----- Original Message -----
From: "Nathan" <nawrich(a)gmail.com>
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Friday, September 17, 2010 7:17 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?
As for progress since 2005 - unless I'm mistaken,
all of your own work
dates to after 2005. Would you not describe your own work as improving
the encyclopedia from its 2005 state?
Not at all. I began editing in 2003. William of Sherwood, which I wrote
with Sara Uckelmann (a medieval specialist who no longer contributes
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=William_of_Sherwood&oldid=331…
I rewrote the article Existence around then
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Existence&oldid=23936506 . You can
see it now
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence with all those tags on
that I didn't place there. The article is a mess, hacked around by a hundred
different people. Zermelo set theory is another example
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Zermelo_set_theory&diff=32606…
Note the edit by Randall Holmes -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Randall_Holmes
This was the period when a lot of serious and high-powered users were on the
project and doing great stuff. Wikipedia started becoming really popular
around then and the period 2005-7 saw some big changes. Vandalism started
to rise a lot, and with it was the growth of the 'policeman' class of admin.
This group generally didn't get on with the content creators and this period
was mostly a war between the two groups. The content creators lost because
they had no political power.
A serious study would be needed to confirm my observations, of course.
Kind regards,
Peter