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> IMHO, it's quite sensible to not allow people to edit pages about themselves, because people tend to have a strong-well understood biases on that topic. Ok t

> IMHO, it's quite sensible to not allow people to edit pages about themselves, because people tend to have a strong-well understood biases on that topic. Ok that sounds reasonable. But what if blatant falsehoods are written on a person on wikipedia? There is no way to rectify that information as far as I heard, probably only the legal way, suing for libel, with uncertain outcome facing a multimillion dollar company and the structure of semi-anonymous unpaid writers.

tablespoon 5y ago
> Ok that sounds reasonable. But what if blatant falsehoods are written on a person on wikipedia? I think Wikipedia's standards are fairly reasonable there: their main criteria is actually traceability to a source, not actual truth. If "truth" was the main criteria, they'd actually destroy themselves because there'd be no practical way to resolve disputes about what that is. That's a limitation of their institutional structure that they know they have. So if there's a blatant falsehood, you have to point to a valid source with the correct information (or that shows the falsehood to be false). I suppose it might be possible to get something struck if you made a convincing behind-the-scenes case that it is in fact false (though I don't think you could get something included that way).
- jart 5y ago
  The problem is their sources on living persons is usually clickbait and tabloids. If you feel like you've been treated unfairly, then there's no authority you can appeal to at Wikipedia. Even if you know an admin, they use a consensus process where if one of these anonymous accounts doesn't like you then they do nothing, and doing nothing for them means all the cruel, biased, misleading, false, and harassing content written by guys with names like Dingolover6969 remains as your #1 google search result. So what can you do other than sue for libel? Problem is you might as well be suing Santa Claus, since not many people understand what Wikipedia does, and these constant donation drives buy them an army of lawyers who'll just point the finger at the tabloids. There's no accountability for them either. The only chance you have of making a successful case is if you can argue you're not a public figure, but it's hard to make that argument if you're an open source developer. Even if you're a billionaire, it might take you ten years and millions of dollars to hold just one online tabloid accountable, only to see it sold off at bankruptcy to another head of the hydra that keeps its old harassing content on the web as read-only static content so that Wikipedia can continue to cite it.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > The problem is their sources on living persons is usually clickbait and tabloids. I'm pretty sure those aren't considered good sources on Wikipedia (for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NYPOST https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NYPOST), and you'd probably have a decent argument for getting something removed because it was sourced to something like that. IIRC, their standards are even pickier for biographies of living people than for regular articles. > Even if you know an admin, they use a consensus process where if one of these anonymous accounts doesn't like you then they do nothing, and doing nothing for them means all the cruel, biased, misleading, false, and harassing content written by guys with names like Dingolover6969 remains as your #1 google search result. Do you have an actual example of that? The actual issue with Wikipedia here is that it has all kinds of weird inscrutable bureaucratic processes that are confusing to outsiders (and often require herculean patience/obsessiveness to navigate to a desired result even when you know them). As far as I can tell, you have no idea how it works and are imagining a bunch of stuff (maybe to explain a bad experience?).
    - jart 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Justine_Tunney#Personal_Life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Justine_Tunney#Personal_L...

tablespoon 5y ago

> Ok that sounds reasonable. But what if blatant falsehoods are written on a person on wikipedia? I think Wikipedia's standards are fairly reasonable there: their main criteria is actually traceability to a source, not actual truth. If "truth" was the main criteria, they'd actually destroy themselves because there'd be no practical way to resolve disputes about what that is. That's a limitation of their institutional structure that they know they have. So if there's a blatant falsehood, you have to point to a valid source with the correct information (or that shows the falsehood to be false). I suppose it might be possible to get something struck if you made a convincing behind-the-scenes case that it is in fact false (though I don't think you could get something included that way).

jart 5y ago
The problem is their sources on living persons is usually clickbait and tabloids. If you feel like you've been treated unfairly, then there's no authority you can appeal to at Wikipedia. Even if you know an admin, they use a consensus process where if one of these anonymous accounts doesn't like you then they do nothing, and doing nothing for them means all the cruel, biased, misleading, false, and harassing content written by guys with names like Dingolover6969 remains as your #1 google search result. So what can you do other than sue for libel? Problem is you might as well be suing Santa Claus, since not many people understand what Wikipedia does, and these constant donation drives buy them an army of lawyers who'll just point the finger at the tabloids. There's no accountability for them either. The only chance you have of making a successful case is if you can argue you're not a public figure, but it's hard to make that argument if you're an open source developer. Even if you're a billionaire, it might take you ten years and millions of dollars to hold just one online tabloid accountable, only to see it sold off at bankruptcy to another head of the hydra that keeps its old harassing content on the web as read-only static content so that Wikipedia can continue to cite it.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > The problem is their sources on living persons is usually clickbait and tabloids. I'm pretty sure those aren't considered good sources on Wikipedia (for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NYPOST https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NYPOST), and you'd probably have a decent argument for getting something removed because it was sourced to something like that. IIRC, their standards are even pickier for biographies of living people than for regular articles. > Even if you know an admin, they use a consensus process where if one of these anonymous accounts doesn't like you then they do nothing, and doing nothing for them means all the cruel, biased, misleading, false, and harassing content written by guys with names like Dingolover6969 remains as your #1 google search result. Do you have an actual example of that? The actual issue with Wikipedia here is that it has all kinds of weird inscrutable bureaucratic processes that are confusing to outsiders (and often require herculean patience/obsessiveness to navigate to a desired result even when you know them). As far as I can tell, you have no idea how it works and are imagining a bunch of stuff (maybe to explain a bad experience?).
  - jart 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Justine_Tunney#Personal_Life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Justine_Tunney#Personal_L...