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I was surprised that Wikipedia wasn't immediately overrun by trolls, griefers, and spammers. I'm still not entirely sure how it avoids that, though I've got som
by jfengel 1y ago
I was surprised that Wikipedia wasn't immediately overrun by trolls, griefers, and spammers. I'm still not entirely sure how it avoids that, though I've got some speculations.
Unlike most user contributed sites it's happy to throw stuff away. It does grow but it doesn't care about growing fast. That's great but it's a hard formula to replicate.
- idle_zealot 1y ago> That's great but it's a hard formula to replicate One important piece of even trying to replicate that is its nature as a nonprofit. Any profit-seeking organization trying to grow a user-contribution based site will prefer content and moderation pipelines that drive engagement over quality.
- rafram 1y agoBecause contributions from new users are immediately reviewed by legions of volunteer cops who are eager to revert vandalism, and most wannabe vandals don’t have the sense to make a couple legitimate edits before vandalizing.
- jfengel 1y agoCan you imagine any other crowdsourced site who was willing to subject new users to so much scrutiny, and err on the side of deleting contributions? Certainly that's not a great way to make money. Not if you're depending on people to spend a lot of time seeking new content (and be shown ads).
- zahlman 1y ago> I'm still not entirely sure how it avoids that It really doesn't. Granted, it could be a lot worse.