4 ms·

Whenever seeing the staggering number of Wikipedia articles it reminds me of my own recent experience with creating an article. To centralize some of the knowle

by vladak 7y ago

Whenever seeing the staggering number of Wikipedia articles it reminds me of my own recent experience with creating an article. To centralize some of the knowledge of now niche set of keyboards (manufactured by what used to be one of the FAANGs of its time) I set to create a page. After adding some - what I thought - useful and interesting data, the page got deleted as it was not "notable" enough, i.e. lacking sufficient number of external references. These keyboards did exist and are used until this day however are not as popular (and therefore not as commented/described) like Apple's keyboards (which do have their own page on Wikipedia) so the line was drawn there. In the end I found it funny and also interesting to see how Wikipedia works. If the editors were not so strictly bound to the set of rules there would be probably tens of millions of articles/pages now. Another experience I had was watching a video on YouTube from Japan where a guy was brewing coffee which reminded me that the brand of the coffee equipment used in the video is sometimes sold in coffee shops in Europe. I wanted to know a little bit more about the company so I went to Wikipedia - the English page got deleted because there was little information about the company on the English speaking part of the Internet. This does not say anything about the company (which seems to be hugely popular in Japan and certain social circles in Europe), rather it demonstrates the limit of the model Wikipedia uses for curating the articles.

the_af 7y ago
There is a struggle between "deletionist" and "inclusionist" factions within Wikipedia. One side tends to find fault (many times real faults, mind you) and err on the side of deletion; the other prefers to err on the side of inclusion in Wikipedia. All agree they want to keep some standard of quality in Wikipedia, they just disagree on the method and threshold for deletion. Just be aware Wikipedia is not a single hive-mind :)
- Carpetsmoker 7y ago
  I find all of this really hilarious especially considering that a lot of Wikipedia is about trivial stuff like entertainment (films, sports, anime, whatnot), but whenever someone tries to a document something technical in the wrong way ... NO SOUP FOR YOU! I find it really really rude and disrespectful to just trample over other volunteers' work like this. I'm all for deleting crap, but outright deletion instead of offering suggestions first and then being super-defensive when asked "hey, what's up?" Yeah nah, that doesn't fly. It's like just closing people's PRs on GitHub without offering suggestions on how to fix the patch first with just a single line of "doesn't fit code standards", "doesn't work on Windows", or just a link to a lengthy page. Guess everyone is too busy fighting over capitalisation of movies titles or whether or not the Stanley Kubrick article should have an infobox to offer meaningful suggestions to new users shrug. On Wikipedia, the biggest asshole with the most persistence wins. They've deluded themselves in to thinking this is "meritocracy".
  - the_af 7y ago
    I guess you're an inclusionist then. A lot of people agree with you. (Note some in the deletionist camp want to delete many of the articles about trivial stuff!). I find Wikipedia articles on technical/science subjects tend to be higher quality (with some exceptions of course), those on history tend to be so-so, those about current political matters tend to be outrageously one-sided, and those on pop culture matters are often hilarious -- an article on a subject related to anime can be a lot longer and more detailed than one about real history! Back in the olden days I remember there used to be a Wikipedia article about vampires, written from the point of view of someone in the "vampire community" who wrote about them as if "vampirism" was a "lifestyle", and when it got edited/deleted of course these people threw a fit. But this was a clear case of garbage that doesn't belong in a general encyclopedia. Contributing to Wikipedia, especially in topics where there is controversy, is very frustrating. Like you said, the person with the most time or clout with the online community tends to "win". Having lots of rules of the form WP:<this or that> in order to overwhelm you and make you give up can feel very tiresome. This is why I don't contribute; I simply don't have the time for it. Still find Wikipedia immensely useful though. I'm glad it exists.
    - Carpetsmoker 7y ago
      > I guess you're an inclusionist then. Well, not really. I'm mostly a "treat people's time with respect"-ist. The biggest problem I have is not so much with deleting as such, but rather that for some this seems to be the first tool they use once they see something that they think is not a good fit. Not everyone in the deletionist camp is like that, but there are quite a lot of them and you will run in to these people sooner rather than later. I've saved more than a bit of content by just copy/pasting the deleted content somewhere else (instead of a separate article), or just by Googling for a few extra references.

by vladak 7y ago

the_af 7y ago

There is a struggle between "deletionist" and "inclusionist" factions within Wikipedia. One side tends to find fault (many times real faults, mind you) and err on the side of deletion; the other prefers to err on the side of inclusion in Wikipedia. All agree they want to keep some standard of quality in Wikipedia, they just disagree on the method and threshold for deletion. Just be aware Wikipedia is not a single hive-mind :)

Carpetsmoker 7y ago
I find all of this really hilarious especially considering that a lot of Wikipedia is about trivial stuff like entertainment (films, sports, anime, whatnot), but whenever someone tries to a document something technical in the wrong way ... NO SOUP FOR YOU! I find it really really rude and disrespectful to just trample over other volunteers' work like this. I'm all for deleting crap, but outright deletion instead of offering suggestions first and then being super-defensive when asked "hey, what's up?" Yeah nah, that doesn't fly. It's like just closing people's PRs on GitHub without offering suggestions on how to fix the patch first with just a single line of "doesn't fit code standards", "doesn't work on Windows", or just a link to a lengthy page. Guess everyone is too busy fighting over capitalisation of movies titles or whether or not the Stanley Kubrick article should have an infobox to offer meaningful suggestions to new users shrug. On Wikipedia, the biggest asshole with the most persistence wins. They've deluded themselves in to thinking this is "meritocracy".
- the_af 7y ago
  I guess you're an inclusionist then. A lot of people agree with you. (Note some in the deletionist camp want to delete many of the articles about trivial stuff!). I find Wikipedia articles on technical/science subjects tend to be higher quality (with some exceptions of course), those on history tend to be so-so, those about current political matters tend to be outrageously one-sided, and those on pop culture matters are often hilarious -- an article on a subject related to anime can be a lot longer and more detailed than one about real history! Back in the olden days I remember there used to be a Wikipedia article about vampires, written from the point of view of someone in the "vampire community" who wrote about them as if "vampirism" was a "lifestyle", and when it got edited/deleted of course these people threw a fit. But this was a clear case of garbage that doesn't belong in a general encyclopedia. Contributing to Wikipedia, especially in topics where there is controversy, is very frustrating. Like you said, the person with the most time or clout with the online community tends to "win". Having lots of rules of the form WP:<this or that> in order to overwhelm you and make you give up can feel very tiresome. This is why I don't contribute; I simply don't have the time for it. Still find Wikipedia immensely useful though. I'm glad it exists.
  - Carpetsmoker 7y ago
    > I guess you're an inclusionist then. Well, not really. I'm mostly a "treat people's time with respect"-ist. The biggest problem I have is not so much with deleting as such, but rather that for some this seems to be the first tool they use once they see something that they think is not a good fit. Not everyone in the deletionist camp is like that, but there are quite a lot of them and you will run in to these people sooner rather than later. I've saved more than a bit of content by just copy/pasting the deleted content somewhere else (instead of a separate article), or just by Googling for a few extra references.