[p2p-research] the wikipedia decline

Thu Nov 26 22:45:26 CET 2009

Hi Paul,

the issues of spam and libel etc.. are real, but have no bearing on
inclusionism/deletionism, since they can happen on both notable and
so-called non-notable articles; in fact, since the latter are from
passionate subcultures, they have most chance of being corrected ...

either we go back to pre-publication censorship or verification, or we
accept the open model, knowing that the latter is a process of
post-publication verification ..

again, the only result of deletionism and creating the selection hierarchy,
has been to destroy the passionate engagement of volunteers, as has now been
amply demonstrated, and was widely expected by people such as myself ...

On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 9:42 PM, Paul D. Fernhout <
pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:

> Kevin Carson wrote:
>
>> On 11/25/09, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>
>> I'm not sure you and Paul are disagreeing here.  Articles of interest
>> to such microcommunities are unlikely to meet the Deletionazis'
>> criteria for notability.
>>
>> And I think we're all agreed that the notability requirements are
>> unnecessary in an environment of abundance.
>>
>> Reminds me of a radio commercial I used to hear for some pizza place
>> that said "...And we don't put dead minnows on our pies!"  Well, I'm
>> not aware of any pizza place that puts anchovies on orders for people
>> who don't ask for them.  So what they were really bragging about was
>> that they didn't have them for those who DID want them.  Similarly,
>> the "non-notable" articles will never even be seen by those who aren't
>> interested or looking for them; but thanks to the Deletionazis, they
>> won't be there for anyone who IS looking.
>>
>
> And this gives me an opportunity to once again say, I feel the biggest
> problem of the 21st century is the tools of creating abundance in the hands
> of people thinking in terms of managing scarcity. And, to some extent, that
> is exactly what we see on Wikipedia as you and Michel point out -- scarcity
> thinking in a digital world of abundance. Like you say, if you don't want
> information on a topic at Wikipedia, the average user probably won't see it.
>
> Still, I agree only up to point here on practical grounds. :-)
> Unfortunately, every article in Wikipedia can create a legal liability for
> the central organization in at least three ways, libel, copyright, and
> international censorship.
>
> Libel (written slander) can show up on any page, and this creates a legal
> problem for Wikipedia (witness how much warning there is about issues in
> relation to commenting on living people). Sometimes (younger kids
> especially) someone might put up a non-complimentary page about someone in
> their social circle to hurt them. Wikipedia could be named in such a
> lawsuit.
>
> Copyright-infringing information can show up and needs to be dealt with on
> a timely basis or Wikipedia could face vast amounts of monetary damages.
>
> Information that is illegal in various countries can show up, which could
> entail jail time for people associated with Wikipedia if they travel to
> those countries.
>
> These legal issues all deterred me from putting up and promoting OSCOMAK as
> a centralized site. They led me to prefer a distributed social semantic
> model where users or small topical workgroups would be more responsible for
> the legal implications of hosting their created content or transmitting it,
> not a central organization that can be attacked for every single legal
> problem as a single legal point of failure.
>
> Another non-legal public relations problem is that some article with major
> problems might be presented to the press as evidence that Wikipedia itself
> has major problems (ignoring that Wikipedia has cybernetic feedback
> processes once issues are brought to the community's attention). This has
> happened several times in the past, like with the Ted Kennedy article or
> Even if only a tiny number of such situations show up, it can be a major
> public relations issue. So, now that Wikipedia has assets and a reputation
> to protect, it may be getting more conservative.
>  "25 Biggest Blunders in Wikipedia History"
>
> http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2009/02/10/25-biggest-blunders-in-wikipedia-history/
>  "Wikipedia New Yorker Article Misrepresentation Exposed"
>  http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/archives/001156.html
>  "What The New Yorker Article Fraud Tells Us About Wikipedia"
>  http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/archives/001157.html
>
> Then there is also the Spam problem.
>
> So, for these sorts of reasons, there is a natural scarcity of editors
> based on the size of the current community, but a potentially infinite
> amount of articles (or edits to existing articles) that may cause problems
> for the Wikipedia organization legally or in terms of public relations.
>
> Every new article takes some attention from the community to appraise it on
> its creation, and every existing article takes some effort to protect it,
> and human attention by core volunteers (about 1000?) is a limited resource,
> and most of the rest of the volunteers may not be as concerned about these
> liability issues. Some people probably really do monitor a stream like this
> on new pages or new changes, so the less editing and less new articles, the
> better from their point of view, as it is less work for them:
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:NewPages
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges
>
> In a way, does the existence of a "New Page" tool itself encourage
> deletionism? You suggest that average Wikipedia users won't see non-notable
> content unless they are interested in it, but because of these tools, there
> are people who will see it, and those people tend to be the ones who are
> more powerful within the system for various reasons (the administrators) and
> also the ones who feel the most overwhelmed and underpaid (mostly not paid
> at all). If we had a basic income in our society, then many people might
> just decide their contribution back to society would be to spend full-time
> taking care of Wikipedia (which by itself might decrease vandalism the way
> Jane Jacobs says many eyes on a city street does -- people won't even try
> it). Actually, Jane Jabobs' ideas might apply here as she says some
> community densities in the middle are worse than very dispersed or very
> dense, as you get the problems of random strangers interacting but not
> enough people to make solutions.
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs
>
> I'm also reminded of analogies to exponential-growth assuming mainstream
> economics (and limited demand) as well as David Goodstein's Big Crunch idea
> about the exponential growth of academia ending in the 1970s and causing
> problems. As long as Wikipedia was growing exponentially, the case for most
> of the past decade, one could assume that there would always be a lot more
> people next year to deal with maintaining last year's content against
> vandalism. But, as soon as exponential growth of the community stopped, then
> the burden per editor for new articles starts going up tremendously. And,
> like any pyramid scheme, there are maybe not enough resources this year to
> deal with the obligations incurred last year. So, all of this controversy
> may be related to Wikipedia transitioning to a more steady-state model of
> attention.
>
> I can wonder if there are any lessons here about the implications of the
> ending of industrial growth or service growth in large areas of the economy?
> Will endless new products just be seen as a burden? Have we reached that
> stage already in some ways, like with Vioxx or endless new car models of
> only minor variations?
>
> I can wonder if we could have some unified mathematical model (smiles to
> Andrew :-) about both situations as systems like Wikipedia or the global
> economy transition from exponential growth in some areas to a steady-state?
>
> Anyway, what I'm saying is, if there is a scarcity, it is not mainly about
> bandwith or storage capacity, but it is about aspects of the community like
> limited human attention or maybe something else.
>
> --Paul Fernhout
> http://www.pdfernhout.net/
>
>
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-- 
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