The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia • Hacker News Board

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#91

Post by tptacek » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 3:18 AM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #81

tptacek wrote: post #51

You can tell someone hasn't spent much time at AfD, the section of Wikipedia where people (anyone in the world, really) discuss whether articles should be deleted, by the outrage they express at the "arbitrariness" of Wikipedia's notability rules. Have you spent any time at AfD? Let me help you out: here's the AfD log for the week they killed "Jessie_Stricchiola": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_d…

The article is a usability study of a scenario where a committed but novice domain expert has something to contribute to the Wikipedia process. The deleted article itself is just a MacGuffin.

Or, it is now that we can see how flimsy the article itself turned out to be. By the way: it appears to have been written by Jessie Stricchiola herself (classy move, that).

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#92

Post by philwelch » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 3:18 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #79

philwelch wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP's complaint is 20% that they deleted an article they shouldn't have and 80% that the software and culture of Wikipedia is completely opaque and unusable to everyone except the most dedicated contributors. It's absolutely retarded that discussion pages are just wikipages where you have to handle comment threading and nesting yourself with indentation syntax. It's absolutely retarded that you have to learn tons…

And yet somehow, as absolutely retarded as Wikipedia is, it continues to be the most successful reference site on the Internet. Funny how often stuff geeks find "absolutely retarded" turn out not to matter in the real world. I really shouldn't dignify your comment though, because it dubs "absolutely retarded" a process that got a non-notable SEO consultant's book considered by someone who could find out how many libr…

> I really shouldn't dignify your comment though

You could try to comprehend my comment first, instead of interpreting it as an indirect ego-attack. Wikipedia's software and community aren't magically immune from criticism, especially from a usability standpoint, just because they produce a lot of useful content.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#93

Post by hahainternet » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 3:18 AM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #77

zbowling wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I joined this discussion at 32 comments and the all down-voted comments ones were people with the same sentiment. I really don't understand the anti-wikipedia sentiment hackernews is having in general around this. I've been through the AfD process 30 to 40 times myself. I normally don't see it because I spend most of my time on vandal patrol where I've contributed code and countless hours to that effort over the last…

The OP's complaint is 20% that they deleted an article they shouldn't have and 80% that the software and culture of Wikipedia is completely opaque and unusable to everyone except the most dedicated contributors. It's absolutely retarded that discussion pages are just wikipages where you have to handle comment threading and nesting yourself with indentation syntax. It's absolutely retarded that you have to learn tons…

While your first point may have merit, lets just consider your second point for a second.

You say that it's ridiculous that to revert a community decision on a major international knowledge resource, someone should have to learn about their policies.

Is it really that 'retarded'? I actually went and followed the instructions while actually paying attention, and I found that the header of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review fully explains the situation, and within 2 clicks you can be instructed on what to do and where to do it.

This process is only opaque or difficult if your attention span is such that reading two paragraphs is a strain. Given that the writer of the original article didn't even bother to read the email he was sent then I think we can assume that the fault lies there.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#94

Post by tptacek » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 3:19 AM UTC

sethg wrote: post #82

philwelch wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason is because deletion is one of the single biggest areans for status games. See, from the outside, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. And there's a community there to write an encyclopedia. Sensible, no? Actually, the community comes first and the encyclopedia is a side-effect. The community functions very politically, and very much like a game as well. The original intention might have been an encyclopedia with…

On the one hand, yes, yes, yes. On the other hand.... 95% of the effort that goes into Wikipedia may be nothing more than primate status games among insiders, but those games motivate an extremely large number of people, and because so many people do get involved, the actually-useful work is 5% of a very large number. If some change in policy cut the political bullshit in half but drove away two-thirds of the people…

That eloquently summarizes of my take on Wikipedia, and the reason I stopped participating several years ago.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#95

Post by billpatrianakos » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 3:22 AM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #77

zbowling wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I joined this discussion at 32 comments and the all down-voted comments ones were people with the same sentiment. I really don't understand the anti-wikipedia sentiment hackernews is having in general around this. I've been through the AfD process 30 to 40 times myself. I normally don't see it because I spend most of my time on vandal patrol where I've contributed code and countless hours to that effort over the last…

The OP's complaint is 20% that they deleted an article they shouldn't have and 80% that the software and culture of Wikipedia is completely opaque and unusable to everyone except the most dedicated contributors. It's absolutely retarded that discussion pages are just wikipages where you have to handle comment threading and nesting yourself with indentation syntax. It's absolutely retarded that you have to learn tons…

Maybe you're right on 20% but I'll tell you that 100% of the article was a temper tantrum. Had the author looked into why these rules are necessary and suggested a more efficient process maybe he could have been taken seriously. Instead he rattled on about how it was hard for him to nag people into seeing things his way and upset that all his effort went to waste.

People who argue about the campaigns to tarnish Wikipedia's name and repeat the fact that Wikipedia still manages to be respectable and successful are right! The same things the author rails against are the very things that keep the riff raft out.

The author didn't get his way after a lengthy, well reasoned, and obviously thoroughly thought through debate. Not every website needs a reworking of their user experience. Sometimes we make you jump through hoops for a reason. This process weeds out the people who would use Wikipedia to advertise. At the end, despite the author believing his submission was fitting of its own Wikipedia page, the community still disagreed.

I call sour grapes.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#96

Post by modeless » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 3:22 AM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #81

tptacek wrote: post #51

You can tell someone hasn't spent much time at AfD, the section of Wikipedia where people (anyone in the world, really) discuss whether articles should be deleted, by the outrage they express at the "arbitrariness" of Wikipedia's notability rules. Have you spent any time at AfD? Let me help you out: here's the AfD log for the week they killed "Jessie_Stricchiola": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_d…

The article is a usability study of a scenario where a committed but novice domain expert has something to contribute to the Wikipedia process. The deleted article itself is just a MacGuffin.

His "contribution" was arguably wrong, his effort was minimal, and his attitude was poisonous. If you want an encyclopedia where the opinions of "domain experts" trump consensus, then use Citizendium.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#97

Post by billpatrianakos » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 3:24 AM UTC

mqqq wrote: post #86

tptacek wrote: post #51

You can tell someone hasn't spent much time at AfD, the section of Wikipedia where people (anyone in the world, really) discuss whether articles should be deleted, by the outrage they express at the "arbitrariness" of Wikipedia's notability rules. Have you spent any time at AfD? Let me help you out: here's the AfD log for the week they killed "Jessie_Stricchiola": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_d…

>>Something I don't get about people on HN and their attitude towards Wikipedia. You are overestimating your average hacker news reader.

I'd modify that to add in the words "in recent times". There was a time the HN community was reliably smarter and awesome than average.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#98

Post by tptacek » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 3:24 AM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #92

tptacek wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet somehow, as absolutely retarded as Wikipedia is, it continues to be the most successful reference site on the Internet. Funny how often stuff geeks find "absolutely retarded" turn out not to matter in the real world. I really shouldn't dignify your comment though, because it dubs "absolutely retarded" a process that got a non-notable SEO consultant's book considered by someone who could find out how many libr…

> I really shouldn't dignify your comment though You could try to comprehend my comment first, instead of interpreting it as an indirect ego-attack. Wikipedia's software and community aren't magically immune from criticism, especially from a usability standpoint, just because they produce a lot of useful content.

Wikipedia's current UX produced the optimal decision in this case. That's what I'm trying to say. It's goofy to deride it as "absolutely retarded" when your case study is one where the system appears to have worked rather well.

But of course, I don't think this is actually a UX discussion at all; the participants here are:

* An SEO consultant who may have written her own promotional article on Wikipedia

* Her friend, who was upset at the experience he had attempting to convince Wikipedia to keep that article

* Hacker News, which is convinced that Wikipedia suffers from "rampant deletionism" (despite --- for the most part --- never having seriously participated in anything at Wikipedia) and viewing every story about Wikipedia through that lens.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#99

Post by ultrasaurus » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 3:25 AM UTC

HnNoPassMailer wrote: post #45

[deleted] wrote: post #40

[deleted]

Everyone should have a wikipedia page. Notability and value of information however should be clear: Turing's page should clearly be different then the page of my teacher in kindergarten. How? I don't know. We can go much finer in granularity. To be successfully usable, developments are needed to cope with the finer grained information (like having ~10M pages of teachers of kindergartens).

Wouldn't the pagerank algorithm work as a first pas for notability? I can guarantee that more (and more important) wiki pages will link to Turing's page than mine.

There would still be policing, but now it's of the form "This article on Bletchley Park shouldn't link to this random guy's page" which is more objective than giving me a notability score.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#100

Post by philwelch » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 3:25 AM UTC

sethg wrote: post #82

philwelch wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason is because deletion is one of the single biggest areans for status games. See, from the outside, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. And there's a community there to write an encyclopedia. Sensible, no? Actually, the community comes first and the encyclopedia is a side-effect. The community functions very politically, and very much like a game as well. The original intention might have been an encyclopedia with…

On the one hand, yes, yes, yes. On the other hand.... 95% of the effort that goes into Wikipedia may be nothing more than primate status games among insiders, but those games motivate an extremely large number of people, and because so many people do get involved, the actually-useful work is 5% of a very large number. If some change in policy cut the political bullshit in half but drove away two-thirds of the people…

That's the crazy part! I completely agree with you--it's a massively gamified process and ideally, I'd like to believe that just letting people get to work without too much crap in their way would produce good results just as well as the status quo does, but maybe that's too idealistic and this is just how you make the sausage.

Still, there are some useful usability critiques to be made. Even an ugly sausage-making process should let you ramp up into it at the very least, and at the most, should have useful methods of collecting and processing input from novice users rather than rejecting it unseen or outright discouraging it in the first place.