4 ms·

Recent HN articles on Wikipedia are not helping me to like the edit system. Seeing someone on a crusade to edit other people's work because they don't like a p

by xupybd 3y ago

Recent HN articles on Wikipedia are not helping me to like the edit system. Seeing someone on a crusade to edit other people's work because they don't like a phrase was really distasteful to me. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35838180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35838180 Now these edit wars are even more so.

kelnos 3y ago
If I were to write something in a Wikipedia article and some bad grammar or word choice slipped in, I'd be thrilled that someone else would correct it for me. Not for me, but for everyone. It's not like traditional published works don't go through an editing process. Part of the point of that editing process is there to fix language usage issues. Also I think "because they don't like a phrase" is a bit of an uncharitable description of what they're doing. You may think it's silly or pedantic, but it's not for us to decide (or even pass judgment on) what other people choose to do with their spare time. I'm sure you and I both have hobbies or whatever that others might think are silly wastes of time (like commenting on HN about silly things like this).
- xupybd 3y ago
  I'm not against them spending time. I'm against their attempt at controlling the use of language. They're not fixing a mistake, they're rewriting according to personal preference. I see this as defacing other people's work. To me it would be like going into an open source project and changing the tab spacing just because it's not the one you use.
  - commoner 3y ago
    > To me it would be like going into an open source project and changing the tab spacing just because it's not the one you use. This analogy doesn't work because one of Wikipedia's rules is that nobody owns any article, even if they wrote it themselves: > All Wikipedia pages and articles are edited collaboratively by a community of volunteer contributors. Individual contributors, also called editors, are known as Wikipedians. No one, no matter what, has the right to act as though they are the owner of a particular article (or any part of it). > Once you have posted it to Wikipedia, you cannot stop anyone from editing text you have written. As each edit page clearly states: >> Work submitted to Wikipedia can be edited, used, and redistributed—by anyone > Similarly, by submitting your ideas (for article organization, categorization, style, standards, etc.) to Wikipedia, you allow others to challenge and develop them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ownership_of_content https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ownership_of_content Open source software projects are different because each repo is usually controlled by at least one owner who can make decisions based solely on their own preferences. On Wikipedia, every disagreement is put to discussion and there is no article owner who can overrule everyone else.
    - xupybd 3y ago
      No analogy holds 100%. It feels the same to me. Yes there are many differences. As with every analogy.
      - commoner 3y ago
        My point is that if you edit an article on Wikipedia, you can't reasonably expect the article to be as you left it. Every article is ever changing and nobody gets to stake a claim to anything they write.
        xupybd 3y ago
        I don't disagree with that point.
- iudqnolq 3y ago
  > You may think it's silly or pedantic, but it's not for us to decide If we thought it was silly or pedantic you'd be right. But we think it's wrong. I have no desire to repeat the exhaustive discussion recently on this site about why.

by xupybd 3y ago

kelnos 3y ago

If I were to write something in a Wikipedia article and some bad grammar or word choice slipped in, I'd be thrilled that someone else would correct it for me. Not for me, but for everyone. It's not like traditional published works don't go through an editing process. Part of the point of that editing process is there to fix language usage issues. Also I think "because they don't like a phrase" is a bit of an uncharitable description of what they're doing. You may think it's silly or pedantic, but it's not for us to decide (or even pass judgment on) what other people choose to do with their spare time. I'm sure you and I both have hobbies or whatever that others might think are silly wastes of time (like commenting on HN about silly things like this).

xupybd 3y ago
I'm not against them spending time. I'm against their attempt at controlling the use of language. They're not fixing a mistake, they're rewriting according to personal preference. I see this as defacing other people's work. To me it would be like going into an open source project and changing the tab spacing just because it's not the one you use.
- commoner 3y ago
  > To me it would be like going into an open source project and changing the tab spacing just because it's not the one you use. This analogy doesn't work because one of Wikipedia's rules is that nobody owns any article, even if they wrote it themselves: > All Wikipedia pages and articles are edited collaboratively by a community of volunteer contributors. Individual contributors, also called editors, are known as Wikipedians. No one, no matter what, has the right to act as though they are the owner of a particular article (or any part of it). > Once you have posted it to Wikipedia, you cannot stop anyone from editing text you have written. As each edit page clearly states: >> Work submitted to Wikipedia can be edited, used, and redistributed—by anyone > Similarly, by submitting your ideas (for article organization, categorization, style, standards, etc.) to Wikipedia, you allow others to challenge and develop them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ownership_of_content https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ownership_of_content Open source software projects are different because each repo is usually controlled by at least one owner who can make decisions based solely on their own preferences. On Wikipedia, every disagreement is put to discussion and there is no article owner who can overrule everyone else.
  - xupybd 3y ago
    No analogy holds 100%. It feels the same to me. Yes there are many differences. As with every analogy.
    - commoner 3y ago
      My point is that if you edit an article on Wikipedia, you can't reasonably expect the article to be as you left it. Every article is ever changing and nobody gets to stake a claim to anything they write.
      - xupybd 3y ago
        I don't disagree with that point.
iudqnolq 3y ago
> You may think it's silly or pedantic, but it's not for us to decide If we thought it was silly or pedantic you'd be right. But we think it's wrong. I have no desire to repeat the exhaustive discussion recently on this site about why.