Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by vasco » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 7:09 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #168

Washuu wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"…

The trick with any sort of halfway controversial edits is to not do them, if you want to remain sane.

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

#172

Post by Avamander » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 7:20 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #168

Washuu wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"…

You can also revert the revert a few times, that requires arbitration usually.

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

#173

Post by egberts1 » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 7:22 PM UTC

Yea, during the dark ages of toxic Wikipedia editors, I had ample of citations to split apart "Deaf" (ethnocentric label) from "Deafness" (culture) and "Hearing-Loss" (medical) not to mention the toxic ableism of "Hearing Impaired" (former medical), it was nothing but a browbeating, deletion of my Wiki drafts, and reversion of my hard and diligent efforts.

About 20 years later, some 240 Deaf wikipedia editors finally led a revolt: first to fall is "hearing impaired" (ablist slang), of which many governments/civic/businesses are now moving away from.

We are almost there.

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

#174

Post by t0bia_s » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 7:23 PM UTC

harimau777 wrote: post #132

tptacek wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet it's one of the crowning achievements of the entire Internet, and a contender for one of the most important written works of the last century. This is always the challenge trying to dismiss Wikipedia: something they're doing is working, not just well, but well on a level that is virtually unprecedented.

Give it time. As Wikipedia has become more and more obsessed with being "encyclopedic", I've noticed that they are increasingly ending up with articles that are stripped of any useful information.

Idea of centralized and universal interpenetration of information soon or later bump into boundaries. By definition, it's impossible approach. Interpretation vary with knowledge, culture and is shaped by politics, religion, regime, etc.

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

#175

Post by t0bia_s » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 7:38 PM UTC

ceving wrote: post #81

There is too much politically motivated agitation on Wikipedia. This is particularly a problem because Wikipedia's power apparatus is completely undemocratic and anonymous. Wikipedia's organizational structure corresponds to a medieval feudal system.

It's impossible to have centralized "democratic" interpretation of information. You need vote system and constant revision of text. Even though I think it's not possible to have universal interpretation of information. Point of view vary with many aspects including politics, religion, regime, actual available knowledge...

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

#176

Post by shagie » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 7:41 PM UTC

novaleaf wrote: post #138

vasco wrote: post #22

"Toxic" would not be the thing I'd start with. I'd start with "being told no for the first time", which might or not have an overlap with toxicity. But I think it's much more likely that someone will start making edits, only get uninterested comments or bot engagements, keep editing, then at some point someone reverts the edits - tells them no, and so they stop. Potentially this scenario even catches situations like:…

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.

There are roughly 13,000 middle schools in the United States.

Creating a page for each one and curating it represents a significant amount of volunteer work.

The "not notable enough" is in place in part to try to limit the amount of pages that need curating.

Whether or not that's a good thing is debatable - but the allocation of volunteer curation resources are often stretched quite thin on sites that crowdsource their content.

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

#177

Post by t0bia_s » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 7:41 PM UTC

Ensorceled wrote: post #50

paulnpace wrote: post #27

Gave up looking for a clear definition of what a "toxic comment" is. All I found is a statement that they use some score from some tool and link to the tool developer's site so I'm required to sift through the developer's site to understand what the core part of the paper is, or I've missed some other part of the paper because they include so many dense paragraphs of nothing useful informations (as well as a nice pro…

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.

It's not easy. Definition of toxicity is fluid. Also, polotical topics are regularly flagged, even though source information is reliable and solid.

I miss something like explanation/select of category if giving a flag. Without any explanation, why link is flagged, no one is learning.

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

#178

Post by EnigmaFlare » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 7:42 PM UTC

ziddoap wrote: post #131

EnigmaFlare wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He had his own TV show, has multiple published books and a popular podcast. That alone doesn't meet Wikipedia's requirements for noteworthiness. Some of the sources you used have to be independent . Eg. published biographies written by someone else, an independent TV show about him (not starring him), etc. Otherwise any random social media influencer could be included if they publish their content in various format…

> Otherwise any random social media influencer could be included if they publish their content in various formats. I have yet to hear a compelling reason why this would be a bad thing. Are you able to expand on why?

I'm guessing because of self-promotion as well as the fact that if nobody's written about them, they probably aren't that significant. Wikipedia says it's not meant to be a collection of all human knowledge.

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

#179

Post by lelanthran » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 7:43 PM UTC

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #78

donatj wrote: 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 had a similar experience a few years ago. I started a new topic and immediately I had some guy marking it for deletion. In the talk page he made various claims, almost all of them nonsensical, apparently with goal of getting me to go away. Eventually, after some fairly harsh replies, he went away, and the pages stand to this day. But it worked, I gave up soon after and haven't contributed since. It's like the exist…

I hate to dogpile and I almost never do, but the parent's and GP's experiences are almost the same as mine.

It doesn't take too much blatantly dishonest interaction before I decide "life is too short", regardless of whether it is on Wikipedia or elsewhere.

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

#180

Post by juliusdavies » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 7:44 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #125

tivert wrote: post #60

Here's how they define toxicity (only clearly described in their "Supplementary material"): https://oup.silverchair-cdn.com/oup/backfile/Content_public/... Honestly, that's probably the most "measurable" kind of toxicity, but Wikipedia has a much bigger problem with toxicity than that. The whole place is infused with passive-aggression (by policy) and toxic double-standards. IMHO, you have to be deeply weird to be a…

And yet it's one of the crowning achievements of the entire Internet, and a contender for one of the most important written works of the last century. This is always the challenge trying to dismiss Wikipedia: something they're doing is working, not just well, but well on a level that is virtually unprecedented.

I consider Wikipedia to be the last standing wonder of the WWW (world wide web).

- Google search results get worse every year.

- Stackoverflow lies in ruins (albeit the ruins are still useful).

- ICQ/Gtalk/AIM completely dead and all in silos now (Slack).

- Twitter is dead.

- Facebook is too annoying now.

Google Maps is still amazing, but I consider that more a miracle of the internet as opposed to a miracle of the WWW, since the data is essentially sourced commercially (satellites and maps), whereas with the examples above the data was sourced communally.

And so I think it's inevitable Wikipedia will die within my lifetime. Probably within the decade. I suspect my children will never get to enjoy the miraculous shockingly glorious human affirming paradox of Wikipedia. Their (public school) teachers senselessly already tell them to avoid it. :-(

I don't think Wikipedia will die for any specific technical or political reason. I just think it will die because everything else that was wonderful from 2009 or before already has, so why not Wikipedia?