Why Kenya's first Internet meme wasn't notable enough for Wikipedia
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Actually in the end, it was notable enough for Wikipedia. The article was not deleted again following the initial speedy deletions for copyright violation and the like. It was nominated for a full deletion discussion, but every single person other than the nominator voted "keep" [1]. Furthermore, the nominator (the guy who initiated the full debate) isn't exactly a model Wikipedian; he had been registered for less than half a year, and left in a huff just two months later after administrators told him to be more patient with some guy who had added unsourced names to a soccer roster article [2][3].
But it is doubtful whether Internet access alone will make people in developing countries contribute to Wikipedia ... As those from developing countries come online and try to edit the encyclopedia, a number of conflicts have arisen due to tensions between so-called ‘inclusionists’ and ‘deletionists’ in the encyclopaedia ... the homophily of the current network is coming up against its need to expand and diversify
Incidentally, one of the users who proposed the Makmende article for deletion (one of the other times, not the main debate above) is himself from a developing country [4]. And he's contributed to Wikipedia numerous articles about his home country (as well as others about Swedish, Taiwan, and Russian chemists) [5].
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Woogee
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_not...
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Makmende&actio...
Insiders are satisfied that the process, honed over a decade, is working. At a micro level there is nothing to point to that is actually wrong; indeed you could argue the process is growing in sophistication and fairness.
Outsiders are often very dissatisfied. From their perspective, new contributions are assailed with objections from people who appear to be proudly ignorant of the subject in question, and their work is subjected to bewildering bureaucratic procedures. And this is reflected in the macro statistics for contributors, which for the English Wikipedia are all flat or even going in reverse.[1]
I think Wiki-insiders have become a bit disconnected from the experience of outsiders, especially when it comes to social norms. To an insider, squabbles about notability and even requests for deletion are normal. Insiders are so used to this, they avoid being vulnerable to the criticisms of other Wikipedians, by reflex; for instance, in footnoting everything they say. ;) Imagine for a minute that you walked into a passionate notability discussion without such habits already ingrained. How do you think it would go?
The article strongly implies that there is a Global North/Global South problem here. So your point about how the core 'homophily' group aren't necessarily from Europe or America is interesting. Perhaps the real axis is Wikipedian/Non-wikipedian.
[1] http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_users#Growth_in...
I think the biggest problem is that the “outsiders” you are generalizing about, at least in your portrayal, are failing to realize that the “insiders” are just a bunch of individual people, and don’t stand for any unified position, conspiratorial or otherwise.
Communicating information to new users, especially ones who make little effort to learn about community norms and practices, is extremely difficult, because there is no way to force them to look at any particular explanation. Even talk page messages lovingly crafted to be as helpful as possible are going to often meet with “What, I have to spend more than 30 seconds figuring out why my changes to an article were deemed a regression? No thanks.”
Karma systems deal with this by using game dynamics. Beginners are channeled into work which supposedly educates them and indoctrinates than into community values.
I think the feedback (reversions with edit summaries, discussion on talk pages, comments on users’ pages) are okay, but it’s an inherently different kind of feedback than you’d get from, say, HN or Facebook or Twitter or Stack Overflow. Just comes with the territory.
I think Wikipedia could do a lot better, especially if it had more programmers working on technical improvements. But I wouldn’t guess the systems used by discussion-oriented communities could be usefully easily transferred.
The specific mechanisms would have to be different, but the underlying economics would be the same.
Are you suggesting that Wikipedia is like a debate training ground, and that Wikipedian HN users are prone to citation?
The Wikipedia page listed only St Andrew so I added the other two only to see them immediately deleted. So I added them again. Again they were deleted.
I asked why they were continually being deleted. Someone, who claimed to be in charge of the Scotland page, replied:
"if you ask any man in the street he will tell you that St Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columba
Wouldn't it be great if something like Semantic Web technology could actually detect these inconsistencies?
If you witness an important event that has been reported inaccurately would your first reaction be to write a newspaper article, write a blog, or edit the Wikipedia page?
That's not what Wikipedia claims to be, for any ordinary definition of "primary source."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research
At some point, the weight of millions of edits to itself will have to outweigh a link to another single source.
Note: she now has a legit wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Lewis