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Ask HN: How many of you contribute to Wikipedia?

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Re: Ask HN: How many of you contribute to Wikipedia?

#41

Post by mjn »

zalew wrote: post #38

I anonymously contributed mostly to automotive pages, and mostly for the Polish versions. I found everything in English got reverted, in Polish the vast part holded up (even a link to my own on-topic website). Probably regional versions aren't that nazi as the main one, although I've seen crazy discussions on every subject even mildly touching politics, for obvious reasons (some zealots are just ridiculous).

I think it varies a bit; the German Wikipedia is actually considerably more strict on inclusion criteria than the English Wikipedia, but others are less strict.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you contribute to Wikipedia?

#42

Post by zalew »

mjn wrote: post #41
zalew wrote: post #38

I anonymously contributed mostly to automotive pages, and mostly for the Polish versions. I found everything in English got reverted, in Polish the vast part holded up (even a link to my own on-topic website). Probably regional versions aren't that nazi as the main one, although I've seen crazy discussions on every subject even mildly touching politics, for obvious reasons (some zealots are just ridiculous).

I think it varies a bit; the German Wikipedia is actually considerably more strict on inclusion criteria than the English Wikipedia, but others are less strict.

Maybe. I always avoided getting into 'somebody is wrong on the internet' over touchy subjects, rather filled in technical data or trivia on my hobby topics or more often niche wiki sites (not wikipedia.org). Sometimes I regret the lost street-cred of doing it anon.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you contribute to Wikipedia?

#43

Post by officemonkey »

I was a pretty active editor in the early days, mostly building out articles on Jazz musicians that were particularly stubby.

I had a watchlist of pages I cared about and everything. I gave up as my personal life became more interesting.

I also had a knack of finding movies in the Public Domain and getting good image captures for their photos. Photos of Charlie Barnett and Count Basie are two examples that still exist. The photo of Paulette Goddard (which I'm the most proud of) did not survive on the English language wikipedia (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/PauletteG...)

Now, if I edit something, it's a typo, or something stupid (akin to "George Washington had X-ray vision.")

Re: Ask HN: How many of you contribute to Wikipedia?

#44

Post by 542458 »

incompatible wrote: post #39
542458 wrote: post #8

I've tried on a three occasions to contribute to wikipedia - Two occasions where I've found articles with incorrect data based off of poor sources, and once to correct a minor grammatical issue, with all of the articles in question being small and non-political in nature. Every time I was promptly reverted. In the former's case I always provided sources for my updated info, which were completely ignored the first occ…

I'm curious to see the change you made, since I've done the same thing hundreds of times (adding or changing an article and giving a reference) and I haven't noticed random reversion.

I considered including that in this post, but it would have the net effect of tying several of my online accounts to my real name, and I'd like to avoid that. Sorry!

Re: Ask HN: How many of you contribute to Wikipedia?

#45

Post by owenversteeg »

I've been a contributor to Wikipedia for a few years. I mostly do small corrections but occasionally make an article or vastly improve an article.

My most significant wiki-creation is my Peltier element diagram (which explains how to read Peltier element IDs.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Peltier_IDs_explained.svg

Re: Ask HN: How many of you contribute to Wikipedia?

#46

Post by teh_klev »

I've been a contributor since 2010 [1]. My first contribution was to create the NuGet package manager article [2]. Since then I mostly fix typo's, undo vandalism, fix or delete dead links and other wee odds and sods.

I avoid controversial topic stuff because I just don't have the time or energy to argue the toss about whether something should be in the wiki or about the content of a wiki article.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Teh_klev

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuget

Re: Ask HN: How many of you contribute to Wikipedia?

#47

Post by bjourne »

Edited frequently about 2002-2004. About Israel. At that time, Wikipedia was so young and sparsely populated that it was still possible to make great advances on such a contentious topic despite hugely different point of views.

Then the trolls came, pov pushers and various ideologues who thought that the best way to push their view on wikipedia was to make "the other sides" editors be as miserable as possible. People that don't really care about history or facts or even being right as long as their side wins.

So every edit or addition became stuck in discussions on talk pages or the mailing list. Lots of slurs about editors being anti-semites, racism etc.. Not only from trolls but also from admins. Thing is, when you want to write stuff you're at a distinct disadvantage versus those who likes to delete it. It can take you days to research a single paragraph while people who don't like you just have to spend a few minutes coming up with a reason why it's off-topic for the article, biased or something else. Then the ones with the most political clout in the Wikipedia establishment wins.

You also can't start a fresh on Wikipedia. If you edited about Israel (or Palestine for that matter) and upset some people, they will follow you around and try to find reasons why your edits suck even in totally different topic areas.

It's incredibly frustrating experience and huge amount of work. So you'll ask yourself what's the point? Unless you're a fanatic the answer is "absolutely no fucking point" so you let the extremists have their way and spend your time with more fullfilling hobbies!

Re: Ask HN: How many of you contribute to Wikipedia?

#48

Post by moeffju »

I used to contribute for a few years, around 2003–2005. I largely stopped because the amount of ideology and trolling is just too much to bother. I see Wikipedia as a failed community – there is a strong bureaucracy very strong groupthink and everything that falls outside that is often met with resistance, outlash and deletionism. Also, what bjourne says in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6584940

Re: Ask HN: How many of you contribute to Wikipedia?

#49

Post by zalew »

bjourne wrote: post #47

Edited frequently about 2002-2004. About Israel. At that time, Wikipedia was so young and sparsely populated that it was still possible to make great advances on such a contentious topic despite hugely different point of views. Then the trolls came, pov pushers and various ideologues who thought that the best way to push their view on wikipedia was to make "the other sides" editors be as miserable as possible. People…

Not that you're wrong, but it should be no suprise when you engaged in edit wars on one of the most touchy subjects on earth.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you contribute to Wikipedia?

#50

Post by fluxon »

I've contributed since 2006 (under a different username than here), with several peak years, totaling 14k edits so far. I'm an inclusionist who insists on good reliable sourcing for extraordinary claims, and who frequently defends articles from deletion by adding obvious sources (or which would be obvious if the deletionists ever bothered to look). The couple dozen articles I've written have been sourced well enough not to be nominated for deletion or attacked in any significant way. I've also helped out over the years on the #en-wikipedia-help IRC channel. I'm a http://enwp.org/WP:Wikignome and anti-PR activist, and I'm proud of (but a little jealous I missed out on) the recent investigation of and purge of the Wiki-PR infestation.
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