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Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free

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Re: Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free

#121

Post by tptacek »

ghaff wrote: post #110
ghshephard wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing at _least_ 15 out of those 16 people knew that deletionism has nothing to do with the cost of disk space. It was more a vote of frustration over the overreaching that occurs when seminal figures like _why have their Wikipedia Page deleted. There are _shades_ of notability, and I agree that someone has to make a call: Not: o How many times have I sneezed today. Barely: o The Ties of my Local Anchorman Not…

Notability is a really tough concept in the context of Wikipedia for a couple of reasons. The first is that notability is in no small part a function of scale. Many things that would not make the cut in a global, space-limited encyclopedia are nevertheless in Wikipedia (properly) because they're notable to some niche of contributors/readers. But once you start having articles about some episode of a 1980s TV show, ho…

Because the selectman wasn't written about in a reliable secondary source, and the TV show was.

What, you say, the selectman appeared in a newspaper article? Congratulations: you're done. Cite it. The article will stick. Someone will inevitably try to delete it; you'll point to the sourcing at the bottom of the article, and you'll win the AfD.

It's really not complicated.

It is also NOT ABOUT "FAIR". Notability and verifiability aren't value judgements about subjects. They are judgements about the COMPATIBILITY of subjects with Wikipedia.

Re: Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free

#122

Post by tptacek »

celoyd wrote: post #68
tptacek wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your anti-deletionism argument is insufficiently doctrinaire: it acknowledges that there may exist some true statements that might merit deletion from Wikipedia. Many inclusionists find that idea repellant. For whatever it's worth: _why has a page. Nobody ever tried to delete Canada. Pokemon characters have pages because they are easily verified.

Your anti-deletionism argument is insufficiently doctrinaire Having just appreciated your criticism of a sarcastic and unhelpful comment, I hope you’re not turning to easy point-scoring yourself.

I'm flattered that you think I'm taking a high road here, but I'm really just irritated at the fact that the comment was content-free snark.

Re: Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free

#123

Post by tptacek »

cookiecaper wrote: post #94
zmmz wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not trying to provoke you or anything, but as I am somebody who has not given this topic much thought I would be curious to hear of your concrete examples and arguments about bad policies? I am somebody who can't see himself as contributing to wikipedia, but some changes might make me reconsider. What would you like to see changed?

I don't remember them all anymore -- I keep only loose tabs on Wikipedia these days. I was a very active editor and a founding member of a WikiProject in the 2004-2005 timeframe. I thought the blanket removal of most fair use images and the policy banning them was inappropriate and one of the least pragmatic things from an editorial quality perspective that could have been done. That's the only big policy change sinc…

You've written a lot of gut-check stuff here about why you distrust Wales, and I respect that. But you really only made two substantive criticisms of the project's actual work:

* That Wikipedia didn't go to bat for fair-use images, and instead adopted a harsh policy of copyright attribution that can be used by activist admins to require forms-in-triplicate process to get an image posted.

* That Wikipedia's conflict resolution processes add up to make it impossible to contribute to controversial articles.

Both of these may be true, but my response is, "so what?". The outcome you've spelled out here isn't the end of the world. The encyclopedia is still epic in scope and useful even to a cynical bastard like me. It dominates the top spot on most Google SERPs and by doing so drastically improves the quality of virtually every Internet search in the English-speaking world.

Particularly regarding controversial articles: seriously, just go edit somewhere else. You were a busy editor in your time, and you know exactly why those draconian rules exist: because controversial articles are massive neodymium magnets for crappy edits. Between daily attempts to rewrite the entire flow of articles to specific POV's (often in nitpicky work-to-rules fashion deliberately designed to incite days worth of arguments over how to revert) and mindless vandalism, how is anyone supposed to get anything done anywhere on the project if everyone has to patrol the articles cleaning up all the nonsense?

You bring up lots of valid points, but you don't seem willing to consider the other side. I might actually entirely agree with you about the project, but for the fact that your comment is overtly misleading.

Re: Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free

#124

Post by eddieplan9 »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #79
bdonlan wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And then we have wikipedia's budget priorities, which indicate that Wales et al seem to value creating cushy jobs for people who don't add much to wikipedia much more than just keeping the site running for as long as possible, by a ratio of around 10:1 (roughly). I won't comment on your other points, but - Wikipedia is a non-profit. They can't just hang on to cash, they have to spend it somehow, and in a way in lin…

They could do what every other similar organization has done in the past, create a trust fund to keep the organization running into the foreseeable future without having to routinely solicit donations. Whether or not their charter is set up correctly to allow that today is immaterial, they can found on a new charter if necessary. If you asked people what the benefit of donating to the wikimedia foundation was I'm sur…

That reminds me two different attitudes towards life. If all you need to support a good meaningful life is $100k, and somehow you can get $1M a year by running a business, soliciting dontations or whatever, you could choose to get $1M for year one, and continue with your lifestyle for another 9 years without getting more money; or you could change how you spend your money, aim big things and spend $1M all in year one. My zen master taught me to aim big. How big an impact your life can make depends on how wise you spend your money and also, equally important, how much you can spend.

Re: Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free

#125

Post by andywood »

tptacek wrote: post #120
philwelch wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtually no deletion arguments conclude with a merge, though. Typically the information is completely lost, no matter how well cited it is. Which makes the verifiability argument bankrupt as well, at least as a defense of what actually happens on Wikipedia. If the verifiability argument were sufficient, the notability policies would all be scrapped and deletion policy would round down to "delete articles which don't…

Wikipedia is broken in a lot of ways. I wrote a big long comment about a year and a half ago where I supposed that the problems probably boil down to "editing as sport" and "status seeking quests for adminship". Both lead to situations where editing decisions are made in a slipshod fashion and then defended to the death to avoid losing points in RfA's. Deletionism is not one of the things that is broken about Wikiped…

But for several years, up until, oh ~2005 or so, Wikipedia was on the path to becoming the repository of all human knowledge. Many people, including myself, found that to be extremely valuable, and exciting.

Why don't we get to say that the fundamental point of Wikipedia is to be an aspiring repository of all human knowledge? Asserting that the reason for these policies is that it's [merely] an encyclopedia [more or less in the traditional sense] is self-fulfilling rhetoric. You say "the point is X" but I say "the point was Y, and could have continued to be if certain people didn't establish turf and assert control."

From my point of view, Wikipedia was on the way to being something much more than what it is now, and value was lost.

Re: Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free

#126

Post by tptacek »

andywood wrote: post #125
tptacek wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia is broken in a lot of ways. I wrote a big long comment about a year and a half ago where I supposed that the problems probably boil down to "editing as sport" and "status seeking quests for adminship". Both lead to situations where editing decisions are made in a slipshod fashion and then defended to the death to avoid losing points in RfA's. Deletionism is not one of the things that is broken about Wikiped…

But for several years, up until, oh ~2005 or so, Wikipedia was on the path to becoming the repository of all human knowledge. Many people, including myself, found that to be extremely valuable, and exciting. Why don't we get to say that the fundamental point of Wikipedia is to be an aspiring repository of all human knowledge? Asserting that the reason for these policies is that it's [merely] an encyclopedia [more or…

When was that ever the stated goal of Wikipedia? Cite a source?

Re: Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free

#127

Post by tptacek »

StavrosK wrote: post #119
tptacek wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That first sentence doesn't even make sense: the whole debate over deletionism vs. inclusionism isn't even relevant to this article. You're like the guy who can't stop from commenting about Wikileaks on Amazon stories. Please, stop.

On the contrary, I think the debate over the issues of a service that is soliciting donations from us is of direct relevance.

You didn't debate issues of any service. You tried to score points with a snarky and ultimately false comment.

(Also, apropos nothing, but because I just looked up who you are: that CRAM-MD5 proposal on your website is terribly broken; please don't recommend it to people.)

Re: Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free

#128

Post by chc »

patio11 wrote: post #91
Untitled wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are people so consistently negative about Wikipedia? I am not negative about Wikipedia, but about its management. The add campaign was distasteful and I suspect just an ego trip for Jimmy Wales. The real Wikipedia is the thousands of faceless people who write the articles.

The add campaign was distasteful and I suspect just an ego trip for Jimmy Wales They published the results of the split tests: Jimmy Wales ROFLstomped all their other creatives. It blows my mind, too, but there you go: the people who matter (i.e. people who donate to the foundation) want to Jimmy's rugged and photoshopped good looks, and all he has to do is glance in their general direction and their wallets open.

My theory: I think people feel more like they owe the "Wikipedia Founder" (or at least would derive some benefit themselves) than some random author named Kartika.

Re: Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free

#129

Post by kolmogorovcmplx »

ghshephard wrote: post #62
tptacek wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are tens of great arguments you could have made against deletionism, why make a bullshit one? You know it's not about the disk space --- though presumably not all of the 16 people who modded you up know that as well.

I'm guessing at _least_ 15 out of those 16 people knew that deletionism has nothing to do with the cost of disk space. It was more a vote of frustration over the overreaching that occurs when seminal figures like _why have their Wikipedia Page deleted. There are _shades_ of notability, and I agree that someone has to make a call: Not: o How many times have I sneezed today. Barely: o The Ties of my Local Anchorman Not…

This continuous lowering of the "delete or not" bar should be pretty obvious to anybody who has followed Wikipedia for some time.

I used to be of the opinion that it was justified, but has realised lately that it has become a tool for political censorship. Some of the editing cliques have become very adept at suppressing unwanted views with dubious, but to many persuasive, application of the verifiability and notability policies.

Re: Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free

#130

Post by tptacek »

kolmogorovcmplx wrote: post #129
ghshephard wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing at _least_ 15 out of those 16 people knew that deletionism has nothing to do with the cost of disk space. It was more a vote of frustration over the overreaching that occurs when seminal figures like _why have their Wikipedia Page deleted. There are _shades_ of notability, and I agree that someone has to make a call: Not: o How many times have I sneezed today. Barely: o The Ties of my Local Anchorman Not…

This continuous lowering of the "delete or not" bar should be pretty obvious to anybody who has followed Wikipedia for some time. I used to be of the opinion that it was justified, but has realised lately that it has become a tool for political censorship. Some of the editing cliques have become very adept at suppressing unwanted views with dubious, but to many persuasive, application of the verifiability and notabil…

It should be very, very easy for you to produce a URL illustrating this phenomenon for those of us who are skeptical of it.
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