And how does this build an "encyclopedia", prithee?
Does this soap opera go on until the sun explodes?

Not only is it assholes at play, it's always the same assholes.


Jury's still out on this.


"if you want Wikipedia to succeed"? May I suggest that, at this late date,
only the delusional or the deranged would think that Wikipedia can "succeed".
It has already failed, and continues to exist only to fuel the ongoing soapy opera.

Hell is other administrators.

It all reminds me of the Ford Whitehouse in the mid 70's. There's Rumsfeld as Sec Def. Dick Cheney is Chief of Staff.

Then Ford fell, and we thought we were rid of them. No. Fast-forward 30 years and it's the same damn thing all over again. Same assholes, different roles. Sometimes the same roles.

By all the measures of "success" normally used, Wikipedia is quite successful... with traffic in the top ten of websites, and used by the public probably more than all other encyclopedias combined. The fact that if you get inside it and look closely you see lots of absurdity doesn't make it a "failure" except in the wishful thinking of critics. It just makes Wikipedia join laws and sausages as things you are better off not seeing how they're made.

Sho Nuff.

It's not exactly the most successful con game ever devised — I think Mr. Madoff made off with that prize — but it's probably the best in the Working 4 Peanuts category …

Oh wait … I forgot …

Ja Ja

This is an important and oft-neglected point. Indeed, many of the criticisms of Wikipedia stem from this success: if it wasn't so dominant, for example, BLP issues wouldn't be of such great concern (people can anonymously defame people on all sorts of message boards around the internet, for example, but those don't normally turn up on the first page of search results). As well, there's concern that Wikipedia is so successful that it's driving works of genuine scholarship out of the market. I don't think most Wikipedians want Wikipedia to supplant EB and other real encyclopaedias, but a substantial subset certainly does, and that terrifies me.

Wikipedia's successful in much the same way that the United States is successful. And it needs to be criticized for approximately the same reasons.

Of course, you've only opened a Lar front hypothetically, right?

It is sadly true of life in general that sleazy popularism beats stuffy erudition. "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.", said P.T. Barnum, and while Jimbo might have that tattooed on his forearm, he might actually be the first major exception, albeit for different reasons.

Mods,

It looks like this thread went off topic round about Post 30 or maybe Post 29, and it would be a shame to waste a perfectly good title on yet another one of those Circa 2004 discussions of «How Suckcesspool Is Wikipedia, Anyway?»

Like, Split, Daddy-O —

Jon

No it's the final product that is the problem. I don't care how it is made. You really don't see that do you.

What final product? Yet another problem.

Ah, but that is a critical point. Contrary to the "it'll be fixed someday, therefore it is not a problem" it already is a final product, sitting on the Internet like a carelessly put together haggis.*



* Could have been worse, it could have been a French ragout, or a fricassee.

The final product is The Woolworths Foundation School of Political Dramaturgy.

Perfectly put.
Especially since Woolworths recently closed the last of its stores.....

The British Woolworths, anyway. The U.S. Woolworths closed over 10 years ago. According to that article, there are still (independent) Woolworths in Australia and South Africa, apparently never connected to the US or UK ones (which themselves used to be part of the same company as one another before splitting). According to the article in a highly reliable source, the U.S. Woolworths company transformed itself into Foot Locker, the athletic shoe store chain, the main piece of their operations that managed to survive the failure of other parts including the original five-and-dime-store chain. You can't get anything anywhere for a nickel or a dime any more anyway.