Do you edit Wikipedia articles by adding information about FreeBSD?

jrm@

jrm@

Developer
Assuming you think more exposure for the BSDs is a good thing, a simple way to spread the word is to correct Wikipedia articles. For example, in the [thread="42371"]thread about Gmail and Skype alternatives[/thread], net/linphone was mentioned. I know from experience that Linphone works as least as well on FreeBSD as it does on Android, but the Wikipedia page didn't list FreeBSD as one of the operating systems Linphone runs on. After less than five minutes of editing it now does. It's about as small a contribution one can make, but might be a start for someone.
 
For anyone interested in editing Wikipedia: the English version tends to be rather anal (be it for good reasons) about verifiability, so when adding information you are encouraged to provide references. Unsourced content might be challenged and/or removed. Other language versions tend to be way less strict about this, though.
 
I tried to do my first Wikipedia post by adding the FreeBSD port to the Firefox wiki page. In less than five minutes I received the following reply:
Hello, I'm In Transit. I wanted to let you know that I undid one or more of your recent contributions to Firefox because it appeared to be promotional. Advertising and using Wikipedia as a "soapbox" are against Wikipedia policy and not permitted. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. Thank you. Martinian Leave a message! 16:33, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
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I’m quite shocked now…
 
That's unfortunate. At least it still lists FreeBSD on the left under Operating Systems. You still have the opportunity to work something out through the talk section. There is a bit of Wikipedia culture as @fonz mentioned that takes some time to get used to (I'm not there yet either). It's frustrating when your work gets trashed or modified, but I still find most people are reasonable when you try to be reasonable. On a side note, while in there making these small edits I try to be generic when it's appropriate and say things like "BSD operating systems such as FreeBSD".
 
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jrm said:
It's frustrating when your work gets trashed or modified
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And then people complain about the editing we do here on the FreeBSD Forums. Wikipedia is much worse ;):e:p /me ducks for cover
 
But the difference is that you are an elite few who have the editing powers here, whereas on Wikipedia everyone shares that power.* Moreover, there is an edit history accessible to everyone on Wikipedia, but not here.

* Yes, I know there are exceptions on Wikipedia and I'm not suggesting that things should change here. :)
 
jrm said:
That's unfortunate. At least it still lists FreeBSD on the left under Operating Systems. You still have the opportunity to work something out through the talk section. There is a bit of Wikipedia culture as @fonz mentioned that takes some time to get used to (I'm not there yet either). It's frustrating when your work gets trashed or modified, but I still find most people are reasonable when you try to be reasonable. On a side note, while in there making these small edits I try to be generic when it's appropriate and say things like "BSD operating systems such as FreeBSD".
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That is a good suggestion, I should research more before posting, but I was so excited to contribute something potentially useful… :r I don’t know how other BSD OS support Firefox.

As a side note, I don’t remember the details, but I’m almost certain that I discovered FreeBSD by clicking on one of these Wikipedia links. Whether it was a good thing for the project remains to be verified… :e
 
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This OpenZFS page is also extremely important and urgently needs an update. Note the question marks for FreeBSD. The new TRIM feature is also completely missing. Any of the ZFS contributors reading?
 
Juanitou said:
I tried to do my first Wikipedia post by adding the FreeBSD port to the Firefox wiki page. In less than five minutes I received the following reply:


I’m quite shocked now…
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I can't see what the issue is, FreeBSD isn't a commercial product after all.:\
 
I'm not much of a Wikipedia fan, though I respect the project.

zspider said:
I can't see what the issue is, FreeBSD isn't a commercial product after all.:\
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My guess: to prevent holy wars. It's not commercial but you're still 'promoting' one product over the other. There are enough twisted minds who will pick that up as a challenge because now 'their' product also demands a place.

So if you're not careful you could quickly run into idiocy like: "This product is known to run on Unix systems. And CentOS Linux, Ubuntu Linux, the Debian Linux project, Fedora Linux, Trisquel Linux, Gentoo Linux, SuSE Linux. Also runs good on Rxart!" while you could have sufficed with "Will run on most Linux environments", so not playing any "favourites".

Just my 2 cents mind you.
 
I don't think that entries of software like Firefox should include FreeBSD on Wikipedia. It's because FreeBSD is NOT supported. Mozilla supports only Windows, OS X and Linux. Any other ports are unofficial. FreeBSD should be included in entries for software that explicitly supports FreeBSD, like Opera in the past. A lot of software can be run on FreeBSD, even though it's not meant to, e.g. Windows programs through Wine or Linux programs. But that doesn't mean they are also made for FreeBSD. E.g. the aforementioned Wine lists FreeBSD in their website ( http://www.winehq.org/download/ ), so IMO it's fine to mention that it works on FreeBSD on its Wikipedia entry.
 
My edit states that it has been ported, not that it is supported, and does not concern the sections or paragraphs mentioning the official development targets and releases. Oh well…
 
As an extension to the concept emerged from @ShelLuser's and @zspider's thoughts. Wikipedia claim to be a source of information. Information must be complete or they easily fall into propaganda. What is Wikipedia? I too am not a Wikipedia fan, but I've found some useful information in the English version of it, the Italian version is very very different.
 
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freethread said:
Information must be complete or they easily fall into propaganda.
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The provided information is rarely complete. Even in a science context, information is a snapshot of the knowledge available in an ongoing process. As missing data is a common problem, as it is often difficult to evaluate the reason for the missing. If you can fill in missing information/data, just do it.
 
Erratus said:
Provided information is rarely complete. Even in science context, information is a snapshot of the knowledge available in an ongoing process. As missing data are a common problem, as it is often difficult to evaluate the reason for the missing. If you can fill missing information/data, just do it.
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This is not the point. The point is 'some information is banned, claimed to be not informative' and '... because it appeared to be promotional'. Those are not objective points of view open to controversy. A well-known censorship method.
 
What? People posting to these forums read this forum?! Egad, old chap, has the world gone mad?
 
vanessa said:
This OpenZFS page is also extremely important and urgently needs an update. Note the question marks for FreeBSD. The new TRIM feature is also completely missing. Any of the ZFS contributors reading?
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There's a thread about this on the ZFS mailing list (it's side-tracked right now on debating whether or not we should care about Oracle ZFS). Hopefully someone with a wiki account will take the info in that thread and update the OpenZFS wiki.
 
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