Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People • Hacker News Board

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#61

Post by commoner » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 10:46 AM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #26

flexie wrote: post #11

People come to Wikipedia to get an answer. Many users of Wikipedia are kids, or non-native English speakers for whom contributing is a challenge. Or laymen that don't know about the subject and naturally don't feel like they could contribute anything. Or people who simply don't know how to contribute. Or people visiting via mobiles where it's really difficult to research and contribute. If you adjust for all those us…

Deletionism is the thing that will kill Wikipedia, by deleting itself and gradually narrowing the circle of permitted contributors. There are some situations where the non-English Wikipedias have far more information than the English ones though, because of how "notability" works.

The number of Wikipedia articles is steadily increasing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia

Deleting articles doesn't prevent anyone from participating, since anyone can write/edit articles on any notable subject. The deletion process protects Wikipedia from search engine marketers who try to promote their clients with biased low-quality content. They can go to Quora for that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Reas...

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#62

Post by DanBC » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 10:47 AM UTC

keithwhor wrote: post #4

Yes. Most of the content you watch on TV was written and acted by outliers. The products you use and consume were crafted, marketed and even distributed by outliers. First, when zoomed out, outliers in all possible tasks become more common — internet commenting is just a subset for silly folks like me. Secondly, the emergent human social fabric is built to recognize and amplify outspoken and / or talented outliers, v…

It's a problem for Wikipedia which says a central principle is that it's the enclyclopedia anyone can edit.

That's clearly not true with Wikipedia's hostile to new users policies (even with the existance of "don't bite the newbies").

Even creating a username means you have to navigate the username policy, and the two admin boards (one RFC, one noticeboard) for usernames. There are two templates for usernames (and templating new users is pretty hostile). And until very recently the noticeboard had two different sections, a holding pen and the main board. (They've got rid of the holding pen).

Username creation is less hostile right now that it was a few years ago, but that can change at any moment if someone choses to trawl the new username lists.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#63

Post by giornogiovanna » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 10:52 AM UTC

pcnix wrote: post #24

avenius wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdata, but I'm a typical lurker. If I don't have something to contribute to a discussion, I stay silent. I think that goes for a lot of people. There's also the commitment angle - if you engage in a discussion, you're typically committed to follow up on the responses you get. That can be more of a time/attention commitment than people are interested in, and with the growing toxicity of online discourse a lot of pe…

There's also your attention surface. I typically read threads/posts from a variety of communities, but might prefer to reply only on some, and lurk on the others. I'm sure this is true for a lot of people, from anecdotes I've heard.

Yes, there are few subjects in which I am proficient enough to contribute.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#64

Post by gurpreet- » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 10:53 AM UTC

I suppose a related question is if every single person were to comment, would that be beneficial in any way?

I personally think we'd get a lot of duplicate comments stating the same thing which would reduce the overall quality of the topic at hand. An example that proves this is Ebay's user reviews. You have a lot of people participating in reviews because it's a review system that works both ways, so it's in the both user's best interest to review and rate. But most reviews are duplicates.

YouTube's comment system, which has a younger audience mainly, is rife with spam, trolling and comments that add nothing to the discussion. Is this what we want everywhere? Are those people outliers too? Or people with more spare time than people who purely browse?

I wouldn't use the term "outliers" then to describe these people. I would simply call them "people with initiative"... And in some cases "people with initiative who also want to help".

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#65

Post by Kaveren » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 10:54 AM UTC

aryamaan wrote: post #48

Kaveren wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if you're willing to make a 3rd comment, but I'm trying to understand the lurker mindset from the perspective of someone who posts quite actively. Is is just that you don't care enough to reply, feel like your opinions are unpopular, don't feel like you have anything to say, or something else?

Similarly, I would like to know your mindset like what incentives or motivations do you see? Do you also feel that if you don't post a comment, the discussion won't go in that direction? As a lurker for me most of the times I feel like I am on window shopping of ideas. Not looking anything in particular.

A fair percentage of my comments are downvoted, so it's not about opinion validation. I'm opinionated on a number of topics, and voice those opinions.

Sometimes I have a question to pose, or I disagree with the premise of the submission (sometimes I'm one of the few people to do so).

I'm a singular, non-influential person. I don't believe I'm exactly changing hearts and minds writing HN comments. I do like the discourse I get, though.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#66

Post by FooHentai » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 10:55 AM UTC

gurpreet- wrote: post #64

I suppose a related question is if every single person were to comment, would that be beneficial in any way? I personally think we'd get a lot of duplicate comments stating the same thing which would reduce the overall quality of the topic at hand. An example that proves this is Ebay's user reviews. You have a lot of people participating in reviews because it's a review system that works both ways, so it's in the bot…

>question is if every single person were to comment, would that be beneficial in any way?

you would end up crowded out with middle-of-the-road comments. Which is really interesting, because nobody would really enjoy that I think, yet it would be entirely representative of the viewer base.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#67

Post by austincheney » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 11:04 AM UTC

Reddit is an echo chamber. Almost nobody contributes to the conversation, but they sure are quick to exercise insecurity for very minor things. I deleted my account there last year and life has improved as a result.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#68

Post by commoner » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 11:07 AM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #62

keithwhor wrote: post #4

Yes. Most of the content you watch on TV was written and acted by outliers. The products you use and consume were crafted, marketed and even distributed by outliers. First, when zoomed out, outliers in all possible tasks become more common — internet commenting is just a subset for silly folks like me. Secondly, the emergent human social fabric is built to recognize and amplify outspoken and / or talented outliers, v…

It's a problem for Wikipedia which says a central principle is that it's the enclyclopedia anyone can edit. That's clearly not true with Wikipedia's hostile to new users policies (even with the existance of "don't bite the newbies"). Even creating a username means you have to navigate the username policy, and the two admin boards (one RFC, one noticeboard) for usernames. There are two templates for usernames (and tem…

The username policy is quite simple. A username:

1. Must represent a single person, not a company, organization, website, band, partnership, or other group of people

2. Must not be deceptive or impersonate someone else

3. Must not be unreasonably long

4. Must not be inflammatory or imply that you intend to troll

If you create an account that doesn't meet this policy, an administrator will prevent you from editing until you choose a new username, and you can continue afterward.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Username_policy

You're absolutely right in that Wikipedia needs to improve its user experience to ensure that new editors know what the rules are before they accidentally violate them.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#69

Post by NeedMoreTea » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 11:11 AM UTC

flexie wrote: post #11

People come to Wikipedia to get an answer. Many users of Wikipedia are kids, or non-native English speakers for whom contributing is a challenge. Or laymen that don't know about the subject and naturally don't feel like they could contribute anything. Or people who simply don't know how to contribute. Or people visiting via mobiles where it's really difficult to research and contribute. If you adjust for all those us…

I went through an almost identical process with English Wikipedia many years ago. Added to a sorely incomplete entry with carefully written and sourced info, to find it gone a few days later. Tried a few tiny updates in case new users were restricted somehow (this was never made obvious), so simply corrected some obvious grammar and spelling mistakes. Nearly all of those were backed out too. At which point there's only one option, give up.

I've encountered torrent sites that make more effort to make newcomers feel welcome.

Never tried again, and won't, despite running across much that's inaccurate, plain wrong or has poor language over the years.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#70

Post by freeflight » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 11:13 AM UTC

commoner wrote: post #68

DanBC wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a problem for Wikipedia which says a central principle is that it's the enclyclopedia anyone can edit. That's clearly not true with Wikipedia's hostile to new users policies (even with the existance of "don't bite the newbies"). Even creating a username means you have to navigate the username policy, and the two admin boards (one RFC, one noticeboard) for usernames. There are two templates for usernames (and tem…

The username policy is quite simple. A username: 1. Must represent a single person, not a company, organization, website, band, partnership, or other group of people 2. Must not be deceptive or impersonate someone else 3. Must not be unreasonably long 4. Must not be inflammatory or imply that you intend to troll If you create an account that doesn't meet this policy, an administrator will prevent you from editing unt…

On their own these might all be simple and reasonable, where the problems start is when entrenched people try to "weaponize" these rules for the purpose of waging drama wars to keep any newcomers from becoming relevant in the community, at that point it becomes an issue of personal interpretation which usually isn't all that objective.