Watching Wikipedia's extinction event from a distance

An academic journal article would be gold, but usually harder to find in a Google search, and when adding, be careful not to draw a conclusion too far from what the article actually states.

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It’s not my field of study, but this popped up:

https://works.bepress.com/mathieu_oneil/9/

Kind of embarrassing to think about it now, but in 2007, out of anger and frustration, I coined the word Wikipric and it still exists in the Urban dictionary and one or two other spots; https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wikipric

LaLaLa…

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LOL

never mind

:wink:

Xeni did this and got called out for it by the wikipedists…

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I wonder why they called out one and not the other. I mean, what possible difference could there be… :rolling_eyes:

Add me to the long, long list of people who won’t edit a page again. Life is just way too short to deal with that shower of wankers.

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As someone who has both worked for the WMF and Boing Boing, I shudder at your apparent paranoid worldview.

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Misread as WWF. I am now disappointed.

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I know. I’m all like

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It needn’t necessarily have been sexism. She edited her page while logged in as herself. One could clearly see that xenijardin has just edited the Xeni Jardin page. This would be more noticeable than Mark using “Ottomatik.”

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Yeah, that sounds possible. It doesn’t fit with my experiences, but easily could be that.

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Perhaps, but it’s also true that Wikipedia enjoys a cozy relationship with Google:
https://www.simplyzesty.com/blog/article/february-2012/why-does-wikipedia-rank-so-highly-in-google-search

There’s also this article about the same thing, which, illustratively, I had to scroll past two and a half pages of Wikipedia results to find:

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Sure, fine - I don’t doubt that Google may well have made the decision to promote Wikipedia. They may believe that in many cases, it’s the best result for many subjects, for a plethora of reasons - no corporate bias, likely longevity, and so on. The WMF certainly didn’t ask for such treatment, and all anyone needs to do is to look at their financials to see that there’s not some sort of quid-pro-quo taking place here.

So what is your implication? That either 1) the Wikimedia Foundation or 2) the volunteer editors, somehow, are acting in bad faith because of it? I don’t see what your comment has anything to do with editorial issues with Wikipedia, unless you believe there’s some underhandedness going on somewhere?

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Ha! The tree-huggers at the World Wildlife Federation kicked their asses!

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Never mess with The Panda.

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I’ve edited a lot of articles, but I’ve never cared to take ownership of a Wikipedia article, because I don’t think that’s very productive.

The Wikipedia community does seem to be some sort of weird cult, and I haven’t even dealt with Wikipedians very much.

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It was in response to the text I quoted, which claimed Wikipedia is getting top-ranked in merit alone. If Google has chosen to promote them, that does not follow.

Now personally I think it’s okay if they do that so long as it’s spelled it that’s what they’re doing. It doesn’t seem so.

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Well, to be fair, Google tells no one how they decide what sites are the most relevant. There’s a million pages talking about the issues that arise when they tweak their algorithm (the Google Dance and how that can impact page rankings [and, of course, there’s an entire cottage industry of Search Engine Optimization out there trying to reverse-engineer that system]). So, unfortunately, Google will not likely ever do what you ask.

That being said, it’s most certainly not because of some sort of inside deal between anyone at Wikipedia/Wikimedia and Google. If they are preferring Wikipedia more than the algorithm says it should be, for example, then they are doing so by their own choice.

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I found this page because RHaworth issued a Speedy Deletion on my userpage this week.

It’s not just the impulse to delete rather than to improve articles, it’s the use of the speedy deletion to eradicate contributions rather than use it as an opportunity to make things better coupled with an attitude that…discourages one’s inclination to contribute any more of their labor to Wikipedia.

It’s one thing for an editor to send you a note saying “hey, this is our policy,” or even to make changes themselves. It’s quite another to wipe contributions out of existence through expedited procedures.

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Gee, I wonder why?

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