[Wikipedia-l] Re: Encarta goes wiki - sort of...

[Stirling Newberry]

On Apr 14, 2005, at 7:38 AM, Faraaz Damji wrote:

> I disagree.  I've found most people to be kind and helpful.  Something
> like Wikipedia tends to draw people of a different intellectual and
> moral level than most other environments, and I think that a lot of
> editors have come to value that.  If you think that there are serious
> problems with Wikipedia, there's nothing stopping you from starting
> another wiki encyclopedia with Wikipedia's content since everything is
> GFDL'd.


Of course the people who are left are happy, it is selection in action. 
However, in about 2 years when growth rates on en have flattened off it 
will be very visible, the pove growth curve will have long since 
outstripped the wikipedian growth curve. At that point it will be 
noticeable to the outside world and it will be your competition that 
notices it. Right now, of course, everyone is drunk on growth rates and 
ever argument is ended by "I'm happy" and "look how fast we are 
growing, clearly people are happy". This has happened before to 
numerous internet communities - intoxication on the flood of eyeballs.

However, that flood of eyeballs and the link equity they bring are a 
thing of value, and people will figure out how to hack the rules to 
extract, rather than increase, the link equity. This is already 
happening, and the active voting majority on most issues is on making 
it easier to extract value from wikipedia. That means you have about 2 
years before the community itself is noticeably degraded, and your 
competitors will cheerfully point out how wikipedia is crashing and 
burning, and cheerfully document the articles which have outrageous 
bias, omissions of fact, and are run by people who in the outside world 
would be called "fruit loops".

It will be at that point - too late - that "something" will be done 
about it, but by then someone else will have set up a competing medium, 
and will be earnestly promising that he won't make the same mistakes 
that wikipedia made.

This cycle takes time, and there is still ample time to do something 
about it, but nothing will be done about it, because the leadership of 
the community is confusing people pouring in, with sustainability.