4 ms·

I think that 99% of articles are not disputed, and those that are, it's just a part of the article. And that's par for the course: there are things happening r

• cookiecaper 17y ago
  Jimbo is incredibly shady. See http://wikitruth.info http://wikitruth.info and the many other writeups about his misdeeds; no need to recount them here. I will mention that I find his insistence on the omission of Larry Sanger's historical role in Wikipedia is a detestable revisionist glory/money grab. My better idea is, first, to be much scarcer with granting adminship. Most users who've been active on WP for a while without causing much trouble are eventually awarded it. It makes appeal to an admin to resolve a dispute essentially useless since you'll get peons and shills for all sides there, too, constantly reverting each other, just like we see normal editors doing. Second, there needs to be a special "expert certification" or class so that experts in a field can receive extra respect and can provide "seals of approval" on revisions of articles within their purvue. These users would use their real names and be independently verifiable. Thirdly, rules need stronger and clearer wording and enforcement. There are far too many people who stretch the current rules beyond any logical limit, but get away with it because there's nobody to stop them, basically. That needs to stop, and clear standards should be set. That's a part of my better idea. Wikipedia is far too messy and disorderly now, and while I agree that it has become very good, it'd be even better if normal people could contribute. In my experience, people will revert even minor, clear changes because they don't like someone reworking their wording. In a lot of cases, despite WP's blaring disclaimers to the contrary, it's about keeping the individual's own edits predominant, and innocent, good changes are reverted on weak grounds, and the normal people who contributed them don't care enough to delve into WP's deep hierarchy of rules, policies, guidelines, admins, and other bureaucratic constructs to make sure that their improvements stick.
  • javert 17y ago
    I know some people have some concerns with Jimmy Wales, but he's done a good job as far as I can tell, and none of the complaints about him really seem that important. For example, so what if he claims to be the "sole founder"; only he and Sanger know that first hand, but it's not necessarily an important issue anyway. So what if he tried to edit his own biography; it's not like he thought people wouldn't notice, so he must have assumed it wasn't a big deal. So what if he slept with somebody who has an article on Wikipedia; that was practically inevitable. There just don't seem to be any really solid examples that show that Jimbo actually is "shady". The writing style on the sight you linked me to is, to say the least, highly "editorialized". The site whines about a bunch of things which one could legitimately assume were done in good faith. In browsing through it, whatever is actually so bad about Wikipedia certainly doesn't pop out at you; maybe I could find it if I looked hard enough. My point here is that the authors of that site could do a much better job of pointing out problems with Wikipedia if they focus on the really big/obvious problems rather than whining about things that don't matter or aren't necessarily unethical. I think your first idea is, potentially, a great idea, but I'm not enough of a wikipedia insider to say. I don't agree with "expert certification," because how do you determine who the experts are? Certainly "experts" disagree on lots of things. And the people who hate wikipedia would claim that expert selection is biased (as well as people who don't hate wikipedia but actually think it is biased). Can't disagree with the statement that rules should be enforced. You have a lot of complaints and they are probably valid to a certain degree, but as a casual wikipedia user who sometimes edits articles, I have had an almost flawless experience. I don't run into these issues, personally.