Are the Wikipedia’s days numbered?
p2pnet news view P2P:- Noted law professor Eric Goldman predicted the Wikipedia would fail.
That was in his Technology & Marketing Law Blog in 2006.
It would become extinct for a number of reasons, he said, among them »»»
- As Wikipedia traffic grows, it becomes a juicier target for marketers seeking to promote themselves (see the analogous problems Digg is experiencing with results gaming as it gains more traffic)
- Wikipedians are the only thing stopping those marketers from modifying Wikipedia’s open-access pages in ways that might degrade the user experience
- Wikipedians, in turn, will fight the marketers because of their pride in the site. However, as marketers become more determined and use automated tools to mount their attacks, Wikipedians will progressively find themselves spending more time combating the marketers.
- The repetitive and unsatisfying nature of these tasks will burn out some Wikipedians, and slowly they will individually decide to invest their time elsewhere.
- As some Wikipedians check out, the remaining Wikipedians will have to pick up the load. With fewer hands, the site will get progressively junkier, which will reduce the pride incentive of the remaining Wikipedians, further accelerating their check-out rate.
- Thus, Wikipedia will enter a death spiral where the rate of junkiness will increase rapidly until the site becomes a wasteland. Alternatively, to prevent this death spiral, Wikipedia will change its core open-access architecture, increasing the database’s vitality by changing its mission somewhat.
It’s now 2009 with the Wikipedia still very much alive almost four years after Goldman’s prophecy.
But he isn’t giving up.
He loves the Wikipedia, “but he’s also convinced that the site contains the ‘seeds of its own destruction’,” says Ars Technica, continuing »»»
In other words, not to put too fine a point upon it, Wikipedia will fail.
Goldman made his provocative point at the Silicon Flatirons conference this weekend in Boulder, Colorado, standing at a heavy wooden podium in a multiuse room that had been donated to the University of Colorado by a graduating class back in the 1960s. Those students could not have foreseen Wikipedia at the time, but by 2008, everyone gathered in that roomâfrom corporate vice presidents to think tank bosses to academics – had made use of the collaborative online encyclopedia.
In Goldman’s view, the very popularity of the site stands in tension with its goal of radical openness. The freely editable nature of Wikipedia has made it a canvas upon which vandals, spammers, and pranksters can paint at will.
So does the Wikipedia have less than a year to live?
Definitely stay tuned. 
Within four years - Technology & Marketing Law Blog, December 5, 2006
February , 2009
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February 12th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
jessss i bet the marketers as you term htem have less than a year to live, those kidns burn out far faser then someone WHOM has a love of what he does.
February 13th, 2009 at 11:03 am
law professor?
Well it’s the law professors’ product that have screwed the american courts first and then economy . They took over the courts and then wall street and there you have it. This guy should stick to professing and fixing the law, whatever that is.
February 13th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Wikipedia’s traffic is already massive it’s been under attack by marketers for years and automated tools have not presented a significant threat.
February 14th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
The occidental society is decaying because people lost their moral standard. Capitalism is going too far and has became a jungle law. Unless we reverse this trend right now and regain our social skill our civilisation will collapse.
This is one exemple:
Marketing was once a legitimate method of information for leting people know about new products and services.
It is now the Science of BS where the best way to lie, deceive and brainwash people are cultivated.
this no longer serve our society and corrupt every aspect of humain activity, Art, science, jusrtice, govermenent, humain relationship. . .
Look at how marketing bring down to the ground the music and song industry in particular and the art in general.
Crappy song with no lyric and no music, crappy painting that does not represent anything and that even my cat can do (no offense to my cat but this is not it’s stuff!) crapy sculture, made of random piece of garbages randomly stuck together, crapy architecture looking like stack of chiken cages for storing humanity, crappy movies with not story, no action and no content but with sex to catch a sexually starved audience with predictable result.
Science also is impaired and our society is still runing out of old discoveries from the begining of the 20th century.
Humanity is clearly on a tail spine. This hapen before and the result was never pretty. This time with nuclear weapon in the deal, who knows where it is going to take us if we don’t fix this.
February 14th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
” The occidental society is decaying because people lost their moral standard. ”
The ‘occidental society’ ?
Take a look at public media in China, Japan, and other
Oriental countries.
It’s basically ‘Bread and Circuses’ to keep the populace happy,
stupid, and controlled. Anthing truly informational is STRICTLY
censored. We’re not quite there yet, but our leaders are trying
really hard to catch up.
I wouldn’t be so quick to point to ‘occidental’ society for the ills of
the world.
February 14th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Japan is basically like us. As of others societies, from the distance It does not look good either but I can not coment on this because I am not living there. Beside all these other societies as bad or good as they may be does not affect the world that much because they don’t dominate like our society.
My point is that it is not the “Occidental society” who are responsible for the ills of the world.
This is us the people. The people have to change. Capitalist, Socialist, whatever it does not matter. If the people don’t behave you have a bad society heading for disaster.