The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia • Hacker News Board

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#121

Post by wpietri » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 3:56 AM UTC

There's a lot of Wikipedia I think should be more transparent or more approachable. But deletion discussions aren't really one of them.

Deciding what really fits in an encyclopedia isn't simple. Wikipedia has spent literally a decade working out a set of rules that balances utility, fairness, quality, and maintainability. Those rules will inevitably seem bureaucratic and opaque to people who haven't worked on a number of articles and then really considered the problem.

Deletion discussions are perennial magnets for non-participants who believe that they or their (friend|band|ancestor|website) belong in Wikipedia. They are inevitably upset. Worse, in Pauli's phrase, they aren't even wrong: they start with the premise the article should be kept and then say whatever they think will let them win.

In this case, the bloggy ranter doesn't get basic Wikipedia fundamentals. E.g. that Wikipedia isn't about what's true, it's about what's verifiable[1]. Suppose he thinks that his pal is the most important person ever. He might be right, but what matters is what can be proven from reliable sources[2].

Making deletion review more approachable to the personally outraged would certainly increase the number of reviews, but it wouldn't materially change the number of articles kept. What it would do is waste a lot of valuable editor and admin time.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:V [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:RS

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#122

Post by tptacek » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 3:57 AM UTC

bane wrote: post #119

tptacek wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! Fixed!

Sure thing. When passions run high, we often need a different case to rise to the occasion.

It's all in good fun. Happy Thanksgiving!

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#123

Post by tptacek » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 3:59 AM UTC

neilk wrote: post #114

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…

Dude, have you read WP:Notability? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability In one sentence: "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article or stand-alone list." Notability isn't really that much of a judgment call. Also, it doesn't necessarily apply to the creation of new articl…

That day will probably never arrive, because the stakes are so high that any simple, trivially navigable process would immediately be gamed.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#124

Post by philwelch » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 4:00 AM UTC

hahainternet wrote: post #93

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…

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/…

It's not insurmountable, and if the stated purpose of the project is to exclude the input of insufficiently dedicated contributors then it's even a good idea. But if your tagline is "the free encyclopedia anyone can edit" and you allow anonymous edits from people who don't even have user accounts, you should at least have some type of clear venue for someone to suggest relevant facts and provide relevant sources and citations for, say, the "notability" of deleted article subjects. Then the insiders could judge those facts and sources and handle the bureaucracy themselves, or else explain the rationale, rather than shuffling him around the system with a thick instruction manual and a "do it yourself".

Or you could have a deletion policy that's less complicated in itself. When I was a heavy contributor to Wikipedia and actually knew all these dumb policies, people argued that notability shouldn't be a criteria and verifiability was the only truly necessary criterion for including content. I find it hard to argue with that.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#125

Post by tptacek » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 4:01 AM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #76

pessimizer wrote: post #28

His case for the notability of his friend doesn't seem to add anything that hadn't already been considered by the Wikipedians already, and his attitude was monstrously shitty. Especially his reaction to the guy/girl that removed his comments on the page that said not to leave comments on it, saving them on his "user page" with a helpful message about the process to get the debate, which was already over, reopened. I…

I seem to be dropping like a stone here, so let me go on forever about this: 1. Danny Sullivan hears that his friend Jessie Stricchiola, a pioneer in fighting click fraud, has been deleted from Wikipedia. 2. He somehow gets to a discussion about the deletion of her page on Wikipedia. On it is a debate between 13 people about whether her page should be deleted, and at the top of that page is a detailed explanation by…

I seem to be dropping like a stone here, so let me go on forever about this

You are my new favorite commenter.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#126

Post by philwelch » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 4:02 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #120

philwelch wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you can frame it however you want. My main takeaway is that Wikipedia is completely opaque to someone who has a specific concern about something, but isn't already a committed contributor and insider to the community. If you're of the opinion that Wikipedia should be an insular community, than maybe they should be more honest about it, disable anonymous edits, and save everyone a lot of time. If you think Wik…

Explain how so many dumb people can become so adept at navigating Wikipedia's processes in between shifts at the gas station and 17 hour Farmville jags, and I'll concede that you have a point. Mediawiki, and Wikipedia's incarnation of it in particular, is outmoded and obtuse. But it's not hard to do things on Wikipedia. If anything, it's too f'ing easy.

I don't know why you're demanding that I explain a claim I never made and don't agree with.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#127

Post by ceejayoz » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 4:03 AM UTC

zotz wrote: post #102

Someone at Wikipedia recently requested speedy deletion for the article on Ilya Zhitomirskiy, two days AFTER he died. The vote was to keep: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion... I was an early user and editor of Wikipedia. I greatly dislike cliquishness and clannishness so I didn't last. The above treatment of a dead young coder only solidifies my decision to cease my association with the pl…

> The above treatment of a dead young coder...

That treatment was six people casting "delete" votes, which did not succeed. That's one hell of a small tolerance you have for disagreement.

Your post is a little like saying "I won't go to New York City any more because a few people posted on Yelp that they didn't like this one restaurant I enjoyed going to."

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#128

Post by mustpax » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 4:04 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #103

mustpax wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed the part where the author provided several citations of publications mentioning the unnotable person and books published by the said person. He also goes on to state, if the goal of Wikipedia is to encourage subject matter experts to contribute expertise it's not making it particularly easy to do so. Wikipedia policies exist to facilitate user contributions, not the other way around. Wikipedia itself says…

You missed the AfD discussion, trivially easy to find for that article but helpfully provided upthread for you, where a Wikipedia admin considered each of those sources and took them to pieces --- those citations were superficial quotes attributed to Stricchiola in articles about click fraud, not coverage of Stricchiola herself, and the book appears to be a step away from vanity publishing.

Yes, I did miss it. But you'll notice I did not use the word deletionism once in my comment so that's kinda besides the point. The more important issue is that bureaucracy is making Wikipedia unusable for casual users (philwelch also says as much upthread).

I understand you're trying to defend deletionism from the HN horde but I'm not even fighting that fight.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#129

Post by mindcrime » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 4:05 AM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #50

I wonder if the same thing will happen to stackoverflow? They have a number of levels of access, reviewing, meta-reviewing, administrators, etc. What level do you get to before becoming a bureaucratic place where everything is designed and decided by comitee?

Many (most? all?) of the Stackexchange sites are already overwhelmingly bureaucratic. The difference between Wikipedia and SE is that on SE, the problem isn't "deletionism" it's "closequestionitis." That and a generally unwelcoming / unfriendly attitude expressed towards n00bs. But, ya know, it's working for them (for now at least) so what can ya do?

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#130

Post by tptacek » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 4:06 AM UTC

tnuc wrote: post #24

javert wrote: post #5

First of all, the author is wrong. Someone saying "Hey, I know that person, they're an expert on X," does not mean they belong in an encyclopedia. Furthermore, a sizeable group of people already had a discussion on whether the person meets Wikipedia's standards and decided that they do not. Now, the author feels entitled to barge in without learning anything about how Wikipedia actually works, and complain that it's…

>If the author had just been willing to spend half an hour learning about Wikipedia's policies instead of bitching... Half an hour? You cannot be serious?

"It takes half an hour to challenge the community decisions of the website than in 10 years will simply be referred to as the encyclopedia? You can't be serious!"

You sound like the guy Louis CK talks about, complaining about how slow his smartphone is. "Give it a second!", one wants to respond, "It's going to space!"