And, to continue on my train of thought from the last message, it's a real shame that the main critical sites are like that; I genuinely see a lot of good in the idea of an independent, critical-minded site that keeps watch on Wikipedia, holds it up to criticism where warranted and ridicule when it deserves it, and makes constructive commentary about what its problems are and how they might be solved. There's even a place for forums on which people banned from Wikipedia can have their say and explain why they think their ban was unjust. And it's good that there are places to talk about Wikipedia that aren't controlled by the same people who run Wikipedia itself, so that those in power aren't able to completely remove all checks and balances on the exertion of that power, by suppressing criticism whenever it hits close to home.
It's just too bad that the places where this sort of thing can take place end up getting dominated by unconstructive criticism along the lines of "Wikipedia is evil and must be destroyed!" (an actual thread subject on WR recently).
Overall, when looking at the WP critic sites, I find that Wikipedia Review is not that bad. Much worse are Wikitruth and Daniel Brandt's site.
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On 4/15/07, Daniel R. Tobias dan@tobias.name wrote:
And, to continue on my train of thought from the last message, it's a real shame that the main critical sites are like that; I genuinely see a lot of good in the idea of an independent, critical-minded site that keeps watch on Wikipedia, holds it up to criticism where warranted and ridicule when it deserves it, and makes constructive criticism about what its problems are and how they might be solved.
I see alot of good in the idea too. In the hope of finding some constructive criticism that I could use to improve Wikipedia, I registered at Wikipedia Review in late 2005, shortly after it was started.
In the beginning (when there were only a handful of users there) I managed to have some fairly constructive discussions (including with some people who had never edited, but who were looking for a forum where they could discuss weaknesses of the project and opportunities for improvement with other like minded people), but over time the composition of the site changed from being mostly rational critics to being largely comprised of banned users with grudges.
Now the discussion is almost exclusively about individuals on Wikipedia.
There's still a lack of a dedicated place for independent, external, rational critical commentary.