Slashdot Mirror
Wikipedia Editor Says Site's Toxic Community Has Him Contemplating Suicide (vice.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A longtime Wikipedia editor wrote an email to a large public mailing list Tuesday, saying he was contemplating suicide due to online abuse by his fellow Wikipedians. "Nobody on Wikipedia seems to be kind," he wrote. "You are all so busy power tripping that you forget there is a real, live person on the other side." He lamented that obstructionism by other editors stopped him from contributing to the site's "great mission -- one I feel so keenly." The email was sent to the Wikimedia-L mailing list, which is one of the largest community-run Wikimedia mailing lists and has hundreds of subscribers. The editor was upset after an ongoing disagreement with other editors on the "talk" pages of an article about a local politician. The debate devolved into name-calling, the editor wrote, and eventually he was completely banned from editing the site he had devoted so much time to.
The online world is like drunk people. Some drunks are mean, some are nice. You get to know the real person if they have had a few drinks, honest, crook, lecherous, moral. Same for how people behave when they have some power online and can ban folks they disagree with. They are online drunks.
...fuck Wikipedia. It's entire model can literally be summed-up as, "King of the Hill." Whoever camps at their computer to edit pages is the editor, regardless of any acumen or credentials with the subject matter, and without regard to any actual rules that govern article structure or citation.
If Wikipedia wants to fix this, they need to disallow users from camping on pet articles. They need to disallow reverts based on style that have nothing to do with substance and have no real benefit, and they need to ban users that continue to engage in these practices. Until that's done the entire process will be at the whim of the cave trolls that patrol the site because they have nothing better to do.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
If you're contemplating suicide based on something going on with the Internet, you have lost perspective and need to go outside.
Back in the day, I hade almost several 1000 quality edits - which is to say slightly more than typo correction - but walked away for many of the reasons that this guy puts light on. Suicide would have been a bit of an over reaction, though.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Isn't wiki software open? Start your own encyclopedia.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I wouldn't kill myself if I got banned from submitting PRs to my favorite open source projects. But people can get obsessed, and those are the kind people who edit more than one page on Wikipedia.
Also, just as a friendly reminder: buying into the left's propaganda by using the word "toxic" as an adjective for anything other than chemicals is not a constructive or even informative way to describe a social environment.
And... as a followup to my post. If you get suicidal over online crap. You need to get off the internet and go outside to play.
Move along, nothing to see here.
Doesn't matter if it is a job, a website, a community knitting group.
If the people there are getting you down so much, then you need to get out.
It's highly unlikely that you can fix an aggressive rude culture like the one he describes - not in a short term anyway. Surely Wikipedia has behavioural standards for editors, etc?
Some people are more sensitive than others. Telling all of those to GTFO will lead in a lot of resources wasted. Because, believe you me, the power hungry assholes usually aren't the great contributors to society they want you to think they are.
I can relate to his experience - not in wikipedia, but other forums, including slashdot and LinkedIn. I have found that most people are nice, but there are certain people who become nasty very quickly. Those individuals can easily destroy a discussion. IMO we need to expect civility in online forums - otherwise, why have a forum? People should not make personal attacks - comments should be issue focused. I see a-lot of posts on slashdot that get personal, like "you are an idiot", etc. That is not appropriate - it is childish. IMO, a comment that embeds a personal attack should result in the commenter being banned for awhile at least.
If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.
There are online communities that haven't copped out and let assholes take over. It isn't actually necessary to tolerate these people. It isn't easy, and it requires strong leadership, but it is possible.
I don't know if wikipedia can be salvaged at this point. The powers-that-be seem to be happy in their mess.
I gave up on fixing Wikipedia errors when I received an official notice warning me about vandalizing a page for fixing errors on it.
better to see resources wasted, then humans.
While dated, much of FYI-28 / RFC 1855 is still applicable and the world would be a better place if more folk followed it.
As Dilbert long ago pointed out, the craziest person wins any debate where the only thing that matters is persistence.
Now maybe we know what happens to the second craziest person... they commit suicide?
People suck, but are worse on the internet, where any wanker is a multimillionaire, genius with Close Personal Ties to The House of Saud, George Clooney, Danica Patrick, and attended the private funeral of Steve Jobs.
Go on vacation, and make sure there is no internet where you go.
On the Internet, no one knows you are a dog.
They are fighting over a politician's wiki page, and how awful or perfect they are.
They are all scum, problem solved.
When anything you're doing is evoking feeling so extreme, time to step away and do something completely different for a while to recollect yourself and regain some perspective. Don't do the futile thing of hoping you can cope or change things for the better in your current position while you are experiencing such extreme feelings.
Wikipedia is not a way of life, it is not someone you love, it is not worth suffering or ending yourself for. Find something that makes you happy.
Twinstiq, game news
True but time away from the internet will let you see that not everyone is like that
And... as a followup to my post. If you get suicidal over online crap. You need to get off the internet and go outside to play.
Yup.
This is the challenge of putting anything out to the public, since it becomes a form of public domain. Even if the copyright technically belongs to a small group, the stake holders are in the millions and the unofficial armchair committee huge. Sometimes the best thing is to know when you need to agree to differ and walk away from the shitfest. It is not always easy, but the short term pain may make the long term so much better.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
In the last number of years, reaching a fever-pitch since the GamerGate stuff, I've noticed a serious decline in the quality of discussion online, practically everywhere I look - *puts tin foil hat on* it's as if there is a deliberate and co-ordinated effort to completely destroy a lot of online discourse.
We saw the news of the paid Russian shills a year or two ago, any person to ever step foot in an Israel vs Palestine discussion has seen paid shills - why are we not paying the same critical attention, to the fact that there must be paid shills among other monied political groups, such as among Libertarians, Finance/Banking and Economists in general?
We already saw the astroturfing from the Tea Party movement - and if you dig into the motives behind the leaders of the Libertarian movement and look at the realpolitik, you see that they have everything to gain from degenerating the course of online discussion, and promoting Divide and Conquer type distractions over social issues (such as mens rights vs feminism) - to distract/block people from discussion the economic end of political issues.
We haven't outed the online shills within western society yet - and that should scare us, because we know they must exist - we need to out them.
Gawd, I hope he doesn't read /.. /..
The most God-awful trolls who are devoid of any sensibility
to their fellow human being and are without soul post on
CAP === 'mandated'
You would be surprised at the amount of inner strength it can take to remove your finger from the trigger, remove the gun barrel from against your head, and walk away. Don't associate admitting that you've gone so far down a dark road that you're considering ending your life with weakness. You sound silly to those of us who have been there.
Personally I try to skip editing the pages where there is any element of sensitivity to the content. Let others war over that stuff. There is plenty of other material that needs improving. It's peaceful that way, and you'll accomplish more.
-Bob-
Instead of being an "editor", just "quit" and go outside more. Problem solved.
I just can't comprehend the idea of using the internet to satisfy my social needs to the point that some jackasses on Wikipedia could ruin my day. I've noticed that paradoxically there's something about conversations where getting punched in the face isn't a possibility that tends to make them very uncivilized.
Special snowflake wants a wiki safe space?
Generally I find that in cases like this, the lack of skill at "abuse", which is what a disagreement is often revered to by the so called "victim" is what causes this theatrical whining. Wikipedia is clearly not is arena to be fruitful in. tough shit.
The actual message is here. The politician mentioned in the story is this guy.
The politician, Salim Mehajer, is really something. Sort of an Australian Donald Trump. He runs people over with his super car, threatens people, violates election laws and then gets himself acquitted or wrist-slapped for all of it in court. The editor wanted to elaborate on details of this stuff in Salim Mehajer's Wikipedia page and the powers-that-be blocked him. Seems like the editor was trying to do the equivalent of investigative reporting, to the degree that it amounted to original research and detail excessive for a Wikipedia page.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
What are they, 13? Probably shouldn't be a Wikipedia editor if they can't take criticism. Also, everything sounds a lot harsher when you read it in email.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Yeah, perhaps this is someone investing too many eggs in one basket. I don't like "toxic" or "problematic" unless what follows is an evidence-based description of why it is so.
I can see how people get fucked up online. Imagine your favorite bar, where you go a couple of nights a week. Been going there for years, and then one night you find it closed. It's reopening as a gastro pub. Sure you could keep in contact with the regulars but, as we find when online games shut down, perhaps the bar was the main thing these people had in common. This doesn't make their relationships shallow - it just worked in that time and that place. It's those over the hedge chats you had with your neighbor, as you cut your respective lawns. It was fulfilling, but you lose contact when your neighbor moves to the town over. You feel a loss, and try to call one another, but over time the calls become increasingly infrequent.
Yeah, some people invest too much in one thing. Perhaps it's comfort, or minimal effort required. Having been through this in both meat space and online, I'm thinking that creative destruction may be the way. Nothing lasts forever, and it's better to try new things and risk moving away from existing comfort than to rest on your laurels.
TL;DR get out more
The democratization of anything leads to a decline in the quality of the conversation. Look at what it has done to politics!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
But, get afoul of the wrong people, or post even a minor change in a topic that some troll considers his personal property, and you will see the toxicity, From the article:
Yep.
http://gizmodo.com/updated-anti-science-trolls-are-starting-edit-wars-on-1724422402
Here's the link to the Wikipedia editor's message
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-May/084230.html
And I sit here in my car and contemplate suicide. My despair is total. There is not a kind one amongst you. You have taken my right of appeal, my ability to protest and my dignity. You have let others mock me, and I have failed to contribute to Wikipedias great mission - one I feel so keenly.
I failed. I'm not sure what I'm going to do next. I will drive, I don't know where. I pray my family forgives me.
Chris
Ta bu shi da yu
Sent from my iPhone [!]
But don't worry, he's fine!
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-May/084241.html
Followup: Chris is fine :-) All is well. He's quite touched at how
many people rallied around to help him. Mostly he's a bit embarrassed
about just how many people this email went out to, but he's pretty
public about his depressive illness in order that others will be less
shy.
He wants you to know: "Please tell anyone else who has similar
suicidal feelings that life is wonderful and it's worth every painful
and wonderful moment."
Also I told him to put 127.0.0.1 en.wikipedia.org in /etc/hosts ;-)
Step away from the keyboard. Go outside. Find another hobby.
Some of Wikipedia's abusive admins and editors need to face consequences for their actions. Imagine if deletionism was useless that any attempt to delete articles resulted in a Streisand effect. Imagine if Admins needed police vetting and social skills training to stop power triping neckbeards becoming admins. If someone does commit suicide due to Wikipedia, then Jimbo needs to be thrown in jail for allowing such a toxic environment to exist.
Wikipedia needs to have their servers raided and checked for criminal evidence of harrassment.
If any admin is reading this, resign now and apologize for your power tripping.
Tragedy of the Commons.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Don't do it, allowing bad behavior to destroy good things just encourages more bad behavior. People who know how to accomplish something worthwhile are the only hope in a world full of loonies.
JoeR
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-May/084230.html
It's true power hungry assholes are generally not good contributors, but neither are people who crumble because someone said something mean on the Internet. Emotional weakness leads to a tendency to avoid confrontation and so a tendency to follow what the group think.
I've tried to make edits. There was a page where I had cited evidence from multiple sources that my change should be accepted, and no reason was given just a "nope". So why bother?
Solution: stop making Wikipedia an important part of your life. They only have as much power over you as you give them.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
A depressed person when confronted with the shitheads of the internet thinks of suicide.
A healthy person when exposed to the same people on the internet thinks of homicide. Because the world would be a better place without the shitheads in it.
Do your duty, make the world a better place for everyone.
This Public Service Announcement brought to you by the NRA.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Because that's an actual option in this day and age right?
lots of comments here are saying 'get a life', 'get out', 'stay away from them if they make you miserable'
if only life was this easy
'get out' of the place you have been dedicating a lot of work
'get a life' when life and internet are something mixed up together now, and the people you most speak with are the one part of the community you are supposed to leave
'stay away from them if they make you miserable' and ignore all the ones that make your life brighter
i was part of a wiki community (UrbanDead Wiki), and it was a toxic environment at times. There were several occasions were i felt bad about what was happening there, and left it for a while, only to return a few weeks later and resume my work there. In other occasions, i prolly was the toxic guy, which helped drive some users away from it. Its insane, and full of Drama, and reflects the same kind of toxicity that i noticed on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia communities. Its not part of the code, but its something embedded on it like a curse.
"life is a joke, and someone is laughing at me"
Sure it still sucks, but show me something better and that will suck too.
For Science and Math and a lot of facts, it is much better. But for propaganda, it's much worse. The encyclopaedia entry on a given politician did not used to be made by that politician's intern or PR firm.
Real lawyers write in C++
He DONATED his time as opposed to devoted... it is their time now.
Bullying destroys lives. Simple. Don't bully.
Last Mother's Day, a group of self-righteous feminists and white knights launched attacks on (at least) two communities on Facebook (that I know of). It was the typical social justice mob attempting to defame anybody who might dare make any kind of sexual commentary as being pro rape. There was also the typical COINTELPRO tactic of trying to further shame anyone who disagreed as being drama queens.
Community A banned a few people and the problem was solved.
Community B buckled, gave into their COINTELPRO tactics, and nearly drove one of their more creative and enthusiastic members to suicide.
The "go outside to play" stuff is just more bullshit from these bullies. When one suddenly loses 50+ contacts and gets shut out of an IRL event they were going to perform at, it's a little more than just internet drama.
(Food for thought. One of the targets was transgendered. Other targets were homosexual. Oh, and bonus points when some other AC attacks me for being the person who was suicidal. Go to hell. I'm fucking sick of the COINTELPRO tactics, and they're easy to see.)
Well considering the internet has provably increased depression in people with weak minds, yeah they really ought to get off the thing and go through a 3 month "grow-some-balls" course before even thinking of coming back to this shithole of wires and bits.
Weak-minded people will always be bullied by society. It simply does not tolerate them.
Companies take advantage of them every year in the millions.
The internet is not a safe place for these people.
Your work is valuable.
You may not hear it very often, but you are appreciated.
Open-sourcing an encyclopedia is no different than open-sourcing software; you only attract mentally-deranged maniacs who think that you can never do enough for them. The moment a "community" has any say or power over a project, it either turns into a complete mess or a hostile work environment... sometimes both.
From what I have seen it is very rare that good contributors crumble. The most common response is "Fuck this shit, it's not worth my time." and then they move on to more rewarding projects.
It's not that they can't handle the abuse, it's just that it isn't worth it.
There are places that pay well for someone willing to take abuse, there is no reason to accept it for free.
This is shown by the support for Trump.
There had been a gradual decrease in empowerment in one form or another. Back in the old days there was a well defined class structure.
White higher than Black, Men greater than Women, now this is going away, and some people think it is because of Political Correctness is taking over. It isn't it is because we as a culture are trying to flatten the class structure. So now the failing White Male can no longer go and put his power over a successful black woman. So now he needs to realize that he is a loser, or just blame society for his problems, because he now finds himself in a position where he deserves to be.
Now the internet where there is anonymity means he can insult and try to place his power over people just by spamming, where there is no real recourse for such behavior.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Or, perhaps people should have a "don't be an asshole" course instead.
When you have the choice to be an asshole or a reasonable person, why be an asshole?
Love sees no species.
better to see resources wasted, then humans.
Exactly! Always waste resources before wasting humans. Wasting humans before wasting resources never works out.
How can you believe anything there? I've seen a number of things I know to be wrong - truth by consensus merely means we agree on our untruths, not that it describes reality.
grow a set and pull the tampon out... geez
And it's worth it.
It's not my intent to be callous to its effects on the people who put the effort in, but Wikipedia is without a question the most correct, current, and expansive singular source of knowledge that mankind has every seen. It's far from perfect, but it's literally the best that has ever been. It might just be that zealotry and incivility is the only known way to provide a rigid standard of quality control in an organization where there are no genuine laws, authoritarian oversight, or wage structure to hold over peoples' heads. So, if the ends justify the means, then keep it up!
But if it doesn't-- if the emotional effects on some is too great a cost for the benefits, then someone needs to find another way to facilitate the intellectual and emotional drive for people to volunteer their own time to put so many hours of work into building and maintaining such an important source of information.
Complaining about its imperfections is insufficient.
I keep hearing over and over again about how communities are better than individuals, multilateralism is better than unilateralism, open source is better than proprietary, or whatever, and then I see entities like wikipedia which epitomize the "mob mentality" where the most involved are contemplating suicide.
Somewhere Rey is camping in a little hut where she doesn't need to be told by a cackle of editors how to spend her time or whether her life is important.
Look guys, if you want to avoid the road to suicide (and by suicide I include the majority of people on slashdot who are searching for technology as another way to check out from life) you're going to have to do something radical. Like Jesus Christ radical.
The world and its desires are passing away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever. 1 John 2:17
Perhaps you don't understand human nature....
It doesn't seem like this person crumbled at the first mean thing said to them, it's more like an on-going series of incidents over a long period of time. Most normal people are like that - generally stable and able to cope with what life throws at them, but if put under sustained pressure will eventually crack.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
What of the emotionally strong with a sense of self-worth who figure that they can go contribute somewhere not populated with self-important assholes who never grew out of the terrible twos?
Save the GTFOs for the assholes.
Quit being a fucking pussy. Nobody is responsible for your happiness, or lack thereof, but you. If you're too much of a wimp to handle the fact that people aren't always nice, then we're all better off without you.
He should try hanging out on /.
I think Tyler the creator put it rather succinctly.
Yeah, you never get assaulted in real life, that only happens on the internet.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
"When you have the choice to be an asshole or a reasonable person, why be an asshole?"
When I'm talking to someone and I want to be understood I speak the common tongue (English in my case). If I want to speak to someone who doesn't speak english maybe I switch to THEIR tongue so I can be understood.
When someone *IS* unreasonable and *IS* an asshole sometimes they only UNDERSTAND the language of 'asshole'.
Seriously, do it already.
While I wouldn't encourage anyone's suicide, it would be Wikipedia deletion mania taken to it's logical extreme.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Sure, everyone gets pissed at the Wikipedia community from time to time.
The answer lies on the following line of options:
1) Pick a less contentious set of articles to edit...politics is toxic either with or without Wikipedians. .... ...
2) Take a "Wiki-break" - simply leave the site for a month and do something else.
3) Delete your Wikipedia account - treat Wikipedia as a read-only medium.
4) Boycott Wikipedia altogether.
5) Disconnect the Internet to your house.
27) Go live on a far distant island where the word "Internet" is unknown.
999) Kill yourself.
Personally, I'd want to get up through at least the first couple of options before jumping to the last one.
www.sjbaker.org
The problem with Wikipedia - as I see it - is that it is no longer an open space for collecting whatever-quality information from the general public; and it cannot, ever, reach anywhere near the new goal it has set for itself, which is a hig-quality, peer-reviewed site with accurate and/or balanced content. Basically, they shot themselves in the foot by reaching (way) too high.
Anyone with any sense knows that counting on Wikipedia for fundamental accuracy is, and has always been, hugely hit-and-miss. As it stands now, some pages by their very nature settle out at one extreme or another; one I am familiar with is the page on Atheism, which begins with one accurate sentence, and then wanders off into absolute theist-oriented nonsense before the paragraph is done. The page has a history of being locked to change, while presenting incredibly distorted views of the subject matter. It can't stay accurate, even if it were to be edited to be so at any one point in time, because atheists understand atheism to be one thing, and theists understand it to be another, and never the twain shall meet. When the editors freeze it, though, then it ends up in whatever extreme it was last edited in and... we have an echo chamber.
Some pages are reasonably accurate, typically those that engender little or no controversy. Others are like the atheism page, pretty much tripe that you'd have to say "oh, no way" if you wanted to provide someone an accurate reference to the matter therein. Knowing which is which requires someone expert on the subject matter before they even arrive; and that makes the pages into an echo chamber at best, and completely misleading at worst.
I have no objection to a net resource that is not accurate (that pretty much describes the whole Internet universe, in my opinion) but I am uncomfortable with a resource that claims accuracy, but can't actually reach that goal, and worse, as in this example, actually promotes nonsense. It's too reminiscent of Fox News "entertainment" take on reporting for me.
They have other severe problems. Put up an image you took, and they will very likely take it down. They're absolutely insane about attribution and so on; I used to try to provide high-quality, relevant source images in the areas I am qualified to do so, but the static level from "editors" never sank below a deafening roar, and my images were as likely to be deleted as not. I have better things to do with my time than try to fight those kinds of battles, especially as there's no winning against such opponents.
Someday, it is my hope that someone will start a wikipedia-like site (the code is available, though the cost of a site like this is high) and keep their eye on the ball: collecting information from the people at large, without claiming any particular level of ultimate accuracy that is impossible to actually achieve. An information free-for-all is one thing; a kingdom ruled by a small cadre of anally retentive assholes is entirely another.
Copyright law and that lowest class of human beings, lawyers (and legislators, but really, I repeat myself), aren't helping either.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
So explain all the groupthink on tech sites like Slashdot. It's arguably worse here (and other similar sites) than other places on the net.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
> (Upon seeing the email, Motherboard immediately contacted local law enforcement, who are responding to the situation. We are not naming the person who made the post, but we believe the story is notable because of its public nature and the fact that nearly the entirety of the editor’s letter centered on the toxicity of the Wikimedia community, a topic that is increasingly a part of the overall Wikipedia conversation.) > Update: The person who posted the letter has been contacted by local law enforcement and says he is feeling better. I see this as over the top.
My wife is involved in a number of Facebook communities, and some of the other members can get pretty mean sometimes. They’ll belittle you for remarks they disagree with, or whatever. Sometimes it gets a little upsetting. So what she does is temporarily deactivate her account and stop participating for a while. When she’s over it, she reactivates and continues on.
Reminds me of the difference between goth and emo:
Emo: Life sucks. I wish I was dead.
Goth: Life sucks. I wish you were dead.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
I disagree with you, so I will censor your opinion. No, we don't each get our own section for conflicting views, I delete your text, and substitute my own.
/. does.
Oh, wait. That's not what
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
Wikipedia is the best site on the internet. Ok, best site since the dawn of mankind. If you can't take the heat please don't be an editor there. Just use the site like a normal user.
Please pass this info on, ty.
Donald.... Is that you?
All large or power-holding places to be filled with those assholes, since everyone else was driven off. Since this occurs everywhere as it is a property of human nature / society every place will have these self-important, belittling assholes except places small enough in personnel to not possibly fit into a statistically representative sample of the larger society you live in / interact with (the statistical population).
Even if you start your own business / organization you will be dependent on outside factors in the form of investors, customers, and/or specialists (stock brokers, specialist PhD's, traders, legal, etc.)--all control a lot of your group's income . Those people can be the asshole and there's not much you will be able to do about it (i.e. pick: deal with assholes or go bankrupt).
Geez, what a pussy! Can we bring back the draft?
No, you just get modded to a -1, which doesn't delete your text, but it hides it from everyone.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
Wikipedia has a completely corrupt editorial process that is structured to censor and hide the truth. Editors with connections to certain topics (school alumni) are able to obstruct truth from being posted and prevent people from even researching history of discussions regarding decisions made by the editors. Example:
In August 2011, a high-school student named Savannah Dietrich was sexually assaulted by Will Frey III and Austin Zehnder, lacrosse players from Trinity High School, an exclusive Catholic high school in Louisville, Kentucky. Read:
http://www.wdrb.com/story/19428803/parents-of-juveniles-accused-of-sexual-assault-upset-that-names-are-public
Now read the Wikipedia article about Savannah Dietrich:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_assault_of_Savannah_Dietrich
Will Frey III and Austin Zehnder are not mentioned anywhere in the Wikipedia article even though their names are now common knowledge and have appeared in many mainstream periodicals (see above). Trinity High School is also not mentioned in the Wikipedia article, even though Paul Richwalsky, the morally corrupt and ethically challenged state prosecutor who offered the sweetheart plea bargain to Will Frey III and Austin Zehnder was a graduate of Trinity High School.
If you visit the Trinity High School Wikipedia page you will find no mention of the sexual assaults perpetrated by Trinity High School students Will Frey III and Austin Zehnder, even though Trinity High School has a history of sexual deviance, including sexual abuse by their football coach Philip “Dale” Anderson:
http://www.wlky.com/news/former-catholic-school-teacher-football-coach-arrested-on-sex-abuse-charges/27579740
Try adding the names Will Frey III and Austin Zehnder or Trinity High School to the Wikipedia article about Savannah Dietrich. Their names will be censored by Wikipedia editors quickly. Try writing about sexual assault / sexual abuse controversy on the Trinity High School Wikipedia page. It will disappear quickly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_High_School_(Louisville)
In August 2012 Wikipedia removed a passage added to the Trinity High School Wikipedia article outlining the sexual assault controversy surrounding Trinity High School students Will Frey III and Austin Zehnder. The factual passage and all references to it have been deleted from the Wikipedia database and the account for the author Freedomc has been blocked:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Trinity_High_School_(Louisville)&offset=&limit=500&action=history
Parents considering sending their children to Trinity High School because it is a Catholic school with high moral values will have to search elsewhere to learn the truth about Trinity High School. Wikipedia is useless and pathetic and needs to restructure its editorial process so they do NOT censor entries from their system based on editorial decisions.
better to see resources wasted, then humans.
Nah. Humans is a renewable resource.
And wasted humans can be quite funny at times.
However, if they are oversensitive all the time, they retard the interactions of others with their drama. At some point it's better to let them find a way to build a hugbox that doesn't derail the point of the organization.
People are always at different points in their lives, some never reach the point where they choose to be a reasonable person than an asshole. Sometimes it is easier to be an asshole than to continue an argument. The easy solution is to ignore said asshole. I have never understood why people let others have such an effect on them. It is YOUR choice how you react to somebody. They are offering you poison, whether you drink it or not is up to you.
Wouldn't a normal person realize that this is online, and that they can just walk away? It's not like this is your physical neighbors doing this, where it really would be reasonably difficult to solve the problem. Find something else to do online.
This sounds like someone who wants more attention than what they're getting.
false dilemma, since 'asshole' and 'reasonable' are subjective depending on the rationality of the person making the judgement.
Seriously. It's on the internet so it will never be what you want it to be. I can't speak for anyone but myself here but I'm at my most "sane"where anything online is concerned when I don't give a shit about it. Internet things are simultaneously incredibly important and completely worthless. The idea is usually important but as soon as you involve human beings in your holy quest to make a free encyclopedia or a free operating system or anything else you could do online for the betterment of well, "everyone" you bring in some life-crushing assholes who disagree with you. Note, you may very well be someone else's version of a life-crushing asshole. You probably are. You have to be able to walk away from it.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Power without conscience
Hmm
3) Make a public comment in an effort to reform a dysfunctional organization that claims to support the general public. There are a lot of problems with wiki-everything and the toxic atmosphere has always kept real academics at a distance, allowing for a potent combination of pseudo-legalism and popularity contests to replace the real rigor and peer-review that defines the production of knowledge.
Dear Wikipedia Editor, If it wasn't wikipedia, I'm sure you would find something else to get gloopy about to the point where you want to end your life. Step away step away.. alter your reality and destroy your illusions..
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
You aren't wrong.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I like to avoid confrontration and have a tendency to reject group think... Confrontation is bad in my view, it never leads anywhere and the winner of the argument is whoever is the best bully. At some point it's better to give up rather than argue with idiots; they're never going to be swayed by any argument so why waste the energy trying.
If some shit I'm doing makes me want to kill myself, I stop doing that shit. Especially if I'm doing it for free. Gotta wonder what kind of person would consider killing themselves versus just leaving with a giant "Fuck you, assclowns" note on the way out.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
When a reasonable person goes up against a reasonable person, a solution may be worked out.
When an asshole goes up against an asshole, a solution may be hammered out.
When a reasonable person goes up against an asshole, the asshole wins. Worse, the reasonable person will find himself without support, because all the other "reasonable people" -- even if they agree with him -- will tell him it's not worth the conflict, to pick his battles or to not die on this hill or whatever metaphor they prefer.
Thus, when dealing with assholes, be an asshole. And if you're a reasonable person on the sidelines of a reasonable person/asshole fight, for crying out loud resist the urge to play Neville Chamberlain.
Because you can't make it anywhere in politics by being a reasonable person.
Well Mr Smarty Pants. I've never gotten raped on the internet. Wish real life were like that.
Maintaining individual power levels to the extreme of sabatoging the site. I'll use them to take what has value but have long ago stopped trying to contribute do to the sort of fuckery described by many across the internet. Both these sites don't seem to understand that crowd sourced solutions require that the crowd is educated in the topic, not expert in the site mechanics.
From Merriam-Webster:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/toxic
Full Definition of toxic
1
: containing or being poisonous material especially when capable of causing death or serious debilitation
2
: exhibiting symptoms of infection or toxicosis
3
: extremely harsh, malicious, or harmful
4
: relating to or being an asset that has lost so much value that it cannot be sold on the market
And a friendly reminder: Not knowing the definition of a word and then blaming it on a political side instantly makes you a tool for both the left and right to use.
For them, it's only harassment if they're the "victim".
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
OP is correct! I edited the article with a citation and within 9 minutes it was rejected by a journalism student named Alex McCann from Ohio University. I wonder if his professors know he is engaging in censorship on Wikipedia. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/ind...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
EOF
He should seek professional help to work through things. However, the whole "a bunch of people online behaving like children makes me want to kill myself" is just blaming others for one's own problems and seems like attention seeking.
The online world is like drunk people. Some drunks are mean, some are nice. You get to know the real person if they have had a few drinks, honest, crook, lecherous, moral. Same for how people behave when they have some power online and can ban folks they disagree with. They are online drunks.
Citation Needed
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
The real problem comes in when you give the assholes free reign. Unfortunately they're not likely to be eliminated in all contexts but they can be placed at arm's length.
Since assholes stuck at the terrible-twos don't tend to produch much other than stress and resentment, organizations that don't control the problem tend to fail while their employees fling feces at each other.
Obligatory Penny Arcade comic: John Gabriel's Internet ******* Theory
... like unplugging his internet access and living in the real world instead of online.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Over-protected children tend to think that nothing and no-one can harm them. So they think they are invulnerable, and free to harm others without risk. And they think the internet is anonymous, which of course it is not.
So they embark on journeys of destruction, until something catches up with them. With luck, they survive it. But they never are the same again...
P.S., Please don't feed the trolls.
Outside is overrated though. :P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
This isn't sensitivity -- it's someone who sounds depressed, which is often a failure to properly frame a problem (though it can also be a difficulty emotionally handling a properly framed problem). Going outside quite literally expands your horizons, but really any change can be beneficial. Additionally, the author may want to seek help, whether it's self-help or professional. Depression is not a joke, and the OP's advice is solid, even if the delivery may have been flippant. Besides, nobody said he should never come back, just get some perspective first.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I say this with honest affection, but it sounds like you are actual an asshole and you've just written a justification for it. I see two kinds of people in this world. People who escalate conflict (aka assholes) and people who deescalate conflict (aka reasonable). If you always feel you need to escalate a situation to win, you are an asshole. Assholes are useful, I have some of them as friends, but they live miserable lives. I figured out when I was 12 that I didn't want to be the kind of person who would get in a fight with themselves.
People who point out pedantry like this, are assholes....
That AC doesn't get it but we do. That's why you'll completely understand when I bully you to stop bullying others. You guys sometimes have to be reminded how shitty your medicine tastes and we're done drinking it. Your turn, moron.
Some people are more sensitive than others. Telling all of those to GTFO will lead in a lot of resources wasted. Because, believe you me, the power hungry assholes usually aren't the great contributors to society they want you to think they are.
As an example I was having some difficulty with some Linux software installs I was doing, and in the group I was involved with, there was one of these agressive assholes - one of the lucky people who were born knowing everything. I kept reporting the issues to the group, and it was like a freaking yelowjacket stinging after every post. I was an idiot, I didn't know anything about Linux, I didn't know how to compile and install programs. All just completely un-needed and false noise. Finally he even got the guy that wrote the software to join in the "Ol Olsoc doesn't know what he's doing" jeremiad.
As it turned out, it was an issue in Ubuntu Mate and after finding out about it, they fixed it. When I reported back my success, and with one problem the software eally did have during the configure - it asked for a portaudio file, I installed that and it worked - the guy fires right back that I shouldn't have done that, because he likes PulseAudio and more of how stupid I am - My last post was that if it's my mistake when the config asks me to install something, I do it, and it works, the world has gone crazy.
Contemplate suicide? Hell no. Just be as valuable as you can be at all times, so that if you do bow out due to assholes, its a double hit. Your lack of presence is felt, and now the assholes take over, feeling they won, and thus encouraged to go after more productive people. I used to contribute regularly to the group wiki, and helped out the noobs, who are usually pilloried by the assholes. And if the owner can't keep the assholes in line? - his software suffers.
Be excellent to each other, but if you can't, make certain you are missed.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
It's true power hungry assholes are generally not good contributors, but neither are people who crumble because someone said something mean on the Internet. Emotional weakness leads to a tendency to avoid confrontation and so a tendency to follow what the group think.
Define crumble. Is allowing a group to suffer because assholes have taken over, crumbling? I've left a few groups in my wake when it bacame obvious that the tragedy of the commons had taken over, and the assholes were in complete power, and further participation was pointless unless I wanted to be one of the assholes. When the wings have been blown off the plane, you can either bail, or try to start it flying again. Option one tends to work best.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Frankly, both of the people could be defined as emotionally weak. Many people act out and mistreat others because of their own weaknesses which are often brought on by past experience with being abused verbally and/or physically.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
What of the emotionally strong with a sense of self-worth who figure that they can go contribute somewhere not populated with self-important assholes who never grew out of the terrible twos?
Save the GTFOs for the assholes.
I've been involved in some groups where the assholes took over completely. At that point I had to determine if there was a point in fighting them. In a few cases, I stuck around and fought and won. In more cases, there wasn't any point, because I could have fought for the rest of my life, and still lost.
That had the double effect of allowing the assholes to take their group to it's inevitable failure, and allowed me to contribute on a professional level, and not merely deal with personality conflicts, in a new and productive group.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
So explain all the groupthink on tech sites like Slashdot. It's arguably worse here (and other similar sites) than other places on the net.
How? I've been modded down both ways, and up both ways. it seems to be just a matter of luck. But even so, if you want to post the ever stupid "I fscked your mother" asshattery, or homophobic haiku, it just gets modded down - it doesn't disappear. If you can't abide by the rules of a place that allows every post - you need to take a chill. And if every post is modded down, just consider that you might be having a few social issues in the first place.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
No, you just get modded to a -1, which doesn't delete your text, but it hides it from everyone.
Do you actually know how slashdot works? From your post, it is not at all clear that you do.
Tell of how simply getting a -1 automatically hides your post from everyone.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
When someone thinks of killing himself, I believe the word "crumble" is appropriate. Don't you think?
I'm curious... Do you think I should start to learn Mandarin, Russian or Arabic? Because if we don't stop right now this folly of always catering to the weak, the West will fall.
When someone thinks of killing himself, I believe the word "crumble" is appropriate. Don't you think?
I'm curious... Do you think I should start to learn Mandarin, Russian or Arabic? Because if we don't stop right now this folly of always catering to the weak, the West will fall.
When someone is overly sensitive, I think of you. Why the over the top reaction?
My point, in the most delicate way to put it, is that to mean people, a not mean person who decides that it isn't worth it to stick around and be mean in their dealings - migh be considered crumbling. By the mean people.
This Wikipedia editor who is contemplating suicide has much deeper issues than the mean people that are being mean to him.
While I was raising a rhetorical question, perhaps to further discussion - you took it as a personal insult. Most abject apologies, I'll make certain to try not to do that.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
LOL! Just to put things in context, I spend a lot of time arguing with feminists and social justice warriors. I can assure you I get insulted a lot, and it's far worse than "when someone is overly sensitive, I think of you".
LOL! Just to put things in context, I spend a lot of time arguing with feminists and social justice warriors. I can assure you I get insulted a lot, and it's far worse than "when someone is overly sensitive, I think of you".
Your reaction to my apologizing to you is merely proving you are oversensitive.
Okay. Be that way. I don't give a fuck if you argue with feminists or SJW's Most of those people are just as big of assholes, as those they argue with two sides of the same coin. And overly sensitive. Have a nice day, and good day sir.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I don't know why, I'm now thinking of the Energizer bunny... ;)
He said 'then' humans.. so they should both be wasted, humans last for some reason.
;)
You've just exemplified my point about reasonable people on the sidelines.