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A Third of Wikipedia Discussions Are Stuck in Forever Beefs (vice.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Wikipedia, the internet's encyclopedia, is run entirely by volunteers -- people who spend large swaths of their personal time making sure the information that hundreds of millions of people access every day stays accurate and up-to-date. Of those volunteers, 77 percent of Wikipedia articles are written by just one percent of Wikipedia editors. As such, tensions tend to get a little high, because these editors are often highly invested. They've been arguing about corn for nearly a decade, for example, and there's a long-running edit war about the meaning of neuroticism.
When editors disagree about an edit to be made on a Wikipedia article, they start by discussing it on the article's Talk page. When that doesn't result in a decision, they can open a Request for Comment (RfC). From there, any editor can choose a side or discuss the merits of whatever edit is up for discussion, and -- in theory -- come to an agreement. Or at least, some kind of decision about how to make the edit. But a new study by MIT researchers found that as many as one-third of RfC disputes go unresolved, often abandoned out of frustration or exhaustion. The most common sticking points were chalked up to inexperience, inattention from experience editors, and just plain petty bickering.
When editors disagree about an edit to be made on a Wikipedia article, they start by discussing it on the article's Talk page. When that doesn't result in a decision, they can open a Request for Comment (RfC). From there, any editor can choose a side or discuss the merits of whatever edit is up for discussion, and -- in theory -- come to an agreement. Or at least, some kind of decision about how to make the edit. But a new study by MIT researchers found that as many as one-third of RfC disputes go unresolved, often abandoned out of frustration or exhaustion. The most common sticking points were chalked up to inexperience, inattention from experience editors, and just plain petty bickering.
... as someone who has been around a long time, i also see many editors are just more interested in pushing their agenda than in writing the truth. In any area where opinions vary, so like 99.9% of things, editors seem stuck in ONE opinion and push that as absolute truth without even acknowledging that other opinions exist. It seems that even if the concensus of the leaders in a field is one thing, the editors will only present their own opinion ad nauseum and delete discussions of anything else.
"Governments have been dominated by the corporate entities and citizens have ceased to matter in public policy" true in
A person who normally is very cool-headed and objective will still have some topic to which they are emotionally attached.
That emotional attachment warps their cognitive processes to the point where they think they are being totally cool and objective, but they aren't. They will start dropping logical fallacies and engaging in defensive tactics left and right, and have no idea they are doing this. They will even deny it when it is pointed out to them.
Rising above this is very hard. For most people, impossible. That includes 99% of the people reading this and thinking that they are in the 1% who rises above. You don't.
Fully half of Slashdot article comment sections are stuck in Forever Beefs! Step up your game, Wikipedia!
No, on slashdot all arguments are resolved by arguing on other topics.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
No. You are wrong about that because Trump is the smartest person ever (so great, has the best words) and climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese. Build the wall!
>> Of those volunteers, 77 percent of Wikipedia articles are written by just one percent of Wikipedia editors.
Great summary, Brownie.
People are very different, our knowledge if often extremely contentious (aside from hard science) - it's amazing Wikipedia exists in the first place.
Also, I bet neuroticism is not even at the top of contentious articles: politics/history/countries/events and famous people must attract even more opposing opinions. As if it wasn't enough we have conspiracy theories, "alien" sightings and abductions, "divine" interventions and all sorts of BS which people are keen to add to Wikipedia.
It's been that way for a decade. I gave up trying to contribute long ago.
It's now a battleground, and the winners are the ones who are most persistent.
It's like a home owners association - the place is run by people with not enough to do, and a desire to control others.
there's a long-running edit war about the meaning of neuroticism.
Sometimes you don't even have to go out of your way to make the joke, it just falls right in your lap.
The story basically confirms my experiences with Wikipedia. Nice idea, great intentions, and I even use it pretty often, but not worth trying to improve. Let me clarify that I'm an extremely infrequent contributor, mostly just asking questions and offering suggestion in Talk pages and most of my actual public contributions were just minor editorial corrections. Years ago I cared quite a bit more and fixed lots of grammar problems, but these days I just don't care and don't bother. (However I also think there are fewer low-level grammar problems these years.)
I'm trying to figure out the quickest explanation of how my attitude towards Wikipedia was flipped from mostly positive to mostly negative. Various minor things, but I think the recurring one might have been the spam. Not from Wikipedia, but from spammers using Wikipedia to boost the credibility of their scams, usually 419s.
In my twisted way of thinking this is a relatively minor problem (but with potential to become a more serious problem) with an obvious fix. Flag the targeted articles to defeat the spammers' intentions. I think that Wikipedia should notice spammer-related traffic or at least accept reports that an article is being used to support spam, and add a temporary alert to that article. Something like "Scam alert: If you came to this article because you are looking for evidence that Claude left you a million dollars, then you should know that it is just a 419 scam. Follow this link for more information on 419 scams and how to avoid them."
Maybe the suggestion is stupid, but I would say that "internal" consideration of the suggestion never rose to that level of incomprehension within Wikipedia. And I still think there is a significant risk of active vandalism if the spammers interpret Wikipedia's collective indifference in the wrong way.
Oh well. Too much time again. I bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Duty calls
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
I wonder if an "ignore" feature would work for Wikipedia. Like on forums where if you put someone on ignore, it auto-hides all their posts. If you have a contributor on ignore, any edits they've made could be undone in the version of Wikipedia you see. Non-editors could then trade blacklists of known stupid/ignorant/troublesome editors they could auto-apply to the version of Wikipedia they see. Wikipedia could make public a ranked list of most-ignored editors.
This would basically give Wikipedia users a vote on who they think are (not) making valuable contributions, shifting the incentive for editors from the current "he who edits last wins" to "he who satisfies the most readers wins."
You're saying here that the NSA runs and controls Wikipedia because some people make edits that you find statist.
If you weren't a trolling coward, there would be many easy ways to show you are incorrect, but no anonymous commentator deserves such a courtesy.
Fuck that, Bitcoin is going to dominate the future economy, making all that shit moot.
It's their policy not to publish anything that doesn't have outside sources. They do this to avoid any serious legal issues. Such outside sources can be of any variety from USENET postings (perhaps even facebook, twitter, etc..) to mainstream media articles.
What is most important is the fact that wikipedia is not any more reliable than their published sources. Today with so much fake news and in the bottomless pit published claims, Wikipedia should never be used for the primary or final source for anything, especially AI/Robotic projects such as Sophia.
I know of at least a couple cases where wikipedia articles are in fact, wrong, but they persist and insist with the errors.
If you look at Wikipedia’s admin history, most admins were elected over 10 years ago. This provides a substanial old guard that locks out newer viewpoints. What we need is a new generaton of edtiors who arent revert happy and allows more articles about Women in science. I notice that Wikipedia is very deletionist now days especially after they restricted article creation to autoconfirmed accounts. Remember to repay the favor and be deletionist with your donation money.
Do not wake the APK, for it is in slumber.
So ... you are saying there is really no hope for science as an objective study of truth?
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
maybe some kind of equal time doctrine would be useful, with each article have a common controversies section, so that alternative views are at least documented even if it is on another tab.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
The First Doctor does not run any country.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Then here are some things you should never pay for: Cars, clothes, the Internet, chocolate, breakfast cereal, nuclear energy, solar energy, education, health, books, comics, aircraft/flights, computers, food containing grains, beer/wine/mead.
In fact, there's virtually nothing you can pay for. Those you object to invented it all.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I tried to participate. It inevitably turned into a MMORPG, where primary attack/left click was bound to "You are not here to write an encyclopedia".
Bull. Fucking. Shit.
The Earth is FLAT!
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
No, we are talking about Wikipedia.
I've never seen anyone who is a science attacker ever advance even a remotely feasible or effective alternative. No, obviously faith in God isn't an alternative because faith doesn't teach you about the natural world - honest theologians admit that.
Start by giving some proof to your extraordinary claims then.
Bull. Fucking. Shit. The Earth is FLAT!
No it isn't, Nazi.
> I'm not the same AC as the OP
Citation needed.
"They" have been arguing about corn for a decade. As in, some agree and some don't that the title should be "maize" since "corn" has other meanings in some countries. TFS seems to think that the ultimate goal is 100% agreement. That's not the point of Wikipedia. It's not perfect, and it cannot be because people have different preferences. Is it a valuable resource available to all? Yes.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
So ... you are saying there is really no hope for science as an objective study of truth?
I dunno what that person was saying, but to me it seems obvious that you don't get there by "voting" on disagreements on the talk page!
Just an example, if you look up a page about Foo-ism, instead of an encyclopedic description of the concept, you get Foo-ist statements right in the opening paragraph claiming that Fooism affects certain Foos more than others; whereas that distinction is itself actually the very definition of Fooism!
It seems obvious that you'd have a section on "Fooism in [geographic region] in the [time period]," but that would not be objectively stated in the continuous tense as "Fooism mostly affects [subgroup divided based on Foo]."
If I write that using the word Foo, most of the response is likely to be, "What?" But if I substitute any actual real-world -ism, I'd get shouted at from multiple sides for taking the objective, removed, timeless, encyclopedic perspective on the concept.
People flatly refuse to be encyclopedic on divisive issues. Being anointed as Very Objective Keepers of the Truth doesn't seem to help, nor does voting.
No, we are talking about Wikipedia.
I've never seen anyone who is a science attacker ever advance even a remotely feasible or effective alternative. No, obviously faith in God isn't an alternative because faith doesn't teach you about the natural world - honest theologians admit that.
Your whole premise of needing to defend science against attackers is an unscientific attack on the scientific process!
It replaces actual science with the dogma of whatever is currently believed by people with letters next to their names, but that isn't the scientific process at all.
It precludes science. But luckily, wikipedia is an encyclopedia, a place that should not be trying to do anything scientific at all. Is there a way to get editors to stop trying? Dunno, but if so they haven't found it yet!
If we can't even agree about the facts of genital mutilation, what hope is there for consensus-based "objective" publications?
Fuck that, Bitcoin is going to dominate the future economy, making all that shit moot.
Won't work, if you put the CO2 on the blockchain it becomes immutable.
The Earth is FLAT!
Locally true, on average.
The blockchain is shaped like a tree, so if we want to make Earth immutable, we need a blockchain rooted at the Sun, and linking Earth to the outer bodies.
I thought culture wars have been going on since the first tribe defeated the second tribe.
I had a disagreement about a page edit. It went back and forth in an edit war for a while and the discussion page ended with a user just obstinately refusing to change his position--and then threatening anybody with bans and deletions if they dared disagree again. He was clearly in a minority but he had moderator/admin access and used it to enforce his own views.
It's *NOT* an encyclopedia that "anyone can edit" it's a webpage that a few elites with admin powers can bully to say what they want and everybody else can do trivial grunt work at best.
Wikipedia's run by the sort of person who enjoys bureaucracy and also enjoys editing Wikipedia all day. They've driven off all the normal people a long time ago.
No, that is really false. People who have scientific training or who have studied rhetoric are far more aware of logical fallacies in their own arguments. Maybe it is somewhat true for the general public, even though 99% still sounds like hyperbole.
It doesn't matter that you think that way about me, because there are 3 sexes. Why? Because Egypt did it.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
That's so fucking stupid, have you even been born yet?? Here, let me put this into words that you can understand:
TRUUUUMMMP!!!
Also, you're wrong. I get the Discover magazine every month.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
They are trying to fix the RfC problem, but it's been stuck in a RfC thread for a decade now....
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
I posit that if you have been arguing for more than a decade on the internet about the definition of neuroticism, you ARE the definition of neuroticism.
Couldn't agree more, this is the folly of people being labeled as "biased" - everyone is biased, it's the human condition.
Anyone who claims to be objective merely lacks self awareness.
You are quite right - I didn't think about that. However I'd like to ask you, do you think it's possible to include all the conflicting opinions/views on a topic? What if there are too many? What if some are supported by a large group of people and others are in the minority?
What about historical events or even current events where there's little official information however rumors and theories are aplenty (mind with various sources)? What if the official information is doubted/rejected by pretty much everyone with a brain, e.g. when the government, some corporation or person is covering up something.
What about citations? I mean Wikipedia is obsessed with them but in certain cases they are hard to get by e.g. some things are common knowledge somewhere but they are not really documented.
Wikipedia wants to convey the truth but sometimes truth is quite relative. It makes no sense to argue about the theory of gravity since doubting it is akin to commiting suicide but there are millions of things which are far from certain.
Wikipedia was taken over by the self-styled elitists 10 years ago. That's when I stopped contributing anything other than correction of blatant errors.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
No, you can't do it perfectly. And it isn't useful to include all opinions. But it also isn't useful to deny that other opinions exist, or to declare them wrong.
But I don't think doing it by committee has shown itself to produce higher quality results, merely a larger volume of results that are updated more often. (as compared to a traditional encyclopedia)
IMO the highest quality encyclopedia would fork from wikipedia, freeze it in time, and then slowly improve the content with a small team of experts who are paid to just do that. And then there is at least a chance of improved quality; especially if you have a few competing teams.
The produced-by-the-masses one can easily be bigger, and have a mediocre treatment of a wider variety of subjects, but it has a really hard time being consistent, or intellectually honest.
And there is lots of room to disagree about the theory of gravity; surely much more room than there is to disagree on the strength of the effect! I'm still waiting for my Graviton Detector.
The earth is flat AND round. Like a pizza and who does not like pizza, so everybody is a winner.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Z^-1
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Oh, did I get my own personal troll? Awesome! lolz welcome to the internet, kiddo. But no, I won't do that for you. Find a cam boy.
Z^-2
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.