The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia • Hacker News Board

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#101

Post by tptacek » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 3:26 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/…

And, again: he could simply have clicked on the highlighted name of the admin who deleted the article, prominently displayed on the Wikipedia landing page for the deleted article, and then, like a human being, asked what to do next. He would have gotten a straight answer.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#102

Post by zotz » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 3:27 AM UTC

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 place.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#103

Post by tptacek » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 3:29 AM UTC

mustpax wrote: post #20

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…

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.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#104

Post by billpatrianakos » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 3:30 AM UTC

derleth wrote: post #39

aeontech wrote: post #13

Just the latest victim of the deletionist forces. This is the reason I, and many many other people have given up on contributing to Wikipedia altogether. Jason Scott has a very eloquent description of the problem [1],[2], and Wikipedia's failure in addressing it several years ago; nothing has changed since then, and I doubt it will any time soon, since the Wikipedia administration sees no problem with the status quo.…

Everyone is a deletionist about some things. Now, watch people try to delete my post by downvoting it.

Ha! You were right! You totally got downvoteed. I tried to help you with an up vote.

It's probably true that Wikipedia is a big game of politics but that's just a side effect of community involvement. It may suck sometimes but what other way is more democratic? Do we give one person the ability to be the Decider or do we put up with a lot of ego games? I go for ego. At least in that scenario there can be some people to challenge decisions.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#105

Post by philwelch » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 3:32 AM UTC

billpatrianakos wrote: post #95

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…

Maybe you're right on 20% but I'll tell you that 100% of the article was a temper tantrum. Had the author looked into why these rules are necessary and suggested a more efficient process maybe he could have been taken seriously. Instead he rattled on about how it was hard for him to nag people into seeing things his way and upset that all his effort went to waste. People who argue about the campaigns to tarnish Wikip…

> Had the author looked into why these rules are necessary and suggested a more efficient process maybe he could have been taken seriously.

Suggesting more efficient processes for Wikipedia is a never ending tarpit that doesn't get anywhere, no matter how committed you are and how established you are in the community.

Any hidebound culture filled with red tape has horror stories and experiences that seem to justify every broken thing they do. If your answer to a usability critique is "they should learn the last several years of Wikipedia history, which isn't documented anywhere, and understand where all these rules came from", isn't that just a concession that you might as well not even bother unless contributing to Wikipedia is going to be one of your primary hobbies for the foreseeable future?

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#106

Post by bane » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 3:34 AM UTC

zbowling wrote: post #49

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…

It's not bureaucratic as much you think. There is a system that is very easy to follow. 1. First they missed the delete review that normally waits about 7 days before taking action. 2. Upon discovering that their page was deleted found the archive delete review discussion. 3. Didn't understand what they were looking at and with disregard to the notes posted at the top saying that it's archive and not to edit it, edit…

So WP let him do a bunch of things he wouldn't have been able to do if it had a decent interface and/or couldn't find things buried under a pile of acronyms and bureaucratic opaqueness and that's supposed to be your evidence that it's not a broken process?

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#107

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 3:35 AM UTC

billpatrianakos wrote: post #97

mqqq wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Something I don't get about people on HN and their attitude towards Wikipedia. You are overestimating your average hacker news reader.

I'd modify that to add in the words "in recent times". There was a time the HN community was reliably smarter and awesome than average.

[deleted]

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#108

Post by bane » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 3:36 AM UTC

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…

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."

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#109

Post by nowarninglabel » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 3:38 AM UTC

zbowling wrote: post #62

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…

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 / negotiations) and that was after many deletion reviews.

So while I agree that the blog author's actual article under discussion may deserve to be deleted, that's not the point. The point is, it's extremely difficult to participate, and I don't want to need to spend a bunch at Wikipedia reading countless rules trying to figure that out. The process needs to be simplified.

Wikipedia itself great, the creation/editing process is not. To all those who call for more participation in Wikipedia, don't ask me to participate in or like a process that sucks, fix the process first, just as the blog author suggests.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#110

Post by sethg » Thu, Nov 24, 2011, 3:42 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #89

omaranto wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how much of the article you read. You have a long angry rant (that makes good points) about people that get upset because a Wikipedia page they care about is deleted. The article is not about that, it is about how hard it is to figure out how to navigate the Wikipedia waters to give support to an article that has been deleted or is up for deletion, etc. It is about Wikipedia's usability in cases like thi…

I don't blame you for not carefully reading my rant, but I addressed your point somewhere in the middle of it: when the article went up for deletion, there was a big link on the article itself saying how to vote on the deletion. The thing that this guy writing this post didn't do that any reasonable person could have been expected to do: click the name of the admin who deleted the article and ask him on his talk page…

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 to “use” the talk page instead. You and I know that user talk pages are “used” by just editing them, but he didn’t, and nothing above the fold on that page told him what he should have been doing.