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The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

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Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#301

Post by ceejayoz »

zotz wrote: post #140
ceejayoz wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The above treatment of a dead young coder... That treatment was six people casting "delete" votes, which did not succeed. That's one hell of a small tolerance you have for disagreement. Your post is a little like saying "I won't go to New York City any more because a few people posted on Yelp that they didn't like this one restaurant I enjoyed going to."

If I got treated in NYC like I've been treated and have seen people treated on Wikipedia, I'd never go back there either.

I'm pretty sure there are more than six people who'd treat you like that in NYC.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#302

Post by wpietri »

kstenerud wrote: post #299
wpietri wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Requesting a reinstatement of a deleted page in a properly designed UI should take no more than a couple of clicks and 1 minute of reading, tops. That assumes that it would be beneficial to have people who don't understand anything about what makes an article worth keeping making requests like that. It also assumes that requesting deletion review is Wikipedia's most valuable place to spend developer and designer ti…

No, it assumes that user task design should follow the tenets of good UI design. What I'm hearing you say is that usability barriers are a good thing because they stop people who don't understand the system from using the system, which is the refrain of all defenders of bad UI design. We've seen plenty of disruption in the area of software UI design in recent years that disprove such a theory.

UI design is not a religion whose tenets are to be followed for their own sakes. It's a practical art. Good UI makes easy things that should be easy, and hard that which should be hard. (E.g.: http://www.zen171398.zen.co.uk/Alien%20Page%206/Ian%20Wingro...) Your mistake is naive optimization of one part of the process.

In this case, the right system would be one that makes it very easy for deletion review to process requests. It would also make sure that only well-formed, well-thought-out deletion requests make it to the deletion reviewers. The UI of that submission process could be made easy, but it's an essentially hard problem. You're supposed to think carefully, come to grips with the careful balance that Wikipedia has struck around deletion, and then submit a reasoned argument.

It's not possible that someone will do that in 1 minute of reading. This is like a submission to an appellate court: you have to know what you're doing or there's no point.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#303

Post by xyzzyz »

schrijver wrote: post #267
xyzzyz wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference with Drupal is that there are very clearly defined rules for how to participate, clear instructions for how to do so, and new contributors are helped along in the process to get their code right, rather than being told their contribution is worthless, which is the attitude I get anytime I try to contribute something on Wikipedia. But there are also clearly defined rules for how to participate in Wikipe…

Interesting use of the words ‘us’ / ‘we’ here: ‘We can create crappy articles about not notable subjects ourselves, thank you.’ Who are the ‘we’ you speak of? It seems you speak of the group of people that is already used to writing wikipedia articles, and you are in this way enforcing a divide between them and potential contributors. Shouldn’t the ‘we’ who wrote Wikipedia be all of us? Should that not be the startin…

I used to contribute quite a lot to Wikipedia in the past (I stopped because of lack of time), and I identify with Wikipedia community, that's why I used "we".

It seems you speak of the group of people that is already used to writing wikipedia articles, and you are in this way enforcing a divide between them and potential contributors. Shouldn’t the ‘we’ who wrote Wikipedia be all of us?

Of course it should -- we are very happy to accept contribution. The only thing we ask for from contributors is to make some effort and spend hour or a half on reading Wikipedia rules, otherwise their contribution becomes a burden on us -- because people who don't care enough to read and follow the rules are not likely to stay longer, it's enough for them to create their promotional article and leave us with maintaining it.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#304

Post by gojomo »

tommorris wrote: post #281
gojomo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, the strict 'encyclopedic' standard that got Wikipedia this far, as a defense against lots of problems, is now itself a damaging constraint. I'll soon be launching a reference site called Thunkpedia which loosens the 'encyclopedic' standard, but adds other constraints in its place. There's a video about my motivations, and a sneak peek of its interface, at http://thunkpedia.org . More discussion is at the proj…

I've been looking forward to adding to the list of unsuccessful inclusionist Wikipedia forks.

A fork which only flips the 'inclusionist' bit is clearly the wrong approach.

Wikipedia is still very good, and a fork with the same 'encyclopedic' mission, software, and general format – but inclusionist – would inherit all the stresses that made Wikipedia become deletionist. It'd also still have to compete with Wikipedia for the critical mass of attention and contributors who like everything about Wikipedia except for the deletionism.

The reference-information successes have explored territory a bit further from Wikipedia, in content (Wikia, wikiHow, tvTropes) and format (StackOverflow, Quora, IMDB)... so that's what Thunkpedia is doing too. Whether it succeeds or fails, it won't fit neatly into your list of 'inclusionist Wikipedia forks'.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#305

Post by IsaacL »

From the action deletion discussion:

"The result was delete. As far as I can tell, the numbers are split about 7-6 in favour of delete. That's not normally going to lead to a consensus to delete unless there are unusual circumstances, such as one side having significantly stronger arguments than the other, so much as that can be ascertained objectively. In this case, the final three unchallenged delete !votes—DGG, ItsZippy and Metropolitan90—demonstrate such strength.

DGG and Metropolitan90 highlight a number of fundamental misconceptions behind a number of the keep !votes, such as the inaccuracy of the assertions that the subject's work was covered significantly in The Google story and that The Google story is a Pulitzer prize-winning book. DGG also demonstrates with clear evidence that the subject's own book is not as prominent as asserted, without any evidence, by some on the keep side. ItsZippy is the only editor in the debate, on either side, to comprehensively discuss the sources on offer as opposed to making generalised assertions about the sufficiency of the sourcing.

That those delete !votes have stood for between 7 and 13 days without any challenge leads me to conclude that there is a consensus to delete"

More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion....

Two thoughts: yes, the back pages of Wikipedia are tricky to navigate for non-experts, it took me a while to find that link. No, Wikipedians are not all unfriendly deletionists.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#306

Post by [deleted] »

DanBC wrote: post #241
wpietri wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. So your ideal contribution from him in regards to this is no contribution at all, right? I agree it would be great for him to have a lot of love and handholding to get to the point where he realizes that he's in the wrong. And equally that it would be great for him to get enough support that he goes on to edit other things. But honestly, I don't expect that he would ever do that. He's a legitimately busy and impo…

Enjoy working with hyperactive twinkle using 14 year olds who rapidly revert[1] as much as they can so they can rack up "edits" in the mistaken thought that it's how you get to admin. Or dysfunctional trolls with a 10:1 meta:content edit ratio who have nothing better to do than hang out on ANI. Those are pretty much the only people who'll have the time or patience to play the wikipedia game as it is now.

[deleted]

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#307

Post by wpietri »

DanBC wrote: post #241
wpietri wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. So your ideal contribution from him in regards to this is no contribution at all, right? I agree it would be great for him to have a lot of love and handholding to get to the point where he realizes that he's in the wrong. And equally that it would be great for him to get enough support that he goes on to edit other things. But honestly, I don't expect that he would ever do that. He's a legitimately busy and impo…

Enjoy working with hyperactive twinkle using 14 year olds who rapidly revert[1] as much as they can so they can rack up "edits" in the mistaken thought that it's how you get to admin. Or dysfunctional trolls with a 10:1 meta:content edit ratio who have nothing better to do than hang out on ANI. Those are pretty much the only people who'll have the time or patience to play the wikipedia game as it is now.

Valid points, but entirely unrelated to the UI of deletion review, or the best possible contribution from Sullivan as part of this topic.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#308

Post by wpietri »

caf wrote: post #56
javert wrote: post #5

First of all, the author is wrong. Someone saying "Hey, I know that person, they're an expert on X," does not mean they belong in an encyclopedia. Furthermore, a sizeable group of people already had a discussion on whether the person meets Wikipedia's standards and decided that they do not. Now, the author feels entitled to barge in without learning anything about how Wikipedia actually works, and complain that it's…

The author is saying, among other things, that the editors who decided that the person was not notable did not have the domain-specific knowledge needed to enable them to do the research to make that determination.

The author is wrong. If he were right, the point would be irrelevant.

One of the users who ended up recommending deletion, DGG, is a professional librarian who makes a habit of rescuing biographies from the rubbish bin. The domain here isn't search engine marketing: it's biographies. Plenty of Wikipedians understand that domain, and understand especially well Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion about biographies.

But his point is irrelevant because Wikipedia can't require topic expertise for participation. They have no way of verifying it, and to try ends up with a totally different beast. (For people who have tried the domain-expertise approach, check out Citizendium.) Wikipedia has to be maintainable by non-experts, because that's 99% of the people who want to volunteer significant time to make a free encyclopedia.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#309

Post by zotz »

slyall wrote: post #149
zotz wrote: post #102

Someone at Wikipedia recently requested speedy deletion for the article on Ilya Zhitomirskiy, two days AFTER he died. The vote was to keep: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion... I was an early user and editor of Wikipedia. I greatly dislike cliquishness and clannishness so I didn't last. The above treatment of a dead young coder only solidifies my decision to cease my association with the pl…

The article wasn't created until after he had died as is made clear by the discussion and the edit history. People create articles all the time about their recently deceased grandfather who was an ordinary soldier in WW2. These usually get deleted unless the person was otherwise noteable. If I request that such a "grandfather" article is deleted it is not cause I hate your grandfather or want to hurt you. It is just…

Wisely, the vote was to keep.

Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia

#310

Post by wpietri »

philwelch wrote: post #43
javert wrote: post #5

First of all, the author is wrong. Someone saying "Hey, I know that person, they're an expert on X," does not mean they belong in an encyclopedia. Furthermore, a sizeable group of people already had a discussion on whether the person meets Wikipedia's standards and decided that they do not. Now, the author feels entitled to barge in without learning anything about how Wikipedia actually works, and complain that it's…

You are more right than you know; the purpose of Wikipedia is to provide an arena for exclusionary status games among core contributors, and so allowing outsiders to do anything without learning how to follow tons of red tape (and dozens of assorted acronyms) is indeed a failure. Providing the sum of all human knowledge, for free, to the entire world, however, might be better served by making Wikipedia's software and…

Sigh.

The purpose of Wikipedia is to make an encyclopedia.

The mechanism by which that happens can, yes, be seen as a giant MMORPG. That is what happens when you try to make a machine out of half-evolved monkeys. Monkeys like to do monkey things.

Wikipedia is indeed putting a lot of effort into making the software and editing process more accessible and usable to others. Smart and dedicated people have devoted years to that very thing. It's not an easy problem, and Wikipedia is doing it on a shoestring.

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