8
votes
What do we think about posting Wikipedia articles to Tildes?
I personally find it uselful in certain cases, like getting an overview of areas where we have many solutions to a problem, like who should the Democratic nominee be or how should we make money.
I generally don't like it, and have previously discouraged it (and even removed them in some cases). Here's a comment I posted on one that I removed last year:
As a comment to a topic, I think it's fine. I don't know about as topics themselves though. I think it would end up being a r/TIL thing where none of the information is really all that interesting. Slash it becomes a race for easy points.
I think it’s a great idea, both articles linked provide a ton of information, condensed into one accessible website. If the information is not interesting to people, it will disappear soon without any harm done, just like any other post would
That's a fair point. I guess I'm saying why I wouldn't post a wiki article.
Speaking of Hungarian military history... although occurring quite a bit earlier than the formation/dissolution of the Black Army, you might still get a kick out of the latest Kings & Generals video: Mongol Invasions of Hungary and Poland (1242-1296)
Their ongoing Ottoman empire series is one of my favs too, since I have a particular soft spot for the history in the region of the Eastern Roman Empire. I have even fully conquered the entire world as both Byzantium and the Ottomans in EU4 (ironman mode). ;)
Hah... I am the reigning champion of getting sidetracked with other things, so no worries! :P
I'd say Wikipedia entries are fine as links to supporting information in a comment, especially when clarifying terms of a discussion or providing a quick summary of what's already established knowledge.
The examples you provided are highly controversial (in a way that's known to provoke endless partisan bickering), or insufficiently broad to facilitate the discussion indicated by "how should we make money".
I recall a couple of very obscure Wiki entries posted as curiosity topics for discussion, but don't think that they spurred much useful commentary. I'd say Wikipedia entries are potential sources of low-effort topic posts which should be discouraged, unless the questions they provoke are clearly and explicitly stated as ask.survey or otherwise opened to more involved conversations.
Cool. I'll be applying my solution to these daily posts.
I gave up arguing this point ages ago. I'm against it, but other people like it.
I came up with my own solution: I've created a filter for all posts tagged
wikipedia, and I tag all these posts withwikipedia. Out of sight, out of mind!EDIT: This explains why I didn't see this post until I stumbled across an untagged Wikipedia post elsewhere by @spit-evil-olive-tips. This post is tagged with
wikipediaso it's hidden from me. Oh well. The benefits still outweigh the drawbacks.I agree that no other post gets tagged with the name of the site. However, for most other posts, the site is irrelevant: it's just a platform for delivering information.
But for Wikipedia posts, the site is the point. The aim of those posts is to highlight a Wikipedia article. It's all about "Look what I found on Wikipedia!"
Meanwhile, the point of the filtering feature is for us to be able to customise our feeds to hide things we don't want to see. I don't want to see random Wikipedia posts - especially now that @spit-evil-olive-tips says he's going to post a new Wikipedia article every single day.
I am therefore using the features available to me (tagging and filtering) to hide this noise from my Tildes feed, rather than complaining about it. I did my complaining a long time ago. It didn't change anything: people still insisted on posting Wikipedia articles. And me complaining just creates negativity.
So I switched to a different tactic.