Who here is as in love with Wikipedia as me? It's amazing, that's how I found this site!
I use it constantly. I wouldn't say I'm in love with it, but it's a wonderful resource.
I'm jerkin' it to wikipedia right now
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Wikipedia is horrible.
It isn't paper, so there can be many articles and in more depth than normal right?
But they delete a lot of content because of flawed notability guidelines. Well known figure in say.. art from centuries ago? Deleted, someone {{prod}}s it and no one notices or it goes through AFD and people vote on it with (at best) googling for it. I'm pretty certain a lot of the people voting on AFDs don't even read the article before voting, much less do any research.
All the while there is an article on EVERY GOD DAMN POKEMON AND TRANSFORMER AND NEARLY EVERY EPISODE OF THE SIMPSONS AND HALF OF THE BIBLE SPLIT UP BY VERSE. The fuck? Harddrives are cheap, even Jimbo "Bomis wasn't a pornsite" Wales thinks that the guidelines for inclusion should be low. He doesn't mind the Simpsons articles. You also have the horrible editors that will spout guidelines and policies up the ass all over talk pages instead of actually trying to contribute. These people are also highly likely to revert an expert on a subject citing some guideline (not policy). Not even going to mention wheel warring and edit warring. There is another set of people that just go out of their way to be stubborn it seems. You want to put an image below the fold? OR HEAVENS NO LINKIMAGE IT and people have a fucking shitstorm and there can never be a concensus because they will vehemently fight for WIKIPEDIA IS NOT CENSORED FOR THE PROTECTION OF MINORS and even citing the god damn disclaimer of liability as policy (see Mohammed cartoon). If people would shut the fuck up about userboxes maybe people could get back to work. Although, that might actually make the quality of the encyclopedia go down as the edits by those that are knowledgable about a subject and/or can copyedit are widdled away to mediocrity by Joe Average.
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Not that >>4 is bitter or anything.
Wow.
I used to be totally addicted to Wikipedia, both reading and contributing. Probably the contributions I'm most proud of are starting the articles on traditional animation and Tank Man (the Tiananmen Square protester with balls the size of station wagons). Nowadays, I don't spend as much time there, but I still hit it up for quick info on stuff at least once a week and I'll sometimes edit typos and formatting and such.
Winston Churchill said "...democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." (Thanks, WikiQuote!) I think Wikipedia's operation model is the same; it has its problems, but really, can you come up with a better model that wouldn't hinder the fundamental concept of allowing anyone and everyone to be a contributor? Most of the time, it works just fine. Really, the "problems" are just such a minor piece of the site as a whole. I really think that, if you had to pick one site on the web to point out as an example of the potential for collaboration and information seeking capabilities of the internet, Wikipedia would be a natural choice.
I do agree, though, that there's a good deal of article bloat with respect to things like pages for every single episode of Star Trek and such.
>>6
Is wikipedia a good source for general information on a topic? Sure. Is it likely to have information that I could not find myself on google? Not really. That being said it is still useful as a general overview of a topic and maybe a few references.
I think Wikipedia the thing has lots of problems, but Wikipedia the idea is great. It does a good job of looking good on the outside, but the inside is a total mess (in some places). My view is probably scewed though as I have mostly been going through NPOV disputes instead of creating articles. It is undeniable that the issues in >>4 exist, but I would not say that they are pervasive (well, besides the morons on AFD and driving off experts).
There are also more problems with the board and Jimbo. One example is fundraising claiming to be a compendium of all human knowledge and then in practice trying to be a normal encyclopedia. Another is Jimbo cannot decide if he wants to be a dictator or not. He stays out of some issues saying the community should decide, but at other times he strikes like the fist of an angry god. Its his project, fine--do whatever you want, but at times I think it would be better off without him.
Is there a better way to do things? Probably. Do I know what it is? No. I'm sure someone is going to say allowing anonymity would be good (and I agree). Does anyone have knowledge of ja.wikipedia? I've heard that it is mostly done by anons. Do they appened their IPs all over the place or is it true anon? Is there as much infighting as en.? I'm not convinced that allowing anyone to edit is even a good idea. There are pleny of good editors, but there are plenty of bad ones too. Some of the bad ones drive off good editors. Is there a way to let all of the good ones in while still keeping out the bad ones? I have no clue.
Ultimately, I think most of these issues boil down to wikipedia not knowing what it is or what it is trying to be. Is it a community run site or a dictatorship? Is it a reposistory for all knowledge or is it trying to be a (traditional) encyclopedia? Maybe someday it will mature and figure out what it wants to be or maybe someone else will make a better one.
>if you had to pick one site on the web to point out as an example of the potential for collaboration and information seeking capabilities of the internet
I agree, wikipedia is a decent choice (right now). Information seeking? The internet would be much better off having Lexis/Nexis, InfoTrac, scholarly journals, books... basically your local library, online. Collaboration? It does show that people can work together to create good things on the internet. Is it the best example? Probably not. There are plenty of open source projects that are great examples of collaboration but that is probably beyond the average person. I would put everything2 over wikipedia any day of the week though.
Wikipedia is a pretty shitty work environment but if you hate the project as a whole you just hate the internet + GFDL
I actually do hate the GFDL and GPL. It is quite obvious with GPL 3 that it is not truly interested in being free speech.
>>11 Actually, I wasn't trolling.
I'll just quote RMS about gpl3. If you really care google and you will see much debate.
<blockquote>The Foundation believes that free software---that is, software that can be freely studied, copied, modified, reused, redistributed and shared by its users---is the only ethically satisfactory form of software development, as free and open scientific research is the only ethically satisfactory context for the conduct of mathematics, physics, or biology. The Foundation, and those who support its broader work, regard free software as an essential step in a social movement for freer access to knowledge, freer access to facilities of communication, and a more deeply participatory culture, open to human beings with less regard to existing distributions of wealth and social power. </blockquote>
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<blockquote>...Changes to the GPL, for whatever reason they are undertaken, must not undermine the underlying movement for freer exchange of knowledge. To the extent that the movement has identified technological or legal measures likely to be harmful to freedom, such as ``trusted computing'' or a broadening of the scope of patent law, the GPL needs to address those issues from a perspective of political principle and the needs of the movement, not from primary regard for the industrial or commercial consequences.</blockquote>
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From the gpl3 itself:
<blockquote>
3. Digital Restrictions Management.As a free software license, this License intrinsically disfavors technical attempts to restrict users' freedom to copy, modify, and share copyrighted works. Each of its provisions shall be interpreted in light of this specific declaration of the licensor's intent. Regardless of any other provision of this License, no permission is given to distribute covered works that illegally invade users' privacy, nor for modes of distribution that deny users that run covered works the full exercise of the legal rights granted by this License.
No covered work constitutes part of an effective technological protection measure: that is to say, distribution of a covered work as part of a system to generate or access certain data constitutes general permission at least for development, distribution and use, under this License, of other software capable of accessing the same data. </blockquote>
I'll stick to licensing things I write as either BSD or MIT. Advocating freedom and lack of restrictions by including restrictions is idiotic. The GFDL has a similar clause. I was never really fond of the GPL anyways because of it being viral and the silly clause such as requiring that changes be documented and such.
I win for not clicking HTML formatting.
The Foundation believes that free software---that is, software that can be freely studied, copied, modified, reused, redistributed and shared by its users---is the only ethically satisfactory form of software development, as free and open scientific research is the only ethically satisfactory context for the conduct of mathematics, physics, or biology. The Foundation, and those who support its broader work, regard free software as an essential step in a social movement for freer access to knowledge, freer access to facilities of communication, and a more deeply participatory culture, open to human beings with less regard to existing distributions of wealth and social power.
...Changes to the GPL, for whatever reason they are undertaken, must not undermine the underlying movement for freer exchange of knowledge. To the extent that the movement has identified technological or legal measures likely to be harmful to freedom, such as ``trusted computing'' or a broadening of the scope of patent law, the GPL needs to address those issues from a perspective of political principle and the needs of the movement, not from primary regard for the industrial or commercial consequences.
3. Digital Restrictions Management.
As a free software license, this License intrinsically disfavors technical attempts to restrict users' freedom to copy, modify, and share copyrighted works. Each of its provisions shall be interpreted in light of this specific declaration of the licensor's intent. Regardless of any other provision of this License, no permission is given to distribute covered works that illegally invade users' privacy, nor for modes of distribution that deny users that run covered works the full exercise of the legal rights granted by this License.
No covered work constitutes part of an effective technological protection measure: that is to say, distribution of a covered work as part of a system to generate or access certain data constitutes general permission at least for development, distribution and use, under this License, of other software capable of accessing the same data.
>Is there a better way to do things?
everything2
Funny!
Wiki is going to take over the world
wikipedia sucks. people there are way too serious.
maybe...but I think its a good source of info at least. on most topics anyway