5 ms·

You are technically right, but if it takes to be a "tatus-obsessed WP dork" to become a WP administrator - then it is a problem in itself, isn't it?

• time_management 18y ago
  Most WP administrators are jackasses, idiots, and blowhards, both online and in real life. Their idiocy was one of the reasons I quit the project. I think that most serious Wikipedia vandalism (not page-blanking, but the kind of shit that is difficult to spot and refute, such as transposing digits in population figures) is done to spite those assclowns.
  • THEFIEND 18y ago
    I have just come off of three absolutely exasperating days trying to comply with these idiots' ever changing policy requirements. Each one has an opinion, albeit as or more negative than the previous clown, and if you go left, someone else tells you to go right. They should seriously reconsider putting 19 year olds (or frustrated housewives) who have serious chips on their shoulders in positions of anything resembling authority or power. I can tell you, from an end-user standpoint, I have lost ALL respect for the validity of anything at all on Wikipedia. It all depends what mood the child on the help desk or admin pool was in when they decided to wreak havoc on someone's hard, valid and substantiated-beyond-ANY-reasonable-doubt work. I say, they suck. And I am sure I learned something from this utterly harrowing experience, I just haven't figured out what, yet.
• tptacek 18y ago
  On the one hand, yes, but on the other hand WP adminship means so little that it's effectively flypaper for the drama club. Admins are essentially powerless against solid contributions, and the cliques and internal strife function as a fine system of checks and balances against overt abuse. The worst you can say about it is that the admin culture repulses newcomers. But the WP model doesn't really demand long-term commitment from contributors in order to work. WP will improve steadily based on casual contributions. And so adminship is really more of an inefficiency than a serious problem.
  • gruseom 18y ago
    flypaper for the drama club Did you just make that up? I like it.
    • tapostrophemo 18y ago
      Even better - fftdc.com is still available. Quick! Register it!
  • zby 18y ago
    I don't know if it is so harmless drama - for example see this: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/01/wikipedia_and_naked_shorting/print.html http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/01/wikipedia_and_naked_... it is certainly overdramatized on itself by the journalist - but even if there is just a trace of truth - then it seems quite serious.
    • tptacek 18y ago
      Exactly how is any of this quite serious? The only serious threat to the encyclopedia would be a force that would prevent strong writing on relevant subjects from being incorporated into it, or a force that persistantly corrupted that strong writing once it was incorporated. This link is just drama. What lazy or corrupt journalists choose to do with the content in the encyclopedia is a problem outside the purview of the encyclopedia.