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Wikipedia is an MMORPG

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Re: Wikipedia is an MMORPG

#81

Post by HeadsUpHigh »

consumer451 wrote: post #70
HeadsUpHigh wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The non-expert with a beginners' textbook having strong opinions about the subject is everything that's wrong with places like wikipedia and reddit. I just hate it.

> places like wikipedia and reddit. I just hate it. All human products have issues, but are there any superior alternatives at scale? Wikipedia is one of our civilization’s greatest achievements, isn’t it? It seems like the Library of Alexandria on steroids to me. Especially when combined with an internet archive. It’s funny to admit it, but Reddit is also quite an achievement due to the scalable human moderation mod…

No I don't have any superior alternatives at scale. For anything I can get away with, I avoid large scale places completely. Of course it's not always possible. I'm just tired of non-experts giving opinions and having the power to enforce those opinions.

I think wikipedia is as good as it can get given the constrains it has. Some kind of vetting process for experts on specific fields could potentially be useful for specific information though. But the matter of fact is that I have pretty much stopped using wikipedia for anything but the most rudimentary info check. I rarely even check the sources they provide. If I want more than the couple paragraphs wikipedia has on most subjects I go straight to books an sometimes I skip wikipedia altogether when I know that it won't be enough.

Re: Wikipedia is an MMORPG

#82

Post by HeadsUpHigh »

hirako2000 wrote: post #77
burntoutfire wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there any superior alternatives at scale? Pay tens of thousands of experts to work on the encyclopedia instead. The issue isn't scale, but the cost of the labor (which, in Wikipedia's case, is free - but in many cases you get the quality you paid for).

This alternative has shown to produce inferior universal encyclopedia. Encyclopedia Britanica was/is probably the most successful professional collection of knowledge, it's been superseded by Wikipedia over a decade ago. Free contributor is a low expense for sure but what you get isn't necessarily lower value than paying contributors.

The problem with wikipedia is that the existing editors tend to drive away experts who are willing to edit things for free though. Like one comment here about the random editor with a beginner's textbook reverting edits with information that was not in their textbook( that were properly cited from well-known books). That's just ridiculous and I'm blown away at the level of hubris that makes you trust your own lack of knowledge more than proper citations.

Re: Wikipedia is an MMORPG

#83

Post by qPM9l3XJrF »

jl6 wrote: post #52

I’d be grateful if, in this thread, anybody with an anecdote about how their perfectly fine edit was reverted by the evil career Wikipedians, could provide a link so we can judge for ourselves.

I once came across some Python code on Wikipedia which looked like:

    for i in range(n):
        a = [f(i) for i in range(q)]
I was reading over it and got temporarily confused by the re-use of the variable "i" in the list comprehension so I edited it to something else in order to help the next person. Reverted without explanation.

Another complaint I have about Wikipedia: There are certain people who are sometimes described in the media as "antisemites", "white nationalists", "white supremacists" etc. If it's a reliable source then Wikipedia will describe the person as a white supremacist or whatever. That doesn't bother me a lot.

However, in some cases the person themselves will say something to clarify their view, and a surprising number of Wikipedia editors think that the subject of the article's own statement of their political view does not merit inclusion in the article.

I believe I remember one particular case where there was a person whose Wikipedia bio referred to him as an antisemite, but if you went to his Twitter profile, he used some of the (very limited) space in his Twitter bio to refer to himself as pro-Israel... and a certain senior editor strongly objected to mentioning this fact in his Wikipedia bio.

At that point I think you're effectively just smearing living people in their Wikipedia bios and that really rubs me the wrong way.

The broader issue here is that Wikipedia, due to its reliable sources policy, can't really be much better than journalists are. And journalism isn't what it once was. Same argument for academia and the replication crisis. We live in a society, basically.

Re: Wikipedia is an MMORPG

#84

Post by nsajko »

saagarjha wrote: post #78
jl6 wrote: post #52

I’d be grateful if, in this thread, anybody with an anecdote about how their perfectly fine edit was reverted by the evil career Wikipedians, could provide a link so we can judge for ourselves.

This is the Wikipedia article of the high school I attended just a few years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monta_Vista_High_School . While I was there it had approximately ten times as much content, which I will readily admit was probably not entirely written by a third party but gave a fairly decent amount of information that to my knowledge was accurate. Some time recently it has been stripped entirely by a Wi…

Wikipedia is supposed to be a reliably sourced and verifiable encyclopedia, not a blog or advertisement, not full of random non-notable or unverifiable information. In other words, it is supposed to be useful.

Re: Wikipedia is an MMORPG

#85

Post by Kye »

captainmuon wrote: post #57
jl6 wrote: post #52

I’d be grateful if, in this thread, anybody with an anecdote about how their perfectly fine edit was reverted by the evil career Wikipedians, could provide a link so we can judge for ourselves.

Not an edit I made, but the final straw for me was a debate about the article name of the turkey (the animal) on the German wikipedia. The only commonly used name is "Truthahn" which refers to both the female and male animal if you are not being specific. But one especially vocal Wikipedian insists that in his ornithology book, the generic term is always the female term, so "Truthuhn" (with u). That sounds like "turk…

That sounds like the situation with violoncello. No one refers to it with the full name, but it pops up in the occasional music tutorial, probably for the same reason: the author read it in a book that said it was the correct name. It's technically true, but practically weird.

Re: Wikipedia is an MMORPG

#86

Post by nsajko »

qPM9l3XJrF wrote: post #83
jl6 wrote: post #52

I’d be grateful if, in this thread, anybody with an anecdote about how their perfectly fine edit was reverted by the evil career Wikipedians, could provide a link so we can judge for ourselves.

I once came across some Python code on Wikipedia which looked like: for i in range(n): a = [f(i) for i in range(q)] I was reading over it and got temporarily confused by the re-use of the variable "i" in the list comprehension so I edited it to something else in order to help the next person. Reverted without explanation. Another complaint I have about Wikipedia: There are certain people who are sometimes described i…

Your example with the python list comprehension could just be an example of a conflict over content because of an inevitable difference of opinion. There is nothing wrong with that, and no way around it: you either invest enough of your time to work it through, or pay someone else to do that (although I don't know how you could find someone both competent enough and willing to do it).

The example with the antisemite is probably more complicated, if you wanted a discussion on it you should have posted a link to the relevant discussion on Wikipedia, but I very much doubt it would be appropriate to take Twitter as source in that case, because Wikipedia is not meant to be (an extension of) social media. Also, it seems like you are not aware that it is very much possible to be a pro-Israel antisemite, e.g., the Nazis at one point supported Jewish Zionist emmigration to Palestine.

BTW, I am not a Wikipedia apologist, see my next comment.

It is true that low quality journalism limits Wikipedia in certain areas, but also note that good Wikipedia sources are not limited to newspapers, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability#Reliab...

Re: Wikipedia is an MMORPG

#87

Post by purple-again »

jl6 wrote: post #52

I’d be grateful if, in this thread, anybody with an anecdote about how their perfectly fine edit was reverted by the evil career Wikipedians, could provide a link so we can judge for ourselves.

I am more interested in an analysis of the “controversies” section and the initial paragraph of a topic. The kind of information that is included versus the kind of information that is not included. This is likely to be where the most significant bias can be found.

Re: Wikipedia is an MMORPG

#88

Post by andrepd »

Kaze404 wrote: post #25
haunter wrote: post #3

Good comparison tbh. MMOs are one of the most toxic game genre (only topped by MOBAs) and that perfectly fits to the holier than thou attitude of the majority of editors

Depends on the MMO. Final Fantasy XIV and Guild Wars 2 were both incredibly friendly experiences for me.

Likewise. MMOs are usually fondly remembered as friendly experiences when it comes to player interaction.

Re: Wikipedia is an MMORPG

#89

Post by jamil7 »

jl6 wrote: post #52

I’d be grateful if, in this thread, anybody with an anecdote about how their perfectly fine edit was reverted by the evil career Wikipedians, could provide a link so we can judge for ourselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars might be of interest if people haven't seen it.

Re: Wikipedia is an MMORPG

#90

Post by gilrain »

nsajko wrote: post #84
saagarjha wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the Wikipedia article of the high school I attended just a few years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monta_Vista_High_School . While I was there it had approximately ten times as much content, which I will readily admit was probably not entirely written by a third party but gave a fairly decent amount of information that to my knowledge was accurate. Some time recently it has been stripped entirely by a Wi…

Wikipedia is supposed to be a reliably sourced and verifiable encyclopedia, not a blog or advertisement, not full of random non-notable or unverifiable information. In other words, it is supposed to be useful.

If I were looking for information about this school, a war hero alum with a local monument would definitely be of interest.
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