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As someone building a direct competitor to Wikipedia for crowdsourced biographies and news-based pages [1], I have come to the conclusion that the wiki software

As someone building a direct competitor to Wikipedia for crowdsourced biographies and news-based pages [1], I have come to the conclusion that the wiki software while responsible for the site's success, is also the cause of its inevitable decline. The software causes almost every problem that people complain about, mainly because it lets real or imagined experts have too much power over the page. It's simply easier for an editor to reject new information, than to go through the pain of adding it. In one case, I struggled for weeks to try to get a simple sentence into the site, only to be harassed by the site's administrators, when I challenged a particularly ambiguous rule. Entrenched editors such as William Connolley [2] on Global Warming, act as guardians for whole sections of the site, and do not allow any dissenting opinion, censoring and minimizing views that do not suit their agenda. So much of this is simply unnecessary in a better designed system. As a result of the open nature of wiki editing, Wikipedia has built up an increasingly restrictive, massive, rule set of how to reject information, which makes it increasingly difficult to add new information. Many of those rules, such as those for notability, conflict of interest, and reliable sources are ambiguous and arbitrarily applied, giving even more power to editors and admins, instead of content creators. This means that the site has become rigid and nobody wants to maintain it. The quality of pages is declining rapidly. It is also very easy to harass other people on the system, so much so that women and minorities are virtually excluded. We have taken a different approach with great results. By avoiding the page-based metaphor and giving better tools to our editors have created a system that makes it easy to add information without being harassed. We also pay our writers and editors, and are implementing a revenue share system so they can actually get some benefit from their work. So far our writers have added 25,000 posts without a single edit war, and zero harassment. 80% of them are women. [1] http://newslines.org http://newslines.org [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Connolley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Connolley

tokenadult 12y ago
How come the Getting Started page link from the Newslines front page[1] returns a 404 error? A different link that has the link text "Click here to get started"[2] from a different page does work. Why aren't the link targets consistent? [1] http://newslines.org/getting-started/ http://newslines.org/getting-started/ [2] http://newslines.org/newslines-rewards/ http://newslines.org/newslines-rewards/
- sparkzilla 12y ago
  I was confused there for a minute, but you're right, there was an old link still there. I have fixed it, thanks!
grecy 12y ago
I run a mediawiki based information site, and I disagree the following statement: >The software causes almost every problem that people complain about The real problem is: >As a result of the open nature of wiki editing, Wikipedia has built up an increasingly restrictive, massive, rule set of how to reject information Wikipedia is not longer a place setup so people contribute information, it's a place set up to reject the addition of information (as you point out). It's been a goal of my wiki to be the precise opposite, and it's been very interesting to see people go from "I hate wikis b/c of Wikipedia's stupid rules" to "huh, my edit was accepted" to "wow, this is extremely useful and collaborative". I believe a wiki is not inherently bad, it's all the rejection rules they've built on top that are the problem.
- sparkzilla 12y ago
  Hi, I checked your site out. It's a useful resource. However, it appears you are making it by yourself mainly. When you get a lot of users on your wiki you will have to make a lot of rules, or ban a lot of users. I used to run my site on MediaWiki too and moved to WordPress. I don't know if that would work for your content though.
  - grecy 12y ago
    > When you get a lot of users on your wiki you will have to make a lot of rules, or ban a lot of users I'd like to hear your reasons why you think this will be needed? As long as the edit is something useful to traveling overland, it's allowed. That's the only rule, and I think it's the only rule that will ever be needed.
    - sparkzilla 12y ago
      The objective of any crowdsourcing system is to find people who know more about the topic than you. However, oftentimes those people are dicks. You need rules that will allow you to get their content without them causing you (or them) a lot of grief.
ue_ 12y ago
>As a result of the open nature of wiki editing, Wikipedia has built up an increasingly restrictive, massive, rule set of how to reject information It's useful to note that this problem relates more to wiki-encyclopedias, and perhaps not as much to non-encyclopedic wikis. If you take a look at the C2 wiki or MeatballWiki, rejecting information make less of a problem even though they share the principle of anyone being able to edit anything on any page. MeatballWiki states that it is not an encyclopedia, but rather a set of pages which feature discussion. Because of this, there is less grounds to refuse or revert edits with the reason of being "off-topic" (because discussion usually means merging several related topics) or for being "biased" (again, a feature of discussion is to get one's personal viewpoint across). In short, I don't think this is a problem due to wiki software or the open nature of wikis, but rather wikis-as-encyclopediae or even Wikipedia specifically. "Encyclopedia" places a huge set of rules as to what can be added and what not.

tokenadult 12y ago

How come the Getting Started page link from the Newslines front page[1] returns a 404 error? A different link that has the link text "Click here to get started"[2] from a different page does work. Why aren't the link targets consistent? [1] http://newslines.org/getting-started/ http://newslines.org/getting-started/ [2] http://newslines.org/newslines-rewards/ http://newslines.org/newslines-rewards/

sparkzilla 12y ago
I was confused there for a minute, but you're right, there was an old link still there. I have fixed it, thanks!

grecy 12y ago

I run a mediawiki based information site, and I disagree the following statement: >The software causes almost every problem that people complain about The real problem is: >As a result of the open nature of wiki editing, Wikipedia has built up an increasingly restrictive, massive, rule set of how to reject information Wikipedia is not longer a place setup so people contribute information, it's a place set up to reject the addition of information (as you point out). It's been a goal of my wiki to be the precise opposite, and it's been very interesting to see people go from "I hate wikis b/c of Wikipedia's stupid rules" to "huh, my edit was accepted" to "wow, this is extremely useful and collaborative". I believe a wiki is not inherently bad, it's all the rejection rules they've built on top that are the problem.

sparkzilla 12y ago
Hi, I checked your site out. It's a useful resource. However, it appears you are making it by yourself mainly. When you get a lot of users on your wiki you will have to make a lot of rules, or ban a lot of users. I used to run my site on MediaWiki too and moved to WordPress. I don't know if that would work for your content though.
- grecy 12y ago
  > When you get a lot of users on your wiki you will have to make a lot of rules, or ban a lot of users I'd like to hear your reasons why you think this will be needed? As long as the edit is something useful to traveling overland, it's allowed. That's the only rule, and I think it's the only rule that will ever be needed.
  - sparkzilla 12y ago
    The objective of any crowdsourcing system is to find people who know more about the topic than you. However, oftentimes those people are dicks. You need rules that will allow you to get their content without them causing you (or them) a lot of grief.

ue_ 12y ago

>As a result of the open nature of wiki editing, Wikipedia has built up an increasingly restrictive, massive, rule set of how to reject information It's useful to note that this problem relates more to wiki-encyclopedias, and perhaps not as much to non-encyclopedic wikis. If you take a look at the C2 wiki or MeatballWiki, rejecting information make less of a problem even though they share the principle of anyone being able to edit anything on any page. MeatballWiki states that it is not an encyclopedia, but rather a set of pages which feature discussion. Because of this, there is less grounds to refuse or revert edits with the reason of being "off-topic" (because discussion usually means merging several related topics) or for being "biased" (again, a feature of discussion is to get one's personal viewpoint across). In short, I don't think this is a problem due to wiki software or the open nature of wikis, but rather wikis-as-encyclopediae or even Wikipedia specifically. "Encyclopedia" places a huge set of rules as to what can be added and what not.