Wikipedia Sucks!

Poetlister wrote:How many people are rooting for CN and how many for RfB? For professional reasons, I am trying to remain 100% neutral.

WhoReallyCares wrote:
Analysis
Randy put in a great first round. Very tactical. You can see he's probing for weaknesses, vulnerabilities and future opportunities. CrowsNest fought back well, but only in a predictable way.

Will CN punch himself out too soon? And how will Randy consolidate the tactical and strategic points he's earned?

Round two awaits!


Round two: early analysis
Randy has gone back into the ring and kicked off round two. He looks very strong and commanding!

After starting with a series a well-aimed jabs, he concludes nicely with a bit of food for thought. Impressive performance.

Eric Barbour has replied, but I see no real meat on the bones: no convincing body shots or serious head blows; nothing that's likely to trouble Mr Tim Carrite.

As things stand, Randy is definitely ahead.


Round 4: analysis
The first three rounds all went to Tim, but CN has fought back.

He's focusing on vanity publishing, addiction, and the dopamine hits Wikipedians get from making their crappy edits.

CN is now in fine form and the clear winner of round 4. Verbose, sure. But his points are good.

WhoReallyCares wrote:
Round 5: a major historical event
Mr Tim Carrite's post is not only one of the best you'll see anywhere on the internet, it's a major historical event. Body punch after slamming body punch; right hook after devastating right hook. He describes CN as a narcissist and fantasist, and observes that "somebody" is a frustrated writer. That last punch will hurt since [IMO] CN will hard it very hard to prove otherwise.

Here -- in full -- is Randy's masterpiece:

CN wrote:
I'm not remotely confused about what motivates you Tim.

That I don't doubt in the least — that in your mind you don't have the slightest confusion about what I believe, or anything at all, really. It's almost entirely wrong, mind you, but you've nonetheless got an absolute certainty that anything you believe is correct. It's a form of narcissism.

CN wrote:
You are writing on Wikipedia to gain the recognition and readers for your work that other routes could not or would not offer you.

Here's one of exactly two things you've got right — millions of people use Wikipedia every month and thousands of these make use of Wikipedia to gain information on matters about which I have expert knowledge. So I am writing for a broad set of readers, people who would be completely oblivious to anything I produced if it were written for and published in academic journals and small circulation university press books.

CN wrote:
But money is also clearly an issue for you, you clearly resent not being recompensed by Wikipedia for what you lay out in expenses, just like you clearly resent not being able to make money from traditional publishers.

Completely absurd. I've been a book collector since the 1980s and a Wikipedian since the closing days of 2008. Why would I "resent not being recompensated" by WMF for my own collection-building that had been going on for decades before? The only issue I raised my own spending on books, microfilm, and associated gear at all was to illustrate what a tiny, tiny part was played by WMF's contribution (gratis access to Newspapers.com and JSTOR) to my my information-acquisition budget.

I couldn't care less about making a nickel off my writing in any form. I don't have an ad on my website, I have made sure to assign away potential royalties in my book contracts, and the only reason I have edited Wikipedia for pay was to gain experience in the process with a view to writing about it someday — money which was donated to charity. I care about money like you care about American football.

CN wrote:
Your lack of any real or visible effort in fixing what is broken at Wikipedia...

The fact that you haven't noticed it doesn't mean it hasn't taken place. A more humble phrasing would be: "The fact I've never noticed you spending time fixing what I think is broken at Wikipedia..." But then again, humility was never your strong suit.

CN wrote:
"...your apparent happiness that it has and will continue to undermine the traditional model of authors owning their work and being paid for it, particularly when it would have marketable value if Wikipedia did not exist, all suggests to me it is more about what you couldn't achieve as a writer using the traditional model, than principle in general."

Now here is where we get to what motivates you. Somebody is a frustrated writer... It's certainly not me, I'm paddling as fast as I can in the deep end of the pool. And again: the fact that you blame Wikipedia, a superficial marker for or symptom of underlying technological changes in the publishing industry, for a declining market for freelance or professional writing is sort of like blaming the Stanley Motor Carriage Company for the falling pay rates of horse-drawn wagon drivers in the 1910s.

CN wrote:
This has been tried before, by other pseudo-critics.

And here again we arrive at one of the fundamentals of your own personality. You and you alone are the savior of the world from the menace of Wikipedia. All others, those who make muted or partial or focused criticism of Wikipedia are mockable "pseudo-critics." Only nonstop and total vilification in the most shrill tone will do. In this you are probably one of three (plus or minus one) humans on our planet. I ask you again, do you really think that such a standard has the most remote chance of building a movement that can actually effect change? Or is it not more likely that you love the sound of your own voice and are addicted to "the adrenaline rush of verbal abuse." (—Ming)

It's not really about Wikipedia at all, is it? It's about proudly flaring magnificently colored peacock tail-feathers and shrieking for all to hear...

CN wrote:
I sometimes think maybe it only ever was Jimmy Wales who thought Wikipedia would be a professional environment.
Jimmy Wales has been accused of being motivated by and envisioning many things, but belief that he was creating a "professional environment" is not one of them. Surely you mistake him for Larry Sanger and his ill-starred Citizendium.

CN wrote:
You refer to the unsung heroes of Wikipedia, like you have some evidence they do what they do out of a conscious choice or a genuine altruistic motive. We know different. We know those people are simply addicts, hooked on the rush you get from instant publishing. There's no higher cause to their efforts, they're simply writing, just like you, for selfish reasons.

Of course people would rather write for the widely read Wikipedia about their interests than they would spend money to start an obscure blog that nobody sees. How does this make them selfish? Rather, it is a rational and smart choice if one is sharing knowledge. This is the reason you and your ilk can shriek and vilify Wikipedia and Wikipedians in your various cul-de-sacs of the internet to your heart's content and it won't make the slightest difference to the people who keep the encyclopedia improving and growing.

CN wrote:
Pick a backlog, any backlog, they would all be seen as priorities by people who genuinely believed in Wikipedia solely for what it can be to the world, not what it can be for them.

Some people write. Some people maintain. Some people are just there for the drama. It takes all kinds.

CN wrote:
What a strange way to refer to a project whose entire ethos is collaboration and coordination.

Only Jimmy Wales and the circle of people with snouts in the fundraising trough profess such a huggy-kissy depiction of Wikipedia. Allow me to introduce you to a very smart comment made by Andreas Kolbe at Wikipediocracy in July 2012: "Received wisdom is, too many cooks spoil the broth. Crowdsourcing wisdom is, the more cooks, the better. But in practice, every featured article in Wikipedia is the work of one writer...or a small team. Crowdsourcing does not result in excellent articles."

Most dedicated WP content-writers write in isolation. You don't see their names unless you go looking for them and they could not care one molecule less about Wikipolitics or what you or I have to say about the defects of Wikipedia.

CN wrote:
why only 0.6% of it is up to an acceptable standard according their own metrics.

Ha!!! There you go again, making use of Wikipedia stats and definitions to "prove" Wikipedia processes are the cat's meow. There is nothing about the "Good Article/Featured Article" homogenization machine that makes or breaks a Wikipedia article. That approval process is nothing more than a pastime for copyeditors on the make. Wikipedia, in actual fact, is a mixed bag of good and bad articles, of generally acceptable quality and accuracy for most topics. This is why Wikipedia is so well-regarded with the public. This is how WMF is able to raise $100 Million a year passing the hat.

CN wrote:
You are probably the most Wikipedian Wikipedian I know.

Thank you. I do mean that. One thing we punk rock fans have long known is that the true believers in the punk/DIY ethic are, counterintuitively, the ones who superficially look the least like punk rockers. This is probably the only other thing you've got really right about me. Everything else is horseshit.

CN wrote:
What I write here, is written firstly for the victims, the unwitting consumers, and secondly for those who have the power and the motivation to destroy Wikipedia.

Here you reveal yourself a fantasist. Why are you not attempting to contribute freelance exposés to every media site on the internet if you are truly trying to "help the victims"??? No, my friend, you just like the sound of your own voice and the thrill of denunciation and (anonymously) written abuse.

But enough about me. Let us know your big strategy of knocking off a multimillion dollar public institution with a higher public "approval rating" than the government of any country with the sheer force of your shrill and sectarian words on an obscure website (Alexa global rank: 1,515,392).

WhoReallyCares wrote:Round 5: conclusion
CrowsNest has fought back, and his first 2 paragraphs are extremely good. He delivers a blinding left hook by noting that Tim's crappy article about Severi Alanne generates an average of just 1 view per day:

https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/?pr ... eri_Alanne

(The 2 FAs I wrote apparently get 18 and 11 views per day, and I don't even give a fuck about them. My third [slightly unfinished] article gets 19 hits a day.)

A few body punches ensue, but much of CN's response is restricted to well-executed jabs. I'm impressed by his comeback and pleased to see he's unhurt by the ferocity of Tim's assault.

It's been a close round, but on points it has to go to Tim.

Graaf Statler wrote:In my opinion Tim made a cruciaal mistake, WRC, Tim is all the time putting his money on impressive numbers. So much money, to big to fall, that is his tactic. But he has played all his cards now and has nothing left, and that was the reason I said crow will win the next rounds. But we will see, we will see what Tim is bringing up.
But after this extremely good posting of Crow he will have a hard time from now on.

Ming wrote:Ming sees CN exhibiting his usual clairvoyance as to his opponents' thinking.

Ming personally finds it painful to read a long semi-rant broken into 2-3 sentence paragraphs for no particular reason, but Ming really cannot find it in Mingself to take seriously all the claims about motivation for editing. People are simultaneously more and less complex than that, and are as a rule not terribly rational in their pursuit of their desires, or even in having them in the first place. It's unreasonable to expect that people participating in WP are somehow signed onto its noble aims, and indeed a lot of them do so in blatant contradiction, and CM's cheap maligning of RiB's intent need not be taken seriously. It speaks far more to CN's intent than anything else, since, after all, that is what it expresses.

WhoReallyCares wrote:Round 6: That all you got, George?
Muhammad Ali taunted his opponent in Zaire by asking That all you got, George? This time around it's Mr Tim Carrite doing the taunting.

Randy starts with: "Wow, that's embarrassing... If this were actually a boxing match, you'd have just treated the spectators to three minutes of racing around the ring with a bloody nose, back to the opponent, blindly windmilling awkward attempts at haymakers at phantoms in the air. I had a higher expectation of you."

He later concludes: "You've got nothing. No viable strategy, nothing but self-righteousness, anger, and an addiction to the adrenaline of anonymous invective."

IMO, CrowsNest urgently needs to re-think his strategy or this could end in a knockout.

On a more positive note, Muhammad Ali and George Foreman went on to become lifelong friends.

WhoReallyCares wrote:Round 6: conclusion
The mighty CrowsNest struggles on, but there's not much fight left in him now. The invective is gone; there are no personal insults; and he doesn't even mention the Ferret Fucker.

He starts with: "I already told you quite a bit about who I am writing for, and how they can bring down Wikipedia". To some extent this is true. At the end of round four he observed that his commentary is: "written firstly for the victims, the unwitting consumers, and secondly for those who have the power and the motivation to destroy Wikipedia".

But who are these people with the power to bring down Wikipedia, and how do we know they're reading the WS forum?

Round six goes to Tim. CN put in several punches, but IMO they lacked bite and precision. And no way did they counter Randy's taunts.

WhoReallyCares wrote:Round 7: the cult of Wikipedia criticism
Even a cursory glance at Wikipedia's editing community reveals cult-like behavior. And that's in addition to very obvious autism, Aspergers, mental illness, depression and social disenfranchisement.

In his opening post, Mr Tim Carrite has taken the unusual and highly innovative step of suggesting an equally cult-like mentality exists among HTD believers. His tone is mocking throughout; his points are interesting and supported by facts. The action is right here, at the very top of page 4.

https://www.wikipediasucks.co/forum/vie ... 4&start=30

And regrettably ........
A somewhat overzealous Dutch fan has made his way into the ring. He's shouting and screaming at Tim, and demanding answers. He states that if no answers are forthcoming, Tim will be disqualified.

IMO, the WS forum needs to tighten ringside security. These interruptions are most unseemly.

Randy from Boise wrote:You also forget to mention that Don Quixote de la Mancha started a retaliatory thread under my real name because I was mopping the ring with his fat keister... He's a poser and a pussy.
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