What is this forum for? Is it to fix the problems with Wikipedia? Should we still be using accounts and editing there and promoting positive change from within and without? Or should we just stay here and be entirely negative and hurl insults, missiles, bricks and whatever else comes useful?

My recent priority was to get unblocked, as a point of honour, and I hadn’t been paying much attention to the question of whether it was possible to fix Wikipedia. Now I’m back, the place seems to be in terminal decline. The people I knew from the set of articles I used to work on have long since gone. The old often-abusive but fundamentally good-natured atmosphere seems to be gone entirely, replaced by a superficially civil air with a deep underlying menace (a bit like those formal meetings at work where you have to consider every word with great care). The pioneers, the real editors, seem mostly to have gone. Replaced by a cadre of people whose main priority seems to be ‘vandal fighting’ and surveillance.

So, fix or destroy?

I think that the general position of the WR is that this remains a personal decision. There is no single idea supported by the forum at large.

My own personal opinion is destroy, which is being confirmed by current events....

It's personal opinions I was looking for (and thanks).

Which current events?

The whole Erik Moeller situation, the ad hoc changes in the way the WMF board works and many other smaller incidents....

The primary purpose of The Wikipedia Review is … wait for it … the Review of Wikipedia and its Wiki-Ilk.

Being a free-form forum for discussion, The Wikipedia Review naturally invites many other activities that will from time to time suggest themselves as coming with the territory.

I have already written 10 or 20 essays on the purpose of criticism — in the present genre and in general — and so I refer readers to the search function for those.

I am, however, gratified that you are beginning to see the problem.

Think of The Wikipedia Review as something like Consumer Reports. If you look at the history of reporting on a particular line of products over the long haul, you will notice a variety of scenarios that may occur in the natural life-cycle of a product line. In the worse case scenarios a critical point is reached when the preponderance of the evidence coming in from moderately informative observers shows that the product is "unsafe at any speed", to steal a phrase.

I don't know whether we have reached that point yet with Wikipedia — there are still so many utterly bedazzled and befuddled (read "clueless") observers, but I know what I have personally concluded, and I think that we shall soon reach that critical point, at least among those who are paying attention.

Ours is not to "fix" Wikipedia. There is nothing that anyone can do to "fix" Wikipedia — more precisely, there is nothing that anyone who can will do to fix Wikipedia. I can only suggest that observers review their default AGF (read "naive") hypothesis that anyone who can wants to "fix" the game any other way than they have already "fixed" it.

Ours is not to "destroy" Wikipedia. Nothing that we could do could outdo what they are doing already. But we can do our part to remove harmful products from the marketplace by earnestly, loudly, and most of all publicly, praying to that Unseen Hand that everyone seems to believe in these days to quit sitting on 'is 'ands and get 'is butt on deck.

Jon

I'll take that as a 'destroy' vote. In effect, you are saying that here is a fatally flawed and potentially lethal product out in the market, and you are writing for a consumer magazine to warn consumers. If that is true, no one would buy the product, and the company would go bankrupt. Correct?

What Jon Awbrey said.

There isn't a single point of view on Wikipedia Review, which makes for lively and sometimes bizarre debate.

Viewpoints are also not fixed. Some feel that given the right conditions Wikipedia could become a useful encyclopedia. Others are less sanguine.

Certainly the amount of drama on and around Wikipedia suggests that only deep reform (which includes the sacking of the WMF board) would begin to address the problems.

I can only predict that there will be even more drama over the coming months. I guarantee it.

A thoroughly good objective, and we all congratulate you wholeheartedly.

Sorry, I didn't know this was a WfD discussion.

At any rate, it's not a vote, now is it?

I refer readers to my original, er, initial statement for the nuances of what I actually said.

Jon

My preference is for WR to be a site that offers responsible analysis, commentary, and criticism, including constructive criticism.

I will not write anymore on the German-speaking Wikipedia. Like I explained in the threads Das Problem fehlender Bescheidenheit and Jimbo named "Führer" of German Wikipedia!!, ...as the masses revolt and call for vandalism... now that I'm blocked my edits get blindly reverted. At my favorite topics there are on the English-speaking Wikipedia still able authors—at least they don't remove everything I contribute.

What do you mean with destroying Wikipedia? I think the hype around it should be terminated. Wikipedia is not the best source one can find. This should be made public.

Not an official WR position, but I adopt what I consider an externalist critique. I encourage a critique as viewed from outside Wikipedia. I have come to see that Wikipedia success or failure is essentially none of my business. I am here to try to articulate what problems and issues arise from this massive on-line attempt at collaborative learning. I attempt to help develop ideas on how many of the failures and limitations of Wikipedia can be overcome by projects with objectives similar to those stated by Wikipedia. Whether that includes a reformed Wikipedia is not up to me.

In the end I believe this to consistent with promise and limits of a website like WR. After all I have buttons that permit me to post and reply, not fix or destroy.

Jon

THE FUTURE OF REPUTATION:


Two pages on wikipedia - most of it fairly positive. Dull.

Yes, indeed, it's just that some of all of us congratulate you whole♥edly with the kind of whole♥ed encouragement that we reserve for urging on fools in their folly in the hopes of their thereby becoming wise.

If the d'oh!piates don't kill you first …

Jon

Fix, as long as wikipedia remains in the top 20 internet sites it is the only solution, and WRs own survival is surely based on supporting the fixing.

For me personally, WR's survival is not a priority. I would be quite happy myself if it could be closed down.....

Well, destroy, in the sense that it will take a good dose of destruction to unseat Jimmy Wales, Sue Gardner, Erik Moeller, and probably half of the incompetent WMF board from its leadership role, and to be replaced by a trustworthy, experienced team that recognizes that the continued "open wiki that anyone can edit" is no longer in the best interest of constructing an unvandalized, reliable encyclopedia.

And also, fix, in the sense that it will take a good dose of fixing after we unseat Jimmy Wales, Sue Gardner, Erik Moeller, and probably half of the incompetent WMF board from its leadership role, to be replaced by a trustworthy, experienced team that recognizes that the continued "open wiki that anyone can edit" is no longer in the best interest of constructing an unvandalized, reliable encyclopedia.

Let's use Enron as an example. Enron doesn't exist any more. What does still exist is Enron Creditors Recovery Corporation. Once ECRC has completed all outstanding litigation and monetized all assets, it will make a final distribution to creditors. After that, the company will cease to exist.

This is not to say that energy production and management corporations have all ceased to exist. Of course they continue to exist and thrive. The Indian Mesa wind farm in Texas that used to be owned by Enron, for example, is now owned by American Electric Power. Indian Mesa wasn't "destroyed" by the destruction of Enron. It was merely "fixed" by being sold off for $175 million to a presumably more trustworthy, experienced team.

When we ask these questions about "destroy or fix", I hope that we're all mature enough to realize that the various electronic letters, words, and pictures on Wikipedia are not the problem. It is how they are being managed by the Wikimedia Foundation that is the problem. The bulk of Wikipedia's content literally can't be "destroyed" -- it has already been scraped and copied across the Internet too many times. What needs to be destroyed is the notion that Jimmy Wales, Sue Gardner, and Erik Moeller are appropriate stewards of this content on the most popular site that hosts it.

Sometimes I amaze myself with how clearly I think. Anyone who disagrees with what I've said above is clearly deranged.

Greg

Home! Home On Derange!

Jon

Long term, Wikipedia and the WMF due to their collective inability to respond to problems without getting insular and wildly defensive is in a word fucked. The problem starts with Jimmy Wales and works downwards from there. Sue Gardner, the Board, all of them... their primary focus has never been stated to be completely responsible, and locally on the flagship Wiki, the English one, there has always been, and still is, so much crap that people are unwilling to ruthlessly smack down that there is no room for positive growth.

Positive growth is not 3,000,000 articles. Positive growth is socially responsible policies, and aggressive application of those same policies. It's not stopping HAGGER!!! crap, and it's not defending "attacked editors", and it's not dealing with BADSITES, and it's not bullshit like Arbitration or some reforms that people will smack down, or dealing with any of the pointless little battles, or anything like that. They need to simply get rid of the ingrained senior leadership at the highest level that's let a great idea grow aimlessly, and that is now floundering.

When will they be doing a good job? When all the media coverage and press is overwhelmingly positive. That's the only real barometer and yardstick.

"WMF director supports child porn!"

"WMF executive arrested for felonies!"

"Wikipedia says JFK's best friend ordered a hit on him!"

"Chris Benoit!"

They need to at a start:

1. Can the board.
2. Can Jimmy. He's happier at Wikia anyway.
3. Can Sue and Erik.
4. Make the board 90% community driven.
5. Make a super-duper effort to get corporations to buy in for fiscal support.
6. Get over themselves and semi-protect all BLPs at a minimum.
7. Get over themselves and make everyone register ideally.
8. Respond aggressively to problems at all levels.

At a dead minimum.

I'm in the "fix" camp, by the way, and always have been.

Obviously, I'm in the "fix" camp, and don't even think there's as much broken as most others on this site do. I do find one of their biggest problems to be the fact that they deal with all sorts of criticism, vaild or invalid, fair or foul, by dismissing it and attacking the critics; that's the main thing that needs fixing.

Are you sure this is an actual change, or has your experience increased your sensitivity to characteristics that were there before?


There's a whole lot of options between those, I think - demystify, expose, discredit, zap it with a shrink ray...

I also take an outsider view. I was directed to this article by criticisms of WP in the news. Its become an interesting exercise to flag WP as a minefield of misinformation, that can potentially get much worse.

You could think of pointing out nonsense as a public duty. I'm more motivated by the expression of clarifying bullshit though. I think thats a natural reaction of anyone who sees illogic and injustice and wants to do something about it. You can't effectively clarify things over there, but you can here.

Destroy? Well its a nice idea to sink WP and salvage any useful bits from the pit. But it seems more likely the collection of pushers and clueless dorks will increase in concentration and push out more helpful people.

So I'm happy just to investigate and flag the organization and activities as trouble.

I don't care if Wikipedia lives on forever. What bothers me is that it's the number one result on the world's most popular search engine for so many topics.

The consumer needs to be made aware that Wikipedia is not as good as it needs to be, and that there are better alternatives out there.

Wikipedians need to know that there are better ways to spend their time if they honestly want to help people, or at least not to take Jimbo's little experiment so seriously.

Short answer: fix is impossible because the management there doesn't want it to be fixed, and destroy is unnecessary because there is plenty of room on the internet for alternatives.

Much has been said around here about learning systems and so forth. I'm not up on all the cool jargon, but it seems to me that "Monkey see, monkey do" is almost always the best method. The day someone builds a more popular encyclopedia, you can bet Jimbo and friends will change their behavior, or at least people will stop emulating them.

Of course this means you're sort of putting me in the destroy column, because if Wikipedia becomes a relatively unknown curiosity from the early 2000's or if it changes to remain competitive then it really won't be the Wikipedia we know.

That seems contradictory to me. I've experimented with alternatives. The same article on a different wiki (e.g. Sanger's) returns nothing, on Wikipedia it is #1.

If someone can fix that problem I'm all for 'destroy'. Otherwise, try to fix.




I don't do options, don 't do nuances &c.

I suspect that there is a commonality between many (but not all) WR contributors, and that is that many of us thought it was a good idea when they first came across it.

I suspect that camp is now broken down into two divisions:

1) How could I have been so stupid - it can never work.
2) It is still a good idea, we just have not, in all the variations that abound, yet seen a sound incarnation of "the idea"

I am still attracted to the idea. I also recognise that I voided the bowels of my useful contributions in a few short weeks. (I hope you like the allusion there, chaps).

The dilemma for me is that Wikipedia represents the site most likely to, all others are unable to gain sufficient traction. The public, thinking or otherwise, want and like Wikipedia, with certain qualifications.

So, destroying what people see is a useful resource, regardless of whether they appreciate the dangers, is unlikely to happen. In the worst case the crap lives on unedited in Answers.com or some similar site and we are not freed.

Pragmatically therefore, I would have to be in the fix it camp, even if this turns out to be an impossible task.

I am sure I am naive to a certain extent, but it seems to me that the worst excesses of Wikipedia would be rapidly fixed by a strong user management - a WMF that put in place policies that rooted out the blatant offenders - those who cannot work properly and professionally together. They need a team of professionals to guide them, but the WMF is too embedded itself in the cult of the amateur, that it somehow believes hiring people it likes over capable people will somehow work out in the end.

It is not too difficult to put together an ethical framework of content. Why is "It is not censored" inviolable, when it is clear that there are those who have stopped it descending into a free for all porn site. Clearly there is an ethical line being taken, it is just very wobbly and some people delight in abusing it.

So, Peter says he doesn't like it any more because it is an unhappy place. His concerns could readily be fixed - but not by "the community".

There is copious evidence that Mimesis is not only far from the best practice, it's the source of humankind's most intractable problems — conflict, violence, oppression, injustice, corruption, poverty, ignorance, alienation, suffering, and terrorism.

Roaming Charges Are Not Billed In A Day …

By way of looking at some real data over the long haul, you might periodically visit the articles on my old Strike Roster and compare how a Google search on their subject names will rank the Wikipedia versions in comparison to, say, the versions on GetWiki, Wikipedia Review, and PlanetMath (this last for the few, the brave, the proud logic and math articles).

Nota Bene. I have no financial interests in any of these sites, Guy, so mentioning them here for the purposes of comparison does not violate any Wikipedia Review Vow Of Poverty (WR:VOP).

Jon

Maybe MySpace is the answer.

I think you may be right.

All Philosophers and Philosophasters who want to devote their lives to Mediæval Philosophy and still be popular with the kiddies, too, should go straight to MySpecious.Com, do not pass Go2Net.

Jon

And an equally long list of positives, starting with empathy, love, charity, and any specific virtue you care to name. All are best taught by example. Some are ONLY taught by example. It's practically impossible to argue anybody into any empathic view (I know, I've tried it on Wikipedia with BLP). People have to be shown, like being taken by the hand in a dream by the Ghost of Christmas Future. Experience keeps a dear school, but sometimes not only fools but also wise people will have no other. That's one of the things that makes Hivemind necessary, ugly as it is. It's that Rod Serling-esque vision where the white racist wakes up one fine morning and looks in mirror and finds that he's .... black. It's almost as good a lesson as when conservatives who think homosexuality is taught, and is evil, find out that their kids are gay. Not fun for the kids, of course.

For situations in which the viewer never has any reasonable expectation of sharing the fate of the victim, I can only recommend a trip with a ghost who both shows facts and feelings. If you only show facts, especially selective facts, you risk decending into entertainment. For example, I thought televised Supermax prison TV-reality shows would finally do something about the horrid over-prisoning situation here in the US. Nope. The average citizen has reacted like a denison of the Roman coliseum. If we televised executions, it might be the same.

Speak for yourself, guy. Nobody else.

So you're annoyed that Peter Damian was unblocked?

The main thing about Mimesis, or being a Role Mode, is that it's important to employ it consciously and conscientiously in the context of a Virtuous Cycle rather than a Vicious Cycle.

The phrase "Monkey See, Monkey Do" is suggestive of an absence of reflection upon what one is mindlessly doing.

I'll come out of lurker limbo to drop my two cents.

Destroy, with the aim to rebuild.

Scrap it all. Ditch the board and all the like. Enforce strict fact checking measures. Completely rewrite notability requirements for BLPs. Allow opt-outs. Users claiming degrees or other credentials would be asked to verify.

Adopt a simple 3 strikes and out policy for severe vandalism. Require third party arbitration for complex issues. These arbitrators should have no interest or connection to the matter at hand.

On things like TV shows or movies, Star Trek, Star Wars, etc; leave a single, lengthy article instead of individual articles on Romulans, Klingons, so on. Structure the article's contents to allow all information to be accessible from the top of the article's page.

Restructure admin levels to specific purposes. Such as:

Have one group's main purpose to check for plagiarism within articles. If found, fix it.
Another group could be strictly fact-checking. If a claim looks suspect, remove it until it can be verified from multiple reliable resources.
A third group to focus on removing vandalism. Remove obvious horseshit.
And another to handle conflicts between users.

Rotate these jobs between users so no individual holds a permanent position.

I know this stuff isn't perfect, it might not even be good or worth the effort, but, if I were going to start something like this, this is a rough draft of the idea. Not that it'll happen.

You speak of DevolvePower. I remember when Badlydrawnjeff tried to run for RFA just because he wanted to use some of the powers afforded to administrators and not all the powers.

I never understood why his request was considered offensive to other Wikipedians' sensibilities. Perhaps those that wanted all the power were afraid Jeff's request would set a precedent for DevolvePower and they would never in one gulp get all the power?

Nice link, if I'm reading it correctly it says what I did, only in a much more intelligent fashion. (I hate what I write.)

I think it could work like that, but it simply won't happen on WP. It'd take an entirely new project, as the current people in power at WP would probably kick and scream until someone said, "Fine, forget it."

I figure it could go something like this:

Billy Everyuser becomes admin in the group devoted to fact checking. The term for serving as an admin is two months. Billy Everyuser's two months end, and a new admin group is cycled in. In order to assure that Billy Everyuser can't abuse any power, Billy Everyuser couldn't become an admin for six months. Once those are up, if necessary, Billy Everyuser can regain an admin position, but not in the group he perviously served in.

This would only work provided there are enough users to cover the needs of the positions in the first place, though.

Wikipedia is too large to give a simple answer of "fix or destroy". Some areas of Wikipedia are fine and other areas are a disaster. There may not be a need for a major fix in the areas of popular culture.

A problem with Wikipedia is it has grown too large, and a solution is to split Wikipedia into multiple smaller wiki's. There is no way science articles should be in the same wiki as popular culture articles.





Admins doing fact checking need to have some expertise in the subject area of the articles. Otherwise, they will not know if the source they are checking is reliable, whether the reliable source they are checking contains an error, whether the "fact" in the source is taken out of context, etc.

Many articles on Wikipedia simply consist of a random set of "facts" taken from a random set of sources.

Fact checking could be as simple as going to the library on some issues, others, yeah you'd need someone who knows what they're talking about; or just ask someone who does. If the purpose was truly to build an encyclopedia, I doubt an intellectual authority would have a problem answering a quick question.

Again, all just hypothetical.

In the absence of good role models, the kids out there are going to copy people like Jimbo.

There is no shortage of bad role models.

And the last pair of good role models — NYB and Doc Glasgow — left the project.

We're only in the middle part here: the time when it's most tempting to join the baddies.

There's a lot of garbage in Wikipedia, but there's a lot of good stuff too. So I say fix it. In another thread we discussed an improved governance model for Wikipedia, with committees to oversee and make formal decisions on policy and content dispute issues, in addition to ArbCom which deals with user conduct issues.

Coincidentally, at the same time we were having that discussion, someone started a proposal in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Governance_reform) to establish a policy oversight committee. That's a step in the right direction. Hopefully the project's participants can keep making progress in that area, because it's fairly obvious that little vision and leadership will be forthcoming from the Foundation members.

If Wikipedia can't be fixed, then I hope someone can pull off a successful fork. Copy the content, establish a better governance model, but not as strict as Citizendium. The Commons would need to be copied over also, because I think that's one of Wikimedia's most valuable and useful projects.

There is a simple reason. Much of the criticism of Wikipedia review is that it is a collection of trolls who simply couldn't get along with Wikipedia however ever hard they tried, they are a bunch of losers &c &c. Getting unblocked, whether or not you contribute to Wikipedia, is a point of honour for the forum.

[edit] - and here is the same point of view from Shankbone: I rest my case.

Come on now - you are selling a lot of people short there.

What did NYB ever actually do anyway? I get that he's likeable but I don't recall him ever actually accomplishing anything amazing enough to earn him martyr status ... ?

Anyhow, if Wikipedia is ever sucessfully "destroyed" (which is pretty unlikely to happen), it won't come from anything that anyone does here. Maybe a string of really high profile lawsuits or something.

(alright, time to stop lurking)

Wikisource is another interesting and potentially valuable project.

The creation of separate wikis for various topics is an interesting idea. That would engender better expert participation - there are specialist collaborative reference sites (wikis and non-wikis) that have run for ages and have produced good content. Also, that might help in isolating and containing the BLP problem.

Yes, the emphasis on social interaction is waaaay too high. This plus AGF seem to define the major rules of conduct. Professionalism is nowhere to be seen - either that, or it is definitely not made clear enough.

Misunderstanding (my fault). The 'rag-tag band of haters' refers to Wikipedia Review.

Yes I know, but doesn't this crticism suggest that WR people are the ones who have difficulty with social interaction, which is so highly prized on WP? Or at least, that's how I read it.