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

[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? 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:

[Wolfe]

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)

[Firsfron of Ronchester]

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: