The Problem with Wikipedia

[pne]

xkcd_rss captures the problem with Wikipedia rather well:

Wikipedia can take up hours, because there's just so much, and it's all interlinked, and I find such "info-junk" so fascinating.

Comments

[rozallin.livejournal.com]

Do you find that you're more informed and educated as a result? I limit myself to Wikipedia because I found that it could eat up hours of my day but I didn't feel more knowledgeable as a result.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Do you find that you're more informed and educated as a result?

Occasionally, but usually not. It's usually more entertainment than education.

I limit myself to Wikipedia because I found that it could eat up hours of my day but I didn't feel more knowledgeable as a result.

Sounds like a plan I should consider.

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

I've often wanted to play a sort of Six Degrees Of Wikipedia game - press the Random Page button twice, note the result each time, then start at one and try to go to the other in as few moves as possible.

I find Wikipedia good for trivia, but not much more. I wrote the Wikipedia page on Ubykh back when I was much more idealistic about the concept of Wikipedia, but after seeing the number of trolls and vandals that skulk around the site, I've pretty much given up.

[pne.livejournal.com]

after seeing the number of trolls and vandals that skulk around the site

Not to mention the arcane bureaucracy, process, and red tape.

I've ignored that for the most part so far, but I've seen enough to suspect that should I start taking a more active part, I'd be disgusted, too.

[allegrox.livejournal.com]

Six degrees of Wikipedia (http://tools.wikimedia.de/sixdeg/) is the greatest thing ever. See for example Suspension bridge -> Batman (http://tools.wikimedia.de/sixdeg/index.jsp?from=Suspension+bridge&to=Batman&ign_dates=1).

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

Wow... obviously my idea wasn't original!

Gary Glitter -> Ubykh language (http://tools.wikimedia.de/sixdeg/index.jsp?from=Gary+Glitter&to=Ubykh+language&ign_dates=1)

I assume you know of the Oracle of Bacon?

[node-ue.livejournal.com]

One of the worst is nationalists who edit articles they know absolutely nothing about simply because they think it somehow disagrees with their ideology, for example someone changing the classification of Ubykh to say it is Turkic for political motives (not sure if anyone's actually done that, but I wouldn't be surprised).

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Wikipedia seems to be one of the choicest places for people to climb upon their particular philosophical or political soapbox and proselytise. Ubykh seems to be reasonably safe from the sort of thing you're talking about (perhaps because no-one can convince themselves that it's OK to rail against the extinct language of a disintegrated culture), but I had some problems a few months ago with a Georgian person who tried to convince me that Abkhaz and Georgian belonged to the same language family, a claim that's considered completely laughable by most modern linguists and hasn't been taken seriously in international linguistic circles for nearly a hundred years.

I seem to recall you were having some problems with the Moldovan pages some time ago, yes? Did that ever get resolved?

[node-ue.livejournal.com]

Haha... yes... unfortunately, all Moldova-related pages were (and are still) dominated, or at least heavily influenced, by Romanians, with Moldovans playing a more minor role, if any at all.

Paradoxically, the article on the Romanian Wikipedia about the language is more complete and more neutral than the one on the English Wikipedia is. Completely contrary to all of my expectations -- 6 months ago, it was full of Romanian nationalist polemics and I did not expect that to go away.

[denial-land.livejournal.com]

Story of my LIFE!

What am i ever going to do with all this useless knowledge? ;)

[nyssa.livejournal.com]

I ♥ Wikipedia. I waste spend waste so much time there. :D

Also, out of curiosity - the boyfriend and I were in disagreement. How do most people pronounce "Wikipedia"? I say "wi-key-pedia", and he says "wik-ah-pedia". :\

[nyssa.livejournal.com]

PS: Apparently you can go from "nyssa" to "serial killers" in just four jumps:

Nyssa
Batman
Black Mask (comics)
Torture
Serial killers

I connect with a lot of things, mostly through the "Batman" page.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Didn't even know about that Nyssa.

pronunciation of "Wikipedia"

[pne.livejournal.com]

No idea about most people -- and come to think of it, I'm not even sure whether I've ever heard the word "Wikipedia" spoken in English.

As for me, though, I pronounce "wiki" to rhyme with "sticky" or "quicky", and "Wikipedia" therefore would rhyme with "sticky speedier" (my default 'lect is non-rhotic).

[node-ue.livejournal.com]

There's no official pronunciation, I don't think.

The etymological pronunciation would be something between "vee-key-pedia" and "wee-key-pedia".

My view is that it should be "wik-ah-pedia" or "wik-kih-pedia" because the unstressed medial [i:] (the unaccented occurance in the middle of a word of the "ee" sound in "machine" or "lee") is not natural in English. For ease of pronunciation, in quick speech, even when I used to try to say "wee-kee-pee-dee-a", it tended to turn out with the "kee" clipped and I ended up saying basically "Wicca-pedia", which is how I think the majority of the English-speaking world pronounces it.

[pne.livejournal.com]

My view is that it should be "wik-ah-pedia" or "wik-kih-pedia" because the unstressed medial [i:] (the unaccented occurance in the middle of a word of the "ee" sound in "machine" or "lee") is not natural in English.

I'm not quite sure what sound "kih" is supposed to represent.

However, how would you pronounce "Stickypedia"? For me, final -y in "sticky" and similar words seems to be something like [i] rather than [I] (though whether it's the same phoneme as in "eat" or as in "it", I'm not sure -- the sound seems to be somewhere in between).

I think "posh" RP uses [I] for this sound, but I thought that [i], or something similar, is not uncommon.

So while that might not be [i:] as in "machine" or "lee", I would have expected a "wickypedia" pronunciation to be present as well.

Unless you have the same vowel in both syllables of "sticky"?

[node-ue.livejournal.com]

kih = [I].

I would probably pronounce "stickypedia" with an [I] although I use [i] for the last syllable of "sticky"; this is with a Western American accent.

You're right though, it is definitely variable.

[node-ue.livejournal.com]

What sucks with a word like that is that now all of the pseudo-intellectuals will be telling us that it's properly pronounced "weekeepedia", just like they told us it's wrong to pronounce "karate" with an [i] (which is correct, actually, if you assume that the Okinawan language, rather than Standard Japanese, is the origin of the word, and that the romanisation is just from SJ) or "tsunami" without an initial [t].