The Decline of Wikipedia: As More People Rely on It, Fewer People Create It • Hacker News Board

Re: The Decline of Wikipedia: As More People Rely on It, Fewer People Create It

#31

Post by fluxon » Fri, Oct 25, 2013, 6:10 PM UTC

mathattack wrote: post #18

hyperpape wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over my years of editing Wikipedia off and on, I've come to think this is mostly a bad excuse. The issue is that very few articles meet Wikipedia's real standards for citations. Yet new content provided by experts is often challenged for lacking citations, perhaps because of a sort of status quo bias. What needs to happen is that there should be collaboration between Wikipedia insiders who know the Wikipedia system a…

I think the challenge is how do you identify experts? Does a Professor have to earn it over time? Are some professorships worth more than others?

The set of experts I'd like to invite to Talk page discussions would be published, widely cited authors, including professors, engineers, scientists, and non-degreed practitioners with a good reputation in their field. Publications can be academic, professional, and/or popular, IMHO. Peer review, of course, helps. Longevity helps. Professors who have published, and been cited, would certainly become seen to be established in their field.

Re: The Decline of Wikipedia: As More People Rely on It, Fewer People Create It

#32

Post by owenmarshall » Fri, Oct 25, 2013, 6:10 PM UTC

brianpgordon wrote: post #11

owenmarshall wrote: post #7

Interesting read, and it reminds me of a really annoying experience I once had with one of the StackExchange sites. There was a question about Emacs, and the answer was a chunk of elisp that was wrong - one of the closing parens was in the wrong place, so it caused an error. OK, easy fix! But I don't have enough karma to edit answers on StackExchange and have them submit cleanly, so I submitted an 'edit suggestion' o…

I bet that your professor tried to write content from his own knowledge rather than strictly from published sources. The problem is that anyone can claim to be a math professor with expertise on graph theory. For this reason, everyone - even experts - need to cite sources in order to add content to Wikipedia.

I bet he was too. But personally I don't care, and in my opinion neither should Wikipedia.

In my opinion it'd be better to risk a little inaccuracy if it meant attracting experts to edit articles. But as cldr notes above, it's possible that's not the goal of Wikipedia - which is completely fair, but makes me wish some hybrid of NuPedia and Wikipedia existed.

Re: The Decline of Wikipedia: As More People Rely on It, Fewer People Create It

#33

Post by ilamont » Fri, Oct 25, 2013, 6:14 PM UTC

The results paint a numerical picture of a community dominated by bureaucracy. Since 2007, when the new controls began to bite, the likelihood of a new participant’s edit being immediately deleted has steadily climbed. Over the same period, the proportion of those deletions made by automated tools rather than humans grew. Unsurprisingly, the data also indicate that well-intentioned newcomers are far less likely to still be editing Wikipedia two months after their first try. ... One idea being tested offers newcomers suggestions about what to work on, steering them toward easy tasks such as copyediting articles that need it. The hope is this will give people time to gain confidence before they break a rule and experience the tough side of Wikipedia.

People want to create content, not fix other people's grammatical mistakes.

Here's another idea: Instead of figuring out new processes, badges, sandboxes, help zones, and polite ways of saying "your contribution doesn't meet notability requirements and needs at least n media citations. Please refer to Policy X before resubmitting", why not attack the hydra head on? Determine how to eliminate bureaucracy. Don't keep adding to it.

Re: The Decline of Wikipedia: As More People Rely on It, Fewer People Create It

#34

Post by vlasev » Fri, Oct 25, 2013, 6:14 PM UTC

Look at the Wikipedia article on the Russian Armed Forces[1]. Look at the budget of 907 billion dollars (44% GDP) for 2013. That's ridiculous isn't it? I tried changing it to the proper 90.7 billion (4.4% of GDP) but it reverted back. I tried again and same thing happened. I rest my case.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Armed_Forces

Re: The Decline of Wikipedia: As More People Rely on It, Fewer People Create It

#35

Post by r00fus » Fri, Oct 25, 2013, 6:15 PM UTC

muaddirac wrote: post #26

An ex of mine edited a wiki article and added false information to it. I think that sort of thing is very harmful, so I removed it. A day later the edit was reverted. I tried a few months later. It, too, was reverted. I had someone else try. It was reverted. I tried once more, probably two years later (after the "fact" had time to propagate throughout the internet), and it too was reverted. The reason it was reverted…

> Apparently I didn't sufficiently explain the edit. It didn't require explanation: it was an uncited, demonstrably false fact.

So did you provide the explanation? Was the expectation of an explanation sufficiently made obvious?

So given the reversion wars (mostly on politically sensitive topics and companies that want to whitewash their images), I can understand the reversion of the removal.

Re: The Decline of Wikipedia: As More People Rely on It, Fewer People Create It

#36

Post by ISL » Fri, Oct 25, 2013, 6:16 PM UTC

brianpgordon wrote: post #11

owenmarshall wrote: post #7

Interesting read, and it reminds me of a really annoying experience I once had with one of the StackExchange sites. There was a question about Emacs, and the answer was a chunk of elisp that was wrong - one of the closing parens was in the wrong place, so it caused an error. OK, easy fix! But I don't have enough karma to edit answers on StackExchange and have them submit cleanly, so I submitted an 'edit suggestion' o…

I bet that your professor tried to write content from his own knowledge rather than strictly from published sources. The problem is that anyone can claim to be a math professor with expertise on graph theory. For this reason, everyone - even experts - need to cite sources in order to add content to Wikipedia.

Physicist here: I stopped making contributions to Wikipedia after a few edits and reversions, I stopped too. Furthermore, the danger that something I'd put a lot of time into could be replaced meant that it's not worth sinking a lot of time into it. The citation policy makes a ton of pragmatic sense, and I understand why it's there. It's an unfriendly way to meet the Wikipedia community. (an alternative way to address a "citation needed" concern is to presume that the editor is correct, and go looking for the citation)

In addition, I'm not aware of any way to be compensated, even by citation, for putting time and care into Wikipedia. As academics, we give a lot away for free (want to know some of our most-clever trade secrets? Just read our papers, where we detail everything we do so you can replicate it), but our compensation ultimately comes from what we can show others as our contribution to society. To anyone considering me for a job, promotion, or tenure, a well-written introductory article on precision tests of gravitation isn't worth a hundredth of one precision test of gravity published in Physical Review Letters.

For a single contributor, Wikipedia is ephemeral, but the academic literature is effectively permanent.

Re: The Decline of Wikipedia: As More People Rely on It, Fewer People Create It

#37

Post by justincormack » Fri, Oct 25, 2013, 6:19 PM UTC

smoyer wrote: post #17

Well ... there was always a limited amount of information in printed encyclopedia's, and since printing included incremental costs, the editors were careful to make sure each article had enough value to be included. Is it possible that all the important articles have been written and are, at this point, well vetted? Perhaps there aren't enough topics left for all the people that would be writing articles? Or perhaps…

Thats not true at all, but the interests of the editors do not cover everything. Also you need reference books for most stuff, online sources are not that great. eg loads of historical subjects are not covered at all well.

Re: The Decline of Wikipedia: As More People Rely on It, Fewer People Create It

#38

Post by rcthompson » Fri, Oct 25, 2013, 6:23 PM UTC

Whenever I hear warnings about the pace of change slowing down on Wikipedia, I have to wonder to what extent this is explained simply by (parts of) Wikipedia being "finished", in the sense that it is now only updating to keep up with current events as they happen, and not working on filling in gaps on subjects that are relatively static. For example, the articles on most well-known laws of physics are effectively "done", and, barring a major breakthrough in physics, aren't going to change much. This doesn't mean that they are somehow "dead".

So what fraction of articles on Wikipedia are "finished", and does this explain the apparent decline of Wikipedia in terms of contributors/contributions? I don't know if there's an easy way to answer this.

Re: The Decline of Wikipedia: As More People Rely on It, Fewer People Create It

#39

Post by stephp » Fri, Oct 25, 2013, 6:25 PM UTC

I wonder if this is more a matter of would-be participants being turned off or of a higher volume of readers giving individuals the sense that the site doesn't need them. (Probably an equal amount of both.)

I can't remember if there's a formal psychological term for the latter, but it's like how a person in trouble is better off being seen by one person than many (the many assume someone else is helping).

While I don't mean to sound ungrateful to the Wikipedia team and community for providing such a great resource, I've personally been turned off by all the calls for donations because they won't implement a few measly ads. It just seems kind of stubborn to me-- shifting the problem onto each individual user when money could be generated so painlessly. Even a little ironic considering the calls for donations get in the way of the user experience more than regular ads would.

Re: The Decline of Wikipedia: As More People Rely on It, Fewer People Create It

#40

Post by fluxon » Fri, Oct 25, 2013, 6:26 PM UTC

muaddirac wrote: post #26

An ex of mine edited a wiki article and added false information to it. I think that sort of thing is very harmful, so I removed it. A day later the edit was reverted. I tried a few months later. It, too, was reverted. I had someone else try. It was reverted. I tried once more, probably two years later (after the "fact" had time to propagate throughout the internet), and it too was reverted. The reason it was reverted…

Thank you for the effort. Good edit summaries are really helpful to other editors - that fact is not well explained as you're trying to save an edit. It's a frequently thankless job. Now (thanks to concerted effort by the Wikilove project) thanking an editor for a specific edit is now easy and tidy with a single click of "thank" in the edit history. They're notified by an upcount in their red notification box - no messy Talk page spam. My point is that little things are gradually improving. Most people needing live help editing Wikipedia can access IRC easily using this freenode webchat link: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=wikipedia-en-help . You really don't have to wonder about why edits are reverted - you can ask in real time. This help channel is intended for new editors, but edit warring is certainly a topic well asked about.