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A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

wikipedia.fivefilters.org

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Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#111

Post by tptacek »

Retric wrote: post #110
bhouston wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then it's a pretty big "inner circle".

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#112

Post by AndyNemmity »

Jasper_ wrote: post #36
noobermin wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Wikipedia is useful for looking up technical info that there is no conflict over. Even this isn't true. As a former contributor to the Linux desktop community, false information about projects and codebases I had runs rampant on Wikipedia. One Wikipedia editor with more time on his hands than any of us [0] devotes his time to maintaining those articles, despite self-admittedly having little topical knowledge [1]. T…

The same was true for technical articles on databases. Just factually incorrect information, and lots of marketing. Tried to fix it, but there were a few people more devoted than I was, and it became too much of an effort to play the revert/lawyer game just to get consistent articles with similar information across all databases.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#113

Post by jpatokal »

lkrubner wrote: post #58

This part: “ We pulled in the dates from his user contributions page and found that Cross had not had a single day off from editing the site in almost 5 years! ” Makes me think that this is an account shared by many people. Since we don’t know who this person is, there is a chance that this person is really a whole organization.

There are a lot of obsessive people on Wikipedia. Back in the days when I was an active editor, I was regularly embroiled in edit wars with somebody who had odd but extremely firm opinions about the romanization of Okinawan (not a political topic even in Japan) and what appeared to be 24/7 ability to enforce them. I suspect quite a few of those shut-in "hikikomori" types are top Wikipedia editors...

All that said, checking the manual of style in question today, I'm positively surprised to see the weirdness is gone. This is a strength of Wikipedia: over time entropy of opinion tends to decrease, even though it may take years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Japa...

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#114

Post by yarrel »

tptacek wrote: post #37
always_good wrote: post #29

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…

"Shameful" is a good word for it. Stuff like this is a major reason --- maybe the major reason --- behind most of the limitations of the Wikipedia platform. It is, for instance, the primary cause of "deletionism": marginal articles are difficult to police, and so the project has to establish a notability cut-off so it can constrain the problem at least to articles where there are sources to tie claims to. I'm not say…

You are confusing edits with articles.

Deletionists tend to confuse their personal ignorance (often of a website called "Google" [yes I know how notability works, no that's not an argument against not bothering to even trivially check whether an article can be improved rather than deleted]) with a mandate to sabotage Wikipedia.

People who remove cruft from articles, rather than speedy deleting articles that aren't about Pokemon, are not deletionists and should not be invoked as human shields for deletionists.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#115

Post by Kim_Bruning »

k1m wrote: post #92
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia is not a hierarchy. Admins are experienced wikipedians who have a few extra administrative tasks (hence the name). The Admin in question seems to have acted based on their own judgment. (I know because I asked them! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:JzG#meatball:ExpandS... ) . You could even talk to the admin yourself, if you would like extra information. Wikipedia has a function to add questions to a…

What are you suggesting with your last comment? Did you read the story posted here and the changes Philip Cross has made? "I went looking around, and there appear to be politicians and russian media involved here." - Is that the level of evidence needed to do whatever you want on Wikipedia?

Yes, I have read most carefully. And I have also talked to one of the admins, as you can see.

Obviously, things are not adding up. We can both agree on that much ;-)

What I don't quite get is why fivefilters.org is interested?

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#116

Post by tux3 »

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…

Alright I'm going to have to disagree specifically on that point. I otherwise agree with your argument that there's no homogenous "they" banding together (And there's an article for that, even! [0] And an article nuancing that view too. [1])

But I emphatically take issue with the idea that it's reasonable to shut down what sounds like, in your words, "very legitimate concerns" instead of guiding the concerned users through the proper process, fostering a healthy discussion. If I'm being harsh, isn't that the role of an admin, someone who should know better?

It's important to follow rules, and I could ironically cite you a dozen Wikipedia guidelines that argue for[4][5][6][7] or against[8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] the idea that not following proper process should get your concerns shut down.

But one of the founding and most important principles of Wikipedia[2] is precisely that it has no firm rules. What it has are guidelines that have been found to work well, and policy that one is expected to follow unless there is a reason not to.

The moment that heavily codified process is used by experienced editors against less experienced ones or against people who have a legitimate concern, that is not helpful process and not a fair or acceptable outcome.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Is_No_Cabal

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CABAL

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:5P5

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:LAWYER

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOCOMMON

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RECKLESS

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CAUTIOUS

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:EXPECT

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:IAR

[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:BOLD

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:SNOWBALL

[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOTBURO

[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOTFATRAT

[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:COMMON

[14] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:REASONABILITY

[15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:PRINCIPLE

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#117

Post by Retric »

tptacek wrote: post #103
netsharc wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No, you can't edit, even simple spelling mistakes get reverted regularly. It's designed to be an overly byzantine bureaucracy to discourage edits so a relatively small group can maintain control. Remember if 100 million people made meaningful contributions daily there would be no way to maintain that control.

Arguably that works well, but it's almost meaningless to call it a wiki.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#118

Post by belorn »

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…

saying that "anyone can edit wikipedia" is identical to saying that anyone can contribute to the linux kernel. Its both true and false depending on how you look at it.

Yes, anyone can send in a patch.

No, only a very small subset of the world population has the knowledge and experience to create a patch that gets accepted.

Yes, they do want more contributors and want to encourage all users to contribute.

No, they can not accept all patches.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#120

Post by Retric »

tptacek wrote: post #111
Retric wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Then it's a pretty big "inner circle".

From everyone that uses Wikipedia a subset has made an edit. And within that subset an even smaller fraction is part of the inner circle that has some ideas about Wikipedia's culture. The Chinese Communist Party is vast, but it still qualifies as an inner circle, even though that onion has plenty of layers.
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