Speaker 1: When Wikipedia launched, it was supposed to represent the democratization
Speaker 1: of information, but a recent study shows that the majority
Speaker 1: of content comes from just one percent of the site's editors.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland, and this is tex Stuff Daily. Back
Speaker 1: in two thousand, the administrators for a new reference site
Speaker 1: called Newpedia. We're running into a problem. Their strategy was
Speaker 1: to create an online encyclopedia consisting of articles written by
Speaker 1: experts and vetted with a peer review process. But there
Speaker 1: was just one problem. That process was really slow. In
Speaker 1: its first six months, the site published precisely two articles,
Speaker 1: not two million, or two thousand, or even two hundred,
Speaker 1: just two. Laurence Sanger, one of the co founders of Newpedia,
Speaker 1: thought that by launching a complementary site in which anyone
Speaker 1: could submit articles free of editorial review, might help take
Speaker 1: some of the pressure off nupedia. On January two thousand one,
Speaker 1: Wikipedia launched. By the end of its first year, it
Speaker 1: boasted twenty thousand articles. Sanger's philosophy was that by allowing
Speaker 1: anyone and everyone to contribute, Wikipedia could ramp up to
Speaker 1: become a record of pretty much all human knowledge. Experts
Speaker 1: could contribute or tweak articles that might contain inaccuracies, the
Speaker 1: cream would rise to the top. In practice, Wikipedia had
Speaker 1: a few other issues to contend with. The open nature
Speaker 1: of the platform meant that people could make both positive
Speaker 1: or negative changes to content. Articles on sensitive subjects became
Speaker 1: battlegrounds for different ideologies, and some people just found it
Speaker 1: amusing to vandalize articles in various ways. It became clear
Speaker 1: that the open policy needed a few more guidelines to
Speaker 1: keep things orderly. Sanger created the first set of these
Speaker 1: guidelines in two thousand two, and a sizeable group of
Speaker 1: volunteer editors did their best to make sure those rules
Speaker 1: were followed. These rules required reference citations for factual statements
Speaker 1: and articles, and avoidance of bias or opinion and pieces,
Speaker 1: and some general guides on what is and isn't considered
Speaker 1: to be relevant information for any given subject. Over time,
Speaker 1: the process for writing and editing content on Wikipedia has
Speaker 1: grown more bureaucratic. This may contribute to the problem of
Speaker 1: a relatively small number of editors contributing more than of
Speaker 1: all content. A two thousand thirteen m I T Technology
Speaker 1: Review article concluded that the red tape editors had to
Speaker 1: navigate to be active on Wikipedia meant fewer editors would
Speaker 1: stick around. The article cited a decline and editors who
Speaker 1: had more than ten edits to their accounts. A piece
Speaker 1: on Motherboard states that the top one percent of editors
Speaker 1: at Wikipedia has a pretty high turnover rate. Of that
Speaker 1: top one percent changes every five weeks or so. Wikipedia
Speaker 1: has struggled with getting more active editors involved since the
Speaker 1: mid two thousand's. The New York Times published a piece
Speaker 1: in two thousand fifteen titled can Wikipedia Survive? The article
Speaker 1: identified a different threat to Wikipedia mobile devices. Now, the
Speaker 1: online world in general has struggled with the rise of
Speaker 1: web traffic from mobile devices. It can be challenging to
Speaker 1: serve up mobile advertising, and web advertising is still a
Speaker 1: major source of revenue for web based sites and services,
Speaker 1: but that was not the problem the article was focusing on. Instead,
Speaker 1: it was all about how mobile devices aren't ideal if
Speaker 1: you want to write up an article or make extensive
Speaker 1: changes to content, it's inconvenient and cumbersome to use a
Speaker 1: mobile device compared to the good old mouse and keyboard
Speaker 1: of desktop and laptop computers. The New York Times argued
Speaker 1: that the shift in web experiencement fewer people were comfortable
Speaker 1: performing research writing and editing in general. The periodical The
Speaker 1: Guardian had its own response to this and acknowledge that
Speaker 1: editing on Wikipedia isn't easy for many reasons. First, just
Speaker 1: using the markup language to make changes to the site
Speaker 1: is tough. There's a learning curve to properly navigating the code.
Speaker 1: Beyond that, the Guardian pointed out that editors can sometimes
Speaker 1: feel a great deal of ownership regarding some articles, and
Speaker 1: if you feel passionately about the content in them, making
Speaker 1: a change to that content can be met with resistance,
Speaker 1: and so being an editor on Wikipedia often entails arguing
Speaker 1: for changes, defending editorial decisions, and navigating an increasingly complex
Speaker 1: framework of rules. The Guardian article goes further still and
Speaker 1: argues that the barriers to editing on Wikipedia are so
Speaker 1: high that only a really motivated person would go through
Speaker 1: the trouble of doing it. Further, the article states those
Speaker 1: who have the most motivation tend to be those with
Speaker 1: an agenda, and frequently include dishonest or manipulative individuals. On
Speaker 1: the academic front, Wikipedia has been the frequent target of
Speaker 1: scholarly scorn. Because articles are by their nature changeable, it's
Speaker 1: problematic to cite a Wikipedia article. In research, there's no
Speaker 1: guarantee that the information you are citing will be there
Speaker 1: in the future, and because there have been some high
Speaker 1: profile cases of people with a specific agenda to push
Speaker 1: altering Wikipedia articles to a line with that agenda, the
Speaker 1: veracity of information found in Wikipedia can also come under suspicion.
Speaker 1: There's also a touch of elitism in some criticisms directed
Speaker 1: towards Wikipedia. Some of the longest articles by word count
Speaker 1: are for seemingly inconsequential topics, for example, figures in pop culture,
Speaker 1: whereas more traditionally revered subject matter such as a historical figure,
Speaker 1: may have comparatively fewer words dedicated to them. I see
Speaker 1: no indication that Wikipedia is going to fade away in
Speaker 1: the near future, and maybe that the number of editors
Speaker 1: will decrease to a select few willing to pick their
Speaker 1: way through the rules and code to grow Wikipedia, and
Speaker 1: perhaps in the end we'll find ourselves with a compendium
Speaker 1: of knowledge closer to what the founders wanted when they
Speaker 1: first launched Newpedia years ago. To learn more about Wikipedia
Speaker 1: and all other topics in tech, subscribe to the tech
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast. That's my long form show in which I
Speaker 1: dive deep into all things technological to find out what's
Speaker 1: really going on. I'll see you again soon won