Contributors Leaving Wikipedia In Record Numbers

Hugh Pickens writes "CNET reports that the volunteers who create Wikipedia's pages, check facts and adapt the site are abandoning Wikipedia in unprecedented numbers, with tens of thousands of editors going 'dead' — no longer actively contributing and updating the site — a trend many experts believe could threaten Wikipedia's future. In the first three months of 2009, the English-language version of Wikipedia suffered a net loss of 49,000 contributors, compared with a loss of about 4,900 during the same period in 2008. 'If you don't have enough people to take care of the project it could vanish quickly,' says Felipe Ortega at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid, who created a computer system to analyze the editing history of more than three million active Wikipedia contributors in ten different languages. 'We're not in that situation yet. But eventually, if the negative trends follow, we could be in that situation.' Contributors are becoming disenchanted with the process of adding to the site, which is becoming increasingly difficult says Andrew Dalby, author of The World and Wikipedia: How We are Editing Reality and a regular editor of the site. 'There is an increase of bureaucracy and rules. Wikipedia grew because of the lack of rules. That has been forgotten. The rules are regarded as irritating and useless by many contributors.' Arguments over various articles have also taken their toll. 'Many people are getting burnt out when they have to debate about the contents of certain articles again and again,' adds Ortega."

Im tired of

[Anonymous Coward]

all the special interests that constatly undermining the credebility of the wikipedia who have time and money to constantly spin information, in small increments, towards their goals of presenting things only in how they perceive things should be. They have money, time, and resources.
Large corporations, countries, special interest groups and political parties infiltrated and subverting the credibility of Wikipedia.

  Alas, Sisyphus 2.0 with changes rolling back every day.

Re:add one

[rm999]

Wikipedia is not a Democracy, so a delete request would never be "accepted by a narrow margin". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_democracy)

Besides, if an article was up for deletion 3 times and ultimately was deleted, it had some serious issues. In all those months that passed, a single reliable source would have been enough to squash any deletion nominations right away. Why didn't you just add one?

I'm calling your bluff - please link to your old account or the article in question.

Re:Rules are to be broken, but not on Wikipedia.

[Creepy]

My problem is the "relevance" people are at odds with wiki projects. There was a wiki project to catalog early Apple ][ and C64 games and every article I added got flagged immediately for relevance even if relevance was cited in the article (e.g. awards, top 10 lists, etc), and then within a couple of days, candidate for deletion. I would then have to defend the relevance on the Talk page and it just became an exercise in frustration. Many times the article would just get deleted anyway.

    I did in fact move my articles to a non-wikipedia web site and have stopped contributing to it for the most part. Either the relevance admins should allow wiki projects to add their entries or kill the wiki project - there are always going to be somewhat minor entries for any wiki project, but the entries need to be there for completeness.

Re:It's finished, dummies

[kingduct]

I'd add that the concept of "compendium of all human knowledge" included a whole lot of stuff that can't be cited. Unfortunately, Wikipedia decided that it was supposed to compete with Brittanica and other traditional encyclopedias and needed academic citations. All of a sudden humans who knew things outside the realms of academia were lesser again, and people who knew how to make a citation were greater, even if they didn't understand what they were citing.

I myself stopped participating after having an extended argument related to a minor edit I made, but the other guy had a citation. While I had real world experience on the issue and the other guy didn't, he had the citation. When I finally got the book he cited through inter-library loan, it turned out he had completely misunderstood the text.

I think Wikipedia or something like it will evolve to include different tags that let people determine if they want to read uncited or irrelevant information.

Re:May I ask

[Anonymous Coward]

Happens all the time. I had first hand experience with this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_CMS

Utterly infuriating and seemingly random (why are comparable projects left untouched?). Notability is subjective, and these fuckwits push it to the nth degree. Some of their editors are so far up their own arses it's a wonder it's taken this long to happen.

Re:Not a surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried to improve their article on Pantheism but every month or so someone change the page to essentially say Pantheism = Atheism and there is nothing else to it. These 'deletionists' or 'revisionists' or w/e you want to call it turned me off wikipedia very early on. Most of the time it ends up in a flame war or, if you can convince someone your points are valid, it just gets deleted in a month. Ultimately everyone ends up with a handful of pages they have to 'babysit' and when a new editor comes in they have a flame war to see who gets to 'own' that page. The most obnoxious person wins.

Re:Businesses Leaving America in Record Numbers

[Maltheus]

I see you never worked in business. Bush's signing of Sarbanes-Oxley has driven many businesses offshore and enacted a high cost of compliance for those who've stayed (not to mention all the BS courses I have to take over it). The repeal of Glass-Steagall (which most talking heads on both sides of the aisle claim was responsible for our current economic mess), was signed into law by Bill Clinton. Bush was as anti-freemarket as any Democrat. And Obama is just as fascist as any Republican.

Re:Not only the english Wikipedia

[TheRaven64]

And sometimes edits fall between the cracks. Following random links, I ended up on the Wikipedia page for the girls' name Cloe which announced in the second sentence that it was the best name ever (it even had a citation, although the citation did not support the assertion). In the interest of scientific enquiry, kept checking this page to see how long it would last. It stayed there for about two weeks, and six other edits of the page by four different users happened in the meantime. Meanwhile, a page I was checking about a new WM whose development I was following was nominated for deletion (by someone whose only contributions had been nominations and votes for deletion), and removed. Wikipedia needs more time spent editing and reviewing changes, and less time spent playing politics and deleting articles.

Re:why I left Wikipedia

[CannonballHead]

Oh, but it's sourced [msdn.com]. You can very obviously see where they got the clear Windows design goals from ;)

Re:It's finished, dummies

[vampire_baozi]

Bear in mind Wikipedia may not be the site of choice for users in these countries: searches on Chinese google or Baidu don't always return wikipedia at the top. The most popular search engine, Baidu, often returns results from Baidu Encyclopedia (a clone of Wikipedia, in functionality). The Baidu Baike entry for Heilongjianghttp://baike.baidu.com/view/2647.htm?fr=ala0 [baidu.com] is much longer and more complete, and seems to have more activity than the Chinese version. Also, Wikipedia was censored for a period of time, which might have affected usage.

Re:It's finished, dummies

[Luyseyal]

You should have submitted it anonymously (or largely anonymously) and cited a copy of your dissertation (online PDF preferred). As I understand it, that's how half the more detailed articles are written when only a few have any clue. It's moronic, but

As for the Metz, France, one, yeah that was a dumb deletion. Every podunk town in Texas has a Wikipedia page. Probably because Texas is the France of the U.S. in terms of pride. Back on topic, make friends with a French admin. ;)

I only ever make anonymous grammar fixes, etc. because I don't have time for Wiki's B.S.
-l

Re:How about anti-science?

[MindlessAutomata]

Way back when I was editing the "scientific skepticism" article, and I had some clownshoes nutcases fighting me because they had some sort of mystical, anti-science bent. From vandalizing in anti-science quotations from prominent wackjobs to inserting claims with citations by people talking about angels or people living with no brains in their heads, to libel about writers on scientific skepticism, I couldn't handle it. I committed the sin of reverting the page 3 times in one day which got me in hot water, same as the other guy, but I was still in the wrong despite how clearly what I was saying was simply true (and verifiable) information while the other guys' was pseudoscientific, bizarre nonsense, the type of crank that believes anything that isn't established science.

The wiki admins were quick to point out "NPOV!" regarding scientific facts, and if you can't take a point of view over scientific evidence then even the most obscure "revelation" and superstition should, according to this line of thought, be given equal time. It is just like the evolution vs creationist nonsense, with the wiki staff taking a "both sides get to speak" position. It was ridiculous! If you're going to treat established, mainstream science on the same level as obscure fantasy then the whole endeavor is useless. Wikipedia was supposed to be a compendium of knowledge, not "claims." Science essentially is the purest form of our knowledge, and with such a backhanded attitude toward... just, ugh.

Additionally, when asked about the page being frozen with clearly untrue and unscientific information, the staff knee-slapped about how "oh, the page is ALWAYS frozen on the wrong one." So, clearly, wikipedia bureaucrats have a relativistic view of truth as well. Fascinating. They told me to just "let the community take care of it," despite none of them willing to listen to my pleas and step in and fix it. I gave up and came back a month later with the problems not being fixed. Ugh.

I won out in the end, with the page being changed significantly to include more (accurate) information and without the nonsense, but seeing what I went through I'm not going to give wikipedia much consideration anymore.

Copy editors leaving WSJ in droves

[nbauman]

That is one of the dumber stories the WSJ wrote, although since Murdoch took over, there have been a lot of dumb, poorly edited stories.

The significant fact, as I and other readers pointed out in the comments, is that it's meaningless to say that 50,000 wikipedia editors left, unless you know the base number that it's drawn from.

Google search for "Number of Wikipedia editors." 300,000 editors have edited Wikipedia more than 10 times. So that would make it 17%. Aren't WSJ reporters supposed to do that?

But another WSJ reader said:

Guys, Do your homework. This has nothing to do with Wikipedia becoming less relevant or the other reasons discussed. It's because they mahttp://news.slashdot.org/story/09/11/25/160236/Contributors-Leaving-Wikipedia-In-Record-Numbers?art_pos=6#de a technical change to the site that makes it less attractive for spammers to use. It's a good thing that these spammers are no longer editing the site to link to their blogs / websites.

http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/Wikipedia_Adds_NOFOLLOW_Attribute_To_Outbound_Lin [webmonkey.com]

Re:A suggestion

[orangemike]

Judging from the tone and content, it appears that Morvath is the same person anonymously editing this article from an IP in the 72.128. ranges. The "whitewashing" which other editors and I are being abused for includes removing that individual's preferred language, which included, "During Frank Zeidler's administration, Milwaukee grew by constantly annexing local municipalities and hiking taxes on people. During this period, Milwaukee nearly doubled its size with a very aggressive campaign of municipal annexations. Large parts of the Town of Lake and most of the Town of Granville were annexed to the city during this era, eventually causing the other suburbs to rise up and demand that the State legislature do something to prevent the communist administration from taking over their villages. The eventual result was Wisconsin statute 66.0215, also known as the "Oak Creek Law", which caused Zeidler to go into conniption fits and bitchfests about the "iron ring" preventing him from taxing more people even more outrageously." Do I need to remind Slashdot readers that encyclopedia articles in Wikipedia are supposed to be written from a neutral point of view? If you consider "conniption fits and bitchfests" and conflating a Milwaukee Christian social democrat with "communism" to constitute a neutral point of view, then take Morvath seriously. Otherwise, I urge you to judge for yourself. The editing history of that article, like any other on Wikipedia, is not secret. My friendship with Zeidler is no secret (does Morvath imply I should have hidden it?) I make it a point to fully disclose my conflicts of interest, so that others may judge my work fairly. My identity is openly known and public to all. My training is as a historian, and I believe that I have been true to that training in my edits on Wikipedia. I am no more flawless than any other writer/editor; but I know the difference between an editing dispute and "fascist-style controls".

Re:Copy editors leaving WSJ in droves

[KlaymenDK]

Now there's a post that should be marked informative. Unfortunately, your link is broken.

webmonkey (January 22, 2007): Wikipedia Adds NOFOLLOW Attribute To Outbound Links [webmonkey.com]

webmonkey (January 26, 2007): Wikipedia to Web: "Stop Following Me!" [webmonkey.com]

Re:It's finished, dummies

[Stormie]

. I once wrote a very complete article on Metz, France, one of the largest cities in France, and it got deleted for being "obscure" and because "Wikipedia can't have an article on every no name city nobody has every heard of"

I'm afraid I'm going to have to call bullshit on that one, Anonymous Coward. The Metz article [wikipedia.org] was first created in June 2002 [wikipedia.org] (content: "Metz is an industrial city in northern France. It is represented in la Ligue Nationale, the French premier football division by F.C. Metz."), and has never been deleted at any time.

Re:It just isn't worth the fight anymore.

[snarfer]

I strongly suspect you ran up against what I ran up against. Possibly even the same guy from the way you describe it. Here is what I think is going on: It's pretty clear that there are people employed to do this.

I ran up against someone who I confirmed was employed to put a corporate viewpoint into articles on tort reform, and to keep other viewpoints off of the site. He was an admin, who worked on the site all day, every day, and who was employed as Director of a Tort reform center at a right-wing/corporate "think tank." There was no question that was almost all he was doing with his time. But he had a number of other admins he could call on to confrim his decisions.

So I started tracking the edits of this guy and his cohorts. I found that they were working full-time on articles involving trade issues, tax cuts, tort reform, and the who gamut of the Chamber of Commerce / Corporate agenda...