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Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia

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Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia

#111
Wikipedia has grown to be a PR outlet. It's overwhelmed by different interest groups pushing their own agenda or doing PR. Especially smaller Wikipedias, like for example German, are known for defamation campaigns against “unpopular” authors and topics.

And before someone cries "citation needed" I'll add just one link to satisfy the requirements: https://swprs.org/wikipedia-and-propaganda/

Though the source, although worth reading and providing a valid criticism, may not be good enough, since Wikipedia, the main source of truth on Internets, marks it as a misinformation website.

Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia

#112
post #48

I have been making small contributions for fifteen or so years. I don’t much feel like doing it anymore after a spurt of bad interactions. About a year ago I created a Wikipedia page for a TV personality and author I enjoy. Spent literal hours on it collecting citations and what have you. Within a couple hours the page was deleted for not being noteworthy. He had his own TV show, has multiple published books and a po…

I've observed this phenomenon for a while. The people deleting these pretty much do nothing else. They are some how considered valuable contributors. Something I've mocked loudly. The effect is that some topics/categories have wild outgrowth of articles even the best of us would doubt necessary but certainly wouldn't care enough to attempt to delete it. Every popstar, every album, every song on the album, covers of it, each their own article. It would be wild if STEM editors got the memo.

Who the hell would not want an article about a tractor company? Tractor are more important than discography. It gets even more stupid if we assume your articles really needed work. Who is to do the work if it is not allowed?

They should just ban the deletionists starting with the ones who didn't contribute a single sentence for years. Filling talk pages with nothing that creates articles.

The worse case I've seen was a guy creating articles about (mostly old) books for many years followed by this giant caravan of deletionists who sometimes deleted the article immediately, sometimes after a week, sometimes a month, sometimes they exchanged troll messages among their own for a whole year. Eventually they deleted the articles faster than he created them with ever cheaper excuses until eventually the person creating them was the excuse for deletion. Thousands of articles gone, all good articles. I know all of the guidelines, I know when it should be good enough.

Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia

#114

Wikipedia is definitely used in politicized way by the editors. A clear example of my knowledge is how the referendum celebrated in Catalunya (Spain) in 2017 is described in the Catalan and Spanish versions, for some topics they seem to be talking about different events. Anyone can use an english translator and check it out. Just in the first three lines the Spanish version uses the word "ilegal" and the Catalan does…

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Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia

#116
post #48

I have been making small contributions for fifteen or so years. I don’t much feel like doing it anymore after a spurt of bad interactions. About a year ago I created a Wikipedia page for a TV personality and author I enjoy. Spent literal hours on it collecting citations and what have you. Within a couple hours the page was deleted for not being noteworthy. He had his own TV show, has multiple published books and a po…

Only slightly tangential to parents post but I hate that Wikipedia moderators need articles to be import enough. A lot of deep dive articles into niche shows are all relegated to fandom wikis. Those sites provide no way to get a dump or even has any sort of knowledge graph

I had been working with the zeshel dataset and wanted to build a knowledge graph on top of the dataset for the model that I was planning to build. If those articles were a part of Wikipedia, there would have atleast been some effort integrate them to the larger Wikipedia knowledge graph

Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia

#117
post #48

I have been making small contributions for fifteen or so years. I don’t much feel like doing it anymore after a spurt of bad interactions. About a year ago I created a Wikipedia page for a TV personality and author I enjoy. Spent literal hours on it collecting citations and what have you. Within a couple hours the page was deleted for not being noteworthy. He had his own TV show, has multiple published books and a po…

[deleted]

Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia

#118
post #59

I can say assuredly that toxicity and politicization (IRL, not just on wiki) also makes the vast majority (>99%) of science experts refrain from trying to engage with the public. The experts that do engage tend to be outliers, which sometimes exacerbates the public’s distorted impressions of science questions.

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Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think StackOverflow is a good example of a site where cultural norms have become a life-threatening issue. The site has experienced a sharp drop in search traffic and yet people still say it's unfriendly all the time. Fixing that perception should be a top priority.

Fixing the unfriendly perception is why stack overflow is dead. Signal to noise for professionals is now close to zero. Maybe it's friendlier, but it's also no longer worth visiting other than the historical record.

From my last 5 stack overflow questions, 3 were some mod closing the question with a rationale that’s ridiculous.

Most questions are now answered in the comments instead of being written as an answer below the question and I assume this is because people have had bad experiences with gate keeper mods when writing answers.

I have reasonably high karma.

I don’t think quality deteriorated due to some attempts to make the site more friendly. It’s the spirit of a county rabbit breeders association that drives people away

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