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Wikipedia’s declining stats

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From Paul Furber at Brainstorm:

Wikipedia lost at least 300 million views in 2015, dropping it from the fifth most viewed website on the planet down to the tenth. This is a good thing for a number of reasons. It started as a good idea in 2001 — an encyclopaedia that anyone could edit. Unfortunately, it’s now a quagmire of bureaucracy, infighting, corruption and agenda-pushing.

Try to edit any article that an established editor regards as their pet project and you’ll find your edits reverted in double quick time, regardless of whether you have reliable sources for your edit. Complain about this and you’ll get banned. You personally may be a reliable source, but that won’t matter: Wikipedia doesn’t even allow people to correct information about themselves unless it comes from a third party.

Some editors are untouchable no matter how many rules they break. And the number of arbitrary rules behind the scenes is staggering, all of them tagged with strange acronyms like WP:BLP and WP:NPOV. More.

The moral of the story is, creative disorganization is fun but it is still disorganization, and that matters.

Co-ordinated smoke signals would be a big improvement.

See also: How Wikipedia can turn fiction into fact (Sourced enough times, the fiction becomes “troo”)

Wikipedia hacked by elite sources now (The main problem is that the people who use Wikipedia do not care whether it is false or true. “Wikipedia is my library” is the new diagnostic for irresponsible laziness.)

and

Mathematician complains Wikipedia is promoting “pseudo-science” of multiverse (Then there were the minor revelations that core articles “don’t earn even Wikipedia’s own middle-ranking quality scores” and that some “editors” are paid by outside sources.)

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Comments
http://digital-deadly-sins.theguardian.com/ (It's not just made up out of thin air.)kairosfocus
February 25, 2016
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“Wikipedia is my library” is the new diagnostic for irresponsible laziness.
“Wikipedia is my library” would be a good diagnostic for irresponsible laziness - if anyone actually said such a thing. So I still think that statements like "the people who use Wikipedia do not care whether it is false or true" is a better diagnostic for irresponsible laziness. vikingmom,
Wikipedia is banned by some teachers and professors for the reasons noted above…
Teachers and professors usually want students to use primary sources, and thus all encyclopedias are usually banned as a source.goodusername
February 25, 2016
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Wikipedia is banned by some teachers and professors for the reasons noted above...vikingmom
February 25, 2016
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I think wikj is great and one of the best ideas ever for mankind. Its easy and quick to bring up info. there probably is problems with authors but everyone should wish them well. It brings to the common people a friendly source to info. I think the quality is great relative to human ability. Probably there are agendas but no more then in the big media or big educational institutions. Pray for wik. by the way they might be so effective that it a curve there should be a drop in views as the folks learn what they wanted to know. Speculation on curves here.Robert Byers
February 24, 2016
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I recently attempted to update the Discovery Institute entry to reflect the fact that the Institute denies it promotes creationism and intelligent design theory in the public schools. It was promptly removed by a smug, self-righteous individual who had no real rationale for removing it. Of course, the piece is an atrocious example of bias, full of loaded language and downright lies. Sure, I didn't really think I would effect change there, but it was worth learning the lesson for myself.OldArmy94
February 24, 2016
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