5 ms·

No comments yet? I guess others are still reading TFA... There are a number of issues that seem to be eternal. Even if there's an obvious right answer, I see y

by narag 6y ago

No comments yet? I guess others are still reading TFA... There are a number of issues that seem to be eternal. Even if there's an obvious right answer, I see year after year, decade after decade that they keep being discussed, with the same points being made over and over again. Is there a name for these? I guess that for each of them, there is some kind of unspeakable reason that trumps any sound rationale.

CarVac 6y ago
I would attribute it to an inadequate equilibrium, a local minimum that's simply too hard to escape at this point.
lidHanteyk 6y ago
As a former Wikipedian, what's there to say? The evidence is still there, and was there for years and years. Deletionism was, and remains, a wrong-headed attitude that does not understand what makes WP qualitatively different from standard encyclopedic offerings. There is not a motivating need to limit WP's scope, and indeed that is why WMF forked off projects like Wiktionary and Wikidata to their own TLDs. The main problem with WP is that it is far easier to be wrong than to be right, and the effort required to be right is linear in the number of words written. In short, the number of editors per page required for acceptable quality does not roll off with large numbers of pages, but stays relatively high, at around 1-2 editors/page. Worse, the number of moderators per editor does not roll off either. The number of bureaucrats required therefore keeps growing, logarithmically but steadily, and the demands on arbitration committees keep growing. The committees themselves have long ago failed basic principles of legal legibility, leading to sprawling bureaucracy. One possible solution is to fundamentally alter what we store. Rather than writing thousands of words of prose, we could use Wikidata to automatically generate articles. We already have factboxes which could be largely automatically populated, and many people only care about the factboxes. Prose would be limited to commentary and explication, but would not be the main bodies of articles. This is not just a pipe dream; LMFDB [0] exists and is worth examining as an example of how code and data can automatically generate the bulk of an encyclopedia. But, let's be honest, the writing was on the wall when Esperanza [1] was dissolved. We are now somewhere between Bureaucracy and The Aftermath. [0] https://www.lmfdb.org/ https://www.lmfdb.org/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Esperanza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Esperanza
- narag 6y ago
  Wow, the death of hope...
- zozbot234 6y ago
  > One possible solution is to fundamentally alter what we store. Rather than writing thousands of words of prose, we could use Wikidata to automatically generate articles. This is in fact being proposed at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Forum#Proposal_towards_a_multilingual_Wikipedia_and_a_new_Wikipedia_project https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Forum#Proposal_tow... by a prominent Wikidatan. (Edit: follow up at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilambda https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilambda and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikilambda https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikilambda .) However generating sensible articles would require expanding the current Wikidata model, and this is something that should happen gradually and be managed by the WD community itself, not at a separate project. The whole pretty-printing-in-natural-language part is the most speculative by far, and incubating it separately makes more sense. It's worth noting that Wikidata itself is not "deletionist" other than as implied by verifiability- and sourcing-requirements. Its model is far more general and far more "inclusionist" than even the most permissive visions for Wikipedia.
- duskwuff 6y ago
  > There is not a motivating need to limit WP's scope, and indeed that is why WMF forked off projects like Wiktionary and Wikidata to their own TLDs. This feels like a gross misreading of the facts. Wiktionary is separate from Wikipedia because its work product is fundamentally different -- it's a dictionary, not an encylopedia. Wikipedia has a lot of articles about things that aren't words, and Wiktionary has a lot of pages for words that wouldn't make sense to write an encyclopedia article about. Wikidata, meanwhile, is only about raw data. Which is a part of an encyclopedia, but far from all of it. (How would you write an article about the history of Rome using only data?) > But, let's be honest, the writing was on the wall when Esperanza [1] was dissolved. This, too, is a gross misstatement of the facts. Esperanza was dissolved because it was becoming a cabal. It started as a social group, but rapidly grew into its own organization, with its own decision-making processes and elected officials separate from those of Wikipedia. There was widespread agreement, even from Esperanza's founder, that the organization was no longer fulfilling its purpose, and an effort to reform it before it was shut down. There's a decent summary at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-01-02/Experanza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...
pdonis 6y ago
> I guess that for each of them, there is some kind of unspeakable reason that trumps any sound rationale. I think the general unspeakable reason is pretty simple: once you give people power, some of them will misuse it. And since it takes more effort to correct a misuse of power than to commit the misuse in the first place, any institution that gives people power becomes more and more corrupt over time as misuses of power outweigh valid uses of power.
- ghaff 6y ago
  While I'm mostly in Camp Inclusion, I appreciate the issues that tend to come up as you loosen criteria for articles more and more--you probably inevitably get articles that are "notable" to a narrower and narrower set of people and a lot of verification depends on shakier and harder to access sources. That said, it's pretty clear that there are more than a few Wikipedia admins who seem to have embraced deletionism for topics that aren't near and dear to them personally and/or which poke at whatever their particular political hot buttons are.
- kragen 6y ago
  The nice thing about Wikis in general is that it's usually easier to correct a misuse of the power to edit a page than it is to commit the misuse in the first place. That's why Wikis work at all.
  - narag 6y ago
    That works for the power to edit, not for the power to delete. So it makes sense, yes.
- ooobit2 6y ago
  Not just some people, nearly all will abuse it. But we've seen this more-so in people who are less familiar with these institutions. Baltimore, MD, for example, has had now two black, female mayors convicted of corruption and removed from office. We've seen the current mayor of Chicago attempt authoritarianism to enforce the stay-at-home order. Michigan's mayor has reached far beyond CDC and NHS recommendations, and now faces possible corruption charges over abuse of power. Maine's governor is also in the spotlight for circumventing checks and balances by the legislature on the executive office. People love AOC, and I too believe she means well, but even she has warped into an anarcho-syndicalist, going so far as to make absurd statements that "incremental change isn't working", when everyone knows governance is a complex, incremental series of processes, necessary to maintain a free republic and limit opportunities for tyranny. Omar has had a sexual affair with a senior member of her staff. Tlaib has been censured for collaborating with anti-semitic organizations on official business. Biden, himself, has now managed over a year of avoiding investigations into how his son secured a chair on a Ukrainian energy board and was on that board during negotiations between the Obama-Biden administration and Ukraine related to that company's finances. It's cute that people like John Oliver continue to say that the rise of fascism isn't obvious, that it happens slow, subtle. But abuses of power and position are everywhere right now, especially among anti-Trump activists in the media and Congress. You might agree that Trump is a racist, but taking that very position is complicit with the anarcho-syndicalism among a growing number of leftist politicians now. Keep an air of skepticism about you for your own safety. Just because 75% of us think a hate speech law is a reasonable circumvention of free speech guarantees doesn't mean we aren't also enabling scope creep. As we've seen thus far, "slippery slope" is a fallacy in everything but governance.
som33 6y ago
> I see year after year, decade after decade that they keep being discussed, with the same points being made over and over again. Is there a name for these? Because human beings don't see reality accurately, see the science: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

by narag 6y ago

CarVac 6y ago

I would attribute it to an inadequate equilibrium, a local minimum that's simply too hard to escape at this point.

lidHanteyk 6y ago

As a former Wikipedian, what's there to say? The evidence is still there, and was there for years and years. Deletionism was, and remains, a wrong-headed attitude that does not understand what makes WP qualitatively different from standard encyclopedic offerings. There is not a motivating need to limit WP's scope, and indeed that is why WMF forked off projects like Wiktionary and Wikidata to their own TLDs. The main problem with WP is that it is far easier to be wrong than to be right, and the effort required to be right is linear in the number of words written. In short, the number of editors per page required for acceptable quality does not roll off with large numbers of pages, but stays relatively high, at around 1-2 editors/page. Worse, the number of moderators per editor does not roll off either. The number of bureaucrats required therefore keeps growing, logarithmically but steadily, and the demands on arbitration committees keep growing. The committees themselves have long ago failed basic principles of legal legibility, leading to sprawling bureaucracy. One possible solution is to fundamentally alter what we store. Rather than writing thousands of words of prose, we could use Wikidata to automatically generate articles. We already have factboxes which could be largely automatically populated, and many people only care about the factboxes. Prose would be limited to commentary and explication, but would not be the main bodies of articles. This is not just a pipe dream; LMFDB [0] exists and is worth examining as an example of how code and data can automatically generate the bulk of an encyclopedia. But, let's be honest, the writing was on the wall when Esperanza [1] was dissolved. We are now somewhere between Bureaucracy and The Aftermath. [0] https://www.lmfdb.org/ https://www.lmfdb.org/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Esperanza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Esperanza

narag 6y ago
Wow, the death of hope...
zozbot234 6y ago
> One possible solution is to fundamentally alter what we store. Rather than writing thousands of words of prose, we could use Wikidata to automatically generate articles. This is in fact being proposed at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Forum#Proposal_towards_a_multilingual_Wikipedia_and_a_new_Wikipedia_project https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Forum#Proposal_tow... by a prominent Wikidatan. (Edit: follow up at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilambda https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilambda and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikilambda https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikilambda .) However generating sensible articles would require expanding the current Wikidata model, and this is something that should happen gradually and be managed by the WD community itself, not at a separate project. The whole pretty-printing-in-natural-language part is the most speculative by far, and incubating it separately makes more sense. It's worth noting that Wikidata itself is not "deletionist" other than as implied by verifiability- and sourcing-requirements. Its model is far more general and far more "inclusionist" than even the most permissive visions for Wikipedia.
duskwuff 6y ago
> There is not a motivating need to limit WP's scope, and indeed that is why WMF forked off projects like Wiktionary and Wikidata to their own TLDs. This feels like a gross misreading of the facts. Wiktionary is separate from Wikipedia because its work product is fundamentally different -- it's a dictionary, not an encylopedia. Wikipedia has a lot of articles about things that aren't words, and Wiktionary has a lot of pages for words that wouldn't make sense to write an encyclopedia article about. Wikidata, meanwhile, is only about raw data. Which is a part of an encyclopedia, but far from all of it. (How would you write an article about the history of Rome using only data?) > But, let's be honest, the writing was on the wall when Esperanza [1] was dissolved. This, too, is a gross misstatement of the facts. Esperanza was dissolved because it was becoming a cabal. It started as a social group, but rapidly grew into its own organization, with its own decision-making processes and elected officials separate from those of Wikipedia. There was widespread agreement, even from Esperanza's founder, that the organization was no longer fulfilling its purpose, and an effort to reform it before it was shut down. There's a decent summary at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-01-02/Experanza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...

pdonis 6y ago

> I guess that for each of them, there is some kind of unspeakable reason that trumps any sound rationale. I think the general unspeakable reason is pretty simple: once you give people power, some of them will misuse it. And since it takes more effort to correct a misuse of power than to commit the misuse in the first place, any institution that gives people power becomes more and more corrupt over time as misuses of power outweigh valid uses of power.

ghaff 6y ago
While I'm mostly in Camp Inclusion, I appreciate the issues that tend to come up as you loosen criteria for articles more and more--you probably inevitably get articles that are "notable" to a narrower and narrower set of people and a lot of verification depends on shakier and harder to access sources. That said, it's pretty clear that there are more than a few Wikipedia admins who seem to have embraced deletionism for topics that aren't near and dear to them personally and/or which poke at whatever their particular political hot buttons are.
kragen 6y ago
The nice thing about Wikis in general is that it's usually easier to correct a misuse of the power to edit a page than it is to commit the misuse in the first place. That's why Wikis work at all.
- narag 6y ago
  That works for the power to edit, not for the power to delete. So it makes sense, yes.
ooobit2 6y ago
Not just some people, nearly all will abuse it. But we've seen this more-so in people who are less familiar with these institutions. Baltimore, MD, for example, has had now two black, female mayors convicted of corruption and removed from office. We've seen the current mayor of Chicago attempt authoritarianism to enforce the stay-at-home order. Michigan's mayor has reached far beyond CDC and NHS recommendations, and now faces possible corruption charges over abuse of power. Maine's governor is also in the spotlight for circumventing checks and balances by the legislature on the executive office. People love AOC, and I too believe she means well, but even she has warped into an anarcho-syndicalist, going so far as to make absurd statements that "incremental change isn't working", when everyone knows governance is a complex, incremental series of processes, necessary to maintain a free republic and limit opportunities for tyranny. Omar has had a sexual affair with a senior member of her staff. Tlaib has been censured for collaborating with anti-semitic organizations on official business. Biden, himself, has now managed over a year of avoiding investigations into how his son secured a chair on a Ukrainian energy board and was on that board during negotiations between the Obama-Biden administration and Ukraine related to that company's finances. It's cute that people like John Oliver continue to say that the rise of fascism isn't obvious, that it happens slow, subtle. But abuses of power and position are everywhere right now, especially among anti-Trump activists in the media and Congress. You might agree that Trump is a racist, but taking that very position is complicit with the anarcho-syndicalism among a growing number of leftist politicians now. Keep an air of skepticism about you for your own safety. Just because 75% of us think a hate speech law is a reasonable circumvention of free speech guarantees doesn't mean we aren't also enabling scope creep. As we've seen thus far, "slippery slope" is a fallacy in everything but governance.

som33 6y ago

> I see year after year, decade after decade that they keep being discussed, with the same points being made over and over again. Is there a name for these? Because human beings don't see reality accurately, see the science: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ