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

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell?

Wikipedia's asshole editors are causing its decline. It has been going on for a long time.

Re:What?

[JMJimmy]

Asshole editors, inability to allow a mediocre edit be improved by others, rules that only apply to casual editors and not "the elite wikipedians" (read as crazy nut jobs with no lives on power trips), inability to make changes to articles where the thing has changed over time (like standards), on and on and on... and at the end of it all you cannot delete your account/disassociate yourself from Wikimedia because assholes.

Re:What?

[TigerNut]

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.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:What?

[bhcompy]

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.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a lamentable but hard-to-sidestep effect of avoiding the "I heard that X is true" school of editing. Without a reference that can be easily checked online, who knows whether a person saying "I know X from personal experience, it's outrageous that you haven't included it in the article!" isn't full of crap? As erroneous eye-witness accounts in trials too often demonstrate, "hands-on knowledge" can be really, really wrong.

That's why the whole cumbersome reference citation-needed hoohaa was developed. It's very flawed, but the alternative seems to be worse.

Re:What?

[TigerNut]

I completely appreciate the need to vet any contribution, but the system puts too much power in the hands of the established editor, to reject the addition of new references that may provide a counter viewpoint to what is currently on the page. Even a new analysis of the merits of the posted references (eg. saying "I added up all the production numbers posted by references X, Y, and Z, and I can arrive at a different conclusion from what is posted"), can be disallowed as being independent research, where in fact it is exactly the same process that the original editor used.

Re:What?

[jbolden]

What you are describing is original research and has been against policy since even before 2006. Wikipedia wants to reflect the mainstream press and most reliable sources. It makes no claims to represent a "truth" beyond that. If something is wrong in the mainstream press, fix it there.

Re: What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, something *is* wrong with the mainstream press, and this has been the case since forever. Furthermore, vetted academic texts are often behind paywalls.

And, as we've learned, trying to fix academic paywalls could get you investigated by federal prosecutors with a death-gleam in their eye.

Re: What?

[jbolden]

Wikipedia can reflect information behind paywalls as long as it isn't violating copyright. Paywalls aren't the issue.

Re: What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Paywalls are absolutely part of the issue, they're discriminatory by nature and allow only a very small subset of editors to contribute sources using material from behind the paywall. Furthermore, many journalistic sources now also use paywalls, further constricting the editor-base and introducing bias favouring the small groups who have such access.

Re:What?

[the_povinator]

Agreed, this is the issue. I've had the same problems on multiple different pages, including on a math page where the editor who controlled it did not seem to understand the topic himself.

Re: What?

[jbolden]

The amount of free information in 2015 is much higher than it was in 2003. The number of people with access to paywalled internet sites is higher than 2003. I don't see what you are claiming changed after 2006 regarding paywalls.

Re:What?

[rudy_wayne]

Asshole editors, inability to allow a mediocre edit be improved by others, rules that only apply to casual editors and not "the elite wikipedians" (read as crazy nut jobs with no lives on power trips), inability to make changes to articles where the thing has changed over time (like standards), on and on and on... and at the end of it all you cannot delete your account/disassociate yourself from Wikimedia because assholes.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

The Wikimedia foundation spent $52.5 Million in fiscal year 2015 (an increase of $7 Million over the previous year). None of that money was spent on content creation and editing -- that's all done by unpaid volunteers.

Until Wikipedia starts running itself like a real business, the decline will continue. That includes a full time staff of employees who are paid to oversee content creation, weed out the asshole editors that eventually drive away anyone interested in contributing, and who are held responsible if they don't do their job.

Re:What?

[rudy_wayne]

If Wikipedia and its current admins had been around in 1890, they would have deleted the entry for Vincent Van Gogh due to "lack of notability".

Re:What?

[tepples]

And in 1890, van Gogh might not have qualified for inclusion in a general-interest encyclopedia such as Britannica. But decades later, he eventually came to qualify, as other sources began to report more on his works.

Re:What?

[TigerNut]

Wikipedia wants to reflect the mainstream press and most reliable sources..

The problem is that "reliable" is only as good as the background knowledge of the editor on the particular topic being discussed, and his/her willingness to be objective in the light of new information.

Re:What?

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

I know how you feel. I have books that pre-date the Internet with information on the engines and development team, from Alfa Romeo. The wiki page is so far off base on just about everything in that area. But try to correct it and it's a total no go.

So these days, I look at wikipedia and a good starting point to find general information. If I want *accurate* information, I go elsewhere.

Re:What?

[careysub]

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.

Re:What?

[jbolden]

Not really. Reliable in wikipedia is defined in terms of mainstream acceptance. Things like: strong academic credentials, strong sales... objective criteria that don't require topical knowledge.

Re:What?

[FunkSoulBrother]

Care to link us to some of the more egregious examples from your pile of reverted edits?

Re:What?

[thinkwaitfast]

I helped a friend in 2009 who had published a book create a wikipedia page for herself. We gave up after 4 attempts of being deleted within literal seconds and despite being a real (not self published) book. She finally got a page around 2011....

Re:What?

[TigerNut]

I understand the Wikipedia use of the word "reliable" and it's unfortunate they adopted an approach where an oft-repeated story by a coffee-table-book author can obliterate facts that were learned only through years of careful research by niche enthusiasts.

If Jimmy had created a way for expert information to be included (with appropriate justification from non-mainstream references), rather than just depending on regurgitated mainstream dreck, then Wikipedia would not be the lowest common denominator that it is, and maybe he would not have such a hard time getting donations to keep it going.

Re:What?

[jbolden]

It isn't the coffee table book. It is best sources. But mostly they went the other way on that. They want non-mainstream out not in. I agree it can be frustrating and I think they often go too far but their position is they don't want to get involved in arguments. Have the arguments elsewhere with other experts not on wikipedia.

Re:What?

[Cederic]

maybe he would not have such a hard time getting donations to keep it going.

My understanding is that wikipedia has a massive cash pool, enough to fund potentially decades of continued operation, and the ongoing fundraising is frankly bewildering.

You have evidence they're short on cash?

Re:What?

[hughperkins]

So, why not fork wikipedia? What's to stop that? Or is it like, it's not ideal, but it mostly works ok?

On the whole, my own experiences with Wikipedia have been more or less ok:
- as a contributor: on high traffic pages, trying to edit something is not going to get very far. But... whatever
- as a contributor: on low-traffic pages, as far as I know, edits mostly go through, unless you say something that conflicts too much with someone else's agenda. Adding equations: works ok. Adding some opinion on someone's personal bio page: might not get very far
- as a reader/end-user: most stuff is approximately correct, most of the time, at least for the uses I make of it, ie looking up some scientific or mathematical concept

Re:What?

[AthanasiusKircher]

Wikipedia wants to reflect the mainstream press and most reliable sources.

That's simply not true. Wikipedia wants to reflect the consensus of the most ACCESSIBLE and POPULAR sources, which include the mainstream press.

In another reply in this thread, you also claim that Wikipedia doesn't want to get involved in scholarly debates or whatever -- but that's also not true. It wants to declare whatever appears in the most ACCESSIBLE AND POPULAR sources as correct, regardless of what the consensus of scholars is.

The more obscure the field, the more likely you are to find this sort of tension, particularly when that obscure field also tends to show up in popular accounts (often in very naive ways). You'll see this, for example, in a lot of humanities articles, where there's a scholarly consensus that some popular account has been wrong for half a century, but Wikipedia still states that incorrect popular view, because it appears in ACCESSIBLE AND POPULAR sources.

Meanwhile, if you go to any academic journal in that field, it would be immediately clear that the popular view is crap. But try correcting something like that on Wikipedia.

In a mainstream print encyclopedia back in the day, you would inevitably have some of that too. But the bigger encyclopedias would at least hire some subject editors who could differentiate between some nonsense spouted in a popular "History of Art for Dummies" coffee-table book and dozens of articles by experts in professional journals of the field.

I'm specifically talking about things here that are non-controversial. The consensus of experts is settled, but those results haven't trickled down to the mainstream media and popular literature. It's next to impossible to correct such errors on Wikipedia -- and yes, they are ERRORS, not simply a "different view" or some sort of "popular consensus."

I've tried to fix some of these years ago, but gave up. In one case, I made a change and posted a talk page thing explaining the edit with a source, which was reverted. I then posted links to over a DOZEN standard professional articles on the subject that make it clear what the scholarly consensus is, and how mainstream perception is based on an old myth that was discounted by experts decades ago. It was reverted summarily, and my sources were deleted. That was actually the final straw that caused me to stop editing Wikipedia after being somewhat active for a couple years and gradually discovering how screwed up it was.

Wikipedia's biggest problem in accuracy (aside from random vandalism) is that it simply doesn't have any equivalent of the old paper encyclopedia subject editor who could recognize the difference between "most reliable sources" (as you put it) and random popular fluff that could very well be wrong (but is "verifiable"). It usually takes someone familiar with a field and the literature of that field to be able to know which sources to trust.

And even if some subject expert manages to fight the bureaucracy and get some edits through to make an article more accurate, it could easily be reverted next week or next month or next year... by some idiot who read three popular books and thinks he knows better. So a subject expert has to not only commit to learning the Wikipedia bureaucracy and fighting it to make headway, but then has to commit to perpetual policing of such edits.

Sorry, but most academics have better things to do with their time. Thus, Wikipedia is guaranteed to gradually get further and further away from the "truth" or "consensus" of specialist literature, which repeating the same old crap said in popular sources.

Re:What?

[McFortner]

What you are describing is original research and has been against policy since even before 2006. Wikipedia wants to reflect the mainstream press and most reliable sources. It makes no claims to represent a "truth" beyond that. If something is wrong in the mainstream press, fix it there.

The problem is that more and more the mainstream press is using Wikipedia for it's fact checking, resulting in a doom spiral for truth.

Re:What?

[TapeCutter]

What you describe is called an "appeal to authority", it is a logical fallacy. Other than that, slashdot sure does hate an open and transparent meritocracy where they are the noob. And no, I don't edit WP, I just read it.

Re:What?

[TigerNut]

Nope, I was just going by the continuous barrage of give-to-us popups.

Re:What?

[TigerNut]

What you describe is called an "appeal to authority", it is a logical fallacy.

Point taken. The issue with the particular page I have a vested interest in, is that it mostly concerns hard facts for which there is documentation in the form of build records, inter-company correspondence, as well as the physical evidence of features on cars that I've seen, touched, and owned. For a variety of reasons, the authors of the books used as reference on the Wiki page did not have access to all the documentation that is now known to exist, at the time they published their books; but, due to the arcane machinations of Wikipedia, even those authors are not currently able to refute themselves in the eyes of the editors and get the pages fixed... evidently the only "authority" are the Wikipedia editors, which is just as wrong.

Re:What?

[Cito]

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.
like southpark this past season, it's a "cloaked" ad. :P

Re:What?

[TapeCutter]

I look at wikipedia [as] a good starting point to find general information.

Ironically, that is exactly what you are supposed to do with ANY encyclopedia. It's entire purpose is to be a summary of knowledge found in accessible sources. The word itself derives from greek and translates to "general knowledge".

Re:What?

[ShanghaiBill]

I always felt they were having issues once they decided to delete pages and more specifically information they consider trivia.

This is why I stopped contributing. Several pages where I had spent a lot of time and effort, were summarily deleted, with no explanation and no way to appeal the decision. That was five years ago, and I have not contributed one minute or donated one dime since. I don't understand the deletionist mindset. If you don't search for the topic, you won't see it, and it doesn't matter if it trivia. If you do search for it, then it is obviously an important, non-trivial topic for you.

Re:What?

[harlequinn]

Wikipedia's attempt to redefine the term original research doesn't help.

Research articles, or primary articles are based on original research. I.e. someone makes a hypothesis, tests it, and writes it up. Furthermore the person who designed and performed the test is the paper author.

It's telling that Wikipedia even has to qualify the definition as their own interpretation: 'The phrase "original research" (OR) is used on Wikipedia to refer to material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published sources exist.' (italics mine)

Re: What?

[harlequinn]

The amount of paywalled information is also higher now in 2015 than it was in 2003.

Restricting information so that the general public can't verify it's veracity without paying money makes those references useless to a very large amount of people.

You could even game a paywall system.

E.g. make an edit with a reference to a fake article behind a paywalled site that you setup. Make the subscription cost to the site very expensive. Will anyone but a very motivated, wealthy individual, with a lot of time on their hands, pay and investigate the paywalled article? Done carefully enough it may be possible to avoid detection for quite a while.

Re:What?

[harlequinn]

Yes really. Wikipedia should stop attempting to redefine words or phrases to suit their purpose. It muddies the waters.

Re:What?

[harlequinn]

An "appeal to authority" requires that the person not be an authority on the subject.

If he and the other enthusiasts are authorities on Sunbeam Tigers then it is not an appeal to authority. I suggest that if they felt strongly enough to attempt a factorial edit in regards to Sunbeam Tigers, then they are very likely authorities on the topic.

The question is, under what circumstances do you get to decide whether or not the person has authority.

Nice guide here: http://www.nizkor.org/features...

(note - I'm arguing from prior knowledge of this fallacy, but I did look up the guide to post a link for others to read more)

Re:What?

[jbolden]

A document that claims to be summary of the opinion of authorities is not committing a fallacy when it makes an appeal to said authorities. The appeal to authority fallacy requires a dismissal of evidence. Wikipedia doesn't evaluate the evidence at all.

Re:What?

[jbolden]

In theory if the authors of those books published elsewhere (like a blog) that they were wrong that would be a better source. Experts are allowed to refine their opinion. But they would have to do the retraction off wikipedia.

Re:What?

[jbolden]

I think that you get the policy that an academic consensus is going to be taken over a popular position. As far as your sources being deleted and ... that's Wikipedia's obnoxious culture not the ban on original research. No question after 2006 the culture for Wikipedia became more obnoxious. However what GP was talking about above was something that even if Wikipedia were functioning properly would still be a violation of policy.

  I'd say the situation you are describing that:

a) There exists a clear academic consensus X
b) There exists a clear popular consensus Y
c) X and Y disagree

Mostly though Wikipedia wants to reflect the truth in popular sources not the consensus of specialist literature. Both views probably need to be reflected. That approach is also less likely to get reverted or rejected in time. Trying to maintain a position that the academic view is right even while Y is still maintained in the popular literate is not going to fly. Ultimately the question is going to be "why is the academic position being rejected by popular writers?" As far as the changes in time. Wikipedia represents the best opinion of editors at the time of their edits. Articles flow back and forth depending on who shows up. A specialist can help influence an article in a positive direction and those changes might stick, but they might not. Ultimately the best way for the specialist to affect Wikipedia would be t write a piece of popular literature on the topic and thus destroy the popular consensus around Y.

Re:What?

[jbolden]

Not really:

step 1: Get "the truth" published in high quality locations
step 2: Get "the truth" published in wikipedia
step 3: Get "the truth" published in low quality mainstream sources.

Wikipedia has never wanted to try and be a replacement for step 1.

Re:What?

[jbolden]

How is that a redefinition?

academic: if someone has a published paper saying X then saying X is not original research
Wikipedia: if someone has a published paper saying X then saying X is not original research

Re: What?

[jbolden]

Your game doesn't matter.

X is a citation behind an expensive paywall, P.
Either
a) P is well regarded and mainstream and thus large numbers of people have access
b) P is niche

In case (b) a counter point from a well regarded site would overwhelm the facts from P. If a consensus appeared to emerge contradicting P the fact would be removed even without the citation ever being refuted.

Re: What?

[cthulhu11]

I added a photo a few years back to an existing article. I had to go figure out some entirely different web site to host it, get an account, figure out how to insert it. Took me like an hour. Compared to the three clicks it should have taken.

Re:What?

[MoarSauce123]

I find that contributing to WikiPedia is needlessly complicated and cumbersome. Starts with the incredibly tedious to use wiki markup and ends not only with the entire submission process. It might keep the casual writer out who might not source articles well, but making contributing tricky and complaining that folks do not contribute is the pot calling the kettle black.

Re:What?

[akozakie]

> Ultimately the question is going to be "why is the academic position being rejected by popular writers?"

Umm... Because it's reinforced by Wikipedia? A well-meaning author will check the facts in the most accessible source he has - the Wikipedia - and consider that enough. After all, he's not writing an academic paper, spending days on research would be overkill. Then his writing will support the current content of Wikipedia against the academic consensus. Perpetuum mobile.

> Ultimately the best way for the specialist to affect Wikipedia would be t write a piece of popular literature on the topic and thus destroy the popular consensus around Y.

You're joking, right? The set of skills required for being a specialist in the field and a good popular writer do not necessarily overlap. One piece of popular literature is not going to "destroy the popular consensus", especially if it is a widely spread myth. And a really good specialist in the field, any field, is likely to have a lot of work, far more than mediocre ones. The hours spent on Wikipedia are a much more significant commitment than the no-life editors realize. Writing a piece of popular literature and getting it published is likely too much effort and not going to happen.

Wikipedia is going down due to this, it's just not going down very fast.

No worries though. It will be replaced. Probably by something that will repeat this cycle, since it's the natural lifecycle of a human effort.

Re:What?

[lucien86]

Yes but the trouble with that is that it is plain common sense.

Re:What?

[harlequinn]

You replied to an explanation.

Academic - primary research papers are considered "original research".
Wikipedia - facts, allegations, and ideas for which no reliable published source exists are considered "original research".

The academic definition is basically all primary research. The wikipedia definition only encompasses a small subset of research which doesn't belong to a reliable source. They define different things and AFAIK one (the academic definition) existed well before the other.

Re: What?

[harlequinn]

Of course there are circumstances where it wouldn't work.

But there are circumstances where it would as well. E.g. there are plenty of niche papers cited on wikipedia. Unless there are sufficient knowledgeable people editing that page who are intimate with the relevant papers, then it is likely to go by unnoticed. As you would know, there are examples of purposeful misedits going by unnoticed for years on wikipedia.

Re:What?

[Alsee]

TigerNut, I glanced over the pages you alluded to. You had the misfortune to bump into Wikipedia's most infamous editor. He has been blocked repeatedly for his abusive treatment of other editors. The community has been reluctant to permanently block him because he produces a vast quantity of high quality work. There has been a lot of controversy about it. At what point does the harm he causes outweigh the value of his massive contributions?

You also ran into a second issue. I see you've pretty well figured it out, but I'll discuss it for public benefit. Most new editors are surprised to discover that Wikipedia does not allow articles to contain "truth". Instead, the goal of Wikipedia is to accurately summarize what reliable sources say.

If most reliable sources say the moon is made of cheese, then Wikipedia is going to accurately reflect those sources.

There's a pretty good reason for that. Editors show up at all sorts of articles wanting to write "truth". Articles about astrology, politics, evolution, ghosts, religions, global warming, everywhere. People know "the truth" and want to write it into the articles. As a matter of sanity and survival Wikipedia HAS to have a rule to shut down the kooks, believers, and activists. The rule is that Wikipedia don't deal in Truth, it deals in Reliable Sources. Editors don't judge the Truth, editors judge the Sources.

It is a messy problem when reliable sources are wrong. That's a problem Wikipedia can't fix. Editors can try to apply some common sense and hopefully find an agreeable way to deal with it. But when there's a dispute, the rule is to summarize the sources. Astrologers have to accept astrology is considered pseudoscience. Experts in recording ghost-voices have to accept that it's considered pseudoscience. Creationists and climate change deniers have to accept that evolution and global warming are considered solid mainstream accepted science. And as a side effect, you may have to accept that it's going to be difficult to fix an article if the available reliable sources screwed up.

Re:What?

[TigerNut]

Yeah, I recall getting similar feedback from others at the time (regarding this particular editor).

I understand the system and the reason for preferring summaries of "reliable sources" over "independent truth", but it was (and is) really frustrating that this particular guy was absolutely against making any changes to the article largely because it had achieved "featured article" status at some point, under his purview. It was, in fact, that FA status that made Tiger folks pay attention to the article and realize it was full of errors. The editor would not accept any sources (in popular press or otherwise) other than the ones he'd decided were "most reliable", which essentially makes it un-fixable within the Wikipedia rules.

Re: What?

[lucien86]

But the only reason that purposeful misedits can exist for so long is usually because there is no reliable source to check the certainty of the facts, and no real expert who can look and immediately spot the deceit or error.
And you can also have misedits based on verifiable sources. No source is 100% trustworthy. Even the most staid and august scientific journals cannot bury themselves so deep in peer review that they can guarantee no errors. Scientific Conservatism itself can sometimes become a source of errors.

In partisan subjects like history there usually is no base of absolute truth and all sources are biased to some extent by their own roots and physical organisation.
Then on subjects like Astrology where do you go for accurate detailed sources?? the people who are 'experts' in the field? scientific sceptics & critics? anthropologists? subject specialist journalists? non specialist journalists? By trying to aim too high Wikipedia has made itself next to useless as a resource on many such subjects.. Being 'Encyclopaedic' means that Wikipedia has to cover such subjects..

Re:What?

[cwsumner]

It sounds like they are talking two different dialects of "technish"! 8-)

Librarians have a different technical jargon than scientists, and Wickipedia is basically librarians. Or maybe not, by now they may have drifted into their own private dialect.

If you are talking -to- Wickipedia, then you are constained to talk in their dialect. If talking to others, then use what they are used to. And never assume that people define words the same. Most arguments are really just about definitions of words...

Re:What?

[nobodie]

What everyone is harping about (too much power in the hands of established editors) is the standard for academic acceptance of new information.

A story/an anecdote: My friend from Spain, Jorge, was working around US campuses as a visiting professor right after getting his newly minted PhD in Linguistics. He had discovered that he would never make it in a Spanish department where the Dean and the tenured professors were all much older than he was: they had set up their camp, only hired people they wanted who would defend the accepted ideas of the existing power structure and turn away anyone who didn't want to play the game their way. This is the reality for most departments with entrenched power structures.

Another, similar, power elite structure that occurs (and I maintain that these are all natural processes, not evil plans by greedy old men) is what goes on in my department (which is very young, very forward looking-- while the dean has a PhD, our "academic director" is still finishing theirs) and is still warped by an elite created by the simple numbers of faculty hired from the Applied Linguistics program run by our university. These kids come out of the program with a particular view of teaching that is reinforced by the fact that they all learned the same thing through the same process and expect the same results. Of course they see the world through the same filters. So someone like myself, with 15 years of experience in the field and another 4 years in this university, crashes into their established and "fully supported" approaches to the knowledge and its dissemination.

To conclude: To meet academic standards of quality for information, Wikipedia has recreated the established academic systems around areas of knowledge. This is really pretty understandable considering the reality of academic life. To rebuild, retrain, change expectations and outcomes and processes to something "better" without some kind of experimentation into results that improve the transmission of the information and the vetting process, there is no way to change it. The system does work, but very slowly and it stays at least a generation behind the times. Sometimes even more: I have been railing at the teaching of a particular piece of English pronunciation for almost twenty years, based on solid and easily reproducible and understandable research done in the 70s, and still it is taught, described and written as if the new ideas didn't exist. So, this is where human nature meets transmission of information.

No

[OverlordQ]

It's the editing cabals that are causing the decline. No new user will put up with that kind of bullshit and stick around.

Re:No

[cfalcon]

Wikipedia at this point is just a site that has one point of view on something. It's assuredly not a neutral point of view, and massive swaths of data on the site are suppressed or banned, including entire social movements. In many cases, discussion and topics are deleted, and their policies on original research often eliminate uncontroversial but interesting things. The fact that their primary method of debate is deletionism, there's no possible way to debate them. It's a private website with an agenda, much like any other slanted website.

Re: No

[cyber-vandal]

So it's become Conservapedia then.

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it is worse than Conservapedia because while Conservapedia has a bias, at least they are upfront about it and it is easy to detect, it is in the website's name for goodness sake. However, Wikipedia has biases, but they are much harder to determine because they change depending on the subject area and sometimes are different depending on the particular article you are reading. Subtle biases are much more dangerous than big, in-your-face ones.

Re: No

[cyber-vandal]

Conservapedia is at least unintentionally hilarious.

Gave up on it long ago...

[Sebby]

...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.

Re:Gave up on it long ago...

[Anonymous Coward]

I could only conclude that they didn't, in fact, wanted contributions.

I sure hope they would not want contributions with that type of gammer.

Re:Gave up on it long ago...

[halivar]

gammer.

Irony abounds.

Re:Gave up on it long ago...

[QuietLagoon]

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.....

Re:Gave up on it long ago...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Gave up on it long ago...

[Sebby]

Yes, indeed - hate mis-proof reading my own stuff! However, my original argument stands.

Re:Gave up on it long ago...

[Sebby]

Actually in this instance it was correct - 'wanted' is past tense, hence grammar (If I had written 'wantde', that would be a spelling error).

Re:Gave up on it long ago...

[Sebby]

Yes, indeed - hate mis-proof reading my own stuff! However, my original argument stands

Re:Gave up on it long ago...

[Sebby]

Kinda like some AC's about my original post :) Too bad ./ doesn't have some sort of moderator-monitored editing of posts itself! ;)

Re:Gave up on it long ago...

[Z00L00K]

From one perspective I can understand that they want to try to keep an unified structure, but from another perspective they also need to accept some variations on how stuff is written and the structure and don't waste time on changing formalities that aren't necessary to change.

I have been a bit annoyed by some changes that are performed by automated bots that Wikipedia has as well, some of those changes are completely redundant and don't enhance the content at all. All those small changes are quite annoying and disruptive for anyone that produces information.

Not that I hope that anyone from Wikipedia ever sees this.

Re:Gave up on it long ago...

[gweilo8888]

My god, a non-native English speaker making an effort to speak English? Quick, let's dog-pile him and grind his resolve into dust!

/sometimes I despair for my fellow man

Re:Gave up on it long ago...

[Sebby]

Congratulations, AC, you've shown yourself to be so much smarter than all the rest of us that clearly couldn't possibly have done or noticed a simple typo, and proved your superior knowledge to the world by not only pointlessly pointing it out*, but also endlessly harp about it.
*except for the part where I specifically admitted 'wanted' was indeed bad grammar, but hey, I guess you could be forgiven for not having noticed that, which was the main point of the post after all.

Re:Gave up on it long ago...

[halivar]

I think your time is better spent picking up a dictionary and reading it, rather than hypocritical pedantry. Based on your spelling of 'grammar', you actually thought it was spelled with an 'e'. And that's fine, as long as your aren't being a English-purity troll on the internet.

Re:Gave up on it long ago...

[halivar]

"an", not "a". I don't want to keep you up at night.

Re:Gave up on it long ago...

[Dutch Gun]

Wikipedia is a pretty decent reference for any subject that hasn't attracted much attention, either by trolls, vandals, or an overbearing editor. Avoid using it for any sort of controversial subject (religion, politics, current events), and it's still a pretty decent source of information.

The sheer breadth of knowledge contained there still continues to be very helpful to me personally. Need to know something about a particular computer algorithm? Wikipedia will likely have a pretty decent article explaining it. Need to find an episode list of a particular TV series? Wikipedia is almost sure to have it. How about some basic information about a historical figure or event? Yep, that too. Just understand the source of the information, and take it with a grain of salt. The odds are it's probably accurate, but there's no real guarantee.

Most of the complaints I hear revolve around the editing process, which I'd imagine most people don't get involved in. Personally, I typically just *use* the site (although I'll occasionally make minor corrections or improvements when I see the need), which I think is probably true of most people as well. I'm sure as hell not interested enough to get in pissing matches about edits with an editor. I can understand why that would turn you away, and I suspect its done the same for a lot of people, which is too bad, but I'm not sure I'd go as far to call that a "decline" in the website. Maybe "potential for decline" is more suitable.

Re:Gave up on it long ago...

[Calydor]

"outed yourself"

What, is it a crime or socially unacceptable to not be a native English speaker?

Re:Gave up on it long ago...

[tsotha]

Days later a long time Wikipedia luminary inserted the exact same information without any objection.

I've heard this complaint from dozens of sources: "I made an edit that got rejected. Then some short time later an established editor added the same information."

Re:Gave up on it long ago...

[Hognoxious]

That's not the issue. It's gobbing off like he's an expert when he's fucking wrong.

Re:Gave up on it long ago...

[Hognoxious]

It is in fact, incorrect, to say

It is, in fact, incorrect to place commas like that.

When we add "didn't", we have to change it from "wanted" to "want". Crazy, I know, but that's our language. (0_o)

How is it crazy? Other languages that do tenses with an auxiliary + participle/infinitive work like that, probably because it's a) easier b) not redundant and c) allows more tenses e.g. perfect and pluperfect.

Re:Gave up on it long ago...

[FunkSoulBrother]

Please link it, I'd like to make sure that this editor isn't continually up to bad rejections

Re:Gave up on it long ago...

[FunkSoulBrother]

Which article/edits? Lets get this tyrant taken care of.

Re:Gave up on it long ago...

[AmiMoJo]

Can you (and all the others complaining) provide links to the articles in question, and ideally your user name. Everything is archived on Wikipedia so we can look at what happened ourselves.

Decline doesn't mean death.

[jellomizer]

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.

Re:Decline doesn't mean death.

[Major Blud]

I think you nailed it. There's already more than enough dick pics in there ;-)

http://news.slashdot.org/story...

Re:Decline doesn't mean death.

[QuietLagoon]

So a decline in contributions is expected as it is now one of the great repositories of misinformation.

.
FTFY...

Re:Decline doesn't mean death.

[jbolden]

I think you would find the vast majority of articles lack crucial information. There is plenty beyond maintenance.

Re:Decline doesn't mean death.

[swillden]

For example?

Here, let's try this. I used Wikipedia:Random to grab 20 random articles. Can you (or someone else) provide corrections for the majority of them? Or any of them? (Aside: Wikipedia:Random gives a fascinating glimpse into the extreme breadth of Wikipedia topics.)

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
14. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
16. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
17 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
18. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
19. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
20. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

FWIW, my perception is that -- as found in the Nature study a few years ago -- Wikipedia is as good as any other encyclopedia in terms of accuracy, and blows every other encyclopedia in the world away in terms of breadth and depth. Nearly all of the controversy over editing and accuracy is really confined to a small subset of articles which are related to current events or currently-controversial topics. Editors are a little quicker on the "revert" trigger than they should be, but I've found that by providing references and being a little bit persistent (and trying to write reasonably good prose) I can always get corrections in when I see problems. Not that I often see problems in the topics I tend to look up.

Re:Decline doesn't mean death.

[jbolden]

I don't think I could have made corrections but I can see problems.

For example your first article:
San Diego Men's Chorus the history of how and why it was founded as well as by whom is short. It is missing detail. There is still obvious work to be done in filling this in. There are language problems and missing detail example: " SDMC performed some of the finest choral literature from a variety of genres. ". Obvious thing is to fine what they performed and what genres.

On your second article you have Jeffrey Scholten who had the world record as a redlink. The notes are unclear as to their meaning (what does "ADV" mean)...

All the easy articles are gone

[Cigaes]

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.

Re:All the easy articles are gone

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the problem. To have experts on specific topics you will by definition need to expand the contributor base, not shrink it. I will no longer donate to Wikipedia since the organization is essentially a "club" or "gang".

Re:All the easy articles are gone

[TigerNut]

That's thin ice because of the requirement of verifiable sources. If you are an expert and have access to obscure sources (eg. club publications that are not widely available) or personal knowledge, that actual knowledge must not be allowed to taint the previously published tripe because the "tripe" is a "verifiable reference" and your actual knowledge is not.

Re:All the easy articles are gone

[BradMajors]

To make a significant contribution, you would have to be an expert on an obscure topic.

No. The problem is contributors to topics are not experts and the experts don't want to contribute because their contributions will be reverted by non-experts.

Re: All the easy articles are gone

[guruevi]

The problem is that many sources that are conflicting with a certain viewpoint, even if they are true are rejected by editors with an agenda. That's particularly true when you go to subjects on cults or things that are particularly controversial such as the social justice issues. It's also the case for any political issue, candidate or corporation that has the money to hire editors to continue editing 24/7. There are simply too many sources (opinion blogs and PR releases) that are frequently copied and thus 'verified' but sources such as actual (offline) scientific evidence are rejected either because the shills or people that are too lazy to go to a library to verify it.

revert jerks

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Re:revert jerks

[gustygolf]

Yeees, we have two dozen people here complaining about these "someone reverted it for no reason" cases and not a single one of them bothers providing a link to their edit.

We'd like to judge the circumstances ourselves and not rely on unsubstantiated hearsay, thank you very much!

Translation..

[wbr1]

Wikipedia is overrun with territorial asshats who decry even sane edits. The tools used to promote change are in their hands, so newcomers are alienated. Big surprise. As others have mentioned, good edits get warned and deleted constantly. It is not a fun place to be.

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.

Re:Translation..

[wbr1]

Oh.. and this: http://weknowmemes.com/wp-cont...

Re:Translation..

[Anonymous Coward]

yearly? it's like every other week.

Re:Translation..

[Uecker]

My favourite example is the article about researchgate. This company has spammed every scientist on this planet hundred times. But for a long time this very well known and obvious fact could not be mentioned in the wikipedia article because there was no secondary source... on the other hand, every questionable statement put out by researchgate in a press release about themselves was immediately copied into some article by a lazy journalist and so became reliable knowledge. It didn't help that they had paid editors helping keep their article clean from criticism.

You can't contribute to Wikipedia anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:You can't contribute to Wikipedia anymore

[Marcomasino]

What about that fella who tried to include a reference to his own blog on an article about himself. Wasn't allowed as it violated WP:SPSX or some such :)

Re:You can't contribute to Wikipedia anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Watch as your sources are labeled as biased or not trustworthy.

Philip Roth was not allowed to correct the Wikipedia article on "The Human Stain", the book he wrote himself.
The Wikipedia editor considered the interpretation on a random blog more important than the guy who wrote it.
So he was forced to get a letter published by the New Yorker, to get a "credible" source and then it still took some time to remove all traces of the "alternate opinion".

I get the need for unbiased sources, and the "no own research" policy, but there should also be a "demonstrably wrong" policy.
Nowadays you can find many false facts on Wikipedia, only because there is some "reputable" website claiming those facts.

Re:You can't contribute to Wikipedia anymore

[tepples]

The featured article mentions the "BOLD, revert, discuss" process to get the reverting editor to explain the revert. Have you tried that?

Is this a problem?

[MobyDisk]

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.

Re:Is this a problem?

[MobyDisk]

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.

Re:Is this a problem?

[timholman]

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.

But why not? What harm does it do for Wikipedia to host those fandom pages (as it once did)? It's not as if the Pokemon pages are going to bleed over into the pages on the history of WW2. Wikipedia is a digital encyclopedia; the economic limits of page count don't matter. Wikipedia's decline began when they started cracking down on that sort of content, as if it somehow harmed other articles (which it didn't).

On top of that, Wikipedia wants to be treated as an authoritative information source, but you can't have that when any idiot with a keyboard and an agenda has as much editing power as an expert in a given field. Like most people, I gave up on editing long ago; life is too short to spend fighting it out with fanatics who insist on reverting every edit with a "my way or the highway" attitude.

Re:Is this a problem?

[colinrichardday]

It's not as if the Pokemon pages are going to bleed over into the pages on the history of WW2.

Except for that time when Pikachu took out a German panzer with a Molotov cocktail!

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

You get triggered by text on a screen. Go lay down and show some appreciation to the people that do real work that created the Internet for you.

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

[ArylAkamov]

Loving how the comments are proving your point.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't love how you think anyone opposed to the petty totalitarianism you favour must be religious.
Use your noggin.

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

[Dputiger]

Wikipedia's core staff is overwhelmingly male (87%) and mostly white. There is no indication that "social justice" played a role in either the creation of the current system nor the difficulty the site has had in attracting greater participation from members of other races and the opposite sex.

"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."

This is a meaningless attack when evaluated in the context of any other social movement or ideological argument. All ideologies seek, by their nature, to exert control over what others think, feel, and express. If you believe that the First Amendment should have absolutely no restrictions and you loudly advocate for this position and push for laws that would enforce it, you are attempting to create a rigid ideological framework that refuses to consider any challenge to the idea of free speech.

I profoundly disagree with your evaluation of so-called "social justice," as well as your characterization of it as a monolithic and uniform bloc. My problems with your argument, however, aren't rooted in my personal opinion.

"These are the people who will manipulate Wikipedia articles to match the narrative that they want to dictate. "

There've been multiple high-profile articles this year about how Wikipedia is actually prone to manipulation by PR firms and self-interested parties. Drug companies that write glowing entries about new medications. Celebrities and others who hire PR firms to write Wikipedia pages for them. Special interests and organizations that pay those same PR firms to edit entries to confirm points of view.

"These are the people who will suppress any sort of original thought. "

The reason Wikipedia bans personal research and "original thought" is because an encyclopedia is not supposed to be "The Collected Thoughts of Todd." The purpose of an encyclopedia is to present factual, well-researched, documented information. That simple-sounding goal is incredibly difficult in and of itself, before we leap into the quicksand of evaluating the personal opinions of any given person.

"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."

Ironically, it has been Wikipedia itself that's been attacked for standing *by* such opinions in recent years. The debate has been over the degree to which this is true, and what should be done about.

Your point is vague enough to be meaningless. I have no doubt that some people have been erroneously labeled as racist, sexist, and bullies. I have seen no evidence that this is unique or particular to Wikipedia, and no evidence that Wikipedians are more or less prone to this type of behavior than any other organization or group of people working together on the Internet.

You throw a lot of invective, but you offer precious little research to back it up as it pertains to Wikipedia. It therefore seems appropriate to end this with a [Citation Needed.]

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

[phantomfive]

The awful editing at Wikipedia is just a symptom of the "social justice" disease that affects society today.

[citation needed]. You might as well say that systemd is a result of "social justice warriors" (it isn't).

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

[guruevi]

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.

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

[PopeRatzo]

"social justice"

Wishing all of the family of Slashdot commenters a safe and happy New Year.

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

[vel-ex-tech]

Wikipedia's core staff is overwhelmingly male (87%) and mostly white.

Small nitpick. Being white and male does not prevent a person from adopting the "social justice" bully mindset. In fact, I've found it can often reinforce that mindset. In their minds, they're warriors, they're guilty about having these intangible privileges they think they have, so they're going to use those privileges to fight the good fight.

Perhaps ironically, they miss the obvious privileges they do have. Having, say, parents who will pay for one's college education including room and board is a tangible privilege for an individual. One can use demographic data to determine that if one is white, one has a higher chance of having that privilege. One can determine from demographic data that we do still have a race problem in the USA.

A while back, one idiot seriously thought I was going to mansplain (or something) programming to somebody I was teaching because I'm white, present as male to do business, and am a programmer. The person I was tutoring was black and presents as female. Conclusion: I was going to do something to prevent her from learning programming anybody who is white, male, and a programmer is part of a giant conspiracy). Well, he decided to babysit our first few sessions. I hope he felt pretty damned sheepish when Boolean algebra went straight over his vacuous head and my student grasped it instantly.

So, let's look at where the logic in the middle of that anecdote went wrong. I believe it's the hasty generalization, otherwise known as being, deep down, a sexist, racist bigot who thought he would need to white knight for my student. At any rate, certainly not my first IRL encounter with the creature known as the "social justice" bully but hopefully one of the last....

The rest of your comment is well reasoned, although I did have a few "[citation needed]" moments myself, but then again I have this wonderful thing called a search engine integrated into the UI of my browser so I'll leave it at that.

*looks over shoulder to see AC sibling comment while trying to post this logged in* You again? Strange. You're like a non-tl;dr version of me.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Go back to school and learn about opinions, objectivity, fact-checking, oral history, nationalism and historical narratives. Then, we can talk about your narrative and opinions vs. the facts.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

See if the illustrious career of former Wiki editor Ryulong is still on record. Just because he's former doesn't mean the behavior isn't tolerated, there are more and worse editors than him.

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

[phantomfive]

Nah, I'm sure there are editors like that. Probably GG editors like that too......

The question that matters is whether it has an effect overall on Wikipedia. There will always be a few hot topics that are getting a lot of controversial edits, and making people angry.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

There aren't GG editors like that. Anyone who has tried to even take the extreme bias out of the gamergate article(Kotaku is not corrupt. Source: kotaku) is banned. People who start arbitration requests against abusive editors end up getting banned, too.

It's basically all the worse editors on Reddit gathered in one place, showcasing just how broken the system is.

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

[phantomfive]

Anyone who has tried to even take the extreme bias out of the gamergate article

I certainly can believe that there is a huge controversy and bias in the gamergate article.

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

[thinkwaitfast]

I love how politics has destroyed slashdot. Just as George Washington et al predicted. Excellent.

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

[SillyHamster]

Wikipedia's core staff is overwhelmingly male (87%) and mostly white. There is no indication that "social justice" played a role in either the creation of the current system nor the difficulty the site has had in attracting greater participation from members of other races and the opposite sex.

Rule #1 of SJWs - SJWs Always Lie.

SJWs are identified by their behavior, not their skin color or sex. It is quite typical for SJWs to be white males.

Bringing up white and male is irrelevant and your "no indication" assertion is falsified by observed wikipedia editor behavior.

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

[shutdown -p now]

If you believe that the First Amendment should have absolutely no restrictions and you loudly advocate for this position and push for laws that would enforce it, you are attempting to create a rigid ideological framework that refuses to consider any challenge to the idea of free speech.

Such framework may refuse to consider a challenge to free speech, but you would still be free to "think, feel and express" such a challenge. So it would seem that it is not true that all ideologies "by their very nature seek control over" those things.

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

[harlequinn]

They may be bigger than you or me, but they're still not armed.

Symptoms and causes

[QuietLagoon]

...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.

Re:Symptoms and causes

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

"Fixing the "cause" of people trolling" is something far beyond any person or organization, Wikipedia notwithstanding. It's a part of the human condition,it's just far more noticeable now since we have the Internet and access to various articles that people can easily troll on. But this activity has been going on since humans devolved writing...

The deletionists have won!

[Anonymous Coward]

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."

Re:The deletionists have won!

[mbrotzman.jhu]

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."

The fact that it took a family member to add the person's page indeed proves that the person is not notable. Neutral Point of View means that if you have a vested interest in a page, aka the person was your family member, then you should not be editing it. OMG, the system works,

Re:I dare to dissagre

[phantomfive]

Indeed, there are still over 30,000 active editors (compared to 55,000 at the peak in 2007). You might say 2007 is when Wikipedia hit it's intersection between popularity and newness. Just like a pop song is still just as good five years after its released, but most people listen to it when it's new.

The article is deeper than that, though. They investigate the quality of edits from newcomers, and show that people are being rejected who probably shouldn't be. (In other words, focusing on the number of active editors is misleading: that is not the core of the paper).

Been there, done that

[spaceyhackerlady]

I've tried to contribute to Wikipedia. Nothing ever made it past the editors.

I don't try any more.

Case closed.

...laura

Re:Let newbies be hazed

[TigerNut]

Totally wrong, because the right of not being micro-offended should more directly point at the editors, not the new contributors. In fact, if Wikipedia doesn't want to become completely irrelevant it will need to recognize that new folks would probably only go to the trouble of trying to add or change content, if there was a problem with the existing content. The main problem with Wikipedia is that it is too strongly founded with the idea of being a meta-encyclopedia and to not allow the exposition of independent research.

formal mechanisms for norm... translation?

[shoor]

What does "formal mechanisms for norm articulation" mean?

They lie, push agenda

[p51d007]

It's no different that pretty much any website. They push their agenda, as some other sites push the opposite agenda. The PROBLEM, is that people see it as a website version of an encyclopedia, which it is not. How many errors, or out and out lies have been discovered on that site. It's like any other website. Take it with a grain of salt, unless you can independently verify the information from other sources.

Re:They lie, push agenda

[PopeRatzo]

Take it with a grain of salt, unless you can independently verify the information from other sources.

Fortunately, sources are listed on Wikipedia.

From a former editor

[darkain]

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.

Re:From a former editor

[PopeRatzo]

You make sense, damn you.

Re:From a former editor

[Oligonicella]

"First is highly specialized knowledge..." Explain then why people with exactly that kind of knowledge can't get their information through page sitting editors.

Re:From a former editor

[Lisias]

"First is highly specialized knowledge..." Explain then why people with exactly that kind of knowledge can't get their information through page sitting editors.

It's exactly what i was going to post.

I'm in a group of retrocomputing enthusiasts. We dig, bid, pursue and beyond for pisces of history of he computer industry - mainly from my own country. Problem is, n this process, we find out facts and curiosities that we just can't publish on Wikipedia.

That would be alright - except that someone else had published facts and misinformation that we know for sure about the veracity - as we own the product, the official advertising material (sometimes even the original piece) and the official manuals.

So, the current status quo is that some SOB gets there first, publish anything he thinks it's right and make a hell of a fuss against every single further contribution, no matter the source. Once I saw one editor making a insane broad interpretation for what's a "blog", to justify ignoring a technical article printed in a online service. By that interpretation, the very damned Wikipedia is a blog, god damnit.

I don't know the extension of such bigotry, but it's for sure plays a significant (even if not deterministic) hole on the problem - I just quit trying to contributing to Wikipedia, and speaking frankly, even reduced the use of it for articles on my own tongue where the problem appears to be worst. I know english (kind of, at least), so I don't need to rely on half baked articles, I can go directly to the original article - where, at least apparently, such bigotry don't affects too much the quality of the material.

Re:From a former editor

[AthanasiusKircher]

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.

Actually, for at least the past decade of so, Wikipedia has been actively driving expert editors away. If you were lucky enough to get started back before 2005 or so (and thus had an established rep) or have managed to fight your way through wikilawyering and bureaucracy while doing massive amounts of grunt work to prove yourself, then you have enough credibility to make significant changes without being immediately rejected.

But I know lots of academics who have tried to edit Wikipedia at some point over the past decade and gave up. They could have added significant "specialized knowledge" as part of the community, but they were driven away. Yes, some of them tried to do inappropriate things like pushing their own research -- but most of them just wanted to correct obvious errors that experts in a field would know (and which there is clear expert consensus about -- often decades old), but which popular sources that general Wikipedia editors tend to use may not reflect as well.

The problem with "verifiability" as a criterion is that there are lots of possible "verifiable" sources (according to the Wiki definition) in the world. At some point, you often need a subject expert to be able to arbitrate between the relative weight that should be given to them. Old paper encyclopedias had such people on staff or hired to edit a specific selection of articles.

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.

Sorry for the irony, but [citation needed]. Do you have any idea of the amount of academic scholarship coming out in specialist journals and publications all the time? Most of that is obviously cutting edge research and may not be ready for an encyclopedia yet, but the majority of "factual" (i.e., scholarly consensus) stuff that any specialist on a given topic would know about an article is likely NOT in Wikipedia yet.

And since Wikipedia has a bizarre draconian (and inconsistently applied) deletionist bias toward "notability," most of that information simply can't make it on Wikipedia under present policy -- and if it does, it could be summarily deleted with all evidence of its existence removed.

Meanwhile, for reasons I mentioned above, there's a lot of crap in Wikipedia that is known by experts to be false, so saying Wikipedia is a collection of "human factual knowledge" is more than a bit misleading (it gets worse if you factor in the effects of random vandalism).

Re:From a former editor

[Alsee]

By that interpretation, the very damned Wikipedia is a blog, god damnit.

Absolutely correct. Wikipedia policy says:

Self-published sources
Anyone can create a personal web page or publish their own book, and also claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason, self-published media, such as books, patents, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, personal or group blogs (as distinguished from newsblogs, above), content farms, Internet forum postings, and social media postings, are largely not acceptable as sources.

and

Wikipedia and sources that mirror or use it
Do not use articles from Wikipedia as sources. Also, do not use websites that mirror Wikipedia content or publications that rely on material from Wikipedia as sources. Content from a Wikipedia article is not considered reliable unless it is backed up by citing reliable sources. Confirm that these sources support the content, then use them directly.

-

Re:From a former editor

[mbrotzman.jhu]

"First is highly specialized knowledge..." Explain then why people with exactly that kind of knowledge can't get their information through page sitting editors.

It's exactly what i was going to post.

I'm in a group of retrocomputing enthusiasts. We dig, bid, pursue and beyond for pisces of history of he computer industry - mainly from my own country. Problem is, n this process, we find out facts and curiosities that we just can't publish on Wikipedia.

That would be alright - except that someone else had published facts and misinformation that we know for sure about the veracity - as we own the product, the official advertising material (sometimes even the original piece) and the official manuals.

So, the current status quo is that some SOB gets there first, publish anything he thinks it's right and make a hell of a fuss against every single further contribution, no matter the source. Once I saw one editor making a insane broad interpretation for what's a "blog", to justify ignoring a technical article printed in a online service. By that interpretation, the very damned Wikipedia is a blog, god damnit.

If you find someone that has some vested interest in blocking your edits, you simply have to spend the time and effort needed to defeat them. Your two best weapons are Wikipedia Policy itself and other Wikipedia users you can recruit to your cause. Wikipedia policy is such that almost everything is violating it. People who try to invoke policy to enforce their point of view are basically throwing stones in a glass house. If they can outlast raw aggression, ie out revert you, then you can usually win by switching to passive aggression. Tag every uncited fact with a citation needed. Delete all of his stuff that doesn't meet policy. Hit him with deletion and merge votes backed up by your friends. If the editor complains bring in an admin. Admins will generally enforce policy properly so because all pages violate policy you can usually grind the page to a halt. At some point the stubborn editor will usually give in. Also numbers matter. If you really wanted to win you edit war you would have told /. exactly what the problem article was, exactly what you wanted to do to fix it and who was in your way. Then everyone here could have gone and ganged up on the WikiNazi. It's just like every other battle. Be the first with the most. Yes, Wikipedia has become political, but the good news is that its a great place to learn how to fight political battles. You'll be all the better for it.

I wanted to help

[Sir_Eptishous]

But all I heard was that the new editors get raked over the coals, and that it isn't worth the time.

Edits Denied

[buk110]

I'd love to spend some time trying to make it better, but every edit I've had has been declined. So ya, good luck with that

Re:Edits Denied

[DamonHD]

Pretty much all my edits have stuck so far as I can tell, or at least not been reverted per se, other than one which was briefly (somewhat aggressively) queried then reinstated.

I make a mixture of micro (eg typo), and more substantive corrections/additions.

I have no axe to grind: maybe that helps?

Rgds

Damon

"WikiSpeak"

[Gravis Zero]

i believe wikipedia's own "humorous" article on WikiSpeak explains a lot about the issues it's having.

From the conclusion:

[ronabop]

"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.

Maybe they could...

[BorisSkratchunkov]

...actually hire and pay editors like a normal encyclopedia rather than focus on improving an already mature enough web application.

It's a mission-driven org

[Improv]

It's not a social club, it's a mission-driven org. A lot of people are not suitable for participation, and they'll get weeded out. Others just have knowledge that's very common and don't want to do boring stuff. How many people does the project need? How many can it productively use? I don't think the answer is everyone on the planet.

Doesn't mean that some of the other criticisms are not also right.

It depends on the editors

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia at this point is just a site that has one point of view on something. It's assuredly not a neutral point of view, and massive swaths of data on the site are suppressed or banned, including entire social movements.

I have contributed several edits to Wikipedia, and have added a couple of articles. As a result, I was asked to contribute to a related field by the editors of that field (I declined, as it was outside my expertise). My opinion is that most articles on Wikipedia are objectively neutral and fairly balanced. It depends very strongly on the editors and the contributors.

Not sure about those "social movements", you mentioned. Anything social and/or political is a point of view disaster (or success, depending on your point of view).

Re:What the fuck is there to study?!

[PopeRatzo]

and this drives away the best normal users.

Fuck 'em. If I wanted "normal", I'd go read allrecipes.com.

Re:Horrible rejection reasons

[Ungrounded Lightning]

(Specifically I put in a line on every single element indicating how the majority of that element is believed to have been created - which stage of a star's life cycle creates each element. One sentence per element and all those changes were deleted by idiots refusing to add a tiny bit more information that is known and accepted science).

If I ever saw a set of edits that rated, at a minimum, "citation needed", that's it.

Each of those assertions should, imho, be supported by a reference to the research, or at least published and academically well-respected theorizing, that generated it.

You got that list from somewhere. Tell the reader where. (Then other editors can check it out and, if there is a better reference, add or change it, and if a claim is bogus, correct it.)

Re:Let newbies be hazed

[Oligonicella]

Only an asshole believes that.

I edit Wikipedia regularly

[MobyDisk]

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

Re:I edit Wikipedia regularly

[Anonymous Coward]

So lots of people, here on Slashdot and elsewhere, for quite a while now, relate how they've been put off contributing to Wikipedia due to reversals of perfectly reasonable edits and the unwelcoming attitude of the established editors and you dismiss it with levity because it hasn't happened to you?

By your logicl, since I haven't been mugged in a big city yet, all the people who've told me they have are surely to blame somehow.

Re:I edit Wikipedia regularly

[Anonymous Coward]

I edit even more often, almost every day. I've created 100 or more articles myself. I watchlist them and revert vandalism. And no, I don't have "ownership" issues; people make a lot of legitimate edits, and I don't even revert the ones I disagree with.
Not that there aren't some jerks out there blocking constructive work, but I'm convinced that the bigger problem is noobs who don't want to read and follow instructions.

Re:I edit Wikipedia regularly

[justthinkit]

Question: when you post "anonymously", are you using the same ID (e.g. "MobyDisk")? If so, then you have a history, and perhaps credibility, which goes into how you are treated. I'm just mildly curious...never had an interest in contributing anything to Wiki myself.

Re:I edit Wikipedia regularly

[FunkSoulBrother]

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.

Re:I edit Wikipedia regularly

[FunkSoulBrother]

That sounds exactly like the kind of thing you *should* shine a spotlight on to clean up the corruption. Just link one example please!

Re:I edit Wikipedia regularly

[bloodhawk]

you need to get out more or learn how to use the internet, would take you all of about 10 seconds to find a crap ton of references. you can even hire firms to write and camp articles on Wikipedia for you and revert changes. e.g. http://wiki-pr.com/services/

Re:I edit Wikipedia regularly

[dillee1]

My wikipedia account is very old and I edit semi regularly too. I have my contribution revert by "asshat editor" before, but this doesn't discourage me from further editing.
Reason is I see a wiki article as a living thing and evolve over time. Something that might be accurate by the time I contribute might be outdated and removed later. I have no commitment to maintain a article forever, and if someone else maintains it, that's actually a good thing.
Remove/revert/warnings? No butt hurt. I just ignore them and move on. What's important is I contribute what afaik is correct at that time being, and that's helped other people.

Re:I edit Wikipedia regularly

[MobyDisk]

That article is about the editors doing a good job. It's not an example of asshole editors deleting perfectly valid edits, which is what is being claimed by the ACs.

Re:I edit Wikipedia regularly

[MobyDisk]

I actually just registered an ID today. My edits come from all different IPs. So no, I have no credibility or history. I can't even prove the edits are mine if I wanted to.

Re:I edit Wikipedia regularly

[MobyDisk]

Thank you for finally posting an example.

So let me get this straight: You think the song is Metamorphosis Five. Someone else thinks it is Metamorphosis One. There is an external citation that says it is Metamorphosis One. You think your opinion should win, even though they have a citation and you don't.

This is no different from how Slashdot discussions go quite regularly. Someone posts "According to peer reviewed research posted in a presigious journal (include link here), X+Y = 7." Some Slashdotter posts "My name is PonyUnicorn75, and I say X+Y = 8 and I've got 20 years of experience in the industry to prove it!" Who would you believe?

You have confirmed for me that wikipedia is working perfectly. If you really care about that article so dang much, find some proof. Or contact the author of the citation and show they are wrong. Just making the change isn't editing. Editing isn't about posting your opinion: editing is work! It's research! The reason Wikipedia is losing editors is because the burden of proof has increased, and that is hard.

Re:I edit Wikipedia regularly

[FunkSoulBrother]

Oh no doubt there are people who are making paid edits in an attempt to circumvent the spirit of Wikipedia. I put them in the same box as anyone claiming to offer 'Search Engine Optimization' -- people who abuse a system shared by the masses for personal gain.

The question is, do any of those Wiki-PR type firms actually have guys high up in the Wiki-bureaucracy? I posit that they really don't, and as such they are just another type of troll that needs to be planned for and dealt with, just like anywhere else on the internet.

What about ones own school?

[Hasaf]

I have tried twice to go through the process of having my students create, or edit, an entry for the school. Both times the process made it impossible.

Re:What about ones own school?

[Sowelu]

Hate to say it, but that seems pretty legit. Articles about organizations ought to be of interest to people outside of the organization.

Re:What about ones own school?

[UsuallyReasonable]

Articles about organizations ought to be of interest to people outside of the organization.

Oh come on. If, from those "Random" links above, the band "1997," of whom maybe five people have heard, rates a Wikipedia page, surely an actual functioning school does.

Re:What about ones own school?

[toddestan]

I've never really understood the notability requirement on Wikipedia anyway. It's not articles are taking up physical space like a paper encyclopedia, and the digital storage space needed is insignificant. Obviously you've got to have some standard, but it seems that if the article is able to cite external references and it contains information that someone might be interested in, it should be able to stay. A school would certainly qualify.

Re:Not Notable

[PrimaryConsult]

This is what put me off to Wikipedia. There are four areas where I ran into the "notability" wall:

1. Open Source Software projects (ironically). I was researching replacements to a proprietary system we use at work, but half of the linked product articles were removed on the basis of "not notable" or "reads like an advertisement". We gave up and bought something.

2. Small town details.

3. TV Show details. They seem to have gotten better about it, but at one point the level of detail allowed for a TV show was proportional to how popular it was, which is pretty stupid considering the obscure ones benefit more from the extra detail as they don't have enough following to have their own sites.

4. Information of primary interest in other languages. It seems at some point someone took a shotgun to the sections regarding Japanese trains (many links which point to deleted pages). I can fill in the gaps by reading the Japanese language wikipedia, but I thought the whole point of an Encyclopedia was that you didn't need to learn whole other languages to get information out of them. It's on the level of Britannica putting the section on the USSR in Russian.

truth

[mynamestolen]

The wikipedia Editor who queried the existence of truth is clearly part of the problem. Nutjob post-modernists who know nothing of Sokal.

Verifiability, not truth

[tepples]

Wikipedia's mission is not to reflect truth as much as the consensus narrative of reliable sources.

Re:Verifiability, not truth

[cwsumner]

Wikipedia's mission is not to reflect truth as much as the consensus narrative of reliable sources.

Correct. Wickipedia is not History, it is more like a daily newspaper. But with a better index. 8-)

Re:Not Notable

[careysub]

I have commented on the exponentially egregious fundraising scam, err campaign, in another post above, and yes, you cite my other major peeve about Wikipedia: the scourge of 'notability'.

Why would any new editor want to start an article today knowing that the (free) labor they contribute to the site is likely to be wiped away, unrecoverably, without recourse or consultation, by an editor who decides on a whim that it is not 'notable'? And if they did not know this might happen, they sure would be turned off when they found out the hard way. This is a sure fire way to drive away any editor permanently.

There is absolutely nothing objective about this "standard", it is completely arbitrary, impossible to define, and even more troubling, totally unnecessary. Is there a shortage of disk space for these articles? Of course not. Wikipedia could host a vast store of obscure, niche, specialized information - not just for present users, but for future generations, a detailed record of modern world society, including the obscure. It seems to be a combination of a sense of self-flattery, Wikipedia needing to prove it is a "real" encyclopedia, and power-tripping by their pathological senior editor culture.

Hey look a Wikipedia article

[FunkSoulBrother]

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.

Re:Hey look a Wikipedia article

[AthanasiusKircher]

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.

It's really easy to find. Imagine a controversial topic -- any topic you imagine people would tend to get in fights about. Now go read the "Talk Page" on Wikipedia on an article about it. In a significant number of such articles, you're likely to find all sorts of dysfunction with minority views either summarily suppressed or sometimes arbitrarily held up over the clear consensus of the majority (and sometimes even the clear scholarly consensus).

Better yet, imagine some topic that there's some common popular misunderstanding but where some pedantic jerks would love to debate it. Then go read the "Talk Page." Here, the vast majority of articles will have bizarre edit wars, wikilawyering, and various bureaucratic BS.

This stuff is quite common. It's not hard to find if you spend ANY time perusing the Talk pages on articles.

Re:Hey look a Wikipedia article

[swillden]

So... you don't actually know of a specific instance.

Re:Hey look a Wikipedia article

[gustygolf]

I wouldn't rule out that it's just a couple of individuals (mind you, most of these are ACs) who are trying to influence public opinion for the negative.

The strange part is that these posts keep getting modded up -- they never even reference the article in question, much less the actual edit they made. They just make nebulous references to PR firms on the news if pressed.

(Indeed, I edit without a username and I've never had these instant reverts happen. The closest I've gotten to one is that I once put up a cleanup tag and a couple of months later someone removed it, even though it was still valid. I restored the tag and it stayed.)

Incidentally, I did come across one username belonging to someone likely being paid to add links. I have no clue where to report such a user though. The user hasn't had a contribution since 2014, so it's not really pressing.

Re:Hey look a Wikipedia article

[nomentanus]

You can look them up if you care to, just a couple of examples, out of many, many I know about personally:

Under Celiac disease, rejection of an accurate prevalence figure because they source "wasn't sufficiently reliable" even though no other figure was being given by the article at the time. The unreliable source? The New York Times.

Under the incident that led to the Movie Black Hawk Down, back when the book that was the source for the movie was the only detailed public account available: any fact in the book, but not in the movie, was deleted. Why? All the editors had seen the movie, none of them had apparently read the book. This re Bin Laden's involvement in shipping arms (RPGs) in, war crimes by insurgents (in the movie but not unmistakeable), and more.

Then look at all the locks - convenient for editors, but the very acme of ossification of error.

I couldn't possibly count my contributions to Wikipedia; not least because they happened a long time ago now. It's been many years since I've attempted to contribute, except the odd time when it's been deleted anyway for absurd reasons; but I'm very frequently tempted since there's a ton left to do, and plenty of new research that will take a generation to find its way into the now uber-reactionary encyclopedia, sadly. It's just insane now, corporate narcissism run amok - so long as they're never embarrassed, ever, they're happy to reflect unmoored consensus ignorance and ignore any amount of empirical research. If that means not reflecting any changes in human knowledge, or very few, well, they're quite happy with that - that is their definition of "quality" - never being caught on except when they're accurately reflecting common prejudice.

2016: Celebrating a decade of utter mismanagement of Wikipedia! May it, the institution not the information it's abusing, die a thousand deaths. Or at least one, soon.

Re:Hey look a Wikipedia article

[FunkSoulBrother]

Just in case you (or anyone else) is interested, if you come across someone who is being paid to add links, you can open a thread at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... to alert admins to their behavior.

Re:Hey look a Wikipedia article

[GbrDead]

Ok, here you are. I once edited the following article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

It mentions some Bulgarian cities with either very old names or with obvious typos:
Ruschuk - stopped being called this way over a century ago.
Philippopolis - this is the name from Antiquity! It stopped being called this way by the people who live in it at least 10 centuries ago.
Gor Orvakhovitsa - two obvious typos.
Stara Zagoran - one obvious typo.

The source is a badly scanned article from 1958, written by a non-Bulgarian, in English.

Me, being a Bulgarian (and my IP address proves that) decided to fix these. References? Wikipedia itself. The wrong names already point to the Wikipedia articles with the correct names.
Got reverted 10 hours later. The names are wrong to this very day.

Re:Hey look a Wikipedia article

[FunkSoulBrother]

Thank you. I appreciate the actual example. I do think that the Wikipedia community in general does have a bit of a bias against anonymous (IP-only) accounts -- I personally don't understand the hassle in restricting edits to logged-in accounts and would support a change in that direction to eliminate this. It looks like you went through the trouble of even commenting on the guy's talk page and he never responded. I'm going to try to find some English language sources with the modern names and fix this.

Re:Hey look a Wikipedia article

[nomentanus]

And surely that's the point - the supposed policy that you should use the talk pages to communicate, protest, etc is something never mentioned to those just trying to add something to Wikipedia. Why not? Precisely because it would leave traces. Nor do the editors themselves use the talk pages and then refer their interlocuters to those notes. If the real culture of Wikipedia ACTUALLY wanted the talk pages used, it would be easy to use them, use would be transparent; there would be a form to ease that, say; but in fact it's perhaps the most arcane part of Wikipedia - giving the clear signal that if you don't really, really know what you're doing you should stay away from talk pages. That way of presenting things is no accident, not after decades! The foxes are very securely in control of the henhouse.

De jure doesn't matter when de facto actions are highly effective (in this case at keeping most interactions off the record) and never reversed or punished.

Re:Hey look a Wikipedia article

[FunkSoulBrother]

Ok. For better or worse, I went ahead and made the changes again, with references. Let's see if they'll stick and we can improve Wikipedia a tiny bit with all of this effort! :-)

Speaking of social justice did you see MGTOW?

[BrookHarty]

Want to see what scojus thought control looks like on wikipedia?
MGTOW page has been deleted all the time, because the scojus feminists believe it shouldn't be included, and since they only need a few editors to vote "delete" it gets removed.

This is AFTER it had tons of negative updates added, just view the talk page, its a damn warzone.

Here is it before http://i.imgur.com/Nni5Z13.jpg
And after http://i.imgur.com/MQ89wYO.jpg

This is why I will never donate a cent, and actively remind people of their censorship.

 

Re:Speaking of social justice did you see MGTOW?

[colinrichardday]

How do you know it was done by Social Justice Warriors? Even Return to Kings thinks MGTOWs (Men Going Their Own Way) are silly.

http://www.returnofkings.com/6...

Re:Speaking of social justice did you see MGTOW?

[Pascal Sartoretti]

MGTOW page has been deleted all the time

I spent 5 minutes reading about MGTOW, and I am now convinced that it currently has nothing to do in an encyclopedia. Maybe in 5 or 10 years.

It should be renamed Weakipedia

[ayesnymous]

It's weak.

Its the censorship

[Karmashock]

Look at any politically contentious issue on wikipedia and generally they choose a side and censor the other. Ideally what should be done is to cite that there is controversy and allow BOTH or as many sides exist on the matter to have their own section of the entry.

What they do instead is they just remove the alternate view points in many cases entirely.

This renders wikipedia politically biased on many issues and thus not trustworthy.

Wikipedia must be neutral and it is not.

Here someone likely that politically profits from this situation will say "you only don't like it because your faction doesn't profit"... Lets say that is true for the sake of argument... you just admitted I was right that there is bias. Lets see if anyone is dumb enough to make that argument anyway... from what I've seen around here lately... I should get a bite. The tragedy there being that I can't pull the stupid beast onto my boat, knock its tiny brains out, skin, and eat the fool.

Who knows... retard could be good eating.

wikipedia is junk for propaganda

[strstr]

heavy censorship on Wikipedia and edit wars. there's a large body of 'trolls' and for pay shills, and insiders who police Wikipedia to control the information on the site. they're attempting to control the types of information that are on the site and spin it positively for corporations, government, police, and military interests. the site is no good if you're interested in anything factual as such and it's mostly industry propaganda. this is also the fault of the way Wikipedia is set up because the site prefers to use propaganda as sources for information, for example they'll use largely company provided sources for information on mental health drugs and the scientific studies on the subject will be edited out as "conspiracy theory" or not fitting the standard of a "good source."

the whole site is in shambles.

expert information and scientific information is therefore lacking on the site.

one time I decided to try to beef up the articles on mind control and electronic warfare weaponry, citing government articles and psychiatrists who were experts on the issue. because the information I was posting painted the government in a negative light, the information was edited out quickly by troll user who edit wars the pages and is friends with all the administrators. I was quickly banned for attempted to undo his reversals of my edits. a look at the talk pages and logs and I find out dozens of users had been banned and had problem for years with this one troll editor who keeps the pages void of real information and pro-government. he attempts to paint the issue as "not real" or "conspiracy theory" or the product of people's delusions and mental health issues.

nothing you can do about it ..

and the issue isn't new. going back to 2010 users attempted to have a page on synthetic telepathy and that year increasing edit wars to remove and censor the information forced Wikipedia to close the page entirely. even though the technology is real and factual, backed by patents and dozens of victims and police officers who've all used it. and now Facebook has announced the technology is coming to facebook eventually, and IBM did predictions in 2011 that it would be coming to consumer grade technology within 5 years.https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/05/451768.html

The internet is not void of dozens upon dozens upon thousands of reports of Wikipedia censoring pages and peoples content being removed.

Wikipedia is the defacto "psychological warfare" weapon. It's very valuable. Governments and companies seek to control the knowledge base of society, and that includes hiding negative information, spinning negatives as positives, and making up positive information. They invest and use Wikipedia to control what information you'll find readily available if you do a Google search. You'll walk away misled on most subjects. Entire sciences can be hidden and kept from the publics views by censoring the site as can trade secrets and things that harm the public.

obamasweapon.com

It is not only about the text

[Max_W]

It is possible to improve Wikipedia by adding quality ground and aerial images to articles. And if not to an article itself, but to the Wikimedia category.

Often the photos in a category are outdated, made by digital cameras of 90s. Sometimes a Wikipedia article lacks a photo completely.

Here is the web-application which I use to plan my Wikimedia&Wikipedia photography expeditions: http://www.ausleuchtung.ch/geo...

Click on the map and it shows geolocations of all the Wikipedia articles in the radius of 10 kilometers (about 6 miles) around the click. The default WIkipedia language is English, but you can change in to French by exchanging "en" on the page to "fr", or German "de", Russian "ru", etc. The map position, zoom, language of the last request are memorized by the application.

So on your vacations or business trip you can click on the map and see geolocations of Wikipedia articles are around, visit the location and upload an updated photo. As saying goes: a picture is worth a thousand words. Especially if it is a quality image made by ta modern camera, using a tripod or an UAV.

Self-Reinforcing Corporate Narcissism

[nomentanus]

No doubt Mr. Wales meant well when he called for quality just before the great decline; but he didn't distinguish between narcissism: which is to say, not being caught out, and accuracy - which would have to include taking some chances in order to reflect the best and newest information. So incompleteness (in order to ensure verifiability according to some cobbled-together criteria) actually became a desirable means for many editors, and a goal for some, judging by results.

So his speech initiated a self-reinforcing, ever-tightening conservative regime in which - as under Stalin - the only important thing was never to allow a change that might be shown wrong someday; just stick with the previous coffee-table consensus and never mind the facts. Never try for completeness, or unpopular fact.

This process has continued to feed on itself, like an infinite loop or the French Revolution, as the least conservative and anal-retentive editors amongst the remaining bunch get chucked each year. Left to itself, it can only get worse.

Pernicious cultures in any group or business are notoriously difficult to change. So difficult that it's very foolish to try. As a practical matter, you have to clean house entirely and start again. In this case, bar anyone who's been active in Wikipedia during the last five years from anything except bare contributions for the next ten years; then let them back in very gradually, if at all. So much has been lost that there's little downside at this point.

PS - I'm reminded of Dyson's analysis of bomber formation tightness in WWII.

Re: What? - Partial Solution

[lucien86]

And that is why Wikipedia is losing editors. Once you reach obscure or aberrant subjects the new Wikipedia often becomes next to useless. This wouldn't annoy me but Wikipedia used to be a pretty good resource on many such subjects. An encyclopaedia is meant to be exactly that a compendium of all knowledge, including trivial and outlying fields.. But in fields where things are not cut and dried or where the common consensus among experts in the field is outside of general media knowledge Wikipedia's referencing system simply doesn't work.

References can be a real problem. Sometimes where they do exist references where are all to old books, often out of print for decades or extremely difficult to access. Even then they often chase back further to old papers which are very often virtually impossible (very expensive) to find or collate.. Other times there really are no good references, and only second hand accounts by people like journalists - sometimes containing known errors or deliberate omissions.
In my own primary field Strong AI (where modern academia are usually largely incompetent) even publishing a list of basic background references could be very commercially damaging.. and there are loose ends in my own knowledge that I know about but that I simply don't have the resources to tie down.. (Even with resources the answers might only have the status of hearsay.) It doesn’t help when an area may also have been subject to PC or military driven historical revisionism. In that case only old & proven to be original copies can be remotely trusted .. not easy in the era of online information..

What Wikipedia needs is a separate section on pages that allows subjects with a lower level of evidence. There should obviously be a warning on such sections but they would be a partial solution. As it is many more pages face deletion or destructive pruning because nobody is willing to spend the time and money to research them - and the research of course always has the danger of becoming or of being classified as OR.. There are subjects where that is an amazingly fine line.

New Editors Land in Minefields

[mbrotzman.jhu]

I think a lot of the problems with reverts and deletions turning off new editors is that new editors are usually drawn into editing minefields simply because of the way human nature works. Since people edit what they read, the most new editors would be drawn to the most popular articles. Popular articles see higher levels of policing than non-popular articles and have also at higher levels of development with a large amount of edit and talk page history. Someone going in to make edits about Han shooting first is of course going to get shot down almost immediately. The other thing that draws users is to add pages about something they know. However something that you know that Wikipedia has missed is likely to not be very notable. As the article discussed notability used to be much more lax, but today the guidelines are in place to make sure there is some third party source material and not just an editor writing stuff from their own experiences. Therefore new editors often get dinged on notability problems. Finally, new editors might not know that people, places, historical events and popular media properties are given much higher scrutiny than let's say 1970's railroad locomotives.

I have had my fair share of run-ins with Wiki Nazis, but generally when I am adding to legitimate gaps in the content that aren't in one of the minefields, I rarely run into problems. Wikipedia probably just needs to do a better job to hive new editors a heads up that they might want to stick to various types of non-controversial edits, like spelling corrections, before they dive in to the deep end. Most open source projects work with way with new contributors needing to work on bug fixes before they can add features.

Regarding deletions, more often than not it is anonymous users who try to come in and delete whole chunks out of an article. It's crap like that that makes me need to patrol my watchlist.