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A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

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Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#261

Post by chris_wot »

zug_zug wrote: post #128
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, bu…

It’s not just this sort of editor who cause problems. There is a class of editor who makes no significant extra content via research or substantially flesh out article but who watch the edits as they come through.

As an example, see the user WWGB - if you review their contribution history you will not see any work done other than “review” the work of others:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/WWGB

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#263

Post by c22 »

ThoAppelsin wrote: post #151
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…

The important difference here is that this platform claims to be an encyclopedia, and any random vandal may not simply make an edit on an article of the conventional encyclopedia. It would only be natural for us to take this resource as not-so-reliable, for that it is as easy a man to spit on the floor to infiltrate Wikipedia with false information. Yet, we usually don't. We usually just go ahead and trust what we se…

I would argue that anyone who takes wikipedia at face value and trusts everything they read there without further verification, research, or compatible pre-existing knowledge is not a very discerning individual. Wikipedia is not being coy about their identity, I'm pretty sure everyone knows it's edited by strangers on the internet. If you want an encyclopedic source you know you can trust then buy an encyclopedia.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#264

Post by jakobegger »

philwelch wrote: post #256
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.

So, here's the Wikipedia page in question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Galloway The revision history is interesting to look through as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_Galloway&o... Many of Cross's revisions seem to revolve around removing unreliable sources (such as RT and Sputnik), integrating edits such that the verbiage flows better, and so forth. I can't find any edits that he's p…

That’s a very generous interpretation. Usually, when you find something that is not sufficiently well sourced, you add “citation needed” or mention it on the talk page or something. You don’t just delete entire sections that aren’t obvious vandalism.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#265

Post by chris_wot »

philwelch wrote: post #256
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.

So, here's the Wikipedia page in question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Galloway The revision history is interesting to look through as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_Galloway&o... Many of Cross's revisions seem to revolve around removing unreliable sources (such as RT and Sputnik), integrating edits such that the verbiage flows better, and so forth. I can't find any edits that he's p…

The linked article shows quite a few edits that violate the Biographies of Living Persons policy.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#267

Post by Udik »

megous wrote: post #180
Udik wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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. No. Please, everybody stop with this Russia nonsense. Russia has become the bogeyman to which every evil and its opposite can be attributed, included the election of a US president that the US citizens voted t…

It's not nonsense. Russia is waging a propaganda war in the west. Results are clearly visible in the last 5 years or so. Even in my country that was occupied by USSR at one time, there are now very vocal pro-russian agenda voices, especially on social media, news comment sections and or alt-news websites. It's ridiculous. And what's this website anyway? Someone created an anonymous website to spread some onesided inf…

So, you looked up a politician you've never heard of before, that's been in politics for 30 years, and filtered on his tweets to see if it fits what you own definition of "anti-war" is? Maybe you want to contact him and tell him what he should be talking about and how, to fit your own ideas? I warn you that he's a blistering debater. You can have a taste of his ability in this hearing at the US Senate 13 years ago, when he defended himself from the nonsensical propaganda accusations that he had done oil trading with the Saddam Hussein regime:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP_EDl3OCco

> He comes of as some kind of misinformed activist

Haha. Maybe you'd want to look up some of his activity and also get a grip on the history of the past, uhm, 30 years. It'll take you a bit longer than doing a filter search on twitter.

> Someone created an anonymous website to spread some onesided info about a feud with some wikipedia editor he doesn't like.

There's no question about the fact that Philip Cross has been suspiciously hyper-active for years and that he's concentrating on a cluster of political figures. I've checked a couple Wikipedia entries of people I know as critics of the US and western policies, and voila', hundreds of Philip Cross edits just in the last few days.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#268

Post by js8 »

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.

> The Wikipedia editing process is broken

It is broken, in my opinion, because people in charge insist that it is not (and should not be) a democracy.

So in the end, there is no clear understanding who is in charge, and you get people who invest lot of time and get implicit power.

Democracy is a principle which, for all its failings, is there to protect interests of people who can't or don't want to fight for power full-time. Because we say, here we are being treated as equal. By explicitly setting the power that people have, democracy makes attaining implicit power somewhat pointless.

Therefore, democracy is in the interest of people who want to get job done and not get so much involved in politics.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#269

Post by belorn »

forapurpose wrote: post #245
belorn wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where would one go to dive into a top-level controversial topic? Outside of doing the research oneself or having a organization which is explicit nonpartisan with the goal of unbiased reporting (ie fact checking sites), what options are left beside Wikipedia?

There are many options. Off the top of my head, here are a few: Major non-partisan news organizations. Generally, their news is relatively unbiased; editorials are meant to be biased, of course. Search their news archives. Major non-partisan think tanks can be fantastic sources, but be a bit careful about their funding. Encyclopedia Britannica is excellent, with articles generally written by domain experts. Coverage…

> non-partisan news organizations. Generally, their news is relatively unbiased;

One has to be very careful about who their readership are and whom the journalist cater to in their writing. For example we had this study done for reporting on the 2016 election and its only a small selection in green that indicate nonpartisan target audience: http://wilkins.law.harvard.edu/projects/2017-08_mediacloud/G... It should be noted that the map do not show official endorsements which some of the green marked organization (or owners) made.

We also have the classic "Who reads the papers?" from Yes, Prime Minister. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGscoaUWW2M) Its a joke of course but one that rings quite true for a lot of people. The audience influence the paper which in turn incentives the writers to cater to the existing audience. Online advertisement is exceptional strong in this where the effect can be felt continuously with instant feedback.

Encyclopedias are fun. One on side of the family I have academic ancestors who had two really old sets from around world war 1 and before. Amazing read, especially if you look up political topics. Occasional I read it just for the culture difference. Domain experts can be rather "colored" by their time, and its difficult argument to make that today Encyclopedia Britannica is enlighten and correct but 100 years ago they paid biased and blind experts.

Which leaves doing the work oneself and make original meta research by seeking out studies, academic journals and papers. That is the proper way to do it if one has the time and energy.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#270

Post by Tomte »

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…

> (Some articles also just have possessive editors; there is dysfunction everywhere, and WP is no exception).

That's exactly what made me not waste a second thought on Wikipedia after my first attempt to contribute.

A small change, clearly correct, well-sourced with first-rate sources, but unfortunately the guy who made most of tzhe changes to the article over its history cannot stand if someone fixes something in "his" article.

Unless Wikipedia finds a way to "appeal" those decisions in a low-barrier way (maybe introduce "Wiki-lawyers" who know the gigabytes of procedures, rules and obscure Wiki pages where those procedures happen?), Wikipedia will lose both concrete work and also good-will.

I won't ever try again.

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