A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign • Hacker News Board

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#121

Post by belorn » Sat, May 19, 2018, 10:25 PM UTC

bjourne wrote: post #45

whack wrote: post #10

This is extremely concerning. Phillip Cross was easily caught because he was running his mouth on twitter, and was blatantly making one-sided edits from his single account. Imagine if a country like Russia makes an orchestrated effort to achieve similar goals, using an army of fake-wikipedia-profiles. They could easily turn Wikipedia into a platform for disseminating propaganda. In fact, I'd be surprised if they have…

It is already happening on a daily basis regarding all articles related to a certain country. Correcting erroneous information doesn't work because most issues aren't about facts, but about judgement calls. Is this piece of information relevant in this context or not? Should we use "this definition" that all anthropologists uses or "that definition" that most Wikipedians prefer but no scholar uses? Unless you are get…

Interesting that you mentioned political topics since I find Wikipedia a much better source than news agencies that are openly aligned to one specific political platform. For news here in Sweden its not uncommon to hear the national radio say "in the political aligned left/right news paper xxx, they wrote ..., while the political aligned (opposing side) wrote ...".

Fact checking sites are naturally better and usually go to great length to differentiate themselves from normal (political aligned) news sites and affirm that they are political unaffiliated. Sadly their time and scope is limited so Wikipedia work as a nice middle ground.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#122

Post by wybiral » Sat, May 19, 2018, 10:29 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #54

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…

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…

That's what I took from it too. But I've noticed an increasingly growing segment of HN commenters wearing fashionable hats made of foil.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#123

Post by tptacek » Sat, May 19, 2018, 10:31 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #117

tptacek wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One of the indisputably nice things about WP is that there's a record of everything that happens. Can you cite an example where a simple spelling mistake was reverted, so that the page right now is running the incorrect spelling of something?

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#124

Post by pvg » Sat, May 19, 2018, 10:33 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #118

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…

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…

That's not what 'identical' means. Although this thing isn't even similar, never mind identical.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#125

Post by k1m » Sat, May 19, 2018, 10:34 PM UTC

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?

One of Cross' targets attempted to edit his page and his changes were quickly reverted by Cross due to conflict of interest. What it seems you're suggesting here is that those unfairly targeted on Wikipedia, as Cross is doing, should learn the labyrinthine processes Wikipedia expects to correct their entries. And then presumably to put in the same amount of time Cross is putting in (hours and hours on weekdays and weekends) to monitor their pages for more abuses from him.

Should we not be more concerned about blocking those who are clearly in the wrong here?

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#126

Post by tptacek » Sat, May 19, 2018, 10:35 PM UTC

tux3 wrote: post #116

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…

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 t…

In what sense is a process being used by experienced editors against an inexperienced one here? Again: all I see is a person being told where to file grievances, and a general set of expectation about "Conflict of Interest" that doesn't in fact match the project's COI guidelines.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#127

Post by philwelch » Sat, May 19, 2018, 10:35 PM UTC

whack wrote: post #10

This is extremely concerning. Phillip Cross was easily caught because he was running his mouth on twitter, and was blatantly making one-sided edits from his single account. Imagine if a country like Russia makes an orchestrated effort to achieve similar goals, using an army of fake-wikipedia-profiles. They could easily turn Wikipedia into a platform for disseminating propaganda. In fact, I'd be surprised if they have…

What if that’s exactly what this guy is trying to resist? I don’t have a whole lot of information, but it seems like many of ths guy’s “targets” are “journalists” for Sputnik, which is part of Russia’s propaganda apparatus. And I’ve developed a strong, deeply-held skepticism towards any obvious attempt to fire up the ol’ internet outrage machine against some particular person.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#128

Post by zug_zug » Sat, May 19, 2018, 10:35 PM UTC

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…

We can't just jump to conclusions like this. We can't take a single story about a single bad editor and make blanket rules. You have to take a look at the whole dataset of people who make crusader efforts and then see if there's a pattern.

Even if there is, you then have to ask yourself if it's something that people will just learn and work-around.

I'm not disagreeing Cross was likely a net negative for wikipedia, but gut reactions to a single bad actor don't justify large theoretical changes to a largely-successful system.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#129

Post by strainer » Sat, May 19, 2018, 10:37 PM UTC

bushin wrote: post #67

roywiggins wrote: post #14

"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…

This seems closer to the truth, otherwise why sputnik and rt would care.

These notable persons (Craig Murray, David Edwards, George Galloway etc) who are reporting their personal biographies being edited unfairly on Wikipedia, are in fact well known as prominent humanitarian and anti-war activists and writers.

For strategic reasons at least -- Russia's foreign commercial news stations are also of late "sympathetic" to anti-war and progressive themes (such as arms reduction and peaceful conflict resolution). Opinions may differ here about the nature of Russia's support for those subjects, but that is a very orthogonal concern.

I don't know of any substantiated connections between the persons involved here and the Russian government or media. They certainly are "anti war" in the popular sense of the term.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#130

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 19, 2018, 10:37 PM UTC

abugher wrote: post #81

smsm42 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is easy to mess up public places. You can spit on the floor in a bus, throw trash on a street, vandalize Wikipedia. Or you can clean the trash and help Wikipedia. The choice is yours. There's no mystical powers coming in and cleaning up after you - just you and people exactly like you. So before complaining "nobody cared" ask yourself - how did I help? What did I do to expect others to clean up after me and feel e…

You have a choice. You can engage in conversation with peers as if you might want to understand the reasons for their actions. Or you can preach at them and blame them as individuals for system problems.

[deleted]