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

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

#111

Post by e12e »

sytelus wrote: post #104

I've burned enough midnight oil trying to add content in Wikipedia just to discover it frequently gets deleted next day. The worst part is that even if it doesn't, it always feels like that it's a question of when rather than if it would get deleted. And I'm not talking about silly content. For instance I tried to add content on properties of different grades of gortex material and someone deemed it not useful on the…

I'm not a "wikipedian" -- but I do think the focus on sibling-projects, allowing wikipedia to be an encyclopaedia, is good. Contribute to wikibooks if you want to write text books (on math or some other subject) -- I don't think it makes sense for wikipedia to host all content everyone ever wants to create. That's what the Internet is for. It shouldn't be the goal of wikipedia to be the wiki to end all wikis. More wikis with different focus would be more manageable, I think. Both wrt quality control and translation.

Text in a wikipedia is much like source code for a program -- it will be read many times more than it is written -- and after a certain point, it should largely stop changing, unless bugs are found. "Bugs" in the case of text are the obvious: grammar/spelling, somewhat subtle: use of language, wording (contrast eg: articles written in "simple English" wikipedia vs "normal" English) -- and external change: Hiroshima has lots of beautiful wooden houses > Hiroshima is one of two cities to have ever been bombed with a nuclear weapon (For a rather grotesque example).

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

#112

Post by [deleted] »

jberryman wrote: post #105
cldr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking about this the other day and I came to think that Wikipedia's rule about citations is this: Wikipedia does not want to be a source of information. It wants to be a collection/aggregation of other sources of information, and those other sources have to be accessible to others for all time (i.e. not a human being but a book written by a human being). What I mean to say is that Wikipedia's system is one t…

i.e. wikipedia is an encyclopedia.

[deleted]

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

#113

Post by r0h1n »

I know it isn't a direct comparison, but could this be the modern, Internet-equivalent of "tragedy of the commons"?

Instead of degradation through overuse (as with real-world resources, but meaningless in the context of Internet resources), we have degradation without meaningful contribution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

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

#114

Post by znowi »

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…

This brilliant professor of yours should not have a problem following a few simple rules that a repair technician can and everyone else abides to.

> he's the editor that Wikipedia desperately needs to attract

If those editors require special care and exemption from the rules on the account of their fancy credentials, they're certainly not the type for Wikipedia.

One of those examples is ISL the physicist here in the comments. He complains that his contribution got edited by someone else. And that he doesn't get compensated for his hard work on the wiki. I'm sure he's a smart fella, but this attitude is not compatible with the Wikipedia model.

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

#115

Post by ddebernardy »

znowi wrote: post #114
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…

This brilliant professor of yours should not have a problem following a few simple rules that a repair technician can and everyone else abides to. > he's the editor that Wikipedia desperately needs to attract If those editors require special care and exemption from the rules on the account of their fancy credentials, they're certainly not the type for Wikipedia. One of those examples is ISL the physicist here in the…

And your mindset is precisely why Wikipedia has been turning new editors off for years now.

Congrats! You've summarized and illustrated the entire article in three short paragraphs.

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

#116

Post by nitrogen »

rhizome wrote: post #82
owenmarshall wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's what is meant by "go looking for the citation." I read it more as "by being an expert in this subject I know this is true; by being an expert in this subject I also probably don't have time to find the journal that has the article in question, cite it per Wikipedia's rules, and put it in the article." Frankly that sounds like a great task for editors that aren't subject experts. Maybe the expert…

I read it more as "by being an expert in this subject I know this is true; by being an expert in this subject I also probably don't have time to find the journal that has the article in question, cite it per Wikipedia's rules, and put it in the article." Really, a "P.S. I'm an expert" policy?

Wikipedia could add a category of academic editors whose identities have been verified in some way with their institutions, and who meet some definition of subject area expert. These editors would be given a presumption of innocence by other editors, so their changes should be researched for citations, rather than reverted.

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

#117

Post by nitrogen »

anonymous wrote: post #71
fluxon wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please come back and make suggestions on Talk pages, rather than directly edit. There, you can actively discuss, cite sources (your own and hopefully others), and make real contributions which will last. Experts have a special kind of conflict of interest: their possible bias when directly editing. Discussing will moderate and ameliorate that bias, before it gets into the article. This approach will help as science a…

Well you can keep his edit and send the guy a polite message that he ought to cite his sources soon or you'll remove what he added. I mean, at worst you'll just have an article without a citation for a short while, without driving people away. What you are doing right now is this: .-. |U| | | | | _| |_ | | | |-. /| ` | | | | | | \ / | | | | FUCK YOU

I agree with your comment, but the ASCII art is out of place on HN.

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

#118

Post by thenomad »

bane wrote: post #50
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…

It's said that the best way to be a primary source for wikipedia is to write a webpage that posits the change you want to make to a WP article, then cite that page when you make the change.

Interesting.

As a world expert on some topics (Machinima filmmaking) for which the primary source of some relevant information resides largely in my head, I was wondering if this was the best way to approach Wikipedia edits. Thanks for the info: I may actually make some contributions soon!

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

#119

Post by nullc »

ddebernardy wrote: post #115
znowi wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This brilliant professor of yours should not have a problem following a few simple rules that a repair technician can and everyone else abides to. > he's the editor that Wikipedia desperately needs to attract If those editors require special care and exemption from the rules on the account of their fancy credentials, they're certainly not the type for Wikipedia. One of those examples is ISL the physicist here in the…

And your mindset is precisely why Wikipedia has been turning new editors off for years now. Congrats! You've summarized and illustrated the entire article in three short paragraphs.

I'm not sure what you'd have him say.

McDonalds is surely turning aways scads of customers by not providing their food for free.

Certainly there are many things Wikipedia could do to be more welcoming. But not permitting editing by others and/or paying people to edit are not within the Wikipedia model any more than McDonalds giving away all their food would be.

There is nothing wrong with being polite but firm about what something is and what it isn't.

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

#120

Post by nitrogen »

aaronem wrote: post #84
Aldo_MX wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gave up StackExchange since day 1, I found no difference between being registered or not, any useful action is blocked because I'm a new user, and I would rather stay away than spend time figuring out my way through a hostile site like that.

If you care, or for others who haven't yet approached Stack Exchange sites [1] in the wrong way and found themselves put off as a result, the way to start building reputation is by answering questions , not just accurately but as extensively and generally as you can manage, with bonus points for considering edge and corner cases. Play to your strengths in terms of domain knowledge, especially in relatively obscure do…

But what if you don't care about building reputation, and you just want to comment on something that desperately needs a comment (50 points required)?
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