Most crappy important article Options

[Doc glasgow]

Muammar Gaddafi is an evil dictator. But even evil dictators don't deserve such shit wiki-bios.

It got me wondering - what's the most crappy article on a really important core topic that anyone can find on Wikipedia? Is the Gaddafi bio just bad because he's controversial.

[Malleus]

That's an interesting question, but wp articles on high-profile people like Gaddafi or Chavez have become almost no-fly zones, a bit like Libya itself. Wikipedia has no structures in place analagous to the UN or NATO, so the various factions just have to slug it out, manoeuvring to try and have their opponents blocked, or better yet banned.

[Doc glasgow]

That's an interesting question, but wp articles on high-profile people like Gaddafi or Chavez have become almost no-fly zones, a bit like Libya itself. Wikipedia has no structures in place analagous to the UN or NATO, so the various factions just have to slug it out, manoeuvring to try and have their opponents blocked, or better yet banned.

yes, a war of attrition (or ought that to be attribution).

[Emperor]

WWII. It's a top 20 article, and has major errors of fact, as well as some really screwy priorities.

[thekohser]

Doc, if you can define "importance" for us, I'd like to participate in this exercise. I think I know how "crappy" is defined.

[Doc glasgow]

Doc, if you can define "importance" for us, I'd like to participate in this exercise. I think I know how "crappy" is defined.

I suppose I mean articles you'd expect to find in a moderately sized paper encyclopaedia. Say top 3,000 articles of interest to the general public (i.e. not exclusively 20 something male internet nerds who know more about Wayne's World that World Wars).

[EricBarbour]

WP articles on major corporations tend to be either stubs, or battlegrounds for two general groups: paid editors trying to make a happy-love-time article, and Wiki-Dinks with progressive views posting negative information about the firm.

Look at the IBM article. The long and varied history of America's most venerable computing company is glossed over miserably; there's a large section of "selected current projects" that looks like a bunch of company press releases mashed together; and an "environmental record" section that appears to have been massaged by company shills, and fails to mention the severe pollution problems at the Almaden Research Center.

Oh, yeah, wanna see something really funny?

Yes, I saw the History of IBM article. It's full of random-appearing detail, is poorly written, and has plenty of references that aren't referring to anything. Some of the articles about historic IBM products are pretty good, some are utter crap.

Go ahead, try any Fortune 500 firm's name.

This post has been edited by EricBarbour: Wed 23rd March 2011, 1:35am

[Versa]

I think that the article on asshole http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asshole is pretty bad.


Especially this:
"Asstard is another rarer variant upon the ass- theme. It is possibly a portmanteau of asshole and retard and has almost the same meaning as asshole, but with a greater implied connotation of stupidity.[citation needed] An identically spelled version of the same word is a contraction of asshole and bastard, with a commensurately more abusive meaning."


Do you have to ask the person who called you an asstard whether they are using the asshole+retard version or the asshole+bastard version in order to determine if they intend to insult you with the commensurately more abusive meaning?

[melloden]

They already made a list at this page. So just go ahead and look for the low-rated ones.

Mountain looks pretty crappy. Country is quite short. Entertainment is a joke--"Some people find animation to be amusing. Similarly, some people find cartoons to be entertaining"--is this supposed to be for stupid people?

Job (role) is even worse, as are cuisine and government.

The list goes on and on, but I stopped looking after prose.

It's true, however, that broader, general topics are harder to cover well than specific ones.

This post has been edited by melloden: Wed 23rd March 2011, 4:16am

[Milton Roe]

Entertainment is a joke--"Some people {{who?}} find animation to be amusing. Similarly, some people {{who?}} find cartoons to be entertaining"

--is this supposed to be for stupid people?

Is that a trick question?

[thekohser]

Go ahead, try any Fortune 500 firm's name.

I struggled for a while to adjust the 60:40 ratio of controversy:not-controversy on the Comcast article, which had gotten so bad, even an established editor was unwittingly adding neutral/favorable factual content to the "Controversies" section.

The article is such a mess, the section about Comcast's purchase of a majority share of NBC Universal is positioned at the same outline level as the fact that Comcast has started transmitting three HD channels per Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) carrier, rather than two per QAM like some other video service providers.

Also, I corrected a 6-year-old mistake that was originally entered by Angela Beesley, co-founder of Wikia, Inc.

[Cock-up-over-conspiracy]

Muammar Gaddafi is an evil dictator. But even evil dictators don't deserve such shit wiki-bios.

Wikipedia is the rabble's only chance to throw their shoes at their preferred demiurge, or villain de nos jours.

It would be much easier to list "Least crappy article", there are far fewer of them.

The fumbling lede of Sexual intercourse is a study in the typical sweaty crapitutude of the porno-pedia. And, of course, it comes quickly with its own 'sausage in the hole' 'reader's wife' photo that I am sure 13 years boys are very grateful for.

It is a wonder how my generation ever worked out how to have sex given that we only had technical line drawings in a Victorian Encyclopedia Britannia to work out how to do it.

Any who of you have ever used the word "outercourse" enough to warrant its erection to the second paragraph?

[Milton Roe]

It is a wonder how my generation ever worked out how to have sex given that we only had technical line drawings in a Victorian Encyclopedia Britannia to work out how to do it.

I wonder if the print editions of Britannica of a few generations ago, even had line drawings. Anybody know?

Back in the barnyard days of agrarian America, I suppose they could watch barnyard antics. Which would lead to a lot of French or doggy style stuff perhaps. I seem to recall that the Romans had a little sex stool that the man sat on, and sex was often not face-to-face. Goodness. Perhaps these furniture items served as wedding gifts in the days before toasters.

[Peter Damian]

It is a wonder how my generation ever worked out how to have sex given that we only had technical line drawings in a Victorian Encyclopedia Britannia to work out how to do it.

I wonder if the print editions of Britannica of a few generations ago, even had line drawings. Anybody know?

Back in the barnyard days of agrarian America, I suppose they could watch barnyard antics. Which would lead to a lot of French or doggy style stuff perhaps. I seem to recall that the Romans had a little sex stool that the man sat on, and sex was often not face-to-face. Goodness. Perhaps these furniture items served as wedding gifts in the days before toasters.

Indeed they did. I have the 1810 edition as well as three volumes of the 1776 2nd edition. Plenty of drawings. Indeed, the 2nd edition as a number of detailed illustrations of vaginas, so this aspect of encyclopedias was not uncelebrated even then.

[edit] This sort of thing. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/historic.../Smellie_33.jpg

I suppose I could scan these in together with the 18th century penises and upload them to Commons, and be in good company.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian: Wed 23rd March 2011, 8:27pm

[EricBarbour]

Texas Towers is a miserable excuse for an article.

This old radomes.org article is far more useful and detailed.

One of the dumbest things the US Air Force built during the Cold War--but don't ask Wikipedia about that!
Maybe someday, someone will set an FPS videogame on a Texas Tower, whereupon the Wiki-Noids will go "omg we need a better article".

[melloden]

[edit] This sort of thing. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/historic.../Smellie_33.jpg

I suppose I could scan these in together with the 18th century penises and upload them to Commons, and be in good company.

It looks like that abnormally fat baby is someone's head. And the butt cheeks are soggy boobs.

What a horrid drawing. What makes it worse is that the illustrator's name was "Smellie".

This post has been edited by melloden: Wed 23rd March 2011, 9:12pm

[Eva Destruction]

It got me wondering - what's the most crappy article on a really important core topic that anyone can find on Wikipedia? Is the Gaddafi bio just bad because he's controversial.

Information technology. No contest.

[Silver seren]

It got me wondering - what's the most crappy article on a really important core topic that anyone can find on Wikipedia? Is the Gaddafi bio just bad because he's controversial.

Information technology. No contest.

Agreed, wow. IT is one of the fastest growing fields in the world and this article is, like, three paragraphs.

[Eva Destruction]

Agreed, wow. IT is one of the fastest growing fields in the world and this article is, like, three paragraphs.

Until Malleus cleaned out the worst of the shit, it used to be even worse.

[Eva Destruction]

Honorable mention for Factory as well.