How to boycott Wikipedia. Share all your suggestions here.

[Ca$hBag]

Until recently, I have been refraining from clicking on WIkipedia results on google searches. That's because I fixed up many articles, but today after seeing again that majority vote on Wikipedia out-rules just about everything including reliable sources. So if the Earth is flat according to most Wikipedians, that's what goes on Wikipedia despite no single reliable source supporting such evidence.

As such, I have decided to boycott Wikipedia, because the more hits a website gets in google search results, the more it comes up (as most of you know).

What else can we do? Share all your suggestions here.

[AndyTheGrump]

Who is 'we'?

[Randy from Boise]

Don't give the WMF money. Tell your family and friends not to give the WMF money.

That's a boycott.

Not looking at search results don't learn nobody nothing.... That's just silly.

RfB

[Ca$hBag]

I did...only after my sister donated to WMF once, but without me knowing. Looking at other search results reduces their strength on google search results.

[Rogol Domedonfors]

I think Google gives special rankings to Wikipedia entries, so it is not clear that refusing to click on them would have any effect.

Performance art is the way.

[Kingsindian]

Looking at other search results reduces their strength on google search results.

Negligible.

[Zoloft]

Speaking up reduces their people power = (volunteers + donations + positive press)

[Textnyymi]

As pages start to contain more and more incorrect information, people will be reading incorrect data and then when it starts to have an impact on their lives they will think twice about going back to Wikipedia. Donations will be made to maintain a pile of false information, and when the reality of the situation hits people in the face, Jimbo and the WMF will face a few problems in maintaining the flow of incoming cash.

[thekohser]

As pages start to contain more and more incorrect information, people will be reading incorrect data and then when it starts to have an impact on their lives they will think twice about going back to Wikipedia. Donations will be made to maintain a pile of false information, and when the reality of the situation hits people in the face, Jimbo and the WMF will face a few problems in maintaining the flow of incoming cash.

I think that this is one of the stronger methods of weakening Wikipedia's hold on information distribution. As I tried to show two years ago, if someone is able to write grammatically-correct nonsense with a properly formatted citation to go with it, there is perhaps a 60% chance that it will go uncorrected for a long duration. Get a team of about ten people doing this, three times a day, using different accounts, user agents, and IP addresses across the weeks, and after a year, I believe that Wikipedia would be sufficiently infiltrated with nonsense that the general public would really start to question the platform, much as "fake news" became a thing in 2016. The WikiFaithful really aren't checking their resource any more -- I have a howler in an article receiving over 700 page views per day, and it's fake content that any WP insider would immediately recognize as my work if it were shown to them. It's coming up on two years now of undisturbed glory. Granted, it's fairly deep down in the article, so maybe only 10 or 20 of those 700 daily visitors are actually reading and processing that paragraph... but still, that's maybe 8,000 actual readers over this span of time who must be either scratching their heads or fully believing in an imaginary fiction that I put in place back in September 2015.

[Rogol Domedonfors]

Get a team of about ten people doing this, three times a day, using different accounts, user agents, and IP addresses across the weeks, and after a year, I believe that Wikipedia would be sufficiently infiltrated with nonsense[...]

As someone once said, "Sounds like an awful lot of work (especially for people with families and jobs), for very, very little gain." I estimate it would cost you the best part of $100K.

[Johnny Au]

Easy:

First, don't donate to the WMF.

Second, rely on alternative facts. This also means creating a wiki that only agrees with your personal beliefs.

Third, convince Sverker to implement Lsjbot on every Wikipedia. We all know how comprehensive the Cebuano Wikipedia is. Sverker is the one person who is slowly destroying Wikipedia without him realizing it and admins condoning his action (yes, Sverker is himself an admin).

[Textnyymi]

As someone once said, "Sounds like an awful lot of work (especially for people with families and jobs), for very, very little gain." I estimate it would cost you the best part of $100K.

5 minutes of bad data insertion each day costs little. Plus, with all the unrefined mobile edits coming in, pages are going to be found in a state of disrepair more and more as time passes. And anyone who doesn't have a good enough command of the English language is going to lower the quality of the pages they edit.

By 2030 Wikipedia will be similar to what DMOZ is today.

[thekohser]

Get a team of about ten people doing this, three times a day, using different accounts, user agents, and IP addresses across the weeks, and after a year, I believe that Wikipedia would be sufficiently infiltrated with nonsense[...]

As someone once said, "Sounds like an awful lot of work (especially for people with families and jobs), for very, very little gain." I estimate it would cost you the best part of $100K.

I fully agree it would take a good amount of work and diligent "hiding" of access info (so that your team's work couldn't be "batch undone"). But, if the end result is the complete dismissal of Wikipedia by the general public as a meaningful and important platform (a la MySpace), then I'd say that's not "very, very little gain". It would be immense gain, wildly disproportionate to the effort expended.

[Rogol Domedonfors]

The operative word being if.

[thekohser]

The operative word being if.

Exactly. That's very true.

[Textnyymi]

The operative word being if.

Should you care about it? If people get incorrect information from Wikipedia and they keep using it as a base for getting info, then it's what they want to get (or maybe what they deserve to get for free).

[Earthy Astringent]

Vandalize

[Midsize Jake]

Vandalize

What we call "subtle vandalism" might very well help society in the long term, but obvious, overt vandalism only helps Wikipedia. They've always used it as a recruitment strategy (mostly for kids), and these days they have bots that fix about 90 percent of it within 30 seconds anyway. So please, don't just say "vandalize"; say, "vandalize subtly, creatively, and in such a way as to not be immediately reverted."

This is not to say that I personally would ever do such a thing, of course.

[Rogol Domedonfors]

The operative word being if.

Should you care about it? If people get incorrect information from Wikipedia and they keep using it as a base for getting info, then it's what they want to get (or maybe what they deserve to get for free).

I think I care if, for example, enough people are misinformed about medicine that infectious diseases become widespread again; or they believe that AIDS can be cured by raping virgins; or that hospitals can be closed down because cancer can be cured by brinking bleach, and mental illness can be cured by thinking happy thoughts, or that schools and libraries can be closed down because they aren't necessary any longer, or ...

[Textnyymi]

I think I care if, for example, enough people are misinformed about medicine that infectious diseases become widespread again; or they believe that AIDS can be cured by raping virgins; or that hospitals can be closed down because cancer can be cured by brinking bleach, and mental illness can be cured by thinking happy thoughts, or that schools and libraries can be closed down because they aren't necessary any longer, or ...

Increasing digital literacy would be useful, but that's going to cost a lot. Wikipedia and Facebook don't contribute that much in helping people become more digitally literate.

[Rogol Domedonfors]

I don't know how these click-bait things work (can you just rent space on them?) but something along the lines of "12 amazing tricks you can learn from Wikipedia" might be a way of spreading the joke about hoaxes, stupid mistakes, etc. It might even make money too.

[Poetlister]

On Google, you can usually look at the cache of a page rather than the actual live page, which means that no pageview is recorded. It may be slightly out of date, but that isn't likely to matter very often.

Of course, look at the other Google hits first. They may well be better articles.

[Rogol Domedonfors]

Increasing digital literacy would be useful, but that's going to cost a lot. Wikipedia and Facebook don't contribute that much in helping people become more digitally literate.

They have no interest in doing so. I went to a talk a little while ago where the speaker asked how many people in the room were customers of Facebook. Of course nearly everyone put a hand up. The speaker said nothing and people started to look puzzled. After a pause, he continued: The advertisers are the customers of Facebook – you're the product Facebook is selling them.

[Johnny Au]

I think I care if, for example, enough people are misinformed about medicine that infectious diseases become widespread again; or they believe that AIDS can be cured by raping virgins; or that hospitals can be closed down because cancer can be cured by brinking bleach, and mental illness can be cured by thinking happy thoughts, or that schools and libraries can be closed down because they aren't necessary any longer, or ...

Increasing digital literacy would be useful, but that's going to cost a lot. Wikipedia and Facebook don't contribute that much in helping people become more digitally literate.

...or Twitter, Reddit, etc.

[Johnny Au]

Vandalize

What we call "subtle vandalism" might very well help society in the long term, but obvious, overt vandalism only helps Wikipedia. They've always used it as a recruitment strategy (mostly for kids), and these days they have bots that fix about 90 percent of it within 30 seconds anyway. So please, don't just say "vandalize"; say, "vandalize subtly, creatively, and in such a way as to not be immediately reverted."

This is not to say that I personally would ever do such a thing, of course.

ClueBot NG catches obvious vandalism.

Vandalizing articles with over 10 active watchers will almost never work. Don't forget that there's some who use Huggle.

I don't condone vandalism, but you have to be subtle about it, as well as doing so on a minor article.

Alternatively, you can be like Sverker and create a bot that would flood Wikipedia with extremely poorly written articles. Sverker is Wikipedia's greatest vandal.

[thekohser]

Vandalizing articles with over 10 active watchers will almost never work.

Is that so? Johnny, if we can't even get it through to you, an active participant here, is there any hope for dispelling this myth?

Or, if you need more detail. Inflammation has over 250 watchers. None of them had a concern that the human body tissue produces volcanic rock.

[Textnyymi]

I don't condone vandalism, but you have to be subtle about it, as well as doing so on a minor article.

It's not so much about bad edits sticking around, but about people making decent edits getting progressively reduced in number. In 2007 there was the highest number of active editors. Today not as many as before are left, and the number of admins continues to dwindle. Not enough good people left, who have a stake in keeping the thing up to date and smoothly running.

Look at Uncyclopedia to see Wikipedia's future.

[Poetlister]

Another idea. If you're on a dynamic IP, or you use an Internet café, library or hotspot, keep checking whether anyone has made an IP edit using that IP, and then revert it with an apology. Libraries are quite good for that.

[thekohser]

Another idea. If you're on a dynamic IP, or you use an Internet café, library or hotspot, keep checking whether anyone has made an IP edit using that IP, and then revert it with an apology. Libraries are quite good for that.

That's sinister and wonderful.

[Johnny Au]

I don't condone vandalism, but you have to be subtle about it, as well as doing so on a minor article.

It's not so much about bad edits sticking around, but about people making decent edits getting progressively reduced in number. In 2007 there was the highest number of active editors. Today not as many as before are left, and the number of admins continues to dwindle. Not enough good people left, who have a stake in keeping the thing up to date and smoothly running.

Look at Uncyclopedia to see Wikipedia's future.

TV Tropes is the new Uncyclopedia.

[Textnyymi]

TV Tropes is the new Uncyclopedia.

And Facebook is the new Wikipedia. Companies are promoting themselves there and are buying contextual ads, ads which make browsing much more difficult, by the way.

[Ca$hBag]

I think Google gives special rankings to Wikipedia entries, so it is not clear that refusing to click on them would have any effect.

Performance art is the way.

The reason why those pages would come higher is due to their quality and more interest in them, so people would visit them more.

And yes your idea does sound good, the only thing is what are the guarantees that people (or not everyone) will misinterpret them as correct information?

[Randy from Boise]

Here's an idea: work to make Wikipedia better and fight the leeches and bastards on their own turf.

Happy to help,

tim

[Rogol Domedonfors]

Better at what? Being an encyclopaedia? Because that would require it to deliver deliver knowledge – justified true belief – and it does not, can not and will not do that.

[Poetlister]

Here's an idea: work to make Wikipedia better and fight the leeches and bastards on their own turf.

Happy to help,

tim

It would take two or three thousand people, many with admin powers, and it would be a never-ending battle.

[Rogol Domedonfors]

Here's an idea: work to make Wikipedia better and fight the leeches and bastards on their own turf.

Happy to help,

tim

It would take two or three thousand people, many with admin powers, and it would be a never-ending battle.

The Chinese government might be able to do it.

[Johnny Au]

Here's an idea: work to make Wikipedia better and fight the leeches and bastards on their own turf.

Happy to help,

tim

It would take two or three thousand people, many with admin powers, and it would be a never-ending battle.

The Chinese government might be able to do it.

...on June 4 of course!

[Poetlister]

The Chinese government might be able to do it.

Not if the site's blocked in China.