5 ms·

Why would that be weird? Personally I would find it convenient. There would be some issues, e.g. I wouldn't want to see Minecraft recipes when I'm searching fo

by thih9 2y ago

Why would that be weird? Personally I would find it convenient. There would be some issues, e.g. I wouldn't want to see Minecraft recipes when I'm searching for "obsidian". But these seem solvable; niche articles could be flagged and downranked, or they could live in a satellite wiki project, or something else. I remember seeing niche articles like this and enjoying it.

Waterluvian 2y ago
It's not really about what you would find convenient. It's about what Wikimedia wants to spend its limited resources on. It has decided it wants to spend its resources on something it believes to be a reasonable subset of general knowledge and information. Where to draw that line is highly subjective, but they have to try to find a good balance.
- lmm 2y ago
  Wikimedia spends the vast majority of its resources on stuff that has a lot less to do with traditional-Wikipedia than a Fandom competitor would.
- audiodude 2y ago
  The Wikimedia Foundation has not decided this, the community of editors has, through years of debate and eventual consensus.
JoshTriplett 2y ago
I am very much on the side of inclusion, but at some point, the number of users who have the ability to check the added information becomes sufficiently small that the articles become nearly impossible to maintain and fact-check. I can understand drawing a notability line somewhere. If, for instance, Wikipedia allowed articles on every human being, whether well-known or not, they'd likely have a larger problem than they already do with people creating attack articles against other people over extremely local disputes/feuds. With more notable people, they can look for other sources to confirm or deny information about those people.
- gravescale 2y ago
  I'm also a pretty strong inclusionist at heart, but I can see also that if the living-person rules were relaxed, self-aggrandisement would proliferate like crazy. Even under the current, slightly deletionist, status-quo in a 10000 word article about some random academic (1), who is going to fact check all that spew and edit it down? The answer on that page is "no-one, for years"(2). And that's with lots of references, even if they are all his own papers and therefore not secondary sources. Now what would the millions of articles about every TikTok influencer look like? And then the same goes for products and companies. Every scam Kickstarter and onanistic startup would get a massive screed. And then it all sits and rots forever once the academic retires, the influencer gets a real job, the Kickstarter vanishes and the startup folds, because no one else cares. But someone has to go around and fix the links and update templates and generally expend effort indefinitely. On top of all that, while the article creator is still around, because the article is actually an advert, any attempt to edit it into a more encyclopaedic article is disproportionately likely to cause drama that burns up volunteer time and effort. (1): One I saw recently https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didier_Sornette https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didier_Sornette (2): Especially as many people actually good enough at collating and editing encyclopedic articles about subjects that aren't about their own media-based hobbies quickly decide Wikipedia isn't a very fun place to do that any more.
  - lmm 2y ago
    > Especially as many people actually good enough at collating and editing encyclopedic articles about subjects that aren't about their own media-based hobbies quickly decide Wikipedia isn't a very fun place to do that any more. That cuts both ways. IMO Wikipedia has lost a lot of contributors by banning fun and disallowing the topics that people found interesting.
    - gravescale 2y ago
      My comment is more of a tangent along people/products but certainly I agree in that I don't see why the wider Wikimedia group of sites including things like Wikibooks needed to completely evict "fun" content, even if I personally don't think it should be in some language's Wikipedia itself. Not least, you can crosslink between Wikimedia sites, so you could just link to [[fans:Digimon:Whatevermon]] and have the content "nearby" in digital terms without drawing it under the same notability and sourcing guidelines as an article on benzene, say. Which as you say would keep the (often very, perhaps to a fault) keen contributor to the fandom in the Wikimedia tent and might encourage them to contribute to Wikipedia and related sites as well. Then again, the auxiliary Wikimedia sites are pretty neglected by the parent foundation which has more important things on its mind much of the time, mostly fundraising and finding novel ways to spend that money.
sbarre 2y ago
> they could live in a satellite wiki project You mean something like Wikia?
- thih9 2y ago
  Perhaps - but still managed by the foundation and not run as a for profit project.
itishappy 2y ago
Game wiki's often have custom UIs that are designed to make browsing game data a better experience. I'll be using Factorio as an example: https://wiki.factorio.com/ https://wiki.factorio.com/ Items can be referenced using their in-game names because there's no risk of conflict and custom templates can be created and tailored per game. Guess which one of these displays more info: {{:Infobox:Tank}} https://wiki.factorio.com/Tank https://wiki.factorio.com/Tank {{Infobox video game | title = Factorio | image = Factorio cover.png | developer = Wube Software | publisher = Wube Software | platforms = {{cslist|[[Linux]]|[[macOS]]|[[Microsoft Windows|Windows]]|[[Nintendo Switch|Switch]]}} | released = {{ubl|'''Linux''', '''macOS''', '''Windows'''|14 August 2020|'''Switch'''|28 October 2022}} | genre = [[Construction and management simulation]], [[real-time strategy]] | modes = [[Single-player]], [[multiplayer]] | director = {{Unbulleted list|Michal Kovařík|Tomáš Kozelek|Albert Bertolín}} | producer = | designer = Michal Kovařík | artist = {{Unbulleted list|Albert Bertolin|Václav Benč}} | composer = Daniel James Taylor Petr Wajsar (Space Age expansion) }} https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factorio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factorio Keeping the information up-to-date is a big task for a fast-moving game. Imagine editing the card every time the dev changes the hp of the tank. The Factorio blog describes the benefits of this better than I can: > Together with scripts, templates allow us to partially automate updating the wiki to the newest version, and alongside access to the game's source code, it is possible for me to update the wiki to a new version within a few minutes The blog post has a lot of other interesting stuff in there as well: https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-233 https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-233 A whole lot of work goes into making game wikis pleasant. I'm sure you could duplicate this all on Wikipedia as well, but that's a lot of additional work and communities already struggle to keep their Fandom wiki's up-to-date. The old Factorio wiki does not even have an article for the tank which has been in the game for years: https://factorio.fandom.com/wiki/Combat https://factorio.fandom.com/wiki/Combat Out of date info is wrong info.
- Dylan16807 2y ago
 > Items can be referenced using their in-game names because there's no risk of conflict Did you purposefully pick one of the items that has an in-game naming conflict and a disambiguation line? Being focused to a single game means there's only a few conflicts, but it's not zero.
TZubiri 2y ago
Every project needs a scope. An encyclopedia excluding exhaustive videogame information is reasonable. If you don't, you end up with 20 articles for real life fish species, and 20000 articles for fish species in videogames. Especially since we are talking about an online encyclopedia, Wikipedia is cognizant of its biases and tries to counter them.
- red-iron-pine 2y ago
  wikipedia is for everyone; fandom is for fans, aka fanatics

by thih9 2y ago

Waterluvian 2y ago

It's not really about what you would find convenient. It's about what Wikimedia wants to spend its limited resources on. It has decided it wants to spend its resources on something it believes to be a reasonable subset of general knowledge and information. Where to draw that line is highly subjective, but they have to try to find a good balance.

lmm 2y ago
Wikimedia spends the vast majority of its resources on stuff that has a lot less to do with traditional-Wikipedia than a Fandom competitor would.
audiodude 2y ago
The Wikimedia Foundation has not decided this, the community of editors has, through years of debate and eventual consensus.

JoshTriplett 2y ago

I am very much on the side of inclusion, but at some point, the number of users who have the ability to check the added information becomes sufficiently small that the articles become nearly impossible to maintain and fact-check. I can understand drawing a notability line somewhere. If, for instance, Wikipedia allowed articles on every human being, whether well-known or not, they'd likely have a larger problem than they already do with people creating attack articles against other people over extremely local disputes/feuds. With more notable people, they can look for other sources to confirm or deny information about those people.

gravescale 2y ago
I'm also a pretty strong inclusionist at heart, but I can see also that if the living-person rules were relaxed, self-aggrandisement would proliferate like crazy. Even under the current, slightly deletionist, status-quo in a 10000 word article about some random academic (1), who is going to fact check all that spew and edit it down? The answer on that page is "no-one, for years"(2). And that's with lots of references, even if they are all his own papers and therefore not secondary sources. Now what would the millions of articles about every TikTok influencer look like? And then the same goes for products and companies. Every scam Kickstarter and onanistic startup would get a massive screed. And then it all sits and rots forever once the academic retires, the influencer gets a real job, the Kickstarter vanishes and the startup folds, because no one else cares. But someone has to go around and fix the links and update templates and generally expend effort indefinitely. On top of all that, while the article creator is still around, because the article is actually an advert, any attempt to edit it into a more encyclopaedic article is disproportionately likely to cause drama that burns up volunteer time and effort. (1): One I saw recently https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didier_Sornette https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didier_Sornette (2): Especially as many people actually good enough at collating and editing encyclopedic articles about subjects that aren't about their own media-based hobbies quickly decide Wikipedia isn't a very fun place to do that any more.
- lmm 2y ago
  > Especially as many people actually good enough at collating and editing encyclopedic articles about subjects that aren't about their own media-based hobbies quickly decide Wikipedia isn't a very fun place to do that any more. That cuts both ways. IMO Wikipedia has lost a lot of contributors by banning fun and disallowing the topics that people found interesting.
  - gravescale 2y ago
    My comment is more of a tangent along people/products but certainly I agree in that I don't see why the wider Wikimedia group of sites including things like Wikibooks needed to completely evict "fun" content, even if I personally don't think it should be in some language's Wikipedia itself. Not least, you can crosslink between Wikimedia sites, so you could just link to [[fans:Digimon:Whatevermon]] and have the content "nearby" in digital terms without drawing it under the same notability and sourcing guidelines as an article on benzene, say. Which as you say would keep the (often very, perhaps to a fault) keen contributor to the fandom in the Wikimedia tent and might encourage them to contribute to Wikipedia and related sites as well. Then again, the auxiliary Wikimedia sites are pretty neglected by the parent foundation which has more important things on its mind much of the time, mostly fundraising and finding novel ways to spend that money.

sbarre 2y ago

> they could live in a satellite wiki project You mean something like Wikia?

thih9 2y ago
Perhaps - but still managed by the foundation and not run as a for profit project.

itishappy 2y ago

Game wiki's often have custom UIs that are designed to make browsing game data a better experience. I'll be using Factorio as an example: https://wiki.factorio.com/ https://wiki.factorio.com/ Items can be referenced using their in-game names because there's no risk of conflict and custom templates can be created and tailored per game. Guess which one of these displays more info: {{:Infobox:Tank}} https://wiki.factorio.com/Tank https://wiki.factorio.com/Tank {{Infobox video game | title = Factorio | image = Factorio cover.png | developer = Wube Software | publisher = Wube Software | platforms = {{cslist|[[Linux]]|[[macOS]]|[[Microsoft Windows|Windows]]|[[Nintendo Switch|Switch]]}} | released = {{ubl|'''Linux''', '''macOS''', '''Windows'''|14 August 2020|'''Switch'''|28 October 2022}} | genre = [[Construction and management simulation]], [[real-time strategy]] | modes = [[Single-player]], [[multiplayer]] | director = {{Unbulleted list|Michal Kovařík|Tomáš Kozelek|Albert Bertolín}} | producer = | designer = Michal Kovařík | artist = {{Unbulleted list|Albert Bertolin|Václav Benč}} | composer = Daniel James Taylor Petr Wajsar (Space Age expansion) }} https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factorio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factorio Keeping the information up-to-date is a big task for a fast-moving game. Imagine editing the card every time the dev changes the hp of the tank. The Factorio blog describes the benefits of this better than I can: > Together with scripts, templates allow us to partially automate updating the wiki to the newest version, and alongside access to the game's source code, it is possible for me to update the wiki to a new version within a few minutes The blog post has a lot of other interesting stuff in there as well: https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-233 https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-233 A whole lot of work goes into making game wikis pleasant. I'm sure you could duplicate this all on Wikipedia as well, but that's a lot of additional work and communities already struggle to keep their Fandom wiki's up-to-date. The old Factorio wiki does not even have an article for the tank which has been in the game for years: https://factorio.fandom.com/wiki/Combat https://factorio.fandom.com/wiki/Combat Out of date info is wrong info.

Dylan16807 2y ago
> Items can be referenced using their in-game names because there's no risk of conflict Did you purposefully pick one of the items that has an in-game naming conflict and a disambiguation line? Being focused to a single game means there's only a few conflicts, but it's not zero.

TZubiri 2y ago

Every project needs a scope. An encyclopedia excluding exhaustive videogame information is reasonable. If you don't, you end up with 20 articles for real life fish species, and 20000 articles for fish species in videogames. Especially since we are talking about an online encyclopedia, Wikipedia is cognizant of its biases and tries to counter them.

red-iron-pine 2y ago
wikipedia is for everyone; fandom is for fans, aka fanatics