Friday, November 13, 2009

Pascagoula, Mississippi


Pascagoula, Mississippi is an article on the Swahili Wikipedia. It is bot generated by someone who does not speak any Swahili. The article is there with many other articles that are imho hardly usefull, I would even call it spamming.

Pascagoula has some 23.500 inhabitants and, I selected it as a random example of a brain dead experiment. When people truly want to improve the Swahili Wikipedia, they would add similar places from Tanzania and Kenya. They would add these places to the English language Wikipedia as well.

We need good relevant content in all languages, it makes some sense to create stubs for all the chemical elements, the presidents, popes, kings and emperors. Pascagoula Missisipi... what are they thinking ??
Thanks,
     GerardM

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

well you calling that spamming .. i would even calling trolling. troll.

GerardM said...

This is indeed a coherent argument why this practice is sensible...
Thanks,
GerardM

Waldir said...

My position on this issue is that it's preferable to avoid bias by adding under-represented content, rather than by removing or avoiding to add over-represented content. This post by User:Everyking explains that very well.

GerardM said...

For the record, I am not calling for the deletion of this material. I am of the opinion that the same effort with content about Tanzanian or Kenian towns and villages will generate more interest..

The problem with such a load of data is that it is a target for vandals and when this proves to be the case it puts stress on the admins who have to deal with that.
Thanks,
GerardM

Waldir said...

"I am not calling for the deletion of this material."

That's why I included "or avoiding to add" in my comment.

I understand that these articles may increase maintenance burden, but that is no reason not to add it. And even less so to despise the work (whether it is hard or not is not the question) of people who are adding this content, with remarks such as "what are they thinking ??" -- that could hurt feelings, as these are volunteer projects and they had no obligation to translate the template and run the bot, but chose to do so.

I understand that these issues matter deeply to you, and I sympathize with that, but I think that when you're referring to someone else's work you could be a little more careful with your words.

GerardM said...

You have a point...
Thanks,
GerardM