61–70 of 387 posts
regarding general participation in English Wikipedia -- the last three or four edits I made to Wikipedia articles I found interesting, were summarily reverted. Why try ?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see an admin with no apparent connection to this subject[0]: (1) instructing KalHolmann not to canvass (this is one of WP's older rules and comes up all the time in AfD, where people will canvass WP and Twitter to get votes to keep marginal articles) (2) backing out KalHolmann's canvassing comments (3) responding to KalHolmann's question about where to direct his concern by telling him to take it to ANI (4) advisin…
NeilN isn't the abusive or sinister one here. It is the fact that KalHolmann's posts were closed on the boards that is the issue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:JzG
Also no apparent connection to the topic.
There over a thousand admins on Wikipedia; most of them don't know or have any connection to each other.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The relevant bit is the last two comments by KalHolmann. Attempts to discuss Cross' behavior in the relevant, public boards were closed within minutes of each posting with unsatisfactory explanations. See [0] for example. Not a wikipedian, but from my nerdish poking around and learning about how wikipedia works, it was my impression that these boards are supposed to be public forums to openly discuss issues, in line…
I see an admin with no apparent connection to this subject[0]: (1) instructing KalHolmann not to canvass (this is one of WP's older rules and comes up all the time in AfD, where people will canvass WP and Twitter to get votes to keep marginal articles) (2) backing out KalHolmann's canvassing comments (3) responding to KalHolmann's question about where to direct his concern by telling him to take it to ANI (4) advisin…
I should also add that the people targeted by Cross all have a fairly large audiences on Twitter, and have been vocal about this issue. Jimmy Wales is aware (he's tweeted to them, as I say in another comment, but to dismiss the matter). I, too, would conclude they were trying to protect him if I was met with that kind of response.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see an admin with no apparent connection to this subject[0]: (1) instructing KalHolmann not to canvass (this is one of WP's older rules and comes up all the time in AfD, where people will canvass WP and Twitter to get votes to keep marginal articles) (2) backing out KalHolmann's canvassing comments (3) responding to KalHolmann's question about where to direct his concern by telling him to take it to ANI (4) advisin…
You misssed the fact that he took it to ANI and was shut down there too very quickly. Frustrated with the fact that no attempt was made to deal with the matter, he, quite sensibly, concludes that it appears they are trying to protect Cross. I should also add that the people targeted by Cross all have a fairly large audiences on Twitter, and have been vocal about this issue. Jimmy Wales is aware (he's tweeted to them,…
What seems more likely to me is that people have very legitimate concerns about Cross's POV, but aren't following WP norms in raising those concerns, and are getting shut down as a result. That's an expected outcome, not a sign of something nefarious happening.
Wikipedia is like any other encyclopedia, human endeavor with shortcomings, biases, and failings. It should be taken with a grain of salt where warranted, trusted as canonical elsewhere, and constitute one among many sources in other cases. For me, at least there is the relatively high degree of transparency that allows people to independently research the claims of this article theirself should they choose. That's not the case with Google's search results and those probably have more a role in my ordinary decisions than Wikipedia.
None of which is to say that this is good. Only that for me, it is a corner case...contemporary politics is an area of Wikipedia where I expect political gerrymandering and biased reporting simply due to the size of the attack surface, the nature of politics and the stakes at stake.
"ditch Wikipedia" seems a bit melodramatic. Nobody should rely on Wikipedia as the sole source of any information, but it can be a useful starting point and usually has enough references to back it up. People need to be more careful about examining the source of claims in general. Including what is shared with them on social media, YouTube videos, news articles, etc. But that doesn't mean those mediums are no longer…
"Anti-war" doesn't sound like a particularly descriptive adjective for the apparent targets here. They are not anti-war campaigners per se, they seem to be sitting in the Russia-sympathetic zone of discourse. I'm not saying that to discredit them (I might, but I won't), but calling them anti-war rather obscures the problems people might have with them. That doesn't mean that a "one-man" effort to shepherd their Wikip…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The relevant bit is the last two comments by KalHolmann. Attempts to discuss Cross' behavior in the relevant, public boards were closed within minutes of each posting with unsatisfactory explanations. See [0] for example. Not a wikipedian, but from my nerdish poking around and learning about how wikipedia works, it was my impression that these boards are supposed to be public forums to openly discuss issues, in line…
I see an admin with no apparent connection to this subject[0]: (1) instructing KalHolmann not to canvass (this is one of WP's older rules and comes up all the time in AfD, where people will canvass WP and Twitter to get votes to keep marginal articles) (2) backing out KalHolmann's canvassing comments (3) responding to KalHolmann's question about where to direct his concern by telling him to take it to ANI (4) advisin…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly what is it we're supposed to be looking at here? And what does "Wikipedia", as an entity, mean in your comment?
It's not that long. Did you read it? One Wikipedia editor is trying to highlight the problem of Cross' edits and have him marked as having a conflict of interest on certain articles. The Wikipedia admin (or superiour, I'm not familiar with the Wikipedia hierarchy) shuts him down very rudely and doesn't appear to want to address the issue at all. Leaving the editor to give up: "Forgive me for concluding that Wikipedia…
My friends and I had a shameful game in uni where we competed to see who could make the most egregious edits to wikipedia without getting reverted. What was surprising was just how easy it was. We started with minor edits in small articles, just adding our own name to some list of notable achievers. Then, due to competition, we would add an entire paragraph that fabricated an event. Like adding ourself as a conquista…
Me and my friends did exactly the same when we were 15. One of us added "Hannah screwed her dog" to the Wikipedia article for Paper . I remember being surprised that it lasted for a few weeks.
When the bot doesn't catch those, there's almost always a couple of people looking at every change as they stream by, but that's an uphill battle that mostly catches the obvious bad edits.
The rate of change to recent change reviewers is too high to catch the more sophisticated vandalism as it happens, that's when things start staying up for weeks or months until some random person browsing the page notices, and hopefully fixes it.