Tag: Wikipediocracy

An amusing story from Wikipediocracy, the Wikipedia criticism site.  A user at Wikipedia has now banned any link to Wikipediocracy from Wikipedia, by adding the site to the “spam” blacklist.  Of course Wikipediocracy is not spam; this is censorship of an external site.

Since Google privileges Wikipedia so much, this reduces traffic to Wikipediocracy and therefore reduces the number of people who are aware of the criticism site.  Which is, of course, terribly convenient to evildoers at Wikipedia, of whom there are rather a lot these days.

And why, we may ask, was it felt acceptable for Wikipedia to impose a ban on another legitimate internet site?

WO has regrettably decided to out a Wikipedia user on its pages (the link is available from its main page, and several sub-pages that link to what’s on the front page) and several en-Wikipedia users have gone on a crusade to mention this site as much as possible to push drama and in some cases to further the outing.

That’s right.  Someone in Wikipediocracy dared to mention the real name of one of the editors hiding behind a pseudonym in Wikipedia.  This is strictly forbidden in Wikipedia — where abuse is so endemic that it is unsafe to use your own name — and, apparently, Wikipedia feels that it has the right to forbid any other internet site to do it either.  Or else.

Dear me.  And I thought Wikipedia was all about sharing knowledge?

The serious point is that the people in power in Wikipedia today are unfit to hold such a role, as such impudence demonstrates.  Wikipedia is too important to the internet, and has too much power over Google ranking, to be left to the administration of fools, trolls and children.  It’s got to stop, and needs regulation now.

Yes, crowdsourcing content is a marvellous idea, and I have used it myself for translation projects.  But there is no point whatsoever in trying to “crowd-source” control of such projects.  Doing so merely allows the most determined trolls to self-select themselves as kings and lords of the project.  Rarely will such people be fit to hold such a role.  What follows will be mainly a “Lord of the Flies” experience. 

It is now time for the administrators of Wikipedia to be retired.  Instead a group of paid administrators should be introduced, with transparent, fair and adult administration. 

Until this happens, sleazy events like anonymous users banning other internet sites for daring to leak information will continue to occur.

Regular readers will know that I had a very bad experience attempting to contribute to the Mithras article on Wikipedia, when I was the target of a deliberate campaign of violence and defamation by an obvious troll operating at least two accounts, who simply wanted to own my work and push a falsehood.  It ended with a corrupt administrator blocking me on a false accusation of sock puppeting.  I disabled my account and I’ve not been back, needless to say. 

But the experience left me wondering how many other honest contributors have had the same experience.  Today I’ve been reading around the entries on the Wikipediocracy blog.  They are well-written and well thought-out. 

I’ve also spent some time reading material at the Wikipedia Review forum, which contains more of the same, and there is also a Wikipediocracy forum, much of it written by people who are obviously still bleeding from the beatings they received.  

All this makes sad reading.  Out of it emerges a picture of a cess-pit full of vipers, in which, to change metaphors, ordinary contributors are little more than meat for the grinder. 

I’ve written there a short account myself of my own evil experience of Wikipedia administration (here).

Obviously the articles on these sites are very much the work of the disillusioned ex-Wikipedians; but none the less they represent a valuable corrective to the quite misleadingly positive impression that many people have of Wikipedia.  Most people suppose that the way Wikipedia represents itself is accurate.  Even those who have enough experience to realise that this presentation is not how things actually work, and that there is endless fighting involved, nevertheless tend to suppose (as I did) that the administration is honest at least in intent.  The testimonies of the ex-Wikipedians suggest very strongly otherwise. 

It is, of course, necessary to treat all these narratives with a degree of scepticism.  All these people are exiles; and, notoriously, the exile’s perspective on his homeland is distorted by his exile.  There is an undue willingness to believe evil of the ruling faction, and an undue willingness to suppose that anyone else notices.  Memory deceives, and, without any intention to mislead, a narrative can be constructed which is unbalanced.

But that said, it is quite eye-opening to see what is said there.