Wikipedia Is Nearing "Completion"

Hugh Pickens writes "According to Rebecca J. Rosen, it may seem impossible for an encyclopedia of everything to ever near completion, but at least for the major articles on topics like big wars, important historical figures, and central scientific concepts, the English-language Wikipedia is pretty well filled out. 'After an encyclopedia reaches 100,000 articles, the pool of good material shrinks. By the time one million articles are written, it must tax ingenuity to think of something new. Wikipedia,' writes historian and Wikipedia editor Richard Jensen, 'passed the four-million-article mark in summer 2012.' With the exciting work over, editors are losing interest. In the spring of 2012, 3,300 editors contributed more than 100 edits per month each — that's a 31 percent drop from spring of 2007, when that number was 4,800. For example, let's take the Wikipedia article for the War of 1812 which runs 14,000 words cobbled together by 3,000 editors. Today, the War of 1812 page has many more readers than it did in 2008 — 623,000 compared with 434,000 — but the number who make a change has dropped precipitously, from 256 to just 28. Of those original 256, just one remains active. The reason, Jensen believes, is that the article already has had so many edits, there is just not that much to do. Jensen says Wikipedia should now devote more resources toward getting editors access to higher-quality scholarship (in private databases like JSTOR), admission to military-history conferences, and maybe even training in the field of historiography, so that they could bring the articles up to a more polished, professional standard. 'Wikipedia is now a mature reference work with a stable organizational structure and a well-established reputation. The problem is that it is not mature in a scholarly sense (PDF).'"

Comments

Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[eldavojohn]

This is the one where upon completion of recording all worthwhile knowledge, Wikipedia writes the final article describing Wikipedia itself. Following that, it detonates a bomb that implodes the universe back to a singularity so that no new information can be created and its volumes are complete for eternity. Luckily, as a Slashdot user, Wikipedia knows absolutely nothing about me or my intentions so I'll just take my Scooty Puff Jr. here over to the Wikimedia Foundation's servers ...

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[Anonymous Coward]

Luckily, as a Slashdot user, Wikipedia knows absolutely nothing about me or my intentions ...

Wrong!

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[SomePgmr]

I'd rather everyone just moved on to simple.wikipedia.org now. Many of the articles are waaay too dense for me to grok, and most of the 'simple' versions just don't exist yet.

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[TWX]

I thought it was when Colossus and Guardian joined forces to protect and enslave the human race...

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[RaceProUK]

Wikipedia writes the final article describing Wikipedia itself

Hurry - that final article already exists... Though you really need the Scooty Puff Snr if you want to succeed.

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[Fallingcow]

Articles in regular Wikipedia on more advanced topics—especially in mathematics—could do with some work in that direction, too.

Certainly the articles don't need to be dumbed down overall, but it would be nice if at least the introductory paragraph were comprehensible to someone who hasn't spent years studying the topic, or hours following an ever-growing tree of other articles the summary links to (and others that those summaries link to, and so on) just to try to understand a majority of the nouns and verbs therein. It's often difficult to even guess at what kind of thing the article concerns without opening at least a half-dozen other tabs.

Maybe some of the articles can't be explained, even at a high level, in simpler language, but the sheer quantity of summaries that drive me to a link-following frenzy in an effort to grasp their basic meaning lead me to believe that a lot of the editors and authors in some areas of Wikipedia aren't good at explaining their field to laymen, don't care about doing so, or don't want anyone to do so.

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[readin]

Articles in regular Wikipedia on more advanced topics—especially in mathematics—could do with some work in that direction, too.

Certainly the articles don't need to be dumbed down overall, but it would be nice if at least the introductory paragraph were comprehensible to someone who hasn't spent years studying the topic, or hours following an ever-growing tree of other articles the summary links to (and others that those summaries link to, and so on) just to try to understand a majority of the nouns and verbs therein. It's often difficult to even guess at what kind of thing the article concerns without opening at least a half-dozen other tabs.

I agree. The first page of any math article should be easily accessible to someone with a BS in a STEM field

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[gmuslera]

Always will be an incomplete article, the one that links all the articles that don't link to themselves. See? no need for ending the univer

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[AnotherAnonymousUser]

Google has a similar plan for the world :)

http://www.theonion.com/articles/google-announces-plan-to-destroy-all-information-i,1783/

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[Anonymous Coward]

While there are a lot of articles that could still use better introductions, some fields, especially mathematics, are written with almost a programmer's mindset of modularity and effort to remove redundancy. Since a lot of math builds upon other concepts, instead of just repeating the explanation of such concepts, generous use of links to other articles are used as an effort to reduce maintenance effort. This can make reading much more difficult if jumping into something deep into a field you are not experienced with. Assuming the article is dense, but well linked, you could end up with dozens of browser tabs open trying to understand the definition. Kind of the nice thing about math is you can actually learn it by assembling the pieces, although it takes a lot of time. But in the end, many of those concepts are going to be difficult and time consuming to learn without an appropriate background. And while articles could handle some repetition in terms of introducing the concept and field that a particular concept falls under, at some point a line has to be draw such that you don't end up with every article trying to teach a whole subfield of background.

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[skids]

This. The math articles are actually very good, but you have to make it past the hurdle of being able to comprehend WTF the article is about before you can appreciate the power of all the crosslinks. Many of them drop almost immediately into notations, which even if notations don't scare you off, generally aren't very helpful to the objective of description. Also they follow the general mathematical convention of "here's a big bunch of symbols, now here is what each symbol means" instead of what humans naturally need: here is thing thing, we'll use symbol to represent it, and here are these other things with these symbols, and what's going tpo happen is we are going to divide this generic concept by this other generic concept and add this other thing and now here's the big mess of symbols that describes exaclty how we go about that and here are a few things you might want to notice in that big mess of symbols because they are important/interesting."

It always amazes me after studying a mathematical topic how easy it is to picture the very simple structure of meaning after you already understand it, but how very hard it was to upload that simple structure from the printed page to the wetware. I often hold out hope that a true talent for visual art combined with modern multimedia might make that whole process much smoother. I keep meaning to suggest teaming students from our art department with math students to try to come up with art/video that explains math.

What I would not like to see is what we see on things like the Science channel where documentaries about scientific subjects are really just human interest stories about the scientists involved. That material should be on its own page, except for the tie-ins.

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Its not so much that they're dense, many of them are so badly written as to be almost illegible. I appreciate that there's a reason good writers get paid, but some sort of an effort to make it not so much like a manual for a DVD player might be an idea.

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[Anonymous Coward]

Scooty Puff Jr. suuuuuuuuu------ccksssss~

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[firewrought]

especially in mathematics

YES!! It seems like there is a secret cabal of mathematicians who try to make anything even partially math-related as dense as possible.

Take, for instance, Wikipedia's article on Grundy Numbers. It looks like there's some good technical stuff there, but what's lacking is a less technical walkthru for an educated general audience. Contrast with this page, which takes a little while to get there but is MUCH more accessible.

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[wonkey_monkey]

I agree. The first page of any math article should be easily accessible to someone with a BS in a STEM field

Hey, kids read this site, y'know. Pervert!

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[menno_h]

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tutorial.
If you want to learn a topic, you don't look it up in an encyclopedia, you read an introductory tutorial. Wikipedia is a reference for people that already know a thing or two about the subject.
Reading the article on Galois Theory with a minimal maths background would be like reading the ANSI standard for C while having programmed only in logo.

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[Anonymous Coward]

Right in the first sentence of that article though it says Grundy numbers come from combination game theory, and the article on combination game theory has a lot more less technical overview of the field. Additionally the Sprague–Grundy theorem article has some more background too, also linked in the intro. If there are issues with getting enough people editing and maintaining articles, adding more redundant content has quite a risk of making a mess, with concepts explained and introduced in many places.

Maybe a template system could be used to offer expandable introductions to concepts in other articles that are maintained in one place... although that is going to just shift the barriers to getting enough help and maintenance from one place to another as it complicates things.

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia is a general purpose encyclopedia, explicitly in the model of other such encyclopedias like Britannica that are written to be accessible to laymen. It is not a technical reference manual.

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[Fallingcow]

If you want to learn a topic, you don't look it up in an encyclopedia, you read an introductory tutorial. Wikipedia is a reference for people that already know a thing or two about the subject.

Interesting perspective. I see a general-purpose encyclopedia as serving primarily as a resource for the non-expert, rather than a collection of many separate specialized resources for those already heavily invested in a given field. If it does more than that, fine, but to me that's the core mission of an encyclopedia, particularly for one the title of which isn't followed by the words "of [topic name here]".

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[lgw]

The whole point here is that each page should be understandable in isolation to someone with general technical background. Having boilerplate text that explains certain concepts in every article is a good thing.

If you ever read techincal stuff on investing, you'll see the same boilerplate explaining what an option is a million times. It doesn't hurt anyone to drop that boilerplate in whenever an option is metioned, nor to skip that well-known paragraph while reading.

That's what it means to write for a general audience.

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps math itself isn't designed properly and needs an overhaul.

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah...they could definitely use a lot more run-on sentences.

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[Arancaytar]

Wikipedia writes the final article describing Wikipedia itself

That happened shortly after Wikipedia was founded. :P

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[orgelspieler]

As someone who graduated magna cum laude with a math minor, I wholeheartedly agree. Anytime I have trouble sleeping, I pull out my mobile and try to read any math article that mentions rings or gamma functions. Instant zombification.

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, something like inline functions or #include statements ...

#include <what_an_option_is>

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[lgw]

Yes, something like inline functions or #include statements ...

#include "what_an_option_is"

That woud be an elegant solution.

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[UnknownSoldier]

> Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tutorial

Which is *precisely* why it is total crap. It has the potential to be SO MUCH MORE then just a encyclopedia. Instead they piss away their opportunity to be great.

Every article should be broken down into at *least* 4 sections:

* Layman introduction (either 8th grade, or 12th grade)
* Theory - Professional Description - notation, terminology, etc.
* Implementation & Examples
* Tutorial
* Reference
* Related Info - such as Trivia
* Optional: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Frequently asked Questions & Answers

One man's junk is another man's treasure. SOME people LOVE trivia. Others hate it. The solution is to be appeal to BOTH people. For the people that hate trivia they never have to view it.

Also, when you stupid crap like this Artist who has 9 CD's actively being sold on Amazon yet STILL is refused to be listed on Wikipedia you know the admins are fucking clueless.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Mehdi
i.e.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehdi

Does it REALLY take up THAT much disk space and network storage to be COMPLETE ??

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[Anonymous Coward]

Then every article devolves into a gigantic mess of information which will beg for someone to simplify it into encyclopedia form so they can more easily digest it. Basically, you would recreate a problem that Wikipedia tried to SOLVE.

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[Anonymous Coward]

but that Scooty Puff Jr. SUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKED

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[ShakaUVM]

>Articles in regular Wikipedia on more advanced topicsâ"especially in mathematicsâ"could do with some work in that direction, too.

Yep. I've been studying music theory, and all the music theory pages on Wikipedia are written with the understanding that you already know music theory. It's a ridiculous situation. I once ran around in a circle of pages trying to just find the definition of some basic terms.

On a related note, I know Richard Jensen in real life, and have worked with him for a number of years. He's not a very huge fan of the "everyman" aspect of Wikipedia - he doesn't believe in citing all relevant sources, but only those related to "the truth" (i.e. those he agrees with), and will constantly trot out his history credentials in an edit war, and refuse to allow dissenting voices in that disagree with him.

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does one website have to be everything to everyone? Let Wikipedia focus on being a good general-purpose encyclopedia. Let some other website, a wiki even, focus on being a good technical reference. Let Amazon or iTunes or whatever maintain a comprehensive list of every musician ever. These are all different functions that don't need to be performed by a single website.

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[wisnoskij]

Ya, I remember back a few years ago when as a university student you could use wikipedia to look up information on mathematical concepts and equations. Then they changed everything and made it basically useless.

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole point here is that each page should be understandable in isolation to someone with general technical background.

At least with mathematics, this would mean many articles would be anywhere from 90 to 99% boiler plate. How many times does Wikipedia need to define what a group is instead of just linking to the definition of a group? There are, for example, 250+ articles in the group theory category directly, plus 29 subcategories, not to mention applied use of group theory in some other articles.

I can only think of three ways to handle stuff like that (not to say this is exhaustive, just what I can think of). First, you can write boilerplate into every article. This would make each article self-contained, but would inflate the volume of math text needed to be maintained by at least a factor of ten while not adding much new information, just spreading it around instead. The second would be to use Wikipedia's template system to transclude a single source of text into many articles. This reduces the volume of text needed to be maintained, but does make it more complicated to be used, as now editors have to understand some amount of the template system, and the boiler plate source need to be maintained in a generic way that can be fit into other articles. The third is to link to a single source material, which is what Wikipedia currently does. It has both editing simplicity and minimum editing redundancy, at the cost of dense articles. It does at least help keep articles concise so that you wouldn't have to spend as much time skipping over boiler plate in every article (and if you made it so boiler plate was expandable/collapsible... how would that be much different than just opening in another tab?).

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[Anonymous Coward]

Layman introduction (either 8th grade, or 12th grade)

Not everything can be made accessible to those levels, at least uniquely. As in, there would be many concepts that the layman's introduction is going to be the same for several different detailed topics. Wikipedia already tries to deal with that by putting such things in an umbrella topic that gives a more general introduction, while keeping the detailed stuff separate for those that want that. And I would hope by the 12 grade, someone would have some basic grasp of prerequisites and hierarchical structure to information, just enough to the point that if something said, "This is an object is part of theory XYZ" that they might think they should know what XYZ is before continuing.

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia is a reference for people that already know a thing or two about the subject.

That is exactly what a general encyclopedia is not, it is a reference that is accessible to people who know nothing about the subject yet. What's the point of putting thousands upon thousands of subjects in a single reference work if not a single one of the readers is capable of understanding more than a small fraction?

I'm very happy that Wikipedia gives far more detailed information, but it should remain accessible to people who don't yet know anything about a subject.

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[Anonymous Coward]

I have this problem with math articles too, while at the same time I'm very happy with the level of detail used for math subjects on the English language Wikipedia. But without a gentle introduction that level of detail becomes a high treshold for non-experts. I think there are two problems.

First, mathematicians tend to use math as a language. They do that for good reasons, but for a non-mathematician their texts often are like reading a supposedly English text that is so full of Latin that only people fluent in Latin can understand it without a lot of effort. Another analogy that comes to mind is the discussion about comments in source code. There are people who argue that the code itself explains what it does, and others (of which I am one) who argue that the point of the comments is to describe what you're doing at a higher level, including why it works the way it does. It's far more difficult to reverse engineer the big picture from an explosion of details than it is to make sense of the details if you understand the big picture first. Many mathematical concepts can be explained in a few paragraphs or even sentences of plain English well enough for a non-mathematician to get the general idea. For many people that will be all they wanted to know anyway, for others it makes the detailed description much more accessible.

Second, the structure of Wikipedia tends to fragment information while the authors try to avoid redundant explanations. Detailed explanations should be in one place as much as possible. But knowledge structured as a network is not very accessible. There is no clear starting point for building understanding unless every page can serve as the starting point. Pages that change may cease to be good references for pages linking to them. And there is a real risk of creating circular references. If A requires knowledge of B and C, B of D through F, C of F and G, and finally D and E of A a simple lookup changes into a study that takes several iterations through the information to finally 'get' it. And quite likely several of these subjects turn out to be irrelevant for what you came to find out, only you need to understand them somewhat to understand they aren't relevant. Again, plain English introductions that give a basic understanding of what the page describes would save a lot of trouble and make the information much more accessible.

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia is nothing more than a collection of poorly written seventh grade book reports. If you don't believe that visit the articles about Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga.

VisionAndPsychosis.Net -- see the "Letters" page for a full explanation of Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga.

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[yusing]

It appears to me that you're passionate enough about Mehdi to start an article yourself.
There are a lot of notable musicians with better qualifications from decades back that are far from finished. So either join the party or get in line.

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[Pseudonym]

This is the one where upon completion of recording all worthwhile knowledge, Wikipedia writes the final article describing Wikipedia itself.

FWIW, in Asimov's version, disaster was averted because the Universal AC got stuck in an edit war with itself.

Re:Oh Yeah, I Remember This Episode

[UnknownSoldier]

> It appears to me that you're passionate enough about Mehdi to start an article yourself.

I already did. It got deleted because it wasn't "notable" enough.

I more important battles then to fight clueless admins who don't have a fucking clue how Wikipedia is _supposed_ to work.

Coulnd't add to it if you wanted to

[alphatel]

Not for nothing, but Wiki editors are so obtuse and didactic, that attempting to add anything of relevance has become a chore unworthy of its meritlessness.

Re:Coulnd't add to it if you wanted to

[poetmatt]

Not to mention that tons and tons of bias and misleading comments escape articles instantly once a company realizes they can pay people to "manage" their wiki page - aka every technology page on wikipedia.

In addition to the fact that it will never be nearing completion, the phrasing is simply incorrect.

Re:Coulnd't add to it if you wanted to

[arth1]

Not only editors, but the various scripts that automatically undo any and all changes to articles without anyone even looking at the changes.

It's become such a chore and so many hoops to jump through to add or correct wikipedia that I'm not surprised that people won't bother anymore.

Re:Coulnd't add to it if you wanted to

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention paid shills. Try criticizing a large successful corporation, see how many minutes that lasts. Or presenting a fact in any important article that isn't part of the official creed and you'll instantly be called a conspiracy theorist and reverted until kingdom come and attacked with think rulebooks. Nevermind any references, reliable or not, you'll get slapped around with "undue weight" and other similar catch-all tools.

Toe the line bitch.

Re:Coulnd't add to it if you wanted to

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. I put up with bureaucratic $#!+ at work like that only because they pay me for it. Wikipedia can go pound sand.

Re:Coulnd't add to it if you wanted to

[ralfalot]

Amen!!! I tried to add to the list of light-weight web servers. Even though I followed the rules AND used the exact format of another entry, mine was deleted. I had/have no stake in the server that I was trying to add, only trying to put there for completeness of the article. It's a nice site to "use", but not a nice one to contribute to. I speculate that it will eventually fade away and be replaced by something else.

Re:Coulnd't add to it if you wanted to

[wjousts]

And the over-zealous moderators. I can't edit from work anymore because some moderator decided I was on an open proxy (I'm not) and refuses to do anything about it. Oh well, no more editing in my lunch hour.

Re:Coulnd't add to it if you wanted to

[Anonymous Coward]

The tone of this suggests that wikipedia is very well managed.

You're trying to add unverifiable accusations about companies you hate, and various conspiracy theories, but they won't let you? Allow me to play you a song from this tiny violin.

Re:Coulnd't add to it if you wanted to

[tjonnyc999]

Agree 1000%.

A friend of mine asked me to write an article about his company, which I did, taking a well-established article about another company in the same industry as a template. It's a 10-minute job.

The article gets taken down due to "lack of notability". When I questioned how come a company that has operations on 2 continents, employs several hundred people, and offers more products than its next 4 competitors combined, is somehow "not notable", I got back a vague reply along the lines of "well, unless it's mentioned in a reputable source, like the New York Times or Wall Street Journal..." Yeah, OK, a totally obscure technology like supersonic emulsifiers is REALLY going to make front-page news in NYT.

So, I do some research, find several industry awards the company has won, and re-post the article with references to those awards, AND an explanation on the talk page that "see, it IS notable, it's been getting awards".

It gets taken down for "spamming suspicious links".

So, if there are no links, it's not notable. If there are links, it's spamming. At this point, I'm pissed and it becomes a personal challenge.

I post a photo of a unique item - it gets taken down because "it MIGHT exist in the public domain". No, it might not. It does not. Because this company is the ONLY one that makes it. I explain this to the editors. Doesn't matter - as long as there's some hypothetical made-up possibility of a public-domain alternative, you can't post original images. Even if the copyright holder chooses the "I give Wikipedia permission to use this image" option. (which raises the question, why the hell is that option there in the first place?).

And so on, and so on. Long story short, after a dozen-plus iterations of this BS I gave up on it.

As long as there are self-aggrandazing jagoffs taking down article for absolutely random reasons, and refusing to consider any explanations, sources, links, supporting evidence, or plain simple COMMON SENSE, there will be more and more potential authors who are disenchanted with Wikipedia.

Re:Coulnd't add to it if you wanted to

[Anonymous Coward]

Create an account?

Re:Coulnd't add to it if you wanted to

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up! I don't care if its already score 5, it should be score 11. (Yes, the knob should go to eleven!)

This quote made me laugh:

"Wikipedia is now a mature reference work with a stable organizational structure and a well-established reputation"

By its very nature, wikipedia is *not* a work one can reference if they want anything more than a zero on any academic or professional work. Its well established reputation is that of being "unreferenceable". It's not that it isn't mature in a scholarly sense, it's that by definition it is completely useless in a scholarly sense. Any additional "aging" will never change the fundamental design that makes it so useless.

Moreover, they're worse than NPR with their "oh cry for the children and give us money" crap. Drives me nuts. "An appeal by some douche who had a good idea and decided he didn't want to monetize it using one of the fundamental building blocks of american society, i.e. capitalism." Go suck an egg, wikipedia. Not long ago, congress would scream commie and put your figurative head on a figurative pike, and as far as I'm concerned rightfully so. ::double checks that I'm posting as AC:: okay, good.

Re:Coulnd't add to it if you wanted to

[gmhowell]

Create an account?

Oh irony.

Re:Coulnd't add to it if you wanted to

[FunkSoulBrother]

Could you link to the edit history? Usually that only happens when people add stuff to lists that doesn't have it's own wikipedia page (usually complete with external links to a website).

Seriously though, link it. I'd be happy to help correct the error.

Re:Coulnd't add to it if you wanted to

[wjousts]

I have an account, and I'm logged in. I'm still blocked.

Re:Coulnd't add to it if you wanted to

[Anonymous Coward]

The real irony is that gmhowell's a troll with several different registered user accounts on slashdot.

Re:Coulnd't add to it if you wanted to

[gmhowell]

The real irony is that gmhowell's a troll with several different registered user accounts on slashdot.

Name three.

Re:Coulnd't add to it if you wanted to

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't have to now. You're down moderated as a troll again gmhowell right here, hahaha http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3217847&cid=41815427 Watch that post get miraculously up moderated after this everyone. That's proof enough of how a 1 line karma whoring loser with multiple registered slashdot user accounts like you operates and others recognized it with the down mod of your post in that link.

Terrible editing culture

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, here's a thought: Maybe the reason fewer people are editing Wikipedia articles is because 90% of the time, edits get instantly reverted by some spaz who's jealously guarding their page, typos and all. I've made a half-dozen edits to Wikipedia, and every single one of them has been reverted within an hour or two. And we're not talking factual or debatable edits here, I'm referring to things like incorrect usage of it's/its or adding a citation.

Re:Terrible editing culture

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, here's a thought: Maybe the reason fewer people are editing Wikipedia articles is because 90% of the time, edits get instantly reverted by some spaz who's jealously guarding their page, typos and all. I've made a half-dozen edits to Wikipedia, and every single one of them has been reverted within an hour or two. And we're not talking factual or debatable edits here, I'm referring to things like incorrect usage of it's/its or adding a citation.

Diffs or or it didn't happen!

Re:Terrible editing culture

[0xdeadbeef]

Diffs or or it didn't happen!

I was going to go with

[citation needed]

Re:Terrible editing culture

[lkcl]

i've also encountered problems, especially with technical articles where the "common wisdom" is terribly misinformed. i won't mention which articles because i was so alarmed and intimidated by the unwelcoming way in which those people who were better informed of wikipedia's "policies" used those policies to bully their way towards reverting everything back towards the ignorant and technically mis-informed perspectives left me feeling very much like i never want to edit wikipedia ever again.

the problem with these particular articles is that they are highly scientifically technical, yet quite obscure at the same time. one of them people wanted to believe that the technology would fail: it is therefore full of a scientific "review" which, wrongly, concludes that the technology could not possibly work. the other, people want to believe that the technology would *succeed*. and, because there *are* no successful examples of that technology, there are no successful products out there which can be used to demonstrate that the wikipedia article is plain wrong and misleading people!

in both cases, the lack of citeable material resulted in an edit war verging on vandalism, and in the end i went "fuck it, i don't need the hassle" and walked away. in neither case were the reviewers welcoming: in one case they actually believed that *i* was the vandal, in direct contravention of wikipedia's "welcoming" policy which is supposed to assume that all contributors are acting with integrity. in fact what had happened was that i had not logged in, so was editing by IP address purely by mistake, and, because of what followed and the level of intimidation and abuse directed at me i am extremely glad that i *did* make that mistake.

wikipedia has a lot to answer for.

Re:Terrible editing culture

[NotBorg]

Link to the history of your unspecified articles or you're a troll. 90% of comments like yours are exaggerated and based off of the perception granted by listening to the internet echo chamber. Your post is devoid supporting evidence and sounds like an echo to me.

I'm not saying this type of thing doesn't happen. I'm saying that I doubt you've participated in Wikipedia enough to make such a wide generalization. What did you do to try to resolve the issue?

Re:Terrible editing culture

[readin]

I haven't encountered such people, though I did have a bad experience with some very unreasonable editors when I tried to edit a page related to global warming.

I think the behavior actually reflects the fact that so many articles have become good. When you work hard on something, spending time discussing and sometimes having heated arguments with other editors, you come to take a certain pride in your work and some relief in being "done". And if you have a good article, most of the edits will make the article worse so it becomes easy to get in a habit of reverting everything. Also, even some good attempts at editing may be making a change that has been tried, discussed - perhaps with a lot of bad feelings if the change is good enough to be worth arguing about - perhaps resulting in a compromise - and there can be a hesitation to re-open the topic.

I think a good editor will recognize a good faith effort and explain (on in the revert comment if there is space, or on the talk page if not) direct to the new editor to the talk page for further discussion. But I have seen editors who just don't have the patience.

Re:Terrible editing culture

[fermion]

If we say that all interesting content is going to be covered, that all edits are going to be reverted, then we are also saying that we are going to judge Wikipedia the same as an idealized print encyclopedia, then we are missing the whole point. First, encyclopedias were never only about facts and figures. If we look at older editions, all encyclopedias have biases, fallacies and outright lies. They were, arguably, an important cultural artifact documenting a specific time and set of values.

Of course print encyclopedias are quite irrelevant, but in an effort keep them relevant the embedded interests tried to create this idealized encyclopedia in which facts were pristine and perfect as they could be. Any error was a temporary misunderstanding of other facts that would soon be corrected by the magical editors who were superior to anyone else in the world. This of course never existed, and if Wikipedia is going to reach it's full potential it has to be very clear about this.

The value of wikipedia is that if reflects a culture that can change more quickly that the print cycle of a encyclopedia, and a world that can be interested in more things that can fit in 30 volumes. Note that changes in the way we related to knowledge occurred prior to the widespread use fo the Internet and Wikipedia. My Brittanica was from the 60's. In the 70's it because a much more pop encyclopedia with much less of the scholarly focus we say from 1900-1970. This included shorter articles.So Wikipedia responded to a market forces that were well in effect by the turn of the century.

So if we say that wikipedia is something new we see that it will never be 'complete' as there will always be some piece of history, some trivia, some event that can be added as soon as someone want to take charge. Even now, there are stub articles that can filled in only someone had the context and knowledge. In that Wikipedia is still run by the people, and therefore it is something old, there is always going to be the element of the pages being a product of the current editors with their biases, which means that it won't be a pristine representations of facts. however, as certain people are going to have interested in certain pages, the biases will be varied. For instance Google will make sure that it's pages continue to look like marketing copy, but that does not mean that other pages cannot have an alternate point of view.

Re:Terrible editing culture

[Anonymous Coward]

I can vouch that it happened to me, but I find posting to /. unpaid is more entertaining than posting to Wikipedia and having my helpful proofreading auto-undone by bots. Why should I waste more of my time there?

posting anon since i'm at work >____>

Could you give some examples of when you've done corrections but it hasn't happened? I found it to be pretty universal that anything I fixed was unfixed pretty quickly.

Re:Terrible editing culture

[QuietLagoon]

Hey, here's a thought: Maybe the reason fewer people are editing Wikipedia articles is because 90% of the time, edits get instantly reverted by some spaz who's jealously guarding their page, typos and all.

I have had similar experiences with editing, and I have ceased trying to edit any articles. After a while, it just was not worth my time trying to fight someone who is standing over an article 24/7 to make sure no one changes it.

Re:Terrible editing culture

[lcrocker]

As one of the first Wikipedia editors, I have to agree. The current state of Wikipedia is unusable. 5 million articles is a pathetically small number: every town, every park, every building, every movie, every TV show, every book, every law, every government official of every country throughout history: all of these should be articles, and would be if it were easier to make them.

--Wikipedia user #43

Re:Terrible editing culture

[AmiMoJo]

Trolling on Wikipedia is out of control. Not just reverts, deletionism and deliberately trying to annoy knowledgeable editors.

For example a few years back the decision was made to change the names of all foreign media, particularly anime and manga, to the western titles. Article titles and all references in the text were renamed. Often the western name was based on some lame attempt to partially translate a small fraction of the available material, gutting and heavily re-writing it in the process (e.g. Detective Conan, Card Captor Sakura). A lot of editors who had previously made good contributions just got fed up and left.

Re:Terrible editing culture

[alexgieg]

all of these should be articles, and would be if it we were allowed to make them.

There, fixed it for you. For more obscure subjects it isn't only a matter of having the knowledge about them, and then the references about them, but also of having editors consider them relevant. I've lost the number of times I've searched for a subject just to find a page that at some point existed in Wikipedia, but was deleted because it wasn't "notable" enough. Funnily enough though, sometimes the exact same "non-notable" article exists in some foreign edition of Wikipedia, so Google Translate comes to the rescue.

Re:Terrible editing culture

[Anonymous Coward]

Given your difficulty with using correct capitalisation, I'm unsurprised your edits weren't welcomed.

Re:Terrible editing culture

[gsslay]

And in your utopian vision it would be impossible to find anything about anything you might actual wish to know about, because it's hidden amongst 100 similarly named articles, each written by one single person according to their own viewpoint. That's 99% of the articles that are impossible to verify because no-one else gives a damn to write about them outside of Wikipedia, far less read about them inside Wikipedia.

Re:Terrible editing culture

[Anonymous Coward]

i won't mention which articles

That means no one can independently evaluate what happened. As you say, the other side of the dispute thought you were the vandal. You could both be posting in this thread, complaining about each other and not know it.

Re:Terrible editing culture

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, here's a thought: Maybe the reason fewer people are editing Wikipedia articles is because 90% of the time, edits get instantly reverted by some spaz who's jealously guarding their page, typos and all. I've made a half-dozen edits to Wikipedia, and every single one of them has been reverted within an hour or two. And we're not talking factual or debatable edits here, I'm referring to things like incorrect usage of it's/its or adding a citation.

I'm calling bullshit. Post the links to your edits. What you are saying the way you are saying it virtually never happens on Wikipedia. That's more than 5 years of editting experience talking. Almost always, claims like yours are bogus when inspected because you didn't understand the rules of the site.

Re:Terrible editing culture

[plasticsquirrel]

If you are fulfilling the basic requirements for edits (good information that is well-sourced, and written in an encyclopedic manner), then your edits are unlikely to be reverted. However, often newbies are unfamiliar with the basic editing process, and think that because it's a wiki, that it should be a free-for-all. It's not quite so simple, and just as Encyclopedia Brittanica has standards, Wikipedia also has standards. The key to learning the system and becoming very proficient in it, is to start small, working on obscure articles and watching bigger articles, and gradually expanding your reach. After some time, you will be able to edit major articles with a fair amount of confidence that nothing will be reverted.

Re:Terrible editing culture

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you. The Reddit MMA community went through a lot of work to detail every major event in modern history only to have those articles deleted and replaced by summaries by year. Hundreds of hours and tons of information lost because some editor who dislikes MMA decided the articles violated Wikipedia policy. The MMA community decided to do the work somewhere else.

I'm not surprised editorship is down.

Loss of interesting articles to write

[Anonymous Coward]

Or frustration at the deletionists nuking anything added about (not-so) niche topics?

Re:Loss of interesting articles to write

[0xdeadbeef]

So where did the mean man delete you? Show us on the doll:

Local politician?
Local band?
Local stand-up comic?
Self-published book?
Long dead ancestor who built the first whatever out in nowheresville?

Re:Loss of interesting articles to write

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I'm not so sure of that. I'm pretty damn sure Catholic theology is a niche topic, but due to the superior nature of the search engine, Wikipedia has become one of my go-to sources for good discussions on obscure theological topics.

Having said that- it does seem to me that just from a statistics standpoint, 100,000 English articles is a bit small for an online general encyclopedia. Perhaps they need to adopt Google's business model and start building out more datacenters.

Re:Loss of interesting articles to write

[Anonymous Coward]

History of MUD scripting languages, actually. But it'll get fixed, Jason Scott is doing some real preservation work on the topic of MUDs.

The constant pruning of *nix window managers as being less notable and less-cited than one-scene pornstars who won an AVN award, though, will probably rot on the vine.

Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[tepples]

Not all Wikipedia editors are as obtuse as you claim. Let me reiterate the comment I made on the submission: If particular editors are violating Wikipedia's policy against ownership-like behavior by not allowing a consensus to form after discussion of a reverted edit on an article's talk page, consider using the various dispute resolution means in the Wikipedia community.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[alphatel]

Not all Wikipedia editors are as obtuse as you claim. Let me reiterate the comment I made on the submission: If particular editors are violating Wikipedia's policy against ownership-like behavior by not allowing a consensus to form after discussion of a reverted edit on an article's talk page, consider using the various dispute resolution means in the Wikipedia community.

Exactly what a Wikipedia editor would post.
But seriously, when you try to argue with a senior editor know what everyone tells you? Read the 20 awesome Wikipedia entries that validate their statements, however unjustifiable they are in real arguement.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[Anonymous Coward]

I think what he's calling "a chore unworthy of its meritlessness" is exactly the kind of thing you're describing.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[DerekLyons]

And one of Wikipedia's sock puppets/cheerleaders chimes in as expected with his "it's all sweetness and light if you follow the bureaucracy and play Wikipedia the Role Playing Game" posts...

You just don't get it do you? It's exactly that all that bullcrap, favoring those who play Wikipedia The Role Playing Game over those who want to do the work, that has driven the latter away. The lunatics are now running the asylum.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[eldavojohn]

Not all Wikipedia editors are as obtuse as you claim. Let me reiterate the comment I made on the submission: If particular editors are violating Wikipedia's policy against ownership-like behavior by not allowing a consensus to form after discussion of a reverted edit on an article's talk page, consider using the various dispute resolution means in the Wikipedia community.

Exactly what a Wikipedia editor would post.

And he used citations! That's a total give away! You know you're talking to one of them when they embed properly formatted URLs into their posts. It instantly invalidates anything they're trying to tell you, too!

But seriously, when you try to argue with a senior editor know what everyone tells you? Read the 20 awesome Wikipedia entries that validate their statements, however unjustifiable they are in real arguement.

Oh you are preaching to the choir! Sometimes when I'm in one of those Northern states I have to wonder if a senior Wikipedia editor ever used the same drinking fountain I'm using! I mean, what if they were talking about the 20 awesome Wikipedia entries just before their dirty dirty mouths touched that faucet?! Gross!

Something needs to be done about them people ... now I know why they continually destroyed the Library of Alexandria. Let's get Jimmy Wales' address from his Florida public voting registration and burn a W on his front lawn!

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[readin]

And one of Wikipedia's sock puppets/cheerleaders chimes in as expected with his "it's all sweetness and light if you follow the bureaucracy and play Wikipedia the Role Playing Game" posts...

You just don't get it do you? It's exactly that all that bullcrap, favoring those who play Wikipedia The Role Playing Game over those who want to do the work, that has driven the latter away. The lunatics are now running the asylum.

What you say reminds me of American politics and our legal system.

And it is probably caused by exactly the same thing - an attempt to make a system both reasonably easy for reasonable people to use while at the same time guarding against abuses while at the same time trying to give people equal treatment.

It's a hard thing to do.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you possibly disprove yourself any better? I think not.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[arth1]

And it is probably caused by exactly the same thing - an attempt to make a system both reasonably easy for reasonable people to use while at the same time guarding against abuses while at the same time trying to give people equal treatment.

It's a hard thing to do.

When something turns out to be too hard to do, one might consider, you know, not doing it.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[alphatel]

... now I know why they continually destroyed the Library of Alexandria.

I was confused earlier. Now more so.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Nerd kid build sand castle on beach.
2. Jock bully kicks over and destroys sand castle.
3. Nerd kid goes to complain to authorities.
4. Nerd kid learns jock bully is really popular with beachgoers because he is the star quarterback of local football team.
5. Jock bully gets a free pass because of this. No punishment, sand castle remains destroyed.
6. Nerd kid is no longer trusted among beachgoers due to bringing "baseless" accusations against popular kid. Further complaints are ignored.
7. Nerd kid stops building sand castles and stops trusting beachgoers.
8. Beachgoers wonder why nobody builds sand castles any more.

It's far, far easier to destroy than to create or rebuild. When you have a culture that supports unchecked destruction by the popular kids, you drive out the culture that wants to create or rebuild. Having a complaint system doesn't help; the culture is still based around destruction, not creation. Moreso when said complaint system only serves to scare the new kids away from complaining by setting up a bureaucracy that, even when followed to completion, only serves to remind the new kids that the popular kids are more popular than they are, so their decisions stand.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all Wikipedia editors are as obtuse as you claim. Let me reiterate the comment I made on the submission: If particular editors are violating Wikipedia's policy against ownership-like behavior by not allowing a consensus to form after discussion of a reverted edit on an article's talk page, consider using the various dispute resolution means in the Wikipedia community.

The question is, after being rejected like that do I care sufficiently to follow up through a complaints procedure? Or do I just walk away and not bother posting to Wikipedia again.

My guess is that a lot of the people do care enough are also the people who are strongly opinionated about the page they're trying to edit, and probably deserved the rejection.

The majority that don't bother to follow up are more likely to have been the ones that might have been useful contributors. ....but I guess we'll never know for sure.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the alternative though? Get rid of those policies so that people just revert your edits anyways without any attempt at validation? There are jerks in the world, and the system doesn't get rid of them, as they adapt. But it does at least try to give some options. Policy evolves into almost legalese in complexity to avoid loopholes and to minimize people who abuse the policies. The key should be "minimize" not "get rid of," as the latter is unrealistic.

Regardless of policy, there will be people with too much time on their hands. If you have no policy, they will brute force ownership of an article by out editing you. If you have complicated policy, they will try obscure, strung together references to make policy look like it works for them. If you have simple policies, they might just easily abuse it against you. At least as is, there are some options with a little time or luck you can find in your favor, and places to ask for help from people with more time. If you want a solution that requires no extra effort, that might not be possible in the real world.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[eldavojohn]

... now I know why they continually destroyed the Library of Alexandria.

I was confused earlier. Now more so.

Damnit, if only there was some way to look up the history of the Library of Alexandria ... some online resource that could instantly serve us up a good enough but referenced version of history and .... NO no, do not give in! Remain strong brother, we can rely on things we think we heard in history class 20 years ago. That will suffice! I'm pretty sure that the Library of Alexandria was brought to ruins several times and I will fight you if you accuse me of being wrong. Let us settle this with fisticuffs like we did in the long long ago before Wikipedia in the time of Whiskey where pedantry was relegated to nerds' basements and we were safe to carouse about drunk on ignorance and were correct-ish in our retelling of history! 'Tis a far far better fate than to let senior editors revert our edits to some snobbish central repository.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[Anonymous Coward]

drinking fountain

bubbler... and it's duck, duck GOOSE!

lol, j/k

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[Anonymous Coward]

grey duck

It begins ...

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[Anonymous Coward]

LMGTFY

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria

It was destroyed 4 times over 700 years, hardly "continually"

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[Rob the Bold]

You just don't get it do you? It's exactly that all that bullcrap, favoring those who play Wikipedia The Role Playing Game over those who want to do the work, that has driven the latter away. The lunatics are now running the asylum.

Back in my younger days, I had a game called Star Fleet Battles. I had the game set, the expansion set, the Captain's Rule Book. All the add-on sets and rules addenda volumes ("this page replaces p. N of book X") plus the special issues of gaming magazines with extra ships, scenarios and what-not. I'd always want my friends to come and play out epic space battles. They did play a few times, but almost always I'd beat them by finding a special rule to defeat what they'd thought were their most brilliant moves ("All your drones hit my wild weasel - it's considered active for the entire turn now, even if it was technically destroyed already.").

The game's been on the shelf for a long time now. All my friends had other things to do when I wanted to play SFB.

I realized my "error" all these years later as tried and gave up on adding to collaborative online knowledge bases. Someone always knows the "rules" better than me, and the learning process is sufficiently irritating I'd rather not bother. ("For this album type, the composer is considered the artist, not the performer, unless the lyricist also wrote part of the tune, in which case the artist is the composer and lyricist.") I can think of plenty of other, more rewarding pursuits.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[alphatel]

in the time of Whiskey where pedantry was relegated to nerds' basements and we were safe to carouse about drunk on ignorance and were correct-ish in our retelling of history! 'Tis a far far better fate than to let senior editors revert our edits to some snobbish central repository.

I like the whiskey part.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent +infinity

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus fucking christ. Take Jimmy Wales cock out of your mouth for 2 seconds! You don't know where that thing's been! Given all he donation mponey he spends on junkets, hookers, and blow, he could have diseases you've never even heard of!

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[Raenex]

Wait, isn't Wikipedia a giant sandbox full of sandcastles built by nerd kids?

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[bill_mcgonigle]

But seriously, when you try to argue with a senior editor know what everyone tells you? Read the 20 awesome Wikipedia entries that validate their statements, however unjustifiable they are in real arguement.

Yep. I tried adding some facts to an article about a famous/popular author, namely that he was a eugenicist who advocated the elimination and sterilization of the lesser humans. This was challenged, with the sources given as not reliable enough. I offered to hop over to the university library and photograph the intro to one of his works (original printing) where he went on about this. I was told that would not be acceptable evidence.

Did I start up a dispute resolution process? No, this guy was a fan of the author - even if I had emerged victorious, he would have just later deleted it when nobody was looking. It wasn't worth winning this one as I didn't have a dog in the fight.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[Just Some Guy]

You left out:

9. Nerd kid discovers Wikipedia and vows that no one is ever going to destroy his sand castle again, and he'll show those jerks, just you wait!

You have a great analogy, even more so because it probably explains how hardcore Wikipedia editors are created and why they're so freaking annoying to deal with.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[tjonnyc999]

...but I'm sure they will be meticulously described in appropriate articles with plenty of citations.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[jdavidb]

consider using the various dispute resolution means in the Wikipedia community

I would sooner consider drilling my brain out with a power drill. And I say that as somebody who has been involved in Wikipedia's various dispute resolution methods.

No thanks.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[gmhowell]

I would sooner consider drilling my brain out with a power drill.

There's some relevant info here.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[sqrt(2)]

Several times I've had my, extremely minor, edits reversed nearly instantaneously (which makes me suspect some sort of bot written by the "owner" camping that article) and then a few minutes later I get a pithy comment on my user page that almost always begins, "Welcome to Wikipedia!" That I've been registered years longer than them doesn't seem to matter. It then continues to list their extensive expertise in the related fields relevant to the article and how that makes them far more qualified than a mere mortal like me to edit the holy text.

You may be an expert in *this* field, sir, but you're in need of some remedial English courses.

And it's usually not even changing anything factual, just cleaning up cumbersome prose. Many of the engineering and science articles suffer from this. They still take offense and revert it. I don't have the patience to start an edit war over every single grammatically tedious sentence I want to fix.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[lkcl]

Not all Wikipedia editors are as obtuse as you claim. Let me reiterate the comment I made on the submission: If particular editors are violating Wikipedia's policy against ownership-like behavior by not allowing a consensus to form after discussion of a reverted edit on an article's talk page, consider using the various dispute resolution means in the Wikipedia community.

i did exactly that, tepples. the responses *in the dispute resolution* page were so violent, abusive and dis-trusting, with one editor claiming that i was "deliberately hiding behind an anonymous IP address for the sole purpose of causing maximum damage to wikipedia", were themselves so clearly against wikipedia's policies that i simply went "fuck this" and walked away.

there is a serious problem in wikipedia which is that the culture of encouraging and trusting new contributors is completely breaking down, with the "mature" editors using wikipedia's policies to *bully* those with less knowledge of the "rules", forcing themselves and their views onto newer contributors.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[Anonymous Coward]

The consensus on Wikipedia doesn't agree with you. So what? Your problem not theirs and if this post is an example I'm not surprised they're ignoring you.

Probably Wikipedia's biggest problem is not it's editors but the people trying to game it and the nutcases. High profile projects like Wikipedia unfortunately do attract the attention of large numbers of nutcases who tend to be long on verbiage and short on common sense. Most of the complaints in this /. story are probably examples of this. I've seen similar in other contexts.

I have no connection with wikipedia, just an interested bystander.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[WolfWithoutAClause]

How old was the book?

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[mynamestolen]

My experience was the powers-that-be in wikipedia are uneducated kids from the USA. They get their kicks from throwing their weight around. Yes they behave just like bullies in the school playground. I gave up a few years ago when most of the kiddies were anti-science and knew nothing about science. Hopefully that's changed but I can't be bothered "negotiating" with idiots and playing the role playing games referred to above. Their jargon is impenetrable too. As for the idea that the project is almost complete, I laughed so much I nearly fell of the chair. EVERY time I look at an article I find problems. Some areas are a huge vacuum.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[Anonymous Coward]

little offtopic but usually true:
10. After 10 years nerd kid says to bully: "carwash nr 5 with extra wax"

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[bill_mcgonigle]

How old was the book?

From the 30's.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[yusing]

If you can find the assertion in some published book you can cite the book and page number and that is automatically "good enough" for WP. Anyone who tells you different is wrong. For potentially libelous assertions you can - and should- provide two reliable sources. (There are plenty of articles that don't have a single source that good.)

Yes, someone can always come along and take it out ... and if you don't care to dispute it, yes, they win. But that's how life, not just WP, works.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[WolfWithoutAClause]

It's likely still in copyright, so photographing it and uploading it would be a bit dodgy.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[Anonymous Coward]

gmhowell doesn't have a brain to take a drill to. He's just a 1 line posting karma whoring troll.

Re:Violations of Wikipedia:Ownership

[bill_mcgonigle]

Yes, someone can always come along and take it out ... and if you don't care to dispute it, yes, they win. But that's how life, not just WP, works.

Certainly, and you fight for the things you care about. But that also means that WP is now [effectively] only editable by people who care to fight, which wasn't the original intent.

Notability

[tepples]

What articles about "(not-so) niche topics" were deleted despite citing three different scholarly or mainstream media sources independent of one another and of the subject?

Re:Notability

[Anonymous Coward]

How dare you ask for reliable sources. Don't you trust every little thing I say?

Re:Notability

[bmo]

You don't need 3 different scholarly references for stub status. It would be nice, but a stub is that, a stub and if it doesn't have a stub tag, it should be tagged as such instead of deleted.

But stubs on "unfamiliar subjects to the editor" get deleted, because they're not complete enough. *table flip*

--
BMO

Re:Notability

[tepples]

You know, if you create an account on Wikipedia, you get a user space in which to keep your stubs while you look for sources to cite.

Re:Notability

[VortexCortex]

What articles about "(not-so) niche topics" were deleted despite citing three different scholarly or mainstream media sources independent of one another and of the subject?

So, if some media slut says some inane inflammatory bullshit and gets all over the news, that can be cited and documented in Wikipedia... However, if one of us lowly netizens finally reverse engineers an undocumented file format, of use to many folks in the 3D graphics fields, it doesn't get in Wikipedia because there's not three independent "scholarly or mainstream" sources? Even if it's being used like mad in tons of applications, and no one can really find the data elsewhere even though they're searching for it and just don't know what exactly to call it?

Look, Wikipedia blatantly ripped off the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy website, (H2G2) which allowed anyone to add anything regardless of notoriety. It was great, and extremely helpful. There was something on everything. Too bad BBC shut id down. If you didn't want to know about the proper way to drink water upside down, then you didn't read the damn article. Storage is Cheap, esp. for text. Maybe if Wikipedia was more inclusive you'd have MORE EDITORS? Fuck you and your popularity contests.

Re:Notability

[Beren Erchamion]

Which, of course, defeats the whole purpose of Wikipedia's open-content open-editing model, since now they're tucked away where casual readers won't ever find them.

Re:Notability

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd love to, but they've been deleted.

Re:Notability

[tepples]

As soon as your stub article has references, you can move it to mainspace where casual readers will find it.

Re:Notability

[tepples]

You could try linking to the AFD discussions or deletion log entries.

Re:Notability

[Anonymous Coward]

The BBC didn't shut h2g2 down; it's now community-owned.

http://h2g2.com/

They did shut down some other sub-sites which had been built around h2g2's tech, notably Get Writing (which was, when I last checked, an uneditable archive).

Re:Notability

[J'raxis]

See what it's like to argue with the deletionists? This is why so many editors have left Wikipedia in droves. This guy has nothing better to do than tell you what not to add to Wikipedia.

Re:Notability

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone has said this better. But I'll repeat them in caps: "THIS DEFEATS THE PURPOSE".

I started editing Wikipedia over 10 years ago. Back then, stubs were encouraged. I'd often find stubs to add to.

Now people want every article to be complete on day 1.

Not mature in a scholarly sene... so fscking what?

[rodrigoandrade]

If some stupid intellectuals from Harvard, Yale, etc. aren't happy with Wikipedia's "scholarly maturity," then maybe they/their respective institutions should pony up and donate to the project.

I've done my part.

We Know Eveything

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Eldavojohn

Re:Not mature in a scholarly sene... so fscking wh

[geekoid]

I would love to exerts in a field become the editors for one or two articles in Wikipedia as part of the academic responsibilities. Nothing that would take more then an hour a week.

War of 1812 is an odd example

[Urban Garlic]

The War of 1812 is an odd example to pick -- the summary makes it sound like it's a representative military history item for which there is lots of good scholarship, so that the readership and edit traffic numbers might generalize across other history articles.

But in fact, the War of 1812 has been getting more press lately, because it's currently the 200th anniversary. There's even a post-blog, 1812now, specifically about it, and a variety of interest-generating retrospectives in mainstream media.

Their broader point may not hold up for other, less topical pages.

Re:War of 1812 is an odd example

[DerekLyons]

Their broader point may not hold up for other, less topical pages.

For the specific sub-specialty of military history I study, it certainly doesn't. But after the bruising battles I fought (and lost) trying to get the base article even remotely into shape and useful... I'm disinclined to even try and fix/expand the balance. There's a bunch of soi-disant experts on the topic who'll revert any attempt almost immediately - and who'll zerg you if you even try any of the discussion/mediation processes.

Re:War of 1812 is an odd example

[Anonymous Coward]

And add to that all the propaganda from the Canadian government.

Re:War of 1812 is an odd example

[LoudMusic]

I think it's a safe bet that this article references the War of 1812 to glean a few search hits from people searching for actual information on the War of 1812.

Marketing tactics at work.

Re:War of 1812 is an odd example

[nyctopterus]

Link us to the relevant discussion pages or diffs.

Re:War of 1812 is an odd example

[Braedley]

Took the words right out of my mouth. I would be very surprised if view counts didn't return to say 2010 levels in several months, after the recognition of this historical event subsides. A more appropriate candidate may have been the US War for Independence or the Boer Wars, as it isn't an important anniversary year for either.

The End of Information Daily

[Anonymous Coward]

There's always pop-culture. Can't you see the day when all new entries are limited to 140 characters?

Social media, the new encyclopedia.

Re:The End of Information Daily

[arth1]

There's always pop-culture. Can't you see the day when all new entries are limited to 140 characters?

I can see the day when all entries are videos.

And I shudder.

BOLD, revert, discuss

[tepples]

edits get instantly reverted by some spaz who's jealously guarding their page, typos and all. I've made a half-dozen edits to Wikipedia, and every single one of them has been reverted within an hour or two.

Was it the same jealous palsy patient every time, or someone different every time? And did you try discussing the reverts on the article's talk page?

Re:BOLD, revert, discuss

[Anonymous Coward]

I usually just post changes to the talk page. Insult the reverting editor and such for good measure. Ensures someone with power reads it and might do the actual edit. It at least stays up longer since reverting isn't SOP for the talk page.

Time to fork the project?

[phrackwulf]

Maybe there is a need to split this project along the lines of the split between Red Hat and Fedora? Wikipedia as we know it today would continue as an open source, crowd-sourced knowledge base while the scholarship required to polish the project is applied to produce a more refined product that could be used to support the open source project? How do we translate what has been accomplished as an open, public knowledge product into an economical and refined knowledge product?

What is missing

[grahamsz]

There's loads of local interest stuff missing. I'm not sure exactly where it could be acquired from, but I know when I take local tours of historical sites there are lots of interesting stories and ties with historical figures that are almost entirely uncaptured online.

Presumably it would require citing actual history books and the likes but it would require a reasonable effort to get that all online.

Re:What is missing

[VortexCortex]

And it would be deleted for not having enough references or not being notable.

Re:What is missing

[geniice]

Not so. Check out the local history section of your local library sometime.

well-established reputation? scholarship?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> 'Wikipedia is now a mature reference work with a stable organizational structure and a well-established reputation. ...which is why NO ONE accepts it as the reference of record, right?

>> Jensen says Wikipedia should now devote more resources toward getting editors access...so that they could bring the articles up to a more polished, professional standard.

The current problem isn't that editors don't have direct access to the information; after all, most editors would rather edit than become subject matter experts. Instead, it's that it's not even worth trying to post any change to Wikipedia anymore. As a previous poster stated, it seems that there's about a 90% chance that any revision to any entry will be quickly redacted, whether it's a punctuation correction, a fact backed up by a reference, or just the addition of a reference. From the perspective of contributors with subject matter expertise, Wikipedia has largely become a waste of their time.

Wikipedia was originally the draft of Nupedia

[tepples]

Maybe there is a need to split this project along the lines of the split between Red Hat and Fedora?

They tried that. Wikipedia was originally the draft version of Nupedia, and Nupedia fizzled.

Re:Wikipedia was originally the draft of Nupedia

[phrackwulf]

Point taken, but just because a product that was half baked didn't sell the first time, does that mean we just sort of give up and never try selling the product again now that it is further along? Certainly, we don't keep trying for a win after the fourth or fifth loss but just giving up on the concept entirely seems somewhat premature?

Re:Not mature in a scholarly sene... so fscking wh

[captaindomon]

Donating to the project, though, just helps to pay for server maintenance, connectivity, etc, correct? Donating money doesn't go towards hiring professional editors or anything. It just keeps the light on. If Harvard and Yale wanted to help on the quality, they shouldn't donate money, they should get a bunch of their faculty to start editing, right?

Still not finished

[kbob88]

I just looked on Wikipedia for what happened on October 28, 2012, and there's nothing there! The 29th doesn't look very complete either. Jeez, how sloppy. So clearly it's not finished yet...

Re:Still not finished

[Anonymous Coward]

I just looked on Wikipedia for what happened on October 28, 2012, and there's nothing there! The 29th doesn't look very complete either. Jeez, how sloppy. So clearly it's not finished yet...

Well, I TRIED adding those articles last month, but some fascist admin going by the name "Causality" reverted all my changes and eventually banned me! They said it was to "protect reality from obvious time paradoxes", but I know it was because they were babysitting their own articles.

NOTE: Man, I sure hope there's no actual Wikipedia admin named "Causality", else this would turn from a joke into a personal attack.

Re:Still not finished

[Guppy]

Well, I TRIED adding those articles last month, but some fascist admin going by the name "Causality" reverted all my changes and eventually banned me! They said it was to "protect reality from obvious time paradoxes", but I know it was because they were babysitting their own articles.

Pfft. I had a run in with the so-called Mr. Causality, and he threatened to ban my Grandpa! Obvious nuts, since there's no way he cou

Nonsense, this is deletionist propoganda

[0xdeadbeef]

There are still plenty of Japanese cartoons, political ideologies and conspiracy theories that need pages and links to those pages in every other page that has the slightest real or imagined association.

Re:Not mature in a scholarly sene... so fscking wh

[MarkGriz]

I would love to exerts in a field become the editors for one or two articles in Wikipedia as part of the academic responsibilities. Nothing that would take more then an hour a week.

I would love for experts in a field to become the editors for one or two articles in Wikipedia as part of their academic responsibilities. Nothing that would take more than an hour a week

I'm an expert pedantic speller.

Maybe ...

[PPH]

... its time to start making some new stuff up.

You Caught Me!

[eldavojohn]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Eldavojohn

Hoisted by my own petard!

Whelp, here I am trapped for all eternity listening to Jimmy Wales sing a 12.7 second fair use clip of "American Pie" at 64kbit/s in ogg vorbis as punishment. I guess I deserve this.

Re:You Caught Me!

[medcalf]

But at least Jimmy Wales is a godlike guitar player. Oh, you said "sing." Carry on, then.

Re:You Caught Me!

[medcalf]

(For the record, I know which Jimmy Wales you were referring to. Just realized that someone is going to totally miss that.)

New Articles

[readin]

After an encyclopedia reaches 100,000 articles, the pool of good material shrinks. By the time one million articles are written, it must tax ingenuity to think of something new.

It isn't that hard. There are plenty of local landmarks around. And there are always new things being built, and new major historical events occurring. And then there is foreign stuff. People write about what they know. Most Anglophones write about things that exist or occur in the English speaking world. There are plenty of famous people, places and historical events in foreign countries that either don't have articles or have very weak articles.

Re:New Articles

[chebucto]

Exactly. This is why the 'notability' thing pisses me off: why not let there be an article for every tiny, minor thing? Where is the harm?

If I care enough about a the history of a the street I grew up on to write an article about it, and do a decent job of it (eg back it up with sources and do a neutral job of it), Wikipedia should be glad to have the info. And once you let in all the small things, and the minor historical figures, all the little battles and sub-sub-sub fields of philosophy, you get many more than 4 million articles.

Re:New Articles

[Anonymous Coward]

"Exactly. This is why the 'notability' thing pisses me off: why not let there be an article for every tiny, minor thing? Where is the harm?"

At least with respect to the general notability guideline, "non-notable" means "I don't have, and there probably aren't, even two reliable sources that talk about this subject on all the planet." Which, as a logical implication, means that the information within the article is either not particularly well-verified, or at least potentially biased since there aren't even two sources from which one might actually see any controversies on the subject.

The harm is the potential for false and/or biased information, even positive looking stuff can be quietly promotional. Other than those concerns, I (and, I sense, most WP editors) couldn't give a flying f**k about notability.

Re:New Articles

[Anonymous Coward]

And at some point maybe the history of your street will be notable (maybe a future President will be born there). Unfortunately by that time maybe the knowledge of the history of the street would have been lost in time. The requirement for something to be 'notable' is very odd.

Four million articles?

[Elbereth]

How many of those articles are about vapid pop culture topics, like Pokemon or Buffy the Vampire Slayer?

Regardless, I still like Wikipedia, and I contribute to it, when I notice obvious errors (increasingly rare) or poor grammar (much more common). I've even partially rewritten several articles, because the grammar and spelling were so atrocious. Although I'm philosophically what you might call a "deletionist", I'm too apathetic to actually bring up an article for deletion (or even to vote for deletion). Anyway, I figure that every article, no matter how stupid, deserves a chance to be fixed, before it's deleted.

I remember once editing an article that was being used for character assassination against some prominent NYC socialite. After I cleaned up all the personal attacks and gossip, someone accused me of being her public relations team. Ha. I have only one rule, when editing Wikipedia articles: never edit an article that you care about. It keeps stress levels minimal. If someone really thinks I care about NYC socialites, young adult romance fiction, 1980s death metal bands, or anything else in my list of Contributions, they're quite wrong. That's how I avoid burn-out, and, for that, I have to thank all the pop culture-obsessed nerds and gossipy housewives out there, for providing me stress-free articles to edit.

Re:Four million articles?

[Animats]

How many of those articles are about vapid pop culture topics, like Pokemon or Buffy the Vampire Slayer?

Yes. I think Wikipedia should have a Popular Culture Division, where most music, TV, and movie/video articles would be dumped. That's what Wikia, with the Star [Trek|Craft|Wars|Gate] wikis, ended up as, a repository for fancruft. The Wikipedia notability threshold for popular culture is low; any CD every issued by a major label qualifies, and there are over 3 million of those in CD databases.

Wikipedia has the wrong structure for performers, groups, and works. Wikipedia has manually maintained lists of all works by a performer, all performers on a work, all songs on an album, and other things which should be looked up with an SQL SELECT statement. When all you have is a wiki, everything looks like an article, even when it should be a database row.

Wikipedia also doesn't handle location-based information well. Items like "State Route 42" belong in a map-driven geographical database, not wiki articles. A map-driven system could handle far more local points of interest, because you can zoom. Space is what keeps everything from being in the same place.

Re:Four million articles?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that was what wikimedia was for. But even if it is vapid it's part of history and cultural influence.

Re:Four million articles?

[Kethinov]

How many of those articles are about vapid pop culture topics, like Pokemon or Buffy the Vampire Slayer?

What you find vapid, millions of other people find notable.

Or maybe...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe there aren't many edits anymore because lots of editors got tired of having their good faith edits reverted by the Wikipedia "ruling class" and have quit Wikipedia.

"central scientific concepts"

[Anonymous Coward]

If you aren't a physicist, don't look to Wikipedia for insight into any physics questions you might have. Those articles are written so full of jargon and filled with circular refrence spaghetti links that you will learn nothing of physical science without first having a college text book to make sense of the "refrence material" offered on Wikipedia..
The same can be said of math - only much, much more so.

Love/hate Wikipedia...

[crankyspice]

obligatory humorous link to an article on.

Meanwhile, Wikipedia has some serious credibility problems, as a federal judge in California recently observed:

“It is unfortunate that the parties were unable to provide more authoritative evidence. One court recently noted the danger of relying
on Wikipedia:

Wikipedia.com [is] a website that allows virtually anyone to upload an article into what is essentially a free, online encyclopedia.
A review of the Wikipedia website reveals a pervasive and, for our purposes, disturbing series of disclaimers, among them,
that: (i) any given Wikipedia article ‘may be, at any given moment, in a bad state: for example it could be in the middle of
a large edit or it could have been recently vandalized;’ (ii) Wikipedia articles are ‘also subject to remarkable oversights and
omissions;’ (iii) ‘Wikipedia articles (or series of related articles) are liable to be incomplete in ways that would be less usual in
a more tightly controlled reference work;’ (iv) ‘[a]nother problem with a lot of content on Wikipedia is that many contributors
do not cite their sources, something that makes it hard for the reader to judge the credibility of what is written;’ and (v) ‘many
articles commence their lives as partisan drafts' and may be ‘caught up in a heavily unbalanced viewpoint.’ ” Campbell ex rel.
Campbell v. Secretary of Health and Human Services, 69 Fed.Cl. 775, 781 (2006).

“See also Badasa v. Mukasey, 540 F.3d 909, 910 (8th Cir.2008) (noting that Wikipedia is not a sufficiently reliable source on
which to rest judicial findings for the reasons stated in Campbell); Kole v. Astrue, No. CV 08–0411–LMB, 2010 WL 1338092,
*7 n. 3 (D.Idaho Mar. 31, 2010) (“At this point, it must be noted that, in support of his brief, Respondent cites to Wikipedia.
While it may support his contention of what the mathematical symbols of ‘’ refer to, Respondent is admonished from
using Wikipedia as an authority in this District again. Wikipedia is not a reliable source at this level of discourse. As an attorney
representing the United States, Mr. Rodriguez should know that citations to such unreliable sources only serve to undermine his
reliability as counsel”); R. Jason Richards, Courting Wikipedia, 44 TRIAL 62, 62 (2008) (“Since when did a Web site that any
Internet surfer can edit become an authoritative source by which law students could write passing papers, experts could provide
credible testimony, lawyers could craft legal arguments, and judges could issue precedents?”); James Glerick, Wikipedians Leave
Cyberspace, Meet in Egypt, WALL ST. J., Aug. 8, 2008, at W1 (“Anyone can edit [a Wikipedia] article, anonymously, hit and
run. From the very beginning that has been Wikipedia's greatest strength and its greatest weakness”).” Crispin v. Christian Audigier, Inc., 717 F.Supp.2d 965, 976 (C.D. Cal., 2010).

Definitely not 'scholarly mature.'

Re:well-established reputation? scholarship?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then on top of that... Lets say for sake of argument what you say is 100% false. The perception of that is there. So even if it goes away. That perception will linger on for a LONG time. If you feel like your edit is just going to get tossed you will not do it in the first place. Even if it will not.

My biggest gripe? At some point 'lists of things' went away (they still exist somewhat but usually are missing tons of info). Those lists are *very* helpful in comparison shopping or trying to figure out which 200 (but only the 17 the original author thought was worthy) open source projects have what features (instead of trying them all). Or even something as simple as what episodes were on a TV show. The more popular ones are all tagged and listed out. Many of the older ones have had their lists yanked. As yeah no information is better than the 'bad list' I had before. Yet we can get a 10 page document on the intricacies of the lightsaber fully cited.

For goodness sake if you think it is bad just mark it out in the article and dont just wholesale remove it...

Disagree

[Urthas]

Nearing completion? Hardly. Its veracity at points conflicts with alternative interpretations of an event or phenomenon, which cannot always, nonetheless, be discarded as a matter of course. That tension will always be present, and balancing the two will always be necessary. Let's not even mention spelling and especially grammar (except I just did, and it is too often atrocious). Mature reference work with a well established reputation? Certainly debatable; I personally know several professors who will not accept citing Wikipedia. Anecdotal, sure, but there must be a significant number like that. The nature of the work may be fundamentally changing, but the work on Wikipedia is FAR from over.

Re:Disagree

[cashman73]

I personally know several professors who will not accept citing Wikipedia.

You shouldn't cite Wikipedia for the exact same reason that you shouldn't cite Encyclopedia Britannica. Both are tertiary references, and it's preferred to cite the primary or secondary source. If you haven't figured this out by the time you reach college, you need to go back to high school.

There's also a huge difference between "citing Wikipedia" in term papers and "using Wikipedia" in your research. I fully support Professors that ban citing Wikipedia. But I completely support students that want to use Wikipedia as a good starting point to their research on a given topic.

Fork, Fork, Fork, All Day Long

[eldavojohn]

Point taken, but just because a product that was half baked didn't sell the first time, does that mean we just sort of give up and never try selling the product again now that it is further along? Certainly, we don't keep trying for a win after the fourth or fifth loss but just giving up on the concept entirely seems somewhat premature?

And people continually try to fork it. The earliest instance of this that I remember is citizendium but often what spurs a fork is a very specific thing (okay sometimes they change multiple things but usually it's one big factor). And the reason for that is that Wikipedia has done very well. It's easy to criticize anything claiming to be the nexus of "good enough" human knowledge because any label like that is inherently flammable.

A more recent example is Conservapedia which changes one big thing: NPOV now stands for Nixon's Point of View:

Barack Hussein Obama II (b. August 4, 1961, either in Kenya or Honolulu, Hawaii) was elected the 44th President. Promoted heavily by liberals, as demonstrated by his unjustified receipt of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, Obama won the presidency despite a short and unremarkable political career by outspending his opponent, John McCain, by hundreds of millions of dollars in 2008.

Now, aside from the entertainment value of that line, you have to tell me what your fork is going to do differently and how is that going to be better for your fork? I think that any attempts to fix this could result in even bigger problems for your newer-Pedia and would simply succumb to being a less popular Wikipedia. So what are your change(s) and what negative effects could arise from them?

notability issues

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had fucking articles deleted out from under me due to "not notable".

If it weren't fucking notable I wouldn't have been looking at it.

horse fuckers.

Re:notability issues

[FunkSoulBrother]

Which article?

OK, everyone!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop doing anything notable ever. Wikipedia is almost complete. If you do anything interesting at all, it will just create more work for Wikipedia editors.

Somalipedia

[tepples]

[The lunacy in both Wikipedia policy and U.S. federal law arises from] an attempt to make a system both reasonably easy for reasonable people to use while at the same time guarding against abuses while at the same time trying to give people equal treatment. It's a hard thing to do.

When something turns out to be too hard to do, one might consider, you know, not doing it.

But what's the alternative to making policy? Is it anarchy, where every article's text is controlled by whoever can push out penis pill spam fastest?

Re:Not mature in a scholarly sene... so fscking wh

[Anonymous Coward]

If some stupid intellectuals from Harvard, Yale, etc. aren't happy with Wikipedia's "scholarly maturity," then maybe they/their respective institutions should pony up and donate to the project.

I've done my part.

So a tenured prof at Hahvahd can get in a flame war with a frustrated 25 year old dropout, wherein the main parameters for winning are (1) time spent debating, and (2) knowledge of wikipedia administrivia?

[sarcasm] Indeed, what a good idea! I wonder why the respective university administrations aren't making Wiki contributions a requirement for decent parking spaces right now! [/sarcasm]

Your post reminds me why I didn't like Wiki when it first came out: the irrational and angry anti-establishment attitude. The 'University degrees don't mean anything' crowd.

Original research?

[Zinho]

Jensen says Wikipedia should now devote more resources toward getting editors access to higher-quality scholarship (in private databases like JSTOR), admission to military-history conferences, and maybe even training in the field of historiography, so that they could bring the articles up to a more polished, professional standard. 'Wikipedia is now a mature reference work with a stable organizational structure and a well-established reputation. The problem is that it is not mature in a scholarly sense (PDF).'"

Hang on, that almost sounds like wanting people to do original research. I thought that was against Wikipedia policy. Training professional historians and getting them access to raw information sources would probably do wonders for the article quality, but I somehow doubt that the Cult of Wales would put up with such heresy. A lack of professionalism was taken as a known side-effect of volunteer-driven content creation, and considered a lesser evil than allowing any crackpot theorist to use the wiki as a soapbox (which allowing original research opens the door for).

That being said, having a few senior editors get technical writing courses and convincing organizations that publish peer-reviewed scholarly articles to open their archives to the public would both be great ideas.

Completion by deletion!

[Anonymous Coward]

I gave up after having content deleted behind me that I added. I added totally fair use items like book covers, screen captures, and publicity photos (hint - they are PUBLICITY photos - you're SUPPOSED to reproduce them).

Those who delete will always win over people who contribute, because contributors will give up.

Revert bots

[tepples]

Not only editors, but the various scripts that automatically undo any and all changes to articles without anyone even looking at the changes.

You mean bots like ClueBot NG and XLinkBot? If you've been around for four days and make ten edits, a lot of those anti-vandal bots will stop reverting you. Some of them are also engineered to be aware of their imperfections and won't revert the same user on the same article more than once in a day, and they tend to have processes to report false positives.

Re:Revert bots

[Just Some Guy]

You mean bots like ClueBot NG and XLinkBot? If you've been around for four days and make ten edits, a lot of those anti-vandal bots will stop reverting you.

So casual editors are explicitly not welcome. My kid can't see a mistake, edit it, and expect the correction to stick until he's satisfied our robotic overlords? Fuck that. No wonder edits are drying up.

Re:Revert bots

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean bots like ClueBot NG and XLinkBot? If you've been around for four days and make ten edits, a lot of those anti-vandal bots will stop reverting you. Some of them are also engineered to be aware of their imperfections and won't revert the same user on the same article more than once in a day, and they tend to have processes to report false positives.

The fact that a Wikipedia editor doesn't see any of those statements as pants-on-head stupid, let alone a problem, really says all anyone needs to know about whether they should participate in Wikipedia.

Re:Revert bots

[FunkSoulBrother]

Depends on what your kid is correcting? I've never seen ClueBot or XLinkBot eat a spelling/grammar correction, even from an IP with a single edit.

If your kid is adding "Bobby was here!!" or Facebook links to random articles, they tend to do a pretty good job of reverting his edits.

Editor access???

[bradley13]

"... getting editors access to higher-quality scholarship (in private databases like JSTOR), admission to military-history conferences..."

Um, no. The problem with this idea is that the editors - as well intentioned as they may be - are generally not scholars of particular fields. They will never really be in a position to judge these things. Worse, on historical events such as wars, the editors have a well-deserved reputation of resisting any interpretations other than those that are well-established and well-accepted. They generally do not allow controversial alternative views to be mentioned, however well-founded, because Wikipedia is about consensus.

If they really want to make the transition to academic-quality content, they need to find away to get experts in the various fields to contribute, and to not only allow but encourage the presentation of more than one viewpoint - while somehow still filtering out the crackpots. This will be a very difficult thing to achieve, will require a very different way of working. I frankly do not believe that Wikipedia is capable of this kind of transition, though I would love to be proven wrong.

Re:Editor access???

[Anonymous Coward]

Worse, on historical events such as wars, the editors have a well-deserved reputation of resisting any interpretations other than those that are well-established and well-accepted. They generally do not allow controversial alternative views to be mentioned, however well-founded, because Wikipedia is about consensus.

This statement is not true. As a simple example, consider the Rape of Nanking. The Wikipedia article states that, "Historians and witnesses have estimated that 250,000 to 300,000 people were killed", which is only true if you accept Chinese propaganda. The real estimate was much more likely in the 70,000 to 100,000 range.

Wikipedia takes the Chinese stance because there are so many Chinese-American editors who've grown up uncritically questioning bullshit. 70,000 to 100,000 is NOT controversial within the academic community; it is only controversial among the ignorant public.

So the problem with Wikipedia is not that it's built on consensus, but rather that it's built on consensus of the ignorant.

Re:Editor access???

[bradley13]

Well, yes, but consensus nonetheless. The point is: As currently run, only one viewpoint is allowed or accepted. On controversial topics, this is simply not useful. In fact, it winds up being propoganda.

For anyone who doesn't believe this, take the article on "global warming" as an example. There is a substantial group of people who believe that anthropogenic warming is exaggerated. Even given the warming, there is substantial dispute on the effect: for example, whether or not it will affect sea level. These are areas of genuine dispute. Science is supposed to be about using theories to make predictions, verifying the predictions provides evidence for the theory. Competing theories are supposed to be welcomed, and allowed to rise and fall on the merits of their predictive ability. Yet nowhere in the article is there any indication that alternative vewpoints to the IPCC reports even exist.

Re:Editor access???

[mbstone]

Agree that WP should fork for topics on which there is more than one viewpoint.

Disagree that the Exxon theory of climate change qualifies as a "viewpoint."

Re:Editor access???

[Anonymous Coward]

"Alternate viewpoints" on climate change belong on Wikipedia right along manga and all the other articles about fiction.

Re:Editor access???

[mynamestolen]

jeez I wish I had some mod points to mod you up. Couldn't agree more.

Time to burn it down...

[Anonymous Coward]

It worked in Alexandria.

Re:Not mature in a scholarly sene... so fscking wh

[RabidReindeer]

I would love to exerts in a field become the editors for one or two articles in Wikipedia as part of the academic responsibilities. Nothing that would take more then an hour a week.

I would love for experts in a field to become the editors for one or two articles in Wikipedia as part of their academic responsibilities. Nothing that would take more than an hour a week

I'm an expert pedantic speller.

But it was all spelled correctly, just not the right words!

Actually, I have this nasty suspicion that a lot of the apps I use auto-suggest word completions when I'm not looking. Badly.

Encyclopedia Dramatica

[fyi101]

I'm completely devastated about the current state of Wikipedia, just like you, I hate all this bureaucratic crap. That's why I take all my factually correct information from Encyclopedia Dramatica, where the asylum is running the inmates. Why have bureaucracy when you can have "bureaucrazy"?

But seriously, do you expect something as vast and ambitious as Wikipedia to exist without a somewhat intimidating rulebook? I'm not saying Wikipedians shouldn't be more welcoming or helpful, or that they're not, perhaps the problem is related to the way the site is structured. It's not easy for newcomers to find their way around the place, or around the people.

Re:Encyclopedia Dramatica

[Maury Markowitz]

> bureaucrazy

Is that a game about a bomb in a dresser factory?

Re:Encyclopedia Dramatica

[lgw]

Wikipedia destroyed it's future by attempting to become scholarly. That goal cannot be achieved: it will always be mocked and deprecated by those whose income depends on a lack of free educational resources.

Meanwhile, a resource of everyhting evryone thought was coold, without deletion on basis of "noteworthyness", or thoughtless reverting of edits for terrirtoial reasons, or the rest of the BS that stems from trying to be "taken seriously". It could easily have been a resource for stuff thta people actually want to read about, and thereby a treasured resource to future historians of the culture of the would about now, instead of the ever-more-stale-and-boring tome that it has become.

Wikipedia isn't for press releases

[tepples]

However, if one of us lowly netizens finally reverse engineers an undocumented file format, of use to many folks in the 3D graphics fields, it doesn't get in Wikipedia because there's not three independent "scholarly or mainstream" sources? Even if it's being used like mad in tons of applications

The actual policy refers to "reliable" sources, those that have built a reputation for fact checking. "Scholarly or mainstream" sources are just the most common examples of reliable sources. If a file format has been reverse engineered, you can report this news as a press release to reliable publications that cover 3D graphics, and then once the news breaks, you can cite it. That's the route Philip Roth took when trying to correct a misconception about his 2000 novel The Human Stain.

Re:Wikipedia isn't for press releases

[medcalf]

Wow, really? Nothing says "usability" like having to get your own work reported by a third party before it's considered acceptable. How many people, come right down to it, are going to bother? I understand the argument about trying to keep Wikipedia in some sense verifiable, rather than overrun by trolls and conspiracy theories, but there is such a thing as going too far.

Re:Wikipedia isn't for press releases

[Anonymous Coward]

lol this guy is a troll. a or a walking talking parody.

My opinion is

[Captain.Abrecan]

I think they should work on getting the partisan people out of the editing circle. Just my opinion. For example, trying to edit in *real* facts on gender studies is hard with female-supremacists masquerading as feminists, deleting valuable links to data and hiding research on misandry.

Wikipedia: Revision history

[Anonymous Coward]

26 Oct 2012 Topbot (changed "anybody" => "everybody" after "4 million articles should be good enough for...")

uh-oh...

[NikeHerc]

Why did the ending of Arthur C. Clarke's "The Nine Billion Names of God" suddenly spring to mind???

Fuck Wikipedia Editors

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck them up their stupid asses.

Those fat faggot fucks have completely ruined Wikipedia and everybody but them knows it.

You flying fuckernauts.

You fudgepackers.

You rectal rimming retards.

Go fucking kill yourselves.

mandatory xkcd

[menno_h]

read the mouseover text

good for the "minor" topics

[Anonymous Coward]

Good...then some of the more overbearing editors out there will let the real experts fill in the minor topics with accurate information.

Not mature in a scholarly sense?

[FridayBob]

Of course it isn't! For instance, with so many blatantly anti-scientific types preventing the biology articles from being organized and developed properly, why would that accusation sound surprising to anyone? For this reason, biologists avoid Wikipedia, but without them it will never become a descent source of information about life on this planet.

Re:Not mature in a scholarly sense?

[dwye]

, but without them it will never become a descent source of information about life on this planet.

Nor of spelling. "Decent" not "descent", which would mean something different and a bit punny.

Re:Not mature in a scholarly sene... so fscking wh

[docmordin]

Speaking as an academic at one of the schools you listed, it's not worth my time to edit Wikipedia entries, as I get no credit for my contributions that go toward advancing my career, let alone the state of the art, unless I spend an inordinate amount of time to make a noticeable impact. Instead, I'm better off sharing my knowledge in a less volatile yet still easily-accessible medium, such as a freely available e-book that also offers a printed version through a publisher, e.g., one akin to Jon Dattorro's excellent treatise on convex optimization and Euclidean distance geometry (https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~dattorro/mybook.html); in this instance, I not only have something tangible that I can list when it comes time for a tenure review, but can also be assured that key concepts won't be wiped away by some ignorant, but perhaps well-meaning, editor.

completely wrong

[circletimessquare]

you have to be obtuse and didactic for such a role as wiki editor. you're trying to create the perfect reference material for a subject. you WANT the person to be obtuse and didactic

look, i despise grammar nazis here, on slashdot. but the quality of mind where tiny details loom as alarm bells does have a valid place in this world. in the library. in the dictionary. on wikipedia

while i don't get along with such people, that doesn't mean these people don't have a place in the world where they should hold all of the power. not here in a comment board. but yes, in other places on the web

i know that i'll never be a wiki editor, and nor should you by your comment. and like me, you should know enough to not criticize that which you are not cut out for

Re:completely wrong

[lgw]

Trying to create the "perfect reference material for a subject" is why it all falls apart. That's not a possible or interesting goal. I would much rather see a set of articles that people found interesting enough to write about, with some indication for the non-fiction topics whether a given article represents the view predominantly held by experts.

OTOH, I'm sure you could become a wiki editor if only you could understand the operation of the Shift key.

Re:completely wrong

[circletimessquare]

What you describe isn't Wikipedia. Completely different topic. Irrelevant thought.

And of course nothing is perfect in this world. But exacting standards as close to perfection as possible is what is required to be an editor. You do understand what it takes to write a Wikipedia entry on a controversial or dense topic?

Re:completely wrong

[lgw]

YOU DID NOT FOLLOW THE RULES - DELETED

Yep, that's pretty much what I'm on about. The original "social experiment" which grew up into WIkipedia had so much promise an potential to become somehting wonderful: a boundless, searchable, only repository of human ideas. But somewhere along the way as the problems mounted they decided they wanted the "correct" ideas, and thereby the experiment failed.

You do understand what it takes to write a Wikipedia entry on a controversial or dense topic?

The idea that there should be one entry for a conroversial topic is where it all goes wrong. One entry for each viewpoint; no editor choosing the "correct" point of view. Editorial oversight needed to be limited to separating out offtopic matrial (ideally by simply moving it to it's own entry, which after awhile would liekly already exist). The timesink wiki does a great job of keeping entries on topic without disocuraging people from contributing. It can be done.

Finally, I appeciate and admire your demonstrated mastery of the Shift key, and only hope you shall make a habit of it! (I see you're starting to from your posting history - it looks a lot less like the timecube guy now.)

Re:completely wrong

[tjonnyc999]

There's a difference between being a "Grammar Nazi", who adheres to a strict set of codified rules (e.g. the English language, Strunk & White, Chicago Manual of Style, etc), which both the Nazi and the Misspeller can look up and agree on...

...and a complete asshat who continues deleting images because "they might exist in public domain", even despite being told that they do NOT, cannot, and will not. It's a one-time release of copyrighted material into Wikipedia only, using the specific option that Wikipedia itself offers. Nope, doesn't matter, common sense and evidence go right out the window, Mr. Editor has a hard-on for an image illustrating a very-little-known technology. It's completely baffling in the sheer scope of its arrogance, but short of opening a dispute and baby-sitting it for days on end, there's nothing that can be done.

Asshats have turned contributing to Wikipedia from an enjoyable pastime into a ridiculously randomized chore. I have better things to do.

Re:completely wrong

[circletimessquare]

dude, it's not a creative writing contest

if the editors weren't cutting 99% of the crap that people try to put on a post, they aren't doing their job

your problem seems to be in thinking wikipedia is something that it's not. i don't care what you think wikipedia should have become. nobody does. hell, the internet was also thought at one point to become a distributed mass media art project. what the fuck?

take this example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama

using your guidance, the quality of this page would quickly devolve into partisan nonsense

One entry for each viewpoint; no editor choosing the "correct" point of view.

this is completely ignorant. how old is barack obama? where did he go to college? who are his children? there is only one correct point of view on anything you can find in a wikipedia entry. because it is about fact. there is only one correct point of view. if it isn't a factual representation, it doesn't belong on wikipedia in the first place

thus the need for editors to prune the kind of bullshit you want to put on it that would quickly make wikipedia fucking useless. i go to an encyclopedia to learn a few facts about a topic. i don't go there to read stupid shit some assholes want to babble on about on the topic

whatever you thought wikipedia should have become, it didn't become. and that's a good thing, because what you seem to be imagining is something no one would visit because it would be useless. people want facts. quick. that's the whole idea about an encyclopedia. they don't want to read loopy nonsense some crackpot wants to ramble on about

you seem to have this insane or stupid belief that without an editor pruning the kind of shit people would want to slap on an entry, that the entry would still be useful. no, it would be 4chan

Re:completely wrong

[lgw]

if it isn't a factual representation, it doesn't belong on wikipedia in the first place

What's a "fact"? Something published, by wikipedia standards. What rubbish. There are "measurements", which always have error bars, and room for argument about the degree of uncertainty. All else is opinion. Someitmes most of the world's smart people have the same opinion, and that's worth mentioning! But "fact" is a nonsense word.

you seem to have this insane or stupid belief that without an editor pruning the kind of shit people would want to slap on an entry, that the entry would still be useful. no, it would be 4chan

Again, the timesink wiki manages this quite well, without anyone complaining about editor arrogance. The ridiculous farce that Wikipedia editorial control has become is in no way a requirement to keep things from becoming useless. You sounds a bit like Hobbes (and not the stuffed one): society is better with a brutal dictator than with anarchy, so let's all celebrate the brutal dictator!

Re:completely wrong

[circletimessquare]

What's a "fact"?

i didn't read past that point

you should announce yourself as a crackpot before someone sane gets stuck this far in a comment thread with you

Re:completely wrong

[circletimessquare]

wikipedia is useful because it rigidly adheres to the facts. 99.9% of the crap people want to put on it should be pruned out

it's also free. you seem to be complaining because a volunteer won't do copyright research for you. if it isn't obviously and immediately public domain: fuck it. perfectly sensible. the problem is you, for imagining wikipedia is something it isn't

Re:completely wrong

[lgw]

You should read on. You have an unrealistic belief that reality cares what people believe about reality. We know almost nothing for sure, and there's no harm in letting people express unpopular views in a wikipedia-like-place. Just make sure to note that, e.g., all of science disagrees with the "creationism" idea. The Creationists' arguments and "evidence" are still fascinating to students of many fields other than biology!

Re:completely wrong

[tjonnyc999]

The issue was that the image "MIGHT exist in the public domain". Which it didn't. Because that was an original image, specifically released to Wikipedia using the "This is a copyrighted, non-free work, but I believe it is Fair Use" -> "This image is the object of discussion in an article." -> "Special source and license conditions (optional)" -> "Permission granted, but only for Wikipedia". There are NO other copies of this image anywhere, it was shot SPECIFICALLY for this article, and Wikipedia's own options were used to justify its use. There was no "copyright research" to do.

Besides which, if the editor wanted to claim that it exists in the public domain, why didn't HE provide proof of such? Google Image Search is that way --->

Oh, you would like ME to prove that it doesn't exist? Hm, please enlighten us, how the hell do you prove a negative? Descartes couldn't figure it out, I'm eager to hear your approach.

Reminds me of the patent office in 1899

[Tony Isaac]

Charles Udell, USPTO commissioner in 1899, is said to have said, "Everything that can be invented – has already been invented."

http://www.inventionmysteries.com/article4.html

What the Wiki is good for...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia can be quite good for straight technical knowledge.

Wikipedia can be very good for obscure minor things, such as lists of lesser known geek comics. That's actually its strength. I don't know why it seems to be suppressing 'minor knowledge', because that's what an open encyclopedia is best at collecting.

Wikipedia can seem very good for major 'encyclopedia-type' things, like the causes of the War of Spanish Succession. So long as there is no controversy about the subject. But it's hard to KNOW if there's no controversy about something if you're looking it up because you don't know about it...

Wikipedia can be very bad for things where there is an active controversy raging. This is what an open encyclopedia is WORST at, because it's an open invitation for activists of all kinds to get into edit wars. And they don't only smear the subject they are fighting over, they smear associated items which they alter as part of their attempt to prove their case. Left unchecked, this will destroy the entire encyclopedia....

Truth versus NPOV

[NewYork]

When I tried to disclose the truth about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scandals_in_India I got this warning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:4thaugust1932

"Nothing New--Again"

[hutsell]

Granted the following quotes from other times are not ideally analogous to Wikipedia's predicament, but it was impossible to resist recalling the similarities.

Starting with:

Rebecca J. Rosen, associate editor at The Atlantic, 2012: "There's always going to be some tidying -- better citations, small updates, new links, cleaner formatting -- but the bulk of the work, the actual writing and structuring of articles [in Wikipedia], has already been done."

Ending with:

Lord Kelvin (William Thomson), in 1901:
"There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement."

Charles Holland Duell, U.S. Patent Office Commissioner, in the 1890's:
"In my opinion, all previous advances in the various lines of invention will appear totally insignificant when compared with those which the present century will witness. I almost wish that I might live my life over again to see the wonders which are at the threshold." The questionable version: "Everything that can be invented has been invented."

Henry Ellsworth, U.S. Patent Office Commissioner, in an 1843 report to Congress:
"The advancement of the arts taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of when human improvement must end."

Old Testament's Ecclesiastes:
"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."

How to get questions answered on topics not in WP

[mbstone]

Consider a time traveler who has an electric fan that runs on 110VAC and is terminated with an Edison plug. Can he plug into a USA household circa 1905? 1899? 1910? What about in the UK on those dates (yes they did initially use 110VAC)? When were the first electric fans and toasters placed into service? And why can't I find this info on WP?

Re:Not mature in a scholarly sene... so fscking wh

[Anonymous Coward]

The faculty here had aspirations of doing so only to have people disagree with us and say: but I learned something different in my 101 course. Of course, we would explain the difference was due to simplification and cite sources and the like. But some things are just plain unciteable because they require thinking about the content or its logical inferences, especially in the field I work with (such as saying the writer thinks B is true and then citing the writer said that there are two possibilities, A and B, in one area but a few pages later saying that possibility A is actually impossible). But people wouldn't do that. Worse, we had higher ups go "your doctorate degree isn't proof of anything" but then they would turn around and in different circumstances go, "I agree with Bob because he has a doctorate and must know what he is talking about." The final nail in the coffin was the scandal they had with the guy making up advanced degrees and many of the higher ups coming to his defense in public while relatively silently making changes in the background when his making up of basic facts and disagreement based on his "doctorate" caused one of the guys in the Religious Studies program such a headache.

Completion? Really?

[Rudisaurus]

And how many of those 4+ million articles are just stubs?

There's no way that Wikipedia is anything near to "complete"; there's a huge amount of work left to do to fill in the blanks, correct errors, add detail to existing articles, etc. The large number of stubs I run into when I read almost anything is testimony to that.

But this isn't the sexy work of adding a whole new article, so many people lose interest at this point -- as evidenced by the drop in the rate of recruitment of new editors (see: I did RTFA) and the numbers of edits per article. It's very much like the process of debugging a piece of software to make it functional and useful; many developers just aren't all that into the whole process, the grind that it takes to turn a first-pass into a usable product.

I think what they're trying to tell us is that Wikipedia is nearing maturity ... but maturity and completion are two entirely different concepts.

Parental-tags must be a priority

[cellurl]

did they provide parental-tags yet? I tell my kids to steer clear of wikipedia, and I like to show Moms where to learn more about CxmShxts.

Re:Not mature in a scholarly sene... so fscking wh

[Just Some Guy]

maybe they/their respective institutions should pony up and donate to the project.

I've "ponied up" in the form of contributions that were instantly reverted (or for which the entire pages were deleted). I consider that a "no thanks, here's your refund" response.

PS: No, I'm not listing my contributions or the deleted pages. Updating Wikipedia is something I do casually and not obsessively, and in the real world you're allowed to say "this plausible thing happened" without having to cite it to hell and back. If you care so much, you look it up - I've exerted all the effort I'm wiling to spend on the matter.

Alternate explanation

[shiftless]

Today, the War of 1812 page has many more readers than it did in 2008 — 623,000 compared with 434,000 — but the number who make a change has dropped precipitously, from 256 to just 28. Of those original 256, just one remains active. The reason, Jensen believes, is that the article already has had so many edits, there is just not that much to do.

Or maybe people have by and large given up on Wikipedia edits because they're tired of the bureaucracy and politics.

Editors losing interest

[jdavidb]

I did not lose interest because the exciting work was over. I lost interest because of a lot of policies that I thought were counterproductive, annoying, contrary to Wikipedia's founding principles, or depersonalizing. For example, at one time Wikipedia looked to be on track to have a comprehensive guide to Star Trek, including an article for every episode, pictures, summaries, etc. Somebody decided that wasn't "encyclopedic," came up with a new interesting definition of notability that excluded individual episodes, and went on a deletion-happy mad spree obliterating the great work people were doing.

When I came to Wikipedia, we all understood that the wiki medium was not paper, that it would therefore not run out of space, and we could aim for capturing "the sum total of human knowledge." I was interested in that vision. Then along came Wikia, a for-profit venture that could capture all of the non-notable knowledge.

I lost interest in the current vision. I still use it, they are still doing good work, but there's a lot of things I wish were different about Wikipedia, and trying to change it involved fighting with a bunch of entrenched jerks.

Re:Editors losing interest

[Anonymous Coward]

I wholeheartedly agree. This has been my experience.

I never cared about Star Trek or Pokemon, so I never looked up those articles. But I always felt that having them there made Wikipedia great. It had articles on everything imaginable.

For whatever reason, the place is controlled by losers who seek only to destroy things that others have made. It's a sad place now.

The Mayans vs The Cyborg Singularity

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether you believe the Mayan Calendar or not, they certainly picked an interesting end date.

The effective culmination of Wikipedia, the Higgs Boson, Hipsterism, Twitter. It all represents a cultural concrescence, and a singularity of thought and ideas. The past decade has been like a fractal of old ideas all brought together.

When they imagined the year 2000 way back in the 50s, they imagined men in Fedoras walking around tall shiny buildings, they just projected themselves forward. For some reason people still do this. There won't be soccer moms and SUVs in 2080, there won't be iphone v 100, the fact is life would be unrecognisable.

I just can't get on board with some serial notion of time where the future is just about new technology, and the consumers of that new technology. I see a technological singularity no farther than 2030, the integration of man and machine on some level, this can't be a good thing, it will only be used for abuse and control, sorry but there is no cyborg utopia. So when people talk about 2012 in the context of a spiritual singularity, like in the new age, it makes sense because a spiritual singularity or an apotheosis is really our only escape hatch from the technological singularity. Religions, cultures, everyday people.. and all but the most lumpen among us have some intuition about the transcendant and the transformative.

All I've said only really counts if you believe in a purposeful universe of course, if you believe that there is some synchronistic punchline to our lives and to history. If you just believe in the random clashing of atoms in a heat death universe then you can feel free to ignore my post, but to me it feels like things are reaching a culmination point at there very least.

too bad 99% of those articles

[Anonymous Coward]

are about children's cartoons and fictional charatcers
only people with very sever assburgers bother to edit wikipedia
it's a piece of trash and an embarassment to humanity that it even exists

Sincerely,

Julian Assange

Wikis other than TOW

[tepples]

Nothing says "usability" like having to get your own work reported by a third party before it's considered acceptable.

Original research is not what Wikipedia is for. There exist other specialized wikis that encourage original research, and many of them are hosted on places like Wikia. In fact the first wiki (Ward's Wiki) is among those that encourage original research If you want to write about a non-notable topic, post on a specialized wiki.

Standards have been raised over time

[tepples]

As Wikipedia has grown, and as scandals such as the Seigenthaler biography controversy have happened, the standards have been raised. Wikipedia regulars don't expect complete on day 1, but they expect minimally referenced by the time it's moved to mainspace. When I created "Roly-poly toy", I made sure to bring references on day 1, and it wasn't deleted.

convenient excuse

[evilviper]

Editors are fleeing wikipedia like the plague, because nonsensical policies make every conflict a nightmare to deal with, and give vandals and POV pushers a massive edge over good-faith editors.

There is an insane amount of work needed on major Wikipedia articles, which isn't being done, because most of the good editors have already left. All the rest are excuses.

"Ow! My Balls!"

[Guppy]

There's always pop-culture. Can't you see the day when all new entries are limited to 140 characters?

I can see the day when all entries are videos.

I can see the day when said videos all involve some guy getting hit in the balls, with zany sound effects mixed in.

Can't contribute?

[a whoabot]

I see a few people posting on here saying that they try to contribute but their contributions are just reverted by other editors. However, no one supplies any examples in the edit histories. I'm suspicious. I've been editing lately, and haven't had any of my contributions reverted. I edited quite a bit maybe 6 months ago too, and had maybe two of those edits reverted. What are you people including as references for your edits? I'm guessing not much. If you want your edits to go through include an inline citation to your source; published academic works written by an expert on the topic at hand make the best sources generally. If you don't include that, don't be surprised that someone will doubt and delete it. I'm not saying that contributions aren't reverted for no good reason, I know this happens because it has happened to me; but in my experience this is rare.

As to TFA:

Obviously I'm not familiar with every Wikipedia article. I know that many important articles in philosophy are very poor and nowhere near "completion". Compare the current Platonic realism with the SEP article. Many important philosophy articles are lacking like this. This situation is similar for many important religion articles.

Re:Not mature in a scholarly sene... so fscking wh

[Anonymous Coward]

in the real world you're allowed to say "this plausible thing happened" without having to cite it to hell and back

Citation, please.

Re:well-established reputation? scholarship?

[ShakaUVM]

>> Jensen says Wikipedia should now devote more resources toward getting editors access...so that they could bring the articles up to a more polished, professional standard.
>The current problem isn't that editors don't have direct access to the information; after all, most editors would rather edit than become subject matter experts

The key fact missing here is that Jensen himself has a large private library, and uses this fact (he has sources that other people don't have access to) to bully people when he gets into one of his hundreds of edit wars. "Well of course you're wrong, my source that you don't have access to says so!" Jensen is opposed to having any dissenting voices in "his" history articles, and will endlessly edit war competing points of view into the ground, even if they're correctly sourced.

> As a previous poster stated, it seems that there's about a 90% chance that any revision to any entry will be quickly redacted, whether it's a punctuation correction, a fact backed up by a reference, or just the addition of a reference. From the perspective of contributors with subject matter expertise, Wikipedia has largely become a waste of their time.

Correct, and experts like Jensen are part of the problem. They essentially claim ownership over certain articles, and will ruthlessly edit out any changes to "their" articles. I've added ISBN numbers to a page, to have it reverted by the page's goaltender less than 30 seconds later, no explanation given.

No no, that's not it... people hate editing wikis

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that's not the reason.

The real reason is a small number of (jerkass) editors drive off the the more intelligent-less-gives-a-care-about-nitpicky-things editors. So the wiki is now largely made up of editors that care more about whitespace accuracy than those that care about content.

Re:Not mature in a scholarly sene... so fscking wh

[Bieeanda]

No, you misunderstand. They don't give a shit about Wikipedia. It is neither their responsibility, nor in their interests, to contribute to the development of what is basically a tertiary source.

They're just saying the same thing that every professor I've known has put in their syllabi: Wikipedia is a good enough stepping-off point for research (all of those tasty citations, all lined up at the bottom of the article), but directly citing a Wikipedia article is all kinds of a bad idea for reasons including it could very well be wrong, the passage quoted may not be there five minutes afterward, and the actual density of information on a scholarly topic on Wikipedia is extremely variable.

When secret archives of

[Max_W]

the Foreign Office, State Department, Kremlin, etc. are opened to researches, the whole history section, probably, would have to be re-written.

"Editors" are morons, don't understand WIkipedia

[Anonymous Coward]

The idiots who have made a fuss of putting how many edits (automatic or not) and other vain metrics to make a game out of wikipedia now want to have scholarship funding? I hope to fuck that Jimmy Wales laughs at the deluded fools.

The POINT of Wikipedia is that knowledgeable people would write and edit. Not losers with too much time, who harangue Jimmy like a demigod, who post stats and idiotic side panels on user pages, who twists stats to say "they wrote wikipedia", which was debunked.

> Jensen says Wikipedia should now devote more resources toward getting editors access to higher-quality scholarship (in private databases like JSTOR), admission to military-history conferences, and maybe even training in the field of historiography, so that they could bring the articles up to a more polished, professional standard.

Screw you Jensen - go fucking pay for your own education if you want to faff around. Research shit for free you dumb fuck. YOU'RE part of the problem that made wikipedia a hostile place for MANY of those who DID pay for their own education and wanted to add significant facts to the system.

Meh, Wikipedia became a poisonous well because the carrot-stick formula (the risk-reward strategy) wasn't aligned to the needs of the page, people created their own meta-rewards and idiotic things in there, much like reddit.

Maybe I am pants-on-head stupid

[tepples]

pants-on-head stupid

What again is wrong with wearing a pair of trousers as a scarf?

Poe's law

[tepples]

lol this guy is a troll. a or a walking talking parody.

And thus is Poe's law validated.

All Human Knowledge, an estimate

[emijrp]

Hi. It took me 2 years to make this estimate and it is incomplete, but I found that there are more than 120 million notable topics for Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Emijrp/All_human_knowledge Regards