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Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

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Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#61

Post by Proziam »

defertoreptar wrote: post #52
Proziam wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US military also skews young but leans more towards the republican party. https://news.gallup.com/poll/118684/military-veterans-ages-t...

Looks like there are 1.29 million in the US military (0.3% of US population), with an average age of 34.5. (All figures from top search result of Google.) 59% of millennials lean or identify as Democrat compared to 35% Republican https://www.people-press.org/2018/03/01/1-generations-party-...

[0]There were 18.8 million veterans living in the US in 2017.

I don't know a single person in the military today that is over 30, and I live right by Nellis(Not exactly hard data, of course). Most people go into the military right after high school. I'd be surprised if the average age is actually that high, especially considering you can't even join the military over certain ages - though that depends on the branch and other factors. IIRC you cannot join the marines if you are >30

I suspect you probably are specifically looking at officers, which is an entirely different story.

[0]https://www.ncsl.org/blog/2017/11/10/veterans-by-the-numbers...

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#62

Post by iwillaccept »

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #59
quanticle wrote: post #22

Wales is right about one thing, though. This fact does have enormous policy implications. If Wikipedia is written by occasional contributors, then growing it requires making it easier and more rewarding to contribute occasionally. Instead of trying to squeeze more work out of those who spend their life on Wikipedia, we need to broaden the base of those who contribute just a little bit. The problem is that, as a commu…

It really depends on what you edit. Sci/tech/math is pretty much un-monitored in my experience. The economics pages are full of weird pet theories. Meanwhile, as you say, current events, biographies, and a lot of other less technical pages (that don't require the deep background that the article refers to) are infested with deletionists.

I noticed the same pattern. Pages surrounding software architecture and companies always have some amount of fud in them.

Do we have any surveys for wikipedia like stackoverflow about the demography of editors and how many people visit pages in particular categories? How often will someone notice a mistake and try to fix it?

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#63

Post by notRobot »

quanticle wrote: post #22

Wales is right about one thing, though. This fact does have enormous policy implications. If Wikipedia is written by occasional contributors, then growing it requires making it easier and more rewarding to contribute occasionally. Instead of trying to squeeze more work out of those who spend their life on Wikipedia, we need to broaden the base of those who contribute just a little bit. The problem is that, as a commu…

Please don't quote text in code blocks. It's impossible to read on mobile and narrow viewports.

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Properly formatted:

> Wales is right about one thing, though. This fact does have enormous policy implications. If Wikipedia is written by occasional contributors, then growing it requires making it easier and more rewarding to contribute occasionally. Instead of trying to squeeze more work out of those who spend their life on Wikipedia, we need to broaden the base of those who contribute just a little bit.

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#64

Post by [deleted] »

watwut wrote: post #49
goto11 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you disagree with the numbers presented in article?

He may accept numbers in article and still think that 14 years later things are different. Wikipedia changed policies in the meantime, society changed in the meantime. He may also think that more representative selection of articles to run test on would end up differently.

[deleted]

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#65

Post by quanticle »

2zcon wrote: post #58
quanticle wrote: post #22

Wales is right about one thing, though. This fact does have enormous policy implications. If Wikipedia is written by occasional contributors, then growing it requires making it easier and more rewarding to contribute occasionally. Instead of trying to squeeze more work out of those who spend their life on Wikipedia, we need to broaden the base of those who contribute just a little bit. The problem is that, as a commu…

Isn't that the same for most open-source software[1]? To a Wikipedia editor going into a programming project to correct documentation, it might seem absurd that we want them to 'pass CI', 'squash the commits and correct the message column width to pass the code style', or 'sign the CLA'. [1] It's a very prettied-up domain-specific language but it's still copyleft software.

It would be, if the requirements were clearly documented, consistent for all pages, and consistently enforced. They are none of those things.

EDIT: the other big difference is that every time I've attempted to contribute to an open-source project, people have, in general, been helpful and willing to explain what needed improvement. On Wikipedia, it's a much more hostile attitude. People are less willing to explain why your content was reverted or nominated for deletion, and if you protest, there's a decent chance that you'll be sanctioned (either topic-banned or temp-banned from Wikipedia). Imagine if forgetting to run a linter got your SSH key tempbanned from the project and you'll have a closer analogy to the current process.

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#67

Post by booboolayla »

Proziam wrote: post #40
defertoreptar wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression that this was because the left skews younger, and Gen X and millennials are more active and capable online.

Age is a component, but it doesn't adequately explain the difference in movements that occur in the real world as well as online. Universities have students organizing protests against right-wing figures quite frequently, and it was almost exclusively the left who pushed for the $15 minimum wage - despite both parties populations being affected heavily. From what I've seen (living in US, Germany, and Sweden) no matte…

[dead]

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#68

Post by guerrilla »

draugadrotten wrote: post #12
onyva wrote: post #3

From 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…

The political bias of wikipedia editors is horrible in most smaller countries. You mention Israel and Croatia. I can add Sweden. For an example, compare the wikipedia entries of the two largest parties in the Swedish parliament. One, Socialdemokraterna, starts with a blurb on how the party provides public welfare and the party slogan ("av var och en efter förmåga, åt var och en efter behov"). Compare with the second…

Maybe if the social democrats, moderaterna or any other party were caught being literal nazis as often as Sverigedemorkaterna then they'd all have more similar Wikipedia pages.

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#69

Post by FalconSensei »

sien wrote: post #26
onyva wrote: post #3

From 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…

This was pretty similar to my experience trying to add up to date participation numbers to Australian sport. There is a big survey done in Australia, the Ausplay survey: https://www.clearinghouseforsport.gov.au/research/smi/auspla... They have extensive tables on adult participation. Two editors would not let this data into the sport in Australia article. The reason was fairly obvious, it shows that soccer/football i…

> The reason was fairly obvious, it shows that soccer/football is the most played team sport in Australia

I'm not familiar with Australian culture, can you explain why would that be obvious?

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

#70

Post by sien »

FalconSensei wrote: post #69
sien wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was pretty similar to my experience trying to add up to date participation numbers to Australian sport. There is a big survey done in Australia, the Ausplay survey: https://www.clearinghouseforsport.gov.au/research/smi/auspla... They have extensive tables on adult participation. Two editors would not let this data into the sport in Australia article. The reason was fairly obvious, it shows that soccer/football i…

> The reason was fairly obvious, it shows that soccer/football is the most played team sport in Australia I'm not familiar with Australian culture, can you explain why would that be obvious?

Good point. Sorry.

Some older Australians are parochial about sport. Soccer is seen as foreign and something not really Australian.

It's similar to the way soccer has been described as un-American in the US.

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