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Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

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Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#161

Post by bawolff »

jibal wrote: post #125
Barrin92 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's an indication that notoriety in Discord servers isn't a basis for relevance in an encyclopedia. Which is a good choice. A streamer mentioned a language? Wikipedia isn't Twitter. As a reader thank god not everything that has grabbed the attention of social media gets an article.

I'm talking about a universe of developing systems programming languages, not "the attention of social media" -- that's a silly shallow bad faith reduction. And I see that elsewhere you have written "a archive for whatever trends on social media, which seems to be the articles criterion for the relevance of Odin" -- it doesn't seem that way to anyone who is remotely intellectually honest ... clearly it is ideology ab…

> I'm talking about a universe of developing systems programming languages

Are you though? Like this seems like hobby project that hasn't really generated much discussion or interest in the broader programming language community, and practically speaking doesn't seem to have seen much use as a systems programming language (a single vfx package isn't really that impressive).

People seem to get offended by the notion that this language is obscure and hasn't generated much interest, and yet they don't seem to offer any counter examples.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#162

Post by countWSS »

smitty1e wrote: post #7

Well, there's always https://grokipedia.com/page/Odin_programming_language

Don't know why you get downvoted, but this is how AI-based projects win over time: they don't randomly decide to delete valuable data. Grokipedia might be trash in terms of its quality, but at least it it doesn't have omnipresent moral busybodies loitering in to "purify" it from knowledge.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#163

Post by LoveMortuus »

armchairhacker wrote: post #141

Get together and fork (or make your own) Wikipedia. Seriously. Wikipedia seems very good at providing detailed, accurate, concise facts of well-known, non-controversial topics. It’s by far the best in this area. Unfortunately (perhaps as a sacrifice for this competence) it sets a high and inconsistent bar for “well-known” and has a specific bias in controversial topics*. On the other end of the spectrum, search engin…

I guess Elon Musk is doing something like that: https://grokipedia.com/page/Odin_programming_language

At least there, the Odin article still lives on.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#164

Post by skotobaza »

Barrin92 wrote: post #158
skotobaza wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't you want to have an article about a programming language that is currently used in production by someone? Are there any downsides to this?

what I want doesn't matter for an encyclopedia. Encyclopedias rely on secondary and not primary sources because they must be authoritative. The CEO of Kelloggs doesn't get to write the wikipedia article for kelloggs even if millions of people eat his cornflakes. If a programming language is widely used in production then sourcing an article with secondary sources ought to be trivial. But the appropriate content for p…

But the goal of an encyclopedia is to inform people on things that it covers, isn't it? It's quite broad with Wikipedia but still... The language clearly exists, it's not a student project, it's is use, people are interested in it. So the page was created, but is now removed because of formalities (the lack of good enough sources).

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#165

Post by amval »

What a fantastic article. I could not care less about the actual topic, but in these times of literacy scarcity, it is refreshing to see someone actually being able to read through sub-text and present their views in a well-reasoned manner.

Unsurprisingly, this seems to make quite some people angry.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#166

Post by akritid »

traes wrote: post #139
chris_wot wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not more obscure than Brainfuck.

What? Brainfuck is the single least obscure esoteric programming language. It's the most famous example of a simple Turing complete language and its provocative name gets it a fair amount of media coverage outside its niche.

And it’s also a reinvention of Corrado Bohm’s P’’ which is even more seminal

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#167

Post by mindcrime »

stock_toaster wrote: post #100
mindcrime wrote: post #86

Wikipedia seems stuck in an antiquated worldview where things like traditionally-published books with second- or third-hand reports of what happened, and which are frequently incomplete or wholly inaccurate, are nonetheless considered more authoritative than primary sources you can find with a ten-second Google search. So much this. Wikipedia's processes and policies are - in ways - an outdated and archaic relic of a…

> And the really insidious thing about this, is the fundamental asymmetry of effort between creation and deletion. Creating a Wikipedia article can take hours, days, or longer, of effort. Tagging an article as AfD takes a few seconds. The actual deletion (once whatever discussion happens) probably takes even less time. Not really relevant in this case (that the article talks about), but I don't think that it is so cu…

Not really relevant in this case (that the article talks about), but I don't think that it is so cut and dry as "someone spent time on this so we have to keep it".

No, and I'm not arguing for that. Just pointing out that that insidious nature makes contributing to Wikipedia a questionable activity for (a few|some|many|???) people.

To be clear, I'm not arguing for having NO standards at all for what's included, but I think there's room to rethink the nature of some of those standards.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#168

Post by leecommamichael »

amval wrote: post #165

What a fantastic article. I could not care less about the actual topic, but in these times of literacy scarcity, it is refreshing to see someone actually being able to read through sub-text and present their views in a well-reasoned manner. Unsurprisingly, this seems to make quite some people angry.

I think part of being well-reasoned is being honest, and they're certainly being honest. I don't agree with their means, though. Bill is a complex person, and you don't have to stalk him to learn about him. He interacts with newbies plenty in the Discord server. I find him to be pretty nice in those interactions.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#169

Post by Paracompact »

questiona wrote: post #119
Morromist wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's amazing that anybody creates Wikpedia articles at all" Yeh. This is why I stopped editing wikipedia very often. They are maniacal about deleting things that I consider noteworthy but others don't. I still love wikipedia and think its the best website on the internet, but this is probably its biggest flaw.

[flagged]

Wretch, huh. I don't think we want you here.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#170

Post by mindcrime »

Barrin92 wrote: post #126
mindcrime wrote: post #86

Wikipedia seems stuck in an antiquated worldview where things like traditionally-published books with second- or third-hand reports of what happened, and which are frequently incomplete or wholly inaccurate, are nonetheless considered more authoritative than primary sources you can find with a ten-second Google search. So much this. Wikipedia's processes and policies are - in ways - an outdated and archaic relic of a…

>an outdated and archaic relic of a bygone time this isn't a meaningful criticism. An encyclopedia is a reference for established and public knowledge. It's by definition archaic, not an archive for whatever trends on social media, which seems to be the article's criterion for the relevance of Odin. An encyclopedia shouldn't prioritize article creation, it should be restrictive about what it adds and make sure the co…

See, to me, you're just leaning into the outdated and archaic aspect of this. Sure, that's the way encyclopedia's have been for a long time. But none of that means that they need to continue to work the same way. Technologies change, times change, standards change.

And that said... this whole issue may become moot anyway. Perhaps LLM powered AI systems (or whatever comes after them) will take the place of Wikipedia for certain classes of queries, that one might want to conduct. Eg, if a person wants to know about Odin and ChatGPT or Gemini can tell them all about Odin, maybe it's less important that Odin have a dedicated Wikipedia page (note: just an example, I'm not trying to make any particular commentary on Odin per-se).

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