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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

#271

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

Gare wrote: post #220
natpalmer1776 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To some degree you see this pattern repeated over and over anytime you have an organization gain any sort of longevity. A culture develops to create a power structure that favors those who have devoted a large portion of their personal identity to the success of the organization. This culture serves as a moat against anyone who would integrate themselves within the organization and attempt drastic changes that would…

I agree. Is there any way to "inoculate" organisation to prevent this failure mode?

How about having a leader willing to make big bold bets? Whatever you may think about Zuck renaming Facebook to Meta, it certainly seems to demonstrate that his company hasn't fallen prey to stasis.

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

#272

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

juliusdavies wrote: post #180
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.

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 W…

>I just think it will die because everything else that was wonderful from 2009 or before already has

Assuming this is true, what are the leading hypotheses? Regression to the mean? Eternal September? I know everyone likes to talk about "enshittification", but what is the actual mechanism?

Since this is HN, someone's going to say "capitalism", but "capitalism" doesn't explain why Google search results get worse or Facebook is too annoying.

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

#274

Post by jltsiren »

Gare wrote: post #220
natpalmer1776 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To some degree you see this pattern repeated over and over anytime you have an organization gain any sort of longevity. A culture develops to create a power structure that favors those who have devoted a large portion of their personal identity to the success of the organization. This culture serves as a moat against anyone who would integrate themselves within the organization and attempt drastic changes that would…

I agree. Is there any way to "inoculate" organisation to prevent this failure mode?

Probably not for existing organizations. Possibly for newly formed organizations, but it's unlikely to scale.

I've seen volunteer organizations founded on mild anarchistic principles thrive for a few decades while occasionally reinventing themselves. The key is a culture focusing on people working together for a common purpose. Keeping in mind that the purpose of the organization is more important than the organization itself.

There may be formal stakeholders and formal power hierarchies, but their role is kept to a minimum. Some people need to be in charge for legal and practical reasons, but leadership positions are not associated with high status. Ideally, the leaders are selected through a deliberative process, and they voluntarily step down after a while. Some people inevitably acquire high status within the community, but they are expected to recognize it and avoid being too vocal.

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

#275

Post by dxbydt »

tptacek wrote: post #134
alboaie wrote: post #93

After an editor, who has edited millions of pages and seems to be a jack-of-all-trades, unjustifiably rejects your contribution on a topic where you have dozens of scientific articles published, the only conclusion is that the system is flawed. There's a need for a fundamental change in approach, probably to a system where censorship exists only in cases of clearly illegal content, and various opinions are allowed to…

From bitter experience: if you have well established subject matter expertise on a topic, you should almost certainly not be writing Wikipedia articles about it. In Wikipedia's framing, you are a generator of primary and secondary sources. Wikipedia is a tertiary source: it is exclusively a roadmap to other, more authoritative sources. Instead of writing Wikipedia articles, write the articles Wikipedia will end up dr…

There was a sketching algo on wikipedia that was not well described. So I added 2 lines of python to illuminate what was intended by the roundabout description. Within an hour my edit was reverted with the terse comment - "Wikipedia is not a github." ! So I clicked on the editor to find who this rude person was. It was the professor who had invented that sketching algo.

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

#276

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#277

Post by ern »

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…

The whole place is infused with passive-aggression (by policy) and toxic double-standards.

There are some truly bizarre things that I've encountered on Wikipedia (editing for almost 20 years now). Admins handwave blatant mistakes away by their friends, citing [[WP:NOTBURO]] and other such shenanigans. It seems to be getting worse over time.

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

#278

Post by pinusc »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #214
notahacker wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect the system for scoring "toxic" comments is less likely to flag the bureaucratic "I have reverted your edit for a second time because it does not meet WP:NPOV or WP:NOR. Please be aware of WP:3RR and be prepared to discuss any further changes on the talk page" comments about reversion and more likely to flag the sort of very angry and personal comments that come up when the page being edited is related to th…

The system almost certainly doesn't address the primary problem, which is that a small group of people consider a page or topic to be their personal fiefdom and they're experts at snowballing people with the most obscure wikipedia policies. A shining example of this would be the page for Alcoholics Anonymous, which has a small legion of accounts 'defending' it. The accounts espouse, vocally, a victimhood complex - th…

Could you point me to any sources that discuss how the program "has no basis in science"? They have a section on effectiveness citing a few studies and the Cochrane review. I'm not well-equipped to determine if that's conclusive, of course. Is there overwhelming evidence to the contrary? As someone else pointed out, there is a section on thirteenth stepping. Do you find it insufficient, or is it a recent addition..?

I am not invested either way, I am just curious. If what you're saying is accurate, it's a stark reminder that Wikipedia articles may _look_ well-researched and still ignore or hide enough evidence to fundamentally change the story.

This is something I have a hard time coping with: that no matter how many sources are cited, there is no way of knowing how many are missing... in some cases a few minutes of research can uncover obvious lies (and it's already a titanic effort to cursorily check most of your beliefs), but in others it takes actual expertise in the topic to know.

Edit: After a better look at the Criticism section, the article seems less-than-neutral in listing critical sources. "In the past, some critics have criticized 12-step programs as pseudoscientific". I would object to the use of "In the past" here: the sources cited are from 2015 and 2010 (although both of them are prior to the 2020 Cochrane review, which the Wikipedia page seems to consider conclusive. Still, unclear wording which spins the opinions as outdated). Similarly, two sources of criticism are listed under the "Popular press" section. Perhaps a better wording would be "Non peer-reviewed". If you believe that AA _is_ ineffective, then this wording is certainly a misdirection. If you believe that the sources in its favor are conclusive, then it's adequate. Neutrality is tricky, and while it's extremely important in some topics, it should not be entertained in others (should the article on Earth be "neutral" and faithfully cite flat-earthers as a reasonable side?) Again, I don't know which way this should go, as I don't have any degree of certainty either way, because I know absolutely nothing about the subject.

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

#279

Post by im3w1l »

tptacek wrote: post #136
josefritz wrote: post #52

I gave up contributing to Wikipedia when I looked back and found how much had been deleted. The deletionists have won the war.

That being the literal premise of the project, it's the outcome you'd have expected.

Are you saying people aren't allowed to be upset with an action if you announce it beforehand?

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

#280

Post by Manuel_D »

resolutebat wrote: post #270
Manuel_D wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia's flaws are more subtle. Pages sometimes present controversial, or even wrong claims as unambiguously true. Note, this is not actually that bad on pages that are clearly covering controversial topics (namely historical & political topics). The issue is more prevalent on niche topics where the average reader wouldn't recognize the controversy being claimed. I've sometimes encountered citations where the cite…

Genuine Q: what do you find "wrong" about Ada Lovelace's article as it stands today? To me it looks scrupulously fair about her contributions and the amount of disagreement on what exactly she did "first", which seems to account for 99% of the talk page wrangling. Lovelace's notes are important in the early history of computers, especially since the seventh one contained what many consider to be the first computer pr…

I don't have any issues with the article as it stands today. But earlier revisions had uncritically claimed that she had written the first computer programs. Hence the massive Talk thread.
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