1. This isn't a political example, but big parts of Scottish Wikipedia were basically written by one teenager, who took English texts and wrote them with Scottish accent. He did not use real Scottish language, but rather some strange version of English.
Either nobody reads the relatively small Scottish Wikipedia, or (more likely) everyone who complained about it got banned by said admin. And since nobody really reviews bans (why cant the Wikimedia Foundation have someone for it?), then you are generally out of luck.
2A. There was a Wikipedia administrator who created 80 000 pages and redirects related to breasts. Also seemed to have some obsession over some low key political woman.
What is more sad in this case, is that every other admin knew very well that thousands of such pages were created, but nobody did anything. This is the usual situation when the clique will never go against one of their own.
It took them an incredible amount of time to do anything with that rogue admin and at the end I think he wasn't even removed from his role and banned, he simply stepped down on his own.
2B. Compare the rogue admin described in point 2A (who created 80 thousand articles and redirects related to breasts) with the typical experience of a new wikipedia user, whose article will be probably speedy deleted immediately after creation. There is a big group of admins who try to speed delete everything - because by default they treat every new user as human trash and every new article as not encyclopedic.
I dont have any statistics,but I assume that after the new article is deleted, most new users will simply give up, because the alternative is to fight versus the admin clique through various "committees" (full of said admins). This time is wasted, because instead of improving the article you go through a trial of tears.
2C. Also very possible is that every edit by a new user is reverted by default. The new user cannot revert it back - since this is an "edit war". I dont feel like searching for examples, but there are admins who have literal counters that show how many things they reverted - and they pride themselves of it.
This basically means thousands of users pushed away of trying to improve wikipedia, just because some sad asshole sits and reverts everything to paddle his stats.
Other admins dont do anything about it, because it is incredibly hard to remove an admin / if they removed that guy, then someone else could go after them.
The Wikimedia foundation simply does not care at all. They just need those millions for various expensive "projects", lunches and so on. A very similar thing happened with Firefox, where the Mozilla foundation is interested in everything, but not their core product.
If you are a new Wikipedia user a very typical situation is that if you create a new article, some admin will "improve" it (generally making it worse) and you cannot revert those changes, or you get banned by the said admin. On some smaller Wikipedia the admins knew each other very well, so they ask their friend to ban you.
I am aware that I dont provide any examples for those + I sound like a "frustrated person".
If you dont believe me, you can make a second account and see how it looks for someone new (using two accounts is against Wikipedia terms of service btw).
Perhaps a good way would be to randomize admin names, so those assholes get banned by their own friends, or reverted by own friends, who like to revert everything.
3. Regarding examples of "fresh" political cases having a lot of problems. You can check the page of Aimee Channelor and constant edit wars related to that person
Everyone I know who has tried to contribute to Wikipedia would concur with your comments here. I myself dipped my little toe tentatively into the Wikipedia swamp a couple of times, and can confirm everything you say. It’s a toxic presence on the web, a cesspool of plagiarism and insular politics masquerading as political neutrality. It sucks the energy out of the web of creative, individual voices that should be the ideal, and substitutes crowdsourced mush that reads as exactly what it is: something written by a committee.
2A. The general rule with the Wikipedia is that, if you can make a redirect to something, it’s usually good to do so, even if the redirect uses a term which is not politically correct. Considering the source of the complaint comes from Reddit, Reddit is not a particularly reliable source about matters like this.
2B. As a strict inclusionist sometimes Wikipedia editor, I agree 100% with the general gist that the Wikipedia makes adding new articles too hard. That said, I have with some effort been able to make a new article stay in the Wikipedia fairly recently (late 2019): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ValhallaDSP
1. Wikimedia foundation is doing literally nothing. It is painfully obvious that they should hire people who would sit all day and review actions of admins (their bans, reverts, edit wars.. yes admins participate in them too, but nobody does anything about it). Obviously we end up with a question "who watches the watchmen", but this could be made all public too.
For example Wikipedia has a role called CheckUser - what is a person that has special access rights to check IP addresses of all other users. This is mainly used to see if a person doesn't use multiple sock puppet accounts to make various types of abuse (e.g. vote manipulation).
I know a local Wikipedia, where the CheckUser literally refuses to check if admins don't have sock puppet accounts. This means that the admins can literally make any sock puppet they want and always win any vote, including future votes for a new CheckUser.
What can you do about it? Nothing.
Can you write about this to Wikimedia Foundation? Nope. There even isnt any official way to contact them. They basically let local Wikipedia branches run themselves.
2A. You write a lot of text to defend literal garbage. That admin added 80 THOUSAND incredibly low effort redirects related to woman breasts.
"Titty tumors", "Segmental removal of the titties", "Constructions of the booby", "Hypoplastic tits", "Atrophy of the titties"...
Please explain to me how this is any good?
If a new user made such garbage, it would be speed deleted and the user IP banned immediately.
2B. So basically an experienced Wikipedia user still got their article speed deleted, had to fight to get it back.. and then somehow what I wrote is wrong. So to sum up, if you dont like the facts, you ignore the facts? I realy dont understand what is your point here.
3. Again, you seem to miss the point. Someone asked for an example of a political article that was problematic. So I provided an article. You can look at the edit history to see that there were literal wars about everything there.
Also in case of articles about living people, politicians etc. it is often quite clear that said politicians or their aides are the ones who are tasked with guarding the article, editing it.
> Please let us know how the article is not neutral.
Do you represent Wikipedia or Wikipedia foundation in any way?
Hey, please explain to me why "Constructions of the booby", or "Atrophy of the titties" are things that should be on Wikipedia? I guess you cannot defend this, so you just change the subject. Or maybe you are a sexist, who thinks that this is ok.
Why do you demand citations when Wikipedia is discussed? For any other topic, you dont demand them, or dont use them.
I guess you are just some common troll, probably a Wikipedia admin. Joke's on me, since I even bothered to reply.
You crossed badly into flamewar and personal attack in this thread. We've had to warn you about this kind of thing before. We ban accounts that do it repeatedly, so please stop and don't do it again.
You can make your substantive points without any of that, and it's also in your interests to do so!
It is clear from when he originally brought it up that those articles had been, eventually, removed. Indeed, part of his point (and a relevant issue, I believe) was to ask why this took so long. Since this must be clear to you, it seems that your comment is disingenuous.
I agree, the Wikipedia process is very slow, and often times a lot of discussion happens before something is finally done. That’s a natural consequence of a process where consensus, reliable sourcing, and a desire to be neutral and accurate determines what is acceptable and not acceptable.
I much prefer the process to what Reddit does, which is, in many subreddits, to quickly ban anyone who goes against the group think of a given subreddit, even if the subreddit is wrong.
In Wikipedia, as a rule of thumb, is that the truth does win out, even if it takes a while to get there. As one example, while Tara Reade’s now-discredited accusation [1] against Joe Biden was all over numerous subreddits and presented as objective fact, [2] the Wikipedia was taking a slower, more measured approach to reporting the accusations which ultimately ended up being far more accurate than what Reddit was doing at the time. [3]
As another case, a lot of noise was made over how horrible the Wikipedia was because Clarice Phelps didn’t have a Wikipedia article. She has one today. [4]
[5] Wikipedia has a hard time with allowing articles about cool open source projects and languages. I agree this is really annoying, since it means I have to dig through GitHub, forums like this one, or (for fonts) Google Fonts to find high quality open source programs or content.
[6] Adding footnotes without a reference to the footnote is an old alt.sysadmin.recovery tradition
Yeah, I used to love that place. Alas, the last time I was there, I got in a bad flame war which left a sour taste in my mouth. These days, the place is (mostly) dead, although they did have a nice eulogy for Brian Kantor (who actually killfiled me because of said flame war)
[1] It seems to have picked up some during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020
You sidestepped the point about disingenuously pointing out that the articles that the original commenter was very clear had been already taken down, were not there.
Do you think that being better than Reddit is a high bar?
While the post was quite heated and it’s hard to separate facts from expressions of anger, to me he strongly implied the other two haven’t been dealt with or resolved, while, in fact, all the issues are resolved or are being discussed, in Wikipedia’s typical style of discussing things to death (I remember when discussing whether to host pro-pedophile advocacy was a thing on Wikipedia, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Pedophile_movement/Archiv... )
I brought up Reddit because the OP brought up Reddit; I agree they are horribly inaccurate, and if something I read on Reddit makes me angry, I check other sources to make sure I’m not getting worked up over a lie.
I believe you did. In rvba’s item 2A, he is clear that the issue was addressed, after “an incredible amount of time”. Your reply provides the information that the articles no longer exist on the platform, as if it were a refutation of rvba’s point. This is what I am calling disingenuous, and I think my characterization is warranted.
EDIT: But perhaps I am wrong or confused. Wouldn’t be the first time. In that case, please clarify what, exactly, was the purpose of your citations that began “Those articles aren’t on the Wikipedia:”.
Thank you for the discussion. I have edited my parent posts to better clarify my position. For the record, I am no fan of Wikipedia’s “Deletionist” movement, and didn’t edit there for years because I did not approve of their wide spread deletions.
I was, when pointing out the articles are not on the Wikipedia, answering the direct question “please explain to me why "Constructions of the b—by", or "Atrophy of the ti—ies" are things that should be on Wikipedia?” (I have gone to the bother of bowdlerizing the cuss words) where the answer is “they haven’t been on the Wikipedia since 2015”.
That poster was being, to say the least, quite disingenuous asking me that question: They were making a direct personal insult against me, and they were stating that I advocated a position that I do not advocate. In other words, they were asking me a “are you still beating your wife?” type of question, and they worded their question as if those redirects are still on the Wikipedia.
Indeed, a point you missed they never stated the redirects went away.
Let’s look at what they actually said: >>>What is more sad in this case, is that every other admin knew very well that thousands of such pages were created, but nobody did anything. This is the usual situation when the clique will never go against one of their own.
It took them an incredible amount of time to do anything with that rogue admin and at the end I think he wasn't even removed from his role and banned, he simply stepped down on his own.<<<
Did this poster state the pages were removed? No, they did not. The poster only stated they they “[did] anything” with the admin, inaccurately stated he wasn’t banned (he was topic banned, which is a pretty serious punishment on the Wikipedia), and the OP never said what happened with the redirects.
A reasonable person reading what the OP wrote would not be given the impression the redirects were removed.
Now, back to me: I merely stated that the Wikipedia is a little more loose about redirects than about articles (“if you can make a redirect to something, it’s usually good to do so, even if the redirect uses a term which is not politically correct”); I agree that the particular redirects the OP incorrectly accused me of supporting go beyond the pale, and are examples of why I said “usually good” and not always good. The Wikipedia community agrees they went beyond the pale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_no...
It would be like if someone asked me “Why is it that pro-pedophile advocacy should be on the Wikipedia?”; it is in no way “disingenuous” to answer “that hasn’t been on the Wikipedia since 2007”, even if they previously pointed out that the Wikipedia did “something” about pedophilia a while ago, and even if I previously said that Wikipedia errs on the side of supporting free speech.
Personally, I think it’s pretty disingenuous to defend someone who was flaming me so hard, @dang had to intervene, and to incorrectly imply they OP said something they never actually said when falsely claiming I was being “disingenuous”. But that’s just my opinion.
It seems that we interpret language in radically different ways. This last comment of yours brings that home, as I find your analysis of the poster’s statements wildly off the mark. If you had simply disagreed with my interpretation initially when I said “Since this must be clear to you”, I could have retracted my characterization and we’d have been done. As it is, I must acknowledge that what seemed obvious to me might not be obvious to you, and, therefore, it is possible you were not being intentionally disingenuous. I’m sorry if my inferences wounded you; I should have taken more care in considering alternative possible, even if unlikely, readings.
> Maybe setting a high bar to new edits is not a bad idea.
I agree about this. If you're worried that your edit might get reverted, the trick is to argue for it on the talk page first, wait for any objections to be raised there, then if no one objects, make the edit marking it as "per talk". At that point, it will be very hard for them to just revert, and if they do so without addressing your comments they're breaking Wikipedia policy themselves.
This is a little unwiki though. If you fear your edit will be reverted, don't worry, it's still in edit history. Make a [1] Bold edit, wait for it to be reverted, then discuss.
The trick of it is that there are very high odds that the actual reverter will enter discussion with you; which means you're talking with exactly the right person on exactly the right topic at exactly the right time. O:-)
You can then proceed to figure out what (either of you [2]) are doing wrong, and get something on the page that works.
[2] Analogous to unit testing, where the bug could be in the test or in the main program; the problem here could lie with the BOLD editor or with the Reverter, or even both! If you assume good faith[3] and talk it out together, you can go far.
Of course it is, but it's way less unwiki than the alternative (revert wars and wiki blocks)! Being 'BOLD' works very well when you expect your edit to stick; if you have reason to think someone will revert your edit, it's just way better to proactively show good faith by arguing for your edit on the talk page.
It is entirely possible to be bold without revert warring. And the one of the best times to be bold is -in fact- when you do not expect your edit to stick. (see references, above.)
Be BOLD, but don't be reckless! Do show good faith, Do also follow all the other policies and guidelines, Do be respectful of others; Do also put a comment on the talk page; Don't start an edit war, and then you definitely won't get blocked!
Wikipedia policies and guidelines are not an optional, pick the ones you like kind of affair. When used together they document optimal processes found over years of experience.
When you follow optimal process and act in a decisive, clear and respectful manner, you'll find that you and your other co-editors can edit more rapidly, effectively and amicably, and you'll even get into less trouble along the way.
Setting a high bar to new edits increases the cycle time to deal with edits in general. If we look at control theory for analogies, and take a feedback controller (say PID) you'll see that short cycle times often lead to quicker convergence and higher accuracy; even with very crude control; while long cycle times even with very fine control will lead to much less satisfactory results.
Analogously thus with a wiki. One of the things that make a wiki (hawaiian for "quick") work is that it (potentially) has very short feedback loops when editing.
One reason wikipedia is often slower than it can be is because very many people have the "slow but fine" intuition; but less people have/(or used to have) experience with the "coarse but fast correction" regime, and thus lack the intuition that comes with that.
Nice that you talk about edits (or new articles?) that you have not seen. Spoken like a true Wikipedist: be hostile to anyone who is outside of the clique and dares to criticize it.
The hostile speed deletions and reverts applied to new users are never happen admins, or members of the clique - even if the quality of things they add is very, very low.
I even wrote above that there are ways to fight it: for example by randomizing the names of users who made the edits.
Although Im quite sure that Wikipedia is full of sad people, who will spend a lot of time and effort to still be able to bypass such a system.
What is even more sad, is that in this particular discussions, you have 3 different users who wrote that it happened to them... just look to other replies to the top comment.
Ten years ago I wrote a bunch of articles in a niche of my interest. One in particular was very complex, I spent a whole month doing research for it, posted citations for everything. When I came back a few years later it was unrecognizable. Now it barely has anything of what I wrote in it. So I know how it is to see your work trashed and how difficult the 'pro' editors can be. That's why I don't write there anymore, it's like writing on sand.
Even so Wikipedia is still one of my top 3 sites. I'm doing NLP and I see the Wikipedia corpus used in hundreds of papers. It's useful in many ways.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-...
Either nobody reads the relatively small Scottish Wikipedia, or (more likely) everyone who complained about it got banned by said admin. And since nobody really reviews bans (why cant the Wikimedia Foundation have someone for it?), then you are generally out of luck.
2A. There was a Wikipedia administrator who created 80 000 pages and redirects related to breasts. Also seemed to have some obsession over some low key political woman.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/dk17c9/wikipedi...
What is more sad in this case, is that every other admin knew very well that thousands of such pages were created, but nobody did anything. This is the usual situation when the clique will never go against one of their own.
It took them an incredible amount of time to do anything with that rogue admin and at the end I think he wasn't even removed from his role and banned, he simply stepped down on his own.
2B. Compare the rogue admin described in point 2A (who created 80 thousand articles and redirects related to breasts) with the typical experience of a new wikipedia user, whose article will be probably speedy deleted immediately after creation. There is a big group of admins who try to speed delete everything - because by default they treat every new user as human trash and every new article as not encyclopedic.
I dont have any statistics,but I assume that after the new article is deleted, most new users will simply give up, because the alternative is to fight versus the admin clique through various "committees" (full of said admins). This time is wasted, because instead of improving the article you go through a trial of tears.
2C. Also very possible is that every edit by a new user is reverted by default. The new user cannot revert it back - since this is an "edit war". I dont feel like searching for examples, but there are admins who have literal counters that show how many things they reverted - and they pride themselves of it.
This basically means thousands of users pushed away of trying to improve wikipedia, just because some sad asshole sits and reverts everything to paddle his stats.
Other admins dont do anything about it, because it is incredibly hard to remove an admin / if they removed that guy, then someone else could go after them.
The Wikimedia foundation simply does not care at all. They just need those millions for various expensive "projects", lunches and so on. A very similar thing happened with Firefox, where the Mozilla foundation is interested in everything, but not their core product.
If you are a new Wikipedia user a very typical situation is that if you create a new article, some admin will "improve" it (generally making it worse) and you cannot revert those changes, or you get banned by the said admin. On some smaller Wikipedia the admins knew each other very well, so they ask their friend to ban you.
I am aware that I dont provide any examples for those + I sound like a "frustrated person".
If you dont believe me, you can make a second account and see how it looks for someone new (using two accounts is against Wikipedia terms of service btw).
Perhaps a good way would be to randomize admin names, so those assholes get banned by their own friends, or reverted by own friends, who like to revert everything.
3. Regarding examples of "fresh" political cases having a lot of problems. You can check the page of Aimee Channelor and constant edit wars related to that person
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Aimee_Challenor
That's the person involved in the reddit scandal in 2021.
If you feel like a detective, you can also try to figure out who are the people who constantly guard and edit the said article.
Btw. I guess I also have to add a disclaimer that I never had anything to do with article from point 3.