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Friday Procrastination Link: Wikigroaning
Long summer Friday afternoon at work got you down? Have you tried Wikigroaning? Here's how it works:
First, find a useful Wikipedia article that normal people might read. For example, the article called "Knight." Then, find a somehow similar article that is longer, but at the same time, useless to a very large fraction of the population. In this case, we'll go with "Jedi Knight." Open both of the links and compare the lengths of the two articles. Compare not only that, but how well concepts are explored, and the greater professionalism with which the longer article was likely created....The next step is to find your own article pair and share it with your friends, who will usually look for their own pairs and you end up spending a good hour or two in a groaning arms race.
Some sample pairs to get your started:
Raphael
(archangel)
Raphael
(ninja turtle)
Apocalypse
Resident
Evil: Apocalypse
Or--a slightly more educational option, but just slightly--your could pass the afternoon reading thousands of words about Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder, from reason's June issue.
|6.8.07 @ 12:11PM|#
The Wikipedia Neutral Point of View (NPOV) objective, is itself a source of bias. And a rather tilted one at that. If a topic has some controversy, NPOV will ensure that the controversy will be expanded, expounded and highlighted beyond its measure. There is no molehill that the Wikipedians can't inflate into a Himalayan peak.
peter naegele|6.8.07 @ 12:18PM|#
@Brandybuck:
Dead on! Why Reason is supporting this collectivist nonsense is
beyond me
Check out WIKITRUTH.
lunchstealer|6.8.07 @ 12:29PM|#
Except I was doing google groaning instead of wikigroaning, now
that I go back and re-read the premise.
Gotta stop conflating Google and Wikipedia.
Brian Sorgatz|6.8.07 @ 12:31PM|#
Why should I spend an afternoon doing something I feel superior to non-libertarians for not doing: sneering at other people's cultural interests?
WikipediaBiasDotCom|6.8.07 @ 12:37PM|#
Alternatively, you could check out my new site about the titular
topic. It's very much a work in progress, but what's there should
get you started on your own road to discovery.
Also, did Reason ask Jimbo about the NorthAmericanUnion article?
Why was it deleted and locked?
What about those nofollow tags? Why are they on most links... but
not some other? Don't non-nofollow'ed links have an economic value?
Does Jimbo think WP will link to Conserrrvapediaa in the same way
as it links to the non-nofollowed sites? Or, is Conserrrvapediaa
not as "valid" as sourcewatch.org?
|6.8.07 @ 12:48PM|#
here is how wikipedia says the US military draft ended:
After a series of challenges to the draft under section 20 in
1971 and 1972, leading to an injunction against induction in the
geographical area encompassed by 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by
Justice William O. Douglas (where, legend has it, Justice Douglas
posted the injunction on a tree near a camp site while hiking in
the Cascade Mountains), it became so difficult for the Selective
Service System to unwind the mess the Section 20 cases caused (and
to draft men according to the priorities required by law -- the
"order of call" named after the "order of call" defense),
that the draft was quietly ended -- just in time
for the wind down of the Vietnam War. The then-young Harvard Law
school graduate who engineered the Section 20 cases, and the end of
the draft, has never been acknowledged for his contributions (or,
as viewed by others, his lack of patriotism) to ending the
draft.[citation needed]
Where is the Gates Commission? Hell, where is Nixon?
Mister DNA|6.8.07 @ 12:49PM|#
Religious
Society of Friends (The Quakers)
Friends (The
shitty sitcom)
And yeah, Peter Naegele, Wikitruth is a pretty cool site - it would
be better if they updated it more often, though.
dhex|6.8.07 @ 12:54PM|#
oh for fuck's sake people it's wikipedia.
sure, it sucks that a bunch of nasty aspie kids can be dicks but
competing services like "conservapedia" (more like
"laughuntilyoupukeoutyourgutsandhavetogotothehospitalbutthedoctortellsyouthatyouhavesixmonthstolivesoitstimetobuythatmopedyouwantedwhenyouwerefourteen-pedia,
amirite?) and the many conspira-wiki groups exist because wikis are
virtually free publishing platforms.
put out a better service and you shall see more acolytes. (and as
we all know, acolytes=rolls royces and blowjobs. thank you osho,
for revealing that thorny truth to the world.)
how seriously do you take wikipedia anyway? it might be a good
starting point, but it's not really a reference unless you need to
look up stuff about tv shows.
lunchstealer|6.8.07 @ 1:00PM|#
Why Reason is supporting this collectivist nonsense is
beyond me
Well, this collectivist nonsense is purely self-organized,
voluntary, and an experiment in participatory media. So long as
it's non-coercive, it certainly doesn't violate any of Reason's
primary values. If you don't like what they say, you are more than
free to post your own website wherein you expound competing
ideas.
I think it's kind of cool, even though it has obvious flaws. But
those flaws can be circumvented. Also, the founder calls himself an
Objectivist, so there's a Reason hook - Reason's not Objectivist
itself, but there's clearly a lot of shared territory.
|6.8.07 @ 1:10PM|#
One person's wikigroaning is another person's cultural elitism. I personally find it endearing and sometimes useful to have a lengthy article on Daffy Duck or Peter Petrelli.
Seitz|6.8.07 @ 1:12PM|#
If you really want to groan, you can just read
Conservapedia.
That usually produces more laughter than groaning. Caution: May
also produce weeping.
|6.8.07 @ 1:21PM|#
Something Awful pointed out last fall that the Wikipedia entry
for "Knuckles the Echidna" (a character in Sonic the Hedgehog) is
longer than the entries for:
-Echidnas
-The Internet
-The internal combustion engine
-William Shakespeare
-Western culture
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/awful-links/awful-link-4103.php
|6.8.07 @ 1:27PM|#
Any time an editor at wikipedia bitches about an article not being "encyclopedic" (i.e., not the type of article that would appear in a traditional paper encyclopedia) I point them to Major events of the Marvel Universe.
Baylen|6.8.07 @ 1:38PM|#
Roosevelt Franklin and Franklin Roosevelt. (Links unintentionally transposed).
|6.8.07 @ 1:51PM|#
Maybe instead of groaning about how the more worthy articles are too short, you should add content to them. Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness, you know.
|6.8.07 @ 1:57PM|#
Where is the Gates Commission? Hell, where is
Nixon?
joshua, if you feel so strongly about it, why don't you edit the
article to include them (while citing sources)? I'm just
flabbergasted that people will happily spend more time pissing and
moaning about a problem with a Wikipedia article than it would take
to FIX the problem.
|6.8.07 @ 2:00PM|#
joshua corning | June 8, 2007, 12:48pm | #
here is how wikipedia says the US military draft ended:
After a series of challenges to the draft under section 20 in 1971 and 1972, leading to an injunction against induction in the geographical area encompassed by 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by Justice William O. Douglas (where, legend has it, Justice Douglas posted the injunction on a tree near a camp site while hiking in the Cascade Mountains), it became so difficult for the Selective Service System to unwind the mess the Section 20 cases caused (and to draft men according to the priorities required by law -- the "order of call" named after the "order of call" defense), that the draft was quietly ended -- just in time for the wind down of the Vietnam War. The then-young Harvard Law school graduate who engineered the Section 20 cases, and the end of the draft, has never been acknowledged for his contributions (or, as viewed by others, his lack of patriotism) to ending the draft.[citation needed]
Where is the Gates Commission? Hell, where is Nixon?
Well, I see you edited the article rather than just bitching about
it. Very good!! Of course a nice link to the Gates Commission
report and perhaps a link to said "media fanfare" would have been
appropriate.
|6.8.07 @ 2:21PM|#
Of course a nice link to the Gates Commission report and
perhaps a link to said "media fanfare" would have been
appropriate.
Or you could add them yourself rather than just bitching about it.
[ducks] ;)
pete naegele|6.8.07 @ 2:28PM|#
@lunchstealer:
Do some research, wikipedia is quite coercive.
Just because someone claims to be something does not make
them such. Actions speak louder than words.
scandalrag|6.8.07 @ 2:37PM|#
@ Pete Naegele: Do some research, wikipedia is quite
coercive.
Yes, because everytime I use Lexis/Nexis for information, the IRS
comes to my house and audits me.
|6.8.07 @ 3:05PM|#
I'd wager that Raphael the Archangel has a lot less influence on
people's lives than Raphael the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
But just to keep in the spirit of things:
William Randolph Hearst
J. Jonah Jameson
My WikipediaTest|6.8.07 @ 3:15PM|#
Regarding editing WP content, I gave up. "Liberals" have more
time to constantly edit articles to suit; see the MediaMatters
article for an example.
I have also capitulated my multi-year battle to get facts to stick
in AntonioVillaraigosa's article; see the latest test at the link,
and do see the talk page for the reasons why the facts I added in
2005 were deleted: we were just a week away from an election, so
negative information - no matter how factual - was deleted with the
suggestion I add it after the election. No, really.
Any time someone talks about WP, you know they're a hack if they
fail to mention two points:
1. The fact that it appears at the top of the search results and it
frequently contains missing information means it's little more than
a vehicle to push disinformation.
2. The oh so curious issue of their two-tiered linking system, with
some sites getting real links and others getting crap links.
My WikipediaTest|6.8.07 @ 3:21PM|#
Fun side notes:
It looked like the IP used to remove negative information I put in
AsaHutchison's article was coming from inside AR. I added that in a
couple more times and then gave up.
One of the examples of MediaMatters getting it wrong was deleted
and never added back in.
My site dealing with the PoliticalImpactsOfKatrinawas
repeatedly and, in my opinion maliciously, deleted from the WP
entry with the same topic, despite having been there for several
months and despite containing 100 times as much raw text as the WP
entry itself.
lunchstealer|6.8.07 @ 3:28PM|#
Do some research, wikipedia is quite coercive.
You misunderstand what I mean by coercive. Wikipedia is
non-coercive in the way that Linux is non-coercive. You can't take
Linux code, modify it, and sell the result, unless you make the
uncompiled code available for free. This may seem like coercion,
but you are free not to use any linux code and write your own
software from scratch or from non-GPL sources.
Wikipedia is the same way. They provide their service under their
terms, and you are free to use it or not use it. They can't force
you to use it. In that sense, they're non-coercive. You are welcome
to take your ball and go home, but if you are using their servers
to post your writing, you have to live by their rules. If you want
to post your own competition to information on Wikipedia, pony up
some cash for a server and get wikiing.
But don't come tell me they're forcing you to do something against
your will. You can always walk away.
|6.8.07 @ 3:45PM|#
A lot of times when certain sections that seem important are shorter than a section that isn't as important (like Lutherains vs. The Colbert Report) is because pages on major subjects are only the primer for that information. Lutherains might be shorter than TCR, but the total amount of pages on the The Luterain category, and pages relating to Luterainism is considerably larger (by word count) than the amount of pages in TCR's categories.
|6.8.07 @ 3:49PM|#
The Wikipedia Neutral Point of View (NPOV) objective, is
itself a source of bias. And a rather tilted one at that. If a
topic has some controversy, NPOV will ensure that the controversy
will be expanded, expounded and highlighted beyond its measure.
There is no molehill that the Wikipedians can't inflate into a
Himalayan peak.
I think the solution to that is using NPOV less often in favor of
enforcing more specific citations like "weasel" and "peacock"
words. ("Reason magazine is considered by some to be the shittiest
magazine ever" and "Reason Magazine is considered by some to be the
greatest magazine ever", respectivly)
|6.8.07 @ 4:10PM|#
Now that you mention it. The Reason magazine article is lame and out of date. If I could be bothered, I suppose I could spruce it up a bit. But this is a magazine!!! Shouldn't someone on staff be able to write an article? I would expect this to be someone's job actually. Checking in every other week or so. Looking for vandalism, making updates. I mean you guys are writers right?
Matthew Brown|6.8.07 @ 4:25PM|#
Wikipedia being a user-written site, all this is doing is
holding up a mirror of Internet users' interests. Doesn't surprise
me that popular culture articles get more work done on them than
'worthy' topics - though many of those are quite well covered
anyway.
As to all the whining about links - I'd ask, first, why anyone
thinks that getting magic google juice from being linked to by
Wikipedia is a right? In fact, we kept from implementing nofollow
for much longer than we probably should have.
There are two types of external links on Wikipedia, yes - interwiki
links and regular links. This is very old in the code, preceding
the existence of nofollow for years. Interwiki links are lookups in
a table of trusted sites, which are generally other Wikis, and
linkable to in shorter syntax. Nofollow is not implemented on these
because, as known quantities, we can be pretty sure those entries
are not spam. We can't be sure of that for other links.
Jim|6.8.07 @ 4:52PM|#
I created a site that does the calcs for you- check it out and
let me know what you think!
www.wikigroaning.com
|6.8.07 @ 4:57PM|#
"My Wikipedia Test" or lonewacko or whoever,
What kind of reverts are you talking about? For example, the only
reverts that I've found for Antonio Villaraigosa were for vandalism
and where someone keeps inserting the word "rascist" in the
description. If you can post the info that was reverted, we'll know
that you aren't just a vandal who doesn't realize that he's a
vandal.
|6.8.07 @ 5:30PM|#
This is exactly why Wikipedia is so great, and why people like Peter Naegele and the "Wikitruth" losers just don't get it. Wikipedia is a celebration of nerd/internet culture. If you're using it to replace the Encyclopedia Britannica, that's your problem.
TLB|6.8.07 @ 8:17PM|#
Matthew Brown: the issue isn't that WP owes anyone a link. The
issue that those who link to WP might consider is that all the link
juice is flowing to a set of anointed sites, which I believe also
includes a commercial travel site.
I've also done a little hacking of the Mediawiki code for my own
purposes (specifically to remove nofollow tags on trusted sites),
and I'm almost certain it would take someone who's familiar with
the codebase just a few minutes to tack on a nofollow tag to those
trusted sites.
So, I assume they like things the way they are: getting a ton of
links from all over and, instead of giving real links to their
contributors, funneling that into a small set of interesting sites
like sourcewatch.org.
Tell me: what are the chance of Conserrvaapedia getting into the
trusted list? Tell us some of the reasons it wouldn't make it,
OK?
Rimfax's smear is the type I'd expect from someone who's both a WP
and a Reason fan. The AntonioVillaraigosa entry has a talk page
(under the "discussion" link) that includes a whole section called
"Distortion from supporters". That includes this:
You cannot add a bunch of (supposedly) factual but
intentionally denigrating information and then expect other editors
to provide the balance. Considering that this derogatory material
is being added just days before an election that follows a negative
campaign, it appears that the reasons for adding it is not to
improve the encyclopedia, but rather to affect the election. If
that's not the case, then waiting few days won't make a
difference.
I have no doubt that most of those here will not be able to
interpret that correctly.
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