Perhaps the most powerful example Wikipedia is CRAP

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CrowsNest
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Perhaps the most powerful example Wikipedia is CRAP

Post by CrowsNest » Fri Apr 13, 2018 1:03 pm

Deep sea mining.

Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =826903615

BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt ... sea_mining

I very much doubt any of the people who think Wikipedia is a good idea, a benefit to mankind, something whose faults are minor and fixable by a process of reform, can explain the huge difference in quality here.

If Wikipedia can be this bad at even coming close to replicating what genuine reliable sources are doing for an issue this serious and with this global scale, then what use is it? It's not like the BBC has a special brief to produce this kind of material and the encyclopedia of crapness does not.

The BBC has to do this as merely one part of a wide ranging brief to "inform, educate and entertain" across all areas of knowledge, with what most seem to agree is an insufficient funding model for the purpose. Perhaps their quality here, is an idea they see it as a priority?

A deep dive (yes, intentional) into the Wikipedia page's history, reveals Wikipedia's truth.

The page was created in April 2007, but it only saw five! edits from then to 2010.

It remained a pretty poor stub until User:Unimanmike had a go at expanding it in 2010. In a series of edits, including through sand-boxing, he added 5,657 characters, supported by no less than 23 references (the article's first sight of a reference, at least independent ones).

This was a step change that was never to be repeated. And even their effort was only brief, lasting two months, and the guy's user page seems to indicate why - it was merely practice, or even maybe an actual assignment, for a 1st year university class.

Since then, the article has racked up a miserable total of only 200 edits, and the seemingly more impressive roll call of 127 editors being responsible for that belies the fact the most edits by a single user is just 8, and the vast majority performed just one or two edits (only 22 editors managing the big two). Obviously sandboxing isn't included, because Unimanmike copy-pasted in his efforts, but there's no sign of any later improvements of that kind. Later edits have barely doubled the article's size since 2010. The talk page shows zero sign of human life.

As such, the crapness is easily explained by the fact Wikipedians are clearly more interested in other topics, there isn't a single editor with an identifiable long term interest in it, much less a concerted collective active effort to raise its quality. What little does get done on the page, isn't examined beyond a cursory check that it's not vandalism.

Wikipedia was only ever going to work if it could attract highly motivated experts willing to put hundreds of hours into a topic, or thousands of basically competent editors willing to buy into the process of gradual improvement through small but value adding edits to a topic for years on end, and ideally, both types of contributor working together to produce a quality piece of work on the topic.

Their model has failed here, clearly. Even this idea that controversy=quality, has failed. But sadly, because they have managed to slop something together through simple editing that looks vaguely alright and free of obvious vandalism, certainly better than a blank page, it still somehow merits top Google ranking, way above the superior reliable source given above.

It doesn't seem to be much of a consolation that the Wikipediots themselves seem to recognise their failure, rating the article currently as mere Start class. That they only consider it High on the Importance scale to the narrow field of Mining, is disturbing. Naturally, these are just for internal consumption, and do not affect their Google ranking (or overall reputation) in any way, it seems.

Wikipedia's sheer crapness on this topic illustrates it has absolutely no role to play in human society, certainly not in the identification and dissemination of science and thus by extension the education of the masses on issues of serious importance.

HTD.

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Re: Perhaps the most powerful example Wikipedia is CRAP

Post by Graaf Statler » Fri Apr 13, 2018 8:15 pm

I think WMF has played a very dangers game with presenting themself as the fact checkers of this world and there mission statement Wikipedia would be the universal source of knowledge in 2030. Because the plain true is it is a goofy project. It's at it's best a sometimes useful project, and at it worst the Dutch wikipedia with it's sock pupped and troll army in charge. And this true can ruin there reputation.

The internet is in crisis after what happend with Facebook. Wikipedia can be the second victim after Facebook with there lying and trolling. Because they have powerful enemies like for instance Breitbart.
And be careful, these guy's know where they are talking about and they are very, very well informed. They hate the leftish bias of the Wiki mouvement and so do I. You have to be neutral and not promote al kinds of extremism whit the donor money you get from common people. And be honest what your projects are.

I am not lying, why should I? I have not any interest to lie. I am telling the true, something they don't want to hear and because of that they have trolled me out. And that is the true and nothing but the true, so help me god!

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Re: Perhaps the most powerful example Wikipedia is CRAP

Post by sashi » Sat Apr 14, 2018 5:15 am

1. In 2018, Team BBC wove a very readable story on deep sea mining into a nice modern style-sheet.
2. Back in 2010, someone did good research for a class using the en.wp scribblepad. Nothing was done to follow up on that work because the model of 1000 monkeys at 1000 typewriters doesn't empower the monkeys to negotiate contracts with Getty Images or documentary makers / Nautilus minerals. Nor have the bot-builders dreamed up machines that bury keyword alerts on the talk page.

Thanks for posting this, CN. Meanwhile, France 24 is running a special on the trilateral retaliation against chemical warfare... brought to the viewer by Fertiligène.

a hard-typing monkey wrote:Acetamiprid is used to produce a variety of crops, plants and flowers.

source


May the monkeys win the war on bugs this cherry season!

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Re: Perhaps the most powerful example Wikipedia is CRAP

Post by ericbarbour » Sat Apr 14, 2018 5:32 am

Easy to explain: Wikinerds don't care about this subject because it's not
1) military related
2) aerospace related
3) covered by a Wikiproject run by fanatical obsessives (science fiction, Roads or Anime/Manga, for example)
4) not a "political imperative" for the usually-crackpot leftists and environmentalists who hang around
5) it's not "sexy" or interesting to one robotic edit freak.

Quite a few articles drift like this for decades. You can usually find a few by punching that random-article button, even in 2018.

(I just did it, and got this. Looks like something his students at Warwick would write. Miserable little crap article.)

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Re: Perhaps the most powerful example Wikipedia is CRAP

Post by CrowsNest » Sat Apr 14, 2018 12:04 pm

ericbarbour wrote:Easy to explain: Wikinerds don't care about this subject because it's not
1) military related
2) aerospace related
3) covered by a Wikiproject run by fanatical obsessives (science fiction, Roads or Anime/Manga, for example)
4) not a "political imperative" for the usually-crackpot leftists and environmentalists who hang around
5) it's not "sexy" or interesting to one robotic edit freak.

Quite a few articles drift like this for decades. You can usually find a few by punching that random-article button, even in 2018.

(I just did it, and got this. Looks like something his students at Warwick would write. Miserable little crap article.)
Proabably even easier to explain by the fact Wikipediots are overwhelmingly not encyclopedia writers/curators, neither in skill nor arguably evident motivation. And the Wikipedia model which aims to compensate for these shortcomings and introduce even a small smattering of such and boosterise it with the sweet magic of collaboration with lesser lights helping however they can, is a failure. It was arguably always going to be a failure, and will continue to be a failure however they tweak the parameters of the experiment, such as for example by offering academic recognition (WikiJournals) or privileged positions (Wikipedians In Residence).

And while obviously examples are plentiful, the whole point of this thread was to highlight this particular example (hence why I took the risk of calling it out, which sometimes lead to minor improvements due to the existence of immoral lurkers like Yvangottidir who continually seek to hide Wikipedia's true nature from the world). This particular example is not merely one of many, it's a major fuckup in a sea of fuckups.

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Re: Perhaps the most powerful example Wikipedia is CRAP

Post by Kumioko » Sat Apr 14, 2018 12:07 pm

There's also this gem:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peng_Tee_Khaw

What's even worse, here is a link to show that there are a few thousand BLP's without any references at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Unreferenced_BLPs
#BbbGate

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Re: Perhaps the most powerful example Wikipedia is CRAP

Post by CrowsNest » Sat Apr 14, 2018 1:03 pm

I'll repeat, there was a particular reason to highlight this particular example.....I'm going for shock value here. Alternative candidates are obviously welcome, but we already have a thread for random examples of general crapness, which are indeed sadly as ubiquitous as they are unsurprising (hence why the continual listing of random examples of such does rather become counterproductive, as I said in that very thread).

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Re: Perhaps the most powerful example Wikipedia is CRAP

Post by CrowsNest » Fri Aug 10, 2018 6:17 pm

Ooh, a new paragraph.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =826903615

Progress? A New Hope? Well, it was added by User:DustySpot, whose entire contribution history is seven edits from 7 March to 22 April.

So, no. Just another signal Wikipedia is a dead duck.

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Re: Perhaps the most powerful example Wikipedia is CRAP

Post by Dysklyver » Mon Aug 13, 2018 1:57 pm

Kumioko wrote:There's also this gem:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peng_Tee_Khaw

What's even worse, here is a link to show that there are a few thousand BLP's without any references at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Unreferenced_BLPs


The great thing about that category is that it will naturally empty as people die...

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