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Wikipedia Approaches Its Limits
Reservoir Hill writes "The Guardian reports that a study by Ed H Chi demonstrates that the character of Wikipedia has changed significantly since Wikipedia's first burst of activity between 2004 and 2007. While the encyclopedia is still growing overall, the number of articles being added has reduced from an average of 2,200 a day in July 2007 to around 1,300 today while at the same time, the base of highly active editors has remained more or less static. Chi's team discovered that the way the site operates had changed significantly from the early days, when it ran an open-door policy that allowed in anyone with the time and energy to dedicate to the project. Today, they discovered, a stable group of high-level editors has become increasingly responsible for controlling the encyclopedia, while casual contributors and editors are falling away. 'We found that if you were an elite editor, the chance of your edit being reverted was something in the order of 1% — and that's been very consistent over time from around 2003 or 2004,' says Chi. 'For editors that make between two and nine edits a month, the percentage of their edits being reverted had gone from 5% in 2004 all the way up to about 15% by October 2008. And the 'onesies' — people who only make one edit a month — their edits are now being reverted at a 25% rate.' While Chi points out that this does not necessarily imply causation, he suggests it is concrete evidence to back up what many people have been saying: that it is increasingly difficult to enjoy contributing to Wikipedia unless you are part of the site's inner core of editors. Wikipedia's growth pattern suggests that it is becoming like a community where resources have started to run out. 'As you run out of food, people start competing for that food, and that results in a slowdown in population growth and means that the stronger, more well-adapted part of the population starts to have more power.'"
Not to knock golf, fishing, spoiling the grandkids or catching the early-bird special, but I could think of worse ways of spending one's retirement time than editing and writing articles for an encyclopedia.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Because jackasses can't stop making edits about Obama being the antichrist, bears and elephants fighting with robots in the year 2525, or Metamucil and Clorox mixed together being better than cocaine. This is why we can't have nice things on the internet.
The "muppet" was right to do so. Information that is not independently verifiable does not belong in an encyclopedia.
Publish the information somewhere else as an authority on the subject, then make the edit and add a citation.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
>>Wikipedia has gone from "the encyclopedia of everything that everyone can edit" to the "encyclopedia of things we like and some people may edit."
Pretty much. Elitism on the part of the core editors combined with a provincial desire to have articles "their way" combined with healthy doses of fucktardery has basically made me give up on contributing to wikipedia.
Case in point:
I went to an article, saw that it was missing ISBN numbers for the books the subject was written.
I looked up the ISBN numbers, and added them to the bibliography.
The core editor who claimed it as part of his domain reverted the edit. Within a matter of seconds; certainly less than a minute. No comment on the revert.
I waited a day, added the ISBN numbers again. He reverted the edit again, again no comment.
I tried it a third time, then left a notice on his user page telling him that he shouldn't be acting like that.
One of his admin friends came onto his user page, reverted out my warning to him, said there was no evidence the editor was rejecting edits arbitrarily (even though I'd linked the reverts in the notice), and that I essentially shouldn't say such things to my betters.
So yeah, I waited a month, did it again, and they were accepted without comment. Because, you know, there's nothing controversial about ISBN numbers. :/
But that was enough for me. Wikipedia is an incestuous cesspool.
I have been saying for some time, the historical significance of Wikipedia will be as an extremely well documented social experiment, rather than as an encyclopedia.
It was a genuine attempt to create a new way of gathering and ordering human knowledge, but ultimately it failed to overcome the problems in the society that it occupied. Petty politics and corruption ate away at the original vision. I am not intellectually lazy enough to just shrug and say 'human nature' - I think there is more to it than that.
Wikipedia, like the rest of the Internet, might appear to be a new cultural space but the fact remains that everyone who contributed to it still occupies a real world cultural space. Real life Democrats are wikipedian democrats. Real life creationists are wikipedian creationists. Technology itself doesn't let you outrun who you are, so ultimately the same conflicts that make real life debate and conflict suck made Wikipedia suck as well.
I'm hoping, for the sake of the web and for the sake of Wikipedia itself (a victim of its own dominance; everyone wants access to the first hit on a Google search of their pet topic) that something else displaces it. Having a single, flawed, starting point for finding out information on the Internet (as many people do with Wikipedia) reduces its utility for research.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
An example of this would be "BUFF" in the article about the B-52 Stratofortress, it means "Big Ugly Fat Fucker" but last time I checked someone had decided to make the article "child-friendly" by changing this to "Big Ugly Fat Fellow"
That's pretty ironic when I can go to this article and see a picture of the female sex organs. Won't someone please think of the children?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I have only made a few contributions to Wikipedia, and the experience of having my changes reverted has killed my interest in contributing again.
I'd like to see a new/competing version of the online encyclopedia which attempts to be more inclusive of all information. Rather than removing information because it is not deemed notable, contributions should be rated for how notable and essential they are. However, the less notable information would still be there - it just wouldn't be the first thing to come up in search results.
This could even apply within specific articles. The main article would contain the most important information, and would look much like an article on Wikipedia today. However, more arcane / tangential information on the topic would be available for those who wanted it. They would just click on a link for "all details" or click to expand certain sections of the article.
Do you speak of the prophecy of the one who will bring balance to Wikipedia?
Interesting.
No kidding.
The problem is the incestuous "culture" - or more to the point, the haves-and-have-nots attitude of the majority of their administrators and so-called "respected users" - that works on the basis of gaming the system.
Words by a former wikipedia administrator that showed me how their system really works. And then of course there's scandal after scandal after scandal after scandal (the last one is incredible fun, too... if you think that's the only secret organizing list for abusive wikipedians, admin or no, you're delusional).
Wikipedia doesn't work. It hasn't worked for a long time and I don't think it ever really did. It has horrible bias against anyone who is a verifiable expert in their field. It has MASSIVE problems with cliques going around pushing their agendas and claiming that anyone new coming to an article or set of articles on their favorite topic (global warming, middle eastern conflict/culture, scientology, etc). If you show up with well-researched refutals to the crap that is 99% of wikipedia, you are labeled a "troll", or abused, or targeted by one of their throwaway accounts so that a friendly behind-the-scenes admin can slap an indefinite ban on you. This is deliberate: 20 newcomers to an article might be able to outweigh the morons pushing bad information, but as long as they can pick them off one at a time, they "win" in the wikipedian system.
A few wikipedians have been there "Forever." They'll never go away. More have been there "A very long time" and have developed incestuous, corrupt relationships with each other and with the "forever" types. Meanwhile, anyone new coming in is instantly accused of being a "sockpuppet", "meatpuppet", or whatever other epithet can be thrown at them.
It's no coincidence that the "Checkuser" tool, which was originally ripped out of David Gerard's corrupt grasp after a series of false-attack incidents (privately hushed up, naturally) has on en.wp been removed from the ability to "prove innocence." The accusation of "sockpuppetry" is an abuser's tool of force, pure and simple. In the Wikipedia "judge, jury, and executioner" administrator zone, any tool that could prove someone is innocent is to be neutered as soon as possible.
The statistics on blockings/bannings and responses to them are likewise hidden. Why? Because analysis of these shows what really goes on. Most administrators don't bother to communicate with users when placing a block. They drop indefinites immediately with no remorse, using wikispeak code rather than plain language. The "appeal" process is a laughable joke as well, with maybe 5-8 active "reviewers" who basically use it as a stress-relief tool, beating up on people who are helpless (because they don't have the admin bit) to begin with.
Face it. Wikipedia is worthless with the current "leadership." All the good editors and conscientious administrators were driven away long ago.
Information that is not independently verifiable does not belong in an encyclopedia.
True, but the problem is how Wikipedia defines "verifiability". In most cases I have encountered it was used in the "it was printed on paper" sense, it didn't matter if the source was trustworthy, a press release or any other incorrect crap, as long as it was paper. Other Wikis, Blogs or Forums that might have easily verifiable knowledge of certain subjects aren't accepted as source. The PSP Homebrew article for example is pretty worthless blubber for that reason, mainstream press just doesn't like to talk about homebrew.
I edited Wikipedia because I found significant errors and omissions in areas I was familiar with. The articles are accurate enough now. And, yes, I had an edit reverted. After we discussed it on the talk page, I redid the edit, and it was much better the second time.
So, I'd like to propose a completely innocuous explanation for the figures given: the number of casual contributors has gone down because there's a lot less room to go into an article and be an expert. Also, casual contributors very often haven't learned how to make a good Wikipedia edit, and having it reverted is ultimately a good thing. Moreover, with the lesser need for the casual contributor, the proportion of crackpots and vandals has doubtless increased. This could well account for the large number of reverts.
While Wikipedia has definitely changed, it doesn't look to me like it has changed for the worse.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Because, you know, there's nothing controversial about ISBN numbers.
If, however, a story had once run in the National Enquirer that the ISBN numbers were gay, not only would they have been included in the article, but three more paragraphs would have been added about them, with supporting citations from overseas versions of the National Enquirer, and a photograph of the ISBN number with some Dewey Decimal number believed to be it's life partner. ...and don't mod me flamebait until you've read the talk pages for Anderson Cooper, Tom Cruise, et. al.
Agenda? nahhh...
Like the articles about wikipedia's founder for example. Oh wait ... For a "self-avowed objectivist to the core" he sure has a low tolerance for criticism. (I refuse to link to his wikipedia page, if you want to see masturbation in action there are quite sufficient sites depicting that, and none of them should be linked)
> So why not have a mechanism for moving articles to the relevant specialised wiki and adding a stub page in Wikipedia (or a redirect to an index page) with a link to that specialised wiki, rather than just delete someone else's work?
Because deleting someone's article is about power - it's about showing them that you have it and they don't. All the rhetoric about notability and "reaching a consensus" is just a cover for demonstrating that you can shaft them. Moving the article to a specialised Wiki wouldn't achieve this.
In fact articles about specialised Wikis keep getting deleted as "non notable", because the people that run Wiki don't have any power of them.
Everyone likes to think that we're an evolved species interested in knowledge but actually everything is about hierarchies, chimp style. Actually if wikipedia stopped being about consensus and switched to voting a lot of these problems would disappear.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
"the encyclopedia of everything that everyone can edit", and it pretty much was until a ruling clique formed!
I think they are trying to keep it from degenerating into a blog, or a chat space, or an encyclopedia of trivial things like the Star Wars universe. Some wikis, like Wookiepedia, started out because Wikipedia kept kicking out certain stuff, like exhaustive detail of the Star Wars universe.
This article makes the change in Wikipedia sound nefarious, like there is some elitist cabal that wants to accrue power. Sure that is true in part. But as the site has grown it is more important to keep things out than it is to add things. The alternative is that every article about a politician will include nasty, defamatory, and useless content and that vociferous fans of various fantasy genres and celebrities will take over all coverage of things related to their realms.
Wikipedia needs people who say "no", and if those people are a bunch of elitist editors, then fine.
Penny - plain text accounting
I disagree. I'm not an editor there, but I frequently read the talk pages(I find them more interesting and more telling than the main pages sometimes).
The top editors quite obviously revert edits from "lesser" users for no reason other than disagreement with POV, or just pride in what they initially wrote. Wikipedia at this point has so many rules that someone who spends a lot of time on Wikipedia can almost entirely control articles with them.
If you don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of these rules(even though many are selectively enforced) you really have no control over the article. It's quite similar to the idea that police have so many laws at their disposal that they can nearly always find something wrong with your driving/car if they really want to give you a ticket(such as slight overhangs of the license plate frame)
One glaring example I remember is Bristol Palin. Someone managed to get her article removed(though she was obviously notable), redirected it a section about Sarah Palin's family, then changed the the anchor so that the place it was redirecting to had nothing to do with her. Could it be an accident? Yeah. But there's a lot of similar examples.
Also, despite the number of articles with built in criticism sections, large corporations and political figures will often remove the criticism section entirely, or move it to a separate article. Why? Because those locations get a fraction of the traffic.
Wikipedia ranks too well in the search engines for special interest groups and PR/reputation management companies to ignore. Slowly but surely, they've been building up influence and sockpuppet accounts. And Wikipedia has changed a lot as a result.
Obviously I can't cite any of this, so I understand if you guys take it with a grain of salt. But it's been something I've been seeing for quite awhile now, and I'm quite confident it's happening.
Before you mod me funny, think, perhaps I was insightfully funny?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No. It's the encyclopedia you may edit so long as you have "consensus".
I recently decided to edit out a particularly rambling and circular introduction to the Exponential Function. Needless to say, my excision was not taken too kindly. I found myself in a protracted and frankly, surreal struggle to make the article in some way useful for the people who come to read it.
Long story short, my opinions on how best to present the exponential function were labeled a POINT OF VIEW, a major no-no contrary to the higher WP:PRINCPLES. Having found myself lumped in with Holocaust deniers and cranks of every degree, my chances of making further edits to the article were in fact pretty slim. What debate there once again was petered out without any "consensus", which meant I couldn't alter the status quo.
This is at least the fourth time this has happened to me on Wikipedia.
The usual routine is that someone who "owns" the article with throw up a mountain of WP:RULES and WP:TRADITIONS, each more underhanded in intent than the last, in an effort to stonewall you for as long as they can. They can keep this up for months. Any "debates" with the aim to achieve consensus are farcical to begin with, as everyone involved knows that they never, ever reach consensus on anything. Good men get frustrated, demoralised and bored, and leave, letting evil triumph. I do not use evil in a rhetorical way. I firmly believe that the great majority of wiki-lawyers have petty malice and megalomania as their primary motivations rather than concern for the quality of articles.
The Wikipedia page for World War 2 had the start date for the conflict as "Late 1930s" for over 5 months. Five months with a totally incorrect date for one of the most important events of human history because one editor felt things needed to be more "inclusive". I'm all for inclusivity, but stupidity is where I draw the line. The usual farce ensued. The editors set up a Mediation Cabal to reach "consensus" on the issue(Their discussion once again petered out impotently), all while the the obscenity of a start date sat, unmolested for 5 months on one of the most visited pages on the site, no, on the internet. The thought of how its precence may have shifted general human knowledge and understanding of the conflict saddens me.
There is a deep and by now, inoperable rot and the centre of how things are run and done at Wikipedia. The rot began with Jimbo Wales and his simple inability and unwillingness to properly run a project of this scope and importance. As time went by, only the most devious, duplicitous and underhanded of editors prospered and gained control. Now, as the site enters its consolidation phase, the altruism and effort of millions of honest editors has been crushed under the weight of one of the most corrupt and intransigent bureaucracies in the world today.
Wikipedia is rotten from the Top to the Bottom and cannot be trusted for anything, by anyone, for any reason. Even as a reference section. Not even the chemistry and astronomy pages can be relied upon these days,. Things will only get worse as the Wikicrats, Wikilawyers and Wikiticians assume total oligarchical control.
May the Maths Be with you!
And that's one of the insane concepts that many experts hate about Wikipedia.
They say that democracy is three wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. That's a simplified metaphor to point out a crucial flaw of majority voting.
In the same way, one could say that Wikipedia is where an anonymous blog posting (which can be linked to) is the more trustworthy authority on spacetime than a direct edit by Stephen Hawking himself.
Protest all you want, reason all you want, the simple truth is that that's how it is.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I'm not sure if there's specifically a list of wikis anywhere, but there is a wiki for Conservatives [conservapedia.com]. Most articles seem to be mostly fixated on debunking Abortion, Evolution, and Homosexuality.
That's awesome! I didn't know Conservatives had their very own slanted wiki. Now all we need to do is start ones for the rest of the population:
American big-city Liberal wiki:
Firearms: Evil devices designed only for murder.
Rural America: The part of the country filled with inbred hicks who are too stupid to govern themselves.
Communist Chinese wiki:
Tiananmen Square: No such article found.
Revisionist Japanese wiki:
Rape of Nanjing: No such article found.
Bataan Death March: No such article found.
Burmese Death Railway: No such article found.
Revisionist American wiki:
Trail of tears: No such article found.
French wiki:
American revolution: The war waged by France against Great Britain with some minor assistance from 13 British colonies.
Fall of France: No such article found.
Dien Bien Phu: No such article found.
Southern wiki:
War of Northern Aggression (redirected from American Civil War)
Neo-con wiki:
Anti-Americanism: They hate us because we are free!
Hippie Liberal Douche wiki:
Anti-Americanism: They hate us because every single injustice in the world is caused by American aggression and imperialism.
Ahmadinejad wiki:
Homosexuality in Iran: No such article found.
Tin-foil hat wiki:
TWA Flight 800: A civilian airliner shot down by the US Navy.
9/11: The attacks carried out on the United States in 2001 by agents of the Mossad with the backing of the GWB administration.
Wi-Fi: A wireless communications system that is known to cause brain cancer and other neurological disorders.
Security theater wiki:
Bottled water: Portable containers of bottled water. When sold in containers greater than 3oz it becomes the single greatest threat to civilian aviation since the invention of the box cutter.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I've corrected spelling and had my changes reverted. I've reworded paragraphs so that they are coherent English and had the changes reverted. I've split a 2-page run-on sentence into proper sentences and paragraphs and been reverted. It's not about whether a change makes sense. Much more often, it's about someone having a pet article that only he can touch, no matter how poor of a writer he may be. That's why I quit editing Wikipedia. I got too sick of people not wanting their articles to be improved.
Perfection has two basic meanings. It can mean 'done' or it can mean 'flawless.' Wikipedia is definitely approaching the former, but will never attain the latter.
The owner of a website I frequented was once added to Wikipedia. Moderators started debating whether him and his (albeit popular) website were notable enough for an entry. They pretty unanimously agreed that he was not.
Which was great, because the owner most definitely did not want the article on the site. He signed up and politely requested the article removed (Something along the lines of:"I'd rather have a cactus shoved up my ass then see an article about me and my website on wikipedia. Did I mention the cactus would be on fire and covered in bees?"
Almost immediately many of the moderators started rethinking their original decision and decided the topic was notable enough after all.
If that's not a group of people who have control issues, I don't know what is.
It's good that Wikipedia's growth is slowing. That's an indication that the job is approaching completion.
Most of the important articles were in the first 500,000. New articles at this point tend to be marginal or unwanted. Here are the last five articles added to Wikipedia:
That's what's coming in right now. Most of the articles being added to Wikipedia at this point are either junk like that, or on very obscure topics. That's why growth is slowing. This is a good thing. Throwing out the trash is a hassle for everyone involved.
"the encyclopedia of everything that everyone can edit", and it pretty much was until a ruling clique formed!
I think they are trying to keep it from degenerating into a blog, or a chat space, or an encyclopedia of trivial things like the Star Wars universe. Some wikis, like Wookiepedia, started out because Wikipedia kept kicking out certain stuff, like exhaustive detail of the Star Wars universe.
Preventing it from becoming a chat space or blog is fine.
But the so-called trivial elements like Star Wars universe make wikipedia a one stop shop for information. I know that I've looked up stuff and someone has flagged the article for deletion because it was supposedly trivial. If it were actually trivial, why am I as an end user looking at it?
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Tv Tropes is the most fun Wiki I've found in a while.
What!? You LINKED to a page on TV Tropes? You've doomed half of Slashdot! That site is a black hole that sucks you in and spits you out countless hours later. And I have proof! Just click on that link and you'll see.
Off all things, linking TV Tropes, these crazy people.
What, no porn wiki?
Blowjob: Something that happens every single time you have sex and which often happens during breaks from anal and/or vaginal intercourse.
Bukkake: The natural endpoint of all sexual encounters between human beings from the Far East.
Virgin: A female who has never had sex and knows nothing about it. She will typically have five or six earth shattering orgasms the first time she engages in it and decide to do it with a complete stranger.
Foreplay: Stimulative actions that proceed sexual intercourse, usually consists of the female offering a blowjob and receiving nothing in return. Typically lasts 30 seconds to 2 minutes before penetrative sex begins.
Reverse cowgirl: The most popular position for sexual intercourse
Doggy style: The second most popular position for sexual intercourse
Missionary position: Article not found.
Breast: Secondary female sex characteristic. Usually ranges in size from huge to colossal.
Fingernail: A part of the human finger primarily made up of the keratin protein. On females usually ranges in size from 6 to 12 inches.
Penis: Male sex organ. Usually ranges in size from 10 to 18 inches.
Pubic hair: Secondary sex characteristic. Virtually everybody either completely shaves this off or allows it grow until it rivals the hair on the top of your head.
Cable repairman: Best occupation in the world. Only possible equal is the pizza delivery man.
Female ejaculation: Something that happens to every woman, every single time she has sex. Ejaculate may travel up to 50 feet and is usually measured in gallons.
Male ejaculation: The natural endpoint of most sexual encounters. Usually happens on the females chest but there are occasional exceptions (see Creampie)
Anal intercourse: Something that all women enjoy and all men are eager to engage in.
High-heeled footwear: Extremely comfortable female footwear that looks best when her legs are wrapped around one or more males.
Did I miss any? ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.