5 ms·

That's one version. Another version, that I know will go over very well here, is that some have invested a lot of money to bring high quality, accessibly-writte

by in3d 6y ago

That's one version. Another version, that I know will go over very well here, is that some have invested a lot of money to bring high quality, accessibly-written off-line content by experts in the field to the Web, only for Wikipedia editors to poorly rewrite it in thousands of articles and rank over the original content in Google. And then Wikipedia started using non-follow links so the original sites got no benefit whatsoever.

nsajko 6y ago
I don't like Wikimedia nor the Wikipedias, but I don't get your point and I think you're incorrect (unless you're talking about Wikipedia's early days). The way Wikipedia should work is by sourcing verifiable facts from reputable sources, and copyright violations are not allowed. I don't understand to what are you referring with "high quality, accessibly-written off-line content"? Britannica isn't high-quality and journalism isn't written by experts in the field.
- in3d 6y ago
  You’re mistaken: rewriting content is not a copyright violation and is allowed. I’m not talking about Britannica but more in-depth content.
aikinai 6y ago
> high quality, accessibly-written off-line content by experts in the field to the Web Where is this content? It sounds like you’re alluding to something obvious but I honestly have no idea, and would like to know where to find it if it does exist.
- hutzlibu 6y ago
  "Where is this content? " Scattered all over the web. I do agree with that point, that for most topics there exists better quality content elsewhere. But finding it and verifying, that it is not made up, is the reason I also use mainly wikipedia first for researching a new topic. And then proceed to more detailed pages, sometimes linked in wikipedia.
- bawolff 6y ago
  No kidding. I remember trying to find high quality educational content on the web before wikipedia. For certain subjects it existed, but it was few and far between, and of very mixed quality (how do you know how much trust to put on some geocitirs page)?
  - itsoktocry 6y ago
    >(how do you know how much trust to put on some geocitirs page) The same way you learn to "trust" anything, including Wikipedia - by verifying sources. I love Wikipedia, but I don't blindly assume it to be the ground truth in anything (if such truth even exists), especially in the "long-tail" of subject matter.
    - bawolff 6y ago
      There's different levels of "trust". With Wikipedia i know roughly what i am getting. I can make an informed decision as to how much to trust it and how much to do further research depending on the application i need it for. After all, sometimes i just need knowledge with a decent chance of being true, where other times I need to be really sure. Wikipedia provides a relatively consistent experience (varrying somewhat with how obscure a page is). Random geocities sites do not give me that consistency, so I cannot make an informed guess as to how correct the page is.
      - ghaff 6y ago
        There are fairly predictable quirks about Wikipedia: - Articles in areas of math written in impenetrable jargon - Encyclopedic articles about obscure, trivial subjects - Stubs about relatively important individuals - Tug-of-war entries about current events - Random endless lists - A lot of procedural fighting about original research, notability, etc. But, as you say, a way to get pointers to or a quick take on a topic, it's pretty good. Am I going to take anything Wikipedia says to the bank without double-checking? Probably not. And, if you look deeply enough into some topics, you find a lot of circular references to some other single source of information. But overall, it's a good go-to reference.
    - 6y ago
- DanBC 6y ago
  If you want to understand suicide in the UK you need to know, at a minimum, about ONS, NCISH, Fingertips, and then coroners for England and Wales and whatever the equivalent is for Scotland and Northern Ireland. Here's a list of links: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/suicidesintheunitedkingdom/2019registrations https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde... https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/ncish/ https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/ncish/ https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental-health/profile/suicide https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental-health/pr... https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/guidance-no-17-conclusions.pdf https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/guidance... The best way to find out about these is to speak to someone who works in suicide prevention, so that would be people working for local authority suicide prevention partnership boards (they can have different names in different areas), or people working for NCISH or MASH or ONS, or people on Twitter. But if you can't do that you can sort of get some of the information from Wikipedia. It's a struggle though because the page is a poorly laid out mishmash of information, mostly written by people who don't understand the subject. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_Kingdom
  - iamacyborg 6y ago
    I hate to be that guy, but if the content on Wikipedia is wrong, why not fix it? Unlike other profit-driven community sites (cough, Fandom, cough) you'll actually be helping other people.
    - DanBC 6y ago
      It's not possible to fix information on Wikipedia by using primary sources (the Judiciary website, the ONS data, the NCISH reports), you have to use secondary sources such as newspaper reports. Since newspapers get this stuff wrong too wikipedia will only allow incorrect information. And that's Wikipedia working as intended. If you're unfortunate you'll run up against someone who i) doesn't know anything at all about the topic, ii) has misunderstood some poorly reported document, and iii) has more free time than you. It's exhausting dealing with these people and I simply have better things to do with my time.
- in3d 6y ago
  Well, that kind of shows the issue, right? I’m talking about what happened many years ago (nofollow links were added in 2005) - companies learned their lesson and wouldn’t try to pay expert writers and editors for reference-type content for web use anymore. Here is content that’s somewhat similar: encyclopedia.com. By the way, I think Google and its easily-gamed algorithms that rewarded regurgitated content and mega-sites is more to “blame” here than Wikipedia itself for how it went down.
notahacker 6y ago
I find it often has the opposite problem. High quality, accessibly-written off-line content by experts in the field is synthesised on Wikipedia by someone with good understanding of the subject, but then other editors delete large swathes of it for not citing every line and replace it with considerably more dubious explanations of the subject sourced to news articles and partisan think tanks which put all their content online.
froh 6y ago
What does "non-follow links" mean?
- in3d 6y ago
  https://www.semrush.com/blog/linkbuilding-dofollow-vs-nofollow-semrushchat/ https://www.semrush.com/blog/linkbuilding-dofollow-vs-nofoll...

by in3d 6y ago

nsajko 6y ago

I don't like Wikimedia nor the Wikipedias, but I don't get your point and I think you're incorrect (unless you're talking about Wikipedia's early days). The way Wikipedia should work is by sourcing verifiable facts from reputable sources, and copyright violations are not allowed. I don't understand to what are you referring with "high quality, accessibly-written off-line content"? Britannica isn't high-quality and journalism isn't written by experts in the field.

in3d 6y ago
You’re mistaken: rewriting content is not a copyright violation and is allowed. I’m not talking about Britannica but more in-depth content.

aikinai 6y ago

> high quality, accessibly-written off-line content by experts in the field to the Web Where is this content? It sounds like you’re alluding to something obvious but I honestly have no idea, and would like to know where to find it if it does exist.

hutzlibu 6y ago
"Where is this content? " Scattered all over the web. I do agree with that point, that for most topics there exists better quality content elsewhere. But finding it and verifying, that it is not made up, is the reason I also use mainly wikipedia first for researching a new topic. And then proceed to more detailed pages, sometimes linked in wikipedia.
bawolff 6y ago
No kidding. I remember trying to find high quality educational content on the web before wikipedia. For certain subjects it existed, but it was few and far between, and of very mixed quality (how do you know how much trust to put on some geocitirs page)?
- itsoktocry 6y ago
  >(how do you know how much trust to put on some geocitirs page) The same way you learn to "trust" anything, including Wikipedia - by verifying sources. I love Wikipedia, but I don't blindly assume it to be the ground truth in anything (if such truth even exists), especially in the "long-tail" of subject matter.
  - bawolff 6y ago
    There's different levels of "trust". With Wikipedia i know roughly what i am getting. I can make an informed decision as to how much to trust it and how much to do further research depending on the application i need it for. After all, sometimes i just need knowledge with a decent chance of being true, where other times I need to be really sure. Wikipedia provides a relatively consistent experience (varrying somewhat with how obscure a page is). Random geocities sites do not give me that consistency, so I cannot make an informed guess as to how correct the page is.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      There are fairly predictable quirks about Wikipedia: - Articles in areas of math written in impenetrable jargon - Encyclopedic articles about obscure, trivial subjects - Stubs about relatively important individuals - Tug-of-war entries about current events - Random endless lists - A lot of procedural fighting about original research, notability, etc. But, as you say, a way to get pointers to or a quick take on a topic, it's pretty good. Am I going to take anything Wikipedia says to the bank without double-checking? Probably not. And, if you look deeply enough into some topics, you find a lot of circular references to some other single source of information. But overall, it's a good go-to reference.
  - 6y ago
DanBC 6y ago
If you want to understand suicide in the UK you need to know, at a minimum, about ONS, NCISH, Fingertips, and then coroners for England and Wales and whatever the equivalent is for Scotland and Northern Ireland. Here's a list of links: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/suicidesintheunitedkingdom/2019registrations https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde... https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/ncish/ https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/ncish/ https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental-health/profile/suicide https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental-health/pr... https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/guidance-no-17-conclusions.pdf https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/guidance... The best way to find out about these is to speak to someone who works in suicide prevention, so that would be people working for local authority suicide prevention partnership boards (they can have different names in different areas), or people working for NCISH or MASH or ONS, or people on Twitter. But if you can't do that you can sort of get some of the information from Wikipedia. It's a struggle though because the page is a poorly laid out mishmash of information, mostly written by people who don't understand the subject. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_Kingdom
- iamacyborg 6y ago
  I hate to be that guy, but if the content on Wikipedia is wrong, why not fix it? Unlike other profit-driven community sites (cough, Fandom, cough) you'll actually be helping other people.
  - DanBC 6y ago
    It's not possible to fix information on Wikipedia by using primary sources (the Judiciary website, the ONS data, the NCISH reports), you have to use secondary sources such as newspaper reports. Since newspapers get this stuff wrong too wikipedia will only allow incorrect information. And that's Wikipedia working as intended. If you're unfortunate you'll run up against someone who i) doesn't know anything at all about the topic, ii) has misunderstood some poorly reported document, and iii) has more free time than you. It's exhausting dealing with these people and I simply have better things to do with my time.
in3d 6y ago
Well, that kind of shows the issue, right? I’m talking about what happened many years ago (nofollow links were added in 2005) - companies learned their lesson and wouldn’t try to pay expert writers and editors for reference-type content for web use anymore. Here is content that’s somewhat similar: encyclopedia.com. By the way, I think Google and its easily-gamed algorithms that rewarded regurgitated content and mega-sites is more to “blame” here than Wikipedia itself for how it went down.

notahacker 6y ago

I find it often has the opposite problem. High quality, accessibly-written off-line content by experts in the field is synthesised on Wikipedia by someone with good understanding of the subject, but then other editors delete large swathes of it for not citing every line and replace it with considerably more dubious explanations of the subject sourced to news articles and partisan think tanks which put all their content online.

froh 6y ago

What does "non-follow links" mean?

in3d 6y ago
https://www.semrush.com/blog/linkbuilding-dofollow-vs-nofollow-semrushchat/ https://www.semrush.com/blog/linkbuilding-dofollow-vs-nofoll...