I’m not seeing a lot of what can be done about it. That’s the bottom line; understanding the problems is of mostly academic interest if that understanding doesn’t lead to solutions.
I didn’t read the whole thing for that reason; maybe you’ve got solutions intermixed in some sections I didn’t read closely? I only got the ones at the end, and they boil down to “do something different, maybe that would fix it”, when that doesn’t address the root causes: competition, power-seeking for its own sake, and misaligned incentives in places (racking up deletions because they won’t be contested for edit points).
So, how about a followup that references this one, and proposes solutions?
It was indeed intermixed in some sections. The crux of it is to recognise that Wikipedia functions as a monopoly in knowledge market nowadays, and the solution is to assist the rise of a few new general-reference encyclopedias who will share the knowledge market with Wikipedia, as a minimum.
Why divide efforts if the same forces will create the same problems? I’m not sure how big a factor competition will be in this situation. I challenge you to think harder about solutions, since you’ve thought so hard about the problems.
Why divide efforts if the same forces will create the same problems?
The same way as how it’s better to distribute power among companies in a market and let them compete with each other, rather than concentrating these among a company which then will become a monopoly which the end result inevitably involves abuses of power, i.e. enshittification. If readers don’t like how a particular encyclopedia is going, they can at least vote with their feet and switch to another platform so much that the former will have to adapt to changes that could make them become appealing to readers again.
Two companies is better than one, but not by much. That’s a pretty limited amount of competition, much less than the ideal of many competitors.
And the effort duplication is huge. Do you know if a competitor could legally start by copying Wikipedia’s articles? That would make competing projects much more viable.
Do you know if a competitor could legally start by copying Wikipedia’s articles? That would make competing projects much more viable.
There’s already one which did exactly that a year ago—Justapedia. Founder is Betty Wills who is surprisingly an established contributor in Wikipedia itself. As far as I understand they’re experimenting ways that will prevent them from Wikipedia’s mistakes again, such as reformative/preventative enforcement approach and a binding commitment favoring the idea of inclusionism.
I’m not seeing a lot of what can be done about it. That’s the bottom line; understanding the problems is of mostly academic interest if that understanding doesn’t lead to solutions.
I didn’t read the whole thing for that reason; maybe you’ve got solutions intermixed in some sections I didn’t read closely? I only got the ones at the end, and they boil down to “do something different, maybe that would fix it”, when that doesn’t address the root causes: competition, power-seeking for its own sake, and misaligned incentives in places (racking up deletions because they won’t be contested for edit points).
So, how about a followup that references this one, and proposes solutions?
It was indeed intermixed in some sections. The crux of it is to recognise that Wikipedia functions as a monopoly in knowledge market nowadays, and the solution is to assist the rise of a few new general-reference encyclopedias who will share the knowledge market with Wikipedia, as a minimum.
Why divide efforts if the same forces will create the same problems? I’m not sure how big a factor competition will be in this situation. I challenge you to think harder about solutions, since you’ve thought so hard about the problems.
The same way as how it’s better to distribute power among companies in a market and let them compete with each other, rather than concentrating these among a company which then will become a monopoly which the end result inevitably involves abuses of power, i.e. enshittification. If readers don’t like how a particular encyclopedia is going, they can at least vote with their feet and switch to another platform so much that the former will have to adapt to changes that could make them become appealing to readers again.
Two companies is better than one, but not by much. That’s a pretty limited amount of competition, much less than the ideal of many competitors.
And the effort duplication is huge. Do you know if a competitor could legally start by copying Wikipedia’s articles? That would make competing projects much more viable.
There’s already one which did exactly that a year ago—Justapedia. Founder is Betty Wills who is surprisingly an established contributor in Wikipedia itself. As far as I understand they’re experimenting ways that will prevent them from Wikipedia’s mistakes again, such as reformative/preventative enforcement approach and a binding commitment favoring the idea of inclusionism.
I read the whole thing, there are no solutions in the middle. I also feel like the “what can be done about it” part is very underdeveloped