Wikipedia Sucks!

Read the latest news?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chelsea-ma ... ing-photo/

Don't bother going to Wikipedia for information about what actually happened days ago now, they don't want to mention it because WP:NOTNEWS, WP:DUE and the almighty WP:BLP.

There's a difference between being cautious and responsible, and utterly moronic. They're doing it wrong.

They simply won't ever be able to fix problems like this, because Wikipedia has become a place where Administrators are terrified of over-ruling one of their own even when it is clear they're being moronic. Especially so if it isn't just one of them being a moron, it's a bunch of them. They have lost all capacity to realise that groups can do moronic things too.

Read the policies you claim to be enforcing, you fucking idiots.

CrowsNest wrote:Don't bother going to Wikipedia for information about what actually happened days ago now, they don't want to mention it because WP:NOTNEWS, WP:DUE and the almighty WP:BLP.

Not quite clear what you're arguing for here. Do you really want closer attention to every single episode in the life of every single person who has a biography on Wikipedia? That would just be an even bigger pile of badly written undigested garbage than we have at present. Should a fake encyclopaedia written by people incapable of the task and with a policy of not having any editorial control also attempt to be a news medium written by the same people with the same lack of capability and the same absence of control? Or perhaps you mean that encouraging the cultists to stretch their already inadequate amount of incompetent effort across even more demanding and conflicting missions would tend to hasten the cult's already inevitable collapse?

I'm arguing for Wikipedia Administrators to stop being dumbasses, using this topical example. Or rather, and some may have heard this rationale before, I'm using the rhetorical device of pointing out they are being dumb, in full knowledge they are incapable of not being dumb even when we critics point out their dumbness and say hey, you're being dumb. Using a topical example, so people know that how things work on Wikipedia is always the same, it's only ever just a different day.

As for the specifics of the example, surely it is obvious the argument is for the timely inclusion of relevant and impeccably sourced material in a high profile public person's biography before the heat death of the universe, on the precise basis that it's inclusion would not be a case of the recording of intransigent or trivial information, or that exclusion is somehow going to lessen the harm already done.

CrowsNest wrote:As for the specifics of the example, surely it is obvious the argument is for the timely inclusion of relevant and impeccably sourced material in a high profile public person's biography before the heat death of the universe, on the precise basis that it's inclusion would not be a case of the recording of intransigent or trivial information, or that exclusion is somehow going to lessen the harm already done.

I think you meant "transient" (fleeting, ephemeral) rather than "intransigent" (obstreperous, obstinate) there. But it is not obvious to me that the episode you mention is worthy of recording in an encyclopaedia. As Chou En Lai may or may not have said about the French Revolution, "too early to say". However, why would we be discussing the difference in approach to this incident between an encyclopaedia and a newspaper? Wikipedia is not either of those, and never can be.

It is inarguably worthy of mention in the biography of their life to date, and extremely unlikely to be downgraded to an unimportant side detail in the final version.

Wikipedia is indeed neither an encyclopedia or a newpaper. However its attempts to be one at the preference of not being the other, are analogous enough to the real world distinction, for us to be able to mock and castigate them when they get it so, so, wrong.

What we do know about Wikipedia, from this incident, is that it is just shit as an information source, be that newspaper, encyclopedia, or some hybrid of the two. Specifically, it wants people to think they are benefiting from having a place to go, somewhere with the top Google rank for this person's name, where they can supposedly find a summary of their life, and links to further useful information sources, like their Twitter feed.

Currently, for reasons which are just fucking stupid and bear no relation to their actual policies surrounding such things, Wikipedia evidently wants readers to still believe Manning is running for the US senate, with a primary scheduled in 22 days. It does not want readers to have any clue as to why their Twitter feed doesn't exactly reflect that as her current reality.

There is of course an up to date reliable source which at least confirms the campaign is still a thing in light of recent events, even if that is basically just a lie, but they can't really use it in the article because it is all part of the same news coverage discussing the incident they seem to think is too trivial, too damaging or simply not eligible for an encyclopedia because it is mere news, as if all news is excluded by definition. A situation proved quite false by one look at the article's references.

These people are dickheads. Wikipedia protects them from facing that harsh reality by excluding all the voices of people who aren't stupid enough to engage with this farce on a long term basis. And in truth most of their nominal readers don't care because they no longer actually use Wikipedia as an information source. And why would they? Whatever they call this thing they have cobbled together with Chelsea Manning's name at the top of it, as a result of this incident, why would anyone bother to read it, for any purpose. Nobody has any clue how they decide what goes in and what stays out. A look at the talk page just confirms the nominal process is to just talk utter bollocks, until people get tired of talking bollocks.

A hilarious side effect of this farce, is that they were unable to add this latest news in a timely fashion either......

https://reason.com/volokh/2018/06/01/ch ... s-first-am

....and readers will actually struggle to find that on their news feed of choice, since it is obviously not considered the most important thing going on in Manning's life right now. She may not even know of it herself, given her mental state. But readers of Wikipedia cannot be provided any such context. Because of these dickheads.

Still, assume good faith, we are being asked, by said dickheads. Well, the world probably already appreciates that stupid people can do stupid things with the best of intentions, but they might not know that one of the gifts of Wikipedia to the world, is that is now a part of the encyclopedia writing process. Supposedly.

Given Wikipedia's political bias problem, despite their protestations, the most obvious explanation for this farce is that the article is being controlled by partisan editors who don't want Manning to be seen as unstable or unelectable, and don't want people thinking her campaign has come to a shuddering halt.

CrowsNest wrote:Currently, for reasons which are just fucking stupid and bear no relation to their actual policies surrounding such things, Wikipedia evidently wants readers to still believe Manning is running for the US senate, with a primary scheduled in 22 days. It does not want readers to have any clue as to why their Twitter feed doesn't exactly reflect that as her current reality.
[...]
Given Wikipedia's political bias problem, despite their protestations, the most obvious explanation for this farce is that the article is being controlled by partisan editors who don't want Manning to be seen as unstable or unelectable, and don't want people thinking her campaign has come to a shuddering halt.

Ah, that makes sense, you should have said so earlier.

I'm not sure I agree with you on this Crowsnest. I do not know what B. Manning was like before spending years in solitary, but I have watched C. Manning interviewed on Democracy Now! after. My impression was of a troubled individual who would have their work cut out for them readjusting to life outside prison. This is probably the case for every person who gets released after long periods of solitary confinement (though some may have been psychologically stronger than Manning to begin with). The "call for help" of someone suffering from PTSD only seems "notable" to me because Manning is in the press' eye 24-7.

Maybe things would change if we had an encyclopedia that gave readers the unvarnished truth about what happens to people like Manning under the continued glare of publicity. I see no reason to exclude it on the basis it could have been predicted, given her backstory. Much of what is on Wikipedia could have been predicted and thus be deemed unworthy of recording, surely?

The issue is that despite this being an unsurprising outcome, currently, Wikipedia wants readers to believe someone who has the sort of life Manning has had, can then run for Senate, and suffer no ill effects.

Wikipedia are actively deceiving readers who lazily don't consult a variety of sources. It could even be argued, by delivering fake news in the form of an incomplete summation of all known pertinent facts as reflected by reliable sources, on what are clearly bogus grounds, they are potentially affecting the democratic procss. And we know how the Wikipedians hate people who interfere with the democratic process, right?

Just so we are clear on what an almighty fuckup this really is, here's an actual collection of quotes from Wikipedians who seem to think they're correctly applying policy, and thus by extension are somehow helping Wikipedia, Manning and the reader......

Wikipedia isn't a tabloid and we don't report on the daily Twitterverse. There has to be evidence of lasting historical significance.

This was a couple tweets that got some fleeting attention that was resolved quickly, unclear if there is lasting importance here.

Why must we hurry up and have information about these tweets in the article right now?

It is not Wikipedia's purpose to state everything that someone might be interested in reading -- even when it is well-sourced.

I will repeat, if you to look at the underlying policies, you will see no support whatsoever for these opinions being valid in this context. None, whatsoever.

BLP: Manning is a high profile person, indeed she is actively seeking the glare of publicity with this Senate run, so there can be no credible presumption of privacy, or any sense that Wikipedia documenting reliably sourced events in her life is going to compound their suffering any further

BLP/RS/OR: The details of the event are impeccably sourced, and there is no source claiming it was not either a suicide attempt or serious crisis episode. No gaps need to be filled by editors in order to provide a form of words that accurately and neutraly represents what happened to the reader, up to and including the fact the campaign has not been suspended as a result of the incident.

NOTNEWS/TRIVIA/RECENTISM : Not remotely relevant for such an obviously serious and not remotely routine incident. Laughable that people are even trying to claim they are. This is perhaps what hints most at people having ulterior motives for wanting this information buried, since in just 22 days it will arguably be irrelevant whether it is documented or not, at least to the Senate race.

LASTING/PERSISTENCE - totally irrelevant, since these are subsections of WP:N, which doesn't govern inckusion/exclusion of in-article text, only whether or not a whole article is merited. An article on this incident isn't being proposed, obviously.

If we're being generous, I guess you could say these people are merely confused, and have wrongly conflated a set of different policies and principles to come up with what maybe makes sense to them as a reason not to include this material. But I find it hard to assume good faith that they think they're making sense, because ultimately what they're saying is so obviously irrrelevant given the policies and context, you can barely believe it is even happening.

Some of these people are, on balance of probability, trying to abuse Wikipedia's dysfunctional system of governance to influence the democratic process, with the help of a couple of useful idiots who probably are just too stupid to even know how stupid they are, all to the backdrop of a general disinterest from within and without, certainly compared to anything Trump related.

It is worth noting that before Kaldari got involved with his "Twitterverse" bullshit, the debate was not whether to include it, but merely whether to call it a suicide attempt. Who is Kaldari? Only an WMF employee, that's who.

I don't see this sort of thing as being about correctly or incorrectly applying policy. Wikipedia has no coherent policy on anything, although it has a lot of policy pronouncements. The policies are inconsistent among themselves, and are not applied consistently. They sound good, but that's all. The key observation is that the applications is an expression of political manoeuvring within the Wikipedia game. There is literally no point in discussing whether any given move is or is not in conformance with policy, because the policies have been written so that the answer is whatever the person wants who wins this particular conflict.