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I agree with your point that it is a good thing it doesn't take hundreds of moderators to delete a Wikipedia article. However, while the actual state of Wikipe

I agree with your point that it is a good thing it doesn't take hundreds of moderators to delete a Wikipedia article. However, while the actual state of Wikipedia is much better than your alternate future, what we have right now is also extremely dangerous and misleading. Today it is composed of accurate, well-written sentences and inaccurate, self-aggrandizing, or just schizophrenic sentences. But they're all intermingled. Pick any article, say block cipher modes, CTR in particular: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cipher_block_chaining#Counter_.28CTR.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cipher_block_chaining#Counter_.... It starts off ok, but then heads off the weeds with "Nevertheless, there are specialized attacks like a Hardware Fault Attack that is based on the usage of a simple counter function as input.[14]" This is a reference to a minor paper in a conference I've never heard of, likely added by the authors themselves. "Fix it yourself", comes the cry. But without some sort of educated review board, you end up having to explain the background of the field in order to get around to why a given reference is not noteworthy. Often, the choice comes down to who spends more time on Wikipedia. Guess who doesn't? Meanwhile, a generation is growing up with this as their only example of an "encyclopedia".

tptacek 14y ago
How does Britannica's coverage of block cipher concepts compare to Wikipedia's? My guess is, Wikipedia "roflstomps" it, to use Patrick McKenzie's favored term. I think my kids are far better off with Wikipedia than they would be with "real" encyclopedias.
- saurik 14y ago
  The fact that Wikipedia does better than Britannica on that subject isn't exactly relevant to your argument... especially so as it mostly goes to help NateLawson's counter-argument: NateLawson demonstrated how the existing article contains something that in your vision of reality should be deleted, and you seem to be responding "and yet it is still better for it!"... if you want to even pretend to be consistent here you need to demonstrate how and why that information should be deleted, as it is non-notable in the same way as everything else on your long list.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    The content Nate points to isn't wrong, it's just given inappropriate weight. But Wikipedia's coverage of block cipher modes is, compared to any other encyclopedia, successful. My kids are better off with Wikipedia's block cipher coverage than Britannica's. I suppose my friend Nate could be arguing the following: it's unfortunate that there is marginal content that survives wikilawyering while at the same time there's good content that doesn't. But he hasn't supported that argument with evidence. What's the "good" content that belongs under CTR mode that he'd have a hard time placing there? The CTR coverage in WP isn't bad because of deletionism; it's bad because there isn't enough crypto expertise in the WP editor community. If Nate sat down and wrote a well-sourced article on CTR mode, it would survive.
    - saurik 14y ago
      None of the content in question is "wrong": we are only discussing things with "inappropriate weight". Are you saying that the game Space Empire Elite (the article that Jason Scott is angry about today) did not exist? Was there something else on the article that you believe was "wrong"? We are explicitly discussing "notability" here. (Sadly, I can't even look at the article, for the reason I already complained about: when Wikipedia decides to delete something, it is totally removed from the website in a way such that you cannot use edit history to get it back, making arguments about it impossible post-facto. I wish I could make a real judgement for myself.) I do now see, however, why you made your Britannica comment: you are responding only to the final sentence of Nate's comment ("Meanwhile, a generation is growing up with this as their only example of an "encyclopedia"."), which I mostly ignored as it was just rhetoric ;P. (I am sorry that I did that, as it caused me to misunderstand your's.) Regardless, looking at the actual argument thread, Britannica is entirely irrelevant unless it can be shown that either 1) they were of higher quality due to their more limited focus, or 2) that their eventual downfall was related to them being more likely to cover a niche topic than Wikipedia ;P. Regardless--to now respond to your new comment--at some point you need to make a choice: either that content is notable, or it is not. If it is, you have to decide who is allowed to determine whether that fact. Wikipedia, FWIW, does not appreciate content that requires "expertise" much, as they want everything verifiable by the layman. (Again, leading to what I consider to be a ludicrous situation with respect to the various articles surrounding RSA: there is much more coverage of the recent non-attack on embedded systems with bad random number generators than there is on actual modern mathematical attacks, seemingly because the former could be verified by newspaper articles and the latter requires citing academic papers, as the last time a review paper in this field was published, a requirement for Wikipedia's "primary sources must be verified by secondary sources" requirement, was 1999.) "...similarly, a scientific paper documenting a new experiment is a primary source on the outcome of that experiment." "A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the source but without further, specialized knowledge." "For example, a review article that analyzes research papers in a field is a secondary source for the research" -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research "All Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources. Reliable primary sources may occasionally be used with care as an adjunct to the secondary literature, but there remains potential for misuse." (emphasis copied from original) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:MEDRS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:MEDRS
- NateLawson 14y ago
  False alternative. Two things better than a Wikipedia article on cipher modes: 1. Britannica choosing not to have an article on it since they can't do it justice. 2. Papers or books (you know, things that cost money and real effort to develop) on cryptography that give much more thorough, accurate, and unbiased information.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    Not sure I follow. Britannica has in fact chosen not to cover these topics. There are in fact books and papers on block cipher modes. And there's a Wikipedia article that attempts to serve as a survey to the existing literature on block ciphers.

tptacek 14y ago

How does Britannica's coverage of block cipher concepts compare to Wikipedia's? My guess is, Wikipedia "roflstomps" it, to use Patrick McKenzie's favored term. I think my kids are far better off with Wikipedia than they would be with "real" encyclopedias.

saurik 14y ago
The fact that Wikipedia does better than Britannica on that subject isn't exactly relevant to your argument... especially so as it mostly goes to help NateLawson's counter-argument: NateLawson demonstrated how the existing article contains something that in your vision of reality should be deleted, and you seem to be responding "and yet it is still better for it!"... if you want to even pretend to be consistent here you need to demonstrate how and why that information should be deleted, as it is non-notable in the same way as everything else on your long list.
- tptacek 14y ago
  The content Nate points to isn't wrong, it's just given inappropriate weight. But Wikipedia's coverage of block cipher modes is, compared to any other encyclopedia, successful. My kids are better off with Wikipedia's block cipher coverage than Britannica's. I suppose my friend Nate could be arguing the following: it's unfortunate that there is marginal content that survives wikilawyering while at the same time there's good content that doesn't. But he hasn't supported that argument with evidence. What's the "good" content that belongs under CTR mode that he'd have a hard time placing there? The CTR coverage in WP isn't bad because of deletionism; it's bad because there isn't enough crypto expertise in the WP editor community. If Nate sat down and wrote a well-sourced article on CTR mode, it would survive.
  - saurik 14y ago
    None of the content in question is "wrong": we are only discussing things with "inappropriate weight". Are you saying that the game Space Empire Elite (the article that Jason Scott is angry about today) did not exist? Was there something else on the article that you believe was "wrong"? We are explicitly discussing "notability" here. (Sadly, I can't even look at the article, for the reason I already complained about: when Wikipedia decides to delete something, it is totally removed from the website in a way such that you cannot use edit history to get it back, making arguments about it impossible post-facto. I wish I could make a real judgement for myself.) I do now see, however, why you made your Britannica comment: you are responding only to the final sentence of Nate's comment ("Meanwhile, a generation is growing up with this as their only example of an "encyclopedia"."), which I mostly ignored as it was just rhetoric ;P. (I am sorry that I did that, as it caused me to misunderstand your's.) Regardless, looking at the actual argument thread, Britannica is entirely irrelevant unless it can be shown that either 1) they were of higher quality due to their more limited focus, or 2) that their eventual downfall was related to them being more likely to cover a niche topic than Wikipedia ;P. Regardless--to now respond to your new comment--at some point you need to make a choice: either that content is notable, or it is not. If it is, you have to decide who is allowed to determine whether that fact. Wikipedia, FWIW, does not appreciate content that requires "expertise" much, as they want everything verifiable by the layman. (Again, leading to what I consider to be a ludicrous situation with respect to the various articles surrounding RSA: there is much more coverage of the recent non-attack on embedded systems with bad random number generators than there is on actual modern mathematical attacks, seemingly because the former could be verified by newspaper articles and the latter requires citing academic papers, as the last time a review paper in this field was published, a requirement for Wikipedia's "primary sources must be verified by secondary sources" requirement, was 1999.) "...similarly, a scientific paper documenting a new experiment is a primary source on the outcome of that experiment." "A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the source but without further, specialized knowledge." "For example, a review article that analyzes research papers in a field is a secondary source for the research" -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research "All Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources. Reliable primary sources may occasionally be used with care as an adjunct to the secondary literature, but there remains potential for misuse." (emphasis copied from original) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:MEDRS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:MEDRS
NateLawson 14y ago
False alternative. Two things better than a Wikipedia article on cipher modes: 1. Britannica choosing not to have an article on it since they can't do it justice. 2. Papers or books (you know, things that cost money and real effort to develop) on cryptography that give much more thorough, accurate, and unbiased information.
- tptacek 14y ago
  Not sure I follow. Britannica has in fact chosen not to cover these topics. There are in fact books and papers on block cipher modes. And there's a Wikipedia article that attempts to serve as a survey to the existing literature on block ciphers.