Wikipedia

Shashi Sushila Murray

Joined 29 October 2018
In all of my editing I'm striving to keep in mind Wikipedia's flaws. You should too: don't be part of the problem. Don't get caught up in group think. Drop the abrasive macho posturing. We should all be mindful of our fallibility, treat each other with respect, and engage in thoughtful discourse. If I add any kind of flags to any page, section, or text it's with the intention that that is just one step towards improving that content. I'm not trying to get worthy content removed and I hope no one treats it as such.
Notability
General notability guideline
Subject-specific guidelines
See also

I'm just here to contribute to improving wikipedia. I'm not part of this community.

I'm here to become a more critical consumer of information on Wikipedia by participating in the project. I'm interested in pursuing good edits, how this process works, observing the insertion of bias (especially through ethnocentrism and apathetic ignorance), and in particular Wikipedia's contradictions (for example, read this essay about Wikipedia's supposed power structure). The decline in the detail within articles has made me skeptical of Wikipedia as a source of information. For the last number of years I've ignored the prose and only read through sources directly (as well as external links). Finally, I decided to start editing to see if I could fix the problems I perceive. Since Wikipedia is based on consensus (which can change over time), I figure my edits will contribute in various contexts towards change. So far I've spent a substantial amount of time learning the editing process, reading community debates and discussions, interacting with other users (especially helping new users to get over technical issues and encouraging them to keep trying), fixing citations, confirming information within citations, marking problems on pages, writing prose on some niche topics that I am interested in, etc.

My experience so far as an editor has left me astounded at the insertion of editorial bias through wikilawyering, the use of ambiguous weasel-words, a false pretense of consensusα and the philosophy of deletionismβ to justify the removal of verifiable information from reliable, authoritative sources. Additionally, I've been surprised while reading through deletion debates. It seems that arguments for deleting articles are based on the fallacy argument from ignorance. It seems like many editors are treating 1) their lack of interest in a topic (even if it meets notability requirements for a niche subject—for instance theoretical physics is not a topic of interest that most people have and sub-topics in physics that meet noteability requirements probably don't even exist in the minds of many editors) and lack of work on the article (there are many articles that don't exist right now that meet notability requirements—just because no one has decided to put in the work doesn't mean that the article shouldn't exist. Is the class rating system just decorative or isn't it mean to categorize articles based on how much work they need?) as reasons for deletion. I have the sneaking suspicion that there's a contest to have done the "most" (laughable) work to "clean up" wikipedia—even if it's phony work! Prior to my start in editing wikipedia, I had been intensely skeptical of wikipedia, but I hadn't had the first hand experience of what goes on in the community. Rather than complain (or in addition to complaining), I'm going to do my part to contribute.

Critiques of Wikipedia worth fully digesting to help make Wikipedia better

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This section is meant to be an easy reference guide for me to substantive criticisms of Wikipedia and atttempts to measure Wikipedia's flaws. Hopefully this also serves as food for thought to other editors as it is undoubtedly easy to give an undue defense to something that you've spent a substantial amount of time contributing to. Some of these are links to critics and some are to critiques.

Serious Critiques & Studies

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  • "Gender equity report 2018". Meta-Wiki. 2018. Retrieved November 21, 2018. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
Important Points

From the barriers to equity section:

 
Gender equity report 2018 - Issues with existing policies
  • "Twenty percent of interviewees identified bias in policies on Wikimedia projects as the most challenging obstacle they face."
  • "Eighteen percent of interviewees identified a lack of awareness about gender inequity within the community as the most challenging obstacle they face."
  • "Fourteen percent of interviewees identified poor community health as the most challenging obstacle they face."
    • Harassment: Pornographic images posted on userpages, aggression, double-standards from veteran editors, doxxing and harassment at home, inappropriate text messages, and threatening to call people's employers.
  • Lack of community support
  • Leadership lacks diversity
     
    Gender equity report 2018 - Diversity in leadership roles 01

My initial reaction to this is that these projects should encourage users to contribute only under pseudonyms and to avoid posting any personally identifying information. Additionally, perhaps the Wikimedia Foundation should pursue criminal action against users who engage in doxxing, threats, harassment, etc. since the Wikipedia community doesn't care about fixing those problems. This resource also comes to mind: https://onlinesafety.feministfrequency.com/en/

Important Points
Arwid Lund's monographc provides a close-range focus on the content creators, what are the motivations that drive them to create and curate content on this platform, and how their participation in this enterprise without any promise of remuneration for the creation of a use value can be seen vis-a-vis the capitalistic modes of production of exchange values.
Important Points
  • "... a flattening growth rate in the number of contributors to the website."
  • "As Neil Postman noted in his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death, the rise of television introduced not just a new medium but a new discourse: a gradual shift from a typographic culture to a photographic one, which in turn meant a shift from rationality to emotions, exposition to entertainment."
  • The early internet as an extension of the Enlightenment's values pushing back against irrationality.
  • "Social networks, though, have since colonized the web for television’s values."

So, the author argues that the web has been colonized by the same forces that Neil Postman refers to via social media and that, consequently, the internet's amplification of society's focus on Enlightenment values has been dampened.

Important Points

The author wanted to look at the underlying causes of the gender gap and lack of diversity as well as "... why those who already contribute actually remain."

  • Interviewees attribute their lack of problem (with sexism and harassment) to deliberately using gender-neutral accounts.
  • Structural issues.
  • "virulent reaction to a newcomer’s first error".
  • Importance of in-person meetups
  • "To them, the importance of having history written by all segments of society outweighs all other considerations."
Points
  • Steep obstacles for less tech-savvy users and users who haven't learned internet jargon.
  • "... decisions about content and form are now made top-down and not bottom-up" and the editing environment can be quite hostile.
  • "Wikipedia’s policies have generated a maze of contradictory rules that are not transparent to newcomers and are enforced by experienced editors often furthering their own interests and agendas"
  • "Higher positions in the Wikipedia user hierarchy are achieved through building a reputation for one’s contributions—but as always, quantity is more easily measured than quality, and thus users who are technologically savvy and build software that helps them to make large numbers of small automatic or semi-automated edits are more likely to succeed than those who focus instead on the scholarly aspect of editing."
Points
  1. Reversions and aggressive admonishments.
  2. Only 9% of wikipedia editors are women. That's really pathetic. You're definitely doing something wrong considering that more women enter higher education and academia than men. What are you doing to alienate the majority of scholars and people in higher education?
  3. Refer to citations for more in depth analysis of wikipedia's community flaws to be self-conscious of one's own behavior to try to help turn this ship around.

Critics

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Wikipediocracy's homepage

Wikipedia Sucks forum

In Defense of Inclusionism - "a long time editor & former admin" offers a harsh critique of English Wikipedia and a defense of inclusionism. This essay was praised by Sue Gardner (former executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation) by giving the author the executive director barnstar.

https://thewikipedian.net/ - This might be the best so far

Conferences - To Watch & Categorize (Perhaps remove)

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Miscellaneous

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Wikipedia archives

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This section is here for easy reference to deleted material.

Wikipedia alternatives

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Key questions to mull over: what weaknesses are these alternatives trying to address? In what ways are they better than wikipedia and in what ways are they worse?

  • Citizendium - Citizendium requires real verified names, so it eliminates anonymity. Expert authors may get special roles.
  • Scholarpedia ISSN 1941-6016 - Scholarpedia is edited by experts and is peer reviewed. It can be cited (in contrast to wikipedia), because of its veracity and authority.
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Guides for Editors

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Guides for New Editors

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Templates

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Not categorized (so far)

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Articles that I am actively trying to improve

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Articles that I want to improve

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  • Gender bias on Wikipedia - How is this article so neglected? Super pathetic and just goes to show how skewed the demographics of wikipedia must be.
  • Facebook - The criticisms section is missing a subsection about their response to institutionally weak democracies sending them cries for help to clamp down on incendiary speech which may have led to genocides (among other things). There's currently a wealth of sources that discuss this, so I need to draft a section related to this and compare it to what's in the criticisms of facebook article and get some cross-article discussion before I add any prose.
  • Amusing Ourselves to Death - This is an important work (although flawed). I want to reread it and do some critical reading of secondary sources, so I might as well update it.
  • Bari Weiss - I enjoy this journalist's coverage and want to learn more about her. Consequently, I might as well update her article.
  • Carrie Rentschler - Some time-sensitive factual inaccuracies that I marked. Also, I found some gender biased prose that I modified (then decided to remove as per guide to writing about women).
  • Eric Dregni - A deletion discussion was ongoing for him. I believed that the article ought to be deleted until I read other editor's remarks and I changed my mind, so, I might as well put in some work to improve the page. I own some of his books, so I will start by rereading those, reading secondary source reviews, then updating the article based on those sources.
  • Marcel Ophüls
  • Wild Strawberries (film)
  • Viridiana
  • Unchained camera technique - I've considered whether or not this page should be merged with the director who invented the technique. You can't make this decision until you've read more authoritative sources via databases.
  • Journey into the Night
  • Transit Film GmbH
  • Metropolis (1927 film)
  • Rouben Mamoulian

Notes

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α.^ How do you guys measure that? Oh, wait, you don't!
β.^ What ever happened to marking information with Wikipedia:Citation needed, appropriately doing a Wikipedia:Accuracy dispute, or a Wikipedia:NPOV dispute?
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