

Doomed: Why Wikipedia [may] fail - boredguy8
http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/02/doomed-why-wikipedia-will-fail.ars

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tptacek
The thesis of this article is built around an anecdote and two assertions.

The anecdote is that someone inserted a "Wilhelm" into finance minister Karl
Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr
von und zu Guttenberg's name. I think K. T. M. N. J. J. "Phil" F. J. S. F. von
und zu Guttenberg has a sense of humor about it by now. Similar (though less
amusing) anecdotes have been breathlessly reported for years now.

The assertions: first, that the greater part of all edits made by newcomers to
the site are reverted by a new breed of xenophobic editors. This is an
extraordinary claim. It's easy to disprove; go pull up Special:NewPages and
watch dozens of new users create superfluous new pages every hour, most of
which won't get reverted.

The second assertion, that attrition is taking a toll on WP administrators, is
even more laughable. Go pull up Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship. Status-
obsessed WP dorks spend weeks and months doing menial work (like patrolling
new pages) to build a case for adminship. If anything, WP's problem is that it
has too many of them.

~~~
zby
You are technically right, but if it takes to be a "tatus-obsessed WP dork" to
become a WP administrator - then it is a problem in itself, isn't it?

~~~
tptacek
On the one hand, yes, but on the other hand WP adminship means so little that
it's effectively flypaper for the drama club. Admins are essentially powerless
against solid contributions, and the cliques and internal strife function as a
fine system of checks and balances against overt abuse.

The worst you can say about it is that the admin culture repulses newcomers.
But the WP model doesn't really demand long-term commitment from contributors
in order to work. WP will improve steadily based on casual contributions. And
so adminship is really more of an inefficiency than a serious problem.

~~~
zby
I don't know if it is so harmless drama - for example see this:
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/01/wikipedia_and_naked_...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/01/wikipedia_and_naked_shorting/print.html)
it is certainly overdramatized on itself by the journalist - but even if there
is just a trace of truth - then it seems quite serious.

~~~
tptacek
Exactly how is any of this quite serious?

The only serious threat to the encyclopedia would be a force that would
prevent strong writing on relevant subjects from being incorporated into it,
or a force that persistantly corrupted that strong writing once it was
incorporated. This link is just drama.

What lazy or corrupt journalists choose to do with the content in the
encyclopedia is a problem outside the purview of the encyclopedia.

------
jacquesm
Wikipedia is the content stored in wikipedia and an editorial process. The
first is here to stay, with caveats to its quality, the second can - and
probably will - be fixed.

This article is grandly exaggerating the problems wikipedia is facing, I think
we should be surprised how well it worked and fix the few problems that are
there rather than to start predicting its demise. That content will certainly
outlast everybody who claims it will die soon.

~~~
mynameishere
All they need is to have experts occasionally read articles, and mark them as
"verified". Then, every page will display the latest edit, just as now, but
have a "last verified" button that will go to the historical page, previously
mentioned.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
That's a great idea, though I think "All they need..." trivializes the scope
of the implementation a bit :)

------
scott_s
_'"I think Wikipedia is great," he said when wrapping up his talk, and he
wants to see it succeed, but he has trouble seeing how that can happen as the
project continues to grow.'_

If someone had explained Wikipedia to you ten years ago, would you have
thought it had a chance? I'll be honest, I doubt I would have.

I think of the success of Wikipedia as similar to evolution. We're just not
good at grasping the scale at which either work, so our intuition betrays us.

~~~
jrockway
> would you have thought it had a chance?

Sure... we had open source projects in 1999, too. Ten years is not that long
ago.

~~~
scott_s
Wikipedia follows a different model than all open source software projects.
Even if there are a large number of contributors in an open source software
project, there are still a disproportionately small number of arbiters. Any
random person can submit a patch, but there's no guarantee it will get in. The
larger the project, the less likely it will.

Wikipedia is everyone can be a contributor, and everyone can be an arbiter.

~~~
jrockway
> Wikipedia is everyone can be a contributor, and everyone can be an arbiter.

Open source is no different. Click the "fork" button on Github, and the
project is now yours.

> Even if there are a large number of contributors in an open source software
> project, there are still a disproportionately small number of arbiters. Any
> random person can submit a patch, but there's no guarantee it will get in.

> The larger the project, the less likely it will.

This is not really true. Send a patch to any open source project, and it will
probably get in if it needs to be in. (Sure patches get rejected -- not
everything needs to be "core", the code might not work, it might not be
useful, etc., etc. But if you send a useful patch, it will get in regardless
of how big or how small the project is.)

Anyway, Wikipedia really has the same model, it just looks different. You can
edit anything, and the edit sticks immediately. But eventually an arbiter will
review your edit, and if it's bad, it will be reverted. (There are
"WikiProjects" dedicated to making sure every edit in their project gets
looked at.)

Bad edits rarely slip by completely undetected, and if they do, that's life.
Bad patches are committed to open source projects. Paper books have errata.

I am not sure why Wikipedia needs to be held to some higher standard than any
other form of media ever.

~~~
scott_s
Open source _is_ different because forking a project doesn't fork the users of
the original. There's a central repository for Wikipedia.

The model is fundamentally different. It's the ecosystem around that model
that makes it work.

------
njharman
I'm soooooooo fucking tired or hearing this bullshit argument. Wikipedia will
fail cause it's open. And the false dichotomy between quality and openness.

------
Danmatt
Wikipedia never claimed to be 100 per cent accurate and is rarely quoted as a
source by an authority wanting to prove a 'fact' - but that doesn't mean it
isn't brilliant or successful.

It is a useful website for many reasons, all of which come together to prove
its worthiness, and it's success.

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biohacker42
Many people (me!) don't trust Wikipedia, never have, and don't care who gets
screwed by erroneous Wikipedia information.

For all others, Wikipedia is convenient and it will have to go horribly wrong
before it's bad enough for most people to stop using it.

The real thread to Wikipedia is a _better_ free online encyclopedia.

~~~
bbgm
The real threat to Wikipedia is over reaction from the powers that be. It's
very successful, quite useful, and hopefully isn't going anywhere. Is it
perfect, no, but I haven't seen anything at this scale and ambition being 100%
perfect.

------
Tangurena
I think the real underlying presumption by the article's author is that he
wants _someone_ to be responsible. Similar wikis where some editor is
ultimately responsible for approving/disapproving content have many orders of
magnitude less pages, less content, and less edits.

