The Project To Revive Abandoned Wikipedia Pages Has Been Abandoned (theoutline.com) 85
For years, an "entrepreneurial spirit" kept alive several of abandoned articles on Wikipedia. The WikiProject called Abandoned Articles, which sought to bring abandoned articles back to life, or "if appropriate, merging information or recommending deletion"
is no more...for a long time. From an article on the Outline: A few editors are still listed as active, but most don't actively edit articles anymore. The few I tried to contact didn't get back to me. One email address I found bounced back. Many seem to have moved on with their lives. The concept of "abandoned" Wikipedia articles, one finds, when one peruses the Abandoned project for a few minutes, is sort of outmoded. Back in 2007, when the project was really last active, Wikipedia was a much different place. One user who occasionally edited "stub" articles -- those with little to no content, often the first on the chopping block for deletion because of their lack of "relevance" -- told me that "back then Wikipedia was a lot emptier. It was occasionally possible to find, like, sort of significant people or whatever -- a photographer -- whose entire Wikipedia entry amounted to the work of two people." Now that Wikipedia averages, according to its own statistics, 10 edits per second and 800 new articles a day, a group dedicated to articles that are dormant -- not deleted, simply left to grow over with weeds -- seems almost quaint. In fact, of the many articles still listed as needing to be adopted, almost none are currently abandoned: Straight Face was deleted in December 2007; Pavane got further disambiguated; "From a View to a Kill" was inhaled into the greater entry for For Your Eyes Only, a short story collection by Ian Fleming; likewise, Forward Link was added to the larger entry for "Telecommunications link."
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And now you get to explain Linux. And why SCO failed.
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From what I remember, SCO failed because it was probably the first victim of MS's extend...embrace...extinguish method of removing competition.
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Some researches say that the WW1 and WW2 were the same war, and that it is not over yet. It may reignite again.
In my opinion such projects as Linux and Wikipedia is a good step forward in this respect.
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Linux is pretty darn successful: 1st place dominant in server / cloud, dominant player in embedded about $10 / unit, dominant in mobile. dominant in supercomputing. There are areas Linux doesn't do well in, like its original target of desktop, but its far from a failure by any reasonable standard.
SCO failed because of inexpensive server big box Unix, Linux and Windows NT. There were better OSes for X86. There are better Unixes at around the $7k price point. And by the mid 1990s there was even a better U
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So much so, so amazingly and overwhelmingly so, that it somehow dragged the collective's experience down to an average value that still fits the qualifier "failed".
Re: Once more socialism has failed (Score:1)
You are an idiot. The alternative to socialism is a dollar slavery with no incentive to compete because 1% owns everything else already. Capitalism is a myth that can't exist without regulation. And regulation by the government is Socialism.
Re:Once more socialism has failed (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you've got the wrong problem. ISTM that the problem (which *may* have been fixed) is that people who know the subject matter keep getting their edits reverted by those who don't have a clue, but who have an investment in making a lot of edits. I've heard many complain that they were never going to bother editing a Wikipedia page again, because it was like writing on the wind. Nothing they wrote would be preserved, so why bother.
Unfortunately Wikipedia now has such a bad reputation that there are many experts who will not only never contribute to them again, they will, if asked, strongly recommend against anyone else so wasting their time.
Re:Once more socialism has failed (Score:5, Interesting)
I've heard many complain that they were never going to bother editing a Wikipedia page again, because it was like writing on the wind.
That's me. I contributed quite a bit in the early days of Wikipedia. I also donated money. But I had too much of my work deleted by some teenage admin with a Napoleon complex. I haven't contributed or donated in years, and I won't ever again until the deletionism stops. Wikipedia is not printed on paper, so there is no inherent practical limit to how much information it can contain. Every article matters to the people that wrote it, and to the people that seek it out and read it. Nobody else will see it. So why delete it? "Noteworthiness" should not be a binary "in or out". It should be a continuum so more noteworthy articles appear higher in the search list, but should not be used to justify deletion of more obscure information.
Should there be a Wiki page for every Pokemon character? If someone wants to write the pages, and people are interested in reading about them, then of course they should each have a page.
Disclaimer: The pages I edited were not about Pokemon. I just used Pokemon as an example, because the Pokemon pages and the community involved in them, were indeed attacked and destroyed by the deletionists.
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I liked Wikipedia in the inclusionist days. It would probably have 20-100x the number of articles it has today were it not for the deletionism. The articles themsleves would be far more complete. Deletionism has been incredibly expensive. OTOH the deletionists were somewhat successful in raising the bar for accuracy. I don't think it was worth the cost but unlike say 4 years ago the changes are quite evident.
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I never really got over it. I had worked pretty hard on a couple of entries for lower-profile mid-1990's bands when I realized their (mostly fan-curated) pages were disappearing, but bam! deleted for relevance. Turns out both those bands have pages up again today, just not nearly as informative, accurate, or detailed, and now all those caches I used for the information are pretty much lost....
English (Score:1)
kept several of abandoned articles on Wikipedia afloat.
If only someone at Slashdot was paid to do some editing...
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No they do it for free. Sometimes they mod for hotpockets tho...
Re: English (Score:1, Funny)
I am starting a project to identify abandoned Slashdot editors. For example, like, several appear to have been brain dead since 2007.
Re:Wikipedia killed by abusive admins (Score:4, Insightful)
Wikipedia is held hostage by abusive admins like Closedmouth and Bsadowski1. Also there are the twinkle using minions like Sro23 and Chrissymad who revert editors.
This is exactly the kind of thing that drove me away from adding and editing pages. Not these guys specifically, but people just like them. They're basically griefers who orbit Wikipedia day and night looking for the opportunity to fuck with people, wreck their work, or just act like authoritarian assholes.
After a few utterly pointless go-arounds with them and their power-mad dick-waving, I just gave up. Life is too short to waste screwing around with people like them.
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I was a wikipedia admin for a long time, but I gave up exactly because of people like Closedmouth and DoRD. DoRD is particularly bad, he's been caught fabricating "checkuser results" repeatedly to help his friends "win" content disputes, but they keep him on because he's connected to certain people high up.
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Your statements remind me of FFmpeg.
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Your statements remind me of FFmpeg.
I must have missed that scuffle. (??) Was it an edit-war or a revision-war?
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FFmpeg, in my assessment, is a bunch of teenage, mostly French, egomaniacs running an otherwise decent piece of open source software into the ground with their attitudes. Some seemingly cooler heads did fork AvConv from it some years ago, and now the two forks spend quite a bit of effort duplicating each others' work... maybe in 10 years or so some of them will grow up enough to stop the ego wars.
Seems a tad disingenuous (Score:4, Interesting)
The article's interviewees seemingly try to imply that the group is going away because it is no longer necessary - but, to even an occasional user of Wikipedia, it is obvious there's plenty of that sort of work to do, were anyone willing to do so. That's the problem... it's hard to keep unpaid volunteers interested in doing the drudge work for any length of time.
Baloney (Score:5, Insightful)
it's hard to keep unpaid volunteers interested in doing the drudge work for any length of time.
Baloney. It's hard to keep unpaid volunteers interested in putting up with the incredibly stupid politics that permeate Wikipedia...
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Let me guess...those that you deem stupid are those that conflict with your views...
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No, read this slashdot discussion. The stupid politics is a small group of editors who like to delete people's contributions. The quickest way to make a volunteer stop volunteering is to repeatedly destroy all the work they volunteered.
It's basic respect, and incredibly simple: if you want an open source project to not fail, all you have to do is not prevent people from contributing. No money required, just simple human respect.
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Also, just the attitude of some users there. I was fixing up some pages dealing with colours because I have a plug-in for Xcode that helps developers with colours. I got in touch with a user to ask about the reasoning of a change so I could understand it. I explained why I was interested in knowing and didn't just ask "Why did you do this?" The response back was filled with I know better, I'm an expert, don't question me, etc.
One thing I really hate when people move a section is that they don't update a
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It's not even the politics that stopped me editing. They don't support VPN use. It's nearly impossible to get an exemption to use one. Since VPN use is mandatory for privacy reasons in the UK now, I don't improve Wikipedia any more.
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Yep. As I've explained many times, the key limit on Wikipedia isn't (and never was) disk space - but editor eyeballs. There's tons of articles on
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There's tons of articles on Wikipedia that are "abandoned" (not brought up-to-date in a very long time) that contain statements like "X intends toY in 2011"...
My 1975 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica has the same problem.
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You own an old encyclopedia, so the fuck what?
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Also consider that some Wikipedia pages don't have to be edited much as soon as they have been created. Like pages describing connector pinouts where the amount of information is finite.
There's of course always some minor stuff that may be adjusted, but such pages are safe to abandon.
Pages about persons is a different matter - there's always some new stuff that can float up, and there are a lot of variations on them as well.
Potential (Score:3)
This has some real potential! Find "abandoned" articles and just, you know, "move in" and own 'em like a god! Beat back any mamby pamby so-called potentially pesky fellow editors, establish a line and stand on it!
So, real question, just because no one is actively editing or owning an article, does that really mean they are "abandoned" ?
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So, real question, just because no one is actively editing or owning an article, does that really mean they are "abandoned" ?
There is a far more important question:
Does an article being abandoned mean that it is irrelevant and should be deleted? I mean there are some things that just don't change anymore and as such I don't expect anyone to update articles on it. I would understand deleting an article because it isn't necessary or about anything of note, but just because no one edits it doesn't mean the content isn't still worth keeping.
Maybe mark them with a banner if their sources are no longer accessible.
From the blurb.... (Score:2)
It looks like it was successful, everythings been adopted?
Why even bother, your edits get reverted anyway (Score:3, Insightful)
Last time I went to edit some Wikipedia articles, putting in actual content, the pages got reverted with little to no explanation why. A few months later, mysteriously, the identical content, word for word, I added (which was yanked) was present, put there by another editor.
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Last time I went to edit some Wikipedia articles, putting in actual content, the pages got reverted with little to no explanation why. A few months later, mysteriously, the identical content, word for word, I added (which was yanked) was present, put there by another editor.
Exactly what I was thinking. Wikipedia sells itself as an open encyclopedia anyone can edit but in my experience it is one of the most user hostile environments ever once one tries to contribute. You can even be a PhD on a subject and make an edit complete with references and it will still get reverted because it's some self-proclaimed editor's pet project and you can't be apart of it.
This doesn't seem to be a problem specific to Wikipedia either but to the whole Wiki platform as a whole because I've experi
Re:Why even bother, your edits get reverted anyway (Score:4, Informative)
This has simply not been my experience of Wikipedia: I've had very little trouble overall with the numerous edits that I've made.
Rgds
Damon
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I have a feeling it depends on the nature of the articles, the types of edits, and whether you happen to run into any "big fish / little pond" personality types. I also haven't had any issues, but I've mostly done minor edits and corrections to technical articles, so that's not too surprising. People being what they are, some conflict and contention is probably inevitable. I'm certain there are some petty people so invested in their Wikipedia editor status that they feel the need to assert their "power"
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Yes, my edits have generally also been fairly minor and in technical articles. I have had one or two minor disagreements with people being a little hasty or headstrong about my changes, and some of my additions have been permanently removed though with plausible reasons.
As you say, not taking it too personally is key.
Rgds
Damon
discretion is the better part of valour (Score:2)
My approach exactly.
I pretty much only edit Wikipedia articles that I'm actively reading (usually to take very quick notes). I make my changes and move on. I've touched hundreds of articles over the past year and only been reverted by an over-invested douche maybe five times. A couple of times I probably crossed the line a bit and wasn't too surprised.
One revert appeared to be politic
still happening. (Score:5, Insightful)
Back in 2007, when the project was really last active, Wikipedia was a much different place. One user who occasionally edited "stub" articles -- those with little to no content, often the first on the chopping block for deletion because of their lack of "relevance"
There are still users (like Cahk [wikipedia.org]) that suggest articles for deletion (within one hour) if they don't have enough content, even if there are many other articles already pointing to the article.
This kind of bullshit will never end.
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Oh yeah? (Score:2)
Maybe if they worked together. (Score:3)
Maybe if Wikipedia folks worked together, there wouldn't be so many abandon articles. Many are quickly discouraged when factual corrections are removed or reverted, with the wrong information. Even heavily cited sources are removed because someone else thinks that they aren't relevant.
Abandon articles may not have been abandon if interested parties weren't discouraged from making changes.
I've known other publication authors who were unable to edit their own information. Some were as simple as a wrong age. Even familiar third parties couldn't get the correct information to stay, because it would be reverted, removed, or changed to different incorrect information. "No really, my birthday is ..." is considered a lie, but trust a blogger who says
I found one particular instance that was very ... well, stupid. Paraphrased, it said
That came after multiple edits saying it is just water. The "closely held secret" version quotes an unrelated organization who isn't in the area. The factual citation was from a local news organization. It's like quoting Pravda [slashdot.org] about a Wisconsin cheese festival, and saying that WISN [wisn.com] is irrelevant because they actually had reporters there.
I've heard of other things, like specialized scientists correcting errors are themselves told that they are wrong, making it impossible to fix until someone else says it.
Rather than correcting information, or adding new information, people learn to just say "Don't trust the Wikipedia information, it's wrong, and they won't let anyone fix it." Sadly, they're right.
Wikipedia's abandonment problem won't get fixed, as long as people are discouraged from doing the work correctly.
You know the expression? (Score:2)
"...and nothing of value was lost."
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"...and nothing of value was lost."
You must of missed the war of words between encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia of years ago.
Encyclopedia Britannica would enjoy nothing more than the demise of Wikipedia.
Wikipedia has value as all have used it.
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Britannica was disrupted by Wikipedia. There was a window of time where Wikipedia had a quantity of articles which was comparable through to the point that while Wikipedia's quantity was larger than Britannica didn't just dwarf it to the extent that Britannica was simply not in the same league. During that period of time Wikipedia was experiencing exponential growth. Britannica CD (later DVD) version was available but not free (or they had an online version). The argument was mainly about whether one sh
Trivia (Score:2)
These days, Wikipedia is mostly just a source for trivia - oh, sorry, "In Popular Culture", never ever say "trivia" at Wikipedia.
Sounds vaguely familiar (Score:2)
Wikipedia got damn hard to use. (Score:2)
At first I edited the entry for Kennewick Man (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennewick_Man) by placing this photo for use in the
aritcle http://i44.tinypic.com/j7ffoz.... [tinypic.com] it was a straight text entry.
Then all of these programs started showing up to add to your browser or stand alones. It
got to the point one had to specifically be set up to make any entries; it was too much for me when an entry would of been a rare occasion.
Note:
I got all the permissions for posting the photo (It's a bust outside the door of
Classic Solutrean (Score:2)
That is why it looks like Patrick Stewart (who is most famous for playing a French ethnic character) and why it was removed.
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Perhaps someone who says "would of", uses "it's" incorrectly, and doesn't know the difference between statue and stature shouldn't be editing articles anyway?
Using "got" in the subject line is borderline but could be acceptable for effect, but "damn" should be "damned".
While reading of your observance of my inability to communicate I also noticed all the mod points I had just acquired.
It brought a grin and a bit of humor into my day.
Abandon this Article!! (Score:1)
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The people who abandoned the story about wikipedia abandoning abandoned entries have been fired. The remainder of the story will be completed in a completely new style at great expense.
Wikipedia Benefits Google (Score:2)
That way, whatever you type into the search engine, there will be authoritative-looking results.
And yet, Wikipedia is a group graffiti wall, gamed by spammers, Leftist ideologues and basement NEETbeards with megalomania.