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

[Silver seren]

Exactly. Articles on things people would be interested in working on are obviously better. The only reason why regular encyclopedias have entries on "boring" topics such as the ones you mentioned is because people are being paid to make them.

[Gruntled]

Exactly. Articles on things people would be interested in working on are obviously better. The only reason why regular encyclopedias have entries on "boring" topics such as the ones you mentioned is because people are being paid to make them.

Presumably, contributors to regular encyclopedias are paid. However, equally importantly, these contributors are selected to be mature, responsible, properly educated people. They're a very different demographic from the bulk of WP editors, so they have very different interests. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them like say physical geography so much that they enjoy writing about rivers.

[radek]

A Wikipedia paradox, is the whole "obscure article quality" point. You'd think that Travel (T-H-L-K-D) would be better-referenced than, oh, I don't know ... Gropecunt Lane (T-H-L-K-D). But it's not.

Well, I don't think it's technically a paradox since it's just a natural outcome of the incentive structure. Which is why I think the process should be expanded, even transformed, to promote "most improved" articles rather than new ones.

[radek]

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.

Oh hell no. Your fellow Wikipedians don't care about "boring" subjects, of the type one might find in a real encyclopedia. Like travel. Or river. Or sewing.

But they sure as hell love to talk about My Little Pony.
They evidently consider Klingons to be a critical subject.
And they feel no encyclopedia should be without massive amounts of information about Babylon 5.
Or Kirby. Or Wyandanch.

Aside from the mind-blowingly awesome Wyandanch article, too a large extent this is a problem of the demand-side not the supply side. Sadly, this is probably what people want to read. Or to state it differently, the problem is that many Wikipedia editors are drawn primarily from the same demographic as Wikipedia readers.

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.

[chrisoff]

A Wikipedia paradox, is the whole "obscure article quality" point. You'd think that Travel (T-H-L-K-D) would be better-referenced than, oh, I don't know ... Gropecunt Lane (T-H-L-K-D). But it's not.

Well, anything with "cunt" in it is going to do well. Anything with a sexual ref will do well and get lots of attention.

This post has been edited by chrisoff: Mon 16th May 2011, 6:51pm

[Casliber]

Errr, DYK ain't restricted to new articles, but 5x expansion of oldies and now 2x expansion of unreferenced BLPs too (unsure of how many of them are nommed). I made a subpage to note more obvious broader articles that could easily be 5x expanded. There are a few.....
Cas

[radek]

A Wikipedia paradox, is the whole "obscure article quality" point. You'd think that Travel (T-H-L-K-D) would be better-referenced than, oh, I don't know ... Gropecunt Lane (T-H-L-K-D). But it's not.

Well, anything with "cunt" in it is going to do well. Anything with a sexual ref will do well and get lots of attention.

Actually that one wasn't a DYK (because as we all know Malleus is not one of the "DYK children" who writes about pop culture sensationalist topics)

And if you look at the DYKs that got more than 5000+ views when they were up you pretty much get:

1. Cute animal doing cute things. Also football/world cup.
2. War (this one is actually a source of puzzlement to all the DYK regulars)
3. War (on this one Russavia actually cheated by having it featured on DYK and then OTD to get lots of hits. Technically it shouldn't be on the list)
4. War/morbidity
5. Disease/morbidity
6. War/morbidity
7. Food (Bacon)
8. Current politics
9. Cute animals doing cute things.
10. Current politics
11. War
12. First pop culture one - and it's James Bond not MLP
13. Sort of war. Well, it's Bolsheviks. Sort of crime.
14. Curious invention
15. Football, but it's really a form of morbidity too
16. Sex/pop culture - first one
17. War
18. Food (candy) and current politics
19. Geography
20. War (dis one's mine)
21. Sports
22. Geography/mythology
23. Cute animals doing cute things
24. Morbidity/geography
25. Cute animals doing cute things
26. Cute animals doing cute things
27. War/morbidity
28. (not so) cute animals
29. Current politics (another strange one)
30. Weird animals being weird
31. Religion
32. Crime
33. Space exploration
34. Curious invention
35. Weird animals, science, space stuff

So there's really only one sex related article there. It's hard to say for sure without knowing the the rate of nomination of sex related articles but this looks like an entirely "encyclopedic" list.

Obviously war and morbidity do really well, with cute animals doing cute things being up there too.
Let's see if I can make this a 5x expansion.

[radek]

Errr, DYK ain't restricted to new articles, but 5x expansion of oldies and now 2x expansion of unreferenced BLPs too (unsure of how many of them are nommed). I made a subpage to note more obvious broader articles that could easily be 5x expanded. There are a few.....
Cas

I wasn't aware of the 2x BLP thing, it's new.

But the 5x expansion for all practical purposes means that it's all about new articles (and expanding short stubs is essentially creating new articles). There's no way in the world that an article like "Poverty" (or some of the ones Eric listed) can be expanded 5 times over, or even 2 times over. text expansion=/quality improvement , at least not past a certain point, and dyk should take that into account.

At one point I tried to actually do a 5x expansion on Gilbert Hernandez (because there ain't enough GOOD pop culture stuff on Wikipedia). Initially the article was at 1417 characters, which means it would have to wound up at 7000+ characters. After extensive research and pretty much looking through everything that was available out there, short of interviewing the guy myself, I could manage only 3845 characters. It's a notable topic. It's an interesting topic. But there's no way that you can write more than 4000 characters on it at this point. Which means that unless it's "new" it can never be a DYK, despite the huge improvement in it.

If you want a more serious example then I recall that Jmabel had a similar problem with some Portuguese explorers (the articles are now FAs I believe). There I helped him bitch and whine (by me, he was very polite about it), until the DYK regulars relented and let him have the DYK. But it took some trouble stirring.

Also somebody tried to do it with Captain Beefheart (or was it the Elevators?) - same problem.

This post has been edited by radek: Mon 16th May 2011, 9:06pm

[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.)

[EricBarbour]

And if you look at the DYKs that got more than 5000+ views when they were up you pretty much get:

1. Cute animal doing cute things. Also football/world cup.
2. War (this one is actually a source of puzzlement to all the DYK regulars)
3. War (on this one Russavia actually cheated by having it featured on DYK and then OTD to get lots of hits. Technically it shouldn't be on the list)
4. War/morbidity
5. Disease/morbidity
6. War/morbidity
7. Food (Bacon)
8. Current politics
9. Cute animals doing cute things.
10. Current politics
11. War
12. First pop culture one - and it's James Bond not MLP
13. Sort of war. Well, it's Bolsheviks. Sort of crime.
14. Curious invention
15. Football, but it's really a form of morbidity too
16. Sex/pop culture - first one
17. War
18. Food (candy) and current politics
19. Geography
20. War (dis one's mine)
21. Sports
22. Geography/mythology
23. Cute animals doing cute things
24. Morbidity/geography
25. Cute animals doing cute things
26. Cute animals doing cute things
27. War/morbidity
28. (not so) cute animals
29. Current politics (another strange one)
30. Weird animals being weird
31. Religion
32. Crime
33. Space exploration
34. Curious invention
35. Weird animals, science, space stuff

You stumbled into an essential fact: Wikipedia is edited by and for arrogant young males.
And what do arrogant young males like most? War, sports, violence, death, etc. (And bacon.)
Everybody loves cute animals , so I guess you could call that "manly".

[A Horse With No Name]

Well, anything with "cunt" in it is going to do well.

Support.

[melloden]

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.

Laziness.

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.)

Biology, eh? What did they teach you about about the furry anatomy in college?

[Milton Roe]

Biology, eh? What did they teach you about about the furry anatomy in college?

It's like a violin.

[Silver seren]

Biology, eh? What did they teach you about about the furry anatomy in college?

It's like a violin.

Do I even want to know what you mean by that?

[Zoloft]

Biology, eh? What did they teach you about about the furry anatomy in college?

It's like a violin.

Do I even want to know what you mean by that?

"I worry about that stuff sometimes. I read this book once . . . that had this very sophisticated, suave, sexy guy in it . . . and all he did in his spare time was beat women off with a club ... He said, in this one part, that a woman's body is like a violin and all, and that it takes a terrific musician to play it right. It was a very corny book—I realize that—but I couldn't get that violin stuff out of my mind anyway."

The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger

[The Joy]

People, please! This is about DYK! The cycle of violins must stop!

[Detective]

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

So is the general public everyone who isn't a WP editor?

And are you saying that two thirds of all people with PhDs edit WP? How would anyone know?

[Zoloft]

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

So is the general public everyone who isn't a WP editor?

And are you saying that two thirds of all people with PhDs edit WP? How would anyone know?

Well, I have a PhD holder but not a PhD. It's made of acid-free parchment.