eric-jon: So apparently the current Wikipedia strategy is that images cannot be used unless they are absolutely critical to the understanding of the body text. If it can be reasonably argued that the article can be understood without images, away they go. In theory.
Just in case you were interested!
I know you wake up thinking, “How is Wikipedia wacky today?”
amandeep: wouldn’t that basically make all images superfluous except, like, really complicated diagrams in math articles?
eric-jon: Pretty much. Or depictions of complex or similar objects that are difficult to distinguish by description alone.
So a lot of people have been rampaging around, deleting images from every article.
amandeep: that’s kind of bullshit.
i mean, it’s not like they’re saving on printing costs.
eric-jon: There’s some intellectual dishonesty going on here. Remember how a while ago people were making noise about the academic reliability or whatever of Wikipedia compared to “real” encyclopedias?
amandeep: yeah.
eric-jon: Well, someone took that seriously.
And they sort of have this five year mission to become respectable.
Which is meaningless and impossible.
And pretty much goes against the strengths of the project.
amandeep: …
eric-jon: But that’s how these things go.
amandeep: man.
this is like when they started getting aggressive about marking pages for deletion if they aren’t “notable” enough
eric-jon: That’s part of the same process.
amandeep: so what is the goal here, exactly?
to get to the point where college professors will say “oh, yeah, you guys can cite wikipedia if you want, that’s cool with me, i trust that thing”?
i don’t even see that happening
eric-jon: Yes.
Or that, maybe, people who release studies of these things will acknowledge that Wikipedia is as reliable a source as any “professional” encylopedia.
It’s basically this weird ego thing.
That’s got nothing to do with why Wikipedia is useful.
amandeep: wikipedia is awesome because a casual internet user can look up pretty much anything and read some interesting information about that thing
i mean, anything beyond that is just kind of beside the point.
eric-jon: And then, usually, link to more enlightening articles on the subject.
Thorough sourcing is something I support.
Though it can get obnoxious sometimes, as anything can.
amandeep: yeah.
but, i mean, for professionalism, don’t focus on images and “noteworthiness,” – be tighter with npov and that kind of shit.
eric-jon: Yes.
And do something to reward decent writing.
And formatting.
Preferably something not cock-wavy.
amandeep: i mean, hell, there’s a lot of just badly written shit in some of the minor articles. instead of hunting for pictures to nuke them, it’d be better to riffle through those stubs and rewrite them, or mark them for that
yeah, the cock-waving is the other aspect of wikipedia that sort of pisses me off
though that, i guess no one can do much about. i think that’s just how people are.
still, though, the few times i’ve tried to edit an article, my edits get reverted and some asshole sends me a message about how what i put in is not where he’s trying to go with the article
bear in mind the edits i try to make are always fairly minor ones about fucking videogames
but there’s always some dude with a huge WIKI USER page that proudlylists the 400 game articles he watches with his fucking eagle eye
usually what i see is, like, some kind of bullshit fanboyish sentence like, you know
“most people generally have considered final fantasy tactics to be perhaps the finest strategy title yet to have been made by a company.”
(inevitably it’s written in that style, too)
eric-jon: Maybe if there were a sort of user grading thing, on various fronts. The more you improve wikipedia in these categories (writing quality, formatting, correctness of information, balance of information, etc.), the better your chances of a good reputation. Every edit you make can be graded by other users as “very constructive”, “constructive”, “not constructive”, or “damaging”. By default, everything would be given a neutral rating.
There would have to be some kind of things in place to discourage drama.
And self-rating.
Through proxy accounts and stuff.
amandeep: so kind of a slashdot thing
eric-jon: Yes.
And so in theory, the users with the best reputations would be the ones whose contributions people find the most constructive.
So there would be sort of this cultural incentive.
Be an ass, and be flagged as an ass.
Stir up drama, and people will know about it.
Be petty, and people will know.
amandeep: yeah. that kind of thing would go a long way towards figuring this out.
wikipedia really has nothing like that in place
which i guess was fine for the first couple of years, but now it’s gotten kind of unmanageable
eric-jon: Of course, people could rate others in a petty way — yet others might come along, see those same ratings and say “hey, this change was perfectly fine; I’ll rate it positively”.
And it would balance out.
in theory.
Sort of the way that wikipedia is supposed to balance out.
pubs
