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Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

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598 points leotravis10 | 4 comments | 04 Sep 25 15:30 UTC | HN request time: 0.598s | source
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bawolff ◴[04 Sep 25 16:49 UTC] No.45129304[source]▶
There has been this trend recently of calling Wikipedia the last good thing on the internet.

And i agree its great, i spend an inordinate amount of my time on Wikimedia related things.

But i think there is a danger here with all these articles putting Wikipedia too much on a pedestal. It isn't perfect. It isn't perfectly neutral or perfectly reliable. It has flaws.

The true best part of Wikipedia is that its a work in progress and people are working to make it a little better everyday. We shouldn't lose sight of the fact we aren't there yet. We'll never be "there". But hopefully we'll continue to be a little bit closer every day. And that is what makes Wikipedia great.

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xorvoid ◴[04 Sep 25 17:50 UTC] No.45130082[source]▶
I would say this is all we really should reasonably expect from our knowledge consensus systems. In fact it’s the same values that “science” stands on: do our best everyday and continue to try improving.

It’s a bit hard for me to imagine something better (in practice). It’s easy to want more or feel like reality doesn’t live up to one’s idealism.

But we live here and now in the messiness of the present.

Viva la Wikipedia!

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abnercoimbre ◴[04 Sep 25 18:08 UTC] No.45130299[source]▶
Indeed, Wikipedia really is worth celebrating. While I sympathize with the GP, we should avoid devolving into purity spirals or we'll never have moments of joy.
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sshine ◴[04 Sep 25 21:16 UTC] No.45132293[source]▶
It’s possible to both criticise Wikipedia and celebrate it.
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xeromal ◴[05 Sep 25 02:52 UTC] No.45134559[source]▶
You know when you're proud of something and you tell it to someone and they always find something to nitpick while also saying good job. That's what this feels like. It's very unnecessary. Time and a place
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sshine ◴[05 Sep 25 03:44 UTC] No.45134806[source]▶
That’s one example, but I mean less personal. Wikipedia isn’t a person.

For example:

I’m a big fan of Wikipedia. I spent countless hours writing articles in my early twenties. I stopped because the environment got more hostile as the site grew in popularity. I think that might have been necessary to address the influx of drive-by editing, but it still meant I stopped enjoying being a contributor. I don’t appreciate the constant asking for money — as far as I understand, they’re well off without donations.

There.

I think the misconception here is that criticism has to be mean and personal. As someone who celebrates the project’s ideals, giving criticism is an act of love.

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chris_wot ◴[05 Sep 25 05:38 UTC] No.45135293[source]▶
You think that's bad? I got permanently banned and I started many important things on Wikipedia - like the admins noticeboard, a number of Australia communities, and the [citation needed]. I wrote dozens of articles about Australian women - none of them gave a shit and so I'm not able to write about them any more.

They are, by and large, a bunch of horrible bullies and losers - many Wikipedians don't actually care about articles creation or actual content, they fiddle about with URL fixes and categorisation. There was one horrible human being called BrownHairedGirl who did all these things and almost destroyed the place before they got indefinitely banned also.

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1. throwaway2037 ◴[05 Sep 25 06:42 UTC] No.45135616[source]▶
Why did you get permanently banned? And what stops you from creating a new account?
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2. amiga386 ◴[05 Sep 25 08:44 UTC] No.45136376[source]▶
> Why did you get permanently banned.

Ta bu shi da yu created the citation needed template: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Citation... (I remember that account name from Kuro5hin. Much respect!)

He edited under several accounts, all of which are permabanned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Aussie_Article_Writer

Why? Because he'd earned an interaction ban (IBAN) from engaging with BrownHairedGirl, and he breached the ban: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=...

Whatever he said, it's been fully scrubbed, but it appears to have been commenting on BrownHairedGirl's not-yet-submitted Request for Adminship: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=1039021442#Piotrus...

How'd he get the interaction ban? Because another account of his and BrownHairedGirl were squabbling, and the admins have working eyes and brains, they could see he was doing the instigating: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=980273295#Proposa...

You're not meant to wind up or troll your fellow Wikipedians, even if they are combative dickheads who need taking down a peg.

What was the beef? That he was creating small subcategories for each suburb of Brisbane, and BrownHairedGirl goes off her nut at small categories.

BrownHairedGirl was eventually taken out by being needlessly combative about - of all things - Wikipedia's "small categories" policy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests...

> what stops you from creating a new account?

Wikipedians inevitably go back to their old stomping grounds, use their normal tone in discussions, repeat their same old habits and basically don't change. When they do that, they're very recognisable to the people they already spent 20 years interacting with. They out themselves as a sockpuppet of the original banned user, and they get banned again.

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3. ForOldHack ◴[05 Sep 25 09:38 UTC] No.45136719[source]▶
Perfect! Wikipedia is an overflowing of dickheads. Perfect. It is the instutionalisation of dickheads. And @#$# the czar of the New York Subway system and the people who endlessly add retracted citations.
4. chris_wot ◴[07 Sep 25 22:34 UTC] No.45162804[source]▶
Curious - and do you know what I got the one-way IBAN for? The answer is: nothing.

I can assure you, I was not doing the instigating. Though I did comment on her RFA, not realising it was not yet submitted. There was never an appropriate review of my one-way IBAN, and nobody has been able to explain why this was done given her vile and ongoing obnoxious comments about myself. unless you consider her accusing me of "whining" to have been acceptable, something not a single person commented on. Also, I had been asking them not to comment on my talk page and had taken it to WP:AN/I. Not sure why you consider this to have been something that I was not allowed to ask for review about?

I had no part in the scrubbing of that page. That was the ArbCom, for reasons only known to themselves. Probably instigated by then-arbitrator Beeblebrox, who was later suspended from ArbCom for disclosing ArbCom matters on an external anti-Wikipedia site.

Also: I was not doing any editing of Brisbane categories. I don't know where you got that from.

Furthermore, I have not edited Wikipedia since I was banned. If you are implying otherwise, then you are wrong.