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Wikipedia Turns 15

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Re: Wikipedia Turns 15

#91

Post by xorcist »

judemelancon wrote: post #66
reasonality wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All magic comes at a price. You could have learnt other tricks of the trade, could have made new friends talking to that human bartender. Talking to someone who is a master at something is far more valuable than asking the internet specific questions - how do you know what questions to ask...

The internet's supply of masters is much larger and more accessible. Is there a reason to think the video or other sources he found are from someone inferior in expertise to a local? Does that reason apply even for people who live outside major urban centers? Also, that line of thinking is letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Remember the most likely outcome before was recognizing the cost of acquiring the k…

The Internet's supply of poseurs is far greater still.

I think Stack Overflow is the canonical example. It feels like I deal daily with people who paste something from Stack Overflow instead of reading up on a library or API. It is made worse by all those to game their score system by being very quick to paste in a semi-related "answer".

Re: Wikipedia Turns 15

#92

Post by menssen »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #87
chorizo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or at least the linguistics department at the local community college.

Also every dictionary should have a disclaimer written on its cover with big, bold letters: DICTIONARIES ARE DESCRIPTIVE, NOT PRESCRIPTIVE. THEY DOCUMENT HOW WORDS ARE COMMONLY USED, THEY DO NOT DEFINE THEIR MEANINGS.

Although this is not universally accepted. This old DFW essay on the topic is good reading.

http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-0...

Re: Wikipedia Turns 15

#93

Post by efsavage »

reasonality wrote: post #61
klenwell wrote: post #59

I was talking to a friend the other day and came up with a term to sorta quantify what I consider perhaps the most important revolution of my lifetime: TTK or Time To Knowledge. The example I always use, the occasion when it first occurred to me, was a couple years ago when, for some reason, I decided I wanted to make a foam for a cocktail. Within 5 minutes, I had found a video on Youtube illustrating how, not to men…

All magic comes at a price. You could have learnt other tricks of the trade, could have made new friends talking to that human bartender. Talking to someone who is a master at something is far more valuable than asking the internet specific questions - how do you know what questions to ask...

You can still go meet that bartender, but now when you ask her about the technique you can explain what you've already tried, and will almost certainly get better knowledge from her.

Re: Wikipedia Turns 15

#95

Post by arca_vorago »

I love wikipedia, and contribute when I can, it does a great service to us all. Where it fails though is regarding controversial subjects. It would be a thesis paper to get into the meat of the issue, but thats its weakpoint.

Which is why I love they have shared their system open source so others can use it.

The real issue boils down to a filter bubble problem, and google isnt helping avoid this. Its that people use wikipedia as a panacea and forgoe actually following sources far too often.

Shades of trusting trust but instead of compilers its editors and censorship.

Re: Wikipedia Turns 15

#96

Post by cooper12 »

edgyswingset wrote: post #90
cooper12 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend swears by Wikiwand, but I hate how it changes all links to its own domain. (It really should have been a browser extension instead of its own website that's merely a stylesheet) It also overoptimizes for the reader: minimizing the edit tab, hiding the talk page, hiding the history tab, over-enlarging images, and making disambiguation hatnotes nearly invisible. I do like how it has article preview popups on…

I'm not sure that blog post is really applicable. It's shunning the idea of using designer tools to generate mockups of Wikipedia which focus on eye candy at the expense of content. That's not really what's going on with Wikiwand.

I think it is applicable in how it brings up how these redesigns focus on aesthetics at the expense of information. Wikiwand puts aside what it doesn't think is important, but if they had talked to anyone who actually uses Wikipedia they would learn otherwise. For example, look how much prominence it gives to images. While these are aesthetically pleasing, they reduce the information density and give the images more prominence than the actual content. I also bought up how it hides so much important parts of an article. How is a reader/editor supposed to bring up their concerns if they don't clearly know that there is a talk page? What if they felt that the article suddenly changed drastically and wanted to view the article history? What if they landed on the wrong article and can't see the hatnotes that usually tell them about the article they likely wanted? The blog post has this to say:

> Why Wikipedia? Because you often stumbled upon it and thought “Urgh, it’s so ugly!”? If so, you weren’t using it. You were looking at it.

and I think it rings quite true.

Re: Wikipedia Turns 15

#97

Post by punee »

coliveira wrote: post #64
klenwell wrote: post #59

I was talking to a friend the other day and came up with a term to sorta quantify what I consider perhaps the most important revolution of my lifetime: TTK or Time To Knowledge. The example I always use, the occasion when it first occurred to me, was a couple years ago when, for some reason, I decided I wanted to make a foam for a cocktail. Within 5 minutes, I had found a video on Youtube illustrating how, not to men…

This is really interesting, until you realize that 99% of the knowledge you acquire in this way is useless. In the 80s, if you didn't know how to do the foam you would just do without it, and nothing in the world would change because of that. Now, this would be certainly different if you were searching for a way to solve a hard engineering problem, but hard engineering problems cannot be learned with a 5 min youtube…

Yes, finding something that teaches you how to do something you want to do is useless. Unless it's something YOU want to do, of course! Then it's fantastic.

Re: Wikipedia Turns 15

#98

Post by valarauca1 »

xorcist wrote: post #91
judemelancon wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet's supply of masters is much larger and more accessible. Is there a reason to think the video or other sources he found are from someone inferior in expertise to a local? Does that reason apply even for people who live outside major urban centers? Also, that line of thinking is letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Remember the most likely outcome before was recognizing the cost of acquiring the k…

The Internet's supply of poseurs is far greater still. I think Stack Overflow is the canonical example. It feels like I deal daily with people who paste something from Stack Overflow instead of reading up on a library or API. It is made worse by all those to game their score system by being very quick to paste in a semi-related "answer".

The Internet's supply of poseurs is far greater still - Holden Caulfield

Re: Wikipedia Turns 15

#99

Post by davidgerard »

agumonkey wrote: post #11
edelans wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find their campaigns rather effective. I have the impression they do a big surge once a year with banners everywhere on the site. I find it very effective at reminding you how wikipedia bring you value everytime you use it. At least it made me donate at each occasions and I don't consider myself as a heavy user (hardly one consultation / week), and I think it is the only project I have donated multiple times.

First campaign were subtler though, making me pay, and then it was big banner fest which me a bit angry. Maybe it's not the case if you're logged in and they track your donation so they can ask in finer ways.

FWIW, the more obnoxious campaigns also met with considerable dissent from the community as well.

Re: Wikipedia Turns 15

#100

Post by kensai »

valarauca1 wrote: post #98
xorcist wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Internet's supply of poseurs is far greater still. I think Stack Overflow is the canonical example. It feels like I deal daily with people who paste something from Stack Overflow instead of reading up on a library or API. It is made worse by all those to game their score system by being very quick to paste in a semi-related "answer".

The Internet's supply of poseurs is far greater still - Holden Caulfield

Ouch. Nailed it. :D

(unless xorcist is freakin' Holden himself!)

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