I would like to see wikipedia move it's database to a decentralized model, something similar to a blockchain ledger.
I would definitely consider contributing and donating to an effort that opened up it's content and moderation further.
Wikipedia is 20
221–230 of 391 posts
Re: Wikipedia is 20
#222Do anybody has any hypothesis on why there hasn't been any successful Wikipedia copycat? I know Google attempted their variant called Knol( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knol ).
Because a clone would have to be significantly better to convince the community and users to switch.
There simply was none. And it is a huge amount of work to try and as far as I know, mainly those people try this in seriousnes (and some success), who are not happy with wikipedia because they don't like alternative facts. So I think I have seen alt-right and esoteric wikipedia clones somewhere, but for some reason they have not wide success.
Re: Wikipedia is 20
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Wikipedia is incredible. It's good for surface level stuff. The apolitical superficial knowledge is where wikipedia excels. > I find it frustrating when friends say it's unreliable/not to be trusted. In terms of depth and breadth of knowledge of topics, it is sorely lacking. And it is highly untrustworthy when it comes to anything remotely political/historical/economic/etc - which are ultimately all political. > Of…
It’s an encyclopedia. For facts, it can by definition only touch the surface. For subjective debates and subjects (like politics) it can by definition only give a high level overview of the different points of view. Saying it’s “extremely flawed” is like saying Superman is weak because he’s vulnerable to Kryptonite.
You would be right, if Wikipedia would not cover the opinions/subjective topics as well. Nowadays it is often used as a column for some higher-up contributors/journalists.
It is still valuable for the scientific topics and I would not call that superficial at all, but you need to be very critical of anything that goes further than that. And actually even for the scientific topics you need to be aware if PR is involved with the article, because then you have to take anything with a grain of salt as well.
Re: Wikipedia is 20
#224I am surprised that the comments haven't mentioned the role of SEO in Wikipedia's growth and defensibility. Wikipedia's habit of deep interlinking helped it rank back in the early aughts when the SEO rules were rather simple. Add to that the subdomain-driven localization strategy and many other moves that were considered SEO best practices back in those years when the on-page factors used to matter. But that was just…
For those who don’t closely follow SEO, can you explain what Panda is/was?
I know nothing about SEO either, but a quick search gives: https://moz.com/learn/seo/google-panda
Re: Wikipedia is 20
#225In grad school back in like 2007 I took a 2-credit class called "The History of Nuclear Enterprise" taught by one of those long white-haired Doc Brown type professors. The final project was for each of us to make Wikipedia pages describing some important topic that wasn't covered yet. I made one on the university's nuclear reactor which had just been shut down. I dug through many linear feet of archived info, scannin…
I have never been able to find a wikipedia topic I could contribute to. The problem is the topics which don't have pages on wikipedia also don't tend to have a lot of referencable information on the internet.
Re: Wikipedia is 20
#226I just opened up google maps and zoomed in on a random town: Mt. Pleasant Iowa. If I search it on google, on the top of the page is a snippet from Wikipedia. The top result is a link to Wikipedia. The second is the actual town website. This is what I find fascinating about the project. We’re more interested in reading a secondary source compiled by random people, than the actual primary source! I think it says a lot…
I took a look at those two pages and they are not equivalent. Wikipedia lists out a bunch of facts, demographics, and important details on the area. The towns own site is not to focused on collecting facts but more on directing people in the area to info they would need like where to pay a parking ticket or what events are on. I couldn't even find most of the info on the wikipedia page on the towns own site.
Re: Wikipedia is 20
#227I am surprised that the comments haven't mentioned the role of SEO in Wikipedia's growth and defensibility. Wikipedia's habit of deep interlinking helped it rank back in the early aughts when the SEO rules were rather simple. Add to that the subdomain-driven localization strategy and many other moves that were considered SEO best practices back in those years when the on-page factors used to matter. But that was just…
That's one version. Another version, that I know will go over very well here, is that some have invested a lot of money to bring high quality, accessibly-written off-line content by experts in the field to the Web, only for Wikipedia editors to poorly rewrite it in thousands of articles and rank over the original content in Google. And then Wikipedia started using non-follow links so the original sites got no benefit…
I find it often has the opposite problem. High quality, accessibly-written off-line content by experts in the field is synthesised on Wikipedia by someone with good understanding of the subject, but then other editors delete large swathes of it for not citing every line and replace it with considerably more dubious explanations of the subject sourced to news articles and partisan think tanks which put all their content online.
Re: Wikipedia is 20
#228Its reputation is severely declining, especially on topics relating to current events, figures, or politics. It, however, remains excellent for technical knowledge.
Wikipedia is not a place to catch up on the latest news or scandals as this stuff is usually hotly debated and often the truth isn't known for some time anyway. They usually do have pretty good summaries of the issues years after they have happened and all investigations / biases have finished.
I use wikipedia several times daily and find the information to be super useful and seemingly accurate. I find the wikipedia information on chemicals and plants to be super useful.
Re: Wikipedia is 20
#229Do anybody has any hypothesis on why there hasn't been any successful Wikipedia copycat? I know Google attempted their variant called Knol( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knol ).
Usually when you build a clone, you base it on fixing the problems of the original? What problems in wikipedia could a clone possibly fix since the main issues with wikipedia is getting people to agree on what should be included and I don't see how that could be solved.
Re: Wikipedia is 20
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry if it’s obvious, but why don’t people think Wikipedia should work in theory? Isn’t it just tapping into the need to tell people things you know and feel good about how smart you are? Or is the concern not around how content is submitted but more around how disputes are resolved?
I would have expected it to be destroyed by vandals, marketeers and trolls, and that nutcases and people with alternative facts would have crowded out actually knowledgeable people. For every person with a deep insight in a subject, there are fifty people who think they have a deep insight, and it is hard to tell the difference from the outside. My concern was not that nobody would contribute, but that the wrong peop…
Wikipedia has a bunch of power user tools that are not very clear to the average user. Power users also have the ability to lock hot topic pages so only other power users can touch them.