5 ms·

Why does the Wiki page say "citation needed" for calling her a "computer scientist, electrical engineer"?

waterhouse 2y ago
If you were looking at the same revision I saw, the "citation needed" was on the word "was", and on mouseover said "Please add credible news of death".
amin 2y ago
[flagged]
- adamomada 2y ago
  The tragedy of Wikipedia is that something like 3,000 people in the entire world are active editors (>100 edits)
  - skyyler 2y ago
    Be the change you wish to see :) I edit wikipedia casually.
  - m0llusk 2y ago
    And they focus largely on deletions which makes contributing frustrating.
  - sltkr 2y ago
    The last time I tried to contribute to Wikipedia I spent more than an hour crafting an initial article about Makoto Matsumoto, inventor of the popular Mersenne Twister PRNG, mostly using sources from the sister article on the Japanese wiki. Within moments, the article was deleted by a veteran editor who didn't consider the subject sufficiently notable. (This was apparently not an issue for the much smaller German, French and Japanese wikis.) My page was 1 of 5 pages he had deleted in the span of 15 minutes, which shows how much effort he personally spent on the decision to negate other contributor's work. Needless to say, I doubt I will ever try to contribute to Wikipedia again.
    - arjie 2y ago
      Sorry to hear about that. I am not an admin so I can only do exact searches in the Deletion Log https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Log?type=delete&user=&page=Makoto_Matsumoto_%28mathematician%29&wpdate=&tagfilter=&subtype=&wpFormIdentifier=logeventslist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Log?type=delete&user=&... and so I was unable to find the original article. Do you happen to have the contents of the page somewhere (I understand if you don't)? I will try to create the stub article with sources somewhere and see if I can defend it sufficiently this evening. EDIT: I was able to find the draft deletion over my lunch break! I have requested an undelete here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_undeletion#Draft%3AMakoto_Matsumoto_%28mathematician%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_undelet... But this evening, I can just create the article directly. Not because I have any particular authority but just because confirmed users from a long time ago can do this. If the draft is undeleted, I can recover your work! If not, and you still want to, I'll send you a message when I create the article and you can add to it. Totally understandable if the last experience soured you on it and you'd rather not.
      - sltkr 2y ago
        Thanks, but my point was less about this one article, and more about the general experience of a well-intentioned but novice contributor: no matter how much you try to do the right thing, there's a good chance your work is for nothing because someone more established than you doesn't see the value in it. And maybe they are right: I understand that not all new contributions are valuable to the project (though you could argue that improving upon them is better than outright deleting them — obvious spam and vandalism excepted ofcourse). But you can't have it both ways: either you want to invite new contributors, in which case you need to be tolerant of their mistakes, and ensure that they are mentored instead of bullied by the more experienced users, or you choose to have a small group of trusted veterans maintain all articles. I don't think one option is obviously superior to the other, but it's a choice that Wikipedia doesn't seem to want to make. There is lots of room for improvement here. For example, I get the impression that Deletionists now rule Wikipedia, so if a newbie like me tries to create a new article on any topic, there is a 90% chance it will just be deleted (because if the topic was worthy of an article on Wikipedia, don't you think someone more experienced had already created it by now, silly noob?) If that's the case, then why allow people to create new articles at all? It's just setting up people to waste their time creating an initial draft. And it's an annoying gamble: I know that the more time I spend on making the initial revision really really good, the less likely it will be insta-deleted by some grumpy guy, but the more time I will have lost if it is! It's a real dilemma. Why make people gamble with their time like that? If you accept that most new articles will not be accepted, wouldn't it be better to disable article creation, and instead have a form where people can suggest ideas for new articles? That way, you spare contributors the effort of creating the initial draft (which is actually really difficult if you're new to Wikipedia and you are trying to be diligent about creating properly-formatted references and info-boxes and so on), and on the off-chance that the people in power decide to allow the new article to be created, they could also pair up the new contributor with a more experienced editor who will mentor them and help them create an initial revision that's up to snuff. This strikes me as a process that's 1000% better if you want to encourage new contributions.
renewiltord 2y ago
[flagged]
- rdlw 2y ago
  You're outraged that Wikipedia requires a source for the death of a public figure?
  - paulspl 2y ago
    No, he's outraged that someone that frequents a tech forum regularly doesn't think to check what the "citation needed" was for and that their first instinct was to post outrage bait
    - rdlw 2y ago
      Oh, that makes much more sense. I posted my comment before they elaborated on what they were saying, so the comment just said "Outrage bait, seriously: here's a screenshot.", which seemed like a direct response
      - renewiltord 2y ago
        Yeah, I thought it was obvious but it clearly wasn't (I asked an LLM and it reached the conclusion you did as well) so I elaborated.
tim333 2y ago
Seems to be fixed now, and I had a go at fixing the other "citation needed" on leaving MIT. This stuff all relies on volunteers getting around to it.

If you were looking at the same revision I saw, the "citation needed" was on the word "was", and on mouseover said "Please add credible news of death".

amin 2y ago

[flagged]

adamomada 2y ago
The tragedy of Wikipedia is that something like 3,000 people in the entire world are active editors (>100 edits)
- skyyler 2y ago
  Be the change you wish to see :) I edit wikipedia casually.
- m0llusk 2y ago
  And they focus largely on deletions which makes contributing frustrating.
- sltkr 2y ago
  The last time I tried to contribute to Wikipedia I spent more than an hour crafting an initial article about Makoto Matsumoto, inventor of the popular Mersenne Twister PRNG, mostly using sources from the sister article on the Japanese wiki. Within moments, the article was deleted by a veteran editor who didn't consider the subject sufficiently notable. (This was apparently not an issue for the much smaller German, French and Japanese wikis.) My page was 1 of 5 pages he had deleted in the span of 15 minutes, which shows how much effort he personally spent on the decision to negate other contributor's work. Needless to say, I doubt I will ever try to contribute to Wikipedia again.
  - arjie 2y ago
    Sorry to hear about that. I am not an admin so I can only do exact searches in the Deletion Log https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Log?type=delete&user=&page=Makoto_Matsumoto_%28mathematician%29&wpdate=&tagfilter=&subtype=&wpFormIdentifier=logeventslist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Log?type=delete&user=&... and so I was unable to find the original article. Do you happen to have the contents of the page somewhere (I understand if you don't)? I will try to create the stub article with sources somewhere and see if I can defend it sufficiently this evening. EDIT: I was able to find the draft deletion over my lunch break! I have requested an undelete here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_undeletion#Draft%3AMakoto_Matsumoto_%28mathematician%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_undelet... But this evening, I can just create the article directly. Not because I have any particular authority but just because confirmed users from a long time ago can do this. If the draft is undeleted, I can recover your work! If not, and you still want to, I'll send you a message when I create the article and you can add to it. Totally understandable if the last experience soured you on it and you'd rather not.
    - sltkr 2y ago
      Thanks, but my point was less about this one article, and more about the general experience of a well-intentioned but novice contributor: no matter how much you try to do the right thing, there's a good chance your work is for nothing because someone more established than you doesn't see the value in it. And maybe they are right: I understand that not all new contributions are valuable to the project (though you could argue that improving upon them is better than outright deleting them — obvious spam and vandalism excepted ofcourse). But you can't have it both ways: either you want to invite new contributors, in which case you need to be tolerant of their mistakes, and ensure that they are mentored instead of bullied by the more experienced users, or you choose to have a small group of trusted veterans maintain all articles. I don't think one option is obviously superior to the other, but it's a choice that Wikipedia doesn't seem to want to make. There is lots of room for improvement here. For example, I get the impression that Deletionists now rule Wikipedia, so if a newbie like me tries to create a new article on any topic, there is a 90% chance it will just be deleted (because if the topic was worthy of an article on Wikipedia, don't you think someone more experienced had already created it by now, silly noob?) If that's the case, then why allow people to create new articles at all? It's just setting up people to waste their time creating an initial draft. And it's an annoying gamble: I know that the more time I spend on making the initial revision really really good, the less likely it will be insta-deleted by some grumpy guy, but the more time I will have lost if it is! It's a real dilemma. Why make people gamble with their time like that? If you accept that most new articles will not be accepted, wouldn't it be better to disable article creation, and instead have a form where people can suggest ideas for new articles? That way, you spare contributors the effort of creating the initial draft (which is actually really difficult if you're new to Wikipedia and you are trying to be diligent about creating properly-formatted references and info-boxes and so on), and on the off-chance that the people in power decide to allow the new article to be created, they could also pair up the new contributor with a more experienced editor who will mentor them and help them create an initial revision that's up to snuff. This strikes me as a process that's 1000% better if you want to encourage new contributions.

renewiltord 2y ago

[flagged]

rdlw 2y ago
You're outraged that Wikipedia requires a source for the death of a public figure?
- paulspl 2y ago
  No, he's outraged that someone that frequents a tech forum regularly doesn't think to check what the "citation needed" was for and that their first instinct was to post outrage bait
  - rdlw 2y ago
    Oh, that makes much more sense. I posted my comment before they elaborated on what they were saying, so the comment just said "Outrage bait, seriously: here's a screenshot.", which seemed like a direct response
    - renewiltord 2y ago
      Yeah, I thought it was obvious but it clearly wasn't (I asked an LLM and it reached the conclusion you did as well) so I elaborated.

tim333 2y ago

Seems to be fixed now, and I had a go at fixing the other "citation needed" on leaving MIT. This stuff all relies on volunteers getting around to it.