9 ms·
It's "working as intended" in the sense that its rules are being followed. The problem is that the rules are only there because we want Wikipedia to actually b
by Jiro 5y ago
It's "working as intended" in the sense that its rules are being followed. The problem is that the rules are only there because we want Wikipedia to actually be useful as a source of knowledge, and the rules which demand removing this information have failed at this larger goal.
- akvadrako 5y agoAgreed. Wikipedia would be much better without notability requirements, etc.
- psyc 5y agoThat’s how it was for the first few years, and it was glorious. Something of immense value (to inclusionists) was surely lost. The deletionists traded it all away for credit in the straight world.
- archon1410 5y agomany wikis with that premise have been created, Everipedia is the latest that comes to mind. of course they all have failed one way or the other. the comments seem to want something even more radical—a wiki without verifiability requirements. why that would be a very bad idea is immediately obvious.
- davidgerard 5y agoMany, many attempts have been made to make a Wikipedia without this requirement. None have gained any traction. Perhaps the experiment has been done, and it isn't better?
- psyc 5y agoWikipedia itself was in practice a Wikipedia without this requirement for years, and it gained all of the traction before the deletionistas won their war and rewrote history. I know this because I was working in Microsoft’s Education Products Group during that time (aka Encarta) and Wikipedia completely ended us. What Wikipedia had not gained was serious credibility - i.e. professors were forbidding their students to cite it. How hard do you think we tried to use that to our PR advantage to save our product and the whole org? It didn’t make any difference.
- tptacek 4y agoWhat's the time period you're thinking about? I was somewhat intensely involved with Wikipedia back in 2007, and "deletionism" was so ingrained into the site that it was a joke to talk about it. You'd have to be telling us that Wikipedia didn't expand or improve at all in the last (does math) 15 years. Sounds like an extraordinary claim.
- psyc 4y ago2001-2006, but front loaded in the first two years. Perhaps you can imagine why I would see/feel this as new people coming in and taking over a great thing. Of course Wikipedia expanded and improved astronomically in that time, but within its own constraints. If you've completely bought into the policy, then you would see that as expanding and improving, full stop, mission accomplished. It was a trade-off. Something gained, something lost. I expect that you think there is a "pick one" law at work here. I don't. I would have liked to see more aspiration to completeness, even at the expense of errors taking longer to correct. Like open source with less code review up front, vs. with code review and a lot more process. As it is, Wikipedia is still great, but how much knowledge will be lost forever? The world at large and future generations will never know that my friend, who has a Wikipedia article of his name that is for whatever reasons non-biographical (I have not kept up with the rules, at all), founded a company and created software that transformed an entire massive, critical, but very very boring industry. You're not wrong. Be happy about what is. I'm sad about what might have been. Don't worry about it, it's part of my personality. Listened to too much Nine Inch Nails.
- Ekaros 5y agoNetwork effects are what made Internet great and ruined it... Wikipedia has the existing content(could be stolen), but it also has the brand recognition which makes any new players very hard to usurp it. And regular users are annoyed, but really don't change their use patterns.
- tptacek 4y agoWhat does it matter what users do? The pages we're talking about aren't on the Wikipedia at all and never will be. It's not like you're competing with them as a platform for the content; it's all yours.