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> If you try to write niche articles on certain topics, people will tell you to save it for Wikia. I am not excited or interested in such a parochial project wh

> If you try to write niche articles on certain topics, people will tell you to save it for Wikia. I am not excited or interested in such a parochial project which excludes so many of my interests, which does not want me to go into great depth about even the interests it deems meritorious—and a great many other people are not excited either, especially as they begin to realize that even if you navigate the culture correctly and get your material into Wikipedia, there is far from any guarantee that your contributions will be respected, not deleted, and improved. I hate to be seen as supporting deletionism, because I've never contributed enough to WP to really have an opinion (I've mostly just expanded on existing articles and fixed obvious vandalism and typos), but I don't understand why this is a bad thing. I don't like that they're being driven to an ad-supported website, but the simple act of not having Wikipedia eat all of the web seems like a good thing. The Iron Law of Oligarchy will weaken the website just like it's destroyed every other website, with no good reason to believe it'll be different this time. At least if Wikipedia is limited in scope, the damage it does will be limited too.

vkou 6y ago
> I don't like that they're being driven to an ad-supported website, but the simple act of not having Wikipedia eat all of the web seems like a good thing. No, having all of this content under Wikipedia would be an amazing thing. For all its warts, Wikipedia (When it has the information you are looking for) is the gold standard in what the the web should be. It's amazing that it exists as a website, and compared to the mountains of crud that surrounds it, it has an amazing UX. The inclusionist argument is that the web would be better if more of its content was available under the same high standards that Wikipedia set. Competitors can't deliver that same standard because of economies of scale.
- notriddle 6y ago
  > Competitors can't deliver that same standard because of economies of scale. The invasion of policy-driven jerks seems like a good counterargument; it's an anti-economy of scale, since smaller websites have less of the problem. edit: Arguing about scale also kind of ignores that there's a good space between the scope of the website being "everything" and having a website dedicated to the IDW "Sniffles the Mouse" comics. IMDB is well-respected, TVTropes has been successful with a very different culture from IMDB, the Arch Linux Wiki has a reputation for being useful even if you aren't technically using Arch, and, as we've already proven, Wikia has pretty much made a business out of this.
  - vkou 6y ago
    Smaller websites have this problem, it's just that the holy wars waged within the Pokemon fandom rarely make it to the HN front page. If anything, the politics get even more personal and vicious in smaller communities. The business of Wikia may be successful, but as a user, it's complete rubbish.

vkou 6y ago

> I don't like that they're being driven to an ad-supported website, but the simple act of not having Wikipedia eat all of the web seems like a good thing. No, having all of this content under Wikipedia would be an amazing thing. For all its warts, Wikipedia (When it has the information you are looking for) is the gold standard in what the the web should be. It's amazing that it exists as a website, and compared to the mountains of crud that surrounds it, it has an amazing UX. The inclusionist argument is that the web would be better if more of its content was available under the same high standards that Wikipedia set. Competitors can't deliver that same standard because of economies of scale.

notriddle 6y ago
> Competitors can't deliver that same standard because of economies of scale. The invasion of policy-driven jerks seems like a good counterargument; it's an anti-economy of scale, since smaller websites have less of the problem. edit: Arguing about scale also kind of ignores that there's a good space between the scope of the website being "everything" and having a website dedicated to the IDW "Sniffles the Mouse" comics. IMDB is well-respected, TVTropes has been successful with a very different culture from IMDB, the Arch Linux Wiki has a reputation for being useful even if you aren't technically using Arch, and, as we've already proven, Wikia has pretty much made a business out of this.
- vkou 6y ago
  Smaller websites have this problem, it's just that the holy wars waged within the Pokemon fandom rarely make it to the HN front page. If anything, the politics get even more personal and vicious in smaller communities. The business of Wikia may be successful, but as a user, it's complete rubbish.