I ask honestly: why should it be easy to participate?
> and I don't want to need to spend a bunch at Wikipedia reading countless rules trying to figure that out
You don't want to spend time contributing, you just want readers to accept your contribution? I hope I'm misreading your intent, as it sounds like you feel you're above the vetting process? I've made some modest contributions to OSS, and I've never expected anyone to accept a patch based on the fact that I feel like I'm a competent programmer.
> I ask honestly: why should it be easy to participate?
Because the alternative is massive systemic bias.
This issue has been discussed to death and I won't argue anything here, but the point is that having a thick coat of process encourages a _certain kind_ of editor to participate in Wikipedia. Thus, proponents claim, the largest reference work on the internet is biased, in a very nonobvious way.
This wouldn't be an issue if Wikipedia was some niche forum where "facts" are taken for granted to be opinions. But for (what I suspect is) the majority of people these days, Wikipedia is the de facto source of truth. Therein the problem lies.
The quality of technical articles on Wikipedia are second to none. Time and time again technical references have played out in personal and professional endeavours. They're clear and concise.
You've got to accept that some topics, biographies for example, are inherently subjective and can't be purely objective.
Wikipedia is the most rigorous source of 'truth' available to the masses, and the complaints of bias are about bias which may indeed be present, but are markedly subtle. Where is the source of 'truth' that's anywhere near as objective as the offerings of wikipedia?
>The quality of technical articles on Wikipedia are second to none
Academic articles maybe, other articles, not so much. I run a website / forum in a niche area of animal husbandry, and one part of the site links to useful descriptions / information on different breeds. We've had no choice but to ban links to Wikipedia articles on individual breeds because they are simply factually incorrect, to the extent that even pre-teen site members find them funny and point out errors on our forums. Seriously, we have 10 year olds on our forums linking to Wikipedia articles and making fun of them - they really are that full of nonsense.
Fair enough, but apart from your story all the others I've heard strongly complain about inaccuracy have been about subjective topics.
Still, if it's causing that much trouble in your community, why not fix the articles? Rather than spend time making fun of it, why not spend time fixing it - which is a double-barreled solution: not only do you lose the incorrect links, but people not associated with your group benefit from more correct advice.
Sorry, I should have said "given the breadth". Even so, the information in wikipedia is regularly (though not always) more concise and palatable than textbooks.
> I ask honestly: why should it be easy to participate?
Perhaps because the tagline of Wikipedia is "The free encyclopedia anyone can edit", not "The free encyclopedia anyone can edit after conducting 20 hours of intense self-study into the arbitrary bureaucracy and 'standards' that let us have a page for every Pokemon and Justine Ezarik's 300-page iPhone bill but not a page for a band that's won 15 local music festivals and produced 3 records"?
Your first example is a little dated; Wikipedia hasn't had one article per Pokemon since around 2007, at the latest, when they were all merged into a handful of lists. Since then, a small number have been spun back out into articles on individual species or evolutionary lines, but only after careful consideration and considerable effort put into finding sources and establishing notability.
Am I the only person who find this comment (perhaps inadvertantly) amusing? "A small number have been spun back out... but only after careful consideration and considerable effort put into finding sources and establishing notability."
A popular band can, if there are good sources for the information. Regardless of what other policy exists, having written a number of band articles, I've found that to be more or less the one de-facto rule: cite thy sources, preferably to sources that seem relatively legit (musicological books or journal articles good; newspapers and magazines ok; the band's own website ok but not as the only source; "personal communication" not so good). Overall I think that makes sense, because it's the only real way of verifying that it's not just fans writing impossible-to-verify opinion or lore. Plus, Wikipedia is supposed to be a tertiary source that compiles secondary sources, which doesn't make any sense if there aren't secondary sources.
Whenever I've written articles about music groups that do have good references, I've never run into problems, even if they're obscure groups. For example, I recently wrote one on a minor 1980s punk band, with citations to the book American Hardcore (a history of 80s hardcore), which I doubt anybody would challenge. I do think there's an awkward gap around subjects that clearly should have secondary sources, but for some reason don't, because music historians and journalists have somehow neglected to write about them, or just haven't done it yet (musicology tends to lag). I can see why people get pissed off in those cases, but I do think it's basically no-win for Wikipedia, because in cases where good sources don't exist, it's not possible to produce an article up to what Wikipedia claims are its standards, a tertiary-literature article solidly referenced to the existing literature; because the problem is with the secondary literature itself being deficient (http://www.kmjn.org/notes/wikipedia_notability_verifiability...).
Nowadays I mostly do my Wikipedia-editing source-first: I find a good source or two about something, and then decide, hey, this is a good basis for a Wikipedia article. So for example, I'll pick up a book on the history of hip-hop, and use it to write articles about hip-hop musicians. Doing it that way, I have a remarkably laid-back, trouble-free Wikipedia-editing experience. It's still theoretically possible to read some policy pages in a way that could cause me problems: there might be some minor band that I've written a well-referenced article on, but is somehow still "too minor" to deserve a Wikipedia article under the Notability policies. But in practice, those objections almost never come up in the case of well-referenced articles; I think Verifiability basically trumps Notability these days, and that the deletionists who argued for a more strongly curated encyclopedia have lost that battle.
I think his point still stands - and this plays into the "systemic bias" point that other posters here have made. The issue here is not that citations are required (they ought to be, otherwise how can we ascertain truthfulness?), but rather it's heavily biased towards certain types of citations.
A poster mentioned elsewhere in this thread that Wikipedia's articles on animal husbandry are laughably incorrect, to the point where children can spot the errors. If someone knowledgeable in the field were to come in and try to correct this nonsense, what exactly would they cite?
Academic journals? Because information on animal husbandry is a frequent subject of academic debate. Newspapers and magazines? Surely a smash hit topic there.
This is why Wikipedia's quality is highly correlated to how well this subject is documented online. Physics, math, and computer science? These articles are top notch - because information is widely available online already, just begging for a Wikipedia editor to cite it.
Anything that isn't common online? Fuggetaboutit. Worse, anything that isn't the regular subject of newspapers and magazines?
Sure, people cite online stuff more, because people are lazy. But I haven't seen any bias against people who do cite books. That's mostly what I cite, since I write articles while I'm working my way through books, citing the book in the process. People seem to actually welcome it, if anything. I've added some information not previously available online that way about some archaeological sites, Greek wines, old AI systems, and a few other things. I've gotten only positive comments from doing that, which makes it extra-weird that people say Wikipedia is so unfriendly to contributors. No bureaucracy or acronyms or anything; just a few paragraphs with a citation to a book or two, click save, done.
Surely there must be books on animal husbandry that can be used to improve the articles? There has to be something, because I don't think Wikipedia should let you just cite "trust me, I know this". As a reader, I don't want to have to trust Wikipedia; I want Wikipedia to point me to somewhere where I can follow it up.
I do agree that there is a huge pile of stuff only covered in books that is under-covered on Wikipedia currently, due to nobody having gone to the library and dug up the information yet. It's got 3.8 million articles in English, but I think is not even halfway "done".
"But I haven't seen any bias against people who do cite books."
If you recall the great programming language AfD wars of recent. The problem was precisely that the editors exhibited an extraordinary bias against two things:
a) references of printed material -- because they didn't have a copy so they couldn't verify it, and/or the proceedings were not perceived to be notable enough on that particular editors radar to be counted
b) references of printed material in another language - as odd as it may seem, people who communicate in other languages do have something to say and produce material that can be referenced. But because the editor couldn't read that language, it was dismissed.
I'd believe what you posted, the trouble free utopian life of a contributor, maybe 5 years ago when one could actually contribute to WP without having all their changes reverted followed by snide comments from capricious editors. But the reality is that there are very large numbers of people who won't even be bothered contributing anymore (and you can see a fraction of a percent represented in the comments here) because the experience of doing so was shamefully poor.
If anything, I've found the experience has gotten better over the past few years, in that "notability" has been almost entirely trumped by "verifiability". These days, if I write an article with a few solid sources, I don't get hassled at all. I just wrote something a few days ago on an Ottoman-era castle in Greece, citing an offline (and not even very easy to get) book, and nobody hassled me.
I mean, you don't have to believe it, but I would guess that if you pick up a solid book, and write some well-referenced articles based on it, you aren't going to have problems either.
"If someone knowledgeable in the field were to come in and try to correct this nonsense, what exactly would they cite? Academic journals? Because information on animal husbandry is a frequent subject of academic debate. Newspapers and magazines? Surely a smash hit topic there."
I don't get your point. Of course there are academic journals on animal husbandry, as well as trade magazines and textbooks. Why would their be any difficulty finding material to cite on animal husbandry?
I checked up on it too. The more notable Pokemon (like Bulbasaur) still have a page to themselves, just like most major characters in popular TV shows[1][2][3]. Minor Pokemon are indeed collected into lists[4], just like the GP said.
Your attitude speaks to exactly what is wrong with Wikipedia. You seem to think it should be difficult to participate, such that only the elite who have busted their chops should be able to do so. If you wish to end up with a dead community (which is exactly what is happening, the number contributors is stabilizing not growing), then fine, but if you wish to actually expand the wealth of human knowledge available there, then you're going to have to drop the holier-than-thou attitude.
It should be easy to participate because that is what is being asked for, it is after all "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit."
However, I am being asked to contribute, and asked to encourage others to contribute, such as noted here: http://www.marketplace.org/topics/tech/wikipedia-loses-contr... Or more directly, read the statements from Jimmy Wales here http://www.firstpost.com/tech/wikipedia-in-india-we-needs-mo... where he says Wikipedia's interface needs to be simplified and asks for more regional language contributors. I've tried to turn on Indian friends/co-workers to editing Wikipedia, but they found it extremely daunting.
This is in sharp contrast to open source projects I've contributed to, such as Drupal, which I'll note I have quite a few contributions there, so I'm certainly no stranger to putting in a lot of work to participate in something.
The difference with Drupal is that there are very clearly defined rules for how to participate, clear instructions for how to do so, and new contributors are helped along in the process to get their code right, rather than being told their contribution is worthless, which is the attitude I get anytime I try to contribute something on Wikipedia. And that's not to say there isn't attitude in the Drupal community, there still is, but at least there one can still contribute despite it, whereas at Wikipedia, it just becomes a lost cause.
The difference with Drupal is that there are very clearly defined rules for how to participate, clear instructions for how to do so, and new contributors are helped along in the process to get their code right, rather than being told their contribution is worthless, which is the attitude I get anytime I try to contribute something on Wikipedia.
But there are also clearly defined rules for how to participate in Wikipedia, which you just disregarded as rules made "such that only the elite who have busted their chops should be able to [contribute]". You see, if you write an article without any sources or references, badly formated, without interlinks etc, it's really of no help to us -- getting it into shape (i.e. formatting, finding sources) will take more time than rewriting it from scratch. We can create crappy articles about not notable subjects ourselves, thank you. Do you also think that Linus Torvalds is wrong with rejecting patchs which do not meet guidelines? Do you think it's unfair to make people read and care about Linux guidelines? Do you think it will make Linux a dead community?
Interesting use of the words ‘us’ / ‘we’ here: ‘We can create crappy articles about not notable subjects ourselves, thank you.’ Who are the ‘we’ you speak of? It seems you speak of the group of people that is already used to writing wikipedia articles, and you are in this way enforcing a divide between them and potential contributors. Shouldn’t the ‘we’ who wrote Wikipedia be all of us? Should that not be the starting point?
I used to contribute quite a lot to Wikipedia in the past (I stopped because of lack of time), and I identify with Wikipedia community, that's why I used "we".
It seems you speak of the group of people that is already used to writing wikipedia articles, and you are in this way enforcing a divide between them and potential contributors. Shouldn’t the ‘we’ who wrote Wikipedia be all of us?
Of course it should -- we are very happy to accept contribution. The only thing we ask for from contributors is to make some effort and spend hour or a half on reading Wikipedia rules, otherwise their contribution becomes a burden on us -- because people who don't care enough to read and follow the rules are not likely to stay longer, it's enough for them to create their promotional article and leave us with maintaining it.
A poor article ("stub") that needs a complete rewrite can be better than no article. The reason is that a poor article encourages a rewrite. An article that doesn't exist will probably remain non-existent.
>You seem to think it should be difficult to participate, such that only the elite who have busted their chops should be able to do so. //
Wherein "the elite" is anyone with internet access to Wikipedia and "busted their chops" means spent a few hours on Wikipedia reading how the editing and review processes work.
> I ask honestly: why should it be easy to participate?
I agree with you, though I've also experienced the encouragement to participate as nowarninglabel has:
>> When I meet wikipedia people here in SF, they say, "Get involved!" Then, when I have tried to get involved, I get endless bureaucracy and everything eventually deleted.
I think this is where the frustration stems. Wikipedia, understandably, wants participation. But it's not just any ole participation. It wants, and needs, _quality_ participation. Unfortunately, quality is a subjective measure; what one assumes is quality is rubbish to another.
I sympathize with the huge task Wikipedia has in trying to police an enormous amount of content, though I think it's entirely understandable that there are many people who are unhappy with how that policing is being done, rightly or wrongly.
The history of the problem with WP is not that there's a lack of people willing to provide quality participation. Everyone from professional authors to nuclear physicists have been screwed by the bureaucratic psychosis that pervades contributing to WP.
Almost by definition, high quality participants are such because they have spent an inordinate amount of time in their area of expertise. They don't have the time to deal with "the WP way", Even contributing an article to WP is a "big deal" for these kinds of people because of the time it takes to do it.
But because WP invariably turns almost any submission, no matter the quality, into a situation of content defense, quality participants simply don't have the time to:
a) waste defending perfectly good material
b) waste learning the ins and outs of WP on how to defend the perfectly good material and manage it through a multi-week AfD process -- possibly several times.
Sure there's lots of junk that ends up submitted to WP, and if you read through the comments here, nobody is really up in arms about that, it's when the actual high quality material (which might represent dozens or hundreds of hours of high quality work) is tossed out because some WP editor has trouble functioning in society and decided that they couldn't handle invaders on their patch of electrons that we end up with the problem you see here.
So no, the only ones who are able to have any sort of impact on WP are the ones who are able to have fanatical dedication to learning the ins and outs of WP and are able to manage an edit through the tortured, arbitrary and capricious bureaucratic processes that define WP today.
This discussion resulted from a specific blog post about a specific article. Do you consider the Jessie Stricchiola article to be "actual high quality material"?
What is your proposed alternative process, and how does it help to build a useful, reasonably accurate encyclopedia?
If Wikipedia's process is so bad, why hasn't anyone forked the contest and done it over better?
I haven't ever seen quality contribution in scientific area to be rejected. The only people screwed by the "bureaucratic psychosis" are the ones who try to use Wikipedia as a way of self-promotion, which shows that the process works.
> I ask honestly: why should it be easy to participate?
Because that's a core fundamental part of wikipedia practice. That's why every page says "the encylopedia anyone can edit" and why you don't need to create an account to contribute.
The page says "the encyclopedia anyone can edit," not "the encyclopedia anyone is entitled to edit." I don't think a couple of hours (if that) familiarizing yourself with the practices is much to ask.
I ask honestly: why should it be easy to participate?
> and I don't want to need to spend a bunch at Wikipedia reading countless rules trying to figure that out
You don't want to spend time contributing, you just want readers to accept your contribution? I hope I'm misreading your intent, as it sounds like you feel you're above the vetting process? I've made some modest contributions to OSS, and I've never expected anyone to accept a patch based on the fact that I feel like I'm a competent programmer.