Slashdot Mirror
Wikipedia To Unlock Frequently Vandalized Pages
netbuzz writes "In an effort to encourage greater participation, Wikipedia, the self-described 'online encyclopedia that anyone can edit,' is turning to tighter editorial control as a substitute for simply 'locking' those entries that frequently attract mischief makers and ideologues. The new system, which will apply to a maximum of 2,000 most-vulnerable pages, is sure to create controversies of its own."
The "locked" articles are guarded by ideologues whose views differ from the "mischief makers and ideologues" Wikipedia hates.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
(I try to volunteer a bit of my time on Huggle, a .NET application that allows for Wikipedia users with rollback permission to quickly patrol, revert vandalism, warn, and report users)
Vandalism has been down a lot from what I've seen in the past, and more and more I get beaten to the punch reverting it.
The biggest problem I see with this "pending changes" is that there will be so many edits that intentional subtle trolling (deliberately inserting incorrect facts/statistics) is more likely to get through just by the nature of the fact that experienced editors will have to read thousands of edits.
However, it does make Wikipedia more accessible to a wider variety of users and should stop scaring away new contributors. Most anonymously made edits are actually not vandalism, so it's good to see Wikipedia trying to take an approach that allows these people to contribute to "bigger" (in the sense of # of visitors) articles.
The article specifically mentions W's page, but doesn't seem to give any direction on where one might find a comprehensive list. I'd actually be kind of interested to see that.
This is great! Everybody will now know that Obama was born to a prostitute in Kenya, and that Bush personally parachuted from the planes just before they crashed into the towers!
I don't get why they won't just evolve the software and instead of fighting revert wars over publically available versions of articles, simply have working copies that need to be approved before being merged into the released article.
This is supposed to open up participation by anonymous and new editors so that they can work on a small number of highly controversial articles. It might work, for those articles. But there is a broader problem that it won't address, which is that when a newbie edits *any* article on WP, they are extremely likely to get slapped in the face by having their edits immediately reverted without any explanation. I started working on WP articles in 2002, did a lot of editing until 2006, and finally gave up and munged the password to my account so I wouldn't be tempted to get heavily into it again. Somewhere between 2002 and 2006, the whole experience changed. These days, WP belongs to people who keep watch-lists of articles that they want to defend. The type of person who is successful at this game is totally obsessed with making sure that a particular paragraph in the article on shoe polish remains the way it is. Since I only edit anonymously now, I see the same experience as a newbie, and it ain't pretty. If you add a citation to a source, people will revert you because they assume the link is spam. If you clean up redundant text in an article, people revert you because they were in love with the sentence they wrote, and want it to stay in the article. Recently I added a couple of sentences to a WWII-era biographical article in which I referred to the Nazi party, and someone's bot reverted it because "Nazi" was a keyword that it was programmed to assume indicated vandalism.
Find free books.
My guess would be that it would violate the integrity of the project as an encyclopedia that anyone can edit freely.
There are already serious problems on many articles where an elite group of editors will choke out any edits that they disagree with, whether they are vandalism, incorrect, or perfectly fine.
After a series of 3 reverts within 24 hours, you aren't allowed to revert an article again (except with a few exceptions- self reverting, reverting obvious vandalism, etc.). If you do revert more than that, you get banned for a minimum of 24 hours.
After 3 reverts, you duke it out on the talk page, eventually someone up the chain will resolve the issue.
that when I correct a spelling mistake or grammatical error it won't be immediately reverted?
"This page is part of Wikipedia Project:Vandalism. Please be kind."
Even leaving aside the obvious entries on religion, abortion, evolution, etc... We also have to deal with viral marketing firms who, for example, kept editing the entry for the faux-dokumentary "The Fourth Kind" trying to make it seem real.
There are simply more people willing to discredit Wikipedia, not just the small percentage of the population who indulge in trolling behaviour for shits and giggles.
I can totally understand how people would defend their paragraphs. In that case, the system should allow others to attack. A really CMS should be able to list multiple versions of the same issue, along with some background information about the authors. In other words, just let the world decide who's the genius and who's the moron.
The WikiProject model has a peer-review process. Just create a WikiProject for frequently-vandalized pages.
ironically, I just made a joke post to that effect, but now I realize it's the best course of action.
I can see the reasoning behind this change, unlike the let's move the search box from one side of the page to the opposite side after years of muscle memory has trained millions of people to start a search on the left because 4% more people's eyes view the right area first idea.
Interesting the search box relocation happened a day or two after Wales resigned most of his admin privileges.
I quit using it when I found various errors, slanderous articles. As you stated, the site is "allowed" to put crap on things or people their "views" are different from, but will remove any content, that directly goes against their own view. Nice idea, but, wicki has a long way to go to fix the BS that goes on over there.
...which is the correct "neutral fact" regarding the recent Taliban act which took the life of a 7 year old boy for spying? They say they "punished" him, we say they "murdered" him. Who is correct?
Everybody knows part of the problem with Wikipedia is the automated tools, that and the insane edit counts required by people who play it as a game with the idea of "leveling up" to admin.
Try to correct a date, for example, and watch it get reverted just so someone can add another reversion to their edit count. Lather, rinse, repeat. Good data is 99% likely to be reverted at this point, because the people operating "tools" like Huggle, Twinkle, Finkle, Fuckle, Whatever don't give two shits about checking to see whether an edit is good before they revert it - the fact that you spent 2 minutes checking to see whether it was good means 2 minutes that someone else could have gotten the revert for their "score", and if you don't revert it, you don't "score" anything. So all these mindless idiots do is revert, revert, revert.
Isn't this exactly what this change is about?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Maybe now 9001 can be described as "the first whole number over 9000" now.
I actually turn to Wikipedia for useful information. Vandalizers and viral marketers may be having fun with Wikipedia, but too much of that makes it less useful. Nevertheless, I applaud a system that encourages more participation rather than just locking down controversial articles. I just hope the "more editorial control" doesn't end up too heavy handed.
:)
Easy. "Neutral" means "agrees with the opinions of liberal white, upper-middle-class college-educated geeks living in a large coastal city in the United States."
I wouldn't agree with this - for the main reason that (AFAIK) anti-vandalism currently relies a lot on automated processes that check for common vandalism patterns. This change will bring the changes under the scrutiny of real people (for example, if they'll add a tool to show a diff between the public version and latest unapproved version, it'll be plain obvious someone changed some numbers, etc.). There's also that "anti-vandalism patrol" involves people reading random articles in which they have no personal interest - I imagine that the task of reviewing and publishing changes with the new feature would fall to editors with some interest in the article in question.
The words such as "neutral" "ideals" "hypocrisy" "propaganda" "open" mean whatever i damn well edit them to mean!
Some editors abuse tools.
Huggle, for instance, is only for obvious vandalism (nonsense, page blanking, attack pages, doing test edits outside of the sandbox).
Using it to revert anything other than obvious vandalism (content that you believe to be non-neutral or wrong) is grounds for your loss of rollback rights and a ban from Wikipedia.
I'd say one of the bigger problem on the site is overzealous bots. They just revert with impunity.
Easy. "Neutral" means "agrees with the opinions of liberal white, upper-middle-class college-educated geeks living in a large coastal city in the United States." [citation needed]
Using it to revert anything other than obvious vandalism (content that you believe to be non-neutral or wrong) is grounds for your loss of rollback rights and a ban from Wikipedia.
And the chance of the admins on wikipedia actually being responsible enough to do this? If you think they will, you're insane.
No, in practice, the Huggle-jockey just goes on merrily reverting whatever the fuck they can. Nobody doublechecks them anyways.
D'oh. I can finally shut up about that.
which will apply to a maximum of 2,000 most-vulnerable pages
I wonder why 2000? Did they look at the numbers and was there a natural break there. I wonder if the number of topics means anything.
It will also be interesting to see what the list of 2000 actually are and what made or didn't make the list.
It could just mean that much of these shenanigans will simply be shifted to the 2001-3001 topics...
I predict this debate will take more than one hundred years and exceed over 9000 posts before we have the correct question...
I feel as though some Wikipedia articles are under the control of advertisers for the given product. Here are two examples.
The Windows 7 article has no criticism section, even though there are tuns of anti-consumer features in Win7 like "Cable Ready" and product activation, which can one day make your purchase worthless. It is worth noting that most (all?) other Windows articles have accurate criticism sections.
The ReadyBoost article for Windows Vista makes it sound like it will seriously help you out if you're on a machine with 512 megs of RAM. We gave this a try, and it made very little (if any difference).
Everybody knows Wikipedia is often very helpful, but occasionally can't be trusted. The problem is, Wikipedia doesn't seem to give feedback about *when* vandalism, non-neutrality, and other problems are likely. Of course it can happen anywhere, but for some pages, vandalism is an epidemic.
How about if the Wikipedia engine automatically identified pages with very high rates of reverted page edits, "vandalism" and other similar terms appearing in the history, rapidly growing Talk:: sections, and other signs of trouble, and came right out and said in a top-of-page banner: this page is rapidly changing, and may be unreliable.
This can be done mechanically, without having possibly biased editors to flag or protect pages, or to approve or disapprove changes. As a reader, if I know that the page I'm reading has been modified 20 times in the past week, with edits affecting 50% of the total text, most of which were reverted, I can form my own conclusion about its current reliability.
Achieving an authentically objective view on any subject is something humans have a hard time with.
Allow a dictator to be the final arbiter of truth, and eventually you will find something about which he is biased.
Crowdsource determination of the truth and you get utter chaos.
Any balance between these two extremes will also be seen as a failure.
(note: not talking to you personally, just want to rant a little here)
Forget in the USA, this subject is Afghanistan, where the "death penalty", applied in public, videotaped, then to be enjoyed later by all the corporate and military snuff film freaks, is a daily occurrence to a lot of people, many of them innocent, and a lot of them killed by US and assorted other allied "heroes". Including children. Hideously ripped apart by expensive US corporate profits war machine materiel. Hey, it is enhancing shareholder value!
Dumbass brainwashed raggyhead with a rope killing a kid because his "superior" says to do it, or some videogamer complete psycho asshole with hands on joystick trigger "go ahead wounded guy with guts shot out, reach for something I can claim is a weapon" "Oh, he made a furtive gesture ratatatat HAHAHAHA! Got that sucker! Hahahaha! Oh look, some random car pulled up, trying to pick up wounded "terrorists", they must be terrorists, too, RATATATAT HAHAHAHAHA! Oh, some kids in there, well they shouldn't be kid terrorists then, too bad!"
Fucking double speak hypocrisy abounds here
Both sides suck the same near as I can tell, nutcase suicide bombers in some square, nutcase drone bomber video death freaks elsewhere, doesn't matter a bit really. Both sides are comprised of random and completely insane and dangerous psychotic murderers armed with whatever technology they can get their hands on, and fueled with similar "we are the good guys, the others are the bad guys, kill them painfully, and no matter if anyone "innocent" is closeby" brainwashing. Fucking idiot cultists, doesn't matter if they wear turbans or kevlar beanies, psychotic murdering cultist assholes who take orders from some alleged "superior", and if that means kids die, it happens, daily, and it is not rare at all. So who cares about geographical location, public executions are being "enjoyed" all the time still.
And just remember, these are the same psychos who come back and are now becoming all the newest "community policemen", because being a combat veteran mercenary puts you at the top of the list.
And I have no idea how to break this cycle other than whatever culture/nation you are in, STOP supporting the psycho killers, stop "following orders" to murder people, refuse to participate, and don't get brainwashed by your cult leaders, whether his name is muhammad, schlomo, johnson or whocares. Quit being a murdering tool.
Everyone should read "War is a Racket" by General Smedley Butler. Nails it, short and to the point. It completely exposes this blood cult profits at any cost nonsense. And that goes for any other folks as well, your "leaders" are lying jerks as well, stop being a tool for them, just say no. No, anyone "you" aren't the "chosen people" or the "master race" or "the good guys" and everyone else is inferior or the enemy or some infidel, that's complete bullshit that the world's various elite, your superiors, your elected politicians, your business leaders, your church leaders or other idealogical leaders brainwash you into believing and then following through on, including killing children for some reason, or with some excuse like "collateral damage" crap.
I believe in self defense. Most wars are 99.999% bullshit and have nothing to do with self defense, they are staged and run for profit of various kinds by the world's elite nutcases, so if you "follow" those idiots, sign up for their nutcase "cause", that just makes you a cheap expendable nutcase lackey, nothing more, and never a "hero". You aren't promoting any "peaceful religion" or "freedom" or "democracy" or "religious government" or anything else, just killing for someone else's profit and goals after they feed you some utter rubbish they get you to "believe in". Like I said, stop being a cult member.
WW2? A few hundred tops globally big corporate execs, politicians and bankers and assorted other cult leaders started it. Everyone else got to suffer for a few hundred complete assholes. Millions "followed th
People have been blacklisted from using Twinkle after misusing it. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AzaToth/morebits.js ("twinkleBlacklistedUsers" near end of page)
Hi there, I'm on the team that deployed Pending Changes. We picked 2000 rather arbitrarily, but it actually was a technical limitation driven by our need to limit possible load on the system rather than an editorial decision. Based on rough community consensus, it's actually in effect on far fewer articles as of this writing. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Pending_changes/Queue#Using_pending_changes for the community discussion of how and where to apply it.
Well I hate them all equally worse than the others.. but Wikipedia - and it's "6 pack of pricks" clique of moderators...
It's like I hope a big asteroid lands on earth - in lots of baseball sized bits and lands on the wikipedian moderators heads...
I hope they get poxes of the nether regions - that cause them to piss prickles for the rest of their days.
Hmmmmmmmmm
The scribbling Pharisees - oh it's unsourced... not verified, - "But oh royal dimwit, the article is on me and I wrote the book" - doesn't matter, the information does not come from a verifiable source....
Delete.
Delete.
Delete.
Delete.
Delete.
Welcome to Wikipedia - the Nazi Party of the 22nd Century.
.
Voting up, Voting down - If I really gave a fuck about your approval or not, I'd come and ask you.
wiki allows for the deletion of an article based on its "noteworthiness". articles are deleted constantly by the unemployed-are they trying to save wiki some bandwidth?
wiki mods are in a ghey competition to have the most edits-people edit just to increase their stats. there's no good appeals process.
it's maddening
People that change dates without adding any references are likely to be reverted. If you add a reference you won't be reverted.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"