6 ms·
The story is incorrect. Knuth's comment was not removed because it was uncited. It was removed because Wikipedia has a policy that articles should not mention W
by gort 17y ago
The story is incorrect. Knuth's comment was not removed because it was uncited. It was removed because Wikipedia has a policy that articles should not mention Wikipedia unless there's a good reason for them to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Self-references_to_avoid#Articles_are_about_their_subjects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Self-references_to_av...
There was a time years ago when every time some public figure mentioned Wikipedia, that fact itself would make it into their Wikipedia article. That was lame. Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia about Wikipedia.
When User:Staecker removed Knuth's comment, it was with the edit summary "rm self-reference" which is shorthand for "removed unneeded reference to Wikipedia", and has nothing to do with the quote being uncited.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- michael_dorfman 17y agoAnd I have to say that this is a good thing. If you're going to attempt to write a serious encyclopedia article about Knuth, trivia like his opinion of Wikipedia has no place.
- christopherolah 17y agoNot necessarily. He's one of the leading figures in CS, his opinion on major projects like Wikipedia strikes me as significant...
- wmf 17y agoWhat does Wikipedia have to do with CS? What does Knuth's expertise in algorithms and typesetting have to do with Wikipedia?
- gritzko 17y agoHow on earth can an outsider know that? So, skipping some steps, that leads us to a conclusion that the Wikipedia's grows has stopped by design. Namely, because the administration prefers to have some kind of "Better Britannica" ("better" means "bigger" in this case) and anything beyond the borders of that vision is unwelcomed.
- gort 17y agoIt's mostly common sense. A sensible guide is: would an article on the same subject, but hosted on a different site, mention Wikipedia?
- gritzko 17y agoSorry for the emotional response. I agree. But more or less that confirms a point: contributing to Wikipedia became a complex business; thus, the growth predictably stopped.
- dasil003 17y agothe growth predictably stopped While none of the comments or OA itself come out and say it, there seems to be an implicit assumption that this is bad. However when I go to wikipedia there is an article about anything I want to look up. It seems like the low-hanging fruit is gone, so shouldn't we expect that it would slow down? Once there is a critical mass of editors it makes sense to slow it down and keep the bar high for contributions. It's far from perfect, but isn't it better than "grow grow grow"?
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- xsmasher 17y agoAgreed, more editing does not eaqual more quality, or vice versa. This leveling off (or even contraction) may be a normal stage in the maturity of Wikipedia. A bigger problem, I think, is that many articles reach a high level of quality, and then suffer a succession of edits that clutter up or otherwise reduce the quality of the article. Wikipedia needs a way to fight this article entropy.
- tptacek 17y agoAnd, it was uncited. If Knuth wants to have a documented opinion on WP in the WP, he should write a page on his own site and cite it. WP isn't a primary source.