10 ms·
Wikipedia is an MMORPG
- stennie 6y agoAccording to the page edit history, this humorous article was created in 2004 and has continued to evolve since then with 400+ edits (including updated stats for 2020). I often describe my Wikipedia experience as the "largest MMORPG I've played", and this article does an excellent job of fleshing out the comparison.
- libraryatnight 6y agoHilarious stuff, great Saturday afternoon reading. thank you
- haunter 6y agoGood comparison tbh. MMOs are one of the most toxic game genre (only topped by MOBAs) and that perfectly fits to the holier than thou attitude of the majority of editors
- fireattack 6y agoI'd say MMO only won this over some competitive genres games like FPS is because people in these games don't have time to type.
- Insanity 6y agoPlenty of time to do so when waiting to respawn in e.g counter-strike
- leetcrew 6y agoyeah cs has always been pretty toxic. I think the culture of the game matters a lot more than the genre. though it is an MMO, I've always found EVE players to be very polite ingame. won't stop them from scamming you out of every last isk in your wallet, of course.
- fireattack 6y agoMMORPG today in general is more polite than its heyday too, since the players are older and more relaxed (younger generations don't play MMORPG as much anymore).
- Mediterraneo10 6y agoAnd just as some people somehow manage to play MMOs every waking hour of the day even as ordinary people would have e.g. a job and a family, so Wikipedia has editors who somehow manage to edit all day every day. I have been active in Wikipedia since shortly after its founding and I am quite familiar with all processes and standards, but I have had edits reverted simply because my edit history struck the obsessive editors as too casual; if I wasn’t editing constantly around the clock like them, then I was seen as too low-quality an editor for my edits to stand.
- haunter 6y agoMy main problem that a lot of times I want to do a raid and not the game but the players won't let me do it. The game doesn't say you need this class or this item level, actually anyone can and encouraged to do it. But then you are there against the boss and another player turns up and kills it before you. "Sorry you not meant to kill this boss, this _our_ boss, go farm something else". Then you are locked out from the instance and scratch your head what to do. That's especially frustrating when you know the other players use a very wrong or inefficient strategy (my strat would work 10x faster!) and even worse: you know those players don't even need the loot from the boss (they can't even equip it or they already have it). So why don't they let others join the fun?
- Talanes 6y agoBy definition, when you are in an instance, there shouldn't be another rando there to take the boss. What games are you playing?
- the_jeremy 6y agoThis reminds me heavily of Stack Overflow culture.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- renewiltord 6y agoIf you don't mind, would you like to share one such edit that was reverted for that reason?
- busterarm 6y agoScary when you consider that "winning" this game means you get to control the interpretation of facts.
- chki 6y agoYes but interestingly it's also somewhat calming because the "winners" tend to see winning as the goal. Maliciously changing facts is almost never their goal because Wikipedia itself is their main (maybe obsessive) focus. It might not be good for them but it's not that dangerous for us readers.
- busterarm 6y agoThat just means they are enforcing their biases on the information. Winning doesn't mean they got it correct, just that they achieved control of the narrative. That's going to push the means of winning to editing towards the collective biases of the majority of wikipedia editors. Just consider the fact that at various times in our history that commonly accepted knowledge was that the Earth was flat, the Sun, Moon and Stars revolved around it and that slaves were property instead of people. Effectively this is a proof that mob-sourced information tends towards the mob's interpretation of information and is not necessarily the truth. I think a lot of people reading Wikipedia forget this and makes me disagree with your last statement -- there's a high potential for danger to the reader if the prevailing mob opinion is outwardly destructive or self-destructive.
- TheNorthman 6y agoThat's just what encyclopedias are though, the collective mentality of it's editors, their ideology, so to speak. You were never free to just consume encyclopedias, they were always meant to be understood in the context of their creation. What makes Wikipedia different from its competitors is the sheer diversity of editors contributing.
- moonbug 6y agofine, except that Wikipedia editors aren't diverse.
- Kaze404 6y agoDepends on the MMO. Final Fantasy XIV and Guild Wars 2 were both incredibly friendly experiences for me.
- andrepd 6y agoLikewise. MMOs are usually fondly remembered as friendly experiences when it comes to player interaction.
- ifmpx 6y agoYet MOBAs MMOs continue to thrive. Perhaps toxicity isn't as negative as often portrayed.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- beagle3 6y agoI remember something more snarky along the same lines from encyclopedia dramatica (or was it uncyclopedia?) from 2003 or so.
- linkdd 6y agohttps://en.uncyclopedia.co/wiki/Main_Page https://en.uncyclopedia.co/wiki/Main_Page :)
- fardeem 6y agoThe things I find on this orange website haha
- oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago> orange website Actually made me laugh
- benatkin 6y agoneeds more funny yellow dog
- surround 6y agoHacker News is an FPS
- koolba 6y agoMore of a MUSH. I bet you could interact with telnet too.
- gruez 6y agoHow so? For one, it's missing the 12 year olds telling me how they had sex with my mother.
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoOkay, you’re going to have to expand on that one. Even if we’re going for the very loosest of metaphors, I don’t see it.
- surround 6y agoIt was the only other game type I could think of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- _fzslm 6y agoi love how Larry Sanger's name is cheekily crossed out :p
- hombre_fatal 6y agoJust saw that lil devil post this today: https://twitter.com/lsanger/status/1304606908364578817 https://twitter.com/lsanger/status/1304606908364578817
- lemondemon 6y agoDeleted. Sorry, my anxiety is playing up.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- qdiencdxqd 6y agoThis is a fascinating story. I wish you could provide more details, or even name what the article was about.
- starpilot 6y agoSounded like Epstein.
- Permit 6y agoIt's hard to know what to make of your comment. Consider the perspective of others reading it: You allude to a government conspiracy but don't elaborate. You say you investigated this story, but don't describe your investigation (ie. Did you interview victims or did you read blogs online?). You mention this all happened on Wikipedia so presumably there exists some kind of paper trail, but you don't provide any supporting evidence. You describe "random objects" in your mail but don't describe them. From the reader's perspective this story could be: 1. An unbiased account of a (unnamed) government unfairly wielding their influence over Wikipedia 2. The result of someone upset that their Pizzagate exposé wasn't being taken seriously on Wikipedia 3. An exercise in creative writing Some kind of supporting evidence would greatly improve your comment.
- lemondemon 6y agoI investigated the story by reading newspaper articles and government documents. I'd like to forget this ever happened, but also would like to serve as a (anonymous internet) warning. Heed it or not, up to you. I don't want to link to the paper trail and wake up any dormant monsters. The "random objects" I also don't describe, in case the objects ring a bell to someone. But you can imagine a door handle or a travel bottle of shampoo. If you want specifics, I suppose I could mail you those. I fully agree that the account sounds fantastical and psychotic, but it is what I was comfortable sharing. I also think it is a smart tactic if you wanted to discredit someone. I never told anyone close to me either and completely submitted after the article was deleted.
- qdiencdxqd 6y agoI think they should lean into this. Imagine how many contributors they could end up with if their on-boarding experience was as smooth as World of Warcraft.
- HeadsUpHigh 6y agoOr maybe not. It's not like they are lacking contributors and using addictive systems to attract people isn't the most ethical thing, plus I seriously question the quality of the contributors.
- zitterbewegung 6y agoIf you wanted to actually do this see https://parl.ai/projects/wizard_of_wikipedia/ https://parl.ai/projects/wizard_of_wikipedia/ You would need a scoring system though.
- fnord77 6y ago> Genre(s): Fantasy
- sergioro 6y agoShameless plug: I recently wrote a Ruby gem to get/post Wikipedia articles from the command line. Then I can use my text editor to edit the articles which is faster than doing so in the browser. To install it: gem install wikian. To see how it works visit https://rubygems.org/gems/wikian https://rubygems.org/gems/wikian.
- sergioro 6y ago*edit: delete "Shameless plug" from above comment
- hk__2 6y agoThat’s great! Which text editor do you use? How does wikian deal with edit conflicts?
- sergioro 6y agoI use Vim. Thanks for mentioning edit conflicts, I had overlooked that important feature. Will add it to the next version of Wikian by comparing timestamps of the local and most recent revisions.
- SMAAART 6y agoSame for Reddit!
- jl6 6y agoI’d be grateful if, in this thread, anybody with an anecdote about how their perfectly fine edit was reverted by the evil career Wikipedians, could provide a link so we can judge for ourselves.
- captainmuon 6y agoNot an edit I made, but the final straw for me was a debate about the article name of the turkey (the animal) on the German wikipedia. The only commonly used name is "Truthahn" which refers to both the female and male animal if you are not being specific. But one especially vocal Wikipedian insists that in his ornithology book, the generic term is always the female term, so "Truthuhn" (with u). That sounds like "turkeychicken" to the average German. I have never heard this outside of Wikipedia. You might use it to contrast the female from the male animal in a zoological setting, but the thing you eat or the thing that makes "gobbeldigock" is called "Truthahn". So this was a win of technically correct over useful. I've also had many small edits on technical subjects (particle physics and supersymmetry) reversed by people who were self-professedly not experts, with comments like they could not find it in their beginners' textbook. So I just gave up. (Edit: this was over ten years ago, and I can't find it anymore - not even sure what my username was - but one dispute was about the naming convention of some exotic particles. I was quoting from the famous "review of particle physics" and respectable textbooks, but it kept being reverted to a made-up notation...)
- HeadsUpHigh 6y agoThe non-expert with a beginners' textbook having strong opinions about the subject is everything that's wrong with places like wikipedia and reddit. I just hate it.
- consumer451 6y ago> places like wikipedia and reddit. I just hate it. All human products have issues, but are there any superior alternatives at scale? Wikipedia is one of our civilization’s greatest achievements, isn’t it? It seems like the Library of Alexandria on steroids to me. Especially when combined with an internet archive. It’s funny to admit it, but Reddit is also quite an achievement due to the scalable human moderation model and very useful hive mind. For research, name a better duo.
- LostTrackHowM 6y agoI am shocked this first version of an online encyclopedia has lasted so long. Typically first versions of software reproduce real world limitations, which don't apply to the software. Second and third iterations tend to drop them. Wikipedia has lots of those real world limitations. Notoriety and style of writing were determined by the limitations of shelf space and paper. The selected editor team is something wikipedia specifically wanted to get rid of but has bumbled back into over time. I keep expecting someone else to crate wikipedia 2.0, but so far nothing. Here's my suggestion for a better virtual encyclopedia. - Articles are cryptographically signed by authors. - Articles are not editable after publication. Edits result in new articles. - Articles have a unique and unchanging url. - Registered users can vote on articles. - Registered users can create collections of existing articles. And those collections can be tread as an article. - Articles can be filtered on popularity, and on popularity among select groups of authors, and on popularity among select groups of up-voters. I think based on the above you end up with human repository of knowledge. Where articles and links to articles are reliably unchanged, and you never have to worry about them changing "under your feet" so to speak. The same group of people running wikipedia now, can reproduce their own view of the world in the above setup, and their fans can use it. Any other group can also create their view of things. There is going to be one most popular view of things. But there could also be a one armed economists' view of modern dance filter of the knowledge pool. How to deal with spammer or trolls? In addition to voting and filtering, top notch text compression and time based moving of the least often visited articles to slower and cheaper storage. The slowest and cheapest storage we have, combined with how well we can compress text, in my opinion, results in almost unlimited capacity to store text. And thus notoriety should not be a concern. Leave that to paper encyclopedias.
- Sebb767 6y agoI don't think that would necessarily result in a better wiki. > Articles are cryptographically signed by authors. This would significantly up the hurdle for doing edits and, given the meager popularity of PGP, not really pin down a person. But fair, I'd like to see that as a feature. > Articles are not editable after publication. Edits result in new articles. I don't see how this is different to a version history. For the most part, people just want the newest information; if a specific revision is needed, you can already direct-link to that. > Articles have a unique and unchanging url. Again doable via direct links. I see why you'd want to use that, but if I link (for example) my town, I want people to get the best info about my town and not that version I saw at that moment, unless I'm talking about edits specifically - in which case I'll link a revision. Of course, this requirement satisfies the crypto nerd in us, but it's really going against the usability here for hardly any gain whatsoever. > Registered users can vote on articles. Because that works so well for Reddit and all the other vote platforms. Or in science - see the replication crisis. In all honesty, I think adding a popularity score into this is going to make things far worse. It'll just lead to repeating whatever happens to get votes, with everything else ignored. Why bother with the article of your town? No one cares about that, those two upvotes ... Let's go start an edit war over the birthday of a person! > Registered users can create collections of existing articles. And those collections can be tread as an article. Fair, but that's nothing that wouldn't be doable as of now. > Articles can be filtered on popularity, and on popularity among select groups of authors, and on popularity among select groups of up-voters. That'd be actually interesting, but I don't think it be worth the drawback of votes. Also, people which were set to that group or people which self-identify as that group?
- hubbabubbarex 6y agoMore funding.. More wiki lies.