Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

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Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by thekohser » Wed Feb 04, 2015 11:57 am

An amusing story in "Medium"...

One Man’s Quest to Rid Wikipedia of Exactly One Grammatical Mistake:
Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

WRITTEN ON FEB 3 BY
Andrew McMillen
"...making nonsensical connections and culminating in feigned surprise, since 2006..."

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by Mason » Wed Feb 04, 2015 12:34 pm

I've seen him around and am always amused when people get angry when he fixes their terrible grammar.

I tried doing that with "inconvience" a few years ago, but only got about 10 edits into it when I realized that the presence of "inconvience" in an article was merely an indicator that the rest of the article was almost certainly garbage, and any effort spent on fixing it was very much like polishing a turd.

I find it helpful to think of "comprises" as a rough synonym for "contains." You wouldn't say "is contained of," so don't say "is comprised of."

(Oh, lord, I guess people actually do say "contained of"... one weeps.)
Last edited by Mason on Wed Feb 04, 2015 1:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by Jim » Wed Feb 04, 2015 12:53 pm

Mason wrote:I've seen him around and am always amused when people get angry when he fixes their terrible grammar.

I tried doing that with "inconvience" a few years ago, but only got about 10 edits into it when I realized that the presence of "inconvience" in an article was merely an indicator that the rest of the article was almost certainly garbage, and any effort spent on fixing it was very much like polishing a turd.

I find it helpful to think of "comprises" as a rough synonym for "contains." You wouldn't say "is contained of," so don't say "is comprises of."

(Oh, lord, I guess people actually do say "contained of"... one weeps.)
Yeah, in my early days at WP, being a "techy" kind of guy I did some grammar/typo fixing like that with WP:AWB (T-H-L).

As you say, it's fine until you step back and look at what you actually achieved.

"Well, I sure did put some very pretty lipstick on a metric shit-load of pigs there. Uh-huh... Yay, me."

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by thekohser » Wed Feb 04, 2015 1:07 pm

What makes Wikipedia fun is that any one of us could pick up his crusade mentality, to add "comprised of" to a few articles per day, just to keep Bryan Henderson eternally busy.
"...making nonsensical connections and culminating in feigned surprise, since 2006..."

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by thekohser » Wed Feb 04, 2015 1:10 pm

Further amusement in the Medium article:
“By hand, manually. No tools!” interjects Pinchuk, her green-painted fingernails fluttering as she gestures for emphasis.

“It’s not a bot!” adds Walling. “It’s totally contextual in every article”...
Later in the article:
He begins by running a software program that he wrote himself, which sends a request to Wikipedia’s server for articles containing the phrase ‘comprised of.’ His program parses the HTML code from the search results page to extract a list of dozens of article titles...
The Wikimedia Foundation certainly hires only the best intellectual talent, eh?


Also note, that it seems like Henderson went a really long time editing Wikipedia before he discovered it has a "Search" function. And he wears a red Polo shirt with a pocket, every day to work.
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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by Jim » Wed Feb 04, 2015 1:42 pm

thekohser wrote:What makes Wikipedia fun is that any one of us could pick up his crusade mentality, to add "comprised of" to a few articles per day, just to keep Bryan Henderson eternally busy.
Spell it "comprized" when doing so, with a "z" for added lulz and confuzion. You wacky yanks love that kind of thing, it's well recognised, and the z/s wars could be lulsy. :evilgrin:

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by Poetlister » Wed Feb 04, 2015 2:01 pm

Mason wrote:I've seen him around and am always amused when people get angry when he fixes their terrible grammar.

I tried doing that with "inconvience" a few years ago, but only got about 10 edits into it when I realized that the presence of "inconvience" in an article was merely an indicator that the rest of the article was almost certainly garbage, and any effort spent on fixing it was very much like polishing a turd.

I find it helpful to think of "comprises" as a rough synonym for "contains." You wouldn't say "is contained of," so don't say "is comprised of."

(Oh, lord, I guess people actually do say "contained of"... one weeps.)
Not the least of the problems of Wikipedia is that for many editors, English is not their first language. Even if it is, they may be barely literate. As a result, many articles are hard to read.
"The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly" - Nietzsche

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by Jim » Wed Feb 04, 2015 2:21 pm

Poetlister wrote:Not the least of the problems of Wikipedia is that for many editors, English is not their first language. Even if it is, they may be barely literate. As a result, many articles are hard to read.
How would you address this problem?

Serious question.

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by thekohser » Wed Feb 04, 2015 2:22 pm

Jim wrote:
Poetlister wrote:Not the least of the problems of Wikipedia is that for many editors, English is not their first language. Even if it is, they may be barely literate. As a result, many articles are hard to read.
How would you address this problem?

Serious question.
I would post a notice on the Main Page, that if English isn't your first language, go to the Wikipedia of your first language and busy yourself there.
"...making nonsensical connections and culminating in feigned surprise, since 2006..."

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by Jim » Wed Feb 04, 2015 2:25 pm

thekohser wrote:
Jim wrote:
Poetlister wrote:Not the least of the problems of Wikipedia is that for many editors, English is not their first language. Even if it is, they may be barely literate. As a result, many articles are hard to read.
How would you address this problem?

Serious question.
I would post a notice on the Main Page, that if English isn't your first language, go to the Wikipedia of your first language and busy yourself there.
Cool. And then, when they take no heed of that ...?

(Cos they really won't go to a lower exposure venue on the strength of that. There's plenty of experimental evidence for that kind of advice, and its efficacy.)

(I'm not even mentioning, here, the misguided campaigns from the WMF to attract this kind of editor. Oops, I did.)

Anyway, I was asking PL, who may have a "which kind of chutney you put on the cheese in the sandwich" solution, which is as likely as anything else to work here, as far as I can see.

Sometimes the answer is "It's just fucked."

I'll go for that.

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by eppur si muove » Wed Feb 04, 2015 3:21 pm

thekohser wrote:Further amusement in the Medium article:
“By hand, manually. No tools!” interjects Pinchuk, her green-painted fingernails fluttering as she gestures for emphasis.

“It’s not a bot!” adds Walling. “It’s totally contextual in every article”...
Later in the article:
He begins by running a software program that he wrote himself, which sends a request to Wikipedia’s server for articles containing the phrase ‘comprised of.’ His program parses the HTML code from the search results page to extract a list of dozens of article titles...
The Wikimedia Foundation certainly hires only the best intellectual talent, eh?


Also note, that it seems like Henderson went a really long time editing Wikipedia before he discovered it has a "Search" function. And he wears a red Polo shirt with a pocket, every day to work.
If Asperger's Syndrome hadn't been defined out of existence, he would be the text book example.

Mind you, AIR Wittgenstein ate the same food everyday or something similar. Computing has simply provided a good outlet for high-functioning autistic types who aren't quite up to producing a philosophy text with the numbering system of the Tractatus.

Now, how long before someone blocks Henderson's account on the grounds that he might relaunch a company under that name?

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by sparkzilla » Wed Feb 04, 2015 4:29 pm

thekohser wrote:
Jim wrote:
Poetlister wrote:Not the least of the problems of Wikipedia is that for many editors, English is not their first language. Even if it is, they may be barely literate. As a result, many articles are hard to read.
How would you address this problem?

Serious question.
I would post a notice on the Main Page, that if English isn't your first language, go to the Wikipedia of your first language and busy yourself there.
Good advice, but large segments of the Indian and African populations consist of people who believe they have native English skills. Wikipedia does not have good tools to weed them out, and consequently many native speakers' work comprises fixing their errors. As for wikignoming, when I first started Newslines I reached out to Justin Knapp, the guy who has made over one million edits (mostly minor if I recall correctly) and offered him equity to come on board, but he said he was too busy. Too busy to make money I guess (we have distributed $26,000 to our contributors so far).

Most of these wikignomes can be replaced by bots anyway, and any decent system should try to design them out of existence.
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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by Notvelty » Wed Feb 04, 2015 10:33 pm

Mason wrote:
I find it helpful to think of "comprises" as a rough synonym for "contains." You wouldn't say "is contained of," so don't say "is comprised of."
Regarding "is comprised of", I am agnostic though I use "comprises" myself. "Comprises of" is right out.

On the other hand, I'm not sure I like the idea of substituting the sort of reason you're advocating enough. That way likes the abhorrent "i before e, except after c" or "you can't start a sentence with "And" or "But".

After all, the road to hell is paved with good declensions.

Hmm. Looks like my next step comprises a coat.
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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by Mason » Wed Feb 04, 2015 10:51 pm

Notvelty wrote:On the other hand, I'm not sure I like the idea of substituting the sort of reason you're advocating enough. That way likes the abhorrent "i before e, except after c" or "you can't start a sentence with "And" or "But".
I try to avoid using any form of "comprise" in my own writing, because it always takes me a minute to remember how to do it correctly even with the "contains" mnemonic, and, well, ain't nobody got time for that. But when I have to proofread for someone else, it's handy.

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by EricBarbour » Wed Feb 04, 2015 11:05 pm

Wiktionary sez:

comprise (third-person singular simple present comprises, present participle comprising, simple past and past participle comprised)

To be made up of; to consist of (especially a comprehensive list of parts). [from earlier 15thc.]  [quotations ▼]

The whole comprises the parts.
The parts are comprised by the whole.
However, the passive voice of comprise must be employed carefully to make sense. Phrases such as "animals and cages are comprised by zoos" or "pitchers, catchers, and fielders are comprised by baseball teams" highlight the difficulty.

To include, contain or embrace. [from earlier 15thc.]

Our committee comprises a president, secretary, treasurer and five other members.

(informal, considered incorrect, usually in passive) To compose, to constitute. See usage note below.  [quotations ▼]

A team is comprised of its members.
The members comprise the team.

(patents) To include, contain, or be made up of ("open-ended", doesn't limit to the items listed; cf. compose, which is "closed" and limits to the items listed)

Usage notes

The most recent usages, compose and constitute, whereby the passive form effectively means “the members comprise the team”, are usually informal and often considered incorrect. By classical definition, a team comprises its members, whereas the members compose the team. It is not proper to use comprise in place of compose. With regard to journalistic writing, the Associated Press Stylebook maintains this distinction. These usages are, however, quite common, with the "compose" variation being more common than the "constitute" one.

According to Webster's Dictionary, the usage dates back to the late 18th century, when it was usually found in technical writing. Webster's indicates that this usage is becoming increasingly common in nontechnical literature, while American Heritage Dictionary and Random House Dictionary state that it is an increasingly frequent and accepted usage.

The use of "of" with an active use of the verb is unequivocally incorrect (see of: composition), thus "the UK comprises of four countries" and "a round comprising of four games" are incorrect.
But I still think this is excessive nitpicking.

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by Poetlister » Thu Feb 05, 2015 10:30 am

Jim wrote:
Poetlister wrote:Not the least of the problems of Wikipedia is that for many editors, English is not their first language. Even if it is, they may be barely literate. As a result, many articles are hard to read.
How would you address this problem?

Serious question.
The best way to deal with it would be to have pending changes, and a load of sub-editors who would not allow an article or edit to appear until they approve it. Any article too incomprehensible to sort out would be deleted. I can't seen the "community" agreeing to that though.
"The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly" - Nietzsche

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by Jim » Thu Feb 05, 2015 10:49 am

Poetlister wrote:
Jim wrote:
Poetlister wrote:Not the least of the problems of Wikipedia is that for many editors, English is not their first language. Even if it is, they may be barely literate. As a result, many articles are hard to read.
How would you address this problem?
Serious question.
The best way to deal with it would be to have pending changes, and a load of sub-editors who would not allow an article or edit to appear until they approve it. Any article too incomprehensible to sort out would be deleted. I can't seen the "community" agreeing to that though.
Isn't that what the German wikipedia does with "Flagged Revisions"?
Andreas could probably tell us how well that works.

I'm not clear what would happen with new article creations, prior to review.

And you are correct - they haven't even done it at en.wp for all BLPs, which should be a no-brainer, so chances of doing it for all articles, none.

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by Poetlister » Thu Feb 05, 2015 10:53 am

Jim wrote:Isn't that what the German wikipedia does with "Flagged revisions"?
Andreas could probably tell us how well that works.

I'm not clear what would happen with new article creations, prior to review.

And you are correct - they haven't even done it at en.wp for all BLPs, which should be a no-brainer, so chances of doing it for all articles, none.
It also happens on English Wikibooks. The trouble is that the present reviewers can't be relied on to sort out grammatical errors; they just think that the edit looks vaguely OK and nod it through. It would require a considerable tightening up of who can review, maybe even (gasp) have paid people.
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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by The Adversary » Thu Feb 05, 2015 11:54 am

sparkzilla wrote:
thekohser wrote:
Jim wrote:
Poetlister wrote:Not the least of the problems of Wikipedia is that for many editors, English is not their first language. Even if it is, they may be barely literate. As a result, many articles are hard to read.
How would you address this problem?

Serious question.
I would post a notice on the Main Page, that if English isn't your first language, go to the Wikipedia of your first language and busy yourself there.
Good advice, but large segments of the Indian and African populations consist of people who believe they have native English skills. Wikipedia does not have good tools to weed them out, and consequently many native speakers' work comprises fixing their errors. As for wikignoming, when I first started Newslines I reached out to Justin Knapp, the guy who has made over one million edits (mostly minor if I recall correctly) and offered him equity to come on board, but he said he was too busy. Too busy to make money I guess (we have distributed $26,000 to our contributors so far).

Most of these wikignomes can be replaced by bots anyway, and any decent system should try to design them out of existence.
Well, English isn´t my first language (or second, or third), but I still contribute on English Wikipedia.
Why? Because I contribute in one rather special area (not my home region), which is hardly represented at all on my "native" Wikipedias. I have learned an immense amount from my fellow Wikipedians on en.wp. If I had stayed on my local wp: I would never have gotten that knowledge.

And sure: my English isn´t perfect at all. But I have seen that if you have some who are good at finding sources, combined with some who are good at copy-editing, then the result isn´t all bad.

For me: working with other editors on expanding an article was always the most fun part. (Unfortunately 3-4 of the most active in the area have been occupied by RL-affairs: it is rather boring without them. Sigh.)

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by sparkzilla » Thu Feb 05, 2015 6:17 pm

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by HRIP7 » Thu Feb 05, 2015 11:20 pm

Jim wrote:
Poetlister wrote:
Jim wrote:
Poetlister wrote:Not the least of the problems of Wikipedia is that for many editors, English is not their first language. Even if it is, they may be barely literate. As a result, many articles are hard to read.
How would you address this problem?
Serious question.
The best way to deal with it would be to have pending changes, and a load of sub-editors who would not allow an article or edit to appear until they approve it. Any article too incomprehensible to sort out would be deleted. I can't seen the "community" agreeing to that though.
Isn't that what the German wikipedia does with "Flagged Revisions"?
Andreas could probably tell us how well that works.
Very well. Grammar on the German WP is a lot better than on the English; but that's partly because you get far fewer non-native contributors.

I sometimes think the German Wikipedia's demographics are a bit different from the English Wikipedia's demographics in other respects as well, which may well be a result of flagged revisions, as well as slightly tighter sourcing standards.

Gamergate e.g. largely passed the German Wikipedia by. Okay, all the Gamergate players and publications are Americans, and it's possible I've missed something, as I don't spend much time in the German Wikipedia, but I don't recall similar outbreaks of mass madness on German hot-button issues either. If you click "random article" in the German Wikipedia, you don't get anywhere near the same number of pig's ears as in the English Wikipedia.

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by Neotarf » Fri Feb 06, 2015 12:50 am

Some days I think Wikipedia is comprised of idiots.
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3136
Or possibly zombies, as Lieberman would have it.
The Guardian agrees.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... MP=ema_565
And you can check the n-gram viewer yourself:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?c ... of%3B%2Cc0
The guy is swimming against the tide.

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by Mason » Fri Feb 06, 2015 1:07 am

Neotarf wrote:The guy is swimming against the tide.
Oh, no doubt. Within a decade or two, "comprised of", "alot", "irregardless", "contains of", "more better" and countless other linguistic yokelisms will be seen as acceptable, and the world won't end, any more than it ended when the linguistic purists finally, grudgingly conceded that "hopefully" can mean "one hopes" in addition to "with hope."

But it's nonetheless inspiring to see someone taking a stand and saying that that sort of foolishness is something up with which they will not put. Fly that grammar flag high, giraffe guy, I salute you.

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by HRIP7 » Fri Feb 06, 2015 1:28 am

Mason wrote:
Neotarf wrote:The guy is swimming against the tide.
Oh, no doubt. Within a decade or two, "comprised of", "alot", "irregardless", "contains of", "more better" and countless other linguistic yokelisms will be seen as acceptable, and the world won't end, any more than it ended when the linguistic purists finally, grudgingly conceded that "hopefully" can mean "one hopes" in addition to "with hope."

But it's nonetheless inspiring to see someone taking a stand and saying that that sort of foolishness is something up with which they will not put. Fly that grammar flag high, giraffe guy, I salute you.
Personally, I confess to loathing "comprised of". Maybe I'm handicapped by my knowledge of Latin and French. It's just wrooooooooooooong. :)

I once had a go at correcting misspellings of complimented/complemented in Wikipedia. But life is short.

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by Johnny Au » Fri Feb 06, 2015 1:34 am

There is also "should of", "could of", and "would of".

I remember a website that shows "alot" as some weird beast.

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by Mason » Fri Feb 06, 2015 1:44 am

Johnny Au wrote:There is also "should of", "could of", and "would of".

I remember a website that shows "alot" as some weird beast.
Yes, and I like that alot.

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by sparkzilla » Fri Feb 06, 2015 1:48 am

Personally I think it's great that this guy is working for free so that Jimmy Wales can get more speaking engagements and Google can make more billions. We web entrepreneurs need more shmucks like you to do our dirty work for free while we fly around the world in our golden airships. So here's to you Bryan Henderson, let's raise a glass of the best champagne to you! May you stand as an example of the how computers have set us all free!
Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them. - Frank Herbert, Dune.
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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by Johnny Au » Fri Feb 06, 2015 2:08 am

Mason wrote:
Johnny Au wrote:There is also "should of", "could of", and "would of".

I remember a website that shows "alot" as some weird beast.
Yes, and I like that alot.
Here you go:

Image

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by The Adversary » Fri Feb 06, 2015 3:05 am

HRIP7 wrote:Very well. Grammar on the German WP is a lot better than on the English; but that's partly because you get far fewer non-native contributors.
One travel-writer who wrote about the Middle-East, noted that in virtually every Museum in the region the labels with text in French or German were perfect, while those with text in English were generally horrible. For French or German they had gotten hold of professionals, English was done by any local.

Everybody thinks they can speak English. French or German: not so much.

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by HRIP7 » Fri Feb 06, 2015 3:52 am

Neotarf wrote:And you can check the n-gram viewer yourself:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?c ... of%3B%2Cc0
The guy is swimming against the tide.
The same diagram with "consists of", "consisting of" and "composed of" included:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?c ... of%3B%2Cc0

The interesting thing here is that "consisting of" and "composed of" are becoming less common. They're still significantly more common than "comprised of", but the gap is narrowing.

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by Mason » Fri Feb 06, 2015 6:39 am

HRIP7 wrote:The same diagram with "consists of", "consisting of" and "composed of" included:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?c ... of%3B%2Cc0

The interesting thing here is that "consisting of" and "composed of" are becoming less common. They're still significantly more common than "comprised of", but the gap is narrowing.
"Comprise of" and "comprises of" both seem to be picking up steam as well.

"Could of been", "could of done" and "could of did" (!) seem to be on the wane, though, after peaking around 1930.

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by Neotarf » Sat Feb 07, 2015 5:38 am

N-gram of "could have, could've, coulda, could of.

According to this, "could of" is a common misspelling of "could have" since 1837, since it's pronounced more or less as a contraction. Probably qualifies as an eggcorn, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn but I don't see it on the eggcorn database.
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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by DuhHello » Mon Feb 09, 2015 11:55 pm

A minor case of the Streisand effect (sans legal action) being inflicted, Mr. Giraffedata will have to "fix" more edits comprised of comprised of soon.

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by SB_Johnny » Tue Feb 10, 2015 3:22 am

He was on BBC News Hour last night/early today. Just sounds like a harmless guy with a harmless hobby to me. Why is this a global news story? :blink:
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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by Alison » Tue Feb 10, 2015 3:33 am

DuhHello wrote:A minor case of the Streisand effect (sans legal action) being inflicted, Mr. Giraffedata will have to "fix" more edits comprised of comprised of soon.
Someone needs to code a bot comprising of code that re-adds 'comprised of' back into articles from which the comprise as been excised, so to speak. Lather, rinse, repeat.

:popcorn:
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One Man’s Quest to Rid Wikipedia of Exactly One Grammatical

Unread post by TungstenCarbide » Tue Feb 10, 2015 7:08 pm

Gone hiking. also, beware of women with crazy head gear and a dagger.

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Re: One Man’s Quest to Rid Wikipedia of Exactly One Grammati

Unread post by JCM » Tue Feb 10, 2015 7:25 pm

Gee, this looks a lot like the "Meet the Ultimate WikiGnome" thread a page or two down.

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Re: One Man’s Quest to Rid Wikipedia of Exactly One Grammati

Unread post by thekohser » Tue Feb 10, 2015 8:29 pm

Seriously, try to keep up, people.
"...making nonsensical connections and culminating in feigned surprise, since 2006..."

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Re: One Man’s Quest to Rid Wikipedia of Exactly One Grammati

Unread post by TungstenCarbide » Tue Feb 10, 2015 8:41 pm

thekohser wrote:Seriously, try to keep up, people.
Sorry, I'm a little out of the loop. There was a big storm this weekend so I spent the last three nights alone in the woods. It's something I like to do a few times a year.
Gone hiking. also, beware of women with crazy head gear and a dagger.

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Re: One Man’s Quest to Rid Wikipedia of Exactly One Grammati

Unread post by JCM » Tue Feb 10, 2015 8:49 pm

TungstenCarbide wrote:
thekohser wrote:Seriously, try to keep up, people.
Sorry, I'm a little out of the loop. There was a big storm this weekend so I spent the last three nights alone in the woods. It's something I like to do a few times a year.
:noproblem: I don't know where you live where mid February is a time when being out alone in the woods seems like a good idea, but getting away from all the idiots everywhere is something that I think everybody should do at least once in a while.

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Re: One Man’s Quest to Rid Wikipedia of Exactly One Grammati

Unread post by TungstenCarbide » Tue Feb 10, 2015 9:00 pm

JCM wrote:
TungstenCarbide wrote:
thekohser wrote:Seriously, try to keep up, people.
Sorry, I'm a little out of the loop. There was a big storm this weekend so I spent the last three nights alone in the woods. It's something I like to do a few times a year.
:noproblem: I don't know where you live where mid February is a time when being out alone in the woods seems like a good idea, but getting away from all the idiots everywhere is something that I think everybody should do at least once in a while.
Trapper Creek Wilderness baby! (and environs) Gets over a 100 inches of rain a year. Saw some Roosevelt elk.
Gone hiking. also, beware of women with crazy head gear and a dagger.

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Re: One Man’s Quest to Rid Wikipedia of Exactly One Grammati

Unread post by Ming » Tue Feb 10, 2015 11:03 pm

Not really all that different from Jayjg's annual quest to get rid of "centered around".

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by Zoloft » Tue Feb 10, 2015 11:33 pm

Merged two topics.

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Re: One Man’s Quest to Rid Wikipedia of Exactly One Grammati

Unread post by Poetlister » Wed Feb 11, 2015 11:32 am

TungstenCarbide wrote:
thekohser wrote:Seriously, try to keep up, people.
Sorry, I'm a little out of the loop. There was a big storm this weekend so I spent the last three nights alone in the woods. It's something I like to do a few times a year.
That sounds like Jimbo's famous explanation for not commenting on the Essjay scandal - that he was in India so there was allegedly no broadband.
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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by Peryglus » Sat Feb 14, 2015 12:26 pm

Alison wrote:
DuhHello wrote:A minor case of the Streisand effect (sans legal action) being inflicted, Mr. Giraffedata will have to "fix" more edits comprised of comprised of soon.
Someone needs to code a bot comprising of code that re-adds 'comprised of' back into articles from which the comprise as been excised, so to speak. Lather, rinse, repeat.

:popcorn:
That would be blocked straight away by Wikipedians from the BAG (Bot Approvals Group) for running without permission.
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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by Alison » Tue Feb 17, 2015 8:27 pm

Peryglus wrote:
Alison wrote:Someone needs to code a bot comprising of code that re-adds 'comprised of' back into articles from which the comprise as been excised, so to speak. Lather, rinse, repeat.

:popcorn:
That would be blocked straight away by Wikipedians from the BAG (Bot Approvals Group) for running without permission.
Indeed. Because all unauthorized bots are always blocked on-sight ... right?
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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by DanMurphy » Fri Feb 20, 2015 6:39 pm

David Golumbia, [i]Wikipedia and the Oligarchy of Ignorance[/i]:
Neither the presenters nor McMillen follow up on Walling’s aside that Giraffedata’s work might be “a little bit negative in some ways.” But it seems arguable to me that this is the real story, and the celebration of Henderson’s efforts is not just misplaced, but symptomatic. Rather than demonstrating the salvific benefits of non-hierarchical organizations, Giraffedata’s work symbolizes their remarkable tendency to turn into formations that are the exact opposite of what the rhetoric suggests: deeply (if informally) hierarchical collectives of individuals strongly attached to their own power, and dismissive of the structuring elements built into explicit political institutions.

This is a well-known problem. It has been well-known at least since 1970 when Jo Freeman wrote “The Tyranny of Structurelessness”; it is connected to what Alexander Galloway has recently called “The Reticular Fallacy.” These critiques can be summed fairly simply: when you deny an organization the formal power to distribute power equitably—to acknowledge the inevitable hierarchies in social groups and deal with them explicitly—you inevitably hand power over to those most willing to be ruthless and unflinching in their pursuit of it. In other words, in the effort to create a “more distributed” system, except in very rare circumstances where all participants are of good will and relatively equivalent in their ethics and politics, you end up creating exactly the authoritarian rule that your work seemed designed specifically to avoid. You end up giving even more unstructured power to exactly the persons that institutional strictures are designed to curtail.

... Drawing the circle just a bit wider, Giraffedata is a linguistic prescriptivist in a world where the experts agree that prescriptivism is ideology rather than wisdom. Prescriptivism itself is an assertion of power in the name of one’s own authority that claims (erroneously) to be based on on higher authorities that do not, in fact, exist. It is, in fact, one of the most persistent targets in writing by actual linguists from across the political spectrum: Lieberman rightly calls it “authoritarian rationalism,” and he and Geoff Nunberg (another of the most prominent US linguists) have an interesting back-and-forth about its fit with general right-left politics.

At another level of abstraction, Henderson’s efforts exemplify a lust for power that entails a specific (if perhaps not entirely conscious) rejection of expertise over precisely the topic he cares about.[2] The development of “expertise” is exactly the kind of social, relatively ad-hoc but still structured distribution of power that the new structureless tyrants want to re-hierarchize, with themselves at top.
Etc...

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by HRIP7 » Fri Feb 20, 2015 8:02 pm

DanMurphy wrote:David Golumbia, [i]Wikipedia and the Oligarchy of Ignorance[/i]:
Neither the presenters nor McMillen follow up on Walling’s aside that Giraffedata’s work might be “a little bit negative in some ways.” But it seems arguable to me that this is the real story, and the celebration of Henderson’s efforts is not just misplaced, but symptomatic. Rather than demonstrating the salvific benefits of non-hierarchical organizations, Giraffedata’s work symbolizes their remarkable tendency to turn into formations that are the exact opposite of what the rhetoric suggests: deeply (if informally) hierarchical collectives of individuals strongly attached to their own power, and dismissive of the structuring elements built into explicit political institutions.

This is a well-known problem. It has been well-known at least since 1970 when Jo Freeman wrote “The Tyranny of Structurelessness”; it is connected to what Alexander Galloway has recently called “The Reticular Fallacy.” These critiques can be summed fairly simply: when you deny an organization the formal power to distribute power equitably—to acknowledge the inevitable hierarchies in social groups and deal with them explicitly—you inevitably hand power over to those most willing to be ruthless and unflinching in their pursuit of it. In other words, in the effort to create a “more distributed” system, except in very rare circumstances where all participants are of good will and relatively equivalent in their ethics and politics, you end up creating exactly the authoritarian rule that your work seemed designed specifically to avoid. You end up giving even more unstructured power to exactly the persons that institutional strictures are designed to curtail.

... Drawing the circle just a bit wider, Giraffedata is a linguistic prescriptivist in a world where the experts agree that prescriptivism is ideology rather than wisdom. Prescriptivism itself is an assertion of power in the name of one’s own authority that claims (erroneously) to be based on on higher authorities that do not, in fact, exist. It is, in fact, one of the most persistent targets in writing by actual linguists from across the political spectrum: Lieberman rightly calls it “authoritarian rationalism,” and he and Geoff Nunberg (another of the most prominent US linguists) have an interesting back-and-forth about its fit with general right-left politics.

At another level of abstraction, Henderson’s efforts exemplify a lust for power that entails a specific (if perhaps not entirely conscious) rejection of expertise over precisely the topic he cares about.[2] The development of “expertise” is exactly the kind of social, relatively ad-hoc but still structured distribution of power that the new structureless tyrants want to re-hierarchize, with themselves at top.
Etc...
Excellent article.
At the next level of abstraction, perhaps the most important one, the Wikimedia Foundation’s endorsement of Giraffedata’s work as among their “favorite” displays a kind of agnotology—a studied cultivation of ignorance—that feeds structureless tyrannies and authoritarian anti-hierarchies. In order to rule over those whose knowledge or expertise challenges you, the best route is to dismiss or mock that expertise wholesale, to rule it out as expertise at all, in favor of your own deeply-held convictions that you trumpet as a “new kind” of expertise that invalidates the “old,” “incumbent” kinds. This kind of agnotology is widespread in current Silicon Valley and digital culture; it is no less prominent in reactionary political culture, such as the Tea Party and rightist anti-science movements.

Thus Henderson’s work connects to the well-known disdain of many core Wikipedia editors for actual experts on specific topics, and even more so for their stubborn resistance (speaking generally; of course there are exceptions) to the input of such experts, when one would expect exactly the opposite should be the case. (As a writer in Wired put it almost a decade ago, “The Wikipedia philosophy can be summed up thusly: ‘Experts are scum.’”)

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by JCM » Fri Feb 20, 2015 8:23 pm

HRIP7 wrote:(As a writer in Wired put it almost a decade ago, “The Wikipedia philosophy can be summed up thusly: ‘Experts are scum.’”)
I would like to think that today it might be amended to say "Experts who come to wikipedia to promote their own work because no one who consults the best independent reliable sources not written by that individual self-described expert will find much substantial agreement with that self-described expert are scum." I would agree with that statement, if I could be really sure what the hell it was saying. I tend to write really ridiculous run-ons like that, unfortunately.

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Re: Meet the ultimate WikiGnome

Unread post by HRIP7 » Fri Feb 20, 2015 8:55 pm

JCM wrote:
HRIP7 wrote:(As a writer in Wired put it almost a decade ago, “The Wikipedia philosophy can be summed up thusly: ‘Experts are scum.’”)
I would like to think that today it might be amended to say "Experts who come to wikipedia to promote their own work because no one who consults the best independent reliable sources not written by that individual self-described expert will find much substantial agreement with that self-described expert are scum." I would agree with that statement, if I could be really sure what the hell it was saying. I tend to write really ridiculous run-ons like that, unfortunately.
Experts who come to Wikipedia merely to promote their own work are still part of the same Wikipedia "lust for power" problem. Wikipedia is structurally set up to encourage that sort of behaviour.

The vast majority of experts simply don't bother – and that includes, in particular, those who have the standing and detachment to write neutral textbooks.

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