Why should a Wikipedia criticism platform be independent anyway?

For serious discussion of the "major" forum for Wikipedia criticism and how it fails.
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Jake Is A Sellout
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Why should a Wikipedia criticism platform be independent anyway?

Post by Jake Is A Sellout » Thu Nov 18, 2021 1:09 pm

Here's a funny thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... (dinosaur)

Big John is the largest known triceratops skeleton that sold for a record auction price.

You'd think that was enough to merit an article on Wikipedia, given where it draws the line in other topic areas.

But no. It's quite the hilarious debate, and chiefly for the absurdity of the delete arguments...

1. The sources are lying (BBC, Guardian, etc)

2. This is run of the mill trivia, happens every day, Wikipedia doesn't care what interests news sites, it only documents scholarly information (my arse)

3. The only people who want to keep this article aren't Wikipedia's dinosaur experts (I seriously doubt Wikipedia has any dinosaur experts, but even if it did, this is a straight up personal attack, a de facto inadmissible argument at AfD)

4. The are other ways Wikipedia can keep this information (so why did you daft fuckers not notice that deletion is meant as last resort, not as an opening gambit in the Great Game?)

And that's all a very interesting way to demolish the idea Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, because this didn't happen in some out of the way place between some absolute retards, this was a well advertised and well participated debate featuring some of Wikipedia's most experienced editors.

But the most interesting part I noticed?

The nominator, the closing Administrator, and an Administrator who warned the nominator against making any further incivil comments of this nature....
Typical response from an ARShole. Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:41, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
....are all members of Wikipediocracy. And not just members, pretty active ones, all making multiple comments in this last week alone.

Isn't that just fucking wierd? An amazing coincidence?

What concerns me, is what an independent minded person thinks when they notice this remarkable amount of cross pollination in membership.

Would you be happy posting a comment about this debate on Wikipediocracy, knowing you were surrounded by involved actors? Would you attack the decisions of the Administrators, or the principal editor, as freely as I have just done? Would you feel compelled to adjust those attacks, to either amplify or water them down, based on their apparent social standing on that forum? Two of the actors are apparently well liked, and take advantage of that, while one is not, but revels in it.

To be truly independent, to be free of these distorting forces and undeclared complications, is a wonderful thing.

But as we know, Wikipediocracy is no longer that kind of place. It's only continued down its path of emulating Wikipedia. It now very much does matter on that forum, who you are talking about, who their friends are, and what they or their friends can do to you in revenge, on Wikipedia or Wikipediocracy.

Wikipediocracy is no longer the place for example, where it is even asked, why is that comment above where the Administrators draw the line on civility, and not on the many examles of incivil behaviour that preceded it (it being a common and well understood flaw that at some point, perhaps because it made things so much easier to enforce, incivility was in practice only defined as using bad language).

It also wasn't an accident, for example, that mention of this Afd did actually crop up on Wikipediocracy, but not as a standalone issue, a microcosm for analysis....

https://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewto ... 09#p296945

It was mentioned by the principal actor, in a thread where it was already being established that keep voters are bad people. People who Wikipedia Administrators need to sanction. With a handy link to the debate where this was currently being proposed. I somehow doubt this fortuitous recruitment of like minded individuals, to either the individual AfD or the sanction proposals, was noted in the debate on Wikipedia.

As with all conflicts of interest, it hardly matters that you aren't trying to do bad shit in your own mind, it only matters whether people think that's a plausible explanation of what's going on. And the very last people who understand the true nature of their miserable existence, are the addicts themselves.

Easiest way to avoid it? Don't run your forum as if its primary purpose is to be in the fray. Make it pretty damn clear, in all that you do, that the purpose of your forum is the view from 50,000 feet. That you have no skin in the game. That you are, independent.

Because to look at it, the very idea it would be welcome or even wise to drop a note on Wikipediocracy to effect of my four points above, or the note about civility enforcement, is laughable. Whether you were a Wikipedia editor or an independent observer.

It's worth knowing of course, I'm banned from Wikipediocracy precisely because they find things like those four points to be, well, too hostile. Too upsetting to their target audience. Wikipedia editors! And for the same exact reason, they've decided not to keep reminding Wikipedia Administrators who inhabit their space, what WP:CIV actually says, and prefer to be in lock step with the far more convenient idea that on Wikipedia, incivility is, ironically, whatever the uncivilised mob says it is. Although tbf, that is at least consistent with how they enforce all other important policies, such as neutrality and reliable sources.

I'll grant there is some meta debate in the Wikipediocracy thread, sort of, since even that is couched in terms that will be palatable to Wikipedia editors, but the vast majority of what is posted and by whom, is simply reflective of the very Team A versus Team B nonsense playing out on Wikipedia, and recruiting activities therein.

There are no Wikipedia editors here, you will note. No calls to arms, no directions in how to vote or where to comment. We tell you who to hate, sure, but it is hopefully quite clear from this small sample of my work, I'm telling you to hate them because they're bad people who represent everything that is wrong with Wikipedia, not because I actually give a fuck whether Big John is immortalised on Wikipedia or not.

I mean, if you truly want to know, I find it inconceivable that an "encyclopedia" would bother itself with any topic that can only be sourced to news articles and auction websites, but that serves merely as proof I'm a deep thinker who is ever focused on the topic of why a Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia, rather than, shit, who can we persuade/intimidate/murder to achieve our goal of making Wikipedia what we want it to be. If that was ever even a realistic aim of Wikipedia criticism, it's yesterday's war. We are here to fight tomorrow's war. How do we build a free encyclopedia from the ashes of Wikipedia?

Not that we don't want Wikipedia editors here, and they are welcome to post any time they like, especially to exercise their right of reply (a right not afforded anyone on Wikipedia or Wikipediocracy). They just seem to naturally understand that a forum which has a laser focus on identifying the bad/mad/sad shit Wikipedia editors do on the daily, and has a convincing case to make that Wikipedia is irredeemable, broken by design, a failed experiment, is probably not where they will find much gratification.

We are what we do and we do what we say.

One would wish the people of Wikipediocracy at least had the decency of acknowledging such criticism of the current state of their forum, even if they wholly disagree with it. And it would be appreciated if these acknowledgements weren't simply gross (and absurd) personal attacks.

But hey, I don't say Wikipediocracy looks and acts like Wikipedia an awful lot these days for no reason!

And if you look so much like the very thing you seek to criticise, well, fuck me if you didn't go wrong somewhere, eh?

Two completely different websites conceived as independent entities, will not naturally converge to a Wikipedia like state. That is not how such things work. Ask a behavioural scientist. Wikipedia is an outlier in terms of how websites are run, and like any wierd cult, they'll tell you that's a good thing any change they get, because they have no concern that the resulting product is beyond shit. As it would be, when the ingredients are low quality and the manufacturing process is an unregulated toxic nightmare. The sausage, it bad. It always been bad. You don't want to be feeding that shit to your kids.

There has been a contamination. Like a virus, the Wikipedia aspect of Wikipedia, the thing that makes it Wikipedia, the cult members, they spread to Wikipediocracy. The intermarriage of unequals must stop. Order must be restored, monkeys sent to one corner of the laboratory if needs be, with suitable caging, monkey studiers to their alloted benches reflecting each specialism (sexism in monkeys, bias in monkeys, monkey decorum, monkey on monkey violence).

You must restore the natural order. You must let the superior species back into the habitat. There wil be screaming, there will be blood, much poop will be flung, but you must not be afraid.

The weak must perish. The monkeys shall not replace us. The virus cannot win.

For humanity. For evolution. For progress.

HTD.

:ugeek:

Alternatively, just rebrand the website.

Monkeys R Us.

Trademark shouldn't be an issue, right?

:lol:

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Re: Why should a Wikipedia criticism platform be independent anyway?

Post by rog » Thu Nov 18, 2021 1:53 pm

Jake Is A Sellout wrote:
Thu Nov 18, 2021 1:09 pm
Order must be restored, monkeys sent to one corner of the laboratory if needs be, with suitable caging, monkey studiers to their alloted benches reflecting each specialism (sexism in monkeys, bias in monkeys, monkey decorum, monkey on monkey violence).
Meanwhile, on sucks...


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