4 ms·

I don't understand why something being worthless to you makes it inappropriate to have on an encyclopedia we both read.

lavajava 3y ago
I think the difficulty arises from finding a balance between a baseline that appeals to a general audience and an extensive repository for expert reference. Sifting through large Wikis can be daunting and discourage viewership. There is even an acronym for this: TL;DR https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Too_long%3B_didn%27t_read https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Too_long%3B_didn%2...
- kortilla 3y ago
  Wikipedia supports more than one article. It’s dumb to not have related articles about specific details.
ghaff 3y ago
At some point, a general purpose reference can get overwhelmed by specialized minutiae. I'm generally in the inclusionist camp with respect to Wikipedia, but I also don't think it's really an appropriate vessel for all of possible human knowledge. Which implies there is some line. So an article on the Big Dig is probably appropriate but not the blow by blow history of some country road.
- im3w1l 3y ago
  Hiding irrelevant details from people that don't care about them is just a UI-puzzle that should be possible to solve imho.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Just a simple matter of programming. And now you're asking for an algorithm to decide what you can see and not see.
    - whatshisface 3y ago
      How about the people who click on "homeomorphism" see an article on homeomorphisms and the people who click on "Route 48" see an article on Route 48?
      - thfuran 3y ago
        Is the article on route 48 meant to be a 500,000 word treatise on its history including every work order involved in its construction and maintenance as well as discussion of the procurement process for the paints used for its lines, or can some of that maybe be elided? Would you expect the article on homeomorphisms to include a list of every homeomorphism every described, suggested, defined, or posited?
        whatshisface 3y ago
        Wikipedia has a couple of devices to solve this organizational problem: "full article" links that appear at the top of sections, and "list of X" pages. So in your examples, you'd have a three-sentence "History" section on the Route 48 page, with a link to the full article on the history of Route 48 at the top. For your second example, there would be a "see also" section at the bottom of the article, including a hyperlink to "List of Homeomorphisms."
advisedwang 3y ago
Risks of too much low interest data in wikipedia include: * Not enough interest to update wiki when the subject changes; then wiki becomes out of date and unreliable. * Too few eyeballs allows false information to be added (accidentally or intentionally) * Becomes harder to do wiki-wide changes (of course it's inevitably too large for manual wiki-wide changes, but you can imagine more articles means more corner cases will be hit that will get automation mistakes or require more complex automation. Think info-boxes used in novel ways etc)
- whatshisface 3y ago
  The first two are arguments against letting an individual write a single article about a unique topic, not against allowing a vibrant community of people with special interests document them in a public reference. The third could be solved by only deleting pages that use the wiki language in unmaintainable ways.
bawolff 3y ago
A lot of making a high quality resource comes down to editing. Making sure you don't just include what you need but also remove what you don't. It is impossible to satisfy everyone, which is why i think it is a good thing to separate out to different resources when different groups want different things.
- whatshisface 3y ago
  Deleting text from a page I can understand, but the context of this discussion is the deletion of thousands of pages.
add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
It's more the Wikipedia leadership that would have to be convinced. And looking at it that way, is it safe for all human knowledge to be gatekept by a single group?
vvillena 3y ago
A lot of that content that is deemed "not Wikipedia worthy" ends up in Fandom, a for-profit wiki host also started by Jimmy Wales.

I think the difficulty arises from finding a balance between a baseline that appeals to a general audience and an extensive repository for expert reference. Sifting through large Wikis can be daunting and discourage viewership. There is even an acronym for this: TL;DR https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Too_long%3B_didn%27t_read https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Too_long%3B_didn%2...

kortilla 3y ago
Wikipedia supports more than one article. It’s dumb to not have related articles about specific details.

ghaff 3y ago

At some point, a general purpose reference can get overwhelmed by specialized minutiae. I'm generally in the inclusionist camp with respect to Wikipedia, but I also don't think it's really an appropriate vessel for all of possible human knowledge. Which implies there is some line. So an article on the Big Dig is probably appropriate but not the blow by blow history of some country road.

im3w1l 3y ago
Hiding irrelevant details from people that don't care about them is just a UI-puzzle that should be possible to solve imho.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Just a simple matter of programming. And now you're asking for an algorithm to decide what you can see and not see.
  - whatshisface 3y ago
    How about the people who click on "homeomorphism" see an article on homeomorphisms and the people who click on "Route 48" see an article on Route 48?
    - thfuran 3y ago
      Is the article on route 48 meant to be a 500,000 word treatise on its history including every work order involved in its construction and maintenance as well as discussion of the procurement process for the paints used for its lines, or can some of that maybe be elided? Would you expect the article on homeomorphisms to include a list of every homeomorphism every described, suggested, defined, or posited?
      - whatshisface 3y ago
        Wikipedia has a couple of devices to solve this organizational problem: "full article" links that appear at the top of sections, and "list of X" pages. So in your examples, you'd have a three-sentence "History" section on the Route 48 page, with a link to the full article on the history of Route 48 at the top. For your second example, there would be a "see also" section at the bottom of the article, including a hyperlink to "List of Homeomorphisms."

advisedwang 3y ago

Risks of too much low interest data in wikipedia include: * Not enough interest to update wiki when the subject changes; then wiki becomes out of date and unreliable. * Too few eyeballs allows false information to be added (accidentally or intentionally) * Becomes harder to do wiki-wide changes (of course it's inevitably too large for manual wiki-wide changes, but you can imagine more articles means more corner cases will be hit that will get automation mistakes or require more complex automation. Think info-boxes used in novel ways etc)

whatshisface 3y ago
The first two are arguments against letting an individual write a single article about a unique topic, not against allowing a vibrant community of people with special interests document them in a public reference. The third could be solved by only deleting pages that use the wiki language in unmaintainable ways.

bawolff 3y ago

A lot of making a high quality resource comes down to editing. Making sure you don't just include what you need but also remove what you don't. It is impossible to satisfy everyone, which is why i think it is a good thing to separate out to different resources when different groups want different things.

whatshisface 3y ago
Deleting text from a page I can understand, but the context of this discussion is the deletion of thousands of pages.

add-sub-mul-div 3y ago

It's more the Wikipedia leadership that would have to be convinced. And looking at it that way, is it safe for all human knowledge to be gatekept by a single group?

vvillena 3y ago

A lot of that content that is deemed "not Wikipedia worthy" ends up in Fandom, a for-profit wiki host also started by Jimmy Wales.