446
this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
446 points (97.6% liked)
Technology
59314 readers
4948 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Looks like they nearly shut the door on new admins circa 2008 and the existing group is slowly attriting.
Wikipedia is an RPG and it’s too hard for new players.
Hopefully they realize it's not healthy for Wikipedia in long term and make a course correction.
No idea how they work internally but probably some kind of mentoring program would be in order. There's no way someone relatively new will learn all their quirks that have been developed in the past decade and too many people on the internet expect you to know everything already to be worth a shit to them.
There is a mentoring program and I'm a part of it. Unfortunately, a lot of the accounts going through it very blatantly aren't there to actually make a good Wikipedia article on something, but to instead promote themselves or their company.
Half-baked idea incoming.
Wiki Jr. A Wikipedia dedicated to kids culture. Kids contribute and edit, have a mentor, put it on college applications. When they turn 18 can migrate account to real Wikipedia.
Possibly, though Wikipedia and all of its related projects have an 18+ requirement. Likely because of copyright issues, as under 18 year olds legally can't give up a share-alike license on the content they make.
Note that this requirement is not really enforced
It is if you reveal you're underaged. But if you keep quiet about it, no one will know. That's true for the entirety of the internet.
Can they just give it to the public domain? I'm sure Wikipedia would other copy left systems, but for kid content I could see it being less important.
It's possible. I'm not a copyright expert, so I have no idea how things like that work and what the potential legal pitfalls are.
Free child labor, nice
I know it’s a joke, but the world isn’t super black and white. Kids want to help, by nature. My family owned a business when I was underage. I wanted to help and did little little things, but not allowed to help customers. When I was old enough I got hired for real and paid for it. By then I knew most things and was a good contributor, and learned a lot about balancing ledgers and counting registers, etc.
I also was manager at a young age after I moved out and went to other things, because I had experience already!
This isn’t to say I’m for child labor. Just that, for centuries kids have helped out and learned things by being a part of stuff. Blocking that off complete until they are 18 isn’t benefiting them either. Just to be clear though, the thought of kids working in meat plants and such; sickens me. 😷
I’m only pointing out the world isn’t black and white, and that perhaps there are in-between places which can benefit youths.
I don't know if it still exist, but that used to be a thing. I was pretty active on there during primary school.
You think recruiting new blood is the biggest hurdle right now?
I think long-term retention is more the problem. There's plenty of new editors that show up to do something, but they don't care about being an editor on broader subjects long-term.
There's attempts to retain interest more through things like editathons on specific topics, such as with the Women in Red group, that have seen a decent amount of success.
I used to be an editor, and an admin. Quite a prolific one, in fact. I eventually quit (not really "officially", I just gradually ran down my frequency of editing until I eventually realized I just wasn't any more) because editing Wikipedia was no longer fun. And as far as I could tell, that was deliberate and as-designed.
Rules, rules, rules. No articles on quirky topics for the sake of quirky topics. Strict limits on pop culture. Articles for Deletion became a death sentence, arguing felt like trying to be a lawyer in a court that had already ruled against you and was just making things official. Just a tiring slog to produce something I wasn't terribly interested in any more.
Not really sure what the solution is, if there even is one. Wikipedia seems to be what it wants to be, now. I am a bit saddened because what it used to be was fun, but I've moved on. I'm glad Wikipedia still exists and has been useful to a great many people over the years.
I mean, is it surprising that a project aimed at becoming a proper encyclopedia would become stricter on content and raise the standards over time?
Which makes complete sense for pop culture stuff and especially things like Trivia sections that try to be added to a bunch of articles, adding things in like appearances of a historical subject in any and every manga that features them and any TV episode. That's not really something that's needed.
Nope, not surprising, which is why I figure it's as-designed.
Well, is it? If the problem is that no new editors are joining then perhaps something that new editors would enjoy working on is needed.
If Wikipedia is fine with continuing to get greyer and greyer, ossifying into a "proper" and "serious" encyclopedia, then that's fine I guess. If new blood is needed, on the other hand, maybe look at things that would attract it and consider that as something that's needed.
It's not like Wikipedia can offer a wage increase.
Wikipedia is already a proper encyclopedia, as has been the case six years ago. Pop culture sections are still allowed, they’re just restricted to reliably sourced entries to prevent being disproportionally long and having shaky entries that are a stretch
Yes, those are all things I said in my comment already. I think they are the main reason for the lack of new blood.
If you don't think the lack of new blood is a problem, then that's all fine. If the lack of new blood is a problem, then maybe those things need to be reevaluated.
How have they “basically shut the door” in new admins? There has been three new admins in the last three months and there is currently an ongoing request for adminship which has a 100% support rate
Maybe they were denied as a Wikipedia admin? lol
You said yourself. Three.
How is 3 in 3 months "basically shutting the door"? Plus it's going to be 4 in three months very soon (19 hours later)
Because it’s a 90% drop from the 2006 sysopping rate.
That doesn't mean they've "shut the door", especially when you consider how much Wikipedia activity has declined since 2006. To see if they've shut the door you should look at the overall RfA success rate, not quantity