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

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

Post by Jake Is A Sellout » Mon Jun 21, 2021 10:53 pm

Not only are they a cesspool, they openly admit it.

Even though it is allegedly a "Pillar" of Wikipedia that everyone should treat each other with respect, the hard core volunteers of English Wikipedia got together a while back, and formed a "consensus" that their Administrators shouldn't do anything even if a user is repeatedly telling other users to "fuck off".

They cannot block people for it, they are not supposed to even warn them for it (in case the person who is doing it, gets offended!).

Naturally, this rule doesn't apply to newcomers, who can still easily be blocked for repeated and deliberate rudeness under the pillar. It is designed to protect the people to whom aggressive and calculated rudeness comes naturally. The established editors, the people who consider themselves more important than newcomers, just because they've wasted a good portion of their lives, being Wikipedia editors.

If that doesn't tell you what the core values of the Wikipedia community are, I don't know what would.

This probably doesn't sit well with the legal owners of Wikipedia, but of course, by law and custom, they're not allowed to hold the volunteer editors to a defined minimal standard of conduct. That is a position the volunteers have fought very hard to achieve.

The right to be assholes, and self regulate their accepted level of inter-editor assholery, is perhaps the hardest they have ever fought for anything (whereas, when it came time to stand up as a community and show support for Black Lives Matter, they dodged the issue by falsely claiming that is a political issue, rather than a matter of fundamental decency).

In a word, they're scum.

Nobody in their right mind wants to be part of that "community" if they can help it. But Wikipedia is addictive, so sadly, many people aren't made aware of what they have joined, until they are psychologically unable to leave.

That is perhaps why so many of them are so rude all the time, lashing out at the drop of a hat. They're angry at the realisation they're nothing but filthy little loser addicts.

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

Post by Jake Is A Sellout » Tue Jun 22, 2021 12:17 pm

why is wikipedia so addictive?
It's about agency, and immediacy. No other website in the world let's you change "knowledge", and see that change happen instantly. Other websites do stupid things, like ask what your qualifications are, to be changing an article about Quantum Physics, like you know shit about shit.

The only qualification needed for Wikipedia, is an ability to read. And to be honest, they're even flexible about that, if you bring something else to the table that they want and need.

Of course, this is exactly why Wikipedia isn't "knowledge" but rather just a giant communal scribble pad, but the scum who own it, and the even bigger scum who volunteer to write and Administer it, don't want the rest of the world to know this basic reality of their endeavor.

To them, it is an "encyclopedia", as if that word had never even had a different meaning, a past usage where it was taken as read that you could trust the content of an encyclopedia was accurate, unbiased, and complete. A work where any deviance from that goal, was the result of a genuine and exceedingly rare mistake, not a baked in flaw producing surprisingly high amounts of poor quality articles.

Even their allegedly expert editors, like Jess Wade, are certifable idiots. Absolute total morons. At least part of the reason for her shockingly high error rate and frequency of general dumbassery, is undoubtedly, addiction.

They all know it. Instead of owning up and admitting their experiment is a failure, their chosen strategy is to tell the world that black is white, up is down, like people on the outside really are just that stupid.

For children especially, but also fuckwitted young adults like Wade, the power to edit is very addictive. The dopamine hit is nice. The feeling like you actually have agency and influence in this world. So you want another. And another.

This loser feedback loop produces sad bastards like Kumioko, who is genuinely proud that he makes thousands of edits a day as a sad bastard socky wocky, helping a website where everyone hates him. He thinks he is cheating the system and getting one over on the evil Admins.

In reality, he's just feeding his addiction. Like all addicts, they have no idea how pathetic they look to normal people, and they lash out when we hold a mirror up to show them the results of their poor life choices.

Like dirty crack dealers, the scumbag Administrators are secretly (actually, quite openly) fine with people interacting with Wikipedia on that basis especially, the addict socks. They get experienced edits, which gives them a reason to get up in the morning, without the hassle of Kumioko feeling like he can actually openly be Kumioko (he was quite the pain the ass).

This is why nobody should ever edit Wikipedia as a sock, unless it is to do damage. Doing helpful edits as a sock, is basically just admitting you're a sad addict loser.

Once the addictive element of simple article editing wears off, as it does, there is of course the next level of addiction. Experienced editors, once they know the complex myriad of contradictory rules, and especially once they have realized they're contradictory and often nonsensical for a reason (to keep people fighting over nonsense), they can then get addicted to approaching Wikipedia as a massive online game.

It has all the addictive elements of a game, there, in the back room areas of "policy enforcement". Gameplay. Levelling up. The ability to knock out opponents, and claim territory. Strategy. Battlefield techniques.

Sad bastards like Hemenchuia, who probably genuinely get an erection when they have reported another sock. It's sad loser addicts like that, who genuinely can't see that the rest of the world sees them for what they are. People who are in effect, so addicted to their drug of choice, they are quite happy to let Wikipedia get away with enabling child abuse. All to keep the flimsy edifice of Wikipedia's editorial rules, in tact.

And of course, the sick deviants over at Wikipediocracy, they get their kicks out of playing their full part in the games, encouraging loser addicts like Hemenchuia in their beliefs that they are doing good works. That they are a benefit to society, rather than the turds floating in a giant sewer.

It's really sick stuff. The people at the very top, the people like Bradv, who ensure the game space is broadly kept as it should be, that the loser addicts are all kept nicely doped up and only attack those they are meant to attack, not the Game Masters, especially the Arbitration Committee, who work really hard using their advanced tools to ensure nobody can pull a Neo on the whole thing, they're no longer addicted in the normal sense, they're way past that.

They're psychopaths. The super dealers.

All told, the Wikipedia community is a pretty sick place. Half of them are sick, as in addicted. The other half are sick, as in they get their jollies from other people's addictions.

What would they ever do, if the place was reset, they were all unplugged from their dopamine feeds, and being an editor and an Admin actually became all about creating (and crucially, maintaining) an actual, encyclopedia. And making the necessary structural and policy changes to ensure it was accurate, complete and unbiased, by design, rather than dumb luck.

Their brains would properly melt. It would be like telling a heroin addict to imagine of a world without stealing and sucking dick.

Just say no kids.
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Re: Is wikipedia really the cesspool everyone ways it to be here?

Post by Jake Is A Sellout » Tue Jun 22, 2021 9:10 pm

Vanished user wrote:
Jake Is A Sellout wrote:
Tue Jun 22, 2021 12:17 pm
This is why nobody should ever edit Wikipedia as a sock, unless it is to do damage. Doing helpful edits as a sock, is basically just admitting you're a sad addict loser.
Why do you need to "do damage" to be a good sock?
For the reason already given (to avoid looking like a loser)
Vanished user wrote:Being disruptive is against common sense.
How? Being disruptive wastes the time of a Wikipedia editor. That's time they can't then spend ruining the world with their half baked delusions that they're building an encyclopedia.
Vanished user wrote:There are multiple LTAs with thousands of disruptive socks like Cow Cleaner 5000 prove that vandals are also addicted.
Perhaps. That just shows what a stupid idea Wikipedia was. Vandalism is addictive, for the same reason constructive editing is. Those first few vandalism edits, are thrilling. And when it starts to get harder, when they start using advanced methods to stop you, that's when the game playing type addiction kicks in.

It's hilarious to think that, brain chemistry wise, there's absolutely no difference between being a good Wikipedia editor, and being a Wikipedia vandalism.

That's how you can tell Wikipedia was invented by morons, is written and maintained by morons, and is Administrated by morons.

The real geniuses are those who get paid to do actual jobs loosely connected to the whole farce.

How can you vandalise a real encyclopedia? You can't. That's not an accident. With a real encyclopedia, all the rewards come from positive contributions. Negative contributions only lead to negative effects for the disruptor. Up to and including losing their livelihood and perhaps even jail time.

What's the worst that Wikipedia can do to a vandal? Issue a ban, which are easily worked around. That's how you can tell what value society puts on Wikipedia. Zero dollars, zero cents.

This is the difference between a real encyclopedia (a serious enterprise for the public good) and Wikipedia (a game for addicts with absolutely no wider societal benefit).
Vanished user wrote: there are also editors like ProtoDrake, who contribute to genuinely high quality articles to wikipedia.
If you say so. Video games are not my speciality, but I don't see why the flaws of Wikipedia that apply in every other topic area, don't apply to video games too.
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Re: Is wikipedia really the cesspool everyone ways it to be here?

Post by ericbarbour » Wed Jun 23, 2021 1:17 am

Jake Is A Sellout wrote:
Tue Jun 22, 2021 9:10 pm
Perhaps. That just shows what a stupid idea Wikipedia was. Vandalism is addictive, for the same reason constructive editing is. Those first few vandalism edits, are thrilling. And when it starts to get harder, when they start using advanced methods to stop you, that's when the game playing type addiction kicks in.

It's hilarious to think that, brain chemistry wise, there's absolutely no difference between being a good Wikipedia editor, and being a Wikipedia vandalism.

That's how you can tell Wikipedia was invented by morons, is written and maintained by morons, and is Administrated by morons.

The real geniuses are those who get paid to do actual jobs loosely connected to the whole farce.

How can you vandalise a real encyclopedia? You can't. That's not an accident. With a real encyclopedia, all the rewards come from positive contributions. Negative contributions only lead to negative effects for the disruptor. Up to and including losing their livelihood and perhaps even jail time.
Basically accurate
Even though it is allegedly a "Pillar" of Wikipedia that everyone should treat each other with respect, the hard core volunteers of English Wikipedia got together a while back, and formed a "consensus" that their Administrators shouldn't do anything even if a user is repeatedly telling other users to "fuck off".

They cannot block people for it, they are not supposed to even warn them for it (in case the person who is doing it, gets offended!).

Naturally, this rule doesn't apply to newcomers, who can still easily be blocked for repeated and deliberate rudeness under the pillar. It is designed to protect the people to whom aggressive and calculated rudeness comes naturally. The established editors, the people who consider themselves more important than newcomers, just because they've wasted a good portion of their lives, being Wikipedia editors.

If that doesn't tell you what the core values of the Wikipedia community are, I don't know what would.

This probably doesn't sit well with the legal owners of Wikipedia, but of course, by law and custom, they're not allowed to hold the volunteer editors to a defined minimal standard of conduct. That is a position the volunteers have fought very hard to achieve.

The right to be assholes, and self regulate their accepted level of inter-editor assholery, is perhaps the hardest they have ever fought for anything (whereas, when it came time to stand up as a community and show support for Black Lives Matter, they dodged the issue by falsely claiming that is a political issue, rather than a matter of fundamental decency).
also basically accurate BUT THEY WILL NEVER ADMIT IT

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

Post by sashi » Wed Jun 23, 2021 2:25 am

JisaS wrote: To them, it is an "encyclopedia", as if that word had never even had a different meaning, a past usage where it was taken as read that you could trust the content of an encyclopedia was accurate, unbiased, and complete.
Scholars have claimed that Rabelais is the first written record of this word. If this is accurate, I'm not sure that what you say actually follows, given that he always uses the puffed-up Greekish term with an ironic wink.

JisaS (decontextualized) wrote:
Tue Jun 22, 2021 9:10 pm
[...] Up to and including losing their livelihood and perhaps even jail time.

FWIW: Diderot did time for his Lettre sur les aveugles à l’usage de ceux qui voient in 1749.

JisaS wrote:The real geniuses are those who get paid to do actual jobs loosely connected to the whole farce.
Are you alluding to your own comfortable emoluments, Me. Corbeau :?: :twisted:

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Re: Is Wikipedia a nutshell?

Post by sashi » Wed Jun 23, 2021 7:23 pm

Now c'mon, Wikipedians don't have Yakuza tattoos identifying themselves for evermore. Oh, wait. ( § )

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

Post by Kumioko » Mon Jun 28, 2021 10:58 am

Actually you're obsession with with me is much sadder than my editing. Had you bothered to be honest, my editing is merely to get admin rights to unlock deleted content and the things being an admin unlocks. In order to do that, I have to create and improve content. But don't worry, after I'm discovered, they'll delete that content out of spite.
#BbbGate

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

Post by Jake Is A Sellout » Mon Jun 28, 2021 2:00 pm

Kumioko wrote:
Mon Jun 28, 2021 10:58 am
Actually you're obsession with with me is much sadder than my editing. Had you bothered to be honest, my editing is merely to get admin rights to unlock deleted content and the things being an admin unlocks. In order to do that, I have to create and improve content. But don't worry, after I'm discovered, they'll delete that content out of spite.
Well, for a start, that's an obvious lie, but for the purposes of cruelly mocking you, let's run with it.

Are you so stupid as to believe anyone here buys that the path to Admin on Wikipedia is content creation? And that it woud take thousands of edits (I can't be bothered to check, but I suspect your exact words were that you had made "millions" of edits as a very proud but very sad little socky wocky.)

Even on this pointlessly difficult path to power, If she wasn't such a fucking moron and an all round bitch, Jess Wade could have made admin with less than 700 purely content edits. Ritchie would be happy to nominate her. He's that stupid, and that desperate to get laid.

But much like it would be with you no doubt, even as she tried her hardest to appear like a good little bunny, it only really took a handful of talk page interactions to reveal her true self, and thus show why nobody but the stupidest people would ever give her any Wikipedia power. She's useful only as a mindless grunt, and that's exactly what they will think of any good hand sock of yours.

You're a fucking mug if you think that is what you need to do though. There are far easier routes to become an Admin. But it would fit your general powers of observation though. You always did suck as a Wikipedia critic. The first basic skill required being, knowing anything about Wikipedia.

But yeah, that aside, so you genuinely think you're capable of seeming normal for long enough that you could make Admin on Wikipedia?

Whatever you say numbuts.

:roll:

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

Post by ericbarbour » Mon Jun 28, 2021 8:31 pm

Jake Is A Sellout wrote:
Mon Jun 28, 2021 2:00 pm
Are you so stupid as to believe anyone here buys that the path to Admin on Wikipedia is content creation? And that it woud take thousands of edits (I can't be bothered to check, but I suspect your exact words were that you had made "millions" of edits as a very proud but very sad little socky wocky.)
Unfortunately, you are correct. Many of the worst admins I've ever seen wrote almost no content.

This is why the term "editor" is meaningless on WP. In that sick little world, there are only two kinds of people: insiders, and cannon-fodder who write most of the content. The former are "precious" and must never be harmed while the latter are worthless and disposable. I've been telling Kumi this for years and he still doesn't believe me. Such an optimist.

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

Post by oranges33 » Wed Jan 05, 2022 9:46 am

I think every Mediawiki project has more or less the same trajectory

It start off with a flurry of excitement that lasts a few years. There's tons of open space to write whatever. Everyone feels important, everyone feels smart, everyone feels special for getting in early.

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.

At this point everyone has to get to know each other. That weird anonymous guy you brought on to help with an edit one day now is a permanent partner in daily conflict resolution. The room of each core article is crowded and it smells like spiteful, smelly nerds continuously trying to enact revenge for having disagreements instead of actual dispute resolution.

And it's not the fault of the smelly nerds always. Mediawiki has no dispute resolution. The rules pages are too long and more-or-less hidden from average users, and the first rule is to ignore them. With no real rules, software built-in dispute resolution, including no real trusted way to count votes, and no real organization, it's now up to a small group of admins and first-movers to power-trip and decide everything.

They can pick rules out of a hat to justify their decisions post-hoc. Or change rules to continue what they wanted to do. If they're powerful and connected enough admins, they can just ban people at will, or if they get bored with what's on offer, launder info or disinfo through any number of 60,000 "digital journalism" outlets. Since the core articles like "spoon" have enough info, debated topics (a topic on something <100 years old) can always offer something new to write about, as news keeps coming out about it.

Wikipedia now starts literally moving the news cycle, as the pinned post on citogenesis mentions. Wikipedia is now a media group, albeit one that won't admit it. It's not omnipotent, it routinely loses control of the narrative, or never gains a foothold. An individual WP page on a topic can only reach so many people.

The most desperate Wikipedia long-term editors losing control of a narrative might start doing dumb shit like threatening people they think are at fault, or calling them up at work. They may think they are in the right to do this because to them Wikipedia is everything, it's life. It has the same dopamine trappings of other 24/7 social networks.

After a wiki dies, people try to make alternative wikis. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don't. But even if you start your own, you realize you are dictator and it's basically just an extended blog. You now own a fancy, narcissistically titled blog, with non-paid editors. And this is also how it works at Wikipedia, albeit with a larger ownership network.

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