Wikipedia was once adored by the press. The web journalists began pouring out elegies to Wikipedia, just like they did with Google. They spouted wide-eyed admiration for this new, amazing light that shined within the dark tunnels of the web. However, these people completely ignored the immense problems that Wikipedia might initiate. Even after notorious incidents like Essjay, Taner Akcam, etc., the tech press continued praising Wikipedia, though not as much. The Essjay incident exposed Wikipedia as irresponsible, and it gained the attention of the mass media. However, the tech press, in addition to widely read blogs (which is not the same thing as journalism) kept showing their love for Wikipedia.

Now, it seems quite different. The mainstream media are reporting about what Wikipedia really is, and there have been efforts to expose it by the tech press as well. This is a new sign that Wikipedia is on its way to just going down in history as one of the most harmful, irresponsible, and useless sites to ever grace the web with its presence. Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon?

--FB

Oooh... um... er? Ah... Okay, I give up. Has anyone else noticed?

Your right. It has been discussed here and here but it might be good to continue the discussion here in the "General" forum.

Yes, but one has difficulty projecting the future of these things, knowing that the popular "buzz" for ALL putatively good new phenomena go through three phases after being introduced 1) Best thing since sliced bread 2) Actually crap, and should never have been loosed on the world, and finally 3) (Yawn) one more choice out there. You see this happen all the time to new celebrities in the tabloids, as time goes on.

In the drug development business (for example), these are called the P, PP, and PPP phases. New drugs are first

1) Panacea
2) Pandora Plague

Then finally

3) Perfectly Pedestrian Pharmaceutical (joining the ranks of all the others, a mild improvement in their place).

Or say, Longhorn--> Vista--> Windows 7.

Though I don't practice this pattern myself, I sometimes see people put others through the cycle of overvalued, hated, never-thought-about. They go from Divine Perfect Love--> Spouse From Hell --> One More Ex. Done in excess, it's a common symptom of personality disorder. But like most mental illnesses, it's only an amplification of the way we as societies and individuals treat all new things.

I saw the first link, but I thought that it would be better to have it as a completely separate discussion.

Anyway, I believe this is due to the efforts of many people, working from within Wikipedia and from without (this Board) to expose Wikipedia. Wikipedia does not seem to have a very long future if this continues.

Jimbo Wales' defamation machine relies on propaganda from media outlets that praise the "Community" and its irresponsible governing body, the Foundation. If he does not have the media to promote his product, then his project does not attract wide-eyed "future contributors", and it begins to fall.

Milton Roe: And the fourth step is...the end of Wikipedia. Later on, it will take its place in the annals of history as one of the worst ideas in Internet history, and the defamation that it has encouraged and participated in will be exposed as an example of how it was so harmful and useless.

I guess the way I see it is, as Wikipedia pisses off more people, those people turn to blogs and comments on news sites, and reporters notice this. They, then, turn to increasingly negative coverage of WP as a means of better satisfying their readers and constituencies. (It also doesn't help that the negative coverage is well-deserved, I suppose.)

Still, I'd have to say that the media coverage I've seen in the wake of the recent WMF press release on Flagged Revisions has been mostly favorable, with the few negative stories I've seen mostly coming from the non-English-speaking press (and I'm not sure why they care, unless they assume it's going to apply to all non-English Wikipedia sites eventually).

Perhaps more importantly, I still haven't been seeing journalists point out the "vaporware" issue, which has reached almost Microsoftian proportions. Essentially, we saw them get favorable coverage for flagged revisions in 2007, the feature still isn't enabled, and now they're getting it again in 2009, with nobody mentioning a word about how long they've been promising it.

As for the rest, increased scandal coverage mostly reflects WP's increasing importance as it drives traditional-media reference publishers (and others) out of business. I doubt there's any way they can avoid that, other than to stop doing things that are scandalous.

Also, welcome to WR, Mr. Baguette! Somehow I just knew you wouldn't be a spamborg...

Some day, after Wikipedia.org has been erased from the face of the Web, leaving only Jimbo's Spam & Scrapers, there will be a book about Wikipedia. It will not be a nostalgic retrospective by an uninformed Wikipedia fanatic, but rather an honest, bleak look at the terrible reality of what it actually was. It will probably mention the efforts of critics and journalists to expose it as a defamation machine and fraud.

And why do all my posts consolidate into the one above?

That's the ten-minute anti-flood feature, I'm afraid. If you wait until the ten minutes have elapsed, you'll get a nice new post!

I once seriously considered writing a critical-perspective book about WP... I know Karmafist wanted to write one too, and one or two others, but I guess they all shelved 'em. Maybe after I get my first novel published - I outlined the thing at one point, but I couldn't figure out how to get the obligatory sex scenes in there without involving Jimbo in them.

I think Wikipedia's importance in the Internet is falling somewhat, but its Google rankings still do a good job of driving a lot of internet sites out of business, to use your phrase. Also, as you said, traditional publishers have fallen out of use due to Wikipedia, which is not a good thing. But that is because people have become drawn into Wikipedia, and they use that now. However, I still think that because of the negative coverage of Wikipedia, that people are starting to use other sources of information now, and that Wikipedia's monopoly, increased by Google's undying love for WP, is now growing smaller.

By the way, thanks for the welcome.

--FB

That's Journalism 101 -- bad news is good business for the media.

Furthermore, many MSM types are especially critical of what they perceive as amateur online media. It is no surprise that right after any hiccup of a scandal (Joe Wilson, Kanye West), the MSM immediately points out how the WP articles related to the controversial people or subjects get vandalized.

Wikipedia is in a lose-lose situation with the MSM -- the only way Jimbo can get positive PR is to do the self-serving advertorial stuff, like that Huffington Post column that was cited elsewhere.

I think it's normal for the press to originally support a good idea, but, when a website becomes as prominent as Google or Wikipedia, for example, it doesn't need to be further built up. People will start noticing flaws, and tear it down.

Without acknowledging the "good idea" aspect I agree that WP has heretofore received the kind of treatment reserved for tech novelties. I believe Wikipedia will now become the Walmart of the internet in the journalistic community. It will become the goto website for any story involving the vanity, failings and abuses of Web 2.0 projects.

You could have Marsden alone in bedroom with her Apple laptop-- moodily lit room, only from the back light of the screen--- being asked to DO things she'd rather not, but does anyway, by a character behind the screen we never see. Depending on who's playing Marsden, it could be fun. Course, this is cinematic, not novelistic thinking...

I think Milton is most right of all the posters in this thread. There's no permanent trend for people to find Wikipedia "evil", merely a familiar sequence all new things go through; first to be overly hyped, then for the real and imagined problems with it to be overly demonized, and then finally it becomes a boring part of the generic infrastructure. The Internet itself went through this sequence in the 1990s.

The hard part is finally figuring out what it's good for in the long run.

Assuming there is a long run.

The press still regularly use Wikipedia as a source. The occasional hostile article will make no difference to public perceptions. I recently discussed a few articles with experts and took the opportunity to ask if they knew about the Wales-Marsden affair. None did, yet surely nothing to do with Wikipedia has had more publicity.