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Who Writes Wikipedia?

aaronsw.com

51–56 of 56 posts

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia?

#51

As a moderator of a wiki-project, I can confirm Aaron Swartz's results. After we had gained enough popularity, most of the articles were written by outsiders and core community was there only to maintain -- categorize, wikify, create interlinks here and there, delete garbage and, last but not least, have flamewars in the discussion pages.

It's only logical- the people best suited to write articles are people who are well-versed in the subject, and the core community can't possibly contain experts on every subject.

100% agree. the core community needs to scale with the number of pages that are added every year.

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia?

#52

Out of curiosity, how many HNers write on Wikipedia? I do it every so once in awhile, but only only on a few topics I'm intimately familiar with, or to fix obvious vandalism.

I don't (anymore). About two years ago I went through about a six month period where I spent pretty much every day in a revert war with various people who definitely didn't know anything about the field/area I was trying to provide some information on. I happen to have a fair amount of expertise and experience in a certain area (Music Trackers) and at the time thought I would lend a hand to flesh out the still woeful…

What sources (published sources by observers of the industry) did you have to refer to at the time you posted the articles you created?

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia?

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't (anymore). About two years ago I went through about a six month period where I spent pretty much every day in a revert war with various people who definitely didn't know anything about the field/area I was trying to provide some information on. I happen to have a fair amount of expertise and experience in a certain area (Music Trackers) and at the time thought I would lend a hand to flesh out the still woeful…

What sources (published sources by observers of the industry) did you have to refer to at the time you posted the articles you created?

As an 30 year-old underground-ish art movement rooted deeply if not almost entirely online, the demoscene is not exactly one with much printed source material or reporting (I've managed to be interviewed on TV once though at an event in Quebec)

   http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/10-of-the-coolest-demoscene-creations-715166
but has had a relatively profound impact on the tech industry

e.g. the game industry in particular is stuffed full of demosceners

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remedy_Entertainment
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games
   http://www.spore.com/ftl
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PopCap_Games
etc.

(as well as a few others like the music biz)

   http://www.pelulamu.net/timbaland/
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunz
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Sega
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lynne
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brothomstates
nearly every soft-mp3 player supports scene music formats (.mod, .s3m, .mtm, .669, .xm, .it, etc.) or have extensions to support them

The recent resurgence in pixel art I find amusing since the demoscene has been carrying that torch for decades:

   http://gfxzone.planet-d.net/frames.html
I've been part of the scene for over 20 years myself and my sources are pretty much all primary, personal contacts, etc. Influence-wise, tons of tech industry folks got their start hacking away on 'scene projects and bring a particular style and set of associated concepts with them.

Print e-Sources though may include some of the scene-zines, a handful of books, Wired has run a few articles from time-to-time, but most of the scene exists either as web sites or chat logs to be honest.

   http://www.scene.org/
   http://www.demoscene.us/
   http://www.pouet.net/
   http://www.scenemusic.net/demovibes/
   http://datunnel.blogspot.com/
As a movement, the scene has a pretty cohesive culture, style, ethos, language, etc. One way to think of it is that it's the Liberal Arts alternative to the Open Source movement (if you consider the Open Source movement as the Hard Engineering/Science alternative to the Artsy Demoscene). It has its sub-cultures and there are various geographic differences -- dialects -- if you will to the scene. Not entirely unlike the difference between say, Korean Hip-Hop and North American Hip-Hop.

Thousands of people attend the events (called parties) which are loosely organized as competitions but are really just a chance to show off your creations to loads of like-minded folks.

   http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4143/4868635967_19ec3ddc7c_z.jpg
Like most art movements, the work ranges from amateurish to sublime

   http://www.demoscene.tv/page.php?id=172&lang=uk&vsmaction=view_prod&id_prod=13947
(keep in mind this is realtime, one of the core foundations of the demoscene is for productions to run real-time)

...is often abstract and at times quite evocative. videos of tons of productions here:

   http://www.demoscene.tv/
So when I sit there, on wikipedia, and see this page

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Tracker_musicians
I really really want to provide some content, but I know from past experience it's not worth the effort or time. Which is a shame since I believe I would have a lot to offer in fleshing out this quite vibrant art scene.

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia?

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sources (published sources by observers of the industry) did you have to refer to at the time you posted the articles you created?

As an 30 year-old underground-ish art movement rooted deeply if not almost entirely online, the demoscene is not exactly one with much printed source material or reporting (I've managed to be interviewed on TV once though at an event in Quebec) http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/10-of-the-coolest-demoscene-creations-715166 but has had a relatively profound impact on the tech industry e.g. the game industry in pa…

elblanco: Please contact me (email in profile). Fi.wikipedia (I am an Arbcom member there) would very much welcome new content related to Demoscene.

It is quite appreciated popular (not really underground here) movement in Finland. Many of our most successful game developers like Remedy (Alan Wake, Max Payne), Housemarque and Bugbear were founded by demoscene vets.

Only two months ago our National Broadcasting Agency ran a 7-part documentary series on Demoscene. It is available here with English subtitles: http://dome.fi/pelit/artikkelit/yleiset/ylen-demoscene-dokum...

The very least I could look into your reverted edits and try to salvage the useful bits :)

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia?

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how would they distribute the thing, if not through the dumps? I mean, using an scm to distribute it (I asked the freebase guys the same thing) would save time/bandwidth but it's not a conceptual improvement. Also, how would forking be useful in any way? It's not like someone can work on a feature that later gets merged into the mainline, right? Could you explain the advantages ?

Forking would be the key to eliminate the gatekeeper problem, so that for certain topics people could publish their own articles or make changes to existing ones without needing the approval of some opinionated moderator or admin. On the German Wikipedia this problem is so bad that earlier this year we had a really big discussion that even extended from the blogosphere to the major news outlets. What I mean is that W…

sorry I do not understand: who is in charge of importing the data anyway, if not the gatekeeper?

Also, i mean that the difference with forking source code is that you can work on something that will not get accepted into the mailine, but is useful to you, or your organization.

It does not seem to me that you can have a private wikipedia to which you refer people, it would be useless. Same with forks, if an officially blessed fork does not exist, you get anarchy and all of them become unreliable, cfr the rails foreign key plugins for reference: when strong active and clear leadership miss, projects fade into failure.

OTOH if you just want "easy merge" that does not seem to replace the gatekeeper, you just made him more visibile.

But if I am missing soemthing, I'd be happy to understand :)

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia?

#56
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an 30 year-old underground-ish art movement rooted deeply if not almost entirely online, the demoscene is not exactly one with much printed source material or reporting (I've managed to be interviewed on TV once though at an event in Quebec) http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/10-of-the-coolest-demoscene-creations-715166 but has had a relatively profound impact on the tech industry e.g. the game industry in pa…

elblanco: Please contact me (email in profile). Fi.wikipedia (I am an Arbcom member there) would very much welcome new content related to Demoscene. It is quite appreciated popular (not really underground here) movement in Finland. Many of our most successful game developers like Remedy (Alan Wake, Max Payne), Housemarque and Bugbear were founded by demoscene vets. Only two months ago our National Broadcasting Agency…

Appreciate it, I'll send an email off in a bit, not sure if I have the kind of time I need to be a solid contributor anymore, but I can always take a stab.

(btw, some of my biggest long distance bills ever came from calling Starport years ago to get the latest releases)

I just checked and my user pages don't even exist anymore. :(

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