[WikiEN-l] Is Wikipedia dying?

[Carcharoth]

On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 10:56 AM, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Surreptitiousness wrote:
>> So, how
>> do you fix the underlying problems?  You roll your sleeves up and fix
>> them.  Sofixit. The underlying problem is actually that Wikipedia
>> suffers from some sort of bias towards pop culture. Now where I sit, the
>> people who make this complaint are the sort of people who could actually
>> correct that bias, so I'm always thinking to myself, "sofixit". But
>> that's me.
>>
>>
> "Sofixit" is a good enough baseline for encouraging participation. It
> happens that when COI is involved it may not be the best advice (you are
> advised, I suppose, to remove only defamatory statements about your own
> biography, and leave things that you'd prefer not to be there or are
> somewhat inaccurate, participating on the talk page and/or using an OTRS
> complaint to draw attention). I think it is worthy saying this: people
> who object only to weaknesses in WP that have a direct personal impact
> on themselves are not really the ideal recruits: they are natural users
> of OTRS, not natural encyclopedists. Since many readers of WP fall
> somewhere between classic Wikipedians, and people having a particular
> beef where they are in some way vested, "sofixit" still has a definite
> role to play. I wonder how best to put "sofixit thoughtfully" which is
> what we really require.

It's a good suggestion, and the point about those making complaints
not being ideal recruits is a good one, as is the frequent element of
a vested interest in the article. What makes *me* queasy is the
feeling that sometimes those pseudonymous Wikipedia editors who are
otherwise standard Wikipedians, edit heavily in one area without
disclosing their real-world involvement. The only way to discern that
is to assess the sources someone is using. If they are using sources
from one side of a debate only, they either hold strong views on the
subject, or are promoting one side of the argument. You absolutely
have to engage with all views  to have any hope of writing anything
approaching a good article.

Carcharoth