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."

Comments

Re: So-called "social justice" is to blame, too.

[Anonymous Coward]

The article about the Michael Brown incident is a good example, if you're really unable to find one on your own.

The first misleading part is the title. It should be called "Rampage of Michael Brown". The shooting was just a minor part of the much bigger incident which started with Brown violently robbing a shop.

Another misleading part are the multiple references to Brown being "unarmed". He may not have been armed with a gun, but he did weigh nearly 100 lbs more than Officer Wilson. That 100 lbs of extra weight is definitely a type of weapon that could cause serious harm.

Then there's the fact that the article brings race into it. Race had nothing to do with what happened. It was merely a case of somebody who had just engaged in violent criminal behavior then violently attacking an armed police officer who did the only sensible thing and defended himself. The skin color of the people involved is irrelevant.

Now if anyone goes and tries to correct those flaws with the article you can be sure that the editors would put an end to such corrections immediately. They're not interested in a truthful article; they're interested in an article that supports their narrative, even in a case like this where there's ample evidence disproving that narrative.