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Wikipedia

JMK

Joined 15 February 2006
User:JMK is very dissatisfied with the neglect of the Vaquita porpoise in the Gulf of California, and that there are only 10 left as of March 2019 [1]

Other wikis

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I contribute to several wikis, including Commons, Afrikaans, wikispecies and wikiquote. Contributions tally, pages started.

State of the wiki

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Lead paragraphs

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A lead introduces you to the subject in a limited number of steps, and is accessible to as many as possible, whatever their angle of incidence. It stops short of specialist details.
 
Some articles to the contrary exist only on a lofty, inaccessible platform that intimidates or excludes newcomers. cf. Timmer, 2015, Byrne, 2017

While the articles have grown and matured, many lead paragraphs are still neglected. They are often too short or too long, and do not provide a summary of the article. Any new contributors may well dedicate themselves to these, and render a valuable service. The lead is a good place to describe the context of the subject, to give a perspective on how the topic fits into the larger picture.

Headers

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Similarly, insufficient thought is given to the application of headers to separate the information into meaningful sections, or to reduce unwieldy lead paragraphs. A dearth of headers also essentially conceals the lack of information in, or the poor treatment of certain subsections.

AFD

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The AFD, or articles for deletion, receives too little input. More votes should be cast to either keep or delete the articles nominated there.

About wikipedia

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A few articles from the web are referenced below, which may serve as indicators of wikipedia's successes or failings:

Personal reflections on Everipedia

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...and why its no substitute for wikipedia. Originally Everipedia mirrored (or forked from) wikipedia and consequently shared its hosting cost, but this has perhaps become less useful lately, when the Wikimedia Foundation's funding drives were more successful. Everipedia's potential value was perhaps in adding less notable topics, something wikipedia shouldn't strive for, but which some people would indeed like to see. In 2017, the "trickle of entries" however seemed to "relate almost exclusively to sensational topics". One may assume that many of the less sensational topics will not be updated, and the site may do better by limiting its scope. It has also been described as the "wikipedia for being wrong".[7]. In 2020 "best pages of the week",[8] include the likes of: PieDAO, Connext, dex.blue, Lily Mma: VoteCoin cryptocurrency, xDai Chain, Totle Swap, Idle (DeFi), EOSREX.IO, Centrifuge (DeFi), DeBank, Ethereum Name Service and P2P Validator. This doesn't resemble a general topic encyclopedia, but rather describes private ventures (and read like advertisements) where the writer is tightly involved with the topic – or is writing about him/herself essentially.

In 2018 Mr Larry Sanger proposed that Everipedia be empowered by blockchain technology, seen as a new avenue for those who want to move beyond what wikipedia can offer.Wikipedia co-founder’s 8,000-word essay on how to build a better Wikipedia Many questions can be asked however, concerning its rating/ranking feature, monetary nature and governance structure, for instance:

  • A rating system (of all articles) is proposed which will be curated "by experts and by the general public". Question: What exactly does this mean? How will the public be distinguished from the experts, or how will such a two-tier result be recombined? If an article is expertly rated, what weight will the public rating carry? Why not rather use wikipedia's existing rating system which elevates some articles to featured status, based on "accuracy, neutrality, completeness, and style"?[9] Admittedly the latter rating process is only applied to a small percentage of articles, but how may this be extended to all articles? Who will do the work if few experts are contributing? And why would anyone reward someone else's work if the writer stands to be monetized or be awarded IQ tokens by a high rating, and not the adjudicator him/herself?
  • A decentralized system ("Greaterwiki," which would not constitute a community) is proposed that will "enable anyone to use the data about ratings (and raters) creatively." Question: So anyone will be able to take a rating (by anyone) and use that to improve an article? How will that be accomplished, and why would a writer rely on the rating rather than his or her own prejudices when updating an article?
  • A system is proposed that splits and weighs the ratings according to demographic, whether that be "experts with endorsements, French socialists, programmers, women, Christians, Muslims," or other. Question: So each rater/ranker will first have to identify as such? Will anyone care to give so much information on themselves? And Everipedia will be the centralized authority to keep all of that?
  • It is proposed that the rating data must be "tied to carefully-verified real world identities and be open." Question: Then at least the verification will be centralized, and the raters/rankers will have to willingly give personal information to that centralized institution?
  • It is proposed that there could be "competing rankings" of articles. Question: What is the value of a ranking if each person has his own?
  • It is proposed that "users and organizations will be enabled to rate each other’s expertise," and "rate sources." Question: Further forks in the rating scheme? Experts on experts? Public rating experts?
  • It is proposed that articles on the blockchain will be compensated. Question: Compensated by whom? A blockchain is not automatically a virtual currency, or a real currency, so who supplies the money? a) The reader or end user? Then we are moving away from a free encyclopedia. Or do we need digital miners as well? Who will be keeping the virtual cash? For what purposes may that virtual cash be employed to give it economic value in solid currency? b) Someone buys "your block" directly? That means we're back to advertisements, proprietary content and copyright, the content is not free forever, as it always remains liable to be sold and resold. The end user is removed from the system.
  • It is proposed that "governance will be determined by the owners of (IQ?) tokens / coins" / virtual currency. Question: Which governance, to govern what? So if there is value here the investors will run the show? An oligarchic voting system, or will investors be happy to be outvoted by anyone with a penny or two? And you loose governance when you sell your block (stock?), or do you get governance if your coins from sales stay in the bank? Either way you have to keep one eye on the value of this currency and the other on writing articles. And how are IQ tokens (or blocks) converted to coins?

The proposed features sound like something as general and decentralized as the internet itself, and the way that it would refocus all the forking of functions and authority to provide something like an encyclopedia is unclear. The end result of the above isn't called an encyclopedia anyway, but "a peer-to-peer database", with share-holders. How a writer behaves outside a writer community, or whether he/she will receive any cooperation, is likewise unclear. One begins to see why the wikipedia model achieved its measure of success, namely by focusing its functions.

Google knol failed in 2011/2012 due to lack of organisation and maintenance, lack of ongoing support, product development or user-generated quality control.[10]. As importantly, it failed due to lack of focus. Its focus was neither on the topic or on cooperation. Consequently there was no need for authors to find consensus (agreement with co-authors), or if that failed, neutrality, which is part of the contribution ethic on wikipedia. The dynamic was lost. The result of consensus and neutrality is an article that self-corrects and achieves a measure of credibility. Infogalactic makes the knol mistake again, and perhaps compounds it. As one topic is split into various articles, one can ask where the follow-up user will go to update the topic? And how will his/her update affect the ratings. Verdict: Probably unworkable as it dilutes rather than focuses, and the result will be abandonment and outdated articles. See also: [11]


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