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The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

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Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#121

Post by DanBC »

frenchy wrote: post #98
spb wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenStreetMaps' content is virtually 100% objective (with only political borders and names being potentially contentious).

It's not 100% objective, but for simple things, it mostly is. If you hop on the mailing lists you will find all sorts of people bickering about whether it should be `shop=ice_cream` or `amenity=ice_cream` or `restauraunt=ice_cream` as they fight over their self-made taxonomies. At some point, I think, things will inevitably change. But for the moment, there's so many obvious things to work on that the confusing/subje…

Do you have links? I'm interested in meta stuff.

Discussions about shop= vs amenity= are sometimes frustrating, but I bet they don't come anywhere near the discussions over using –,—, or - in page titles.

Here's 15,000 words. At the end of that? No consensus. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(poli...

The type of dash to use in "Mexican-American War" got over 20,000 words. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mexican%E2%80%93American_...

Dash wars even got to Arbcom: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitra...

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#122

Post by runn1ng »

cooper12 wrote: post #103
runn1ng wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have learned that in order to actually contribute to Wikipedia, you have to treat it less like a collaboration and more like a battle. You can't just contribute and consider it done. You have to be prepare to fight your way through, engage in edit wars, learn about the battlefield (the bureaucracy, the article sourcing) and in the end, if you fight long enough, you usually win. You have to repeatedly, over and over…

Umm you're right that whoever cares more will usually win, but edit warring is a quick way to get yourself banned. There's a talk page right next to the "Read" tab. Use it and come to a consensus like a reasonable person. If you treat Wikipedia like a battleground, of course people are going to assume you aren't there to build an encyclopedia.

Nobody reads the talk pages.

Also I don't really want to do that. It's just a necessity, otherwise your text gets immediately reverted. While when you stick with it and revert it back, you actually have a chance

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#123

Post by quadrangle »

smithkl42 wrote: post #86

I'll toss my own experience out there. I've contributed edits to maybe a dozen or so different Wikipedia articles, and would like to contribute more, but it's hard to get past a couple of hurdles. The main one is the byzantine and archaic editing tools. The markdown language that Wikipedia uses is a PITA to learn, and following a discussion on the talk page is almost impossible. Wikipedia presents a wonderful UX for…

Talk pages should not themselves be wiki pages. This is the result of all that MVP stuff people go on about. Wikipedia had wikis, they didn't have discussion boards. They needed discussion boards. MVP was to use another wiki page for discussions, and that evolved into the stupidness we see today.

Talk and discussion are completely different process than collaborative editing, and they demand different tools.

I also agree about the markup (it's markUP. "Markdown" is a specific type of markup language which, despite its flaws, probably is the easiest and now most common one)

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#124

Post by prodigal_erik »

rloc wrote: post #13

I tried once or twice to edit articles but was quickly rejected by editors that usually believe they sort of "own" the content. I've quickly become demotivated as explained in the analysis and never contributed again. Another problem is that when you think you've made an important and useful update you're never sure when someone will roll it back. Some are spending a very big chunk of their time to make sure articles…

They explicitly don't want original research, so knowing about the topic is only helpful for judging primary and secondary sources. Most experts should be writing primary sources rather than Wikipedia articles.

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#126

Post by jessriedel »

quadrangle wrote: post #123
smithkl42 wrote: post #86

I'll toss my own experience out there. I've contributed edits to maybe a dozen or so different Wikipedia articles, and would like to contribute more, but it's hard to get past a couple of hurdles. The main one is the byzantine and archaic editing tools. The markdown language that Wikipedia uses is a PITA to learn, and following a discussion on the talk page is almost impossible. Wikipedia presents a wonderful UX for…

Talk pages should not themselves be wiki pages. This is the result of all that MVP stuff people go on about. Wikipedia had wikis, they didn't have discussion boards. They needed discussion boards. MVP was to use another wiki page for discussions, and that evolved into the stupidness we see today. Talk and discussion are completely different process than collaborative editing, and they demand different tools. I also a…

MVP?

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#127

Post by reitanqild »

Spooky23 wrote: post #54
Retric wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I contributed to several Wikipedia articles over the years (~50-100). It's gotten to the point where it's pointless to improve even terrible articles like stubs as basically everything is automatically reversed. At best a mod may decide to add your content back, which means at this point it's basically stopped being a public wiki. Which is fine, IMO they should just change the name to Webpedia or something if they do…

It's a shame, but any public forum seems to degenerate to this point. Stack exchange is another great example... The bureaucracy that emerges distracts from the original mission.

Interestingly lots of people seem to have a negative view of forums and fear that stack-sites will go the way of the forums if they don't continue their bureaucracy.

Yet I cannot remember one technical forum that was as unhelpful as stack-sites sometimes turns into.

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#128

Post by cetacea »

smithkl42 wrote: post #86

I'll toss my own experience out there. I've contributed edits to maybe a dozen or so different Wikipedia articles, and would like to contribute more, but it's hard to get past a couple of hurdles. The main one is the byzantine and archaic editing tools. The markdown language that Wikipedia uses is a PITA to learn, and following a discussion on the talk page is almost impossible. Wikipedia presents a wonderful UX for…

If Markdown were around (and widely used) when MediaWiki was written, I imagine there would have been a push to use it as the markup language for MediaWiki.

I don't see MediaWiki markup as byzantine or archaic, except for whatever half-assed LaTeX processor they use. It seems to only recognize some random subset of features from various ams packages. Why they don't just use a fully-featured TeX distro is beyond me.

Wikipedia's talk page workflow (indenting to start a new comment, then inserting a special image to wrap around to the margin once too many indents have accumulated) is moronic.

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#129

Post by bgilroy26 »

jessriedel wrote: post #126
quadrangle wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talk pages should not themselves be wiki pages. This is the result of all that MVP stuff people go on about. Wikipedia had wikis, they didn't have discussion boards. They needed discussion boards. MVP was to use another wiki page for discussions, and that evolved into the stupidness we see today. Talk and discussion are completely different process than collaborative editing, and they demand different tools. I also a…

MVP?

Maybe MVP is being used as a calling card for the concept of iterating on a prototype in general?

Lean startup methodology was an inheritor of common wisdom such as "worse is better" and "best is the enemy of the good" but they're all in the same family tree.

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#130

Post by nolok »

jessriedel wrote: post #126
quadrangle wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talk pages should not themselves be wiki pages. This is the result of all that MVP stuff people go on about. Wikipedia had wikis, they didn't have discussion boards. They needed discussion boards. MVP was to use another wiki page for discussions, and that evolved into the stupidness we see today. Talk and discussion are completely different process than collaborative editing, and they demand different tools. I also a…

MVP?

Minimum viable product.

In this case, "hey we need a way for people to talk to each other", "sure, we should make a discussion tool, but to get it right now we could use a wiki page that users edit one after another to add their answers".

The fact that it started as such is not an issue per se, but after so many years wikipedia should have replaced it with something better and easier.

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