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This brings up a very interesting point - can anyone think of topics that Wikipedia has inadvertently omitted thanks to the narrow section of society that contr

This brings up a very interesting point - can anyone think of topics that Wikipedia has inadvertently omitted thanks to the narrow section of society that contributes significant amounts of new content to the site? There's been a lot of talk in recent years about how the "initial work" of adding information to Wikipedia is mostly done, and that from here on out, it's going to be mainly about adding new content as it's created (new events, people, companies, etc.). But it seems possible that myopia on the part of editors could be having inadvertent effects.

jmduke 14y ago
World history. The article for the XBOX 360: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBOX_360 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBOX_360 The article for the Republic of Ragusa: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Ragusa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Ragusa Wikipedia's editors (or, perhaps more accurately, humanity) have a bias in thinking details in the present are more important than details in the past.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  That's very amusing, because the exact opposite bias can be found in traditional encyclopedias: > The other day I read a dozen thousand words about Assyrian archeology in my DVD copy of Encyclopedia Britannica, but when I wanted to read about the Xbox 360, there wasn't even a single entry, so I gave up. http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/12/3154537/paul-miller-offline-hard-to-binge http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/12/3154537/paul-miller-offlin... > Wikipedia's editors (or, perhaps more accurately, humanity) have a bias in thinking details in the present are more important than details in the past. I don't know if that's entirely true. I think it significantly depends on what those "details" are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_games
  - gaius 14y ago
    The test of time takes time...
- philwelch 14y ago
  More important? No, but certainly far more accessible, and the low-hanging fruit gets picked the most, so to speak.
  - jmduke 14y ago
    You make a great point, and I think that ties into how one defines 'important information'. Specs/prices/etc.etc. about the XBOX 360 are all but ubiquitous on the internet; does this mean that, because they're more common, they're more important and thus should be added to Wikipedia? Or do stricter filters need to be placed on more common knowledge/data?
- rosser 14y ago
  While I'm sure a bias towards the present is part of the problem, there's also the simple fact that it's easy to write about things plenty of other people are writing about, and about which details are plentiful. Many of the things Wikipedia is missing, but really should have if it wants to call itself an encyclopaedia with any pretense at seriousness are obscure, and their details locked away in obscurity. (As a consequence of this, many of those things Wikipedia does have articles about are couched in the language of someone who already understands the topic, mitigating their utility to those who don't.) All that said, the article on the Republic of Ragusa was far better and longer than I'd have expected, given its use as your counter-point.
patio11 14y ago
It used to be even worse -- when I started using Wikipedia (dinosaurs walked the earth) they had substantially more written about several comic book characters than on obscure religious cults like e.g. Catholicism. That said, long-term I bet on Wikipedia converging more on the desires of Wikipedians (who are so screamingly not representative of the population that it almost pains me to have to mention that) than on any objectively awesome target for Wikipedia. Happily, Wikipedian's consensus target for Wikipedia is, even if far from perfect, pretty close to one of the most useful tools on the Internet.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  > long-term I bet on Wikipedia converging more on the desires of Wikipedians The fundamental issue here seems to be that there's a select group of "Wikipedians" who are the primary editors. As long as the site doesn't make editing/adding articles a more user friendly/advertised feature, things aren't going to change. Case in point: I went just yesterday to add some new content to an article, along with which I had a citation to add. Imagine my surprise when I found out that citations are still added in MediaWiki syntax! I can say without a doubt that every single acquaintance of mine who doesn't have an interest in computers (and quite a few who do) would have been utterly discouraged at this point from editing the article. How difficult can it be to add a GUI editor? It would be a small, purely technical, step that could have a significant impact on the userbase, if advertised properly.
  - jacobolus 14y ago
    Adding a good GUI editor properly integrated into Mediawiki would take at least a man year of effort by skilled programmers, I would guess. It would be a huge, extremely difficult technical step, with a large amount of resistance from the existing user base. Most GUI text editors around the web are horrible buggy piles of crap (to take one example I was recently frustrated by, the editor at Adobe’s forums – and Adobe is a gigantic company with thousands of highly paid, experienced developers). The result of any such effort could easily end up making the software more complex and harder to use rather than easier.
jacobolus 14y ago
> the "initial work" of adding information to Wikipedia is mostly done, I don’t buy this at all. Almost every topic that I’m deeply familiar with has inadequate coverage on Wikipedia. (Examples: color science, latin american history and politics, cities in southern mexico, various mathematical topics (here the articles tend to be overwhelmingly technical and entirely lacking in context, motivation, or history), the history and function of many common household appliances, particular bits of human anatomy, computer user interface design and its history, typography, 17th–19th century political philosophers, various US Supreme Court cases.) Every once in a while I try to tackle one of these, but writing a good encyclopedia article is still a ton of work. Most topics have some kind of Wikipedia page, but only a tiny fraction are anywhere close to as comprehensive as they should be. Just consider: there are more than 20 million books in the Library of Congress, whereas if the English Wikipedia has about 2000 articles with “good article” or “featured article” status.
- mjn 14y ago
  I agree with that, although I believe that prediction (I can't seem to dig up where it was) was more about how many new articles need to be created entirely, i.e. how many subjects Wikipedia should cover don't even have a 1-sentence stub yet. I think there are probably still several million of those, but new-article growth is inevitably slowing as low-hanging fruit has been quite well harvested. I agree that there are a ton of the current 4 million articles that are nowhere near complete, in many cases not even 10% complete. That's an area that could use considerably more work than new-article creation imo.
modarts 14y ago
Information is fractal in nature. The work is continuous.

jmduke 14y ago

World history. The article for the XBOX 360: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBOX_360 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBOX_360 The article for the Republic of Ragusa: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Ragusa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Ragusa Wikipedia's editors (or, perhaps more accurately, humanity) have a bias in thinking details in the present are more important than details in the past.

w1ntermute 14y ago
That's very amusing, because the exact opposite bias can be found in traditional encyclopedias: > The other day I read a dozen thousand words about Assyrian archeology in my DVD copy of Encyclopedia Britannica, but when I wanted to read about the Xbox 360, there wasn't even a single entry, so I gave up. http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/12/3154537/paul-miller-offline-hard-to-binge http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/12/3154537/paul-miller-offlin... > Wikipedia's editors (or, perhaps more accurately, humanity) have a bias in thinking details in the present are more important than details in the past. I don't know if that's entirely true. I think it significantly depends on what those "details" are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_games
- gaius 14y ago
  The test of time takes time...
philwelch 14y ago
More important? No, but certainly far more accessible, and the low-hanging fruit gets picked the most, so to speak.
- jmduke 14y ago
  You make a great point, and I think that ties into how one defines 'important information'. Specs/prices/etc.etc. about the XBOX 360 are all but ubiquitous on the internet; does this mean that, because they're more common, they're more important and thus should be added to Wikipedia? Or do stricter filters need to be placed on more common knowledge/data?
rosser 14y ago
While I'm sure a bias towards the present is part of the problem, there's also the simple fact that it's easy to write about things plenty of other people are writing about, and about which details are plentiful. Many of the things Wikipedia is missing, but really should have if it wants to call itself an encyclopaedia with any pretense at seriousness are obscure, and their details locked away in obscurity. (As a consequence of this, many of those things Wikipedia does have articles about are couched in the language of someone who already understands the topic, mitigating their utility to those who don't.) All that said, the article on the Republic of Ragusa was far better and longer than I'd have expected, given its use as your counter-point.

patio11 14y ago

It used to be even worse -- when I started using Wikipedia (dinosaurs walked the earth) they had substantially more written about several comic book characters than on obscure religious cults like e.g. Catholicism. That said, long-term I bet on Wikipedia converging more on the desires of Wikipedians (who are so screamingly not representative of the population that it almost pains me to have to mention that) than on any objectively awesome target for Wikipedia. Happily, Wikipedian's consensus target for Wikipedia is, even if far from perfect, pretty close to one of the most useful tools on the Internet.

w1ntermute 14y ago
> long-term I bet on Wikipedia converging more on the desires of Wikipedians The fundamental issue here seems to be that there's a select group of "Wikipedians" who are the primary editors. As long as the site doesn't make editing/adding articles a more user friendly/advertised feature, things aren't going to change. Case in point: I went just yesterday to add some new content to an article, along with which I had a citation to add. Imagine my surprise when I found out that citations are still added in MediaWiki syntax! I can say without a doubt that every single acquaintance of mine who doesn't have an interest in computers (and quite a few who do) would have been utterly discouraged at this point from editing the article. How difficult can it be to add a GUI editor? It would be a small, purely technical, step that could have a significant impact on the userbase, if advertised properly.
- jacobolus 14y ago
  Adding a good GUI editor properly integrated into Mediawiki would take at least a man year of effort by skilled programmers, I would guess. It would be a huge, extremely difficult technical step, with a large amount of resistance from the existing user base. Most GUI text editors around the web are horrible buggy piles of crap (to take one example I was recently frustrated by, the editor at Adobe’s forums – and Adobe is a gigantic company with thousands of highly paid, experienced developers). The result of any such effort could easily end up making the software more complex and harder to use rather than easier.

jacobolus 14y ago

> the "initial work" of adding information to Wikipedia is mostly done, I don’t buy this at all. Almost every topic that I’m deeply familiar with has inadequate coverage on Wikipedia. (Examples: color science, latin american history and politics, cities in southern mexico, various mathematical topics (here the articles tend to be overwhelmingly technical and entirely lacking in context, motivation, or history), the history and function of many common household appliances, particular bits of human anatomy, computer user interface design and its history, typography, 17th–19th century political philosophers, various US Supreme Court cases.) Every once in a while I try to tackle one of these, but writing a good encyclopedia article is still a ton of work. Most topics have some kind of Wikipedia page, but only a tiny fraction are anywhere close to as comprehensive as they should be. Just consider: there are more than 20 million books in the Library of Congress, whereas if the English Wikipedia has about 2000 articles with “good article” or “featured article” status.

mjn 14y ago
I agree with that, although I believe that prediction (I can't seem to dig up where it was) was more about how many new articles need to be created entirely, i.e. how many subjects Wikipedia should cover don't even have a 1-sentence stub yet. I think there are probably still several million of those, but new-article growth is inevitably slowing as low-hanging fruit has been quite well harvested. I agree that there are a ton of the current 4 million articles that are nowhere near complete, in many cases not even 10% complete. That's an area that could use considerably more work than new-article creation imo.

modarts 14y ago

Information is fractal in nature. The work is continuous.