Talk:Conflicting Wikipedia philosophies

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Sysopism vs. Rehabilism vs. Politicism

Sysopism vs. Rehabilism vs. Politicism are reconcilable, not truly conflicting. --SmokeyJoe 11:01, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay; care to elaborate? —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 13:09, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Sure, if you find it interesting. I'll have to refresh myself on what I was thinking. I don't visit here very often, pretty much only contributing to en.wikipedia.org. Can watchlists be globalised? --SmokeyJoe 11:58, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Yet Another Philosophical Divide

I've often encountered a philosophical division that I haven't yet seen described here. I've been involved in several editing disputes that revolved around the use of specialized terminology in an article.

My own POV is that articles should be written to be understandable to the lay person. It's important to explain specialized terminology, particularly where it differs from common usage of the same word or expression. But the article shouldn't use terminology that differs from everyday language unless it's unavoidable. I suppose we could call that Laymanism.

However, I have sometimes encountered editors who were subject-matter experts who insisted on using subject-specific terminology even where, to me as a lay person, it seemed less clear, or even misleading. They usually justify this by reference to subject-matter articles and research that use the terminology (which, from the Laymanist point of view, is a circular argument). We could call that Expertism.

--Tedd 06:33, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

My opinion is this, based on my experience with mathematics and other extraordinarily complicated topics:

• an article understood only by those who already know the answer is meaningless,
• one should write articles on a topic to be understandable by persons who don't know exactly the content of that article, but who have enough knowledge to be able to understand the contents of the article,
• one should not try to explain it to everyone, only as many as possible,
• at the same time one mustn't make the article discourse too complex to follow for the normally intelligent person;

in the vast majority of areas, the suitable public is the "lay person", but in some areas, such as in logic and mathematics, a lay person might not be a good public, but maybe instead a "diligent student" that have reached just a certain preconditional knowledge level. rursus 15:42, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Structurism vs. Chaoism

Methinks that Wikipedia articles are becoming too standardized and burdened by structuring devices. I cannot see anything positive in navboxes, and even categories seem to be getting out of hand. The proliferation of infoboxes is turning wikipedia into a huge rolodex (which will be eternally incomplete and full of errors). The "standard" devices for tables, references, and templates in general are amazingly baroque, and make editing harder, not easier. (To use {{Cite ... }}, for example, one must write two or three times as much code than one would write in a plain <ref> ... </ref>.) The "spartan" standards for dab pages make it harder for readers to find the right article. And so on.
Methinks that most of that structuring and uniformization has zero or negative value, and Wikpedia would be much more pleasant to read and edit if it was simply a collection of plain articles connected exclusively by in-text links. Knoweledge does not have structure or categories: those things are all in our brains, vices that we inherited from mindless-parrot teachers and four millennia of befuddled thinking.
So, is there a WP faction willing to fight (or at least whine discreetly about) the takeover of Wikipedia by those bloody structurists ? Where poor chaoist souls like me would feel less lonely ?
All the best, Jorge Stolfi 143.106.24.25 06:13, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Anyone have a source for this?

I know a source isn't really necessary on a "philosophical" page like this, but, to satiate my curiosity, is anyone able to support the assertion from the article that:

The epistemology of this view is quite similar to the Buddhist view of language: words are just indicators of conflicts, since if no conflict existed, there would be no need to speak.

I searched the web for this "aspect" of the Buddhist philosophy, and the first result was this page, and I couldn't find any other topical ones. Is this just a bit of OR added in a way that makes it "sound good" (something I'll admit I'm guilty of in essay writing), or is it in fact a Buddhist view of language? It would be nice to know; does anyone here know more about Buddhism and perhaps have a source that covers this (or even alludes to it)?

Peace and Passion 20:56, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Encyclopedyism equals moderate Exopedianism

Since it will take years, millennia and eons before anyone reads and considers answering this post, I hereby claims that Encyclopedyism equals moderate Exopedianism and proposes the article links those concepts accordingly. The next person who sees this post and agrees have the following choices:

if feel WP:BOLD then make the linkup [[Encyclopedyism|Exopedianism]],

else add your name here below.

rursus 15:49, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

adding my name. rursus 15:49, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Change "Edit" text - to edit icon

Hare Krishna everyone here, I suggest that [Edit] text to be changed into edit icon on every wikipedia page. WHY? Because if I want to use wikipedia mostly for reading, not for editing - then why do I have to read countless times the word [Edit] - as many times as there are Sections in wiki page??? NO USE! Moreover, If then I want to copy paste some part of page to some other place - it also takes another steps like clicking 'print version' etc etc... WHY? I need just READABLE Wikipedia, not really editable wikipedia... BUT of course, editing feature is OK. So I suggest that that [Edit] text must be changed into Edit icon. This Edit icon might show some picture like PENCIL, WHICH WRITES A LINE/TEXT ON PAPER... SO there might be many colorful pencils on each wikipedia page, instead of [EDIT] texts... This might look much nicer!!! Alternatively, there might be some elder version of wikipedia for compatibility, but now when more users start using Android-like devices or IPADs, then who would really care if a picture is on a page or a text? I mean less and less people would use in future some older devices which do not support text, but more people would like that page be more informative... And it must be more usable, more esthetical etc etc... So I think changing [EDIT] text into some icon (and that Icon may even be customizable) - that is a good idea!

MOREOVER

I'ld suggest to change interface of wikipedia... it is good to show so much text on wikipedia, but tell me: HOW MANY PEOPLE REALLY NEED LEFT-HAND PART OF WIKIPEDIA, I mean that part which is always on left of a page? WHO NEEDS IT? SEE IT ALWAYS? WHY? I mean that menu which on this site includes: "Main page Goings-on, Wikimedia News, Translations, Recent changes, Random page, Help, Community, Beyond the Web, Toolbox" etc... Who needs it? Well on this site it is ok, but on WIKIPEDIA site? Hardly few percents of all wikipedia users really use it very often... So that part of user interface can be moved, can be hidden... Yes, you can even make a special program, WIKIPEDIA BROWSER - specially for wikipedia - so one can make offline edits, manage his account etc... - and apply all kinds of CSS styles/themes etc... Isn't it??? I tell this - just to make it more usable and READABLE, USER-FRIENDLY!

Comments removed from within the page itself

These comments were added at some point. They belong somewhere else, probably on the posting individuals' userpages. Quiddity (talk) 18:30, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Are all these philosophies among Wikimedians (people) truly taking place, carrying on, affecting and effecting the editing of webpages under the Foundation?

Per title, can I get an answer? -- Ktsquare (talk) 15:50, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Meritocracy based on counting the total number of characters added by an editor to a particular article (Aaron Swartz) against on counting the total number of edits (Jimmy Wales)

In memoriam Aaron Swartz

In 2006, Aaron Swartz wrote an analysis of how Wikipedia articles are written, and concluded that the bulk of the actual content comes from tens of thousands of occasional contributors, or "outsiders", each of whom may not make many other contributions to the site, while a core group of 500 to 1,000 regular editors tend to correct spelling and other formatting errors. According to Swartz: "the formatters aid the contributors, not the other way around." His conclusions, based on the analysis of edit histories of several randomly selected articles, contradicted the opinion of Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, who believed the core group of regular editors were providing most of the content while thousands of others contributed to formatting issues. Swartz came to his conclusions by counting the total number of characters added by an editor to a particular article, while Wales counted the total number of edits.

References

--Mauro Lanari (talk) 23:48, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Wow

Amazing article. Puts in words many of the conflicts of wikipedia's policies, which are often cited as absolute law rather than displays of a political identification.

To think it was submitted by an anonymous user.--TZubiri (talk) 22:46, 6 March 2022 (UTC)