The Wiki Elite

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
When Wikipedia launched, it was supposed to represent the democratization
of information, but a recent study shows that the majority
of content comes from just one percent of the site's editors.
I'm Jonathan Strickland, and this is tex Stuff Daily. Back
in two thousand, the administrators for a new reference site

(00:24):
called Newpedia. We're running into a problem. Their strategy was
to create an online encyclopedia consisting of articles written by
experts and vetted with a peer review process. But there
was just one problem. That process was really slow. In
its first six months, the site published precisely two articles,

(00:45):
not two million, or two thousand, or even two hundred,
just two. Laurence Sanger, one of the co founders of Newpedia,
thought that by launching a complementary site in which anyone
could submit articles free of editorial review, might help take
some of the pressure off nupedia. On January two thousand one,
Wikipedia launched. By the end of its first year, it

(01:07):
boasted twenty thousand articles. Sanger's philosophy was that by allowing
anyone and everyone to contribute, Wikipedia could ramp up to
become a record of pretty much all human knowledge. Experts
could contribute or tweak articles that might contain inaccuracies, the
cream would rise to the top. In practice, Wikipedia had
a few other issues to contend with. The open nature

(01:30):
of the platform meant that people could make both positive
or negative changes to content. Articles on sensitive subjects became
battlegrounds for different ideologies, and some people just found it
amusing to vandalize articles in various ways. It became clear
that the open policy needed a few more guidelines to
keep things orderly. Sanger created the first set of these

(01:50):
guidelines in two thousand two, and a sizeable group of
volunteer editors did their best to make sure those rules
were followed. These rules required reference citations for factual statements
and articles, and avoidance of bias or opinion and pieces,
and some general guides on what is and isn't considered
to be relevant information for any given subject. Over time,
the process for writing and editing content on Wikipedia has

(02:13):
grown more bureaucratic. This may contribute to the problem of
a relatively small number of editors contributing more than of
all content. A two thousand thirteen m I T Technology
Review article concluded that the red tape editors had to
navigate to be active on Wikipedia meant fewer editors would
stick around. The article cited a decline and editors who

(02:34):
had more than ten edits to their accounts. A piece
on Motherboard states that the top one percent of editors
at Wikipedia has a pretty high turnover rate. Of that
top one percent changes every five weeks or so. Wikipedia
has struggled with getting more active editors involved since the
mid two thousand's. The New York Times published a piece

(02:54):
in two thousand fifteen titled can Wikipedia Survive? The article
identified a different threat to Wikipedia mobile devices. Now, the
online world in general has struggled with the rise of
web traffic from mobile devices. It can be challenging to
serve up mobile advertising, and web advertising is still a
major source of revenue for web based sites and services,

(03:15):
but that was not the problem the article was focusing on. Instead,
it was all about how mobile devices aren't ideal if
you want to write up an article or make extensive
changes to content, it's inconvenient and cumbersome to use a
mobile device compared to the good old mouse and keyboard
of desktop and laptop computers. The New York Times argued
that the shift in web experiencement fewer people were comfortable

(03:38):
performing research writing and editing in general. The periodical The
Guardian had its own response to this and acknowledge that
editing on Wikipedia isn't easy for many reasons. First, just
using the markup language to make changes to the site
is tough. There's a learning curve to properly navigating the code.
Beyond that, the Guardian pointed out that editors can sometimes

(04:00):
feel a great deal of ownership regarding some articles, and
if you feel passionately about the content in them, making
a change to that content can be met with resistance,
and so being an editor on Wikipedia often entails arguing
for changes, defending editorial decisions, and navigating an increasingly complex
framework of rules. The Guardian article goes further still and

(04:21):
argues that the barriers to editing on Wikipedia are so
high that only a really motivated person would go through
the trouble of doing it. Further, the article states those
who have the most motivation tend to be those with
an agenda, and frequently include dishonest or manipulative individuals. On
the academic front, Wikipedia has been the frequent target of

(04:41):
scholarly scorn. Because articles are by their nature changeable, it's
problematic to cite a Wikipedia article. In research, there's no
guarantee that the information you are citing will be there
in the future, and because there have been some high
profile cases of people with a specific agenda to push
altering Wikipedia articles to a line with that agenda, the

(05:02):
veracity of information found in Wikipedia can also come under suspicion.
There's also a touch of elitism in some criticisms directed
towards Wikipedia. Some of the longest articles by word count
are for seemingly inconsequential topics, for example, figures in pop culture,
whereas more traditionally revered subject matter such as a historical figure,

(05:22):
may have comparatively fewer words dedicated to them. I see
no indication that Wikipedia is going to fade away in
the near future, and maybe that the number of editors
will decrease to a select few willing to pick their
way through the rules and code to grow Wikipedia, and
perhaps in the end we'll find ourselves with a compendium
of knowledge closer to what the founders wanted when they

(05:43):
first launched Newpedia years ago. To learn more about Wikipedia
and all other topics in tech, subscribe to the tech
Stuff podcast. That's my long form show in which I
dive deep into all things technological to find out what's
really going on. I'll see you again soon won