I was reading through some wikipedia entry's on DMA and their games, and it staggers my just how bad community editing can be. I look at these every now and then to see if anyone's discovered anything cool, but what strikes me the most is how bad the editing is.
Uniracers for example. About a year or so ago it had a fairly large entry and was pretty factual, but now its a tiny stub as editors trim bits they don't like. If you look back through the history far enough, you'll find additions by me where I talked about the split screen system having to be verified by Nintendo R&D. This was because I got the guys to use an old C64 trick of ripping sprites to get perfect splits. However some over zealous editor started asking for citations and verifications and it eventually got cut. It pisses me off a bit since they really know nothing about it, and any citations would have come from me in the first place.
The problem with only putting down things they are 100% sure of because its been in print somewhere else, is that there's never anything new. Its just a duplication of what's out there already. This is stupid. It means no one could EVER use wikipedia to publish a new theory or idea, because some little Hitler will come along and nuke the whole thing just because they have never heard of it.
Community editing is good, over all the right thing gets out there. Bits you've never heard of you leave, bits your sure about you add or fix. But at some point you get some kind of community editor, and they have too much power to kill things they don't like or don't understand. They are usually appointed because they've spent lots of time adding content, but it doesn't means they know what the **** they're on about.
All in all, Wikipedia is going downhill fast. Rant over....Grrrr...
5 comments:
This has been a long-standing complaint about Wikipedia, and a certain flaw in their procedures. If you read into the internal politics of Wikipedia you hear some really unfortunate stories about the forces behind these decisions...
Maybe I'll go through and tear out your contributions from the wikipedia archives and post 'em somewhere more permanent. Beats working while I'm at work. =)
Yeah, same thing happened to me with the Hired Guns article. Stupid thing is, if I created my own HG site I'd then be the source of the references which I was adding anyway. Wikipedia can only ever be a 'first stop'.
That would be the full concept of wikipedia, not the source of firsthand research, but as a gatherer of facts.
This is why bsnes' page has been removed.
That is the rule about Wikipedia: no original research. The fact that you worked on this game gives you a lot of insight, but it really makes it so that you shouldn't be editing the article (there are a lot of politicians that have got in trouble for editing their own wikipedia article).
If you want the information to get out, I would suggest going to fan sites and getting them to post the information about the game. If that information is significant enough, someone will put it on Wikipedia and link to the fan site.
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