5 ms·

Why are people so consistently negative about Wikipedia? Just looking at the top comments here, and other places around the internet - I think it's far too com

Why are people so consistently negative about Wikipedia? Just looking at the top comments here, and other places around the internet - I think it's far too common. Let's be more positive. Wikipedia is amazing - congrats to them for successfully achieving their fund-raising goals.

mike_esspe 16y ago
Wikipedia is amazing, but deletionism policy is bad. BTW, anyone wants to make a service, which hosts base content from wikipedia, but allows to fork and merge articles a la git? By default you see main article (if it exists), but if you want to see alternative opinions - they are just several clicks away.
mortenjorck 16y ago
I think there's a tendency toward cynicism with Wikipedia precisely because it's an amazing idea that, in many ways, has been beautifully delivered on – but that where it falls short, it can be maddeningly frustrating. It's not all that different from other bureaucracies. Like the bureaucracies responsible for administration in other spheres, the practical result is more than serviceable. Your city council, despite its backroom deals, manages to keep your town livable. Your insurance company, despite its shrewd actuarial restrictions, generally has your back. Wikipedia, despite its policy of deletionism, is a great first resource for a vast variety of subjects. Every bureaucracy could do with a lot of improvement, and Wikipedia's no different. But we're still much better off with it and its imperfections than we'd be without it.
Untitled 16y ago
> Why are people so consistently negative about Wikipedia? I am not negative about Wikipedia, but about its management. The add campaign was distasteful and I suspect just an ego trip for Jimmy Wales. The real Wikipedia is the thousands of faceless people who write the articles.
- patio11 16y ago
  The add campaign was distasteful and I suspect just an ego trip for Jimmy Wales They published the results of the split tests: Jimmy Wales ROFLstomped all their other creatives. It blows my mind, too, but there you go: the people who matter (i.e. people who donate to the foundation) want to Jimmy's rugged and photoshopped good looks, and all he has to do is glance in their general direction and their wallets open.
  - quickpost 16y ago
    Good call. This post sums it up quite nicely: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/the-science-behind-wikipedias-jimmy-appeal/ http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/the-science-behin... EDIT: Raw Data here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Banner_testing http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Banner_testi...
  - Untitled 16y ago
    Maybe, but there are other factors. Firstly, the question is the size. Were all the advertisements the same size? (i.e. were they all images or were some text - like google adwords?). Then there is the question of how non-donors feel. The ad campaign made me negative about WP (and I bet quite a few other people). The third problem is the damage to the image of WP. An idiot on the top of every page begging for money really knocks the image for me.
    - tokenadult 16y ago
      Then there is the question of how non-donors feel. The ad campaign made me negative about WP (and I bet quite a few other people). That's an important point that is harder to reveal through A/B testing. What would Wikipedia's fundraising look like if there were another online encyclopedia that appeared to be a credible contender? Is Wikipedia Google in this space, or is it AltaVista?
  - miniatureape 16y ago
    Suspecting A/B tests, I actually waited until I got one of the photos of Mr. Wales looking off in the distance before I donated (anything was better than the glaring full-on eyes). I didn't see any of the volunteer ads until after I donated.
- prawn 16y ago
  'Thousands of faceless people' generally don't make great donation drives, advertising campaigns, etc. Sounds like the ad campaign was effective to me and nothing to do with Wales' ego.
cookiecaper 16y ago
I don't trust Wales to run the organization effectively. I think that things are just going to get worse for Wikimedia as they get more money. My opinion on Wales is not high generally and Wikipedia has implemented some policies that I find rather undesirable in the recent years. Wikipedia has also done little to really actively improve the encyclopedia; they make all the wrong organizational changes, which in general tend to further stupid political bickering and turf wars, and these are the biggest problems to successful Wikipedia editing. Good governance would move to minimize these so that editing remains (or now, becomes) reasonable for people who don't have time to sit around for six hours a day and justify every change they make over and over again until the other guys get sick of it. What it comes down to is that Wikipedia is really one great big edit war, though they'll never admit it.
- zmmz 16y ago
  Not trying to provoke you or anything, but as I am somebody who has not given this topic much thought I would be curious to hear of your concrete examples and arguments about bad policies? I am somebody who can't see himself as contributing to wikipedia, but some changes might make me reconsider. What would you like to see changed?
  - cookiecaper 16y ago
    I don't remember them all anymore -- I keep only loose tabs on Wikipedia these days. I was a very active editor and a founding member of a WikiProject in the 2004-2005 timeframe. I thought the blanket removal of most fair use images and the policy banning them was inappropriate and one of the least pragmatic things from an editorial quality perspective that could have been done. That's the only big policy change since I quit that I can remember right now, though I know there have been several other that I felt were misguided or inappropriate. When I browse talk pages these days, I see very many new policy links, and that's part of the problem. Wikipedia has a pretty steep learning curve just to format an edit in a way that won't be reverted under a cavalcade of acronyms from the WP pagespace. Edits on controversial topics are nearly impossible, primarily because articles will often be locked in the first place, or if they're not, each member on each side exhausts his/her three reverts, someone complains to an admin, and the page is locked so that it can all pick back up in a few days. It becomes especially difficult on pages that are hand-sanitized by a politician's staffers or other editors paid to keep WP articles favorable, because they literally have all day and they make their money by being combative, intimidating opposing editors, and otherwise staving off legitimate unfavorable edits. And that's part of what makes this all so frustrating. Wikipedia has no real conflict resolution mechanisms. Open-source software is supposedly an inspiration for WP, but OSS has very clear, authoritarian project leaders that don't tolerate silliness. WP is an absolute free-for-all; there are policies, but in general they just mean you have to avoid specific phraseology and can still do whatever you want. As such, editing WP is very inconsistent but almost universally frustrating and it's often clear even to readers which group has established turf over a given article or set of articles. On top of all of this, Jimmy Wales has an extreme aura of arrogance and ethical pliability. See the incidents around "co-founder" and "founder" of Wikipedia for just one example; there have been some other good ones over the years. Wales misappropriated Wikipedia, really the brain child of Larry Sanger, for his own and hasn't known what to do with it since. Sanger, meanwhile, started another wiki-based site that evolved on the Wikipedia model with approved revisions and a few other small tweaks (Citizendium, I don't know if it's still alive or not). It also seems to me that Wales has been trying to carefully straddle the community line regarding policies, etc., (except a few cases where lawyers specifically said "this part is not optional, sorry") because he doesn't really know what's good for WP. It's all some kind of anomaly to him and he's just trying to keep a light touch so he doesn't scare it away. As such, WP yet languishes in its morass of "whoever-is-the-most-obsessed" methodology for resolving editorial conflict and lacks any serious drive or leadership. WP is already like a big corporation because it already has a CEO that got there through business school instead of innovation. That's always the sign that you shouldn't expect many interesting advances from a given group anymore -- they are interested in maintaining their model and milking it for money until someone comes around and obsoletes them. Hiring a chief executive trained in milking money out of existing infrastructure instead of a chief executive trained in contributing something new is a huge red flag from every non-financial perspective (though the finances usually languish along with the invention and research). Basically, it boils down to frustration over the lack of conceptual or procedural improvement in Wikipedia and the general belief that Wales is blatantly unqualified in almost all relevant respects and sort of wandered into his position accidentally. I don't necessarily blame him for that (though I do blame him for the morally dubious stuff, like Bomis, Sanger, and that girl), it just doesn't bode well for the organization. And, as I'm sure we all know, it's generally a pretty bad thing when confused people get a whole bunch of money, as Wales just procured for himself. Wikimedia already emanates these astonishingly corporate vibes, I think we should only expect those to increase.

mike_esspe 16y ago

Wikipedia is amazing, but deletionism policy is bad. BTW, anyone wants to make a service, which hosts base content from wikipedia, but allows to fork and merge articles a la git? By default you see main article (if it exists), but if you want to see alternative opinions - they are just several clicks away.

mortenjorck 16y ago

I think there's a tendency toward cynicism with Wikipedia precisely because it's an amazing idea that, in many ways, has been beautifully delivered on – but that where it falls short, it can be maddeningly frustrating. It's not all that different from other bureaucracies. Like the bureaucracies responsible for administration in other spheres, the practical result is more than serviceable. Your city council, despite its backroom deals, manages to keep your town livable. Your insurance company, despite its shrewd actuarial restrictions, generally has your back. Wikipedia, despite its policy of deletionism, is a great first resource for a vast variety of subjects. Every bureaucracy could do with a lot of improvement, and Wikipedia's no different. But we're still much better off with it and its imperfections than we'd be without it.

Untitled 16y ago

> Why are people so consistently negative about Wikipedia? I am not negative about Wikipedia, but about its management. The add campaign was distasteful and I suspect just an ego trip for Jimmy Wales. The real Wikipedia is the thousands of faceless people who write the articles.

patio11 16y ago
The add campaign was distasteful and I suspect just an ego trip for Jimmy Wales They published the results of the split tests: Jimmy Wales ROFLstomped all their other creatives. It blows my mind, too, but there you go: the people who matter (i.e. people who donate to the foundation) want to Jimmy's rugged and photoshopped good looks, and all he has to do is glance in their general direction and their wallets open.
- quickpost 16y ago
  Good call. This post sums it up quite nicely: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/the-science-behind-wikipedias-jimmy-appeal/ http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/the-science-behin... EDIT: Raw Data here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Banner_testing http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Banner_testi...
- Untitled 16y ago
  Maybe, but there are other factors. Firstly, the question is the size. Were all the advertisements the same size? (i.e. were they all images or were some text - like google adwords?). Then there is the question of how non-donors feel. The ad campaign made me negative about WP (and I bet quite a few other people). The third problem is the damage to the image of WP. An idiot on the top of every page begging for money really knocks the image for me.
  - tokenadult 16y ago
    Then there is the question of how non-donors feel. The ad campaign made me negative about WP (and I bet quite a few other people). That's an important point that is harder to reveal through A/B testing. What would Wikipedia's fundraising look like if there were another online encyclopedia that appeared to be a credible contender? Is Wikipedia Google in this space, or is it AltaVista?
- miniatureape 16y ago
  Suspecting A/B tests, I actually waited until I got one of the photos of Mr. Wales looking off in the distance before I donated (anything was better than the glaring full-on eyes). I didn't see any of the volunteer ads until after I donated.
prawn 16y ago
'Thousands of faceless people' generally don't make great donation drives, advertising campaigns, etc. Sounds like the ad campaign was effective to me and nothing to do with Wales' ego.

cookiecaper 16y ago

I don't trust Wales to run the organization effectively. I think that things are just going to get worse for Wikimedia as they get more money. My opinion on Wales is not high generally and Wikipedia has implemented some policies that I find rather undesirable in the recent years. Wikipedia has also done little to really actively improve the encyclopedia; they make all the wrong organizational changes, which in general tend to further stupid political bickering and turf wars, and these are the biggest problems to successful Wikipedia editing. Good governance would move to minimize these so that editing remains (or now, becomes) reasonable for people who don't have time to sit around for six hours a day and justify every change they make over and over again until the other guys get sick of it. What it comes down to is that Wikipedia is really one great big edit war, though they'll never admit it.

zmmz 16y ago
Not trying to provoke you or anything, but as I am somebody who has not given this topic much thought I would be curious to hear of your concrete examples and arguments about bad policies? I am somebody who can't see himself as contributing to wikipedia, but some changes might make me reconsider. What would you like to see changed?
- cookiecaper 16y ago
  I don't remember them all anymore -- I keep only loose tabs on Wikipedia these days. I was a very active editor and a founding member of a WikiProject in the 2004-2005 timeframe. I thought the blanket removal of most fair use images and the policy banning them was inappropriate and one of the least pragmatic things from an editorial quality perspective that could have been done. That's the only big policy change since I quit that I can remember right now, though I know there have been several other that I felt were misguided or inappropriate. When I browse talk pages these days, I see very many new policy links, and that's part of the problem. Wikipedia has a pretty steep learning curve just to format an edit in a way that won't be reverted under a cavalcade of acronyms from the WP pagespace. Edits on controversial topics are nearly impossible, primarily because articles will often be locked in the first place, or if they're not, each member on each side exhausts his/her three reverts, someone complains to an admin, and the page is locked so that it can all pick back up in a few days. It becomes especially difficult on pages that are hand-sanitized by a politician's staffers or other editors paid to keep WP articles favorable, because they literally have all day and they make their money by being combative, intimidating opposing editors, and otherwise staving off legitimate unfavorable edits. And that's part of what makes this all so frustrating. Wikipedia has no real conflict resolution mechanisms. Open-source software is supposedly an inspiration for WP, but OSS has very clear, authoritarian project leaders that don't tolerate silliness. WP is an absolute free-for-all; there are policies, but in general they just mean you have to avoid specific phraseology and can still do whatever you want. As such, editing WP is very inconsistent but almost universally frustrating and it's often clear even to readers which group has established turf over a given article or set of articles. On top of all of this, Jimmy Wales has an extreme aura of arrogance and ethical pliability. See the incidents around "co-founder" and "founder" of Wikipedia for just one example; there have been some other good ones over the years. Wales misappropriated Wikipedia, really the brain child of Larry Sanger, for his own and hasn't known what to do with it since. Sanger, meanwhile, started another wiki-based site that evolved on the Wikipedia model with approved revisions and a few other small tweaks (Citizendium, I don't know if it's still alive or not). It also seems to me that Wales has been trying to carefully straddle the community line regarding policies, etc., (except a few cases where lawyers specifically said "this part is not optional, sorry") because he doesn't really know what's good for WP. It's all some kind of anomaly to him and he's just trying to keep a light touch so he doesn't scare it away. As such, WP yet languishes in its morass of "whoever-is-the-most-obsessed" methodology for resolving editorial conflict and lacks any serious drive or leadership. WP is already like a big corporation because it already has a CEO that got there through business school instead of innovation. That's always the sign that you shouldn't expect many interesting advances from a given group anymore -- they are interested in maintaining their model and milking it for money until someone comes around and obsoletes them. Hiring a chief executive trained in milking money out of existing infrastructure instead of a chief executive trained in contributing something new is a huge red flag from every non-financial perspective (though the finances usually languish along with the invention and research). Basically, it boils down to frustration over the lack of conceptual or procedural improvement in Wikipedia and the general belief that Wales is blatantly unqualified in almost all relevant respects and sort of wandered into his position accidentally. I don't necessarily blame him for that (though I do blame him for the morally dubious stuff, like Bomis, Sanger, and that girl), it just doesn't bode well for the organization. And, as I'm sure we all know, it's generally a pretty bad thing when confused people get a whole bunch of money, as Wales just procured for himself. Wikimedia already emanates these astonishingly corporate vibes, I think we should only expect those to increase.