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."
Easy reason (Score:5, Insightful)
There's an easy reason for this. The admins are, generally speaking, dicks. This wouldn't be a problem if they were in touch with the community, but they aren't.
Re:Easy reason (Score:5, Interesting)
But how do you fix this? Who do you replace them with? The only people who would spend so much time editing instead of reading Wikipedia have got to be really weird.
Maybe all edits could be fed into a queue like the Slashdot metamod where they are evaluated by random visitors side-by-side to see if they are reasonable.
Re:Easy reason (Score:4, Insightful)
But how do you fix this?
Require admins, and anyone else who's privilege level is above the basic editor, to use their real names.
Re:Easy reason (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a bad idea. Administrators may be in a position of power on Wikipedia, but that doesn't mean that they have a commensurate level of power in the real world. Forcing real name use just opens up administrators to possible personal harassment and physical attack.
Re:Easy reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Power without accountability to the people that you're exercising power over is dangerous.
I'd go further and argue that editors should disclose their real names, too, as that provides some accountability for content. Some people really more qualified to edit an article than others.
Re:Easy reason (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd go further and argue that editors should disclose their real names, too, as that provides some accountability for content.
Which will most likely kill of 99% [citation needed] of edits on Wikipedia. Good job! [citation needed]
Some people really more qualified to edit an article than others.
Sure thing, Stephen Hawking is going to update that page on black holes immediately, right after he updates the Theory of Everything and breaks down the entire universe into a single formula [citation needed]. The man has little else to do anyway.
The problem with wikipedia doesn't lie with the crappy contributions (those get edited out over time anyway), it lies with the people who insist on arguing about its content rather than improving it. This is why most pages [citation needed] are littered with "[citation needed]" left and right. Pointless little edit wars where a paragraph is added, removed, added again, removed again, simply because of clashing egos [citation needed] and not necessarily because the content simply wasn't up to shape [citation needed]...
Adding real names to this isn't going to change that kind of dickish behaviour, because you have no way of verifying all of the credentials on the various subjects on wikipedia.
Sincerely yours,
Captain Dick Darlington
Department of Funology and Funectomy
Her Majesties Royal Army
P.S.: If you want proof of my authority on the subject of funectomy, invite me to a party and allow me to suck all the fun out of the room. My certificate of authority from the Mexican University of Fun expired last week [citation needed]. Sorry about that.
Re: (Score:3)
Where did I write that qualification means level of education?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If your product is based on ostensibly presenting a version of the truth, at some point you must be held accountable for it. This means you must open yourself up to criticism and attack, but it also means you're open for praise. If you cannot be shown to be deceptive, manipulative, or otherwise false, you cannot in any way, shape, or form be expected to shepherd the truth. I do not understand how someone can think they should work in a scholarly capacity and expect anonymity while simultaneously having a
Re:Easy reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes admins have to be the bigger dick in a situation because sometimes the admins will be right in an argument with someone who won't back down. Do you want the admin that won't allow creative design topics into the evolution page to have his house picketed by idiots who don't know better? Or the guy who manages the abortion page having his car firebombed because he won't let someone put in the pet statistics?
Re: (Score:3)
You're confusing being a dick with being legitimately authoritarian. Many of the admins are actual dicks, people who'll go to lengths to have things done their way, rather than the "right" way, and take out as many dissenting individuals as they can in the process. That's why Wikipedia is the mess of inconsistent enforcement and edge case policy that it is.
Re: (Score:3)
You're confusing being a dick with being legitimately authoritarian.
Some people can't distinguish between the two. It's kind of like "One man's rebel is another's freedom fighter."
Re: (Score:3)
There's really nothing that can be done about this problem, at least not from the outside. It's an internal problem, and only Wales and Wikipedia's upper management can fix it. I would suggest some sort of process so that admins' actions are reviewed periodically and ones who are abusive are removed from those positions, and all of them are given "sensitivity training" of a sort, really training on how to be a good admin and not be a dick, and a warning that they'll be removed if they are.
However, this ag
Re: (Score:3)
Most Wikipedia admin actions aren't even remotely within policy, however.
Look at the "recent changes patrollers" and "vandalism patrol" types, for instance. If you aggregate their logs, you find that most of them aren't filing few-hours, one-day, or even two-day blocks: they are filing week- or month-long blocks (sometimes multiple months!) upon DHCP addresses. Admins can, and do as a matter of policy, lock talkpages to prevent unblock requests. It's supposed to be used in cases of "abuse", but more often t
Re: (Score:3)
Accountability.
Right now there's no easy way for a random user to look at an admin's history. You don't have to have real names. Just knowing that admin X blasted every comment about Y with position Z, whilst telling the objectors that their opinion (regarding the correctness of such action) was meaningless.
Re: (Score:3)
But how do you fix this?
Give less power to admins. They should only be needed to resolve disputes and handle cases of persistent bad behaviour.
Re: (Score:3)
As much as I would like to believe this, admins and and do "throw their weight around" and sometimes revert edits that otherwise would not normally be acceptable out of "ordinary editors". I got in one particularly nasty edit war with another admin that ended up going into the wheel warring category, and I simply backed off and essentially quit even participating in the project as a result.
Oh wait, somebody wants to know why participation has dropped again?
Re: (Score:3)
For an interesting discussion that eventually led to my leaving Wikibooks as a regular contributor, I'd point out this following discussion:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Reading_room/Archives/2006/May#Gaming_manual_as_a_textbook [wikibooks.org]
Mind you, the wheel warring here was absolutely atrocious.... and note who started the whole thing.
Also, look at this edit:
http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Wikibooks%3AWhat_is_Wikibooks&action=historysubmit&diff=281147&oldid=265973 [wikibooks.org]
Again, note who made th
Re:Easy reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Easy reason (Score:5, Interesting)
I just stopped doing it because I lost interest in doing it. It's time out of my day that I can do things far more entertaining. (It's also my main gripe with people who think that taking care of the world's needs will bring some kind of utopian future. If I didn't have to go to work, I wouldn't do work. I'd be the best damn video game player in the world.)
Re: (Score:3)
Sure, but if I'm doing that... who's paying for my rent, food, etc. Eventually, there will not be enough money coming in to cover all of us that would be rather unproductive for society.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, we currently waste enough food to feed 1bn people. Add in all the overheads caused by the market and it's easy to see how we could feed everyone essentially for free.
As to how we make sure people bother to farm, maybe we could just turn food production into a form of (inter)national service? If you don't want to take part fine, you just have to spend your life paying for food. People who want it can spend a couple of years when they're young doing farm work and then enjoying free food for life.
Then it
Re: (Score:3)
But there's no mandate that says the work needs to be productive. The work could be building a new room on my house. It could be biking around town all day. It may not help society in any way. I may even get in their way, making it harder to "pay" for my utopia.
For instance. If all your worries were taken care of, would you run around the neighborhood picking up other people's garbage they left on the sidewalk? You think there's enough people in this world that would enjoy doing that on their own time
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Notability is necessary for verifiability (Score:3)
But then, why does notability matter anyway?
Because notability is necessary for verifiability. If no reliable sources care enough about a given subject to write about it, how are claims about the subject supposed to be verifiable?
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:Easy reason (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the reason the community is shrinking is because Wikipedia, at least the English version, is complete. I'm not implying that there isn't more information that can be added, but as far as the sum of human knowledge goes, I'd guess that they have gotten past that "magic" 95% marker for easily acquired knowledge. Most of the remaining work to be done is article maintenance, and filling in mundane details of niche articles or emerging fields. The days when 5th graders wrote articles on your home town or park near you is gone. My quaint home town article for Rockford, MI [wikimedia.org] (a town with less than 5000 people) is nearly 3 pages long! (I can't believe there was enough to even fill in 1 page, after the generic census data...),
This isn't a bad thing. It's the natural evolution of such a site. Wales should pat himself on the back and congratulate the community for his contribution to society as a whole. Wikipedia is a job well done and has moved our world forward in a positive direction, in what is becoming a rarer achievement every day.
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:Easy reason (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to edit wikipedia, but I rarely come across articles that I an improve aside from grammar and proofreading these days. The stuff that's missing requires quite a bit of expertise. The only articles I can still meaningfully contribute to are those related to my own field (astrophysics) or a hobby that I know in great depth (film).
Re: (Score:3)
I think the breaking point came when new sister projects essentially stopped being developed. I spoke up as bluntly as I could put it [wikimedia.org] when the New Project Policy [wikimedia.org] page on the Wikimedia Meta project was declared an obsolete historical page. Mind you, that page has not been made historical because a new policy was developed to replace it, but rather because no new Wikimedia projects are being developed.
Essentially, the Wikimedia Foundation killed the leavening yeast that helped to cause the projects to grow
Re: (Score:3)
I think the reason the community is shrinking is because Wikipedia, at least the English version, is complete.
Kind of. The core problem however isn't that it is complete in a good way, but that the current rules forbid you to extend it, which in turn brings you in conflict with the admins or regulars if you actually try.
There is plenty of more information that could and should be added to Wikipedia, but that shouldn't be part of the normal overview article, as it might be to much detail. For a video game that could be things like list of cheatcodes, walkthrough stuff, character descriptions, etc. stuff you currentl
Re:Easy reason (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem here are those who feel that Wikipedia being snowed under by "cruft" articles like a synopsis of each episode of Star Trek or separate articles for each monster in World of Warcraft sort of miss the point of those kind of articles: Those articles help provide the "training" and experience for new users to expand into something more serious like John Robert [wikipedia.org] or Quantum mechanics [wikipedia.org].
Wholesale deletion of the cruft articles drives entire communities away from Wikipedia, which in turn fractures the community and makes Wikipedia less due to the separation of those communities. A similar thing happened on Wikibooks, where most of the game walk through books were deleted on a wholesale basis, along with the "Jokebook" that worked as a proving ground for many new contributors. I still claim that "cleanup" of Wikibooks killed the project and similar things also happened on Wikipedia and the other sister projects.
Re:Easy reason (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the reason the community is shrinking is because Wikipedia, at least the English version, is complete. I'm not implying that there isn't more information that can be added, but as far as the sum of human knowledge goes, I'd guess that they have gotten past that "magic" 95% marker for easily acquired knowledge.
Until the cancer of "not notable" is gone, it can never be "complete" (not 95%, not even 50%).
I've seen articles on an entire range of software get deleted, while the page for Luke Skywalker goes on forever.
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: (Score:3)
wikipedia is supposed to be "the sum of human knowledge", not a compilation of notable sources.
Re: (Score:3)
I disagree. It is true for most things that I know about enough to be confident in writing about without further research (i.e., physics-related stuff), but when I look up scientific-ish topics outside the more geeky fields (math, physics, computer science), I encounter articles all the time that could be improved vastly.
Think about plant species. I look out of the window and se
Re:Easy reason (Score:5, Interesting)
Yup!
This is definitely the core of the problem.
It only takes one aspergers inflicted admin to make a good long term contributer throw their hands up in the air and say "fuck that shit". Additionally other people see this happening and decide not to get involved at all.
The fact that this issue is brough up nearly every time wikipedia is mentioned would indicate that this is a serious and obvious problem ... not the editing interface. I have never heard anyone complain that "it was just so damn hard to get the text to look correct that I stopped contributing". I _have_ heard people rant about control-freak admins on a fairly regular basis.
I think the big problem, as someone mentioned, is that the people who make it to the top are the people who spend all day trolling through articles and correcting things. In other words... the people who are probably running on a lean mixture and take things just a little too seriously. The people you need admining wiki are the occasional contributers who are socially well adjusted (which is why they are "occasional" contributers.. they spend time doing other things with real people). How you achieve this I do not know.. but I think it's the answer.
Re: (Score:3)
The Great Webcomics Purge made sure I'd never bother contributing.
Personally, other than ease of access, I don't really care about articles that would already be in a real encyclopedia, because they're already in a real encyclopedia. What I do care about is all the minutia you can really only get from the obsessive geeks and otaku of that topic. "That's what wikia is for" people can go die in the malware infested fire that is wikia. We're not even close to peak bits, so who really cares if Pikachu and compa
Re:Easy reason (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes!
The notability thing is high on my list of "stuff they need to take less seriously". It's a community driven project, so if the community wants to talk in gory detail about anime or star trek or whatever, what is the harm. If it's factual and well written.. who cares how "notable" it is.
Re: (Score:3)
another thing is, is there really a need to delete info deemed not necessary by editors?
For instance, there are a lot of bands/artists whom have their entry deleted because they're not a "signed band".
Ex: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calamine_(band) [wikipedia.org]
Yes, they're the band that did the sealab 2021 theme song. Had an entry, but nope, deleted.
Re: (Score:3)
I assume that the e-mail address is one you got through other means, as normally the e-mail addresses are not public information, at least from the Wikipedia page. Wikipedia-l is another story, which is where I presume you got the information.
Yes, some users have some very crazy "usernames".... which is something you should expect with an on-line community. Before you get critical of this particular arbitrator's name, have you seen what he has done on Wikipedia and why he was elected by his peers for the
Re:Easy reason (Score:4, Insightful)
There's an easy reason for this. The admins are, generally speaking, dicks. This wouldn't be a problem if they were in touch with the community, but they aren't.
Agreed. The kind of people that want power over overs in their free time are not the kind of people who are good at using that power productively.
I gave up everything but small spelling corrections and rephrasing on wikipedia ages ago.
Re: (Score:3)
The kind of people that want power over overs in their free time are not the kind of people who are good at using that power productively.
Yeah, instead they're busy playing cricket. Those damned bowlers, busy taking wickets!
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Your spelling corrections don't get reverted? Mine always do. I completely gave up before I ever tried to make a non-trivial contribution.
Re: (Score:3)
Wikipedia used to be the "site that everyone could edit". Now it is the site that everyone can edit, so long as everyone is a Wikipedia admin. Everyone ELSE's edits get removed.
One time I created a Wikipedia page for something I considered interesting, which didn't have a page yet. I wrote a detailed page with lots of links and information. It took me at least an hour. I wanted to contribute this small piece of knowledge to the whole, which I understood to be the whole point of Wikipedia. In less than 12 ho
Sick of the cabals (Score:5, Interesting)
Or more likely they're sick of the cabals that form. Wikipedia has lost lots of contributers over the past few years because of them, and will continue to do so unless these spergmeisters are kicked off the pages that they edit camp.
As usual, it's a couple of intractable morons that ruin it for the casual contributor.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Sick of the cabals (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sick of the cabals (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. Wikipedia was in trouble from the moment "deletionists" became a word.
Unfortunate, but expected (Score:2)
Many people go to Wikipedia as a 1st search hit. And it's always nice to get decent info. But it's inevitable that it would lose volunteers. It is common for many things. People help, then move on leaving room for others to take up the torch, but somehow the torch gets set down, and no one ever picks it up.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Unfortunate, but expected (Score:5, Interesting)
You imply laziness where others see frustration. I edited Wikipedia for a long time, and granted not all of my edits were good, but then I watched as my contributions, one-by-one, regardless of quality, got deleted. This took years, mind you, but it left me with the distinct impression that either I had nothing of value to add to Wikipedia, or Wikipedia had nothing of value for me. Perhaps both.
I would go back in a heartbeat if WP worked like it did in 2004 again. But it doesn't, and I don't think that's going to change any time soon, so my edits nowadays are minor, few, and far between.
The problem is WikiPolitics (Score:4, Interesting)
Edit the "wrong" article the "wrong" way and you'll get some asshat jumping on you. Wikipedia isn't exactly a friendly place to new people, or even some veterans, so that makes it difficult to retain volunteers.
The Slashdot approach (Score:5, Interesting)
Slashdot has figured out how to fix this problem.
Most comment sections on news Web sites are junk, usually not worth reading. But on Slashdot, the comments are generally more entertaining and useful than the articles themselves.
Why is this? I think it's because of the clever moderating system. Ordinary users get to vote comments up or down, and the result is that the trash sinks to the bottom, and the good stuff gets highlighted.
So Wikipedea should try the Slashdot approach...let people vote on the edits that should be reverted, and which ones should be kept.
Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps if the whole thing wasn't run by a small clique of sociopathic dorks who wield a ridiculous bureaucracy in a manner that can yield any conclusion that they wish it to yield, then people might stick around for longer than their first editing war.
Every procedure on that site is a complete farce.
Politics in everything (Score:3)
The WORLD is run by small cliques of bureaucracy wielding, sociopathic dorks.
Re:Politics in everything (Score:5, Interesting)
Which gives the phrase "You can't fight city hall" its peculiar poignancy in the Wikipedia context.
You might wrestle with the cabals of incompetent, self-serving, mildly power-hungry bureaucrats if your life, liberty, family, or property were on the line. You'd walk away from the pointless (and probably fruitless) aggro if it's just Wikipedia, because there is no personal stake. It absolutely isn't worth it. If Wikipedia goes to hell, for the overwhelming majority of people the result will be "and nothing of value was lost."
Sad, too. It had such potential.
Re: (Score:2)
You're confusing the world with most open source projects, I fear.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Let's see... my experience with editing Wikipedia (Score:5, Interesting)
I once was an editor there. Allow me to illustrate why I am no longer.
It all started when I dared to step into the turf of something one of the "higher ups" considered his. An edit of me was reverted. Not just something trivial that begs for a "citation needed", it was a well worded and sourced piece of information. The reason was that it was "not enough on topic". Ok, I see that differently, but so be it. Not like I have to have everything I write published.
What bugged me was that the day after, my entry was, almost verbatim, in there again. This time under the name of the person who thought it's "offtopic" only one day earlier. But ok, so be it, some people need it for their ego to be the "only authority" on some subject.
The problem started when this became the rule rather than the exception. Whenever something new developed in an issue, it descended into mind numbing bickering whose version gets to stand. And since I'm more in the fact-gathering and less in the butt-kissing game, usually it's not my version that stands. So hey, maybe they don't need me as an editor.
The last straw was when I removed some defacement (IIRC it was an article about greek pillars and someone made a rude reference of someone fucking someone else up the rear) and it got reverted by my personal stalker. It seems, they get butt-kissing brownie points for doing as many reverts as possible, preferably without reading first what got written.
So, in case you're wondering why you don't get more editors, take a look at the existing ones.
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: (Score:3)
People keep posting these personal experiences without links.
Nope (Score:3)
It was simply an inconsistency in Wikipedia. Sourced information in one article said one thing, while another article stated differently without a source. It was a long time ago.
Although in looking back at it now, it appears it was "some say" weasel-worded around the problem. I'm sure putting WP:WW on there would get slapped down fast, but I'm not about to try since I know it is an admin- and cabal-controlled article.
Wait, now I see the sources in the other article are gone, all content regarding it removed
Re:Let's see... my experience with editing Wikiped (Score:4, Insightful)
Whine whine whine... It is hard to take you and anyone else seriously unless you link to Wikipedia. Citation needed.
I find it much harder to take you seriously if you believe that putting in "whine whine whine" does something positive for you. If you argue like that on Wikipedia, some introspection may be in order on how not to drive editors away.
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.
Re: (Score:3)
Because it improves the state of everyone's knowledge. Sure, editing Wikipedia is harder than it used to be, but it's not because of the community or the policy. It is because the main body of work is complete, the standards are higher, and there is more scrutiny. There is a way to keep Wikipedia (or any community project of a similar size) organized, fair, and free from vandalism, and it's a bureaucratic process. You and others who whined here over the past few years always have the same story: your edits
Re:Self-revert (Score:5, Insightful)
Next time this happens, take the revert to the article's talk page.
What you cannot seem to be made to understand is that no one outside Wikipedia can be bothered to give a shit about "the proper process". We don't care. It's one thing to see an article we can copy-edit or add a little bit to. Hey, I can spend two minutes adding to the collection of human knowledge? I'm in! But it's entirely different to expect us to want to spend time babysitting our edits so that the griefer jackasses who stake ownership to large swaths of a hard drive don't delete our work on a whim.
You keep saying "well, all you have to do is..." but that's never going to happen. We're not "into" Wikipedia in the same way that the Aspie teen hitting "reload" 100 times an hour is, and aren't willing to donate large chunks of time to it.
The problems (and any possible solutions) lie wholly with Wikipedia and not with casual editors. Expecting the entire world to modify their behavior to cater to Wikipedia's processes and procedures - which were cooked up by those same editors who are ruining it for everyone else - is a pipe dream at best.
Wikipedia's policies are insane (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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In Wikipedia culture, taking a break from editing altogether [wikipedia.org] isn't considered ignoring.
Unfortunately, said wasn't the case as he was active at the time.
As for a deletion review, we thankfully didn't need to go to that hassle. Point was that we should have had to in the first place. It is frustrating to the max, and most people aren't going to bother, they'll just leave.
Re: (Score:3)
They don't accept evidence as verification, only "published sources"
Evidence wikipedia is fucked [wikipedia.org].
Re: (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 decad
Re: (Score:3)
"Apparently because Christians claim to be in a monotheistic religion, makes it so..."
Probably uniquely among any subjects, what believers in a religion believe the religion to be about does deserve to be considered authoritative descriptions of its beliefs.
One could from the outside mention observable practices which parallel other polytheistic religions (prayer to distinctly different physical representations) and those that do not (mythic stories in polytheistic pantheons frequently involved serious conf
Wiki Nazis (Score:4, Insightful)
Problem with Hobby v. Job (Score:2)
When the typical editor noted in the article ages through the honeymoon/kids period of their lives, I would suspect they will return to editing Wikipedia, even more so when they retire from work. The typical editor will return to editing just like the typical person that built models as a kid or pl
As opposed to frustration over bots gone mad... (Score:2)
[The typical guy who left is someone who] moves on to other ventures, gets married and leaves the website
Yeah right. The ones who left are people leaving in frustration when their contributions get deleted wholesale by script kiddies like Betacommand who are allowed to go postal with killbots.
Don't forget the ones leaving in frustration when the Arbitration Committee decides in favour of people who get paid to "own" a topic and who have the time to astroturf/argue/discuss about their biased edits as long as is needed to drive any honest contributor away. Hint: discussion page activity is in inverse proportion
not a crisis (Score:2)
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.
Re:Not surpricing (Score:4, Insightful)
Not sure if you can see the subtext, so let me be the first to make it clear that quitting wikipedia as an editor is exactly like getting a divorce: we've already given up. We just tell our story like a battered war veteran talks about wars --without giving names of things that are long dead, or expecting you, the audience, to fix our past.
In other words, seeing other slashdotters resonate with our suffering does not fix the problem. What fixes it is the fact that we have already gotten closure through a non-negotiable decision to move away. We don't think that a random slashdotter will go up there and fix the problem, either, and unlike marriage, it's easy to find a replacement especialized wiki to contribute to... or to just stop making real contributions while getting all the other benefits and none of the revert drama.
Possible explanation - "Mission accomplished" (Score:2)
The thing is, there's not much important left to write about. All the things people generally go onto Wikipedia for are well-covered - there's data on every country, language, mountain range, planet, president, prime minister, prince and poet. There's a ton of placeholder articles, yeah, but does anybody really want to write an article on a Venezuelan political party from the '40s, a minor asteroid of no special significance, a particular bird species (already well-documented in the family page), or an earl
There was a time (Score:2)
And? What was expected? (Score:2, Insightful)
There are too many rules, the environment is too hostile (examine the default template "warning" about being blocked, it's a threat, not a warning), pages are guarded jealously by people who will claim that there is no consensus for any change they don't like, etc.
So, fewer people are editing for whatever reason, and many people who try and edit, are driven away.
Some specific reasons some people don't post are outlined [...] reasons [people] don't edit Wikipedia (in their own words) [suegardner.org].
At the article Chronicli [pandagon.net]
Stop deleting stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
If you spend a lot of time writing something, and then somebody decides that it's not "notable", it's unlikely that you will contribute again.
Wikipedia is just bits, bits are cheap, why do the editors act like they are rationing a scarce resource?
Re: (Score:3)
That's possibly the most 1984esque comment I've ever read on Slashdot, and I've been here a while.
I tried to edit Wikipedia once (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Ugh. Responding in any other way would have spared you from this reply:
you, sir, are exactly what is wrong with wikipedia, down to your very reply subtly paraphrasing the notorious "citation needed." We all know the question itself is made more to annoy than to fix anything. For every "most cases" that you discussed above, there is always "the rest of the cases."
How should we expect those, er, "victims" will react to being asked to provide "proof" of being wronged by the same group that did the wronging?
Re: (Score:3)
I used to edit Wikipedia a bit a few years ago - nothing major, just fixing stupid errors like mixups between north/south or east/west on pages related to my city and surrounding area. Obvio
Re: (Score:3)
You could have taken revenge by reinserting the correction and citing e.g. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. He wanted a reference, he got a reference. And he can't say that reference is not notable either.
And he will revert it as not relevant, or for some other reason. It soon becomes a game of who can spend more time pushing a small change into an article.
With nothing to gain from winning and a large amount of wasted time win or lose normal people give up.
Wikipedia has finally discovered reality (Score:3)
The reality is that well-researched material is difficult and time consuming. You can get maybe 50-60% of the material that makes up what an encyclopedia was in the 1980s from people with passion and dedication but after that you are faced with just a lot of work. Work for no compensation other than ego-boosting.
This reality has been utterly rejected by the Walesian philosphy of knowledge in which there is no real "truth" there is just concensus.
What they are left with is a whole bunch of stuff of unknown quality that people with various passions have written over the years. OK, admittedly some of it is accurate and good but there is no telling what. There is plenty that was written by someone with an agenda and Wikipedia made (and continues to make) it possible for someone with enough dedication to block anyone from corrupting their perfect treatise. Eventually, it is going to be left alone even if the original contributor departs.
The amount of passion that is out there for people to spend time writing and defending their turf in the Wikipedia world just isn't enough for the whole thing to work consistently for a long period of time. Sure, there might be a base of the truly hardcore, but it isn't enough. They seem to have some kind of rating now so people can continue to tune the text according to concensus, but concensus isn't important except in that Walesian dimension. As someone pointed out earlier what you tend to get with enforced concensus is the million-monkeys effect. While it is entirely possible you can get another Shakespear you absolutely will get a lot of drivel. What concensus does is form that drivel according to social norms so it isn't recognized. It is still nothing but the regurgitated ramblings of pop culture.
How do you fix this? Well, I don't think it is possible. Walesian philosophy says that in large numbers there is truth and all truths are equal. With that in mind, what possible hope does a real subject matter expert have? Sure, there might be a few with real passion to tell the world their views on genetics, high energy particle physics or the social orders in ancient Egypt. But they chances they are going to win out over the concensus belief system are small indeed. It was an interesting experiment and it isn't entirely surprising that it lasted as long as it has. But passions move on and Jimmy is unlikely to find much passion out there filling in the cracks in what has been built or taking over what has been abandoned.
Theme song (Score:4, Funny)
Tom Smith - WikiPirates [blogspot.com]
Some lust for gold and silver, and some for gems and jewels
But some want greater treasures, and they use their software tools
For some of us quest for knowledge, and we wants it undefiled,
But now and then you get a troll who thinks he's Oscar Wilde.
Beware the Wiki Pirates, who sail the server seas.
They flaunt their fake credentials and their advanced degrees.
They control the information with bullying moderation,
'Cause arrogance and online swagger trump your expertise.
No matter what your sources, no matter whom you cite,
He doesn't want to hear it, 'cause he knows for sure he's right
There is no compromising, no bargain or accord,
He's never heard of you, or doesn't like you, or he's bored.
Beware the Wiki Pirates, they love to wield their clout
All day they'll argue details that no one cares about
They don't see as overreachin' their demands for page deletion
Web pages are in short supply, and what if we run out?
Yo ho, yo ho, no one ever thought,
Yo ho, yo ho, in this web we'd be caught,
The Wiki's meant to document the stuff the mainstream missed,
Instead we've got a pompous sot who's building up his wrist.
So if ye've got a subject that really interests you,
Beware the Wikipirates, they've got nothing else to do.
Someday we'll have a knowledge base with all you want and need,
Till then we'll take cold comfort that they're likely not to breed.
Beware the Wiki Pirates, who whine at our attacks.
They're only trying to help us, never mind the rules and facts.
They're just honest, not unpleasant, it's not their fault that we're peasants,
If we'd only see their brilliance, everybody could relax.
Beware the Wiki Pirates, that basement-dwellin' band.
They regulate and obfuscate what they don't understand.
The grief they give ya will reduce ya to trivia and minutiae,
And prayin' that you really do get banned,
Only "public noteriety" will get you in their library,
Be grateful they're all lost at sea... they'd try to delete the land.
perhaps better if it didn't Wikipedia exist (Score:3)
When I search for particular subjects, the Wikipedia and aggregates always dominate the results. Since information on Wikipedia is questionable then what material they have is "contaminated" meaning you have to spend extra time verifying it. "If it's on the internet, then it must be true!" but I like webpages that have the name and contact of the person that wrote the material. And like everything else you have to consider the source, i.e. govt websites, company websites (download useful troubleshoot manuals or simply marketing by dweebs), websites by nutzoid people, websites by reputable people. As we all know who it comes from makes a difference in credibility of information. But many sites I cannot quickly find because Wikipedia hijacks search results!
Wikipedia is useful if you want to find very basic information, i.e. is Gina Lollobrigida an actress, ESA astronaut or photographer? (she is only two of those three).
simple answer - short memory (Score:3)
I wrote an article on someone who's career predated the internet, had published several books and published groundbreaking research with Nobel prize winners. Deleted for "lack of notability" because there isn't much about him on the internet. Meanwhile, there are 50 articles on Pokemon, an article on every NBA player, and an article on every town in America. Note: Ever been to Harpster, Ohio [wikipedia.org]? Not notable.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Where Alph the sacred river ran, through caverns measureless to man... Now care to explain why you quoted that? I don't get it.
An empty palace is still empty no matter how much trash you fill it with. Seemed obvious to me.
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: (Score:3)
Ever tried to just fix a spelling error? Good fucking luck.
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)
Re: (Score:3)
Or, if not outright reversion by the site, careful editing of a subject one knows well and are working to make accurate re-edited into oblivion by people who know it considerably less well.
And then there are the "locked" subjects, where really poorly put together subject matter can become perpetual; you couldn't fix it if you wanted to.
It's one thing to be asked to contribute to a global knowledge resource; it is quite another to do so and have your work tossed aside f
Now, THERE's a Bar Set Pretty Low... (Score:4, Funny)
I also [received] more 5-Funny to my credit in the year I've been here than your entire life.
Dood, I get +5 Funny here all the time, and I'm a fuckin' idiot. For the sake of your self-esteem and all that's holy, please don't ascribe any real-life value to slashdot moderations.
Re: (Score:2)
You sound like a wikipedia moderator. Gee, I wonder why I don't bother contributing anymore - just read all the other posts above. It's no secret.