this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
831 points (96.7% liked)
Technology
59091 readers
5522 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Wikipedia addresses that last issue with "semi protection". It's not a complete absence of rules - large decisions are made by consensus and the whole system is maintained by admins and bureaucrats with bots.
For example there's an article on the flat earth theory, and we're not going to even pretend like there's any merit to that idea anymore. One can only edit it if they're an established, registered user. And if one such user decides to troll, then it'll be reverted nearly instantly, and that user will waste a lot more time establishing a new account than it takes to deal with them.
I'm familiar enough with Wikipedia to know that, yeah. I am also familiar enough with Wikipedia to know that there are topic areas (such as Israel/Palestine and the Holocaust in Poland on the English-language version) where the shortcomings of the wiki system are completely evident. Once you have to restrict editing to users with more than 500 edits and make special rules how to handle sourcing, it's clear that the wiki just isn't a suitable mechanism: if there are so many people wanting to write about a topic that you have to do that, then why not abandon the wiki concept altogether?
The greatest success story of the wiki principle isn't Wikipedia, nor any other Wikimedia project. The greatest success story of the wiki principle is OpenStreetMap, which does limit itself to objective facts and is used not just by people, but also organizations. I work as a software developer and I've encountered usages of OpenStreetMap data many times, but of anything on Wikimedia projects? Wikipedia is great for teenagers to get an overview of the world, but everyone who actually needs the information in it has better sources for it anyway.
Because it's quick? At that point it's not just the last thing anyone wrote - it's a collaborative effort from many experienced volunteers. Wikipedia doesn't have to be either a purely "no rules" wiki or a purely "all rules" paper encyclopedia.
Where would you suggest as a better source for general information, when one would otherwise start with Wikipedia?
I am saying that if there are so many people wanting to write (and influence public opinion) about a topic that you have to go into endless arguments what the article should say, then there is no reason why it has to be "quick" that the article gets published with whatever new ideas anyone has had.
As it is now, Wikipedia is what we have and I am not saying you shouldn't read it.