Wednesday, May 09, 2007

 

Rant

Larry Sanger has often criticized Wikipedia's article for gradually falling in quality. I had dismissed this as the disgruntlement of a person who does not get the respect he feels his certification entitles him to. Until tonight.

Many moons ago, I wrote the beginnings of an article for each one of the Dynasties of Ancient Egypt. I'll admit that they weren't great articles; I threw most of them together in hope that someone who actually knew something about the subject would improve on them. Because I knew I did not own them. So I sent them on their way in the world, and never looked back.

So tonight, surprised that two of them were on my watch list, I had a look. And now I knew how Sanger felt: both had degraded visibly in quality. I don't mean that some odd opinions or interpretations were inserted, but that they had become almost unreadable. I cleaned them up, left unavoidably critical remarks in the comment fields -- then stopped because I was about to start flaming the previous editor, who, I had to admit, was doing the best that she/he could do.

Worse was, the previous editor was improving on what she/he had found.

Knowing that I have to watch even more articles to keep them minimally useful does not encourage me to write any more. And I can think of several hundred articles, all of which are notable or worth an entry, Wikipedia needs.

Geoff

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Comments:
you know what, you can't let a few bad apples ruin the tree. all Sanger has to do to be 'right' is show a few bad apples - 'look, everything is rotten'! there is going to be good and there is going to be bad; lets not feed the FUD machine and only pay attention to the bad, eh?
 
The new "stable versions" system should take care of this, I think. [[WP:STABLE]]
 
Wow, that is disturbing, seeing your work become fermented. Sometimes, Wikipedia is like a zen exercise in patience.

The good news is, sometimes the opposite is true. A few stubs blossom into great articles.
 
Yeah, I was going to say the same thing about stable versions. Factually, wikipedia is pretty damn good, but on non-heavily-trafficked articles, trying to hoist the writing style beyond a certain quality level is a sometimes like trying to get your footprints to stay permanently in the sand.
 
Let me apologize for this post, even though I warned everyone that this was a rant. I have to confess that I was probably making much ado over nothing in this entry. But when I wrote it I was tired, frustrated -- and decided it was much better to vent on my blog than pour bile and flame upon another Wikipedian who, I'll admit again, was just trying to improve things.

Although I have to agree with Ben: it's hard not to think that there are wide stretches of Wikipedia that do not get the attention some parts do, and seem to resist efforts to improve them.

Geoff
 
Thank yyou for writing this
 
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