

Wikipedia sucks - distrust
http://distru.st/wikipedia-sucks/

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chris_wot
Wikipedia has many, many issues, but the reasons you provide aren't their real
problem. Wikipedia provides most of the information needed for free and
unfettered dissemination and distribution. This is not something that Encarta
could ever claim. A lot of the media on Encarta is licensed and costs lots of
money to publish, assuming you can get the publishers permission to do so.

No, Wikipedia's issues are, sadly for me, abuse of admin power, an inability
to deal with trolls or people like Giano (who are experts in their field but
don't play nicely with others) and a lack of enforcement of core site
policies.

This, unfortunately, infects the project and causes problems with the actual
content. There are many, many more folks who want to participate the in the
admins notice board than there are those who want to work on articles. As the
person who actually came up with the idea of the admission notice board and
who started it, that makes me very sad.

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luser001
Linkbait title.

TLDR: Wikipedia needs more images, videos etc. In a bid to rile up emotion he
compares wikipedia unfavourably to an ancient version of encarta.

AFAIK: there are no technical restrictions on adding videos and images to the
pages. The reason there aren't more videos/images etc is because of copyright
concerns. It just isn't that easy still to find images/videos with clear
copyright.

Since text is literally created by the authors, wikipedia automatically
assigns themselves the right to use the text you type in on.

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andrewfelix
I wonder how much information Encarta had on the Pitjantjatjara
language(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitjantjatjara_language>) or
evolutionary approaches to
depression([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_approaches_to_depr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_approaches_to_depression))?
I imagine fuck all.

How much does video add to your understanding of a subject? I don't imagine
people who watch the History Channel would have a comparable understanding to
those who read about similar topics through Wikipedia. Video is often just a
distraction.

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ahelwer
Unrelated to the topic at hand, but who else here on HN actually contributes
to Wikipedia? Lots of technical articles in the algorithms & data structures
field are very lacking, and you aren't likely to encounter the much-discussed
editor drama wars there.

I myself have started expanding the articles on string search algorithms, and
have found it is a great way to incentivize learning things while also
contributing meaningfully to society.

~~~
DanBC
I used to gnome away on WP.

I got bored of dealing with over-zealous twinkle users rollbacking stuff, and
templating me, for things which were obviously not vandalism.

Then there was a problem with my (real) name. And there were problems with
every name I chose after that - the names policy is baffling.

So, now I do contribute a spelling or punctuation correction if it's obvious
and if it's on a page that I'm reading, but I make no contribution otherwise.

~~~
ahelwer
I suppose all I can say is that my experience has not matched yours. I've
rewritten some articles almost from scratch, and the only feedback I've
received so far is someone pointing out a bug in my Python implementation of
an algorithm. Here's hoping my good luck continues?

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tnuc
Yes Wikipedia does suck but not for the reasons outlined. When Encarta started
out everything was on Encarta. You need to remember not many people had
internet at home in 1997.

If you want to read about the space shuttle try clicking through to the NASA
site. They have videos.
<http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html>

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bmcleod
It's a reasonably sensible point being made when I expected the title to mean
I was about to be subjected to yet another rant about editors.

Improving the interactivity of wikipedia would be nice. Although I suspect it
would make it harder to edit which might be worse than the benefits.

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jjNford
I disagree. Wikipedia is about the idea of free knowledge. This means
supporting the growing number of old devices passed to third world countries.
As a NP relying on user contributions I think the work is amazing.

