Wikipedia is nothing but a superminority making the website their playground, though[0]. If you get rid of the superminority, the website literally couldn't function. The inner workings of Wikipedia are actually a fascinating rabbit hole to fall into, but the takeaway is that this behaviour seems to be ingrained into human nature. Basically, the majority consume, a minority produces, and a minority of the minority produces a lot. You can see this in any participatory system as well, not just Wikipedia.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_...
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead
The main point of contention is that some of Mead's subjects, 40 years and a conversion to Christianity later, denied having had casual sex as young women and claimed that they were playing a practical joke on her.
Whether they were telling the truth then and if so to what extent they're representative of Mead's other subjects is a thorny issue, to say the least.
They produce a whole lot of edits. They don't actually contribute an especially large amount of content, which is the thing with real value.
The content is mostly written by subject matter experts that contribute large blocks of useful text to just a few articles each.
That sounds like the ideal scenario. Any evidence that it is or isn’t this way? I would guess it’s skewed more towards a handful of folks simply writing many articles about things they’re moderately knowledgeable about.
The vast majority of content was created by a long tail of users, with a very small minority of users being the last to "touch" a particular piece of text (copy edits, moving things around, etc).
Probably should have published that.
As with most human efforts, the emergence of a political layer is inevitable. But overall they seem to be doing a pretty good job keeping their shit together. Even though I have no way of knowing whether the information on Wikipedia is correct as a whole, at least it presents as self-consistent.
I'm not too sure about that, actually. Wikipedia has a lot of special interest groups to handle niche topics, so I don't think that there's much room for experts outside of the group.
Reality is that their rules are only for you. They dont judge their own edits with same standards. If edits were anonymized tons od admins would get banned.
We're talking about totally different minorities here.
Yes, a tiny proportion of Wikipedia users create a vast portion of the content. But that doesn't mean their views are minority views.
If those, say, 1% of users who are contributors, still map roughly to the same distribution of gender, race, nationality, political leanings, etc. as the group of all users, then there's no superminority issue. If they set policy according to their own discussion and voting, we wouldn't expect that to be substantially different from a larger group.
The problem is with superminority views -- if you asked 100 randomly selected users of Wikipedia whether all instances of "is comprised of" should be replaced with "comprises", probably only a tiny minority would agree. This is a superminority viewpoint, which is the whole reason why this story is generating so much discussion.
A superminority viewpoint imposing its beliefs is a problem. While a small group of editors that is merely numerically a "superminority" is in no way a problem, unless they turn out to be substantially unrepresentative of the larger population in their views.
It's more like the minority of the minority does a lot of spellchecking and editing, but it seems, much more plausibly, that a group much larger than a minority does the bulk of writing.
Any discussion of Wikipidia on HN is incomplete without a reference to Aaron Swartz's analysis of how Wikipedia is written:
"[He] concluded that the bulk of its content came from tens of thousands of occasional contributors, or "outsiders," each of whom made few other contributions to the site, while a core group of 500 to 1,000 regular editors tended to correct spelling and other formatting errors.He said: "The formatters aid the contributors, not the other way around." [1]
Maybe we need a defense mechanism against bike-shedding, no matter what color bikeshed one prefers?
Not in the slightest. Categorically, he's using prescriptive arguments, which are bunk. Language evolves, people can use it however they want.
With respect to this case, I'd have to see a given usage in context but I would probably generally leave it as is.
If I'm editing you I'll try to avoid making a lot of changes that boil down to stylistic choice but I will absolutely change things I (and my references) consider wrong.
ADDED: You can of course personally use language however you want. But others will judge you based on that.
I'd support this guy if he said "I hate 'comprised of' and so I am changing it where I can", but the idea that there's somehow a logical argument justifying it is silly. Appeal to authority is particularly silly in the context of linguistics.
If you like MLA style, do that. I personally love a little extra diaeresis and the oxford comma, but I wouldn't make them the law.
Oh, I would :-) But I do reluctantly conform to AP style in certain contexts.
That said, there is a certain appeal to authority mindset if you're looking for mainstream non-fiction (and a lot of fiction as well) publication. Maybe "correct" isn't the right term but "accepted practice" or something along those lines which boils down to more or less the same thing.
A prescriptivist will say that a term is “correct,” a descriptivist will say a term is “commonly accepted.”
Personally, this is what I say to prescriptivists: if they want a language with legally defined rules - they should learn French.
Why AP style - written specifically for journalists - instead of all the other styles such as APA, Chicago, etc. etc.?
Otherwise, I/we use Chicago and Oxford comma.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/can-you-use-co...
There methods comprise of robbing others autonomy. (Wording chosen purposefully!).
But changing quotations seems like a step too far. I think his practice of changing a quotation to a paraphrasing (where it doesn't really matter if the article includes a quotation or not) is fine (if a little obsessive). But actually changing quotations feels wrong to me.
I do agree with his assessment that including people's grammatical/spelling mistakes in a quotation detracts from what the person said, but I don't think the correct move is to change the quotation to something the person didn't actually say. At most, the "offending" part of the quotation should be removed and replaced with correct usage inside square brackets to indicate the changed/added part was not part of the original quotation. But overall I think he should just leave these instances alone.
> There methods comprise of robbing others autonomy. (Wording chosen purposefully!).
I think you are in a way proving the editor's point, though? Purposefully chosen or not (I did chuckle a little), that sentence is garbage, and if I were to read that in something without knowing or realizing it was a joke, I would take your words less seriously. I would think, if you can't even use language properly, and need to "inflate" your words, maybe your ideas are overinflated too.
On a different note, I don't think we should care about people's "autonomy" when we're talking about a resource like Wikipedia. "Letting people write whatever and however they want" is not a positive trait in an encyclopedia.
“[sic]”, which is always lowercase, indicates something the current author views as (probably) erroneous or otherwise improper that is left unchanged in the quoted text, to emphasize that the author isn’t endorsing the usage/construction so marked. It doesn’t mark a change.
But, yeah, the basic point is to not change a quote unless it's some trivial mistake. (But you can flag it so that it doesn't look like you're the one who may have screwed up.)
Note that I'm not saying we should write poorly, or deliberately sloppily, just it's at the author or editor's preference.
The English/American are culturally less prescriptive around grammar, but other languages (such as French) are often much more prescriptive with it.
Also consider the "why": does this phrase pop up more and more often due to misunderstandings and copy/paste? Or is it because people actually want to change the meaning of the phrase and are doing it consciously? I don't see any evidence of the latter.
Language is important. It's the foundation of communication. I think it's noble to push against inadvertent usage changes that make the language more ambiguous.
Put another way: sure, language evolves as people use it differently. But why is it any more valid to push the language toward using "comprised of" in this new way, than it is to push the language to avoid it?
This is not true at all. Merriam-Webster includes it as its second definition of three [1]. It is not presented as an "alternate" or as confusing or incorrect in any way. To the contrary, there is a usage note at the end emphasizing its validity -- how it is "now somewhat more common in general use".
> I think it's noble to push against inadvertent usage changes that make the language more ambiguous.
But there is nothing ambiguous whatsoever about "is comprised of". Its meaning is crystal clear.
> But why is it any more valid to push the language toward using "comprised of" in this new way
It's not, because they're not "pushing" anything. People are just communicating in the same constructions they've unconsciously absorbed, like they do with most of language. The only people "pushing" are people like this Wikipedia editor, who is trying to impose an exclusionary viewpoint that, for example, the editors of Merriam Webster disagree with.
Are you sure? There appear to have been 90k instances of usage in widely read reference material (e.g. Wikipedia, bar this crusade). I'd say that qualifies.
> I don't see any evidence of the latter.
I'm pretty sure people use it based on the meaning they intend it to have, see prior statement for substantial evidence :P
> sure, language evolves as people use it differently. But why is it any more valid to push the language toward using "comprised of" in this new way, than it is to push the language to avoid it?
I don't think anyone but the Wiki editor is pushing anything. I'm saying use language as you like, just don't try to justify your personal crusade based on "correctness", be it moral or technical. I don't care for that style of usage of "comprised of" either, particularly, but I wouldn't try to tell other people how to write, and I think the meaning and purpose of the phrase is perfectly clear.
It's not.
> If people are using words in a way that doesn't make sense to the reader, such as changing the meaning of them to be the opposite like the word factoid, it's not the reader that is wrong by pointing out that the word has a different meaning than intended.
The reader can say "It was unclear", "I didn't like it", or "that seems like it's opposite to what I would expect", but "wrong" is a silly thing to say. None of these things are even absolute within published English literature, let alone just say American, or UK, English literature. Even if you're following a particular style manual things are ambiguous in many cases.
Of course it's not perfectly unbiased, and anal super-pedants do make it intolerable to try to contribute. That said, they do at least make an effort to stick to the facts.
I'm not sure about "much more than any other media outlet" but for mainstream non-controversial topics it's probably pretty accurate. It may not be comprehensible for anyone who isn't already an expert, it's maybe pretty thin if the person/subject isn't part of the modern tech and hobbyist zeitgeist, but it's probably not a bad starting point especially if it has a lot of good cites.
The editor here is arguably correct in that the usage he's changing is incorrect.
You may find it pedantic (and I might agree), but that doesn't mean it's wrong. Does tilting at this particular windmill make Wikipedia worse? I would say it makes it better, even if in a very small way.
Even if you don't care about the incorrect usage, I find his argument that some uses are there just to make the prose sound more "intelligent" -- at the expense of clarity and ease of reading -- to be valid enough. I would much rather read "The residents are former New Yorkers" instead of "The population is comprised of former New Yorkers". The latter is unnecessarily complex for a sentence like that.
I'm sure someone can find a completely separate example of this sort of editing that actually is harmful. But the solution to that isn't "ban all edits of this sort".
I actually kind of admire these folks that do stuff like this. These sorts of obsessions are interesting artifacts of the internet’s cultural landscape.
There is one editor, BrownHairedGirl, who tags articles with “bare links” (note she does not actually change those links very often), and gets into battles about categories that has driven off dozens of users (if not more). They are the most toxic editor on Wikipedia but have amassed a group of followers who are of the same ilk - people who do nothing but poke at minor parts of Wikipedia but contribute nothing of significance - and will remove anyone who gets on their bad side.
Wikipedia is said to have hit “maintenance phase”. That’s ridiculous, there is a lot more to be writing about. Basically these people are killing the project. It’s a complete tragedy.
Edit: here’s an example of the vicious and petty actions they make - they created a category “Abusive, mean, petty Wikipedians” for people who use a particular category that is never filled in on their user pages. This has been there since 2017. We have one user who calls themselves the “category police” who is currently arguing such a divisive and abusive labeling of editors is quite acceptable. The irony is strong in that one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Abusive,_mean,_petty_...
I don’t think there can be a system to balance this without harming the wider system simply because these people make up the bulk of the work being done, and enforcement systems usually cause much of the same sort of power centralization, but often worse.
Of course not all of the work by these powerusers is useful but I can’t imagine a system that only blocks the bad work without harming the highly productive ‘good’ people who are trying to be more representative of the public. Plus stereotypically making the rules/processes is the easy part, because people are motivated at the start to fix things, but after it’s in place the actual hard work of enforcing it and doing it right is often neglected… or these same small groups of “powerusers” will also end up running the moderation and use it to explicitly control things even more.
Although those risks/issues has rarely stopped people from trying in the past.
Articles are often heavily censored or simply biased.
Maybe the whole internet is?
But I find myself relying on Wikipedia less and less. I think chat searches are probably the final nail in the coffin for me directly access it.
The refrain of the left "what's the big deal, why do you care" is exactly the sort of lazy dismissal that makes people end up resting on their laurels and believing that "one small change" doesn't matter.
We need to get better at pushing back at the first small sign of nonsense, and not let things get really bad before people start to care. Ironically, this wikipedia edit is pretty much the most benign current example of a minority controlling a narrative because nobody cares enough to push back. See all the insane modern language policing.
I'll be using comprised of more frequently. I was already a satisfied user, but now I'll continue with glee.
Language changes and evolves to serve the purpose of communication. It doesn't care about rules or usage.
The battle here pedant vs “comprised of”. What’s the cultural importance?
Language drifts. The rate of that drift is of no particular importance and that seems to be all that’s at stake here.
2. Encourage the author to do something that effects more positive sentiment with their time, even if it’s “wrong.” It could be this behavior is compulsive and author has problems controlling it. At least try to steer that energy, and just do not engage in fighting it.
I am happy there are people willing to do the work for free and that Wikipedia is now better. Hopefully he corrects more errors in the future so I am less likely to pick up incorrect language in the future when I read the articles. Sounds like the right solution you are looking for to me.
Being a grammar nazi is one thing, but editing quotes to match a language that stopped evolving in the 1970s definitely oversteps the bound between quirky and actively harmful.
I'd even argue, in the vein of a sibling comment, that willing to label the activist superminorities that run things as mentally ill is very important. They're usually obsessive/perfectionist and workaholics, yet we're supposed to commend them and follow in their lead.
I think I understood them, but I can never be sure, because in order to understand something with improper grammar, you usually need to "fill in the gaps" with the most reasonable assumptions possible, and those don't necessarily line up with your interlocutor's beliefs or intentions.
Putting words in other people's mouths is often required to "lubricate communication along", but it should be done as minimally as possible if the goal is for people to understand each other.
See Grice's cooperative principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle
What's bullshit is people who think they know what other people think.
For example, "you're" and "your" are two very different words.
Let people obsess. They're not hurting you.
And in fact why would I have? I was replying to something someone else said in reply to you, not even related really except via parent to your GP comment.
So writing and speaking, while having a lot of linguistic overlap, are just different beasts.
(Ironically I think my grammar in this comment is not great, but FYI English is not my first language-- I'd appreciate a correction if appropriate)
I think I pronounce all three differently (Southern RP-ish (as in not farmer) BrE) but 'their' and 'they're' are close।
Rhotic AmE though clearly distinguishes those, and I can imagine them all sounding similar in that sort of accent।
The other thing is that writing on the open internet means that potentially many people will read the writing. Good grammar is borne out of routine, but this only works if the people practice the right thing - if they practice the wrong thing, then next time they'll potentially do the wrong thing by habit. So really, good grammar depends on reading texts with good grammar. It's also how we pick up vocabulary. Putting these things together, I think people owe it to each other, and the collective humanity, that they produce quality writings on public places.
Maybe the pathology is this kind of conservativism. I find lack of change - due to knee-jerk resistance and corrupt vested interest - causes far more problems than anything.
There is so much we could do - easy low-hanging fruit - where the only obstacle is (this kind of) conservativism.
...yet I'm seeing unironic comparisons to both 1984 and Nazi Germany, so ... what this person did is evil?
Can someone please help me understand this?
It's not so different from if a Brit tried to change every instance of "color" to "colour", or an American changed every instance of "colour" to "color". It would be incredibly annoying, patronizing, and disrespectful.
Wikipedia is not a place for people to wage their private grammatical language wars, and so people are responding in a negative way because the editor is trying to impose their viewpoint by sheer force rather than respecting contributors who choose to use Merriam-Webster's 2nd definition of the word.
Even though this person is a lone wolf, their actions feel disturbingly authoritarian. This level of compulsion and control is immensely off-putting to the average person. Anyone who puts this much effort into controlling information seems like someone worth confronting.