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Wikipedia Adds "WikiLove" For Newbie Editors
mikejuk writes "Wikipedia has a cunning plan to make wikipedians nicer to each other — its all about WikiLove. They can click on the Love button to make each other feel good about contributing anything from an article to an edit. The idea is that this will encourage newbie editors to stay and contribute rather than slink away into the rest of the web because their contributions get deleted and derided. Perhaps all we need for world peace is a big enough love button."
No, it's backed by the Ministry of Communism. When people post comments on Slashdot about inability to work with "established in-groups" on Wikipedia, it usually sounds to me like the in-group is violating the policy against acting like the owner of an article. The policy states that Wikipedia articles are owned in common, not as the "property" of specific cliques.
With the problems I've had in the past I don't know if this is going to be nearly enough. Wikipedia's problems lies in the fact that many, if not most, of their long-time editors consider themselves the end-all be-all of Wikipedia. I've contributed to several pages, cited properly, and still get reverted because someone disagrees with the page for reasons other than factual accuracy. For example, when editing an article about Vince Lombardi and citing sources the changes were reverted for no given reason. When I asked why I was reverted I was not given a reasonable answer (and was trolled in the process). So I stopped contributing. I'm now content to let the self-appointed elites run the site.
That's the other reason I will never give a red cent to Wikipedia. So long as the Wikipedia mafia of editors continue to run things the way that they do I think the site will suffer and eventually wither out as it's last gasp of neutrality and openness disappear behind the power-hungry editors who run the site the way that they want to run it. If Jimmy wants Wikipedia to succeed he'll start with the cadre of idiots who currently run the place.
"This food is problematic."
You know, everyone on slashdot keeps saying stuff like this, but in my corner of the Wikipedia (palaeontology), most pages are under-edited. If anyone comes along and adds relevant, cited information, the edits are most certainly kept. If you cite a real paper that you've read and understood, we'll be pressing that love button!
There is a lot of reverting, but most of it is reverting popular misconceptions that have no citation, or ideologically driven edits (usually creationists, again with no citations).
Is this because people are going and trying to edit the Mohammed or Jesus pages or something? Because I really don't get what you're all on about. Maybe my interests are esoteric, but I've never had a real problem getting edits to stick on any subject, even on controversial fringe topics like cryptozoology.
Same here. I was correcting the BitchX article (it pointed to Bitchx.com as the IRC Client's website, which is a domain squatter. BitchX.org is the real site). Within minutes, it was reverted. I corrected it again with a better description (assuming I wasn't clear enough the first time), same thing. Finally, someone else corrected it, and all history of the battle disappeared.
However, I did look at the history and saw that this has been done several times by several other people, only to get reverted back to the wrong website each time.
The only thing this really does is make me sad though. Wikipedia could be (and sometimes still is) a great resource, but bullshit like this is what ruins it for everyone.
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