[Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

Mon Sep 20 17:56:29 UTC 2010

On 20/09/2010 04:21, Robert S. Horning wrote:
> On 09/19/2010 06:52 PM, wiki-list at phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:
>> On 20/09/2010 00:26, Robert S. Horning wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I'm not entirely sure how accurate this is, so I'm just making a
>>> raw conjecture here that is completely unsupported by facts other
>>> than perhaps by general observations:
>>>
>>> Is it possible that the problem with the humanities-related
>>> articles on Wikipedia has more to do with the lack of an existing
>>> culture of "copyleft" or public domain collaboration?  It has
>>> taken literally decades of effort that go back even a couple of
>>> decades earlier of similar efforts to put together what is today
>>> the "open source movement" that has produced things like Linux,
>>> the GNU tools, and software like Apache.  Wikipedia is a product
>>> of this environment too, where many of those who have
>>> participated in developing open source software don't hesitate to
>>> at least add a couple of paragraphs to Wikipedia.
>>>
>>>
>> Linux, Apache, and the GNU Tools were the work of a handful of
>> people. Others have come along and added a bit here or there or
>> fixed something or other but I bet that if I were to look at the
>> core source code for Emacs to day it wouldn't be that much
>> different from when I worked on it 20 years ago.
>>
>> Software changes either work or they don't and any change ought to
>> be testable to demonstrate that it adds some new feature or fixes
>> something broken. But there is a problem with software changes in
>> that most changes tend to degrade the overall quality of the
>> product in some way. Overtime, unless someone steps in and does a
>> rewrite the code becomes a mess, and it happened one change at a
>> time.
>>
>> The same is true of wikipedia articles, edit by edit, they tend to
>> degrade. There comes a point when they are 'done' and they knob
>> polishers need to be told to bugger off and leave them alone.
>>
> While I appreciate extending the analogy, you are missing my point
> here.  Geeks have been used to the philosophy of collaboratively
> written documents (including software) for quite some time and this
> was ingrained into at least a significant sub-set of technologically
> minded people for quite some time.  It is this culture of sharing
> with one another and having no stigma of sharing your work and
> letting potentially millions of others poke at your work, tweak it or
> even  trash it.
>

What?????

The chances of you or I being able to just chance the core code of Linux
is zip, nada, ain't' gonna happen matey. Before anything goes back its
going to have to have passed a whole load of tests, and it will be
reviewed by experts in the code/subject area. The Open source
software that matters is tightly controlled.

> It isn't just this software but the tens of thousands of other
> applications that have been built and shared with the world.
> Wikipedia was formed from this community where sharing this kind of
> information was even a second nature.  Indeed it has been encouraged
> for people of a technical nature to share the information they know
> with one another.
>
> What I'm trying to point out is that a similar sub-culture within
> the community that works on arts and literature is such a minority
> that you might as well not really pay attention to it.  Certainly
> academia isn't embracing Wikipedia for multiple reasons.  That may be
> part of it as those in an academic situation tend to be a minority in
> technical fields but tend to dominate those with studies in the
> humanities.  They are also hesitant to work collaboratively and even
> when that happens it tends to be very small groups... not groups of
> dozens or hundreds involved.  A paper on physics may have hundreds of
> co-authors, but a similar academic paper on Greek Mythology may only
> have a couple authors or a single author.  This is a cultural
> difference that can't be understated.
>

When you have 100s of authors tweaking and adding stuff you tend to end
up with at best a turgid mess. Which is why people are saying that the 
articles are worstening over time.

Gerard says that the mathematics were improved by a handful of people 
getting together and fixing the mess. Back in 2006/7 it was awful and 
the physics was even worse. If it ain't been locked down the janitors 
will degrade their work with minor tweaks soon as night follows day.