[HN Gopher] The loss of prolific contributors in Wikipedia ___________________________________________________________________ The loss of prolific contributors in Wikipedia Author : polm23 Score : 45 points Date : 2021-09-26 11:16 UTC (11 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.semanticscholar.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.semanticscholar.org) | spoonjim wrote: | The bigger Wikipedia gets, the less contribution is required, | since the "static" content gets more and more covered. | bshipp wrote: | that's been my impression as well. when I look at articles | focused toward my field I struggle to figure out how I can | contribute without needlessly adding complexity or excessive | detail to--what amounts to--an encyclopedia entry. Wikipedia | isn't done but a lot of the low hanging fruit has been plucked. | cratermoon wrote: | Historically underrepresented groups have entered the chat. | jonnycomputer wrote: | I think there is plenty room for more content, but a lot of it | requires more than average level of expertise, or contributions | from demographics that historically haven't contributed to | Wikipedia. | cratermoon wrote: | It was never and can never be sustainable to depend on a small | number of super-contributors for a "crowd-sourced" knowledge | store. | | Maybe the Wikimedia Foundation should focus more on attracting | and keeping a broader range and number of contributors instead of | curating few it considered "good". | bob229 wrote: | Wikipedia is absolute garbage. If you ever read an article about | something you were actually involved in you will realise how much | of it and the media is just total made up tripe | wly_cdgr wrote: | This study sounds like it's part of a strategy to establish | corporate control of Wikipedia | diskzero wrote: | I read the paper and I didn't come to that conclusion. Can you | explain why you think that? | | Here is their stated purpose: | | _The primary objective of this work has been to bring forth | the issue of the growing depletion of editors, especially the | experienced editors in Wikipedia._ | | One may be able to take their data and then determine if | certain editors are near the quitting threshold. The data may | also reveal operational and environmental conditions that could | be changed to limit the loss of experienced editor. | cratermoon wrote: | From the abstract: | | > a major concern for not only the future of this platform | but also for several industry-scale information retrieval | systems such as Siri, Alexa which depend on Wikipedia as | knowledge store. | | That doesn't imply that the paper is advocating for it, but | given that Apple and Amazon now have built products on top | Wikipedia, their bottom line depends on it. It's entirely | reasonable to wonder if they would prefer to have more | influence and control over it. Whether or not it was ever a | good idea for Alexa and Siri to have a dependency on | Wikipedia is a moot point. They do now, and it wouldn't | surprise me to see them wanting to take an active part in | keeping Wikipedia fresh. | | Of course, because their revenue depends on it, they probably | would want more control. In the same way the Amazon is | working to exercise more control over the Rust language, | Apple or Amazon could decide that taking over Wikipedia is | the right move to protect profits. | geofft wrote: | > _Of course, because their revenue depends on it, they | probably would want more control._ | | I don't think this follows. They could have all the control | they wanted if they set up their own product, but their | revenue doesn't depend on control, their revenue depends on | the product being good. It would take a lot of work to make | your own Wikipedia-alike; it would take a lot of work to | even start with the current Wikipedia (which they legally | can, since its license permits commercial use) and keep it | up to date. | cratermoon wrote: | > their revenue depends on the product being good | | Yes, and what happens when the content of Wikipedia, | through neglect, gets out of date or (negligently or | maliciously) wrong? Imagine the following: | | User: "Siri, who is the president of North Macedonia?" | | Siri: "Macedonia is a geographic and administrative | region of Greece, in the southern Balkans" | m0llusk wrote: | There is plenty of room for more content but deletion focused | contributors remove whole classes of articles and tend to turn | off whole groups of contributors in the process. The biggest | challenge for Wikipedia now is to find some way to tame the rise | of deletion as a form of contribution. | crmrc114 wrote: | Yep, had plenty of bespoke technical pages that explained some | pretty involved network infrastructure from the 90s and various | hardware families outside Cisco. The delete party would come in | like locust and nuke all your work citing all forms of wikilaw. | I just can't be bothered. Internet archive and EFF get my money | each month. Not the wiki foundation. | geofft wrote: | Not to defend Wikipedia at all (and they certainly should not | get your money), but, the solution that Wikipedia themselves | would advocate is that you should publish those explanations | on some site of your own, and Wikipedia could then cite it. | That also means that the publications are under your control | and yours alone and nobody can come in and delete them. | | It's pretty great that Wikipedia is a centralized source of | information, but I do sort of lament the decline of personal | web sites on GeoCities or university web hosts or whatever. | ratww wrote: | _> the solution that Wikipedia themselves would advocate is | that you should publish those explanations on some site of | your own, and Wikipedia could then cite it_ | | The problem with "deletionism" is not lack of sources and | citations. It's the fact some moderators don't want certain | material there. Creating sources is not a guarantee you'll | be able to add them back, quite the opposite. | | In the past I've seen purges of all kinds of well-sourced | material: law, electric engineering, literature, important | CS/engineering figures. It's never because of lack of | sources, it's always some subjective rule. | | Actually, I've seen "the content is already available in | another website, why do we need it here?" being be used as | an argument against reinstating some very uncontroversial | articles. | pphysch wrote: | Part of the problem is that philosophically, Wikipedia wants to | pretend that contributors are "thin" interfaces for pure | knowledge. That there is a well-defined set of "reliable sources" | and all contributors have to do is summarize and create | hyperlinks to them. | | Not surprising given the ~Objectivist philosophies of its | creators. | theknocker wrote: | "Loss" | poxycat wrote: | Having contributed to the Danish Wikipedia, I was astounded by | the arrogance and the accusations by the other contributors/mods. | That was what made me not contribute anymore. | darig wrote: | History is written by the most pompous. | | Ignore history. Buy guns. | inglor_cz wrote: | It is nothing short of astounding how small amounts of power | corrupt otherwise intelligent people. | | Sometimes I despair at the state of democratic politics, but | looking at the edit wars of Wikipedia, it could have been | worse. So much pettiness for nothing. | Barrin92 wrote: | >So much pettiness for nothing. | | well as the saying goes, 'the fights are so fierce because | the stakes are so low', or slightly more technically 'In any | dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to | the value of the issues at stake'. Wikipedia is like a | breeding ground for Girardian terror with people who tend to | be very homogenous all competing for very similar things | which often are only relevant because someone else wants to | exercise control over them. Only place worse might be reddit | moderation. | AdrianB1 wrote: | As a long time, low volume contributor, I see 2 explanations for | what happens: | | 1. There is not a lot to contribute as a lot of matters are | already covered. This is not a bad thing at all. | | 2. Moderators do a very bad job. Last year I created an entire | article about a popular vehicle, it took 6 months to be published | and it was just about a page long with solid references. At one | time it was rejected because it had "not enough external links", | so I added half a dozen links to the dealers selling that | vehicle, on top of the original manufacturer page. This | discourages contributors and it is a serios problem. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-09-26 23:01 UTC)