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Wikipedia is 20

economist.com

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Re: Wikipedia is 20

#321

Post by leetcrew »

progre wrote: post #287
chrisbolt wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So when Panda came around, Google correctly rewarded Wikipedia with #1 rankings for over 50% of its terms (!!), and Jason Calacanis had to shut down Mahalo which got destroyed by Panda. For context, this is the type of content that Mahalo was producing to try to game SEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdNk1xmDpxo

Game how? Pretty girl says she will show how to mix a drink. Then proceeds to show how to mix a drink. Not ending world hunger or anything, but nothing deceitful here at least. Maybe I'm missing something

it's not awful, it's just not very high quality content. the instructions are more or less correct, but she does a lot of triggering things in the video, like not measuring the whiskey at all. if I ordered a mint julep in a bar and the bartender made it the way she does, I would not order one at that bar again. if it was expensive, I might ask for my money back or a simpler drink.

compare with this video on the same drink: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTKC9Ht4Erg

the guy explains why he does things the way he does them and why you might do it differently depending on your tastes. unlike the first, this video manages to be more informative than simply reading its script as text.

Re: Wikipedia is 20

#323

Post by capital_guy »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #291
tyingq wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia's page views, though, are relatively flat since 2016. I suspect, in large part, because of Google's move to expose Wikipedia content on Google pages, removing the need to follow any links to Wikipedia for many queries. https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-projects/reading/total-pag...

Google doesn't reliably put Wikipedia links in the results anymore because they're filling the first page with revenue generators.

This is definitely the reason. Whereas wikipedia is always top of duckduckgo results.

Re: Wikipedia is 20

#324

Post by luxuryballs »

iso8859-1 wrote: post #319
luxuryballs wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can’t donate in good conscience though because they do somewhat have a general tone and worldview that seems to be pervasive and heavily moderated. Wish there was a forkable version of Wikipedia so all views and angles can be allowed to co-exist, no need for a digital encyclopedia to be so skeuomorphic.

It is forkable, you can download the database dumps and import them into your own instance.

I mean forkability as a first class feature built into the UI so you can easily browse the alternative or competing beliefs.

Re: Wikipedia is 20

#325

Post by hrafn »

jedberg wrote: post #309
shepherdjerred wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia is incredible. I find it frustrating when friends say it's unreliable/not to be trusted. Of course it's not perfect, but I've learned plenty enough from it to be well worth the trade-off

> I find it frustrating when friends say it's unreliable/not to be trusted. You should point them at some of the studies that show Wikipedia is more accurate than Encyclopedia Brittanica.

It's worth reading Britannica's response to that study:

https://corporate.britannica.com/britannica_nature_response....

Wikipedia is riddled with far more and far deeper types of errors, I do edit Wikipedia daily but am quite disillusioned with it. Even articles on major topics can include made-up paragraphs that no one notices for years, errors caused by an editor's misunderstanding of what the source is actually saying, and errors that slowly accumulate through various editors' well meaning copy-editing.

Re: Wikipedia is 20

#326

Post by yreg »

marcod wrote: post #311

I'm sorry, but the intro of the article is wrong. Not anyone could edit the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Ford was researching earth for 15 years and an editor cut his submission down to "mostly harmless"... > https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Ford_Prefect#Work_on_the...

Well, that could happen to you on Wikipedia as well (WP:Notability)

Re: Wikipedia is 20

#327

Post by baby »

sharkweek wrote: post #18

Ah good stuff - I love Wikipedia more than almost any other non-living thing that has been created in my lifetime. If you had told me the idea as a pitch 20 years ago I would have assumed you were capital I insane for thinking it would work. It was pretty fresh when I was in college and I remember my professors all being pretty explicit about not using it as a source. Thought I had figured out the world’s biggest lif…

Same. I recently subscribed to donate 10$ each month. I urge everyone to do the same. Even 1$/month imo is enough, as long as you’re contributing back!

Re: Wikipedia is 20

#328

Post by jl6 »

tshaddox wrote: post #318
goto11 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have expected it to be destroyed by vandals, marketeers and trolls, and that nutcases and people with alternative facts would have crowded out actually knowledgeable people. For every person with a deep insight in a subject, there are fifty people who think they have a deep insight, and it is hard to tell the difference from the outside. My concern was not that nobody would contribute, but that the wrong peop…

> For every person with a deep insight in a subject, there are fifty people who think they have a deep insight, and it is hard to tell the difference from the outside. If it’s hard to tell the difference from the outside, how do we know which one we got?

For niche subjects, we don’t.

But for most subjects, rumours of objective truth’s death have been greatly exaggerated.

(Objective truth being another thing that doesn’t exist in theory but does in practice).

Re: Wikipedia is 20

#329

Post by ghaff »

aerosmile wrote: post #315
selestify wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were the competitors in the early days?

Further down in the comments you'll find a research paper [1] that analyzed why Wikipedia succeeded where others failed. I am not sure I bought into the conclusion (which prompted my initial comment), but at least it has a comprehensive listing of all the main players at the time: Interpedia, TDEP, Everything2, h2g2, TheInfo, Nupedia, GNE [1] https://mako.cc/academic/hill-almost_wikipedia-DRAFT.pdf

Thank you for posting that. It made me realize that I have the wrong citation in a footnote of a book I'm about to proof :-)

Re: Wikipedia is 20

#330

Post by progre »

leetcrew wrote: post #321
progre wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game how? Pretty girl says she will show how to mix a drink. Then proceeds to show how to mix a drink. Not ending world hunger or anything, but nothing deceitful here at least. Maybe I'm missing something

it's not awful, it's just not very high quality content. the instructions are more or less correct, but she does a lot of triggering things in the video, like not measuring the whiskey at all. if I ordered a mint julep in a bar and the bartender made it the way she does, I would not order one at that bar again. if it was expensive, I might ask for my money back or a simpler drink. compare with this video on the same…

Yeah, I'm not saying it's amazing content, I just fail to see how this is "gaming SEO"
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