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   Irenes (many) (irenes@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 04-Apr-2024 06:32:08 JST Irenes (many)

   • Tod Beardsley

   @todb we do hope that you will keep in mind that, though it is broadly true that wikimedia, like, still exists and isn't drowning in spam, there is a lot of ideologically-motivated abuse that does get a high degree of success because it's done in long-term, patient ways

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     Irenes (many) (irenes@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 04-Apr-2024 06:32:07 JST Irenes (many)

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     • Tod Beardsley

     @todb anyway, to answer the original question... we can't claim to have a complete analysis, but we think it's instructive to look at why wikimedia gets higher-quality output than stack overflow, despite them both being crowdsourced and having the nominal goal of helping the public be more informed.

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     Irenes (many) (irenes@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 04-Apr-2024 06:32:07 JST Irenes (many)

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     • Tod Beardsley

     @todb in our view it's two-fold: first, the structure of wikipedia doesn't work well as a tool for people to promote their personal fame, outside the community of wikipedia editors. for example, contributors' names don't appear directly on the encyclopedia entries, you have to click to the change history to see them.

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     Irenes (many) (irenes@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 04-Apr-2024 06:32:08 JST Irenes (many)

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     • Tod Beardsley

     @todb keeping out people who have a profit motive is one thing: profit is a short-term goal and all you have to do is make it cheaper to attack someone else. keeping out hate groups that perceive themselves to be fighting a war over the desired shape of the world, or nation-states that are fighting "hot" wars, is quite another thing.

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     Irenes (many) (irenes@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 04-Apr-2024 06:32:08 JST Irenes (many)

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     • Tod Beardsley

     @todb much of the recent abuse of the CVE system lately does appear to have had profit as a motive, so there is reason to think it can be improved. we do enthusiastically support the comparison you're doing, too, we just want to make note of its limitations.

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     Irenes (many) (irenes@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 04-Apr-2024 06:32:17 JST Irenes (many)

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     • Tod Beardsley

     @todb second, the incentive structure of wikipedia is much more closely aligned with people's intrinsic motivation. humans ENJOY organizing information and finding the best ways to say things, it's what our brains evolved to do. maybe not everyone is in touch with that feeling, but there's enough who are. there are layers of mechanism for review, quality control, dispute resolution etc. but their shape is driven by what the end goal needs.

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     Irenes (many) (irenes@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 04-Apr-2024 06:32:35 JST Irenes (many)

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     • Tod Beardsley

     @todb stack overflow in contrast goes really hard in building out game mechanics that kind-of seek to substitute the intrinsic motivation of helping other people with the artificial desire to acquire a large number - or, darker yet, with the potential to acquire power over others. while it would be possible to quibble with the details of these mechanisms, we think the mistake is more fundamental, it's the disconnect in motivations behind them.

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