Wikipedia from the inside

Everyone uses Wikipedia. Even those who never admit it.

But every time I am amazed at how fantastic ideas about Wikipedia are among people who do not write it. (I must say, the people who write it, too.)

Wikipedia seems like a very strange creature, with far-fetched, unnatural rules, complex organization and a high barrier to entry.

And I’ll tell you that the rules are just very natural, and Wikipedia is a very stable organism that has survived wars, crises, blockages by Roskomnadzor and has existed for more than 20 years.

Reveal the secrets of our sect?

So my name is Lesless and I am the admin.

A bit of history

Wikipedia was not meant to be as we see it now. It is the product of a long and rather chaotic evolution.

It was created as a draft for a “real” encyclopedia (called “Nupedia”). Nupedia was not a wiki site, the articles went through the peer review stage, and as many as 12 articles were created there in a year. Wikipedia quickly overtook Nupedia and pulled off the covers.

In 2012, it was ranked 6th among the most visited sites in the world. In 2021 in the ranking of the “best sites”

there’s a pretty tricky estimate:

The sites in the top sites lists are ordered by their 1 month Alexa traffic rank. The 1 month rank is calculated using a combination of average daily visitors and pageviews over the past month. The site with the highest combination of visitors and pageviews is ranked # 1 https://www.alexa.com/topsites

on 13 (already in 14th place), it is seriously developing and among all existing encyclopedias out of competition both in terms of volume and relevance.

The problems of vandalism are greatly exaggerated. Now the main load is borne by several bots with support for a machine learning system, administrators can only adjust their work and clean up the products of the activity of single broken vandals.

Actually, I’ll say a terrible thing now. Nobody has spoken about it yet, and I do not know how my colleagues will react.

Wikipedia is no longer an IT project. Was there? Yes. At first, it was filled almost entirely by IT specialists, and this, by the way, left a certain imprint on her image.

But now the Wikipedia administrator is not an IT specialist, but a psychologist.

At the center of Wikipedia is not a car, but a person

In terms of technical skills, Wikipedia is nothing complicated.

All the difficulties from the fact that very different people gathered in one place.

Some have additional technical capabilities. Most authors don’t.

Remind me of what happened at the Stanford Prison Experiment?

And remember at the same time what Philip Zimbardo said about this in “The Lucifer Effect” (by the way, thanks to a related Wikipedia project, you can read this work for free: https://rusneb.ru/catalog/000199_000009_02000025899/ )

People are gathered in one place, and they have different motives. These are the motives that need to be thought about.

Wikipedia has at least a common goal for everyone – the creation of an encyclopedia.

There is no such goal in the real world. Wikipedia is better in this sense.

Many people escape from the real world here, and this must also be borne in mind. This is their safe place, and they protect it. Sometimes too much.

In general, this is a separate topic, there will be interest – we will devote a new creative to it.

What else annoys those who recently came to Wikipedia?

Copyright

But there is nothing complicated.

Who Said Wikipedia flexes like copyrists?

Vice versa. Wikipedia fights against them, on a global level. Wikipedia shows the advantage of free licenses (and proves it with its global success).

Artists submit their work:

Author ru: File: Gzhel ball wiki.png - Elena Solovova (Art-of-sun) File: Wikipedia-logo-v2-ru.svg - Wikimedia Foundation File: Wikipedia-logo-v4-ru-xmas.png - Vladimir Lobachev & Vort This version - Alexey Gomankov
Author ru: File: Gzhel ball wiki.png – Elena Solovova (Art-of-sun) File: Wikipedia-logo-v2-ru.svg – Wikimedia Foundation File: Wikipedia-logo-v4-ru-xmas.png – Vladimir Lobachev & Vort This version – Alexey Gomankov

Sites are moving to free licenses. Kremlin.ru operates under a free license. Work continues with the legislative branch (in 2014, a major breakthrough was the freedom of panorama for architectural structures in Russia). This is the mission: to show the advantages of freedom, freedom of panorama, free licenses, this is quite official:

The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally.

And if “simple”, then generally elementary: you can give your works either into the public domain, or under a license from the Creative commons line (it is important to allow both commercial use and the creation of derivative works). You can do this directly when uploading to Wikimedia Commons, either by explicitly indicating on your site (just no need to launder licenses), or by indicating in a letter (there is template form for submitting permissions).

It is better to upload someone else’s work sometime later, when you have experience. Just “take a picture from the Internet” will not work. But in fact, there is nothing complicated about this either, everything is solvable (except for works with an inaccessible copyright holder in Russia, there are questions to the State Duma of the Russian Federation).

Security

If you are unsure, do not divulge your real name. Then you can’t stuff it into the bottle.

Do not threaten anything, not by court, not by Roskomnadzor, not by tough guys.

Do not try to deceive anyone (this is very visible when they try).

Otherwise, just come and start reigning. Registration is not needed, authorization is not needed, no SMS, no mail, nothing is needed. Just come and start reigning.

And then tell your children: and this article was written by me.

Literature and films:

Eric Berne. “Games that people play” and (especially) “People who play games”

Eliezer Yudkowski. “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rational Thinking”: hpmor.ru

“Child of the Internet. The story of Aaron Schwartz “(en: The Internet’s Own Boy) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOys9VLKfq0 (rus), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q6Fzbgs_Lg&t=20s (en)

Das Experiment, a 2001 film by Oliver Hirschbigel, reflects many of the real-life events of the Stanford Prison Experiment (STE). Starring Moritz Bleibtreu.

Optional:

Romanov V. N. “Historical development of culture (psychological and typological aspect)” – M., Savin. 2003. – 448 pp. – ISBN 5-902121-03-5

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP: PLEASANT

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