This list strikes me as a long and not particularly well reasoned way of justifying (to the writer themself, probably, but also to others) questionable past and future behaviour that maintains the status quo and the keeps the "cabal" intact while waving away criticism.
Some choice quotes that come with no acknowledgement there are valid criticisms, and no solution to those criticisms other than "keep doing what you're doing":
- “attack sites are the whining of the incompetent, who failed to succeed at editing Wikipedia”
- "There IS a cabal. It's a core group of editors united by the belief that the encyclopedia must protect itself against jerks, and against people who write junk."
- "When someone complains loudly about censorship, you may be certain they are up to no good."
- "The only bias it has arises from the self-selection of its members"
Could've written "You have a problem with the way we do things? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" and saved some time.
That's how organizations get stuck with a status quo.
The key is to understand they're quite sincere; when they think it through, they have this massively successful encyclopedia as evidence that solidly justifies their conviction that their current way of doing business works.
And people who don't like it tend to leave and their voice goes unheard; as the piece correctly indicates, this is pretty normal.
This is a common problem. For an institution or organization to work, the members of it have to build up and disseminate institutional knowledge, often by trial and error, and much of it can't be fully explained. That then leads to inertia: you can't formulate a convicing challenge to the way things are done unless you understand them, but at that point you're selected by the other members of the institution to accept their way of doing things.
Generally, for a given organization, it takes an outside shock to really force them to reevaluate how they operate. If Wikipedia started losing patrons or saw their readership decline, they'd probably reconsider, but it's hard to imagine how much they'd collectively have to screw up for that to happen.
That's also how apple made great devices. You do have to protect yourself against the average mediocrity if you want something to remain great on the long run.
It's a hard balance, and a hard one to keep without sounding like a jerk.
When someone complains loudly about censorship, you may be certain they do not share the views and value of the majority. Otherwise they would not get censored.
I would agree, as long as the "majority" refers only to the majority of people that use and maintain the particular platform upon which the censorship is occurring.
If you get hung up on the list’s views on censorship or Wikipedia’s policies, you’ll miss a lot of practical advice for moderating communities. For instance:
> 16. Some trolls and POV-pushers are best fought with a time delay. Let them make their edit; then change it an hour or two later, or even the next day. Trolls are easily bored, and are more likely to go away if you hold your fire for a bit. (Blatant vandalism of course needs to be reverted immediately.)
There’s an important UX principle here not to make negative feedback more responsive than positive feedback, or you might adversely induce your users to do more of what you didn’t want them to do. Consider using a different format for negative feedback (use email rather than in-app notifications), and find ways to stop the user from doing further harm immediately but notifying them eventually.
> 60. It is easier to get a sincere "thank you" for reverting "you're a f____" from someone's userpage, than it is for writing a researched, thorough, and referenced encyclopedia article on an encyclopedic topic. The best way to continue as a writing Wikipedian for many years is to be, as the Buddha recommends, "indifferent to both praise and blame."
There’s a running theme in the list about how conflict is more engaging than collaboration, and it really makes you think about how social media platforms have primarily become places for public conflict. Wikipedia has the goal of being an online encyclopedia first so they can actually strive to lessen conflict rather than come up with innovative ways to convert conflict into user engagement (Twitter ratios, the FaceBook mad emoji, etc.)
> 6. Any logged-in user whose first edit is vandalism of a user page, or a nasty personal attack on a talk page, should be immediately and permanently blocked, without comment.
> 30. Many of our best contributors began with a few shabby edits. Be kind to newbies, even though it is a test of patience to see the same mistake hundreds of times over several years.
> 38. Try to be as tolerant as you possibly can regarding edits by established contributors. Should you need to revert one, leave as polite an explanation as possible, with room for compromise: and if they're simply wrong, don't rub their nose in it. The loss of long-established contributors due to avoidable conflict is one of the greatest threats the project faces. People who have been here a year or more, and made thousands of contributions to the project, are its greatest asset, and this cannot be overstated.
There’s a great case to be made, when creating a community whose primary goal is not raw engagement, to segment users into new and established members. The first actions a user takes on a platform are clear indicators of what kind of user they will be, and it’s important to distinguish users who will provide no value versus users who might not know the niche norms of the community. I really think a lot more online communities would do well to add quizzes to the user registration process (Which of the following actions are harassment?). In addition, you should never use the same moderation tools (especially automated moderation tools) on established community members, because they’re that much more valuable.
Independent of your views of how Wikipedia is run this list is written by someone who’s been in the trenches, and has, in my view, a really solid understanding of the work that goes into internet moderation.
> > 16. Some trolls and POV-pushers are best fought with a time delay. Let them make their edit; then change it an hour or two later, or even the next day. Trolls are easily bored, and are more likely to go away if you hold your fire for a bit. (Blatant vandalism of course needs to be reverted immediately.)
How do you tell the difference between vandalism, trolling, and good faith but wrong edits?
Even "blatant vandalism needs to be reverted immediately" isn't as obvious as it seems, which is why rollback needs special rights and why there's frequently discussion of misuse of twinkle on Ani.
EDIT: honestly, there are thousands of posts to Ani about people reverting good faith edits as vandalism, or about using Twinkle too fast, or about misuse of rollback, or about projects (eg, vandal patrol) being too quick to revert and too aggressive with warnings.
A community of collaboration requires open honest communication especially when it is difficult. The writer seems to recognise this with 38, but their other points are more concerned with shutting down conversation like number 6.
You can't expect other people to communicate honestly and openly if you won't.
You can't create a community by behaving like a tyrant.
People here seem a bit skeptical, but after reading every single point I have to say, I agree with nearly all of them; but not in relation to Wikipedia. With relation to the internet as a whole.
The one that stings the most:
>70. It is impossible to love again anything you have truly ceased to love.[14] Editors who return after retirement, or after a wearied or bitter departure, may edit again, but never with the same passion they once brought to the project. Each successive return will be with diminished dedication and shorter duration.
Wow. It actually hurts to read this, because it perfectly explains why I’ve left most social media and forums I’ve been a part of, and failed to ever return for more than a month or two at a time.
My love of the internet has largely faded, and is relegated to being a tool and a way to waste time when bored. It’s not exciting. I can’t reattach to it.
>Many people leaving the project blame either the project or the people working on it for their departure, rather than recognize that it is normal in life for one's enthusiasm to wane. It does with all things that we once found exciting.
I started using the Internet some 25 years ago. Maybe things then were more idealist? I was younger then of course and perhaps more idealist by nature? Nowadays I'm afraid that the overall idealism may fade and that other more primitive forces will increase its drive of the net e.g. capitalism, criminality and autocracy.
I believe the main problem is ownership. Editors feel they own "their" article, don't want other people outside their friend group in the history, and revert clear improvements by newcomers.
That happened to me, and after I re-added it once with expanded sources and explanation, a friend of the reverter swooped in, said it amounts to "vandalism", and... I will never contribute anything again.
Wikipedia doesn't care. Sure, there are "processes" to appeal. Which are so convoluted and inscrutable that they seem designed to protect incumbents and people with too much time.
Edit: oh, and when you're using "just an IP" as an insult, you should re-examine your life choices.
I had the same experience on Wikipedia over a decade ago. My change was correcting a spelling mistake. A legitimate one. Not a British/American English difference. It was reverted within a few minutes.
I never contributed again. I don't recall the response I got along with the revert, if any, but I felt like my help wasn't wanted.
However, when Wikipedia donation season rolls around I definitely feel my help is wanted.
Honestly, if one minor bad experience prevented you from ever contributing to wikipedia again, you're not the type of user that would become a long term editor.
Wikipedia is rife with conflict due to being an open, easily anonymous platform frequently targeted by astroturfers and troll.
It sucks that your first contribution was reverted, but to write off the entire community as a result... It's not like wikipedia is a corporation with a strict PR front for external communication, the editing process consists of flawed individuals just like any community.
Was your edit on something politically sensitive?
I ask because this could e.g. be an edit about TCP congestion control in the wild; or an edit about the link between autism and vaccines.
I don't at all want to accuse you of the second type of edit, but that type would not be universally seen as an improvement, no matter how well sourced and explained.
I agree that some topics are hot-button topics whether that's on-wiki or AFK.
But on Wikipedia anything can become a hot button topic. Look at, for example, the amount of discussion about whether to use en dash, em dash, or minus in article titles.
> 500,000 words … about whether to use en dash, em dash, or minus
Pfft, amateurs. 500,000 words and no mention of the distinction between a true hyphen (‐), a true minus sign (−), and the vulgar ASCII hyphen‐minus (-).
Not op but was interested in OpenStreetMap for awhile. Although there were no editors but there were people who thought they knew better and they have deleted huge chunks of map because they didn't like it and they will redraw it "sometime later".
A simple and small factual edit on a UNIX programming article, with links to authoritative external sources (think: Tanenbaum book, although it was something else).
A bit of a mixed bag, and overly long. Could benefit from some distillation and less back patting.
Given point 3, they seem to spend an inordinate amount of time complaining about vandalism, even going so far as to call out sockpuppets and anonymous IPs as a special type of "despicable cowardice" when they are basically the internet equivalent of wearing a hoodie while you spray paint a tag. Don't call out this behavior as particularly egregious, it is just ordinary vandalism and doesn't deserve special outrage.
Also, point 21: "There are no fools more troublesome than those with wit," should I find this ironic? That's the mixed bag bit. What is this doing in there? It is hardly an observation on wikipedia behavior but is obviously the author trying to feel superior to clever people they disagreed with. Then again, I'm probably guilty of point 31 and seeing my own arrogance.
It started getting samey and I stopped reading further.
It's not even that bad ordinary vandalism is a lot harder to revert. They should just fix the UI and let the end user pick the version like most api documentation.
If op wrote an autobiography it would be 31, to be fair I could do the same.
Many of the points there make much more sense after you've been involved in the Wikipedia editing community for a while. I don't think these observations were addressed to the casual Wikipedia reader or editor.
For the first point, Wikipedia has pretty comprehensive guidelines around editing articles. Consider for example the guidelines around editing biographies of living people [1]. Pushback due to non-compliance with the guidelines isn't censorship.
I agree. I did contribute to Wikipedia once or twice, but that was quite some time ago and I don't remember the prevalence of any editors at that time. I would like to have political content separated because 90% of contested articles are opinions while common articles have a steady quality. It definitely is a problem, so the current ensemble of editors might be too. They should at least flag it as such.
> When someone complains loudly about censorship, you may be certain they are up to no good.
No, you probably did censor them. You wouldn't even need to promote their views. Just put it in the criticism section and be done with it. It may be value added for every reader, even if the editor already dismissed the opinion.
Wasn't the top admin banned by the foundation few days ago? Someone told me there were controversies... again...
The attitude is indeed disgraceful and pretty much against anything Wikipedia once stood for.
To be honest, looking from outside I cannot put anything on that page into context (didn't read everything). Was there as specific instance of what prompted that ban? I don't even understand the role of these admins thoroughly.
Oh man, you should see our notes on Fram. What a complete asshole. And they KNEW he was an asshole, and they made him an admin anyway. For FOURTEEN YEARS he got away with all kinds of stupidity....
> He was banned because he was abusive and harassing, and en:wiki couldn't or wouldn't control it.
That is a pro-Foundation stance. Fram was removed bypassing all existing community processes while there are no public complaints against him and with no rationale or explanation. It seems like he was just removed for being rude. Also note that Fram was a critic of the foundation.
In any case, this is a truly weird change of behavior from the Wikimedia Foundation, considering that they previously ignored even child abuse from admins, leaving everything to Arbitration committees. Awful administrator abuse on hr.wikipedia.org, which dissolved its Arbitration committee and is literally run, written and micromanaged by illiterate Nazis (and I do not mean grammar-Nazi or something like that) who behave MUCH worse than Fram was ignored.
There are people in the linked thread saying his behaviour is problematic but that he should get a pass because he makes so many edits -- this is precisely the toxic culture that the foundation is trying to end.
> ... there are no public complaints against him ...
I gather that's because making complaints public would arguably identify those who had submitted them. And still, with that there's zero public accountability.
I participated in similar communities and would kindly disagree with you.
The ones who raise this point 99% of the time _are_ up to no good.
It's the Occam's razor, again: there's no censorship conspiracy and if anything of such user's comments got deleted, it probably insulted everybody under the sun.
Reasonable people argue on the relevant points they disagree with, and can understand when to stop if their idea simply doesn't get traction.
>I participated in similar communities and would kindly disagree with you.
>The ones who raise this point 99% of the time _are_ up to no good.
In my experience, comments like GPs are working on the idealized assumption that sites/forums have unlimited resources for handling stuff like censorship, off-topic content, etc. Many communities consist of volunteers to moderate the content. We would love to have an unlimited pool of unbiased mods/admin to review every situation on a case-by-case basis. However, there simply isn't enough time or resources to do it. That's how we get heuristics like, "people complaining about censorship are usually up to no good."
I have no experience (other than very minor edits) with Wikipedia. I don't necessarily agree with some of the stuff in TFA - I actually disagree with some of the points. Though I can mostly see where the author is coming from. Moderating can be a tireless and almost thankless job, but people do it to ensure that the communities they enjoy flourish.
Sure, but everyone can comment on them. And one can imagine, for example, having alternative versions of contentious articles. The existing disambiguation setup could easily handle that. Agreeing on tags might be nontrivial, but I'm sure that it's doable.
Having co-authored a book about Wikipedia's early history, I can tell you more about Wiki administrators and "insiders" then you could possibly absorb. (A book that will apparently never see the light of day, because publishers are terrified of being sued by Jimmy Wales for "libel". We prepared 2 million words of notes to justify everything, plus thousands of weblinks showing what really happened; to no avail.)
Antandrus, the middle-aged California music teacher who wrote this prime example of Wikipedia insider lies, is a complete nobody. On Wikipedia or anywhere else. But they like him and he sticks around, because he pushes the status quo and the party line like a good little Soviet apparatchik. We only know his first name, because he went to deeply insane amounts of effort to hide his real identity.
Doesn't even have to be free, you could sell it on the internet. Self publishing is easier than it has ever been. Sounds more like an excuse than a reason.
My co-author wants it to be thru a major publisher or an academic house. Self-publishing means the WMF can just call it a "crank job on a website" and claim it wasn't checked for accuracy.
Everyone always has terrible stories about contributing to wikipedia, and will never give us a link. I don't doubt that the stories are substantially true, but it's a really inappropriate way to criticise a project which values citations so highly.
So anyway, here's my story: i added a paragraph about huge earthworms to the page about the Isle of Rum, and it's still there:
I had been a Wikipedia administrator in a similar timeframe (--2007), albeit in a different language edition. While some items show the "community" norm that is not necessarily backed by concrete evidences (that's why some got annoyed by the first statement), the entire list is generally an excellent description for any kind of community moderation and matches my personal experience. The problem here is, of course, that most people is not an administrator and it would be difficult to justify the very difficulty of moderation to them. And it cannot be eliminated at all; I've seen the namuwiki, the biggest Korean encyclopedic wiki [1] besides from Wikipedia, falling into this trap and turning itself into a slew of toxic contents.
I had been long against a single big wiki model like Wikipedia. It unbelievably works, and it seems that it will thrive even with the insurmountable amount of cracks, but we need alternatives (plural)---fully accountable, easy-to-fork and community-free. And we don't yet have a single alternative taking off (for example I really wanted Infinithree/Thunkpedia to thrive [2]). Every time I ponder about this, I come back to the circle and find myself searching for the Shii's great piece [3]. I don't exactly agree to the suggestion to simply make a personal "wiki", for the lack of forking mechanism, but the entire essay is still surpringly true, and possibly the only viable alternative to Wikipedia because it clearly lacks the community. I'm still waiting for others.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namuwiki (I reluctantly describe it as encyclopedic, but it only became encyclopedic after it became popular and has tons of issues as a true encyclopedia.)
I understand the benefits of having multiple independent encyclopedias, but one downside would be it going overboard and turning into a virtual library of babel.
No single person can compile a comprehensive encyclopedia, nor should one. Rather it has to be a network of loosely interconnected websites where anyone can add their opinion to others' to the extent that the opinion can grow into an independent website but shouldn't be able to misrepresent existing opinions by the full accountability. The comprehensiveness would then be achieved with a search engine, as much as the older web did (and that's why Shii claimed that the personal wiki is a way to go).
They white-wash politician’s profiles and controversial topics such as 9/11 or Israel-Palestinia conflict, etc.
It seems to be a very well-equipped propaganda outlet.
Some of the admins are said to post 50,000 and more article edits, literally night and day including Christmas.
The admins have a sophisticated method of badmouthing critics (including those who revealed the cabal) on both, Wikipedia and a side-project with heavy backlinks from Wikipedia. It’s called www.psiram.com - They invest a lot of efforts to maintain total anonymity by registering companies and domain in several countries.
It is suspected, that this ecosphere (it’s huge) is financed by a secret service. (Not) surprisingly, no main-stream media is covering this topic of amazing importance, or they play it down by looking at irrelevant side aspects of it.
I would wonder if something similar does exist on the English Wikipedia.
Point #2 is some deep wisdom. I am better for having read it.
"Many people leaving the project blame either the project or the people working on it for their departure, rather than recognize that it is normal in life for one's enthusiasm to wane. It does with all things that we once found exciting. This is neither pessimistic nor tragic: one needs always to find new exciting things to do. All things in life change and end, and this includes one's involvement with Wikipedia. "He who kisses the joy as it flies / lives in eternity's sunrise."[1] Enjoy it while you are here, and enjoy what you do after you have gone."
They white-wash politician’s profiles and controversial topics such as 9/11 or Israel-Palestinia conflict, etc.
It seems to be a very well-equipped propaganda outlet.
Some of the admins are said to post 50,000 and more article edits, literally night and day including Christmas.
The admins have a sophisticated method of badmouthing critics (including those who revealed the cabal) on both, Wikipedia and a side-project with heavy backlinks from Wikipedia. It’s called www.psiram.com - They invest a lot of efforts to maintain total anonymity by registering companies and domain in several countries.
Some investigators suspect, that this entire ecosphere (it’s huge) is financed by a secret service. (Not) surprisingly, no main-stream media is covering this topic of amazing importance, or they play it down by looking at irrelevant side aspects of it.
I would wonder if something similar does exist on the English Wikipedia.
This list strikes me as a long and not particularly well reasoned way of justifying (to the writer themself, probably, but also to others) questionable past and future behaviour that maintains the status quo and the keeps the "cabal" intact while waving away criticism.
Some choice quotes that come with no acknowledgement there are valid criticisms, and no solution to those criticisms other than "keep doing what you're doing":
- “attack sites are the whining of the incompetent, who failed to succeed at editing Wikipedia”
- "There IS a cabal. It's a core group of editors united by the belief that the encyclopedia must protect itself against jerks, and against people who write junk."
- "When someone complains loudly about censorship, you may be certain they are up to no good."
- "The only bias it has arises from the self-selection of its members"
Could've written "You have a problem with the way we do things? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" and saved some time.
That's how organizations get stuck with a status quo.
The key is to understand they're quite sincere; when they think it through, they have this massively successful encyclopedia as evidence that solidly justifies their conviction that their current way of doing business works.
And people who don't like it tend to leave and their voice goes unheard; as the piece correctly indicates, this is pretty normal.
This is a common problem. For an institution or organization to work, the members of it have to build up and disseminate institutional knowledge, often by trial and error, and much of it can't be fully explained. That then leads to inertia: you can't formulate a convicing challenge to the way things are done unless you understand them, but at that point you're selected by the other members of the institution to accept their way of doing things.
Generally, for a given organization, it takes an outside shock to really force them to reevaluate how they operate. If Wikipedia started losing patrons or saw their readership decline, they'd probably reconsider, but it's hard to imagine how much they'd collectively have to screw up for that to happen.
Groupthink is the term of art. Makes it very easy for otherwise reasonable people to ignore all the evidence.
That's also how apple made great devices. You do have to protect yourself against the average mediocrity if you want something to remain great on the long run.
It's a hard balance, and a hard one to keep without sounding like a jerk.
I mentally rewrote the first point as:
When someone complains loudly about censorship, you may be certain they do not share the views and value of the majority. Otherwise they would not get censored.
> majority
I would agree, as long as the "majority" refers only to the majority of people that use and maintain the particular platform upon which the censorship is occurring.
If you get hung up on the list’s views on censorship or Wikipedia’s policies, you’ll miss a lot of practical advice for moderating communities. For instance:
> 16. Some trolls and POV-pushers are best fought with a time delay. Let them make their edit; then change it an hour or two later, or even the next day. Trolls are easily bored, and are more likely to go away if you hold your fire for a bit. (Blatant vandalism of course needs to be reverted immediately.)
There’s an important UX principle here not to make negative feedback more responsive than positive feedback, or you might adversely induce your users to do more of what you didn’t want them to do. Consider using a different format for negative feedback (use email rather than in-app notifications), and find ways to stop the user from doing further harm immediately but notifying them eventually.
> 60. It is easier to get a sincere "thank you" for reverting "you're a f____" from someone's userpage, than it is for writing a researched, thorough, and referenced encyclopedia article on an encyclopedic topic. The best way to continue as a writing Wikipedian for many years is to be, as the Buddha recommends, "indifferent to both praise and blame."
There’s a running theme in the list about how conflict is more engaging than collaboration, and it really makes you think about how social media platforms have primarily become places for public conflict. Wikipedia has the goal of being an online encyclopedia first so they can actually strive to lessen conflict rather than come up with innovative ways to convert conflict into user engagement (Twitter ratios, the FaceBook mad emoji, etc.)
> 6. Any logged-in user whose first edit is vandalism of a user page, or a nasty personal attack on a talk page, should be immediately and permanently blocked, without comment.
> 30. Many of our best contributors began with a few shabby edits. Be kind to newbies, even though it is a test of patience to see the same mistake hundreds of times over several years.
> 38. Try to be as tolerant as you possibly can regarding edits by established contributors. Should you need to revert one, leave as polite an explanation as possible, with room for compromise: and if they're simply wrong, don't rub their nose in it. The loss of long-established contributors due to avoidable conflict is one of the greatest threats the project faces. People who have been here a year or more, and made thousands of contributions to the project, are its greatest asset, and this cannot be overstated.
There’s a great case to be made, when creating a community whose primary goal is not raw engagement, to segment users into new and established members. The first actions a user takes on a platform are clear indicators of what kind of user they will be, and it’s important to distinguish users who will provide no value versus users who might not know the niche norms of the community. I really think a lot more online communities would do well to add quizzes to the user registration process (Which of the following actions are harassment?). In addition, you should never use the same moderation tools (especially automated moderation tools) on established community members, because they’re that much more valuable.
Independent of your views of how Wikipedia is run this list is written by someone who’s been in the trenches, and has, in my view, a really solid understanding of the work that goes into internet moderation.
> > 16. Some trolls and POV-pushers are best fought with a time delay. Let them make their edit; then change it an hour or two later, or even the next day. Trolls are easily bored, and are more likely to go away if you hold your fire for a bit. (Blatant vandalism of course needs to be reverted immediately.)
How do you tell the difference between vandalism, trolling, and good faith but wrong edits?
Even "blatant vandalism needs to be reverted immediately" isn't as obvious as it seems, which is why rollback needs special rights and why there's frequently discussion of misuse of twinkle on Ani.
EDIT: honestly, there are thousands of posts to Ani about people reverting good faith edits as vandalism, or about using Twinkle too fast, or about misuse of rollback, or about projects (eg, vandal patrol) being too quick to revert and too aggressive with warnings.
A community of collaboration requires open honest communication especially when it is difficult. The writer seems to recognise this with 38, but their other points are more concerned with shutting down conversation like number 6.
You can't expect other people to communicate honestly and openly if you won't.
You can't create a community by behaving like a tyrant.
People here seem a bit skeptical, but after reading every single point I have to say, I agree with nearly all of them; but not in relation to Wikipedia. With relation to the internet as a whole.
The one that stings the most:
>70. It is impossible to love again anything you have truly ceased to love.[14] Editors who return after retirement, or after a wearied or bitter departure, may edit again, but never with the same passion they once brought to the project. Each successive return will be with diminished dedication and shorter duration.
Wow. It actually hurts to read this, because it perfectly explains why I’ve left most social media and forums I’ve been a part of, and failed to ever return for more than a month or two at a time.
My love of the internet has largely faded, and is relegated to being a tool and a way to waste time when bored. It’s not exciting. I can’t reattach to it.
>Many people leaving the project blame either the project or the people working on it for their departure, rather than recognize that it is normal in life for one's enthusiasm to wane. It does with all things that we once found exciting.
Indeed, but also, ouch.
I started using the Internet some 25 years ago. Maybe things then were more idealist? I was younger then of course and perhaps more idealist by nature? Nowadays I'm afraid that the overall idealism may fade and that other more primitive forces will increase its drive of the net e.g. capitalism, criminality and autocracy.
I believe the main problem is ownership. Editors feel they own "their" article, don't want other people outside their friend group in the history, and revert clear improvements by newcomers.
That happened to me, and after I re-added it once with expanded sources and explanation, a friend of the reverter swooped in, said it amounts to "vandalism", and... I will never contribute anything again.
Wikipedia doesn't care. Sure, there are "processes" to appeal. Which are so convoluted and inscrutable that they seem designed to protect incumbents and people with too much time.
Edit: oh, and when you're using "just an IP" as an insult, you should re-examine your life choices.
Would you mind sharing the article in question and the username you used, so we can form a opinion based on the edits?
I had the same experience on Wikipedia over a decade ago. My change was correcting a spelling mistake. A legitimate one. Not a British/American English difference. It was reverted within a few minutes.
I never contributed again. I don't recall the response I got along with the revert, if any, but I felt like my help wasn't wanted.
However, when Wikipedia donation season rolls around I definitely feel my help is wanted.
Honestly, if one minor bad experience prevented you from ever contributing to wikipedia again, you're not the type of user that would become a long term editor.
Wikipedia is rife with conflict due to being an open, easily anonymous platform frequently targeted by astroturfers and troll.
It sucks that your first contribution was reverted, but to write off the entire community as a result... It's not like wikipedia is a corporation with a strict PR front for external communication, the editing process consists of flawed individuals just like any community.
Was your edit on something politically sensitive? I ask because this could e.g. be an edit about TCP congestion control in the wild; or an edit about the link between autism and vaccines.
I don't at all want to accuse you of the second type of edit, but that type would not be universally seen as an improvement, no matter how well sourced and explained.
I agree that some topics are hot-button topics whether that's on-wiki or AFK.
But on Wikipedia anything can become a hot button topic. Look at, for example, the amount of discussion about whether to use en dash, em dash, or minus in article titles.
Approx 20,000 words (no consensus): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(poli...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=dash&pre...
Here's how it plays out in one article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mexican%E2%80%93American_...
The Arbcom discussion is useful, because it links to some of the Ani threads: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitra...
There's about 500,000 words about –,— or -.
There's no way of knowing in advance if you're going to fall into one of these tarpits.
> 500,000 words … about whether to use en dash, em dash, or minus
Pfft, amateurs. 500,000 words and no mention of the distinction between a true hyphen (‐), a true minus sign (−), and the vulgar ASCII hyphen‐minus (-).
I bet that's in there somewhere.
Not op but was interested in OpenStreetMap for awhile. Although there were no editors but there were people who thought they knew better and they have deleted huge chunks of map because they didn't like it and they will redraw it "sometime later".
A simple and small factual edit on a UNIX programming article, with links to authoritative external sources (think: Tanenbaum book, although it was something else).
That seems pretty clear cut. Thanks for clarifying!
A bit of a mixed bag, and overly long. Could benefit from some distillation and less back patting.
Given point 3, they seem to spend an inordinate amount of time complaining about vandalism, even going so far as to call out sockpuppets and anonymous IPs as a special type of "despicable cowardice" when they are basically the internet equivalent of wearing a hoodie while you spray paint a tag. Don't call out this behavior as particularly egregious, it is just ordinary vandalism and doesn't deserve special outrage.
Also, point 21: "There are no fools more troublesome than those with wit," should I find this ironic? That's the mixed bag bit. What is this doing in there? It is hardly an observation on wikipedia behavior but is obviously the author trying to feel superior to clever people they disagreed with. Then again, I'm probably guilty of point 31 and seeing my own arrogance.
It started getting samey and I stopped reading further.
> it is just ordinary vandalism
It's not even that bad ordinary vandalism is a lot harder to revert. They should just fix the UI and let the end user pick the version like most api documentation.
If op wrote an autobiography it would be 31, to be fair I could do the same.
> When someone complains loudly about censorship, you may be certain they are up to no good.
That attitude is part of the problem. Or at least, it's why I've never wanted to contribute.
Many of the points there make much more sense after you've been involved in the Wikipedia editing community for a while. I don't think these observations were addressed to the casual Wikipedia reader or editor.
For the first point, Wikipedia has pretty comprehensive guidelines around editing articles. Consider for example the guidelines around editing biographies of living people [1]. Pushback due to non-compliance with the guidelines isn't censorship.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_livin...
I agree. I did contribute to Wikipedia once or twice, but that was quite some time ago and I don't remember the prevalence of any editors at that time. I would like to have political content separated because 90% of contested articles are opinions while common articles have a steady quality. It definitely is a problem, so the current ensemble of editors might be too. They should at least flag it as such.
> When someone complains loudly about censorship, you may be certain they are up to no good.
No, you probably did censor them. You wouldn't even need to promote their views. Just put it in the criticism section and be done with it. It may be value added for every reader, even if the editor already dismissed the opinion.
Wasn't the top admin banned by the foundation few days ago? Someone told me there were controversies... again...
The attitude is indeed disgraceful and pretty much against anything Wikipedia once stood for.
> Wasn't the top admin banned by the foundation few days ago? Someone told me there were controversies... again...
Yes. Here's the enormous discussion about the banning of Fram.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_response_t...
Probably best to start with the two statements from the foundation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_response_t...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_response_t...
He was banned because he was abusive and harassing, and en:wiki couldn't or wouldn't control it.
To be honest, looking from outside I cannot put anything on that page into context (didn't read everything). Was there as specific instance of what prompted that ban? I don't even understand the role of these admins thoroughly.
The foundation have said that to protect the people making the complaints they're not going to release more details.
Probably a wise choice, but they would need something to justify the ban. Otherwise it would be statement against statement would it not?
They claim they looked back over several years of edit history across multiple accounts.
There are a few people in the linked thread defending him while saying he's an arsehole.
That's a very partisan way of presenting things.
It's literally what the foundation have said.
Oh man, you should see our notes on Fram. What a complete asshole. And they KNEW he was an asshole, and they made him an admin anyway. For FOURTEEN YEARS he got away with all kinds of stupidity....
> He was banned because he was abusive and harassing, and en:wiki couldn't or wouldn't control it.
That is a pro-Foundation stance. Fram was removed bypassing all existing community processes while there are no public complaints against him and with no rationale or explanation. It seems like he was just removed for being rude. Also note that Fram was a critic of the foundation.
In any case, this is a truly weird change of behavior from the Wikimedia Foundation, considering that they previously ignored even child abuse from admins, leaving everything to Arbitration committees. Awful administrator abuse on hr.wikipedia.org, which dissolved its Arbitration committee and is literally run, written and micromanaged by illiterate Nazis (and I do not mean grammar-Nazi or something like that) who behave MUCH worse than Fram was ignored.
There are people in the linked thread saying his behaviour is problematic but that he should get a pass because he makes so many edits -- this is precisely the toxic culture that the foundation is trying to end.
> ... there are no public complaints against him ...
I gather that's because making complaints public would arguably identify those who had submitted them. And still, with that there's zero public accountability.
I participated in similar communities and would kindly disagree with you.
The ones who raise this point 99% of the time _are_ up to no good.
It's the Occam's razor, again: there's no censorship conspiracy and if anything of such user's comments got deleted, it probably insulted everybody under the sun.
Reasonable people argue on the relevant points they disagree with, and can understand when to stop if their idea simply doesn't get traction.
>I participated in similar communities and would kindly disagree with you.
>The ones who raise this point 99% of the time _are_ up to no good.
In my experience, comments like GPs are working on the idealized assumption that sites/forums have unlimited resources for handling stuff like censorship, off-topic content, etc. Many communities consist of volunteers to moderate the content. We would love to have an unlimited pool of unbiased mods/admin to review every situation on a case-by-case basis. However, there simply isn't enough time or resources to do it. That's how we get heuristics like, "people complaining about censorship are usually up to no good."
I have no experience (other than very minor edits) with Wikipedia. I don't necessarily agree with some of the stuff in TFA - I actually disagree with some of the points. Though I can mostly see where the author is coming from. Moderating can be a tireless and almost thankless job, but people do it to ensure that the communities they enjoy flourish.
There are bad opinions if you allow everyone to speak.
relevant link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship
Sure, but everyone can comment on them. And one can imagine, for example, having alternative versions of contentious articles. The existing disambiguation setup could easily handle that. Agreeing on tags might be nontrivial, but I'm sure that it's doable.
Having co-authored a book about Wikipedia's early history, I can tell you more about Wiki administrators and "insiders" then you could possibly absorb. (A book that will apparently never see the light of day, because publishers are terrified of being sued by Jimmy Wales for "libel". We prepared 2 million words of notes to justify everything, plus thousands of weblinks showing what really happened; to no avail.)
Antandrus, the middle-aged California music teacher who wrote this prime example of Wikipedia insider lies, is a complete nobody. On Wikipedia or anywhere else. But they like him and he sticks around, because he pushes the status quo and the party line like a good little Soviet apparatchik. We only know his first name, because he went to deeply insane amounts of effort to hide his real identity.
You could just publish the book for free on internet
Doesn't even have to be free, you could sell it on the internet. Self publishing is easier than it has ever been. Sounds more like an excuse than a reason.
My co-author wants it to be thru a major publisher or an academic house. Self-publishing means the WMF can just call it a "crank job on a website" and claim it wasn't checked for accuracy.
Everyone always has terrible stories about contributing to wikipedia, and will never give us a link. I don't doubt that the stories are substantially true, but it's a really inappropriate way to criticise a project which values citations so highly.
So anyway, here's my story: i added a paragraph about huge earthworms to the page about the Isle of Rum, and it's still there:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B9m#Other_fauna
> When someone complains loudly about censorship, you may be certain they are up to no good.
This one has a weird USSR vibe to it.
I had been a Wikipedia administrator in a similar timeframe (--2007), albeit in a different language edition. While some items show the "community" norm that is not necessarily backed by concrete evidences (that's why some got annoyed by the first statement), the entire list is generally an excellent description for any kind of community moderation and matches my personal experience. The problem here is, of course, that most people is not an administrator and it would be difficult to justify the very difficulty of moderation to them. And it cannot be eliminated at all; I've seen the namuwiki, the biggest Korean encyclopedic wiki [1] besides from Wikipedia, falling into this trap and turning itself into a slew of toxic contents.
I had been long against a single big wiki model like Wikipedia. It unbelievably works, and it seems that it will thrive even with the insurmountable amount of cracks, but we need alternatives (plural)---fully accountable, easy-to-fork and community-free. And we don't yet have a single alternative taking off (for example I really wanted Infinithree/Thunkpedia to thrive [2]). Every time I ponder about this, I come back to the circle and find myself searching for the Shii's great piece [3]. I don't exactly agree to the suggestion to simply make a personal "wiki", for the lack of forking mechanism, but the entire essay is still surpringly true, and possibly the only viable alternative to Wikipedia because it clearly lacks the community. I'm still waiting for others.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namuwiki (I reluctantly describe it as encyclopedic, but it only became encyclopedic after it became popular and has tons of issues as a true encyclopedia.)
[2] http://en.thunkpedia.org/ (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2597881)
[3] http://shii.bibanon.org/shii.org/knows/Shii%27s_Solution_to_...
I understand the benefits of having multiple independent encyclopedias, but one downside would be it going overboard and turning into a virtual library of babel.
No single person can compile a comprehensive encyclopedia, nor should one. Rather it has to be a network of loosely interconnected websites where anyone can add their opinion to others' to the extent that the opinion can grow into an independent website but shouldn't be able to misrepresent existing opinions by the full accountability. The comprehensiveness would then be achieved with a search engine, as much as the older web did (and that's why Shii claimed that the personal wiki is a way to go).
I didn't read the text but have a special approach for this type of writing:
You click on user contributions, if/since there are to many talk page entries filter down to article space.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contribut...
Years and years of arguing without any article writing.
Wikipedia destroyed the encyclopedia market and now is the most popular encyclopedic platform for political information.
In Germany, a huge admin cabal at Wikipedia has been revealed that influences political topics: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://...
They white-wash politician’s profiles and controversial topics such as 9/11 or Israel-Palestinia conflict, etc. It seems to be a very well-equipped propaganda outlet.
Some of the admins are said to post 50,000 and more article edits, literally night and day including Christmas.
The admins have a sophisticated method of badmouthing critics (including those who revealed the cabal) on both, Wikipedia and a side-project with heavy backlinks from Wikipedia. It’s called www.psiram.com - They invest a lot of efforts to maintain total anonymity by registering companies and domain in several countries.
It is suspected, that this ecosphere (it’s huge) is financed by a secret service. (Not) surprisingly, no main-stream media is covering this topic of amazing importance, or they play it down by looking at irrelevant side aspects of it.
I would wonder if something similar does exist on the English Wikipedia.
Point #2 is some deep wisdom. I am better for having read it.
"Many people leaving the project blame either the project or the people working on it for their departure, rather than recognize that it is normal in life for one's enthusiasm to wane. It does with all things that we once found exciting. This is neither pessimistic nor tragic: one needs always to find new exciting things to do. All things in life change and end, and this includes one's involvement with Wikipedia. "He who kisses the joy as it flies / lives in eternity's sunrise."[1] Enjoy it while you are here, and enjoy what you do after you have gone."
Wikipedia destroyed the entire encyclopedia market and now is the only encyclopedic platform for political information.
In Germany, a huge admin cabal at Wikipedia has been revealed that influences political topics: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://...
They white-wash politician’s profiles and controversial topics such as 9/11 or Israel-Palestinia conflict, etc. It seems to be a very well-equipped propaganda outlet.
Some of the admins are said to post 50,000 and more article edits, literally night and day including Christmas.
The admins have a sophisticated method of badmouthing critics (including those who revealed the cabal) on both, Wikipedia and a side-project with heavy backlinks from Wikipedia. It’s called www.psiram.com - They invest a lot of efforts to maintain total anonymity by registering companies and domain in several countries.
Some investigators suspect, that this entire ecosphere (it’s huge) is financed by a secret service. (Not) surprisingly, no main-stream media is covering this topic of amazing importance, or they play it down by looking at irrelevant side aspects of it.
I would wonder if something similar does exist on the English Wikipedia.