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

[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.