Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free

Re:Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free by tokenadult on Saturday January 01, 2011 @10:24PM (#2059292)

We will never make Wikipedia perfect, although I have some ideas for making it more so.

I'd love to hear ideas about making Wikipedia better. I'd especially like ideas about how to encourage new editors with good sources (that is, access to libraries or better specialized databases) on technical but controversial subjects to participate more. I left this thread for a few hours, following links to the annual reports and also doing some of my own Wikipedia editing, and I'm also very curious about how to reduce the decline in the number of active administrators.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free by redthrowaway on Saturday January 01, 2011 @11:06PM (#2059361)

As far as encouraging new experts to edit, I like the current Wikipedia Ambassador program. What I'd really like, however, is Final Revision. On an article-by-article basis, propose articles for final rev in the same way they are proposed for FA class. This would involve a thorough review, hopefully be experts in the field, to weed out inaccuracies. Then, the article would be fully protected indefinitely. Proposed changes could be submitted, but the idea would be to consider it a final product. By moving through many of the articles that would be suitable for this process, we could focus the community's energy on improving articles that needed it. I think we've written most of what needs to be written. With the exception of dynamic subjects, we should be archiving those articles which are done.

As far as encouraging new editors, we need to stop the manic approach to vandal fighting. Vandalism is a problem, sure, but there are far more people who are driven away by hasty reverts and unfriendly warnings.

As far as admins are concerned, it really needs to be no big deal. Perhaps an admin review noticeboard, to look at questionable admin actions, and a clear demoppping process. Other than that, promote editors pseudo-randomly. I think by throwing mops at editors without requiring RfA, we could eliminate a lot of the politicking that goes on. If you need more admins, promote more. We know that the statistically optimum way of promoting people within an organization is to do so randomly, and I think Wikipedia would be a great testbed to try that theory out.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free by tokenadult on Saturday January 01, 2011 @11:26PM (#2059389)

We know that the statistically optimum way of promoting people within an organization is to do so randomly,

We do? What is the citation for that conclusion?

and I think Wikipedia would be a great testbed to try that theory out.

You don't think Wikipedia is already trying out promoting people randomly?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essjay_controversy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/20...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free by redthrowaway on Saturday January 01, 2011 @11:32PM (#2059400)

>We do? What is the citation for that conclusion?

Bah. It's around here somewhere. They did a study, and found that promoting people randomly within a corporation led to better outcomes than any other strategy. I'm sure someone could find the citation.

As far as promoting people randomly, no, they're not doing that. I'm not sure what Essjay has to do with your point; he was a guy who claimed to have real life expertise as a way of gaining prominence on Wikipedia. I'm not suggesting Wikipedia currently promotes based on claimed qualifications; I'm suggesting they promote x editors with ~3k+ edits and ~1 year (numbers are very maleable) to adminship at random, doing away with the RfA process.

[ Parent | on HN ]