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Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

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Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#321

Post by qingcharles »

lambdaone wrote: post #262
stock_toaster wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the really insidious thing about this, is the fundamental asymmetry of effort between creation and deletion. Creating a Wikipedia article can take hours, days, or longer, of effort. Tagging an article as AfD takes a few seconds. The actual deletion (once whatever discussion happens) probably takes even less time. Not really relevant in this case (that the article talks about), but I don't think that it is so cu…

The deletion discussion also takes time and consensus, and even then isn't irreversible; you can move the text to draftspace, [1] and try again when you do have proof of notability. Even if the article is deleted before you can respond you can always get a deletion review [0] get your article text back via temporary undeletion and move that to draftspace. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Drafts [1] https:/…

Right. I had an article I spent a bunch of time on last year that didn't pass muster for notability (first time I've had this happen) and shoved into draftspace where I got to edit it and retry it (unsuccessfully) a couple of times.

It was an article that really just slipped between the cracks of the rules, probably like the Odin one. All I did was take a breather for a few weeks, come back, edit it judiciously down to its core and resubmit it. It passed.

If Odin is important enough then one day there will be enough relevant citations to make it notable and it will be approved. Take a breather and come back.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#322

Post by arijun »

atiedebee wrote: post #222
skotobaza wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see anyone (especially GingerBill) stating that article about Odin was deleted because of "political bias". The only thing I see is a general statement about Wikipedia being an "ideological playground". But I don't see that anyone thinks that people who removed the article were of the opposite views. The author makes the connection because of some Twitter accounts that GingerBill follows (and because of what…

Right before the statement in Wikipedia being an ideological playground: > Our best hypothesis is quite simple: some of the mods just don't like Odin as a language and don't want it on Wikipedia as any form of "advertisement". It doesn't directly say "political bias", but it certainly is implied (not as in national politics, more like ideological)

> the mods just don't like Odin as a language

Seems to be pretty explicit that they don't like the language, not the creator or his political views. I don't like Java, the few times I was forced to use it I hated it, but I don't even know who the creators are.

Like someone else said, for someone to go through such lengths to claim many of their points, it's a pretty tenuous connection to hang half your article on.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#323

Post by baranul »

svat wrote: post #296
SanjayMehta wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

No they are not, which is why Wikipedia doesn't rely on them. All information on Wikipedia is supposed to be verifiable via a reliable secondary source (books, newspapers, etc from publishers with a reputation), so anything written by any editor can, if unverifiable, be removed by any other editor, anonymous or not.

Agree. That's what some people seem to not understand or overlook.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#324

Post by strenholme »

I have read the entire blog entry while waiting for all of MaraDNS’s automated tests to pass so I could release MaraDNS 3.5.0038.

My impression is that I generally agree that people on social media upvote and make go viral what we called “flamebait” in the 1990s. I also agree that a lot of supporters posted inaccurate hot takes, and that was too much heat and not enough light in this discussion.

That said, I think the blog would be better if it didn’t mention Matt Walsh at all. The final footnote calls Walsh a “White Supremacist”—is that something Matt Walsh calls himself, or is that a pejorative people who disagree with him call him? And then it links to YouTube videos to make the case Walsh advocates right-wing positions that “katamari” doesn’t agree with.

I think katamari makes a strong case that Odin’s supporters post hot takes and make bad faith arguments, and I think that argument would be a lot stronger if katamari didn’t reveal their own strongly left-leaning worldview at the end. Posting culture war content like this tends to generate more heat than light, and compromises the message the blog makes that light is better than heat.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#325

Post by [deleted] »

leecommamichael wrote: post #168
amval wrote: post #165

What a fantastic article. I could not care less about the actual topic, but in these times of literacy scarcity, it is refreshing to see someone actually being able to read through sub-text and present their views in a well-reasoned manner. Unsurprisingly, this seems to make quite some people angry.

I think part of being well-reasoned is being honest, and they're certainly being honest. I don't agree with their means, though. Bill is a complex person, and you don't have to stalk him to learn about him. He interacts with newbies plenty in the Discord server. I find him to be pretty nice in those interactions.

[deleted]

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#326

Post by shash »

lerno wrote: post #310
willdr wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Encyclopedias are not designed to report on pop culture. The entire nature of an encyclopedia is to be downstream of good secondary sources, ideally academic, and summarise what those good secondary sources have said about specific topics. Side note, it is very funny that the same people lamenting the state of Wikipedia seem to be desperate to have their topic included on it. If the site sucks, why care about it so m…

It's funny. Today people say that of Wikipedia, as if it was trustworthy. But it used to be common knowledge to just "don't trust anything on Wikipedia". Wikipedia was never like a regular encyclopedia, it just wanted to be one. Its biggest advantage over traditional encyclopedias was its breadth and how quickly it could be updated. The trade-off was that articles could vary greatly in quality and could be edited by…

TBH, "Don't trust anything on Wikipedia" was always just stuck up posturing. Plenty of badly sourced, badly edited and biased articles in regular encyclopedias too, but because Wikipedia is contributed to by the unwashed masses, don't trust it.

"Don't use Wiki as a primary source" is much more to the point - it's not meant to be. Use it to find the primaries.

Also, I don't see this as "reducing breadth" so much as attempting to hold to a minimum standard of "has this been written up anywhere by someone other than the people who started it?" which isn't perfect, but it's been the stance since the beginning.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#329

Post by baranul »

lerno wrote: post #307
andrybak wrote: post #10

> Articles for Deletion votes -- original with comments > > Summarizing it, 5/7 for delete have accounts, and 1/4 for keep have accounts. Not along after the final vote, a Wikipedia admin deleted the article. Being a little bit lax with my language, the majority's consensus agreed that Odin isn't notable, and the article had no reliable sources. important clarification about a popular misconception: "Articles for del…

What kind of happens is that there are some people who invest their lives in Wikipedia, their opinions is what ends up mattering. This has boths pros and cons. The good thing about it, is that these people are deeply invested in Wikipedia and therefore have a lot of incitament to do what (they believe at least) is the best for Wikipedia. The downsides are: (1) that just because you invested a lot of time into Wikiped…

Sounds like you are describing Grokipedia (Grok), where the general public has rejected it as a replacement for Wikipedia. Way too much hallucinating, tainted algorithms reflecting political preferences, gossip, and unverified or disreputable sources.

Re: Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

#330

Post by lerno »

lerno wrote: post #307
andrybak wrote: post #10

> Articles for Deletion votes -- original with comments > > Summarizing it, 5/7 for delete have accounts, and 1/4 for keep have accounts. Not along after the final vote, a Wikipedia admin deleted the article. Being a little bit lax with my language, the majority's consensus agreed that Odin isn't notable, and the article had no reliable sources. important clarification about a popular misconception: "Articles for del…

What kind of happens is that there are some people who invest their lives in Wikipedia, their opinions is what ends up mattering. This has boths pros and cons. The good thing about it, is that these people are deeply invested in Wikipedia and therefore have a lot of incitament to do what (they believe at least) is the best for Wikipedia. The downsides are: (1) that just because you invested a lot of time into Wikiped…

And as an example of bias: I personally witnessed a wikipedia editors adding their own interpretation of a certain written article. This interpretation was very politically biased and not justified by the text, but these were influential wikipedia editors so that it stayed in. I then asked the author of the article on Twitter if this interpretation was correct. I was unambiguously told NO. This information (including the public twitter conversation), was rejected by the wikipedia editors because it was first hand accounts.

Which led to the rather odd result that the interpretation of an article's message by a Wikipedia editor was favoured over the explicit statement by the article's author.

Here I would have thought that it would have been prudent to simply leave out that part of speculation, but they adamantly insisted it should stay.

I must add that this happened on Swedish wikipedia, not the main English Wikipedia – which I actually found much more balanced. But the problem is that this mechanism exists in the first place.

It was at the time (5-10 years ago?) well known that the Wikipedia of some language – I don't recall which one – was at the time pretty much hijacked by a group. Oh, wait I found it - the Croatian Wikipedia.

This is unlikely to happen to the main Wikipedia, but it does demonstrate a certain brittleness and risk of bias in the system.

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