Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is not failing

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Miscellany for deletion This page was nominated for deletion on 19 February 2007. The result of the discussion was keep.
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[edit] Page started

I just started this page today in response to WP:FAIL Feel free to help finish it. Jeff Carr 23:32, 14 February 2007 (UTC) Very nice. Maybe you could mention Wikipedia's progress toward a cd/dvd version? 129.120.94.174 23:33, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

This essay should be a Meta-wiki article. See What_Wikipedia_is_not for reasons why. Dharh 16:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I am confused about this section

WP:WINF#A_response_to_performance_on_broader_topics. It appears to have a section copied wholesale out of WP:FAIL and included verbatim. Is this a mistake? I do not understand.--Filll 00:06, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Name

If the dichotomy between this page and 'WIF' is going to be maintained I'd suggest renaming this to something like 'Wikipedia is succeeding'. Better yet would be to toss the 'rival POV forks' idea and merge the two into something like 'Is Wikipedia succeeding'? The primary failing of the other page is that it does not merely have a presentation of POV facts, but POV assumptions. For instance, it implies that there is a significant problem of featured article degradation over time because 340 articles have been de-featured... but that's an (incorrect IMO) assumption about WHY they were de-featured. In fact, I'd argue that most de-featured articles have been demoted because standards have gone up... rather than the quality of the article going down. Most articles rejected from 'Good' status today are of higher quality than the earliest 'Featured' articles were. Having the two essays split like this makes it impossible to directly address these issues where one or the other relies on POV assumptions. If we're going to have an honest analysis of the progress of Wikipedia it ought to include all sides of the issues... articles are demoted because they deteriorate AND standards have gone up, we have a small percentage of 'Good' articles because alot aren't of high enough quality AND because there were a million articles before 'Good' status ever existed and most of those haven't even been assessed yet, only 72 of 1182 'core' topics are 'featured' articles BUT that's more than we had last year and there are lots of high quality articles which have never been assessed, et cetera. Looking at just one side and cherry-picking statistics / assumptions serves no valid purpose. Only a balanced analysis can actually TELL us anything worthwhile. --CBD 01:55, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Move to new, neutral article?

Several people have suggested that we start a new NPOV article in WP space that evaluates Wikipedia according to the published standard criteria used for other encyclopedias, for which I recently gave three independent citations from reliable sources. Each criterion would get its own section in the article, within which there would be three subsections: Pro, Con and Consensus for each type of argument (an idea borrowed from Thomas Aquinas' Si et Non). We can also have additional sections at the end to address non-standard criteria in a similarly three-fold way. I'm interested in whether people here would agree to deleting this article in favor of such an article. At any rate, I would like to move my material from here to the new article, since it seems better suited for such an article. Thank you for your thoughts and time, Willow 06:39, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Vital articles

The article mentions vital articles, and seems to suggest that nothing is wrong here. There's plenty wrong. Here is my assessment of the philosophy vital articles, as follows:

  • Philosophy – we know all about this. We just got an incorrigible troll evicted (6 month block) after two months of pleading, but only after being ticked off twice by admins for being bad editors by not being nice to the troll blah blah. It is still a complete mess.
  • Beauty – this is actually not bad
  • Ethics – no tags, and not a bad article
  • Epistemology – not so bad, but still has an unsourced claims template.
  • Belief – 'may contain original research or unverified claims'
  • Knowledge – 'Some information in this article or section has not been verified and may not be reliable. Please check for inaccuracies, and modify and cite sources as needed'. Begins 'Knowledge is what is known'. Indeed.
  • Truth – suffered a severe bout of trolling about a year ago, and is now a shattered relic of its original self
  • Dialectic – begins 'This article may contain original research or unverified claims.' Quite so.
  • Logic – I recruited an expert to tidy this up last year, but he disappeared, and the project was never completed. It's a mess.
  • Metaphysics - this has a well-deserved cleanup tag. Starts off OK but rapidly gets worse.

Existence – I tidied this up a year ago, but was vandalised late last year. I haven't had the energy to revisit it.

  • Ontology – good God I never spotted that one on troll patrol. Complete nonsense. An abomination.
  • Reality – as the title suggests, this was going to be complete nonsense, and it was. 'This page has been temporarily protected from editing to deal with vandalism.'

Dbuckner 11:03, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

In fact, Reality is spectacular proof that the idea of constant monotonic improvement to articles by mass access. This is the original version of the article written in November 2002. It is not a bad philosophy article. Not brilliant, but literate, accurate, informative. Now it is complete nonsense. Nonsense on stilts. Dbuckner 11:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Another section of this articles states 'It's true it's [i.e. Wikipedia is] not finished and, perhaps, some important subjects have pages that need work." This fails to explain how an article begun in 2002 could actually end up much worse after thousands of edits. If this paper is remotely honest, it will attempt to address the issues raised by this. Dbuckner 12:25, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a wiki. There is no shortage of print encyclopedias that are more stable than Wikipedia, and so there is no need for Wikipedia to try to imitate or replace them. On the other hand, mistakes in a print encyclopedia persist for decades. (Does the Britanica still say there are ten Horatio Hornblower books instead of eleven?) And print encyclopedias rarely have articles on Wookies. A wiki can never be a standard reference, because any fool can post "Abraham Lincoln was the first president of the US." and it will be there long enough for somebody to look it up and believe it. On the other hand, if I want esoteric information, Wikipedia is the first place I look. And I correct errors wherever I see them.

I'll take a look at logic.

Rick Norwood 13:52, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FA stats

I suggest insertion of the following, somewhere:

The statistics of numbers of Featured Articles do not account for articles that formerly had that status, but have had it revoked. In the interests of ensuring the highest possible standards for these articles, xxxx articles that formerly held FA status have subsequently lost it. Some have lost their status because they have no image, have an image which has license problems, or may have failed bureaucratic criteria, such as use of footnotes. Yet they remain excellent, well-written and verifiably sourced. Similar comments could be made of countless other articles that have been submitted for FA status, but failed to achieve it.

Comments and remorseless editing welcomed and expected. --Dweller 12:22, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Further on featured articles, although no length criterion is mentioned for them, one of the tips pages is surely correct in saying they are mostly 30-50K long. For many kinds of article, one would not for a moment want anything that long - leave that to the thesis writers. The essay says (in Response to the rate of quality article production":
"many of the articles currently not featured will most likely never be featured since there are many topics which meet Wikipedia notability criteria but do not have enough verifiable information about them to have as featured articles."
- but for many, many articles that is not the problem - the information is there but to put it in WP would distort what should be a steady sense of encyclopedic perspective, with long articles on big subjects, and shorter ones on less important ones. The ambition to have a 30-50k article on every actor, Simpsons episode, politician, or artist is just fundamentally misplaced - that would not be an encyclopedia but some sort of web-library, and most articles would be too long for most users, and filled up with waffle, as many 1911 EB articles and nearly all Vanity Fair profiles are. Johnbod 05:38, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mistake: Unable To Propose What Was Meant

In this section exists a mistake, highlighted in bold. Please fix it and delete this section. Discuss if necessary.

Although the Macropædia are generally much longer (2-310 pages) than the corresponding Wikipedia entry, this page-count comparison may be misleading, since the Wikipedia articles are required to limited in length and the Macropædia articles are generally compilations of smaller articles. Therefore, a more appropriate comparison would be to compare the Macropædia with the set of articles found in the corresponding Wikipedia category. --Seans Potato Business 23:40, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

"be" inserted, if that is what was meant. Johnbod 19:06, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sigh. OK

Hi all,

I don't agree with this approach but, if there have to be duelling polemics instead of a single collaborative essay, we might as well make this one's counter-arguments cogent. Does anyone object if I tweak the section order and give it more backbone? The article has been rather dormant lately. Regretfully, Willow 18:55, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comparison to other encyclopedias: realistic measure of Wikipedia's success?

I'm becoming less convinced that this is a useful way of evaluating Wikipedia. Yes, we have articles that Britannia or Encarta or World Book or whoever wouldn't have, but they're not even trying to cover most of those topics. Traditional encyclopedias aim to cover core topics well, and have no intention of covering peripheral subjects at all; few readers expect to find these subjects in the Britannica, but everyone expects to find everything in Wikipedia. Saying 'Wikipedia has an article on X, and Britannica doesn't, so we're doing well' is a stretch; it's like challenging someone to a race and then crowing that you won when they never even responded to the challenge.

More broadly, I sincerely doubt that Wikipedia's major competitor for readers is Britannica (or any encyclopedia that charges for content). Our major competition for readers of a given topic is whatever other readily accessible content Google turns up for that topic, which in the vast majority of cases will not be another encyclopedia. There's a good chance it will be a more specialized reference (for Laplace-Runge-Lenz vector, the next hit after us is mathworld) or a Wikipedia mirror. In order to improve upon other possible sources of information (and stay at the top of the google hit list ;) we have to do better than 'have more articles/better searching/better coverage than Britannica'; we also have to be on par with or better than all the subject-specific references like mathworld out there. Opabinia regalis 06:03, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi O, I agree with your arguments, and feel their truth; yet I think one can still reach the opposite conclusion. May I offer some other considerations? I should also say straightaway, though, that the WINF article here was written as a counter-polemic, and doesn't reflect exactly my own opinion, which isn't thought through but is definitely more nuanced.
I agree that, in practice, our competitors are the specialized sites such as MathWorld. But I worry about the Red Queen effect, something that a Cambrian worm such as yourself will appreciate. Wikipedia can't be everything to all people, and I think that it's OK to limit our goal to just being an encyclopedia, to being a little summary of a topic with references, a place to begin learning a subject. Although Wikipedia's pagerank does benefit from its size, and although Wikipedia can improve itself from the other non-free sources, it's very possible that those other sources — especially meta-mirrors such as answers.com — will eventually outcompete Wikipedia. If so, oh well; we'll still have given something valuble to the world, much as the success of the Meta server depends on the quality of its individual servers, no? Even with a restricted goal of being a relatively complete, reliable encyclopedia, it's not clear to me that Wikipedia will succeed; I think it wise to be circumspect and measured in our ambitions, remembering our own limitations and those of human nature. Hubris has been the downfall of more than one fantastic creature. ;)
Re:the EB, I think we're in the same foot-race, no? Representatives of the Encyclopædia Britannica have long maintained that the EB is the ultimate reference work, a sketch of omne scibile, everything that may be known; and also the best place to begin an education on any subject. By being online and being freely available, Wikipedia fulfils the goals that the Britannica set for itself at its bicentennial, of being a common touchstone of English-speaking culture, of being a common birth-right of all English-speaking peoples who wish to learn. To be sure, Wikipedia has less august contributors and generally worse writing than the EB; but we have the advantage of space and don't have to cut important topics such as 310 helix and Hamilton-Jacobi equation. I sincerely believe that the EB would try to cover such topics if it were financially practical for them; they want to be encyclopedic.
Wikipedia is a new way of building an encyclopedia but not that different from how the OED was put together. Indeed, in my little yarn-filled world, I sometimes think of the good doctor and the good professor who labored so faithfully, a century earlier. If we succeed in making Wikipedia a decent resource for beginning students, I will be well content, as I think you will be, too. :) Willow 08:52, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Misrepresentations

First of all, you mention me about every other sentence in this, it seems. This is a bit excessive. It's not just me that has developed WP:WIF.

Second, you misrepresent my views quite significantly. ...proof that Wikipedia is doomed to failure is not something I ever set out to provide. The title of the essay defines its view succinctly and accurately.

Third, I do not see the value in the links on every paragraph to the 'opposing' essay. On WIF, I object to this essay being described as 'the rebuttal' as if that's some kind of official thing and that only one rebuttal is possible. We already have links at the bottom and I think that's quite sufficient. I suggest you remove the links to WIF, and the links at WIF to here also be removed. Worldtraveller 10:29, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Forgive me, since I seem to have misunderstood you at every turn. Let me clarify my viewpoint, and I would welcome yours in return.
On your first point, it seemed very important to credit you, the original author, since the arguments advanced are indeed yours, aren't they? No one else has introduced new significant lines of reasoning, have they? If you like, though, I'll be glad to refer to the "sister essay" instead.
On your second point, you're right; I got carried away and extrapolated from "Wikipedia is failing" to "Wikipedia is doomed to failure". How about "augurs future failure" or some such wording?
On your third point, your whole goal was to have duelling polemics, right? Let the arguments clash and the truth prevail, that's what you wanted, no? You expressly forbade there being any kind of collaboration to lay out the truth in a balanced way; when I tried to clarify the limits of your conclusions, you told me to work on the other essay. That being so, the links between argument and counterargument should remain; to remove them seems to me inconsistent with the goals of both articles. If you think that your arguments suffer by comparison, you should work to improve them, not try to squelch the comparison. Willow 10:56, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
P.S. I am indeed very sorry for the anguish and headache that my edits caused you over the fast five days, and I apologize for having offended you. I honestly was not trying to "emasculate" the article, but clarify its reasoning; I'm gratified that you chose to adopt my "Assumptions" section. But you have to admit, that's a funny accusation; I couldn't help but "demasculate" the article a little, no? ;) But that's not really my fault, nor even my parents'.
The main arguments in the essay are mine, but other people have contributed, directly and via discussion, and plenty of people share my views. Using my name all over the place may give people the impression that I am in a minority of one - certainly not the case!
On the second point, I'm really not making any predictions about the future apart from the various extrapolations which demonstrate the present predicament. I'm arguing that right now, there are serious problems which need attention. The whole point of the essay was to try and inspire some sort of action to avert a potential failure. Reflect that however you think best, but my argument has never been that failure is inevitable.
And on the third point - what is 'truth', in this context? What is 'balanced'? I consider that my essay represents a balanced account of some truths about Wikipedia. Not the whole truth, but the truth nonetheless. I hardly 'expressly forbade' anything. I objected to people turning the essay into something completely different to what it was intended to be. I especially objected to people 'correcting flaws' in the essay without any attempt to discuss on talk. That would surely have been far more productive.
I don't feel my arguments suffer at all. I think they're pretty robust and I can see what I consider significant flaws in your rebuttal. I still don't like your linking to 'the rebuttal' as if it is some recognised official thing, and I don't see the need for multiple links instead of just one at the end, in either direction.
Ha, well I suppose demasculation may have been inevitable with your edits, but not emasculation - removing the figurative male genitalia from the article... perhaps I shall avoid using the word in future...
I apologise, by the way, that I suggested that your edits were akin to vandalism. That was wide of the mark. Worldtraveller 16:10, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Avatar's Piece

Anyone may know something you don't. However if we stay as we are, we will be left behind by the sheer amount of Bologna posted by trolls, instead of keeping up with the good edits that are often required after the rampaging of said trolls. This is becoming a serious problem I think because more and more bulk articles are being posted and we seem (at least to me) to be policing rather then working on an Encyclopedic articles, the articles that are good are excellent, exceptionally informing and concise. others are a complete mess and utterly useless. If need be, we must reduce our focus and double our efforts in our kept articles. this is not a desireable scenario, but I have High Hopes for wikipedia in the future. although bot improvements may be a good idea ;-)

Avatar of Nothing 15:38, 21 February 2007 (UTC)Avatar of Nothing

[edit] I disagree wholeheartedly on the bias issue

An work that is based on the consesus of the masses, that can be changed at any moment in time to a better or worse version, that is not subject to review except by another nonexpert in the field, that can include or disinclude information perhaps hiding biases is not a good "unbiased" encyclopedia. That is the biggest danger of Wikipedia. Have none of you read Nineteen Eighty-Four? Olin 13:34, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

I do indeed remember Nineteen Eighty-Four fondly although, as I recall, the false "truths" were not the result of mob self-delusion, but rather of the determined policy of a state. That's the exact opposite of Wikipedia, which seems closer to the ideal of a marketplace of ideas. There is no barrier to entry for any opinion, and therefore opinions cannot hold sway merely because their owners have a better distribution system. We just need to be sure that the rules of the game favor those who hold the most reasonable, most scholar-referenced arguments.
The premise of Wikipedia is that its editors, which include both experts and non-experts, may find a consensus version that is founded upon scholarly conclusions published in the literature. To be sure, such a "good" version may be temporarily defaced by cranks, self-assured fools and provocateurs secretly hoping to become better educated; but as long as those are a minority compared to well-meaning editors, Wikipedia's articles should improve steadily, as has been observed, at least within my ken.
I do recognize the danger you pose, but I disagree with your implicit solution. To me, banning all non-expert editors just because some malfeasers waste 8% of our time is akin to banning all male editors because Wikipedia is populated by a few testosterone-addled editors who defend their theses with aggressive verbal abuse rather than refining their reasoning or referencing their arguments. Do you see the validity of the comparison? Willow 16:05, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

I never suggested that anyone be banned. I just question as to whether Wikipedia can ever be a reliable, unbiased source. I do not believe it can be. (And your comparison is bad; having credentials is a lot different than having XY--or XX,for that matter--genes. I don't want to discuss the expert issue here as it is discussed in other places, and to be honest, is not the point.)

The real problem is that a casual web surfer can come on Wikipedia using it as a source and have no idea what bias has been imposed on an article by the last editor (particularly if she or he doesn't read the talk page, which is unlikely). The ephemeral nature of the encyclopedia is not conducive to unbiased pages, particularly since the sources that people supposedly read are haphazard and not controlled, and the edits can be haphazard or controlled. It's also not a consensus, it's often who ever checks the page the most. My favorite Wikipedia quote, "[Wikipedia is an] encyclopedia, where genuine data both exists and doesn't exist depending on the precise moment I rely upon your discordant f..... mob for my information." [1] It's like letting someone hand in a term paper without anyone grading it.

Well-meaning or not, it just takes one editor to crap-out an article, and there are many articles that have gotten worse than better. (For example, look at how "torn-up" the writing is on any page with an edit war. It's awful.) If Wikipedia is getting better in terms of reliability and bias, why are there so many POV-conflicts, many of which never go away? Furthermore, arbitration doesn't always address the content of the page, just the behavior of the editor. Olin 17:12, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree that there are serious problems of many kinds of Wikipedia. However, I must point out that the mechanisms that currently exist to gauge the value of each article and reduce vandalism and address conflicts did not exist a couple of years ago. Look at the average Wikipedia article from 2 or 3 years ago, and the average Wikipedia article on the same subject now, and you will see that they are quite different, and usually better. It is a bit difficult for me to imagine that the current structure and mechanisms of Wikipedia will remain static. There are numerous proposals for creating a more reliable version of Wikipedia. Some of these might eventually be tested and tried, and some might be adopted. I believe that as long as this is a concern, efforts will be made to address it. I do not believe it will just remain as it is, and then deteriorate into an undifferentiated morass of mediocre articles on video game characters. Why would anyone expect it to stay as it is? Why would anyone expect that the present rules and principles and mechanisms would not change? What evidence do we have that this is likely to happen? Wikipedia has improved phenomenally, and it will continue to improve, as long as there are enough people that care about improving it. It will become broader, and cover more and more obscure subjects. And in certain specific instances, it will cover them in greater and greater depth. I will also point out that Wikipedia does not have to have the best possible article on every single subject on planet earth. It is, after all, just an encyclopedia. And any encyclopedia is just a good starting off point for research in an area, not the final word.--Filll 17:46, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Having been scorched myself, I concede that a self-assured but inept editor can do a lot of damage. But I cannot give up hope or, perhaps better, hope won't let go of me; I believe, rightly or wrongly, that Wikipedia will overcome such problems, at least for some significant fraction of its articles, just as Filll suggests above. If nothing else, that faith lets me be happy, playful, even joyful, when I'm editing or creating new articles. But I also agree with you that we should try to solve problems practically as they arise, rather than being blind to them. Willow 18:10, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
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