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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

#11

Post by brianpgordon »

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.

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

#13

Post by cLeEOGPw »

I think the western male tech-centric demographic partly boils down to the fact that you just need to spend much time at the computer, spend much energy for writing and editing and have to be passionate about it and the topic you write about has to be provable/widely accepted (no personal stories, opinions, etc.). The combination of these things is exactly as it is, maybe except for the western part. I don't understand why easterners aren't participating more actively.

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

#14

Post by hyperpape »

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.

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 and subject matter experts who have valuable information to add.

Worse, the demand for citations is often just absurd. There's a big difference between "this is a controversial claim that might need citations" and "no one has yet bothered to look in a basic textbook for citations."

There are real reasons why experts can't just come in and say "do it my way" but the response has to be geared towards saying "how do we take advantage of your knowledge without forcing you to learn arcane policies?"

Update: As for identifying experts, that's not altogether obvious. But if an article is an absolute mess, there should be a low bar for cleanup. If the article is in decent shape, then presumably someone is running around with a bit of subject matter knowledge, and can coordinate. Think about any area you know something about: how quickly can you distinguish someone who generally is on target from someone who doesn't have a clue?

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

#15

Post by Aldo_MX »

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 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.

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

#16

Post by mjn »

cLeEOGPw wrote: post #13

I think the western male tech-centric demographic partly boils down to the fact that you just need to spend much time at the computer, spend much energy for writing and editing and have to be passionate about it and the topic you write about has to be provable/widely accepted (no personal stories, opinions, etc.). The combination of these things is exactly as it is, maybe except for the western part. I don't understa…

> I don't understand why easterners aren't participating more actively.

Quite a few are, though it's highly variable between countries, and many contribute in languages other than English. The Japanese-language Wikipedia has about 4000 active editors in a typical month [1], and I believe the vast majority of them are Japanese, though I'm having trouble finding solid stats on that (if any exist).

[1] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/SummaryJA.htm

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

#17

Post by smoyer »

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 the ones that are left are boring, so volunteer writers won't address them?

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

#18

Post by mathattack »

hyperpape wrote: post #14
brianpgordon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

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

#19

Post by cldr »

hyperpape wrote: post #14
brianpgordon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 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 that does not/will not give article editors credit for original content; it treats them as just collectors and explainers of original content. When the explainers start writing stuff that has no source, they then disappear and leave Wikipedia holding the content which is now unverifiable. And that's just not how Jimmy wanted it to work I guess.

When I look at it that way, the policy doesn't seem that ridiculous. It may be inconvenient, but that's like saying a stack data structure is inconvenient because you can't remove things from the bottom. It's just the way it is; it has advantages and disadvantages.

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