Wikipedia Disputes Editor Exodus Claims

eldavojohn writes "The Wikimedia blog has a new post from Erik Moeller, deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation, and Erik Zachte, a data analyst, to dispute recent reports about editors leaving Wikipedia (which we discussed on Wednesday). They offer these points to discredit the claims: 'The number of people reading Wikipedia continues to grow. In October, we had 344 million unique visitors from around the world, according to comScore Media Metrix, up 6% from September. Wikipedia is the fifth most popular web property in the world. The number of articles in Wikipedia keeps growing. There are about 14.4 million articles in Wikipedia, with thousands of new ones added every day. The number of people writing Wikipedia peaked about two and a half years ago, declined slightly for a brief period, and has remained stable since then. Every month, some people stop writing, and every month, they are replaced by new people." They also note that it's impossible to tell whether someone has left and will never return, as their account still remains there."

Comments

Liar

[Tom]

If someone starts off saying "it ain't so" by listing half a dozen facts that have nothing to do with the question, he's either terribly stupid, or trying to pull a fast one on you. It's called misdirection and confusion. Yes, it's actually a named trick in the arsenal of con artists.

So much for that.

Re:Liar

[Stargoat]

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

But a Wikipedia administrator with a bunch of tags and article locks isn't too far away from inventing a fourth type of lie.

Re:Liar

[mdwh2]

As opposed to simply reeling off ad hominems, and attacking his writing strategy rather than his argument?

He didn't say "it ain't so". RTFA. In fact, it doesn't even dispute it even though that's presumably the intent, it simply talks of looking further into the figures.

The first two things listed may not be directly related to the number of editors - but that's the point! "Number of editors leaving" is a rather meaningless figure. You have to look at the whole picture, which is what he's doing. And the second one is related - they're still getting new articles, so there's yet to be any problem.

The third one is directly related.

He then goes in depth in discussing the alleged claims of the 49,000 figure.

Am I reading the same article as you?

Re:Liar

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I think it's a bit much to say you're replying to a post riddled with ad hominems, I see a single one in the subject line, the rest looks looks conditional.

I also think it's a natural response when we're used to seeing politically motivated people dance around a simple claim.

Re:Liar

[gilleain]

Yes, this is an argument pattern I call "ad logicam" (I don't care if that is terrible latin, it's been 17 years since I used the language).

What happens is that the arguer knows these terms like "ad hominem", "straw man", etc. and concentrates only on that aspect of an opposing argument. So, you could make the most well thought out reply that completely destroys their point, but end with "you idiot" and the argument is 'lost'. Not lost in the technical sense of having a better point, but lost to flame and bitter gall.

It doesn't help that slashdot is full of idiots as well...oh no! My point!...

Re:Liar

[Opportunist]

Sorry, but I have been working for a (dead tree) magazine for a while. It might be different for online media, but editors leaving is NOT a good sign for a paper. Even if you bring more new people on board than are leaving, you're usually losing out. It's like in every business, when your skilled, experienced workers leave and you have to replace them with new, inexperienced people, quality suffers. First, by the very law of tenure, it's not the "bad" people that stay for long. They won't be kept long, in a business they'll be fired, in a volunteer area like wikipedia they'll either be asked to leave or, if they're disruptive, banned. So you can assume that 100% of what is leaving is "good" people. Else they would not have stayed around for a year or longer. On the other hand, you don't know what you get in. It's like hiring a new guy. Can he do his job? Is he a slacker? Is he even sabotaging you (unlikely in a professional environment, but for wikipedia? How do you determine if some new guy is going to be a dedicated editor or just a troll)? You won't know for a while.

Out with the good, in with the new is not necessarily something good...

Re:Liar

[RiotingPacifist]

A relevant Orwell reference... on the internet? Dear god, what is slashdot coming to!

Re:Liar

[Geek Prophet]

If you think that he is "listing half a dozen facts that have nothing to do with the question", then you don't understand the question. The question is not, "Are editors leaving Wikipedia in droves?" The question *he* cares about is, "Does this claim that editors are leaving Wikipedia in droves mean Wikipedia is dying?" So, he states outright that this claim is being made, and then disputes it. Only after he takes care of the important stuff does he address the question of number of editors. So, no, this wasn't "smoke and mirrors" (to give the actual name to the trick). It was his attempt to address what *he* considered important before talking about the accuracy of what *you* consider "the question".

Re:Liar

[DerekLyons]

He didn't say "it ain't so". RTFA. In fact, it doesn't even dispute it even though that's presumably the intent, it simply talks of looking further into the figures.

Simply looking deeper into the numbers is one thing - spouting facts and figures in an attempt to impress and overwhelm the reader and thus distract him from actually thinking about the numbers is a different thing entirely. The latter is precisely what is happening here, and you fell for it hook line and sinker.
 

The first two things listed may not be directly related to the number of editors - but that's the point! "Number of editors leaving" is a rather meaningless figure. You have to look at the whole picture, which is what he's doing. And the second one is related - they're still getting new articles, so there's yet to be any problem.

Looking at the whole picture, and actually thinking about the numbers he presents rather than being impressed by their size, doesn't paint the rosy picture you and he want us to be dazzled by. If the number of editors is remaining stable, while the number of articles is going up - that means each editor is overseeing an increasing number of articles, which means the amount of attention he can pay to any given article goes inevitably down.
 
In actuality, since editors tend to cluster, that means that more and more articles are out on the fringes - under (at best) only loose or rote supervision, or not actually watched on a regular basis but only checked when someone happens to wander by. The first means that edits are often reverted without the editor actually spending much time looking at the new edit. The latter means the articles are (often) increasingly out of date. (I now routinely find articles weeks to months out of date, and found one a couple of weeks back that was three years out of date.) Articles out on the fringes are also especially vulnerable to vandalism.
 
Your last statement is particularly troubling to me. Just because there isn't a problem "yet", doesn't mean one can safely ignore trends. To use the traditional Slashdot automobile analogy: If your "check oil" light comes on, and your engine is still running normally, only a fool places a bit of tape over the light and pretends it doesn't exist.

Re:Liar

[stumblingblock]

But please consider that at least a few of people involved in any purportedly righteous endeavor as volunteers are not necessarily good at what they do but like feel that they are doing their part. No great loss when they get their knickers in a twist and make a self righteous statement upon leaving.

Re:Liar

[hey!]

Well, perhaps. But it seems to me that what you describe also happens when people have different *conceptions* of a problem.

Looked at dispassionately, the idea that as editorial standards are imposed, the number of contributors would be reduced seems *obvious*. If one imposed the requirement that firefighter recruits were able to bench press 80% of their body weight, you'd expect the number of applicants who enter the training stage to drop. It is quite possible for that to happen, while the number of *competent new firefighters increases*.

Arguably, saying that people left after editorial standards tighten is an "exodus" is just as, if not *more* misleading than quoting statistics that show the project remains healthy. Editorial standards *naturally* mean that fewer people will contribute. The sky *might* be falling, but in order to address *that* question, you need to something more like a study of average article quality. That's not easy to do.

Re:Oh, you can tell

[ACS Solver]

Cursing or not, I can understand why people stop editing. I used to contribute stuff but stopped some 3 years ago. One problem is that Wikipedia has gotten very bogged down in its own bureaucracy. For making non-minor edits, there's the distinct impression that you're supposed to know a huge amount of rules and guidelines, proper procedures and whatnot. Then there's the problem with other editors that won't accept your edits as valid unless you can show them a citation they understand. Requiring citations is great, but if I'm making edits related to a fairly small European language only spoken in one country, what can I show? I can cite books or online resources written in that very language - citations that some editors don't find satisfying because they don't understand what it says.

My own experience.

[taxman_10m]

I joined recently to update the page of a candidate running for Ted Kennedy's seat (election will be done and over with by January). I wasn't updating much, adding the candidate's birth date, linking to a book he had written, and adding the part copied from other candidate's wiki pages that links him to the Senate race. After a full day of back in forth with an editor deleting whatever I had just added, the only think that made it through was the link to the book he had written. And I think that just slipped through. Not worth the effort at all trying to update a page with new info. That ends my time working with Wikipedia.

Re:My own experience.

[Anonymous Coward]

The popularity of Wikipedia is one of the clearest symptoms of the human condition on the Internet: a state where truth is not authority or accessibility, but authority and accessibility are truth. Put in practical terms: people refer to the top Google hit for anything they search for, and informed researchers / educators are finding it increasingly hard to reach out to the layman via the Internet.

Yes, by quantity alone, Wikipedia wins - but only after my stack of 500GB drives, filled with random bits. Yes, any printed Encyclopedia Generica also contains errors. So what? What are you doing using either, beyond Middle School / Junior High? Every subject has well-known compendia of knowledge and well-used text books for an introductory exposition, so why aren't you reading there? The problem is not that people aren't using traditional generic encyclopedias any more; the problem is that people are using Wikipedia where previously they would never have gone to the first random person they meet in the street and asked them for information about a subject.

So much for Wikipedia's effect on everyone else. What is most damaging, I think, is that Wikipedia itself has grown as a cult. My girlfriend is from a JW family, and I've seen what a mild cult is like: people who criticise it are met with jargon, misdirection (TFA is a fine example!), denial, and finally anger. Ritual is more important than enlightenment, because ritual which was initially aimed (if you're feeling generous) to fulfil the cult's vision instead becomes a method of maintaining existing power structure. A cult convinces you that you are educating yourself in the best way by propagandizing successes while ignoring endemic inefficiencies. You will learn some things from getting involved in Wikipedia, just as you will gain philosophical insight from many cult study groups - indeed, some cult / Wikipedia articles are technically brilliant - but you're unlikely to improve your condition. You're not there to promote scholarship, or pedagogy: you're there to support the rules.

I thrive in an academic environment. I am thoroughly scrutinised by peers. I interact with experienced educators and students so my ability to impart information is improved. I feel I've made advances to my discipline, and that those tutored by me have benefitted from my efforts in preparing myself to help them. But I've not got past first base trying to teach cult members, whether the more fundamentalist JWs I've known or through contributions to Wikipedia. The challenges are always the same:
- "But [authority] imparting [belief], which means [policy];"
- "But [inability to understand source], which means [conspiracy];"
- "But [disagreement], which means [call on authority to suppress dissent]."

This isn't how scholarship works. The worthiness of scholarship is measured by the question: "Have I exposed some truths?" The worthiness of cult contribution is measured by: "Have I provided an argument which pleases my masters?" The majority of non-trivial Wikipedia articles are neutrally titled subjects presenting the result of a dominant viewpoint being transformed into a supporting argument, just as a cult article on "X" will end up being "why X is right/wrong"; the majority of scholarly articles are works written to support a transparent abstract.

The Internet was a lot easier to find introductory information from before Wikipedia: search engines returned, at the top, accessible subject-specific sites contributed to by researchers, professionals or keen amateurs (N.B. an "amateur" in the sense of an expert doing something on his own dime, often with a level of qualification, such as a radio ham). Now it's Wikipedia, Wikipedia scrapes, answers.com style aggregators, random stores with products related to words, and - if you're really lucky - a subject-specific site. The latter remain popular because they're introduced to you by experts, whether on forums, at college, or among colleagues - but to find these among search results always takes more effort than just hitting "en.wikipedia.org" right at the top.

And that's the only reason's Wikipedia's popular: she's easy and you're lazy.

Re:My own experience.

[labradore]

I am not surprised by your experience. I have recently found that I was unable to make spelling and grammar changes to several pages that were locked. Lots of the pages that I was interested in contributing to were in some kind of locked state. It seems strange that someone could justify locking a page and controlling it without satisfying the basic requirements that he or she be fluent in the language in which the page is written. I found myself hoping that some other group with less anti-social tendencies would fork from wikipedia.

Re:My own experience.

[Dulimano]

I have seen hundreds of posts on Slashdot about incompetence and abuse of power by Wikipedia editors. NONE of these posts contained reference to the events described. Citation needed, indeed.

Anecdotes are not data

[mdwh2]

The point being, there's no automated way to do this, in order come up with statistics about the site.

An anecdote of "Well I stopped editing in 2004, and so did some people I know" may make for interesting discussion, but doesn't tell us anything useful about trends in Wikipedia editing as a whole, and certainly doesn't support the recent story.

Unfortunately, Wikipedia is one of Slashdot's blindspots - where the usual thought out points go out of the window in the groupthink, and mod points are dished out purely on who can criticise Wikipedia, for whatever reason, be it a personal bad experience of editing there, or some axe to grind against its policies.

Re:Anecdotes are not data

[zoney_ie]

It nevertheless should tell you something that criticism of Wikipedia is now so widespread, and particularly by ex-editors/admins (one could argue that is nothing surprising - but the sheer numbers of such "exs" surely is extraordinary).

Anyway, it is interesting, sometimes useful in a sort of "ask a friend" way, and sort of a real-life H2G2, but basically, it's a bit of fanciful nonsense to think it's anything particularly special or proper (the same goes for the web in general, and "web 2.0" in particular). People are the same as always, and the information online is neither necessarily persistent, and is mostly noise (and any influence on offline "hard copy" information may be overall detrimental due to the noise/inaccuracy added).

Also too many people still haven't realised that the Internet is not some special mystical place but is in fact just part of the real world, and ultimately has to be subject to real world social, political and judicial norms, despite the difficulties in applying some of those.

A lot of the idealists who want to belief the fluff about a free magical Internet are people who in the real world would try to push their idealistic nonsense and simply allow the strongest elements in society to abuse any "freedom" to impose horrible restrictions of freedom. It's the same kind of mindset that believed the nonsense accompanying certain failed political ideologies of the 20th century, which we now have ample evidence that they are fanciful ideas that in reality just bring misery.

People need to stick to boring old tradition and the lessons we have learnt over and over again over centuries.

Re:Anecdotes are not data

[Abcd1234]

It nevertheless should tell you something that criticism of Wikipedia is now so widespread

By that argument, the fact that there are all those anti-vaxxers and creationists tells us something...

But, of course, it doesn't. What it tells us is that there's a loud group of people who like to criticize Wikipedia, many of which are disgrunted ex-editors and ex-admins, and a bunch of bandwagon jumpers.

Re:Oh, you can tell

[mdwh2]

The funny thing is, elsewhere on this artice will be people bitching about "Well I left Wikipedia, I got fed up of people coming in an making changes to articles, without discussing with people or following basic guidelines". I'm not saying you're in the wrong, I'm just saying there's no right answer here, and the fault is not with "Wikipedia" as an entity.

The fallacy is referring to "Wikipedia" as if it was some single entity. The problem is between the editors - and when you edit, that includes you. There's no you-and-them, as the them may well be other people who are complaining about "Wikipedia", when by "Wikipedia" they actually mean their experience with you.

The only plausible time when a them-and-us argument is valid is when discussing Wikipedia admins (who are granted special privileges). But this doesn't apply to editors. You were an editor, and are just as much a target of Wikipedia criticism as any other editor.

The bottom line is that when you have a massive collaboration between people online who don't even know each other, there are going to be disagreements. Unfortunately, rather than debate it with each other, sometimes both sides of an argument will take it out on "Wikipedia", each of them referring to the other side's view as wrong, and an example of how doomed Wikipedia is.

Thankfully, criticisms on Slashdot comments or in the tabloids don't change the fact that out of this collabaration, we nonetheless actually have a resultant free encyclopedia that's pretty damn good.

Someone touched a nerve eh ?

[daveime]

The number of people reading Wikipedia continues to grow. In October, we had 344 million unique visitors from around the world, according to comScore Media Metrix, up 6% from September.

I don't think the number of readers was actually a point of contention. How long those readers actually stay on Wikipedia and how useful they find it now that everything is getting culled by overzealous moderators citing "lack of sources" etc. is possibly more the point.

Wikipedia is the fifth most popular web property in the world. The number of articles in Wikipedia keeps growing. There are about 14.4 million articles in Wikipedia, with thousands of new ones added every day.

Wikipedia's own article on Wikipedia has a nice graph of article count. Since Jul 2007 it seems they've typically been adding about 2000 articles a day ... so "thousands" is being used in it's most literal sense. But without the number of articles being edited down to nothing, or simply being culled, this data is useless, and they damn well know it. Tell us how many articles are being deleted each day, and that that number isn't increasing !

The number of people writing Wikipedia peaked about two and a half years ago, declined slightly for a brief period, and has remained stable since then. Every month, some people stop writing, and every month, they are replaced by new people.

Interesting this is exactly the point at which the increase in articles per day flatlined, meanign that the number of editors they ave maintained since means a linear addition to the total volume of articles, and not the "projected doubling that they expected" on the graph.

They also note that it's impossible to tell whether someone has left and will never return, as their account still remains there.

So they don't maintain a timestamp of "last activity by author" ??? Fucking nonsense, pardon my language.

The report touched a nerve, and their response with half-assed, half-complete figures does nothing to convince me the report was incorrect.

And they have the gall to ask for 7.5 million US in donations for a diminshing product. Jimbo's days of champagne, caviar and jet planes are numbered methinks.

Re:Oh, you can tell

[ACS Solver]

I actually agree with what you're saying for the most part. But part of the general criticism of Wikipedia comes because people on the outside see it as a single entity. Which is unsurprising. So whenever they see something bad/wrong/unlikeable, they are going to blame "the Wikipedia" as a whole. It's to be expected, really, most readers have never edited Wikipedia. According to TFA, the amount of active editors peaked at over 54k while last month the amount of unique visitors was 344m. Granted, more people than those 54k have ever made edits, but how many? 200k? A million? Even in that case it would be a very low percentage of readers, what I'm saying here is, to non-editors Wikipedia will be a single entity.

I see one big difference between Wikipedia and some other great collaborative projects like the Linux kernel, X11, Wine, Haiku, etc. For open-source programming projects, there's a fairly significant entry barrier. You have to know programming, you have to be able to figure out how the project works in general before you can contribute code. Essentially, by the time you can submit a code patch, you'll have learned a few things about the internal working, whether you like it or not. To edit Wikipedia, though, the entry barrier is much lower. If you're already reading Wikipedia, all you need to edit is the ability to write in whatever language you may want to edit in. That's it. So you can easily start editing without even knowing there are Wikipedia admins, without having any clue about the (by now fairly complex) internal organization of Wikipedia and its editors. And, of course, not knowing anything about the various "camps" of editors (deletionists vs inclusionists, anyone?).

As such, a fairly new editor to Wikipedia can go edit a few things and then be very surprised when they discover all the internal stuff, scaring them away.

And as a disclaimer, yes, I do overall think that Wikipedia is one of the greatest achievements of the Internet. It does seem rather US-centric, it does suffer from partisanship on articles regarding certain topics, etc., but on many, many subjects it's the best place for quick, all-in-one-place information.

Wikipedia "Knowledge"

[Steve Franklin]

What's the difference? Wikipedia is simply a means of promoting whatever is the accepted "common knowledge" about a subject at the time. Anything resembling original research is immediately stricken from the Wikipedia "Gospel according to the Experts." In this regard, Wikipedia resembles the kind of banal nonsense one reads in high school textbooks.

Re:Dealing with protected pages

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at all the bullshit you have to go through just to fix some spelling mistakes. That's why people leave Wikipedia and why it sucks.

Re:My own anecdote.

[ivucica]

It is fascinating how ofter Wikipedia apoogists seem to repeat this same argument in other comments of this article.

It's the fault of culture of rules and bureaucracy propagated and promoted by ... whom? Wikipedia?

When there's police brutality without punishment, do you blame the policeman or the government?
When there's a massacre perpetrated by your authoritarian government, do you blame the army/policemen, or the government?
When Madoff steals money over there in the US, do you blame Madoff or those who didn't stop him?

Of course, you can blame the person who directly committed the crime (or the immoral act, depending on laws). But sometimes, just sometimes, the act is a product of the culture. I have a pratical example of bad culture influencing otherwise smart and good people in my country, but stating my personal experiences directly would make me a racist.

Is it core Wikipedia management's fault that I had problems adding a short stub article about a well-known Croatian band? I don't know. Is it Wikipedia's fault? Yes. Wikipedia is more than just the site, it's also the community. Whoever created the rules is responsible for making active editors and admins behave like shit. Why did [citation needed] have to become a joke?

Re:Dealing with protected pages

[ivucica]

Did you try registering for an account and making a few edits to unrelated pages to establish yourself as a serious editor? If so, what was the your Wikipedia username?

What happened to "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit"?

Re:Oh, you can tell

[Ihmhi]

A large part of the internal Wikipedia war is Inclusionists and Exclusionists. Inclusionists believe by and large that a page should never be deleted - simply moved, merged, or filled out until it is eventually up to par. Exclusionists believe pages should be held to a certain standard, and pages that can't reach that standard within a few days after their creation should be deleted.

I myself am an Inclusionist. In the days of cheap storage and bandwidth, there is not really a good reason not to have a page on there because it doesn't have references or citations yet. The key word there is "yet". Higher-ups are too quick with the delete button and so if you cannot write a large article with proper citation within a few days you might as well not bother at all.

That's why I (and many others) just don't bother at all anymore. I was fortunate enough to be able to write for a little while when Wikipedia was still fairly new. I loved watching the articles I created get built up by other people and grow, but this takes time. Nowadays, the current policy is basically unwilling to provide the time to let the weekend and occasional contributors pitch in to build an article slowly, so instead the people writing the articles are the people who have a vested interest in getting them written. That is a good and bad thing.

Re:You show the reason

[Theleton]

So you're telling me that a "very very important scientist" doesn't have any publications s/he could cite? No articles in peer-reviewed journals? No books or book chapters? No proceedings from conferences held by scientific societies?

Or is your scientist friend just not used to providing references for claims that are based on others' work? (That would certainly explain the lack of publications.)

I can understand that "ordinary people" have problems with the "citation needed" thing on Wikipedia. Most people aren't used to being asked to back up whatever they say, and don't have the training to know what a reliable source is. But knowing the literature and thoroughly sourcing your statements (to grab one book from atop the nearest pile, 'The Origins of Biblical Monotheism' by Mark S. Smith is 200 pages of text followed by 100 pages of notes) is what academia is all about; within your field of expertise you should be able to name relevant papers and monographs off the top of your head. If there are any people who should have no problem with the citation requirements of Wikipedia, it's academics.

Re:Editors can't delete articles

[dangitman]

*sigh* Now we have a mod abusing "overrated" on a post that was never uprated,

There's no logical problem with that. A comment doesn't have to be modded up to be overrated. A stupid post might be highly overrated at slashdot's default score of 1 or 2, yet still not fall into a category like 'troll' or 'flamebait.'

Re:My own anecdote.

[oberondarksoul]

Surely these are false dichotomies? There's no reason why in any of those examples that only one person or entity can be ascribed guilt. It can be neither, either, or both, depending on the situation.

Re:Wikipedia hits 3 million, dies.

[cerberusss]

My god man, you should write for The Onion. Bravo!