The decline of the WP "Community", Light at the end of this dark tunnel? Options

[Kato]

Back in December, we briefly touched upon some statistics which showed a decline in the number of new Wikipedia users, and a tailing off of editors with all number of edits -- basically, a decline in the community across the board.

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=21890

It was hard to know how seriously to take these statistics, but the other other day, I listened to a broadcast of Wikipedia Weekly (Andrew Lih's well produced but difficult to stomach pro-Wikipedia radio show). Lih and his on-air "zoo" of cohorts, high on Jimbo-Juice, discuss the findings at some length.

Their comments make quite interesting listening. Through the wailing and gnashing of teeth, it is clear that they are concerned by this drop off. One Wiki-pundit asserts that if the community fails, the project dies. Lih himself compares WP to a shark that needs to keep moving, or it will die. Another pro-WP voice bemoans the statistics as "the most depressing thing I've read in all my time at WP" (which, given the hurtful strife and multi-layered defamation WP has unleashed on the world is galling in itself).

Interestingly, it is agreed that February-March 2007 was the peak of WP, and it has been downhill ever since. The statistical figures back that up, and this ties in with anecdotal evidence from pretty much all Wiki-watchers.

Lih noted that activity on all WP fronts declined from that time, including on mailing lists and so on. At the Review, we can confirm that the community began to eat itself around that time, and a third phase of unending internal conflict had replaced the peak era (which was 2005-2007). Somey here has talked long and hard of the "Maintenance Phase", the inevitable period when new articles are hard to find, and where Wikipedios spend their time chasing their tails in an ever more meaningless tasks.

As noted by Greg Kohs and others here, February-March 2007 also coincides with the Essjay scandal. Greg wrote:

The Essjay incident appeared to have an adverse impact on daily financial donations to the Wikimedia Foundation. The downward slide closely mirrored a number of ethically questionable decisions by key administrators of Wikipedia.

In 2007, the wool was removed from the eyes of some of the media, and it seems now that even the most pro-Wikipedia pieces are laced with negatives. And the public at large are much more skeptical of the site than they were 2 years ago.

So, we've discussed the demise of WP many times before here, but now, Wiki-evangelists and Cultists like those on Wikipedia Weekly are beginning to take the decline seriously.

Is this it?

[Kato]

Here are some old Somey posts about the "Maintenance Phase".

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.

(Bolding mine)

So they waste it all spending hours of their lives every day reverting people and trying to get things deleted?

Why not, if they've already written everything they feel they can, and gotten the articles they're interested in well into shape, to last with minimal editorial maintenance over time? I'd imagine it's a lot more fun than participating in "policy discussions."

You mustn't oversimplify this issue, Lamont - these are not people just showing up out of nowhere and wanting to delete things just for the sake of deleting them, or because they're offended by "cruft" proliferation. For the most part, they're established users who have seen the problems of maintaining a 2-million page database first-hand. Every one of those 2 million articles is a potential problem that would, and often does, have to be solved by human intervention - in many cases, LOTS of human intervention.

Obviously in an ideal world, you could build a database of a zillion articles, and all of them would be consistently improved over time until they couldn't be improved any further, at which point nobody would touch them. But realistically that just doesn't happen, mostly because the perception of content-quality is always relative, and perfection is always unachievable. (And, of course, there are people who just like to "vandalize.")

WP has been firmly into its maintenance phase for well over a year now - in fact, I would say two years. As the ability of new users to stake out territory by writing new articles is diminished, WP will be left with a relatively small, and (due to burnout, etc.) shrinking, hard core of committed maintainers, fighting an ever-growing army of spammers and POV pushers. Over time, the database will have to be increasingly locked down to deal with it - there's almost no way to avoid that. Deletionism actually postpones the lockdown phase by making maintenance less of a drain on human resources.

This is also why it's so important that people like JzG, Durova, and other corrosive "black hat" personalities are "shown the door" - in the long term, the "white hat" Wikipedians can't allow anything that causes their core group of maintainers to shrink. On the contrary, they should actually reach out to people in business, government, and academia to help ensure that standards are maintained as long as possible, even if it means making a few concessions, such as opt-out for biographies, noindexing of specific pages or categories, and so on.

Will they actually do any of that, though? Of course not - these are not long-term thinkers we're dealing with here.

On top of everything else, the use of pseudonyms quickly issues in the circumstance that the pseuds in question have nothing else to talk about but pseudonyms.

I actually see this as a sort of "sub-phase" in the Wikipedia life cycle, one that impacts this website as well as other sites that are related to WP in some way, or that include significant portions of the WP community. Another term for it might be "Phase transition factor."

Essentially, I've always posited that the Maintenance Phase (which we're in now) would eventually give way to the "Lockdown Phase," and that this would occur over the course of roughly 5 years (we're now getting towards the end of Year 2). But the mechanism by which this will occur is interesting in itself. My assumption is that three main issues will drive the transition: Editor-gang politics, the leadership vacuum, and the destabilizing effects of anonymity.

It may be that the anonymity problem is the thing they try to deal with first, except that it's a veritable certainty that they won't "solve" it in the sense of making it either go away, or figuring out some magical means of ensuring that the system isn't abused by sock puppeteers, meat puppeteers, or members of the Boston Meat Sox. The only way to even allow for it is some degree of lockdown applied to the actual content - i.e., what I'm assuming will happen.

If they were like, super-smart, they'd deal with the leadership vacuum first, because that's at least theoretically solvable (even if, from a practical perspective, it isn't any more solvable than the rest of their problems). If they had effective leadership, they'd at least have something to help them deal with the other issues - otherwise, they might as well just go ahead and make the whole database read-only now, if only to save time.

[dtobias]

Phase one (2003-2005): The idealists, the encyclopedists, the basically honest gnome types. Excemplified by Larry Sanger. They got deposed by..

Phase two (2005-2007): The power gamers, the clique builders, the POV pushers, the hidden agenda figures. Best exemplified by SlimVirgin.

Phase three (2007-2008): The rebels vs The power gamers. The rise of the community gadflys who contribute little to content, but are engaged in an ongoing war with Phase Two. Best exemplified by Dan Tobias.

Hmm... I'm not sure I saw this when it was first posted last year... I'm touched to be made the exemplar of a phase.

But since the project started in 2001, is there a phase zero before that?

[Kato]

Phase one (2003-2005): The idealists, the encyclopedists, the basically honest gnome types. Excemplified by Larry Sanger. They got deposed by..

Phase two (2005-2007): The power gamers, the clique builders, the POV pushers, the hidden agenda figures. Best exemplified by SlimVirgin.

Phase three (2007-2008): The rebels vs The power gamers. The rise of the community gadflys who contribute little to content, but are engaged in an ongoing war with Phase Two. Best exemplified by Dan Tobias.

Hmm... I'm not sure I saw this when it was first posted last year... I'm touched to be made the exemplar of a phase.

Sorry Dan, but that was a year ago. The editor who best exemplifies the "rebels", and is the embodiment of a community eating itself, is, of course, Giano. You've been usurped.

Today, Giano's ally Geogre wrote during yet another Giano war:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=269511007

Jimbo's reaction is unhelpful, if not hysterical. It is ill-advised, at best, and seems to prove again that the best label these days for Jimbo is less "god-king" and more Jimbo ðe unræd. That David Gerard or FT2 is all over the blog making a tangle of his argument and spitting bile at everyone who dares question him only ensures that he is unreadable and unbelievable...

blah... blah... blah (added by me)

A community dominated by individuals like Giano, Geogre, David Gerard and FT2 is bound to self-implode. Who would stick around if they were the people calling the shots? Is it any wonder editor numbers are tailing off?

[Jon Awbrey]

Wut A Yuck — DT is a rebel like WAS is a rebel. Folks like that are the Jesters in Jimbo's Court. They are tolerated only because everyone knows they will never make any real dent on the overall warp of things.

Ja Ja (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/boing.gif)

[Random832]

Phase three (2007-2008)(IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/mad.gif)/b] The rebels vs The power gamers. The rise of the community gadflys who contribute little to content, but are engaged in an ongoing war with Phase Two. Best exemplified by Dan Tobias.

Hmm... I'm not sure I saw this when it was first posted last year... I'm touched to be made the exemplar of a phase.

Sorry Dan, but that was a year ago. The editor who best exemplifies the "rebels", and is the embodiment of a community eating itself, is, of course, Giano. You've been usurped.

Really? For one thing, he doesn't really fit the "contribute little to content" part - and he's also more than willing to side with the "cabal" when it suits him (see e.g. his about-face on the Peter Damian issue). I think we may be seeing the beginnings of a phase four.

[Sarcasticidealist]

As the ability of new users to stake out territory by writing new articles is diminished...

I think the evidence is that something's happening (for exactly what, see Stills et al), but I can't buy the above as an explanation. At a guess, I'd say 95% of the articles on Wikipedia fit the following criteria:
i. could benefit from a complete overhaul, and
ii. do not have anybody "protecting" then who would interfere with a complete overhaul.

For example, I'm working mostly on biographies of the Premiers of Alberta these days - not a major subject, but still relatively high profile in a Wikipedia in which everybody who ever so much as sat in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta gets an article. These articles have all existed for some years, but in stubbish forms with the haphazardly arbitrary selection of information so familiar to us all. I have been rewriting them from scratch, in much expanded form - to all intents and purposes, what I am doing is writing new articles (and, in so doing, I suppose staking out territory, though that's not how I'd have characterized it). There's *plenty* of room to write new articles, and most of the places that you can do that won't run you afoul of any POV pushers or other nuisances. The shrinking contributor base and increased infighting (I'm taking the latter as a given; I haven't seen any quantifiable data, any don't have any strong impressions of my own) must come from elsewhere.

[Jon Awbrey]

(IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/sleep.gif)

So you say you're trying to put the Premiers of Alberta in a can?

Ja Ja (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/boing.gif)

[Sarcasticidealist]

So you say you're trying to put the Premiers of Alberta in a can?

Well, somebody has to; I've called all the druggists in the area, and none of them have Arthur Sifton in a can.

[Bottled_Spider]

The editor who best exemplifies the "rebels", and is the embodiment of a community eating itself, is, of course, Giano. You've been usurped.

Today, Giano's ally Geogre wrote during yet another Giano war:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=269511007

Jimbo's reaction is unhelpful, if not hysterical. It is ill-advised, at best, and seems to prove again that the best label these days for Jimbo is less "god-king" and more Jimbo ðe unræd. That David Gerard or FT2 is all over the blog making a tangle of his argument and spitting bile at everyone who dares question him only ensures that he is unreadable and unbelievable...

Geogre's way off target in comparing Jimbo to Ethelred the Unready. I've always thought of him as a sort of Tumbledown Dick with staying power. Like a turd that won't flush.

[Cla68]

Phase one (2003-2005): The idealists, the encyclopedists, the basically honest gnome types. Excemplified by Larry Sanger. They got deposed by..

Phase two (2005-2007): The power gamers, the clique builders, the POV pushers, the hidden agenda figures. Best exemplified by SlimVirgin.

Phase three (2007-2008): The rebels vs The power gamers. The rise of the community gadflys who contribute little to content, but are engaged in an ongoing war with Phase Two. Best exemplified by Dan Tobias.

Hmm... I'm not sure I saw this when it was first posted last year... I'm touched to be made the exemplar of a phase.

Sorry Dan, but that was a year ago. The editor who best exemplifies the "rebels", and is the embodiment of a community eating itself, is, of course, Giano. You've been usurped.

Today, Giano's ally Geogre wrote during yet another Giano war:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=269511007

Jimbo's reaction is unhelpful, if not hysterical. It is ill-advised, at best, and seems to prove again that the best label these days for Jimbo is less "god-king" and more Jimbo ðe unræd. That David Gerard or FT2 is all over the blog making a tangle of his argument and spitting bile at everyone who dares question him only ensures that he is unreadable and unbelievable...

blah... blah... blah (added by me)

A community dominated by individuals like Giano, Geogre, David Gerard and FT2 is bound to self-implode. Who would stick around if they were the people calling the shots? Is it any wonder editor numbers are tailing off?

Most of the editors who contribute to Wikipedia I can't imagine are that familiar with the ongoing wiki-political power games. I think the situation with Wikipedia and it's future are more complex.

The MilitaryHistory project, for example, is still plowing ahead at seemingly the same pace. Although the number of editors involved in building military history articles hasn't increased greatly, they also don't seem to have decreased. The editors attracted to writing complete military history articles, like me, I believe are drawn to Wikipedia because we really enjoy having a forum to explore our subject of interest. The fact that the military history project is fairly well organized and led makes it work even better. The Japan wiki-project is also well organized and led, with many highly motivated and helpful editors.

There is much less support for other editors in other topics. The A-class review forum in the Biography project, for example, has an article listed there which has been waiting for someone to review it for about eight months now. Clearly, that project is disfunctional. That is probably the case with most of the other topic areas in Wikipedia. The editors working in those topics realize after awhile that they have no support from anyone. If they have a question or issue, they're on their own. Thus, I can imagine that editing Wikipedia will cease to be fun or fulfilling for them after awhile and they'll get bored or disillusioned and leave. If they encounter a POV pusher and take their issue to ANI, they'll then watch in disgust or confusion as their concern gets ignored, or else several admins will argue amongst themselves about it without ultimately taking any action.

So, certain areas of Wikipedia will continue to function well for the foreseeable future, like military history. Others are falling apart. Will the disfunctional areas eventually torpedo the entire project? Perhaps so. That's why I save the articles I've written to my hard drive.

[thekohser]

It looks like Jimbo is waking up to a more nervous outlook on Wikipedia.

[Jon Awbrey]

It looks like Jimbo is waking up to a more nervous outlook on Wikipedia.

Let me cut to the chase for ya —

Mumbai Jumbai

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

[anklet with the pom-pom]

Back in December, we briefly touched upon some statistics which showed a decline in the number of new Wikipedia users, and a tailing off of editors with all number of edits -- basically, a decline in the community across the board.

...

So, we've discussed the demise of WP many times before here, but now, Wiki-evangelists and Cultists like those on Wikipedia Weekly are beginning to take the decline seriously.

Is this it?

Having been here long enough to know that posts like yours usually invite a combination of over-analysis as well as sarcasm that usually goes quite off-topic, I'd like to add my take on why Wikipedia is in the decline it is.

(1) It's a generally unfriendly place. Newbies are often met with scorn and immediate reverts as well as suspicion. In short, if you've never edited before and happen upon an article that's popular, you will likely be told to go away (even if not that bluntly) by those who watch that article and have taken ownership of it. The encyclopedia anyone can edit has become an encyclopedia no one new can edit.

(2) There's no consistency. Admins, rules, standards, etc...none of these things have consistency. And that inconsistency is completely out of control. Hypocrisy in administrative action and behavior is rampant. Long time editors are leaving by the handfuls because of the lack of consistency in how things are run. New editors are quickly discouraged by the lack of consistency. If Wikipedia were a corporation, they would have been out of business long ago. It's chaos run amok and no one at the top seems to care.

(3) The cabal definitely exists (even if in little sub-groups) and has turned WP into a social network and a fancier version of Usenet. Social networks and Usenet are okay when they are identified as such, but in an environment such as WP when the stated mission is to "build an encyclopedia", then the social networking will eventually bring it down like a cancer that refuses to stop growing.

(4) The admins and places like AN/I and the so-called process of "consensus" are a joke and serve no purpose other than to feed egos and build mini-kingdoms. 'Nuf said about that.

(5) Banning and blocking are out of control and only serve to create a bigger problem because editors are getting pissed off at unjust blocks and bans and just return as socks. Socks then create a bigger problem and hassle and time-waster for admins and C/Us. I would be willing to wager that more time is spent by admins and self-appointed wiki-cops on chasing socks than editing the encyclopedia to make it better. What's the point in that?

That's all I have for now - anyone here is welcome to build on this synopsis.

This post has been edited by anklet with the pom-pom:

[powercorrupts]

Back in December, we briefly touched upon some statistics which showed a decline in the number of new Wikipedia users, and a tailing off of editors with all number of edits -- basically, a decline in the community across the board.

...

So, we've discussed the demise of WP many times before here, but now, Wiki-evangelists and Cultists like those on Wikipedia Weekly are beginning to take the decline seriously.

Is this it?

Having been here long enough to know that posts like yours usually invite a combination of over-analysis as well as sarcasm that usually goes quite off-topic, I'd like to add my take on why Wikipedia is in the decline it is.

(1) It's a generally unfriendly place. Newbies are often met with scorn and immediate reverts as well as suspicion. In short, if you've never edited before and happen upon an article that's popular, you will likely be told to go away (even if not that bluntly) by those who watch that article and have taken ownership of it. The encyclopedia anyone can edit has become an encyclopedia no one new can edit.

(2) There's no consistency. Admins, rules, standards, etc...none of these things have consistency. And that inconsistency is completely out of control. Hypocrisy in administrative action and behavior is rampant. Long time editors are leaving by the handfuls because of the lack of consistency in how things are run. New editors are quickly discouraged by the lack of consistency. If Wikipedia were a corporation, they would have been out of business long ago. It's chaos run amok and no one at the top seems to care.

(3) The cabal definitely exists (even if in little sub-groups) and has turned WP into a social network and a fancier version of Usenet. Social networks and Usenet are okay when they are identified as such, but in an environment such as WP when the stated mission is to "build an encyclopedia", then the social networking will eventually bring it down like a cancer that refuses to stop growing.

(4) The admins and places like AN/I and the so-called process of "consensus" are a joke and serve no purpose other than to feed egos and build mini-kingdoms. 'Nuf said about that.

(5) Banning and blocking are out of control and only serve to create a bigger problem because editors are getting pissed off at unjust blocks and bans and just return as socks. Socks then create a bigger problem and hassle and time-waster for admins and C/Us. I would be willing to wager that more time is spent by admins and self-appointed wiki-cops on chasing socks than editing the encyclopedia to make it better. What's the point in that?

That's all I have for now - anyone here is welcome to build on this synopsis.

1. "It's a generally unfriendly place."

I agree with that, and it's largely to do with the Machiavellian quality of people involved. When you find charm on Wikipedia, is usually means someone wants something. They are happy with it being a kind of Facebook, but they don't want floods of quiet, politely academic people involved as they would try and finish the thing, and have genuine grounds to complain when they see the slapdash way their specialist subjects are being treated.

2. "If Wikipedia were a corporation, they would have been out of business long ago. It's chaos run amok and no one at the top seems to care."

Wikipedia is part of a corporation, and the business model involves chaos. They care allright - they profit from all the confusion. It's just a balancing act to them, and their main concern is to make Wikipedia less finanically reliable on a continuing stream of 'gratitude' donations that are largely due to the convenience factor supplied by Google's favourable page ranking.

3. "The cabal definitely exists (even if in little sub-groups) "

Aside from those little cabals, there is The Cabal. How many of them understand the top level motivations and how many of them just want to kiss their arses doesn't matter: they slyly club together for the good of the sinister Project, and to achieve each other's aims.

4. The admins and places like AN/I and the so-called process of "consensus" are a joke and serve no purpose other than to feed egos and build mini-kingdoms. 'Nuf said about that.

The admin(+) class is certainly full of self-serving egos. If you ask all of them individually to explain Wikipedia, or answer a prepared set of questions, they would all give seriously different answers. In fact, that would really show what a bunch of fuckwits they all are. Rlevse, though an extreme example of ineptitude, is just the tip of the iceberg.

5. " I would be willing to wager that more time is spent by admins and self-appointed wiki-cops on chasing socks than editing the encyclopedia to make it better. What's the point in that?"

It's just not meant to be a great encyclopedia. Do you think they want 'finished' articles (or as good as complete) ? It's a fucking business.

This post has been edited by powercorrupts:

[Jon Awbrey]

It looks like The Wikipedia Review has passed into the Non-Maintenance Phase.

Fold up your pumpkins and go home …

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)

[Peter Damian]

It looks like The Wikipedia Review has passed into the Non-Maintenance Phase.

Fold up your pumpkins and go home …

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)

What are you doing here? Why are you at the Wikipedia Review?

[anklet with the pom-pom]

It looks like The Wikipedia Review has passed into the Non-Maintenance Phase.

Fold up your pumpkins and go home …

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)

What are you doing here? Why are you at the Wikipedia Review?

Interesting question. I've wondered that about him numerous times.

[Jon Awbrey]

It looks like The Wikipedia Review has passed into the Non-Maintenance Phase.

Fold up your pumpkins and go home …

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)

What are you doing here? Why are you at the Wikipedia Review?

That should be obvious to anyone who actually reads a moderate sample of my substantive posts over the last 4 years.

That it isn't obvious to some people is probably a reflection of the fact that some people have lost the capacity to read.

Me, I blame Wikipedia for that …

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)

[Zoloft]

It looks like The Wikipedia Review has passed into the Non-Maintenance Phase.

Fold up your pumpkins and go home …

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)

What are you doing here? Why are you at the Wikipedia Review?

That should be obvious to anyone who actually reads a moderate sample of my substantive posts over the last 4 years.

That it isn't obvious to some people is probably a reflection of the fact that some people have lost the capacity to read.

Me, I blame Wikipedia for that …

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)

So, your response is, "Go back and read the last four years of my posts, you post-literate swine..."

I've looked at your posts. You're a scholar, a critic, and have elevated criticism of Wikipedia to a level so riddled with obscure symbolism, initialisms, necroed threads, and arrogant dismissals of newcomers that your purpose has become obscure.