Black Book Wikipedia

[tarantino]

German author Andreas Mäckler edited and published Schwarzbuch Wikipedia: Mobbing, Diffamierung und Falschinformation in der Online-Enzyklopädie. There are 25 authors credited. The back story to this seems pretty complicated, with accusations from both sides of right-wing extremism and pseudoscience-pushing.

From Google translate of https://www.schwarzbuch-wikipedia.de/:

Black Book Wikipedia
Bullying, defamation and misinformation in the online encyclopedia and what needs to be done about it now

With contributions from

Alex Baur, Günter Bechly, David Berger, Elias Erdmann, Markus Fiedler, Tomasz M. Froelich, Gunnar Melf Tobias Hamann (Wiki-Watch), Arne Hoffmann, Michael Klein, Walter Krämer, Michael Kühntopf, Heather Anne De Lisle, Andreas Mäckler, Katrin McClean, Hermann Ploppa, Lorenzo Ravagli, Helmut Roewer, Niki Vogt, Harald Walach, Torsten Walter, Volkmar Weiss, Werner (WikiMANNia), Jörg Wichmann, Wiki-Radar, Claus Wolfschlag

Wikipedia, the »encyclopedia of free content«, is one of the most visited websites worldwide – everyone knows it, everyone uses it. But what about the social media project? How true is the information contained, and how democratic is it?

Founder Jimmy Wales asserts that the online dictionary is almost immune to fake news. If you take a closer look, you will see that after about 20 years, not much remains of the once good idea. In the German-language Wikipedia, in any case, factual errors and disinformation as well as bullying and vandalism have spread, people, parties and companies are deliberately defamed – a reflection of the increasing radicalization of our Internet culture.

This documentation contains texts and interviews by and with experts as well as injured parties from politics, science and culture. Carefully documented case studies, court reports and bizarre style blossoms round off the picture. However, the book also shows solutions to the dilemma.

edited to remove wrong conclusion -t-

[Midsize Jake]

Carefully documented case studies, court reports and bizarre style blossoms round off the picture.

Someone please correct me if I'm totally wrong here, but apparently while the German word "stilblüte" does translate literally as "style blossoms," it's actually a kind of vernacular to mean "bad stylistic mistakes" — somewhere between the English term "grammatical error" and the more universal term "shitty writing." And the term "Schwarzbuch" or "Black Book" also has a special meaning in German, sort of like the term "scandal sheet" or "withering exposé," but slightly more formal... or so I gather.

Anyway, I should reserve judgement on the book since I haven't read it, but it does look like the agenda for most of the contributing essayists here is more along the lines of "those mean bastards deleted my article about neuro-linguistic programming" (or morphic resonance, or whatever) as opposed to a more substantive critique of the systems and rule-sets Wikipedia operates under, and the potential negative effects of those systems on the people who spend time participating in it.

That's not to say those same bastards on the German Wikipedia were justified in deleting every one of the articles in question, but that said, at first glance it doesn't look like the sort of project I would have wanted to get involved in myself.

[AndyTheGrump]

'"Stilblüte"/"style blossoms" - not to be confused with 'crash blossoms': I've a vague recollection of seeing one of those on Wikipedia many years back, when someone parsed a sentence completely the wrong way.

As for the book, if it is just another collection of gripes by people who've had stuff rejected, that's a pity. That isn't how you do a proper analysis of anything.

[jport]

Article about Günter Bechly was restored in HandWiki: https://handwiki.org/wiki/Biography:G%C3%BCnter_Bechly (sort of)

[Hemiauchenia]

The more I look back at the Gunter Bechly AfD, the more I am ambivalent about it. Having done lots of encyclopedic writing on fossil insects (paleoentomology), Bechly is a prominent specialist in fossil dragonflies, damselflies and their relatives. Many of the votes in the AfD were prejudiced against him due to his Intelligent design beliefs, which are unscientific but seem to have little impact on his work or the respect he has from peers. The other major thing was his citation score, which is arguably substantially lower than other major figures in the field like Andre Nel (who also doesn't have an article). Wikipedia's coverage of contemporary prominent paleoentomologists and arachnologists is poor, but given how poor the coverage of prominent contemporary scientists is, meaning that their articles are often little more than stubs, I don't think much is lost.

[Poetlister]

"Black book" could refer to the Nazis' Sonderfahndungsliste GB ("most wanted arrest list GB"), a list of British people who would be in trouble if they succeeded in taking us over, from Winston Churchill to Sir William Bragg.

[Moral Hazard]

"Black book" could refer to the Nazis' Sonderfahndungsliste GB ("most wanted arrest list GB"), a list of British people who would be in trouble if they succeeded in taking us over, from Winston Churchill to Sir William Bragg.

The more I read about Nazis, the more I dislike them.

[Anroth]

"Black book" could refer to the Nazis' Sonderfahndungsliste GB ("most wanted arrest list GB"), a list of British people who would be in trouble if they succeeded in taking us over, from Winston Churchill to Sir William Bragg.

The more I read about Nazis, the more I dislike them.

Hilarious only for the idea that people can learn to dislike the nazis *more*....

[Moral Hazard]

"Black book" could refer to the Nazis' Sonderfahndungsliste GB ("most wanted arrest list GB"), a list of British people who would be in trouble if they succeeded in taking us over, from Winston Churchill to Sir William Bragg.

The more I read about Nazis, the more I dislike them.

Hilarious only for the idea that people can learn to dislike the nazis *more*....

You know, with Hitler, the more I learn about that guy, the more I don't care for him.

Norm Macdonald (T-H-L)

https://www.npr.org/2021/09/15/10373500 ... end-update