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It's amazing how much this behavior is tolerated, despite very clear policies against a single person "owning" a page. > Saying this as a former Wikipedia admi

It's amazing how much this behavior is tolerated, despite very clear policies against a single person "owning" a page. > Saying this as a former Wikipedia admin + nerd. Any insight into how these people all manage to dodge the policies against such behavior? Is it just too much effort to complain + favoritism towards frequent editors?

philipkglass 4mo ago
There's not a big pool of well-adjusted people who are equally willing to learn the intricacies of Wikipedia and manage it better. The people who care a lot, in the wrong ways, outnumber people who are passionately neutral. Most people don't care enough to fight bad edits and reversions. They just stop contributing. I know I did. (I wasn't even editing controversial areas, just adding to data about chemical compounds.) I still love Wikipedia, but mostly as a starting point to find deeper references. (Which, to be fair, is primarily how you should use an encyclopedia.) The degree to which you should trust it as your sole starting point for research in an unfamiliar area is anti-correlated with the length of the article's Talk page.
Viliam1234 4mo ago
> Is it just too much effort to complain + favoritism towards frequent editors? They know how to play the game 100x better than you do, and you don't want to waste your time learning to play the game at their level. There is a Wikipedia rule for everything, and for the opposite of that, if you know the right buzzwords. If a "good guy" writes on a topic he is involved in, that's great, because he is a subject-matter expert; we need more heroes like him. If a "bad guy" writes on a topic he is involved in, that's a conflict of interest, instant revert and ban. You can accuse people of all kinds of bad behaviors, but if anyone does the same to you, you accuse them of not assuming good faith. You need to be very very patient and diplomatic, because if you lose temper even for a moment, you get banned. Shameless lying is perfectly okay if you stay polite and pretend to be too dumb to understand.
- postflopclarity 4mo ago
  you have described my experience very accurately
- avaer 4mo ago
  Basically this. They literally devote their entire lives to playing this game. They would make for effective politicians if they could translate what they do beyond wikitext.

philipkglass 4mo ago

There's not a big pool of well-adjusted people who are equally willing to learn the intricacies of Wikipedia and manage it better. The people who care a lot, in the wrong ways, outnumber people who are passionately neutral. Most people don't care enough to fight bad edits and reversions. They just stop contributing. I know I did. (I wasn't even editing controversial areas, just adding to data about chemical compounds.) I still love Wikipedia, but mostly as a starting point to find deeper references. (Which, to be fair, is primarily how you should use an encyclopedia.) The degree to which you should trust it as your sole starting point for research in an unfamiliar area is anti-correlated with the length of the article's Talk page.

Viliam1234 4mo ago

> Is it just too much effort to complain + favoritism towards frequent editors? They know how to play the game 100x better than you do, and you don't want to waste your time learning to play the game at their level. There is a Wikipedia rule for everything, and for the opposite of that, if you know the right buzzwords. If a "good guy" writes on a topic he is involved in, that's great, because he is a subject-matter expert; we need more heroes like him. If a "bad guy" writes on a topic he is involved in, that's a conflict of interest, instant revert and ban. You can accuse people of all kinds of bad behaviors, but if anyone does the same to you, you accuse them of not assuming good faith. You need to be very very patient and diplomatic, because if you lose temper even for a moment, you get banned. Shameless lying is perfectly okay if you stay polite and pretend to be too dumb to understand.

postflopclarity 4mo ago
you have described my experience very accurately
avaer 4mo ago
Basically this. They literally devote their entire lives to playing this game. They would make for effective politicians if they could translate what they do beyond wikitext.