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Wikipedia Losing Contributors, Says Wales
derGoldstein writes
"According to an AP report, 'Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said the nonprofit company that runs the site is scrambling to simplify editing procedures in an attempt to retain volunteers.' He explained, 'We are not replenishing our ranks... It is not a crisis, but I consider it to be important.' Despite Wikipedia's wide-reaching popularity, Wales said the typical profile of a contributor is 'a 26-year-old geeky male' who moves on to other ventures, gets married and leaves the website."
There's an easy reason for this. The admins are, generally speaking, dicks. This wouldn't be a problem if they were in touch with the community, but they aren't.
Or more likely they're sick of the cabals that form. Wikipedia has lost lots of contributers over the past few years because of them, and will continue to do so unless these spergmeisters are kicked off the pages that they edit camp.
As usual, it's a couple of intractable morons that ruin it for the casual contributor.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Many people go to Wikipedia as a 1st search hit. And it's always nice to get decent info. But it's inevitable that it would lose volunteers. It is common for many things. People help, then move on leaving room for others to take up the torch, but somehow the torch gets set down, and no one ever picks it up.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Edit the "wrong" article the "wrong" way and you'll get some asshat jumping on you. Wikipedia isn't exactly a friendly place to new people, or even some veterans, so that makes it difficult to retain volunteers.
Perhaps if the whole thing wasn't run by a small clique of sociopathic dorks who wield a ridiculous bureaucracy in a manner that can yield any conclusion that they wish it to yield, then people might stick around for longer than their first editing war.
Every procedure on that site is a complete farce.
Wikipedia needs to adopt some of the stuff StackExchange does to encourage user participation and APPROPRIATE moderation. The SE platform wouldn't work for Wikipedia, but some aspects of the user system would be highly beneficial. Reputation of some sort would be great, along with better privilege levels.
I once was an editor there. Allow me to illustrate why I am no longer.
It all started when I dared to step into the turf of something one of the "higher ups" considered his. An edit of me was reverted. Not just something trivial that begs for a "citation needed", it was a well worded and sourced piece of information. The reason was that it was "not enough on topic". Ok, I see that differently, but so be it. Not like I have to have everything I write published.
What bugged me was that the day after, my entry was, almost verbatim, in there again. This time under the name of the person who thought it's "offtopic" only one day earlier. But ok, so be it, some people need it for their ego to be the "only authority" on some subject.
The problem started when this became the rule rather than the exception. Whenever something new developed in an issue, it descended into mind numbing bickering whose version gets to stand. And since I'm more in the fact-gathering and less in the butt-kissing game, usually it's not my version that stands. So hey, maybe they don't need me as an editor.
The last straw was when I removed some defacement (IIRC it was an article about greek pillars and someone made a rude reference of someone fucking someone else up the rear) and it got reverted by my personal stalker. It seems, they get butt-kissing brownie points for doing as many reverts as possible, preferably without reading first what got written.
So, in case you're wondering why you don't get more editors, take a look at the existing ones.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The WORLD is run by small cliques of bureaucracy wielding, sociopathic dorks.
Wikipedia needs to amend its "Notability" and "Verifiability" policies badly, and stop deleting articles (which blocks access to the edit history). They don't accept evidence as verification, only "published sources" which use inaccurate speculation and second-hand information. Misinformation keeps reappearing on pages, because it has a citation to some other website which makes the claim, despite that it is untrue.
An example of a time I was highly frustrated is when I was trying to read about the software program called Impulse Tracker, then discovered that its page was deleted. So what if Impulse Tracker is "not notable", its file format is still used in the tracking scene, so I wanted to read about the original program, but can't because the page was deleted. And if I want to reconstruct the page, I can't because the edit history is blocked out.
For example, I learned on it the basics of how cable internet works (routers, modems, etc).
I may be one of those who take it for granted. It's just there. Like the street in front of my house. I know deep down inside that my taxes are paying for it, but I don't think that all the time.
We all know deep down inside that Wikipedia needs volunteers and donors, but we don't remind ourselves of it. We just use it.
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
If by simplifying editing procedures you mean getting rid of the untouchable wiki nazi admins, there may be hope still.
Isn't this the problem with all hobbies? As you mature and get older you move away from things with which you used to fill your leisure time. Hobbies drop off and are filled with spouse/kid/work related issues.
When the typical editor noted in the article ages through the honeymoon/kids period of their lives, I would suspect they will return to editing Wikipedia, even more so when they retire from work. The typical editor will return to editing just like the typical person that built models as a kid or played with toy trains, when they have leisure time to devote without distraction.
[The typical guy who left is someone who] moves on to other ventures, gets married and leaves the website
Yeah right. The ones who left are people leaving in frustration when their contributions get deleted wholesale by script kiddies like Betacommand who are allowed to go postal with killbots.
Don't forget the ones leaving in frustration when the Arbitration Committee decides in favour of people who get paid to "own" a topic and who have the time to astroturf/argue/discuss about their biased edits as long as is needed to drive any honest contributor away. Hint: discussion page activity is in inverse proportion to how unbiased the contributor is....
I agree that it is not a crisis. One would expect that at some point, the bulk of the work will be done. Peak knowledge, if you will. It is much easier to write a Wikipedia article about the process of galaxy formation than to develop a corresponding scientific theory, so I would expect us to catch up to our current state of knowledge. Subjectively speaking, most of the articles are already mostly written. At this point, it is up to specialists in narrow fields to continue improving Wikipedia and to keep it up to date. Speaking as one of them, this is a perfect task for people who work in higher education.
Given the "friendliness" that greets new contributors.
I have entered correct information with references and such in few articles where I am somewhat of an expert, like one where I did my masters in the topic and created couple of pages that were in the page request list in topics where I am fairly knowledgable.
End results: >70% of my edits were removed within few days and in several cases replaces with actual WRONG information. Of the created pages one has today totally wrong information, one has been proposed to merge with another page, but nothing has happened in way many months and a third page was just removed.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The thing is, there's not much important left to write about. All the things people generally go onto Wikipedia for are well-covered - there's data on every country, language, mountain range, planet, president, prime minister, prince and poet. There's a ton of placeholder articles, yeah, but does anybody really want to write an article on a Venezuelan political party from the '40s, a minor asteroid of no special significance, a particular bird species (already well-documented in the family page), or an early-90s Congressman from Ohio? Those are all real examples, by the way.
There's still current events, yeah, but history isn't being made that quickly. And the rise of topic-specific wikis is draining Wikipedia of otherwise useless articles (and their authors). Why have a page for every Pokemon on Wikipedia when you can have a page for every Pokemon on a Pokemon-specific Wikipedia? That's actually a good thing - it lets Wikipedia be an introductory course to pretty much everything, and more specific wikis can be more thorough and detailed. But this does mean that all the obsessive fan-nerds will be moving their Star Wars expanded-universe character bios from Wikipedia to Wookiepedia.
So, really, is a decrease in editors really a bad thing? Does it decrease the quality of already-existing pages? No. Do we need articles being written at a high rate? Not anymore.
There was a time when the quality of Wikipedia articles was so bad that it was easy for me to add something to them and make them better. [Citation needed] didn't really exist, and most of it was uncited. Now a lot of it is complete enough (and has decent references) that it makes a good starting point for research in a lot of topics.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Where Alph the sacred river ran, through caverns measureless to man... Now care to explain why you quoted that? I don't get it.
An empty palace is still empty no matter how much trash you fill it with. Seemed obvious to me.
You sound like a wikipedia moderator. Gee, I wonder why I don't bother contributing anymore - just read all the other posts above. It's no secret.
These Wikipedia people must not be slashdotters. They actually meet people of the opposite gender?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Wikipeidia used to have excellent articles on physics, maths computer science and other hard science subjects. Most of them have simply disappeared. Wikipedia is not limited by paper. There's simply no goddamn reason to delete most articles, especially not factually correct scientific articles as opposed to meandering plot summaries of TV shows no-one adult who isn't a goddamn furry cares about.
There are too many rules, the environment is too hostile (examine the default template "warning" about being blocked, it's a threat, not a warning), pages are guarded jealously by people who will claim that there is no consensus for any change they don't like, etc.
So, fewer people are editing for whatever reason, and many people who try and edit, are driven away.
Some specific reasons some people don't post are outlined [...] reasons [people] don't edit Wikipedia (in their own words).
At the article Chronicling the abuses, a commentator made the point:
This type of slant (on other articles as well) also drives away editors who can't put up with the shit.
So, Wikipedia, because of, in many cases the policies and guidelines currently in place, fails to be inclusive. It is not "newbie" friendly (who has time to read all the rules...), and so newbies are bitten and leave.
So, what's the solution? Well, I think that's easy. Any big organization has problems of a much larger scale than small organizations. So, break Wikipedia up into subject specific Wikis. The general encyclopedia model has been demonstrated to have flaws. Now lets try again. The people who care about web comics can edit on Comicpedia. Etc. Fewer arguments about notability as well.
The profile says it all.
That '26 year old single nerd' is perfect example of the intellectual crusader mentality so perfectly captured by xkcd: http://xkcd.com/386/
If you're not one of them, you're not going to put up with the bullshit necessary to edit articles.
Further, have you ever tried to edit Wiki? It's not just a matter of posting some new text into a text box, there are all sorts of damn tags, etc that just make it too much of a nuisance to bother, even if I know a fact could be better corrected.
-Styopa
Clearly Wikipedia fills a niche. The next step is a p2p model.
Participants run a "shared reality documentation store" on their machines to host documents and media they endorse and a "shared reality documentation client" proxy service which behaves like a web site and queries the stores. It's like FreeNet without trying to preserve anonymity.
Instead of edit wars there would be multiple documents on the same subject competing for popularity. Looking up "Evolution" you'd get dozens of results. The top two would be endorsed by 90% of the well-liked network participants and would represent the two dominant views on the subject. Individuals' search results could be adjusted to take their own moderations into account. That is, if Alice tend to disagree with Bob, the meaning of Bob's input is reversed in the context of Alice's searches.
Users would be pseudonymous but (like Slashdot) would have some sort of aggregate "good citizen" metric based on past behavior as judged by their peers. Users could browse the public behaviors of their peers and assign valuations to actions, including other people's "moderation". I might hate your article endorsements but love your moderation. For people not interested in that kind of granularity, users could have the option to just like or dislike another user (like the friend/foe system here). Users would not be required to provide CPU and disk space to be considered good users, but their decisions about how much to contribute would be public and could be used to make automatic or manual judgments.
Articles would scores would be based on some function of the scores of the users who had endorsed them. Participants can only delete articles from their own store and then campaign for others to delete it from theirs. There would be no global "notability" threshold, only a cumulative score based on users' moderation actions.
This is basically how the internet works already, lobbyists and pending legislation not withstanding. The main difference here is formalization and making a uniform UI which non-techies would enjoy using.
(Yes, I realize this is a fairly raw and flawed proposal. I'm hoping someone will see the valuable parts of it and make it happen.)
If you spend a lot of time writing something, and then somebody decides that it's not "notable", it's unlikely that you will contribute again.
Wikipedia is just bits, bits are cheap, why do the editors act like they are rationing a scarce resource?
wow... that's really strange. It's hard to imagine that somebody's main source of entertainment is just reverting a particular person's edits. Did your stalker just do this to you, or anybody who dared edit "his" page?
My changes were immediately reverted and I was harassed by one of their overzealous editors for not citing a source. The change in question was correcting someone's grammar. I'm not surprised one bit that they're losing contributors.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
I always cite my work when I edit something and I remain factual and not opinionated or personal... yet most of my work continually gets rolled back by editors
I'd like to look through your most recent contributions to Wikipedia and offer tips, but you appear not to use the same username on Wikipedia that you use here. What is your username on Wikipedia so that I can find examples? Without examples, all I can recommend is to discuss all reverts on the article's talk page.
I watched as my contributions, one-by-one, regardless of quality, got deleted.
Please link to the "Articles for deletion" discussion pages for these contributions so that I can help you.
It's run by a gang of mental midget dictator-for-life's who believe that capitalism is the one and only God-given way
Are you on crack? Have you tried editing the page on Karl Marx or Che Guevara? WIkipedia has no shortage of leftards.
So your response to a cyber-stalker is to stalk them back? Sounds like a healthy past-time.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The reality is that well-researched material is difficult and time consuming. You can get maybe 50-60% of the material that makes up what an encyclopedia was in the 1980s from people with passion and dedication but after that you are faced with just a lot of work. Work for no compensation other than ego-boosting.
This reality has been utterly rejected by the Walesian philosphy of knowledge in which there is no real "truth" there is just concensus.
What they are left with is a whole bunch of stuff of unknown quality that people with various passions have written over the years. OK, admittedly some of it is accurate and good but there is no telling what. There is plenty that was written by someone with an agenda and Wikipedia made (and continues to make) it possible for someone with enough dedication to block anyone from corrupting their perfect treatise. Eventually, it is going to be left alone even if the original contributor departs.
The amount of passion that is out there for people to spend time writing and defending their turf in the Wikipedia world just isn't enough for the whole thing to work consistently for a long period of time. Sure, there might be a base of the truly hardcore, but it isn't enough. They seem to have some kind of rating now so people can continue to tune the text according to concensus, but concensus isn't important except in that Walesian dimension. As someone pointed out earlier what you tend to get with enforced concensus is the million-monkeys effect. While it is entirely possible you can get another Shakespear you absolutely will get a lot of drivel. What concensus does is form that drivel according to social norms so it isn't recognized. It is still nothing but the regurgitated ramblings of pop culture.
How do you fix this? Well, I don't think it is possible. Walesian philosophy says that in large numbers there is truth and all truths are equal. With that in mind, what possible hope does a real subject matter expert have? Sure, there might be a few with real passion to tell the world their views on genetics, high energy particle physics or the social orders in ancient Egypt. But they chances they are going to win out over the concensus belief system are small indeed. It was an interesting experiment and it isn't entirely surprising that it lasted as long as it has. But passions move on and Jimmy is unlikely to find much passion out there filling in the cracks in what has been built or taking over what has been abandoned.
I don't edit much any more because I'm tired of making contributions and having them reverted by someone else. What's the point?
Time has a number of effects on people and even sub-people: it causes aging. Aye, with aging the abhuman basement dweller comes closer to the reality he fears: the day it has to come out. Out in the harsh, competitive world. Out in the merciless, fast world. Out, in the world of the Jock. Here in the real world the loserboy abhuman basement dweller, that awful mass of wrinkled fatty flesh, the stench of its stale sweat polluting the air, it has no place. Here it needs to exist and feed itself, here it can only rely on itself and its scarce, laughable skills. Here its quaint "non-competitive" philosophy holds no value at all. And in this harsh but fair world work takes its right toll on the non-person, reducing the undeserved amount of free time it previously enjoyed and hence, reducing the time it can dedicate to "projects" like this "wiki-shitty-pedia". Instead it must toil and strive, its back bent, its head bowed, under a reddish sun. As it should be.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
An edit of me was reverted.
Next time this happens, take the revert to the article's talk page.
What bugged me was that the day after, my entry was, almost verbatim, in there again. This time under the name of the person who thought it's "offtopic" only one day earlier.
That sounds like a "self-revert". It happens when the reverting editor realizes that he made a mistake in a revert.
personal stalker.
Please see AC's post.
Whine whine whine... It is hard to take you and anyone else seriously unless you link to Wikipedia. Citation needed.
I find it much harder to take you seriously if you believe that putting in "whine whine whine" does something positive for you. If you argue like that on Wikipedia, some introspection may be in order on how not to drive editors away.
For everyone who pointed out the _real_ reason why editors are leaving Wikipedia:
Tom Smith - WikiPirates
Some lust for gold and silver, and some for gems and jewels
But some want greater treasures, and they use their software tools
For some of us quest for knowledge, and we wants it undefiled,
But now and then you get a troll who thinks he's Oscar Wilde.
Beware the Wiki Pirates, who sail the server seas.
They flaunt their fake credentials and their advanced degrees.
They control the information with bullying moderation,
'Cause arrogance and online swagger trump your expertise.
No matter what your sources, no matter whom you cite,
He doesn't want to hear it, 'cause he knows for sure he's right
There is no compromising, no bargain or accord,
He's never heard of you, or doesn't like you, or he's bored.
Beware the Wiki Pirates, they love to wield their clout
All day they'll argue details that no one cares about
They don't see as overreachin' their demands for page deletion
Web pages are in short supply, and what if we run out?
Yo ho, yo ho, no one ever thought,
Yo ho, yo ho, in this web we'd be caught,
The Wiki's meant to document the stuff the mainstream missed,
Instead we've got a pompous sot who's building up his wrist.
So if ye've got a subject that really interests you,
Beware the Wikipirates, they've got nothing else to do.
Someday we'll have a knowledge base with all you want and need,
Till then we'll take cold comfort that they're likely not to breed.
Beware the Wiki Pirates, who whine at our attacks.
They're only trying to help us, never mind the rules and facts.
They're just honest, not unpleasant, it's not their fault that we're peasants,
If we'd only see their brilliance, everybody could relax.
Beware the Wiki Pirates, that basement-dwellin' band.
They regulate and obfuscate what they don't understand.
The grief they give ya will reduce ya to trivia and minutiae,
And prayin' that you really do get banned,
Only "public noteriety" will get you in their library,
Be grateful they're all lost at sea... they'd try to delete the land.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
When I search for particular subjects, the Wikipedia and aggregates always dominate the results. Since information on Wikipedia is questionable then what material they have is "contaminated" meaning you have to spend extra time verifying it. "If it's on the internet, then it must be true!" but I like webpages that have the name and contact of the person that wrote the material. And like everything else you have to consider the source, i.e. govt websites, company websites (download useful troubleshoot manuals or simply marketing by dweebs), websites by nutzoid people, websites by reputable people. As we all know who it comes from makes a difference in credibility of information. But many sites I cannot quickly find because Wikipedia hijacks search results!
Wikipedia is useful if you want to find very basic information, i.e. is Gina Lollobrigida an actress, ESA astronaut or photographer? (she is only two of those three).
mfwright@batnet.com
It's not everybody getting married, it's the admins hypocritically deleting notable, sourced articles and edits while endorsing much less notable articles and edits.
And after reviewing other comments here, it seems the slashdot crowd has a majority consensus on this. It's why I quit and the only other editor I know in real life has quit. The conclusion we came to is why bother wasting our time?
BTW, I posted this. Forgot to login first
I'm sure my experience as a contributor was very similar to the rest of the people who has left the building. The first problems arose when I got a "shadow" with my first article, any contribution from my part was changed, reverted or simply deleted. Most of the few articles started by me, ended 100% different in just a few months. Ok, maybe my thing isn't writing but all my images were deleted as well, even with a CC license.
I'm not interested to contribute anymore, life is too short.
Did you miss the rest of my post? Yes, I believe the parent was whining. And I explained why I thought he was whining: the article he edited became better, but that wasn't enough for him. But you are in the same camp, aren't you? You don't really care if someone points out that there is nothing major wrong with the editing process, and your complaints about it are stemming from your undue AND unrealistic expectation of fame and recognition every time you fix a paragraph on a site edited by millions of people.
They don't accept evidence as verification
Get your evidence noticed by a member of the scholarly or mainstream media and they'll accept it. For example, MobyGames noticed PocketNES in the credits of Contra 4 for DS, making PocketNES notable.
Misinformation keeps reappearing on pages
How should Wikipedia tell the difference between evidence and misinformation?
So what if Impulse Tracker is "not notable", its file format is still used in the tracking scene
Then the page belongs on a wiki about the tracking scene, not on Wikipedia. For example, detailed information about the technical specifications of the Nintendo Entertainment System belongs on Nesdev wiki more than on Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:Alternative outlets on Wikipedia and The Wiki Rule on TV Tropes.
And if I want to reconstruct the page, I can't because the edit history is blocked out.
If you want to continue a deleted article on a specialized wiki, go to the deletion review page and ask an administrator to e-mail you a copy of the deleted article.
You mean like, like what they do to... JOURNALISTS? Or, or, or... BLOGGERS!?
Yeah... It is really terrible to see those weekend beheadings of journalists at town squared and daily burnings of bloggers by the mad masses who disagree with their news stories on every corner.
But what can you do?
It's not like there is some sort of a law and order structure out there that would police the laws and do other stuff to protect the people from being lynched by a mad mob.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Anyone that knows anything about the timeline and the releases by nem (hello, world for FW 1.00), the ps2dev toolchain, the Swaploit and K-Xploit tools by PsP-Dev (which most definitely did not involve any "cracked code" from Sony) and Sony's firmware Japanese release dates knows that this Wikipedia article is definitely incorrect.
You could start by finding reliable sources for the release dates of PSP firmware, which shouldn't be too hard. It might be a bit harder to find mainstream gaming media sources reporting on said PSP scene releases though.
Some people like credit for their work. Instead he kept seeing people coming in and 'stealing' his work. Then on top of it just reverting him 'just cause'.
But he did get credit for his work. The edit history clearly shows who actually improved that article and who is a stealing douchebag. The parent's complaints are shallow. The article got better thanks to him, and there is a record of it. What else did he expect?
Wales said the typical profile of a contributor is 'a 26-year-old geeky male' who moves on to other ventures, gets married and leaves the website."
Wow, that's exactly the same typical profile of a /. poster! Well, except for the moving on, getting married, and leaving...
I got down-modded for posting that response? Seriously, go and check out 'For a Free Internet's posting history, he's either a professional troll or a gifted amateur.
I think it has something to do with some kind of e-peen, "who makes the most edits". And, let's be honest, the fastest way to get a lot is to revert something. As long as this means they're undoing defacements and advertisements, that's fine. But from what it seems to me is that there are a few that simply move down the "recently edited" list and revert randomly anything not coming from one of the "more important" names.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You didn't create an environment in which smart people were treated well. You created a cliquish clusterfuck. Eat me.
Sorry, I have enough drama and social troubles in my RL. I'm in no way interested in some in an area where I neither get paid for it nor get anything else out of it. I went to Wikipedia to read articles and add my knowledge on a subject to it where applicable and sourceable. If that's not wanted, no problem on my end of the bargain. I'm neither dependent on being a WP-editor for any kind of income, and neither do I draw my self-respect (or respect of any of my peers) from being able to claim "ownership" of any WP-articles.
I added what I knew, corrected what I could prove wrong with relevant sources and if that's not wanted, ok. You can take a horse to the river but can't force it to drink.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
End results: >70% of my edits were removed within few days
Then >70% of your edits should have led to talk page discussions.
one has been proposed to merge with another page
This often happens when a stub article looks like it'd fit in well as a section of another article. Can you link to either of the surviving articles in question?
Does it relate to "Xanadu", the decades-in-development ambitious hyperlinking system for information? That would tie in to wikipedia, tangentially.
How many people outside of wiki editors do you think LOOK at the history page?
I hope you're humorously imitating some of the psychotic editors that are causing such problems over at Wikipedia.
Probably the person from Porlock was Tim Berners Lee, trying to protect the WWW from competition.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
So credit is not enough for you? You DO expect fame and recognition by masses when editing Wikipedia? You seriously don't see a problem with that?
It is being worked on. For the time being though see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cheatsheet
Seriously, with the deletionists and all the other rampant Napoleon syndrome/computer courage bastards who have special priveleges it makes it so no one wants to waste their time submitting articles. When you delete an article with perfectly valid info just because it isn't pretty enough, rather than fixing it, you pretty much have made it clear that you don't want people to contribute, you want elitist assholes to contribute.
I'd rather have a poorly written article on some obscure subject than no article on an obscure subject.
The notoriety bullshit needs to go as well, wtf does it matter, the disk space is so fucking cheap that there is absolutely no point in deleting anything ever. So to get notable, I have to put up a couple fake print books on a couple of the sites that will let you publish pretty much any PDF to paper ... so if I want to fake something, I can still do it with practically zero effort. All wp accomplishes by deleting these articles is a loss of potentially useful knowledge.
Deletion for lack of citations is another one. Mark it as uncited in some big obvious way (As is already done) BUT DON'T FUCKING DELETE IT. Just because it doesn't have citations that fit your retarded idea of what a citation needs to be doesn't mean its wrong or invalid. Rather than delete it, let me know its got nothing to back it up (which I can figure out by looking at the citations list ... like you do in every other publication like this) by putting a header on it that says so (already done) but leave the fucking thing there. Someone else might find it and add citations, you gain absolutely nothing by deleting articles. Not only do you lose the articles themselves and their public presence, after a purge you've lost the history too.
The deletionists are basically book burners, and we should treat them EXACTLY the way we'd treat anyone in the real world that came and tried to burn our books ... burn THEM at the stake.
An article is subjective rather than factual? DON'T FUCKING DELETE IT. There is almost certainly SOME validity to even the most subjective of statements. By leaving it there, you're more likely to have some person like me see it and think 'god I hate when fuckers get it so wrong because their fanboys' and I'll spend the next 3 or 4 hours fixing it, adding citations, putting my reasoning on the talk page, ect .... and then the next day some douche will say 'no your wrong' and it magically goes away ... regardless of the fact that I've posted citations to documents on websites like say .... nasa.gov backing up everything I've said. No talk page discussion, just delete or revert depending on the page and the douche thats protecting it.
You want Wikipedia to have a chance? You're going to need to replace your entire staff, and make it publically known that you are doing so, and then you need to pray that all the people like myself who have gotten so fed up with your staffs bullshit ... actually come back and give you a second chance.
You've already dug your own grave Wikipedia, you can now climb in it and we'll bury you, or you can make a good attempt to fix the fucking problem, but fixing the problem is going to require a changing of the guard. And no, there is no other solution. Your staff IS THE ENTIRE PROBLEM.
Take away the fucking delete button, remove it entirely from the wikimedia software, there is NO REASON it should exist on wikipedia (obviously copyright issues make that statement untrue, but you can deal with that off line manually as the C&D letters come in, its not going to be that common.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Hey I didn't mean to say you did anything wrong. If anything, I was trying to encourage you to ignore the horseplay and go back to improving Wikipedia whenever you see the need and have an opportunity.
Long ago I noticed once that the well-sourced facts set out in one Wikipedia article contradicted a claim (not directly sourced) made in a related article. So I naturally edited the claim to correspond to the facts, mentioning the edit was for internal consistency. I hadn't come to edit an article, but I consider it to be a Good Thing to fix small errors as you see them.
Unfortunately for me the claim happened to be in a gay-related article and apparently embodied the PC position towards this incident.
The storm hit. An admin reverted it without comment (against Wikipedia rules). I explained the reasoning in Talk and reverted back. Then he reverted again, no comment. Now I reverted, explaining he was violating the rule about explaining reversions.
Count: Two reverts for me, two for the admin.
The admin reverted again, saying I needed to cite the source outside of Wikipedia (the same source the other article cited). So I re-did the entry and re-posted with the suggestion. I can work with people, and take positive editing suggestions seriously.
Count: Three reverts for me (if you consider a repost to be a revert), three for the admin.
He reverted it AGAIN without comment, blatantly breaking the three revert rule. Then he said if I tried to change it again it would count as a 3RR violation and I would be banned. I checked the admin's personal page, yep, a gay activist.
At no time were the facts in the other related article challenged or changed. At no time did he tell me I was wrong, or that my edit was factually incorrect. He just didn't want the facts to be on that page.
Even if an admin isn't involved, a cabal of supporters can do the same thing, reverting your posts at will. They can get one or two reverts each, winning while you hit your three revert ceiling. There is really no consensus as Wikipedia tries to reach, since a small, organized and dedicated cabal can easily win over the unorganized concensus of many casual editors. If the cause is a liberal one, it is most likely that their cabal will be supported by the admins.
Now I try to stay away from anything relating to PC, but even then it can seep into the most neutral-seeming articles.
The poster is a spam account trying to make his account look more legitimate by making posts and having people reply too him so it looks like he's been here for a while.
When you see something that clearly makes no sense what so ever, assume it was a bot running on a spam account, ESPECIALLY first or nearly first posts. Some of them are clearly MegaHAL based bots by looking at the speech they produce.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
> FTA: "A lot of editorial guidelines ... are impenetrable to new users."
I'm not a wikipedia editor, but I do edit on other wikis. And yes, there's factionalism, cabals, groupthink, it goes by many names.
Unfortunately for some, I have grown out of my "putting up with bullshit" stage. The nice thing is that you can document the history of this bullshit. The not so nice thing is that you then have to make a fight of it.
And that's the crux of it, right there. People edit Wikipedia because they find it entertaining or rewarding to do so. "Making a fight of it" isn't fun, for most folks.
Why do topics have to be "notable" to be included?
Notability isn't a policy itself as much as a consequence of verifiability, one of the core content policies of Wikipedia.
Why is it the standard that topics have to prove themselves "notable" or die
If a subject is non-notable, it's impossible to determine whether claims about it are made up.
If you initiate BRD but the camper doesn't cite any specific Wikipedia policy or guideline that your edits violate, and the camper continues to revert your edits, then the camper is in violation of the policy on ownership-like behavior. But I'd have to see a specific case in order to be able to give more specific advice.
No, I don't expect fame and recognition from editing wikipedia articles. What I see as a problem is OTHERS looking for that and trying to claim it.
Slashdot has figured out how to fix this problem.
Most comment sections on news Web sites are junk, usually not worth reading. But on Slashdot, the comments are generally more entertaining and useful than the articles themselves.
Why is this? I think it's because of the clever moderating system. Ordinary users get to vote comments up or down, and the result is that the trash sinks to the bottom, and the good stuff gets highlighted.
So Wikipedea should try the Slashdot approach...let people vote on the edits that should be reverted, and which ones should be kept.
The poster is a spam account trying to make his account look more legitimate by making posts and having people reply too him so it looks like he's been here for a while.
When you see something that clearly makes no sense what so ever, assume it was a bot running on a spam account, ESPECIALLY first or nearly first posts. Some of them are clearly MegaHAL based bots by looking at the speech they produce.
I am? WTF are you talking about twitrod?
Did you ever see Citizen Kane. No probably not. You don't have to make your house out of glass to live in a glass house.
You don't dig an offbeat comment that's fine. I have been OT'd plenty of times. But I also more 5-Funny to my credit in the year I've been here than your entire life. The reason? I do not always run the beaten path to a pad answer.
Now go bot yourself.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Power without accountability to the people that you're exercising power over is dangerous.
The only "danger" here is that someone's time might be wasted. If you let that happen to you repeatedly, then you are a fool but nothing worse.
I'd go further and argue that editors should disclose their real names, too, as that provides some accountability for content.
Exactly how will they be accountable? Are you going to fire them? Cut their pay? Call them juvenile names? Tell their mommy?
Some people really more qualified to edit an article than others.
Certainly true but who gets to decide who the "more qualified" person is? Particularly for cases where the differences in qualifications are not large.
That sounds familiar. Everyone who votes keep is classed as a sockpuppet, because someone noticed the page was marked for deletion and posted a message notifying the relevant community, who logged in for the first time to object to the deletion. Rather than saying 'welcome, improve the page, become active contributors' the response was 'fuck off, we don't like your sort around here'. I saw this happen three times before I gave up on Wikipedia. In one case, the vote was keep, the page was then nominated for speedy deletion by someone whose only contributions to Wikipedia were comments on talk pages and marking articles for deletion, and then deleted after counting all of the people who voted 'keep' as unperson.
Wikipedia should be using non-notable pages as a training ground for new recruits. Sure, put a notice up at the top saying 'this page is about a topic that is probably not very notable and isn't subject to the same quality control as the rest of wikipedia', but then leave it alone. Let people contribute. Welcome their contributions. And then try to encourage them to contribute to more important topics.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I think there are a lot of math articles that are more confusing than needed, but are well sourced, and they're hard to improve without pissing the original editors off.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Hey assclown number 2, all I was trying to was wake up the guy who called me a bot. For you I have no useful words, you seem to have found them all and will find many more in your hero folder with your hero friends.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
They were warned about this years ago. Former wikipedia administrator Kelly Martin wrote whole treatises on it. in her blog. A former admin under the pseudonym of "Parker Peters" wrote up apt descriptions of why it happened - power-mad individuals abusing their "buttons", individuals who gamed the system, gangs who formed to "control" articles - on his blog too.
I've found this discussion to be particularly apt, a discussion of precisely how Wikipedia fails to retain newcomers because most newcomers who actually make an edit are quickly shooed out the door by either the POV pushing gangs or the edit-count-aholic "recent changes patrol"; adding in to this is the fact that the trigger-happy admins remaining no longer stay remotely within policy, as the average "visitor vandalism" punishment is not a block of one day, but one month or sometimes more directed at DHCP addresses, and generally these power-mad fools compound the problem by instantly locking down the talkpage so that if someone else were to get that address, they can't even ask for an unblock... not that the unblock process ever actually works any more, since the same trigger-happy gestapo types patrol the Unblock Requests page.
The underlying problem, the thing that drives people away from Wikipedia, is that it's impossible to get started in. The admins are, just about uniformly, complete dickholes. The "regulars" who remain are either edit-count-itis freaks who will play revert-war with automated tools just to get their edit count up, or are shameless sycophants who play hanger-on to those admins deemed "in power" - the goal of both groups being to boost their chances of someday getting the "extra buttons."
To paraphrase Douglas Adams, the first problem of Wikipedia admins is that nobody should be allowed to do it who ever actually WANTS the job.
The secondary problem is that those sections that really need fixing, are the domain of power-mad admins or control-freak groups who maintain them and drive people away as quickly as they come in order to WP:OWN the content.
The third part is that you can't even talk about Wikipedia without having to reference byzantine, contradictory, fucked-up rules. You can't participate in Wikipedia without memorizing most of them, and the moment you cross one of the power-mad fools they call admins or some of the POV groups, you're going to get hammered over the head with those same "rules", and before you know it you're going to be on the end of a longstanding block with a talkpage lock if you dare try to file an unblock request that says, in essence, "please unzip so I can suck your cock o powerful sir."
If you think I'm joking, try reading their own guide. Explaining why you believe the block was out of policy? ZZZTTT! WRONG! Pointing out that you're being targeted by people with WP:OWN issues or that you're responding to a major problem involving some other Wikipedia policy violation? ZZZTTT! WRONG! The only way you get an unblock requested is to (a) know a corrupt admin who happens to be your friend or (b) play the "mea culpa mea culpa" game.
Oh, and as for using CheckUser to show that you are NOT a sockpuppet after the favorite tactic of dickhole admins and POV warrior alike, the false sockpuppetry accusation? Sorry. CheckUser is Sooper Sekrit Kangaroo Court Data that can ONLY get you sent to the gulag.
They should do what legitimate encyclopedias once did: hire writers who actually know WTF they are talking about and editors who know how to manage.
For example, for one of the most famous editions of Encyclopedia Britannica, Albert Einstein wrote the article on relativity (and no doubt a professional editor helped with the English).
This goes against the naive "everybody is equal on the Internet so they should be equal on Wikipedia" BS. Of course it's not true on Wikpiedia either---the obsessive passive-aggressive deletionist nerds and pettifogging procedural bureaucrats practically run the place and this has little correlation with insight, but a huge correlation with pissing off more mature people who know the subject.
With good editors then academics can get "publication credit" for writing and editing articles.
I also [received] more 5-Funny to my credit in the year I've been here than your entire life.
Dood, I get +5 Funny here all the time, and I'm a fuckin' idiot. For the sake of your self-esteem and all that's holy, please don't ascribe any real-life value to slashdot moderations.
Some moderators are too strict. No wonder wikipedia is losing contributors.
I do not understand how someone can think they should work in a scholarly capacity and expect anonymity while simultaneously having authority.
Wikipedia is arguably NOT a scholarly work, and it certainly has no meaningful "authority". It is not the sole or primary source for any information pretty much by definition. Anonymity or the lack thereof of the writers has nothing to do with whether the information presented is accurate or useful. If Wikipedia were to present too much inaccurate information, people would cease using it as a source. As things stand it is a useful source of information for some limited things. It is up to you to understand where those limits are.
To put it simply: Why should we believe anything Wikipedia says is true if they aren't even truthful about their identities?
Easy. You shouldn't assume anything written on Wikipedia is true. What is written may be true but it also sometimes is false, misleading, confusing or incomplete. You shouldn't assume ANYTHING from a single source is true no matter what that source might be or no matter how good their reputation. The same goes for the organization - in fact the same goes for any organization, not just the Wikipedia Foundation. Listen to what they say and come to your own conclusions based on all the facts available to you.
GP makes a valid point, there are spambots that pepper forums with posts like that. There's no need to take it personally and whip out your sweet posting cred just because people don't get your old reference.
Suppose that real names were required on WikiDickia. How do you verify that people are who they say they are?
Day 1 of wikipedia's new real people only campaign: I roll up and register that I am Stephen Hawking. How are you going to verify that? Unless, I start spouting off that the universe is actually a giant banana, chances are slim that you would even suspect that I am not who I claim to be.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
We are running on the same system we had in 2001. It is fucking terrible.
The staff is not the problem. There are staff with similar responsibility all throughout the world of web communities, and they have demonstrate only hints of the level of idiocy and trolling that Wikipedia staff show.
The problem is everything fundamental about the project. Working with articles as the unit of data: FUCKING STUPID. This is handled by copying and pasting content across articles that need the same information, rather than having subarticles that can be included. Having single, 'authoritative' versions of articles: COMPLETE FUCKERY. This leads to a vast majority of strife, edit warring, and trouble because NPOV articles are a completely failed concept.
Stop generally being a fascist monster creating insane policies that destroy efforts at community, and maybe your website will flourish again instead of being a case study in the wrong way to do things.
P.S. did anyone else imagine in 2001 that we would still be using a fundamentally unchanged MediaWiki software for Wikipedia? "Wiki formatting" and shit? Fuck.
Where did they get their facts? Wikipedia is flourishing. Don't believe me? Give me ten minutes then go check wikipedia. http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-05-08/
by those contributing articles, sort of like the the karma system here. You can't vote if your karma is bad.
I would not recommend real names, in this day and age that is like handing someone a gun and hoping they don't shoot. There are too many crazies out there that would only be cowed by a crowd but have one person "do them wrong" and you could end up with admins needing to go to the police for protection.
My problem Wikipedia is that is seems the words repository for current culture, meaning music videos, if not single songs, are bound to have full pages dedicated to them without question but things older than the editors rarely do, and if the page does come in existence it might not live long. The notability/annotation/etc requirements work hard against tech that has literally fallen off the net.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
If(1) you(2) have(3) to(4) cite(5) every(6) single(7) word(8) and(9) punctuation(10),(11) the(12) articles(13) are(14) going(15) to(16) get(17) hard(18) to(19) read(20).(21)
We're dead of we have to recursively cite parentheses.
I dunno, I go there occasionally, drop a few edits, and they seem to stick around and nobody complains. I don't even have an account. Maybe it's the type of page I tend to edit, or maybe it's that people who experience the above problems just don't get what an encyclopedia is supposed to be and don't make quality edits.
(hint, it should take you at least 10 minutes a sentence if you are properly fact-checking, ensuring you are cross-linking where helpful, and choosing your words carefully, as one should when writing such material. If you don't have time to do that, then instead drop a suggestion on the talk page for someone else to consider if they decide to work on the page.)
Someone had to do it.
The Admins are definitely a problem. There needs to be some kind Admin Review process, or a time limit on their terms as Admins. In my experience, it's possible for a small group of editors and Admins to effectively push a point of view.
I edited a statement in an article, pertaining to the historical beliefs of a religious organization, in order to bring it inline with what is overwhelmingly accepted by scientists in the field. I soon found my edits getting reverted by a group of editors and Admins, all with profiles mentioning an affiliation with the religion in the article. They would use the rules of Wikipedia, and insist on verifiable citations of every basic fact, while at the same time, providing no evidence for their POV other than their religious texts. I found myself arguing on the side of science, trying to verify statements which no scientist disputes (essentially trying to prove a negative), while the other side argued their interpretation of evidence, citing religious scripture and folklore. The problem with Wikipedia can be summed up by this quote from one of those editors:
"differing views should be presented and not just eliminated because one thinks they are not true. The truth doesn't matter - what matters is the verifiability."
I eventually gave up any effort to work on these articles. Two weaknesses of the Wikipedia model were clear: Any statement that can be found in print, whether it be a scientific journal article or a purely speculative interpretation of a verse from scripture, can be used to meet the standard of Verifiability; and, a small group of editors who manage to get a few members of their ranks promoted to Admins can effectively keep a point of view in place across a range of articles.
"I'll die before I surrender, Tim"
It's the Great October Revolution all over again.
Then perhaps you have to correct Wikipedia "through the back door", so to say, by getting the mainstream gaming press to publish corrections to its articles.
I disagree strongly. How did they get the staff that is so terrible? I think the guidelines put staff in a ridiculous position.
Sounds like they need more 26 year old geeks working on Wiki. Personally, I think the site is pretty useful, but go on and have housewives from Tennessee writing articles about their battle with dermatitis and it just might resemble 'Yahoo Answers' soon. This is such a non-crisis.
Now we won't be able to read a detailed plot of the latest crappy Hollywood movie or know which episode of Family Guy a particular subject was culturally referenced!
I've always understood the Trinity as one god with three user accounts.
But as I understand you, you claim that a three-faced God makes Christianity not monotheistic, or that the presence of other spirit creatures makes Christianity not monotheistic. If this view is widespread enough for a general-interest encyclopedia, as opposed to a specialized wiki on Wikia or the like, there ought to be other authors with the same view whose works have been reviewed by the mainstream press.
If you start out with describing the other person in terms of "whine whine whine", it really doesn't matter what you say after that, which was my original point and that you clearly still haven't taken to heart. I have no stake in Wikipedia wars.
This is definitely true. They've pigeonholed themselves into the wiki parser (and all it's limitations/quirks) when technology has long since passed that format by.
I think another overlooked problem is the lack of a solid interface for data. There's list upon list of various data sets that are completely isolated. These could be incredible tools that interface with the main article to provide meaningful content that does not require multiple updates. As it is now you need an insanely complex template system of isolated objects. One of the best examples I can think of is actually on http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Dragon_Age_Wiki take this page as an example: http://dragonage.wikia.com/index.php?title=Heavy_chestpieces_(Dragon_Age_II)&action=edit It requires 15 different templates, 18 transclutions of objects that are written in "wiki code" instead of something the average person could edit.
I actually created a template on that site quite a while ago.... how many people could make sense of this: http://dragonage.wikia.com/index.php?title=Template:Approval&action=edit (I tried pasting it in here, Slashdot complained about too many 'junk' characters) All it does is put a picture and a green or red number in some text. I look at it now and I don't think I could modify it without first deconstructing it piece by piece.
Ever tried to just fix a spelling error? Good fucking luck.
You are new here, ain't you?
But that's not really as much of a problem as the huge barrier to entry that byzantine rules create. They're probably even running short on OCD recluse zealots.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
I wrote an article on someone who's career predated the internet, had published several books and published groundbreaking research with Nobel prize winners. Deleted for "lack of notability" because there isn't much about him on the internet. Meanwhile, there are 50 articles on Pokemon, an article on every NBA player, and an article on every town in America. Note: Ever been to Harpster, Ohio? Not notable.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Power corrupts.
~Syberz
I have, several times. I corrected various little things. Nothing that should've been remotely controversial. No account or anything like that.
Result? Reversion, every time.
Fuck it.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Why not ask that question in a non-anonymous post?
But I'll answer it anyway. Because it's not worth the effort. I believe the assertions -- I've seen it happen. I could cite examples, but I won't, because I just don't care anymore. Including not caring about whether or not you believe a word of this post (whoever you are).
The Wikipedia moderation^Wedit system is broken. Fuck it, drive on.
-- Alastair
Lock the basement door. (runs)
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I don't have any cred, and I don't care. But bot I am not.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
There's no other place like Wikipedia. I've never had any big problems when editing, but then again, I don't edit much. Still, if the common sentiment is that the Wikipedia editors are dicks, that won't bode well for new contributors. If it fails, hooray, woo, sparkles. But it's a useful place, and I'd to see it go under just because people can't get along.
Stating you don't like a pattern of behavior and leaving so it doesn't continue to bug you isn't whining. Some people don't feel the need to continually put up with assholes who are bent on harassing them. Walking away is perfectly reasonable. There's nothing whiny about recounting a perfectly on-topic personal experience in a remarkably neutral way regarding incredibly immature behavior on the part of a Wikicrat.
Or, if he's lying, why are you whining about it? Your post certainly qualifies more as whining than the OP's does.
I see several ex editors here talking about the abuses they suffered that caused them to leave Wikipedia, but at no point do they talk about making any attempt to stop the abuse. If you take a little time to document your actions and pay attention to Wikipedia's natural documentation, you can take these abuses to a higher authority and get some action taken. How can you complain about the problems with the system if you simply bent to the whims of the abusers?
I find it ironic that several people are proposing that demanding real names would solve some of Wikipedia's problems because I was banned for life for using a "spam user name", which happens to be my real first name (I have never used a nickname since I got online in 1986, except in systems that use numbers as user IDs). Now I know that is not the real reason, but it is the official reason and the only option they offer for getting my account unbanned is to post a special message selecting a different user ID, which then wouldn't be my real name.
My guess is that the real reason I was banned was because my home page (which was deleted) only had a short phrase about me and a link to my home page, which is a company page. When I created my account (a few years before the guy who banned me), I took a quick look at a few other user pages and most were like this so I just copied their style. If this is not acceptable, then just delete the page. I don't care: I was asked to create a page when I created the account though I didn't really want to. But banning for life seems a bit harsh.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jecel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Jecel
It's not that editing is so difficult, you fools. It really isn't - I have set up MediaWiki installations for several purposes and even the people who have very little affinity with markup languages, etc. are doing ok editing content. Theirs isn't as polished and they certainly don't write new templates, but they certainly have no trouble putting content into the wiki.
The reason people are losing interest in contributing to Wikipedia is twofold:
a) the easy picks have been picked. There are very few common topics where much editing is needed anymore. Your home town, your country, your favorite sports team and TV series already have their WP entries. As do your hobbies and the species of your pets.
b) if you do contribute, chances are high that your edits will be reverted or your pages deleted. Part of the reason is a) - your page was likely a duplicate - and part of the reason is the incest, crazy admins, deletionists, power-mongers and all the other fucktards who consider WP as their personal playing ground that needs to be defended against newcomers.
So between not being able to contribute anything worthwhile and being treated badly when you try, anyone is actually surprised editor counts are going down? Seriously? The only surprising thing is that it took so long for that to happen.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I attended a talk this year that Jimmy Wales gave at a local university, where he described wanting to actively increase the number of women contributing and editing Wikipedia. Barriers he cited included the fact that "Men are very comfortable making authoritative statements about things they know nothing about."
And you just hit the nail on the head why Wikipedia sucks. it might be good for finding out which wire to switch to make a crossover cable (although frankly I don't even trust it for that) or some lame fact about 1880s tractors but if it is anything somebody might have decided to claim as their own? Fuck you its getting reverted.
Hell I got banned for daring to ask EXACTLY what counted as "notable" since I had provided BOTH the exact disc and minute on the director's commentary a mistake was pointed out as well as a link to the director's blog where he pointed out that what was on the screen was not what he shot but had been changed by the suits after he had finished.
All I ever got was "not notable" and when asked what exactly IS notable if both the director AND writer don't count I got banned for daring to question the almighty admin. Fuck them, I have better things to do that take abuse from little shits when I'm not getting paid. it really doesn't surprise me they can't keep anybody, if wales gave a shit he'd be watching the admins and tossing the douches. Instead he lets them run riot and turn the place into their own little asskissing wank fest. no thanks.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Wanna be an Ãoeber-admin - register with your Name, Home Phone number and Address.
Possibly a photo of you holding an ID and a card sent by Wikipedia to the address you listed.
You know - something you know, something you are, something you have.
Hey... with great power and all that.
Naturally, anything but the name would not be available to general public.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Were you also drunk while writing that? Possibly on drugs?
Cause those are some of the most incoherent and yet actually somewhat understandable sentences I've read in a long time.
The whole post doesn't make much sense though.
The best that I could grasp from it is that you hate journalists and bloggers.
Also Jews and Chinese.
Damn boy... Didn't your pappy thought you ANYTHING, boy?
Jews, Chinese, Commies, Faggots and NIGGERS!
How could you forget that?!
Some days boy... you just really disappoint me.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Term limits?
You mean the movie where the guy dies alone, yet everyone seems to know his last word?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Nothing in this thread indicates that you are not a bot.
There our bots on dating sites as clear as your posts.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Or, if not outright reversion by the site, careful editing of a subject one knows well and are working to make accurate re-edited into oblivion by people who know it considerably less well.
And then there are the "locked" subjects, where really poorly put together subject matter can become perpetual; you couldn't fix it if you wanted to.
It's one thing to be asked to contribute to a global knowledge resource; it is quite another to do so and have your work tossed aside for all the wrong reasons, or be locked out in favor of someone considerably less qualified than you are.
There is a vast swath of the population that is poorly informed (to be kind) and the idea of editing open to all is never going to fly as long as no one oversees the quality of people's work; on the other hand, if the clueless and/or deluded are in charge of such oversight, it can't work well either. I think it would take a very, very careful set of policies and people -- and a solid review process -- to make this work any better than it does (which isn't very well, frankly.) Add that to the sheer amount of data involved in a concept like wikipedia... and you get chaos -- no matter how orderly the formatting of the site and the cute little notes about "this article needs..." make it seem.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
that are about to have a lot of free time. I suggest you find ways to get Baby boomers interested, as they are all starting to retire.
This is also a big drag n the economy; why no one talks about it is beyond me.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You are new here, ain't you?
wow, piece of shit detected
Seriously, between the general dickishness of the contributors and the fact that they seem to take themselves way too seriously, what's the point. I'm not going to go to Wikipedia because I want to seriously research something anyway, so why take the attitude that you're better than everyone else.
I've had articles that I follow from time to time deleted for "non-notability" even if they were well-sourced and had verifiable information.
Did you take them to Deletion review?
History deleted.
Deletion of an article only removes it from public view as not part of the encyclopedia. All revisions of all deleted articles are preserved in history and are visible to administrators. Ask an administrator to e-mail the deleted article to you.
Down the memory hole.
The misnamed "oversight" process, or suppression of a revision from even an administrator, happens only in cases of blatant copyright infringement or defamation of living people. Very few articles get suppressed.
why doesn't someone start "RealPedia" which is Wikipedia as it was back before all the nonsense?
Want Wikipedia without notability guidelines? You could always try joining or starting a specialized wiki about a given topic on Wikia. If you plan on starting a specialized wiki, you could even start by getting deleted articles e-mailed to you. The YTMND Wiki, for example, started with the deletion of three articles about fads on YTMND.
So credit is not enough for you? You DO expect fame and recognition by masses when editing Wikipedia? You seriously don't see a problem with that?
With slapping your name on someone else's work without even bothering to thoroughly erase the victim's name? Yes, I see the problem with that, asswipe.
It was simply an inconsistency in Wikipedia. Sourced information in one article said one thing, while another article stated differently without a source. It was a long time ago.
Although in looking back at it now, it appears it was "some say" weasel-worded around the problem. I'm sure putting WP:WW on there would get slapped down fast, but I'm not about to try since I know it is an admin- and cabal-controlled article.
Wait, now I see the sources in the other article are gone, all content regarding it removed, claimed to be NPOV or UNDUE. I guess my rogue admin finally got to that article too. That information had been up there for a rather long time. I guess the PC cleansing hadn't gotten around to it.
Slashdot has *exactly* the same problems -- unfair moderations, an ultimately ineffective meta moderation process, complete lack of accountability for the official editors, wrong-headed bans, known, repeated misbehavior on the part of the official editors; part of this is because of secret moderation (not anonymous -- I don't care who an editor *is*, but I sure want to know which specific editor is responsible for a bad moderation so their reputation on the site may be associated with their actions on the site), there's more too, but it's pointless to go into -- slashdot is run as an authoritarian, top-down system where far too little care has been used in selecting the all-powerful top tier, and consequently we get extremely bad moderations in bulk quantities.
Just like Wikipedia.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If you research and post a modification of an existing article, particularly if one is biased or flawed, it can be vetoed with UNDO in a blink of an eye. Bad faith edits such as graffiti need UNDO. Users must declare if an edit is graffiti or not. Good faith edits need to be reviewed publicly, and not undone so fast. The easiest way to detect conflict is creating transparency for comparing editor and article version is with concordances of words deleted and added by author in an article, and over the life span of an article. It would help find who is misusing the UNDO, and create the basis of limiting power of editors who are not helping.
But then, why does notability matter anyway?
Because notability is necessary for verifiability. If no reliable sources care enough about a given subject to write about it, how are claims about the subject supposed to be verifiable?
And you, sir, judging by your choice of words, must be a grizzled veteran.
Stop double-spacing every sentence.
But that's what it has become. It's also interesting that you ignore what actually drove him away, someone stalking his edits and reverting them for no reason. No wonder you posted anonymously.
The two things that set Wikipedia apart were the fact that it was unrestricted in number of pages compared to a physical encyclopedia, and its open editing approach which allowed it to effectively delve into subjects that wouldn't be worth a print publication's time. Wikipedia will never replace professional editors and academic publications for in-depth research, but it does a smashing job of helping get the basics of damn near any subject down in under 30 seconds.
The very fact that I could use Wikipedia as a reference to find at least a stub and a couple links about some obscure Swedish Metal band, or a Spanish-language sitcom that ran in Colombia from 1979-1981 is EXACTLY why I was a fervent supporter (both financially and with volunteer editing) for years.
Sadly, the rampant deletionism and counter-productive notability guidelines have neutered the entire point of Wikipedia. They haven't gotten a dollar or an edit from me in years, and I really can't see that changing.
what matters here is that it is types like you which have made Wikipedia shit for everyone else.
Yeah, my occasional fixing of typos and uploading of pictures really turned people away. I really made a splash there. Go, check it out, it's the same nick. You see, when I want to troll, I come to Slashdot, and when I want to be helpful, I head to Wikipedia. People who whined about Wikipedia's hostility today probably do it the other way around. Sure, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia and Slashdot is an uncensored, opt-in moderated pseudo-news board with illiterate "editors" and a strong GNAA presense, but hey, don't let these basic facts get to you. Keep defending jerkoffs who badmouth Wikipedia, but won't give us a single link to a documented instance of abuse.
I've only ever made one proper edit, and many spelling corrections. As far as I know, most of the spelling corrections stayed made- the only reversions seem to be where my edit has gotten caught in the crossfire of some other edit/revert war.
My only real edit was made on a very large, major article, and survives to this day. Looking at it now (many years later) it is really an appalling bit of writing, but it's inoffensive, it adds value, and it's still there. So no complaints from me.
My only bad experience was once trying to make a correction on an article about sci-fi. There was one individual in particular who was running amok, and there were already serious flamewars on the talk page before I started. Suffice it to say, I took a deep breath and walked away.
Why do people volunteer for anything? Basically, they never "get" anything tangible from it. If they volunteer to donate blood, they get a free pair of sausages where I live, more a symbolic act than actual payment (seriously, even bums wouldn't do it for that, they prefer to donate plasma for cash). If I volunteer my time for some "noble" cause (for varying definitions of noble), I probably won't get more than a "thank you".
Then why did I edit it? Because I'm one of the old creed hackers of "spreading knowledge multiplies it". Knowledge and information is to be disseminated and handed to those looking for it. That's how knowledge will become more, with more people knowing more and hence being able to build on top of more knowledge. Actually, I didn't even expect a "thank you". I did pretty much what you describe, I shouted facts into the darkness, hoping that someone finds them interesting and learns something from it, just like I gained some insight from Wikipedia.
It's kinda disheartening if someone in the darkness shouts back "shut the fuck up, nobody wants to hear your drivel". It makes me wonder if I invest my time wisely.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Please explain to me why I should invest my time, and quite a bit of it, into editing an article for a 50:50 chance to have it reverted at the whim of someone who considers it "his" article? I could have used the two hours editing to earn money. Or jack off. Or do something else that would have been more productive than editing WP only to see it undone because I stepped on someone's turf.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Because it improves the state of everyone's knowledge. Sure, editing Wikipedia is harder than it used to be, but it's not because of the community or the policy. It is because the main body of work is complete, the standards are higher, and there is more scrutiny. There is a way to keep Wikipedia (or any community project of a similar size) organized, fair, and free from vandalism, and it's a bureaucratic process. You and others who whined here over the past few years always have the same story: your edits got reverted, so you lost interest and quit. That's perfectly fine and you are a hero in my book until there is an implication that "they don't need you as an editor". They do, but you just don't seem to understand what an editor is supposed to do. It sounds like you expected to edit articles in a vacuum, which is not realistic. In a project this large, you need to be a bureaucrat as well, which boils down to resolving conflicts through discussion and filling out official forms. Really, there is no other way to do it. It's an overhead, but frankly, it's nothing compared with the research that goes into an article, so you should definitely give it another go. With just a bit of patience and a consistent effort, you should be able to bulldoze over jerkoffs who try to game the system and get your edits the exposure they deserve. You will succeed every time, because your edits are good, the software keeps a complete record, and moderators do read the history.
My criticism about no links provided is also valid and goes hand to hand with what I am saying above. You guys so obviously don't care about your own contribution or the community review process, you didn't bookmark a single instance of alleged abuse. And you want us to believe you cared before? I am not buying it.
The rules on what is and isn't a 'reliable source' are open to interpretation
This is in fact one of my biggest complaints about Wikipedia. When I asked on the talk page of Wikipedia:Verifiability or Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (I don't remember which) for a clarification that might lead to a more rigorous definition of a reliable source, I was told I was being petty.
Admins appear to love deleting new articles.
Then don't create new articles. Adding a section to an existing article about a related subject is less risky than creating a new article. New editors not yet familiar with wiki politics can let someone else decide when a subject is independently notable and thus deserves a split.
I think Wikipedia moderation should use https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Delphi_method
Slashdot = Sarcasm
I was an editor on wikipedia. Probably edited 10-15 articles. Most were about my local town and nearby villages. They were fine. No problems. I signed up for a wikiproject and proposed a change in the design of the page. My brother, who is my house-mate, saw this, and made 'sockpuppet' accounts to support my change. I was perma-banned. I have defended myself, pointed out that at times he was online on another account while I was, showing that he was a different person. They didn't believe me, so I have been banned for close to 3 years. 2 weeks ago I received an email that an admin had unlocked one of the talk pages of a sockpuppet account, for no reason, other than to appear busy. I no longer make edits to wikipedia, and the articles that I created are no inaccurate, but there is no one to update them.
Wikipedia has become crap maintained by creeps. An encyclopedial LCD.
Kind of like Myspace/Facebook/Google+.
I once had hope that it could be a general collection of all our external memories. There is no need to prune astroturf (people can figure that out and ignore or laugh at it), personal observations (hey, who says each individual is right, or wrong), and capture fleeting (auto)biographic knowledge.
Just stop editing. Maybe a slashdot-style random moderation could help for a while.
And you really, really need real name attribution for when the libel lawyers come to call.
God rest you merry, Jimbo. Sorry things didn't work out.
--
The more project management you do the less likely your project is to succeed. - Google CIO Douglas Merrill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Human_anus#Endless_image_contention
The fundamental problem is that Wikipedia's governance structure has no meaningful mechanisms for self-correction. In one sense, it is being run by a Congress where members are selected for life, and control the selection of their colleagues. In another, it is run by the online equivalent of Afghan warlords. Wikipedia seems to combine the less attractive aspects of both metaphors.
I was against an anti-US contingent on a military issue, but I got lucky with a rational admin who realized I knew what I was talking about, they didn't. It helped that I used to actually run the hardware in question.
Yea, I'm with ya Skids. I added a reference to
Great Tits regarding small frozen bats not long
ago.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_tits
It has stayed there for a month or more.
Someone better aquainted with the system
than I, properly added the provided reference to
the appropriate section. The system worked as
advertised in that instance at least.
I miss the old magnetic perineum jokes.
I think you are pretty close. /. recycles its moderators. Very quickly. This is probably not quite doable for wikipedia.
I suggest that there is some limit on the length of time one can be an admin. Increase the size of the pool (still have screening), but decrease the time you can admin. There are lots of ways. Some sort of cycle - 6 months on, 6 months off - that sort of thing...
Some pages are speedily deleted because they're illegal to distribute to the public. If the backup of deleted articles were public, that would put a bigger strain on the oversight group as people would use the backup of deleted articles as a place to host encoded porn and warez as well as defamatory text.
You are new here, ain't you?
That makes two of us then since my userid is #36999690 and yours is #36999802. I guess you should have signed up before breakfast that day, then you wouldn't have missed me by 112 or 0.0003%. Anyway your response is another example of what I was talking about.
Post IDs. Yeah... I'm a moron.
You are trying to play this off as you not being serious to protect your ego, but you weren't trolling, you were expressing yourself. You see yourself as having made a valid point and we are all trying to deny you the bragging rights of your insightful critique. When that didn't happen, you attacked. When that failed, you tried to play it off with a joke. Life won't go well for you until you realize what the problem here was - it wasn't your point being ignored.
Dude, are you seriously?
I find it much harder to take you seriously if you believe that putting in "whine whine whine" does something positive for you. If you argue like that on Wikipedia,
Do I? (Go and see, it's the same nick.) And if I do, how does it invalidate my point here on Slashdot? My point was that the OP was whining, that the editing process is not all unicorns and roses, that he needed to grow some hair on his chest, fill out a few forms, and go back to improving Wikipedia.
If you start out with describing the other person in terms of "whine whine whine", it really doesn't matter what you say after that
I wasn't describing a person, I was describing the tone of a single post. And why cannot I point out that someone is whining? And even if I am wrong, why does that automatically invalidate everything else I say?
A conversation is an exchange of facts, but it is also more than that. It is a social interaction. If you were having a discussion and the other guy suddenly struck you, that changes the conversation even if a strike is irrelevant to facts and arguments. Of course you can't be violent in text, but perhaps the analogy could be illuminating. Starting off "whine whine whine" doesn't invalidate your arguments, it invalidates the interaction with you. It changes the subject from facts to a fight to be the bigger dick, and it is hard-to-impossible to change the subject back to arguments and facts. Your point is not being ignored, you yourself changed the subject to something else. The word "whining" is an attack and not an argument, it is no different from calling the OP an idiot or any other generic word like that. You can do that, but then you change the subject and you can't go back to the discussion you wanted to have.