20 Reasons not to edit Wikipedia

This is what I've come up with after a very short period of editing Wikipedia.

1. Endless arguments on Talk pages. Apparently more work on Talk pages than actual pages.
2. I'm most able to write about what I'm an expert in. That's also a conflict of interest.
3. Reverts may undo useful changes. There are no merge-based undos, no simple application of a diff between two revisions.
4. Improving free and open source software is both more visible and important.
5. Publishing articles in peer-reviewed venues is more important, although less visible.
6. Lack of a good, canonical, reference and citation system like BibTeX.
7. Popular topics end up better written than unpopular topics. Many entries on fictional worlds.
8. My work might get deleted altogether.
9. Wikipedia is generally not citable itself. Not reviewed, and contents are not constant.
10. There is no correspondance between the different language versions of a page.
11. GFDL is possibly not the best license. I doubt most people have read it.
12. Software screenshots must be low resolution unless the software is open source.
13. Certain topics are taboo, e.g. Encyclopaedia Dramatica
14. If I'm an IP address, nobody cares. If I use my real name, I have to be careful what I write. If I use a pseudonym and hide my identity, it carries less weight.
15. Decentralization. It is doubtful that even a fraction of people take the time to read the relevant guides on editing.
16. Same problems that USENET, mailing lists, and forums have.
17. Neutral point of view confounded by fact that most people here are fairly left wing.
18. Most people editing don't have any formal training in writing beyond high school. Most articles and topics need work.
19. Vandalism, and pseudo-vandalism.
20. Almost every other leisure activity I can think of is more rewarding; Wikipedia is just addictive.

2 reasons to use Wikipedia

1. It's generally better than a Google search.
2. If you're a cultural anthropologist, here's a minefield.

2 reasons to edit Wikipedia

1. It's a great place to practice your translation skills.
2. Most anything you write here appears near the top of a Google search.

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Needless to say, I modded this up

People who like sausages, laws, or Wikipedia articles shouldn't watch them being made. Anyway, here are my comments on the specific points:

1. Sure, there are endless arguments, just like in any online forum... some people like getting into them. BLATANT TROLLING WILL BE CENSORED. Fortunately, on Wikipedia itself, some actual encyclopedia writing does get done alongside all the bitching.

2. Yeah... there is ongoing conflict between the conflict-of-interest policy and the reasonable desire of people to write about what they're knowledgeable and interested in. Fortunately, it doesn't generally stop people from editing things they know about as long as they're at some reasonable arm's length from them; avoiding writing directly about themselves or their employer, but allowed to write about somewhat related things as long as they don't act like an ass about it (e.g., getting into edit wars).

3. That's sometimes a problem... nothing's perfect.

4. That's a matter of opinion. Wikipedia probably has more visibility these days among the general non-geeky public than Linux or Mozilla. Apache is probably more widely used than Wikipedia given that most Web sites are served using it, but this isn't really noticeable to the end users. But Wikipedia and open-source software is hardly an either-or proposition; they coexist very well, with Wikipedia's use of open-source software (including the MediaWiki engine, now widely used by other wiki sites) helps increase its visibility and encourage its development and improvement.

5. If the existence of free publications like Wikipedia helps bust up the locked-up academic journals with their exorbitant subscription prices (for which the money goes to the greedy publishers, not the actual academics who write for those journals, who are generally unpaid for their writing, other than the salary they get from whatever institution they're on the faculty of) that will be a benefit.

6. I'm unfamiliar with BibTeX, but there is a link on every Wikipedia article to a standardized method of referencing Wikipedia content when citing it; and there are guidelines evolving to govern the standardness of citations of other sources used in Wikipedia articles. Over time, this is likely to get more standardized and robust.

7. Sure... so the solution is to get working on whatever unpopular topics you think are under-covered, and don't get peeved if there's a lot of stuff on Pokemon characters... that doesn't hurt you.

8. It might... them's the breaks. Maybe it deserved to be.

9. It's more useful as a quick reference and a starting point for further research, than as the final source of authoritative information. It still serves a useful function for this.

10. Is that a bad thing? Different language wikis are independent projects with only a few overarching principles; they're not intended to be precise translations of one another, though good ideas that any of them come up with might eventually be replicated.

11. Yeah, GFDL sucks... unfortunately, it was the best thing around for its purpose at the time Wikipedia started, and now they're stuck with it since re-licensing the whole thing would be a massive pain, and you'd never track down all the authors and get them to agree to any change.

12. That's the fault of copyright laws, and perhaps copyright paranoia on the part of Wikipedia management, not really a flaw in the concept of Wikipedia itself. The current legal climate of overprotective owners of intellectual property pretty much forces tight-ass rules on stuff like that.

13. I don't agree with the ban on linking to ED myself, but the editors and admins are human; they develop a few overblown hangups like anybody else. That site (which is only marginally notable anyway) got into the taboo zone through its obnoxious, juvenile attacks on various people including some WP admins.

14. Again, the editors and admins are human; they have some prejudices based on past experiences that might sometimes cause them to judge you unfairly. But being careful what you write is a good idea anyway, as is developing and maintaining a good reputation under whatever real or fake name you choose as your online identity.

15. If people stay around, they gradually get more attuned to the culture and principles of Wikipedia editing, even if they don't happen to read the specific guidelines.

16. Yes... other online sites, lists, and forums are not immune to the same problems Wikipedia has, which are hardly unique to it or evidence of any great evil on its part.

17. There is some political slant, but not everybody there is leftist; Jimbo himself is an Ayn Rand fan.

18. So get in and do some of the work that's needed!

19. They're actually pretty good at fixing vandalism most of the time.

20. If you're going to pick up an addiction, then Wikipedia is probably a better one to have than most of the alternatives.

21. Skyrocket's Law: Knowledgeable editors are overwhelmed by the persistent efforts of the agenda-driven stupid.

1 - Talk page arguments are better than edit wars

2 - experts should publish their material and then reference it, not use wikipedia as a publishing source

11 - They didn't give a better one


For the expert editorial thing, Wikipedia is not citizendium or nupedia.

Better = more entertaining? Or better = less nasty?


That's quite true - as long as it's a subject that's worth publishing! Still, I don't think that's what he's getting at - I think he's saying that if you have a personal stake in something, you're also likely to be an expert in it, whatever it is. But having that stake means that your expertise isn't wanted, because any time you correct an inaccuracy, you run the risk of being reverted as a "POV Pusher"... In a lot of cases they just don't know the difference a legitimate correction and a POV edit - because they're not experts.

In other words, there are certain subjects and disciplines where it's very hard, if not impossible, to find an unbiased expert. I suppose I could name a few such subjects if I had to... but I'd rather not!

Neither is entertaining. It's just less problem to argue in a talk page then to have some huge edit war fight.

Is this really from /.? Is JohnA the author, or what? Please supply links and references.

If I'm gonna fustigate somebody, I'd like to know who it is first, not to be all ad hominem or NE-thang.

Jonny

"It's just less a problem when the Palestinians kill each other, instead of killing Israeli's."

"It's just less a problem to have the peasants fight among themselves in the fields, instead of assaulting the Bastille."

"It's just less a problem when clueless retards bicker in talk pages -- to the everlasting mirth of the administrators -- instead of defending the content in the article directly."

Yes, distractions do indeed have their purposes.

Many articles now have talk pages that are much larger than the article itself. Indeed, the "breaking news" articles stuff are notorious for this. The talk/article ratio for the entire project is doomed to increase more or less forever. Cramer is dead on target when she says that WP is a blog.



The end result of all this political nonsense is predictable: people with knowledge are going to be forbidden to contribute said knowledge. Full stop. The culture of anti-intellectualism that WP is incubating is one of its more reprehensible features.



This is flatly inconsistent with your nonsense posted under (2), above.



Yes, you are unfamiliar with BibTex, and almost everything else re: science, peer review, academic pursuit, journalistic standards and the rest of it. This is exactly the problem, dude. WP comes along and believes it can invent, de novo, a regime of knowledge and fact discovery/publication -- wholly ignorant of existing standards and practices that have developed, in many cases, over centuries of experience.

The citation/reference system at WP is an abomination because of this. Unfortunately many other facets of WP are equally abhorrent for the same reason.

I'm going to stop here, as I am getting quite angry, and its not even nine o'clock.

Regarding Point 17 "Neutral point of view confounded by fact that most people here are fairly left wing."

I don't think thats actually the case. It is more a case that the large US demographic, fed on the US mainstream media, is countered by international editors and other groups that are not normally provided with a voice in the US mainstream. This might give the impression to some in the US that this is a leftist perspective. But this is a false perception. In actual fact the US mainstream is far to the right of international opinion and research.

Still, Wikipedia isn't left wing by any stretch, it remains center-right reflecting the larger US demographic. It is the US mainstream that swings far to the right on the global pendulum. When analyzed in any kind of detail, life just isn't "right wing". Perhaps that explains the perception problem.

I think he meant that it was less of a problem to actually do it, as opposed to it being less troubling to the admins and the site's community in general. Edit-warring presumably requires you to be highly reactive, constantly monitoring the opposition's every move, and so on... UGH. And I hope you're not trying to imply that Lamont is clueless, much less afflicted by Down's Syndrome! I've found that even with his occasional tendency towards sensationalism, he's actually quite thoughtful and incisive...

But other than that, spot on. One could even go so far as to say that WP is becoming a "tool of repression," in the sense that people who might otherwise spend their time and energy getting in the faces of government officials and legislators are being subtly and successfully persuaded that "editing" WP is somehow just as effective. And when the hammer of real, oppressive censorship finally does come down, a lot of people will have simply forgotten what to actually do about it.

I see things differently. Wikipedia remains center-right on controversial topics, because topics which are subject to dispute will ultimately be adjudicated by some combination of Cabal-affiliated admins, or the ArbCom (despite the old saw that the ArbCom regulates "conduct, not content.) These latter agencies serve at the pleasure of Jimbo Wales. So ultimately, it is Jimbo's array of prejudices which dominate, not those of the larger US demographic. These prejudices are reflected in thousands of judgment calls about what sources are deemed reliable, and so on.

The Internet was invented by Card Carrion Capitalists. That is why you pay a fee to own a URL, in order to create a real market for the otherwise nominal values of names, but for their inflated market prices mere flatulent vocables. When the owner of an internet address restricts your access to whatever the deil's accessible thereby, the owner is within the owner's rights to do so. What sorts of rights? -- some kind of communal consensuality? -- no, silly, the right of ownership. So Wikipedia is now and always will be a kind of wikiplantation. Not exactly a wikiparagon of a rad-lib wikiparadise, not by a long shit, er, shot.

Jonny

No Jonny it wasn't me. I'm not going to reveal my identity on Slashdot, although I will say that I make clear that I think Wikipedia sucks and I get all the crazies telling me its my fault that Wikipedia sucks because I won't fix it and unless I fix it then I have no right to claim that Wikipedia sucks. Oh and I get modded down as a troll every time.

Not suprising. Some people still have hope, for whatever reason.