What is the life expectancy of Wikipedia?, What is the expiration date on your brain? Options

[Jon Awbrey]

{{blah blah blah}}

Translation — “Hooray 4 Nazi Science”

Jon

You mean the electron microscope? Yes, indeed. Can't find viruses without it.

Ah well, then, all is forgiven.

(Though there are apparently some viruses that escape its scope.)

Jon

[Zoloft]

I'm convinced that Wikipedia will quickly wither away following the day that Google decides to rank another knowledge aggregator (perhaps its own) higher.

The other factors will peel off in turn.

Now, the question remains, what can we do to help Google make that decision?

- Provide an alternative? So far, these efforts have failed.

- Point out the increasing stink? Ditto.

- Populate and popularize Google Knol? <- Hey, if someone developed an add-on social element...

[It's the blimp, Frank]

I think that Zoloft has defined the basic problem very clearly.

[A User]

I'm convinced that Wikipedia will quickly wither away following the day that Google decides to rank another knowledge aggregator (perhaps its own) higher.

The other factors will peel off in turn.

Now, the question remains, what can we do to help Google make that decision?

- Provide an alternative? So far, these efforts have failed.

- Point out the increasing stink? Ditto.

- Populate and popularize Google Knol? <- Hey, if someone developed an add-on social element...

I think a good indication which way Google goes is when they stop donating millions of dollars to the WMF. It's a pity Knol never really took off. Maybe if they launched it 3 years earlier than it did it may have made a difference.

[Shalom]

I'm convinced that Wikipedia will quickly wither away following the day that Google decides to rank another knowledge aggregator (perhaps its own) higher.

The other factors will peel off in turn.

Now, the question remains, what can we do to help Google make that decision?

- Provide an alternative? So far, these efforts have failed.

- Point out the increasing stink? Ditto.

- Populate and popularize Google Knol? <- Hey, if someone developed an add-on social element...

I think a good indication which way Google goes is when they stop donating millions of dollars to the WMF. It's a pity Knol never really took off. Maybe if they launched it 3 years earlier than it did it may have made a difference.

Knol never took off because it's structured to encourage the creation of walled gardens, not an integrated web of knowledge. Wikipedia, for all its flaws, is held together by links and categories that Knol, if it has now, it didn't seem to have when it started. I remember looking at Knol when it came out and saying to myself "this is useless, for all I care I could just write whatever on my blog."

[Jon Awbrey]

There is way too much of the WP:ALBATROSS hanging on this thread to keep it out of the WP:ANNEX for very much longer — I'm guessing that the original topic is probably a legacy from the days before we had a Meta*Forum — but I did make the effort to go looking for some bit of discussion that wouldn't be so Head-Up-The-Annex in its horizon, and my search was rewarded by this nugget of parable from Moulton and gem of x-egesis by Somey:

If you load enough weight on both sides
of an otherwise balanced teeter-totter,
you'll break it.

Can you expand on that?

I'd guess he's saying that as more people participate in WP conflicts, particularly content disputes over material that couldn't possibly be made objective or "neutral" to begin with, the likelihood of defection, quittings, and ultimately lockdown increases along with it.

Another point to be made, which is only slightly tangential to this one, is that this is one of those "frog in boiling water" situations. If a huge number of angry people, let's say 50,000 or more, suddenly showed up on WP within the space of a few days, and attacked everything in various ways, the current crop of established users would presumably be overwhelmed, and the entire database would probably have to be locked down to cope with it. At that point, the established users would go into overdrive to figure out what had just happened and how to fix the situation, and they'd probably have a workable "partial-lockdown" solution within a few days, and implementation within a few weeks. But obviously it won't occur that way — the process leading into a lockdown phase will be so gradual and subtle, they probably won't even realize what they're being led into as they gradually apply more and more "minor" restrictions and run more and more maintenance "bots."

To use the "balanced teeter-totter" analogy, if hundreds of people jumped on a see-saw all at once, it would break, and you'd just go and get bigger and better board — easy solution. Whereas, if you just keep adding people to the see-saw gradually over time, the board will still break, but people will have plenty of opportunities to say things like, "man, there are too many people on this see-saw," and "we've got to stop letting just anybody get on this thing," which in turn will inevitably lead to more arguing and general mayhem.

[MZMcBride]

I'm convinced that Wikipedia will quickly wither away following the day that Google decides to rank another knowledge aggregator (perhaps its own) higher.

Maybe.

Google doubtlessly contributed to the English Wikipedia's success. However, it's become pretty common practice for people to go actively looking for the Wikipedia article on a topic rather than searching for any type of relevant Web content. That is, plenty of searchers nowadays will append "wiki" to their query when the top result isn't (as they presumably expected it to be) a Wikipedia page or their initial query will include "wiki" in order to increase the likelihood that Wikipedia is a top result. You can see this phenomenon in search suggestions.

[CharlotteWebb]

That is, plenty of searchers nowadays will append "wiki" to their query when the top result isn't (as they presumably expected it to be) a Wikipedia page or their initial query will include "wiki" in order to increase the likelihood that Wikipedia is a top result.

Or the likelihood of being able to find it at all perhaps:



This post has been edited by CharlotteWebb: Wed 20th October 2010, 3:35pm

[Text]

Percent of global Internet users who visit X

Wikipedia: 13%
Youtube: 23%
Facebook: 33%
Gogl: 43%

After a strong force obscures wikipedia, it will fall down around 3% reach in 3 years (similarly to Myspace 2007-2010) and around position 20 on alexa

[Jon Awbrey]

Could one of the global mods please scale down that screencapture image above?

Thanks,

Jon

[thekohser]

Could one of the global mods please scale down that screencapture image above?

Thanks,

Jon

Doesn't look that large to me. What is with this board and images?

[Cock-up-over-conspiracy]

I don't know about the life expectancy of Wikipedia, but Rodhullandemu reckons that he might not make it until Xmas ... and is busy soliciting Paypal donations for food whilst hanging on desperately to pay for the DSL line so he can, contribute to Wikipedia until his last dying breath.

Someone please shoot the guy and put us out out of his misery.

Of course, the advantage to dying online is that you get to call other people Wankers without being banned for incivility. Poor Rod, Wikipedia is all he has left.

we should continue to build an encyclopedia using the time we have left to us, to the best of our ability.

The question isn't how long will the Wikipedia live, it is "how long will they be able to milk its corpse for trust funds, wages and speakers fees?

This post has been edited by Cock-up-over-conspiracy: Wed 20th October 2010, 3:10pm

[powercorrupts]

I don't know about the life expectancy of Wikipedia, but Rodhullandemu reckons that he might not make it until Xmas ... and is busy soliciting Paypal donations for food whilst hanging on desperately to pay for the DSL line so he can, contribute to Wikipedia until his last dying breath.

Someone please shoot the guy and put us out out of his misery.

Of course, the advantage to dying online is that you get to call other people Wankers without being banned for incivility. Poor Rod, Wikipedia is all he has left.

we should continue to build an encyclopedia using the time we have left to us, to the best of our ability.

The question isn't how long will the Wikipedia live, it is "how long will they be able to milk its corpse for trust funds, wages and speakers fees?

Jesus - I thought he was actually dying for a minute. Maybe he should crawl the local churches instead of wanking off on Wikipedia - he could continue taking the biscuit, and maybe restore a little vision along the way. £20 quid for two days till his benefits credit, and he belches up his toys on Wikipedia - what a total twat. Sounds like he's either got no friends, or he's used them all up. Or perhaps he just lost his head and is worming his way out of it, like you say.

It's funny how the Maquis de Sade of civility calls him up though - cursing is a fine art on Wikipedia - you need a reputation, scary mates and knack for escapology that's a little more subtle than begging for your supper. I wonder if he will get a telegraphed donation - it would be an interesting precedent if he does. He could get into more trouble for talking Kash than calling his colleagues "wankers": money should be dealt with strictly under the table on Wikipiedia.

Second thoughts - maybe he's just seen the Budget.

[gomi]

[Modnote: Recent posts to this old thread have been moved to the Tar Pit. Topic closed.]