Wikipediocracy

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.)

“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”...

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...

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Neotarf wrote:The guy is swimming against the tide.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

HRIP7 wrote:It's just wrooooooooooooong.

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.

thekohser wrote:Seriously, try to keep up, people.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

That would be blocked straight away by Wikipedians from the BAG (Bot Approvals Group) for running without permission.

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.

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...

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.’”)

HRIP7 wrote:(As a writer in Wired put it almost a decade ago, “The Wikipedia philosophy can be summed up thusly: ‘Experts are scum.’”)

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.