QUOTE(Kelly Martin @ Sat 9th January 2010, 5:56pm)
QUOTE(SB_Johnny @ Sat 9th January 2010, 11:04am)
Is there any evidence to back my suspicion that the "admin class" is getting younger and younger?
Nothing with statistical validity; the proportion of admins whose ages we know is small, and there's no reason to believe the ones we do know about form a representative sample.
However, it would not surprise me in the least; Wikipedia is having an increasingly difficult time recruiting mature adults to its editor base, and so their editor base is steadily getting younger as people grow up and leave.
I would have expected the widespread recession to have increased participation in Wikipedia by experienced adults unable to find work, but I suspect the fact that it's difficult to use Wikipedia to build a reputation that can then be leveraged into finding employment has a lot to do with that. If you're a writer and seeking employment on that basis, you'd be better off writing a blog or writing on a site that seeks to showcase, instead of conceal, individual effort. And if your expertise is in some other area, you're better off on an "answers" site of some sort where you can show off your individual knowledge; again Wikipedia's culture of suppressing individual editorial identity dilutes what value it might otherwise have as a professional networking site. Not to mention the impact of its "COI" policy (which, like most Wikipedia policies, has almost nothing to with what it's named) on people whose participation in Wikipedia is determined (rightly or wrongly) to be for "self-serving" purposes.
It is a shame that the Foundation has never engaged in any type of psychological and sociological analysis of the motivations for, and attraction in, editing. If it had done so, it might have been able to tweek its interfaces and strategy to make a better product.
Don't get me wrong, the current model certainly works and has produced a remarkable volunteer base that have created a unique and unexpected product. It is just that having stumbled on this formula, Wikipedia has shown little or no ability to work with the engine it has created to better the output. It is as if someone, having discovered that putting sails on a boat makes it go very fast, then utterly refuses to consider the benefits of a rudder, or the advantages of having retractable sails, on the basis that "sails got us where we are today, thus we need to resist anything that impedes or threatens that brilliant breakthrough". So speed triumphs over direction. You get to go somewhere, you've just no control over where. It is a remarkable ideological fundamentalism from a project that supposedly prides itself in pragmatism.
The problem basically is that the Foundation have entirely lost sight of the goal. They don't know what they are for - and that combined with their nervousness about intevening in communities (for reasons of legal liability and ideology) means that the Foundation has become no more than "people who runs wikis" and the only criterion is that the Wikis must embody the initial ideology (NPOV etc) at least in name. If the Foundation had really accepted the Jimbo-Jingoism that they were about creating brilliant reference works for all the world - and that wiki was not the raison d'etre but mearly the brilliant means to an end,then things would have been different.
The best articles are written by a very few people. There ought to be a way to encourage good writers to write an article using their own name, and then offer it to Wikipedia. Sure, the text would need to be released under the GFDL and be editable by others, but there's no reason why the article could not have a line at the bottom saying "this article is based on work provided by John Smith" and then link to the original verson he authored. We do that with articles based on old Britanica articles, so no reason why not here. John Smith can then add the article to his CV - or place it on his blog, with a means of authenticating his authorship, without impeding wikipedia's developement. Something like this already sort of happens on FAs - the best of these are mono-authored - and then tweeked for MOS by others. The pity is that this high-quality writing in configned to obsurantist articles where only one person cares enough to write it.
This post has been edited by Doc glasgow: Sat 9th January 2010, 6:35pm
Global sysops, A good idea or not?
Trick cyclist Global sysops Thu 7th January 2010, 12:42pm
Thu 7th January 2010, 12:42pm
