User:Gniw/Criticism of Wikipedia

The English Wikipedia does not have a neutral point of view at all; it also exhibits impatience (in its AfD process), and cultural insensitivity (also in its AfD process). I hope other Wikipedias might fare better in this regard.

The uselessness of the “encyclopedic” requirement

The issue of something being “non-notable” (abbreviated “nn”) or “not encyclopedic” comes up one time or another, esp. in AfD “discussions”. My view of this is that the English word “encyclopedic” itself is not NPOV.

As the article Japanese encyclopedias mentions, the Japanese word for an encyclopedia is hakka jiten (百科事典), or hakka zensho (百科全書). In fact, the former is also the Korean word for encyclopedia (written baekgwa sajeon), and the latter is also the Chinese word (written bǎikē quánshū in pinyin, bɐk³ fɔ¹ tsyn⁴ sy¹ in normal Cantonese IPA as explained below).

Based on how the word “encyclopedic” is used in AfD discussions, this CJ term for encyclopedia, “hakka zensho”, has a subtle difference in meaning than the English word. In particular, this word has the following meaning:

• hakka (百科)—all subjects
• zen (全)—complete
• sho (書)—book

In other words, to a Chinese or Japanese person, an encyclopedia is “a book that describes every subject in complete detail”.

This explains why “non-encyclopedic” means nothing to some people (myself included, since I am Chinese): there is nothing that can be non-encyclopedic in the Chinese/Japanese sense—everything has to belong to some subject; and no matter how trivial it appears to English speakers, it must be the detail of something.

In short, some Wikipedians (“notabilitians”?) say “Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, therefore it should not contain non-notable items”; a Chinese or Japanese person would likely feel confused and reply, “if Wikipedia really is an encyclopedia, it should strive to explain everything.”

The Wikipedian myth of what is and is not IPA

In Wikipedia, IPA transcriptions for Cantonese follow a certain style, and this is not the style usually seen in real dictionaries. Newcomers may be confused, but it’s the standard here, and the confused newcomers are told, “what you use is not IPA, this is IPA”. This bizzareness now has an article of its own, the extremely misleading and inaccurate IPA (free style) article, even complete with a misleading title.

What Wikipedia uses is a phonetic transcription. This style of IPA is very accurate—other than the fact that it does not go far enough to mark unreleased stops as such. However, it is also very unnatural for native Cantonese speakers.

The real dictionaries use a phonemic transcription, the most important differences between the two are

• [p], [t], [k] (unaspirated stops) are transcribed as /b/, /d/, /g/ (cf. Estonian orthography) (unless the stops are also unreleased, in which case they are transcribed /p/, /t/, /k/)
• [pʰ], [tʰ], [kʰ] (aspirated stops) are transcribed as /p/, /t/, /k/ (ditto, cf. Estonian)

Also, tones are transcribed as the digits 1–9 if digits are used, never just 1–6, and never things like 55, 33, etc.

Note that I do mean phonemic in its normal sense: For native Cantonese speakers, [k] (unaspirated) and [g] (voiced) are indeed allophones, and we cannot tell the difference unless we are forced to learn how to distinguish between the two, e.g., when learning French French, where stops are normally unaspirated. (Note that this distinction between [p], [t], [k] and [b], [d], [g] can be got by with when learning Canadian French—or when learning English, unless one is taking those ”how to get rid of your Chinese accent” courses.)

In essense, Cantonese-speaking Wikipedians are taught and/or forced to use a very unnatural style of IPA for them. Worse, this style of IPA actually violates official Wikipedian guidelines. Even worse, some people actually put these phonetic transcriptions inside / /, which should be reserved for phonemic transcriptions.

Jyutping is just as bad: it is based on IPA but doesn’t look like IPA at all. After all these months, I still cannot read (let alone write) jyutping, even though I have no trouble with real dictionaries (with the phonemic IPA).

The myth of the NPOV

This brings us to my ultimate comment about Wikipedia: the NPOV is itself a myth; it does not exist.

In Wikipedia, a machine-translated article is AfD’d (instead of categorizing as a translation request) if it cannot be understood. A regional article is unnotable and therefore should be AfD’d. Short regional articles are AfD’d (instead of being marked as stubs). Bus terminals are automatically non-notable even though “feature article” status requires all stations to have their own articles. These happen, as if the translation request and stub templates exist without a reason, as if cities using buses are intrinsically less valuable than cities using trains.

And take culture. Problems not having written in English can be criticized variously as “original research”, “unjustified”, etc., even if it is widely mentioned in a non-English language; to Wikipedia, the only true view is the English speaker’s view.

And take history. If biblical historical passages are referred to as history, it’s called POV; if an article treats them as myth, it’s called NPOV. A positive article is POV, but a negative article is ok. All these show very clearly that there is no NPOV in Wikipedia.

Wikipedia’s position on POV vs NPOV is essentially the position of the school of Xiaoshuojia during the spring and autumn period in Chinese history; it might be noteworthy to note that Xiaoshuojia was not, and still is not, considered a ryu (major school of thought).