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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."
How much more can we write about Louis Pasteur or the Treaty of Worms or Heilongjiang? Wikipedia has had a ton of stuff poured into it and doesn't really need new contributors. Not surprising they're trying to drive contributors off. One thing I've learned in life, when people are being dicks they're doing it for a reason that benefits them.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The german version is having these problems, as well, with authors being frustrated, because their articles are being deleted for various stupid reasons (like: only referenced in blogs, no real-world influence, except for some obscure hacker meetings etc.) The discussions have even reached the big media.
The system is set up in such a way that when people put massive amounts of effort into adding contributions or what not, they aren't rewarded with anything for doing it other than more rules and regulations and difficulty in posting more edits and content.
Couple that with the natural tendency of people to burn themselves out of things after a while and the natural idea that as the wiki grows, it shouldn't need edits on old content and people have less and less to contribute, and you end up with a declining contribution pool... It's bound to happen inevitably, it's just a matter of when and how they deal with it when it starts to happen.
When 'deletionists' destroy the work people are putting in, it's not surprising when the people who have put that work into Wikipedia leave the site. There's only a finite amount of things that can be written about and as Wikipedia progresses, the articles that are created must become more and more obscure. But with those kinds of articles effectively banned from Wikipedia, the only editors it needs around are those that upkeep the existing articles.
Exactly the reasons I left a long time ago. Glad to see others are finally doing the same, maybe the Wikipedia leadership will wake up.
"Many people are getting burnt out when they have to debate about the contents of certain articles again and again," adds Ortega."
Been there, done that. You've contributed to improve an article, a dozen people have worked on it. Then a fucktard comes along and nominates it for deletion because of lack of "notability". Delete discussion goes on, clear consensus on "keep".
Two months pass. Article gets improved further. Next fucktard comes along, delete nomination. Discussion, with links to the first one, consensus arrives at "keep" again.
Winter holidays. The same fucktard from the 2nd time comes along and nominates the article a 3rd time. This time, vocal people are away or just tired of it all. Whoops, delete request accepted by a narrow margin, all the work of everyone goes *poof*.
So you treat people like shit, destroy the result of their volunteer work, and then you're surprised they're leaving? You've gotta be kidding me.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
That's why I like subject-specific wikis (see sig). An article of no importance to Wikipedia may very useful in another wiki. There are also other benefits, such as community rules more appropriate to the subject.
Developers: We can use your help.
Wikipedia also has a problem with site admins who do things like block people first and ask questions later. I myself was blocked for merely reporting (in the proper venue) that another user was editing in violation of his community ban.
There are admins who it appears can violate every community rule yet won't receive any sanctions. Of course people are leaving - the admins have driven them away.
Then there are the cases where people have been hounded off Wikipedia and later it has been shown that they were correct and their antagonist was the one who should have been banned.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
One thing that might benefit the editing process is a paragraph-lockdown feature. Controversial articles tend to be edited in a back-and-forth way until arbitrators arrive and force a cooperative consensus to be reached. They might also lock the whole page, but such locks are always temporary and as soon as they are lifted, some new users come along, who didn't participate in the consensus, and mess it all up. The the edit war begins again. A paragraph lockdown would ensure that paragraphs reached via consensus would stay unaffected by new users, while still allowing the overall page to have new stuff added. The associated discussion page would be required to be used, before changes were allowed to affect a locked paragraph.
No you can't. Zionism is a political agenda defined by racial politics and largely based on religious fairy tales. For these reasons I think it constitutes racism and should not be considered acceptable by civilized peoples. Zionism isn't some made-up boogeyman - it is a real thing, and the word is used by people who are Zionists! The word and idea did not spring fully-formed from Zeus' forehead and start posting on Stormfront one afternoon.
As to what constitutes neutrality on Hezbollah, I think the issue just goes to show there is no neutrality anywhere. Every article is going to have biases either explicit or implicit as all human beings have biases explicit or implicit. Hell, there was a months-long flamewar on the Brazil article on whether it constituted linguistic imperialism to spell it Brazil rather than Brasil. I didn't expect "neutrality" in the mythological sense, but what I did expect was that the words of the senior leadership of Hezbollah on their motivations and agenda be included in an article on their organization.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
I stopped participating on Wikipedia years ago due to deletionists slashing and burning any and alls article in the name of HURR HURR NOT NOTABLE. I mean, why bother? That said, I recently saw something interesting - about two months ago someone wrote an article about her negative Wikipedia experience - Bullypedia, A Wikipedian Who's Tired of Getting Beat Up. As a result of this article, some folks got together to start WP:NEWT, where they wrote articles while posing as n00bs to see how they were treated. In some cases, they were in fact treated poorly indeed. Gems include "The reason I deleted the article was that the wikilinks did not have the proper markup. In addition, "See also" should be used instead of "See articles" and "External links" should be substituted for "Sites". Willking1979 (talk) 02:43, 6 October 2009 (UTC)" and User:Multixfer throwing a total shitfit when (fully appropriately) outed as being a total asshole.
1. Lebanon is a RINO - Republic in Name Only. Consider the huge population of disefrachized Palestinians who have been living in camps for the past fifty years. Lebanon-born "Palestinians" have it as bad as they would have it in Israel. Jordan is also guilty of this.
2/ Why is Hezbollah a "terrorist" organization? They fight in wars to keep their land free of occupation. Wars result in civilian deaths. Is this news? IDF kills civilians. Hezbollah kills civilians. Hamas kills civilians. Islamic Jihad kills civilians. US Army kills civilians. Either one is terrorist or they all are; as for Hezbollah, at least they fight on their own land and not the land of others.
3. Whatever your opinion, Hezbollah has stated that while it receives funding and support from Iran, they are not a puppet and are Lebanese fighting for Lebanese sovereignty. Consider that in the last war Christians and Druze both fought in Hezbollah and supported Hezbollah by overwhelming majority. In fact, Hezbollah offers a non-confessional alternative to the country's entrenched political system which is based entirely and sickeningly on religion
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
I've used to make maybe 5 edits per year since Wikipedia began. Recently I've made a lot less, and it's not because I've run out of things to contribute.
Of the past 5 edits I've made, I think 4 of them have been tagged as a "good faith edit" and removed because they didn't live up to their new policies. Really, I understand their motivation -- they want everything to be as verifiable as possible. But I think this goes against what made Wikipedia big in the first place.
It used to be so quick and easy to add new information. Anyone who spotted an error was compelled to correct it. It brought the entire internet together as one big community. Now you have to stay caught up with their ever-changing policies, be prepared to defend an edit in the discussion page, etc. -- it's no longer quick and easy. It's no longer fun to contribute. It's more like actual work now. I'm glad that some people can still enjoy doing it because I find Wikipedia an invaluable resource, but as an 'infrequent' contributor, I have a lot of trouble finding the motivation to put up with it any more.
My favorite tag is "citation needed."
I generally read this as, "someone needs to look up a citation for this, and I'm too high and mighty to stoop to such a level! Do it for me, peons!"
Whatever happened to the encyclopedia *anybody* can edit? Either find and add the citation yourself, or delete the fact for having no citation. But shitting those little tags all over the pages doesn't accomplish anything except making the article hard to read.
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