The Use Of Pseudonyms Is a Prima Facie Symptom, Of Emotional, Mental, And Moral Dysfunction (EMAMD) Options Rating

[Jon Awbrey]

Resolved —

The Use Of Pseudonyms Is A Prima Facie Symptom Of Emotional, Mental, And Moral Dysfunction

'Nuff Said

Jon

Notice. Pseudonymaniacs Anonymous Meets Here Wednesday Mornings, 3:00 AM.

This post has been edited by Jon Awbrey: Sat 26th April 2008, 2:24pm

[Somey]

Year 2? — I thought it was 7 or 8.

Year 2 of this particular phase. WP'ers will tell you that Wikipedia isn't "finished" and never really will be, and I suppose that's true to some extent, but late 2005 was the beginning of the final massive growth spurt, during which nearly all the non-esoteric subjects were "taken." After that, it became increasingly difficult, even for specialists, to find things to write new articles about, other than topics related to current events. (Such as new episodes of Doctor Who, and so on.)

After all this time, you continue to labor under the illusion that their principal business is building an encyclopedia?

Of course not - I've never labored under that illusion. Nevertheless, there are still some useful, if not accurate, articles on Wikipedia, and people are still writing and maintaining them, though at this point they're mostly maintaining. As you've said yourself, you have to allow for some legitimacy in the game, or you won't lure in enough marks to keep it going. What's more, if you drop the pretense of legitimacy, the existing marks will tip, and you'll have to hoof it out of there.

[everyking]

Year 2? — I thought it was 7 or 8.

Year 2 of this particular phase. WP'ers will tell you that Wikipedia isn't "finished" and never really will be, and I suppose that's true to some extent, but late 2005 was the beginning of the final massive growth spurt, during which nearly all the non-esoteric subjects were "taken." After that, it became increasingly difficult, even for specialists, to find things to write new articles about, other than topics related to current events. (Such as new episodes of Doctor Who, and so on.)

In the subject areas I work on, there are so many new articles to write, it's staggering. You could give me a team, and I could assign each member of the team several new articles to write each day (including expanding substubs, since that's essentially writing a new article) related to politics in developing countries, and I'm confident we could keep going for a long, long time, even without factoring in anything new from the world post-2008.

[Somey]

In the subject areas I work on, there are so many new articles to write, it's staggering. You could give me a team, and I could assign each member of the team several new articles to write each day (including expanding substubs, since that's essentially writing a new article) related to politics in developing countries, and I'm confident we could keep going for a long, long time, even without factoring in anything new from the world post-2008.

Pursuant to what Jon just posted above, I sort of misstated that thing I said above. The problem in terms of growth vs. maintenance has nothing to do with the problem of finding individual article titles to write, it's all about topic-area territorialism. The WP:OWN rules are never going to be enough to even put a serious dent in that, particularly if you see it as a perceptual problem more than an actual one.

What's more, stubs don't really count, because the newly-arrived mark might just as easily assume that someone else has created the stub specifically to mark out their territory, which presumably will then be defended. That's why each stub has a template on it saying "you can help Wikipedia by expanding it," but that's not enough either. People want virgin territory, topic areas that haven't been despoiled by others having gotten there first to plant the flag. And there's precious little virgin territory left on WP, if any, other than a given current event that just happened. Even there, you end up with "land rush" scenarios where people vie to be the one who writes the first article about a newly-occurring event or object.

Anyway, this is getting a bit off-topic, and I wouldn't blame Jon for wanting to split the thread. However, it might be more relevant if we take the idea a bit further, and ask if a new mark entering the game is more or less likely to dive in when he/she is using his/her real name, and the people already in control of that topic area/territory are not. I'd say less likely, but I'm something of a cynic when it comes to stuff like that.