5 ms·

cranks with axes to grind Every wikipedia critic I know used to be a huge wikipedia fan until something they deeply cared about was either screwed up, vandaliz

cranks with axes to grind Every wikipedia critic I know used to be a huge wikipedia fan until something they deeply cared about was either screwed up, vandalized, or deleted. I bet one internet cookie that if/when this happens to you, you will be as passionately anti-wikipedia as you are now pro-wikipedia.

skolor 17y ago
This seems odd: I don't know any person who is a directly anti-wikipedia, but I do know several people who are against wikipedia. They don't active talk bad about it, but they're the type of people who say "You can believe anything written on there, it was just written by people". Due to the ease of editing, they feel that it means nothing is fact-checked. On the other hand, I know one of the administrators there, and he has shown me several pages of the hate-mongering he gets, mostly for just being an admin. Some of it has merit (for example, a good chunk of it was because of one particular article he moderated, and the side that lost did not lose gracefully), but most of it is just people jumping on him because they feel they are being denied their right to, well, write. I rarely see any well thought out, cohesive arguments for re-structuring wikipedia. Most of what I see is little more than "I hate that admin, he said I wasn't notable enough for a page. Lets go egg his house!"
- asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
  I rarely see any well thought out, cohesive arguments for re-structuring wikipedia. I see no reason for an internet encyclopedia to copy the shortcomings of a paper encyclopedia as closely as wikipedia does. Paper and shelf space are expensive and limited, you have to limit the articles and the article size. On the other hand, HD space is cheap and text small and easily greatly compressed. Searching in paper is hard. Searching on a computer is easy. There's no reason to have one article be THE article. Articles could be write only, unmodifiable, and search-able by their contents, their ranking by the general public, their ranking by a group of experts, their ranking of any selected group, by the hash of their text, etc. There could be some built in redundancy, like a short encyclopedia style article on top of an incredibly deep Ph.D level dissertation article. In short, I find wikipedia cludgy and inexplicably mimicking the short comings of paper.
  - catzaa 17y ago
    > I rarely see any well thought out, cohesive arguments for re-structuring wikipedia. Yes, there are a few (such as the examples to improve citizendium). The first would be to remove anonymity. If the editors are know it would improve quality and would help to bring in specialists from fields. Currently WP is now a vehicle for anonymous slander. Lies simply get repeated. Things do not have to be true – it just have to be on another website.
cyunker 17y ago
I've gone the opposite route. At first, I was skeptical. But it has become an invaluable resource especially in areas not covered by traditional encyclopedias (e.g. popular culture).
- teeja 17y ago
  Very so. As a lifelong rock and film fan, it's WP schoolin' me alla time. Cuz, as Mark Twain put it: "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."
quant18 17y ago
Coincidentally it's just past the three-year anniversary of the first attempt to delete the article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_inventors_killed_by_their_own_inventions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion... Back then it could still be saved by tons of people saying WP:ILIKEIT. But if it wasn't for the fact that some 19th-century writer had the idea of compiling the exact same kind of list, the thing would probably be deleted under today's standards.

skolor 17y ago

This seems odd: I don't know any person who is a directly anti-wikipedia, but I do know several people who are against wikipedia. They don't active talk bad about it, but they're the type of people who say "You can believe anything written on there, it was just written by people". Due to the ease of editing, they feel that it means nothing is fact-checked. On the other hand, I know one of the administrators there, and he has shown me several pages of the hate-mongering he gets, mostly for just being an admin. Some of it has merit (for example, a good chunk of it was because of one particular article he moderated, and the side that lost did not lose gracefully), but most of it is just people jumping on him because they feel they are being denied their right to, well, write. I rarely see any well thought out, cohesive arguments for re-structuring wikipedia. Most of what I see is little more than "I hate that admin, he said I wasn't notable enough for a page. Lets go egg his house!"

asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
I rarely see any well thought out, cohesive arguments for re-structuring wikipedia. I see no reason for an internet encyclopedia to copy the shortcomings of a paper encyclopedia as closely as wikipedia does. Paper and shelf space are expensive and limited, you have to limit the articles and the article size. On the other hand, HD space is cheap and text small and easily greatly compressed. Searching in paper is hard. Searching on a computer is easy. There's no reason to have one article be THE article. Articles could be write only, unmodifiable, and search-able by their contents, their ranking by the general public, their ranking by a group of experts, their ranking of any selected group, by the hash of their text, etc. There could be some built in redundancy, like a short encyclopedia style article on top of an incredibly deep Ph.D level dissertation article. In short, I find wikipedia cludgy and inexplicably mimicking the short comings of paper.
- catzaa 17y ago
  > I rarely see any well thought out, cohesive arguments for re-structuring wikipedia. Yes, there are a few (such as the examples to improve citizendium). The first would be to remove anonymity. If the editors are know it would improve quality and would help to bring in specialists from fields. Currently WP is now a vehicle for anonymous slander. Lies simply get repeated. Things do not have to be true – it just have to be on another website.

cyunker 17y ago

I've gone the opposite route. At first, I was skeptical. But it has become an invaluable resource especially in areas not covered by traditional encyclopedias (e.g. popular culture).

teeja 17y ago
Very so. As a lifelong rock and film fan, it's WP schoolin' me alla time. Cuz, as Mark Twain put it: "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."

quant18 17y ago

Coincidentally it's just past the three-year anniversary of the first attempt to delete the article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_inventors_killed_by_their_own_inventions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion... Back then it could still be saved by tons of people saying WP:ILIKEIT. But if it wasn't for the fact that some 19th-century writer had the idea of compiling the exact same kind of list, the thing would probably be deleted under today's standards.