[Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

[Peter Damian]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Andreas Kolbe" <jayen466 at yahoo.com>
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Sunday, September 19, 2010 1:48 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?


> (1) demanding subject matter, requiring some familiarity with the topic 
> area to be able to contribute effectively
> (2) the relative scarcity of editors who have prior knowledge in these 
> areas.
>
> So "throwing more editors at the Humanities problem" through a WikiProject 
> may not work in this case. Getting students and academics involved might.

Agree with this. Let's throw in a further reason: there are positive 
*disincentives* to editing Wikipedia in this area.  Here: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Owl#Wikipedia.27s_accuracy_and_credibility_.28editorial_comments.29
I know the philosopher who wrote this: well-regarded in his area of 
expertise, and has made positive contributions to Wikipedia. Read the 
reasons he gives.  He stopped contributing in 2006.  Or this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mel_Etitis#My_attitudes_to_Wikipedia_.28an_excuse_for_some_moans.29

by another well-regarded philosopher, also an administrator.  Stopped 
editing in 2007.   Or this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Nsalmon

Salmon is a highly respected philosopher, who edited under his own name.  He 
left, saying "I would strongly urge you to leave the editing of articles 
concerning philosophy and/or philosophers to genuine experts. You simply 
lack the understanding and expertise required to assess whether an edit is a 
genuine improvement or an obvious and cowardly sniper attack (as with the 
insertion in question)."  Note further down I tried to persuade him to stay 
(as I have done with a number of academic philosophers).  I haven't 
succeeded with any of them. One of them was incredulous that I should want 
to persist with it. "Hello! I've just stumbled across the latest episode in 
your peculiar relationship with this Sisyphean project. I still don't 
understand why you bother. " 
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Peter_Damian&diff=prev&oldid=257117615 . 
Or here "This article [analytic philosophy] is typical Wikipedia on 
philosophy -- an accumulation of wildly uneven contributions by diverse 
hands. (Interestingly, the quality generally goes south the farther the 
article progresses.)" 
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Analytic_philosophy&diff=370669325&oldid=370590053 . 
Or the person who emailed me last week saying " really need help to do a 
rewrite of
[[X]], which is a terrible mess, and I posted on theWikiproject philosophy 
page knowing I'd almost certainly get no response. There are so few people 
with philosophy training on WP that
we literally can't afford to lose a single one".

I could find plenty more like that.    Summary: it is not a matter of 
"rounding up" potentially interested editors who have the necessary 
expertise.  It's not that there is no incentive, it's that there is a strong 
disincentive.  Note that most of the professional philosophers who have 
edited Wikipedia, stopped editing between 2005-7, which bears out the point 
I am making that something bad happened during that period. "My basic 
attitude remains unchanged, but as Wikipedia becomes more popular, more and 
more an more people are using it to advertise/puff themselves or their 
friends. There are therefore more genuinely unencyclop&aelig;dic articles 
being added now" 
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Mel_Etitis&diff=prev&oldid=101296369