A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign • Hacker News Board

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#381

Post by 4bpp » Thu, May 24, 2018, 10:51 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #379

4bpp wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the ability for Wikipedia to have a neutral article on a topic hinges on the existence of a single irreplaceable person with that level of dedication, then I think the right solution is to not have an article on the topic. In general, for a topic area that someone out there cares enough to brigade in the fashion you describe, there surely must also exist a non-obsessive set of users capable of moderating the page…

> If the ability for Wikipedia to have a neutral article on a topic hinges on the existence of a single irreplaceable person with that level of dedication, then I think the right solution is to not have an article on the topic. This kills the Wikipedia. Unsurprisingly, there are orders of magnitude more people on the earth with some sort of agenda to push than there are people who actually care about having an unbias…

Why do you think it is more likely that a given obsessive editor is a good-faith Wikipedian who cares about an unbiased and comprehensive encylopedia than an agenda-pusher? My proposal was implicitly based on the opposite assumption, namely, that removing obsessive editors will reduce the agenda-pushing set much more than it will the unbiased encyclopedist set. I think that, considering the real world, this is reasonable: we clearly see many more people dedicating an extreme amount of resources, up to and including their lives, to political causes than to abstract values such as objectivity and the accuracy of the historical record. The example that spawned this discussion certainly seems to involve a highly active editor being driven by a political agenda (do you dispute this?), and this is the case for almost all other instances I am aware of (though of course there is a selection bias here). Do you actually contend that the subject of the opening post has no agenda to push, or do you count him as a force for an unbiased and comprehensive Wikipedia because you think that his agenda is correct?

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#382

Post by philwelch » Fri, May 25, 2018, 11:40 PM UTC

4bpp wrote: post #381

philwelch wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the ability for Wikipedia to have a neutral article on a topic hinges on the existence of a single irreplaceable person with that level of dedication, then I think the right solution is to not have an article on the topic. This kills the Wikipedia. Unsurprisingly, there are orders of magnitude more people on the earth with some sort of agenda to push than there are people who actually care about having an unbias…

Why do you think it is more likely that a given obsessive editor is a good-faith Wikipedian who cares about an unbiased and comprehensive encylopedia than an agenda-pusher? My proposal was implicitly based on the opposite assumption, namely, that removing obsessive editors will reduce the agenda-pushing set much more than it will the unbiased encyclopedist set. I think that, considering the real world, this is reason…

> My proposal was implicitly based on the opposite assumption, namely, that removing obsessive editors will reduce the agenda-pushing set much more than it will the unbiased encyclopedist set.

Which is the exact opposite of what would happen. It’s trivial to get an internet brigade of trolls to push one particular agenda. It’s easy to incite the Internet outrage machine into an angry mob. And the people who do this don’t play fair; they disappear and reappear under new pseudonyms and IPs, spurn accountability, and burn identities. Making it harder for someone to build a record they can stand behind is the wrong direction.

> we clearly see many more people dedicating an extreme amount of resources, up to and including their lives, to political causes than to abstract values such as objectivity and the accuracy of the historical record

Which is why allowing these mobs to brigade against the rare person who is committed to the unbiased truth is the wrong move.

> The example that spawned this discussion certainly seems to involve a highly active editor being driven by a political agenda (do you dispute this?), and this is the case for almost all other instances I am aware of (though of course there is a selection bias here). Do you actually contend that the subject of the opening post has no agenda to push, or do you count him as a force for an unbiased and comprehensive Wikipedia because you think that his agenda is correct?

I did some research on Phillip Cross above and beyond simply reading OP, because OP is an obvious hit piece and the group of fringe political figures who have seemingly declared war on this guy seem to be vaguely aligned with Russian propaganda operations, and this guy’s edit history, from what I’ve seen, seems to be largely in the direction of removing random vandalism and Russian propaganda from Wikipedia. The only seemingly factual criticism I’ve seen is that this guy seems a little obsessive, which is a fair point if you’re worried about this guy having a well-rounded and fulfilling life, but I trust you’ll understand if I don’t think these people who are butthurt about some obsessive Wikipedia editor deleting their propaganda from Wikipedia are genuinely concerned about his well-being.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#383

Post by Topperfalkon » Tue, May 29, 2018, 9:20 PM UTC

4bpp wrote: post #380

wazz wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If the ability for Wikipedia to have a neutral article on a topic hinges on the existence of a single irreplaceable person" i don't think that's been said. "the right solution is to not have an article on the topic." false. or i guess we'll exclude most of quantum mechanics and dozens of other things few people are knowledgeable about. "for a topic area that someone out there cares enough to brigade in the fashion y…

> i don't think that's been said. I think it's implied by the phrase "they are free to inject their biases unchecked." > false. or i guess we'll exclude most of quantum mechanics and dozens of other things few people are knowledgeable about. Note that I said "neutral article". For articles on esoteric QM topics, it's not like one would expect the existence of a well-organised brigade trying to push an alternative vie…

Climate change?

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#384

Post by megous » Wed, May 30, 2018, 6:37 AM UTC

Udik wrote: post #267

megous wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not nonsense. Russia is waging a propaganda war in the west. Results are clearly visible in the last 5 years or so. Even in my country that was occupied by USSR at one time, there are now very vocal pro-russian agenda voices, especially on social media, news comment sections and or alt-news websites. It's ridiculous. And what's this website anyway? Someone created an anonymous website to spread some onesided inf…

So, you looked up a politician you've never heard of before, that's been in politics for 30 years, and filtered on his tweets to see if it fits what you own definition of "anti-war" is? Maybe you want to contact him and tell him what he should be talking about and how, to fit your own ideas? I warn you that he's a blistering debater. You can have a taste of his ability in this hearing at the US Senate 13 years ago, w…

You haven't expalined why is judging someone's public persona/ideas by their own public pronouncements (or lack thereof) on twitter irrational or wrong.

If someone has hunderds of thousands of tweets, I'd say such judgement would be pretty accurate, unless he segemnts his pronouncements based on media/audience in some very deliberate way, which I doubt, because he went to twitter to critcize US intervention.

And yes I wonder how he's anti-war in general or even anti-US imperialism in general based on some simple searches that reveal he's barely criticized US foreign meddling in the war against ISIS on twitter.

Cross may be suspicious, I aggree, but that doesn't make the web page magically non-anonymous and balanced.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#385

Post by mjw1007 » Wed, May 30, 2018, 7:55 AM UTC

mjw1007 wrote: post #91

tptacek wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is "they" and why is it sensible that they're "protecting" some random WP admin? What seems more likely to me is that people have very legitimate concerns about Cross's POV, but aren't following WP norms in raising those concerns, and are getting shut down as a result. That's an expected outcome, not a sign of something nefarious happening.

That's certainly the sort of thing that can happen, but as far as I can tell the COIN report was within Wikipedia norms, and closing the report two minutes later with "Zero evidence of COI. Galloway has picked a fight with Cross, not the other way around." was not. (Unless "don't criticise a top-1000 user" counts as a Wikipedia norm, I suppose.) I disbelieve that that the admin in question is both a neutral arbiter a…

Quick summary of what happened next for anyone who comes across this thread in the future:

Under pressure from outside, the wikipedia admins decided to reopen this case. They fairly quickly came to consensus that Cross was violating the paragraph of the biography-of-living-persons-conflict-of-interest policy quoted above and banned him from editing Galloway's article.

There's continuing discussion of whether Cross is doing anything more seriously wrong.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#386

Post by k1m » Sat, Jun 02, 2018, 8:21 AM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #297

k1m wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

George Galloway offered the reward Well, we're not George Galloway. If the real interest was in the edits as opposed to promoting conspiracy theories about Wikipedia colluding with conflicted editors to damage the good name of Messrs Murray and Galloway, presumably people would be devoting their time to reasoned explanations of why X is important or Y is irrelevant in talk page discussions on article wording I'll jus…

I'm far from the biggest fan of Wikipedia's jargon or bureaucracy, but if there is a specific false or objectionable claim on a page it's generally a lot less time-consuming and more productive to remove it, explain why it was removed and then watch the page for future updates than spend hours searching through the responsible editor's social media accounts and then launch a campaign to ban him through multiple socia…

If someone is persistently editing unfairly, has a conflict of interest with many of the people he edits, you think the best thing is just to let this continue and try to put in as much time as he's putting in to watch for and challenge bad edits? Don't agree.

Re: A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign

#387

Post by k1m » Sat, Jun 02, 2018, 8:26 AM UTC

nneonneo wrote: post #307

k1m wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

George Galloway offered the reward Well, we're not George Galloway. If the real interest was in the edits as opposed to promoting conspiracy theories about Wikipedia colluding with conflicted editors to damage the good name of Messrs Murray and Galloway, presumably people would be devoting their time to reasoned explanations of why X is important or Y is irrelevant in talk page discussions on article wording I'll jus…

If there's an editorial dispute, please solve it in an editorial manner. Editors opposing Cross on Wikipedia have shown prior bad-faith activity. For example, User:Leftworks1 created over a dozen sockpuppets ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investiga... ) to push their viewpoint, only to get smacked by several editors including Cross repeatedly. If there's a real editorial dispute - if anyone want…

You might want to read Leftworks' response to you here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17162387

You have much more faith in the Wikipedia process than I do. Please read our update which highlights how a certain admin has tried to shut down debate around this from the beginning: http://wikipedia.fivefilters.org/agenda.html

It's only finally now being debated thanks to lots of people "yelling" about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests...