Deleted on AfD 8, after multiple train wrecks

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Abd
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Deleted on AfD 8, after multiple train wrecks

Post by Abd » Wed Mar 11, 2020 12:52 am

This came up on WiA on reddit: Wikipedia Airbrushes List of Climate Sceptic Scientists Out of History referring to a Breitbart article that lies about Wikipedia and the actual deletion and the reasons for it. However, there really was a weird process behind this, and I decided to review it.
http://coldfusioncommunity.net/controve ... wikipedia/

It's long.

The tl;dr version: After 8 AfDs, 3 Deletion Reviews, many of these train wrecks with heavy participation, and according to one comment in the last AfD -- which was actually number 8, the numbering was effed up, after 4000 edits by over 700 editors, deleted. And they imagine this is the way to build a "free encyclopedia." It's only free if editor labor is not counted. And it is certainly not reliable. Free but unreliable information (collected at great cost!) has been confused with free knowledge.

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Re: Deleted on AfD 8, after multiple train wrecks

Post by ericbarbour » Fri Mar 13, 2020 5:33 am

Abd wrote:
Wed Mar 11, 2020 12:52 am
The tl;dr version: After 8 AfDs, 3 Deletion Reviews, many of these train wrecks with heavy participation, and according to one comment in the last AfD -- which was actually number 8, the numbering was effed up,
A classic sign of oversight being abused to hide something. No doubt the IRC admin channel was on fire.
And they imagine this is the way to build a "free encyclopedia." It's only free if editor labor is not counted. And it is certainly not reliable. Free but unreliable information (collected at great cost!) has been confused with free knowledge.
If more people sued the WMF for calling themselves the "free encyclopedia", when there are hidden costs everywhere....things would be a little different. Because younger people think WP is just lovely and no one else cares enough, the "non-free ride" continues.

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Re: Deleted on AfD 8, after multiple train wrecks

Post by Abd » Fri Mar 13, 2020 4:15 pm

ericbarbour wrote:
Fri Mar 13, 2020 5:33 am
Abd wrote:
Wed Mar 11, 2020 12:52 am
The tl;dr version: After 8 AfDs, 3 Deletion Reviews, many of these train wrecks with heavy participation, and according to one comment in the last AfD -- which was actually number 8, the numbering was effed up,
A classic sign of oversight being abused to hide something. No doubt the IRC admin channel was on fire.
Actually, no. There is no sign of oversight involvement. All the AfDs are actually listed. What happened was a title change, the page was moved. And then when it was nominated again, the 2nd AfD did not list the prior. Merely sloppy. Then, later, the redirect to the newer page was deleted because the target page was deleted. Process is not transparent, history is hidden from the public with no particular reason, but they have been doing that since founding. It's all there if you are an admin, I assume.
And they imagine this is the way to build a "free encyclopedia." It's only free if editor labor is not counted. And it is certainly not reliable. Free but unreliable information (collected at great cost!) has been confused with free knowledge.
If more people sued the WMF for calling themselves the "free encyclopedia", when there are hidden costs everywhere....things would be a little different. Because younger people think WP is just lovely and no one else cares enough, the "non-free ride" continues.
Fat chance. I don't see standing. "Free encyclopedia" is arguably true, and even if it were not, it would merely be puffery. It is free for the readers. The hidden costs are for those who choose to help build it, and there are disclaimers aplenty.

No, Wikipedia will only be fixed if the rest of the world decides it needs and wants something better, and acts to create it. That new creation would draw on the free labor of the present Wikipedia, but would reliably curate it and improve it, and it might even not be "free." I could see it requiring registration and a small payment, which could be trivial compared to other internet usage costs.

And then you would get a vote. An actual effing vote. And there would be money to pay for staff, responsible to an elected "assembly" which could be elected in a way that makes it transparently responsible to the members. But membership, as you know, was retracted by Jimbo and company, violating the original concept and nobody with any standing said "Boo!" though there were complaints. Complaints. We love to complain. We learn it as children, whine enough and they give us some ice cream!

Sometimes what is free can be reliable, but that's not reliable!

How many people would it take to create such an animal? My opinion has long been "two." I've never seen anyone but me volunteer -- or decide to create what it would take -- or create something that I could support, more than a talk forum, which won't cut it. The "Critic" community sucks because we love to criticize or worse, but we are not willing to lift a finger to make something better, or what little has happened have been naive projects that predictably fail, increasing the despair over certain doom. And it's all quite understandable.

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Re: Deleted on AfD 8, after multiple train wrecks

Post by Dr Mario » Tue Oct 27, 2020 7:01 pm

Not sure whats's more tragic here,
that this list ever existed, or it took 8 AfD nominations to remove it

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