10 ms·

Observations on Wikipedia Behavior (2008)

61 points by salutonmundo 7y ago

mirimir 7y ago
> 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.
- canttestthis 7y ago
  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_living_persons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_livin...
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  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.
  - DanBC 7y ago
    > 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_to_the_Wikimedia_Foundation%27s_ban_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_to_the_Wikimedia_Foundation%27s_ban_of_Fram#Statement_from_the_WMF_Trust_&_Safety_Team https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_response_t... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_response_to_the_Wikimedia_Foundation%27s_ban_of_Fram#Further_comment_from_the_Foundation 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.
    - raxxorrax 7y ago
      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.
      - DanBC 7y ago
        The foundation have said that to protect the people making the complaints they're not going to release more details.
        raxxorrax 7y ago
        Probably a wise choice, but they would need something to justify the ban. Otherwise it would be statement against statement would it not?
        DanBC 7y ago
        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.
- rathel 7y ago
  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.
  - raxxorrax 7y ago
    There are bad opinions if you allow everyone to speak. relevant link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship
    - mirimir 7y ago
      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.
  - noxToken 7y ago
    >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.
brigandish 7y ago
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.
- ben509 7y ago
  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.
  - jaggederest 7y ago
    Groupthink is the term of art. Makes it very easy for otherwise reasonable people to ignore all the evidence.
Tomte 7y ago
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.
- rocqua 7y ago
  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.
  - Tomte 7y ago
    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).
    - rocqua 7y ago
      That seems pretty clear cut. Thanks for clarifying!
  - ascii_only 7y ago
    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".
  - DanBC 7y ago
jchw 7y ago
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.
- mortb 7y ago
  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.
BlackFly 7y ago
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.
- dangerface 7y ago
  > 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.
metasonix 7y ago
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.
- baud147258 7y ago
  You could just publish the book for free on internet
  - admax88q 7y ago
    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.
    - metasonix 7y ago
      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.
lifthrasiir 7y ago
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 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/ http://en.thunkpedia.org/ (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2597881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2597881) [3] http://shii.bibanon.org/shii.org/knows/Shii%27s_Solution_to_the_Problem_of_Wikipedia.html http://shii.bibanon.org/shii.org/knows/Shii%27s_Solution_to_...
- dorusr 7y ago
  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.
  - lifthrasiir 7y ago
    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).
twic 7y ago
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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B9m#Other_fauna
Kopilot 7y ago
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://wikihausen.de/ 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.
nisuni 7y ago
> 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.
hokus 7y ago
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:Contributions&offset=&limit=500&contribs=user&target=Antandrus&namespace=0&tagfilter=&start=&end= https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contribut... Years and years of arguing without any article writing.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Kopilotus 7y ago
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://wikihausen.de/ 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.
mekane8 7y ago
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."

61 points by salutonmundo 7y ago

> 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.

canttestthis 7y ago
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_living_persons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_livin...
raxxorrax 7y ago
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.
- DanBC 7y ago
  > 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_to_the_Wikimedia_Foundation%27s_ban_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_to_the_Wikimedia_Foundation%27s_ban_of_Fram#Statement_from_the_WMF_Trust_&_Safety_Team https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_response_t... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_response_to_the_Wikimedia_Foundation%27s_ban_of_Fram#Further_comment_from_the_Foundation 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.
  - raxxorrax 7y ago
    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.
    - DanBC 7y ago
      The foundation have said that to protect the people making the complaints they're not going to release more details.
      - raxxorrax 7y ago
        Probably a wise choice, but they would need something to justify the ban. Otherwise it would be statement against statement would it not?
        DanBC 7y ago
        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.
rathel 7y ago
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.
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  There are bad opinions if you allow everyone to speak. relevant link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship
  - mirimir 7y ago
    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.
- noxToken 7y ago
  >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.

brigandish 7y ago

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.

ben509 7y ago
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.
- jaggederest 7y ago
  Groupthink is the term of art. Makes it very easy for otherwise reasonable people to ignore all the evidence.

Tomte 7y ago

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.

rocqua 7y ago
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.
- Tomte 7y ago
  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).
  - rocqua 7y ago
    That seems pretty clear cut. Thanks for clarifying!
- ascii_only 7y ago
  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".
- DanBC 7y ago

jchw 7y ago

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.

mortb 7y ago
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.

BlackFly 7y ago

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.

dangerface 7y ago
> 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.

metasonix 7y ago

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.

baud147258 7y ago
You could just publish the book for free on internet
- admax88q 7y ago
  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.
  - metasonix 7y ago
    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.

lifthrasiir 7y ago

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 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/ http://en.thunkpedia.org/ (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2597881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2597881) [3] http://shii.bibanon.org/shii.org/knows/Shii%27s_Solution_to_the_Problem_of_Wikipedia.html http://shii.bibanon.org/shii.org/knows/Shii%27s_Solution_to_...

dorusr 7y ago
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.
- lifthrasiir 7y ago
  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).

twic 7y ago

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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B9m#Other_fauna

Kopilot 7y ago

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://wikihausen.de/ 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.

nisuni 7y ago

> 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.

hokus 7y ago

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:Contributions&offset=&limit=500&contribs=user&target=Antandrus&namespace=0&tagfilter=&start=&end= https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contribut... Years and years of arguing without any article writing.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Kopilotus 7y ago

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://wikihausen.de/ 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.

mekane8 7y ago

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."