Can Wikipedia Teach Us All How To Just Get Along? 191
Ponca City writes "Alexis Madrigal writes in the Atlantic that for all its warts, Wikipedia has been able to retain a generally productive and civil culture. According to Joseph Reagle, who wrote his PhD dissertation on the history and culture of Wikipedia, members of Wikipedia actively work to maintain neutrality, even if that's sometimes nearly impossible. The community has a specific approach to people designed to promote basic civility and consensus decision-making. The number one rule is 'assume good faith,' and the rest of the site's rules are largely extensions of kindergarten etiquette. The idea is that to find consensus, you must see your opponents as people like yourself. Keeping an open perspective on both knowledge claims and other contributors creates an extraordinary collaborative potential, Reagle says. The features of the software help, too. It's easier to be relaxed about newcomers' editing or changes being made when you can hit the revert button and restore what came before. 'Like Wikipedia itself, which seems to tap our natural urge to correct things that we think are wrong, maybe our politics will self-correct,' writes Madrigal. 'Maybe this period of extra nasty divisiveness in politics will push us out of the USENET phase and into a productive period of Wikipedian civility.'"
Yes (Score:2)
Really? I think this is the obligatory answer. (Score:2)
http://tcritic.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/greaterdickwad.jpg [tcritic.com]
Re: (Score:2)
It's Fuckwad.
Re:Really? I think this is the obligatory answer. (Score:5, Funny)
In common usage there is no difference.
Slashdot, though is different, because it is filled pedantic fucking comedians who often go without sleep, survive on caffeine, live in a basement or garage where they are plugged into the internet 24 fucking hours a fucking day, so the probability of some dickwad inventing a difference and some fuckwad using it on someone approaches certitude the way Captain Kirk approaches FTL or green babes.
Now, back to the article, which i did not fucking read, in which case I would be a dickwad (a fuckwad having read the article), which is about wikipedia. Fuck wikipedia.
here's the heirarchy of social media as I understand it.
We'll start with wikipedia.
wikipedia
This is proof of wiki software as a longterm content management system.
wikipedia
myspace
here we see that wiki software is very good for managing consensus software and myspace is good for managing music, blogs and people.
wikipedia
myspace
twitter
facebook
Phone support and real names. I think I'll label them for now.
wikipedia - ivory tower
myspace - rock concert
twitter - text messages
facebook - phonebook? - with pictures.
youtube - videos
You know what I think would be cool?
nasa - control your very own little robots on mars.
Anyways. Where were we? Oh yea.
slashdot - ???
hmm.
slashdot - basement dweller
slashdot - virgin
slashdot - geek
slashdot - nerd
slashdot - dickwad
slashdot - fuckwad
slashdot - *nix user
slashdot - wait that's it.
Slashdot is basically a Unix user's social networking site.
Wikipedia is a Unix run system.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No. And your post is OR.
the neutrality of this post is disputed
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Article is locked.
(translation - Only the admin's whose pet project / particular ideological belief is this article can edit)
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Sometimes this could be not a bad thing...
http://kyon.pl/img/16712,wikipedia,Articles_of_War,lol,wtf,war,.html [kyon.pl]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Article is locked.
(translation - Only the admin's whose pet project / particular ideological belief is this article can edit)
A protected page on Wikipedia only means you need to bring up the change on the talk page first. (Wikipedia usually doesn't protect articles' talk pages, and the policy is to unprotect a talk page of a protected article.) Once users (not necessarily admins) build a consensus on the talk page that the change is constructive, use {{editprotected}} to get a different admin to make the change.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Article is locked.
(translation - Only the admin's whose pet project / particular ideological belief is this article can edit)
I know it seems that way but there are signs of change coming.
So what was he banned for?
Say what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems like the general perception of the Wikipedia community is anything but productive and civil. More like insular and deletionist.
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Re:Say what? (Score:4, Insightful)
If it's notable enough that someone would search for it on Wikipedia, it's notable enough to have an entry in Wikipedia. The entire concept of notability for an electronic encyclopedia is bogus, and representative of the culture of Wikipedia these days.
Re:Say what? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Say what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Random page. Just go through at random, and you will find the articles which should not be there.
And you know they should not be there, because they contain no information, or are a terrible idea in themselves. For example: "Superiority of the Western Culture" is a terrible idea for an article. "My Widget Which I Am Trying To Sell" is another terrible example. "My Webcomic" (three entries and I am working towards a fourth) is yet another article which should not be there.
Re:Say what? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Superiority of the Western Culture" is a terrible idea for an article.
Why? This is just an example of what is wrong with Wikipedia: I disagree with something, therefore it should be deleted. It is certainly a notable concept with plenty of references, and not just in neo-Nazi literature. Not so long ago such beliefs were considered perfectly acceptable and mainstream in many Western societies. Other civilizations, Islamic, Chinese, Japanese often considered themselves superior to others and there are plenty of references for that too. Would you also like to delete the articles on White Supremacy [wikipedia.org], Black Supremacy [wikipedia.org], Holocaust Denial [wikipedia.org] etc because those concepts are not politically correct enough for you?
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Like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random [wikipedia.org]
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new created pages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:NewPages [wikipedia.org]
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If it's notable enough that someone would search for it on Wikipedia, it's notable enough to have an entry in Wikipedia
No, it isn't. Wikipedia is not for documenting every piece of stupid trivia that exists.
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So, by what criteria does one determine what piece of trivia is important enough to include, and what piece of trivia is "Stupid"?
Seems to me that there is no really hard-set criteria for this distinction, and as such is left up to a collective decision process, which has an un-restrained "populist" bias, which is totally arbitrary (based on which group of editors happen to be deliberating at any given time.)
Some people might claim that Leonardo DiVinci being a homosexual is stupid trivia. Others might clai
Notability follows from verifiability (Score:2)
So, by what criteria does one determine what piece of trivia is important enough to include
If it's verifiable to an independent reliable source, it goes in. For example, your band goes in if reliable publications have reviewed its album. A "non-notable subject" is merely one for which few or no facts are verifiable to independent reliable sources.
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It has been my experience reading talk pages on wikipedia articles, that article maintainers have a nasty habbit of redacting informative changes to documents under their control, for reasons that are not well explained by "notability", "lack of citations", or other perfectly resonable or respectable reasons for such redaction; but rather because the maintainer doesnt LIKE the change.
(Strawman alert! I have not checked this article for this kind of shit happening. It does however follow for other articles I
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You missed the point;
It WASNT that the article was deleted, it was WHY.
As was pointed out in the talk page for the "malamanteau" article, it BECAME noteworthy because of the controversy that cropped up around it. The "Delete; merge with xkcd article" solution that was riggorously enforced did nothing to address this new noteworthiness, instead effectively scrapping any compromise from that angle. It didnt even get a 2 line paragraph in the XKCD article concerning the controversy. The whole thing was squashe
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Fair enough. But then we need something that is. Documenting every stupid piece of trivia that exists is a useful goal. The problem for Wikipedia is that the set of all facts is a superset of the set of notable facts. So if we got some other group together to create an electronic encyclopedia without the concept of notability, it would completely supersede Wikipedia.
In short, the notability policy will ensure Wikipedia's obsolescence if its not changed.
Wikia: the overflow (Score:2)
The problem for Wikipedia is that the set of all facts is a superset of the set of notable facts. So if we got some other group together to create an electronic encyclopedia without the concept of notability, it would completely supersede Wikipedia.
Good. Find or start a Wikia or even a Go Daddy-hosted MediaWiki site about your pet subject area.
Re:Say what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when does "general perception" relate in any way to verifiable facts?
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Well, perception is initially created by witnessing facts. It's not exactly a secret that Wikipedia is dysfunctional.
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perception is initially created by witnessing facts
Far more likely by hearing/reading somebody else passing it along.
Regardless, people don't so much witness facts as perceive them through the filters of beliefs, biases, and expectations they've accumulated over their lifetime.
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Can you name an instance where the "General Perception" DOESN'T at least relate to verifiable facts?
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Congress.
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Assume good faith: the Wikipedia community tries to apply its principles, but as with other human communities, it falls short often enough.
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Re:Say what? (Score:4, Interesting)
having your edits reverted oftentimes feels a bit like being beaten like Rodney King
I concur, I posted on a page where I'm sort of an expert in the field and it got reverted.... I even had references, even though it wasn't that linked up, it could of easily been wiki-ified. After that I haven't made an edit to Wikipedia since, It isn't worth my time to provide that useful info if no one will ever see it.
Re:Say what? (Score:5, Insightful)
- the number of "patrollers" of unblock requests who are anything-but-civil and who do nothing but slap each other on the back about how rude they can get away with being until they provoke someone into crossing a "ban line." You know, kind of like stuff like this [wikipedia.org] where they keep poking and prodding merely because they can.
- the way that organized gangs play the "kill them one at a time" and "get our pet admin to declare them sockpuppets or meatpuppets" games. Look at the Wikipedia articles on Felafel and Za'atar; a group of deranged, racist muslims got together and decided they wanted to strip any reference to "evil jews" about the food. And, since they had a couple of racist administrators on their side, their will was done. These days, even the two FOOD articles look like slanted attack articles.
- The way that certain entrenched personalities get away with abuses at will, especially playing "scarlet letter" games and falsely accusing people of being sockpuppets. Even worse, the way that many of these have - since they play to the political or racist sympathies of other entrenches - have climbed the ladder and are now administrators or worse. "Orangemike" and "Dreamguy" are two nasties, Dreamguy particularly being one who shows major ownership issues on any article related to fantasy or mythology and who is not above accusing people - without any evidence or proof or even editspace collision - of being "Enviroknot", or any one of another dozen names that are instant, without question or proof, ban words.
- The fact that corruption got to the point where the Checkuser tool is now an "orf wiv 'is 'ead [google.com]" guilty-only attack. Get accused of being a "sockpuppet", and you're done, no matter what. There IS no proving your innocence of this charge, and the only administrators who will ever even touch an unblock request are the totally corrupt ones like Fisherqueen, Bwilkins, Tnxman, Smashville...
- Then there's the fact that the corrupt admin sector of Wikipedia organizes secretly [theregister.co.uk] to keep their hit-list up to date, as do the various entrenched POV-groups that maintain control on many articles.
Re:Say what? (Score:4, Informative)
It gets worse than this. You see, most people are aware that certain articles will inevitably be biased and most will even be dimly aware that one group or another controls them. Admittedly the food articles are far out there, but once you've heard of which groups are vying for control, you at least tend to understand why.
What's worse is the articles which are controlled by groups or persons for reasons unknown. People must understand that any crackpot, fool, or pedantic can control just about any Wikipedia article they feel like with enough effort. And they do, even for articles you'd least expect. (Terrible) Mathematical articles on things like the exponential function are essentially editorially controlled by people who are manifestly unqualified for the post. I once suggested that the article should start with the Taylor Series definition of exp(x), and I was promptly labelled as holding a point of view (POV), and was lumped in with holocaust deniers and ufo conspiracy theorists as someone unfit to edit the article further. I am not making a word of this up.
Wikipedia is controlled by petty bureaucrats, for petty bureaucrats. It wouldn't matter as much if it weren't the first thing returned by every second Google search. Mercifully however, I suspect that Wikipedia is beginning to collapsing in on itself. The legion of incompetent, self-important, Wikicrats are slowly mulching half good articles into meaningless pulp. For example, someone removed all chemical equations from the smelting article [wikipedia.org]. I dare someone to put them back and see how long they last.
Re:Say what? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the guys PhD dissertation. Nobody important (in his or your life) will ever read it and all it is going to do is sit pretty on his CV for a couple of years. When somebody is hiring him, they will see 'The history and culture of Wikipedia', if they have any interest at all they will read the synopsis and whether or not they agree with it doesn't matter.
That's how it goes with most research papers though. Nobody ever reads it, the synopsis or only some graphs are used to prove or disprove a point in their own research papers. Only when it is or becomes really important or if they're being investigated for fraud in their research projects will somebody actually read it but that's maybe 0.1% of the papers that ever make it that far.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I posted on a page where I'm sort of an expert in the field
There's the problem right there. Already I can sense violations of:
WP:OR [wikipedia.org]
WP:COI [wikipedia.org]
WP:RANDY [wikipedia.org]
WP:WTF [wikipedia.org]
Enough for an indefinite block and a talk page full of patronising comments. In future please stick to editing articles you know nothing about.
Would you post to Slashdot if you'd read the article? No, of course not. So please show a similar respect for Wikipedia and avoid editing subjects you know anything about.
kindergarten etiquette (Score:3, Insightful)
Think what a different place the world would be if you could convince everyone to follow 'kindergarten etiquette', why is it stated so dismissively in the summary? As if getting everyone to show basic respect to everyone else is an easy thing to do.
Re:kindergarten etiquette (Score:5, Insightful)
Kids eating glue.
Kids eating sand.
Kids throwing sand in each other's eyes.
Kids hitting each other with sticks.
Kids walking up to one another, and forcefully stealing their favorite toy from someone else.
Kids screaming, crying, and positively shrieking for attention.
Kids vocally calling each other out on one another's bodily functions (okay, I'll admit, that is actually pretty funny).
Kids pushing each other off the swingset.
Kids talking each other into trying positively stupid stuff just for the fun of it.
And the list goes on.
It's fun to sit around and fantasize about how easy life used to be as a kid (and in many ways it was). But I think we often forget about all of the things that weren't quite so positive when being a kid. We lacked the practice and development of social skills that came from years worth of peer-peer interaction. Young kids tend to have no problem acting as if there is absolutely no such thing as etiquette at all. Of course, that never stops teachers from trying to enforce simple common courtesy rules on children. But what those rules have in simplicity, they lack in applicability to more complex social interactions that form as a consequence of more developed social skills building on top of one another (flattery, imitation, anticipation, reaction, empathy, logical reasoning vs. emotional reasoning, etc.).
As we grow as social animals in age, so, too, do our social interactions and, thus, the complexity of the social situations we find ourselves in. We meet more people. We gain more freedom. We learn more basic laws about the nature of reality. As a result, social interactions involve more players, more observers, more factors to consider, and have further reaching consequences (a kindergartner doesn't need to consider whether or not eating sand will ruin their ability to support their family or not). Therefore, the etiquette we choose to follow, and the rationalizations we make to justify our actions to ourselves, grow ever more complex and nuanced. This is the natural progression of the human mind dynamically adapting as a structure evolved to ensure the survival of a very social species.
It's fun to trot out lines and ideals like, "Everything I need to know, I learned in kindergarten..." and what not. But when childhood is observed from a non-romanticized perspective, it is easy to see why we do not remain as children in our actions, thoughts, or abilities. This is as true for social skills as it is for anything else. If everyone followed kindergarten etiquette, large social entities like national governments, guilds, international clubs, unions, cities, and even, probably, advanced schools would not be possible.
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Kids eating glue.
Kids eating sand.
Kid eating cardboard and dying of cancer at the age of 7.
True story.
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Think what a different place the world would be if you could convince everyone to follow 'kindergarten etiquette', why is it stated so dismissively in the summary? As if getting everyone to show basic respect to everyone else is an easy thing to do.
It's easy to do when face to face with another person. Total strangers who nearly bump into each other on the footpath/sidewalk will instinctively apologize. Separate them either with the bodywork of a car or using the anonymity of a keyboard, and it's a whole different matter because the other person can't get at you. I drive a convertible and I find a huge difference in the way people treat me when I take the roof down.
Look at segregated sports events like English professional soccer where the authoritie
Re:kindergarten etiquette (Score:4, Funny)
So, is chatroulette the next thing that can teach us all how to just get along? ;)
(actually, could be interesting to check what seeing on Wiki the "other person" would bring...even if in gross way)
Re:kindergarten etiquette (Score:5, Insightful)
FTFY (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia has been able to retain a generally productive and civil culture.
Unless the page being worked on is about some particularly controversial topic which is at the forefront of the public mindset....at which point civility and productivity go out the window in lieu of the typical pseudo-anonymous dick waving that happens everywhere else on the internet.
And that doesn't even begin to address those many instances of a Wiki moderator (or whatever the hell they are called) falling in love with some pet page and refusing to let legitimate edits be made to it....
Re: (Score:2)
MOD parent up as generally awesome and completely correct.
Re:FTFY (Score:5, Insightful)
It also doesn't count those of us who LEFT Wikipedia because of the authoritarian admin issue. Sure everyone will get along if you run everyone with a different opinion off or ban them. They haven't found a way to get along, they just had twice as many people than they needed and ran off the half that wouldn't agree with them in exchange for being allowed to belong to the admin club.
Don't get me wrong, you have lots of good admins on Wikipedia, but they simply tolerate the bad ones who have the loudest voices and a bullying attitude. Not everyone rolls over so easy.
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Deletionist, Inclusionists, and the Goal (Score:5, Interesting)
A few years ago, no one imagined that we'd have accomplished what we did here on Wikipedia. Compared to the entrenched encyclopedia companies, we were far behind, and we always knew the climb would be steep. But in record numbers of entries, we came out and wrote so many articles. And with these articles and discussions, it was made clear that at this moment - in this fight for intellectual freedom - there is something happening on the Web.
There is something happening when men and men pretending to be women in Des Moines and Davenport; in Lebanon and Concord come out of their basements to write and rewrite and edit and correct because they believe in what this medium can be. We can be the new majority who can lead this world out of a long intellectual property darkness - Communists, Free-marketeers, and Furries who are tired of the high prices of Britannica and the inadequacy of Funk and Wagnalls; who know that we can disagree without being disagreeable; who understand that if we mobilize our voices to challenge the money and influence that's stood in our way to knowledge and challenge ourselves to reach for something better, there's no obscure minutia we can't illuminate - no minor character we cannot flesh out.
Our new Web encyclopedia can end the outrage of unaffordable, unavailable encyclopedias in our time. We can bring doctors and patients; workers and businesses, Democrats and Republicans together for discussion and consultation; and we can tell the big name encyclopedia players that while they'll get a seat at the table, they don't get to buy every chair. Not this time. Not now.
All of the inclusionists and the deletists on this site share these goals. All have good ideas. And all are valuable contributors who serve this website honorably. But the reason Wikipedia has always been different is because it's not just about what I or they will do, it's also about what you, the people who love knowledge, can do to increase it.
We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics who will only grow louder and more dissonant in the years to come. We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of the world false hope and bad information. But in the unlikely story that is Wikipedia, there has never been anything false about participation. For when we have faced down increasing attacks on our credibility; when we've been told that we're not a valid source, or that we shouldn't even try to be the be all and end all, or that we can't, thousands upon thousands of Wikipedia authors have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a free and liberated people.
Yes we can.
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What a horrible analogy.
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A few years ago, no one imagined that we'd have accomplished what we did here on Wikipedia.
Um, if you mean that it's gotten more words in it, but it's become no less fractious a society and no more accurate a source of information, then, yeah. Sure. If that was the goal, then you nailed it. But I'm pretty sure I imagined it that way.
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it's gotten more words in it, but it's become no less fractious a society and no more accurate a source of information
Sounds like a description of /. ;-). Seriously, though, Wikipedia's become a vastly more useful source of information over the past few years. Don't forget that many of those 'new words' are on topics that weren't in Wikipedia at all a few years back. And many more are linking out to sources. If you know how to use it (i.e. treat it as a starting point, not as hard fact), it's invaluable.
And while it's slow, it is getting more accurate, too. A year ago, it would tell you that unripe tomatoes were poisonous
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For when we have faced down increasing attacks on our credibility; when we've been told that we're not a valid source, or that we shouldn't even try to be the be all and end all, or that we can't, thousands upon thousands of Wikipedia authors have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a free and liberated people.
"Edit reverted."
Not "self-correcting" (Score:2, Insightful)
Politics won't self-correct, just as Wikipedia doesn't self-correct. Whenever vandalism or POV hackery is removed from Wikipedia, it's because someone went to an effort to do so. If politics is to become civil or collaborative, it will require some effort from the people involved to make it that way. It's not going to happen all by itself.
Re:Not "self-correcting" (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference- wikipedia actively makes it as easy as possible for people to make that effort and correct things in minutes. ,most likely, decades to get into a position from which they can, and even then it's a long shot.
In politics it is set up exactly opposite.
No individual no matter how much effort they're willing to put in can correct even the most obvious fuckup without investing months, years or
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I agree (Score:4, Informative)
I edit a lot of Northern Ireland-related articles on Wiki. A long-standing dispute is the name of one city and county. Catholics call it Derry, Protestants call it Londonderry. Politicians have raged for years on what to call it and never reached a compromise, it's a never-ending dispute. Wikipedians on the other hand have agreed to call the county Londonderry and the city Derry. That kind of compromise is a long way off among the politicians. In fact I sometimes think that Northern Ireland's politicians could do well to spend a few months editing on Wiki and learning how to get along with other editors. They'd be a lot more civil to each other if they did.
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I wish I were back home in Derry.
Re:I agree (Score:5, Funny)
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sorry but it breaks the rhythm of the tune.
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If there weren't a feudal hierarchy to decisionmaking that would never have happened.
And it's wrong, by the way. Which is why feudal hierarchies aren't any good at decisionmaking. Especially where the decision is what facts are true. Most especially then.
Re:I agree (Score:4, Informative)
What actually happened is there was a compromise on the "Article Names" and both articles start the same. The city article Derry "Derry or Londonderry is the second-biggest city in Northern Ireland..." and the county article starts "County Londonderry or County Derry is one of six counties that form Northern Ireland..."
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Wikipedia was great. Wikipedia is broken. And it's broken because of f**kery like the above post, extolling how wonderful it is that Wikipedia has managed to split-the-hair and call the county "Londonderry" and the city "Derry." Here is a post by a Wikipedia insider, bragging that Wikipedia does not reflect REALITY.
Wikipedia was great.
Wikipedia is broken.
Smart people like me cannot correct facts or grammar, without being reverted.
Wikipedia is broken.
Wikipedia WAS great.
How I get along (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I know there's loads of controversy about the system itself, and whether it's really as nice as it sounds. I'm not even going to address that, because most of this /. discussion will be about that anyway.
I mostly get along by not contributing.
That's exactly the key -- Wikipedia works because people who don't fit the system (whether it's good or bad doesn't matter) can get bored/frustrated/mad and leave the editing side. They can still get the benefits of other people's work within the system (or not if they choose), but there are no demands on t
No, just no.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia is full of people with agendas, and they have different camps.. inclusionists, deletionists, plus all the real-world politics on top of that.. And there is really not much recourse when admins have taken actions that you disagree with. Procedure is followed haphazardly. Many admins are undisciplined (in several senses of the word). Wikipedia doesn't seem to be self-correcting.
There are few ways politics self-correct, and very few of them don't involve bloodshed. I don't see how wikipedia is at all relevant to that.
-molo
Re:No, just no.. (Score:5, Interesting)
But the great thing about Wiki is the sheer amount of guidelines. No matter what agenda you're trying to push, there's a guideline somewhere that you can cite in support of your edit. Discussions often become a battle to see who can cite the most compelling WP guidelines. In fact I often find the discussion pages more interesting than the actual articles themselves. Ever seen the EV1 discussion? It's as if someone from GM is doing battle with a load of people who watched Who Killed the Electric Car?
Please remember to be WP:CIVIL when replying...
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There's also this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IAR [wikipedia.org]
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That still sounds considerably better than much of the rest of the internet.
Re:No, just no.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Then again, there definitely are people who know enough and should be able to edit accordingly. Maybe Wikipedia could use a system where editors can (privately) provide proof of being an expert in an area, and then they get tagged as such by the moderators, provided they also have a positive history of contributions.
Not civil at all behind the scenes (Score:5, Interesting)
The is wildly inconsistent application of rules relating to context and verifiability.
Many articles on even non-controversial subjects are watched by editors who seem to have a hardened POV agenda and will revert well-sourced edits that don't fit their world-view.
I found articles that were very thin and fleshed them out considerably, only to have them completely reverted by such individuals for a single missing reference. One that would have taken them all of a minute to source themselves.
This is in direct violation of the rules involving non-controversial subjects.
This same guy then went through every edit I made on other articles with a fine-toothed comb and reverted many of them for officious reasons.
Omarcheeseboro was the guy that particular time. Pointing out the literally *thousands* of articles that had problems many times worse than what I supposedly introduced was a complete waste of time. The arbitration process is hopelessly broken.
Basically the net affect of all this is that you have to be a Wikipedia etiquette expert to hope to make any changes of substance - or you can expect hours of work to be thoughtlessly reverted as part of petty jealousies and personal POV dominions.
Re:Not civil at all behind the scenes (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok, you named the person who reverted your edits, but you didn't say what page or link to the revert. For all we know this person was doing the right thing.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Predictably enough, /. commenters line up to hate on Wikipedia. And yet, somehow, despite this apparent culture of obstructionism which will send it down the drain in short order, Wikipedia seems to still be going strong. Thinking back for a moment, I first heard of this free online encyclopaedia in around 2005. That's just five years ago, and Wikipedia is now the de facto starting point for finding information on almost anything. It's come a long way, and doesn't seem to be grinding to a halt any time soon
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People with complaints, especially when other people have acted in ways that seems jerk-ish, tend to be more vocal than those who have entirely pleasant experiences.
I'm afraid to post to Wikipedia. Most of the time I know nothing about it, but sometimes I find the occasional spelling error, or word choice error, or find that a link to a book in the series is incorrect (e.g., there IS a wikipedia page on said book, but the series article doesn't link correctly to it). I don't bother to change them specific
Wikipedia can live and let live (Score:4, Insightful)
Where as the world often can't. Abortion is either legal, or it's not. Taxes are either at one rate or another. We either provide universal health care or we do not.
Wikipedia can present all valid views. The world can't implement all possible policies.
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Wikipedia can present all valid views. The world can't implement all possible policies.
Not in the same place. But the world is pretty large, why can't we have abortions legal here and illegal over there and you move to wherever the laws are the way you want them? Ah, I see, the problem is that those kinds of people think their truth should be everyone's truth. An anti-abortionists couldn't sleep knowing that abortions are legal across the border.
But that's got nothing to do with the world. In fact, in this regard Wikipedia actually is a start (some of the time) in teaching them that theirs is
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Who determines what is valid?
How about cold, hard logic? People may have differing opinions, but I'd venture to say that if your point of view isn't even internally consistent then it simply isn't valid. As in science, we cannot really prove that a particular view is correct, but we can certainly prove that it's not.
As an example, consider moron prosecutors who prosecute teenagers as adults for sending underage naked pictures of themselves to other people. This is a person who is not holding a logically c
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On Wikipedia, the person or people who determine what is valid is the one who has the most time and is most invested in the content of the article, regardless of cold, hard logic.
Your analogy fails to support your contention because it actually describes how Wikipedia operates: Anyone can make edits, but the edits will only stay if the support the opinion of the Wikipedia cliques and admins.
We don't know everything (Score:2)
There are often multiple possibilities of which no one has been absolutely proven. Wikipedia also has the advantage of not doing original research, but only summarizing that done by others that can be cited.
True (Score:2)
That does happen. There are means to deal with it, but it requires there be someone who cares enough about that article to make use of them.
Yah! RIIIIGHT! (Score:4, Insightful)
So long as you conform to the opinions of the moderators there, right, wrong, or otherwise, you can get along.
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So long as you conform to the opinions of the moderators there, right, wrong, or otherwise, you can get along.
Except that Wikipedia does not have moderation.
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But there are admins. And people with admin friend.
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No, Wikipedia has cliques and admins.
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The fuck they don't!
If you happen to add something that is both true and well sourced, if someone doing the editing and/or monitoring doesn't like it, it gets whacked for "neutral POV" or "unsupported" or some similar BS reason and gets, if you're lucky, reverted. If they're being especially douche-y, they even remove your edit.
Bollocks. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a chance (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, wait, are we talking about the slashdot sense of "us", or a greater collection of people?
Re:Not a chance (Score:4, Insightful)
But for all that, I believe it's doing us a service by forcing us to have the arguments. We have to confront the views we don't like. Because there's only one 'current' version of any page, conflicting factions cannot produce their own versions* and simply ignore each other. And, most of the time, that results in some form of compromise. People aren't always nice to each other (although that's encouraged), but by and large, it works.
* Yes, I know, Conservapedia, Citizendium, and so on do have their own versions. But a) it's much easier to edit Wikipedia than it is to set up your own version, and b) almost nobody uses any of the alternatives.
What's next for Joseph Reagle? (Score:2)
After his graduation, Joseph Reagle has accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at Hogwarts to study unicorns.
I think Calvin summarized it best. (Score:2)
--Calvin [wikipedia.org]
Openxml Travesty (Score:2)
Remember the "openxml" standardization travesty.
Professionals exploit the rules, and the people playing fair are cheated.
I suspect the thing about wikipedia is that none of the cheaters actually get onto the board.
With society / elections it is different. Maybe because spending money on campaigns has an effect?
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Another fun one is to try to add "not to be confused with ODF, the format produced by the software known as Open Office". This will get instantly reverted with the incredibly bogus excuse that the official name for Open Office is not "Open Office".
Wikipedia is not like that (Score:3, Interesting)
It also says "court was prosecuting one of the two men for involvement in the death of Mohammadi Ashtiani's husband". Yes "involved in the death", another way of saying murder.
The slanting of this article is incredible. If a woman in Texas had an affair with a man, a man who then murdered her husband, and months later she had been convicted under a death sentence for conspiring to murder her husband with her lover, do you think there would be anything like this in the article? Do you think maybe you wouldn't have to piece together that she was thought to be a co-conspirator in those who murdered, I mean were "involved in the death", of her husband? A cursory read of this would make one thing this woman was getting the death penalty for having an affair.
Then there's the canard - "Well, just edit it". Well, look through the history and discussion pages - people have, but their edits are reverted by the usual Wikipedia cabal. Their control of articles like this are backed up by the Arbitration Committee, and ultimately Jimbo Wales himself, whose devotion to Ayn Rand and the like are well known. Anyone with little involvement with Wikipedia might easily believe it is free and open. Even those heavily involved in uncontroversial editing of articles on science, math and the like might not see it. But a long-time observance of things is obvious. Just look at the enormously controversial and biased JayJG failing in the 2006 vote to make the Arbitration Committee - but Jimbo Wales appointing him to it anyhow. I pick that as JayJG is heavily biased against Iran. I am not Iranian, but I do find it laughable how the Americans who overthrew Mossadegh and the democratic government of Iran in the 1950s and installed a brutal dictator now whine about the Iranian government, and turn their eyes from their bloody Texan death rows to some far-off village in Iran and make some woman who conspired with her lover to murder her husband into some cause celebre.
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A more thourough research effort would indeed confirm she was originally convicted of adultery and sentenced to death for it. The fact that such a primitive and barbaric law is still on the books of a so-called modern nation is the real travistry.
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LOL (Score:3, Funny)
I'm not into chat-lingo, but "LOL" seems the only appropriate answer to the question asked in the summary.
If Wikipedia were the model for a society, it would be a strict oligarchy covered in a thin layer of pseudo-democracy. And I mean even thinner than our current so-called democracies where you actually can become a part of the in-group through nothing more than popular support.
It would also be a society hostile to science, dominated by porn on every street corner, and one in which a lot of people and sometimes even places "disappear" suddenly with only a note left behind saying "he wasn't notable" or, in some cases, just "WP:SD". If his wife complains to the authorities, she will find herself tagged "citation needed" and will have to supply several relatives who can vouch that she exists, or she will follow. Strangely, producing a birth certificate will be rejected as "original research".
Also, the official language of the administration, that you need to speak if you want anything from the authorities, will not be the language of the land but a derivative full of strange acrynoms and grammar traps so any bureaucrat who doesn't like you can always find some flaw in whatever you said and reject your request based on formalities.
No, thanks. Even though in many respects our current pseudo-democracies aren't too different, I still prefer them.
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[citation needed]
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