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Wikipedia Adds "WikiLove" For Newbie Editors

Posted by samzenpus on from the communal-hug dept.

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."

12 of 225 comments (clear)

  1. Wikipedia is communism by tepples · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Wikipedia is communism by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Did you ever play D&D? Remember the guy who memorised every little rule and regulation and then turned them to his advantage? That's the average Wikipedia troll. No matter what you do they will be able to cite a rule saying you are wrong.

      It was quite a clever move really. Work behind the scenes to get the rules changed in their favour, and all the while casual editors are too busy improving articles to notice. Then once the trap is sprung go on a mass delete/revert frenzy and divvy the world up into hundreds of tiny kingdoms.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  2. Re:Government Sponsored? by edumacator · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I wish slashdot had a +1 love button.

    --
    An important change for education.
  3. I tell you what by trifish · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I stopped editing Wikipedia a couple of years ago and haven't gone back. Why? Because the members of the established mafia occupying the articles appeared to have much much more time than me to keep reverting or discussing (i.e. repeating the arguments over and over ad nauseam) than me.

    Any change I made was immediately (usually within 1-10 minutes) reverted. I have been living my life and working, while they have apparently been just squatting "their" articles. I don't feel sorry for them, however.

    1. Re:I tell you what by Twinbee · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What was the topic in question? And a link to the "Discuss" arguments? I ask because it's always possible to advertise to get other people involved, perhaps people more knowledgeable than either of you. With more people (and more expert people), a middle-ground consensus is more likely to established.

      --
      Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
    2. Re:I tell you what by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      With more people (and more expert people)

      Those two are NOT the same thing. Having a bunch of people editing doesn't help if the few experts get drowned out by the multitude of ignorant assholes who just sit around all day reverting articles.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    3. Re:I tell you what by twocows · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I had a similar experience adding some minor details to a page. I wasn't particularly busy that day, so I quoted enough Wikipedia bureaucracy at them to fill a book and they finally left the details in.

      The problem with Wikipedia is just as you say; too many people have their little pet pages and to get anything done you need to throw the book at them. Nobody's going to bother doing that.

    4. Re:I tell you what by devphaeton · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --


      do() || do_not(); // try();
  4. Millions of little fiefdoms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I discovered recently just how petty and arrogant some Wikipedia contributors are. I attempted to clean up an article, nothing major, just fixing some awkward sentences that were poorly worded, confusing, or grammatically incorrect. Less than half an hour later it was changed back and I received a message from the author of the parts I corrected telling me that it was "his" article and that the sections I fixed were already perfect and needed no changes. I made my case for keeping my edits, explained that I made the article read better without changing any facts, and then changed them back. The next message I got was an angry post insulting me personally, and telling me that there was no way I was more of an expert on the subject ("or the English language" he actually said that) than he was. This is probably one of the worst examples but it can't be the only one.

    You can't make people like that "love" each other. They are protective, bitter, autists who spend all day refreshing "their" articles and reverting the edits of anyone who attempts to change them.

  5. Gave up on Wikipedia long ago by citking · · Score: 4, Informative

    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."
  6. The Auto-Delete Bots Really Bothered Me by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Three years ago or so I decided to try to upload clips to classic rock songs that I had on CD that had their own pages on Wikipedia. They were constantly deleted. If a song had a page, I figured it'd be notable enough to have a fair use clip of it and so for about twenty songs I carefully selected the best 10% of the song (or 30 seconds, whichever is shorter) and turned it into the lowest quality ogg in Audacity. Two bots were particularly brutal (DASHBot and FileBot). Months later someone would seemingly voluntarily orphan the fair use examples I had uploaded and one by one they disappeared. Well screw that, I'm done investing my time into something that just gets deleted by a bot whose owner does not respond when I comment on their talk page asking for help and justification. It'd be one thing if someone would explain to me what I'm doing wrong but it appears what I'm doing wrong is volunteering my time to Wikipedia in the first place. It's not like my examples are being improved or adjusted -- just deleted. So forget it, I have better projects to invest my time in.

    --
    My work here is dung.
  7. Re:Encouragement by nyctopterus · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.