Is the Wikipedia in its death throes?
p2pnet news view P2P:- Does the Wikipedia have less than a year to live?
In 2006 Eric Goldman (right), associate professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law, predicted the Wikipedia would fail in the foreseeable future.
Now, “I have finally put together the paper associated with the talk that lays out my argument in more detail (and is more thoroughly cited),” he says in an email.
And Eric is not only sticking to his guns, but in his Technology & Marketing Law Blog, is forecasting the Wikipedia, “eventually will deploy Flagged Revisions, or some other stringent form of editorial lock-down, across the entire site”.
‘Very emotional responses’
In 2005, Eric said in his opinion, the Wikipedia would fail in five years and, “I still think my 2005 predictions look pretty good,” he says.
Evolutionary changes in Wikipedia’s labor supply are, “forcing Wikipedia to change its basic architectural design of permissive user editability,” he says, going on »»»
Flagged revisions is a prime example of the ongoing architectural shift. With flagged revisions, every user has the technical capacity to edit a Wikipedia entry, but submitted revisions remain hidden from public view until a trusted editor approves them for publication. Accordingly, flagged revisions significantly changes the Wikipedia experience. It delays publication of most contributions, it buries some contributions without ever being published at all, and it creates a significant workload for editors.
For example, he notes, “the German Wikipedia deploys flagged revisions site-wide and publication delays are up to three weeks.”
The Wikipedia, “has been on red alert with biographies since the John Seigenthaler incident in September 2005, so it’s not surprising that Wikipedia will tighten the reins there first,” Eric states, adding »»»
However, I think this change is just one more intermediate step in Wikipedia’s ongoing process of restricting user editability, and it is not the final restrictive step Wikipedia will take. For reasons I outline in the article, I expect Wikipedia eventually will deploy Flagged Revisions, or some other stringent form of editorial lock-down, across the entire site, not just for living people’s biographies. I explore some other possible alternatives in the paper, but I conclude that substantial restrictions to user editability are Wikipedia’s only viable long-term solution to preserve site credibility.
People who have reviewed the article have asked about the article’s relationship to Benkler’s Wealth of Networks and its related commentary. Those works have explored the phenomenon and implications of large-scale online volunteerism, including a convincing proof that people will contribute their labor to online collaborative enterprises without any direct financial compensation. However, I’ve seen less attention paid to the exact reasons why people volunteer for these projects. My article focuses on the “why” in some detail, but even then, I make some assumptions and guesses. Despite extensive academic research into the Wikipedia community, we still lack a complete and clear empirical picture of why people join the community and, perhaps just as important, why people leave. I offer up my theoretical considerations, but more empirical work remains to be done.
He says his Wikipedia`s Labor Squeeze and its Consequences is available on SSRN and is slated for publication in the Journal of Telecommunications and High Technology Law.
“The article is still in draft form, and I gratefully welcome your comments,” he says.
Stay tuned.
less than a year – Are the Wikipedia`s days numbered?, February 12, 2009
foreseeable future – Technology & Marketing Law Blog, December 5, 2006
Technology & Marketing Law Blog – Why More Wikipedia Editing Restrictions Are Inevitable, and Some Comments on Flagged Revisions for Living People’s Biographies, August 25, 2009
fail in five years – Wikipedia Will Fail Within 5 Years, December 5, 2005
John Seigenthaler incident – Wikipedia anti-vandalism move, December 17, 2005
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It`s really easy!
Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details.
August 27th, 2009 at 10:04 am
“To date, Wikipedia editors have successfully defended against malicious attacks from spammers and vandals, but as editors turn over, Wikipedia will need to recruit replacements. However, Wikipedia will have difficulty with this recruiting task due to its limited incentives for participation. ”
And how will the incentives for participation be any different 5 years from now? He says wikipedia will become too big a target for spammers and vandals to stay away from in critical numbers, but where’s the logic in saying the new popularity won’t also recruit that many more “good” editors? The site is already the internet’s 7th busiest. There’s not a whole lot more prominence to gain.
August 27th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
I predict that this guy will keep moving his failure date further and further out until Wikipedia slowly changes enough for him to say it’s not really Wikipedia anymore.
I predict that he will then declare victory and go home
.
August 28th, 2009 at 3:18 am
While I think that Wikipedia will survive and prosper in the long run, there are always new problems rearing their ugly heads. However, this is a good thing. It shows that Wikipedia is growing up and gaining influence. Most of the troubles occurring on Wikipedia are a direct result of its popularity and its growing place in the world. Right now the current “big issue” is Spanish Wikipedia, which is under tension from the populations of several Spanish speaking countries in the world over its neutrality on political issues (ex. the Honduran political crisis). Other big political neutrality issues going on now include Israel/Middle East and China. Everyone wants Wikipedia to conform to their view of the world and Wikipedia is trying to be a neutral “just the facts” repository of information. But we must not forget that if Wikipedia’s influence was not so prevalent this would not be happening. It would be insane to think that the different peoples of the world would argue so vehemently to a trifle of a website catering to a small niche of netizens. That is why we must look at these events with a worldview – not unlike the one that Wikipedia does its best to teach us – so that we are able to comprehend the bigger issue at hand and rectify it. Regardless of the outcome of this current situation and future ones, now that Wikipedia has rooted itself into our world, the Wikipedian spirit will live on and it’s vast pools of knowledge already amassed will be saved and added to – either on Wikipedia itself or the next site that takes its place.
August 28th, 2009 at 5:01 am
Wikipedia is already functionally locked down for substantive edits. They have editor trolls who immediately, consistently, mindlessly revert ALL edits to ALL entries unless they are (apparently) made by a buddy of their or whatever. For that reason, most entries in any of the technical areas don’t change, don’t stay current, and don’t do anything but paint a picture of how something worked back in the 2005 heyday of the site.
Don’t believe me? Create an account and make a good, solid, useful edit to a specialized page. Come back in an hour and see if your edit remains – guaranteed, it won’t. Unless you are already a too-cool Wiki insider, your edits will get wiped. Try to re-apply it and you’ll be banned.
Needless to say, those of us with “lives” have long since learned not to bother trying to “contribute” to the site. So it’s laughably stale in any real areas – I guess the 4chan-level stuff is really “up to date.” Yay, how useful. They basically conned real experts into writing the original entries years ago. Now, the deletenik edit trolls have grabbed “power” and act as scary little dictators in their tiny, make-believe world. Who bothers even trying to play that game?
The ONE reason Wikipedia is even remotely relevant is that they’ve gamed Pagerank so their pages come up first in Google searches. That’s it. Take that SEO-style trick away, and the site is filled with out-of-date, incomplete, generic “facts” that get less and less relevant to reality every day that goes by. The rot in Wikipedia’s culture has been going on for years – Jimmy and his insiders don’t even pretend to support inclusive, genuinely diverse culture on the site. It’s all about the 1% of editors who burn all day long deleting posts from others, thereby gaining “power” by default. Since Jimmy and his crew are clearly nowhere near well enough educated or experienced to do anything about this obvious structural flaw, the site is in flame out trajectory. Take away the Pagerank hack, and nobody would even remember the URL at this point.
As with any good idea, a failure to provide truly caring, respectful, inclusive leadership has overwhelmed the originally positive momentum. See also Pirate Bay for a parallel example of good ideas wrecked by incompetent leadership. In the end, you can’t fake competence – not even with a cute name and clever PR.
Fausty