May
11
Wikipedia equals Fail - Death to the Open Encyclopedia
It’s amazing to think that just about ‘anyone’ can write an article about ‘anybody’ or ‘anything’ on Wikipedia.
Is it just me, or does that concept seem faulty at best? The only advantage of this system is that masses of information can be quickly written and updated - but that does not necessarily mean that the people editing or administering this website are so-called ‘experts’ in the fields they are editing.
The Wikipedia system, although extremely popular at the moment has the word FAIL written all over it. I argue that it is a good place for reference, but people MUST remember (and must not forget) to take the articles posted there very lightly.
While I believe in the various tenements of democratic principle, I also think that people left to their own devices will often come to the wrong Pavlovian responses and conclusions. People by nature congregate around what they perceive to be as facts. And what is even scarier is that people tend to believe what they see being written or reported.
In order to ‘resolve’ what inaccuracies the general public can introduce into Wikipedia, Wikipedia nominates administrators. Unfortunately, these administrators are STILL NOT experts - if you ever followed the back pages of Wikipedia administration (for which most of it is clearly visible through logging in, hunting and pecking around), you will encounter a very biased, nepotistic environment in which these admins are chatting about personal lives - attending parties, social events, and what-not. This is the ‘User’ or ‘Talk’ section of Wikipedia - the back-end to its mechanical inner-workings.
In my opinion, these administrators are in NO position to be monitoring each other or nominating others. It’s hard to elect a fair, unbiased party of ‘administrators’ that are impartial to judgement or the opinions of others in such an incestuous atmosphere.
Wikipedia does ‘implement’ guidelines, but I will discuss that in a moment.
To add to the reasons why the concept of Wikipedia fails, people (these editors in particular) generally are ‘fat, dumb, and happy’ for a couple of reasons:
- They follow group mentality and group beliefs.
- They don’t objectively find out facts for themselves.
A few years ago when Wikipedia first started, I posted some articles about myself for three main reasons:
- I was getting asked for interviews due to the field that I am in.
- Just general information - there’s a lot of incorrect information on the web about people and I thought this would help put an end to incorrect topics relating to my work.
- Rankings. I’m not going to lie - part of my motivation was to increase rankings within Google. Google views Wikipedia (fail) as a high ranking ‘authority website’ which means any link from Wikipedia, boosts the importance of those linked websites and your ranking increases.
I couldn’t have been more wrong about #2.
- Within a matter of a day the article which I had written about myself was rewritten by somebody else. WTF.
- Within a few days of that, somebody else changed that article. Double WTF.
- Someone eventually introduced improper grammar into the article. Please note: I know this particular website is full of improper grammar and badly formatted - I’m just rushing through writing posts here. But a little background about myself, I have worked in the editorial departments of some of the world’s largest and most famous publishing groups. And when it comes times to make an article ‘nice and pretty’, I can deliver that if so desired I just have better things to do most of the time.
- Several years later, the original article I wrote about myself morphed into a former shell of the original self. It was still recognizable, but words became completely twisted around. I wish I had saved copies for comparison.
Now recently, there seems to be some major activity going on behind Wikipedia. I’m seeing a large influx of deletions and changes within their topics. In particular, the article I had written about myself was deleted. You may ask why this was deleted? The reasoning was:
- Person is not notable.
- No references from an encyclopedia to this individual.
Let’s address #1. Person is not notable. F** You. Okay - I can live with the concept that I am not famous, but I do have a long line of contributions in my field. I’m not bragging. I am not showing off. I am just stating the obvious in my line of work. Chances are that you haven’t heard of me and that’s fine. But who and what determines ‘what’ is notable?
If you do a search for any movie star in Hollywood (and I’m not comparing myself to someone famous - famous being a completely objective/relative term), I am sure they have an article written about them. How is their body of work any more ‘notable’ than the rest of us? Is Britney Spears (listed in Wikipedia) any more important/notable to our daily lives? Does she add any true value to society? Hell no you fool. You may ‘think’ she does add something to your life, but I argue that she’s truly impertinent and inconsequential.
And if you do think her or the Olsen Twins is important to your lives (in the off-chance they aren’t family members), then you’ve got some bigger, much more deeply-seated psychological issues to contend with. Check yourself into your local hospital ASAP.
Perhaps Britney is notable in the sense that she is considered ‘famous.’ Perhaps that is good enough reason to list celebrities on Wikipedia. Fame however, should not be an indicator of whether somebody is worth listing in my opinion.
In a nutshell, these ‘famous’ people do absolutely nothing for us unless they’ve done something miraculous or profound to alter the trajectory of our lives in a lasting method. But who are we to judge that - and who the hell are these loser editors over at Wikipedia to judge that?
Let’s address #2. No references from an encyclopedia to this individual. Gee whiz. I think the folk over at Wikipedia should just simply cut and paste the articles they find in Brittanica and call it a day. this clause is a self-defeating concept, and a way out of a ‘tight spot.’ Isn’t the point of this online encyclopedia to be more informative than what is currently out there in traditionally published encyclopedias??? If I had to turn back over to Brittanica every time I edited an article, nothing new would be written.
If I have a recommendation for any of the search engines out there trying to do the right thing, take Wikipedia and burn it into the ground. Give it very little authority.
Yes, I am a little hurt that someone called me a nobody. It’s also funny and ironic how when I marked one of their own editors as ‘not notable’, all hell broke loose.
Wikipedia equals fail.
I should also probably add - I’m not so much ‘angry’ with the Wikipedians, but I do find their efforts rather foolish, ultimately deceitful, and useless. It cannot be trusted.
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(4 votes, average: 4 out of 5)
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May 15th, 2008 at 6:26 am
i agree with you. i had the same problem when i tried to inscribe my media company at wikipedia. we are the market leader for community and town guides in Swizerland. Any dump german so called experts decided to delete my article and made defamation and incompetent notices.
On the other side, the same ppl. composed articles about inconsiderably persons (maybe friends of them) and companies in Germany.
May 12th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
I should add that you are absolutely correct.
To be honest, I still read Wikipedia. You just have to NOT trust it. It is quite amazing that you can’t read about your colleagues who are actually contributing something useful or even beneficial to society, yet you can read about anyone who has had their 5 minutes of fame on some crap television show.
I’m part of a forum that contributes to the 3D industry, yet most of my fellow colleagues will never get recognized on Wikipedia for their efforts because their editors are simply uneducated about the topics (and quick to delete them as they come across them.) Some of these guys (including myself) have created a lot of work for magazines, books, and the movie industry - including the creation of some techniques that have become standard practice within the latest movies in Hollywood.
I’m not bragging, but rather stating a fact.
I not ’supposed’ to write about myself (although nothing currently states on Wikipedia that I couldn’t - however it is frowned upon lol), but some other jackass that doesn’t even really know me can.
Oh well. Wikipedia is heading in the direction of what is currently popular and previously ‘accepted’ - as you have brought up. Much of future history, especially in such an innovative computer age that we currently live in, will be lost due to their own actions, inactions, inabilities, and lack of willingness to do their own research rather than simply hitting the ‘delete’ key. The sad part is that future generations will take the majority of these amazing strides for granted, and the editing of these obsessive compulsive dolts to be held as true.
You would expect Wikipedia to cover and record everything happening within the world as we know it today, but apparently this isn’t their policy. Granted, their system is intended to keep out spam and self-promotion, but as a whole it still fails miserably. Their editorial system lacks proper governing authority and their review process/criteria is nothing but a gigantic popularity contest.
I suppose ‘history’ and ‘notable’ events have always been characterized by highly unusual circumstances. Act dumb enough or do something incredibly idiotic to be on the news (or even Youtube), and you may find yourself listed there along with ‘Kevin Federline’ and ‘Kato Kaelin’.
Better yet, just be a pretty face, smile a lot for the camera, and they will include you. ‘Fame’ is their price of admission.
May 12th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
LOL. That’s too funny…
May 12th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Wikipedia is full of ironies or simply put, Wikipedia is an ironic failure. Best thing that Wikipedia can serve is pop culture. Is has more information about show business and pornstars than anything else.
May 11th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Nicely put.
Wikipedia is one of those things I’ve never used nor seen the point of.. Any Tom, Dick or Harry can add stuff there and people look at it thinking its a correct answer. Bollocks says I.