HAVE ANOTHER!! A dead-typical long, long list of red links for obscure plants. They still have this kind of thing for genus lists of bacteria, insects, protozoa, etc.
Which reminds me: there is an ugly political battle over a deeply obscure flower only found in a tiny section of the Rhyolite Ridge in Esmeralda County, Nevada. And there is nothing about this on Wikipedia.
This brings me to what was once my favorite topic, how Wikiversity could complement Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, for notable topics. Wikiversity was for educational materials and "learning by doing," and what does one do when studying in a real university? Well, write papers! Participate in seminars and discuss topics!. We did it to some degree on WV, created learning resources, where compiling the information was learning (Wikipedians thought of Wikiversity as "articles," and then were upset if the articles weren't "neutral," but a university library is full of non-neutral materials. The overall structure is neutral, and on WV this would be represented by top-level pages (Wikiversity allows subpages in mainspace!) being rigorously neutral with full or very high consensus -- which is actually easy to do if divergent points of view can be expressed on subpages.
It worked, so, naturally and eventually, the Wikipedians killed it.
In any case, no problem at all creating WV placeholder pages for every species, and sorting and categorizing that information, and collecting sources, no matter how obscure. They would not have to be "reliable source," but site neutrality requires that sources not be misrepresented. They are what they are. If it's an amateur botanist, the problem is? Only if it is presented with color of authority would that be a problem. And students would learn.
I learned very much of what I know about cold fusion by collecting sources -- including highly critical ones. In fact, especially critical sources, ones that are substantial are not easy to find! (and they are all old, that's another finding one only comes to when reading a lot in a field.) But this also worked with many other topics, even ones where there was even heavier controversy.
With this approach, people with strong differences could still collaborate to create complete resources.
Yeah, they killed it. Wikipedians do not want genuine consensus to form. Too often, they are terrified of it.
Re: Crap or questionable articles
Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2020 9:54 am
by ericbarbour
Ran across this fine example of Wikipedia "failing to achieve consensus" today:
For information NOT allowed to exist on Wikipedia, you might consult this. Corporations love GardaWorld because they're usually the cheapest bidder for cash-pickup contracts.
Yeah. The Tampa Times, reliable source, horrifying story. If this were in a blog about some fringe scientist or alternative medical practice, the article would be citing it and editors who try to neutralize it would be threatened and blocked. But this isn't mentioned on Wikipedia.
I wondered about the shortage of reliable source. Most sources are not reliable. Then there was a substantial removal of content by SMarkowitz, contributions.
This shows a sign of sophistication: extensive and trivial changes (adding spaces) to the stuff at the top of the article, to suppress notice by Recent Changes Patrollers, who would normally choke on a substantial removal of content with no explanation. That content was sourced, possibly reliably. It was also clumsily added, to be sure.
Nobody is home, nobody is responsible. Wiki. But, hey, it's quick and it's easy, right?
"This article needs to be updated" NO SHIT, NERDS. It goes on and on (and on!) about the "battery-pack swapping program", which was abandoned back in 2015. The list of charging stations is pathetic.
Re: Crap or questionable articles
Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2020 8:43 pm
by ericbarbour
It's a bit "odd", how United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz is treated by Wikipedia. They always mishandle screechy news-media messes involving big stupid corporations and this is a great example.
Then the David Dao business struck. Years of hysterical editwarring resulted. Today the Munoz bio talks more about the Dao incident and the way Munoz and the company mishandled it, than about his life or career. (Three days later it was even worse.)
This freak was a major reason for Munoz' life being defined by ten minutes of idiocy in Chicago - a town where violent idiocy is loved deeply. But Wikipedians seem to love their own special brand of local idiocy even moar.
Virtually useless article about the government of Greece, it says nothing about the EU and a large part of the article is about the Greek flag.
I looked for a "Greece in the EU" article thinking some gormless idiot was going to write a complementary stub, but all they have is a stupid "Greek Withdrawal from the European Union" article instead. And they don't have the guts to mention Yanis Veroufakis' book Adults in the Room* (2017), which they don't have an article for anyway....all they have is an article for the 2019 movie Costa-Gavras made of the book! This is why Wikipedia needs expert input and professional copyeditors, but Hillbilly Jim is too fuckin' Southern and cheap for that, oh no....."free labor is the best labor", spoken like a true plantation owner.
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