At 10:54 AM 9/16/2012, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]> wrote:
TheNextFuture, 5RR. I predict a block any day for TheNextFuture.
This is an SPA, likely the sock of a banned user. New users don't
file AfDs in their first few edits. . . .
All these arcane acronyms: SPA, AfD, blah, blah. As I said,
Wikipedia is too complicated. It has too many rules. Only fanatics
will bother to master this complex set of rules and procedures.
Actually, there are no rules. WP:IAR. However, anyone who has
substantial Wikipedia experience knows what RR and SPA and AfD mean.
Those are elementary. An SPA means a "single purpose account," an
account which typically has only one area of interest. SPAs often
don't gain substantial Wikipedia experience and don't understand how
the place works. It's just an natural consequence, not a moral judgment.
If Wikipedia had a saner structure, SPAs would be heavily supported
and encouraged, at the same time as being restrained.
Conventional academic publishing does have rules. It has procedures
based on long established traditions. They are simpler than Wikipedia's rules.
Well, no. Get this: Wikipedia doesn't have rules. That, indeed, is
one reason why it's difficult to understand. I gave an acronym:
WP:IAR. Enter that in the search box on Wikipedia. You'll see what
was called Rule Number One.
Granted, Wikipedia's rules are partly about the Internet. Things
like "three revisions." But I get the impression that most of the
rules are about the administrative structure of Wikipedia, which I
think is too complicated and opaque.
The problem is that the structure worked, quite well, but it fails
when topics are seriously controversial. The closest thing that
Wikipedia has to rules are called "Policy," but the defacto structure
is lousy at enforcing policy, and fundamental site purposes are
encoded into policy. Wikipedia cannot realize its mission and the
crucial neutrality policy with the ad hoc structure developed.
And the ad hoc structure developed became strongly resistant to any
change, typically ejecting those who seriously stood for *enforcement
of the original -- and still standing -- policies, as against the
"whim of the mob."
Or the whim of any of various factions that include administrators,
such as the anti-pseudoscience faction, which wasn't too careful
about straying into "fringe science," which it typically treated as
if it were pseudoscience. But they failed when they tried to get cold
fusion classified as pseudoscience.... they actually failed again and
again whenever confronted through Wikipedia processes as they were designed.
Problem is, anyone who did that was then identified as having an
agenda, which the mob then treats as if it were leprosy or something.
And the mob cares nothing about evidence, it just reacts.
Reading the policies with understanding, they are excellent, at least
usually. The problem is that the reality can be very, very different
from what you'd think from policy, and there is no structure that can
discriminate between majority point of view and neutrality. MPOV, in
practice, is "majority of whoever shows up," which, then, can be
heavily biased by various factors. Long-term Wikipedians with a
factional view have common watchlists, they are highly active, they
look every day, so they show up in discussions way out of proportion
to what a real sample of users would be. Perhaps they have WP:ANI on
their watchlists, because they are very interested in banning editors.
So, without any "conspiracy," there is nevertheless are the effects
of cabals. And anyone who is truly a long-term Wikipedian is very
likely imbalanced, so crazy is the place. I eventually found that the
long-term sane editors, the ones I could count on for supportive
comments, became fewer and fewer, and when I looked, they'd stopped
editing. Enough, already!
My very supportive friend, elected to the Arbitration Committee,
resigned after he was personally, face-to-face, confronted with a
threat of harm to his family if he continued. The "civil" facade of
Wikipedia covers an ugly side, very ugly. There are forces which want
the place to stay the same, and are willing to go to serious lengths
to keep it that way. They know how to manipulate it.
That probably has nothing to do with cold fusion, by the way. I was
considered a threat not because of my interest in cold fusion and the
predictions that I'd be banned started before I ever saw the article.
It was because I was proposing ways to, within policy, improve the
structure, so that the reality and the policies would converge. Very
dangerous. Off with his head!
