4 ms·

A Fork of Wikipedia wouldn't face the insurmountable network effects. You'd have all the content ready and waiting.

by Angostura 7y ago

majewsky 7y ago
So the moderators count for nothing?
- tempestn 7y ago
  No, but you could scale up moderation in parallel with users over time.
- Angostura 7y ago
  They count. But they aren't subject to network effects. There's no 'I can't moderate this site, because none of my friends use it' issues.
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    Of course there are network effects for moderators. One major reason people volunteer to moderate Wikipedia is because it's in such ubiquitous use. A fork of Wikipedia with no community is just a content mirror and, because of network effects, you'll have an incredibly hard time attracting anyone to help out with it when they can just go to Wikipedia.
superhuzza 7y ago
Wikipedia only works because of the massive user contributions and moderation. Losing even a small proportion of contributors could seriously affect the future development of Wikipedia.
- cdirkx 7y ago
  But this was in the hypothetical of Wikipedia being sold or taken over. If people don't agree with the practices of the new owners and rally behind a fork trusted by the community, I expect most moderators and contributors to follow.
  - kazagistar 7y ago
    PR firms are really good at spinning and diffusing and confusing criticism. Not completely, but enough to split a community trying to rally behind anything that is against their interests. The sale or takeover would start with promises that nothing would change, and then would change slowly enough that each editor would have a different breaking point and thus be too fragmented to move over at a specific point.
- dimensi0nal 7y ago
  >Losing even a small proportion of contributors Wikipedia has been slowly losing editors for ~12 years[0]. [0]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Active_editors_on_English_Wikipedia_over_time.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Active_editors_on_En...

A Fork of Wikipedia wouldn't face the insurmountable network effects. You'd have all the content ready and waiting.

majewsky 7y ago

So the moderators count for nothing?

tempestn 7y ago
No, but you could scale up moderation in parallel with users over time.
Angostura 7y ago
They count. But they aren't subject to network effects. There's no 'I can't moderate this site, because none of my friends use it' issues.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  Of course there are network effects for moderators. One major reason people volunteer to moderate Wikipedia is because it's in such ubiquitous use. A fork of Wikipedia with no community is just a content mirror and, because of network effects, you'll have an incredibly hard time attracting anyone to help out with it when they can just go to Wikipedia.

superhuzza 7y ago

Wikipedia only works because of the massive user contributions and moderation. Losing even a small proportion of contributors could seriously affect the future development of Wikipedia.

cdirkx 7y ago
But this was in the hypothetical of Wikipedia being sold or taken over. If people don't agree with the practices of the new owners and rally behind a fork trusted by the community, I expect most moderators and contributors to follow.
- kazagistar 7y ago
  PR firms are really good at spinning and diffusing and confusing criticism. Not completely, but enough to split a community trying to rally behind anything that is against their interests. The sale or takeover would start with promises that nothing would change, and then would change slowly enough that each editor would have a different breaking point and thus be too fragmented to move over at a specific point.
dimensi0nal 7y ago
>Losing even a small proportion of contributors Wikipedia has been slowly losing editors for ~12 years[0]. [0]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Active_editors_on_English_Wikipedia_over_time.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Active_editors_on_En...