12 ms·

I want to love this idea. I want to love wikipedia. But before I can do that, I need to be able to use wikipedia. And by use, I don't mean consume - I mean,

by rsync 13y ago

I want to love this idea. I want to love wikipedia. But before I can do that, I need to be able to use wikipedia. And by use, I don't mean consume - I mean, be a full participant in a collective online encyclopedia. This is currently not possible. Rather than explain or give examples, let me challenge you to start any new article, or make any decent sized edit to any article, and let's assume for the discussion that your facts, grammar, form, and adherence to wikipedia style are perfect. Come back and let us know how that goes.

cookiecaper 13y ago
Wikipedia is now and always has been a giant turf war, roamed by amalgamations of insufferable, biased, and often incorrect pedants and paid PR shills. There was a time something could've been done about it, but Wikipedia chose not to. I stopped editing in 2005.
- alayne 13y ago
  What is a concrete example? Many of the Wikipedia controversies I've read about have been related to political figures and events.
  - OWaz 13y ago
    One example that comes to my mind is when author Philip Roth attempted to clarify the inspiration for his book The Human Stain. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/09/an-open-letter-to-wikipedia.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/09/an-open-... The wikipedia entry for The Human Stain now contains a reference to the controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Stain#Anatole_Broyard_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Stain#Anatole_Broyard...
    - tommorris 13y ago
      Except Roth was full of shit on that. See: http://old.ironholds.org/?p=979 http://old.ironholds.org/?p=979
      - ZeroGravitas 13y ago
        That link's really worth a read.
  - cookiecaper 13y ago
    There are many examples. Attempts to make technical pages more accessible to a general audience have been shut down repeatedly and resulted in a separate Wikipedia entirely called "Simple English". Attempts to neutralize any page that anyone pays attention to results in the page's regular babysitters coming out and destroying it -- a normal person can't compete because these people are obsessive about the pages they watch, often because their full-time job is to ensure that clients' Wikipedia pages read in the manner desired. Sometimes other motives, like zealotry, contribute to the obsession. These persons become steeped in WP-specific jargon, utilizing an ever-growing body of subjective and sometimes almost conflicting rules to crush any opponent who doesn't come ready for the fight. They'll say that your edit doesn't comply with WP:XYZ and WP:ABC, you'll say it does, etc. And even if you do come prepared, unless you're willing to commit more resources than your opponent, they'll just quietly change it back with a non-suspicious commit message after a few days, once you've decided you had other things that deserved attention. Worse, often these persons become administrators and will ban you for "incivility" or protect the article so that their preferred version remains in place. You can begin an appeals process, but again, it's something that's going to be difficult to reasonably affect without a major time commitment and even after you win, it's typically something that can be easily undone once the attention of the relevant appeals committee is diverted. It's impossible for a normal person to compete with that type of editor, and they are very widespread. I don't necessarily want to give specific examples because I was involved in all of the ones that are significant to me, but it is not hard to find this occurring. You may want to reference the historical archives for The Wikitruth, as they had extensive case studies on this type of failure.
    - ArbitraryLimits 13y ago
      Without either agreeing or disagreeing with your comment, I'd like to point out your case would be stronger if you actually provided a concrete example like the GP asked.
      - cookiecaper 13y ago
        I referenced places where the GP can find concrete examples, other posters have given links, and I've explained that I don't want to wake sleeping dogs and get into specific controversies that I was involved with, which are the primary source of my observations. I believe that is sufficient.
- jarek 13y ago
  > roamed by amalgamations of insufferable, biased, and often incorrect pedants and paid PR shills Everyone on the internet is an insufferable, biased, and often incorrect pedant according to at least one other person. Do you think you're the exception?
  - cookiecaper 13y ago
    I don't agree that everyone thinks that about everyone else. I agree that certainly there are people that will disagree with one another, but that doesn't mean accusations of insufferability, pedantry, or bias even make sense in context, let alone accurately describe the circumstance. I chose my words intentionally with regard to the experience of editing Wikipedia. I contribute to many online fora, and am unpopular on many of those, but WP is a unique experience.
    - jarek 13y ago
      Just an observation: in my experience, everyone with an axe to grind against Wikipedia says basically "I thought the article was incorrect (wrong, biased, not neutral) and they wouldn't let me fix it." You can imagine how the problem looks from Wikipedia's point of view.
smacktoward 13y ago
What does that have to do with this? From the writeup it sounds like the Wikipedia Zero initiative is explicitly about the consumption side of the project ("accessing free knowledge"). Should they not do anything to make Wikipedia more accessible to non-contributing readers until every problem with contribution is resolved? The problems are separate and could be worked on separately -- why even assume that they can't walk and chew gum at the same time?
- vacri 13y ago
  Some stories will always have kneejerk reactions on sight of the 'trigger word'. Wikipedia story, regardless of content, will have 'dictorship!' detractors; feminism stories will have MRA detractors; Big Brand X will always have 'I hate X' detractors; political stories will always have 'taxes are theft and/or government is violence' detractors. All regardless of article content.
  - hacker789 13y ago
    Indeed. When people feel very strongly about things (a couple of your examples touch upon human rights), and they feel they rarely have a platform to express those views, they'll take any platform they can get. It's annoying but understandable. Also keep in mind that it's annoying to see a viewpoint expressed if you disagree with it. When such a viewpoint is expressed, you are predisposed to view them as unwanted contributions to the discussion. I don't believe the parent comment is warranted here, but maybe he wasted a lot of his time trying to improve Wikipedia, and he feels very strongly about this.
    - vacri 13y ago
      Edit: The parent comment, which was nearly half an hour old when I saw it, has been edited to remove the reference that I was against men's rights. -- Oh, sod off. Don't put words in my mouth. I do not disagree with men's rights, but I do disagree the the hysterical bulk of MRA knobheads that create a hyperbolic smokescreen, preventing real issues from being properly discussed. There's a shitload of valid men's rights issues, from strong imbalance in parental rights in some jurisdiction, to massive imbalances in prisoner treatment, to sociological things like the shame of showing emotion or weakness. Similarly there are different health issues for men and women, each of which requires its own focus. None of this comes up in the usual MRA "wah wah, feminists are speaking! it's so hard to be a man!" self-indulgent whining. Neither is there much of a recognition that while men have problems, it's not a competition and it doesn't mean that women don't also have problems. There aren't 'teams' here, except in the eyes of extremists. The thing is that MRA, here on HN and most other places, are free to submit anything they want any time they want. They most certainly have a platform to express those views. They don't though - they only rile up when they see a feminism post and have to 'put them in their place'. If they really were about "I just want to be heard", then they'd be posting articles, not tearing down others' stuff. I'd fucking love to see discussion on men's issues that didn't require putting women or feminists in their place. There are serious issues that men have to deal with, but the fucking hysterical over-wrought self-absorbed MRA commentry completely smothers real attempts at rational discussion. We can discuss and develop solutions to men's issues without having to be victorious over a third party. I mean seriously, 'no platform to speak'? HN is a firehose, and there are plenty of MRA-favourable people here. What a joke. Post some quality articles on MRA and get some discussion going. In other words - be a 'man': put up or shut up.
TrainedMonkey 13y ago
I see what you mean - Wikipedia essentially promotes oligopoly on knowledge. Relatively few privileged, old time crew, can enforce their views through bureaucratic like process. I am not sure that can be fixed though - what we can fix are which people get to be in charge of the article by some kind of peer voting mechanism where greater weight is given to academics who actually study the problem. To know which people are academics Wikipedia can start some kind of initiative with universities that would verify credentials.
- avn2109 13y ago
  I'm imagining the opacity of language that would result from this scheme, and it is frightening.
- nzp 13y ago
  We already have that: http://www.scholarpedia.org http://www.scholarpedia.org
throwaway092834 13y ago
I've contributed casually and anonymously in the past without problem, but it's been a while and I thought I'd take you up on your challenge. But there's a complication: Wikipedia appears to be TOO COMPREHENSIVE. I can no longer find a subject of general interest which isn't fleshed out to near (or beyond) my level of knowledge. All my local landmarks are well represented, as are the interesting areas I've travelled. Do you have any ideas on an article Wikipedia needs? I'd be happy to spend some of my own time on research and submit it anonymously.
- DanBC 13y ago
  Here's a list of requested articles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_articles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_articles Here are some stubs that might need expanding into proper articles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Stubs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Stubs Here are articles that need more information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_articles_in_need_of_updating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_articles_in...
  - nl 13y ago
    It's been a few years, but I've started a number of articles on the "Requested Articles" list. Most are pretty obscure, but thankfully Google Books and Amazon "search inside" gives access to information published before the web was born. There are also some services where you can ask a librarian online to look something up in a book for you. I've had some luck previously with http://www.nla.gov.au/askalibrarian http://www.nla.gov.au/askalibrarian
    - voltagex_ 13y ago
      Hey, that's my "local" library! Trove is also amazing, but fairly biased towards Australian history (for obvious reasons). http://trove.nla.gov.au/ http://trove.nla.gov.au/
- MattGrommes 13y ago
  I've often wondered why Wikipedia doesn't push the Simple English Wikipedia more: http://simple.wikipedia.org/ http://simple.wikipedia.org/ It only has 100k articles but I've found a bunch of excellent stuff there.
retr0rocket 13y ago
yet its still more accurate then any "properly" curated encyclopedia so your point is practically moot.
hnriot 13y ago
maybe they just don't like you, I've had no problems with wikipedia. contributed many pages (mostly on art)
Ellipsis753 13y ago
I quite frequently make small edits to Wikipedia. Sometimes I just ask for clarification on something that sounds wrong (but I'm having trouble looking it up) on the talk page. It's rare that my edits are reverted and when they are I've never felt that it wasn't reasonable for the edit to be reverted. I don't normally make huge edits as I haven't got the time but lots of small changes will still slowly improve the article.
jzwinck 13y ago
Here is an article I created and authored with no undue interference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_Island_(Namibia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_Island_(Namibia) Sure, the topic is obscure and even sort of shitty, but you need to dig deep these days if you want to start a brand new page, simply because most topics are already covered.
- justincormack 13y ago
  Thats an ok article. Its probably not going to get much better alas. But its useful given the fact that its not a very large thing...
why-el 13y ago
So you won't love the idea of access to knowledge for millions of people unless you can be able to contribute to that knowledge? (assuming it's as hard as you say). Either you didn't not phrase it correctly or this is a remarkably insensitive thing to say.
gbog 13y ago
Ok, some people came back and did let us know that you're wrong. Now would please remove this post about wounded egoes of some Wikipedia editors from the top of the page and let us talk about the important issue of free access to knowledge in poor countries?
justincormack 13y ago
No, give an example. I have created a number of articles, but on the other hand I am a (not very contributing) admin so I could be biased. But the difficult stuff I dealt with was in the areas where people argue (which you wouldnt realise). Most of the problems are where there are few contributions (history is terrible).
aaron695 13y ago
> let me challenge you to start any new article, or make any decent sized edit to any article In essence this is a stupidity filter. This has been mentioned many times before where other people have gone off topic to discuss this.
eliben 13y ago
Can you try to give more details than snark? What particular experience has left you so scarred? I have never had a problem doing Wikipedia edits for stuff I found inaccurate or needed more details. I didn't always go back to check but whenever I did, the edits were still there / no one has removed or edited them away.
GFischer 13y ago
I've had few problems, and I'm far from perfect. I've edited several articles, and created some. I just went ahead, created an account, and started trying to contribute. I did have problems in the Spanish language Wikipedia, I created a page for the Finance Minister, and it got deleted twice for "self-promotion" until I managed to convince the guy that the person was, in fact, a relevant political figure in my country. http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Lorenzo http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Lorenzo I also created and modified pages on the English Wikipedia, and I haven't had problems yet, for example the last one I created was the page of the owner of the company I work for (one of the world's richest): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayme_Garfinkel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayme_Garfinkel I don't have a good knowledge of Wikipedia, I just copy a page I think is similar to the one I want to create and use it as a start.

by rsync 13y ago

cookiecaper 13y ago

Wikipedia is now and always has been a giant turf war, roamed by amalgamations of insufferable, biased, and often incorrect pedants and paid PR shills. There was a time something could've been done about it, but Wikipedia chose not to. I stopped editing in 2005.

alayne 13y ago
What is a concrete example? Many of the Wikipedia controversies I've read about have been related to political figures and events.
- OWaz 13y ago
  One example that comes to my mind is when author Philip Roth attempted to clarify the inspiration for his book The Human Stain. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/09/an-open-letter-to-wikipedia.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/09/an-open-... The wikipedia entry for The Human Stain now contains a reference to the controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Stain#Anatole_Broyard_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Stain#Anatole_Broyard...
  - tommorris 13y ago
    Except Roth was full of shit on that. See: http://old.ironholds.org/?p=979 http://old.ironholds.org/?p=979
    - ZeroGravitas 13y ago
      That link's really worth a read.
- cookiecaper 13y ago
  There are many examples. Attempts to make technical pages more accessible to a general audience have been shut down repeatedly and resulted in a separate Wikipedia entirely called "Simple English". Attempts to neutralize any page that anyone pays attention to results in the page's regular babysitters coming out and destroying it -- a normal person can't compete because these people are obsessive about the pages they watch, often because their full-time job is to ensure that clients' Wikipedia pages read in the manner desired. Sometimes other motives, like zealotry, contribute to the obsession. These persons become steeped in WP-specific jargon, utilizing an ever-growing body of subjective and sometimes almost conflicting rules to crush any opponent who doesn't come ready for the fight. They'll say that your edit doesn't comply with WP:XYZ and WP:ABC, you'll say it does, etc. And even if you do come prepared, unless you're willing to commit more resources than your opponent, they'll just quietly change it back with a non-suspicious commit message after a few days, once you've decided you had other things that deserved attention. Worse, often these persons become administrators and will ban you for "incivility" or protect the article so that their preferred version remains in place. You can begin an appeals process, but again, it's something that's going to be difficult to reasonably affect without a major time commitment and even after you win, it's typically something that can be easily undone once the attention of the relevant appeals committee is diverted. It's impossible for a normal person to compete with that type of editor, and they are very widespread. I don't necessarily want to give specific examples because I was involved in all of the ones that are significant to me, but it is not hard to find this occurring. You may want to reference the historical archives for The Wikitruth, as they had extensive case studies on this type of failure.
  - ArbitraryLimits 13y ago
    Without either agreeing or disagreeing with your comment, I'd like to point out your case would be stronger if you actually provided a concrete example like the GP asked.
    - cookiecaper 13y ago
      I referenced places where the GP can find concrete examples, other posters have given links, and I've explained that I don't want to wake sleeping dogs and get into specific controversies that I was involved with, which are the primary source of my observations. I believe that is sufficient.
jarek 13y ago
> roamed by amalgamations of insufferable, biased, and often incorrect pedants and paid PR shills Everyone on the internet is an insufferable, biased, and often incorrect pedant according to at least one other person. Do you think you're the exception?
- cookiecaper 13y ago
  I don't agree that everyone thinks that about everyone else. I agree that certainly there are people that will disagree with one another, but that doesn't mean accusations of insufferability, pedantry, or bias even make sense in context, let alone accurately describe the circumstance. I chose my words intentionally with regard to the experience of editing Wikipedia. I contribute to many online fora, and am unpopular on many of those, but WP is a unique experience.
  - jarek 13y ago
    Just an observation: in my experience, everyone with an axe to grind against Wikipedia says basically "I thought the article was incorrect (wrong, biased, not neutral) and they wouldn't let me fix it." You can imagine how the problem looks from Wikipedia's point of view.

smacktoward 13y ago

What does that have to do with this? From the writeup it sounds like the Wikipedia Zero initiative is explicitly about the consumption side of the project ("accessing free knowledge"). Should they not do anything to make Wikipedia more accessible to non-contributing readers until every problem with contribution is resolved? The problems are separate and could be worked on separately -- why even assume that they can't walk and chew gum at the same time?

vacri 13y ago
Some stories will always have kneejerk reactions on sight of the 'trigger word'. Wikipedia story, regardless of content, will have 'dictorship!' detractors; feminism stories will have MRA detractors; Big Brand X will always have 'I hate X' detractors; political stories will always have 'taxes are theft and/or government is violence' detractors. All regardless of article content.
- hacker789 13y ago
  Indeed. When people feel very strongly about things (a couple of your examples touch upon human rights), and they feel they rarely have a platform to express those views, they'll take any platform they can get. It's annoying but understandable. Also keep in mind that it's annoying to see a viewpoint expressed if you disagree with it. When such a viewpoint is expressed, you are predisposed to view them as unwanted contributions to the discussion. I don't believe the parent comment is warranted here, but maybe he wasted a lot of his time trying to improve Wikipedia, and he feels very strongly about this.
  - vacri 13y ago
    Edit: The parent comment, which was nearly half an hour old when I saw it, has been edited to remove the reference that I was against men's rights. -- Oh, sod off. Don't put words in my mouth. I do not disagree with men's rights, but I do disagree the the hysterical bulk of MRA knobheads that create a hyperbolic smokescreen, preventing real issues from being properly discussed. There's a shitload of valid men's rights issues, from strong imbalance in parental rights in some jurisdiction, to massive imbalances in prisoner treatment, to sociological things like the shame of showing emotion or weakness. Similarly there are different health issues for men and women, each of which requires its own focus. None of this comes up in the usual MRA "wah wah, feminists are speaking! it's so hard to be a man!" self-indulgent whining. Neither is there much of a recognition that while men have problems, it's not a competition and it doesn't mean that women don't also have problems. There aren't 'teams' here, except in the eyes of extremists. The thing is that MRA, here on HN and most other places, are free to submit anything they want any time they want. They most certainly have a platform to express those views. They don't though - they only rile up when they see a feminism post and have to 'put them in their place'. If they really were about "I just want to be heard", then they'd be posting articles, not tearing down others' stuff. I'd fucking love to see discussion on men's issues that didn't require putting women or feminists in their place. There are serious issues that men have to deal with, but the fucking hysterical over-wrought self-absorbed MRA commentry completely smothers real attempts at rational discussion. We can discuss and develop solutions to men's issues without having to be victorious over a third party. I mean seriously, 'no platform to speak'? HN is a firehose, and there are plenty of MRA-favourable people here. What a joke. Post some quality articles on MRA and get some discussion going. In other words - be a 'man': put up or shut up.

TrainedMonkey 13y ago

I see what you mean - Wikipedia essentially promotes oligopoly on knowledge. Relatively few privileged, old time crew, can enforce their views through bureaucratic like process. I am not sure that can be fixed though - what we can fix are which people get to be in charge of the article by some kind of peer voting mechanism where greater weight is given to academics who actually study the problem. To know which people are academics Wikipedia can start some kind of initiative with universities that would verify credentials.

avn2109 13y ago
I'm imagining the opacity of language that would result from this scheme, and it is frightening.
nzp 13y ago
We already have that: http://www.scholarpedia.org http://www.scholarpedia.org

throwaway092834 13y ago

I've contributed casually and anonymously in the past without problem, but it's been a while and I thought I'd take you up on your challenge. But there's a complication: Wikipedia appears to be TOO COMPREHENSIVE. I can no longer find a subject of general interest which isn't fleshed out to near (or beyond) my level of knowledge. All my local landmarks are well represented, as are the interesting areas I've travelled. Do you have any ideas on an article Wikipedia needs? I'd be happy to spend some of my own time on research and submit it anonymously.

DanBC 13y ago
Here's a list of requested articles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_articles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_articles Here are some stubs that might need expanding into proper articles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Stubs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Stubs Here are articles that need more information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_articles_in_need_of_updating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_articles_in...
- nl 13y ago
  It's been a few years, but I've started a number of articles on the "Requested Articles" list. Most are pretty obscure, but thankfully Google Books and Amazon "search inside" gives access to information published before the web was born. There are also some services where you can ask a librarian online to look something up in a book for you. I've had some luck previously with http://www.nla.gov.au/askalibrarian http://www.nla.gov.au/askalibrarian
  - voltagex_ 13y ago
    Hey, that's my "local" library! Trove is also amazing, but fairly biased towards Australian history (for obvious reasons). http://trove.nla.gov.au/ http://trove.nla.gov.au/
MattGrommes 13y ago
I've often wondered why Wikipedia doesn't push the Simple English Wikipedia more: http://simple.wikipedia.org/ http://simple.wikipedia.org/ It only has 100k articles but I've found a bunch of excellent stuff there.

retr0rocket 13y ago

yet its still more accurate then any "properly" curated encyclopedia so your point is practically moot.

hnriot 13y ago

maybe they just don't like you, I've had no problems with wikipedia. contributed many pages (mostly on art)

Ellipsis753 13y ago

I quite frequently make small edits to Wikipedia. Sometimes I just ask for clarification on something that sounds wrong (but I'm having trouble looking it up) on the talk page. It's rare that my edits are reverted and when they are I've never felt that it wasn't reasonable for the edit to be reverted. I don't normally make huge edits as I haven't got the time but lots of small changes will still slowly improve the article.

jzwinck 13y ago

Here is an article I created and authored with no undue interference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_Island_(Namibia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_Island_(Namibia) Sure, the topic is obscure and even sort of shitty, but you need to dig deep these days if you want to start a brand new page, simply because most topics are already covered.

justincormack 13y ago
Thats an ok article. Its probably not going to get much better alas. But its useful given the fact that its not a very large thing...

why-el 13y ago

So you won't love the idea of access to knowledge for millions of people unless you can be able to contribute to that knowledge? (assuming it's as hard as you say). Either you didn't not phrase it correctly or this is a remarkably insensitive thing to say.

gbog 13y ago

Ok, some people came back and did let us know that you're wrong. Now would please remove this post about wounded egoes of some Wikipedia editors from the top of the page and let us talk about the important issue of free access to knowledge in poor countries?

justincormack 13y ago

No, give an example. I have created a number of articles, but on the other hand I am a (not very contributing) admin so I could be biased. But the difficult stuff I dealt with was in the areas where people argue (which you wouldnt realise). Most of the problems are where there are few contributions (history is terrible).

aaron695 13y ago

> let me challenge you to start any new article, or make any decent sized edit to any article In essence this is a stupidity filter. This has been mentioned many times before where other people have gone off topic to discuss this.

eliben 13y ago

Can you try to give more details than snark? What particular experience has left you so scarred? I have never had a problem doing Wikipedia edits for stuff I found inaccurate or needed more details. I didn't always go back to check but whenever I did, the edits were still there / no one has removed or edited them away.

GFischer 13y ago

I've had few problems, and I'm far from perfect. I've edited several articles, and created some. I just went ahead, created an account, and started trying to contribute. I did have problems in the Spanish language Wikipedia, I created a page for the Finance Minister, and it got deleted twice for "self-promotion" until I managed to convince the guy that the person was, in fact, a relevant political figure in my country. http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Lorenzo http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Lorenzo I also created and modified pages on the English Wikipedia, and I haven't had problems yet, for example the last one I created was the page of the owner of the company I work for (one of the world's richest): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayme_Garfinkel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayme_Garfinkel I don't have a good knowledge of Wikipedia, I just copy a page I think is similar to the one I want to create and use it as a start.