4 ms·

Say you draw a venn diagram with three intersecting circles: 1. People with technical web expertise 2. People with deep domain knowledge 3. People willing to

Say you draw a venn diagram with three intersecting circles: 1. People with technical web expertise 2. People with deep domain knowledge 3. People willing to deal with bureaucracy You will get a very tiny population. Wikipedia wasn't always like this, the problem is that well established editors have built a fort to keep the noobs out—not because they are power thirsty—but because they don't want to deal with noob mistakes. As with anyone new to a job, your first week will likely be a net loss to the company: they have to show you the ropes, set up your computer, take you out for lunch, make you feel welcome, etc. The wikipedia editors don't want to deal with this, so they just build technical and policy barriers to keep new people out. Around three years ago I decided on "donating" one day of my life to Wikipedia in Spanish. I went around areas of intest, fixed some stuff, created two new articles of well recognized designers. The next day both articles were "nominated for deletion", one because it wasn't properly formatted or referenced, and the other for copyright infringement. An overzealous editor made a search on google and found a similar article in a blog, my own blog! which I release under public domain and which shares my wikipedia handle. I ended up collaborating one day and fighting bureaucracy three days. No wonder they're having trouble finding new editors.

Steko 15y ago
It's pretty clear that Wikipedia's eventually death/massive reorganization will come about over four easily recognizable flaws: (1) rejecting articles for notability. (2) no advertising (3) reliance on a tiny population of unpaid editors. (4) allowing anonymous edits. Google tried with Knol but they focused on (2), (3) and (4) when in actuality the biggest weakness is (1) due to Kryder's Law. What Google (or Microsoft or some startup) should do is create a third party wikipedia extension, call it notapedia (or whatever) and have it spider wikipedia and keep a fork of any page deleted for notability reasons. Of course that's just the tip of the iceberg. People will be able to make their own (notable or not notapedia) info pages. Notapedia will hit a critical mass and the killing blow will come all at once as wikipedia is forked and most of their editors enticed with revenue deals. Having swallowed it's father (patriphagicide?) notapedia grows even faster. Info pages are created for nearly every person on the planet, becoming the anti-facebook that Zuckerburg envisioned but replacing the real facebook and twitter and flickr and linked in and everything else as well. Businesses and government agencies will check your id against the datestamped photos of you on notapedia. An enormous network of private and government databases will be setup to work as extensions of notapedia.
- someperson 15y ago
  The final paragraph seems like a huge leap from your (very convincing) earlier paragraphs. Reducing/removing notability guidelines does not necessarily open the flood gates to some kind of social network with a wiki page for every individual on earth :P That said, I really hope a wikipedia fork gains popularity and is merged back later.
  - Steko 15y ago
    Was engaging in a bit of artistic license there but I think it's certainly possible. Once the notability threshold is gone and people realize they could make a page for themselves, their family, friends, their dog, their band... Well some people will do that. This can easily be turned into a crowd sourced version of any social or blogging service. It grows faster because one user can make pages for 100, 1000 people. It grows faster because the total lack of privacy and editorial controls make it more interesting (right up Google's alley btw). Lack of anonymous commenting means people are ultimately subject to libel laws.

Steko 15y ago

It's pretty clear that Wikipedia's eventually death/massive reorganization will come about over four easily recognizable flaws: (1) rejecting articles for notability. (2) no advertising (3) reliance on a tiny population of unpaid editors. (4) allowing anonymous edits. Google tried with Knol but they focused on (2), (3) and (4) when in actuality the biggest weakness is (1) due to Kryder's Law. What Google (or Microsoft or some startup) should do is create a third party wikipedia extension, call it notapedia (or whatever) and have it spider wikipedia and keep a fork of any page deleted for notability reasons. Of course that's just the tip of the iceberg. People will be able to make their own (notable or not notapedia) info pages. Notapedia will hit a critical mass and the killing blow will come all at once as wikipedia is forked and most of their editors enticed with revenue deals. Having swallowed it's father (patriphagicide?) notapedia grows even faster. Info pages are created for nearly every person on the planet, becoming the anti-facebook that Zuckerburg envisioned but replacing the real facebook and twitter and flickr and linked in and everything else as well. Businesses and government agencies will check your id against the datestamped photos of you on notapedia. An enormous network of private and government databases will be setup to work as extensions of notapedia.

someperson 15y ago
The final paragraph seems like a huge leap from your (very convincing) earlier paragraphs. Reducing/removing notability guidelines does not necessarily open the flood gates to some kind of social network with a wiki page for every individual on earth :P That said, I really hope a wikipedia fork gains popularity and is merged back later.
- Steko 15y ago
  Was engaging in a bit of artistic license there but I think it's certainly possible. Once the notability threshold is gone and people realize they could make a page for themselves, their family, friends, their dog, their band... Well some people will do that. This can easily be turned into a crowd sourced version of any social or blogging service. It grows faster because one user can make pages for 100, 1000 people. It grows faster because the total lack of privacy and editorial controls make it more interesting (right up Google's alley btw). Lack of anonymous commenting means people are ultimately subject to libel laws.