Comments on: Wikipedia’s Plateau: A Sign of Elitism, Maturity, or Both?

By: David Crotty

David Crotty — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:24:45 +0000

I think the comments on the Guardian and CNet articles are particularly interesting and present a picture of what it's like for the uninitiated to try to participate in Wikipedia. The vast majority of the comments talk about adding factual information only to have it immediately deleted, how annoying it was, and how they'll never bother going back to add anything ever again. I think that's the common experience for most with participating in Wikipedia. The rules are arcane, and when they're enforced, no one really understands what happened. There's an insistence on following the form being more important than the content itself. It's fascinating that in the void of having an editorial board, the users formed one themselves. Nature abhors a vacuum I suppose. Although unlike most editorial boards who have a monetary stake in creating the best possible publication, the rewards offered by Wikipedia don't necessarily drive editors in this same direction. It seems more about power and status of the individual editor within the community. As one commenter pointed out, editors will often go in and revert a stack of recent additions without even reading them, because the quantity of edits you make as an individual adds to your status, and apparently that's more important than improving the quality of the material on Wikipedia. As such, it becomes the province of petty tyrants, and is heavily influenced by the opinions of whoever is the most persistent, the most willing to revert, rewrite, revert, rewrite, revert, rewrite until someone with a different opinion gives up.

By: Kent Anderson

Kent Anderson — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:08:55 +0000

Great citations. It makes me think that the “what” is now emerging as more important while the “how” was what generated the initial idea. Ultimately, the notion was to create a reliable general reference (the “what”), but do it in a new way (the “how”). While how it was done was novel and interesting, what it has become and represents is increasingly powerful and enduring. That’s why some traits of prior attempts at general references have been replicated. Still, the “how” is pretty powerful here — while 25% of occasional edits get reverted, that means ~75% don’t. That’s by far the majority, so while Wikipedia is more restrictive than ever, it’s still far less restrictive than the old encyclopedias.

By: Philip Davis

Philip Davis — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:57:27 +0000

Interesting analysis. This reminds me of Garvey and Griffith’s discussion of the evolution of scientific communication systems [1].

They maintain that when formal systems (say edited encyclopedias in this case) become too slow and restrictive, new informal systems (like Wikipedia) are likely to arise and compete with their formal counterparts [2].

However over time, these new informal systems tend to adopt more of the attributes of their formal counterparts — they become more restrictive and assume tighter gatekeeping characteristics. In the end, these informal systems become formalized communication channels and begin to suffer some of the same problems that they attempted to solve.

[1] Garvey, W. D., & Griffith, B. C. 1967. Scientific Communication as a Social System. Science 157: 1011-1016, http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.157.3792.1011

[2] G & G mostly concern themselves with journals and the rise of informal preprint services.

By: The Wiki Police « Jurn blog

The Wiki Police « Jurn blog — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:06:26 +0000

[...] to the world like a rookie and so attract the intolerance of the Wiki Police. The Scholarly Kitchen covers a debate happening now, which helps explain one of the reasons for a marked plateau in submissions… “The [...]