[captainmuon]

Not an edit I made, but the final straw for me was a debate about the article name of the turkey (the animal) on the German wikipedia. The only commonly used name is "Truthahn" which refers to both the female and male animal if you are not being specific. But one especially vocal Wikipedian insists that in his ornithology book, the generic term is always the female term, so "Truthuhn" (with u). That sounds like "turkeychicken" to the average German. I have never heard this outside of Wikipedia. You might use it to contrast the female from the male animal in a zoological setting, but the thing you eat or the thing that makes "gobbeldigock" is called "Truthahn". So this was a win of technically correct over useful.

I've also had many small edits on technical subjects (particle physics and supersymmetry) reversed by people who were self-professedly not experts, with comments like they could not find it in their beginners' textbook. So I just gave up. (Edit: this was over ten years ago, and I can't find it anymore - not even sure what my username was - but one dispute was about the naming convention of some exotic particles. I was quoting from the famous "review of particle physics" and respectable textbooks, but it kept being reverted to a made-up notation...)

[HeadsUpHigh]

The non-expert with a beginners' textbook having strong opinions about the subject is everything that's wrong with places like wikipedia and reddit. I just hate it.

[consumer451]

> places like wikipedia and reddit. I just hate it.

All human products have issues, but are there any superior alternatives at scale?

Wikipedia is one of our civilization’s greatest achievements, isn’t it? It seems like the Library of Alexandria on steroids to me. Especially when combined with an internet archive.

It’s funny to admit it, but Reddit is also quite an achievement due to the scalable human moderation model and very useful hive mind.

For research, name a better duo.

[HeadsUpHigh]

No I don't have any superior alternatives at scale. For anything I can get away with, I avoid large scale places completely. Of course it's not always possible. I'm just tired of non-experts giving opinions and having the power to enforce those opinions.

I think wikipedia is as good as it can get given the constrains it has. Some kind of vetting process for experts on specific fields could potentially be useful for specific information though. But the matter of fact is that I have pretty much stopped using wikipedia for anything but the most rudimentary info check. I rarely even check the sources they provide. If I want more than the couple paragraphs wikipedia has on most subjects I go straight to books an sometimes I skip wikipedia altogether when I know that it won't be enough.

[burntoutfire]

> Are there any superior alternatives at scale?

Pay tens of thousands of experts to work on the encyclopedia instead. The issue isn't scale, but the cost of the labor (which, in Wikipedia's case, is free - but in many cases you get the quality you paid for).

[hirako2000]

This alternative has shown to produce inferior universal encyclopedia.

Encyclopedia Britanica was/is probably the most successful professional collection of knowledge, it's been superseded by Wikipedia over a decade ago.

Free contributor is a low expense for sure but what you get isn't necessarily lower value than paying contributors.

[HeadsUpHigh]

The problem with wikipedia is that the existing editors tend to drive away experts who are willing to edit things for free though. Like one comment here about the random editor with a beginner's textbook reverting edits with information that was not in their textbook( that were properly cited from well-known books). That's just ridiculous and I'm blown away at the level of hubris that makes you trust your own lack of knowledge more than proper citations.

[burntoutfire]

Were the expert-produced entries in Britannica of lower quality/accuracy than in Wikipedia?

[Const-me]

> For research, name a better duo.

A search engine and scihub?

Wikipedia is useful for a high-level overview. For more info, you'll be clicking on the references a lot. No reason not to start with the sources.

[consumer451]

> > > For research, name a better duo.

> A search engine and scihub?

> Wikipedia is useful for a high-level overview. For more info, you'll be clicking on the references a lot. No reason not to start with the sources.

Ok, you got me there. I knew using "research" with no qualifier was going to get me into trouble. I should have said "general research."

I can't wait for Sci-Hub, or better, to become legal. The fact that is not legal is pretty embarrassing for our civilization.

Regarding the search engine, for a lot of general research adding "... reddit" often improves results in my experience. It's so weird how important that site turned out to be. Now if only it could make money without unneccesary features. I feel like we should buy reddit for the commons while we can :)

[Const-me]

> The fact that is not legal is pretty embarrassing for our civilization.

Philosophically speaking sure, but practically it already works fine now.

I don’t think any judge is going to convict a researcher for bypassing these paywalls. if Elsevier and company will decide to prosecute, it will become a PR nightmare for them. Also likely to cause a legislative response which will undermine their ability to collect their profits. I don’t believe these people are stupid, I think they understand these consequences as well.

> adding "... reddit" often improves results in my experience

Interesting, will try next time. I have an account there for a few years, but wasn’t using it much.

[newen]

This applies to any internet discussion site that doesn’t list your entire background, which is basically every internet site. How many people do you think does the same thing in HN? I’d say it’s most of them.

There is no way to tell whether you are debating a child on the internet.

[yorwba]

> I've also had many small edits on technical subjects (particle physics and supersymmetry) reversed by people who were self-professedly not experts,

I'm all for having experts determine the notation to be used in their respective fields...

> in his ornithology book, the generic term is always the female term, so "Truthuhn" (with u). That sounds like "turkeychicken" to the average German.

... but that also means deferring to ornithologists on the question of what birds are called, instead of relying on your lay understanding based on eating turkey meat. If chickens were named after their meat, they might be called "Hähnchen". But of course chickens are mostly kept for their eggs, so we end up with the opposite situation where the average person treats neuter "Huhn" as synonymous with female "Henne".

[belorn]

When I discuss test driver development with a friend we often end up talking about the definition of a unit, what inherently defines a programming type, constraint, system tests, what it mean to allow a test drive the development, a class vs function vs data, exploratory programming, what should be tested vs not tested, if refactoring is likely or unlikely once we have a initial version running in production, what they think when using the word test vs what test might mean for me, and a bunch of side topics maybe related to programming.

Collaboration is hard even when two persons are paid to work for a common goal. An encyclopedia also encourage such debate over word definitions, and its only over the medium of writing, so it can very easy fall into arguments over words rather than productive collaboration that produce a working article. When that happen the easiest way out is to follow two rules: the assumption of good faith and an almost robotic approach to using what the majority of sources is using. It is not without reason why most of the issues in Wikipedia comes down to conflict resolution.

[alvarelle]

I find it ironic that you answer to a comment asking for links, but you don't provide any. (Same for the other comments in this thread)

[lixtra]

Linking your HN persona to your WP persona is something not everyone is happy to do just because some random guy demands it.

[Sebb767]

Which is fair, but responding to a post asking for a specific example with circumstantial stories to proof a point has its irony.

[Kye]

That sounds like the situation with violoncello. No one refers to it with the full name, but it pops up in the occasional music tutorial, probably for the same reason: the author read it in a book that said it was the correct name. It's technically true, but practically weird.

[DeeLAN]

I enjoy that in one paragraph you are upset about somebody using the technical name over the common name, and in the next paragraph you are upset people reverse your technical edits for what might be a more common notion from a beginner's textbook.

[k__]

I read, German Wikipedia is a garbage fire compared to the English one.

[moonbug]

But as any good Wikipedian knows, technical correctness is the best sort of correctness.