Wikipedia is not so great, and is overrated

https://old.reddit.com/r/TrueUnpopularOpinion/comments/zieyyf/wikipedia_is_not_so_great_and_is_overrated/

by kurtreed • 4 years ago

12 8 4 years ago

old.reddit.com

musicale• 4 years ago

It seems that any group with power tends to become a cabal.

Deletionism irks me, but I still use wikipedia. I've largely given up on stackoverflow however.

Now I want to demand NPOV for articles on bigfoot and UFOs. ;-)

Ghosts[1] get slightly better NPOV I guess because they have more sightings! (

According to a 2009 study by the Pew Research Center, 18% of Americans say they have seen a ghost.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost

indiogrindio• 4 years ago

It seems like a joke article since they link to Wikipedia so much given the title.

It can come in a format similar to GitHub where anyone can present in their preferred version of a subject instead of edit-warring at a small point, and if version is good enough then they can be merged/pushed/vouched by other users to work upon and goes to the top in ranks.

It will always lead to the same sort of supposed systemic biases regardless of the system, because so much content is based on subjective judgement calls at the end of it (IE, who decides what is "good enough?"). In other words, there will be another anecdotal thread about the future Github-style wiki and all of it's problems and drama.

kurtreed2• 4 years ago

I think the GitHub-style wiki he talked about has existed already:

https://www.encycla.com

It's founded by those behind LocalWiki.

https://wikiindex.org/Encycla

Encycla isn't quite a wiki, instead, it's sort of a 'next generation' wiki. Unlike a traditional wiki site, where everyone edits a single page, on Encycla, each user maintains their own personal copy of a page, and changes are suggested (pulled) between pages.

system2• 4 years ago

I agree it is not perfect but there is nothing close to it. God knows how much I learnt from Wikipedia. I appreciate finding whatever information I need from it. Currently there nothing out there close enough.

TheChaplain• 4 years ago

What a garbage post title.

Wikipedia as content is IMHO very good, but as an organization.. well, that could probably be discussed.

stareatgoats• 4 years ago

Ok, so Wikipedia is the closest we have of an actual truth-ministry, with an almost impenetrable sea of checks and balances to weed out biases, lolz and lies [0]. Looking at it that way it becomes clear that it must fail, and there should be competing solutions.

These will however also fail, and so what we would end up with are a number of sites with largely the same information, albeit with some difference in nuance that ultimately will coalesce along political lines. Some with maybe better tools for merging new edits but lacking in other respects. And that's not good either.

So Wikipedia should stay, and iron out the crinkles instead. Let's just not expect it to be perfect.

[0] as someone who never really understood the inner workings of Wikipedia, this article is really a goldmine - the not so NPOV notwithstanding.

kurtreed2• 4 years ago

So Wikipedia should stay, and iron out the crinkles instead. Let's just not expect it to be perfect.

They could, but the author is pessimistic that nothing will change at all because of inertia resisting such change. He used Fram as example and the sole McDonald's in a food desert as an analogy.

pasttense01• 4 years ago

You need to compare it to the usual alternative for a query: looking at the first page of Google search results. There is so much junk in the first page of Google search results that Wikipedia shines by comparison.

Wikipedia is not so great, and is overrated

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