Talk about Wikipedia

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The collective mind-mass of Wikipedia editors is a strange and frightening thing. Here's proof:

The following article has been deleted five times in the past hour for various reasons such as "personal attack" & "vandalism" – it's an article on the word "Wikidiot"!

Here's the banned and deleted Wiki for Wikidiot and/or Wikidiotism: The Science of Wikidiotism concerns frequent ill-considered [[action]]s by Wikipedia [[editor]]s that detract from the [[project]]. Such actions include, but are not limited to, the following [[habit]]ual [[response]]s to [[edit]]s and [[article]] [[creation]]: :Editing into an article without reading the article. :: This creates duplicate information on a single page. :Reverting to previous versions without considering all of the changes made. ::Bad edits may have included useful and valid information along with the objectionable or erroneous content. :Speedily deleting controversial articles (such as this one) without discussion on the talk page or on the [[votes for deletion]] page. To be continued... {{wikipedia-stub}}

– cache-rtc-ae03.proxy.aol.com 2005-06-23 11:15 UTC

Wikipedia can set whatever policy they want - it's their Web site. Which is one reason why I've set up the Cast Iron Chaos wiki: so that we can be as biased as we want.

– Modemac 2005-06-23 13:05 UTC

FSK says "You're still wrong. Blogs and first-hand accounts do NOT meet Wikipedia's inclusion for entry. For example, a Scientologist who edits a Scientology page saying 'This is true! I'm a primary source!' is banned for improper editing. (I'm not defending Scientologists, but I heard that Scientologists are very unhappy with how they're portrayed on Wikipedia.) On some drug pages, I added links to personal accounts of negative experiences with drugs. Wikipedia's censors removed those links. Wikipedia only allows links to sources that meet mainstream censorship standards. Wikipedia isn't fighting the Conspiracy. Wikipedia is fully part of the Conspiracy!"

FSK says "Wikipedia's rules read like a list of what NOT to do. In fact, if you take all of Wikipedia's rules and take the logical negation, you find a good set of rules for running a Wiki. 'Reliable Sources' means 'censor non-mainstream sources'. 'No original research' means 'no original content'. 'Determine rules by a vote' means 'the loudest and most persistent get their way'. What happened is that as Wikipedia was gaining popularity, members of the Conspiracy said 'This site needs to be infiltrated'. Wikipedia's rules were determined by vote, and the Conspiracy members made sure they voted for the most exploitable rules."

– FSK 2007-12-04 13:48

I gave up on wikipedia as a serious effort 6 months ago, after I got rolled and flattened between a sockdrawer of Wikiturfing Discordians and a Fundamentalist Discordian Sysop.

– drjon 2007-12-05 08:54

My attitude towards Wikipedia is that it's a read-only resource. I'll read it when it's useful (with a grain of salt). I no longer contribute or fix errors.

One problem is that Wikipedia is SO popular that it's frequently the #1 search result in Google. The average naive person will assume Wikipedia is an excellent source.

The "debates solved by majority vote" sucks for the same reason democracy fails in real life.

A lot of "expert" editors have abandoned Wikipedia, because they didn't like wasting their time fighting with trolls.

This site doesn't have a problem because there's practically nobody here right now.

The answer is that you need a better Wiki engine. I was thinking of writing one, but didn't find the time. You need a page branching system combined with a page moderation system.

It's the usual "community does not scale" problem that most online sites have. Slashdot and Digg have the same problem. If your bias doesn't match the aggregate bias of other Digg users, you won't like the content presented on Digg. The problem is "stuff I'm interest in" doesn't match "stuff the majority of Digg users find interesting".

– FSK 2007-12-05 13:51