6 ms·

The Institute for Cultural Diplomacy and Wikipedia

84 points by martey 14y ago

guard-of-terra 14y ago
"In Wikipedia, debates can be won by stamina. If you care more and argue longer, you will tend to get your way. The result, very often, is that individuals and organizations with a very strong interest in having Wikipedia say a particular thing tend to win out over other editors who just want the encyclopedia to be solid, neutral, and reliable" That's why I stopped sending them money. That and deletionism.
- derleth 14y ago
  Everyone is a deletionist about something. Now watch as people try to delete this comment with downvotes.
  - lukifer 14y ago
    Deletionism is like the Myers-Briggs personality types: it's not about what you do all the time, but rather the more common reflex/tendency. Yes, there should be an upper limit; a wiki page for the sandwich I had last Thursday would go too far. But in a world of quasi-infinite storage, I think inclusionism should be the default, with a strong burden of proof required to delete.
    - dragonwriter 14y ago
      > But in a world of quasi-infinite storage, I think inclusionism should be the default, with a strong burden of proof required to delete. Its not about storage, its about mission. Wikipedia has a purpose. Many things do not fit that purpose (even many things for which the Wikimedia Foundation is happy to have its storage used, hence why the Foundation has other projects besides Wikipedia.) Just because its is worth having somewhere on the internet (even in a publicly-editable place on the internet hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation) doesn't mean it belongs on Wikipedia.
    - derleth 14y ago
      That would destroy Wikipedia's utility as a reference for stuff that exists in the real world. A website should be allowed to focus on what it does best without being forced to be all things to all people.
    - DanBC 14y ago
      There's too much stuff in WP already. Important articles have errors or poor sources. Just noodling through the important articles fixing sources and style and language is too much work. Doing that for bus routes or every Minecraft block or whatever just invites bitrot.
- lambda 14y ago
  I used to be staunchly against deletionism, but having had more experience with exactly the above kind of page, where someone who cares a lot about some organization or topic that really isn't at all notable can go to an awful lot of trouble to create stuff that just junks up Wikipedia with biased, poorly researched and poorly cited pages, I am a lot more sympathetic to deletionism these days. There are real costs to maintaining pages; editors need to revert vandalism, fix it to match the style guidelines, look for citations, resolve disputes, keep it neutral, ensure that it reflects a broad consensus about the actual truth of the matter, and so on. For small, insignificant topics, an article can be more trouble than it's worth.
  - tingletech 14y ago
    destruction is selection, and selection is destruction
  - guard-of-terra 14y ago
    You could always stub and protect such a page instead of deleting it. I don't care about orgs but when a band or programming language bages get deleted i'm not happy.
ilamont 14y ago
The author has been wronged. However, this unfortunate mess points to problems with various Wikipedia policies, including the inability of most companies, organizations and topics to have Wikipedia pages unless they are created by unbiased parties citing established mass media sources or scholarship. Regardless of its size or stature, if the organization/company/topic has never generated press coverage, and if no neutral editors care enough about it to create an article, then there won't be any article ... or eventually the Wikipedia police will delete it. Note that Wikipedia guidelines(1) define allowable press sources as substantial coverage, not a passing reference. A blog or forum post written by a knowledgeable user doesn't count, while an article written by a reporter talking with a company's PR team will. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources#Some_types_of_sources http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_...
- lambda 14y ago
  I'm not sure why you think the Wikipedia policy is wrong. If there is no substantial third party coverage of a topic, why should Wikipedia cover it? A lot of people seem to believe that since bits are cheap, we might as well keep around any page no matter how non-notable it is. But there is a cost to including articles beyond the storage cost. Articles need to be patrolled for vandalism, and fact checked based on material published elsewhere. If you let people just post anything they want, then people will start using it for spam, fluff pieces, random bullshit, and so on. Enough of that, and it will substantially tarnish Wikipedia's reputation as a useful and unbiased source of information. If a person or organization has never received press coverage, academic research, or other substantial information published on them outside of Wikipedia, why should they have a Wikipedia page? Should every Joe Blow who happened to be captain of the swim team in high school and who's now the local Rotary Club president have a Wikipedia page? Should every mom and pop pizza joint? Who gets to have the Wikipedia page for "Village Pizza"? The only reason for these small, not otherwise notable organizations to have a Wikipedia page is to increase their perceived notability; having a Wikipedia page indicates a certain amount of fame or notoriety. So in that case, allowing not otherwise notable organizations to have Wikipedia page would basically be a way for them to get free advertising. Especially in a case like this, when the whole page was edited by people who are, apparently, closely connected to the organization in question, and who would fight any negative information placed on the page.
DanBC 14y ago
I'm sorry they had a poor experience with editors for that institute. Did the author forward the legal threats to the foundation? As I understand it blocks (bans?) would be put in place. In other circumstances I'd assume good faith, and I'd suggest that the baffling maze of essays, guidelines, pillars, rules, policies, noticeboards, and discussion pages all contribute to new users feeling attacked by WP.
RexRollman 14y ago
Someone should cite this entry on the ICD Wikipedia pages that do exist.
CurtMonash 14y ago
I do all my Wikipedia editing anonymously. That way it's hard for Wikipedians to tell me I'm doing it wrong. And since my edits are usually good, they rarely get reverted. :) By way of contrast, I'm an official DMOZ editor, but it's been quite a while since I actually edited there. Too much hassle. Even the smallest decision is apt to turn into an entmoot. And of course, it's unclear whether there's much DMOZ usage these days anyway, by humans or search engines alike.
- tokenadult 14y ago
  I do all my Wikipedia editing anonymously. Most places I go online, I use my real name. I use a screen name here because I already had a habit of using the same screen name in two other online forums. I use a completely different, unique screen name on Wikipedia, as I was forewarned that editing is contentious there. I've seen some point-of-view-pushers on Wikipedia go to elaborate lengths to look up personal information about me, to give me harassing phone calls in the middle of the night, so I guess my screen name there didn't disguise my identity sufficiently. Over the years, most of those people have been site-banned in their first and second identities, but they still have plenty of sockpuppets and meatpuppets, and the administrators are always encountering new I.P. edits in support of the same skewing of point of view in that series of articles. (The articles are under ongoing arbitration committee supervision from a case http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race_and_intelligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/... that began hearing evidence just as I formally registered as a Wikipedian.) So I mostly wikignome on articles I happen to look up for fun, and only rarely edit articles on the subjects I actually know best and have the most sources at hand for. Wikipedia's editing atmosphere is lousy that way--the lunatics are mostly allowed to take over the asylum.
  - mjn 14y ago
    Whoa, that is pretty nuts! I've been on Wikipedia for ~10 years, and for a few years (mid-2000s) was on the arbitration committee, and never ran across anything like that, either first- or second-hand, not even for the brief period of time I was somewhat active in editing articles relating to the Israel-Palestine and Greece-Macedonia disputes. The worst I've gotten is angry emails, though even those are rare and it mostly sticks to angry talk-page messages. Perhaps I was lucky; or perhaps "race and intelligence" as a topic brings out an exceptionally insane crowd? Sounds rather unpleasant. I mostly edit articles relating to archaeology and (pre-20th-c) history these days, and I don't really run into trouble. If anything, my main complaint is not enough other people around; parts of the encyclopedia feel like ghost towns, where you can write whatever and nobody will comment either way.
lutze 14y ago
This has all the hallmarks of a Scientology operation. Seriously, is no one else getting the vibe here?

84 points by martey 14y ago

"In Wikipedia, debates can be won by stamina. If you care more and argue longer, you will tend to get your way. The result, very often, is that individuals and organizations with a very strong interest in having Wikipedia say a particular thing tend to win out over other editors who just want the encyclopedia to be solid, neutral, and reliable" That's why I stopped sending them money. That and deletionism.

derleth 14y ago
Everyone is a deletionist about something. Now watch as people try to delete this comment with downvotes.
- lukifer 14y ago
  Deletionism is like the Myers-Briggs personality types: it's not about what you do all the time, but rather the more common reflex/tendency. Yes, there should be an upper limit; a wiki page for the sandwich I had last Thursday would go too far. But in a world of quasi-infinite storage, I think inclusionism should be the default, with a strong burden of proof required to delete.
  - dragonwriter 14y ago
    > But in a world of quasi-infinite storage, I think inclusionism should be the default, with a strong burden of proof required to delete. Its not about storage, its about mission. Wikipedia has a purpose. Many things do not fit that purpose (even many things for which the Wikimedia Foundation is happy to have its storage used, hence why the Foundation has other projects besides Wikipedia.) Just because its is worth having somewhere on the internet (even in a publicly-editable place on the internet hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation) doesn't mean it belongs on Wikipedia.
  - derleth 14y ago
    That would destroy Wikipedia's utility as a reference for stuff that exists in the real world. A website should be allowed to focus on what it does best without being forced to be all things to all people.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    There's too much stuff in WP already. Important articles have errors or poor sources. Just noodling through the important articles fixing sources and style and language is too much work. Doing that for bus routes or every Minecraft block or whatever just invites bitrot.
lambda 14y ago
I used to be staunchly against deletionism, but having had more experience with exactly the above kind of page, where someone who cares a lot about some organization or topic that really isn't at all notable can go to an awful lot of trouble to create stuff that just junks up Wikipedia with biased, poorly researched and poorly cited pages, I am a lot more sympathetic to deletionism these days. There are real costs to maintaining pages; editors need to revert vandalism, fix it to match the style guidelines, look for citations, resolve disputes, keep it neutral, ensure that it reflects a broad consensus about the actual truth of the matter, and so on. For small, insignificant topics, an article can be more trouble than it's worth.
- tingletech 14y ago
  destruction is selection, and selection is destruction
- guard-of-terra 14y ago
  You could always stub and protect such a page instead of deleting it. I don't care about orgs but when a band or programming language bages get deleted i'm not happy.

ilamont 14y ago

The author has been wronged. However, this unfortunate mess points to problems with various Wikipedia policies, including the inability of most companies, organizations and topics to have Wikipedia pages unless they are created by unbiased parties citing established mass media sources or scholarship. Regardless of its size or stature, if the organization/company/topic has never generated press coverage, and if no neutral editors care enough about it to create an article, then there won't be any article ... or eventually the Wikipedia police will delete it. Note that Wikipedia guidelines(1) define allowable press sources as substantial coverage, not a passing reference. A blog or forum post written by a knowledgeable user doesn't count, while an article written by a reporter talking with a company's PR team will. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources#Some_types_of_sources http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_...

lambda 14y ago
I'm not sure why you think the Wikipedia policy is wrong. If there is no substantial third party coverage of a topic, why should Wikipedia cover it? A lot of people seem to believe that since bits are cheap, we might as well keep around any page no matter how non-notable it is. But there is a cost to including articles beyond the storage cost. Articles need to be patrolled for vandalism, and fact checked based on material published elsewhere. If you let people just post anything they want, then people will start using it for spam, fluff pieces, random bullshit, and so on. Enough of that, and it will substantially tarnish Wikipedia's reputation as a useful and unbiased source of information. If a person or organization has never received press coverage, academic research, or other substantial information published on them outside of Wikipedia, why should they have a Wikipedia page? Should every Joe Blow who happened to be captain of the swim team in high school and who's now the local Rotary Club president have a Wikipedia page? Should every mom and pop pizza joint? Who gets to have the Wikipedia page for "Village Pizza"? The only reason for these small, not otherwise notable organizations to have a Wikipedia page is to increase their perceived notability; having a Wikipedia page indicates a certain amount of fame or notoriety. So in that case, allowing not otherwise notable organizations to have Wikipedia page would basically be a way for them to get free advertising. Especially in a case like this, when the whole page was edited by people who are, apparently, closely connected to the organization in question, and who would fight any negative information placed on the page.

DanBC 14y ago

I'm sorry they had a poor experience with editors for that institute. Did the author forward the legal threats to the foundation? As I understand it blocks (bans?) would be put in place. In other circumstances I'd assume good faith, and I'd suggest that the baffling maze of essays, guidelines, pillars, rules, policies, noticeboards, and discussion pages all contribute to new users feeling attacked by WP.

RexRollman 14y ago

Someone should cite this entry on the ICD Wikipedia pages that do exist.

CurtMonash 14y ago

I do all my Wikipedia editing anonymously. That way it's hard for Wikipedians to tell me I'm doing it wrong. And since my edits are usually good, they rarely get reverted. :) By way of contrast, I'm an official DMOZ editor, but it's been quite a while since I actually edited there. Too much hassle. Even the smallest decision is apt to turn into an entmoot. And of course, it's unclear whether there's much DMOZ usage these days anyway, by humans or search engines alike.

tokenadult 14y ago
I do all my Wikipedia editing anonymously. Most places I go online, I use my real name. I use a screen name here because I already had a habit of using the same screen name in two other online forums. I use a completely different, unique screen name on Wikipedia, as I was forewarned that editing is contentious there. I've seen some point-of-view-pushers on Wikipedia go to elaborate lengths to look up personal information about me, to give me harassing phone calls in the middle of the night, so I guess my screen name there didn't disguise my identity sufficiently. Over the years, most of those people have been site-banned in their first and second identities, but they still have plenty of sockpuppets and meatpuppets, and the administrators are always encountering new I.P. edits in support of the same skewing of point of view in that series of articles. (The articles are under ongoing arbitration committee supervision from a case http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race_and_intelligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/... that began hearing evidence just as I formally registered as a Wikipedian.) So I mostly wikignome on articles I happen to look up for fun, and only rarely edit articles on the subjects I actually know best and have the most sources at hand for. Wikipedia's editing atmosphere is lousy that way--the lunatics are mostly allowed to take over the asylum.
- mjn 14y ago
  Whoa, that is pretty nuts! I've been on Wikipedia for ~10 years, and for a few years (mid-2000s) was on the arbitration committee, and never ran across anything like that, either first- or second-hand, not even for the brief period of time I was somewhat active in editing articles relating to the Israel-Palestine and Greece-Macedonia disputes. The worst I've gotten is angry emails, though even those are rare and it mostly sticks to angry talk-page messages. Perhaps I was lucky; or perhaps "race and intelligence" as a topic brings out an exceptionally insane crowd? Sounds rather unpleasant. I mostly edit articles relating to archaeology and (pre-20th-c) history these days, and I don't really run into trouble. If anything, my main complaint is not enough other people around; parts of the encyclopedia feel like ghost towns, where you can write whatever and nobody will comment either way.

lutze 14y ago

This has all the hallmarks of a Scientology operation. Seriously, is no one else getting the vibe here?