7 ms·

Wikipedia links to HN

125 points by lelf 13y ago

spindritf 13y ago
Among them an article on Taskwarrior[1]. We are now an officially recognized authoritative source on procrastination. I don't think anyone could question that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taskwarrior https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taskwarrior
- rfnslyr 13y ago
  I've been looking for something like this for a very long time. Anyone know of something like this with a GUI?
  - ronjouch 13y ago
    Not sure it qualifies as "something like this", but for Linux/GTK, GTG [1] comes to mind. http://gtgnome.net/ http://gtgnome.net/
- tom9729 13y ago
  Actually someone just reverted that reference. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Taskwarrior&diff=573037180&oldid=573032788 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Taskwarrior&diff=...
tailbalance 13y ago
And there's one to news.ycombinator.net https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinkSearch&target=news.ycombinator.net https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinkSea...
ck2 13y ago
Someone should make an automated dmoz-like directory of wikipedia external links with thumbnails.
igorgue 13y ago
They should go to source links... Unless they're comments or text posts.
GabrielF00 13y ago
Hacker News would not qualify as a reliable source on Wikipedia as it is an aggregator of user-submitted content without much oversight.
- gwern 13y ago
  No, but many of these may be used in much the same way as why Wikipedia links to tons of Twitter pages even though it's 'an aggregator of user-submitted content without much oversight' - the users themselves confer the the reliability. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see a pg comment used as a source in the Paul Graham article.
  - GabrielF00 13y ago
    But that's a primary source. Generally, use of primary sources on Wikipedia should be limited because primary sources are easily subject to abuse. For instance, even something as simple as a quote from X that "Y is great" can be problematic. Is that what X really thinks? Is there a quote from somewhere where X says "Y is not great?" Was X really in a position to evaluate Y? Wikipedia articles should generally be based on reliable secondary and tertiary sources. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PRIMARY#Primary.2C_secondary_and_tertiary_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PRIMARY#Primary.2C_s...]
    - beambot 13y ago
      From your link: "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources." That suggests that Wikipedia treats primary sources on par with tertiary.
nonchalance 13y ago
Some of these make perfect sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoffeeScript https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoffeeScript links to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2037801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2037801 with the sentence "On December 24, 2010, Ashkenas announced the release of stable 1.0.0 to Hacker News, the site where the project was announced for the first time." "80legs has been criticised by numerous site owners for its technology effectively acting as a Distributed Denial of Service attack and not obeying robots.txt." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1056960 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1056960 (which makes sense because the discussion includes site owners) Others are questionable: "While ZumoDrive encrypts transport of all content with 256-bit SSL, and stores that content encrypted on Amazon S3 servers, that content is still accessible to ZumoDrive administrators" It would seem that the direct link http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2010-03-11-zumodrive-rolls-a-hard-six.html http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2010-03-11-zumodrive-rolls-a... is far more relevant than the comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1183308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1183308 (and many of the comments actually are opposed to the claim)
- saraid216 13y ago
  Keep in mind that HN comments are actually a fairly decent set of secondary sources: the discussion of expert-level commentators is exactly what Wikipedia wants to link to, rather than basing things off the first-hand claims.
  - greenyoda 13y ago
    Except that the quality of HN comments varies widely: not all commenters on HN are experts in the subjects they're writing about (and the people voting up a comment aren't necessarily experts either). A general reader following a link here from Wikipedia is not likely to be able to tell the difference between an expert and a non-expert. Thus, HN would make a much worse secondary source than something like an industry publication that has an editor and fact checkers (rare as these seem to be in our field today).
    - saraid216 13y ago
nvr219 13y ago
Top one on that list is "toilet paper orientation archive 1" lol.
- misnome 13y ago
  ...which is a talk page, without an actual article. And it's a very long discussion/argument. I'm not sure a better example of wikipedia could be found.
  - polshaw 13y ago
    The 'toilet paper orientation' article is still there, with over 100 notes/references.
amerika_blog 13y ago
Wikipedia is overrated as a resource. It is, like many crowd-sourced things, a social determination of importance and not an actual assessment. However, as you'd expect, it's great for pop culture.
- trumbitta2 13y ago
  Out of curiosity: what's an actual assessment of importance, as opposed to a social determination of importance?

125 points by lelf 13y ago

Among them an article on Taskwarrior[1]. We are now an officially recognized authoritative source on procrastination. I don't think anyone could question that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taskwarrior https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taskwarrior

rfnslyr 13y ago
I've been looking for something like this for a very long time. Anyone know of something like this with a GUI?
- ronjouch 13y ago
  Not sure it qualifies as "something like this", but for Linux/GTK, GTG [1] comes to mind. http://gtgnome.net/ http://gtgnome.net/
tom9729 13y ago
Actually someone just reverted that reference. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Taskwarrior&diff=573037180&oldid=573032788 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Taskwarrior&diff=...

tailbalance 13y ago

And there's one to news.ycombinator.net https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinkSearch&target=news.ycombinator.net https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinkSea...

ck2 13y ago

Someone should make an automated dmoz-like directory of wikipedia external links with thumbnails.

igorgue 13y ago

They should go to source links... Unless they're comments or text posts.

GabrielF00 13y ago

Hacker News would not qualify as a reliable source on Wikipedia as it is an aggregator of user-submitted content without much oversight.

gwern 13y ago
No, but many of these may be used in much the same way as why Wikipedia links to tons of Twitter pages even though it's 'an aggregator of user-submitted content without much oversight' - the users themselves confer the the reliability. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see a pg comment used as a source in the Paul Graham article.
- GabrielF00 13y ago
  But that's a primary source. Generally, use of primary sources on Wikipedia should be limited because primary sources are easily subject to abuse. For instance, even something as simple as a quote from X that "Y is great" can be problematic. Is that what X really thinks? Is there a quote from somewhere where X says "Y is not great?" Was X really in a position to evaluate Y? Wikipedia articles should generally be based on reliable secondary and tertiary sources. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PRIMARY#Primary.2C_secondary_and_tertiary_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PRIMARY#Primary.2C_s...]
  - beambot 13y ago
    From your link: "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources." That suggests that Wikipedia treats primary sources on par with tertiary.

nonchalance 13y ago

Some of these make perfect sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoffeeScript https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoffeeScript links to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2037801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2037801 with the sentence "On December 24, 2010, Ashkenas announced the release of stable 1.0.0 to Hacker News, the site where the project was announced for the first time." "80legs has been criticised by numerous site owners for its technology effectively acting as a Distributed Denial of Service attack and not obeying robots.txt." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1056960 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1056960 (which makes sense because the discussion includes site owners) Others are questionable: "While ZumoDrive encrypts transport of all content with 256-bit SSL, and stores that content encrypted on Amazon S3 servers, that content is still accessible to ZumoDrive administrators" It would seem that the direct link http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2010-03-11-zumodrive-rolls-a-hard-six.html http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2010-03-11-zumodrive-rolls-a... is far more relevant than the comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1183308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1183308 (and many of the comments actually are opposed to the claim)

saraid216 13y ago
Keep in mind that HN comments are actually a fairly decent set of secondary sources: the discussion of expert-level commentators is exactly what Wikipedia wants to link to, rather than basing things off the first-hand claims.
- greenyoda 13y ago
  Except that the quality of HN comments varies widely: not all commenters on HN are experts in the subjects they're writing about (and the people voting up a comment aren't necessarily experts either). A general reader following a link here from Wikipedia is not likely to be able to tell the difference between an expert and a non-expert. Thus, HN would make a much worse secondary source than something like an industry publication that has an editor and fact checkers (rare as these seem to be in our field today).
  - saraid216 13y ago

nvr219 13y ago

Top one on that list is "toilet paper orientation archive 1" lol.

misnome 13y ago
...which is a talk page, without an actual article. And it's a very long discussion/argument. I'm not sure a better example of wikipedia could be found.
- polshaw 13y ago
  The 'toilet paper orientation' article is still there, with over 100 notes/references.

amerika_blog 13y ago

Wikipedia is overrated as a resource. It is, like many crowd-sourced things, a social determination of importance and not an actual assessment. However, as you'd expect, it's great for pop culture.

trumbitta2 13y ago
Out of curiosity: what's an actual assessment of importance, as opposed to a social determination of importance?