User:Colchicum

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[edit] What is Wikipedia

As Wikipedia is a free dynamic encyclopedia, attempts to comply with paper encyclopedia standards are worthless and amount to its destruction (Yes, I am not a big fan of Britannica, it is too superficial, outdated and full of inaccuracies, as well as tertiary sources in general). Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, neither should it be taken as such. And it is normal, because our readers are not idiots and understand how Wikipedia is being written perfectly well.[1] Wikipedia is still a worthy undertaking, but because of this, it is worthy and reliable only to the extent it is an annotated cross-referenced bibliography, a guide to the knowledge rather than knowledge by itself. Most readers will not rely on information they haven't already believed in, unless they proceed to the sources they (rather than we) consider reliable and learn about the issue by themselves. Sure, reliable sources can also be wrong, but this shouldn't concern us here. Verifiability, not truth.

Therefore I think that the most important constructive contribution to Wikipedia would be summarizing sources and adding the information to relevant articles. However, keep WP:C and WP:SPAM in mind.

Internal linking between different articles is also very important. Articles without references matter to the readers only as a mean of navigation, and sometimes it may be very important (some articles on railways, provinces, government cabinets etc. written by me are supposed to serve exactly this purpose). For that purpose check what links there with the toolbox in the left menu.

Large general articles (about countries, large cities, great wars etc.) approaching the upper limit of article size are supposed to summarize more specific articles and often suffer from information losses due to perfectionist battles, so it is hardly a good idea to put something else into them. Just make sure that they are linked to more specific articles and let others play with them.

Wikipedia contributors often forget than our readers are not idiots. Do you see bias in an article on a topic you have no expertise in? So do the readers. Don't care too much, they won't be deceived. Correcting, pushing or balancing a point of view in Wikipedia is a waste of time, as well as deletion of articles or some particular information. If word jugglery and propaganda affect anything, it is the credibility of a given article rather than the readers' minds. For an illuminating example of how hot point-of-view battles can be between contributors and how small is their impact on the readers, you might look at articles related to Armenia-Azerbaijan relations. If you value your time, don't be engaged in such activities, whether your side is right or wrong. At worst, if some intervention really seems necessary on a page, others will eventually do this for you.

Wikipedia is not a social networking site, you will gain nothing by abusing talk pages. Never talk unless it is absolutely necessary and you are going to discuss content, always abstracting away from your fellow contributors (even if the sample of personality disorders they happen to represent is very special).

Unfortunately, Wikipedia pays too little attention to theories (i.e., roughly, explanations), as compared to "facts". E.g. we have plenty of articles on specific films or filmmakers, plants or botanists (and here Wikipedia is not unique among many other online databases and is still mostly inferior to them), but much less on film theory or explanation in botany. This bias is conceivable, as writing theoretical articles normally requires more substantial professional expertise, but should be corrected if possible. Your contributions would have a much greater impact on Wikipedia if you knew how to do that.

  1. ^ Some people argue that some other people see wikipedia as reliable. True, but then nothing prevents them from seeing other unreliable sources as reliable independently of Wikipedia. Should we care?

[edit] Causes of Wikipedia erosion

  1. Good-faith change of referenced information (or even direct quotations) by subsequent editors who don't read the sources
  2. Partial change of values in lists, tables and the like, while the rest is not updated, rendering the whole structure misleading.
  3. Suppression of referenced information some users dislike, sometimes citing WP:NPOV, WP:NOT, WP:BLP etc.

[edit] Online instruments for referencing

Poor sources are better than no sources. The best solution is to use sources you have actually consulted. After all, virtually everybody knows how to google. Keep in mind that less respected sources may also be very valuable, especially as they are not always properly indexed elsewhere and are not easy to find.

General Google search is useful, but often returns too much stuff to process. I would discourage the use of Google Book Search, because indexation of a book there doesn't guarantee its quality or sufficient editorial oversight. Moreover, within many developed fields of knowledge books are somewhat out of fashion, and for a good reason. If you resort to books, read published reviews, it is very important. Google Scholar is much better as to selection criteria and search results ranking, though the latter is sometimes puzzling and the results are far from exhaustive. Make sure that you have searched (with Google) in the academic journal databases you have access to (JSTOR, Springerlink and many others) by adding something like the following line to your Google search query: site:jstor.org OR site:springerlink.com

[edit] Redlinks

Here (or maybe on a subpage) I will put some redlinks. We should have these articles, but unfortunately they haven't yet been created. Get involved!

[edit] Gadgets

New Articles Bot by user:Alex Bakharev.

And this is invented by me and developed by user:Sander Säde. A tool of edit-warring? No, rather a tool of editorial oversight. Or just a tool. The rest depends on the users.

[edit] Nazi analogies

Although the Nazi alalogies are normally meaningless, as they are unfortunately very often evoked in Wikipedia discussions, it is worth remembering what Nazism is. Nazism is the fatally flawed leftist ideology stipulating that the interests of a certain nation (a) extend beyond the interests of its individual members and (b) are superior to the interests of its individual members and the interests of other nations. All other collectivist ideologies drawing ethical conclusions from their collectivist delusions are no better and will eventually demise. But this won't be easy.

According to the Political Compass this user is:
Economic Right (7.38) and
Social Libertarian (-6.62)

BTW, I am not Georgian. The username refers to this for no particular reason. I am from Leningrad/Saint Petersburg, but I don't reside in Russia, Estonia or Finland.