User talk:Beyond My Ken/Thoughts

Early comments
This is the best essay here on Wikipedia. I've added link to my userpage, hope you don't mind. My respect. --Vejvančický (talk) 17:57, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree. It's an extremely good piece of writing. I couldn't stop reading it! The sad fact is, being a good writer doesn't guarantee an enjoyable Wikipedian experience :-( Currently I'm writing a book, but I don't think I'd enjoy doing it as a Group experience! (LOL) OMG, I've just had an awesome idea! I think if Ed had been a true Wikipedian he would have started a WikiProject on this entire subject!! He would've had loadsa people as members - I'd have helped him to help himself if he needed it. I'd have done the project a wicked Portal! Remember Ed, nothing's set in stone old chap, and Wikipedia DOES need a diverse membership. Wiki User 68 (talk) 19:28, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Wow. This must be the best description of Wikipedia I've ever read. Kudos. --91.55.214.168 (talk) 18:52, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

your WikiPhilosophy
I am awed by your WikiPhilosophy. While I certaily can disagree on some points you made (if I want to be one of the perfectionists and adamantly argue), to me the heart and soul of what you have said is to agree to disagree. I would think as time passes and things continue to evolve even you would disagree with some of the points you have made or might completely change your philosophy!

Some editors who have evolved at wikipedia and have become experts and acquired priviledged roles sometimes forget how they got there.

So my hat off to you!!!

Guru120 (talk) 15:44, 22 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I've just read your "Thoughts" section and have to say it contains a lot of wisdom. Wikipedia is crawling with a large number of utter arseholes, dickheads, weirdos and bullies. Oh, and brainwashed cult members. Despite that, I've kept on coming back because I think it's possible to ignore or sidestep the worst of them and still contribute meaningfully to what is a very worthwhile project. The key is not to get dragged down by the worst of them and keep one's sanity. Thanks for your work. BlackCab (talk) 10:42, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

I agree. I'd support an effort to spin much of this out into an essay or something that got more eyeballs.--Brian Dell (talk) 02:30, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

"not encyclopedic"
What intrigues me about this phrase is that there is no useful definition of what an encyclopedia is. Yes, a Google search will provide a list of definitions, but most of them envision a print encyclopedia, not one in another media such as an electronic format. AFAIK, most print encyclopedias fail to explain what they propose to cover, what was their criteria for inclusion, & why their content is presented the way it was -- although their advertising copy claim to distill the totality of human knowledge in their pages. Although I know what I mean when I say those words, it is hard to deny your suspicion that far too often the phrase simply means "I don't like it, and I don't want it included." -- llywrch (talk) 07:23, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Age before beauty; pearls before...
Lovely bit, though perhaps too broad to be made an impersonal essay. You put the main message at the top, we must write for readers, not for us. Yeah! My version goes further; we must write for people unlike us. The ignorant, the narrow, the semiliterate, the semithoughtful. That's one of the advantages of a commercial enterprise; creative workers can be paid to cater to customers who are unlike them. Instead we get engineers and other specialists who know how to write for their peers. Darn, I won't have time to organize properly today so here's the place for a few bullets.
 * Who's a CIA editor? COI, maybe?
 * Oops! And readers who answer after a skim rather than a proper reading.
 * Democracy? Seems to me, that implies an informed citizenry able to pursue what's good for them. Which means, us insiders, not our millions of mostly (yet rationally) clueless consumers. As it is, hundreds of thousands of editors have the right to vote but rarely more than a few hundred actually do, and they are even more insider than we are.
 * Old timers step back into the shadows? That's me, all right but the other day at Brooklyn Public Library I explained to an interested but clueless young recruit that "Wikipedia is one of those iceberg things, 99% underwater". Seems to me, though our time discussing each others' essays may be seen as wasted, still it's what we're good at, and better understanding among insiders is also valuable. Which yes, pushes that part the iceberg into the waters of a social network.
 * Arrogance of young minds especially when lit by a Great Idea? Yes, been there, done that and now my silliness is more conscious than half a century ago, but old fogies like us can also try being a little more gentle and flexible.
 * Wow, talk about arrogance. I got so carried away by my own sentence that I forgot my final three points and must end here with enough time left before final watchlist checks and going about my real world afternoon business.
 * Oh. No anonymous or pseudonymous editing? That part of the Nupedia plan is still in use at Citizendium. The benefits are real but the cost is, to my mind, terrible.
 * Anyway don't give up hope. Wikipedia is doomed to SNAFU but so's the rest of life. Jim.henderson (talk) 17:46, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

An Analysis of WP Software Flaws
Hi, I'm interested in your thoughts on my blog post, Wikipedia's 13 Dealy Sins which covers the technical aspects of why many of the Wikipedia problems you mention occur. In short, the wiki software itself is to blame.-- Sparkzilla talk! 19:42, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the link. I read your article (well, skimmed it would be more accurate).  I agreed with a few things, but strongly disagreed with a lot of your opinions.  I doubt very much that your thesis that the software is to blame for most of the problems we have here is significantly true - but please do my a favor, I'm not particularly interested in debating the subject, or in further exploration of your piece, so it's not really necessary to extend this discussion any further than this.  I do thank you for the link, though. BMK (talk) 01:31, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Copyediting allowed?
I have the misfortune to be a compulsive copyeditor.

May I edit your user essay for obvious typos, please?

If I do mess up, you can always revert me without a whimper of protest from me... BushelCandle (talk) 06:48, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Actually, I'd prefer you to mention them here, and then I'll fix them. Thanks. BMK (talk) 02:24, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
 * It's only tiny stuff like obvious misspellings and grammar - nothing semantic.
 * Because of that, it would take approximately 40 times the number of characters to explain each needed change rather than to simply make it. Because that's such an inefficient way to copyedit, I must respectfully decline your suggestion. Just message me on my talk page if you re-consider and thanks for considering my proposal... BushelCandle (talk) 04:18, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
 * If you paste the whole essay onto another page, save it, and edit the copy, then Ken can diff your before-and-after versions and use the changes that he wants. 50.0.136.56 (talk) 08:37, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
 * That would be fine. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:39, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Grammar
At the top it says the word "which" when it should say "that". Great essay though.  IWI  ( chat ) 00:31, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

NoNazis errata
I think that MjolnirPants started it, but it was also the work of other editors, including TonyBallioni (now attributed on your page) and various others, of course. — Paleo Neonate  – 03:04, 10 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that correction. I guess I didn't see MjolnirPants name at the bottom of the page's history.  I've fixed it. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:45, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Explanatory notes and citations
You say (about explanatory notes and citations) "....but there's absolutely no reason why both types of note can't coexist in a single list..."

Putting myself in the position of a reader of Wikipedia article, books, academic articles, etc., I find it particularly irritating when explanatory notes are intermingled with citations.

It is entirely possible to read most works that are extensively cited without reading any of the citations. They are there just in case you want to follow up who said exactly what – or if you want to read further in a subject. Explanatory notes are, however, part of the information that the writer of the work in question wants to impart. They may not be in the main narrative/discussion for any of a number of reasons – such a note may explain something that would be known to many readers, or the explanation may be important, but off the immediate topic. But it is still something the writer wants the reader to be able to access without effort.

So, in paper books, we often see the explanatory notes as a footnote at the bottom of the page, with the citations at the end of the chapter. The former are immediately accessible, whilst the latter are collected in a way that enable you to get a feel for where all the cited information originates.

In a Wikipedia article, if we see explanatory notes in a section of its own, immediately after the last ordinary article section, then (to quote from above) "...information that the writer... wants to impart" flows on directly on from the text of the article. Where an article does have these notes intermingled with citations, they become relatively invisible and, to my mind, the effort of the editor in writing them goes to waste.

An example of what I try to achieve is Cutter (boat) (yes, there are things that need fixing in the article).

Obviously, just my opinion. Overall, I think your comments on Wikipedia are spot on. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 22:58, 11 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I think that my take on this has shifted a bit across the years.  In most academic or otherwise footnoted books, there's only one list of notes at the back (I don't come across notes at the end of chapters very often - think that may be a form that's either fallen out of fashion, is regional in usage, or is used where each chapter is by a different author).  I'm a reader of footnotes, but when I finish the book, not as I read it.  What I'm looking for are those (sometimes rare) instances where footnotes contain additional information, as opposed to simply citations.  It's a bit of a task scrolling through pages of citations looking for those nuggets, so I think I've begun to appreciate the separation of informational or explanatory notes from straightforward citations in our articles.  On a few occasions I've moved those kind of notes out of the general list into their own list, and I think that's helpful.  A citation with a couple of words of explanation or additional information should stay with the rest of the citations, but I guess I've come around to thinking that separation by type is useful. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:25, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

A copy-editing comment made in good humour
RE: Appendix 2021 - whether intentional or not, I did literally laugh out loud when I clicked WP:EE and ended up .... well, I'll let you find out. Can I expect to be Rickrolled elsewhere? Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 22:09, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Should've been WP:ARBEE. Beyond My Ken (talk) 06:43, 26 December 2023 (UTC)