Slashdot Mirror
Is Wikipedia's Popularity Causing Its Decline?
HughPickens.com writes: Researchers Halfaker, Geiger, Morgan, and Riedl have a new paper on the topic of open collaboration systems about how Wikipedia's reaction to its popularity is causing its decline. From the Abstract: "Open collaboration systems like Wikipedia need to maintain a pool of volunteer contributors in order to remain relevant. Wikipedia was created through a tremendous number of contributions by millions of contributors. However, recent research has shown that the number of active contributors in Wikipedia has been declining steadily for years, and suggests that a sharp decline in the retention of newcomers is the cause. This paper presents data that show that several changes the Wikipedia community made to manage quality and consistency in the face of a massive growth in participation have ironically crippled the very growth they were designed to manage. Specifically, the restrictiveness of the encyclopedia's primary quality control mechanism and the algorithmic tools used to reject contributions are implicated as key causes of decreased newcomer retention. Further, the community's formal mechanisms for norm articulation are shown to have calcified against changes – especially changes proposed by newer editors."
I added the DOB to an article about a noteworthy deceased individual. It got removed as it violated the privacy of the individual. I argued the case in the Talk Page and pointed out that the information was available elsewhere on a tribute site. I also pointed out there were loads more personal pages that mentioned the DOB. Why were they not in violation of the rules. Got warned off and the account disabled. Days later a long time Wikipedia luminary inserted the exact same information without any objection. I guess everyone over on Wikipedia is equal only some people are more equal than others.
That's the biggest problem I see. People camp out on pages and claim that they're the editor for it. Any edit you make is reverted or rewritten to fit their style. Any source you pull that would make changes to the article will be discredited or simply deleted. Wikipedia has a metastasized cancer that it embraces as if it is healthy for the ecosystem, and it will be the death of it.
Let me cancel out the comments like "Heck, just try editing wikipedia! Everything I post is reverted instantly!" by posting my experience.
I edit Wikipedia maybe once every few months. None of my edits have ever been reverted or debated. I've anonymously edited things I know about like the article on sorting algorithms. I've edited things I know nothing about, like the article on depth charges. In the latter cases, I was usually reading the article and misunderstood something, so I read more elsewhere, then went back to reword or clarify the section that was unclear. I've fixed citations and spelling errors randomly. No complaints, reverts, or edit wars.
Given the rather... opinionated... Slashdot culture, I would love to know what articles people are editing that cause flame wars. Because I just don't see it
Mod this guy up. The perpetual fundraising machine has become very troubling. They have cumulatively raised well more than $200 million dollars, most of that in just the last few years. We are constantly greeted by banners about how far they are away from their current fundraising 'goals' but those goals seem to be exploding every year, with no explanation about what that money is actually 'needed' for.
Jimmy used to boast about how little it cost to keep Wikipedia on-line, just a few million at most, and with the money raised in just the last two years they could easily have set up an endowment that would keep those servers running forever, without requiring another dollar in fundraising, ever.
It appears that the 'goals' are being set by simple formula: whatever we raised last year, plus 20%, and with an additional 20% "stretch goal". Seriously - that appears to be the only rationale I can glean from their reports.
Oh, and they are finally starting an endowment now next year of $5 million, after having burned through $200+ million, and representing only 7% of their new $71.4 million base goal.
With the cost of operating Wikipedia low and nearly fixed, and without paying any staff to actually produce their product (which is what this has become), why the 'need' for double digit annual revenue growth every single year?
I am now telling everyone I know not to contribute to Wikipedia. They really, really, really do not need the money. Their days of paupery are long past. Jimmy is now in $profit$ mode.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Can any of the people who have anecdotes about asshole editor grievances please actually post some links? Seriously, I don't think you a lying, give us a chance to overthrow the assholes with actual evidence.
Wikipedia admin accounts are bought and sold, and high end editors with more than X amount of edits get paid to post.
They get paid to edit and add bias, remove defaming info, add defaming info.
add SEO, by creating a "pseudo source" on a webserver that a webmaster wants to boost the pagerank on, they'll create a professional looking article with circular cited sources so you are in a long chain of sources that will eventually link back on itself.
these get cited often as source in articles when they are fake sources, just used to boost SEO on a website.
Here's just a few examples proving Wikipedia is useless, and only used to add/remove specific info, add bias that's not easily detected with logic fallacies, typical propaganda tricks.
Paying $1 per edit: http://www.blackhatworld.com/b...
Hiring a few different editors (various accounts from different ip's to look legit) to modify articles: http://www.blackhatworld.com/b...
Wikipedia admin selling services: http://www.blackhatworld.com/b...
Hiring editors to make edits: http://www.blackhatworld.com/b...
There's thousands of links on that one site, then other sites as well.
"Paid to write wikipedia articles" is supposed to be against the rules, but you can find thousands, most even include usernames, but wikipedia don't really give a shit. unless you are a new account of course, if a 1 day old account writes a really good article you get banned. The reason for banning is they accuse you of being a professional or paid writer since they think no brand new account can write a complete article including sources by themselves so the admin accounts are bought/traded/ even hired out as well as editors of all levels that have a successful history.
http://www.wizardsofwiki.com/h...
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3f72...
Getting paid to edit wikipedia for leading companies:
http://www.businessinsider.com...
moral of story, never use wikipedia, it's all a facade of ads. :P
like southpark this past season, it's a "cloaked" ad.