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."
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
I knew it was a lot, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
That's a lot of eyeballs.
If nothing else they deserve an award for not plastering advertisements on their site. I know some major newspapers that would love to see their sites get that kind of traffic.
Re:I knew it was a lot, but... (Score:1, Interesting)
They might deserve an award if they actually built Wikipedia themselves. Those are OUR articles and OUR blood, sweat and tears. They had BETTER not start serving ads on content that they didn't create.
Comparision with the FLOSS communities (Score:3, Interesting)
If someone starts off saying "it ain't so" by listing half a dozen facts that have nothing to do with the question, he's either terribly stupid, or trying to pull a fast one on you. It's called misdirection and confusion. Yes, it's actually a named trick in the arsenal of con artists.
So much for that.
Did you actually read the fine blog? It's titled "Wikipedia’s Volunteer Story" (emphasis mine). So it's not so much an answer to a question as a question about the relevance of the supposed question. It's like asking whether nuclear warheads or terrorism is the greater danger to world peace. (I'd answer both.)
The Wikipedia blog raises an interesting point about the seemingly irrelevant statistic about an increase in the number of readers or users as against the alleged decrease in the number of editors. This invites comparison to the free and open source software communities. Majority of those in the FLOSS community aren't developers (editors) but users, users who may include the free software advocates and others whose contribution don't necessarily involve the writing and rewriting of code. For example, the helpful mailing list or forum member who might volunteer to explain to a newbie how to edit a certain /etc/config file to revive a bjorked installation.
Anecdotes are not evidence (Score:2, Interesting)
Anecdotes are not evidence, and tell us nothing about trends in contributions.
But yes, basically some people have a bad experience about working with other people online anonymously. But it is a mistake to think that this means Wikipedia is flawed - for all we know, the other person is also here complaining about people who kept adding "rubbish" to an article... I'm sure you think your change was valid, and maybe it was, but that's not always the case [slashdot.org]. There's no right answer, yet people will always come away, complaining about Wikipedia, no matter what their edit was.
It's entirely natural that some people aren't cut out for Wikipedia editing - I wouldn't expect a massive collabation with large numbers of anonymous people online to be easy. I mean, what do you propose? That all edits should be allowed to stay? Well no, that would be unworkable.
Many things in life, especially those in life that involve working with other people, require cooperation and time, and sometimes not everything goes your way. It is a mistake to think that making the edit is the only work necessary, because such a policy of no reverts would be unworkable. You have to sometimes discuss changes with other people - that's true of all sorts of things in life, such as open source projects, volunteer work, or jobs. But that doesn't mean that no one is interested, nor does it mean that there is something wrong with the activity. Imagine someone saying "I tried working in a band once, but it was hopeless, the other guys didn't want to play any of the songs I wrote or listen to my suggestions, so I left" - sure, it's a nice little anecdote, but it tells us nothing about (a) whether you were in the right or not, (b) about trends in music, or (c) whether working in bands is a good idea or not, other than the obvious point that you have to be prepared to work with other people, who sometimes may not agree with you.
Why is Wikipedia so different? Yes, by all means tell us about how you didn't like being an editor, but please don't present that as criticism of the project, or evidence of a trend - anymore than my dislike of playing football is valid criticism of football, or evidence of a decline in the sport.
Re:My own experience. (Score:2, Interesting)
PS - what was the article (or name of the candidate)? If you're in the right, maybe other people such as myself can have a look, and put the changes back.
Re:My own anecdote. (Score:2, Interesting)
So wait, one editor is rude to another editor, and you blame "Wikipedia"?
Perhaps if a troll upsets me here, I should blame "Slashdot".
Wikipedia, a heap of self-serving corporate propaganda and free advertising pretending to be an Encyclopedia
Now we're getting silly - believe it if you like, but your anecdote of a bad experience from another editor does not support this view! I can't see how these two issues are even remotely related? That editor was likely just a random other person (who for all we know, is also criticising "Wikipedia" based on his experience with you!) not anything to do with representing corporation. Hell, I'm sure even people working for Britannica have a bad day sometimes (as with just about any job), but that's not a reason to criticise the end product.
Self-serving? It serves people who want to read it. Corporate propaganda - examples? Free advertising? Well yes, it's free of adverts. And yes, it's an encyclopedia. Squabbles between editors don't change that.
How About Those (Score:3, Interesting)
I heard long ago complaints about elitism and the elitist top grand master guru cabal who control the website. New comers are scoffed, 'good 'ol boy' network prevails.
I suspect the editors who are still left are well suited for their post - elitist power hungry control freaks who validate themselves stepping on others. I want nothing to do with them. [Citation Needed] and [Marked For Deletion] have become memes I suspect from people who have been burned by the wikipedia process and the control freaks who consider themselves demigods.
I pass. The frustration I hear from others who have tried to contribute I won't accept in my life let alone seek it out. The expertise I have in a subject or two will never make it to wikipedia. I won't even bother to get started.
-[d]-
How did they dispute it... (Score:3, Interesting)
How did they dispute it? Did they just edit the wiki article about editors leaving?
But seriously wikipedia started dying the second they handed out enhanced powers for being a no lifer trolling Wikipedia all day. Later on top management showed no interest in reigning in abusive admins, and even rewarded several who were shown to be taking part in out right fraud and lying.
I can appreciate their pain... (Score:3, Interesting)
There are probably a number of reasons for the lack of quality, but certainly the ability for anyone to contribute has got to be a big part. Is there an easy fix? No, probably not. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the barriers to approval are lop-sided, so raising them won't necessarily help. It's not like potential users will put up with taking a written exam just to be able to edit a single page...
I would suggest using privilege escalation to grant users more power and control based on how long they've been members and require that when people create accounts, they specify a number of areas that they possess knowledge of. Say I create a new account. When a user creates a login, he has to pick five to ten topics that he thinks he's qualified to write about (and these can be fairly broad, otherwise we'd have far too many checkboxes). He can't make any changes or contributions for a week (to prevent people from signing up just to vandalize articles) and can only lurk and learn the rules. Then, after that time period is up, he's allowed to only make changes to existing articles in his self-proclaimed fields. If he makes enough good and accepted changes, then allow him to start writing new articles in his self-proclaimed fields. Finally, after a period of time has passed where he's acknowledged as knowing what he's talking about and not a jerk who does things for the lulz, let him make changes/create articles anywhere.
One thing I would love to see done more than anything else, however, is the clear separation of fiction and non-fiction, by at least a subdomain, if not an entirely different FQDN. Star Wars as a film and a cultural institution in America? That goes in Wikipedia as non-fiction. Luke Skywalker as a person? That's in-universe and belongs in Wookiepedia, or at least in the fiction section. A biography of Luke doesn't belong in the same encyclopaedia as one about Louis Pasteur, plain and simple.
Merge slashdot code to Wiki if you dare? (Score:5, Interesting)
As Slashdot is open source, Perl based, it won't be a problem.
Lets merge Slashdot code to Wikipedia so people, semi-randomly selected can moderate Wiki editor responses. It will have karma system too. If an editor does too much flamebait or "troll", his karma will go negative and by default, his editing powers will be reduced to normal levels and eventually taken off.
You have no clue how your type of editor responses makes users and the real deal (one off editors) feel right?
Re:My own experience. (Score:3, Interesting)
It gets into the field of bizarre when you see editors revert cleanups.
My personal story: I read a (probably little read) article to find it being vandalized (something like "$whateverperson is gay" sprinkled into the article) so I went and edited it. I admit, I didn't bother to register just for that. It was neither a locked article nor was it in any way controversal, so anonymous editing was possible. I removed the "xxx is gay" parts and checked it in with a remark noting that it was a vandalism removal.
2 hours later it was reverted by an editor.
Maybe it was pertinent for an article about Greek column styles to know that a certain person likes "Greek love", dunno...
The revolution eats its children (Score:5, Interesting)
Wikipedia was a very interesting concept. A free online encyclopedia that everyone could contribute to. Everyone could fill his knowledge and information in, contribute to the common knowledge and, eventually, this should lead to possibly the best, most complete collection of human knowledge ever assembled. A quite noble goal, and for a while it worked out well.
Then came the trolls, the spammers, the corporate shills, and we noticed that human is appearantly not able to cooperate without rules and boundaries. Sad. But we're humans. Driven by base interests, instincts and egoism. So the idea of editors and supervisers was born, people who should take it into their hands to make sure these shills, spammers and trolls are kept out and tossed out. A noble goal, and for a while it worked out well.
But editors are just as much human as the spammers, trolls and shills are. When you are given the power to shape and regulate the knowledge of humankind, it becomes quite tempting to not only shape and regulate it, the big temptation is to dictate it. You are the keeper of knowledge, the overseer of truth.
No nobel goal this time and behold, it doesn't work out well.
It's the same "who watches the watchers" problem we see a lot today. If there's nobody overseeing your use of power, the temptation to abuse that power becomes strong. It seems we are unable or unwilling to self regulate ourselves when we are not held accountable for what we do. As we see here (as well as in politics or business) if you are only held accountable by your peers, it's unlikely that anything but the most gross transgressions will ever be punished. And with "gross", of course I mean "whatever goes against the interests of your peers". Not what goes against the interests of your "inferiors", your users or even the project or duty itself that you agreed to oversee and manage.
So what could be done? Another superstructure above the editors? I think it's already been done, and it doesn't change jack. A broader base has to be founded, not a smaller top. Power in the hands of more people, not less. The meta-moderation system of /. comes to mind, where some (or many, computers can handle it) can vote for or against a certain moderation. One person may err. Some people may conspire to push an agenda. A few millions are hard to bribe, convince or sway.
Wikipedia allegedly has millions of users. Ok, so use them. Again, certain people may have a dislike of a certain editor and will vote his edits negative no matter how much they might remove vandalism because they feel slighted by them. The majority won't. And IF the majority feels slighted by a certain editor, it might be a good idea to remove that editor. Quite obviously he's not doing a good job.
Re:I can appreciate their pain... (Score:3, Interesting)
... I would suggest using privilege escalation to grant users more power and control based on how long they've been members and require that when people create accounts, they specify a number of areas that they possess knowledge of.....
I think that this is the right track for an enduring and effective Wikipedia. The ethos of "anyone can edit" (including anonymous IP addresses never before used) and pretending that all are equal seems to be the source of most of WIkipedia's problems.
For example, I read that anonymous IP address edits are the source of most vandalism, and have very low quality over all, and that anonymous edits are usually reverted, and that dealing with all of this is a substantial work load for the active editors and Admins. While allowing anonymous edits surely helped get Wikipedia started, it seems to be a purely negative policy at this point.
Requiring that edits be made by accounts (which are still free, anonymous, and easy to set up) will allow a meritocracy to emerge from among the editors/contributors based on a history of quality contributions (with appropriate supporting policies and tracking techniques), and more importantly this meritocracy would confer a presumption of value to their work, and higher levels of protection from newbie editors, so that effective long-time contributors do not find their work being trashed by the uninformed. Wikipedia tries to do some of this (anonymous edits being apparently presumed likely of no value, Admins with special powers, both of which the illustrate that the notion that everyone is equal is a sham in fact), but not having a system of merit built in makes it much harder and less effective. It makes it possible to recognize that an account represents a true authority on some area of knowledge (perhaps by dropping thie anonymity to the WIki Foundation), and treat their contributions appropriately without forcing them to try to jump through many hoops.
WSJ (Score:4, Interesting)
What is this? Wall Street? That's the only place I know of where when something stops growing, because infinite growth of any human enterprise is not possible in reality, it's a signal to mark the time of death and run screaming into the hills. Oh noes! Company XYZ's growth is not going to be 50% a year forever! They're projecting 49.9%! Sell! Sell! Oh woes is we! Buy more bad loan products! Those are safer!
I would have thought hitting a level of stability in something like Wikipedia would be a good thing.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Editors can't delete articles (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, mdwd2, you are wrong.
This did happen, without warning. Was it admins instead of editors? I can't say.
Do I believe the same rush you felt, telling me my experiences were invalid, is behind many of the bad experiences people have with Wikipedia?
You betcha'.
Re:Liar (Score:3, Interesting)
Thanks.
Yes, correct all you say.
So, we've now established that people in charge of Wikipedia consider themselves more important than their audience. Yes, I can confirm that from my own experiences and feelings. You know, it may be the problem.
Re:Oh, you can tell (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is not between two individuals... The problem is a system which has an extremely cumbersome bureaucratic process for (eventually) addressing conflicts between editors.
Wikipedia is not meant to be a "he who pushes hardest, wins" anarchy, but in reality, that's what you're left with these days.
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:WSJ (Score:3, Interesting)