4 ms·

Wales is right about one thing, though. This fact does have enormous policy implications. If Wikipedia is written by occasional contributors, then grow

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. :(
2zcon 7y ago
Isn't that the same for most open-source software[1]? To a Wikipedia editor going into a programming project to correct documentation, it might seem absurd that we want them to 'pass CI', 'squash the commits and correct the message column width to pass the code style', or 'sign the CLA'. [1] It's a very prettied-up domain-specific language but it's still copyleft software.
- quanticle 7y ago
  It would be, if the requirements were clearly documented, consistent for all pages, and consistently enforced. They are none of those things. EDIT: the other big difference is that every time I've attempted to contribute to an open-source project, people have, in general, been helpful and willing to explain what needed improvement. On Wikipedia, it's a much more hostile attitude. People are less willing to explain why your content was reverted or nominated for deletion, and if you protest, there's a decent chance that you'll be sanctioned (either topic-banned or temp-banned from Wikipedia). Imagine if forgetting to run a linter got your SSH key tempbanned from the project and you'll have a closer analogy to the current process.
Mathnerd314 7y ago
It really depends on what you edit. Sci/tech/math is pretty much un-monitored in my experience. The economics pages are full of weird pet theories. Meanwhile, as you say, current events, biographies, and a lot of other less technical pages (that don't require the deep background that the article refers to) are infested with deletionists.
- iwillaccept 7y ago
  I noticed the same pattern. Pages surrounding software architecture and companies always have some amount of fud in them. Do we have any surveys for wikipedia like stackoverflow about the demography of editors and how many people visit pages in particular categories? How often will someone notice a mistake and try to fix it?
- shdjchduwne7 7y ago
  It really seems to come down to politics, specifically whether or not /any/ group considers a topic political. I've made a few reasonably long albeit anonymous edits to the pages for specific regional cuisines and so far the only thing that's been changed is someone altered my wording a little once by breaking a sentence up into two.
notRobot 7y ago
Please don't quote text in code blocks. It's impossible to read on mobile and narrow viewports. --- Properly formatted: > 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.

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. :(

2zcon 7y ago

Isn't that the same for most open-source software[1]? To a Wikipedia editor going into a programming project to correct documentation, it might seem absurd that we want them to 'pass CI', 'squash the commits and correct the message column width to pass the code style', or 'sign the CLA'. [1] It's a very prettied-up domain-specific language but it's still copyleft software.

quanticle 7y ago
It would be, if the requirements were clearly documented, consistent for all pages, and consistently enforced. They are none of those things. EDIT: the other big difference is that every time I've attempted to contribute to an open-source project, people have, in general, been helpful and willing to explain what needed improvement. On Wikipedia, it's a much more hostile attitude. People are less willing to explain why your content was reverted or nominated for deletion, and if you protest, there's a decent chance that you'll be sanctioned (either topic-banned or temp-banned from Wikipedia). Imagine if forgetting to run a linter got your SSH key tempbanned from the project and you'll have a closer analogy to the current process.

Mathnerd314 7y ago

It really depends on what you edit. Sci/tech/math is pretty much un-monitored in my experience. The economics pages are full of weird pet theories. Meanwhile, as you say, current events, biographies, and a lot of other less technical pages (that don't require the deep background that the article refers to) are infested with deletionists.

iwillaccept 7y ago
I noticed the same pattern. Pages surrounding software architecture and companies always have some amount of fud in them. Do we have any surveys for wikipedia like stackoverflow about the demography of editors and how many people visit pages in particular categories? How often will someone notice a mistake and try to fix it?
shdjchduwne7 7y ago
It really seems to come down to politics, specifically whether or not /any/ group considers a topic political. I've made a few reasonably long albeit anonymous edits to the pages for specific regional cuisines and so far the only thing that's been changed is someone altered my wording a little once by breaking a sentence up into two.

notRobot 7y ago

Please don't quote text in code blocks. It's impossible to read on mobile and narrow viewports. --- Properly formatted: > 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.