https://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewto ... =8&t=13507
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... 1221157596
His bias unfortunately skewed his results.....As a football nerd I had the laptop burning tuned in to NFL Network, which was heavy with ads and blather and frequently light with content. I used Wikipedia as an adjunct this year, used it in a different way, constantly refreshing the 2024 NFL draft (T-H-L) page in real time. I also spent a few spare minutes picking away at a few biographies of newly drafted collegians.
He doesn't say what these errors were, but this doesn't instil confidence. If they were errors in the main article, then that shows the lack of quality of Wikipedia. A professional broadcaster making two significant errors in a single programme watched by millions, gets taken off air. If they were errors in the player biographies, that shows Wikipedia's lack of care for living people.There were only a couple significant errors that I ran into
There are only 257 players in this draft class. So Wikipedia has a "significant error" rate of ~1%. That's unacceptably high, considering you could potentially ruin someone's entire life in this use case - using Wikipedia as a real time companion where you literally don't have time to make absolutely sure that what Wikipedia is telling you isn't absolute garbage. As some of the richest sports entities in the world, NFL franchises are surprisingly frugal in some areas. I can certainly see how they might not quite put the preparatory work in when you get to the lower rounds, and instead just fire up Teh Wiki. Certainly if you end up in a situation where all your preferred players have been taken.
What Tim is brushing off here as a curiosity is a major problem.one wrong blue link that I couldn't figure out how to correct given the sort of strange template being used on the 2024 draft index page
This kind of error is unique to Wikipedia. You think you're clicking the biography of a college footballer, and instead you get the page for a 1920s Century jazz trumpeter. It's a sign of what can go wrong when experienced Wikipedia editors are rushing to keep up with real world events.
It's also a sign of Wikipedia becoming more exclusive and elitist. If Tim couldn't figure out how to fix this, what chance a random reader? It's not like it's hard usually. The Visual Editor makes link correction really quite intuitive. And so captures a brand new editor for Wikipedia. A friend for Timmy.
And of course, a newcomer probably isn't even allowed to make this correction. Because of their high risk nature (being able to insert goatse into the highly visible draft page in a way that takes minutes to correct), you probably needed the Template Editor right to even fix this basic error these days. There are only ~1,000 editors with this right (~800 Admins +189 non-Admins).
Timmy didn't make the cut. Not considered one of the top 1,000 most trusted competent Wikipedia editors, it seem. Ouch. Ah well. Plenty of people are happy toiling away as minor league players. Not everyone can be a star.
Interesting.the new updates beginning to lag as the draft progressed and the pace of selections increased.
That is of course to be expected. But it does rather undermine Tim's claims.
If Wikipedia was truly useful as a real time breaking news service, then surely for a major event like this, it wouldn't struggle to cope with the task once the breaking news reached the later rounds. It would have sufficient correspondents and fit for purpose technology. Of course, in the real world, in the world of breaking news, it's recognised that most people could really give a shit once you reach the later rounds. They can wait a while. And if not, the one hundred percent reliable one hundred percent real time updates are available on the news ticker at the bottom of the sports networks coverage. Below the actual news, the discussion and analysis of the picks that matter.
It's only football obsessives who want literal live updates once you get down there in the NFL boonies. There are people who claim Wikipedia has a dual use. It can be both a general reference work and an almanac. And it is implied that its ability to update in real time, applies to both.
Clearly, that's horseshit.
Wikipedia can't update fast enough to satisfy football obsessives, not for this prestige event in the football calendar. It doesn't have enough obsessives to do it. And its not like they aren't out there. Wikipedia just can't seem to persuade them that Wikipedia is a worthwhile hobby. I dare say if they even want to be more than just passive observers, if they're looking to be armchair journalists, most football nerds are swerving Wikipedia for the other platforms that can feed this need.
This kind of service Wikipedia offers will be the first to whither and die when machines learn how to do it better.
Just let it come Tim. Don't fight it.
Of course, as a self confessed football nerd, Tim's analysis was greatly skewed away from what a general critic would see when looking at the 2024 NFL Draft page. It's simply not an encyclopedia article. It's a database report. One giant table, and an index of trade records. It didn't excite me as a reader.
And I say that as someone who is heavily into the NFL, definitely enough to consider myself both a fan of specific teams/players and the wider sport. I am a regular consumer of the work of Mike Florio. I didn't need Wikipedia to tell me that the one time replacement for his usual partner Chris's Simms for his Friday post draft analysis show was none other than Devin McCourty. The legendary Patriots safety.
That's coverage that goes behind the headline news, and tells you about the shit that also really matters during the draft. Who is beefing up their O-Line. The players nobody praises when things are going go well.
This Wikipedia "article" that claims to be about the 2024 draft, and which Tim seems to think satisfies the thirst for breaking news in football nerds, isn't even telling me what I learned from simply consuming my daily dose of the reliable football obsessive media the day after the event. It's only a two hour show. Wikipedia only told me what Florio/McCourty covered in the first hour. And even then, only as a brief few sentences. The same sentences that you can find on any news network, as the headline news. Wikipedia only covers their second hour of news and anaysis in table form. Raw data. No context. No analysis. Just data. The vast table and notes is only interesting to the sql/java nerd in me. But I have sufficient avenues to feed that.
I can't lie, It's impressive that Wikipedia has documented every last trade in note form, but come on. We all know this is merely a case of Wikipedia exploiting people with spectrum disorders. This isn't even what football obsessives care about, if they're being honest. Not in real time. Not down there in the lower rounds. Not even for their own team. The vast majority of that information will be forgotten tomorrow. Nobody will give a shit. It is worth retaining only if later events make it newsworthy. If in hindsight, trades look to be works of absolute genius or absolute incompetence. For now, Wikipedia's only service is as a data dump. An archive.
If it has to be on Wikipedia at all, why not split it out? Have a main draft article, and a list article for the table and trades. Or is that just too obvious for the "editors" of Wikipedia? Because as it stands, here is what appear to be their editorial priorities even in an imagined role a as a breaking news service for football nerds.....
1. Introduction. Which turns out isn't an introduction. It's the bulk of text information Wikipedia is making available. Nothing there that can't be found in the top Google News results for 2024 NFL Draft.
2. A gallery of pictures. Shouldn't even be there. See WP:GALLERY.
3. Data. Derp. Derp.
It is only after all that, you find what is actually some really important news regarding the draft.
Presented as a footnote, is the huge story about Tom Brady and Miami. Mike Florio was all over this, pretty much when it happened. And then he banged on about it for months on end. Why? Because it's important. It speaks to major flaws of the NFL model. Not for the first time, the major NFL media ignored it, because they're shit scared of losing their access. Vital for a breaking news reporter, if they haven't done what Florio did and spent years building up the kind of respect and connections a trusted correspondent can get.
Buried in jargon is another Florio favourite, he being a former lawyer. The NFL's attempts to deploy affirmative action. Does it work? Or is it only a sad attempt to deflect attention from the racism lawsuit. Wikipedia can't even be bothered to comment.
This Wikipedia breaking news article even buried other actual news deep inside its vast compendium of trade notes.....
-------Philadelphia traded a fifth-round selection and a 2023 third-round selection (94th) to Arizona in exchange for a third-round selection (No. 66). The trade settled Philadelphia's tampering complaint regarding Arizona hiring Eagles defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon as their head coach.
HEY ZOLOFT
Miss me yet?
Was this post too long for you? Too rich in detail? Too timely? Too likely to attract the attention of journalists? Oh well. Never mind. I'm sure the shitheels you prefer will be along soon to make Tim's effort worth his while. I do this work with ease. I wrote this post in an hour. My Sunday morning hobby.
Your shitheels probably haven't even got off Twitter yet. The Church of Woke.
This is why Tim likes me. Misses me. Thinks your ban is politically motivated bullshit. I keep him honest. I keep him sharp. There is a healthy respect. With me around, he feels less like what he clearly is under your tenure. A means by which you can pretend you allow a multitude of viewpoints. When in realty, he is merely tolerated, just as long as he never attacks one of your shitheels. And never ever questions how you run your forum.
Everyone can see what you are Zoloft. Everyone can see you tolerate long posts when they're not likely to trigger your shitheels. Were your shitheels even aware of the NFL racism lawsuit? Are they even capable of analysing an article like the 2024 NFL Draft from the perspective of is Wikipedia complicit in hiding ingrained American cultural racism because Wikipedia's model is no different to the breaking news model of corporate America?
Are your shitheels just dumb? Just really fucking dumb? Like any pure breed wokester has to be. Twitter twats. Delusional freaks like Molly White. Was this article what she meant when she claimed Wikipedia is largely reliable?
Seems pretty clear to me they are. Fucking dumb. Seems pretty clear everyone knows it too. Even them.
