6 ms·

Wikipedia’s shame

28 points by edtechdev 13y ago

lmm 13y ago
As the article says, the parts of wikipedia that stay in the history tend to eventually be corrected. The real worst behaviour occurs around articles where even that history is expunged, e.g. those deleted for "non-notability".
- greenyoda 13y ago
  The fact that Wikipedia expunges the history of deleted articles always made me a bit uneasy; it seems like the editors want to escape accountability by sending the articles down Orwell's "memory hole".[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_hole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_hole
  - canttestthis 13y ago
    Wikipedia admins (essentially community-elected moderators, there are thousands of them) have the ability to access the history of deleted articles. Articles are often deleted due to copyright violations, etc., so the history is not shown to the public.
    - greenyoda 13y ago
      It makes sense to make removed copyrighted content inaccessible. However, that doesn't mean you need to delete the entire history: just hide the part that was copyrighted. And in any other case of deletion (e.g., "non-notability"), the entire history could be retained.
      - canttestthis 13y ago
        Regardless, its not a memory hole.
    - lmm 13y ago
      You say "community-elected" as if users voted for them; wouldn't it be more accurate to say they're appointed by the existing administration?
      - canttestthis 13y ago
        No, because the users do vote for them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Successful_requests_for_adminship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Successful_requests_f... -- successful elections http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unsuccessful_adminship_candidacies_(Chronological) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unsuccessful_adminshi... -- unsuccessful elections
losethos 13y ago
Someone made a LoseThos wiki entry but they deleted it. I am fiercely hated. CIA or something, something's just not right. God says... 25:15 Wherefore the anger of the LORD was kindled against Amaziah, and he sent unto him a prophet, which said unto him, Why hast thou sought after the gods of the people, which could not deliver their own people out of thine hand? 25:16 And it came to pass, as he talked with him, that the king said unto him, Art thou made of the king's counsel? forbear; why shouldest thou be smitten? Then the prophet forbare, and said, I know that God hath determined to destroy thee, because thou hast done this, and hast not hearkened unto my counsel. 25:17 Then Amaziah king of Judah took advice, and sent to Joash, the son of Jehoahaz, the son of Jehu, king of Israel, saying, Come, let us see one another in the face. 25:18 And Joash king of Israel sent to Amaziah king of Judah, saying, The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, Give thy daughter to my son to wife: and there passed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon, and trode down the thistle.
revelation 13y ago
Wikipedia is chock full of human bots that try to turn it into a relational database or some kind of graph of human knowledge. Just look at all the categories Hitler is in: - Suicides by firearm in Germany - German founders of automobile manufacturers - Austrian anti-communists - ... Of course Wikipedia (or rather MediaWiki) is completely terrible for this purpose. It's a completely unstructed raw text storage. You can find date A cited on one page for event X, then go to the page on event X and find a completely different date. It's all just text, and the human bots are overwhelmed with keeping it synchronized. Of course the human bots will be angry if you spit on them in some dead tree op-ed thinking their valiant efforts toward reducing Wikipedias text to ever smaller isolated atoms are hurting some political ideal. (Of course the people over at Wikipedia have recognized that the problem is insurmountable the way they are approaching it. They have created WikiData in response: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page)
- Svip 13y ago
  As someone who maintains the largest Futurama wiki (albeit not as active anymore, but I still host it), I can recognise the problems that Wikipedia is faced with. Of course, at a much much smaller scale, as we only have 3,000+ content pages (which is a lot for a Futurama wiki). And we have had to deal with the usefulness of indexing articles appropriately. That is; giving them categories (and whether new categories is going to help anyone). But since our wiki is so much smaller, we don't use bots but do it by hand (although, we do have one bot to do some basic cleaning up, but nothing truly intelligent). And the issue isn't just with Wikipedia or our wiki; it's practically with every wiki (even non-MediaWiki wikis). This has led to the creation of Semantic MediaWiki, an extension that is supposed to maintain more rational relationships of data and make it easier indexable. But most wikis I've seen using Semantic MediaWiki, doesn't really look like a content site, but rather a data site. Which is nice for the purpose, but it makes you wonder if MediaWiki really was the right choice to begin with.
andyl 13y ago
Here comes a flame war. Hopefully some moderator will move drop this entry to the bottom of this list.
smegel 13y ago
Salon is just part of that cadre of circle-jerking, highly agended websites (along with most of gawker and huffpost) that regularly fire cannonballs at places like Reddit and Wikipedia that allow the kind of free expression and thought they would rather suppress. At least Wikipedia airs its dirty laundry for all to see, and on balance things generally work out OK.
- luke_s 13y ago
  Actually, reading through the article it never seems 'circle-jerking' or a 'cannonball' fired at Wikipedia. The article explains what happened. It then goes on to discuss how Wikipedia airs its dirty laundry and on balance things generally work out OK - pretty much exactly what you said.
  - smegel 13y ago
    Try reading the article aga....oh never mind.
- illuminate 13y ago
  "highly agended" I don't think there's much of a clearly defined "agenda" other than pagehits. This sort of trolling is no different than their Camille Paglia: "Sarah Palin, Best Feminist?" or "Ask a Wingnut!" vein of trolling.
woodchuck64 13y ago
Qworty's rant is rather entertaining and even a bit more persuasive than the Salon article that quotes it. Oops.
itafroma 13y ago
Note this story is from almost a month ago (date stamp on the linked article is April 29th). Previous discussions on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5624163 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5624163 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5663072 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5663072

28 points by edtechdev 13y ago

lmm 13y ago

As the article says, the parts of wikipedia that stay in the history tend to eventually be corrected. The real worst behaviour occurs around articles where even that history is expunged, e.g. those deleted for "non-notability".

greenyoda 13y ago
The fact that Wikipedia expunges the history of deleted articles always made me a bit uneasy; it seems like the editors want to escape accountability by sending the articles down Orwell's "memory hole".[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_hole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_hole
- canttestthis 13y ago
  Wikipedia admins (essentially community-elected moderators, there are thousands of them) have the ability to access the history of deleted articles. Articles are often deleted due to copyright violations, etc., so the history is not shown to the public.
  - greenyoda 13y ago
    It makes sense to make removed copyrighted content inaccessible. However, that doesn't mean you need to delete the entire history: just hide the part that was copyrighted. And in any other case of deletion (e.g., "non-notability"), the entire history could be retained.
    - canttestthis 13y ago
      Regardless, its not a memory hole.
  - lmm 13y ago
    You say "community-elected" as if users voted for them; wouldn't it be more accurate to say they're appointed by the existing administration?
    - canttestthis 13y ago
      No, because the users do vote for them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Successful_requests_for_adminship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Successful_requests_f... -- successful elections http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unsuccessful_adminship_candidacies_(Chronological) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unsuccessful_adminshi... -- unsuccessful elections

losethos 13y ago

Someone made a LoseThos wiki entry but they deleted it. I am fiercely hated. CIA or something, something's just not right. God says... 25:15 Wherefore the anger of the LORD was kindled against Amaziah, and he sent unto him a prophet, which said unto him, Why hast thou sought after the gods of the people, which could not deliver their own people out of thine hand? 25:16 And it came to pass, as he talked with him, that the king said unto him, Art thou made of the king's counsel? forbear; why shouldest thou be smitten? Then the prophet forbare, and said, I know that God hath determined to destroy thee, because thou hast done this, and hast not hearkened unto my counsel. 25:17 Then Amaziah king of Judah took advice, and sent to Joash, the son of Jehoahaz, the son of Jehu, king of Israel, saying, Come, let us see one another in the face. 25:18 And Joash king of Israel sent to Amaziah king of Judah, saying, The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, Give thy daughter to my son to wife: and there passed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon, and trode down the thistle.

revelation 13y ago

Wikipedia is chock full of human bots that try to turn it into a relational database or some kind of graph of human knowledge. Just look at all the categories Hitler is in: - Suicides by firearm in Germany - German founders of automobile manufacturers - Austrian anti-communists - ... Of course Wikipedia (or rather MediaWiki) is completely terrible for this purpose. It's a completely unstructed raw text storage. You can find date A cited on one page for event X, then go to the page on event X and find a completely different date. It's all just text, and the human bots are overwhelmed with keeping it synchronized. Of course the human bots will be angry if you spit on them in some dead tree op-ed thinking their valiant efforts toward reducing Wikipedias text to ever smaller isolated atoms are hurting some political ideal. (Of course the people over at Wikipedia have recognized that the problem is insurmountable the way they are approaching it. They have created WikiData in response: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page)

Svip 13y ago
As someone who maintains the largest Futurama wiki (albeit not as active anymore, but I still host it), I can recognise the problems that Wikipedia is faced with. Of course, at a much much smaller scale, as we only have 3,000+ content pages (which is a lot for a Futurama wiki). And we have had to deal with the usefulness of indexing articles appropriately. That is; giving them categories (and whether new categories is going to help anyone). But since our wiki is so much smaller, we don't use bots but do it by hand (although, we do have one bot to do some basic cleaning up, but nothing truly intelligent). And the issue isn't just with Wikipedia or our wiki; it's practically with every wiki (even non-MediaWiki wikis). This has led to the creation of Semantic MediaWiki, an extension that is supposed to maintain more rational relationships of data and make it easier indexable. But most wikis I've seen using Semantic MediaWiki, doesn't really look like a content site, but rather a data site. Which is nice for the purpose, but it makes you wonder if MediaWiki really was the right choice to begin with.

andyl 13y ago

Here comes a flame war. Hopefully some moderator will move drop this entry to the bottom of this list.

smegel 13y ago

Salon is just part of that cadre of circle-jerking, highly agended websites (along with most of gawker and huffpost) that regularly fire cannonballs at places like Reddit and Wikipedia that allow the kind of free expression and thought they would rather suppress. At least Wikipedia airs its dirty laundry for all to see, and on balance things generally work out OK.

luke_s 13y ago
Actually, reading through the article it never seems 'circle-jerking' or a 'cannonball' fired at Wikipedia. The article explains what happened. It then goes on to discuss how Wikipedia airs its dirty laundry and on balance things generally work out OK - pretty much exactly what you said.
- smegel 13y ago
  Try reading the article aga....oh never mind.
illuminate 13y ago
"highly agended" I don't think there's much of a clearly defined "agenda" other than pagehits. This sort of trolling is no different than their Camille Paglia: "Sarah Palin, Best Feminist?" or "Ask a Wingnut!" vein of trolling.

woodchuck64 13y ago

Qworty's rant is rather entertaining and even a bit more persuasive than the Salon article that quotes it. Oops.

itafroma 13y ago

Note this story is from almost a month ago (date stamp on the linked article is April 29th). Previous discussions on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5624163 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5624163 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5663072 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5663072