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Improving Wikipedia Coverage of Computer Science
Pickens writes "MIT computer scientist Scott Aaronson has an interesting post on how to improve Wikipedia's coverage of theoretical computer science. Aaronson writes what while Wikpedia will never be an ideal venue for academics because 'we're used to (1) putting our names on our stuff, (2) editorializing pretty freely, (3) using "original research" as a compliment and not an accusation, and (4) not having our prose rewritten or deleted by people calling themselves Duduyat, Raul654, and Prokonsul Piotrus,' he identifies twenty basic research areas and terms in theoretical computer science that are not defined on Wikipedia, and invites readers to write some articles about them. Article suggestions include property testing, algorithmic game theory, derandomization, sketching algorithms, propositional proof complexity, arithmetic circuit complexity, discrete harmonic analysis, streaming algorithms, and hardness of approximation. One commenter suggests that professors should encourage students to improve the Wikipedia articles about topics they are studying. 'This will help them understand the topic and at the same time improve Wikipedia.'"
Essentially all that you have to do (or should have to do) to avoid the "original research" claims is to cite sources. It's not intended to be treated like some sort of scientific journal, it's intended to be an encyclopedia; everything put in the Wikipedia should have been published elsewhere first. Seems reasonable.
A problem to watch out for is that if you add your own research to Wikipedia (even with all the proper citations), you'll get slapped by some self-important wikipedian because it is apparently wrong and evil to have the person directly responsible for the research itself to be included in the creation of encyclopedia content about said research.
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A while back, about a year ago, I spent my time correcting wikipedia - the corrections I made were accurate, meaningful, and relevant to the topic. However, my additions and changes were mostly removed within two hours of my posting. Perhaps those who run wikipedia do not like my educated improvements. One incident that sticks was when a friend and I added a section dedicated to the problems with genetic algorithms; by the next day it was removed. I had sources, a good and well written arguement, and it was fairly long and not biased (at least my professor thought so).
As for adding new topics, one may try, but seeing as additions are not appreciated, than what would become of new articles (even stubs)?
Most academic issues are handled worse than computer science.
Most of the CS coverage addressed on wikipedia is the kind of stuff that working computer programmers would be interested. There are a few theory articles, but you can't expect much from them. Writing in CS theory or other areas in mathematics is difficult, and requires more than citations. It requires strong writing and editing skills, and strong understanding of the subject at hand. I wouldn't expect to get more than a rough overview of a field from its wikipedia entry.
Deletionists are horrible horrible people. Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia, it's a website with virtually limitless room for expansion. You don't have to fit everything inside a set of books. Guidelines for inclusion should be incredibly lax.
Maybe you're right, but thus far you've acted exactly as the parent post described: Complaining about how bad Wikipedia is without providing any links as evidence. So why not show us these "minor edits" that were reverted by corrupt admins so we can judge for ourselves?
ich muß mehr Kuhglocke haben
Are you joking? Guidelines for inclusion are incredibly lax.
If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article.
Are you reading that? Any subject that's been mentioned in a magazine/book/journal/newspaper/website with some amount of editorial control is acceptable.
That's every video game, every book, every television show and every episode of each, every politician, every rock band, rapper, and hit song that's ever been on the radio, every school, and every city, in the entire world, forever and ever,
and that's without even starting an argument! The number of fictional characters and abstract concepts on Wikipedia is absolutely staggering.
You really want it to be laxer than that? Here's where you can find that stuff: THE REST OF THE INTERNET.
Deletionists are following the Golden Rule that summarizes the purpose of Wikipedia and all of the debates that have ever occurred on it, the one part that no one seems to get, no matter what:
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that summarizes research from reliable secondary sources.
That's what it is and that's all it's ever going to be. If someone's doing something you don't like, either a) you're wrong or b) they're a troll and you shouldn't give up so easily. How is that any different from the rest of the Internet? How is that any different from real life? How could Wikipedia possibly pursue its goal better than it does without restricting people more?
just think of Wikipedia as a reflection of the social intelligence and cultural health (or is it social health and cultural intelligence?) of a society.
if a society is healthy, and its population consists of relatively intelligent, mature, unselfish individuals, then a Wikipedia-type knowledge repository would be a great success and a very useful cultural tool. on the other hand, if a society is plagued by social issues resulting in a large population of emotionally-dysfunctional sociopaths, then the signal-to-noise ratio might be very low due to there being more trolls than legitimate users.
a Wikipedia-type site probably wouldn't work very well in a society dominated by greed and the selfish pursuit of personal financial interests either, as you'd probably have more spam ads than legitimate edits. likewise, a society dominated by a culture of anti-intellectualism might result in a collaborative knowledgebase full of misinformation.
all things considered, Wikipedia has been a relatively big success. sure, there's the odd troll, misinformation or spam edit, but one doesn't have to "remain forever on guard after making technically complex contributions." there are enough relatively intelligent and well-intentioned users to drown out the noise from idiots/assholes. most users try to keep an eye open for bad edits, whether intentional or unintentional, and make corrections when appropriate. and as long as everyone does that, the burden of "guarding" the integrity of the information on Wikipedia gets distributed between millions of users, meaning each user has to do very little to maintain the quality of the site.