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

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#221

Post by cooper12 » Sun, May 20, 2018, 2:22 AM UTC

justonepost wrote: post #198

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 wer…

Let's stop pretending any of these rules are "arcane". Go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. Right there in the sidebar in plain view, the first option is "Help": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents. Everything you need to know to edit is there. You can also just Google "Wikipedia how to edit" and plenty of hits will come up. It's not hard at all. You sound no better than someone who bitches about some open source project when they didn't even do basic due diligence and RTFM.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#222

Post by cooper12 » Sun, May 20, 2018, 2:25 AM UTC

joering2 wrote: post #18

Wikipedia been disappointing for a while. I had few years run when every year I got Jimmy email, I did donated $10 cause they gave me tons of info. Just recent year or so, every single article is locked for edition and by different reason (which really doesn't matter). After spending some time you clearly see "clans" of wiki editors fighting with others, removing their content and clearly having agenda, whether it is…

It's not hard at all to be able to edit these articles once you make an account and takes a bare minimum of effort. See one of my earlier comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16582767

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#223

Post by cooper12 » Sun, May 20, 2018, 2:32 AM UTC

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.

It's not hard to make an edit a day. It's a daily activity for editors like me to come home and wind down by quickly going through our watchlists and reverting any vandalism. I have 11k articles on mine and I wouldn't even say I'm a prolific editor. It takes me only a few minutes and thanks to things like ORES (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ORES), most of the suspicious edits are highlighted already.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#224

Post by cooper12 » Sun, May 20, 2018, 2:37 AM UTC

tomtimtall wrote: post #33

Wikipedia should maintain 3 separate threads for all these polarizing individuals and organizations. Obliviously biased for, obviously biased against, and the the idealt neutral statement of facts(with no facts removerførsel because they play negative or positive, they can be dismissed or remover In the biased sections only.

And now you have three times as many problems...

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#225

Post by cyphar » Sun, May 20, 2018, 2:37 AM UTC

My experience with Wikipedia's editing is that there doesn't seem to be any unified concept of editors should act, nor does there appear to be any type of non-reactive review process for changes. While I think that Wikipedia's "anyone can edit" mantra sounds very nice it results in people changing articles out of their personal interest, and nobody notices for a long time.

For instance, I recently discovered that the article on Comodo[1] didn't mention any of their controversies (something that is quite important given their history and significance). After I mentioned this there was an edit war and the controversies were eventually restored, but it definitely worries me that a single contributor removed a large portion of an article without any checks in place (the edit description was just that "controversies are not encyclopedic" -- whatever that is supposed to mean).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comodo_Group

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#226

Post by tptacek » Sun, May 20, 2018, 2:41 AM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #166

tptacek wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A biased point of view isn't a conflict of interest. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest... ? We all have biases. But we have conflicts when we have direct relationships with topics. Similarly: edits are supposed to have NPOV. But editors almost always have a POV.

Is truth defined by perseverance?

No?

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#227

Post by yongjik » Sun, May 20, 2018, 2:50 AM UTC

cooper12 wrote: post #221

justonepost wrote: post #198

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 wer…

Let's stop pretending any of these rules are "arcane". Go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page . Right there in the sidebar in plain view, the first option is "Help": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents . Everything you need to know to edit is there. You can also just Google "Wikipedia how to edit" and plenty of hits will come up. It's not hard at all. You sound no better than someone who bitches about…

How can it be considered not arcane when it contains gems like "Wikipedia:Be bold" and "Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point".

In other words, when I'm skirting a rule, I'm "being bold". When you claim your edit did not violate some rule any more than my edit did, you're "disrupting Wikipedia to illustrate a point".

If these issues are resolved by reasonable folks, it may still work, but Wikipedia is not a democracy and issues are frequently not resolved by reasonable folks.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#228

Post by Qwertie » Sun, May 20, 2018, 2:56 AM UTC

TwoBit wrote: post #77

jarym wrote: post #40

Next time Jimmy pesters me for a donation I'll be contacting him and citing this as a reason why I won't.

Why don't we start a big "don't contribute to Wikipedia campaign". Can we start one of those "fund me" campaigns and use the proceeds to battle this?

Do you have a proposal for an alternative place to contribute to?

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#229

Post by gkya » Sun, May 20, 2018, 2:59 AM UTC

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…

The best part of a Wikipedia article is where it links to external resources and gives you links/DOIs.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#230

Post by strainer » Sun, May 20, 2018, 3:01 AM UTC

M2Ys4U wrote: post #220

strainer wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

Galloway, a humanitarian? Hahahaha. This is what Galloway said to Saddam Hussain: "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength your indefatigability. And I want you to know that we are with you until victory, until victory, until Jerusalem."

That isn't in the spirit of hacker news discussion. That quote has a context and we shouldn't single one of the concerned notable persons out to judge them all. Galloway organised the Iraqi Oil for food program to try to relieve the population suffering extreme infant mortality under international sanctions, and he was a UK Parliamentarian and major figure in UKs Stop the War campaign and others.