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The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

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Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#211

Post by wpietri »

njw45 wrote: post #207
gergles wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Why hasn't anyone taken wikipedia's content and put in it another mediawiki setup run without a deletionist policy?

It is frequently proposed (e.g, this from 2008: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/wackypedia-wikipedia-for...) but I don't know of any that are even mildly successful. There are plenty of mirrors and forks, though. Naturally, Wikipedia has a list of them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks/All

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#212

Post by DanBC »

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?

Because that's a core fundamental part of wikipedia practice. That's why every page says "the encylopedia anyone can edit" and why you don't need to create an account to contribute.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#213

Post by vacri »

sabat wrote: post #173
gwillen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because 1) There is a policy against Americanizing British spellings for no reason (this is probably a good thing); 2) frequently experienced editors are much too harsh with new contributors and don't explain why (this is definitely a bad thing).

... which is completely ridiculous, for two reasons. One, Wikipedia is based in America, and so naturally its English should be consistently American. Two, modern English as spoken and written in England has grammar problems -- e.g., the insistence on using plurals for singular objects, such as corporations ("Shell Oil have announced ..."). Therefore, American English is obviously preferable.

Ah, the good old "The English have poor command of English" argument. Nice work.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#214

Post by greenyoda »

"About two weeks ago, Jessie Stricchiola let me know that her Wikipedia page had been deleted. Apparently, she wasn’t notable enough."

Apparently, every fictional character from every forgotten TV show seems to merit their own page (see, for example, the amount of space that Wikipedia devotes to "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" and its cast of characters). It's hard to imagine why any real person wouldn't be "notable enough" by these standards.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#215

Post by vacri »

eykanal wrote: post #37
billpatrianakos wrote: post #32

Sounds like a lot of whining to me. The author's reaction to this made him lose all credibility with me. First off, you think you're an expert? Maybe you are, maybe not but even experts aren't always right and just because you think in your infinite expert wisdom that so and so should have a Wikipedia page, the majority of us obviously don't. Secondly, so sorry the appeals process was so inconvenient for you. So far…

What's with all the hate? The author has a lot of valid points. 1) If it's supposed to be the "encyclopedia that anyone can edit", then it should be easy to use. If the "anyone can edit" is marred by insane levels of bureaucracy, making it so that, technically anyone can edit, but realistically , only those who know how to game the system can edit, than the system as a whole is a partial failure. 2) Who are you to ju…

It is easy to use. It's just not mindless to use. It's easy to drive a car, but that doesn't mean there's no initial learning. Also, where you say 'game the system', you really mean 'follow the system'.

I've made tons of correctional edits and vandal reversions on Wikipedia, and a small number of new info edits. Only one of them has ever caused a problem - that was a revert done by a bot that didn't recognise I was fixing vandalism (some previous errant edit had blown the page of a seagoing vessel out to the longest page on wikipedia by far, with ctrl+c ctrl+V). The bot that wouldn't let me revert also wouldn't let anyone comment on the talk page, and the feedback link for it was broken.

But apart from that one experience, I've made probably somewhere between 100-200 successful edits. I don't even have an account, I edit anonymously.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#217

Post by xyzzyz »

nowarninglabel wrote: post #178
geraldalewis wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Your attitude speaks to exactly what is wrong with Wikipedia. You seem to think it should be difficult to participate, such that only the elite who have busted their chops should be able to do so. If you wish to end up with a dead community (which is exactly what is happening, the number contributors is stabilizing not growing), then fine, but if you wish to actually expand the wealth of human knowledge available the…

The difference with Drupal is that there are very clearly defined rules for how to participate, clear instructions for how to do so, and new contributors are helped along in the process to get their code right, rather than being told their contribution is worthless, which is the attitude I get anytime I try to contribute something on Wikipedia.

But there are also clearly defined rules for how to participate in Wikipedia, which you just disregarded as rules made "such that only the elite who have busted their chops should be able to [contribute]". You see, if you write an article without any sources or references, badly formated, without interlinks etc, it's really of no help to us -- getting it into shape (i.e. formatting, finding sources) will take more time than rewriting it from scratch. We can create crappy articles about not notable subjects ourselves, thank you. Do you also think that Linus Torvalds is wrong with rejecting patchs which do not meet guidelines? Do you think it's unfair to make people read and care about Linux guidelines? Do you think it will make Linux a dead community?

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#218

Post by spullara »

Looks like Danny's article on wikipedia has now come under scrutiny:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Sullivan_(technologist)

"The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's general notability guideline. Please help to establish notability by adding reliable, secondary sources about the topic. If notability cannot be established, the article is likely to be merged, redirected, or deleted. (November 2011)"

Personally, I think the notability guidelines are pretty outrageous and wildly out of date. I mean, how long before there aren't any "legitimate publications" by their standard?

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#219

Post by DanBC »

wpietri wrote: post #157
philwelch wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Under ideal circumstances he would have "known" the article was great and really important; he would have heard it got deleted; he would have gone to wikipedia and found short simple clear advice about what is included and what isn't included. Preferably in one place. Then he would have realised that the article was not a good fit for Wikipedia, but he would have met some people who were not fucking wingnuts and who encouraged him to contribute and he would have found some other articles where he starts making gentle contributions.

Instead, that information is scattered over a few different pages (and thus there's lag between them when there's a change); there's differing standards for different things (Elected national politicians are automatically notable because they're elected, Olympic athletes are not notable.) Deletion process is incredibly bitey; I don't care that people doing deletion have floods of shitty articles to plough through, they should realise that destroying (even justifiably) someone's work is going to be hard for that person and is not going to encourage them to contribute to the process, and that this is an (a tricky) opportunity to get new editors.

Combine this with weird rules about other stuff (The software stops me creating this name (which means some things are hard coded), so I read the rules, and create another name, and get newbie-bitten by some over enthusiastic 17 year old who claims that my real name is offensive or that the pseudonym I chose instead is "confusing" or whatever. My name goes in front of how ever many different username discussions they have now, where I argue my point and am "allowed" to edit.)

There are huge differences between things like the five pillars and the rest of the obscure processes.

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