The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

First off, you think you're an expert? Maybe you are, maybe not but even experts aren't always right and just because you think in your infinite expert wisdom that so and so should have a Wikipedia page, the majority of us obviously don't.

Secondly, so sorry the appeals process was so inconvenient for you. So far Wikipedia is doing just fine and your rant doesn't seem to be hurting them much. With all the garbage that people attempt to post on Wikipedia, there's a good reason for all the walls.

In the end this comes off like a know-it-all's childish hissy fit for not getting his way. The world doesn't have to accept your point of view. Your response to this whole thing probably played a large role in you not getting what you wanted.

Next time try to up think about why some of these things are in place, know that you can't jump ahead of someone else in charge just because you think you're better qualified (it's first volunteer, first served on Wikipedia) and just approach the issue with a lot more tact and less childish kicking and screaming next time.

Some people love to talk about ideals like freedom, democracy, fairness, and all that but as soon as it inconveniences them they take the position that somehow those rules are for everyone else and they're somehow special. This guy doesn't fall in with the ideals thing I was talking about but he somehow managed to convince himself that everyone should just see thing his way.

How dare a free, worldwide, not for profit, website with a 99% democratic submission and editing process not bend to your will! The audacity!

Welcome to Wikipedia on the WWW where majority rules (even if you think they're all stupid-heads). I hope Jimmy Wales sends you a personal apology. Now let's all go edit the Wikipedia pages for "Cry Baby", "Brat", and "Temper Tantrum" and cite the author as a living example.

See, from the outside, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. And there's a community there to write an encyclopedia. Sensible, no?

Actually, the community comes first and the encyclopedia is a side-effect. The community functions very politically, and very much like a game as well. The original intention might have been an encyclopedia with the minimum number of rules necessary to make that successful, but ultimately, the rules and red tape turned into the fun part of the game, and the encyclopedia-writing is just the grinding bit.

If all you wanted was a huge encyclopedia unlimited by the constraints of physical book size, you'd have a deletion policy like this: "each statement of fact has to be cited from a reliable source, every article has to be composed entirely of statements of fact, any other content should be deleted". So if there are no reliably-sourced statements of fact about a given subject, you don't get an article about them. If I started a Wikipedia article about my neighbor's cat and wrote a lot of outrageous claims, they would all be deleted and we'd be left with a blank article, which would probably be deleted as a relatively boring matter of procedure.

But what fun is that, when we can have a concept like "notability"? Ah! Suddenly, instead of all that boring shit about citing facts and removing uncited content, and just keeping whatever reliable information we have about something, we can have a massive PvE game where you get to find articles about subjects you don't care about and declare "this isn't notable!", and then you can lawyer a "consensus" of other players into agreeing with you. Or if another player disagrees, suddenly you have a massive PvP battle! Fun! Well, at least for a certain type of person who enjoys lawyering and gets off on will-to-power stuff that motivates one to try and delete articles from an encyclopedia, which is exactly the type of person that gravitates towards the project. And--believe it or not--these kinds of highly-social games, and one's success in them on Wikipedia, are a major factor in getting elected "administrator", at which point your duties now entail judging these lawyering games and actually deleting the articles!

It's both. HN is unfriendly to new users who are used to the kind of interactions that predominate elsewhere. It is in many ways a close reddit analogue, and yet even veteran redditors will find themselves downvoted to oblivion here. I certainly did, when I first signed up.

Like HN, Wikipedia requires getting used to. There is a "Wikipedia Way", which is very different from how people interact on other parts of the Internet. It can seem bureaucratic and neurotic, and it is, but it keeps things running relatively smoothly for the regulars, which is the important part. The people who take the time to learn the ropes are the ones who end up ensuring that the content is useful and informative. Yes, some people will be put off by the fact that only reliable secondary sources can be considered when determining the notability of a subject, but the restriction is there for a reason: it keeps the crap out.

None of this means that Wikipedia is not open. If you waltzed into the Linux dev channel and insisted that something be done a certain way, you'd be banned. Linux is similarly complex, and there is a "Linux Way" of doing things. Take the time to learn that way and contribute, and you'll be welcomed. Insist they're wrong and write blog posts about how wrong they are, and you'll be ignored.

> Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, written collaboratively by the people who use it.

There's the problem. Wikipedia should stop being an encyclopedia and start being Wikipedia.