[WikiEN-l] What's going on? - Inquiry 2

[George Herbert]

On 9/13/07, WikipediaEditor Durin <wikidurin at gmail.com> wrote:
> The overarching problem here is that Wikipedia is collapsing. This list
> is just a symptom of that.
> * The Foundation has become ineffective and no longer cares about
>    its mission and goals. There's a number of symptoms resulting from
>    this state. One such symptom is the abysmal state of fundraising.
>    In hard numbers, the fundraising is better. In terms of per-capita
>    analysis, absolutely terrible. In short, the importance, scale and
>    complexity of Wikipedia has dramatically increased while fund
>    raising has only slightly increased. It's not keeping up, and the
>    more that it can't keep up the worse the problems will become.
>    Another symptom; massive turnover at the Foundation level. Though
>    the words we've been hearing from the departing people have all
>    been nice, any outside observer can see that an organization that
>    loses people by the droves has serious problems, regardless of
>    what face they attempt to put on it.
> * This list, which used to be an effective forum and regarded by Jimbo
>    as being THE place to do business is now ineffectual. Jimbo used to
>    be a regular here. Looking from the perspective of number of posts
>    per month, his participation here is down 43% this year from last year.
> * Issues of scale are not being addressed. Analogous; Usenet newsgroups
>    were useful when there was a small community per newsgroup. When it
>    became thousands per newsgroup, they became useless. See
>    "Dunbar's number" article.
> * Prior decisions on key points are being disregarded, despite lengthy
>    debates leading to those decisions. Precedent is meaningless now.
>    The community has lost its ability to move forward because all
>    decisions are immediately obsolete and carry no relevance for tightly
>    related circumstances.
> * General behavior on Wikipedia has led to a narrower definition of the
>    typical Wikipedian. Wikignomes, for example, are no longer valued.
> * While we have a crossed 2,000,000 articles, one automated study
>    showed that about 3% of our articles...just 60,000...have anything
>    above a few sentences and a handful of references. I.e., vast swaths
>    of Wikipedia are very far from being encyclopedic in content and
>    structure.
>
> I could go on for a *long* while about the ails of Wikipedia and
> all the various symptoms that show its imminent demise.
>
> Of course, all of what I've said above will be disputed, and I'll be
> shown by massive writings that I'm insane, criminally wrong, etc.
> The arguments will continue ad nauseum. I do not care for rebuttals
> at this point. I just hope people read this and take it to heart. Yes,
> the end of Wikipedia is nigh. Yes, I'm the quack standing on a corner
> with a sandwich board on me. Don't say I didn't warn you.


I still find it unfortunate that (from what I have seen) you have
reacted this negatively to the shift in consensus position on fair use
of non-free images.

I think your personal experience has come to illustrate a rather
negative long-term trend, though, the editor / admin burnout problem.

It would be easy for me to run down your itemized list and rebut a
bunch; instead, I'll just note that growing pains are real, Wikipedia
is not the same as it once was (at any level), and that some aspects
of this are unfortunate at the same time as others are exhilirating.

Regarding the burnout problem; I am beginning to think that the
fundamental problem is with the personality of the people who make
good editors and admins.  We are the types of people who, while
basically functional in normal society, also can get very focused and
obsessed on particular points.

I spent my late teens and early 20s figuring out how to unfocus and
acknowledge when I had worked myself into a mental corner on an issue
or problem.  A majority of my talented friends and good coworkers
haven't worked that out, yet, and I think that it's common on
Wikipedia.  Being able to identify it in yourself, and listen when
others are trying to point it out to you, is a prerequisite to dealing
with a situation by de-escalating, de-stressing, letting go and
letting someone else handle it for a while.  Those skills are the only
way for people like us to keep focused on a project or issue for long
periods of time.  If we don't have them, we tend eventually to get
locked in to some issue or problem we cannot personally actually
solve, and it destroys our ability to keep working on the project or
problem.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com