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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.
It's good to see that somebody in academics is appreciating the importance and usefulness of Wikipedia, instead of ranting about inaccuracies and trolls.
Now let's resume our program of bashing Wikipedia.
Knuth is a fan of Wikipedia, but he's a bit leery of the concept, saying that he would not want to have to remain forever on guard after making technically complex contributions, lest his comments be badly reedited.[citation needed]
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
"Prokonsul Piotrus" aka just "Piotrus" is a rather controversial figure. He has been bought up in not one, but TWO arbitration cases, one of which is now in the voting phase.
I stopped trying to add any content to Wikipedia years ago. WP:Notability is, quite possibly, the worst thing to ever happen to that website, and I got sick of deletionism bullshit.
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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Or submit the articles to DocForge where original research is allowed. It's focused completely on programming and computer science topics. It hasn't grown large enough yet to breed overzealous editors, either.
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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)?
I'm not sure that Aaronson really gets it regarding original research and putting his name on it.
Surely, it is meant to work this way:
1. Researcher publishes research in reputable peer-grouped journal, and makes this paper available on the Web.
2. Researcher writes nice, easily digestable Wiki page on the topic, citing the peer-reviewed research as a source.
The Wikipedia prohibition on 'original research' is really a polite way of saying: 'don't assert things that could simoly have been pulled out of your butt'. The reliance on peer-reviewed external sources is supposed to get around this problem.
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Anyone know why my posts recently started appearing with Score 1, despite "excellent" karma? I'd love to know.
He's got a list of complaints which is completely the wrong list. Essentially he seems upset about (1) not getting a byline, (2) neutral point of view, (3) no original research, and (4) having what he writes modified by others. Well, sorry, but those are all basic features of WP. They're not gonna change, and IMO they shouldn't change. WP has problems, but the problems are not on this list.
In my opinion, the biggest problems with WP are (1) the poor quality of the writing, and (2) the tendency of the quality of an article to get worse over time, rather than better. Problem 1 is particularly pronounced in my field, which is physics; most of the physics articles read as if they were written by smart grad students who wanted to show off how smart they were. If there was going to be a #3 on my list, it would have to do with the factors that make me personally feel like working on WP has gotten about as pleasant as a proctological exam. But that's really not a problem with WP, it's just a problem that makes me personally not want to work on WP. Plenty of other people still seem to be happily maintaining it, which I think is great.
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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.
If they and their students write a Wikipedia article in exactly the same way as they write an academic "literature review," they will have no problems at all.
Literature reviews presents no original research; provide some interpretation and context but no personal opinion; and cite sources for every fact. Just like a good Wikipedia article.
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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.
Good thing Wikipedia is a Wiki and not an encyclopedia then.
You know, every time there's a Wikipedia-related thread on Slashdot, there's a massive run of people with anecdotes about how they spent hours and hours improving some article only to have it reverted.
I've never once seen someone post a link to the changes they made.
Please tell us what article it was, and what corrections you made. If you go to the article's history you can post a link to the exact changes that you made, and the subsequent reversion. It'll take two minutes, I swear.
You don't even have to go through all that. Just post your user name and the article title and we can find it ourselves.
It would prove once and for all that Wikipedia is as bad as everyone says it is. I'd love to see it. We'd all love to see it. Then we can fix it and make sure that your corrections actually get implemented properly.
Because otherwise you, like everyone else here, are just posting the equivalent of "my friend's friend died from eating Pop Rocks and Sprite." Baseless accusations that don't help anyone.
My British Lit professor was always pushing us to use Wikipedia as a source for papers and content. After reviewing the list of contributors to the areas that he wanted us to read I found that he was a regular contributor. The point he knew the entries that he was taking us too had correct information because he made sure of. I think what the article is saying is the same thing. Rather than knock it down academics, or at least their grad students, should be making an effort to update the entries regarding Theoretical Computer Science so that the information is viewed as hear say.
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This really comes down to the distinction "Encyclopedia" (read: "A book, or set of books, or digital version of such, containing authoritative information about a variety of topics, arranged in alphabetical order") vs. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (read: "A book containing the compendium of Life, The Universe and Everything, notable or otherwise, as written by everyone with half an interest in writing it.")
Wikipedia intends to be a new-agey digital Encyclopedia, which includes academic drive, unavoidable deletionism, well-cited sources, and some kind of drive for neutrality (no matter how badly it actually fails at such a thing).
What we need is a real-life implementation of the Hitchhiker's Guide. It should be far less careful than Wikipedia (and likely should be a superset of Wikipedia with all of those fun lists like "Things Gregory House has written on his whiteboard on House M.D.") The two sites really should work in concert (i.e. when something gets "demoted" from Wikipedia, it should slide into the Hitchhiker's Guide).
The third effort of having a even-more verified-and-factual Wikipedia is already underway via several projects. Why hasn't anyone looked into the super-set?
p=np is a classic theoretical computer problem that has never been solved
"Let n = 1."
There you go. Why do people get so worked up about this?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
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.'"
How is bringing thousands of people into the mix who don't know what they're talking about (many of whom think they know everything) supposed to improve anything?
Encouraging your students to go "improve" Wikipedia articles isn't encouraging them to speak up, seek knowledge, or debate.
And somebody's already tagged it {{notability}}. *Sigh*
Aaronson is one of the few CS researchers whose name keeps coming up again & again. He's at least as notable as many of the other CSists who have articles. (Yeah, I know. WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS.)
Citizendium looked like a great idea until they decided to dump the Wikipedia content and start from scratch. So now, according to their front pages, Citizendium has 8,700 articles and English Wikipedia has 2.6 million. If you want to look something up, chances are it won't be in Citizendium. So you go to Wikipedia instead. And we all know everybody else goes to Wikipedia as well.
If you have a contribution to make, why bother with Citizendium? Chances are nobody'll read it. Academics like their names on things but they also like those things to be read. If you contribute to Wikipedia, the worst thing that can happen is that it gets reverted, and nobody reads that either.
When a new project forks Wikipedia while fixing its organizational problems, then it might attract the best academic contributors. It has to fulfil the following criteria:
Then, smart people can contribute in the hope that the whole project won't get dumped in favor of Wikipedia's established content. The new project can benefit from enhancements to Wikipedia. And contributors to the new project can hope that even if it does die, their changes will have as much chance of surviving in Wikipedia as if they'd made them directly. All of this won't be easy to get right, but they're similar problems to distributed development, and computer scientists are the best placed to solve them.
For now, Wikipedia may be inefficient in all kinds of ways, but it's also an extremely successful project. It has a lot of good content, a lot of contributors, a lot of readers, and a lot of momentum. A rival can't ignore all that.
why would the average person bother to spend the time to contribute, if all he wanted to do was attack? There are much better places for that.