This fairly dumb article in a magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers claims there's a "crisis" at Wikipedia because the editors rejected a push to have an AI summary on top of every Wikipedia article,
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@johncarlosbaez re. second point:if the second part of the sentence was 'today, the average age is mid fifties' then it would be true if the younger editors stopped editing over those 10 years and the older editors didn't, as the average would go up faster.
... this threw me as well. If people were in their mid twenties 16 years ago, it's completely correct that those people are in their 40ies. And the _average_ age was mid-twenties, clearly some editors were older and are now in their 50ies.
The first issue is totally on point, but the ago thing is needless nitpicking. There are so many, much more stupid, issues with this article.
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@ieeespectrum/116059551433682789
This fairly dumb article in a magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers claims there's a "crisis" at Wikipedia because the editors rejected a push to have an AI summary on top of every Wikipedia article,
A couple of reasons why the article is dumb:
• It doesn't give evidence that there's a "crisis". Where the article says "Research has shown that many readers today greatly value quick overviews of any article," the link leads to something completely different: an article titled "In the AI era, Wikipedia has never been more valuable", containing no such research.
• The article says "But the volunteer base is aging. A 2010 study found the average Wikipedia contributor was in their mid-twenties; today, many of those same editors are now in their forties or fifties."
So volunteers at Wikipedia are aging faster than other people, with some of *the same people* moving from their mid-twenties to their fifties in just 16 years?!? Maybe it just feels that way.
Jemielniak is a long-time Wikipedia activist and has served three terms on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. He is also a professor who studies this specific area, so I give him the benefit of the doubt.
The main point of the article, as I see it, is that Wikipedia has a structure geared toward older generations. Young people don't read long articles, and older generations tend to calcify the organization.
I agree with all of the above. This also explains why there are fewer young volunteers. You don't become a contributor if you don't read the articles, especially if the style feels outdated or inconvenient.
On the other hand, I don't see anything wrong with projects that gradually decline in popularity while sticking to what the organization knows how to do. Wikipedia is losing readers and is becoming a more 'academic' and elite institution for new generations, but it still provides a valuable service, for those who read.
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A collaborative society should not mean that collaboration must happen within a single institution.
Wikipedia’s content is not bound to the organization itself; Gen Z and Gen Alpha can create their own organizations and short-form or conversational interfaces using Wikipedia as a source.
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@ieeespectrum/116059551433682789
This fairly dumb article in a magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers claims there's a "crisis" at Wikipedia because the editors rejected a push to have an AI summary on top of every Wikipedia article,
A couple of reasons why the article is dumb:
• It doesn't give evidence that there's a "crisis". Where the article says "Research has shown that many readers today greatly value quick overviews of any article," the link leads to something completely different: an article titled "In the AI era, Wikipedia has never been more valuable", containing no such research.
• The article says "But the volunteer base is aging. A 2010 study found the average Wikipedia contributor was in their mid-twenties; today, many of those same editors are now in their forties or fifties."
So volunteers at Wikipedia are aging faster than other people, with some of *the same people* moving from their mid-twenties to their fifties in just 16 years?!? Maybe it just feels that way.
@johncarlosbaez that kind of illogical writing makes me think it was written by AI
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@ieeespectrum/116059551433682789
This fairly dumb article in a magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers claims there's a "crisis" at Wikipedia because the editors rejected a push to have an AI summary on top of every Wikipedia article,
A couple of reasons why the article is dumb:
• It doesn't give evidence that there's a "crisis". Where the article says "Research has shown that many readers today greatly value quick overviews of any article," the link leads to something completely different: an article titled "In the AI era, Wikipedia has never been more valuable", containing no such research.
• The article says "But the volunteer base is aging. A 2010 study found the average Wikipedia contributor was in their mid-twenties; today, many of those same editors are now in their forties or fifties."
So volunteers at Wikipedia are aging faster than other people, with some of *the same people* moving from their mid-twenties to their fifties in just 16 years?!? Maybe it just feels that way.
@johncarlosbaez
Wasn't it IEEE Spectrum that ran an article a few weeks ago saying AI should rewrite a whole bunch of open source projects using Rust to make them "more secure"? Sigh... -
Jemielniak is a long-time Wikipedia activist and has served three terms on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. He is also a professor who studies this specific area, so I give him the benefit of the doubt.
The main point of the article, as I see it, is that Wikipedia has a structure geared toward older generations. Young people don't read long articles, and older generations tend to calcify the organization.
I agree with all of the above. This also explains why there are fewer young volunteers. You don't become a contributor if you don't read the articles, especially if the style feels outdated or inconvenient.
On the other hand, I don't see anything wrong with projects that gradually decline in popularity while sticking to what the organization knows how to do. Wikipedia is losing readers and is becoming a more 'academic' and elite institution for new generations, but it still provides a valuable service, for those who read.
---
A collaborative society should not mean that collaboration must happen within a single institution.
Wikipedia’s content is not bound to the organization itself; Gen Z and Gen Alpha can create their own organizations and short-form or conversational interfaces using Wikipedia as a source.
@maxpool @johncarlosbaez so coming from a background as an avid model railroader, a hobby that has for as long as I've been alive basically been pretty much exclusively a retiree's hobby due to its time, patience, indoor space and budgetary requirements, Wikipedia contributions could simply become a hobby that's similarly only attractive to retirees with the time, patience and mental bandwidth to pour into it. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as people generally live longer and may even spend nearly as long retired as they did in the workforce now, but it does require some amount of retooling to ensure that it is an attractive hobby to those who might enjoy it
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@johncarlosbaez aren't the first couple of paragraphs supposed to be a summary of the entire article anyway?
@aatch @johncarlosbaez The longer articles tend to have a summary above the info box.
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@ieeespectrum/116059551433682789
This fairly dumb article in a magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers claims there's a "crisis" at Wikipedia because the editors rejected a push to have an AI summary on top of every Wikipedia article,
A couple of reasons why the article is dumb:
• It doesn't give evidence that there's a "crisis". Where the article says "Research has shown that many readers today greatly value quick overviews of any article," the link leads to something completely different: an article titled "In the AI era, Wikipedia has never been more valuable", containing no such research.
• The article says "But the volunteer base is aging. A 2010 study found the average Wikipedia contributor was in their mid-twenties; today, many of those same editors are now in their forties or fifties."
So volunteers at Wikipedia are aging faster than other people, with some of *the same people* moving from their mid-twenties to their fifties in just 16 years?!? Maybe it just feels that way.
@johncarlosbaez Re. aging: I bet reading that took some years off your life, so the statement holds.
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@johncarlosbaez aren't the first couple of paragraphs supposed to be a summary of the entire article anyway?
@aatch
That's the only reason why redactle works as a game.
@johncarlosbaez -
Jemielniak is a long-time Wikipedia activist and has served three terms on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. He is also a professor who studies this specific area, so I give him the benefit of the doubt.
The main point of the article, as I see it, is that Wikipedia has a structure geared toward older generations. Young people don't read long articles, and older generations tend to calcify the organization.
I agree with all of the above. This also explains why there are fewer young volunteers. You don't become a contributor if you don't read the articles, especially if the style feels outdated or inconvenient.
On the other hand, I don't see anything wrong with projects that gradually decline in popularity while sticking to what the organization knows how to do. Wikipedia is losing readers and is becoming a more 'academic' and elite institution for new generations, but it still provides a valuable service, for those who read.
---
A collaborative society should not mean that collaboration must happen within a single institution.
Wikipedia’s content is not bound to the organization itself; Gen Z and Gen Alpha can create their own organizations and short-form or conversational interfaces using Wikipedia as a source.
@maxpool @johncarlosbaez
The 2023 Community Insights survey does not reflect that editors are getting older, in fact, it finds the opposite, that the youngest age group grew from previous surveys (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Insights/Community_Insights_2023_Report) And a newer independent survey from 2024 found 20% of users in the age group of 18 to 34.https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter/2024/April On the other hand, it is probably likely that editors are getting older, if retention is good enough. Not sure I agree with the premises, unless there is other data -
@maxpool @johncarlosbaez
The 2023 Community Insights survey does not reflect that editors are getting older, in fact, it finds the opposite, that the youngest age group grew from previous surveys (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Insights/Community_Insights_2023_Report) And a newer independent survey from 2024 found 20% of users in the age group of 18 to 34.https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter/2024/April On the other hand, it is probably likely that editors are getting older, if retention is good enough. Not sure I agree with the premises, unless there is other dataI was talking primarily about readers, and I think the main point of the article was that it will become "irrelevant to younger generations of readers."
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@ieeespectrum/116059551433682789
This fairly dumb article in a magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers claims there's a "crisis" at Wikipedia because the editors rejected a push to have an AI summary on top of every Wikipedia article,
A couple of reasons why the article is dumb:
• It doesn't give evidence that there's a "crisis". Where the article says "Research has shown that many readers today greatly value quick overviews of any article," the link leads to something completely different: an article titled "In the AI era, Wikipedia has never been more valuable", containing no such research.
• The article says "But the volunteer base is aging. A 2010 study found the average Wikipedia contributor was in their mid-twenties; today, many of those same editors are now in their forties or fifties."
So volunteers at Wikipedia are aging faster than other people, with some of *the same people* moving from their mid-twenties to their fifties in just 16 years?!? Maybe it just feels that way.
@johncarlosbaez @msbw I don't work for wikipedia (nor in tech anymore) and I'm pretty sure I aged 10 years over the last year so I can kinda relate
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I was talking primarily about readers, and I think the main point of the article was that it will become "irrelevant to younger generations of readers."
@maxpool @gethemudo - the article says:
"However, teens and twentysomethings today are of a very different demographic and have markedly different media consumption habits compared to Wikipedia’s forebears. Gen Z and Gen Alpha readers are accustomed to TikTok, YouTube, and mobile-first visual media. Their impatience for Wikipedia’s impenetrable walls of text, as any parent of kids of this age knows, arguably threatens the future of the internet’s collaborative knowledge clearinghouse."
It would be interesting to study this more carefully. If kids these days prefer TikTok, that may not be so bad: I imagine that in the 1930s dancing the Charleston was more popular among youths than reading encyclopedias. In fact I can imagine a "moral panic" back then, about how swing dancing was corrupting the youth, much as TikTok is now. But I have trouble imagining people back then saying that encyclopedias should change to compete with the Charleston.
