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

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#131

Post by mahranch » Fri, Jan 01, 2016, 1:04 AM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #88

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.

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

But is that inherently a bad thing? The way you state it, I'm getting that you're implying that it's bad 100% of the time. If you're looking at it in terms of black and white, I guess just hearing "rules can be bent" is bad, but I don't think it's that simple.

I think there are times where the rules can be bent which creates an outcome that is beneficial to all. Times where the rules don't account for certain variables/situations and those incidents need to be handled differently (or with care). I think it's a complex problem and it may need a complex solution.

The best, and I mean absolute best volunteer teams I've been a part of have always had a leader at the top with absolute authority. However, he or she never abused their power, and rarely flexed their absolute authority, preferring to take up the mantle of "benevolent dictator". In those cases, some amazing things happened. We got our work done ahead of time, group moral was sky-high, and the projects were a massive success. Things "just worked".

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#132

Post by mahranch » Fri, Jan 01, 2016, 1:08 AM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #120

gozur88 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

> This seems a bit crazy when the famous person is someone you respect and trust

Bingo. Just because the person in question may even be the topic of the article, it doesn't mean that person can't be biased or want to spin things a certain way. By requiring citations and sources, you're providing some validity and "proof". Granted, sources can be faked too, but the level of separation works to minimize much of that. The faking of sources isn't something that would be very common anyways.

It sort of falls back on the Perfect Solution fallacy. You can never have a perfect solution so you have to choose the "least bad" option. The option with the least drawbacks or negatives.

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#133

Post by mjklin » Fri, Jan 01, 2016, 1:10 AM UTC

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…

I agree with your analogy to other volunteer projects, but Wikipedia is certainly a special case. For a given article that is connected to an academic discipline, there is a good chance that it has at least one professional "babysitter" who is notified when changes are made. I can imagine that scholars have a portfolio on Wiki in the same way programmers do on GitHub.

Point being that it's much easier for them to maintain high quality with low effort.

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#134

Post by Frqy3 » Fri, Jan 01, 2016, 1:10 AM 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…

With apologies to Mark Twain:

I do not have time to write a well written concise article, so I have just copypastaed some stuff I don't understand.

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#135

Post by noobermin » Fri, Jan 01, 2016, 1:13 AM 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…

>A lot of the math articles articles are very poorly written

This is emphatically not the case in my experience. I believe I wrote a runge-kutta numeric solver using the wikipedia articles as the source. It was sufficient for my purposes. And yes, Wikipedia is not a textbook. You might want to be more specific what "improvements" were attempted. If you mean something like exercises and lengthy, worked out examples, then that's right, I'm not sure that fits in wikipedia more than it fits in a book.

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#136

Post by noobermin » Fri, Jan 01, 2016, 1:18 AM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #54

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…

It's a shame, but any public forum seems to degenerate to this point. Stack exchange is another great example... The bureaucracy that emerges distracts from the original mission.

Do you suppose one day, dang will be replaced by a RNN that auto rejects all possible dupes?

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#137

Post by noobermin » Fri, Jan 01, 2016, 1:20 AM UTC

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…

Isn't this really true of all organizations, not just ones staffed with volunteers? One organization I'd think this applies well to is academia.

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#138

Post by mitchtbaum » Fri, Jan 01, 2016, 1:32 AM UTC

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…

> Things always go south when you have volunteers bossing around other volunteers.

You showed this well. Thank you for finding this pattern and telling about it clearly.

> The answer is to keep all volunteers equal.

(Un)Fortunately this would break. Logically, how can you have one group of equals enforce their rules with unequal power? Naturally, influence (roles(?)) emerge(s). For social animals to want to stick together over the long haul, (1) an elder's view needs to carry a good bit of weight. This makes it possible to retain experience and membership, because these elders are our gateway to the past and they get tired and battle worn. The young learn from those with the experience and use it to build their future. (2) Members need to both use influence and limit it. Mocking leaders and their work, behind their backs and in-front of them, joking with them over the flaws in their work help them to keep their heads from filling with hot air. When someone takes on more responsibility, people will naturally and comfortably give them uneven support if they mutually respect and believe in eachother. This means some have more influence than others. When this flowing power gets a kink in it and builds up in any one place, then it will flood the basin. As long as work gets done and individuals cultivate good relationships, then a community will stick together and most everyone will feel like the community has good balance.

My experience with this: studied this a bit within anthropology and sociology, lived with these dynamics in and among Drupal (a self-described do-ocracy, perhaps a holocracy) community members for over ~10 years, and have a deep interest in natural processes that contribute to social order.

A related snippet from you guessed it with several links to springboard into related research:

Anthropologists maintain that hunter/gatherers don't have permanent leaders; instead, the person taking the initiative at any one time depends on the task being performed.[13][14][15] In addition to social and economic equality in hunter-gatherer societies, there is often, though not always, sexual parity as well.[13] Hunter-gatherers are often grouped together based on kinship and band (or tribe) membership.[16] Postmarital residence among hunter-gatherers tends to be matrilocal, at least initially.[17]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-gatherer#Social_and_eco...

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#139

Post by digler999 » Fri, Jan 01, 2016, 2:02 AM 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…

> who shall remain nameless

"PC hypersensitive" coward

Re: The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf]

#140

Post by sangnoir » Fri, Jan 01, 2016, 2:28 AM 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…

> 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

You know what grinds my gears? Pages upon pages of 'useless'[1] anime guest-characters, and yet when I tried to add pages for real-life artistes from my (3rd world) country, I had the pages deleted for "lack of notability". This must have happened a decade ago, but I told myself "never again". Now I ignore Wikipedia's pleas for content under their "Wikipedia loves X" campaigns because I know they don't mean it. I doubt Wikipedia's cultural bias can ever be cured with the current editorial structures.

1. Useless to me! This is very much tongue-in-cheek