Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Guard

What is this?

This is an organizational page, in which Larry Sanger invites fellow Wikipedians to consider themselves part of a so-called (humorous) "Wikipedia Guard." The purpose of the "Guard" is as follows: if Wikipedia ever receives a really enormous amount of new traffic, which it very well might, we will ask some "old hands"--the people who have put their name on this page--to help break the new contributors into the process and remove the inevitable vandalism and other dross. We'll "call out the Guard."

Background: why a "Wikipedia Guard" at all?

A wonderful problem we haven't yet had to deal with: lots of media coverage. Despite having been written up by the New York Times and MIT's Technology Review, Slashdotted a few times, and inundated with enormous amounts of traffic after some Kuro5hin articles, Wikipedia has never actually been the focus of a sustained and enormous barrage of media coverage. Of course, Wikipedia isn't about the publicity, the fame, and the recognition; it is a work of passion and love. But we might indeed get a lot of publicity and that could have some ill effects we might want to be prepared for.

A media barrage: if we stay the course, it's not whether, but when. If we stay the course, however, this will happen within the next year or two. It's not a matter of whether; it's a matter of when. This could happen all at once, too, which is the thing I'm concerned about. If it happened relatively gradually, the new recruits could be quickly trained to break in the even newer recruits. But what if it happens suddenly? Next summer, for example, we might break 50,000 articles, and be going gangbusters. We might decide to do a press release (we've never done one!), and Time (or whatever) might decide to write up a big hyped-up article about it, and that might lead to evening broadcast news coverage, Wall Street Journal analysts mentioning it as the next big thing, interviews for TV and magazines, the works. I think it would be a mistake to dismiss this possibility. If Wikipedia becomes as large and useful as we want it to be, this will happen.

The accompanying invasion of new contributors. Now, if that happened, of course it would be mainly wonderful and fantastic. What worries me is that, overnight, most of the people working on Wikipedia, at that stage, would be new contributors. Suppose there were, say, 200 people on average working on Wikipedia. (Presently, it's somewhat less than that.) Then suppose that, over a period of two weeks, that number were instantly increased by a factor of ten, or a hundred: 2,000, or 20,000. In that case, it's possible that many of the newbies in this generation of contributors could be of the "clueless" variety, and that a significant minority would be downright malicious. This could be a significant threat to the integrity and credibility of the project.

Let me try to put this worry slightly differently. In the past, the Slashdottings and my Kuro5hin articles, in spite of the overall greatly positive effects of these events, have resulted in a lot of dross, which, in my opinion, we're still recovering from. We just weren't able to keep up with it. Now consider the possibility that we are suddenly invaded with, say, fifty times that amount of traffic. It could be a major disaster. The face of Wikipedia could change overnight, and for the worse. So I think we've got to be prepared to preserve the quality of articles and the positive elements of the Wikipedia ethos.

The Wikipedia "Guard." In case of a media-induced invasion of new contributors, it would be instantly, but probably temporarily, important that we have a very high proportion of old hands (you know who you are) working constantly doing Wikipedia weeding. This weeding should focus not on each other's work, but on the new contributors' stuff, and particularly the work of the "clueless" new contributors.

In preparing for this (otherwise most welcome) sort of invasion, I think it would help if we had something akin to a (humorous) "Guard," where, when "war" or "flooding" (i.e., the aforementioned media-induced invasion of new contributors) strikes, the "troops" are called out to, er, nicely assimilate and teach the "invaders." To declare yourself a member of the "Wikipedia Guard" is to declare that, when asked, you are committed to doing unusual amounts of Wikipedia weeding, focusing particularly on the contributions of the more "clueless" of the new contributors, as well as the just-plain-malicious people.

The Guard officially loves new contributors. None of this should be construed as a claim that old hands are better than new contributors or that new contributors should be looked down upon. We love them. But very often, as those of us who have been at this for a while know, when there are disproportionately large numbers of new contributors at work here, quality can suffer, and many of the new contributors often need guidance of one sort or another. This is not to say anything bad about the new contributors. Again, we love them. We need them. We want to assimilate them.

Calling out the Guard. I am going to put my name on the following list of Guard members. I encourage you to do the same. If we are "invaded" as a result of massive amounts of news coverage, I (or any alert guard member!) will "call out the Guard," meaning that somebody will post an announcement on Wikipedia-L (all Guard members should be subscribed) as well as on Wikipedia Announcements, and that will be your cue to "do your duty," namely, do some heavy weeding on the Recent Changes page and on a (hopefully automatically-generated) list of new article topics. I will also, some time after that, try to make a point of declaring that the "invasion" is over; but, of course, as the newer people are still learning, we should still be on "heightened alert."

So, join the Guard! Add your name to the list below! I fully expect Wikipediholics will want to enlist. :-) --Larry Sanger