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Last Stop For Wikipedia's Feuding Editors -- Online High Court (wsj.com)
Wikipedia has its own internal "Supreme Court," which adjudicates disputes, takes appeals, and even issues injunctions [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled]. The cases it hears are as petty as you'd expect. Fascinating story by WSJ: Wikipedia, the vast online crowdsourced encyclopedia, has a high court. It is a panel called the Arbitration Committee, largely unknown to anyone other than Wiki aficionados, which hears disputes that arise after all other means of conflict resolution have failed. The 15 elected jurists on the English-language Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee -- among them a former staffer for presidential candidate John Kerry, an information-technology consultant in a tiny British village and a retired college librarian -- have clerks, write binding decisions and hear appeals. They even issue preliminary injunctions.
Founded in 2001, Wikipedia operates largely through community consensus. All editors are volunteers, and anyone can write and edit its millions of articles. In online forums, editors debate content, sources and style, and typically manage to broker peace by talking -- or rather, typing -- it out. But every so often, tempers flare, necessitating a more stringent brand of justice. In 2003, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales created the committee, known as ArbCom, as the final stop in the site's dispute-resolution process. "There are things that wouldn't start an argument anywhere else that can still start an argument on Wikipedia," says Ira Matetsky, a Manhattan litigator and the unpaid panel's longest-serving current member. Among them: capitalization rules and whether individual television episodes deserve encyclopedia entries.
Founded in 2001, Wikipedia operates largely through community consensus. All editors are volunteers, and anyone can write and edit its millions of articles. In online forums, editors debate content, sources and style, and typically manage to broker peace by talking -- or rather, typing -- it out. But every so often, tempers flare, necessitating a more stringent brand of justice. In 2003, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales created the committee, known as ArbCom, as the final stop in the site's dispute-resolution process. "There are things that wouldn't start an argument anywhere else that can still start an argument on Wikipedia," says Ira Matetsky, a Manhattan litigator and the unpaid panel's longest-serving current member. Among them: capitalization rules and whether individual television episodes deserve encyclopedia entries.
... that I'm not gonna read it.
Wikipedia is a go-to for quick overviews and starting points to find out more, but it takes itself entirely too seriously. Certainly for the quality content it produces.
...John Kerry, an information-technology consultant in a tiny British village and a retired college librarian...
Slashdot REALLY needs to hire some editors. This appositive is highly misleading.
I thought the same thing reading that. Proficiency in English isn't a requirement for the submission-acceptors anymore.
How nice. A link to a paywalled article that I can't read.
Fucking moron.
This appears to be a polemic, and contains opinion rather than facts.
Not in accord with WP:NPOV.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Shut up, msmash
If ever we develop a Ministry of Truth (pun intended) — or, in the case of US, a Department of same — it will begin with the similar seemingly benign composition.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Oh, an article about a free online knowledge warehouse that doesn't charge for access nor show ads? Cool! Let's go read that... wait a tick. The article is behind a paywall and a legion of ads.
Visit a 3rd World country sometime. People love to gripe about petty shit wherever you go. This idea that people who have "real" problems aren't concerned with pettiness is something that people in rich countries imagine but it's not true by a longshot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Or a 3-line summary at the bottom:
>Well stated. Wikipedia Editors have been foolish, arrogant, and elitist for several years now. Thus my reason for no longer contributing to Wikipedia content -- it's not worth the hassle...
>Whilst you're entitled to your opinions, please don't insult other editors. We've put a massive amount of effort into making sure we keep the article in line with both reality, and the MoS.
>That it took a massive amount of effort to decide whether to capitalize an "I" pretty much confirms what Alchemistmatt said. This is a good illustration of why I don't edit Wikipedia anymore either...
You're on Slashdot and you don't know how to bypass a paywall, so I guess the joke is on you.
Irrelevant. You're editor on a site that receives millions of visitors per month, and you post on the front page a paywalled link as the story to read?
FAIL.
I don't like bashing /. editors, but unfortunately it's too often called for. Sending readers to look for ways around a paywall, is not a good thing. From ethical nor editorial p.o.v.
And why shouldn't they? The whole point of Wikipedia is that the normal rules of hardcopy encyclopedias should not apply. There are no limits to the numbers of pages that can be added. If there is someone out there who is passionate enough to create a wiki page for every single episode of a 30-year-old sitcom, then why not? Wikipedia had more value back in the days before it began pretending to be a "real" encyclopedia. You could lose yourself for hours following one link after another through some obscure aspects of pop culture.
Then suddenly Wikipedia changed, with editors who would arbitrarily decide what was "notable" and what was not, with no consistency whatsoever from one subject to another. Thousands upon thousands of wiki pages were deleted for no other reason than "an encyclopedia shouldn't have an entry on an obscure topic like this". But why not? How does having a separate wiki entry for every manga character ever created damage the wiki entries for heads of state, or historical events?
The people running Wikipedia want everyone to believe that that Wikipedia is a "serious" online reference. Of course, that will never be true as long as anyone with an agenda and an Internet connection can edit any page. Instead, the editors' fruitless efforts to enforce their collective delusion has significantly degraded the overall value of the site.
I once wrote a piece to be put into Weakpedia. I spent quite A bit of time drawing it up. I put in a reference to its topic in the article as proof of truthfulness and validity. The bastards actually rejected it, saying that there was no proof that the information was true and correct. What a joke this thing is. I never wrote another article for this bilge. I have since heard that the bastard editors in charge are a bunch of socialist that will reject anything they disagree with. They had no reason to reject my article however.
I did put in an additional line into another article that was true and quite funny. It lasted for a few years, but then was taken out. Haven't wasted my time contributing since.
Wikipedia used to be an anything goes encyclopedia, where anyone could jump in and create an article. My first articles were almost 16 years ago where there were no notability rules and Ip addresses could create articles. In fact I almost became an admin but their rapidly increasingly “standards” prevented me because I wasn’t enough of an “obsessive”. I left the site after that and became a vandal. Yes I’m proud to be one of the sites “long term abuse”rs. As years went by they put increasingly tougher rules into the system.
They made it so you needed an account to post articles (they blamed the Seigenthaler incident). then they made that you can’t have a “conflict of interest”, made that you need 500 edits to edit certain topics and finally made it that you need to wait four days before you can create an article.
Wikipedia has thoroughly wasted my donation money over the years and I think until its core croup of obsessive editors die of old age there is little hope for the future of the project. Attempts to fork Wikipedia have been generally unsuccessful and I have seen a load of them.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Definitively don't cite wikipedia as an authority on how their own politics work.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
I think anyone that has ever encountered Wikipedia knows what the kangaroo court known as "ArbCom" is. It's like the online version of the Fliegendes Sonder-Standgericht or Tax Court.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
...xkcd quote
And why is it that all the product has to be produced for free, but all the relatively lax management gets paid the sort of bucks dozens of people could retire off of each year?
I have a habit of correcting grammar errors -- in Portuguese (my native language, that is).
Sometimes I get some phrases in Wikipedia which look like Google's automatic translation with an structure which is impossible to understand.
Most of the times sense can be grasped from context, but there are times when I check the English version, which may provide clearer ideas (or rather, less distorted). There are other aspects we must respect -- for instance, subtleties related to differences between Brazil and Portugal language differences. Also, I don't get involved in polemic discussions.
Very well... I've been banned for such corrections. By a lady from the Netherlands -- which I assume can understand English. I do not seek fame, so my corrections are done unregistered. It's my way to say thanks and I could as well forget about my rejected contributions -- but the idea of incorrect things bothers me. *sigh*
I read it as a list lacking an Oxford comma?
It's a dangling appositive. That goes MUCH further than an oxford comma annoyance.
A while back I noticed a wiki page about the Chinese and inside it was a reference of 'Yellow Dog'
I filed a note to the Wikipedia committee regarding that 'Yellow Dog' reference and you know what they did to me?
The banned my account!
I wasn't the one who put the 'Yellow Dog' reference inside a wiki page related to a Chinese but somehow those wiki fucktoids accuse me of putting it there
Oh well ...
"Wikipedia: the source of all often accurate information"
I came up with that quip years ago. Feel free to spread it around.
I use wikipedia way to much. One of the major reasons I use wikipedia is that, compared to many other sites, it is easy to read, comprehend, navigate, does not load up a lot ads, cookies, etc. It wins on the 'mental ergonomics.'
In the area of hard science, I trust that if I am looking up the atomic weight of an element or something from basic physics it will be accurate. That is because if anyone enters erroneous info in those area, it easy for someone else to spot an error hard facts and replace with a correct entry.
But, in subject matters where science has not been done, or the issue is artistic merit, in other words, where opinion matters because facts are lacking or the subject is about what what people like or value, then, like the rest of the internet, you get people battling over opinions. Often mistaking them for facts.
And then there are trolls and vandals...
I'm pretty critical of wikipedia, but where they win is that even though any given article is likely to be written by hired-guns promoting their masters opinions, the very fact that they have to pretend to sound kind-of sort-of neutral forces them to tone down their act somewhat to the point where what they're saying has to be at least comprehensible.
Compare tech industry advertising copy to wikipedia pages about corporate products... there's something to be said for comprehensible bullshit.
Subject to the usual exceptions, HILLARY (talk contribs) is indefinitely restricted to one revert per page in any 24 hour period.
> Founded in 2001, Wikipedia operates largely through community consensus.
It's the consensus of the "Vote with your feet" kind which many of us did. That's why the number of people making edits has plunged. Even the most inoffensive of articles ruled by little tinpot dictators who shriek and attack if you dare edit "their" articles. Some will accuse you of vandalism. Others sit there and revert any changes without an explanation.
Many people called this out and the Wikipedia powers that be never fixed it and never even acknowledged it. Just look at that bullshit sentence in the WSJ.
Like many others I gave up and left long ago. No way I'd go back. Ever. It was a horrible experience.
Ooooh look people. We have been blessed by a visit from a dickhead Wikipedia editor. All drop to your knees and sing praise to him.
100% agreed.
Of course, things like Wikipedia have to fall prey to the very trap our greedy globalized capitalism is: either it is relevant, then a tsunami of resources is poured into it to "leverage" and "monetize" it, thus corrupting it -- or it stays irrelevant.
Given that, I'm infinitely thankful that Wikipedia has resisted this tsunami astonishingly well.
Furthermore, I read articles like the one quoted from the WSJ in part as the system's petty vengeance that Wikipedia isn't "functioning" as every other "natural resource" is supposed to "function": just lie around there and allow to be "extracted" without complaining.
While the article is at least a welcome sign the media is prepared to take an interest in the finer details, it sadly lacks the benefit of real truth. The real reason ArbCom's workload is down, is because it long ago stopped being the case that you could rely on it to stand up for established site policy, and even those rulings it does make to nominally uphold it, are easily ignored by Wikipedia's version of the Sheriff's department. This is why people who think Wikipedia should be governed by policy, as in the rule of the law, as opposed to simply doing what the people want, no longer bother with filing cases. And those that don't, well, naturally they have no use for a Supreme Court except in the situations where they can be confident it's failings will ensure an enemy is removed.
For quite a while now, what Wikipedians do, isn't really reflective of their local laws, which says things like all editors are equal and nobody should be accused without evidence, etc, etc. They know this disconnect has happened and Wikipedians are subject to the law of the jungle for the large part, but they also know the rest of the world does not. So it doesn't make sense to them to suffer the PR disaster of updating their laws to explain how it all really works, today. Because who in their right mind would want to donate their free time to a website where you're only really going to be considered an equal years down the line, once you've figured out how it all really works, and developed a fighting style that works, and a useful list of allies.
For those who want to know how Wikipedia really works, Google Wikipedia Sucks.
I came up with that quip years ago. Feel free to spread it around.
Do you find that this is something that happens a lot? People spreading your quips around?
Can you give us any concrete examples of that ever happening? It just seems unlikely is all. Nothing you say seems interesting or worth repeating, so I'm puzzled as to why people might be turning your words into common currency.
What does the IBTC have to say about it?
huh? Oh, it stands for Itty Bitty Titty Committee