[p2p-research] the wikipedia decline

[Michel Bauwens]

Paul, there is no shortage of articles at all, that's a myth, just like
saying the world needs only five computers .. there are thousands or even
millions of microcommunities with topics dear to their heart which are
systematically expunged from the wikipedia.

Why would this be necessary in an infinite medium? Whom does an extra
article hurt.

What artificial scarcity has done however is create a power base for the
selectors, who are typically less knowledgeable about the articles than the
authors, and create such a high treshold for inclusion (which now always
includes political fights with the powerful editor clique), that most
volunteers just call it quits. Without the support of the p2p-f community,
my own article would already have been deleted twice ...

Michel

On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 10:51 AM, Paul D. Fernhout <
pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:

> Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
>
>> Just for a personal example, yesterday, out of nostalgia in the context of
>> the current student occupations of buildings, I went to look up an old
>> science fiction society at Princeton University that now seems not to be
>> around anymore. Google showed me there was a Wikipedia page on it, I went
>> there, because I've been wondering what happened to the group who brought
>> James P. Hogan to campus where I met him, and imagine my disappointment to
>> see the page had been deleted:
>>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity,_Ltd
>> """
>> This page has been deleted. The deletion and move log for the page are
>> provided below for reference.
>>    * 08:34, 15 January 2009 Redvers (talk | contribs) deleted "Infinity,
>> Ltd" ‎ (A7: No indication that the article may meet guidelines for
>> inclusion)
>>
>> """
>>
>> The science fiction society I belonged to at SUNY Stony Brook is still
>> going strong though, with lots of content on the web, and even a Wikipedia
>> article on it:
>>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_Fiction_Forum
>>
>> Just pointing out an inconsistency. I hope this does not get the other
>> article deleted too. :-(
>>
>
> I had mentioned separately a slashdot article from today on Wikipedia and
> the WSJ article, and here is a comment by someone than is very insightful
> about this issue:
>  http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1457098&cid=30227440
> "When 'deletionists' destroy the work people are putting in, it's not
> surprising when the people who have put that work into Wikipedia leave the
> site. There's only a finite amount of things that can be written about and
> as Wikipedia progresses, the articles that are created must become more and
> more obscure. But with those kinds of articles effectively banned from
> Wikipedia, the only editors it needs around are those that upkeep the
> existing articles."
>
> That idea explains a lot -- both why that web page on "Infinity, Ltd." got
> added (people are still stigmergically building at the edges), and also why
> it got deleted (almost anything left to add now is less and less of general
> interest).
>
> So, wikipedia's notability policy:
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability
> essentially suggests that Wikipedia may not be able to grow much anymore?
> With over three million articles, it may just be hard to come up with
> anything that is really "notable" to enough people that has not been added.
> And, if the result of trying to put something new up is to just see it is
> deleted as not "notable", that is a real turnoff.
>
> Anyway, that comment cleared up some more of the dynamics for me.
>
>
> --Paul Fernhout
> http://www.pdfernhout.net/
>
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-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Research:
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