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Posted by: Joseph100

Wikipedia is evil and must be destroyed. I've made numerous attempts to try to work with them in order to edit and correct glaring factual mistakes, as well as blatant boldface bias on various biographies of Republican officeholders from Illinois.

What I have found is Wikipedia is a complete totally filled with hate filled Marxists children, and tin pot, petty dictators drunk with power, whose concept of fairness is distorted and corrupt and with out control.

So, I am looking for advice on how to go about to diminish, destroy and neutralize Wikipedia.

Any reasonable suggestion will be taken under advisement.

For those who are pro-Wikipedia. All I have to say is this... there is nothing that you could say, do, or argue which would convinced me that Wikipedia has any merit, or good for the body politic or the Internet at large.
It is my sworn belief that Wikipedia is absolutely a cesspool of evil.

Thank you

Posted by: dtobias

I'm sure you'll fit right in and be warmly welcomed into this forum with an attitude like that.

Now, whether whatever suggestions you might get on how to destroy Wikipedia are "reasonable" depends, I suppose, on what definition of "reasonable" one holds. However, the attitude that "there is nothing [pro-Wikipedia people] could say, do, or argue" to change your opinion seems to better fit the definition of "dogmatic" than "reasonable".

Posted by: Yanksox

I don't view it as evil but as excessively misguided. Like communism it is fantastic in theory, but once placed into action it fails to account for the element of human nature. If you want to see it's downfall, let it run it's course. Wikipedia as a foundation will last, but the culture itself has been slowly permeated by a plague that affects other internet cultures (i.e. newgrounds, and the one at the tip of my tongue that allowed you to apply for licensces online). So, to be honest, Wikipedia (probably with the Essjay situation) has jumped the shark. I think it is a nice thing to collect and allow for a dumping ground of information, but with the factor of humans (biographies, POV pushing) it is far too dangerous and real than the perimeters established in the cyber world.

Posted by: Nathan

Of course, one can easily make the assertion that "the sum of all human knowledge" would be flawed, as human beings aren't perfect but flawed.

Therefore the entire project is riddled with those flaws (which is true and has been proven).

Posted by: Skyrocket

How to be REALLY anonymous on Wikipedia:

1) Get low cost long distance telephone service.
2) Get a dialup service such as AOL.
3) Find dialup access numbers in various cities far from where you live.
4) Use one of them to connect to your service, then use your service to connect to Wikipedia. Do NOT use a username.
5) Say whatever you want to say.
6) Sign off.
7) Sign on and repeat, using the same dialup number.
8) When they ban the IP block that contains the dialup number, pick a number in a different city and resume your activity. Let them know you're the same person, and laugh at them because they'll never catch you.

Posted by: Joseph100

It's like this, you try to argue that the Earth is flat, even know, though facts, personal observation, and critical reading, that, in absolute fact, the Earth is round. Believing the earth is round is dogmatic?

So, it is with Wikipedia. Is that Dogmatic, as the wikidick leaders are found of saying... If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it's a duck. My personal experiance and exposure to Wikipedia as well as others collaborate my assertion. My statement is factual and not Dogmatic, as you say.

DOGMATIC -characterized by or given to the expression of opinions very strongly or positively as if they were facts

The key word is "FACTS" and the fact is Wikipedia hurts, misleads, people. The leaders and administors of wikipedia are people, see Essay incident, who have no respect for facts, or turth and only concern with the power.

PS: The context of the term "reasonable" means not entertaining any suggestion that would entail murdering assassinating jimbo, and/or his merry band of henchmen or burning down the server farms that hosts Wikipedia or any other illegal or immoral acts. That type of suggestion is not reasonable and I will not entertain them.
Thank you.

Posted by: chankachank

I've already had a love/hate relationship with the Internet for the past decade or so. I knew a long time ago that epidemic intellectual laziness was going to be one of its main products. Sure, it is interesting and fun to browse around endlessly, learning new things, "seeing" documents and data that I never would have seen otherwise, communicating instantaneously, etc. It seems to have been "good" for society overall, and I've certainly had my fun. But as someone who was trained in the use of an academic library at the graduate level, I knew that the next generation would overwhemingly just get their data by typing search terms into Google.

With the advent of Wikipedia, and its inevitable top ranking for search results, it has become the default source of knowledge on almost every topic. I will admit to clicking on Wikipedia results to get an overview of something. I don't like this kind of "digest-knowledge" (as Ezra Pound called it, distinct from what we used to have, historein -- "to find out for oneself").

What can we do with Wikipedia? I like what the late Jean Baudrillard had to say (he died last week):

Cipher, don't decipher. Create illusions. Turn into an enigma what is clear. Make unintelligible what is far too intelligible. Render unreadable the event itself. Work all the events to make them unintelligible. Accentuate the fake transparency of the world to spread a terroristic confusion, to spread the germs or viruses of a radical illusion, make a radical disillusion of the real.

Take from that what you will.

Posted by: michael

I thought the addition of XFF headers at least made AOL vandalziing less lethal than it used to be.

Posted by: Joel Leyden

Wikipedia is evil!
Or should I say that Jimmy Wales and Danny Wool are evil?
Their investors are evil for pouring fuel onto a destructive blaze.
Evil = unaccountable leadership.

What is evil?
Evil is when you hurt innocent people and management turns a blind eye.
They ignore the hurt, destructive libel and slander for the same reasons that the Romans entertained with lions eating slaves. Some people love violence - Wales and Wool feed it out for breakfast.

Patience. The Wikipedia Contest will soon be realized

Posted by: Somey

Well, this is becoming one of the more interesting topics we've had in a while...

Illinois is actually a somewhat unusual state, politically speaking. It should really be two states, "Chicagoland" and "Illinois," i.e., not-Chicagoland. The non-Chicagoland part would be fairly solid Republican, I suspect, more like Kansas, Missouri, or Indiana... Anyway, Chicagoland always swings the whole state towards the Democrats in national elections, and the conservative types in the non-Chicagoland areas usually end up with US senators they don't like much, such as Dick Durbin, Carol Moseley Braun, and Barack Obama. Some of them - yourself included, I suspect - get rather P.O.'d about that!

What I'm trying to say is that your specific issue probably isn't with Wikipedia as a whole - I suspect it's actually with a determined group of Chicagoland liberals and their WP allies who are fighting just as hard as their downstate counterparts to get what they want - even if it means fighting dirty. And they almost certainly have admin support on WP to achieve their goals. So while it's tempting to see Wikipedia in its entirety as the culprit here simply because the system allows this sort of thing to go on, let's be realistic - that's targeting indiscriminately when you really need to pinpoint things somewhat.


"Cesspool" seems like an overstatement, and again rather indiscriminate - it implies that the people involved are swimming in evil (or whatever one wants to call it), when most of them are really just ignoring it or pretending it doesn't exist. I tend to prefer "system of evil" or "system that helps evil thrive." The real problem is that WP is too big (and unscalable), too easy to game, vandalize and manipulate, and impossible to manage in a fair and unbiased fashion. Those problems are inherent in the fundamental concept, which in turn, really has to change if it's ever going to get better. It's only "evil" to the extent that people refuse to recognize it and deal with it, in the face of clear and indisputable evidence of what's really necessary.

And so on...

Posted by: Nathan

I prefer my own method.

Posted by: gomi

Destroying Wikipedia would probably be remarkably simple, if one was interested in doing such a thing. Simply distribute a virus/worm that, at random but regular intervals: 1) replicates itself through the usual mechanisms; 2) creates an account; 3) uploads a very large, non-copyvio image of limited usefulness; 4) using this account, makes reversions (not nonsense edits) to a small number of pages listed in "recent changes"; and 5) leaves notes on one or more admin's pages alleging "vandalism" or some such by the previous editors on those pages.

Such a virus, even if well-throttled, would be an effective DDOS attack on the system of Wikipedia.

One could be more selective, and program a virus to revert only the edits of major contributors (perhaps only those who the virus author decided were assholes, administrators, or the equivalent), in conjnction with the above. Imagine, a series of edits relentlessly reverting everything (e.g.) SlimVirgin did, without her being able to pin a 3RR on it? Every page of interest would become "protected", and editing would effectively cease.

Even better, a well-throttled Wikipedia-targeted virus would have minimal impact on most people's computers, so it would probably last quite a while before becoming discovered and eliminated.

It's astonishing that no one has done it.

Posted by: Joseph100

I submit that the term “cesspool” is not an overstatement. The evil is not necessarily that of the individual people who edit and administer on Wikipedia themselves, obviously they are not evil per se, but the evil is a collective evil, in the assemblage of the rules, the ideas, and the kind of people that are allowed to have power on Wikipedia. This creates a synergy of evil and makes Wikipedia the evil thing that it now is.

Now regarding the battlefield in Illinois politics, which is dirty and bare-knuckle. The Republicans will eventually get their act together and considering that it is inevitable due to Blago’s (the boy governor) excesses as well as pervasive Illinois Democratic Party corruption which now exist in Illinois state government will eventually bring the state back in Republican hands again, as it did 10 years ago. This may happen in less then four years from now.

Now because wiki administrators and ediors who now control [WP:OWN] Republican office holder Bioagraphies, who, most likely, are local Illinois Democratic party wonks, have now dragged Wikipedia in this battlefield. So, rest assured, Wikipedia will be attacked, by the Republican opposition in Illinois, who have money and smart, people working for them and have the where with all, to bring Wikipedia down, notwithstanding all the the other groups and interests, out side this particular political battlefield, which would like Wikipedia to be destroyed.

Whatever morality Wikipedia may or may not have is irrelevant now, because they are now in this political battlefield and have enabled those with political agendas and point of view, (unfortunately who are mostly liberal Democrats at this time on Wikipedia)to have their way on Wikipedia so now there is a political imperative to destroy Wikipedia or at the vary lest heavily damage it’s credibility and rest assured this will happen very soon.

The Wikipedian administrators, who are protecting and foisting Democratic party point of view, by not enforcing their own rules fairly and without prejudice by locking out Republicans from editing on Republican office holders are actually endangering Wikipedia by dragging it into the arena of real-world politics By not allowing fair dialogue on Wikipedia and frezing out Republicans over Democrates, it then will become a political imperative to destroy Wikipedia. This is, again, an example of the sheer stupidity and childlike Naivety of those who run Wikipedia.


Thank you.

Posted by: dtobias

Wikipedia doesn't let Joseph100 get his way on politically-charged edit wars = Wikipedia is evil and must be destroyed.

I have a simple, elegant proof of this, but unfortunately this margin is too small to contain it.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

All of us here are fully aware of the Wikipedian Holy Orders Sacrament that dispenses the grace of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RFA (WP:RFA) in Edit Wars, Personal Attacks, POV Pushing, Revert Wars, ad nauseum, ad sæculorum.

If someone fails to get ordained as a WikiPriest before engaging in such tactics, then that is a strategic error on his or her part, but none of this changes the facts of WikiParochial life itself.

Jonny

Posted by: Skyrocket

"His or her?" Just another proof of the evil. Priests are male, or at least they are in non-evil venues. You can look it up.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

Ha! An obvious symptom of Wiki-Patriarchal mentality.

Jonny

Posted by: JohnA

Wikipedia is evil in a sense because its been perverted from its original good intentions, but the perversion is meant to be "for the benefit of all".

This does not mean that the vast majority of editors who contribute are evil or consciously subscribe to the intellectual abomination. I wonder if some exopedians don't continue out of a religious conviction that it will all turn out all right in the end, that these problems are temporary growth pains.

The Russian Revolution did not start out to be evil, but it was perverted and became worse than the regime it replaced. It ignored human nature and human motivations.

Wikipedia is a classic Marxist project with more than a little dose of Ayn Rand "benevolent selfishness" stirred into the mix.

Posted by: Cedric

Interesting. If Jimbo is WP's Vladimir I. Lenin, who's Stalin?

Posted by: gomi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Raul654

Posted by: Jonny Cache

I think that JohnA is confusing communism with feudalism.

Frankly, I see more relics of the Tsars here than anything else, with SlimVirgin as Catherine-The-Not-So-Great.

TSAR = Totally Shirk All Responsibility

Jonny

Posted by: Skyrocket

And here is part of their http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kizzle/Spoon_Feeding, straight from a disciple of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

Now there's a perfect example of Auto-Spoon-Feeding for ya.

My Manifesto : Never Confuse A Manifesto With A Manifold — Ouch !!!

Jonny

Posted by: Cedric

OMG!! I just had a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Raul654, where he posted a pic of himself. He actually looks like Stalin, although a bit chubbier. A chubby, Cheeto-chomping cyber-Stalin! Aaaaaaaaaugh!

Posted by: Jonny Cache

He claims to be An Oversight —

Finally an honest auto-crudential ...

Jonny

Posted by: Kurt M. Weber

I would submit that no collectivist ideology is "fantastic in theory" precisely the reasons that make it unbearable in practice.

Rand had an excellent remark on this...I must find it.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

Wikipedia is about as Marxist as The Hell's Angels, or some Electric Avenue Street Gang.

Wikimedia, Incorpulated is about as collectivist as the Beverly Hills Yacht Club.

It is simply laughable to attribute any of the usual political ideologies to them.

They are for their ownselves, only, the Self Love Of The Hive (SLOTH).

Jonny

Posted by: Joseph100

That's your assertion. I submit your proof full of bulldonky. It’s flawed, because it contains insufficient facts and an over simplification analysis which distorts your conclusion. The model is too simpleminded just like those who would like to believe it.

Now, grow up, and take your rose-colored Wiki-glasses off figure out what will happen when the big boys take an interest in Wikipedia.

I am not talking about grand illusion of having articles about Klingon verbs or articles about the controversies revolving around whether Galactica is to make it to Earth.

I'm talking about bare knuckles politics, Chicago style Illinois style politics and because the idiot admins and bureaucrats at Wikipedia think that, they can lock out dialogue. That's not going to stop those who want to protect their people whose biographies are on Wikipedia. This is due to Wikipedia as high rating on Google and Yahoo.

Now if administrators were smart and just follow their own rules and do the right thing (which they seem to can't help themselves and not do), then Wikipedia would be safe, but the administrators and bureaucrats can't help themselves and Wikipedia will be dragged into this bare knuckle political arena, where the stakes are very a very high and destruction of Wikipedia may be a reasonable strategy.

I we can beat this horse to death but I present a better analysis.

Fact:
A lot more Wikipedia editors, administrators, and bureaucrats are liberal zealot Democratic Party wonks.

Fact:
A lot less Wikipedia editors and administrators and hardly any bureaucrats are conservative zealot Republican Party wonks.

Fact:
Politician D's biography is lovingly protected by Liberal zealot Wikiedia editors and bureaucrats.

Fact:
Politician D' biography is savaged by conservatives... but since there is more liberals then conservative wonks, Politician D' bio is untouched.

Fact:
Politician R's biography is lovingly protected by conservative wonks, but there are more Liberal zealot editors and bureaucrats, so politician R’s article is left savaged.

Fact:
Conservatives zealot's try, but fail to change Politican R's savaged biography, due to greater numbers of liberal zealot admins Since most administrators do not enforce regulation even handedly, fairly and without bias. Conservative zeatlots gets gang bang and banned

Conclusion:
Since, within the Wikipedia world, jungle law, the tyranny of the majority is the rule of the wiki land, liberal zelolite wonks squelch and locks out conservative zealot wonks.

So, with Wikipedia high rating on the search engines, as well as the fact that there is no justice to be found at Wikipedia, it then becomes necessary to make an “end run” and destroy or diminished Wikipedia.

Because, Wikipedia has entered the political arena they are now at the mercy of its vulgarities.

Whether this is right, wrong, good, or bad, is irrelevant because all this takes place outside Wikipedia's warm and fuzzy confines, in the REAL WORLD, under rules of REAL human behavior and laws. So, if I were wiki- management, regardless of my political ideology, I would very keen to enforce the regulations evenhandedly and honestly with some integrity.

The fact of the massive problems, complaints, and criticism Wikipedia now receives is proof my assertions above are correct.


So, I would suggest you remove your wiki colored shades, take note of the real world under real rules of human and political behavior, and grow up.

Posted by: Kurt M. Weber

I wasn't talking about Wikipedia...I was talking about collectivist ideologies themselves.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

I forget exactly, but I don't think I was responding to anything in that nest of quote boxes itself so much as I was commenting on the general trend of the whole thread above it.

Jonny

Posted by: JohnA

Not really. The Russian Revolution began with the Bolsheviks but was quickly co-opted to the Communism of Lenin and Bolshevism was suppressed.

I cannot stress this enough: Wikipedia is not going away any time soon

What will happen is the Wikimedia Foundation will lose any vestige of control over Wikipedia (probably for financial reasons).

What bothers me is not Wikipedia continuing on its path downwards towards autocracy, but the lack of an effective alternative to Wikipedia.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

Look, in my humble opinion, it's just plain silly to keep calling Wikipedia a Marxist anything. It's almost as if you have bought their own propaganda about populism and "there's nobody here but us wikiprole swiners" baloney.

I think that we are simply seeing the sorts of dynamics that have a relentless tendency to take over and rule in any human group, humble or humongous, simply on account of the fact that it's human beings making it up. Now, we can always see the shape and flow of these phenomena somewhat better when they're across the street instead of when they're right next door, but the plain fact is that the shape and flow is pretty much the same wherever you go.

Jonny

Posted by: bernie724

No but this page should go away.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Wikimedians_by_college_major_or_degree&diff=538221&oldid=512693