Vanity of Article Writers, ...a time to cast away stones Options

[GlassBeadGame]

I have been struck lately by the growing smugness of "article writers." Those who avoid wonkery and administraton for the creaton or "improvement" of articles on Wikpedia. To hear them say you would thing they were creating some great works of literature. I got to tell you I don't see it. Even among our FA artistes. They use this activity much in the same way "vandal patrols" or policy wonks use the stuff they do for playing the game that is Wikipedia.

At best I'd say is "Well pretty good for a sand painting made in a sandbox surrounded by pre-schoolers flinging rocks and spraying down the place with pressure hoses...but come back tomorrow." Wikipedia articles, even FAs, are no great shakes. Certainly they don't justify the sense of self-entitlement these prima donnas pretend. Nor do they make up for the many levels or irresponsibilty directed at people outside the project that results from their work.

The only thing of any value in Wikipedia is it partially functions in the the same task Wikia Search fails at, collecting a list of manually generated sources (very imperfectly vetted) and indirectly returning them on the top of search request. You don't need article writers for this task at all.

[Skinny87]

As an article writer, and an FA contributor, I don't think I'm particularly vain; I like my articles and think they're quite good, but I'm not going to say they're brilliant. Far from it; my prose is probably average, for example.

I'd agree that wikipedia isn't the font of all human knowledge it's sometimes portrayed as being, but I'd also agree that it's better than nothing at all, and probably the best organized on the internet. My articles aren't comprehensive, even when they're at FA level, they're often lacking (non-vital) sources that I can't access or afford. But I'd like to think that they're as comprehensive as they can be, and that they give the reader a fairly detailed and neutral view of what occurred. Ultimately, they're a starting point - no one should be citing them in an essay or thinking they're the best source of knowledge for that particular topic. A good wiki article should be well-sourced to allow the reader to find those sources for themselves whilst they get at least a general understanding of the topic.

[UseOnceAndDestroy]

I'd agree that wikipedia isn't the font of all human knowledge it's sometimes portrayed as being, but I'd also agree that it's better than nothing at all

It's a recurring wikipedian myth to position wikipedia and "nothing" as the only possibilities. Wikipedia is decidedly not better than a rich and diverse internet of independent sites and documents, created by people who actually understand the topics they're involved in.

The wikipedian project is to appropriate and re-mediate, losing definition and wedging content into its own shape on the way - for the benefit of someone other than the readers. Most "article writers" are doing grunt work that MFA sites can do with scripts.

[Sarcasticidealist]

It's a recurring wikipedian myth to position wikipedia and "nothing" as the only possibilities. Wikipedia is decidedly not better than a rich and diverse internet of independent sites and documents, created by people who actually understand the topics they're involved in.

So why doesn't that network exist? Surely the people who actually understand what they're talking about aren't engaged in editing Wikipedia, so what's stopping them from setting up their own network? I've written three featured articles, all of which are, as featured articles go, of pretty middling quality. But each is the best free access online resource on the subject. That may not be true of all FAs, but it's true of a good many of them. Wikipedia has actually driven the creation of free access online information that, by all the evidence we have, would not otherwise exist in such a form.

Besides that, there is utility in Wikipedia's organization, which is actually among its stronger suits; the interconnectivity of Wikipedia articles provides utility to the reader that would not exist from your mostly hypothetical diverse network of sites and documents.

[Somey]

...Wikipedia is decidedly not better than a rich and diverse internet of independent sites and documents, created by people who actually understand the topics they're involved in.

So why doesn't that network exist? Surely the people who actually understand what they're talking about aren't engaged in editing Wikipedia, so what's stopping them from setting up their own network?

Cost, time, energy, liability issues, and all sorts of other concerns, one would assume. The World Wide Web, and to some extent the internet in general, wasn't set up or organized to maximize convenience and reliability in information aggregation. Technically, it was set up to ensure survivability of information in the event of a catastrophic event such as a nuclear war, but for most practical purposes that translates into a system that allows a large number of people to redundantly disseminate information to anyone and everyone with the technical means of accessing it. Things like security, bandwidth, search, and the accountability of site owners/operators were all afterthoughts.

It's obviously unrealistic to think that the internet can re-work itself in the short term, but until it does, people who run websites have to deal with ISP's of varying levels of competence, software of varying levels of reliability, and of course, hackers, phishers, identity thieves, spammers, scammers, "script kiddies," "trolls," and (occasionally) lawyers. This doesn't mean Mr. Destroy is wrong - a richer and more diverse internet would be a good thing, and Wikipedia is clearly preventing that diversity from growing by providing a cheap (and anonymous) alternative for people who only want to share a relatively small amount of information, don't feel any need to get paid for sharing it, and don't particularly care who else gets to mess with it after the fact... and, in so doing, handling some (but not all) of the various headaches that come with running a website.

The more interesting question, to me, is whether Wikipedia and its sister sites are doing the world a "net-positive" favor by providing that alternative. I'd say they probably would be, if they split the site into a fairly large number of smaller inter-linked ones with separate low-level administrations, operated under a more ethical standard of governance, each with reasonably accountable (and perhaps more identifiable) ownership - a consortium, essentially. As it is though, I'd have to say no.

Because of the Google factor and also the nature of domain ownership, Jimbo and the WMF will fight any decentralization or "official mass forking" effort tooth and nail, though they'll probably claim they're not fighting it the whole time they're doing just that. And I'd imagine there are all sorts of additional arguments against that kind of decentralization, not the least of which would be based on pure practicality, not to mention the intimidation factor that comes with being so large and well known... but if WP is ever going to go from discouraging web diversity to encouraging it, that's what has to happen.