4 ms·
> Wikipedia has already been bleeding editors for a long time Where can I learn about this?
by neolog 5y ago
> Wikipedia has already been bleeding editors for a long time
Where can I learn about this?
- bawolff 5y agoA lot of fuss has been made about this graph: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Editor_Retention_Update.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Editor_Retention_Upd... Roughly, English Wikipedia hit its editor peak around 2007 and has been very slowly declining since then. Various people argue about various causes. Theories I've heard include wikipedia becoming too rule heavy, to community just not scaling past that point, to the internet being a lot more interesting now then it was in 2007 so more distractions, community being mean/troll-filled now, everyone using mobile phones which are crap for writing long form content, all the easy to write articles are written, etc (Probably missed some).
- gspr 5y agoCan't it just be that since 2007 most of the obvious topics for an encyclopedia to cover have been covered? It's probably less satisfying to change the wording in one sentence in an article about an Australian cheese than it is to write that article. So fewer people care.
- zozbot234 5y agoYes, the standards for what counts as "good" Wikipedia editing have gotten a lot higher as well, at least wrt. mainstream topics.
- watwut 5y agoNo it is not. Some areas are perfectly describes, others basically empty. I remember dabbing into sewing a while ago and finding out wiki is basically empty.
- throwaway2037 5y agoYes, I also notice the coverage dedicated to women vs men is extremely imbalanced. I know they have a separate team working on the issue and big advert banners about it... but the issue remains: Much more is written about men (living or dead) than women.
- pfranz 5y agoThis was brought up as a major issue about 10 years ago: https://slate.com/technology/2012/07/kate-middleton-s-wedding-gown-and-wikipedia-s-gender-gap.html https://slate.com/technology/2012/07/kate-middleton-s-weddin...
- exporectomy 5y agoAren't there far more prominent men than women though? Especially when you count the whole of patriarchal history.
- zozbot234 5y agoHistory is always written by the victors, and due to patriarchy most of the victors in recorded history have been men. This has consequences if you want your encyclopedia to rely on existing sources.
- throwaway2037 5y agoI cannot personally agree with the first sentence from a modern context, but the second sentence is reasonable. I'm most bothered with I see articles about important ministers of a country and the women have either just a stub or a few measly paragraphs, and the men have flowing pages. I see the same for business leaders.
- depressedpanda 5y agoThe beauty of Wikipedia is that nothing prevents you (or other people) from writing those missing articles.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mavhc 5y agoThe barrier to entry is often that more articles exist now, it's likely the random thing you know enough about to start an article about already has one. Having 10% of new editors stick around seems amazingly high. Has anyone done the same for post 2015?
- trothamel 5y agoThat's not completely true, as it seems like the number of editors on English wikipedia hit a low point around 2013 and has been steady or going up since then. https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/en.wikipedia.org/contributing/active-editors/normal|line|all|(page_type)~content*non-content|monthly https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/en.wikipedia.org/contributing/...
- belorn 5y agoOne of the major argument I have seen why the retention graph has gone down is that English Wikipedia is much more complete in 2021 than 2007. Writing about esoteric topics is by itself limiting to fewer editors, and the bar of notability is more restrictive. Non-English articles is easier in that sense, but much of that work seems to become a translation of the English version. Writing a non-English article from scratch is an alternative but can feel a bit less interesting when the English version is already of high quality. I could be wrong but today it seems that most editor efforts in the English Wikipedia goes towards news, politics and media. It would not surprise me if those have a natural lower retention rate than other form of articles.
- strogonoff 5y agoOn one hand, Wikipedia has become more “complete” in the last 10 years (though information never is, really). On the other hand, the grown amount of content means there is proportionately more content to maintain—which might take even more effort and attention to detail than writing new content. That, as well as the reputation and pervasiveness of links to Wikipedia, together make it more vulnerable to and a more compelling target for instances of blatant or stealthy misinformation, censorship and vandalism. On that topic, I suspect a resource that tracks change histories for sensitive Wikipedia articles[0], aggregating and correlating changes by IPs and usernames along with some smart NLP analysis on text contents of the diffs, could end up being insightful. [0] Many of us know a certain date coming up, publicly remembering which starting this year is already punishable by a prison sentence in Hong Kong. Maintaining the article covering this one is hopefully taken care of for now as it is pretty conspicuous—but for how long, and how many lesser known articles are there…
- usrusr 5y agoBeing disgruntled about supporting a donations scam might be another reason to leave.
- thomasahle 5y ago> Wikipedia hit its editor peak around 2007 It's a very sharp peak. What happened in 2007?
- exporectomy 5y agono-follow was added to links in Jan 2007. I wonder if the drop was a drop in spam editors when SEO stopped working.
- thomasahle 5y agoI didn't know they did that. Sounds like a great decision!