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You might want to try editing for style rather than references; the deleted text doesn't seem encyclopedic in tone, and doesn't mesh well stylistically with the rest of the article.

Specific things that stand out:

His highly popular story.

Wikipedia pages generally don't describe works as popular without reference. If a work is a bestseller or major cultural phenomenon, the page will make notes that effect, but you should try to avoid sounding like a fan plugging the story.

isn’t primarily interested in teaching readers the “what” of science

The story isn't interested in anything. You can describe the intentions Eliezer in writing it, but writing about what the story is interested in or intends sounds inappropriate.

even though it is liberally sprinkled with interesting facts about genetics, game theory, quantum mechanics, and psychology, among other things.

Sounds like what wikipedia would categorize as weasel words. "Liberally sprinkled with" is vague, and "interesting" is too subjective. Stylistically, you should also try to avoid using the passive voice (my parents both have degrees in writing and I hated it when they used to tell me that, but I have to admit that for most cases they were right.)

Instead, as the title suggests, it’s about the “how” of science, conceived of not in the narrow sense of research in a laboratory, but in the broader sense of the process of figuring out how anything in the world works.

It's not obvious that the title suggests this, and "it's" would probably be better as "Methods of Rationality is."

has been favorably reviewed by

Passive voice again.

The text does seem to be relevant and adequately cited for the content that isn't subjective, so those are the things I'd focus on.

Jonathan_Graehl13y80

Passive voice is unfairly vilified. I don't like it when it's obviously serving to avoid citing the agent of an action, but consider that "Z has been Yed by X" or "X has Yed Z" give the same information. If you look at the best writing, you'll find some passive constructions.

Mostly, people can't reliably identify passives - see especially these amusing (not unusual) "passive voice" corrections, although in your case you accurately identify it (except maybe you could call "X [is] sprinkled with Y" an adjective complem... (read more)

5atucker13y

I agree with that assessment, that its stuff like that makes me feel almost like I'm reading a pamphlet that's trying to sell me something. Though, IIRC David_Gerard is involved with wikipedia, and can probably tell you more about why that might be edited.

17

HP:MoR: request for Reliable Sources

24th Jun 2011

1 min read

17

For the last few weeks, I have been engaged in a slow motion edit war on the Wikipedia Eliezer Yudkowsky article, about including discussion of HP:MoR. The specific text being removed, to my eyes, well-sourced and germane to the article. But it may be that only 2 reviews of it is not enough and the other editor will respite if I can add in another RS or two.

Of course, I don't know of any besides the ones I have. That's where you all come in. What can I add to bolster the case for inclusion?

(If this seems trivial to you, I will note that the WP article gets around 2000 readers a month, and will continue to do so indefinitely; the WP article is also ranked #3-4 in Google for "Eliezer Yudkowsky". My impression is also that people reading WP articles tend to be 'high-quality' visitors, who spend time reading it and whose opinions are molded by it. At least, I've noticed this with Evangelion articles - points and quotes I've spent time referencing and highlighting tend to show up in reviews and other mainstream coverage...)

17

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[-]Desrtopa13y230

You might want to try editing for style rather than references; the deleted text doesn't seem encyclopedic in tone, and doesn't mesh well stylistically with the rest of the article.

Specific things that stand out:

His highly popular story.

Wikipedia pages generally don't describe works as popular without reference. If a work is a bestseller or major cultural phenomenon, the page will make notes that effect, but you should try to avoid sounding like a fan plugging the story.

isn’t primarily interested in teaching readers the “what” of science

The story isn't interested in anything. You can describe the intentions Eliezer in writing it, but writing about what the story is interested in or intends sounds inappropriate.

even though it is liberally sprinkled with interesting facts about genetics, game theory, quantum mechanics, and psychology, among other things.

Sounds like what wikipedia would categorize as weasel words. "Liberally sprinkled with" is vague, and "interesting" is too subjective. Stylistically, you should also try to avoid using the passive voice (my parents both have degrees in writing and I hated it when they used to tell me that, but I have to admit that for most cases they were right.)

Instead, as the title suggests, it’s about the “how” of science, conceived of not in the narrow sense of research in a laboratory, but in the broader sense of the process of figuring out how anything in the world works.

It's not obvious that the title suggests this, and "it's" would probably be better as "Methods of Rationality is."

has been favorably reviewed by

Passive voice again.

The text does seem to be relevant and adequately cited for the content that isn't subjective, so those are the things I'd focus on.

[-]Jonathan_Graehl13y80

Passive voice is unfairly vilified. I don't like it when it's obviously serving to avoid citing the agent of an action, but consider that "Z has been Yed by X" or "X has Yed Z" give the same information. If you look at the best writing, you'll find some passive constructions.

Mostly, people can't reliably identify passives - see especially these amusing (not unusual) "passive voice" corrections, although in your case you accurately identify it (except maybe you could call "X [is] sprinkled with Y" an adjective complement instead of a passive version of [somebody] sprinkles Y on X).

I agree with the meat of your complaint. I often see poor quality writing on Wikipedia, and it's fine that people want to spend time cleaning it.

[-]Desrtopa13y10

I agree that passive voice has valid uses (my parents' admonitions didn't bother me just because I didn't want to be corrected,) but if you try to write stuff that scans well, I don't think you'll often err too far on the side of not using it.

[-]atucker13y50

I agree with that assessment, that its stuff like

Instead, as the title suggests, it’s about the “how” of science, conceived of not in the narrow sense of research in a laboratory, but in the broader sense of the process of figuring out how anything in the world works.

that makes me feel almost like I'm reading a pamphlet that's trying to sell me something.

Though, IIRC David_Gerard is involved with wikipedia, and can probably tell you more about why that might be edited.

[-]Jonathan_Graehl13y120

I believe WP culture is pretty hostile toward outside-WP recruitment in an edit-war. Be careful.

[-]fubarobfusco13y60

I agree. However, this discussion seems to be aimed at improving the quality of the contribution to Wikipedia — and secondarily at understanding what the Wikipedia community wants — and not at recruiting people to edit-war.

[-]Jonathan_Graehl13y10

True. The post as it stands now doesn't even suggest the possibility. And the discussion doesn't contain a whiff of battle planning; only suggestions for improvement.

Of course it doesn't suggest the possibility. I've been on Wikipedia since 2004 and have done a great deal of editing, so I know enough to avoid rookie mistakes. (As an administrator, I personally had to deal with the occasional outside recruitment problem.)

Quite deliberately, I didn't post this as a request for meat puppets - that would be counterproductive since someone would alert the editor involved (as has apparently happened), and would not help me very much.

Rather, I need either different versions of the content (as JoshuaZ has done) or new content.

[-]Jonathan_Graehl13y00

I didn't know you used to be an admin!

I've never even had the heart to stick around and see if my occasional edits were reverted.

I don't blame you. The cost-benefit of contributing to Wikipedia has plummeted drastically over the past 5 years.

My feeling is that now, pretty much the only time it's worth contributing to Wikipedia these days is when your edit is only an external link or a direct quote+citation. (And this is more true the more popular an article is.) That's one reason I spend more time on my own website than Wikipedia articles; I'm not building on quicksand there.

[-]JoshuaZ13y100

I've reincluded your section. I think that my edit summary had the magic words necessary to keep the section. Unfortunately, it is in general difficult to get this sort of thing included in an article since 1) very few reliable sources bother talking about this sort of thing and 2) there's a general desire by many Wikipedians for Wikipedia to appear to be a serious encyclopedia, which often means getting rid of things that seem trivial or silly to them. In this context, multiple reviews however which are by professional, notable fiction writers, should be enough for inclusion. That said, Wikipedians as community also don't like it very much when people bring Wikipedia related stuff to outside fora. It easily leads to all sorts of people who aren't aware of the community norms flooding discussions which is not so good.

[-]Dreaded_Anomaly13y30

It appears that there is a link in the text you added that is not formatted correctly (brackets are showing). I'm not sure what your intention was with it, so I'm telling you here rather than fixing it myself.

[-]JoshuaZ13y50

Thanks. Fixed now.

[-]James_Miller13y40

In Jan 2011 I suggested to my introductory microeconomics class at Smith College that they read HP:MoR to better learn about rationality.

James Miller

[-]fubarobfusco13y100

Personal anecdote doesn't count as a reliable source for Wikipedia purposes.

A published syllabus might count, although on the other hand it might be considered a primary source.

I appreciate Miller's suggestion, but you're right - even a syllabus wouldn't count. (My Wikipedian instincts tell me that if I came across a random article citing a intro course's syllabus as a source of notability or relevance for claims, I would cast a jaundiced eye upon the article indeed.)

[-]Eliezer Yudkowsky13y30

There's been an article in the online? version of The Atlantic about it. See "Press Coverage" in the user profile.

[-]Incorrect13y00

TVtropes calls him a hero and cites Normal Cryonics.

Perhaps this could be worked into the Wikipedia article.

[This comment is no longer endorsed by its author]Reply

[-]Nornagest13y110

Considering that TVTropes itself had trouble getting Wikipedia representation for quite a while, I doubt it'd be very helpful when it comes to sourcing.

[+]LiteralKa13y-70