Talk:Eventualism

Comments on eventualism

• Finally, a faction that I belong to! -- Toby Bartels 22:55, 8 Oct 2003 (UTC)
• Me too! With the added qualification that for me Eventualism is encapsulated in the idea that either everybody will eventually agree with me, since I am right, or I will eventually learn the truth, because I am willing to learn -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo stick 02:58, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)
• I am a bit undecided on whether WikiPedia will eventually have any value. There is a question about convergence versus divergence: if new silly articles and stubs keeping getting added and there are more adders (people who add extra marginal pages) than vipers (people who vipe things out and tidy up: excuse the pun about adders and vipers) then we will end up with a hopeless mess. It is incredibly difficult to see if this is happening page by page so I've started saving periodic text version on [1]so we can see if it really looks like it will eventually be anything other than a mess. --AndrewCates 06:56, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

Where is the Vindows viper? No, wait, my glasses are dirty!

• Wikipedia has and will continue to have value. Adding incidental pages doesn't damage the value of existing pages. If I want to look up a great article, it's still there. GreenReaper 17:47, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
• The great irony the exclusionists must face is their insistence on arguing about every article posted creates more storage and eats more bandwidth than if most of their complaints were ignored.--Steven Kippel 00:21, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
• Consider Wikipedia when it was first founded. It included only the official policies and guidelines. And look at it now; it is the biggest encyclopedia in the world, developed in very little time for a project that large. Face it, immediatists! The growth is exponential! In 5 years, Wikipedia will be twice as better! Orthologist
• Twice as better? Well.
• If better can be be better than better, I'll bet it's twice as better.
• One obvious advantage is the immediacy of information in Wikipedia. Items are added, revised and deleted quickly as events change the perception or more facts become verifiably known. It remains to be seen as to whether this will eventually result in a stable, growing, self-correcting, encyclopedia, or will be a collection of "facts" that change as the wind blows. So far - so good.
• As time tends to infinity, Wikipedia tends to perfection. Let's not choke the process. Dhatfield
• I too do have doubts about whether Wikipedia will ever be of significant research value. When I first found wikipedia over a year ago, I was excited! However the more I read, the more I began to come to this understanding: most articles I have read (and I have read many of them) do not come close to providing adequate information on the subjects covered. Furthermore, most articles are written with a significant bias. It seems that many I have read articles are simply a compilation or summarization of what a few brief google searches may provide. On this basis, what I read in Wikipedia I take with a grain of salt. This does not mean I do not consult it ever, because it does tend to be a quick way to see at least some topics. As far as a being a real source for research, Wikipedia is not a replacement for hard work and digging into original sources.
• Research value? That is not a standard to which an encyclopedia can or will ever aspire. It is a tertiary source by design. That does not diminish it's value in any way or invalidate the concept and spirit of eventualism. Eventually, it will be a very good encyclopedia free and available to all, no more and no less. If you want to do research, go to the library. Dhatfield
• Going to the library and doing research involves looking at encyclopedias, amongst other things. I hope readers realize that it is this kind of research the prior poster was referring to. -Moritheil 17:35, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
• I don't understand. Wikipedia has awesome research value. It's very fast and efficient to look over a lot of basic information. Of course, you have to be wary of it, just like talking to fellow scientists, watching the news, reading books for laymen by scientists, scientific journalism, etc and you most certainly can't cite it in a scientific journal. Also, there's some really abstract subjects out there that experts work on and that only interested graduate students are likely to come across because it's not a popular enough topic to vandalize or misrepresent. Absolute Eventualist and science graduate student, Xurtio 11:12, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
• It appears that the last few posts are probably using the word "research" to describe different things. Encyclopedias of all kinds are intended to give you an over view of every topic that they cover. They aren't designed to be definitive sources on anything. Dhatfield is probably talking about the kinds of research where you look at the material that is involved in the ongoing intellectual conversation about the topic. You can of course do other kinds of research, like looking into encyclopedias. --Lexandalf 06:48, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
• I'd like to reserve a space here for my comment, as I'm busy at the moment, but I'll eventually think of something and put it in. Penyulap 13:05, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Image

What's the relevance of the Indian statue? Very confusing!

Neville

--

Christ, I'm glad the fall of Communism has given us all enough leisure time to adopt ideological postures about encyclopedia. 138.88.181.236 13:35, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

And better yet, to make snarky comments about those who do...

Time for a fifth stance?

I am wondering if a fifth stance is gaining ground, or perhaps even also a sixth:

• Conservatism - the belief that some articles policies etc. should be cemented and or frozen in their current status.
• Reactionarism - the belief that some articles and or policy-implementations are not incrementally improving, polishing towards perfection, but instead are corrupting and bloating; and that we need to return backwards in time.

-- Cimon

Eventualism is dead

All you eventualiststs must now realise that your cause is no longer worthy. The time for action is NOW. We must seek to improve WP immediately -- not in a thousand years time- we may not be here to see it.

You must all realise by now that the only true faith is Exclusionism. Please visit the exclusionist page to pledge your support for this final solution to all Wikipedia problems!!! 88.110.101.169 00:24, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Maybe you misunderstand the eventualist's side of things. They don't believe we should leave everything as it currently is, but that in time, with judicious care and involvement, the articles will become what the goal is.

The exclusionist acting prematurely effectively kills the chance of improvement and lives in the past. But the community needs to be constantly fed. There is no such thing as punctuated equilibrium in the WIKI world.

Yes, things should be cleaned up as needed, but there also needs to be room for improvement. Perfection is not something one can achieve, but is a goal always on the horizon.--Steven Kippel 00:28, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

"Eventualism is dead, Long Live Eventualism." 71.176.178.23 21:24, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Badly needs an update

See en:w:WP:REAL. Eventualism with regard to en.Wikipedia and many others is totally obsolete. It may still be valid for some languages with small Wikipedias, but this page should be update to reflect that times have changed drastically in the last 5 years or so.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  10:05, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

I have no idea what makes you think w:en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia is in the real world is new of the last 5 years or supports your opinion on this page. I think the sentence "As Wikipedia has grown in practical use, a more immediatist approach has won adherents", present since 2003, has proven to be future-proof in that it already covers your concern. --Nemo 10:37, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

Non Notability

I'm arguing for reducing the Notability standards. The burden of proof should not be on the article to proof it's notability to random editors. Increasingly people are using wikipedia as their primary reference, even in advanced classes. Many esoteric subjects are notable, but won't appear so at first glance to a reader without sufficient background.

I'd suggest we lower the bar for notability by 20 % :) Put the burden of proof on the party arguing against an articles notability. Mathiastck 15:00, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Notability Guideline finally under fire

I and some others have surprisingly managed to open (widely) the topic of whether the Wikipedia Notability Guideline, the Deletionists' Best Friend, is a valid Wikipedia Guideline at all, on grounds of lack of consensus, lack of objectivity, conflict with Policy, and ramapant abuse in the article deletion processes. This is probably the last chance to have any major impact on this supposed Guideline (it was just a random essay this summer, but turned into a Guideline on shaky grounds while I was on an extended wikibreak.) I'm not asking people to go "vote" or make trouble, or even support my version of what's wrong with Wikipedia:Notability; just express concerns rationally. The hot spot is W:Wikipedia talk:Notability. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 09:13, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I think this whole article needs to be deleted as it is non notable.

Monolithism

I believe this claim in the article reflects an implicit assumption that Wikipedia is a monolith:

Historically, the eventualist perspective has been strong, as Wikipedia was of little current value, so its value in several years' time was of primary importance. As Wikipedia has grown in practical use, a more immediatist approach has won adherents. If Wikipedia ever approaches its target, the immediatist position may triumph, but for now there is still a tension between these differing schools of thought.

I define "monolithism" as the tendency to view complex entities as being more simple and uniform than they really are. See: Blind men and an elephant and Hasty generalization. When Wikipedia was new, it was in fact much simpler and more uniform than it is now (as of 2008). Different parts of Wikipedia are now at different stages of development. For example, articles about Mathematics benefit from the long scholarly tradition of the field and the multi-generational talent base, whereas newer areas of human activity such as Renewable energy just aren't as well-organized nor as well-represented on Wikipedia. Thus we could reasonably expect the math articles to "get there" sooner than many other topic areas, and an immediatist approach would make more sense for math articles than for articles in a subject area that isn't as far along yet. To imply that we could speak sensibly about immediatism or eventualism across Wikipedia as a whole is, I believe, an expression of monolithism, and constitutes a "blind men and an elephant" fallacy. A Wikipedian who attempts to characterize Wikipedia as a whole and cram it into one narrow philosophy is most likely generalizing from the small subset of Wikipedia he or she has focused primarily on. --Teratornis 20:32, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I share the same general doubts, I believe some kinds of article converge very slowly and some don't even converge to any specific end state at all such as certain cult related articles. But how does this relate to the fact that the articles technically are on a capacity-limited set of servers running the same software? Is that just a question of dimensionality: that facts diverge on same servers, or will the capacity-limitations sooner or later push non-converging topics into the Deep Void of Must-Delete-to-Avoid-Servers-Catch-Fire? rursus 15:43, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Nice image!

rursus 15:36, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

It could/will be improved. --Alchemist Jack 22:47, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Some further expansion would be nice

I came here from a link from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons, because I had no idea what "Eventualism" was. I gather it is something like "A bad article is better than no article, because it will eventually be improved", but some further expansion of the term would be nice.

Etc, Etc.....

As a Christian, I liken all of this to "How many Angels can dance on the head of a pin". I used to say "So what", until I found that someone came up with an answer. So.........

Now I just say "You go, guys!" (Duane44 23:47, 9 November 2010 (UTC))

musing on the concept of eventualism, knowledge, and the nature of an encyclopedia

While I think that certain things are urgent matters and eventualism should never be an excuse to allow bad things to float around forever, I was reading through WP:NOT and something struck me.

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, that means by definition that it is a tertiary source. It can only report on what has been reported on. It is a compilation of what other people have said, not a voice in and of itself.

To me that means eventualism is an inevitability in the end, because undoubtedly Wikipedia has factual errors that are errors not because we used a bad source or because we have misrepresented a source but because the secondary source is mistaken. If Wikipedia was around in the Roman ages undoubtedly we would have had a very excellent featured article on the solar system, stating that the Earth was the center of the solar system. This statement would have been sourced to reputable scientists and their well-known and respected works, but it ultimately would have been false.

Eventualism is the position science itself takes, the idea that we propose the best theory that we have right now to explain the experimentally recorded phenomenon and we test it and evaluate it and look for evidence it might be false and the more we look for evidence it is false and fail to disprove it the more certain we can become.

Replace "theory" with "article" and "data" with "sources" and the tale stays the same. We make the best article we can with the sources that exist, and we continually evaluate those sources. In looking for better sources and more accurate information we find some exists we incorporate this new information, if none exists then our confidence increases that our article is a good one, but we can never reach 100% confidence: there is always the possibility that new sources will refute old ones, old opinions will become discredited. As the body of human knowledge lives and breathes so does the encyclopedia.

Because we don't have print editions we never have a laughably outdated volume. We never have a book to hold up and say "hoo boy were we wrong" we gradually incorporate and improve.

How can I translate this article?

Is here any rule applied to translate this article, and any template to link its korean translation? --바리반디 04:08, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

What's with the KKK at the start of the article?

WikiBlame says Insertion found between 06:59, 2 January 2008 and 21:08, 3 January 2008, but there's no specific revision that added it.

It was added in Template:Eventualism/lang, I reverted it. verdy_p (talk) 17:12, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Casino winners

This whole notion of a positive outcome resulting in the long term from negative instances reminds me of the infamous technique of progression betting in negative-expectation casino games, usually roulette. You have in every instance a negative expectation, yet somehow people think this will lead to a positive outcome. Try adding negative numbers and see if, at some point, "in the long run," you can obtain a positive number. -The Gnome (talk) 09:01, 18 June 2018 (UTC)