

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the yardstick for Wikipedia entries - awa
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2010/03/29/9986468.aspx

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quant18
If you have a topic whose entire history consists of a bounded, publicly-
observable, enumerable series of events with clearly-defined consequences,
then odds are that topic will have a good Wikipedia article. Why? Because
those topics are easy to research and don't have much for editors to disagree
about.

Sports results and things that happened to characters in TV shows are two
examples of this. Lists of discovery dates of minor planets are a third
example.

Of course, the third example never comes up in this kind of "Wikigroaning". No
blogger seems to characterise writing about lumps of rock in space as a moral
failing. And certainly no one assumes that editors who can make lists of rocks
in space are fungible with the editors who can write about Ruth Bader
Ginsburg's influence on the U.S. legal system.

~~~
jacobolus
More than that, popular TV shows and sports teams have millions of avid fans
who carefully track their trajectories. There are (sadly?) far fewer
collectors of Ginsburg-opinion trivia than of The Simpsons trivia or NY
Yankees trivia. A lot more of the average daily newspaper or TV news broadcast
is also devoted to sports and TV shows than to the Supreme Court.

In response to the article: who cares? If you think Ginsburg’s article is too
short, go research her for a few weeks or months and write a better 5000 word
or 10000 word version. Having crap you don’t care about described in loving
detail somewhere on Wikipedia isn’t going to hurt you, as long as it doesn’t
get taken so excessively far that none of it can be verified.

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ugh
Ah, the importance we assign to length – because in the past all that stuff
had actually to be printed.

Just remember to not read anything into the length of Wikipedia articles.
That’s all. Then you will notice that the Ginsburg article is perfectly
alright, longer than most of the stuff you will find in printed encyclopedias
and maybe in need of some focus.

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prodigal_erik
It's a chunking problem. The article about her would probably be longer if
each of her most momentous actions weren't broken out into its own article.

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ZeroGravitas
Why does not one of the many, many people who point out this amusing imbalance
in Wikipedia take the next logical step:

Either we force people to write only about the things that we think are
worthy, or we actively prevent people from writing about the things we think
are unworthy. Alleged "problem" solved.

~~~
fondue
"Either we force people to write only about the things that we think are
worthy ..."

Who determines what is worthy and what isn't? They already have this problem,
expiring pages despite people protesting their validity.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Generally notability and worthiness aren't correlated. You get really popular
trash, and really obscure genius.

The deletionist/inclusionist debate is orthogonal to whether a notable judge
should have more words written about her than a notable item of low-brow
and/or popular culture.

This _is_ a popular rhetorical argument from people who like to point to
amusing discrepancies in their (mis)understanding of Wikipedia, but it's only
by fudging the difference between worthy and notable that it even begins to
make sense. Maybe "don't delete my obscure thing, look here's something else
you've never heard of that is allowed in Wikipedia" doesn't have the same
persuasive force as "don't deleted my obscure thing, look here's something you
definitely have heard of but which you consider to be in some way stupid,
inferior or low-class", even if it's logically flawed.

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joegaudet
I am confused as to his point.

The number of words is proportional to the imagined worth of a person by the
contributors of wikipedia?

Or is it that the contributors of wikipedia maybe just know more about Lost
than they do about Ruth Ginsburg?

.joe

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brazzy
Wikipedia simply reflects the fact that nearly everyone spends far more time
thinking about TV series or sports evens than about any single real person
(except perhaps close family and friends, and fake stands-ins for these, i.e.
media celebrities).

This should not be a surprise to anyone. The interesting question is why this
is the case and whether it is in fact lamentable.

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patio11
At one point I remember Matter Eater Lad (comic book character, in case you
haven't heard of him) having a more extensive entry than Catholicism
(religion, in case you haven't heard of it).

~~~
ZeroGravitas
That's just a bad comparison, you'd need to compare something like the DC
universe to Catholicism because each schism, saint, pope etc. would get their
own page just like each character, writer, film adaptation.

Often long articles are a sign of neglect: " _I have made this [letter]
longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter._ " -- Blaise
Pascal

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Snark7
Good grief this is low-hanging fruit, just like a big fat guy reaching over
and gorging himself of a big mac a coke.

Ick.

