Really gadgetgirl02? The article “Wedding dress of Kate Middleton” has existed since 2011. Yes, there was discussion of deletion etc, but that’s all “part of the process” of a consensus driven system. I suspect that the real problem is that some people take all of this far too personally, and are unwilling to work with others.
Having said all that, Wikipedia’s goal is to be the largest encyclopedia in history, both in terms of breadth and in terms of depth - and while this doesn’t exclude “pop culture”, that is certainly not at the top of the priority list.
But, but, if the internet is vast and storage is too cheap to meter, why can’t we have all these stubs, and let new editors find them and expand them? I think one problem is the reward system. Weenies serarching for barnstars or upper level editor status tend to want to beat down the competition. And don’t get me started on people with vested interests.
That’s a rather facile re-telling of the events. The dress entry only survived because it hit the MSM so fast, so hard. Wikipedia had, until that point, been able to keep the façade up of being inclusive to a large extent. The men behind the curtain got exposed.
The dress is a good example because it’s not just a pop culture thing, but historical in terms of ceremonial clothing. There’s the strong resemblance to Grace Kelly’s wedding gown. There’s the long sleeves coming after a decade of not just no sleeves, but strapless being de rigeur. There’s the reintroduction of lace as a major component.
That’s all off the top of my head, and I hate wedding gowns, don’t really follow the royals, and aren’t really into any fashions less than 70 years old. That it even got tipped for deletion indicates a broken, non-inclusive system.
Textile history is one of the topics notably underrepresented on Wikipedia, and the Middleton dress article was a flashpoint. “Consensus” had nothing to do with it.
I’ve long since been demoralized from doing anything to help Wikipedia. I’ve written dozens of articles and while some have survived, many were deleted despite meeting all the necessary criteria for inclusion. I decided that I had better things to do with my time rather than fight the uphill battle against the faceless bureaucracy at Wikipedia.
Yeah, I gave up on contributing to wiki years ago. Some of ‘my’ pages are still there, even though some have changed a lot (mostly for the better!)
But between editors who ‘own’ pages and get furious about anyone else making changes (reverting the change then making the same change themselves later) and my carefully written pages with detailed cites and attention to readability involving many hours of effort being wiped out in passing for not being ‘notable’ enough even with all the bullshit stub pages that are apparently really notable , fuck 'em. I won’t even bother with transparent falsehoods any more because it’s not worth dealing with the ‘professional’ editors.
Trouble is, I don’t think your experience means it’s dying since nobody really cares if it’s accurate. It just has to exist.
My last contribution under my actual account (not just on-the-fly anonymous edits which I still do on occasion) was in 2007. It’s interesting to see how much the modest pages I originally created or spent time fixing up evolved.
We created some pages then let them evolve (free free, set them free o/~). That’s how it’s ‘supposed’ to work. It seems like the biggest problem Wiki has other than misinformation are the over-territorial editors. Anyone I know who ever tried to contribute to it has cited this as the reason they gave up, either quickly or eventually.
And Wikipedia knows this, several studies over the years have been quite explicit about it, like a recent one that showed that about 30 editors are responsible for a tenth of all abuse on Wikipedia. They just don’t think it’s a big problem as long as Wikimedia Foundation keeps raking in the big bucks.
I think the experience is nigh universal. Sane people try to make Wikipedia a little better. If they get away with it, they try to add something more substantial. Eventually they get noticed by the trollish moderators and good content is destroyed. Now on the troll radar, more and more of their efforts to contribute positively are frustrated, until they give it all up as a bad show. It’s particularly painful when group-think is dominant in the content, and accurate, well-sourced diversification is frustrated.
Personally I think something like “term limits” would be a significant improvement. Rate-limit the ability of bad actors with strong social networks to do damage to the public good.
The exact same thing has been happening to Stackoverflow. In the beginning that was a great site and people were asking questions and getting answers.
After a while (and especially nowadays) the moderators and judging characters have taken over. They’re more concerned with what’s wrong with the question, than with trying to help someone. They actually think they’re being helpful by harassing people over spelling mistakes, incorrect wording, possible duplicate questions etc. God forbid any of them would ever actually answer a question or help someone.
I agree with the latter statement, but “What’s it for” is not really a good question.
It does not need to have a purpose. Evolution is not completely optimised, and certainly not purposeful. I admit, even I think it might be of use (maybe just under very specific circumstances), or have been of use. But even the latter does not necessarily need to be the case. A lack of selective pressure on this particular characteristic can be enough to keep it in the game.
Sorry, I needed to say this. Everyone, including scientists, tends to think in “What’s it for” terms. Its not a terrible question, but I think its not a really good one.
If it takes more energy to produce than it does to not, it has to have a purpose, for lack of a better word. A raccoon’s ringed tail may be a simple function of how genes are expressed; as long as it doesn’t take more resources than a plain brown tail or make the animal more vulnerable, there’s no net cost, even if the rings confer no evolutionary advantage.
So there must be a reason that hemovanadin exists. Organisms don’t generally produce useless cell types, at least not for long.
Yes, you would. Wikipedia is in the top five results for virtually any term, often the top hit. The vast majority of the encyclopedic content represents one of the few places that information is available online without for-profit corporate control.
Some editors literally risk prison or worse for adding content about repressive culture or regimes worldwide, and it is a critical resource for the underprivileged in areas where library networks do not exist, are out of date, or are lacking.
Wikipedia’s mission, and the resulting contribution to society, is important. The editor situation causes the project to not be as useful as it could be, makes it slanted towards western information and culture, and incredibly resistant to change. But that doesn’t negate the other critical benefits the project provides as a whole.
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