Stephen Downes

Re: Is Wikipedia Saturated? Yep! Last Year.

Ben Curtis, August 8, 2008

My impression was that the troll comments were good alerts to the possibility that the information was incomplete or misleading, especially in domains with which I have little familiarity. Might be annoying in an article on something I know a lot about, but then, I don't have to look at Wikipedia. In other words, I thought the troll comments added value, and were perhaps valudable feedback for the authors. A Wiki is not supposed to be a blog, is it? [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]

Re: Is Wikipedia Saturated? Yep! Last Year.

Anymouse, August 11, 2008

I agree that nitpicking has begun to change Wikipedia, but I don't think it's remotely fair to imply that the editors suggesting Articles for Deletion and such are trolls. Why, all of a sudden, would Wikipedia receive an onslaught of "trolls" such that it changes the entire course of Wikipedia?

I think a more neutral and logical (and correct) explanation is that Wikipedia reached critical mass. It truly became a valuable resource to so many people that it really became time to listen to people who questioned its quality and accuracy. As more people aimed to fix errors and cite debated facts, the quality began rising drastically.

I support a content management system as part of my full-time job. The elephant in the room when it comes to CMS's is that not everyone can do everything well. It turns out that although basically everyone online could add a sentence at the end of a Wikipedia article, relatively few of those people can make quality edits to the existing article. Fewer still are willing to become well-versed in the "rules" of Wikipedia.

Basically, anyone can sing, but when your audience wants to hear opera music, they need someone who has invested time in improving their skills. Yes, this is a huge shift in Wikipedia that really changes where it sits in the conversation about social media -- but you can either condemn the change or recognize it as an amazing fore-runner case study. Will shifts like this occur on other social media sites? (myspace embraced music, Facebook opened to non-college email addresses, etc.) [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]

Re: Is Wikipedia Saturated? Yep! Last Year.

Anymouse, April 15, 2009

no the lib of congress NYC lib and British lib all have over 50 m volumes wikipedia has be shut down check the edit numbers yourself since the spring of 2007 probably by major financial and political interest which plan to corner the internet itself by 2012

no more progress no more development no more science

just more evil

interesting that the cia now has intelipedia
and wall street has google

next they want to control all the tea in china

I hope this helps steve [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]