6 ms·
Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject, so you know you are getting the best possible information.
by epolanski 1y ago
Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject, so you know you are getting the best possible information.
- supportengineer 1y agoWell, any writes are reverted within seconds by the gatekeepers, but sure, ok.
- fruitworks 1y agothe free encyclopedia that ANYONE from Black Mesa can edit!
- alt187 1y agoThe free encyclopedia that NO ONE will ever edit.
- Diederich 1y agoOf the dozens of contributions I've made over the decades, some recent, either zero or one of them have been reverted.
- peab 1y agowhat topics did you make contributions to? From what I understand, it's mostly political and/or controversial topics that have this issue.
- Analemma_ 1y agoI also have problems with Wikipedia's favoritism of insiders who have learned how to navigate its bureaucracy, but the fact that most edits of political and/or controversial topics are immediately reverted is not in itself evidence of a problem. A priori, I would expect that the majority of edits to political and controversial topics are bad and should be reverted.
- WastedCucumber 1y agoI don't have an extensive wikipedia career, but I've found that even my few edits to political topics have been accepted. What did get reverted was a trivial [citation needed] fix, for a musician's page, for a sentence stating they were involved in scoring a film. I found a relevant citation and this was promptly reverted, for reasons that were explained but, at least for me, utterly incomprehensible
- spelk 1y agoYou're not really considered a veteran editor until you've won at least 10 Request for Comments outquoting your detractors with at least 100 obscure Wikipedia guidelines and policies.
- nobodywillobsrv 1y agoI've had tax stuff reverted even. eventually was allowed I think. Wikipedia has problems.
- bee_rider 1y agoI guess you picked “tax stuff” because the tax related thing you edited was a sort of dry tax related topic, but I’m sure we could find lots of controversial topics under the “tax stuff” umbrella.
- amiga386 1y agoWere any on these topics? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contentious_topics#List_of_contentious_topics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contentious_topics#L...
- consumer451 1y agoWhat percentage of Wikipedia does that cover? The entire world's knowledge has some controversial topics? Oh my! Burn it! Burn it all!! The librarians of Alexandria would have killed for Wikipedia. It's easily our greatest digital achievement. This is a hill on which I would happily fight to my metaphorical death, here and now. If you disagree, let's discuss please.
- internetter 1y agoI don't get your point. You are allowed to edit articles on contentious topics. Its just more likely to be reverted. Because the topic is... contentious.
- consumer451 1y agoMy attempt at a point is that the controversial topics are a tiny percentage of the human knowledge stored on Wikipedia. If there were no controversies, then I would actually start to get worried. That would indicate that there was pure control of information on Wikipedia, like a theoretical CCPedia. [0] Wikipedia is so open, that they even have their own "controversial" section! Is that not the coolest thing ever? The chip on my shoulder is that there is a concerted effort to destroy and discredit Wikipedia. The accomplishment of Wikipedia is not just beating the Library of Alexandria by many orders of magnitude, but doing so while keeping moderation logs in the open as well. Ask @dang, or anyone that has ever had anything to do with forum moderation, if they would be cool with their moderation logs being completely open. Almost everyone with experience would say 100% no. They likely tried that and saw how much nutso drama it creates. Wikipedia actually does that, at the largest possible scale! [0] Of course that exists, apparently it's called Baidu Baike
- FireBeyond 1y agoSome of the garbage I've been involved with that I either had to avoid or bail out of an edit or revert war: * A claim on "Fisting" that "seasoned fisters can insert their arm up to the shoulder into the anus", "supported" by a deleted PornHub video. * Fighting on a Production Car top ten list when Tesla announced that Ludicrous Mode was coming the next year and "expected" to have certain performance stats, where multiple editors fell over each other to make sure it stayed at the top of the list, even when they eventually had to add a column just for Tesla where every other result had "Actual Results" and the Tesla had "Projected/Expected Results". * A collation of John Deere tractors that described multiple models as "light years ahead of the competition". * An article on an Australian drug smuggler where exhibits from court case were being removed as "biased".
- adamsb6 1y agoI have contributed inconsequential lies to clown on a friend and they persisted for years.
- morshu9001 1y agoIn middle school, I pretended my friend was a famous rapper and snuck his name onto random articles. Some of those stuck around really long.
- chris_wot 1y agoOr you could make significant contributions, then get banned because of ignorant sociopaths like BrownHairedGirl and her coterie of followers.
- Gander5739 1y agoShe was banned a few years ago.
- chris_wot 1y agoIndeed, and those same supporters are still there.
- epx 1y agoI have donated to them in the last two decades, and stopped because of this. Won't feed those beasts
- DyslexicAtheist 1y agoshould give them another chance
- vachina 1y agoWorking as intended
- greenchair 1y agoone big reason why ai is garbage in garbage out
- Amorymeltzer 1y ago"For those unaware, this is (exactly?) quoting Michael Scott from The Office." - Wayne Gretzky
- antegamisou 1y agoSounds like you're either a Wikipedia landlord or don't use it for anything other than STEM articles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contentious_topics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contentious_topics
- SchemaLoad 1y agoHave you actually tried editing wikipedia? It's extremely difficult to get anything approved. You have to provide multiple credible sources for things or else the mods just revert/delete your page.
- pveierland 1y agoIsn't is good that there are some forcing factors to help ensure the quality of the content? I get that there's plenty of drama and difficulties in building and moderating the content of Wikipedia, but it certainly does not appear to stagnate in terms of content if you are looking at e.g. the number of articles on English Wikipedia. The overall process appears to produce great outcomes and it is the greatest collection of knowledge created. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia
- panxyh 1y agoGP wasn't complaining.
- pveierland 1y agoI took it as a statement that it is prohibitively difficult to contribute to Wikipedia, and wanted to point out that a large number of contributions are being made and the resulting quality being high, in part due to the difficulty of making contributions.
- wslh 1y agoYou are mistaking quality with difficulty. Many people have quality information for contributing but lack the time for politics.
- pveierland 1y agoWhere do I mistake quality for difficulty? My statement was that the quality of Wikipedia overall is high, and that one of the reasons for that is because they set and enforce standards for contributions. Certainly many people are put off by the process and will not have time to deal with it, but my belief would be that such cases are more likely on more controversial topics, and less likely for less controversial topics. Inherently, collaborating on difficult topics will be a difficult process, which also means that there are likely no easy answers for how to make this process not discourage anyone.