Wikipedia article is back but now sucks

OmegaGuy · Post by **OmegaGuy** » 2007-11-03 09:27am

The article about Reggie Fils-Aime does

18-Till-I-Die · Post by **18-Till-I-Die** » 2007-11-03 06:32pm

Wikipedia...i have a love hate relationship with them.

On the one hand, they have some info on obscure stuff you just simply can not find anywhere else.

On the other hand i lost all respect for them when they deleted the page about "big bust" models, and up, forcing me to trek around the tubes of the internet to find such information again. I believe it's back up now though.

And on the gripping hand, in the end, it's really not that bad a site. I seriously doubt any intelligent person would try and use it as a real, bona fide encyclopedia and it has stuff i can use for less serious research, like about certain comic books or certain video games.

Peptuck · Post by **Peptuck** » 2007-11-03 10:13pm

That's one of the more annoying problems I have with Wikipedia, as there's a rather aggressive drive by "concerned editors" to cut back on information for things like comic books and video games, and make them more "real world relevant."

Zablorg · Post by **Zablorg** » 2007-11-03 11:45pm

Even if the article was any good, they would still fill every single statement with "citation needed"

Ryan Thunder · Post by **Ryan Thunder** » 2007-11-04 01:05am

Oh this is good... The Wookiepedia article actually cites Dickstar's site as a source...

chitoryu12 · Post by **chitoryu12** » 2007-11-04 08:36am

Ryan Thunder wrote:Oh this is good... The Wookiepedia article actually cites Dickstar's site as a source...

That seems counterproductive.

Jim Raynor · Post by **Jim Raynor** » 2007-11-04 08:54am

Ryan Thunder wrote:Oh this is good... The Wookiepedia article actually cites Dickstar's site as a source...

It does? I don't see it right now.

I actually prefer this short, substance-less, two-sentence article to the one before. That one did link to Darkstar's site, and was full of inaccuracies and Golden Mean bullshit.

The way I see it, either do something right or don't do it at all.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2007-11-04 09:28am

It does? I don't see it right now.

It doesn't. The link is in the "external links" section, but so is SDN, Poe's Morgue and... some sort of weirdo versus furry site

Dooey Jo · Post by **Dooey Jo** » 2007-11-04 01:19pm

Bounty wrote:
It does? I don't see it right now.
It doesn't. The link is in the "external links" section, but so is SDN, Poe's Morgue and... some sort of weirdo versus furry site

Just what the hell is "the Furry Conflict" anyhow? For years that site would be the first hit when googling for Star Wars vs. Star Trek.

Darth Yoshi · Post by **Darth Yoshi** » 2007-11-04 03:32pm

Ewoks vs Tribbles, maybe? *shrugs*

Ryan Thunder · Post by **Ryan Thunder** » 2007-11-04 03:57pm

It's Star Wars vs. Star Trek, they just made all the characters furry, IIRC.

If that's not it, I have no idea.

Vehrec · Post by **Vehrec** » 2007-11-04 05:11pm

I once spent some time over there. They arbitrarily wank Trek-tech, weaken Wars, and create crappy fan designs of ships, and make up this uber Starfleet fighter corp that magically learns the secrets of how to kill Executors with mini-photons torps. They use the 'good guys always win' cliche, write out almost every canon character in both franchises to replace them with sue-lite OCs. They have a couple of interesting concepts, but the trash tends to drown out any redeeming characteristics they might have had.

Also, they never update anything, and they are so niche that they have no real new members and activity in their community.

Connor MacLeod · Post by **Connor MacLeod** » 2007-11-04 07:05pm

The Furry conflict is some sort of bizarre SW vs ST site. We had the guy who was behind it, Marc Xavier here for awhile, before he got booted for being a fuckwit. The arguments are still probably around somewhere, but it basically reovlved around "magically contained plasma" bullshit. The placee is largely full of pseudoscience and has the sort of "embrace it all" canon philosohpy that would make most TFNetters jizz.

Don't ask me where the furry bit comes in. I don't want to know.

As for Wikipedia, I think it like alot of other concepts has been supplanted by more specialized ones (the more topic-specific wikis) but it refuses to die because it still considers itself important (or want to.) Alot of concepts or industries will do bizarre bullshit to stay "relevant" after all.

Lord Poe · Post by **Lord Poe** » 2007-11-04 08:48pm

Why doesn't SDnet start a Wikipedia? Or an ASVS/SDnet wiki?

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2007-11-04 11:12pm

Lord Poe wrote:Why doesn't SDnet start a Wikipedia? Or an ASVS/SDnet wiki?

Because we're lazy and cheap.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2007-11-05 10:30am

Hey guys, how was your weekend? Anyway, Wayne's suggestion of an SD.Net wiki is an interesting one. There's no technical reason why we couldn't do it, but there are a shitload of wiki engines out there. Personally, I like PHP-based software because I'm used to PHP; this board runs on PHP, the creationtheory.org website is PHP-based, and even my revamped personal home page relies on PHP. And for that matter, when I finally start updating my Empire site again, I intend to convert that one over to PHP as well.

However, even if I narrow down the list of wiki engines to just the PHP-based ones, there are still a shitload. Does anyone know how to determine which one(s) might be the best for us to experiment with?

Terralthra · Post by **Terralthra** » 2007-11-05 12:44pm

I've worked a bunch with MediaWiki (as have most people) and it's rather good. The only other Wiki software I have direct experience editing and such on more than a cursory basis is TWiki, which is Perl, not PHP.

Drooling Iguana · Post by **Drooling Iguana** » 2007-11-05 02:42pm

Connor MacLeod wrote:As for Wikipedia, I think it like alot of other concepts has been supplanted by more specialized ones (the more topic-specific wikis) but it refuses to die because it still considers itself important (or want to.) Alot of concepts or industries will do bizarre bullshit to stay "relevant" after all.

I think Wikipedia's still useful if only for the sheer number of topics it covers. It's usually the first place I go when someone mentions a name of some famous person I don't recognise or makes reference to a topic I'm not familliar with, just so that I have a general idea of what the hell they're talking about. I'd never use it for any kind of in-depth research or consider information in it authoritative in any way, but it's a good place to get quick summaries of things at a glance.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2007-11-07 04:15am

Wilkepdia is useless for anything but casual browsing randomly topics. You simply have no way of knowing if the information is accurate or not, and wrong information can often be very well hidden. So if you know enough to pick it out, then you never needed to read the page to start with! I really don’t see why anyone ever cared about an SDN or vs. debate entry. It certainly is useless information and it’s only likely to bring around hoards of utter morons.

Personally I’m very afraid that real encyclopedias and other reliable sources of information are slowly going to be squeezed out of existence by wilkpedia, and the world will directly suffer as a result of its nonsense. It just painful to see how much money people are giving them ,and scary to hear about the plans to send DVDs of the site to the third world.