Wikipedia displays odd historical record on Farmer City - Bloomington Pantagraph Options

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<img alt="" height="1" width="1" />[b]Wikipedia displays odd historical record on Farmer City[/b]
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By Pantagraph staff pantagraph.com | Posted: Tuesday, May 24, 2011 6:04 pm | Loading… FARMER CITY -- Farmer City was settled by a group of nomadic farmers who simply gave up trying to find fertile soil and later was destroyed by a deadly meteor strike, ...



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[thekohser]

Wikipedia -- if we donate more money, they'll be always improving even more betterer.

Also, while medieval philosophy experts are banned, vandals who make headline news will not even be reprimanded, much less blocked.

This post has been edited by thekohser: Wed 25th May 2011, 4:06am

[EricBarbour]

Also, while medieval philosophy experts are banned, vandals who make headline news will not even be reprimanded, much less blocked.

Not only that, the user who reverted the vandalism, and added good historical material, was called Farmercitymayor.

And he was promptly accused of COI......

Strikerforce (T-C-L-K-R-D) appears to be just another twit trolling for adminship.
With a shit-ton of useless userboxes.

[thekohser]

Strikerforce (T-C-L-K-R-D) appears to be just another twit trolling for adminship.
With a shit-ton of useless userboxes.

He sounds perfect for admin puffery:

...currently self-employed as a commercial voiceover talent, in addition to doing an evening show on a CHR/Top 40 radio station and serving as the Social Media Content Director for that station and its sister stations

Nothing like running a radio station's Facebook page, all while projecting your actions with funny voices.

[Abd]

Wikipedia -- if we donate more money, they'll be always improving even more betterer.

Also, while medieval philosophy experts are banned, vandals who make headline news will not even be reprimanded, much less blocked.

Blocked? He should get a barnstar for demonstrating the ineffectiveness of Recent Changes Patrol.

RCP is good for catching sound-bite vandalism. If a very quick glance at the first few words of text doesn't catch it, it can just slide by.

Flagged revisions (called Pending Changes) would fix this, but, of course, supposedly the community doesn't want PC.

Short of that, a Recent changes review process could be set up whereby all changes are specifically reviewed by an editor who takes the assignment. Volunteering for this process, sitting down and being active, you would "grab" a change from a queue, and it would be yours for a time. You could take all the time you need to check sources, etc. You'd tag it if it needs a tag, etc.

That doesn't mean that someone else couldn't look at the edit, too, but that *all edits* would be seen, in detail, by at least one responsible editor, and the operating mechanism for this would require some kind of acceptance, at a minimum, autoconfirmed. I've done a lot of RCP, and what usually happens is that I find some vandalism, and go to revert it, and someone else has already found it. How many editors does it take to change a light bulb? (As many as waste time in redundant examination.)

I'd think it would be best to set this up off-wiki, because the changes involved in doing it on-wiki would triple traffic, in terms of numbers of edits. We have a disgruntled editor here who claims to be making the kinds of vandalism edits that a simple glance will not detect, changing values for physical constants, for example. If Wikipedia is to grow in reliability, it would be essential that every edit be subject to a real and documented verification review. Flagged revisions, applied to every article, would have done that, given sane review process. The reviewed flag shows acceptance, and this is entirely apart from how the pages are displayed.

[thekohser]

...vandals who make headline news will not even be reprimanded, much less blocked.

So, they reprimand him, just to make a liar out of me.

[Abd]

...vandals who make headline news will not even be reprimanded, much less blocked.

So, they reprimand him, just to make a liar out of me.

Aw, AGF, Greg.

You could frame this as a demonstration that they are paying attention to you. There is no other reason for that warning at this time, the cause is obvious. Congratulations!

However, I'd say that Strikerforce should be trout-slapped, for roughing up a newbie. So, the mayor of the town edited the article, but COI guidelines don't actually prohibit that, per se, and a COI warning should have been accompanied by a thank-you for correcting vandalism. The thank-you should have come first, followed by a gentle, "by the way," be aware of conflict of interest guidelines. Please feel free to ask me if you have any questions .... etc."

My question: the account name indicates a role and should probably be interdicted. Gently, with a suggestion that the mayor set up an account, perhaps with his real name, even, and disclosing that he's mayor on his user page. He's then as transparent as he is with the name he chose, and nothing changes when there is a new mayor.

What if Wikipedia actually encouraged the mayors of small towns to register an account, openly? Indeed, COI has been misunderstood, I've long argued that. We should *encourage* COI editing, but constrain it. That is, we should protect COI accounts from charges of "POV-pushing," since a COI account can be expected to have a POV -- that's the whole point of COI! -- and we should very clearly discourage them and prevent them from revert warring or other problems (such as incivility).

[thekohser]

What if Wikipedia actually encouraged the mayors of small towns to register an account, openly? Indeed, COI has been misunderstood, I've long argued that. We should *encourage* COI editing, but constrain it. That is, we should protect COI accounts from charges of "POV-pushing," since a COI account can be expected to have a POV -- that's the whole point of COI! -- and we should very clearly discourage them and prevent them from revert warring or other problems (such as incivility).

In January 2007, I spoke on national TV about how a point of view automatically comes with expertise. Instead of embracing expertise, Wikipedia shuns it with its COI policies.

[SB_Johnny]

What if Wikipedia actually encouraged the mayors of small towns to register an account, openly? Indeed, COI has been misunderstood, I've long argued that. We should *encourage* COI editing, but constrain it. That is, we should protect COI accounts from charges of "POV-pushing," since a COI account can be expected to have a POV -- that's the whole point of COI! -- and we should very clearly discourage them and prevent them from revert warring or other problems (such as incivility).

In January 2007, I spoke on national TV about how a point of view automatically comes with expertise. Instead of embracing expertise, Wikipedia shuns it with its COI policies.

Well, yes, WP is run by teenagers who don't like to admit that (some) grownups actually know (some) things, and by grown men and women who are absolutely sure there's no difference between a teenager and an adult. Hardly newsworthy.

[Kelly Martin]

Well, yes, WP is run by teenagers who don't like to admit that (some) grownups actually know (some) things, and by grown men and women who are absolutely sure there's no difference between a teenager and an adult.

You forgot the old cranky men (and women) who are absolutely convinced that The Establishment is keeping The Truth from being known. Since all experts are, ipso facto, part of The Establishment, they are inherently untrustworthy. Remember that Wikipedia's culture started out with an (un)healthy dose of armchair anarchism, and the pathological disrespect for established systems that goes with it. The sociocultural evolution of Wikipedia's community is fascinating; unfortunately fairly little good information is available on the first four or five years, which is where so many of the worst decisions were made.

[EricBarbour]

Remember that Wikipedia's culture started out with an (un)healthy dose of armchair anarchism, and the pathological disrespect for established systems that goes with it. The sociocultural evolution of Wikipedia's community is fascinating; unfortunately fairly little good information is available on the first four or five years, which is where so many of the worst decisions were made.

This is true, although I would hasten to say that you can point a finger directly at Master Wales for many of those pre-2004 decisions.

Arbcom was set up in 2004---by Jimbo.
Everyone on it was installed---by Jimbo. And for a couple of years thereafter, Jimbo controlled who was on it.

And the Mediation Committee (which we rarely hear about anymore, mainly because people in an editwar in that sick subculture would rather fight than compromise) was set up in 2003. At the behest of Jimbo. By Mediator (T-C-L-K-R-D) , who was banned for all eternity, for trying to set up his own mediation system--apparently. Or something. This episode is one of those dirty, slimy little things that happened early in Wikipedia's history, that will never be adequately documented by third parties and which people directly involved seem to refuse to discuss.

Many of the same small group of people were involved in both. It was very incestuous. And the "average users" didn't know about these activities, so no one commented on them at the time.

Some of them were actual academics, who Jimbo apparently met via their involvement with Nupedia. Some of them were people who "imposed" themselves onto Wikipedia and made themselves useful to Jimbo, such as Florence Devouard.

And some of both those groups were also cranks who had previously spent a lot of time on Usenet arguing about Scientology, conspiracies, etc. I would put Ed Poor, David Gerard, Kat Walsh, Moeller, and several others in that list.

If you don't believe me, go to Google Groups and type their names into the searchbox. You will find loads of their rants on various Usenet groups, predating 2002. Ed Poor was a remarkably annoying fellow, especially on religion-related groups.

If you still don't believe me, ask Alex756. He was an early WMF member, who quit in 2006 in total disgust with the way it was being run.

Basically, Wikipedia's broken "system of governance" is a direct result of Jimbo installing people who were nuts.