Who are the customers of Wikipedia?

The Story.

I have been a big fan of Wikipedia for years, considering one of the greatest discoveries of the 21st century. But over the last few years I have seen numerous contributors becoming frustrated with increasing bureaucracy and a "shoot first, ask questions later" (quoting Rific on my talk page) attitude from overzealous administrators or should I say cops.

This morning, after I created the article about the Open Web Foundation, I was surprised that seven (yes 7) minutes later the article was already nominated for speedy deletion for an alleged, unverified, copyright violation. This despite a clear guideline in the criteria for speedy deletion stating that "Before nominating an article for speedy deletion, consider whether it could be improved, ...". No attempt was made by the administrator to check if the article could be improved as he acted mechanically over a bot indication that their MAY contain a copyright violation.

I then had to engage in a race to avoid the speedy deletion by tagging the article with a "hangon" tag, editing the article and providing proper explanation in the talk page.

Two hours later, another administrator changed the speedy deletion tag for another one, still calling for speedy deletion but for another reason. This time because the article did not "indicate the importance or significance of the subject". If this second administrator had spent less than a minute checking the relevance of the subject, they would have found lots of reliable sources. Therefore this second nomination was also violating Wikipedia guidelines.

Finally after other edits from myself and another generous contributor who added some references, a third administrator accepted to remove the speedy deletion tag entirely.

My point here is that at no time did the first two administrators consider they were violating their own guidelines of considering whether the article could be improved before nominating it for speedy deletion.

During this process we have exchanged a lot of messages on the discussion page of the article instead of improving the content of the article. A big waste of time for nothing because the cops@wikipedia won't consider they could have been violating their own guidelines and nobody will blame them for that.

There are 48, and growing, different tags and policies allowing administrators to nominate an article for speedy deletion today. Chances are that if this trend continues, nobody except administrators, will be able to make an edit without risking at automatic reverse or nomination for speedy deletion.

In the end, Wikipedia administrators are both legislators, cops and judges! But they seldom are contributors to the content of Wikipedia.

So, Who are Wikipedia's customers?

Obviously, the readers are but without the valuable content provided by millions of generous contributors, occasional and not, there would be nothing to feed readers.
As contributors are not paid and indeed provide food for wikipedia they should also be considered customers of Wikipedia.
Therefore Wikipedia, the company here, should consider how to treat its customers properly and stop policing with over-zealous legislators, alias cops, alias judges, alias administrators.

What will happen if Wikipedia fails to keep encouraging contributors?

Well this will encourage contributors to consider alternative places to contribute, and possibly go check for Knol in Google-land. This could be the beginning of the end of Wikipedia.
In the end Wikipedia could be left only with a few thousand administrators, or bot-geeks, and very few real contributors. I do not believe that administrators will contribute anything other than bots and more rules to further close Wikipedia to the average contributor.

Can we still consider Wikipedia 'Open'?

A few years ago Wikipedia was definitely more open, but over the years the administrators are closing it in many ways:

by the explosion of the number of rules, making it impossible for the average contributor that I am to not violate half a dozen rules per edit
using bots to automatically an inhumanly flame contributors and prevent further edits by scaring contributors out of Wikipedia
by not separating powers properly and creating a closed administrator club where being politically correct (read over-zealous and over-protective) is encouraged
by excluding administrators who would like Wikipedia to stay Open

What could Wikipedia do?

Definitely review the direction where Wikipedia is headed and find innovative ways to keep the bad guys outs while rewarding contributors and stop scaring them off.
A few guidelines:

Administrators should always consider if an article can be improved before any sort of retaliation. This requires human intelligence and excludes the use of bots to automatically tag articles, reverse changes or delete articles.

Bots could still be used to help administrators make a review of an article

Separate powers. There are thousands of administrators of Wikipedia, split them in exclusive groups and monitor abuses proactively.

These are just a few suggestions and I am sure that some or all of these have already been considered but it is time to implement something to give some freedom back to contributors.

Long live Wikipedia!

Where do people find the time to contribute to Wikipedia and Open-Source?

Health coverage in Wikipedia and Knol

Frank said...

Your comments are disingenuous and misleading. The copyright violation, rather than being unverified, was (and remains) proven. All that is necessary is to compare the text in the article when it was created (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Open_Web_Foundation&oldid=227807690) with the text on the Open Web Foundation's web site; the text in the first two paragraphs is copied - verbatim. That is the very definition of copyright violation. Since Wikipedia is subject to the same copyright laws that other web sites are subject to, and since it is one of the most visited and visible web sites on the planet, adherence to applicable law is a requirement for the project to maintain credibility and to remain in existence. This is largely immutable and it trumps most other considerations.

Regarding the rest of your rant, my suggestion to you is to spend time learning about Wikipedia instead of criticizing it.

riffic said...

Frank, criticism is fair and nothing is perfect. We should all strive to improve imperfect processes.

Jul 25, 2008

Jean Vincent said...

Frank,

My point since the beginning is that wikipedia guidelines have been violated. The article could be improved and was improved but no attempt was made to consider if there was a possibility for improvement before shooting the nomination speedy deletion thus violating the guidelines.

The discussions I had on wikipedia regarding this have revealed that most administrators prefer to consider that the speedy deletion nomination was appropriate.

When I stated that I would no longer contribute to Wikipedia, one administrator replied 'So long'. With this kind of administrator, Wikipedia will indeed become a closed administrator club.

I had been a contributor to wikipedia for longer than many administrators and I don't understand why editing is becoming so difficult.

Riffic,

Apparently most Wikipedia administrators consider that improvement means more restrictions on edits.

They consider that closing Wikipedia is the way to go.

Jul 26, 2008

The article about the Open Web Foundation was finally deleted today. Congratulations to the closed user group that wikipedia has become!

Riffic has now moved the page back to wikipedia. Let's hope that this does not end-up in a deletion/undeletion war.

Anonymous said...

I believe you're over-generalizing. Many, many articles are created everyday and most are made by new users. If you take a look at the new pages log, you can see hundreds (if not thousands) of new pages are created daily (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:NewPages). Wikipedia is not a closed site and never will be.

As far as I can see, your article doesn't establish notability. The sources provided only show that the subject exists--not that it's notable enough to be in an encyclopedia like Wikipedia. If I was yourself, I would add references that show the OWF is important, or somebody will take this to Articles for deletion and get the page deleted. If you try to recreate after that, you could be potentially blocked and the article create-protected. Best of luck!

I believe that notability has been largely established and documented by the facts that well-known industry players are supporting this organization.

This may be just my opinion but just take a few seconds to consider the list of supporters:
* BBC
* Facebook
* Google
* MySpace
* O'Reilly
* Plaxo
* Six Apart
* Sourceforge
* Vidoop
* Yahoo

John Digsby said...

Your blog here and your userpage in general show that you don't understand how Wikipedia works. For example, the User:Gazimoff, who tagged it for a speedy nomination, is *not* an administrator.

Yet you blame administrators for all these problems, and thus come to the false conclusion that Wikipedia is a "closed club" of administrators tagging articles for deletion.

As for the copyvio itself - this was absolutely clear. Copyright is automatic, and it is up to the originator (the creator of content) to specify whether it is ok to copy that material. In the absence of such a disclaimeer, copying the material directly is a violation of copyright law - doing this actually threatens Wikipedia more because it leaves it open to lawsuits and being discredited as a "plagiarism site"

Honestly, you're upset about the fact that, not knowing how article creation on Wikipedia works (establishing notability, etc.), people wanted your article gone - and as a result, you are attacking the entire structure. The site increases in size by thousands of pages a day - in your dystopic view, if correct, this would never occur.

Just chill.

Jul 29, 2008

Dear John,

My blog is not about Wikipedia, only this post.

I concede that I did not check is Gazimoff was an administrator but he was acting as such. I, a normal user, would certainly never tag an article for deletion and would certainly engage in a discussion with the author prior to any referral to an administrator for examination. The article was later improperly deleted by an administrator who did not understand the nature of my complaint proving the point that too many administrators are all about hasty deletions. Or is this to assert some form of authority in cyberspace?

The point is that it is too easy to delete or undo other people contributions without following wikipedia guidelines which consistently urge users and administrators to be cooperative and polite. An other user (or administrator) has compared the practice of deleting (or undoing) without looking for possible improvement as a 'hit and run'.

Does anyone think, just one second, that a new Open Source organization would sue Wikipedia, or eWeek (which made the same exact citation) or dozens of other blogs for citing a extract of its public charter that the need out? Isn't that being over-zealous or paranoid?

There was no copyright violation, and the content was perfectly acceptable under Wikipedia guidelines for citing sources of non-free content. However the citation or attribution may have been improved. But the point of my complaint was that no attempt was made by the happy tagger to verify that the citation or attribution could be improved contrary to wikipedia guidelines for speedy deletions.

The same shortcomings apply for the second hasty nomination for deletion regarding notability. No attempt was made to consider if the notability of partners such as Facebook could be asserted. Is this a joke?

Finally, the administrator who eventually deleted the article did so without consideration for all other administrators opinion that the article had improved enough to become acceptable. This last move, done after I posted this entry, further demonstrates what Wikipedia is becoming.

I have been even more disappointed that almost no administrator, if any, was able to understand or recognize that my initial point was not regarding the copyright violation or notability, but about the failure to abide by the guidelines for speedy deletion nomination that specifically state in its introduction: "Before nominating an article for speedy deletion, consider whether it could be improved, ...". Tell me how this guideline was NOT violated? I asked this same question in the discussions, nobody dared answering this question. This inability to understand the true nature of a complaint by administrators is my biggest concern today.

In conclusion, I believe that the rules are so complicated that both regular users like me and seasoned administrators fail to properly follow these rules and the days when Wikipedia was the encyclopedia that anyone can edit are going, but certainly not gone.

Wikipedia's current growth is no future guaranty for long term continued success. I wish Wikipedia long-term success but believe that this cannot be done without a cooperative attitude as opposed to a coercive attitude.

Chill,
Jean.

John,

Just a quick check on user Gazimoff shows that this 'regular' user that I mistakenly considered an administrator is, in fact, applying to become an administrator:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Gazimoff

So even if I did not check, this was a pretty close guess.

Do users demonstrate their administrative skills by tagging articles for deletion?

Now, the hasty tagging makes more sense.

I believe a better administrator would be one that would engage in cooperative work to help regular users contribute better content. This is actually the spirit of the vast majority of Wikipedia guidelines but this is no longer what is happening. The user which deleted the Open Web Foundation article his strong thousands of deletions in less than 2 years. Congratulations!

Understanding is the Essence of Intelligence

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