Wikipedia is a community built on love and respect

[Peter Damian]

The first quote below is from Jimmy's foreword to a book written by Andrew Lih in 2009. He appears to be describing Wikipedia, at least he says so. The impression he is giving (I may be misunderstanding him) is the WP is a community built on trusting people, built on love and respect, a new model for social engagement on the Internet. A successful model, indeed – he says that they figured out the basic way to organise a community. Contrast that with the second, comment from his talk page today, particularly the bits in bold, which surpass anything I have ever heard a Wikipedian say about their own community. Are the two passages about the same place, really? Or has Wikipedia changed so much in three years?

The whole discussion on that page is worth following. There have been many like it before, but it has reached a new intensity, IMO.

"Wikipedia isn't a technological innovation at all; it's a social innovation. What we figured out between 1995 and 2001 was not new technology. We had the Web already, but we discovered the basic idea of how to organise a community. … How do people trust each other? How do people feel about society? Many, many people report that when they've been involved in some kind of online mailing list or other things like that, gee, it's so hostile. There are so many hostile communities on the Internet. One of the reasons is because this philosophy of trying to make sure that no one can hurt anyone else actually eliminates all the opportunities for trust. … So the most important thing about the process is to understand that all of the rules [of Wikipedia] are social. … Let's take these ideals of Wikipedia and bring them out to lots and lots of people in lots and lots of areas far beyond simply encyclopedias. I think the genuine communities, like Wikipedia, will be built on love and respect. But it's really important … to remember that Wikipedia is not about technology, it's about people. It's about leaving things open-ended, it's about trusting people, it's about encouraging people to do good. These communities, I believe, are going to be the norm on the Internet. People have seen that some of the old models are really unhealthy. Wikipedia shows us a really powerful means to move forward to empower lots of people to do good work, cooperatively.
The Wikipedia Revolution xvi

This is a vicious culture here. I need to stay and edit here for reasons I keep to myself; one cannot appear weak or defenceless. I edit gingerly and keep a low profile. I would never dare to write a new article, although I have the skill and experience. My edits tend to revert vandalism or be minor because I stalk an edit test / junk edit bot around for work to do. I clear out categories of backlogged work and rephrase grammar. I duly registered an account and hung wallpaper on my walls. My first edit was to add information to a BLP with a substantiating reference and it was tagged as vandalism. I have had my feelings hurt and have been in a few tiffs and sometimes just have to walk away and talk myself into feeling less injured; to remember that I have to continue here for a greater personal cause. I always apologize for whatever I've done rather than have anything escalate, even on an article talk page. It's like living in an abusive relationship, waiting to be beaten in the face with a glass casserole dish. I've been here 15 months and some of the stuff I've experienced only vicariously; if I had to live through what I've seen other fine editors subjected to, I'm not sure how I would ever get over it. I heard Chris Matthews say the other day on MSNBC that probably everyone, if placed under sodium pentathol would say they hated high school - I would say the same about Wikipedia. It's torture waiting to happen lying just beneath the surface. The bullying, the taunts, the evil staff waiting to wound you with cruel words you will never forget. Fylbecatulous talk 13:59, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =538883727

[thekohser]

Are the two passages about the same place, really? Or has Wikipedia changed so much in three years?

The two passages are about the same place, and Wikipedia has not substantially changed in the past six years that I've known it. What you have here is (yet another example of) Jimmy Wales lying to the public about something, so that the narrative makes him look accomplished, heroic, powerful, and successful, when in actuality, he is mostly a sickening weasel.

[The Devil's Advocate]

The two passages are about the same place, and Wikipedia has not substantially changed in the past six years that I've known it. What you have here is (yet another example of) Jimmy Wales lying to the public about something, so that the narrative makes him look accomplished, heroic, powerful, and successful, when in actuality, he is mostly a sickening weasel.

Maybe he just heavily samples his own Kool-aid.

[SB_Johnny]

Maybe he just heavily samples his own Kool-aid.

It always comes back to autofellatio.

[EricBarbour]

The whole discussion on that page is worth following. There have been many like it before, but it has reached a new intensity, IMO.

Yes! Wikipedia has always had its critics and its disgruntled users, but they were always outweighed by the rabid fans. In recent years,
even posts on nerd-friendly blogs such as Slashdot and Metafilter have filled up rapidly with complaints about WP's toxic internal culture,
not to mention its biases and POV pushers and "hidden discussions". This would not have happened, even 4 years ago.

http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/10/26 ... completion
http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/09/20 ... consulting
http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/09/08 ... -wikipedia
http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/05/17 ... get-caught

http://www.metafilter.com/120057/A-Scandal-in-Wikipedia
http://www.metafilter.com/106830/Wikipe ... -citations
http://www.metafilter.com/101461/A-nota ... -Wikipedia

Bear in mind that Metafilter sysop Jessamyn West is an advisor to the WMF since June 2011
(and heeled her own Wikipedia biography, and the bio of Metafilter's founder, using friends).
Even in spite of her presence as a moderator, many Metafilter threads about Wikipedia still fill up with complaints.

As someone said in this thread:

I learned that lesson early. It's a huge mistake to take pride in bunny-suited textual purity. Wikipedia is a pig farm. Even the most conscientious farmer gets shit on his boots. Also, Wikipedia doesn't exactly encourage subject matter experts to take on leading editorial roles. It's more into the kind of loose accuracy obtained at arm's length remove. I would almost say that Wikipedia actively resists excellence. This is hard concept for many people to comprehend. The highly cultivated "feature articles" are a bit of a Potemkin village. Featureness degrades rapidly after the parade moves on.

Wikipedia has a lot of problems, which is why I mostly stopped contributing years ago. But all the problems basically stem directly from their list of "policies" that were erected around the time that a horde of fairly obvious disinformation agents managed to wrest control away from Jimmy Wales. The new Wikipedia "democracy" now ensures that the government with the largest propaganda budget will always be able to control the tone and narrative of any controversial articles.

One of the worst of these policies is the idea that mainsteam media news sources should be given special status. This was obviously intentionally designed to steer the revolutionary capability of truly grass-roots, crowd-sourced intelligence back into the fold of the controlled narrative. And, unfortunately, one of the most blatant abuses of this policy is the way Wikipedia is used as a vehicle to slander controversial public figures.

This one has a good comment:

If you remember DMOZ, the community edited links directory, that died a death because they didn't tackle paid interests.

[3 to 20 characters]

Well, I always liked the man, but he has a good face and maybe that's why. I also have to say that the community is not without love and respect. There are lots of faithful who make lots of minor changes, such as fixes to spelling and grammar, and it's hard to see how they could ever lose the warm inner glow.

[Zoloft]

Well, I always liked the man, but he has a good face and maybe that's why. I also have to say that the community is not without love and respect. There are lots of faithful who make lots of minor changes, such as fixes to spelling and grammar, and it's hard to see how they could ever lose the warm inner glow.

I was one of those who had the warm inner glow until I encountered Cirt (T-C-L).
He was in the process of helping Dan Savage (T-H-L) slime Rick Santorum (T-H-L)'s last name.
link
I intensely dislike Santorum, but making his surname a synonym for 'feces and lube mixture' rankled me.

Oh, the fun Wikipedians had joining in to help Cirt!

That was really the last straw for me.

[roger_pearse]

The two passages are about the same place, and Wikipedia has not substantially changed in the past six years that I've known it.

I think over that period it has got worse.

When did the "new user" registration start to advise people not to use their real names? That is a change that happened during that period, I think.

[Randy from Boise]

I was one of those who had the warm inner glow until I encountered Cirt (T-C-L).
He was in the process of helping Dan Savage (T-H-L) slime Rick Santorum (T-H-L)'s last name.
link
I intensely dislike Santorum, but making his surname a synonym for 'feces and lube mixture' rankled me.

Oh, the fun Wikipedians had joining in to help Cirt!

That was really the last straw for me.

That was actually one of the most interesting theoretical issues at AfD over the past few years: Was "Santorum" notable given the fact it had assumed mass use in the USA as a political meme? Was the political effort to create such a nasty politically-charged neologism notable?

My own conclusion was ultimately that the Neologism should be deleted but that the Savage campaign to "create" the neologism — "Campaign for 'Santorum' neologism" or whatever it was called, which included, of course, coverage of the neologism itself — was inclusion-worthy.

I still think that's a correct call.

RfB

[Poetlister]

I never thought that words like that should have entries on Wikipedia at all. That's what Wiktionary is for. What's the point of having all those othern sites and not using them properly? (That's on top of my repulsion in this case at a dirty political trick, even against an unlikeable politician.)

[EricBarbour]

Read this.

Then come back and tell me more about "love and respect".

[Malleus]

Read this.

Then come back and tell me more about "love and respect".

Love and respect (did someone forget thoughtfulness?) have nothing to do with Wiikipedia. Vindictiveness, selfishness, and childishness are much closer to the mark.

[3 to 20 characters]

[Love and respect (did someone forget thoughtfulness?) have nothing to do with Wiikipedia. Vindictiveness, selfishness, and childishness are much closer to the mark.

It's too big an organization to be dismissed completely. Maybe you are in a prophetic mood. When the pond shrinks, things gets really nasty. I think large sections are in danger of shrinking and disappearing up its black hole. The academic sections. The BLP stuff will always attract a crowd and that tail seems to be wagging the dog already.

[Peter Damian]

Read this.

Then come back and tell me more about "love and respect".

Love and respect (did someone forget thoughtfulness?) have nothing to do with Wiikipedia. Vindictiveness, selfishness, and childishness are much closer to the mark.

Sorry about that. See p. xvii "We are talking about people's behaviour in the community. Quality matters, and a thoughtful community has emerged around that ideal".