Hackaday’s Wikipedia Page Needs Help

Wikipedia-logo-en-bigHey, did you know we have a Wikipedia page? We didn’t either. Until today you could search for “Hackaday” and nothing would come up. That’s because it’s listed as “Hack a Day” and it hadn’t seen any TLC in at least a couple of years.

Here’s the great thing about Wikipedia, they want factual information so they discourage people with Conflicts of Interest from editing the pages. That means that having the Hackaday Staff edit the page is a sticky issue. I did indeed edit the page in order to add more sections (History, Hackaday Projects, Accolades) to make it easier for the community to work on the article. I disclosed this in the “Talk” section, requested the logo be uploaded, and began a discussion suggesting the page be moved.

Ethically this is about all I think we should do. It’s up to you now. We’d love to see a well-written, immaculately cited Wikipedia article for this great thing we’re all involved in.

42 thoughts on “Hackaday’s Wikipedia Page Needs Help

  1. I’ve been interested since the days of blue boxes, but never knew the “men behind the curtain”. If inappropriate for you to write Wiki entries yourselves, would you guys write up some particulars of the early days and publish them on this site? We followers could edit and massage those stories and write/edit the Wiki, and it wouldn’t be your writing any more! ‘Just a thought. . .

    And, thanks for a lot of very interesting years..

    1. One of the things I’m adamant about is that Hackaday isn’t about the staff, it’s about the community. That’s why we still use 3rd person when writing daily features (original content is often first person though).

      I’m happy to help flesh out the history, I’ve been on board half the time we’ve been around and have talked to all of the former editors about goings-on. I just want to wait until more of the page is filled out so it doesn’t appear that I’m trying to craft an advertisement for Hackaday over on Wikipedia.

  2. Wikipedia is not a promotional medium. Self-promotion, paid material, autobiography, and product placement are not valid routes to an encyclopedia article. The barometer of notability is whether people independent of the topic itself (or of its manufacturer, creator, author, inventor, or vendor) have actually considered the topic notable enough that they have written and published non-trivial works of their own that focus upon it – without incentive, promotion, or other influence by people connected to the topic matter.

    1. Yes, I think it is a bit in the gray zone, but one fact is that it was already created and existed for a long time before being even noticed. So far it didn’t trigger any process like Articles for Deletion. Just updating it with basic, referenced facts is not unethical in any way here in my humble opinion.

      What Hack A Day crew can do to promote improving the page without concerns of breaking Wikipedia rules and guidelines is publishing basic facts about itself with references to good sources. The rest is left for the people to decide if it is worth putting on the Wikipedia page.

    2. And this is why Wikipedia is broken. Have you ever seen any article on a prominent politician or political issue? Completely biased and/or promotional. Yet they still try to pretend not to be.

      1. I don’t care how Wikipedia handle it but if Hackaday staff thinks it should be named “Hackaday” without spaces, at the very least, the logo should certainly reflect that …

  3. I feel like this has the tone of, “link more things on Wikipedia for more clicks.” I think the history of the site as well as the major editors and contributors would be a good read, while not necessarily something that would generate ad revenue. Also I feel like the important question is “Who cares?” Anyone looking up hack a day on wikipedia is prolly not your primary audience anyway. Perhaps for the offline copies? The future index of the encyclopedia galactica? Bringing attention to it is good, it will be fleshed out in time.

    1. I’m +1 for “who cares”. Wikipedia reflects the Internet, which reflects the world. Which means a good chunk of it is nonsense written by idiots who know nothing. Remember wikigroaning, where you compare the number of words on a sensible subject from Britannica, with something like Samurai Pizza Cats on Wikipedia? It’s the Internet’s primary encyclopaedia of stupid bullshit.

      1. He/she is… every site needs its resident codger/codgerette, and he/she certainly fills the role nicely. I have nothing but some sort of weirdly grudging respect for [fartface].

    1. And that’s where you find that the site disappears due to someone actually posting about a fully functional SEP field device. ‘Tis a shame, now it’s someone else problem to make it.

      1. Hackaday exists primarily to drive the sales of arduinos. Recently they diversified into the retail of baked goods, specialising in fruit pies, raspberry being the favoured choice of most contributors.

  4. Due to how wikipedia works, the best way for you to help the article, Mike, is to put more information out there. If there’s anything in particular you would like to see added to the article, or corrected if it’s wrong, then you should sneak it into future interviews, or specifically request it be added to off-site articles about hackaday.

    Ah, and I see someone else mentioned something similar above.

  5. I often go to Wikipedia to find out what a website is about. Remarkably, many websites don’t do a good job of telling visitors who they are or what they do.

    Everyone [probably] knows Amazon.com, so I’ll use that as an example. Going to Amazon.com, there’s no obvious “this is what we do” on the landing page. You have to hunt around the help file, or be previously familiar with it. It seems to be selling things (there’s a “cart” icon), but is it electronics only? Mozilla.com says “doing good is part of our code”. What good? What do they do?

    For contrast, Perl.com states “news and views of the Perl programming language” up front, and on the first page.

    So when I hear about some weirdly-named project, such as “ning” or “ninite”, my first stop is usually Wikipedia. Do you know what these do? The wikipedia entry for both of these gives a clear definition in the first sentence.

    Brian is doing a good job avoiding the appearance of conflict of interest.

    Hackaday should have a Wikipedia entry. It explains in simple terms what the site is about, and maybe more background information if the reader is interested.

    1. Bearing in mind the number of ‘pedia articles that are just page-by-page descriptions of Spiderman comics, I wouldn’t worry too much. The “rules” such as they are, are just points to score for the loveless spergs who make up the actual core of the site.

      1. Nobody posting on this site has ANY business calling anyone else “loveless spergs.”

        Also holy shit, did Wikipedia kill your parents? You sound like you have a serious chip on your shoulder.

  6. well, if i’m going to edit the Wikipedia entry correctly, i won’t be able to leave out the background on hackaday’s involvement in the kinetic strike that sank atlantis or the assassination of pope elizabeth the 3rd. there was also their involvement with the development of reaganomics. the truth must be told.

  7. I knew it was there, but totally forgot how crappy it was because I haven’t viewed it in years. I was also too busy and inconfident to touch it up at the time, too.

    Whatever. It’s good to see that the page has finally caught attention and brought up to see a little love and such.

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