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Is Wikipedia Failing?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the everybody-successful-is-failing dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A growing number of people are concerned about where Wikipedia is heading. Some have left Wikipedia for Citizendium, while others are trying to change the culture of Wikipedia from within. A recent essay called Wikipedia is failing points out many of the problems which must be solved with Wikipedia for it to succeed in its aim of becoming a reputable, reliable reference work. How would you go about solving these problems?"

15 of 478 comments (clear)

  1. Editorial board... by BWJones · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What can be done to change the system?

    Now that Wikipedia has reached a critical mass, the time has come to establish a trusted editorial board that can vet articles to established experts in the field of subjects. This board could then also solicit articles by experts and find other wikis that host specialized information to link to the common Wikipedia. This will prevent much of the vandalism and uninformed disasters that seem to befall certain subjects or topics when they are edited by people who are not competent to be making edits in certain topics. As a professor in the biosciences, I've seen more than one article/entry on Wikipedia, written by an expert in that field that has been absolutely, shamefully and quite inaccurately edited or altered by well meaning individuals that absolutely have no idea what they are doing/saying.

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    1. Re:Editorial board... by robbarrett · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Actually, most scholars contribute their writing for little or no direct compensation. In fact, some scholars pay journals to publish their articles. Instead of payment from the publishers, scholars are usually funded by their sponsoring organizations (e.g. universities, corporate research centers, etc.) to do high quality scholarship, which is funded by a variety of sources (e.g. student tuition, endowments, research grants, product profits).

      Publishing high quality work is simply part of the package of being a successful scholar. So the key to getting top notch scholars to work on wikipedia is to generate appropriate reputation feedback. If it is CV-able that I wrote the definitive wikipedia article in my field, there will be competition amongst scholars to do it.

      In my current field of biblical studies, scholars donate literally decades of work editing the critical editions of ancient texts, generating modern translations, writing commentaries, etc. without any additional compensation beyond their base pay. In my previous fields of physics, computer science, and computer-human interaction, the vast majority of top scholars receive very little direct compensation for the many articles, books, and reference book entries that they write. But they do receive scholarly acclaim for doing so -- and there is tremendous pressure from their sponsors to produce documentably important output.

      In my experience, professional drive, fame, and dedication to the scholarly field generally drive scholars more than money, after the basic bills are paid.

    2. Re:Editorial board... by ameoba · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If I were to write hundreds of innane, but interesting, articles on fluffy pop-culture bits to build up my 'cred', I could then weigh in on a serious topic & expect my earned credibility to carry over? Alternately, if I'm a newcomer and all the 'low-hanging fruit' have already been picked up, how am I supposed to get my initial reputation in order to lend any sort of permanence to my writings?

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    3. Re:Editorial board... by joto · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The trouble is that wikipedia articles arent' "authored". They are "edited", by several wikipedians. Having written an excellent article, it can be unrecognizable a few months later. Academics that want CV-able material *could* continue to monitor their article forever, reverting harmful changes, and actively participating on the discussion page. However, this takes a lot of time, and is better suited for unemployed wikipedians. If you want to improve your CV, it would be better to write your articles only once, and be done with it. This can be done by writing real journal articles, real magazine articles, real books, real websites, or even real blogs.

    4. Re:Editorial board... by edremy · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Imagine the outcry if NPR or PBS started having 5 minute commercial breaks even after they had all those annoying fund raisers they do.

      As a long time NPR listener (and donator), they *do* have commercial breaks. Lots of them. I even bought some of them to advertise a speaker on our campus. Others are bought by local companies, or people who like to mention birthdays, anniversaries or the like. They tend to be low key- speech only by the announcer, no music, no screaming and I suspect that they are edited for taste, but they are most certainly ads.

      Do I like it? Of course not. But the alternatives on one side (no cash = no NPR) or the other ("Y'ALL GET DOWN TO JIM BOB'S TRUCK EMPORIUM RIGHT NOW!") are so bad that I'm happy to put up with it, even though I *also* donate money every year. Rational people know that running an enormous website or paying the electricity bill for a 50k watt transmitter costs real money and that you have to find some way to pay. If the bulk of Wikipedias find this idea distasteful they are welcome to try and find some other way of getting the money, but don't be surprised if you simply can't raise enough donations.

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  2. The problem... by brennanw · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... is that they're too busy nominating webcomic articles for deletion to bother updating anything else.

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    Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
    1. Re:The problem... by blincoln · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is moderated funny (and it is), but it is also a good point. There is some awesome content on Wikipedia, but IMO they have their priorities all screwed up. (Again, IMO) if they allow sci-fi dorks to post reams of material on completely fictional topics, they have no basis for deleting any factual article, no matter how obscure or rarely-viewed.

      I wandered into an editorial discussion once on what a high school needed to do to qualify as "noteworthy" enough to not have an article about it deleted. I'm sorry, but any high school in the real world is more "noteworthy" than the Treaty of Algeron, Pikachu, or the E-Wing Starfighter.

      I really feel like Wikipedia is a brilliant idea that's going to be killed off or crippled by the nerdy bureaucrats who seem to control the editorial process. I know I have no interest in posting content there given their criteria for deleting articles.

      --
      "...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
  3. Not really by JoshJ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wikipedia's job is to let people look something up quickly. Need to know who the 23rd vice-president was? It's Adlai Stephenson.
    "But someone could edit that page and change it!"
    Oh, right. Now I've linked to the static page.
    That part seems rather hard for some people to grasp, considering how many times I've seen that used as a justification for "thou shalt not cite" bullshit.
    However, in some cases, "thou shalt not cite" is correct, not just based on reactionary BS- Wiki articles are sourced. If you cite a sourced statement from a Wiki article, you should really be citing it from the original... which is conveniently linked at the bottom of Wikipedia.
    Wikipedia isn't failing at this. It's doing this remarkably well. The failing is in reactionary academics who feel threatened by Wikipedia, and the perception these people cause.

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  4. Well... by CGP314 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, since I have to create an account with Citizendium just to look at the articles, I'm not too worried about it overtaking the Wikipedia just yet.

    -CGP

  5. Too Late to Fail by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Meanwhile, most people with a clue have heard about Wikipedia, but not about these others. Wikipedia is now an established brand. That status, more than any functional superiority (or even competence) defines Wikipedia as the success. Its problems will be solved (or not), but it's got its audience.

    Even if the competitors are superior, they will have to compete with Wikipedia's brand. Their superiority will have to be more easily communicated than Wikipedia's (eg. a better name, like "Google" vs "AltaVista") to actually beat them. It's a meme pool, and swimming counts more than smarts.

    Wikipedia is no different from any other large Website: its success is defined by its scale of users, not its quality. As if you couldn't tell that by looking at Slashdot.

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  6. From the Essay by CGP314 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There are about 1,300 featured articles. There are also about 1,700 good articles. However, there are currently 1,637,703 articles on Wikipedia. This means that slightly more than 99.8% of all the articles on Wikipedia are not considered well written, verifiable or broad or comprehensive in their coverage.

    This to me seems like the old most-blogs-are-terrible argument. I would wager that those 3,000 good/featured articles make up the bulk of what people who go to wikipedia read about.

    -CGP

  7. We will be launching as soon as possible by Larry+Sanger · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hey, we badly want to be open to the world! But it's expensive!

    I can make a little announcement. Wikis are huge resource hogs, so to grant just read access to wiki pages indiscriminately will require more resources than the big souped-up but single server we have at present. Quite frankly we have been holding out for an infusion of funds for sixteen servers. It's clear now that we can launch with less than that, with a number that we can afford with our very limited present budget. So we'll be bravely forging ahead with an only temporarily adequate number of servers!

    The Citizendium wiki will be launching for public read access as soon as (1) we get a few new servers set up (it'll be a small enough number to be within our budget), and (2) we make a few technical changes (e.g., change the "Citizendium Pilot" namespace to "Citizendium"; and lots of other stuff).

    Now, when will that be? Not sure; now it's a matter of getting and setting up the equipment and making those software changes, and it's impossible to predict how long it will take to do this, as we are mostly relying on volunteers (and one part-time contracter) to work on our software. But on the order of weeks, not months. If you want to help us with the software stuff, I bow to your geekiness and invite you to our forge.

    Hope that clarifies our situation anyway.

  8. Re:Agreed by h2g2bob · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Have you even read the global warming article, or the evolution article!? They're damn good - in fact the science articles are some of the best.

    Wikipedia is just like any other encyclopedia - it should not be used as evidence, but as a starting point to find out more.

  9. Wikipedia is flawed at best by mlwmohawk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wikipedia is at best flawed, at worst dangerous.

    It rejects "experts" in favor of consensus. Finding facts is not a democratic process. It is often an intrusive and offensive process. "Facts" have to be protected from people with ulterior motives.

    Most people think they are safe in a car from lightening because of the rubber tires. General consensus where critical thinking and science are involved is typically wrong.

  10. Re:Agreed by infaustus · · Score: 5, Informative

    While wikipedia articles on evolution and global warming aren't actually that bad, you're ignoring the huge number of non-controversial science and mathematics articles on wikipedia. Non-controversial!=trivial. These articles tend to be very thorough and reliable.

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