4 ms·

This is a good summary of some of the technical issues Wikipedia is facing. Those can be overcome and eventually will. The really serious problems are organiza

by 4cao 6y ago

This is a good summary of some of the technical issues Wikipedia is facing. Those can be overcome and eventually will. The really serious problems are organizational in nature: the overgrowth of bureaucracy, the jungle of policies and "sort-of" policies that can be weaponized, the emergence of an inner clique skilled in navigating the quagmire, and the resulting impossibly high barrier to entry for new contributors. The experience of contributing to Wikipedia these days is inherently adversarial. People come and write something genuinely useful or at least do so in good faith, and then realize they unleashed on themselves a whole lengthy process when they have to defend what they did on numerous talk pages over an extended period of time, or succumb to deletionists. Even if they prevail, the experience is hardly pleasant, so they eventually leave and never look back. An artefact of the above is also that the editorial base suffers from an overrepresentation of people with vested interests, as they will always be the most highly-motivated to stay. There are of course many great editors too but the way things are going, the project is not sustainable, and its quality is being compromised due to an organizational failure. What Wikipedia needs is not Markdown (not that I have anything against it) but courage, fresh air, and less of the siege mentality.

samat 6y ago
Thank you for writing this. Some years ago I served as a CTO for a major news media org. Google approached us and asked to implement some 'structured web' stuff on our pages, so I dug in and realised there is a mandatory field for a link to a book or movie reviewers personal page in wikipedia. So I've found out that one of the most notable Russian book reviewers does not have an wikipedia page. No big deal, I've created one with some very basic info and some links to prove she's 'notable enough'. What ensued shortly after is kafkaesque story of some entitled shitheads who have power because they know some local lingo and have unlimited time resources to waste. Luckily, someone poured too much time and effort and made that page 'standard wikipedia article about a person' with all those 'templates and boxes' and used the right lingo to defend it's notability. I swear I tried to do it myself and failed. I am not stupid, the wikipedia editing is just too complicated. Thanks for reading, a few years passed and apparently I still have not got it fully out of my system. That feeling of complete helplessness, when those bureaucrats are clearly toying with you and enjoying it. It sucks big time.
- wnissen 6y ago
  Do I ever feel this. I've created 50 Wikipedia pages and I still feel that way. I was attempting to midwife a good, but poorly formatted and sourced page, the "too much time and effort" you describe, and it still got shot down. The person in question has had three solo interviews published in national publications, a long performing career, even produced and starred in a TV show on a niche, but real, cable channel. That's not notable? Whereas every major league Bangladeshi cricketer is allowed a page? It's exhausting. And my Wikipedia account is old enough to vote. The only place you can make articles easily is when everyone involved is dead.
willis936 6y ago
I'm not sure it's so bad. I have come across multiple wikipedia articles on technical subjects that I'm somewhat familiar with and notice how biased or straight up wrong some of them are. If the bureaucratic overhead was really "too far", then this wouldn't be possible.
- DanBC 6y ago
  Why haven't people tried to fix those articles? They have, but they came up against the bureaucratic overhead and gave up.
- 4cao 6y ago
  Could it be that attempts to improve them were reverted?
pradn 6y ago
There does need to be a budget for the number of rules that exist. Since there's no "paper", a wiki can keep growing indefinitely and that includes the rules governing the wiki itself. If there was, let's say, a 30 page rulebook, it would prevent arcana from developing. The problem with this is that it places more of an onus on individual admins to figure out the interpretation of the compressed ruleset. It's a bit like a constitution requiring judges to interpret it. I work on Wikipedia articles in niche worldwide arts and history topics. I just see few people caring enough to debate me about Uyghur modernist poetry. I had a slight bit of trouble recently when I wrote a script to generate stub articles for Indonesian films. I got some flak for creating articles without enough extra detail (just the name, year, cast, genre, and awards), but only one was temporarily pulled down into the sandbox area. I recently got someone who I wrote an article on to release their photo to the public domain. I had to have them email Wikimedia Commons a legalese template to do that. But the person on the other side said, "how can you release a photo of yourself"? (It wasn't a selfie.) So he had to get his daughter who took the photo to send them the legalese. It's a bit much, but I see how they have to be careful with legal things. It wasn't the smoothest experience. It's much easier to release the copyright on your own works.
dalbasal 6y ago
Policies and/or sort of policies can always be weaponized. A highly legible ruleset with less "sort of" might lower the barrier for new contributors but come with its own tradeoffs. Rigidity, for example. Is getting more contributors involved a limiting factor for wikipedia? Wikipedia's goal isn't necessarily to maximize the number of contributors, or articles. They aren't facebook. Ultimately, wikipedia is still pioneering its space. There isn't really anything else like it, and all considered, it works remarkably well. I don't see how any version of wikipedia could really avoid adversersarial dynamics. It's those adversarial dynamics that make decisions, even though clear policies or authorities don't really exist. Sure, many will find it alienating. Most people don't need to edit wikipedia for it to work though. I think what we need is other wikipedia-like things. The ideal solution to a lot of deletionists problem would be more highly active sites that work in different ways.

by 4cao 6y ago

samat 6y ago

Thank you for writing this. Some years ago I served as a CTO for a major news media org. Google approached us and asked to implement some 'structured web' stuff on our pages, so I dug in and realised there is a mandatory field for a link to a book or movie reviewers personal page in wikipedia. So I've found out that one of the most notable Russian book reviewers does not have an wikipedia page. No big deal, I've created one with some very basic info and some links to prove she's 'notable enough'. What ensued shortly after is kafkaesque story of some entitled shitheads who have power because they know some local lingo and have unlimited time resources to waste. Luckily, someone poured too much time and effort and made that page 'standard wikipedia article about a person' with all those 'templates and boxes' and used the right lingo to defend it's notability. I swear I tried to do it myself and failed. I am not stupid, the wikipedia editing is just too complicated. Thanks for reading, a few years passed and apparently I still have not got it fully out of my system. That feeling of complete helplessness, when those bureaucrats are clearly toying with you and enjoying it. It sucks big time.

wnissen 6y ago
Do I ever feel this. I've created 50 Wikipedia pages and I still feel that way. I was attempting to midwife a good, but poorly formatted and sourced page, the "too much time and effort" you describe, and it still got shot down. The person in question has had three solo interviews published in national publications, a long performing career, even produced and starred in a TV show on a niche, but real, cable channel. That's not notable? Whereas every major league Bangladeshi cricketer is allowed a page? It's exhausting. And my Wikipedia account is old enough to vote. The only place you can make articles easily is when everyone involved is dead.

willis936 6y ago

I'm not sure it's so bad. I have come across multiple wikipedia articles on technical subjects that I'm somewhat familiar with and notice how biased or straight up wrong some of them are. If the bureaucratic overhead was really "too far", then this wouldn't be possible.

DanBC 6y ago
Why haven't people tried to fix those articles? They have, but they came up against the bureaucratic overhead and gave up.
4cao 6y ago
Could it be that attempts to improve them were reverted?

pradn 6y ago

There does need to be a budget for the number of rules that exist. Since there's no "paper", a wiki can keep growing indefinitely and that includes the rules governing the wiki itself. If there was, let's say, a 30 page rulebook, it would prevent arcana from developing. The problem with this is that it places more of an onus on individual admins to figure out the interpretation of the compressed ruleset. It's a bit like a constitution requiring judges to interpret it. I work on Wikipedia articles in niche worldwide arts and history topics. I just see few people caring enough to debate me about Uyghur modernist poetry. I had a slight bit of trouble recently when I wrote a script to generate stub articles for Indonesian films. I got some flak for creating articles without enough extra detail (just the name, year, cast, genre, and awards), but only one was temporarily pulled down into the sandbox area. I recently got someone who I wrote an article on to release their photo to the public domain. I had to have them email Wikimedia Commons a legalese template to do that. But the person on the other side said, "how can you release a photo of yourself"? (It wasn't a selfie.) So he had to get his daughter who took the photo to send them the legalese. It's a bit much, but I see how they have to be careful with legal things. It wasn't the smoothest experience. It's much easier to release the copyright on your own works.

dalbasal 6y ago

Policies and/or sort of policies can always be weaponized. A highly legible ruleset with less "sort of" might lower the barrier for new contributors but come with its own tradeoffs. Rigidity, for example. Is getting more contributors involved a limiting factor for wikipedia? Wikipedia's goal isn't necessarily to maximize the number of contributors, or articles. They aren't facebook. Ultimately, wikipedia is still pioneering its space. There isn't really anything else like it, and all considered, it works remarkably well. I don't see how any version of wikipedia could really avoid adversersarial dynamics. It's those adversarial dynamics that make decisions, even though clear policies or authorities don't really exist. Sure, many will find it alienating. Most people don't need to edit wikipedia for it to work though. I think what we need is other wikipedia-like things. The ideal solution to a lot of deletionists problem would be more highly active sites that work in different ways.