Wikipedia Sucks!

Apologies as I'm sure this stuff has been said before, but it's my first post here and wanted to get it off my chest. From various interactions on Wikipedia it seems most long time users now follow the following pattern:

1) Create or edit a page with hideous NPOV problems
2) Camp this page
3) Wait until someone relatively new to the site engages you on the talk page, or, actually has the gual to make an edit.
4) First, if they've made an edit, revert it all. Next, if the user made an edit, call them an abject moron who doesn't understand anything about Wikipedia or its policies. Be as rude as you like about this. If the user engaged you in talk, you can be a little more civil at this stage, since they didn't actually exert any power over the content you were camping... Just make sure to flag they're a more recent user than you

And now on to step five, which is the most important one:

5) Spam them with [[WP:XXX]] links, the more the better.

Try to get in about three per sentence if you can, if not more. To start with these may actually be related to what the user is saying, but they certainly don't have to be. However, if the user starts to disprove your points then you really need to double down. Begin quoting any and all WP policy guidelines even when they're not relevant or even directly disprove the long-time user's stated position. It really doesn't matter. If the user actually quotes the rule to prove it says the opposite of what they claim, cite [[WP:Wikilawyering]]. The point is to a casual observer it has to look like you're educating a clueless newbie, and the hope is that since you're chucking so much material at them, they'll either give up or make a mistake. While you're doing this, pepper your responses with vailed threats like 'you're on thin ice now' or outright insults like 'your cluelessness act is approaching perfection'. Even if the user remains calm the hope is to a casual observer they'll seem like they don't know what they're talking about. Keep at this until you drive them away.

Seems to me very like the Buddhist view of the world of the Asuras, or the world of Anger/Arrogance, where its unhappy inhabbitants seek continually to dominate and disprove each other, locking themselves in a perpetual cycle of misery.

Anyone else noticed this pattern?

Sounds familiar, yes. Special the quoting any and all WP policy guidelines even when they're not relevant and the lose of any civilisation as you describes. And of course welcome.

Wikipedia is very weird, people change in very strange, completely unreasonable creatures. In a kind of robots. You can't simple communicate with them, that is impossible.
But the biggest problem in the beginning is you don't understand what is going on, and that is so confusing. That takes time. And all that strange and many times conflicting policy guidelines, it is a grab bag. They just take out of it what fits them to push there nonsense in the way you describe.
We slowly come to the conclusion the wiki system change something in peoples brain, it must be a kind of addiction. Because you see people get solved in all that nonsense and start to consider it as normal, what it not is of course.

One thing you certainly can't do, I have discovered, is edit an article marked satire to be critical of admins.

You've identified the established pattern all right. Nothing about Wikipedia works as advertised in policy, it is all done according to the unwritten rules and norms the people sad enough to stick around or otherwise have a reason to play the game, soon learn. Takes about a year, all told. The funniest thing about Wikipedia has to be how common it is to see people not only be blatantly doing the exact opposite of what a policy says, but getting away with it, right under the noses of the so called Administrators. Normal, right minded people just wouldn't stand for it. And that is how they like it. The more normal people editing Wikipedia, the less likely the abnormal ones could get away with it. Administrators are selected and promoted by the community, who reward those with the most talent at making the abnormal seem normal, so it is no surprise they end up seeing nothing abnormal in what the most determined and often hopelessly addicted editors get up to. It is entirely self-reinforcing. Talking sense to a Wikipedian, pointing out the sheer stupidity of what they so often do, is impossible. To prevent the mere possibility of that happening, they make sure the only people allowed to talk to inhabitants unmolested, are those who have proved they are stupid enough to stick with Wikipedia long term.

People who have a normal live, a job, a family, parents to take care about, hobby's etc. have no interest in Wikipedia. So what is left? People with a activistic agenda, people die niet als een andere zijn, how are the same like a other person, people who have failed in life complete, in short a bunch of losers.
And this kind of people appreciate very much sysops made out of steel wool and whiskey. People who have actually accomplished much are simple not welcome, they are a threat to them. They bring there safe wiki-world where they are 100 % accepted in danger. And that is the reason they behave themself in this way.

On WP-NL many of them are doxxed, not by me by the way, and if you read there social media you first start to laugh, and than to cry. Some of those wiki heros even have state coaches, state support, state protect jobs, because they can't function in a normal way in our society.
And are a sysop, arb, steward ect. Traveling around Holland and the world to support the miracle Wikipedia.

About WP-EN I don't know, but what I have read on the critical fora the last years I haven not the impression the situation is much better there.

Mrspaceowl wrote:1) Create or edit a page with hideous NPOV problems
2) Camp this page
3) Wait until someone relatively new to the site engages you on the talk page, or, actually has the gual to make an edit.
4) First, if they've made an edit, revert it all. Next, if the user made an edit, call them an abject moron who doesn't understand anything about Wikipedia or its policies. Be as rude as you like about this. If the user engaged you in talk, you can be a little more civil at this stage, since they didn't actually exert any power over the content you were camping... Just make sure to flag they're a more recent user than you
And now on to step five, which is the most important one:
5) Spam them with [[WP:XXX]] links, the more the better.

This is a typical procedure, and works best with two major caveats.
a) BE OBSESSIVE. Watch that content like a crazy OCD victim with insomnia.
b) enlist the help and protection of an admin. Grinding the IRC channels and sucking up to the regulars is the best way.

ericbarbour wrote:

Mrspaceowl wrote:1) Create or edit a page with hideous NPOV problems
2) Camp this page
3) Wait until someone relatively new to the site engages you on the talk page, or, actually has the gual to make an edit.
4) First, if they've made an edit, revert it all. Next, if the user made an edit, call them an abject moron who doesn't understand anything about Wikipedia or its policies. Be as rude as you like about this. If the user engaged you in talk, you can be a little more civil at this stage, since they didn't actually exert any power over the content you were camping... Just make sure to flag they're a more recent user than you
And now on to step five, which is the most important one:
5) Spam them with [[WP:XXX]] links, the more the better.

This is a typical procedure, and works best with two major caveats.
a) BE OBSESSIVE. Watch that content like a crazy OCD victim with insomnia.
b) enlist the help and protection of an admin. Grinding the IRC channels and sucking up to the regulars is the best way.

You're right, but the insanity is so hard to deal with. It starts to get to the point that you don't even care who's right or wrong, you just want to wipe the foam from their mouths, give them a rabies shot and tell them they're still worthwhile people even though they don't have a PhD.