7 ms·

Wikipedia may have been an amazing idea in the beginning. Then it got taken over by a bunch of entrenched editors more interested in their own power than the ac

by nickpp 6y ago

Wikipedia may have been an amazing idea in the beginning. Then it got taken over by a bunch of entrenched editors more interested in their own power than the accuracy of the pages' information. Today I can see mistakes and inaccurate info in every niche I am familiar with. Because of that, I cannot trust it on subjects I know nothing about. I tried contributing and fixing but nothing got through. Even worse, the level of writing makes it almost impossible to comprehend. Articles are badly organized, unclear and explanations are missing or hard to understand. Again, any attempt to fix the form was rejected. Editors are much more interested in citations and levels of notability. I gave up. I would gladly pay for an encyclopedia written by actual experts, I see a tremendous value in something like that, but alas the market was killed by the free Wikipedia.

ardy42 6y ago
> Wikipedia may have been an amazing idea in the beginning. Then it got taken over by a bunch of entrenched editors more interested in their own power than the accuracy of the pages' information. Then there are also the people with ideological axes to grind, and the community's seeming belief that it's fine to merely reform a problematic user to just the barest level of acceptability. Unless you find some forgotten corner, being a Wikipedia editor requires an inhuman level of patience or obsessiveness, which probably ends up turning off a huge number of potential contributors.
- nickff 6y ago
  Wikipedia also has the Stack Overflow problem of 'deletionists' (who mark everything as already described somewhere else, or not notable).
  - vngzs 6y ago
    For more on what's wrong with this, see gwern's "In Defense of Inclusionism" [0], an essay on this topic. [0]: https://www.gwern.net/In-Defense-Of-Inclusionism https://www.gwern.net/In-Defense-Of-Inclusionism
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    I've encountered this on both of those sites. A Wikipedia deletionist resulted in a movie going without an article for months, despite my efforts to at least give it a stub page. The film was by no means an obscure arthouse production or anything like that, the not noteworthy objection was pure nonsense. Someone other than me eventually won that battle. A StackOverflow deletionist deleted my question, fortunately after I got a decent answer, on the grounds that it was a duplicate of an existing question. The explanations in the answers were indeed similar, but the symptoms were quite different, especially from the point of view of someone who doesn't already know the answer. (It turned out I had made a false assumption about the way parentheses are treated in regex. Unlike in many contexts in many languages, it doesn't only affect precedence.)
  - exporectomy 6y ago
    I would expect that to happen and be appropriate since eventually most questions will have been asked and most articles written. If you put aside information on new things in the world, those two sites are approaching a "finished" state so there's surely not much of value that anyone can add anymore. Of course, they may still be overzealous in deleting.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
einpoklum 6y ago
> Then it got taken over by a bunch of entrenched editors You're assuming this is not enabled and supported by the WikiMedia foundation. I believe you are wrong. That is, what you see when you try to edit values are those "entrenched editors", but those are just the front lines. Certainly, some policy and customs are set by virtue of being an active editor; but more fundamental and site-scale issues are just as certainly discussed, decided and acted upon - infrastructurally - by the foundation.
1_player 6y ago
> Wikipedia may have been an amazing idea in the beginning. > I would gladly pay for an encyclopedia written by actual experts. While you're entitled to your opinion, this is a case of "the grass is always greener on the other side". I'm not a fan of the Wikipedia internal politics, but as a user, Wikipedia is one of the best showcases of the Internet and in my opinion the greatest collaboration project in human history. For the first time we have knowledge available to all, for (almost) free. You want to pay because you're privileged, but that's not the way of improving humanity as a whole, rich and poor, privileged and stuck in a mud hut with a crappy phone. Of course we can do better, but I find it incredibly dismissive not to recognise the incredible achievement Wikipedia is. Blame the fact that as a species we're quite tribalistic and selfish, not the collective effort we're making while trying the hardest limit our biases and shortcomings as much as (humanly) possible.
- nickpp 6y ago
  Honestly I feel where you’re coming from, I used to think exactly like you. But I slowly came to my current sad realization. Right now I do believe that free wrong info is actually more damaging than paid correct info. But I am open to and wish for a third option or a solution which is more inclusive and less "for the privileged".
  - r00fus 6y ago
    What examples do you have of this? I also feel Wikipedia is a success, but I'd like any data points of failures as well.
  - the_duke 6y ago
    Could you cite specific examples of wrong or actually harmful information? That would give more credence to your arguments. Maybe also link to your rejected contributions to show that you are not just disgruntled because your edits were reverted. I do agree that there are lots of inaccuracies in articles, but having Wikipedia with at least somewhat helpful information is infinitely better than having nothing at all.
    - 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
smsm42 6y ago
I don't really bother to contribute to any prominent pages on main Wikis, because in my experience it almost always required fighting with people with huge egos following arcane rules and procedures which they certainly took a lot of time to design and develop but which don't seem like productive use of my time, especially when people who designed them are going to fight me on every step. There are some younger and less entrenched projects where one could make a difference without wasting time on BS (like Wikidata or Wiktionary) and there are less popular areas which aren't controlled by wikifeudals, but changing something otherwise requires too much effort for what it's worth, IMHO. And yes, if there's any conflict of interest (usually political or ideological), the only thing you can trust is the links, and even those should be presumed to be selected in a biased manner. Of course, this also applies to any random article in 99.999% of the press, so it goes... It's still a valuable resource for topics not consumed with public controversy.
- kayxspre 6y ago
  > in my experience it almost always required fighting with people with huge egos following arcane rules and procedures which they certainly took a lot of time to design and develop but which don't seem like productive use of my time This echoed my experience before I left a Wikipedia project (one of its language variant). I have been vocal with the direction one of its most active admin is trying to head the project to, as well as the not-so-positive treatment of inexperienced users. Many of the legitimate complaints against this admin was pretty much ignored or stalled. Ultimately, I decided that it's not worth my efforts to try to push for a more friendly environment, and I have decided to leave. I still help with some offline activities and movement-related function, but chances for me to return to being the contributors again are slim.
- 8bitsrule 6y ago
  > I don't really bother to contribute to any prominent pages That's one of the secrets for being left alone. Improving jealously-guarded pages - or bio pages that are overseen by PR folk - is like walking on thin ice. Stay away from politics and celebs. There are lots (millions!) of pages in hundreds of topics that have been rated as high-importance and need lots of TLC ... and don't attract turf-guarders. There are lots of pages where people have added 'citation needed' (so easy) ... when they could have just added a good citation instead. Correct a spelling. Clarify a passage. Add a high-quality external link ... might save someone some research and let them spend that time improving the article. Might be better than the article will ever be. None of those are likely to attract attention, all improve the article. Start small, build over time. You can draft something in a sandbox, then ask for an opinion before you invest hours. Yep, there are (many, many) rules - and they change over time. There are pages where you can ask for help. If someone reverts something, calmly discuss it. A copy of your work is never gone, it's in the history. Come back in a year and try it again!
iNic 6y ago
Of course Wikipedia has some unique problems due to its fundamental structure, but on the whole it is roughly as accurate as other Encyclopedias [1]. But not every study agrees [2]. See also [3]. It seems to be also be field dependent, and I have to say that personally, as a mathematician, I have never seen anything wrong in any article about mathematics. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/438900a https://www.nature.com/articles/438900a [2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249362832_Comparison_of_Wikipedia_and_other_encyclopedias_for_accuracy_breadth_and_depth_in_historical_articles https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249362832_Compariso... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia
- bzbarsky 6y ago
  I don't know that I've ever seen anything strictly _wrong_ in an article about mathematics, but I've certainly seen articles giving equations without defining what any of the variables are and using using very field-specific notation without defining or referencing it, making them impossible to read unless you know enough about the topic to reverse-engineer what they're talking about. And I'm not talking something like using a Dirac delta without referencing it; I'm talking about pretty esoteric notation that is really only relevant to the topic of the article. And of course plenty of the math articles are just not very coherently written (and yes, plenty are quite good).
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    Will definitely second math articles (some, not all) having a "X is the result of X'ing" circular definition antipattern coursing through them. But I suppose that's an epistemological question, as to whether an article is a definition or an educational method.
  - ptero 6y ago
    Can you point to a few examples just to make sure we are talking about the same thing? I use wikipedia for math, physics and engineering topics frequently and generally do not have too much trouble understanding it, possibly with a few cross-referenced articles. I have seen occasional weird writing, but this is usually either some esoteric subject or just an initial writeup on a narrow topic -- that is, an inexperienced author trying to fill a void, not someone staking out territory or looking for recognition. Just my experience.
tokai 6y ago
You can still pay for Encyclopædia Britannica if you really want to.
Kiro 6y ago
> Today I can see mistakes and inaccurate info in every niche I am familiar with. Do you have any examples?
dessant 6y ago
I was quite happy to see one of my projects mentioned on Wikipedia for the first time, in the reCAPTCHA article. I've discovered it from the list of referring sites shown by GitHub Insights, and then the mention disappeared. Looking at the edit history of the article, someone added it a year ago, and then 204.132.216.84 has decided recently that a genuinely informative section must be removed from the article, because they thought it's "self-promotion for browser extension". Dear 204.132.216.84, you're wrong.
- andrepd 6y ago
  Then add it back? Or at least engage in discussion in the Talk page and find a compromise, like rewording. Btw, I'm a user of your extension ;)
  - dessant 6y ago
    Hi, I'm glad you found it useful! I don't feel that strongly about the issue to make a case for it, it was just a bit sad to see an article become less informative because of an editor's paranoia, and me being denied immortality :P.
KingOfCoders 6y ago
Just read articles in several languages on historic events. You'll see how they differ and draw your own conclusions.
cabalamat 6y ago
And the maths articles only make sense if you already understand them, which restricts their usefulness somewhat.
mountainb 6y ago
If you try using Wikipedia as a research aid in almost any field and try to follow footnotes a lot of the time you will wind up with broken links or a garbage source. It's not that there are not some Wikipedia pages that are not good. It is the case that it's very challenging to tell when a page is good or bad without following the footnotes. Sometimes you will find a good source, but at least in my experience most of the time you will try to follow citations and see it ends in either 404 or a trash pit. There are also lots of situations like if you are looking for things such as statistics related to a war, if you use Wikipedia to start your research you will wind up clicking through to all kinds of trash sources that waste your time when there are compendiums of statistics through either government reports or print references that you could have just used with library access in a fraction of the time that you spent sifting through a sea of web feces.
andrepd 6y ago
Every time the post title contains "wikipedia" out come the same complaints. I say what I always say: can you please point out a specific incident where you saw wrong information, tried to correct it, and were overturned?
- wpietri 6y ago
  It's an important question. Sometimes I see rejection of actual good material,so it happens. Often it's well-meaning noobs running afoul of either the essential complexity (encyclopedias are hard) or the incidental complexity (Wikipedia's a bit of a beast). And sometimes it's people who are sure that THEY ARE RIGHT and HOW DARE THOSE PEOPLE. So we always need to look at specific incidents.
  - oldev 6y ago
    If you are a deployment engineer/Windows desktop dev, check out the article on installers. [1] Most of those are obsolete, small and pretty much useless. The one we've been using for 15 years is not listed. Check out the article history. Every time someone tries to update it and add modern, actually useful tools, someone else comes from the woodwork and deletes it. Some of the deletionists don't know what a repackager is. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_installation_software#Windows https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_installation_software#... Just an example, in my area of expertise. Some of the rejected edits were mine.
    - jjk166 6y ago
      There was extensive discussion on the talk page about criteria for inclusion and one of those criteria is that only software that has a dedicated wikipedia page or with citations showing notability should be included on the list. It doesn't matter that you know something belongs on a list, you need to show that it belongs on the list.
      - wpietri 6y ago
        Which I'm sure is a reaction to self-promoters trying to edit the page in hopes of boosting their thing to prominence. People who don't edit Wikipedia have no idea how much of a problem spamming attempts are. This can easily lead to beleaguered editors who are inclined to stomp on anything that looks like it might possibly be spam. That's a terrible experience for well-meaning first-time contributors and I'd love to see it improve. But I get how they end up that way.
swiley 6y ago
Wikipedia has always suffered from inaccuracies. IME it's gotten better, not worse, over the past few years. I don't read many of the politically interesting articles though, maybe that's what you're complaining about? Wikipedia has never been the right platform for that though.
seanhunter 6y ago
> I would gladly pay for an encyclopedia written by actual experts, I see a tremendous value in something like that, but alas the market was killed by the free Wikipedia. There are definitely pros and cons. My wife is a professional musician and teacher so at home we have a copy of the "New Grove" encyclopedia of music, which is the industry standard "proper encyclopedia" for music. Each article is written by a specific expert in that subject, This leads to them being tremendously detailed and informative. The downside is the process of compliation is slow and so even if you have a subscription to the electronic version it will be behind (sometimes years behind) the very latest research.
- Veen 6y ago
  That's true, but including the very latest research isn't really what encyclopedias are for—there are other places for that.
  - fartcannon 6y ago
    Yes, like Wikipedia.
Loic 6y ago
As a chemical engineer, I must say that I was never disappointed with the content of the Wikipedia pages. Of course, as I have spent 3h/day for the past 15 years improving fluid phase equilibria calculations for the chemical industry, I see where the articles have limits for this stuff, but what is available is sound. I would be interested in knowing your field of expertise where you find errors.
tedd4u 6y ago
If you want to pay, just sent $5-10/mo donation to Wikimedia. If more people did this I think it would help. I find it a fair price.
jerry1979 6y ago
I have heard people voice concerns similar to yours. Could you please provide some examples of mistakes and inaccurate info?
alexandrerond 6y ago
> Today I can see mistakes and inaccurate info in every niche I am familiar with. Because of that, I cannot trust it on subjects I know nothing about Just like HN comments :)

by nickpp 6y ago

ardy42 6y ago

> Wikipedia may have been an amazing idea in the beginning. Then it got taken over by a bunch of entrenched editors more interested in their own power than the accuracy of the pages' information. Then there are also the people with ideological axes to grind, and the community's seeming belief that it's fine to merely reform a problematic user to just the barest level of acceptability. Unless you find some forgotten corner, being a Wikipedia editor requires an inhuman level of patience or obsessiveness, which probably ends up turning off a huge number of potential contributors.

nickff 6y ago
Wikipedia also has the Stack Overflow problem of 'deletionists' (who mark everything as already described somewhere else, or not notable).
- vngzs 6y ago
  For more on what's wrong with this, see gwern's "In Defense of Inclusionism" [0], an essay on this topic. [0]: https://www.gwern.net/In-Defense-Of-Inclusionism https://www.gwern.net/In-Defense-Of-Inclusionism
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  I've encountered this on both of those sites. A Wikipedia deletionist resulted in a movie going without an article for months, despite my efforts to at least give it a stub page. The film was by no means an obscure arthouse production or anything like that, the not noteworthy objection was pure nonsense. Someone other than me eventually won that battle. A StackOverflow deletionist deleted my question, fortunately after I got a decent answer, on the grounds that it was a duplicate of an existing question. The explanations in the answers were indeed similar, but the symptoms were quite different, especially from the point of view of someone who doesn't already know the answer. (It turned out I had made a false assumption about the way parentheses are treated in regex. Unlike in many contexts in many languages, it doesn't only affect precedence.)
- exporectomy 6y ago
  I would expect that to happen and be appropriate since eventually most questions will have been asked and most articles written. If you put aside information on new things in the world, those two sites are approaching a "finished" state so there's surely not much of value that anyone can add anymore. Of course, they may still be overzealous in deleting.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

einpoklum 6y ago

> Then it got taken over by a bunch of entrenched editors You're assuming this is not enabled and supported by the WikiMedia foundation. I believe you are wrong. That is, what you see when you try to edit values are those "entrenched editors", but those are just the front lines. Certainly, some policy and customs are set by virtue of being an active editor; but more fundamental and site-scale issues are just as certainly discussed, decided and acted upon - infrastructurally - by the foundation.

1_player 6y ago

> Wikipedia may have been an amazing idea in the beginning. > I would gladly pay for an encyclopedia written by actual experts. While you're entitled to your opinion, this is a case of "the grass is always greener on the other side". I'm not a fan of the Wikipedia internal politics, but as a user, Wikipedia is one of the best showcases of the Internet and in my opinion the greatest collaboration project in human history. For the first time we have knowledge available to all, for (almost) free. You want to pay because you're privileged, but that's not the way of improving humanity as a whole, rich and poor, privileged and stuck in a mud hut with a crappy phone. Of course we can do better, but I find it incredibly dismissive not to recognise the incredible achievement Wikipedia is. Blame the fact that as a species we're quite tribalistic and selfish, not the collective effort we're making while trying the hardest limit our biases and shortcomings as much as (humanly) possible.

nickpp 6y ago
Honestly I feel where you’re coming from, I used to think exactly like you. But I slowly came to my current sad realization. Right now I do believe that free wrong info is actually more damaging than paid correct info. But I am open to and wish for a third option or a solution which is more inclusive and less "for the privileged".
- r00fus 6y ago
  What examples do you have of this? I also feel Wikipedia is a success, but I'd like any data points of failures as well.
- the_duke 6y ago
  Could you cite specific examples of wrong or actually harmful information? That would give more credence to your arguments. Maybe also link to your rejected contributions to show that you are not just disgruntled because your edits were reverted. I do agree that there are lots of inaccuracies in articles, but having Wikipedia with at least somewhat helpful information is infinitely better than having nothing at all.
  - 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

smsm42 6y ago

I don't really bother to contribute to any prominent pages on main Wikis, because in my experience it almost always required fighting with people with huge egos following arcane rules and procedures which they certainly took a lot of time to design and develop but which don't seem like productive use of my time, especially when people who designed them are going to fight me on every step. There are some younger and less entrenched projects where one could make a difference without wasting time on BS (like Wikidata or Wiktionary) and there are less popular areas which aren't controlled by wikifeudals, but changing something otherwise requires too much effort for what it's worth, IMHO. And yes, if there's any conflict of interest (usually political or ideological), the only thing you can trust is the links, and even those should be presumed to be selected in a biased manner. Of course, this also applies to any random article in 99.999% of the press, so it goes... It's still a valuable resource for topics not consumed with public controversy.

kayxspre 6y ago
> in my experience it almost always required fighting with people with huge egos following arcane rules and procedures which they certainly took a lot of time to design and develop but which don't seem like productive use of my time This echoed my experience before I left a Wikipedia project (one of its language variant). I have been vocal with the direction one of its most active admin is trying to head the project to, as well as the not-so-positive treatment of inexperienced users. Many of the legitimate complaints against this admin was pretty much ignored or stalled. Ultimately, I decided that it's not worth my efforts to try to push for a more friendly environment, and I have decided to leave. I still help with some offline activities and movement-related function, but chances for me to return to being the contributors again are slim.
8bitsrule 6y ago
> I don't really bother to contribute to any prominent pages That's one of the secrets for being left alone. Improving jealously-guarded pages - or bio pages that are overseen by PR folk - is like walking on thin ice. Stay away from politics and celebs. There are lots (millions!) of pages in hundreds of topics that have been rated as high-importance and need lots of TLC ... and don't attract turf-guarders. There are lots of pages where people have added 'citation needed' (so easy) ... when they could have just added a good citation instead. Correct a spelling. Clarify a passage. Add a high-quality external link ... might save someone some research and let them spend that time improving the article. Might be better than the article will ever be. None of those are likely to attract attention, all improve the article. Start small, build over time. You can draft something in a sandbox, then ask for an opinion before you invest hours. Yep, there are (many, many) rules - and they change over time. There are pages where you can ask for help. If someone reverts something, calmly discuss it. A copy of your work is never gone, it's in the history. Come back in a year and try it again!

iNic 6y ago

Of course Wikipedia has some unique problems due to its fundamental structure, but on the whole it is roughly as accurate as other Encyclopedias [1]. But not every study agrees [2]. See also [3]. It seems to be also be field dependent, and I have to say that personally, as a mathematician, I have never seen anything wrong in any article about mathematics. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/438900a https://www.nature.com/articles/438900a [2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249362832_Comparison_of_Wikipedia_and_other_encyclopedias_for_accuracy_breadth_and_depth_in_historical_articles https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249362832_Compariso... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia

bzbarsky 6y ago
I don't know that I've ever seen anything strictly _wrong_ in an article about mathematics, but I've certainly seen articles giving equations without defining what any of the variables are and using using very field-specific notation without defining or referencing it, making them impossible to read unless you know enough about the topic to reverse-engineer what they're talking about. And I'm not talking something like using a Dirac delta without referencing it; I'm talking about pretty esoteric notation that is really only relevant to the topic of the article. And of course plenty of the math articles are just not very coherently written (and yes, plenty are quite good).
- ethbr0 6y ago
  Will definitely second math articles (some, not all) having a "X is the result of X'ing" circular definition antipattern coursing through them. But I suppose that's an epistemological question, as to whether an article is a definition or an educational method.
- ptero 6y ago
  Can you point to a few examples just to make sure we are talking about the same thing? I use wikipedia for math, physics and engineering topics frequently and generally do not have too much trouble understanding it, possibly with a few cross-referenced articles. I have seen occasional weird writing, but this is usually either some esoteric subject or just an initial writeup on a narrow topic -- that is, an inexperienced author trying to fill a void, not someone staking out territory or looking for recognition. Just my experience.

tokai 6y ago

You can still pay for Encyclopædia Britannica if you really want to.

Kiro 6y ago

> Today I can see mistakes and inaccurate info in every niche I am familiar with. Do you have any examples?

dessant 6y ago

I was quite happy to see one of my projects mentioned on Wikipedia for the first time, in the reCAPTCHA article. I've discovered it from the list of referring sites shown by GitHub Insights, and then the mention disappeared. Looking at the edit history of the article, someone added it a year ago, and then 204.132.216.84 has decided recently that a genuinely informative section must be removed from the article, because they thought it's "self-promotion for browser extension". Dear 204.132.216.84, you're wrong.

andrepd 6y ago
Then add it back? Or at least engage in discussion in the Talk page and find a compromise, like rewording. Btw, I'm a user of your extension ;)
- dessant 6y ago
  Hi, I'm glad you found it useful! I don't feel that strongly about the issue to make a case for it, it was just a bit sad to see an article become less informative because of an editor's paranoia, and me being denied immortality :P.

KingOfCoders 6y ago

Just read articles in several languages on historic events. You'll see how they differ and draw your own conclusions.

cabalamat 6y ago

And the maths articles only make sense if you already understand them, which restricts their usefulness somewhat.

mountainb 6y ago

If you try using Wikipedia as a research aid in almost any field and try to follow footnotes a lot of the time you will wind up with broken links or a garbage source. It's not that there are not some Wikipedia pages that are not good. It is the case that it's very challenging to tell when a page is good or bad without following the footnotes. Sometimes you will find a good source, but at least in my experience most of the time you will try to follow citations and see it ends in either 404 or a trash pit. There are also lots of situations like if you are looking for things such as statistics related to a war, if you use Wikipedia to start your research you will wind up clicking through to all kinds of trash sources that waste your time when there are compendiums of statistics through either government reports or print references that you could have just used with library access in a fraction of the time that you spent sifting through a sea of web feces.

andrepd 6y ago

Every time the post title contains "wikipedia" out come the same complaints. I say what I always say: can you please point out a specific incident where you saw wrong information, tried to correct it, and were overturned?

wpietri 6y ago
It's an important question. Sometimes I see rejection of actual good material,so it happens. Often it's well-meaning noobs running afoul of either the essential complexity (encyclopedias are hard) or the incidental complexity (Wikipedia's a bit of a beast). And sometimes it's people who are sure that THEY ARE RIGHT and HOW DARE THOSE PEOPLE. So we always need to look at specific incidents.
- oldev 6y ago
  If you are a deployment engineer/Windows desktop dev, check out the article on installers. [1] Most of those are obsolete, small and pretty much useless. The one we've been using for 15 years is not listed. Check out the article history. Every time someone tries to update it and add modern, actually useful tools, someone else comes from the woodwork and deletes it. Some of the deletionists don't know what a repackager is. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_installation_software#Windows https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_installation_software#... Just an example, in my area of expertise. Some of the rejected edits were mine.
  - jjk166 6y ago
    There was extensive discussion on the talk page about criteria for inclusion and one of those criteria is that only software that has a dedicated wikipedia page or with citations showing notability should be included on the list. It doesn't matter that you know something belongs on a list, you need to show that it belongs on the list.
    - wpietri 6y ago
      Which I'm sure is a reaction to self-promoters trying to edit the page in hopes of boosting their thing to prominence. People who don't edit Wikipedia have no idea how much of a problem spamming attempts are. This can easily lead to beleaguered editors who are inclined to stomp on anything that looks like it might possibly be spam. That's a terrible experience for well-meaning first-time contributors and I'd love to see it improve. But I get how they end up that way.

swiley 6y ago

Wikipedia has always suffered from inaccuracies. IME it's gotten better, not worse, over the past few years. I don't read many of the politically interesting articles though, maybe that's what you're complaining about? Wikipedia has never been the right platform for that though.

seanhunter 6y ago

> I would gladly pay for an encyclopedia written by actual experts, I see a tremendous value in something like that, but alas the market was killed by the free Wikipedia. There are definitely pros and cons. My wife is a professional musician and teacher so at home we have a copy of the "New Grove" encyclopedia of music, which is the industry standard "proper encyclopedia" for music. Each article is written by a specific expert in that subject, This leads to them being tremendously detailed and informative. The downside is the process of compliation is slow and so even if you have a subscription to the electronic version it will be behind (sometimes years behind) the very latest research.

Veen 6y ago
That's true, but including the very latest research isn't really what encyclopedias are for—there are other places for that.
- fartcannon 6y ago
  Yes, like Wikipedia.

Loic 6y ago

As a chemical engineer, I must say that I was never disappointed with the content of the Wikipedia pages. Of course, as I have spent 3h/day for the past 15 years improving fluid phase equilibria calculations for the chemical industry, I see where the articles have limits for this stuff, but what is available is sound. I would be interested in knowing your field of expertise where you find errors.

tedd4u 6y ago

If you want to pay, just sent $5-10/mo donation to Wikimedia. If more people did this I think it would help. I find it a fair price.

jerry1979 6y ago

I have heard people voice concerns similar to yours. Could you please provide some examples of mistakes and inaccurate info?

alexandrerond 6y ago

> Today I can see mistakes and inaccurate info in every niche I am familiar with. Because of that, I cannot trust it on subjects I know nothing about Just like HN comments :)