Is this being discussed, cussed, or disgusted anywhere on this forum?

Sue Gardner's March 2011 Update

Apparently, the Wikipedia isn't keeping new editors and old editors are becoming older (well, that's a hardly miraculous) and they don't know why, so they had to hand over money to an expert to write tosh for them.

Of course the expert does not actually say "because the Wikipedia is full of dirty, tricky addicted c*nts who spend all their time driving good people off their territory", or that the "Pee-dia welcome is as warm as the Spanish Inquisitions'" but we know better. Entropy is already setting in, from here it ought be quite easy to predict future patterns.

Given that "tenured editors" ... to keep up the myth and metaphor of academic-like standards ho-ho-ho ... only require to make more than 5 edits a month, I think the statistics are skewed. 5 edits a months ... that is less than most sockpuppets do in a few hours!

The results are here. I cannot be bothered investing any time anal-izing them.

The Wikipedia Welcoming Party ...

Only Sue Gardner could say, "Thank you for being awesome", and think that this is not a silly thing to say.

I'm sure an Angry WikiBirds script will follow shortly.

A script called "WikiWhore" would be more apt.

That was really really awful. 'Awesome' in the first para, two paras down opens with 'So.' And while they are recognising there is a problem, the solution is to develop tools for expressing Wikilove. Really.

They don't even have tools for expression of normal human facial expressions, and don't use them on TALK pages.

The goal is better communication not just love. When you fuck up written communications, however, it leads to unncessary drama and hate.

This we've seen on USENET and the rest of the internet. Wikipedia's wonk-nerds should check out the internet sometime. It might have some useful ideas that they could stealappropriate, which would keep them from going without good things, suffering consequences, and then wondering how to reinvent what everybody else already has.

That was a little grating, I agree.

Oh, shut up, Malleus. You know it was awesome.

Yes Indeedy Do❢
I Award The Grate Barnstar Of Awesomosity To You❢

Was it? just because it was written by one of those apparently rare chicks that wikipedia has suddenly become so desperate to attract? I don't think so.

I've got the perfect capper to Sue's idiocy!

Metafilter's nerds complaining about it! Replete with comments like:

Some excellent comments.

Has not Sue's use of a word like "awesome", as a CEO, got an embarrassing twinge of that condition where a grown up misuses dated youth culture language and dates themself by doing so. I think it used to be called "trendy uncle syndrome" and I have never heard it an equivalent for a woman. The realm of awful overaged children's TV performers, "Yeah, let's all edit an encyclopedia kids ... would that be great!"


One thing I have resigned myself to in this modern world is that if you want to be successful ... the low end of mediocrity is where you want to position yourself. Improvements, development, responsibility etc are all elitists threats. Excellence is not attractive because it is of the few ... and how many really excellent people would be willing to subject them to the dude's silliness

As ever there is some good critique in that thread (making admins a term limited appointment, rather than lifetime reward, would instantly help). I liked the 'breaking down to smaller scale' comment and wonder why they still give over admin super powers to apply to the entire site rather than just keep it scaled down to a departmental or specialist level like any faculty or media production company ... but it is futile to do so and just another addictive hook.

There are only two sorts of individuals in the Wikipedia, those making money out of it and promoting their own career, and those not making money out of it and wasting their own lives. It's dumb to be in the latter; and far too much work now, for too little reward, to crawl one's way into the former. Kiss ass for two years daily commitment and all you get to be is an unpaid janitor.

Board Chairman Ting Chen has weighed in on this subject, which is to say that he has simply repeated the party line in a blog posting.


As you can see, it's a classic example of why they'll never actually "solve" this "problem" - obviously, if they're only going to look inwardly to try and determine why people on the outside don't like them, they're going to fail roughly 100 percent of the time.

Also, I assume he's only saying "many" contributors have worked on "hospitality" in past years because it would be impolitic to say, "a tiny minority of Wikipedians have expressed concern about the fact that new users often object to their having to suck up to established users on a near-constant basis," or something to that effect.