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.
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.
While dated, much of FYI-28 / RFC 1855 is still applicable and the world would be a better place if more folk followed it.
You are an idiot :)
Now, seriously, sometimes the poster indeed is an idiot and it's painfully obvious. I see nothing wrong in calling that out - if, of course, you explain why.
I personally don't agree with "appropriate" being a measure - because it's a non-measurable convention. I'd go for "correct" versus "incorrect".
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
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.
You're an idiot.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
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?
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
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.
I gave up on fixing Wikipedia errors when I received an official notice warning me about vandalizing a page for fixing errors on it.
Because the editors don't like it. So they tell you it's not an error - it's true. And they have citations. And they' point out that your citations are invalid because WP:CiteRule1 and WP:CredibleSources and so you must be wrong because they can apply WP:Fringe and WP:SourceType does not apply to their article.
FTFA: "Wikipedia is ... has a dizzying list of guidelines, principles, and rules that are disproportionately applied across the site."
Yea, that's putting it mildly. None of your corrections were accepted because the editor had a different opinion, and he can dismiss any link or citation with some arbitrary reference to some rule (that references some other rule, that references several other guidelines), whether they are really applicable or not. They'll berate you with that stuff on the Talk pages and if you don't respond appropriately a ban request is easy to get approved.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
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!
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
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
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?
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.
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++
Come, now. It's the Internet. Everyone knows "Your an idiot" is what you write to achieve maximum rage and trolling value. I'm ashamed of your intentional use of proper spelling.
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.
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
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.
Already does, No Personal Attacks and Assume Good Faith are two pillars of Wikipedian law. But enforcement is arbitrary, and it doesn't help if you're up against an admin who can pretty much accuse you of anything and force you to go through a (usually biased against you) appeals process to get your editing privileges back.
Editing Wikipedia sucks. You inevitably end up against someone playing power games, and you pay the price for it. I'm not surprised that the number of participating editors has been dropping of late. I don't even bother editing as an AIP any more, it's not worth the aggravation.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
"...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."
We've been flattening class structure since the 1600s and has nothing to do with Trump's popularity. PC is fairly new and it *IS* causing huge unnecessary problems and conflict. By labeling nearly EVERYTHING racist or sexist to silence your opposition there can be no middle-ground or compromise. I believe it's impossible to govern a republic based on democratic principles for very long without compromise -- you end up with sometimes more than 50% of the population against the establishment. .
Trump is popular because he's talking about things both the Ds and the Rs wont talk about -- like illegal immigration for instance. PC crap and 'micro aggressions" are just really starting to piss people off. I swear its right out of George Orwell how we're changing language to change perception. "Pro Life" vs "Pro Choice"? That's so crazy minor compared to a young black woman calling out a young white man with dreadlocks for stealing her culture -- or taking "felon" and "criminal" out of our lexicon in favor of "persons who have been involved in the justice system" or "individuals who have been incarcerated". I'm not making that up!
When the press and the establishment both refuse to use the term "illegal immigrant" and refer to those who have a PROBLEM with unregulated and vetted migration across our sovereign borders as "anti - immigrant" (rather than anti-ILLEGAL-immigration) it's appalling.
You can only shut down the opposition so much via tactics like this for so long before something fractures. There's no more ability to compromise and "meet in the middle". You are right that people feel less empowered -- but not just white people (how long until we want to call ourselves 'melanin lacking individuals'?) And it's because our system broke. Things that should require a constitutional amendment are being forced on a country not fully ready for it by judicial fiat. That takes sovereignty out of the hands of the individual.
It's no wonder why Trump is so popular. It's also no wonder why he's so hated.
*I'm not a Trump supporter. He strikes me as a psychopath the way he attacks and loves in almost the same sentence. That doesn't mean I can't see the appeal to FINALLY have someone speak honestly and blow off PC dribble and talk about topics that are basically quasi-taboo to the establishment of both parties.
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.
1) Pick a less contentious set of articles to edit
And then the crackpots win. They aren't resorting to abuse to win an argument. They are doing to to drive people with opposing view points, or people who just want to post the facts, off the forum. So they can present their view as the only one and therefore the correct one.
Have gnu, will travel.
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."
As the subject of the article, I entirely agree. Life is very precious, and there is always someone who loves you and who would be devastated if you weren't there. If something good can come of it, then it's this: suicide is most definitely not an answer. I was most definitely not in my right mind when I was having those thoughts, and I'm happy I'm still around :-)
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I don't think you're right. Not every depressive gets into bad situations, and those that do often get into only a few. You don't want to encourage a depressive to give up, and in some cases walking away can feel like giving up. There are no good generally applicable answers.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
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