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Comment by Tarsul | Hacker News Reader

Imagine you are reading wikipedia every day for years and really like its content and it gives a lot to you and then suddenly you see grave mistakes on some of the sites (like when I saw that wikipedia had the wrong year for nicolas cage's oscar win!), wouldn't you go "out of your way" to fix these mistakes? I mean wouldn't it annoy the living hell out of you to know that this mistake lives on while you go on consuming the rest of wikipedia? Nonetheless, ADDING stuff is a level higher but editing mistakes might be the first stepping stone...

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I have actually spent considerable amounts of time reading math related wikipedia articles in graduate school, though those tend to be well written and researched. More often you find ways that things could be explained more clearly.

No, the thought wouldn't even occur to me. I'd just recognize the mistake and move on to what I was doing at the time.

You're probably too tired out to have the neurotransmitters to promote the energy to consider so much more.

> wouldn't you go "out of your way" to fix these mistakes?

On wikipedia? As someone who has not spent years building up a reputation? No, it would just be reverted in ten seconds flat by whoever had nominated themselves as guardian of the truth about Nick Cage.

That’s not at all been my experience. I’m not a regular contributor, but I correct errors when I come, add sources, and sometimes remove unsourced claims.

The most that’s ever happened is that I’ve had my edits reverted until I added citations. Since then I include them by default and haven’t had it happen in years.

That's not true.

I don't have any reputation on Wikipedia but I have made dozens of small corrections to it, and they seldom get reverted (though they are sometimes improved upon, which I'm fine with).

Reputation on Wikipedia helps with edit wars and flamewars, on contested issues. But just fixing a spelling error or a link is not usually a contested issue.

I’m sorry but it’s very true. People on Wikipedia have their patch and will revert corrections on a whim. Just as others will remove contributions that meet the criteria purely out of their own ignorance.

Wikipedia is a great resource, but at some point the knee-jerk deletionists won over the culture behind the scenes. It’s toxic for outsiders for the most part.

I don't know what to tell you. Like I said, that hasn't been my experience for minor edits (I don't have time for larger edits, and the few times I argued on controversial topics it was of course a mess, but that's to be expected: it happens here on HN as well).

I mean, I've literally done this for the birth year of an actor I went to school with, and had the above insta-revert happen, and watched pages get deleted on notability because the person nominating for deletion hadn't heard of one of the most prestigious literary awards in the UK.

I'm willing to accept that each person's experience is different, perhaps it's just unfortunate, but it seems to marry up with a lot of other self-reported wikipedia experiences I've seen on HN over the last several years.

I think it varies wildly based on topic. Under some (I’ve heard history is like this) there are quite large wars, but many others are not as preciously guarded.

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