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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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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
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
"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.