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Wikipedia’s Pyrrhic Victory (www.newyorker.com)
submitted 2 weeks ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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One “very senior Wikimedian,” we are told, “came to think of the project as a ‘city built by Asperger’s.’ ”

If you get the paywall, it's readable at http://archive.today/R2rnW

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[–] 17 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

If non-notable articles were never deleted, millions of people and companies would create articles about themselves for promotion.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 weeks ago* (2 children)

    Self promotion is a different rule that exists. Also, their threshold for what constitutes 'notability' is ridiculously arbitrary and bureaucratic, or at least it was in the past. I doubt it's changed.

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 child)

    It's notable if there are reliable sources about it. If there are no reliable sources about it, you wouldn't be able to write much about the topic anyway. Unless you conduct your original research.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 child)

    So? If the information they provide is accurate, what's the big deal?

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  • [–] 10 points 2 weeks ago

    Because an encyclopedia with millions of promotional articles would lose not only its objectivity, but also crater the standard of quality of the average Wikipedia article.

    The Cebuano Wikipedia is the poster child of a project expanding beyond its scope: millions of articles generated by a bot with no one there to edit them after they're created.

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