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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."
Is the lack of new contributors to Wikipedia a good thing or a bad thing?
Wikipedia started with 0 pages. Now it has 38 million pages. There are fewer articles to write than their were before, and they have realized that having fandom pages for every character of every new anime series isn't what Wikipedia is for. That restricts the easy-to-write new articles and means new contributors leave because they don't have anything to contribute.
Been there, had that happen to me. In my instance, I even provided a link to the transcript of the TV show to justify what I had written. At that point, the editor rejected it because of a grammatical error (i.e., wrong tense on a verb). Why couldn't the editor just fix the verb's tense? Geesh.....
After having four new pages in a row deleted that had four or more citations each, I gave up. One of the pages was for my uncle who was nominated for a grammy and has two platinum records, but his page was deleted for not being "notable."
Exactly this. The requirement for "reliable references" and their method of vetting references (i.e., must be published in mass media or some equivalent) and the on-purpose rejection of "personal research" allow the perpetuation of inaccurate history even though current research may have turned up additional data that overturns the "common knowledge" of the day. A couple of years ago several of us actual Sunbeam Tiger owners had a discussion with the "editor" of the ST Wikipedia page, to attempt to present a viewpoint that adheres more closely to actual fact as opposed to some of the popular apochryphal tales that were put in print by some prolific automotive press writers. No go, because two of the editors had decided between them, without consultation of anyone that might have actual hands-on knowledge, that they had it "right" and therefore any counter viewpoint was without merit, regardless of how obvious the error was. Even attempts to go up the chain of authority had little success because of the established status of the editor in question.
Less is more.
Yes. More to the point, the problem is asshole editors, editors who feel that they "own" hundreds of pages to the exclusion of anyone else, and the bots that enable all of this behavior.
I've lost track of how many times I've made a factual, minor edit to a Wikipedia page, only to have said edit automatically reverted seconds later. I'm talking everything from a punctuation or grammar correction, to updating an NFL player's page when he was drafted by another team, to adding a fully cited reference with <ref> tags in a section where [citation needed] was planted. I'm not out to vandalize or spread disinformation, I'm trying to make positive edits, but heaven forbid I dare to edit a page that someone else considers their personal baby.
It's not worth the effort trying to contribute when there's a 50% or better chance that my contribution, however benign, will be immediately reverted, either by a robot or by someone who thinks that all edits must meet their personal muster. And those people are backed up by the establishment. Sorry, I'm not part of "the club" who has 12 hours a day to devote to curating Wikipedia pages, but over the past few years it seems those people are the only ones whose edits are accepted.
"Wikipedia has changed from “the encyclopedia that anyone can edit” to “the encyclopedia that anyone who understands the norms, socializes him or herself, dodges the impersonal wall of semi-automated rejection and still wants to voluntarily contribute his or her time and energy can edit”
The former turned out to be a monumentally bad idea, creating a space filled with weird conspiracy editors, tendentious axe-grinding, automated submission systems, random drive-by vandalism, massive amount of astroturfing, and general trolling. Hence, the latter.
Not just social justice warriors. The entire 'open' encyclopedia is rife with editors and people that have more control than others to make and roll back edits. Niche topics are controlled in and large by corporate shills, know-it-all armchair experts and others with interest to keep the status quo. Somehow the people with a special interest in a topic (aka payed for social media spin doctors) gained control, grew to the top of the pyramid and are preventing anything that doesn't fit their agenda to go in.
For example any topic on Jehovahs Witnesses is controlled and edited by a Jehovahs Witness who rolls back any edit that is not published by their own official public releases and when pressed in the editor forums they mention that 'apostate' sources aren't trustworthy or independently confirmed (even things supported by journalists such as leaked internal doctrinal documents and publications, court cases and books) So are the Scientology topics (a few years ago at least) and to a lesser extent quite a few mainstream Christian doctrine topics.
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