Something Awful has a flat out hilarious (if somewhat long in the introduction) article on the nerd bias of wikipedia. The point isn’t to say that one article or another on Wikipedia has factual inaccuracies, but rather to show how much more attention certain topics get than others. They suggest opening up two somewhat related articles, where one appeals to the nerds and the other does not, and see how much longer and more complete the nerd-related entries are. Some of my favorites are below. If you want the quick results, just click on Lightsaber Combat and you’ll get the point (”The master practitioners of Form IV make extensive use of acrobatic maneuvers often thought physically impossible without the aid of the Force.”). People contribute to articles they care about. And Wikipedia’s community cares about light sabres, fantasy characters, video games and acne.
- 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
Update: check out wikigroaning, which shows the difference by numbers. No idea how they are trying to measure it, but its very funny.
nerds may not rule the world….but they’ll inherit the earth
are you a deletionist or inclusionist when it comes to american punk rock groups? guess you`ll get what you´re looking for. if you´re feeling nerdy for social network analysis, eigenvector centrality and epidemic growth arithmetics, the results are quite decent and human driven wikipedia beats google-grid in terms of overview and conciseness by orders of magnitude.
I think it shows the potential of Wikipedia.
The nerds are the early adopters, perhaps “every” article on Wikipedia will be as in-depth as Jedi Lightsabre Techniques when enough passionate people engage with contributing.
The nerds are taking over… well, that’s the funniest thing I’ve read today (not sure if I’m having a good or bad day).
you wouldn’t go lobster hunting in a river
same concept applies to wikipedia
My favorite was simply the Girlfriend vs Video Game comparison. The comparison sums up the issue so succinctly.
So, when does it start to transition to the global audience as a whole for contributors? This is something that affects all sites… We no longer see the 80:20 rule, but more along the lines of 98:2 rule.
Hilarious!
I think wiki has more power and very use full
movie download
—————————————
http://www.greatdownload.org
That’s funny. Especially the light sabers.
I would be lost without wikipedia. I have had to quickly learn and be able to talk about very complex technologies over the years and started coming across it on google when searching/trying to get my arms around stuff. Ajax, ruby on rails, visual search, malware, are just some of the things I can recall learning there. It is a really good source and pops up easily with the right search terms. Even to this day, i don’t like to blog about anything technology related without having a little bit of an understanding of it. I like that site. It’s been very useful.
Of course there are geeks there. That was a no brainer from the get go
Modern warfare vs lightsabers is not a valid comparison, modern warfare article is mostly moved to sub-articles (see “Main article: blah” in every section) with only summaries present whereas light saber article is all there.
As for video games and girlfriends, well, duh, you cannot say a lot about girlfriends.
ahh..so painfully true.
How’s does this relate to Calacanis’s new venture then?
Presuming the nerds are doing the editing / updating (which I think is a fair assumption) then he might have the best starwars / WOW / Acne centric fat tail search engine around?
to associate acne w/ nerds is like associating AIDS with black people…the fact is, is there is no relationship w/ a skin disease and individuals, and in that respect/point you are dead wrong.
think about it. otherwise, i see a few relationships.
The unfortunate thing is that Something Awful’s conclusion is wrong. Most, if not all, of the articles that they CLAIM are shorter than the ‘nerd version’ ones, actually have even MORE links to OTHER articles that expand on that one topic.
I think its down to who contributes the most. So in that case, nerds are the winners.
Computers can’t create virus itself. Some people write computer viruses to stop bullies others want to seal money. Bible said same thing God can’t create virus. Only scientist can write DNA to create new viruses. AIDS, Birdflu…
Birds can’t write birdflu virus. There is no such thing bird hospital.
So nerd are smart…
people can’t grow zits at 26-90 years old
If you dont like nerds you dont have to read wikipedia… there is a really cool encyclopedia made for you: http://www.britannica.com/
Nerds are mostly contributing - that’s true. Even if not creating the thread, they are most likely post editing content. Actually nerds need less of motivation compared to us, mortal. Though it still works. Somebody’s always motivated to do something for others. And those others (as the consumers) are happy/unhappy of what’s been done. Different needs and motivation makes this world possible!
Thank you, nerds!
I thought this was absolutely hilarious. I’m a nerd so I had to build a site for it. Check it out - its pretty darn fun!
http://www.wikigroaning.com
Love, bathing — who cares about such mundane minutiae? The geek shall inherit the earth!
That’s pretty lame. The reason most of the “serious” articles are smaller is because they are split up into categories, the link for which you must follow for more detail on that sub-subject. If you were to expand each subject and put them all on the same page, it would dwarf the “nerdy” subject.
Pretty lame reach for comedy there, Something Awful.
Hahahahahahahaha. That was a good laugh.
what would expect? the readers make the articles. so they write about what they most spent their time in. thats obvious.
I always thought I was a star ways fan …
- now I know Im a wanna - be
- I knew nothing of the 7 techniques
(I better get to practice)-RB
haha nerds like prime numbers, too!
Programmer: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 will be fixed in the
next release, …
Wikipedia’s depth is it’s charm.
There’s always Wikipedia’s “Simple English” for those who want to keep it simple.
i actually think that as much as Wikipedia talks about NPOV and about open source / equal access, the tools / process for participating in the service are still too hard to use & too complicated… which results in the nerdy having more power.
while i don’t necessarily think empowered nerds is a bad thing, i think Spock.com does a much better job of making “community-powered editing” a simple & easy process so that a much larger (& less savvy) audience can participate.
democratization & equal access are great aspirational goals, but if you don’t also make the path to get there an easy one, only a few folks can walk down it.
Wikipedia has opened the eyes of many. In the past, we have difficulty sourcing aritlces on some topics- for example, sex. These are topics which teenagers like me are interested about. With the existence of Wikipedia, I get more than the facts- but they are presented in a neutral, academic and healthy way.
Who would think of a community edited encyclopedia? Since the inception of this idea, learning has become so much easier.
so what, if ppl write about what they like
That’s pretty awesome right there.
I never really thought about it, but yeah, by it’s very nature Wikipedia has a narrow userbase. I guess you can always make the argument, though, that the internet literati probably should be the ones in charge, since they tend to be the best-educated people.
I’m not sure what’s most hilarious… the original article on SA, or the commenters replies here :))
Hello! Good Site! Thanks you! lneiwbckcdqss