On 07/06/2014 14:42, MZMcBride wrote:
The part of the piece I found most striking was that the author
readily, and almost boastfully, admits to speaking to "a minority of the minority of the minority," but she seems to have no issue using this very limited sample size to evaluate Wikipedia on the whole.
But she is about right, isn't she? I mean, there are millions and millions of people who edit Wikipedia, about their garage band, e.g., or about a company they were paid to edit for, or to write something incompetent or plagiarised about history or philosophy, or whatever. Some are remarkably good at it, many aren't. Most of these I suspect would not call themselves 'Wikipedians'. Then there are those who are regularly involved with the site, mostly as 'content contributors', but who would also shudder to call themselves 'Wikipedians'. I would have put myself in that category, when I used to edit. I care about the free knowledge stuff, very much, actually, and I would always do my best to ensure articles in my specialist field were reasonably accurate. Even though I don't edit any more I still try and get stuff corrected http://wikipediocracy.com/2014/02/23/islands-of-sanity. But I have never seen myself as part of any 'community'.
Then there are the people who _would_ call themselves 'Wikipedians', but wouldn't have the time or location or money to go to any of the 'community events'. Finally there are the hard core, who talk about the 'movement' and who proselytise for it and who do turn up to such events. So it's a minority of a minority of a minority, yes. That's a rough picture, obviously, but I don't think the journalist meant anything else.
, Ed