Is DYK a joke?, DYIK - a fast way to amass millions Options

[chrisoff]

"There is actually another problem there as well: DYK has become a factory for mainpage credits. There seems to be a large number of DYK junkies who mass-produce totally boring articles and put them through DYK. As a result, every single article currentrly gets only a few hours on DYK, and readers have been conditioned to ignore it entirely as it routinely breaks the promise of providing interesting information. Unfortunately, the lobby of DYK abusers has so far prevented reform. "

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=429004222



For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Dr._Blofeld

This post has been edited by chrisoff: Sat 14th May 2011, 12:27am

[Silver seren]

One of the main things with the example you mention, "Travel", is that it's generally just seen as a generic word. It's rather hard to find proper sources and figure out the right organization for such an article.

Such effort is one that is seldomly taken because it is not a topic that would be of personal interest to someone so they would put forth the effort.

[melloden]

One of the main things with the example you mention, "Travel", is that it's generally just seen as a generic word. It's rather hard to find proper sources and figure out the right organization for such an article.

Such effort is one that is seldomly taken because it is not a topic that would be of personal interest to someone so they would put forth the effort.

The old "general topic, hard to write about" argument is logically flawed. It's quite simple to write about these topics. What's hard is figuring out how to organize the information. Wikipedians are too lazy to read through so sources.

[Peter Damian]

One of the main things with the example you mention, "Travel", is that it's generally just seen as a generic word. It's rather hard to find proper sources and figure out the right organization for such an article.

Writing at any level of generality requires a command of the subject.

Another "big" topic that has a horrible article is Poverty - I mean, it tries, but you can totally see the serious writer vs. the "this is how poverty makes me feel" 16 year olds vs. I got some ideological agenda to push, in the fault lines of the article.

Radek, do you have access to the 'Book Club' section?

This post has been edited by Peter Damian: Tue 17th May 2011, 4:52pm

[Silver seren]

One of the main things with the example you mention, "Travel", is that it's generally just seen as a generic word. It's rather hard to find proper sources and figure out the right organization for such an article.

Writing at any level of generality requires a command of the subject.

Well, considering that Wikipedia editors have twice as many Ph. D holders than in the general public, you would think that there would be more than enough people with a command of various subjects that could bring their talent, knowledge, and experience to bear.

The issue is the amount of interest in a specific topic. Even though i'm a biology major, that doesn't mean i'm going to be all that interested in working on the article on, say, Life (T-H-L-K-D). (Though that article is actually pretty good.)

[thekohser]

Well, considering that Wikipedia editors have twice as many Ph. D holders than in the general public...

I'll bet that "fact" was established through a carefully-executed survey that featured an impeccable sampling design that minimized self-selection and other biases of data collection.

[radek]

Well, considering that Wikipedia editors have twice as many Ph. D holders than in the general public...

I'll bet that "fact" was established through a carefully-executed survey that featured an impeccable sampling design that minimized self-selection and other biases of data collection.

Heh, and I'd also be interested in the amount of PhD's among "banned Wikipedia editors". Anyway, some topic areas probably do. Most don't. And even if this is true in aggregate I am sure that it's driven by just a few select areas, while rest of Wikipedia still sucks.

And as I've said before, it's really the "professional grad student" that is the source of the biggest problems as the Arrogance/Competence ratio pretty much peaks in grad school (at least wrt to the lay public - in relations with your thesis advisor it's probably the Butt Kissing/Competence ratio that peaks and in fact the two phenomenon are related, as one is a psychological over compensation for the other)