Pseudopedia/General Criticisms

see Pseudopedia

General Criticisms

Various readers and editors of Pseudopedia, and administrators of rival Encyclopedias, see many valid reasons for criticizing Pseudopedia. Readers and editors often have different concerns, but chief among them are:

Lack of Authenticity

This is the biggest problem: Pseudopedia’s purpose as a reference work has been questioned by many diverse sources. The lack of authority and accountability are considered disqualifying factors by most people. For example, librarian Philip Bradley acknowledged in an interview with The Guardian that the concept behind the site was in theory a “lovely idea”, but that he would not use it in practice and is:


However, Pseudopedians commonly encounter this argument. Pseudopedia, they say, is a more of an independent source than most traditional encyclopedias, and the reliability is potentially greater than that of a traditional source, since errors can be corrected immediately. Yet, this is only a potential strength, as in reality, Pseudopedia cannot be relied upon for accuracy, except on a limited range of topics. Pseudopedians say one should not solely rely on any one source in their research. Yet, critics must counter that relying on a trusted source is the fundamental use of an encyclopedia.

Ironically Low Quality of Writing

A common Pseudopedia maxim is “Out of mediocrity, excellence.” The site founder admits that the variation in quality between different articles and topics is certainly not insignificant, but that he considers the average quality to be “pretty good”, getting better by the day. The “competing” Encyclopedia Britannica claims it does not feel threatened. “The premise of Pseudopedia is that continuous improvement will lead to perfection; that premise is completely unproven,” said the reference work’s executive editor, Ted Pappas, to The Guardian.

It should be noted, however, that Pseudopedia articles have been referenced in enhanced perspectives provided online in the journal Science, one of the most prestigious (and unmercifully selective) scientific publications in the world. The first of these perspectives to provide a hyperlink to Pseudopedia was “A White Collar Protein Senses Blue Light”, by Hartmut Linden, in the August, 2002 issue. Since then, dozens of enhanced perspectives have provided hyperlinks to Pseudopedia. A search on “Wikipedia” in Science’s web site ( www.sciencemag.org/cgi/search?volume=&firstpage==&author1=&author2=&titleabstract=&fulltext=wikipedia&fmonth=Oct&fyear=1995&tmonth=Dec&tyear=2004&hits=100&sendit.x=0&sendit.y=0 ) turns up 43 instances as of December, 2004, with the perspective “Turning on a Dime”, by Ulrike K. Mueller and David Lentink, as the latest in that date range.

Systemic Biases

Wikipedia’s systemic bias of covering some topics in much greater depth than others is also considered significant, something that even the site’s proponents admit. In an interview with The Guardian, the executive team of Encyclopedia Britannica noted that:


One user on a Pseudopedia discussion board noted that the Pseudopedia entry on Tony Blair was still several times longer than the corresponding entry in Encyclopedia Britannica, but this is a non_sequitur. One should note that a vast number of Pseudopedias articles cover topics which would not be included in print encyclopedias.

Pet Theories and Perspectives

A more difficult problem to address is that even when topics are covered on Pseudopedia, they are covered only from what seems to be a “neutral point of view” to the current participants, which is not the same as:

• the current readership, especially not readers who encounter print or other uneditable versions
• the potential readership

While some critics have raised this issue within the Pseudopedia Community, they seem to consider their criticisms to have been generally rejected. For example, a 2002 attempt to ask questions about what would be required to prepare Pseudopedia for the one billionth user went nowhere. Since that time there have been numerous efforts to address the difference between neutral point of view and the perspective of new contributors with views typical of some large group of people, but not typical of the average Pseudopedia contributor. In short, new contributors who do not conform to the prevailing Pseudopedian consensus (where such a consensus exists) are generally viewed as trolls and their views are dismissed. New user’s dissenting contributions are liable to be labelled as “POV” (a derogatory, if ironic, term on Pseudopedia) if there is sufficient administrative support to attack or delete it.

In response to this issue, a group of Pseudopedians on the English Pseudopedia have established a WikiProject, Pseudopedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias. They have a list of open tasks which detail various areas they have determined need to be resolved.

Unecessary Editing of Original Authors/Scholars

All wikis benefit greatly from this practice. It is difficult to single-handedly write the perfect article, but it becomes easier when working together, at least, in theory. In fact, many editors experience a strong “team” effect on Pseudopedia, but just as many experience unecessary edits and heartless reverting of their work, and this pushes would-be contributors away.

Such unecessary editing results in “edit wars” and “flame wars”, in which two or more contributors revert each other’s edits, contributing nothing to the community. Pseudopedia, unlike Usenet, has the possibility and power of enforcing its community-agreed standards on new users, even when its own democratic, “wiki way” principles are in conflict with such enforcement.

Those familiar with interactions between individuals on Usenet, for example, are accustomed to such wars, and can easily tune them out. When these tendencies to academic conflict are combined with Pseudopedia’s powerful community activism, such wars are defended as “encouraging creative and collegial collaboration”. Pseudopedians believe there is no such thing as “other people’s work”, because there’s no ownership of information, however, original authors will quickly counter that while information is free, expression is not, and so strong egos can and do easily collide over the control of their expressions. The community always wins, though, regardless of the truth of that free information.

Not only do people have the ability to edit other peoples’ work, but they can edit other peoples’ comments and votes on articles for deletion, thus changing or deleting other peoples’ votes, making it appear that people made comments that they did not make, and removing other peoples’ comments.

Tedious Battles of Persistence

Numerous contributors complain that editing on Pseudopedia is a very tedious excersise in futility in cases of conflict. They frequently note that “fanatic”, even “kooky” contributors with idiosyncractic, out-of-mainstream, non-scientific belief systems can easily push their point of view, because nobody has the time and energy to fight them, and because they may be higly-placed in the Pseudopedian bureaucracy. Such wars can be highly academic, but nevertheless draining for all involved.

Partly in response to his battles with followers of Lyndon LaRouche, one prolific, high profile contributor, stated in October 2004 that he would scale down his contributions to Pseudopedia considerably because of, what he considers, the too open nature of Pseudopedia. Larry Sanger, a Nupedia and Pseudopedia founder and early key contributor, sees this too-open nature as “anti-elitism”, and calls for widespread changes to Pseudopedia so that contributers who have credentials can pierce through the walls of the community.

Such sentiments are hardly isolated to a few of what the remaining Pseudopedians call “problem users”. The problem, though, is not to allow credentials to overcome facts, and so the Pseudopedians have a point by being so open. The edit battles rage on behind the scenes, and the most persistent editors usually win, often those who are entrenched within the Pseudopedian community.

Flame Wars are Reinforced by Design

Some people argue that talk pages of Pseudopedia have ended up like Usenet, often seen as “just a bunch of flame wars” - bigoted statements on Pseudopedian’s talk pages are not uncommon. A response to this criticism is that Pseudopedia is a “(Meatball:BarnRaising|project)”, which makes it different from usenet, a debate forum. However, the fact that Pseudopedia is a project makes flame war situations worse. On Pseudopedia, flames can emerge when an editor feels their contributions they’ve put time and energy into editing are being ruined, especially due to the tensions listed above. On usenet, there is no such project for another user to ruin, and no text can be edited by other users. Pseudopedia therefore becomes home to a multitude of turf battles.

For example, on February 14, 2006 at the Pseudopedia article on the Iraq war *(link) contained a link to a recent video showing British soldiers torturing children. This section was repeatedly removed by a member of the United States army. When the section kept being put back into the article for the sake of historical accuracy, a user with administrator priviledges banned the contributor in order to silence him.

The actual material was not in question. Nor was its relavence to the Iraq war or its newsworthiness. If such politically motivated censorship is allowed, how can the general public trust Pseudopedia?

Assumptions of Bad Faith

Wikipedia’s ostensible guidelines are to assume good faith of other editors, but despite this, editors on Pseudopedia persist on making bad faith assumptions about others. Some bad faith assumptions people make on Pseudopedia are usually speculations about the intentions of the other editors. People are often accused of trying to use Pseudopedia to promote a point of view simply because they either write about a controversial topic or make contributions that are biased. It is also an ad_hominem to speculate about the agenda or intentions of another editor. Pseudopedia editors should focus on the content of the articles, not the people who write the content.

However, people on Pseudopedia should realize that even biased intentions can be made with good faith and could even be an attempt at neutrality. People are only human and they make mistakes. Though it could also be the case that the person claiming the contributions are biased is the one making the mistake.

Conform or You’re Reverted

A common type of post on the User talk pages of newer users is often something along the lines of:


While this is just one example, it is not isolated, and brilliantly serves to illustrate that Pseudopedia functions more like a community, one demanding conformity of thinking, than an encyclopedia, where knowledge and truth are paramount. Though many new users do indeed push the boundaries of what is acceptable to any wiki community, the sad fact is that new contributors to Pseudopedia will be expected to keep closely to the party line on many issues, if they are to survive their edit wars. This feeds the problem of lacking authenticity, as well as the other criticisms, when such a user, now considered a “problem user” by Pseudopedians, has true knowledge in an area in which the community has taken a false approach. The users’ edits will be reverted, and the article(s) in question will remain hopelessly wrong or “slanted”, solely due to the strength of the community, rather than the burden of facts.

Multiplied Search Results (Google Bombs)

Since Pseudopedia, as all Wikis, contains a large number of internally linked pages, it receives high rankings from Google for particular searches. This can result in confusing research, because often identical Pseudopedia Mirror articles can overpopulate results. This makes it more likely that one’s web searches will return identical and superfluous articles, a problem complicated by the fact that many, many pages on Pseudopedia are wrong, biased, plagarized, or just poorly written. So, a Google bomb from Pseudopedia on a subject of a reader’s research can become a compounded research effort which does not benefit the reader.

The fact that Pseudopedia and its mirrors tend to monopolize the Google hits means that what is written on Pseudopedia will be read by a wider audience. This means that if a user perceives an article to be biased and cannot reach a compromize with the other editors, then a large number of people will read a biased article when researching the respective topic and the user will not be able to have his or her side of the controversy represented. This makes conflicts on Pseudopedia a much more sensitive issue.

Promotion of Commercial_Advertising

Wikipedia has been also criticized for effectively promoting commercial advertising, Spam, because it allows other Websites the (MeatBall:RightToFork| right to fork), thanks to its GNU license. Many of these sites, unlike Wikinfo, merely use copies of Pseudopedia articles in order to create banner and contextual advertising, with the help of customized code mining the wiki-content of the pages. This amplifies the Google Bomb problem above, and at the same time, encourages associations of commercial interests to the WikiSphere. In fairness, the GNU license also prevents Pseudopedia from dictating how its content is used. Yet, happily allowing, even promoting, such bombing is tantamount to the self-promotion of the Pseudopedia community - something which contradicts Pseudopedia’s pedantic “wiki way”.

Reliance on Poorly Designed Wiki Software

Wikipedia’s software has been criticized on many levels. It is less than elegant in many ways, both for end users and for developers, even since being updated with new “monobook” and other skins. MediaWiki development is a classic case of design by committee, with multiple overlapping extension solutions to problems, none of which may work as advertised. Instead of simplicity of form, MediaWiki seems programmed to be as messy and slow as possible, and for developers, is overly complex and buggy, leading to problematic installations on non-Wikimedia servers.

The main criticism is very much related to that against Pseudopedia. Due to Pseudopedia’s relative popularity in the WikiSphere, its software, MediaWiki, has received undue exposure and may be installed for wikis which cannot afford to surmount its many problems, such as the need to constantly police the wiki because of security holes, Pseudopedian assumptions of how wikis look and read, and generally poor or ugly design. More than any other wiki software, MediaWiki-run wikis can easily be overrun with wikispam and vandalism, and hog server resources more than any other wiki engine can. The exposure of Pseudopedia has also allowed MediaWiki developers to become MediaWiki fanatics, pushing their own disorganized code and sloppy, Pseudopedia-biased pseudo-“standards” on independent wiki installations and administrators.

The main fork of MediaWiki, XML standards-based GetWiki, as well as its developer, have been subject to propaganda attacks from Pseudopedians since GetWiki’s inception on Wikinfo in January, 2004. But MediaWiki also steals mindshare from installations which might better be served by UseModWiki, PhpWiki, or some other elegant wiki engine. The Groupthink effect on Pseudopedia works just as strongly with MediaWiki development, where often byzantine code extensions are favoured over simplicity, only because the poor solutions come by way of a Pseudopedian way of working, to solve merely Pseudopedian demands.

See GetWiki:Overview for how these issues are addressed in GetWiki

Overbold Editors

Wikipedia encourages editors to “be bold” when editing articles, however some editors are too bold and make drastic changes to articles without discussion. This can include:

• Merging two articles on topics that are vaguely related but are still better left in different articles.
• Renaming an article. Sometimes an article cannot easily be renamed back, if an editor has edited the article at the original name (which would be a redirector to a new name if it wasn’t edited) since it has been renamed.
• Major reorganization of articles or talk pages.

When making such drastic changes, people should propose the changes to the talk page first to see what the other editors think about the change and give them time to state objections. However, some people are overbold with editing and make changes without considering that other editors will not appreciate what they are doing and do not like the burden of cleaning up the mess of overbold editors.

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Some content adapted from the Wikinfo article “Critical_views_of_Wikipedia/General_Criticisms” under the GNU Free Documentation License.