Can someone edit this wikipedia page?

Neo Kaiser · Post by **Neo Kaiser** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 7:52 am

Something don't seem to be right and I don't want misinformation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_emulator

I can't do it because I know less than most people here...

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 8:09 am

Heh.
They cite the GBA/PS/DS remakes of the FF games as emulations(while totally missing the Wonderswan and, less understandably, PSP versions)...

Exophase · Post by **Exophase** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 8:37 pm

I don't see anything overtly wrong with it except for what Gil_Hamilton said (the FF ports are definitely not emulated). It is maybe questionable that VSMC and Super Pasofami were ever really popular emulators, and I would edit the mention of Yuji Naka's NES emulator for Genesis given that there's no hard evidence that such a thing ever really existed. I personally think he may be a great big liar ;p

neo_bahamut1985 · Post by **neo_bahamut1985** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 8:42 pm

Strange how the removed the BSNES entry.....that guy must've hated if for some reason. But, the fact it says VSMC and Super Pasofami were popular is laughable.

Neo Kaiser · Post by **Neo Kaiser** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 8:59 pm

It also praise Nesticle too much...

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 9:08 pm

This is Wikipedia, the place where politics has an edit button to use.

byuu · Post by **byuu** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 9:31 pm

neo_bahamut1985 wrote:Strange how the removed the BSNES entry.....that guy must've hated if for some reason. But, the fact it says VSMC and Super Pasofami were popular is laughable.

That's what happens when you favor "verifiability" (read: what a major newspaper editor wrote) over fact. They say it themselves, "Wikipedia is not about truth." I wish I was making that up.

I honestly can't believe any intelligent, self-respecting person wastes their time there.

I'm glad the article is gone, and I've blacklisted all WP domains as a referral </emo> which I will not ever be removing to encourage them to keep it that way. I'll start redirecting to Jason Scott's page if they recreate the article.

neo_bahamut1985 · Post by **neo_bahamut1985** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 9:46 pm

byuu wrote: I'm glad the article is gone, and I've blacklisted all WP domains as a referral </emo> which I will not ever be removing to encourage them to keep it that way. I'll start redirecting to Jason Scott's page if they recreate the article.

Good idea. Maybe it's just as well.

blargg · Post by **blargg** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 11:46 pm

byuu wrote:That's what happens when you favor "verifiability" (read: what a major newspaper editor wrote) over fact. They say it themselves, "Wikipedia is not about truth." I wish I was making that up.

I honestly can't believe any intelligent, self-respecting person wastes their time there.

As I understand it, Wikipedia is about summarizing information available elsewhere (and citing sources). That's something can be done objectively, and a reader can verify the facts by following sources. Requiring that articles contain truth is unenforcable, except outside limited realms like mathematics. Why would an intelligent, self-respecting person consider this a useless resource?

byuu · Post by **byuu** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 12:03 am

As I understand it, Wikipedia is about summarizing information available elsewhere (and citing sources). That's something can be done objectively, and a reader can verify the facts by following sources. Requiring that articles contain truth is unenforcable, except outside limited realms like mathematics. Why would an intelligent, self-respecting person consider this a useless resource?

Because the summaries are shit, continuously twiddled down and nitpicked by people with way too much free time on their hands and special agendas to meet all their lofty goals (N, NPOV, NOR, RS, BIO, etc,) done by people with absolutely zero qualifications or business writing about said topics, and many times the information is completely wrong. Sure, you can edit it, only to have your changes reverted five minutes later by someone complaining that your source isn't reliable enough.

As it stands, it ends up being nothing but a loosely plagiarized -- I'm sorry, "reworded / summarized" -- group of inaccurate trash, followed by a collection of links. A search engine serves more purpose.

And that's not even covering all of the political bullshit that goes on there. I'll take an actual encyclopedia any day of the week.

Check out the article I linked to above. He also has two or three audio presentations that make many good points as well. The man is much more eloquent with words than I am.

Neo Kaiser · Post by **Neo Kaiser** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 2:35 am

And posting arguments? Can after making the changes and edited the article with true facts be locked down by Wikipedia staff so no one can mislead?

Tallgeese · Post by **Tallgeese** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 4:06 am

Wikipedia's staff is actually fairly corrupt. Look up the shenanigans for example of the head, Jimbo Wales.

funkyass · Post by **funkyass** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 9:11 pm

blargg wrote: As I understand it, Wikipedia is about summarizing information available elsewhere (and citing sources). That's something can be done objectively, and a reader can verify the facts by following sources. Requiring that articles contain truth is unenforcable, except outside limited realms like mathematics. Why would an intelligent, self-respecting person consider this a useless resource?

to clarify something - wikipedia is about notability, and if that leads to truth, then so we are that lucky. Truth however, is a far second to notability.

In the beginning, it wasn't intended to be an encyclopedia, or a universal repository of knowledge - both require a degree of unbiased editorial control. Wp allows anyone to be an editor, and there are sufficient enough assholes who use their select areas of WP as their personal fiefdom to make articles outside of the scientific ones(as those subjects are above the general populace) a virtual wasteland of truthful information, and WP foundation will only exercise editorial control for its own benefit.

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 9:33 pm

funkyass wrote:
blargg wrote: As I understand it, Wikipedia is about summarizing information available elsewhere (and citing sources). That's something can be done objectively, and a reader can verify the facts by following sources. Requiring that articles contain truth is unenforcable, except outside limited realms like mathematics. Why would an intelligent, self-respecting person consider this a useless resource?
to clarify something - wikipedia is about notability, and if that leads to truth, then so we are that lucky. Truth however, is a far second to notability.

In the beginning, it wasn't intended to be an encyclopedia, or a universal repository of knowledge - both require a degree of unbiased editorial control. Wp allows anyone to be an editor, and there are sufficient enough assholes who use their select areas of WP as their personal fiefdom to make articles outside of the scientific ones(as those subjects are above the general populace) a virtual wasteland of truthful information, and WP foundation will only exercise editorial control for its own benefit.

Another way of saying it is that if you are notable asshole, you get a special page about yourself. That's Wikipedia.

byuu · Post by **byuu** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 9:39 pm

to clarify something - wikipedia is about notability, and if that leads to truth, then so we are that lucky. Truth however, is a far second to notability.

I understand blargg's point that truth is hard to quantify without reliable sources. But that doesn't mean it should be banned outright.

There are plenty of truths that can be verified by anyone. For instance, "grass is green", or "this software runs on Windows." You can't even take an author's own words to provide truth, even if said claim is easily testable by anyone in five minutes. Instead, they won't allow that claim to be added until the Wall Street Journal talks about the claim. Not that the WSJ is qualified to, or would have any interest in that claim, but just because they're a "reliable source." Never mind how factually wrong that source is.

Put another way, if WSJ printed that a city in Africa had a population of two billion, and there was no other "reliable source" to find the info, would you want that in Wikipedia? Or would you rather someone who lived there and knew it was two million fixed the obvious mistake?

That isn't a productive way to capture knowledge. A more ideal model would be to allow something akin to a scientific method of gathering information. Individuals that don't publish in a major nation-wide magazine or newspaper should be allowed to form proofs, and submit claims that others can test against.

If something enters that is untrue, then it can be refuted and rejected, never to be seen again. If something is questionably true, one can ask for more information to be provided to back up the claim. Someone could scan a tourism flyer with population info, for example.

You could argue that the only important information out there is discussed in "reliable sources," which would be fine if Wikipedia enforced that policy. It would also make the website a whole hell of a lot less valuable. I like the idea of an all-inclusive encyclopedia, where I can get information on anything -- regardless of notability. The coolest part about Wikipedia is the quick link jumping, going from topic to topic. Cut out everything that less than 10 million people have heard of, and all of a sudden all those internal links with nifty additional info disappear.

But all of this is a moot point, anyway. The model of "anyone can edit anything" was a model for a disaster, as soon as the Wikipedia community grew too large.

Really, the best way to handle this is to have experts gather and create their own dedicated wikis and such to capture knowledge. The politics can be adjusted as appropriate for a given category, rather than a "one size fits all" rules system. And the quality of information will be vastly higher. Then you just have to overcome the Google bias of putting Wikipedia results as #1 for virtually any term you can search for, so that people can actually find your information.

A great example of this is RHDN, which collects ROM hacking information that Wikipedia deletionists are hellbent on destroying. Sure, it may not be a cure for cancer, but it's notable to me.

funkyass · Post by **funkyass** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 10:10 pm

there is nothing wrong with having everyone edit, the problem lies with the fact that everyone can edit the rules which editing is done by. WP is an indictment against letting the inmates run the asylum. Jimmy wales needs to learn from slashdot.

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Tue Jun 10, 2008 6:43 am

byuu wrote: There are plenty of truths that can be verified by anyone. For instance, "grass is green", or "this software runs on Windows." You can't even take an author's own words to provide truth, even if said claim is easily testable by anyone in five minutes. Instead, they won't allow that claim to be added until the Wall Street Journal talks about the claim. Not that the WSJ is qualified to, or would have any interest in that claim, but just because they're a "reliable source." Never mind how factually wrong that source is.

Put another way, if WSJ printed that a city in Africa had a population of two billion, and there was no other "reliable source" to find the info, would you want that in Wikipedia? Or would you rather someone who lived there and knew it was two million fixed the obvious mistake?

Or to put a more local flavor...
There is a New York Times articles attributing the creation of Sonic the Hedgehog to a company that wasn't even AROUND during the Genesis days.
I could put it in Wikipedia, and put a citation in. And it would be the word of God.
...
Well, until it was justifiably reverted for being blatantly wrong.

But if I were so inclined, I could start a big revert war, and "the law" would be on my side.
The only thing keeping me from being a tremendous pain in the ass would be the umpteen-bajillion Sega fanboys waiting to revert my properly-cited "truth" as soon as it showed up without any "evidence" to disprove it(surely the NYTimes is a more credible source than GamePro).