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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."
What the hell?
Wikipedia's asshole editors are causing its decline. It has been going on for a long time.
It's the editing cabals that are causing the decline. No new user will put up with that kind of bullshit and stick around.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
...when a simple (small, perfectly accurate, in accordance with the guidelines) edit I did to clarify a definition apparently warranted no less than 3 separate "warnings" about it; I could only conclude that they didn't, in fact, wanted contributions.
AC comments get piped to
Most organizations when they start there is rapid growth, for Wikipedia, there is a lot of information to be loaded in and maintained. Now for the most part a lot of this information is in, and may be taking minor edits or changes for most articles. Many things do not have new insights or new discoveries in generations. So the bulk of the articles don't need to be updated with latest and greatest, because they are already there.
So a decline in contributions is expected as it is now one of the great repositories of information.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
There is another point to consider: at the beginning, there was a lot to do, including easy stuff. You only had to know well a subject and be the first to write the article. Nowadays, almost everything is already written. To make a significant contribution, you would have to be an expert on an obscure topic.
I tried to make some corrections to some pages a few years back...you guessed it - totally reverted almost instantly! No recourse or reason, totally turned me off trying to help...
Now some may argue that this is part of an effort to keep out slanted/paid content, but that ship has sailed, and the interests that can afford to pay editors to push articles a certain way have the power and funding to push through the curmudgeons. The current attitude actually only serves those interests, as small, independent editors are more likely to get discouraged and leave.
Mr. Wales doesn't care though, as long as he can do his yearly beg for money dance all is good in his world.
Silence is a state of mime.
Go ahead and try to make a contribution to a Wikipedia article.
Watch as it's reverted within minutes by the veteran editor who is babysitting that article.
Go ahead and try and cite sources when trying to add something.
Watch as your sources are labeled as biased or not trustworthy.
Wikipedia is a nepotism-fueled hellhole. Truth doesn't matter, only "verifiability". And "verifiability" is entirely subjective depending on the editor you're fighting against. You'll see sources like Buzzfeed considered higher-priority than official sources, if the editor feels like it. You cannot contribute to Wikipedia. You'll get crushed between the different editing factions, or "projects" as they're officially called.
It isn't just the shitty editors, though. It's the shitty editors who are enabled and empowered by the so-called "social justice" movement.
The "social justice" movement is all about exerting control over what others think, believe and express. This is done by any means necessary, including hypocrisy and censorship.
There is a huge overlap between those who support the "social justice" movement and those who participate as editors at Wikipedia. Both draw in the same sort of academically-minded people who can't function within the real world. So they build their bureaucracies in academia and online at places like Wikipedia where they can actively engage in the suppression of others.
These are the people who will manipulate Wikipedia articles to match the narrative that they want to dictate. These are the people who will suppress any sort of original thought. These are the sort of people who claim to be "tolerant", while practicing what is an extreme form of intolerance. These are the sorts of people who will mislabel their opponents as "racists" or "sexists" or "intolerant" or "bullies", even when that's clearly not the case.
The awful editing at Wikipedia is just a symptom of the "social justice" disease that affects society today.
...suggests that a sharp decline in the retention of newcomers is the cause....
That's the symptom.
In order to solve the problem, go after the causes, not the symptoms.
.
The reason for the sharp decline in retention of newcomers is the way their edits are treated. Fix that and you'll have more contributors.
I still remember the very day that Wikipedia's homepage strictly stated "DON'T POST THIS ON SLASHDOT", which of course I found through Slashdot. Back when the site first launched, that very first day. For the first couple of years, I contributed quite a bit, but don't really do much of that ever anymore. Why?
It is the "low hanging fruit" problem: http://www.urbandictionary.com...
Essentially, all of the easy and common knowledge topics have already been covered. We're at the point now where only two types of edits can really happen. First is highly specialized knowledge, so yes, only a fraction of the community can do that properly. The second is new and emerging ideas, which is generally also highly specialized knowledge that has yet to become common knowledge, so again a very small subset of people who can contribute.
If anything, this isn't a problem. It means they've achieved a very significant goal. They have a huge percentage of human factual knowledge all in one place.
Even if there were no new relevant topics emerging, existing articles still have to be maintained, and there are a lot of errors to fix.
Sure, but the point is that maintaing existing articles is harder and requires more experienced editors. Whereas when it was new, Wikipedia relied on a large number of newcomers. So is this trend a decline, or a demographics shift? So far, nobody seems to be forking Wikipedia, which makes me think that this isn't a groundswell of upset where people really want to edit it but they can't.
Newcomers who try to update and correct articles are quickly scared away by "editors" whose only occupation is to fend off intruders.
*shrugs* I see lots of Slashdot posts saying that, yet it never happens to me, and nobody links to their reverted edits so we can't judge.
Lastly:
You don't know what you're talking about
On Slashdot, it seems like a requirement to make an ad hominem attack in every post. I know the post was an AC, so it is to be expected, but I'm making a habit of pointing this out when it happens.
If someone is going to claim that a big city is a crime-ridden hellhole, I'd at least like to see a news article about their mugging, or their black eye, or something.
Wikipedia is basically a big city with all-seeing cameras on every intersection. I'm not saying it's never corrupt or abused, but the people making such accusations could at least post a link to the edits in question so we can look at the issue as an objective 3rd party. It might just have the effect eliminating some tinpot shithead editor by putting the spotlight on them!
But in all the Slashdot articles about Wikipedia, I never see anyone link to the outrageous reverts they are constantly bitching about.