10 ms·

Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006)

92 points by luu 7y ago

milsorgen 7y ago
The small amount of people who work on Wikipedia is it's greatest weakness. Petty power plays and individual politics all bubble up from those few into a resource so many millions use. It deserves more but how can anyone even start with all the rules, bots and reverts. It's really demoralizing to try and put in any effort there as you'll quickly encroach on some editors "territory".
- flir 7y ago
  There's wikipedia the product, and wikipedia the game. A lot of people really enjoy playing wikipedia. Even so, the product's really not that bad by most metrics.
- executesorder66 7y ago
  > It deserves more but how can anyone even start with all the rules, bots and reverts. That's why I prefer contributing to smaller wikis. They have much less political issues. However, I'd say more than 90% of the edits I've made to the English Wikipedia are still live. It really depends where you choose to edit. Some articles just have asshole editors who think they own the article. And not everyone has the energy to fight back against that.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    Is there a simple way to check if one's edits are live, so those that aren't can be reviewed?
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      Incognito mode?
    - TuringTest 7y ago
      You can filter article history by user [1] to check whether their contributions are still in the current version, or use Wikiblame creatively to find who wrote some specific part of a live article [2]. [1] https://tools.wmflabs.org/sigma/usersearch.py https://tools.wmflabs.org/sigma/usersearch.py [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiBlame https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiBlame http://wikipedia.ramselehof.de/wikiblame.php http://wikipedia.ramselehof.de/wikiblame.php
- goto11 7y ago
  So you disagree with the numbers presented in article?
  - watwut 7y ago
    He may accept numbers in article and still think that 14 years later things are different. Wikipedia changed policies in the meantime, society changed in the meantime. He may also think that more representative selection of articles to run test on would end up differently.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - goto11 7y ago
      How would a more representative test end up? Are there better numbers available?
onyva 7y ago
From my experience with trying to contribute to the Hebrew version, try contributing focusing on expanding an existing article and watch what happens. In my case there was a very strong push back even against adding links that expand on issues mentioned which imho helped to balance an obvious slant. I gave up after a while. At university of course you’re warned not to use Wikipedia, it’s not acceptable as a reference and many examples are presented of experts in their field who contributed articles, which were then rewritten to the point where there was nothing left, other than the revised version of the moderators and the small mafia that runs the Israeli Wikipedia. There’s also the examples of the Croatian version which was taken over by neonazis and even the ministry of education had to publish a warning.
- draugadrotten 7y ago
  The political bias of wikipedia editors is horrible in most smaller countries. You mention Israel and Croatia. I can add Sweden. For an example, compare the wikipedia entries of the two largest parties in the Swedish parliament. One, Socialdemokraterna, starts with a blurb on how the party provides public welfare and the party slogan ("av var och en efter förmåga, åt var och en efter behov"). Compare with the second largest party, Sverigedemokraterna, which has an entire section devoted to listing scandals, controversial quotes and shunnings. Whatever you think about the two ideologies, these two wikipedia entries alone should be enough proof that there is a (left) political bias of wikipedia editors. I use wikipedia often because it has a lot of information in it, but would never rely on it as a source of fact. It is a google result like any other, and must be treated with caution.
  - woodpanel 7y ago
    I can echo your concern. German wikipedia has the same troubles. That's why it's not uncommon amongst anyone I've aksed or observed to habitually fact-check a German wiki-page with a quick hop into the English version (If there is any ideological classification involved). There at least, Wikipedia's promise, that the heterogenity of writers creates informational breadth and balancedness, seems to be more kept. In contrast to the German version, the English articles often have dedicated "criticism"-chapters, that also leave the criticism uncommented. The German versions often start with a political classification right away. If the classification is contested, then it stays there and just gets slighty changed into reported speech. If any counter-arguments to that classification make it into an article, then they are almost always commented, often with a counter-argument to the counter-argument from groups that created that classification in the first place, litteraly giving them the last word.
CommieDetector 7y ago
Leftists since every political article have an left slant.
kick 7y ago
None of the comments in this submission's thread so far seem to be related to the article's content (the headline was tantalizing, but the article itself is really cool), so to try and counteract that, here's one that's directly related: As it says, Wikipedia is written by vast amounts of people. The myth that only a small number of people contribute is just that: a myth. Checking edit histories on anything but the most niche of articles would demonstrate this, but you could also do the same analysis he did today and see if you can replicate his result; it's been a few years now, things probably look slightly different. This has gotten more relevant over time even though the people perpetuating the myth have changed, along with their motives for doing so. One of the more popular and long-lasting myths!
- saagarjha 7y ago
  I don't get why you'd want to perpetuate the myth of Wikipedia editors being this small, powerful in-group of people anyways…
  - thrwaway69 7y ago
    Possibly to discredit it as having a political identity of its own or something because small group of people can be more biased openly than a large group?
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      Right, but this is Jimmy Wales pushing this.
      - kick 7y ago
        Ego in his case, though modern forms of it are generally what the above throwaway said.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
giansegato 7y ago
I miss Aaron so much
- sswaner 7y ago
  Twice this morning, in less than an hour I am hit with profound sadness when reminded of the injustice of Aaron’s treatment at the hands of a system we call “land of the free”. I started the morning curious about a Markdown syntax question and was reminded that Aaron also contributed to md. [https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/ https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/]
- fergie 7y ago
  I miss him, and I miss people like him. At one point he embodied "web" culture. Seems like a long time ago now.
  - commandlinefan 7y ago
    > At one point he embodied "web" culture And is now the polar opposite of anything you might consider "web culture" today.
milkers 7y ago
R.I.P Aaron.
quanticle 7y ago
Wales is right about one thing, though. This fact does have enormous policy implications. If Wikipedia is written by occasional contributors, then growing it requires making it easier and more rewarding to contribute occasionally. Instead of trying to squeeze more work out of those who spend their life on Wikipedia, we need to broaden the base of those who contribute just a little bit. The problem is that, as a community, Wikipedia has gone out of its way to do the opposite of that. New content is often treated as "guilty until proven innocent", and it's up to the contributor to wade through Wikipedia's idiosyncratic rules and definitions in order to justify to the moderators why their edits should not be reverted or their articles deleted.
- Double_a_92 7y ago
  > "guilty until proven innocent" I think that's still a good approach. You want Wikipedia to be a trustworthy source, not one where everyone can add their half-knowledge without any checks. Maybe making the discussion pages more "interactive" might help a bit. People could share their ideas, interesting sources or other inputs in a casual way and someone more skilled in writing and researching could use that to write the proper article.
- posterboy 7y ago
  Sadly there's a couple paradoxes. Some occasiinal contributions only press for others to do something, helpfully pointing out what they think are mistakes and errors. This is someone with an axe to grind in denigrating wiki lingo. As someone who's been told of there before, I think I understand the problem, and I like to agree with Aaron's sentiment--I don't know where it's coming from, though. The quote is very much related. Who is "we"? > we need to broaden the base of those who contribute just a little bit. Easing the entry to beaurocracy would likely increase its burden significantly, while its not strictly separable from content contribution. Nevertheless, being a frequent and fair editor is not a sufficient criterium for good administration, sadly.
- virgil_disgr4ce 7y ago
  > New content is often treated as "guilty until proven innocent", and it's up to the contributor to wade through Wikipedia's idiosyncratic rules and definitions in order to justify to the moderators why their edits should not be reverted or their articles deleted This has been EXACTLY my experience and it really really turned me off from even bothering in the future. :(
bawolff 7y ago
It would be interesting to redo this analysis now. 2006 was a long time ago. In 2006 wikipedia was in a very rapid growth phase; lots of topics still didn't have good coverage yet. In 2020, I can't remember a recent time where a mainstream topic didn't have extensive coverage on en wikipedia. Do the masses still write most of Wikipedia now that the low hanging fruit has been written?
- lkbm 7y ago
  I recently amazed several non-tech friends by mentioning that I, personally, have edited Wikipedia. It's not something a lot of people think of as something they can even do. They're not fixing typos, let alone making substantive edits or writing new articles. I realize "do most people edit Wikipedia" is different from "are most Wikipedia edits from casual users", but it was an eye-opening interaction for me.
jokoon 7y ago
Is there valid criticism on the accuracy of certain wikipedia articles? It could also be interesting to have some study or writing on certain "edit wars" on certain controversial subjects on wikipedia. In general, the accuracy of wikipedia is pretty good, and generally wikipedia is still very valuable. I just wish wikimedia would do more do promote its high quality articles and bundle them per fields to make quality textbooks on particular subjects. It also seems articles are not really indexed per category, which makes it hard to gather articles on a particular subject. Anyway it would involve a lot of work.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  Wikipedia does support article 'bundles' (they're known as Featured/Good Topics) but open textbooks are covered by a separate effort, namely Wikibooks.
greendestiny_re 7y ago
For those who haven't read the linked article, it states that unregistered and anonymous users create the vast majority of Wikipedia content; the registered editors mostly move things around, delete commas and the like.
hnewsshadowbans 7y ago
Wikipedia is written by a much smaller (from what I've seen) and far more cliquish group than in the old days. The novelty of editing an open encyclopedia has worn off and a far more vast majority now just visit for the questionable facts while only the people with too much time on their hands still edit. Coincidentally theres even more territoriality than before with people setting up fiefdoms on prime articles and don't you dare flout their authority. Its worst of course on the politically relevant topics. A current favored tactic is to frontload the very beginnings of articles about organizations and people they don't like with negative/inflammatory information. For example compare the current versions of Breitbart News, Conservapedia, One America News Network, and Stephen Miller with Daily Kos, Rational Wiki, and Huffington Post. The defense if they're called on it is a tortured appeal to 'authoritative consensus' where an editor will go on a fishing expedition for negative quotes from the left of center media bloc like CNN or HuffPo and anything they find on there even blatant opinion is automatically sacrosanct regardless of whether it actually is a consensus among the entire media. So basically the political articles are even more trash than ever. Again you can draw whatever connection you want to the type of people left editing this mess. I feel sorry for anyone who actually reads and believes it. Another annoying thing is that they still haven't fixed their scientific articles which for anything beyond the basics tend to be overly jargonish and technical yet uninformative at the same time.
WhompingWindows 7y ago
I write/edit on Wikipedia most days. I've contributed to over 100 English articles, on topics ranging from science to music to art. In my experience, science/mathematics articles are VERY high level, often graduate-level content, and they can use some softening of jargon and domain-specific verbiage. In the arts and music, many paintings, musical compositions, etc. don't have much written, or it's poorly written, by a non-English writer, etc. I tried to write an article about my college a cappella group and it got rejected for not being famous enough. I thought that was a bit silly because my group was just as famous as random tiny towns in the middle of nowhere...shrug. I'd encourage you all to join Wikipedia and make edits to anything you see that's amiss!
gwern 7y ago
2006, using data primarily from Wikipedia articles written before then, was a very long time ago. Things have changed a lot: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1407.0323.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1407.0323.pdf
- gatestone 7y ago
  Small special wikis are very different fron Wikipedia.

92 points by luu 7y ago

The small amount of people who work on Wikipedia is it's greatest weakness. Petty power plays and individual politics all bubble up from those few into a resource so many millions use. It deserves more but how can anyone even start with all the rules, bots and reverts. It's really demoralizing to try and put in any effort there as you'll quickly encroach on some editors "territory".

flir 7y ago
There's wikipedia the product, and wikipedia the game. A lot of people really enjoy playing wikipedia. Even so, the product's really not that bad by most metrics.
executesorder66 7y ago
> It deserves more but how can anyone even start with all the rules, bots and reverts. That's why I prefer contributing to smaller wikis. They have much less political issues. However, I'd say more than 90% of the edits I've made to the English Wikipedia are still live. It really depends where you choose to edit. Some articles just have asshole editors who think they own the article. And not everyone has the energy to fight back against that.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Is there a simple way to check if one's edits are live, so those that aren't can be reviewed?
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Incognito mode?
  - TuringTest 7y ago
    You can filter article history by user [1] to check whether their contributions are still in the current version, or use Wikiblame creatively to find who wrote some specific part of a live article [2]. [1] https://tools.wmflabs.org/sigma/usersearch.py https://tools.wmflabs.org/sigma/usersearch.py [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiBlame https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiBlame http://wikipedia.ramselehof.de/wikiblame.php http://wikipedia.ramselehof.de/wikiblame.php
goto11 7y ago
So you disagree with the numbers presented in article?
- watwut 7y ago
  He may accept numbers in article and still think that 14 years later things are different. Wikipedia changed policies in the meantime, society changed in the meantime. He may also think that more representative selection of articles to run test on would end up differently.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - goto11 7y ago
    How would a more representative test end up? Are there better numbers available?

onyva 7y ago

From my experience with trying to contribute to the Hebrew version, try contributing focusing on expanding an existing article and watch what happens. In my case there was a very strong push back even against adding links that expand on issues mentioned which imho helped to balance an obvious slant. I gave up after a while. At university of course you’re warned not to use Wikipedia, it’s not acceptable as a reference and many examples are presented of experts in their field who contributed articles, which were then rewritten to the point where there was nothing left, other than the revised version of the moderators and the small mafia that runs the Israeli Wikipedia. There’s also the examples of the Croatian version which was taken over by neonazis and even the ministry of education had to publish a warning.

draugadrotten 7y ago
The political bias of wikipedia editors is horrible in most smaller countries. You mention Israel and Croatia. I can add Sweden. For an example, compare the wikipedia entries of the two largest parties in the Swedish parliament. One, Socialdemokraterna, starts with a blurb on how the party provides public welfare and the party slogan ("av var och en efter förmåga, åt var och en efter behov"). Compare with the second largest party, Sverigedemokraterna, which has an entire section devoted to listing scandals, controversial quotes and shunnings. Whatever you think about the two ideologies, these two wikipedia entries alone should be enough proof that there is a (left) political bias of wikipedia editors. I use wikipedia often because it has a lot of information in it, but would never rely on it as a source of fact. It is a google result like any other, and must be treated with caution.
- woodpanel 7y ago
  I can echo your concern. German wikipedia has the same troubles. That's why it's not uncommon amongst anyone I've aksed or observed to habitually fact-check a German wiki-page with a quick hop into the English version (If there is any ideological classification involved). There at least, Wikipedia's promise, that the heterogenity of writers creates informational breadth and balancedness, seems to be more kept. In contrast to the German version, the English articles often have dedicated "criticism"-chapters, that also leave the criticism uncommented. The German versions often start with a political classification right away. If the classification is contested, then it stays there and just gets slighty changed into reported speech. If any counter-arguments to that classification make it into an article, then they are almost always commented, often with a counter-argument to the counter-argument from groups that created that classification in the first place, litteraly giving them the last word.

CommieDetector 7y ago

Leftists since every political article have an left slant.

kick 7y ago

None of the comments in this submission's thread so far seem to be related to the article's content (the headline was tantalizing, but the article itself is really cool), so to try and counteract that, here's one that's directly related: As it says, Wikipedia is written by vast amounts of people. The myth that only a small number of people contribute is just that: a myth. Checking edit histories on anything but the most niche of articles would demonstrate this, but you could also do the same analysis he did today and see if you can replicate his result; it's been a few years now, things probably look slightly different. This has gotten more relevant over time even though the people perpetuating the myth have changed, along with their motives for doing so. One of the more popular and long-lasting myths!

saagarjha 7y ago
I don't get why you'd want to perpetuate the myth of Wikipedia editors being this small, powerful in-group of people anyways…
- thrwaway69 7y ago
  Possibly to discredit it as having a political identity of its own or something because small group of people can be more biased openly than a large group?
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Right, but this is Jimmy Wales pushing this.
    - kick 7y ago
      Ego in his case, though modern forms of it are generally what the above throwaway said.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
DiogenesKynikos 7y ago

giansegato 7y ago

I miss Aaron so much

sswaner 7y ago
Twice this morning, in less than an hour I am hit with profound sadness when reminded of the injustice of Aaron’s treatment at the hands of a system we call “land of the free”. I started the morning curious about a Markdown syntax question and was reminded that Aaron also contributed to md. [https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/ https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/]
fergie 7y ago
I miss him, and I miss people like him. At one point he embodied "web" culture. Seems like a long time ago now.
- commandlinefan 7y ago
  > At one point he embodied "web" culture And is now the polar opposite of anything you might consider "web culture" today.

milkers 7y ago

R.I.P Aaron.

quanticle 7y ago

Wales is right about one thing, though. This fact does have enormous policy implications. If Wikipedia is written by occasional contributors, then growing it requires making it easier and more rewarding to contribute occasionally. Instead of trying to squeeze more work out of those who spend their life on Wikipedia, we need to broaden the base of those who contribute just a little bit. The problem is that, as a community, Wikipedia has gone out of its way to do the opposite of that. New content is often treated as "guilty until proven innocent", and it's up to the contributor to wade through Wikipedia's idiosyncratic rules and definitions in order to justify to the moderators why their edits should not be reverted or their articles deleted.

Double_a_92 7y ago
> "guilty until proven innocent" I think that's still a good approach. You want Wikipedia to be a trustworthy source, not one where everyone can add their half-knowledge without any checks. Maybe making the discussion pages more "interactive" might help a bit. People could share their ideas, interesting sources or other inputs in a casual way and someone more skilled in writing and researching could use that to write the proper article.
posterboy 7y ago
Sadly there's a couple paradoxes. Some occasiinal contributions only press for others to do something, helpfully pointing out what they think are mistakes and errors. This is someone with an axe to grind in denigrating wiki lingo. As someone who's been told of there before, I think I understand the problem, and I like to agree with Aaron's sentiment--I don't know where it's coming from, though. The quote is very much related. Who is "we"? > we need to broaden the base of those who contribute just a little bit. Easing the entry to beaurocracy would likely increase its burden significantly, while its not strictly separable from content contribution. Nevertheless, being a frequent and fair editor is not a sufficient criterium for good administration, sadly.
virgil_disgr4ce 7y ago
> New content is often treated as "guilty until proven innocent", and it's up to the contributor to wade through Wikipedia's idiosyncratic rules and definitions in order to justify to the moderators why their edits should not be reverted or their articles deleted This has been EXACTLY my experience and it really really turned me off from even bothering in the future. :(

bawolff 7y ago

It would be interesting to redo this analysis now. 2006 was a long time ago. In 2006 wikipedia was in a very rapid growth phase; lots of topics still didn't have good coverage yet. In 2020, I can't remember a recent time where a mainstream topic didn't have extensive coverage on en wikipedia. Do the masses still write most of Wikipedia now that the low hanging fruit has been written?

lkbm 7y ago
I recently amazed several non-tech friends by mentioning that I, personally, have edited Wikipedia. It's not something a lot of people think of as something they can even do. They're not fixing typos, let alone making substantive edits or writing new articles. I realize "do most people edit Wikipedia" is different from "are most Wikipedia edits from casual users", but it was an eye-opening interaction for me.

jokoon 7y ago

Is there valid criticism on the accuracy of certain wikipedia articles? It could also be interesting to have some study or writing on certain "edit wars" on certain controversial subjects on wikipedia. In general, the accuracy of wikipedia is pretty good, and generally wikipedia is still very valuable. I just wish wikimedia would do more do promote its high quality articles and bundle them per fields to make quality textbooks on particular subjects. It also seems articles are not really indexed per category, which makes it hard to gather articles on a particular subject. Anyway it would involve a lot of work.

zozbot234 7y ago
Wikipedia does support article 'bundles' (they're known as Featured/Good Topics) but open textbooks are covered by a separate effort, namely Wikibooks.

greendestiny_re 7y ago

For those who haven't read the linked article, it states that unregistered and anonymous users create the vast majority of Wikipedia content; the registered editors mostly move things around, delete commas and the like.

hnewsshadowbans 7y ago

Wikipedia is written by a much smaller (from what I've seen) and far more cliquish group than in the old days. The novelty of editing an open encyclopedia has worn off and a far more vast majority now just visit for the questionable facts while only the people with too much time on their hands still edit. Coincidentally theres even more territoriality than before with people setting up fiefdoms on prime articles and don't you dare flout their authority. Its worst of course on the politically relevant topics. A current favored tactic is to frontload the very beginnings of articles about organizations and people they don't like with negative/inflammatory information. For example compare the current versions of Breitbart News, Conservapedia, One America News Network, and Stephen Miller with Daily Kos, Rational Wiki, and Huffington Post. The defense if they're called on it is a tortured appeal to 'authoritative consensus' where an editor will go on a fishing expedition for negative quotes from the left of center media bloc like CNN or HuffPo and anything they find on there even blatant opinion is automatically sacrosanct regardless of whether it actually is a consensus among the entire media. So basically the political articles are even more trash than ever. Again you can draw whatever connection you want to the type of people left editing this mess. I feel sorry for anyone who actually reads and believes it. Another annoying thing is that they still haven't fixed their scientific articles which for anything beyond the basics tend to be overly jargonish and technical yet uninformative at the same time.

WhompingWindows 7y ago

I write/edit on Wikipedia most days. I've contributed to over 100 English articles, on topics ranging from science to music to art. In my experience, science/mathematics articles are VERY high level, often graduate-level content, and they can use some softening of jargon and domain-specific verbiage. In the arts and music, many paintings, musical compositions, etc. don't have much written, or it's poorly written, by a non-English writer, etc. I tried to write an article about my college a cappella group and it got rejected for not being famous enough. I thought that was a bit silly because my group was just as famous as random tiny towns in the middle of nowhere...shrug. I'd encourage you all to join Wikipedia and make edits to anything you see that's amiss!

gwern 7y ago

2006, using data primarily from Wikipedia articles written before then, was a very long time ago. Things have changed a lot: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1407.0323.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1407.0323.pdf

gatestone 7y ago
Small special wikis are very different fron Wikipedia.