10 ms·

Even worse, many of these self-appointed Article Sheriffs are part of little vigilante cliques that include members of varying rank and influence which they cal

Even worse, many of these self-appointed Article Sheriffs are part of little vigilante cliques that include members of varying rank and influence which they call on for reinforcements if they're formally challenged on anything. It's gotten to the point where, to get the full picture of any topic that might be controversial, I immediately skip to the Talk page.

postingposts 5y ago
Wikipedia has gone from being an encyclopedia to “here is generally what the media has said about this and if you say otherwise fuck you” Most espouse the claim that they appreciate science, but I think really people appreciate James Bond gadgets and call that science.
- calvinmorrison 5y ago
  Which I think initially was, okay with me, since seeing through the political spin is easy on articles about politics. But it's invasive, on medical pages, on celebrity pages, on every page you can think of.
  - postingposts 5y ago
    The real stinker of a rule is that they prefer media sources to first-hand accounts or direct sources. For example: an article about Linux CANNOT link to posts Linus himself has made on forums, but CAN link to media articles that get his posts incorrect. Then, because the editors enforce this real crap rule, you can have an article that lists the media opinion about some Linux component but you CAN’T even INCLUDE what Linus wrote! It is unchecked madness.
    - chris_wot 5y ago
      That’s a carefully considered rule. In general, primary sources are frowned upon, instead they have editors use secondary or tertiary sources.
      - CamperBob2 5y ago
        You've simply restated the rule in a context where justification was expected.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        YPPH 5y ago
        First, I need to restate the rule to give it nuance. Original research isn't allowed on Wikipedia. Primary sources are acceptable for simple statements of fact, but editors can't make analysis of or synthesise what is contained in that material. That analysis or synthesis requires reliable secondary sources. The epistemological basis for the "no original research" rule seems to be because Wikipedia is not a suitable vehicle for synthesis or analysis: it is written by anonymous editors with varying degrees of expertise in the subject area. They are not assumed to be competent to conduct such analysis. They are only assumed competent to find secondary sources that make such analysis and cite them. The rule also has some pragmatism about it. If such analysis was allowed, it would have to be performed on Wikipedia with its reasoning clearly articulated and developed. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, it shouldn't be cluttered by such reasoning. The appropriate place for analysis and synthesis of this kind are peer reviewed journal articles or other secondary sources where the author's expertise or authority to speak to a point, and their reasoning, is made plain. A reader should, at least in theory, be able to check the source and verify as such. It is also not seen as acceptable for editors, who lack accountability for what they post, to offer such analysis. A news report is expected to have some degree of accountability, to put the relevant statement into context and to consider competing views. A Linux kernel mailing list post does not do this. That said, in my experience, a blind eye is turned to uncontroversial analysis.
        Jiro 5y ago
        Many of those things are the Wikipedia equivalent of legal fictions. They may not be true in any meaningful sense. News reports have very little accountability outside of cases where someone can sue the newspaper, and the "analysis" that people are assumed to be incompetent at and the "finding secondary sources" they are assumed to be competent actually require fairly similar levels of competency.
    - caslon 5y ago
      That's not true, actually. The Wikipedia page for Linux has a bunch of direct-from-Linus citations. Here's one I found literally on the first row of citations. https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.linux/c/5Rcys5xYuJc/m/Dpv00xjb5koJ https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.linux/c/5Rcys5xYuJc/m/Dp...
      - postingposts 5y ago
        It’s just an example. Shall I craft another example for you? Or should we talk about the point the example is trying to make? :)
        caslon 5y ago
        Your example being wrong disproves your entire point.
        postingposts 5y ago
        PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        You stated that a thing could not happen. You received an example showing that thing happening. The example disproves your claim that it could not happen. If you perhaps meant something more like "in general, you can't cite the subject directly", then you'd be right that a single example does not disprove your point. But you used quite unequivocal language.
        postingposts 5y ago
        It’s similar to if someone in public who is a non-famous figure said something and it was recorded on a phone but not posted elsewhere. You can’t use the phone recording on the article. Now, let’s talk about why that’s stupid. are you happy you pedantic weasel?
    - easrng 5y ago
      Also, if you want Wikipedia to reflect a change to your name/pronouns you need to wait for someone to write a new article including them, or contact the publishers of existing articles and hope they make the change.
      - calvinmorrison 5y ago
        My father has some niche research interests and did a lot of primary research. Soccer clubs, dead kingdoms, a painter from the midwest. As a kid I spent hours in the library with my dad looking at microfiche. He essentially had to - for many of these things, make websites so he could quote the website on wikipedia. He's actually gotten quite adept at creating a digital papertrail for some of these interests. Digitizing with OCR is nice - but someone still needs to write the story. Piece together the different news clippings. In one case - it was a soccer team - Bethlehem Steel, which one of my great great something or others played for. They won a bunch of championships, there's a whole story, but nobody had really compiled it into a usable work. When Bethlehem Steel the name got resurrected as a feeder club for the Phila Union, they called HIM for the info - It was kind of fun watching my dad go onto an AM radio broadcast! Another, he's currently interested in is a fairly important but not well known artist who did a lot of work in the midwest from the area we are from. He is currently writing up the story, interviewing family, etc. I guess he'll have to publish a news story in order for it to be real! Looking at that artist's wikipedia page though - it does appear that most of his citations are directly to news clippings... like Fayetteville Democrat, 23 January 1935, p. 1. Kansas City Times, 23 May 1936, p. 18. Kinda cool
        davidgerard 5y ago
        You can quote printed sources directly, you don't need to make them into a website first.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  I actually have the opposite opinion in that I think Wikipedia has done a good job (albeit versus a benchmark of real zeroes) handling itself in the so-called post-truth age. The only people I know who have complained to me about Wikipedia are all contrarians (some of which I would call "Contrarian idiots", since the play on the green day song just popped into my head) who have so far been basically unable to substantiate any concrete argument, either structural or regarding more than the minutiae of a given article. It's also worth noting that in recent years we've had a lot of very controversial and more importantly novel geopolitical and domestic "lore" being formed, and I think people make a fundamental mistake in expecting wikipedia to be as confident as it is for the new as it is for the old or perhaps merely mature.
  - postingposts 5y ago
    It’s extremely good for science and maths where there’s little room for argument or interpretation. History, or current events tend to be Abysmal. Literature tends to be underrepresented and the arts in general are not well-curated, either in completeness or in finding ways to display the work or discuss it. I admire the project but ultimately at this point it’s not very useful.
    - reidjs 5y ago
      How is something that’s extremely good at science and math documentation not very useful? Do you mean it’s not useful to historians/artists?
      - MrPatan 5y ago
        The sleight of hand is to be Truth about science and math, then pretend you're Truth about everything else based on that. Pretty useful if you can pull it off. What could you do with that?
        mhh__ 5y ago
        This is the kind of argument I was referring to. Anything specific you're referring to?
- agumonkey 5y ago
  I found reading about history of science interesting because you see how for long periods people "knew what was true" only to discover a better truth, that includes even brilliant physicists. It kinda killed the absolute aspect of science for me. Sadly a lot of people, thanks to the web / computer / wikipedia era are freshly jumping into science as a safe source of truth and cannot keep the implicit "if" regarding a lot of domains.
sandworm101 5y ago
I tried to edit the entry for my own great grandfather, once a notable member of government and the military, to include some of his current living relatives who work in government and military jobs today, many of whom carry the same name. My father's generation was listed and I wanted to add my own generation to the tree. I though it was a basic edit to update a very minor article. I gave up after I was asked/told to present documentation. Presumably, they wanted birth certificates or military ID cards.
- hackernewds 5y ago
  Why would they allow just anyone to edit the article? They probably could be a better process, which goes beyond the scope of Wikipedia, to verify identity but why would they not ask for this?
  - sandworm101 5y ago
    Because wikipedia was meant to be open. When the article was first created it had zero documentation. Someone just wrote from memory and published it. It then sat for a decade without additions. Now it cannot be touched because editing an old article draws mod attention. I guess if I cared I could hire someone to make the edit, someone with a longstanding wikipedia account. Such things do happen. I guess that is the real future of openness.
    - tptacek 5y ago
      Wikipedia publishes in exquisite detail what it's meant to be; it's one of the most rigorously documented communities on the Internet. Again: if you can cite a specific topic you've had problems with, along with the time the problems happened, we can probably see whether there was abusive administration happening (that definitely does happen sometimes) or whether you were just not careful about following their process (far more common).
    - davidgerard 5y ago
      The complete history of most articles is right there on the wiki. You've made several comments like this, you should be able to provide multiple examples to substantiate your claims.
hackernewds 5y ago
What is this "Talk" page?
- KarlKemp 5y ago
  "Discussion", top left.
tptacek 5y ago
Can you cite cases where you've seen that happen? You don't even need links; if you have the topic and the rough time these things happened, we can go find them in the Wikipedia backlog.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  There was a whole bunch of edits in the french mother sauces after "Alex" (a french cooking youtuber) found a mistake: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=French_mother_sauces&action=history https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=French_mother_sau... short version, some old french dude wrote a book/theory on french sauces, original french cookbook mentioned mayonaise as the "mother sauce", but during translation from french to english this was changed to Hollandaise, alex found the original book, fixed the wikipedia entry, and stuff got reverted because the english books didnt mention mayo... then a whole bunch of edits from both sides fixed and unfixed things https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMXvAjH0Nco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMXvAjH0Nco
  - tptacek 5y ago
    It looks to me like the process converged on Alex's narrative.
teddyh 5y ago
Do you have any links to examples of this?

postingposts 5y ago

Wikipedia has gone from being an encyclopedia to “here is generally what the media has said about this and if you say otherwise fuck you” Most espouse the claim that they appreciate science, but I think really people appreciate James Bond gadgets and call that science.

calvinmorrison 5y ago
Which I think initially was, okay with me, since seeing through the political spin is easy on articles about politics. But it's invasive, on medical pages, on celebrity pages, on every page you can think of.
- postingposts 5y ago
  The real stinker of a rule is that they prefer media sources to first-hand accounts or direct sources. For example: an article about Linux CANNOT link to posts Linus himself has made on forums, but CAN link to media articles that get his posts incorrect. Then, because the editors enforce this real crap rule, you can have an article that lists the media opinion about some Linux component but you CAN’T even INCLUDE what Linus wrote! It is unchecked madness.
  - chris_wot 5y ago
    That’s a carefully considered rule. In general, primary sources are frowned upon, instead they have editors use secondary or tertiary sources.
    - CamperBob2 5y ago
      You've simply restated the rule in a context where justification was expected.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - YPPH 5y ago
        First, I need to restate the rule to give it nuance. Original research isn't allowed on Wikipedia. Primary sources are acceptable for simple statements of fact, but editors can't make analysis of or synthesise what is contained in that material. That analysis or synthesis requires reliable secondary sources. The epistemological basis for the "no original research" rule seems to be because Wikipedia is not a suitable vehicle for synthesis or analysis: it is written by anonymous editors with varying degrees of expertise in the subject area. They are not assumed to be competent to conduct such analysis. They are only assumed competent to find secondary sources that make such analysis and cite them. The rule also has some pragmatism about it. If such analysis was allowed, it would have to be performed on Wikipedia with its reasoning clearly articulated and developed. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, it shouldn't be cluttered by such reasoning. The appropriate place for analysis and synthesis of this kind are peer reviewed journal articles or other secondary sources where the author's expertise or authority to speak to a point, and their reasoning, is made plain. A reader should, at least in theory, be able to check the source and verify as such. It is also not seen as acceptable for editors, who lack accountability for what they post, to offer such analysis. A news report is expected to have some degree of accountability, to put the relevant statement into context and to consider competing views. A Linux kernel mailing list post does not do this. That said, in my experience, a blind eye is turned to uncontroversial analysis.
        Jiro 5y ago
        Many of those things are the Wikipedia equivalent of legal fictions. They may not be true in any meaningful sense. News reports have very little accountability outside of cases where someone can sue the newspaper, and the "analysis" that people are assumed to be incompetent at and the "finding secondary sources" they are assumed to be competent actually require fairly similar levels of competency.
  - caslon 5y ago
    That's not true, actually. The Wikipedia page for Linux has a bunch of direct-from-Linus citations. Here's one I found literally on the first row of citations. https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.linux/c/5Rcys5xYuJc/m/Dpv00xjb5koJ https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.linux/c/5Rcys5xYuJc/m/Dp...
    - postingposts 5y ago
      It’s just an example. Shall I craft another example for you? Or should we talk about the point the example is trying to make? :)
      - caslon 5y ago
        Your example being wrong disproves your entire point.
        postingposts 5y ago
        PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        You stated that a thing could not happen. You received an example showing that thing happening. The example disproves your claim that it could not happen. If you perhaps meant something more like "in general, you can't cite the subject directly", then you'd be right that a single example does not disprove your point. But you used quite unequivocal language.
        postingposts 5y ago
        It’s similar to if someone in public who is a non-famous figure said something and it was recorded on a phone but not posted elsewhere. You can’t use the phone recording on the article. Now, let’s talk about why that’s stupid. are you happy you pedantic weasel?
  - easrng 5y ago
    Also, if you want Wikipedia to reflect a change to your name/pronouns you need to wait for someone to write a new article including them, or contact the publishers of existing articles and hope they make the change.
    - calvinmorrison 5y ago
      My father has some niche research interests and did a lot of primary research. Soccer clubs, dead kingdoms, a painter from the midwest. As a kid I spent hours in the library with my dad looking at microfiche. He essentially had to - for many of these things, make websites so he could quote the website on wikipedia. He's actually gotten quite adept at creating a digital papertrail for some of these interests. Digitizing with OCR is nice - but someone still needs to write the story. Piece together the different news clippings. In one case - it was a soccer team - Bethlehem Steel, which one of my great great something or others played for. They won a bunch of championships, there's a whole story, but nobody had really compiled it into a usable work. When Bethlehem Steel the name got resurrected as a feeder club for the Phila Union, they called HIM for the info - It was kind of fun watching my dad go onto an AM radio broadcast! Another, he's currently interested in is a fairly important but not well known artist who did a lot of work in the midwest from the area we are from. He is currently writing up the story, interviewing family, etc. I guess he'll have to publish a news story in order for it to be real! Looking at that artist's wikipedia page though - it does appear that most of his citations are directly to news clippings... like Fayetteville Democrat, 23 January 1935, p. 1. Kansas City Times, 23 May 1936, p. 18. Kinda cool
      - davidgerard 5y ago
        You can quote printed sources directly, you don't need to make them into a website first.
mhh__ 5y ago
I actually have the opposite opinion in that I think Wikipedia has done a good job (albeit versus a benchmark of real zeroes) handling itself in the so-called post-truth age. The only people I know who have complained to me about Wikipedia are all contrarians (some of which I would call "Contrarian idiots", since the play on the green day song just popped into my head) who have so far been basically unable to substantiate any concrete argument, either structural or regarding more than the minutiae of a given article. It's also worth noting that in recent years we've had a lot of very controversial and more importantly novel geopolitical and domestic "lore" being formed, and I think people make a fundamental mistake in expecting wikipedia to be as confident as it is for the new as it is for the old or perhaps merely mature.
- postingposts 5y ago
  It’s extremely good for science and maths where there’s little room for argument or interpretation. History, or current events tend to be Abysmal. Literature tends to be underrepresented and the arts in general are not well-curated, either in completeness or in finding ways to display the work or discuss it. I admire the project but ultimately at this point it’s not very useful.
  - reidjs 5y ago
    How is something that’s extremely good at science and math documentation not very useful? Do you mean it’s not useful to historians/artists?
    - MrPatan 5y ago
      The sleight of hand is to be Truth about science and math, then pretend you're Truth about everything else based on that. Pretty useful if you can pull it off. What could you do with that?
      - mhh__ 5y ago
        This is the kind of argument I was referring to. Anything specific you're referring to?
agumonkey 5y ago
I found reading about history of science interesting because you see how for long periods people "knew what was true" only to discover a better truth, that includes even brilliant physicists. It kinda killed the absolute aspect of science for me. Sadly a lot of people, thanks to the web / computer / wikipedia era are freshly jumping into science as a safe source of truth and cannot keep the implicit "if" regarding a lot of domains.

sandworm101 5y ago

I tried to edit the entry for my own great grandfather, once a notable member of government and the military, to include some of his current living relatives who work in government and military jobs today, many of whom carry the same name. My father's generation was listed and I wanted to add my own generation to the tree. I though it was a basic edit to update a very minor article. I gave up after I was asked/told to present documentation. Presumably, they wanted birth certificates or military ID cards.

hackernewds 5y ago
Why would they allow just anyone to edit the article? They probably could be a better process, which goes beyond the scope of Wikipedia, to verify identity but why would they not ask for this?
- sandworm101 5y ago
  Because wikipedia was meant to be open. When the article was first created it had zero documentation. Someone just wrote from memory and published it. It then sat for a decade without additions. Now it cannot be touched because editing an old article draws mod attention. I guess if I cared I could hire someone to make the edit, someone with a longstanding wikipedia account. Such things do happen. I guess that is the real future of openness.
  - tptacek 5y ago
    Wikipedia publishes in exquisite detail what it's meant to be; it's one of the most rigorously documented communities on the Internet. Again: if you can cite a specific topic you've had problems with, along with the time the problems happened, we can probably see whether there was abusive administration happening (that definitely does happen sometimes) or whether you were just not careful about following their process (far more common).
  - davidgerard 5y ago
    The complete history of most articles is right there on the wiki. You've made several comments like this, you should be able to provide multiple examples to substantiate your claims.

hackernewds 5y ago

What is this "Talk" page?

KarlKemp 5y ago
"Discussion", top left.

tptacek 5y ago

Can you cite cases where you've seen that happen? You don't even need links; if you have the topic and the rough time these things happened, we can go find them in the Wikipedia backlog.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
There was a whole bunch of edits in the french mother sauces after "Alex" (a french cooking youtuber) found a mistake: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=French_mother_sauces&action=history https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=French_mother_sau... short version, some old french dude wrote a book/theory on french sauces, original french cookbook mentioned mayonaise as the "mother sauce", but during translation from french to english this was changed to Hollandaise, alex found the original book, fixed the wikipedia entry, and stuff got reverted because the english books didnt mention mayo... then a whole bunch of edits from both sides fixed and unfixed things https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMXvAjH0Nco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMXvAjH0Nco
- tptacek 5y ago
  It looks to me like the process converged on Alex's narrative.

teddyh 5y ago

Do you have any links to examples of this?