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Wikipedia is the most incredible creation in modern times. Because it's not about some law of the universe that people have learned enough about to use to their

Wikipedia is the most incredible creation in modern times. Because it's not about some law of the universe that people have learned enough about to use to their advantage like electricity or nuclear physics. It's something inherent to us as a species that we came together to create a resource for everyone to access and that it has such a high level of quality. The culture around Wikipedia - the culmination of knowledge, the importance of said knowledge, the random curiosity of such a wide variety of topics and so much more, says so much about us as people. If you had asked me half a century ago if something like this would ever work - I would've said absolutely not. And yet, there it is.

c3534l 7y ago
I, like almost every person at the time, heard about wikipedia and scoffed at it. And, in the early days,the quality was atrocious and the scope seemingly insurmountable. But wikipedia almost ever gets better, not worse, and the limitation that the books have to sit on a shelf makes wikipedia far more than an encyclopedia. It has evolved, through time, to be something few people ever imagined it could be.
- Polylactic_acid 7y ago
  People tend to be super critical of wikipedia but I think it could have been a whole lot worse. We are incredibly lucky that wikipedia isn't owned by some tech megacorp, it isn't loaded with spyware JS bogging it down, and it doesn't require an account to use.
  - O1111OOO 7y ago
    > We are incredibly lucky that wikipedia isn't owned by some tech megacorp, it isn't loaded with spyware JS bogging it down, and it doesn't require an account to use. There was Google's attempt in 2007 wih knol(0) - which many called an attempt at a Wikipedia killer. Agreed... We dodged a bullet. Authors could also choose to include ads from Google's AdSense on their pages ... All contributors to the Knol project had to sign in with a Google account ... authors were also able to choose the CC-BY-NC-3.0 license (which prohibits commercial reuse) or traditional copyright protection instead. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knol
    - Polylactic_acid 7y ago
      I think the most fascinating thing is the bit about how people criticized google for placing knol results in more accessible spots on google search and the conflict of interest. This is exactly the same debate we are having over a decade later about AMP.
      - 6510 7y ago
        Their scheme is ranking by popular domain name. This, as a rule, makes shit content rise to the top. A debate about how bad this idea is shouldn't last long. That said, the question then becomes if google.com is worthy of this favoritism. It unquestionably qualifies here. So there is no-such-thing as placing knol in a more accessible spot. google.com is just a more popular website than wikipedia.
  - thrwaway69 7y ago
    > it isn't loaded with spyware JS bogging it down, and it doesn't require an account to use. https://i.redd.it/y0oy7zsc72541.jpg https://i.redd.it/y0oy7zsc72541.jpg They were hijacking every link on mobile a while ago and messing with my browser so bad. Surely, there wasn't any "spyware js". A small sticky donate button on bottom would have been better. Wikipedia pages in general are fine because people constantly have to edit spammers out from them. They haven't done much to curb similar looking spam clearly distinct from content. [Our super scale webhosting powers google services](superwebhosting.in) everywhere...I don't remember the times I had to remove it from the history of cloud providers, tech companies, web, https, etc. Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:History/Google_data_centers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:History/Google_data_...
  - brownbat 7y ago
    IMDb went through this, it was basically open and crowdsourced, then suddenly became much more commercial, which freaked out a lot of users. And it's... fine. But it was really amazing in the beginning. Much less cruft, much more usable. There was a lot of drama on the late 90s internet that now seems impossible to read about or search for.
    - rapnie 7y ago
      On IMDb it is only the rating system that is totally gamed, very warped. I usually look at the distribution of the individual User Review ratings. If they are mostly 10's and 1's the movie is usually crap (a large chunk of Hollywood 'blockbusters' are here), even though the aggregate rating is an 8+. Fairer distributions with 6, 7's and 8's and this might be worth watching. There can be spoilers in the review titles, though. One thing that is fun to do after watching a totally crap movie - to make up for 2 wasted hours of your life - is read the 1-rated reviews. There is usually some brilliant sarcastic analysis there to make you laugh out loud.
gauravjain13 7y ago
Wikipedia is so incredible because it’s that sliver of intersection in a Venn diagram of what’s ideal and what’s real – a rare phenomenon.
baddox 7y ago
Forget half a century ago! Even when I was in high school in 2005 (while I was getting a vastly better education from personal curiosity on Wikipedia than from public school) it was widely accepted that it would be ludicrous to believe anything in Wikipedia since anyone can edit it.
- StevePerkins 7y ago
  I remember an episode of "The Office" where Michael Scott states that Wikipedia is very accurate, "because anybody can edit it". And that was the joke. Michael Scott being naive and gullible enough to believe this ridiculous statement, while other characters made exasperated reaction shots for the camera. A lot has changed since the mid-2000's. Wikipedia was so revolutionary at the time.
soheil 7y ago
Please don't hate on my comment, all I can do is ask not to be downvoted, at least I tried. Here is my case against Wikipedia. In a capitalistic model it makes little sense why Wikipedia should thrive without enriching someone so massively in the process, therefore, it must be corrected. If we assume that line of thinking is valid (which I'm not saying we should or shouldn't) then it follows that an alternative Wikipedia riddled with ads would be a superior model, in terms of capitalism. It'd be much more similar to imdb perhaps, owned by Amazon. Wikipedia (in the film category) provides information in a much effective way and can stay on top of change by issuing revisions way better than imdb can ever do. If we jump to the most logical conclusion of the set of assumptions made above I think it then follows that readily accessible knowledge cannot necessarily be a good thing, otherwise, the market would have rewarded that. But we see in the case of imdb market did not reward it enough for it to achieve the same pedigree as Wikipedia. It's not good for people to learn facts that easily. There should be a higher cost associated with that. This is of course a ridiculous conclusion but I think it could make sense why it would be true. It is a whole other post for why it would be true but I will only give an example or two. One example is if knowledge is that easily accessible then anyone could achieve it without necessarily having enough desire to achieve said knowledge, and since we have limited capacity for knowledge acquisition and retainment we are most likely sacrificing knowledge that we are truly passionate about. Second example is maybe it isn't good for people to know so much anyway. After all there are many things that due to the laws of nature we are inherently incapable of ever knowing such as what is beyond knowable universe (nothing can travel faster than speed of light so we cannot learn about it since the knowledge or light from stuff beyond the knowable universe won't have enough time to ever reach us.)
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  You're glossing over that Wikipedia would not be feasible if you had to pay people to do it, and if it were not free, you'd have to pay people to do it. Your "capitalistic model" likely does not correspond sufficiently to reality to be useful. And why did you write this comment? There is no need for a "case against Wikipedia."
  - soheil 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
Balgair 7y ago
> It's something inherent to us as a species that we came together to create a resource for everyone to access and that it has such a high level of quality. Oh man, if only it were true! If anything, wikipedia should be seen as an overcoming of our terrible human nature in making something good in the world, not as a property of humans. It is SO precious and fragile in our mortal hands. The story of the Encyclopédie's origins is incredible and a great reminder that works like wikipedia are the exception, not the rule. The Philosophes worked very hard to get the volumes out and were under constant threat of censure. The very idea of the Encyclopédie was a direct threat to the Ancient Regime and it's publication was a direct cause (among many) of the French Revolution. A revolution whose effects we feel until this very day. The Encyclopédie was a lit cigarette in a powder cache. It's head editor, Diderot, is still a controversial person. If you can have haters and lovers nearly 250 years after you dance your last, well kiddo, you've done something right. Even today wikipedia is vandalized by powerful interests and is routinely censored out of existence for many of the people of the world. Governments are still afraid of the free knowledge that wikipedia gives us. It is still a lit cigarette in a powder cache. But it is a fragile thing. Cherish it: DONATE https://donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LandingPage&country=US&uselang=en&utm_medium=sidebar&utm_source=donate&utm_campaign=C13_en.wikipedia.org https://donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Landi...
- phamilton 7y ago
  It's a great resource, but isn't it pretty well established that the foundation does not need more funding? For anyone interested, take a read through https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:FY17-18_-_Independent_Auditors%27_Report.pdf https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:FY17...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- a-nikolaev 7y ago
  Recommending to donate is rather misleading. Most of the work on Wikipedia is done by unpaid editors. On the other hand, Wikimedia Foundation (the one that collects donations and manages the project) is accumulating donations and increasing spendings at ever-increasing rates, way above its maintenance and development needs. Just google a bit. Something like this: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9qqds7Z3Ykd9Kdeay/should-you-donate-to-the-wikimedia-foundation https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9qqds7Z3Ykd9Kdeay/... Their history of being wasteful and not transparent about their spending is rather long.
spodek 7y ago
I remember telling people in 2004 or so how it would take over and people thought I was crazy. There were something like 10,000 articles then. One coworker didn't believe anyone could edit it so he edited a page for the fun of it. A few hours later someone had reverted it, which led him to believe more in it. As they say, Wikipedia doesn't work in theory, only in practice. As longtime GNU/Linux user then, I viewed the GPL as the foundation to it. Encyclopedias seemed a niche where a GPL-based project could thrive, like in making an operating system or web server.
anderspitman 7y ago
> It's something inherent to us as a species that we came together to create a resource for everyone to access and that it has such a high level of quality I like the explanation that Wikipedia is built on nerds' need to correct each other.

c3534l 7y ago

I, like almost every person at the time, heard about wikipedia and scoffed at it. And, in the early days,the quality was atrocious and the scope seemingly insurmountable. But wikipedia almost ever gets better, not worse, and the limitation that the books have to sit on a shelf makes wikipedia far more than an encyclopedia. It has evolved, through time, to be something few people ever imagined it could be.

Polylactic_acid 7y ago
People tend to be super critical of wikipedia but I think it could have been a whole lot worse. We are incredibly lucky that wikipedia isn't owned by some tech megacorp, it isn't loaded with spyware JS bogging it down, and it doesn't require an account to use.
- O1111OOO 7y ago
  > We are incredibly lucky that wikipedia isn't owned by some tech megacorp, it isn't loaded with spyware JS bogging it down, and it doesn't require an account to use. There was Google's attempt in 2007 wih knol(0) - which many called an attempt at a Wikipedia killer. Agreed... We dodged a bullet. Authors could also choose to include ads from Google's AdSense on their pages ... All contributors to the Knol project had to sign in with a Google account ... authors were also able to choose the CC-BY-NC-3.0 license (which prohibits commercial reuse) or traditional copyright protection instead. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knol
  - Polylactic_acid 7y ago
    I think the most fascinating thing is the bit about how people criticized google for placing knol results in more accessible spots on google search and the conflict of interest. This is exactly the same debate we are having over a decade later about AMP.
    - 6510 7y ago
      Their scheme is ranking by popular domain name. This, as a rule, makes shit content rise to the top. A debate about how bad this idea is shouldn't last long. That said, the question then becomes if google.com is worthy of this favoritism. It unquestionably qualifies here. So there is no-such-thing as placing knol in a more accessible spot. google.com is just a more popular website than wikipedia.
- thrwaway69 7y ago
  > it isn't loaded with spyware JS bogging it down, and it doesn't require an account to use. https://i.redd.it/y0oy7zsc72541.jpg https://i.redd.it/y0oy7zsc72541.jpg They were hijacking every link on mobile a while ago and messing with my browser so bad. Surely, there wasn't any "spyware js". A small sticky donate button on bottom would have been better. Wikipedia pages in general are fine because people constantly have to edit spammers out from them. They haven't done much to curb similar looking spam clearly distinct from content. [Our super scale webhosting powers google services](superwebhosting.in) everywhere...I don't remember the times I had to remove it from the history of cloud providers, tech companies, web, https, etc. Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:History/Google_data_centers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:History/Google_data_...
- brownbat 7y ago
  IMDb went through this, it was basically open and crowdsourced, then suddenly became much more commercial, which freaked out a lot of users. And it's... fine. But it was really amazing in the beginning. Much less cruft, much more usable. There was a lot of drama on the late 90s internet that now seems impossible to read about or search for.
  - rapnie 7y ago
    On IMDb it is only the rating system that is totally gamed, very warped. I usually look at the distribution of the individual User Review ratings. If they are mostly 10's and 1's the movie is usually crap (a large chunk of Hollywood 'blockbusters' are here), even though the aggregate rating is an 8+. Fairer distributions with 6, 7's and 8's and this might be worth watching. There can be spoilers in the review titles, though. One thing that is fun to do after watching a totally crap movie - to make up for 2 wasted hours of your life - is read the 1-rated reviews. There is usually some brilliant sarcastic analysis there to make you laugh out loud.

gauravjain13 7y ago

Wikipedia is so incredible because it’s that sliver of intersection in a Venn diagram of what’s ideal and what’s real – a rare phenomenon.

baddox 7y ago

Forget half a century ago! Even when I was in high school in 2005 (while I was getting a vastly better education from personal curiosity on Wikipedia than from public school) it was widely accepted that it would be ludicrous to believe anything in Wikipedia since anyone can edit it.

StevePerkins 7y ago
I remember an episode of "The Office" where Michael Scott states that Wikipedia is very accurate, "because anybody can edit it". And that was the joke. Michael Scott being naive and gullible enough to believe this ridiculous statement, while other characters made exasperated reaction shots for the camera. A lot has changed since the mid-2000's. Wikipedia was so revolutionary at the time.

soheil 7y ago

Please don't hate on my comment, all I can do is ask not to be downvoted, at least I tried. Here is my case against Wikipedia. In a capitalistic model it makes little sense why Wikipedia should thrive without enriching someone so massively in the process, therefore, it must be corrected. If we assume that line of thinking is valid (which I'm not saying we should or shouldn't) then it follows that an alternative Wikipedia riddled with ads would be a superior model, in terms of capitalism. It'd be much more similar to imdb perhaps, owned by Amazon. Wikipedia (in the film category) provides information in a much effective way and can stay on top of change by issuing revisions way better than imdb can ever do. If we jump to the most logical conclusion of the set of assumptions made above I think it then follows that readily accessible knowledge cannot necessarily be a good thing, otherwise, the market would have rewarded that. But we see in the case of imdb market did not reward it enough for it to achieve the same pedigree as Wikipedia. It's not good for people to learn facts that easily. There should be a higher cost associated with that. This is of course a ridiculous conclusion but I think it could make sense why it would be true. It is a whole other post for why it would be true but I will only give an example or two. One example is if knowledge is that easily accessible then anyone could achieve it without necessarily having enough desire to achieve said knowledge, and since we have limited capacity for knowledge acquisition and retainment we are most likely sacrificing knowledge that we are truly passionate about. Second example is maybe it isn't good for people to know so much anyway. After all there are many things that due to the laws of nature we are inherently incapable of ever knowing such as what is beyond knowable universe (nothing can travel faster than speed of light so we cannot learn about it since the knowledge or light from stuff beyond the knowable universe won't have enough time to ever reach us.)

asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
You're glossing over that Wikipedia would not be feasible if you had to pay people to do it, and if it were not free, you'd have to pay people to do it. Your "capitalistic model" likely does not correspond sufficiently to reality to be useful. And why did you write this comment? There is no need for a "case against Wikipedia."
- soheil 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

Balgair 7y ago

> It's something inherent to us as a species that we came together to create a resource for everyone to access and that it has such a high level of quality. Oh man, if only it were true! If anything, wikipedia should be seen as an overcoming of our terrible human nature in making something good in the world, not as a property of humans. It is SO precious and fragile in our mortal hands. The story of the Encyclopédie's origins is incredible and a great reminder that works like wikipedia are the exception, not the rule. The Philosophes worked very hard to get the volumes out and were under constant threat of censure. The very idea of the Encyclopédie was a direct threat to the Ancient Regime and it's publication was a direct cause (among many) of the French Revolution. A revolution whose effects we feel until this very day. The Encyclopédie was a lit cigarette in a powder cache. It's head editor, Diderot, is still a controversial person. If you can have haters and lovers nearly 250 years after you dance your last, well kiddo, you've done something right. Even today wikipedia is vandalized by powerful interests and is routinely censored out of existence for many of the people of the world. Governments are still afraid of the free knowledge that wikipedia gives us. It is still a lit cigarette in a powder cache. But it is a fragile thing. Cherish it: DONATE https://donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LandingPage&country=US&uselang=en&utm_medium=sidebar&utm_source=donate&utm_campaign=C13_en.wikipedia.org https://donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Landi...

phamilton 7y ago
It's a great resource, but isn't it pretty well established that the foundation does not need more funding? For anyone interested, take a read through https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:FY17-18_-_Independent_Auditors%27_Report.pdf https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:FY17...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
a-nikolaev 7y ago
Recommending to donate is rather misleading. Most of the work on Wikipedia is done by unpaid editors. On the other hand, Wikimedia Foundation (the one that collects donations and manages the project) is accumulating donations and increasing spendings at ever-increasing rates, way above its maintenance and development needs. Just google a bit. Something like this: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9qqds7Z3Ykd9Kdeay/should-you-donate-to-the-wikimedia-foundation https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9qqds7Z3Ykd9Kdeay/... Their history of being wasteful and not transparent about their spending is rather long.

spodek 7y ago

I remember telling people in 2004 or so how it would take over and people thought I was crazy. There were something like 10,000 articles then. One coworker didn't believe anyone could edit it so he edited a page for the fun of it. A few hours later someone had reverted it, which led him to believe more in it. As they say, Wikipedia doesn't work in theory, only in practice. As longtime GNU/Linux user then, I viewed the GPL as the foundation to it. Encyclopedias seemed a niche where a GPL-based project could thrive, like in making an operating system or web server.

anderspitman 7y ago

> It's something inherent to us as a species that we came together to create a resource for everyone to access and that it has such a high level of quality I like the explanation that Wikipedia is built on nerds' need to correct each other.