Hi,
Just out of curiosity, what specifically about the Jane Fonda entry is "crap?"
POV? Writing Style? Focus of Content? Rough text?
Help us out here.
:-)
-Chip Berlet
________________________________
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org on behalf of Jimmy Wales Sent: Thu 10/6/2005 5:01 PM To: wikien-l@wikimedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] a valid criticism
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2005/10/the_amorality_o.php
I don't agree with much of this critique, and I certainly do not share the attitude that Wikipedia is better than Britannica merely because it is free. It is my intention that we aim at Britannica-or-better quality, period, free or non-free. We should strive to be the best.
But the two examples he puts forward are, quite frankly, a horrific embarassment. [[Bill Gates]] and [[Jane Fonda]] are nearly unreadable crap.
Why? What can we do about it?
--Jimbo _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Chip Berlet wrote:
Hi,
Just out of curiosity, what specifically about the Jane Fonda entry is "crap?"
POV? Writing Style? Focus of Content? Rough text?
In the current examples, I'm mainly focussed on writing style.
"Her nickname as a youth—Lady Jane—was one she reportedly disliked. She traveled to Communist Russia in 1964 and was impressed by the people, who welcomed her warmly as Henry's daughter. In the mid-1960s she bought a farm outside of Paris, had it renovated and personally started a garden. She visited Andy Warhol's Factory in 1966. About her 1971 Oscar win, her father Henry said: "How in hell would you like to have been in this business as long as I and have one of your kids win an Oscar before you do?" Jane was on the cover of Life magazine, March 29, 1968."
This is a motley collection of facts, poorly expressed, poorly organized, and without context.
--Jimbo
--- Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
..it's really not joyful to see bad writing in two very prominent articles.
Why? What can we do about it?
Please forgive us who work countless hours for free and dont quite get all the corners completely spic-and-span. Some of us are too busy rewriting crappy prominent articles like [[terrorism]] back to readability.
SV By the way, theres been much recent discussion about reorganizing the Arbcom, Medcom, and perhaps providing for the ability to form formal committees. Growth in population means growth in governance.
__________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com
From: "Chip Berlet" c.berlet@publiceye.org
Hi,
Just out of curiosity, what specifically about the Jane Fonda entry is "crap?"
POV? Writing Style? Focus of Content? Rough text?
Help us out here.
:-)
I think the problem is that there aren't enough pictures from Barbarella in the article. ;-)
Jay.
On 06/10/05, Chip Berlet c.berlet@publiceye.org wrote:
Hi,
Just out of curiosity, what specifically about the Jane Fonda entry is "crap?"
At a guess: Slightly under a screenful of "biography", one of "acting career", four and a half of "Political activism" (including links which suggest [[Opposition to the Vietnam War]] and [[Opposition to the Iraq War]] are pages about her!) then another half on "Later career".
That's not an encylopedia article; it's a chunk of debate. I look at that TOC and I certainly don't want to read most of the article...
Do we really need to discuss in detail incidents in 2005 where someone spat at her at a book signing? That one guy in Kentucky won't show her films in his cinemas?
-- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
Just out of curiosity, what specifically about the Jane Fonda entry is "crap?"
Chip Berlet
Early in her career she had grown both distant and critical of her father, but in 1980 she bought the play "On Golden Pond" for the purpose of acting alongside her father-hoping he might win the Oscar that had eluded him throughout his career. He won, and when she accepted the Oscar on his behalf, she said it was "the happiest night of my life." Director and first husband Roger Vadim once said about her: "Living with Jane was difficult in the beginning...she had so many, how do you say, 'bachelor habits.' Too much organization. Time is her enemy. She cannot relax. Always there is something to do." Vadim also said, "There is also in Jane a basic wish to carry things to the limit."
That's a quote, and it's bad writing.
(1) Early in her career she had grown both distant and critical of her father, but in 1980 she bought the play "On Golden Pond" for the purpose of acting alongside her father-hoping he might win the Oscar that had eluded him throughout his career.
This means that "As a young woman, she had a troubled relationship with her father". That's Henry Fonda. "In the film 'On Golden Pond', they acted together. Henry won an Oscar for his performance, his first Academy Award, at age 107 (whatever). Jane ina acceptance speech when she took the award for him called it "the happiest night of my life." .
And (2) Vadim can keep out of the happy moment - he was surely relevant to the 1960s.
Really, the writing is wretchedly bad, as Jimbo said.
Charles
On 10/6/05, Chip Berlet c.berlet@publiceye.org wrote:
Hi,
Just out of curiosity, what specifically about the Jane Fonda entry is "crap?"
POV? Writing Style? Focus of Content? Rough text?
Help us out here.
:-)
-Chip Berlet
You know, if it was anyone else complaining about article quality, the response would be something more like "{{sofixit}}".
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
You know, if it was anyone else complaining about article quality, the response would be something more like "{{sofixit}}".
Yes, and that's a valid response to me. Except, when people tell me {{sofixit}} I start thinking about broad policy, not about editing the article itself. :-)
{{sofixit}} is what I intend to do, but at the level of policy. We need to take a serious look at why some high-profile articles are delightful, and some are horrible.
I do not think that the fact that Jane Fonda and Bill Gates are controversial figures is the real answer here, by the way. They are, but the problems I'm complaining about in the articles is not that they are biased, nor that they focus too much on the controversies, etc.
It's that they are badly written. A confusing mishmash of random facts not shaped into a coherent whole. Others have written eloquently on this, and on why this might be the case. The puzzle, though, is: what can be done about it.
Project outsiders might suggest only allowing "expert writers" to work on such articles. I think any of us can explain how that's much easier said than done.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
I do not think that the fact that Jane Fonda and Bill Gates are controversial figures is the real answer here, by the way. They are, but the problems I'm complaining about in the articles is not that they are biased, nor that they focus too much on the controversies, etc.
It's that they are badly written. A confusing mishmash of random facts not shaped into a coherent whole. Others have written eloquently on this, and on why this might be the case. The puzzle, though, is: what can be done about it.
Project outsiders might suggest only allowing "expert writers" to work on such articles. I think any of us can explain how that's much easier said than done.
I answer with a quote from someone you know:
To attact and retain the participation of experts, there would have to be little patience for those who do not understand or agree with Wikipedia's mission, or even for those pretentious mediocrities who are not able to work with others constructively and recognize when there are holes in their knowledge (collectively, probably the most disruptive group of all). A less tolerant attitude toward disruption would make the project more polite, welcoming, and indeed open to the vast majority of intelligent, well-meaning people on the Internet.
In my view, wikipedia has to undergo a paradigm change if it really wants to succeed in creating a good encyclopedia. Some answers in this thread are symptomatic for this: You shouldn't be forced to explain a revert of a bad edit (of course it's good if you still do).
Currently wikipedia forces editors to go through silly processes and discussions to defend good edits. How many highlevel editors are willing to do this all the time? The physics professor may explain relativity theory once to a clueless wikipedian who just put his wisdom into the article, but if he has to do it every week, he'll pack his belongings and go to another project to spend his time on.
And it's even worse with style improvements if you have to argue with bad writers why an article should be coherent text and not randomly assembled item lists.
We shouldn't give up the principle of open editing but we should make clear now from the beginning that we seek good writers and knowledgeable people, not anyone. Yes, anyone _can_ edit an article. But not anyone _should_ edit any article.
greetings, elian
At 07:03 PM 10/7/2005, Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
We shouldn't give up the principle of open editing but we should make clear now from the beginning that we seek good writers and knowledgeable people, not anyone. Yes, anyone _can_ edit an article. But not anyone _should_ edit any article.
But how to keep the people who can but shouldn't away? Without becoming an exclusive club where you have to be friends with five senior members before you can even be considered for joining.
A required tutorial for newbies? Hoping that the not-so-good editors will lose interest before the tutorial is over?
Chl
It's that they are badly written. A confusing mishmash of random facts not shaped into a coherent whole. Others have written eloquently on this, and on why this might be the case. The puzzle, though, is: what can be done about it.
Encourage people to become better writers?
I admit that even though I have a FA (autism) I'm not a very good writer for an encyclopedia. Peer review and FAC are great except I don't know how much they help in this part (and the criticism is rather harsh sometimes for those who can't take it). I always have a tendency to write novel-like for these articles, but of course I don't because its an encyclopedia, so a lot of times its just a bunch of well structured, but unconnected facts...
Thanks, Ryan
[[User:RN]] at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:RN Ryan Norton at wxforum: http://wxforum.org
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Ryan Norton wrote:
It's that they are badly written. A confusing mishmash of random facts not shaped into a coherent whole. Others have written eloquently on this, and on why this might be the case. The puzzle, though, is: what can be done about it.
Encourage people to become better writers?
There are plenty of people capable of writing coherently, as evidenced by the quality of posts to this mailing list :)
- -- Alphax | /"\ Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \
It's that they are badly written. A confusing mishmash of random facts not shaped into a coherent whole. Others have written eloquently on this, and on why this might be the case. The puzzle, though, is: what can be done about it.
Encourage people to become better writers?
There are plenty of people capable of writing coherently, as evidenced by the quality of posts to this mailing list :)
You have a point there, but at the same time you dont. :) I don't know why, but I feel that it is much easier to write well-written emails than coherent encyclopedic prose. I suspect that atleast some other Wikipedians have the same problem. Maybe it has something to do with that in mails you can write from your personal view, but in articles you have to use NPOV and only present the relevant facts? Also, the longer the text, the harder it is to add to it without "destroying it." It's like software development - introducing a new feature often requires you to redesign the whole (or large parts of) the program again. In programming, the answer is to always think ahead, structure your code and refactor often. But Wikipedians already employ those techniques with small incremental edits that slowly but surely make bad articles better.
I don't think anything really needs to be changed. Someone with a good knowledge of English could make their way through both Bill Gates and Jane Fonda and make them much better. If something should be changed then I think it is peoples perception about who the real "superstars" on Wikipedia is. I think it is all those who mark their edits "minor," corrects spelling misstakes and other grammatical errors. Sometimes that is seen as a thankless job I think.
-- mvh Björn
On Sat, 8 Oct 2005, BJ�rn Lindqvist wrote:
I don't know why, but I feel that it is much easier to write well-written emails than coherent encyclopedic prose. I suspect that atleast some other Wikipedians have the same problem.
Part of the problem is that it is often easier to talk about doing something than actually doing it. I suspect that often we all are seduced by the easier choice. ;-)
But a larger problem is that with finite amounts of time, all of us are faced with the quandry of devoting this time to (1) writing new articles; (2) improving existing articles; or (3) devoting ourselves to discussions about procedure or the first two.
I try to spend a couple of hours a day online with Wikipedia, & usually spend as much time offline doing research -- or writing. Sometimes I can write an article in 15 minutes; sometimes it takes 6 months, & that article will look worse than the one I spent 15 minutes on. There is the problem that I have to accept that I will never get an article into a "polished" state, & a rough draft at least has the chance of attracting someone who will improve on what I wrote. And then there is the problem that a given forum -- AfD, a poll , a meta or a talk page, or even this email list -- requires attention, & I have to put some of my other work on hold to pitch in. (I don't mean to sound as if I'm complaining here: I'm just stating that I can only do so much; frankly I am in awe at all of you who can not only contribute content to Wikipedia but effectively participate in several fora at once.)
[snip]
Also, the longer the text, the harder it is to add to it without "destroying it." It's like software development - introducing a new feature often requires you to redesign the whole (or large parts of) the program again. In programming, the answer is to always think ahead, structure your code and refactor often. But Wikipedians already employ those techniques with small incremental edits that slowly but surely make bad articles better.
BJ�rn makes a good point here: there are technical reasons why it is hard to keep the quality of an article high (such as the difficulty of gracefully inserting more content into an article). Sometimes we can borrow tricks from the programming world (e.g., structure our content into sections more often), but sometimes an article must get worse before it can get even better.
I'm just throwing out some ideas here in this email. The only suggestion I have is that if the quality of existing articles becomes bad enough, maybe we should declare a moritorium on new articles until the quality of enough articles is up to snuff. But I'm not sure I'd want to deal with the fallout from that decision.
Geoff
On 10/7/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
You know, if it was anyone else complaining about article quality, the response would be something more like "{{sofixit}}".
Yes, and that's a valid response to me. Except, when people tell me {{sofixit}} I start thinking about broad policy, not about editing the article itself. :-)
{{sofixit}} is what I intend to do, but at the level of policy. We need to take a serious look at why some high-profile articles are delightful, and some are horrible.
I do not think that the fact that Jane Fonda and Bill Gates are controversial figures is the real answer here, by the way. They are, but the problems I'm complaining about in the articles is not that they are biased, nor that they focus too much on the controversies, etc.
It's that they are badly written. A confusing mishmash of random facts not shaped into a coherent whole. Others have written eloquently on this, and on why this might be the case. The puzzle, though, is: what can be done about it.
Project outsiders might suggest only allowing "expert writers" to work on such articles. I think any of us can explain how that's much easier said than done.
I would suggest a Wikiproject to write an "archtypical example" of each type of article we have significant problems with, complete with sidebar explanations of what is good about each section, both in what was included in the model article, and what was excluded. We should start with "Biography". An "annotated feature article" version would illustrate how to create a good article of each type. Then it's just a matter of encouraging people to follow the examples or have a legitmate reason not to.
Biographical articles on Wikipedia are often crap because biography is a somewhat specialized field of writing that few people are formally taught. With thousands of users and probably only a few dozens who have formal education about to do it right, it's no wonder we get many that aren't very good.
That said, my surprise is not how bad so many are, nor how many are bad, but instead, how many are actually pretty good.
-- Michael Turley User:Unfocused
On Friday, October 7, 2005, at 06:06 PM, Michael Turley wrote:
On 10/7/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
You know, if it was anyone else complaining about article quality, the response would be something more like "{{sofixit}}".
Yes, and that's a valid response to me. Except, when people tell me {{sofixit}} I start thinking about broad policy, not about editing the article itself. :-)
{{sofixit}} is what I intend to do, but at the level of policy. We need to take a serious look at why some high-profile articles are delightful, and some are horrible.
I do not think that the fact that Jane Fonda and Bill Gates are controversial figures is the real answer here, by the way. They are, but the problems I'm complaining about in the articles is not that they are biased, nor that they focus too much on the controversies, etc.
It's that they are badly written. A confusing mishmash of random facts not shaped into a coherent whole. Others have written eloquently on this, and on why this might be the case. The puzzle, though, is: what can be done about it.
Project outsiders might suggest only allowing "expert writers" to work on such articles. I think any of us can explain how that's much easier said than done.
I would suggest a Wikiproject to write an "archtypical example" of each type of article we have significant problems with, complete with sidebar explanations of what is good about each section, both in what was included in the model article, and what was excluded. We should start with "Biography". An "annotated feature article" version would illustrate how to create a good article of each type. Then it's just a matter of encouraging people to follow the examples or have a legitmate reason not to.
Biographical articles on Wikipedia are often crap because biography is a somewhat specialized field of writing that few people are formally taught. With thousands of users and probably only a few dozens who have formal education about to do it right, it's no wonder we get many that aren't very good.
That said, my surprise is not how bad so many are, nor how many are bad, but instead, how many are actually pretty good.
That's a great idea! I'd follow it too since I've already had one article that failed FAC because of a bad biography.
Thanks,
Ryan
[[User:RN]] at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:RN Ryan Norton at wxforum: http://wxforum.org