IMHO there are three things that compete for top position in this category.

1) The WP notion that "anyone can edit". Total nonsense. Editing, in the proper sense of the word, requires considerable skill, experience, and a dedication to accuracy and lucidity -- which are notably absent at a majority of WP articles "edited" by self-styled "editors".

2) The manner and method whereby editing histories can be deleted and/or falsified and/or manipulated, i.e. made to disappear without trace, without anyone ever knowing who did it.

3) The deletion of accurate information which is then replaced with inaccurate or misleading information; and when you complain too loudly, you're then blocked for "disruption".

Criticisms of Wikipedia (Jan 1, 2008)

Wikipedians.

Senior management abides by the Peter Principle.

There's also a very insightful, in-depth critical analyis of WP "methodology" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ed_Fitzgerald/thoughts

Anonymous people who complain about Wikipedia.

Anonymous people who edit Wikipedia.

Arbitrators who have no background experience in writing or knowing how to write an encyclopedia.

The wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald.

This stuff is now found at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Beyond_My_Ken/thoughts

Some interesting insights sprinkled about, but mostly tl;dr.

People who are dicks to everyone, all the time.

Self important pinheads with narrow scopes of sub-competence who insist on trying to be experts in fields to which they are genetically poorly fit.

People who insist that the sheer volume of edits to subjects almost nobody cares about entitles them to proudly display the above two personality disorders

That's because WP is ego-driven, not value-driven.

I was talking about Jeffrey Peters, specifically.

Well played Mr. V. Given Ottava's first of the nested quotes above any request for redaction will certainly look silly.

A little strange, because I asked for a long time for redactions and was told by you and others no. SB Johnny used my name quite often, as did the above stalker.

Funny how you then try to attack me on a ground like that, showing that you are willing to just make up things.

By the way, GBG, what is your real name? You want to make a comment about me, then why don't you provide your name for everyone?

I pinky swear I'm not going to engage you further...after this post...because you just make it too easy. So let's get this straight. You just hate it when anybody acts as an anon to either edit Wikipedia or even criticize Wikipedia. But you use a pseudonym to do both. When this pseudonym is linked to your real name you demand redaction. It is the request, which you admit making, that make you look ridiculous and hypocritical. The refusal to grant it just makes you look powerless and ineffective. You just seem to not like it when some people manage their privacy better than you.

Mr. V is doubtlessly "trolling" you. Calling him a "stalker" pretty much yields the day to him. He just out maneuvered you, which I grudgingly admire.

http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikime...oundation/46582

For the link averse:

"On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 3:32 PM, Jeffrey Peters
<17peters <at> cardinalmail.cua.edu> wrote:
> Austin,
>
> Maybe you didn't realize but I am the top organizer of Wikiversity. Gerard's
> call for political activism against that organization is completely
> unacceptable and harms projects like my own that have to deal with large
> institutions and the rest.
>
> If you want to claim that I should be moderated, then push that fringe
> political view as you just did, then there is something very wrong here.
> Your statements about the legality have been 100% wrong, to an embarrassing
> extent. These two combined represent a very major problem.
>
> The Foundation-l is for Foundation discussion, and not for pushing fringe
> views that would embarrass our projects. You do realize that, right?
> Moderators serve only as long as they enforce that, and are you going to
> demonstrate in the above that you will be doing 100% opposite of your job?
>
> Sincerely,
> Jeffrey Peters
> aka Ottava Rima
>"

You identified yourself on a public mailing list. The cat is out of the bag.

Had you not had such a raging hate boner for anyone who opposed even the slightest of your whims when you were the "top organizer of Wikiversity" and had you not had a similar erectile response regarding waving your e-peen around about your "qualifications" then you would not, now, find yourself in this predicament.

However, that is water under the bridge and you are incontrovertibly outed by your own hand.

Please try to find the sand to deal with your own internally generated difficulties.

The less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.
--Clint Eastwood

There is a difference between being anonymous and not wanting my full name posted by people who are posting it solely to try and harass.

Do you refer to thekohser as thekohser or Greg? Furthermore, there are various levels of personal information that are beyond a name.

And here is the thing: if you want to use my name, don't be a coward and hide behind a fake identity. It is that simple. If you are unwilling to put your name out there you have no right to use mine.



I have him on ignore because I don't care. However, -you- made a post and I can't ignore you because of your status. That is something frustrating which I have asked Somey time after time to fix.

You have me on ignore, yet sometimes answer me directly, because I keep knocking the stuffing out of you in the conversation.

You are the classic bully who prefers to argue with those who won't fight back.
You are the classic bully in that you appeal to the crowd while being a dick.
You are the classic bully that harangues the victim forever and then decries the situation when someone else subjects them to anything similar.

You have spent the last 4-5 years editing Wikipedia and trying to gain ephemeral power only to find out that very nearly everyone there can't stand to work with you.
You are BANNED from multiple projects.
If you search through Wikipedia with Everything enable for "Ottava Rima" and just hit the appearances at ANI, you quickly put together the profile of a smug, insecure bully.

Wear your Columbian necktie with pride.

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=29188

Plus,

It has been discussed before - GBG's Moderator status makes him unable to be ignore. I have complained to Somey about that.

Just to humor you, I tried again and it wouldn't work. So it hasn't been fixed. I stated that was the case in the post you respond to, so please just read what I say instead of doing things like that.

Ottava, those of us who have grown up have learned to practice a thing called self-restraint. We can ignore your posts without having to ask the computer to do it for us.

You might give this a try. Don't worry, it won't hurt that much.

It's a rule, Ottava. Global Moderators, Staff, and Staffy cannot be ignored by anyone. It's not Somey's decision, anyway. Selina made the rule when someone ignored her after she issued a rude user warnings years ago. It would be up to Selina to change that and she is unlikely to do so for your sake. And Selina will not even consider your request unless you approach her nicely and treat her with dignity and respect. She's a nice person, but if you piss her off, you'll never post here again ever. She once banned two Reviewers for a year and locked the software to prevent Somey and others from unbanning them. So, if you want the feature removed, you'll have to diplomatically appeal to Selina for its removal and drop it if she declines your request.

Could a kind mod move this off-topic exchange to WRR? Thanks.

If that is true, why are you responding?


By the way, lets add this to the list: members of Wikipedia who had no background in writing yet took over leadership of Wikipedia and caused most of the problems, then comes to WR and bitches about the problems she created.

Why Kelly Martin was ever allowed at an encyclopedia is beyond belief, but it goes right up there with Essjay and Gerard for winning picks.




And The Joy, I stated that I couldn't ignore him because of his moderator status before you linked to a post about ignoring. Then I repointed that out and you try to be smug. That is two posts in a row that you show that you can't read or you can read and you feel like being smug. Either way, it doesn't make you look good, so stop.

I think the gamesmanship which goes on is probably a big turn-off for many Wikipedia participants. For example, earlier today I attempted to use one of Wikipedia's early dispute resolution forums to resolve a concern I had over another editor's conduct on an article talk page. After posting notification on the other editor's talk page, I expected his friends who had his user talk page watched would come and defend him at the forum, using ad hominem tactics, which is what occurred.

Now, those of us who are regular participants in Wikipedia are used to this kind of stuff, and I, unfortunately, may have participated in that kind of behavior myself at times. The problem is with new editors, who I think, based on my observations, are often bewildered and disgusted when they encounter this kind of behavior when they try to engage in the dispute resolution process. You can see it just looking at other threads on that Wikiquette page.

Wikipedia has got to implement some measures to make the dispute resolution system more orderly, civilized, quicker, less adversarial, and less subject to the gang warfare that goes on now when cabals of like-minded editors rush to try to head-off threats to one of their friends by viciously attacking the complaining editor. Another example was the recent Cirt RfC, when editors, one of whom was Raul654 (Wikipedia's front page manager!), called me and Jayen Nazis and liars, without sanction. How are recreational, part-time editors of Wikipedia expected to react to seeing or experiencing this kind of thing?

Ottava, the post I linked to explained that moderators can't be ignored. It's been a rule for years.

Yes, and this is the third time I will have to say that I know that already. I merely mentioned it because I said if I could I would have ignored GBG in addition to the others.

Gesh.




Cla68

You had to know that the MathSci thing wouldn't have worked right? If you want to talk about gamesmanship, why not do what the game players do and just have someone "neutral" do such things like that? A lot of people use email or IRC to ping a different person each time to stack the decks and then eventually go to ANI or ArbCom and say "Look at how this one person has so many neutral people upset over it".

It is the oldest tactic in the book.

You're right. It shouldn't be that way.

Wikipedia needs more "normal" people as participants. By "normal", I mean people who simply edit Wikipedia as a casual hobby, maybe spending an hour or two on it each week gradually helping build articles that interest them, as opposed to the current situation where about 1,000 regular editors are obsessively doing everything. Casual editors just don't have any patience for the kind of treatment they get when they try to deal with someone in the ID, science, anti-cult, pikachu, or whatever cabal. I don't blame them at all.

Hey, there is nothing wrong with the Pikachu cabal.

But seriously - you are leaving out (from what it seems) the 99% of people who don't seriously edit articles. There are a few decent gnomes (people who work on grammar, clean up such, etc), but besides them the majority of non content people have no real reason to be there. They flood various discussions with whatever preconceived notions they have or, more likely, jump in whatever side they think will help them get into positions of power.

I don't think Mathsci is a bad person. I don't think Raul is. But I do think they would be more cooperative or nicer if they didn't have myspacers reinforce them in situations that they should instead be trying to seek a compromise on.


Think of it this way: you put four scientists in a company. They disagree on an issue with 2 on one side and 2 on another. They either come to terms with the disagreement, seek some neutral ground, or whatever. They normally don't try to get the other two fired and, if they did, there would be no real clout for them to do such.

However, if you take ten random people and add it to the mix, that changes the whole dynamic. Instead of it being 2 vs 2, it could be 2 vs "the group". By gaining a mob on your side, it no longer matters if you are right or wrong. You can do whatever you want. So you stop being careful, you stop trying to find compromise or work with people, etc. Why? Because you don't have to. Remember, a decent person in a mob becomes a douche. Rarely would an ordinary person loot, burn things, etc. Put them in a mob and things change. Individual conscience is replaced with group think.

And the toxic people came here from which site?........


A large number of people here, and on Wikipedia, would disagree with that assessment.

I'm beginning to wonder if someone's paying you to troll WR, Ottava.

I didn't say Mathsci or Raul were correct. I just said I don't think they are -bad-. Raul, at least, is someone who was never mean to me.



Remember, I was part of the FAC crowd. I worked with Raul. We don't agree politically but he always seemed willing to work with me on things like the Rosalind Picard matter.

And Eric - I don't think we've ever had a problem and I don't think you are a bad person. There are only a few people on Wiki or WR that I think are bad people (maybe 6 or so) and you can pretty much guess who they are. By the way, why are you still indeffed for one edit of "outing". It has been over a year. The community didn't agree to a ban (plus, it was proposed by Aitias who was shown the door). The admin who made the block on you was Lar, who was pretty much disgraced after the Stewards basically told him to screw off. Have you ever tried approaching an admin about being let back in?

It depends on who is to respond your question.

John Seigenthaler would have probably said that the worst thing about WP is that anybody could vandalize an article and to damage one reputation.

I as a former Wikipedia editor believe that the worst thing on Wikipedia is bullying. As Proofreader77 said it: "Of course, Wikipedia needs its bullies — it does not pay salaries, but there is the psychic pleasures of bullying."

Some policies or rather their enforcement even support bulling. For example, if an admin is brave and fair enough to revert an unfair AE block, this admin is desysopped at once, not a bully that imposed the block, but the one, who undid unfairness. That happened User:Trusilver even after the community has spoken.
On the other hand, when a heavily involved admin blocks an editor, nothing happens. For example A bully Gwen Gale blocked the editor in a middle of arbitration case that was initiated to discuss her prior idiotic block (read harassment) of the same editor, and nobody said anything to Gwen Gale, and nobody unblocked the editor, who was bullied. Do not members of Arbcom understand that using administrative tools, when involved is the same as when a bully-teen harasses a toddler?

Because I don't want back in. Okay?

Can you even begin to understand the depths of the hatred I have for those imbeciles and liars??
It amuses me to attack and mock them. In no way do my mockeries represent an affirmation
of the "Wiki-Way", or even of the "right of Wikipedia to exist". I don't hang around WR because
I want to get back in and write 4000 stubs about Turkish villages, as that asshole Blofeld is doing
this month. I don't even hang around WR because I think Wikipedia can be "saved" or "reformed".
It can't. It will go down hard, and it will be very embarrassing.

Wikipedia is a toxic parasite. It has learned to attach itself to the teat of nonprofit-fundraising,
and now has a staff of people dedicated to telling tech-industry twiddlers "keep giving us MORE and
MORE MONEY, because we have to save Wikipedia!" Meanwhile, the actual database is getting more
and more FUCKED every day. And the edit figures continue to decline, despite Sue's secret exhortations
to mental cases like Blofeld and Merovingian and Carlossuarez46 to keep edit counts and article
creation pumped up, in any manner possible. (Hint: they use translation bots. Lots of them.)

It's a giant TURD, Jeffrey. You are spending a good chunk of your life trying to save a TURD.
IMO, you are just as foolish as any of the teenaged basement-dwelling Wiki-Faithful.

Sorry.

Wikipedia's Terms of Service.

I thought I was doing this solely because I was a narcissist?

But yes, if you hate Raul et al, wouldn't it be better to be unblocked just to taunt them?

This statement is true of pretty much all exchanges involving Ottava. Can we get this added to the board FAQ maybe?

A little odd seeing as how I have many, many friends here on their various names and yet you don't really seem capable of any human interaction that doesn't show how you lash out in order to compensate for your inadequacies.

And why are you here? You were part of the system and caused the problems people are complaining about. Do you just like taunting them? Here to try and trick the new people without a clue? No one really likes you. Do you enjoy that?

William Connolley is of course a famous publicly disgraced POV pusher, but who is ScottyBerg?

Also a famous publicly disgraced POV pusher. He's a sock of Mantanmoreland (T-C-L-K-R-D) , aka Gary Weiss.

Another bad thing about Wikipedia is that nobody cares about content contributors, who are often sacrificed to trolls and bullies. At the image Jimbo is barely seen behind the trolls while content contributors are being banned, blocked and humiliated with all kind of sick punishments bullies administrators could think of

Wow! Is this common knowledge? Is there hard evidence? Is there an... SPI?

Someone should tell Will Beback. I understand he's opposed to socking.

Strangely, that is my all-time favorite song!

The worst thing about Wikipedia is that it is free. If Jimbo charged an annual fee to participate, you'd see a much more professional website that placed its emphasis on editorial quality instead of game playing.

Of course, that would leave us with relatively little to talk.

Irony

Since some of the worst things about WP are the personalities of the people who control it, it's rather hard to stay away from some of that, in criticizing the site.

For me personally, the hardest thing to take about WP is the shear amount of dishonesty in it. It is full of "policies" that are lies, and these are lies that the faithful are expected to regurgitate when needed. Instead of trying to fix things so that the policies of WP describe what it actually is, and what it actually is trying to do, instead there remain these descriptions which have nothing to do with reality.

Example: The 5 pillars: WP:5P. These are supposed to be the be-all and end-all of WP policy. They start out by saying that WP is an "online encyclopedia." Well, it's not that. Or it's far more than that. For one thing, WP includes an awful lot of lists of crap. In fact there's a list of lists of the crap: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lists_of_lists. No encyclopedia of other types would tolerate such lists of crap. This, notwithstanding the fact that the word "encyclopedia" is not well-defined, in the first place. We don’t really know what Wikipedia actually IS, but for certain, WP comes much closer to being an "indiscriminate list of information" than any other known encyclopedia does. And yet-- WP says it is NOT an indiscriminate list of information—see WP:INFO. Any time something tries to define itself in terms of what it is NOT, you know you have problems.

WP is not even successful there. As much as WP claims to be WP:NOTNEWS, for example, it is instantly updated as the news comes out. This is true of weather, people, current events, etc, etc. Very often this results in the bias of “recentism.”

Another claim in the pillars is that Wikipedia is written from a “neutral point of view.” This meaningless phrase means (apparently) that WP strives “for articles that document and explain the major points of view in a balanced impartial manner.” Of course, somebody must decide on the balance, and for this, WP claims that it tries to summarize published reliable sources, so it is actually talking about published major points of view. But WP wants more: it has a bias against what it calls “self-published sources” WP:SPS. The central idea here (never explicitly defended with any sort of evidence) is that information published directly by parties, or paid for directly by parties, is less likely to be reliable or likely to be truthful, than if the publication costs are paid for instead by advertisers (!) or subscribers/readers. Well, who says so? There are reasons this sometimes tends to be true for expensive paper publication (though also many examples where it is not—see your local tabloid), but WP is WP:NOTPAPER and doesn’t only use only paper sources (in fact, usually does not use paper sources). Wikipedia contains endless debates in the reliability of sources: WP:IRS. But WP claims they “try to avoid advocacy and we characterize information and issues rather than debate them.” This is in fact boloney; such debate is endless, and quite often the debate about the “reliability of sources” is simply a proxy for it.

If WP ever decided it that it knew what it wanted to be, or didn’t want to be, it might be able to give some reasons for its policies. As it is, WP generally is what it is simply because somebody wanted to do something and won-out in an edit war, and blocked the people who wanted to do something else. Thus, WP frequently can do no better for its policy reasoning than the sad little essay WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, which is often quoted as though it was a policy or guideline, but actually just points out that one should not argue about putting a thing into WP because somebody else has done something like it elsewhere, while at the same time admitting that often no other argument is available, and that in the past major notability guidelines on information inclusion have grown up, in just this way. So we have here an essay that contradicts itself, is frequently cited as though it were policy, and yet, actually isn’t any kind of rule at all. It’s hard to come up with a better example of why Wikipedia can be crap, and frequently is.

I’m going to stop now, as I’m in danger of tl;dr. But you did ask.

Why, there was an SPI. It got closed and the filer was blocked. Cla68 brought the matter up, but got brushed off by the ArbCom.

There's a discussion about this here.

A man to my heart.

Pedophila is one thing and sure it's deplorable. A potentially more dangerous and pathological thing IMHO is georgewilliamherbet's bizarre Explosives project, which is more-or-less a DIY manual on how to manufacture terrorist bombs using easily obtainable ingredients. I suggest the reason why such topics are allowed at WP -- encouraged even -- is to falsely convey the impression that WP democratically supports "freedom of expression" and, unlike "authoritarian" regimes, is against censorship. Whereas, in reality, censorship is the norm in certain topic areas such as geo-politics, international relations, and modern military history, among others. Go blow yourself up GWH, you self-righteous piece of crap.

The Wikipediot anthem.

I was reading some conversations on Wikipedia going back as far as 2006 and one thing that kept standing out was the use of "malicious civility" and "naive civility" Wikipedians keep engaging in. "Malicious civility" is civility (WP:CIVIL, WP:NPA, WP:AGF) used as a weapon to silence enemies and push through their own POV or position. If someone does something wrong, the accuser is lambasted for being uncivil, being a bad Wikipedian, and being a big meanie. "Naive civility" can be malicious, ignorant, or completely naive that Wikipedians can actually do bad things. "Oh, Mantanmoreland socking? I'm aghast at such a thought! Who would violate Wikipedia's rules and mission this way? No! It's not true! That's impossible!" And the accuser must be a very bad person to think there are bad people on Wikipedia.

I just can't believe that there were and still are Wikipedians that view Wikipedia as some perfect utopia where one can do no wrong. I do exaggerate with the North Korea/USSR analogies, but Wikipedia does seem to have a "cult of personality" though not around a person, but Wikipedia itself with its twisted policies and social rules. I know organizations hate "muck-rakers," contrarians, rebels, and outside thinkers, but good organizations will retain these people and put them into positions where they have voice and improve the organization. Instead, Wikipedians spend more time trying to get rid of reformers instead of working with them. Yes, it can be frustrating, yet it is ultimately good for the project to have dissent to always push for the next great thing and break up any echo chambers. Otherwise, you stagnate and drown in your own poo.

Assume good faith, comrade, or you're gone!