Is wikipedia really the cesspool everyone ways it to be here?

You can talk about anything related to Wikipedia criticism here.
User avatar
ericbarbour
Sucks Admin
Posts: 4547
Joined: Sat Feb 25, 2017 1:56 am
Location: The ass-tral plane
Has thanked: 1099 times
Been thanked: 1797 times

Re: Is wikipedia really the cesspool everyone ways it to be here?

Post by ericbarbour » Wed Jan 05, 2022 8:39 pm

oranges33 wrote:
Wed Jan 05, 2022 9:46 am
I think every Mediawiki project has more or less the same trajectory
some are worse. A lot worse.
At some point, as mentioned in Barbour's, "Why Wikipedia Will Fail", critical mass is hit. Edits and active users hit the highest it will probably ever get. In my opinion this is around the time when most of the "core" (bread and butter non-news) articles get filled to the point when you actually have to routinely arbitrate every edit and patrol every edit of the "core" articles.
I estimated that participation peaked in 2009 and has been declining ever since, with occasional frantic attempts to jack up content writing statistics, usually with bots and "tricks".
And it's not the fault of the smelly nerds always. Mediawiki has no dispute resolution.
The bastards LOVE to see people fighting. "Hell with the content, let's harass this editing addict and get a messy arbitration!"

User avatar
Jake Is A Sellout
Sucks Warrior
Posts: 717
Joined: Mon Mar 15, 2021 1:01 am
Been thanked: 113 times

Re: Is wikipedia really the cesspool everyone ways it to be here?

Post by Jake Is A Sellout » Thu Jan 06, 2022 2:57 pm

ericbarbour wrote:
Wed Jan 05, 2022 8:39 pm
The bastards LOVE to see people fighting. "Hell with the content, let's harass this editing addict and get a messy arbitration!"
Another thoroughly outdated observation. Anyone keeping their finger on the pulse can name several users who, back in the day, would indeed have been marched to ArbCom for a good old hose down. No longer.

The name of the game now is low level stuff, posturing, leveraging, and now this new promising drama mechanism, XRV, which only yesterday managed to get David Gerard to admit fault for one minor infraction, simply because someone had the good sense to lay out a nice concise list of his more serious violations that, while not particularly useful at AN/I or ArbCom, can be used under this new paradigm to make him think before he acts like a God.

This very week, it was shown that people still operating under the assumption the powers that be will be rewarded by dragging a dispute to ArbCom, will see their powers shown to be ineffectual for reasons, and be forced into doing what Jehochman was forced to do, and surrender his power.

Due to what has gone on these last few years, ArbCom are now nothing more than bizarre and ineffectual mix of jaded veterans and wide eyed n00bs, as detailed here by yours truly. No surprise then that nobody but the seriously deluded even bother with them, for good or evil.

They seek other means, some new, some as old as time itself. None that help anyone trying to promote Wikipedia to partners, which has obvious benefits.

Pays to know this shit.

User avatar
ericbarbour
Sucks Admin
Posts: 4547
Joined: Sat Feb 25, 2017 1:56 am
Location: The ass-tral plane
Has thanked: 1099 times
Been thanked: 1797 times

Re: Is wikipedia really the cesspool everyone ways it to be here?

Post by ericbarbour » Fri Jan 07, 2022 12:54 am

Jake Is A Sellout wrote:
Thu Jan 06, 2022 2:57 pm
This very week, it was shown that people still operating under the assumption the powers that be will be rewarded by dragging a dispute to ArbCom, will see their powers shown to be ineffectual for reasons, and be forced into doing what Jehochman was forced to do, and surrender his power.
You're talking about this? It doesn't amount to much IMO. Hochman was a huge asspain between 2006 and 2011 but since then he's been mostly inactive. He was personally responsible for many abuses. It's a bit ironic that he quit mainly because of Icewhiz pulling the usual crap. (DO NOT be terribly surprised if Hochman requests resysop months from now, after all this has blown over. And they will give it to him of course. Done it many times before.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... Jehochman)

You know they have a serious internal problem when administrators start threatening each other. Holocaust-denial related squabbles are one of those deeply disturbing areas that Wikipedia is very poorly set up to handle. "The encyclopedia anyone can edit" really should NOT allow people with extremist political agendas to edit. But they do.

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

Note that right above it, Kirill Lokshin requested his own desysop. THAT is more important given what an inveterate suck-up Lokshin has been for years. A true-blue "Wikipedia fan", and one of the major reasons for their fanatical coverage of military history. And for more editwars than I can count.

User avatar
oranges33
Sucks Fan
Posts: 181
Joined: Mon Jan 03, 2022 5:33 am
Has thanked: 18 times
Been thanked: 78 times

Re: Is wikipedia really the cesspool everyone ways it to be here?

Post by oranges33 » Sat Jan 08, 2022 7:59 am

ericbarbour wrote:
Fri Jan 07, 2022 12:54 am
Holocaust-denial related squabbles are one of those deeply disturbing areas that Wikipedia is very poorly set up to handle. "The encyclopedia anyone can edit" really should NOT allow people with extremist political agendas to edit. But they do.

I think once you venture into Wikipedia articles with a lot of attention, far-right people are banned or sanctioned (often on technicalities or unfairly) pretty swiftly. I've also run into conspiracy promoting far-right-wingers on other wikis and usually just ban them if they cause too many issues.

But if I don't have that amount of control, it's true that there's a lot of fringe or extremist views in modern academia. Which isn't always bad, but everyone from "race realists" (racists) to manospherians have many modern, peer-reviewed academic counterparts.

Arguing about the academia takes too long and it's almost certain the extremist has spent more time than you even want to invest, reading it.

So I've found the best solution to be to clarify in the article a group of people feel a certain way x about a topic. This is pretty standard NPOV wiki stuff I'm sure everyone here has done or knows about.

But nowadays on Wikipedia I see admins just giving themselves more power to unfairly use rules to unfairly ban extremists or unpopular views, rather than just specifying deep in the article a group of people think x way in academia, without advocating it.

It's not too much fun editing Wikipedia when you know an admin can ban you, at pretty much any point, if they don't like your views on politics or gender. Supposedly Gamergate made that necessary, and I don't know maybe it did for a few weeks then, but it's not 2014 imho. It's like Wikipedia constantly thinks there's brigading from thousands of organized people to ruin the gender and politics articles. But there aren't. But they'll act that way to get more power indefinitely. We're gonna see year 2180 Gamergate based arbitration if this nonsense doesn't stop imho.

User avatar
Bandyboy
Sucks Noob
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Apr 20, 2022 12:18 pm

Re: Is wikipedia really the cesspool everyone ways it to be here?

Post by Bandyboy » Wed Apr 20, 2022 3:44 pm

The English Wikipedia is like a big city. You'll get completely different experiences in different neighborhoods.

It's a nice place to edit if you're into obscure plant species.

But for companies, businesspeople, politics, and other topics that tend to attract the worst of the worst, you're in the hood. It's a nasty dog eat dog cesspool.

Smaller wikis are nice though. They can feel like ghost towns, so you can pretty much do whatever you want without any resistance, unless some Meta stewards or cross-wiki harassers notice.

Post Reply