[WikiEN-l] Potential Wikipedian growing pains

Tue Sep 20 23:03:45 UTC 2005

> From: Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com>

>  is there a point in Wikipedia's size where it's current growth
> will taper off or stop? I don't mean to repeat the old chestnut that
> knowledge is somehow finite: put in different words, is there a  
> certain
> point where contributors will find it far easier to work on existing
> articles than to contribute new ones?

Oddly enough, I wonder about the exact opposite. I fear that people  
enjoy creating new articles far more than they enjoy editing existing  
articles, and that people look desperately for topics that do not  
exist yet so that they can be the first to create them. The  
Wikipedian equivalent of the Slashdot FIRST POST!!!!

This means that over time a greater proportion of newly created  
articles will reflect an artificial attempt to find a topic that  
hasn't been "taken," and a smaller proportion will be reflect a  
genuine attempt to serve potential readers.

I do not think its growth will stop. The problem is, will the quality  
of the articles hold up? There's no obvious reason why it shouldn't,  
and no obvious reason why it should.

One reason why it _might_ not hold up is that when Wikipedia was less  
famous, contributing to it required a greater interest in the project  
and a greater commitment to the project's ideals. As it becomes more  
and more familiar, it is possible that we will see an increasing  
proportion of new "articles" that are really paragraph-long newbie  
tests.

To tell the truth, I think many of the "articles" that land on AfD  
are best not regarded as articles at all, but as elaborate newbie  
tests OR as badly executed article requests. I'm thinking of substubs  
that convey no information at all except the fact that someone either  
a) genuinely wanted an article on that topic, or b) simply wanted to  
experience the pleasure of creating an article.

I've been casting "votes" recently in AfD that say "delete, and enter  
a request for the article." So far, nobody but me seems to think this  
is a good idea.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/