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How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

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Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#61

Post by denton-scratch »

gurchik wrote: post #39
palmfacehn wrote: post #20

Wikipedia as an institution, their insider-only ways, byzantine guidelines and more all incentivize this kind of abuse. There's a pessimistic comment on this page observing, "The world is just chock full of assholes..". Wikipedia editors are not exempt here. Wikipedia shouldn't be so difficult to edit or highly politicized. There was a time when IP editors made the majority of contributions. Today correcting a typo m…

> Today correcting a typo might trigger a full-time editor to defend his turf. Even asking questions about an uncited assertion on a talk page can be labeled as disruptive. This doesn't align with my experience. From what I've seen, the consensus is that the majority of edits from an IP user are constructive, and they're not reverted simply because they're from an IP user. I've seen data about this[1], but for fun I…

> Some articles require pretty strict criteria to edit

500 edits and a 30-day history are not "pretty strict" - it's the minimum evidence that you have a basic knowledge of the rules. Protected articles are articles that tend to attract wingnuts and agenda-pushers.

I keep on coming across editors with a history of (say) 50 minor edits, 100% of which have been quickly reverted for being nonsense or worse. It's a blessing that such editors can't alter high-profile sesitive articles.

Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#62

Post by Radim »

gurchik wrote: post #5

Getting an article created for you or your business is not some mysterious black box. Every article on Wikipedia has to follow WP:NOTE (notability guidelines)[1]. In short, it just means you have to have multiple sources directly about the subject, and these sources are independent from the subject of the article, and the sources are WP:RELIABLE (e.g., from a reputable source like a well known news publisher). The on…

I don't think WP:NOTE or WP:RELIABLE as such are what ruffles people's feathers. Rather, it's Wikipedia's insistence on pre-chewed secondary sources from legacy media – the roundabout "No original research" policy – which was a questionable (and often questioned) move from the start.

Now public trust in corporate news is at a record low [0], for good reasons. Wikipedia simply hitched their "truth and reliability wagon" to a dying horse, and the chicken are coming home to roost.

[0] https://fortune.com/2023/02/15/trust-in-media-low-misinform-...

Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#63

Post by Timon3 »

RidiculousBeans wrote: post #54
defrost wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalashnikov_rifle links to the English page about the Kalashnikov rifle family. It's titled Kalashnikov Rifle. The first image is of an AK-74. There's a comparative table of about 20+ different members of the family. Each of the types has a seperate page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-108 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AKM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-47 etc. Perhaps you went direc…

That's not the full story. If you read into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-47 , it's clearly written as an article about _both_ AK-47 and AKM. So, all sentences like "100 million belong to the Kalashnikov family, three-quarters of which are AK-47s" and "Việt Cộng soldier armed with an AK-47" - they are simply wrong. The funniest thing is, they openly admit it in the article (deep down the article! not in the lead):…

I was undecided on this topic, but the comment you linked convinced me of Wikipedias stance. The linked guidelines about using commonly recognizable names[0] have great examples for why this naming scheme makes a lot of sense:

- Mahatma Gandhi (not: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi)

- Bill Clinton (not: William Jefferson Clinton)

- Aspirin (not: acetylsalicylic acid)

- Sailor Moon (character) (not: Usagi Tsukino)

All of these are technically incorrect, yet they are much more useful than the "correct" names.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_titles#Use_c...

Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#64

Post by mihalycsaba »

quartesixte wrote: post #14
idiotsecant wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you and I just had the singular luck to exist at a time where computers were for weirdos, deviants, and dreamers. The internet was full of people who had naive ideas of what it would be used for and built beautiful and horrible things but they were built largely on ideology, not the banal mediocre lukewarm lawful neutral selfish tribal beige tyranny of the rest of the world. The technology is mature enough now th…

Is there anywhere new for us to go? Or must we wait for some new leap forward still?

Outside

Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#65

Post by denton-scratch »

charcircuit wrote: post #47
cuu508 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point to a few specific examples? Are there signs this is targetted, and done maliciously? I have not previously noticed/recogmized articles like this, and am asking out of curiosity.

I would rather not as they are seen as controversial to outsiders since outsiders have probably only heard of them due to the drama. The common theme of these articles is that if you go to their wikipedia page and go to the very first revision you will see that the article was made to document a controversy. I don't think it's necessarily the person writing the wikipedia page malicious, but it creates a reinforcing c…

> you can't correct misinformation yourself

Huh? Do you mean "you can't correct misinformation about yourself? Who do you think is allowed to correct misinformation?

Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#66

Post by charcircuit »

denton-scratch wrote: post #65
charcircuit wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would rather not as they are seen as controversial to outsiders since outsiders have probably only heard of them due to the drama. The common theme of these articles is that if you go to their wikipedia page and go to the very first revision you will see that the article was made to document a controversy. I don't think it's necessarily the person writing the wikipedia page malicious, but it creates a reinforcing c…

> you can't correct misinformation yourself Huh? Do you mean "you can't correct misinformation about yourself? Who do you think is allowed to correct misinformation?

>Who do you think is allowed to correct misinformation?

I don't know but you can't simply delete it yourself as technically that information did come from a reliable source. I figure you have to counter it by finding another published work that is a reliable source. Even then people have agendas they want to push, so in the end your correction may just be reverted.

Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#67

Post by jacquesm »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #34
quartesixte wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anywhere new for us to go? Or must we wait for some new leap forward still?

For some reason it's unpopular here, but that "place to go" is the altweb of crypto and other networks like I2P, often dubbed "web3". Yes, all of the scams and beige this-or-that are there. But it's so vast and so granular right now that you can definitely find your dreamers and weirdos doing interesting things.

That's the polar opposite.

Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#68

Post by jacquesm »

treffer wrote: post #28
Smoosh wrote: post #4

Perhaps I’m just getting old and weary and the scales are falling from my eyes, but the number of assholes in the world who are willing to destroy some valuable resource or community for a small benefit to themselves seems to be increasing, and also increasing their efforts and their effectiveness.

Well, the good news is that there aren't enough of these a*** to destroy it. When Wikipedia started and even like 10-15 years ago that wasn't a common belief. Especially in Germany. "There are some assholes on earth, how could you dare to believe something voluntary and open to everyone will succeed?!?" (others already posted that it's not unfounded given real world experience) Wikipedia though is my preferred counte…

It doesn't take a large number of assholes to undo the work of a much larger number of good people.

Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#69

Post by jacquesm »

hashar wrote: post #40
treffer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the good news is that there aren't enough of these a*** to destroy it. When Wikipedia started and even like 10-15 years ago that wasn't a common belief. Especially in Germany. "There are some assholes on earth, how could you dare to believe something voluntary and open to everyone will succeed?!?" (others already posted that it's not unfounded given real world experience) Wikipedia though is my preferred counte…

I work for Wikimedia and I have been one of the few weirdos assisting in its creation back in the early 2000's. The first time I got exposed to wikis predates Wikipedia and my stance was: - a site editable by anyone on the internet? That is never going to fly Few months later I followed a link to Wikipedia and that clicked, we can definitely build an encyclopedia online and the hope (I was in my early 20's) or bet wa…

That burning up of resources of the good guys is exactly why a lot of stuff eventually derails. Just like the fight against the online crime rings that hold people's data ransom and that deface and destroy: the defenders have to succeed all the time, the attackers only have to succeed part of the time to be successful. So over a long enough run the attackers have an edge. Wikipedia is an exception, so far. Enough people cherish it that they are willing to put in the effort. But the day enough of them blink at the same time the assholes will take over. I hope that day will never come, but I'm not sure it will not. On a human scale Wikipedia is still very young.

Re: How paid Wikipedia editors squeeze you dry

#70

Post by quiet_cool »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #60
idiotsecant wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you and I just had the singular luck to exist at a time where computers were for weirdos, deviants, and dreamers. The internet was full of people who had naive ideas of what it would be used for and built beautiful and horrible things but they were built largely on ideology, not the banal mediocre lukewarm lawful neutral selfish tribal beige tyranny of the rest of the world. The technology is mature enough now th…

No. The technology is different this time. I argue software is a form of literacy, and literacy demands openness. My great hope is the VW emissions scandal where the CTO of the company had to commit lines of code that said “do billion dollar crime”. In a git repo. We can see your crimes now. Wikipedia is this in microcosm - we can see the edits, we can use software to watch for us, everything is in the open and the f…

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