Wikipedia Editor Says Site's Toxic Community Has Him Contemplating Suicide (vice.com) 379
An anonymous reader writes: A longtime Wikipedia editor wrote an email to a large public mailing list Tuesday, saying he was contemplating suicide due to online abuse by his fellow Wikipedians. "Nobody on Wikipedia seems to be kind," he wrote. "You are all so busy power tripping that you forget there is a real, live person on the other side." He lamented that obstructionism by other editors stopped him from contributing to the site's "great mission -- one I feel so keenly." The email was sent to the Wikimedia-L mailing list, which is one of the largest community-run Wikimedia mailing lists and has hundreds of subscribers. The editor was upset after an ongoing disagreement with other editors on the "talk" pages of an article about a local politician. The debate devolved into name-calling, the editor wrote, and eventually he was completely banned from editing the site he had devoted so much time to.
Well, what do you expect. It's online. (Score:5, Interesting)
The online world is like drunk people. Some drunks are mean, some are nice. You get to know the real person if they have had a few drinks, honest, crook, lecherous, moral. Same for how people behave when they have some power online and can ban folks they disagree with. They are online drunks.
Re:Well, what do you expect. It's online. (Score:5, Insightful)
And... as a followup to my post. If you get suicidal over online crap. You need to get off the internet and go outside to play.
Re:Well, what do you expect. It's online. (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people are more sensitive than others. Telling all of those to GTFO will lead in a lot of resources wasted. Because, believe you me, the power hungry assholes usually aren't the great contributors to society they want you to think they are.
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This isn't sensitivity -- it's someone who sounds depressed, which is often a failure to properly frame a problem (though it can also be a difficulty emotionally handling a properly framed problem). Going outside quite literally expands your horizons, but really any change can be beneficial. Additionally, the author may want to seek help, whether it's self-help or professional. Depression is not a joke, and the OP's advice is solid, even if the delivery may have been flippant. Besides, nobody said he sh
Re: Well, what do you expect. It's online. (Score:3)
Or, perhaps people should have a "don't be an asshole" course instead.
When you have the choice to be an asshole or a reasonable person, why be an asshole?
Re:Well, what do you expect. It's online. (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't seem like this person crumbled at the first mean thing said to them, it's more like an on-going series of incidents over a long period of time. Most normal people are like that - generally stable and able to cope with what life throws at them, but if put under sustained pressure will eventually crack.
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What of the emotionally strong with a sense of self-worth who figure that they can go contribute somewhere not populated with self-important assholes who never grew out of the terrible twos?
Save the GTFOs for the assholes.
Re:We don't know how to be nice. (Score:5, Insightful)
"...some people think it is because of Political Correctness is taking over. It isn't it is because we as a culture are trying to flatten the class structure."
We've been flattening class structure since the 1600s and has nothing to do with Trump's popularity. PC is fairly new and it *IS* causing huge unnecessary problems and conflict. By labeling nearly EVERYTHING racist or sexist to silence your opposition there can be no middle-ground or compromise. I believe it's impossible to govern a republic based on democratic principles for very long without compromise -- you end up with sometimes more than 50% of the population against the establishment. .
Trump is popular because he's talking about things both the Ds and the Rs wont talk about -- like illegal immigration for instance. PC crap and 'micro aggressions" are just really starting to piss people off. I swear its right out of George Orwell how we're changing language to change perception. "Pro Life" vs "Pro Choice"? That's so crazy minor compared to a young black woman calling out a young white man with dreadlocks for stealing her culture -- or taking "felon" and "criminal" out of our lexicon in favor of "persons who have been involved in the justice system" or "individuals who have been incarcerated". I'm not making that up!
When the press and the establishment both refuse to use the term "illegal immigrant" and refer to those who have a PROBLEM with unregulated and vetted migration across our sovereign borders as "anti - immigrant" (rather than anti-ILLEGAL-immigration) it's appalling.
You can only shut down the opposition so much via tactics like this for so long before something fractures. There's no more ability to compromise and "meet in the middle". You are right that people feel less empowered -- but not just white people (how long until we want to call ourselves 'melanin lacking individuals'?) And it's because our system broke. Things that should require a constitutional amendment are being forced on a country not fully ready for it by judicial fiat. That takes sovereignty out of the hands of the individual.
It's no wonder why Trump is so popular. It's also no wonder why he's so hated.
*I'm not a Trump supporter. He strikes me as a psychopath the way he attacks and loves in almost the same sentence. That doesn't mean I can't see the appeal to FINALLY have someone speak honestly and blow off PC dribble and talk about topics that are basically quasi-taboo to the establishment of both parties.
Re:Well, what do you expect. It's online. (Score:5, Insightful)
And... as a followup to my post. If you get suicidal over online crap. You need to get off the internet and go outside to play.
Yup.
This is the challenge of putting anything out to the public, since it becomes a form of public domain. Even if the copyright technically belongs to a small group, the stake holders are in the millions and the unofficial armchair committee huge. Sometimes the best thing is to know when you need to agree to differ and walk away from the shitfest. It is not always easy, but the short term pain may make the long term so much better.
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Tragedy of the Commons.
As I've said before... (Score:5, Insightful)
If Wikipedia wants to fix this, they need to disallow users from camping on pet articles. They need to disallow reverts based on style that have nothing to do with substance and have no real benefit, and they need to ban users that continue to engage in these practices. Until that's done the entire process will be at the whim of the cave trolls that patrol the site because they have nothing better to do.
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Re:As I've said before... (Score:5, Insightful)
...fuck Wikipedia. It's entire model can literally be summed-up as, "King of the Hill." Whoever camps at their computer to edit pages is the editor, regardless of any acumen or credentials with the subject matter, and without regard to any actual rules that govern article structure or citation. If Wikipedia wants to fix this, they need to disallow users from camping on pet articles. They need to disallow reverts based on style that have nothing to do with substance and have no real benefit, and they need to ban users that continue to engage in these practices. Until that's done the entire process will be at the whim of the cave trolls that patrol the site because they have nothing better to do.
Wikipedia, as an idea, has a lot of promise but unfortunately the reality is far from the promise. There is a lot of good information there, but it is also a convenient and large forum for the power tripping to seek validation by "winning" while they safely post from their mother's basement. Those with useful input eventually decide to go elsewhere because the headaches aren't worth the toile, which off course just makes basement dwelling troll feel go because he has won yet again; even if no one really gives a shit about him or his miserable existence.
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Like communism, with a small "c", it requires the majority of people to not be assholes.
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Most people think most people aren't assholes, because most people (by definition) are not part of the out-groups toward which that assholishness is directed.
If you happen to agree with everyone else, of course everyone else seems great. But it's the points of disagreement that test peoples' character.
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Actually, to win at Wikipedia you need multiple identities. Whether with real people behind them or just you and a bunch of network proxies, doesn't matter. In disputes, whoever gets a bigger flash mob gets the upper hand. You don't need the means of the Olgino trolls [wikipedia.org], just calling on a bunch of friends is enough.
Re:As I've said before... (Score:5, Informative)
... It's entire model can literally be summed-up as, "King of the Hill." Whoever camps at their computer to edit pages is the editor,...
In my experience, that is a valid statement.
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I had the few hours to research and edit an article, complete with citations. I did not have the time to sit around, hovering over the article to argue with an "editor" who reverted my change because he had verb-tense disagreements with my edit.
If the only problem he had was the tense of the verb (and he said that was the only issue he had with the changes I made), then why didn't he just fix the tense of the verb?
The Wikipedia model has deep systemic problems that are largely ignored by the powers that be at the top of Wikipedia.
...and I'll say it again... (Score:4, Insightful)
As Dilbert long ago pointed out, the craziest person wins any debate where the only thing that matters is persistence.
Now maybe we know what happens to the second craziest person... they commit suicide?
Re:As I've said before... (Score:5, Interesting)
...fuck Wikipedia. It's entire model can literally be summed-up as, "King of the Hill." Whoever camps at their computer to edit pages is the editor, regardless of any acumen or credentials with the subject matter, and without regard to any actual rules that govern article structure or citation.
If Wikipedia wants to fix this, they need to disallow users from camping on pet articles. They need to disallow reverts based on style that have nothing to do with substance and have no real benefit, and they need to ban users that continue to engage in these practices. Until that's done the entire process will be at the whim of the cave trolls that patrol the site because they have nothing better to do.
Still it beats by a hundred fold the encyclopedia set that used to adorn every middle class household's and library's bookshelf as their first view of the world. Wikipedia is a treasure of useful information, a starting point for unknown topics.
In such an endeavor striving too much for perfection is the enemy of the good. People always have to understand the perspectives and biases of their sources. That isn't a flaw, that is just reality.
Wikipedia is still the most successful attempt to provide a starting point, an entry point, to all of human knowledge.
Sure it still sucks, but show me something better and that will suck too.
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Re:As I've said before... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the idea of an encyclopaedia anyone can edit that is bad, it's the Wikipedia MMORPG that has been built up around it.
Better for Science, not politics. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure it still sucks, but show me something better and that will suck too.
For Science and Math and a lot of facts, it is much better. But for propaganda, it's much worse. The encyclopaedia entry on a given politician did not used to be made by that politician's intern or PR firm.
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Sure it still sucks, but show me something better and that will suck too.
For Science and Math and a lot of facts, it is much better. But for propaganda, it's much worse. The encyclopaedia entry on a given politician did not used to be made by that politician's intern or PR firm.
Encyclopedia entries for politicians didn't used to happen during their tenure. Don't conflate the two situations. If encyclopedia entries of our parent's generation could have been made in a more timely manner the same situation would have occurred. Or people would have been sued for defamation, libel, or some other nonsense.
Re:Better for Science, not politics. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia could post an integrity score for each of its pages. The score would be based solely on how often edits are reverted. If a page bounces back and forth repeatedly, the score would be close to zero and people would be told to not put much stock in that page. And, again automatically, the page's editor(s) would be notified and, in time, could be consequenced in a variety of ways.
Slashdot needs something similar, for when mods up then down then up then down mod a post. Typically the down-modders are the problem but, with a bit of human intervention by the editors, they could "settle the argument" and deal out a consequence to whomever is on the problem side.
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Wikipedia could post an integrity score for each of its pages. The score would be based solely on how often edits are reverted. If a page bounces back and forth repeatedly, the score would be close to zero and people would be told to not put much stock in that page. And, again automatically, the page's editor(s) would be notified and, in time, could be consequenced in a variety of ways. .
I like the idea of this metric, but it shouldn't be called "integrity" as that is a misnomer. "volatility" score is more like it. Or even more to the point, just put a number of reversions in the past 30 days count at the top of the page to eliminate the obfuscation of what the "score" means.
Re:As I've said before... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia is a treasure of useful information, a starting point for unknown topics.
Most of the time, sure. Unfortunately, it's really difficult to tell the difference between a well-researched article that agrees with the scholarly consensus vs. an article based on weird sources (but usually popular, not necessarily scholarly) that are 50 years out of date. Now, it's true that paper encyclopedias could suffer from that problem too. On the other hand, good paper encyclopedias often had information on authors of articles or at least the major subject editors, so you could take a guess about whether it was reliable. You don't have that on Wikipedia, where "anyone can edit."
But there are much worse things -- like how you don't know whether an article has been randomly vandalized, or edited recently by some idiot who just inserted false information. Back when I was actually active editing Wikipedia for a while (before I became aware of how insanely screwed up it was), I remember a number of cases of very subtle vandalism that went unnoticed for weeks.
My favorite was some person -- who was a registered user, rather than just an "anonymous IP address," so it didn't send up as many immediate red flags -- who went through and just changed DIGITS in historical dates. So some random historical person suddenly did X in 1742 instead of 1752 or whatever. They did this on perhaps a dozen articles, and the edits stood for at least a week. The main reason I think he was caught is because -- like most vandals -- eventually he couldn't contain himself and altered some historical article on a woman to say she was "a dirty whore" or something. If he hadn't done that, it might have been months or years before anyone noticed that this one guy had been randomly switching digits across a bunch of Wikipedia articles.
The "vandalism" problem is definitely something that is much WORSE than traditional paper encyclopedias... and if you don't think you've viewed articles that contain various subtle forms of it, you have no idea of how much vandalism is attempted on Wikipedia all the time. (And that doesn't even get into deliberate hoaxes [washingtonpost.com] or persistent misinformation [wikipediocracy.com] that doesn't look like obvious vandalism.)
In such an endeavor striving too much for perfection is the enemy of the good. People always have to understand the perspectives and biases of their sources. That isn't a flaw, that is just reality.
"Perspectives and biases of their sources" is important. But the problem with Wikipedia is that we don't know the perspectives and biases, because it's written mostly by anonymous people and pseudonyms (who have sometimes been known to lie about their identities, even when they claim to provide real-world info about themselves).
And leaving almost all articles open to random editing ensures a continuous war against the kind of vandalism I've already mentioned. That's not a "perspective or bias" -- that IS a serious FLAW. Say what you will about Encyclopedia Britannica, but when I open the paper copy two days later, there won't be random NEW misprints appearing or the word "PENUS!!" suddenly appearing in the middle of an article.
Sure it still sucks, but show me something better and that will suck too.
I have a real problem with this attitude -- "Oh, well it's still better than other stuff!" That's a lame excuse, frankly. We could still improve the concept significantly.
I've been saying this for years, but if Wikipedia really wants to be successful in the long term, it needs major changes. The idea that "anyone can edit!" any article was great in the early days to build a foundation of information -- and it's still good for new articles
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...fuck Wikipedia. It's entire model can literally be summed-up as, "King of the Hill." Whoever camps at their computer to edit pages is the editor, regardless of any acumen or credentials with the subject matter, and without regard to any actual rules that govern article structure or citation.
If Wikipedia wants to fix this, they need to disallow users from camping on pet articles. They need to disallow reverts based on style that have nothing to do with substance and have no real benefit, and they need to ban users that continue to engage in these practices. Until that's done the entire process will be at the whim of the cave trolls that patrol the site because they have nothing better to do.
Slashdot had (has?) a metamod system where mods get moderated. Presumably people who downmodded things for political or other reasons would get their own mod points reduced or stripped. Didn't do squat.
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Slashdot had (has?) a metamod system where mods get moderated. Presumably people who downmodded things for political or other reasons would get their own mod points reduced or stripped. Didn't do squat.
You can meta-moderate after every post you put up. People who downmodded things for political or other reasons can also get upmodded, so it's not that useful.
Re:As I've said before... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, then it's more like "whoever has more friends" or "whoever supports the groupthink of the week" gets to set what's considered "right".
There is no real way to solve this. At least 'til people prefer actual reality to their pet reality.
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Re:As I've said before... (Score:4, Insightful)
Whenever I metamodded, I would go in thinking "yeah, now I have a chance to right the clearly-political mods! Let's do this!"
Then I'd get in and it'd be "Well, ok, that's fine. Yeah, that one was fine too. This one... I have no idea what the moderator was thinking. Whatever." And it'd be a boring list. I'd go in because I wanted to undo some of the crazy mods I'd seen, but when I metamodded... I never ran across them. The two possibilities are that the crazy mods are somehow excluded from the system, which seems extremely unlikely, or that.. well, maybe there aren't as many crazy/weird/wrong moderations as we suspect there are, that the vast majority of moderation is done correctly.
We don't get any feedback for metamodding, so it's hard for us to say "yes, the system is working!" But in general I think the system works.
This may sound harsh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This may sound harsh... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think in general if people are making you want to commit suicide, you need to get away from those people. Do not expect those people to change their ways to save you, in fact, if on the internet, expect them to get worst.
Re: This may sound harsh... (Score:5, Interesting)
Take this from one person who circles these feelings on a fairly regular basis. When you are really contemplating suicide you don't tell people. When you are serious, you go quiet. The saw about"we knew we should worry because he stopped talking" is true. Saying I'm thinking about suicide is generally a plea to stop the argument and oh by the way, let me win kind of thing.
I'm not trying to be dismissive. I'm sure some very terrible things were said. If he can't handle the heat he should probably step out of the kitchen for awhile. No one owes you happiness.
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I don't buy the "just don't go there" argument. It's like saying you should never engage with anything or anyone to the point where it would upset you to lose them. Especially for nerds, "just find some new friends" isn't nearly as easy as it sounds.
In some ways quitting is worse than staying. It's an acceptance that you lost, that you were bullied off the site and had to go to preserve your mental health.
Also, as a society we have an interest in not using this solution, because it allows people to bully ot
Re:This may sound harsh... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're contemplating suicide, you have lost perspective.
FTFY
Re:This may sound harsh... (Score:4, Insightful)
I doubt he was actually contemplating suicide. This seems more on the level of emotional blackmail to me.
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I doubt he was actually contemplating suicide. This seems more on the level of emotional blackmail to me.
Welcome to victimhood culture.
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He feels like shit because assholes surround him, and you pile on.
Good job.
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If you're contemplating suicide based on something going on with the Internet, you have lost perspective and need to go outside.
To you and everyone else who uses the "go outside" meme - the internet is not some weird geeky subsection of humanity any more. I would have thought on this site - people commenting on this particular *website* - would know better than to try and diminish it. The internet is where some of us spend more time than anywhere else, and yes these are a valid way of interacting socially. The outside isn't intrinsically a more virtuous place to be. Every time you tell someone they're the one at fault you make excus
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To you and everyone else who uses the "go outside" meme - the internet is not some weird geeky subsection of humanity any more.
There's a difference between "going outside" and "getting a life". If a situation gets too tense, take a break. For some people, getting a life is a better solution.
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Actually I feel the same way.
He needs to "get a life". And I mean that in a good way. Make some friends face to face. Play cards with them or go to the movies. Find someone to care about and that cares about you.
Life is too short to worry about idiot online that need to be bullies to makeup for their feelings if impotence in the real world.
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This is true for a lot of people on wikipedia though. Hell go look through /r/wikiinaction [reddit.com] the absolute depths that some of the editors go to to camp pages, and try to force their own point of view is literally insane. The only upside for this person appears to be they're trying to get out before they follow some of the more insane editors and have a total mental break that goes so deep that they get kicked off then run off to something like rationalwiki(where ideas go to die) where they also get kicked o
Yup, yup... (Score:4, Interesting)
Back in the day, I hade almost several 1000 quality edits - which is to say slightly more than typo correction - but walked away for many of the reasons that this guy puts light on. Suicide would have been a bit of an over reaction, though.
Re:Yup, yup... (Score:4, Funny)
And all of them to this one article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I hade almost several 1000 quality edits - which is to say slightly more than typo correction
Correction or addition?
Don't you mean [citation needed] ?
Fork them (Score:3)
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Didn't that used to be about.com's business model?
This is the average person who edits on Wikipedia? (Score:2, Insightful)
I wouldn't kill myself if I got banned from submitting PRs to my favorite open source projects. But people can get obsessed, and those are the kind people who edit more than one page on Wikipedia.
Also, just as a friendly reminder: buying into the left's propaganda by using the word "toxic" as an adjective for anything other than chemicals is not a constructive or even informative way to describe a social environment.
FYI-28 (Score:3)
While dated, much of FYI-28 / RFC 1855 [ietf.org] is still applicable and the world would be a better place if more folk followed it.
Time to step away (Score:5, Interesting)
When anything you're doing is evoking feeling so extreme, time to step away and do something completely different for a while to recollect yourself and regain some perspective. Don't do the futile thing of hoping you can cope or change things for the better in your current position while you are experiencing such extreme feelings.
Wikipedia is not a way of life, it is not someone you love, it is not worth suffering or ending yourself for. Find something that makes you happy.
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Maybe I'm old (Score:2)
I just can't comprehend the idea of using the internet to satisfy my social needs to the point that some jackasses on Wikipedia could ruin my day. I've noticed that paradoxically there's something about conversations where getting punched in the face isn't a possibility that tends to make them very uncivilized.
Details (Score:5, Informative)
The actual message is here [gossamer-threads.com]. The politician mentioned in the story is this guy [wikipedia.org].
The politician, Salim Mehajer, is really something. Sort of an Australian Donald Trump. He runs people over with his super car, threatens people, violates election laws and then gets himself acquitted or wrist-slapped for all of it in court. The editor wanted to elaborate on details of this stuff in Salim Mehajer's Wikipedia page and the powers-that-be blocked him. Seems like the editor was trying to do the equivalent of investigative reporting, to the degree that it amounted to original research and detail excessive for a Wikipedia page.
Frickin' drama queen (Score:2)
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"$SOMEBODY is an effing moron." - abuse
Something like Wikipedia should ban anyone who resorts to name calling or worse. It exacerbates a conflict as opposed to helping resolve one.
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I like it, but yes, it's toxic. (Score:3)
But, get afoul of the wrong people, or post even a minor change in a topic that some troll considers his personal property, and you will see the toxicity, From the article:
Yep.
http://gizmodo.com/updated-anti-science-trolls-are-starting-edit-wars-on-1724422402
I don't even bother anymore (Score:5, Informative)
Solution (Score:2)
Solution: stop making Wikipedia an important part of your life. They only have as much power over you as you give them.
The difference between healthy and depressed.... (Score:3)
A depressed person when confronted with the shitheads of the internet thinks of suicide.
A healthy person when exposed to the same people on the internet thinks of homicide. Because the world would be a better place without the shitheads in it.
Do your duty, make the world a better place for everyone.
This Public Service Announcement brought to you by the NRA.
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Reminds me of the difference between goth and emo:
Emo: Life sucks. I wish I was dead.
Goth: Life sucks. I wish you were dead.
if only life was this easy (Score:2)
lots of comments here are saying 'get a life', 'get out', 'stay away from them if they make you miserable'
if only life was this easy
'get out' of the place you have been dedicating a lot of work
'get a life' when life and internet are something mixed up together now, and the people you most speak with are the one part of the community you are supposed to leave
'stay away from them if they make you miserable' and ignore all the ones that make your life brighter
i was part of a wiki community (UrbanDead Wiki), an
And it's worth it (?) (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not my intent to be callous to its effects on the people who put the effort in, but Wikipedia is without a question the most correct, current, and expansive singular source of knowledge that mankind has every seen. It's far from perfect, but it's literally the best that has ever been. It might just be that zealotry and incivility is the only known way to provide a rigid standard of quality control in an organization where there are no genuine laws, authoritarian oversight, or wage structure to hold over peoples' heads. So, if the ends justify the means, then keep it up!
But if it doesn't-- if the emotional effects on some is too great a cost for the benefits, then someone needs to find another way to facilitate the intellectual and emotional drive for people to volunteer their own time to put so many hours of work into building and maintaining such an important source of information.
Complaining about its imperfections is insufficient.
Time to take a break from Facebook (Score:3)
My wife is involved in a number of Facebook communities, and some of the other members can get pretty mean sometimes. They’ll belittle you for remarks they disagree with, or whatever. Sometimes it gets a little upsetting. So what she does is temporarily deactivate her account and stop participating for a while. When she’s over it, she reactivates and continues on.
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You are an idiot :)
Now, seriously, sometimes the poster indeed is an idiot and it's painfully obvious. I see nothing wrong in calling that out - if, of course, you explain why.
I personally don't agree with "appropriate" being a measure - because it's a non-measurable convention. I'd go for "correct" versus "incorrect".
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Re:People online need to be more sensitive (Score:4, Funny)
I can relate to his experience - not in wikipedia, but other forums, including slashdot and LinkedIn. I have found that most people are nice, but there are certain people who become nasty very quickly. Those individuals can easily destroy a discussion. IMO we need to expect civility in online forums - otherwise, why have a forum? People should not make personal attacks - comments should be issue focused. I see a-lot of posts on slashdot that get personal, like "you are an idiot", etc. That is not appropriate - it is childish. IMO, a comment that embeds a personal attack should result in the commenter being banned for awhile at least.
You're an idiot.
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If one were in a tribe in neolithic times
Fellow neolithic tribe member would just bash your head open in a fight over potential mate. We evolved quite a bit since then, so I will restrict myself to pointing out how out of touch your expectations of utopia and human enlightenment. I might call you a fool, but you are 100% safe from rock-bashing from my side.
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Part of this problem is that some people react differently in online communication versus face-to-face. This can smooth out conversations as you cut through the non-verbal communication and go right to the "verbal" (well, written) communication. Unfortunately, it can also lead to people not thinking of the poster they are replying to as an actual human being. Their reactions don't get moderated like they might if a person was right in front of them and "I disagree because of these reasons..." becomes "YO
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Ditto.
Last edit I made was in an article about Greek column styles that contained a graphic, detailed description of the sexual preferences of a certain person I don't really know, but knowing the column style I could deduce that the sexual preferences, especially some involving certain rodents, are not really part of pertinent information for aforementioned columns.
No 10 minutes after I received a warning against defacing articles and the revert showed again that a certain person enjoys a rather odd varian
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I gave up on fixing Wikipedia errors when I received an official notice warning me about vandalizing a page for fixing errors on it.
Because the editors don't like it. So they tell you it's not an error - it's true. And they have citations. And they' point out that your citations are invalid because WP:CiteRule1 and WP:CredibleSources and so you must be wrong because they can apply WP:Fringe and WP:SourceType does not apply to their article.
FTFA: "Wikipedia is ... has a dizzying list of guidelines, principles, and rules that are disproportionately applied across the site."
Yea, that's putting it mildly. None of your corrections were acce
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Re:Go for it (Score:4, Insightful)
Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with Wikipedia - as I see it - is that it is no longer an open space for collecting whatever-quality information from the general public; and it cannot, ever, reach anywhere near the new goal it has set for itself, which is a hig-quality, peer-reviewed site with accurate and/or balanced content. Basically, they shot themselves in the foot by reaching (way) too high.
Anyone with any sense knows that counting on Wikipedia for fundamental accuracy is, and has always been, hugely hit-and-miss. As it stands now, some pages by their very nature settle out at one extreme or another; one I am familiar with is the page on Atheism, which begins with one accurate sentence, and then wanders off into absolute theist-oriented nonsense before the paragraph is done. The page has a history of being locked to change, while presenting incredibly distorted views of the subject matter. It can't stay accurate, even if it were to be edited to be so at any one point in time, because atheists understand atheism to be one thing, and theists understand it to be another, and never the twain shall meet. When the editors freeze it, though, then it ends up in whatever extreme it was last edited in and... we have an echo chamber.
Some pages are reasonably accurate, typically those that engender little or no controversy. Others are like the atheism page, pretty much tripe that you'd have to say "oh, no way" if you wanted to provide someone an accurate reference to the matter therein. Knowing which is which requires someone expert on the subject matter before they even arrive; and that makes the pages into an echo chamber at best, and completely misleading at worst.
I have no objection to a net resource that is not accurate (that pretty much describes the whole Internet universe, in my opinion) but I am uncomfortable with a resource that claims accuracy, but can't actually reach that goal, and worse, as in this example, actually promotes nonsense. It's too reminiscent of Fox News "entertainment" take on reporting for me.
They have other severe problems. Put up an image you took, and they will very likely take it down. They're absolutely insane about attribution and so on; I used to try to provide high-quality, relevant source images in the areas I am qualified to do so, but the static level from "editors" never sank below a deafening roar, and my images were as likely to be deleted as not. I have better things to do with my time than try to fight those kinds of battles, especially as there's no winning against such opponents.
Someday, it is my hope that someone will start a wikipedia-like site (the code is available, though the cost of a site like this is high) and keep their eye on the ball: collecting information from the people at large, without claiming any particular level of ultimate accuracy that is impossible to actually achieve. An information free-for-all is one thing; a kingdom ruled by a small cadre of anally retentive assholes is entirely another.
Copyright law and that lowest class of human beings, lawyers (and legislators, but really, I repeat myself), aren't helping either.
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Anyone with any sense knows that counting on Wikipedia for fundamental accuracy is, and has always been, hugely hit-and-miss. As it stands now, some pages by their very nature settle out at one extreme or another; one I am familiar with is the page on Atheism, which begins with one accurate sentence, and then wanders off into absolute theist-oriented nonsense before the paragraph is done.
Could you be more specific? Looking at the first paragraph of the Atheism article, as an agnostic/atheist, I don't see anything in there that is incorrect. It doesn't always apply to me personally, since there are multiple levels/flavors of atheism, just as their are in most things:
Atheism is, in the broadest sense, the absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is the rejection of belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which, in its most general form, is the belief that at least one deity exists.
Nothing wrong there, atheism has been an umbrella term encompassing hard atheists whose denial of any theism brims with a religious fervor of its own, to very weak atheists who don't think there's any god because they've yet to s
Re:Wikipedia (Score:5, Informative)
I'll try.
Atheism is the lack of belief in a god or gods. That's it. That's all of it. It's not "rejection of belief", and it's not the "position there are no deities."
Theism: belief in a god or gods. That's it. That's all of it. It's not just YWHA, it's not just Quetzalcoatl, it's not just Odin. A god or gods. Any one, or any combination. There you go.
The root 'a' means "without."
So atheism means "without belief in a god or gods."
There is no book, no canon, no mantra. Nothing about it speaks to rejection or assertion or anything at all, in fact. It's the state of lacking these specific beliefs. It's what a baby has, or a dog has. No belief. It's like having no money. Either you have it, or you don't. And when you don't, talking about what kind of money you have... that's intellectually bewildered. Likewise, when you don't hold a belief, to say it's this or it's that... it's nothing. Either you have it, which makes you a theist, because that's what a theist is, or you don't, which makes you an atheist, because that's what an atheist is.
Anything else - is something else and doesn't even address the issue.
Rejection of someone's belief? That's all you, or whomever. Assertion of some state or lack thereof? That's all you, or whomever. It's not atheism.
Can you be atheist - without belief in a god or gods - and hold such views? Of course - because atheism doesn't say yea or nae about that, or anything else. You can be atheist and like peanut butter sandwiches; you can be atheist and send people to gulags; you can be atheist and with, or without knowledge.
And while knowledge and meaning are both, however cursorily, on the table, you're either atheist, or you're not. Agnostic is not a third position - it doesn't even deal with the same question, which is belief. It deals with knowledge. It's not a modifier, either, it's about what you (think you) know, which does not speak to belief at all; "atheist agnostic" is just like "atheist peanut butter assembler" and "theist agnostic" is just like "theist peanut butter assembler."
Historically speaking, theists, being both in the majority and in control of most media and definition sources, have usually characterized atheism in a way most convenient, or perhaps familiar, to them. You'll find it called out as "disbelief" in many places, and you'll find people claiming "it's a religion" and "it's a belief" just as often. All are incorrect, and serve, if anything, as a wall between actual understanding of the issue at hand, and the fog of name-calling that stands in for idea exchange in most conversations about this. And that's not to say that there aren't atheists out there who have bought into the idea that lack of belief is somehow belief, or disbelief. There are. Maximum clarity requires isolating every idea in this space and understanding it at a fundamental level. What you do not want to do is start tacking modifiers like "hard" or "soft" or "agnostic" or "peanut butter assembler" onto a basic position as if it were actually a fundamental position in itself. Because it isn't. Any more than "peanut butter liking lego builder" is a basic position.
By all means, hold whatever ideas you want to. What I'm saying here, basically, is that if you can identify which ideas actually accrue to what fundamental facets of your mental state, your education, your social outlook and so on, you'll be much clearer headed overall, and you're likely to be able to understand others much better as well.
That, and Wikipedia's atheism article is a mess. :)
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Theism: belief in a god or gods. That's it. That's all of it. It's not just YWHA, it's not just Quetzalcoatl, it's not just Odin. A god or gods. Any one, or any combination. There you go.
Thanks for clearing that up. That means I'm not an atheist, because I believe in the existence of Prince Philip [wikipedia.org].
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No TL;DR here. Read your post carefully. Here's where I disagree:
Theism is about the belief in a god or gods. It does not speak to the existence of a god or gods. Just belief; faith. That's the very nature of theism, of religious faith that there is a god - it doesn't require consensually experiential observation, repeatability, falsification, or peer review. It does not, in fact, require the existence of anything. Theism is about a state of mind, conviction: faith.
Now, the cargo cult believes in a god; so
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"Faith" has been used to mean "belief without evidence" by quite a few people, and it seems to be a pretty accepted definition. Many theists have faith in one or more gods, and don't have evidence. I think that particular linguistic point has been lost.
I've never met this Prince Phillip guy, but a reasonable definition of "god" might well include "superhuman", and all the accounts I have received of the prince make him appear to be human. I'm willing to believe that people believe him to be a god, and
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Re:Wikipedia (Score:4, Interesting)
This is pretty much my take on it too. I got into an minor edit skirmish a few years ago regarding Disney World's monorail system. My problem was that most of the authoritative references are copyrighted by Disney and not for distribution outside the company. So, even though I'd worked there for many years, had been a trainer, and knew the trains and system inside and out, it didn't matter because someone found some content on some Disney fan site (that also happened to be inaccurate) and wanted to continually invalidate my corrections with the aforementioned inaccurate (but attributable) info. I just said "fuck it" and haven't even looked at the article since then, and take most things on Wikipedia with a grain of salt. Being able to attribute sources doesn't make a lick of difference if the info is wrong to begin with.
Re:Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
The committee process is such that it works against itself. Not just Wiki committees but any committee. The people on the committees are rarely unbiased observers because you have to rise to a certain level of interest in the subject before volunteering. No one joins a home owner's association when they just want to live somewhere, keep their nose down, not be bothered and not bother anyone else; so they tend to be populated with people who like doing petty politics, or who have had a major issue to be dealt with, or so forth. Political committees are almost always populated by the true believers (revolutionaries still full of zeal).
Other problem is that committees become slaves to their own rules. Once a practice is set in place it becomes extremely difficult to change. If you try others will object that the new suggestions is not how things are supposed to be done. Thus once there's a requirement for proper attribution you will get people on the committee who's highest mission in life is to ensure that there is proper attribution with no exceptions and will treat that as more important then the original goal of the committee.
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1) Pick a less contentious set of articles to edit
And then the crackpots win. They aren't resorting to abuse to win an argument. They are doing to to drive people with opposing view points, or people who just want to post the facts, off the forum. So they can present their view as the only one and therefore the correct one.
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As the subject of the article, I entirely agree. Life is very precious, and there is always someone who loves you and who would be devastated if you weren't there. If something good can come of it, then it's this: suicide is most definitely not an answer. I was most definitely not in my right mind when I was having those thoughts, and I'm happy I'm still around :-)
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I don't think you're right. Not every depressive gets into bad situations, and those that do often get into only a few. You don't want to encourage a depressive to give up, and in some cases walking away can feel like giving up. There are no good generally applicable answers.