
The all-conquering Wikipedia? - Petiver
http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/encyclopedic-knowledge/
======
TazeTSchnitzel
Wikipedia reminds me of Web 1.0: plain, informational text with minimal
formatting, and liberal use of hyperlinks.

But it's better than the old web. It has revision history, proper licensing,
suffers less from link rot, uses consistent and readable styling and, of
course, it is collaboratively edited.

Shame about the centralisation, though.

~~~
chris_wot
Except it does suffer from link rot, and often citations are to inaccessible
sources.

~~~
iamgopal
I want them to cache atleast pdf version of the page, just in case. ( I think
legality might be involve, but still, wish is a wish. )

~~~
chris_wot
It's not their content, it might fall under fair use but I'm very doubtful.
And that doesn't help with restricted content, where they are almost certain
to get a DMCA takedown notice.

------
zyxley
Wikis in general will be a part of human culture until, more or less, the end
of time... but Wikipedia specifically feels like it's already begun a slow
decline of bikeshedding, endless reverts, and territory claims by predatory
editors.

~~~
atdt
This claim is nearly as old as Wikipedia itself, and it is mostly false. There
are over five million articles on English Wikipedia, and approximately 10,000
highly active editors (editors who make 25 or more edits a month). There is
too much territory and too few claimants for your description to be true.

I don't know what motivates people to repeat this trope, when it is simply
untrue. I think it stems from the fact that many people expect editing
Wikipedia to be easier than it is. It is in fact quite hard. Some of the
difficulty is essential (writing good, well-sourced expository prose is
challenging) and some of it is inessential, the result of technical and social
debt.

But most worthwhile things are difficult, and on balance, the rewards of
editing Wikipedia are quite large in comparison to the effort required. You
can go from a complete novice to a lasting (small) contribution to the project
of civilization in an afternoon. You can't same the same for playing an
instrument! And it can be hugely satisfying, really. Try it!

~~~
Tomte
What makes people repeat it? Personal experience.

I have experienced first-hand how my edit (purely factual corrections, with
sources) were reverted by an editor who has edited most of the lemma for most
of the time, just because it is "his" lemma.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
If you disagree with the editor, you can revert their reversions with
justifications and bring it to attention on the talk page, though.

~~~
DanBC
But that's the point. Here we're talking about a good edit. If someone makes a
good edit they shouldn't need to defend it - other editors should see it's
good and defend it themselves.

By asking people to defend their edits on the talk page you're just saying
that Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anybody with enough time can edit.

~~~
cooper12
I think its a naive view to expect two or more people to work on something
without conflicts. How do these get solved in real life? Do people just keep
pushing and pulling until one side cedes? Perhaps, but the more effective and
optimal solution is to actually discuss it instead of creating a tug-of-war.
[0] This way the results reflect a consensus, even if its a compromise, and
this way Wikipedia can be host to multiple opinions. There's a really good
reason every article is paired with a talk page. Just because it's called "The
Encyclopedia Anyone Can Edit", it doesn't mean that its obligated to take
anyones edits or that all that hard work won't be entirely rewritten in the
future. [1][2]

Lastly, what makes a "good edit". I've seen someone write paragraphs for a
film on their personal interpretations of the protagonist's feelings. No doubt
they thought this was essential information for someone to understand the
film, but this went completely against Wikipedia's rule prohibiting original
research. [3]

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BOLD,_revert,_discus...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BOLD,_revert,_discuss_cycle)
[1]:[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Competence_is_requir...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Competence_is_required)
[2]:[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ownership_of_content](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ownership_of_content)
[3]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research)

Edit: I said nothing about time in my comment, but addressed conflict
resolution and the parent's comment about good edits. If taking the time and
effort to discuss something is too much for you, maybe it's better that you
don't try to work on a _collaborative_ encyclopedia project.

------
weinzierl
> As Lynch rightly notes [..] “Wikipedia, despite being noncommercial, still
> poses many of the dangers of a traditional monopoly, and we run the risk of
> living in an information monoculture.” Large parts of the media demonstrably
> use Wiki­pedia as their major or sole source of factual data; as a result,
> false or half-true claims (such as are found in any encyclopedia) can spread
> and take root with extraordinary speed.

I used to have a teacher who used to say: "A single source is no source at
all". I often wish I had a second encyclopedic source (in addition to the
original sources cited in the encyclopedia). What I often do is read the
article in another language, but this is just a workaround.

Is there any alternative to Wikipedia?

------
tim333
>An army of anonymous, tech-savvy people – mostly young...

Bah ageist humbug. The 2010 survey had 51% over 30 and at Wikimania in London
last year the biggest group were retired over 50s. I think because it involves
tech people just assume it's youth.

(I note the featured article today is The House of Plantagenet (1154–1485) and
you have to scroll down half the page before you hit Justin Bieber.)

------
chris_wot
Wikipedia is a toxic mess. If you try to contribute anything even slightly
controversial and one of the page patrollers decide you are obnoxious, or
wrong, then your work will be eviscerated.

The funny thing is, even when you know the policies and follow them, it's
irrelevant. For example, I was told by several people that primary sources are
entirely verboten. I did a search to verify the Australian Securities &
Investments Commission (ASIC) company ownership of a number of companies,
which is entirely non-controversial, I was told this was violating WP:OR, or
more specifically [[WP:PRIMARY]] as this disallows primary sources. This,
however, is a shortcut to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research#Primary.2C_secondary_and_tertiary_sources)

This reads:

 _Policy: Unless restricted by another policy, primary sources that have been
reputably published may be used in Wikipedia; but only with care, because it
is easy to misuse them. Any interpretation of primary source material requires
a reliable secondary source for that interpretation. A primary source may only
be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts
that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source
but without further, specialized knowledge._

When I pointed this out, there was silence and my work was removed.

The project is now completely impossible to contribute to in any meaningful
way. There are literally users who do nothing but watch the incoming edit
stream and revert or tweak edits as soon as they get made. Often they make
mistakes or make it impossible for an editor to do any sort of extensive
contributions. One editor I interacted with did this to me, and when I
reviewed what happened after I found I couldn't go on further I realised they
have made over 98,000 edits since 2009, yet there is literally no article they
contributed to in any significant way whatsoever! It's all reverts, page
moves, typo fixes, wiki link changed or the creation of small article stubs
(they claimed to have created 500 articles, but when I checked they created
over 500 pages, but about 450 are redirects or pages moves, and nothing else.
Of the rest, about 25 article are 1 sentence stubs, albeit with a reference,
and the rest are still very basic and not deeply researched articles - not
really much better than stubs.

It's really a lost cause now. I certainly know the quality is degrading very
rapidly. Unless practices are drastically changed, it will degrade to the
point where traditional sources will come back into fashion.

Jimmy Wales once stated the grand vision of Wikipedia was summed up by asking
people to "imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given
free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." [1]

That was the goal, and for years that was what I and many others worked
towards. For whatever reason, the project has now stagnated and that is no
longer occurring consistently. This grand vision has been lost, and I don't
see that there are any moves to bring it back.

1\. [http://m.slashdot.org/story/48267](http://m.slashdot.org/story/48267)

~~~
iamgopal
If agreeing what ever being said, is there an alternative way things can be
improved ?

~~~
chris_wot
Sure, I think firstly editors can treat each other with much more kindness and
respect.

Secondly, administrators should be refreshing their understanding of policy.
Any editor who tries to be a wikilawyer and force their viewpoint even when it
is contrary to the very policy they say another editor is violating should be
warned and told to carefully read the policy.

Editors who deliberately hide discussions via tricks like adding collapse tags
should be warned then sanctioned. That's deliberately being disruptive and
preventing consensus based contributions.

BLP accusations should be more carefully analysed - a lot of what I was being
accused off had nothing to do with a violation of BLP and huge swathes of non-
controversial material was removed under the BLP policy, even though Much of
it was no a violation at all.

Admins should not accuse editors of not discussing things on talk pages when
in fact that's what they have done.

And lastly, editors who are page patrollers only should not be given more
weight than new editors who make substantial contributions to Wikipedia. Those
new editors should be encouraged and a polite message should be given
detailing what the issues are when material is contributed. If they ask
questions in the talk page and the page patroller refuses to discuss things
further, then the page patroller should entirely disengage from the article -
especially those who have not shown any skills in research or even the
slightest attempt at getting any article to good article start us, let alone
an attempt at making the article a featured article!

