How to write a Featured Article in 21 steps
Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2018 1:33 pm
What's missing from this post?
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AIridescent&type=revision&diff=865386187&oldid=865384165
Other than the part which says don't accidentally remove anyone else's work as long as you think it is relevant, there's not one part of this that gives any indication Wikipedia is a collaboration. Oh, and he generously invites people to copyedit the new version. I.e., don't significantly change it, and most certainly don't revert it wholesale as an undiscussed change (nobody should be reverting anyone on this basis, but it is worth noting how often these sort of editors do just that to protect their own creations).
Bizarrely, even though he shows awareness of the issue of undue weight, his mechanical loop approach to examining books is virtually guaranteed to give undue weight to one or more authors. If you have ten books on a topic, that does not mean each factoid should be included. If nine books don't even mention it, that may be a big sign it does not need mentioning.
What this sad little flow chart demonstrates, is that this buffoon, who if it wasn't clear already, fancies himself as a shit hot Wikipedian, doesn't seem to have the first clue as to what the benefit of reading all the books you might be using as a source before you write a single word on Wikipedia, even as a draft article, actually are.
Since the task is the summation of disparate thoughts in your own words, you should at best only be writing notes and page numbers, until the last book is finished. His approach almost guarantees the awful "according to x, but contradicted by y" style found in many articles. Much of these apparent contradictions are easy to eliminate at the source review stage, so you only expose the reader to genuine and relevant areas of disagreement.
Not to mention it is a very real obstacle to the necessary transformation in expression required to ensure you are creating an original work, for copyright purposes. It is possible to plagiarize ten books even if the instances of plagiarism are intermixed.
Even worse, he advises using the bibliography compiled by Wikipedians as your starting source list, his presumption being that anything not there, will simply be new. Bizarre. And he only advises using Amazon to find books! Crazy.
They're seemingly no awareness on his part that not all books are equal. His approach is, if it exists, read it. Which is of course a tremendous waste of time. Proper writers would be able to tell which author's works are significant, and indeed which are simply not reliable or otherwise suitable for Wikipedia's purposes.
It is also a noteworthy that he only recommends checking Commons for images. This isn't what I would expect from one of these arrogant content creator types, they usually despise Commons and all who sail in her. I don't, but even I know it is a are situation indeed that they will have the very best selection of free images. An inability to search for images yourself, doesn't speak well to an ability to find sources (hence why he only uses Amazon?).
On a final, hilarious note, his advice to include an infobox regardless of whether the article has one of not, or what might have been discussed in this regard before, will of course cause huge fights, and goes against current Wikipedia policy. But even this does fit with his hugely arrogant and isolationist approach to the task of Wikipedia publishing.
I will repeat, this guy thinks he's one of their best writers, and he certainly gets no disagreement on that score from anyone inside the cult. Although you can't be sure whether that is because they think he really is, or their silence is out of fear, or they just don't give a fuck, or lastly they're just too thick to even understand what is being discussed. And that is why Wikipedia sucks. That is why only 0.1% of the whole of Wikipedia is even a Featured Article, and why those will largely be crap anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AIridescent&type=revision&diff=865386187&oldid=865384165
Other than the part which says don't accidentally remove anyone else's work as long as you think it is relevant, there's not one part of this that gives any indication Wikipedia is a collaboration. Oh, and he generously invites people to copyedit the new version. I.e., don't significantly change it, and most certainly don't revert it wholesale as an undiscussed change (nobody should be reverting anyone on this basis, but it is worth noting how often these sort of editors do just that to protect their own creations).
Bizarrely, even though he shows awareness of the issue of undue weight, his mechanical loop approach to examining books is virtually guaranteed to give undue weight to one or more authors. If you have ten books on a topic, that does not mean each factoid should be included. If nine books don't even mention it, that may be a big sign it does not need mentioning.
What this sad little flow chart demonstrates, is that this buffoon, who if it wasn't clear already, fancies himself as a shit hot Wikipedian, doesn't seem to have the first clue as to what the benefit of reading all the books you might be using as a source before you write a single word on Wikipedia, even as a draft article, actually are.
Since the task is the summation of disparate thoughts in your own words, you should at best only be writing notes and page numbers, until the last book is finished. His approach almost guarantees the awful "according to x, but contradicted by y" style found in many articles. Much of these apparent contradictions are easy to eliminate at the source review stage, so you only expose the reader to genuine and relevant areas of disagreement.
Not to mention it is a very real obstacle to the necessary transformation in expression required to ensure you are creating an original work, for copyright purposes. It is possible to plagiarize ten books even if the instances of plagiarism are intermixed.
Even worse, he advises using the bibliography compiled by Wikipedians as your starting source list, his presumption being that anything not there, will simply be new. Bizarre. And he only advises using Amazon to find books! Crazy.
They're seemingly no awareness on his part that not all books are equal. His approach is, if it exists, read it. Which is of course a tremendous waste of time. Proper writers would be able to tell which author's works are significant, and indeed which are simply not reliable or otherwise suitable for Wikipedia's purposes.
It is also a noteworthy that he only recommends checking Commons for images. This isn't what I would expect from one of these arrogant content creator types, they usually despise Commons and all who sail in her. I don't, but even I know it is a are situation indeed that they will have the very best selection of free images. An inability to search for images yourself, doesn't speak well to an ability to find sources (hence why he only uses Amazon?).
On a final, hilarious note, his advice to include an infobox regardless of whether the article has one of not, or what might have been discussed in this regard before, will of course cause huge fights, and goes against current Wikipedia policy. But even this does fit with his hugely arrogant and isolationist approach to the task of Wikipedia publishing.
I will repeat, this guy thinks he's one of their best writers, and he certainly gets no disagreement on that score from anyone inside the cult. Although you can't be sure whether that is because they think he really is, or their silence is out of fear, or they just don't give a fuck, or lastly they're just too thick to even understand what is being discussed. And that is why Wikipedia sucks. That is why only 0.1% of the whole of Wikipedia is even a Featured Article, and why those will largely be crap anyway.
