Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-11-30/In the news

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Why is the media always so eager for anti-Wikipedia stuff??? :/ So far, I haven't seen anything positive about Wikipedia in the media. BejinhanTalk 13:15, 1 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Online media is set to make their jobs obsolete, that's why. Any hint of bad news feels like job security at a newspaper. That, and yellow journalism sells better. --King Öomie 13:51, 1 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - The encyclopedia certainly is in competition with conventional media, even as we rely on it for our sources. I am thinking of articles on major current events. The media doesn't have much positive to report about Craigslist either. On the other hand, in general, the media report negative things about everything. When things are going expectedly, that's not news. Diderot's dreams (talk) 14:40, 1 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    - The world has been in a death spiral since people discovered they could make a lot of money reporting on the death spiral, I think. --King Öomie 14:43, 1 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      - You only have to read fark.com to see what a passes for news in the MSM (mainstream media) these days... – ukexpat (talk) 15:43, 1 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        It's despicable, but so entertaining... --King Öomie 16:15, 1 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The original thesis on which these reports are based is at http://libresoft.es/Members/jfelipe/thesis-wkp-quantanalysis/
- - The media does report positively on Wikipedia. It frequently makes their "Best of the Web" lists and they often link to our articles which is an implicit compliment. --bodnotbod (talk) 14:16, 1 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The media just wants to show us in bad light. But, so far there has been one exception and that was DNA which portayed us as warriors... [1] --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 14:45, 1 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

To paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of our demise have been greatly exaggerated. I agree with those who say that the low-hanging fruit has been picked. Most people don't have the inclination or skills to do real research and add high-quality content to the encyclopedia. I think it's a good thing that the current contributors are those who can and do. -- Ssilvers (talk) 16:07, 1 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

To comment about a different subject above, we've tried for years to alert contributors that there are subjects which deserve more attention than others; that is one of the reasons why articles are rated for importance. However, volunteers will continue to work on the subjects that they are interested in; that is why there are Featured Articles on Pokemon-related topics, to mention an old canard, while many important articles remain a mess. Maybe the community ought to explore ways to either encourage or make it easier to improve important articles. -- llywrch (talk) 16:46, 1 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

People write about what interests them. Wikipedia reflects in a way what a section of humanity considers important. Difficult to get around this other than attracting more academics to the project, maybe partnering with Universities? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:17, 1 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

True, but there are a lot of people who are willing to help out where needed. I think we could do a much better job of steering those people to the more important article areas. Right now, if you come to browse the to do list, you are presented with a cacophony of choices that do not do much, qualitatively, to indicate the areas of greatest need. -- Ssilvers (talk) 15:03, 4 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For some insight on why Wikipedians leave the project, see Wikipedia:Missing Wikipedians.
For some ideas for new articles, see Wikipedia:Requested articles. -- Wavelength (talk) 20:37, 1 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Beyond the low-hanging article fruit thing, there's the simple matter of how a system grows over which at least the WSJ article made somewhat of a deal out of if I recall correctly. Of course Wikipedia's membership rose rapidly in its first couple years, you are starting at zero. In some ways it's a matter of low-hanging membership fruit. There is, to some degree, an upper limit on the total possible number of Wikipedia members (the Earth's population minus those permabanned) and then a more realistic upper limit (of those with internet access who are interested in and capable of working on the project). When you start at zero you can feast upon that group, but once you've recruited a great many of them there's fewer easy new members to attract. Staxringold _talk^contribs 23:33, 2 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I find it a little disturbing to suggest that people are leaving because most of the articles have been created. If one checks the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Australia/To-do list, one might notice a lot of work still needs to be done, especially when the list is no-where near complete. - Shiftchange (talk) 12:47, 3 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's not that all have been created, but there are 3 million articles created. If one of those would have been something that drew you in to the project back in 2006, now it's not there. Staxringold _talk^contribs 15:07, 3 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Right. If you think you will be the first person to write an article about kangaroos, you will find, when you come here, that there is already an article on kangaroos. To improve the article further, we now need some serious research, and many potential contributors just want to write about something off the top of their heads. So, it is not surprising that those contributors will be less likely to edit, now that the obvious topics already have "off the top of my head" information. But, as I said above, I don't think that's a problem. -- Ssilvers (talk) 14:58, 4 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

With a project of this nature there will always be a levelling off of new recruits, people updating 'their pet topics' and then doing minimal work, and temporary increases and decreases in active users (statistical link anyone?).

What might be more interesting is the 'number of editors of #all# wikis', what overlaps there are between them, and what proportion of persons have transferred 'some, much or all' of their wiki-ing activity to other wikis. Jackiespeel (talk) 14:43, 4 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Statistics has a link to Wikipedia Statistics - Site map. -- Wavelength (talk) 20:27, 5 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Falloff in number of editors can be accounted for fairly easily. When individuals see that the articles they are interested in enough to come to wikipedia are already in what is to them an acceptable condition, or at a point where further improvements might involve more work than they are willing or able to put out, their motivation for editing declines. Particularly considering the number of people we have who are, to some degree, motivated by pop culture content, it makes perfect sense to me that once that content has gotten to a good quality, the people who are interested in it will have less content to keep themselves occupied with and start to taper off. I do myself think highly of the current Donut Drive and Bacon Challenge contests as quick, comparatively nonbinding ways of addressing these questions, and hope that such short collaborations take on. That doesn't really help us address the comparative weakness of some of the real encyclopedic content, but it's good for what it is. John Carter (talk) 16:21, 5 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What's all this talk of "the media is always negative"? That's not what I see. I also don't see the falloff in editors as a huge problem, at least not for biology-related matters. The supposed move of people who want to make biased articles on politics is great news, if it is real. There are still new editors: including myself. I started this account in October, after editing as an IP for some time. I've also seen a number of people join up already.—innotata (Talk • Contribs) 20:40, 7 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There will always be some turnover of editors 'for all sorts of reasons' (including 'forgot previous name and password, restart under new name' and 'surge following WP mentions in the news'). Would there be any way of measuring the statistics of 'overlap with and transfer to other Wikis'?

On KangarooWiki, would one 'hop' to another page? Jackiespeel (talk) 16:48, 9 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]