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The Decline of Wikipedia: As More People Rely on It, Fewer People Create It

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Re: The Decline of Wikipedia: As More People Rely on It, Fewer People Create It

#131

Post by Nursie »

muaddirac wrote: post #26

An ex of mine edited a wiki article and added false information to it. I think that sort of thing is very harmful, so I removed it. A day later the edit was reverted. I tried a few months later. It, too, was reverted. I had someone else try. It was reverted. I tried once more, probably two years later (after the "fact" had time to propagate throughout the internet), and it too was reverted. The reason it was reverted…

LOL. A friend of mine is a (multiply) published author b7t trying to get anything about his real, actual books on there is almost impossible!

Re: The Decline of Wikipedia: As More People Rely on It, Fewer People Create It

#132

Post by lttlrck »

e12e wrote: post #111
sytelus wrote: post #104

I've burned enough midnight oil trying to add content in Wikipedia just to discover it frequently gets deleted next day. The worst part is that even if it doesn't, it always feels like that it's a question of when rather than if it would get deleted. And I'm not talking about silly content. For instance I tried to add content on properties of different grades of gortex material and someone deemed it not useful on the…

I'm not a "wikipedian" -- but I do think the focus on sibling-projects, allowing wikipedia to be an encyclopaedia, is good. Contribute to wikibooks if you want to write text books (on math or some other subject) -- I don't think it makes sense for wikipedia to host all content everyone ever wants to create. That's what the Internet is for. It shouldn't be the goal of wikipedia to be the wiki to end all wikis. More wi…

I've often wondered this. There are many article categories that I'm unsure belong in an encyclopedia.

- Telecoms and networking protocols articles that I feel go into far to much detail, they are like abstracts of the RFCs...

- The same goes for programming languages.

- Do ( e.g. web server) comparison tables belong in an encyclopedia?

I guess it's a hard line to draw though.

Re: The Decline of Wikipedia: As More People Rely on It, Fewer People Create It

#133

Post by chris_wot »

ddebernardy wrote: post #124
nullc wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you'd have him say. McDonalds is surely turning aways scads of customers by not providing their food for free. Certainly there are many things Wikipedia could do to be more welcoming. But not permitting editing by others and/or paying people to edit are not within the Wikipedia model any more than McDonalds giving away all their food would be. There is nothing wrong with being polite but firm about…

In my view, a large part of the problem is that many of the rules or the way they're enforced borders on the idiotic. Take [citation needed] as a case in point. It's aggressively and mindlessly waved all over the place, irrespective of pre-existing content in wikipedia itself and obvious factual information. Say you contribute one or two sentence summary of related pages -- complete with links. Or worse, a sentence o…

It's sad that its misused like that. When I created it, I just wanted the project to be more reliable, via sourcing. It was never meant as a weapon of war!

Re: The Decline of Wikipedia: As More People Rely on It, Fewer People Create It

#134

Post by hyperpape »

gnaritas wrote: post #87
owenmarshall wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's what is meant by "go looking for the citation." I read it more as "by being an expert in this subject I know this is true; by being an expert in this subject I also probably don't have time to find the journal that has the article in question, cite it per Wikipedia's rules, and put it in the article." Frankly that sounds like a great task for editors that aren't subject experts. Maybe the expert…

> by being an expert in this subject I know this is true Anyone can make that claim; if not forced to cite sources, many will who aren't.

Sure, and if the claim is actually controversial (someone says "I don't think that's true) we need higher standards. But I see stuff reverted without anyone willing to say "that sounds wrong".

Re: The Decline of Wikipedia: As More People Rely on It, Fewer People Create It

#135

Post by Aldo_MX »

nitrogen wrote: post #120
aaronem wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you care, or for others who haven't yet approached Stack Exchange sites [1] in the wrong way and found themselves put off as a result, the way to start building reputation is by answering questions , not just accurately but as extensively and generally as you can manage, with bonus points for considering edge and corner cases. Play to your strengths in terms of domain knowledge, especially in relatively obscure do…

But what if you don't care about building reputation, and you just want to comment on something that desperately needs a comment (50 points required)?

My point exactly, or if I find a useful answer in a completely obscure question and I want to upvote the person that answered it because she got too few votes (xx points required).

Like I said, I got frustrated because I couldn't do anything useful, and I would rather stay away than be hunted down by a SE Inquisitor.

Re: The Decline of Wikipedia: As More People Rely on It, Fewer People Create It

#136

Post by fluxon »

nitrogen wrote: post #122
bane wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's said that the best way to be a primary source for wikipedia is to write a webpage that posits the change you want to make to a WP article, then cite that page when you make the change.

I thought Wikipedia wanted secondary sources (i.e. newspapers, journals, textbooks, biographies) that have reported on primary sources (individual papers, original research). I also thought it was frowned upon to cite your own research. Have these positions changed?

You are correct. WP still does want secondary sources, exactly as you state: http://enwp.org/WP:V and WP:IRS Independent reliable sources, and does not want WP:OR. IMHO it's ok to discuss one's own work on an article Talk page, in the light of a future improvement to the article, as in, "I've just finished this, it's in peer review now, it's slated for publication on (future date), and it's relevant to update/correct (section). I'll come back and notify y'all if it receives commentary by others elsewhere."

Re: The Decline of Wikipedia: As More People Rely on It, Fewer People Create It

#137

Post by fluxon »

thenomad wrote: post #118
bane wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's said that the best way to be a primary source for wikipedia is to write a webpage that posits the change you want to make to a WP article, then cite that page when you make the change.

Interesting. As a world expert on some topics (Machinima filmmaking) for which the primary source of some relevant information resides largely in my head, I was wondering if this was the best way to approach Wikipedia edits. Thanks for the info: I may actually make some contributions soon!

If what you know has been published in a way which meets enwp.org/WP:Reliable_sources then it can be used in articles. Unpublished material can't be used, because it can't be independently verified by anyone - see enwp.org/WP:V Self-published material might be usable under certain circumstances, if you're already an established expert in your field (per independent reviews, or citations by others) - see enwp.org/WP:SPS

Re: The Decline of Wikipedia: As More People Rely on It, Fewer People Create It

#138

Post by gnaritas »

hyperpape wrote: post #134
gnaritas wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by being an expert in this subject I know this is true Anyone can make that claim; if not forced to cite sources, many will who aren't.

Sure, and if the claim is actually controversial (someone says "I don't think that's true) we need higher standards. But I see stuff reverted without anyone willing to say "that sounds wrong".

I think it should be, no sources, no argument required to cut it. What can be asserted without evidence can be removed with discussion.

Re: The Decline of Wikipedia: As More People Rely on It, Fewer People Create It

#139

Post by vlasev »

jamesbritt wrote: post #62
vlasev wrote: post #34

Look at the Wikipedia article on the Russian Armed Forces[1]. Look at the budget of 907 billion dollars (44% GDP) for 2013. That's ridiculous isn't it? I tried changing it to the proper 90.7 billion (4.4% of GDP) but it reverted back. I tried again and same thing happened. I rest my case. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Armed_Forces

I think you won. I see 90.7.

A small but important victory

Re: The Decline of Wikipedia: As More People Rely on It, Fewer People Create It

#140

Post by aaronem »

nitrogen wrote: post #121
aaronem wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to hear you had that trouble on Stack Overflow -- I assume it was SO, anyway; most of the Emacs questions tend to live there. I doubt you care at this point, but for others who might, it's generally a better alternative for a new user to comment with the correction, than to try to edit; comments are globally visible no matter who makes them, and a comment pointing out an error like that one is very likely to re…

Comments are only available at 50 reputation points (or some number requiring a large number of previous reputation building actions), which a new user wouldn't have.

Are they? It's been long enough since I started that I'd forgotten. Still, 50 points is 5 upvotes, which is not difficult to attain quite quickly -- I earned >400 rep in my first two days with an account on Super User, and while that's not typical and took some effort on my part to achieve, a mere 50 points shouldn't be all that hard to manage by comparison.
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