Sorry if this has been done before, but I'm very interested to hear what people around here actually think. Is Wikipedia inherently broken? A good idea gone bad? A success?

In my opinion, Wikipedia is a good idea with significant flaws that have led to pretty bad results, but it's salvageable.

It could be salvaged. But I don't want that to happen--because any "salvaging" would involve the slimy efforts of the slimy, crazy people who currently control it.

I want them PURGED. All of them. I want a complete reboot, with new management. Find someone more responsible than Jimbo and Sue Gardner and Eric Moeller and Cary Bass, and let the new managers try to find a better grade of volunteers to clean up that demented database.

Is that too damned much to ask? It's not like invading Russia in the winter. It's not even as difficult as writing a new encyclopedia from scratch--most of the work is already done. Just a little honesty and transparency, that's all I ask. Exactly what it does NOT have at present.

The original two-tier plan in which flowers would occasionally blossom in the Wikipedia sewer and be plucked and moved to Nupedia was sound. Wikipedia's problem is that it was never meant to be the "front end", but with Nupedia gone all the crap is given equal billing to the decent quality stuff. Danny tried to address this with Veropedia, but that was always going to fail. For better or worse "Wikipedia" is a strong brand name; if there were a concerted effort to move the crap to a secondary "workspace" site and reserve the "Wikipedia" name for verifiable articles of at least a reasonable quality, the thing could be turned round. I wouldn't be in the least surprised if this is the ultimate aim of Google's creeping takeover; no major corporation, especially one who's business model relies on a reputation for accurate information, could want to be associated with some of the current Orchard Towers style garbage.

Agree.



Don't agree. There is still much work to be done.

None of them quite exactly match my true view, which is that it's got some problems that most likely will never be solved, but despite all of them it's still in general more of a good thing than a bad one.

As for Nupedia, well, yes, if they had managed to come up with a system that actually resulted in a decent quantity of articles of high quality making it into that site, then it would have had some value as a more selective, higher-quality online encyclopedia. As it is, though, their article vetting process was just much too slow and cumbersome, so that after years of effort they only had a few dozen articles. Perhaps their model was more in the line of medieval monks laboring for decades or centuries on something that would eventually become a masterpiece, rather than something expanding rapidly in "Internet time" as the current generation prefers.

Perfect. Absolutely perfect.

Nothing on Earth is.

I voted "Perfect" - because it is perfectly what it is; not what it hoped to be, or is said to be (nor many of the things it is said to be by various non approving viewpoints) but simply because it is. Wikipedia perfectly fits into the space it occupies.

That really is the most amazing piece of logic. So its perfect because its exactly like itself? Doesnt that apply to most things?

Well at least Somey will be glad to hear that this Review "is perfectly what it is; not what it hoped to be, or is said to be (nor many of the things it is said to be by various non approving viewpoints) but simply because it is. Wikipedia (Review) perfectly fits into the space it occupies."

On the contrary, I'm emotionally devastated by this. I was really hoping WR would fit into the space over in the corner of my living room, opposite the big-screen TV, so I could read it without being so distracted.

One can tautologically define anything as "perfect", even a perfect idiot, by simply defining the way it ought to be as being exactly what it presently is. Of course, you'd then have to keep moving the goalposts so that no matter what it changes into it remains the model of eternal perfection.

Managers do something very like this when they're compelled by some law, regulation, or policy to do a competitive job candidate search for some position but they've already decided in advance who they want to hire; the solution is to draw up official criteria for a "perfect candidate" that includes lots of highly specific, and dubiously relevant, attributes that just happen to match what the person they already want has.

However, most of the time it's more useful to have criteria determined in some independent manner which things can then be objectively (or subjectively) compared to; in this case, pretty much all real-world things will end up falling short of perfection in some manner, since there's always something that could have worked out even better for its purpose than what actually did happen.

So, yes, Wikipedia is a "perfect" Wikipedia, if you define Wikipedianess to encompass exactly every attribute the real Wikipedia has, to exactly the degree it has it. But is your "perfect" Wikipedia the Wikipedia of 2001, of 2004, of 2007, of 2010, or 2013? Or is it some sort of "meta-Wikipedia" that encompasses the totality of its change and evolution over time, past, present, and future, as a "perfect" attribute it possesses?

If you're instead coming up with an independent purpose to judge its suitability, you'll get different answers. As a source for reference materials, it can be really good or really lousy depending on what you're looking up, when you do it, and how much depends on its accuracy. As a MMORPG, it can be entertaining or frustrating, and would probably be more "perfect" if it were purged of the people who take that encyclopedia stuff too seriously and get in the way of gameplay. As a defamation machine to get nasty stuff about people you hate into a widely used reference, it can be very good (as frequently expounded here), but would be more perfect if they didn't have that pesky BLP policy stuff.

wikipedia is the perfect cesspool.

The only way then is a vetting-within-vetting, which is what the auditing process is about. Incidentally the GA sweeps are just about completed.

A cesspool is not a bad analogy - I have thought of that myself - organic and thriving rather than sterile and lifeless....

It kind of depends - because I think the idea that "anyone can edit" is a fundamental flaw that is beyond correction. On the other hand, if you throw out that fundamental and unworkable principle, and still call the result "Wikipedia," I guess the project might be salvageable.

Well we all know WR is much bigger than that. It is too big to fit into a living room because it is big enough to fight the behemoth that is WP. Is it not bigger than Somey or Lar or NYB or indeed any one of us?

I'm torn on my opinions of Wikipedia. In many ways it's proof of concept that crowdsourcing information works, and generally leads to solid, factual information. On the other hand, it's evidence that crowdsourcing doesn't work, as certain topics become POV battlegrounds and its hard to build a good article out of those ashes. It has structural issues, and a problem-solving/decision-making solution that, while it generally works, is disfunctional and wastes resources.

What about things on the Internet?

I imagine a group of cavemen who have recently discovered fire. One cavemen tells the others that this new thing "doesn't work".

"But it keeps us warm! And now we can cook food. And what about light? And what about..."

"Yes, all that may be true, but don't you remember how Drog burned himself the other day? I don't know if he'll ever be able to go on the hunt again. I think we should consider this 'fire' a failure. Maybe if there were a way to make it so it wasn't quite so hot, it would be OK..."

The existence of imperfections shouldn't invalidate progress. To look at Wikipedia now, after it has existed for nine years, and call it a failure--despite all that has been accomplished and despite its overwhelming popularity--is to simply deny reality. The appropriate response is to fine-tune the advance, not condemn it.

I would in no way call Wikipedia "progress". It is a regression, making an "encyclopedia" using a feudalism falsely labeled as anarchy.

EK, the more you talk here, the loonier you look.

I don't think the existence of POV battlegrounds is the main problem here - though of course it often can be. As I've pointed out before with the broad topic of Economics, there's hardly any POV battlegrounds in there and consequently hardly any edit warring. And most of those articles are horrible (I'm going through some of these and taggin' and assessin' them, and based on what I've seen I'd call about 95% of Economics related articles "horrible"). In Eastern European topics, there's plenty of POV battlegrounds, and while there's of course quite a number of terrible articles, the ones that have been most fought over also happen to be the most well sourced, or at least much better sourced than the average or median Wikipedia article. When the battleground means that editors scurry off to find reliable sources to back up their claims, a bit of edit warring and battleground mentality can be a good thing (I'm taking a risk saying that with the expectation that expressing this opinion will come back to bite me on the ass when some schmucko refers to this in some AN/I or AE thread).

The real problems are the lack of standards, sloppy enforcement of RS policy and not enough eyes on a particular article(s). And that's why Economics articles suck - not very many people watching them so any ol' fool or vandal can go in and put any kind of nonsense in them without being called on it. This is obviously also one of the main sources of troubles with the BLPs. Which is why the existence of such a large numbers of unsourced unwatched BLPs is such a big deal.

This is also related to that other dispute in the other thread about whether Wikipedia functions like "a market". To the extent that kind of parallel can be drawn, in order for markets to work well you need competition. And that means a large number of people of different viewpoints keeping an eye on a given article. Without competition you get the equivalent of monopoly power with the standard result of shoddy goods.

Poll option #3 (third down).

For my further thoughts on the matter see the posts by Eric and Eva.





But when the life dies out and a cesspool dries out...look out!

You must enjoy bad smells, cockroaches, rats and fecal coliforms.

In an optimist mood I went with #4 though I want it to be noted that "can be fixed" does not imply "will be fixed".

Verified.

Perhaps there should be "Wikipedia Gold" or platinum or whatever precious metal you want to use and it could be a more exclusive place where the standards are higher but still use the basic presmise of wikipedia. "Wikipedia" is a household name so there's name recognition there. "Nupedia" or "Veropedia" won't really strike any interest and just looks like some also-ran concoction. With that new version, I would bring over the featured articles to start but let any article be started but no ip's allowed, only user names with a verified email address, flagged revisions, and there must be a source before an article is allowed. I don't know how it would ultimately work out but it would be interesting to observe.

See also how to fork a wiki.

Well, it's not bigger than my MASSIVE CO - oops, sorry, wrong venue.


Eek, what a terrible analogy. Fire, among primitive man, would have had equal potential to both help and harm everyone who used it, and still does. It's also a natural force - it can be controlled by humans up to a point, and it does grow more when you don't try to control it, but it obeys physical laws and doesn't discriminate.

It's basically a medium, EK, and should be compared to other mediums. I'd say the advance from chisels and stone tablets to ink and animal skins, and then parchment, isn't all that bad an analogy. Parchment in particular made writing more portable, cheaper, easier to do, easier to correct, easier to store, and so on - but it also made it easier to burn, erase, deface, damage (either intentionally or due to poor storage conditions)... People also started using seals and signatures when parchment came along, which was certainly handy, but that also brought about the invention of forgery and various other forms of paper-based fraud.

Good real-world analogies for Wikipedia are hard to come by in general, but if we're going to use them, IMO we've got to try to avoid obviously bad ones!

Would that be anything like Colbert Platinum?
Or the Centurion Card?
Or UltraFark?

"Wikipedia Gold" sounds like some sort of pornographic version of Wikipedia, perhaps one where all of the nude picture already in Wikipedia are of attractive people. Other than that, I think you're describing Citizendium.

I think that's mostly right. It can be very irritating to war with an Ayn Rand supporter or whatever, but it forces you to check the facts and get the sources.

Philosophy has the same problem as Economics. (I didn't realise the Economics articles were so bad - are they?).

In general, coverage of the social sciences other than history (insofar as history is a social science) is absolutely horrible.

Take a look at, for example, the article on neorealism. I also love how there are separate articles on defensive realism and offensive realism that try to present the concepts as entirely distinct from neorealism. So here we have the most influential theory in the entire discipline of international relations, and the articles look like they were written by a freshman who got a D in Intro to IR. Interestingly, certain other schools of IR are much better represented than realism.

Or take a look at the article on the security dilemma, easily the most important explanatory concept used in security studies. It's not really explained at all. Game theory is not brought in even slightly. It doesn't even mention the prisoner's dilemma, and the discussion of the First World War is just wrong. There are incredibly fierce and active debates about all of these topics, but the price of admission to those debates is high - you need at least an undergraduate degree in political science, and probably some graduate work, before you can start to comment meaningfully.

Overall, I've found that this is the quickest and easiest way to guess whether a given topic will be covered well. Certain topics that are very popular among and accessible to hobbyists are done extremely well. Wikipedia's success in military history and popular culture are clear evidence of this. Topics that require long study to understand, for example philosophy or economic or political theory, are almost never covered well. There are a few gems in computer science and the hard sciences because some early Wikipedians had expertise in these areas (and because, in fact, the hard sciences are more accessible to hobbyists than the social sciences), but they are the exception.

Perhaps. My point is name recognition. No one will care about something called "Citizendium" to read when they're all used to wikipedia. It could be called "Super wikipedia" for all I care.

There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Wikipedia is a disease, a cancer of this planet. It's a plague and we are the cure.


Of course, viruses aren't always bad. Some are benign. Some may even help by contributing to evolution. Some 8% of the human genome is old viruses.

And some mornings, it feels like more.

None of the alternatives fit my opinion of wp.

I think I look upon wp much as I look upon the U.S. of A.: it does some good things...and some horribly bad things......

But love it or hate it: it is the only superpower around. And it is not going away any time soon.

(Eventually, though..)

You betcha. These are precisely the sort of articles that attract POV warriors.

Yes I've looked at a few economic articles. They are all so far as I can see at variance with the views of the world's leading economist. Worse, they don't even mention him. So much for NPOV!

Yes, that's true, Mike. Oddly enough, the List of Poets doesn't mention him either.

Consumer economy

Very well said. Sometimes I forget the successful parts of Wikipedia, because it fails so miserably to live up to the grandiose claims touted by its most prominent proponents. As a collaboration tool, I think the software is pretty good (I'd say excellent but it has to a large extent been degraded over the years due to the attempts to make Wikipedia into something it never will be). In certain areas (popular, accessible to hobbyists, and not overly controversial), I think the crowdsourcing concept works great (at producing a rough draft, or a guide to further reading, and not a final product, but still).

I can't find much to argue with there.

Cesspools can breed viruses too.
But popular as that analogy is around here, I prefer to liken WP to a colony of Blind Naked Mole Rats.

Now these are interesting creatures for they are, in fact, none of the above. They can see vague shapes and shades of light, much like Mr. Magoo and NY Gov Patterson. They have very thin layers of fur on various strategic locations (even inside their mouths!) and thus, unlike Jennifer Love Hewitt, are not naked nor are they moles nor rats.

But they appear to have these characteristics, and are so strange and so unlike any other animals, that we call them such for lack of a better name.
Even though Wikipedia is not a Wiki in the true sense of the term, at least not anymore, nor is it a true encyclopedia, we still refer to it thus, even those of us who know better for lack of a better name.

IMO, as long as the bad admins remain, it's unsalvagable. You've got emotional and actual children running the asylum - it's the epitome of a dysfunctional family of morons.

It will always be a dismal failure due to one simple fact. It's edited by humans.

The same features that make it a success as an enterprise (famous, popular, influential) make it a failure as an encyclopedia (wrong, haphazard, vengeful), so any attempt to fix it will kill it.

WP succeeds as a compendium of popular culture.

It is a good starting point. If what I'm interested in is fairly trivial, there is no need to look further. If you are looking for information that is not trivial, I basically just go straight to the references section and go on from there.

Like any media, people should be taught to think critically about it, what its uses are and what they aren't. But, media studies, and critical thinking in general, is not taught. that is the larger problem, I think.

MY analogy of Wikipedia is that of a Chicago street gang.

Wikipedia is a compound of several ideas. Some are workable, others are flawed. For instance:

Free access to knowledge: excellent
Neutrality, no orginal research, reliabilty, verifiability: fair, poorly managed
Everyone can edit: mediocre, poorly managed
Protection of author rights and living persons: wanting
All editors are equal: flawed
Power to the moderators: flawed
Community over project leadership: flawed

As a whole, it is well beyond repair.

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Seigenthaler,_Sr

There is nothing wrong with Wikipedia that a blowtorch can't fix.