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> The arbitrary threshold of what is notable and what is not doesn't cut it in the Knowledge Age. There are currently 5.8 million English language articles in W

by Cynddl 7y ago

> The arbitrary threshold of what is notable and what is not doesn't cut it in the Knowledge Age. There are currently 5.8 million English language articles in Wikipedia, and Google had 1 billion objects (200x Wikipedia's size) in its Knowledge Graph when it launched in 2015. We estimate internally that there are 1000x the entities to cover than what Wikipedia has today. It’s an exciting challenge! This is a very weird comparison. Why not helping Wikipedia and contributing to this huge open knowledge base? The rules set by the WP community for acceptability clearly do not imply that “actual technologies, projects, products, theoretical electrical components and academic ideas” might be removed if written there, as the author suggests. That articles, or even drafts, for specific American VC-funded projects did not reach WP's acceptability threshold does not mean that there is something fundamentally wrong in Wikimedia's approach. I'd love to see a better comparison.

Bjartr 7y ago
> That articles, or even drafts, for specific American VC-funded projects did not reach WP's acceptability threshold does not mean that there is something fundamentally wrong in Wikimedia's approach. Unless your goals include preserving knowledge that is outside of WP's guidelines. WP drew the line for what is worth preserving in one place, there is room enough in the world for a service that draws the line somewhere else.
Cynddl 7y ago
More interesting questions: 1. What does not work in WP's model that you will address? Moderation? Transparency? Funding? 2. How do you plan to have 1000x the number of articles on WP? How do you plan to moderate and follow the accuracy of these 6,000,000,000 articles? 3. Is it an English-only project or do you value international contributions?
jcrben 7y ago
Wikipedia notability is actually quite strict. Relatively few businesses have significant coverage by multiple independent reliable sources, for example.
judegomila 7y ago
Jude from Golden here. Unfortunately, there are many more topics other than US companies being removed eg right now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soda_Popinski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soda_Popinski is up for removal. This notability issue spans almost all entity types. Additionally, many topics just simply don't make it onto there soon enough https://golden.com/wiki/Morphogenetic_Engineering https://golden.com/wiki/Morphogenetic_Engineering Another example, Lisk was removed https://golden.com/wiki/Lisk https://golden.com/wiki/Lisk SV Angel https://golden.com/wiki/SV_Angel https://golden.com/wiki/SV_Angel
- opportune 7y ago
  As far as I see for issue like the morphogenetic engineering page you linked, the notability issue is to prevent people from gaming SEO or making their personal company/theory/whatever from being listed. Which is to say, maybe it's not a good idea for anybody to be able to list their business, thesis, or book (for commercial or discovery purposes) alongside actually notable topics. It seems ripe for marketing or other gaming.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
coldacid 7y ago
>Why not helping Wikipedia and contributing to this huge open knowledge base? The rules set by the WP community for acceptability clearly do not imply that “actual technologies, projects, products, theoretical electrical components and academic ideas” might be removed if written there, as the author suggests. There are rules as they are written, and there are rules as they are actually enforced. Wikipedia has long had a great divide here, especially thanks to rules-lawyering deletionists and political cliques amongst editors.
jplayer01 7y ago
> Why not helping Wikipedia and contributing to this huge open knowledge base? Wikipedia is incredibly selective about what they allow to have its own page. They simply aren't interested in being a huge open universal knowledge base - it's aggressively curated in an awful way that isn't immediately obvious. I've seen notable/important/interesting people be removed simply because they didn't meet some arbitrary level of notability, even if they had high impact in their respective communities. That kind of selective enforcement and control of information is what we should be fighting against, not encouraging.

by Cynddl 7y ago

Bjartr 7y ago

> That articles, or even drafts, for specific American VC-funded projects did not reach WP's acceptability threshold does not mean that there is something fundamentally wrong in Wikimedia's approach. Unless your goals include preserving knowledge that is outside of WP's guidelines. WP drew the line for what is worth preserving in one place, there is room enough in the world for a service that draws the line somewhere else.

Cynddl 7y ago

More interesting questions: 1. What does not work in WP's model that you will address? Moderation? Transparency? Funding? 2. How do you plan to have 1000x the number of articles on WP? How do you plan to moderate and follow the accuracy of these 6,000,000,000 articles? 3. Is it an English-only project or do you value international contributions?

jcrben 7y ago

Wikipedia notability is actually quite strict. Relatively few businesses have significant coverage by multiple independent reliable sources, for example.

judegomila 7y ago

Jude from Golden here. Unfortunately, there are many more topics other than US companies being removed eg right now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soda_Popinski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soda_Popinski is up for removal. This notability issue spans almost all entity types. Additionally, many topics just simply don't make it onto there soon enough https://golden.com/wiki/Morphogenetic_Engineering https://golden.com/wiki/Morphogenetic_Engineering Another example, Lisk was removed https://golden.com/wiki/Lisk https://golden.com/wiki/Lisk SV Angel https://golden.com/wiki/SV_Angel https://golden.com/wiki/SV_Angel

opportune 7y ago
As far as I see for issue like the morphogenetic engineering page you linked, the notability issue is to prevent people from gaming SEO or making their personal company/theory/whatever from being listed. Which is to say, maybe it's not a good idea for anybody to be able to list their business, thesis, or book (for commercial or discovery purposes) alongside actually notable topics. It seems ripe for marketing or other gaming.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

coldacid 7y ago

>Why not helping Wikipedia and contributing to this huge open knowledge base? The rules set by the WP community for acceptability clearly do not imply that “actual technologies, projects, products, theoretical electrical components and academic ideas” might be removed if written there, as the author suggests. There are rules as they are written, and there are rules as they are actually enforced. Wikipedia has long had a great divide here, especially thanks to rules-lawyering deletionists and political cliques amongst editors.

jplayer01 7y ago

> Why not helping Wikipedia and contributing to this huge open knowledge base? Wikipedia is incredibly selective about what they allow to have its own page. They simply aren't interested in being a huge open universal knowledge base - it's aggressively curated in an awful way that isn't immediately obvious. I've seen notable/important/interesting people be removed simply because they didn't meet some arbitrary level of notability, even if they had high impact in their respective communities. That kind of selective enforcement and control of information is what we should be fighting against, not encouraging.