What will be the warning signs of the coming collapse? Options

A comment I made recently made me realise that Wikipedia will collapse when wikipedians realise their folly and begin to leave it in droves.

What will be the warning signs? How will we recognise that the end is nigh? I've been thinking and I believe that it will be worth documenting and carefully analysing when it does happen, as the dying days and collapse will be of considerable value to several fields.

This post has been edited by Unrepentant Vandal:

A comment I made recently made me realise that Wikipedia will collapse when wikipedians realise their folly and begin to leave it in droves.

What will be the warning signs? How will we recognise that the end is nigh?

It will die a cold death, by losing its credibility bit by bit when honest members will continue being banned and dishonest POV pushers, lobbyists, political activists etc., will be the only so-called users of good standing remaining.

A comment I made recently made me realise that Wikipedia will collapse when wikipedians realise their folly and begin to leave it in droves.

What will be the warning signs? How will we recognise that the end is nigh?

It will die a cold death, by losing its credibility bit by bit when honest members will continue being banned and dishonest POV pushers, lobbyists, political activists etc., will be the only so-called users of good standing remaining.

A cold death perhaps, but I'm convinced that there'll be a mass exodus at some point.

There'll be a big dispute, and everyone will go home crying, leaving retire messages on their userpages. And the only person left will be me, and I'll rule the wiki! hahahahaha!

Not really, too bad.

A comment I made recently made me realise that Wikipedia will collapse when wikipedians realise their folly and begin to leave it in droves.

What will be the warning signs? How will we recognise that the end is nigh? I've been thinking and I believe that it will be worth documenting and carefully analysing when it does happen, as the dying days and collapse will be of considerable value to several fields.

Unfortunately for your original research idea history proves you wrong. Whenever there is a power vacuum there are always people to fill it, and wikipedia will be no different. As its such a powerful star (the very opposite of a vacuum in itself). I remain convinced that change is the only real option. Policy has failed to keep up with practice, time to trash the trolls ("keep beats delete" folk) and change the wikipedia policies.

Perhaps when everyone starts recycling the same old, tired phrases like Crockpot. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/wink.gif)

I think it will be a lack of donations and the server will gradually run slower and slower.

When the public finally understands the failings of a "wiki." Too many emperors. The emperors have no clothes, and most of the emperors are teenagers.

Like a powerful virus, a wiki can spread and infiltrate everything in it's path, albeit many times a virus kills the host.

The most likely scenario for Wikipedia will be a government action or intervention. Small governments already have acted, (e.g., schools and government districts that do not allow employees or students to rely on Wikipedia.) Ultimately civic organizations will outlaw it and some committee will question whether or not it is a threat to national security.

Without a final rule making / governing body, a wiki will not end on a postive or "good note."

Too many cooks.

For anyone not old enough to know that one? "Too many cooks spoil the broth." That is...as old as the hills.

This post has been edited by WhispersOfWisdom:

Personally, I'm sticking to my "Five-Phase Lifecycle Theory," which suggests that there won't be a quick collapse at all, but rather a gradual process of attrition resulting in stagnation and ultimately, breakup.

Right now we're firmly in the "Maintenance Phase," which I believe started about a year ago. Just for the record, the phases are:

- Formation
- Growth
- Maintenance
- Attrition
- Breakup

I expect the maintenance phase to last at least five years, and to be characterized by increased authoritarianism and regimentation - mostly in the name of curbing the tendency towards infighting, which in turn is being caused by too many people wanting control of various "important" topic areas. This will result in an almost social-Darwinian "shakeout," which will end with firm control of all worthwhile territories by whichever of the various groups, cabals, cliques (or whatever you want to call them) should "win" them. That will bring on the attrition, which will be expressed as mass "forking" of entire topic areas to other websites.

Jimbo's increasing interest in "open source" web-crawling technology may suggest that he himself has realized this as a distinct, even likely possibility - there's no company better positioned to take advantage of the WP breakup than Wikia, and combining "encyclopedic" content with human-filtered search results may be his primary scheme at this point. I'm not sure I'd even call it a bad scheme, to be honest, though obviously I'd rather someone else was in charge.

I think that it will be a very long time before it is completely destroyed, and indeed I doubt that it will ever 100% disappear. However, it will change so that it is not what it is today. This is how I envisage the changes:

1) Wikipedia's integrity will weaken. Things like the various scandals that we have exposed, Wikipedia Scanner, and so forth, demonstrate it is not reliable as a reference.
2) People will fail to donate sufficiently to Wikipedia, thus meaning that they need to have a for-profit avenue of some kind. They either go to Google AdSense, or to wikia, or to having ads directly on the web site. Either way, it is going to cause problems.
3) People react towards them finding this for-profit enterprise, initially upset, then beginning to accept it, but it becomes very different.
4) Issues relating to abuse of their for-profit enterprise are raised, and real live law suits come out, in much higher numbers than before, because there is real money at stake, rather than "volunteers" and hence they are far more accountable.
5) Wikipedia finds ways to account for the various problems, and goes in to serious, permanent, damage control mode.
6) Wikipedia starts to cut down on usage of it, permanently deleting revision histories, leaving only the current version, minimising editing of articles, not allowing talk page messages, no more user pages or user talk pages, and doing everything that they can to minimise it.
7) Wikipedia eventually locks down completely, so that all that is left are the articles themselves. They may even delete all of the stubs, all of the part-finished ones.
8) Wikipedia tries to present this version positively, and eventually gets more funding, to start to rebuild it again. People come back, it has a revised form, it is very different to what it was before, it is controlled by different people, it is more professional, there is a hope for it.
9) This version tries to avoid controversy, but they keep on getting hit.
10) Eventually this version too falls under, and it is left as an archive only.

That's pretty much it. So it may be 10 years or more before it is just an archive, but its pages are destined to remain forever. In 1,000 years you will be able to find Wikipedia pages on the stupid lies that they told. But in 1,000 years they will be laughed about, rather than treated seriously. An annal in the historical report will be "Wikipedia was an example of why we can't trust what people say about history".

Hi, I'm sort of new here. I registered a while ago, but I never got around to posting until now. I basically don't edit Wikipedia (although I authored one small article a long time ago), but I'm interested in the whole idea and some of the less savoury aspects of Wikipedia bother me, which is how I found this place. I thought I might as well start now, because this topic is quite interesting.

I should say something about my background. Without wanting to give too much away: I'm a college professor in a rather arcane field, with a PhD from one of the top programs in said weird field. This is relevant because I've found Wikipedia to be quite accurate with respect to the articles on which I could be counted as an expert. It's certainly better than most other encyclopaedias in this regard.

I don't share the pessimism of many people here. I think that the wiki model works spectacularly well, if the right constraints are adhered to. To expect any encyclopaedia to be error free is to expect too much, and Wikipedia, while it has its problems, is not that bad. However, as posts in this forum justly complain, it is not as good as it could be, and there are obvious failings. If they are not addressed, then Wikipedia will limp on in a slow decline, until something else comes along.

That said, most of it isn't too bad, with the exception of some of the politically charged stuff and the problems with biographies of living persons, which Daniel Brandt has done so much to point out.

One of the main problems is that the wrong person is "in charge". I don't know Jim Wales personallly, and he's probably not a bad person, but letting someone who is an avowed member of the Ayn Rand cult run anything like this is a recipe for disaster. Ayn Rand is generally acknowledged as a terrible novelist, a bad philosopher, and a joke "intellectual" in academic circles. Her adherents like to paint this as some leftist or "collectivist" conspiracy against her ideas, but the truth is that she just isn't very good. Her followers tend towards the fanatical and are often incapable of taking any criticism. Even the most casual observer knows this is true of Wales and his lackeys.

In general, people who, like Randians and Libertarian minded people, are the wrong sort of folk to take charge of an entity like Wikipedia due to their tendency to have blind faith in free markets and freedom of expression to produce the best outcomes. It takes a lot of work and immense coercive power on the part of the state to ensure that the free markets most of us enjoy actually work to produce useful things. Free markets are finely honed legal entities with a myriad of rules.

This is the main problem with Wikipedia – those who are engaged in content disputes are in many cases the same people who are involved in setting the rules and enforcing them. That's just a recipe for corruption, and as usual, in a badly policed system, the worst candidates for authority rise to the top. In this case they are largely ill-educated POV pushers, or plain old obsessive nutcases. It's strange that Wikipedia should largely be run by Americans, since the USA was deliberately designed as a system of separate powers in order to prevent this sort of thing happening (even if it isn't living up to it these days).

In many ways, Wikipedia is the greatest book ever written by human beings. Certainly no other human work comes close to its scope and general level of up-to-dateness. "The Wisdom of Crowds" is real, and the sooner that effective ways of tapping it are realized, the better off we will all be. Wikipedia's problem is that it isn't set up in a way that will do this with maximum efficiency. The inmates are largely running the asylum, and it is testament to the power of decentralized authorship that the product is still quite good, even with its glaring deficiencies.

The naive utopianism of those in charge is the root cause of Wikipedia's problems. Either they need to go and be replaced with professionals, or it will flounder on until someone else starts a better system. If Wikipedia is to fulfil its potential, then Wales needs to leave for the good of the project. However, it strikes me that his ego will get in the way.

So if it does decline, then something better will come along. The only real problem is that, like MS Windows, it is a comparatively poor product that has become entrenched, so this will take longer than it should.

Anyway.. peace to all

W.

Hi Wolfe and welcome!

The articles in your field are probably accurate because nobody knows anything about whatever it is. I wish that I could say the same things for articles about musical subjects, but it simply isn't the case.

I'm convinced (having watched a couple of similar systems go under) that when WP goes, there is going to be a spectacular jump in the level of vandalism and a corresponding decline in the amount of time spent correcting vandalism. The end of Wikipedia will make Encyclopedia Dramatica look like "My Weekly Reader".

Although, you have to admit that there is something to be said for an incredible foodfight.....

First of all, welcome to Wikipedia Review!

This is the main problem with Wikipedia – those who are engaged in content disputes are in many cases the same people who are involved in setting the rules and enforcing them. That's just a recipe for corruption, and as usual, in a badly policed system, the worst candidates for authority rise to the top. In this case they are largely ill-educated POV pushers, or plain old obsessive nutcases.

Exactly. In most places, the rules are set in stone, and can only be changed by the person or people in charge, after meetings and such. On Wikipedia, the rules are in an article that anyone can edit at any time. Ted Frank recently was an example of someone who changed the rules so as to avoid any problems with him having a Conflict of Interest while editing an article relating to his professional work, so that he could make profit for himself. This kind of ludicrous situation wouldn't happen in most places. It is a situation that is repeated over and over again on Wikipedia.

So if it does decline, then something better will come along. The only real problem is that, like MS Windows, it is a comparatively poor product that has become entrenched, so this will take longer than it should.

That is probably true. MS Windows came about primarily as a stolen idea from Apple, which was needed and the world was ready for, but they did it so sloppily that when Apple's real version came out people were already interested in the sloppy version. Low prices and popularity became desired ahead of quality reliable products, and continue to be so. Computers keep on getting cheaper, and keep lasting for shorter periods of time before they have major malfunctions.

Wikipedia is probably along the same lines, in line with the "now" society, the "disposable" society.

As I said elsewhere, I think that Wikipedia's articles vary largely on subject type.

• Best: "Cruft" articles, on TV shows, movies and fan-based articles, e.g. South Park
• Good: Purely factual entries with no other points of view e.g. currency
• Average: Clearly established historical events with small elements that are disputed e.g. The holocaust
• Poor: Controversial issues with 3 or more major points of view e.g. 9/11
• Horrible: Issues in which the official story is not widely believed (i.e. cover ups) e.g. Port Arthur massacre (Australia)

The sad thing is that Wikipedia has a tendency to push their worst articles at the expense of their best. They are always so keen on deleting the "cruft" articles, like Spongebob Squarepants and the like, and also to delete fringe theories, which are very interesting, whilst pushing some of the most horribly written articles that exist.

lol, time to sit back and read the apocalypse theories...

lol, time to sit back and read the apocalypse theories...

We prefer to call it the wiki-pocalypse

I'd have to agree, generally speaking... In fact, you could simplify it even more by just saying that there are "geeky" and "non-geeky" subjects, and the articles on geeky subjects are generally good, and the non-geeky ones bad.

Or maybe you could say that the quality of each article is often in proportion to its geekiness... it probably doesn't hold true in all cases, of course, but one might easily say that most biographies are non-geeky, along with articles on religion, economics, recent history, ethnographics, most areas of philosophy, and quite a few political subjects.

"Borderline geeky" subjects might include things like ancient history, literature, mathematics, and many of the physical sciences (at least the ones that the religious types aren't so interested in). In most of those areas I'd say WP is relatively good - what often happens is that one or two articles in a general topic will get warred over, but quality is acceptable overall, and of course the sheer number of articles is higher than a traditional encyclopedia.

One big exception IMO is probably military history and military "science" - this is one of the best topic areas on Wikipedia by far, and one would normally expect otherwise, given the amount of controversy involved. It's still a little too US-centric, but somehow they manage to keep most of the edit-warring under control, and there are a lot of extremely knowledgeable people writing this stuff. Maybe it's all being written by retired officers with nothing better to do, but they're doing a pretty good job of it!

See, there, I said something fairly nice about Wikipedia. Woo hoo! Of course, I'm obviously generalizing horribly here - this is really just the general impression I have personally.

YMMV, as they say.

Actually, its not just its geekiness, what you can say really is whether "consensus" is a good thing for each article:

On fan articles - consensus is great - they put in what everyone loves

On purely factual articles - consensus is great - they put in everything you could possibly imagine (really uber long articles, but nonetheless good)

On accepted historical facts - consensus is good, as its already been established, but of course some people disagree with that, but its still not too bad

On things with multiple points of view - consensus CANNOT WORK. If you take something like 9/11 for example, there are at least 7 or 8 major points of view that simply don't work with each other. Anything to do with any war or conflict is the same. What you need to have is all experts being in one room and it being mediated by a neutral party - i.e. someone who doesn't know a thing about it. Get the facts, and account for every viewpoint. The problem is that Wikipedia has a tendency to ban experts, and they don't have a workable NPOV policy, so articles like this get ruined. They whinge that someone has a "POV" when of course everyone has a POV, and then they insist that the neutral person is the best person to write the article, when they actually don't know what they are talking about and are the worst person. So it all falls apart and ends up in constant conflict.

The cover up articles are even worse, as they tend to invite people who like to just mass delete huge chunks of information, entire articles, put them on spam blacklists, oversight them, and so forth. Lockerbie bombing is another good example of course. Whilst JFK and Weapons of Mass Destruction now are not considered to be coverups - at the time they were! Also Children Overboard was another coverup which has been properly exposed now. And of course the related MV Tampa scandal is no longer considered to be a cover up.

Wikipedia can argue until they are blue in the face that a respected encyclopedia wouldn't include anything that is not the official government line, but that is a load of bullshit while they are in there writing Biographies of Living Persons without their permission in a negative way and not even letting the living persons edit them. Respected encyclopedias regularly write articles that are not the official government line - at least when they are writing from other countries. Which government line are they going to pull? Ours or theirs? Or everyone's? Given that Wikipedia is international they have to decide which government to ally to if they are going to insist on portraying false government lines on articles. Do they ally with the government concerning that lie? Or the American government? Or none at all? There must be some degree of consistency, surely.

There is a degree of geekiness, but overall that's not the biggest issue. Long-term, the issue is that with some articles the more people that contribute the worse it gets, especially if most of the people that are contributing don't know a thing about what they are talking about, and those who do know what they are talking about get banned. This is more of an issue with some articles than with others.

One problem with articles that lack consensus is the idea that, if everyone were an expert, consensus would follow. Unfortunately, that is not quite true. In part, this is due to the design of academia, where you get rewarded for publishing new and contrarian material, rather than backing up a consensus. Of course, there aren't the wild conspiracies like the Moon landing hoax, but there is plenty of dispute, and much of it venomous, over many of the same articles that suffer on Wikipedia.

Most problems with Wikipedia could be solved by tweaking its structure. The project really needs professional adminstrators who are prevented from making substantive edits, and whose job is merely to arbitrate and discipline. None of these people ought to be involved in making policy: they just enforce it. That's a pretty obvious separation of powers that most countries follow.

What's killing Wikipedia is collusion. It's well known that the wisdom of crowds works best when each person approaches the subject as an individual. Once people start forming organized groups, you lose the benefit of decentralized authorship because there is cross pollution of information and groupthink. The ideal Wikipedia editor is someone who doesn't edit all the time, and who doesn't have the time or inclination to get involved in Wikipolitics. Editors should live in a private bubble, so to say.

I guess what I'm saying is that the people that are now thought to be the most valuable contributors to the encyclopedia – those who make thousands of substantive edits – are actually the ones who are least valuable to the project. The encyclopedia really needs to be rid of them. They are the ones who get involved in politics, cabals and groupthink, and thus they are the enemies of the wisdom of crowds.

If the goal of Wikipedia is to produce a great encyclopedia for readers, then a principle that has to be strictly adhered to is that editors have no rights. I mean that, no rights at all. The ban hammer needs to swing much more frequently than it does. Anyone suspected of collusion should be banned, and anyone who causes too much strife or edits too much should be banned as well. That is what is required to rescue the project: it needs to be made clear that it is not a community or an online role playing game, but a project that requires a little from a lot of people, rather than a lot from a few.

The truth is that every individual editor is dispensable. There are always more fish in the sea. If you are spending hours every day editing Wikipedia, then the chances are that you are, unwittingly, damaging the project more than you are helping it.

Larry Sanger is missing the point with Citizendium. He's trying to make people take more of a stake in the project by getting rid of anonymity, when he should be aiming to try to get every individual to take less of a personal stake in the project. Once people have a stake in the project. competition and hierarchy naturally follow, and the scum often float to the top. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/wink.gif)

Many of the most important subject matters are ones which people do not readily agree with. Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution was widely discredited at the time, and even now is hardly accepted as fact, yet it has become a very important theory in discussing species, humanity and many other aspects of who people are. Sigmund Freud's various psychiatric theories were widely discredited, and continue to be widely discredited, yet he is perhaps the single most widely quoted philosopher in history, and his theories are used in many other more established theories elsewhere.

That there is no consensus to agree with it does not make something bad. In lower educational levels, everyone agrees with everything, but as time goes on it becomes more debatable. Fringe theories in any subject become prone to heated debate. In science, the theory of black holes (which is still just a theory, and will never be proven fact) has always been highly disputable, although nowadays it is considered to be okay to teach some elements of the theory to small children. The big bang theory is another highly debatable theory.

But the difference is that when people are discussing, for example, chaos theory, you know that the language is so complex that the only people who will be debating it are EXPERTS in the field, or at least SEMI-EXPERTS, such that all dialogue is meaningful, and you end up with, yes, disputes, but not ones that end up with anything particularly ridiculous being listed.

Whilst if you debate a similarly disputed issue in the humanities, the problem is that a bunch of idiots who don't have a clue what they are talking about jump in and insist that they know all about it. Look at people like Morton Devonshire and MONGO for example, who jump in to the whole "9/11 theories" when they actually have no clue about them, just like to delete the whole lot just out of ignorance. Experts are getting banned, expertise dismissed, and in the end the idiots are being pushed forward in the name of consensus and neutrality.

If you write in a way that any idiot can understand, any idiot will have an opinion. If you then go by consensus, then you have the consensus of those idiots.

What should be happening of course is that only experts should be writing on the topic, and it should then be dumbed down to a level that is acceptable to idiots, that they can understand.

Part of the problem with Wikipedia is that it insists on every version being written in a way that is already dumbed-down, thus encouraging people who don't have a clue what they are talking about to over-ride actual experts. This is fine when its about simplistic issues like which Pokemon character is best against fire-based attacks. But it is not good at all when you are talking about why the Weapons of mass destruction lie was used to justify attacks on Iraq.

Ultimately, what Wikipedia should be doing is encouraging people to demonstrate their biases, so that people can account for them. They might not necessarily get the most expert people in the world writing about a given subject, but as expert as they can get.

Thanks for your interesting and thought-provoking analysis, Wolfe.

Most problems with Wikipedia could be solved by tweaking its structure. The project really needs professional adminstrators who are prevented from making substantive edits, and whose job is merely to arbitrate and discipline. None of these people ought to be involved in making policy: they just enforce it. That's a pretty obvious separation of powers that most countries follow.

There clearly isn't a seperation of powers on Wikipedia. That alone has caused a lot of the abuse on WP. But how would preventing a class of adminstrators from making substantive edits prevent abuse of priveledges? I am not poo-pooing your idea (it's the first time I've heard this proposal), I'm just asking for further clarification.

What's killing Wikipedia is collusion. It's well known that the wisdom of crowds works best when each person approaches the subject as an individual. Once people start forming organized groups, you lose the benefit of decentralized authorship because there is cross pollution of information and groupthink. The ideal Wikipedia editor is someone who doesn't edit all the time, and who doesn't have the time or inclination to get involved in Wikipolitics. Editors should live in a private bubble, so to say.

This is sort of opposite to the way I've been editing Wikipedia; I've worked individually, but I've usually asked for back-up or advice on how to write many articles, either because I lack the expertise, or because I start thinking that my writing may be unclear, and want a second opinion. The idea that I was colluding, killing Wikipedia, hadn't occurred to me. I see your point about avoiding groupthink. But wouldn't one way to avoid groupthink be to ask for outside opinion, outside the organized group? "Peer review" on Wikipedia is mostly a joke, with untrained individuals making recommendations on how to "improve" an article. That's not an academic's definition of peer review at all. But Wikipedia's "peer review" system, I think, is good for one thing (and one thing only): improving clarity. Someone who hasn't read the article before is much more likely to spot areas where the article needs to be clarified.

I guess what I'm saying is that the people that are now thought to be the most valuable contributors to the encyclopedia – those who make thousands of substantive edits – are actually the ones who are least valuable to the project. The encyclopedia really needs to be rid of them. They are the ones who get involved in politics, cabals and groupthink, and thus they are the enemies of the wisdom of crowds.

I don't agree with this point. I think Wikipedia needs substantive edits, if only to clean up the mess that a collaborative editing system creates: articles which look like they were written by someone with Multiple Personality Disorder. Articles which are written in various styles, formats, and spelling conventions. Articles which go much too far in detail or are written too technically. There are a million of these articles, and they need substantial adjustments. Minor edits won't fix them.

If the goal of Wikipedia is to produce a great encyclopedia for readers, then a principle that has to be strictly adhered to is that editors have no rights. I mean that, no rights at all. The ban hammer needs to swing much more frequently than it does.

I'm really surprised this part of your post hasn't received much attention yet. You really believe people should be banned more frequently?


(edited for spelling)

This post has been edited by Firsfron of Ronchester:

Many of the most important subject matters are ones which people do not readily agree with. Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution was widely discredited at the time, and even now is hardly accepted as fact

Blissy, Evolution is accepted with remarkable consensus throughout the scientific community. No serious scientist disputes evolution. Among the general populace, there is very little debate about evolution, outside the provincial United States of America.

...Whilst if you debate a similarly disputed issue in the humanities, the problem is that a bunch of idiots who don't have a clue what they are talking about jump in and insist that they know all about it. Look at people like Morton Devonshire and MONGO for example, who jump in to the whole "9/11 theories" when they actually have no clue about them, just like to delete the whole lot just out of ignorance. Experts are getting banned, expertise dismissed ...

You consider the people who promote 9/11 conspiracy theories to be "experts"?

...Whilst if you debate a similarly disputed issue in the humanities, the problem is that a bunch of idiots who don't have a clue what they are talking about jump in and insist that they know all about it. Look at people like Morton Devonshire and MONGO for example, who jump in to the whole "9/11 theories" when they actually have no clue about them, just like to delete the whole lot just out of ignorance. Experts are getting banned, expertise dismissed ...

You consider the people who promote 9/11 conspiracy theories to be "experts"?

Of course they do. Basically everyone that gets blocked from Wikipedia is an expert. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif) No, just kidding. That wasn't nice.


But it was somewhat true.

...Whilst if you debate a similarly disputed issue in the humanities, the problem is that a bunch of idiots who don't have a clue what they are talking about jump in and insist that they know all about it. Look at people like Morton Devonshire and MONGO for example, who jump in to the whole "9/11 theories" when they actually have no clue about them, just like to delete the whole lot just out of ignorance. Experts are getting banned, expertise dismissed ...

You consider the people who promote 9/11 conspiracy theories to be "experts"?

I know.
(IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/sad.gif)

I'd rather spend a weekend locked in MONGO's elk lodge than encounter any of these so called "experts". Anyone anywhere who tries to counter that garbage deserves some sort of acknowledgement. And your profile on the Alex Jones website should be a great source of pride, Morton. The thing is, WP feeds this kind of nonsense by its fast and loose attitude to facts and reality. See my Richard Dawkins link on my signature for some more thoughts on this.

Thanks for your interesting and thought-provoking analysis, Wolfe.

YW. I'm glad you found some value in it.

This is sort of opposite to the way I've been editing Wikipedia; I've worked individually, but I've usually asked for back-up or advice on how to write many articles, either because I lack the expertise, or because I start thinking that my writing may be unclear, and want a second opinion.

Asking for advice on how to write an article is fine. Wikipedia should really employ professional writers to give advice to editors on subjects like this. It's colluding on content that is counter to the principle of the wisdom of crowds.

The idea that I was colluding, killing Wikipedia, hadn't occurred to me. I see your point about avoiding groupthink. But wouldn't one way to avoid groupthink be to ask for outside opinion, outside the organized group? "Peer review" on Wikipedia is mostly a joke, with untrained individuals making recommendations on how to "improve" an article. That's not an academic's definition of peer review at all. But Wikipedia's "peer review" system, I think, is good for one thing (and one thing only): improving clarity. Someone who hasn't read the article before is much more likely to spot areas where the article needs to be clarified.

As I understand it, the wisdom of crowds dispenses with the need for peer review. The whole point of it is that everyone is a peer. WOC won't work if that isn't the case. The problem occurs when people edit too much and seek others to help them support their edits (which is natural).

The proper attitude one should take to Wikipedia is this: "I've seen something I think is wrong, so I am going to change it. But I am not going to come back every day to revert it if someone else changes it. Rather I am simply going to leave it. If, over time, it survives the scrutiny of thousands of individuals, then it was a good edit. If it doesn't, then that's just too bad. What I can't do is keep insisting I am right and attempting to "own" that part of the article".

I don't agree with this point. I think Wikipedia needs substantive edits, if only to clean up the mess that a collaborative editing system creates: articles which look like they were written by someone with Multiple Personality Disorder. Articles which are written in various styles, formats, and spelling conventions. Articles which go much too far in detail or are written too technically. There are a million of these articles, and they need substantial adjustments. Minor edits won't fix them.

And Wikipedia should employ full time writers to clean up articles. I don't believe that there is such a thing as too much detail. What that usually means is that the article should be spun off into a number of sub articles.

It's not like Wikipedia couldn't afford this. It's one of the most visited sites on the internet, and wisely placed Google ads would enable it to fund a large number of professional administrators and clean up crew. These people would not be contributing content, but just helping to organize the contributions of the amateur editors more efficiently.

I'm really surprised this part of your post hasn't received much attention yet. You really believe people should be banned more frequently?

Yes. Every individual editor is dispensable.

As I understand it, the WOC works like this: you have a jar with a certain number of jellybeans in it, and you then get everyone in a room to make one individual guess as to how many jellybeans are in the jar. Contrary to expectation, it turns out that the average guess is startlingly accurate.

What messes this up is a situation where people are allowed multiple guesses and are allowed to start discussing the issue amongst themselves. In the first case, a very few people are likely to care a lot more than others and keep making more and more guesses, while everyone else gives up, and in the second case collusion will produce distortion via groupthink.

Wikipedia would operate in an optimal fashion if everyone edited occasionally, but no-one individual or group of individuals edited excessively. That is, of course, an ideal situation. You can't force all readers to edit, and you can't prevent individuals from editing more than others. What you can do is prevent excessive editing of individual topics by simply banning people who do that for a month or so. The worst POV articles on Wikipedia content wise are not caused by thousands of editors making small edits to them, but by a small number of editors making thousands of edits to them in the context of POV wars. That's not the wisdom of crowds, but the folly of a few.

Whilst if you debate a similarly disputed issue in the humanities, the problem is that a bunch of idiots who don't have a clue what they are talking about jump in and insist that they know all about it. Look at people like Morton Devonshire and MONGO for example, who jump in to the whole "9/11 theories" when they actually have no clue about them, just like to delete the whole lot just out of ignorance. Experts are getting banned, expertise dismissed, and in the end the idiots are being pushed forward in the name of consensus and neutrality.

I see the problem with the 9/11 conspiracies somewhat differently. You have two groups of people who are obsessed with the issue. The 9/11 truth movement take advantage of the open nature of the internet by having their relatively few members spam wikipedia and sites like digg with rubbish. People like MONGO see it as their own personal mission to wage war on the "truthers".

Both groups are wrong, and both groups are damaging Wikipedia. Wikipedia policy should be to minimize the number of edits by each individual editor to each particular article and to maximize the number of editors who edit each particular article.

At present, the entrenched "ownership" of certain articles by individuals or groups serves as a disincentive to casual readers to edit. But the whole point of the wisdom of crowds is that you want to encourage the casual editors to edit, and dissuade the obsessives. That way, the net of opinion is cast as wide as possible.

If the obsessives were prevented from editing 9/11 articles, you would quickly find that the 9/11 Truth stuff would be marginalized, because most people don't believe it. It's the nutters who are trying to ensure that the article matches their own personal beliefs for all time who are corrupting the articles. And as we all know, the people who tend to win in these contests are the kind of control freaks who aren't representative of the general population.

That's what I mean when I say that people who edit too much should be banned.

Whilst if you debate a similarly disputed issue in the humanities, the problem is that a bunch of idiots who don't have a clue what they are talking about jump in and insist that they know all about it. Look at people like Morton Devonshire and MONGO for example, who jump in to the whole "9/11 theories" when they actually have no clue about them, just like to delete the whole lot just out of ignorance. Experts are getting banned, expertise dismissed, and in the end the idiots are being pushed forward in the name of consensus and neutrality.

I see the problem with the 9/11 conspiracies somewhat differently. You have two groups of people who are obsessed with the issue. The 9/11 truth movement take advantage of the open nature of the internet by having their relatively few members spam wikipedia and sites like digg with rubbish. People like MONGO see it as their own personal mission to wage war on the "truthers".

Both groups are wrong, and both groups are damaging Wikipedia. Wikipedia policy should be to minimize the number of edits by each individual editor to each particular article and to maximize the number of editors who edit each particular article.

At present, the entrenched "ownership" of certain articles by individuals or groups serves as a disincentive to casual readers to edit. But the whole point of the wisdom of crowds is that you want to encourage the casual editors to edit, and dissuade the obsessives. That way, the net of opinion is cast as wide as possible.

If the obsessives were prevented from editing 9/11 articles, you would quickly find that the 9/11 Truth stuff would be marginalized, because most people don't believe it. It's the nutters who are trying to ensure that the article matches their own personal beliefs for all time who are corrupting the articles. And as we all know, the people who tend to win in these contests are the kind of control freaks who aren't representative of the general population.

That's what I mean when I say that people who edit too much should be banned.

I'm sorry Wolfe but you're just wrong. The "Wisdom of crowds" assumes that truth is a majoritarian construct, but the history of the world shows the madness of crowds to be the norm since crowds are easily manipulated especially when objective facts are hard to come by and rumors abound. The Internet does not make this easier because we have to consciously filter a large amount of crap put there by people with an agenda - an agenda that may not even be rational.

In this situation, the obsessives always win. Look at Usenet for an example of this: the place swarms not with people with knowledge but crackpots and paranoid schizophrenics.

Knowledge is not a democratic process which is decided on by majority. Truth is not arrived at by many ignorant people as an emergent property.

Your textbooks at college were not written by crowds, neither was your house or car built by whoever came in off the street and lent a hand. Why should you expect the very fabric of knowledge upon which we all rely suddenly emerge from many ignoramuses?

Its simply preposterous on its face.

Nobody would ever get into an airplane built by wikiengineers unless they were completely mad. Yet somehow we are supposed to approve of this massive intellectual virus that dominates the Internet search engines?

This post has been edited by JohnA:

I'm very much with John on that.

When I first arrived at WP, I assumed that people editing a particularly article would have a very good understanding of the topic, perhaps with some form of professional expertise. It became apparent that not only were most of the editors largely ignorant, but many of the people were simply warped! And they were getting away with it - protected by various pseudo-policies or their on-site social ability. Over 95% of editors weren't up to it, and almost every content edit I saw was poor. Simple as that.

When an obvious expert and good editor arrives on the scene, I wanted them to own the article. I didn't want goons and fools getting in there debasing the text. And having a misleading, ill-informed pile of tripe sitting at the top of a google search. But the failed consequences were inevitable. Knowledge and education actually deteriorates as a result.

This essay explains things better than I could here.

A comment I made recently made me realise that Wikipedia will collapse when wikipedians realise their folly and begin to leave it in droves.

What will be the warning signs? How will we recognise that the end is nigh?

It will die a cold death, by losing its credibility bit by bit when honest members will continue being banned and dishonest POV pushers, lobbyists, political activists etc., will be the only so-called users of good standing remaining.

Sounds like a recipe for hotting up and becoming more popular not dying a cold death, when there is a power vacuum there is always siomeone to fill it and POV pyushers, lobbysits and activists are well motivated by pushing their own thing to keep it becoming m more and more powerful - as if dry, objectivity were ever popular anyway, SqueakBox (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/ph34r.gif)

Many of the most important subject matters are ones which people do not readily agree with. Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution was widely discredited at the time, and even now is hardly accepted as fact, yet it has become a very important theory in discussing species, humanity and many other aspects of who people are. Sigmund Freud's various psychiatric theories were widely discredited, and continue to be widely discredited, yet he is perhaps the single most widely quoted philosopher in history, and his theories are used in many other more established theories elsewhere.

You aren't comparing Darwin with Freud are you? Darwin is one of the greatest if not the greatest scientist of all time. Most scientists agree with the full theory of evolution, even the few who believe in intelligent design still party adhere that there was also an evolutionary process. In short, the theory of evolution in full or in part is not disputed by any credible scientist.

I'm sorry Wolfe but you're just wrong.

Well that counts as an argument. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/wink.gif)

The "Wisdom of crowds" assumes that truth is a majoritarian construct,

No it doesn't, at least on the sane reading of the phrase. All it means in its basic form is that crowds operating under certain circumstances are likely to produce more accurate results than individuals acting on their own. "More accurate" in this sentence means "closer to the truth", where truth is simple correspondence to the facts (or defined in some other independent fashion). The Wisdom of Crowds is neither a theory of truth, nor an epistemological theory. In short: it isn't a philosophical thesis, but simply an empirical claim, which is borne out by various experiments.

but the history of the world shows the madness of crowds to be the norm since crowds are easily manipulated especially when objective facts are hard to come by and rumors abound.

Well, no one would doubt that is true in some cases, but it would be rash to assume it is true all the time. The Wisdom of Crowds thesis does not maintain that crowds are accurate all the time under any context, but that under certain conditions decentralized decision making can produce accurate results.

In particular, there has to be no collusion or groupthink. The core idea of the WOC is that each individual appraisal, occurring independently of the appraisals of others, and averaged with all other similar appraisals is likely to produce an average result that is accurate.

The Internet does not make this easier because we have to consciously filter a large amount of crap put there by people with an agenda - an agenda that may not even be rational.

There is far more truth than lies on the internet, just as there is far more truth than lies in everyday discourse, even if much of it is mundane.

In this situation, the obsessives always win. Look at Usenet for an example of this: the place swarms not with people with knowledge but crackpots and paranoid schizophrenics.

But they need not win in every situation. In carefully regulated environments their influence can be nullified or minimized. Look, I'm not assuming that Wikipedia could ever end up as an infallible repository of information, but that it could be more accurate than it currently is if the people running it actually understood what they were supposed to be doing.

Knowledge is not a democratic process which is decided on by majority. Truth is not arrived at by many ignorant people as an emergent property.

Whoever said that? I certainly didn't. You're confusing a theory of truth with an empirical claim about the accuracy of results, and bringing up emergence is irrelevant.

Your textbooks at college were not written by crowds, neither was your house or car built by whoever came in off the street and lent a hand. Why should you expect the very fabric of knowledge upon which we all rely suddenly emerge from many ignoramuses?

College textbooks are a bad example, since unless the author is someone like Aristotle, most of the claims made in them are heavily dependent on the work of other authors.

Its simply preposterous on its face.

So was the idea that the earth moved around the sun. The fact that some people found it preposterous did not count against its truth.

I don't see the point of your argument anyway. Wikipedia is supposedly built upon the principle of the wisdom of crowds. The only problem is that Wikipedia implements it very badly, probably because the people who run it don't really understand the limits of the idea. My argument is simply that, in order to achieve its supposed goal on its own principles, Wikipedia needs to be reorganized. I'm not sure whether it would actually work in the long run, but that is no excuse for making a half baked attempt, as is currently the case.

If you are going to conduct an experiment, you should always do it to maximize the chances of success. Wikipedia is not doing this right now.

Nobody would ever get into an airplane built by wikiengineers unless they were completely mad. Yet somehow we are supposed to approve of this massive intellectual virus that dominates the Internet search engines?

Whoever suggested this? WOC works in some cases and not in others. It may work in the case of Wikipedia if it is given the chance to do so, which it currently isn't being given.

As I said above. Wikipedia is pretty good when it comes to my area of expertise. It's certainly not wildly inaccurate compared to professional encyclopedias within the subject.

...Whilst if you debate a similarly disputed issue in the humanities, the problem is that a bunch of idiots who don't have a clue what they are talking about jump in and insist that they know all about it. Look at people like Morton Devonshire and MONGO for example, who jump in to the whole "9/11 theories" when they actually have no clue about them, just like to delete the whole lot just out of ignorance. Experts are getting banned, expertise dismissed ...

You consider the people who promote 9/11 conspiracy theories to be "experts"?

Experts in conspiracy theories perhaps. Here is actually where MONGO makes some sense, there is way too much spaces permitted on Wikipedia to those whole crappy conspirationist theories(something which won't be allowed in a true encyclopedia). It's pathetic that it is POV pushers like MONGO who are defending something which would be more defendable by others who don't have some ill intend.

This post has been edited by Xidaf:

Many of the most important subject matters are ones which people do not readily agree with. Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution was widely discredited at the time, and even now is hardly accepted as fact, yet it has become a very important theory in discussing species, humanity and many other aspects of who people are. Sigmund Freud's various psychiatric theories were widely discredited, and continue to be widely discredited, yet he is perhaps the single most widely quoted philosopher in history, and his theories are used in many other more established theories elsewhere.

You aren't comparing Darwin with Freud are you? Darwin is one of the greatest if not the greatest scientist of all time. Most scientists agree with the full theory of evolution, even the few who believe in intelligent design still party adhere that there was also an evolutionary process. In short, the theory of evolution in full or in part is not disputed by any credible scientist.

That's funny, because Freud is much more influential in everyday discourse than Darwin has ever been. I remember the first time I read Freud. I couldn't understand what the fuss was about since I already understood almost all of it, simply from living in a modern society.

I wouldn't call Darwin a great scientist either. The idea of natural selection is as old as the hills, and isn't particularly complicated. Darwin's contribution was simply to do the thousands of hours of work required to prove it beyond all reasonable doubt.

...Whilst if you debate a similarly disputed issue in the humanities, the problem is that a bunch of idiots who don't have a clue what they are talking about jump in and insist that they know all about it. Look at people like Morton Devonshire and MONGO for example, who jump in to the whole "9/11 theories" when they actually have no clue about them, just like to delete the whole lot just out of ignorance. Experts are getting banned, expertise dismissed ...

You consider the people who promote 9/11 conspiracy theories to be "experts"?

Experts in conspiracy theories perhaps. Here is actually where MONGO makes some sense, there is way too much spaces permitted on Wikipedia to those whole crappy conspirationist theories(something which won't be allowed in a true encyclopedia). It's pathetic that it is POV pushers like MONGO who are defending something which would be more defendable by others who don't have some ill intend.

Just because something is a conspiracy theory does not make it false. Conspiracies can, and have, occurred. If individuals were prevented from obsessively editing the same article over and over again, I think you would find that the bad conspiracy theories would be relegated to minor importance.

Many of the most important subject matters are ones which people do not readily agree with. Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution was widely discredited at the time, and even now is hardly accepted as fact, yet it has become a very important theory in discussing species, humanity and many other aspects of who people are. Sigmund Freud's various psychiatric theories were widely discredited, and continue to be widely discredited, yet he is perhaps the single most widely quoted philosopher in history, and his theories are used in many other more established theories elsewhere.

You aren't comparing Darwin with Freud are you? Darwin is one of the greatest if not the greatest scientist of all time. Most scientists agree with the full theory of evolution, even the few who believe in intelligent design still party adhere that there was also an evolutionary process. In short, the theory of evolution in full or in part is not disputed by any credible scientist.

That's funny, because Freud is much more influential in everyday discourse than Darwin has ever been. I remember the first time I read Freud. I couldn't understand what the fuss was about since I already understood almost all of it, simply from living in a modern society.

I wouldn't call Darwin a great scientist either. The idea of natural selection is as old as the hills, and isn't particularly complicated. Darwin's contribution was simply to do the thousands of hours of work required to prove it beyond all reasonable doubt.

Prior to Darwin the studies were more on inheritance than Darwin's natural selection. I disagree that he only ''proved'', he did more than this, he actually also introduce the evolutionist vision of animal behavior which has influenced behavioralists and shows much more expention and potential and used as a key for almost any observable behavior including in humans than Freud psychoanalism will ever do.

Just because something is a conspiracy theory does not make it false. Conspiracies can, and have, occurred. If individuals were prevented from obsessively editing the same article over and over again, I think you would find that the bad conspiracy theories would be relegated to minor importance.

Perhaps, but in this cases, most of it have nothing to do with reality. Anyway, I'll discuss about this later.

This post has been edited by Xidaf:

Look, let me make this very clear here - I live in Australia. What happens in America is of little concern to me - and that includes 9/11. I don't really care about it all that much one way or another. I have empathy, sure, but it doesn't affect me. It didn't happen here. I think that 9/11 is a localised American issue that had no business being in international news. It has, and I object to that. I get very irritated at that. I think that it has become far, far more important than it needed to have been.

Therefore, given that I have very little interest in it, I obviously don't know anything about the "9/11 truth movement" or any of the other movements. I don't know if it is true or not.

My passing interest is that it seems to be a complex issue, and whilst we can perhaps suggest some things that seem to be pretty obvious, there are a lot of unknowns, and henceforth so-called conspiracy theories belong in this kind of issue. Where there are unknowns, there are theories. This is fair and reasonable.

As for people being experts, obviously if you are pushing the theory yourself, then you are an expert on pushing the theory.

Please, guys, I get so fucking sick of people insisting that I am interested in something when I am not. I have zero interest in 9/11. I couldn't give a shit about it. I am interested in the war in Iraq because our country is involved in that. See the difference? Until Americans start to pay attention to what happens in Australia, I don't see why I should pay attention to what happens in America, in anything more than a passing way. I mean there are people that don't even know about PA or MV Tampa for heaven's sakes, two of the biggest issues in Australian history. So why should I care about something in America, in anything more than a passing way? I am sorry, Americans, but the world doesn't revolve around you. Many people like to be interested in their own country's affairs.

I think that 9/11 is a localised American issue that had no business being in international news.

I must admit that at first glance, your post looks absolutely insane, Bliss. But then, I guess that for a lot of us, if we lived somewhere like Tasmania, we wouldn't care a lot about these things either.

Fair dinkum, sport. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/biggrin.gif)

I must admit that at first glance, your post looks absolutely insane, Bliss. But then, I guess that for a lot of us, if we lived somewhere like Tasmania, we wouldn't care a lot about these things either.

Fair dinkum, sport. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/biggrin.gif)

What Blissy is missing of course is that the Iraq war probably wouldn't have happened were it not for 911.

I must admit that at first glance, your post looks absolutely insane, Bliss. But then, I guess that for a lot of us, if we lived somewhere like Tasmania, we wouldn't care a lot about these things either.

Fair dinkum, sport. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/biggrin.gif)

What Blissy is missing of course is that the Iraq war probably wouldn't have happened were it not for 911.

It's hard to tell really. Clearly Bush wanted to go into Iraq (he couldn't really have believed that they Iraq was related to 9/11, nor did anyone in the "intelligence community" genuinely believe in a threat from weapons of mass destruction, so far as I am aware).

Were it not for 9/11, I'm sure that he could have found a pretext.

What Blissy is missing of course is that the Iraq war probably wouldn't have happened were it not for 911.

Certainly the invasion of Afghanistan wouldn't have.

It's hard to tell really. Clearly Bush wanted to go into Iraq (he couldn't really have believed that they Iraq was related to 9/11, nor did anyone in the "intelligence community" genuinely believe in a threat from weapons of mass destruction, so far as I am aware).

Were it not for 9/11, I'm sure that he could have found a pretext.

"he couldn't really have believed that they Iraq was related to 9/11"

I wouldn't be so sure of that- Bush was not a bright spark to begin with. Add in the cocaine binging and alcoholism over 20 years and doubt he has much idea of what is going on. But then again, his basic Bush instinct of greed is probably still functioning.