From: Geoff Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com
is there a point in Wikipedia's size where it's current growth will taper off or stop? I don't mean to repeat the old chestnut that knowledge is somehow finite: put in different words, is there a certain point where contributors will find it far easier to work on existing articles than to contribute new ones?
Oddly enough, I wonder about the exact opposite. I fear that people enjoy creating new articles far more than they enjoy editing existing articles, and that people look desperately for topics that do not exist yet so that they can be the first to create them. The Wikipedian equivalent of the Slashdot FIRST POST!!!!
This means that over time a greater proportion of newly created articles will reflect an artificial attempt to find a topic that hasn't been "taken," and a smaller proportion will be reflect a genuine attempt to serve potential readers.
I do not think its growth will stop. The problem is, will the quality of the articles hold up? There's no obvious reason why it shouldn't, and no obvious reason why it should.
One reason why it _might_ not hold up is that when Wikipedia was less famous, contributing to it required a greater interest in the project and a greater commitment to the project's ideals. As it becomes more and more familiar, it is possible that we will see an increasing proportion of new "articles" that are really paragraph-long newbie tests.
To tell the truth, I think many of the "articles" that land on AfD are best not regarded as articles at all, but as elaborate newbie tests OR as badly executed article requests. I'm thinking of substubs that convey no information at all except the fact that someone either a) genuinely wanted an article on that topic, or b) simply wanted to experience the pleasure of creating an article.
I've been casting "votes" recently in AfD that say "delete, and enter a request for the article." So far, nobody but me seems to think this is a good idea.
-- Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith@verizon.net "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print! Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
On 9/21/05, Daniel P. B. Smith dpbsmith@verizon.net wrote:
Oddly enough, I wonder about the exact opposite. I fear that people enjoy creating new articles far more than they enjoy editing existing articles, and that people look desperately for topics that do not exist yet so that they can be the first to create them. The Wikipedian equivalent of the Slashdot FIRST POST!!!!
I don't think you have to look too desperately to start a new article - as long as humans exist and make news, there will be plenty of things to add. The next killer hurricane, the next teenage gal missing in the Caribbean, the next popular TV show, the next government official arrested for corruption, et al.
I do not think its growth will stop. The problem is, will the quality of the articles hold up? There's no obvious reason why it shouldn't, and no obvious reason why it should.
Obviously the "1.0" or rating project is an attempt to institutionalize the maintenance of high quality articles. But there may be some evolutionary reasons why quality has held up.
More and more WP articles have taxoboxes, infoboxes, templates, categories, and the like, so that when someone clicks on "Edit this page" it is more likely now than ever before, that they'll be presented with some pretty intimidating code. Just check out [[Cat]] for an example. There seems to be a higher threshold for older articles once these constructs have been placed in the code.
I used to tell folks writing for wiki was easy, and the inclusiveness of it has to do with not being like a database or data entry system. That has changed with templating now being extensively used around the Wikimedia projects.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. As articles have evolved through Wikipedia's lifetime, moving them to more complex stages of coding has likely kept in check some of the spurious newbie editing of these articles one would expect with WP's explosive growth. At the same time, it still remains easy to start an article, and to do basic essential markup.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
Andrew Lih wrote:
On 9/21/05, Daniel P. B. Smith dpbsmith@verizon.net wrote:
Oddly enough, I wonder about the exact opposite. I fear that people enjoy creating new articles far more than they enjoy editing existing articles, and that people look desperately for topics that do not exist yet so that they can be the first to create them. The Wikipedian equivalent of the Slashdot FIRST POST!!!!
I don't think you have to look too desperately to start a new article
- as long as humans exist and make news, there will be plenty of
things to add. The next killer hurricane, the next teenage gal missing in the Caribbean, the next popular TV show, the next government official arrested for corruption, et al.
I do not think its growth will stop. The problem is, will the quality of the articles hold up? There's no obvious reason why it shouldn't, and no obvious reason why it should.
Obviously the "1.0" or rating project is an attempt to institutionalize the maintenance of high quality articles. But there may be some evolutionary reasons why quality has held up.
More and more WP articles have taxoboxes, infoboxes, templates, categories, and the like, so that when someone clicks on "Edit this page" it is more likely now than ever before, that they'll be presented with some pretty intimidating code. Just check out [[Cat]] for an example. There seems to be a higher threshold for older articles once these constructs have been placed in the code.
I used to tell folks writing for wiki was easy, and the inclusiveness of it has to do with not being like a database or data entry system. That has changed with templating now being extensively used around the Wikimedia projects.
Fr: is the worst :)
I don't think you have to look too desperately to start a new article
- as long as humans exist and make news, there will be plenty of
things to add. The next killer hurricane, the next teenage gal missing in the Caribbean, the next popular TV show, the next government official arrested for corruption, et al.
There'll always be valid topics to write about, but like Daniel I'm worried about the amount of granular entries we're receiving. "Guy making a canoe out of a log" (or whatever it was), a minor character from Wayne's World 2 is on AFD. While he may be real and verifiable, people need to take into account Wikipedia structure more. Important and big stuff can get a seperate article and granular stuff should only get an article if something encyclopedic can actually be said about it. Otherwise merge per WP:FICT or whatever equivalent we've got.
An article on a Wayne's World character shouldn't even see AfD because it can be redirected in seconds.
But that isn't the reason why AfD doesn't scale.
Even if we only listed articles that are deletable under the deletion policy, there would be no way that AfD could keep up and scrutinize even a significant proportion of them.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
An article on a Wayne's World character shouldn't even see AfD because it can be redirected in seconds.
But that isn't the reason why AfD doesn't scale.
Even if we only listed articles that are deletable under the deletion policy, there would be no way that AfD could keep up and scrutinize even a significant proportion of them.
True as that might be, you still need to be able to separate those articles that can be diverted like the Wayne's World character, and convince the contributor that all the information that he added already exists somewhere else.
Ec
On 9/21/05, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
More and more WP articles have taxoboxes, infoboxes, templates, categories, and the like, so that when someone clicks on "Edit this page" it is more likely now than ever before, that they'll be presented with some pretty intimidating code. Just check out [[Cat]] for an example. There seems to be a higher threshold for older articles once these constructs have been placed in the code.
I used to tell folks writing for wiki was easy, and the inclusiveness of it has to do with not being like a database or data entry system. That has changed with templating now being extensively used around the Wikimedia projects.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
Well, templating is preferable than having the code contained within the template (usually a complex table) within the main article. Also, templates do make things much easier to maintain for a series of similar or linked articles.
Is there a sensible explanation anywhere of how templates work, orientated towards newbies/less experienced editors?
Some template proliferation is possibly overboard, but in any case, those are usually the templates without variables (articles series, etc.) which shouldn't confuse new editors too much, and are often at the bottom of articles.
Adding the links to the template pages on the edit page was a good idea, but perhaps they shouldn't just be plonked there, should have a more useful subheading/explanation above them, or some more help to the editor.
Zoney -- ~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...