6 ms·

Wikipedia has gone from being an encyclopedia to “here is generally what the media has said about this and if you say otherwise fuck you” Most espouse the clai

Wikipedia has gone from being an encyclopedia to “here is generally what the media has said about this and if you say otherwise fuck you” Most espouse the claim that they appreciate science, but I think really people appreciate James Bond gadgets and call that science.

calvinmorrison 4y ago
Which I think initially was, okay with me, since seeing through the political spin is easy on articles about politics. But it's invasive, on medical pages, on celebrity pages, on every page you can think of.
- postingposts 4y ago
  The real stinker of a rule is that they prefer media sources to first-hand accounts or direct sources. For example: an article about Linux CANNOT link to posts Linus himself has made on forums, but CAN link to media articles that get his posts incorrect. Then, because the editors enforce this real crap rule, you can have an article that lists the media opinion about some Linux component but you CAN’T even INCLUDE what Linus wrote! It is unchecked madness.
  - chris_wot 4y ago
    That’s a carefully considered rule. In general, primary sources are frowned upon, instead they have editors use secondary or tertiary sources.
    - CamperBob2 4y ago
      You've simply restated the rule in a context where justification was expected.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - YPPH 4y ago
        First, I need to restate the rule to give it nuance. Original research isn't allowed on Wikipedia. Primary sources are acceptable for simple statements of fact, but editors can't make analysis of or synthesise what is contained in that material. That analysis or synthesis requires reliable secondary sources. The epistemological basis for the "no original research" rule seems to be because Wikipedia is not a suitable vehicle for synthesis or analysis: it is written by anonymous editors with varying degrees of expertise in the subject area. They are not assumed to be competent to conduct such analysis. They are only assumed competent to find secondary sources that make such analysis and cite them. The rule also has some pragmatism about it. If such analysis was allowed, it would have to be performed on Wikipedia with its reasoning clearly articulated and developed. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, it shouldn't be cluttered by such reasoning. The appropriate place for analysis and synthesis of this kind are peer reviewed journal articles or other secondary sources where the author's expertise or authority to speak to a point, and their reasoning, is made plain. A reader should, at least in theory, be able to check the source and verify as such. It is also not seen as acceptable for editors, who lack accountability for what they post, to offer such analysis. A news report is expected to have some degree of accountability, to put the relevant statement into context and to consider competing views. A Linux kernel mailing list post does not do this. That said, in my experience, a blind eye is turned to uncontroversial analysis.
        Jiro 4y ago
        Many of those things are the Wikipedia equivalent of legal fictions. They may not be true in any meaningful sense. News reports have very little accountability outside of cases where someone can sue the newspaper, and the "analysis" that people are assumed to be incompetent at and the "finding secondary sources" they are assumed to be competent actually require fairly similar levels of competency.
        YPPH 4y ago
        How is it a fiction that news reports come from identified individuals, while Wikipedia is edited by anonymous individuals with questionable credentials? I'm not convinced of the characterisation as a legal fiction, either. There is a logical justification for this position, as stated, in detail, in my reply. A freely editable encyclopedia isn't the place for contentious analysis.
    - Ekaros 4y ago
      Where it fails is that media lies are not considered primary sources for this stuff, but instead secondary... When their follow the political spin editors want to present...
  - caslon 4y ago
    That's not true, actually. The Wikipedia page for Linux has a bunch of direct-from-Linus citations. Here's one I found literally on the first row of citations. https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.linux/c/5Rcys5xYuJc/m/Dpv00xjb5koJ https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.linux/c/5Rcys5xYuJc/m/Dp...
    - postingposts 4y ago
      It’s just an example. Shall I craft another example for you? Or should we talk about the point the example is trying to make? :)
      - caslon 4y ago
        Your example being wrong disproves your entire point.
        postingposts 4y ago
        PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
        You stated that a thing could not happen. You received an example showing that thing happening. The example disproves your claim that it could not happen. If you perhaps meant something more like "in general, you can't cite the subject directly", then you'd be right that a single example does not disprove your point. But you used quite unequivocal language.
        postingposts 4y ago
        It’s similar to if someone in public who is a non-famous figure said something and it was recorded on a phone but not posted elsewhere. You can’t use the phone recording on the article. Now, let’s talk about why that’s stupid. are you happy you pedantic weasel?
  - easrng 4y ago
    Also, if you want Wikipedia to reflect a change to your name/pronouns you need to wait for someone to write a new article including them, or contact the publishers of existing articles and hope they make the change.
    - calvinmorrison 4y ago
      My father has some niche research interests and did a lot of primary research. Soccer clubs, dead kingdoms, a painter from the midwest. As a kid I spent hours in the library with my dad looking at microfiche. He essentially had to - for many of these things, make websites so he could quote the website on wikipedia. He's actually gotten quite adept at creating a digital papertrail for some of these interests. Digitizing with OCR is nice - but someone still needs to write the story. Piece together the different news clippings. In one case - it was a soccer team - Bethlehem Steel, which one of my great great something or others played for. They won a bunch of championships, there's a whole story, but nobody had really compiled it into a usable work. When Bethlehem Steel the name got resurrected as a feeder club for the Phila Union, they called HIM for the info - It was kind of fun watching my dad go onto an AM radio broadcast! Another, he's currently interested in is a fairly important but not well known artist who did a lot of work in the midwest from the area we are from. He is currently writing up the story, interviewing family, etc. I guess he'll have to publish a news story in order for it to be real! Looking at that artist's wikipedia page though - it does appear that most of his citations are directly to news clippings... like Fayetteville Democrat, 23 January 1935, p. 1. Kansas City Times, 23 May 1936, p. 18. Kinda cool
      - davidgerard 4y ago
        You can quote printed sources directly, you don't need to make them into a website first.
mhh__ 4y ago
I actually have the opposite opinion in that I think Wikipedia has done a good job (albeit versus a benchmark of real zeroes) handling itself in the so-called post-truth age. The only people I know who have complained to me about Wikipedia are all contrarians (some of which I would call "Contrarian idiots", since the play on the green day song just popped into my head) who have so far been basically unable to substantiate any concrete argument, either structural or regarding more than the minutiae of a given article. It's also worth noting that in recent years we've had a lot of very controversial and more importantly novel geopolitical and domestic "lore" being formed, and I think people make a fundamental mistake in expecting wikipedia to be as confident as it is for the new as it is for the old or perhaps merely mature.
- postingposts 4y ago
  It’s extremely good for science and maths where there’s little room for argument or interpretation. History, or current events tend to be Abysmal. Literature tends to be underrepresented and the arts in general are not well-curated, either in completeness or in finding ways to display the work or discuss it. I admire the project but ultimately at this point it’s not very useful.
  - reidjs 4y ago
    How is something that’s extremely good at science and math documentation not very useful? Do you mean it’s not useful to historians/artists?
    - MrPatan 4y ago
      The sleight of hand is to be Truth about science and math, then pretend you're Truth about everything else based on that. Pretty useful if you can pull it off. What could you do with that?
      - mhh__ 4y ago
        This is the kind of argument I was referring to. Anything specific you're referring to?
agumonkey 4y ago
I found reading about history of science interesting because you see how for long periods people "knew what was true" only to discover a better truth, that includes even brilliant physicists. It kinda killed the absolute aspect of science for me. Sadly a lot of people, thanks to the web / computer / wikipedia era are freshly jumping into science as a safe source of truth and cannot keep the implicit "if" regarding a lot of domains.

calvinmorrison 4y ago

Which I think initially was, okay with me, since seeing through the political spin is easy on articles about politics. But it's invasive, on medical pages, on celebrity pages, on every page you can think of.

postingposts 4y ago
The real stinker of a rule is that they prefer media sources to first-hand accounts or direct sources. For example: an article about Linux CANNOT link to posts Linus himself has made on forums, but CAN link to media articles that get his posts incorrect. Then, because the editors enforce this real crap rule, you can have an article that lists the media opinion about some Linux component but you CAN’T even INCLUDE what Linus wrote! It is unchecked madness.
- chris_wot 4y ago
  That’s a carefully considered rule. In general, primary sources are frowned upon, instead they have editors use secondary or tertiary sources.
  - CamperBob2 4y ago
    You've simply restated the rule in a context where justification was expected.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - YPPH 4y ago
      First, I need to restate the rule to give it nuance. Original research isn't allowed on Wikipedia. Primary sources are acceptable for simple statements of fact, but editors can't make analysis of or synthesise what is contained in that material. That analysis or synthesis requires reliable secondary sources. The epistemological basis for the "no original research" rule seems to be because Wikipedia is not a suitable vehicle for synthesis or analysis: it is written by anonymous editors with varying degrees of expertise in the subject area. They are not assumed to be competent to conduct such analysis. They are only assumed competent to find secondary sources that make such analysis and cite them. The rule also has some pragmatism about it. If such analysis was allowed, it would have to be performed on Wikipedia with its reasoning clearly articulated and developed. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, it shouldn't be cluttered by such reasoning. The appropriate place for analysis and synthesis of this kind are peer reviewed journal articles or other secondary sources where the author's expertise or authority to speak to a point, and their reasoning, is made plain. A reader should, at least in theory, be able to check the source and verify as such. It is also not seen as acceptable for editors, who lack accountability for what they post, to offer such analysis. A news report is expected to have some degree of accountability, to put the relevant statement into context and to consider competing views. A Linux kernel mailing list post does not do this. That said, in my experience, a blind eye is turned to uncontroversial analysis.
      - Jiro 4y ago
        Many of those things are the Wikipedia equivalent of legal fictions. They may not be true in any meaningful sense. News reports have very little accountability outside of cases where someone can sue the newspaper, and the "analysis" that people are assumed to be incompetent at and the "finding secondary sources" they are assumed to be competent actually require fairly similar levels of competency.
        YPPH 4y ago
        How is it a fiction that news reports come from identified individuals, while Wikipedia is edited by anonymous individuals with questionable credentials? I'm not convinced of the characterisation as a legal fiction, either. There is a logical justification for this position, as stated, in detail, in my reply. A freely editable encyclopedia isn't the place for contentious analysis.
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    Where it fails is that media lies are not considered primary sources for this stuff, but instead secondary... When their follow the political spin editors want to present...
- caslon 4y ago
  That's not true, actually. The Wikipedia page for Linux has a bunch of direct-from-Linus citations. Here's one I found literally on the first row of citations. https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.linux/c/5Rcys5xYuJc/m/Dpv00xjb5koJ https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.linux/c/5Rcys5xYuJc/m/Dp...
  - postingposts 4y ago
    It’s just an example. Shall I craft another example for you? Or should we talk about the point the example is trying to make? :)
    - caslon 4y ago
      Your example being wrong disproves your entire point.
      - postingposts 4y ago
        PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
        You stated that a thing could not happen. You received an example showing that thing happening. The example disproves your claim that it could not happen. If you perhaps meant something more like "in general, you can't cite the subject directly", then you'd be right that a single example does not disprove your point. But you used quite unequivocal language.
        postingposts 4y ago
        It’s similar to if someone in public who is a non-famous figure said something and it was recorded on a phone but not posted elsewhere. You can’t use the phone recording on the article. Now, let’s talk about why that’s stupid. are you happy you pedantic weasel?
- easrng 4y ago
  Also, if you want Wikipedia to reflect a change to your name/pronouns you need to wait for someone to write a new article including them, or contact the publishers of existing articles and hope they make the change.
  - calvinmorrison 4y ago
    My father has some niche research interests and did a lot of primary research. Soccer clubs, dead kingdoms, a painter from the midwest. As a kid I spent hours in the library with my dad looking at microfiche. He essentially had to - for many of these things, make websites so he could quote the website on wikipedia. He's actually gotten quite adept at creating a digital papertrail for some of these interests. Digitizing with OCR is nice - but someone still needs to write the story. Piece together the different news clippings. In one case - it was a soccer team - Bethlehem Steel, which one of my great great something or others played for. They won a bunch of championships, there's a whole story, but nobody had really compiled it into a usable work. When Bethlehem Steel the name got resurrected as a feeder club for the Phila Union, they called HIM for the info - It was kind of fun watching my dad go onto an AM radio broadcast! Another, he's currently interested in is a fairly important but not well known artist who did a lot of work in the midwest from the area we are from. He is currently writing up the story, interviewing family, etc. I guess he'll have to publish a news story in order for it to be real! Looking at that artist's wikipedia page though - it does appear that most of his citations are directly to news clippings... like Fayetteville Democrat, 23 January 1935, p. 1. Kansas City Times, 23 May 1936, p. 18. Kinda cool
    - davidgerard 4y ago
      You can quote printed sources directly, you don't need to make them into a website first.

mhh__ 4y ago

I actually have the opposite opinion in that I think Wikipedia has done a good job (albeit versus a benchmark of real zeroes) handling itself in the so-called post-truth age. The only people I know who have complained to me about Wikipedia are all contrarians (some of which I would call "Contrarian idiots", since the play on the green day song just popped into my head) who have so far been basically unable to substantiate any concrete argument, either structural or regarding more than the minutiae of a given article. It's also worth noting that in recent years we've had a lot of very controversial and more importantly novel geopolitical and domestic "lore" being formed, and I think people make a fundamental mistake in expecting wikipedia to be as confident as it is for the new as it is for the old or perhaps merely mature.

postingposts 4y ago
It’s extremely good for science and maths where there’s little room for argument or interpretation. History, or current events tend to be Abysmal. Literature tends to be underrepresented and the arts in general are not well-curated, either in completeness or in finding ways to display the work or discuss it. I admire the project but ultimately at this point it’s not very useful.
- reidjs 4y ago
  How is something that’s extremely good at science and math documentation not very useful? Do you mean it’s not useful to historians/artists?
  - MrPatan 4y ago
    The sleight of hand is to be Truth about science and math, then pretend you're Truth about everything else based on that. Pretty useful if you can pull it off. What could you do with that?
    - mhh__ 4y ago
      This is the kind of argument I was referring to. Anything specific you're referring to?

agumonkey 4y ago

I found reading about history of science interesting because you see how for long periods people "knew what was true" only to discover a better truth, that includes even brilliant physicists. It kinda killed the absolute aspect of science for me. Sadly a lot of people, thanks to the web / computer / wikipedia era are freshly jumping into science as a safe source of truth and cannot keep the implicit "if" regarding a lot of domains.