Talk:Criticism of Wikipedia

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This page was previously nominated for deletion. Please see prior discussion(s) before considering re-nomination:
  • No consensus, VFD December 23, 2004, see discussion
  • Keep, VFD March 13 2005 , see discussion
  • Speedy Keep, AFD October 18, 2005, see discussion
  • Keep, don't move and don't merge, AFD December 10, 2005, see discussion
  • Keep, AFD December 13, 2006, see discussion
To-do: edit · history · watch · refresh
  • Flesh lead out a bit - an extremely long article should have a large lead.
  • Add more images
For critical takes on Wikipedia covered by Wikipedia itself, see Wikipedia:External peer review/Nature December 2005 (40 science articles) and Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-10-31/Guardian rates articles (7 articles of general interest).

Contents

[edit] Controversy with the Authors and Readers of Webcomics

A frequently cited criticism of Wikipedia and one that is sometimes blamed for the decline in traffic is the manner in which an admin determines that certain topics aren't significant enough to merit an article and deletes the article written about the topic. As a result of this policy, several articles about popular webcomics and blogs that recieve tens of thousands of viewers according to Alexa, many of which won critical praise had articles about them deleted by wikipedia. <references/http://www.webcomicker.com/?p=33> <references/http://comixtalk.com/terrence_markswikipedia_and_y> It was viewed as not acceptable my many webcomic authors and readers that articles about websites and webcomics that have tens of thousands of regular viewers are deemed as candidates for deletion as a result of an admin who is personally unfamiliar with the comic. Others found it counter intuitive that because of Wikipedia's deletion policy, users who come to wikipedia looking for information about a popular blog or webcomic or site were unable to find it. This seemed to go against what was traditionally considered one of Wikipedia's greatest assests, it's ability to provide information on topics that professional encyclopedias like Encyclopedia brittanica were too limited in scope to cover. Others view as a sign that Wikipedia has become too hierarchical, closed, and overrun with "admins" and "editors" and Wikipedia itself is becoming burdened by the bureacracy of of it's editing staff.

[edit] De Facto Leader

Why in the devil does it say that Jimmy Wales is the de facto leader of Wikipedia 3 times? I think most readers of this page probably could care less from knowing that he is so much cooler than us "mere mortals", that it has to be mentioned 3 times.

[edit] Carolyn Doran and "hive mind"

Can someone think of a good addition to the "hive mind" section that uses Wikipedia's response to the Carolyn Doran article? Most of the stuff I add to articles seems to get reverted, so I'm not even going to try. --Fandyllic (talk) 11:06 AM PST 6 Jan 2008

[edit] Usefulness as a reference

I edited the intro to read Wikipedia acknowledges that it should not be used as a primary source for serious research. I certainly hope I read the reference correctly. Asav (talk) 04:05, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia may acknowledge the fact it shouldn't be used for "serious" research. Yet Wikipedia has been compared equal to Encyclopedia Britannica. If serious research can use Britannica, why not Wikipedia? And if that, whats the whole point of criticizing Wikipedia if is basically the same as Encyclopedia Britannica? Just putting that out there. --SpartaGeek23 (talk) 21:55, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
It "has been compared" to Britannica only in a few unscientific "studies", whose flaws are easily shown. People have been fooled because one such appeared in Nature, the only case of a serious magazine making this absurd claim, yet it was basically an editorial and not peer-reviewed like the rest of the magazine. Other similar studies have only appeared in popular magazines like Stern (famous for its Hitler diaries), which don't have the necessary intellectual standing to begin with. Bramlet Abercrombie (talk) 22:39, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
Well, this wasn't my original point. I was merely wondering if I had read the reference right, not making any statement as to WP's usefulness or reliability. Still, to (partly) answer your question, the difference between WP and EB for (academic) research ought to be obvious: The EB contains signed articles by academically verifiable authors, i.e. you can judge an individual article by the standing its author has. You can do no such thing with any contribution to WP. Asav (talk) 09:09, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Article too long: let's split it

The largest section of this article is "criticism of the wiki model" as a means of organizing information. This is an excellent and encyclopedic topic. I think it would be fine to give that its own article, summarize it here, and let the criticism of Wikipedia's implementation and culture expand accordingly. Shii (tock) 23:47, 22 May 2008 (UTC)