The solution for webmasters in dealing with Wikipedia is very simple, for educational institutions they can simply block access to Wikipedia so that students must make the effort to research technical data of a more reliable nature. At the opposite end if a webmaster is not willing to let an organisation like Wikipedia use his/her website to build their encycplopedia as a set of links to other people's content, all they need do is alter their ".htaccess" file and do a referrers block and it breaks the direct link. The end result is to force Wikipedia to provide their own content like everyone else has to do.
Once people realise the Wikipedia is "just another web site" they can routinely treate it like "just another web site" and if its content, actions and internal policy do not measure up to the criterion set by other web sites on the internet, then double end blocking it is the solution. Never be misled by the hype coming out of the place, behind the facade is a variant GPL licencing system that takes anything it can get and owns it. Anything you contribute to Wikipedia becomes their property and you become expendable once they own your work. Never contribute your own copyright data to them or even access to it as you have an army of backyard GPL lawyers geared to take what they can and you never get anything back.
Remember that Wikipedia is a privately owned organisation and while it sells the notion of being a non-profit organisation, the private ownership makes it vulnerable to commercial exploitation at a later date so the unwitting contributor ends up doing little else than lining someone elses pocket. The double ended block levels the playing field.
Hey Hutch,
That is a considered and intelligent solution that will unfortunately be lost on the masses. It will likely result in people thinking the masm project no longer exists when they click the link and other organisations will not have the 'organisational intelligence' to implement the block or understand the reasons for blocking. Further, information posted will be even less accurate. Google and the corporate empire are continueing to circle looking for a profitable angle which will probably make things worse as it will potentially split the web in two, the fed accurate information and the fed bullshit groups, kinda like those with and without university education in the real world only that goes against the rebel 'fight the power' inclusive nature of the internet so someone will come along with a worse but inclusive idea everyone will signup to.
IMHO the best way to fight it, save the world economy and the minds of future generations is to convince enough people to use a sane licensing system, for what it's worth :bg
Interesting comment. The masm32 project never needed them and is better off without any association as it is freeware for programmers, not amusement for the masses but my comments after having recently had some involvement are pointed far wider. It appears to be going through some consolidation stage at the moment in preparation for its next move which among other things involved putting it on a CD/DVD and selling it to educational institutions and its here where profitability raises its ugly head.
Through this consolidation stage it is now biting off the hand that fed it in the first place, that army of people with diverse expertise that wrote the core of the articles that it contains. While its own hype says that it aspires to be something else that ascends other sites on the internet, the construction of the internet has the solution for web masters running independent web sites and that goes for educational institutions as well as commercial and other web sites, if the web master or board that runs an educational institution do not approve of either the quality of the content or alternately being used to provide content for them by embedded links on the Wikipedsia web site, they can just block it from either direction to protect the interests they serve.
Encyclopedia Britannica is a real encyclopedia with a long history of published expertise as is in fact the case with many other well respected publishers but Wikipedia is none of these, its a reasonably recent internet web site with aspirations of hitting the heights on the back of a multitude of well intended people that it has made use of in the first place, chopping off their access so that they must provide their own content is the solution and its easy to do at the web site level.
I do like the idea of this, it does make sense and would make still more sense if wiki was to promote it itself to websites listed. The idea that wiki doesnt rely on qualifications is a good one, but it should still rely on expertise, if people who want to contribute are forced to have a reasonable *on topic* website that backs up their expertise this makes more sense. The problem is twitter, facebook and the like, again IMHO.... If you make things too easy you dumb down the entire internet, people with any kind of authoritative position online should have a working knowledge of how things technically work.... You wouldnt get in a taxi if the driver couldnt drive or on a plane if the pilot couldnt fly.... Just because the taxi driver has a lot to say for himself doesnt mean jack sh*t....
Hutch, on a witch hunt - are we? :lol
However, I agree with you, and oex has made some very true comments.
And to add to all that, Wikipedia officially disrespects the individuals which made the information available in the first place (like JWASM case). If this were to happen - expect Wikipedia and its owners to be very much........useless in the future.
Quote from: hutch-- on February 08, 2010, 09:20:03 PM
Remember that Wikipedia is a privately owned organisation
Can you back this up ? As far as I know it is owned by the Wikimedia foundation which is a non-profit foundation and under the law cannot be privately owned since its status is a "Public Charity".
And before you go on about how I should become an editor, I will once again note that I do not seem to have the same desire for wiki-notability that you demonstrate so I don't get particularly upset when the "just another web site" doesn't want the content I would provide (not that I would consider providing any).
Edgar
Quote from: hutch-- on February 08, 2010, 09:20:03 PM
Never be misled by the hype coming out of the place, behind the facade is a variant GPL licencing system that takes anything it can get and owns it.
? that's a violation of copyright law and expressly against the terms of the content license.
There are plenty of things you can truthfully say against Wikipedia, making things up shouldn't be necessary.
Quote from: hutch-- on February 08, 2010, 09:20:03 PM
Never be misled by the hype coming out of the place, behind the facade is a variant GPL licencing system that takes anything it can get and owns it.
Quote
I think Hutch means the license owns it not the organisation which is worse because like software associated material gets dragged into the black hole license.... At least if I understand GPL correctly I am no expert.... So for example so I can be properly chastised if I'm wrong.... if you include an open source licensed piece of code in your app all your code has to be open source also.... This makes your code owned by the open source license.... ie it tells oyu you have no choice but to publish
Quote from: oex on February 15, 2010, 07:52:45 PM
Quote from: hutch-- on February 08, 2010, 09:20:03 PM
Never be misled by the hype coming out of the place, behind the facade is a variant GPL licencing system that takes anything it can get and owns it.
Quote
I think Hutch means the license owns it not the organisation which is worse because like software associated material gets dragged into the black hole license.... At least if I understand GPL correctly I am no expert.... So for example so I can be properly chastised if I'm wrong.... if you include an open source licensed piece of code in your app all your code has to be open source also.... This makes your code owned by the open source license.... ie it tells oyu you have no choice but to publish
The license, by law, cannot abrogate the rights of the copyright holder, if you own it, you own it - period. It does not limit your right to use it nor does it deny you the right to later issue it under a different separate license. According to wikipedia:
Quote from: Wikipedia FAQBy law the contributions are still owned by people who donated them. These people are not bound by the license and can use their property in the way they like. However media with multiple authors require permission from every contributor to use them differently from the terms of the Wikipedia license.
Quote from: Wikipedia:CopyrightsThe Wikimedia Foundation does not own copyright on Wikipedia article texts and illustrations
...
For permission to use it, one must contact the owner of the copyright of the text or illustration in question; often, but not always, this will be the original author.
Hi oex,
Yes, the GPL is a viral license (and I'm the last one to support it) but under no circumstances does it change your rights over code you own. If you include code that you did not write or hold the copyright to and the author licensed it to you under the GPL then you are bound by the terms of that license as long as you use the GPL code. However, the author can have a separate license governing the terms of your use and that has nothing to do with the GPL and you would not be bound by the GPL nor would it infect your software. The key player in all of this is the copyright holder (normally the author), he can license his software in as many ways as he likes to as many different people as he likes. For example I can require that if you use a snippet of mine you are required to place a notice in the about box while at the same time require another to place a hyperlink, different licensing requirements for different users.
The distinction is between word and object but to consumerise it, its the difference between principle and practice. While most of us have heard the pie in the sky GPL bullsh*t it is as a matter of fact that behind the platitudes is a licence that is after Copyright which it rigidly enforces so if you are connected to them or in any sense dependent on their content, your content is their content and their content is their content.
Now while the Wikipedia organisation may publish guidelines on copyright, because of the sheer size of the organisation, normal inertia factors and arse covering by combinations of editors and administrators, getting copyright violations removed is another matter entirely.
The topic is the effective way to solve the problem, treat Wikipedia like any other web site and block their access to your content so they have to actually write their own. Wikipedia editor "Apache" strikes again using the ".htaccess" method.
PS: Edgar, you really should become a Wikipedia editor trying to add content to their web site, it would be a fantasy shattering experience for you. Like Coleridges Ancient Mariner "A sadder but a wiser man he woke the morrow morn". :bg
Steve,
I have no fantasies about Wikipedia, but I do like to be fair. They have rules and guidelines for submissions, it is their right to question whether something falls within their guidelines. The fact of the matter is that if I have something to publish regarding code I do it here, there is no better forum for me.
This is my take on Wikipedia, so we can put the editor question to rest:
Wikipedia is too general for my liking and I tend to frequent more targeted sites with in-depth information rather than get the watered down generalizations that Wikipedia offers. For example if I want to know something about IBM's research in quantum computers I will visit IBM's research site, not Wikipedia. Wikipedia is just like any encyclopedia, it has very general and factually dubious information that is useless for any real analysis nor does it offer any enlightenment. In my opinion Wikipedia is chewing gum for the mind and nothing else, it steps in when you are not interested in a subject enough to bother researching it.
QuoteThe distinction is between word and object but to consumerise it, its the difference between principle and practice. While most of us have heard the pie in the sky GPL bullsh*t it is as a matter of fact that behind the platitudes is a licence that is after Copyright which it rigidly enforces so if you are connected to them or in any sense dependent on their content, your content is their content and their content is their content.
This can be said about any license, if you don't own it you have to live up to the terms of use. For example, in the MASM32 distribution there are snippets which the author has licensed for non-commercial use only (Ernie's COM stuff), if I was to use that code I would be bound by that agreement and limiting my own distribution rights. Not only that but if you used say BitmapFromPicture in your freeware application, no one would ever be allowed to use it in a commercial application, not even you. So would you say that by including Ernie's bitmap stuff MASM32 is as viral in some cases as the GPL ? You would be hard pressed to find anyone more anti-gpl than I am, I have even earned a special place in Betov's "asshole" list because of my vocal opposition to it but I am still a realist and every license places restrictions on you.
Edgar
Edgar,
I am still much of the view that the experience would make you a sadder but wiser man. Without bothering to learn WikiSpeak create a new page on Wikipedia using their invitation for topics that don't exist and enjoy all of the crap that they don't tell you about, some imbecile tracking the new pages list comes flying in within hours and slaps a tag on it in terms of notability or relevance or whatever etc .... and you have no warning of this crap until it happens. Then if you question it the sh*t starts to fly, the arse covering begins and the tribal nature of collections of editors and administrators grinds into gear.
If they were honest in the first place and warned you of how contributions are treated, most people would tell them to shove their web site up their arse but they still grovel for contributions on one hand and sh*t on the contributors on the other. I offer you the chance to experience the place so you stop talking about the theoretical nature of licencing and see how it is done in real life, the distinction between word and object. You could waste your life and time wading through a set of conflicting and often contrdictory rules that the idiot fringe tearing around the place communicate with yet if you bother to have a look at their contributions, most of them have written almost no content, they are just pests vying for administrator status and trashing the place in the process.
The topic here is how you deal with it at a domain level, editor "Apache" treats Wikipedia like any other web site and the ".htaccess" method works fine. If they want an encyclopedia, then they can get off their arse and write their own content, not steal bandwidth from other web sites.
Quoteyet if you bother to have a look at their contributions, most of them have written almost no content, they are just pests vying for administrator status and trashing the place in the process
That is the way it looked to me after I checked the history of some of these clowns. The articles they choose to edit typically cover such a wide range of topics that they could not possibly have any significant grasp of the subject matter.
Some links for interested parties to make themselves heard about the deletion of the JWASM page.
The instigator of the deletion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Elen_of_the_Roads
The seconder who also tried to delete half of the masm page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:OrangeDog
His busom buddy covering his arse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:SarekOfVulcan
Their partner in crime.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Pohta_ce-am_pohtit
The administrator who did the dirty work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:MLauba
I only ask this much, even though these people acted like a bunch of arseh*les I would ask that if and when you comment on their talk pages that you do not vandalise anything or use naughty words as they may not be able to cope with real world criticism. They appear to recoil in shock/horor if you suggest that they write the f*cking thing themselves. :P
Quote from: hutch-- on February 17, 2010, 02:40:16 AM
Some links for interested parties to make themselves heard about the deletion of the JWASM page.
I only ask this much, even though these people acted like a bunch of arseh*les I would ask that if and when you comment on their talk pages that you do not vandalise anything ...
It's very bad style to talk in such a way about persons who aren't member of this board and cannot defend themselves. There was no "dirty work" or anything, they just removed some parts of the mess you created. Please stop this!
In a members forum like this we ensure you are entitled to your opinion, even if other members disagree with it where in the environment of the persons mentioned, you are not and will be attacked for doing so. Feel free to become a Wikipedia editor and learn the joys first hand of dealing with imbeciles. :P
Just to confirm the virtue of server blocking Wikipedia, a couple of weeks after raising the copyright issue with the internal Wikipedia mechanism to deal with the problem, I got a reply back which recognised the copyright violation but isolated Wikipedia from the actions of their editors and administrators. Bottom line is if the can get away witrh stealing your property they will and if you raise the issue with them they cover their arse by passing the buck to the collection of anonymous d*ckheads tearing around the place making a mess of it.
Same old bullshit as anything else GPL, take anything they can get by any means they can and sh*t on you in the process. Editor Apache is the solution using the ".htaccess" method.
This could explain why they implemented such an apparently idiotic editing policy.
i recently watched a movie that dealt with how Wikipedia was started and how it runs and it had a number of interesting concepts in it. The well known defects of the "anyone can edit anything" policy means that brain surgery can be edited by the dustman and the idea of "no original research" means the place has no content but another interesting concept was raised that made sense.
Wikipedia is another form of online "Virtual Reality" where anonymous people join a website, undertake a range of roles, develop a community and construct a bureaucracy with a predefined pecking order and an infinitely redefinable set of rules cast in a shorthand for practitioners to communicate among themselves as they try and construct their "Virtual World".
Now this would be fine if it was represented as what it effectively is but unfortunately it is being represented as a source of knowledge under the name of an online encyclopaedia. In days of old an encyclopaedia was constructed on the basis of available expertise so issues of brain surgery went to brain surgeons, rocket science went to rocket scientists and chinese floral arrangements went to such folks as had expertise in such fields and the content could be trusted to some extent as it eminated from people who had some track record in the filed they addressed.
One can only hope that when Jimbo has his next testicle uplift operation that the surgeon performing the operation is reading how to do it online from a Wikipedia entry that has been edited by an anonymous Wikipedia editor with the end result that he ends up with lumps in his throat. :P
interesting comment about "virtual society"
we have one, of sorts, here as well
one of the first such societies i had experince with was yahoo games
primarily, i play euchre and spades - card games
but, i have also played their chess, pool, literati (like scrabble)
in these game rooms, they have "lobbies" where those not involved in games (and sometimes, those who are) may communicate
it's kind of like a kiosk bulletin board area or chat room - all players can see what anyone types instantly
yahoo has pretty much left these "places" unpoliced
it seems the absolute worst come out in some people - many people, in fact
swearing - name calling - you name it - lol
even some of the women could teach sailors how to talk
it is interesting to see how people treat each other, when there are no consequences to their actions
this is similar to what you are talking about - because there are no consequences for providing incorrect information
the yahoo game lobbies introduce an additional dynamic in that what is typed shows up instantly
Ubuntu wiki suffers from the same problem.
Individuals that have firmly stated that they do not want to work with you, edit your content according to their social agenda.
They cite the "spirit of Ubuntu" and the Creative Commons license as the proof that they can do this.
There is no actual citation on the wiki site as to which license the content falls under.
The main Ubuntu site has a legal page that cites content is either GPL or Creative Commons (but not which is which).
Both GPL and Creative Commons recognize the right of the "Original Author", someone that the wiki editors ignore.
Whatever council that Ubuntu/Canonical uses approves of and defends the wiki editors. (2 out of the five have firmly stated this).
They don't want to participate or cooperate or collaborate; despite that their guidelines / rules specifically state otherwise.
You can't point this out, then they claim *you* are the one not cooperating with *them*.
You add content they do not have then 3 years later someone comes along and rewrites your content for their agenda (and one editor clearly stated it was a personal agenda).
No one wanted to help or made a serious offer to and then after 2 years inactivity, they form an actual group and after one year of their own inactivity they edit someone else's content.
They have yet to produce anything I haven't already done and are actually trying to do work I have already completed if they had bothered to actually read my content or try to work with me.
So I deleted everything and took back my work and now they cry foul and how I am not a team player or violated the license or some other crap.
There was a wiki war for a time where I deleted the page and they kept restoring it.
Appealingly when you "delete" a ubuntu wiki page it is not actually deleted and you can revert to an earlier revision.
Deletion is a revision, I don't know who came up with that crap.
But the wiki is full of edits for their own agenda.
I tried to explain to a so-called team leader about how refreshes are not redirects and shouldn't be used as such.
The Italian wiki didn't have problems with redirects and used them specifically because people were notified of the redirect.
But in the US the wiki would rather use a refresh so that you are not notified of the redirect.
After I told him about this, the wiki instructions was edited so that a user doesn't know about redirects and can only use refresh as a method of redirection.
They don't like it when you shine a public light on their crap.
I complained about their actions directly on the ubuntu forum thread that I made for my content.
Where one of the editors had posted but not discussed anything with me.
And apparently that means I am the one that doesn't know how to communicate.
This is why I put all wikis, facebook, twitter and other assorted crap as Social Engineering websites.
:bg :U
:bg
WIKIPEDIA REVISITED.
It was with a sense of Deja Vu that I bothered to have a look at the pages that yielded so much argument within the Wikipedia organisation and 9 months down the track they are still the crippled piles of crap that they left them as back then and no-one has fixed them or extended them in the mean time.
It is clearly the case that Wikipedia is not a sound vehicle to support programming in general or assembler programming in particular and that it is good practice not to put sensible technical work into the hands of imbeciles who neither know what they are doing or how to properly use it in an encyclopaedia.
If you have code or technical reference that you want to share with other programmers, publish it on an independent site that cannot be damaged by idiots and engage the assistance of the informal Wikipedia editor "Apache" where you block Wikipedia from linking to your site. This effectively forces them to get off their arse and write their own instead of bandwith theft of other peoples work.
Editor "Apache" is your friend. :U
I haven't visited the ubuntu wiki page I created for a while now.
But last I saw they had reverted it to just prior to deletion and locked it with an ACL so I can no longer edit my own content.
I don't know how the subscriptions work with regard tot he ACL but if they work as normal then noone else has bothered to edit the pages either because I haven't been receiving notices of page updates.
Nice to know that they needed my work so badly that they can't be bothered to work on any content either.
It sounds like a similar problem, non technical "editors" (IE they may be able to type) exercising power over technical contributors by means of their wiki software.
RE: Wikipedia just on the 1 year anniversary of their last fiasco have yet to fix the MASM page errors and the WASM page is still nonsense. for those with an appropriate sense of humour, the criterion for removing topics in Wikipedia was notability yet by its own criterion, Wikipedia is not notable. Not only does it have no demonstrable expertise or review capacity but its rules exclude them ever having any expertise. It is a relatively recent internet phenomenon (post 2000) that is subject to anonymous idiot fringe editing on any subject and the better quality work done by competent contributors is progressively being vandalised by their own internal loonie tune fringe.
Its a variation of the "Revenge Of The Nerds" where any idiot can damage anything they like and rely on their buddies with administrative access to their PHP software to cover their arse when they get caught doing something stupid.
This is the bunch of cockroaches that turned assembler reference in Wikipedia to trash.
The instigator of the deletion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Elen_of_the_Roads
The seconder who also tried to delete half of the masm page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:OrangeDog
His busom buddy covering his arse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:SarekOfVulcan
Their partner in crime.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Pohta_ce-am_pohtit
The administrator who did the dirty work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:MLauba
One can but wish HAPPY ANNIVERSARY to this list of anonymous cowards hiding behind their bullsh*t nick names playing power games. Editor "APACHE" serves you well here. :bg
Outside of this technical issue....
Most topics I research on Wikipedia is flagged a stub (never to be expanded) or to be move into or out of an article (never to be moved) or does not reflect neutral bias (never to be rewritten). Meanwhile I am waiting for the articles to be fleshed out and have more detail than a twenty line review or heaven forbid an author write more than 140 characters.
If you want to actually learn something or how to do something, go to your public library.
I read an interview with Jimbo yesterday and it looks like change will be forced on them with some form of review to be applied to article content. Over time I have seen the quality of articles go up then down as the idiot fringe run around vandalising articles according to their own hobby horse. As long as it has the multiple problems of badly written conflicting rules, lack of reference to each topic's "talk" page and is at the mercy of a bunch of dimwits let loose to modify pages any way they like, it will continue to go downhill.
The problems are compounded by groupings of administrators and associated editors playing power games and this abuse needs to be stopped if they ever intend to progress past the kiddies games and produce a viable online reference source. In programming terms Wikipedia is insignificant and the often good work done in the past by a wide range of editors has progressively been damaged by technical illiterates massaging their own egos by modifying technical data that they don't even understand.
Something that does need to be changed is the collective editing decision making criteria, a Wikipedia editor's conference amounts to little more than a verbal mastibating competition where the conclusions reflect little else than a consensus of ignorance. For any category of information they need to be able to attract people who have the appropriate expertise, doctors writing medical articles, lawyers writing legal articles, techos writing technical articles in their fields so that there is some reasonable association between the content and the evidence to support it.
The blanket prohibition on "Original Research" also needs to redefined as the current criterion excludes any content that does not have a direct internet link to support it. This amounts to systemic bandwidth theft by Wikipedia as they choose to provide content at someone else expense instead of providing their own.
Quote from: hutch-- on January 14, 2011, 11:43:04 PM
For any category of information they need to be able to attract people who have the appropriate expertise, doctors writing medical articles, lawyers writing legal articles, techos writing technical articles in their fields so that there is some reasonable association between the content and the evidence to support it.
Problem in my case was that the editors in question claimed to be experts in the related field and yet contradicted themselves. One indicated they would not behave this way professionally at their place of work yet he did with me. And he couldn't see the inherit contradiction.
Quote from: hutch--
The blanket prohibition on "Original Research" also needs to redefined as the current criterion excludes any content that does not have a direct internet link to support it. This amounts to systemic bandwidth theft by Wikipedia as they choose to provide content at someone else expense instead of providing their own.
This had bothered me not just in the bandwidth sense but also the notion that an original or "new" idea is not allowed without some collaborating link. That makes no sense, anyone could write and post a webpage and then write the article pointing to their own page as a reference (this probably happens quite often and did in my case by one ubuntu wiki "editor"). Not only that but would this mean that "innovation" is prohibited ? At some point there would have to be new information.
And what about the problem with ignorant editors labeling what they should be able to recognize as statements of obvious fact, as Original Research.
It seems to be roughly the difference between form and content, people of diverse technical expertise over time produced the content that once used to be very good in parts of Wikipedia but it became subject to a collection of imbeciles tearing around the place modifying pages that they did not even know how to read let alone edit, slapping tags that damaged the content and readability of many good pages and justifying their vandalism on the basis of form. In this context form was argued out of the circular and conflicting set of mechanical rules and the decisions of what stayed and what went was determined by a consensus fo ignorance between practitioners covering each other's arse.
I am much of the view that Wikipedia "jockeys" (those who endlessly edit without understanding the content) need to be shoved out the door until they get off their arse and learn how to write something useful. I have seen some of these imbeciles boasting on their own talk pages about how many pages they have deleted yet even if they were Einstein which clearly they are not, no-one has the range of expertise to edit or delete the range of pages that they trashed.
Too many people have too many permisions to alter others work.
Not sure how they have any sort of hierarchy but the system is too flat with everyone having the ability to edit or move content. Not sure about wikipedia but in the Ubuntu wiki they also had the same power to delete. *EVERYONE* had this power. I don't think that wiki engines should give a PWK to the same people who probably are 13 year old script kiddies that play World of Warcraft in God mode (or DM whatever).
(PWK = Power Word, Kill ; Spell From Dungeons And Dragons [In some contexts I have heard this used as an euphanism regarding how some people get banned or have their content deleted])
hutch,
I do not understand what the problem is with MASM's Wikipedia page. Unless they are calling Microsoft a butthead for creating it, then I .. well I just don't know. :eek
DarkWolf,
I laughed at the DnD reference.
Its basically a problem of it being edited by people who don't know enough to make the edits. Technically Wikipedia is insignificant at a programming level as it has no demonstrated expertise and no quality control of its content. Would you allow someone to operate on you while they were reading the medical data from Wikipedia ?
Quote from: hutch-- on July 08, 2011, 02:36:54 AM
Its basically a problem of it being edited by people who don't know enough to make the edits. Technically Wikipedia is insignificant at a programming level as it has no demonstrated expertise and no quality control of its content. Would you allow someone to operate on you while they were reading the medical data from Wikipedia ?
This is not to disprove your point, your point is very good; BUT there are doctors who use wikipedia for quick reference. The reason they trust wikipedia is because they already have credible knowledge in the field, so they use wikipedia for quick "reminders", they dont need wikipedia as a trusted source, they use it as a reminder of what they already know to be true, so they are able to filter out useful data.
People who are not already doctors can not do that without corruption ofcourse :naughty:
I'm currently engaged in an argument on Wikipedia if anybody is interested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links/Noticeboard
See "slide-rule" at the bottom of the page.
My own experience with Wikipedia is that, if I don't know anything at all about a subject, Wikipedia is a good way to familiarize myself. This helps me to avoid making totally ignorant remarks in public and looking like an idiot. But I wouldn't pretend to have any knowledge (enough to pontificate to other people) without going beyond that to the websites that are specific to the subject. Wikipedia helps me to know if a subject is relevant to what I'm doing, and if it is worth my time to follow up on it (mostly in regard to algorithms).
The most valuable part of any Wikipedia article is almost always the external-links section at the bottom.
Quote from: dedndave on May 03, 2010, 08:30:02 AM
interesting comment about "virtual society"
we have one, of sorts, here as well
one of the first such societies i had experince with was yahoo games
primarily, i play euchre and spades - card games
but, i have also played their chess, pool, literati (like scrabble)
in these game rooms, they have "lobbies" where those not involved in games (and sometimes, those who are) may communicate
it's kind of like a kiosk bulletin board area or chat room - all players can see what anyone types instantly
yahoo has pretty much left these "places" unpoliced
it seems the absolute worst come out in some people - many people, in fact
swearing - name calling - you name it - lol
even some of the women could teach sailors how to talk
it is interesting to see how people treat each other, when there are no consequences to their actions
this is similar to what you are talking about - because there are no consequences for providing incorrect information
the yahoo game lobbies introduce an additional dynamic in that what is typed shows up instantly
I play Go at: http://www.gokgs.com/applet.jsp using the name Classic.
I like card games too, but only for live play, not on the internet.
As for those chat rooms, I ignore them completely --- it is all just nonsense.
This is an interesting book: "You are not a Gadget"
Hugh,
It looks like you have been shafted by a common process in Wikipedia, a collection of vested interests that gang up on a non-compliant author and then get the help of their buddies as well. The failing as I see it and have experienced it on Wikipedia is quality control, any idiot who can type can edit a Wikipedia page and often good quality work from well qualified people ends up being defaced by others who know little or nothing about the topic they edit.
In programming terms Wikipedia is insignificant because it has no viable quality control. If you need decent technical reference, go to the source, not a second hand clapped out website that functions as a virtual reality game. Its unfortunate as there has been some very good technical work done on Wikipedia but time after time some imbecile who know almost nothing about the topic slap graffiti on the page according to some bullsh*t circular reasoning rule they trot out.
Do yourself a favour, post your work on a website you control and use a server block to ensure that Wikipedia cannot steal bandwidth from your site. If they want to sound like experts, let them do enough work to BE experts. :bg
Quote from: hutch-- on December 25, 2011, 08:52:23 AM
Do yourself a favour, post your work on a website you control and use a server block to ensure that Wikipedia cannot steal bandwidth from your site.
My software is on www.forth.org. I don't control that website. It is owned by Skip Carter of Taygeta Scientific. He is a long-time supporter of Forth and a generally good guy.
I agree that it is not worthwhile to post articles on Wikipedia because those articles can later be "edited" by people who don't know what they are talking about and/or are trying to impose their own agenda on the information. I'm just trying to get a link to my page included in their external-links section of the relevant article.
I don't understand what you mean by "steal bandwidth" from a site. Can you explain that? Are you talking about a "denial of service" attack? The Wikipedia editors may be bad at their job, but I don't think they are hacking into other people's sites. What are you talking about?
P.S. Merry Christmas everybody!
stealing bandwidth - meaning other sites hot-link to your files and or content
they use links to your stuff on their site, even to display a picture, let's say
it's ok that they get the pic (one time), but they are getting "free" bandwidth from your site for their users
Quote from: hutch-- on December 25, 2011, 08:52:23 AM
It looks like you have been shafted by a common process in Wikipedia, a collection of vested interests that gang up on a non-compliant author and then get the help of their buddies as well. The failing as I see it and have experienced it on Wikipedia is quality control, any idiot who can type can edit a Wikipedia page and often good quality work from well qualified people ends up being defaced by others who know little or nothing about the topic they edit.
This is the same that occured to me at the Ubuntu Wiki.
To the best of my knowledge they have yet to do anyhting themselves. It still sits there locked in an ACL and they have no work to show for themselves. But of course they still want to edit my work direct everyone to their personal blogs, bad mouth me behind my back and they have the full support of two members of Canonical's Council (or whatever they call it).
Social Engineering.
Gee.. Hutch, you must have really p...ed off those over at wiki, Masm32 doesn't even get a remote mention... (Fasm and Nasm get mentioned) :bg
Neither does SOL_ASM :D but then again I am also "well known" to be against wiki :D
http://wiki.osdev.org/MASM
Van, that result was with a little help from our friends AND I have a permanent server block against Wikipedia to ensure they cannot link to the masm32.com site. If they want to try and sound like experts, they need to get off their arse and learn enough to be experts. The Wikipedia idiot fringe are progressively trashing the MASM page so its the same comment as before, Wikipedia are insignificant in programming terms as they allow any idiot to modify existing pages.
Quote from: hutch-- on January 04, 2012, 09:42:26 PM
Van, that result was with a little help from our friends AND I have a permanent server block against Wikipedia to ensure they cannot link to the masm32.com site. If they want to try and sound like experts, they need to get off their arse and learn enough to be experts. The Wikipedia idiot fringe are progressively trashing the MASM page so its the same comment as before, Wikipedia are insignificant in programming terms as they allow any idiot to modify existing pages.
All of this talk about the MASM page on Wikipedia got me interested enough to go read it.
What is Wikipedia for? Is a page about MASM actually supposed to help somebody learn about MASM? That seems to be an unrealistic goal. It took me months to learn MASM/TASM, and I still don't know enough to claim expertise on the subject. Reading a Wikipedia article isn't even a baby step toward learning about the subject --- it is a waste of five minutes.
I think that Wikipedia is primarily used by high school students who are writing a report about some subject and need to fake-up some expertise on that subject, despite the fact that they know nothing about the subject. What possible good does it do to tell somebody about OFFSET and PTR and all that, if the guy doesn't already know assembly language? This kind of information is mostly used by students writing reports so that they can appear to have expert-level knowledge of assembly-language, despite the fact that they have never written an assembly-language program in their life and wouldn't know how to begin. They turn in their report and get an A (or a B if they have grammar and spelling errors) --- then they get on their skateboard and go to a party, and they forget all about pretending to be a MASM expert and all of that other foolishness that is required by their teachers.
Personally, my use of Wikipedia primarily involves reading about a subject that I know nothing about (usually some programming algorithm). If it looks interesting, then I go to the external-links section to obtain some real information. I don't expect to learn anything from the article itself, except a very general overview of what the subject is about --- the external-links section is the only really useful part of any article.
The sordid saga of my own edit-war continues! We have one editor (the guy who deleted my link) who describes machining of aluminum to be "arts and crafts." His name is "Dr.K" (as if he were a doctor!). The big-cheese editor (with the humorous name "WhatamIdoing") who is supposedly making some kind of decision has so far made these statements:
1.) "If a worse product [than your software] gets more exposure, then that doesn't actually matter to us. What we care about is whether our readers find the link useful or interesting."
2.) "My interest in slide rules has never managed to exceed ten minutes. Like at least 99.9% of the people in the world, I'll never care enough to even consider building one. In fact, so far, my interest hasn't even risen to the level of reading the entire Wikipedia article on the subject."
This is why I have come to believe that Wikipedia doesn't care about quality, but only cares about providing filler for high-school reports --- a lot of technicalish blather that the H.S. student can copy over to obtain the required number of lines of text so that a teacher (who knows nothing about the subject either) will be impressed and give the brave student an A so that he can get into a good college. BTW, "technicalish" is my own coined word --- how do you like it?
I still find Wikipedia's protest against SOPA hilarious. They are one of the biggest violators of copyright on the net.
Take the small articles that don't have any authors knowledgble on a subject. They just copy and paste from a related website. Go to the Fresh IDE article to see what I mean. They copied the Fresh frontpage almost word or word for the introduction.
The HLA article is marked for deletion. Some editors who appear to have no programming skill are arguing over what the article is and whether it should be deleted. One of editors if you read her profile clearly indicates that she just parks on and edits wiki articles.
Sounds about right, while I don't support SOPA in its current form, Wikipedia editors try and do anything they like including copyright violations on a regular basis and their internal mechanism to remove copyright violations is slow and flawed.
Not so the appropriate solution to Wikipedia editors and Wikipedia in general, a server block kills this nonsense stone dead.
You should have seen the nonsense that occurred with both the MASM page and the now defunct JWASM page, a bunch of technical illiterates with DICK in hand were trying to make decisions on a subject they had trouble spelling let alone understand.
Block them and the lazy bastards have to produce their own technical data and provide the bandwidth to display it.
Quote from: Hugh Aguilar on January 07, 2012, 04:08:25 AM
.. "technicalish" is my own coined word --- how do you like it?
Sounds good.. you can place that on Wiki :bg
Nah.. I agree with you that wiki is really nothing more than a
layman's information site, but it has it's uses :bg