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Is Wikipedia Failing?
An anonymous reader writes "A growing number of people are concerned about where Wikipedia is heading. Some have left Wikipedia for Citizendium, while others are trying to change the culture of Wikipedia from within. A recent essay called Wikipedia is failing points out many of the problems which must be solved with Wikipedia for it to succeed in its aim of becoming a reputable, reliable reference work. How would you go about solving these problems?"
What can be done to change the system?
Now that Wikipedia has reached a critical mass, the time has come to establish a trusted editorial board that can vet articles to established experts in the field of subjects. This board could then also solicit articles by experts and find other wikis that host specialized information to link to the common Wikipedia. This will prevent much of the vandalism and uninformed disasters that seem to befall certain subjects or topics when they are edited by people who are not competent to be making edits in certain topics. As a professor in the biosciences, I've seen more than one article/entry on Wikipedia, written by an expert in that field that has been absolutely, shamefully and quite inaccurately edited or altered by well meaning individuals that absolutely have no idea what they are doing/saying.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
... is that they're too busy nominating webcomic articles for deletion to bother updating anything else.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
Just edit the Wikipedia is Failing article to say it's fixed.
Wikipedia's job is to let people look something up quickly. Need to know who the 23rd vice-president was? It's Adlai Stephenson.
"But someone could edit that page and change it!"
Oh, right. Now I've linked to the static page.
That part seems rather hard for some people to grasp, considering how many times I've seen that used as a justification for "thou shalt not cite" bullshit.
However, in some cases, "thou shalt not cite" is correct, not just based on reactionary BS- Wiki articles are sourced. If you cite a sourced statement from a Wiki article, you should really be citing it from the original... which is conveniently linked at the bottom of Wikipedia.
Wikipedia isn't failing at this. It's doing this remarkably well. The failing is in reactionary academics who feel threatened by Wikipedia, and the perception these people cause.
Care about privacy? Read this!
Well, since I have to create an account with Citizendium just to look at the articles, I'm not too worried about it overtaking the Wikipedia just yet.
-CGP
I don't think the question should be, "Is Wikipedia failing?" Rather, "is there a credible argument that Wikipedia is not failing?" The linked article is pretty damning.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Remove anonymous posting and put ads on the search results to hire paid full-time expert researchers
-nick
The best encyclopedia you cannot read ever!
IMHO, the time has come for wikipedia to return to its origins before it's too late. What made it work was its openness, now people think it can be "saved" by closing it up?
In truth, the biggest problem with wikipedia has nothing to do with wikipedia. The problem is us, especially our greed. Article after article has become slanted by those with a special, i.e. greedy, interest. Many controversial issues have already been editoralized into one-sided oblivion.
Top down is not going to help, so I say avoid the temptation to let the "experts" decide what we should be able to freely consider.
Words to men, as air to birds.
20 Reasons not to edit Wikipedia
This is what I've come up with after a very short period of editing Wikipedia.
1. Endless arguments on Talk pages. Apparently more work on Talk pages than actual pages.
2. I'm most able to write about what I'm an expert in. That's also a conflict of interest.
3. Reverts may undo useful changes. There are no merge-based undos, no simple application of a diff between two revisions.
4. Improving free and open source software is both more visible and important.
5. Publishing articles in peer-reviewed venues is more important, although less visible.
6. Lack of a good, canonical, reference and citation system like BibTeX.
7. Popular topics end up better written than unpopular topics. Many entries on fictional worlds.
8. My work might get deleted altogether.
9. Wikipedia is generally not citable itself. Not reviewed, and contents are not constant.
10. There is no correspondance between the different language versions of a page.
11. GFDL is possibly not the best license. I doubt most people have read it.
12. Software screenshots must be low resolution unless the software is open source.
13. Certain topics are taboo, e.g. Encyclopaedia Dramatica
14. If I'm an IP address, nobody cares. If I use my real name, I have to be careful what I write. If I use a pseudonym and hide my identity, it carries less weight.
15. Decentralization. It is doubtful that even a fraction of people take the time to read the relevant guides on editing.
16. Same problems that USENET, mailing lists, and forums have.
17. Neutral point of view confounded by fact that most people here are fairly left wing.
18. Most people editing don't have any formal training in writing beyond high school. Most articles and topics need work.
19. Vandalism, and pseudo-vandalism.
20. Almost every other leisure activity I can think of is more rewarding; Wikipedia is just addictive.
2 reasons to use Wikipedia
1. It's generally better than a Google search.
2. If you're a cultural anthropologist, here's a minefield.
2 reasons to edit Wikipedia
1. It's a great place to practice your translation skills.
2. Most anything you write here appears near the top of a Google search.
Meanwhile, most people with a clue have heard about Wikipedia, but not about these others. Wikipedia is now an established brand. That status, more than any functional superiority (or even competence) defines Wikipedia as the success. Its problems will be solved (or not), but it's got its audience.
Even if the competitors are superior, they will have to compete with Wikipedia's brand. Their superiority will have to be more easily communicated than Wikipedia's (eg. a better name, like "Google" vs "AltaVista") to actually beat them. It's a meme pool, and swimming counts more than smarts.
Wikipedia is no different from any other large Website: its success is defined by its scale of users, not its quality. As if you couldn't tell that by looking at Slashdot.
--
make install -not war
Okay, maybe I missed some major shift over at Wikipedia but a little over a year ago, Slashdot reported that Nature magazine's comparison of a sample of 42 Wikipedia and Britannica articles found on average, Wikipedia had 4 errors per article while Britannica had 3, but on average, Wikipedia articles had 2.6 times as much content.
So, from that point of view, I hardly see Wikipedia as a failing endeavor. There have been other studies that show Wikipedia to generally be quite accurate. There are exceptions, particularly in controversial topics which has been covered here a number of times, and maybe that needs to be fixed, but "Is Wikipedia Failing?" What is this? Fox News?
There is of course room for other slightly more reliable web encyclopaedias, but in the end all of them have to be verified by the reader to be trusted.
I predict that WIKI will become more of a 'pop-culture' database. Forget reading properly researched and documented articles on 'global warming' or 'evolution'. Rest assured though, crazed fans will document every nuance of Babylon 5 or Star Trek info that exists. Want to know how many PIPs Data has on his shirt in the last season of stng? Go to wiki!
No, you can read it. I'm reading it right now. It's only open to contributors for the time being though.
It's not the Wikipedia itself what is failing here, it's actually people. As in many aspects in life there will be idiots everywhere looking forward to mess something that could be useful for everybody.
There are about 1,300 featured articles. There are also about 1,700 good articles. However, there are currently 1,637,703 articles on Wikipedia. This means that slightly more than 99.8% of all the articles on Wikipedia are not considered well written, verifiable or broad or comprehensive in their coverage.
This to me seems like the old most-blogs-are-terrible argument. I would wager that those 3,000 good/featured articles make up the bulk of what people who go to wikipedia read about.
-CGP
i think its gonna be like the whole "BSD is dying" thing....
"The Wikipedia has failed"
"Stallman says add to this code and you are one of us. Gates says use this code and you belong to us."
...that Wikipedia is dying.
No statement is true, not even this one.
This essay seems to be fixed on featured articles and big entries. To me the real advantage of wikipedia seems to be the huge number of small, concise leaf articles that aren't featured, and maybe rarely accessed, but provide a short, in-depth punch about a particular topic, typically an obscure one. You can look up obscure topics like the Dry Tourgas or As Easy As and get the gist. Typically, small articles are written by an expert and ignored in terms of editing, but very useful for research. If you type certain strings into google, you get the wikipedia entry and not much else worthwhile. Wikipedia is sort of a common repository of knowledge. I'd rather have an article written by someone who knows something about an obscure topic than nothing. No one can grasp or deal with the entirety of wikipedia. There's too much there. But if you need to look up something obscure, you can go directly to that article.
What bothers me the most is all the web sites which clone wikipedia articles and add advertising. Ususually a google hit for a wikipedia entry turns up three or four other sites that just include the wikipedia article. This poisons the search engine, crowding out other hits. There ought to be a GPL version for wikipedia that allows people to mirror it only for nonprofit purposes. Down with leeches!
Another problem is edit decay, often exacerbated by Wiki-masturbation. What do I mean? Basically, edits are normally on a small scale. Lots of individual small-scale edits do not make a big article; on the contrary, I've copyedited at least one article that was fine on a sentence-by-sentence level, but messed-up, disorganised, verbose and unreadable because no-one had bothered to step back and look at the article as a whole. Thus many small edits (even if individually useful) tend to increase the structural decay of an article, and make it hard to see when something useful is being lost.
A problem occurs when minor edits are made, or an article changed several times, with little ultimate point (hence "masturbation"). It's in these sorts of pointless changes that good work gets lost for no real purpose. In such cases, it may make sense to go back to an earlier version, compare any major changes, find out why these have happened, and if there seems to have been no justifiable reason for them, to revert some or all of the article.
Should the aim of Wikipedia be change? No. The aim of Wikipedia should be changability; a subtle but very important difference. Unlike evolution in nature, we can go back as far as we like if an earlier version is better, and there's no reason we shouldn't do this. Some subjects inevitably date, necessitating change; but many do not. Changeability is about having the choice, and that includes the choice of saying "actually, the earlier version *was* better".
The WP article actually covers some similar ground to the above, but both are issues that had been on my mind for a long time beforehand.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
The day they allow the "Everywhere Girl" to remain posted is the day I will change my mind about them.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
Yeah, well, good luck with that.
The article is just a bunch of complaining.
Wikipedis is failing to be exactly what the article writer wants it to be. It's succeeding perfectly in being what it is.
The article writer values his opinion more than reality. He's undoubtedly disappointed a lot.
I use Wikipedia from time to time, and once I found an article, that needed some work. So I rewrote some of the chapters, added some links to sources and added some information that I thought would fit well into the article. Unfortunately it lastet only a few hours and some registered contributor who wrote the original article reversed it all. I guess that's why they have a discussion page, only the original contributor won't give in and let anyone change "his" article. My point is: I think many regular contributors to wikipedia are very stubborn and only want it done their way, which turns away people that maybe only contribute once or twice and don't have time for endless flamewars.
There are 1.6 million articles of poor quality that are unreferenced simply because Wikipedia makes no effort to make sure new editors know anything about Wikipedia policy. New editors don't know what Original Research is, or even NPOV. They've never read [[WP:RS]], [[WP:V]], [[WP:OR]], or any of the Wikipedia policies. Editors about blogs and websites are fully unaware of notability requirements such as WP:WEB and WP:NOTABILITY.
Wikipedia is failing because editors are not forced to educate themselves about the main pillars of Wikipedia policy.
If new users had to go through a tutorial it might have saved Wikipedia. Now I fear it is too late.
the sky isn't falling and wikipedia seems to be working just fine.
They raised 1.3 MILLION DOLLARS in 2006. I'd say that should be enough to run a website. Even if it cost them $25K a month to host (which I would argue should be more than enough) that's only $300K a year. If $1.3M/year isn't enough for a non-profit website, chances are they're not spending their money right.
The quality of the majority of articles is FAIRLY HIGH, and yes, it's not finished yet but in time it will get more and more articles. I didn't RTFA because I don't want to give yet another doomsayer ad impressions. Shut the fuck up already.
Please stop posting senseless adladen rubbish on the front page. It does nothing but encourage bunk sensationalism. And that's the job of fark.com not slashdot.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
But is there anyone here who can name one source where we would not be able to find a glaring error or even something that would be considered a flat out lie by a lot of people ?
I mean even stuff like the BBC, that used to be the definition of reliable has been shown to flat-out lie about some topics. So maybe the problem is not with wikipedia, but with people demanding reliable sources.
There aren't any reliable sources. Wikipedia, like the Britannica, like the Bible, like Muhammad's sayings like Shinto's roll's and like anything else is just a human's opinion. It is fallible, corruptible, incomplete, and potentially for sale.
Notability: Wikipedia should encompass the whole of human knowledge, not just what some consider notable. I've been involved in too many AfD's (discussion about whether an article should be deleted) where the only reason someone wants to remove the article from Wikipedia is because the subject is considered non-notable. My response to that is "So what?" Who cares if it's non-notable?
I'm part of the "Inclusionist" movement on Wikipedia. I feel that, generally, edits should only be made to Wikipedia in which no information is lost.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
Seriously. Everyone knows how to find the "live" article on wikipedia and send links to it to their friends. It takes two non-obvious clicks from there to to get to the permanent, static link. (You have to click history, and then the most recent version.) There should be a big, shiny, flaming, "Permanent link to this version" button, or every "live" page should auto-redirect to the most recent static page (so the url in the address bar is a static page), or something.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
But that's clearly not what Wikipedia has become. It's become a strong source for pop-culture knowledge and trivia, as well as everything else under the sun. The thing that draws people to it is not its original openness, but the fact that it's a microcosm of what people are actually interested in.
But try telling that to some of the people who work on the site, who are so obsessed with trying to make the site GFDL-compliant, above all else, that they've basically been willing to sacrifice the quality of the site by pushing for free resources over what's available legally.
This is largely a problem with images. Most media companies put out fair-use promotional images for products and shows, along with people, but because we follow the rules so closely to the T, these images aren't available for us. In the example of people, the standard is so high as to when it's okay to allow for a fair-use image - if a person's alive, no matter how hard they are to get in touch with, there's enough possibility to allow for a license-free image that we can't even put a fair use image on the page. Identifying a person isn't a good enough reason to put a fair-use image on the page, even though that's pretty much the point of putting a photo of a person on a page.
The logic is that fair-use images discourage free images, and since Wikipedia's trying to be free, we need to get rid of fair-use images. They discourage resale of content as books down the line, even though its Web form is far more useful.
As a result of all this, there are a handful of editors out there who have made it their mission to remove these images wholesale, no matter how much average users protest. It's just silly.
I work in the media for a living, and I haven't found anyone with tighter, more unrealistic standards about content than Wikipedia. The site is in its own way a member of the media and needs to start playing by the same rules as everyone else, or quality is going to suffer. They need to make calls to PR people. They need to agree to licensing standards when grabbing photos. They need to understand that there's a limit to what free can do, especially in an industry known for copyright. And this problem stems from the top - Jimbo Wales has a fairly hard-line view on copyright that many editors are picking up.
Now, I don't know about you guys, but I didn't get into Wikipedia for the free-as-in-speech part. I got into it because was freely-editable and easy for the average person to improve. But because of a draconian interpretation of a rule, many articles are having a difficulty improving. The average user is getting forgotten because the original mission is incompatible with what Wikipedia has become, and the people pushing for the original mission have clearly lost sight of this.
I hope they realize their mistake before Wikipedia bleeds quality any further.
ShortFormBlog: Writing a little. Saying a lot.
Most of the technical articles are (very) good. Anything that's political gets edited from the extremes from both sides. Sources being removed because one side says they aren't reputable enough, but can't back up the claim why they aren't, etc... There are some problem editors who usually works together to edit articles to their liking. I left Wikipedia for this reason.
is that *anyone* can edit it without creating an account. This can cause a problem in the UK when a popular DJ will mention an article on Wikipedia and then suddenly everyone's a comedian, changing the page and writing any old shit on it until an administrator locks the page.
The one thing I'd do to improve Wikipedia would be to require you to create an account and activate it. It would remove a large chunk of the vandalism very quickly.
Summation 2
Is Wikipedia succeeding in its aim of becoming a reputable, reliable reference work? To me Wikipedia is much more than an encyclopedia or a mere work of reference. Perhaps it fails the reliability test, but we must look at what it achieves. In as far at it is an experiment in the creation and indexing of information by millions of users around the world: it plain works. In as far as it is a first point of contact when doing your research: it works. In as far as it keep track of article audits: it works. Etc, etc, etc. It has taken centuries to get to where we are in terms of human knowledge. I don't know it will probably take about long time to get Wikipedia to where it's supposed to be. And it won't be by the efforts of some self-proclaimed "experts". (as an aside, if you want "reliable", whatever that means, you still have the Encyclopedia Britannicas of this world). Some are going to pull their hairs and give up at the state of Wikipedia affairs; but why don't the rest of us stick around for a decade or so, and see how this thing pans out?
"I've got a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel"
This is a useful suggestion, but is something that Citizendium is really already doing. Their restriction of only allowing real-names is a breath of fresh air too. I am just waiting for the day some angsty script kiddie teeny bopper incorporate a random paper generator into a botnet to attach Wikipedia. With some good cloaking (first have one IP on the botnet obviously vandalize a page, then have another on the botnet "fix' the vandalization but add something from the random paper generator) the damage will be years fixing.
Say what you want for anonimity, it is turning the internet into a sewer. The number of attacks on my web server in a day is staggering, and my web site isn't all that popular. One of these days soon, someone will create an overnet on top of the internet where each site only accepts packets from users registered with a real name and real address.
yo moderator, RTFA before you mod flamebait. Someone has indeed inserted a rude word into the article. Checking the history, the same weiner has been vandalising other articles in the same way.
need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
Hey, we badly want to be open to the world! But it's expensive!
I can make a little announcement. Wikis are huge resource hogs, so to grant just read access to wiki pages indiscriminately will require more resources than the big souped-up but single server we have at present. Quite frankly we have been holding out for an infusion of funds for sixteen servers. It's clear now that we can launch with less than that, with a number that we can afford with our very limited present budget. So we'll be bravely forging ahead with an only temporarily adequate number of servers!
The Citizendium wiki will be launching for public read access as soon as (1) we get a few new servers set up (it'll be a small enough number to be within our budget), and (2) we make a few technical changes (e.g., change the "Citizendium Pilot" namespace to "Citizendium"; and lots of other stuff).
Now, when will that be? Not sure; now it's a matter of getting and setting up the equipment and making those software changes, and it's impossible to predict how long it will take to do this, as we are mostly relying on volunteers (and one part-time contracter) to work on our software. But on the order of weeks, not months. If you want to help us with the software stuff, I bow to your geekiness and invite you to our forge.
Hope that clarifies our situation anyway.
I see that Citizendium is uses the same Wikimedia engine. They use it with the authentication patch (which Wikipedia for "open" reasons has avoided.) There have been endless discussions on Wikipedia vs Encyclopedias. The one thing that stands out is, most Encyclopedias "restrict" information unless they can validate it. I know that "Consensus" in itself is not a part of Scientific method, but only the last resort when a conclusion cannot be reached. Any attempt to clone the success of an existing freely editable Encyclopedic Wiki (rather than an Encyclopedia itself) is bound to produce the same results. Changing those fundamental variables that made Wikipeida possible "freedom", "open", "editable" are known recipes for disaster.
There have been numerous debates on whether Wikipedia is a valuable resource for Research. The answer is a yes. However it is not a resource that can be cited. Like numerous sites on the internet, it only points one to other material for further reading or introduces the random reader to theories that may not essentially be correct. Some people thought Wikipedia could become a fundamental instrument to facilitate research, resulting in their attempts to create "authentication", "article validation" and the likes. A book is only as good as its authors. Wikipedia is only as good as its contributors and consumers. An Encyclopedia is no different. That would explain why Encyclopedia Brittanica and Microsoft Encarta are so different. To put it simply, this article on EncycloPedia is quite informative, yet you might not want to cite it if you are writing a thesis on them. You would need access to more Books and Information, such as those available in a Library. Wikipedia remains a source for quickly looking up information. In this usage, there are no substitutes, not even Google. It contains good pionters and sometimes Valid and credible reference material. The "Wikipedia Falling" story is simply a amplified reaction to what I term is the "Tower of Babel" effect. If there are too many people converging to one source, they tend to separate at some point; someone might understand this better. So as evolution always is, this shall happen. But Wikipedia isn't the Tower of Babel and it ain't falling.
No Greater Friend, No Greater Enemy! (Lucius Cornelius Sulla)
Not everyone is an expert, yet at Wikipedia everybody gets an equal vote anyway. For any given field, there are alway far fewer experts than laymen. Yet Wikipedia does not give experts or otherwise reasonably knowledgeable individuals any credit whatsoever when it comes to making decisions regarding policy and content. As a result, excellent suggestions supported by solid and coherent arguments can always be voted away with simple replies, such as "No!"
Sadly, this is a case where perception defines reality.
I know of two kids who in the same week both got downgraded on papers because they referenced wikipedia as a source, with the comment (2 different teachers, same school) "Wikipedia is not considered a factual reference" and "Perhaps you should look for a more reliable source than Wikipedia".
These were not for deeply controversial facts. One referenced wiki as a source for the factual statement "Plants need CO2 to live", and the other referenced it for Bill Cosby's birthdate.
Personally, I think this is idiotic. Had the original instructions said not to use it, that's one thing. But to post facto condemn this as a source smacks of knee-jerk - the kind of knee-jerk dismissal that will kill Wiki in the end.
We all know Wiki's weaknesses, and perhaps schools would be better off in using that as a teachable moment regarding 'internet facts' in general. Have one kid write a paragraph about their school without signing their name. Then allow 30 others to edit it freely and anonymously over a week or more. With the class, review the evolution of the 'facts' presented.
Wiki is at its strongest as a very timely resource for general facts; it's best when those facts are footnoted or linked in a useful way to source material. To ignore it as a reference is simply Luddism. To recognize it and use it in context is where value can be found.
-Styopa
FTA: at this rate, it will take 4,380 years for all the currently existing articles to meet FA criteria.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
You should have used this link to Citizendium here to make "article" even more ridiculous.
Personally, I see only technical problems with Wikipedia: lack of Open API of some kind, ease of static-linking (to protect yourself from content modifications), bad data format (at least for my taste), but as an idea of an open social encyclopedia I would say it is _extremely_ successful.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Wikipedia is not broken. It works and works well for its intended purpose. It needs a little more editorial control and that's it. This issue has been rehashed over and over again here about using it as an authoritative source when it is really nothing more than a fact look-up and starting point for in depth research - like an encyclopedia (duh). This is all FUD to drive people to Citizendium.
It's quite likely that Wikipedia passed through its growth inflection point in 2006. Here's the graphs. Nielson's blogpulse still shows growth, but it's a shorter term measure and may be more indicative of the current controversy than long-term growth rate.
y =wikipedia_meme
http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme?entr
Remember, the inflection point is the point of maximum growth, maximum exposure and often maximum hysteria.
I've said in the past that the model upon which WikiPedia is based is a flawed one. It is good to see that others are beginning to view the majority of WikiPedia as what it really is: unsubstantiated documentation of pop culture fads.
I believe the term, as coined by Stephen Colbert, is Wikiality.
Don't get me wrong but that really misses the point. Take, for example, Voltron. I can plug that into Britannica and Wikipedia. Britannica doesn't know who or what Voltron is. Wikipedia has a fairly detailed explanation. Accurate? Well written? I'd be shocked if that article fell in to the 2000 or so "well written" articles. I doubt it's verifiable in any credible way. Also, I don't see Britannica ever having an article that talks about Voltron. It's not a scholarly article because it's not a scholarly subject. That doesn't change the fact that when I couldn't remember the names of the pilots of the lions and for whatever reason I wanted to remember them, wikipedia provided an answer and a whole lot more where most other sources wouldn't provide anything. That's the beauty of it.
I don't know that you should read a candidates wikipedia article and decide off of that alone if you will vote for them. I don't know any single sources that you should use for that. I also don't know that I'd read about global warming on wikipedia and use it as an exclusive guide to your own beliefs on it; again, there is no good single source on such an important subject. However if you do want to look up who's driving for each F1 team next season or Voltron, or what looks like well over a million other articles, wikipedia is probably ok. The alternative is either nothing or you scour the web for some hobbiest that cares enough about Voltron or whatever to put up a webpage of his own and provide a detailed document on it.
The problem is that it allows for opinion of the masses. When I was in genetics (early 80s), I noticed that to come up with radical experiments and /or conclusions, you either had to have a well known name or be published in small science rags. I just wonder if it would be possible to rate the sections. i.e. allow for sections that are controlled by the top appointed academicians (not necessarily, the top academicians in the fields), as well as the entry. This would allow for the average person to search the acceptable theory type pages while still allowing for others to enter into the field.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Like in software there's usually a Stable version, even if it's quite old and a Beta version, i'd go so far as to suggest that Wikipedia pages should have three versions
.../wiki/The_Page
1. The Stable Page - and THIS should be the default at
2. The Candidate Page - The candidate to become the next stable page
3. The Current Page - Up to the minute revert war free for all
Both [1] and [2] are essentially historic versions of the page but linked to from handy labelled tabs and some kind of moderation/voting system can elevate a page from current to beta to stable.
obviously newly created articles would only have one or three versions and these would filter across all three until a moderator/vote decides to split the article into the aforementioned modus operandi
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
So if Wikipedia isn't a quality reference work, then Britannica apparently isn't either. What can be done to change the system?
Is radical change required, or just small adjustments to the current set-up? I guess Wikipedia will continue to constantly improve in many ways, but the system that everyone can edit anything should stay at all costs, even if some articles written by experts are sometimes edited by people who think they know it better, but unfortunately don't. At the end you will still have the biggest reference with the most recent informations available, just a day behind the news, which is a very big achievement on it's own. Here on Slashdot, every piece of news gets torn apart in the comments-section and often leave all those "well researched" articels with incorrectnesses behind. Wikipedia will probably always suffer from the same amount of false information. Does this matter, given that Wikipedia is one of the most popular websites in the world? Of course it does, but this is not a problem as long as you understand two things:
1. Wikipedia can only be accurate to a certain degree which, however, won't differ from any other reference work.
2. Sometimes, especially on complicated topics, it will maybe only represent what the mayority thinks is correct.
I assume CV = Curriculumn Vita (aka a very thourough resume). Just thought others may be wondering what CV is as I just recently found out what a CV is or the other option is that I am just stupid.
On the other hand, on the other end of the spectrum are the categories History and Society. Wikipedia is horrible at such articles. You have two conflicting sides fighting over an article. Let's take a look at the current protected pages. "2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict" and "Taba Summit" are both protected. Semi-protected is "1972 Summer Olympics", "Zionism" and other similar articles. Israelis and Palestinians are shooting each other over there, and such a thing spills over onto Wikipedia. It even spills over onto Slashdot - the last time I said this about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict on Slashdot, in a pretty neutral and moderate tone, someone lambasted me for "taking sides".
Jimbo Wales is not politically neutral. He ran the Ayn Rand mailing list for years. His appointees to the Arbitration Committee are people like JayJG, who could not get voted in and who had over 100 votes against them during elections (including me). He says he uses Friedrich Hayek's theories as a model of how to run Wikipedia. He has personally harrassed people like Secretlondon. He is not a fanatic, or Wikipedia would have never taken off, but he is biased, and his bias is reflected. The Wikipedia "cabal" is sort of cultish - check out the Criticism of Wikipedia page and how obsessed the "cabal" is with criticism they can not control. Dozens of people have tried to link to the Wikipedia Review web site and the link is removed over and over. It is really cultish behavior, the idea that criticism of Wikipedia can happen which they can't control drives them crazy.
I know the society and history articles will always be crap, unless it's something like 1755 Lisbon Earthquake or something which no one cares much about any more. But by and large they are junk and not encyclopedic. The solution I think is for these types of articles to move onto other wiki encyclopedias. This has already happened. I've written a number of articles elsewhere that people put back into Wikipedia. Some of the ones I have done I know could never be put back because they are of the "Taba Summit" type. There is only one wiki encylopedia now, which makes sense, but this will not continue and in fact Wikipedia already has some minor competition in Demopedia, dKosopedia, Internet Encyclopedia (Wikinfo), Red Wiki, Anarchopedia and so forth. This trend will continue.
I'm not accusing him of anything; just asking.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Wikipedia is at best flawed, at worst dangerous.
It rejects "experts" in favor of consensus. Finding facts is not a democratic process. It is often an intrusive and offensive process. "Facts" have to be protected from people with ulterior motives.
Most people think they are safe in a car from lightening because of the rubber tires. General consensus where critical thinking and science are involved is typically wrong.
Wikipedi[a] is failing to be exactly what the article writer wants it to be. It's succeeding perfectly in being what it is.
Hear, hear. Wikipedia will probably continue to fail at being whatever successful thing you're comparing it to, because Wikipedia is unique. I think the prevailing idea is that Wikipedia should become this amazingly cite-able bastion of unquestioned facts, but by its current nature it cannot ever become that. Nor should it. I see Wikipedia as a place to learn; either you learn something from the article, or by digging deeper and engaging in discussions with other editors about it you learn even more. I'm a prof and would never dream of citing Wikipedia in an academic paper. But for casual learning and light research, it's a dream come true.
Sam! If you will let me be,
I will try them.
You will see.
Ratings could be something like
5. I'm a generally recognized expert working the field 4. I work in the field 3. I've studied the field at university/college level 2. I'm a generally interested bystander, having done self-study of the field to some depth 1. I'm a generally interested bystander having tried to follow the field for a few years
Comments could be something like what sources you have checked against, or a deeper description of qualifications.
Ratings like these would allow us to do a lot of stuff. We could turn users that seem to do a good job of voting in their particular areas (and staying off voting in other areas) into an officially sanctioned editorial board retroactively, for instance - by just giving their ratings weight. Or we could let people look at "Last version of article vouched for by a 5-authority", or show the differences from that version, or whatever we feel like.
The important thing is to start collecting the data. And that can be done NOW, trivially.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
So, you decided against calling it Nupedia this time? Perhaps "Just As Good As Wikipedia Except I'm In Charge" next time? Or "Sour Grapes-o-Pedia"?
I kid, I kid. Honestly, variety is good (insert Gnome/KDE flamewar here); we already have enough problems with Wikipedia articles being replicated around the internet so that it becomes hard to find anything else. There's a serious free-encyclopedia vacuum out there, and it can only help to have another batch of people doing work independently of Wikipedia.
I think you're doomed to failure due to scalability issues and the likelihood of POV-pushing from your chosen elite, but I'd be very happy to be proved wrong on that one.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Given that it seems to be the sole source for the allegations. NO ORIGINAL RESEARCH.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Maybe this idea has been proposed and shot down, but...
... If anyone disagrees they just don't include Abe et al. in their list of peers. Eventually there will be clusters of people who all agree on a particular representation of the information. When Betty looks at another article and sees that Abe approved of it then there is a reasonable degree of certainty that the material is acceptable. Betty is also given a view of (if any) differences that have been inserted since Abe signed off on the article and can approve or not of each change. Abe and Betty can automatically reciprocate with regard to the information.
Please comment with any constructive criticism you may have.
The basic problem is how to know if an article is trustworthy or not. This solution is based on the philosophy that respect is a personal choice, not an authoritarian decree.
In my opinion this can be solved with a system that is not terribly different than the slashdot friend/foe idea.
Basically you just create a system that is capable of tracking your "friends" opinion of a particular state of an article, and maybe your friends friends to a specifiable distance.
In a Nut Shell: Abe looks at an article and votes that it is accurate. Betty looks at the same article at a later time and also thinks it is accurate, then Betty is given the option to include Abe in her list of peers. repeat for users C. D. E.
Once this is set up, users can subscribe to "peer clusters" with a given radius of friends of peers. Eventually you will have well recognized and respected groups of friend/peer/editors that are then the de facto authority on any set of articles. As an arbitrary user you can view the article in either the latest edit or the latest reviewed edit and determine for yourself if you agree with any changes.
Now, there is the possibility of waring peer clusters, in which case the user simply determines which faction they agree with and no further action by an oversight committee is required. In short, since this is user based content, let the users decide who they trust. "Of the People, by the people, and for the people".
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
Why is slashdot so interested latelly in me joining citizendium?
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
An article about why Wikipedia is failing...that is posted in Wikipedia? So if Wikipedia is not accurate, that means that the article that says it is not accurate is not accurate, which means that it is accurate, which means......Oww, my head is going to explode!
I see this claim a lot, but people seldom back it up. Most of what gets reverted is nonsense or vandalism. I'm not saying your edits fell into that category, but I'll remain skeptical until you produce this edit you had mentioned.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Ok, that was it for me. Just to view articles, you have to be logged in at citizendium. What kind of messed up mindset do you need in the year of 2005/6 to make such an idiotic decision? Are they not aware that just about any web project is more successful, the lower the entry barrier is? I understand that they want some barrier for editing, but for viewing???
It might have been a nice idea.
One way to help Wikipedia succeed is to get the Slashdot Lunix zealotry to keep editting Microsoft's page and keep refering to them as "a monopoly". Then, go to Apple's page, and remove any reference to Apple's exercise of it's brutal monopoly status.
Oh, and also talk about how good Neal's mule tastes.
Wikipedia is being held to an unfair standard. When is the last time any of you who have complained about not being allowed to cite wikipedia have cited Britannica, Encarta, or some other "accepted" encyclopedia? Are you out of grade school? Encylopedias should NEVER be cited in an academic work. They are a generic reference that allows a researcher who has absolutely 0 knowledge of a subject gain the necessary background to begin an effective research campaign. This is akin to having a friend tell you what search terms to plug into google to find material for your paper - you don't cite your friend either. I remember being taught to question bias in Britannica before the internet became popular. Wikipedia has bias. It has errors. It is by no means an authoritative source. Yet it summarizes basic facts and timelines well, and often gives one everything necessary to perform a deeper search - often begun with the citations at the bottom of each article. It fascinates me that Wikipedia because of its open nature is being held to a far higher standard than other encyclopedias. This seems to hold true of Linux as well. If an open source system shipped with as few bells and whistles as say...XP (ie, no office, no pdf reader, no CD burning software, etc) it would be held up as a failure in the mass media. (although I'm sure the enlightened readership of slashdot would ignore the hype) So why should there be a higher expectation of something that is FREE than something that one PAYS FOR? This seems bass ackwards to me. Recognizing that this perception exists, how do we go about changing it? Advertising? Viral Marketing? Light-brights? I realize not every OS, encylopedia, etc is right for everyone; but they should at least be evaluated on a level playing field.
He who would be a man, must be a nonconformist. -- Emerson
One word: bandwidth. As ugly as MySpace is, it was faster than competitors. You can build the most reliable web encyclopedia to challenge Wikipedia, but I'm not using it if I can't load it under 3 seconds. Deal.
20 Reasons not to edit Chinese Wikipedia
This is what I've come up with after a long period of editing Chinese Wikipedia.
- Endless arguments on Talk pages. Apparently more work on Talk pages than actual pages.
- If I say something bad about current president of Taiwan, my account my be banned. And if I say something bad about the opponent of the current president of Taiwan, my account may also be banned.
- Reverts may undo useful changes. There are no merge-based undos, no simple application of a diff between two revisions.
- Traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese can not be mixed in use of "Category".
- Publishing articles in peer-reviewed venues is more important, although less visible.
- Lack of a good, canonical, reference and citation system like BibTeX.
- Sensational, controversial topics end up better written than unpopular topics. Many entries on history worlds. Everyday there will be something new about sex intercourse.
- My work might get deleted altogether, and replaced by a total copy of English wikipedia article with a "translation request".
- Contributors easily get angry about the pronunciation of tomato and difference between wrench and spanner.
- Dark side of many topics are not allowed to write in Chinese wikipedia. You need to read English version for that part.
- If I contribute something better than the English version or doesn't exist in English wikipedia, it may be labeled "quick delete" for potential violation of GFDL.
- It is too hard to communicate with contributors from Taiwan, if I call a guy Taiwanese, he/she may say "I am a citizen of Republic of China." If I ask them "Are you a citizen of ROC?" There are 50% chance get an answer of "Taiwan is not ROC!"
:-*
- Too many topics are protected.
- If I'm an IP address, nobody cares. If I use my real name, I have to be careful what I write. If I use a pseudonym and hide my identity, it carries less weight.
- People in mainland China can not read Chinese wikipedia, that means most Chinese speaking people can NOT read what I wrote, then why I wrote it?
- Subtle information about mainland China may be deleted by IPs, like sister cities of Washington DC, you get tired of this after some time.
- Neutral point of view doesn't exist in the 5000 years of history of Chinese culture, I mean Chinese culture, no matter where you are. The winners win it all.
- Most people editing don't have any formal training in writing beyond elementary school. Most articles and topics need work.
- Vandalism, and pseudo-vandalism, without being noticed for months.
- Almost every other leisure activity I can think of is more rewarding.
2 reasons to use Chinese Wikipedia- It's generally better than a Google search.
- Most articles have links to their counterparts in English, which are more useful in most cases.
2 reasons to edit WikipediaThere is a spark in every single flame bait point.
I use Wikipedia for its ease of use and general reference - I'm certainly not using it as a citable source for papers or anything. In that respect, no, Wikipedia is not failing. If it were easier to verify people who change and update articles this might not even be an issue, but alas, it is not.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
At the moment, the 'editorial' function for a given page flows from an arbitrary authority(mostly whoever is most invested in a page, IME). Under your system, the editorial function for a given page would flow from an arbitrary authority. Without a way for users to temper the 'generic' editorial decisions with their own editorial decisions(i.e., I should be able to globally ignore people I think are stupid or worthless, or even just disagree with), it doesn't matter how frozen a page is, the page will reflect the generic editorial atmosphere of wikipedia.
And yes, it would allow people to create their own pockets of stupid in which reason was sorely absent, but so what, it would allow other people to easily ignore them, and the 'generic' wikipedia faces the same problem right now anyway, there just isn't any acknowledgment of it built into the institutional machinery.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Exactly what I was thinking.
Cubia is a lightweight Wikipedia mirror running on a $7 GoDaddy account along with a bunch of other sites. I'm still importing the articles (2-3 million of 4.5 are already there) but it should be done today.
Until your project maxes out 1000GB of transfer per month and/or 100GB of space there's no reason to pay more than $7 a month to run your new project. I'm amazed at the ignorance that prompts people to waste 10's of thousands of dollars on equipment they won't possibly have a need for, for years. Meanwhile that money could be sitting in a high yeild savings account collecting interest and the interest alone could cover all the hosting costs needed while the project gets started.
Cubia will allow for user submitted content later this week. The first step was getting all the articles loaded up.
If Wikipedia fails it's because of stupidity. No one should ever develop software on a top of the line system. Especially web apps. It needs to be designed on old and busted systems to ensure that it is highly efficient to reduce costs. Cubia was started on a PIII 900Mhz system and it runs like a champ. MediaWiki (which is used by Wikipedia) is completely unusable on the same system. And that's why they spend so much money on servers.
Meanwhile, I'm mirroring it on a $7 GoDaddy account.
Work Safe Porn
Good idea.
I think "article development" approach would work for the important, "most significant" articles. For articles involving current events, a "current page only" method would have to be in place.
But what about the enforcement of this idea? How would you make people follow this "article development" system? I would think the wiki software would have to provide the checking mechanisms.
FORTUNE FAVORS IRONY
Just a note: The citizendium will be opened to the public after the public launch. The pre-release registration is to keep people from happening upon it before the general release -- sort of a voluntary beta test.
While I'm rather neutral about the entire concept, this seems to be a common misconception about their model. Hope you check it out when it goes public.
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Wikipedia needs to realize that it's not going to be a reputable source, ever. There is just no way you can be a good source of research and maintain public user submisssions. Not gonna happen.
There is nothing wrong with that though.
Wikipedia right now is a great resource that you have to take with a grain of salt, that is fine. It's great the way it is. If I want to know some bit of trivia then Wikipedia is the place, if someone makes a reference to something I'm ignorant about in a conversation for instance, or if I'm just mildly curious about something I read in a news article, I can at least find out what's going on with a quick check to Wikipedia. These are things that in the past I might have to search Google for and then possibly wade through a few pages of the things before I get to the bottom of it, now with Wikipedia my questions are usually answered much faster, easier, and more in depth than if I had just used Google.
Now I realize that what I'm reading might be biased, someones opinion, and in a lot of cases just flat wrong, but that's okay because that would have been even more true with Google searches. I realize that if I really need hard information about a subject then Wikipedia is little more than a lead to actual references at best, but it still serves a purpose.
If you ask me, the thing Wikipedia can do to improve would be to stop deleting articles because they aren't "notable enough". Seriously. Why the hell should there not be an entry for my local highschool in there? I know few people would want to read it, but so what? If Joe Johnson down at Johnsons gas station wants to write about the history of his family gas station, let him! Who is it hurting? Besides, I might know Joe and be interested in reading it.
Sigs are awesome huh?
MediaWiki is slow and therefore demands more resources than are actually necessary to do what they are doing.
This new project (Citizendium) is being developed on a fast server which hinders the ability to optimize code. Smart people start with low cost equipment and optimize the heck out of it to make it work for as long as possible. Only then do you start spending more on faster systems and more bandwidth. You don't spend rediculous amounts of money up front for resources you have no use for. You first find ways to reduce the amount of resources needed and only then do you increase resources.
People don't understand these simple concepts and that's why money is wasted and projects go bankrupt.
Cubia is starting simple. The goal is to see how complex it can get before a $7 GoDaddy account is insufficient to run it. The next step is user submitted articles.
Citizendium has the oppositite goal: see how much money they can waste until the demand matches the resources and then blow more money on more resources.
Work Safe Porn
...they're too busy nominating webcomic articles... This sounds naive, but Wikipedia isn't a "they." The internet isn't a "they" either.What's being said here sound to me like:
Those damn internets are too busy pornographizing...
"...objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences, subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny." -Gould
This "significant portion" is a bunch of frequent users. They could easily have ads for those not logged in. They would easily get enough money from ad views on public terminals or users too lazy to log in.
If the measure of Wikipedia's success is merely "A lot of people view and edit this site" then Wikipedia is successful on the same level as MySpace. And indeed, there are numerous parallels to be drawn between the two, which I'll leave as an exercise for the reader.
However, if the measure of Wikipedia success is "Useful, timely, and relatively correct information" then the project is in danger of failing. Numerous articles are poorly written (I like to say that "This Wikipedia is NOT English), contain outdated information, or have content that is flat-out wrong. The oft-repeated mantra "anyone can edit it" doesn't seem to be the solution to these problems. Indeed, I'd offer that while it cuold help correct them, it is also the source of many of Wikipedia's problems.
There are a number of possible solutions for the problems that Wikipedia has in the areas of utility and accuracy (all encyclopedia's have issues with currency) but I question whether the folks who "run" Wikipedia (the content contributors and editors) woul be willing to enforce the kind of processes necessary to fix them. I tend to be of the mind of an earlier poster who suggested that Wikipedia will eventually evolve into an encyclopedia of current events and entertainment trivia.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
You probably do. If you don't, chances are a) you don't give a crap, b) don't have anything worth taking/vandalising, or c) live in a Utopia.
-- Security is never convenient.
Obviously from the discussion in this thread people feel that Wikipedia is a valuable resource and there is a problem with vandalism. Heck they're only asking you to put your key in the lock when you want to change things.
If you're too inconvenienced with having to log into Wikipedia to contribute, then the community is probably better off without you.
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
There is a clear segment of the population that believes in groupthink. If 100 people believe something, especially if those people are in some kind of proximity to a person, in many cases that person will "know" they are correct. More correct than if only 50 people believe the same thing.
This in itself is dangerous. It promotes conformity and sacrifices truth for going with the flow. This is what the core of any "wiki" is.
Putting people together into groups and herding them in the same direction is never a good idea. The "wiki" concept strongly reinforces everyone heading in the same direction and thinking alike. Outliers are "punished" by the group by having their work "edited" to remove non-conformist material.
There isn't anything unique about the "wiki" concept. It has been in effect for thousands of years. The result is always the same. Truth eventually wins and facts win out over concensus. But it is a terrible price in the short term.
Sorry, this was a reply to Goaway.
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
I submit wikipedia is doing just fine. After six years why would you expect more? 65,000 Britannica Micropeadia articles of size ca. 700 words, compare quite well to over a million wikipedia articles. Also look at how long the Britannica took: First edition of ca. 2400 pages after 3 years in 1771.
i tannica
i ca
If anything, the wikipedia community should take a break and relax for a while.
Stephan
References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Br
http://www.answers.com/topic/encyclop-dia-britann
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
... I get "You must log in to view other pages."
Something tells me Citizendium isn't going to replace Wikipedia anytime soon.
http://outcampaign.org/
Obviously from the discussion in this thread people feel that Wikipedia is a valuable resource and there is a problem with vandalism. Heck they're only asking you to put your key in the lock when you want to change things.
So if I want to mess around with people on the internet, I will never, ever create an account?
If you're too inconvenienced with having to log into Wikipedia to contribute, then the community is probably better off without you.
So if I am a person who actually has things to do with his time, Wikipedia is better off without me?
Here's a thought for you: People who want to vandalise wikipedia are generally bored internet lolsters, who have tons of free time and are bored, and will create an account if they have to. People who are actual experts in a field actually have things to do with their time, and if they are faced with useless tasks before being allowed to contribute, they more likely than not will not bother, and will do something else constructive instead.
"Wikipedis is failing to be exactly what the article writer wants it to be."
Hardly, the article writer is trying to hold Wikipedia to THEIR OWN STATED GOALS.
"It's succeeding perfectly in being what it is."
Really? What is it?
More importantly, what does it claim to be?
If you bought a book that said "English to Spanish Dictionary" on the front would you be disappointed if, say, it was actually English to French inside, or the Spanish words were made up?
But hey, claims mean absolutely nothing, right?
"The article writer values his opinion more than reality."
The reality is that Wikipedia in the general case is nowhere near where it says it wants to be.
Yes.
Root Cause Analysis: Idiot editors.
Detailed Analysis: Any contentious article is subject to vandalism, hijacking by partisan editors, and eventual irrelevance, requiring manual intervention to restore factual or nonpartisan entries and lock the article to prevent further abuse. Unintended effects include higher work rates for editorial supervisors, discrediting the entire project by association, among others.
Recommended Fix: Editor Approvals
Workaround: Edit the Editors.
Likelihood of Success: Poor.
Alternative: None.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
The Problem with Wikipedia: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/89/Penn y_Arcade_comic-20051216h.jpg
Yes, my girlfriend is a BitchX
I know it has always been the case in some form or another but any sort of 'heavy' editorial intervention is a bad idea. I see more evidence than before that established users in wikipedia delete legitimate things that I am sure most agree belong to a certain page. 'External links' is one example, the way some users systematically edit certain links out of a page reminds of the failings of dmoz and dmoz editors.
RGdot.com
Because of these reasons some people started in germany the wiki that aims to be more concern about corecness and want to produce shorter better written articels. their mission statement reads nearly as the citizendium.
Am I the only one who has trouble reading all of these learned, cerebral, impassioned opinions on the future of human knowledge from all of this site's Mensa candidates that are written like "wikipedia has it's probblmes but their's no ads so I wil continew too edit they're biochemistry articls as I have a Doctoratt." If you people are so smart why the f*ck can't you spell? Especially when you're weighing in with your oh so educated opinions on how to run an encyclopedia. I'd say easily half the posts in this thread are written so poorly that I want to ignore the writer's opinion. Am I alone in this? Non-native speakers are excepted from my scorn.
How should Wikipedia face these challenges? Scrap the current monolithic article model, and begin publishing incremental edits in XML instead.
This way, independent third-parties could serve customized edit filters of the main Wikipedia database. For instance, one site could serve only articles composed of edits made by scholars. Another site could serve only articles composed of edits approved by a board of editors whose particular editorial style you like. Yet another site could serve edits based on mass moderation. And yet another site could allow you to select from all the available edits to an article in order to tailor the exact article which meets your particular demands. Companies like Google could mirror the edit database and apply their own proprietary search and ranking technologies. Contributors could discuss and evaluate single edits in detail, and so on.
Wikis has opened up editing. Now let's open up viewing as well.
peer review, moderation? a la http://theoryofcomputing.org/
They didn't say anything about the overwhelming bias evident in many entries driven by political agendas.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Here is but one example I can think of off of the top of my head as my suggestions / edits were swept away in a flurry of people yelling NPOV, NPOV!
Take a look at the criticism section on the "Chronicles of Narnia" book.
Most of the criticisms are leveled by one person. The "Hensher, Philip" citation leads to a page that states "The published source of this article is not known." Some of the other critisism citations/links lead to BLOGS published by who knows.
I've always been of the opinion that criticism sections, especially ones that relate to literary works that can be interpreted in a manner of different ways can be useless, especially when "any" and "every" possible criticism must be included under the guise of NPOV. Essentially, what you can get is that a bunch of people with agendas and personal vendettas get opinions published in an "encyclopedia" unless you really watch these sections carefully. In essence, a lot of times, it only give creedence to the wackos and the article degenerates into a series of opinions / counter opinions rather than just the facts.
I think you'll find these things happen more often than you think.
Ultimately, no, it's not that important of an article, not that big of a deal. I just offered this as one concrete example of the "group think" that I've seen.
Wikipedia will fail, yes, but its content model has nothing to do with it.
It is the organization of the project itself that cannot last.
Wikipedia is fraught with pretentiousness, which attracts uptight anal-retentives who simply like to power trip and enforce every last minute consequence of every obscure policy rather than, and sometimes to the detriment of, creating good content--and even if the situation to which they were responding wasn't actually hurting anything.
I believe in the idea of Wikipedia, but the idea of Wikipedia needs to be saved from Wikipedia. To that end, I have created an alternative encyclopedia, Opencycle, that I believe will fix those problems.
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
The Wikipedia editors can do whatever they like with it. Seriously. My comic was up for deletion -- for some reason they decided to keep it. One way or another it really wasn't going to affect me (it's not like I get a lot of traffic from Wikipedia -- I certainly wasn't using it as a traffic magnet or anything).
It's just that the notability thing doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If the topic "webcomics" is in itself notable, then the notability for an individual webcomic should be based on that topic -- the parent topic -- rather than an external factor. A painter who was very influential in surrealist art but not as well known in the larger sphere of painting would be notable as far as surrealist art went, and it would be stupid to exclude that painter from wikipedia just because there weren't a lot of articles written about the painter from outside the genre. But that is exactly the standard that the deltion-happy editors are using for webcomics -- it doesn't matter how influential a webcomic is within the genre, what matters is whether they get a lot of independent press.
But that's ok -- they can do as they please. It won't keep me from considering the whole thing a collossal waste of time.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
So, what I would propose is this:
- Anyone can create or edit any article.
- Anyone can rate any edit that is made to an article.
- Articles and edits with the highest ratings are displayed.
- Users acquire "expertise" in their field according to how their articles and/or edits are rated.
- Gaining expertise provides two benefits: a) Articles and edits in the area of expertise start with an initially higher rating, and b) Votes on articles and edits in the area of expertise carry more weight.
What you would have is a community where experts are chosen from the community, by the community. However, everyone is still able to contribute.
Consider this example. Stephen Hawking writes an article on black holes. Stephen's expertise rating in astrophysics would be huge, because presumably he would have already written dozens of articles, and people would presumably give his articles good ratings. Now, you, Joe Schmoe, are reading the article, and you find a spelling error. Your expertise rating in astrophysics is tiny compared to Hawking's. You're still allowed to make edits to the article, but you do so knowing that you are the "underdog." You fix the spelling and submit your change. The change doesn't take effect, but the page does make a note that someone has suggested an edit (maybe a good way to show this is to change the text color for the section where the edit has been suggested). So anyone reading the article sees that there's an edit hiding there, and can click to see what it is. And if you are correct about the spelling error, people will "vote up" your correction until eventually it will rate highly enough to be displayed. And in fact, this might happen rather quickly because Stephen himself probably looks over his own articles from time to time, and might help you (and himself) by giving your edit a good rating.
The net result is that Stephen's article gets a little better, and you improve your astrophysics expertise rating a little. And you deserve it, even though you only made a spelling correction. You won't gain a huge amount of expertise, because once your correction becomes visible, people just won't care about it any more, so you'll stop receiving votes. But the article as a whole will continue to be read and appreciated by people interested in astrophysics, so Stephen will continue to receive expertise points.
Some additional things to consider...
- Edits with a rating below a certain threshold should just be removed completely to allow pornography, spam, trolls, ignorance, and misinformation to simply disappear without ever even being visible.
- It is important to restrict expertise to certain areas of study. In other words, Stephen Hawking's astrophysics articles don't earn him preferential treatment when writing about baking.
A nice thing about this approach is that the current Wikipedia content could be used as a starting point. Everything would just go in as a new, unrated article and would be voted up or down over time, and the good stuff would rise to the top, while the crap would just fall off the radar.
This is the age-old problem of double blind anonymity. We've been seeing it for years in MMOGs, where 2-5% of the playerbase terrorized UO completely, or where a couple of trolls, if left unchecked, can destroy an online community. There are more people willing to destroy, than there are people willing to police. Given that it is also far easier to destroy than police, those who seek to police wikipedia will always be outpaced by those who wish to destroy. It's not helped by corporate and political whitewashing either. You have people who's job it is to deface wikipedia, whether it's "correcting" the entry for their corporate overlords, or defacing that of the competition. As others have no doubt mentioned, a change board, or editorial board, could work. The problem is that it destroys the community aspect of wikipedia, and it does nothing to prevent infiltration or defacing done by the editorial staff itself.
One of the posts up the page starts with, "this is what I've come up with after a very short period of editing Wikipedia," and goes on to list the problems he perceives. It's amazing how many people who are brand new to the project or who have no experience whatsoever actually working on the Wiki know all the problems the project faces and what the solutions are.
Usually the problems cited include variants on the old canard that Wikipedia doesn't value expertise. This totally misses the point. To say that Wikipedia doesn't value the input of experts is patently false: the project values the contributions of those who are at the forefront of their fields. However, they, like everyone else, are required to supply references for assertions they make in Wikipedia articles. Typically, friction with experts comes because they assert their expertise and expect it to carry weight, and get frustrated when it does not. Experts perceive this as a lack of respect, when in fact they are simply being held to the same standards as everyone else.
Usually the solutions involve complex karma systems, or a tiered article system. This former solution makes the assumption that the edits of established editors are somehow inherently better than those of newcomers to the project; they are not. Just as with the misconception on experts outlined above, Wikipedia content requires sources, not simply trust in the submitter. The latter solution is probably workable, actually, and is being actively considered; the Germans have implemented such a program on de.wikipedia, and the English-language project is inching in that direction.
On The Essay About Wikipedia Failing
Then there's this essay about Wikipedia failing, which makes a number of gross errors in logic. The biggest is the value of Featured Articles as a metric of the quality of the project. For those unfamiliar with the way the FA process works, after a page has been polished to a certain level, the editors who got it to that level have the option of submitting it for FA review, a week-or-so-long process of getting input on the article, and making changes based on peer review. If a team has worked really hard on producing an article, they might pursue it, but they might not. It's a lot of extra work that goes more toward establishing a point of pride than really improving the article. There are plenty of good articles that could probably be shepherded through that process, but it just hasn't meant enough to anyone to get a shiny star atop the page. (This is true with the Good Articles too. There are thousands of articles that could be given this title if people wanted to put them through the peer review process, but there simply isn't clamor to increase the number of certified articles for the sake of increasing the number of certified articles.)
There are also a lot of very good articles that probably cannot, for other reasons, make it to FA status. Some of them are about topics on which there simply isn't more than a few paragraphs worth of material, and so they can't get past the general length requirement to reach FA status despite their quality. Others are about controversial topics, and so while the articles themselves are very well-written, those on either side of the debate would end up derailing the FA process because a lack of the amicable atmosphere a successful peer review requires, and so it's simply not attempted.
It's only logical that the percentage of FAs should fall as the project goes on. As standards rise, articles which were once considered excellent are reevaluated, and no longer make the grade. This is a sign of improvement, not decay.
Criticism of the project is very healthy; every project must have the strength to face and conquer its internal challenges if it is to continue to succeed. But if Wikipedia is threatened with failure, the reasons presented in this essay aren't the reasons why.
--
.nosig
The only people who tend to take any notice of a high-school are located in a very small area surrounding the school. Unless someone gets killed in it.
Star Wars, Star Trek and Pokemon, on the other hand, are all integrated into our culture, and we are likely to see references to them everywhere. References we might want to look up. That is noteworthy, and that is what an encyclopedia is for.
Of your three examples, the E-Wing probably shouldn't be included, it is from "the expanded universe", which has a much lower impact. The Treaty is borderline, the Romulans is an important race, but not one everybody knows. Pikachu should obviously be there, it is the most recognizable figure from the Pokemon universe.
The slower the target system the more you have to optimize to make it fast. A fast server can decieve you into thinking your code is fast when in fact the system is just a crutch for your bad code.
MediaWiki looks fast running on Wikipedia's servers but that's only because of their servers. When it's run on a PIII 900Mhz system you realize very quickly what a bloated piece of garbage MediaWiki is.
Sure it does a lot of stuff. It's just very inefficient at doing it.
Universities should teach courses that require students get software that runs fast on modern systems to run just as fast on old systems without changing the quality of the output.
Work Safe Porn
According to a recent post on wiki-en-l, CZ currently has around 30 editors. Yes, thirty. (And it's already falling victim to infighting!) Calling it a viable competitor to Wikipedia is a gross exaggeration.
Any Wikipedia article should ideally be edited by a number of independent people, to ensure that it doesn't just reflect the opinions of a single person. And a number of people should watch over it, to guard it from vandalism.
This is far from the case today for all articles, but the notability criteria should only let articles through for which it is likely to become true one day.
Science is based on consensus as well. A person might make wonderful discoveries in the lab, but it won't be science unless he can convince other scientists abut their noteworthiness.
What matters isn't where it is based on consensus or not, it always is, but how consensus is achieved. In a democracy, it is about voting. In science, it is about independently unverifiable predictions. In Wikipedia, it is about authoritative references.
Each of these are also based on an underlying consensus about how to achieve the consensus on particular issues.
So if I want to mess around with people on the internet, I will never, ever create an account?
/.
Sure you will, but it's more inconvenient. If [random jerk] wants to create a disposable account for the purposes of vandalism, he/she'll also have to go create a throw-away email address for the password email.
So if I am a person who actually has things to do with his time, Wikipedia is better off without me?
If you consider 10 seconds and a few keystrokes far too inconvenient to warrant sharing your valuable expertise then I would have to say "Yes." You obviously feel that it is important enough for
People who are actual experts in a field actually have things to do with their time, and if they are faced with useless tasks before being allowed to contribute, they more likely than not will not bother, and will do something else constructive instead.
And here's a thought back to you: How do you verify that the expert is in fact the expert you think they are if you don't have them authenticate. How do you propose to differentiate those experts from "lolsters?"
Final thought: If I require a "lolster" to authenticate in some manner, I then have an audit trail. If I discover that they have defaced a page, I can go back and look at everything that they've done across the whole site. As it is now, that discovery is limited to only those things that people notice.
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
A lot of the Wikipedia bashers and nay-sayers have one unique problem: they don't get it. They want academic rigor and precise accuracy in something that is not edited exclusively by academics, experts and elites. Wikipedia is a look in to the hive mind of humanity - and reflects the daily winds of change in the common consensus and the fact that people perceive reality differently.
Wikipedia isn't broke and I hope it stays donation supported for a long time.
-- $G
If you consider 10 seconds and a few keystrokes far too inconvenient to warrant sharing your valuable expertise then I would have to say "Yes." You obviously feel that it is important enough for /.
I have never seen a site where registration required "10 seconds and a few keystrokes". Even so, it's a needless barrier to entry.
And I don't even know why I have a Slashdot account, I found it in an old mail archive with no memory of ever creating the account. Maybe I was drunk? Either way, Slashdot may claim to support anonymous posting but in practice it is impossible to have a discussion on Slashdot without an account to track discussions.
And here's a thought back to you: How do you verify that the expert is in fact the expert you think they are if you don't have them authenticate.
Because they post things that are verifably correct and well-written? The same way you do with people who do with people who have accounts?
Most people will make one or two edits to Wikipedia, ever. There's no audit trail in either case. Those who find it amusing will no doubt create accounts for themselves after a while, for convenience. But that convenience comes only after you've used the site for a while and gotten into the system. Requiring you to register immediately gives no benefit to either the user or the site.
The day wikipedia dies will be like those days when the most popular P2P service of the day gets shut down by the MAFIAA: they get replaced by better ones, quite quicklier than if slowing fading into irrelevance. Wikipedia is not an end, it's a means.
I think at the end of the day Wikipedia needs to make it clear just what they're looking for and who the audience is. They need a universal style and content guide. The trio of policies (Verifiability, No Original Research, and Neutral Point of View) helps but the project is still ghettoised. You have various groups writing for themselves and for like-minded people, which doesn't really work. For example the theoretical physicists and mathematicians are writing largely textbook-like articles utterly impenetrable to the lay reader, and likewise webcomic fans are producing a vast database of character and story guides which aren't of much interest to anyone who isn't already familiar with each comic.
On top of this difficulty for the reader, you wind up with different editorial groups who have different criteria for quality, style, and (my favourite) notability. This leads to the endlessly hilarious border skirmishes when humanities editors start nominating webcomics articles for deletion and videogame fans start blasting tracts from the Matrix articles as original research.
I think at the end of the day they need some sort of "round table" discussion to get these cliques talking and sorting things out. Mix things up, put the webcomics project in charge of science articles for a week or something. It's fun and games when everyone's singing from the same hymn sheet, but by far the most important skill in wiki editing is diplomacy, which you can only get really good at by getting into a lot of disputes.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I think a good way to fix the problems with wikipedia is not for them to spend all their time figuring out which articles to delete, since most of those articles aren't even read, but to spend some more time adding positive tags to the tops of articles.
I've noticed articles tagged as "This article may be biased...", etc. But why not have some people that can prove they know the material to give the article an approval rating. for instance, add a "This article has been verified for errors...", etc. This way instead of simply trying to avoid bad articles we can actually look for good articles.
Even a point system (5/10 stars, etc.) would work. With this system a quality assurance block could even be initiated where any article with a certain approval rating would be locked from anonymous editing and require a submission approval (same as editing but the admins have to approve it first). I'm not saying do this for the majority of articles (that would be mayhem), but instead just for high ranking articles (9 or 10 stars, etc.)
Wikipedia has information that NO OTHER encyclopedia in the world has.
Try and go to Encyclopedia Britannica and find an article on Radix Trees
You can't.
Oh look, they mention binary trees in passing. How quaint.
Wikipedia has a breadth and a depth that is unsurpassed by any other publically and freely available repository of information.
I would call that one hell of a success.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
There are about 1,300 featured articles. There are also about 1,700 good articles. However, there are currently 1,638,336 articles on Wikipedia. This means that slightly more than 99.8% of all the articles on Wikipedia are not considered well written, verifiable or broad or comprehensive in their coverage. A useful exercise is to critically read ten random articles. It is very likely that most or even all will contain poor writing and unsourced material.
How many of those 1,638,336 articles have ever been reviewed? There may be well-written articles that nobody has bothered to go through the effort of nominating it for FA. Furthermore, how many of those articles are on topics that anyone could possibly satisfy the FA requirements for? Not every article covers a deep subject. A large number of them are about cricketers and 90's pop albums.
What the hell difference does the number of articles make anyway? What matters is the articles that people actually read, and that undoubtedly does not include all of them. Is this English article on a Korean-language film eroding the quality of Wikipedia by virtue of being one sentence long?
I agree with a lot of criticism of Wikipedia, but not when it's based on the idea that simply counting the number of articles is a good way to measure quality.
(By the way, does anyone have statistics on the ratio of article text to bickering talk pages and administrative bullshit? If anything is killing Wikipedia, I think it's the fact that the people with the most time and energy invested in it tend to spend it all arguing and applying the stub tag.)
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
I have never seen a site where registration required "10 seconds and a few keystrokes". Even so, it's a needless barrier to entry.
My mistake... I just went to Wikipedia and registered. It took 20 seconds and about 40 keystrokes. The 10 seconds I was originally speaking of was in reference to logging in at a later date to preform additional contributions and/or edits.
Most people will make one or two edits to Wikipedia, ever. There's no audit trail in either case.
You're right, if the vandal only vandalises a single page then there is no audit trail. If on the other hand, it's some bored dweeb vandalising multiple pages then that audit trail becomes invaluable in terms of correcting the damage.
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
Wiki, Wikipedia, Saddam Hussein, Sex, United States, Naruto, Wii, Gerald Ford, List of sex positions, World War II, Playstation 3, Sexual intercourse, Christmas, YouTube, Windows Vista, Adolf Hitler, Pornogrpahy, Deaths in 2007, Martin Luther King Jr., and List of Naruto episodes.
In February, Anna Nicole Smith and Valentine's Day and Windows Vista are now in the top 10, and Gerald Ford is nowhere to be seen in the top 100.
Of these articles, only Gerald Ford is a Featured Article, and of course, he died last month, which is the only reason his page was so popular. Wikipedia, Wii, and Windows Vista are the only listed Good Articles.
The articles that make it to Good or Featured status are the ones that have editors who are interested in pursuing those goals. That in itself is hard work, but the ongoing entropy due to vandalism and unskilled editors is a frustration that distracts those editors from forging ahead with new work.
what if those who edit anonymously have a lower rank than those that edit with a name. Those that prove their identity as an "expert" (say department head at an ivy league school) can lock their posts from editing by anyone that does not meet their higher level of expertise. Perhaps place "expert" text in blue, "knowlegeble persons" text in red, and the average anonymous editor in black. blue can edit blue, red can edit red, and black can edit black. while it will take a full time staff to verify the identites of "experts" and subsequently allow them blue text on pages they are experts in, it shouldn't require too much overhead, while possibly giving wikipedia more authority. just an idea, would there be any major problems with such an approach?
Seems that what is lacking is an effective tiered rating system, seems that an article on many subjects will reach a critical mass of quality where any edits would take away from that quality. But editing is still allowed and more importantly it is only the latest edits that people see when they go to the article page. A solution to this particular problem is to have the rating effect which version of the page people see. This could lead to forking the article, but what other choice is there?
Linear iteration will not bring the best article to the top, because the best version of the article will be reached and then passed by in favor of newer poorer quality edits.
The problem is how to continue to allow edits, but that you could tag certain versions (like you might in a source code repository) as highest quality. Rather than an editorial board (though there may be some role for one) I would propose that each version of an article have a rating based upon popular vote, the one with the highest vote is the default version that people will see. Perhaps it could be the function of the editorial board to occasionally wipe out the vote tallies and let the best rise to the top again. Or actually, votes could just expire after 1 year or something which would allow new revisions a chance to be given proper notice. Potentially a lot of data to maintain, but it would be a built in quality control system rather than one which allows an authoritarian system to creep in which would eventually cause fatal stagnation.
The risk would be that with no certainty that a particular edit would ever be seen on the default article, then people would be less inclined to contribute. So, basically the system should be weighted towards maintaining the quality of long established articles which have reached some sort of threshold based on reader feedback, but have a mechanism that prevents complete stagnation.
And the unstructured discussion tab which is just another wiki without any threads or moderator rating like slashdot can get very unwieldy very fast.
It isn't just aggregating content that other people researched, earning a ton of money on it, and demanding yet still more money. No sane person with IT employment goals would even think of starting an IT startup in Fl*rida, owning a house in Fl*rida and working there, yet Tim insists on massive donations so he can fund a lifestyle that no-one even dreams about. It isn't that no-one even thinks of creating their own kiwipedia.
It's another example of our generation repeatedly insisting that the only way to survive is to provide outrageous lifestyles to a tiny number of leaders. They cling to it like air.
as a rule, npr is no so bland and middle of hte road that arguing about it is like arguing about which company makes the best horse buggy whip.
Even when it rises above the crap that passes for american TV news, it ain't that good; take the peice which ran yesterday as part of a series on mideast history; the seqment talked about the history of iran, and noted "the prime minister was overthrown with cia help"...
thats all. No explaining how this history of us crimminality makes people suspicious.
NPR sucks, and all the liberal support for it is just a waste of energy.
having said that, I suspect that if you took npr back to where it was in the 70s, in terms of salaries, and perks for start people, you could do it without ads.
When the scope of the encyclopedia is as large as that of Wikipedia, there are bound to be lots of controversial topics and poorly written articles. Verifying that every article is perfect, is just asking for too much. For now at least, it is best to leave the judging of an article to the user. Libraries and schools have always had classes on how to research a subject, and critically evaluate an article (eg., reference to verifiable facts, sound reasoning). Since Wikipedia is now quite well known to the general public, it might be a good idea to inform/remind users about how to judge articles. Of course, Wikipedia should continue exploring ways to limit obviously destructive acts like vandalism, but it should also stick to its fundamentals that have made it a success.
"Some have left Wikipedia for Citizendium"
/. I have never even heard of that site.
Some?
In the region of 0.01%?
Outside of
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
NPOV doesn't mean giving equal time to any crackpot who can string two words together. For example, the article on the Holocaust doesn't give equal weight to the possibility that Hitler was just defending the hapless Aryans from predatory Jews. See undue weight. While this does happen, it's not in accordance with policy, and you should refer people who yell "NPOV!" at you to that section. It's a sad truth that those who bang on the rules the most are those who are trying to abuse them.
I looked at the "The Chronicles of Narnia" article, and noticed that the Hensher reference (about racism in the depictions of the Calormen) is hosted on the Discovery Institute, of all places, but Googling for a phrase gets a copy (with popups) citing The Independent of London, on December 4, 1999--which is a real newspaper; the criticism has been reputably put forth, and so has a place in the article.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I emphasize with your perspective, but perhaps rather than constraining the enthusiam for participation that might come from an editorial board, perhaps the biological community could take it upon itself to do more teaching and correction itself so that the number of shamefully inaccurate edits can be corrected. After all, it takes an expert only to save a copy of articles that he or she feels is essentially correct and sufficiently worth preserving and then reposting this to the website, perhaps with additional clarity and educational content, so that future offenders might be less inclined to alter it. All you have to do is hit the save button on your browser and there is nothing to stop a group of like-minded individuals willing to write a webbot to repost these repeatedly. Presumably, the site owner's would welcome the assistance in maintaining its accuracy and finding ways to get experts to train the uneducated, thereby more readily maintaining the integrity of well-supported and well-established facts in a structured way through a loose amalgam of organizations and individuals who benefit by the posting of accurate information on a broad variety of subjects by Wikipedia. We must keep in mind that any source of information that is meant as an encyclopedia is only as good as the ability of the reader to understand and critique it and make use of the information in a logically coherent way. Obviously, this will be true for a variety of different users and hence there is a source for potential confusion. We should not however think that it is greater than what it would be without any Wikipedia pages. I personally think if there is the need for an editorial board, it should be taken up on an informal basis by scientific societies as it is only they who could realistically be in a position to know what is expert disucssion. These could then be farmed out to a community of educators to add to and to improve upon. Perhaps, this is the idea behind Citizenipedia. It makes little sense to create a scientific advisory board, if there is not an educational component.
One thing which I would be glad to see less of in Wikipedia articles is the "cultural uses" of people, things or ideas; basically, references to appearances in movies or video games. Unfortunately, too often I've found fictional information mixed in with real-world information (which I believe is unacceptable), or there can appear to be too much emphasis on video game references and not enough on reality (which I believe makes Wikipedia look immature and affects its credibility).
On one occasion I removed such a cultural reference from an article only to see it reinstated a few days later, and I removed it again. For that particular article, I suspect the time committment vs emotional committment will determine whether the info stays or goes.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
What are you talking about?
The biggest single thing that could be done to save Wikipedia would be to take all of the fiction-related stuff and move it to a new database. Each individual characer in Star Trek or Heroes should not have their own page in an encyclopedia that wants to be taken seriously.
The salt lake city shooter had the word Muslim removed from his wiki page as if being a terrorist and being a muslim are totally unrelated. Yes, Correlation does not equal causation but knowing that someone died of cancer from a three pack a day habit is not irrelevant.
speaking of Keplers laws. Is it correct to say that Keplers first law is completely false? I have heard people claim that that it does not describe planet motion correctly. and planets and the star they orbit, both orbit the center of mass of the planet-star system. The article seems to allude to it, but when I read it I'm left askifn the question, is the first law correct or incorrect.
And if thats the case, why do we even consider the first law anymore?
The nice thing about Wikipedia is that it is a democratic system. So why not have a democratic editorial board?
That is, have two copies of a page - the latest "approved" content and the work in progress version. In order for edits to be moved into the "approved" section, they need to have enough users click a button on the page saying that they approve of it.
Lack of information transfer leads to "dead weight loss" , which multiplies across the economy, having much worse effects than a "general tax".
I know that many here hate ads, but if I decide to research pogo sticks and I see a little unobtrusive text ad in the bottom quarter of the page, leading me to buy a pogo-stick, what is wrong with this?
Look, I'd appreciate a good essay that shows me why Wikipedia is failing. However, the assumptions on the failing essay are that all articles that aren't featured are crap or mediocre and that FA article quality declines over time. It assumes that 1.6 millions articles are terrible, and 3,000 are very good. It assumes that featured articles get worse over time. Sure, that sometimes happens, but rarely in my view. What has happened is that FAC has become more discerning when it comes to quality, and FA article sthat used to be seen as FA quality no longer reach that standard as the standard has risen - not that the article has decreased in quality! When seen in this light, it makes many of these assertions look pretty dopey really.
The open questions, by the way, are either misleading or the wrong questions to be asking.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I work for a management consulting firm and have a background in Electrical Engineering. I come across a lot of data from various sites on a regular basis for my work. Wikipedia is just short of being spectacular and thats because other sites have upgraded themselves to a new level be it university databases or magazine sources. Wikipedia has created the brand name and now need to add some more substance. The articles should contain more depth and width than currently so.
Most of the articles are excellent starting points and rarely have I found articles of a useless nature. They, however, need to bring more relevance on some articles by understanding the user himself. For example, there is info about Mckinsey, Boston Consulting Group, etc but nothing about consulting firms in Asia, Latin America, Europe or others (from my perspective). If they do so then they could expand their user base many fold.
Secondly, if there are financial issues then they have done all the hard work in creating the brand name which can generate revenue for them. They can ask knowledge management firms to gather relevant info and post them (with the board approval of course) as articles/advertising. Whether one accepts or not, when searching on Google for anything, invariably wikipedia articles come up on the first page which is such a fantastic marketing tool and I can say that it would amount to multi millions for wikipedia if they were to capitalize upon that (if they are not already doing so).
If Mark Zuckerberg can get $750 million for Facebook, then wikipedia can also generate revenue in some form or the other while maintaining the brand equity and integrity. Personally, I think they are doing great but can do much better.
Aditya
I tend to disagree with this idea. Part of Wikipedia's value as an information source is that it is the mass conglomeration of populist opinion and perception of the world. This is NOT equal to authority, and it cannot be shifted toward such without devaluing part of its other attributes.
What would be more beneficial is if OTHER sites or subsites gathered expert articles together, such that Wikipedia can link to them or copy and paste from them as desired. Wikipedia provides a mass of information with the caveat that it is what the most active people think, and thus is not necessarilly true. But this serves a useful balance to the traditional authority-based gateways of information, as the content is therefore more diverse in opinion and wide in scope. The goal should be to increase information by tapping the wiki format in a controlled fashion to provide the availability of expert articles, but not to constrain the flow of information by restricting information to that approved by certified experts.
Now, financial or legal problems are one thing (and Wikipedia has had both in the past, afaik). Quality is still something else, and it has that problem too. But a community death can be seen from a mile away as activity declines, and I'm not seeing one.
If this list begins to cover more than the last 2 minutes, it's time to worry.
Treating Wikipedia as authoritative is a Never A Good Idea, but most articles give a useful overview (if skim over the details and ignore obvious vandalism etc) and, more importantly, contain lots of useful hyperlinks. Clicking on the interesting-looking links can quickly get you to trustworthy documents, or at least tell you which books you need to read. Yes, there is lots of vandalism at Wikipedia, but it's almost always self-evident. (If you're familiar with Wikipedia, you can generally tell how credible an article is from it's discussion page and/or edit history.)
While some Wikipedia articles are quite useless, there are hundreds of excellent articles which can be trusted (modulo vandalism). For instance, the article about ASCII is very good, IMO. (Full disclosure: I've edited it; my Wikipedia username is "Chris Chittleborough".) The articles about computer technologies tend to be fairly good in general.
From now on, every time I see one of these wacked front-page plugs for Citizendium on Slashdot, I'm going to give US$100 to Wikimedia.
-Carl
What I find useful about Wikipedia's coverage of controversial topics, is that it's usually apparent from the article that a controversy exists. Once you know a controversy exists, you know to look to other sources (which might include the WP article's history) to get other sides to the story.
Often, sources that are biased to one side of a controversial topic will not make it clear at all that any controversy exists.
You might be amused to know that the response of the Wikipedia community was to re-write the article in a more favourable tone, block the person who wrote it from editing and then move the original text to an obscure place so that the link from here doesn't take you to it any more. Nice to see they are so open to healthy debate and criticism.
This is an example of the old 'Lies, damned lies, and statistics' axiom. It uses 'true' statistics like, 'people who die of natural causes are much more likely to have bad eyesight than those who die of other causes' to conclude that 'bad eyesight protects you from being murdered'. It's complete nonsense.
For instance, the page cites that 340 articles have been removed from 'featured' status... and concludes that therefor article quality is obviously deteriorating. True statistic... false conclusion. If you look at an article given 'featured' status three years ago vs one today it isn't even close... the standards have become MUCH stricter over time. And most of those 340 former featured articles were removed because they stood still while the standards got higher - not because the articles themselves got worse.
Likewise the page cites that only a tiny percentage of articles have been classified as 'Good' or 'Featured' status... but fails to mention that the 'Good article' status wasn't even introduced until after there were already a million articles on Wikipedia and 'Featured' status requires extensive review that couldn't possibly be applied to every article. The conclusion that most Wikipedia articles 'are not good' is simply false... the truth is that most Wikipedia articles don't have such status because they have never been rated at all. Another way of looking at it is that every day a few articles are voted to be of 'Good' or 'Featured' status... but they don't suddenly improve from what they were the day before when no rating had been assigned to them. It is the same article - there is just a vast backlog of articles which have never been rated.
Et cetera. The page misrepresents facts to reach a pre-determined conclusion. The truth is that both Wikipedia's standards for article quality and the number of articles which meet those standards are going up. Those are easily observable facts. The 'Wikipedia is failing' page is smoke and mirrors.