
A personal appeal from a former Wikipedia editor - tokenadult
http://kevinforsyth.net/weblog/2012/01/please-read-a-personal-appeal-from-a-former-wikipedia-editor/
======
vacri
Tired of the constant wikipedia naysayers. Yes, it has problems, but it's
still a resounding success. People seem to ignore the idea that something can
fail in some area but still be strong overall.

'edits are declining' does not mean that the wiki is declining. The low-
hanging fruit has been largely been done. I imagine also that vandalism
control is improved, leading to less vandal edits and less corrective edits. I
think the 'edits are declining' comment is far more complex than simply
'editors are fed up and leaving in droves'.

People have been naysaying Wikipedia since the day it started, yet it's still
in the top 5 websites by visits.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome>

------
neilk
While he is wrong that Wikipedia is a failure, I wouldn't dismiss this guy's
rant out of hand. The editor trends he cites are real. But more importantly,
experiences like his are becoming more and more common.

If you think of the product that Wikipedia delivers as being editor
satisfaction, it's currently succeeding more in spite of itself than because
of its virtues. Part of the impetus behind the GUI editor project is to
indirectly broaden the editor base.

I think a more direct solution may be a kind of karma system, perhaps modelled
on Slashdot "meta moderation". Most Wikipedians, even the ones that really
piss other people off, are usually acting in good faith. If you investigate
these disputes, invariably the complainer actually did do it a little bit
wrong, or at least there is a legitimate difference of opinion. But the
problem is, Wikipedians start a conversation with you by reverting everything
you just did. At best you are told to go read a few hundred pages of policies
to understand why you were wrong. It would be nice if we had some system
whereby the greater community could gently nudge these revert-happy editors,
and remind them there are more constructive ways to engage. Just as new Hacker
News contributors get downvoted to oblivion when they post memes or GIFs.

I know for a fact that some people at the WMF are interested in a karma
system. It's not easy for 5 or 6 people to stay on top of what 10-100,000
people are doing. One concern is that the WMF may be paying too much attention
to soul-sucking trolls who rant on Foundation-L, and not enough to awesome
people who are quietly doing great work. I don't work at the WMF any more, but
maybe some hack day I'll do this....

~~~
Confusion
It isn't a failure at this moment, but as he rightly points out, it will
gradually start failing in the years to come, unless something changes.

I like producing overviews of subjects of explanations, but I get the most
satisfaction out of knowing it's worthwhile to others. If my contribution can
be distorted and vandalized at will, without me possibly being able to revert
all the changes, I'm just not interested in investing the time.

I gladly engage in debate about facts and more subjective things like writing
and educational styles, but only with reasonable people. If I'm editing the
article on some specific part of Quantum Mechanics and have to deal with
pseudoscience believers that keep putting in nonsense, I'm not interested
either. They can of course have their own page.

I doubt I'm the only one with these thoughts. Just like Athens can't currently
stand against the vandals, neither can Wikipedia.

~~~
kamjam
While I agree about the vandalism, I really don't like this "don't bother"
attitude. If it's broke, then fix it.

~~~
Confusion
The author and many other have proposed various ways to fix it. So far none
have been pursued.

~~~
kamjam
"A camel is a horse designed by committee"

Well that's the problem with committees, unless you are all reading off the
same sheet, the music ain't going to sound so sweet.

Regardless, the answer is not "don't bother", the answer is still to sort out
the fundamental root cause of the issue. It is the same truth for everything
else in life.

------
notatoad
wow. it's a pretty bold statement to call the largest and most accessible
repository of knowledge ever collected to be a "failure". the author of this
article needs to get his ego in check, just because your reports of vandalism
weren't dealt with in the way you wanted doesn't mean you need to throw a
hissy fit.

the worst thing about wikipedia is the mess of egos and politics that happens
behind the scenes. i'd love to see some stats about the quality of edits that
these so-called editors with their tens of thousands of positive edits make,
versus what the average user edits in. i'm willing to bet that the majority of
the actual content and information comes from the one-time contributors.

~~~
flomo
Here's the problem imo: most of Wikipedia's content is currently unmaintained
(as far as I can tell).

If there's any political or nationalistic controversy to the content, there's
50 wikilawyers obsessively monitoring it. But if the article is 'boring',
anyone can go in there and write whatever they want and (unless a bot thinks
it's vandalism), nobody will care.

This is natural - it's fun to write an article and collaborate on edits. Then
you move on, because no normal person wants to be the content janitor. And
what happens to the article 5 years later? How about 10 or 20 years? I think
if Wikipedia doesn't get a handle on this, on the structural level, the site
is going to be mostly random agrammatical garbage sooner-or-later.

Wikipedia is already at the point where it seems like every article has
content warning banner on top of it. Most of them have been there for years,
and nobody cares.

~~~
redthrowaway
>most of Wikipedia's content is currently unmaintained

"Most" by what measure? By bits? By number of articles? Possibly. By pageviews
or importance, no way.

I cannot remember googling something, checking out its wikipedia entry, and
finding it unhelpful. It's been at least 5 years since that has happened.

Sure, there's a bunch of low-quality articles with no maintainers, but to
claim that that makes wikipedia bad is to claim github's bad for the same
reason.

~~~
flomo
I'm certainly not saying the articles are unhelpful, I'm noticing most of them
are slowly getting worse.

Next time you try your google experiment, read the article closely. I can
almost guarantee you'll find dubious claims inserted in odd places, atrocious
writing, and all sorts of wikiwarts indicating untrustworthy content. Now
check back in six months. Chances are the article will not have improved, it
will include more of the above. In the long-term that doesn't bode well for
the content.

------
femto
I notice that the peak in activity is about the same time as the advent of the
Notability guideline [1]. I think the two are related, but I only have one
data point to back my opinion.

For me, the zealous application of notability was when Wikipedia changed from
being an attempt to document everything to an attempt to replicate what
already existed in paper, and I lost the fire in the belly.

It's got to be one of the most contentious issues in the project, with half
considering it the saviour of Wikipedia and the other half considering it the
death.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Notabili...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Notability&dir=prev&action=history)

------
Uchikoma
The reason why editors stagnate is more like this:

Wikipedia will die because noone real can contribute. Write a new article and
it will be shot down. Write an article about important programming languages
and it will be killed with some strange acronym.

Exception: a several thousand word article about what Homer did eat in one 8
year old Simpson episode will stay.

"Programming languages are being deleted from Wikipedia "
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2215168>

His “on the list” idea is totally Wikipedia directorate style and a.) will be
implemented b.) will accelerate stagnation

Wikipedia will stay relevant - and I still use it - for some trivia I want to
know, it's usually sufficient complete there. But it creates a mirror universe
that reflects the thoughts of all editors, not of the online community.

~~~
ZenPsycho
Yep. Wikipedia rejects primary sources as a matter of policy. No original
research means that the only "legitimate" content can be secondary or
tertiary. Mistakes can't be corrected by people in a position to know the
truth- whatever information must be published somewhere first. This is
completely backward from how quality content must normally be created.

~~~
baddox
> _This is completely backward from how quality content must normally be
> created._

It's precisely how content for encyclopedias are generally created.
Encyclopedias are compilations and summaries of information about a variety of
topics, _not_ compilations of original research by experts from a variety of
fields.

~~~
Uchikoma
I didn't know that Wikipedia aims to be the web clone of Britannica. I thought
it aspired for more.

Yahoo tried to replicate business directories on and for the web, Google did
not.

~~~
baddox
You're being a bit unfair. Wikipedia does have a goal, and ignoring other
valid goals is not really a valid criticism. Wikipedia doesn't strive, for
example, to end poverty or cure cancer. Their goal is to build the best and
most freely available encyclopedia. You just seem to have an issue with what
an encyclopedia inherently is, so I suppose Wikipedia becoming the best
instance of an encyclopedia doesn't appeal to you.

------
bane
I'm continuously mystified as to why people who are heavily involved with WP
seem mystified as to why the trends in contributions are going into the
toilet.

It's really very simple:

1) It's the highly problematic notability guideline abuse 2) It's the
deletionists who think it's their job to lobotomize WP and delete knowledge
out of the public sphere 3) It's the super editors who enable the deletionists
and there's no reasonable mechanism to police either them or the deletionists.

I agree that there's a lack of oversight. The self-licking ice cream cone of
the WP community built bureaucracy is finally starting to come apart because
there's no reasonable way to participate in the bureaucracy unless you are an
established part of it.

In the end, WP will be an interesting curiosity, populated by people drunk on
the power their carved out fiefdom in the tangled mess of WP processes gives
them, typing furiously about how great their contribution was to the great
edifice of WP while their deletionist minions slowly burn the castly down
around them until all that's left is a slightly dog eared copy of the
Encyclopedia Britannica.

 _edit_ reading through the rest of the comments, this idea is repeated over
and over and over again. It's sad really, there are vast communities of smart
people actually telling WP what the problem is, and every once in a while a
clueless editor pops his head out of the vault and asks "why are edits going
down?" when it appears the rest of the planet outside of WP...the potential
editor pool...already know the answer, but WP won't accept it.

~~~
DanBC
It's also the huge number of juvenile editors using automatic revert tools (eg
Twinkle) who think making many reverts and slapping warning banners on user
pages is a useful way to clean Wikipedia.

You get the feeling they're on some adolescent power trip.

The whole "VANDAL PATROL" badge thing reeks.

See also the antipathy towards IP editors, who provide many useful edits and
who could be encouraged to return but who are often treated like dirt.

See also the bizarre over-concern about usernames. WP has software limits on
user-names, and extensive filters. Usernames need only gentle filtering, yet
there have been more than one notice board for user name action.

Most of Wikipedia is great, and it's possible to ignore a lot of the meta-
stench, but sometimes quiet productive editors get caught up in drama-
mongering idiocy.

~~~
conradfr
I used to clean up and correct small mistakes or vandalism, I don't have an
account.

My corrections were usually reverted almost instantaneously and I had to
insist to push them, even when just cleaning dirty words by bored teenagers.
Does someone even read edits before reverting them ?

Nowadays, I just correct nothing and don't bother.

~~~
bane
"Does someone even read edits before reverting them ?"

I don't think they do. I'm convinced that they won't even read them through
the entire appeals process. In the world of WP, the reversion holds more
weight than the actual content that was reverted.

------
calydon
Pure sour grapes. Wikipedia does not need more elitism and douchebaggery than
it already has. The experiment is a success because of its pluralistic
foundation, but 'top editors' (academics) keep forgetting this and attempting
to turn Wikipedia into a 'real' encyclopedia. It isn't nor will it ever be.
It's a repository of facts, opinions, lies, and yes, some vandalism. In other
words, a snapshot of the state of the internet, maybe even more than that.

The main problems with Wikipedia from my outsider perspective: 1\. Lack of a
viable long-term business model. Begware will never flourish. 2\. Lack of an
efficient impartial mechanized/algorithmic resolution system. 3\. Lack of
expert business leadership - see #1.

------
noibl
As personal appeals go, I'm just not sure. On the one hand it's almost
impossible to sympathise with the guy's crazy predictions or hurt feelings. It
definitely needs a big watery-eyed photo of him across the top or something.
On the other hand, "don't bother" is a very powerful call-to-action -- so
powerful that I nearly didn't bother reading the rest of the post.

------
twelvechairs
He seems to be sure the number of active contributors is going down due to
poor oversight and 'troublemakers'. In my experience this is wrong - far more
important is that people can't be bothered to get their head around wikipedias
obtuse structure and ever-more-complex editing methodology, and when they do,
their contributions can be overzealously edited out by the wikipedia police...

------
rmccue
Nice article, but it'd be nice to see what the author's proposed fix to this
would be. Stopping multiple accounts from the same person is a nice idea in
theory, but breaks when you realise it's technically impossible (IP checks are
easy to work around, and ignore the fact that many people can share IP
addresses).

~~~
jQueryIsAwesome
My vote would be for a strong reputation system (i.e. your edit must be
approved if you are not a trusted editor); it may hurt one-time contributors
but i think it would be for the best in the long run.

~~~
tikhonj
If they could set the system up to incentivize _quality_ rather than
_quantity_ , gamifying it could lead to more good edits as well.

I'm not sure it's plausible for Wikipedia, but it seems to work for
StackOverflow. That said, StackOverflow does not have any seriously
controversial material on it.

------
andreasklinger
If content contribution is the problem…

Why is updating and extending wikipedia pages not part of normal school or
university work. E.g. teams of two students get topic and have to create a
value contribution to wikipedia. Not only recite current knowledge but go
beyond that and extend the "common denominator" of knowledge called wikipedia.
It would teach about research, team work and to some extend about editorial
quality and processes.

I proposed it once in college. The teacher suggested to bring it to an
multimedia course. Maybe the world would be more open today.

~~~
ErrantX
It is; there are various outreach efforts to bring Wikipedia editing to the
classroom (and other similar arenas). The GLAM and Wikipedian in Residence
schemes work with various cultural institutions and ones such as Campus
Ambassador are active on college/uni campuses.

Most only just getting into their stride, but I think the world is more open
like you hope :)

------
lucb1e
It seems to me his appeal is mostly about his personal problems with the
organisation. He felt unsafe, felt like his privacy was void, and that nobody
listened to him. Also he calls it a failure because of a few core problems
(which I, as outsider, don't see going wrong as badly as he says it is), but
he doesn't acknowledge what Wikipedia has archieved and what it is to many
people.

I personally think it's a great resource to learn the basics about mostly any
subject. I never donated though and I'm not sure I ever will, but I don't see
how a non-profit organisation needs millions to run. Sure they need money for
hosting, but not millions. And if they do, they should look for a model to get
some money. I'd rather see ads than Jimmy Wales' face printed hugely on top of
all articles for months.

------
jbarham
Here's a timely and somewhat depressing article on one expert's futile
attempts to improve a Wikipedia article: [http://chronicle.com/article/The-
Undue-Weight-of-Truth-on/13...](http://chronicle.com/article/The-Undue-Weight-
of-Truth-on/130704/)

------
hobin
I don't think Wikipedia is going down the toilet, nor do I think it was a
failure. Personally, I don't think the graphs are surprising: first Wikipedia
becomes a big hit, and loads of people sign up. Then, as time passes, some
people become unactive. In the end, I think we'll still have a pretty large
baseline editing Wikipedia.

The biggest problem I see with Wikipedia is that it's only reliable as long as
you're looking up non-controversial issues. Thus, it's fine when you're
looking for definitions and trivia, but when it comes to the interesting stuff
- pretty much all of which is controversial, because that's where the good
bits of science happen - Wikipedia is horrible. In these cases, it is much
better to check out (for example) Google Scholar and search for scientific
articles directly.

Ah, if only there were an encyclopedia that would directly list all the
appropriate references for a given subject. I'd pay good money for that.

------
e_proxus
Would it be possible to create a bayesian spam filter-like system where new
users edits are analyzed and matched to old accounts? That way, admins could
get a heads up for a new user that is likely to be a pseudonym of an old user.
Would it be technically feasable?

Maybe there are social consequences to this as well? What about false
postives?

------
chalst
While I agree with the article that WP is in trouble, I disagree entirely as
to what the problem is. WP is not too bad at the low-level policing part, to
do with stopping vandalism, enforcing its biography of living persons policy,
&c.

It has mostly failed at the higher-level policing mission, of ensuring that
those editors who are trying to write articles that are soundly sourced and
informative are able to get on with this task without being harassed by people
pushing agendas. The more value a resource Wikipedia becomes, the more
valuable it is to such agenda pushers: cranks, lobbyists, corporate PR, &c,
who often can devote considerable energy to this task.

For example, the editor FT2, who earned money through his NLP practice, pushed
pseudoscientific doctrines on many Wikipedia pages. he was expert at playing
Wikipedia politics, and rose to become a member of Arbcom, and only came
unstuck when he abused this position to punish editor Orangemarlin, an editor
who campaigned against pseudoscience and who was a nuisance to FT2.

The way WP now works is that the enforcement of the low-level policing is done
at the expense of the higher-level issue of neutrality. By playing the
politics well, as FT2 did, agenda pushers can use the WP rules to waste the
time and wear down the patience of good content editors. I left WP following
the fiasco of the Arbcom ruling against Peter Damian.

Ed Buckner wrote an excellent summary of the problem with agenda pushers in
_Skeptica Adsversaria_ (apologies: the formatting in this copy is awful 400px
left and right margin hard coded into every paragraph: OK if you have a very
wide screen or can overide the margin somehow):
[http://www.btinternet.com/~musicweaver/wikipedia-by-ed-
buckn...](http://www.btinternet.com/~musicweaver/wikipedia-by-ed-buckner-
ASKE.htm)

------
araneae
>My personal well-being (as well as my privacy and, I truly believe, my
safety) are not worth the risk and grief.

Jesus. Melodramatic much?

I've been a low level Wikipedia editor for many years. I have edited and
written a smattering of articles, and it has never been a waste of time, and
certainly not dangerous to my SAFETY.

I don't know if anyone has gotten any value from my articles, but I have. I
have written articles to help study for exams back in college, I've written
articles to help my keep track of the TV schedule of a favorite but unpopular
TV show, and I've written articles about favorite but unpopular books. I've
also written and edited articles that I use as references for my work.

I never got involved in the "politics" of Wikipedia; I just care about making
the content better for personal use. Maybe this is where this guy went wrong.
Simply editing articles is not a waste of time, even if you're the only one
that reads them. At the very least it helps you.

~~~
pm90
>I never got involved in the "politics" of Wikipedia; I just care about making
the content better for personal use. Maybe this is where this guy went wrong.
Simply editing articles is not a waste of time, even if you're the only one
that reads them. At the very least it helps you.

I'm also a low-level wikipedia editor; you have been extremely lucky to have
not had this trouble, my friend. In 98% cases, it has been great; but when
there is a disagreement, the debate can quickly get out of control if the
sides aren't willing to compromise. For instance, try making an edit on the
page for the Monty Hall Problem
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem>.

------
edanm
"Statistics already show a steady decline in editor activity on Wikipedia, and
analysts have myriad theories as to causes. But I think it all comes down to a
handful of interconnected problems:"

Isn't there a more obvious reason? Most subjects are already covered, and
already written well, leaving only subjects which less people care about.

~~~
makronized
I definitely agree with you. There are some pages written better than more
"real" encyclopedias would do. Ok, other pages could be made better, but the
most part of "arguments" have been already treated.

------
noarchy
That "naive openness" of Wikipedia that the author describes is a huge part of
its success. If a top-down form of editing is sought, there are encyclopedias
for that. Wikipedia already has its groups of elites (deletionists come to
mind), and we've had plenty of articles posted to HN about them. But I can't
see any good reason to call Wikipedia a _failure_ , as the author attempts to
do. If Wikipedia were an obscure site, with few articles of interest, then one
could entertain the thought of failure.

------
brador
Same thing on Stack right now. Mods getting too heavy handed and idiotic rules
limiting questions.

Maybe it's the eventual end game of all socially curated sites with "open to
all" editing?

------
rkwz
Nice rant, but what's the alternative?

~~~
ZenPsycho
citizendium? <http://en.citizendium.org/>

~~~
duskwuff
Citizendium is pretty clearly a failed project at this point. The founding
principles of the site (Real Name editors only, strong bias toward
credentialed "expert" editors) are pretty much an amplification of the exact
features that Kevin Forsyth is complaining that Wikipedia is displaying!

------
archer174
I just don't understand how it costs 20million a year to run a community
driven website.

~~~
xyzzyz
Wikimedia Foundation releases financial reports, you can just go and check
them out.

------
riffraff
where can we get statistics for the last two years of editing?

Every time I see graphs showing the decline of editor contributions they
always seem to stop in 2010 (I expect the trend to continue, I'm just
curious).

~~~
ErrantX
<http://stats.wikimedia.org>

Specifically: <http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm>

The decline of existing editors has stabilised a bit - the trend downward is
now fairly slow (and there are a few upswings). New editor pick up has
recently slumped a bit more dramatically.

------
david_xia
Anyone have the text? There's some database error right now.

~~~
Mithrandir
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fkevinforsyth.net%2Fweblog%2F2012%2F01%2Fplease-
read-a-personal-appeal-from-a-former-wikipedia-editor%2F)

------
atopuzov
What about all those deletions of "not notable enough" articles?, which in
fact were more notable then all the other crap that's on wikipedia.

------
zotz
This is why wikipedia is a failure:

"....Another editor cheerfully tutored me in what this means: "Wikipedia is
not 'truth,' Wikipedia is 'verifiability' of reliable sources. Hence, if most
secondary sources which are taken as reliable happen to repeat a flawed
account or description of something, Wikipedia will echo that."
[http://chronicle.com/article/The-Undue-Weight-of-Truth-
on/13...](http://chronicle.com/article/The-Undue-Weight-of-Truth-on/130704/)

~~~
extension
It makes sense to me. Going with the majority opinion is the only way to have
stable content. Trying to resolve controversy on Wikipedia is what would
actually destroy it. Democracy can cause horrible injustice, but we've learned
from history that it's the only irrefutable way to decide things, unless the
evidence is even simpler than counting ballots.

It doesn't mean Wikipedia is a failure, it just means Wikipedia is not the
oracle of truth that some people expect it to be. It's a repository of
majority views, which is usually pretty valuable, even if it's sometimes
wrong. We have other venues for challenging popular fallacies.

~~~
zotz
Going with the majority opinion, even when wrong, is an excellent way to
maintain errors in thinking and in fact.

Wikipedia is an ok MMORPG but a failure as a reliable repository of useful
knowledge.

------
boubountu
You better have stronger reasons than those presented in the article to doom
Wikipedia to be a "failure"

The problems stated by the author are valid however they are solvable.
Definitely, Wikipedia must have a scoring system to allow editors with high
points to have more credibility than those with lower points, also a system to
eliminate the trouble makers.

