Wikicrap

Posted on January 5, 2009 by Scott Jennings| 71 Comments

Wikipedia is a perfect example of the tragedy of the commons: where multiple individuals acting independently in their own self-interest can ultimately destroy a shared resource even where it is clear that it is not in anyone’s long term interest for this to happen.

I love Wikipedia. I use it constantly, like in the sentence above. For the big picture stuff, Wikipedia works. Take the article on Hamas for example – a nuanced treatment of currently one of the most explosive (literally) topics in the news today. In this, it benefits from high visibility, and a lot of people pushing and pulling at cross-currents to come up with the “conventional wisdom” on a given subject. It has about 10 or so edits a day, and editing with an axe to grind is treated as vandalism and pruned in short order. Wikipedia works precisely as advertised here – the wisdom of the many is outed in the struggle of the everyday. Beautiful phrase,  no? Pity it doesn’t work anywhere else.

Let’s take a look at two people: Raph Koster and myself. You know, I’m going to just go out on a limb here and say Raph’s had a bit more impact on virtual world development than I have. Yet poor Raph gets one breezy paragraph and a credits list, and I get a loving dissertation (which I didn’t write, by the way) on the various ebb and flows of my blogging history. (Which mind you, used to be even longer.) Richard Bartle freaking helped invent MUDs and his entry is mostly about how he pisses World of Warcraft players off. Good thing Rob Pardo has a good entry! Oh wait, no, he doesn’t, his entire biography is how he hates Paladins. NO, I AM NOT JOKING AT ALL. Thanks, Wikipedia, for focusing on what’s really important about the career of the lead designer of the most successful MMO in history. You rock. Especially since, apparently according to Wikipedia, I am the most important MMO developer of our time. I’m getting a plaque or something now.

As a result, we have a bit of a kerfluffle (described by Bartle and Koster) where an angry Wikipedian decided that a MUD he may or may not have used to play isn’t “notable“, meaning that it isn’t worthy of being included in the same category of knowledge as, say, ponyplay. To be fair, the article in question does read more like an ad than a descriptor. But the talk page (a page attached to each wiki entry where people can discuss the pros and cons of MUDding, ponyplay, or both) descends into Shakespearean madness and it’s pretty clear that some uninvolved rational adult needs to step in and thwap everyone on the nose. Of course, no such individual actually exists, so we get people with duelling ASCII signature tags arguing over encyclotrivia.

But maybe it’s just MMOs where Wikipedia falls down. Let’s look at two other people: Barack Obama and Lyndon LaRouche. Space aliens would, just judging from Wikipedia, judge LaRouche as equally notable as Obama. (Luckily, they’d probably also find it easier to communicate with him). This is a good example of where Wikipedia just craps all over itself – since Wikipedia is a hivemind, there’s no policing save that of interested parties – and the interested parties in LaRouche’s case happen to be, well, LaRouchies who think he’s the pre-eminent economist of our times or something. Again, there’s no controlling legal authority (thanks, Al Gore!) so the occasional random visitor dumbstruck by such statements as “LaRouche was credited by press in Italy and Argentina as the economist who successfully forecast the financial crisis of 2007–2008″ (note: this may in fact be true, if you come from the Moon) are attacked themselves as having “conflicts of interest“.

Wikipedia is like the web writ manifest – a huge body of knowledge, with no guidance save that of its priesthood, who ensure that there is no editorial voice whatsoever. Which would work, if everyone on the planet agreed on important moral issues, and was sane, and didn’t have axes to grind, and knew what they were talking about. Failing that, it’s much like, well, reading a blog. You might get something of interest, or you might get the leavings of some random game developer ranting about arcane geeky political issues on his lunch break.

And hey, if you think I’m off the wall when it comes to Wikipedia, try Prokofy Neva’s opinion. Having Wikipedia vetted through Second Life? Well, at least then we’d be able to grief the LaRouchies, I suppose.

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  • sinij

    Would the world be better is Wiki never existed? I don’t think so. So whatever its flaws are, and there are numerous, it is a net gain for humanity.

  • http://www.4rca.com breed

    I only use Wiki to look up band bio information. Other than that it is mostly worthless.

  • Zuzax

    I think Wikipedia is now an MMOG, populated by rival editing guilds.

  • http://www.vinull.com Michael C. Neel

    This is what we blog about in 2009 – Wikipedia isn’t 100% perfect?

    To see Wikipedia’s success look no further than this post – instead of comparing Wikipedia to other resource sites, news outlets or the Encyclopedia Britannica, we compare Wikipedia to Utopian perfection.

    So how does your Wikipedia article stand up when compared to your Encyclopedia Britannica article?

  • http://terranova.blogs.com greglas

    It’s “the Web writ manifest” — that’s quite right! You shouldn’t expect anything more (or less) out of it…

  • sidereal

    The problem is you’re equating Wikipedia content length or coverage with objective importance. There’s no correlation between the two, as should be apparent to anyone who uses it frequently (especially for fringe topics). That is not Wikipedia’s function. If you want an importance metric, go to PageRank or something similar.

    I can’t remember a single time anyone has cited length of Wikipedia article as evidence of something or someone’s importance, so I really don’t think it’s a problem. It only comes up in vanity peen-waving contexts, and is therefore irrelevant to most users and uses.

  • JuJutsu

    Congratulations on being less off-the-wall than Prokofy Neva.

  • Mode

    LaRouchies used to be pretty common on Wikipedia. You’d be reading an article on nuclear power and there’d be a section on what LaRouche thought of it. Eventually saner minds got fed up with them and they were mostly banned.

    The majority of articles on Wikipedia have a singular author that is responsible for the majority of content. So the lack of a good article on Raph is mostly that no-one has ever sat down and said “I would like to make this article on Raph good”. Eventually, someone will do just that.

  • Sullee

    Like most things internet you simply need to take the good and filter the bad yourself. And I agree with sidereal entirely; not sure why you are using length as a metric.

    On the peen-waving front I’m not sure notoriety is any metric either. The top people in specialized fields are not broadly known. I think you are confusing the industry with the product which is likely easy to do from the inside. Any gamers enjoyment of WoW is likely not related to their knowledge of Rob Pardo for example. Conversely the notoriety of e.g. Raph or you is likely not a good indication of your contributions to the field.

  • http://keithneilson.co.uk mandrill

    You’re right Wikipedia is good at the big picture. It is also good at hard and fast facts, rather than opinions. Discerning one from the other is your responsibility, and if you think someone is wrong then the beauty of Wikipedia is that you can say so and add your subjective facts (ie opinion) to the mix.

    Wikipedia is far from perfect (I don’t have my own page for a start, mebbe I should fix that…) but nothing built by human hands is. It is however one of the better resources on the internet as long as you do your own fact checking, which can be said of any media. You have to work to get anything worth having in this world and that includes accurate information, expecting to be spoon fed it is just asking to be lied to.

  • http://www.pinwiz.net Pinwiz

    It’s a great starting point. That’s all that matters.

  • http://simple-n-complex.blogspot.com/ Openedge1

    Wiki for me can be summed up in the area of work for my contracts..

    I work for a Religious organization.

    In the many attempts to add the specific organization I work with to Wikipedia, the constant whole hearted deletions of said article got to be a major argument day in and day out.
    Each time it was another deleter. Everytime it was either someone who was a noted Atheist or other dissenter.
    It does not bother me how people feel about it (believe? don’t believe? that is fine…isn’t it why we are a “Free” society?). It really was the matter of having the article posted in the first place.
    My arguments of “Why can Scientology” have a page and our organization (which is a Methodist based group) not be noted, went on deaf ears.
    I finally gave up after the 5th deletion, and was able to at least link the organization on a famous Bishop’s page who was the creator of the organization…

    Then they decided to delete his image there even though it was under Creative Commons…

    Wikipedia is VERY opinionated.

  • Vetarnias

    As a starting point, it’s good. But it’s as someone once posted elsewhere, on Wikipedia, a study of Klingon used to rate longer than an entry for your average philosopher. I haven’t checked recently to see if that has changed, but I suspect it hasn’t.

    As an encyclopedia, it never ranked very highly, its appeal being based mostly on the fact that it’s free, something that no professional encyclopedia could ever achieve unless it benefited from major donations by Bill Gates or others.

    I think Wikipedia’s greatest purpose will be revealed over time, as a structured repository of miscellaneous trivia of varying relevance. That’s if it resists the urges of those who’d delete entire entries on the ground that they’re no longer newsworthy. In this respect the “encyclopedists” at Wikipedia are more to fear than the populists or the trivia compilers.

  • http://lost-war.com Mist

    LaRouche and random MMO devs don’t really matter. The fact that Wikipedia can get the big things that matter right, means, with enough involvement, it could get just about everything right.

  • http://www.muckbeast.com Muckbeast

    I am the owner of Threshold (http://www.thresholdrpg.com), and I appreciate Scott and other blogs bringing some attention to this issue.

    The reason this whole debacle is, imho, noteworthy and important, goes far beyond the entry for my company’s game: Threshold. We have had entries for other games or aspects of our company created and deleted on Wikipedia in the past, and we didn’t get involved. We get ZERO customers from Wikipedia, so what happens there is largely irrelevant.

    What made us get actively involved in this instance was the nefarious campaign of a small cabal of Wikipedia editors and admins, and the pernicious way they behaved. They spent a few weeks poking and proding at people who spent 4 years working on the entry, and the instant they slipped up on some Wiki policy, they banned them. Once they had everyone banned, they moved in with an AfD (article for deletion) – obviously thinking there would be nobody left with the power to post who would argue to KEEP it.

    They were wrong, and a lot of people in the MUD community started adding their views. This same group of people immediately started labelling them all sockpuppets or meatpuppets, and the bans were falling like raindrops. That happens to be an absolute violation of Wikipedia’s own policy, interesting nicknamed “WP:BITE” (bascially, don’t bite the newbies).

    As the AfD progressed, they made it clear they intended to remove *ALL* similar MUD or MUD related pages, as they were all too irrelevant for Wikipedia. That is when we REALLY got involved, because we definitely feel MUDs have a significant place in the history of the internet and online games.

    It was at this point that a bunch of respected gaming blogs picked it up (Dr. Bartle’s, Raph Koster’s, like this one, and others) and the discussion has spread like wildfire.

    I think it raises some interesting issues for gamers and internet “netizens” in general. Wikipedia is the 4th most popular web site on the internet and it gets preferably placement on google. With great power comes great responsibility. If Wikipedia wishes to hold itself out as a repository of all human knowledge, and solicit millions of dollars of donations to that end, it needs to hold itself to a higher standard when deciding to completely purge the historical record of major concepts like MUDs or specific, established MUDs.

    -Michael
    Muckbeast – Game Design and Online Worlds
    http://www.muckbeast.com
    http://www.thresholdrpg.com

  • Vetarnias

    Oh, we could discuss Wikipedia politics for hours — it’s really fascinating.

    If you want to read some serious criticism of Wikipedia, I refer the readers here to the British IT publication “The Register” (if you didn’t know about it already), which turned this into an art.

  • TPRJones

    Wikipedia is a good starting point, but that’s all it is: a place to start. Trust nothing; verify anything that seems important. This is true not only of Wikipedia, but also of Time Magazine, ABC News, The New Yorker, BrokenToys.org, and EVERY other source of information that exists, online or off.

    The problem isn’t Wikipedia, the problem are the idiots that believe anything they read and trust sources instead of their own research efforts and ability to think.

  • Brask Mumei

    WP:N is the Achilles heel of Wikipedia. It is needed to keep the cranks out, but then is often perverted to delete perfectly accurate, non-biased, articles on the crazy grounds that they are not “notable enough”. This leads people to conclude that the articles that *do* survive, ie, treatsies on obscure characters in pokemon, must have been considered more notable than the deleted article. This leads people to becoming extraordinarily frustrated with the whole system and quit in disgust. Which is a loss to us all because that accurate and non-biased article should have been kept as the only people that would encounter it are those who are searching it.

    I’ve often seen articles up for deletion where people would write in: “I found this article useful as it answered my question when I searched on it.” yet this being rejected as an irrelevant note.

    My exposure to Wikipedia politics has been equally negative. Rules-lawyering trolls trying to burn things down, claims of “meatpuppeting” (an extremely offensive term, it is antithetical to the idea of WP:BITE. Yes, AFDs are not about voting. But it isn’t about dismissing people either.) to deflect the rather simple fact that experts in the field (in this case, the MUD playing community) all reject their opinion.

    The problem with Wikipedia is *not* the tragedy of the commons. It actually skirts that issue extremely skillfully. The problem with Wikipedia is that it is easier to destroy than create. Thus, the destroyers and banners who focus their energy on that will always win over the builders. It is hard enough to write a good article without also being expected to stand watch over it. Nothing pisses me off more than searching for something, finding it on Wikipedia well answered in a fashion that is useful and interesting, and seeing the inevitable: “This article was nominated for deletion…”

  • Skelanth

    Lum deserves such a large entry because Lum will lead us to the promised mmog.

  • dartwick

    lum gave up

  • Boanerges

    If you really want to see editor bias, go into any topic on global warming and just hint that maybe it might not be true. It will be gone within the hour.

    The problem with Wikipedia is two prong
    1. It’s often whatever random-person-x THINKS the truth is (or would like the truth to be)
    2. It’s seen as an authority on the Internet by many people. Probably most notably Google, who highly ranks it articles. Many schools now warn students to not cite Wikipedia as a source.

    Wikipedia is at its best when it’s a general or obscure topic and there are few people with axes to grind. They have some superb episode guides to various TV series. And wikis are great when you have a strong community standing behind them.

    The silliest thing, tho, are people who get uppity when Wikipedia wars break out. If you want your content on the Internet then post it somewhere. I’m amazed at people who spend long hours posting content on Wikipedia where anyone can edit it. If you really want your article published then find a free publisher that is NOT Wikipedia. Google still does pay attention to the rest of the Internet, I promise.

  • Freakazoid

    Didn’t we have this conversation last year?

    Also, I really do think you were far more important at the time than you realise, but it’s not worth trolling wikipedia over it. The disunion between pre-WoW and post-WoW player/developer communication is so wide, we will never again see a single ranter have such influence over MMOs in our lifetime.

  • http://hirvox.blogspot.com/ Hirvox

    IMHO, one of the greatest things that has happened to Wikipedia has been the founding of topic-specific sub-wikis under wikia.com. If you want a general idea, you go to Wikipedia. If you want specific knowledge, you go to the sub-wikis. Communities are free to have their own stomping grounds and Wikipedia editors do not have to engage in wars about notability.

  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    Wiki biographies are based on being hated or loved enough for someone to take the time to write about you.

    I consider Lum’s wiki an example of Internet drama driving a wiki entry. To the credit of wiki the defensive topics have been mostly removed from the article.

  • Vetarnias

    I also have to ask: What exactly is wrong with being considered worthy of a Wikipedia entry? Sure, maybe you’d like to be remembered for something else than “I think paladins suck”, but at least they considered you were worthy of being remembered in the first place.

    It’s not as though your entry claimed you killed both Kennedys.

  • http://wowpanda.blogspot.com wowpanda

    Maybe they should not delete, just make all posts searchable, and put on a recommendation system, posts sorted by recommendations.

  • http://www.muckbeast.com Muckbeast

    > Brask Mumei wrote:
    > WP:N is the Achilles heel of Wikipedia.
    > It is needed to keep the cranks out, but then
    > is often perverted to delete perfectly accurate,
    > non-biased, articles on the crazy grounds that
    > they are not “notable enough”.”

    That is so incredibly true. WP:V (verifiability) is considered the threshold and foundation of whether an article exist, and there was a time where WP:V loomed large and was the most important consideration. But lately, WP:N (notability) has become the 700 pound gorilla running rampant through Wikipedia and stomping everything in its path.

    > The problem with Wikipedia is that it is easier
    > to destroy than create. Thus, the destroyers and
    > banners who focus their energy on that will always
    > win over the builders.

    Exactly. And I suspect that is why WP:N is en vogue and WP:V is deemed irrelevant.

    Also, there are aspiring Wikipedia editors with visions of administratorhood in their eyes, and the only way to move up the ranks is to have a lot of “contributions.” Well, that’s not easy since most topics are already written about. So that leaves destroying things, or only supporting your own pet, obscure topics.

    The person who spearheaded the move to destroy Threshold’s entry has an entry on the 1993 PC game “Buzz Aldrin’s Race into Space.” Now, that’s a pretty darn obscure topic, but since its his baby and he has his admin friends helping protect it, it is safe.

    The system itself is cooked, and the tiny cabal of editors who rule the place act like the rules do not apply to them (and in effect, they don’t).

    Wikipedia is a cool idea gone horribly wrong.

  • Vetarnias

    And let’s not forget the “no original research” clause which can get stretched pretty far when the occasion lends itself to it. In a way, it’s necessary to avoid all those conspiracy theorists coming up with links between the Vatican, aliens, the CIA, Wal-Mart, global warming and a one-legged Senegalese medium who can channel Queen Victoria — as well as all the lawsuits that could come as a result of them (and of course prove them right).

    But sometimes it was getting absurd. I vaguely recall the case of one minor (but litigious) public figure without much claim to fame where someone posted something to the effect that said figure had had a few court rulings against him. As factual as it gets. But Wikipedians came to the conclusion that although court rulings were indeed factual, they were not easily obtainable by the community to be verified, so any mention of court cases could also fall under Original Research.

    So what is original research? Something not available online for confirmation by millions?

  • http://www.fun.webs.com Darby

    I agree, who ever invented wikipedi, may have not had a reviser to revise there website. but, it is fun answer questions that others do not know.

    fortune cookie fact:
    “A man does not fail until he gives up.”

  • Iconic

    Slow news day, huh?

  • http://www.mygamemug.com DOTAMONSTER

    Hm. I’m usually satisfied with the majority of Wikipedia’s content. I even find some of the trolling on articles amusing.

    But I feel ya on this. There’s times where I’m trying to look for a credible source that’s linked to wikipedia and all that’s filled in the article is utter crap.

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Protonk Adam Hyland

    I’m sorry, but where is Britannica’s article on Threshold?

    http://www.britannica.com/bps/fulltext?query=threshold

    I can’t seem to find it.

  • http://www.muckbeast.com Muckbeast

    In case anyone is interested, they deleted the entry. There were 17 votes for DELETE, 22 votes for KEEP, with Wikipedia admins on both sides. The supposed rules for an “Article for Deletion” discussion were completely ignored. The AfD was closed after 3 days when the rule is 5 minimum. An article is only supposed to be deleted if there is a CONSENSUS FOR DELETE. With more people on the KEEP side, it is absurd to argue there was consensus to delete.

    Furthermore, the “closing admin” substituted his own pure opinion and completely ignored everything discussed on the page, the input of experts, etc.

    Basically, Wikipedia is run by a bunch of hard core lifers willing to break any and all rules and policies of Wikipedia to get their way and protect their buddies.

    If you look at the stats of recent admins and people trying to become admins, almost everything they do is negative. You will see stats like “1370 deletions, 27 pages rescued or created.” Basically, the only way to “move up” on Wikipedia is to destroy, since that is so much easier than improving or creating things.

    The only upside is that the word has really gotten out about how crooked Wikipedia’s operations are becoming.

    -Michael
    Muckbeast – Game Design and Online Worlds
    http://www.muckbeast.com
    http://www.thresholdrpg.com

  • http://wiki.primordiax.com Milawe

    @Hirvox

    Wikipedia only serves as a testing grounds for the Media Wiki software, the true genius of an invention here. Wikipedia itself is pretty much crap due to the way administrators are created and uncontrolled. Media Wiki, the software used to run Wikipedia, however, is pretty spectacular.

  • Vetarnias

    @Muckbeast: I suggest you try to locate some of the Wikipedia critics out there (and there are many) to bring this particular case to a broader audience. If the vote had been for deletion, we could have been discussing the concept of “tyranny of the majority” until we had fallen asleep from the effort, but in this case it wasn’t even that…

  • Klaitu

    I guess I missed the point of the article.

    Was it that wikipedia isn’t an actual encyclopedia?

    Was it that people don’t give the same amount of detail on one person as opposed to another?

    Does anyone really care who LaRouche is?

  • http://www.metaplace.com Raph

    @Adam Hyland

    I use Wikipedia because it is more inclusive than Britannica. I hope the goal isn’t to emulate Britannica?

  • Brask Mumei

    Reading the deletion review is particularly humorous. Apparently, the very fact that us mere outsiders dare to talk about the article is grounds for deletion. “Canvasing” is considered disruptive to the proper establishment of consensus – how can that not be seen as the utmost in elitist reasoning? Canvasing should be irrelevant. The new comers will either make reasonable arguments or not. The whole idea of consensus is for the arguments to stand on their own! Statements made by anon should have the same weight as those by established editors – the truth of the statement is not governed by the author.

    I just wish Wikipedia recognized what it is good at: documenting *exactly* these sorts of articles. I don’t think lavish attention to random 80′s punk bands is a problem – it is a feature, that is what is notable to us mere peons of humanity. Likewise, proper verifiable articles about obscure muds are equally legitimate. WP:V should be the key question. I don’t think anyone was trying to say that the mud didn’t exist, or didn’t exist in the way it was portrayed.

  • http://www.muckbeast.com Muckbeast

    The irony with the WP:N obsession is that non-notable stuff is what Wikipedia does best. If I wanted to learn something about George Washington, would I go to Wikipedia? Not by a longshot. I’d find a well researched book by an expert in the field.

    But when I hear about a comic book hero, or I want some details about a character from Dune, or I’m trying to remember what happened last season on Dancing with the Stars, Wikipedia is great.

    I will put aside the HORDES of editors who delete anything they can because it pads their stats towards becoming an administrator (for the moment). The rest are pushing Wikipedia in the direction it is least well suited for. No matter how much these unqualified, undisciplined, lazy, sloppy, hasty, and often uneducated work on an entry, it will never be as good as a trained, well educated, disciplined expert in a field. So on all the complicated or “important” issues, Wikipedia is always going to be crap compared to a “real” source.

    That is why WP:V was the original standard, and it was a better standard. Try hard to keep things accurate and verifiable, and let the content fall where it may.

    -Michael
    http://www.thresholdrpg.com

  • http://www.brokentoys.org/ Scott Jennings

    Wikipedia being what it is, there is a suitably meta discussion of the deletion in progress: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2009_January_7#Threshold_.28online_game.29 I left a comment which I’m sure will be picked apart in short order.

  • Vetarnias

    Raph :
    @Adam Hyland
    I use Wikipedia because it is more inclusive than Britannica. I hope the goal isn’t to emulate Britannica?

    Unfortunately, that’s the goal of some of the “editors” over there, who fail to realize that the reason why Wikipedia will never have nearly the same amount of credibility of Britannica is that it allows them to proclaim themselves “editors” in the first place without outside scrutiny or expert oversight.

    Ephemeral trivia is what Wikipedia does best. Nobody’s going to turn to it for the finer points of Kantian ethics or quantum theory — and those who do, won’t take it seriously.

    Oh, and to confirm my earlier post: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/10/the-laws-of-wik.html

    “What makes a fact or statement fit for inclusion is that it appeared in some other publication–ideally, one that is in English and is available free online. “The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth,” states Wikipedia’s official policy on the subject.”

    If you feel up to it, just compare the English Wikipedia with those in other languages. Everybody wants to play editor, but nobody wants to be the grunt stuck with doing translations of whatever mishmash the original “editing” led to.

  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    Sandboxes. Everyone has to play in someone else’s sandbox eventually.

    The sad thing is, people jump in to a sandbox and start playing without realizing it isn’t there’s to play in; others are already playing and working out a pecking order… How dare you get there idol’s attention!

    Trust me, watching the online gaming forum and blog community big dogs running head on in to the wiki big dogs is a train wreck to behold.

    Well, fellow gaming nerds, guess what? It’s there sandbox. You are powerless.

  • xzzy

    If you think Mr. Koster is more influential than you, why aren’t you editing his page to describe his distinguished career? ;)

    To my mind, that’s the real limitation of wikipedia, the submitters are self selecting. If a topic doesn’t attract the attention of someone who’s knowledgeable on the subject, it’s going to languish in obscurity.

    Computing history in general is documented pretty poorly (check out the email article as an example). There’s no permanent record of which nerd did what. It’s mostly a bunch of gray haired old men staring off into the distance and creating their version of events, and the only real exceptions are the events that caught the attention of mass media.. and this seems to be happening with MMO history as well. Putting “Abashi” into google wouldn’t give anyone a solid idea who the guy is and why his actions were significant.

    So I guess the point is that all you MMO developer types need to document this stuff before you get too old to recall it. ;) As long it doesn’t turn into MMO veterans sniping at each other, the odds of the wikipedia priesthood taking exception are negligable.

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Protonk Adam Hyland

    @Raph
    I sure hope not (though the comments above about some editors wishing it were is correct). My point was more that we need to compare wikipedia to the alternatives at hand, not some utopian alternative where no article is ever deleted yet it isn’t taken over by spam and nonsense (and subject matter experts work for free). I don’t want to be glib, but the expectations game is a killer.

  • Baroo

    What a fascinating glimpse inside the weird and wacky world of Wikipedia politics. I had no idea.

  • Pingback: Erasing History: Wikipedia Wiping All Traces of MUD | Daily Diablo

  • http://www.muckbeast.com Muckbeast

    The drama continues over there, and now the embarassed admins are using their various powers and influence in about 12 different ways to get me banned, criticized, tarred, feathered, pilloried, smacked with an anvil, and goodness knows what else.

    When Wikipedia cared more about WP:V than WP:N, it operated pretty smoothly. Unimportant articles were simply ignored and not searched for. Pure spam articles were deleted, which is fine.

    The new obsession with notability is purely driven by editors bucking for adminhood. This is no different than the early mud days when “Wizards” would figure out the path of least resistance to Arch-Wizard or even (gasp) Admin status.

    As has been stated numerous times, the obscure stuff is what Wikipedia does well. The serious stuff is what it does poorly, because most of the editors are (to be frank) incompetent and unqualified.

    But worst of all is the insane amounts of insider abuse. I have never in my life experienced such hostility to outsiders, and I’ve visited 3rd world countries with multiple pejorative words in their common parlance for “foreigner.” The degree to which the “powers that be” will use any means necessary to get their way is amazing.

    Most insulting of all is the fact that on top of the abuse, they actually try to force you to accept they are actually being righteous. At least when I encountered abusive Wizzes on muds, they would come right out with the “this is my mud, accept it or leave” truth. On Wikipedia, they want you to lick their boots, but pretend everyone is equal while doing so.

    -Michael
    Threshold RPG
    http://www.thresholdrpg.com

  • UnSub

    Scott Jennings :
    Wikipedia being what it is, there is a suitably meta discussion of the deletion in progress: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2009_January_7#Threshold_.28online_game.29 I left a comment which I’m sure will be picked apart in short order.

    I just read through most of that. It’s like nerds interbred with lawyers who in turn interbred with English undergrads who then bred with old-school English class system. All attention to the rules while completely ignoring what doesn’t fit, trolling while mostly being polite in the words and making sure that tangents are being argued rather than the main point and it is seniority that counts, not merit.

    I’m impressed at the level of nerd elitism that actually involved mostly correct spelling and grammar :-)

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  • http://aarmstrong.org Andrew

    Followed this here from Raph’s website, sorry to hear that Michael, I’ve made a note of it on the preservation SIG’s blog I run but I just wish either I was an admin there (but man, I’ve not ever moderated such a wild bunch), or there was an alternative people turn to. Sigh.

    I wish they had an actual paid admin team who had editorial oversight. They don’t want to do it though, I wish I knew why but I strongly suspect it means actual work for the foundation, shockingly (rather then what they do now which is to let it run the course and maintain the servers and software, a noble goal indeed).

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