4 ms·

You could always create an esoteric languages wiki of your own if you were all fired up about it (I work at wikia, and that's the service we provide, we have 17

by owyn 16y ago

You could always create an esoteric languages wiki of your own if you were all fired up about it (I work at wikia, and that's the service we provide, we have 170,000 wikis on various subjects, using the same software! Founded by the same guy!) But that's not really the point here. It's just because it's wikipedia that everyone gets all weird about it. The information is out there, I don't see why it's so important that every esoteric project have a wikipedia.org page. It's not supposed to be a compendium of ALL human knowledge, it's an encyclopedia of generally useful knowledge. There has to be SOME criteria for excluding stuff. There's already a problem with wikipedia containing way too many pages about nerd topics and not enough information about the rest of the world.

angus77 16y ago
It's rare that I can't find some article about the "rest of the world" on Wikipedia that I'm looking for. What part of the world have I been overlooking?
- carussell 16y ago
  I realize your question was mostly flippant and not directed at me, but to answer the question seriously: The English Wikipedia is amazing, but it's incredibly ethnocentric in its coverage. There're a lot of red links here, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_television_articles_by_country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_television_articles_by_.... Unfortunately, when you are looking for information that's not something the average native English-speaking editor has knowledge of, and you are able to find some information, sometimes those writing it have a vested interest in the topic at hand. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul_supremacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul_supremacy is a minor example.
  - owyn 16y ago
    Yep, nail+head. Sounds like this is going to be a big institutional focus for the next couple of years as well... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/8292978/Wikipedia-seeks-women-writers.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/8292978/Wiki... Somethingawful even made a game out of it, the results of which were quoted in that article: For example, the article on "Women's suffrage" is around the same length as the "List of fictional gynoids and female cyborgs", and Shakespeare's Henry VIII is given as much attention as Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
    - angus77 16y ago
      As long as the articles on Women's Suffrage and Henry VIII are of appropriate length and depth, I don't see how this is a problem. Is this a contest or something?
carussell 16y ago
It's not supposed to be a compendium of ALL human knowledge ...: Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing. —Jimmy Wales. Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales Responds. Slashdot, 2004. http://interviews.slashdot.org/story/04/07/28/1351230/Wikipedia-Founder-Jimmy-Wales-Responds http://interviews.slashdot.org/story/04/07/28/1351230/Wikipe...
- owyn 16y ago
  The focus is changing, 2011: “It’s about diversifying the community. At the moment we’re really male, geek orientated, which is great, but there are lots of editors that we don’t get who are geeks, but not tech geeks. So they may be real experts in, say, ancient Chinese poetry but if they go to try to edit Wikipedia, then they find it too intimidating and we lose them and that’s just silly." I think this whole explosion of whatever-it-is-itis is a perfect example of that.
  - carussell 16y ago
    I'm trying to figure out what that quote has to do with anything brought up in this thread.
    - msg 16y ago
      It is about whether minority viewpoints get a fair shake on Wikipedia. As it turns out, no. And it turns out minority means "outside the male, machismo-dominated world of the alpha techno-geek." It also turns out that even esoteric technogeekery is outside the tiny circle. And it only takes one alphageek to make it so. This is an organizational problem with Wikipedia, not just an isolated incident.
      - owyn 16y ago
        Oh yeah, that's a great point!
    - owyn 16y ago
waterlesscloud 16y ago
Why is it "way too many"? Seriously, that implies that some harm is being done. What harm?
- owyn 16y ago
  It's not harmful, just silly. There are N articles about star wars and M articles about africa. When N > M to a ridiculous level, I'm okay with pruning stuff. I've never made a single edit to wikipedia though. Looks like I'm encountering some nerd rage.
  - wnoise 16y ago
    Pruning articles about Star Wars doesn't actually improve the number (or quality) of articles about Africa. Deleting Star Wars articles won't make the contributors suddenly interested in writing articles about Africa instead.
    - jacques_chester 16y ago
      Otherwise put: 1. Articles are not substitutable goods. 2. The supply of articles is not a zero sum game.
    - psykotic 16y ago
      > Deleting Star Wars articles won't make the contributors suddenly interested in writing articles about Africa instead. If anything, the opposite happens. Contributors first come for special interests. Once welcomed into the community, they will stick around and their contributions broaden in scope. Was the interest that sparked their involvement Elizabethan drama or Star Wars? Who cares.
chc 16y ago
You have a funny definition of problem. "This base of information is too useful and too widely applicable! It's only supposed to contain generally useful knowledge!" In all honesty, do you think allowing something with Nemerle's level of notability would be bad for Wikipedia? Is it somehow crowding out articles about these "other parts of the world" you mention that would otherwise exist?
- owyn 16y ago
  It's just an encyclopedia, not a replacement for the internet. That's all I'm trying to say. I've never heard of nemerle, and I'm not a wikipedia editor, so I have no opinion about it's notoriety. In general, the categorization of knowledge is a hard problem, and a lot of people prefer to spend spend time organizing things rather than writing new content, and this just seems like one of those examples.
  - srean 16y ago
    Not anymore. It is no longer "just an encyclopedia" and yes for many things it is very close to being the "replacement for the internet". What with spam and ads cluttering the web up. I think that precisely was the reason for the uproar. I do not belong to any of the language communities involved, and neither do I depend on those languages for my day to day work. But languages interest me, though I am not a PL person. That is why Wikipedia is an important resource for me to come in contact with these languages. Yes, the content might exist on other parts of the web, but here it has already been collected under one umbrella. The quality on average is good, the site is speedy and without distracting cruft. So of course that is one of the first resource I will turn to, and I have often been plentifully rewarded. Google is not the internet, neither is Wikipedia. Nevertheless if I want to search for something I will go to Google and if I want to browse something I will go to Wikipedia. So, what these deletions mean to me is someone is destroying the value that Wikipedia has for me. I am sure many people feel the same way and hence the outrage.
  - chc 16y ago
    It doesn't seem like that to me. Organization creates sense out of chaos. Deleting useful information just destroys things. Categorizing and organizing knowledge are hard and important problems, but going Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is not a good answer to those problems. Personally, I really think Wikipedia has developed a culture of fetishism around the guidelines that violates their spirit (e.g. ignore all rules) where the wikilawyers chase away the real contributors — and I don't like the "take it to Wikia" suggestion because it just creates a financial incentive for Wikimedia to ignore the problem.
knowtheory 16y ago
How does deleting nerd topics help you produce more information about the rest of the world? And, if you have 2nd class citizens riding in the back of the wikipedia bus via wikia, i fail to see how interlinking them into the main Wikipedia makes things worse in any way shape or form.
steveklabnik 16y ago
There is one: http://esolangs.org/wiki/Main_Page http://esolangs.org/wiki/Main_Page

by owyn 16y ago

angus77 16y ago

It's rare that I can't find some article about the "rest of the world" on Wikipedia that I'm looking for. What part of the world have I been overlooking?

carussell 16y ago
I realize your question was mostly flippant and not directed at me, but to answer the question seriously: The English Wikipedia is amazing, but it's incredibly ethnocentric in its coverage. There're a lot of red links here, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_television_articles_by_country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_television_articles_by_.... Unfortunately, when you are looking for information that's not something the average native English-speaking editor has knowledge of, and you are able to find some information, sometimes those writing it have a vested interest in the topic at hand. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul_supremacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul_supremacy is a minor example.
- owyn 16y ago
  Yep, nail+head. Sounds like this is going to be a big institutional focus for the next couple of years as well... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/8292978/Wikipedia-seeks-women-writers.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/8292978/Wiki... Somethingawful even made a game out of it, the results of which were quoted in that article: For example, the article on "Women's suffrage" is around the same length as the "List of fictional gynoids and female cyborgs", and Shakespeare's Henry VIII is given as much attention as Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
  - angus77 16y ago
    As long as the articles on Women's Suffrage and Henry VIII are of appropriate length and depth, I don't see how this is a problem. Is this a contest or something?

carussell 16y ago

It's not supposed to be a compendium of ALL human knowledge ...: Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing. —Jimmy Wales. Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales Responds. Slashdot, 2004. http://interviews.slashdot.org/story/04/07/28/1351230/Wikipedia-Founder-Jimmy-Wales-Responds http://interviews.slashdot.org/story/04/07/28/1351230/Wikipe...

owyn 16y ago
The focus is changing, 2011: “It’s about diversifying the community. At the moment we’re really male, geek orientated, which is great, but there are lots of editors that we don’t get who are geeks, but not tech geeks. So they may be real experts in, say, ancient Chinese poetry but if they go to try to edit Wikipedia, then they find it too intimidating and we lose them and that’s just silly." I think this whole explosion of whatever-it-is-itis is a perfect example of that.
- carussell 16y ago
  I'm trying to figure out what that quote has to do with anything brought up in this thread.
  - msg 16y ago
    It is about whether minority viewpoints get a fair shake on Wikipedia. As it turns out, no. And it turns out minority means "outside the male, machismo-dominated world of the alpha techno-geek." It also turns out that even esoteric technogeekery is outside the tiny circle. And it only takes one alphageek to make it so. This is an organizational problem with Wikipedia, not just an isolated incident.
    - owyn 16y ago
      Oh yeah, that's a great point!
  - owyn 16y ago

waterlesscloud 16y ago

Why is it "way too many"? Seriously, that implies that some harm is being done. What harm?

owyn 16y ago
It's not harmful, just silly. There are N articles about star wars and M articles about africa. When N > M to a ridiculous level, I'm okay with pruning stuff. I've never made a single edit to wikipedia though. Looks like I'm encountering some nerd rage.
- wnoise 16y ago
  Pruning articles about Star Wars doesn't actually improve the number (or quality) of articles about Africa. Deleting Star Wars articles won't make the contributors suddenly interested in writing articles about Africa instead.
  - jacques_chester 16y ago
    Otherwise put: 1. Articles are not substitutable goods. 2. The supply of articles is not a zero sum game.
  - psykotic 16y ago
    > Deleting Star Wars articles won't make the contributors suddenly interested in writing articles about Africa instead. If anything, the opposite happens. Contributors first come for special interests. Once welcomed into the community, they will stick around and their contributions broaden in scope. Was the interest that sparked their involvement Elizabethan drama or Star Wars? Who cares.

chc 16y ago

You have a funny definition of problem. "This base of information is too useful and too widely applicable! It's only supposed to contain generally useful knowledge!" In all honesty, do you think allowing something with Nemerle's level of notability would be bad for Wikipedia? Is it somehow crowding out articles about these "other parts of the world" you mention that would otherwise exist?

owyn 16y ago
It's just an encyclopedia, not a replacement for the internet. That's all I'm trying to say. I've never heard of nemerle, and I'm not a wikipedia editor, so I have no opinion about it's notoriety. In general, the categorization of knowledge is a hard problem, and a lot of people prefer to spend spend time organizing things rather than writing new content, and this just seems like one of those examples.
- srean 16y ago
  Not anymore. It is no longer "just an encyclopedia" and yes for many things it is very close to being the "replacement for the internet". What with spam and ads cluttering the web up. I think that precisely was the reason for the uproar. I do not belong to any of the language communities involved, and neither do I depend on those languages for my day to day work. But languages interest me, though I am not a PL person. That is why Wikipedia is an important resource for me to come in contact with these languages. Yes, the content might exist on other parts of the web, but here it has already been collected under one umbrella. The quality on average is good, the site is speedy and without distracting cruft. So of course that is one of the first resource I will turn to, and I have often been plentifully rewarded. Google is not the internet, neither is Wikipedia. Nevertheless if I want to search for something I will go to Google and if I want to browse something I will go to Wikipedia. So, what these deletions mean to me is someone is destroying the value that Wikipedia has for me. I am sure many people feel the same way and hence the outrage.
- chc 16y ago
  It doesn't seem like that to me. Organization creates sense out of chaos. Deleting useful information just destroys things. Categorizing and organizing knowledge are hard and important problems, but going Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is not a good answer to those problems. Personally, I really think Wikipedia has developed a culture of fetishism around the guidelines that violates their spirit (e.g. ignore all rules) where the wikilawyers chase away the real contributors — and I don't like the "take it to Wikia" suggestion because it just creates a financial incentive for Wikimedia to ignore the problem.

knowtheory 16y ago

How does deleting nerd topics help you produce more information about the rest of the world? And, if you have 2nd class citizens riding in the back of the wikipedia bus via wikia, i fail to see how interlinking them into the main Wikipedia makes things worse in any way shape or form.

steveklabnik 16y ago

There is one: http://esolangs.org/wiki/Main_Page http://esolangs.org/wiki/Main_Page