I use Wikipedia quite a lot nowadays to find additional information on a variety of subjects. I really like the amount of detail they provide, links that explain various terms and references to external sites on the subject. Another cool thing is that most subjects you can think of, such as Heroes (TV series), functional programming, The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything are covered (this is not an exhaustive list, by the way). Today I looked at the pages for WHATWG, HTML and XHTML. Subjects I actually know a thing or two about. If you just read through the HTML Talk page and search for key words such as “html5” and “whatwg” it’s hard to believe what people write down. It makes you wonder how that compares to the quality of the rest of the site.
By the way, the reason I’m not going to fix the text directly is because those people seem quite opinionated. It seems better to just wait until they realize it themselves.
I also like how WikiPedia has information on lots of topics that are more "new" in terms of things like TV shows, news events, etc. Plus everything is much more in depth than other encyclopedias.
Too often, I see people putting their ego in discussions. They don't want to know if they're wrong. It's quite common at Wikipedia.
The user most HTML5-disapproving commenter in the HTML talk page has since been banned from Wikipedia.
I'd encourage you to DO edit the pages Anne, you're one of the people that could probably word it best...
If you look at old-fashioned information sources about things you're an expert on, you'll find the same problem. Go to a bookstore, find a book on HTML, open it to a random page, and see how many mistakes you find on that page.
There are occasional books that are pretty good, but most of them aren't.
I am not an expert on Wikipedia, but aren't the Talk pages supposed to be discussions about how to make the actual article more accurate? I don't think it is supposed to be used as a reference like the actual article. I believe it is supposed to be a discussion in which all comments are allowed - meaning that uninformed comments are likely to be left there - not edited or deleted once mistakes are discovered, correct?
You definitely should participate in that discussion and contribute to the article. I find it very frustrating when I see people talking about Wikipedia's shortcomings, especially when they have a lot of knowledge about a topic and could possibly aid in its improvement, and then just resign not to do anything about it. It will never improve if the people who know most about certain subjects never help them along...
By the way, the reason I’m not going to fix the text directly is because those people seem quite opinionated. It seems better to just wait until they realize it themselves.
If that's how you feel, you might as well have not made any comment about Wikipedia at all, because you are ignoring the most basic and important attribute of the project, the fact that anyone can edit it. If you know more about it than others, fix it.
It seems a bit unfair to judge Wikipedia by its talk pages… The talk pages are just talk, it’s the quality of the articles that count. What about them?
Also, at least on subjects that I know a lot about, such as e.g. the MSX page, the information has always been pretty accurate (and if it’s not, I have modified it in the past), and the article’s quality has only improved over time.
Of course, I’ve also seen pages that were quite wrong, e.g. the article on fan translation, which lauded a 1995 translation of a SNES game as the pioneer in the area, but in reality on MSX games have been fan-translated since 1993. But in that case it was really just a matter of more historical information being added which I think especially could happen because it’s a wiki.
What’s more probable is that, any other kind of encyclopedia would even list this interesting subject, so even if the information would have been low-quality, at the least there is some information. In any case, so far I’ve never seen any article get worse, so even in the places where it isn’t so good, it’s only getting better.
~Grauw
"But he believes the silliest things!"
Fuck Wikipedia. Seriously. Their supposed allegiance to "neutral point of view" would be funny if it weren't such pathetic self-parody. Just keep doing what you're doing, and Wikipedia may catch up eventually. Or it may not. Either way, who cares?
And for God's sake, don't try to edit it yourself. That's like saying "I think I'll play 10 minutes of World of Warcraft." Wikipedia is for "level 60" Wikipedians, full stop. You could become one if you were willing to devote your life to it, but then you wouldn't have any time to do anything else. Like, you know, changing the world in ways that may someday (or maybe not) be grudgingly acknowledged by the level 60 Wikipedians of tomorrow.
I made some remarks on the various talk pages, but I’m hesitant towards editing the main articles. One of the reasons is that I only have a limited amount of time to do such things. Another is that I’m afraid edits would quickly be reverted by the people who’ve been maintaining the article for the past couple of years.
Why don't you try making an edit to one of the articles, and see what happens? You might be surprised.
Wikis will rarely be able to provide the final word on any subject. However, in my opinion, their usefulness have been abundantly proven. I think it is worthwhile to become involved in areas that you have an interest.
And for God's sake, don't try to edit it yourself. That's like saying "I think I'll play 10 minutes of World of Warcraft." Wikipedia is for "level 60" Wikipedians, full stop.
Ah, that’s just not true. You sound so bitter too! I’ve made a number of edits (here and here too) over the past few years, none to controversial or extremely-popular articles I must admit, and they are either still there or got improved upon.
I made some remarks on the various talk pages, but I’m hesitant towards editing the main articles. One of the reasons is that I only have a limited amount of time to do such things. Another is that I’m afraid edits would quickly be reverted by the people who’ve been maintaining the article for the past couple of years.
I think you’re seeing ghosts, if the edits are factual and correct (quoting a source helps too) then the people who have been more actively looking at that article for the past few years will recognise that. Stuff doesn’t get reverted so easily.
Of course, once you add stuff that is not factual but instead a point of view like say, how bad .mobi is, or how the W3C is destroying the web, Wikipedia is not the place for that (unless you add something like ‘a popular point of view’ to clearly indicate it, and it really is a popular -and relevant- one). For the sole reason that that is an opinion where people may (strongly) disagree and it can indeed be reverted/changed, and that is why neutral POV is the only thing that works on a wiki.
But then again, even if you add something that is not neutral, it’s likely that when it it modified by someone, it is modified to be more neutral. So in the end, everybody wins because the article got better.
I’m just a bit sad about all the scepticism, especially given that it’s apparantly not based on actual experience but just ‘fears’. Wikipedia really is great :).
~Grauw
Not fixing things in Wikipedia and hoping someone else will fix it is kind of like complaining about your elected officials but not voting. It's easy to step in, make a couple of changes, and step out. You don't need to commit to it as a full-time thing.
I'd hardly consider myself a "Level 60 Wikipedian." I don't spend hours a day editing the site. But if I happen to be reading an article and see something I know is wrong, I log in and fix it. Some of those changes are still there, some have been removed, some have been rewritten. It's only a problem when misinformed people decide to "correct" it back. With the new emphasis on citing sources, one hopes that problem will diminish, at least on articles where the issues are factual rather than opinion-based.
Mark:
And for God’s sake, don’t try to edit it yourself. That’s like saying “I think I’ll play 10 minutes of World of Warcraft.”
Maybe for you, but it’s patently untrue for others. I occasionally edit pages I read when I know something about the topic, and then go on my merry way. I even watch the feed for changes to the Perl page and actively edit the page, occasionally reverting, partially undoing or rephrasing changes. (And I derive some personal satisfaction from reverting some edits whose sole purpose is to, uh, “neutralise” factually correct statements.) On the whole, all this activity costs me maybe 20 minutes a week.
I’ve used my _Contributions_ page1 a couple times to check up on my old hit-and-run edits, and fragments of many of them are still there. Where they’re not, it’s mostly because the pages have been merged or otherwise reorganised.
RESOLVED WORKSFORME.
Anne:
I’m afraid edits would quickly be reverted by the people who’ve been maintaining the article for the past couple of years.
How much time is a one- or two-time experiment going to cost you? Is success maybe what you’re really afraid of?
Plus, if the people on Wikipedia actually turn out to be clueless blowhards, you get to gloat about it – with proof.
Finally, I have to note that for someone who is so strongly convinced of the value of experiments and research about what people are actually doing in the wild, all this theoretical conjecture about Wikipedia is a remarkably incongruent stance. :-)
OK, after reading the comments on this thread, I decided to give it another shot. I found my old login info and made a small factual correction to a single page. It was reverted in 99 seconds.
Ninety. Nine. Seconds.
Now I haven't confirmed this recently, but I'm pretty sure there was a time in the not-too-distant past when I could hold my breath for 99 seconds. I can't even begin to imagine the pathology (or even the technical infrastructure) involved in being able to be notified of a change and revert the change in 99 seconds. They even had time to type up a non-form-letter reason. (The reason was fallacious, of course, an opinion which I brought up in the associated Talk page, which led to a rousing, enlightened discussion where all sides debated the matter civilly in shared pursuit of the objective truth, and reason won out and the page was ultimately clarified for the betterment of all Mankind. ... No, just kidding. I was completely ignored, and I'm afraid to make the change again for fear of being permanently banned as some sort of troll or "sock puppet" or something.)
So... you were saying?
That none of my own experiences reflect yours. I wasn’t saying your experience is wrong or invalid; experiences are what they are. And mine is what it is.
Why the difference? *shrug* Without knowing more about the circumstances, I cannot even venture a hypothesis. Whose experience will Anne’s be more like? *shrug* Can’t know without trying.
And hey; you got to gloat.
Here is the exact change (and revert) in question. (If you log into Wikipedia, you can see more precise timestamps. I was not exaggerating; my change was reverted in 99 seconds.) This is a topic in which I have considerable expertise, and there are multiple factual inaccuracies on that page which I could, in theory, correct. Maybe the next one will last 100 seconds... but I'm not holding my breath.
Mark, so you removed the information from the quick overview that Mozilla Firefox is tri-licensed. Of course it’s going to be reverted.
Of course, you could have just added the link instead of replacing the others.
Dashing in and modify some obscure detail just to prove a point, in the process rolling over some other information isn’t really the right mindset for Wikipedia.
By the way, I like Aristotle Pagaltzis’s mention of "RESOLVED WORKSFORME". Contrary to Wikipedia, I did have some unpleasant experiences with Bugzilla, where bugs were WONTFIX-ed or INVALID-ed for stupid reasons by level 60 Mozillians. Does that mean I should give up trying to file bugs? I am more discouraged to file bugs in Bugzilla than I am to make edits to Wikipedia, where I’ve made some nice constructive contributions to various articles.
By the way, does anyone see a connection here, given that both negative experiences (Bugzilla and Wikipedia) involved the Mozilla community? Maybe it’s not Bugzilla or Wikipedia at fault, but the Mozilla community. Yes, that seems to make a lot of sense. I think maybe you might be blaming the wrong entity :).
~Grauw
(Although I must add that you are of course correct :).)
So per the further exchange on the talk-page I re-did the change and elaborated on the why in the Licensing section.
By the way, for your entertainment, I accidentally removed half of the article for like 10 minutes before I noticed and fixed it myself :).
~Grauw
I am positively surprised that my reality-based spec-contradicting edits on the topic of doctypes and DTDs are still standing after two days in the article on HTML.
I just checked Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2006 and there is no mention of XHTML or HTML 5 at all. There is a very basic article about HTML though. Here are two quotes, for your enjoyment (and frustration):
Some tags in an HTML document determine the way certain text, such as titles, will be formatted.
Since HTML is an accepted standard, anyone can build a browser without concerning themselves with the form various documents will assume, unlike documents produced by typical word processors, which must be translated into a different format if another word processing application is used. Most sites on the Web adhere to HTML standards and HTML itself continues to evolve, meaning browsers must be upgraded regularly to meet the revised standards.
Knowing Microsoft's background with Internet Explorer, this is really rich, isn't it? ;)
Mark:
Ah. I doesn’t surprise me that that was reverted. You didn’t refute the existing information, and someone who isn’t aware that the EULA imposes restrictions beyond the tri-licence is not likely to question his own misconception over such a minor-seeming change.
This is a topic in which I have considerable expertise, and there are multiple factual inaccuracies on that page which I could, in theory, correct.
You do have this expertise, but how do the other editors know? They have no idea who you are. This is a perpetual issue at Wikipedia since anyone can edit. You just need to keep in mind that other editors are likely to know less than you and at the same time can’t easily tell that you know more, so you need to justify changes that aren’t self-evidently correct. I don’t see this as brokenness – it’s impossible for a project at this scale to work any differently.
Maybe the next one will last 100 seconds... but I'm not holding my breath.
I bet dimes to dollars that if you had corrected the Licensing section first and the sidebox second, neither edit would have been touched. You’ll note that after you actually explained the change in the talk page discussion that followed, the other guy immediately recanted. Laurens’s subsequent revert of the revert and his edits to the Licensing section still stand; the article is now correct on the issue in question.
I won’t claim the Wikipedia process is flawless by any stretch; but in my experience it works quite passably for articles outside of political or religious controversy, as long as you keep its limitations in mind.
I humbly acknowledge the outcome of this community experiment.
I have not found anything of interesting about XHTML 2.0, so the the transition HTML into a kind of XML vocabulary. The most useful things i know is the way to don't duplicate or reinvent a language feature if already exists in XML.
I have not found anything on Wikipedia about more accessibility and device independence, internationalization and so on.
Wikipedia often lacks on "collaboration" in certain cases i know.