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The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

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Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#321

Post by jarek »

bane wrote: post #296
jarek wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If knowing the fairly simple rules of the site you are participating in counts as fanatic dedication, I weep for the internet. Do you feel one has to be fanatically dedicated to HN to know why "reply" links don't always appear right away?

The history of the problem with WP is not that there's a lack of people willing to provide quality participation. Everyone from professional authors to nuclear physicists have been screwed by the bureaucratic psychosis that pervades contributing to WP. Almost by definition, high quality participants are such because they have spent an inordinate amount of time in their area of expertise. They don't have the time to d…

That is a lot of words with little evidence.

This discussion resulted from a specific blog post about a specific article. Do you consider the Jessie Stricchiola article to be "actual high quality material"?

What is your proposed alternative process, and how does it help to build a useful, reasonably accurate encyclopedia?

If Wikipedia's process is so bad, why hasn't anyone forked the contest and done it over better?

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#322

Post by jarek »

DanBC wrote: post #212
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…

> 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.

The page says "the encyclopedia anyone can edit," not "the encyclopedia anyone is entitled to edit." I don't think a couple of hours (if that) familiarizing yourself with the practices is much to ask.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#323

Post by pessimizer »

kstenerud wrote: post #313
wpietri wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UI design is not a religion whose tenets are to be followed for their own sakes. It's a practical art. Good UI makes easy things that should be easy, and hard that which should be hard. (E.g.: http://www.zen171398.zen.co.uk/Alien%20Page%206/Ian%20Wingro... ) Your mistake is naive optimization of one part of the process. In this case, the right system would be one that makes it very easy for deletion review to process…

I haven't made myself clear. I'm not saying that someone should understand what the CONTENTS of their submission should be with only 1 minute's worth of reading, but rather the ACTIONS the user must take from a UI perspective in order to go through the process should not take more than 1 minute's worth of reading. If the content of the user submission should be carefully thought out prior to taking the action, that's…

Maybe I'm a fast reader, so try timing yourself reading this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review#Steps... . I don't find it to be much more than a minute.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#326

Post by sammyo »

ErrantX wrote: post #237
neilk wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow AfD closely. I'm a programmer. But I just had a look through the latest AfDs and I have to say there's little I disagreed with. This one was sponsored by a very prolific Wikipedian, though, who has a particular affection for the rule that one event doesn't make you notable: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion... Which is totally outrageous. It's tempting to conclude the nominat…

Actually; that is a prime example of where the deletion process is failing - because the only option is "delete or not delete". That article is a problem; if you read it, it is not a biography, it describes an event. Which, I suspect, is the point the nominator was trying to make. For a reader, the content is better presented in an article on Women's rights in Egypt (or activism in Egypt) with the title redirected th…

Looking through the list of deletion candidates I saw merging as an alternative to a delete.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#327

Post by yuvipanda »

spullara wrote: post #218

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)" Perso…

Quoting from the talk page:

> Given the extensive list of sources covering this individual above, please explain exactly how the subject does not meet Wikipedia's notability criteria. If others agree, the tag can be restored - but you cannot tag an article that meets the criteria simply because you don't like them. --Jezebel'sPonyo

And the tag has been removed.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#328

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#329

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#330

Post by ja2ke »

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…

The "Wikipedia submitter vs script kiddie checkins to an OSS project" analogy is incredibly tired, and the amount of presumption going on here is a huge contributor to why people get so frustrated with Wikipedia's process.

That tired ass analogy is too busy focusing blame on hypothetical idiot submitters that it fails to look at the problem it's incorrectly ignoring about the other half -- potential idiot reviewers.

Open source submissions are vetted by programmers. Are Wikipedia articles related to Ethiopian cuisine reviewed by Ethiopian chefs, or by food critics or historians or the editor of a culinary publication, or even just by someone who likes food? I imagine on average they are reviewed by a person whose credentials are more or less I'm Some Dude Who Is Involved With Wikipedia.

Imagine an open source software project so valuable and interesting that it drew in the most legendary programmers working today, but the person vetting that code was me, a graphic designer with some outdated HTML markup knowledge and enough surviving scraps from my high school Pascal class that I can express an idea to an engineer, but couldn't actually write a 'hello world' to save my grandma. I imagine those brilliant programmers would eventually stop submitting code to my project. It doesn't matter how qualified your submitters are if the gatekeepers aren't. That is especially exacerbated if the gatekeepers are super inside and uppity about it (which is not uncommon in the case of Wikipedia).

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