On 01/06/2014 10:53, Ting Chen wrote:
>Nowaday Wikipedia articles (across all major
languages) are highly
biased in style and in content to academic thesis.
There is good reason for this: 'anyone can edit'. In an encyclopedia
produced using the 'one best way' approach, there is sparse use of
references and citations. Take this article on the syllogism
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/medieval-syllogism written by Henrik
Lagerlund. I don't spot any references, and generally SEP is sparing in
their use. Henrik doesn't need to supply references, because he is an
expert in his field, and because there is a traditional peer review
process supporting SEP.
In Wikipedia by contrast, 'anyone can edit', and there is no equivalent
peer review process, and so the only control is insistence on citations.
This is part of what makes it difficult for newcomers. I remember well
the period 2006-7. The growth of Wikipedia was tremendous. Before that,
it was possible to manage the occasional 'idiosyncratic' contributors.
Towards the beginning of 2007 it became impossible. Then two things
happened. (i) It became much easier to get the 'idiosyncratic
contributors' blocked. Before that, you had to make a very strong case
to a non-involved admin. After that, it progressively became more like
shoot on sight. (ii) The policies on citation became increasingly
established and enforced. This made it much easier to gain control of an
article. 'Idiosyncratic' contributors found it difficult to find
reliable sources for whatever version of flat earth theory they were
promoting, and got discouraged. There was also (iii) an easy way to
control the quality of an article was to impose a sort of change freeze
on any contribution, good or bad. I still maintain contact with the few
editors left on the Philosophy and NLP articles, and they tell me this
is how they achieve it.
Of course, all this will have the effect of deterring contributors. But
the underlying reason is the trade-off between quality and
participation. If you have a large user base under the 'anyone can
edit' policy, then you are going to have quality control problems. If
you address the quality problem by any of the three methods above, then
you will have to limit participation in some way. No brainer.
I would advise anyone with an interest in this to read Aaron Halfaker's
seminal paper on this. The links are in his post here
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-May/072267.html .