4 ms·

"Jensen believes that there is a way out of this: "Wikipedia is now a mature reference work with a stable organizational structure and a well-established reputa

"Jensen believes that there is a way out of this: "Wikipedia is now a mature reference work with a stable organizational structure and a well-established reputation. The problem is that it is not mature in a scholarly sense." Wikipedia should devote more resources toward getting editors access to higher-quality scholarship (in private databases like JSTOR), admission to military-history conferences, and maybe even training in the field of historiography, so that they could bring the articles up to a more polished, professional standard." I think that this is the most interesting part of the article. What if Wikipedia was funded well enough to act as both a traditional encyclopedia with full-time editors/writers and as a place where everyone can add/edit content? We need a modern Andrew Carnegie to step up.

gojomo 14y ago
They're not hurting for funding. The Wikimedia Foundation had a $28 million budget for its current year and is projecting $46 million in revenues for 2012-2013: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2012-2013_Annual_Plan_Questions_and_Answers https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2012-2013_Annual_Plan_Q... Also, hiring editors/writers might crowd out the volunteer motivations, costing the project far more in the loss of donated effort. I believe Wikipedia's challenges are more strategic -- deciding the right things to do and in what proportions -- than financial.
- jessriedel 14y ago
  What makes you think $40 million is a lot? That seems like a very tiny amount to me, especially considering that most (nearly all?) is spent on technical requirements rather than editing.
  - gojomo 14y ago
    I believe $40 million per year is a lot because it could, just based on crude rules-of-thumb, support a strong technical staff of well over 100 people indefinitely. Indeed, according the 2012-2013 Plan document, current Wikimedia Foundation headcount was about 119 at the time of writing and expected to grow to 174 next year. I'm not sure what you mean by 'technical requirements', but if you specifically mean hosting costs (other than staffing) and capital expenditures on equipment, per the plan's page 69 that is forecast to be about $5.3MM of the total $42MM budget -- around 13%. Staff is the major cost -- I believe it is chiefly technical, administrative, legal, and community/chapter outreach roles. I also believe there's a not single person with explicit 'editing' duties on their payroll, as a matter of strategy and doctrine: Wikipedia is edited by unpaid volunteers, the Foundation supports those volunteers. Adding any 'official' and compensated editors would tamper with the formula/culture that's worked so far. In one respect, crossing that threshold by adding just a single paid editor would be 'cheap', but if that steps makes the volunteers feel less appreciated, or start thinking of things in terms of a salary (aka: 'motivation crowding'), the loss in productive contributions could be much larger. Why do you think $40MM-per-year is a "very tiny amount", and how big of an editorial staff do you think they'd need under some new model including professionalized editors?
    - jessriedel 14y ago
      There are 4 million articles on Wikipedia and 50k active editors. 100 people, even working full time, would hardly make a dent. This is true even ignoring the serious impact of tampering with the all-volunteer philosophy. I'd wager you'd need at least 10 times the number of people/money to seriously improve the content of wikipedia by hiring editors.
      - gojomo 14y ago
        The definition of 'active editor' that gives totals in the tens of thousands is anything more than 5 edits a month. That could just be minutes of time, so I doubt you can draw any sensible conclusions about sizing a paid full-time staff from '5+ edit' volunteer counts. FWIW, the Wikipedia article on Encyclopedia Britannica suggests that in 2007, Britannica had a credited staff of about 60, with another dozen editorial advisors. (While thousands of other advisors contributed over the decades, they're not required as continuing full-time staff.) So your suggestion that the Foundation would need a "at least 10 times the number of people/money" -- 1000+ full-time paid editors, a $400 million/year+ budget?!? -- for serious improvements seems wildly extravagant. Is it extrapolated from the known size/cost of any real-world professional/academic editorial efforts?
        jessriedel 14y ago
        I'm saying that if you added the staff of Encyclopedia Britannica to Wikipedia you wouldn't make a dent in Wikipedia. Britannica is about 40 million words. Wikipedia is 2 billion words, or 50 times larger. 2% is a blip.
        gojomo 14y ago
        And Wikpedia got the 2 billion words with zero paid editors, and indeed a culture that is suspicious of financial motivations, which is a big reason why the Foundation/community doesn't seem to have any interest in paid editors. But if they thought they could use them, it doesn't follow that they'd need a staff of a thousand-plus. It depends on the (unstated, entirely-hypothetical) strategy for using them. Superficial word-count-output extrapolations wouldn't be part of such a strategy. They've got plenty of money (provided each year's donation campaign meets its goals). They've got plenty of words. There's just not a clear path where "if they just had enough funding from some modern Andrew Carnegie" they could throw paid editors at their mission and improve things. (That was the particular suggestion that started this tangent about whether they need more money or not.) Other tangential evidence: while the Foundation reaches its fundraising target each year, they often spend less than planned. See for example: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2012-2013_Annual_Plan_Questions_and_Answers#Why_is_2011-12.27s_projected_spending_lower_than_plan.3F https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2012-2013_Annual_Plan_Q...
saurik 14y ago
While I agree that that would be interesting, that seems incredibly far-fetched as every one of those categories of scholarship--even including reading JSTOR to a real extent--is what Wikipedia would call "original research". Instead, Wikipedia believes strongly that it should only base itself on secondary sources, and thereby would much prefer to cite a New York Times article over a peer-reviewed journal article (which you are technically allowed to do, but the rules severely discourage it). The problem, therefore, isn't about helping editors get access to these more professional sources, it is making Wikipedia believe that they are even valuable sources in the first place. Until then, it simply will not happen. (To demonstrate the issue, I have pasted below a section of the rules on the usage of primary sources on Wikipedia. The idea of sending someone to a "military-history conference" with this rule still in place, obviously would do no help.) > A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the source but without further, specialized knowledge.
- ErrantX 14y ago
  A journal article would certainly count as a secondary source (unless of course you were talking about the source itself)! And is always preferred over a media report. Now if your argument was that Wikipedia suffers from "recentism", whereby lots of topics are based on media reports and lack more in depth literature to establish historical interest, then we would be in agreement. But the Wikipedia community is well aware of the importance of peer reviewed literature. The Medicine wiki-project, for example, has specific sourcing policies[1] for medical articles that specifies literature reviews as good sources. In fact, Wikipedians are working to get access to professional literature. There is a resource exchange page where we help each other get access to specific journal articles. And one particular editor has been working hard to get free accounts for things like Credo reference etc. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:MEDRS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:MEDRS
  - saurik 14y ago
    I found your response highly surprising, and I see my confusion now: Wikipedia is making (I will even admit correctly) a distinction between actual research (which it very clearly calls a "primary source") and a "review paper" (which it calls a "secondary source"). [references below] You really thereby can't say "a journal article would certainly count as a secondary source", as most journal articles are research, not reviews of research: the page you link to even very directly states "many, but not all, papers published in medical journals are primary sources". Of course, I will totally admit that at least some of the articles in JSTOR are going to be review papers, and thereby must retract part of my previous statement as written. In the specific case of JSTOR from those examples, and thereby my entire first aside, there would be at least some marginal benefit, even under Wikipedia's rules. However, I will point out that the underlying argument I was making quite stands: sending people to conferences, teaching them more about historiography, and getting them access to more sources of research, are all ways to make people better at performing what Wikipedia continues to call "original research" (and clearly wants no part in). Put differently, the goal of these activities is to make people better at interpreting primary information, not copy/pasting secondary information. Indeed, Wikipedia makes it quite clear that primary sources may only be used in cases where people with no specialized knowledge can plainly understand the information (which, honestly, to me seems unlikely to be plausible: journal articles are not written for the layperson), and even goes so far as to be quite explicit that secondary sources must be used to make the primary sources trustworthy. <edit> It does, however, at least seem like the medical parts of Wikipedia do not believe that a newspaper article is even a valid secondary source, so good on them. ;P I tried to find a similar document for the field of History, and they do seem to be working on a similar document (still marked "essay") and it also looks like it could be pretty good (as in, "no journalism"). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources_(history) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_... (I imagine an interesting benefit with Wikipedia/History is that you don't run experiments, so of course much of the material you find is technically a secondary source; you thereby don't actually find the usual discussion of "primary" vs. "secondary" in this essay: "primary" gets defined as the actual source documents, as arguably history is all opinion ;P.) Even reading the history-specific documentation, however, does not seem to indicate that you could both follow the rules and get much value out of having a strong background in history and history research: I maintain that attending conferences and taking courses in the field is seemingly not something that Wikipedia would look favorably on. This quote, however, was quite uplifting: "Historical articles on wikipedia should be the result of scholarly works.". </edit> (additional quotes from Wikipedia backing up my statements:) "...similarly, a scientific paper documenting a new experiment is a primary source on the outcome of that experiment." "A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the source but without further, specialized knowledge." "For example, a review article that analyzes research papers in a field is a secondary source for the research" -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research "A primary source in medicine is one in which the authors directly participated in the research or documented their personal experiences. ... Many, but not all, papers published in medical journals are primary sources for facts about the research and discoveries made." "A secondary source is... Examples include literature reviews or systematic reviews found in medical journals, specialist academic or professional books, and medical guidelines or position statements published by major health organizations." "All Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources. Reliable primary sources may occasionally be used with care as an adjunct to the secondary literature, but there remains potential for misuse." (emphasis copied from original) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:MEDRS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:MEDRS

gojomo 14y ago

They're not hurting for funding. The Wikimedia Foundation had a $28 million budget for its current year and is projecting $46 million in revenues for 2012-2013: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2012-2013_Annual_Plan_Questions_and_Answers https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2012-2013_Annual_Plan_Q... Also, hiring editors/writers might crowd out the volunteer motivations, costing the project far more in the loss of donated effort. I believe Wikipedia's challenges are more strategic -- deciding the right things to do and in what proportions -- than financial.

jessriedel 14y ago
What makes you think $40 million is a lot? That seems like a very tiny amount to me, especially considering that most (nearly all?) is spent on technical requirements rather than editing.
- gojomo 14y ago
  I believe $40 million per year is a lot because it could, just based on crude rules-of-thumb, support a strong technical staff of well over 100 people indefinitely. Indeed, according the 2012-2013 Plan document, current Wikimedia Foundation headcount was about 119 at the time of writing and expected to grow to 174 next year. I'm not sure what you mean by 'technical requirements', but if you specifically mean hosting costs (other than staffing) and capital expenditures on equipment, per the plan's page 69 that is forecast to be about $5.3MM of the total $42MM budget -- around 13%. Staff is the major cost -- I believe it is chiefly technical, administrative, legal, and community/chapter outreach roles. I also believe there's a not single person with explicit 'editing' duties on their payroll, as a matter of strategy and doctrine: Wikipedia is edited by unpaid volunteers, the Foundation supports those volunteers. Adding any 'official' and compensated editors would tamper with the formula/culture that's worked so far. In one respect, crossing that threshold by adding just a single paid editor would be 'cheap', but if that steps makes the volunteers feel less appreciated, or start thinking of things in terms of a salary (aka: 'motivation crowding'), the loss in productive contributions could be much larger. Why do you think $40MM-per-year is a "very tiny amount", and how big of an editorial staff do you think they'd need under some new model including professionalized editors?
  - jessriedel 14y ago
    There are 4 million articles on Wikipedia and 50k active editors. 100 people, even working full time, would hardly make a dent. This is true even ignoring the serious impact of tampering with the all-volunteer philosophy. I'd wager you'd need at least 10 times the number of people/money to seriously improve the content of wikipedia by hiring editors.
    - gojomo 14y ago
      The definition of 'active editor' that gives totals in the tens of thousands is anything more than 5 edits a month. That could just be minutes of time, so I doubt you can draw any sensible conclusions about sizing a paid full-time staff from '5+ edit' volunteer counts. FWIW, the Wikipedia article on Encyclopedia Britannica suggests that in 2007, Britannica had a credited staff of about 60, with another dozen editorial advisors. (While thousands of other advisors contributed over the decades, they're not required as continuing full-time staff.) So your suggestion that the Foundation would need a "at least 10 times the number of people/money" -- 1000+ full-time paid editors, a $400 million/year+ budget?!? -- for serious improvements seems wildly extravagant. Is it extrapolated from the known size/cost of any real-world professional/academic editorial efforts?
      - jessriedel 14y ago
        I'm saying that if you added the staff of Encyclopedia Britannica to Wikipedia you wouldn't make a dent in Wikipedia. Britannica is about 40 million words. Wikipedia is 2 billion words, or 50 times larger. 2% is a blip.
        gojomo 14y ago
        And Wikpedia got the 2 billion words with zero paid editors, and indeed a culture that is suspicious of financial motivations, which is a big reason why the Foundation/community doesn't seem to have any interest in paid editors. But if they thought they could use them, it doesn't follow that they'd need a staff of a thousand-plus. It depends on the (unstated, entirely-hypothetical) strategy for using them. Superficial word-count-output extrapolations wouldn't be part of such a strategy. They've got plenty of money (provided each year's donation campaign meets its goals). They've got plenty of words. There's just not a clear path where "if they just had enough funding from some modern Andrew Carnegie" they could throw paid editors at their mission and improve things. (That was the particular suggestion that started this tangent about whether they need more money or not.) Other tangential evidence: while the Foundation reaches its fundraising target each year, they often spend less than planned. See for example: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2012-2013_Annual_Plan_Questions_and_Answers#Why_is_2011-12.27s_projected_spending_lower_than_plan.3F https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2012-2013_Annual_Plan_Q...

saurik 14y ago

While I agree that that would be interesting, that seems incredibly far-fetched as every one of those categories of scholarship--even including reading JSTOR to a real extent--is what Wikipedia would call "original research". Instead, Wikipedia believes strongly that it should only base itself on secondary sources, and thereby would much prefer to cite a New York Times article over a peer-reviewed journal article (which you are technically allowed to do, but the rules severely discourage it). The problem, therefore, isn't about helping editors get access to these more professional sources, it is making Wikipedia believe that they are even valuable sources in the first place. Until then, it simply will not happen. (To demonstrate the issue, I have pasted below a section of the rules on the usage of primary sources on Wikipedia. The idea of sending someone to a "military-history conference" with this rule still in place, obviously would do no help.) > A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the source but without further, specialized knowledge.

ErrantX 14y ago
A journal article would certainly count as a secondary source (unless of course you were talking about the source itself)! And is always preferred over a media report. Now if your argument was that Wikipedia suffers from "recentism", whereby lots of topics are based on media reports and lack more in depth literature to establish historical interest, then we would be in agreement. But the Wikipedia community is well aware of the importance of peer reviewed literature. The Medicine wiki-project, for example, has specific sourcing policies[1] for medical articles that specifies literature reviews as good sources. In fact, Wikipedians are working to get access to professional literature. There is a resource exchange page where we help each other get access to specific journal articles. And one particular editor has been working hard to get free accounts for things like Credo reference etc. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:MEDRS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:MEDRS
- saurik 14y ago
  I found your response highly surprising, and I see my confusion now: Wikipedia is making (I will even admit correctly) a distinction between actual research (which it very clearly calls a "primary source") and a "review paper" (which it calls a "secondary source"). [references below] You really thereby can't say "a journal article would certainly count as a secondary source", as most journal articles are research, not reviews of research: the page you link to even very directly states "many, but not all, papers published in medical journals are primary sources". Of course, I will totally admit that at least some of the articles in JSTOR are going to be review papers, and thereby must retract part of my previous statement as written. In the specific case of JSTOR from those examples, and thereby my entire first aside, there would be at least some marginal benefit, even under Wikipedia's rules. However, I will point out that the underlying argument I was making quite stands: sending people to conferences, teaching them more about historiography, and getting them access to more sources of research, are all ways to make people better at performing what Wikipedia continues to call "original research" (and clearly wants no part in). Put differently, the goal of these activities is to make people better at interpreting primary information, not copy/pasting secondary information. Indeed, Wikipedia makes it quite clear that primary sources may only be used in cases where people with no specialized knowledge can plainly understand the information (which, honestly, to me seems unlikely to be plausible: journal articles are not written for the layperson), and even goes so far as to be quite explicit that secondary sources must be used to make the primary sources trustworthy. <edit> It does, however, at least seem like the medical parts of Wikipedia do not believe that a newspaper article is even a valid secondary source, so good on them. ;P I tried to find a similar document for the field of History, and they do seem to be working on a similar document (still marked "essay") and it also looks like it could be pretty good (as in, "no journalism"). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources_(history) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_... (I imagine an interesting benefit with Wikipedia/History is that you don't run experiments, so of course much of the material you find is technically a secondary source; you thereby don't actually find the usual discussion of "primary" vs. "secondary" in this essay: "primary" gets defined as the actual source documents, as arguably history is all opinion ;P.) Even reading the history-specific documentation, however, does not seem to indicate that you could both follow the rules and get much value out of having a strong background in history and history research: I maintain that attending conferences and taking courses in the field is seemingly not something that Wikipedia would look favorably on. This quote, however, was quite uplifting: "Historical articles on wikipedia should be the result of scholarly works.". </edit> (additional quotes from Wikipedia backing up my statements:) "...similarly, a scientific paper documenting a new experiment is a primary source on the outcome of that experiment." "A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the source but without further, specialized knowledge." "For example, a review article that analyzes research papers in a field is a secondary source for the research" -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research "A primary source in medicine is one in which the authors directly participated in the research or documented their personal experiences. ... Many, but not all, papers published in medical journals are primary sources for facts about the research and discoveries made." "A secondary source is... Examples include literature reviews or systematic reviews found in medical journals, specialist academic or professional books, and medical guidelines or position statements published by major health organizations." "All Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources. Reliable primary sources may occasionally be used with care as an adjunct to the secondary literature, but there remains potential for misuse." (emphasis copied from original) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:MEDRS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:MEDRS