Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer editors on Wikipedia

Re:Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer edit... by dxbydt on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @08:21PM (#38539358)

There was a sketching algo on wikipedia that was not well described. So I added 2 lines of python to illuminate what was intended by the roundabout description. Within an hour my edit was reverted with the terse comment - "Wikipedia is not a github." ! So I clicked on the editor to find who this rude person was. It was the professor who had invented that sketching algo.

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Re:Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer edit... by janalsncm on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @08:50PM (#38539565)

I always always always prefer code to mathematical notation or descriptions. Maybe it’s because I was never formally taught notation whereas I use code everyday, but I often find that mathematical notation lacks sufficient context and explanation.

Ultimately I’m going to need to turn your algorithm into code anyways so let’s just cut out the middleman. That may not be a popular opinion with peer reviewers, though.

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Re:Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer edit... by tptacek on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:33PM (#38539871)

This is a great story. Do you remember the name of the page? It'd be funny to track it down in the page history.

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Re:Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer edit... by nerdponx on Wednesday December 06, 2023 @11:10AM (#38545787)

That's ridiculous on so many levels, but most of all because there are plenty of other computer science articles with code samples.

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