Wiki-tedium
What do you think of Wikipedia? The Register has been pounding on it for some time now - with some justification, I think. Over at The Guardian, they've asked some known experts to assess the entries for their specialist subjects. The best mark it gets is 8/10, for the Bob Dylan entry.
But then you read what the guy has to say about the entry - that it's pretty accurate as far as the facts go, but so badly written that it would piss people off - and you wonder about the marking scheme! For me, factually accurate gets you 5/10. Making you actually want to read it gets you more. Now, it's a fact that most academics are terrible writers, better at obfuscation than communication, so they probably wouldn't be the best people to ask.
Most academics wouldn't know good writing if it came up and stamped on their heads.
My opinion of the Wiki is that it's good in parts, if you find a little corner where not too many people have had a hand. Popular subjects, on the other hand, tend to be overwhelmed and end up reading like random fragments with little relevance to the overall picture, stuffed full of trivia but completely lacking in substance.
And the linking! Oh, the humanity. Pointless links prevail, pointing to articles about things mentioned in passing that don't really have much to do with the subject under discussion, and which - crucially - don't contain a link back to the original subject.
Start with the search term "Atomic Bomb", for example, which redirects you to an article on Nuclear Weapons. No mention in that article on where the first bomb was developed and exploded, though the Manhattan Project is mentioned. So you follow a link to there, where you read that the first test was in Alamogordo, New Mexico, with a link to an article on Alamogordo, which has a one-line mention of the first man-made nuclear explosion taking place there, but doesn't mention the Manhattan Project by name. There's a helpful link from the word "nuclear" however, which takes you to a general link on the word "nuclear", with lots of other links to articles containing the word "nuclear" - and, if you guess right, you can find your way back to your original nuclear weapon story.
Many Wikipedia articles are stuffed full of links, some more useful than others, most of them not relevant at the moment your eye is stopped by them, and even when there is a kind of relevance, you might find yourself going round in circles. in the example above, say I was looking for the location of the first nuclear test - it's not mentioned in the main article, so I have to follow (if I guess right) several other links to find the answer. And when you read the article on Alamogordo, if there's going to be a link from the brief mention of "nuclear test", in my mind it should go back to the Manhattan Project article, and not to an entirely unhelpful definition of the word Nuclear with a load of other links.
In the end, the Wikipedia is a huge collection of articles containing a huge collection of links between articles, as if a deeply paranoid individual set out to describe the world in terms of the links between things, which doesn't sound too bad, except there's no underlying coherence, and in the end no actual point to all the linking. At least James Burke, whom we have mentioned before, had a point, and at least he was just one person trying to make that point, rather than a random collection of individuals with internet access and time.
The Register is often attacked by the Wikipedes, who demand that, instead of criticising, people who think entries are wrong should "try to improve them", but to do that you've got to be willing to engage in battle with people who are like the Comic Book Store Guy in The Simpsons, who will sit up all night, ready to delete your every comma. Apart from that, you gotta know where to start, and you know you're never going to get the radical idea of taking out a lot of the links past the Comic Book Store Guy.
I still use it, sometimes, when the article is purely factual and doesn't bombard you with blue words, but when you encounter one of those link-farm type articles, it always makes you think twice.
But then you read what the guy has to say about the entry - that it's pretty accurate as far as the facts go, but so badly written that it would piss people off - and you wonder about the marking scheme! For me, factually accurate gets you 5/10. Making you actually want to read it gets you more. Now, it's a fact that most academics are terrible writers, better at obfuscation than communication, so they probably wouldn't be the best people to ask.
Most academics wouldn't know good writing if it came up and stamped on their heads.
My opinion of the Wiki is that it's good in parts, if you find a little corner where not too many people have had a hand. Popular subjects, on the other hand, tend to be overwhelmed and end up reading like random fragments with little relevance to the overall picture, stuffed full of trivia but completely lacking in substance.
And the linking! Oh, the humanity. Pointless links prevail, pointing to articles about things mentioned in passing that don't really have much to do with the subject under discussion, and which - crucially - don't contain a link back to the original subject.
Start with the search term "Atomic Bomb", for example, which redirects you to an article on Nuclear Weapons. No mention in that article on where the first bomb was developed and exploded, though the Manhattan Project is mentioned. So you follow a link to there, where you read that the first test was in Alamogordo, New Mexico, with a link to an article on Alamogordo, which has a one-line mention of the first man-made nuclear explosion taking place there, but doesn't mention the Manhattan Project by name. There's a helpful link from the word "nuclear" however, which takes you to a general link on the word "nuclear", with lots of other links to articles containing the word "nuclear" - and, if you guess right, you can find your way back to your original nuclear weapon story.
Many Wikipedia articles are stuffed full of links, some more useful than others, most of them not relevant at the moment your eye is stopped by them, and even when there is a kind of relevance, you might find yourself going round in circles. in the example above, say I was looking for the location of the first nuclear test - it's not mentioned in the main article, so I have to follow (if I guess right) several other links to find the answer. And when you read the article on Alamogordo, if there's going to be a link from the brief mention of "nuclear test", in my mind it should go back to the Manhattan Project article, and not to an entirely unhelpful definition of the word Nuclear with a load of other links.
The word nuclear means of or belonging to the nucleus of something. Eh? Run that by me again? What's a fucking nucleus then?
In the end, the Wikipedia is a huge collection of articles containing a huge collection of links between articles, as if a deeply paranoid individual set out to describe the world in terms of the links between things, which doesn't sound too bad, except there's no underlying coherence, and in the end no actual point to all the linking. At least James Burke, whom we have mentioned before, had a point, and at least he was just one person trying to make that point, rather than a random collection of individuals with internet access and time.
The Register is often attacked by the Wikipedes, who demand that, instead of criticising, people who think entries are wrong should "try to improve them", but to do that you've got to be willing to engage in battle with people who are like the Comic Book Store Guy in The Simpsons, who will sit up all night, ready to delete your every comma. Apart from that, you gotta know where to start, and you know you're never going to get the radical idea of taking out a lot of the links past the Comic Book Store Guy.
I still use it, sometimes, when the article is purely factual and doesn't bombard you with blue words, but when you encounter one of those link-farm type articles, it always makes you think twice.
posted by Anonymous at
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
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