4 ms·

Are those pages inaccurate? Any examples?

NavinF 4y ago
I wouldn't say they're inaccurate; Just unfocused. Can't think of an example off the top of my head, but it's super weird seeing a whole paragraph about something that's only relevant to historians followed by 1 sentence about something that revolutionized the field a few years ago and is now widely deployed in production.
- random314 4y ago
  It is really frustrating that there are dozens of complaints about inaccuracies and awfulness of articles in wikipedia with none of the complainers able to provide a single example, there are 100s of comments with zero example articles at all. I work in ML and have found wikipedia to be a very important reference when I do any research. Which is what an encyclopedia is supposed to be.
  - GCA10 4y ago
    Fair question -- here are a few examples: On Wikipedia's entry for Facebook, there's no discussion in the 2006-12 section about Facebook's steps to monetize the site around targeted ads. That has had gigantic global impact and was the impetus for Meta/Facebook's emergence as one of the world's most profitable companies. But Facebook never "announced" that it was doing this. So the entry is clogged with a string of quite minor "announcements" that it did make -- touching on short-lived headquarters moves, feature tweaks, obscure awards, etc. instead. Wikipedia's entry on Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins is an achingly long list of votes she's taken over the years, or one-line quotes about her positions at various moments in time, without any effort to write coherently about what's been consistent or evolving in her political views. Also absent is any nuanced sense of how Collins's journey interacted with changing political tides. We end up with a 20,000-word string of factoids that goes on forever, with scant insight about her enduring impact, core principles, etc.
    - random314 4y ago
      I am unfamiliar with Collins. However, looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Collins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Collins There is a whole section and separate article on her political positions. As an encyclopedic reference it looks like a pretty good reference. Obviously a strong narrative like a new Yorker profile can't be expected of an encyclopedia.
      - GCA10 4y ago
        Actually, back in the day, that's exactly what the top encyclopedias aspired to do. It's worth looking up who wrote the main entries in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. Future Nobel laureate Ernest Rutherford did the entry on radioactivity. British medical researcher Joseph Lister (the inspiration for Listerine), wrote the entry on slime molds. Environmentalist John Muir weighed in. And, in my absolute favorite, Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin wrote the article about anarchy.

I wouldn't say they're inaccurate; Just unfocused. Can't think of an example off the top of my head, but it's super weird seeing a whole paragraph about something that's only relevant to historians followed by 1 sentence about something that revolutionized the field a few years ago and is now widely deployed in production.

random314 4y ago
It is really frustrating that there are dozens of complaints about inaccuracies and awfulness of articles in wikipedia with none of the complainers able to provide a single example, there are 100s of comments with zero example articles at all. I work in ML and have found wikipedia to be a very important reference when I do any research. Which is what an encyclopedia is supposed to be.
- GCA10 4y ago
  Fair question -- here are a few examples: On Wikipedia's entry for Facebook, there's no discussion in the 2006-12 section about Facebook's steps to monetize the site around targeted ads. That has had gigantic global impact and was the impetus for Meta/Facebook's emergence as one of the world's most profitable companies. But Facebook never "announced" that it was doing this. So the entry is clogged with a string of quite minor "announcements" that it did make -- touching on short-lived headquarters moves, feature tweaks, obscure awards, etc. instead. Wikipedia's entry on Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins is an achingly long list of votes she's taken over the years, or one-line quotes about her positions at various moments in time, without any effort to write coherently about what's been consistent or evolving in her political views. Also absent is any nuanced sense of how Collins's journey interacted with changing political tides. We end up with a 20,000-word string of factoids that goes on forever, with scant insight about her enduring impact, core principles, etc.
  - random314 4y ago
    I am unfamiliar with Collins. However, looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Collins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Collins There is a whole section and separate article on her political positions. As an encyclopedic reference it looks like a pretty good reference. Obviously a strong narrative like a new Yorker profile can't be expected of an encyclopedia.
    - GCA10 4y ago
      Actually, back in the day, that's exactly what the top encyclopedias aspired to do. It's worth looking up who wrote the main entries in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. Future Nobel laureate Ernest Rutherford did the entry on radioactivity. British medical researcher Joseph Lister (the inspiration for Listerine), wrote the entry on slime molds. Environmentalist John Muir weighed in. And, in my absolute favorite, Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin wrote the article about anarchy.