Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

[Ross McPherson]

Wikipedia has a major shortage of commas these days.

Commas are needed, since it makes reading aloud easier, as well as making it easier to digest what is written.

I believe in the Oxford comma, the greatest of all commas.

Commas, commas, and more commas galore!

However, I do remove commas, especially when exactly two items are listed.

Everyone makes fun of me and I do like to make fun of myself, the self-proclaimed king of commas.

I have problems with your first example – you have deployed two commas (ten cents thanks) just for rhetorical effect when they are quite unnecessary for meaning. Also if you had attended to meaning rather than sound you would have spotted a grammatical mistake and found a better way to demonstrate the meaning. It should be:

Commas are needed since they make reading aloud easier as well as making it easier to digest what is written.

Better still:

Commas are needed to facilitate both reading aloud and comprehension.

In archaic Greece, when writing was rare, everyone read aloud even in private and they didn’t have word spacing let alone commas. However Wikipedians might as well deploy rhetorical devices since much of their work is tendentious anyway.

[Amy Francis]

I am not sure about Amy - if she is a Wikipedian, she is a rare kind of girl. But I think there is a better than even chance that, despite her global warming fears, she is not so scared of Shell or British Petrolium as she is of creeps in dark alleys. I think she would rather Wikipedia allowed advertizing by Shell than editing by anonymous gangs of creeps. But that is for her to say, of course.

Ross, as you are a gentleman, I assume that you are paying me a compliment, so thanks. I've been fortunate enough not to have been overly bothered by creeps in real dark alleys. I encountered them on Wikipedia when I started as a naive schoolgirl, which led me to stop editing there for some time until I met someone who was willing to help if anyone attempted to mug me. I have a new account with no indication of my age or gender. I get the impression that many here will have no sympathy for anyone stupid enough to edit Wikipedia at all. However, I am no longer under any illusions about it. I just edit occasionally as an alternative to playing a Sporcle quiz.

[Ross McPherson]

@Amy

My invitation for you you to speak on that subject was a bit indelicate and I apologize for it. But I am glad you did. We don't hear enough from the girls and a site that is critical of WP needs to hear the whole story. At the same time, there are guys here who play tough and who need to do that to score points against the misinformation machine. Maybe this site should have a women's forum where men are guests only. I would love to hear the girls talking among themselves without any concern about getting crash-tackled by critics.

Somebody like you who edits WP just occasionally is the ideal Wikipedian. If everyone did that, WP would live up to its mission as a crowd-sourced encyclopaedia. Instead, too many people are entrenched there and think they own it. The gangsters! The more guilty they are of ownership, the more they mouth off about the free work they are doing for humankind. How noble. They do it for the kicks they get out of it, controlling and fighting over territory, playing-acting as world experts, pushing their agendas. You know this as well as I do. How come the whole world doesn't know?

Silly question - the whole world doesn't edit WP. If it did, pretty soon nobody would edit it and nobody would want to read it either. So there are two ways to crash that place. Drain it of people or fill it with people. While it retains a critical mass, sloshing about the bilges, it will keep floating along. Oh there is a third way - Kohser or Eric or someone like that torpedoes it with a scandal that blows the place to smithereens.

Keep a lifeboat handy.

[EricBarbour]

Oh there is a third way - Kohser or Eric or someone like that torpedoes it with a scandal that blows the place to smithereens.

Keep a lifeboat handy.

We've tried and tried. Wikipedia is deeply loved by schoolchildren and journalists all over the world, so "blowing it up" is not likely to happen anytime soon. When it does finally fold up and sink, be prepared for screaming -- the likes of which the Internet has never seen before.

Even if someone successfully starts a "fork" of English Wikipedia, with a completely separate organization, I fully expect they will hire former WMF people to run it, in their ignorance. And the idiocy will resume.

Amy, if you want to contribute, just copy the WP article you want to edit to a Wikia, or someplace else YOU control. Then edit at your discretion. Do a good job, you can get someone to copy it back to Wikipedia. But don't get your hopes up.

[Ross McPherson]

Oh there is a third way - Kohser or Eric or someone like that torpedoes it with a scandal that blows the place to smithereens.

Keep a lifeboat handy.

We've tried and tried. Wikipedia is deeply loved by schoolchildren and journalists all over the world, so "blowing it up" is not likely to happen anytime soon.

Oh come on! All those millions of dollars, all that bad governance, all those anonymous creeps - there has to be enough explosives in that mix. You just need a rat in their ranks ready to jump ship and unload all he knows. Be a dreamer like Jimmy! It can happen, it should happen, therefore it will happen.

[Amy Francis]

Amy, if you want to contribute, just copy the WP article you want to edit to a Wikia, or someplace else YOU control. Then edit at your discretion. Do a good job, you can get someone to copy it back to Wikipedia. But don't get your hopes up.

Eric, thanks, I expect that's good advice. But I'm not at all familiar with Wikia. Since I've edited a range of topics, I expect I'd have to use several different ones, and no doubt each has its own internal rules, written or otherwise, and it would be surprising if none has its bullies and OWNers. Maybe I'd even have to start my own.

[thekohser]

Amy, if you want to contribute, just copy the WP article you want to edit to a Wikia, or someplace else YOU control. Then edit at your discretion. Do a good job, you can get someone to copy it back to Wikipedia. But don't get your hopes up.

Eric, thanks, I expect that's good advice. But I'm not at all familiar with Wikia. Since I've edited a range of topics, I expect I'd have to use several different ones, and no doubt each has its own internal rules, written or otherwise, and it would be surprising if none has its bullies and OWNers. Maybe I'd even have to start my own.

Using Wikia puts money in the pocket of Jimmy Wales, which is a repugnant thought to many people.

If you want to use MyWikiBiz, sign up for a User account, and I will waive the $10 anti-spammer registration fee.

[John Cook]

thekohser, how do I get the $10 fee waived?

[eagle]

thekohser, how do I get the $10 fee waived?

John Cook. It is good to have users who appreciate the value of a dollar.

[thekohser]

thekohser, how do I get the $10 fee waived?

Are you as cute as Amy Francis?

But seriously, folks... if you intend to use MyWikiBiz.com to publish thoughtful content about something more than just your business or enterprise, I'm happy to waive the current registration fee (which was imposed to halt an onslaught of over 100,000 spam accounts).

Just sign up for an account there, then let me know "it's you" here, or by e-mail -- mention the "Wikipediocracy Waiver".

[eagle]

Just sign up for an account there, then let me know "it's you" here, or by e-mail -- mention the "Wikipediocracy Waiver".

Thank you for your generous offer. If Wikipediocracy users want to be equally generous, perhaps they could send in a check that donates to the Student Microgrant Program?