[HN Gopher] The Depths of Wikipedians
___________________________________________________________________
The Depths of Wikipedians
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 132 points
Date : 2024-12-10 15:32 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (asteriskmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (asteriskmag.com)
| Philpax wrote:
| Delightful interview that goes into some of the mentalities
| involved in Wikipedia editing and the people behind it. Great
| read!
| bowmessage wrote:
| I've seen Annie's live show in Seattle! It was extremely
| entertaining, highly recommend.
| simonw wrote:
| Annie has a fantastic TikTok account
| https://www.tiktok.com/@depthsofwikipedia
| Vinnl wrote:
| Her Mastodon is fun too: https://wikis.world/@annierau
| spacesanjeet wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. Wonderful read.
| cxr wrote:
| > that's the unfortunate thing about growing and becoming a
| massive encyclopedia that's more respected than it was in 2004
|
| Is it? Wikipedia was massive and respected in 2014, too, but it
| wasn't dominated by the problems discussed immediately beforehand
| --WP:BRD didn't neuter WP:BOLD, and egoists with "standing"
| didn't have free reign to antagonize newcomers who followed the
| rules.
|
| The problem with Wikipedia and other WMF projects nowadays is the
| entrenched folks with standing not being subject to rules and
| being permitted to apply new ones pulled out of thin air, not to
| mention the insidious circling-of-the-wagons when they're
| challenged and comrades come to their defense by trying to attack
| and smear the perceived threat.
|
| In a well-ordered and functioning society you can avoid running
| afoul of the law by following the rules--you can get by without
| having to pay speeding tickets by simply not speeding. Wikipedia
| and other WMF projects that have been infected by Wikipedia
| admins and their toxic mindset are more like a society where
| impunity might as well be codified--like a cop who says, "It's
| like this because I say so."
| rvba wrote:
| Wikimedia foundation could audit the admins who defend each
| other on a tit or tat basis and attack newbies.
|
| My lifetime achievement is getting one those assholes banned.
|
| Exactly as you say - rules dont aplly to them.
|
| Also using the "standards" to delete everything even when fully
| cited, while their own articles are slop.
|
| Not to mention people who edit good articles just to have more
| edits. Often for the worse.
|
| The worst trend recently is putting 5-10 paragraph quotations
| in articles. Often by some randoms (self promotion?). Those
| look like articles written by 5th graders.
|
| Wikipedia should be concise!
| jjmarr wrote:
| Wikipedia has a functioning appeals process in the form of
| RfCs, third opinions, and other dispute resolution processes
| (listed at [[Wikipedia:Dispute resolution]]). American police
| officers don't have that.
| merely-unlikely wrote:
| What about the courts?
| bawolff wrote:
| Are you suggesting online communities should resolve
| disputes through lawsuits? That sounds terrible to me.
|
| Imagine if on hacker news, if your comment broke a rule,
| that instead of dang deleting it, you got sued! I don't
| think that would make a good community.
| simlevesque wrote:
| > In a well-ordered and functioning society you can avoid
| running afoul of the law by following the rules
|
| Name me one of those societies that would prove your argument.
| jacobolus wrote:
| The above comment seems unnecessarily vitriolic.
|
| > _free reign to antagonize newcomers_
|
| Nobody has "free reign to antagonize" anyone including
| newcomers. It's hard to come to a new large community and
| project with somewhat unusual norms, and established editors
| should try to do a better job helping people learn the ropes,
| but at the same time I have gone to look repeatedly when some
| newcomer complained about being antagonized (either complained
| here, or other forums, or on Wikipedia) and maybe half the time
| the newcomer making the complaint was being a total jerk to
| everyone but really didn't like being called out.
|
| If you (the generic you reading this comment) want to put a
| bunch of volunteer effort into finding newcomers who are having
| a tough time and helping them out that would be a valuable
| contribution. On an all-volunteer project people do what they
| are interested and unfortunately intermediating on newcomers'
| behalf is usually not it (I do try to help when I can).
|
| > _in 2014, too, but it wasn 't dominated by the problems
| [...]_
|
| To my recollection is has been continually dominated by similar
| kinds of issues, since close to the beginning. It was then, and
| still is now, often a frustrating slog when multiple editors
| disagree about something, especially if there's some kind of
| (typically unstated) ideological motivation involved, e.g.
| promoting one ethnic group or nation. There are various dispute
| resolution processes, which work more or less, mainly by
| attracting more eyeballs any time there is a stuck conflict,
| but trying to form consensus with a pseodonymous global group
| of volunteers is just an inherently hard problem.
|
| The main differences between the first few years vs. today are
| that (1) many topics at least have some kind of article written
| about them (often still mediocre, especially parts from the
| early days that haven't seen much dedicated focused effort)
| which means that there's a bit more bias toward preserving what
| is already there (an understandable tendency in the face of a
| constant onslaught of vandalism and entropy), (2) people
| recently tend to demand a bit better sourcing for claims than
| was done up to about 2010, so there's sometimes a bit of a
| disconnect between the quality standard applied to existing
| material vs. newly added/changed material, and (3) there's a
| bit more focus than before on earning little gamified badges
| like stars or green + signs in the corners of articles.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > In a well-ordered and functioning society you can avoid
| running afoul of the law by following the rules--you can get by
| without having to pay speeding tickets by simply not speeding.
|
| That's because instead of codifying a set of rules, it
| "regulates" by citing a jumble of bizarre Confucian-style
| aphorisms listed in no particular order, in no particular
| place.
|
| If they were serious about integrity, they'd formalize.
| Formalization might give them some defense from attack, whereas
| until then they'll always roll over for the person with the
| most resources to spend on subverting it.
| rosmax_1337 wrote:
| The problem with Wikipedia is unfortunately the same problem as
| any society faces. Often things start out well, then [someone]
| arrives. Society then believes that if we define with rules and
| scripture how we believe, [someone] will behave like we did.
|
| But [someone] isn't the one who started the project. They're a
| different person. And even if they read the rules, they are not
| motivated by the rules.
| seneca wrote:
| Wikimedia is one of the bigger "fall from grace" stories of the
| modern internet. I really wonder how long they can continue to
| have any credibility left. I suppose rose-tinted articles like
| this help keep it on life support.
| hmmmmmmmm11 wrote:
| From the article: "I would say, generally, it's pretty good on US
| politics -- even local politics."
|
| Ctrl-F "bias": 0 results
|
| Wikipedia is simply not trustworthy on anything remotely
| political due to the extreme ideological slant of its editors.
| hk__2 wrote:
| > Wikipedia is simply not trustworthy on anything remotely
| political due to the extreme ideological slant of its editors.
|
| This reminds me of when the BBC reported that they get
| "complaints from people who feel that [their] reporting of the
| conflict has been biased against Israel, and complaints from
| those who feel it has been biased against the Palestinians"
| [1]. In my experience with the French Wikipedia, it's the same
| there, with people from both sides complaining the encyclopedia
| is biased in favor of the other side.
|
| [1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaint/israel-
| gazacoverage
| bawolff wrote:
| The two aren't mutually exclusive. Like they could be biased
| about certain parts in one direction but the other direction
| in another.
|
| I think we humans have the unfortunate tendency to view
| things as binary - you are either biased for one side or
| another. However when we are talking about something like
| wikipedia with lots of authors or even something like bbc
| where different articles are written by different people, i
| think its entirely possible for it to be biased against both
| sides (and for both sides) in different aspects.
| WolfeReader wrote:
| Can you give an example or two?
| roenxi wrote:
| A fun one is to compare its coverage of Trump's Ukraine
| scandal to Biden's Ukraine scandal. It is a good example of
| slant being constructed from completely factual reporting.
|
| We've got pretty clear kickbacks happening from a Ukraine
| company to a high ranking US official. It is likely legal in
| the same way that congressional insider trading is legal -
| it'd be illegal except for the fact that it affects
| politicians. Wikipedia doesn't consider there to be anything
| there worth talking about except for a page on Biden-Ukraine
| conspiracy theories despite there being, as far as I can tell
| from reading the related pages, no plausible explanation for
| what was going on except corruption.
|
| Then you go to the Trump page where he prods the Ukrainians
| to investigate what, prima-facie, looks like pretty serious
| corruption and we get the short thesis that is the Trump-
| Ukraine scandal page.
| jov2600 wrote:
| How do these structured communities balance efficiency with
| encouraging new contributors, especially those who might find the
| guidelines intimidating?
| qingcharles wrote:
| Wikipedia is getting _hard_. I 've been editing on there for
| over 20 years and I couldn't even get a new article accepted
| recently, even with a stack of solid citations.
|
| God knows how it would be for a new user.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The fundamental problem with Wikipedia is that reading one
| article edited by a dozen people with different perspectives and
| opinions is just not as illuminating as reading a dozen articles,
| each written by one person.
|
| That's why all serious researchers need access to the primary
| literature, original research reports, reviews of collections of
| reports, all clearly attributed to known sources. If you're
| working in the field you'll also know about the biases of the
| lead figures and can take that into account in your reading.
| Wikipedia is a mess in comparison, it's just for entertainment.
| beezlewax wrote:
| Except wikipedia provides their sources also.. meaning you can
| go read that material.
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| Wikipedia would benefit from allowing fir the narratives that
| sgape people, articles and the world to be diplayed while
| fighting for truth. hotly debated issues should show the debate
| and allow for those with better arguments , not better narratives
| to win by points.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| I've been editing Wikipedia literally for decades and I'm
| astonished at the vitriol in these comments. Would any HNers care
| to share any examples of actual articles that showcase this
| "extreme ideological slant"?
|
| Yes, editing Wikipedia is harder than it needs to be and you
| better have your Kevlar underwear on before venturing into hot
| potato topics, but there's a lot more to Wikipedia than that and
| contributions to more obscure/factual articles are generally more
| than welcome.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| Anything about gender ideology for one
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-12-10 23:00 UTC)