Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)
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Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)
1–10 of 74 posts
Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)
#2The small amount of people who work on Wikipedia is it's greatest weakness. Petty power plays and individual politics all bubble up from those few into a resource so many millions use. It deserves more but how can anyone even start with all the rules, bots and reverts. It's really demoralizing to try and put in any effort there as you'll quickly encroach on some editors "territory".
Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)
#3From my experience with trying to contribute to the Hebrew version, try contributing focusing on expanding an existing article and watch what happens. In my case there was a very strong push back even against adding links that expand on issues mentioned which imho helped to balance an obvious slant. I gave up after a while. At university of course you’re warned not to use Wikipedia, it’s not acceptable as a reference and many examples are presented of experts in their field who contributed articles, which were then rewritten to the point where there was nothing left, other than the revised version of the moderators and the small mafia that runs the Israeli Wikipedia. There’s also the examples of the Croatian version which was taken over by neonazis and even the ministry of education had to publish a warning.
Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)
#4The small amount of people who work on Wikipedia is it's greatest weakness. Petty power plays and individual politics all bubble up from those few into a resource so many millions use. It deserves more but how can anyone even start with all the rules, bots and reverts. It's really demoralizing to try and put in any effort there as you'll quickly encroach on some editors "territory".
There's wikipedia the product, and wikipedia the game. A lot of people really enjoy playing wikipedia. Even so, the product's really not that bad by most metrics.
Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)
#5Leftists since every political article have an left slant.
Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)
#6None of the comments in this submission's thread so far seem to be related to the article's content (the headline was tantalizing, but the article itself is really cool), so to try and counteract that, here's one that's directly related:
As it says, Wikipedia is written by vast amounts of people. The myth that only a small number of people contribute is just that: a myth. Checking edit histories on anything but the most niche of articles would demonstrate this, but you could also do the same analysis he did today and see if you can replicate his result; it's been a few years now, things probably look slightly different.
This has gotten more relevant over time even though the people perpetuating the myth have changed, along with their motives for doing so. One of the more popular and long-lasting myths!
Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)
#7I miss Aaron so much
Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)
#8The small amount of people who work on Wikipedia is it's greatest weakness. Petty power plays and individual politics all bubble up from those few into a resource so many millions use. It deserves more but how can anyone even start with all the rules, bots and reverts. It's really demoralizing to try and put in any effort there as you'll quickly encroach on some editors "territory".
> It deserves more but how can anyone even start with all the rules, bots and reverts.
That's why I prefer contributing to smaller wikis. They have much less political issues. However, I'd say more than 90% of the edits I've made to the English Wikipedia are still live.
It really depends where you choose to edit. Some articles just have asshole editors who think they own the article. And not everyone has the energy to fight back against that.
Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)
#9None of the comments in this submission's thread so far seem to be related to the article's content (the headline was tantalizing, but the article itself is really cool), so to try and counteract that, here's one that's directly related: As it says, Wikipedia is written by vast amounts of people. The myth that only a small number of people contribute is just that: a myth. Checking edit histories on anything but the m…
I don't get why you'd want to perpetuate the myth of Wikipedia editors being this small, powerful in-group of people anyways…
Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)
#10The small amount of people who work on Wikipedia is it's greatest weakness. Petty power plays and individual politics all bubble up from those few into a resource so many millions use. It deserves more but how can anyone even start with all the rules, bots and reverts. It's really demoralizing to try and put in any effort there as you'll quickly encroach on some editors "territory".
> It deserves more but how can anyone even start with all the rules, bots and reverts. That's why I prefer contributing to smaller wikis. They have much less political issues. However, I'd say more than 90% of the edits I've made to the English Wikipedia are still live. It really depends where you choose to edit. Some articles just have asshole editors who think they own the article. And not everyone has the energy t…
Is there a simple way to check if one's edits are live, so those that aren't can be reviewed?