The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#111

Post by bjourne » Thu, Dec 31, 2015, 10:42 PM UTC

runn1ng wrote: post #18

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 have learned that in order to actually contribute to Wikipedia, you have to treat it less like a collaboration and more like a battle. You can't just contribute and consider it done. You have to be prepare to fight your way through, engage in edit wars, learn about the battlefield (the bureaucracy, the article sourcing) and in the end, if you fight long enough, you usually win. You have to repeatedly, over and over…

> You can't just contribute and consider it done. You have to be prepare to fight your way through, engage in edit wars, learn about the battlefield (the bureaucracy, the article sourcing) and in the end, if you fight long enough, you usually win.

And this is why only fundamentalists and paid editors edit Wikipedia. I spent days with such battles on a certain Wikipedia page only to have one "senior" editor come around and essentially say that I was wrong (no explanation given) and revert the changes. It's a completely useless waste of time. :)

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#112

Post by gedy » Thu, Dec 31, 2015, 10:57 PM UTC

massysett wrote: post #99

smithkl42 wrote: post #86

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…

This is the worst thing about Wikipedia. Experts with actual knowledge are discouraged and ridiculed while those who have built up longevity through tenacity retain control even if they know nothing.

Sounds like most companies I've worked for :-)

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#113

Post by andrepd » Thu, Dec 31, 2015, 10:58 PM UTC

mangeletti wrote: post #7

placeybordeaux wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this related to the article? You seem to be talking about public perception of wikipedia while the article mainly focuses on the falling number of active editors.

I'm suggesting that there hasn't been as much of a decline in community as there has been a decline in the available encyclopedia-relevant information left in the world that isn't already published on Wikipedia. Also, the public perception is related to the drop of users and vice versa. There has been a lot of negative press lately, specifically related to problems in the community.

But the article addresses precisely that. In fact, only less than 10% of the core 1000 articles are deemed good quality. So that point is moot.

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#114

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 31, 2015, 11:20 PM UTC

_pmf_ wrote: post #10

I think Wikipedia will become the best case study in how bureaucracy cripples a working society. 80% of the effort of creating new content is following byzantine processes and procedures. While I admit that these processes work for consistency of content, I cannot in the least observe any noticeable quality improvements, and the reason is that valuable contributors with deep domain knowledge will not invest the time…

[deleted]

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#115

Post by danso » Thu, Dec 31, 2015, 11:22 PM UTC

Marcomasino wrote: post #97

digler999 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, one anecdotal piece of evidence. Your postulate must now be proven. Tell me some of your anecdotes about black people or mexicans while you're at it. Remember, by your logic, any single sample speaks for the whole population. This should be interesting! :)

Having worked with and directed people of differing ethnic backgrounds, I would pick the Chinese as best to work with. The worst who shall remain nameless, were either augmentative dishonest or lazy and some were as thick as two very thick planks glued together. You had to speak to them in very short sentences and not use big words and still they didn't get it. I didn't experience a large enough sample to form an opi…

Initial comment from you (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10819307):

> I used deal with a self declared Asperger who was top class in his field. The thing is whenever I asked him do you know how to fix this problem. The answer was invariably, 'sorry I don't know how to do that'.

From your comment above:

> The worst [group of people] who shall remain nameless, were either augmentative dishonest or lazy and some were as thick as two very thick planks glued together. You had to speak to them in very short sentences and not use big words and still they didn't get it.

So...how do you know that either:

A. The "self-declared Asperger" is actually quite reasonable and you just happen to be in his "worst" group of people...I don't mean that you necessarily have those qualities, just that he's chosen to treat you as if you did, based on his past experiences with people of your kind?

B. That you yourself don't have the stereotypical behavioral symptoms Aspergers and that this "worst" group of people may not really deserve your harsh judgment?

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#116

Post by johan_larson » Thu, Dec 31, 2015, 11:23 PM UTC

LoSboccacc wrote: post #3

Eh, it went from a interesting novelty, to a incredible community, to a petty bureaucracy. My personal experience is that under the crowdsourcing model the well meaning non experts outnumber the real experts and it's hard to police them while treating all as equals. In short, democracy brought content toward mediocrity. Now it's dangerous to use it but for a cursory introduction to any in depth content, while non fac…

Good, fast, cheap: choose at most two.

High quality, large system, lightweight dev process: choose at most two.

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#117

Post by flomo » Thu, Dec 31, 2015, 11:34 PM UTC

Zitrax wrote: post #65

ars wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct, and you know what happens? The people LEAST qualified to contribute contribute the most. Why? Because they have too much time on their hands, and can battle endlessly. People with real knowledge usually have better things to do.

It is indeed a problem to not have enough time. Just throwing in some facts in an article is often not good enough, it must fit with the flow of the article and not repeat things that has already been said and be in order, and with references etc etc. Some people might not have the time for that additional work to make the contribution "good enough". I haven't followed Wikipedia for a while but I assume that some rej…

I see the exactly opposite. There's so many poorly written wikipedia entries which read as "Fact. Other Disconnected Fact. Another Random Fact (except for fact, fact and fact)." I've made attempts at smoothing out the language in various articles, and it often gets reverted because someone's precious trivia was removed. If anything, it seems that wikipedians are loath to have anything "edited down".

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#118

Post by anigbrowl » Thu, Dec 31, 2015, 11:39 PM UTC

mangeletti wrote: post #5

Wikipedia has problems, but I think it's worth noting that Wikipedia has enough content to fill 2,200x volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica[1], or, a small library. I don't think it's necessarily an existential problem that the public image of Wikipedia's relevance is reaching a sort of "trough of disillusionment" due to some of its governance issues. It has simply reached a scale where it faces a new set or hurdles to…

This is a bug, not a feature. A huge proportion of that content is crap (eg it's perfectly reasonable to have entries for popular anime shows, but we don't need hundreds of stub pages for every character in the show), and even a lot of the good content is poorly curated. A lot of the math articles articles are very poorly written, for example, but attempts to improve them are often reverted on the grounds that 'Wikipedia is not a textbook,'

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#119

Post by jzelinskie » Thu, Dec 31, 2015, 11:46 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #118

mangeletti wrote: post #5

Wikipedia has problems, but I think it's worth noting that Wikipedia has enough content to fill 2,200x volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica[1], or, a small library. I don't think it's necessarily an existential problem that the public image of Wikipedia's relevance is reaching a sort of "trough of disillusionment" due to some of its governance issues. It has simply reached a scale where it faces a new set or hurdles to…

This is a bug, not a feature. A huge proportion of that content is crap (eg it's perfectly reasonable to have entries for popular anime shows, but we don't need hundreds of stub pages for every character in the show), and even a lot of the good content is poorly curated. A lot of the math articles articles are very poorly written, for example, but attempts to improve them are often reverted on the grounds that 'Wikip…

Is that really true? I'd rather Wikipedia contain all the character pages than have to go to a wikia that is even more poorly maintained, ad-written, and destined for death at an unknown point in time. The reason these articles exist are because there are more people available to provide feedback and write them. It is much harder to contribute to the Yoneda Lemma article than the Spike Spiegel article.

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#120

Post by ZeroGravitas » Thu, Dec 31, 2015, 11:56 PM UTC

gozur88 wrote: post #66

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…

This is something Jerry Pournelle used to complain about. He edited some pages relating to the US space program. Events in which he took part or knew the people involved. Then he'd come back a month later and find the page had been edited again with the incorrect information re-inserted. Eventually he just gave up. And then there are political problems. The Tyson affair is a good example - Neil deGrasse Tyson spent m…

The "famous person tried to contribute to stuff they were involved in" thing comes up a lot.

The wikipedia answer is that they want published sources that people can cite and review.

This seems a bit crazy when the famous person is someone you respect and trust, but as soon as self-publicists, frauds and quacks get involved, this becomes a useful guideline. And of course you can't have one rule for some and another rule for the rest.