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The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

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Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#131

Post by philwelch »

tptacek wrote: post #116
sethg wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I just don't buy it. There are some dumb, dumb, dumb people thoroughly ensconced in Wikipedia and its processes; clearly it's not that hard to figure out that to talk to an admin, you can just edit their page. I think Danny Sullivan is being disingenuous. Mediawiki is an obtuse piece of software; he knows that, and we know that, and he's using it as a fig leaf to conceal the fact that he wasn't able to push his frien…

It's not especially edifying to discuss your perceptions of Danny's hidden motives, when the intended topic of discussion is what Danny actually wrote.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#132

Post by geraldalewis »

nowarninglabel wrote: post #109
zbowling wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 / 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 contributions to OSS, and I've never expected anyone to accept a patch based on the fact that I feel like I'm a competent programmer.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#133

Post by wpietri »

tptacek wrote: post #111
sullivandanny wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent a half-hour just trying to find the right form to merely request that the page be reviewed for restoration. That form, as I explained in detail, doesn't actually work. There is no form for pages that have been deleted. There is a page only (as best I can tell) for pages that are under consideration for being deleted. Once they are gone, they're gone -- unless they were removed for the ill-defined uncontrovers…

The way you want Wikipedia to work is exactly the problem Wikipedia does have : people write vanity/promo articles about themselves, and then get their friends to barge in and claim "subject matter expertise" to rebut the people doing Lexis/Nexis and University library periodical searches to verify that people are non-notable. This happened all the time in my domain of expertise (information security), and it was exa…

This!

One of the things novices eternally miss about Wikipedia is that is might be their first time posting/supporting an article, but it is the eleven billionth time Wikipedia has has to deal with somebody like them.

When I got spam in in 1995? I would call spammers on the phone and politely talk them out of spamming. Now? I would happily nuke them from orbit. Most HN readers would.

One of the things on Wikipedia that wore me out is people approaching things like Jessie Stricchiola and Danny Sullivan did. I am sure they are decent people generally, and from their perspective I'm sure their self-promotion and drama spewing seems entirely reasonable. But man, when you're just a volunteer trying to help make something cool, stuff like this makes it get real old, real fast.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#134

Post by tptacek »

philwelch wrote: post #126
tptacek wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explain how so many dumb people can become so adept at navigating Wikipedia's processes in between shifts at the gas station and 17 hour Farmville jags, and I'll concede that you have a point. Mediawiki, and Wikipedia's incarnation of it in particular, is outmoded and obtuse. But it's not hard to do things on Wikipedia. If anything, it's too f'ing easy.

I don't know why you're demanding that I explain a claim I never made and don't agree with.

I'm not communicating well. I'm saying, "sure, Wikipedia's UX is clunky, but it obviously does work".

You should read downthread; other people have taken a closer look at Danny Sullivan's real experience working with Wikipedia's processes. This isn't a good case study to make a stand on. Give it a few weeks; Wikipedia will inevitably do something genuinely dumb we can get outraged about. It appears not to have here.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#135

Post by tptacek »

mustpax wrote: post #128
tptacek wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, I did miss it. But you'll notice I did not use the word deletionism once in my comment so that's kinda besides the point. The more important issue is that bureaucracy is making Wikipedia unusable for casual users (philwelch also says as much upthread). I understand you're trying to defend deletionism from the HN horde but I'm not even fighting that fight.

You're really sticking up for the wrong side in this one case. Read downthread at what really happened with Danny Sullivan's experience with Wikipedia. "Unusable for casual users" is certainly not a fair summary of what happened here --- even if you were going to start with the premise that overriding community votes was something that should be in the bailiwick of "casual users".

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#136

Post by maxerickson »

tptacek wrote: post #116
sethg wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I just don't buy it. There are some dumb, dumb, dumb people thoroughly ensconced in Wikipedia and its processes; clearly it's not that hard to figure out that to talk to an admin, you can just edit their page. I think Danny Sullivan is being disingenuous. Mediawiki is an obtuse piece of software; he knows that, and we know that, and he's using it as a fig leaf to conceal the fact that he wasn't able to push his frien…

Wikipedia presents itself as a pain in the ass. It takes very little energy to convince someone to walk away.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#137

Post by Chirael »

I can't agree with this post strongly enough. It's an amazing small insular community of bureaucracy.

I've tried to make a few minor edits and had my edits undone and squashed in a pretty unfriendly way, and encountered the same things that the author of this article did.

Bravo for calling it out and posting about it.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#138

Post by tptacek »

philwelch wrote: post #131
tptacek wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't buy it. There are some dumb, dumb, dumb people thoroughly ensconced in Wikipedia and its processes; clearly it's not that hard to figure out that to talk to an admin, you can just edit their page. I think Danny Sullivan is being disingenuous. Mediawiki is an obtuse piece of software; he knows that, and we know that, and he's using it as a fig leaf to conceal the fact that he wasn't able to push his frien…

It's not especially edifying to discuss your perceptions of Danny's hidden motives, when the intended topic of discussion is what Danny actually wrote.

What Danny Sullivan did write appears to be disingenuous: he didn't want to read a noisy web page in order to override a community vote on Wikipedia, scribbled on a page he wasn't supposed to edit, had his scribbling carefully preserved by another Wikipedian, and then started yelling.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#139

Post by [deleted] »

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.…

[deleted]

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#140

Post by zotz »

ceejayoz wrote: post #127
zotz wrote: post #102

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 pl…

> The above treatment of a dead young coder... That treatment was six people casting "delete" votes, which did not succeed. That's one hell of a small tolerance you have for disagreement. Your post is a little like saying "I won't go to New York City any more because a few people posted on Yelp that they didn't like this one restaurant I enjoyed going to."

If I got treated in NYC like I've been treated and have seen people treated on Wikipedia, I'd never go back there either.
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