Can Wikipedia Teach Us All How To Just Get Along?

Ponca City writes "Alexis Madrigal writes in the Atlantic that for all its warts, Wikipedia has been able to retain a generally productive and civil culture. According to Joseph Reagle, who wrote his PhD dissertation on the history and culture of Wikipedia, members of Wikipedia actively work to maintain neutrality, even if that's sometimes nearly impossible. The community has a specific approach to people designed to promote basic civility and consensus decision-making. The number one rule is 'assume good faith,' and the rest of the site's rules are largely extensions of kindergarten etiquette. The idea is that to find consensus, you must see your opponents as people like yourself. Keeping an open perspective on both knowledge claims and other contributors creates an extraordinary collaborative potential, Reagle says. The features of the software help, too. It's easier to be relaxed about newcomers' editing or changes being made when you can hit the revert button and restore what came before. 'Like Wikipedia itself, which seems to tap our natural urge to correct things that we think are wrong, maybe our politics will self-correct,' writes Madrigal. 'Maybe this period of extra nasty divisiveness in politics will push us out of the USENET phase and into a productive period of Wikipedian civility.'"

Comments

Yes

[swanzilla]

[citation needed]

Re:Yes

[gront]

[citation needed]

No. And your post is OR.

Re:Yes

[toastar]

No. And your post is OR.

the neutrality of this post is disputed

Re:Yes

[Stargoat]

Article is locked.

(translation - Only the admin's whose pet project / particular ideological belief is this article can edit)

Re:Yes

[sznupi]

Sometimes this could be not a bad thing...

http://kyon.pl/img/16712,wikipedia,Articles_of_War,lol,wtf,war,.html

Re:Yes

[tepples]

Article is locked.

(translation - Only the admin's whose pet project / particular ideological belief is this article can edit)

A protected page on Wikipedia only means you need to bring up the change on the talk page first. (Wikipedia usually doesn't protect articles' talk pages, and the policy is to unprotect a talk page of a protected article.) Once users (not necessarily admins) build a consensus on the talk page that the change is constructive, use {{editprotected}} to get a different admin to make the change.

Re:Yes

[budgenator]

Article is locked.

(translation - Only the admin's whose pet project / particular ideological belief is this article can edit)

I know it seems that way but there are signs of change coming.

In a vote of 7-0, The most prolific climate revisionist editor ever at Wikipedia, with over 5400 article revisions has been banned from making any edits about climate related articles for six months.William Connolley, now “climate topic banned” at Wikipedia

So what was he banned for?

William M. Connolley has been uncivil and antagonistic
This uncivil and antagonistic behaviour has included refactoring of talk page comments by other users,(examples: [18], [19], [20]) to the point that he was formally prohibited from doing so. In the notice advising him that a consensus of 7 administrators had prohibited his refactoring of talk page posts, he inserted commentary within the post of the administrator leaving the notice on his talk page.
User:William M. Connolley has shown an unreasonable degree of Ownership over climate-related articles and unwillingness to work in a consensus environment.
William M. Connolley has shown Ownership
William M. Connolley is acknowledged to have expertise on the topic of climate change significantly beyond that of most Wikipedians; however, this also holds true for several other editors who regularly edit in this topic area. In this setting, User:William M. Connolley has shown an unreasonable degree of Ownership over climate-related articles and unwillingness to work in a consensus environment.
William M. Connolley BLP violations
William M. Connolley has repeatedly violated the biography of living persons policy. Violations have included inserting personal information irrelevant to the subject's notability, use of blogs as sources, inserting original research and opinion into articles, and removing reliably sourced positive comments about subjects. He has edited biographical articles of persons with whom he has off-wiki professional or personal disagreements.
William M. Connolley's edits to biographies of living persons
William M. Connolley has focused a substantial portion of his editing in the Climate change topic area on biographical articles about living persons who hold views opposed to his own with respect to the reality and significance of anthropogenic global warming, in a fashion suggesting that he does not always approach such articles with an appropriately neutral and disinterested point of view.
William M. Connolley topic-banned
William M. Connolley is topic-banned from Climate change, per Remedy 3.
Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate change/Proposed decision

Basically he doesn't play well with others, is rude to people who disagrees with him and most of the stuff that most of us have learned to not do by the time we got to kindergarten. So many people seem to be Narcissistic now and social media and wikipedia just gives them a new venues to bully others around.

Except

[Anonymous Coward]

Except when the 'contributors' actually just delete others' articles as a way to gain rep.

And out of the USENET phase? Where did USENET end up?

Say what?

[Hatta]

Seems like the general perception of the Wikipedia community is anything but productive and civil. More like insular and deletionist.

Re:Say what?

[hedwards]

You're just mad because somebody deleted your entry for not being notable.

Re:Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

having your edits reverted oftentimes feels a bit like being beaten like Rodney King

Re:Say what?

[flaming error]

Since when does "general perception" relate in any way to verifiable facts?

Re:Say what?

[dadioflex]

Well yeah, but if you delete anything you don't agree with, things can remain remarkably civil, wherever you control the edits.

Re:Say what?

[toastar]

having your edits reverted oftentimes feels a bit like being beaten like Rodney King

I concur, I posted on a page where I'm sort of an expert in the field and it got reverted.... I even had references, even though it wasn't that linked up, it could of easily been wiki-ified. After that I haven't made an edit to Wikipedia since, It isn't worth my time to provide that useful info if no one will ever see it.

Re:Say what?

[Hatta]

If it's notable enough that someone would search for it on Wikipedia, it's notable enough to have an entry in Wikipedia. The entire concept of notability for an electronic encyclopedia is bogus, and representative of the culture of Wikipedia these days.

Re:Say what?

[hedwards]

Which is what's so odd about that. People regularly flag things as not being noteworthy and as such in need of deletion. Makes me wonder how they find those pages if they're not noteworthy in the first place.

Re:Say what?

[SomeKDEUser]

Random page. Just go through at random, and you will find the articles which should not be there.

And you know they should not be there, because they contain no information, or are a terrible idea in themselves. For example: "Superiority of the Western Culture" is a terrible idea for an article. "My Widget Which I Am Trying To Sell" is another terrible example. "My Webcomic" (three entries and I am working towards a fourth) is yet another article which should not be there.

Re:Say what?

[bonch]

Well, perception is initially created by witnessing facts. It's not exactly a secret that Wikipedia is dysfunctional.

Re:Say what?

[blair1q]

Like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

Re:Say what?

[Moryath]

As anyone knows who's ever actually interacted with Wikipedia, the supposed rules mean about as much there as a turd sandwich. Reagle is pie-in-the-sky clueless, and it's easy to see why. Wikipedia's not set up to "assume good faith." Quite the contrary, the following trends are very much evidence that it is anything but:

- the number of "patrollers" of unblock requests who are anything-but-civil and who do nothing but slap each other on the back about how rude they can get away with being until they provoke someone into crossing a "ban line." You know, kind of like stuff like this where they keep poking and prodding merely because they can.

- the way that organized gangs play the "kill them one at a time" and "get our pet admin to declare them sockpuppets or meatpuppets" games. Look at the Wikipedia articles on Felafel and Za'atar; a group of deranged, racist muslims got together and decided they wanted to strip any reference to "evil jews" about the food. And, since they had a couple of racist administrators on their side, their will was done. These days, even the two FOOD articles look like slanted attack articles.

- The way that certain entrenched personalities get away with abuses at will, especially playing "scarlet letter" games and falsely accusing people of being sockpuppets. Even worse, the way that many of these have - since they play to the political or racist sympathies of other entrenches - have climbed the ladder and are now administrators or worse. "Orangemike" and "Dreamguy" are two nasties, Dreamguy particularly being one who shows major ownership issues on any article related to fantasy or mythology and who is not above accusing people - without any evidence or proof or even editspace collision - of being "Enviroknot", or any one of another dozen names that are instant, without question or proof, ban words.

- The fact that corruption got to the point where the Checkuser tool is now an "orf wiv 'is 'ead" guilty-only attack. Get accused of being a "sockpuppet", and you're done, no matter what. There IS no proving your innocence of this charge, and the only administrators who will ever even touch an unblock request are the totally corrupt ones like Fisherqueen, Bwilkins, Tnxman, Smashville...

- Then there's the fact that the corrupt admin sector of Wikipedia organizes secretly to keep their hit-list up to date, as do the various entrenched POV-groups that maintain control on many articles.

Re:Say what?

[at_slashdot]

new created pages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:NewPages

Re:Say what?

[Hope Thelps]

I posted on a page where I'm sort of an expert in the field

There's the problem right there. Already I can sense violations of:

WP:OR
WP:COI
WP:RANDY
WP:WTF

Enough for an indefinite block and a talk page full of patronising comments. In future please stick to editing articles you know nothing about.

Would you post to Slashdot if you'd read the article? No, of course not. So please show a similar respect for Wikipedia and avoid editing subjects you know anything about.

Re:Say what?

[0xdeadbeef]

If it's notable enough that someone would search for it on Wikipedia, it's notable enough to have an entry in Wikipedia

No, it isn't. Wikipedia is not for documenting every piece of stupid trivia that exists.

Re:Say what?

[clarkkent09]

"Superiority of the Western Culture" is a terrible idea for an article.
 
Why? This is just an example of what is wrong with Wikipedia: I disagree with something, therefore it should be deleted. It is certainly a notable concept with plenty of references, and not just in neo-Nazi literature. Not so long ago such beliefs were considered perfectly acceptable and mainstream in many Western societies. Other civilizations, Islamic, Chinese, Japanese often considered themselves superior to others and there are plenty of references for that too. Would you also like to delete the articles on White Supremacy, Black Supremacy, Holocaust Denial etc because those concepts are not politically correct enough for you?

Re:Say what?

[Grapplebeam]

WP:OR should be renamed to WOPR to keep with the trend.

Re:Say what?

[wierd_w]

So, by what criteria does one determine what piece of trivia is important enough to include, and what piece of trivia is "Stupid"?

Seems to me that there is no really hard-set criteria for this distinction, and as such is left up to a collective decision process, which has an un-restrained "populist" bias, which is totally arbitrary (based on which group of editors happen to be deliberating at any given time.)

Some people might claim that Leonardo DiVinci being a homosexual is stupid trivia. Others might claim it has modern cultural significance in light of modern trends toward embracing alternative sexualities. Who is right? How does Wikipedia decide which is which, and do so in a neutral, productive, and riggorous way?

Last time I checked, I saw what went on with the "Malamanteu" article, and saw LOTS of ego, LOTS of dick waving, and VERY VERY little true compromise or consideration. (It basically boiled down to a hard-line of "No, We wont include it, We dont care about your "supposed" justifications, our decision is final, stop questioning it; any attempt to re-create the article will be met with instant deletion." It wasn't that the article was deleted, it was the mentality as to WHY it was deleted-- A mentaltity that refuses to compromise, and assumes itself correct by default, and unquestionable.)

As such, I find Wikipedia's claims of being unbiased, et al, as being just so much hot air, hubris, and puffery. I might as well take a politician at face value as take such a claim, since it has been repeatedly demonstrated that these claims are false, if you would just pay attention.

Re:Say what?

[Hatta]

Fair enough. But then we need something that is. Documenting every stupid piece of trivia that exists is a useful goal. The problem for Wikipedia is that the set of all facts is a superset of the set of notable facts. So if we got some other group together to create an electronic encyclopedia without the concept of notability, it would completely supersede Wikipedia.

In short, the notability policy will ensure Wikipedia's obsolescence if its not changed.

Re:Say what?

[Monkeedude1212]

Can you name an instance where the "General Perception" DOESN'T at least relate to verifiable facts?

Re:Say what?

[flaming error]

perception is initially created by witnessing facts

Far more likely by hearing/reading somebody else passing it along.

Regardless, people don't so much witness facts as perceive them through the filters of beliefs, biases, and expectations they've accumulated over their lifetime.

Re:Say what?

[bersl2]

Assume good faith: the Wikipedia community tries to apply its principles, but as with other human communities, it falls short often enough.

Re:Say what?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

- the way that organized gangs play the "kill them one at a time" and "get our pet admin to declare them sockpuppets or meatpuppets" games. Look at the Wikipedia articles on Felafel and Za'atar; a group of deranged, racist muslims got together and decided they wanted to strip any reference to "evil jews" about the food. And, since they had a couple of racist administrators on their side, their will was done. These days, even the two FOOD articles look like slanted attack articles.

It gets worse than this. You see, most people are aware that certain articles will inevitably be biased and most will even be dimly aware that one group or another controls them. Admittedly the food articles are far out there, but once you've heard of which groups are vying for control, you at least tend to understand why.

What's worse is the articles which are controlled by groups or persons for reasons unknown. People must understand that any crackpot, fool, or pedantic can control just about any Wikipedia article they feel like with enough effort. And they do, even for articles you'd least expect. (Terrible) Mathematical articles on things like the exponential function are essentially editorially controlled by people who are manifestly unqualified for the post. I once suggested that the article should start with the Taylor Series definition of exp(x), and I was promptly labelled as holding a point of view (POV), and was lumped in with holocaust deniers and ufo conspiracy theorists as someone unfit to edit the article further. I am not making a word of this up.

Wikipedia is controlled by petty bureaucrats, for petty bureaucrats. It wouldn't matter as much if it weren't the first thing returned by every second Google search. Mercifully however, I suspect that Wikipedia is beginning to collapsing in on itself. The legion of incompetent, self-important, Wikicrats are slowly mulching half good articles into meaningless pulp. For example, someone removed all chemical equations from the smelting article. I dare someone to put them back and see how long they last.

Re:Say what?

[TapeCutter]

Can you name an instance where the "General Perception" DOESN'T at least relate to verifiable facts?

Congress.

Re:Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

why ? because storing a 5kb text file is so cumbersome ? because a search engine slows down horribly when indexing file 10 billion of 10 billion and 1 files ?

Re:Say what?

[PPH]

Don't label the entire Wikipedia community with the actions of a few Wikadors.

Re:Say what?

[misexistentialist]

Maybe you just want a redirection to Eurocentrism (and related links in the article)? Academic titles for articles might seem "politically correct," but they are also an attempt at neutrality.

Re:Say what?

[guruevi]

It's the guys PhD dissertation. Nobody important (in his or your life) will ever read it and all it is going to do is sit pretty on his CV for a couple of years. When somebody is hiring him, they will see 'The history and culture of Wikipedia', if they have any interest at all they will read the synopsis and whether or not they agree with it doesn't matter.

That's how it goes with most research papers though. Nobody ever reads it, the synopsis or only some graphs are used to prove or disprove a point in their own research papers. Only when it is or becomes really important or if they're being investigated for fraud in their research projects will somebody actually read it but that's maybe 0.1% of the papers that ever make it that far.

Re:Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The "Malamanteu" article should not exist. Pretty much every new xkcd comic will have idiots adding refrences in wikipedia. There's even a site for it, http://xkcdwikiwatch.blogspot.com/. One of the stupidest examples is the Voynich manuscript, go read the wiki talk page for a dose of the stupidity of these fanbois. Fuck it, here's some for you:

you are incacurrately perceiving thie results of Randal Munroes's resaerch. if you look closely, the detail and art inscription installated at this so-called "joke" is a new theory presented ina nonthreatening and easy to understand way. The mannerisms with which they are presented are trappings without the boring formal archadaemics that many people cn find offputting outside the field. It is in fact the representation of a reasonable and equaly evidenced point of view, expressed by a top NASA former employee. If NASA -- the National Aeronotics and Space Administration are considered less to be deferenced to, then quite frankly all other sources are lesser as well. that is my firm belief and I will in the future present further evidence to try to rationaly persuade you around to this pov

Re:Say what?

[wierd_w]

You missed the point;

It WASNT that the article was deleted, it was WHY.

As was pointed out in the talk page for the "malamanteau" article, it BECAME noteworthy because of the controversy that cropped up around it. The "Delete; merge with xkcd article" solution that was riggorously enforced did nothing to address this new noteworthiness, instead effectively scrapping any compromise from that angle. It didnt even get a 2 line paragraph in the XKCD article concerning the controversy. The whole thing was squashed.

THAT was the point.

Re:Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Concur as well. I once submitted a change to a Sony PSP related page, links and all, correcting many factually incorrect statements (that are easily verified to be incorrect).

Problem #1 is there's some errrr... person that keeps reverting that stuff because it wasn't published in a paper magazine/newspaper. Problem #2 is that the articles that are there, are incorrect, and there won't be any new ones because it's no longer relevant/newsworthy.

Soon after the PSP was released, hackers began to discover exploits in the PSP that could be used to run unsigned code on the device. Sony released version 1.51 of the PSP firmware in May 2005 to plug the holes that hackers were using to gain access to the device.[1] On 15 June 2005 the hackers distributed the cracked code of the PSP on the internet.

Hhahahahaha! What a moron.
Fact is that is that the PSP was released in Japan on December 12, 2004.
Fact is also that nem's "hello, world" program was announced on ps2dev on May 5, 2005 (allowing for time zone/date differences).

So this did not happen 'soon after the PSP was released'. It was also not an exploit, as 1.00 firmware never bothered to check for signatures for regular unencrypted binaries.

Sony released firmware 1.50 on March 24, 2005 where this oversight was rectified.

Sony released firmware 1.51 on May 24, 2005, well ahead of the release by PSP-DEV of 'Swaploit' on June 15, 2005 which only worked with firmware 1.50 - incidentally the same date as the release of firmware 1.52 (note: the swapless KXploit, named after PSP-DEV member Killer-X, was released on June 22, 2005 and also only worked with the 1.50 firmware).

I could continue on and on.

I now wonder about many other articles on Wikipedia. Is crap-that-was-printed preferred over truth-that-was-not-printed? Some writer that doesn't really have a clue interviewing someone that, as the Dutch say, "heard the bell toll but doesn't know where the clapper is"? The editor doesn't care either and by the next issue it's all forgotten about.

Here's an exercise for the reader: find an obscure, fairly recent subject on which you are an expert (non-science), and check relevant Wikipedia articles for obvious, factually incorrect statements that any other expert would recognize as such. Submit appropriate corrections, preferably with links. Wait and see what happens.

Re:Say what?

[epine]

The cool thing in Wikipedia is that you can check out what really happened when people link to "stuff like this".

The repressed editor at the heart of "stuff like this" is harping on the gayness of a judge as grounds for immediate recusal on the legal matter in question. Without getting into specifics, I can see reasons why the issue might not be so clear cut. Do judges with children recuse themselves in cases of child abuse? It might be different in the judge had a child of their own who had been abused. I'm sure it's been discussed. There would be dictates on the matter that could be cited, as this response spells out in reasonable and participatory terms:

Walker's member of a protected minority class affected by the case was not an issue in the case, and is not related to the question of the constitutionality of the ballot measure. If that can be sourced as a major political argument, it might be appropriate in a "public reaction" section of [[Perry v. Schwarzenegger]], the article about the case, but it would have to be put in context with a sourced statement that judges who are members of a protected class (blacks, gays, straights, Christians, whatever) are not required to recuse themselves from rulings on the basis of affecting the civil rights of the class. - [[User:Wikidemon|Wikidemon]] ([[User talk:Wikidemon|talk]]) 14:39, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Ten posts later the repressed editor (with no edit history of note) is referring to longtime contributors as asstards and flinging other profanities in all directions.

What is his response to the thoughtful interaction above? To go grammar nazi on a well intentioned person who misuses "overlook" to mean "look over".

I'm guessing you are not a native English speaker, "Native94080", unless you are actually asking us to ignore the case in question? Perhaps you wish us to "look over", "look into", or "look at" the case, meaning to observe and inspect for relevant information to the topic at hand?

I spent the day yesterday reading The Elements of Statistical Learning: Data Mining, Inference, and Prediction by Hastie, Tibshirani, and Friedman (2009). Good, but you have to work for your rewards. Many of the classification examples use spam data. There's not a hope in hell this particular repressed editor would escape the classification bucket "asking for trouble" by any of the statistical methods I read about.

Folks, this isn't a [[WP:FORUM]]. What's to be discussed here is the editing of this article -- and since the matter at question is a single aspect of the public response to the ruling in a case related to this Prop which has its own web page, the correct place for possible inclusion of a mention of this response is on the case's web page... as Wikidemon noted. --[[User:NatGertler|Nat Gertler]] ([[User talk:NatGertler|talk]]) 20:21, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Ho, he's not even ranting on the right talk page.

I've had hard work on Wikipedia undone by the next random moron who came along. It's not a place to indulge a perfectionist streak. I moved on. Mostly make small one paragraph edits to articles that clearly omit a point of merit, usually providing sources. 75% of my pebbles survive unscathed.

I'm a bit disillusioned about the quality ceiling. Careful writing tends to suffer instant bitrot. OTOH, competent nuggets fare better.

I think the quality problem is hard. People tend not to agree. It's hard to achieve high quality without basing the process on credentialism and prerogative of the elite. That works too, but there's already plenty of stuff out there on that basis, it's a much slower process, and Wikipedia benefits from being immediate, if not always great.

I'm sure there are plenty of cases where admins overstep the bounds. It's also true that the pungent miasma of disenchantment tends to have an inverse relationship in loudness of complain vs how well it holds up when you go back and turn the edit history stones.

Re:Say what?

[crossmr]

Nothing at all. There are many users who do new page patrol. Anything newly created they see. If it's not notable it gets flagged. There are also those who do recent page patrol. Which means any article edited goes across their view. Someone updating some pet band page will give it away. or there may have been a problem with the article which has a bot run across it and bring it to someone's attention.

Re:Say what?

[rtb61]

First off Wikipedia only represents a small percentage of the population, with a significant proportion being US residents. The US population has a bias towards competition due to a lack of a fully featured social welfare net which does reduce the stress of a modern life by reducing the impact of losing. The competitiveness reflects in the desire to win with a contribution and to protect it regardless of the validity of doing so.

This is balanced out by a global exchange and the creation of a more psychologically supportive environment where the emphasis is on intellectual exchange rather than competitiveness, hence wikipedia can be an escape from competition for US residence, enabling consensus to more readily occur.

Consensus requires the autonomic biological constraint of empathy, where emotions when recognised are shared. These feelings can be ignored and often are where winning and losing have a more significant impact than greater personal influence on a largely anonymous article, especially when competing in socio economic climates contaminated by psychopaths and actual narcissists (both of whom have a biological lack of empathic ability), which of course excludes any possibility of consensus except as a sham to lull gullible.

Re:Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the last year and a half wikipedia has become yet another advertising model and the supposed wikipedia resolution mechanisms bascially useless.

There are now campers who's sole 'Job' is to prevent, remove and "clean up" any entries that are counter to their sponsor's projections of squeeky clean self promotions. The so called objective criticims are hollow and intended to merely create an appearance, having been selected for their inconsequential triviality.

Wikipedia now officially sucks and, despite the promotions of gladhands and fangurls, of increasingly diminished value to all but the most novice off laypersons.

Re:Say what?

[AmiMoJo]

Deletionism isn't about getting crap removed, it's about trolling Wikipedia and destroying people's work instead of trying to improve it.

The article about the Zenburn colour scheme was deleted for not being notable enough. The article contained useful information and a reasonable number of links and references. There is no reasonable argument for deleting it, it does not detract from Wikipedia in any way and is not a troll or partisan article. Quite a few text editors now ship with it as an included theme and Google returns 11,000 results, so while it is perhaps a minor topic it is notable enough to have many web sites dedicated to it.

Re:Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet Jimbo Wales keeps asking me to send him money. Seriously, Mr. Wales? What have YOU done about these things lately?

Wikipedia is still an extremely important reference site today, but the things that you and others have mentioned about its corruption are entirely true. I can attest to that personally. (For one thing, I very clearly remember the "criticism" section on Ron Paul's article shrinking and shrinking and me being unable to do anything to stop it. This was during the 2008 elections.)

kindergarten etiquette

[MozeeToby]

Think what a different place the world would be if you could convince everyone to follow 'kindergarten etiquette', why is it stated so dismissively in the summary? As if getting everyone to show basic respect to everyone else is an easy thing to do.

Re:kindergarten etiquette

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Perhaps your kindergarten experience differed from mine, but I have explicit kindergarten memories involving:

Kids eating glue.
Kids eating sand.
Kids throwing sand in each other's eyes.
Kids hitting each other with sticks.
Kids walking up to one another, and forcefully stealing their favorite toy from someone else.
Kids screaming, crying, and positively shrieking for attention.
Kids vocally calling each other out on one another's bodily functions (okay, I'll admit, that is actually pretty funny).
Kids pushing each other off the swingset.
Kids talking each other into trying positively stupid stuff just for the fun of it.
....
And the list goes on.

It's fun to sit around and fantasize about how easy life used to be as a kid (and in many ways it was). But I think we often forget about all of the things that weren't quite so positive when being a kid. We lacked the practice and development of social skills that came from years worth of peer-peer interaction. Young kids tend to have no problem acting as if there is absolutely no such thing as etiquette at all. Of course, that never stops teachers from trying to enforce simple common courtesy rules on children. But what those rules have in simplicity, they lack in applicability to more complex social interactions that form as a consequence of more developed social skills building on top of one another (flattery, imitation, anticipation, reaction, empathy, logical reasoning vs. emotional reasoning, etc.).

As we grow as social animals in age, so, too, do our social interactions and, thus, the complexity of the social situations we find ourselves in. We meet more people. We gain more freedom. We learn more basic laws about the nature of reality. As a result, social interactions involve more players, more observers, more factors to consider, and have further reaching consequences (a kindergartner doesn't need to consider whether or not eating sand will ruin their ability to support their family or not). Therefore, the etiquette we choose to follow, and the rationalizations we make to justify our actions to ourselves, grow ever more complex and nuanced. This is the natural progression of the human mind dynamically adapting as a structure evolved to ensure the survival of a very social species.

It's fun to trot out lines and ideals like, "Everything I need to know, I learned in kindergarten..." and what not. But when childhood is observed from a non-romanticized perspective, it is easy to see why we do not remain as children in our actions, thoughts, or abilities. This is as true for social skills as it is for anything else. If everyone followed kindergarten etiquette, large social entities like national governments, guilds, international clubs, unions, cities, and even, probably, advanced schools would not be possible.

Re:kindergarten etiquette

[fiannaFailMan]

Think what a different place the world would be if you could convince everyone to follow 'kindergarten etiquette', why is it stated so dismissively in the summary? As if getting everyone to show basic respect to everyone else is an easy thing to do.

It's easy to do when face to face with another person. Total strangers who nearly bump into each other on the footpath/sidewalk will instinctively apologize. Separate them either with the bodywork of a car or using the anonymity of a keyboard, and it's a whole different matter because the other person can't get at you. I drive a convertible and I find a huge difference in the way people treat me when I take the roof down.

Look at segregated sports events like English professional soccer where the authorities don't dare let the spectators mingle with those of opposing clubs. Fans in other sports like Gaelic games mingle all the time and there's never any crowd trouble.

It's all about that face-to-face interaction. You just don't have it on Wiki, so asking people to be civil is necessary.

Re:kindergarten etiquette

[dadioflex]

Kindergarten Etiquette falls down when you're arguing against assholes who refuse to accept your carefully reasoned refutation of their insane ideas. That's why "Kindergarten Etiquette" doesn't work, in general. If everyone is polite and open to new ideas, an asshole with a crazy scheme will own you. No matter how politely you argue the counter-point, they will win because they have no boundaries on the tools they will use to break what you say. So, "Kindergarten Etiquette" actually leads to less civility, because it encourages sinful behaviour, like greed and anger. Obviously, and classically, Kindergarten Etiquette has been involved in the majority of the most egregious sex crimes committed in the twentieth century. When it's wrong to disagree with an adult, what isn't wrong?

Re:kindergarten etiquette

[Anonymous Coward]

If you mod me up, I'll be your best friend and you'll be invited to my birthday party!

Re:kindergarten etiquette

[DaveV1.0]

Hmmm, that sounds a lot like the Wikipedia I have experienced.

Re:kindergarten etiquette

[sznupi]

So, is chatroulette the next thing that can teach us all how to just get along? ;)

(actually, could be interesting to check what seeing on Wiki the "other person" would bring...even if in gross way)

Re:kindergarten etiquette

[sourcerror]

Kids eating glue.
Kids eating sand.

Kid eating cardboard and dying of cancer at the age of 7.
True story.

Re:kindergarten etiquette

[The Shootist]

Respect is something that is earned, not given, I've always heard. At least until I started working at a large urban hospital, where everyone is disrespected at the drop of a hat.

Re:kindergarten etiquette

[Anonymous Coward]

It is all too easy and common to assume other peoples ideas are simplistic and sometimes very difficult to point out the inherent complications. Millions of people use Wikipedia as an encyclopedic tool but I had still to learn to read in kindergarten. The single phrase of "Kindergarten etiquette" negates the real content of the article.

No

[falzer]

You're a jerk, a complete arsehole.

Re:No

[Archangel Michael]

[citation needed]

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a jerk, a complete arsehole.

[citation needed]

Let's get a third opinion and then take it to mediation. After a few weeks I'm sure we can settle on "arsehole whose completeness is still undecided" before someone else comes along, changes it back again, and points out that the mediation doesn't have any binding effect whatsoever.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Jerks and Complete Assholes in Popular Culture
[dump of IMDB]

Re:No

[Bieeanda]

Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, is that you?

FTFY

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Wikipedia has been able to retain a generally productive and civil culture.

Unless the page being worked on is about some particularly controversial topic which is at the forefront of the public mindset....at which point civility and productivity go out the window in lieu of the typical pseudo-anonymous dick waving that happens everywhere else on the internet.

And that doesn't even begin to address those many instances of a Wiki moderator (or whatever the hell they are called) falling in love with some pet page and refusing to let legitimate edits be made to it....

Re:FTFY

[Stargoat]

MOD parent up as generally awesome and completely correct.

Re:FTFY

[Pharmboy]

It also doesn't count those of us who LEFT Wikipedia because of the authoritarian admin issue. Sure everyone will get along if you run everyone with a different opinion off or ban them. They haven't found a way to get along, they just had twice as many people than they needed and ran off the half that wouldn't agree with them in exchange for being allowed to belong to the admin club.

Don't get me wrong, you have lots of good admins on Wikipedia, but they simply tolerate the bad ones who have the loudest voices and a bullying attitude. Not everyone rolls over so easy.

Re:FTFY

[hairyfeet]

Hell it don't even have to be a controversial page, it can be just the fact that someone is phobic or just a prick. The first time I heard of wiki I thought it was a great idea, basically use crowdsourcing to find errors, since everyone know a little bit about everything, as long as they cited their sources everything would be golden. Or at least I thought that until I found a page with an error. it wasn't a big error, it just said a writer's intention on a show was x when it was y. I knew it was y because I had the box set where the writer specifically said it was y, and he even wrote about it on his blog. so i corrected the error, cited the sources, and got banned. Apparently an admin is a fanboi of the show but has a problem with characters that aren't what HE wants, so anything that doesn't fit his worldview gets changed.

So now I simply treat wiki like a gossip column, completely worthless for any sort of information except for the most basic of facts like what voltage PCI runs on or what wires are which on an Ethernet cable. Anything else and the data simply can't be trusted, as they've allowed too many admins with agendas to own pages and morph them to their liking. Sorry wiki, but if even little errors properly cited equal bans if you don't kiss some admin ass your site is broken.

Re:FTFY

[Anonymous Coward]

Word of advice on the :"basic of facts" thing. I would caution you to leave it to the PCI voltage and 8 pin pinout on the most common fucking connectors type thing... things that if vandalized would be picked up very quickly.

Anything a tad more obscure. Like a list of area codes, say, or list of keywords in a language, something completely non-controversial but with an official source list that is a little harder to get a hold of... well then you are in deep shit because I have fabricated edits that have lasted over 2 years (when I started seeing how well Wikipedia could stand up to bogus edits that were made 1) carefully (make sure to follow formatting and layout conventions) 2) looked jargony or appropriate enough to cause doubt in all but the best experts). Well Wikipedia doesn't stand up too well on anything but the most pervasive and compact of "facts" like which pin is which in a USB cable.

Re:FTFY

[npendleton]

Wikipedia's software is not designed to create consensus in the Article Editing Political Model. Any Good Faith Edit can be VETOed by any single grumpy/biased user, a form of tyranny. Wikipedia does not distinguish between UNDOing bad faith graffiti, and VETOing/Deleting good faith edits with the UNDO button. The more biased an article, the harder it is to create balance. Hours of work to balance a biased article, vs one click muzzling by a biased VETOer. Biased VETOers can keep an article biased forever. Wikipedia is designed to fail, because all users have to completely follow Assume Good Faith, or the VETO via UNDO becomes a weapon for the first unhappy user, not a shield against graffiti. See my longer comment below.

Deletionist, Inclusionists, and the Goal

[BadAnalogyGuy]

A few years ago, no one imagined that we'd have accomplished what we did here on Wikipedia. Compared to the entrenched encyclopedia companies, we were far behind, and we always knew the climb would be steep. But in record numbers of entries, we came out and wrote so many articles. And with these articles and discussions, it was made clear that at this moment - in this fight for intellectual freedom - there is something happening on the Web.

There is something happening when men and men pretending to be women in Des Moines and Davenport; in Lebanon and Concord come out of their basements to write and rewrite and edit and correct because they believe in what this medium can be. We can be the new majority who can lead this world out of a long intellectual property darkness - Communists, Free-marketeers, and Furries who are tired of the high prices of Britannica and the inadequacy of Funk and Wagnalls; who know that we can disagree without being disagreeable; who understand that if we mobilize our voices to challenge the money and influence that's stood in our way to knowledge and challenge ourselves to reach for something better, there's no obscure minutia we can't illuminate - no minor character we cannot flesh out.

Our new Web encyclopedia can end the outrage of unaffordable, unavailable encyclopedias in our time. We can bring doctors and patients; workers and businesses, Democrats and Republicans together for discussion and consultation; and we can tell the big name encyclopedia players that while they'll get a seat at the table, they don't get to buy every chair. Not this time. Not now.

All of the inclusionists and the deletists on this site share these goals. All have good ideas. And all are valuable contributors who serve this website honorably. But the reason Wikipedia has always been different is because it's not just about what I or they will do, it's also about what you, the people who love knowledge, can do to increase it.

We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics who will only grow louder and more dissonant in the years to come. We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of the world false hope and bad information. But in the unlikely story that is Wikipedia, there has never been anything false about participation. For when we have faced down increasing attacks on our credibility; when we've been told that we're not a valid source, or that we shouldn't even try to be the be all and end all, or that we can't, thousands upon thousands of Wikipedia authors have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a free and liberated people.

Yes we can.

Re:Deletionist, Inclusionists, and the Goal

[jaymzter]

What a horrible analogy.

Re:Deletionist, Inclusionists, and the Goal

[blair1q]

A few years ago, no one imagined that we'd have accomplished what we did here on Wikipedia.

Um, if you mean that it's gotten more words in it, but it's become no less fractious a society and no more accurate a source of information, then, yeah. Sure. If that was the goal, then you nailed it. But I'm pretty sure I imagined it that way.

Re:Deletionist, Inclusionists, and the Goal

[takowl]

it's gotten more words in it, but it's become no less fractious a society and no more accurate a source of information

Sounds like a description of /. ;-). Seriously, though, Wikipedia's become a vastly more useful source of information over the past few years. Don't forget that many of those 'new words' are on topics that weren't in Wikipedia at all a few years back. And many more are linking out to sources. If you know how to use it (i.e. treat it as a starting point, not as hard fact), it's invaluable.

And while it's slow, it is getting more accurate, too. A year ago, it would tell you that unripe tomatoes were poisonous (citing an old book). Now it's got newer information (still with citations).

Re:Deletionist, Inclusionists, and the Goal

[Grapplebeam]

You didn't have to change that many words, did you? That speech works for everything!

Re:Deletionist, Inclusionists, and the Goal

[TapeCutter]

Thanks BAG, you made my day!

Re:Deletionist, Inclusionists, and the Goal

[Anonymous Coward]

chorus of cynics who will only grow louder and more dissonant

Apparently this is your idea of a pluralistic debate. And this is why you and the powers that be at Wikipedia want to continue crowdsourcing, i.e. have others work for them for free, but fiercely oppose equality and democracy.

Re:Deletionist, Inclusionists, and the Goal

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

For when we have faced down increasing attacks on our credibility; when we've been told that we're not a valid source, or that we shouldn't even try to be the be all and end all, or that we can't, thousands upon thousands of Wikipedia authors have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a free and liberated people.

"Edit reverted."

Re:Deletionist, Inclusionists, and the Goal

[BadAnalogyGuy]

It's hard to believe he gave this speech *after* he lost.

Re:Deletionist, Inclusionists, and the Goal

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you Obama. You can lick my balls.

Re:Deletionist, Inclusionists, and the Goal

[metasonix]

You posted this same propaganda on a Slashdot story back in 2008.

Who are you on Wikipedia?

Re:Deletionist, Inclusionists, and the Goal

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Propaganda??

No... Wikipedia Deletes Useful Articles

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia lets smug users go around deleting content deemed by these pencil dick morons to be 'not notable'.

As if any of these basement dwelling serial masturbaters has ever even done anything notable other than deleting useful articles from Wikipedia...

Pathetic.

Not "self-correcting"

[Anonymous Coward]

Politics won't self-correct, just as Wikipedia doesn't self-correct. Whenever vandalism or POV hackery is removed from Wikipedia, it's because someone went to an effort to do so. If politics is to become civil or collaborative, it will require some effort from the people involved to make it that way. It's not going to happen all by itself.

Re:Not "self-correcting"

[HungryHobo]

The difference- wikipedia actively makes it as easy as possible for people to make that effort and correct things in minutes.
In politics it is set up exactly opposite.
No individual no matter how much effort they're willing to put in can correct even the most obvious fuckup without investing months, years or ,most likely, decades to get into a position from which they can, and even then it's a long shot.

Re:Not "self-correcting"

[perpetual pessimist]

The only way to correct Wikipedia is pretty much the same way to correct politics. Sweep in with an enraged mob and hang 'em all from the lampposts.

Re:Not "self-correcting"

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference- wikipedia actively makes it as easy as possible for people with time on their hands to make that effort and change things in minutes to what they want.

Re:Not "self-correcting"

[npendleton]

You obviously don't know about VETOing good faith edits with the UNDO button. Wikipedia is politics.

Any single user can click one button and remove any good faith addition from public discourse. The more biased the article, the harder it is to create a balanced article, because one biased VETOer can undo hours of work (writing, editing, linking, citation finding, and proof reading) with a single UNDO click. Wikipedia does not distinguish between UNDOing bad faith graffiti and VETOing good faith edits. A single bad faith VETOer can trip up the entire world from reading a better or more balanced article on Wikipedia. Wikipedia helps a minority shoot down progress in the development of articles. Wikipedia software developers simply punted with the "Assume Good Faith Policy", so no one can notice who is controlling the articles. We need both the policy and the software to limit and track VETOing with UNDO of good faith contributions.

See my longer comment below.

I agree

[fiannaFailMan]

I edit a lot of Northern Ireland-related articles on Wiki. A long-standing dispute is the name of one city and county. Catholics call it Derry, Protestants call it Londonderry. Politicians have raged for years on what to call it and never reached a compromise, it's a never-ending dispute. Wikipedians on the other hand have agreed to call the county Londonderry and the city Derry. That kind of compromise is a long way off among the politicians. In fact I sometimes think that Northern Ireland's politicians could do well to spend a few months editing on Wiki and learning how to get along with other editors. They'd be a lot more civil to each other if they did.

Re:I agree

[Altus]

I wish I were back home in Derry.

Re:I agree

[hedwards]

Can't get enough of that Derry air?

Re:I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean Londonderry

Re:I agree

[blair1q]

If there weren't a feudal hierarchy to decisionmaking that would never have happened.

And it's wrong, by the way. Which is why feudal hierarchies aren't any good at decisionmaking. Especially where the decision is what facts are true. Most especially then.

Re:I agree

[jgtg32a]

You should have been a little more descriptive of what was actually done because I wrote a long rant about "who the hell is wiki to decide that city is called Derry and the county is called Londonderry.

What actually happened is there was a compromise on the "Article Names" and both articles start the same. The city article Derry "Derry or Londonderry is the second-biggest city in Northern Ireland..." and the county article starts "County Londonderry or County Derry is one of six counties that form Northern Ireland..."

Re:I agree

[Altus]

sorry but it breaks the rhythm of the tune.

Re:I agree

[Kell Bengal]

Sir, my hat off to you.

Re:I agree

[Web Goddess]

Wikipedia was great. Wikipedia is broken. And it's broken because of f**kery like the above post, extolling how wonderful it is that Wikipedia has managed to split-the-hair and call the county "Londonderry" and the city "Derry." Here is a post by a Wikipedia insider, bragging that Wikipedia does not reflect REALITY.

Wikipedia was great.

Wikipedia is broken.

Smart people like me cannot correct facts or grammar, without being reverted.

Wikipedia is broken.

Wikipedia WAS great.

Re:I agree

[Maritz]

I remember a few years ago reading my sister's copy of the Guardian's "Style Guide". The in the entry for Derry/Londonderry, it just said "Use Derry. Not Londonderry".

Oh Please

[Mephistophocles]

What a load of horseshit. "Maybe our politics will self-correct?????" Maybe the sky will rain flowers and chocolate and we'll all dance off into the rock-candy-mountain sunset singing kum-by-fucking-ya. Wikipedia only works because there are droves of well-meaning people guarding it constantly against nihilistic saboteurs. Applying some delusional happy-happy utopian vision to the cut-throat world of politics is kindergarten logic.

Re:Oh Please

[bonch]

You just need a bigger injection of Hopenchange(tm).

How I get along

[Dyinobal]

I mostly get along by not contributing.

Re:How I get along

[Anonymous Coward]

I know there's loads of controversy about the system itself, and whether it's really as nice as it sounds. I'm not even going to address that, because most of this /. discussion will be about that anyway.

I mostly get along by not contributing.

That's exactly the key -- Wikipedia works because people who don't fit the system (whether it's good or bad doesn't matter) can get bored/frustrated/mad and leave the editing side. They can still get the benefits of other people's work within the system (or not if they choose), but there are no demands on them.

So you wind up with all the people who like/tolerate the system working within it, being happy and getting along, and people who don't being utterly uninterfered with by it, and getting along. And trolls, of course, but that's a cosmic background phenomenon.

Politics, on the other hand, is an aspect of government, and government fundamentally works by taking shit from people and spending it to benefit people. If you get along with the system, bully for you, but if not, there's no easy opt-out. You can disregard politics, sure, but this is a losing proposition since the government that is steered by politics will now take your taxes and spend them as others choose. So if you don't like how the government is run, you more-or-less have to fight it.

To make government run like Wikipedia, you'd need at the very least some form of voluntary outlaw status, where in exchange for paying no taxes, you forgo all government services. Some services can be excluded that way, but people won't because it's believed to hurt everyone, not just the ones you deny the services to (e.g. schooling); others simply can't be excluded (police patrolling a beat, national defense), and still others can be (and in some cases are) excluded, with no harm to others, and a lot of people still get superpissed about it (that firefighters-watch-house-burn story from a couple weeks back). Of course, some level of this is generally what libertarians want, and they believe it practical, but anyone short of anarchism agrees there is some core of government services that must be provided for (i.e. forced on) all.

No, just no..

[molo]

Wikipedia is full of people with agendas, and they have different camps.. inclusionists, deletionists, plus all the real-world politics on top of that.. And there is really not much recourse when admins have taken actions that you disagree with. Procedure is followed haphazardly. Many admins are undisciplined (in several senses of the word). Wikipedia doesn't seem to be self-correcting.

There are few ways politics self-correct, and very few of them don't involve bloodshed. I don't see how wikipedia is at all relevant to that.

-molo

Re:No, just no..

[fiannaFailMan]

But the great thing about Wiki is the sheer amount of guidelines. No matter what agenda you're trying to push, there's a guideline somewhere that you can cite in support of your edit. Discussions often become a battle to see who can cite the most compelling WP guidelines. In fact I often find the discussion pages more interesting than the actual articles themselves. Ever seen the EV1 discussion? It's as if someone from GM is doing battle with a load of people who watched Who Killed the Electric Car?

Please remember to be WP:CIVIL when replying...

Re:No, just no..

[Altus]

That still sounds considerably better than much of the rest of the internet.

Re:No, just no..

[Stregano]

I completely agree. I am personally a game collector and have a degree in Computer Science, but apparently if I can't cite a source (when I am the source), then deleted. It gets very irritating that the mods on Wikipedia just can't seem to understand that I know enough to where should be able to cite myself. I am not famous, but neither are alot of sources. Whatever their definition of what a source is, is just dumb. Some of the facts for stuff is just completely wrong for some video game stuff. I remember one day I corrected, easily, 20-30 issues with just the Sega Saturn stuff alone. Not even an hour later, they all went back to the mistakes.

Also, why can't we make a Wikipedia page about ourselves? I thought it would be awesome if you could find me on Wikipedia (by sheer chance, I have the same first and last name as a rockstar, so that might have something to do with it, but it is WP, so I doubt it). Apparently, we can't make WP pages about ourselves unless we make a certain income, or are on MTV or something. Now I understand that if they let all of those pages fly through, the flood of horrible stuff would come in, but my own WP biography page I made sure to work on to make it legit.

Mods that refuse to let anybody edit specific pages, weird rules about what can and can't be added. WP is just like any other community on the net. They people that have been around for awhile and/or mods have much more power than everybody else. I don't see why it is any greater

Re:No, just no..

[DaveV1.0]

Funny, but it sounds like the rest of the internet to me. It also sounds like every other clique-laden environment I have ever seen or heard of.

Re:No, just no..

[at_slashdot]

There's also this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IAR

Re:No, just no..

[ACS Solver]

I've had some similar experiences here (and a fun occasion when I cited my own site and that was fine), but to play the devil's advocate, how are the mods supposed to know if you really know your stuff or are full of shit? So you know about video games, but mods can't tell that. They also can't tell if you really have a Computer Science degree or not (besides, it's not like the degree automatically makes you an authority - I also have a CS degree and there's plenty of CS stuff I don't know).

Then again, there definitely are people who know enough and should be able to edit accordingly. Maybe Wikipedia could use a system where editors can (privately) provide proof of being an expert in an area, and then they get tagged as such by the moderators, provided they also have a positive history of contributions.

Re:No, just no..

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. I got bullied away from Wikipedia and I quickly found out that all those nice sounding rules and regulations are dead letters. I'm not even a particularly controversial person, and in any case I left my political ideas behind every time I went editing. But as it happens, it was easier for the administrators to see me leave than to hit multiple people with the banhammer. Furthermore, those people had way to much time on their hands and fixing what they had already done would have required so much effort that it was apparently easier to simply say "screw the rules, these are the rules now".
And so it goes; Wikipedia is ruled by force majeure. From the outside, such systems tend to look relatively peacefully, but that's only because the consequences of not playing nice are that the people "in power" (on Wikipedia that means something like being big in number, having way too much time on your hands, and possibly having an administrator among your number) chew you out. It's the civilised western democracies where people are always fighting (at least vocally) and striking and protesting and what not - but that's precisely because the democratic system works well, not in spite of it.

Re:No, just no..

[Entropy98]

I know, you practically have to be a "WP lawyer" to argue anything.

I imagine companies hiring people to argue "WP law" on the discussion pages one day.
--
windows codec pack

Re:No, just no..

[Entropy98]

I'm not sure its a good thing. There are a lot of guidelines. You can quote wiki guidelines all day, back and forth. Its almost worse than going to court.

I'm convinced someone who knew the guidelines well enough could charge money to argue on wikipedia on others behalf.
--
windows codec pack

Re:No, just no..

[Anonymous Coward]

it reminds me of when i played dungeons and dragons in the late 70's. half the fun was arguing about what should happen, based on numerous, unagreed upon rules. very talmudic. it suits me, but not others, i guess.

No.

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Next Question.

real life vs wikipedia

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a difference in wikipedia population and real life. The kind of people that are willing to spend time sharing knowledge on wikipedia generate a different kind of conflicts than those in real life.

Not civil at all behind the scenes

[drsmack1]

It seems to be that a significant quantity of the people with power over there revel in the power of controlling "what truth is".

The is wildly inconsistent application of rules relating to context and verifiability.

Many articles on even non-controversial subjects are watched by editors who seem to have a hardened POV agenda and will revert well-sourced edits that don't fit their world-view.

I found articles that were very thin and fleshed them out considerably, only to have them completely reverted by such individuals for a single missing reference. One that would have taken them all of a minute to source themselves.

This is in direct violation of the rules involving non-controversial subjects.

This same guy then went through every edit I made on other articles with a fine-toothed comb and reverted many of them for officious reasons.

Omarcheeseboro was the guy that particular time. Pointing out the literally *thousands* of articles that had problems many times worse than what I supposedly introduced was a complete waste of time. The arbitration process is hopelessly broken.
Basically the net affect of all this is that you have to be a Wikipedia etiquette expert to hope to make any changes of substance - or you can expect hours of work to be thoughtlessly reverted as part of petty jealousies and personal POV dominions.

Re:Not civil at all behind the scenes

[Raenex]

Ok, you named the person who reverted your edits, but you didn't say what page or link to the revert. For all we know this person was doing the right thing.

Re:Not civil at all behind the scenes

[takowl]

Predictably enough, /. commenters line up to hate on Wikipedia. And yet, somehow, despite this apparent culture of obstructionism which will send it down the drain in short order, Wikipedia seems to still be going strong. Thinking back for a moment, I first heard of this free online encyclopaedia in around 2005. That's just five years ago, and Wikipedia is now the de facto starting point for finding information on almost anything. It's come a long way, and doesn't seem to be grinding to a halt any time soon.

Why do so many people here seem to have had bad experiences with Wikipedia? I've spent a fair bit of time editing articles, and even started a few, and while I sometimes disagree with people, almost everyone I've interacted with has been perfectly mature, and ready to reach an agreement. Obviously stories of frustration and anger get told more often, and read more (people are strange like that), but even accounting for that, it seems that a lot of /.ers run into problems with Wikipedia. Maybe 'geeky' topics (computers, sci-fi, trains, etc.) attract editors with less social skills, or who're more convinced they're right, so they block other editors' changes. Just a theory.

I also find signing comments with my real name helps. I hope it reminds other people that I'm a real person, but I know it makes me more civil to them ("Do I want a future employer to be able to find me calling him a *****?").

Re:Not civil at all behind the scenes

[gknoy]

People with complaints, especially when other people have acted in ways that seems jerk-ish, tend to be more vocal than those who have entirely pleasant experiences.

I'm afraid to post to Wikipedia. Most of the time I know nothing about it, but sometimes I find the occasional spelling error, or word choice error, or find that a link to a book in the series is incorrect (e.g., there IS a wikipedia page on said book, but the series article doesn't link correctly to it). I don't bother to change them specifically because of this perception of revert-happy (and ban-happy) maintainers. I'd love to contribute, but I can't really spare the time to become an expert on the nuances of being a Wikipedian in order to fortify myself against the potential BS. Sure, many articles aren't perfect, and many aren't mired in edit-wars, but the general feeling I get from the myriad stories like this is that it's a waste of my time to bother. One could understandably see why this dismays me.

Re:Not civil at all behind the scenes

[Raenex]

I've made dozens of simple corrections over the years. There was only one time that somebody who decided they owned a page reverted my edit. I brought up the revert on the Discussion page (note I did NOT get in an edit war, that's the wrong way to go about it). The editor replied to me but tried to brush me off, but I kept at it. Other people hopped in, and consensus was eventually reached.

It wasn't always pleasant, and it annoyed me that I had to fight to make a simple change, but in the end this person was in general keeping the page at a certain quality, and people will always disagree on certain issues. Overall Wikipedia functions very well.

My advice, if you seem a simple error, is to just take a second and fix it. There's nothing to be afraid of.

Re:Not civil at all behind the scenes

[Short Circuit]

Basically the net affect of all this is that you have to be a Wikipedia etiquette expert to hope to make any changes of substance - or you can expect hours of work to be thoughtlessly reverted as part of petty jealousies and personal POV dominions.

One of the principle reasons I prefer to continue running my own wiki, despite the occasional suggestion that I seek to have my content moved to WP.

It's easily arguable, though, that the state of things on my wiki is little better. We have almost no rules. I hate rules. I hate that rules cannot be defined to fully reflect their intent. I hate that there are people who, when handed a framework of rules, will leverage those rules in violating the rules' own intent.

As a result, we have very few rules, and they're not very well documented. I work to maintain site structure and infrastructure, watch wiki activity, and try to step in only when discussion has gone from productive to destructive. Sometimes it's managing a miscommunication. Other times, it's acting as a damper when tempers are high. Still other times, it's making a declarative decision to resolve an impasse.

I've got a couple hundred active users making up an interesting, diverse and vibrant community. I actively encourage advocacy, but I hardly ever see advocates sparking against each other. My wiki is mostly what my users make of it. The biggest problem I face? New users, assuming (or needing) some rule structure, don't always figure out what to do.

So, in contrast to WP, I encourage advocacy, and have a top-down imperative approach to management that I only use on rare occasions. However, I also have a much more constrained problem domain, and the wiki isn't moving so fast that I often miss addressing problems before they're irreperable.

The 'benevolent dictator' isn't a long-term solution in general politics, of course. Even barring other considerations, I won't live forever, so my wiki necessarily can't have me forever.

Re:Not civil at all behind the scenes

[takowl]

Which is kind of why I came to disagree. As Raenex has already said, the bad experiences you hear about tend to be the exception, not the rule.

Please, if you see obvious errors like the ones you described, have a shot at fixing them. Use a descriptive edit summary, like "correct spelling", or "fix link". Even the most protective of editors are unlikely to argue with such simple, obvious corrections, and even if they do, they'll just revert your edit. You won't get banned on that basis (despite what some people say, the rules are generally followed, and banning is taken fairly seriously). And even if you do somehow get banned, that's only a ban from editing: you'll still be able to read articles.

Re:Not civil at all behind the scenes

[gknoy]

Thanks (and to Raenex too). It's nice to reaffirm that it's the exception, rather than the rule. I'll try to keep that in mind, next time I see something that needs fixing. :)

Wikipedia can live and let live

[Rix]

Where as the world often can't. Abortion is either legal, or it's not. Taxes are either at one rate or another. We either provide universal health care or we do not.

Wikipedia can present all valid views. The world can't implement all possible policies.

Re:Wikipedia can live and let live

[DaveV1.0]

All valid views? Who determines what is valid? Which view is more valid? The truth is not relative and the idea that there is more than one valid view implies that what is true depends on what one's view is. Two diametrically opposed views can not both be true.

Re:Wikipedia can live and let live

[pclminion]

Who determines what is valid?

How about cold, hard logic? People may have differing opinions, but I'd venture to say that if your point of view isn't even internally consistent then it simply isn't valid. As in science, we cannot really prove that a particular view is correct, but we can certainly prove that it's not.

As an example, consider moron prosecutors who prosecute teenagers as adults for sending underage naked pictures of themselves to other people. This is a person who is not holding a logically consistent world view: he is treating the teenager as an adult and a child at the same time. I don't care what your moral perspective is on teens "sexting" each other -- that point of view simply isn't valid. A computer could make that determination.

Re:Wikipedia can live and let live

[DaveV1.0]

On Wikipedia, the person or people who determine what is valid is the one who has the most time and is most invested in the content of the article, regardless of cold, hard logic.
 
Your analogy fails to support your contention because it actually describes how Wikipedia operates: Anyone can make edits, but the edits will only stay if the support the opinion of the Wikipedia cliques and admins.

Re:Wikipedia can live and let live

[RealGrouchy]

I guess that explains why the disambiguation page on my mailbox didn't send all my bills to my neighbour like I hoped it would.

- RG>

Re:Wikipedia can live and let live

[Tom]

Wikipedia can present all valid views. The world can't implement all possible policies.

Not in the same place. But the world is pretty large, why can't we have abortions legal here and illegal over there and you move to wherever the laws are the way you want them? Ah, I see, the problem is that those kinds of people think their truth should be everyone's truth. An anti-abortionists couldn't sleep knowing that abortions are legal across the border.

But that's got nothing to do with the world. In fact, in this regard Wikipedia actually is a start (some of the time) in teaching them that theirs is not the only opinion and the other side will be present as well.

Re:Wikipedia can live and let live

[dkf]

Your analogy fails to support your contention because it actually describes how Wikipedia operates: Anyone can make edits, but the edits will only stay if the support the opinion of the Wikipedia cliques and admins.

So some people keep asserting, but it's not clear whether that's actually true. (Yeah, [citation needed].) Assertions backed up with peer-reviewed research in a respectable journal should be able to stay in any WP article worthy of the name. Anything else, it's got to take its chances, though sticking to facts presented in a plain, informative way remains a good approach. (Opinion dressed up as flame... well, that's just not worth keeping no matter who says it.)

Every time that I have looked into cases of someone complaining about being suppressed on Wikipedia, it's turned out that it was because they were either being clearly an annoying asshole, or because they were promoting some dodgy snake-oil product, or it was a case where the facts on the ground looked no different from those two. I don't claim that all cases are the same, but I've yet to see one that varies from that script (even in cases where I personally knew the individual being suppressed, to be honest).

Yah! RIIIIGHT!

[Chas]

So long as you conform to the opinions of the moderators there, right, wrong, or otherwise, you can get along.

Kinda obvious how it doesn't apply

[Anonymous Coward]

It's easier to be relaxed about newcomers' editing or changes being made when you can hit the revert button and restore what came before.

The analogy kind of falls apart right there. Real life doesn't have an undo button.

Bollocks.

[vague disclaimer]

Any appearance of civility is caused by the inherent wiki problem: arguments are won by those who just won't give up. Those with better things to do, give up, go and never look back.

Re:Bollocks.

[Stargoat]

That was true about 2 years ago. Today, arguments in Wikipedia are won by admins. The problem is that the Wikipedia admins are by and large American WASPs and Eastern Coast American Jews. It's a bit of a problem for creating objective 20th century history articles. ;)

Re:Bollocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the fucks is Eugene von Savoy?! Marked for speedy deletion.

Not a chance

[damn_registrars]

People will continue to argue, yell, insult, and generally be rude to each other. Besides half of the people believe that wikipedia is itself a tool for the other side to spread their message (that first half then sponsored conservapedia, naturally). So no, wikipedia won't teach us how to get along.

Oh, wait, are we talking about the slashdot sense of "us", or a greater collection of people?

Re:Not a chance

[takowl]

But for all that, I believe it's doing us a service by forcing us to have the arguments. We have to confront the views we don't like. Because there's only one 'current' version of any page, conflicting factions cannot produce their own versions* and simply ignore each other. And, most of the time, that results in some form of compromise. People aren't always nice to each other (although that's encouraged), but by and large, it works.

* Yes, I know, Conservapedia, Citizendium, and so on do have their own versions. But a) it's much easier to edit Wikipedia than it is to set up your own version, and b) almost nobody uses any of the alternatives.

When did that start?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did he study the same Wikipedia I sometimes contribute to?

Because I've had to stop using a named account entirely to keep from being harassed by the trolls they've hired as admins.

Pmdrive1061 and Nawlinwiki like sucking my cock

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia is communism covered in pelican shit. Vandalism forever

Willy on Wheels! MascotGuy, Runtshit, Grawp, Wik, Cplot, Bambifan101, Atlanticdeep, Pickmanbothlol, all just some of the amazing vandals that cannot be WP:DENY'd.

Re:Pmdrive1061 and Nawlinwiki like sucking my cock

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet, it is the first place you go to when you need a quick summary on a new issue you are unfamiliar with.

But I forgot: you suck. And drink too much.

What's next for Joseph Reagle?

[blair1q]

After his graduation, Joseph Reagle has accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at Hogwarts to study unicorns.

I think Calvin summarized it best.

[idontgno]

I'm at peace with the world. I'm completely serene. I've discovered my purpose in life. I know why I was put here and why everything exists... I am here so everybody can do what I want. Once everybody accepts it, they'll be serene too.

--Calvin

Openxml Travesty

[sugarmotor]

Remember the "openxml" standardization travesty.

Professionals exploit the rules, and the people playing fair are cheated.

I suspect the thing about wikipedia is that none of the cheaters actually get onto the board.

With society / elections it is different. Maybe because spending money on campaigns has an effect?

Re:Openxml Travesty

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want some fun, try adding a "this page deals with a controversial subject" on the top of the OOXML page. You'll get instantly hounded down with loud cries of "oh no it wasn't controversial _at_all_!!
It's like a monty python sketch on IRC. "This isn't an argument!"

Re:Openxml Travesty

[spitzak]

Another fun one is to try to add "not to be confused with ODF, the format produced by the software known as Open Office". This will get instantly reverted with the incredibly bogus excuse that the official name for Open Office is not "Open Office".

Re:Yah! RIIIIGHT!

[Meshach]

So long as you conform to the opinions of the moderators there, right, wrong, or otherwise, you can get along.

Except that Wikipedia does not have moderation.

Wikipedia is not like that

[br00tus]

A case in point is the article Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani. She is a woman in Iran who had the death penalty charged against her. The opening paragraph mentions nothing about her dead husband. The next paragraph at one point says - 'she has since recanted the "confession" made under duress'. Note the scare quotes around the word confession, the mention it was made under duress - as if confessions in American murder cases are not made to police "under duress", whatever that is supposed to mean.

It also says "court was prosecuting one of the two men for involvement in the death of Mohammadi Ashtiani's husband". Yes "involved in the death", another way of saying murder.

The slanting of this article is incredible. If a woman in Texas had an affair with a man, a man who then murdered her husband, and months later she had been convicted under a death sentence for conspiring to murder her husband with her lover, do you think there would be anything like this in the article? Do you think maybe you wouldn't have to piece together that she was thought to be a co-conspirator in those who murdered, I mean were "involved in the death", of her husband? A cursory read of this would make one thing this woman was getting the death penalty for having an affair.

Then there's the canard - "Well, just edit it". Well, look through the history and discussion pages - people have, but their edits are reverted by the usual Wikipedia cabal. Their control of articles like this are backed up by the Arbitration Committee, and ultimately Jimbo Wales himself, whose devotion to Ayn Rand and the like are well known. Anyone with little involvement with Wikipedia might easily believe it is free and open. Even those heavily involved in uncontroversial editing of articles on science, math and the like might not see it. But a long-time observance of things is obvious. Just look at the enormously controversial and biased JayJG failing in the 2006 vote to make the Arbitration Committee - but Jimbo Wales appointing him to it anyhow. I pick that as JayJG is heavily biased against Iran. I am not Iranian, but I do find it laughable how the Americans who overthrew Mossadegh and the democratic government of Iran in the 1950s and installed a brutal dictator now whine about the Iranian government, and turn their eyes from their bloody Texan death rows to some far-off village in Iran and make some woman who conspired with her lover to murder her husband into some cause celebre.

Re:Wikipedia is not like that

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice example you pulled up. She was initially sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, not for the murder of her husband. Stoning...adultery. Maybe that has something to do with the Western world, errr, countries where the legal system isn't based on some interpretation of Sharia, finding things in Iran to be more than a bit unsavory. We all know about America's historic blunders and wrongs in Iran but that hardly makes medieval treatment of women acceptable, nor does it mean that we have no right to criticize their hardline judiciary.

Re:Wikipedia is not like that

[Oligonicella]

Nice example you pulled up. She was initially sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, not for the murder of her husband. Stoning...adultery. Maybe that has something to do with the Western world, errr, countries where the legal system isn't based on some interpretation of Sharia, finding things in Iran to be more than a bit unsavory. We all know about America's historic blunders and wrongs in Iran. but that hardly makes medieval treatment of women acceptable, nor does it mean that w We have no right to criticize their hardline judiciary.

Nice example you pulled up. We all know about America's historic blunders and wrongs in Iran. We have no right to criticize their judiciary.

Removed bolded text - Admin.

Re:Wikipedia is not like that

[TapeCutter]

"A cursory read of this would make one thing this woman was getting the death penalty for having an affair."

A more thourough research effort would indeed confirm she was originally convicted of adultery and sentenced to death for it. The fact that such a primitive and barbaric law is still on the books of a so-called modern nation is the real travistry.

Streisand effect

[Anonymous Coward]

Will this curiosity prompt people to screw with Wikipedia, perhaps wrecking something good for everyone?

oblig xkcd

[BenSchuarmer]

http://xkcd.com/545/

Re:oblig xkcd

[ChunderDownunder]

I prefer this one given the response it provoked.

We don't know everything

[Rix]

There are often multiple possibilities of which no one has been absolutely proven. Wikipedia also has the advantage of not doing original research, but only summarizing that done by others that can be cited.

Re:We don't know everything

[DaveV1.0]

There are always multiple possibilities, but most, if not all, of those possibilities are not equally valid.
 
  What I often see on Wikipedia is someone becoming emotionally invested in the contents of an article and refusing to allow edits that contradict his personal opinion. It does not matter if the contradictory information has valid citations or is even accepted truth. If it goes against the guard dog's opinions, then they pounce.

Re:Yah! RIIIIGHT!

[Anonymous Coward]

So long as you conform to the opinions of the moderators there, right, wrong, or otherwise, you can get along.

Except that Wikipedia does not have moderation.

Exactly. You will call them editors, or you will be wrong.

There is no place for wrongness on Wikipedia. Pay no attention to the original poster, he is a sock puppet.

Re:Yah! RIIIIGHT!

[sourcerror]

But there are admins. And people with admin friend.

Re:Yah! RIIIIGHT!

[DaveV1.0]

No, Wikipedia has cliques and admins.

Really? I think this is the obligatory answer.

[siddesu]

http://tcritic.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/greaterdickwad.jpg

Re:Really? I think this is the obligatory answer.

[Shadow of Eternity]

It's Fuckwad.

Re:Really? I think this is the obligatory answer.

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the conceptual difference? Please explain it to the dumb foreigner motherfucker who does not speak the English.

Re:Really? I think this is the obligatory answer.

[cinderellamanson]

In common usage there is no difference.

Slashdot, though is different, because it is filled pedantic fucking comedians who often go without sleep, survive on caffeine, live in a basement or garage where they are plugged into the internet 24 fucking hours a fucking day, so the probability of some dickwad inventing a difference and some fuckwad using it on someone approaches certitude the way Captain Kirk approaches FTL or green babes.

Now, back to the article, which i did not fucking read, in which case I would be a dickwad (a fuckwad having read the article), which is about wikipedia. Fuck wikipedia.

here's the heirarchy of social media as I understand it.

We'll start with wikipedia.

wikipedia

This is proof of wiki software as a longterm content management system.

wikipedia
myspace

here we see that wiki software is very good for managing consensus software and myspace is good for managing music, blogs and people.

wikipedia
myspace
twitter
facebook

Phone support and real names. I think I'll label them for now.

wikipedia - ivory tower
myspace - rock concert
twitter - text messages
facebook - phonebook? - with pictures.
youtube - videos

You know what I think would be cool?

nasa - control your very own little robots on mars.

Anyways. Where were we? Oh yea.

slashdot - ???

hmm.

slashdot - basement dweller
slashdot - virgin
slashdot - geek
slashdot - nerd
slashdot - dickwad
slashdot - fuckwad
slashdot - *nix user
slashdot - wait that's it.

Slashdot is basically a Unix user's social networking site.

Wikipedia is a Unix run system.

Re:Really? I think this is the obligatory answer.

[cinderellamanson]

Q.E.D.

Fuck Wikipedia.

Direct Application to Governance

[Anonymous Coward]

The principles first developed for Wikipedia are being applied more broadly to human governance.

It's called collaborative governance though on Wikipedia is is more referred to as open source governance.

Re:Direct Application to Governance

[Anonymous Coward]

Wiki-government. Sweet.

This must be a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

Or is silencing discussions, locking down controversial content, erasing history and building opaque unaccountable hierarchies how we all should get along?

True

[Rix]

That does happen. There are means to deal with it, but it requires there be someone who cares enough about that article to make use of them.

Notability follows from verifiability

[tepples]

So, by what criteria does one determine what piece of trivia is important enough to include

If it's verifiable to an independent reliable source, it goes in. For example, your band goes in if reliable publications have reviewed its album. A "non-notable subject" is merely one for which few or no facts are verifiable to independent reliable sources.

Re:Notability follows from verifiability

[wierd_w]

It has been my experience reading talk pages on wikipedia articles, that article maintainers have a nasty habbit of redacting informative changes to documents under their control, for reasons that are not well explained by "notability", "lack of citations", or other perfectly resonable or respectable reasons for such redaction; but rather because the maintainer doesnt LIKE the change.

(Strawman alert! I have not checked this article for this kind of shit happening. It does however follow for other articles I have read. Just substitute "Details on sexuality" for "Details on subject X", and "DiVinci" for "Article Y", and the strawman fits.)

EG, if the maintainer of the article for master DiVinci happened to be a fanboi of his, and didnt like the idea that he could be attacked for being a homosexual by the extreme right wing, he would frantically redact any mention of the subject's sexuality, and claim that it was "Unimportant" to the document, and sternly reject any and all discourse that would support the inclusion of such additional information.

It wouldnt matter how many sources, and if you had a paper trail proving his sexuality with dark age court documents and lists of lovers-- the maintainer would redact the changes, and claim they were "unimportant."

That is why I asked the question the way I did-- How does wikipedia determine what is "Stupid trivia", and what is imporant enough to include?

Wikia: the overflow

[tepples]

The problem for Wikipedia is that the set of all facts is a superset of the set of notable facts. So if we got some other group together to create an electronic encyclopedia without the concept of notability, it would completely supersede Wikipedia.

Good. Find or start a Wikia or even a Go Daddy-hosted MediaWiki site about your pet subject area.

GB versus GiB!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Back to Encarta print edition for me*. What I want to know is why they are allowing someone (or a group) to go through EVERY computer related article on wikipedia and change the well understood and vastly used GB (gigabytes) to GiB (Gibibytes). There was never a concensus on the issue, and every article I come accross I have to personally convert the values to understand them. I mean, really? I think wikipedia is slowly creeping into the useless catagory. That's not to mention all the malicious editing they have allowed or overlooked. I hereby declare wikipedia garbage.
*Or maybe their new DVD.

Re:GB versus GiB!!

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree that it is annoying as hell, there doesn't need to be consensus for correctness. As long as they are using them correctly; I have seen some ignorant pedants using them backwards.

Idiot article author makes idiotic presumption

[Anonymous Coward]

There are real and profoundly important conflicts that take place in politics. The choice between individualism/freedom and collectivism/slavery is no small matter. There have always been and will always be conflict between those who want to control their own lives and those who try to control others. Only childish fools who dream of gumdrops and rainbows think that conflict can be eliminated. Human nature is human nature. I am cynical enough to note that articles calling for civility in politics always follow closely on the heels of major victories by collectivists. Currently in the US, the collectivists have finally passed laws putting the Government in charge of health care over the loud and strenuous objections of most citizens. Naturally, the collectivists, who are going to suffer mightily in the upcoming election, would like nothing better than for The People to be civil, i.e. to be quiet and passive until the new laws have become entrenched and repealing them becomes all but impossible. The voters are not in the mood for civility and they shouldn't be. When the ruling class attempts to shackle The People, The People need to be uncivil, even nasty. It is better to use the vote to oust the villains than to be passive until only violence will solve the problem.

Re:Yah! RIIIIGHT!

[Chas]

The fuck they don't!

If you happen to add something that is both true and well sourced, if someone doing the editing and/or monitoring doesn't like it, it gets whacked for "neutral POV" or "unsupported" or some similar BS reason and gets, if you're lucky, reverted. If they're being especially douche-y, they even remove your edit.

Haiku time

[RealGrouchy]

Sure everyone will get along if you run everyone with a different opinion off or ban them.

In other words...

Wikipedia
Everybody get along
Everybody left

- RG>

"Wikipedian"

[Kennita]

I'd seen "Wikipedian" as a noun, but as an adjective it's new on me. I wonder if/when it will make it into a dictionary? Not so unthinkable: "Lilliputian" is in there!

LMFAO

[Anonymous Coward]

seriously i dont know how else to expess myself about this

i have more confidence that we will see free republic and huffpo come together to try and get Rush and jon steward elected in 2012 before we ever see wikipedia teaching people how to get along.

Re:Yah! RIIIIGHT!

[Anonymous Coward]

They have hundreds of bots controlled by people with Asperger's, and go through and delete any picture with a brandname in it. (One guy deleted the photo from the Chapstick page because it was a photo of Chapstick),

If you write about something they have never heard of they'll delete the article. Straight away. They won't even Google to see if you're right. They'll delete as much as they can to get a barnstar to add to their collection on their user page.

Wikipedia is overrun by nutjob social rejects, who can't get along with anyone. I hope they're reading this now.

LOL

[Tom]

I'm not into chat-lingo, but "LOL" seems the only appropriate answer to the question asked in the summary.

If Wikipedia were the model for a society, it would be a strict oligarchy covered in a thin layer of pseudo-democracy. And I mean even thinner than our current so-called democracies where you actually can become a part of the in-group through nothing more than popular support.

It would also be a society hostile to science, dominated by porn on every street corner, and one in which a lot of people and sometimes even places "disappear" suddenly with only a note left behind saying "he wasn't notable" or, in some cases, just "WP:SD". If his wife complains to the authorities, she will find herself tagged "citation needed" and will have to supply several relatives who can vouch that she exists, or she will follow. Strangely, producing a birth certificate will be rejected as "original research".

Also, the official language of the administration, that you need to speak if you want anything from the authorities, will not be the language of the land but a derivative full of strange acrynoms and grammar traps so any bureaucrat who doesn't like you can always find some flaw in whatever you said and reject your request based on formalities.

No, thanks. Even though in many respects our current pseudo-democracies aren't too different, I still prefer them.

I include Wikipedia in all my search queries

[Lincolnshire Poacher]

In the form of "-wikipedia"

Not only does it prevent Google's Instant Search from working, but it also removes all the clones of Wikipedia and any page on which someone has quoted from Wikipedia.

Very refreshing.

Wikipedia moderators are all cunts....

[dogzdik]

I am the specialist on the subject.

.

I wrote the book on the subject.

.

Someone writes up an article on Wikipedia on me and the subject - with some errors and ommissions - I write up some corrections and additions.

.

Then some fuckwad Wiki moderator deletes them - reason - "Not an authorative source".....

.

Wikipedia is filled with stupid nazi cunts with god complexes...

.

Fuck Them.

They are violating WP:OWN

[tepples]

It has been my experience reading talk pages on wikipedia articles, that article maintainers have a nasty habbit of redacting informative changes to documents under their control, for reasons that are not well explained by "notability", "lack of citations", or other perfectly resonable or respectable reasons for such redaction

Then they are in violation of WP:OWN, and you should seek other measures to resolve this dispute.

I've given up on Wikipedia

[Anonymous Coward]

I got fed up with the petty bureaucrats who joined earlier than me knowing how to use the system to suppress edits they didn't like. Well referenced, useful, highly popular, articles being deleted because they were 'not encyclopaedic' (and I don't mean fancruft). Rampant nationalism, to the extent of blatantly ignoring Wikipedia policies, such that particular articles reflect a particular partisan point of view, fully supported by admins. Verifiability, not truth being the criterion for inclusion: so a reference to a shoddy, non-peer reviewed, vanity-published journal trumps common sense; and there is no concept of determining which references are more credible. I wouldn't say my time on Wikipedia was wasted, but it taught me that pettyfogging bureaucrats are the death of a project, and there are more of them with time upon their hands than sensible contributors can deal with.

It's not that big

[Rix]

Any place you wanted to make abortion illegal (or legal) would already have lots of people living there with their own ideas about the issue.

Re:It's not that big

[Tom]

You could make it per block, we have the information processing capacity. Heck, you could make it by individual person. Oh, wait. That's the problem, isn't it? The anti-abortionists (or any other kind of people, I'm just using them as an example) are not furious that they could have an abortion if they wanted to, they want to regulate other people's lives.

Re:It's not that big

[Rix]

The anti-abortionists would argue that the foetus is an individual person, and thus should get a vote on any abortion concerning it. Wikipedia can link to a page on the definition of personhood and lay out the various arguments. The real world has to pick one.

Re:It's not that big

[Tom]

I'm familiar with the argument.

The point remains that the anti-abortionists think that their point should apply to someone else, both the foetus and its mother.

That's not evil. In fact, the whole concept of a society rests on groups of people agreeing to follow common rules. The problem is the absolutism inherit in that.

Re:It's not that big

[Rix]

I think it's fair to assume that the foetus would opt not to be aborted.

We can't implement multiple definitions of personhood in the real world. Wikipedia can.

Re:It's not that big

[Tom]

I think it's fair to assume that the foetus would opt not to be aborted.

No, it is not fair. It pre-supposes a critical element of the discussion, namely whether or not the foetus is a being capable of making conscious decisions. But I'm not here to repeat that discussion.

We can't implement multiple definitions of personhood in the real world. Wikipedia can.

Just like Wikipedia, we can consider multiple possibilities, and take into account that none of us is in posession of the whole truth. While in the end, we have to settle down to one law or rule, in deciding which one it should be we can take multiple dimensions of the problem and various points-of-view into account.

In fact, in many cases we already do. That is the common approach in less emotionally charged topics. And in many countries, we have managed to do that even for the difficult ones. For example, it is entirely irrational to believe that a sperm and an egg cell are not a human being, while the second they fuse suddenly a human being comes into existence. That is an entirely arbitrary line to draw in what really is a gradual development. It is, however, not the worst line. Certainly better than any random number of weeks, because it marks the spot where two DNAs combine.

I don't, however, see much argument along those lines. Usually, the discussion is more of the "you are evil satanists" vs. "you are religious nutjobs" kind.

Nice idea but no match to reality

[Antaeus Feldspar]

It sounds as if Reagle based all his work on the false premise that Wikipedia actually follows the rules it claims to follow.

In the infamous Scientology arbitration case (WP:ARBSCI) the ArbCom was ready to punish a well-respected user and admin because he did not speedy-delete an article that they thought should have been speedy-deleted. The rules on speedy deletion have some gray areas, but they also have areas which are starkly clear, such as an article which has survived an AfD discussion is not a candidate for speedy deletion. Speedy deletion was introduced as an alternative to the lengthier process, AfD (Articles for Deletion), only because the lengthier process was overkill for very simple cases like blatant hoaxes and unambiguous copyright infringement -- cases where no user with knowledge of Wikipedia's standards could seriously dispute that the article merited deletion. But the only way that an article survives an AfD discussion is if a sufficient number of users do dispute that the article should be deleted. So if an article has survived AfD, even if you think the AfD reached the wrong conclusion by not deleting the article, it was obviously not one of the simple cases that speedy deletion was intended for. And yet the ArbCom was actually ready to sanction this long-time admin for not violating the rules to speedy-delete an article that had survived four such discussions!

That barely even scratches the surface of what the ArbCom did wrong in that case, and I'm sure that was hardly the only case where they committed such egregious violations. ArbCom is supposed to be the "Supreme Court" of Wikipedia and yet if they're not only not enforcing the rules but trying to punish users for following the rules then there's no reason to think that the rules are being followed past the point of convenience anywhere on Wikipedia.

One man Veto with UNDO permits article hijacking

[npendleton]

Only one grumpy person is needed to VETO any good faith changes to an article. Its called monopoly. It deliberately defeats Wikipedia's stated aim, by muzzling valuable good faith contributions. It is the most important flaw in the Wikipedia article editing political model. Assuming good faith is completely inadequate, because only one person who doesn't assume good faith can control the message. Because any unhappy user can VETO any good faith contribution, using the UNDO button, wikipedia articles can become hopelessly biased. Bad faith graffiti needs to be VETOed by UNDO. Good faith edits need public discourse. Malicious UNDO removes/deletes good faith effort from public discussion. UNDO denies the network effect to improve good faith content. The VETOer is not required to point to specific words that need improvement, before deleting the good faith effort with a single click. Any effort to correct a biased article can be simply removed by a biased VETOer with one click. It is an unstable equilibrium. The more biased the article, the harder it is to update and correct it. Cascading equilibrium is actually the basis of Chaos Theory! Wikipedia needs to reorganize its tools to create stable a equalibrium between perspectives in each article.

When I suggested to the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee that bad faith VETO of good faith edits was biggest flaw in Wikipedia, guess what, my view was deleted. See July 14 to July 24, 2010..


An Example: The "District of Columbia Voting Rights" article is where I personally noticed this bias in the cherry picking of the frame of reference in this article, and found no ability to circumvent the wikipedia VETO (bad faith use of UNDO).

With 600,000 disenfranchised full US Citizens, Washington, D.C. is the largest on-going case of disenfranchisement of lawful full US Citizens in the United States. Since Washington DC was carved out of Maryland, all voting rights and elected offices were removed from DC citizens by the US Congress. The US Congress 'alienates' rights of these full US citizens, by using Article one, Section 8, clause 17, of the US Constitution, to act as an "Exclusive legislature", controlling the States Rights of this place. Since Washington DC land and people was removed from US Rep. Craik's District, US Senator Hindman's and US Senator Howard's State, no one can be elected from this place to full voting membership of the US House Congress, because the US Congress cancels the elections and elected offices of these citizens from Washington, DC. Using the States Rights of this place, the US Congress 'alienates' the Citizens of Washington DC of their voting rights, elections, and laws, such as the US Constitution, Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Maryland Constitution of 1776, all of which had applied in this portion of Maryland was converted into Washington, DC. Washington, DC, citizens are asking for further RESTORATION (full or partial) of their elections and elected offices. The US Congress in debates recorded in the Annals of Congress decided to disenfranchise this portion of Maryland by simply not writing laws to replace the Maryland laws that Congress abolished. Opposition to disenfranchisement was led by Rep. Smilie of Pennsylvania. During debate,

It doesn't work.

[teachknowlegy]

There are hard copies running amuk that laugh at the times when the entire subject Iraq was "Saddam is a dick".

Wikipedia articles are not factual.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia entries has nothing to do with fact. They do not get their information first-hand. They use hear-say from newspaper articles, which are NOT factual - they are written however the reporter wants the readers to perceive the subject. Anyone who gets their information from Wikipedia and believes it to be accurate are being very misled.