4 ms·
What's with all the hate? The author has a lot of valid points. 1) If it's supposed to be the "encyclopedia that anyone can edit", then it should be easy to us
by eykanal 15y ago
What's with all the hate? The author has a lot of valid points.
1) If it's supposed to be the "encyclopedia that anyone can edit", then it should be easy to use. If the "anyone can edit" is marred by insane levels of bureaucracy, making it so that, technically anyone can edit, but realistically, only those who know how to game the system can edit, than the system as a whole is a partial failure.
2) Who are you to judge whether he's an expert? Given that he at least claims to work in the field, that makes him more of an expert than almost all of the wikipedia editors combined. They just know their own bureaucratic guidelines, he actually knows something about the article in discussion. In the interest of journalistic integrity, they should at least attempt to listen to his points.
3) His points about how difficult it is to contest something is completely spot-on. There's no good reason why all the "contest this" or "discuss that" pages are simply huge text pages, other than because no one gave them a proper UI. For new users, it's confusing as heck. Given the status wikipedia has nowadays, and how widely it's used, they simply can't expect every user to know or care about their arcane systems. The system needs a proper UI for these sorts of things, making it easy to (a) file a complaint, (b) find a previously filed complaint, (c) discuss the complaint, and (d) find the resolution. His story about wading through talk pages isn't unusual, and it's kind of shameful for wikipedia that they haven't made it easier to use since their inception.
- vacri 15y agoIt is easy to use. It's just not mindless to use. It's easy to drive a car, but that doesn't mean there's no initial learning. Also, where you say 'game the system', you really mean 'follow the system'. I've made tons of correctional edits and vandal reversions on Wikipedia, and a small number of new info edits. Only one of them has ever caused a problem - that was a revert done by a bot that didn't recognise I was fixing vandalism (some previous errant edit had blown the page of a seagoing vessel out to the longest page on wikipedia by far, with ctrl+c ctrl+V). The bot that wouldn't let me revert also wouldn't let anyone comment on the talk page, and the feedback link for it was broken. But apart from that one experience, I've made probably somewhere between 100-200 successful edits. I don't even have an account, I edit anonymously.
- Flibbler 15y agoJust because you find it easy doesn't mean others do, agreed there's an initial learning curve to everything in life but we (current Wikipedia contributors) could be doing a lot more to smooth that curve for less technically minded people who want to contribute. We could also be doing more to make the basics of the rules clearer.