Wikipedia's Participation Problem

holy_calamity writes "More people use Wikipedia than ever but the number of people contributing to the project has declined by a third since 2007, and it still has significant gaps in its quality and coverage. MIT Technology Review reports on the troubled efforts to make the site more welcoming to newcomers, which Jimmy Wales says must succeed if Wikipedia is to address its failings."

Comments

The established editors are the problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Their main contribution is to drive people who don't think like they do off.

Re:The established editors are the problem.

[Blakey Rat]

Well, enforce their own rules for one. Bots that do nothing but revert aren't "Assuming Good Faith", are they? But they're still common. (In fact, why are bots allowed at all, come to think of it?)

I would also suggest:

1) They fix the deletion problem by making it possible for non-admins to view "deleted" pages. Right now, if a user (in good faith) writes a long article that gets deleted, they have no way to even VIEW it, much less CORRECT the problems it was deleted over. That's ridiculous. You've just flushed that user's goodwill down the toilet. You might as well send a email to them reading, "The Wikipedia project says FUCK YOU!".

2) They come up with a more democratic method of selecting admins, one that doesn't involve "being Jimmy Wales' personal friend" or "having lots of tiny edits".

3) When they beg for donations, something that might help is acknowledging the problems and explaining to users how the donations are intended to resolve them.

All I've really seen so far is, "our hosting costs are high". Well ok. But frankly at this point I don't give a shit if you can't pay your hosting-- explain to me how you're making Wikipedia better to earn my money, not just "we need money to do more of the same broken shit we've been doing for the last 5 years".

Bad Answer to the Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Technical solutions to a social problem do not address the primary issues. They need to be willing to admit that it is not a welcoming place for non-combative contributors.

Why I don't edit

[Anonymous Coward]

I contributed to wikipedia a couple of times years ago. My edits were quickly reverted. I haven't tried to edit since. I'm guessing many other people had this experience.

Jerks with revertbots.

[bellers]

The wikipedia community has made itself utterly insular and there's way too much protectionism-via-automation.

Make an edit on an article someone thinks is 'theirs' ? Auto reverted via a bot. Complain about it? vote to block.

The constant barrage of Wikipedia-specific jargon and acronyms, all on its own, is enough to turn off most people.

Wikipedia's culture has very much evolved away from everyman's resource to a rarefied and specialized discipline that requires as much specific knowledge as most jobs.

This, this, and more this!

[TWiTfan]

Every time I've tried to contribute in my areas of expertise (and we're talking very modest and very non-controversial stuff), I've been met with a wall of pricks who basically stop anyone who isn't in the inner circle from making even the most benign contributions, additions, or edits. The editors there suffered from a clear case of what we in the old college frat used to call the "It's my party of no one else is invited" syndrome (in reference to newer fraternity brothers who wanted to make the frat as exclusive as possible, exactly one second after they got in). It didn't take me long to get tired of even trying.

Now, that was a few years ago, admittedly. But it was enough to drive me away and make me vow never to return. Maybe things have changed since then, but I'm not really looking to find out.

Re:Unfriendly Elitists

[MarkvW]

In my direct experience the majority of hardcore contributors and long-time editors are complete ideologues and giant assholes who are extraordinarily hostile to any outsiders or differing thought.

Real experts don't want to go to the trouble of battling with presumptuous morons over the Internet.