragments, etc. Counter-example: 99% of my Wikipedia activity is fixing typos here and there and I never got any issue.
sushisource 8y ago
Indeed. Say what you want about the bar for contribution, but those sites rarely disappoint me when I visit.
DanBC 8y ago
Wikipedia is a lot better now, but any site that has hundreds of thousands of words of discussion over which dash to use and when is obviously toxic. Here is an n-dash, an m-dash, and a hyphen. –,—,- We expect discussions about wars to be tricky, but we don't expect discussion about the punctuation used in titles to be so hard: Read the "Mexican–American War" / "Mexican—American War" discussion here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mexican%E2%80%93American_War/Archive_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mexican%E2%80%93American_... Here's several thousand words of discussion. (Closed with no consensus) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)/Archive_101#Hyphens_and_endashs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy... Look at the word counts for these meta discussions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=dash&prefix=Wikipedia+talk%3AManual+of+Style%2F&fulltext=Search+archives&fulltext=Search&searchToken=4qs2rbbjac34sfeyvlhyrwgb7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=dash&pre... Dashes and hyphens made it to Arbcom (this also has links to various Ani threads): https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case&oldid=429209333#Hyphens_and_dashes https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitra...
notatoad 8y ago
Wikipedia is useful, no denying that. StackOverflow might as well just be put into read-only mode at this point. Asking new questions is more likely than not going to end up with your question locked for some reason. It's a super useful archive of questions and answers from back in the day when they still let people ask questions, but as far as I can tell no new useful content is being added. A few of the stack exchange sites are still allowing questions, but on the programming one the "ask a question" button is just a decoy.

Thanks to pedantic rules, Wikipedia and StackOverflow are the two most useful sites online right now.

by knowuh 8y ago

Thanks to pedantic rules, Wikipedia and StackOverflow are the two most useful sites online right now.

Until you try to correct simple mistakes on Wikipedia a couple of times, and learn that you should just give up, and accept things like broken grammar, repeated sentence fragments, etc. I believe they are surfing on the strength of past contributions, and very dedicated in-group contributors, not by harnessing the world.

hk__2 8y ago
> Until you try to correct simple mistakes on Wikipedia a couple of times, and learn that you should just give up, and accept things like broken grammar, repeated sentence fragments, etc. Counter-example: 99% of my Wikipedia activity is fixing typos here and there and I never got any issue.

sushisource 8y ago

Indeed. Say what you want about the bar for contribution, but those sites rarely disappoint me when I visit.

DanBC 8y ago

Wikipedia is a lot better now, but any site that has hundreds of thousands of words of discussion over which dash to use and when is obviously toxic. Here is an n-dash, an m-dash, and a hyphen. –,—,- We expect discussions about wars to be tricky, but we don't expect discussion about the punctuation used in titles to be so hard: Read the "Mexican–American War" / "Mexican—American War" discussion here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mexican%E2%80%93American_War/Archive_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mexican%E2%80%93American_... Here's several thousand words of discussion. (Closed with no consensus) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)/Archive_101#Hyphens_and_endashs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy... Look at the word counts for these meta discussions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=dash&prefix=Wikipedia+talk%3AManual+of+Style%2F&fulltext=Search+archives&fulltext=Search&searchToken=4qs2rbbjac34sfeyvlhyrwgb7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=dash&pre... Dashes and hyphens made it to Arbcom (this also has links to various Ani threads): https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case&oldid=429209333#Hyphens_and_dashes https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitra...

notatoad 8y ago

Wikipedia is useful, no denying that. StackOverflow might as well just be put into read-only mode at this point. Asking new questions is more likely than not going to end up with your question locked for some reason. It's a super useful archive of questions and answers from back in the day when they still let people ask questions, but as far as I can tell no new useful content is being added. A few of the stack exchange sites are still allowing questions, but on the programming one the "ask a question" button is just a decoy.