What do you think are the main problems with Wikipedia?, Make a list Options

There has been some discussion lately about what we (Wikipedia Review) are "really" trying to do. One thing that confuses some people coming here is that we actually disagree with each other. Some of us think that some things are big issues, while others disagree. But what do you see as the biggest problems with Wikipedia? If you were going to write an accurate "Criticism of Wikipedia" article, what kinds of things would you include?

I'd like to get an overall kind of view as to what people think are the main problems.

Furthermore, if you want to, you can give examples, links, and even an explanation as to why each problem is the most serious.

To me, the single biggest issue not covered by Wikipedia's Criticism of Wikipedia article is that of controlled articles.

Controlled articles are when a person, or group of people, choose for whatever reason to prevent anyone else from changing an article without their permission. Most controversial articles are controlled articles (especially ones which are still relevant today). Some of the controlled articles may be controlled for fun, but others have a definite political agenda. Whatever the reason for the control, the result is that truth can be presented as fiction, and vice versa. In some cases they can in time change how the general public perceives that issue, especially when Wikipedia mirrors are used as sources in future articles about the topic, and especially with regards to complex controversial issues, where only a select few truly understand all of the nuances. Wikipedia claims that WP:OWN prohibits any controlled articles existing, but they do exist in relatively large amounts. The fact that Wikipedia has such a thing as a "Watch list" encourages controlled articles to exist.

The next biggest issue is that of hidden bias (also not included in Wikipedia's article). People who claim to be completely neutral, yet are actually knowledgeable about the subject have an obvious hidden agenda. Ordinarily we could account for that agenda by researching their qualifications and background and hence their point of view, but Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy prohibits anyone from acknowledging that they have a point of view, and hence people are forced to hide this, meaning that we, as readers, cannot adequately account for their point of view. Wikipedia often bans people for being experts and for acknowledging this expertise, yet on some occasions allows experts to contribute without any opposition at all. If only Wikipedia would allow people to be experts, and perhaps have a mediator between two opposing viewpoints, then things would be fine. As it stands, Wikipedia cannot be reliably used as a research for anything but purely factual statements, because you cannot adequately account for its bias.

The next biggest issue is Wikipedia's unwillingness to conform to any legal statutes. Whilst they have recently introduced a policy for Biographies of Living Persons (BLPs), largely thanks to the efforts of Daniel Brandt, they refuse to allow Legal Threats on the site, and furthermore use their servers to engage in especially nasty statements made against people who for one reason or another they have prohibited from their service - banning people and then smearing their names. At a bare minimum they put "This user is banned" on their user page, and thus ridiculing all of their contributions, but beyond that they tend to like to write about it in talk pages and everywhere else, thus devaluing their statements. And beyond all of that, they keep such things as an Arbitration hearing (if there is one) open for all to see even after the case is finished and they are banned with no possibility of appeal. This is especially bad for people who have real life information on Wikipedia. It serves no useful purpose other than to act as a smear against the people who Wikipedia doesn't like.

The next biggest issue is Wikipedia's unwillingness to accept real criticism of itself. They ban people for daring to say that there is anything wrong, blacklist sites, and at the same time have false criticisms, with such things as the "Criticism of Wikipedia" article, and "Uncyclopedia" pretending that more serious criticisms do not exist.

Anyway that's my point of view on the most serious issues facing Wikipedia. What's yours?

Governance, Accountability, Social Responsibility. Also being mean to Poetlister.

The biggest problem with Wikipedia are ill faithed POV pushers(conflict of interest, pressure groups, lobbies, people writting about themselves etc.) who have infested the project like worms in rotten apples. This is the biggest problem.

The main problem with Wikipedia is the people there. Pure and simple. The people.

The exception is those that selflessly give information like at the reference desk.

Beyond that one exception, the people there are the problem and they all should be banned.

As it stands, Wikipedia cannot be reliably used as a research for anything but purely factual statements, because you cannot adequately account for its bias.

Factual statements can be lies.

Also being mean to Poetlister.

I also dislike Encyclopedia Dramatica for that reason.

Dispute resolution.

People disagree over article content and none of the mechanisms in place work. Instead, editors are stuck in pointless edit wars, wikilawyering and other online violence, often forming cabals for strength in numbers. The admins are no help because they're typically incompetent, arbitrary or key members of cabals. Essentially, there are the outlaws, who are criminals, and then there's the state, which is hopelessly corrupt.

For the record, I'm a white-hat outlaw.

Al

Those are some good points. The problem of cabals and article ownership is perhaps the deepest (and I rant about this elsewhere in this thread), but I'm glad you point out the Wikicultism. Wikipedia has a hostile and paranoid relationship with the real world, and their current pseudo-anonymity policy is self-contradictory and self-destructive.

Al

#1. Problem: Administrators having the carte blanche to bend and even break important policies (assume good faith, article ownership), and getting away with it, while powerless users are supressed by a group of administraitors acting like a ruling class clique.

#2. Problem:Edit warring. Mindless conflict over every article. But this happens, so the main problem with this is the way most editors mediate: MedCab, ArbCom, strike the banhammer. Ideally, people should try, try, try again, but admins want to really play a video game and have no time for mediating seriously.

#3. Problem: Administrators not living up to their reputation as an open-minded, collectively ran, online community. I'm sorry, but it is the exact opposite with closed-minded people trying oligarchic regimes like MONGO, Slimvirgin, Durova, and the like, and harassment of daniel brandt, etc.

#4. Problem:All users are equal, but some users are more equal than others. In other words, users claim that everyone is treated equally, but that is truly not so and just hypocrisy.

This post has been edited by jdrand:

The biggest problem with Wikipedia are ill faithed POV pushers(conflict of interest, pressure groups, lobbies, people writting about themselves etc.) who have infested the project like worms in rotten apples. This is the biggest problem.

This, combined with some of Blissyu2's observations about article ownership is about right. I will note there's some article ownership I approve of, like the evolution article cabal that enforces a fair, reasonable article and sends creationists on their way when they try to insert blatant lies.

Bad faith editors who behave within the requirements of WP:CIVIL are given way too much leeway. Somewhere between Wikipedia's current blocking policy and Citizendium's "When in doubt - block" would probably be a lot more helpful. POV warriors aren't needed to build an encyclopedia, but nobody's willing to just boot them.

It is graffiti disguised as an encyclopedia.

Dispute resolution.

People disagree over article content and none of the mechanisms in place work. Instead, editors are stuck in pointless edit wars, wikilawyering and other online violence, often forming cabals for strength in numbers. The admins are no help because they're typically incompetent, arbitrary or key members of cabals. Essentially, there are the outlaws, who are criminals, and then there's the state, which is hopelessly corrupt.

For the record, I'm a white-hat outlaw.

Al

I think it might be a problem, but not the major one. Dispute resolution such as mediation will only work when both side of a dispute are serious and sincere when requesting it and do not use it to advace their position.

I was part of some dispute resolution in the past, something like three times. And everytime I have been said to do the right thing but then when the other editor found out that his POV pushing will not be supported, he left dispute resolution and resumed his POV pushing.

Most of the time, if both side editors are editig in good faith, understand neutrality, any sort of dispute resolution is useless.

Bad faith editors who behave within the requirements of WP:CIVIL are given way too much leeway. Somewhere between Wikipedia's current blocking policy and Citizendium's "When in doubt - block" would probably be a lot more helpful. POV warriors aren't needed to build an encyclopedia, but nobody's willing to just boot them.

Aha! exactly, many fail to understand that civility is a major requirement when discussing constructivally, which I have done more than failed to do so. But when you are confronted with ill faithed POV pushers who have turned Wikipedia into a war front with major POV pushing and revert waring on countless numbers of articles, civility or not would not change anything, because it is impossible to discuss with someone who is not willing to discuss.

You discuss with people who are willing to discuss, not with POV pushers who edit war like warriors. Many administrators are fixed on civility but don't want to do anything else. Wikipedia has nothing to deal with POV pushing, this is the only thing which will destroy it, administrators can be as corrupt as possible, if editors edit in good faith the project will work. But now under the current situation Wikipedia's popularity has made of it a vehicule for POV pushers who provoke others with their POV pushing and edit warring, and those others have no way to deal with them. In my case I turned into personal attacks to stop that because I had no ressources at all, that's what got me banned. They just thought I was a major problem and searched for evidence in consequences of that to justify my banning. Obviously I was not the major problem as few months later another arbitration case was opened(and an evidence page at least two times larger) on the same issue because the underlying problem which is POV pushing was not fixed. And since the arbitration can not do anything to fix this, it is more than probable that more and more arbitration cases will follow because they fix the consequences NOT the underlying problem.

I see no other option than doing like Citizidium, you need your true name to edit, but those who do not provide those informations could still creat articles in their talkpage and discuss in talkpages but can not edit the mainspaces or creat articles. This will slow down progression but could be a tool against POV pushers.

I've never been involved in dispute resolution.

I was told that it was pointless to attempt dispute resolution, and just to ban me for good, no chances offered.

Maybe I was just unlucky.

That's a pretty common reaction. Once people are attacked by an RFC or RFCU or whatever other excuse the powers that be need to justify using the banhammer, and they see which way the deck is stacked, they tend to just walk away, sometimes with a suicide note. There's not much point defending yourself, especially if you're innocent. The more you do, the worse the punishment, and the more your friends get fucked over for coming to your defense. Here's my goodbye message, which I think is pretty typical.

The extra bit of irony in my case is that my ban expired a while back, but was extended indefinitely on utterly unsubstantiated sock puppet charges. Any excuse will do, once they've determined the desired outcome. It's nonsense like this that makes Wikipedia such a joke.

Al

I think it might be a problem, but not the major one. Dispute resolution such as mediation will only work when both side of a dispute are serious and sincere when requesting it and do not use it to advace their position.

I was part of some dispute resolution in the past, something like three times. And everytime I have been said to do the right thing but then when the other editor found out that his POV pushing will not be supported, he left dispute resolution and resumed his POV pushing.

Most of the time, if both side editors are editig in good faith, understand neutrality, any sort of dispute resolution is useless.

Dispute resolution is the key issue precisely because POV pushers want to injet bias into articles and no amount of discussion can dissuade them. Either they're not editing in good faith, or they're so far gone that they can't see any difference between their bias and NPOV.

I'd been involved in various sorts of mediations and none of them have ever been both binding and fair at the same time. Instead, bringing in third parties amounts to rolling the dice, and is as likely to get you banned as anything else. That's why people just learn to edit war, form cabals and suck up to admins.

Al

One thing that is a serious problem with it being described as "Dispute resolution" is that a "remedy" can include banning someone for life! That shouldn't even be an option if it was seriously considered to be dispute resolution. Dispute resolution should be aiming at a win-win. But Wikipedia's version of dispute resolution never aims at a win-win.

There has been some discussion lately about what we (Wikipedia Review) are "really" trying to do. One thing that confuses some people coming here is that we actually disagree with each other. Some of us think that some things are big issues, while others disagree. But what do you see as the biggest problems with Wikipedia? If you were going to write an accurate "Criticism of Wikipedia" article, what kinds of things would you include?

I'd like to get an overall kind of view as to what people think are the main problems.

Furthermore, if you want to, you can give examples, links, and even an explanation as to why each problem is the most serious.

Blissy,

I gave some answers in another thread. I don't know if it's frowned upon here to repost something, especially if it's pretty recent, so if this offends anyone, I apologize in advance.

The thing is that most people on Wikipedia Review *LIKE* most parts of Wikipedia. Shock, horror, that's quite true. Why would we be discussing Wikipedia even if we hated all aspects of it? Of course we wouldn't. Most of us like most aspects of Wikipedia, but have 1 or 2 things that we don't like. What those things are varies between us.

Common themes include:

1) Wikipedia allowing people to edit under pseudonyms (not their real name)
2) Wikipedia making it so ridiculously easy to create multiple accounts (no e-mail check even, or IP check)
3) The NPOV policy and how it creates hidden POVs
4) Articles that are controlled, and hence create a false version of truth
5) The manner that Wikipedia decides which articles stay and which go (Articles for Deletion), the lack of true polls and the inherent misuse of such an arbitrary way to decide what stays and what goes
6) The focus on "Vandals" when they could quite easily have software that dealt with that, which seems to cover up their more serious problems
7) Their inability to acknowledge true criticism
8) The misuse and abuse of sock puppet accusations to win arguments, ban users, and win edit wars - which ultimately leads to truth being changed in to falsehoods
9) The manner that Request for Adminship works - everyone votes "Support", you support each other, it is all very predictable, and anyone who plays the game right could easily become administrator
10) The misuse of the Oversight command for anything other than legally dangerous removals (e.g. Jayjg's oversighting of Lockerbie bombing edits and SlimVirgin's contributions) - note: few here disagree with oversight existing, just it is misused
11) The existence of CheckUser to replace the regular old ability of all admins to see IPs
12) That Wikipedia actually bans people for legal threats
13) That Arb Com cases remain after a person is banned, and can be used to damage a person's reputation
14) The ability to change a rule while you are doing something against the rule, until the rule reflects that what you are doing is okay (E.g. Verifiability rules, manipulated by SlimVirgin to win edit wars)
15) The hodge-podge way that Wikipedia started, without firm rules, and trying not to ban anyone, that led to a secret group of powerful users controlling it all

But these, and probably other criticisms, are not shared by everyone here. Each of us has perhaps 4 or 5 of them that they share, and then we disagree with others.

Reasons #2, 5, 6, 8, 10, 13, and 14 are the ones that bother me the most about WP. I don't understand why IPs are still allowed to edit when statistics indicate 90% of vandalism comes from IP editors. I think Wikipedia could focus a lot more on clean-up of unsourced and incorrect material if it didn't waste so much energy reverting vandalism. Wikipedia could still be "the encyclopedia anyone can edit", since anyone can still create an account. Requiring editors to provide a valid non-web based e-mail address, as WR does, wouldn't eliminate sock abuse, but it would reduce it, and prevent tons of vandalism.

The AFD concern for me is how few people show up to many AFD discussions, which still somehow result in the "consensus" of the "community". How on earth can an XFD with only three participants, one !voting keep, and two delete, result in a "delete" consensus from the community? And yet it happens quite often. The thing that worries me most about AFD discussions, however, are the mass deletion nominations, where a hundred articles are nominated for deletion at the same time, which appears to be a more and more common practice.

The ability of some users to change the rules mid-debate is terrible. It is dispiriting and frustrating for ANY editor to quote a policy or guideline during a discussion, only to have it "magically change" a couple hours later, at the whim of the opposing editors. And yet this happens all the time. Anyone who does this to another editor has never had it happen to him/herself, I guarantee. It is one of the most frustrating things I have felt on WP. Well, that and seeing good users (like Massiveego) blocked for literally *nothing*.

One thing that is a serious problem with it being described as "Dispute resolution" is that a "remedy" can include banning someone for life! That shouldn't even be an option if it was seriously considered to be dispute resolution. Dispute resolution should be aiming at a win-win. But Wikipedia's version of dispute resolution never aims at a win-win.

I agree with you for the most part, but I think there are editors who really should be "banned for life". I'm not talking about editors who have simply crossed other editors, or even editors who have difficulty getting along with other editors. IMO [[User:Freestylefrappe]] should never have been community banned, for example, despite some civility/sockpuppetry issues.

But there are some accounts that, no matter the amount of dispute resolution, will never become (not sure what word to use here: good? productive? positive?) contributors. Some accounts were created just to disturb Wikipedia. There's no reason for them to edit, except to provoke problems and cause misery to other editors.

Of course, in the majority of dispute resolution cases, the dispute is between two or more users acting in good faith. It seems like a lot of the cases do end in lose-win or lose-lose situations.

Okay, here's my list of people that should be banned, on a project by project basis, but applicable to any project:

Ban a user for good if:

1) Their one and only point to come to the project was to upset the project (includes hackers, GNAA trolls, regular trolls, and anyone who was there purely to destroy it e.g. Malber & Grace Note from here) AND you are CERTAIN that that is the case.

2) They are breaking the law while using your project (includes someone stalking other users, making racist hate speech, libel, or a myriad of other applicable laws)

Actually, that's pretty much it.

I also agree with short-term bans for people doing something less, such as:

1) Continued harassment of another user, even when asked to stop (again, it may be unintentional or well-meaning or it may stop later)

2) Deliberately breaking the rules of the project in protest (they may be making a point, trying to criticise, trying to demonstrate that the project has flaws)

3) Deliberately attacking all admins, and/or the main admin BECAUSE of their rank, or attacking the project as a whole (once again, their criticism may have merit, so this should be done if you are confident that their criticism is not constructive, but allowed back after a period of time)

4) Constant ignoring of all requests by admins, flaunting of rules, and acting like they are above everything else (you need to ban such people to be able to enforce your own rules, but you also need to allow them to come back to demonstrate that you are forgiving and that people are allowed to be law-abiding)

Many of Wikipedia's bans are reasonable. In terms of sheer numbers, the vast majority of them are reasonable.

However, bad reasons to ban include:

1) Banning someone purely because you don't like them.

2) Banning someone because you think that they are wrong (or even if they are wrong)

3) Banning someone as a way of taking sides in a dispute (unless you ban both sides, and they are both temporary bans) - you should be aiming to have a win-win situation in any kind of a dispute

4) Banning someone for a legal threat, or because they are following the law and pointing out that someone else might not be. SO WRONG IT IS UNBELIEVABLE! This goes back to point 2 in reasons to indef ban someone - for breaking the law. If you indef ban someone for breaking the law, you have to allow someone to be able to point out this breach, even if it might be wrong. This is one of the most absurd rules I've ever heard of anywhere.

The thing is that Wikipedia tends to write more about bans that they realistically know that they shouldn't have made. They don't seem to even care all that much about the cases which they actually should be banning people for.

Of course, in the majority of dispute resolution cases, the dispute is between two or more users acting in good faith. It seems like a lot of the cases do end in lose-win or lose-lose situations.

Are they? I'd say that the majority of dispute resolution cases involve at least one person who's biased to the point that they want the article to reflect their POV, without any attempt at being neutral. Disagreements among reasonable people are usually resolved by communication and compromise, not outside force.

Of course, now that the dispute resolution process has earned itself such a terrible track record, I'd say the particpants can be broken down into two types. The first involves of at least one naive newbie who thinks dispute resolution works and is in for an unpleasant surprise. The second is launched by a dedicated POV warrior to silence the opposition, typically with help from a cabal that has at least one admin.

Al

Of course, in the majority of dispute resolution cases, the dispute is between two or more users acting in good faith. It seems like a lot of the cases do end in lose-win or lose-lose situations.

Are they? I'd say that the majority of dispute resolution cases involve at least one person who's biased to the point that they want the article to reflect their POV, without any attempt at being neutral. Disagreements among reasonable people are usually resolved by communication and compromise, not outside force.

Of course, now that the dispute resolution process has earned itself such a terrible track record, I'd say the particpants can be broken down into two types. The first involves of at least one naive newbie who thinks dispute resolution works and is in for an unpleasant surprise. The second is launched by a dedicated POV warrior to silence the opposition, typically with help from a cabal that has at least one admin.

Al

Indeed, disagreements between reasonable editors very rarely needs to go farther than talk pages, or maybe Request for Comments (which is actually useful, especially if it's just a two editor good faith dispute) Most ArbCom cases should be handing out bans and blocks, because a group of only worthwhile editors should never let it get that far.