Why Wikipedia is not so great

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

by makimaki • 18 years ago

21 15 18 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

ashleyw• 18 years ago

The only problem for me is its so complicated; if I found obvious vandalism which hadn't got caught by any of the active members, it'd take me 10 mins to work out how to revert it correctly — it'd not be much harder to use it from the command line!

snprbob862• 18 years ago

Yeah, I think that MetaWiki is overly complicated and heavily lacking in ease of use.

Maybe someone could treat Wikipedia as a back-end and implement a cleaner, simpler, and more powerful UI on top without having to fork the entire database?

randomwalker• 18 years ago

My preferences --> gadgets --> editing gadgets.

Between the various gadgets there, I'm sure you can find what you want. And you can write your own too. There are a variety of user-contributed stylesheets and scripts listed elsewhere on the site.

Unless you're trying to do admin tasks, I'm not sure what you mean ease of use. Just click the edit button and start typing. If the formatting is wrong, someone will clean up after you.

InVerse• 18 years ago

i agree with you in spirit. for me, the social/political difficulties are even larger obstacles than the technical.

well, you did say obvious vandalism. anything other than nonsense could be a trial by fire to "correct".

there was a satire making the reddit rounds (and presumably hn?) a few months back in which editing wikipedia was extrapolated to time traveling, complete with inane policy discussions.

found it: http://www.abyssandapex.com/200710-wikihistory.html

jonursenbach• 18 years ago

The versioning system in MediaWiki definitely needs work.

marbletiles• 18 years ago

By jove, that Wikipedia page is accurate and well-written!

Prrometheus• 18 years ago

It's great for math.

brent• 18 years ago

Except for the inaccuracies. I find MathWorld to be a safer bet.

jcromartie• 18 years ago

I second MathWorld. Sometimes I spend hours reading it.

timmorgan• 18 years ago

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:A9H3pqjznZwJ:en.wikipedi...

This page has to be deleted and undeleted by admins, yes? So editors with privileges are helping to write this and reinstate it from time to time? Interesting.

jrp• 18 years ago

So does Wikipedia let you look at deleted pages? I thought they did but from the article link I couldn't find it.

edit -- I was thinking of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Why_Wikipedia_is_n...

I guess not.

halo• 18 years ago

Someone killed the redirect because it was in article space.

The original article is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_Wikipedia_is_not_...

rejoyy• 18 years ago

although i agree with the points raised here, am inclined to be critical of the uh, critic... when all is said and done, wikipedia provides a lot of info we can use and THAT is what matters...

ps: it would be to wikipedia's own good if it could reflect on the points raised by the "critic"... aren't we all for self improvement, eh?

Ardit20• 18 years ago

So basicaly wikipedia reflects the society we live in and the many varied views and tactis we humans use. Intresting.

Why Wikipedia is not so great

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