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Improving Wikipedia Coverage of Computer Science
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Nov 29, 2008 03:32 PM
from the accused-of-original-research dept.
from the accused-of-original-research dept.
Pickens writes "MIT computer scientist Scott Aaronson has an interesting post on how to improve Wikipedia's coverage of theoretical computer science. Aaronson writes what while Wikpedia will never be an ideal venue for academics because 'we're used to (1) putting our names on our stuff, (2) editorializing pretty freely, (3) using "original research" as a compliment and not an accusation, and (4) not having our prose rewritten or deleted by people calling themselves Duduyat, Raul654, and Prokonsul Piotrus,' he identifies twenty basic research areas and terms in theoretical computer science that are not defined on Wikipedia, and invites readers to write some articles about them. Article suggestions include property testing, algorithmic game theory, derandomization, sketching algorithms, propositional proof complexity, arithmetic circuit complexity, discrete harmonic analysis, streaming algorithms, and hardness of approximation. One commenter suggests that professors should encourage students to improve the Wikipedia articles about topics they are studying. 'This will help them understand the topic and at the same time improve Wikipedia.'"
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Original Research (Score:5, Insightful)
Essentially all that you have to do (or should have to do) to avoid the "original research" claims is to cite sources. It's not intended to be treated like some sort of scientific journal, it's intended to be an encyclopedia; everything put in the Wikipedia should have been published elsewhere first. Seems reasonable.
Good to see... (Score:5, Funny)
Now let's resume our program of bashing Wikipedia.
Donald Knuth agrees (Score:5, Interesting)
Knuth is a fan of Wikipedia, but he's a bit leery of the concept, saying that he would not want to have to remain forever on guard after making technically complex contributions, lest his comments be badly reedited.[citation needed]
Re:Donald Knuth agrees (Score:5, Informative)
He should use Citizendium then.
Parent
Re:Donald Knuth agrees (Score:5, Insightful)
just think of Wikipedia as a reflection of the social intelligence and cultural health (or is it social health and cultural intelligence?) of a society.
if a society is healthy, and its population consists of relatively intelligent, mature, unselfish individuals, then a Wikipedia-type knowledge repository would be a great success and a very useful cultural tool. on the other hand, if a society is plagued by social issues resulting in a large population of emotionally-dysfunctional sociopaths, then the signal-to-noise ratio might be very low due to there being more trolls than legitimate users.
a Wikipedia-type site probably wouldn't work very well in a society dominated by greed and the selfish pursuit of personal financial interests either, as you'd probably have more spam ads than legitimate edits. likewise, a society dominated by a culture of anti-intellectualism might result in a collaborative knowledgebase full of misinformation.
all things considered, Wikipedia has been a relatively big success. sure, there's the odd troll, misinformation or spam edit, but one doesn't have to "remain forever on guard after making technically complex contributions." there are enough relatively intelligent and well-intentioned users to drown out the noise from idiots/assholes. most users try to keep an eye open for bad edits, whether intentional or unintentional, and make corrections when appropriate. and as long as everyone does that, the burden of "guarding" the integrity of the information on Wikipedia gets distributed between millions of users, meaning each user has to do very little to maintain the quality of the site.
Parent
Prokonsul Piotrus (Score:5, Interesting)
"Prokonsul Piotrus" aka just "Piotrus" is a rather controversial figure. He has been bought up in not one, but TWO arbitration cases, one of which is now in the voting phase. [wikipedia.org]
I stopped trying to add any content to Wikipedia years ago. WP:Notability is, quite possibly, the worst thing to ever happen to that website, and I got sick of deletionism bullshit.
Re:Prokonsul Piotrus (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
HHGTTG vs Encyclopedia (Score:5, Interesting)
Wikipedia intends to be a new-agey digital Encyclopedia, which includes academic drive, unavoidable deletionism, well-cited sources, and some kind of drive for neutrality (no matter how badly it actually fails at such a thing).
What we need is a real-life implementation of the Hitchhiker's Guide. It should be far less careful than Wikipedia (and likely should be a superset of Wikipedia with all of those fun lists like "Things Gregory House has written on his whiteboard on House M.D.") The two sites really should work in concert (i.e. when something gets "demoted" from Wikipedia, it should slide into the Hitchhiker's Guide).
The third effort of having a even-more verified-and-factual Wikipedia is already underway via several projects. Why hasn't anyone looked into the super-set?
Parent
Re:Prokonsul Piotrus (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you joking? Guidelines for inclusion are incredibly lax.
If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article.
Are you reading that? Any subject that's been mentioned in a magazine/book/journal/newspaper/website with some amount of editorial control is acceptable.
That's every video game, every book, every television show and every episode of each, every politician, every rock band, rapper, and hit song that's ever been on the radio, every school, and every city, in the entire world, forever and ever,
and that's without even starting an argument! The number of fictional characters and abstract concepts on Wikipedia is absolutely staggering.
You really want it to be laxer than that? Here's where you can find that stuff: THE REST OF THE INTERNET.
Deletionists are following the Golden Rule that summarizes the purpose of Wikipedia and all of the debates that have ever occurred on it, the one part that no one seems to get, no matter what:
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that summarizes research from reliable secondary sources.
That's what it is and that's all it's ever going to be. If someone's doing something you don't like, either a) you're wrong or b) they're a troll and you shouldn't give up so easily. How is that any different from the rest of the Internet? How is that any different from real life? How could Wikipedia possibly pursue its goal better than it does without restricting people more?
Parent
Beware of posting your own research... (Score:5, Insightful)
A problem to watch out for is that if you add your own research to Wikipedia (even with all the proper citations), you'll get slapped by some self-important wikipedian because it is apparently wrong and evil to have the person directly responsible for the research itself to be included in the creation of encyclopedia content about said research.
tagged !encyclopedia (Score:4, Funny)
it is apparently wrong and evil to have the person directly responsible for the research itself to be included in the creation of encyclopedia content about said research.
Good thing Wikipedia is a Wiki and not an encyclopedia then.
Parent
Re:tagged !encyclopedia (Score:5, Funny)
The way they reject things for being non-notable (as if there was a lack of space in wikipedia)
Yeah, I really hate that. I was trying to publish my research about how (1/0 * Infinity) proves the existence of God, but they deleted my page. Bastards. They're in cahoots with all the journals too.
Parent
DocForge (Score:5, Interesting)
Or submit the articles to DocForge [docforge.com] where original research is allowed. It's focused completely on programming and computer science topics. It hasn't grown large enough yet to breed overzealous editors, either.
Removal... (Score:4, Insightful)
A while back, about a year ago, I spent my time correcting wikipedia - the corrections I made were accurate, meaningful, and relevant to the topic. However, my additions and changes were mostly removed within two hours of my posting. Perhaps those who run wikipedia do not like my educated improvements. One incident that sticks was when a friend and I added a section dedicated to the problems with genetic algorithms; by the next day it was removed. I had sources, a good and well written arguement, and it was fairly long and not biased (at least my professor thought so).
As for adding new topics, one may try, but seeing as additions are not appreciated, than what would become of new articles (even stubs)?
Re:Removal... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Removal... (Score:4, Insightful)
I bet I could do the same. Not to say perlhacker's arguments weren't well-thought-out and well-researched, just that there may very well have been a good reason for it -- to play devil's advocate.
Parent
So show us. (Score:5, Interesting)
You know, every time there's a Wikipedia-related thread on Slashdot, there's a massive run of people with anecdotes about how they spent hours and hours improving some article only to have it reverted.
I've never once seen someone post a link to the changes they made.
Please tell us what article it was, and what corrections you made. If you go to the article's history you can post a link to the exact changes that you made, and the subsequent reversion. It'll take two minutes, I swear.
You don't even have to go through all that. Just post your user name and the article title and we can find it ourselves.
It would prove once and for all that Wikipedia is as bad as everyone says it is. I'd love to see it. We'd all love to see it. Then we can fix it and make sure that your corrections actually get implemented properly.
Because otherwise you, like everyone else here, are just posting the equivalent of "my friend's friend died from eating Pop Rocks and Sprite." Baseless accusations that don't help anyone.
Parent
Re:So show us. (Score:4, Informative)
Give me one reason why this [wikipedia.org] was reverted and you'll be giving me one more reason than the reverter did.
Parent
Re:So show us. (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok...
Some guy nominates Heavy Metal (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) [wikipedia.org] for deletion and fails in his attempt. So what does he do? Merges every episode, save that one, into List of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles episodes [wikipedia.org]. You see - this user knows he couldn't get consensus by an AfD so he engages in backroom deals to gain support.
Of course, that doesn't top Torchic [wikipedia.org]. A front page featured article with 20 paragraphs and 46 citations now reduced to redirecting to a list of pokemon, with 2-3 paragraphs (depending on whether or not a one sentence paragraph counts) and no citations.
Critics of pokemon articles often say "it's insane that there are articles on every single pokemon but not on {some random subject}". Wikipedians used to, properly, redirect such critics to be bold [wikipedia.org] - if you don't like the coverage of some random subject, expand on that subject, yourself, instead of trying to destroy other peoples hard work. Now, all wikipedia ever does is cave to critics proposing deletion.
Parent
Re:So show us. (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe you're right, but thus far you've acted exactly as the parent post described: Complaining about how bad Wikipedia is without providing any links as evidence. So why not show us these "minor edits" that were reverted by corrupt admins so we can judge for ourselves?
Parent
Not the place for original research... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not sure that Aaronson really gets it regarding original research and putting his name on it.
Surely, it is meant to work this way:
1. Researcher publishes research in reputable peer-grouped journal, and makes this paper available on the Web.
2. Researcher writes nice, easily digestable Wiki page on the topic, citing the peer-reviewed research as a source.
The Wikipedia prohibition on 'original research' is really a polite way of saying: 'don't assert things that could simoly have been pulled out of your butt'. The reliance on peer-reviewed external sources is supposed to get around this problem.
----
Anyone know why my posts recently started appearing with Score 1, despite "excellent" karma? I'd love to know.
wrong list (Score:5, Interesting)
He's got a list of complaints which is completely the wrong list. Essentially he seems upset about (1) not getting a byline, (2) neutral point of view, (3) no original research, and (4) having what he writes modified by others. Well, sorry, but those are all basic features of WP. They're not gonna change, and IMO they shouldn't change. WP has problems, but the problems are not on this list.
In my opinion, the biggest problems with WP are (1) the poor quality of the writing, and (2) the tendency of the quality of an article to get worse over time, rather than better. Problem 1 is particularly pronounced in my field, which is physics; most of the physics articles read as if they were written by smart grad students who wanted to show off how smart they were. If there was going to be a #3 on my list, it would have to do with the factors that make me personally feel like working on WP has gotten about as pleasant as a proctological exam. But that's really not a problem with WP, it's just a problem that makes me personally not want to work on WP. Plenty of other people still seem to be happily maintaining it, which I think is great.
CS coverage relatively better (Score:5, Insightful)
Most academic issues are handled worse than computer science.
Most of the CS coverage addressed on wikipedia is the kind of stuff that working computer programmers would be interested. There are a few theory articles, but you can't expect much from them. Writing in CS theory or other areas in mathematics is difficult, and requires more than citations. It requires strong writing and editing skills, and strong understanding of the subject at hand. I wouldn't expect to get more than a rough overview of a field from its wikipedia entry.
What Could Possibly Go Right? (Score:4, Insightful)
One commenter suggests that professors should encourage students to improve the Wikipedia articles about topics they are studying. 'This will help them understand the topic and at the same time improve Wikipedia.'"
How is bringing thousands of people into the mix who don't know what they're talking about (many of whom think they know everything) supposed to improve anything?
Encouraging your students to go "improve" Wikipedia articles isn't encouraging them to speak up, seek knowledge, or debate.
Re:what (Score:5, Funny)
p=np is a classic theoretical computer problem that has never been solved
"Let n = 1."
There you go. Why do people get so worked up about this?
Parent