[Web4lib] The Wikipedia Gotcha

[Alain D. M. G. Vaillancourt]

Yes, the short head and long tail is an interesting way of putting it,
but it's a bit more complicated.

For one, there is an overabundance of science and technical (computer
programming mostly) in the short head, to the point that it overflows
into the "torso".

Then, there's the fact that the long tail is not really a tail, since
it is not true that one can write any article on any kind of obscure
topic any time.  Even the obscure articles are patrolled for
"notability".  It doesn't always work, but it means that there is
actually no precise tail forming and it's hard to tell apart an
"obscure" article on a nearly unknown 19th century author with
absolutely no importance from an extremely scholarly one dealing with
specialized topics in History or Artisan crafts.  Or it might be the
other way around with insignificant crafts and , since unlike a tail
there's no precise end or beginning.

There certainly are Wikipedia "editors" who could be called zealots but
you can't lump them all in one group of zealots.  Also there,s a
question of zeal and Faith and there's also a question of Order and
Beauty. For you they are etiquette-mad.  For other groups, such as Web
comics artists who have had rotten experiences with the "bad editors"
at Wikipedia those regulars are anal-retentive sorts who want to put
everything on catalog cards and then find joy in sorting them.  They
never use the words "frustrated librarians" to describe those "bad
editor" cliques at Wikipedia but all the stereotypes are there.

You see zealots, possessed with Faith, and ignorant of Truth and they,
(the foiled Web comics creators) see frustrated monomaniacs who are
more interested in a petty ordering of their chosen limited knowledge
than in reporting on Art and Beauty.  The bad guys deleted their Web
comics articles you see, and when a few of them fought back using
Wikipedia rules, the Order-mad "bad-editors" (cousins to the etiquette
zealots most probably) started attacking (with the deletion process)
many other articles surrounding Web comics, like the Oni Press article,
in a show of petty vindictive actions.

Gentlemen (and ladies) we are not dealing with a mammal here, but with
a giant amoeba, with no easily discernible head or tail and with a rich
symbiotic mass of life within its body.  It's a social animal, but not
the kind who's going to lick your fingers when you come home or go into
the barn.

Alain Vaillancourt

--- Richard Wiggins <richard.wiggins at gmail.com> a écrit :

> And this is precisely what I worry about: the authenticity of
> Wikipedia's
> long tail.
> 
> I've already cited the particulars of my personal episode with
> totally false
> information on Wikipedia concerning the history of computing at
> Michigan
> State, so I won't relay the episode again here.  I will repeat that
> Wikipedia zealots are more interested in Wikipedia etiquette than in
> the
> truth.
> 
> What that episode caused me to realize is this:
> 
> -- Since anyone can publish an article on any topic, the Wikipedia
> corpus
> will grow ad infinitum.  By contrast, a print encyclopedia has a
> budget, and
> articles on very obscure topics won't get published.  The Britannica
> will
> never offer a long tail of very obscure articles.
> 
> -- On Wikipedia the article on "Why is the sky blue?" will be
> constantly
> checked and corrected if a numbskull edits it to say "Because Crayola
> says
> so."   So the short head will be relatively reliable.
> 
> -- An article on an obscure topic won't be checked, and will live to
> be
> cited as authority someday when finally someone stumbles on it.
> 
> -- Therefore, where Wikipedia fails is in the long tail.  And it will
> have
> an ever-growing, ever-longer tail of falsehood.
> 
> /rich


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