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The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

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Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#81

Post by DanBC »

dajohnson89 wrote: post #45
Retric wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I contributed to several Wikipedia articles over the years (~50-100). It's gotten to the point where it's pointless to improve even terrible articles like stubs as basically everything is automatically reversed. At best a mod may decide to add your content back, which means at this point it's basically stopped being a public wiki. Which is fine, IMO they should just change the name to Webpedia or something if they do…

Just curious, why are your edits auto-reversed? That's very discouraging to hear.

For a whie there were some wikiprojects (Vandal Patrol; Rollback; twinkle) and some of the people involved were very aggressive in making reverts.

Those problems were recognised and so things are a bit better now, but still.

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#82

Post by IvyMike »

The article raises an important point that I haven't seen addressed elsewhere in the comments: revert bots can be terrible.

For example, I was once reading about a song, and at the bottom there was a link to a youtube video. The link was broken, so I replaced it with a working youtube link.

The edit was immediately reverted by a bot that was anti-all-links-to-youtube. Fine, maybe that is a problem. But it's also a problem that the anti-youtube bot replaced my youtube link with a youtube link.

When I went to the bot's page, it was filled with comments from dozens of others who had made similar edits that were blindly reverted. The bot author, who took a "it's me against the world" stance, proclaiming that his bot was doing the only sensible thing, and that he was "sick of arguing". As the paper proclaims, this immediate negative reinforcement had long term consequences of turning away many good faith editors.

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#84

Post by bachmeier »

It's easy to dismiss this as "oh well, it's not perfect". The problem arises when you see something that is factually incorrect but cannot change it, and you know others rely on it. I've noticed a number of wrong, or just not precisely correct, things on Wikipedia, so I seldom click on those links when they appear in a search result.

I've never used it all that much, to be honest, but the information hiding aspect is what makes it so dangerous. Allow incorrect information to appear on the site and then explain why it's incorrect. Allow information on the site that might be incorrect, so that others can investigate further. But presenting the material as if it is correct, because there is a quality control mechanism in place, is simply dishonest.

If Wikipedia disappeared tomorrow, it would not bother me at all. No information would be lost. It would reappear elsewhere on the internet.

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#85

Post by tokenadult »

As mentioned in the other recent thread about Wikikpedia, I am a Wikipedian. I joined active editing in 2010, that is after the heyday of welcoming new editors, but long before most articles on important topics were anywhere near to being well sourced. I have tried to clean up the mess on some articles, and am a winner or co-winner of two Million Awards[1] for fixing up high-page-view articles.

But how I got the awards basically illustrates the problem. One article I fixed I wrote entirely off-line in a text editor file, while commenting on the talk page of the previous lousy version of the article, and then I dropped in the new article text all at once. Every previous time when I tried piecemeal editing of that article, my best edits would be reverted, while other stuff that was entirely made up and without reliable sources would be inserted into the article. The second article I worked on fixing up was a collaborative effort. Again, I started with discussion on the article talk page. My first few edits were reverted, contrary to reliable sources, by editors who exerted "ownership" on the article but who refused to look up sources. Later I was joined by two other editors, and one of the other two made it his project to rewrite the article from top to bottom for one of the Wikipedia editing contests. He liberally threw out old unsourced crap and then layered in new, well sourced text. I mentioned on the article talk page I'd like to fix a few sections of the article, and proofread all of it, and after he deleted the old crap, I put in new good content in the sections I worked on and checked all of his references throughout the article. The former editors who let the article be bad for years slithered away. It's a slog and a struggle like this every time someone tries to improve Wikipedia--the established editing culture includes snap judgments without looking up reliable sources.

AFTER EDIT: I also mentioned in the previous thread about Wikipedia that I hope sometime soon a philanthropist funds a Free Online Encyclopedia X Prize to put to the test what could be possible in building an accurate, well edited free, online encyclopedia if some new projects began and tried out some new models of project management and perhaps some new software. (I personally don't have any trouble dealing with Wikipedia's software, but I have been using various kinds of markup languages since the 1980s in earlier editing work.) The only way to know what's possible is to try to challenge the incumbent project with some competition, I think. Even if Wikipedia then just ended up winning a prize with reasonable criteria, it would still become better, and we would all have a better idea about what works and what doesn't.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Million_Award

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#86

Post by smithkl42 »

I'll toss my own experience out there.

I've contributed edits to maybe a dozen or so different Wikipedia articles, and would like to contribute more, but it's hard to get past a couple of hurdles.

The main one is the byzantine and archaic editing tools. The markdown language that Wikipedia uses is a PITA to learn, and following a discussion on the talk page is almost impossible. Wikipedia presents a wonderful UX for browsing and reading. It has perhaps the worst UX I've ever seen for a beginner who wants to make a contribution.

Beyond that, I spent a significant amount of time editing some articles on a fringe religious group that I had studied extensively. (Apart from the group's own leaders, I arguably knew more about the group than anyone else in the world.) But the group that was the focus of the article kept backing out my edits and replacing them with propaganda. It was simply too much work to fight them (especially with the horrible edit/discussion tools), they were a lot more motivated than I was, and I eventually gave up.

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#88

Post by DanBC »

sandworm101 wrote: post #44

There is a finite pattern whenever one relies on volunteers. Most will come and go, but a few hang around and rise to the top. Lacking renumeration, they tend towards self-gratification. Some handle extra responsibility well, but others start building their own little castles from which to berate all below. This process is inevitable once you have multiple ranks of volunteers. I've seen this with charities, open sour…

That's different enough from VestedContributor that you should give it a name and write it up.

http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/VestedContributor

VestedContributors think the rules can be bent for them because they've been around so long and done so much good work.

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#89

Post by CM30 »

An odd thought, but perhaps the decline in editor numbers also has something to do with an increase in the number of wikis in general, mostly aimed at specific audiences and about specific subjects. Back in the early/mid 00s, Wikipedia was the site you'd contribute to if you wanted to write general encyclopedia entries about something that's now seen as fairly niche (like say, a certain TV show, film series, game franchise, etc), and from there you might become interested in editing other pages on less specialised subjects.

But now, thousands of wikis exist, about every subject under the sun. Many of those are very popular, have more welcoming communities, etc. So people don't join the general site any more. If they care for say, Star Wars, they join Wookiepedia. If they care for Pokemon, it'd be Bulbapedia. Or one of the many others listed here:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheWikiRule

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#90

Post by rsync »

rloc wrote: post #13

I tried once or twice to edit articles but was quickly rejected by editors that usually believe they sort of "own" the content. I've quickly become demotivated as explained in the analysis and never contributed again. Another problem is that when you think you've made an important and useful update you're never sure when someone will roll it back. Some are spending a very big chunk of their time to make sure articles…

"I tried once or twice to edit articles but was quickly rejected by editors that usually believe they sort of "own" the content."

I have experienced this as well. It is difficult to believe and truly inexplicable, but there is some perceived status related to editing articles and making contributions to wikipedia.

It is very safe to generalize the young, white, male keyboard commandos who are staking out their turf in this way.

In the meantime, actual adults with real contributions to make (and normal, grown-up lives to lead elsewhere) cannot do so. In response to a child comment, below, No, no I will not learn to play the game and learn the tactics needed to bully my edits through.

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