News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Why Wikipedia is not so great by bonaldi on Thursday January 01, 2009 @06:09PM (#416772)
By jove, that Wikipedia page is accurate and well-written!
Re:Why Wikipedia is not so great by timmorgan on Thursday January 01, 2009 @11:52PM (#417057)
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:A9H3pqjznZwJ:en.wikipedi...

This page has to be deleted and undeleted by admins, yes? So editors with privileges are helping to write this and reinstate it from time to time? Interesting.

Re:Why Wikipedia is not so great by halo on Friday January 02, 2009 @04:02AM (#417226)
Someone killed the redirect because it was in article space.

The original article is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_Wikipedia_is_not_...

Re:Why Wikipedia is not so great by jrp on Friday January 02, 2009 @03:01AM (#417189)
So does Wikipedia let you look at deleted pages? I thought they did but from the article link I couldn't find it.

edit -- I was thinking of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Why_Wikipedia_is_n...

I guess not.

Re:Why Wikipedia is not so great by ashleyw on Thursday January 01, 2009 @05:56PM (#416755)
The only problem for me is its so complicated; if I found obvious vandalism which hadn't got caught by any of the active members, it'd take me 10 mins to work out how to revert it correctly — it'd not be much harder to use it from the command line!
Re:Why Wikipedia is not so great by snprbob86 on Thursday January 01, 2009 @06:24PM (#416781)
Yeah, I think that MetaWiki is overly complicated and heavily lacking in ease of use.

Maybe someone could treat Wikipedia as a back-end and implement a cleaner, simpler, and more powerful UI on top without having to fork the entire database?

Re:Why Wikipedia is not so great by randomwalker on Thursday January 01, 2009 @07:03PM (#416807)
My preferences --> gadgets --> editing gadgets.

Between the various gadgets there, I'm sure you can find what you want. And you can write your own too. There are a variety of user-contributed stylesheets and scripts listed elsewhere on the site.

Unless you're trying to do admin tasks, I'm not sure what you mean ease of use. Just click the edit button and start typing. If the formatting is wrong, someone will clean up after you.

Re:Why Wikipedia is not so great by snprbob86 on Thursday January 01, 2009 @10:19PM (#416977)
I had no idea that was there... I'm sure most people don't.
Re:Why Wikipedia is not so great by InVerse on Thursday January 01, 2009 @08:01PM (#416853)
i agree with you in spirit. for me, the social/political difficulties are even larger obstacles than the technical.

well, you did say obvious vandalism. anything other than nonsense could be a trial by fire to "correct".

there was a satire making the reddit rounds (and presumably hn?) a few months back in which editing wikipedia was extrapolated to time traveling, complete with inane policy discussions.

found it: http://www.abyssandapex.com/200710-wikihistory.html

Re:Why Wikipedia is not so great by jonursenbach on Thursday January 01, 2009 @11:31PM (#417040)
The versioning system in MediaWiki definitely needs work.
Re:Why Wikipedia is not so great by Prrometheus on Thursday January 01, 2009 @07:31PM (#416826)
It's great for math.
Re:Why Wikipedia is not so great by brent on Thursday January 01, 2009 @08:40PM (#416876)
Except for the inaccuracies. I find MathWorld to be a safer bet.
Re:Why Wikipedia is not so great by jcromartie on Thursday January 01, 2009 @09:56PM (#416958)
I second MathWorld. Sometimes I spend hours reading it.
Re:Why Wikipedia is not so great by rejoyy on Friday January 02, 2009 @06:00AM (#417261)
although i agree with the points raised here, am inclined to be critical of the uh, critic... when all is said and done, wikipedia provides a lot of info we can use and THAT is what matters...

ps: it would be to wikipedia's own good if it could reflect on the points raised by the "critic"... aren't we all for self improvement, eh?

Re:Why Wikipedia is not so great by Ardit20 on Friday January 02, 2009 @09:07AM (#417322)
So basicaly wikipedia reflects the society we live in and the many varied views and tactis we humans use. Intresting.