Contributors Leaving Wikipedia In Record Numbers 632
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."
It's finished, dummies (Score:3, Interesting)
Not only the english Wikipedia (Score:4, Interesting)
too much political bias (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It's finished, dummies (Score:4, Interesting)
This isn't surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
Couple that with the natural tendency of people to burn themselves out of things after a while and the natural idea that as the wiki grows, it shouldn't need edits on old content and people have less and less to contribute, and you end up with a declining contribution pool... It's bound to happen inevitably, it's just a matter of when and how they deal with it when it starts to happen.
Not a surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
add one (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly the reasons I left a long time ago. Glad to see others are finally doing the same, maybe the Wikipedia leadership will wake up.
"Many people are getting burnt out when they have to debate about the contents of certain articles again and again," adds Ortega."
Been there, done that. You've contributed to improve an article, a dozen people have worked on it. Then a fucktard comes along and nominates it for deletion because of lack of "notability". Delete discussion goes on, clear consensus on "keep".
Two months pass. Article gets improved further. Next fucktard comes along, delete nomination. Discussion, with links to the first one, consensus arrives at "keep" again.
Winter holidays. The same fucktard from the 2nd time comes along and nominates the article a 3rd time. This time, vocal people are away or just tired of it all. Whoops, delete request accepted by a narrow margin, all the work of everyone goes *poof*.
So you treat people like shit, destroy the result of their volunteer work, and then you're surprised they're leaving? You've gotta be kidding me.
Re:Rules are to be broken, but not on Wikipedia. (Score:4, Interesting)
That's why I like subject-specific wikis (see sig). An article of no importance to Wikipedia may very useful in another wiki. There are also other benefits, such as community rules more appropriate to the subject.
Uncontrolled administrators (Score:5, Interesting)
Wikipedia also has a problem with site admins who do things like block people first and ask questions later. I myself was blocked for merely reporting (in the proper venue) that another user was editing in violation of his community ban.
There are admins who it appears can violate every community rule yet won't receive any sanctions. Of course people are leaving - the admins have driven them away.
Then there are the cases where people have been hounded off Wikipedia and later it has been shown that they were correct and their antagonist was the one who should have been banned.
A suggestion (Score:5, Interesting)
Reminds Me of the Early DotCom Syndrome (Score:3, Interesting)
The kids have a crazy idea, work hard, total chaos, but lo-and-behold Something Wonderful Is Made. Then the foosball tables get wheeled in, there's an in-house rave with free pizza and beer and cocaine every Friday night, the kids try branching out into a hundred other lines of business they have no good reason to be in, and that hockey stick revenue projection starts to look more and more like a zombie's EKG reading. Finally, the adults get called in, all the kids get thrown out except for the one or two who have been featured on the cover of Wired, and everybody hopes it's not too late to "finally get down to business."
"It was the life we choose... we fight and never lose..."
Re:too much political bias (Score:5, Interesting)
As to what constitutes neutrality on Hezbollah, I think the issue just goes to show there is no neutrality anywhere. Every article is going to have biases either explicit or implicit as all human beings have biases explicit or implicit. Hell, there was a months-long flamewar on the Brazil article on whether it constituted linguistic imperialism to spell it Brazil rather than Brasil. I didn't expect "neutrality" in the mythological sense, but what I did expect was that the words of the senior leadership of Hezbollah on their motivations and agenda be included in an article on their organization.
Re:It's finished, dummies (Score:3, Interesting)
A lot of the stuff in wikipedia is obviously copied from other materials. I think they may have finished copying all of the easily available materials.
Re:As a long-time contributor (Score:2, Interesting)
Much of the material on pop-culture subjects has been either cut down or deleted outright. This has pushed many editors to other smaller wikis where they can have the level of detail they want.
Exactly. If I want lots of detail on a particular Haruhi book/episode I'd go to the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Wiki. Same for Pokemon or lyrics or homebrew DS software or anything. Wikipedia isn't supposed to have everything in one place; it's supposed to be a general source of information. Make it anything more than that and fanboys/fangirls insert a lot of unneeded information that might not even be necessary to people looking it up.
Can't imagine why.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Can't imagine why contributors are leaving. It's become a cesspool of those who do nothing but revert legitimate edits (to get their edit count up) because it isn't from anyone in power worth brown-nosing to.
Like juries, the people who have enough time to become a real political power in the wikipedia game are not the people we want in charge of the contributions or making decisions.
A sign of possible improvement (Score:5, Interesting)
I stopped participating on Wikipedia years ago due to deletionists slashing and burning any and alls article in the name of HURR HURR NOT NOTABLE. I mean, why bother? That said, I recently saw something interesting - about two months ago someone wrote an article about her negative Wikipedia experience - Bullypedia, A Wikipedian Who's Tired of Getting Beat Up [uptake.com]. As a result of this article, some folks got together to start WP:NEWT [wikipedia.org], where they wrote articles while posing as n00bs to see how they were treated. In some cases, they were in fact treated poorly indeed. Gems include "The reason I deleted the article was that the wikilinks did not have the proper markup. In addition, "See also" should be used instead of "See articles" and "External links" should be substituted for "Sites". Willking1979 (talk) 02:43, 6 October 2009 (UTC)" [wikipedia.org] and User:Multixfer throwing a total shitfit when (fully appropriately) outed as being a total asshole [wikipedia.org].
Re:too much political bias (Score:3, Interesting)
2/ Why is Hezbollah a "terrorist" organization? They fight in wars to keep their land free of occupation. Wars result in civilian deaths. Is this news? IDF kills civilians. Hezbollah kills civilians. Hamas kills civilians. Islamic Jihad kills civilians. US Army kills civilians. Either one is terrorist or they all are; as for Hezbollah, at least they fight on their own land and not the land of others.
3. Whatever your opinion, Hezbollah has stated that while it receives funding and support from Iran, they are not a puppet and are Lebanese fighting for Lebanese sovereignty. Consider that in the last war Christians and Druze both fought in Hezbollah [time.com] and supported Hezbollah by overwhelming majority [parapundit.com]. In fact, Hezbollah offers a non-confessional alternative to the country's entrenched political system which is based entirely and sickeningly on religion
Re:It's finished, dummies (Score:5, Interesting)
Right. The important articles were in the first million. Let's see what's coming in right now:
Any questions?
That's why most new articles are deleted. Most of the whining about "deletionism" is from fans who want to blither endlessly about their favorite movie/comic book/Star Trek episode/vampire. That's what Wikia is for.
Wikia ended up as a hosting service for fancruft. They have the Star [Trek|Craft|Wars|Gate] wikis, and the low-end advertisers who target that demographic. It's not going to get Jimbo Wales a private jet. [theregister.co.uk] It's useful to Wikipedia, though, in that the rabid fans can be diverted to Wikia, which has rather lower standards for inclusion.
why I left Wikipedia (Score:1, Interesting)
" Consumer versions of Windows were originally designed for ease-of-use on a single-user PC without a network connection, and did not have security features built in from the outset.
However, Windows NT and its successors are designed for security (including on a network) and multi-user PCs, but were not initially designed with Internet security in mind as much, since, when it was first developed in the early 1990s, Internet use was less prevalent"
Microsoft Windows [wikipedia.org]
Re:It's finished, dummies (Score:5, Interesting)
As an infrequent contributor (Score:5, Interesting)
I've used to make maybe 5 edits per year since Wikipedia began. Recently I've made a lot less, and it's not because I've run out of things to contribute.
Of the past 5 edits I've made, I think 4 of them have been tagged as a "good faith edit" and removed because they didn't live up to their new policies. Really, I understand their motivation -- they want everything to be as verifiable as possible. But I think this goes against what made Wikipedia big in the first place.
It used to be so quick and easy to add new information. Anyone who spotted an error was compelled to correct it. It brought the entire internet together as one big community. Now you have to stay caught up with their ever-changing policies, be prepared to defend an edit in the discussion page, etc. -- it's no longer quick and easy. It's no longer fun to contribute. It's more like actual work now. I'm glad that some people can still enjoy doing it because I find Wikipedia an invaluable resource, but as an 'infrequent' contributor, I have a lot of trouble finding the motivation to put up with it any more.
Re:As a long-time contributor (Score:1, Interesting)
Don't forget the bureaucracy. I don't mind rules about style and content insofar as they're reasonable (I like consistency) but Wikipedia has acquired a big body of laws about other things. And these and other decisions are not always reasonable and not always arrived at in a democratic fashion. I've been involved in many "rope pulling contests" before and even though Wikipedia says they rule based on consensus, in practice this is not the case. I got really frustrated at times with people who were obviously wrong (not just according to me) but who simply used the vast amounts of time they apparently have on their hands to push hardest and then use the result to tweak the rules to make it even easier to do. We've scored a few victories, yes. But not enough. And in any case, I want to write articles and I don't want to have to defend them all the time. It isn't the anonymous vandals that burn you out the most, it's unreasonable long standing contributors that make you go away. Even when you're thinking about an article that probably won't be bothered by them, you still think about adding it in the context of adding it to a bigger entity that has those problems and then you stop bothering. I haven't logged in in months now. I've still asked questions on talk pages though, but I simply can't bring myself to edit anymore. Although it was probably a certain autocratic decision from above that pushed me over the brim, but even if that hadn't happened, it was probably a question of time before I got fed up with it all.
Re:New wiki user (Score:1, Interesting)
How about massive layoffs?
I used to edit wikipedia from work. I'd look something up, notice an error, and then fix it during my 15-minute breaks. Now, not having a job, I don't edit the encyclopedia at all. My last edit dates back about one month prior to my last day in the office, but I bet once I return to work, my contributions will skyrocket.
Perhaps the same phenomenon is spreading throughout the world: more time at home == more time doing other things, not wiki-editing
Re:It's finished, dummies (Score:4, Interesting)
This isn't a troll. A lot of articles in Wikipedia on historical topics are copied verbatim from the 1911 (or something close to that year) edition of Encyclopaedia Brittanica, which is in the public domain.
Why I am no longer supporting Wikipedia.. (Score:1, Interesting)
I have started three (minor) articles and contributed to hundreds more.
I am no longer doing this. Wikipedia has become a slew of in-fighting political activists, and many articles have been severely distorted by single-issue fanatics insisting on deleting anything which does not accord with their point of view....
Re:A suggestion (Score:5, Interesting)
I wouldn't know about that specifically, but I do know that Wikipedia's structure lends itself to fascist-style controls.
As one record, I'll point you to the records of the cities of Milwaukee WI and Oak Creek WI, and the page of past Milwaukee mayor (and later, co-re-founder of the US Socialist Party) Frank Zeidler.
What happened? Far from being objective, the articles for these are whitewashed to remove any mention of Zeidler that is not glowingly positive. It's been done repeatedly over the years by one "Orangemike", previously just a maltempered user with severe (codeword: WP:OWN) "ownership issues" but later given admin status thanks to being buddy-buddy with the left-wing crowd.
He admits that he's hopelessly biased, especially since he calls Zeidler a "good friend" of his [wikipedia.org], but the whitewash and abuse of power have been consistent over the years as relates to Milwaukee, Zeidler, Oak Creek, and especially the circumstances surrounding the adoption of WI 66.0215, aka "The Oak Creek Law", which was put in place specifically to stop Zeidler's extreme abuses in gobbling up small towns.
With administrators like that, it's no wonder the "encyclopedia" is failing fast. If you look at the currently-active administrators of Wikipedia, they all have their little fiefdoms of "owned" articles, they all know how to play the system (and all protect each other when questions are raised about their behavior), and so the chance of needed change happening has a statistical probability rapidly approaching zero, and likely today so small today as to be inexpressible in 32-bit floating point math.
Re:It's finished, dummies (Score:2, Interesting)
But isn't it possible that the contributors that are "disappearing in record numbers" are largely "casual" editors and vandals who can no longer edit articles as easily as they used to?
Re:As a long-time contributor (Score:5, Interesting)
My favorite tag is "citation needed."
I generally read this as, "someone needs to look up a citation for this, and I'm too high and mighty to stoop to such a level! Do it for me, peons!"
Whatever happened to the encyclopedia *anybody* can edit? Either find and add the citation yourself, or delete the fact for having no citation. But shitting those little tags all over the pages doesn't accomplish anything except making the article hard to read.
Re:As a long-time contributor (Score:3, Interesting)
I am one of these elusive deletionists. I am motivated by the huge amounts of spam articles being put into Wikipedia these days, articles almost unambiguously meant to drive customers to the company. Wikipedia is the fifth most visited website in the world, and a Wikipedia article will shoot your company right to the top of Google. One CTO of a company posted such an article and told me that they found visitors who came to their website from Wikipedia stayed many times longer than people who found them through Google. These people are single-purpose, have enormous conflicts of interest, and have no interest in Wikipedia beyond what it can do for their companies' bottom lines.
This pisses me off because I have frustration issues in my life that I am unable to channel in other ways. I could start martial arts training or yoga, but Wikipedia is much more available.
Re:It's finished, dummies (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's finished, dummies (Score:5, Interesting)
Hosting Wikipedia is very expensive, so a fork would be difficult for someone to maintain. I could grab a copy of the DB easily; it's only about 5GB, but the images, movies, and other resources are a few TB (at least). Then you add on the bandwidth for hosting it and the CPU costs for people editing it and you'll find it's not so easy. Hosting it on something like FreeNet would be a nice idea, but I don't know how well FreeNet handles wiki-like functionality.
Claiming that Wikipedia is finished is hilarious. Of the last ten things I've looked up on Wikipedia, four have been stubs. I contributed a little bit, but never really felt encourage to participate a lot in Wikipedia for two reasons:
First, deletionists irritated me. A couple of pages that I made some changes to were marked for deletion and then removed. Looking at the history of the people nominating and voting for deletion, none of them had made any changes to Wikipedia other than to propose and vote for deletion. I don't really see that any content should be deleted from Wikipedia. At most, it should be moved to a specialist wiki, and if one doesn't exist then it should be created and the Wikipedia page should be redirected to a general page on the subject that links to the specialist Wiki. I suggested this well over a year ago, but still people delete content from Wikipedia. There's little incentive to contribute anything to a project where someone who has made no positive contribution can come along and delete your effort.
The second issue was that there was no concept of responsibility for articles. Most of the time when I spotted something wrong on a Wikipedia page, I made a note on the talk page. If I checked back a few months later, no one had responded and no one had made any changes. Fine, I can make changes myself, but then I'd be writing in my own style which would disrupt the flow of the page. Ideally, each page should have a maintainer and various editors. The maintainer should be responsible for making changes, the editors (who can be one-off visitors) should be responsible for flagging errors. Possibly this belief on my part is an artefact of the way that I work normally (I'm a freelance writer), but it is how I produce my best results.
Re:Businesses Leaving America in Record Numbers (Score:3, Interesting)
Right. It was paperwork that pushed business offshore, not inhuman wages and a lack of environmental laws in other countries.
And the solution to the offshoring problem, I take it, is to cut taxes and cut regulation?
Grow up. Paperwork is a good thing when it protects people from thieves. We need old-fashioned tariffs, not a race to the bottom of the living standards scale.
Re:It's finished, dummies (Score:1, Interesting)
This is correct. Wikipedia has already been forked to Citizendium in order to maintain quality and accuracy of articles at the cost of volume.
Posting anon since I'm modding you informative.
Re:It's finished, dummies (Score:5, Interesting)
I also quit after an extended argument over citations.
His citation was to a fanciful coffee table reference book published before the system in question was declassified, and which was widely cited elsewhere on the web. My citation was to a professional academic analysis written a decade after the system was declassified, but which existed only in a few thousand hard copies. (Damm thing cost me nearly $100.00, in comparison his was usually found in $10 bins around Christmas time. At least that's where I got my copy of it.) In addition I had actually worked on the system in question.
The powers that be decided than since he could point to places on the web that cited his citation - it was obviously more correct than mine.
Re:A suggestion (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually the one thing that would really benefit wikipedia is a feature allowing multiple versions of the same page/subject. Allow total free editing, then have a "version responsable" that comprises his version of the page, accepting or denying edits as he sees fit.
A sort of cross between the current wikipedia and google's knol.
This is called Flagged Revisions [wikimedia.org], and it's currently in testing. Jimbo Wales is pushing for its adoption on the main Wikipedia namespace. Go to that link to try it out and see how it's working out! :)
Re:It's finished, dummies (Score:5, Interesting)
Well I'm a mathematician and to my mind there is an awful lot to be done on the mathematics pages on Wikipedia.
The majority of mathematics articles on Wikipedia typically begin with a rambling, incoherent and unhelpful introduction to the topic. When they do begin to properly define the entity at hand, they typically pick the most opaque and rambling definition possible. Important properties are often glossed over while any pertinent mathematical oddities are given their own individual sections on the page. Throughout the spectacle, hyperlinks to equally poorly written articles are liberally thrown down as though the author believes the reader would actually benefit from the topics convoluted connections to some advanced graduate level topic. This article [everything2.net] basically sums up the situation in a nutshell.
I've actually attempted to change things, but it's an uphill struggle which I for one know I can't win. Time and again I have been faced with what I can only describe as completely inane article custodians whos arguments at times read like a satire of themselves. In the instance of only one article I was told that "Compound interest is the best way to introduce e^x as everyone understands compound interest", "It's better to talk about the properties of a function before defining it", and "Thinking that a certain method is a better way to introduce a topic breaks Neutral Point of View policy."
At times, the stonewalling becomes so exasperating that I end up losing patience somewhat and end up essentially telling these people outright that they are being stupid. Bad idea. I have recently been brought up on Wikiettique charges of hurting someone's feelings [wikipedia.org], and despite my complete and utter lack of ability to change just about anything on the site, have been labeled "a bully"; a label to go with my being a "Point of Viewer".
My current opinion is that the Wikipedia editors and custodians have the mentality of 12 year olds. I have tried and tried to explain to these people that the articles they have taken charge of are in need of serious reform; with mathematical bric-a-brac like havercosine [wikipedia.org] coming before the sum of cosines formula on trigonometry pages. If you try and change something, they will revert it. If you try and argue a case, they will dismiss it. If you press them on their opinions, they will appeal to WP:RULES. If you press them further, they will quite literally start crying. I deeply, deeply wish I was exaggerating here. I cannot believe I once thought so highly of Wikipedia and the people that ran it. The influence of these pages on the learning and perception of mathematics worldwide terrifies me.
Now, maybe I'm just an old crank, too stuck in my old ways. But you tell me where the formula for the the sum "cosA + cosB" should be on this page [wikipedia.org]. Before or after the formula for the sum of an infinite number of cosines, or that for "versed cosine"? Now; guess where it is?
Wikipedia is rotten from the top to the bottom. I used to think that the rot set in at the top with Wales, and slowly trickled down to the user base. Now I'm not so sure. It may be that Wikipedia was always going to primarily attract the type of person who is not interesting in providing knowledge for all, but only those for whom its articles are personal prestige projects, intended to impress only themselves and their imagined audience.
Re:It's finished, dummies (Score:4, Interesting)
Of the last ten things I've looked up on Wikipedia, four have been stubs.
I've oft wondered how many of those stubs are things about which no one has written, and how many are things about which fairly decent articles have been deprecated, not-notabled, or otherwise removed for various reasons on the spectrum of reasonable to nefarious.
Re:Businesses Leaving America in Record Numbers (Score:3, Interesting)
Businesses decrease wages because they want to keep more of their revenue as profit. It's that simple. Whatever wage decreases they can get away with, they will make.
Regulation ensures that companies can't get away with these bad practices.
And yes, the rich can exploit flaws is regulation. But that's not a reason to get rid of regulation. It's a reason to fix it.
It's as if you're saying, "The roof leaks! We're getting wet because water can use holes in the roof to get in. The roof is making us wet, and we need to tear it off entirely."
Re:A sign of possible improvement (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems to me that there is a significant minority of people whose primary hobby is to act as gatekeepers for Wikipedia and monitor new articles. They mostly delete them, giving newbies very terse (or no) reasons.
I think a good antidote to this would be to require people to continue to produce a certain amount of new material in order to be able to moderate. Something similar to Slashdot moderation, whereby the algorithm chooses the 'middle category' and excludes lurkers and also the rabidly/obsessionally interested. Wikipedia should try to make moderation a necessary (if tiresome) responsibility for the good citizens that are genuinely interested in the community. It shouldn't be an occupation in its own right for something as wide and varied as Wikipedia.
Re:A suggestion (Score:4, Interesting)
There are a couple of problems with the Wikipedia admins, above and beyond the other issues raised here.
Admins are very insular and are not really willing to let newcomers into their ranks... raising the bar of who is acceptable to become an admin to even higher restrictions. In spite of having a comparatively old/ancient account and thousands of edits, knowledge of Wikipedia policies, and participation in discussions, it seems unlikely that I would ever even be considered for administration on that project even if I asked. This is a far, far cry from the "no big deal" as originally suggested for administration of the project.
Admins are also lothesome to criticize each other or undo actions of another admin. Admittedly wheel warring is a bad thing and can cause all sorts of other problems (wheel warring is like an edit war, but with the admin tools to lock the page, ban users, and other similar actions). Still, even if a full edit war is not happening, there is a strong tendency to stay off another admin's turf.
Not all admins are bad, and I've corresponded with some that seem to be having a level head. Still, it seems like the bad is driving out the good, which is the larger problem here. The arbitration board is supposedly set up to police and act as meta-admins, but it seems to be increasingly ineffective at culling out the troublesome admins in spite of some fairly good successes.
Wikilawyering is also rampant with seemingly the editor with the best knowledge of Wikipedia policies seemingly winning the argument and prevailing with their POV. That is not the purpose of those policies, but it does seem to be the effect, and either being or having as a close friend somebody with admin privileges seems to give you an edge.
Re:A suggestion (Score:4, Interesting)
Bleh. No he's not. Flagged Revisions have been in the WP codebase for years. It's been tested, and the WMF is and has been stalling on its implementation for fear that it might "change community interaction". Whenever a concern comes up (usually the defamation of a living person), Jimbo makes overtures about assuming good faith, and how flagged revisions are coming and how he'd like to see them implemented, just long enough for the furore to die down, and without actually doing anything to make it so... until the next instance.
Re:It's finished, dummies (Score:5, Interesting)
This is much, much easier said than done. Wikipedia is far more than just the content, and it would take a significant problem in the community to make a difference of this nature.
The Spanish Wikipedia community did get to the point that a majority of the Spanish language editors left and formed their own alternate wiki, with their own funding sources and infrastructure. Because of the fact that the Spanish Wikipedia was never really deleted, the two communities have essentially co-existed and shared content with each other.
This is also one of the few "successful" forks I've seen for a project like Wikipedia. I was also encouraged to do something similar with the Wikibooks project when editors were not happy with some Wikimedia foundation policies getting shoved down the throat of the Wikibooks users. Knowing the problems with forking, I encouraged the editors to stay put and fight the policies from within. In retrospect, I'm still not sure I made the correct decision there, but it did keep the community mostly in tact.
The only way you are going to see a major shift is if the Wikimedia Foundation no longer can financially support and sustain Wikipedia servers and infrastructure. There is quite a bit of fluff to the Wikimedia's budget that can be trimmed before that becomes a significant issue and possibility.
Coming up with an alternative to the Wikimedia Foundation is the real trick, and something that I don't think could be developed nearly so easily as simply ripping a copy of the latest Wikipedia content dump. If you can create a legitimate alternative non-profit foundation to compete with the WMF, that would be a chance to make a huge difference. The question then is.... why? If you have the bucks to create such a legal structure, why are you wasting resources in this manner?
Re:A suggestion (Score:5, Interesting)
This is also the downfall I predict for the experiment that is StackOverflow.
StackOverflow has a very simple well defined purpose: answering programming questions. I don't quite see how moderators/admins would ever have much reason for abuse on that site, especially as all the voting is done by the community or the one asking the question. There is some room on deciding what is ontopic and what is offtopic, but the core is pretty clear.
I have no idea how Slashdot has survived 12 years,
Slashdot, unlike say Digg or Youtube, has a discussion and moderation system that actually works. And having such a system encourages users to write useful comments and it also encourages moderators to give useful moderations. With other sites just trying to read a discussion or follow a thread is already a PITA, having a mod system limited to up down votes on top of that, instead of Slashdots Funny, Informative, Offtopic, etc. just encourages rating on agreement instead of on quality of the comment. On Youtube the video upload can also play censor and remove any comments or lock them, which makes it pretty much impossible to comment on a controversial video. Having a character limit and a crap UI just guarantees that nobody will ever write a useful comment on that system.
Re:It's finished, dummies (Score:3, Interesting)
Wikipedia math sections really turned me off to Wikipedia. It was such a terrible mess, only comprehensible to those who already understand the subject matter, and it had been years without improvement. Seriously, most of math can be explained (at least qualitatively) to a layman without technical jargon. I learned calculus quickly from a geometrical presentation in high scool. Rings and groups are easy to explain in fairly non-technical language.
And yet, things seem to have been improving lately! Two years ago [wikipedia.org], the page for Abelian group was hopeless. Today, [wikipedia.org] it's actually comprehensible, it clearly explains the concept using only simpler concepts. There's still room for improvement, but now it's useful.
So maybe there is some hope, at least in areas where Wikipedia doesn't overlap politics.
credit stealing bastards (Score:2, Interesting)
Any details, on how they got such numbers? (Score:2, Interesting)
Singapore (Score:3, Interesting)
Another example: the Wikipedia page on Singapore describes its political system thus:
What is mentioned only obliquely, however, is the fact that Singapore is totally undemocratic because any meaningful opposition party or politician is ruthlessly crushed using oppressive defamation laws and stacked courts to bankrupt them. It is a "democracy" in name only.
Wikipedia simply says that it is "criticised by some" in relation to democratic rights. I tried to add more detail to this to reflect reality, which is that there are substantial and well recognised problems with Singaporean "democracy", and was brutally and instantly edited into oblivion.
Apparently actual, objective, provable facts which are slightly offensive to some are now called "opinions" and are not relevant or informative.
Completely backwards... (Score:3, Interesting)
The summary is utterly wrong. It wasn't lack of rules that made Wikipedia popular. It was simply that the rules rarely had to be utilized when there were fewer people, and therefore, fewer conflicts.
The rules are a total and utter mess. All the politicians in the world coming together in committee couldn't come up with something so wasteful, frustrating and time consuming.
Wikipedia's rules work against patent vandalism, but NOTHING ELSE. One person steadfastly insisting that the Earth is flat can bend Wikipedia to his will, and it will take months of your time to get official refutation for ONE of those edits. After a few dozen of those, he might get temporarily restricted for a few days before he can push his agenda once more. Meanwhile, you've lost a year of your life.
No. That's not an exaggeration.
Meanwhile, I, and many other Wikipedia refugees, have headed over to Citizendium for something better. It's policies make sense, and were designed to overcome just about every problem we see with WP. In fact, several of the foundation documents are really thinly veiled recitations of everything that is wrong with Wikipedia.
Specifically "We think humanity can do better":
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Why_Citizendium%3F#We_can_do_better [citizendium.org]
As well as:
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:We_aren't_Wikipedia [citizendium.org]
I'm hopeful mankind will get it right the second time around.
Re:It's finished, dummies (Score:3, Interesting)