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Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia
161–170 of 363 posts
Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 th…
Saying "mod on stack overflow" is much like saying "editor on Wikipedia".
Where these other community members who had the close vote privilege? Or an elected moderator that had a diamond in their name to designate that?
Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia
#163[flagged]
What is it about this topic that drives people absolutely crazy? Far less than 1% of people ID as trans yet it's just the most important cultural shibboleth and just mentioned / argued about constantly... why do you care at all how Wikipedia phrases the opening paragraph on their page about Trans women?
I think the major things that drive anti-trans people crazy are laws, regulations, and policies compelling speech [1], and creating mandatory mixed-sex spaces [2] and competitions (we're still in an era where women have to fight for rights such as sports equality [3] and lactation rooms).
While Pew doesn't get into the question you're asking, it's research results show how widely people think on the issue [4]. A breadth of ideology facilitates polarization and craziness.
For pro-trans people you probably have a silent majority, but the crazy minority [5] will range the gamut in motivation.
[1] - https://www.insider.com/california-court-says-legal-to-misge...
[2] - https://www.archdaily.com/984280/designing-around-debate-the... - Search for "Hesitancy is a significant hurdle behind the widespread" to get to the point where they start discussing this.
[3] - https://www.hawaiipublicradio.org/local-news/2023-11-01/stat...
[4] - https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2022/06/28/america...
[5] - https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/opinion-trans-rights-radical...
Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
A good way to begin to understand about toxic comments is to look for the "dead" comments on HN. Dead comments fall into a few categories: trolling, advertisements, conspiracy/culture war and toxic. It's pretty easy to figure out which is which.
As somebody who wants to see as much discussion as possible, even if I might disagree with or dislike what's being expressed, I find the moderation here tends to be more "toxic" to my user experience than the dead or grayed-out comments are. I wish this site had a setting like "showdead", but that disabled all moderation-related impacts on the display of the discussion. There wouldn't be any grayed-out comments, for…
Agreed, and I'd even be willing to opt out of the karma system entirely to get this.
The self-defeating nature of "graying" comments out is just utterly mind-blowing. It calls more attention to the undesirable content rather than less... yet nobody in power seems to understand that. (For starters: if I turn on showdead, it means I don't want my view censored. So stop doing it.)
Anyway, it's OT for this story.
Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wikipedia policy specifically says to not reference primary sources (e.g. published, peer-reviewed journal articles). Only secondary sources such as news articles referencing the papers. This is probably why your contributions are being rejected. I haven't read the specific justification for this policy, but a couple of reasons is that it allows two rounds of review of the information prior to incorporation into Wiki…
This is not correct at all. The sourcing policy says: “If available, academic and peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources on topics such as history, medicine, and science.”
When did they change that policy?
Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
As somebody who wants to see as much discussion as possible, even if I might disagree with or dislike what's being expressed, I find the moderation here tends to be more "toxic" to my user experience than the dead or grayed-out comments are. I wish this site had a setting like "showdead", but that disabled all moderation-related impacts on the display of the discussion. There wouldn't be any grayed-out comments, for…
Agreed, and I'd even be willing to opt out of the karma system entirely to get this. The self-defeating nature of "graying" comments out is just utterly mind-blowing. It calls more attention to the undesirable content rather than less... yet nobody in power seems to understand that. (For starters: if I turn on showdead, it means I don't want my view censored. So stop doing it. ) Anyway, it's OT for this story.
I’m not inside your head so I don’t know if you would agree, but I would love to see this say content that is deemed undesirable as opposed to just straight “undesirable.”
My problem with gray text is a bit different: Since the dumbness of crowds can happen even on HN, I’d like to be able read comments myself and decide for myself what to think about them.
With some topics the hater community is very strong, and comments get so light so fast they cannot even be read without some disruptive workflow, and they aren’t always useless comments.
Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed, and I'd even be willing to opt out of the karma system entirely to get this. The self-defeating nature of "graying" comments out is just utterly mind-blowing. It calls more attention to the undesirable content rather than less... yet nobody in power seems to understand that. (For starters: if I turn on showdead, it means I don't want my view censored. So stop doing it. ) Anyway, it's OT for this story.
I’m not inside your head so I don’t know if you would agree, but I would love to see this say content that is deemed undesirable as opposed to just straight “undesirable.” My problem with gray text is a bit different: Since the dumbness of crowds can happen even on HN, I’d like to be able read comments myself and decide for myself what to think about them. With some topics the hater community is very strong, and comm…
Yeah, we're basically in agreement there.
In most cases, I'd say those comment threads that end up almost entirely grayed out were never good candidates for HN stories in the first place.
Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
my son created an account and tried to add a page for his middle-school, only to have the page deleted and told it's not notable enough to have a page. after that my son hasn't tried editing Wikipedia.
Similar here. I corrected some statistics on a page for a vehicle. I had multiple different years of the owner and service manuals in had to verify these facts and able to source them. Nope, some overlord of the page just kept reverting it with no recourse. I never bother to try editing again. It is not worth my time to deal with that.
The trick with any sort of halfway controversial edits is to discuss at length your planned contribution on the talk page, wait until nobody complains, then make the actual edit. If you do get reverted, you can point out that you had announced the edit in the talk page and no objections had been raised. It helps to post on the message boards for relevant WikiProjects too.
Yes, Wikipedia policy pages say to be "bold" with editing, but that only really works for things like fixing typos. If you know that someone might object, you should focus on in-depth discussion and let concerns be addressed that way.
Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not correct at all. The sourcing policy says: “If available, academic and peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources on topics such as history, medicine, and science.”
When did they change that policy?
Peer-reviewed research papers have always been allowed in citations. The nuance that evolved over time is this "For example, a paper reviewing existing research, a review article, monograph, or textbook is often better than a primary research paper." Meaning, you can cite a research paper, but something more secondary that summarizes a body of scholarship would be better.
Individual research papers that haven't been reproduced often present conflicting results with one another, especially in fields with poor quality research like nutrition. Experts often run into this issue when they try to cite their own research or a narrow set of papers in a given field, especially when recent research conflicts with prior scientific consensus. It's why tptacek's comment above is apropos.
Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not correct at all. The sourcing policy says: “If available, academic and peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources on topics such as history, medicine, and science.”
When did they change that policy?
They never did. You can't use YOUR OWN work as a source, but you can use primary sources.