Good post. A little long maybe, for outsiders, so perhaps consider dumping some extraneous material and tightening the wording. Wikipedia is indeed a perfect example how you can never really know the truth of how something really works, until you try it yourself. You can read hundreds (thousands are out there) of words about it by those who do know, but there is nothing like the feeling of being utterly screwed over to really open your eyes. This is where the relative lack of public engagement with Wikipedia helps the entrenched activists get away with it.
Your fringe theories noticeboard link needs updating....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... pak_ChopraI love how they seem to think they have no means to fight back other than resist on Wikipedia. They do, of course, they just choose not to because it is a route that inevitably leads to further exposure of their methods. And that, they Do Not Want. So the more Google hits on these keywords and phrases, the better.
Update 2 is very powerful. It has always made me laugh that they think people can't spot what they're doing. Guy Chapman probably employs an Indian hothouse to create all these enemey-impersonator accounts, no way does a person like him say the things he does, believe the things he does, and then play by the rules. He's going to screw up eventually, and it will make all previous Wikipedia controversies look tame by comparison. Of course, useful idiots like Oswah sadly play their part. You'd think he would have learnt from the Tony1 debacle that you can't ever really take back an erroneous block log entry.
Let the Wikipediots cry about how you're trying to disrupt them with this post. Fuck them. Live by the sword, die by the sword. If you fuck people over, then expect to get fucked, and twice as hard. Revenge in the face of injustice, one so obvious it isn't even a matter of perspective or merely siding with one's team (through my educational background I have a pretty in depth knowledge of the theory of evolution, and can find nothing in it to dispute, and I readily laugh at ID proponents), is and always be a much more powerful motivator than mere activism. The Wikipediots, particularly of the activist stripe, have never really understood that.
I suspect a big reason why Larry crafted NPOV as he did, is precisely to avoid the inevitable backlash from educated moderates who identify as an encyclopedist first and foremost, as well as the peoole being truly wronged, that sneaky but otherwise easily spotted bias brings. As he famously said, the inmates took over the asylum, and the reaction to that complaint was a picture perfect example (as was how it was received on Wikipediocracy, which is now just a clubhouse for these sort of dim witted Wikipedians). You might as well be trying to explain evolution to an actual dog, for all the sense they can make of such things. Wikipediots are Wikipediots largely because they lack the capacity for nuance and graduated thinking. Black and white is their style.
Cook's conclusion needs a little refinement.....
Just as in the real world, most people on Wikipedia are good people and have better things to do than take down people’s pages just for the fun of it.
Perhaps. If they're there, the good people of Wikipedia do seem to be as reluctant to step up as they are in the real world (although in the real world you have the legitimate excuse that you don't want to get stabbed just for being a good Samaritan). That is why in the real world, of course, there's usually a functional police force who will step in on your behalf and put into effect what "good people" would do, by actually enforcing the written law.
There are no such safeguards on Wikipedia, no respect for the actual law (i.e. policy), and endless exampoles of it being distorted and manipulated for reasons that are antithetical to Wikipedia, because their governance is stuck in the Middle Ages, and will likely never evolve beyond that mire.
As such, digital stabbings, and indeed lynchings, witch hunts, struggle sessions and tarring/feathering, are commonplace, and more often than not, it's what passes for the rule of law that's doing the stabbing, cheered on by the mud stained locals decrying the witch and their woo (they might as well just say heresy, it's what they mean). Take a look at how Smallbones reacted to this article - it was classic "burn the witch". Didn't for a second consider why she had written it, the ugly truths about Wikipedia that underpin it.
Further to all this, perhaps the only improvement I'd suggest is to add that the entire Wikipedia community is well aware of the level of injustice on their site. Indeed many, including several Administrators, positively revel in it - they flaunt the fact that Wikipedia is "not about justice" in the face of victims. Ignoring people if you can't be bothered to get into the weeds of their complaint is perhaps understandable on a volunteer project, but when you show that level of disrespect, why would you be surprised that the next move is you get your face torn off? Metaphorically speaking, of course.
Keep up the good work. Anything that severaly disrupts the Wikipediots attempts to make what they do appear normal, ethical even, and anything that makes them even more paranoid and insular than they already are, is a good thing. HTD.