Slashdot Mirror
The Project To Revive Abandoned Wikipedia Pages Has Been Abandoned (theoutline.com)
For years, an "entrepreneurial spirit" kept alive several of abandoned articles on Wikipedia. The WikiProject called Abandoned Articles, which sought to bring abandoned articles back to life, or "if appropriate, merging information or recommending deletion"
is no more...for a long time. From an article on the Outline: A few editors are still listed as active, but most don't actively edit articles anymore. The few I tried to contact didn't get back to me. One email address I found bounced back. Many seem to have moved on with their lives. The concept of "abandoned" Wikipedia articles, one finds, when one peruses the Abandoned project for a few minutes, is sort of outmoded. Back in 2007, when the project was really last active, Wikipedia was a much different place. One user who occasionally edited "stub" articles -- those with little to no content, often the first on the chopping block for deletion because of their lack of "relevance" -- told me that "back then Wikipedia was a lot emptier. It was occasionally possible to find, like, sort of significant people or whatever -- a photographer -- whose entire Wikipedia entry amounted to the work of two people." Now that Wikipedia averages, according to its own statistics, 10 edits per second and 800 new articles a day, a group dedicated to articles that are dormant -- not deleted, simply left to grow over with weeds -- seems almost quaint. In fact, of the many articles still listed as needing to be adopted, almost none are currently abandoned: Straight Face was deleted in December 2007; Pavane got further disambiguated; "From a View to a Kill" was inhaled into the greater entry for For Your Eyes Only, a short story collection by Ian Fleming; likewise, Forward Link was added to the larger entry for "Telecommunications link."
And now you get to explain Linux. And why SCO failed.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The article's interviewees seemingly try to imply that the group is going away because it is no longer necessary - but, to even an occasional user of Wikipedia, it is obvious there's plenty of that sort of work to do, were anyone willing to do so. That's the problem... it's hard to keep unpaid volunteers interested in doing the drudge work for any length of time.
#DeleteChrome
This has some real potential! Find "abandoned" articles and just, you know, "move in" and own 'em like a god! Beat back any mamby pamby so-called potentially pesky fellow editors, establish a line and stand on it!
So, real question, just because no one is actively editing or owning an article, does that really mean they are "abandoned" ?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
it's hard to keep unpaid volunteers interested in doing the drudge work for any length of time.
Baloney. It's hard to keep unpaid volunteers interested in putting up with the incredibly stupid politics that permeate Wikipedia...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
It looks like it was successful, everythings been adopted?
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
Last time I went to edit some Wikipedia articles, putting in actual content, the pages got reverted with little to no explanation why. A few months later, mysteriously, the identical content, word for word, I added (which was yanked) was present, put there by another editor.
I'm sorry to hear wikipedia has never been useful to you.
So much so, so amazingly and overwhelmingly so, that it somehow dragged the collective's experience down to an average value that still fits the qualifier "failed".
Back in 2007, when the project was really last active, Wikipedia was a much different place. One user who occasionally edited "stub" articles -- those with little to no content, often the first on the chopping block for deletion because of their lack of "relevance"
There are still users (like Cahk) that suggest articles for deletion (within one hour) if they don't have enough content, even if there are many other articles already pointing to the article.
This kind of bullshit will never end.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
nobodys even bothered to consider my project to revive The Project To Revive Abandoned Wikipedia Pages...its a surefire winner and bound to succeed where others have failed.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Just wait until I start the project to revive the project to revive abandoned Wikipedia pages.
I wonder whether /. editors earn any more than Wiki editors
You are an idiot. The alternative to socialism is a dollar slavery with no incentive to compete because 1% owns everything else already. Capitalism is a myth that can't exist without regulation. And regulation by the government is Socialism.
From what I remember, SCO failed because it was probably the first victim of MS's extend...embrace...extinguish method of removing competition.
Wikipedia is held hostage by abusive admins like Closedmouth and Bsadowski1. Also there are the twinkle using minions like Sro23 and Chrissymad who revert editors.
This is exactly the kind of thing that drove me away from adding and editing pages. Not these guys specifically, but people just like them. They're basically griefers who orbit Wikipedia day and night looking for the opportunity to fuck with people, wreck their work, or just act like authoritarian assholes.
After a few utterly pointless go-arounds with them and their power-mad dick-waving, I just gave up. Life is too short to waste screwing around with people like them.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Triumphalism is not the right approach as capitalism too may still fail. Marx and some other philosophers predicted that it is likely to end in an imperialism and a war.
Some researches say that the WW1 and WW2 were the same war, and that it is not over yet. It may reignite again.
In my opinion such projects as Linux and Wikipedia is a good step forward in this respect.
Maybe if Wikipedia folks worked together, there wouldn't be so many abandon articles. Many are quickly discouraged when factual corrections are removed or reverted, with the wrong information. Even heavily cited sources are removed because someone else thinks that they aren't relevant.
Abandon articles may not have been abandon if interested parties weren't discouraged from making changes.
I've known other publication authors who were unable to edit their own information. Some were as simple as a wrong age. Even familiar third parties couldn't get the correct information to stay, because it would be reverted, removed, or changed to different incorrect information. "No really, my birthday is ..." is considered a lie, but trust a blogger who says
I found one particular instance that was very ... well, stupid. Paraphrased, it said
That came after multiple edits saying it is just water. The "closely held secret" version quotes an unrelated organization who isn't in the area. The factual citation was from a local news organization. It's like quoting Pravda about a Wisconsin cheese festival, and saying that WISN is irrelevant because they actually had reporters there.
I've heard of other things, like specialized scientists correcting errors are themselves told that they are wrong, making it impossible to fix until someone else says it.
Rather than correcting information, or adding new information, people learn to just say "Don't trust the Wikipedia information, it's wrong, and they won't let anyone fix it." Sadly, they're right.
Wikipedia's abandonment problem won't get fixed, as long as people are discouraged from doing the work correctly.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I am starting a project to identify abandoned Slashdot editors. For example, like, several appear to have been brain dead since 2007.
"...and nothing of value was lost."
I was a wikipedia admin for a long time, but I gave up exactly because of people like Closedmouth and DoRD. DoRD is particularly bad, he's been caught fabricating "checkuser results" repeatedly to help his friends "win" content disputes, but they keep him on because he's connected to certain people high up.
These days, Wikipedia is mostly just a source for trivia - oh, sorry, "In Popular Culture", never ever say "trivia" at Wikipedia.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I think you've got the wrong problem. ISTM that the problem (which *may* have been fixed) is that people who know the subject matter keep getting their edits reverted by those who don't have a clue, but who have an investment in making a lot of edits. I've heard many complain that they were never going to bother editing a Wikipedia page again, because it was like writing on the wind. Nothing they wrote would be preserved, so why bother.
Unfortunately Wikipedia now has such a bad reputation that there are many experts who will not only never contribute to them again, they will, if asked, strongly recommend against anyone else so wasting their time.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I've heard many complain that they were never going to bother editing a Wikipedia page again, because it was like writing on the wind.
That's me. I contributed quite a bit in the early days of Wikipedia. I also donated money. But I had too much of my work deleted by some teenage admin with a Napoleon complex. I haven't contributed or donated in years, and I won't ever again until the deletionism stops. Wikipedia is not printed on paper, so there is no inherent practical limit to how much information it can contain. Every article matters to the people that wrote it, and to the people that seek it out and read it. Nobody else will see it. So why delete it? "Noteworthiness" should not be a binary "in or out". It should be a continuum so more noteworthy articles appear higher in the search list, but should not be used to justify deletion of more obscure information.
Should there be a Wiki page for every Pokemon character? If someone wants to write the pages, and people are interested in reading about them, then of course they should each have a page.
Disclaimer: The pages I edited were not about Pokemon. I just used Pokemon as an example, because the Pokemon pages and the community involved in them, were indeed attacked and destroyed by the deletionists.
Linux is pretty darn successful: 1st place dominant in server / cloud, dominant player in embedded about $10 / unit, dominant in mobile. dominant in supercomputing. There are areas Linux doesn't do well in, like its original target of desktop, but its far from a failure by any reasonable standard.
SCO failed because of inexpensive server big box Unix, Linux and Windows NT. There were better OSes for X86. There are better Unixes at around the $7k price point. And by the mid 1990s there was even a better Unix for x86. And with the invention of the 486 the advantages of the x86 / i860 dual motherboards became far too niche. Essentially SCO never found a large enough market to sustain the level of development needed to compete. An example of how
I liked Wikipedia in the inclusionist days. It would probably have 20-100x the number of articles it has today were it not for the deletionism. The articles themsleves would be far more complete. Deletionism has been incredibly expensive. OTOH the deletionists were somewhat successful in raising the bar for accuracy. I don't think it was worth the cost but unlike say 4 years ago the changes are quite evident.
Your statements remind me of FFmpeg.
No they do it for free. Sometimes they mod for hotpockets tho...
Om, nomnomnom...
"We apologize again for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked."
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
At first I edited the entry for Kennewick Man (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennewick_Man) by placing this photo for use in the
aritcle http://i44.tinypic.com/j7ffoz.... it was a straight text entry.
Then all of these programs started showing up to add to your browser or stand alones. It
got to the point one had to specifically be set up to make any entries; it was too much for me when an entry would of been a rare occasion.
Note:
I got all the permissions for posting the photo (It's a bust outside the door of a library), all was good.
Then the photo had a history of reappearing in the article then being removed - appears one involved in it's construction claimed ownership having it removed from Wikipedia, and refused any email from me questioning ownership of a stature.
-and yes it does look like Patrick Stewart.
Perhaps /. should abandon this story about Wikipedia abandoning abandoned entries.
That way, whatever you type into the search engine, there will be authoritative-looking results.
And yet, Wikipedia is a group graffiti wall, gamed by spammers, Leftist ideologues and basement NEETbeards with megalomania.
Alternative Right.
That is why it looks like Patrick Stewart (who is most famous for playing a French ethnic character) and why it was removed.
Alternative Right.
I never really got over it. I had worked pretty hard on a couple of entries for lower-profile mid-1990's bands when I realized their (mostly fan-curated) pages were disappearing, but bam! deleted for relevance. Turns out both those bands have pages up again today, just not nearly as informative, accurate, or detailed, and now all those caches I used for the information are pretty much lost....
Your statements remind me of FFmpeg.
I must have missed that scuffle. (??) Was it an edit-war or a revision-war?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
My approach exactly.
I pretty much only edit Wikipedia articles that I'm actively reading (usually to take very quick notes). I make my changes and move on. I've touched hundreds of articles over the past year and only been reverted by an over-invested douche maybe five times. A couple of times I probably crossed the line a bit and wasn't too surprised.
One revert appeared to be politically motivated. My edit made Israel look slightly worse by intensifying, for clarity, what the article already said. I registered my complaint on the talk page of the editor in question (very active), and never heard back.
So I lost one battle (a quick edit, a quick revert, a quick comment, and done). Discretion is the better part of valour.
I think many of my edits survive because I'm usually scratching my own itch (usually for quickness of note taking). That helps to bring perspective, too.
FFmpeg, in my assessment, is a bunch of teenage, mostly French, egomaniacs running an otherwise decent piece of open source software into the ground with their attitudes. Some seemingly cooler heads did fork AvConv from it some years ago, and now the two forks spend quite a bit of effort duplicating each others' work... maybe in 10 years or so some of them will grow up enough to stop the ego wars.