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Wikipedia is 20

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Re: Wikipedia is 20

#161

Post by jjcon »

elliotec wrote: post #100
kyle_martin1 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Wikipedia severely locks out content creators to provide balanced views on politics. It’s no secret the current content creators lean towards one side of the isle.

The goal isn't "balance" - it's accuracy. Turns out that's tough for some sides, particularly those that eschew reality, to follow or understand.

You can be 100% accurate and be incredibly misleading by omission or overemphasis, that is what ‘balance’ is for and refers to.

https://accountablejournalism.org/ethics-codes/guidelines-on...

Re: Wikipedia is 20

#162

Post by aikinai »

in3d wrote: post #125
aerosmile wrote: post #40

I am surprised that the comments haven't mentioned the role of SEO in Wikipedia's growth and defensibility. Wikipedia's habit of deep interlinking helped it rank back in the early aughts when the SEO rules were rather simple. Add to that the subdomain-driven localization strategy and many other moves that were considered SEO best practices back in those years when the on-page factors used to matter. But that was just…

That's one version. Another version, that I know will go over very well here, is that some have invested a lot of money to bring high quality, accessibly-written off-line content by experts in the field to the Web, only for Wikipedia editors to poorly rewrite it in thousands of articles and rank over the original content in Google. And then Wikipedia started using non-follow links so the original sites got no benefit…

> high quality, accessibly-written off-line content by experts in the field to the Web

Where is this content? It sounds like you’re alluding to something obvious but I honestly have no idea, and would like to know where to find it if it does exist.

Re: Wikipedia is 20

#163

Post by jjcon »

mhh__ wrote: post #87
kyle_martin1 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Wikipedia severely locks out content creators to provide balanced views on politics. It’s no secret the current content creators lean towards one side of the isle.

What does balanced mean? It's supposed to be well-cited not balanced

It has to be balanced and accurate. You can be 100% accurate and be incredibly misleading by omission or overemphasis.

https://accountablejournalism.org/ethics-codes/guidelines-on...

Re: Wikipedia is 20

#164

Post by Kim_Bruning »

jjcon wrote: post #157
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a strong long-tail effect. Here's a 2015 essay that sets out to debunk the above 2017 source. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia

I’m confused - that article is from 2006 - how can it be used to debunk a 2017 study?

Apologies, It's from 2006 even. I'm clearly getting old.

The reason it can be used to debunk the 2017 study is because said study is working with an old idea that already existed in 2006.

Aaron Swartz posits that at the very least you should not discount the importance of the long tail.

Re: Wikipedia is 20

#165

Post by nsajko »

jjcon wrote: post #161
elliotec wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal isn't "balance" - it's accuracy. Turns out that's tough for some sides, particularly those that eschew reality, to follow or understand.

You can be 100% accurate and be incredibly misleading by omission or overemphasis, that is what ‘balance’ is for and refers to. https://accountablejournalism.org/ethics-codes/guidelines-on...

In Wikipedia parlance, this is called "due weight" and "neutral point of view".

Re: Wikipedia is 20

#166

Post by _hyrb »

jjcon wrote: post #161
elliotec wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal isn't "balance" - it's accuracy. Turns out that's tough for some sides, particularly those that eschew reality, to follow or understand.

You can be 100% accurate and be incredibly misleading by omission or overemphasis, that is what ‘balance’ is for and refers to. https://accountablejournalism.org/ethics-codes/guidelines-on...

Exactly. If you want to be fair and balanced, you only devote 66% of the article to globe cucks, and the rest to people who are actually rational.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2018/04/04/only-two-...

Re: Wikipedia is 20

#167

Post by redis_mlc »

HDMI_Cable wrote: post #2

One reason Wikipedia was able to grow so quickly was because of its scale. Instead of relying on a few posh journal editors like Britannica, anyone could contribute. And while you have edge cases of people trolling and some misinformation, you also have a much larger labour pool of people dedicated to helping, not for a paycheque, but their own personal reasons.

> you also have a much larger labour pool of people dedicated to helping, not for a paycheque, but their own personal reasons.

This is often not true. There's a whole industry of W editors who charge corporations a monthly fee to guard their pages.

It's supposed to be against the W ToS, but whenever foreign W editors are interviewed, they readily admit it (to gain more paying clients.)

The "no paycheck" trope is almost as bad as saying ebay is about selling beanie babies.

Re: Wikipedia is 20

#168

Post by nsajko »

justinzollars wrote: post #46
admiralspoo wrote: post #23

Its reputation is severely declining, especially on topics relating to current events, figures, or politics. It, however, remains excellent for technical knowledge.

100%. Wikipedia is an excellent recourse for anything non political, especially scientific and technical information.

You're missing some crucial facts:

* Politics (and similar stuff) can creep into any topic

* It takes a lot of effort to verify a Wikipedia article and assess neutral point of view and other stuff. My point is that you won't know that you're reading a biased or hoax article while you're reading it.

Re: Wikipedia is 20

#169

Post by pvorb »

creato wrote: post #72
aerosmile wrote: post #40

I am surprised that the comments haven't mentioned the role of SEO in Wikipedia's growth and defensibility. Wikipedia's habit of deep interlinking helped it rank back in the early aughts when the SEO rules were rather simple. Add to that the subdomain-driven localization strategy and many other moves that were considered SEO best practices back in those years when the on-page factors used to matter. But that was just…

It is somehow sad that "caring about content quality" is considered SEO and not just making a good website. I think more than half the things you mentioned are only good SEO because search engines want to send people to websites they will like reading. I think when that is the case, we should be crediting people for making good websites, not good SEO.

Yes, I believe that Wikipedia and its authors never put much thought into SEO. They just think about how to best structure the information and make heavy use of links, which also happens to be a good strategy for SEO.

The Google search rank algorithms changed a lot more than the overall structure of a good Wikipedia article in the last 20 years.

Re: Wikipedia is 20

#170

Post by varvar »

elliotec wrote: post #89
jjcon wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One random example I ran across recently of note to HN crowd - the creator of Javscript and Brave, Founder of Mozilla Brendan Eich. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich Under known for it says, “Known for JavaScript, opposition to same-sex marriage” Really? I’m as gay as they come but this just gives me scarlet letter vibes. I sincerely doubt people know this guy for his work opposing ssm (of which there wasn’t…

I mean, it's what he's known for. It was a very big deal when it was discovered that he opposed and donated against gay marriage. He resigned as CEO of Mozilla over it. Many people outside of internet communities like HN first learned his name when this all went down. Creator of JS wasn't as big a deal to most people at the time as CEO of a major non profit internet company opposing one of the biggest human rights is…

I think he is known for being the creator of Brave nowadays, and most likely that's how he will be remembered, thanks to the SJW-leftist overreaction to his rather insignificant donation of $1000, and his own subsequent creative output while working on Brave of course.
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