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Contributors Leaving Wikipedia In Record Numbers
Hugh Pickens writes "CNET reports that the volunteers who create Wikipedia's pages, check facts and adapt the site are abandoning Wikipedia in unprecedented numbers, with tens of thousands of editors going 'dead' — no longer actively contributing and updating the site — a trend many experts believe could threaten Wikipedia's future. In the first three months of 2009, the English-language version of Wikipedia suffered a net loss of 49,000 contributors, compared with a loss of about 4,900 during the same period in 2008. 'If you don't have enough people to take care of the project it could vanish quickly,' says Felipe Ortega at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid, who created a computer system to analyze the editing history of more than three million active Wikipedia contributors in ten different languages. 'We're not in that situation yet. But eventually, if the negative trends follow, we could be in that situation.' Contributors are becoming disenchanted with the process of adding to the site, which is becoming increasingly difficult says Andrew Dalby, author of The World and Wikipedia: How We are Editing Reality and a regular editor of the site. 'There is an increase of bureaucracy and rules. Wikipedia grew because of the lack of rules. That has been forgotten. The rules are regarded as irritating and useless by many contributors.' Arguments over various articles have also taken their toll. 'Many people are getting burnt out when they have to debate about the contents of certain articles again and again,' adds Ortega."
They also have a stupid rule regarding "how important stuff has to be" before it can be added as a new article on Wikipedia. That one alone is the main reason I never again will try to contribute anything to it.
Maybe not finished, but certainly quite aways toward it.
“If you don’t have enough people to take care of the project it could vanish quickly"
That's an odd thing to say. For a game such as an MMO, it would be detrimental to have all the players leave; but a reference is a different kind of game: even with no new contributions and no more editing, there is still a vast mass of articles on historical (history up until today, at least) subjects, and they're not likely to disappear just because the contributors do.
"Good news, everyone!"
Wikipedia was supposed to end up being something akin to a compendium of all human knowledge, which in theory could never really be "full" because human knowledge always expands. The problem is, the powers that be over there decided to arbitrarily apply their "noteworthy" filter on everything, and so they've collapsed the infinite array of human knowledge down into a decidedly finite set of "relevant" human knowledge. Of course, they alone are the arbiters of what is and isn't relevant, and wield the delete hammer often. Under these circumstances, yes you'll eventually come to the end of what is "appropriate" for wikipedia.
Having said that, I don't think even with their draconian and arbitrary relevancy policies that they're anywhere near the end of everything that would fit on the site. The issue is not that they're running out of things to put up, it's that they're actively driving contributors away by subjecting them to all these hoops to jump through that didn't exist before. You have the old guard admins fighting amongst themselves, and throwing up arbitrary restrictions to make it harder and more frustrating for new editors to get involved.
Wikipedia is also much more susceptible to rot than most other sites. Without a steady stream of admins coming in and doing the grunt work of cleaning up the many thousands of articles on the site, those articles will eventually be taken over by the trolls and become useless. Eventually, enough articles will suffer this fate that no one will consider the site any kind of good resource anymore, and we will have lost something truly remarkable.
Wikipedia as it stood not too long ago was a remarkable testament to the power of collaborative editing, and represented an incredible resource. If it continues the slide it's on, it will end up being an object lesson in how political infighting and needless bureaucracy (particularly bureaucracy designed to protect personal fiefdoms) can ruin things for everyone.
Har har har. How very funny.
Actually, the Wikipedia:Statistics page gets you all the stats there's to be had.
Also, Wikimedia:Statistics is showing a steady influx of New Wikipedians and Active Wikipedians, albeit not quite as many as previously.
Hmm, I wonder if this is more a publicity stunt in relation with their current funds drive?
At least, "Wikipedia shows signs of stalling as number of volunteers falls sharply" should probably have been "Wikipedia shows signs of maturity as number of new volunteers falls slighly".
"Good news, everyone!"
That may be true, but the issue is that the stuff that isn't low-hanging fruit, even though there are people that want to add it, is actively being deleted. When you go on to Wikipedia for the first time and submit an article that immediately gets deleted because it isn't "noteworthy", you're going to get frustrated and leave, and take whatever other contributions you might have made in the future with you.
The noteworthiness filter, and the arbitrary nature with which it's applied by editors more motivated by protecting their own personal turf than building a quality resource, is ruining the site for a lot of people.
I find it particularly egregious that on their "five facts" page, which is trying to get people to donate money, Fact #4 states: "We exist so that every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge." The noteworthiness nonsense makes this a blatant lie. They are no longer in any way interested in "the sum of all knowledge" and are in fact actively working to keep the site from becoming the sum of all knowledge. However, they're still more than happy to claim that as their goal because it sounds good for fundraising purposes.
I was an old-timer on Wikipedia who began contributing in 2002.
I've witnessed layers and layers of bureaucracy be added to Wikipedia all under the benevolent dictatorship of Jimbo. I've witnessed what used to be a culture where all editors were considered equal become one where there are definite castes and hierarchies (and cabals).
It just isn't worth the effort to edit anymore.
Case in point: from 2002 to 2006 I was one of the primary editors of a set of articles that had to do with a subject that definitely has politics surrounding it. All the editors involved and I did our best to present both sides of the topic and to try to keep the articles fair and balanced. The number of editors was sparse and it was relatively easy to keep the articles on track.
A couple of years ago a new user started editing these articles. He was extremely contentious but a skilled at wikilawyering. Every edit he didn't agree with would be dragged by him down a rathole of WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:POV, WP:PSTS, and so and and so on ad infinitum. It doesn't matter how well *your* edits are sourced from quality peer-reviewed sources. If he didn't agree with your edits he would find something to complain about; the journal you are citing isn't respected enough, the author you are quoting has an obvious bias, your summary of the published literature doesn't agree with how he would summarize the published literature, etc, etc, etc. Similarly, any objection you had to his edits (or to the overall effect his edits in aggregate were having on the article) would also be dragged down a similar path of his gaming the system.
Editing the articles involved simply became too painful to continue. If you wanted to make any change that this user would disagree with then you had to prepare yourself of days of arguing with him before he would leave you alone. Similarly, one became hesitant to "correct" any of his articles because of the time-sink that you knew arguing with him was going to become.
The existing editors tried many times to work within the system to make this user stop. There were multiple attempts at mediation and arbitration. But over time all of the "old" editors simply gave up. It just wasn't worth the effort anymore.
When I visit these articles today I am ashamed at what they have become. What was once a fair attempt to present all sides of an issue has become extremely one-sided and quite misleading to a reader not familiar with the subject. The "problem user" has become in effect the only editor of these articles, tolerating only a handful of other editors who primarily make grammatical and punctuation changes.
The only hope for the articles in question is that this user eventually gets tired and quits. He has won in his attempt to take over these articles, everyone with an established interest has been driven away, and I don't think any new user is going to be able to mount a challenge as he will simply tie them down in wikilawyering forever.
from fans who want to blither endlessly about their favorite movie/comic book/Star Trek episode/vampire. That's what Wikia is for.
Why not?
Wikipedia already hosts plenty of articles on Star Wars, including many pages about characters and episodes.
Is there Wikipedia rule against writing these sorts of fluffy articles? If so, why are those rules applied against Star Trek episodes, but not against Star Wars? The reasoning and deletions seem arbitrary.
I find it ironic that contributions to technical articles about Linux, databases and system administration get deleted, but Wikipedia still has a 2000 word article about Chewbacca.
I agree that Wikipedia isn't a great place to host a list of your favorite comic book, and I'd rather that Wikipedia focus on 'important' topics.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
One of the things I hated most when I was writing for Wikipedia was the anti-science attitude of many editors there. I wrote mostly articles on biological organisms and was a strong proponent of using scientific names for article titles. Common names are simply not unique, a fact that has resulted in many heated and pointless debates (i.e. Tiger vs. Puma). I figure WP should try to move beyond that and embrace the advantages of scientific nomenclature that biologists have known about for 250 years.
Most of the folks who were actually busy writing the articles agreed, but every time an attempt was made to change the policies, our efforts would be met with great resistance from people who simply did not know what they were talking about, let alone make any contributions of the kind. You could see from their edit histories that these people were bureaucrats: they produced very little content and an amazing amount of hot air. Yet, they have enormous influence at WP due simply to their dogged persistence.
In my view, the fact that more productive editors are now leaving as opposed to arriving is only partly explained by the low-hanging-fruit phenomenon. I, along with many others, was willing to take WP -- or at least my small corner of it -- to the next level, but the problem is that those bureaucrats simply don't share the same vision. When it comes to certain subjects that enter into their own realm of consciousness, it seems like they'd rather keep things looking like an expanded version of the old encyclopedia that their parents once bought when they were kids. It's completely at odds with Jimbo's original vision, but try telling them that.
As a result, the easy work has already been done, but anyone with the knowledge to do the hard stuff is quickly discouraged. I suspect most professional biologists don't even bother; a few of the ones I spoke to outside of WP had a low opinion of the site precisely because scientific names were not being used for article titles.
Finally, there's the problem of vandalism. Since I've left, no one has stepped in to keep an eye on the articles I wrote, let alone expand them in any meaningful way. The vandalism, however, is constant. Most of the obvious stuff gets reverted, but it's the subtle vandalism that is the most problematic. Unless you're a specialist, you just can't tell the difference. Either WP should start paying specialists to keep watch, or they should start try treating their own volunteer specialists with more respect. I've heard for years that WP v2 was supposed to solve a lot of vandalism problems, but so far it hasn't appeared.
There is a huge double standard applied to what is considered obscure on Wikipedia. I once wrote a very complete article on Metz, France, one of the largest cities in France, and it got deleted for being "obscure" and because "Wikipedia can't have an article on every no name city nobody has every heard of", yet we have plenty of Wikipedia enormous wikipedia articles on US cities that are a tenth the size of Metz, France. I also wrote an article on Ancient Mound civilizations and it got put in for deletion for being "obscure", then got deleted when I mentioned it was based on my PhD thesis for being "original research"--I'm one of a few dozen people in the world who are even qualified to write it! It's insane.