Wikipedia talk:Zeroth law of Wikipedia

Fundamentals, counterfactuals and Asimov

I don't find this essay particularly convincing at present, based, as it is, on counterfactuals ("if editors did not exist, then there would be no articles"). It could be argued similarly that the internet is the key resource: without the internet, Wikipedia would have been inconceivable, and there would be no editors.

The reference to Asimov perhaps provides the most fundamental observation: without humanity, there would not only be no internet, but also no sum of human knowledge to make freely available, and nobody to share it with. Geometry guy 21:23, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Internet, computers, web browsers, web servers ... sure, lots of infrastructure pieces. But these are commodity items; other sites like Ask Jeeves and Britannica have them. What makes Wikipedia distinct and special is its editors. Nobody Ent 00:02, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Why? We could all down our tools now and still have an encyclopedia at least as significant in impact as Samuel Johnson's dictionary. Why do editors still matter? Geometry guy 00:26, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

says here from beginning of time until 2003, civilization produced five exabytess of data; by next year will be producing two exabytes every 10 minutes. Who's gonna separate the RS wheat from the chaff and present it NPOV? And there's still no article on Fishers Island Sound. Nobody Ent 00:49, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Nope, not convinced by that opinion piece: the stuff counted is information, not knowledge, and mostly junk per WP:NOT. Come on, Nobody Ent, sharpen your tools and your arguments: that's all I am encouraging you to do! Geometry guy 01:07, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Self-praise is no praise, but is embarrassing POV OR, etc

• -This essay is Editors praising themselves, hence POV, and without citations, hence OR.
• -It lacks citations so how do we know that the Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics is the apparent triviality given here (A=B and B=C implies A=C), something so ridiculously trivial that it strains credulity to accept that this is what the Law really says?
• -Editors are not defined - for instance, are we talking about 22 million mostly inactive accounts?
• -It lacks balance. Editors are praised for fixing problems, without mentioning that these problems are created by other editors, such as vandals and POV-pushers
• -The essay doesn't even have the redeeming feature of humor, which might have excused its other faults.
• -It's a free advertisement for the works of Isaac Asimov - arguably one of the most dangerous POV-pushers in history, who, according to his own boasts, got very rich by trying to persuade people that we had no need to fear artificial super-intelligence because we could write laws to make it safe, using the analogy that guns are harmless because we put safety catches on them. Strangely this was despite him being, by his own admission, terrified of upgrading from a type-writer to a word-processor. He seems to have known that even the wording of his laws was nonsense - in The Bicentenial Man, a robot is about to disassemble himself because Asimov's Laws oblige him to obey the vandals who tell him to do so (though the last time I heard the Laws quoted was by somebody on some TV programme, perhaps about Artificial Intelligence, misquoting them in such a way as to hide this flaw).
• -Given so many faults, I have no idea what we should do to try to improve this essay, but maybe some of the rest of you do.Tlhslobus (talk) 07:41, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

But, on reflection, I can start by replacing most instances of 'editors' with 'good editors'.Tlhslobus (talk) 08:12, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

I think my reworking of the Thermodynamics now sounds less implausibly trivial, and is definitely from a more authoritative and cited source (Maxwell). Much and all as I hate it, I guess we're stuck with giving free publicity to Asimov's dangerously reassuring ideas unless somebody wants to change our title from Zeroth Law to First Law. The entire essay now acts as a kind of definition of good editor, so presumably no additional definition is needed. I guess we could perhaps find some citeable quote from Jimbo in support of how valuable good editors are, but as that would involve complying with Wikipedia's First Commandment, I guess that bit of the essay will just have to remain POV OR. :) Tlhslobus (talk) 09:38, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

@Tlhslobus: The authors aren't praising themselves so much as stating that editors matter (which they do: without editors, Wikipedia simply wouldn't exist). And a citation isn't really required for the Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics since the term itself is wikilinked.

I don't think that making this about "good editors" is an improvement as it implies a special status (cf. WP:Equality and WP:No vested contributors). But who is to say what a makes a "good" editor? You state that "editors" are not defined (when they are, see Wikipedia:Glossary#E and Wikipedia:Editor), but what of "good editors"? And would you consider yourself a good editor (in which case the essay would still suffer from "self-praise", since you modified it).

Anyway it's an essay so should your viewpoint differ significantly from it, you could always create a separate one to expose an alternative view rather than changing the meaning of the existing one. benzband (talk) 10:03, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

• Thanks for your reply
• I made the Thermodynamics changes, including the citation, because I want a wording which is reliably sourced so as not to detract from the credibility of the article, distract from its main subject, and force others to waste more time trying to fix it, as was my experience. The wording that was originally there is not found in the wikilinked article and one could have a very long debate over whether it did or did not really mean what is said in that article (and so on ad infinitum).
• I suspect 'Good editor' comes closer to the original authors' intended meaning, and, far more importantly, to what is likely to make sense to other readers, than does 'editor', precisely because 'editor' is generally (and correctly) understood to mean what is meant in the definitions to which you have just linked, and under which editors such as vandals and POV pushers would absurdly become some of 'our greatest assets', as long as we leave out 'good' (or some similar qualifier). In that sense I don't think my wording changes have significantly changed the essay's intended meaning, so I see no need to write a different essay instead.
• As mentioned already, I have not explicitly defined 'good editor' because the rest of the essay is basically one long definition of that expression, which seemingly does the job far better than I ever could.
• Whether I am a good editor or not is not really for me to judge, precisely because self-praise and self-denigration are usually both somewhat unwise. Also I am not trying to praise anybody, I'm just trying to fix an essay - the praise was already there, inserted by others, not by me. My changes added no praise - they basically just subtracted praise from such editors as vandals and POV pushers. If what is left is still deemed unacceptable self-praise (and/or POV and/or OR, etc) then the only 'solution' would seem to be to delete the essay, though I suspect that 'cure' would be worse than the 'disease', and I would thus be inclined to defend what remains per WP:IAR (Ignore Any Rule that prevents you from improving the encyclopedia).
• Regards, Tlhslobus (talk) 02:25, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

• It's an opinion and normative aspirational advisory essay that includes a proactive prescription. It isn't policy. Doesn't need a citation and should not be held to the standards of an article in Wikipedia. It is a nicely said piece, and you are overthinking (and gutting) it. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 13:32, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Award

We need to have an award that editors can put on their page saying something like "I read Zeroth law of Wikipedia" or "subscribe" or something to that effect. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 17:51, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Give a barnstar

I had written:

"Thanks for taking the time and reading this! Give yourself (or someone else) a Barnstar! It costs nothing, and you will both feel better for it."

One of our editors said that this "cheapens" articles and recognition.
I strongly disagree.
Penury is foolish when it disincentivizes improvement. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 15:29, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, this does cheapen our barnstars and ultimately, is not apt to increase retention. An editor of your longevity and experience sure recalls editors giving barnstars to those who signed their userpage guestbooks. Thankfully, almost all those guestbooks have grown out-of-style and the editors behind them quit editing. Chris Troutman (talk) 15:39, 29 May 2023 (UTC)