Comments on: Wikipedia blogging outside the Wiki Planet orbit

By: phoebe

phoebe — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 02:30:00 +0000

Hey! Interesting post. I worked with the USF assignment… we have so much to learn, both on the classroom & the wikipedia side, about how to do really good classroom assignments. Work to be done, I guess.

By: Shawn

Shawn — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 06:48:00 +0000

I should just like to add, as someone who became active in WP English during that 2005 – 2007 period, that I’ve noticed a distinct drop off in article editing activity, as well.

Shawn in Montreal

By: Sage

Sage — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 06:35:00 +0000

Kelly, thanks much for the tip.

Danny, another interesting connection, for sure. From my own perspective, I would agree that 2007 was the period when the the mood of the community shifted and became as contentious as I've yet seen it, particularly in terms of an adversarial relationship to the WMF and its leadership. Among long-time editors, much of that was related to the "unresolved issues boiling beneath the surface".

That might help explain my personal observation of a new crop of de facto community leaders on English Wikipedia; newer heavily-involved editors had less of an emotional stake in those issues, and so were not driven away by the discord.

But given the small scale of the metapedian community compared to the overall editor pool, I think a good explanation of the overal trend has to rely on causes that would affect the editing experience of people who only make handful of edits a month and rarely venture outside of article space. In your view, how do the constellation of issues that you allude to relate to the experience of casual editors?

By: All's Wool that Ends Wool

All's Wool that Ends Wool — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 05:26:00 +0000

This is a fascinating post, particularly the statistics showing a slight decline as of March 2007. I don’t agree with Greg that it was the Essjay event that led to the turn around, but I do not, rather curiously, that March 2007 marks when both Brad and I left. Not that our departure was the cause of the decline. I am not that immodest. But in retrospect it was a response to unresolved issues boiling beneath the surface.

By: Kelly Martin

Kelly Martin — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 00:56:00 +0000

Quite frankly, the most consistently reliable report on Wikipedia commentary in blogs can be found in Wikipedia Review’s “Wikipedia in Blogland” forum.

By: Sage

Sage — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 21:23:00 +0000

Gregory Kohs, thanks, that’s an interesting connection that I’m embarrassed not to have noticed. I don’t think the Essjay controversy was the major cause of the changing dynamics of Wikipedia growth, since even well before that event the growth rate was slowing and article creation rate had peaked six months before. But it’s worth considering as an additional factor. The “1+ edits per month” group also peaked in March 2007, for both anons and registered users.

I’m inclined think that, rather than causing a decline, the Essjay controversy brought a temporary boost in editing just as Wikipedia was reaching the end of its rapid growth phase. But I’m not willing to discount your interpretation completely.

It’s too soon to tell, but it looks like the size of the editing community has stabilized and isn’t declining (or at least, not much) any more.

By: david silver

david silver — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 18:15:00 +0000

hey sage - thanks for blogging about my students' projects (and my grading of those projects!).

i was and am extremely excited about the project i assigned my students and early feedback from them about what they learned and how they collaborated has been very positive. i hope to write up some observations about the project later this month.

thanks again for the mention.

By: David Gerard

David Gerard — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 14:24:00 +0000

I suspect a lot of us get the Google Alerts on “Wikipedia.” Someone on the Planets should be doing a regular survey of non-Planet mentions of Wikipedia in blogs. I find this a good way to get a feel for what normal people actually think of Wikipedia.

By: Gregory Kohs

Gregory Kohs — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 13:49:00 +0000

Sage, I’m delighted to see that you brought this study of “20+ edits-per-month” editors. It confirms my suspicions that the Essjay scandal (February/March 2007) was a watershed moment in establishing to the Wikipedia community and to the wider world that the co-founder of Wikipedia can’t even be trusted to make leadership decisions that respect the integrity of the encyclopedia project. It (literally) has been all downhill from there.

By: Sage

Sage — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 08:27:00 +0000

Geoff, I’m glad you’re back. I didn’t know that you were gone on WikiBreak until you blogged about coming back, but I had noticed your lack of blogging, and missed it.

Wikipedia doesn’t do much for (and is more actively hostile on-wiki than ever to) developing a sense of community, beyond activities directly related to creating and maintaining content. It makes it tough to sustain a relationship to the project over a long period, especially considering how much the project has changed since 2002. It getting rid of so much of the silly, community-building pieces of Wikipedia (BJAODN, lots of silly games, interesting but unusual lists, etc.) has hurt the community (and in turn, the content produced), but it’s tough to deal rationally on a wiki with a problem so diffuse and slow-acting. The people who pushed to get rid of all that stuff and make the culture of Wikipedia more serious and content-focused were acting in what they thought was the project’s best interest (and maybe they were).

When I say “anecdotally”, what I really mean is “according to MeatballWiki”. If you haven’t seen it, you might find this interesting: http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?GoodBye