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Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:55:42 -0400
From: Piotr Konieczny <piokon@post.pl>
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	Content preview:  Digwuren wrote: > I think I don't care. But after
	yesterday, I'm not sure enough, so > it'll need some meditation. In any
	case, I believe a more worthwile > concern is making sure that the
	topics I care about are accurately > represented on whatever Google
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	Content preview:  Digwuren wrote: > I think I don't care. But after
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Digwuren wrote:

> I think I don't care.  But after yesterday, I'm not sure enough, so 
> it'll need some meditation.  In any case, I believe a more worthwile 
> concern is making sure that the topics I care about are accurately 
> represented on whatever Google puts atop its search list.

Indeed. I don't think Wikipedia is perfect, but I do care about what is 
written (and read) by people searching for info about Poland (and other 
topics).

> Interestingly, Wikipedia itself doesn't care about the quality of its 
> content; it only cares about quantity.  

I would disagree with that. Quantity makes nice PR and so it gets some 
media attention, but there has been a drive for quality (=inline refs), 
lasting many years. As a contributor to many FAs and GAs I can attest 
personally that their quality has improved immensely over the years. I'd 
again like to suggest a certain strategy of dealing with Soviet (or 
other) trolls, a strategy that's not easy but that in my experience 
yields near unchallangeable results (in terms of putting high quality 
content on top of Google's results): instead of edit warring, 
concentrate on getting an article promoted to GA/FA. I do like to think 
that one of the reasons Irpen-Ghirla-ska stopped challenging Polish 
topics and withdrew is because they lost the fight on enough key 
Polish-Soviet articles (Katym, PSWar, Soviet invasion of Poland, history 
of People's RoPoland, and a few others) that they (or their bosses? :>) 
realized that they lost those topics.

> I continue to believe that Wikipedia needs to be replaced with something 
> designed in a better way, with safeguards in place to keep it from 
> repeating Wikipedia's mistakes.  But that's probably far, far away in 
> the future.

Unfortunately, I think that the snowball effect (Wikipedia's size) means 
that no replacement is possible. The only route is to reform the system.


-- 
Piotr Konieczny

"The problem about Wikipedia is, that it just works in reality, not in 
theory."

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