Wikipedia Disputes Editor Exodus Claims 207
eldavojohn writes "The Wikimedia blog has a new post from Erik Moeller, deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation, and Erik Zachte, a data analyst, to dispute recent reports about editors leaving Wikipedia (which we discussed on Wednesday). They offer these points to discredit the claims: 'The number of people reading Wikipedia continues to grow. In October, we had 344 million unique visitors from around the world, according to comScore Media Metrix, up 6% from September. Wikipedia is the fifth most popular web property in the world. The number of articles in Wikipedia keeps growing. There are about 14.4 million articles in Wikipedia, with thousands of new ones added every day. The number of people writing Wikipedia peaked about two and a half years ago, declined slightly for a brief period, and has remained stable since then. Every month, some people stop writing, and every month, they are replaced by new people." They also note that it's impossible to tell whether someone has left and will never return, as their account still remains there."
Re:My own experience. (Score:4, Informative)
I've had similar experiences.
I think the editors probably do a lot of good overall, but they tend to be heavy handed, deleting whole articles without warning rather than striking parts they find objectionable (which I think is more the intended role of the editor).
Further, I've seen cases where one editor will request better sources, and a second will just delete it (rather than nominate it for 7-day deletion). Kind of annoying.
Editors can't delete articles (Score:2, Informative)
But you were an editor too, along with everyone else giving their experiences here.
Editors can't delete articles, so that is factually wrong. Admins can, but that is not "without warning", it's after a debate when comments are invited from editors (including you), so again that is factually wrong.
There's also Speedy Delete which can be more contentious, but that's still not without warning, and again only Admins can do that. And it's a balance, without it, Wikipedia would be bogged down with thousands of nonsense articles that editors create, as this can be done at a faster rate than they could be deleted through the AfD debate. And if anything, this is another reason why more editors is not necessarily a good thing, as it also means more work generated - the number of editors is meaningless, without telling us what those editors are doing. And indeed, perhaps the editors leaving are the ones you dislike, in which case, you should be glad :)
Dealing with protected pages (Score:3, Informative)
Did you try registering for an account and making a few edits to unrelated pages to establish yourself as a serious editor [wikipedia.org]? If so, what was the your Wikipedia username?
If the page was fully protected, did you try blanketing the talk page with {{editprotected}} requests? Did you try checking the page's deletion log (View history > View logs for this page), seeing why the page was protected, and then seeing if the problem had blown over? If it has, request unprotection at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection [wikipedia.org].
Re:Wikipedia "Knowledge" (Score:1, Informative)
Except high school textbooks are right, you clod!
The "neutral point of view", "reliable sources", and "no original research" rules on Wikipedia keep out the Holocaust denial, the moon-landing hoax theories, homeopathy apologists, etc.
What you call "banal nonsense" is normally called verifiable facts about the universe.
Looks like it works fine (Score:2, Informative)
(Ah, so because I disagree, I'm now an "apoogist".) Sure, sometimes one might blame the system rather than the people, but you still have to show how the Wikipedia policies lead to this situation. What policies lead to the problems being discussed, and how could it be done better? So far, all of the criticisms are not about the policies, they're about bad experiences between other editors - which includes the people making these criticisms! Which rules are you referring too? Note that the only fundamental policies are no original research, neutral point of view, and verifiability. The other policies are decided by, yes, editors - you, and another else who edits.
(And actually, when someone commits a crime, yes I blame the person who commits the crime, not a Government or anyone else for "allowing" it to happen.)
Why did [citation needed] have to become a joke?
It's not a joke. The joke that people make about Wikipedia is precisely the lack of citations - see? [slashdot.org] If you want a Wikipedia where any edits are allowed, without reverts, without citations, then you're the one responsible for the "Wikipedia" that so many people make jokes about...
Also, what's the problem with your article? At this stage [wikipedia.org], the article failed to assert notability (you don't have to prove or even show notability, you just have to assert it - this is simply way to filter out people writing any old crap, which they do. As a result, you then made improvements, and the same editor admitted he was wrong, and removed the tag, giving us this article [wikipedia.org]. So what was the problem? It looks like an example of collabaration working, if you ask me.
And don't tell me that you didn't know - when you create an article, it clearly links to Your first article [wikipedia.org], including "Gather references both to use as source(s) of your information and also to demonstrate notability of your article's subject matter." - if you don't RTFM, it's not the fault of Wikipedia, its rules, or anyone else who edits there. What is your suggestion for improvements? That no articles should be deleted? That references shouldn't be required?
Re:Liar (Score:3, Informative)
Deletionists are editors who think that Wikipedia shouldn't include "non-notable" information, and therefore delete it. Their argument is that the vast majority of the trivia that people try to add to Wikipedia every day has no interest to anyone but the person writing it, is impossible to verify, reduces the level of quality of the articles, is vulnerable to spamming, astroturfing and other manipulations, reduces the signal-to-noise ratio of the content, wastes the time of admins, and would hurt Wikipedia's image if allowed to remain. Reasonable people can disagree about where to draw the line (and about how this policy ends up being experienced by new and casual editors), but it's hard to dispute that a lot of the crap people post absolutely does not belong in anything calling itself an encyclopedia.
Editors trying to enforce their own preferred version of reality, or just locking down an article the way they like it, has a lot more to do with editor bias and personal fiefdoms. In my opinion that's worse than deletionism (though it's an easy trap to fall into; if you've spent hours crafting the introduction to an article until it's just right, and some random schmoe comes and changes it in a way that makes it worse--in your opinion--wouldn't you change it back?), but it's also against Wikipedia policy. If you had had the will or energy to fight it, and learn the ins and outs of the system, you could probably have prevailed in the end. I don't blame you for walking away, though. Who wants to deal with Internet bullies?
Fire them all (Score:3, Informative)
Case-in-point. (Score:2, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion#In_anime [wikipedia.org]
Everything currently wrong with wikipedia can be summed up by this one link, as well as the edit war currently going on over the section. The people most willing to fight over revisions are the generally the ones you don't want involved. Qualified academic writers are driven out by people who will fight for hours over the importance of crucifixion in an episode of their favorite anime.
Re:Not a decline (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Oh, you can tell (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, I can put my finger on it. The New York Times and other major media outlets ran "Wikigroaning" articles making fun of the amount of trivia on the site. Soon afterwards, there was a fairly major effort to clean up popular culture articles and export a lot of the fan-cruft stuff to other wikis.
If there's one thing the wiki-collective reacts to, it's any kind of popular criticism.
Re:Oh, you can tell (Score:3, Informative)