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_ General Discussion _ Vanity of Article Writers

Posted by: 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.

Posted by: Samuel Culper Sr.

Can't fully agree. Unless you think there is no value at all in Wikipedia. (I happen to still think it's a useful tool for general research.)

Take for instance, someone like [[User:Baseball Bugs]] (currently at RfA) and your average "article writer". One's a dramawhore, and the other does actually add something of worth. People that spend their time on adminboards or rfa or stuff like that are just "playing the game".

While not perfect, it's the article writers that maintain some value to Wikipedia. If the numbers of "Article writers" and "adminboard dramawhores" were reversed, I think Wikipedia would be a much better place. IMO, they have a right to be self-righteous and condescending to those that can't write an article.

Posted by: Emperor

For a while I made it a game to pick apart the featured article of the day. It wasn't all that difficult to find glaring errors, if I already knew something about the subject. For topics where I had no prior knowledge, Wikipedia articles seemed perfectly plausible. On the other hand, Wikipedia is often better than the other crap on the internet.

As the owner of another website that lives on user-generated content, I can honestly say that I love article writers.

Posted by: Malleus

QUOTE(Emperor @ Wed 11th March 2009, 4:46pm) *

For a while I made it a game to pick apart the featured article of the day. It wasn't all that difficult to find glaring errors, if I already knew something about the subject. For topics where I had no prior knowledge, Wikipedia articles seemed perfectly plausible. On the other hand, Wikipedia is often better than the other crap on the internet.

As the owner of another website that lives on user-generated content, I can honestly say that I love article writers.

I think that in a not insignificant number of cases the wikipedia entry is very likely the best info available on the internet. Admittedly that doesn't necessarily mean that it's much good, but that's not so much down to the article writers as to the screams of "Conflict of Interest!" whenever anyone who clearly knows what they're writing about turns up.

Posted by: Peter Damian

QUOTE(GlassBeadGame @ Wed 11th March 2009, 2:10pm) *

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.


I think that's a bit unfair. Granted there is a load of crap, but look at the article on the Fourth Crusade e.g.

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

It neatly summarises the main couple of things you need to know about this crusade, has quite a bit of detail (considering it is probably one of the most obscure of the big crusades). It mentions Geoffrey Villhardouin and has links to an article about him - he is also an obscure character, so well done that article writer - Adam Bishop I think.

QUOTE(Emperor @ Wed 11th March 2009, 4:46pm) *

For a while I made it a game to pick apart the featured article of the day. It wasn't all that difficult to find glaring errors, if I already knew something about the subject. For topics where I had no prior knowledge, Wikipedia articles seemed perfectly plausible. On the other hand, Wikipedia is often better than the other crap on the internet.

As the owner of another website that lives on user-generated content, I can honestly say that I love article writers.


As you say, it is also easy to find stuff that is moderate to complete nonsense.

Posted by: 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MPLS_VPN&oldid=274489162.

Want to help your kid find out why salt melts ice on the sidewalk? Prefer the page at http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/solutions/faq/why-salt-melts-ice.shtml before you subject the nipper to the mumbling density of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freezing_point_depression.

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.

Posted by: Sarcasticidealist

I'd agree that the overall quality of Wikipedia is not high. In particular, very few FAs meet the nominal FA prose requirement of "engaging, even brilliant" (mine don't). The de facto prose standard for FAs is "competent, free of easily noticable technical faults and without any really terrible stylistic decisions." But for many subjects - including almost all of those that FAs - Wikipedia provides the clearest, most accessible, free online treatment.

Wikipedia is most useful not when it's a substitute for other sources, but when it's a substitute for ignorance.

As for GBG's original point, there's a segment of article writers for whom smugness is endemic. But there's an observer bias there, just as there is for admins: the article writers you notice are the ones prancing around ANI shrieking that the Wikipolitician caste is ruining the encyclopedia, and that everybody should actually be more like them (the article writers).

Posted by: Skinny87

As an article writer, and an FA contributor, I don't think I'm particularly vain; I like my articles and think they're quite good, but I'm not going to say they're brilliant. Far from it; my prose is probably average, for example.

I'd agree that wikipedia isn't the font of all human knowledge it's sometimes portrayed as being, but I'd also agree that it's better than nothing at all, and probably the best organized on the internet. My articles aren't comprehensive, even when they're at FA level, they're often lacking (non-vital) sources that I can't access or afford. But I'd like to think that they're as comprehensive as they can be, and that they give the reader a fairly detailed and neutral view of what occurred. Ultimately, they're a starting point - no one should be citing them in an essay or thinking they're the best source of knowledge for that particular topic. A good wiki article should be well-sourced to allow the reader to find those sources for themselves whilst they get at least a general understanding of the topic.

Posted by: Obesity

Give it a rest, GBG. FA writers are the last place you should be directing your idle, pissy and predictable ire.

You never struck me as a particularly insightful aesthetic critic, but it shouldn't take Harold Bloom to point out that, Pokémon and Power Rangers paeans excepted, the best Featured Articles demonstrate palpable literary style and substance, especially when compared to entries from, say, World Book (the dumbed-down paper encyclopedia for dummies, which was the only thing I had to read growing up).

Must I drag out my favorite article once again as example?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._A._Andr%C3%A9e%27s_Arctic_balloon_expedition_of_1897

This is textbook, well, textbook. It's better than most textbooks. You sound bitter and uninformed to suggest otherwise.

And it's not an isolated example.

Who, may I ask, besides the inimitable Giano (known slightly more for his over-the-top posturing than for his fluid and witty style) constitutes this insufferable gang of smug, self-satisfied wankers?

At this moment, the lady doing the best article work is Moni3. A industrious lesbian oddball from Florida, she is many things, but she is not a prima donna. She did the Harvey Milk article and is currently working on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Bad_Art (still a work in progress, but already mildly dazzling and, with a tiny bit of professional editing, would be suitable for a number of magazines). People like Moni3 (or Ceoil, or several others) naturally take pride in their full-time hobby (when you work for free, pride is all you can take), but they can hardly be accused of strutting about cyberspace demanding oblations; you know what they do? They write. A lot.

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.

Repent. thumbsdown.gif

Posted by: UseOnceAndDestroy

QUOTE(Skinny87 @ Wed 11th March 2009, 8:41pm) *

I'd agree that wikipedia isn't the font of all human knowledge it's sometimes portrayed as being, but I'd also agree that it's better than nothing at all

It's a recurring wikipedian myth to position wikipedia and "nothing" as the only possibilities. Wikipedia is decidedly not better than a rich and diverse internet of independent sites and documents, created by people who actually understand the topics they're involved in.

The wikipedian project is to appropriate and re-mediate, losing definition and wedging content into its own shape on the way - for the benefit of someone other than the readers. Most "article writers" are doing grunt work that MFA sites can do with scripts.

Posted by: Sarcasticidealist

QUOTE(UseOnceAndDestroy @ Wed 11th March 2009, 6:28pm) *
It's a recurring wikipedian myth to position wikipedia and "nothing" as the only possibilities. Wikipedia is decidedly not better than a rich and diverse internet of independent sites and documents, created by people who actually understand the topics they're involved in.
So why doesn't that network exist? Surely the people who actually understand what they're talking about aren't engaged in editing Wikipedia, so what's stopping them from setting up their own network? I've written three featured articles, all of which are, as featured articles go, of pretty middling quality. But each is the best free access online resource on the subject. That may not be true of all FAs, but it's true of a good many of them. Wikipedia has actually driven the creation of free access online information that, by all the evidence we have, would not otherwise exist in such a form.

Besides that, there is utility in Wikipedia's organization, which is actually among its stronger suits; the interconnectivity of Wikipedia articles provides utility to the reader that would not exist from your mostly hypothetical diverse network of sites and documents.

Posted by: Luís Henrique

QUOTE(Emperor @ Wed 11th March 2009, 1:46pm) *
For a while I made it a game to pick apart the featured article of the day. It wasn't all that difficult to find glaring errors, if I already knew something about the subject. For topics where I had no prior knowledge, Wikipedia articles seemed perfectly plausible.


But isn't this part of the problem?

When I read an article about, say, Thailand, or the proccess of refining iron ore, or emphysema, I wonder whether they actually make any sence, as it superficially seems, or if they are full of lies, pranks, urban legends, fantasies, like those about subjects I have some actual knowledge.

Luís Henrique

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(Sarcasticidealist @ Wed 11th March 2009, 10:27am) *

Wikipedia is most useful not when it's a substitute for other sources, but when it's a substitute for ignorance.

That's a really good quote. If Wikipedia was smart they would adopt it as a slightly-self-derogatory and helpful motto, like Google's DON'T BE EVIL.

Of course, they're not very bright, as an institution. And institutionally, they have very little real ironic self-awareness, either. But I repeat myself...

I'm impressed with the fact that Wikipedia has many critics who haven't paid the price to read its content. I mean, it's okay if you've edited little and are complaining about BLP defamation-- that is actively evil. But what about people who complain about content without having put in any work to improve it? Those are the narcissistic and entitled ones, who think information of the best quality should be FREEEEEE and complain if it isn't. Along with all the other necessities of life. Wikipedia here as mother's tit. It's very Freudian, but that's to be expected, since people who want good stuff for nothin' tend to be very childish.

Okay, so as Obesity observes, Wikipedia IS very much like the real world: full of crap and assholes and with a lot of mediocrity and only a few gems. Well, it's free so WTF else did you expect?? Really? Being free I'm amazed that it's as good as it is. If we can rid it of the actively evil and malevolent parts, starting with BLP, I will declare myself satisfied. I've put enough work into the thing to read it free the rest of my life. And I don't think I "deserve" to get paid back what I put in. Still, I can say I've done my part and more.

Posted by: EricBarbour

QUOTE(UseOnceAndDestroy @ Wed 11th March 2009, 10:19am) *
Want to help your kid find out why salt melts ice on the sidewalk? Prefer the page at http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/solutions/faq/why-salt-melts-ice.shtml before you subject the nipper to the mumbling density of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freezing_point_depression.
nice find, that's one of the most obscurantist articles I've ever seen....while still being accurate.

QUOTE
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, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_emission.) 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.....

Posted by: Eva Destruction

QUOTE(EricBarbour @ Wed 11th March 2009, 10:32pm) *

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.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:FA_number
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:GA_number
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_backlog

The answer is left as an exercise for the student.

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(Luís Henrique @ Wed 11th March 2009, 3:10pm) *

But isn't this part of the problem?

When I read an article about, say, Thailand, or the proccess of refining iron ore, or emphysema, I wonder whether they actually make any sence, as it superficially seems, or if they are full of lies, pranks, urban legends, fantasies, like those about subjects I have some actual knowledge.

Luís Henrique

Sure, but you have that problem about most of what you learn in life, since you're hardly ever going to able to get your summaries directly from the greatest experts in the world, Charlie Rose style (how I envy that man his job).

In the real world, gaining most knowledge is sort of like learning a new word in your vocabulary. You hear it once, this perfectly cromulent word, but you've never heard it before. Still from the way it's used, you begin to have some idea of what it means. As it's used more and more, you realize that your ignorance does not mean it wasn't cromulent, it must means YOU hadn't encountered it. But now you're aware of it.

Studies show that when 3 year-olds are exposed to an articificial word, it only takes about 5 usages for them to hone in on its meaning pretty well, and that they do it rather like tracking an animal by scent. It doesn't start out perfect, but descends through the categories, until they nail it.

Again, in the real world, you don't get to find out about iron ore refining from the bored steelworker sitting next to you on some transoceanic flight on which he wants to talk. Instead, you sort of need to know, don't have access to the net, and so you ask the people around you: "Know anything about iron ore refining"? And you get back something like: "A little. I dunno how they get the dirt out, but I know they have to take the iron oxide, mix it with coke in big furnace, and heat the blazes out of it till the carbon takes out the oxygen and molten iron is left. Then they blow pure oxygen through to get rid of more carbon, to get steel." So you still have an incomplete picture, but you know more than you did. Later you find the thing is self-heating and is called a blast furnace. And you learn out they get the dirt out, and so on and so on. That's Wikipedia, too.

In some ways, as has been said by many people, one problem is that we expect too much of Wikipedia. If we could just fix the vandalism and defamation, we'd be left with sort of what you get from a very large roomful of decent, random people on any subject. And that's no small thing. It's bound to beat hell out of what you "know" just on your own.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Wed 11th March 2009, 6:22pm) *

QUOTE(Sarcasticidealist @ Wed 11th March 2009, 10:27am) *

Wikipedia is most useful not when it's a substitute for other sources, but when it's a substitute for ignorance.


That's a really good quote. If Wikipedia was smart they would adopt it as a slightly-self-derogatory and helpful motto, like Google's DON'T BE EVIL.

Of course, they're not very bright, as an institution. And institutionally, they have very little real ironic self-awareness, either. But I repeat myself …

I'm impressed with the fact that Wikipedia has many critics who haven't paid the price to read its content. I mean, it's okay if you've edited little and are complaining about BLP defamation — that is actively evil. But what about people who complain about content without having put in any work to improve it? Those are the narcissistic and entitled ones, who think information of the best quality should be FREEEEEE and complain if it isn't. Along with all the other necessities of life. Wikipedia here as mother's tit. It's very Freudian, but that's to be expected, since people who want good stuff for nothin' tend to be very childish.

Okay, so as Obesity observes, Wikipedia IS very much like the real world: full of crap and assholes and with a lot of mediocrity and only a few gems. Well, it's free so WTF else did you expect?? Really? Being free I'm amazed that it's as good as it is. If we can rid it of the actively evil and malevolent parts, starting with BLP, I will declare myself satisfied. I've put enough work into the thing to read it free the rest of my life. And I don't think I "deserve" to get paid back what I put in. Still, I can say I've done my part and more.


Tagged for Web Searches under • Still Clueless After All These Years (WP:SCAATY) •

Posted by: Kato

QUOTE(Obesity @ Wed 11th March 2009, 9:23pm) *

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.

That could apply to almost anything. Even Fox News has the odd decent and delightful person involved.

Look, when you see Wikipedia as a con-artist's sweatshop, or a plain bully, which are surely reasonable, proven positions to take by anyone's measure, then how else do you expect people to respond?

That said, there are some really good articles on Wikipedia. As good as you are likely to get on a topic. Though these are scarce. And I have time for anyone who is in the act of creating something of worth.

Months ago, I wrote here that the Art articles are dreadful - you hit the roof. But the plain fact is that they are terrible. Sure, you can point to some quality article on a Bosch painting, but they are few and far between. One needle in a haystack, after how many years now? The "Wisdom of Crowds" hasn't produced anything like the quality Wikipedios would like to believe.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Wed 11th March 2009, 6:43pm) *

QUOTE(Luís Henrique @ Wed 11th March 2009, 3:10pm) *

But isn't this part of the problem?

When I read an article about, say, Thailand, or the proccess of refining iron ore, or emphysema, I wonder whether they actually make any sence, as it superficially seems, or if they are full of lies, pranks, urban legends, fantasies, like those about subjects I have some actual knowledge.

Luís Henrique


Sure, but you have that problem about most of what you learn in life, since you're hardly ever going to able to get your summaries directly from the greatest experts in the world, Charlie Rose style (how I envy that man his job).

In the real world, gaining most knowledge is sort of like learning a new word in your vocabulary. You hear it once, this perfectly cromulent word, but you've never heard it before. Still from the way it's used, you begin to have some idea of what it means. As it's used more and more, you realize that your ignorance does not mean it wasn't cromulent, it must means YOU hadn't encountered it. But now you're aware of it.

Studies show that when 3 year-olds are exposed to an articificial word, it only takes about 5 usages for them to hone in on its meaning pretty well, and that they do it rather like tracking an animal by scent. It doesn't start out perfect, but descends through the categories, until they nail it.

Again, in the real world, you don't get to find out about iron ore refining from the bored steelworker sitting next to you on some transoceanic flight on which he wants to talk. Instead, you sort of need to know, don't have access to the net, and so you ask the people around you: "Know anything about iron ore refining"? And you get back something like: "A little. I dunno how they get the dirt out, but I know they have to take the iron oxide, mix it with coke in big furnace, and heat the blazes out of it till the carbon takes out the oxygen and molten iron is left. Then they blow pure oxygen through to get rid of more carbon, to get steel." So you still have an incomplete picture, but you know more than you did. Later you find the thing is self-heating and is called a blast furnace. And you learn out they get the dirt out, and so on and so on. That's Wikipedia, too.

In some ways, as has been said by many people, one problem is that we expect too much of Wikipedia. If we could just fix the vandalism and defamation, we'd be left with sort of what you get from a very large roomful of decent, random people on any subject. And that's no small thing. It's bound to beat hell out of what you "know" just on your own.


Tagged for Web Searches under • Koolaid Kontact Kontagion •

Posted by: EricBarbour

QUOTE(Eva Destruction @ Wed 11th March 2009, 3:39pm) *

QUOTE(EricBarbour @ Wed 11th March 2009, 10:32pm) *

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.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:FA_number
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:GA_number
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_backlog
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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:GimmeBot. Very funny. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_(Terminator), I suppose?

Where in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_backlog is the category of "articles that have factual errors, are poorly written or are obscurantist"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_articles_needing_style_editing 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2_%D0%9E%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%B3_%D0%AE%D1%80%D1%8C%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87

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."


Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Wed 11th March 2009, 4:17pm) *

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Wed 11th March 2009, 6:43pm) *

QUOTE(Luís Henrique @ Wed 11th March 2009, 3:10pm) *

But isn't this part of the problem?

When I read an article about, say, Thailand, or the proccess of refining iron ore, or emphysema, I wonder whether they actually make any sence, as it superficially seems, or if they are full of lies, pranks, urban legends, fantasies, like those about subjects I have some actual knowledge.

Luís Henrique


Sure, but you have that problem about most of what you learn in life, since you're hardly ever going to able to get your summaries directly from the greatest experts in the world, Charlie Rose style (how I envy that man his job).

In the real world, gaining most knowledge is sort of like learning a new word in your vocabulary. You hear it once, this perfectly cromulent word, but you've never heard it before. Still from the way it's used, you begin to have some idea of what it means. As it's used more and more, you realize that your ignorance does not mean it wasn't cromulent, it must means YOU hadn't encountered it. But now you're aware of it.

Studies show that when 3 year-olds are exposed to an articificial word, it only takes about 5 usages for them to hone in on its meaning pretty well, and that they do it rather like tracking an animal by scent. It doesn't start out perfect, but descends through the categories, until they nail it.

Again, in the real world, you don't get to find out about iron ore refining from the bored steelworker sitting next to you on some transoceanic flight on which he wants to talk. Instead, you sort of need to know, don't have access to the net, and so you ask the people around you: "Know anything about iron ore refining"? And you get back something like: "A little. I dunno how they get the dirt out, but I know they have to take the iron oxide, mix it with coke in big furnace, and heat the blazes out of it till the carbon takes out the oxygen and molten iron is left. Then they blow pure oxygen through to get rid of more carbon, to get steel." So you still have an incomplete picture, but you know more than you did. Later you find the thing is self-heating and is called a blast furnace. And you learn out they get the dirt out, and so on and so on. That's Wikipedia, too.

In some ways, as has been said by many people, one problem is that we expect too much of Wikipedia. If we could just fix the vandalism and defamation, we'd be left with sort of what you get from a very large roomful of decent, random people on any subject. And that's no small thing. It's bound to beat hell out of what you "know" just on your own.


Tagged for Web Searches under • Kontact Koolaid Kontagion •

Truth hurts, don't it, Jon? tongue.gif tongue.gif

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

QUOTE(Obesity @ Wed 11th March 2009, 3:23pm) *

Give it a rest, GBG. FA writers are the last place you should be directing your idle, pissy and predictable ire.

You never struck me as a particularly insightful aesthetic critic, but it shouldn't take Harold Bloom to point out that, Pokémon and Power Rangers paeans excepted, the best Featured Articles demonstrate palpable literary style and substance, especially when compared to entries from, say, World Book (the dumbed-down paper encyclopedia for dummies, which was the only thing I had to read growing up).

Must I drag out my favorite article once again as example?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._A._Andr%C3%A9e%27s_Arctic_balloon_expedition_of_1897

This is textbook, well, textbook. It's better than most textbooks. You sound bitter and uninformed to suggest otherwise.

And it's not an isolated example.

Who, may I ask, besides the inimitable Giano (known slightly more for his over-the-top posturing than for his fluid and witty style) constitutes this insufferable gang of smug, self-satisfied wankers?

At this moment, the lady doing the best article work is Moni3. A industrious lesbian oddball from Florida, she is many things, but she is not a prima donna. She did the Harvey Milk article and is currently working on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Bad_Art (still a work in progress, but already mildly dazzling and, with a tiny bit of professional editing, would be suitable for a number of magazines). People like Moni3 (or Ceoil, or several others) naturally take pride in their full-time hobby (when you work for free, pride is all you can take), but they can hardly be accused of strutting about cyberspace demanding oblations; you know what they do? They write. A lot.

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.

Repent. thumbsdown.gif



That's the button I wanted to press. Wikipedia is overwhelmingly drivel. It is all that you might possibly be proud of and it is not very good at all. The editing is certainly not up to professional standards, even in FAs. The most typical manner in which this manifests itself is in the almost random level of focus and detail that articles pay to sub-parts. This would be absolutely unforgivable in any professional environment, is endlessly annoying and renders articles unreadable. Go look at a dozen FA articles that have "aged" a year . If this horrible aspect was ever addressed at all it will be back. There is simply nothing that can be done about this. Just one example, but one I know you can't deny. It is also a sin World Book would never commit.

You really should have taken that hitch-hike on the triangle between New York, San Francisco and Mexico City. Instead you waste what is left to your youth being a fanboy to wannabe "writers" on a fake encyclopedia.

Posted by: Eva Destruction

QUOTE(EricBarbour @ Wed 11th March 2009, 11:17pm) *

That's very nice. Who devised these statistics? Where is the complete list of "good" articles?

Automatically generated from straight counts of WP:FA and WP:GA.

QUOTE(EricBarbour @ Wed 11th March 2009, 11:17pm) *

Define a "good article". Who decided this, and where's the written policy or standard?

Written policy defining "good article" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Good_article_criteria#What_is_a_good_article.3F; the definition is the result of multiple people, all of whom can be seen in the page history.

QUOTE(EricBarbour @ Wed 11th March 2009, 11:17pm) *

Where in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_backlog is the category of "articles that have factual errors, are poorly written or are obscurantist"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_articles_needing_style_editing contains only 126 articles. I'm fairly certain there are tens of thousands more
which are not listed here (or anywhere).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_articles_needing_factual_verification. The categories are split by month; the 126 articles you're seeing are just those that haven't yet been date-sorted.

QUOTE(EricBarbour @ Wed 11th March 2009, 11:17pm) *

You want something to do to "improve the encyclopedia", Eva? Delete http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2_%D0%9E%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%B3_%D0%AE%D1%80%D1%8C%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2_%D0%9E%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%B3_%D0%AE%D1%80%D1%8C%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87

QUOTE(EricBarbour @ Wed 11th March 2009, 11:17pm) *

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."

Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible

Posted by: Bottled_Spider

QUOTE(Obesity @ Wed 11th March 2009, 9:23pm) *
Must I drag out my favorite article once again as example?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._A._Andr%C3%A9e%27s_Arctic_balloon_expedition_of_1897

Balloons are good. Nice article. Could have used a couple more pictures, though.

QUOTE(GlassBeadGame @ Wed 11th March 2009, 11:44pm) *
That's the button I wanted to press.

That's buttons for you. Just made to be pressed. Heh!

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Wed 11th March 2009, 7:30pm) *

Truth hurts, don't it, Jon? tongue.gif tongue.gif


The Truth is that All the GAGA articles in All the Wikiapedes do not make up for a single unjust banning, a single false death report, or a single violation of a bio subject's good name and privacy.

And there is no better of Proof of the debilitating effect of the Wikipediot Cult on people's ethics and intellects than the fact that you could write the casuistic drivel you wrote above.

And Dat's Da Truth.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Cla68

There are a lot of terrible and mediocre articles in Wikipedia which are an embarrassment. Wikipedia needs more FA and GA writers. The problem is that the FA and GA forums are overloaded and backlogged, so ironically, if more writers were to come and submit more articles for FA or GA candidacy, the standards would probably have to be lowered in order to manage the backlog. As you all have noted, not all of the FA articles which pass are error-free.

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Wed 11th March 2009, 5:06pm) *

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Wed 11th March 2009, 7:30pm) *

Truth hurts, don't it, Jon? tongue.gif tongue.gif


The Truth is that All the GAGA articles in All the Wikiapedes do not make up for a single unjust banning, a single false death report, or a single violation of a bio subject's good name and privacy.

And there is no better of Proof of the debilitating effect of the Wikipediot Cult on people's ethics and intellects than the fact that you could write the casuistic drivel you wrote above.

And Dat's Da Truth.

Jon Awbrey

Feynman always said "Give me a specific problem."

But actually, I'm full of BOTH wise saws and modern instances. And so I play my part.

Posted by: Kato

QUOTE(Cla68 @ Thu 12th March 2009, 12:25am) *

The problem is that the FA and GA forums are overloaded and backlogged, so ironically, if more writers were to come and submit more articles for FA or GA candidacy, the standards would probably have to be lowered in order to manage the backlog.

Get ready for...

Image


Posted by: Obesity

QUOTE(Kato @ Wed 11th March 2009, 7:13pm) *

That could apply to almost anything. Even Fox News has the odd decent and delightful person involved.
I kind of like Fox-News. Especially the blonde bobble-heads in microskirts yammering in raspy, whisky-soaked tones.

QUOTE(UseOnceAndDestroy @ Wed 11th March 2009, 5:28pm) *

It's a recurring wikipedian myth to position wikipedia and "nothing" as the only possibilities. Wikipedia is decidedly not better than a rich and diverse internet of independent sites and documents, created by people who actually understand the topics they're involved in.

Sigh.... does anyone remember how shitty, unreliable and disorganized these richly diverse, independent sites always were before WP came along, how much they suck now and how much they will continue to suck if WP ever loses its prominence. Let's bring back GeoCities, and all our problems will be solved.

99% of the Internet blows. Wikipedia does not boast a superior success rate, but merely sucks in a slightly different key.

QUOTE(GlassBeadGame @ Wed 11th March 2009, 7:44pm) *

That's the button I wanted to press.

That's actually not the button you wanted to press, but I am grateful for your amusement at my response.

If you read your OP, what you were attempting to do, with all of the tiresome and rhetorically sluggish cantankerousness to which we have become accustomed, was conflate WP article writers with a very specific (and now passé) gaggle of martyr-crying attention whores. I assure you that most of the "best" writing is currently being performed by gentle and unassuming people like Karanacs, who are under no delusions that they're creating anything sublime, but still take pleasure in creating something from nothing.

I very much doubt these nice ladies "wannabe" any more than they are: geeky, scrupulous hobbyists who are able to string to words together with a perfunctory level of elegance and are pleased to share their work with a number of online strangers. How repugnant! How purposeless! How blind they are to the big picture! Please, GBG, put them in their place; bring those hoity-toity housewives down to earth for all of us. They're just..... so.... smug.

QUOTE(GlassBeadGame @ Wed 11th March 2009, 7:44pm) *

You really should have taken that hitch-hike on the triangle between New York, San Francisco and Mexico City. Instead you waste what is left to your youth being a fanboy to wannabe "writers" on a fake encyclopedia.

I will mostly refrain from responding to this lowblow outside of the Support Group thread from which the sentiment originated. For the moment, I assure you that Wikipediot "fanboy"-ishness constitutes but a footnote in the comprehensive catalog of unsavory and unproductive dalliances upon my "youth," such as it is, has been squandered. The balance of that catalog is a far greater cause for concern.

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

QUOTE(Obesity @ Wed 11th March 2009, 7:46pm) *
I assure you that most of the "best" writing is currently being performed by gentle and unassuming people like Karanacs, who are under no delusions that they're creating anything sublime, but still take pleasure in creating something from nothing.



Glad you found your own little piece of heaven on Wikipedia. You will excuse me if I don't see it that way. The hitchhiking advice was offered in all sincerity, as I thought your solicitation of advice was sincere. But then what you settled for is nice too, I suppose.

Posted by: Cla68

Doubtless, GBG had no intention for this thread to involve discussions of individual FA articles, but I saw one today that was recently promoted which I believe is one of the "gems" that Obesity mentions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinzua_Bridge, about an old railway bridge, is fantastic. The article even includes a radar loop showing the storm that destroyed the bridge as well as a beautiful, recent panoramic photo of the site.

Sure, the subject is obscure and perhaps, esoteric, but this shows someone using Wikipedia to benefit the Internet community, as Obesity put it, "Making something from nothing." The article's writer is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dtbohrer who doesn't strike me as a smug, condescending, insufferable ANI troller. I'd say that applies to most FA writers or editors who otherwise do their best to write articles that do their subjects the justice they deserve.

Posted by: Obesity

QUOTE(GlassBeadGame @ Wed 11th March 2009, 10:09pm) *

Glad you found your own little piece of heaven on Wikipedia. You will excuse me if I don't see it that way.

Not my piece of heaven, mind you. I don't hang out there at all much anymore (17 edits in February may seem like 17 too many for you, but it ain't many to me). My point was that the decent and harmless people are doing good work--and producing good writing--there with little fanfare. You've just never heard of them.

QUOTE(GlassBeadGame @ Wed 11th March 2009, 10:09pm) *

The hitchhiking advice was offered in all sincerity, as I thought your solicitation of advice was sincere. But then what you settled for is nice too, I suppose.

Fair enough. And I'm sorry if I twisted or failed to hear your argument in this thread.

As I told you before, I'm far too old, too lazy, too fat, too comfortable (complicit would be a more precise word) for any Kerouac/Guevara-style adventures.

Posted by: EricBarbour

QUOTE(Cla68 @ Wed 11th March 2009, 7:21pm) *

Doubtless, GBG had no intention for this thread to involve discussions of individual FA articles, but I saw one today that was recently promoted which I believe is one of the "gems" that Obesity mentions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinzua_Bridge, about an old railway bridge, is fantastic. The article even includes a radar loop showing the storm that destroyed the bridge as well as a beautiful, recent panoramic photo of the site.

Actually, that is a great article. (Although I think the section about the storm is a little overdone.)

There are a lot of great articles on WP. Right next to them in the database,
there are also many ugly and unreadable lumps of text. Not to mention all the
stubs. (The Kinzua Bridge article has links that lead to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pennsylvania_Registered_Historic_Place_stubs. 153 stubs, just for
Pennsylvania registered historic places. That we know of.)

Which only makes the good ones seem all the more sad and lonely......

So okay, there is a written policy of sorts.
That is ignored, apparently on a daily basis, when people write new material.
There is such a volume of articles to deal with, I really can't imagine how the
existing volunteer editor-force can possibly begin to fix them all.

And just how does Wikipedia convince new users to read and follow the "standards"
for good writing? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Good_article_criteria#What_is_a_good_article.3F, as Eva was so determined to tell us.......
and yet, every day there are new writings posted that ignore this standard.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hampster_pants&redirect=no, anyone? How about http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wizard_101_Review&redirect=no or http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kojo_Yankah&redirect=no or http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spankwire&redirect=no? All posted within the last hour.....)

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

And if only Hitler had been a 3rd rate painter instead of a 4th rate painter —

Well, then, all would be forgiven.

Jon hrmph.gif

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

Here's a glorious FA, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan. It's not just the subject matter either. Note the shopping list of incidents and personalities covered. Have a closer look at the "moot's identity" secton which seemingly lacks any coherent point of view, neutral or otherwise. You can feel the editors arguing inside the individual sentences. How could this be a FA? My guess was it got FA'd because they could make it much, much worse.

Posted by: Somey

QUOTE(Sarcasticidealist @ Wed 11th March 2009, 4:43pm) *
QUOTE(UseOnceAndDestroy @ Wed 11th March 2009, 6:28pm) *
...Wikipedia is decidedly not better than a rich and diverse internet of independent sites and documents, created by people who actually understand the topics they're involved in.
So why doesn't that network exist? Surely the people who actually understand what they're talking about aren't engaged in editing Wikipedia, so what's stopping them from setting up their own network?

Cost, time, energy, liability issues, and all sorts of other concerns, one would assume. The World Wide Web, and to some extent the internet in general, wasn't set up or organized to maximize convenience and reliability in information aggregation. Technically, it was set up to ensure survivability of information in the event of a catastrophic event such as a nuclear war, but for most practical purposes that translates into a system that allows a large number of people to redundantly disseminate information to anyone and everyone with the technical means of accessing it. Things like security, bandwidth, search, and the accountability of site owners/operators were all afterthoughts.

It's obviously unrealistic to think that the internet can re-work itself in the short term, but until it does, people who run websites have to deal with ISP's of varying levels of competence, software of varying levels of reliability, and of course, hackers, phishers, identity thieves, spammers, scammers, "script kiddies," "trolls," and (occasionally) lawyers. This doesn't mean Mr. Destroy is wrong - a richer and more diverse internet would be a good thing, and Wikipedia is clearly preventing that diversity from growing by providing a cheap (and anonymous) alternative for people who only want to share a relatively small amount of information, don't feel any need to get paid for sharing it, and don't particularly care who else gets to mess with it after the fact... and, in so doing, handling some (but not all) of the various headaches that come with running a website.

The more interesting question, to me, is whether Wikipedia and its sister sites are doing the world a "net-positive" favor by providing that alternative. I'd say they probably would be, if they split the site into a fairly large number of smaller inter-linked ones with separate low-level administrations, operated under a more ethical standard of governance, each with reasonably accountable (and perhaps more identifiable) ownership - a consortium, essentially. As it is though, I'd have to say no.

Because of the Google factor and also the nature of domain ownership, Jimbo and the WMF will fight any decentralization or "official mass forking" effort tooth and nail, though they'll probably claim they're not fighting it the whole time they're doing just that. And I'd imagine there are all sorts of additional arguments against that kind of decentralization, not the least of which would be based on pure practicality, not to mention the intimidation factor that comes with being so large and well known... but if WP is ever going to go from discouraging web diversity to encouraging it, that's what has to happen.

Posted by: Emperor

QUOTE(Luís Henrique @ Wed 11th March 2009, 6:10pm) *

When I read an article about, say, Thailand, or the proccess of refining iron ore, or emphysema, I wonder whether they actually make any sence, as it superficially seems, or if they are full of lies, pranks, urban legends, fantasies, like those about subjects I have some actual knowledge.


Hmm well let's take Thailand. I don't know much about it either, but having two "History" sections seems kind of redundant to me. Also the tone of the material about WWII seems a bit off... Can't they just admit that they were on the wrong side? At least they mentioned that it's the only southeast Asian country never to have been colonized. That's something a normal person might want to know.

Refining iron ore - longwinded stuff in both "Smelting" and "Blast Furnace", but maybe better than nothing if you have some patience.

Emphysema - The lead sucks for defining it simply as a COPD. Points off again for not mentioning the phrase "loss of elasticity" in the lead, or ever clearly getting the point across in the entire article that air spaces containing the alveoli actually expand. But three points for mentioning smoking in the lead, and 5,000 WikiPoints for mentioning alpha 1-antitrypsin a hundred times. Better off checking Stedman's.

Posted by: Cla68

QUOTE(Somey @ Thu 12th March 2009, 5:28am) *
The more interesting question, to me, is whether Wikipedia and its sister sites are doing the world a "net-positive" favor by providing that alternative. I'd say they probably would be, if they split the site into a fairly large number of smaller inter-linked ones with separate low-level administrations, operated under a more ethical standard of governance, each with reasonably accountable (and perhaps more identifiable) ownership - a consortium, essentially. As it is though, I'd have to say no.

Because of the Google factor and also the nature of domain ownership, Jimbo and the WMF will fight any decentralization or "official mass forking" effort tooth and nail, though they'll probably claim they're not fighting it the whole time they're doing just that. And I'd imagine there are all sorts of additional arguments against that kind of decentralization, not the least of which would be based on pure practicality, not to mention the intimidation factor that comes with being so large and well known... but if WP is ever going to go from discouraging web diversity to encouraging it, that's what has to happen.


Someone who used to be involved with the WMF emailed me once with the same idea of splitting the english projects into smaller sites with stricter administration. Perhaps that's one reason why that person is probably no longer welcome at the WMF office. I think it's a good idea.

Posted by: MBisanz

QUOTE(Cla68 @ Thu 12th March 2009, 7:13am) *

Someone who used to be involved with the WMF emailed me once with the same idea of splitting the english projects into smaller sites with stricter administration. Perhaps that's one reason why that person is probably no longer welcome at the WMF office. I think it's a good idea.


While that is an idea, I would worry about the impact such a fork would have on the generalist editors. Cla, if I'm right, you have a strong interest in military history, so forking along the Uni model of Social Sciences, Humanities, and Natural Sciences probably wouldn't limit you, since you would focus on Social Sciences.

But a large number of wiki functions are performed by editors who don't have a particular topic area. Take for instance my clean up of the File talk: namespace, that crosses all academic fields since it is just clean up. I could probably cover all of the English language wikis, but I like to be able to take a large list and have a large impact quickly. Or look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Addbot, that is a bot that substitutes templates to reduce server load. It works well because it can use one rule set to work on a large amount of data. Having to fork it to work on 10 wikis might increase the difficulty to the point that it would not be worth it. Another thing I do is close AfDs. I've noticed there are a large number of professional AfD editors who find and vet sources for nearly all disciplines. For them there is not a gain by forking, since they work well where they have a massive list of 70 things, to which they can apply the same rule set everyday.

Even in the FA/GA sphere, take a generalist like Malleus, would he really want to learn 10 different sets of GA rules on 10 different wikis to review 10 sets of 23 articles (he reviewed 228 in the latest GA sweeps)? At some point forking leads to a lot of small wikis without a lot of dedicated editors willing to learn the different rule sets. You can probably best see it at http://species.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&limit=500, which is a quasi-natural science fork and lacks a base of generalist cleanup editors and at http://memory-alpha.org/en/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&limit=500&hideminor=0, which is so specific that it doesn't attract the variety needed to get cleanup specialists.

Posted by: Casliber

I hate the idea of splitting wikis..MBZ has a point or two.
Cas

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Wed 11th March 2009, 9:08pm) *

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Wed 11th March 2009, 5:06pm) *

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Wed 11th March 2009, 7:30pm) *

Truth hurts, don't it, Jon? tongue.gif tongue.gif


The Truth is that All the GAGA articles in All the Wikiapedes do not make up for a single unjust banning, a single false death report, or a single violation of a bio subject's good name and privacy.

And there is no better of Proof of the debilitating effect of the Wikipediot Cult on people's ethics and intellects than the fact that you could write the casuistic drivel you wrote above.

And Dat's Da Truth.

Jon Awbrey


Feynman always said "Give me a specific problem."

But actually, I'm full of BOTH wise saws and modern instances. And so I play my part.


Tagged for Web Searches under • Not See Science •

Feynman also said, "The same problems have the same solutions."

So where have we seen this not-see science before?

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Luís Henrique

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Wed 11th March 2009, 7:43pm) *
It's bound to beat hell out of what you "know" just on your own.


That would be the case of, for instance, Babelfish. You put a completely unintelligible text in a language you don't know, and it comes back with some garbled, but useful information. At least you get to know that the text is about the fishing industry in the Pacific, instead of about Human Rights in Rumania.

But this is because you have a reference, ie, your own language, that you know well.

The problem with Wikipedia is not that it contains incomplete, or outdated, or confusely written, information. It is that it often contains apparently complete, apparently up to date, and even well written information, that does not match the real world.

Luís Henrique

Posted by: Luís Henrique

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Thu 12th March 2009, 12:10am) *

And if only Hitler had been a 3rd rate painter instead of a 4th rate painter —

Well, then, all would be forgiven.


Well, in that case he could maybe make a carreer as a mediocre painter, instead of the first class [insert your prefered cussword here] he became. To quote Nero, "what a mediocre artist the world lost!"...

Is Wikipedia a collection of 4th rate pictures, or an holocaust in which knowledge, good will, and decency - among others - are being "genocided"? Or perhaps the later, ornamented with the former?

Luís Henrique

ETA:

If we had Wikipedia in the twenties of the XX Century, would Hitler be Hitler? Or would he waste his youth making up half baked articles, and them owning them against all opposition?

Think of it, perhaps Wikipedia is saving the world, by turning potential first-class criminals into petty page vandalizers. Who knows?

Posted by: Bottled_Spider

QUOTE(Luís Henrique @ Thu 12th March 2009, 12:50pm) *
QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Thu 12th March 2009, 12:10am) *
And if only Hitler had been a 3rd rate painter instead of a 4th rate painter —
Well, then, all would be forgiven.

Well, in that case he could maybe make a carreer as a mediocre painter, instead of the first class [insert your prefered cussword here] he became. To quote Nero, "what a mediocre artist the world lost!"...

In Frederic Mullally's 1975 alternate-history novel "Hitler Has Won" he becomes Pope. I shit you not.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

QUOTE(Luís Henrique @ Thu 12th March 2009, 8:50am) *

If we had Wikipedia in the twenties of the XX Century, would Hitler be Hitler? Or would he waste his youth making up half baked articles, and them owning them against all opposition?

Think of it, perhaps Wikipedia is saving the world, by turning potential first-class criminals into petty page vandalizers. Who knows?


Why do people keep buying the premiss that Wikipedia is about making articles, against all the mounting evidence that it's really about something else?

{{insert archival photo of Nazis marching with brooms, mops, and shovels right about here}}

Hitler failed as a painter, but the art he couldn't match, he could macht.

Jon yak.gif

Posted by: Luís Henrique

QUOTE(Emperor @ Thu 12th March 2009, 2:46am) *

QUOTE(Luís Henrique @ Wed 11th March 2009, 6:10pm) *

When I read an article about, say, Thailand, or the proccess of refining iron ore, or emphysema, I wonder whether they actually make any sence, as it superficially seems, or if they are full of lies, pranks, urban legends, fantasies, like those about subjects I have some actual knowledge.


Hmm well let's take Thailand. I don't know much about it either, but having two "History" sections seems kind of redundant to me. Also the tone of the material about WWII seems a bit off... Can't they just admit that they were on the wrong side? At least they mentioned that it's the only southeast Asian country never to have been colonized. That's something a normal person might want to know.

Refining iron ore - longwinded stuff in both "Smelting" and "Blast Furnace", but maybe better than nothing if you have some patience.

Emphysema - The lead sucks for defining it simply as a COPD. Points off again for not mentioning the phrase "loss of elasticity" in the lead, or ever clearly getting the point across in the entire article that air spaces containing the alveoli actually expand. But three points for mentioning smoking in the lead, and 5,000 WikiPoints for mentioning alpha 1-antitrypsin a hundred times. Better off checking Stedman's.


I think an important difference is that emphysema and iron ore refining both have plenty English-speaking experts; blatant falseties would probably attract enough ridicule upon Wikipedia to get them quickly fixed/deleted. Thailand is probably more complicated: even "experts" on a foreign country will probably miss the correct "mood" of its politics and culture; and it is, I think, possible to make a totally false and misleading article about a country without actually stating a single false "fact".

(Imagine an article about the United States focused on how its politics revolve about religious issues - abortions, evolution teaching, commandments in town halls, etc. The statements could all be actually true, but the immense variety of American culture, politics and life would be fundamentally misrepresented.)

According to the article, Thailand's recorded history begins in the XIII century. But its political section begins in 1932, then jumps directly to 1997.

The section on Education states:

QUOTE
Thailand has never been colonized, and its educational system is not based on European models to any great extent.


But also:

QUOTE
education is provided by a well organized school system of kindergartens, primary, lower secondary and upper secondary schools, numerous vocational colleges, and universities.


which seems to me 'based on European models' to at least "some 'great extent'"...

Besides, it doesn't tell us on what models it is based, instead of European ones - which would be the interesting thing, I reckon.

This paragraph seems quite incoherent, and wouldn't make the pages of any semi-decent newspaper:

QUOTE
Muay Thai, or Thai boxing, is the national sport in Thailand and its native martial art call "Muay." In the past "Muay" was taught to Royal soldiers for combat on battlefield if unarmed. After they retired from the army, these soldiers often became Buddhist monks and stayed at the temples. Most of the Thai people's lives are closely tied to Buddhism and temples; they often send their sons to be educated with the monks. ”Muay” is also one of the subjects taught in the temples.[27]


QUOTE
Taboos in Thailand include touching someone's head or pointing with the feet, as the head is considered the most sacred and the foot the dirtiest part of the body.


Indeed? In Bangkok as well as in rural hamlets?

In "International Rankings", some serious indexes, such as the United Nations' Human Development Index, are mixed up with purely ideological stuff, such as Heritage Foundation's "Indices of Economic Freedom". (ETA: or, and perhaps even worse, Reporters Without Borders' "Worldwide Press Freedom Index".)

I am not sure if by reading it in detail I would be actually learning something about Thailand.

Luís Henrique

Posted by: Luís Henrique

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Thu 12th March 2009, 10:01am) *
Why do people keep buying the premiss that Wikipedia is about making articles, against all the mounting evidence that it's really about something else?


Because its specific form of being about "something else" - ie, territorial struggle - is through writing (and otherwise messing up with) articles.

Luís Henrique

Posted by: Moulton

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Thu 12th March 2009, 9:01am) *
Why do people keep buying the premiss that Wikipedia is about making articles, against all the mounting evidence that it's really about something else?

Jon yak.gif

Probably because http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Ayn_Rand/Proposed_decision#Proposed_principles...

QUOTE(Arbcom @ Ayn Rand Arbitration Case)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Ayn_Rand/Proposed_decision#Purpose_of_Wikipedia

1) The purpose of Wikipedia is to create a high-quality, free-content encyclopedia in an atmosphere of camaraderie and mutual respect among contributors. Use of the site for other purposes, such as advocacy or propaganda, furtherance of outside conflicts, publishing or promoting original research, and political or ideological struggle, is prohibited.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

QUOTE(Luís Henrique @ Thu 12th March 2009, 9:56am) *

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Thu 12th March 2009, 10:01am) *

Why do people keep buying the premiss that Wikipedia is about making articles, against all the mounting evidence that it's really about something else?


Because its specific form of being about "something else" — ie, territorial struggle — is through writing (and otherwise messing up with) articles.

Luís Henrique


Tagged for Web Searches under • Blinded By The Write •

Then you probably think that education is something that concerns the characters on the page instead of the characters of learners.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

QUOTE(Moulton @ Thu 12th March 2009, 10:09am) *

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Thu 12th March 2009, 9:01am) *

Why do people keep buying the premiss that Wikipedia is about making articles, against all the mounting evidence that it's really about something else?

Jon yak.gif


Probably because http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Ayn_Rand/Proposed_decision#Proposed_principles …

QUOTE(Arbcom @ Ayn Rand Arbitration Case)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Ayn_Rand/Proposed_decision#Purpose_of_Wikipedia
  1. The purpose of Wikipedia is to create a high-quality, free-content encyclopedia in an atmosphere of camaraderie and mutual respect among contributors. Use of the site for other purposes, such as advocacy or propaganda, furtherance of outside conflicts, publishing or promoting original research, and political or ideological struggle, is prohibited.


Tagged for Web Searches under • The Overwhelming Desire Of The Mark To Be Conned •
Tagged for Web Searches under • The Unbearable Lightheadedness Of Buying •

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(Luís Henrique @ Thu 12th March 2009, 5:04am) *

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Wed 11th March 2009, 7:43pm) *
It's bound to beat hell out of what you "know" just on your own.


That would be the case of, for instance, Babelfish. You put a completely unintelligible text in a language you don't know, and it comes back with some garbled, but useful information. At least you get to know that the text is about the fishing industry in the Pacific, instead of about Human Rights in Rumania.

But this is because you have a reference, ie, your own language, that you know well.

The problem with Wikipedia is not that it contains incomplete, or outdated, or confusely written, information. It is that it often contains apparently complete, apparently up to date, and even well written information, that does not match the real world.

Luís Henrique

In other words, as Josh Billings famously says: "It ain't the things you don't know that hurt you, so much as the things you know, that just aren't so."

Well, part of the cure for THAT is to look at the thing differently, as everybody has been saying. It appears to be complete and updated, but you just have to realize that appearances are deceiving. As with what Cliff Clavin says in Cheers, you have to take everything in Wikipedia cum grano salis until you get a vetting from an expert, and then you're fine.

But this can still be useful, especially AFTER the vetting. For a reasonably stable sprotected article, it can be a nice shortform to (say) tell an enquiring reporter from the New York Times (I have actually done this on one occasion) that the article on so-and-so is actually pretty good, as of yesterday when I checked it last, and contains no major errors of fact. So go read THAT.

Last week I was reading the TALK page on some physics topic and there was a question from a new IP user who was obviously an academic. He had a quibble but too much of a newbie to be WP:BOLD and WP:FIXIT. I welcomed him to Wikipedia, agreed with one part of this protest but asked if he was sure that the other was an equally important effect in nuclear physics, and he came back and said: "Well, you're right, we should fix the one thing and mention that the other is an effect, but perhaps not the major one." By God, it was CONSENSUS (albeit between two people on a very arcane subject). So I helped him with the change and Wikifying the reference he had brought, and his last comment (now by email, in his own name from an academic institution) was "Thanks, now I can refer my students to this article with a clear conscience."

LOL. He's very far from understanding Wikipedia. I sent him links to WR, Professor Wikipedia, warning him about addiction and politics, and told him he couldn't tell his students anything except that the article was pretty good AS OF DATE VERSION X. But that much was useful. It shouldn't have been necessary, but of course we have no flagged revisions, so here we are. But that's better than nowhere, inasmuch as there wasn't another free online source either of us found which was as nice a summary of the single topic.

A main problem with Wikipedia is that there are very many people in the world who are very uncomfortable with ambiguity. One sees them working in computers, logic, math, etc, because they hate fuzziness, and most of the world is actually pretty fuzzy. These people, who are very much like Religious Fundamentalists (in fact, Fundamentalists of all kinds share a common heritage of binary thinking), just go apeshit about texts that are partly right and partly wrong. Instead of being thankful that in some (not all) circumstances, they beat total ignorance.

The other part of the cure is to know when Josh is irrelevant. In other words, in some time-sensitive life-threatening situations Josh Billings is right; and in others (where you have time to check things out and the consequences are not high for erring in the meantime), Josh is wrong. It takes wisdom to know the difference, and the wisdom itself is NOT in Wikipedia. Too bad. Suck it up. So you don't want to have to apply the same critical skills or skepticism that you would for any manuscript or rumor. Not my problem. Your problem. For being so lazy that you think you should have to work to get anything from a blob of free advice from a bunch of people you don't know well.

I have a odd fantasy in which I see Jon Awbrey driving around in the countryside of a foreign land, needing directions. He stops to ask a random person on the road. Then proceeds to quiz him about his background, how sure he is about what he's saying, and some hard questions about whether or not he's being sent in the opposite of the right direction, just for the lulz. It ends up something like "Go *&^% yourself, you &^%$in' tourist!" And "No, you go *&% yourself, you advice-giving clueless noOb of a fake expert!! boing.gif"

Comical if it doesn't come to blows.

Posted by: Guido den Broeder

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Thu 12th March 2009, 2:01pm) *

Why do people keep buying the premiss that Wikipedia is about making articles, against all the mounting evidence that it's really about something else?


Because if you say different, as I did, you get community banned.

Posted by: Luís Henrique

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Thu 12th March 2009, 11:12am) *
Tagged for Web Searches under • Blinded By The Write •

Then you probably think that education is something that concerns the characters on the page instead of the characters of learners.


Is a sausage plant about making sausages?

Luís Henrique