User:Atb129/Wikipedia has Matured

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I welcome your comments on my thoughts in this essay. It was mostly intended for me to gather and organize my thoughts, so keep in mind I may change and update it.

There is no question that Wikipedia has grown tremendously; far more than was probably envisioned when the project was first started in 2001. In five short years "The Free Encyclopedia" has grown to include more than 1,500,000 articles (see Wikipedia:Statistics), many times more than print encyclopedias, with thousands being created each day by thousands of active users. Wikipedia has also extensively permeated into pop culture and everyday life: your average person on the street would likely be able to tell you what Wikipedia is, something inconceivable a few years ago.

Following a lot of thought and observation on my part, though, I have arrived at one simple question: so what? Yes, we have 1.5 million articles, but as noted in a recent Wikipedia Weekly episode that means 1.4 million are stubs or badly written. Yes, over 2,000 articles are created everyday (according to a figure I heard), but how much is an unsourced stub on All-America Elementary School in Anytown, USA, which very few people will likely ever read, going to really improve the encyclopedia? The point is, we already have articles on everything that an encyclopedia could possibly need to cover, and hundreds of thousands of articles on things like miscellany, fan trivia, etc that an encyclopedia need not.

At the same time, however, a disturbing trend is growing. While massive amounts of new content is being created, not near enough old content is being reviewed and edited. I realize there are many collaborations, etc, that do good work, and many articles that are being consistently edited, but the problem with this is simple: all articles in collaborations or that are commonly edited are high-profile articles which of course would be edited. The problem is the "middle-level" articles, the 200-400,000 or so that are not very high-profile but are nevertheless essential information for an encyclopedia, are not being consistently edited and kept up-to-date and clean. Regardless, any way you look at it, the proportion of articles substantially improved to articles created is not what it should be. There are also two more issues I feel detract from maintaining a good encyclopedia: "fan trivia lists" and "non-mainspace editing." First, fan trivia lists and content such as that. Stephen Colbert made a valid point when he pointed out that the article on truthiness is longer than the article on Lutheranism. There is far too much time wasted on fan trivia lists (i.e.: "List of times Futurama has parodied Star Wars) which should not be considered encyclopedic content. Number 2: non-mainspace edits. As in, despite policies to the contrary, Wikipedians seem to spend far too much time engaging in bureaucracy or "frivolous" programs that do not really help Wikipedia or the Wikipedia community that tangibly.

What does all this mean? Well, I believe Wikipedia is entering a new phase, a "mature" phase, if you will. Previously, we always had to look forward because we were not a viable resource at present. Now, Wikipedia is a viable resource and is just starting to become accepted as one in the world at large. Therefore, the time has come to stop madly creating new content or projects or community-support programs and start maintaining the quality of the articles we have, as well as cleaning up and reorganizing projects, procedures, and perhaps unnecessary articles. The reason for this is simple: once the novelty of Wikipedia wears off and standard readers start to view us as another online reference tool, we have to have something to keep them from going back to Brittanica. While it is true our massive amounts of information, combined with our no cost, will go a long way towards that, if our articles are not polished enough it won't make a difference.

So now you are probably thinking, so, you say we have a problem, but what action do you propose to fix it? Well, I've mulled it over, and I've come up with a couple of solutions that I think might help. Number one, we put in tough new standards for fan trivia and things like that. A policy, say, that prohibited the ceaseless lists on TV shows etc. would go a long way towards improving Wikipedia's professionalism. We need to delete programs like Esperanza (there is already a deletion proposal for this which will likely pass), Concordia, and Kindness Campaign. Besides not actually accomplishing anything, they distract from the Number One Purpose of Wikipedia: building a quality encyclopedia. We also need to heavily increase collaborations and things like that, perhaps creating an "Unknown Article Collaboration of the Month" or something like that. Something more drastic I have also been mulling over is streamlining Wikipedia's categorizing system and pages like Wikipedia:Content so that it is easier to browse, thus increasing our fell of professionalism. None of the solutions are perfect or drastic, but I feel that they would do some good towards solving some of the problems I have outlined.

To conclude, I am not suggesting that we stop creating new articles, or that we stop having a community, or anything like that. I am simply saying that Wikipedia is entering a new phase, where we must focus on content we have rather than new articles or programs. I believe that if we realize this, and act upon it, Wikipedia will be a better and more respected place.