Wikipedia Blocks Hundreds of Accounts Doing Paid Editing 146
jan_jes writes: After weeks of investigation, Wikipedia has blocked 381 user accounts for "black hat" editing. The reason for the ban is that the accounts were engaged in undisclosed paid advocacy — the practice of accepting or charging money to promote external interests on Wikipedia without revealing their affiliation, in violation of Wikimedia's Terms of Use. In addition to blocking the 381 "sockpuppet" account, the editors deleted 210 articles created by these accounts.
Hey (Score:5, Interesting)
Was there ever a more vile and sociopathic concept than "reputation management"?
Re:Hey (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. "Software Patents".
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Sonny Bono Copyrights.
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Sales Department?
K St Lobbyist?
Weapons Dealer?
Anonymous Coward?
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In theory it wouldn't be that bad of a thing if it was done above board. Reputation is important, and a job that consisted of maintaining an awareness of your companies reputation and _ethically_ addressing concerns isn't inherently a bad thing.
That said, in practice it almost always seems to devolve into sketchy behaviour like this.
Not bad in principle (Score:5, Insightful)
Was there ever a more vile and sociopathic concept than "reputation management"?
Yes. Quite a few of them actually. Reputation management is something we all do to some degree. I don't know how you would exist in a complex society without some amount of effort directed towards maintaining your reputation in the community.
Protecting your reputation is not in principle a bad thing. Sometimes false or misleading information becomes public and can cause problems - sometimes serious ones. Nothing wrong with taking reasonable steps to guard against such things. Of course like most things you can go too far and try to hide wrongdoing but just because something is bad in some circumstances does not make it bad in all circumstances.
Re:Not bad in principle (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but most of us do our "reputation management" by, you know, behaving properly rather than going around trying to erase any record of our misdeeds.
Reputation management, the way it's practiced by the "New Media Strategies" type of outfits, is basically organized lying.
Re:Not bad in principle (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, think of this example: you run a nice little restaurant in town. Along comes Yelp and Google reviews, so people can post reviews of your restaurant online. Some customers are just assholes, and you happen to get one who is completely unreasonable, says racist stuff to one of your staff, whatever. Anyway they go away angry and write a nasty and completely false review of your restaurant on Yelp.
Since bad reviews hurt business, even if the reviewer is a liar or exaggerating the facts, there's nothing wrong with you responding to this review in some way. Doing so qualifies as "reputation management", whether you do it yourself, or you have a paid "reputation manager" do it for you (who could be a 3rd-party firm, or your niece).
Re:Not bad in principle (Score:5, Interesting)
One way you can deal with that is to make sure you have lots of positive reviews to drown out the nasty ones. And you get lots of positive reviews by doing positive things, like serving great food and having great service, not by hiring a bunch of people who have never been to your restaurant to write good reviews.
But you raise a good point.
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One way you can deal with that is to make sure you have lots of positive reviews to drown out the nasty ones. And you get lots of positive reviews by doing positive things, like serving great food and having great service, not by hiring a bunch of people who have never been to your restaurant to write good reviews.
But you raise a good point.
But this misunderstands how people are motivated. Anger is a much more powerful motivator than being happy with something. In the example above, it would maybe take 1000 very happy people to get enough good reviews (i.e. maybe 1% will actually post a review) to drown out a few unhappy customers.
I'm not advocating for fake reviews. All I'm saying is that there has to be a way to counterbalance human nature to give a somewhat fair and accurate picture. Today, organizations and individuals use reputation m
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Speak for yourself. I'm much more motivated to leave positive reviews than negative ones.
And if someone is actually angry at a business for bad service or bad products, why shouldn't they be able to leave an angry review.
The way you overcome negative speech is with positive speech. So do the right thing and get good reviews.
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The way you solve that problem is to require reviewers to not hide in anonymity. There are plenty of very prominent reviewers of all kinds of things, including the movie reviewers Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert who got their named plastered all over so much that even a negative review ("Two thumbs down....an interesting movie with flaws") would still show up on movie posters.
Don't trust an individual reviewer.
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"The Owner Of California's Botto Bistro Is Proud To Have Yelp's Worst-Rated Restaurant"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... [huffingtonpost.com]
Re:Not bad in principle (Score:5, Informative)
But not everyone is in the public eye. Think of all the good, normal, upstanding stuff you do every day, and of course nobody notices and splashes "PopeRatzo is a great guy!" all over the internet. But you don't think and screw up one time and you could find yourself destroyed online. There are no 1000 good stories about PopeRatzo to drown out the one about the time you passed out drunk and shit yourself in a Wendy's. Reputation management is good for such cases.
For many people, their 15 minutes of fame are 15 minutes of infamy. There was the woman (whose name I will not mention so as not to further googlize her name in connection with this) who had a stupid game she played with a friend where they would take pictures of themselves next to signs doing the opposite of whatever the sign said. She wasn't thinking and did that in front of a sign asking for quiet and respect at Arlington National Cemetery. She failed to understand the privacy options on FaceBook, posted it to her friend's wall, and it went viral. Lost her job, death threats, whole works. A reputation management company helped get her life back together. [businessinsider.com]
I don't think this woman was an awful person, intentionally expressing hatred for America and dead soldiers. I think she forgot context, used poor judgment, and doesn't deserve to have her life ruined over it. I'm glad she's doing better now.
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Think of all the good, normal, upstanding stuff you do every day, and of course nobody notices and splashes "PopeRatzo is a great guy!" all over the internet. But you don't think and screw up one time and you could find yourself destroyed online. There are no 1000 good stories about PopeRatzo to drown out the one about the time you passed out drunk and shit yourself in a Wendy's. Reputation management is good for such cases.
Actually, this isn't quite true. That guy who dressed up as Batman and visited kids
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That proves my point. If you dress up as Batman, yes, people will see your good deeds and a google search of you will show up "good guy!" to cover up the shitting at Wendy's. But the vast majority of people do not dress up as Batman. They're not bad people. They just don't anything so good you'd get famous for it.
So, if you're just a regular guy who does his job and takes care of his family and stays out of trouble with the law and goes to church on sunday, a google search will not turn up all those fine qu
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That proves my point. If you dress up as Batman, yes, people will see your good deeds and a google search of you will show up "good guy!" to cover up the shitting at Wendy's.
No, they don't. You're missing my point. No one ever heard of this Batman guy (except at the children's hospital he visited) until he died. Then everyone was talking about what a great guy he was. I'm sure he was a great guy, but my point is that he only made national news when he got hit by a car and died. Just driving a black Lam
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Oh. I'd known about that guy for a long time. For me it was the "dressing as batman" part that got him known to me, not the dying part. RIP.
The problem is people will comment on the bad. (Score:2)
It is not even all that hard to understand. When I go to a restaurant I expect good service.
It is human nature to not take notice of the expected so people are less likely to post a review when they get good service.
It is also human nature to take notice of the unexpected so when people have a bad experience they are more likely to post a review.
When looking at reviews I tend to look at the age of the review and the subject. If I see long waits as a complaint I will bet you that is valid. If someone is goin
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I guess human nature varies. If I'm not 100% satisfied at a restaurant, I'll generally chalk it up to them having an off day. I might tell the proprietor, but I'm not gonna go rant on Yelp. If I have a really nice meal, I'll go give a good review. It's sort of the YMMV approach.
I'm generally not much for bad reviews, just as I very seldom mod any comments down. I'm a believer in the carrot over the stick.
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The problem is, that doesn't work. Very few people are motivated to spend the time writing a positive review (unless maybe they're paid for it). But angry people are quick to post negative reviews. I'm not defending false reviews, mind you, I'm just pointing out how "reputation management" (in the most vague sense) can be seen as necessary. I don't really have a good quick-and-easy solution for restaurants with a few angry customers. Most of the time though, what works for me as a customer is to look a
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And you get lots of positive reviews by doing positive things, like serving great food and having great service, not by hiring a bunch of people who have never been to your restaurant to write good reviews.
...or, you could just go the easier/more effective route: Give in to Yelp's blackmail, and pay them to ensure the bad reviews are suppressed.
Since Yelp is already working to negatively "manage" your reputation unless you pay up, paying them doesn't make you a bad person (any more than it does to pay a ransom to preserve something/someone else dear to you). It's just effectively working to manage your reputation, under unfortunate circumstances.
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Anyway they go away angry and write a nasty and completely false review of your restaurant on Yelp.
That is commonly called libel, and can be addressed through the legal system.
http://dictionary.law.com/defa... [law.com]
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Good luck with that. First, many reviews are anonymous, and even if they aren't, how exactly do you prove that they're falsehoods?
"The food tasted lousy" is a subjective claim. That isn't libel. It doesn't matter how great your food is, someone can claim it tastes lousy to them, and that's Constitutionally-protected speech.
Almost any online complaint is going to be a he-said-she-said situation. Libel laws don't help with those.
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So Yelp is willing to refuse a subpoena for the information and risk going to jail for contempt of court?
It may be terrible PR to sue your customers, but if there is no form of redress for false information, than what other path does a business have?
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APK, you would have to prove a single point to make a fool out of anyone but yourself, I am still waiting.
Is the sky not blue?
Is APK not annoying?
Are Hosts files useful for anything other than a very small subset of issues?
Until you can prove ALL my claims false, you are just admitting that you are wrong. (this is the attitude you give to everyone else, live by your own rules!)
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I see no answers, keep trying APK.
No one really thinks these responses are from anyone but you, so just give it up. The style is exactly the same, it is quite obvious.
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Poor old APK, his delusions just get worse, pity the poor souls mental illness.
Nobody is perfect (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but most of us do our "reputation management" by, you know, behaving properly rather than going around trying to erase any record of our misdeeds.
You can behave properly all you want and still get screwed by false information or malicious deeds. A service that helps people combat this sort of problem is fine. Some people are just assholes and will try to ruin your reputation out of spite or just because they can. Ask any restaurant if they get nothing but fair and honest reviews on Yelp. Even if people aren't actively trying to ruin you, nobody is perfect and minor mistakes can sometimes cause major problems - problems far out of scale with the deeds.
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Yes, but most of us do our "reputation management" by, you know, behaving properly rather than going around trying to erase any record of our misdeeds.
Behaving properly? Is that necessarily with a right to be forgotten? Isn't Wikipedia reputation optimization just the European model of reputation management, just with a bit more of a proactive bent?
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Yes, but most of us do our "reputation management" by, you know, behaving properly rather than going around trying to erase any record of our misdeeds.
Sounds like a lot of presumptions (that only the "misbehaving" use these services, that good, behaved businesses aren't/can't be targeted by bad reviewers falsely, etc.
These notions are tripe. It does happen, fairly often, people being wrongly targeted, having their reputations tarnished I mean.
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Reputation management also involves correcting widely-held beliefs about a company/organisation which are flat-out wrong. This happens more than you'd imagine, and work like urban legends - statements of dubious factual content passed around as gospel truth. Just look at Slashdot for a great example - leaps are made between what certain companies do and what the Slashdot audience (or members thereof) think they are doing or going to do (even though there is no evidence for it). How often have you seen a
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Then that's what you spend your marketing budget on. It does NOT mean you should hire an army of minimum wage sockpuppets to post phony reviews or pay media strategies companies to edit your Wiki page.
If you can't repair your image honestly, you're eith
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I think they've just managed my comment! ;-)
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I've always admired your almost fanatical devotion to the pope.
Re: Hey (Score:5, Insightful)
Get back to me in 7 years, when your then 23 year-old daughter finds it hard to land a job because of her drunk texts and selfies on all the popular social media sites throughout high school and college years...
Or consider this, imagine you are a restaurant owner and your competitor down the street has nothing better to do than create new email accounts and post negative comments about your business every day... What is the proper response?
Reputation management serves a useful function.
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I was very disappointed to hear "brought to you by" credits for one of these companies on NPR. Have not heard it recently. I hope someone in the ad dept realized who's money they were taking.
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So what? (Score:2)
English Wikipedia averages nearly 10,000 accounts registered every day. Who thinks 381 accounts blocked is going to make a difference?
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Won't make any difference at all. Wikipedia in itself has a serious editorial and sourcing problem anyway, which is causing it to become highly untrusted even by laymen.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who uses Wikipedia as a trusted source? It's value is in quick information on a number of non contentious topics. Going to Toronto and want to get some quick facts about the city? Wikipedia is great for that. I just wouldn't use it to make any important decisions, and maybe it really doesn't need to be that anyway.
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Most people do. Encyclopaedia Britannica is no longer published in physical form, and does anyone much use the online version?
Despite the possibility of abuse, Wikipedia was a better encyclopaedia than the best physical encyclopaedia. It's vast coverage and constant editing as new things come to light, outweighs it's flaws.
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The problem with it is with any controversial topic, you're not going to get agreement, and contributors will constantly try to change the article to favor their bias. How do you deal with that?
So if you want to read about the Pythagorean Theorem or African Elephants, there's likely great articles about that. If you want to read about the Moon landings, there's probably a great article about that too, and the few cranks who think it was faked are easily overruled by the editors who keep an eye out for som
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I've just had an admittedly cursory look at the article about Obama and haven't found any problems. It seems to state facts only. What bias do you mean?
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Which only means that it is pretty well cleansed due to the debate and non-controversial things have been kept out. It is interesting that the alias used by Barack Obama while his family lived in Indonesia, Barry Soetoro, is not listed anywhere in the actual article even though it is even mentioned in one of the sources on the article as the title of the article. Another interesting thing that has been completely removed from not only that article but any sub-articles is anything even remotely mentioning
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Most people do. Encyclopaedia Britannica is no longer published in physical form, and does anyone much use the online version?
Despite the possibility of abuse, Wikipedia was a better encyclopaedia than the best physical encyclopaedia. It's vast coverage and constant editing as new things come to light, outweighs it's flaws.
Wikipedia is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy of today (the fictional electronic book in the same titled SciFi novel). It can be inaccurate but is usually good enough...
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Wikipedia was a better encyclopaedia than the best physical encyclopaedia. It's vast coverage and constant editing as new things come to light, outweighs it's flaws.
You might even be able to find an article on the proper use of the apostrophe there!
Re: So what? (Score:2)
Who uses Wikipedia as a trusted source? I do! If I'm with friends from around the world and we need to convert between Celsius and Fahrenheit, I look for the formula in Wikipedia and no further. Yesterday we wanted to know if a kettle really reached 100âC. Wikipedia again? You bet? Or idly reading about WW2 battles maybe triggered by a contemporary reference? Wikipedia again AND NO INTEREST IN OTHER SOURCES, as always.
I think a big part of the trust is I can trust a search result that points me to Wiki
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Even for college classes which bar use of Wikipedia directly, going through the citations and downloading/buying the works that were mentioned to read is a solid way to write a paper.
Wikipedia is one of the few places on the web that I can get meaningful info without having to deal with paywalls, full page ads, demands to create a user account or link to FB (so they can post freely as your ID), or other crap.
Of course, it isn't perfect. It is hard to get past the stage where any meaningful/relevant/on topi
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Who uses Wikipedia as a trusted source?
Trusted? Never said that. The problem is there's a lot of special interest groups pushing their versions of events. Even quick facts about something even on non contentious topics is becoming a problem, want to see why? It's crap like this, even when easily disproven. [wikipedia.org]
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Who uses Wikipedia as a trusted source? (...)
People who don't have access to any other source: like those. [slashdot.org]
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" which is causing it to become highly untrusted even by laymen."
I have to disagree here. Over the past few years the overall quality of result pages have become much higher in quality. Given the model of general non-authority for any given published "fact", overall there are many high quality, well referenced and verifiable results.
What you have to wonder is how many know how to verify the authenticity and reliability of the data and that's where the problem exists.
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Editors are allowing things like Gawker, The Mary Sue, twitter and random blog posts as factual information. Even going as far as allowing citeogenesis to reinforce topics as "high quality factual information." I linked this up a few posts, read it and that's how bad it's getting even on non-controversial topics. [wikipedia.org]
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Well said! There's no point in doing anything about any problem in the world, ever, if you can't solve it in one step.
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Anybody who thinks such accounts can be identified through pattern recognition and data-mining for example?
list of articles deleted (Score:5, Informative)
the list of articles that were deleted:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The list has articles and users that were deleted and the day they were deleted. It is called Orangemoody because according to FTA
This post is to inform the English Wikipedia editing community that the Checkuser team has identified a very large group of socks creating promotional articles, inserting promotional external links, and otherwise editing disruptively on this project. The investigation is named "Orangemoody" because this was the first sock identified.
The list of deleted accounts also are under the Orangemoody name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
"Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit, and its open model makes it a rich and reliable resource for the world."
Or, in reality, a handful of basement dwellers sit on the edit history or every article and straight up harass you for making additions or corrections, because they are "wiki".
It's about as reliable as any web forum or blog at this point, maybe worse because it's as famous as google at this point. It's good to see them cutting out the blatant paid posters, but that's not even the bulk of the issue with wikipedia. It's the little closed circle of editors who believe they own the content and the rest of us peons aren't allowed to join the party.
Case in point, the last time I bothered modifying an article on a subject that I'm quite knowledgeable on. Modified an article to add some relevant information and provided sources and citations.
I was promptly banned from making edits and my changes were reverted. Ok great, whatever right? Well if I bothered to tell you which article I'm referring to, you could go look right now and see the content I added is now back, same source, same citations. The only difference is one of the super special wiki-gods didn't like that I, a lowly peon, posted it, so they banned me, then re-added everything they removed under their own name.
This is wikipedia in a nutshell.
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There needs to be an edit history function that records what they did and gets them banned.
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That edit history is already built into the MediaWiki software and has been there for years. it is in fact one of the ways you can track down the activities of a user, and that edit history is for the most part even available to the general public. Here is the edit history [wikipedia.org] of one of the more infamous Wikipedia editors of the past as an example.
Admins get some minor additional pieces of information, and can look up deleted pages (at least pages not visible to everybody) to review what might have happened i
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I was promptly banned from making edits and my changes were reverted. Ok great, whatever right? Well if I bothered to tell you which article I'm referring to, you could go look right now and see the content I added is now back, same source, same citations. The only difference is one of the super special wiki-gods didn't like that I, a lowly peon, posted it, so they banned me, then re-added everything they removed under their own name.
Same here, I added in the birth date of a deceased individual, it was promptly removed as it 'violated their privacy'. I pointed out that the information was available on the memorial website. In response my account got banned. Later on the information was reinstated by some Wikipedian luminary (slimvirgin) with no objection. On Wikipedia all contributors are equal, only some are more equal than others.
VERY mixed - but does work sometimes (Score:2)
Take the plank out of thine pwn eye (Score:5, Interesting)
Has Slashdot investigated if there are paid downmodders to hide comments certain factions don't like? Or upmod, for that matter?
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MOD POINTS FOR SALE!
Usually 15/week. No topic too big. No topic too small. No moral restrictions.
Send private message if interested.
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Comment removed (Score:3)
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more attention needs to be lent to dealing with controversial articles on the RIAA, the trans continental partnership, and the nature of large entities that can afford to muddle their tracks. For example, how many edits to the Coca Cola wiki article have been made and by whom? What edits get made to pages on the gulf oil disaster and on Time Warners article
And you don't think pages like Barack Obama or George W. Bush are immune to these problems by political fanatics either? What about the religious fanatics that get into edit wars over theology, or the Wikipedia pages on Scientology? Frankly what I see for from these shills working for advertising agencies is trivial compared to the huge damage that a well invested fanatic on many other topics can do to Wikipedia articles, most of them not getting any sort of pay for their activities.
It also isn't the famo
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Euuurghhhhh...
Good job Wikipedia! (Score:5, Funny)
I was sitting here drinking a refreshing Coca Cola when I started reading this story on my Apple iPhone 6 Plus. The level of paid shills that infested Wikipedia were getting bothersome. It was at the point that I started using my Encyclopædia Britannica (2015 edition).
Sorry if I don't get to your replies sooner, I'm taking the Prius to Chipotle for a GMO-free lunch.
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-- Trolling is a art,
You should have said Encarta..
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--
Trolling is a art,
You should have said Encarta..
Encarta is an art?
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No... trolling is an Encarta, I think?
When is Wikipedia going to block hovering editors? (Score:2)
.
There are still too many tin-foil-hat editors on Wikipedia, making Wikipedia nice, even entertaining, to read, but I always go elsewhere when I need real information.
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Usually when people come into conflict with the regular editors its because the editor has found genuine fault with the edits. Usually the underlying problem is that they are pushing an agenda. For example there are many global warming deniers who try to edit, and claim they are providing "factual evidence" to backup their edits. But they are not. Wikipedia rightly concentrates on consensus science and covers denier stuff in "controversy" sections and articles.
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Usually when people come into conflict with the regular editors its because the editor has found genuine fault with the edits....
"usually" but not "always", or even "most of the time", in my experience.
.
My experiences have nothing to do with the hot-button issues of climate change or other tin-foil-hat "denier" items.
For example, in one instance the summary of a TV episode was wrong. I had just watch the episode on DVD, and I was curious about something in the episode, so one of the items I checked was the Wikipedia article about the episode. Having just finished watching the episode, I noticed a spot where the summary was wron
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.
always = 100%
most of the time ~ 90 to 99%
usually ~ 70 to 89%
I'll admit that my interpretations thereof may not agree with your interpretations. :)
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I'm curious. Where do you go for real information?
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I'm curious. Where do you go for real information?
No one place that I can say, "I go here." Google tends to put Wikipedia at or near the top of search results. So I just look further down on the search results, and typically I find a truly authoritative site for the information I need.
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"There are still too many tin-foil-hat editors on Wikipedia, making Wikipedia nice, even entertaining, to read, but I always go elsewhere when I need real information."
Funny but I often get miffed with I see extreme bias in articles.
Where's the rewriting? (Score:1)
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As someone who actually lived through the 1990s and who actually used Windows 3.1/3.1.1/95/NT3/NT4/2000, I find the quoted paragraph to be pretty much on the mark.
Instead of being all cutesy & stuff, how about explaining to us exactly how this represents "history being rewritten"?
TOS (Score:3)
I like to see Wikipedia say "No paid postings/sock puppets" in their TOS and a $10,000 per violation click-wrap agreement.
Thank You For Being A Ped(iA) (Score:2)
Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Removing that thimble of water from that ocean is going to make a HUGE difference. Oh wait, no it won't.
Wikipedia has become another little internet fiefdom run by a bunch of backstabbing assholes who use their basement-dwelling power to rule capriciously and for personal gain.
Picky picky (Score:2)
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Whilst in some controversial areas this may be true, in the corners of Wikipedia that are of interest to specialists in proper subjects (i.e. not media studies ;) we see some very good work. Don't discourage right use because of some abuse.
Most of Wikipedia is fine, but the main management and many of the in-house editors are unquestionably a group of power-mad weenies who are trying to fertilize their own egos with the tiny bit of authority they have.
Huh? Are we reading the same article? (Score:2)
Hall of Shame (Score:1)
An example sketchy article from Wikipedia (Score:3)
Ever wondered, how many of russian paid trolls (Score:1)
Ever wondered, how many of Russian paid trolls are on Wikipedia?
Heck, there is even:
Presidential Commission of the Russian Federation to Counter Attempts to Falsify History to the Detriment of Russia's Interests [wikipedia.org]
Easy to edit wikipedia (Score:1)
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And what about this Anonymous Coward fellow?? I've seen more tripe and shilling take place under that moniker than any other, the others seem to pale into insignificance when you consider the things that account posts!
It would almost lead one to believe that every paid shill and troll on the planet is sharing the username and password for that account, which amounts to abuse on a massive scale! We should ban this account, it seems that it would go a long way to restoring public decency here on /.!
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LOL My favorite tactic of that guy is when the post relates tearful and painful personal occurrences or details personal certificate quality awards, etc that support their point as if those things were real.
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I wasn't aware that there were mental disorders called "nawlinwiki" and "bsadowski1". I don't seem to be able to find any Wikipedia articles about these, either. Can you help?