3 ms·

Thanks for the writeup! Slightly unrelated, but re > More to the point, the Wikipedia article for "sum type" redirects to "tagged union," which just honestly

by kaba0 4y ago

Thanks for the writeup! Slightly unrelated, but re > More to the point, the Wikipedia article for "sum type" redirects to "tagged union," which just honestly makes this more of a mess I often see Wikipedia articles in CS topics severely lacking, or claiming exact definitions, when no such thing exists. Many definitions we regularly use are not exact at all, different papers/books use them differently, e.g. how would you even define OOP, low-level languages, etc? I would prefer them to use less strong language, as too many people argue on the internet based on Wikipedia definitions.

burntsushi 4y ago
I agree that they are lacking. In theory, I have the disposition to improve articles like that, but in practice, whenever I've tried, I get shut down by editors. It's been a long time since I've tried though. It happens on other wikis too, like the Arch wiki. I realize it's a tired complaint that a lot of people have and editors don't have an easy job, but I am so completely done with contributing to wikis. I know a lot of other people with the same complaint and same conclusion, including experts in the domain of type theory. One wonders whether this is one of the reasons why the articles are not as good as they could be.