• GunnarRunnar@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • Silverseren@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        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.

          • Silverseren@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            0
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            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.

            • FaceDeer@kbin.social
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              1 year ago

              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.

              • Silverseren@kbin.social
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                0
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                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.

  • twistedtxb@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 year ago

    Many people pointed this out in the link but yeah, it’s much harder to make edits / entries in wikipedia nowadays.

    The rules are more strict and you have to respect an increasing number of rules, etc.

    I remember when Wikipedia started to get some steam, it was basically a text editor with very basic hyperlink-style formatting.

    Minor changes / typos are still easy to do, but frankly I wouldn’t know how to start anymore if I wanted to create a new entry.

    • GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      Unfortunately as more and more people got online it became more and more ripe for abuse. I can’t imagine Wikipedia not getting horrible defaced if its editorial standards were still in 2006. Old Wikipedia had some weird shit. Not every mid-level WW2 Nazi commander needed a page of thinly-veiled apologia, and thankfully many of those excesses are already dealt with. Also, the articles in general are of a higher quality than they used to be.

      I hope they can work out a solution that allows trusted junior editors to become admins more easily.

      • Silverseren@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        It is funny looking back to the earliest articles and how little rules and regulations there were for making them. Including just how loose the reliable source rules were, since there was little oversight on using, say, someone’s blog as a source of information.

  • Silverseren@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Though since this is specifically about being an admin and not just an editor on Wikipedia, is this necessarily an issue? A lot of admin activity has become automated since those early days, so you don’t need as many people to deal with vandalism or other forms of backlogs.