Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by thekohser » Thu Jun 19, 2014 3:33 am

Silent Editor wrote:
Volunteer Marek wrote:But the basic question is still the same. Why 2007?
Could it be simply be that that's when Facebook really started to take off?
Facebook had maybe 30 million users in 2007. It was a pimple on Myspace's butt.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by dogbiscuit » Thu Jun 19, 2014 9:20 am

I think it probably was related to the implementation of the reliable source/no original research stuff where there was a noticeable change from the days of "be bold" and then it will all get sorted out to the bureaucratic every fact must be sourced.

I think my first edits were around 2005, which were carefree edits about stuff, including my home town (an article that still stands very much in the form I wrote it with barely a reference in place, not the perfect article but good enough to have been republished in a number of glossy magazines over the years) and the technology I was working with at the time.

By 2007 I'd got sucked into the Drama and basically walked away. So I would propose that the step change was the ability of the elite to interfere with and control content writing through the gaming of the referencing rules (with a determined emphasis on referenced no matter what rather than a referenced if there was any controversy in the statement).

Editing became extremely rule-based and so the uncommitted wider public were excluded.

We still are in a position where the novice is invited in with warm words and it is suggested that they just make themselves at home, treat the place as their own and try things as you can't break anything, and then they get thrown out for not taking their shoes off when stepping through the front door.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Poetlister » Thu Jun 19, 2014 11:59 am

Johnny Au wrote:Most of my edits are WikiGnomish with very little substantial content creation and approximately 99.9% of my mainspace edits are Toronto-related (and surround regions).
Edit count is not a very useful measure of anything. Wikignoming accounts for quite a high proportion of all edits, though to be fair some of it is marginally useful. And of course every editor is entitled to his hobby horses.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by HRIP7 » Thu Jun 19, 2014 12:53 pm

Poetlister wrote:
Johnny Au wrote:Most of my edits are WikiGnomish with very little substantial content creation and approximately 99.9% of my mainspace edits are Toronto-related (and surround regions).
Edit count is not a very useful measure of anything. Wikignoming accounts for quite a high proportion of all edits, though to be fair some of it is marginally useful. And of course every editor is entitled to his hobby horses.
Indeed.

If you measure Wikipedia against its stated charitable mission – making high-quality educational material available – then the idea that Wikipedia should have as many edits and editors as possible is easily seen to be a fallacy. Many people who edit Wikipedia are, quite frankly, undesirable (this includes numerous administrators). A reduction in editor numbers would not necessarily be a bad thing, if the right people left.

But that doesn't seem to be what is happening: it seems rather that those capable of creating high-quality content leave at a faster rate than those who are not.

For example, look at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Featured log (T-H-L). The number of articles promoted to featured status so far this year averages 29.2 per month.

Here are the previous years' figures:

2013: 390 (32.5 per month)
2012: 375 (31.25 per month)
2011: 355 (29.6 per month)
2010: 513 (42.75 per month)
2009: 522 (43.5 per month)
2008: 719 (59.9 per month)
2007: 773 (64.4 per month)
2006: 560 (46.7 per month)
2005: 437 (36.4 per month)
2004: 353 (29.4 per month)

So currently, with about 3,000 editors in the potential FA writer pool of editors making more than 100 edits a month, FA promotion rates are back to the level of 2004, when Wikipedia had 270 to 900 editors making more than 100 edits a month.

And FA promotion rates today, with around 3,000 editors making more than 100 edits a month, are less than half of what they were in 2008, when editors making more than 100 edits a month hovered around 4,000.

Of course, there may be other reasons why FA promotions have dwindled; one could be fluctuations in the popularity of the FA process itself, another might be increasingly stringent standards (although most of this tightening of standards had occurred by 2008). It might therefore be useful to cross-check this with other data, such as the retirement rates of FA writers in Wikipedia vs. that of other Wikipedians.

However, I believe that one reason why content builders leave is that once a well-researched, well-sourced article is written, they have to defend it on a permanent basis against drive-by editors adding unsourced material here, removing well-sourced material there, and so on.

It is well known in Wikipedia that quality articles in many topic areas tend to degrade into a mush once the person(s) who wrote it stop(s) watching it. (And of course, the more articles you have written, the more you have to watch ...)

By counting edits and editors rather than measuring quality, the Foundation essentially considers such degradation (whether reverted or not) a "success": changes to an article are seen as a "sign of life". More edits!

What this comes across as is good content not being valued. Eventually the person watching the article(s) tires and leaves. Sometimes they are replaced by someone else who is equally capable, more often they're not.

I once likened writing a Wikipedia article to trying to paint Mona Lisa on a busy beach frequented by children, drunken louts and horse riders (as well as other painters), all of whose footprints the painter is required to accept as good-faith attempts at improving their work. Of course, genuine and fruitful collaboration does happen sometimes, even between people espousing opposite points of view. But the non-constructive edits become wearisome, and most people will put up with such conditions for a limited amount of time only. The pride in their own work will sustain them for a few years, and then they will ask themselves: Why am I doing this? Long-term, it's corrosive and no fun: Wikipedia seems to want to undo the good work you have done.

Wikipedia needs something like Wikipedia:Pending_changes (T-H-L), editor ratings based on the quality of people's contributions and editorial boards recognising wheat as wheat and chaff as chaff. Otherwise content builders will continue to leave.

The problem with that solution is that Wikipedia has no regard for real-world qualifications and instead has had fakes like Essjay rising to positions of authority (along with numerous schoolchildren who have lots of time on their hands). This means that given the present climate and demographics, and the dynamics of self-selection, the creation of editorial boards would make matters worse rather than better. The people most likely to want to be on them are hat collectors and content manipulators – the precise people who shouldn't be on them.

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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by sparkzilla » Thu Jun 19, 2014 4:34 pm

Wikipedia needs something like Wikipedia:Pending_changes (T-H-L), editor ratings based on the quality of people's contributions and editorial boards recognising wheat as wheat and chaff as chaff.
You mean like the standard editorial approval process that every other publication uses?
I once likened writing a Wikipedia article to trying to paint Mona Lisa on a busy beach frequented by children, drunken louts and horse riders (as well as other painters), all of whose footprints the painter is required to accept as good-faith attempts at improving their work. Of course, genuine and fruitful collaboration does happen sometimes, even between people espousing opposite points of view. But the non-constructive edits become wearisome, and most people will put up with such conditions for a limited amount of time only. The pride in their own work will sustain them for a few years, and then they will ask themselves: Why am I doing this? Long-term, it's corrosive and no fun: Wikipedia seems to want to undo the good work you have done.
Is it really the fault of the people walking by on the beach, or is the problem that you decided to try to paint the Mona Lisa on a beach to begin with?
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Vigilant » Thu Jun 19, 2014 4:44 pm

sparkzilla wrote:
I once likened writing a Wikipedia article to trying to paint Mona Lisa on a busy beach frequented by children, drunken louts and horse riders (as well as other painters), all of whose footprints the painter is required to accept as good-faith attempts at improving their work. Of course, genuine and fruitful collaboration does happen sometimes, even between people espousing opposite points of view. But the non-constructive edits become wearisome, and most people will put up with such conditions for a limited amount of time only. The pride in their own work will sustain them for a few years, and then they will ask themselves: Why am I doing this? Long-term, it's corrosive and no fun: Wikipedia seems to want to undo the good work you have done.
Is it really the fault of the people walking by on the beach, or is the problem that you decided to try to paint the Mona Lisa on a beach to begin with?
Change it to a sand castle contest where every entry can be messed with by random people on the beach.
You're not really allowed to own your sand castle, but you can beat the ever loving Christ out of people if you've been on the beach long enough.

Wikipedia right there.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Randy from Boise » Thu Jun 19, 2014 4:58 pm

HRIP7 wrote: If you measure Wikipedia against its stated charitable mission – making high-quality educational material available – then the idea that Wikipedia should have as many edits and editors as possible is easily seen to be a fallacy. Many people who edit Wikipedia are, quite frankly, undesirable (this includes numerous administrators). A reduction in editor numbers would not necessarily be a bad thing, if the right people left.

But that doesn't seem to be what is happening: it seems rather that those capable of creating high-quality content leave at a faster rate than those who are not.

For example, look at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Featured log (T-H-L). The number of articles promoted to featured status so far this year averages 29.2 per month.

Here are the previous years' figures:

2013: 390 (32.5 per month)
2012: 375 (31.25 per month)
2011: 355 (29.6 per month)
2010: 513 (42.75 per month)
2009: 522 (43.5 per month)
2008: 719 (59.9 per month)
2007: 773 (64.4 per month)
2006: 560 (46.7 per month)
2005: 437 (36.4 per month)
2004: 353 (29.4 per month)

So currently, with about 3,000 editors in the potential FA writer pool of editors making more than 100 edits a month, FA promotion rates are back to the level of 2004, when Wikipedia had 270 to 900 editors making more than 100 edits a month.

And FA promotion rates today, with around 3,000 editors making more than 100 edits a month, are less than half of what they were in 2008, when editors making more than 100 edits a month hovered around 4,000.

Of course, there may be other reasons why FA promotions have dwindled; one could be fluctuations in the popularity of the FA process itself, another might be increasingly stringent standards (although most of this tightening of standards had occurred by 2008). It might therefore be useful to cross-check this with other data, such as the retirement rates of FA writers in Wikipedia vs. that of other Wikipedians.

However, I believe that one reason why content builders leave is that once a well-researched, well-sourced article is written, they have to defend it on a permanent basis against drive-by editors adding unsourced material here, removing well-sourced material there, and so on.

It is well known in Wikipedia that quality articles in many topic areas tend to degrade into a mush once the person(s) who wrote it stop(s) watching it. (And of course, the more articles you have written, the more you have to watch ...)

By counting edits and editors rather than measuring quality, the Foundation essentially considers such degradation (whether reverted or not) a "success": changes to an article are seen as a "sign of life". More edits!

What this comes across as is good content not being valued. Eventually the person watching the article(s) tires and leaves. Sometimes they are replaced by someone else who is equally capable, more often they're not.

I once likened writing a Wikipedia article to trying to paint Mona Lisa on a busy beach frequented by children, drunken louts and horse riders (as well as other painters), all of whose footprints the painter is required to accept as good-faith attempts at improving their work. Of course, genuine and fruitful collaboration does happen sometimes, even between people espousing opposite points of view. But the non-constructive edits become wearisome, and most people will put up with such conditions for a limited amount of time only. The pride in their own work will sustain them for a few years, and then they will ask themselves: Why am I doing this? Long-term, it's corrosive and no fun: Wikipedia seems to want to undo the good work you have done.

Wikipedia needs something like Wikipedia:Pending_changes (T-H-L), editor ratings based on the quality of people's contributions and editorial boards recognising wheat as wheat and chaff as chaff. Otherwise content builders will continue to leave.

The problem with that solution is that Wikipedia has no regard for real-world qualifications and instead has had fakes like Essjay rising to positions of authority (along with numerous schoolchildren who have lots of time on their hands). This means that given the present climate and demographics, and the dynamics of self-selection, the creation of editorial boards would make matters worse rather than better. The people most likely to want to be on them are hat collectors and content manipulators – the precise people who shouldn't be on them.
This is a very intelligent post.

I question the use of the FA count as a meaningful metric. Featured Article "promotion" is a bureaucratic homogenization process more than anything, making sure that every comma is proper and every footnote according to the form favored by people that obsess about form over function...

I agree that there needs to be much, much more emphasis on quality rather than quantity of content contributors on the part of WMF. I would like to see better real world self-identification of content writers — not only the material that is written but the bona fides of those writing it need to be something open to examination and verification, in my opinion. This will be a slow, evolutionary process, I'm sure. The general trend of articles at WP is moving inevitably from small to large, from rough to polished, from unsourced to sourced, and from general to specialized.

Ultimately, specialized topics are going to need expert, specialized contributors.

I'm not sure what the valid metric is for WP article growth. Total count and new articles per month is part of the picture, and those figures are well documented. Growth in average file size of already-existing articles would be interesting, but difficult to generate.

But the count of FA articles? That is merely a reflection of the diminishing size of the pool of people who care about such things, it seems to me.

RfB

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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by sparkzilla » Thu Jun 19, 2014 6:15 pm

I would like to see better real world self-identification of content writers — not only the material that is written but the bona fides of those writing it need to be something open to examination and verification, in my opinion.
This is unnecessary in a crowdsourced system. Each Wikipedia page is a collection of sources. You don't have to be an expert to compile sources.

Naming editors inevitably introduces an unnecessary and unwelcome discussion of the writer's credibility, and tends to lead to online and offline bullying (as happened to me when accused of COI editing as a means to stop me editing). The whole issue with paid editors is a result of a focus on who is making the edit rather than the quality of the edit itself.

An effective editorial approval process should not care who provides the information, only that the information adheres to the editorial rules.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Peter Damian » Thu Jun 19, 2014 6:33 pm

sparkzilla wrote:An effective editorial approval process should not care who provides the information, only that the information adheres to the editorial rules.
An effective editorial approval process begins with good editors. (Imagine a company that hires absolutely anyone, on the grounds that they don't care who does the work, so long as the work is good. Perhaps an airline, or a hospital).
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Peter Damian » Thu Jun 19, 2014 6:42 pm

οὐκ ἀγαθὸν πολυκοιρανίη: εἷς κοίρανος ἔστω

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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by sparkzilla » Thu Jun 19, 2014 9:41 pm

An effective editorial approval process begins with good editors. (Imagine a company that hires absolutely anyone, on the grounds that they don't care who does the work, so long as the work is good. Perhaps an airline, or a hospital).
Have you seen Tim's Vermeer? It's the story of a guy who finds an optical technique, possibly used by Vermeer, to paint an exact replica of The Music Lesson, even though he has no training as a painter. In fact, if he was trained as a painter he would not have been able to come up with his method. He builds the painting up brushstroke by brushstroke to give an almost photo-realistic end result. This is also the way automation works. Robots, even in hospital, are being trained to repeat and emulate simple tasks, that add up into complex operations.

Anyway the point is that it should require no expert knowledge to add text to Wikipedia. You find a source and write a sentence that encapsulates the source. Even if you are writing about rocket science you don't actually have to know about rocket science, because you are, with other people, building up the page line by line (brushstroke by brushstroke). All it requires is that the source fits the rules of the system, which should be simple and clear. As it is, every edit to Wikipedia is subject to excessive and necessary discussion.

Wikipedia fails to account for the natural reaction for people to use whatever information they can to gain advantage. The software allows for anyone to delete text, and then use any reason they can find to justify their removal: Arguing about the reliability of the source, and the credibility of the person adding the information to name just a few. Instead of seeing where the problem really lies -- the flaws in the underlying software, and the people at the very top who are unwilling to create a better editorial flow -- the call goes up that Wikipedia needs "good" editors. They believe that if only better people were involved then the results would be so much better. If only the "toxic" culture could be changed, they say. Wikipedia doesn't need good editors any more than it needs unpaid editors, or editors with a conflict of interest -- it simply needs a system to better evaluate good edits, irrespective of who makes them. Focusing on the person will only enhance groupthink, increase bullying, and reduce accuracy, while diverting attention away from the real issues.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by dogbiscuit » Thu Jun 19, 2014 9:56 pm

sparkzilla wrote:
An effective editorial approval process begins with good editors. (Imagine a company that hires absolutely anyone, on the grounds that they don't care who does the work, so long as the work is good. Perhaps an airline, or a hospital).
Have you seen Tim's Vermeer? It's the story of a guy who finds an optical technique, possibly used by Vermeer, to paint an exact replica of The Music Lesson, even though he has no training as a painter. In fact, if he was trained as a painter he would not have been able to come up with his method. He builds the painting up brushstroke by brushstroke to give an almost photo-realistic end result. This is also the way automation works. Robots, even in hospital, are being trained to repeat and emulate simple tasks, that add up into complex operations.

Anyway the point is that it should require no expert knowledge to add text to Wikipedia. You find a source and write a sentence that encapsulates the source. Even if you are writing about rocket science you don't actually have to know about rocket science, because you are, with other people, building up the page line by line (brushstroke by brushstroke). All it requires is that the source fits the rules of the system, which should be simple and clear. As it is, every edit to Wikipedia is subject to excessive and necessary discussion.

Wikipedia fails to account for the natural reaction for people to use whatever information they can to gain advantage. The software allows for anyone to delete text, and then use any reason they can find to justify their removal: Arguing about the reliability of the source, and the credibility of the person adding the information to name just a few. Instead of seeing where the problem really lies -- the flaws in the underlying software, and the people at the very top who are unwilling to create a better editorial flow -- the call goes up that Wikipedia needs "good" editors. They believe that if only better people were involved then the results would be so much better. If only the "toxic" culture could be changed, they say. Wikipedia doesn't need good editors any more than it needs unpaid editors, or editors with a conflict of interest -- it simply needs a system to better evaluate good edits, irrespective of who makes them. Focusing on the person will only enhance groupthink, increase bullying, and reduce accuracy, while diverting attention away from the real issues.
The flaw in the Tim's Vermeer analogy is that the system is mindless copying, but building Wikipedia is not mindless copying, the flaw is that it is not allowed to be a copy so it is an amalgamation. To to the amalgamation, comprehension is required - not a deep understanding necessarily but sufficient general knowledge and comprehension of the subject - and comprehension of specialist ideas must necessarily include subject knowledge. A simple example would be legal articles where certain words are understood to have specific and well defined meanings in a legal context which are not necessarily the obvious plain English words (even if these days the Latin element of usage has generally been deprecated).

The other element that was something of a deceit in the Tim programme is that he was not an artist but he clearly was good with his hands, he was something of a workman. If you tried to get a 10 year old to do the same process, a 10 year old could not have achieved it - lack of concentration, lack of consistency and so on.

Try to design a step by step guide to creating an article. Assume you have been presented with 10 excellent and reliable sources on Tim's Vermeer and you are going to write an article about the programme. What are the steps you go through to transform these 10 reliable sources into a single Wikipedia article? Can you break it down into such trivial steps that you cannot conceive that an adult of average intelligence cannot help but create a useful and meaningful article?
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by lilburne » Thu Jun 19, 2014 10:05 pm

We already know how this works out for the science articles at GA and DYK, where all the right words are there not not quite in the right order. We also know how it works out for the maths articles that become impenetrable. The medical articles are similarly given a kitchen sink approach. The least said about the medieval history article the better.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by sparkzilla » Fri Jun 20, 2014 12:04 am

Try to design a step by step guide to creating an article. Assume you have been presented with 10 excellent and reliable sources on Tim's Vermeer and you are going to write an article about the programme. What are the steps you go through to transform these 10 reliable sources into a single Wikipedia article? Can you break it down into such trivial steps that you cannot conceive that an adult of average intelligence cannot help but create a useful and meaningful article?
Yes, it is not only possible, it's what I am doing on my site every day. People have become so used to the flaws of Wikipedia, combined with the vain hope that it could get better, that they find it difficult to believe there can be another way to create articles of similar or better quality. That's why I talk so much about the software -- because it underlies all the issues that people complain about.

To make the page in easy steps:

A. Make sure the data itself is in discreet and easily understandable chunks. I use single newsworthy events as the standard information unit. In the case of Tim's Vermeer our users ask themselves the question: What are the newsworthy events for this topic?

1. Tim is born
2. Tim gets rich
3. Tim reads David Hockney book
4. Tim has the idea to make the painting
5. Tim discovers his own version of the optical device
6. Tim starts work
7. Tim finishes work

There are more but that's for illustration. Breaking up the data allows any discussion to be directly related to the post.

B. The writer then gathers sources. Any newspaper article or post from the person's own blog will do. You do not need to be an expert.

C. Make it so that the data that is required from the source follows clear rules. Each event requires the date, the things that happened only on that date, a link back to the source article, a quote about the event by the person, and a youtube link of the event if that is available.

D. Add a simple approval process that sends the submitted text back to the writer until it meets the requirements of C. The editor may improve the readability of the text, but not change the data included if it is in the source. No personal opinions are allowed. Posts are judged entirely on the data, not on who writes them.

If someone wants to edit a post that has already been approved they can do so, but the post will be resubmitted for approval

E: Repeat until all items on the list are done. Then you have a complete page.

The end result is that a simplified data structure with fixed approval rules makes it easy for the writer. As an example, our writers have created 40-odd posts on Mark Cuban over the past few days (with perhaps 100 more posts to go). There has been very little discussion with the writers while creating the page because, once they have made a few posts, they know the format that is required and simply add events. They are not put in conflict with other users, and they can make money because we pay per post.

BTW, I am not saying my solution works for every single type of Wikipedia page but it will work for all the biographies and any kind of event. I will leave it to you to judge how the results compare to Wikipedia's Mark Cuban page.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by EricBarbour » Fri Jun 20, 2014 1:09 am

sparkzilla wrote:BTW, I am not saying my solution works for every single type of Wikipedia page but it will work for all the biographies and any kind of event. I will leave it to you to judge how the results compare to Wikipedia's Mark Cuban page.
Heh, good choice. Editwarred into an incoherent lump of shreds.

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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Johnny Au » Fri Jun 20, 2014 2:48 am

There is one problem though: you cannot use material from the subject's own blog, since it is a self-published source, which is not allowed.

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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by sparkzilla » Fri Jun 20, 2014 5:14 am

Many of Wikipedia's rules -- the rules we have all spent many hours arguing over and fighting about -- are completely unnecessary when the data is structured differently. As I explained elsewhere, one of WPs main problems is it allows editors to make decisions not only on whether information exists, but on its veracity. This kills any kind of claims. A subject's blog posts may not be allowed on Wikipedia, but the addition of such data is easily solved by adding the word "claims" or even "says" to the event (which has to be newsworthy).

After losing, Cuban claims that the Mavericks will win next year.

Cuban says on his blog, "I'm innocent of the charges" etc.

Why shouldn't the subject have a voice on a page about them? A celebrity's twitter feed, Facebook posts, or YouTube videos often has more readers than traditional newspaper. Isn't the aim is to give an understanding of the subject? Why shouldn't the subject be able to speak for themselves? Just mark a claim as such, it's no big deal. IMHO that has less bias that someone interpreting their words for them.

The site claims to create the sum of all knowledge, but rarely does anyone ask what that knowledge consists of, or to be more precise, how it is presented. My partner put it very clearly when she said "Wikipedia is like a book". The emphasis is on quantity (good for editors), not quality (good for readers). Readers deserve more.

Blanket rules on 1) the quality of sources and 2) the quality of the people adding the information show that the people in charge are more interested in control than in the information itself. Unfortunately, people are so programmed into the "Wikipedia way" that they think it's the only way. Because they cannot conceive an alternative, they wish for changes that can never happen to a system that is irredeemably broken.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by dogbiscuit » Fri Jun 20, 2014 7:27 am

Sparky, your system has failed at the first hurdle - it is not an unskilled process that Tim posits, it requires basic analytical skills.

You pulled out the main events. How did you judge those events? You read the sources, analysed them and concluded that these were important. What happens when the sources diverge? What if an event is described in some but not others - is this lack of concensus important? What if the sources are not coherent but simply Google search results?

So you have already asked for significant skill in simply and glibly determining an article structure. What qualification level does a person need in literacy even to do that?

Sometimes events are not the story of the person. With Nelson Mandela, while there are important events, it was his leadership that was important. Is a timeline the best way to structure an article about Mandela?

Next, how have you concluded that this is the appropriate structure without having first gathered your sources and considered them?

Your clear rules only work for events. What about a discussion of Mandela's attitudes to imprisonment? What are the clear rules for data about that?

How does this process fit with crowd-sourcing, where many writers are flitting in and out?


What you have done is create a process for a low quality auto-biographical timeline. You have not created rules for a reasonable quality encyclopedia.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by sparkzilla » Fri Jun 20, 2014 10:03 am

your system has failed at the first hurdle - it is not an unskilled process that Tim posits, it requires basic analytical skills.
The task set required an adult of average intelligence. I never said it was for unskilled people. I said " it should require no expert knowledge to add text to Wikipedia". Even so, it requires far less skill to post to Newslines than it does to Wikipedia.
You pulled out the main events. How did you judge those events? You read the sources, analysed them and concluded that these were important. What happens when the sources diverge? What if an event is described in some but not others - is this lack of concensus important? What if the sources are not coherent but simply Google search results? So you have already asked for significant skill in simply and glibly determining an article structure. What qualification level does a person need in literacy even to do that?
It doesn't take a genius to do a bit of research into the life of people or events. You can read the news, search Google and see what people have created, who they married, court cases they have been involved in, arrests etc. It's really not a stretch for someone of average intelligence.

Sources that diverge are handled easily by simply stating that the sources diverge. "The New York Times reported that (something was different from the other sources)". There is no need for editors to determine which source is correct.
Sometimes events are not the story of the person. With Nelson Mandela, while there are important events, it was his leadership that was important. Is a timeline the best way to structure an article about Mandela?
I would say that a quality timeline of the events of his life is a good start. Was his leadership important? That highly subjective question is also a poor fit for Wikipedia. What sources are you going to use for that? It's a recipe for editwarring. At least in Newslines I keep the events and the commentary about the events separate.
Your clear rules only work for events. What about a discussion of Mandela's attitudes to imprisonment? What are the clear rules for data about that?
Actually that is handled easily because each event has a quotation by the person themselves about the event. So we can have Mandela actually talk in his own words about the major events of his imprisonment. I believe this is of more value to the reader than someone trying to select secondary sources fit their attitudes about Mandela. In the Cuban page we see him actually talk about the insider trading acquittal in an embedded YouTube video. We see him on Dancing With the stars. We see him on Shark Tank. We see him talk about racism. This is far more value than Wikipedia's text-only presentation.
How does this process fit with crowd-sourcing, where many writers are flitting in and out?
That's the point. It's the "many writers flitting in and out" with no structure that causes Wikipedia's problems. It's foolish to try to create the Mona Lisa on a busy beach -- you use a studio where the environment is controlled. Minimize external distractions by making it clear what data is required at each step and then apply an approval process that actually works. The end result is a lot less conflict, a lot less time, and happier editors for the same or better result.
What you have done is create a process for a low quality auto-biographical timeline. You have not created rules for a reasonable quality encyclopedia.
I'm not interested in the encyclopedic topics that no-one reads. I intend to take all the biographies and news events that comprise the most popular pages on Wikipedia (and which I have argued should not be on the encyclopedia anyway). I'm confident the readers will choose what they think is better over time.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by dogbiscuit » Fri Jun 20, 2014 10:27 am

Sorry, we are talking apples and pears. You have a system for producing something that suits your purposes, which is fine. I was talking about a system to suit Wikipedia's purpose which is "an encyclopedia anyone can edit". Your method is neither an encyclopedia nor does it allow anyone to edit.

Your method is not suitable because it requires people to learn and accept your system and have sufficient knowledge and a coherent view with other editors of the final form.

It is one of my criticisms of Wikipedia that there is no target audience - fundamentally there cannot be an agreed form for articles because there are differing views of the target audience. As an example, is a medical article for the use (only) of the lay public, or for those with some medical knowledge or to enshrine the sum of all knowledge of the subject regardless of its usability by readers of some profile or other.

As your own project, you can define the scope, form and so on. You have taken editorial control. There is no editorial control on Wikipedia and when someone does decide to take control (aka own articles) this is deemed an affront to the system.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Poetlister » Fri Jun 20, 2014 11:38 am

One of the notable features of Wikipedia is the wholesale incorporation of out of copyright reference works such as Encyclopedia Britannica 1911. That did not require much intelligence or originality, but created thousands of originally good but now mostly hopelessly out of date articles. Updating them is the difficult part.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Randy from Boise » Fri Jun 20, 2014 11:53 am

Poetlister wrote:One of the notable features of Wikipedia is the wholesale incorporation of out of copyright reference works such as Encyclopedia Britannica 1911. That did not require much intelligence or originality, but created thousands of originally good but now mostly hopelessly out of date articles. Updating them is the difficult part.
There is very little of that 1911 content still around. I'm sure there are nest here and there. William Morris (T-H-L) had some, last I checked. But in general it is a tiny portion of the whole and steadily receding.

tim

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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Poetlister » Fri Jun 20, 2014 12:03 pm

Randy from Boise wrote:
Poetlister wrote:One of the notable features of Wikipedia is the wholesale incorporation of out of copyright reference works such as Encyclopedia Britannica 1911. That did not require much intelligence or originality, but created thousands of originally good but now mostly hopelessly out of date articles. Updating them is the difficult part.
There is very little of that 1911 content still around. I'm sure there are nest here and there. William Morris (T-H-L) had some, last I checked. But in general it is a tiny portion of the whole and steadily receding.

tim
OK, try the Catholic Encyclopedia or the Jewish Encyclopedia.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Peter Damian » Fri Jun 20, 2014 6:07 pm

Randy from Boise wrote:
Poetlister wrote:One of the notable features of Wikipedia is the wholesale incorporation of out of copyright reference works such as Encyclopedia Britannica 1911. That did not require much intelligence or originality, but created thousands of originally good but now mostly hopelessly out of date articles. Updating them is the difficult part.
There is very little of that 1911 content still around. I'm sure there are nest here and there. William Morris (T-H-L) had some, last I checked. But in general it is a tiny portion of the whole ...
tim
Sometimes I wonder if we are actually talking about the same internet encyclopedia. Give me some hard evidence for this claim, and before that read my post about this subject in general, and the wholesale (and muddled) appropriation of obsolete sources.
The Encyclopedia Britannica edition of 1911 is also a major source for Wikipedia. On March 14 2002, Wikipedia editors began a project to upload all 43,000 articles of the 1911 version of Encyclopedia Britannica into Wikipedia. About 22,000 articles were eventually copied, but few of them (about 5%) were even checked, according to Wikipedia’s own statistics. Some of them are laughably outdated, such as the article on the legal concept of affiliation (“When a bastard child, whose mother has not obtained an order, becomes chargeable to the parish, the guardians may proceed against the putative father for a contribution”). The article on Robert Boyle, originally uploaded on 24 April 2002, has barely changed in ten years, and the current version still contains such gems as “Boyle’s great merit as a scientific investigator is that he carried out the principles which Francis Bacon espoused in the Novum Organum”; “He would not avow himself a follower of Bacon”; “Nothing was more alien to his mental temperament than the spinning of hypotheses.”
First 5,000 articles that link to the {{EB1911}} template.
... and steadily receding
More hard evidence please. Pretty much any subject in my area of specialism is originally sourced from 1911 or Catholic Encyclopedia. As I have argued before, the Wikipedians either leave it as it is, or they mangle it into nonsense. See “Don’t trust Wikipedia on Anselm”.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Johnny Au » Fri Jun 20, 2014 6:23 pm

The thing about Fakebook, TWITter, and YouTube are that there are nothing to fact-check and there is no authority that detects hoaxes or blatantly false information. For example, someone on YouTube provides "proof" [insert extrasolar planet here] is home to an advanced civilization outside of fiction. Some uncritical Wikipedian would add that in. There is a good reason why there should be reliable sources. Anyone can tweet that they are infallible, including charlatans. For newspapers, the journalists who write them generally have a journalism degree and generally have to go through rigorous journalism standards (even if they have to fit within the biases of a newspaper) before they get published.

Oh, and Wikipedia does not allow "on the next match day" scenarios, even if they are published on FIFA's website.

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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Poetlister » Fri Jun 20, 2014 8:43 pm

The Encyclopedia Britannica edition of 1911 is also a major source for Wikipedia. On March 14 2002, Wikipedia editors began a project to upload all 43,000 articles of the 1911 version of Encyclopedia Britannica into Wikipedia. About 22,000 articles were eventually copied, but few of them (about 5%) were even checked, according to Wikipedia’s own statistics. Some of them are laughably outdated, such as the article on the legal concept of affiliation (“When a bastard child, whose mother has not obtained an order, becomes chargeable to the parish, the guardians may proceed against the putative father for a contribution”). The article on Robert Boyle, originally uploaded on 24 April 2002, has barely changed in ten years, and the current version still contains such gems as “Boyle’s great merit as a scientific investigator is that he carried out the principles which Francis Bacon espoused in the Novum Organum”; “He would not avow himself a follower of Bacon”; “Nothing was more alien to his mental temperament than the spinning of hypotheses.”
They can't even copy correctly. The Affiliation article says "(with the (usually termed filiation)", which is nonsense even without the mismatched brackets. Or try Simeon Singer (T-H-L), which helpfully has a template saying "This article is largely based on an article in the out-of-copyright Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, which was produced in 1911. It should be brought up to date to reflect subsequent history or scholarship (including the references, if any). When you have completed the review, replace this notice with a simple note on this article's talk page. (January 2011)" How many articles have that template? How many should have but don't?
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Peter Damian » Sat Jun 21, 2014 7:46 am

I did some ‘archeology’ on the Willliam Morris (T-H-L) article and it is certainly a considerable development from the original EB1911. The two main authors who have brought it to its current state are PKM (T-C-L) and Midnightblueowl (T-C-L), both of whom appear to be women. I have never seen either of them on a drama board.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by sparkzilla » Sat Jun 21, 2014 5:04 pm

Johnny Au wrote:The thing about Fakebook, TWITter, and YouTube are that there are nothing to fact-check and there is no authority that detects hoaxes or blatantly false information
IMHO one of Wikipedia's flaws is that editors are allowed to fact check the information they add.

In the case of Twitterand blogs I'm talking about two types of data: Information about the person about themselves, and information produced by the person. Information about the person on their own site like birthdates etc is unlikely to be hoaxed on their own site. Their own words on Twitter, or in Youtube interviews, especially on verified accounts are good sources, and in some cases the only source. For example, British diver Tom Daley's YouTube coming out video.

Now lets say the person believes in aliens and makes a book about it. Simply add the book as something they have published, and mark it as a claim:

June 21: [Name] releases Aliens ate my Cat. He says on twitter that he believes that dog-like aliens "have been roaming the galaxy looking to felines to eat"

There is no need to verify the truth of the claim, the credibility of the subject, or the motivations or the person who added the information.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Hex » Tue Jun 24, 2014 3:07 pm

Peter Damian wrote: More hard evidence please. Pretty much any subject in my area of specialism is originally sourced from 1911 or Catholic Encyclopedia. As I have argued before, the Wikipedians either leave it as it is, or they mangle it into nonsense. See “Don’t trust Wikipedia on Anselm”.
If it's an extremely specialist subtopic of a field that the Victorians practiced, it probably still has a lot of EB1911 material in it. I just happened across Lacrymatory (T-H-L), which is, bar some tweaks to spelling and grammar, still only the EB1911 article that was copied in 2005. There was a period in 2007 when it had some poor-quality material added to it based on a random website, but that's all gone again and it's back to square one.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Peter Damian » Wed Jun 25, 2014 9:13 am

Hex wrote:
Peter Damian wrote: More hard evidence please. Pretty much any subject in my area of specialism is originally sourced from 1911 or Catholic Encyclopedia. As I have argued before, the Wikipedians either leave it as it is, or they mangle it into nonsense. See “Don’t trust Wikipedia on Anselm”.
If it's an extremely specialist subtopic of a field that the Victorians practiced, it probably still has a lot of EB1911 material in it.
Personally I wouldn't regard Robert Boyle, or Anselm, as an extremely specialist subtopic of a field that the Victorians practised, but education may have changed since I was at school.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by lilburne » Wed Jun 25, 2014 11:15 am

In any volunteer community, there will be churn with new people coming along and older established users finding something better to do, or because they fallen out with others. What you have in the WP admin corps is that the most poisonous one are staying and making the environment increasingly toxic.

Meanwhile the number of articles are increasing resulting in more drudge maintenance work, which makes the project intrinsically less fun to work on, unless your motivation is being officious and you derive pleasure from berating people, and would like access to the block button as well. So those that come through to replace the ones leaving just add a little bit more toxicity to the system.

Meanwhile more stuff is being added, more unpleasant personalities are gaining access to the tools, a large number of people are no longer bothering.

Basically the place is fuxored. Which is a good thing. The bad thing is that fuxored systems like this can exist for several years on life support.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Poetlister » Wed Jun 25, 2014 11:29 am

Peter Damian wrote:
Hex wrote:
Peter Damian wrote: More hard evidence please. Pretty much any subject in my area of specialism is originally sourced from 1911 or Catholic Encyclopedia. As I have argued before, the Wikipedians either leave it as it is, or they mangle it into nonsense. See “Don’t trust Wikipedia on Anselm”.
If it's an extremely specialist subtopic of a field that the Victorians practiced, it probably still has a lot of EB1911 material in it.
Personally I wouldn't regard Robert Boyle, or Anselm, as an extremely specialist subtopic of a field that the Victorians practised, but education may have changed since I was at school.
Robert Boyle, certainly, is well known to every 16 year old in Britain who's studied physics. Anselm is perhaps less well-known but is scarcely a Victorian speciality.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Hex » Wed Jun 25, 2014 12:00 pm

Peter Damian wrote:
Hex wrote: If it's an extremely specialist subtopic of a field that the Victorians practiced, it probably still has a lot of EB1911 material in it.
Personally I wouldn't regard Robert Boyle, or Anselm, as an extremely specialist subtopic of a field that the Victorians practised, but education may have changed since I was at school.
Not disagreeing with you - I meant that the obscure stuff is guaranteed to have it; other topics such as those you mention are merely very likely to have it.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by roger_pearse » Thu Jun 26, 2014 7:52 pm

Randy from Boise wrote:There is very little of that 1911 content still around. I'm sure there are nest here and there.
That is not my impression, I must say. Probably the kinds of articles that I look at do not attract the attention of many editors, of course. But if WP actually was focused on producing good content, then starting with the 1911 encyclopedia article would be a perfectly sound move.

All the best,

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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Hex » Sun Jul 27, 2014 12:43 pm

Hex wrote:As you can see from the figures I've compiled at Wikipedia:Desysoppings by month (T-H-L), this is not entirely true. In the years following the enactment of the inactivity policy:
It struck me recently that those numbers weren't accurate as they didn't take into account resysoppings. A lot of people claw back their admin bit, as is well known. I've updated the numbers accordingly, and this is what the true picture looks like.
Yearly change in numbers of admins on the English Wikipedia.png
Hex wrote: The rate at which the total number of admins is decreasing is itself decreasing. This is entirely unsurprising as the huge bulge in admins created in the boom period of 2005-7 moves into the past. A couple of years from now the in and out numbers are probably going to hit parity.
This was correct, possibly even conservative.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Peter Damian » Sun Jul 27, 2014 2:47 pm

Hex wrote:
Hex wrote:As you can see from the figures I've compiled at Wikipedia:Desysoppings by month (T-H-L), this is not entirely true. In the years following the enactment of the inactivity policy:
It struck me recently that those numbers weren't accurate as they didn't take into account resysoppings. A lot of people claw back their admin bit, as is well known. I've updated the numbers accordingly, and this is what the true picture looks like.
Yearly change in numbers of admins on the English Wikipedia.png
Hex wrote: The rate at which the total number of admins is decreasing is itself decreasing. This is entirely unsurprising as the huge bulge in admins created in the boom period of 2005-7 moves into the past. A couple of years from now the in and out numbers are probably going to hit parity.
This was correct, possibly even conservative.
That's interesting, and perhaps for once the picture does not lie.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by lilburne » Sun Jul 27, 2014 3:57 pm

If they gain parity in numbers due to people having the bit removed for being AWOL claiming it back, then what have they achieved? The workload hasn't decreased the previously AWOL aren't going to be much more active, every one is getting more jaded and snappy. It still all looks good.
Last edited by Zoloft on Mon Jul 28, 2014 3:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Peter Damian » Sun Jul 27, 2014 4:37 pm

lilburne wrote:If they gain parity in numbers due to people having the bit removed for being AWOL claiming it back, then what have they achieved? The workload hasn't decreased the previously AWOL aren't going to be much more active, every one is getting more jaded and snappy. It still all looks good.
Ah I was confusing this with my accustomed metric, which is active admins. This is total number, right? Obviously you can't get back 'active admin' by a few random edits.

But still this is telling us something, no?
Last edited by Zoloft on Mon Jul 28, 2014 3:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by EricBarbour » Mon Jul 28, 2014 12:31 am

Peter Damian wrote:But still this is telling us something, no?
That a deranged, bizarre mess "community" like Wikipedia requires, or tolerates, only about 500-600 administrators. If a stable figure ensues, we'll call it "Damian's Law" or somesuch.

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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Poetlister » Mon Jul 28, 2014 11:12 am

Peter Damian wrote:But still this is telling us something, no?
It's telling us that there are many people who want the kudos of being an admin but aren't willing (or, to be fair, possibly aren't able) to do much admin work to justify having the bit.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Versus » Wed Jan 07, 2015 11:52 am

Washington Post has published a review of Andrew Keen's The Internet Is Not the Answer:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... story.html

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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Anthonyhcole » Wed Jan 07, 2015 2:17 pm

Versus wrote:Washington Post has published a review of Andrew Keen's The Internet Is Not the Answer:

linkhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... story.html[/link]
That's a rave review from Michael Harris.

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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by lilburne » Wed Jan 07, 2015 2:48 pm

Anthonyhcole wrote:
Versus wrote:Washington Post has published a review of Andrew Keen's The Internet Is Not the Answer:

linkhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... story.html[/link]
That's a rave review from Michael Harris.
There is an interview with Andrew Keen here linkhttp://illusionofmore.com/talking-andrew-keen-podcast/[/link]
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Anthonyhcole » Wed Jan 07, 2015 6:34 pm

lilburne wrote:
Anthonyhcole wrote:
Versus wrote:Washington Post has published a review of Andrew Keen's The Internet Is Not the Answer:

linkhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... story.html[/link]
That's a rave review from Michael Harris.
There is an interview with Andrew Keen here linkhttp://illusionofmore.com/talking-andrew-keen-podcast/[/link]
Thanks. I might get that book.

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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Peter Damian » Wed Jan 07, 2015 8:29 pm

lilburne wrote:
Anthonyhcole wrote:
Versus wrote:Washington Post has published a review of Andrew Keen's The Internet Is Not the Answer:

linkhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... story.html[/link]
That's a rave review from Michael Harris.
There is an interview with Andrew Keen here linkhttp://illusionofmore.com/talking-andrew-keen-podcast/[/link]
From the review, it sounds like some dodgy economics going on. People made the same argument during the Industrial Revolution, about technology causing redundancies and so on.

The argument is valid, of course, when it's not technology but simple theft. Then people won't be motivated to produce the stolen goods, and the system collapses. But I am not sure all of it is simple theft.
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Lukeno94
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Lukeno94 » Wed Jan 07, 2015 9:57 pm

Peter Damian wrote:
lilburne wrote:
Anthonyhcole wrote:
Versus wrote:Washington Post has published a review of Andrew Keen's The Internet Is Not the Answer:

linkhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... story.html[/link]
That's a rave review from Michael Harris.
There is an interview with Andrew Keen here linkhttp://illusionofmore.com/talking-andrew-keen-podcast/[/link]
From the review, it sounds like some dodgy economics going on. People made the same argument during the Industrial Revolution, about technology causing redundancies and so on.

The argument is valid, of course, when it's not technology but simple theft. Then people won't be motivated to produce the stolen goods, and the system collapses. But I am not sure all of it is simple theft.
Well, technology did initially cause redundancies back then... but as the industries grew rapidly, those people soon got similar jobs.

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Peter Damian
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Peter Damian » Wed Jan 07, 2015 10:39 pm

Lukeno94 wrote:
Peter Damian wrote:
lilburne wrote:
Anthonyhcole wrote:
Versus wrote:Washington Post has published a review of Andrew Keen's The Internet Is Not the Answer:

linkhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... story.html[/link]
That's a rave review from Michael Harris.
There is an interview with Andrew Keen here linkhttp://illusionofmore.com/talking-andrew-keen-podcast/[/link]
From the review, it sounds like some dodgy economics going on. People made the same argument during the Industrial Revolution, about technology causing redundancies and so on.

The argument is valid, of course, when it's not technology but simple theft. Then people won't be motivated to produce the stolen goods, and the system collapses. But I am not sure all of it is simple theft.
Well, technology did initially cause redundancies back then... but as the industries grew rapidly, those people soon got similar jobs.
Well, if Say's Law is correct, then different jobs, rather than similar jobs.
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Notvelty » Wed Jan 07, 2015 11:35 pm

Peter Damian wrote:
Lukeno94 wrote: Well, technology did initially cause redundancies back then... but as the industries grew rapidly, those people soon got similar jobs.
Well, if Say's Law is correct, then different jobs, rather than similar jobs.
Don't confuse the poor boy, Ed.

PS - have you seen the joke of the Says Law article on WP compared to "Keynesian Economics"?

PPS - what we really need is a world wide economic recession, a "Great Depression" if you will, where Keynesian economics was shown to, rather than reduce the effects, lengthen the period and prolong the recovery. Then we can dump this demonstrably incorrect philosophy once and for all, and improve on one that at least accurately describes what happens.... oh.. wait...

Well maybe we can have a dramatic change in the manufacturing and trade base, some sort of "Industrial Revolution", which demonstrated the drive of demand via an increase in the aggregate of production. Then we could ditch the silly idea that you can create demand without actually providing the means to do so.... hmmm.. yes, I can see this might be a struggle.

Well, at least we don't need to have a century showing the failure of... oh.. yes, I see.

Don't mind me, I've been knocked down by all this, but I'm going to go right ahead and pull myself up by my own shoelaces. You can do that, you know - so long as you stick a third party with mass derived from yourself in the middle. Honest.
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Johnny Au
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Johnny Au » Thu Jan 08, 2015 4:55 am

How to reverse the decline of Wikipedia:

• Promote Wikipedia right down to shoving it down the throats of many different people, especially celebrities, since they are trendsetters (I myself make more edits on Wikipedia than 99.99% of all celebrities combined)
• Put the Wikipedia globe on mainstream advertisements, just like with that navy blue square with a white lowercase "f" superimposed on it and a cyan songbird
• Likewise, put the Wikipedia globe on every major website for the same reason the aforementioned square and songbird are there
• Controversially, link WikiLeaks with the WMF, since bad publicity is publicity nonetheless, even if WikiLeaks is not affiliated with the WMF
Fix Wikipedia's byzantine and opaque governance and listen to what sparkzilla got to say

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Notvelty
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Re: Wikipedia: charting the decline in participation

Unread post by Notvelty » Thu Jan 08, 2015 5:11 am

Johnny Au wrote:How to reverse the decline of Wikipedia:

• Promote Wikipedia right down to shoving it down the throats of many different people, especially celebrities, since they are trendsetters (I myself make more edits on Wikipedia than 99.99% of all celebrities combined)
• Put the Wikipedia globe on mainstream advertisements, just like with that navy blue square with a white lowercase "f" superimposed on it and a cyan songbird
• Likewise, put the Wikipedia globe on every major website for the same reason the aforementioned square and songbird are there
• Controversially, link WikiLeaks with the WMF, since bad publicity is publicity nonetheless, even if WikiLeaks is not affiliated with the WMF
Fix Wikipedia's byzantine and opaque governance and listen to what sparkzilla got to say
Create a hashtag

#illeditwithyou
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