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

[Marc Riddell]

on 9/13/07 9:59 AM, WikipediaEditor Durin at wikidurin at gmail.com wrote:

> 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.

This post was a wild ride, Durin; but one well worth taking. Please hang in
there with the Project. My voice, added to your voice, added to... soon
becomes a sound too loud to ignore. If we become enough of a pain in the
ass, they will eventually have to take a look at what they are sitting on
;-).

Marc Riddell