this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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Looks like they nearly shut the door on new admins circa 2008 and the existing group is slowly attriting.
Wikipedia is an RPG and it’s too hard for new players.
Hopefully they realize it's not healthy for Wikipedia in long term and make a course correction.
No idea how they work internally but probably some kind of mentoring program would be in order. There's no way someone relatively new will learn all their quirks that have been developed in the past decade and too many people on the internet expect you to know everything already to be worth a shit to them.
There is a mentoring program and I'm a part of it. Unfortunately, a lot of the accounts going through it very blatantly aren't there to actually make a good Wikipedia article on something, but to instead promote themselves or their company.
You think recruiting new blood is the biggest hurdle right now?
I think long-term retention is more the problem. There's plenty of new editors that show up to do something, but they don't care about being an editor on broader subjects long-term.
There's attempts to retain interest more through things like editathons on specific topics, such as with the Women in Red group, that have seen a decent amount of success.
I used to be an editor, and an admin. Quite a prolific one, in fact. I eventually quit (not really "officially", I just gradually ran down my frequency of editing until I eventually realized I just wasn't any more) because editing Wikipedia was no longer fun. And as far as I could tell, that was deliberate and as-designed.
Rules, rules, rules. No articles on quirky topics for the sake of quirky topics. Strict limits on pop culture. Articles for Deletion became a death sentence, arguing felt like trying to be a lawyer in a court that had already ruled against you and was just making things official. Just a tiring slog to produce something I wasn't terribly interested in any more.
Not really sure what the solution is, if there even is one. Wikipedia seems to be what it wants to be, now. I am a bit saddened because what it used to be was fun, but I've moved on. I'm glad Wikipedia still exists and has been useful to a great many people over the years.
I mean, is it surprising that a project aimed at becoming a proper encyclopedia would become stricter on content and raise the standards over time?
Which makes complete sense for pop culture stuff and especially things like Trivia sections that try to be added to a bunch of articles, adding things in like appearances of a historical subject in any and every manga that features them and any TV episode. That's not really something that's needed.