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Wikipedia Losing Contributors, Says Wales
derGoldstein writes
"According to an AP report, 'Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said the nonprofit company that runs the site is scrambling to simplify editing procedures in an attempt to retain volunteers.' He explained, 'We are not replenishing our ranks... It is not a crisis, but I consider it to be important.' Despite Wikipedia's wide-reaching popularity, Wales said the typical profile of a contributor is 'a 26-year-old geeky male' who moves on to other ventures, gets married and leaves the website."
Given the "friendliness" that greets new contributors.
I have entered correct information with references and such in few articles where I am somewhat of an expert, like one where I did my masters in the topic and created couple of pages that were in the page request list in topics where I am fairly knowledgable.
End results: >70% of my edits were removed within few days and in several cases replaces with actual WRONG information. Of the created pages one has today totally wrong information, one has been proposed to merge with another page, but nothing has happened in way many months and a third page was just removed.
Long ago I noticed once that the well-sourced facts set out in one Wikipedia article contradicted a claim (not directly sourced) made in a related article. So I naturally edited the claim to correspond to the facts, mentioning the edit was for internal consistency. I hadn't come to edit an article, but I consider it to be a Good Thing to fix small errors as you see them.
Unfortunately for me the claim happened to be in a gay-related article and apparently embodied the PC position towards this incident.
The storm hit. An admin reverted it without comment (against Wikipedia rules). I explained the reasoning in Talk and reverted back. Then he reverted again, no comment. Now I reverted, explaining he was violating the rule about explaining reversions.
Count: Two reverts for me, two for the admin.
The admin reverted again, saying I needed to cite the source outside of Wikipedia (the same source the other article cited). So I re-did the entry and re-posted with the suggestion. I can work with people, and take positive editing suggestions seriously.
Count: Three reverts for me (if you consider a repost to be a revert), three for the admin.
He reverted it AGAIN without comment, blatantly breaking the three revert rule. Then he said if I tried to change it again it would count as a 3RR violation and I would be banned. I checked the admin's personal page, yep, a gay activist.
At no time were the facts in the other related article challenged or changed. At no time did he tell me I was wrong, or that my edit was factually incorrect. He just didn't want the facts to be on that page.
Even if an admin isn't involved, a cabal of supporters can do the same thing, reverting your posts at will. They can get one or two reverts each, winning while you hit your three revert ceiling. There is really no consensus as Wikipedia tries to reach, since a small, organized and dedicated cabal can easily win over the unorganized concensus of many casual editors. If the cause is a liberal one, it is most likely that their cabal will be supported by the admins.
Now I try to stay away from anything relating to PC, but even then it can seep into the most neutral-seeming articles.