There’s an interesting piece about Wikipedia from the Wall Street Journal Online. It seems that Wikipedia volunteers are leaving faster than new volunteers are joining. Could it be that this unaccountable and self-appointed repository of public knowledge is on the verge of imploding?
In an article that I penned earlier this year I exposed some of the corrupt policies that reward volunteers that delete articles in order to increase their standing with the organization. A venerable MUD called Threshold was adversely affected by the shenanigans of these Wikipedia deletion happy scoundrels and almost had its Wikipedia entry deleted if it were not for the public outcry that ensued.
One of the best comments so far comes from Nicole Hamilton:
The problem of the so-called “deletionists” is totally out of control on Wikipedia. These are, so far as I can tell, completely self-appointed topic police who go from one article to another deleting pretty much anything they don’t like. Now, certainly, if they were making these decisions in topics where they actually had some particular domain expertise or knowledge, I’d say, fine. But that doesn’t appear to be what’s going on. To me, it just looks like a plain ol’ power trip for idiots who know basically nothing about anything except Wikipedia’s rules, which, also as pointed out in the article, are getting to be about as labyrinthine as the IRS code. Bottom line, Wikipedia is falling over of its own weight.
There are many other spot on comments as well. Anyone interested in educating themselves about the abuse of power, politically correct politics and cliques that dominate Wikipedia would do well to read the entire thread.
The information age promised us increased democratization and empowerment of the citizenry. The old axiom knowledge is power is certainly true but what of those who decide what is knowledge? These gatekeepers of facts and history hold the real power. This is why Wikipedia can not be trusted by anyone interested in objectivity and the truth.
Here’s a free video report from WSJ Online which gives the viewer a good overview of Wikipedia’s problems. Also here’s another WSJ Online video link of an interview with Andrew Liu the author of The Wikipedia Revolution.
Just a note, the WSJ Online is a pay service. However, the first couple of paragraphs of the article are free as are the comments.
-Wolfshead
{ 1 trackback }
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Sadly, this is old news. Wikipedia has gone from a great reference to a place where people who play politics hold the keys. People declare things “not noteworthy” without knowing anything about the field. Threshold was simply another example, and Michael Hartman was passionate enough to motivate people.
The funny thing is that the DKP article I talk about was deleted, but was later reposted in a much lesser form. The good news is that the internet preserves stuff, so you can find a link to the old post if you want good information.
At any rate, Wikipedia is no longer my first trip when looking up a topic. I also don’t link to Wikipedia pages from my blog anymore because they could be deleted sometime down the road. As said, the internet was supposed to be more democratic, but things haven’t really changed, unfortunately. There’s always someone ready to be petty and lord even a bit of power over others.
Thanks for that link Brian! That was an informative article. I wish I had known about it when I wrote my original piece on Wikipedia
Might be old news, but I for one didn’t know how bad it had got. Very sad.
As you mentioned in your article Brian, jockeying for power and influence seems to affect most communities. I find it’s even worse with “volunteer” organizations.
One such volunteer organization that was rife with corruption, backstabbing and internal politics was the EverQuest Guide Program. As a former Senior Guide I can tell you it was a vipers nest there as we had to deal with all the brown-nosers and lap dogs — not to mention some of the bad apples at SOE. Most of the good guides left the program leaving the power hungry egomaniacs.
The Wikipedia fiasco has made me reconsider the efficacy of volunteer programs in MMOs.
I don’t trust Wikipedia, never have. My pet name for it at work is The Pack of Lies
Those pesky volunteers aren’t trusthworthy 
I meant to reply here but apparently being behind a proxy at the time of posting has made that an impossible endeavor.
Long story short, what I wrote then in the comments, what transpired from the Threshold fiasco and how the gamers, in particular we MUDers of old have interpreted it is not representative of Wikipedia. Contrary to what I wrote then, deletionists are a tiny minority, the power games we surmised are sensationalist but greatly exagerated, and in terms of winning cred and building your reputation on Wikipedia, there is little worse there than being identified as a deletionist.
Since I couldn’t post here when I was inspired, the complete backstory to my change of mind is (shameless plug) now viewable on my own blog
But I truly wouldn’t reconsider the efficacy of volunteer programs in MMOs based on the parts of Wikipedia that make headlines, at least not any more or any less than you would rethink an entire game’s design from scratch if it gets confronted by a tiny handful of griefers or exploiters.
As a group of involved watchers, we have greatly over-reacted to an issue that was emotional to us, and quite outside the norm of what happens at Wikipedia.
As for the substance of the report and its doomsday predictions, it’s quite similar to the similar projections of impending doom that gets posted and reported whenever WoW sees a slump in activity. Are there issues? No doubt. The majority of these, though, have only very little resemblance with the Threshold affair and how we viewed it back in January.
Thanks for your perspective Celerann. It’s good to know that maybe things are turning around at Wikipedia at least in your neck of the woods.
I wonder if any reforms have been instituted from the management at Wikipedia that would account for this turnaround?
In reality, nothing discernable, or, perhaps slightly more accurately, nothing I would have spotted.
I really think that the Threshold entry happened to be in a very unfortunate spot, caught between someone extremely familiar with the rules who may very well have had an agenda (he admitted he was a former player, read into that whatever you want), and Hartman himself, whose passion but also forceful and inexperienced ways attracted way more attention than what you’d get on a normal deletion debate – on average, a gaming article nominated for deletion rarely gets more than 10 votes.
Once he was identified as the game’s creator, he became labelled as someone using Wikipedia as a means of promotion, it attracted wider attention and then turned into a battleground, one of those that did attract true deletionists (but the first time around, not entirely without reason, as the references were admittedly poor compared to what the article has today, for instance, and what passes as the minimal standard on Wikipedia).
If memory serves, towards the end of the first attempted (and successful) deletion discussion, the “keep it” side had spent a lot of time trying to argue about the validity of TopMudSites and The MUDConnector as useable references, again one of the pitfalls you will see often when inexperienced enthusiasts try to defend an article, and the opposition had a field day rebutting those arguments. The commentary from the MMO blogosphere quoted in the debate didn’t help either, for two reasons: blogs aren’t reliable references in Wikipedian terms either, and it is in general percieved as outside forces trying to influence the debate. Last but not least, Michael made two more “tactical mistakes”, the first one to try and argue that the infamous notability guideline be discounted altogether – such arguments always lose in deletion discussions, and the second one, in his passion he also quite often vented and tried to publicize what he percieved as the agenda of his main opponent. Doing that, he breached one of the core etiquette rules, “always assume good faith”, and all of those factors sealed the fate of the article the first time around. And of course, I’m leaving out the backstory of the two months prior, which painted Michael in a bad light from the get go.
As I said, the place has a steep learning curve.
The second time, though, Michael was under a site block because of percieved uncivil behaviour, unable to participate, and the people defending the article were experienced editors. They built their case very simply on 3 or more independent references citing Threshold in a larger content, not the two MUD websites mentioned above but rock solid gaming mags, and that’s, in reality, a slam-dunk for keeping an article.
As fascinating as this may seem, let me however stress one final time that this is in no way the norm, rather, a rare exception built on a perfect storm of multiple combined elements. If you look back at the last wide-scale deletionist scandal, it goes back to the Webcomics purge of 2007, and most of the actors of that drama are part of these alleged 47k editors who haven’t returned in ages.
You know that boneheads playing the rules of Wikipedia usually win? Not everybody there has the will AND knowledge to FIGHT for common sense and spend a lot of time, playing within the rules and playing with them. It apparently is not enough to be right, you also have to prove it. More so than anywhere else.
One needs to be some kind of scheming politician to get something done at Wikipedia. Otherwise he will simply get STOMPED by experienced editors who have a lot of time to spent on getting THEIR opinion through. They play the rules in their favor, and if you don’t know them, you lost. The matter itself does not matter in this regard.
I experienced the same level of stupidity at the German Wikipedia. Good people had to fight for months to partially restore a deleted article, against a senior editor who also had some buddies and renown within Wikipedia. This guy did not have expert knowledge of any kind but had a lot of time at hand and still is playing the rules at Wikipedia.
So much about the free encyclopedia that everyone can edit, as long as it pleases the idiots in charge. I do not think that your claim that the majority of editors are normal persons, idealists and great people as long as this system allows everyone with too much time and ill will at hand to go on a rampage. See how much effort it took Hartman to get Treshold back, I know a lot of cases where people just got pissed and let it be.
For those who do not know, I am Michael Hartman of Threshold. I meant to comment when Wolf first wrote this article, but we were out of town for a week and a half and just got around to it.
Celerann: The first time around, there were many more issues than just the TMC/Top Mud Sites “noteable” source debate. There was the fact that acknowledged experts in the field had written about the noteworthiness of Threshold (something that is generally considered relevant). There was the fact that Threshold has been written about in multiple newspapers and magazines. There was the fact that over 300,000 people have played the game over the years. I don’t want to go into all the arguments again, or the nitty gritty of Wikipedia’s IRS-like policies, but every sane person knew there was no excuse for deleting the entry. The original deletion was fueled by a combination of deletionists and a former, disgruntled player using the Threshold entry as a means to “score points” in his quest to earn an admin-hood.
By the second deletion attempt, there was so much publicity, popular media interest, and then attention from “legitimate” Wikipedia admins, that the attempt failed miserably.
Also, the first deletion itself was a gross abuse of Wikipedia’s policies. There is supposed to be a consensus to delete, or else the article is left in place. About two thirds of the people participating in the AFD were against deletion, and then a random admin swooped in a day or two early and unilaterally deleted the article.
It is interesting to see that this same issue continues to plague Wikipedia. I don’t see it improving unless Jimbo or someone else from way above takes steps to prevent it.