Hopefully they realize it's not healthy for Wikipedia in long term and make a course correction.
No idea how they work internally but probably some kind of mentoring program would be in order. There's no way someone relatively new will learn all their quirks that have been developed in the past decade and too many people on the internet expect you to know everything already to be worth a shit to them.
There is a mentoring program and I'm a part of it. Unfortunately, a lot of the accounts going through it very blatantly aren't there to actually make a good Wikipedia article on something, but to instead promote themselves or their company.
I think long-term retention is more the problem. There's plenty of new editors that show up to do something, but they don't care about being an editor on broader subjects long-term.
There's attempts to retain interest more through things like editathons on specific topics, such as with the Women in Red group, that have seen a decent amount of success.
I used to be an editor, and an admin. Quite a prolific one, in fact. I eventually quit (not really "officially", I just gradually ran down my frequency of editing until I eventually realized I just wasn't any more) because editing Wikipedia was no longer fun. And as far as I could tell, that was deliberate and as-designed.
Rules, rules, rules. No articles on quirky topics for the sake of quirky topics. Strict limits on pop culture. Articles for Deletion became a death sentence, arguing felt like trying to be a lawyer in a court that had already ruled against you and was just making things official. Just a tiring slog to produce something I wasn't terribly interested in any more.
Not really sure what the solution is, if there even is one. Wikipedia seems to be what it wants to be, now. I am a bit saddened because what it used to be was fun, but I've moved on. I'm glad Wikipedia still exists and has been useful to a great many people over the years.
I mean, is it surprising that a project aimed at becoming a proper encyclopedia would become stricter on content and raise the standards over time?
Which makes complete sense for pop culture stuff and especially things like Trivia sections that try to be added to a bunch of articles, adding things in like appearances of a historical subject in any and every manga that features them and any TV episode. That's not really something that's needed.
Nope, not surprising, which is why I figure it's as-designed.
That's not really something that's needed.
Well, is it? If the problem is that no new editors are joining then perhaps something that new editors would enjoy working on is needed.
If Wikipedia is fine with continuing to get greyer and greyer, ossifying into a "proper" and "serious" encyclopedia, then that's fine I guess. If new blood is needed, on the other hand, maybe look at things that would attract it and consider that as something that's needed.
It's not like Wikipedia can offer a wage increase.
Wikipedia is already a proper encyclopedia, as has been the case six years ago. Pop culture sections are still allowed, they’re just restricted to reliably sourced entries to prevent being disproportionally long and having shaky entries that are a stretch
Yes, those are all things I said in my comment already. I think they are the main reason for the lack of new blood.
If you don't think the lack of new blood is a problem, then that's all fine. If the lack of new blood is a problem, then maybe those things need to be reevaluated.
Wiki Jr. A Wikipedia dedicated to kids culture. Kids contribute and edit, have a mentor, put it on college applications. When they turn 18 can migrate account to real Wikipedia.
Possibly, though Wikipedia and all of its related projects have an 18+ requirement. Likely because of copyright issues, as under 18 year olds legally can't give up a share-alike license on the content they make.
I know it’s a joke, but the world isn’t super black and white. Kids want to help, by nature. My family owned a business when I was underage. I wanted to help and did little little things, but not allowed to help customers. When I was old enough I got hired for real and paid for it. By then I knew most things and was a good contributor, and learned a lot about balancing ledgers and counting registers, etc.
I also was manager at a young age after I moved out and went to other things, because I had experience already!
This isn’t to say I’m for child labor. Just that, for centuries kids have helped out and learned things by being a part of stuff. Blocking that off complete until they are 18 isn’t benefiting them either. Just to be clear though, the thought of kids working in meat plants and such; sickens me. 😷
I’m only pointing out the world isn’t black and white, and that perhaps there are in-between places which can benefit youths.
How have they “basically shut the door” in new admins? There has been three new admins in the last three months and there is currently an ongoing request for adminship which has a 100% support rate
That doesn't mean they've "shut the door", especially when you consider how much Wikipedia activity has declined since 2006. To see if they've shut the door you should look at the overall RfA success rate, not quantity
I always work on new articles in my userspace before putting it out into the main article area. Since you're much more likely to run into conflict if you're putting out an article with a couple of sentences and one source, even if you're planning on expanding it, than if you move a more fully formed article into the mainspace all at once.
Unfortunately as more and more people got online it became more and more ripe for abuse. I can’t imagine Wikipedia not getting horrible defaced if its editorial standards were still in 2006. Old Wikipedia had some weird shit. Not every mid-level WW2 Nazi commander needed a page of thinly-veiled apologia, and thankfully many of those excesses are already dealt with. Also, the articles in general are of a higher quality than they used to be.
I hope they can work out a solution that allows trusted junior editors to become admins more easily.
It is funny looking back to the earliest articles and how little rules and regulations there were for making them. Including just how loose the reliable source rules were, since there was little oversight on using, say, someone's blog as a source of information.
Back in the early days, I noticed my town had a wikipedia entry, but no demonym (word for people who live there; e.g. New Yorker, San Franciscan). I thought of a slightly rude word whose first half happened to be my town’s name (think if, say, Parisians were called “Parisites”), and added it as the demonym, totally unsourced, as a joke to show my buddy. It stayed. For a few years it stayed, never questioned. Then, the new Mayor used it in a speech; presumably, she’d looked it up on wikipedia. That speech was published in the local paper. The local paper was added to the page as a source, and not by me. A high-school gag between friends was now a sourced and cited fact.
I’ve tried editing a few articles years ago, only to have everything undone hours later with no explanation why and nothing in the way of constructive criticism for whatever invisible criteria the power users were looking for. I don’t even bother anymore and avoid using the entire site if I can find what I need elsewhere.
Push away eager contributors and you’re stuck with the old guard before you realize it.
frankly I wouldn’t know how to start anymore if I wanted to create a new entry
Read about it in advance (from decent sources, as much as possible), find a few similar articles to see how they’re usually formatted, map out how you want your article to look (while generally respecting the format of the other articles), and do it. The formatting is a bit trickier in the raw editor, but I think the visual editor is the default now. They also have help articles of all sorts, and a message board for new users looking for help.
And if you make some technical mistake, some bot or no-lifer who edits 50 articles a day will smooth it all out anyway.
This seems somewhat important. Things, even major institutions in the internet, can be very generational. Never thought about that in terms of Wikipedia before.
I’m OK with the older tech nerds holding the reigns for awhile when we have the reality of tiktok zoomer broccoli heads everywhere living the social media based life of hollow clout-chasing and such. We need the nerds who know how shit works keeping the shit working in other words.
There are ‘clout chasers’ everywhere in all generations. States, companies and officials all try to edit their Wikipedia pages. I saw an example on my lemmy feed just yesterday.
It's very weird... I wonder how they don't get sued for including other companies' logos. I only discovered this when trying to use FontForge to frankenstein fonts together and saw that Wii logo.
The Film was good. Well told old type of Story, through there was no “catharsis”, the ending was kinda meh.
I can guess why it ended the way it did but still felt a bit like a downer.
The cinematohraphy, the music and the sounds were really good to amazing. The editing during the boarding part was wonky, but once the Crew was on the ship it was good.
The production was really good. I wish the lotr, wot, one piece and other big streaming Shows could Look this good.
The acting was fine. The captain and the first mate were the best, I know them from other movies and they seem to be the most experienced.
Something I was wondering, what was the young guy afraid of at the very beginning. There shouldnt be anything really disturbing left on the ship.
I didn’t realize this was being directed by the guy that directed Trollhunter until a few days ago, makes me a little more excited about this movie. The trailers look corny as hell but Trollhunter knew how to balance the corniness with the seriousness perfectly.
I saw this being released somewhere, and I’ve never heard about this movie before. Such a shame, looks like they haven’t invested in promotion that much as I’d be right within their target audience.
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