My dear friend asked if I would write a few lines about my short career at Wikipedia and why I did not continue.
After several days poking about after I first joined I found myself very disappointed at what I found.
First: This is not (and likely never will be) an encyclopedia. It is more like the large filing cabinet stuffed with clippings, half finished projects, notes, the travel pamphlet collection, manuals for obsolete software and long discarded small appliances, and odd photos etc. that sits in my den and that I will sort through someday, I promise Dear. Except larger, and by the grace of the underlying programming, better ordered.
There is too large a variance of quality and style. Vast numbers of "articles" that consist of nothing but a title and one or two lines that say little of interest, contrasted by entries far too long for the subjects. Shoddy scholarship, shoddy craftsmanship, and shoddy writing abound and pathetically most of you seem oblivious to it. Errors of fact, poor or incomplete references, and plagiarism are rife. And when this is not the case the entry is inaccessible to the common reader. Look at the renormalization article. Will this explain the subject to a bright curious senior high school student, or an older layman outside the field? You have all lost sight, it would seem, that you are writing for a general audience, not to impress each other, not to get your name in as many articles as possible and not to masturbate your egos. Quantity is not a substitute for quality.
Yes there are a few good articles that hit the mark, although not as many of them as most of you seem to think.
Second: If every body's a editor, no one is an editor. You should see just how ridiculous you appear to an old man like me. Pompously giving each other arbitrary orders, haughtily demanding respect where none is due, treating every slight as a "Personal Attack" and altogether carrying on like a bunch of children building a tree-house out of scrap lumber when each one thinks he is the architect and foreman.
Welcoming open participation in the form of contributing material is laudable, brilliant even, but without editors and I mean real editors with thick blue pencils vetting content you aren't building a solid structure. And you are not going to attract or keep good contributors. Not if they have to endure nonsense and flimsy egos, not if they are going to see their work destroyed by a ignoramus with a swollen head who demands to be treated like a peer.
Thirdly: Beyond the structural issues the bald fact is that the leadership of this place is fundamentally inept. I have worked for large companies my whole career, and I have been exposed to every trick that management that is in over its head tries to pull. "We're empowering the employees to make their own choices, they own the decision, management's just here to act as a referee." Translation: "we control the process, you get the blame." I had more than enough of that when I was working, I'm not going to deal with it now.
I don't know that much about the bickering, discipline and vandalism issues DV8 2XL alludes to in the essay on his page, I didn't run into them during my short sojourn here. Had I, I would have added it to my list.
In short, rather than asking me why I didn't stay and why those with expert knowledge will not come (or when they do, they leave) why don't you tell me why I should commit time and effort to what amounts to casting pearls before swine.
- V.J. Ste.Anne
- Sept 3, 2006