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Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

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Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#61

Post by fwipsy »

boca_honey wrote: post #53

I know programming is what's most important to many in this community, but as an outsider I need to ask: literally WTF is Odin? I mean I know about Java and C++, etc. But Odin? That's what Wikipedia policies are for. It cannot include anything and everything about every single profession, subculture, or interest group. An anime community would complain that a very influential (but largely unknown and mostly lost) OVA…

> Wikipedia editors are just Reddit mods with delusions of grandeur

Reddit mods act on their own discretion most of the time, unless they attract the attention of Reddit admins or staff. Anyone can edit Wikipedia and the editing/moderation decisions are transparent. Certainly the editing guidelines are much more rigorous than Reddit, but that's the point of Wikipedia.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#62

Post by greyface- »

fwipsy wrote: post #60
staplung wrote: post #44

I'm not sure I understand why even a truly obscure programming language article should ever be deleted; it's not like Wikipedia is running low on paper. If Odin ceased all development tomorrow it would be good to have some record of what it was. For the record, I like Odin. (On homebrew it appears to have been downloaded 6,707 in the past year. Compare to:) zig: 71,565 rust: 304,405 golang: 1,246,300 malbogle: 9

The point of Wikipedia is to be accurate, not complete. Wikipedia does not want to just trust the developers of $ObscureLang to maintain their own wikipedia page. So, the existence of the $ObscureLang page (and, in the aggregate, many similar pages) imposes a maintenance burden on Wikipedia. Better to say nothing than to risk saying something inaccurate.

> The point of Wikipedia is to be accurate, not complete

The point of Wikipedia is to be verifiable, not accurate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability,_not_t...

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#63

Post by dismalaf »

wtetzner wrote: post #49
jibal wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author knows the orientation of his language better than anyone else. > Odin was a major influence on Jai. This is a popular joke because of the release timeline. The reality is the inverse, and Ginger Bill has acknowledged the influence of Jai.

> The author knows the orientation of his language better than anyone else. The author knows the intention of the language better than anyone else, but that doesn't mean it isn't especially game dev oriented.

Is C++ a game oriented language because most game engines and games are written in it?

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#64

Post by andai »

wavemode wrote: post #16
andai wrote: post #8

If I've got this right: programming these days -- especially niche areas -- meshes poorly with Wikipedia's guidelines on reliable sources and notability, which were designed mostly with traditional media in mind. e.g. a company saying they use a language is not considered a good source because it's a primary source? Not sure if I'm getting that part right. The most interesting part to me: Wikipedia has a bunch of lan…

You've almost got it, except: > Wikipedia has a bunch of languages that were used by like one person, because there is published material on them No. It's more like, there are plenty of articles on Wikipedia that don't meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines AT ALL, but when you write an article on Wikipedia and enough time passes without anyone noticing that the article is poorly sourced, then eventually the tendency…

>Like I said, nobody's getting paid for deletion work.

Actually there are organizations -- several of which brag about it openly -- that employ people to carefully manage what ends up on Wikipedia, and which side of a story ends up in popular articles.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#65

Post by andai »

jibal wrote: post #35
andai wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author protested the framing, but it's very much a game-dev oriented language. In fact, it's the most pleasant language for game development I have ever used. It comes with all sorts of "batteries included" in that direction, possibly more than any other existing language. (Well, I still didn't get my Jai invite, so who knows ;) Odin was a major influence on Jai.)

The author knows the orientation of his language better than anyone else. > Odin was a major influence on Jai. This is a popular joke because of the release timeline. The reality is the inverse, and Ginger Bill has acknowledged the influence of Jai.

I clearly remember Jonathan Blow talking about how Jai's syntax was influenced by his conversations with Bill. But it was 10+ years ago, so I might have gotten it mixed up.

I think the influence ended up going both ways eventually though.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#66

Post by andai »

dismalaf wrote: post #63
wtetzner wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The author knows the orientation of his language better than anyone else. The author knows the intention of the language better than anyone else, but that doesn't mean it isn't especially game dev oriented.

Is C++ a game oriented language because most game engines and games are written in it?

Yeah oriented might be the wrong word here. "Surprisngly well suited for the job" is more like it. It was very ergonomic. In fact, I ended up translating my Odin game to several other languages and the experience was quite painful. (That's one way to measure the quality of a language! How much it hurts to port code out of it.)

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#67

Post by bawolff »

dismalaf wrote: post #54
calvinmorrison wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

golang, rust, c++... etc?

The whole "C competitor" category is about minimalism so no one puts Rust or C++ in that category. Also Golang has a GC so most wouldn't even call it a systems language at all...

Everyone considers rust a c competitor. Its literally replacing c in the linux kernel.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#68

Post by bawolff »

loeg wrote: post #46
bawolff wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> edits others don't like, no matter what the veracity is. Wikipedia bans people for their behaviour, not for being right or wrong. So you are correct that veracity is irrelavent.

Are you saying that lying isn't considered poor behavior by Wikipedia or what? I don't believe that.

Depends on how you define "lying".

Misrepresenting what another contributor said? yeah you can be blocked.

Disagreeing on what should be in an article? That won't get you blocked. Getting into an edit war about it might. Being "right" is not a valid defense for edit warring.

In general, its not the place for admins to decide what is "true". Its their job to make sure people are behaving in accordance to the rules.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#69

Post by square_usual »

I'm so happy I have something I can link to that clearly and patiently engages with all the people who concern troll about Wikipedia. It genuinely bothers me how the temperature of the conversation about wikipedia (even here on HN) has changed so much because of people who don't know anything, don't care to verify anything, but have an axe to grind.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#70

Post by James_K »

andai wrote: post #8

If I've got this right: programming these days -- especially niche areas -- meshes poorly with Wikipedia's guidelines on reliable sources and notability, which were designed mostly with traditional media in mind. e.g. a company saying they use a language is not considered a good source because it's a primary source? Not sure if I'm getting that part right. The most interesting part to me: Wikipedia has a bunch of lan…

Suppose you wanted to make a Wikipedia article on a certain brand CNC milling machine, would that be useful? Not really. The only thing ever written about it is its own manual, and it doesn't feature notably with the exception of being used by some companies for manufacturing. Programming languages are the same thing. It seems rather entitled to demand Wikipedia articles for random brands of tools that don't have anything particularly significant about them.

And beyond that, it's perfectly useless. A Wikipedia article restating the information on Odin's website is a net negative information wise. You've got duplicate content for no good reason. The point of Wikipedia is to take a topic about which much has been written, and distill that into a smaller and more information dense summary. A person who finds the Odin language on Wikipedia would always be better served looking at the website instead, and thus the article is actively harmful to their understanding of the topic.

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