This is an
essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of
Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been
thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
A look at some of the snowclones of "Wikipedia has more information on Pokémon than on the Bible".
The metric varies: information, articles, pages, but the theme is always that some ephemeral piece of pop culture is better covered than some serious academic "encyclopedic" subject.
The implications vary among:
And any combination of the above.
There is never any suggestion of what the ideal situation should be – How many chemists we should cover? Should we delete some of our coverage of Britney Spears? And of course never any offer to leap into the breach and help. (One early example says no-one will read it.)
Apart from the logical fallacy (assuming that because X is better covered than Y, Y is badly covered), these claims are often – as I like to say – plain wrong.
Note we have 22 top-level articles in Category:Socrates and we have 19 articles in Category:Britney Spears.
"Is a category with five Mexican feminist writers impressive, or embarrassing when compared with the 45 articles on characters in The Simpsons? "
Note the MFW's now number 54, while the Simps are still at 45. And why not compare American feminist writers at 574. How many notable Mexican feminist writers are there? Who is capable of writing about them, without serious research? Why are those people not contributing – how come we are (implicitly) blaming the people who are contributing?
Pop quiz: name as many Mexican feminist writers as you can. Name as many Simpsons characters as you can.
«En esta lista de escritoras feministas mexicanas hay 10 nombres. En la de personajes recurrentes de Los Simpsons hay 152. »
Same as the above except now we are comparing a category with a list.
"[T]he entry for " memes" is as long as the entry for Immanuel Kant. (Needless to say, there's no entry for Mary Midgley. We could go on, but you get the general idea)."
"[T]hat there are less Wikipedia articles on women poets than pornographic actresses, a depressing statistic."
"At the New York Review of Books, a whopping 88 percent – or 133 of 152 articles published in 2011 – were written by men. More than 80 percent of the 770 overall pieces published were written by men. (More than three-quarters of the authors reviewed by the publication were male.) In 2010, 85 percent of the articles published by NYROB were written by men, while 84 percent or 306 of 365 authors reviewed were male." Dylan Stableford (1 March 2012). "Voices unheard: Female bylines still lacking in male-dominated literary magazines". Yahoo News.
"However, the claim holds true for American biography subjects: Category:American female pornographic film actors contains 667 biographies, while Category:American women poets and its subcategories contain 416 biographies."
"More articles on Lord of the Rings than on Sub-Saharan Africa"
or
"As a case in point, there are more articles in the Lord of the Rings category than in the sub-Saharan Africa group."
maximum number of objects exceeded
even with a depth of 4! With a depth of 3 there are 21,076 articles and 778 categories – i.e. more categories on SSA than articles on LOTR."[R]ight now, I suspect articles on 21st century porn stars outnumber those on 21st century women writers by a factor of a zillion to one"
This is an
essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of
Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been
thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
A look at some of the snowclones of "Wikipedia has more information on Pokémon than on the Bible".
The metric varies: information, articles, pages, but the theme is always that some ephemeral piece of pop culture is better covered than some serious academic "encyclopedic" subject.
The implications vary among:
And any combination of the above.
There is never any suggestion of what the ideal situation should be – How many chemists we should cover? Should we delete some of our coverage of Britney Spears? And of course never any offer to leap into the breach and help. (One early example says no-one will read it.)
Apart from the logical fallacy (assuming that because X is better covered than Y, Y is badly covered), these claims are often – as I like to say – plain wrong.
Note we have 22 top-level articles in Category:Socrates and we have 19 articles in Category:Britney Spears.
"Is a category with five Mexican feminist writers impressive, or embarrassing when compared with the 45 articles on characters in The Simpsons? "
Note the MFW's now number 54, while the Simps are still at 45. And why not compare American feminist writers at 574. How many notable Mexican feminist writers are there? Who is capable of writing about them, without serious research? Why are those people not contributing – how come we are (implicitly) blaming the people who are contributing?
Pop quiz: name as many Mexican feminist writers as you can. Name as many Simpsons characters as you can.
«En esta lista de escritoras feministas mexicanas hay 10 nombres. En la de personajes recurrentes de Los Simpsons hay 152. »
Same as the above except now we are comparing a category with a list.
"[T]he entry for " memes" is as long as the entry for Immanuel Kant. (Needless to say, there's no entry for Mary Midgley. We could go on, but you get the general idea)."
"[T]hat there are less Wikipedia articles on women poets than pornographic actresses, a depressing statistic."
"At the New York Review of Books, a whopping 88 percent – or 133 of 152 articles published in 2011 – were written by men. More than 80 percent of the 770 overall pieces published were written by men. (More than three-quarters of the authors reviewed by the publication were male.) In 2010, 85 percent of the articles published by NYROB were written by men, while 84 percent or 306 of 365 authors reviewed were male." Dylan Stableford (1 March 2012). "Voices unheard: Female bylines still lacking in male-dominated literary magazines". Yahoo News.
"However, the claim holds true for American biography subjects: Category:American female pornographic film actors contains 667 biographies, while Category:American women poets and its subcategories contain 416 biographies."
"More articles on Lord of the Rings than on Sub-Saharan Africa"
or
"As a case in point, there are more articles in the Lord of the Rings category than in the sub-Saharan Africa group."
maximum number of objects exceeded
even with a depth of 4! With a depth of 3 there are 21,076 articles and 778 categories – i.e. more categories on SSA than articles on LOTR."[R]ight now, I suspect articles on 21st century porn stars outnumber those on 21st century women writers by a factor of a zillion to one"