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The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

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Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#151

Post by InclinedPlane »

knowtheory wrote: post #143
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 two rules you've outline are the primary reason i contribute very little to wikipedia. I can put together a well-sourced piece outlining the importance of a variety of subjects which i am indirectly involved in, and give a dispassionate description of its relevance to the community it serves and the world at large. Wikipedians, instead of saying "do that and have neutral 3rd parties check over your work", instead…

The myth of wikipedia is that the people who run it are the people who are most responsible for creating its content. That is not the case and the ongoing friction between the community that effectively is wikipedia and the community that actually runs wikipedia is the single most likely cause for any future downfall of it.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#152

Post by nerfhammer »

bdrocco wrote: post #41

I would suggest Wikipedia needs a 'second page' site to host these types of 'less than notable pages' and they be eligible to be promoted to the main site. But really I would just classify this as a #FirstWorldProblem

http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#153

Post by sethg »

tptacek wrote: post #116
sethg wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP was not familiar with the Wikipedia convention that editors talk to one another by editing one another’s talk pages. Instead, he followed the instructions on the automated email that Wikipedia sent him , which said “To contact the editor, visit [the editor’s page]”. His reward for following those instructions was a box telling him that actually, that page isn’t the venue for sending a message. The box told him…

I just don't buy it. There are some dumb, dumb, dumb people thoroughly ensconced in Wikipedia and its processes; clearly it's not that hard to figure out that to talk to an admin, you can just edit their page. I think Danny Sullivan is being disingenuous. Mediawiki is an obtuse piece of software; he knows that, and we know that, and he's using it as a fig leaf to conceal the fact that he wasn't able to push his frien…

Dumb, dumb, dumb people can learn to follow all sorts of rituals, if they’re sufficiently motivated. That fact does not, in and of itself, justify the rituals.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#155

Post by gergles »

geraldalewis wrote: post #132
nowarninglabel wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you miss the point, which is that the process is insanely opaque, which you note yourself by saying > if you get really involved in the site When I meet wikipedia people here in SF, they say, "Get involved!" Then, when I have tried to get involved, I get endless bureaucracy and everything eventually deleted. I've only managed to ever get 1 article on wikipedia (a bio of an expert in behavioral economics / neg…

> it's extremely difficult to participate, I ask honestly: why should it be easy to participate? > and I don't want to need to spend a bunch at Wikipedia reading countless rules trying to figure that out You don't want to spend time contributing, you just want readers to accept your contribution? I hope I'm misreading your intent, as it sounds like you feel you're above the vetting process? I've made some modest cont…

> I ask honestly: why should it be easy to participate?

Perhaps because the tagline of Wikipedia is "The free encyclopedia anyone can edit", not "The free encyclopedia anyone can edit after conducting 20 hours of intense self-study into the arbitrary bureaucracy and 'standards' that let us have a page for every Pokemon and Justine Ezarik's 300-page iPhone bill but not a page for a band that's won 15 local music festivals and produced 3 records"?

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#156

Post by epochwolf »

tptacek wrote: post #112
bane wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per the guidelines: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized."

Thanks! Fixed!

Coming in an hour later, it looks like you just italicized the uppercase. I think bane met to use italics instead of uppercase. If this is on purpose, well played. :)

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#157

Post by wpietri »

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.

Under ideal circumstances, what contribution would you have wanted him to make?

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#158

Post by zbowling »

nowarninglabel wrote: post #109
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…

I think you miss the point, which is that the process is insanely opaque, which you note yourself by saying > if you get really involved in the site When I meet wikipedia people here in SF, they say, "Get involved!" Then, when I have tried to get involved, I get endless bureaucracy and everything eventually deleted. I've only managed to ever get 1 article on wikipedia (a bio of an expert in behavioral economics / neg…

It's really not all that complicated. The only process that really has a lot of discussion is when people have disagreements and are trying to come up with a sane way that allows everyone to get to the best content possible. Only in those situations doesn't anyone ever refer to the guidelines or processes for handling issues between people.

The few exceptions are when we as a community feel there is a gray area left to interpretation because the action is large enough to possibly effect a good number of editors. We hold a discussion in those cases. This happens more often than not around page deletions, page merges, category deletions, category merging, tag merging, cross included template changes that effect a large number of pages, changes in process, and other huge things.

There isn't any extra processes and bureaucracy on wikipedia then there has to be or then the community feels is necessary.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#159

Post by gergles »

wpietri wrote: post #121

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 numbe…

You have deliberately ignored the most contentious part of the Wikipedia policy regarding articles, which is the "Notability" rule. Why an Internet-based encyclopedia with no editors, printed version, or quality control feels the need to limit articles to "notable subjects" is beyond me - it isn't like we're going to run out of electrons any time soon.

In this particular case, it was quite clear this person existed and that she worked in SEM. There were plenty of sources to back that up. That should be the relevant criterion for whether an article can exist in an Internet-based encyclopedia. There was no reason to delete this article other than "Ha ha, I know the rules of this bizarre system and will throw W:PDQXYZ links at you until you go away".

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#160

Post by wpietri »

bigiain wrote: post #58
sullivandanny wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent a half-hour just trying to find the right form to merely request that the page be reviewed for restoration. That form, as I explained in detail, doesn't actually work. There is no form for pages that have been deleted. There is a page only (as best I can tell) for pages that are under consideration for being deleted. Once they are gone, they're gone -- unless they were removed for the ill-defined uncontrovers…

I'd be curious to know if this resistance to input from "subject matter experts" is the same for, say, notable physicists or notable cardiac surgeons? It wouldn't surprise me at all to find that because the subject matter in question is "SEO" that there are a lot of prejudices and suspicion of ulterior motives from the wikipedia end. In one sense, I'm of the opinion that if you're promoting yourself as "an SEO expert…

I don't know that this is specifically resistance to contribution by subject matter experts. I think Wikipedia is more precisely indifferent to their subject matter expertise when it comes to considering direct contributions. If Danny Sullivan wants to edit Wikipedia, he's welcome to, but nobody's going to treat him with more deference than any other editor.

What they do make great use of is indirect contributions. If a physicist or a cardiac surgeon writes and publishes a paper on the topic of their expertise, that is fantastic raw material for Wikipedia. Which is precisely the relationship that most subject matter experts have with any other encyclopedia, so it seems reasonable to me.

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