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A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

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Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#191

Post by nullymcnull »

Retric wrote: post #172
tptacek wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That's not what I am saying. I am saying that if you look at Wikipedia history you can find plenty of places where an anonymous user/occasional editor fixes a spelling mistake that was then reverted. That history sticks around far longer than anyone one version. And for that user all they see is that their effort is pointless. "if you make an edit which is good-faith reverted, do not simply reinstate your edit – leav…

> I am saying that if you look at Wikipedia history you can find plenty of places where an anonymous user/occasional editor fixes a spelling mistake that was then reverted.

You're essentially refuting yourself by making the same claim again, and yet still without offering a single example of something you are claiming is rampant. If there are "plenty" of examples, it should be easy to link a few.

I'm skeptical, because I've made many small, always anonymous edits over the years, mostly correcting spelling mistakes and bad grammar. Most of these edits were even made from dynamic IPs - and yet none of them were reverted.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#193

Post by igivanov »

FPGAhacker wrote: post #167
AsyncAwait wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine if a country like Russia Honestly, Israel, KSA etc. are as much, if not more likely to do this, as indeed shown by the Phillip Cross guy, who was making edits to benefit them. Of course it is far easier to constantly mention Russia, (and it should be mentioned), but I'd love if people were more willing to call out our 'partners' who engage in this behavior, as calling out Russia requires no amount of 'coura…

The point of the post was not the courageousness of the op, or Russia. The point was propaganda.

Well it has a definite slant against Russia, especially given the lame example in a link about Mueller's indictment against several Russians from an Internet spam outfit, not against Russia the country. Somehow I haven't heard the Cambridge Analytica debacle being presented as a UK's effort "to achieve similar goals".

Israel would indeed be a better example with their hasbara effort which is directed by the government.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#194

Post by omeid2 »

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 is not a fair comparison.

Linux patches generally gets accepted based on technical merit, some politics aside;

But it seems like most Wikipedia contributions are subject to the inside political considerations and bureaucracy.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#195

Post by cf498 »

wafflebear wrote: post #177
komali2 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed the same behavior on Reddit, hackernews, Tumblr, and lesswrong. As long as you say it in the right cadence for the given forum, you can be completely off base and be getting upvotes. I try to be aware of it but I see myself mindlessly agreeing with someone just because they took the superior tone for the given format.

HN cleverly flips this around to its advantage. Even comments that are categorically wrong often contribute to the conversation. Some of the best comments on HN happen when a comment is so wrong that it baits a sleeping expert into responding.

Thats a matter of quantity though. Have enough of it and the content and normal users get drowned out and leave.

In the end, good faithed users contribute in thier spare time. Once certain interests are involved, you are faced with bad faithed actors who make their livelihood sabotaging this.

Catch enough controversy and this will ruin almost any project where people cooperate in their spare time to inform about something.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#196

Post by PhasmaFelis »

tptacek wrote: post #41
Jasper_ wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If it's "rampant" on Wikipedia, you should have no trouble pointing out examples. So, respectfully, I'd ask that to support your argument with evidence, you do that. I had trouble editing technical topics I was familiar with, too, and found it incredibly aggravating. I'd write demonstrably true, helpful, factual content about something only to have it struck for lack of sourcing. It took awhile to get through my head…

> I had trouble editing technical topics I was familiar with, too, and found it incredibly aggravating. I'd write demonstrably true, helpful, factual content about something only to have it struck for lack of sourcing.

> It took awhile to get through my head the model of the project, which included as a basic premise that I, as an editor, am not a valid source.

It seems to me that the correct response to this is to mark the content as needing citations (or to look up the citations oneself), not to knee-jerk delete it every time. Well-cited material is best, but at least for uncontroversial technical subjects, poorly-cited but nonetheless accurate material is a lot better than nothing.

There's another problem I've seen, particularly in non-technical subjects, with information that is so broadly accepted that nobody ever bothers to formally define it, so it's not allowed on Wikipedia. For example, in the fantasy genre, "high fantasy" broadly meant epic, heroic, good-vs-evil stuff (Lord of the Rings) and "low fantasy" broadly meant gritty shades-of-grey stuff (Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Thieves' World, Song of Ice and Fire). The terms were used this way for decades throughout the genre, and were so intuitive that no one needed to explicitly define them.

In 1971, Lloyd Alexander wrote an essay that used "high fantasy" to, roughly, describe fantasy that takes place in an imaginary world, rather than in our own. This usage was never common or influential...until someone wrote a Wikipedia article about it, and used that one source to block any attempts to mention the original definition for many years. Now the "high fantasy" and "low fantasy" articles are conflicting muddles of the two different definitions, and the confusion has inevitably leaked into off-Wikipedia discussion.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#197

Post by _-_throwaway »

Some of these Wikipedia 'editors' can go sodomize themselves.

Pages deleted/redirected for something being 'non-notable' or having 'no historical significance'. And then when you try to kindly disagree, you're presented with some politically colored Wikimedia rules and such according to which editor has performed their censorship.

How do you even determine what is notable? It may be notable to me. Why some punk editor needs to go remove content just because they feel otherwise with very little to do to appeal. Like why would someone remove entry for an emulator (http://atariage.com/forums/topic/278839-non-notable-say-what... )? Or why do they do that for entries for companies that went bankrupt or got acquired? Or to many of these articles about topics such as WW2 where e.g. this editor ( https://www.wikipediasucks.co/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=216 ) has been waging his own holy war.

I stopped donating Wikipedia 2-3 years a go among these reasons. I guess next xmas when Jimmy or whatever from Wikipedia emails me to beg for contributions, I should reply to him pointer to this thread.

Throwaway account.

edit: engrish

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#198

Post by justonepost »

Yes, it just means it is working. There are a lot of anti-war people on Wikipedia. I am personally very very anti war, a pacifist even. But I appreciate the intellectual integrity of being challenged.

When I was first challenged with the arcane rules of Wikipedia I was a little frustrated. But then I realized I could just learn those arcane rules and use them myself. After that it was amazing how many of my edits were able to get through.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#199

Post by justonepost »

dpwm wrote: post #165
unreal37 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If indeed it is one individual. With the intensity of edits it would not be at all surprising if this editor was in fact more than one individual masquerading behind a single account.

What possible benefit would accrue from doing something like that?

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#200

Post by justonepost »

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…

What is a good source for authoritative content on controversial issues?
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