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Whenever I hear warnings about the pace of change slowing down on Wikipedia, I have to wonder to what extent this is explained simply by (parts of) Wikipedia be
by rcthompson 13y ago
Whenever I hear warnings about the pace of change slowing down on Wikipedia, I have to wonder to what extent this is explained simply by (parts of) Wikipedia being "finished", in the sense that it is now only updating to keep up with current events as they happen, and not working on filling in gaps on subjects that are relatively static. For example, the articles on most well-known laws of physics are effectively "done", and, barring a major breakthrough in physics, aren't going to change much. This doesn't mean that they are somehow "dead".
So what fraction of articles on Wikipedia are "finished", and does this explain the apparent decline of Wikipedia in terms of contributors/contributions? I don't know if there's an easy way to answer this.
- hyperpape 13y agoI don't know how it differs by field, but in the field I know best (philosophy), it's pretty hit or miss. Consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_realism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_realism. That's a pretty fundamental topic, and it has cleanup tags that are four years old.
- bane 13y agoIt doesn't help that when you try and fix obviously broken stuff, or even provide desperately needed citations, the majority of the time you'll get insta-reverted and flagged as a vandal.
- InclinedPlane 13y agoWikipedia represents a tiny fraction of the content that could conceivably exist there. I think most people who have used wikipedia extensively have found some part of it that was extremely light on details on a topic that was not particularly niche.