User:Kierkkadon/Drivel

I think about things, and some people have told me that my opinions have merit and worth. As such, I shall leave the articulation of some of my opinions, such as they pertain to Wikipedia, here. I may even find the time and energy to write a complete essay, who knows. --Kierkkadon ^{talk/contribs} 07:59, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

A comparison of decision-making in online communities

I have fairly extensive experience with lots of online communities, the most prominent of which are 4chan, Reddit, and of course Wikipedia. In each of these communities, content is added to public view and subjected to judging by other members of the community. Within Wikipedia the purpose of the content is, of course, the creation and expansion of an online encyclopedia. The other two are mainly just ways to share interesting content with others. This difference of purpose means that there is a certain amount of apple-to-orange comparison, but I think the basic principle of communally deciding what content has merit and what doesn't is common to all three.

On 4chan, nothing is ever not included. Anything someone posts is just there and stays there. If it violates rules or makes admins angry, the poster could be banned from posting, but their content is still there. The community decides what content is worthy and what isn't primarily by just saying so: even terrible, useless content will be visible long after the community has shown that they don't approve. The next best way is just to ignore it so it never gets 'bumped' to the front page. People can say "tits or gtfo" or "sage" or whatever they like, and that certainly shows the poster what the community thinks, but it's always there. Or at least, until the thread gets pushed to the end of the list and disappears.

On Reddit (my least favorite method of valuing content), there is the famous system of upvotes and downvotes. Ostensibly the purpose of this is to allow the community to hilight valuable content and hide vandalism and nonsense, but in my experience (especially in the subreddits with the highest volume of subscribers) this backfires by allowing the reddit "hivemind" to just delete any content they dislike without explanation. It's technically still there, but no one will ever see it. The main problem with this is that the hivemind frequently targets disagreeable or contentious content over content that legitimately has little value; a real, reasonable argument will get buried just because most of reddit disagrees.

And then Wikipedia, which relies on boldness and consensus. For anything to stick in Wikipedia, it has to have consensus. That doesn't just mean that more people anonymously voted it up or down with no explanation, it means that people actually spoke up and provided reasoning and support for their opinions. Single-word yays or nays don't constitute consensus, even if everybody agrees. There has to be explanation, there has to be articulation. Wikipedia has grown organically from simple beginnings, its evolution determined by a sort of social natural selection. Yeah, you can just blank things and change content willy-nilly, but chances are if you don't back up your claims, they'll be removed. You could just revert it to bring your content back, but that smacks of edit warring and is very noticeable.

I imagine my conclusions are obvious from my wording, but I favor Wikipedia's approach. Perhaps it's because Wikipedia serves a very specific, non-recreational goal. Perhaps it's because of some sort of universal recognition of the value Wikipedia can and does have.

Or perhaps it's all bollocks in the end.

Wikipedia culture to an observant newcomer

I'm reletively new to the culture of Wikipedia. On the face it just seems to be a lot of individuals scurrying about making minor changes; any communication between them is straightforward and primarily concerned with the work.

But I delved deeper, into humorous pages, into the User pages of famous users, into talk page archives and I've found that the culture and community of Wikipedia is a serious force. There are dreams and hopes and squabbles and friendships and all manner of gross organic people stuff here. I've seen arguments go on for MONTHS, involve more than a dozen editors, and link to every conceivable tangent topic, about the most silly and trivial changes. I've seen people leave Wikipedia because they feel like rule hounds are shutting out their constructive contributions. I've seen huge networks of sock puppet accounts hunted down and shut out of Wikipedia, regardless of whether their contributions were constructive.

I've seen userpages where the user invites vandalism. I've seen user pages where the user prides himself on SCORCHING vandalism off the face of Wikipedia, where he presents himself as this no-quarter-given guard at the gates of Wikipedia.

I've seen vandalism that was far more creative and inspired than any real constructive edit could be.

But through this all, all the morass and black, ugly shit that the community has produced...

Wikipedia has continued.

So I can tolerate it. So long as Wikipedia, as a whole, continues to be such an incredible resource, I can handle an infinite number of idiots. Bring it on, rulehounds. --Kierkkadon ^{talk/contribs} 19:18, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia in the classroom

I've desired to be a teacher for some time; I'm currently attending university to facilitate this. Wikipedia tends to be blackballed by educators, especially at the high-school level, because of ideas about its unreliability. And its absolutely true that Wikipedia can be, and is, edited by anybody and everybody. But evidence shows that Wikipedia is not as bad as all that, and despite the occasional serious hiccup Wikipedia is a pretty good source of casual information, and an excellent way to start serious research.

However, I think that the reliability of Wikipedia is immaterial in the discussion of whether it is useful or valuable in the classroom. In fact it is this potential for unrelability that makes it such an excellent resource for classrooms: it actively encourages, by the little thought in the back of people's heads saying "maybe this isn't true, you should check", verification of information on an individual and case-by-case basis.

Wikipedia really does a multitude of jobs in the classroom, and really for anyone who uses it constructively.

• First of all, it's an encyclopedia. It has lots and lots (and lots) of useful information, most of which is reliable.
• As I said above, its potential for unreliability promotes care and caution when researching, and hopefully this trend will translate to research in other areas as well.
• It promotes the idea of open-source and free content. Tux would be proud.
• It encourages collaboration and consensus, where points and positions are explained and supported rather than just voted upon. The very nomenclature of Wikipedia suggests cooperation rather than competition, even in opposing sides of a discussion or debate.
• This.
• And finally, Wikipedia's association with the even-more-awesome Wikimedia project, Wikiversity. When I become an instructor, you bet your sweet bippy every one of my courses is either going to be put on or sourced from Wikiversity. And hopefully all my textbooks will come from Wikibooks.

I have a friend who has been a high-school history teacher for some time. He's quite brilliant, and an excellent instructor, but he's always railed against Wikipedia's use, both in the classroom and in general. Since I started seriously contributing a month ago, and showed him many of my contributions and commitment to Wikipedia, he has (grudgingly) begun using Wikipedia for his own casual information retrieval. He told me that "in realizing there are people like you who actually edit and check this stuff, I have found myself to be ... more and more okay with actually using wikipedia".

So if we want to get Wikipedia to be more and more acceptable, and spread the idea of Wikipedia into more and more heads, we have to present the image of a responsible community all focused on one goal: creating and improving a collaborative, free encyclopedia.

—Kierkkadon ^{talk/contribs} 17:31, 5 February 2013 (UTC)