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Physicist here: I stopped making contributions to Wikipedia after a few edits and reversions, I stopped too. Furthermore, the danger that something I'd put a lo

by ISL 13y ago

Physicist here: I stopped making contributions to Wikipedia after a few edits and reversions, I stopped too. Furthermore, the danger that something I'd put a lot of time into could be replaced meant that it's not worth sinking a lot of time into it. The citation policy makes a ton of pragmatic sense, and I understand why it's there. It's an unfriendly way to meet the Wikipedia community. (an alternative way to address a "citation needed" concern is to presume that the editor is correct, and go looking for the citation) In addition, I'm not aware of any way to be compensated, even by citation, for putting time and care into Wikipedia. As academics, we give a lot away for free (want to know some of our most-clever trade secrets? Just read our papers, where we detail everything we do so you can replicate it), but our compensation ultimately comes from what we can show others as our contribution to society. To anyone considering me for a job, promotion, or tenure, a well-written introductory article on precision tests of gravitation isn't worth a hundredth of one precision test of gravity published in Physical Review Letters. For a single contributor, Wikipedia is ephemeral, but the academic literature is effectively permanent.

rhizome 13y ago
(an alternative way to address a "citation needed" concern is to presume that the editor is correct, and go looking for the citation) You mean, "hey, I wrote it, you go look it up if you don't believe me?" Down that path lies madness. And Fox News. Academics aren't supposed to have "trade secrets" by definition, because that impedes the teacher and researcher's motivation. Historically, anyway, by my understanding.
- owenmarshall 13y ago
  I don't think that's what is meant by "go looking for the citation." I read it more as "by being an expert in this subject I know this is true; by being an expert in this subject I also probably don't have time to find the journal that has the article in question, cite it per Wikipedia's rules, and put it in the article." Frankly that sounds like a great task for editors that aren't subject experts. Maybe the expert can say "this is missing knowledge, this is where I think a citation should be or what to look for" and the non-expert can do that.
  - ISL 13y ago
    Will wikipedia accept a citation like: [1] Widely-known result, probably in Jackson's Electrodynamics as enough of a citation to placate the reversion police?
  - rhizome 13y ago
    I read it more as "by being an expert in this subject I know this is true; by being an expert in this subject I also probably don't have time to find the journal that has the article in question, cite it per Wikipedia's rules, and put it in the article." Really, a "P.S. I'm an expert" policy?
    - owenmarshall 13y ago
      Yes, I think you'll find that's explicitly what I'm advocating. Maybe there's some sort of verification. Maybe experts get limited to their subject area. Maybe we just have to (gasp) assume good faith on the part of the editor and trust that they are experts in what they claim. But I'd happily accept the edits of five "experts" if it means that someone that published with Erdos sticks around to edit. I completely understand if that's not what Wikipedia wants. But I also think it's the wrong decision.
    - danpat 13y ago
      One of the great things about Wikipedia is the ability to follow citations and read the original material. To allow "expert opinion" without opening the floodgates to everyone with an opinion would require some kind of validation, which is probably as much, or more, work as citing sources.
    - nitrogen 13y ago
      Wikipedia could add a category of academic editors whose identities have been verified in some way with their institutions, and who meet some definition of subject area expert. These editors would be given a presumption of innocence by other editors, so their changes should be researched for citations, rather than reverted.
  - gnaritas 13y ago
- SolarNet 13y ago
  And we don't have trade secrets, that's why ISL followed it up with this: > want to know some of our most-clever trade secrets? Just read our papers, where we detail everything we do so you can replicate it ISL was pointing out that many other professions have a lot of field specific knowledge with which they can charge people money to access. Academics print all of the information for basically free. So we already give it away for free, we don't have the time or patience to give it away free to somewhere that's not going to keep our work.
fluxon 13y ago
Please come back and make suggestions on Talk pages, rather than directly edit. There, you can actively discuss, cite sources (your own and hopefully others), and make real contributions which will last. Experts have a special kind of conflict of interest: their possible bias when directly editing. Discussing will moderate and ameliorate that bias, before it gets into the article. This approach will help as science advances and understanding deepens and changes: recent advances in physics prove this. We need your help; just not in direct editing. Your contributions in Talk will be real and welcomed (and maybe disputed, but never deleted) by our more experienced, sane, editors. (typo corrected)
- bunderbunder 13y ago
  If that's true, then incumbent Wikipedians need to take it upon themselves to communicate that to newcomers directly, and not in a random comment in Hacker News. Probably the easiest way to do that: If someone makes a substantive edit that isn't obviously vandalism, but doesn't quite meet Wikipedia's standards, then don't just undo it wholesale. Instead, temporarily pull it off the main page and into a back-end discussion. And then immediately contact the author with an explanation of what's going on and what they can do to get the changes reinstated.
- barrkel 13y ago
  Frankly, I'd rather not have the Talk page or the "editors", and a lot more actual data input. The barrier for entry to writing articles has to be way, way lower than it is; it shouldn't require a negotiation with a bunch of self-important petty bureaucrats. What those self-important guys (they're mostly guys) miss is that the best is the enemy of the good. Their misguided approach to quality actively prevents improvement. Outside the high-edit-count word-shufflers, I'd classify contributions to WP in four buckets: (a) substantial contributors who know a lot about a little and are able to significantly add or improve content; (b) trivial fixers, who fix grammar / spelling mistakes, or otherwise make tiny casual edits; (c) mindless vandals, who work some adolescent scrawl somewhere in the text, with varying degrees of visibility; and (d) the really sneaky stuff; well-written fakes, PR companies, reputation massaging, etc. The guys in (a) need to be preserved at all costs. I think the editors are concerned about (d), but the trouble is that they're doing it in a rules-bound way, but because knowing the rules and right WP:INCANTATIONS is a source of power, the rules become a thing in themselves, rather than a last resort for eliminating (d). I'd much rather have a more complete, comprehensive WP than one that's even 90% correct.
moocowduckquack 13y ago
It would be cool to have a git flavoured wikipedia type thing integrated into jstor.
rmchugh 13y ago
I think you have an interesting point about recognition for your work. It seems to me that Wikipedia's back end is ferociously clunky and outdated, there is no easy way to show all contributions made by a specific user, for example. If you compare this to a system like GitHub or one like StackOverflow, the deficiencies are obvious. Us programmers can easily point to our contributions to open source projects or our general knowledge through pointing at our profiles on those sites. A software overhaul to make Wikipedia more social, easier to edit would also go a long way.
- sjy 13y ago
  Wikipedia has a user contributions page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:User_contributions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:User_contributions

by ISL 13y ago

rhizome 13y ago

(an alternative way to address a "citation needed" concern is to presume that the editor is correct, and go looking for the citation) You mean, "hey, I wrote it, you go look it up if you don't believe me?" Down that path lies madness. And Fox News. Academics aren't supposed to have "trade secrets" by definition, because that impedes the teacher and researcher's motivation. Historically, anyway, by my understanding.

owenmarshall 13y ago
I don't think that's what is meant by "go looking for the citation." I read it more as "by being an expert in this subject I know this is true; by being an expert in this subject I also probably don't have time to find the journal that has the article in question, cite it per Wikipedia's rules, and put it in the article." Frankly that sounds like a great task for editors that aren't subject experts. Maybe the expert can say "this is missing knowledge, this is where I think a citation should be or what to look for" and the non-expert can do that.
- ISL 13y ago
  Will wikipedia accept a citation like: [1] Widely-known result, probably in Jackson's Electrodynamics as enough of a citation to placate the reversion police?
- rhizome 13y ago
  I read it more as "by being an expert in this subject I know this is true; by being an expert in this subject I also probably don't have time to find the journal that has the article in question, cite it per Wikipedia's rules, and put it in the article." Really, a "P.S. I'm an expert" policy?
  - owenmarshall 13y ago
    Yes, I think you'll find that's explicitly what I'm advocating. Maybe there's some sort of verification. Maybe experts get limited to their subject area. Maybe we just have to (gasp) assume good faith on the part of the editor and trust that they are experts in what they claim. But I'd happily accept the edits of five "experts" if it means that someone that published with Erdos sticks around to edit. I completely understand if that's not what Wikipedia wants. But I also think it's the wrong decision.
  - danpat 13y ago
    One of the great things about Wikipedia is the ability to follow citations and read the original material. To allow "expert opinion" without opening the floodgates to everyone with an opinion would require some kind of validation, which is probably as much, or more, work as citing sources.
  - nitrogen 13y ago
    Wikipedia could add a category of academic editors whose identities have been verified in some way with their institutions, and who meet some definition of subject area expert. These editors would be given a presumption of innocence by other editors, so their changes should be researched for citations, rather than reverted.
- gnaritas 13y ago
SolarNet 13y ago
And we don't have trade secrets, that's why ISL followed it up with this: > want to know some of our most-clever trade secrets? Just read our papers, where we detail everything we do so you can replicate it ISL was pointing out that many other professions have a lot of field specific knowledge with which they can charge people money to access. Academics print all of the information for basically free. So we already give it away for free, we don't have the time or patience to give it away free to somewhere that's not going to keep our work.

fluxon 13y ago

Please come back and make suggestions on Talk pages, rather than directly edit. There, you can actively discuss, cite sources (your own and hopefully others), and make real contributions which will last. Experts have a special kind of conflict of interest: their possible bias when directly editing. Discussing will moderate and ameliorate that bias, before it gets into the article. This approach will help as science advances and understanding deepens and changes: recent advances in physics prove this. We need your help; just not in direct editing. Your contributions in Talk will be real and welcomed (and maybe disputed, but never deleted) by our more experienced, sane, editors. (typo corrected)

bunderbunder 13y ago
If that's true, then incumbent Wikipedians need to take it upon themselves to communicate that to newcomers directly, and not in a random comment in Hacker News. Probably the easiest way to do that: If someone makes a substantive edit that isn't obviously vandalism, but doesn't quite meet Wikipedia's standards, then don't just undo it wholesale. Instead, temporarily pull it off the main page and into a back-end discussion. And then immediately contact the author with an explanation of what's going on and what they can do to get the changes reinstated.
barrkel 13y ago
Frankly, I'd rather not have the Talk page or the "editors", and a lot more actual data input. The barrier for entry to writing articles has to be way, way lower than it is; it shouldn't require a negotiation with a bunch of self-important petty bureaucrats. What those self-important guys (they're mostly guys) miss is that the best is the enemy of the good. Their misguided approach to quality actively prevents improvement. Outside the high-edit-count word-shufflers, I'd classify contributions to WP in four buckets: (a) substantial contributors who know a lot about a little and are able to significantly add or improve content; (b) trivial fixers, who fix grammar / spelling mistakes, or otherwise make tiny casual edits; (c) mindless vandals, who work some adolescent scrawl somewhere in the text, with varying degrees of visibility; and (d) the really sneaky stuff; well-written fakes, PR companies, reputation massaging, etc. The guys in (a) need to be preserved at all costs. I think the editors are concerned about (d), but the trouble is that they're doing it in a rules-bound way, but because knowing the rules and right WP:INCANTATIONS is a source of power, the rules become a thing in themselves, rather than a last resort for eliminating (d). I'd much rather have a more complete, comprehensive WP than one that's even 90% correct.

moocowduckquack 13y ago

It would be cool to have a git flavoured wikipedia type thing integrated into jstor.

rmchugh 13y ago

I think you have an interesting point about recognition for your work. It seems to me that Wikipedia's back end is ferociously clunky and outdated, there is no easy way to show all contributions made by a specific user, for example. If you compare this to a system like GitHub or one like StackOverflow, the deficiencies are obvious. Us programmers can easily point to our contributions to open source projects or our general knowledge through pointing at our profiles on those sites. A software overhaul to make Wikipedia more social, easier to edit would also go a long way.

sjy 13y ago
Wikipedia has a user contributions page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:User_contributions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:User_contributions