Wikipedia Quality in Decline

Wikipedia has been criticized often and widely, most notably for their touch-and-go adherence to verifiable fact. Stephen Colbert made brilliant use of them a few months ago, coining the term, “Wikiality.”

Still, Wikipedia has been a solid source of at least basic research for some time - basic in that, while I wouldn’t suggest citing them as a source when writing a term paper, you could at least use it as a launch pad to find out about a subject, and carry on with your real research from there.

The real problem with Wikipedia isn’t that anyone can edit a page, and as such pervert the validity of an entry.

Wikipedia’s problem its editors.

Last year, “nofollow” tags were placed on the site to stop spammers from adding links to pages for the sole purpose of increasing their own site’s page ranks. The thinking was, with these people gone, Wikipedia could finally be rid of these vandals and get on with the work of recording everything. Before that, legions of faithful Wikipedia editors combed over pages, clearing out links manually and deleting irrelevant pages.

Unfortunately, the editors remain fickle in what they will and will not allow on the site. What is more, while there are rules and procedures for deleting an article, they are labyrinthine, preventing any novice from defending themselves against deletion. Given Wikipedia’s enduring importance as a source of information, there is still a need to check postings to be sure they are worthy of keeping. So how do Wiki-editors come to that decision?

Strolling through the archives of articles nominated for deletion, sentiments like, “I’ve never heard of it” or, “blatant advertising” turn up often.

To address the, “I’ve never heard of it” claims, many of the subjects nominated are new to me - however, that doesn’t make them, “not notable.” Notability is defined by Wikipedia, though the actual rule is rarely cited correctly.

As for blatant advertising, if one of these subjects is also a business, that doesn’t make the listing, “blatant advertising.” Blatant advertising usually includes positive adjectives and a call to action. Many of these so-called adverts merely discuss a business.

Constructive suggestions for changing articles to make them acceptable are rare, most likely because it is easier to simply expunge the page and be done with it.

This all assumes an editor doesn’t simply delete the page out of hand, without putting the site up for debate. At least with the nomination, the writer can learn from his or her mistakes and create a better page.

I fear that the guardians of Wikipedia will themselves kill the site. Of course, it will remain a vital source of information about Paris Hilton, NBC, The Moon, and scads of other subjects no one has ever heard of. New subjects, however, will be missed because they are not so widely known no one needs to look them up.

In short, Wikipedia itself will be not notable. (Perhaps not according to the way they define notability, but apparently that no longer matters.)

written at May 18th, 2007 and is filed under Social Networking, Trends, Web site best practices. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.