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

[Marc Riddell]

> On 9/13/07, WikipediaEditor Durin <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.
> 
on 9/13/07 4:10 PM, George Herbert at george.herbert at gmail.com wrote:
> 
> I still find it unfortunate that (from what I have seen) you have
> reacted this negatively to the shift in consensus position on fair use
> of non-free images.
> 
> I think your personal experience has come to illustrate a rather
> negative long-term trend, though, the editor / admin burnout problem.
> 
> It would be easy for me to run down your itemized list and rebut a
> bunch; instead, I'll just note that growing pains are real, Wikipedia
> is not the same as it once was (at any level), and that some aspects
> of this are unfortunate at the same time as others are exhilirating.
> 
> Regarding the burnout problem; I am beginning to think that the
> fundamental problem is with the personality of the people who make
> good editors and admins.  We are the types of people who, while
> basically functional in normal society, also can get very focused and
> obsessed on particular points.
> 
> I spent my late teens and early 20s figuring out how to unfocus and
> acknowledge when I had worked myself into a mental corner on an issue
> or problem.  A majority of my talented friends and good coworkers
> haven't worked that out, yet, and I think that it's common on
> Wikipedia.  Being able to identify it in yourself, and listen when
> others are trying to point it out to you, is a prerequisite to dealing
> with a situation by de-escalating, de-stressing, letting go and
> letting someone else handle it for a while.  Those skills are the only
> way for people like us to keep focused on a project or issue for long
> periods of time.  If we don't have them, we tend eventually to get
> locked in to some issue or problem we cannot personally actually
> solve, and it destroys our ability to keep working on the project or
> problem.
> 

Pretty insightful stuff, George. Thank you.

Marc