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One interesting thing with interesting implications regarding the (Wikimedia Foundation and its) Wikipedias is that getting to know them/it and how it functions
by nsajko 6y ago
One interesting thing with interesting implications regarding the (Wikimedia Foundation and its) Wikipedias is that getting to know them/it and how it functions is very involved.
This is what I'm getting at: I tried to present some criticism of Wikipedia in this discussion. However, a lot of my comments are kind of vague because I failed to give specific examples. Consider why this is so:
Discussing a specific example would require both some (sometimes rare) knowledge of the subject at hand and knowledge of the arcane processes through which a Wikipedia is governed and through which the disputes are resolved.
This means that I would need to invest a lot of time explaining everything for someone to be able to understand the example, but, on the other hand, almost nobody (if not perhaps already a Wikipedian and familiar with the subject matter) would be willing to invest enough time to really understand the example and all the connected issues anyway.
Thus substantial criticism of Wikipedia and its processes never gets to the public at large. I think that even most of Wikipedia's contributors hold little understanding of how Wikipedia actually works (socially) because the majority are very casual. And don't get me started on the incompetent contributors who meddle with articles and topics that they don't know enough about.
Another issue is that Wikipedians probably won't want to associate their Wikipedia identity with their HN identity (and similar).
- bawolff 6y agoWait so your criticism of wikipedia is it is too complicated to understand and you can't effectively criticize wikipedia if you dont understand it? That's certainly a criticism i haven't heard before. I suppose in a way its true - wikipedia has its own culture, norms, etc, both written and unwritten, which can be hard to penetrate for an outsider (i would argue that WMF also struggles with that). But i think any large online community is going to have that. Heck, actual anthropologists have written actual books on the culture of debian, i dont see why wikipedia would be any less complicated. > Another issue is that Wikipedians probably won't want to associate their Wikipedia identity with their HN identity (and similar). And that is an issue because? [For the record my wikipedia username is the same as my HN username, and i know other people for which that is also true]