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Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

aaronsw.com

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Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#41

Post by jokoon »

Is there valid criticism on the accuracy of certain wikipedia articles?

It could also be interesting to have some study or writing on certain "edit wars" on certain controversial subjects on wikipedia.

In general, the accuracy of wikipedia is pretty good, and generally wikipedia is still very valuable.

I just wish wikimedia would do more do promote its high quality articles and bundle them per fields to make quality textbooks on particular subjects. It also seems articles are not really indexed per category, which makes it hard to gather articles on a particular subject. Anyway it would involve a lot of work.

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#42

Post by bawolff »

Proziam wrote: post #38
bawolff wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that true? I've always thought that the right was mildly more hierarchial (which i would describe as "organized") and the left a little bit more grass roots. That said i have no sources and another ancedote doesn't mean much.

The vast majority of large social movements have their origins in the left. Climate change, most social justice movements, the push for higher minimum wage, immigration reform, etc. In general, people leaning 'right' are less interested in social initiatives on the whole. In the US, one of the most common talking points from the right is the desire to be 'left alone' by the government or social movements. The only is…

Large grass roots social movements are not the only way to be organized though. I agree that the left seems to better be able to capitalize on that type of movement in recent history, but i dont think it follows that the right is disorganized, just organized differently. (Then again this is the trump ers and he is not really the establishment right wing im thinking of-To me at least he seems to be riding a wave of fairly disorganized [but powerful] right wing populism, so maybe you are right in regards to him)

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#43

Post by bawolff »

Proziam wrote: post #40
defertoreptar wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression that this was because the left skews younger, and Gen X and millennials are more active and capable online.

Age is a component, but it doesn't adequately explain the difference in movements that occur in the real world as well as online. Universities have students organizing protests against right-wing figures quite frequently, and it was almost exclusively the left who pushed for the $15 minimum wage - despite both parties populations being affected heavily. From what I've seen (living in US, Germany, and Sweden) no matte…

Universities skew younger even more than the internet does.

I think there is an element of the left wanting to "fix" the world which appeals to young people, and the right wanting to "protect" the world from bad changes, which appeals to older more cautious people.

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#45

Post by hnewsshadowbans »

Wikipedia is written by a much smaller (from what I've seen) and far more cliquish group than in the old days. The novelty of editing an open encyclopedia has worn off and a far more vast majority now just visit for the questionable facts while only the people with too much time on their hands still edit.

Coincidentally theres even more territoriality than before with people setting up fiefdoms on prime articles and don't you dare flout their authority. Its worst of course on the politically relevant topics. A current favored tactic is to frontload the very beginnings of articles about organizations and people they don't like with negative/inflammatory information. For example compare the current versions of Breitbart News, Conservapedia, One America News Network, and Stephen Miller with Daily Kos, Rational Wiki, and Huffington Post.

The defense if they're called on it is a tortured appeal to 'authoritative consensus' where an editor will go on a fishing expedition for negative quotes from the left of center media bloc like CNN or HuffPo and anything they find on there even blatant opinion is automatically sacrosanct regardless of whether it actually is a consensus among the entire media.

So basically the political articles are even more trash than ever. Again you can draw whatever connection you want to the type of people left editing this mess. I feel sorry for anyone who actually reads and believes it.

Another annoying thing is that they still haven't fixed their scientific articles which for anything beyond the basics tend to be overly jargonish and technical yet uninformative at the same time.

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#46

Post by Proziam »

bawolff wrote: post #43
Proziam wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Age is a component, but it doesn't adequately explain the difference in movements that occur in the real world as well as online. Universities have students organizing protests against right-wing figures quite frequently, and it was almost exclusively the left who pushed for the $15 minimum wage - despite both parties populations being affected heavily. From what I've seen (living in US, Germany, and Sweden) no matte…

Universities skew younger even more than the internet does. I think there is an element of the left wanting to "fix" the world which appeals to young people, and the right wanting to "protect" the world from bad changes, which appeals to older more cautious people.

The US military also skews young but leans more towards the republican party.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/118684/military-veterans-ages-t...

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#47

Post by zozbot234 »

jokoon wrote: post #41

Is there valid criticism on the accuracy of certain wikipedia articles? It could also be interesting to have some study or writing on certain "edit wars" on certain controversial subjects on wikipedia. In general, the accuracy of wikipedia is pretty good, and generally wikipedia is still very valuable. I just wish wikimedia would do more do promote its high quality articles and bundle them per fields to make quality…

Wikipedia does support article 'bundles' (they're known as Featured/Good Topics) but open textbooks are covered by a separate effort, namely Wikibooks.

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#48

Post by tomtomtom777 »

draugadrotten wrote: post #12
onyva wrote: post #3

From my experience with trying to contribute to the Hebrew version, try contributing focusing on expanding an existing article and watch what happens. In my case there was a very strong push back even against adding links that expand on issues mentioned which imho helped to balance an obvious slant. I gave up after a while. At university of course you’re warned not to use Wikipedia, it’s not acceptable as a reference…

The political bias of wikipedia editors is horrible in most smaller countries. You mention Israel and Croatia. I can add Sweden. For an example, compare the wikipedia entries of the two largest parties in the Swedish parliament. One, Socialdemokraterna, starts with a blurb on how the party provides public welfare and the party slogan ("av var och en efter förmåga, åt var och en efter behov"). Compare with the second…

You may be correct but your proof suffers from the the fallacy of the middle ground.

Unbiased reality by no means implies that the number of scandals, controversial quotes, achievements or even the relevance of the party slogan must be similar for both sides.

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#49

Post by watwut »

goto11 wrote: post #15
milsorgen wrote: post #2

The small amount of people who work on Wikipedia is it's greatest weakness. Petty power plays and individual politics all bubble up from those few into a resource so many millions use. It deserves more but how can anyone even start with all the rules, bots and reverts. It's really demoralizing to try and put in any effort there as you'll quickly encroach on some editors "territory".

So you disagree with the numbers presented in article?

He may accept numbers in article and still think that 14 years later things are different. Wikipedia changed policies in the meantime, society changed in the meantime.

He may also think that more representative selection of articles to run test on would end up differently.

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#50

Post by posterboy »

quanticle wrote: post #22

Wales is right about one thing, though. This fact does have enormous policy implications. If Wikipedia is written by occasional contributors, then growing it requires making it easier and more rewarding to contribute occasionally. Instead of trying to squeeze more work out of those who spend their life on Wikipedia, we need to broaden the base of those who contribute just a little bit. The problem is that, as a commu…

Sadly there's a couple paradoxes.

Some occasiinal contributions only press for others to do something, helpfully pointing out what they think are mistakes and errors. This is someone with an axe to grind in denigrating wiki lingo.

As someone who's been told of there before, I think I understand the problem, and I like to agree with Aaron's sentiment--I don't know where it's coming from, though.

The quote is very much related. Who is "we"?

> we need to broaden the base of those who contribute just a little bit.

Easing the entry to beaurocracy would likely increase its burden significantly, while its not strictly separable from content contribution.

Nevertheless, being a frequent and fair editor is not a sufficient criterium for good administration, sadly.

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