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Wikipedia Losing Contributors, Says Wales

Posted by Soulskill on from the citation-needed dept.

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."

5 of 533 comments (clear)

  1. Sick of the cabals by Pope · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Or more likely they're sick of the cabals that form. Wikipedia has lost lots of contributers over the past few years because of them, and will continue to do so unless these spergmeisters are kicked off the pages that they edit camp.

    As usual, it's a couple of intractable morons that ruin it for the casual contributor.

    --
    It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
    1. Re:Sick of the cabals by Dexter+Herbivore · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I've grown up in a particular industry, I've worked in the industry for almost 20 years, it's a small specialist field referring to a particular geographic area in Australia, I try to add information to the pages that already exist and are not complete, I always cite my work when I edit something and I remain factual and not opinionated or personal... yet most of my work continually gets rolled back by editors based in the US who edit camp particular sections of wikipedia and don't seem to like ANY change to their pages.

  2. Let's see... my experience with editing Wikipedia by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I once was an editor there. Allow me to illustrate why I am no longer.

    It all started when I dared to step into the turf of something one of the "higher ups" considered his. An edit of me was reverted. Not just something trivial that begs for a "citation needed", it was a well worded and sourced piece of information. The reason was that it was "not enough on topic". Ok, I see that differently, but so be it. Not like I have to have everything I write published.

    What bugged me was that the day after, my entry was, almost verbatim, in there again. This time under the name of the person who thought it's "offtopic" only one day earlier. But ok, so be it, some people need it for their ego to be the "only authority" on some subject.

    The problem started when this became the rule rather than the exception. Whenever something new developed in an issue, it descended into mind numbing bickering whose version gets to stand. And since I'm more in the fact-gathering and less in the butt-kissing game, usually it's not my version that stands. So hey, maybe they don't need me as an editor.

    The last straw was when I removed some defacement (IIRC it was an article about greek pillars and someone made a rude reference of someone fucking someone else up the rear) and it got reverted by my personal stalker. It seems, they get butt-kissing brownie points for doing as many reverts as possible, preferably without reading first what got written.

    So, in case you're wondering why you don't get more editors, take a look at the existing ones.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  3. Re:Easy reason by Anrego · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yup!

    This is definitely the core of the problem.

    It only takes one aspergers inflicted admin to make a good long term contributer throw their hands up in the air and say "fuck that shit". Additionally other people see this happening and decide not to get involved at all.

    The fact that this issue is brough up nearly every time wikipedia is mentioned would indicate that this is a serious and obvious problem ... not the editing interface. I have never heard anyone complain that "it was just so damn hard to get the text to look correct that I stopped contributing". I _have_ heard people rant about control-freak admins on a fairly regular basis.

    I think the big problem, as someone mentioned, is that the people who make it to the top are the people who spend all day trolling through articles and correcting things. In other words... the people who are probably running on a lean mixture and take things just a little too seriously. The people you need admining wiki are the occasional contributers who are socially well adjusted (which is why they are "occasional" contributers.. they spend time doing other things with real people). How you achieve this I do not know.. but I think it's the answer.

  4. The Slashdot approach by Tony+Isaac · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Slashdot has figured out how to fix this problem.

    Most comment sections on news Web sites are junk, usually not worth reading. But on Slashdot, the comments are generally more entertaining and useful than the articles themselves.

    Why is this? I think it's because of the clever moderating system. Ordinary users get to vote comments up or down, and the result is that the trash sinks to the bottom, and the good stuff gets highlighted.

    So Wikipedea should try the Slashdot approach...let people vote on the edits that should be reverted, and which ones should be kept.