The Decline of Wikipedia

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Something tells me that Jimmy Wales isn't going to like this article about "the decline" of Wikipedia very much.

The main source of those problems is not mysterious. The loose collective running the site today, estimated to be 90 percent male, operates a crushing bureaucracy with an often abrasive atmosphere that deters newcomers who might increase participation in Wikipedia and broaden its coverage.
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Uhhhh, that's a GOOD thing. If they didn't discourage idiotic 13 year olds from making contributions, Wikipedia would look like Yahoo answers.
 
I stopped contributing to Wikipedia a long time ago :

1.Liberal bias
2.Government-like bureaucracy and cliques. Certain people have way too much influence and decisions about editing are not generally made by consensus of everyone but by what the "in" people think.
3.Deletionists. Was tired of seeing useful information and articles deleted because roving gangs of busybodies have nothing better to do with their life than spend hours on Wikipedia looking for articles that *they* don't think are encyclopedic and getting them deleted.
4.Nerd e-peen contests where an article that should be simple ends up becoming ridiculously complex because each editor is attempting to outdo the others in showing everybody who is the smartest. The end result is that articles that should be simple read like doctorate-level dissertations and are only accessible to people who are already familiar with the subject.
 
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I have developed a rule when it comes to deconstructing these types of articles: if the article headline is declaring the end or "declining" of a website, tool, piece of software, etc, it usually means that said thing is doing just fine and the article is pure link-bait filled with hear-say and conjecture. The same rule can be applied to the articles claiming the opposite, as well.

I mean, for example, how many times has the death of Java been proclaimed and yet is still being widely used?
 
Yup and I hear Google Era is over too:
http://www.businessinsider.com/peak-search-google-search-query-decline-2012-10

Also Facebook is in a decline:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/quickerbettertech/2013/08/19/why-facebook-is-in-decline

And Youtube too:
http://adage.com/article/digital/youtube-s-video-views-falling-design/234735/

And I've run out of motivation but next most trafficed site is Yahoo and everyone talks about how they're done with.

Turns you take any of the top 10 websites on the internet and ALL of them are in a decline! Or at least there is always someone who will say so.
 
Despite the shortcomings, it's probably the most useful website in the world.
 
shade91 said:
Jimmy Wales is a left-wing liberal shill. No surprise there. Have you met the guy? He a first-rate asshole.
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better educated from the left than having the bible shoved down our throats by the right.
 
The internet as a whole is already in decline. What was once a glorious information revolution poised to unite the world has instead devolved into a breeding ground for malcontentedness and isolation, smothered in corporate advertising feces.

But hey, we've still got cat pictures. Hooray for progress.
 
I never understood the doom and gloom over wikipedia. I've always used the site for nearly 10 years, and have yet to find issues with it. When I was in College it was a life saver with Math, History, and Science. When I need more info on something, it's worked well. When I'm curious about something, and totally bored, it works well. When I need to prove someone wrong about something, it's works well.

The only people that seem to have a problem with it are those who disagree with political info. That I don't remember ever looking up on Wikipedia. That and supposedly the amount of people who can alter the info into something incorrect, and that I haven't seen yet either.
 
damicatz said:
1.Liberal bias
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Seriously never understood why people use the word Liberal in such a negative way. First I ever heard the term was in World of Warcraft, where people were cry about how bad liberals were. That and Fox news, which I never watch unless I accidentally found the TV left on Fox.

And looking it up on Wikipedia tells me this. Cause seriously, I don't get why you people hate this? All I can gather is that Republicans use "Liberal" and a demoralizing word for Democrats. Democrats who really like democracy?

Liberalism (from the Latin liberalis)[1] is a political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of liberty and equality. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally they support ideas such as free and fair elections, civil rights, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, free trade, and private property.
 
Ashbringer said:
Seriously never understood why people use the word Liberal in such a negative way. First I ever heard the term was in World of Warcraft, where people were cry about how bad liberals were. That and Fox news, which I never watch unless I accidentally found the TV left on Fox.

And looking it up on Wikipedia tells me this. Cause seriously, I don't get why you people hate this? All I can gather is that Republicans use "Liberal" and a demoralizing word for Democrats. Democrats who really like democracy?

Liberalism (from the Latin liberalis)[1] is a political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of liberty and equality. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally they support ideas such as free and fair elections, civil rights, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, free trade, and private property.
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Most people use the word "liberal" when they actually mean "progressive". One is good, one is bad :)
 
Ashbringer said:
Seriously never understood why people use the word Liberal in such a negative way. First I ever heard the term was in World of Warcraft, where people were cry about how bad liberals were. That and Fox news, which I never watch unless I accidentally found the TV left on Fox.

And looking it up on Wikipedia tells me this. Cause seriously, I don't get why you people hate this? All I can gather is that Republicans use "Liberal" and a demoralizing word for Democrats. Democrats who really like democracy?

Liberalism (from the Latin liberalis)[1] is a political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of liberty and equality. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally they support ideas such as free and fair elections, civil rights, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, free trade, and private property.
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There's a couple of things to understand. First, the term "liberal" as applied to modern American politics is an affectation that has been applied to the social welfare policies of FDR and LBJ, and was largely adopted as a label by the New Left in the 60s and 70s. If you hadn't heard it until the mid-2000s, you weren't paying attention to politics very much, as it has been commonplace for decades. It's the political opposite of "conservative" in America, for all intents and purposes. In recent years, many have attempted to replace this label with "progressive".

The definition you cited is more specifically referred to nowadays as "classical liberalism" and is more in line with the libertarian movement of today.
 
They get 10 billion page views, so yeah, they are reluctant to change things. Change for changes sake is stupid.These complaint articles about companies and their "guy culture" is really, really getting old. Its like being male is abnormal on its face. Maybe that "guy culture" is what made the company or groups so successful in the first place! Ever think of that? Maybe some feminists and their their grovelling male eunuch admirers can start their own company and show us how its done instead of just complaining about what other people built.
 
Despite the shortcomings, it's probably the most useful website in the world.
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It is at that.

Well, the inherent problem with all of these labels, and that is what they are, labels applied to groups who are not really homogenous groups. If I believe in small government that keeps it's nose out of people's personal lives, is tolerant of people's differences, and only interferes in people and business when it needs to be interfered with, then I am many labels and they all are selected and applied by the viewers' point of view.

Small Government makes me a conservative unless you are a Bible-Thumper because my leaving people to choose their own lives means I can have anything in common with them, so I must be a liberal or something worse, etc etc.

I don't think John Lennon was so big on Labels either but then again, I wasn't so sold on his music either, preferred Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull myself.
 
Stiletto said:
There's a couple of things to understand. First, the term "liberal" as applied to modern American politics is an affectation that has been applied to the social welfare policies of FDR and LBJ, and was largely adopted as a label by the New Left in the 60s and 70s.
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It wasn't just about social welfare policies, but social issues across the board.
 
Democracy 3 is a really fun political simulator where you can hash all this liberal/conservative stuff out the way you want :D
 
Azhar said:
better educated from the left than having the bible shoved down our throats by the right.
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How about no (or very little) bias? Just straight facts (which by their nature have no bias - they are either true or they are not - nothing else).

Wikipedia is nice, but there are times when people will take credit for some things that they didn't really do... Sad, but I think credit where credit is due.
 
lcpiper said:
Small Government makes me a conservative unless you are a Bible-Thumper because my leaving people to choose their own lives means I can have anything in common with them, so I must be a liberal or something worse, etc etc.
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That doesn't even mean anything anymore. People like Paul Ryan call themselves conservative while voting for massive spending bills and programs that enlarge the size of government, while others like Ted Cruz affect the same label and attempt to shrink the size of government.

The whole reason the Tea Party movement exists was because George W. Bush called himself a "compassionate conservative" and proceeded to demonstrate that "compassionate" meant "just as willing to spend huge amounts of taxpayer money as non-conservatives". The core value of the Tea Party movement, despite much attempt to muddle it by opponents, is limited government. If conservatism was so focused on this concept, the Tea Party movement would not need to exist, nor would conservatism be split into neo- and paleo- subgroups.
 
bexamous said:
Yup and I hear Google Era is over too:
http://www.businessinsider.com/peak-search-google-search-query-decline-2012-10

Also Facebook is in a decline:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/quickerbettertech/2013/08/19/why-facebook-is-in-decline

And Youtube too:
http://adage.com/article/digital/youtube-s-video-views-falling-design/234735/

And I've run out of motivation but next most trafficed site is Yahoo and everyone talks about how they're done with.

Turns you take any of the top 10 websites on the internet and ALL of them are in a decline! Or at least there is always someone who will say so.
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Also PC gaming is completely dead , Global Climate change is a liberal farse despite the 97 percent census among the scientific community , piracy is putting Hollywood out of business despite record profits of $10.8 billion dollars last year...

And on and on and on. I hate the news media
 
At the same time, "liberal" doesn't even mean what it used to. 40 years ago, liberals distrusted the government and authority because of the Vietnam War and Nixon. Now with Obama in charge, you have so-called liberals in favor of intervening in Syria, granting more powers to the executive branch, and enlarging the ability of government to infringe on civil liberties. Hence, with the recent NSA revelations, you find Republicans and Democrats getting together to dismiss the severity of the new information, while you have self-described conservatives and liberals echoing each others' trepidation at just how far government has gone in destroying privacy. It's really an interesting time, politically, and potentially a flashpoint to destroy the two-party system that has served to make the political process less representative of the people than at any time in our history.
 
Stiletto said:
The internet as a whole is already in decline. What was once a glorious information revolution poised to unite the world has instead devolved into a breeding ground for malcontentedness and isolation, smothered in corporate advertising feces.

But hey, we've still got cat pictures. Hooray for progress.
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Was a time it took some doing to get on the internet, you had to set it up and get it all working.

Now every asshole/retard/pervert on earth is automatically on spewing their bile.

I agree, the internet is less and less useful all the time.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
Most people use the word "liberal" when they actually mean "progressive". One is good, one is bad :)
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Before I came to the US, I used the word liberal quite frequently and much more how it was defined in the dictionary, which can be either good or bad depending on the context... I tend to abstain from using the word in the US :p
 
Tudz said:
Before I came to the US, I used the word liberal quite frequently and much more how it was defined in the dictionary, which can be either good or bad depending on the context... I tend to abstain from using the word in the US :p
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It's best to learn what a label means in each country. Lots of people in the US and UK seem to think that conservatives in the US think the same way as the Conservative Party in the UK. Each country's political spectrum is a little different from every other country's.
 
I dont like the average sentence structure on wikipedia. Its too much about listing unuseful facts all in one sentence, rather than communication of meaningful information. Its decent for history and culture, but is horrible for the sciences.
 
Stiletto said:
It's best to learn what a label means in each country. Lots of people in the US and UK seem to think that conservatives in the US think the same way as the Conservative Party in the UK. Each country's political spectrum is a little different from every other country's.
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Well I'm from Australia, not the UK. We have a liberal party, but I think it's rare in Australia to hear someone refer to something as being liberal in the political sense (although maybe that's starting to change). When I said I used the word frequently (liberally, if you will :D), I meant I used it in every day speech more, but I'm never sure when an American might think I'm using it in a political sense rather than a dictionary sense, so I tend to avoid using it at all now, lol.
 
Tudz said:
Well I'm from Australia, not the UK. We have a liberal party, but I think it's rare in Australia to hear someone refer to something as being liberal in the political sense (although maybe that's starting to change). When I said I used the word frequently (liberally, if you will :D), I meant I used it in every day speech more, but I'm never sure when an American might think I'm using it in a political sense rather than a dictionary sense, so I tend to avoid using it at all now, lol.
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Damn furriners are all librul! :p
 
Stiletto said:
There's a couple of things to understand. First, the term "liberal" as applied to modern American politics is an affectation that has been applied to the social welfare policies of FDR and LBJ, and was largely adopted as a label by the New Left in the 60s and 70s. If you hadn't heard it until the mid-2000s, you weren't paying attention to politics very much, as it has been commonplace for decades. It's the political opposite of "conservative" in America, for all intents and purposes. In recent years, many have attempted to replace this label with "progressive".

The definition you cited is more specifically referred to nowadays as "classical liberalism" and is more in line with the libertarian movement of today.
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I used the term liberal because that is what most people understand. I didn't want to get into a debate about how the term liberal was misappropriated by the conservative establishment in the late 19th century.

1.Originally, conservatives were those people who supported the establishment. They supported the trade guilds (unions of the 18th century), the nobility, the entrenched ruling elite and the establishment. They were also the ones that supported the monarchy. Liberals on the other hand were those who supported freedom : Free markets, freedom of religion, free speech. They were against the monarchy.

2.After liberalism displaced conservatism, with both the American and French revolutions, the conservatives regrouped and re-branded themselves. They adopted socialism as a way to convince the plebs that they were on their side rather than overtly supported the establishment as the previous conservatives did. They also started calling themselves liberals.

3.The term progressive was also misappropriated by socialists and communists. Using it implies that anyone that disagrees with their policies is regressive and therefore bad. It is a loaded term.
 
Tudz said:
Well I'm from Australia, not the UK. We have a liberal party, but I think it's rare in Australia to hear someone refer to something as being liberal in the political sense (although maybe that's starting to change). When I said I used the word frequently (liberally, if you will :D), I meant I used it in every day speech more, but I'm never sure when an American might think I'm using it in a political sense rather than a dictionary sense, so I tend to avoid using it at all now, lol.
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Australia is one of the few places where the establishment class have not managed to co-opt the term liberal. Liberal in the Australian sense means Classical Liberalism.
 
Tudz said:
Before I came to the US, I used the word liberal quite frequently and much more how it was defined in the dictionary, which can be either good or bad depending on the context... I tend to abstain from using the word in the US :p
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I like real definitions. It paints a much more clear picture. I reject the definitions used by my country, because they make very little sense.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
I like real definitions. It paints a much more clear picture. I reject the definitions used by my country, because they make very little sense.
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Our language is decaying, as the meanings of words carry less and less weight, nonsense words with farcical roots are accepted as legitimate, and bastardized words are entered into the lexicon for political reasons.
 
Stiletto said:
Our language is decaying, as the meanings of words carry less and less weight, nonsense words with farcical roots are accepted as legitimate, and bastardized words are entered into the lexicon for political reasons.
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Moonbat commie facist!
 
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