> Compact Disc is a tradename, and therefore is capitalised. But the logo says "Compact disc", and the term is now used as a generic term for compact disks or compact discs, depending on where in the world they are. Everyone calls them CDs (or maybe CD's). My headcanon: - The logo says "dɪsᴄ", like what can be represented on the seven-segment display that would be found on the front of any player even in the '80s. -…
Lamest Edit Wars
71–80 of 90 posts
Re: Lamest Edit Wars
#72Wikipedia is massively raging in edit wars. Before 2014's Russian aggression towards Ukraine, several Crimea-related pages pointed out (with citations) that Crimea tried to split from Ukraine twice already during soviet times, but this whole narrative was steadily rewritten after 2014. Considering how many people rely on Wikipedia to get "facts", this has always struck me at how much history rewriting can happen and…
The best place to find alternate views is on the Talk page of any controversial article. You can usually judge the bias of an article by reading the discussion on its Talk page (and making sure to view the archives).
Re: Lamest Edit Wars
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know what the second one is supposed to be, but at least one instance is featured on the History of Crimea page,[0] which leads to a fairly detailed page about the related referendum.[1] Seems pretty factual to me. > With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Ukrainian independence the majority ethnic Russian Crimean peninsula was reorganized as the Republic of Crimea,[54][55] after a 1991 referendum with t…
> Seems pretty factual to me. But the instances where this happened during the 80s, Crimean leadership working to split from Ukraine are nowhere to be found. Now, did they happen? How? That's my point, it's not easy to find anymore, unless one at least remembers the exact page and can scroll the history to the point this information was still present. I remember reading them about those in February 2014 when I wanted…
Re: Lamest Edit Wars
#74For months or longer, there's been an edit war around Solana vs Ethereum, where mods (it appears deliberate) only allow negative content about the former. It felt petty that adults who've spent over a decade editing such a vast source of information could end up devoting a chunk of their unpaid labour time to such petty edit wars. I didn't know that there's so many edit wars, speaks to the vastness of Wikipedia.
It is petty? If you have a vested interest in cryptocurrency, in particular a cryptocurrency that you've got a lot of, and a vested interest in a different cryptocurrency not replacing yours, that gives someone real financial motive not to allow negative comments about the former, and to make it sound like the latter is on shakey ground and is just moments from collapse. I'd flex whatever Wikipedia editor privileges…
Your example would be greedy and petty, and a couple other words.
Re: Lamest Edit Wars
#75I love it. What fun. I love the discourse and I love the edit wars. Everybody here seems to be talking about how disappointing this is. But this is exactly what Wikipedia is - this is Wikipedia working as intended. This article calls these lame but then relishes them one by one. There’s something quite precious about this.
Re: Lamest Edit Wars
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having been born and lived in the UK for my entire life has given me an intensely low tolerance of arguments about nationality. These things may be very important in practical terms - e.g. whether the UK remains part of the EU, or Scotland remains part of the UK - but the quality of discussion around them is about as interesting as reading the entire talk page of a Wikipedia edit war over and over (and over) again.
Born and lived in UK for most of my life. I generally agree but it really varies. Thing is, there are interesting discussions to be had around the past, the present and the future of the various nationalities in the country ... however much of the time the people most enthusiastic about taking part in them are not the kind you have a good conversation with.
Re: Lamest Edit Wars
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
That isn't true. I grew up there and most of the city is residential neighborhoods surrounding a downtown that has been getting renovated and updated for the past twenty years or so. In terms of particularly photogenic places there are: * Vulcan * The Kirklin Clinic (designed by IM Pei, his first design I believe) * The County Courthouse * 16th Street Baptist Church * Various venues along Birmingham's freedom trail *…
I only briefly visited Alabama, but the Sloss blast furnace was a highlight of my trip. There is a haunting beauty to that place.
Re: Lamest Edit Wars
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Born and lived in UK for most of my life. I generally agree but it really varies. Thing is, there are interesting discussions to be had around the past, the present and the future of the various nationalities in the country ... however much of the time the people most enthusiastic about taking part in them are not the kind you have a good conversation with.
Yeah, it's a fascinating area to talk about if you're with genuinely curious people - for example I think there are some really interesting discussions going on about the changing notion of being "British" in the context of second- and third-generation immigrants - but the quality of the debate is so often terrible that I'm very wary of starting conversations as people can get worked up very quickly.
My friends are all pretty level-headed and good to talk to, but online things tend to get very tribal and center around these exaggerated points as if there's a referee keeping track of the points you scored on your "opposition".
Re: Lamest Edit Wars
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
But, of course, place of birth doesn't determine nationality, and also not necessarily modern nationality. I know a few families whose children were born in France, but have the Spanish nationality, and one of them changed nationality (not to French). Polish borders have shifted a few times, to highlight another problem. I think the problem comes from trying to keep the text short.
> place of birth doesn't determine nationality Depends: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli In most of the Americas it actually does.
- the rest of the world
- the fact that right to nationality is not the same as having it. France has the same right, but --as I already pointed out-- there are quite a few people born there who didn't take the nationality
- the fact that it can change, and that the inference becomes invalid in the future
Re: Lamest Edit Wars
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I were to write something in a Wikipedia article and some bad grammar or word choice slipped in, I'd be thrilled that someone else would correct it for me. Not for me, but for everyone. It's not like traditional published works don't go through an editing process. Part of the point of that editing process is there to fix language usage issues. Also I think "because they don't like a phrase" is a bit of an uncharit…
I'm not against them spending time. I'm against their attempt at controlling the use of language. They're not fixing a mistake, they're rewriting according to personal preference. I see this as defacing other people's work. To me it would be like going into an open source project and changing the tab spacing just because it's not the one you use.
This analogy doesn't work because one of Wikipedia's rules is that nobody owns any article, even if they wrote it themselves:
> All Wikipedia pages and articles are edited collaboratively by a community of volunteer contributors. Individual contributors, also called editors, are known as Wikipedians. No one, no matter what, has the right to act as though they are the owner of a particular article (or any part of it).
> Once you have posted it to Wikipedia, you cannot stop anyone from editing text you have written. As each edit page clearly states:
>> Work submitted to Wikipedia can be edited, used, and redistributed—by anyone
> Similarly, by submitting your ideas (for article organization, categorization, style, standards, etc.) to Wikipedia, you allow others to challenge and develop them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ownership_of_content
Open source software projects are different because each repo is usually controlled by at least one owner who can make decisions based solely on their own preferences. On Wikipedia, every disagreement is put to discussion and there is no article owner who can overrule everyone else.