<story><title>The Covert World of People Trying to Edit Wikipedia for Pay</title><url>http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/08/wikipedia-editors-for-pay/393926/?single_page=true</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>beeboop</author><text>I recently tried to get involved as an editor but gave up. It can take literally hours out of your day going back and forth with some other editor who decides he or she wants to debate you on the world&amp;#x27;s dumbest, most pedantic thing ever. One time it literally took 3+ hours to make a change of less than a sentence on some stupid article like a particular model of motorcycle and it required escalating it to dispute resolution. Eventually a few more people chimed in and unanimously supported my position but my several hours were lost.&lt;p&gt;Articles that are in a niche people care (politically charged subjects) about have pretty strong biases that are impossible to remove because it doesn&amp;#x27;t matter which side follows the rules or the intended spirit of Wikipedia, all that matters is which side has more people and which side is more vocal. When making community decisions, the number of people voting is all that seems to matter, even if they vote with zero explanation or with an explanation that uses the rules incorrectly.&lt;p&gt;I gave up after probably 60 hours accumulated editing time, most of it spent not editing but dealing with other users and their bullshit.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Covert World of People Trying to Edit Wikipedia for Pay</title><url>http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/08/wikipedia-editors-for-pay/393926/?single_page=true</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>sytelus</author><text>The most enlightening thing in this article is a graph which shows numbers of editors has declined by 25% while articles are more than doubling over past 8 years. There must obviously be breaking point sooner or later where Wikipedia has more garbage then useful bits. My take away is that Wikipedia&amp;#x27;s model of small tribes of editors is not working and is demonstrably unscalable.&lt;p&gt;What could be the replacement? How about Stackoverflow style reputations that one must accumulate overtime and then they translate to &lt;i&gt;privileges&lt;/i&gt;. The beauty of Stackoverflow is not its content but this community model they have sharpened to almost perfection. It feels far more scalable than Wikipedia&amp;#x27;s arcane model of emulating print world editorial team and beautifully takes advantage of gamification combining rewards with career profile.</text></comment>