[Why] Wikipedia will never be written
Will wikipedia ever be written? There seems to be no reason to doubt that, someday, Wikipedia will have sufficiently broad coverage, and every Wikipedia article will please the eye with its fullness, coherence and style of presentation, depth of consideration, beauty of design, and, in general, will be easy to use. . Wikipedia is growing in both quantitative and qualitative terms. The development of Wikipedia, however, does not occur intensively, as we would like, but extensively, and this imposes certain limits on the growth of Wikipedia. Being inside Wikipedia (being its constant and, in particular, active editor), it is quite difficult to assess the true meaning of the phenomena. (For Wikipedia editors, there are only growth problems that, in terms of the editors themselves, will pass with time, but when this treasured time comes, they do not know.) Here you need to "fall away from being" a little bit to begin, at least, to see what is happening “from the side”, since the language (in this case, the language of the rules and practices adopted in Wikipedia) forms a certain thinking, which quite objectively does not allow us to see the full picture. But for a person like me, who once tried to do something in Wikipedia (and, therefore, is quite familiar with the rules and procedures in Wikipedia), but has been an external observer for a long time (not involved in the intravikipedy processes) , there is a unique opportunity to look at the functioning of Wikipedia with a detached look, to see its real problems and, at the same time, to make sound judgments about the causes of the phenomena. I went through several stages - from charm to disappointment - but now, it seems to me, I am at the equilibrium point, and my thoughts about Wikipedia are neutral. I wrote this article precisely in order to best understand my own thoughts about Wikipedia and, perhaps, to help others understand. In this article, I reason, of course, about the Russian-language section of Wikipedia (and only about it), although most of the reasoning in the article can be attributed to Wikipedia as a whole as a concept of a “national encyclopedia”.
Wikipedia will never be written! And there are several reasons for this.
As they say, there are "three sources and three components" problems of the current deplorable state of Wikipedia. Each reason can be considered simultaneously at three levels of consideration: at the physical, at the logical and at the conceptual level. We begin with a brief description of the causes, and then proceed to a more detailed consideration of them at various levels.
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First, what we are told about “in the first lines”, “Everyone can rule Wikipedia”. Wikipedia has an extraordinary ease with which every Wikipedia reader can start working on an article. Just click on the cherished button “Edit” and you are already the editor of Wikipedia! The ease of engaging new members in the editing process of Wikipedia results in a complete lack of system work on it. Everything in Wikipedia is in a state of perpetual project, and, with it, Wikipedia itself is also an eternal project.
Secondly, on Wikipedia, there are fairly stringent criteria of significance. Stricter these criteria, for some reason, is associated with improving the quality of Wikipedia. Criteria of significance transform Wikipedia into a collection of descriptions of "especially significant" objects, the articles themselves turn out to be retellings of mainly secondary and tertiary sources, moreover, the "notorious" authority of the sources is put at the center. An approach based on this rather peculiar “dictatorship of significance” leads to the fact that Wikipedia does not receive a lot of very diverse information, and this makes it very doubtful whether it is possible to consider Wikipedia as an encyclopedia at all.
Thirdly, Wikipedia is made by amateurs. As the saying goes, “this explains a lot”: both in terms of the quality of the edits themselves, and in terms of priorities (so to speak, “views on life”), and in terms of the practices and procedures adopted in Wikipedia collective decisions. But the main thing is, even, not dilettantism per se. An ordinary amateur is one who is extremely interested in certain knowledge, but at the same time he is conscious of the limits of his competence. The main problem is that laymans who have gathered on Wikipedia rather actively defend their dilettantism. As a result, there is an insurmountable gap between what is written in professional encyclopedias and what is described in Wikipedia.
Not having a solid scientific basis under them, editors of Wikipedia are subject to rather opportunistic, momentary considerations, and in their activities they always try to rely on certain circumstances. This is what leads the Wikipedia community to the need to introduce stringent criteria of significance, when the very fact of the existence of an article is determined by the presence of an authoritative secondary source that reveals the subject of the article well. Thus, editing Wikipedia is at the mercy of the case, since it is known that, in many situations, there are no secondary sources at all, and, if there is, then there will always be doubts about their credibility. No meaningful considerations are taken into account. When creating an encyclopedia, however, you expect an approach in which they always use only substantive considerations and, in general, try to rely everywhere and in everything only on what cannot change or be lost with time.
Continuing the analysis, in the same vein, one can find many possible differences between the quite obvious (as it seems to be a fresh, unbiased view) ideas about encyclopedic behavior and the practice adopted in Wikipedia. This finally forces one to ask the most important question: is Wikipedia an encyclopedia in the full sense of the word? But, before, to address this truly important and most important issue, let us examine in more detail with all the components of the problem of the deplorable state of Wikipedia. And this analysis, as I warned you, will have to be carried out at the three levels of consideration.
Editing an encyclopedia is a purposeful process — a process that has a beginning and an end, and also involves some predetermined quality criterion, which allows us to systematically improve articles and bring them to a perfect state, which is, in essence, the goal of Wikipedia. The perfect (it is complete) state is the state of the article, in which there is nothing to add to the article (everything is already described and documented). A fully completed article is an article that meets all the highest encyclopedic criteria that you can think of. As soon as such an article is written, it should obviously be protected from any revisions, for the purpose of Wikipedia, in the case of the question described in the article, is successfully reached, and we no longer have anything to do with it.
So, suppose we need to write some kind of article. (We will not consider now whether only specialists should write articles, or laymans may well do this. I will return to this question later when we approach it by the natural course of our reasoning.) If this is a simple article (about a simple question) then one preamble will be enough for us to describe everything. As soon as the subject of the article becomes complex (multidimensional), the article should appear some structure, and, articles of the same type (that is, articles devoted to homogeneous objects) should have the same structure. The structure of the article is the first thing that the reader encounters when opening Wikipedia, and this structure should already carry some encyclopedic information about the subject of the article. The choice of structure, in many respects, predetermines the content of the article. This means that a good structure will necessarily contribute to the rapid filling of the article, while a bad structure will, on the contrary, significantly hinder productive work on the article. As a rule, the quality of articles whose structure is not well thought out (and, sometimes, even random) will, to put it mildly, “leave much to be desired” indefinitely.
Working on an article on Wikipedia, generally speaking, involves the search for consensus, for example, the search for consensus on the content of the article and how to edit them collectively.
Unfortunately, the Wikipedia editors did not decide on what exactly and in what way should be described in Wikipedia. One would expect that the editors of Wikipedia would first agree on what should be the subject of each article of a certain type and what the structure of the article of each type should be. In practice, all these questions are given at the mercy of "common sense" and are always solved "in the course of the play."
Further, suppose we already have some coordinated version, and suddenly a new editor comes in with his ideas and with his ideas about what should be written in the article and how. Of course, he immediately comes into conflict with the Community in the person of editors, active in the same subject. Such conflicts are necessarily accompanied by wars of edits, attempts to explain the rules of Wikipedia to beginners, and, in general, can end in indefinite blockages. The problem here arises from the fact that the Wikipedia reader always has an “Edit” button at hand. Ease of editing Wikipedia is the birth trauma of Wikipedia: on the one hand, it is an integral part of the concept of Wikipedia itself and its most important advantage, but at the same time, on the other hand, it turns out to be its biggest drawback, which can be said to turn into Wikipedia is the most fatal way.
If we wanted to organize the work on the encyclopedia in the optimal way, we would definitely have clearly divided the process and the result (of this process). We would ensure that in the main space there are always only agreed versions of the articles. Moreover, what is fundamentally important here, these must necessarily be completed versions of articles, that is, versions in which, if there is nothing necessary, but everything that is, is needed, and there is nothing that would hang in any way. in the air. At the same time, we would like to have the “Draft:” namespace where all kinds of pieces of articles made by various participants would be located and where the community (in the person directly interested in developing a given topic) would choose the best implementation option. Pressing the "Edit" button, a new Wikipedia member would have to get into a new world for himself, in which there are: 1) other members, called editors; 2) different ideas on how to edit this article; and, finally, 3) a certain order of work on the article (including certain rules of interaction with other participants).
Indeed, how can you add something to an article that is a complete (albeit intermediate) result of the efforts of a certain group of authors? How can, for example, destroy an already defined structure? After all, it will be a gross intervention! In theory, actions that modify articles (from the main space) should be performed only by administrators. But not only and not so much because administrators are, as a rule, more experienced participants, but rather because this should be the general procedure: first, the community accumulates a certain amount of content (in the form of separate variants of individual paragraphs, sections, or even , whole articles), then all interested participants come to a consensus, and only the administrator embodies the result of the found consensus in the main space, moreover, as the author (a fragment of the article, and, therefore, as a co-author of the whole stat si) indicates the author of the option chosen by consensus.
Unfortunately, Wikipedia mixes the process and the result, which is why we, the readers of Wikipedia, not only have to contemplate all sorts of patterns and warnings in the articles, disfiguring articles, but see, in fact, instead of the articles, only semi-finished products thrown by someone blanks, empty sections and other statements hanging in the air, not disclosed, not explained and, accordingly, not substantiated.
Very much in Wikipedia rests on the technical backwardness of Wikipedia itself. Firstly, the very fact that the working unit of editing is an article (and its separate fragments) is erroneous. Encyclopedia, first of all, tells the reader certain facts. These facts should be the basic processing unit. Secondly, very much information on Wikipedia is formalized and can be stored in a database. Therefore, Wikipedia should be thought of as a kind of superstructure above the database. More precisely, it would make sense to talk about the semantic knowledge base. (Wikidata could be considered a step in this direction.) Third, Wikipedia does not have mechanisms for collectively working on articles.
Here, it is very important to understand that, in fact, the reader does not need a specific article in the encyclopedia, but an answer to his own reader's question. The full answer to the question posed is, always, a long text that, although it can be made up as a separate article, is in fact the result of extracts from a variety of real encyclopedia articles. In the usual situation, the reader takes a certain article and is either completely satisfied with its content, or refers to other articles that are referenced in the main article. A good Wikipedia article design style assumes that articles related to this one are cited in the main article as a short paragraph, and a special template (“Main article”) is used for this, indicating the full version of the article being quoted. The quote is needed to make the text connected. Otherwise, the article turns into a catalog of links (the notorious “list”), which seems unacceptable for an encyclopedia. Ideally, the reader should be able to consistently disclose more and more new details, thereby forming a single text. Moreover, the ideal result of the work of the reader with the encyclopedia is the automatic formation of a book containing the compilation of many different articles of the encyclopedia, related to a common theme defined by the reader's inquiry. That is why, it is advisable to make individual facts (they are: semantic units) as a unit of processing in order to effectively create such books, which are, in fact, the result of a kind of information "integral" taken along the contour defined by the reader's actions.
It is also necessary to recall the concept of "trans-inclusion", formulated by Ted Nelson. This concept lies in the fact that we provide the reader, in fact, not a mechanism for moving from one document to another (implemented now in the form of so-called “hyperlinks”), but we establish an inseparable link between the two documents. Imagine a global network based on the mechanism of "trans-operations". In such a WEB, for each entity of the real world, it will be possible to create its own unique document and, then, using the mechanism of “trans-inclusions”, organize a full-fledged semantic network. It is enough to start a document for an individual person in a WEB (scientific concept, object and phenomenon of animate and inanimate nature, philosophical concept, events, settlements, etc.,), then, to attach documents to this , one way or another connected with this, and then, all information will automatically be attached to common centers (and, in particular, any duplication of information will be impossible). Such a WEB is, in fact, automatically generated by a network semantic distributed knowledge base. To automate the formation of the knowledge base, of course, it is necessary that it was impossible to save simple text in the WEB: each text processed in the WEB must be carefully pre-marked. This means that, potentially, every word in a text document can be (and should be!) A hyperlink (more precisely, “transclusion”), and when you save a new document in the WEB, all new links should be automatically established. In other words, creating each page in such a semantic WEB would be completely analogous to a transaction in ordinary databases, when, as a result of the transaction, the contents of the set of affected tables change. The “trans-inclusion” mechanism, just, is designed not only to ensure the routing of search queries, but also to ensure the routing of all changes made. Ultimately, this WEB 3.x could be thought of as one big Wikipedia, where each page has its own history of changes (respectively, there is always the opportunity to refer to a specific version of the page), the pages once created, do not disappear (respectively , there is no "fragility of links"), at the same time, many other (sub) pages are always automatically associated with each page (for example, it would be possible to contain all the pages of its discussions with each object).
It is clear that in such a semantic WEB there is no place either for the search engines or for Wikipedia, since in such a semantic WEB, the search is built-in (all the information is well structured and carefully indexed), and WEB itself essence, and it turns out to be the World Encyclopedia. In such an Encyclopedia, for example, any organization (providing certain services) has its own ordered set of documents and related discussions, operations (for accessing the services provided) and protocols (allowing to learn the history of this organization). The same applies to any city, region, country, and, also, any personalities, scientific concepts or objects and phenomena of animate and inanimate nature. The trouble with Wikipedia lies in the fact that it is trying to locally (and, moreover, in a strongly truncated form!) To realize what should be implemented globally. Thus, the localization of the initially global task, (in) naturally leads to the localization of everything and everyone, including the emergence of the notorious criteria of significance. As a result, that which originally claimed to be something more risks not even doing the small things that it limited itself.
Let's list those signs which each encyclopedic article should possess. First, the encyclopedic article should be fairly complete. The article should be written so that the reader can get the most complete picture of the subject of the article (which, only, can be obtained without reference to the original). The article should be sufficiently detailed and developed to not only provide an opportunity to get a complete picture of the subject of the article, but also to get this idea without referring to any (primary or secondary) sources or even to other articles of the encyclopedia. The meaning and the main message of each article is to give an explanation sufficient for a non-expert. Although the article necessarily contains sections that are only needed by specialists, the exposition, however, should be structured in such a way that a non-specialist could enter the topic. That is why the popular character of presentation in a universal language without juggling with terms and formulas is very important. At the same time, it is necessary to adhere to scientific accuracy, to avoid any liberties of speech and figurative expressions. The general approach involves the presentation of the simple to the complex, but at the same time, from the general to the particular. By telling "first lines" the most common things, you correctly orient the reader in the direction of his searches. Particulars (very important in themselves) should not obscure the essence of the issue. The style of presentation should be as explanatory and explanatory as possible. The “telegraphic” style of presentation, which turns articles into a dump of facts, is completely unacceptable, and, all the more, it is completely unacceptable to create articles, as if copied from a bad textbook, arising as if from “from nowhere”. The most important property of encyclopedicism is connectivity: connectivity of presentation (within one article), connectivity of presentation (in articles on specific topics) and connectivity of articles (as such).
But the most serious question: this is the question of what exactly is the subject of the article and what should be, in accordance with the selected subject of the article, its main content. The “main content”, however, is essentially connected and linked to the completeness of the information presented in the encyclopedia. When you open the encyclopedia, you expect to find everything in it. If this is a specialized encyclopedia, then you expect to find in it a description of each concept from the corresponding subject area. If this is, for example, a cinema encyclopedia, then you expect to find descriptions of all the released films (of all times and peoples) in it. If this is a literary encyclopedia, then you expect to find in it descriptions of all literary works, and, also, all literary characters of all literary works. Etc. etc.
Paper encyclopedias have a limited amount. Paper encyclopedias are made by a very limited team of authors. In addition, there is also a certain time limit: the paper encyclopedia must also be published. That is why when creating a paper encyclopedia, the question of material selection is particularly acute. The electronic encyclopedia does not have such strong restrictions on the volume (you can always provide a new place), so a natural question arises: what washed away to select the material for the electronic encyclopedia with the same care as for the paper one? It is because of this “thoroughness” in Wikipedia that various criteria of significance arise, which significantly limit the range of topics and issues that are reflected in Wikipedia.
Wikipedia’s First Pillar states that “Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that includes elements of general and specialized encyclopedias, yearbooks and geographical directories.” One would expect that Wikipedia is, at a minimum, a mechanical union of all existing encyclopedias and reference books. However, it is not. The criteria for the significance of Wikipedia are independent. At the same time, Wikipedia could not only be a union of an existing one, but also could offer something new and previously inaccessible to us. And here we come to the first essential question concerning Wikipedia: what should be the scope of Wikipedia?
What, in general, do the reader need? What, in general, may interest him? We will try to answer these questions with the example of artistic / musical works, as well as with the example of films / series, television and radio programs. (As you see, a rather wide range of objects is seen here, embracing an essential part of our everyday life.) First, the reader can search for a well-defined book or film. Suppose he reads a certain journal article, for example, an interview with a critic or actor, where a certain story or role in the film is mentioned.If the interview tells you the name of the story or film, then the interested reader opens the encyclopedia hoping to find relevant information. Encyclopedia here is the most important means of identifying an object. In this case, this will be the answer to the question: what kind of story / film is it? And if there is no title, but is there a short description of the plot or is there any plot feature indicated? In order to find the necessary information in the encyclopedia, this very information in the encyclopedia must be presented in the most detailed form. But, most importantly, in the encyclopedia there must be a mention of this story / film, and, of course, there will be nothing better if the encyclopedia contains a full article on this story / film.
The question is, what have any criteria of significance here? Tales spelled great sea. The same is the great sea and movies. It is absolutely impossible that all these stories (novels, novels or even simple individual poems, musical works, pictures) and films (and, also, radio and television programs, performances of musical works) were noticed by critics, and, more critics especially reputable. Not to mention, about various festivals, exhibitions, conferences. Again, the most important function of the encyclopedia is the function “to find an object”, which means that the encyclopedia, first of all, must witness the very existence of the object, and already that this object has some special meaning (clothed with special attention) is secondary and incidental. In fact,The reader needs a comprehensive database of all questions. Some attempt to make such a movie database is IMDB. But, one wonders, why create any separate unrelated resources for each area of ​​human knowledge, if you can make one centralized resource, where you can put together all the different information?
In general, articles about films in Wikipedia quite clearly show what the result is absolutely not encyclopedic approach to business. Take, for example, the article “[[Hackers (film)]]”, which (surprise!) Does not contain encyclopedic content. Firstly, there is no description of the film itself. It is rather difficult to consider as such a “short” description of the plot in the most general words. This helpless “synopsis” ends with an eloquent sentence: “Now the hackers have joined together via the Internet and started a war with a cynical villain.” And where is the description of what this very war consisted of? Too general and uninformative! Secondly, the description of the characters is completely absent. Thirdly, the section "Interesting Facts" contains a lot of information that is an integral part of the information about the film itself, and therefore, can not be simply "interesting facts",but should be mentioned in other sections of the article (for example, in the section “Production / production process”, which tells about the filming of the film), or, for example, should be present in the description of the film itself. In particular, the “interesting fact” that “The words“ ARF! ARF! Gotcha! "(" ARF! ARF! WE GOTCHA! ") ... are a reference to one of the earliest hacker programs ..." should appear in the article as a note to the next piece of the film description: "when the mainframe goes into an alarm condition, on the Gibson display the words “ARF! ARF! Gotcha! ”(“ ARF! ARF! WE GOTCHA! ”)” (For example). If you bring all these arguments to a logical conclusion and write a real encyclopedic article about this film, it becomes clear not only that the existing “article” is not an article, but a useless sketch, but alsohow inherently anti-encyclopaedic is the installation of Wikipedia [[VI: NONSUE]]. The plot and, above all, the plot! Moreover, not so much and not only the plot, as a detailed description of the artistic or musical work (film, program).
And here we come to the second essential question: what should be the depth of consideration of the issue in Wikipedia?
All one way or another use libraries. And why we do not have the appropriate type of audio libraries and video libraries? Imagine, for example, that you come to an analogue of a library where a program of radio and television programs is used as a directory. At the same time, you not only can find out what was planned, but also find out what was actually played on the radio and / or shown on television. Moreover, if we also consider musical works, then you probably want to know who performed this or that work, when and under what circumstances. And, of course, if we are talking about a work of art, it would be very nice to get the opportunity to learn about all the screen versions of this work, as well as about all the performances on the stage. And it will be quite goodif there is an opportunity to watch each film version or to see / listen to a theatrical production (if it is, for example, about a miracle! it was recorded). Of course, this all sounds pretty exaggerated. Nobody (in their right mind) will try to embrace the immensity, but we must at least have the opportunity to find everything we need. It should be noted that listening and viewing is only part of the question. Another part of the question is related to conducting all kinds of research. And to conduct any research you need to have the original data (primary material). The question is, is it not an interesting and urgent task to create a database of such primary data?Nobody (in their right mind) will try to embrace the immensity, but we must at least have the opportunity to find everything we need. It should be noted that listening and viewing is only part of the question. Another part of the question is related to conducting all kinds of research. And to conduct any research you need to have the original data (primary material). The question is, is it not an interesting and urgent task to create a database of such primary data?Nobody (in their right mind) will try to embrace the immensity, but we must at least have the opportunity to find everything we need. It should be noted that listening and viewing is only part of the question. Another part of the question is related to conducting all kinds of research. And to conduct any research you need to have the original data (primary material). The question is, is it not an interesting and urgent task to create a database of such primary data?Is it not an interesting and urgent task to create a database of such primary data?Is it not an interesting and urgent task to create a database of such primary data?
However, to conduct research, not only primary, but also secondary sources are needed, and all kinds of reviews of primary sources should be used as secondary sources. For example, to write the political history of a country of a certain period, it is extremely important to have descriptions of all the airs with the participation of politicians, economists, political scientists and other experts. Everything is important here: who says what he says, what methods he uses, how it relates to real events, what laws are actually adopted. In order to get all this complete, accurate and reliable information, you need to have a text description of each air in the form of an abstract (summary), moreover, this abstract should be supplied with numerous footnotes indicating the degree of validity of the statements made (in the form of indications of sources,where you can find suitable information), including in the sense that it turned out much later, when the situation under discussion was resolved in a certain way, or answers were received to questions posed (for example, by a journalist). Note that the same interview is, conditionally speaking, a supplier of information both in relation to the interviewee (policy) and in relation to the interviewee (journalist), not to mention the events, persons and circumstances mentioned in the interview. This means that every single interview can give a significant amount of diverse and diverse encyclopedic information for many different encyclopedic articles.or answers were received to questions posed (for example, by a journalist). Note that the same interview is, conditionally speaking, a supplier of information both in relation to the interviewee (policy) and in relation to the interviewee (journalist), not to mention the events, persons and circumstances mentioned in the interview. This means that every single interview can give a significant amount of diverse and diverse encyclopedic information for many different encyclopedic articles.or answers were received to questions posed (for example, by a journalist). Note that the same interview is, conditionally speaking, a supplier of information both in relation to the interviewee (policy) and in relation to the interviewee (journalist), not to mention the events, persons and circumstances mentioned in the interview. This means that every single interview can give a significant amount of diverse and diverse encyclopedic information for many different encyclopedic articles.that every single interview is capable of giving a significant amount of diverse and diverse encyclopedic information for many different encyclopedic articles.that every single interview is capable of giving a significant amount of diverse and diverse encyclopedic information for many different encyclopedic articles.
In order to fully experience all the difficulties associated with working on Wikipedia, I will give this example. You probably still remember the magazine "Computerra"? Once out such a magazine. The question is, how can a whole magazine be presented in an encyclopedia? The existing approach is simple: nothing. If you look at Wikipedia, you will see an article that tells us only about the fact of the existence of such a journal, some milestones and chief editors of this publication. And it's all? And who, in general, worked in this magazine? What did this magazine write about? What was the style of this magazine? How did the look of the magazine change? This all you will not find in Wikipedia. (I remember once, almost, not myself, I created the article “[[Ilya Shchurov]]”. - Do you still remember such an editor, Computerry? ”- Then they left it. It seems that it still took place. But, over time ,significance has been lost, and the article was relatively recently removed from Wikipedia.) A similar situation in Wikipedia and with articles about scientific institutions, from which you do not know which employees work in a particular university or institute, and what research is conducted there and the results are obtained. What is the point of Wikipedia, if all this is not in it?
Imagine the opposite approach to Wikipedia. You take each number of “Computerra” and place it on Wikisource: the reader of Wikipedia should be able to refer to the source at any time. Then, you make out a card of this number. This makes it possible for the reader to learn how, over the years, the circulation and editorial staff of the magazine has changed. Finally, you make a detailed review of the contents of the magazine. In essence, this should be an article, the structure of the sections of which fully corresponds to the table of contents of the issue in question, and, each section corresponds to a separate journal article. As a result, a situation arises, similar to that when, in one Wikipedia article, a fragment of another article of the same Wikipedia is cited, with the only difference being that it is not a Wikipedia article that is cited, but an article from Wikiteca. (In this case,there is an obvious separation of functions: there are primary sources on Wikisource, possibly containing original research, while Wikipedia itself has original ideas that are unacceptable.) Each issue of the journal has certain headings or sections, not to mention the fact that there are special collections of articles published under the general title “Theme of the issue”.
The magazine "Computer" was published from 1992 to 2009, and a total of 812 issues were published. (By the way, what is the real number of numbers? There were so-called “double numbers.” Here a complete list of issues with corresponding numbers could be useful.) How many editors are needed to accurately describe each number of Computerra, for example, ten years old? Here you need to take into account the capabilities of a separate editor (work on Wikipedia, after all, not the main work of Wikipedia editors!), And the possibilities in organizing collective work. If we assume that each editor is able to adequately work on one issue of the magazine per month (at the same pace as the release of the magazine itself), then the efforts of seven editors over ten years will be enough to cover all issues of the magazine. (That's why it's very important to have a lot of editors.It is always possible to evenly distribute numbers or individual headings or topics between different editors. Moreover, it is not at all necessary that the same editor deal with the same subject for ten years.)
Such an organization of work could give a huge profit for Wikipedia. First, if you collect all the articles of a certain author, you can, by making the appropriate generalizing review, provide the reader with sufficiently complete information about this author: what is the range of his interests, what is his style of presentation, what is his point of view on certain issues, etc. d. etc.It is rather dreary and of little interest to read in the encyclopedia only the milestones of the work way of this or that person, although this must necessarily be present in the encyclopedic article. It is much more interesting to read about what he has done and to understand what he is. Secondly, journal articles are a wonderful secondary source on many different topics. Here everything has to do: both a short news report and a detailed article published under the “Theme of the issue” header. Thirdly, if you just look at it all from above, you can see that various information is literally scattered everywhere and everywhere, and it is not bad to take and bring all this information together, organize and present it to the reader not in a scattered, but in a concentrated form. You will, however, never see all this on Wikipedia. Simply becausethat none of the editors of Wikipedia need this. In this sense, the activity of the Wikipedia community seems to be largely self-sufficient and almost completely unrelated to the needs of readers. And readers just need to bring together what is scattered across many different sources. The meaning of the use of information technology is to streamline the information as much as possible and ensure its widest availability. Consequently, that which is scattered should be brought together, and everything that appears new should immediately be put on the right shelf.The meaning of the use of information technology is to streamline the information as much as possible and ensure its widest availability. Consequently, that which is scattered should be brought together, and everything that appears new should immediately be put on the right shelf.The meaning of the use of information technology is to streamline the information as much as possible and ensure its widest availability. Consequently, that which is scattered should be brought together, and everything that appears new should immediately be put on the right shelf.
If, now, remember that “Computerra” is far from the only magazine, that there are a great many magazines (starting with the magazine “Science and Life” and ending with the thick literary magazines “Neva”, “Znamya”, “New World” , "Star", etc., etc.), newspapers (not to mention, already, about various programs that also fall under the concept of "continuing publication"), it turns out that the field of activity of the editors of the encyclopedia becomes immeasurable. If, however, to replenish Wikipedia in the manner described here, then, of course, the editors will not have any time for all-round reasoning and talking about deleting "something there." Wikipedia editors will be interested only in questions regarding the completeness, accuracy and reliability of the information provided by Wikipedia.
And here we come to the third essential question related to Wikipedia: how to ensure the accuracy, reliability and verifiability of the information posted on Wikipedia?
Oddly enough it sounds, but its completeness is the essential guarantee of verifiability of encyclopedic information. The more you take from the primary source, the more complete and deep (and at the same time, diversified and neutral) you make an idea about yourself, the more you convince the reader of the accuracy and reliability of all information provided. In fact, it requires some kind of self-verifiability encyclopedia. A simple transfer of information from secondary (at least, even authoritative) sources (without a comprehensive description of the primary source) cannot by itself give any kind of confidence to the reader. And excessive selectivity can, on the contrary, turn the reader against the encyclopedia.
In essence, the Encyclopedia should be perceived as a pyramid, or rather, as an organization of information, in which each topic is described by a hierarchy of articles that looks like a pyramid: small articles devoted to “little significant” objects are located at the lowest level, generalizing reviews are located above, and At the top of the pyramid are articles devoted to the most common issues. Such a pyramid will be stable only if the hierarchy expands downwards, and there are all underlying levels of the hierarchy. The criteria of significance adopted in Wikipedia cut off almost all the underlying layers, leaving only a couple of top, but this design is unstable, such Wikipedia cannot be replenished (because there are neither necessary articles nor necessary correlations), and such Wikipedia cannot be read (for the same reason). As a result, Wikipedia,contrary to its main installation, it turns out to be essentially a dump of information. Firstly, because most of the relevant (relevant) information is omitted. Secondly, because the information remaining (still) on Wikipedia is incoherent (there are no necessary links, because there are no necessary articles). Thirdly, because even the small information that still remains in Wikipedia is poorly structured, although it is precisely the well-structured information that would have to be the main ridge or trump card of Wikipedia. And here, again, we have to remember about the technical backwardness of Wikipedia.that the information remaining (still) in Wikipedia is incoherent (there are no necessary links, because there are no necessary articles). Thirdly, because even the small information that still remains in Wikipedia is poorly structured, although it is precisely the well-structured information that would have to be the main ridge or trump card of Wikipedia. And here, again, we have to remember about the technical backwardness of Wikipedia.that the information remaining (still) in Wikipedia is incoherent (there are no necessary links, because there are no necessary articles). Thirdly, because even the small information that still remains in Wikipedia is poorly structured, although it is precisely the well-structured information that would have to be the main ridge or trump card of Wikipedia. And here, again, we have to remember about the technical backwardness of Wikipedia.
One of the promises in creating Wikipedia could be to initiate a process of independent examination of all human knowledge. Is it possible, for example, to write articles on physics in such a way as to convince all interested readers of the correctness of the methods used in physics and, accordingly, of the correctness of the results obtained with their help? For this, all these methods, and, therefore, the beginnings of all sciences should be described so that the explanations are available to everyone who wants to understand the essence of each question or phenomenon. In fact, here it would be possible (would be) to set the task of compiling a single and universal textbook! Wikipedia could be the place where scientists should prove to everyone (and, in fact, to all humanity) the basic truths of their science. With Wikipedia contact was the hope that, finally, there was a place free from any censorship, from scientific review and from political sympathies.
To be honest, I don’t really want to delve into this rather dangerous and double-edged topic. This will surely lead us into the jungle of clashes between the so-called. "Academic science" and the many-sided hydra of "alternative science". There is one of two things: either the task of constructing a universal textbook is solvable, and our task is to write such a textbook, or such a task is unsolvable, but this task can be unsolvable not because, for example, “the subject is difficult”, but because scientists simply, there are no clear explanations and correct substantiations of the principles of the construction of their science.
Here I immediately recall about Francis Bacon and his “New Organon”, where he talks about the “great restoration of sciences”, and, in particular, talks about four ghosts or idols. Idols of the genus are misconceptions related to the nature of man himself: “the human mind is likened to an uneven mirror, which, mixing nature with its nature, reflects things in a twisted and disfigured form”. The idols of the cave are the delusions of an individual: “the spirit of man ... is a changeable, unstable, and as if random thing”. The idols of the square are associated with the generally accepted usage of words: “the words directly rape the mind, mix everything up and lead people to empty and countless disputes and interpretations”. Finally, the idols of the theater, “who moved into the souls of people from different tenets of philosophy, as well as from the false laws of evidence”: “here we mean not only common philosophies, but also numerous beginnings and the axioms of sciences, which received power as a result of tradition, faith and carelessness. " It would be nice to imagine the knowledge free from these idols, but the reality constantly convinces us how strong they are, how much their corrupting influence on minds and souls, and especially how much they distort our picture of the world. On this topic it would be possible to “dissolve” a rather long discussion, however, now, we will look at this problem from the other side.
The most significant feature of Wikipedia is that it is written by amateurs. Amateurs, not being experts in the areas for which they write articles, face obvious difficulties. Without knowing the basics of their field of interest, not knowing its methods and language, amateurs are always forced to look for secondary sources closest to the subject of the article, almost at random. It is extremely tempting to liken the editor of Wikipedia with a bee (if you again think of Francis Bacon and his classification of possible behaviors), which acts selectively, but in practice, a typical Wikipedist acts like an ant, who drags everything into Wikipedia. Surprisingly, a very good image of Wikipedia is drawn by the same Francis Bacon: “And if you like to dwell on this example and look at it like a mirror, let us imagine an obelisk of considerable magnitude, intended to commemorate a triumph or similar celebration, which should be transferred to another place. If people take it for themselves with bare hands, will not any sober observer recognize this as a manifestation of some serious madness? And will he not admit even more insanity if they increase the number of workers and decide that in this way they can accomplish this? And if they make a known choice, and separate the weak, and use only the strong and healthy, and hope that in this way they do the work, will he not say that they are even more receding from the mind? And if, finally, they are not content with this, decide to turn to athletic art and order everyone to come with arms and muscles well-anointed and prepared for this, then will he not exclaim that they work only in order to go crazy over the well-known rule and intent? ”Although, the editors of Wikipedia declare“ selectivity ”in words, in fact, everything turns into a certain non-systemism, is characterized by a lack of goal-setting, and, accordingly, turns into an eternal design and, eventually The reason is that ... nothing ever ends.
Suppose we need to write an article on a particular topic. We immediately understand that we will not be able to get rid of only one article. Further, we are interested in the question of choosing sources. And what, in general, there are sources on this topic? When we begin to get acquainted with the sources, we begin to understand that the source of the source is different. This means not only that the same material is stated differently in different sources, but even the choice of the material itself is different. This, in turn, is determined by the choice of the source format (manual, monograph, simple textbook or coherent course, covering a wide range of topics), and by subjective factors (tastes, qualifications and breadth of the authors). Not being an expert in the topic, it is quite difficult to navigate the sources. But, if you are a Wikipedia editor, then you start looking for help in secondary sources, look for ready-made reviews and try to work out criteria for selecting the material. But this is the path of an amateur who in every way defends his dilettantism, does not want to change, coming into the picture. If you are trying to enter the course of the case, then you will voluntarily or involuntarily have to become something like a specialist. You will understand that before you write a specific article with an article (with a completely narrow subject), you will have to write quite a lot of “technical” articles. These are articles devoted to the primary and secondary sources themselves, and articles devoted to the authors of articles, manuals, textbooks and monographs, and articles devoted to educational and scientific institutions (where the authors work). Moreover, you will have to study several different sources and try to create a complete vocabulary and a real subject and thematic index. Finally, you will have to track down all the original sources and, in general, examine in detail such an issue as the coverage of a particular topic in the sources. Moreover, to do both, in fact, a historical review and a meaningful analysis of where, when and under what circumstances certain messages and results were published. At its core, your task is to compile an analytical review of the type that all applicants of scientific degrees in the first (review) chapters of their dissertations do. (I’d like to take all these first chapters and “fill in” with Wikipedia!) The main purpose of the thesis’s analytical review, of course, is not only and not so much to show the applicant’s acquaintance with his field of study, but rather to give a correct argument justifying the choice of methods and methods of conducting the dissertation research. In this sense, the analytical review of the thesis is not neutral. If we imagine Wikipedia as a place to publish neutral analytical reviews, then such neutral reviews could be tied to the results of many different studies conducted by researchers around the world. Despite the fact that analytical reviews are published in considerable quantities, in this case, in fact, no one is engaged specifically. At one time, such reviews were actively written in VINNITI (“Itogi nauki i tekhniki.”, “Fundamental Directions” ...).
No matter how you act, you will surely begin to penetrate the area of ​​research that interests you, and the region itself will dictate to you both the range of your further searches, the range of issues you are considering, and the way the material is presented. But! The main thing! You begin to understand that significance is not something that was originally given to you, significance is what you yourself must establish, as a result of your research into sources. The reader of the encyclopedia should be able to see what you considered irrelevant, and what was considered highly significant. For this, the encyclopedia must be presented and that, and more. In other words: significance is not used (not introduced from the real world), and significance is established (directly in the encyclopedia itself). The fundamental mistake of Wikipedia is that the significance is automatically brought in from the real world. However, in the real world, all this turns out to be on the shaky ground of subjectivism, and, in fact, it is entirely at the mercy of all sorts of idols or ghosts. That is why, it is very important (as the main encyclopedic principle and, at the same time, a sign) the completeness of the information presented in the encyclopedia. And that is why, the “argument” about “Vasily Pupkin” is not at all a valid argument. Yes, an article about Vasily Pupkin will definitely be in the full encyclopedia! Yes, there will be quite a lot of such “stubs” (to put it in wikipedic language). Finally, one can hear such an “argument”: they say, we are not obliged to make an analogue of a personal or corporate website. The fact of the matter is that they should. The meaning of information technology is to bring together disparate information, to offer and maintain consistency of structure and content ...
Francis Bacon wrote that “knowledge itself is power” (“Knowledge itself is power”). But knowledge is always some kind of integrity. You can not find something more meaningful and leave in the Encyclopedia, and cut off the rest. Much can be understood just by comparing (for example, what is written in various articles). In order to adequately present in the Encyclopedia all the knowledge of humanity, you must, first, try to embrace them all, systematize, organize and structure. This can not be achieved by constantly cutting off this or that information. The gathering of knowledge is always a synthesis of some new ideas (in part, this is a kind of “original research”). Synthesis is the only possible constructive point of view. Any other position is destructive. The formation of various criteria of significance according to the principles of special exclusivity leads to the fact that for the editors, Wikipedia with each step becomes less space for work, less information to rely on, which can be referenced. As a result, an initially useful and potentially very productive idea of ​​writing an encyclopedia by amateurs turns into its complete opposite, and is expressed in the complete impossibility of writing an Encyclopedia. Amateurism becomes self-sufficient, constantly looking for reasons to not use (on Wikipedia) this or that information, that is, constantly looking for a way to refuse to solve the task set initially (knowledge gathering). And, every time you compare what we have with what could be, it becomes scary how diligently the Wikipedia community works exclusively “under the lamp”. Ultimately, all this dilettantism leads to the fact that the entire body of human knowledge (as well as, in fact, the WEB itself, as a result of the so-called "development" of information technologies), turns out to be, in fact, an iceberg, from which only the topmost part is visible ...
If we try to look at the problem of presenting human knowledge in the form of an Encyclopedia, we can formulate the following three reasons for the pitiable state of affairs in this area (using the software development industry as an example).
First, no one needs that every real-world object (software application, library or technology) is neutral and comprehensively described in the encyclopedia. Imagine descriptions containing detailed usage details, including information about errors and vulnerabilities. After all, these will not be “press-releases” of manufacturers and not bravura articles in various computer and computer-related magazines, but full descriptions of what really is! And this is Knowledge!
They say that “politics is a concentrated economy”, therefore, secondly, no one needs a comparison of the real possibilities of software created by different manufacturers. And how can you create relevant articles without having a full-fledged database of software like a database of films? Perhaps, the software itself would be significantly less, and the quality would be much higher if such a database were?
Finally, it can be said that science is a concentrated policy, and, therefore, thirdly, no one needs a deep comparative analysis of theories, methods and technologies that have been proposed by the software development industry in different years. One always wants to know if there is a scientific approach to the problem, what is the novelty of the proposed approaches, what are the real results of the use of already existing technologies, but you will never see any of this in Wikipedia. Although, this is precisely the essence of Knowledge: we must know that we really know how and what we should learn. And if we do not have this Knowledge, then we will always offer, promote and sell the same thing (under different names and different sauces), as is most likely the case in the software development industry.
Instead of the software development industry, you can, of course, consider any other branch of human Knowledge, the essence of what has been said from this will remain the same ...
And if no one needs it, then there is no Goal either. And if there is no Goal, then ... there will be neither adequate means for achieving the set Goal, nor criteria for achieving this Goal, nor the desire to do something. And, if so, then I see no reason for the fact that Wikipedia will ever be written.
"Three sources and three components"
Wikipedia will never be written! And there are several reasons for this.
As they say, there are "three sources and three components" problems of the current deplorable state of Wikipedia. Each reason can be considered simultaneously at three levels of consideration: at the physical, at the logical and at the conceptual level. We begin with a brief description of the causes, and then proceed to a more detailed consideration of them at various levels.
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First, what we are told about “in the first lines”, “Everyone can rule Wikipedia”. Wikipedia has an extraordinary ease with which every Wikipedia reader can start working on an article. Just click on the cherished button “Edit” and you are already the editor of Wikipedia! The ease of engaging new members in the editing process of Wikipedia results in a complete lack of system work on it. Everything in Wikipedia is in a state of perpetual project, and, with it, Wikipedia itself is also an eternal project.
Secondly, on Wikipedia, there are fairly stringent criteria of significance. Stricter these criteria, for some reason, is associated with improving the quality of Wikipedia. Criteria of significance transform Wikipedia into a collection of descriptions of "especially significant" objects, the articles themselves turn out to be retellings of mainly secondary and tertiary sources, moreover, the "notorious" authority of the sources is put at the center. An approach based on this rather peculiar “dictatorship of significance” leads to the fact that Wikipedia does not receive a lot of very diverse information, and this makes it very doubtful whether it is possible to consider Wikipedia as an encyclopedia at all.
Thirdly, Wikipedia is made by amateurs. As the saying goes, “this explains a lot”: both in terms of the quality of the edits themselves, and in terms of priorities (so to speak, “views on life”), and in terms of the practices and procedures adopted in Wikipedia collective decisions. But the main thing is, even, not dilettantism per se. An ordinary amateur is one who is extremely interested in certain knowledge, but at the same time he is conscious of the limits of his competence. The main problem is that laymans who have gathered on Wikipedia rather actively defend their dilettantism. As a result, there is an insurmountable gap between what is written in professional encyclopedias and what is described in Wikipedia.
Not having a solid scientific basis under them, editors of Wikipedia are subject to rather opportunistic, momentary considerations, and in their activities they always try to rely on certain circumstances. This is what leads the Wikipedia community to the need to introduce stringent criteria of significance, when the very fact of the existence of an article is determined by the presence of an authoritative secondary source that reveals the subject of the article well. Thus, editing Wikipedia is at the mercy of the case, since it is known that, in many situations, there are no secondary sources at all, and, if there is, then there will always be doubts about their credibility. No meaningful considerations are taken into account. When creating an encyclopedia, however, you expect an approach in which they always use only substantive considerations and, in general, try to rely everywhere and in everything only on what cannot change or be lost with time.
Continuing the analysis, in the same vein, one can find many possible differences between the quite obvious (as it seems to be a fresh, unbiased view) ideas about encyclopedic behavior and the practice adopted in Wikipedia. This finally forces one to ask the most important question: is Wikipedia an encyclopedia in the full sense of the word? But, before, to address this truly important and most important issue, let us examine in more detail with all the components of the problem of the deplorable state of Wikipedia. And this analysis, as I warned you, will have to be carried out at the three levels of consideration.
Physical level of consideration
Editing an encyclopedia is a purposeful process — a process that has a beginning and an end, and also involves some predetermined quality criterion, which allows us to systematically improve articles and bring them to a perfect state, which is, in essence, the goal of Wikipedia. The perfect (it is complete) state is the state of the article, in which there is nothing to add to the article (everything is already described and documented). A fully completed article is an article that meets all the highest encyclopedic criteria that you can think of. As soon as such an article is written, it should obviously be protected from any revisions, for the purpose of Wikipedia, in the case of the question described in the article, is successfully reached, and we no longer have anything to do with it.
So, suppose we need to write some kind of article. (We will not consider now whether only specialists should write articles, or laymans may well do this. I will return to this question later when we approach it by the natural course of our reasoning.) If this is a simple article (about a simple question) then one preamble will be enough for us to describe everything. As soon as the subject of the article becomes complex (multidimensional), the article should appear some structure, and, articles of the same type (that is, articles devoted to homogeneous objects) should have the same structure. The structure of the article is the first thing that the reader encounters when opening Wikipedia, and this structure should already carry some encyclopedic information about the subject of the article. The choice of structure, in many respects, predetermines the content of the article. This means that a good structure will necessarily contribute to the rapid filling of the article, while a bad structure will, on the contrary, significantly hinder productive work on the article. As a rule, the quality of articles whose structure is not well thought out (and, sometimes, even random) will, to put it mildly, “leave much to be desired” indefinitely.
Working on an article on Wikipedia, generally speaking, involves the search for consensus, for example, the search for consensus on the content of the article and how to edit them collectively.
Unfortunately, the Wikipedia editors did not decide on what exactly and in what way should be described in Wikipedia. One would expect that the editors of Wikipedia would first agree on what should be the subject of each article of a certain type and what the structure of the article of each type should be. In practice, all these questions are given at the mercy of "common sense" and are always solved "in the course of the play."
Further, suppose we already have some coordinated version, and suddenly a new editor comes in with his ideas and with his ideas about what should be written in the article and how. Of course, he immediately comes into conflict with the Community in the person of editors, active in the same subject. Such conflicts are necessarily accompanied by wars of edits, attempts to explain the rules of Wikipedia to beginners, and, in general, can end in indefinite blockages. The problem here arises from the fact that the Wikipedia reader always has an “Edit” button at hand. Ease of editing Wikipedia is the birth trauma of Wikipedia: on the one hand, it is an integral part of the concept of Wikipedia itself and its most important advantage, but at the same time, on the other hand, it turns out to be its biggest drawback, which can be said to turn into Wikipedia is the most fatal way.
If we wanted to organize the work on the encyclopedia in the optimal way, we would definitely have clearly divided the process and the result (of this process). We would ensure that in the main space there are always only agreed versions of the articles. Moreover, what is fundamentally important here, these must necessarily be completed versions of articles, that is, versions in which, if there is nothing necessary, but everything that is, is needed, and there is nothing that would hang in any way. in the air. At the same time, we would like to have the “Draft:” namespace where all kinds of pieces of articles made by various participants would be located and where the community (in the person directly interested in developing a given topic) would choose the best implementation option. Pressing the "Edit" button, a new Wikipedia member would have to get into a new world for himself, in which there are: 1) other members, called editors; 2) different ideas on how to edit this article; and, finally, 3) a certain order of work on the article (including certain rules of interaction with other participants).
Indeed, how can you add something to an article that is a complete (albeit intermediate) result of the efforts of a certain group of authors? How can, for example, destroy an already defined structure? After all, it will be a gross intervention! In theory, actions that modify articles (from the main space) should be performed only by administrators. But not only and not so much because administrators are, as a rule, more experienced participants, but rather because this should be the general procedure: first, the community accumulates a certain amount of content (in the form of separate variants of individual paragraphs, sections, or even , whole articles), then all interested participants come to a consensus, and only the administrator embodies the result of the found consensus in the main space, moreover, as the author (a fragment of the article, and, therefore, as a co-author of the whole stat si) indicates the author of the option chosen by consensus.
Unfortunately, Wikipedia mixes the process and the result, which is why we, the readers of Wikipedia, not only have to contemplate all sorts of patterns and warnings in the articles, disfiguring articles, but see, in fact, instead of the articles, only semi-finished products thrown by someone blanks, empty sections and other statements hanging in the air, not disclosed, not explained and, accordingly, not substantiated.
Very much in Wikipedia rests on the technical backwardness of Wikipedia itself. Firstly, the very fact that the working unit of editing is an article (and its separate fragments) is erroneous. Encyclopedia, first of all, tells the reader certain facts. These facts should be the basic processing unit. Secondly, very much information on Wikipedia is formalized and can be stored in a database. Therefore, Wikipedia should be thought of as a kind of superstructure above the database. More precisely, it would make sense to talk about the semantic knowledge base. (Wikidata could be considered a step in this direction.) Third, Wikipedia does not have mechanisms for collectively working on articles.
Here, it is very important to understand that, in fact, the reader does not need a specific article in the encyclopedia, but an answer to his own reader's question. The full answer to the question posed is, always, a long text that, although it can be made up as a separate article, is in fact the result of extracts from a variety of real encyclopedia articles. In the usual situation, the reader takes a certain article and is either completely satisfied with its content, or refers to other articles that are referenced in the main article. A good Wikipedia article design style assumes that articles related to this one are cited in the main article as a short paragraph, and a special template (“Main article”) is used for this, indicating the full version of the article being quoted. The quote is needed to make the text connected. Otherwise, the article turns into a catalog of links (the notorious “list”), which seems unacceptable for an encyclopedia. Ideally, the reader should be able to consistently disclose more and more new details, thereby forming a single text. Moreover, the ideal result of the work of the reader with the encyclopedia is the automatic formation of a book containing the compilation of many different articles of the encyclopedia, related to a common theme defined by the reader's inquiry. That is why, it is advisable to make individual facts (they are: semantic units) as a unit of processing in order to effectively create such books, which are, in fact, the result of a kind of information "integral" taken along the contour defined by the reader's actions.
It is also necessary to recall the concept of "trans-inclusion", formulated by Ted Nelson. This concept lies in the fact that we provide the reader, in fact, not a mechanism for moving from one document to another (implemented now in the form of so-called “hyperlinks”), but we establish an inseparable link between the two documents. Imagine a global network based on the mechanism of "trans-operations". In such a WEB, for each entity of the real world, it will be possible to create its own unique document and, then, using the mechanism of “trans-inclusions”, organize a full-fledged semantic network. It is enough to start a document for an individual person in a WEB (scientific concept, object and phenomenon of animate and inanimate nature, philosophical concept, events, settlements, etc.,), then, to attach documents to this , one way or another connected with this, and then, all information will automatically be attached to common centers (and, in particular, any duplication of information will be impossible). Such a WEB is, in fact, automatically generated by a network semantic distributed knowledge base. To automate the formation of the knowledge base, of course, it is necessary that it was impossible to save simple text in the WEB: each text processed in the WEB must be carefully pre-marked. This means that, potentially, every word in a text document can be (and should be!) A hyperlink (more precisely, “transclusion”), and when you save a new document in the WEB, all new links should be automatically established. In other words, creating each page in such a semantic WEB would be completely analogous to a transaction in ordinary databases, when, as a result of the transaction, the contents of the set of affected tables change. The “trans-inclusion” mechanism, just, is designed not only to ensure the routing of search queries, but also to ensure the routing of all changes made. Ultimately, this WEB 3.x could be thought of as one big Wikipedia, where each page has its own history of changes (respectively, there is always the opportunity to refer to a specific version of the page), the pages once created, do not disappear (respectively , there is no "fragility of links"), at the same time, many other (sub) pages are always automatically associated with each page (for example, it would be possible to contain all the pages of its discussions with each object).
It is clear that in such a semantic WEB there is no place either for the search engines or for Wikipedia, since in such a semantic WEB, the search is built-in (all the information is well structured and carefully indexed), and WEB itself essence, and it turns out to be the World Encyclopedia. In such an Encyclopedia, for example, any organization (providing certain services) has its own ordered set of documents and related discussions, operations (for accessing the services provided) and protocols (allowing to learn the history of this organization). The same applies to any city, region, country, and, also, any personalities, scientific concepts or objects and phenomena of animate and inanimate nature. The trouble with Wikipedia lies in the fact that it is trying to locally (and, moreover, in a strongly truncated form!) To realize what should be implemented globally. Thus, the localization of the initially global task, (in) naturally leads to the localization of everything and everyone, including the emergence of the notorious criteria of significance. As a result, that which originally claimed to be something more risks not even doing the small things that it limited itself.
Logical level of consideration
Let's list those signs which each encyclopedic article should possess. First, the encyclopedic article should be fairly complete. The article should be written so that the reader can get the most complete picture of the subject of the article (which, only, can be obtained without reference to the original). The article should be sufficiently detailed and developed to not only provide an opportunity to get a complete picture of the subject of the article, but also to get this idea without referring to any (primary or secondary) sources or even to other articles of the encyclopedia. The meaning and the main message of each article is to give an explanation sufficient for a non-expert. Although the article necessarily contains sections that are only needed by specialists, the exposition, however, should be structured in such a way that a non-specialist could enter the topic. That is why the popular character of presentation in a universal language without juggling with terms and formulas is very important. At the same time, it is necessary to adhere to scientific accuracy, to avoid any liberties of speech and figurative expressions. The general approach involves the presentation of the simple to the complex, but at the same time, from the general to the particular. By telling "first lines" the most common things, you correctly orient the reader in the direction of his searches. Particulars (very important in themselves) should not obscure the essence of the issue. The style of presentation should be as explanatory and explanatory as possible. The “telegraphic” style of presentation, which turns articles into a dump of facts, is completely unacceptable, and, all the more, it is completely unacceptable to create articles, as if copied from a bad textbook, arising as if from “from nowhere”. The most important property of encyclopedicism is connectivity: connectivity of presentation (within one article), connectivity of presentation (in articles on specific topics) and connectivity of articles (as such).
But the most serious question: this is the question of what exactly is the subject of the article and what should be, in accordance with the selected subject of the article, its main content. The “main content”, however, is essentially connected and linked to the completeness of the information presented in the encyclopedia. When you open the encyclopedia, you expect to find everything in it. If this is a specialized encyclopedia, then you expect to find in it a description of each concept from the corresponding subject area. If this is, for example, a cinema encyclopedia, then you expect to find descriptions of all the released films (of all times and peoples) in it. If this is a literary encyclopedia, then you expect to find in it descriptions of all literary works, and, also, all literary characters of all literary works. Etc. etc.
Paper encyclopedias have a limited amount. Paper encyclopedias are made by a very limited team of authors. In addition, there is also a certain time limit: the paper encyclopedia must also be published. That is why when creating a paper encyclopedia, the question of material selection is particularly acute. The electronic encyclopedia does not have such strong restrictions on the volume (you can always provide a new place), so a natural question arises: what washed away to select the material for the electronic encyclopedia with the same care as for the paper one? It is because of this “thoroughness” in Wikipedia that various criteria of significance arise, which significantly limit the range of topics and issues that are reflected in Wikipedia.
Wikipedia’s First Pillar states that “Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that includes elements of general and specialized encyclopedias, yearbooks and geographical directories.” One would expect that Wikipedia is, at a minimum, a mechanical union of all existing encyclopedias and reference books. However, it is not. The criteria for the significance of Wikipedia are independent. At the same time, Wikipedia could not only be a union of an existing one, but also could offer something new and previously inaccessible to us. And here we come to the first essential question concerning Wikipedia: what should be the scope of Wikipedia?
What, in general, do the reader need? What, in general, may interest him? We will try to answer these questions with the example of artistic / musical works, as well as with the example of films / series, television and radio programs. (As you see, a rather wide range of objects is seen here, embracing an essential part of our everyday life.) First, the reader can search for a well-defined book or film. Suppose he reads a certain journal article, for example, an interview with a critic or actor, where a certain story or role in the film is mentioned.If the interview tells you the name of the story or film, then the interested reader opens the encyclopedia hoping to find relevant information. Encyclopedia here is the most important means of identifying an object. In this case, this will be the answer to the question: what kind of story / film is it? And if there is no title, but is there a short description of the plot or is there any plot feature indicated? In order to find the necessary information in the encyclopedia, this very information in the encyclopedia must be presented in the most detailed form. But, most importantly, in the encyclopedia there must be a mention of this story / film, and, of course, there will be nothing better if the encyclopedia contains a full article on this story / film.
The question is, what have any criteria of significance here? Tales spelled great sea. The same is the great sea and movies. It is absolutely impossible that all these stories (novels, novels or even simple individual poems, musical works, pictures) and films (and, also, radio and television programs, performances of musical works) were noticed by critics, and, more critics especially reputable. Not to mention, about various festivals, exhibitions, conferences. Again, the most important function of the encyclopedia is the function “to find an object”, which means that the encyclopedia, first of all, must witness the very existence of the object, and already that this object has some special meaning (clothed with special attention) is secondary and incidental. In fact,The reader needs a comprehensive database of all questions. Some attempt to make such a movie database is IMDB. But, one wonders, why create any separate unrelated resources for each area of ​​human knowledge, if you can make one centralized resource, where you can put together all the different information?
In general, articles about films in Wikipedia quite clearly show what the result is absolutely not encyclopedic approach to business. Take, for example, the article “[[Hackers (film)]]”, which (surprise!) Does not contain encyclopedic content. Firstly, there is no description of the film itself. It is rather difficult to consider as such a “short” description of the plot in the most general words. This helpless “synopsis” ends with an eloquent sentence: “Now the hackers have joined together via the Internet and started a war with a cynical villain.” And where is the description of what this very war consisted of? Too general and uninformative! Secondly, the description of the characters is completely absent. Thirdly, the section "Interesting Facts" contains a lot of information that is an integral part of the information about the film itself, and therefore, can not be simply "interesting facts",but should be mentioned in other sections of the article (for example, in the section “Production / production process”, which tells about the filming of the film), or, for example, should be present in the description of the film itself. In particular, the “interesting fact” that “The words“ ARF! ARF! Gotcha! "(" ARF! ARF! WE GOTCHA! ") ... are a reference to one of the earliest hacker programs ..." should appear in the article as a note to the next piece of the film description: "when the mainframe goes into an alarm condition, on the Gibson display the words “ARF! ARF! Gotcha! ”(“ ARF! ARF! WE GOTCHA! ”)” (For example). If you bring all these arguments to a logical conclusion and write a real encyclopedic article about this film, it becomes clear not only that the existing “article” is not an article, but a useless sketch, but alsohow inherently anti-encyclopaedic is the installation of Wikipedia [[VI: NONSUE]]. The plot and, above all, the plot! Moreover, not so much and not only the plot, as a detailed description of the artistic or musical work (film, program).
And here we come to the second essential question: what should be the depth of consideration of the issue in Wikipedia?
All one way or another use libraries. And why we do not have the appropriate type of audio libraries and video libraries? Imagine, for example, that you come to an analogue of a library where a program of radio and television programs is used as a directory. At the same time, you not only can find out what was planned, but also find out what was actually played on the radio and / or shown on television. Moreover, if we also consider musical works, then you probably want to know who performed this or that work, when and under what circumstances. And, of course, if we are talking about a work of art, it would be very nice to get the opportunity to learn about all the screen versions of this work, as well as about all the performances on the stage. And it will be quite goodif there is an opportunity to watch each film version or to see / listen to a theatrical production (if it is, for example, about a miracle! it was recorded). Of course, this all sounds pretty exaggerated. Nobody (in their right mind) will try to embrace the immensity, but we must at least have the opportunity to find everything we need. It should be noted that listening and viewing is only part of the question. Another part of the question is related to conducting all kinds of research. And to conduct any research you need to have the original data (primary material). The question is, is it not an interesting and urgent task to create a database of such primary data?Nobody (in their right mind) will try to embrace the immensity, but we must at least have the opportunity to find everything we need. It should be noted that listening and viewing is only part of the question. Another part of the question is related to conducting all kinds of research. And to conduct any research you need to have the original data (primary material). The question is, is it not an interesting and urgent task to create a database of such primary data?Nobody (in their right mind) will try to embrace the immensity, but we must at least have the opportunity to find everything we need. It should be noted that listening and viewing is only part of the question. Another part of the question is related to conducting all kinds of research. And to conduct any research you need to have the original data (primary material). The question is, is it not an interesting and urgent task to create a database of such primary data?Is it not an interesting and urgent task to create a database of such primary data?Is it not an interesting and urgent task to create a database of such primary data?
However, to conduct research, not only primary, but also secondary sources are needed, and all kinds of reviews of primary sources should be used as secondary sources. For example, to write the political history of a country of a certain period, it is extremely important to have descriptions of all the airs with the participation of politicians, economists, political scientists and other experts. Everything is important here: who says what he says, what methods he uses, how it relates to real events, what laws are actually adopted. In order to get all this complete, accurate and reliable information, you need to have a text description of each air in the form of an abstract (summary), moreover, this abstract should be supplied with numerous footnotes indicating the degree of validity of the statements made (in the form of indications of sources,where you can find suitable information), including in the sense that it turned out much later, when the situation under discussion was resolved in a certain way, or answers were received to questions posed (for example, by a journalist). Note that the same interview is, conditionally speaking, a supplier of information both in relation to the interviewee (policy) and in relation to the interviewee (journalist), not to mention the events, persons and circumstances mentioned in the interview. This means that every single interview can give a significant amount of diverse and diverse encyclopedic information for many different encyclopedic articles.or answers were received to questions posed (for example, by a journalist). Note that the same interview is, conditionally speaking, a supplier of information both in relation to the interviewee (policy) and in relation to the interviewee (journalist), not to mention the events, persons and circumstances mentioned in the interview. This means that every single interview can give a significant amount of diverse and diverse encyclopedic information for many different encyclopedic articles.or answers were received to questions posed (for example, by a journalist). Note that the same interview is, conditionally speaking, a supplier of information both in relation to the interviewee (policy) and in relation to the interviewee (journalist), not to mention the events, persons and circumstances mentioned in the interview. This means that every single interview can give a significant amount of diverse and diverse encyclopedic information for many different encyclopedic articles.that every single interview is capable of giving a significant amount of diverse and diverse encyclopedic information for many different encyclopedic articles.that every single interview is capable of giving a significant amount of diverse and diverse encyclopedic information for many different encyclopedic articles.
In order to fully experience all the difficulties associated with working on Wikipedia, I will give this example. You probably still remember the magazine "Computerra"? Once out such a magazine. The question is, how can a whole magazine be presented in an encyclopedia? The existing approach is simple: nothing. If you look at Wikipedia, you will see an article that tells us only about the fact of the existence of such a journal, some milestones and chief editors of this publication. And it's all? And who, in general, worked in this magazine? What did this magazine write about? What was the style of this magazine? How did the look of the magazine change? This all you will not find in Wikipedia. (I remember once, almost, not myself, I created the article “[[Ilya Shchurov]]”. - Do you still remember such an editor, Computerry? ”- Then they left it. It seems that it still took place. But, over time ,significance has been lost, and the article was relatively recently removed from Wikipedia.) A similar situation in Wikipedia and with articles about scientific institutions, from which you do not know which employees work in a particular university or institute, and what research is conducted there and the results are obtained. What is the point of Wikipedia, if all this is not in it?
Imagine the opposite approach to Wikipedia. You take each number of “Computerra” and place it on Wikisource: the reader of Wikipedia should be able to refer to the source at any time. Then, you make out a card of this number. This makes it possible for the reader to learn how, over the years, the circulation and editorial staff of the magazine has changed. Finally, you make a detailed review of the contents of the magazine. In essence, this should be an article, the structure of the sections of which fully corresponds to the table of contents of the issue in question, and, each section corresponds to a separate journal article. As a result, a situation arises, similar to that when, in one Wikipedia article, a fragment of another article of the same Wikipedia is cited, with the only difference being that it is not a Wikipedia article that is cited, but an article from Wikiteca. (In this case,there is an obvious separation of functions: there are primary sources on Wikisource, possibly containing original research, while Wikipedia itself has original ideas that are unacceptable.) Each issue of the journal has certain headings or sections, not to mention the fact that there are special collections of articles published under the general title “Theme of the issue”.
The magazine "Computer" was published from 1992 to 2009, and a total of 812 issues were published. (By the way, what is the real number of numbers? There were so-called “double numbers.” Here a complete list of issues with corresponding numbers could be useful.) How many editors are needed to accurately describe each number of Computerra, for example, ten years old? Here you need to take into account the capabilities of a separate editor (work on Wikipedia, after all, not the main work of Wikipedia editors!), And the possibilities in organizing collective work. If we assume that each editor is able to adequately work on one issue of the magazine per month (at the same pace as the release of the magazine itself), then the efforts of seven editors over ten years will be enough to cover all issues of the magazine. (That's why it's very important to have a lot of editors.It is always possible to evenly distribute numbers or individual headings or topics between different editors. Moreover, it is not at all necessary that the same editor deal with the same subject for ten years.)
Such an organization of work could give a huge profit for Wikipedia. First, if you collect all the articles of a certain author, you can, by making the appropriate generalizing review, provide the reader with sufficiently complete information about this author: what is the range of his interests, what is his style of presentation, what is his point of view on certain issues, etc. d. etc.It is rather dreary and of little interest to read in the encyclopedia only the milestones of the work way of this or that person, although this must necessarily be present in the encyclopedic article. It is much more interesting to read about what he has done and to understand what he is. Secondly, journal articles are a wonderful secondary source on many different topics. Here everything has to do: both a short news report and a detailed article published under the “Theme of the issue” header. Thirdly, if you just look at it all from above, you can see that various information is literally scattered everywhere and everywhere, and it is not bad to take and bring all this information together, organize and present it to the reader not in a scattered, but in a concentrated form. You will, however, never see all this on Wikipedia. Simply becausethat none of the editors of Wikipedia need this. In this sense, the activity of the Wikipedia community seems to be largely self-sufficient and almost completely unrelated to the needs of readers. And readers just need to bring together what is scattered across many different sources. The meaning of the use of information technology is to streamline the information as much as possible and ensure its widest availability. Consequently, that which is scattered should be brought together, and everything that appears new should immediately be put on the right shelf.The meaning of the use of information technology is to streamline the information as much as possible and ensure its widest availability. Consequently, that which is scattered should be brought together, and everything that appears new should immediately be put on the right shelf.The meaning of the use of information technology is to streamline the information as much as possible and ensure its widest availability. Consequently, that which is scattered should be brought together, and everything that appears new should immediately be put on the right shelf.
If, now, remember that “Computerra” is far from the only magazine, that there are a great many magazines (starting with the magazine “Science and Life” and ending with the thick literary magazines “Neva”, “Znamya”, “New World” , "Star", etc., etc.), newspapers (not to mention, already, about various programs that also fall under the concept of "continuing publication"), it turns out that the field of activity of the editors of the encyclopedia becomes immeasurable. If, however, to replenish Wikipedia in the manner described here, then, of course, the editors will not have any time for all-round reasoning and talking about deleting "something there." Wikipedia editors will be interested only in questions regarding the completeness, accuracy and reliability of the information provided by Wikipedia.
And here we come to the third essential question related to Wikipedia: how to ensure the accuracy, reliability and verifiability of the information posted on Wikipedia?
Oddly enough it sounds, but its completeness is the essential guarantee of verifiability of encyclopedic information. The more you take from the primary source, the more complete and deep (and at the same time, diversified and neutral) you make an idea about yourself, the more you convince the reader of the accuracy and reliability of all information provided. In fact, it requires some kind of self-verifiability encyclopedia. A simple transfer of information from secondary (at least, even authoritative) sources (without a comprehensive description of the primary source) cannot by itself give any kind of confidence to the reader. And excessive selectivity can, on the contrary, turn the reader against the encyclopedia.
In essence, the Encyclopedia should be perceived as a pyramid, or rather, as an organization of information, in which each topic is described by a hierarchy of articles that looks like a pyramid: small articles devoted to “little significant” objects are located at the lowest level, generalizing reviews are located above, and At the top of the pyramid are articles devoted to the most common issues. Such a pyramid will be stable only if the hierarchy expands downwards, and there are all underlying levels of the hierarchy. The criteria of significance adopted in Wikipedia cut off almost all the underlying layers, leaving only a couple of top, but this design is unstable, such Wikipedia cannot be replenished (because there are neither necessary articles nor necessary correlations), and such Wikipedia cannot be read (for the same reason). As a result, Wikipedia,contrary to its main installation, it turns out to be essentially a dump of information. Firstly, because most of the relevant (relevant) information is omitted. Secondly, because the information remaining (still) on Wikipedia is incoherent (there are no necessary links, because there are no necessary articles). Thirdly, because even the small information that still remains in Wikipedia is poorly structured, although it is precisely the well-structured information that would have to be the main ridge or trump card of Wikipedia. And here, again, we have to remember about the technical backwardness of Wikipedia.that the information remaining (still) in Wikipedia is incoherent (there are no necessary links, because there are no necessary articles). Thirdly, because even the small information that still remains in Wikipedia is poorly structured, although it is precisely the well-structured information that would have to be the main ridge or trump card of Wikipedia. And here, again, we have to remember about the technical backwardness of Wikipedia.that the information remaining (still) in Wikipedia is incoherent (there are no necessary links, because there are no necessary articles). Thirdly, because even the small information that still remains in Wikipedia is poorly structured, although it is precisely the well-structured information that would have to be the main ridge or trump card of Wikipedia. And here, again, we have to remember about the technical backwardness of Wikipedia.
One of the promises in creating Wikipedia could be to initiate a process of independent examination of all human knowledge. Is it possible, for example, to write articles on physics in such a way as to convince all interested readers of the correctness of the methods used in physics and, accordingly, of the correctness of the results obtained with their help? For this, all these methods, and, therefore, the beginnings of all sciences should be described so that the explanations are available to everyone who wants to understand the essence of each question or phenomenon. In fact, here it would be possible (would be) to set the task of compiling a single and universal textbook! Wikipedia could be the place where scientists should prove to everyone (and, in fact, to all humanity) the basic truths of their science. With Wikipedia contact was the hope that, finally, there was a place free from any censorship, from scientific review and from political sympathies.
To be honest, I don’t really want to delve into this rather dangerous and double-edged topic. This will surely lead us into the jungle of clashes between the so-called. "Academic science" and the many-sided hydra of "alternative science". There is one of two things: either the task of constructing a universal textbook is solvable, and our task is to write such a textbook, or such a task is unsolvable, but this task can be unsolvable not because, for example, “the subject is difficult”, but because scientists simply, there are no clear explanations and correct substantiations of the principles of the construction of their science.
Here I immediately recall about Francis Bacon and his “New Organon”, where he talks about the “great restoration of sciences”, and, in particular, talks about four ghosts or idols. Idols of the genus are misconceptions related to the nature of man himself: “the human mind is likened to an uneven mirror, which, mixing nature with its nature, reflects things in a twisted and disfigured form”. The idols of the cave are the delusions of an individual: “the spirit of man ... is a changeable, unstable, and as if random thing”. The idols of the square are associated with the generally accepted usage of words: “the words directly rape the mind, mix everything up and lead people to empty and countless disputes and interpretations”. Finally, the idols of the theater, “who moved into the souls of people from different tenets of philosophy, as well as from the false laws of evidence”: “here we mean not only common philosophies, but also numerous beginnings and the axioms of sciences, which received power as a result of tradition, faith and carelessness. " It would be nice to imagine the knowledge free from these idols, but the reality constantly convinces us how strong they are, how much their corrupting influence on minds and souls, and especially how much they distort our picture of the world. On this topic it would be possible to “dissolve” a rather long discussion, however, now, we will look at this problem from the other side.
The most significant feature of Wikipedia is that it is written by amateurs. Amateurs, not being experts in the areas for which they write articles, face obvious difficulties. Without knowing the basics of their field of interest, not knowing its methods and language, amateurs are always forced to look for secondary sources closest to the subject of the article, almost at random. It is extremely tempting to liken the editor of Wikipedia with a bee (if you again think of Francis Bacon and his classification of possible behaviors), which acts selectively, but in practice, a typical Wikipedist acts like an ant, who drags everything into Wikipedia. Surprisingly, a very good image of Wikipedia is drawn by the same Francis Bacon: “And if you like to dwell on this example and look at it like a mirror, let us imagine an obelisk of considerable magnitude, intended to commemorate a triumph or similar celebration, which should be transferred to another place. If people take it for themselves with bare hands, will not any sober observer recognize this as a manifestation of some serious madness? And will he not admit even more insanity if they increase the number of workers and decide that in this way they can accomplish this? And if they make a known choice, and separate the weak, and use only the strong and healthy, and hope that in this way they do the work, will he not say that they are even more receding from the mind? And if, finally, they are not content with this, decide to turn to athletic art and order everyone to come with arms and muscles well-anointed and prepared for this, then will he not exclaim that they work only in order to go crazy over the well-known rule and intent? ”Although, the editors of Wikipedia declare“ selectivity ”in words, in fact, everything turns into a certain non-systemism, is characterized by a lack of goal-setting, and, accordingly, turns into an eternal design and, eventually The reason is that ... nothing ever ends.
Suppose we need to write an article on a particular topic. We immediately understand that we will not be able to get rid of only one article. Further, we are interested in the question of choosing sources. And what, in general, there are sources on this topic? When we begin to get acquainted with the sources, we begin to understand that the source of the source is different. This means not only that the same material is stated differently in different sources, but even the choice of the material itself is different. This, in turn, is determined by the choice of the source format (manual, monograph, simple textbook or coherent course, covering a wide range of topics), and by subjective factors (tastes, qualifications and breadth of the authors). Not being an expert in the topic, it is quite difficult to navigate the sources. But, if you are a Wikipedia editor, then you start looking for help in secondary sources, look for ready-made reviews and try to work out criteria for selecting the material. But this is the path of an amateur who in every way defends his dilettantism, does not want to change, coming into the picture. If you are trying to enter the course of the case, then you will voluntarily or involuntarily have to become something like a specialist. You will understand that before you write a specific article with an article (with a completely narrow subject), you will have to write quite a lot of “technical” articles. These are articles devoted to the primary and secondary sources themselves, and articles devoted to the authors of articles, manuals, textbooks and monographs, and articles devoted to educational and scientific institutions (where the authors work). Moreover, you will have to study several different sources and try to create a complete vocabulary and a real subject and thematic index. Finally, you will have to track down all the original sources and, in general, examine in detail such an issue as the coverage of a particular topic in the sources. Moreover, to do both, in fact, a historical review and a meaningful analysis of where, when and under what circumstances certain messages and results were published. At its core, your task is to compile an analytical review of the type that all applicants of scientific degrees in the first (review) chapters of their dissertations do. (I’d like to take all these first chapters and “fill in” with Wikipedia!) The main purpose of the thesis’s analytical review, of course, is not only and not so much to show the applicant’s acquaintance with his field of study, but rather to give a correct argument justifying the choice of methods and methods of conducting the dissertation research. In this sense, the analytical review of the thesis is not neutral. If we imagine Wikipedia as a place to publish neutral analytical reviews, then such neutral reviews could be tied to the results of many different studies conducted by researchers around the world. Despite the fact that analytical reviews are published in considerable quantities, in this case, in fact, no one is engaged specifically. At one time, such reviews were actively written in VINNITI (“Itogi nauki i tekhniki.”, “Fundamental Directions” ...).
No matter how you act, you will surely begin to penetrate the area of ​​research that interests you, and the region itself will dictate to you both the range of your further searches, the range of issues you are considering, and the way the material is presented. But! The main thing! You begin to understand that significance is not something that was originally given to you, significance is what you yourself must establish, as a result of your research into sources. The reader of the encyclopedia should be able to see what you considered irrelevant, and what was considered highly significant. For this, the encyclopedia must be presented and that, and more. In other words: significance is not used (not introduced from the real world), and significance is established (directly in the encyclopedia itself). The fundamental mistake of Wikipedia is that the significance is automatically brought in from the real world. However, in the real world, all this turns out to be on the shaky ground of subjectivism, and, in fact, it is entirely at the mercy of all sorts of idols or ghosts. That is why, it is very important (as the main encyclopedic principle and, at the same time, a sign) the completeness of the information presented in the encyclopedia. And that is why, the “argument” about “Vasily Pupkin” is not at all a valid argument. Yes, an article about Vasily Pupkin will definitely be in the full encyclopedia! Yes, there will be quite a lot of such “stubs” (to put it in wikipedic language). Finally, one can hear such an “argument”: they say, we are not obliged to make an analogue of a personal or corporate website. The fact of the matter is that they should. The meaning of information technology is to bring together disparate information, to offer and maintain consistency of structure and content ...
Francis Bacon wrote that “knowledge itself is power” (“Knowledge itself is power”). But knowledge is always some kind of integrity. You can not find something more meaningful and leave in the Encyclopedia, and cut off the rest. Much can be understood just by comparing (for example, what is written in various articles). In order to adequately present in the Encyclopedia all the knowledge of humanity, you must, first, try to embrace them all, systematize, organize and structure. This can not be achieved by constantly cutting off this or that information. The gathering of knowledge is always a synthesis of some new ideas (in part, this is a kind of “original research”). Synthesis is the only possible constructive point of view. Any other position is destructive. The formation of various criteria of significance according to the principles of special exclusivity leads to the fact that for the editors, Wikipedia with each step becomes less space for work, less information to rely on, which can be referenced. As a result, an initially useful and potentially very productive idea of ​​writing an encyclopedia by amateurs turns into its complete opposite, and is expressed in the complete impossibility of writing an Encyclopedia. Amateurism becomes self-sufficient, constantly looking for reasons to not use (on Wikipedia) this or that information, that is, constantly looking for a way to refuse to solve the task set initially (knowledge gathering). And, every time you compare what we have with what could be, it becomes scary how diligently the Wikipedia community works exclusively “under the lamp”. Ultimately, all this dilettantism leads to the fact that the entire body of human knowledge (as well as, in fact, the WEB itself, as a result of the so-called "development" of information technologies), turns out to be, in fact, an iceberg, from which only the topmost part is visible ...
Instead of conclusion
If we try to look at the problem of presenting human knowledge in the form of an Encyclopedia, we can formulate the following three reasons for the pitiable state of affairs in this area (using the software development industry as an example).
First, no one needs that every real-world object (software application, library or technology) is neutral and comprehensively described in the encyclopedia. Imagine descriptions containing detailed usage details, including information about errors and vulnerabilities. After all, these will not be “press-releases” of manufacturers and not bravura articles in various computer and computer-related magazines, but full descriptions of what really is! And this is Knowledge!
They say that “politics is a concentrated economy”, therefore, secondly, no one needs a comparison of the real possibilities of software created by different manufacturers. And how can you create relevant articles without having a full-fledged database of software like a database of films? Perhaps, the software itself would be significantly less, and the quality would be much higher if such a database were?
Finally, it can be said that science is a concentrated policy, and, therefore, thirdly, no one needs a deep comparative analysis of theories, methods and technologies that have been proposed by the software development industry in different years. One always wants to know if there is a scientific approach to the problem, what is the novelty of the proposed approaches, what are the real results of the use of already existing technologies, but you will never see any of this in Wikipedia. Although, this is precisely the essence of Knowledge: we must know that we really know how and what we should learn. And if we do not have this Knowledge, then we will always offer, promote and sell the same thing (under different names and different sauces), as is most likely the case in the software development industry.
Instead of the software development industry, you can, of course, consider any other branch of human Knowledge, the essence of what has been said from this will remain the same ...
And if no one needs it, then there is no Goal either. And if there is no Goal, then ... there will be neither adequate means for achieving the set Goal, nor criteria for achieving this Goal, nor the desire to do something. And, if so, then I see no reason for the fact that Wikipedia will ever be written.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/373473/
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