Recently the concept of having stable versions of Wikipedia's pages has been gaining foothold rapidly. Most supporters of this idea portray this as a rather small change, which would help make Wikipedia more reliable and help it be taken more seriously in academic circles. It is understandable that this idea is tempting, since vandalism and decay of article has gotten a lot of focus recently, but I do not think that this is the easy, safe change many seem to think it is.
Wikipedia was started as an alternative to the stagnating Nupedia, which had the same goal as Wikipedia - to make a free encyclopedia - but tried to do this through the traditional means of experts and peer review. Nupedia failed because there were few editors, no fresh supply of new editors, and difficult to make changes. Wikipedia's wiki model changed that by making every reader an editor and making it easy for them to edit, and after that followed an exponential increase in the number of articles, which has lasted to this day. One explanation for this could be as follows: For any encyclopedia it is reasonable to assume that the number or readers is proportional to the number and quality of articles. By making every reader an editor, Wikipedia added a proportionality between the number of readers and the article creation rate, that is: The rate of article creation became proportional to the number of articles, a recipie for exponential runaway growth.
By marking a version of an article as stable, and presenting that version to normal visitors, we are breaking down the coupling between the number of readers and the number of editors. The whole point of a wiki, and the key behind Wikipedia's incredible growth, is that every reader is an editor, and in light of that it isn't a good idea to create seperate views of an article for readers and editors. Any reader reading the stable version instead of the current version will be one less potential editor to improve the current version. One could hope that people who find faults in the stable version would go to the draft version to implement improvements there, but simply saying that a version is stable will discourage edits, and people who still want to make edits will be further discouraged by those edits not being seen by the main public, but hidden away in some draft version of the article. Thus, this will discourage positive edits for the same reason it will discourage vandalism: It becomes slightly harder to edit, and more importantly, the results aren't immediatly visible on the main version of the article (the one most people read).
Regarding vandalism and bad pages, the wiki answer to these is that we have lots of people to fix those problems for the same reason the poblems are there. There will be more vandalism the bigger Wikipedia grows, but so will the number of people who can spot and fix that vandalism, for the same reason. This is inherently scalable, so there should be no need for any change the way we deal with this just because the wiki has reached a given size. Wikipedia is by no means finished. There are still millions of articles waiting to be created, fleshed out and polished, and many already existing articles that need to be improved. We should therefore continue to make our readers edit our articles. Not because the wiki process is sacred in itself, but because it has proven to be the fastest way to create an encyclopedia.
PS: The quality isn't a big problem according to some sources, such as http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html
PPS: I apologize for breaking the thread, but I wasn't on the list when it started, so I couldn't find a way to tie this message to the thread.
On 12/27/05, Amaurea sigurdkn@gmail.com wrote:
Recently the concept of having stable versions of Wikipedia's pages has been gaining foothold rapidly. Most supporters of this idea portray this as a rather small change, which would help make Wikipedia more reliable and help it be taken more seriously in academic circles. It is understandable that this idea is tempting, since vandalism and decay of article has gotten a lot of focus recently, but I do not think that this is the easy, safe change many seem to think it is.
The rest of Amaurea's post is dead on.
But this is pretty exciting; the successful fork of wikipedia is only a few years away... wikinfo obviously isn't it, but their import utility is the right start. need to build that functionality for any cc-licensed work; need gfdl and cc to merge, etc.
wikipedia is still by and large a healthy community; there needs to be more ossification, paranoia, hypocrisy and institutionalization before the fork will become necessary.
Amaurea wrote: <snip Nupedia comparison>
By marking a version of an article as stable, and presenting that version to normal visitors, we are breaking down the coupling between the number of readers and the number of editors.
No. This *might* happen only if the stable version becomes the default for anons. Then again, it might not.
When Nupedia didn't live up to its expectations, Wikipedia was started. It was an experiment, and it worked, so we kept it.
/That/ is the spirit of the project. If something is not right, try something to fix it. If it works, greak, keep it; if it does not work, so what? Anyone remember the "Nupedia Chalkboard"? It was a wiki to initiate articles for Nupedia. It is not around anymore.
Something is wrong in wikipedia country, not with creating articles, but with being an encyclopedia. With provding *reasonably reliable* information to people. People who don't know wikipedia, and probably don't really care about how the article they are reading came into being. They want it to be correct and complete, period.
The whole point of a wiki, and the key behind Wikipedia's incredible growth, is that every reader is an editor, and in light of that it isn't a good idea to create seperate views of an article for readers and editors. Any reader reading the stable version instead of the current version will be one less potential editor to improve the current version.
I don't know if you've seen my test page, but just below the title, there's a line "This is the stable version. The current working version is [[here]]".
One could hope that people who find faults in the stable version would go to the draft version to implement improvements there, but simply saying that a version is stable will discourage edits, and people who still want to make edits will be further discouraged by those edits not being seen by the main public, but hidden away in some draft version of the article. Thus, this will discourage positive edits for the same reason it will discourage vandalism: It becomes slightly harder to edit,
No. Throw a switch in your user settings, and the haunting will go away ;-) (Note that this is not implemented yet in my version; neither is showing the stable version by default.)
and more importantly, the results aren't immediatly visible on the main version of the article (the one most people read).
So?
Regarding vandalism and bad pages, the wiki answer to these is that we have lots of people to fix those problems for the same reason the poblems are there. There will be more vandalism the bigger Wikipedia grows, but so will the number of people who can spot and fix that vandalism, for the same reason.
The real problem isn't outright vandalism. The problem is the Steigentaler incident type. Wrong information, inserted by accident or by purpose. A stable version can prevent this. The current system has shown it can't, not in all cases.
This is inherently scalable, so there should be no need for any change the way we deal with this just because the wiki has reached a given size. Wikipedia is by no means finished. There are still millions of articles waiting to be created, fleshed out and polished, and many already existing articles that need to be improved. We should therefore continue to make our readers edit our articles. Not because the wiki process is sacred in itself, but because it has proven to be the fastest way to create an encyclopedia.
We already *have* created an encyclopedia. Now our focus has to shift towards /being/ an encyclopedia. Our ways have to change accordingly.
Magnus
Magnus Manske wrote:
Amaurea wrote:
<snip Nupedia comparison>
By marking a version of an article as stable, and presenting that version to normal visitors, we are breaking down the coupling between the number of readers and the number of editors.
No. This *might* happen only if the stable version becomes the default for anons.
Yes, this is part of the hypothetical conditions quoted above.
The whole point of a wiki, and the key behind Wikipedia's incredible growth, is that every reader is an editor, and in light of that it isn't a good idea to create seperate views of an article for readers and editors. Any reader reading the stable version instead of the current version will be one less potential editor to improve the current version.
I don't know if you've seen my test page, but just below the title, there's a line "This is the stable version. The current working version is [[here]]".
That doesn't really change much if the stable version is the default. Who's going to bother checking out the current working version that isn't already a routine Wikipedia contributor? It's hard enough getting a lot of visitors to click on the "edit" link when they _do_ see a problem in need of fixing, if they have to also click on a link in order to see the problem in the first place then I don't see how the situation is likely to improve.
No. Throw a switch in your user settings, and the haunting will go away ;-) (Note that this is not implemented yet in my version; neither is showing the stable version by default.)
That's how we should start the experiment, IMO. Change as little as possible with each new step.
We already *have* created an encyclopedia. Now our focus has to shift towards /being/ an encyclopedia. Our ways have to change accordingly.
I still disagree with this. We've created an encyclopedia once I can go out and buy a copy for my shelves (either on DVD or paper-bound, whichever). Wikipedia as it exists today is still very much a work in progress despite having a number of quite nice articles. And I think it should always _be_ a work in progress. There are plenty of other sites that display Wikipedia's content, but only one site that _creates_ Wikipedia's content. Don't do anything that hinders that function.
Bryan Derksen wrote:
The whole point of a wiki, and the key behind Wikipedia's incredible growth, is that every reader is an editor, and in light of that it isn't a good idea to create seperate views of an article for readers and editors. Any reader reading the stable version instead of the current version will be one less potential editor to improve the current version.
I don't know if you've seen my test page, but just below the title, there's a line "This is the stable version. The current working version is [[here]]".
That doesn't really change much if the stable version is the default. Who's going to bother checking out the current working version that isn't already a routine Wikipedia contributor? It's hard enough getting a lot of visitors to click on the "edit" link when they _do_ see a problem in need of fixing, if they have to also click on a link in order to see the problem in the first place then I don't see how the situation is likely to improve.
Well, the guy who just wants some info probably won't follow the link to the work-in-progress page. But he got what he came for, namely some (within the usual encyclopedia limits) trustworthy information. IMHO that's a good thing.
For the rest of the people who come by, the curious ones with at least a little time on their hands - they might even be less scared to edit if they know it's not directly showing for many people! Editing a dedcated work-in-progress version is IMHO less scary for a newcomer than "your changes will be visible immediately"!
No. Throw a switch in your user settings, and the haunting will go away ;-) (Note that this is not implemented yet in my version; neither is showing the stable version by default.)
That's how we should start the experiment, IMO. Change as little as possible with each new step.
As I said before, the question is if we are primarily a wiki (show work-in-progress first, with link to stable version) or an encyclopedia (show the stable version first, and link to the work-in-progress).
We already *have* created an encyclopedia. Now our focus has to shift towards /being/ an encyclopedia. Our ways have to change accordingly.
I still disagree with this. We've created an encyclopedia once I can go out and buy a copy for my shelves (either on DVD or paper-bound, whichever). Wikipedia as it exists today is still very much a work in progress despite having a number of quite nice articles. And I think it should always _be_ a work in progress. There are plenty of other sites that display Wikipedia's content, but only one site that _creates_ Wikipedia's content. Don't do anything that hinders that function.
You can buy the German wikipedia on DVD. €9,90 including a softcover book about Wikipedia. This is the third release of this DVD, by the way.
Magnus
On 12/28/05, Magnus Manske magnus.manske@web.de wrote:
As I said before, the question is if we are primarily a wiki (show work-in-progress first, with link to stable version) or an encyclopedia (show the stable version first, and link to the work-in-progress).
That is the basic question. The best way to answer the question is to consider which one the current system is better at. A new site can always be created to accomplish the other task.
Anthony
Magnus Manske wrote:
As I said before, the question is if we are primarily a wiki (show work-in-progress first, with link to stable version) or an encyclopedia (show the stable version first, and link to the work-in-progress).
But this is _also_ a false dichotomy. I say we're option number three: a project to _write_ a free encyclopedia that happens to have hit upon a wiki as a the best means to that end that we've come up with so far.
I'm not fanatically dedicated to the "wiki way", I don't think it's some sort of prime ideal we should hold before all else. We could use some other means to write a free encyclopedia instead, perhaps by winning a giant lottery and buying the copyrights to existing encyclopedias to relicence under the GFDL. But the key point is that our goal is _writing_ an encyclopedia rather than just displaying the best version we've managed to come up with so far. If you were proposing something that departed from "wikiness" but that I thought would help the writing process I'd be all over it with sloppy kisses.
You can buy the German wikipedia on DVD. €9,90 including a softcover book about Wikipedia. This is the third release of this DVD, by the way.
I'm very happy for them. I work exclusively on the English encyclopedia, however, so my point still stands. Furthermore, I point out that (from what I've heard) they used an approach making a "publishable" copy that didn't change the ongoing functioning of de.wikipedia in any way - they forked a copy and then culled out the usable stuff from it in private. A stable version tag would help this approach immensely without in any way needing to be the default view on the "working" copy.
In any event, as soon as we've got Wikipedia 1.0 I'm going to throw a brief private party and then get right to work on upgrading it to Wikipedia 2.0. I go where the work is being done.
Why not having the current version as the default at wikipedia.org and a link to the stable version *and* a separate website where only the stable versions are displayed - maybe a revival of nupedia.org (no joke intended, it would be like a homage, IMHO).
--- Pawe³ Dembowski fallout@lexx.eu.org wrote:
Why not having the current version as the default at wikipedia.org and a link to the stable version *and* a separate website where only the stable versions are displayed - maybe a revival of nupedia.org (no joke intended, it would be like a homage, IMHO).
I suggested exactly that same thing a couple years ago when we were talking about the sifter idea that Larry Sanger wanted to start. Nothing ever came of those talks, however.
Such a separate site could also have adverts on it whose revenue would go to the foundation. It would simply be a mirror that we controlled and would benefit from.
This way we keep adverts off of Wikipedia but still get the benefit of it. Granted, it will take a long time before nupedia.org became highly ranked enough to generate any significant revenue. But then, it will also take a long time before there are enough stable articles there to make it a useful place to visit.
In fact, it might be best to create a separate non-profit organization that would manage that site and distribute CDs/DVDs and print versions of Wikimedia content. That way Wikimedia could concentrate on providing a forum for creating content and thus retain all the ISP-related legal protections (ISPs are not considered to be publishers and thus are not liable for content posted through their service).
All excess revenue from that separate organization would go to the Wikimedia Foundation to help support content creation.
-- mav
__________________________________ Yahoo! for Good - Make a difference this year. http://brand.yahoo.com/cybergivingweek2005/
Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Pawe³ Dembowski fallout@lexx.eu.org wrote:
Why not having the current version as the default at wikipedia.org and a link to the stable version *and* a separate website where only the stable versions are displayed - maybe a revival of nupedia.org (no joke intended, it would be like a homage, IMHO).
I suggested exactly that same thing a couple years ago when we were talking about the sifter idea that Larry Sanger wanted to start. Nothing ever came of those talks, however.
Well, I *did* code a halfway working extension that you can include in a MediaWiki, which will then turn import-only. Doesn't work for images yet, though.
So, you could start such a site yourself. But it would be far better to do this on the Wikimedia sites. But then why not integrate this directly into Wikipedia?
Magnus
Magnus Manske wrote:
So, you could start such a site yourself. But it would be far better to do this on the Wikimedia sites. But then why not integrate this directly into Wikipedia?
Because once you're "hiding" the current editable version of Wikipedia, the site becomes no different from any other up-to-date mirror of our content and the unique editing-focused view that Wikipedia currently has is gone. But this is the same argument I've repeated several times already so I won't go into detail. :)
As a different argument, though, there's the subject of advertising on the "stable" version. I didn't want to broach the subject myself since it's so volatile, but since Daniel already did I'll point out that considering that very volatility it's an option that we could only pull off with a separate project held at arm's length from the main site.
On 12/29/05, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
As a different argument, though, there's the subject of advertising on the "stable" version. I didn't want to broach the subject myself since it's so volatile, but since Daniel already did I'll point out that considering that very volatility it's an option that we could only pull off with a separate project held at arm's length from the main site.
"The founder of Wikipedia, the charitably funded online encyclopaedia, says that the website is considering carrying advertisements in a move that could raise hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenues."
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9075-1962714,00.html
On 12/30/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
"The founder of Wikipedia, the charitably funded online encyclopaedia, says that the website is considering carrying advertisements in a move that could raise hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenues."
If this is correctly represented, then I guess it really is true that anyone has their price. I thought better of Wales, though. *Sigh*. Adding advertisements to Wikipedia would definitly cause a fork.
On 12/30/05, Amaurea sigurdkn@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/30/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
"The founder of Wikipedia, the charitably funded online encyclopaedia, says that the website is considering carrying advertisements in a move that could raise hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenues."
If this is correctly represented, then I guess it really is true that anyone has their price. I thought better of Wales, though. *Sigh*. Adding advertisements to Wikipedia would definitly cause a fork.
I hope it happens just because of that. Wikipedia is too valuable to be left in the hands of Jimmy Wales.
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 12/30/05, Amaurea sigurdkn@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/30/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
"The founder of Wikipedia, the charitably funded online encyclopaedia, says that the website is considering carrying advertisements in a move that could raise hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenues."
If this is correctly represented, then I guess it really is true that anyone has their price. I thought better of Wales, though. *Sigh*. Adding advertisements to Wikipedia would definitly cause a fork.
I hope it happens just because of that. Wikipedia is too valuable to be left in the hands of Jimmy Wales.
Admittedly there may be moments when I sympathize with that point of view, but there are still many more moments when I consider how the alternatives are filtered through the wrong end of a telescope, and realize that we are certainly not ready for such a change. Two of the greatest dynasties in China's history were associated with a major development. The importance of those works is still recognized many centuries after they wer accomplished, but the dynasties themselves did not last long after the death of their visionary founders.
The entire issue of advertisements is vexatious. It's easy to see that the kind of money that advertising would bring would soon bring an end to worries about having enough hardware. But after all that hardware is purchased there would be plenty left over, we would be left with a big bank account full of problems. Would we hire new staff? To do what? Who among the longtime committed would not feel a twinge of envy if some newcomer were suddenly hired to be the new Larry Sanger? We would soon learn how many of our active members really live on a shoestring. Maybe we could fund everybody's attendance at the next Wikimania, or we could fund third world projects consistent with a wider vision of bringing knowledge to the most remote corners of the world. Or will someone else see us as the deep pocket that can easily be picked in the courts?
I don't know. Sometimes having too much money can be a bigger problem than having too little.
Ec
On 12/30/05, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
The entire issue of advertisements is vexatious. It's easy to see that the kind of money that advertising would bring would soon bring an end to worries about having enough hardware. But after all that hardware is purchased there would be plenty left over, we would be left with a big bank account full of problems. Would we hire new staff? To do what? Who among the longtime committed would not feel a twinge of envy if some newcomer were suddenly hired to be the new Larry Sanger? We would soon learn how many of our active members really live on a shoestring. Maybe we could fund everybody's attendance at the next Wikimania, or we could fund third world projects consistent with a wider vision of bringing knowledge to the most remote corners of the world. Or will someone else see us as the deep pocket that can easily be picked in the courts?
I don't know. Sometimes having too much money can be a bigger problem than having too little.
Ec
I dunno, I don't think it'd be so hard to spend the money. There are billions of people in the world. The mission of Wikipedia is to distribute an encyclopedia to every single of them. I'm going to be bold and make the claim that distribution alone is going to cost billions of dollars.
Granted, that doesn't mean Wikipedia has to spend all that money itself. Partnering up with other companies and non-profit organizations to do the distribution might be smarter. Even using peer-to-peer distribution channels can work in many areas. But there are plenty of positive ways to spend money.
There are plenty of negative ways too.
And actually, I'm not 100% convinced that the WMF *can* make hundreds of millions of dollars off of advertising without jeopardising its charity status. I've read in IRS documents that advertising revenue is generally considered unrelated business income. Rely too much on unrelated business income, and you're no longer a charity. I went to Guidestar and read the 990s for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), and WHYY, INC (a PBS affiliate), because WHYY most definitely does have advertising on their service, but I haven't been able to figure out how they're classifying their advertising income, and why. Of course even that is different from the Wikipedia situation if Wikipedia chooses to use advertising revenue from web to fund non-web projects.
I just found something else. "PBS ENTERPRISES, INC., a wholly-owned for-profit subsidiary of PBS, was incorporated in December 1984. PBS ENTERPRISES, INC., was organized to pursue revenue-producing projects and services as part of an ongoing effort to increase public television's financial base." Looking further, apparently the Mozilla Corporation was created for similar reasons.
If the WMF wants to create a wholly owned for-profit subsidiary which would run a mirror-site with ads, I don't really see how anyone could have a problem with that.
Anthony
--- Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
"The founder of Wikipedia, the charitably funded online encyclopaedia, says that the website is considering carrying advertisements in a move that could raise hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenues."
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9075-1962714,00.html
I encourage everybody to see *exactly* what Jimmy said and read both articles in full. The headline is needlessly sensational. Jimmy is just pointing out the obvious; that we are giving up on millions of dollars of potential revenue that could help us reach our goals.
Nothing is going to happen without community consent.
-- mav
__________________________________ Yahoo! for Good - Make a difference this year. http://brand.yahoo.com/cybergivingweek2005/
On 12/29/05, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
This way we keep adverts off of Wikipedia but still get the benefit of it. Granted, it will take a long time before nupedia.org became highly ranked enough to generate any significant revenue. But then, it will also take a long time before there are enough stable articles there to make it a useful place to visit.
In fact, it might be best to create a separate non-profit organization that would manage that site and distribute CDs/DVDs and print versions of Wikimedia content. That way Wikimedia could concentrate on providing a forum for creating content and thus retain all the ISP-related legal protections (ISPs are not considered to be publishers and thus are not liable for content posted through their service).
All excess revenue from that separate organization would go to the Wikimedia Foundation to help support content creation.
That sounds by far the most practical long-term solution to the where-to-put-them-damned-stable-versions problem.
I like the advertising-by-the-back-door too! (nota bene: that was a joke)
-- Sam
Hi Magnus,
Regarding vandalism and bad pages, the wiki answer to these is that we have lots of people to fix those problems for the same reason the poblems are there. There will be more vandalism the bigger Wikipedia grows, but so will the number of people who can spot and fix that vandalism, for the same reason.
The real problem isn't outright vandalism. The problem is the Steigentaler incident type. Wrong information, inserted by accident or by purpose. A stable version can prevent this. The current system has shown it can't, not in all cases.
The precise way to put it would be "A stable version **can** prevent this." It will not not neccessarily do so in all cases, but in some it might. My prediction is: * just like the recent changes patrol catches some mistakes, the new "stable versions feature" will find some more mistakes, **but** others will remain. And then some other "Steigentaler incident" will take place and people will complain again. There are some people for whom you will never get it right. In north Germany we have a Low Saxon proverb: "Do wat du wullt, de Lüüd snackt doch". (In English: Whatever you do, people will complain.)
The problem I see with the stable version policy is that it is presented as a one-size-fits-all remedy. If you want to introduce stable versions for all articles you will get a resource problem. Suddenly there have to be stable versions and people will get lazy with their checks.
The problem I see is a very big one. Once some error slips through the checks, the problem for Wikipedia will be an even bigger one. We present a version as stable and nevertheless it was wrong. Now imagine Steigentaler having the passages he did not like in a *stable* version.
In summary: I do not think that stable versions is a wise decision.
Kind regards,
Heiko Evermann
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