Wikipedia Sucks!

First let me say, it was a disgusting and outrageous act of cruelty. And Mr. Tarrant, a regular on 8chan, turned it all into a giant sarcastic meme. Which only multiplies the disgust.

That said, you can probably guess what's happening on WP right now. For example:

ericbarbour wrote:That said, you can probably guess what's happening on WP right now. For example:

Sadly, your example, while not exactly unexpected, does rather let Wikipedia off the hook quite a bit. Everyone knows Wikipedia can be editted by anyone, and so they know that vandalism like that can occur. They sleep soundly in their beds, because it is usually reverted within minutes, and the perpetrator is usually a bad faith newcomer who doesn't know about their wonderful mission, and so is quickly blocked. This is what the Wikipedians tell them.

BUT WAIT A MINUTE......

What if the Wikipedians are LYING SCUM?

What if the whole thing is a FUCKING SCAM?

People need to know the truth about how Wikipedia really works. The REAL truth. Not the stuff that has just become commonplace knowledge, easily explained away those seeking to hide their real truth.

1. What connects Stiffo12, Godwin1996, Abirfan, and who knows how many more? These are all the names of Wikipedia accounts who made equally offensive edits to Fraser Anning's biography in the wake of this controversy, edits so egregious they make it plain these people are utterly opposed to Wikipedia's most important policy, but who, at time of writing, are still not blocked. They are easily spotted, being the classic 'red shirt' - a user who is so new to Wikipedia, they haven't even bothered making a user page. Sadly, unlike the classic Star Trek red shirt, their red designation doesn't lead to their early elimination by the wiki police, the Administrators. As far as the Wikipedia vandal prevention system is concerned (see something, say something), despite having been seen and reverted, these are still A-1 users, so any of the pieces of shit behind these accounts are free to make the same sort of edit to any Wikipedia page in future, and nobody would be any the wiser. They don't even have to bother creating a new account.

2. As of right now, a search of Wikipedia for Fraser Anning reveals the article "dickhead" as the fourth result. Why? Well, isn't it obvious? As if right now, and for the last ten and a half hours, the Wikipedia page for "Dickhead", an index page, has included the suggestion that Fraser Anning might be one of the Wikipedia articles you are looking for. Seriously.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =888019417

Not surprised? You perhaps assumed this is the same vulnerability that allows the sort of vandalism on the biography page? Come on. Even the Wikipedians have the good sense to permanently protect their page for "Dickhead" from being editted by newcomers. The edit was made possible, because the perpetrator, User:1dragon, has been a Wikipedia user for fourteen years, racking up a total of 1,463 edits. Granted, his interest seems to have waned since 2009, but that's the beauty of Wikipedia. Once you have made the required number of edits to pass off as not a threat, then a threat you shall not be considered, for the rest of your earthly days. And although it is a real vulnerability Wikipedia has often fallen afoul of, there is no indication the original operator of 1dragon has long since retired and whoever made these edits is some miscreant who simply hacked their password.

But maybe you thought, hey, Wikipedia is a big place, you can't catch every bad edit. Yeah, well, you might want to realise that because 1dragon made more than one egregious edit, he has been noticed, sort of. His edit to "Racism", adding the name of Anning to the "See Also" section, has rightly been reverted. The Wikipedia magic sauce of everybody tracking everybody else just didn't work here, the stupid fuck who reverted that, didn't do the most basic check of seeing what else they had done to damage Wikipedia. Like the peurile little vandals named above, as of right now, 1dragon remains a user in good standing, not blocked as an imminent threat, with presumably nobody monitoring what he might do next.

3. So, you maybe thought 1dragon isn't representative of the really committed Wikipedians, today's editors, the ones making several hundred edits a year, keeping everything nice and clean, just being diligent and dispassionate, professional, if such a word even applies to this hobbyist endeavour. Well, if you want a great example of how those people conduct themselves in situations like this, just feast your eyes on this edit.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =887915669

Note the "edit summary", Wikipedia speak for the official reason for the edit......

working diligently, rrright

It makes sense when you realise the sentence being added, and the preceding sentence it qualifies.....

Facebook, YouTube, Reddit and Twitter stated they were working diligently to remove the video of the attack from their platforms, and stated that they would also remove anything supporting the attacks.[61] Still, copies of the video were continually being uploaded on YouTube and Twitter.[62]

Isn't that cool? On Wikipedia, you don't just have to think it, you can say it out loud.

Wikipedia naturally has policies that say edit summaries can be deleted, but it has to be really really bad to justify it. This sort of low level commentary regarding the totally irrelevant issue of this random user's opinion behind their edit, which is otherwise perfectly factual, you would hope, won't remotely rise to the level warranting removal. So it is and will remain a permanent part of the Wikipedia historical record, available to anyone who is interested in how pages like this developed.

And to put you totally in the picture, this is not some random editor, this is none other then the infamous Drmies, or Dr. Michel Aaij to give him his real name. He is a highly trusted Wikipedian, so trusted he has served a term on the website's highest dispute resolution body, the Arbitration Committee. A sort of Wikipedia Supreme Court judge, if you will. He narrowly failed in his bid for a second term, and maybe it was because he's this kind of opinionated asshat in his editing. Then again, maybe it wasn't. There is no indication anyone on Wikipedia has any real issue with the way this highly active Administrator operates, even though the insertion of irrelevant vox pop in edit summaries falls at the lower end of the spectrum of what he does as he disregards their rules, principles, and the general basic idea of what they are there to do.

All told, these three examples, all related closely to a page getting MASSIVE attention, should be enough to convince anyone that when they tell you the only people who are a threat to Wikipedia are random vandals, not true believers. That they are merely people who abuse their welcoming nature, but who are quickly detected and and efficiently despatched, is a TOTAL FUCKING LIAR.

Being unprofessional, reactionary dicks, is pretty much a defining feature of being a Wikipedia. That's the difference between being an amateur, and a professional. They are all amateurs, in the very worst sense of that word.

Well put, though a bit long. Whenever a major massacre or major election (there's a difference?) occurs, inevitably there will be Wikipedian squabbling and drive-by sniping edits. People like Drmies, Smallbones, JzG and a few other habitual pests are almost guaranteed to put in an appearance.

The talkpage for the shooting article is one day old, and already has two saved archives. There is Wikipedia failing. Berserk and oft-incoherent squabbles. Endless shrieking that Tarrant's name should be removed from the article because "WP:BLPCRIME" and whatever. More shrieking that his manifesto should not be linked or discussed. And even more screeching about the video. For once Wnt is right: there is no escaping that Tarrant did the shooting. He ran a good quality livestream of himself doing the deed, with pics of himself and his car. He made no attempt to escape or hide his identity....he wants to be a meme. And he made it.

If you are masochistic enough to want to see Tarrant's video or other information removed from "mainstream media sites", you have to use Encyclopedia Dramatica.
https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/Brenton_Tarrant

The content too, has the usual obvious but not obvious flaws........

BBC Editorial Guidance:

Words can be used with precision to make clear what has happened and still convey the awful consequences without needing to resort to labels

.......

Unfortunately, there is no agreed or universal consensus on what constitutes a terrorist, or a terrorist attack. Dictionaries may offer definitions but the United Nations has again just failed to reach agreement. The obvious reason is that terrorism is regarded through a political prism

.......

Some will argue that certain events are so evidently acts of terror (and, therefore, perpetrated by "terrorists") that those descriptions are reasonable, and non-judgemental. However, the language we choose to use in reporting one incident cannot be considered in isolation from our reporting of other stories. So to use the word in incidents which we may consider obvious creates difficulties for less clear-cut incidents.

.......

we don't change the word "terrorist" when quoting other people, but we try to avoid the word ourselves; not because we are morally neutral towards terrorism, nor because we have any sympathy for the perpetrators

Wikipedia article:

The Christchurch mosque shootings were two consecutive terrorist mass shootings

Wikipedia editor (the same one throwing around their personal opinions in the official editting record):

duh--we don't need a conviction, we need reliable sources. Contrary to TompaDompa's somewhat inadequate assertions, BLPCRIMES has nothing to do with this. A comparison with some other shootings, like the one in Las Vegas, goes awry very quickly since this person, according to his "manifesto", had an explicitly political goal. That's not to say that Las Vegas can't be considered a terrorist act (I believe that it was), but that's a different matter. Drmies (talk) 00:40, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

The depressing thing is, there is some overlap between written Wikipedia policy and the BBC's outlook. It does talk of the problematic and ultimately rather pointless need for such labels, so someone in there has definitely thought about this from the perspective of the sober task of editing a neutral and useful reference work. But as ever, even that written policy is negated by the usual overbearing inclusion of the sacred mantra of reliable sources, reliable sources, reliable sources, the inclusion of which is the ultimate cause of the text above, both the content and the reasoning for it.

And on that score, well, the BBC is reliable, is it not? The Gold Fucking Standard, I would have thought.......

Christchurch shootings:

Fifty people have been killed and another 50 wounded in shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in the deadliest attack in the country's history.

ericbarbour wrote:If you are masochistic enough to want to see Tarrant's video or other information removed from "mainstream media sites"

Kinda worth avoiding.

You can't win either way, short of preventing it hitting the open internet in the first place, is what any sensible person would surely realise in the cold light of day.

Meanhwile, in other news, Wikipedia no longer thinks that Australian senator is a dickhead. For reasons we'll never be a party to I am sure, the editor who noticed 1dragon's atrocious edit to Racism finally got around to tracking and reversing his other edits. And he did his mallcop duty by leaving a nice little warning, which I am sure will have all the effect on such a person as the preceding fourteen years of familiarity with basic policy did in preventing it.......

March 2019
Please refrain from making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia, as you did at Dickhead. Your edits appear to constitute vandalism and have been reverted. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. Repeated vandalism may result in the loss of editing privileges. Thank you. Nzd (talk) 01:08, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

1Dragon has therefore happily resumed his use to the world via the medium of Wikipedia, by making productive edits to the index for "Egging" today. I bet you can guess what it related to.

Editors like that should be indefinitely blocked on sight, and Wikipedia editors as experienced (despite evidence to the contrary) as his pursuer is, should know they need to be reported to an Administrator immediately, to be so despatched, or at least so we can identify which Administrator, if not all of them, needs to take partial responsibility for future bad edits.

March 2019
Please refrain from making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia, as you did at Dickhead. Your edits appear to constitute vandalism and have been reverted. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. Repeated vandalism may result in the loss of editing privileges. Thank you. Nzd (talk) 01:08, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

Ha ha ha.....

Oh btw, I saw this on the Dramatica forum. Some hapless New Zealand cop tried to ask the sysop of KiwiFarms for server logs so they could figure out who posted the Christchurch video etc, and this was the result:

Null does have a way of saying "fuck off" with style, I will give him that.

He's fucked. The US and New Zealand has had an extradition treaty since 1970. If his crappy website is accessible in New Zealand, and if he is taking responsibility for and refusing to remove a video now classified as illegal in New Zealand, then he is extraditable under the Treaty for inciting others to commit any number of the specific offences considered serious enough to be valid for requesting extradition.

If they don't want to go that route, then the Five Eyes allliance does of course allow the sharing of intelligence between the US and New Zealand.

He's needs to ask himself, what other higher priorities will the New Zealand authorities have for the next ten years? They already got the shooter, so now they'll want everyone who encouraged and rewarded him.