Wikipedia needs an IDE, not a WYSIWYG editor • Hacker News Board

Re: Wikipedia needs an IDE, not a WYSIWYG editor

#51

Post by 83457 » Sat, Oct 25, 2014, 1:12 PM UTC

discreteevent wrote: post #16

So he goes from: " Thing is, editors hated its bugginess so much that the roll-out was reverted shortly afterwards." to: " Their solution to this was a WYSIWYG editor, which failed for the basic reason that it denies the fact that Wikipedia is a program. " Something tells me he might be making it up as he goes along! I wonder how successful Microsoft Word would have been with markdown editor.

Reminds me of when Word came out and had various WYSIWIG bugs so many stayed with WordPerfect for reveal codes.

Re: Wikipedia needs an IDE, not a WYSIWYG editor

#52

Post by emw » Sat, Oct 25, 2014, 1:19 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #13

tottenhm wrote: post #6

"Users apparently dislike this workflow so much that they don’t bother contributing at all: significantly less people are editing Wikipedia than did a few years ago." To be fair, I think this exaggerates the role of the editing UI -- if the editing UI was that bad, then people wouldn't have contributed in the first place. The more common narrative for reduced participation is the growth of cultural issues which make…

The basic reason that Wikipedia editing is down is that most of the job is done. The goal was to produce a reasonably comprehensive encyclopedia. Mission accomplished. Most of the important articles were written years ago. Take a look at new articles being created. They are mostly about very minor subjects. This was typical of the paper encyclopedias. The initial creation of the Encyclopedia Brittanica was a huge job…

That point is worth making.

Sociological issues among established Wikipedia editors do contribute do lower retention of desirable new editors, but like Animats I suspect Wikipedia's comprehensive coverage is a significant factor (perhaps more so). It's simply less appealing to do curatorial work than to make large additions to major articles like "Genetics" or "France".

Which factor contributes more to Wikipedia's active editors drop-off, sociological issues or encyclopedic completeness? Has anyone looked at that? I'd be interested to see an analysis of how the trends in the notorious graph at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Enwp_retention_vs_act... correlate with word count and reference count in important articles.

Re: Wikipedia needs an IDE, not a WYSIWYG editor

#53

Post by Tomte » Sat, Oct 25, 2014, 1:24 PM UTC

joshvm wrote: post #43

Tomte wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> editors have gotten into turf wars over articles they feel some sense of ownership over That's exactly what killed my one and only attempt to substantially improve an article (not just typo-fixing and stuff): The two guys with a lot of edits on that page couldn't stand someone else editing "their" article. Sure, they tried to bring up superficial disagreements about the content, but that could have been resolved tr…

You fix it by social engineering. If you go in and blam an entire page, no doubt the original authors will cry foul; it probably took them a fair amount of time, even if what they wrote wasn't particularly good. It's also fairly rude without at least giving them a chance to improve sections. Incremental editing will also give you a far stronger case when they get arsey, particularly if your inclusions are better than…

I tried to improve a very small section, about six or seven sentences. It was clearly wrong, I had lots of citations, but they preferred a wrong "my" article to a better "our article".

After the second or third edit, incorporating their feedback, someone called it "vandalism" and reverted everything.

Wikipedia is broken.

Re: Wikipedia needs an IDE, not a WYSIWYG editor

#54

Post by brownbat » Sat, Oct 25, 2014, 1:31 PM UTC

joshvm wrote: post #43

Tomte wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> editors have gotten into turf wars over articles they feel some sense of ownership over That's exactly what killed my one and only attempt to substantially improve an article (not just typo-fixing and stuff): The two guys with a lot of edits on that page couldn't stand someone else editing "their" article. Sure, they tried to bring up superficial disagreements about the content, but that could have been resolved tr…

You fix it by social engineering. If you go in and blam an entire page, no doubt the original authors will cry foul; it probably took them a fair amount of time, even if what they wrote wasn't particularly good. It's also fairly rude without at least giving them a chance to improve sections. Incremental editing will also give you a far stronger case when they get arsey, particularly if your inclusions are better than…

There are certainly ways to make original authors justifiably upset, wikipedia definitely is a place where kindness pays dividends. While probably a factor in some cases, though, I don't think lack of socialization for new users is sufficient to explain what's going on.

I used to see more great collaborative experiences, now I see even incrementalism and conciliatory pleas get rebuffed.

I wouldn't think much of my (anecdotal) experiences, but with all these articles claiming the same thing, I'm willing to accept this might be a wider trend.

Re: Wikipedia needs an IDE, not a WYSIWYG editor

#55

Post by shiven » Sat, Oct 25, 2014, 1:38 PM UTC

joshvm wrote: post #43

Tomte wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> editors have gotten into turf wars over articles they feel some sense of ownership over That's exactly what killed my one and only attempt to substantially improve an article (not just typo-fixing and stuff): The two guys with a lot of edits on that page couldn't stand someone else editing "their" article. Sure, they tried to bring up superficial disagreements about the content, but that could have been resolved tr…

You fix it by social engineering. If you go in and blam an entire page, no doubt the original authors will cry foul; it probably took them a fair amount of time, even if what they wrote wasn't particularly good. It's also fairly rude without at least giving them a chance to improve sections. Incremental editing will also give you a far stronger case when they get arsey, particularly if your inclusions are better than…

The key is trying to work with the grumpy people and reassure them that you're not trying to take their article away from them.

In my view, that right there is the problem with Wikipedia. Just because someone puts up content on a "commons" site does not give them sole ownership or even a moral claim to resist changes proposed by the those who come after them.

Why should the average Wikipedia user not have the chance to clearly see the differences of opinion (in terms of value of information) right on the article page itself? The answer is most likely because the Wikipedia UI is not designed for lucid presentation of such differences.

Wikipedia's (subconscious?) striving to be an authoritative source of information is in direct conflict with very nature of information (and human knowledge) to be non-self-consistent and ever evolving.

Re: Wikipedia needs an IDE, not a WYSIWYG editor

#56

Post by brownbat » Sat, Oct 25, 2014, 1:50 PM UTC

tottenhm wrote: post #6

"Users apparently dislike this workflow so much that they don’t bother contributing at all: significantly less people are editing Wikipedia than did a few years ago." To be fair, I think this exaggerates the role of the editing UI -- if the editing UI was that bad, then people wouldn't have contributed in the first place. The more common narrative for reduced participation is the growth of cultural issues which make…

I used to think this was just a cultural shift, now though I'm wondering if it's not something more fundamental.

It might be an unavoidable symptom of shifting priorities from addition to revision.

When I've worked on joint drafts, having many collaborators tackle a blank page is incredible. Our ability to rapidly churn out rough but readable pages is always stronger than I expect. Each new edit, even sentences in broken English, are putting ideas on the page, contributing value, and so more collaborators is almost always for the better.

There always comes a turning point during drafting, though, where additional collaborators suddenly become a liability. You always want a few different eyes for editing. But when you have enough collaborators polishing a mostly finished product, it will kill that piece (or add months to drafting).

My most optimistic read: maybe this is ok. Polishing is harder, not everyone is good at it. Maybe we should expect more edits to be rejected in articles that are 95% of where they need to be.

Pessimistically, though: Maybe each new collaborator just increases the risk of bikeshedding and petty squabbles. A couple bad edits create presumptions in editors, driving them to revert even high quality additions as their heuristic subconsciously shifts from "new stuff useful" to "new stuff harmful." The most stubborn or fanatical will drive out reasonable high quality editors, leading to a quality death spiral.

I don't know, it's probably somewhere in between.

Re: Wikipedia needs an IDE, not a WYSIWYG editor

#57

Post by Jerry_li » Sat, Oct 25, 2014, 2:07 PM UTC

Maybe something like an enhanced LaTeX.

Re: Wikipedia needs an IDE, not a WYSIWYG editor

#58

Post by ddebernardy » Sat, Oct 25, 2014, 2:16 PM UTC

joshvm wrote: post #43

Tomte wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> editors have gotten into turf wars over articles they feel some sense of ownership over That's exactly what killed my one and only attempt to substantially improve an article (not just typo-fixing and stuff): The two guys with a lot of edits on that page couldn't stand someone else editing "their" article. Sure, they tried to bring up superficial disagreements about the content, but that could have been resolved tr…

You fix it by social engineering. If you go in and blam an entire page, no doubt the original authors will cry foul; it probably took them a fair amount of time, even if what they wrote wasn't particularly good. It's also fairly rude without at least giving them a chance to improve sections. Incremental editing will also give you a far stronger case when they get arsey, particularly if your inclusions are better than…

The key problem is why bother trying to work with the grumpy people (...)?

FTFY

Re: Wikipedia needs an IDE, not a WYSIWYG editor

#59

Post by sparkzilla » Sat, Oct 25, 2014, 2:33 PM UTC

The main problem with Wikipedia is not the editor, but the wiki. Because wiki pages are structured as pages it lets real or imagined experts have control of the entire page. This leads to groupthink, censorship, bullying, gender bias, harassment, excessive rules, vandalism, edit-warring, unsortable page content, inability to cross-reference data across pages.

At Newslines, we solve all of these problem for news and biography pages (the most popular pages on Wikipedia) by using the news event as the core content of the page, as well as a number of other features that allow users to write without harassment. As a result, unlike Wikipedia, which has 90% young male contributors, we have 80% women and minority contributors.

http://newslines.org

Re: Wikipedia needs an IDE, not a WYSIWYG editor

#60

Post by tim333 » Sat, Oct 25, 2014, 3:13 PM UTC

shiven wrote: post #55

joshvm wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You fix it by social engineering. If you go in and blam an entire page, no doubt the original authors will cry foul; it probably took them a fair amount of time, even if what they wrote wasn't particularly good. It's also fairly rude without at least giving them a chance to improve sections. Incremental editing will also give you a far stronger case when they get arsey, particularly if your inclusions are better than…

The key is trying to work with the grumpy people and reassure them that you're not trying to take their article away from them. In my view, that right there is the problem with Wikipedia. Just because someone puts up content on a "commons" site does not give them sole ownership or even a moral claim to resist changes proposed by the those who come after them. Why should the average Wikipedia user not have the chance…

It would be technically trick to do though I guess you could have something like those little speech bubble symbols that they have alongside the articles on Medium which would give access to alternatives - and possibly allow voting/commenting on them in a Hacker News style.