This morning, doing random page browsing, I wandered across Wikipedia's "article" on Lucine Amara. At the moment, exclusive of noncontent templates and external links, it reads: "Lucine Amara is a diva". There are two external links, one to EB (which has broken syntax that invalidates the link, leading EB to throw a 500 error; removing the | fixes this, however) and one to Sony, which throws a "403 Forbidden" error.
This article was created in May 2006 with exactly the text it has now. In the 15 months that have passed since, only four subsequent edits have been made to the article. Three days after it was created, a bot added bullets before the external link to EB (without also fixing the obvious syntax error). In December, an editor added the "expand" tag, and a week later another editor added the link to Sony (which is now dead). In January, a bot replaced the general "expand" tag with a datestamped one -- with the wrong date (while the bot put in January, in reality the article has been tagged since December, not that this really matters).
The only other related change is that in April, another bot declared that this article is "within the scope" of WikiProject Biography and that it is "supported" by WikiProject Musicians. If this is what their support accomplishes, I'd hate to see what happens to articles that they don't support...
This article has existed for 15 months now without any substantive change. It has been tagged for expansion for 8 months, again without any substantive change. Any person with a web browser can go to the EB article and obtain, even with the cut excerpt that EB gives you if you don't pay, her date and place of birth, birth name, singing part (soprano), and notable place of employment (the New York Met). And yet, none of this has happened. Just what is it that WikiProject Biography and WikiProject Musicians do? Why do people bother to put "expand" tags on articles if nobody is actually going to expand them?
This article was created in May 2006 with exactly the text it has now. In the 15 months that have passed since, only four subsequent edits have been made to the article. Three days after it was created, a bot added bullets before the external link to EB (without also fixing the obvious syntax error). In December, an editor added the "expand" tag, and a week later another editor added the link to Sony (which is now dead). In January, a bot replaced the general "expand" tag with a datestamped one -- with the wrong date (while the bot put in January, in reality the article has been tagged since December, not that this really matters).
The only other related change is that in April, another bot declared that this article is "within the scope" of WikiProject Biography and that it is "supported" by WikiProject Musicians. If this is what their support accomplishes, I'd hate to see what happens to articles that they don't support...
This article has existed for 15 months now without any substantive change. It has been tagged for expansion for 8 months, again without any substantive change. Any person with a web browser can go to the EB article and obtain, even with the cut excerpt that EB gives you if you don't pay, her date and place of birth, birth name, singing part (soprano), and notable place of employment (the New York Met). And yet, none of this has happened. Just what is it that WikiProject Biography and WikiProject Musicians do? Why do people bother to put "expand" tags on articles if nobody is actually going to expand them?
Ha! Those two wikiprojects couldn't support the article, but the mere fact that you bogged about it has gotten the article far more "support". Thank God that Wikipedians cruising for drama works better than Wikipedians working together on wikiprojects...
ReplyDelete" ... . Any person with a web browser can go to the EB article and obtain, even with the cut excerpt that EB gives you if you don't pay, her date and place of birth, birth name, singing part (soprano), and notable place of employment (the New York Met) ... "
ReplyDeleteSo did you fix it, or just bleat about it here? I know where my money's placed.
Why do Wikipedians think that pissily asking, "So did you fix the shortcoming that you found?" is an acceptable excuse for widespread poor quality of articles? Back when I was young, I looked to my encyclopedia to learn things, not to make work for myself. Is there a time-line for Wikipedia finally becoming ready for end-users?
ReplyDeleteMr. Anonymous, you almost sound like the editors of Wikipedia are somehow obligated to produce for you a full-quality encyclopedia... and that they are obligated to do so RIGHT NOW. If Wikipedia tires you so, don't visit it. And if you don't understand that it takes work to maintain the quality of 2 million articles, maybe you just don't understand wikis.
ReplyDeleteWrong Mr Scott
ReplyDeleteI understand wikis perfectly well. If I come across stuuf like that and have readily available material to hand, I add it instead of spending the same energy chestbeating on my blog.
Simple as that.
(I think Scott was referring to me, actually.)
ReplyDeleteScott, let me first note that you did not directly address my question, although I infer that what you might have answered my question with is, "We think our pissy question is an acceptable excuse for poor quality because making an encyclopedia is HARD WORK!"
If that's the case, then, bravo, Scott. (golf clapping)
But, since you have extended the pissiness, let me say that, yes, if Wikipedia advertises itself as an encyclopedia, then - yes Scott - it is obligated to, um, BE an encyclopedia, which in case you didn't know it, is a resource that people can go to for general information about a multitude of topics. If it fails in that obligation, then it has falsely advertised itself, has it not? Should Wikipedia call itself "the online project to create an encyclopedia" rather than "the online encyclopedia?"
Anonymous 2 (likely 2 B Kelly methinks), check the current wording on your WP userpage:
ReplyDelete"I am no longer actively involved in Wikimedia projects, although I may occasionally edit things that I happen to wander across that badly need fixing or submit the occasional image to the Commons. For more information on what I am up to, see my blog."
A case in point perhaps, hmm ...
"Making encyclopedias is hard! Let's go shopping!" -- Wikipedian Barbie
ReplyDeleteNow Dan, you've just restarted the whole Barbie v. Bratz thing again!
ReplyDeleteSheesh!
Why don't people expand articles? It's simple: People generally dislike work and would prefer to avoid it. Expanding articles takes work. Hit-and-run tagging of articles doesn't take work. Looking at a tag and doing nothing doesn't take work either. Hence the clusterfuck of tags and templates on so many articles.
ReplyDeleteThe last anon has it. It's all about edit count. If you tag a thousand articles, you have a thousand edits. When you go for adminship, you have a ton of edits, undeniably "useful", and you have likely not had any conflict because you haven't had much cause for interaction.
ReplyDeleteKelly, next time you want to whine, can you do those horrible citation notices? It goes without saying that most articles on Wikipedia lack citations, and it must be horrible for the uninitiated to stumble on an article defaced left right and centre with "citation needed" tags.
expanded it
ReplyDelete