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

Oh, you can tell

[CRCulver]

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

I stopped editing Wikipedia in 2004, IIRC. There were plenty of cases who people left and you could tell they weren't likely to return, as their User or Talk page had some spectacular meltdown where they cursed the entire project and -- in the cases of the more qualified editors -- they vowed never to write anything about their field outside of academic rounds ever again.

Merge slashdot code to Wiki if you dare?

[Ilgaz]

As Slashdot is open source, Perl based, it won't be a problem.

Lets merge Slashdot code to Wikipedia so people, semi-randomly selected can moderate Wiki editor responses. It will have karma system too. If an editor does too much flamebait or "troll", his karma will go negative and by default, his editing powers will be reduced to normal levels and eventually taken off.

You have no clue how your type of editor responses makes users and the real deal (one off editors) feel right?

The revolution eats its children

[Opportunist]

Wikipedia was a very interesting concept. A free online encyclopedia that everyone could contribute to. Everyone could fill his knowledge and information in, contribute to the common knowledge and, eventually, this should lead to possibly the best, most complete collection of human knowledge ever assembled. A quite noble goal, and for a while it worked out well.

Then came the trolls, the spammers, the corporate shills, and we noticed that human is appearantly not able to cooperate without rules and boundaries. Sad. But we're humans. Driven by base interests, instincts and egoism. So the idea of editors and supervisers was born, people who should take it into their hands to make sure these shills, spammers and trolls are kept out and tossed out. A noble goal, and for a while it worked out well.

But editors are just as much human as the spammers, trolls and shills are. When you are given the power to shape and regulate the knowledge of humankind, it becomes quite tempting to not only shape and regulate it, the big temptation is to dictate it. You are the keeper of knowledge, the overseer of truth.

No nobel goal this time and behold, it doesn't work out well.

It's the same "who watches the watchers" problem we see a lot today. If there's nobody overseeing your use of power, the temptation to abuse that power becomes strong. It seems we are unable or unwilling to self regulate ourselves when we are not held accountable for what we do. As we see here (as well as in politics or business) if you are only held accountable by your peers, it's unlikely that anything but the most gross transgressions will ever be punished. And with "gross", of course I mean "whatever goes against the interests of your peers". Not what goes against the interests of your "inferiors", your users or even the project or duty itself that you agreed to oversee and manage.

So what could be done? Another superstructure above the editors? I think it's already been done, and it doesn't change jack. A broader base has to be founded, not a smaller top. Power in the hands of more people, not less. The meta-moderation system of /. comes to mind, where some (or many, computers can handle it) can vote for or against a certain moderation. One person may err. Some people may conspire to push an agenda. A few millions are hard to bribe, convince or sway.

Wikipedia allegedly has millions of users. Ok, so use them. Again, certain people may have a dislike of a certain editor and will vote his edits negative no matter how much they might remove vandalism because they feel slighted by them. The majority won't. And IF the majority feels slighted by a certain editor, it might be a good idea to remove that editor. Quite obviously he's not doing a good job.