Cunctator opines:
There seems to be a pretty fixed number of Wikipedians who write "write
nonsense, brazen political propoganda, crankish unsupported stuff" on a consistent basis.
And that fixed number can be counted on one hand.
It is a problem that people stop editing out of frustration, but the evidence just isn't there that this is a ballooning problem. <<
I'm not just concerned about the ones who do it "on a consistent basis." I'm really concerned about the behavior, not the people. Moreover, the number of people who have polluted Wikipedia to any very significant degree in these ways would easily run into the many dozens. That's not counting the mere vandals. We've just forgotten about them because they've gone away, in many cases very quickly. The ones whose names immediately come to mind can be counted on one hand, yes.
I admit of course that I was merely stating my own opinion as to the seriousness of the problem. It's hard to quantify, but it seems completely obvious to me. It's not like there was a golden age of Wikipedia when everyone was friendly and cranks weren't in sight. On the other hand, I remember writing at one point (for the "replies to our critics" page, I think) that we hadn't had many problems with cranks and internecine warfare. Now, I really couldn't write that, and I suspect the "replies" page should be updated, if it hasn't already been.
What do the rest of you think?
Larry
On Sat, Nov 09, 2002 at 02:50:37PM -0800, Larry Sanger wrote:
I admit of course that I was merely stating my own opinion as to the seriousness of the problem. It's hard to quantify, but it seems completely obvious to me. It's not like there was a golden age of Wikipedia when everyone was friendly and cranks weren't in sight. On the other hand, I remember writing at one point (for the "replies to our critics" page, I think) that we hadn't had many problems with cranks and internecine warfare. Now, I really couldn't write that, and I suspect the "replies" page should be updated, if it hasn't already been.
What do the rest of you think?
It seems to me that the proportion of bad edits, and bad users, is no worse now than it has generally been in the last year.
I worry that any proposed cure may be worse than the disease.
I _would_ like to see clearer guidelines on when it is appropriate to ban people and to freeze pages. I agree with you that currently we have users doing these things (and threatening to do them) in circumstances which would have been surprising a year ago.
-M-
Larry Sanger wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
There seems to be a pretty fixed number of Wikipedians who write "write nonsense, brazen political propoganda, crankish unsupported stuff" on a consistent basis. And that fixed number can be counted on one hand.
I'm not just concerned about the ones who do it "on a consistent basis." I'm really concerned about the behavior, not the people. Moreover, the number of people who have polluted Wikipedia to any very significant degree in these ways would easily run into the many dozens. That's not counting the mere vandals. We've just forgotten about them because they've gone away, in many cases very quickly. The ones whose names immediately come to mind can be counted on one hand, yes.
If they come in, cause some trouble, and then go away, causing little enough trouble and going away quickly enough that we've forgotten about them, then I'm OK with that (much as I'm OK with the fact that anaesthesia wouldn't work as well if they didn't include amnesia inducing agents in it). That's the price of being a wiki -- people can cause trouble. Enforcing community standards will get rid of them -- which we did, without needing to take it to the list. So the system works.
I remember writing at one point (for the "replies to our critics" page, I think) that we hadn't had many problems with cranks and internecine warfare. Now, I really couldn't write that, and I suspect the "replies" page should be updated, if it hasn't already been. What do the rest of you think?
I think that we haven't had many problems with cranks and internecine warfare. It would be wrong to say that we haven't had *any*. Perhaps you and I differ about what "many" is.
-- Toby
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