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A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

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Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#101

Post by jdtang13 »

noobermin wrote: post #23
JoshMnem wrote: post #21

The Wikipedia editing process is broken. Wiki-lawyering is used to shut down the collaborative editing process, even when not on political topics often by people who don't know much about the topic that they are editing. I don't trust Wikipedia content and tend to examine the Talk pages (sometimes even the Talk page histories) on controversial articles.

Wikipedia is useful for looking up technical info that there is no conflict over. It is not a good source for diving into a top-level controversial topic as those articles are long and have many places for people to stump and push for their ideas. The more specific a topic (think, a specific author associated with an ideology vs. the page for the ideology) the better. I think I've just adopted these mental heuristics…

This is pretty much the same heuristic I use. I use Wikipedia a lot for obscure medievalist history topics, and those articles are usually very high-quality. But if you wander into a modern-day controversial topic, like "Palestine", it's going to be quite messy. You can even smell from the way an article is written that there's some trouble brewing in the Talk page.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#102

Post by netsharc »

tptacek wrote: post #89
netsharc wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow, so they don't follow the bureaucracy, so their concerns are shut down, until what? Until they follow the bureaucracy? If I can take a stab at guessing what is happening, the Wikipedia admins probably feel like a super-active member is one of their own, and he/she is being attacked by "outsiders", so what they're doing is defending him with made-up reasons to fool themselves that what they're doing is just. A…

Yes. I understand that lots of people on HN hate that, but, yes. Wikipedia is an incredibly complicated and intricate project with its own objectives and norms. It has been manifestly successful; it is one of the great achievements of the Internet to date. People arguing to override those norms have a heavy burden to meet. One of the reasons for those norms is that on controversial issues, everybody can marshal a pla…

So I suppose the "anyone can edit" tagline is a crock of shit?

If an organization is publishing some info about me, it sounds like a giant pain in the butt if I have to learn their bureaucracy to get e.g. false information changed. At least have an ombudsman who could represent my grievances, if you built such a site. But nooooo, it seems because anyone can join and be involved in the mud-wrestle, that's what they have to do to be heard!

I wonder if politicians/celebrity can GDPR (to use that term as a verb) Wikipedia to delete all info the site has about them. After learning about this 5 minutes ago, I'm outraged! (Do note, this sentence is tongue-in-cheek!)

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#103

Post by tptacek »

netsharc wrote: post #102
tptacek wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I understand that lots of people on HN hate that, but, yes. Wikipedia is an incredibly complicated and intricate project with its own objectives and norms. It has been manifestly successful; it is one of the great achievements of the Internet to date. People arguing to override those norms have a heavy burden to meet. One of the reasons for those norms is that on controversial issues, everybody can marshal a pla…

So I suppose the "anyone can edit" tagline is a crock of shit? If an organization is publishing some info about me, it sounds like a giant pain in the butt if I have to learn their bureaucracy to get e.g. false information changed. At least have an ombudsman who could represent my grievances, if you built such a site. But nooooo, it seems because anyone can join and be involved in the mud-wrestle, that's what they ha…

You obviously can edit. And it's especially easy if you're the subject of an article to correct false information about yourself; see WP:BLP.

What you're not promised is the ability to win any given debate between yourself and other editors. What would you expect? How could the project possibly work otherwise?

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#104

Post by bhouston »

noobermin wrote: post #46
tptacek wrote: post #38

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?

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…

Wikipedia does tend to protect long time contributors and not have to outside sources that do not like an article. There is a meta game in Wikipedia that if you do small changes and write justifications in wikilawyer speak and you discredit your opponents in the right fashion you can win even if you are technically wrong. It is a beuruaucracy and some can play the game well.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#105

Post by unreal37 »

4bpp wrote: post #73

> ‘Philip Cross’ has edited @georgegalloway ‘s wikipedia page over 1800 times. This, and many other political arguments I have seen on it before, really makes me think that Wikipedia would benefit from a policy where a sufficient number of individual complaints against a user who has passed some threshold of number of edits to a single article (say 100) would be automatic grounds to block the user from further edits…

1800 edits on a single page in only a few years is essentially a sickness. I'm not a doctor, but that should be classified as obsession.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#106

Post by unreal37 »

rectang wrote: post #15

Cross's modus operandi seems to be many small edits which accumulate to produce a large negative effect, at odds with Wikipedia's principle of "neutral point of view". It's an example of operating within the letter of the rules but not their spirit.

I bet that if you changed 1 word per day on a page, after 2 or 3 years, you've successfully modified the tone of an article that cannot be easily reverted.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#108

Post by bscphil »

mjw1007 wrote: post #60
noobermin wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like we're missing the context here. Why is wikipedia ignoring it?

The admin who summarily closed the conflict-of-interest report explains his motivation as follows: « You can't amass 130,000 edits, as Philip Cross has, without being reasonably committed to Wikipedia. You'd be noticed if you were an agenda account with that many edits. And being attacked by RT and George Galloway is a reasonably reliable indicator that you are doing something right. » ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki…

>And being attacked by RT and George Galloway is a reasonably reliable indicator that you are doing something right

That is an absolutely astonishing statement and IMO something you should immediately lose admin privileges for making. I have no love for RT or for Syria sympathizers, but to defend someone's edits on the mere basis that they are opposed by those groups is completely unacceptable.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#110

Post by Retric »

bhouston wrote: post #104
noobermin wrote: post #46

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…

Wikipedia does tend to protect long time contributors and not have to outside sources that do not like an article. There is a meta game in Wikipedia that if you do small changes and write justifications in wikilawyer speak and you discredit your opponents in the right fashion you can win even if you are technically wrong. It is a beuruaucracy and some can play the game well.

It's got very little to due with length of contribution it's pure inner circle behavior.
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