Wikipedia’s information has a nerd slant? I think not.
Something Awful wrote an article talking about Wikipedia, discussing that if you take two articles that are similar (the example they give is Knight and Jedi Knight), then you would see that the article that is more related to nerds, which is the latter in this case, is longer and more comprehensive than the former.
TechCrunch also picked up on this, and Michael agreed with Something Awful and the claims that it makes. He says that “People contribute to articles they care about. And Wikipedia’s community cares about light sabres, fantasy characters, video games and acne.”
I digress.
The examples that are given include the following:
- Modern Warfare v. Lightsaber Combat
- Prime Number v. Optimus Prime (the Transformers character)
- Girlfriend v. Video Games
- Half Life v. Half Life 2
- Love v. Masturbation
- Bathing v. Acne
I will analyze the first two examples, below.
For the first example, we’ve got Modern Warfare v. Lightsaber Combat. It’s true the the latter article is longer than the former, BUT, take a look at underneath EACH heading from the former article, and you’ll see that all SIXTEEN sub-sections each have their OWN articles. The Lightsaber Combat article, on the other hand, crams all of the information into one page instead of splitting it up into separate articles.
Secondly, take a look at Prime Number v. Optimus Prime. Again, the latter is longer than the former. Why’s that? Unlike the first example, where both articles contain information that is fairly easily accessible (a lot of people know quite a bit about war and modern warfare, especially with the times that we live in today), this current example contains a subject that is simply not as interesting and not as easily accessible (the article about Prime Numbers). But, keeping that in mind, the Prime Number article actually leads to other articles that are related, and yet long enough that they deserve their own article. Also, the Optimus Prime article is long because it simply contains summaries of stories that include him; this does not require much skill beyond being able to type, since other people will eventually summarize your text so that it’s easier to read. We also have to keep in mind that the new Transformers movie that will be released in a month has given articles such as this more attention.
Finally, if we are comparing articles primarily on a matter of length, then take a look at New York City and Vice City. You’ll see that the former article is longer than the latter. Some of the sections in the New York City article even contain links to other, complete articles that expand on related topics. If we are assuming that nerd-oriented articles are naturally longer than similar ‘normal’ comparisons, then this is a surprise. If we aren’t assuming that, then this is completely normal. And that’s what I’m assuming.
On a side note, I recently met Simon Pulsifer, a Wikipedia contributor who is constantly in the top 5 list of users with the most edits, while attending the mesh conference, and I learned what it meant to be truly dedicated to Wikipedia’s goals. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch was among the participants at the conference.
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Well caught
Your comparisons are hardly fair. Modern Warfare is an umbrella term, while Lightsaber Combat is so specific. It’s like comparing Television Program and Star Trek: The Next Generation. A more fair comparison would be taking a category from Modern Warfare, like Aerial Warfare and then comparing that to Lightsaber Combat. For Prime Number versus Optimus Prime, the Optimus Prime article also leads to other lengthy articles. And can you really say Optimus Prime is nerdier than Prime Numbers? Come on, mathematics isn’t nerdy??? The comparison of New York City and Vice City also isn’t fair. Come on, you’re pitting one of the biggest and most famous cities versus a fictional city in a computer game. Why not compare the planet Earth with the planet Vulcan while you’re at it?
Yeah, I’m just bored and felt like having a pointless argument =P
Wait David – if Gary’s argument is pointless, how is Arrington’s argument any less pointless?
David, Modern Warfare v. Lightsaber Combat was given by Arrington, not me.
You’re right that it’s expected that NYC is larger because it’s such a popular city, but so is Modern Warfare, as you pointed out.
Well, if we look at the… Wait… Hm. I don’t know. I just like to nitpick =)
Modern Warfare has shorter summaries. All we need to do is make them less brief and the Modern Warfare article would be bigger than the Lightsaber Combat.
David, the whole point of those sections in Modern Warfare are to be summaries, otherwise we would be dealing with duplicate content across multiple articles. This will cause confusion and mass hysteria.
The New York sections are also supposed to be summaries. I doubt duplicate content would cause mass hysteria and confusion. More like twinges of annoyance that may result in smashed monitors if the person is sensitive these things.
David, I’m sure they already are summaries. The information in the actual articles for each section are so big that the summaries are also extremely big.
If you are unsatisfied about them, then change them yourselves
P.S.
I’m at 3000+ edits on Wikipedia so far
The summaries could be made shorter.
Nah, if I change them, then I’ll have broken my non-editing of Wikipedia stuff. I’m at zero edits so far
I don’t think its nerdy, I do think howeva that is gives valuable info though. Whos the idiot who sed that N-E-wayz? They need to get their facts str8.