3 ms·

Here's the problem imo: most of Wikipedia's content is currently unmaintained (as far as I can tell). If there's any political or nationalistic controversy to

by flomo 15y ago

Here's the problem imo: most of Wikipedia's content is currently unmaintained (as far as I can tell). If there's any political or nationalistic controversy to the content, there's 50 wikilawyers obsessively monitoring it. But if the article is 'boring', anyone can go in there and write whatever they want and (unless a bot thinks it's vandalism), nobody will care. This is natural - it's fun to write an article and collaborate on edits. Then you move on, because no normal person wants to be the content janitor. And what happens to the article 5 years later? How about 10 or 20 years? I think if Wikipedia doesn't get a handle on this, on the structural level, the site is going to be mostly random agrammatical garbage sooner-or-later. Wikipedia is already at the point where it seems like every article has content warning banner on top of it. Most of them have been there for years, and nobody cares.

redthrowaway 15y ago
>most of Wikipedia's content is currently unmaintained "Most" by what measure? By bits? By number of articles? Possibly. By pageviews or importance, no way. I cannot remember googling something, checking out its wikipedia entry, and finding it unhelpful. It's been at least 5 years since that has happened. Sure, there's a bunch of low-quality articles with no maintainers, but to claim that that makes wikipedia bad is to claim github's bad for the same reason.
- eurleif 15y ago
  >"Most" by what measure? By bits? By number of articles? Possibly. By pageviews or importance, no way. Are you positive not by pageviews? Sure, the articles that get a lot of pageviews are maintained, but I imagine there's a pretty big long tail of articles that get small number pageviews each, and not all of those are maintained. I don't think they're necessarily going to fall into disrepair, though.
- flomo 15y ago
  I'm certainly not saying the articles are unhelpful, I'm noticing most of them are slowly getting worse. Next time you try your google experiment, read the article closely. I can almost guarantee you'll find dubious claims inserted in odd places, atrocious writing, and all sorts of wikiwarts indicating untrustworthy content. Now check back in six months. Chances are the article will not have improved, it will include more of the above. In the long-term that doesn't bode well for the content.
justincormack 15y ago
Oddly though the vandals concentrate on a few articles. The article on lentils is constantly vandalized, while most of the long tail is not.
jellicle 15y ago
> But if the article is 'boring', anyone can go in there and write whatever they want Well, in general what you can do is go in there and write whatever you want - perhaps a well-researched article about a subject which you know well - and then have it deleted within a few seconds.
- flomo 15y ago
  Conversely, if you try to edit down the nonsensical word salads wikipedians tend to create, your edit will likely be reverted with 'Valuable content which could be improved'. The whole thing is becoming impenetrable.

by flomo 15y ago

redthrowaway 15y ago

>most of Wikipedia's content is currently unmaintained "Most" by what measure? By bits? By number of articles? Possibly. By pageviews or importance, no way. I cannot remember googling something, checking out its wikipedia entry, and finding it unhelpful. It's been at least 5 years since that has happened. Sure, there's a bunch of low-quality articles with no maintainers, but to claim that that makes wikipedia bad is to claim github's bad for the same reason.

eurleif 15y ago
>"Most" by what measure? By bits? By number of articles? Possibly. By pageviews or importance, no way. Are you positive not by pageviews? Sure, the articles that get a lot of pageviews are maintained, but I imagine there's a pretty big long tail of articles that get small number pageviews each, and not all of those are maintained. I don't think they're necessarily going to fall into disrepair, though.
flomo 15y ago
I'm certainly not saying the articles are unhelpful, I'm noticing most of them are slowly getting worse. Next time you try your google experiment, read the article closely. I can almost guarantee you'll find dubious claims inserted in odd places, atrocious writing, and all sorts of wikiwarts indicating untrustworthy content. Now check back in six months. Chances are the article will not have improved, it will include more of the above. In the long-term that doesn't bode well for the content.

justincormack 15y ago

Oddly though the vandals concentrate on a few articles. The article on lentils is constantly vandalized, while most of the long tail is not.

jellicle 15y ago

> But if the article is 'boring', anyone can go in there and write whatever they want Well, in general what you can do is go in there and write whatever you want - perhaps a well-researched article about a subject which you know well - and then have it deleted within a few seconds.

flomo 15y ago
Conversely, if you try to edit down the nonsensical word salads wikipedians tend to create, your edit will likely be reverted with 'Valuable content which could be improved'. The whole thing is becoming impenetrable.