Talk:Criticism of Wikipedia/Archive 4

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Why is this not part of the main article on Wikipedia?

This seems to be customary for all other entities but not this self serving, non-encyopedic entity? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.2.156.224 (talk) 22:33, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Critisisms of critisisms

In preparation of the addition of the section "Critisisms of critisisms", those interested may compile information here. Rolyatleahcim (formerly known as Zzzmidnight) (talk) 02:37, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Why is there no criticism of the new Vector skin?

Judging from other criticism articles about websites, whenever a website changes its design it must be included in the website's criticism article, sources be damned. So, I'm waiting. Sceptre ^(talk) 00:55, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

The criticism would need to be reliably sourced and notable in scale. Simply saying "I don't like it" is not a RS. So far, there has been little evidence of widespread criticism of the new interface, although some people were bound to complain about it.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 06:21, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

There is a reliable resource: the system administrators can query the SQL-database in order to count the number of registered users, who changed their default skin back to the normal MediaWiki default. prohlep (talk) 22:24, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Bias in the direction of scientific atheism

There is a relatively bigger portion of the article on diverse biases.

However I miss an important, disturbing bias. The scientific atheism appears unbalanced. Frequently it is masquaraded by "I am on the correct clean base of sciences".

OK, the population, suffered from the communist agressive agitation, from the scientific atheism, ...

... the members of these population can detect faster if someone is cheating with the science, and in fact supports the atheism, incorrectly disregarding the real neutrality in the question of religion.

The main tool of scientific atheists is, that they do not accept, that they view is not scientific, but religious.

They believe in the atheistic interpretation of the scientific experiments.

See for more details, the works of Mihaly Polanyi, especially his leading publication, the Personal Knowledge.

This atheistic bias must be mentioned in an own subsection of the article.

prohlep (talk) 22:36, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

You may be right, but you must cite concrete examples, and be able to cite opinions to that effect.In any case, we're not sure what you mean by scientific atheism.Science, by its very nature, is concerned with what is quantifiable, with what can be observed by the senses and measured by the mind. So it can make no assertion for or against the existence of God. That question is outside its scope.You will need to be more specific.Gazzster (talk) 23:22, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

wrong, many times scientists if they cant explain, they use intelligent design theory to justify certain creations, universe's, scientific, nature's actions!

Psychotropic drug articles

It has been my experience that many of the articles in Wikipedia are often either biased or contain misinformation when it comes to descriptions of psychotropic drugs (antidepressants, benzodiazepines,atypical antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, etc.)One need only look at the discussion page on Effexor, for example, to lose confidence that one is in good hands scientifically. This is particularly unfortunate, since many people rely on Wikipedia information as background for taking medication. This is curious, since the quality of some other scientific articles, e.g., chromatography, are quite good. Perhaps the main "problem" with Wikipedia is not the quality of articles, but the unevenness of quality presented-unfortunately for the reader, one never knows if the article being examined contains mostly accurate or inaccurate information. Dehughes (talk) 20:47, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

It's not the point of this article, or its discussion page, to make criticisms of Wikipedia based on your own experience or opinion; it's the point to gather and summarize the criticisms that have been made as documented in reliable sources. *Dan T.* (talk) 22:20, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

I am the most reliable source of my own opinions. Dehughes (talk) 00:46, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Article by Rowan Scarborough in Human Events

Rowan Scarborough has written a critique of Wikipedia's coverage of American politicians which has been published in Human Events today.

• Wikipedia Whacks the Right, September 27, 2010

Scarborough focuses particularly on a comparison between the articles on Delaware Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell and her Democratic rival Chris Coons. A similar comparison is made between the articles about Republican Senator from Alaska Lisa Murkowski and Joe Miller, the "tea party"-endorsed candidate who unseated her in the primaries. Ditto Democratic senator Harry Reid from Nevada and his Republican tea-party opponent Sharron Angle. (Please don't whack me if I've got some of the titles wrong, I'm not American!)

Scarborough also cites Lawrence Solomon's criticisms which I think have been covered in this article.

The piece ends with a quotation of the lede of Wikipedia's article about Conservapedia, the content of which, Scarborough says, makes his case. --TS 00:14, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

I've added a precis of the above to the section on criticisms of alleged liberal bias. --TS 19:55, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Secondary sources considered harmful

One of the reasons for the lack of authority is that Wikipedia rules for verifyability call for using secondary sources. That policy may reduce bias, but it also increases the error rate, at least for technical fields. This is especially true for proprietary computers, languages and operating systems.Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 15:54, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Per WP:TALKNO, this talk page is not the place to discuss your personal opinions of Wikipedia policies. If you have reliable sources to back up your claims, then we could discuss putting the claims in this article. If you wish to propose a change to the Wikipedia policy you mention, then your posting should go in Wikipedia talk:No original research. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 03:11, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Criticism of Funding

E.g. Seth Finkelstein's, The Guardian articles on Wikipeida funding, such as Wikipedia isn't about human potential, whatever Wales says, claim that the maintenance of a divide between the non-profit Wikipedia and commercial counterpart Wikia, the only "wiki" specifically mentioned in the list of Alternative outlets, successfully encourages volunteerism on Wikipedia. However, "Wikia is sometimes summarised with the slogan "Wikipedia is the Encyclopedia. Wikia is the rest of the library." But libraries are not dedicated to making profits by selling advertising on every page of their books while having authors write the books for free [2]. If WP:DIRECTORY were scrapped, Wikia and Wikipedia were combined, then then there are those that claim[3] that wikipedia would be greatly in the black. These criticisms seem to be relevant, though very painful, especially at this "APAFWFJW" banner time of year. --Timtak (talk) 08:07, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not free. Without funding it will die. It took funding to create and develop the concepts and rules that govern Wikipedia. It takes funding to support the information infrastructure that delivers its content. I takes funding to maintain the credibility of wikipedia as a viable source, controversial or not, and to continue or enhance its infrastructure over its live-cycle. At some point, it will even take funding to end its existance. There is Freedom here for the employees of Wikipedia are not responsible for the end content, and anyone can make changes in a controlled manner consistent with its rules. Kill Wikepedia and perhaps no source can be trusted. "All news is biased" is a popular quotation these days. Can you truly trust the internet, which represents a significant (but not exclusive) portion of Wikipedia references? At least Wikipedia offers the means to question the truth of all things. Don't criticize its need for funding. --71.245.164.83 (talk) 02:51, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

funniest article

Because this is the funniest article on wikipedia and that it's filled with pov which violates wikipedia rules while stating all the very true reasons why so many people, like myself, hate the cult of idiot admins that rule here, I recommend that the article contain a list of what wikipedia intends to do about abusive admins and their simple minds. I knew wikipedia was ill-sourced. Poorly researched and extremely abusive to experts who try to contribute but to find out that wikipedia is a cult of 500 abusive morons is just too funny! To think britannica has over 4000 vetted experts and that wikipedia used to claim that the whole world contributes in their specialties - which is proven false rotflmao!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.189.209.66 (talk) 05:55, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Tagging of article

Not sure what the "Criticism title" tag is hoping to achieve. Are there any suggestions for what else the article could be called? The title is plain and fair, where is the problem?--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 07:34, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Title

The criticism maintenance tag on this article has been removed. Wikipedia's policy on criticism articles at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view#Naming reads: "titles should be worded neutrally, so as not to suggest a viewpoint "for" or "against" something, or to confine the content of the article to views on a particular side of an issue (for example, an article titled "Criticisms of X" might be better renamed "Societal views on X"). Neutral titles encourage multiple viewpoints and responsible article writing." Marcus Qwertyus 09:28, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

There is a need for a common sense approach here. "Societal views on Wikipedia" etc would be vague and would not give a reader a clear summary of what the article was about. Rather than retagging the article, please suggest an alternative name on the talk page to see whether there would be a consensus for a new name.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 09:44, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Why is "Societal views on Wikipedia" vague? Please keep in mind that, per NPOV, the content of this article needs to be expanded to include both positive and negative views of Wikipedia. The fact that the current article focuses on negative views is not a good reason to keep criticism in the title. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 06:25, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

"Societal" is a modern jargon word, but that is another matter. This article looks at the criticism of Wikipedia in the light of incidents like the Seigenthaler and Essjay controversies. It does not pretend to be neutral, because it is looking at the issues raised by online collaborative editing.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 07:47, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

I have posted this issue on the NPOV noticeboard. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 06:07, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

The fact that this article only mentions negative criticism is exactly the problem. As an example of what this leads to, the article is currently pushing a specific POV on the Cyrus cylinder: The one that is favoured by Iranian nationalists. The mainstream scholarly view is that it is an anachronism and very misleading to describe it as a human rights declaration. On other topics there was also unsourced or fraudulently sourced material here, and inadequately sourced BLP material. Hans Adler 12:34, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

How about renaming the article Reliability of Wikipedia? This would be more neutral and would not require a major rewrite of the article. The media often asks if Wikipedia is as reliable as traditional print encyclopedias.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 12:37, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

There already is a Reliability of Wikipedia article, and it has a significant amount of overlap with the criticism article. That overlap is another significant problem with the criticism article. Also, let's keep the title discussion on the NPOV Noticeboard. Although there was a tangential discussion of criticism articles in general, there still is on-going discussion of the article title on that board. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 04:00, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Link missing

I notice that there's no link for the "List of big-bust models and performers". Could someone direct me to this page? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.134.228.203 (talk) 06:03, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Funding

Why is there no secton devoted to criticism of Wikipedia's funding and money handling? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.28.29.192 (talk) 12:19, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Do you have any reliable sources which discuss a problem with Wikipedia's funding and money handling? -- JTSchreiber (talk) 23:49, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Miscellaneous

There needs to be an article about the lack of information on the Egypt crisis. The article on Wikipedia is very limited, but not allowed to be edited, and because some media are playing down the actions of the government, it is imperative that Wikipedia alllow full disclosure. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.169.72.154 (talk) 13:12, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

2011 Egyptian protests is protected only from unregistered "Anon IPs" like yourself since very often in controversial issues they will be vandals who disrupt the article. See WP:Protection for what kind of registration you will need for that page.If you have WP:reliable sourced info to add, register and you can edit. See WP:Protection for what kind of registration you will need for that page. CarolMooreDC (talk) 13:33, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, I think you can understand why people like Egyptians might want to be totally anonymous. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.169.72.154 (talk) 14:03, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

You can sign up with an anonymous name on a gmail or yahoo account and then use whatever user name you like. Only foolish people like me who've since regretted it use their real names! You will remain anonymous except to whatever extent governments track IP addresses and anonymous user names to servers where they can find out where you are. And that is a problem whether or not you have a user name, I assume. CarolMooreDC (talk) 14:08, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Change to disambiguation page

The decision to merge all the content of the old Criticism of Wikipedia article into other articles, such Reliability of Wikipedia, and then convert the Criticism of Wikipedia article into a disambiguation page started with this thread, which was just archived a few minutes ago. Most of the discussion occured on the NPOV noticeboard. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:07, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

There is clearly no consensus to essentially delete (or merge) Criticism of Wikipedia. This topic is extrememly notable. QuackGuru (talk) 17:41, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to keep the discussion on the NPOV noticeboard. Please copy your comments to this section on the noticeboard and I will reply. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 04:33, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

At 06:11, 25 February 2011 (UTC), I copied QuackGuru's statement above to NPOV noticeboard. with this response:

For the consensus issue, I would point out that WP:CONSENSUS says that "consensus can be assumed if editors stop responding to talk page discussions". In the case of Criticism of Wikipedia, II was the last person to oppose the change, but later agreed to a change. There were no other complaints about changing the article for 28 days before the changes were made. Why wouldn't this constitutes consensus per Wikipedia policy?

For the notability issue, I agree that Criticism of Wikipedia is a notable subject. However, WP:N says that notability in and of itself does not necessarily justify the existance of an article. In the case of Criticism of Wikipedia, the issues that led to its merge and replacement with a disambiguation page were lack of neutrality and redundancy with other articles.

I have copied my response back here because it's part of this discussion. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 06:01, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

I would like you to acknowledge you do not have broad consensus to delete a very notable subject. Lack of neutrality is not a reason to delete a very long article. It is irrelevant if other pages have similar or redundant text when this is the main page. I propose we restore the Criticism of Wikipedia. If editors want to essentially delete this page there should be an AFD. I feel merging small bits of this article with other articles is a back door AFD meant to ignore previous consensus to keep this very neutral topic. QuackGuru (talk) 21:21, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, AfD is not required for any merge (except for the unusual case of merge and delete, which is not happened to the Criticism of Wikipedia article). Deletion is more serious than merge/disambiguation, because deletion usually involves the loss of content and version history, neither of which was lost with Criticism of Wikipedia. That may be why the AfD process was approved, but the Article for Merge proposal failed.

Also, is there a reason you want to avoid posting on the NPOV Noticeboard? -- JTSchreiber (talk) 06:21, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I would be against having redirects of "Criticism of Wikipedia" to "Reliability of Wikipedia". The old article - which, personally, I thought was good - was not just about reliability of Wikipedia, but about things such as systematic bias in coverage, such as the common criticism that Wikipedia was too much on popular and media culture. I would like to see the old article brought back, even if it were to get a new name, such as Evaluation of Wikipedia. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:17, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

There was a consensus to break up the "Criticism of Wikipedia" article and merge it into other articles. To use an alternative approach now would require that a new discussion be held and that a new consensus be reached. Are you proposing a new discussion? If so, I would recommend that you work on your arguments for why you think a different approach should be used. So far, you have expressed your personal preference without really saying why others should agree with you. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 06:12, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I do find it highly unusual that the discussion happened entirely on another forum without so much as a single post on this talkpage. --Cybercobra (talk) 07:13, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

The discussion actually began on this talkpage. See this thread, which was not archived until after "Criticism of Wikipedia" was converted to a disambiguation page. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 04:58, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

The NPOV noticeboard is for improving articles. So go ahead and improve the article. There was never a consensus to break up the "Criticism of Wikipedia" article. You have not explained what is not neutral and even if the article is not neutral that is not a reason to break up the article for an extremely notable topic. QuackGuru (talk) 17:21, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Agree, there was never a consensus on this talk page, which is highly unusual. It seemed to be part of an agenda to remove "Criticism of" articles in general. How about testing the water for restoring the old article here?--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 17:41, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

How about the editor who deleted the article should restore the article. I will give JTSchreiber a chance to restore consensus or JTSchreiber should not be allowed to continue to edit this article. QuackGuru (talk) 17:51, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

I could not find much wrong with the old Criticism of Wikipedia article. It was well written and had NPOV. By splitting it up with redirects, the material it contained has been spoiled rather than improved. I vote for the old article back again.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 18:13, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

It sounds like we have two competing ideas about how to proceed. IanMacM would like to have a vote/discussion on bringing the old article back, while QuackGuru wants to view this as a behavior problem, as stated in QuackGuru's edit comment: "we can start a RfC on the behaviour of the editor or take the editor to ANI and request an indef-ban from this article." I don't think it's productive to have both conversations going on at once. I suggest that you two decide on one or the other. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:48, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't think an RfC is going to result in a topic ban. Marcus Qwertyus 06:22, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

JTSchreiber, lack of neutrality or redundancies with other article is not a reason to delete a notable topic. Moving text to other articles that you think is not neutral is not going to make the text neutral by moving it to other articles. Was there even any attempt to improve the article. What was not neutral. QuackGuru (talk) 18:05, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

JTSchreiber's move suggestion was in good faith. However, having seen the results, I am not convinced that it improved the encyclopedia. It has split up material that was once in a single article, and in my view the old article was better.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 18:11, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

While redundancy is an irrelevant reason to merge (they are different topics written as different presentations) the title and one-sided point of view was a problem. Marcus Qwertyus 20:30, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

The title is neutral and the vague objection the article is one-sided is not a reason to delete/merge. QuackGuru (talk) 20:36, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

While "Criticism of ..." titles are not banned, they are discouraged by both NPOV and WP:POVFORK because of neutrality concerns. Simply stating that you consider the title neutral does not override Wikipedia policies and guidelines. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 06:21, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

The Community of Wikipedia which is a criticism of the Wikipedia community is a much less notable topic than the broader topic Criticism of Wikipedia. When a topic is notable a WP:SPINOFF is warranted. The Community of Wikipedia is actually a shorter version of the Criticism of Wikpedia page. I could argue the Community of Wikipedia is the POVFORK and the Criticism of Wikipedia is the broader topic. QuackGuru (talk) 05:11, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

You wrote, "When a topic is notable a WP:SPINOFF is warranted." I've read the WP:SPINOFF section, as well as the whole guildine containing WP:SPINOFF, and I don't see that. Please provide a quotation from Wikipedia policies or guidelines to back up your statement. If you can't provide a quote, your statement is just your opinion, and does not reflect Wikipedia standards. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 04:55, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

WP:SPINOFF: "Sometimes, when an article gets long (see Wikipedia:Article size), a section of the article is made into its own article, and the handling of the subject in the main article is condensed to a brief summary. This is completely normal Wikipedia procedure. The new article is sometimes called a "spinout" or "spinoff" of the main article; Wikipedia:Summary style explains the technique." You can read the rest of the spinoff.

Do you agree that the Community of Wikipedia is actually a shorter version of the Criticism of Wikpedia page. Do you agree that the Community of Wikipedia page is less notable than the Criticism of Wikipedia page. The WP:NPOV page has some material on this subject too. QuackGuru (talk) 15:58, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

In your quote, WP:SPINOFF says "sometimes". That means that WP:SPINOFF is not saying "is warranted". Also, in the quote, the reason for the spinoff is length of the parent article, not notability. So, I can't see how your quote can be interpretted as meaning what you wrote ("When a topic is notable a WP:SPINOFF is warranted."). As far as NPOV is concerned, please be specific about what you're referring to.

The Community of Wikipedia content did come mainly from Criticism of Wikipedia. I had planned to put this material in the Wikipedia article, but Marcus Qwertyus thought it should have its own article due to undue weight issues. The discussion was in this section on his talk page. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:40, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

The article has close to 200 references and there are a lot more out hrere. You can't merge such a large topic without losing substantial material. Many years ago there was not a Criticism of Wikipedia page until the main page got too long. Now there is a lot of spinoff articles. The Reliability of Wikipedia was not merged because editors like the topic. QuackGuru (talk) 15:18, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

The Reliability of Wikipedia article was not merged because NPOV and WP:POVFORK do not discourage that type of article. Also see the new "Was significant content lost?" subsection below. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 04:37, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

The Criticism of Wikipedia article should not be merged because NPOV and WP:POVFORK does not discourage that type of article when the topic is so vast and notable. QuackGuru (talk) 17:38, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

See the new subsection entitled "Do NPOV and WP:POVFORK discourage criticism articles when the topics are very notable?". -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:16, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

After some initial scepticism I find the current solution much better than the original article which had enormous coatrack problems. --Saddhiyama (talk) 20:43, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

The coatrack problems could be the Community of Wikipedia which seems like a cut and paste of the Criticism of Wikipedia page. If the smaller topic is notable then the larger topic of Criticism of Wikipedia is even more notable for mainspace. QuackGuru (talk) 05:11, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

If we take that logic a step further soon we'll have criticism of encyclopedias and criticism of everything. criticism of everything is at least half as notable as everything. Marcus Qwertyus 14:08, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

If you take the logical step forward editors will do was is right for the project and not delete articles they don't like criticism of articles. QuackGuru (talk) 15:18, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Was significant content lost?

On 23 March 2011, QuackGuru wrote that the old Criticism of Wikipedia article had "close to 200 references" and also wrote, "You can't merge such a large topic without losing substantial material." I disagree. If anyone wants to make a case that significant content was lost, please provide specific examples of the lost content. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 04:34, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

The whole page has been broken apart. The Criticism of Wikipedia article has been shortened under a different title called Community of Wikipedia. It is part of the Criticism of Wikipedia but is in main space as a much less notable subject. It is a Criticism of the Wikipedia community article. The Criticism of the Wikipedia community is not notable for its own article. The content does not match the current title. It should be AFDed and the Criticism of Wikipedia article should be restored back to consensus. There are many "Criticism of" pages on Wikipedia. I am unable to read the content on one single page. The whole page was deleted. All the content was lost on this page. Readers should not be forced to go to different pages to read parts of the deleted article. QuackGuru (talk) 17:38, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

All criticism articles are pretty heavily deprecated. We're supposed to have articles that cover a NPOV, not articles that have a title that's clearly intended to pretty much exclusively collect negative views.Rememberway (talk) 18:27, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

There are a lot of Criticism of articles in Wikipedia's mainspace. You have a lot of work to do if you want to redirect all those articles. QuackGuru (talk) 19:19, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

So, you're saying WP:OTHERSTUFF. Do you have a real argument?Rememberway (talk) 22:58, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

You claimed "All criticism articles are pretty heavily deprecated." I showed there are a lot of Criticism articles which is the norm on Wikipedia. Rememberway, there is no policy that says Criticism articles are not allowed in mainspace. QuackGuru (talk) 23:31, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

QuackGuru, nothing you wrote was related to lost content. Do you have any evidence that substantial material was lost during the merge or are you just speculating? -- JTSchreiber (talk) 02:34, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

The whole page is lost because it is deprecated. You are unable to justify deleting an extremely notable topic. I propose an AFD to get broader comments. QuackGuru (talk) 23:31, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Again, you are avoiding the subject of lost material. Here is what you wrote originally: "You can't merge such a large topic without losing substantial material." This is about whether material was not merged properly, not about whether the page itself is "lost". Since you have not provided any evidence of lost material, I will have to assume that you have no evidence. -- JTSchreiber (talk)

This is about whether the page itself is "lost" for such a notable topic. Wikipedia policy allows for Criticism articles where the topic is very notable. QuackGuru (talk) 05:50, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Where did the material on user:Jossi and Prem Rawat go? Someone was asking it about it.   Will Beback  talk  06:19, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

That's a good question. I merged the Jossi and Rawat info into the "Conflicts involving Wikipedia policy makers" section of Reliability of Wikipedia. Here is the version of that article at the time that the Criticism of Wikipedia article was converted to a disambiguation page: [4]. While the Jossi and Rawat info was in that version, someone deleted the info from the reliability article since then. I don't know who deleted it or why the deletion was done. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:12, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, that helps. I was thinking that the Diebold, etc., editing revealed by Wikiscanner would go well with it, under a "conflicts of interest" hdg. Anyway, I'll pursue this at the other page.   Will Beback  talk  05:33, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

You're welcome. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 04:57, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Do NPOV and WP:POVFORK discourage criticism articles when the topics are very notable?

On 25 March 2011, QuackGuru wrote that the "Criticism of Wikipedia article should not be merged because NPOV and WP:POVFORK does not discourage that type of article when the topic is so vast and notable." I have re-read the NPOV and POVFORK sections dealing with criticism articles. I see nothing in there that says highly notable criticism articles are exempt. What is the basis for claiming that there is an exemption for highly notable articles? -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:08, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

"The principles upon which this policy is based cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, or by editors' consensus." -- WP:NPOV Marcus Qwertyus 05:19, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

AFD

The proper procedure is to WP:AFD the article if you think it is not notable. QuackGuru (talk) 22:05, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

What do you mean by "proper procedure"? Are you saying that you prefer AFD or are you saying the Wikipedia policy requires that AFD be used? -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:09, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Dab? Or article-stub?

The current content seems like the concept of Disambiguation page is being over-stretched to accommodate it. Please consider treating it as an article stub. The resulting article would presumably discuss (briefly?) the kinds of criticism (differing e.g. as to the aspects of WP focused on and as to the remedies suggested, including discourage its use, educate potential users on how to use it, modify its model, and promote participation in order to narrow the resource gap). It would of course link to various Main articles.
--Jerzy•t 20:39, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

The consensus reached in this section on the NPOV noticeboard was that Criticism of Wikipedia would not be an article, so I don't think we should make it back into an article, even a stub. The other alternative is to make it a redirect. The most obvious candidates for the target article are Wikipedia and Reliability of Wikipedia. Any thoughts on the choice of target article for the redirect? -- JTSchreiber (talk) 03:52, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia sounds like the soundest choice. Reliability may be our greatest weakness but it isn't our only one. Marcus Qwertyus 05:01, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Since no one else has responded, I will go ahead and make it a redirect to Wikipedia. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 04:48, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia Censorship should never be allowed to touch this article

only people who are part of the alleged 'hive mind', or administrators who know they do abuse as is alleged to exist in this article, would have a reason or motivation to delete justified criticism. Suppressing criticism is a sure sign of the 'dictatorship' of the 'small group that is running the show'. This article disappearing will for sure confirm it's content, as do all tries to obfuscate it or to make it less accessible, or to remove sections instead of replying to them in a professional, clear, and wikified manner.

Mike (talk) 18:55, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

There is an 'outdated' flag on the article, I would not agree, there are articles much older with no activity in the name space and nobody would flag them as 'outdated'. Agreement to remove this flag?

Mike (talk) 19:22, 8 September 2012 (UTC) This article is flagged as 'controversial', I'd suggest to remove this: declaring justified criticism 'controversial' is not a good idea, especially since this article has interest outside of Wikipedia: that labeling would actually confirm it's content, as would editing out criticism or editing in replies, instead of properly replying in a recent article, and make this a 'historical reference ' if you like to pretend it is no longer of any actuality (I have proof of the contrary...).

Mike (talk) 19:22, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Replace article with disambiguation page?

For some strange reason, an editor has replaced the entire contents of the article with what looks like a disambiguation page.[5] I checked this talk page, and I cannot find any discussion regarding such a drastic move. Apparently, there was some discussion on some backwaters part of Wikipedia I've never heard of, but nobody was notified of this discussion. Thus, following WP:BRD, I have reverted this bold move. If there's a valid reason for such a drastic move, please state the case for it here. Thanks! A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 22:29, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

• Yes, there is a valid reason, it's called the RfD discussion that I linked in the edit summary. The discussion was linked from the then redirect page for over a month, and RfD is hardly a backwater! I explicitly asked in the edit summary that anyone who disagrees with the decision to make this a disambiguation page again to explain why with reference to the extensive discussion that has already taken place - yet I see only "I didn't know about it". To summarise Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2012 August 5#Criticism of Wikipedia, this was originally an article. After extensive discussions, that article was split and the material merged into five articles that discussed the various aspects in a more balanced way (i.e. not focussing solely on criticism) and replaced with a disambiguation page linking to those articles. That disambiguation page was unilterally reverted, and then restored after much discussion. Later it was again reverted to an article with little to no discussion, then redirected. That redirect was proposed for deletion and kept, but ignoring the discussion it was retargetted. That redirect was then nominated for discussion in early August, and during the discussion (which was heading towards a "disambiguate" consensus) it was unilaterally again restored to an article. The discussion was closed as moot (no longer a redirect), so I implemented the apparent consensus of every discussion about this over the past couple of years (disambiuate) only to get reverted for lack of discussion! So, why should this not be a dab page? Thryduulf (talk) 00:31, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
  • I will notify all the participants in the RfD discussion about this discussion. Thryduulf (talk) 00:32, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
• Endorse revert. There is no consensus to delete this article, which is what conversion to a revert clearly amounts to. JN466 01:34, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Did you mean, "conversion to a dab"? Scolaire (talk) 09:49, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
• IMHO a disambiguation page is more sensible (as mentioned at the RfD discussion). Any content in this outdated article that is not already duplicated can be merged into the other relevant articles. benzband (talk) 09:23, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
• We have had at least two discussions to make this into either a redirect or a disambig page only a few months ago (Here, here). Both discussions showed clear consensus to do so, however both discussions was also overturned by single editors simply reverting back to the article despite the obvious consensus. I find it very strange that this behaviour has been accepted, and I find it even more strange that we have to take this discussion for the third time within such a short period of time. This article should be a dismabiguation page as per the previous discussion. --Saddhiyama (talk) 09:39, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
• No consensus for change to dab: "[The discussion] was heading towards a "disambiguate" consensus". No. The !votes were: five for change to dab, five for keep as article (including two keep as article and nominate as AfD) and one for keep as article or dab. A dead split! The discussion was heading nowhere after over a month. "I implemented the apparent consensus of every discussion about this over the past couple of years (disambiguate)". I've looked at this page, the four archives and the NPOV noticeboard archive, and I cannot see any apparent consensus at all. And if the consensus was so apparent, why were there continued discussions? Note, by the way, that in at least one of the articles into which this was "split"—Community of Wikipedia—all the content has been removed and replaced with a link back to this article. For the purposes of discussion I will repeat what I said on the RfD page: Keep as article and send to AfD. If consensus is for deletion, then it should not exist as a dab page or as a redirect either. And if consensus is for keeping, somebody should undertake to udate it and clean it up. Scolaire (talk) 09:47, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
  • There has never been a consensus for deletion, nor do I think it should be deleted. Conversion to a dab page is not deletion either as the content has been merged into other places. Thryduulf (talk) 10:08, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
    • Let me put it this way: "Criticism of Wikipedia" is as unambiguous as can be. There is no conceivable need for disambiguation. To pretend that criticism of Wikipedia content is a different topic to criticism of the Wikipedia community is plain silly. Any criticism of content involves content created by the community; any criticism of the community concerns itself with how it creates content. Likewise, "academic studies" will invariably discuss issues of accuracy and bias, which are issues around content created by the community. You say there has never been a consensus for deletion. I say (and you have not shown otherwise) there has never been a consensus for a dab page. So the only question remaining is: is somebody willing to do the work to edit this down into a concise, well-sourced, NPOV, informative article? Scolaire (talk) 18:58, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
      • No, "criticism of Wikipedia" is not an ambiguous term. However, per our own guidelines we should Avoid sections and articles focusing on "criticisms" or "controversies", so the section of this former article that dealt with criticism of the community was merged into the article that discusses the positive and negative aspects of and responses to the Wikipedia community. Likewise with the other sections. The only thing we need here (and I should be clear we do need something here that is not a redlink or a redirect) is a bit of text saying "Criticism of Wikipedia may take many forms" followed by some links to where these various aspects are covered in detail. Anything else just duplicates those articles but without the balance provided by taking a holistic look at the positive and negative aspects of the topic - AKA a POV fork. Thryduulf (talk) 21:07, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
        • I think we're moving closer together. There is a need for an article that acknowledges that there are criticisms of Wikipedia. There is no ambiguity therefore disambiguation is innappropriate. The article should take a holistic look at the positive and negative aspects of the topic. Therefore, take all the crap out of the article, look at genuine criticisms in peer-reviewed books and articles, balance it with positive criticism which also exists out there, and make a decent (and concise) article out of it. Having a dab page that says "hey, if you want to read bad stuff about Wikipedia go to these sections of these articles" does not address any of the problems. Scolaire (talk) 23:27, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
          • Disambiguation in the traditional sense isn't required, what he have is more like a set index (use for situations that require disambiguation but don't fit the rules for when disambiguation "should" be needed). There is no need for an article to look at the holistic positive and negative criticism of Wikipedia because that would duplicate the articles that already do just that for the specific areas - what the dab/set index does is say "if you want to read bad stuff about Wikipedia you're looking in the wrong place because Wikipedia doesn't write articles just about bad stuff about any topic. What we do is write neutral articles about the topics that include the good and bad things people say about it. Lots of people say lots of different good and bad things about Wikipedia so we don't have a single article about it, instead we have five that each concentrate on one aspect of it. Which of these five would you like to read?" Or you could write than in a more concise, encylopaedic fashion and say "Criticism of Wikipedia may take many forms". Thryduulf (talk) 01:29, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
            • Criticism of Wikipedia doesn't take many forms, it takes the single form of either academics or non-academics saying that there are issues of accuracy and bias, which are issues around content created by the community. However, it is obvious that you are not going to take on board anything I say, so I'll just allow the discussion to develop below. Scolaire (talk) 08:04, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
• Move only what belongs in other articles. Why more discussion? This article has caused enough problems already. There was an ANI discussion about it, an RfD, we don't need to waste any more precious time and work. Besides, this serves as an article for miscellaneous criticism, not by any particular person. Longbyte1 (talk) 21:51, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
  • What is there here that doesn't belong in other articles? It was all merged long ago, just before it became a dab page for the first time. Afaict on none of the occasions it was unilaterally reverted to an article in defiance of consensus did anybody actually update the article. Thryduulf (talk) 01:20, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
• Thryduulf: I have two questions. First, you said that content from this article was moved into 5 other articles. Was all the content from this article preserved in the 5 articles, or was any of it lost? Second, why was there no discussion on this talk page? Thanks. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 02:44, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
  • I wasn't involved in any of the discussions prior to the recent two at RfD and the one at ANI, so I can't say for certain whether everything was merged but it was reported as such on the RfD, there is a record of it in the template at the top of this page, and it is mentioned as such in the discussion at #Change to disambiguation page. Regarding the lack of discussion here, if you are referring to the original change, then there was discussion here (see #Title and #Change to disambiguation page and the discussion at the NPOV noticeboard repeatedly linked from those threads. If you are talking about the latest change, I didn't think it was necessary to start yet another discussion following the one just completed at RfD which was advertised on the redirect then article for over a month and brought up at least once at WP:AN/I, particularly given that it reached the same consensus as the previous times it was discussed (see much of Archive 4). Based on this evidence I completely reject the accusations of lack of discussion - the past few years this page has seen a cycle of discussion followed by consensus that was implemented and then reverted by a single editor without discussion because they didn't like that consensus. Thryduulf (talk) 03:08, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
    • @Quest For Knowledge: As I said above, all of the content that was moved to Community of Wikipedia has been removed, so no, everything is not preserved on other articles. I don't know about the remaining articles. @Thryduulf, you say that you "didn't think it was necessary to start yet another discussion following the one just completed at RfD". In fact, your edit summary asked people to discuss, while insisting that your unilateral edit not be reverted until after the discussion. And you're still insisting that consensus on a dab page was reached multiple times, but without linking to any instance of this consensus being reached. Where in Archive 4 (this page) do we see everybody agreeing to a dab page? In #Change to disambiguation page, for instance, I see two people arguing unambiguously for a dab page, three arguing for keeping it as an article, and two others offering views and criticisms, but without mentioning either option. And who is this "single editor" that reverted every time? Scolaire (talk) 08:04, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
    • Ah! I've discovered the consensus in the NPOV noticeboard archive: "Marcus Qwertyus and I have completed the merge and redirect, except that I decided to use a disambiguation page instead of a redirect" (JTSchreiber, 21:17, 13 February 2011). That's it. That's the consensus. "I decided"! Scolaire (talk) 08:42, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
• Revert to a redirect or a dab page. In this discussion from the NPOV noticeboard, there was a consensus to merge the article content and replace it with a redirect. As explained in WP:CONSENSUS, when editors drop out of a discussion, consensus can be assumed. There were 12 editors involved in the noticeboard discussion, so, per WP:CONSENSUS, this counts as a consensus of 12. It was inappropriate to unilaterally change the redirect back to an article last month. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:34, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
  • When Silver seren restored the article on 8 August it was not reverted for a full month. Since A Quest For Knowledge (immediately) restored it, it has not been reverted, nor has it attracted any discussion apart from him, myself, Thryduulf and a couple of "yeah, me too" comments—both for and against—from editors who then "dropped out". If silence equals consensus, then there is a clear consensus to keep the article as an article. Scolaire (talk) 08:09, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
    • It was not immediately reverted after Silver seren unilaterally change it to an article because it was actively being discussed at RfD and people chose not to edit war. When I implemented what every consensus has arrived at, consensus was again ignored by someone who didn't like it (despite a clear request to discuss rather than revert). I've tried to start [i]yet another[/i] discussion, rather than revert again, but it seems there is much fatigue and few could be bothered to make the same arguments again when history shows that any consensus will just be ignored. Thryduulf (talk) 10:03, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
    • Scolaire, WP:CONSENSUS says that edits may be assumed to have consensus if they are not disputed. The edits you mentioned which brought back the article have been disputed, so they cannot be assumed to form a consensus. You seem to be impying that there aren't enough people responding to this discussion for it to count. WP:CONSENSUS says nothing about how many editors need to dispute an edit. One editor should be enough for an edit to be disuputed and thus not represent consensus. Also, I see nothing in WP:CONSENSUS about the amount of time that an edit has been around. It doesn't matter. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:49, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
      • JTSchreiber, you can't have it both ways. Underneath the post in the NPOV archive where you informed contributors what "you decided", you yourself have said that the edit was disputed by QuackGuru! Therefore, by your own criteria, there was no "consensus of 12". Since then there have been discussions which I and Thryduulf have pointed to in Archive 4, at RfD and back here, and in all cases there was a very obvious failure of consensus. Thryduulf continues to assert that he "implemented what every consensus has arrived at", but he still declines to point to the place where these multiple consensuses emerged, while I have done the maths and shown that there was no such thing. Therefore your spurious "consensus of 12", even if it could be wikilawyered into existence, has been superseded by every discussion that has taken place since. Scolaire (talk) 07:45, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
        • Please point to anywhere there is a consensus that this should be an article. The "consensus of 12" certainly didn't generate one, neither RfD discussion generated one, and there certainly isn't one on this page. It would also help if you could actually explain in what way an article here would not duplicate at least one other article and/or why there would be benefit in having such a duplicate. Your arguments so far have completely ignored multiple requests to do so. Thryduulf (talk) 10:13, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
          • Your arguments so far have completely ignored multiple requests to point to anywhere there is a consensus that this should be a pseudo-dab. I merely said that if, per JTSchreiber, silence equals consensus, then the consensus among this silent majority must be to leave things as they are; obviously I can't point to this consensus, as a consensus consisting of the absence of edits, discussion or even interest cannot be pointed to. As you see below, my proposal was to re-write the article in such a way that it would not be a mere duplicate of other articles. Since it is clear to me (and I have no power here, I just call it as I see it) that this will never be permanently converted to a pseudo-dab because there is no consensus, I thought it better to replace the egregious nonsense that is there with a concise, well-sourced, NPOV, informative article. Since I have had neither support nor encouragement, I must conclude that there is consensus among this silent majority to leave the egregious nonsense as it is. I am therefore abandoning any attempt to improve it, withdrawing herewith from the discussion and removing this page from my watchlist. Feel free to continue your rant against me, but please be aware that I will never read it. Scolaire (talk) 13:24, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
        • Scolaire mentioned my posting on the NPOV noticeboard about QuackGuru. That posting was a reference to this discussion on the talk page. In the discussion, all of the editors from who wanted Criticism of Wikipedia to be an article dropped out, so that counts as another consensus against having an article. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:37, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

coverage

The definition of liberal is varies in different countries so the liberal bias section heading should be renamed i think. Pass a Method talk 01:24, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree. Also, the paragraph is quite convincing of the notion that there is a liberal bias. However, all cited sources are themselves right wing and as such not particularly reliable. My instinct is to delete the paragraph entirely, but is this page about valid criticisms or criticisms in general? I have renamed the paragraph "Partisan bias" as I believe it to be better but am not attached to this label. WykiP (talk) 02:56, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Proposals for improving this article

The article as it stands is very poor. I propose the following steps to improve it:

1. Remove everything that is not criticism of Wikipedia. For instance: "Academics have also criticized Wikipedia for its perceived failure as a reliable source...This criticism, however, does not only apply to Wikipedia but to encyclopedias in general". This is therefore a non-issue. Reliability will, of course, be discussed elsewhere.
2. Remove any duplication, and bring together any recurring themes. For instance, several sections have "Encyclopædia Britannica said...". But Britannica has an obvious interest in criticising a competitor, especially a free one, so comments by them should all be dealt with in one area, though probably less than a full section.
3. Remove all unsourced content.
4. Remove all content not supported by reliable sources. In particular, there are many references to The Register and NPR. None of these references are more than opinion pieces written in a sensational style on web pages that fail several of the criteria of WP:RS.
5. Remove all direct quotes that lack context. For instance: "Emigh and Herring argue that 'a few active users, when acting in concert with established norms within an open editing system...'" The article itself may well be worth reading, but the standalone quote is difficult to interpret and so adds nothing to the article.
6. Remove anything that is clearly out of date. A 2004 article saying nothing more than "many important articles are badly written" (I can't think of an example off-hand) would not have any relevance in 2012.
7. Condense any overlong paragraphs and sections. The NPOV section in particular has the appearance of having been added to whenever somebody thought of another example of NPOV criticism, and there are some intances of "he said but she said" type writing.
8. Arrange the remainder into logical sections, reducing the number of subsections as much as possible. At the moment there is a "section 1.1.4.6"; this is far too many levels for any article.
9. Update it by reading up some recent publications. A quick search on jstor brings up half a dozen articles on Wikipedia published within the last four years. These can be used to either suppliment or replace the older references.

Does this look like a reasonable plan of campaign? Scolaire (talk) 08:21, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

On the face of it yes, but I don't really see the point. The NPOV, balance and reliability/accuracy stuff is all dealt with in Reliability of Wikipedia and there is no point duplicating the effort. The academic studies (pro and con) are dealt with in Academic studies about Wikipedia and likewise the Community of Wikipedia article means those two sections aren't needed here either. "Satire of Wikipedia" is covered in Wikipedia in culture and everything else belongs in one of those articles or the main Wikipedia article (which summarises everything anyway). What we're left with is a disambiguation page or an unbalanced duplicate of other articles. Thryduulf (talk) 13:02, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for repeating your comments yet again. Let me assure you that I made note of them the first time. Scolaire (talk) 14:21, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

But you have yet to do anything more than that. Why do you not think they apply? Or if you do think they apply, why are they not relevant? You have said you disagree there was consensus for a dab page, but not why you think it shouldn't be one. Thryduulf (talk) 15:46, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

I said here, "it is obvious that you are not going to take on board anything I say". You have proved me right. Why I don't think they apply, why it shouldn't be a "dab" page, I have explained at length in the discussion above. You didn't hear it. I didn't say I disagreed there was a consensus; I demonstrated conclusively that there was none, and there is none. The choice is to leave the article in the deplorable state it's in, or improve it. I will engage with anybody who is interested in the latter course, but I have not another single word to say about that other matter. Scolaire (talk) 20:47, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes I heard you, and disagreed with you - criticism is about more than just accuracy and bias in the product(s) of the community, there is also criticism about the organisation, structure, philosophy (although this is linked to bias), and behaviour of the community; and then there there are the parodies, etc. But even if it was just about those two things they're covered in the article Reliability of Wikipedia so my point that this would be a duplication of effort remains - the discussion you should be having is whether this title should be a disambiguation page or a redirect. I'm not interested in improving this article, because I don't think it should be an article. The reason I think that is because I don't believe it can, in the long term, be a neutral article when it is focused solely on criticism, whereas the articles this would duplicate can be. Thryduulf (talk) 03:10, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

My proposals stand. I made a start on implementing them, but in the absence of any positive feedback I am not interested in taking it further. I am withdrawing from the discussion and unwatching the page. Happy editing to those who come after me. Scolaire (talk) 13:32, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

This section was archived by MiszaBot I on 25 December 2012‎. I am restoring it because of questions asked below. Scolaire (talk) 21:11, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Why were several paragraphs of this article deleted without any discussion?

I noticed that most of this article's content was deleted in a series of edits, without being restored afterward. Should this mass-removal of content be reverted, or should the deleted content not be restored at all? Jarble (talk) 20:51, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

See #Proposals for improving this article, which was archived by a bot on 25 December last, but which I have now restored for reference. Scolaire (talk) 21:14, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Just for interest, why would you think that a series of edits with clear edit summaries justifying them should automatically be reverted? That seems a bizarre interpretation of Wikipedia policy to me. Scolaire (talk) 21:22, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I thought you had deleted a large section of the article without discussing it on the talk page first - that's why I was concerned. I didn't want a large part of the article to be deleted without a prior discussion among this article's editors, but it appears that there was already some kind of consensus. Jarble (talk) 17:00, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Washington Post reports on bias on wikipedia

• Suzy Khimm (18 June 2012). "Study: Wikipedia perpetuates political bias". Washington Post. Retrieved 5 March 2013.

An interesting read that perhaps should be incorporated into the partisan bias section.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 05:58, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

It's a short, three-paragraph story, and in the third paragraph the author basically says she doesn't think much of the study: it "used a very technical index to measure political slant", and applied 2005 data to 2012 Wikipedia. In other words, poor scientific method. There are much better articles out there. Scolaire (talk) 08:11, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Potential sources

from the stub Wikipedia's women problem which has been redirected here. some of the sources appear to already be in use here.-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 10:45, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

References

Carolyn Doran and "hive mind"

Can someone think of a good addition to the "hive mind" section that uses Wikipedia's response to the Carolyn Doran article? Most of the stuff I add to articles seems to get reverted, so I'm not even going to try. --Fandyllic (talk) 11:06 AM PST 6 Jan 2008

It's the Hive-Mind a correct term when referring to wikipedia? The New York times reported, "Achal Prabhala, an adviser to Ms. Gardner’s Wikimedia Foundation who lives and writes in Bangalore, India, has made perhaps the most trenchant criticism in a video project, “People are Knowledge,” that he presented in Haifa (along with its clunky subtitle, “Exploring alternative methods of citation for Wikipedia”). The film, which was made largely with a $20,000 grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, spends time showing what has been lost to Wikipedia because of sticking rules of citation and verification."

Without the citation rules and regulations wouldn't it just be "truth" agreed upon by majority, or better known as hive mind? I don't have a problem with the citation rules as they stand but who dictates what page is relevant, what entry is relevant and what isn't? A perfect example would be, Gregg Braden. He is a NY times best seller, computer system designer, was a technical operation manage for Cisco and is a New Age philosopher. He is an accomplish individual and some might even say at the for-front of the New Age spiritual moment. However, no wikipedia page.

Was this an oversight? Maybe nobody took the time to create one or was his page deleted because New Age Spiritualism and or Quantum Mysticism are not popular subjects among many different circle of groups of people; or maybe it because, it doesn't fit the hive mentality, the truth by popular opinion model of what is acceptable on wikipedia. So either way, isn't the hive mind criticism correct and very true when talking about wikipedia?

I am sorry, but this talkpage is not a forum for discussion of the topic of the article, but about how to improve the article. How do you suggest we improve it?User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 20:22, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Notable critics

This article discusses criticism of the content and the people, but does not discuss who does the criticism. There are websites devoted to criticism like Wikipedia Review and Wikipediocracy, websites that run critical stories like The Daily Dot, and individuals known for their criticism such as Larry Sanger, Andrew Orlowski, Robert McHenry, Nicholas G. Carr and Andrew Leonard. Should there be a section talking about notable critics? It could just give short summary and point to the main article where present. There would of course have to be some ground rules to avoid describing every blogger with a pet peeve. Support? Oppose? Aymatth2 (talk) 00:33, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

This sounds like an excellent idea. As far as criteria for inclusion I think at a minimum we should require a main article and a secondary source describing the critics as critics. Maybe more is needed, but I wouldn't be comfortable with less than that.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 00:58, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

I think that the proposed addition would run into problems with giving undue weight to some people/organizations by mentioning them in both existing sections and the proposed section. For example, Orlowski is already mentioned in this article. I know from working on his article (Andrew Orlowski) that it's really hard to find reliable, secondary sources for his criticism of Wikipedia (or anything else about him). Discussing him in a new critics section would probably give him undue weight in this article, and may also involve overuse of primary sources. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:35, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

If we go with Alf.laylah.wa.laylah's criteria - main article on the critic and secondary sources that call them a critic - that may not be a problem. I am leaning towards a simple alphabetical list, with entries like:

• Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, left Wikipedia in 2002 and later founded Citizendium.^[16] He has often been critical of the project.^[17]

^[16] and ^[17] would point to reliable secondary sources that support the statements and say he is a critic. The list may be quite short on this basis. Orlowski probably would qualify based on the BBC mention. The Register is quite respectable. An anti-Wikipedia blogger like Gregory Kohs probably would not, since I do not see any secondary sources commenting on his many Examiner.com and Wikipediocracy articles. Aymatth2 (talk) 11:51, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Having a list like your example would help reduce the problem, but may not elimnate it. Considering how little there is from secondary sources about Orlowski's views of Wikipedia, I still think it's questionable to have both the existing Orlowski content and a new list item about him.

Another issue has to do with the WP:NPOV requirement that the article provide a balance between positive and negative views. Will your proposed list contain people and organizations which have positive opinions about Wikipedia.? -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:47, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

The article should present the criticism from a neutral point of view, focusing on criticism by opinion leaders such as well-known journalists and academics, and describing their opinions fairly and without comment. Given the article title, it would be inappropriate to include praise, or people who have praised Wikipedia. The proposed addition serves an index to notable critics, a common practice, like listing notable artists in an article about Pointillism. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:04, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

While you see the similarity between this article and Pointilism, I see the contrast. The artists listed in Pointillism#Notable artists have so much content written about their pointillism in secondary sources. By comparison, someone like Orlowski has virtually nothing in secondary sources for his views on Wikipedia. For me, comparing the two articles just makes me question the proposed addition even more.

WP:NPOV, in the section WP:POVNAMING, says:

Some article titles are descriptive, rather than being a name. Descriptive titles should be worded neutrally, so as not to suggest a viewpoint for or against a topic, or to confine the content of the article to views on a particular side of an issue (for example, an article titled "Criticisms of X" might be better renamed "Societal views on X").

Proponents of "Criticisms of X" titles will sometimes argue that such titles can be neutral because criticism can include both positive and negative views. For example, movie critics express positive and negative opinions about movies, rather than being generally against movies. If you still think that criticism should be negative only, then how do you reconcile your approach with the quotation from WP:NPOV above? -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:47, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

You could propose renaming this article to "Societal views on Wikipedia" and balancing out the negative opinions with positive ones. I doubt that would get much support. The negative scope seems reasonable, like "Atheism", which is not combined with "Theism" for balance. But if the article were renamed and expanded to include positive opinions, that would not affect this proposal. We would call the list something like "Notable commentators" and add people like Jimmy Wales.

Still, I agree that few people are known for being critics (or supporters) of Wikipedia. Most readers find Wikipedia useful, if imperfect, but have little interest in the internal details. Webster's Dictionary had its critics, but the general public was not anxiously awaiting their next pronouncement. Nobody would be introduced as a "noted critic of Webster's Dictionary." The list may be short. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:05, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

I disagree with the comparison of this article to Atheism, whose title is the name of a belief. WP:POVNAMING makes a clear distinction between articles whose title is the name of something (atheism) and articles with a descriptive title (criticism of Wikipedia). The balance requirement in the quotation above applies only to articles with descriptive titles. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:46, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree that WP:POVNAMING supports a move to "Societal views on Wikipedia". The name seems awkward, and editors may be uneasy about balancing the criticism with praise, since there seems to be a conflict of interest. But you could propose a move. This proposal is independent of the outcome of such a proposal. It is to add a list of notable people associated with the subject, a common practice. Notable ... communists, congregationalists, constructivists, creationists ... Aymatth2 (talk) 11:56, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

In your last edit comment, you wrote, "move possibility is a red herring". You are the one talking about a move possibility, not me. The point I was bringing up before is that there is an alternate definition of criticism which includes both positive and negative opinions. This definition fits better with WP:POVNAMING, which is against having articles with descriptive titles be limited to one side of an issue. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:57, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

"Criticism" typically has a negative connotation. WP:POVNAMING says "for example, an article titled 'Criticisms of X' might be better renamed 'Societal views on X'." Technically, criticism does not have to be negative. A film or book critic can write a review that is full of praise. But before adding positive views to this article a rename to "Societal views on Wikipedia" might avoid confusion. Regardless of the title, should this article list people who are known for expressing opinions on the subject? I think it should. It is common practice with articles that discuss ideas or activities to list notable people associated with those ideas or activities. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:43, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Having already played a major role in a previous discussion about changing the name of this article, I do not intend to begin another such discussion at this time. I am still concerned about undue weight for a list of people known for expressing opinions, but I am willing to compromise on that issue if Orlowski is excluded from the list and if there can be a balance of people who have positive and negative opinions. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:44, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Outdated

How can this article be outdated? 23.56.789ERR (talk) 13:51, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

That notice was added almost a year ago, but the article is still outdated; there are only 2 references that mention anything in the last 6 months, so unless everybody's stopped criticising Wikipedia, this article needs updating.  drewmunn  talk  14:22, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Why does it need updating if it includes some recent criticism from within the last six months? Is there anything else new or notable that is missing? If the tag was added over a year ago and criticism from within the last six months has been added, it seems the problem has been addressed and maybe the tag should simply be removed. Deli nk (talk) 15:02, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I'd have to take a look into it, but I believe that there needs to be more added for the last 12 months or so; although the initial issue may be solved, there seems to be a lacking now that would warrant the tag anyway. When I have a bit more time, I'll see how balanced the article is at dealing with recent events.  drewmunn  talk  16:47, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

The edit did not match edit summary

According to The Magnificent Clean-keeper (talk), the text was Misplaced. "Unlikely" he dismissed criticism the year before it was actually made.[6]

In 2007, Wales dismissed the criticism of the Wikipedia model: "I am unaware of any problems with the quality of discourse on the site. I don't know of any higher-quality discourse anywhere."[7][8][9]

Wikipedia Co-Founder Jimmy Wales dismisses the criticism: "I am unaware of any problems with the quality of discourse on the site. I don't know of any higher-quality discourse anywhere."[10]

"I am unaware of any problems with the quality of discourse on the site," he says. "I don't know of any higher-quality discourse anywhere."[11]

Wikipedia Co-Founder Jimmy Wales dismisses this criticism by adding: "....I am unaware of any problems with the quality of discourse on the site. I don't know of any higher-quality discourse anywhere..."[12]

"I am unaware of any problems with the quality of discourse on the site," he says. "I don't know of any higher-quality discourse anywhere."[13]

"I am unaware of any problems with the quality of discourse on the site," he says. "I don't know of any higher-quality discourse anywhere."[14]

The sources indicate is was in 2007 Wales made the comment. The edit did not match the edit summary. QuackGuru (talk) 17:52, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I see critic made in late 2008 followed by a response from early 2007.TMCk (talk) 21:15, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I see all the references I added to the article were from 2007. QuackGuru (talk) 01:27, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

PR accounts on Wikipedia

See this diff. QuackGuru (talk) 04:40, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

There are more sources. See this search result. QuackGuru (talk) 04:56, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Jimbo's role

Is there a better place to put this or a better way to qualify it:

According to Business Insider, "In September of 2012, there was a quite a bit of media attention surrounding two Wikipedia employees (yes, they do have some paid personnel – including Jimbo who makes more than $50K per event where he is a speaker) who were running a PR business on the side and editing Wikipedia on behalf of their clients."[6]

It's in the section "Jimbo's role" but it's not about him; it's about two Wikipedia employees who are not Jimbo. Kind of misleading. If this was added to criticize Jimbo's role, it should only be for the dollar figure (which is itself misleading -- as though he writes himself a check from WMF coffers when he goes and talks somewhere). --Rhododendrites (talk) 03:03, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Section detailing a broadening or narrowing of "Office Actions" ???

Wikipedia is not perfect and has numerous failings. Everyone has a chime-in on that of course. However, one particular problem (both in public understanding of current policy, and whether or not the policy itself is a good idea) is the degree to which wikipedia remains "hands off". There have been an increase over the years in explanations of "office actions", but none of them AFAICT explain really where the line is drawn currently, and where the momentum for changing it may or may not lie.173.48.201.245 (talk) 17:23, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Foundation has abandoned efforts to combat explicit pornographic content on Wikipedia

As of 2013, the Wikimedia Foundation has abandoned efforts to combat explicit pornographic content on Wikipedia because its board members were not able to reach a consensus.[15]

New source. QuackGuru (talk) 01:55, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Sigh. This is the problem with purists. They lose all sight of common sense, even manufacturing arguments that "common sense" is somehow a misdirected ideal in itself, and as a result end up making some fairly simple mistakes even when all variants of a "slippery slope" argument is made. IPA is one such debacle. The edit war over the image in ejaculation is another. Ignorning the solutions to the large number of cited references that just do not say what they're purported to say is yet another.173.48.201.245 (talk) 17:27, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

best wikipedia article

ever — Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.247.0.68 (talk) 21:58, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Comparative_study_on_scientific_articles_conducted_by_Nature

The section on the Nature v Britannica survey suggests that the results were similar. It is also apocryphally bandied about Nature and Britannica have roughly the same accuracy. A 25% higher failure rate by WP is not similar. 25% is not a negligible. 3 is not the same as 4. The section and the myth are misleading. Span (talk) 22:09, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Claims not verified

@Useitorloseit: made this edit [16] In the source, there are no hits for "abuse" and none of the hits for "2006" or "2009" are related to the claim. Yes, the source talks about administration and admins, but I see nothing at all in the source that supports the claim as it appears in the article. The overall jist of the study is that following a following an early balloon creating a ginormous amount of content content, there was a balloon in edits related to maintenance and organization/administration. There doesnt seem to be any "criticism" at all. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 13:16, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

I don't see how you can read that article and say it is not critical. The gist of the section I'm quoting from is that Wikipedia is getting sidetracked into arguments over "process", and the increase in edits for organization/administration is a symptom. Nonetheless, I think this might be better in another section of the piece. Useitorloseit (talk) 19:59, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Rupert Sheldrake / Guerrillas

This issue has two distinct parts:

1. A claim regarding particular bias: Rupert Sheldrake doesn't like his work being called pseudoscience; he apparently doesn't realize that WP:PSCI is a policy rather than the personal preferences of WP editors.
2. A claim regarding systemic bias: The grander idea that the "guerrilla skeptics" group is a pervasive force on Wikipedia, slanting his and other articles. This is where the Deepak Chopra quote comes in.

Both points are rebutted by Jerry Coyne.[17] Since the #2 stuff doesn't belong outside the section on systemic bias, I've removed the Chopra quote found in the #1 stuff. Anyone is welcome to restore the quote, but if you do then it needs to go into the systemic bias section, and should include Coyne's rebuttal.

I must mention that my response is referenced in Coyne's New Republic article (a lot of Sheldrake's claims are contradicted by just looking at the article's history). I would rather not edit Criticism of Wikipedia on this matter at all, but few have really followed the situation. So, check my work. vzaak 01:48, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

I've added back a similar Chopra quote. There are now two separate parts corresponding to #1 and #2 above. vzaak 02:43, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Source that could be added

This article The Decline of Wikipedia, http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520446/the-decline-of-wikipedia/, could be added to the article. — Lentower (talk) 20:29, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Is this article a reliable source?

Since this article is mainly about why Wikipedia is not a reliable source, does this article count as a reliable source since? It could be said that by being part of Wikipedia, it makes Wikipedia's criticisms of itself invalid. Ezza1995 (talk) 14:36, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Well this is a paradox. However, Wikipedia is a collection of sources. It cannot be used as a "source" whatsoever.Forbidden User (talk) 12:10, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

To be crystal clear:

• this article can not be used as a source for another Wikipedia article.
• you can use reliable sources from this article in other Wikipedia articles.
• you can wikilink to this article from other Wikipedia articles, but not in a way that uses it as a source. E.g. in a See also section
• You can use a Wikipedia article as a source outside Wikipedia. But use the permalink of the version you are citing, as an article can change at any time.

It's not a paradox for Wikipedia to include criticism of itself. But discussing that is not what talk pages are for. — Lentower (talk) 13:06, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Some irrelevant info needs removing

The following sentence in the article should be removed: "Coincidentally, or not, in August 2013, Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales scrutinized the U.K.'s Prime Minister David Cameron’s Internet porn-filter, saying the plan is "ridiculous."" It has nothing to do with criticism of Wikipedia. I would remove it myself right away, but I suspect someone would revert me simply because I'm an IP. 122.60.173.222 (talk) 06:00, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

WP:Assume good faith, guy. It is good not only for others, but also you as well.Forbidden User (talk) 12:06, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

This is my experience from editing as an IP. It's almost always, "Oh, an IP made an edit to the article! Revert him!" 122.60.173.222 (talk) 01:12, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

You can read people's minds to know that they were mindlessly reverting because an IP made the edit rather than because it was an awful or inappropriate edit? You should take that act to Vegas!-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 02:19, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

What section in the article is the complete lack of understanding shown by the red pen to be listed in as an example? Juan Riley (talk) 23:14, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Excessive regulation additionally regarding intellectually impaired individuals

A current section appears thusly:

Excessive regulation

Kat Walsh, a former chair of the Wikimedia Foundation, has criticized Wikipedia's increasingly complex policies, saying "It was easier when I joined in 2004... Everything was a little less complicated.... It's harder and harder for new people to adjust."[141]

In his 2014 book titled Common Knowledge?: An Ethnography of Wikipedia, Wikipedia steward Dariusz Jemielniak asserts that the sheer complexity of the rules and laws governing content and editor behavior has become excessive and creates a learning burden for new editors.[142][143] Jemielniak suggests actively abridging and rewriting the rules and laws to fall within a fixed and reasonable limit of size and complexity to remedy their excessive complexity and size.[142][143]

Excessive regulation additionally regarding intellectually impaired individuals

As a learning disabled (though knowledgeable) individual myself, I am coming to terms with the steep learning curve. Such a learning curve is not only a burden, but may be considered barrier. Without patient attitudes and facilitators to turn to for guidance, said barrier may likely constitute discrimination under ADA 1990; and 501(c)(3) status may hang in the balance. As noted in latter referenced article, charities may be granted exemption of anti-discrimination laws, such as Boy Scouts. However, Wikipedia claims no rights to be able to discriminate, as far as can be ascertained. Wikipedia claims are of a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Charitable donors are perhaps being duped by this claim. Rather, perhaps it is intellectually impaired individuals being duped, thinking any welcome extends toward them whatsoever.

Wikipedia help claims, "Contributing is easy..." I am seeing numerous falsities regarding Wiki policies as well. Administrators seem not to be bound to assumptions of good faith for one. Also on WP:NOTTHERAPY the claim is, "Except in extreme cases, editors are not blocked before problems have been patiently discussed..." This statement is patently false on at least one occasion where I have taken the brunt. If Wikipedia wants to allow discrimination against intellectually impaired individuals, such ability should be openly sought in the courts. Then we can just put the entirety of WP:NOTTHERAPY in the digital rubbish-bin where it apparently belongs at present.

If in this "Summer of Moments," requesting help documenting history, Wikipedia is determined to stay on current course. Then by all means, let us document history in the making, all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.

I shall pause for now citing section "It's a lot to learn" of User talk:Materialscientist and all sections to date of my own User talk:Tomkwill especially ending in section "Assume good faith." Tomkwill (talk) 17:00, 26 September 2014 (UTC)Tomkwill

If you cannot find the "It's a lot to learn" section of User talk:Materialscientist, then please reference the cut-pasted version on my own talk page. Tomkwill (talk) 07:26, 27 September 2014 (UTC)Tomkwill

@Tomkwill: WP:WikiProject Editor Retention may be able to offer us further guidance about this issue. Jarble (talk) 00:00, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

"he/she thinks Wikipedia has free expression views"

I noticed this confusing phrase in the article's lead section. What idea is it intended to convey? Jarble (talk) 00:37, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Someone changed the sentence, and I since removed it. --Chealer (talk) 03:53, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

The article has completely wrong lede

The lede must be 100% rewritten.

• There is no standard intro sentence. Currently it is an intro sentence for the "Wikipedia" article.
• The rest is a chaotic collection of individual quotations. Instead, it must be a summary of the major areas of criticism, taken, eg. from the TOC. Individual opinions must be moved into the corresponding sections.

Unfortunately I cannot undertake the job myself (and of course, this major rewrite of the lede requires consensus, or at least the hand of an experienced old-timer.) Staszek Lem (talk) 01:00, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

@Staszek Lem: Several parts of this article (including the lede section) were extensively modified by User:Bigbaby23 in 2014 and 2015. Should the lead section be restored to its original state? Jarble (talk) 00:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't know which lede version you call "original" (surely not this one :-) . No, It must be written from scratch. Wikipedians can summarize numerous RS when writing regular and controversial articles. Surely they (we) can summarize this page just as well. The only hurdle is to resist temptation to add something catchy in the lede which is not in the main body yet and "do the right thing". Staszek Lem (talk) 03:39, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree the lede was in a very bad shape. I did not rewrite it 100%, but I fully revised it and fixed many problems. The first paragraph was more delicate - I revised it too, but further improvement there is very likely achievable. --Chealer (talk) 19:54, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I wrote the first paragraph with the sole goal to show how the intro is supposed to look like. Of course, further improvement is always possible (as well as screwing things up again :-) Staszek Lem (talk) 20:48, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

This was partly undone by User:Moxy, who restored a broken sentence without providing a sensical explanation for doing so. --Chealer (talk) 00:15, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Was the edit summary that undue was not part of policy that caused a revert ...statements like this will lead most to believe the editor in-question is not familiar with our basic policies. That said is it more clear to you now?? -- Moxy (talk) 15:23, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

The edit summary said there was no "Undue Weight policy", not that "undue was not part of policy". That said, yes, the new version is no longer misleading in that fragment following User:Starship.paint's edit. --Chealer (talk) 22:54, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

MIT Handbook in Lede

The Academic Integrity at MIT handbook for students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology states: 'Wikipedia is Not a Reliable Academic Source:' ...

I fail to see how it is criticism: it is a repetition of what Wikipedia says itself about its normal operation. Wikipedia never claimed it is an ultimate Academic Source (unlike some of its rip-offs, such as a super-duper "most definite" "World Heritage Encyclopedia"). At best, it is a criticism of lazy ctrl-C-ctrl-V students. While this factoid may find place in the section "Accuracy", IMO this lengthy quotation does not belong to lede. Staszek Lem (talk) 01:20, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

New section on the treatment of extremely controversial subjects and topics by Wikipedia?

I think there should be a new section on how subjects and topics that are extremely controversial are treated by Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Frogger48 (talk • contribs)

Have any reliable sources you can suggest? EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 06:01, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello, I'm not sure where to find these reliable sources. Frogger48 (talk) 10:03, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

So I don't know if this has already been covered, but is there anything about Wikipedia only being able to use interpretations?

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2015/02/wikipedia_gamergate_scandal_how_a_bad_source_made_wikipedia_wrong_about.html

He says that Wikipedia only does "Verifiability, not Truth"

147.215.1.189 (talk) 08:19, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

The current policy is Wikipedia:Verifiability. There's also an essay about "verifiability, not truth". Mindmatrix 13:31, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

What do you have in mind by saying "only being able to use interpretations". As it stands, it is a false statement. Staszek Lem (talk) 21:39, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

In the linked Slate article, the statement "Without any reliable sources saying otherwise, Wikipedia had no choice but to say that the case was finished, " - is also false. Staszek Lem (talk) 21:42, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Link to "Conflict-of-interest_editing_on_Wikipedia"

Fellow Wikipedians, should this article include a link to Conflict-of-interest_editing_on_Wikipedia, as inserted in this reverted edit[18]? Per WP:BRD, lets discuss. - Ryk72 ^'c.s.n.s.' 08:19, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

• Support - Section on COI editing is very sparse; a single sentence consisting of one quote from Business Insider. Addition of the link provides easy access to readers looking for additional information on this topic. Article already contains a number of Main Article: or See also: links for other sections. It is also suggested that this COI section be expanded to include a summary of the information at Conflict-of-interest_editing_on_Wikipedia. - Ryk72 ^'c.s.n.s.' 08:29, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
• Support - it's clearly relevant, and useful information that readers may wish to pursue further. starship.paint ~ ¡Olé! 12:29, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

As there appears to be no disagreement to adding the link, I am now doing so, as a Template:Main, to match the majority of other links on the page. The invitation for editors to articulate reasons for or against the addition here remains, of course, open. - Ryk72 ^'c.s.n.s.' 16:15, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Seriously out of date

This article, despite presumably being one of those more often read on Wikipedia, is seriously out of date - almost all of the quotations and publications are from 5 to 10 years ago. (Which is not to say they aren't still relevant, but what's happened since then?) Ben Finn (talk) 10:08, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Content removed

Tarc removed content with part of the summary being

The "OMG TEH LEFTISTS" point...

The editor removed content supported with an article from Western Journalism Center. Perhaps it can be better summarized, or more neutrally worded. But it is criticism of Wikipedia, which is the subject of this article, and to remove it outright based on weight, is IMHO a poor argument.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 05:02, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

The opinions of fringe think tanks founded by Joseph Farah belong in articles about fringe think tanks founded by Joseph Farah. Nowhere else. Tarc (talk) 13:19, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

It is "fringe" because Tarc said so?--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 17:50, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

It is clearly a non-notable blog criticism.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 20:55, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

The article already has several quality sources...the Guardian, the National Post, etc...to support the assertion that the Wikipedia and much of its political articles lean left. Why supplement the critique with a bad source? Tarc (talk) 19:06, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

You failed to notice that the deleted text is not 'criticism'. An best it is a McCarthy-style whistleblowing. How the heck support of Obama is "criticism of wikipedia"? Staszek Lem (talk) 00:50, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Criticism by users

[19] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sakiph (talk • contribs) 08:19, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

@Sakiph: This blog appears to contain many articles that were copied and pasted from other websites. Does it contain any original content? Jarble (talk) 19:29, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

This is blog, and as such it cannot be used as a reference in wikipedia. Staszek Lem (talk) 20:09, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Racial bias on Wikipedia

Per arguments made in AfD here: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Racial_Discrimination_On_Wikipedia ― Padenton|✉   18:04, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

• Comment Pinging all editors from AfD. @NawlinWiki, CrazyAces489, ABCDEFAD, Joseph2302, Bosstopher, EvergreenFir, and Winner 42: @Davey2010, Lukeno94, Niteshift36, NinjaRobotPirate, Dai Pritchard, and Vanjagenije: ― Padenton|✉   18:10, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
• Prefer separate - This article is already close to being WP:TOOLONG (Prose size (text only): 43 kB (6763 words)) and the Racial bias on Wikipedia article seems solid/sourced enough to stand on its own. Criticism on Wikipedia is quite ... disjointed? or perhaps trying to cover too much at once and so there's a lot of topics covered briefly and I worry that adding a substantial section like this would exacerbate that. That said, I'm not terribly opposed to a merge either. PS - Thanks for the ping Padenton!EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 18:29, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose The article not only details criticism of racial bias of wikipedia, but attempts to discern its origins and describes ways in which people are combating it. It is not just a simple subset of the Criticism of Wikipedia article. Also as already mentioned in the AfD the Criticism of Wikipedia article is ridiculously long as it already is, and cramming more stuff into it is not a good idea.Bosstopher (talk) 18:35, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
• Support - per my arguments in the AfD. 43 kB isn't really that excessive; it's still shorter than, say Criticism of Microsoft (48-49kB) or Criticism of Apple Inc. (85kB, something I would say is too long). Compared to Criticism of Facebook, which is grossly oversized at nearly 170kB, it's relatively tiny. Quite frankly, given the sweeping nature of some of the prose in the Racial bias article, it needs a lot more sources to be valid. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 18:42, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
• oppose Prefer sseparate as per EvergreenFir. If sourcing is the issue many sources are already in existence in previous versions of the article.

"Wikipedia editing disputes: The crowdsourced encyclopedia has become a rancorous, sexist mess.". Slate Magazine. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f "Meet the Editors Fighting Racism and Sexism on Wikipedia". WIRED. Jump up ^ "Why is Wikipedia so sexist?". New York Post. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e "Bustle". bustle.com. Jump up ^ Deanna Zandt (26 April 2013). "Yes, Wikipedia Is Sexist -- That's Why It Needs You". Forbes. ^ Jump up to: a b http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/opinion/sunday/wikipedias-sexism.html?_r=0 ^ Jump up to: a b "Sexism". The Other Sociologist - Analysis of Difference... By Dr Zuleyka Zevallos. Jump up ^ Amanda Filipacchi (30 April 2013). "Sexism on Wikipedia Is Not the Work of 'a Single Misguided Editor'". The Atlantic. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f "Black History Matters, So Why Is Wikipedia Missing So Much Of It?". Co.Exist. ^ Jump up to: a b c examiner.com/article/leading-wikipedian-explains-why-blacks-don-t-volunteer Jump up ^ "PEOPLE v. BAUDER". Findlaw. Jump up ^ "Wikipedia's edit wars and the eight religious pages people can't stop editing". ncronline.org. ^ Jump up to: a b "Wikipedia editing disputes: The crowdsourced encyclopedia has become a rancorous, sexist mess.". Slate Magazine. ^ Jump up to: a b "The 'Five Horsemen' Of Wikipedia Paid The Price For Getting Between Trolls And Their Victims - ThinkProgress". ThinkProgress. Jump up ^ "Editors to Make Black History Wikipedia Entries More Inclusive - Essence.com". Essence.com. Jump up ^ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/20/us/at-howard-a-historically-black-university-filling-in-wikipedias-gaps-in-color.html?_r=0 Jump up ^ "Growing Army Of Women Take On Wikipedia - Business Insider". Business Insider. 15 February 2014. Jump up ^ https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/02/23/telling-untold-stories-african-americans-stem ^ Jump up to: a b "Edit-athon aims to put left-out black artists into Wikipedia". philly-archives. Jump up ^ "Can ‘Black Wikipedia’ Take Off Like ‘Black Twitter’?". COLORLINES. CrazyAces489 (talk) 18:49, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

A lot of those were removed for a reason. e.g. ThinkProgress and even far worse, Examiner.com. ― Padenton|✉   22:07, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

• Support. This article isn't too long. It makes complete sense to put it here, along with the other common criticisms, than to put a paragraph and a hatnote here that goes to another location. Niteshift36 (talk) 18:53, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
• Support per my comments at the AFD - "Admittingly Criticism of Wikipedia is long but personally I don't think we need articles on every detail here so why not shove it there instead". –Davey2010^Talk 18:09, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose - Racial bias on Wikipedia is a topic that merits its own page that goes into details...that would be purged in this article. -- Moxy (talk) 19:04, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
• Support, inspired by Special:Diff/660521433 on {{Wikipedia}}. –Be..anyone (talk) 09:19, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose - Racial bias is above and beyond criticism; if the topic is deemed notable enough and is supported by reliable sources then it merits its own article.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Tarc (talk • contribs)
• Oppose - Racial bias on Wikipedia is serious and distinct enough to merit its own page. Readers deserve to know what is going on on the website. Middayexpress (talk) 02:19, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose - Racial bias on Wikipedia is a problem, if you were African or non-White, especially Muslim or other minorities you would feel it. And it goes beyond just say "Black" references, to a bias against positions held by authentic representations. Or Africans with African centered views which the dominant race class is uncomfortable with. And it is a problem that should be open, and not hidden. Wiki is Eurocentric to the core. --Inayity (talk) 08:26, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose - clearly separate topic, with reasonable amount of information. Staszek Lem (talk) 19:46, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose - per the numerous reasons mentioned above. AcidSnow (talk) 20:13, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose Dougweller (talk) 12:22, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose - There's a danger that the Criticism of Wikipedia article just becomes a disjointed collection of only vaguely related issues, and there appears to be enough source material for a separate article on racial bias. Cordless Larry (talk) 07:27, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
• Support - no reason to have articles on each of the reasons Wikipedia is criticised. They should be covered in one article. Zacwill16 (talk) 19:34, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
  • We don't have separate article on each of the reasons. We do have a separate articles on topics which produce big articles. This is how wikipedia works. Please read Wikipedia:Summary style. Staszek Lem (talk) 19:56, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
    • Yes, but at the current length, that is not the section that needs to be spun out. 20:02, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
• support for now while a spin out of the topic may be appropriate at a future date, right now there is not sufficient content in Racial bias on Wikipedia that it cannot be included here. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 20:02, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose - For all the reasons cited by others; plus, and I know this isn't meant to figure into the decision, but how will it look if Gender bias on Wikipedia has its own article but Racial bias on Wikipedia is folded into Criticism of Wikipedia (and content will inevitably be lost under the justification of "not relevant to Criticism of Wikipedia" or "we have enough examples" in that scenario)? I will try to find more reliable sources to add. (Yes I'm an IP, no I'm not a sockpuppet.) —2601:19A:4000:4A02:6D37:4742:8E96:A82F (talk) 14:35, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
• Support - For reasons cited above by others. In particular that racial bias on Wikipedia is within the realm of criticism of Wikipedia in general. I say "Aye" to this one. UnitedStatesCentralIntelligenceAgency (talk) 03:11, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose - and I'll remove the tags in a day or two if nobody objects @Padenton:. I count 12 opposes to 7 supports so it should be clear at this point that it's not going to get a consensus to merge. My personal oppose is based on the fact that this is not just a criticism of Wikipedia, but a social issue as well, reflecting on society and racism as a whole. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:26, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Removed Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:19, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Arrangement with paywalled science publisher Elsevier

[20] Rupert Loup (talk) 15:29, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Hoax articles and fake information that failed verification

I think the "Exposure to vandals" section could be updated. There seems to be a lot of fake information on Wikipedia. See Criticism of Wikipedia#Exposure to vandals. QuackGuru (talk) 23:11, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

The Atlantic - How Wikipedia Is Hostile to Women

• Paling, Emma (October 21, 2015). "How Wikipedia Is Hostile to Women". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on October 21, 2015. Retrieved October 21, 2015.

---

Suggested source.

— Cirt (talk) 18:34, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Please discuss the issue in the single place: Talk:Gender bias on Wikipedia/Archive 1#The Atlantic - How Wikipedia Is Hostile to Women. Staszek Lem (talk) 19:40, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

P.S. Aren't we canvassing around, eh? Staszek Lem (talk) 19:44, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

User:Cirt and User:Staszek Lem, I summarised the source. Not sure why is was deleted. QuackGuru (talk) 22:21, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Section Allegations of biased treatment

@Cla68: I deleted the following text:

female editors have alleged that they have been harassed by male editors."

Reason: no evidence stated that it was a biased treatment. A biased would be that females were harassed more than males. Which I doubt, judging from numerous flame wars. At least I doubt anybody collected this stats. Staszek Lem (talk) 01:44, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Here you go. Cla68 (talk) 05:35, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

And another. Cla68 (talk) 05:41, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a valid reference for wikipedia, so I didn't even read it. You did not provide required evidence from reliable sources that females are statistically harassed more than males. The article cited does not state this either. Staszek Lem (talk) 21:37, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

The cited article's title is "Wikipedia's Hostility to Women", with the subtitle "Some female editors have been the target of harassment from their male colleagues—and the gender bias has spilled over into the site’s content, too", clearly asserting there is hostility to women and harassment based in gender bias. It adds, later on, that "To avoid becoming targets of harassment, some editors use gender-neutral pseudonyms and avoid linking any personal information to their usernames" – because using a female pseudonym attracts harassment. So I would respectfully disagree with your argument; I see no problem with the addition proposed above by Cla68. --Andreas JN466 12:03, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. MarkBernstein (talk) 17:24, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, disagreed. "clearly asserting" is your personal opinion based on your interpretation of the text. Let me give you a comparative example. In a heat of the battle one can write "don't be a dick" But is the OP is known to be a woman, he will write "don't be a cunt". Now, taken separately, "don't be a cunt" may be interpreted as gender-based harassment. But in fact, this is rather rather akin to the "he/she" distinction. That said, please provide research which says, basically, that "don't be a cunt" is more frequent than "don't be a dick" (of course, with normalized to the male/female wpedians' ratio. "Some female editors have been the target of harassment from their male colleagues" is of no significance in this context. Just the same I can easily find that "some male editors have been the target of harassment from their male colleagues". So, where is bias? Staszek Lem (talk) 01:18, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

And of course he said no such thing. Lightbreather states that she had not interacted with EC before, and therefore he had no reason to suppose that she was female. Lightbreather states that she even missed the so-called attack the first time she read his comment. It was only (again she says) when one of her wiki-enemies characterized it as "brilliant" that she decided that it must be bad, and treated it as an attack.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:25, 27 October 2015 (UTC).

re: avoid linking any personal information to their username - In my book this is a common sense advise everywhrere in the internets. Already 25 years ago there was an advice "if you don't want you face in a porn pic, don't post your graduation photo on the internet". Staszek Lem (talk) 02:09, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

re: "some editors use gender-neutral pseudonyms" - Some male users use female names. Some female editors are quite aggressively assert that they are women, they politely state they would not tolerate the tone, and they are quite successful in that. Some male editors slap WP:NPA on the slightest occasion. - So what? Of course, it is perfectly clear that a woman is much more vulnerable to off-line harassment than a man, but this goes with any online place. Wikipedia has its share of stalkers, sexual predators and whats not. Moreover, English-language wikipedia has a wide diversity of editors. No offense to particular ethnicities, but many a part of the Earth and even of English-speaking world still treats women as a secondary creature. But I assure you the phrase "you women don't have a clue" will quickly gets you blocked. Of course one may keep their mouth shut, but still act with prejudice. But again, in this case what's your problem? Wikipedia talk pages are supposed to discuss how to improve articles using references from reliable sources, right? If the discussion slips away from this, just try to put it back on track. I am doing this 3 times a day. Staszek Lem (talk) 02:09, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Adding "female editors have alleged that they have been harassed by male editors" to a sentence about arbcom that's followed by more about arbcom seems a bit messy. Also, since it seems like we're presenting a separate sub-topic (harassment as part of biased treatment rather than arbcom, which is the subject of the rest of the section), I think we'd want more than one source talking about harassment of women editors by other editors. It's alluded to elsewhere in relation to Gamergate, but mostly referencing an extension of the off-wiki GG-realted harassment. Adding Paling to what the other sources do touch upon, and staying within the context of ArbCom, would it be more appropriate to change that sentence to "The English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee has been criticized as unfairly targeting female and feminist editors and ineffectively responding to claims of gender-based harassment"? Here "claims of gender-based harassment" includes all claims of gender-based harassment, whether using Wikipedia to continue harassment against people off-wiki (GG) or harassment on-wiki. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 21:34, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

I am against using Paling as a source. The article is riddled with errors, the writer is a virtual unknown, having maybe written another article for Catrca Livre/Brasil Post O 'viagra rosa' vem aí para resolver um problema que talvez não exista. Given that there is no apparent fact checking or editorial oversight on the content, that the writer did not contact the subject of the piece, and that even the corrections have errors, it does not seem like a reliable source. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:25, 27 October 2015 (UTC).

the atlantic is a reliable source, so use it until knocked down at RS or blacklisted. which i would not be surprised at. i can report that this article accurately reflects the attitude of mainstream librarians who say: "Might impact gender imbalance, tho won’t help w/race. It’s sending women into a cultural buzzsaw tho.", and "would not touch wikipedia with a 10 foot pole." [21] Duckduckstop (talk) 21:49, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Please read carefully shat WP:RS is. RS is publisher+author+text. The article poor quality in several places is proven. It is an opinion piece rather a systematic study, therefore is you cite anything from it, you must always qualify "Paling wrote that some ladies claimed that...", i.e., we cannot generalise sociological statements based on random journalist. Staszek Lem (talk) 22:22, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

except you would not be making "sociological statements": you would make statements that quoted people were harassed. not even "sources said". you seem to be making quite an effort to keep criticism off of wiki. do you think that helps or harms the wiki? is not the harrassment an open "secret"? you of course understand that the outside world believes the atlantic, and not the navel gazing of wikipedians? Duckduckstop (talk) 23:27, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

re: you seem to be making quite an effort to keep criticism off - I am not calling WP:AGF and WP:NPA only because I understand what you mean and I understand your confusion. Since I believe my last edit resolved the issue I was worried about, I can only tell you: you are badly mistaken, colleague. As for what outside world believes, IMO it is a problem of WMF awash of monies cannot hire a decent staff writer, so that Paling being criticized seen by the world not by a bunch of sore navel gazers here. Basically, we are a sitting duck for any wikipedia-hater, and the only thing we can do is to resist bulshitting of wikipedia to enter into wikipedia articles. I am not saying that wikipedia must be unconditionally loved by everyone; people gut hurt here, but where is a decent analysis: how many there pricks and how many are decent contributors. So far reading American press about wikipedia is like reading Russian press about America. Sad. Staszek Lem (talk) 00:12, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Paling wrote that some ladies claimed? You're kidding us, right? MarkBernstein (talk) 22:33, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Nope, just being polite. Staszek Lem (talk) 22:45, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

It finally dawned upon me what was wrong with the section in question: it was ridiculously misplaced. Fixed. In the new place the phrase I contested at the beginning of this talk, makes sense. Staszek Lem (talk) 22:45, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I think that works. Well done. Andreas JN466 22:48, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Potential reference

I ran across this reference, but don't know where to add it to this article. Mapping Participation in Wikipedia FriendlyFred (talk) 22:01, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

The root of the problem?

"The Wikimedia Foundation has virtually no influence on what is written in Wikipedia." Is there a reliable source that states this? QuackGuru (talk) 19:55, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Sanger quotation tag

I've slapped {{undue-inline}} on the Sanger quotation for POV and undue weight. It may merit inclusion in the article, but not in the intro, and not without a balanced discussion about it. For example, his statements suggest that collectively, active Wikipedians are trolls engaged in mob rule. Mindmatrix 19:29, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

It is a statement from the creator. It merits due-weight. QuackGuru (talk) 19:35, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Larry Sanger does not get to label active Wikipedians (such as me or you) as "trolls". He is in no way an expert with respect to contributor histories, lifestyles, subject expertise, or any other aspect of their lives. He is more than welcome to offer opinions about Wikipedia and how the project is run, but not about the contributors. Mindmatrix 21:02, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Part of my comment got mangled as I was editing it - Sanger's unqualified opinions about editors do not get to be included without balance. He is certainly entitled to express his opinions, of course. Mindmatrix 21:41, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Of course he -and anyone else- does. Outside of Wiki's Nanny State, people can often say what they damned well feel like. That said, a good deal of the point about calling editors trolls is more a question of "if the shoe fits" than of blanket condemnation. Anmccaff (talk) 22:15, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

PS: Just to make it explicitly clear, the idea that someone who created something has no particular insight into its development is not credible to me, and I'm damned if I can see who's viewpoint might counter this. Certainly not Mr. wales, him being still inside the tent. The tag should go. Anmccaff (talk) 22:30, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Sanger's criticism is presented prominently in the article text. Article lede is article summary . If you think Sanger a prominent to be in the lede, plese summarize his views in a NPOV, rather than sensationalist way. This is encyclopedia, not yellow press. Staszek Lem (talk) 02:23, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

OK. I have read around and first thing I see that the quote "People that I would say are trolls sort of took over. The inmates started running the asylum" AFAIU is taken grossly out of context. IMO Sanger was speaking about 2001, when the literal trolls indeed were a plague (and AFAIK it continued to be for quite some time). In our article it reads as if it is applied to the today. This must be fixed ASAP by someone more English-capable than me. Staszek Lem (talk) 02:34, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

P.S. I don't have time right now to check whether the article has due coverage to the rebuttal of criticism or all of it is just shades of black. Bye. Staszek Lem (talk) 02:37, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, i personally think that Sanger's input is quite relevant and significant. The whole quote is also more telling than the excerpt used. Perhaps a different excerpt would be useful. Sanger's whole quote from that question in the interview is:

What do you think is Wikipedia's biggest problem today?

I think Wikipedia never solved the problem of how to organize itself in a way that didn't lead to mob rule. On the one hand, it isn't a mob at all. It's highly organized and structured and there's a lot of rules, so it seems like the very opposite of that, right? But on the other hand, the way that the community is organized isn't codified or decided upon in any type of constitutional way. So there might be some people who selectively apply rules according to positions that other people take on their pet issues. And that's inherently unfair, right?

And I think a small amount of that goes on. A lot of the behaviors that people associate with so-called social justice warriors today, I remember seeing back in 2001, 2002, with the new arrivals.

It's really hard to lay out what I think is the single biggest shortcoming of Wikipedia, especially if I want to do so in a way that is not going to make a lot of people pissed off at me. I don't want to be in the business of Wikipedia-bashing anymore. But I do think it has a root problem that's social. People that I would say are trolls sort of took over. The inmates started running the asylum.

"Mob rule" is different from the colorful phrase about the inmates and the asylum. Those are two different things he's speaking about. Also the bit about people selectively applying rules according to the positions that other people take on their pet issues. Seems relevant to me in terms of criticism of Wikipedia, which is the topic of this article.

As for who Sanger is and why his criticisms are relevant, the article says of him, It became clear how much Wikipedia was a child of his mind. Also, Sanger came up with the name "Wikipedia," wrote its founding documents, and spent the next 14 months as the site's sole paid editor and philosophical leader. I say use as much of this critique as possible. It's very relevant to the article's topic, in fact it's central. SageRad (talk) 20:05, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

No further comments here after a long time -- i am going to work in the more relevant quotes soon. SageRad (talk) 13:14, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Good idea. Make sure you add relevant information to the lede. Things on Wikipedia are getting worse. QuackGuru (talk) 17:33, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Large removal/change

Dear user MB298, would you provide a justification for this large edit to the lede? It seems to delete a lot of material that looks really good to me. I like to see at least a justification and explanation when an editor makes a huge edit like this, which affects a lot of other editors' work. Thanks. SageRad (talk) 13:13, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

I will change it back, just clean it up a bit and remove the bold headings from the paragraphs. MB298 (talk) 00:10, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Jimbo comments

Some very good comments here to be worked into the article whenever we can. Here is the other linked article that covers a dark force of editors whose mission was to push bias into articles. SageRad (talk) 19:47, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Jimbo made promises that he has not enforced. All over my watchlist there are problems. Wales is not going to do anything about anything on Wikipedia. QuackGuru (talk) 00:53, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

External links modified

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External links modified

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Political Correctness

There needs to be a paragraph on the pervasive political correctness (comparable to the 'liberal' hegemony on the site) of Wikipedia. One such example is the insistence on using CE and BCE instead of AD and BC which count the years from the same date, i.e. the nominal birth of Christ, but try to hide this fact in its use of a meaningless term 'Common Era' and 'Before the Common Era' (which can, incidentally, be read as 'Christian Era' and 'Before the Christian Era'). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.236.213.38 (talk) 19:38, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

Editors, administrators

There needs to be a paragraph explaining how one becomes an editor or an administrator. E.g. who is it that decides what stays or goes? These people are anonymous. How do they get the authority to decide changes? Who are they? Who authorises them? Who blocks editors? How do they do this and how do they get this capability? The site is virtually silent in this respect. If there is a complaint to be made, who does one write to? There is no guidance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.236.213.38 (talk) 19:42, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

Irredentism of Hungarian editors

There are obvious actions of some nationalists from Hungary against the pages of some countries around Hungary. Nationalist editors like Borsoka, Fakirbakir and Norden attacked several times the history pages of other countries. They act like a gang and impose only references they accept. Being a gang it is difficult to act against them. Their tactics: 1. Erasing texts and references of dead authors (until 1990) in the pages of surrounding countries. But they do not respect the same rule in the pages about Hungarian history; 2. Erasing the texts and references of authors that have an original theory (singular authors). But they do not respect the same rule in the pages about Hungarian history; 3. Erasing texts and references of authors that contradict Hungarians authors. They erase any text creating the impression of majority. 4. Erasing texts and references because there were 3-4 references and one was too old. 5. Erasing texts and references because editors Borsoka, Fakirbakir and Norden do not like a phrase or the content.

This kind of actions show that a gang of editors may disturb and construct false data about the history of countries surrounding Hungary. It looks like a politics of Hungarians revisionists. Administrators say they do not want to interfere.

False data and biased data made Wikipedia an unreliable source. More and more institutions avoid data from this source according to American and British journals — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.166.128.24 (talk) 08:48, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Editors organised in Gangs

Some weeks ago I red about wiki editors organised in gangs in order to impose their list of references. It is strange but this is a characteristic of Wiki. If you want to manipulate some data it is sufficient to have 2-3 associated editors. I red about such editors like Boroka or Borsoka who are involved in such activities and nobody may stop them.

I wander if we may find unbiased articles. Decameron. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.3.224.159 (talk) 06:55, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Paraphrasing/block quotes

Hi James J. Lambden. What do you feel about my paraphrasing of David Auerbach's quote here was unrepresentative, or 'lost the essence' of the original quote? Was there an aspect I missed? PeterTheFourth (talk) 21:35, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

The full quote is better. Arkon (talk) 00:46, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

The structure of his argument in the original text was: <opinion> <example> <example> <cause>. Your paraphrase was: <opinion>. Not inaccurate but not a due representation of his argument. James J. Lambden (talk) 23:11, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

@James J. Lambden: I've included two 'examples' and what I believe the 'cause' was. Is this an improvement? PeterTheFourth (talk) 02:01, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

The meaning was lost. QuackGuru (talk) 02:11, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

@QuackGuru: Do you believe it's impossible to convey what the author was trying to say without a direct block quote? If not, is there an alternative you would propose? PeterTheFourth (talk) 02:18, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

I added a quote to an article and after about 8 or 9 months I finally rewrote the text without the quotes. This is one of those times it is hard to rewrite it without losing its meaning. I can't think of another way to write it at this moment. QuackGuru (talk) 04:20, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

A way to think about it that might help: What is 'unique', 'representative', or 'notable' about this particular opinion that it needs to be included? If we can identify that without directly quoting the author, that's what we could use to paraphrase. PeterTheFourth (talk) 04:40, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

See: David Auerbach, writing in Slate magazine, said, "I am not exaggerating when I say it is the closest thing to Kafka’s The Trial I have ever witnessed, with editors and administrators giving conflicting and confusing advice, complaints getting "boomeranged" onto complainants who then face disciplinary action for complaining, and very little consistency in the standards applied. In my short time there, I repeatedly observed editors lawyering an issue with acronyms, only to turn around and declare "Ignore all rules!" when faced with the same rules used against them."[22]

It might be impossible to rewrite it without losing its complete meaning without the quotes. QuackGuru (talk) 05:28, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

There are plenty of other blockquotes in the article, by the way, seemingly without rhyme or reason. I guess people simply like to use the blockquote template, or are too lazy to summarize. A third reason is that people fight over every summary like the incident here, so the path of least resistance is to use blockquotes. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 06:28, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

A fourth reason is it is sometimes too difficult to summarise. QuackGuru (talk) 07:15, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

I don't see a way to improve upon the original. Is there anything in policy preventing us from using it? James J. Lambden (talk) 17:16, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Directly quoting such large chunks of text from other sources isn't very encyclopedic, nor does it read very well. James J. Lambden, QuackGuru, I plan on opening an RfC in a few days regarding what would be best here- presenting options as a paraphrasing, the block quote, etc. If you'd like to present an alternative that is not just the block quote James has been continually reverting to or the paraphrasings I've suggested, post it here within the next few days and I'll include it in the RfC. PeterTheFourth (talk) 23:16, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Before you try a RfC you could try to summarise it better. QuackGuru (talk) 01:55, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

I've proposed two seperate versions which I believe summarise the text adequately. You believe the text is unable to be summarised. I don't see the midground here (you're free to try to approach it yourself!), unfortunately, so the next step is an RfC. PeterTheFourth (talk) 02:14, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

I believed it is very difficult to summarise without losing its meaning. QuackGuru (talk) 02:16, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Sure, my bad. I can't think of a way to better summarise it- if you'd like a different summary, please propose one, preferably before I start the RfC in a few days. PeterTheFourth (talk) 03:02, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

I tried to summarise it and I couldn't. What is the purpose of a RfC when you were not able to summarise it better than the current version? QuackGuru (talk) 03:03, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Because I believe that both of my summaries are better than the block quote (hence why I tried to institute them). I don't disagree that you believe they aren't, but the point of the RfC would be to gather more perspectives. PeterTheFourth (talk) 03:06, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Both were not summaries IMO. Both rendered the wording close to meaningless. QuackGuru (talk) 03:08, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Duplicate paragraphs

There are several paragraphs duplicated -- the last four paragraphs of the lede are roughly the same as the first four paragraphs of the first section, "Criticism of content". Timeline:

• 24 April 2016 and prior: The four paragraphs were only in the lede.
• 25 April 2016: Be..anyone moved them out of the lede and into the first section.
• 28 June 2016: Bigbaby23 re-added them to the lede, without removing them from the first section (with edit summary inexplicably referencing EpicGenius), resulting in the duplication.
• subsequently: There were further edits on both sets of duplicated paragraphs (different edits in different sets), making the paragraphs in question no longer match.

Any suggestion how to resolve? Or anyone want to go ahead and fix it? -- HLachman (talk) 11:37, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

I am trying to get rid of excess verbiage and clean up the paragraphs in question. It seems to me pretty clear that only the first paragraph belongs in the lead. Since it looks like I'm going to be writing some criticism of Wikipedia, it would be good for me to help clean up this article and see what others have written. SashiRolls (talk) 12:25, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Notable source not yet cited in article

I came across this brief article in Time that seems very relevant and useful but is not cited in this article yet. I've no time now but may look to use it soon. Discussion welcome. SageRad (talk) 13:19, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

Not cited, perhaps, but the piece Time was commenting on is listed for further reading. Anmccaff (talk) 17:05, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

Mass changes to lede

The previous lede can be seen here. QuackGuru (talk) 21:36, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

Contradictory wikipedia-BATTLEFIELD OF PROPAGANDA

There are thousands of contradictory articles in Wikipedia. In some wiki languages, we read that X is a hero but in other languages we read that X is a criminal. The same situation about facts, history and persons. In wiki all depends in what language you read. And majority of data are contradictory, depending on the activity of trolls. So Wikipedia is a BATTLEFIELD OF PROPAGANDA. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.112.108.145 (talk) 07:33, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

As I understand it, there is no coordination between different-language wiki articles - both as a matter of policy and a matter of course. I only speak English, so when I go to edit English-language articles on foreign subjects that suffer from bias like 2016 social unrest in Sweden or Impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, I always hit a roadblock because most (if not all) of the reliable sources on those articles are in languages that I have to translate (with online translators that don't always work well). If you are multilingual, the Wiki community could really use your help to sift through cases like this. You're right, Wikipedia often is a battlefield of ideas. You should consider creating an account to help us reduce bias on articles across every language. <> Alt lys er svunnet hen (talk) 01:29, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Election Guide 2016

In 2016, the Washington Post stated that many Wikipedia contributors editing US 2016 campaign pages were unpaid.

References

Volunteer Marek has deleted the above reference, claiming that the citation is a "misrepresentation" of the subject of the article. The citation is from the second, introductory, paragraph of the article which concludes by citing a Wikipedia user who says he enjoys working to prevent Wikipedia from becoming an advertising platform for the candidates. This user, as it turns out, was topic banned as a result of a controversial AE decision in a case brought by Volunteer Marek. I imagine this is the first of many articles to come on the bias during the 2016 election. I would encourage Volunteer Marek to add further details from the article if he feels the citation from the introduction misrepresents the article, which does admittedly read a bit like WP:FANCRUFT at times. SashiRolls (talk) 12:12, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Yes, it's in the article but it still manages to completely misrepresent the article which is NOT about whether Wikipedia editors are paid or not. It's an off hand remark which you are using to make it seem like the article is about paid Wikipedia editors.Volunteer Marek (talk) 13:31, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Both the beginning and the end of the article make allusion to paid editing. How do you propose editing the text making mention of this WaPo article? SashiRolls (talk) 13:39, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

The article being referenced doesn't speak about partisanship actually happening, which would be a criticism. If anything it says the opposite. As positive criticism it suggests that Wikipedia articles aren't actually commercials for candidates (written by either paid staff or volunteer enthusiasts). If you want to make a point about politicians editing articles, and there is a more relevant section about it here than the one on partisanship, it's not difficult to find some which actually make that point (main article). By the way, another quote from the article is "Wikipedia as a whole has become less biased since its founding". -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 14:56, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Fair enough. had it been anyone other than Volunteer Marek who had reverted the content, I probably would not have reacted, but since he was directly involved in the story, I did. We'll wait for the slew of articles that will surely be published soon in papers less aligned with Wikipedia's political coverage (cf. Wikipedia is essentially the election guide...) than the Clinton-endorsing and oft-cited Washington Post. SashiRolls (talk) 15:28, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

List of reporters

I think it would be a good idea to make a list of reporters who like to write about the Wikipedia controversy. Is there such a list? QuackGuru (talk) 21:36, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

Do you mean to put this list into the article or for internal usage? In the first case we need sources which say so. Now,

1. Andrew Orlowski, one of the earlier critics of Wikipedia.
2. ...

Staszek Lem (talk) 01:02, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

...Oops, here we go: Category:Critics of Wikipedia.

References

I want to create a list here on the talk page of reporters who are interested in writing new articles about the current controversy. The list should be of reporters who have written a controversial article on Wikipedia within the last 12 months. QuackGuru (talk) 01:55, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

User:Hijiri88, I have a better idea than reporting the sock account. Do you know any reporters to contact? QuackGuru (talk) 23:43, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

No, and I don't think that's a good idea. I don't like when the mainstream media report "leaks" from people who are dissatisfied with their Wikipedia experience. They always say things like "User X, who has occasionally been blocked from editing, said Y about her". I can't imagine what they would say about me when I get people on-wiki saying dickish things like that on a near-daily basis, and if I did that to someone else I lose the moral high ground when they try to do it to me. If you don't like Wikipedia, just leave. It's voluntary and you're free to leave whenever you want. Don't try to burn everything down on your way out. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:05, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

This is not one editor. This is multiple editors adding WP:OR and/or other nonsense. You would not believe everything that happened. An entire page was deleted and replaced with nonsense. If you want me to spill my guts then you could tell me which reporters to contact. QuackGuru (talk) 00:13, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

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I think that there is a good, well-balanced site (or perhaps I should say, what, prima facie, seems a good site) about whether we can trust Wikipedia called the bubble chamber. I shall try to add it to the external links if I manage to find out what site it is. There is also a website from the Daily Telegraph dated 2015 which debatably could go here, in which some one points towards jokes make on an article on a swimming stroke.81.140.1.129 (talk) 21:01, 4 March 2017 (UTC) This website would be www.telegraph.co.uk and tells us that according to the Wikipedia article on the butterfly stroke, the origins of this stroke are contested - it was either first swam in 1933 or thirty years earlier by Jack Stephens, but Jack Stephens is only a fictitious character who had been inserted in the article on the butterfly stroke as a joke. Carltonio (talk) 09:30, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

OK, the site is thebubblechamber.org/2011/03/can-we-trust-wikipedia. 81.140.1.129 (talk) 21:04, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

The Telegraph article, based on the Telegraph from April 2015, is on the website www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/11539950/How_much_can_we_trust_Wikipedia?Carltonio (talk) 20:52, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

sfnm?

• Could we please use {{sfnm}} to get rid of "gender bias and sexism.[92][93][94][95][96][97] " and " igher-quality discourse anywhere."[118][119][120][121][122]" and "The Guardian's story.[127][128][129][130][131] " etc? Tks  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 13:13, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Is there a page for complaints about Wikipedia by Wikipedians?

I'm sure there are plenty of people right on Wikipedia who have criticism about this site. One of the issues I have is that there are pages that have issues due to Wikipedians having agendas. This of course slants a page's facts. I'm sure there are many pages that have this issue in fact. Criticism of Wikipedia like any organization also comes from within. NaturalEquality (talk) 00:43, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

No. Per WP:NOTFORUM, no page at Wikipedia should be used to moan about anything. However, if there was a concern about a particular article, you might add an actionable proposal about text that should be changed on the article talk page. If there is a dispute, see WP:DR. The first step then would be raise a concern at the appropriate noticebaord, for example, WP:BLPN (unduly negative text about a living person), WP:NPOVN (non-neutral text), WP:RSN (inappropriate use of a source). Use WP:HELPDESK for how-to questions. Johnuniq (talk) 04:17, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

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Wikipedia as a concept versus Wikipedia as a product

Would this article be improved if it distinguished between criticism of Wikipedia as a concept (i.e. criticism of the very idea of a wiki-based encyclopedia) and criticism of Wikipedia as a product (i.e. how the final product looks and reads)? Vorbee (talk) 18:58, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

New article - Predictions of Wikipedia's end

• Predictions of Wikipedia's end

I linked to this from this article. I am not sure how this article should be integrated with other articles about Wikipedia. Lots of criticism has led and still leads to predictions about how Wikipedia is about to go defunct. I thought that it would be useful to start summarizing when this happens. Does anyone have ideas for where this article can go? Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:29, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Is that a joke article that has only just been created? It will be interesting to see how long it will be before it goes to Wikipedia: Articles for deletion. Vorbee (talk) 20:49, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Vorbee Thanks for the comment.

You seem like a new user. Could I assist you in nominating it for deletion? Whatever you have to say about the article including criticism is helpful. Nominating it for deletion is no big deal and from my perspective it advances the conversation. Let me know if I can support you, but the guide is available. To get started, consider the reasons for deletion. Most deletions are because of #8, fails WP:GNG. Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:52, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Follow the money?

Wikipedia, one of the last remaining pillars of the open and decentralized web, is in existential crisis.

This has nothing to do with money. A couple of years ago, the site launched a panicky fundraising campaign, but ironically thanks to Donald Trump, Wikipedia has never been as wealthy or well-organized. American liberals, worried that Trump’s rise threatened the country’s foundational Enlightenment ideals, kicked in a significant flow of funds that has stabilized the nonprofit’s balance sheet. Anmccaff (talk) 23:28, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia is unfortunately only about as reliable and truthful as the corporate, mainstream media - because it is owned and moderated by the same kind of authoritarian, self appointed academic and cultural elite that ru(i)n the media. And much like the media, this deliberate alienation of so many potential donors ("viewers" for the media) will ultimately be what unravels it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 14.200.127.155 (talk) 17:16, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I and the other editors appointed ourselves. I figure that's a strength; others think it's a weakness that allows people who are not authoritative, not elite, not thoughtful, to appoint themselves and undermine reliability. Other online encyclopedias are more selective in their appointments; perhaps you can help them triumph. Jim.henderson (talk) 14:15, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Better image for lead?

The article currently opens with File:Klee-Irwin.gif to illustrate edit wars/differences in presentation and article structuring. However, the article on Klee Irwin was deleted after a third deletion discussion. I think a new example using a more notable figure is warranted, or better yet a subject not involving living persons to avoid potential WP:BLP issues: BLP apples to all living persons in all articles—whether or not they have articles—and showcasing a potential BLP-violation (or WP:NPOV violation) in a permanent image is probably not good, especially since the references in the now deleted article cannot be verified. --Animalparty! (talk) 22:27, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

___Bias towards Irish and Irish Nationalist views.

Why isn't there anything on the fact that every person of Wikipedia is said on Wiki to have Irish heritage and Irish parents and Catholic, Raised Catholic etc. Lapsed Catholic which basically means non religious but gets put down as Catholic. If Wiki is to be believed there isn't anyone noteworthy in the world either now or historically who wasn't Irish, had Irish blood, was Irish nationalist in view or of Catholic stock. The Bias towards Irish,Irish-American and Catholic slants is derailing the good work of most of the editors. It is totally partial to the Irish view.

NOTHING ON THIS PAGE references this well known situation and that should be taken as further proving my point! 86.15.128.219 (talk) 02:27, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Moved here from the banners where I believe the above post was mistakenly placed, although I have no intention of addressing this claim that I find completely ridiculous. SentientParadox (talk) 17:56, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Treatment of the "Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory" section.

A warning that there are living members of The Frankfurt School of thinkers (see Jürgen Habermas et al.), so this section may interact with WP:BLP. I've made some corrections, and will probably preen the section further at a later point if more sourcing isn't provided. Claiming Wikipedia focuses on the Jewishness of living thinkers (when it doesn't) is a genuine and serious problem for WP:BLP, and I'm happy to take this to the related noticeboard. --Jobrot (talk) 15:31, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and removed the claim that Wikipedia has been antisemitic to Jürgen Habermas and other living Frankfurt School thinkers. This claim presents a serious WP:BLP issue. This course of action is not a case of me attempting to be WP:BOLD but is directly recommended by WP:BLP (as well as the legal advice of Wikipedia). Re-including the statement is considered a very serious matter by The Wikimedia Foundation and should be sternly avoided. --Jobrot (talk) 15:44, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

I'm not seeing a good reason to include this at all. First, that it was added by two people embroiled in the disputes at Talk:Frankfurt School doesn't seem ideal. Second, that it was added with the awkward injection of "liberal" regarding Slate but goes on to cite American Conservative and Conservapedia (!) is not ideal. The best source is clearly the Conversation. Auerbach has had many criticisms of Wikipedia, and this is based on less than a paragraph in a larger article -- we don't need to include all of them. My question is whether the Conversation piece, written by a Wikipedian, merits inclusion on this page. Possibly? Don't know. For Wikipedians who disagree with the outcome of discussions about a Wikipedia page to write about that dispute and then have that dispute cited on Wikipedia re: criticism of Wikipedia doesn't seem ideal either (this is not to fault Metamagician btw or to assume bad faith regarding any party -- just to say that, well, it's not ideal). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:58, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Considering that two of the sources are referring to a page (the "Frankfurt School conspiracy theory" page) which hasn't been visible for 3 years, and the other two sources in that paragraph are agreeing with Wikipedia that the term "Cultural Marxism" does in part refer to a conspiracy theory, I have no problem with you deleting the paragraph in question (due to poor and inaccurate sourcing). I came here to check on Teishin's accuracy and found the paragraph violated WP:BLP and did not reflect the sources or Wikipedia's structure accurately. I attempted to correct the paragraph as best as I could, but deletion would perhaps be more appropriate. Feel free to delete it. --Jobrot (talk) 04:53, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Related AfD

Please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ideological bias on Wikipedia. One of the proposed outcomes there is a merger with this article, so if you have an opinion on whether or not that merger would be a good idea, please comment. -- Netoholic @ 05:33, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Peter Hitchens article in The Spectator

See it here https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/08/war-of-words-my-battle-to-correct-wikipedia/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:A601:483:8900:503F:6C0D:2E63:7CEF (talk) 23:41, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

Broken links

WP is highly dependent on external references (whether they have integrity or not is a topic for future discussion). When a link is broken, it diminishes the integrity of the article reference, yet WP does not automatically find or adjust to broken links. I'd like to see WP create a bot to eliminate broken links in main articles and talk pages. 2600:6C48:7006:200:D84D:5A80:173:901D (talk) 23:17, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Archived Talk Pages

I know that talk pages can get rather lengthy, particularly for controversial subjects, but by Archiving talk pages the primary discourse is lost to most viewers. I didn't even know Archived pages existed until I found one of my Talk page comments disappear, to be buried in an Archive (actually, the article has MULTIPLE talk archives) that some privileged user or Bot created. I'm disturbed by this. Issues disappear quickly this way, often unresolved. 2600:6C48:7006:200:D84D:5A80:173:901D (talk) 01:24, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

The links to the four archive pages (for this particular talk page) can be found near the top of the page. —PaleoNeonate – 07:56, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

• I didn't say it was lost. I said it was both Buried and Unresolved. Big difference. As a research tool, WP is diminished greatly by this. 2600:6C48:7006:200:D84D:5A80:173:901D (talk) 23:22, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
• Can people still edit archived talk pages? If so, would this mean they cease to be genuine archives of talk pages? Vorbee (talk) 07:59, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

  They can be although they usually have a tag discouraging it. When they are edited, they of course, like any page, can be restored to their initial state (and if vandalism persists, be protected). It is also legitimate to move back a recently archived thread on the main talk page if its archival was hasty. —PaleoNeonate – 15:24, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

Daily Mail ban meets WP:GNG notability guidelines

I am not a fan, but while learning about wikipedia's history I ended up running across a missing criticism incident that's not included here. Below you will find a list of references.

I'm a noob, so that's why I messed up however I'm supposed to list references here—sorry!

Not including this would be inconsistent with following WP:NPOV:

All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic.

References

24.21.215.155 (talk) 07:56, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

I agree; this issue should be included in the article. Peter K Burian (talk) 11:19, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Need a section about Donna Strickland

This prof got a Nobel prize on Oct. 2 and there was no Wikipedia page about her prior to that date. Someone had started one and it was deleted. A lot of Web publications have criticized Wikipedia about this in the past two days, claiming gender bias. (fyi, Donna Theo Strickland .. A pioneer in the field of pulsed lasers, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018, together with Gérard Mourou, for the invention of chirped pulse amplification;) https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/02/arthur-ashkin-gerard-mourou-and-donna-strickland-win-nobel-physics-prize

Now, a major, highly-respected magazine, The Atlantic has scolded Wikipedia about the lack of a page about Strickland until she won the Nobel prize. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/10/nobel-prize-physics-donna-strickland-gerard-mourou-arthur-ashkin/571909/

   Unlike her fellow winners, Strickland did not have a Wikipedia page at the time of the announcement. A Wikipedia user tried to set up a page in May, but it was denied by a moderator with the message: “This submission’s references do not show that the subject qualifies for a Wikipedia article.” Strickland, it was determined, had not received enough dedicated coverage elsewhere on the internet to warrant a page.

   On Tuesday, a newly created page flooded with edits: “Added in her title.” “Add Nobel-winning paper.” “Added names of other women Nobelists [sic] in physics.”

   The construction of the Wikipedia page feels like a metaphor for a historic award process that has long been criticized for neglecting women in its selection, and for the shortage of women’s stories in the sciences at large. To scroll through the “history” tab of Strickland’s page, where all edits are recorded and tracked, is to witness in real time the recognition of a scientist whose story likely deserved attention long before the Nobel Prize committee called.

Surely this should be mentioned in the Criticism article; I have never contributed to it, and am not even sure where this content would go. An editor more experienced with the Criticism topic would be more suitable. (Or give me a bit of guidance and I will do it.) Peter K Burian (talk) 21:13, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Also see Why didn't Wikipedia have article on Donna Strickland, winner of a Nobel Prize? http:///2018/10/04/donna-strickland-wikipedia/ Donna Strickland is an optical physicist at the University of Waterloo. She is also a Nobel laureate (having been announced as the winner of a ...

Peter K Burian (talk) 21:20, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

According to the logs, the article about her was deleted because it was a copyright violation (from this at The Optical Society). There was no bias against its (re)creation, but editors must respect copyright issues. The Draft article was sourced entirely to primary sources (her own papers, her employers), and was declined for lack of references establishing her notability. The onus is on those who write the articles to provide enough information using reliable, secondary sources to support the claims made. Let's not assume some nefarious plot or bias. Mindmatrix 21:50, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

@Mindmatrix: Careful. You're conflating two separate submissions of a proposed Donna Strickland BLP. The first was speedy deleted on 7 March 2014 for unambiguous copyright infringement. The second, to which @Peter K Burian: refers, was submitted 28 March 2018 and rejected declined 23 May 2018 for failing to meet notability guidelines. KalHolmann (talk) 22:26, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Yes, because there were no sources yet to verify it (and if I remember, not deleted, declined Draft submission)? —PaleoNeonate – 01:43, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

@KalHolmann:How did I conflate them? I mentioned both, and the reasons each was deleted (one as a copyvio, the other for lacking reliable sources). I suppose I could have been clearer by stating "The subsequent Draft article..." Mindmatrix 14:33, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

This Wikipedia page is about criticism of Wikipedia. There is a ton of such criticism about the Donna Strickland issue.

I am not saying that the criticism is valid, but it's becoming very widely published. And quite a few of the articles are claiming gender bias. When a publication like The Atlantic is publishing it, surely the information is important. And if the issue were not important, why would https://wikimediafoundation.org/2018/10/04/donna-strickland-wikipedia/ publish this long article: Why didn’t Wikipedia have an article on Donna Strickland, winner of a Nobel Prize? Do we need to wait until Wikimedia Foundation asks an Admin to include this topic in Criticism of Wikipedia?

A few other news items:

• Female Nobel prize winner deemed not important enough for Wikipedia entry https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/03/donna-strickland-nobel-physics-prize-wikipedia-denied
• How We Can All Fix Wikipedia's Lack of Female Representation http://fortune.com/2018/10/04/how-we-can-all-fix-wikipedias-lack-of-female-representation/
• Nobel winner was not impressive enough for Wikipedia https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/nobel-winner-was-not-impressive-enough-for-wikipedia-jx6pn7v2v
• Wikipedia rejected an entry on a physics Nobel laureate right up until she won, saying she wasn't famous enough https://www.businessinsider.com/wikipedia-rejected-donna-strickland-entry-before-nobel-prize-2018-10
• Physicist Donna Strickland Had to Win a Nobel Prize to Get on Wikipedia https://observer.com/2018/10/wikipedia-nobel-prize-physics-donna-strickland/
• Wikipedia didn’t approve page for Donna Strickland until she got Nobel Physics Prize https://www.thestatesman.com/world/wikipedia-didnt-approve-page-for-donna-strickland-until-she-got-nobel-physics-prize-1502692394.html
• Nicht wichtig genug - Wikipedia verweigerte Nobelpreisträgerin einen Eintrag http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/donna-strickland-wikipedia-verweigerte-nobelpreistraegerin-eintrag-a-1231494.html

Peter K Burian (talk) 22:42, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

The Strickland issue is briefly covered in Gender bias on Wikipedia but it does not address the amount of criticism in the news media. Peter K Burian (talk) 23:18, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

This isn't a gender bias issue; it has been pointed out that George Smith (chemist) did not have a Wikipedia article either until he won the Nobel Prize this week. It just doesn't make as good a headline to point this out. The root cause of the problem is WP:ACADEMIC, because there are plenty of good academics who are not household names and it is difficult to write a bio about them from secondary sourcing, eg not their personal page on the university website. A lot of the coverage of the Donna Strickland issue has been based on the old journalistic maxim of "never let the facts get in the way of a good story."--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 14:46, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

The bottom line is that many news outlets have criticized Wikipedia, some specifically stating that they felt it was gender bias. Whether we agree or not is not relevant. The fact is: there is a lot of criticism so it needs to be covered by an article called Criticism of Wikipedia. Peter K Burian (talk) 14:53, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Interview on Russia Today

This may be of interest here:

"On the latest episode of On Contact, investigative journalist Helen Buyniski exposes Jimmy Wales' egalitarian Wikipedia as yet another tool of the ruling elite."

https://m.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&feature=youtu.be&v=nDPrpKDjQ5U

-- Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:57, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

I just watched it. Laughable rubbish. Hedges is fantastic but it appears he's been duped this time.

I hope none of that is used in this article. If a layperson said the following, it would be original research. Just because Buyniski is a journalist, I hope the piece is not considered a reliable source. Where on Earth did she get her info? Wikipediocracy?

Some quotes that tell the tale:

• "...they are often unpaid..."
• "...turned Wikipedia into a platform for propaganda..."
• When asked how it is supposed to function, Buyniski states "...you've got the entire internet full of unpaid volunteers who are interested in sharing their knowledge..."
• "...a hierarchy takes places...there are administrators...supreme court, the arbitration committee...obviously once you start getting hierarchical, you start getting different factions vying for power...."
• "...by 2007 it has just become this utopia of rules..."
• "...people at the top don't want to let the people at the bottom do what they want..."
• "...it eventually starts to resemble what the administrators want, or what the arbitration committee (wants)..."
• "...they even have a warning on one of the talk pages called don't bite the newbies and it is because they chase the new users away with all of these rules..."
• "...has a complex markup language that you used to have to learn ..."
• "...unless you were like a Wikipedia expert who just spent all their time editing Wikipedia, it was less and less likely that you were going to find your edits would stick..."
• "...you have to disclose your conflict of interest because we can't be looking bad...it's not because they didn't want people doing it, they just didn't want people getting caught doing it..."
• "...there is a very clear intent, on the part of the managers of Wikipedia, to prop up other figures such as Hillary Clinton..."

It goes on like that.

Chris, check your source. Oh, the irony. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:26, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

@Anna Frodesiak: you demand, "Where on Earth did she get her info?" It is of course unfair to require that sources be cited during a video interview, but in fact Helen Buyniski has provided those separately. Hedges repeatedly refers to, and reads aloud from, her "article," which was published in August 2018. "Wikipedia: Friend Or Fraud?" is 7,722 words long and contains 96 references to inline citations. KalHolmann (talk) 00:42, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

• Update. Helen Buyniski has now reposted a longer, more fully referenced version of her article that she and Chris Hedges discussed. Here is her "Wikipedia: Rotten to the Core", consisting of 10,653 words, with 149 references to inline citations. It certainly gives the lie to any assertion by scoffing Wikipedia admins that Buyniski's criticism is not well documented. KalHolmann (talk) 18:30, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi KalHolmann. How on Earth can she get things so wrong? And as a journalist, she ought to know what sort of edit protection the Hillary article has. She didn't know. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:51, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

She actually misunderstands how Wikipedia works. She really thinks editors require knowledge in subjects they write about. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:53, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

@Anna Frodesiak: you advise "Chris, check your source," but your own sources are useless. You cite 12 identical URLs. What is the point? And you fail to attribute quotations specifically to Chris Hedges or Helen Buyniski. For the record, the first two quotes in your list, and the last one, are from Hedges. The rest are from Buyniski. And, by the way, she did not make the grammatical error of "volunteers who are interesting [sic] in sharing." She clearly said "volunteers who are interested in sharing." KalHolmann (talk) 22:14, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi, KalHolmann. My sources are useless? I don't think I can paste quotes unless they are accompanied by sources. I think every quote must have a source attached, yes? So, they have a use. As for the spelling error, oh well. Life will go on. Anything else? Best wishes, Anna Frodesiak (talk) 05:02, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

WP:CONDUCTDISPUTE --KalHolmann (talk) 02:57 23 October 2018 (UTC)

@Anna Frodesiak: On the off chance you are not joking, God save us from editors who have no knowledge in subjects they write about. KalHolmann (talk) 01:17, 23 October 2018 (UTC) Knowledge of a subject is good, but can be a double-edged sword. Plenty of good edits are made by users with no knowledge in the subject. I'm an example of that. I've written countless articles on all sorts of subjects, and I know nothing about anything. Knowledge on a subject is certainly not required. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 01:23, 23 October 2018 (UTC) @Anna Frodesiak: OK, now I get it. This whole thread is a put-on. You pwned me good. KalHolmann (talk) 01:29, 23 October 2018 (UTC) KalHolmann, I'm being serious. No put on. I wrote hundreds of articles on marine species and I know nothing about them. I gathered facts from reliable sources and that's it. If I had knowledge of them, I might have been tempted to add original research. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 01:55, 23 October 2018 (UTC) @Anna Frodesiak: That is appalling. If true, you are the most irresponsible user I've encountered on this website. I can't even imagine the damage you've done. KalHolmann (talk) 02:06, 23 October 2018 (UTC) KalHolmann, you're joking, right? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 02:24, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

[Wikipedia editors] are often unpaid...

Nope. I bailed at that point. That is so fundamentally stupid a statement I would never take anything that follows seriously. --Calton | Talk 14:06, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

• utopia of rules Well...They're not totally wrong. GMG^talk 15:25, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Sources

Criticism of process?

Does anyone think the MIT study of RfCs should be summarized here? Anyone have a proposal? The original study is here. I hope adding a new header is not a problem, I've always read things should be divided into three parts. — 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 00:56, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

Some problems

The article currently states:

"Wikipedia has been criticized for having a systemic racial bias in its coverage, due to an under-representation of people of colour within its editor base. ... Articles that do exist on African topics are, according to some critics, largely edited by editors from Europe and North America and thus reflect their knowledge and consumption of media, which "tend to perpetuate a negative image" of Africa.

1. PoC is primarily an American term (according to the lead in the article). Is the sentence talking about the USA editorial content or all content. If USA then that should be stated in the sentence. If it includes every where, then MOS:ENGVAR suggests MOS:COMMONALITY find a more common expression. Does the source state that this is true for all countries in the Anglosphere and the British Commonwealth? If not then either more sources are needed (avoding WP:SYNTH), or the sentence needs to be circumscribed.
2. I would be surprised if most of the articles on South Africa were written by non-South-Africans. Further does African mean sub-Saharan or all of Africa (with the possible exception of ZA)? Does it include articles about history for example Egyptian history eg during the conquest by Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign and the Second Battle of El Alamein; or the African campaigns during Punic Wars? If it means more recent events then that needs to be explicitly stated.

--PBS (talk) 20:25, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Dated content

Far too much of this article includes content and comments over 10 years old. Much of it is referring to the situation before 2007. Prior to that articles were often written without any citations and most did not have inline citations. There was a lot of debate about this, both internally and critisism within the news media and in academia.

• On 30 August User:SlimVirgin introduced WP:BURDEN to WP:V (diff)
• Wikipedia:100,000 feature-quality articles. (created 14 September 2006 by user:David Gerard) had for its first sentence "English Wikipedia has the text of ten Britannicas. At Wikimania 2006, Jimbo challenged the en: community to work more on quality than sheer quantity".

Thanks to the initative to improve the quality of articles and to base articles on reliable sources, one now hears verly little critisism of the sort that was common 10+ years ago. This has resulted in articles like Why Wikipedia Works (16 March 2018) by Brian Feldman.

Ie the battles and criticisms over 10 years ago while historically interesting are not useful as a relevent critique of what Wikipedia is today, therefore I suggest that instead of the current format, the artice shoud concentrate on more recent critisism (say the last 5 years) and have an historic section on older critisisms, how they were addressed (eg WP:BURDEN but without breaching SELF), or, if criticisms are still an issue (eg Wikipedia:Systemic bias), attemptes to address them.

The artice would then be much more informative for readers as to why 15 years ago Wikipedia was seen as unreliable and much of academia discouraged students accessing page, to today were it is seen by some social media outlets as a practical (cheap) antidote to "fake news". -- PBS (talk) 21:30, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Article on Wikipedia in the Harvard Educational Review

This article may be related to this page:

Fall 2009 Issue of the Harvard Educational Review

High School Research and Critical Literacy: Social Studies With and Despite Wikipedia by Houman Harouni

http://www.hepg.org/her/abstract/742

"Drawing on experiences in his social studies classroom, Houman Harouni evaluates both the challenges and possibilities of helping high school students develop critical research skills. The author describes how he used Wikipedia to design classroom activities that address issues of authorship, neutrality, and reliability in information gathering. The online encyclopedia is often lamented by teachers, scholars, and librarians, but its widespread use necessitates a new approach to teaching research. In describing the experience, Harouni concludes that teaching research skills in the contemporary context requires ongoing observations of the research strategies and practices students already employ as well as the active engagement of student interest and background knowledge."— Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.103.181.34 (talk) 23:39, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Anonymous editing

The phraseology stating that Wikipedia allows anonymous editing, and that this leads to editorial vandalism, is questionable. Firstly, in theory, anybody could perform an act of vandalism on Wikipedia, whether anonymous or not. Secondly, Wikipedia undoubtedly receives many good edits from users who are anonymous and may not even be logged in. For me on this latter point, cf. Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) and go to the section on perennial proposals.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Vorbee (talk • contribs) 15:59, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

Brian Martin (social scientist)

Brian Martin (social scientist) is an academic at the University of Wollongong. He was the PhD supervisor of Judith Wilyman whose degree was (to put it mildly) controversial. He has published the following papers recently:

• Martin, Brian (2018). "Persistent Bias on Wikipedia: Methods and Responses". Social Science Computer Review. 36 (3): 379–388. doi:10.1177/0894439317715434.
• Martin, Brian (2018). "Analysis of a beat-up: The structuring of a sensational media story". Pacific Journalism Review. 24 (2): 117–133. doi:10.24135/pjr.v24i2.429.

The first is of obvious relevance to this page, and includes discussion of how to combat bias (he uses his wikibio as a case study). The second is directed at the media but includes comment on the Wilyman case. Given the comments above about more current material being desirable, editors may wish to look at incorporating something into this article. I don't have time to work on this myself. Cheers, EdChem (talk) 01:48, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Why do you think that a non-peer-reviewed piece by a controversial academic of dubious track record (who has utilized his own bio as a case study; can this be more real? ) is fit as a reference? ∯WBG^converse 14:03, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

The paper was peer reviewed, and has subsequently been referenced in peer-reviewed papers. - Bilby (talk) 12:09, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Leftist bias of Wikipedia

There is high probability that Wikipedia has significant leftist bias. There is for example a good and extensive article on Breitbart for this topic.

But one of the results of the existing leftist bias is, that Breitbart is not allowed as source and is blacklisted without objective justification. So it seems to be clear case of bias including censuring sources challenging the bias. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.105.234.188 (talk) 10:01, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Ahahahahahahahahahahaha look at this tool. BlackholeWA (talk) 15:02, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Although I'm used to see accusations of leftist bias about Wikipedia, those are usually uttered by people from the far-right who consider leftist what's centrist as well. For a good idea of where Breitbart stands on the left/right and fair/propaganda spectrum, this independent assessment is useful: https://adfontesmedia.com/. Also nice is https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/08/opinion/facts-have-a-well-known-liberal-bias.html. —PaleoNeonate – 00:31, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Forcing political correctness over readability is further proof of this bias. We should not stand for having to use terms such as BCE/CE on this site.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:2d80:e402:a800:21f0:9466:6c0a:dcd4 (talk) 22:45, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Please see MOS:ERA: noone is forced to use one or the other, but within the same article consistency is recommended. —PaleoNeonate – 00:25, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

This talk page is not a forum (WP:NOTFORUM) for general extended discussion of the topic, but to discuss specific changes to the article and discuss reliable sources. —PaleoNeonate – 00:34, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Unhappy article gatekeepers

The following changes have been reverted wholesale, despite three sources. No attempt has been made by the gatekeepers to discuss yet. Look forward to hearing their POV below as to why they needed to make wholesale reverts rather than target words they didn't like. I can easily find sources for any of the claims made.

Criticism of Wikipedia has been directed at its content, its procedures, the character and practices of the Wikipedia community, and its self-description as an open-source encyclopedia that anyone can edit. This is true to a large degree, though the terms of use does specify that authors can be banned by either the community or the foundation, for any reason or none. Administrators (capable of blocking users) can also block pages when they feel gate-keeping is necessary for the good of the projects, as can stewards and the office. Other critical concerns include the reliability of the content and sourcing; the readability of the prose; organization of the articles; various potential systemic concerns including: political gaming and shaming, corporate and activist hijacking, gender bias, racial bias, and addictivity. Vandalism, cliques, toxicity, and policy inertia (or instruction-creep) have led to predictions of the end of Wikipedia.

References

🌿 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 15:15, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

SashiRolls, the added text is cited directly to the foundation, which does not mention "criticism of Wikipedia". We're supposed to rely on what third-party sources say about the subject, rather than use primary sources to draw conclusions not stated by the source. – bradv🍁 15:19, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Also, this page is terribly out-of-date. Rather than preserving it in its current state, it would be wiser to try to update it and deal with some of the more widely-discussed questions. Toxicity was mentioned in the NYT (among many others), politics in Wired UK, Slate, corporate hijacking most recently in the NYT (the North Face), activist hijacking in the Church of Scientology article above (The Register), addictivity is mentioned in the main disclaimer (SJ = author), etc....

WRT the claim that we cannot cite the TOU to describe the Terms of Use because the word criticism is (surprisingly!) not contained in the TOU, ummm.... that doesn't seem like a legitimate argument. I added an two articles that pointed out that not just anyone can edit Wikipedia. Another would be the recent Buzzfeed News story about FramGate.🌿 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 15:22, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

There is a discussion on Bradv's talk page about COI. Insofar as he is an arbcom clerk and is just back from retirement, I believe he has a bit of a conflict of interest and perhaps some difficulties judging dispassionately whether a source is reliable for information about its own policies. He doesn't agree. I won't link the discussion out of deference to such a senior fellow's privacy. 🌿 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 16:17, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

I have no problem linking to the discussion in question: User talk:Bradv#Gate-keeping on Criticism of Wikipedia – bradv🍁 17:27, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

Dates in section titles

@SashiRolls: I don't understand why you are putting dates in the section titles. They imply that these events are over and that the criticisms expressed are no longer applicable, which is in most cases clearly not true. Could you please elucidate? – bradv🍁 17:26, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

What is with the lack of communication? This does not inspire confidence. El_C 17:42, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

I have dated all the section titles. I forgot to put up the busy template on the page, so my work was disrupted. Now that there is a stable version I'm more than happy to remove the busy template I hadn't had time to put on the page. This is an excellent way of seeing which sections need updating. That seems obvious to me, but perhaps not to everyone. Have fun reverting the work that was intended to help guide future contributors towards the weaknesses in the article. NB: most of the sources are from 2013 or earlier.🌿 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 17:53, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

SashiRolls, since when do we put the dates of our sources in the section titles? What is this supposed to accomplish? – bradv🍁 17:55, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

This is quite a particular entry, which refers to en.wp quite frequently (While doing the work, y'all don't think is useful, I saw links to a userlog, to several policy pages, to meta...) in fact, contrary to what you seem to have suggested in the previous section concerning the lede. This is being done because there are very few references from 2016 on. Why do you think that is? Which sections do you, as a reader and editor, think need updating? The last good, dated, version is here. Why all the panic amongst the highly placed? 🌿 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 18:13, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

No policy or MOS compliant reason for the dates given, so I have rolled it all back, also per the consensus here. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 18:18, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

Well, as you wish, you are the admins/ArbCom clerks after all, you know what's best for the community's image. I notice that none of the people who got involved (El C, Dodger67, Bbb23, Bradv) have contributed a single character to this entry. source: [23]. I wonder how it's on all your watchlists, and how you all got here (or to my TP) so urgently. :) 🌿 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 18:31, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

My last edit to the article is from May 7. It's been on my watchlist for many, many years. El_C 18:44, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

@SashiRolls: You are on my watchlist. In my view, you deserve a block for what you've done here, namely edit-warring, WP:POINT, and pure snark.--Bbb23 (talk) 18:58, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

I have moved a copy with the dates to a new sandbox and will work on the outdated page there. I was curious to see which sections were the oldest. I didn't expect to discover it was the sections on science. Now, as regards the reaction to a bit of curiosity which provides editing guidance, I think it's a bit excessive, but I'll study/work on the userspace version.🌿 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 19:05, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

/national or corporate (de-)slanting/ -- or -- /national or corporate bias/

The first proposal refers BOTH to cases in which any anyones editing wikipedia might have defamed nations or corporations, causing them to react AND to national or corporate spinning. The second proposal does not refer to an activity or a process but to a potentially measurable (& single-sided) disequilibrium. I think the things described are in flux much more than the noun everybody thinks they understand implies. The only thing I can think of for the argument that [plain language is best] is that you don't have to think when you read the second proposal. The first title covers a good bit more conceptual territory in 9 characters. The Microsoft story does not say anything about bias, it says something about Microsoft's never-executed plan to remove inaccuracies by hiring someone to do so, as I understand the source. One possible slanting is "wrong" for example.🌿 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 22:04, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Except that no one uses "de-slanting." It's not a thing. If you think "bias" fails to adequately cover both proposals, finding a word people actually use seems like the better proposal. Parabolist (talk) 22:53, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Spelling and punctuation

I am wondering whether the section entitled "Quality of presentation" should have a section on spelling and punctuation errors in Wikipedia. Prior to coming to this article, I just noticed a superfluous apostrophe in Wikipedia. Vorbee (talk) 16:44, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Lack of effective conflict resolution

I believe that there should be a subsection under Criticism of Wikipedia#Criticism of process for issues relating to the current conflict resolution mechanisms. I've given up on writing anything major on wiki because I'm not willing to engage in perpetual edit wars with an editor who refuses to accept mediation or arbitration. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk)

I would certainly agree that conflict resolution is a very unsatisfactory area of Wikipedia, but to include anything in this article would require reference to writings outside Wikipedia regarding this problem. Do you know of any such sources? HiLo48 (talk) 01:07, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

updating coverage of blacks and Latinos

The article contains old information on the coverage of blacks and Latinos: eg argued that the lack of information regarding black history on Wikipedia "makes it seem like it's not important." and stressed how it is important for Latinos to be part of Wikipedia. I propose updating with this fresh factual information: In 2019 Wikipedia included 928 articles in the category "Activists for African-American civil rights." [ref> See full list.[/ref> It also included 95 articles on "Activists for Hispanic and Latino American civil rights," as well as 52 articles dealing with Cesar Chavez. <[ef> see listing of the articles and here for Chavez.[/ref> Rjensen (talk) 20:26, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

You might be interested in digging around to see if, according to en.wp, there as many high schools in Haïti (pop: 11m) as there are in Montana (pop: 1m). There's no entry for Lycée Alexandre Pétion, not is there an article on Lycée Toussaint Louverture for example (basically Haiti's Lycée Henri IV and Lycée Louis le Grand as I understand it), both reconstructed in 2015 (five years after the earthquake): e.g. "Le Premier ministre, Evans Paul, a fait l'éloge du Lycée Toussaint Louverture, pour sa participation à la formation d'une grande partie de l'intelligentsia haïtienne" (1, 2) (as well as the sitting (on the hot seat) President Jovenel Moïse and quite a few before him). 🌿 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 21:57, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

French-reading editors work on the French Wikipedia so check that on out. Rjensen (talk) 00:52, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes, last night I added the reconstruction facts over "there" to the school which had an entry and found that in fr.wp there are three pages in the category, but no Lycée Toussaint Ouverture. Lots of encyclopedic work to be done if we want to claim that there is no racial/regional bias, in other words. 🌿 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 06:37, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Using ad hoc Wikipedia pages to talk about racial bias

A contributor has twice now added links (e.g. #2) to categories about Americans on en.wp to suggest that (because of the number of stubs/pages listed) that there is little racial bias. There are multiple problems with self-sourcing an article about Wikipedia to automatically generated (ad-hoc) lists of pages. First WP:PRIMARY. In 2020, or perhaps tomorrow, the categories may no longer verify the numbers cited. Second, the category list page says nothing about racial bias concerning page creation about Americans. Third, the racial bias of en.wp refers to global coverage, not just about coverage of US parochial matters. I would encourage the contributor to find an independent secondary source. 🌿 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 18:44, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

. I followed the rule: A primary source may be used on Wikipedia only to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source see WP:PRIMARY --also read WP:SELFSOURCE The notion that statements must use the word "bias"is not true of other statements in the section (Liriano, Murguia) and is not related to any Wikipedia rule or guideline. The article is about "criticism" not about "bias." Rjensen (talk) 06:41, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

As I've said, there are a number of problems with this: 1) what statements are being verified? (if you answer that there are n pages about a subject, that's not very interesting, as it does not allow the reader to know anything about the quality of those pages without clicking on n pages. 2) it is impossible to verify that these articles themselves do not display racial bias. 3) Also, you should be aware that an admin and arbcom clerk has said above that we cannot quote the Wikipedia Terms of Service in order to talk about the terms of service on Wikipedia because the TOS does not contain the word "criticism" (voir supra). So, given that this is a much, much clearer case where we should be able to use a stable Wikipedia page as a source concerning itself but are not (according to Bradv), I don't think we should be using ad-hoc categories as a source about Wikipedia. 🌿 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 16:30, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Since the page has archived since last I wrote here it's in Archive #4 (Unhappy Gatekeepers) rather than just supra...

the added text is cited directly to the foundation, which does not mention "criticism of Wikipedia". We're supposed to rely on what third-party sources say about the subject, rather than use primary sources to draw conclusions not stated by the source. (bradv)

🌿 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 17:58, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

This seems like a straightforward example of original research, using specific examples from Wikipedia itself to "respond" to (explicitly or implicitly) more general claims in reliable independent sources. The only time this might be a reasonable thing to do is if there were an article specifically mentioning these categories, then perhaps we could give updated figures from those categories now (in a footnote, say). But I don't see these categories mentioned anywhere. Instead it looks like it's trying to diminish certain claims of bias in Wikipedia by saying "look, we have more articles now." If the claims may be dated, the solution would be to ascribe to them an "as of" statement. Discussion about Wikipedia in Wikipedia articles really should not be cited to Wikipedia except perhaps as supplemental to claims already made in reliable independent sources. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:24, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

I agree. OR, if it were permitted, would be a game anyone can play, including critics of Wikipedia. Such an editor could include in this article the fact that the article on Jabba the Hutt (4306 words) is more than twice the size of the article on the prominent writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2057 words). That editor could use this statistic to show that Wikipedia suffers not only from racial and gender bias, but also from wacky priorities. Fortunately, if someone put that in the article, it would be reverted as OR. In this case Wikipedia policy says that it's best for editors not to get started hurling Wikipedia stats at one another, arguing over whether the criticisms in this article are valid. NightHeron (talk) 21:18, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

I also agree that this is original research, the arguments have been made above by other editors and I've got nothing to add. Doug Weller talk 11:39, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

The encyclical that anyone could have edited

A couple users seem to feel that people criticize Wikipedia because anyone can edit. In fact, much of this article refers to the fact that it's the encyclopedia that anyone (in the wealthy world) could have edited. I hope that the lead line will be restored to the real focus of the criticism and not to the slogan about what Wikipedia's "nature" is. Not much that's "natural" about Wikipedia...🌿 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 23:38, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

• Reason given: sorry, but that's what most of my colleagues say too: it's the possibility of ongoing editing by whoever (source)
• Guideline (MoS): The lead summarizes the body.
• BRD: when reverting you are expected to engage on the TP: Aquillion, NightHeron, Drmies, and El C have all failed to do so.

🌿 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 03:58, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Since none of the above wanted to discuss, I've rewritten the lead to summarize the body. In so doing, I've removed the false claim that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit, contradicted both by the Terms of Service and page protection policies on en.wp. Using the corporation's slogan in the first line of an article about criticism of the corporation strikes me as being particularly inappropriate. 🌿 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 13:50, 12 January 2020 (UTC)