4 ms·

Not even close. If you're interested in a particular area of history and you've read a few books on the subject, you'll know that Wikipedia is missing reams of

by TillE 12y ago

Not even close. If you're interested in a particular area of history and you've read a few books on the subject, you'll know that Wikipedia is missing reams of useful information. Maybe Wikipedia is ok for current stuff and the 20th century, but it barely scratches the surface for most of medieval Europe, for example. There's absolutely no need to be constrained to the terse articles and limited scope of a traditional encyclopedia in this respect. In fact, Britannica has substantially more information on certain topics.

muyuu 12y ago
There's the problem with a generic encyclopaedia extended to include news and current affairs to leverage the dynamics of the web: policies that are good for some usages are bad for others. I don't think Wikipedia should base its policies to be suitable for pop culture and sports fact checking if this conflicts in the slightest with good coverage on science, research, and well established philosophy and culture. I can imagine how hard was it to get Wikipedia where it is today, therefore I will trust their judgement moving forwards. It's not the best at everything but that's okay.
ghaff 12y ago
Agreed. Most obvious modern stuff, especially things that are well-known in popular or tech/geek culture. But I'm constantly surprised how many topics, including technical ones, are little more than stubs or are actively bad. Mind you, there's a lot of material that doesn't follow these generalizations but it's very inconsistent.
- vacri 12y ago
  By its very nature, the "popular stuff" is the stuff that more people are interested in. If the "popular stuff" is done, then there's going to naturally be fewer people interested in fleshing out the "unpopular" stuff.
  - cwyers 12y ago
    That seems to assume things not in evidence -- maybe the other entries would be more popular if they were referenced more, and they'd be referenced more if they were more fleshed out.
    - vacri 12y ago
      You could reference "Vacri's cheese preferences" on every page on the web, and it still wouldn't be as well fleshed out as the topic of WWII on Wikipedia, particularly if vacri and his close associates weren't particularly interested in providing the info. Frequency of reference follows popularity more than popularity follows frequency of reference. Or perhaps another example: most politicians have some sort of twitter or facebook account listed on their promotional material. It doesn't make those twitter accounts particularly popular, despite being frequently referenced.
Retric 12y ago
Wikipedia has fairly strict notability guidelines that's going to prohibit adding a lot of historical information. As a rule of thumb if it's not already in there it's probably not notable enough to add.

by TillE 12y ago

muyuu 12y ago

There's the problem with a generic encyclopaedia extended to include news and current affairs to leverage the dynamics of the web: policies that are good for some usages are bad for others. I don't think Wikipedia should base its policies to be suitable for pop culture and sports fact checking if this conflicts in the slightest with good coverage on science, research, and well established philosophy and culture. I can imagine how hard was it to get Wikipedia where it is today, therefore I will trust their judgement moving forwards. It's not the best at everything but that's okay.

ghaff 12y ago

Agreed. Most obvious modern stuff, especially things that are well-known in popular or tech/geek culture. But I'm constantly surprised how many topics, including technical ones, are little more than stubs or are actively bad. Mind you, there's a lot of material that doesn't follow these generalizations but it's very inconsistent.

vacri 12y ago
By its very nature, the "popular stuff" is the stuff that more people are interested in. If the "popular stuff" is done, then there's going to naturally be fewer people interested in fleshing out the "unpopular" stuff.
- cwyers 12y ago
  That seems to assume things not in evidence -- maybe the other entries would be more popular if they were referenced more, and they'd be referenced more if they were more fleshed out.
  - vacri 12y ago
    You could reference "Vacri's cheese preferences" on every page on the web, and it still wouldn't be as well fleshed out as the topic of WWII on Wikipedia, particularly if vacri and his close associates weren't particularly interested in providing the info. Frequency of reference follows popularity more than popularity follows frequency of reference. Or perhaps another example: most politicians have some sort of twitter or facebook account listed on their promotional material. It doesn't make those twitter accounts particularly popular, despite being frequently referenced.

Retric 12y ago

Wikipedia has fairly strict notability guidelines that's going to prohibit adding a lot of historical information. As a rule of thumb if it's not already in there it's probably not notable enough to add.