10 ms·

"Donate time, not money. Contribute as a volunteer." My experience in trying to donate any amount of time and effort to wikipedia has been nothing but pain and

by rsync 7y ago

"Donate time, not money. Contribute as a volunteer." My experience in trying to donate any amount of time and effort to wikipedia has been nothing but pain and suffering at the hands of extremely possessive "little hitlers" that do everything possible to defend their "turf". You are suggesting that volunteering at the corporate/entity level is different than volunteering at the wiki level ?

jasonsync 7y ago
> that do everything possible to defend their "turf". In my experience, some of these "little hitlers" appear to be (controlled by) larger corporate entities in some way, shape or form. When the "turf" becomes profitable for some, it becomes very difficult for others to cut the grass so to speak.
thanatropism 7y ago
I contribute mostly to talk pages. That's a lower effort choice.
ALittleLight 7y ago
For Wikipedia I donate money and not time. I agree, people can be possessive about their turf there, but I think that would only be a real problem if Wikipedia weren't amazingly good. Wikipedia has a great output. In my view they don't need my time and effort. They're doing great now. When I see a message asking to donate money, I do, because I assume they do need that if they're asking for money.
- elect_engineer 7y ago
  Full disclosure: I am the author of the Wikipedia essay "Wikipedia has cancer". See https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C... Re: "Wikipedia has a great output. In my view they don't need my time and effort. They're doing great now." We really need a lot more help here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Typo_Team https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Typo_Team "The Wikipedia Typo Team is dedicated to improving the quality of Wikipedia by correcting typos and misspellings. If you see any typos (even minor ones), please correct them. This kind of editing is a never-ending job, so we could use your help! Please consider joining our team. All you need to do is start correcting typos." Re: "When I see a message asking to donate money, I do, because I assume they do need that if they're asking for money." please read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/12/02/wikipedia-has-a-ton-of-money-so-why-is-it-begging-you-to-donate-yours/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/12... https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/wikipedia-fundraising-drive-should-you-donate-money-wikipedia-foundation-1531912 https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/wikipedia-fundraising-drive-should... https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9qqds7Z3Ykd9Kdeay/should-you-donate-to-the-wikimedia-foundation https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9qqds7Z3Ykd9Kdeay/... http://thewikipedian.net/2016/03/11/modest-proposal-wikimedia-future/ http://thewikipedian.net/2016/03/11/modest-proposal-wikimedi...
  - ALittleLight 7y ago
    These are pretty interesting. Is there a response to these concerns from Wikimedia?
ErrantX 7y ago
Where did you try to contribute? Over the years I've come to see wikipedia as a long term project. It's generally terrible or controversial on current events or recent history. When people lose general interest and the more academic editors move in it's much better.
- DanBC 7y ago
  There's no way of knowing what's going to be a hot-button topic that sucks away your time. There are hundreds of thousands of words of meta discussion about whether to use –,—, or - in titles. This even made its way to Arbcom. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case&oldid=429209333#Hyphens_and_dashes https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitra...
- CharlesColeman 7y ago
  > It's generally terrible or controversial on current events or recent history. Or any person with any kind of ideological charge, especially a boogeyman to some group or other. The problem with Wikipedia is the fanatics with infinite time, which it accumulates because they're the ones who never give up. The other issue is it's inability to actually deal with problematic users, as the moderation doesn't teach the fanatics to be good, it just teaches them to not be so bad they'll be banned.
Bartweiss 7y ago
As a wiki content contributor, it seems like the only easy entry-level approach is to find a category that's interesting to you and largely abandoned. For example, any non-famous books by your favorite author are likely to have stubs or no articles at all. Of course, if the article doesn't exist at all, you risk a war with the deletionists who've decided certain turf shouldn't exist. And occasionally there's a one-two of one user shredding an article as "excessively detailed", then another nominating it for deletion because it lacks content... But overall, I've found it a more approachable way to contribute than trying to change or extend any article with an opinionated 'owner'. (At this point, I suspect Wikipedia's factual errors are less likely to come from "anyone can edit" than from possessive and mistaken writers actively restoring errors.)

by rsync 7y ago

jasonsync 7y ago

> that do everything possible to defend their "turf". In my experience, some of these "little hitlers" appear to be (controlled by) larger corporate entities in some way, shape or form. When the "turf" becomes profitable for some, it becomes very difficult for others to cut the grass so to speak.

thanatropism 7y ago

I contribute mostly to talk pages. That's a lower effort choice.

ALittleLight 7y ago

For Wikipedia I donate money and not time. I agree, people can be possessive about their turf there, but I think that would only be a real problem if Wikipedia weren't amazingly good. Wikipedia has a great output. In my view they don't need my time and effort. They're doing great now. When I see a message asking to donate money, I do, because I assume they do need that if they're asking for money.

elect_engineer 7y ago
Full disclosure: I am the author of the Wikipedia essay "Wikipedia has cancer". See https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C... Re: "Wikipedia has a great output. In my view they don't need my time and effort. They're doing great now." We really need a lot more help here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Typo_Team https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Typo_Team "The Wikipedia Typo Team is dedicated to improving the quality of Wikipedia by correcting typos and misspellings. If you see any typos (even minor ones), please correct them. This kind of editing is a never-ending job, so we could use your help! Please consider joining our team. All you need to do is start correcting typos." Re: "When I see a message asking to donate money, I do, because I assume they do need that if they're asking for money." please read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/12/02/wikipedia-has-a-ton-of-money-so-why-is-it-begging-you-to-donate-yours/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/12... https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/wikipedia-fundraising-drive-should-you-donate-money-wikipedia-foundation-1531912 https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/wikipedia-fundraising-drive-should... https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9qqds7Z3Ykd9Kdeay/should-you-donate-to-the-wikimedia-foundation https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9qqds7Z3Ykd9Kdeay/... http://thewikipedian.net/2016/03/11/modest-proposal-wikimedia-future/ http://thewikipedian.net/2016/03/11/modest-proposal-wikimedi...
- ALittleLight 7y ago
  These are pretty interesting. Is there a response to these concerns from Wikimedia?

ErrantX 7y ago

Where did you try to contribute? Over the years I've come to see wikipedia as a long term project. It's generally terrible or controversial on current events or recent history. When people lose general interest and the more academic editors move in it's much better.

DanBC 7y ago
There's no way of knowing what's going to be a hot-button topic that sucks away your time. There are hundreds of thousands of words of meta discussion about whether to use –,—, or - in titles. This even made its way to Arbcom. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case&oldid=429209333#Hyphens_and_dashes https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitra...
CharlesColeman 7y ago
> It's generally terrible or controversial on current events or recent history. Or any person with any kind of ideological charge, especially a boogeyman to some group or other. The problem with Wikipedia is the fanatics with infinite time, which it accumulates because they're the ones who never give up. The other issue is it's inability to actually deal with problematic users, as the moderation doesn't teach the fanatics to be good, it just teaches them to not be so bad they'll be banned.

Bartweiss 7y ago

As a wiki content contributor, it seems like the only easy entry-level approach is to find a category that's interesting to you and largely abandoned. For example, any non-famous books by your favorite author are likely to have stubs or no articles at all. Of course, if the article doesn't exist at all, you risk a war with the deletionists who've decided certain turf shouldn't exist. And occasionally there's a one-two of one user shredding an article as "excessively detailed", then another nominating it for deletion because it lacks content... But overall, I've found it a more approachable way to contribute than trying to change or extend any article with an opinionated 'owner'. (At this point, I suspect Wikipedia's factual errors are less likely to come from "anyone can edit" than from possessive and mistaken writers actively restoring errors.)