| I started editing only this after I saw some other HNers mention that they are wikipedians. I plunged in gradually to make edits to articles on the subjects that I have been researching the longest for both work and recreation, including topics I've been producing bibliographies or working papers on since 1993. I got the nerve to do that, after seeing how appallingly bad the Wikipedia articles on those same topics have long been, by reading the books How Wikipedia Works and Wikipedia: The Missing Manual. I'm very turned off by the amount of poorly sourced point-of-view pushing that goes on on Wikipedia. I've tried to light a candle in the darkness by compiling source lists in my user space (which I link to from article talk pages), and by mostly adding current reliable sources to articles, but even at that a lot of my edits get reverted by POV-pushers (or their sock puppets or meat puppets) on ideological grounds. This continues to happen even after one group of articles I work on went through an Arbitration Committee case in August of this year. The sanctioned editors learned how to cheat on their sanctions, and the conscientious editors are still badly outnumbered (at least as to visible accounts actively editing the articles at any one time). The administrators are beleaguered, and aren't using their mops actively to clean up the mess. http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/ I have severe doubts about the statement made by Jimbo Wales quoted in the submitted link here: "'I’m not a wiki person who happened to go into encyclopedias,' Wales told the crowd at Oxford. 'I’m an encyclopedia person who happened to use a wiki.'" While I give many of the high-edit-count old hands a lot of credit for trying to maintain encyclopedic standards on Wikipedia, I can't agree that their sound editorial judgment characterizes most of Wikipedia's editorial culture. On any topic that is the least bit controversial, the culture is all about ideological edit-warring, and many active wikipedians seem to be quite proud of their lack of acquaintance with libraries or the other resources used by genuine scholars. There doesn't seem to be anyone at the top of the leadership of Wikipedia backing up the wikipedians who are doing the best work for the project and adding the most reliably sourced content. http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Movement_P... http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Movement_P... If pg has said that someone could do to Wikipedia what Wikipedia did to Britannica (where and when did pg say that?), I'd like to know how to join that effort. What have any of you heard about efforts to bring about a friendly competitor to Wikipedia? The best way to help Wikipedia might be to build a point of comparison that does better work, just as East Germany was best helped by the continually visible example of West Germany until the Stasi couldn't make the East Germans afraid anymore. |