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Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger blocked from editing Wikipedia

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Re: Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger blocked from editing Wikipedia

#61

trying to contribute to wikipedia was the most miserable experience in a "collaborative" process I've ever had in my life. Like arguing with cranks at a town hall meeting, ignorant high school group project classmates, and bureaucracy-obsessed nonprofit initiative zealots all wrapped into one. in the area I was trying to contribute (a math subdomain) to there is sooooo much technical misinformation. but if you don't…

> sooooo much technical misinformation

Especially for math, were I feel like people generally agree on what is true and what is not, this seems unusual. Can you point to an instance of misinformation?

Re: Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger blocked from editing Wikipedia

#62

So to summarize: he resuggested "WikiProject Intellectual Diversity", a group with the goal to make "Wikipedia more intellectually diverse" and "ensure fair and open decision-making and governance, broaden the range of permissible sources, reinforce genuine neutrality, rein in over-aggressive blocking while holding the powerful to higher standards of accountability", etc, with the implied undertone of preventing Wiki…

> But then he made a tweet that basically just says "I suggested this, some people like it, some hate it". That's super against the rules, because it attracts people to the proposal who otherwise wouldn't have seen it. How would this in any way be against the rules? Wouldn'tan open and democratic process like wikipedia want as many eyes as possible on a vote or rule change? That sounds completely backwards from the o…

I would describe Wikipedia's process as democratic but not necessarily open. And it's pretty hypocritical to describe how they operate as 'mob rule' while complaining that rabble-rousing on other platforms should be allowed. Which is it? Should Sanger be allowed to raise a mob to win a policy vote, or should Wikipedia forbid external vote-whipping?

I stopped engaging with Wikipedia because my experience of their administration is that it's deeply toxic. This specific instance doesn't seem too out-of-hand to me, since the rules are clear in this instance. It's where there are grey areas that their behavior starts to get unhinged.

Re: Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger blocked from editing Wikipedia

#63

trying to contribute to wikipedia was the most miserable experience in a "collaborative" process I've ever had in my life. Like arguing with cranks at a town hall meeting, ignorant high school group project classmates, and bureaucracy-obsessed nonprofit initiative zealots all wrapped into one. in the area I was trying to contribute (a math subdomain) to there is sooooo much technical misinformation. but if you don't…

People often mention anecdotes like that when Wikipedia is discussed, but I made a few changes to pages over the years and never had any issues. I took care to follow the rules, and the changes were usually accepted; when they weren't, it was always for reasonable reasons, even if I didn't always agree with them.

[deleted]

Re: Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger blocked from editing Wikipedia

#64
post #35
post #22

As an outsider the accusation "Canvassing" seems like a double edged sword. Similar to Reddits "Brigading" but without the hostile intention. It's not clear to me, how Wikipedia prevents this rule from being used inappropriately to silence people.

Correct, and Administrators (and users invoking administrators) will often selectively use rules to pursue editorial purposes. I learned about wikipedia rules before learning about actual law, it's interesting to see exactly how the mechanisms of modern democracy protect against the specific ways in which Wikipedia fails: 1- Separation of powers between rulemakers and judges. In practice many Administrators who have…

>1- Separation of powers between rulemakers and judges. In practice many Administrators who have the power to enforce rules and bans are actually editing articles themselves!

Separation of judge and party is enforced pretty consistently, it is official policy that people shouldn't participate in a decision if they were involved in the kerfuffle in any way. You can edit articles and enforce rules, as long as these are separate. And then, rules can be proposed by anyone, but they're not just created on the fly because it's convenient. That would obviously be objectionable.

In fact this isn't limited to admins, regular users have the power to decide on a ban. An administrator is only needed to close and enact the decision, and this is what happened to Larry Sanger here.

>The only exception are protected articles, in which case administrators can emit an official ruling on what the article content should be.

Admins don't have a special power to decide what should be in important protected articles. It is not like a government where people are elected, and then citizens don't have any say until the next election.

The community tries to reach a consensus, and admins are part of the community. They get an input like everyone else plus special powers to enact decisions. But any "ruling" better reflect consensus, or you better bet you will wake up to the Noticeboards on fire with about 50,000 words of heated complaints and discussion.

Re: Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger blocked from editing Wikipedia

#65

So to summarize: he resuggested "WikiProject Intellectual Diversity", a group with the goal to make "Wikipedia more intellectually diverse" and "ensure fair and open decision-making and governance, broaden the range of permissible sources, reinforce genuine neutrality, rein in over-aggressive blocking while holding the powerful to higher standards of accountability", etc, with the implied undertone of preventing Wiki…

> But then he made a tweet that basically just says "I suggested this, some people like it, some hate it". That's super against the rules, because it attracts people to the proposal who otherwise wouldn't have seen it. How would this in any way be against the rules? Wouldn'tan open and democratic process like wikipedia want as many eyes as possible on a vote or rule change? That sounds completely backwards from the o…

>How would this in any way be against the rules? Wouldn'tan open and democratic process like wikipedia want as many eyes as possible on a vote or rule change?

if you bring in a bunch of non-wikipedia people (i.e. people who haven't previously cared about or participated in wikipedia discussions at all), all from 1 person's twitter following, you aren't getting "open and free spirit"-ed discussion. you are getting a bunch of larry followers who want larry to "win"

Re: Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger blocked from editing Wikipedia

#67
post #50

So to summarize: he resuggested "WikiProject Intellectual Diversity", a group with the goal to make "Wikipedia more intellectually diverse" and "ensure fair and open decision-making and governance, broaden the range of permissible sources, reinforce genuine neutrality, rein in over-aggressive blocking while holding the powerful to higher standards of accountability", etc, with the implied undertone of preventing Wiki…

Yes, banned by the status quo for trying to disturb it. Wikipedia is nowadays highly politicized and more time and energy are spent on politics than on actually contributing with any useful knowledge. I've stopped contributing years ago after a decade of writing because of how bad things had gotten. It's a lost battle, all that remains is scorched earth filled with toxic editors trying to push their POV and banning e…

Yes agreed, for example, there was an interesting table on the starlink page I used to check every so often showing which countries had access to starlink as it was rolled out. Was interesting to see the expansion.

Of course, some editor decided it was 'marketing' for starlink so it got deleted despite loads of people protesting. It was the only source I could find easily for showing which country got starlink when.

A huge list of prose is still on the page (not marketing?) showing the updates in a very hard to read and not comprehensive way. Something is really quite wrong over there.

Re: Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger blocked from editing Wikipedia

#68

So to summarize: he resuggested "WikiProject Intellectual Diversity", a group with the goal to make "Wikipedia more intellectually diverse" and "ensure fair and open decision-making and governance, broaden the range of permissible sources, reinforce genuine neutrality, rein in over-aggressive blocking while holding the powerful to higher standards of accountability", etc, with the implied undertone of preventing Wiki…

> But then he made a tweet that basically just says "I suggested this, some people like it, some hate it". That's super against the rules, because it attracts people to the proposal who otherwise wouldn't have seen it. How would this in any way be against the rules? Wouldn'tan open and democratic process like wikipedia want as many eyes as possible on a vote or rule change? That sounds completely backwards from the o…

(Note: This is what I got from the Talk page about the ban)

The core idea is, Wikipedia has internal mechanisms to make these kinds of notifications, and making these decisions needs some knowledge and experience about how Wikipedia works.

Recruiting inexperienced people to bias decisions which requires knowledge is effectively converting that proposal to a blunt instrument and trying to force your way in (aka bludgeon).

When the mechanisms in place and requirement of experience (i.e. competence), whistling the town square and calling people to force a gate is textbook brigading, and brigading is forbidden everywhere (maybe except 4chan/8chan).

Re: Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger blocked from editing Wikipedia

#69

So to summarize: he resuggested "WikiProject Intellectual Diversity", a group with the goal to make "Wikipedia more intellectually diverse" and "ensure fair and open decision-making and governance, broaden the range of permissible sources, reinforce genuine neutrality, rein in over-aggressive blocking while holding the powerful to higher standards of accountability", etc, with the implied undertone of preventing Wiki…

> But then he made a tweet that basically just says "I suggested this, some people like it, some hate it". That's super against the rules, because it attracts people to the proposal who otherwise wouldn't have seen it. How would this in any way be against the rules? Wouldn'tan open and democratic process like wikipedia want as many eyes as possible on a vote or rule change? That sounds completely backwards from the o…

The Wikipedia community proudly states that they're not a democracy [1]. I don't even know how that works. People simply think their opinion is the best one while hiding behind statements like, "This is THE consensus, you can't do anything about it. Oh, Wikipedia IS NOT A DEMOCRACY, so your pathetic voting attempt has literally no power here."

[1] : https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wikipedia:IS_NOT_A_DEMOCRACY...

Re: Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger blocked from editing Wikipedia

#70
post #47

More than whatever process was used, just looking at his user page I do think some sort of ostracism-like response was inevitable. The thing about communities like Wikipedia is when you have a group of volunteers coming together to do something the culture has to be somewhat intolerant of cultural change, otherwise it'll fall apart pretty quickly. To repeat that another way, culture defines who is part of the in- and…

> I quite like what he's going for with these 9 theses - the ideas of the public rating articles or enabling competition between articles seems like a clever compromise position - but frankly I don't see how the Wikipedia community could treat this as anything other than an attack whether or not the ideas are improvements.

The problem with the "competing articles" is that the end game is quite obvious - the far-right wants to get crap like Musk's "Grokipedia" or "Conservapedia" out of the gutters where it belongs and into the brand protection of Wikipedia.

And that, frankly, is an existential threat.

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