5 ms·

I have a couple hundreds wikipedia editions. And suddenly someone reverted my change "because it's not like this". So I reverted to my last version, attached li

I have a couple hundreds wikipedia editions. And suddenly someone reverted my change "because it's not like this". So I reverted to my last version, attached links to documentation that I'm right, showed examples etc. Then the same guy reverted that again. And then a couple of other guys came to support him. Then I stopped editing anything there, and I stopped treating wikipedia as a source of any reliable information.

red0point 9y ago
What article exactly where you editing?
oblio 9y ago
There's going to be assholes everywhere. You know the saying: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.". There's excesses and errors on Wikipedia but overall I think it is ok. Just use a skeptic mindset when reading things, just like for any other source.
- jorgec 9y ago
  In this case, Wikipedia's editors are the *ssholes. Of course, not every single editor is bad, but a good editor is somebody that: a) accepted the rules of wikipedia (that are unfair and prone to abuse). b) have enough spare time. c) don't mind or have troubles working with abusive people. If you are a professional then, it takes a single day to find that Wikipedia is ruled by brats and its not your place.
  - geezerjay 9y ago
    > If you are a professional then, it takes a single day to find that Wikipedia is ruled by brats and its not your place. It sounds like that professional tried to use Wikipedia as his free PR soapbox and found it hard to post propaganda when his submissions are under scrutiny. I've seen that before, with a PR guy trying to create a wikipedia article to sell the event he was organizing and link to it from other sources. Oddly enough, he also criticized wikipedia's editors for being childish and irrational. Meanwhile, he failed to notice the irony or even the fact that he was directly going against wikipedia's spam rules.
    - viridian 9y ago
      Did you even look at the WP History? The person who set the DELETE proposal on the page did so because he literally refused to believe that the collaboration existed, and that it looked like some sort of hacker website. I don't know about you, but I don't go on wikipedia to argue with my grandmother about the colloquial phrase hacking, and whether or not hackathons for children are evil or whatever.
      - geezerjay 9y ago
        > The person who set the DELETE proposal on the page did so because he literally refused to believe that the collaboration existed So what? It's your job to present proof that the collaboration existed, and it's your job to convince others that the information you're providing is accurate. And more, submitting a dubious article for deletion is actually just a request for other users to evaluate the merits of the article on their own, and they vote based on the information you provide and the case you make to support your position.
sparkzilla 9y ago
>And then a couple of other guys came to support him. And there's the rub. On Wikipedia, 'truth' is determined by the most powerful players on the page.
- Retra 9y ago
  If by "truth" you mean "what is written on the page." I'm not sure why you're conflating the content of wikipedia with truth, because wikipedia is not a catalogue of truth, but of culture.
gatmne 9y ago
I've encountered the same issue when I attempted to attach a "citation needed" tag to a statement that was blatantly false. The maintainer's excuse for reverting the change was that such a tag did not belong on such a highly visible entry. These are people with whom you simply can't reason. Any argument you provide will be shot down with the absurdest of reasons. Personally, I'm glad this happened to me. Like you, that experience cemented the unreliability of wikipedia in my mind.
- jsjohnst 9y ago
  Had a similar experience with an organization I cofounded. An editor claimed it had to be bogus, that there was no way Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, NASA, and the Worldbank would ever all coloborate on a social good project. Eventually we prevailed, but the article had to be insanely over cited to the point I feel it’s hard to read now and after the experience I’ve not felt it was worth it to encourage folks to maintain it.
  - mseebach 9y ago
    I mean this in the politest possible way, I have no reason not to believe you, but all of your examples, GGP and down, would benefit immensely from a link to the contested revisions.
    - jsjohnst 9y ago
      > but all of your examples, GGP and down, would benefit immensely from a link to the contested revisions. I apologize, but I’m a little unclear on what you’re asking for. Let me know and I’m happy to provide.
      - saghm 9y ago
        I think they just mean to post a link that points to the change you tried to make (and the subsequent ones). I think Wikipedia keeps a record of all the changes?
arikrak 9y ago
I think one issue with Wikipedia is it started when people still thought anonymity was great. (E.g. look at Craigslist compared to more modern sites like Airbnb.) So it's harder for editors to be accountable or for their biases to be known. I think Quora's approach is better overall, where they allow people to select anonymous as an option.
infodroid 9y ago
You suggest you were a victim of some kind of injustice, yet there isn't enough information to think that. You don't actually explain why your initial change was reverted. And you don't say whether you acknowledged the reason your changes were reverted when you reverted the page to your version. If you didn't respond to the initial feedback, this can be interpreted as malicious behavior. And just because you "attached links to documentation that I'm right, showed examples etc.", doesn't mean the documentation met the necessary standards or adequately supported your change. Instead of engaging in an editing war, you should have used the Talk page to get feedback on the best way to push your changes through.
- raverbashing 9y ago
  And instead of fighting willing contributors the editors should have informed that But for some pages it's a competition on who has the most free time and the most willingness to navigate the bureaucracy (and none of those items implies greater knowledge of the subject, quite the opposite)
- tbrownaw 9y ago
  I thought the thing these days was to default to believing victims, instead of starting out by denying their experience and claiming that anything that did happen must have been their fault somehow.
- pleasecalllater 9y ago
  I'm not going to give exact links. That was a page about a database. I've added an info, that this database has a feature. Someone removed that. I have added links to documentation stating that yes, there is this feature. And I'm not going to argue with them. Let me write it so you will understand it: I JUST DON'T CARE. Let them argue in their own kindergarten. I have more interesting things to work on. I can always make another training where I teach people that this database has this feature. I don't have links now, but there are quite known cases where a professor, who spent 20 years on a topic, writes something about this topic, and gets over voted by the bunch of kids, who have no idea about the whole thing.
olavk 9y ago
Why don't you state what your change was? That would make your story so much more interesting.
belorn 9y ago
The process used in academics looks very similar. Someone write a dissertation and several other papers. Someone question the conclusion. An audience/council/board either support the author, or the disputant. It is not fair. The default is a negative, and its up to the author to convince everyone to add specific information to the global collective. It is also susceptible to attacks from popular opinion, which is a common theme for practically all major breakthroughs. Being "right" has a long history of not being enough at the short time, while social cliques has a long history of allowing the "wrong" facts. The question however remains: what is a better process? If they had the HN models, your edit could just as easily be downvoted by that "guy" and his support. They could abandon the deletionism model but then limit google/wikipedia search to only show articles that has been approved by the "featured article" process, but which would result in zero traffic for most articles and effort spent on Wikipedia.
- cardiffspaceman 9y ago
  Wikipedia editors have the power to make your contribution "to the global collective" disappear. On the other hand, if you get a physical book published, it can almost certainly be purchased or borrowed even though many disagree with it or harbor ill intentions towards it. So it remains in "the global collective"
- geezerjay 9y ago
  > It is not fair. The default is a negative As it should be. That's how false positives get filtered out, even at the risk of losing some minor true positives in the process. If your contributions are solid then they are kept in. If they are not then keep it in your blog.
lostboys67 9y ago
Exactly I created a page for the second largest festival in the UK in terms of people attending and some German student marked it as not important enough! To put this into context it would be like a non American saying the next biggest festival to Mardi Gras isn't noteworthy.
gregmac 9y ago
I only skimmed the page but this one caught my eye: > This maneuvering and filibustering is soon likely to exhaust the patience of any reasonable person who naturally prefers not to reason with the unreasonable, and who, unlike the advocate, has no special interest or passion other than striving to maintain neutrality. Additionally, by continually engaging fringe advocates in endless argument, you run the risk of turning Wikipedia into a battleground or a debating society. At the present time, Wikipedia does not have an effective means to address superficially polite but tendentious, long-term, fringe advocacy. This is definitely a very, very hard problem.
JohnTHaller 9y ago
I did the same years ago for similar reasons. Many of the people with tons of edits and 'seniority' maintain control over specific articles to push a specific point of view. Wikipedia can be a good source of links to definitive answers to questions, but it should not be considered a reliable source in and of itself.

red0point 9y ago

What article exactly where you editing?

oblio 9y ago

There's going to be assholes everywhere. You know the saying: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.". There's excesses and errors on Wikipedia but overall I think it is ok. Just use a skeptic mindset when reading things, just like for any other source.

jorgec 9y ago
In this case, Wikipedia's editors are the *ssholes. Of course, not every single editor is bad, but a good editor is somebody that: a) accepted the rules of wikipedia (that are unfair and prone to abuse). b) have enough spare time. c) don't mind or have troubles working with abusive people. If you are a professional then, it takes a single day to find that Wikipedia is ruled by brats and its not your place.
- geezerjay 9y ago
  > If you are a professional then, it takes a single day to find that Wikipedia is ruled by brats and its not your place. It sounds like that professional tried to use Wikipedia as his free PR soapbox and found it hard to post propaganda when his submissions are under scrutiny. I've seen that before, with a PR guy trying to create a wikipedia article to sell the event he was organizing and link to it from other sources. Oddly enough, he also criticized wikipedia's editors for being childish and irrational. Meanwhile, he failed to notice the irony or even the fact that he was directly going against wikipedia's spam rules.
  - viridian 9y ago
    Did you even look at the WP History? The person who set the DELETE proposal on the page did so because he literally refused to believe that the collaboration existed, and that it looked like some sort of hacker website. I don't know about you, but I don't go on wikipedia to argue with my grandmother about the colloquial phrase hacking, and whether or not hackathons for children are evil or whatever.
    - geezerjay 9y ago
      > The person who set the DELETE proposal on the page did so because he literally refused to believe that the collaboration existed So what? It's your job to present proof that the collaboration existed, and it's your job to convince others that the information you're providing is accurate. And more, submitting a dubious article for deletion is actually just a request for other users to evaluate the merits of the article on their own, and they vote based on the information you provide and the case you make to support your position.

sparkzilla 9y ago

>And then a couple of other guys came to support him. And there's the rub. On Wikipedia, 'truth' is determined by the most powerful players on the page.

Retra 9y ago
If by "truth" you mean "what is written on the page." I'm not sure why you're conflating the content of wikipedia with truth, because wikipedia is not a catalogue of truth, but of culture.

gatmne 9y ago

I've encountered the same issue when I attempted to attach a "citation needed" tag to a statement that was blatantly false. The maintainer's excuse for reverting the change was that such a tag did not belong on such a highly visible entry. These are people with whom you simply can't reason. Any argument you provide will be shot down with the absurdest of reasons. Personally, I'm glad this happened to me. Like you, that experience cemented the unreliability of wikipedia in my mind.

jsjohnst 9y ago
Had a similar experience with an organization I cofounded. An editor claimed it had to be bogus, that there was no way Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, NASA, and the Worldbank would ever all coloborate on a social good project. Eventually we prevailed, but the article had to be insanely over cited to the point I feel it’s hard to read now and after the experience I’ve not felt it was worth it to encourage folks to maintain it.
- mseebach 9y ago
  I mean this in the politest possible way, I have no reason not to believe you, but all of your examples, GGP and down, would benefit immensely from a link to the contested revisions.
  - jsjohnst 9y ago
    > but all of your examples, GGP and down, would benefit immensely from a link to the contested revisions. I apologize, but I’m a little unclear on what you’re asking for. Let me know and I’m happy to provide.
    - saghm 9y ago
      I think they just mean to post a link that points to the change you tried to make (and the subsequent ones). I think Wikipedia keeps a record of all the changes?

arikrak 9y ago

I think one issue with Wikipedia is it started when people still thought anonymity was great. (E.g. look at Craigslist compared to more modern sites like Airbnb.) So it's harder for editors to be accountable or for their biases to be known. I think Quora's approach is better overall, where they allow people to select anonymous as an option.

infodroid 9y ago

You suggest you were a victim of some kind of injustice, yet there isn't enough information to think that. You don't actually explain why your initial change was reverted. And you don't say whether you acknowledged the reason your changes were reverted when you reverted the page to your version. If you didn't respond to the initial feedback, this can be interpreted as malicious behavior. And just because you "attached links to documentation that I'm right, showed examples etc.", doesn't mean the documentation met the necessary standards or adequately supported your change. Instead of engaging in an editing war, you should have used the Talk page to get feedback on the best way to push your changes through.

raverbashing 9y ago
And instead of fighting willing contributors the editors should have informed that But for some pages it's a competition on who has the most free time and the most willingness to navigate the bureaucracy (and none of those items implies greater knowledge of the subject, quite the opposite)
tbrownaw 9y ago
I thought the thing these days was to default to believing victims, instead of starting out by denying their experience and claiming that anything that did happen must have been their fault somehow.
pleasecalllater 9y ago
I'm not going to give exact links. That was a page about a database. I've added an info, that this database has a feature. Someone removed that. I have added links to documentation stating that yes, there is this feature. And I'm not going to argue with them. Let me write it so you will understand it: I JUST DON'T CARE. Let them argue in their own kindergarten. I have more interesting things to work on. I can always make another training where I teach people that this database has this feature. I don't have links now, but there are quite known cases where a professor, who spent 20 years on a topic, writes something about this topic, and gets over voted by the bunch of kids, who have no idea about the whole thing.

olavk 9y ago

Why don't you state what your change was? That would make your story so much more interesting.

belorn 9y ago

The process used in academics looks very similar. Someone write a dissertation and several other papers. Someone question the conclusion. An audience/council/board either support the author, or the disputant. It is not fair. The default is a negative, and its up to the author to convince everyone to add specific information to the global collective. It is also susceptible to attacks from popular opinion, which is a common theme for practically all major breakthroughs. Being "right" has a long history of not being enough at the short time, while social cliques has a long history of allowing the "wrong" facts. The question however remains: what is a better process? If they had the HN models, your edit could just as easily be downvoted by that "guy" and his support. They could abandon the deletionism model but then limit google/wikipedia search to only show articles that has been approved by the "featured article" process, but which would result in zero traffic for most articles and effort spent on Wikipedia.

cardiffspaceman 9y ago
Wikipedia editors have the power to make your contribution "to the global collective" disappear. On the other hand, if you get a physical book published, it can almost certainly be purchased or borrowed even though many disagree with it or harbor ill intentions towards it. So it remains in "the global collective"
geezerjay 9y ago
> It is not fair. The default is a negative As it should be. That's how false positives get filtered out, even at the risk of losing some minor true positives in the process. If your contributions are solid then they are kept in. If they are not then keep it in your blog.

lostboys67 9y ago

Exactly I created a page for the second largest festival in the UK in terms of people attending and some German student marked it as not important enough! To put this into context it would be like a non American saying the next biggest festival to Mardi Gras isn't noteworthy.

gregmac 9y ago

I only skimmed the page but this one caught my eye: > This maneuvering and filibustering is soon likely to exhaust the patience of any reasonable person who naturally prefers not to reason with the unreasonable, and who, unlike the advocate, has no special interest or passion other than striving to maintain neutrality. Additionally, by continually engaging fringe advocates in endless argument, you run the risk of turning Wikipedia into a battleground or a debating society. At the present time, Wikipedia does not have an effective means to address superficially polite but tendentious, long-term, fringe advocacy. This is definitely a very, very hard problem.

JohnTHaller 9y ago

I did the same years ago for similar reasons. Many of the people with tons of edits and 'seniority' maintain control over specific articles to push a specific point of view. Wikipedia can be a good source of links to definitive answers to questions, but it should not be considered a reliable source in and of itself.