[WikiEN-l] What's going on? - Inquiry 2

[WikipediaEditor Durin]

The overarching problem here is that Wikipedia is collapsing. This list
is just a symptom of that.
* The Foundation has become ineffective and no longer cares about
   its mission and goals. There's a number of symptoms resulting from
   this state. One such symptom is the abysmal state of fundraising.
   In hard numbers, the fundraising is better. In terms of per-capita
   analysis, absolutely terrible. In short, the importance, scale and
   complexity of Wikipedia has dramatically increased while fund
   raising has only slightly increased. It's not keeping up, and the
   more that it can't keep up the worse the problems will become.
   Another symptom; massive turnover at the Foundation level. Though
   the words we've been hearing from the departing people have all
   been nice, any outside observer can see that an organization that
   loses people by the droves has serious problems, regardless of
   what face they attempt to put on it.
* This list, which used to be an effective forum and regarded by Jimbo
   as being THE place to do business is now ineffectual. Jimbo used to
   be a regular here. Looking from the perspective of number of posts
   per month, his participation here is down 43% this year from last year.
* Issues of scale are not being addressed. Analogous; Usenet newsgroups
   were useful when there was a small community per newsgroup. When it
   became thousands per newsgroup, they became useless. See
   "Dunbar's number" article.
* Prior decisions on key points are being disregarded, despite lengthy
   debates leading to those decisions. Precedent is meaningless now.
   The community has lost its ability to move forward because all
   decisions are immediately obsolete and carry no relevance for tightly
   related circumstances.
* General behavior on Wikipedia has led to a narrower definition of the
   typical Wikipedian. Wikignomes, for example, are no longer valued.
* While we have a crossed 2,000,000 articles, one automated study
   showed that about 3% of our articles...just 60,000...have anything
   above a few sentences and a handful of references. I.e., vast swaths
   of Wikipedia are very far from being encyclopedic in content and
   structure.

I could go on for a *long* while about the ails of Wikipedia and
all the various symptoms that show its imminent demise.

Of course, all of what I've said above will be disputed, and I'll be
shown by massive writings that I'm insane, criminally wrong, etc.
The arguments will continue ad nauseum. I do not care for rebuttals
at this point. I just hope people read this and take it to heart. Yes,
the end of Wikipedia is nigh. Yes, I'm the quack standing on a corner
with a sandwich board on me. Don't say I didn't warn you.