NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] MIT Tech Review: The Decline of Wikipedia
MIT Tech Review: The Decline of Wikipedia
http://j.mp/1a6l6UL (MIT)
"Yet Wikipedia and its stated ambition to "compile the sum of all human
knowledge" are in trouble. The volunteer workforce that built the
project's flagship, the English-language Wikipedia-and must defend it
against vandalism, hoaxes, and manipulation-has shrunk by more than a
third since 2007 and is still shrinking. Those participants left seem
incapable of fixing the flaws that keep Wikipedia from becoming a
high-quality encyclopedia by any standard, including the project's
own. Among the significant problems that aren't getting resolved is
the site's skewed coverage: its entries on Pokemon and female porn
stars are comprehensive, but its pages on female novelists or places
in sub-Saharan Africa are sketchy. Authoritative entries remain
elusive. Of the 1,000 articles that the project's own volunteers have
tagged as forming the core of a good encyclopedia, most don't earn
even Wikipedia's own middle-ranking quality scores. The main source
of those problems is not mysterious. The loose collective running the
site today, estimated to be 90 percent male, operates a crushing
bureaucracy with an often abrasive atmosphere that deters newcomers
who might increase participation in Wikipedia and broaden its
coverage."
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
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