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Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

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Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#231
It's easy to find thousands of 'stub' to 'start'-class articles that obviously need lots more content and/or citations. They may be less 'important' or trendy, and hopefullly less 'opinionated', and unlikely to be on 'watch list's.

There you'll run into less-to-no helicopter parents, and stand a much-better chance of creating most of a great article before they show up. Load up on good citation prospects for solid content.

Over to the left on any page you can see how many visits/day it's been getting - that can help you stay away from them.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#232
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an editor [...] stated he could only allow changes to the "facts" if my SO could point to an online source (a credible one he said). That's plainly false, how many Wikipedia articles have (annoying, I'll admit) offline references to books, papers, and other things that are only available under specific terms and conditions, typically after some payment? You don't have to own anything's copyright to reference it. (I…

> That's plainly false, Thanks for denying experience. You could have said: "That should not be the case." But yet he kept denying changes. > offline references to books, papers, and other things that are only available under specific terms and conditions, typically after some payment I was talking about birth certificates, official but personal documents, things like birthday greetings personally signed by Erich Hon…

> Nothing of that is anyhow publicly available.

Therein the problem.

Your situation sucks, and I'm genuinely sorry about it.

But I'm not sure I can think of a way to change that policy that would be a net win overall.

If anything I feel like you're more collateral damage of copyright law than wikipedia policy here, but I understand that even assuming I'm right about that, that doesn't make the specifics sucks any less.

Bah.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#233

I think overall the wikipedia model has shown itself to be decently working. But (anecdata) I have my gripes with the way it handles evidence. My SO has a person (died already) in her family with a (relatively) short wikipedia entry. There are factual errors in the article. We know that, because we have original documents showing that the "facts" reportet in the entry are wrong. Due to the fact that the documents can…

You think the facts on the page should change because "trust me bro"? Come on. I don't know you from Adam.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#234
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Reparented from another content thread) Agreed. Wikipedia's strength is its long tail of niche articles. However, once one gets off "popular" articles, the quality bounds rapidly spread. But that seems inherent to having an article for which there are only 1-2 editors, as opposed to 10+ frequently reviewing. So better UX is probably the best "solution." I.e. pulling editor count, frequency, and reputation into the r…

Yeah, the smaller articles are usually written by a single person who has spent an inordinate amount of time in the domain of the article and the article is good. I started this article recently and was very impressed by how everyone came together to reach a consensus on a very niche topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qeqertaq_Avannarleq But then the other day I noticed that a page about a certain very popular K-Po…

The reason that someone said the band's Instagram page isn't a valid source for information about the band is because of the rules about self-published sources. The rules were patched at some point with a narrow exception, to allow sources for things like a band listing their own releases (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:ABOUTSE... ) but it's easy for rules lawyers to insist that that patch doesn't apply. And people with OCD really don't like narrow exceptions.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a few too many passive aggressive questions to be asking with a sockpuppet account. If you could rewrite it to be less leading and resentful, I think the GP would be more willing to engage.

I'm not really sure how I am supposed to retroactively go back in time and register earlier. Since you are handing out free advice, is it normally considered polite or helpful here to accuse people of using fake accounts? Is assuming that a person speaking with confidence about a topic may have some direct knowledge of that topic somehow rude or against the rules? If you're speaking confidently on behalf of the perso…

Different registers of english are an interesting conversational issue.

Your phrasing read to me as being close to passive aggressive, but had I been the author of the top level post you were replying to I would have assumed good faith too.

My most common failure mode in HN comments is coming across as more combative than I intended because I tend towards blunt in my communication style. If you look at my comments, you'll note quite a few have a disclaimer in a parenthetical at the end to try and avoid that happening.

Whether or not adopting a similar approach would be remotely useful to you, I genuinely have no idea.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#236
Skimming the revision history of any non-recent nontechnical page shows you that the editing process, rather than revealing a steady dialectical progress, is just a constant back-and-forth churn of competing systems of thought. The winner is the one who can sacrifice the most time for vigilance and simulating an appearance of reasonableness. Of course moderation mitigates this state of affairs somewhat, but by the nature of Wikipedia, the ideal of impartiality, moderation cannot mediate truth; it can only raise the cost of contribution. As a result Wikipedia's model resembles proof-of-work, ceding governance to the fiercest advocates and wasting lots of energy.

I believe we'd be better off with real intellectual diversity. Replace the melting-pot model with a federation, a la mastodon, where any topic can be represented by multiple articles from different wikis that have different specialties. The indexing needs to be federated as well, as different groups will want to in-/exclude different alternatives. But just relieving the single pressure point that Wikipedia represents should offer huge benefits to the ecosystem.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#237
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now more than ever, Wikipedia must be publicly verifiable. That means that any claim can be checked by anyone with an Internet connection and a library card. Imagine if contested articles contained controversial facts on the basis of secret evidence? The editor made the right call.

But if the editors receive proof that a statement article is wrong, but that information can't be published on the Internet for copyright or other reasons, that means it is proven that the source of the information is wrong, so that source should be removed as unreliable at least in this case. If the rules of Wikipedia don't allow unsourced information, they don't prevent removing incorrect information that has been…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability#Access... specifically allows the use of sources that are hard to access. The rule here wasn't that it couldn't be used because it was hard to access, but that it couldn't be used because it wasn't published at all.

Furthermore, any sane editor would allow use of this information under Ignore All Rules (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ignore_all_rules ), which is specifically there because sometimes the rules don't produce good results.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#238
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I personally haven't seen a biased Wikipedia article in a very long time. What leads you to believe you can so easily spot a biased article? Everyone believes they're a neutral arbiter.

"Biased" to me doesn't mean "I disagree". It means: - presented as a fact, rather than as the opinion of a scholar/researcher/etc. (meaning Wikipedia says it is true without citing anyone else) - ignoring a significant controversy or dissent - describing uncertain information as certain - perpetuating the myth that science is settled and can't be updated with new information

Pages with culture war elements will inevitably be impacted by the culture war positions of the active editors in the area in question affecting how strictly a given source is judged for quality.

I'm deliberately avoiding giving examples because it seems logical to assume that I'd merely reflect my own culture war positions with respect to any such example and thereby generate more heat than light.

Overall though I still think wikipedia turns out pretty reasonably as a whole even given having seen a number of situations where I disagreed with the outcome.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#239
post #227
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't read it all but wasn't hard to find "mistakes" in that wiki article For example: "Several countries which are historically neutral, such as Switzerland and Singapore have agreed to sanctions." Clearly a misrepresentation of Swiss neutrality. The news outlets all over the world posted this and various similar claims over the last week and wiki picks it up. Some news articles even straight out tell you that Sw…

Are you disputing that Switzerland is historically neutral?

No absolutely not. But the Swiss neutrality is a broad concept/principle not a strictly defined set of actions that the gov can or can not do.

The sanction against Russia for example are not in conflict with the neutrality principle despite the media reporting pretending that this is somehow "unexpected" or "a first" or "clearly picking a side" or even "ditching neutrality because Russia so bad". This is either the media sacrificing truth for click bait headlines or straight out propaganda but its in "Wikipedia trusted" media so Wikipedia picks that up because that what it should do.

So now you have people thinking Switzerland somehow after 200 year of being neutral sides with EU/NATO whatever against Russia. And if people point out that this is not true, people point to Wikipedia. That is the dilemma. Wikipedia doesn't say its a source for truth but people use it as such anyway.

Re: Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good example of an amazingly bad article with the worst type of wiki lawyering on the talk page. It basically still has the same conclusion in the lead as when it was originally created, and most of the claims/leaks against Hunter were considered "false"/dinsinfo... But now that those laptop leaks were either confirmed by different reputable sources, it more or less indirectly calls most of the claims true…

The only thing this sort of obvious political bias does is discredit Wikipedia and push readers to less reputable sites for information. Like many others on here, I prefer to go directly to multiple biased sources like npr, CNN, breitbart, nypost because I understand their bias and can sort through it to tease out information. The thing that I find the most distasteful is any source that purports to be unbiased, but…

What bias do you think CNN has? Genuinely curious which part of the spectrum you think they belong to, because I could make arguments for either side.

Breitbart is an editorial/propaganda magazine, not a news source. Why would you go there for anything?

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