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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!
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
"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.
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.