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

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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

[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?

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

[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.

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.

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..

[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.

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]

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.

Yah! RIIIIGHT!

[Chas]

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

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:Yes

[Stargoat]

Article is locked.

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

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.

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.

Re:Yah! RIIIIGHT!

[DaveV1.0]

No, Wikipedia has cliques and admins.