Why Wiki Sucks

[koganbot]

Tom Ewing (You Don't Have To Be A Mentalist To Edit Wikipedia, But It Helps): this is one of the awesome things about Wikipedia - the fact that it's a project which has yoked a lot of individual bads (egocentricity and pedantry) into a gigantic collective good. Wikipedia is unique in that it's a community that actually works better the more nit-pickety and humourless its members are! God bless it.

For music, Wiki is indispensable* when it comes to chart placement of a song, what band the lead singer previously belonged to, when she was born, and so forth, but for anything having to do with what the music is like or why anyone would ever care, Wiki is beyond worthless. The most useful nondiscography items I ever saw on Wiki were the various catty things that the Cheetah Girls were rumored to have said about one another, and of course those were removed, presumably for not adhering to Wiki's communal iron-butt standards. By the way, some of the lit and philosophy entries manage to avoid equivalent defects, when they somehow evade the stricture to back everything up with a reference and the insistence that no one engage in original research or thought. (See this write-up on John Wyndham: it's not a collation of received opinion but rather someone's concise analysis of the work, its theme, its method, the entry presumably written by a single individual who read the work and used his or her mind.)

*Allmusic.com takes longer to load, makes you go through too many clicks, gives you too many irrelevant choices with its search engine, and only gives you U.S. data. But its writers will often tell you something interesting about the music, which Wiki almost never manages. I've looked at Discogs a couple of times and it's a mess, too many search results that cover not enough music.

Comments

[koganbot]

Of course it's Wiki's job, just as it's Wiki's job to say what happened at the Battle of the Alamo and why that had an impact on subsequent events (i.e., why anyone would care). And Wiki will do that job for the Alamo (and I presume they do that job for Nietzsche, though I haven't read the entry; the Enclyclopedia of Philosophy thought enough of Nietzsche that they actually said what some of Nietzsche's ideas were, rather than merely giving the publication dates of his books and the number of copies sold).

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

But the impact the Battle of the Alamo is relatively simple: the battle had x outcome, which led to y group moving into z territory, which led to the next battle. And while various historians probably competing theories as to why x outcome led to y group moving into z territory, or whether it was really important that it happened precisely that way, if you ask a group of historians what the impact of the Battle of the Alamo was, you will probably not get answers as varied and personal and contentious as you will if you ask "Why should I care about this album?"

You and I have very similar opinions on Ashlee Simpson's Autobiography, yet if someone asked us, "Why should I care about Autobiography> What is so interesting about it?" we would give them very, very different answers. Dave's answer would be equally different, and a non-fan's answer would probably be "You shouldn't, and nothing."

Because "Why should I care about about the Battle of the Alamo?" and "Why should I care about this album?" are two very different questions. One wants to know why you should care -- why the battle was tactically significant, where it fit in to the big picture of the war. The other wants to know why you should care -- why you should love it.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

the "they" in wikipedia includes all of us frank -- if the stuff that ought to be there isn't there, the person you're complaining not putting it there is basically you yourself

[koganbot]

Yes, I got this the first time you said it, and it's wrong.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

Well yes, I guess I wanted to find out how and why you think it's wrong -- who's blocking the Wyndham effect in the pop entries? It makes no sense to just say "them", meaning the people who devoted their lives to wiki-making, because nothing is stopping "us" adding ourselves to this crew (unless there IS something stopping us which I don't know about and you do but aren't telling).

[koganbot]

Too late, the weight of both wiki practice and wiki policy is against it, to mobilize a critical mass of "us" i.e. potential new wiki editors/writers to change the practice is highly improbable because it would require expending 100 times the effort on wiki that we expended on ilX (which most were willing to let go down in 2005 and 2006), and few would think either the chance of success great enough or the issue important enough to be worth the effort (the opposite would require people like girlboymusic, katstevens, and me to both be outraged by current wiki and to think it would be rewarding and fun to expend a vast amount of energy fighting against dullards and idiots in order to change it). I don't have that much knowledge of current wiki folkways and constituency and may be underestimating the receptivity, but I do know "us."

This doesn't mean that anything with the wiki idea and ideals is doomed to mediocrity in its music coverage. I'm just gauging the current wiki and current possibilities.

[koganbot]

What throws me about this side issue is that... well, it is a side issue. That is, Tom says "Wikipedia has yoked together a lot of individual bads into a collective good, and Wikipedia actually works owing to these characteristics" and I say, "Wait, here's a clear and obvious Wikipedia failure, where Wikipedia actually doesn't work." So, to say, "But if people like us would get involved maybe it would work," even if you're right, doesn't address what either Tom or I is saying. Tom's saying, "Here's a collective success" and I'm saying, "No, there's a failure in at least one part."