User:Woudloper/Hermione
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The Hermione effect is an effect that creates erroneous content on Wikipedia by in all sense constructive and well-meaning users. The effect explains a large group of erroneous edits that are not vandalism. It is named after Hermione Granger, probably one of the world's best known know-it-alls, albeit a fictional character.
Principle
The effect is caused by the sudden impulse, experienced by the user, to add a small, suddenly remembered fact to an article they read. Most of Wikipedia's content was created by people knowing something extra about a subject and wanting to share it with the rest of the world; this page is of course not meant to discourage users from adding content. In a sense, all contributors to Wikipedia are "nasty" know-it-alls (including the author of this text) but considering the rest of humankind are either dull consumers or vandals, Wikipedians are probably the better part of humankind.
Unfortunately, the positive impulse to add ("I know something!") sometimes leads to haste, mainly caused by either the fear that somebody else will be first or the misunderstanding that the article should be completed as soon as possible. This haste can create a number of errors:
- Typographical errors
- very uncommon spelling
- bad use of punctuation
- Grammatical errors: by adding a fact to a sentence the sentence becomes grammatically incorrect
- Logical nonsense: by adding a fact a sentence becomes nonsense because it contradicts itself or becomes otherwise incomprehensible
- Errors in wiki-markup: especially when inexperienced users want to add a fact quickly, without trying to find out how an image can be displayed correctly, what the ==-signs in titles stand for, etc.
- Structural mistakes: by adding the new fact at a wrong place in the article.
How to prevent it?
- By using the "show preview" button.
- Wikipedians should realize that haste is not a good motivation. A fact can also be added tomorrow, or in a week, it doesn't matter.
- Wikipedians should realize that Wikipedia is not a news site. There is no reason for an online encyclopaedia to be up-to-date in a manner of seconds after something happened.