Latest Wikipedia Uproar Over 'Superprotection'

metasonix writes: As if the problems brought up during the recent 2014 Wikimania conference weren't enough, now Wikipedia is having an outright battle between its editor and administrator communities, especially on the German-language Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation, currently flush with cash from its donors, keeps trying to force flawed new software systems onto the editor community, who has repeatedly responded by disabling the software. This time, however, Foundation Deputy Director Erik Moeller had the bright idea to create a new level of page protection to prevent the new software from being disabled. "Superprotection" has resulted in an outright revolt on the German Wikipedia. There has been subsequent coverage in the German press, and people have issued demands that Moeller, one of Wikipedia's oldest insiders, be removed from his job. One English Wikipedia insider started a change.org petition demanding the removal of superprotection."

Comments

Mitre be a problem here

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> Superprotection mandate

Call it Ex Cathedra and get it over with.

Too much good content is deleted at Wikipedia.

[Anonymous Coward]

So I recently heard about a programming language called Nimrod. It's relatively new, but it's very capable and even the venerable Dr. Dobb's Journal featured it recently.

I wanted to get a broader overview of it, so I thought I'd check out Wikipedia's article about it. After all, it's a language I'd managed to hear about, and I don't keep up to date with developments in the field very much these days. It was even featured by a widely read publication. So that should make it notable enough to have a Wikipedia article, right? Nope.

I quickly found out that the notability idiots over at Wikipedia have repeatedly chosen to target it for elimination.

I tried reading some of their justification for deleting the article, but it made absolutely no sense. It's a perfectly good topic to cover, and clearly I and others want to read about it! Yet these totalitarian shitbags feel the need to censor, censor, censor and then censor some more.

The harm these monsters do by getting rid of useful articles far, far outweighs any harm that could ever be done by having allegedly "non-notable" articles exist uncensored. I'd totally rather than the article about Nimrod stay, and anyone who doesn't like it can fuck off and visit some other web site.

Re:Too much good content is deleted at Wikipedia.

[insanecarbonbasedlif]

I quickly found out that the notability idiots over at Wikipedia have repeatedly chosen to target it for elimination.

They've been doing this for years, and long ago burned out my interest in contributing. I've seen 3 pages I helped create/curate get deleted. Happily 2 of the three eventually were re-created by others a year or two later, but a lot of work was destroyed. Let them have their "The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" slogan - I'll continue to be a parasite reading without contributing unless they clean up their practices to prevent the destruction of good articles.

Re:Too much good content is deleted at Wikipedia.

[Mr. Freeman]

People like to joke about how false information added to Wikipedia gets quoted in articles where are then used to justify the information in Wikipedia, but it's actually quite real. It happens amazingly often and no one seems to be taking any real steps to fix the problem. If you go to any article and start looking through the sources you'll find that most of the sources either provide nothing to back up their information, obviously quoted it from Wikipedia in the first place, or actually have the information in such a context that it contradicts what the Wikipedia article is saying.

Re:Too much good content is deleted at Wikipedia.

[GrahamCox]

Exactly. Originally Wikipedia had a statement that "wikipedia isn't paper", so anything and everything was fair game for inclusion. That was one of its great attractions. I have no idea if that still stands, but if so it seems at odds with the whole notability thing. What they *should* do, if notability is an issue, is to have a little +/- thing on each article that rates the article for notability. Over time that will end up indicating the relative 'notabilty score' of the article, without having to have it actually deleted. Brainless fucks the lot of 'em, it's been years since I've contributed to WP, the attitude was just not worth battling over.

Re:Agile can fuck off.

[Just Some Guy]

To be fair, Agile can be freaking awesome. I worked at a devotedly Agile shop and it was a developerocratic utopia. After the few meetings we had, all participants walked away with legitimate action items. You didn't just get called in to listen to something that didn't concern you - if you were invited, it's because you were specifically needed.

I've also worked in places where Agile was a stultifying cover story for "actually waterfall but that doesn't sound as cool so we'll never admit it". That might be the kind of /dev/hell you found yourself stuck in. But that's not Agile Done Right, and shops that Do Agile Right really do exist.

Media Viewer

[Mr 44]

I really don't get the uproar. The crux of the issue seems to be that an update to the software running all the various instances of Wikipedia enabled a new slideshow viewer by default, and removed the ability for site admins to disable it by default (but users still can individually choose their preference).

Tempest in a teapot?