Comments on: Why Wikipedia Is Doomed, The Six Rotten Pillars of Wikipedia http://wikipediareview.com/blog/20081106/181/ It's only a website... it's only a website... Fri, 30 Jul 2010 02:01:40 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc By: mikevf http://wikipediareview.com/blog/20081106/181/#comment-1914 mikevf Wed, 08 Apr 2009 00:59:36 +0000 http://wikipediareview.com/blog/?p=181#comment-1914 Wow, great article and very insightful. After my father died I've been compelled to spend countless hours trying to clean up clearly false and derogatory material posted in a wiki article about him. A single anonymous detractor dominates the article. He used his anonymity to bully, insult and intimidate other editors away and when that doesn't work he simply lasts and out posts them. I'm nearly certain I know who he is given the no outing policy I can't expose him. The whole system seems skewed to favor dishonest editors. The experience has opened my eyes to what a gross travesty wikipedia is. It's shameful and hurts real people. I'm a huge advocate of 1st amendment rights, but those rights must be accompanied by responsibility and accountability. Wow, great article and very insightful. After my father died I’ve been compelled to spend countless hours trying to clean up clearly false and derogatory material posted in a wiki article about him. A single anonymous detractor dominates the article. He used his anonymity to bully, insult and intimidate other editors away and when that doesn’t work he simply lasts and out posts them. I’m nearly certain I know who he is given the no outing policy I can’t expose him. The whole system seems skewed to favor dishonest editors. The experience has opened my eyes to what a gross travesty wikipedia is. It’s shameful and hurts real people. I’m a huge advocate of 1st amendment rights, but those rights must be accompanied by responsibility and accountability.

]]> By: Blissyu2 http://wikipediareview.com/blog/20081106/181/#comment-1815 Blissyu2 Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:50:19 +0000 http://wikipediareview.com/blog/?p=181#comment-1815 I agree that many of the pillars of Wikipedia itself are responsible for why it can never work out properly. NPOV is a major problem, simply because of how impossible it is to achieve. Related to this is their ignorance of experts. If you are neutral, therefore you probably don't know much about the topic. The more neutral you are, the more ignorant you are. I don't want a neutral writing about an article to inform me! I would add another pillar - ownership of articles (although perhaps you partially covered this with anonymity). In the real world (tm), articles are owned. Indeed, people put their names to it, qualifications, why they are an expert, and an idea as to what their biases are. On Wikipedia, articles are not meant to be owned, and yet, increasingly, they secretly are. Articles should be owned, because then they have responsibility. Even if there is a degree of anonymity, but we know which anonymous account is responsible, then that at least is better than what wikipedia has, because then at least you can account for it based on their other activities with that screen name (presuming that they only use 1, of course). Some topics have competing points of view, and perhaps, rather than trying to squeeze them all into one article, they should have multiple competing articles written by biased experts, all with their names to them, that then at least are usable as reference sources. Nice pictures by the way. I agree that many of the pillars of Wikipedia itself are responsible for why it can never work out properly. NPOV is a major problem, simply because of how impossible it is to achieve. Related to this is their ignorance of experts. If you are neutral, therefore you probably don’t know much about the topic. The more neutral you are, the more ignorant you are. I don’t want a neutral writing about an article to inform me! I would add another pillar - ownership of articles (although perhaps you partially covered this with anonymity). In the real world ™, articles are owned. Indeed, people put their names to it, qualifications, why they are an expert, and an idea as to what their biases are. On Wikipedia, articles are not meant to be owned, and yet, increasingly, they secretly are. Articles should be owned, because then they have responsibility. Even if there is a degree of anonymity, but we know which anonymous account is responsible, then that at least is better than what wikipedia has, because then at least you can account for it based on their other activities with that screen name (presuming that they only use 1, of course). Some topics have competing points of view, and perhaps, rather than trying to squeeze them all into one article, they should have multiple competing articles written by biased experts, all with their names to them, that then at least are usable as reference sources.

Nice pictures by the way.

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