Wikipedia Losing Contributors, Says Wales 533
derGoldstein writes
"According to an AP report, 'Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said the nonprofit company that runs the site is scrambling to simplify editing procedures in an attempt to retain volunteers.' He explained, 'We are not replenishing our ranks... It is not a crisis, but I consider it to be important.' Despite Wikipedia's wide-reaching popularity, Wales said the typical profile of a contributor is 'a 26-year-old geeky male' who moves on to other ventures, gets married and leaves the website."
Not surpricing (Score:5, Informative)
Given the "friendliness" that greets new contributors.
I have entered correct information with references and such in few articles where I am somewhat of an expert, like one where I did my masters in the topic and created couple of pages that were in the page request list in topics where I am fairly knowledgable.
End results: >70% of my edits were removed within few days and in several cases replaces with actual WRONG information. Of the created pages one has today totally wrong information, one has been proposed to merge with another page, but nothing has happened in way many months and a third page was just removed.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Easy reason (Score:4, Informative)
The Admins are dicks? True. But so are many of the users.
I stopped editing purely because so many of the people were hostile and uncivil to ANY suggestion. You couldn't get them to accept even talking about a problem, they were much more concerned with bashing you than they were with whatever issue you brought up. There's a comment to one concern I brought up where months after I left it, and after I left Wikipedia, and somebody asked if anybody was working on that, the person just said "Oh ignore that person, he left" which just goes to show what kind of dicks there are.
I'd say shut it down instead.
Re:Wikipedia's policies are insane (Score:3, Informative)
Wikipedia needs to amend its "Notability" and "Verifiability" policies badly, and stop deleting articles (which blocks access to the edit history). They don't accept evidence as verification, only "published sources" which use inaccurate speculation and second-hand information. Misinformation keeps reappearing on pages, because it has a citation to some other website which makes the claim, despite that it is untrue.
An example of a time I was highly frustrated is when I was trying to read about the software program called Impulse Tracker, then discovered that its page was deleted. So what if Impulse Tracker is "not notable", its file format is still used in the tracking scene, so I wanted to read about the original program, but can't because the page was deleted. And if I want to reconstruct the page, I can't because the edit history is blocked out.
Another example is the history of PSP homebrew [wikipedia.org]. Anyone that knows anything about the timeline and the releases by nem (hello, world for FW 1.00), the ps2dev toolchain, the Swaploit and K-Xploit tools by PsP-Dev (which most definitely did not involve any "cracked code" from Sony) and Sony's firmware Japanese release dates knows that this Wikipedia article is definitely incorrect. For the exact same reason: anything that is printed-but-nonsense trumps not-printed-but-true. The sad thing is that a couple decades from now the Wikipedia version will live, but the actual history has long been forgotten: "History is written by the victors" is now "History is written by Wikipedia's clique of editors".
Re:Easy reason (Score:5, Informative)
However, I think you really underestimate the indexing of human knowledge. There are hundreds of thousands of stubs on Wikipedia that need expanding, especially outside of the Western sphere. I have a feeling that just because you don't spend a lot of time studying Asian or African topics that nobody does and therefore their expansion isn't needed. I'm rather quite a sinophile, I can assure you that Wikipedia's coverage of Chinese history, culture, and notable figures alone is respectable but far from complete. I can also tell you that Wikipedia's coverage of more minor cultures in Asia and elsewhere borders on poor. Thankfully this improves all the time, but the point is that your 'work is done' theory is very Western-centric I think.
Re:Let's see... my experience with editing Wikiped (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, I have enough drama and social troubles in my RL. I'm in no way interested in some in an area where I neither get paid for it nor get anything else out of it. I went to Wikipedia to read articles and add my knowledge on a subject to it where applicable and sourceable. If that's not wanted, no problem on my end of the bargain. I'm neither dependent on being a WP-editor for any kind of income, and neither do I draw my self-respect (or respect of any of my peers) from being able to claim "ownership" of any WP-articles.
I added what I knew, corrected what I could prove wrong with relevant sources and if that's not wanted, ok. You can take a horse to the river but can't force it to drink.
Don't make a non-PC edit (Score:5, Informative)
Long ago I noticed once that the well-sourced facts set out in one Wikipedia article contradicted a claim (not directly sourced) made in a related article. So I naturally edited the claim to correspond to the facts, mentioning the edit was for internal consistency. I hadn't come to edit an article, but I consider it to be a Good Thing to fix small errors as you see them.
Unfortunately for me the claim happened to be in a gay-related article and apparently embodied the PC position towards this incident.
The storm hit. An admin reverted it without comment (against Wikipedia rules). I explained the reasoning in Talk and reverted back. Then he reverted again, no comment. Now I reverted, explaining he was violating the rule about explaining reversions.
Count: Two reverts for me, two for the admin.
The admin reverted again, saying I needed to cite the source outside of Wikipedia (the same source the other article cited). So I re-did the entry and re-posted with the suggestion. I can work with people, and take positive editing suggestions seriously.
Count: Three reverts for me (if you consider a repost to be a revert), three for the admin.
He reverted it AGAIN without comment, blatantly breaking the three revert rule. Then he said if I tried to change it again it would count as a 3RR violation and I would be banned. I checked the admin's personal page, yep, a gay activist.
At no time were the facts in the other related article challenged or changed. At no time did he tell me I was wrong, or that my edit was factually incorrect. He just didn't want the facts to be on that page.
Even if an admin isn't involved, a cabal of supporters can do the same thing, reverting your posts at will. They can get one or two reverts each, winning while you hit your three revert ceiling. There is really no consensus as Wikipedia tries to reach, since a small, organized and dedicated cabal can easily win over the unorganized concensus of many casual editors. If the cause is a liberal one, it is most likely that their cabal will be supported by the admins.
Now I try to stay away from anything relating to PC, but even then it can seep into the most neutral-seeming articles.
Re:CK ref: (Score:5, Informative)
They were warned about this years ago. Former wikipedia administrator Kelly Martin wrote whole treatises on it. [blogspot.com] in her blog. [blogspot.com] A former admin under the pseudonym of "Parker Peters" wrote up apt descriptions of why it happened - power-mad individuals abusing their "buttons", individuals who gamed the system, gangs who formed to "control" articles - on his blog [livejournal.com] too.
I've found this discussion [livejournal.com] to be particularly apt, a discussion of precisely how Wikipedia fails to retain newcomers because most newcomers who actually make an edit are quickly shooed out the door by either the POV pushing gangs or the edit-count-aholic "recent changes patrol"; adding in to this is the fact that the trigger-happy admins remaining no longer stay remotely within policy, as the average "visitor vandalism" punishment is not a block of one day, but one month or sometimes more directed at DHCP addresses, and generally these power-mad fools compound the problem by instantly locking down the talkpage so that if someone else were to get that address, they can't even ask for an unblock... not that the unblock process ever actually works any more, since the same trigger-happy gestapo types patrol the Unblock Requests page.
The underlying problem, the thing that drives people away from Wikipedia, is that it's impossible to get started in. The admins are, just about uniformly, complete dickholes. The "regulars" who remain are either edit-count-itis freaks who will play revert-war with automated tools just to get their edit count up, or are shameless sycophants who play hanger-on to those admins deemed "in power" - the goal of both groups being to boost their chances of someday getting the "extra buttons."
To paraphrase Douglas Adams, the first problem of Wikipedia admins is that nobody should be allowed to do it who ever actually WANTS the job.
The secondary problem is that those sections that really need fixing, are the domain of power-mad admins or control-freak groups who maintain them and drive people away as quickly as they come in order to WP:OWN the content.
The third part is that you can't even talk about Wikipedia without having to reference byzantine, contradictory, fucked-up rules. You can't participate in Wikipedia without memorizing most of them, and the moment you cross one of the power-mad fools they call admins or some of the POV groups, you're going to get hammered over the head with those same "rules", and before you know it you're going to be on the end of a longstanding block with a talkpage lock if you dare try to file an unblock request that says, in essence, "please unzip so I can suck your cock o powerful sir."
If you think I'm joking, try reading their own guide [wikipedia.org]. Explaining why you believe the block was out of policy? ZZZTTT! WRONG! Pointing out that you're being targeted by people with WP:OWN issues or that you're responding to a major problem involving some other Wikipedia policy violation? ZZZTTT! WRONG! The only way you get an unblock requested is to (a) know a corrupt admin who happens to be your friend or (b) play the "mea culpa mea culpa" game.
Oh, and as for using CheckUser to show that you are NOT a sockpuppet after the favorite tactic of dickhole admins and POV warrior alike, the false sockpuppetry accusation? Sorry. CheckUser is Sooper Sekrit Kangaroo Court Data [wikipedia.org] that can ONLY get you sent to the gulag.
Re:Easy reason (Score:4, Informative)
This.
With the probable exception of spam, anything posted was obviously notable enough to somebody to warrant the post in the first place.
More and more, huge tracts of Wikipedia make it look like the online compendium of popular culture, rather than a place to find out about possibly obscure but real world topics, inventions or discoveries.
Re:CK ref: (Score:4, Informative)
I have, several times. I corrected various little things. Nothing that should've been remotely controversial. No account or anything like that.
Result? Reversion, every time.
Fuck it.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)