What is a Wikipedia editor?

Editors, Admins and Bureaucrats blecch!
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What is a Wikipedia editor?

Post by Boink Boink » Tue May 16, 2023 6:56 am

A Wikipedia Editor is the sort of ignorant dipshit who thinks Wikipedia is an "encyclopedia" (that term having latterly meant a trustworthy reference work) despite its glaring and obvious failures to meet that definition.

They are ignorant dipshits who have absolutely no problem with their "encylopedia" even now, twenty plus years since Jimmy Wales puked it into being, having ~2% of its articles without a single reference at all. Not even a YouTube video by some random wierdo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... d_articles
There are approximately 124,000 unreferenced articles, which is one of Wikipedia's biggest cleanup categories, we need your help!
Because I can read the Matrix, I can tell you that is a live statistic. It's not one of those Wikipedia facts that can be changed at any time, or fall out of date or be wrong even when it was entered.

Why is this embarassing? Other than the fact that 1 in 50 entries in an "encyclopedia" really shouldn't potentially be one of those long running hoaxes that Wikipedia is famous for?

It's embarrassing because (thanks to millions of dollars of donations) it's never been easier to add a reference to Wikipedia. And to get a Wikipedia article out of that 2%, the reference you add doesn't even need to be a reliable source or even back up the article.

Since rather obviously the entirely unreferenced articles on Wikipedia are going to all fall into the (ever shrinking) proportion of the Wikipedia that "anyone can edit", literally anyone can add a reference. More experienced Wikipedia Editors then theoretically check the reference given meets all their policies and guidance and accept or reject it. But then again, theoretically, it's been over a decade since it was considered acceptable to have an unreferenced article on Wikipedia at all (y'know, because of all the hoaxes!). It should be their number one priority, no?

And yet here we are. It is 2023, and ONE IN FIFTY WIKIPEDIA ARTICLES ARE POTENTIAL HOAXES!

The defenders of Wikipedia want no part of facts like this, because they know what the root cause is. Wikipedia lets editors just choose what they do as part of their day to day hobby. If Wikipedia doesn't have enough editors to fix this problem, and the ones they do have don't consider it to be a problem, there's not really anything that can be done about it.

Proof, if it were needed, that Wikipedia Editors are the feckless, kazy, irresponsible and perhaps even JUST THAT FUCKING INCAPABLE sort of people for whom this sort of thing, just isn't a problem.

They have bigger fish to fry, clearly. Like distorting the holocaust, or ignoring women's achievements, or arguing that articles like "Bukkake" aren't pornographic by any reasonable measure. Important stuff.

The more Wikipedia tries to claim it is of value to the world, the harder you should push back.

The target is and should always be the editors.

Make it hurt to be this irresponsible. Make them pay dearly for prioritising their selfish interests over the needs of humanity.

Make it cost them personally, for being a part of something that claims to be the answer to disinformation, when by metrics like these, their own metrics, Wikipedia has got little to no viable claim to be information at all.

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