Who created Wikipedia's 6 millionth article?

Good, bad, biased, paid or what-have-you. There's an endless supply.
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Jake Is A Sellout
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Who created Wikipedia's 6 millionth article?

Post by Jake Is A Sellout » Fri Jun 25, 2021 5:21 pm

The joy of Wikipedia corruption, is that it is a gift that just keeps on giving. Because no, I am not slow on the uptake. Wikipedia ticked over six million articles a while back. January 2020, to be precise.

The reason it has come across my desk again, is because the person it was given to, Rosie Stephenson-Goodnight, is running for election to the Wikimedia Board of Trustees.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimed ... Goodknight

Among her list of meagre achievements, I was surprised, but perhaps not too surprised, to see this.....
In 2020, the article I created on Maria Lauder was honored as the 6th million article on English Wikipedia.
And what an honour it was. A dubious honour. I am actually surprised she's even linked to the related debate, because it shows Wikipedia in a very bad light.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... n_articles

For a start, they don't actually know what the six millionth article was. It sounds stupid, especially since they keep a count of how many articles they have. But at that time, and presumably still, they have no means of identifying which was the sixth millionth creation.

They instead use time based logs, and a little bit of guesstimation. And because Wikishits are sad losers, that's made harder because of how many of the sad losers try to grab the glory by sitting on a bunch of ready but as yet unpublished articles, waiting to submit them at the time they think will be the magic moment.

The words get a life have never been so apt. Especially as you realise, their efforts were actually in vain.....this year.

It was so different even back when they were picking the five millionth (the vainglorious Cas Liber, a Wikipediocracy resident, was of course the winner last year, thanks to his last minute slew of species articles).

But by the time of the 6 millionth, Wikipedia was transfixed by identity politics. They were desperately trying to prove to the world that they aren't sexist pigs, since the world had finally caught on to what an absolute sausage fest the place is, both in terms terns or the community, and the articles they write.

And so with that, you understand why someone chose to shortcut the traditional guestimate game, and frankly admitted that they might as well just pick one that was close, but which also met other criteria.....
I found it to be one of the five potential candidates in my review... and all things considered it would look good for the project (it's decently sourced and lengthy), make the Foundation happy, make a good media story, and potentially cause more women to join the project. So, from where I'm standing, I think Rosiestep got this one! — Coffee  20:56, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Not only do I find it very likely to have been the 6 millionth, within 3 articles by my count, I agree that it is the best sourced and written of the possibilities, and I think that its focus on an underrepresented Woman in Red, written by Rosiestep no less, makes it the perfect choice. CaptainEek 21:00, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
I don't fault Wikipedia for rigging the selection to choose a winner that paints them in the best possible light. I do object to their dishonesty in not explaining this is how they did it.

This is the genius of Wikipedia. They claim everything is public, out in the open, and therefore how can they possibly be accused of dishonesty? And yet they know as well as anyone, that the press don't know how to find these internal discussions.

They perhaps don't even know they took place for this exercise. The Wikishits know that all the journos do, is reprint the press release. Which is why none of the media coverage at the time, was honest about the reasons why Rosie somehow magically became so honoured.

I suppose they all just assumed it was a happy accident, or worse, a result of Wikipedia's active efforts to address their sausage problem, that an article on a woman, written by a woman, would be the 6 millionth. Which in a way, it was, but it also wasn't.

Indeed, Rosie was extremely lucky to be so honoured. According to one estimate, there were fifteen likely candidates, and of those, nine were biographies. But only two of those were of women. So even at this time, it seems like Wikipedia was in the grip of sausage fever. But they're not going to admit that to the press, obviously.

It's Wikipedia. Lying to the public is what they do. No bigger lie, than calling themselves an "encyclopedia", after all.

But she won. Screw the guy who at that same time, created the Wikipedia article for the first sand sculpture museum in India. What has he ever done for Wikipedia's systemic bias issues? He perhaps took the hint, or has just died of Covid.

Rosie is nothing if not a keen exploiter of PR. And she loves taking credit. She did of course, completely reinvent the WikiProject model. Before Women In Red, it would be absurdly antethical to Wikipedia values to suggest these things had Founders, or that they would be anything other than simple coordination tools. But that didn't suit Rosie, so she changed it. She now presides over a fully fledged cult within a cult.

To be fair, she probably stole the idea from Doc James, but in comparison to his MedProject, hers took OWNERSHIP and egocentrism to the next level. Levels you could perhaps have never even envisioned, until, Trump style, she just went ahead and did it. Perhaps through ignorance, perhaps through evil intent, the point being, it hardly matters why, only what she did. How she has reshaped Wikipedia at a fundamental level.

And maybe that would have been a good thing, had it had any tangible results. But no. Content wise, the size of the gap has barely shifted. And editor wise, well, I think it says a lot they they no longer seem to even be doing the surveys to establish things like gender makeup. And harassment of women editors by powerful males? Alive and well.

And so, it was absolutely no surprise that she has chosen to include this in her candidacy. A dubious, and indeed, entirely meaningless factoid. Remembered by her, and as an honour no less. Self promotion at its finest. Wikipedia achievement, at its finest.

A typical politician. She is well suited to represent that fucked up community.

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Re: Who created Wikipedia's 6 millionth article?

Post by ericbarbour » Fri Jun 25, 2021 11:03 pm

ha ha ha......ask me about Coffee sometime.....

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