Wikipedia

I was reading through some wikipedia entry's on DMA and their games, and it staggers my just how bad community editing can be. I look at these every now and then to see if anyone's discovered anything cool, but what strikes me the most is how bad the editing is.

Uniracers for example. About a year or so ago it had a fairly large entry and was pretty factual, but now its a tiny stub as editors trim bits they don't like. If you look back through the history far enough, you'll find additions by me where I talked about the split screen system having to be verified by Nintendo R&D. This was because I got the guys to use an old C64 trick of ripping sprites to get perfect splits. However some over zealous editor started asking for citations and verifications and it eventually got cut. It pisses me off a bit since they really know nothing about it, and any citations would have come from me in the first place.

The problem with only putting down things they are 100% sure of because its been in print somewhere else, is that there's never anything new. Its just a duplication of what's out there already. This is stupid. It means no one could EVER use wikipedia to publish a new theory or idea, because some little Hitler will come along and nuke the whole thing just because they have never heard of it.

Community editing is good, over all the right thing gets out there. Bits you've never heard of you leave, bits your sure about you add or fix. But at some point you get some kind of community editor, and they have too much power to kill things they don't like or don't understand. They are usually appointed because they've spent lots of time adding content, but it doesn't means they know what the **** they're on about.

All in all, Wikipedia is going downhill fast. Rant over....Grrrr...