5 ms·

Wikipedia's administration is far from perfect, but you have to give them one thing: the amount of vandalism they've had to deal with is of historical proportio

by pierrec 11y ago

Wikipedia's administration is far from perfect, but you have to give them one thing: the amount of vandalism they've had to deal with is of historical proportions. It's not as impactful as physical mass vandalism, such as what occurred in the world's great revolutions, but that makes the job of dealing with it all the more unrewarding and annoying. I can imagine it would wear me down. It would be interesting to attempt a formal quantification of vandalism received by different projects susceptible to it. I'd be willing to bet that Wikipedia has been more targeted than anything else out there, and by a wide margin. It's good to point out the flaws in the WP's inner workings, but you have to take a step back and realize the task of keeping the whole thing working is quite difficult (I might even have said "impossible" but somehow they're doing it.)

Animats 11y ago
"Wikipedia's administration is far from perfect, but you have to give them one thing: the amount of vandalism they've had to deal with is of historical proportions." Simple vandalism is more or less under control. Areas of high controversy (abortion, Israel/Palestine issues) are a huge headache, and much of Wikipedia's bureaucracy spends time dealing with those issues. In between those extremes are attempts to use Wikipedia as a promotional medium. Wikipedia doesn't allow advertising. A lot of people don't get that. I sometimes take on tasks from the Wikipedia conflict of interest noticeboard. This is usually someone trying to promote their band/DJ/company/product, or themself. Most of those are routine, but sometimes it gets out of hand. There are at least three wealthy convicted criminals who have PR people trying to erase, or at least gloss over, their history on Wikipedia. There's a company with a sketchy financial product that set up a massive effort to delete their regulatory and legal problems from Wikipedia. There are several companies which don't like prominent mentions of their product recalls. There are many consumer product companies who try to push their marketing pitch onto Wikipedia, and don't like that their pitch is turned into a cold discussion of their history, mergers, finances, and problems. Without the Wikipedia bureaucracy to push back against that tide of paid promotion, Wikipedia would look like the happy news world of ads and PR Newswire.
- aerique 11y ago
  Sigh... I guess I should have known better but I tried to upvote both parent posts but due to HN not changing the vote buttons for mobile for years now it might have been downvotes.
- provost 11y ago
  Wow, that's troubling - I'd like to help out. Is there a requirement of years/posts/edits to be made before you can help on the 'conflict of interest' noticeboard?

by pierrec 11y ago

Animats 11y ago

"Wikipedia's administration is far from perfect, but you have to give them one thing: the amount of vandalism they've had to deal with is of historical proportions." Simple vandalism is more or less under control. Areas of high controversy (abortion, Israel/Palestine issues) are a huge headache, and much of Wikipedia's bureaucracy spends time dealing with those issues. In between those extremes are attempts to use Wikipedia as a promotional medium. Wikipedia doesn't allow advertising. A lot of people don't get that. I sometimes take on tasks from the Wikipedia conflict of interest noticeboard. This is usually someone trying to promote their band/DJ/company/product, or themself. Most of those are routine, but sometimes it gets out of hand. There are at least three wealthy convicted criminals who have PR people trying to erase, or at least gloss over, their history on Wikipedia. There's a company with a sketchy financial product that set up a massive effort to delete their regulatory and legal problems from Wikipedia. There are several companies which don't like prominent mentions of their product recalls. There are many consumer product companies who try to push their marketing pitch onto Wikipedia, and don't like that their pitch is turned into a cold discussion of their history, mergers, finances, and problems. Without the Wikipedia bureaucracy to push back against that tide of paid promotion, Wikipedia would look like the happy news world of ads and PR Newswire.

aerique 11y ago
Sigh... I guess I should have known better but I tried to upvote both parent posts but due to HN not changing the vote buttons for mobile for years now it might have been downvotes.
provost 11y ago
Wow, that's troubling - I'd like to help out. Is there a requirement of years/posts/edits to be made before you can help on the 'conflict of interest' noticeboard?