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Disclosure: I am a Wikipedian. I agree with several other participants here on HN that the general atmosphere on HN is much more friendly to informed, thoughful
by tokenadult 12y ago
Disclosure: I am a Wikipedian. I agree with several other participants here on HN that the general atmosphere on HN is much more friendly to informed, thoughful discussion on most topics than the Wikipedia editing culture is to discussion of how to edit Wikipedia.
One thing that Wikipedia helps some people learn about is reliable sources. With that in mind, I'll mention that the source kindly submitted here, the Wikipediocracy site, is a haven for critics of Wikipedia of all kinds, including people who were site-banned from Wikipedia for tendentious pro-Nazi edits[1] and a variety of other people that no professional editor would ever allow to edit an important reference resource. The mobocracy of Wikipedia's initial editing culture indeed drew in too many idle young men with little life experience and too few people who had ever had actual responsibilities as editors or researchers.
I agree with the comments posted before this comment was posted that most women, as a general rule, know better than to engage in time-wasting activities like cleaning up the mess on Wikipedia. I have to carefully ration my Wikipedia research and editing time among responsibilities for doing actual paid work and caring for my children. Anyone with adult life experience and mature judgment is likely to find Wikipedia more off-putting than rewarding, but some people persist in trying to clean up one or another corner of Wikipedia out of compassion for readers of the world's most visited free online encyclopedia.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race_and_intelligence#Ferahgo_the_Assassin_and_Captain_Occam_site-banned https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests...
http://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5063 http://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5063
- chubot 12y agoIs this because Wikipedia is "done"? I recall seeing that the rate of articles created has flattened out, so current activity is more editing of existing articles than it used to be. I am mostly a Wikipedia reader (although I have created articles before and done minor edits). From my perspective it's just great and I don't notice any of the angst or frivolity that goes into its curation. I don't have extremely high expectations. It's a fantastic starting point to learn about almost anything. I suspect some of the arguments are basically "in the noise" for a user like me. That is, the way I use Wikipedia, the outcome of the argument wouldn't really make a difference.
- tokenadult 12y agoWikipedia is very far from done in updating articles about psychology[1] or genetics.[2] Most articles on Wikipedia on most topics still need a great deal of work. Even by Wikipedia's own meager standards, few articles have reached "good article" or "featured article" levels of quality. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-09-04/WikiProject_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2014-04-30/WikiProject_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...
- andreasvc 12y agoInteresting that you compare Wikipedia with HN. I think it would be great if Wikipedia embraced a voting model to moderate contributions. On HN you only get to be on the frontpage if enough others support a submission with votes. On Wikipedia each and every edit is immediately bombarded into the version that the whole world sees, which is what leads to edit wars I think.