[WikiEN-l] The Statistical Decline of the English Wikipedia Community

[Zoney]

On 10/10/2007, Sage Ross <ragesoss+wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> A number of Wikipedians have pointed out the changes (starting around
> a year ago) that en-wiki has gone through:
>
> Among others, see:
>
> http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2007/09/10/two-million-english-wikipedia-articles-celebrate/
> http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2007/06/28/wikipedia-plateau/
>
> http://ragesossscholar.blogspot.com/2007/03/watershed-in-history-of-wikipedia.html
>
> http://original-research.blogspot.com/2007/03/is-wikipedia-approaching-barrier.html
>
> I actually found Robert's conclusions much less surprising than he did
> (perhaps because he is just back from an extended break, while I and
> others have been watching this happen for a while).
>
> -Sage
>
>
Personally, I would suggest that Wikipedia has indeed become more
bureaucratic, and it will progress little further until a rethink of the
core ideology is considered, particularly wrt. to how to derive/amend
policy, core policy issues, handling bias or concepts of truth, dispute
resolution and what to do when there isn't consensus (i.e. no consensus for
the status quo, no consensus for proposed or active changes). The whole idea
that Wikipedia acts by consensus is a sham. It's not a democracy of course
either, it's not even anarchy, or specifically authority-driven
(dictatorial). In individual cases it's whatever people can get away with.
That's not a good concept of consensus (i.e. "what sticks is there by tacit
agreement"); it ignores the fact that rational people will eventually give
up rather than deal with bullies and morons.

Zoney

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