5 ms·

Look This Up on Wikipedia: How Big Is Too Big?

16 points by terpua 17y ago

fnid 17y ago
What's the obsession with constant growth? Why does wikipedia need to keep growing? It's not going to disappear if its user base stops growing. People will still edit. People will still read it. It'll probably get better if it slows down a bit and starts to get real.
- duskwuff 17y ago
  Indeed. And, even if Wikipedia can't sustain infinite exponential growth, that hardly means that it's failed.
  - darien 17y ago
    Certainly, information isn't necessarily governed by Moore's law, it's information processing that is! Exponential information creation would require an exponential rise in population, and that's just not the case - thankfully.
    - duskwuff 17y ago
      That, and Wikipedia has been growing far more quickly than the world's population, or even Moore's Law, can account for. At a certain point, a carrying capacity is bound to be reached.
- netsp 17y ago
  At some point, the main job of Wikipedia editors will be to update the encyclopedia in response to new information.
  - Ras_ 17y ago
    ...and translate it to other languages, like they did in the Library of Alexandria... I can't even imagine how long it would take to translate the contents of en.wiki to 240 languages (current active editions).
    - netsp 17y ago
      That point I was talking about comes after the point you were talking about.
- bkovitz 17y ago
  Indeed, growth is not the point. The point is to have a great encyclopedia that anyone can contribute to. Wikipedia has succeeded. I think the main reason for the slowdown in editing is obvious: the mission is basically accomplished.
GavinB 17y ago
Wikipedia is not continuing to grow because its policy is to delete articles whose subjects aren't covered in the mainstream press. The mainstream press, on the other hand, is shrinking every month. The current definition of notability is like Newtonian physics. It's useful, but must eventually be replaced by a more nuanced model.
- halo 17y ago
  At the moment, Wikipedia relies on the press to verify the truth. How do you suggest Wikipedia verifies the truth without relying on the press and other scholarly sources?
  - gojomo 17y ago
    A good question -- and there are at least two dimensions: (1) using traditional publication coverage to evaluate 'notability'; and (2) using traditional publications as sources of information. I personally would jettison 'notability' for 'usefulness', and improve the procedures for allowing 'self-published' material -- even up to original research and the testimony of primary sources -- to provide Wikipedia content, as long as it's true. Yes, that's harder than just deferring to traditional high-reputation news and academic publishers. But those publishers are retreating, while the need for reference information is growing, and this problem needs the boldness of the wiki-model, even as Wikipedia has become squeamish about such experimentalism.
    - hughprime 17y ago
      At present, though, the bar for wikipedia notability is still set a lot lower than the bar for showing up in a newspaper -- not everything in the newspaper is worth recording for all time in wikipedia. Until that happens you're dealing with a fairly theoretical problem of how to cover notable things which never show up in a reputable source.
      - gojomo 17y ago
        As long as true articles are being deleted for 'notability', I'm talking about a real problem, not a theoretical one.
teeja 17y ago
WP's a lot more daunting than it used to be for a newcomer. Every now and then I see an article where someone came along, dumped in a bunch of text (unique if not original), and ran away from merging it. They could really use a hand-holding (offline?) editing environment. Stylistic expectations now are daunting for a noob - and their online help is, well, badly organized might be kind.
gritzko 17y ago
I think the reasons for the decay were already widely discussed everywhere: 1. there is a great amount of rules and guidelines which worsen the learning curve 2. quite often, articles are owned by "shepherds", who tend to rollback outsider contributions (because they have their own perfect vision in their heads); this contributes to despair of occasional contributors 3. because the topmost reasons to be a winner in a editor dispute are (a) persistence and (b) bone-headness
- bkovitz 17y ago
  These problems get a lot of attention because people tend to whine loudly about them. But the vast majority of articles are not affected by them. Except possibly the learning curve. I think the fact that Wikipedia is just a little bit difficult to edit has helped it enormously. That filtered out the people who post the sort of junk you see on YouTube, digg, reddit, etc.

16 points by terpua 17y ago

fnid 17y ago

What's the obsession with constant growth? Why does wikipedia need to keep growing? It's not going to disappear if its user base stops growing. People will still edit. People will still read it. It'll probably get better if it slows down a bit and starts to get real.

duskwuff 17y ago
Indeed. And, even if Wikipedia can't sustain infinite exponential growth, that hardly means that it's failed.
- darien 17y ago
  Certainly, information isn't necessarily governed by Moore's law, it's information processing that is! Exponential information creation would require an exponential rise in population, and that's just not the case - thankfully.
  - duskwuff 17y ago
    That, and Wikipedia has been growing far more quickly than the world's population, or even Moore's Law, can account for. At a certain point, a carrying capacity is bound to be reached.
netsp 17y ago
At some point, the main job of Wikipedia editors will be to update the encyclopedia in response to new information.
- Ras_ 17y ago
  ...and translate it to other languages, like they did in the Library of Alexandria... I can't even imagine how long it would take to translate the contents of en.wiki to 240 languages (current active editions).
  - netsp 17y ago
    That point I was talking about comes after the point you were talking about.
bkovitz 17y ago
Indeed, growth is not the point. The point is to have a great encyclopedia that anyone can contribute to. Wikipedia has succeeded. I think the main reason for the slowdown in editing is obvious: the mission is basically accomplished.

GavinB 17y ago

Wikipedia is not continuing to grow because its policy is to delete articles whose subjects aren't covered in the mainstream press. The mainstream press, on the other hand, is shrinking every month. The current definition of notability is like Newtonian physics. It's useful, but must eventually be replaced by a more nuanced model.

halo 17y ago
At the moment, Wikipedia relies on the press to verify the truth. How do you suggest Wikipedia verifies the truth without relying on the press and other scholarly sources?
- gojomo 17y ago
  A good question -- and there are at least two dimensions: (1) using traditional publication coverage to evaluate 'notability'; and (2) using traditional publications as sources of information. I personally would jettison 'notability' for 'usefulness', and improve the procedures for allowing 'self-published' material -- even up to original research and the testimony of primary sources -- to provide Wikipedia content, as long as it's true. Yes, that's harder than just deferring to traditional high-reputation news and academic publishers. But those publishers are retreating, while the need for reference information is growing, and this problem needs the boldness of the wiki-model, even as Wikipedia has become squeamish about such experimentalism.
  - hughprime 17y ago
    At present, though, the bar for wikipedia notability is still set a lot lower than the bar for showing up in a newspaper -- not everything in the newspaper is worth recording for all time in wikipedia. Until that happens you're dealing with a fairly theoretical problem of how to cover notable things which never show up in a reputable source.
    - gojomo 17y ago
      As long as true articles are being deleted for 'notability', I'm talking about a real problem, not a theoretical one.

teeja 17y ago

WP's a lot more daunting than it used to be for a newcomer. Every now and then I see an article where someone came along, dumped in a bunch of text (unique if not original), and ran away from merging it. They could really use a hand-holding (offline?) editing environment. Stylistic expectations now are daunting for a noob - and their online help is, well, badly organized might be kind.

gritzko 17y ago

I think the reasons for the decay were already widely discussed everywhere: 1. there is a great amount of rules and guidelines which worsen the learning curve 2. quite often, articles are owned by "shepherds", who tend to rollback outsider contributions (because they have their own perfect vision in their heads); this contributes to despair of occasional contributors 3. because the topmost reasons to be a winner in a editor dispute are (a) persistence and (b) bone-headness

bkovitz 17y ago
These problems get a lot of attention because people tend to whine loudly about them. But the vast majority of articles are not affected by them. Except possibly the learning curve. I think the fact that Wikipedia is just a little bit difficult to edit has helped it enormously. That filtered out the people who post the sort of junk you see on YouTube, digg, reddit, etc.