[Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

Sat Sep 18 15:34:50 UTC 2010

Bod Notbod, when you say, "I see a lot of green", it's also worth looking at what B actually means. The article on Doris Lessing for example, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, is B class.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_lessing

It is woefully inadequate. It says there are three phases to her writing, communist, psychological, and sufic. Only the latter has any coverage at all, and it is generally the least highly regarded part of her output. Everything there is on superficial "controversies" (why did she write science fiction, is she a feminist). 

Almost all the sources are newspaper articles; there is not a trace of the available peer-reviewed literature on her output. 

It is much the same in the article on Selma Lagerlöf, another Nobel Prize winner, which is Start class.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_Lagerlöf

Again, no trace of the scholarly literature. The only biography listed in the bibliography is "Who’s Who in Gay and Lesbian History from Antiquity to World War II", which is sort of typical. 

I think there *is* a problem with the humanities, as well as with the gender imbalance in Wikipedia. 

It would be worthwhile to study the location of these deficiencies in more depth, and perhaps to establish links to universities, similar to the recently launched public policy initiative, to address the areas where Wikipedia's natural contributor base does most poorly.

--- On Sat, 18/9/10, Bod Notbod <bodnotbod at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Bod Notbod <bodnotbod at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Saturday, 18 September, 2010, 1:04
> On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 10:58 AM,
> Yann Forget <yannfo at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > I agree that the core content of Wikipedia should be
> educational, not trivia.
> 
> Well, here's our core content (5 thousand or so out of 3.x
> million):
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vital_articles/Expanded
> 
> As it happens I've been proofreading articles of late;
> under nobody's
> say-so I've decided to work my through The Time 100:
> 
> http://205.188.238.181/time/time100/leaders/
> 
> I'm only through the first 12. I have to say, I've been
> delighted by
> what I've seen. 12 out of 3.x million isn't a much better
> sample than
> the two or three this thread has so far been offered. So
> all we can
> say at this point is that "one user thinks that nothing is
> better
> since 2005" whilst "another user thinks that what we have
> in 2010 is
> delightful".
> 
> Which brings us back the question: what is the quality of
> our content?
> 
> Well this list of the 1,000 most important articles as
> judged by
> [waves hand, but I think we'll grant that they think
> [[Biology]] more
> important than [[Mr Hankey the Christmas Poo]] ] doesn't
> give any
> figures but does show the quality rating for each article:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Core_topics_-_1,000
> 
> Scanning with my eyes I see a lot of green, where green =
> B.
> 
> So there is your answer, probably. Wikipedia's grade is B.
> 
> What does B mean? Here we are:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:B-criteria
> 
> Hey, that sounds pretty good!
> 
> So: In 2010 we can say "Wikipedia is pretty good".
> 
> Unfortunately this still leaves the question: was Wikipedia
> pretty good in 2005?
> 
> I find I feel absolutely no compulsion to attempt to answer
> this. But
> since it is a question of importance to Peter Damian he
> will of course
> present data of comparable complexity to mine after the
> weekend.
> 
> Deciding whether to give money to an educational charity
> that "has
> made 1,000 educational topics available for free which are
> pretty
> good" is a matter for one's own heart.
> 
> > Of course, the quality of most articles has improved,
> but I would like
> > to see some serious study about this unbalance
> [between triv and educational content], and what WMF
> > intends to do to correct this.
> 
> Correction implies wrongness. There will always be more
> television
> programmes, long playing records, popular beat combos and
> innovative
> sex toys than there will be Einsteins, paradigm shifting
> scientific
> discoveries and philosophical enquiries. These are the
> degraded times
> in which we live. I suspect the popularity of Chaucer's
> Canterbury
> Tales in his day was rightly castigated for being nothing
> more than a
> tawdry narrative of Miller's arses. Society really started
> to go
> downhill in the 14th century and absolutely nothing has
> improved since
> then.
> 
> But since we must live with the triv/education imbalance
> that Chaucer
> burdened us with, we can at least pray that the twelve year
> old who
> religiously edits [[Numb3rs]] (sic) now might be editing
> [[mathematical modelling]] in a decade's time; after all
> the second is
> wikilinked in the first. It's surely not too much to ask
> that someone
> clicks his mouse once each either side of puberty?
> 
> But I agree with Yann... we should remove our article on
> [[Crazy
> Frog]]. Isn't it horrifying to think how broad our coverage
> is? I
> can't tell you how angry I feel when someone tells me they
> know of
> Wikipedia. I'm glad at first, of course, but when they tell
> me they
> were searching Google for [[Hanson (band)]] and we were one
> of the top
> ten hits, I am repulsed. I am forced to think "Bleurgh! We
> don't want
> *that* *sort* *of* *person* here!"
> 
> And, no, I am not mollified when they say "I found out that
> one member
> had a [[pulmonary embolism]], I didn't know what that was,
> so I
> clicked. And there someone had spelt 'heart' as 'haert' so
> I changed
> it and from that point I got excited about Wikipedia."
> 
> This sort of story I find eminently vomit-inducing and I
> generally
> stalk their contributions waiting for them to do something
> else
> objectionable so that I can get the mods to ban them.
> Unfortunately he
> hasn't done anything that falls outside the guidelines yet,
> these last
> five years, but he will one day and I'll be there.
> 
> I estimate that about 70% of our content should be
> jettisoned. That
> 70% of material does absolutely nothing but pique people's
> prurient
> interest in Wikipedia, it brings undesirable people on
> board that then
> have the temerity to add sourced contributions to core
> articles, and I
> suspect these people then go off and tell other people
> about
> Wikipedia. I mean, who needs it?
> 
> User:Bodnotbod
> 
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