2009/11/5 Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com>om>: The history of the success of Wikipedia: [[Worse is better]]. - d.

The Cunctator wrote: Or send a {{sofixit}} to the author of the review. I think what annoys me about Wikipedia critics is that they hold the very solution to all their criticisms in their power. Get in and change it.

The Cunctator wrote: It does in the sense that if you engage with the community, become a part of it, you can hope to change it.

The Cunctator wrote: Okay. I'm unsure why the sofixit couldn't have applied to the complainant fleshing out the Claude Chabrol entry in the first place. I still can't quite understand how difficult it is to understand that if there is a problem on Wikipedia, it can be fixed by the person who spots it, but perhaps on that we differ.

Steve Bennett wrote: I really don't get this at all. If everyone took that approach, there would be no Wikipedia. This isn't about fixing everything, since you can't actually fix everything. See the laws of physics. This is about fixing something, and you can't fix something without actually fixing it. Hence, sofixit. Great, it's one problem amongst millions. But given there are millions of people, these problems are not insurmountable. Describing the problems as insurmountable is actually another problem, and one that needs to be challenged. Sure, there are huge arguments against fixing it, but they are just arguments. There's no real reason not to actually fix it rather than comment on it or complain about it, depending upon your point of view. Sorry, but maybe I'm too much of a doer today, but I really don't see why this is hard. Unless people are starting to believe the hype? Come on people, don't believe the hype. We're an encyclopedia project written by encyclopedia nerds that has huge flaws yet works regardless and that has become rather popular in spite of it all. If we start taking it all too seriously... delusions of grandeur? I'm still amazed at the responses I get from people when they moan about Wikipedia and I tell them to just edit it. Because, obviously, as this thread is demonstrating, much to my dismay and lack of comprehension, apparently it isn't really that simple. Except, whisper it, it is.

Steve Bennett wrote: You have my mother mistaken for someone else's then. I'm not offended in any way that someone has chosen to criticise. What I am astounded at is the abject negativity which greets the idea that people should have a go at fixing problems. We're supposed to be the people trying to get others to engage with the project. If even we, when discussing the idea, are abjectly negative, don't you think that's discouraging rather than encouraging? Don't you think that's going to convey entirely the wrong idea? Are you challenging the meme or reinforcing it? Are you part of the problem or part of the solution? As to the idea that I have no idea what fraction of the world's population contributes to Wikipedia, can I point you to the portions of my message you snipped, since given that statement it is entirely possible you may not have read them. As I said, most of the people I know can't get their head around editing Wikipedia. My response is gentle encouragement or comedic rebuttal. "Ah, go on, you know you want to" or "I bet you do edit it really though". Some you win, some you lose. Some people eventually come back to you with some story or another, but you can show them where they go wong, and what matters and what doesn't. The idea from where I sit is empowerment.

Ken Arromdee wrote: Looks to me like you might have the wrong end of the stick somewhere. Although I'm baffled as to how you fix a systemic problem without tackling it head on. But then perhaps I see the value in a "lead by example and encouragement" approach and you don't. Regardless of whether an error is just an error or also a representation of something, it still needs fixing. So fix it. There's an argument that deliberately leaving an error so that you can make waves about it is disruptive to the encyclopedia. Sometimes I think it has legs. I also hadn't realised the idea of BLP was to constantly watch the article to make sure the "fix" stays. I always thought that a fix was more like a hack, and eventually someone would come up with a better hack. So I don't watch BLP's like a hawk. I instead do the best I can, relying on the fact that if everyone does the best they can, it will all work out. I kind of think of Wikipedia as like an internal combustion engine. When it starts over-heating we try air-cooling, until we work out water-cooling works better, and so on and so forth. And I hadn't realised Wikipedia was a game where we need to work out how to avoid being reverted. Being reverted is an important pasrt of teh system. It makes it clear that you haven't got consensus, so you'd better work to get a consensus. As to reading the rules, don't worry, you don't have to. Even when confronted with a rules lawyer. The fastest way to beat a rules lawyer is to point out their mistake, check with a couple of other people and carry on as normal. When you argue with a rules lawyer, you legitimise their behaviour. That's why we get so many kicking about, because they are encouraged by the response they get. Or I may be wrong. Who knows. Time will tell.

Ken Arromdee wrote: I had thought the argument had moved on and I was responding to a point you had made, but if you want to drag it back to the initial subject, I'll just trot out the old maxim about how Rome wasn't built in a day. You can't build a brick wall in one go, you start with one brick and a bit of muck. Unless you're worried about footings, of course... So, how do you fix the underlying problems? You roll your sleeves up and fix them. Sofixit. The underlying problem is actually that Wikipedia suffers from some sort of bias towards pop culture. Now where I sit, the people who make this complaint are the sort of people who could actually correct that bias, so I'm always thinking to myself, "sofixit". But that's me. Bloody hell. I'll have to re-read BLP, I hadn't realised we had editors glued to the screen being drip-fed so they could constantly refresh their watchlist. I seriously doubt that the point or even a symptom of BLP is that someone has to watch a page until they die. I think there's a problem here though, since I've already stated I don't believe articles are ever fixed, and you do. That's why you should always help out where you can by pointing out to people they shouldn't bite newcomers. But heck, I managed to outwit rules lawyers in my first week. It can be done. I used to create stubs without permission! Imagine that! Mind, it might not be a bad idea to hardcode IAR onto every page, to undercut the idea that rules lawyers actually have a point.

On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 10:56 AM, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: It's a good suggestion, and the point about those making complaints not being ideal recruits is a good one, as is the frequent element of a vested interest in the article. What makes *me* queasy is the feeling that sometimes those pseudonymous Wikipedia editors who are otherwise standard Wikipedians, edit heavily in one area without disclosing their real-world involvement. The only way to discern that is to assess the sources someone is using. If they are using sources from one side of a debate only, they either hold strong views on the subject, or are promoting one side of the argument. You absolutely have to engage with all views to have any hope of writing anything approaching a good article. Carcharoth

Ken Arromdee wrote: Interesting to compare this with something else Morozov has apparently argued (http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate-uk/tag/evgeny-morozov/) "The Internet can actually inhibit rather than empower civil society". Those unreliable folk on Wikipedia define civil society as follows: "Civil society is composed of the totality of voluntary civic and social organizations and institutions that form the basis of a functioning society as opposed to the force-backed structures of a state (regardless of that state's political system) and commercial institutions of the market." Sounds a bit to me as if "sofixit" is a snappy way of defining participation from the side of civil society, without the guns or cash to fix underlying causes. Sure, patching up a given Wikipedia article is just a form of do-gooding, not changing the reasons it was flawed (ignorance or bias being a couple that might be involved). Since Wikipedia in fact contradicts Morozov's thesis, perhaps it is not so surprising he advances the criticisms he does. Charkes

Bod Notbod wrote: Or quoting completely out of context - same thing really. Charles

Fred Bauder wrote: "Is MySpace dying?" seems to be a standard occurrence of this eye-catching meme. As in also Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft. The top Google hit for "Is Apple dying?" is an amusing query from 2002 (rant about no floppy drivers for the iMac). Charlews

On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 2:06 PM, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney(a)gmail.com> wrote: I'm not sure about that; journalists are no more a monolith than are Wikipedians. I think its just human nature; I don't have the citations handy, but quite a few studies have shown that we focus much more intently on the negative elements of anything than we do their positive counterparts, regardless of relative weight. Just as much, we can't refuse to acknowledge the fact that Wikipedia does have its problems - journalists may miss the scope, and some lose the plot entirely, but by and large the issues they identify are real: we do place a high bar on new contributions, we do have a problem with battlefield editing, we are vulnerable to interest groups and individuals and companies can be harmed by inaccurate information about them that we host. The only problem we are currently addressing in any coordinated way is usability - on the other problems, progress proceeds at geologic speed. This is a function of leadership - the Foundation has it, and the projects do not. Nathan

On Thursday 05 Nov 2009 21:06:08 Ryan Delaney wrote: Wow! This is what I call a "conspiracy theory", where people claim that another entity has an interest to do something out of his implicit nature so they do it on purpose. However, I wouldn't put a lot of faith in it. First of all, if someone criticises the wikipedia (and it doesn't matter whether they are the president of the United States, or someone who wrote a blog comment that few people have read), what he said may be factual, partly true, or completely false, and we need to determine whether it is the case according to logic and evidence. Immediately dismissing something someone said based on its origin is an ad hominem fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem Secondly, it is the job of media reporters and journalists (as well as less official forms of civil reporters such as bloggers) to point that something is wrong in the Wikipedia or wherever (e.g: the government, a school, a crime being committed somewhere, etc.). If something bad happens in something that interests me or affects me, I'd like to know about it. I am a Wikipedia contributor, but I also wrote a parodical (and naturally critical) piece about the wikipedia here: http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/How-many-Wikipedia-Editors/ And I've seen other bloggers and/or Wikipedia contributors being critical of the wikipedia inside or outside it. So I think a journalist who reports something wrong with the Wikipedia is: 1. Doing their job. 2. May not act out of fear for their livelihood. This is as long as what they said has some merit - if it's just FUD / dis-information / twisted facts etc. we should provide a rational response to the contrary and dismiss it as a falsehood. I don't think the Wikipeders should fear criticism from journalists or anyone. It's a bit far-fetched to believe that it will convince anyone to stop using the Wikipedia, which is a bit hard to miss given that Google and other search engines tend to favour it in most common searches and from what are usually good reasons. We should still be self-critical and try to improve the Wikipedia and the way it is managed as best as we can, but we shouldn't make a fuss over some petty, external, negative, criticism (whether by the mainstream media or by a fool-on-the-hill blogger) against the Wikimedia projects because such criticism is very unlikely to do a lot of damage. The Wikipedias and open-content and/or collaborative sites in general face much graver problems, both external and internal. Regards, Shlomi Fish ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shlomif ) -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Understand what Open Source is - http://shlom.in/oss-fs Chuck Norris read the entire English Wikipedia in 24 hours. Twice.