Frustrations with Wikipedia

There is a frustration I experience as an editor of Wikipedia sometimes. It’s one I have little power to change, and after thinking about it for a bit, it seems like this will never change (for valid reasons). My frustration stems from sourcing and research, as I primarily edit more niche articles around software—mainly note-taking apps.

Because note-taking apps are where I mainly work on Wikipedia, I’ll be drawing from that in my (cursory) analysis of a major limitation of the Wikipedia editing model and its impacts on article quality for certain subjects.

Take the articles for Joplin, Roam Research, Bear, Logseq. These are all stubs, meaning they are articles that lack the content needed to provide in-depth coverage of the subject.

So just write more, right? Anyone can add content to Wikipedia, right?

Well… not quite. It’s true that you can add information about these subjects, and given the time, I could go research and create in-depth encyclopedic entries of these apps. But there’s just one problem. There’s very little reliable secondary coverage of these subjects, meaning that an article like that may not meet Wikipedia’s “Verifiability” policy.

And that’s because odds are, in my research, I will have to rely upon primary sources or interpret them to say anything meaningful. The Joplin article as of the date this blog post is published relies almost entirely on primary sources, and beyond that, it uses lesser-known sources that may be scrutinized in its quality. There’s simply no good sourcing for Joplin from traditionally preferred sources (even among major tech publications).

Additionally, researching and publishing novel interpretations of primary sources would violate Wikipedia’s “No Original Research” policy. If no source has ever said something, it cannot be added on Wikipedia.

I am the primary editor of the Wikipedia article for Obsidian. Majority of the edits in recent history were from me, and according to some browser extension that lets me see who wrote what, I am responsible for over 57% of the content for that article. I am a daily user of Obsidian. I know a lot of things about Obsidian that are not even mentioned in the article.

But I can’t add it. It would either force me to use primary sources (only useful for uncontroversial claims) or these shitty content farms that just shit out content about Obsidian (secondary sources, but unreliable). I hate it. The frustration is that I believe I could write an excellent article about Obsidian, but the limitations of Wikipedia’s editing model prevent me from doing so.

But the model exists for a reason. Being edited by volunteers, Wikipedia has to rely on other editors to moderate each others’ edits. The verifiability and no original research rules are there so that other editors can verify information more easily by simply checking a source cited. It also makes it harder for marketers and other malicious groups from simply using marketing materials or other low-quality information as sources, which is a good thing. I am greatful for what Wikipedia has to offer for me already, it’s just that sometimes things frustrate me.