
Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006) - luu
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia
======
quanticle

        Wales is right about one thing, though. This fact does have enormous policy
        implications. If Wikipedia is written by occasional contributors, then 
        growing it requires making it easier and more rewarding to contribute 
        occasionally. Instead of trying to squeeze more work out of those who spend
        their life on Wikipedia, we need to broaden the base of those who 
        contribute just a little bit.
    

The problem is that, as a community, Wikipedia has gone out of its way to do
the opposite of that. New content is often treated as "guilty until proven
innocent", and it's up to the contributor to wade through Wikipedia's
idiosyncratic rules and definitions in order to justify to the moderators why
their edits should not be reverted or their articles deleted.

~~~
Mathnerd314
It really depends on what you edit. Sci/tech/math is pretty much un-monitored
in my experience. The economics pages are full of weird pet theories.
Meanwhile, as you say, current events, biographies, and a lot of other less
technical pages (that don't require the deep background that the article
refers to) are infested with deletionists.

~~~
shdjchduwne7
It really seems to come down to politics, specifically whether or not /any/
group considers a topic political. I've made a few reasonably long albeit
anonymous edits to the pages for specific regional cuisines and so far the
only thing that's been changed is someone altered my wording a little once by
breaking a sentence up into two.

------
onyva
From my experience with trying to contribute to the Hebrew version, try
contributing focusing on expanding an existing article and watch what happens.
In my case there was a very strong push back even against adding links that
expand on issues mentioned which imho helped to balance an obvious slant. I
gave up after a while. At university of course you’re warned not to use
Wikipedia, it’s not acceptable as a reference and many examples are presented
of experts in their field who contributed articles, which were then rewritten
to the point where there was nothing left, other than the revised version of
the moderators and the small mafia that runs the Israeli Wikipedia. There’s
also the examples of the Croatian version which was taken over by neonazis and
even the ministry of education had to publish a warning.

~~~
draugadrotten
The political bias of wikipedia editors is horrible in most smaller countries.
You mention Israel and Croatia. I can add Sweden. For an example, compare the
wikipedia entries of the two largest parties in the Swedish parliament. One,
Socialdemokraterna, starts with a blurb on how the party provides public
welfare and the party slogan ("av var och en efter förmåga, åt var och en
efter behov"). Compare with the second largest party, Sverigedemokraterna,
which has an entire section devoted to listing scandals, controversial quotes
and shunnings. Whatever you think about the two ideologies, these two
wikipedia entries alone should be enough proof that there is a (left)
political bias of wikipedia editors.

I use wikipedia often because it has a lot of information in it, but would
never rely on it as a source of fact. It is a google result like any other,
and must be treated with caution.

~~~
Proziam
Almost all social platforms on the internet have a left-leaning tilt because,
at least partially, the left (historically) organizes much better than the
right does. This is one of those "well duh" statements once it's said out
loud, considering the left's entire platform is about unification and social
issues in most countries. That said, there are signs that point to a change in
that recently (the second amendment rallies and sanctuaries around the US as
examples).

This is _extremely_ visible on Reddit, to the point that even moderates on the
left can find it exhausting.

~~~
defertoreptar
I was under the impression that this was because the left skews younger, and
Gen X and millennials are more active and capable online.

~~~
Proziam
Age is a component, but it doesn't adequately explain the difference in
movements that occur in the real world as well as online. Universities have
students organizing protests against right-wing figures quite frequently, and
it was almost exclusively the left who pushed for the $15 minimum wage -
despite both parties populations being affected heavily.

From what I've seen (living in US, Germany, and Sweden) no matter where you go
there is a difference in 'wiring.' [0]And according to some sources I've read
there appears to be some science behind that as well.

[0][https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/can-
you...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/can-your-genes-
predict-whether-youll-be-a-conservative-or-a-liberal/280677/)

~~~
bawolff
Universities skew younger even more than the internet does.

I think there is an element of the left wanting to "fix" the world which
appeals to young people, and the right wanting to "protect" the world from bad
changes, which appeals to older more cautious people.

~~~
Proziam
The US military also skews young but leans more towards the republican party.

[https://news.gallup.com/poll/118684/military-veterans-
ages-t...](https://news.gallup.com/poll/118684/military-veterans-ages-tend-
republican.aspx)

~~~
defertoreptar
Looks like there are 1.29 million in the US military (0.3% of US population),
with an average age of 34.5. (All figures from top search result of Google.)

59% of millennials lean or identify as Democrat compared to 35% Republican
[https://www.people-press.org/2018/03/01/1-generations-
party-...](https://www.people-press.org/2018/03/01/1-generations-party-
identification-midterm-voting-preferences-views-of-trump/)

~~~
Proziam
[0]There were 18.8 million veterans living in the US in 2017.

I don't know a single person in the military today that is over 30, and I live
right by Nellis(Not exactly hard data, of course). Most people go into the
military right after high school. I'd be surprised if the average age is
actually that high, especially considering you _can 't even join_ the military
over certain ages - though that depends on the branch and other factors. IIRC
you cannot join the marines if you are >30

I suspect you probably are specifically looking at officers, which is an
entirely different story.

[0][https://www.ncsl.org/blog/2017/11/10/veterans-by-the-
numbers...](https://www.ncsl.org/blog/2017/11/10/veterans-by-the-numbers.aspx)

------
bawolff
It would be interesting to redo this analysis now. 2006 was a long time ago.
In 2006 wikipedia was in a very rapid growth phase; lots of topics still
didn't have good coverage yet. In 2020, I can't remember a recent time where a
mainstream topic didn't have extensive coverage on en wikipedia. Do the masses
still write most of Wikipedia now that the low hanging fruit has been written?

~~~
lkbm
I recently amazed several non-tech friends by mentioning that I, personally,
have edited Wikipedia. It's not something a lot of people think of as
something they can even do. They're not fixing typos, let alone making
substantive edits or writing new articles.

I realize "do most people edit Wikipedia" is different from "are most
Wikipedia edits from casual users", but it was an eye-opening interaction for
me.

------
kick
None of the comments in this submission's thread so far seem to be related to
the article's content (the headline _was_ tantalizing, but the article itself
is really cool), so to try and counteract that, here's one that's directly
related:

As it says, Wikipedia is written by vast amounts of people. The myth that only
a small number of people contribute is just that: a myth. Checking edit
histories on anything but the most niche of articles would demonstrate this,
but you could also do the same analysis he did today and see if you can
replicate his result; it's been a few years now, things probably look slightly
different.

This has gotten more relevant over time even though the people perpetuating
the myth have changed, along with their motives for doing so. One of the more
popular and long-lasting myths!

~~~
saagarjha
I don't get why you'd want to perpetuate the myth of Wikipedia editors being
this small, powerful in-group of people anyways…

~~~
thrwaway69
Possibly to discredit it as having a political identity of its own or
something because small group of people can be more biased openly than a large
group?

~~~
saagarjha
Right, but this is _Jimmy Wales_ pushing this.

~~~
kick
Ego in his case, though modern forms of it are generally what the above
throwaway said.

------
milsorgen
The small amount of people who work on Wikipedia is it's greatest weakness.
Petty power plays and individual politics all bubble up from those few into a
resource so many millions use. It deserves more but how can anyone even start
with all the rules, bots and reverts. It's really demoralizing to try and put
in any effort there as you'll quickly encroach on some editors "territory".

~~~
executesorder66
> It deserves more but how can anyone even start with all the rules, bots and
> reverts.

That's why I prefer contributing to smaller wikis. They have much less
political issues. However, I'd say more than 90% of the edits I've made to the
English Wikipedia are still live.

It really depends where you choose to edit. Some articles just have asshole
editors who think they own the article. And not everyone has the energy to
fight back against that.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Is there a simple way to check if one's edits are live, so those that aren't
can be reviewed?

~~~
TuringTest
You can filter article history by user [1] to check whether their
contributions are still in the current version, or use Wikiblame creatively to
find who wrote some specific part of a live article [2].

[1]
[https://tools.wmflabs.org/sigma/usersearch.py](https://tools.wmflabs.org/sigma/usersearch.py)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiBlame](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiBlame)

[http://wikipedia.ramselehof.de/wikiblame.php](http://wikipedia.ramselehof.de/wikiblame.php)

------
WhompingWindows
I write/edit on Wikipedia most days. I've contributed to over 100 English
articles, on topics ranging from science to music to art. In my experience,
science/mathematics articles are VERY high level, often graduate-level
content, and they can use some softening of jargon and domain-specific
verbiage.

In the arts and music, many paintings, musical compositions, etc. don't have
much written, or it's poorly written, by a non-English writer, etc.

I tried to write an article about my college a cappella group and it got
rejected for not being famous enough. I thought that was a bit silly because
my group was just as famous as random tiny towns in the middle of
nowhere...shrug.

I'd encourage you all to join Wikipedia and make edits to anything you see
that's amiss!

------
giansegato
I miss Aaron so much

~~~
fergie
I miss him, and I miss people like him. At one point he embodied "web"
culture. Seems like a long time ago now.

~~~
commandlinefan
> At one point he embodied "web" culture

And is now the polar opposite of anything you might consider "web culture"
today.

------
greendestiny_re
For those who haven't read the linked article, it states that unregistered and
anonymous users create the vast majority of Wikipedia content; the registered
editors mostly move things around, delete commas and the like.

------
jokoon
Is there valid criticism on the accuracy of certain wikipedia articles?

It could also be interesting to have some study or writing on certain "edit
wars" on certain controversial subjects on wikipedia.

In general, the accuracy of wikipedia is pretty good, and generally wikipedia
is still very valuable.

I just wish wikimedia would do more do promote its high quality articles and
bundle them per fields to make quality textbooks on particular subjects. It
also seems articles are not really indexed per category, which makes it hard
to gather articles on a particular subject. Anyway it would involve a lot of
work.

~~~
zozbot234
Wikipedia does support article 'bundles' (they're known as Featured/Good
Topics) but open textbooks are covered by a separate effort, namely Wikibooks.

------
gwern
2006, using data primarily from Wikipedia articles written before then, was a
_very_ long time ago. Things have changed a lot:
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1407.0323.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1407.0323.pdf)

~~~
gatestone
Small special wikis are very different fron Wikipedia.

------
milkers
R.I.P Aaron.

------
hnewsshadowbans
Wikipedia is written by a much smaller (from what I've seen) and far more
cliquish group than in the old days. The novelty of editing an open
encyclopedia has worn off and a far more vast majority now just visit for the
questionable facts while only the people with too much time on their hands
still edit.

Coincidentally theres even more territoriality than before with people setting
up fiefdoms on prime articles and don't you dare flout their authority. Its
worst of course on the politically relevant topics. A current favored tactic
is to frontload the very beginnings of articles about organizations and people
they don't like with negative/inflammatory information. For example compare
the current versions of Breitbart News, Conservapedia, One America News
Network, and Stephen Miller with Daily Kos, Rational Wiki, and Huffington
Post.

The defense if they're called on it is a tortured appeal to 'authoritative
consensus' where an editor will go on a fishing expedition for negative quotes
from the left of center media bloc like CNN or HuffPo and anything they find
on there even blatant opinion is automatically sacrosanct regardless of
whether it actually is a consensus among the entire media.

So basically the political articles are even more trash than ever. Again you
can draw whatever connection you want to the type of people left editing this
mess. I feel sorry for anyone who actually reads and believes it.

Another annoying thing is that they still haven't fixed their scientific
articles which for anything beyond the basics tend to be overly jargonish and
technical yet uninformative at the same time.

