Out of curiosity, how many HNers write on Wikipedia? I do it every so once in awhile, but only only on a few topics I'm intimately familiar with, or to fix obvious vandalism.
I do fairly regularly. I stumbled across it earlyish, so I was pretty involved in meta-Wikipedia stuff (mailing lists, Arbitration Committee, etc.) circa 2003-06, when the barrier to entry and formality was low.
Now, researching & writing articles on moderately-important-to-obscure historical subjects is something I do as an odd form of relaxation. I occasionally edit articles in my actual area of expertise, but that feels more like "work". Collecting a few sources to write a decent first cut at an article on a historical figure or event feels like recreation. Plus, I learn some things.
I started doing so, until I realized the only way you could really contribute an article was to enlist for a lifetime of janitorial duty. Otherwise, whatever work you did quickly degenerates into run-on sentences and trivia.
The article's point resonated with me, because it seems that the whole process is based on the assumption that you're a no-lifer who spends all day patrolling Wikipedia.
They advertised themselves as the "open source encyclopedia", but they have not adopted any other concepts from the software development world, such as "quality assurance" and "stable releases".
They advertised themselves as the "open source encyclopedia", but they have not adopted any other concepts from the software development world, such as "quality assurance" and "stable releases".
Adopting the concept of forking, distributing the whole thing, and making it easy to push and pull in changes from any source would be a great goal.
Someone already started hacking on a tool for converting the dumps to Git repos, which may or may not be a suitable base to build upon: https://github.com/scy/levitation
About two years ago I went through about a six month period where I spent pretty much every day in a revert war with various people who definitely didn't know anything about the field/area I was trying to provide some information on.
I happen to have a fair amount of expertise and experience in a certain area (Music Trackers) and at the time thought I would lend a hand to flesh out the still woefully inadequate content to that part of Wikipedia and started or fleshed out dozens of pages of content. I probably spent north of 100 hours on content creation even going so far as to setup emulated environments in other OSs so I could get screen captures of some of the software. I spent dozens more cleaning up missing or outright incorrect information.
Every time I did something, the change was reverted. To this day, not a single edit I did ever stayed on Wikipedia longer than a week. Eventually, tired of endless arguing with editors who just wholesale reverted entire sections of material rather than edit or augment what I put in there, I just gave up.
Particularly egregious were the endless arguments over notoriety of this or that. Responses to the editors demonstrating conformance to Wikipedia's notoriety guidelines were met with silence and further reverts. One in particular, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Sega, actually has a page now anyways -- but it's not mine. Fascinatingly, I think that two of the editors causing most of the problems didn't even know what the demoscene was! In a bizarre argument from one of the editors, I was called unqualified to write about the demoscene since I myself was a 'scener!
I think I'd still be contributing if the editors had...I don't know..."edited", instead of reverted. I would have happily participated in ensuring things like objectivity and article organization were well followed, but wholesale deleting information? Nah, I'm done with participating in Wikipedia as a contributor.
I used to write, until my edits were regularly reverted by people that had no clue about the subject(s) at hand. I then realized it wasn't worth the effort - I rarely refer to Wikipedia since.
I started editing only this after I saw some other HNers mention that they are wikipedians. I plunged in gradually to make edits to articles on the subjects that I have been researching the longest for both work and recreation, including topics I've been producing bibliographies or working papers on since 1993. I got the nerve to do that, after seeing how appallingly bad the Wikipedia articles on those same topics have long been, by reading the books How Wikipedia Works and Wikipedia: The Missing Manual.
I'm very turned off by the amount of poorly sourced point-of-view pushing that goes on on Wikipedia. I've tried to light a candle in the darkness by compiling source lists in my user space (which I link to from article talk pages), and by mostly adding current reliable sources to articles, but even at that a lot of my edits get reverted by POV-pushers (or their sock puppets or meat puppets) on ideological grounds. This continues to happen even after one group of articles I work on went through an Arbitration Committee case in August of this year. The sanctioned editors learned how to cheat on their sanctions, and the conscientious editors are still badly outnumbered (at least as to visible accounts actively editing the articles at any one time). The administrators are beleaguered, and aren't using their mops actively to clean up the mess.
I have severe doubts about the statement made by Jimbo Wales quoted in the submitted link here: "'I’m not a wiki person who happened to go into encyclopedias,' Wales told the crowd at Oxford. 'I’m an encyclopedia person who happened to use a wiki.'" While I give many of the high-edit-count old hands a lot of credit for trying to maintain encyclopedic standards on Wikipedia, I can't agree that their sound editorial judgment characterizes most of Wikipedia's editorial culture. On any topic that is the least bit controversial, the culture is all about ideological edit-warring, and many active wikipedians seem to be quite proud of their lack of acquaintance with libraries or the other resources used by genuine scholars. There doesn't seem to be anyone at the top of the leadership of Wikipedia backing up the wikipedians who are doing the best work for the project and adding the most reliably sourced content.
If pg has said that someone could do to Wikipedia what Wikipedia did to Britannica (where and when did pg say that?), I'd like to know how to join that effort. What have any of you heard about efforts to bring about a friendly competitor to Wikipedia? The best way to help Wikipedia might be to build a point of comparison that does better work, just as East Germany was best helped by the continually visible example of West Germany until the Stasi couldn't make the East Germans afraid anymore.
I make additions and contributions occasionally, often anonymously. Thus I was disappointed recently when the threshold to vote on some Wikipedia issue was 200 edits, and my signed edits fell short.
On/off contributor for the last 4 years or so. Just worked my way back in during the last four months to edit extensively on the Digital Forensics topics :)
I used to dedicate a lot of time to it and be active in the Wikipedia/Wikimedia channels on IRC. I would mostly add articles on the needed articles pages... just start a few paragraph stubs; or in some cases I would extend stubs. I´ve felt it harder to edit lately, although I have enjoyed working with Wikimedia Commons more...
Every now and then--- mostly when I look up something and it is incomplete or wrong or if I spot a typo. Used to be an editor and I can't help myself...
_delirium|15 years ago
Now, researching & writing articles on moderately-important-to-obscure historical subjects is something I do as an odd form of relaxation. I occasionally edit articles in my actual area of expertise, but that feels more like "work". Collecting a few sources to write a decent first cut at an article on a historical figure or event feels like recreation. Plus, I learn some things.
There'a also very little controversy and conflict compared to writing about hot topics and recent events, so not much wikidrama. People will argue over all sorts of things, but strangely enough I've never had an edit war over an article like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Gradnauer or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Pasquale_Ricci. =]
flomo|15 years ago
The article's point resonated with me, because it seems that the whole process is based on the assumption that you're a no-lifer who spends all day patrolling Wikipedia.
They advertised themselves as the "open source encyclopedia", but they have not adopted any other concepts from the software development world, such as "quality assurance" and "stable releases".
binbasti|15 years ago
Adopting the concept of forking, distributing the whole thing, and making it easy to push and pull in changes from any source would be a great goal.
Someone already started hacking on a tool for converting the dumps to Git repos, which may or may not be a suitable base to build upon: https://github.com/scy/levitation
elblanco|15 years ago
About two years ago I went through about a six month period where I spent pretty much every day in a revert war with various people who definitely didn't know anything about the field/area I was trying to provide some information on.
I happen to have a fair amount of expertise and experience in a certain area (Music Trackers) and at the time thought I would lend a hand to flesh out the still woefully inadequate content to that part of Wikipedia and started or fleshed out dozens of pages of content. I probably spent north of 100 hours on content creation even going so far as to setup emulated environments in other OSs so I could get screen captures of some of the software. I spent dozens more cleaning up missing or outright incorrect information.
Every time I did something, the change was reverted. To this day, not a single edit I did ever stayed on Wikipedia longer than a week. Eventually, tired of endless arguing with editors who just wholesale reverted entire sections of material rather than edit or augment what I put in there, I just gave up.
Particularly egregious were the endless arguments over notoriety of this or that. Responses to the editors demonstrating conformance to Wikipedia's notoriety guidelines were met with silence and further reverts. One in particular, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Sega, actually has a page now anyways -- but it's not mine. Fascinatingly, I think that two of the editors causing most of the problems didn't even know what the demoscene was! In a bizarre argument from one of the editors, I was called unqualified to write about the demoscene since I myself was a 'scener!
I think I'd still be contributing if the editors had...I don't know..."edited", instead of reverted. I would have happily participated in ensuring things like objectivity and article organization were well followed, but wholesale deleting information? Nah, I'm done with participating in Wikipedia as a contributor.
tokenadult|15 years ago
ubernostrum|15 years ago
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2008/06/15/Deletionis...
mfukar|15 years ago
tokenadult|15 years ago
I'm very turned off by the amount of poorly sourced point-of-view pushing that goes on on Wikipedia. I've tried to light a candle in the darkness by compiling source lists in my user space (which I link to from article talk pages), and by mostly adding current reliable sources to articles, but even at that a lot of my edits get reverted by POV-pushers (or their sock puppets or meat puppets) on ideological grounds. This continues to happen even after one group of articles I work on went through an Arbitration Committee case in August of this year. The sanctioned editors learned how to cheat on their sanctions, and the conscientious editors are still badly outnumbered (at least as to visible accounts actively editing the articles at any one time). The administrators are beleaguered, and aren't using their mops actively to clean up the mess.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/
I have severe doubts about the statement made by Jimbo Wales quoted in the submitted link here: "'I’m not a wiki person who happened to go into encyclopedias,' Wales told the crowd at Oxford. 'I’m an encyclopedia person who happened to use a wiki.'" While I give many of the high-edit-count old hands a lot of credit for trying to maintain encyclopedic standards on Wikipedia, I can't agree that their sound editorial judgment characterizes most of Wikipedia's editorial culture. On any topic that is the least bit controversial, the culture is all about ideological edit-warring, and many active wikipedians seem to be quite proud of their lack of acquaintance with libraries or the other resources used by genuine scholars. There doesn't seem to be anyone at the top of the leadership of Wikipedia backing up the wikipedians who are doing the best work for the project and adding the most reliably sourced content.
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Movement_P...
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Movement_P...
If pg has said that someone could do to Wikipedia what Wikipedia did to Britannica (where and when did pg say that?), I'd like to know how to join that effort. What have any of you heard about efforts to bring about a friendly competitor to Wikipedia? The best way to help Wikipedia might be to build a point of comparison that does better work, just as East Germany was best helped by the continually visible example of West Germany until the Stasi couldn't make the East Germans afraid anymore.
gojomo|15 years ago
ErrantX|15 years ago
jawee|15 years ago
hsmyers|15 years ago
sidek|15 years ago
steveklabnik|15 years ago
thyrsus|15 years ago