Vanity of Article Writers, ...a time to cast away stones Options

[GlassBeadGame]

I have been struck lately by the growing smugness of "article writers." Those who avoid wonkery and administraton for the creaton or "improvement" of articles on Wikpedia. To hear them say you would thing they were creating some great works of literature. I got to tell you I don't see it. Even among our FA artistes. They use this activity much in the same way "vandal patrols" or policy wonks use the stuff they do for playing the game that is Wikipedia.

At best I'd say is "Well pretty good for a sand painting made in a sandbox surrounded by pre-schoolers flinging rocks and spraying down the place with pressure hoses...but come back tomorrow." Wikipedia articles, even FAs, are no great shakes. Certainly they don't justify the sense of self-entitlement these prima donnas pretend. Nor do they make up for the many levels or irresponsibilty directed at people outside the project that results from their work.

The only thing of any value in Wikipedia is it partially functions in the the same task Wikia Search fails at, collecting a list of manually generated sources (very imperfectly vetted) and indirectly returning them on the top of search request. You don't need article writers for this task at all.

[UseOnceAndDestroy]

This point gets buried a lot in the noise of BLP and who's-banning-who: the general quality of wikipedia is awful, so much so its main additions to "the sum of human knowledge" are question marks and negative numbers.

Want to know what an MPLS is? Wikipedia will hand you this drivel.

Want to help your kid find out why salt melts ice on the sidewalk? Prefer the page at frostburg.edu before you subject the nipper to the mumbling density of wikipedia's treatment.

I could go on listing. Maybe it’s a product of writing by self-selected committee, but the dominant style on WP is strangulated and inaccessible, and too frequently makes understanding a topic just a little bit harder. For those editors considering quitting who can write well - I'd encourage you to write independently, you'll do better. For those who can't - for god's sake, just stop.

[EricBarbour]

Want to help your kid find out why salt melts ice on the sidewalk? Prefer the page at frostburg.edu before you subject the nipper to the mumbling density of wikipedia's treatment.

nice find, that's one of the most obscurantist articles I've ever seen....while still being accurate.

You are what the kids call a hater, and I suspect you couldn't write your way out of a cardboard box (and don't come after me to your tu quoque's; I'm also practically illiterate and almost used the word "ablutions" instead of "oblations," above).
People like you and others I won't mention see Wikipedia as Dimension X, or the Bizarro universe, when it in many respects approximates the regular universe more than we care to admit: full of nasty people, stacked to its eyeballs in bullshit, with a few reasonable souls and delightful, distracting baubles to be enjoyed, if you take the time to look for them.

You both miss the point. For every well-written and useful FA, there's an unknown pile of crap like that freezing-point article. (or, for a random choice, this.) And nobody can even make up a vague statistic of how bad the problem is, because of the construction of MediaWiki's database and the sheer volume of material that has yet to be examined by a live human being who knows something about the subject.....

[Eva Destruction]

And nobody can even make up a vague statistic of how bad the problem is, because of the construction of MediaWiki's database and the sheer volume of material that has yet to be examined by a live human being who knows something about the subject.....

Number of Featured Articles
Number of Good Articles
Articles with at least one issue needing resolution

The answer is left as an exercise for the student.

[EricBarbour]

And nobody can even make up a vague statistic of how bad the problem is, because of the construction of MediaWiki's database and the sheer volume of material that has yet to be examined by a live human being who knows something about the subject.....

Number of Featured Articles
Number of Good Articles
Articles with at least one issue needing resolution
The answer is left as an exercise for the student.

That's very nice. Who devised these statistics? Where is the complete list of "good" articles?
Define a "good article". Who decided this, and where's the written policy or standard?

That count of "good articles" appears to be the work of a bot. Very funny. Skynet, I suppose?

Where in this list is the category of "articles that have factual errors, are poorly written or are obscurantist"?
This category contains only 126 articles. I'm fairly certain there are tens of thousands more
which are not listed here (or anywhere).

You want something to do to "improve the encyclopedia", Eva? Delete this.

For that matter, where is the Wikipedia policy that says "Wikipedia is a general interest
encyclopedia, therefore all articles should be written to answer general-encyclopedia
questions, and should avoid obscurantistic specialist jargon when possible."