Do not go after Wikipedia because of one or two shitty people. We need it as a country. I would argue that the world needs it. Make it better and support it while calling out the shitty stuff, don't take it down.
this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2025
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Do go for the shitty admins with no mercy though. We don't need Wiki to slowly rot from the inside.
We need it as a country.
We need it as a world.
Agreed. Especially in times like these - having a free and open source of information is incredibly important.
Why do US citizens think everyone on the internet is from their country ?
What part of their comment assumes that everyone else is from their country? I only see them referring to themselves and their own country.
If I said "we need public transit as a city" am I assuming that everyone lives in my city or am I simply talking about my own city? I don't see why this is any different and it seems very nitpicky.
If I said "we need public transit as a city" am I assuming that everyone lives in my city or am I simply talking about my own city?
That’s exactly what I would assume, because you’re talking like your city is the default and everyone knows which one you’re talking about.
talking like your city is the default and everyone knows which one you’re talking about.
Does this mean that everyone must always specify the geographic area they are from when they talk about it lest they risk being accused of assuming everyone knows? I often say that "we need public transit in my city" and it never once crossed my mind that other people would know or assume what city I'm referring to.
I still don't see how saying that you want x or y in your country is equivalent to talking like your community is the default.
I would totally agree if the statement was "we need x in my country and you all should vote for it" because that would be assuming everyone reading is able to participate and therefore lives there. But that's far from what the statement was, which made no assumptions and didn't even mention a country. All they said was that they want something in their country.
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While, surely, OP was speaking English - given the world state why did you immediately jump to the conclusion that the country being referred to was the US? Yes - the statement wasn't broad enough to perhaps include you but it wasn't narrow or hateful in its intent. People (broad statement, including you) need to maybe find some chill and perhaps look for common ground rather than constantly being pedantic cunts. There were a variety of ways to approach that statement without being a twat... so kudos for just going for it - most people would have more tact.
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The article is about protecting the integrity of Wikipedia from admins with ulterior motives. Regardless of the correctness of the article, "going after Wikipedia to take it down" does not describe the topic in the slightest. Why does this have so many upvotes? Are any of you even reading the linked article?
I was going off the comments in this thread at the time. The right wants wikipedia to go away.
To answer your question, It is safe to assume most people read the title and the abstract but don't actually read the article
What the world needs, what you need as a country, is for people to be a bit more discerning and conscious about the reliability of what they read online, and that includes not treating Wikipedia like holy scripture in the way that far too many people do.
forgive me for being suspect about a random anti wikipedia website at a time when the right wing is spending billions to discredit and shut down wikipedia.
The issue that the article raises is legitimate, but actually looking through their archives is baffling, they're really just hellbent on shitting on WP. One of their most read articles says Wikipedia should attract more female editors by reducing the anonymity on the site and making it more like a social media platform. What the hell? https://wikipediocracy.com/why-women-have-no-time-for-wikipedia/
Ah yes, I'd love people online to be positive I'm a woman and not just probably one! That would make me feel extremely safe! I am being extremely sarcastic!
I like how you think ...
This is what the rich choose to do instead of compete in a free market
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After finishing the PhD, I got emails from people saying that for money they would manage a Wikipedia article for me. They said they had people in high places to make that my article communicates the right message.
Dear ...,
Have you ever wondered of having a Wikipedia page for yourself or your company? We can help you get a Wikipedia page for yourself or your brand.
Why have a Wikipedia page?
Google loves Wikipedia and as such ranks it high in search results. Wikipedia is
also the first place people go when they Google your name. By leveraging
Wikipedia, you can help control your Online Profile and present yourself to the
world. Usually Wikipedia only accepts pages on celebrities and famous companies,
if you are looking to get one for yourself, we can help you with that. Having a page
for yourself in Wikipedia, brings you more credibility and makes you more
famous.
We have been editing on Wikipedia for 9+ years and We've created tons of pages
for companies, people, brands, products, and of course for academic purposes as
well.
We own multiple accounts on Wikipedia with page curation and new page
reviewer rights, so we can create and moderate pages with almost zero risk of
another mod taking it down.
There are few Wikipedia editors who are willing to create a page for money, and
most of them are scared to offer this service directly, so they do it through their
trusted sellers who mark up the price to $1500 - $2500 per page.
Because you're buying directly from an experienced Wikipedia editor and mod,
you'll get your page a lot cheaper, faster and with more reliability.
Let me know if you are interested.
Regards
I'm guessing how that goes is you pay them, they do actually make you a page, it gets quickly deleted for not meeting Wikipedia's standards, and then they go "sorry no refunds". Step 0 to getting a Wikipedia page about yourself is to be notable enough for one, which >99.9% of people are not.
And even if technically notable enough, you still need some objective sources for any claims made, even simple things like profession, even if your works speak for themselves. And what the mods deem an acceptable source seems arbitrary.
I listen to a lot of indie music or local smaller bands, and often, even though they gig a lot and have several albums practically on every digital platform, I can’t find the bands in there, nor any of their members.
Often there’s a red page there with some contributor discussions where they argue with each other about these things.
Seems so wonky to me, since I just came from their gig, having listened to them for 10+ years.
You can ask me about sources. We probably all know what "reliable" means, and claims may cite any reliable source (even sources written by the subject of the article if the fact is uncontroversial). However, for an article to be included in Wikipedia, and mainly so that it's possible for the article to be improved so that it conforms with Wikipedia's guidelines, articles must pass "notability" (a misnomer, see efforts to change its name); the biggest component of notability that's most often failed is that there is enough coverage in reliable sources not written by the subject, and that's precisely so that we won't have an article that's entirely the subject's own puffery that turns out to be false or egregiously biased. (Not an admin because I probably have too short a temper, but nonetheless experienced.)
I'm surprised and not surprised I guess that there's a business offering to write Wikipedia articles like this. I suppose it's naivety to think that Wikipedia articles are written with good intentions.
I suppose it’s naivety to think that Wikipedia articles are written with good intentions.
I think the amazing thing is that most still are.
The vast majority, in fact.
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Thanks! I'll contact them.
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What does the PR acronym stand for ?
- Roman people
- pull request
- parliamentary report
- press release
- prize ring
- proportional representation
- Puerto Rico
- Permanent Resident
- Progress Report
- Pressure Regulator
- Park Ridge
- Pattern Recognition
- PageRank
- Planning and Responsibility
- Performance Review
- Performance Rating
- Problem Report
- Papa Roach
- Personal Record
- Peer Review
- ⁝
What does the article mean "Juniper Networks, despite being a “Good Article”, is also mostly PR"? It seems like a fine article to me, and as the article mentioned, Tinucherian disclosed his COI and appropriately sought review for edits in this case (though as the article also mentions, he's edited other articles the wrong way).
What does the article mean “Juniper Networks, despite being a “Good Article”, is also mostly PR”?
It's all part of their various horseshit attempt at making something which is pretty simple an innocuous into something that it isn't.
Within the last few days, it looks like someone raised the issue on this guy's page, the arbitration committee is getting in touch with him, and he's saying he'll get back to them. Presumably there's a minor conflict of interest and they'll look over the article and make sure he didn't do anything slanty to it and then tell him to stay away from COI-adjacent articles in the future.
There's absolutely nothing sinister here, and they are stringing together a bunch of misleading stuff (like "mostly PR") to make a mountain out of a molehill to discredit Wikipedia. I've noticed a bunch of people doing this, presumably there is some organized campaign which actually is sinister in the way they're implying WP is, that is trying to make people think badly of them.
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Both things are technically true: the article is primarily made up of content literally written by the company or people contracted by them for PR purposes, and it is a Good Article (Wikipedia jargon for having passed a review of certain quality standards around writing, coverage and sourcing, but not the higher standard required to be classed as a Featured Article).
How much of a problem this is probably depends on the subject. Does Juniper Networks have any bad practices which the article omits because the people who researched it (i.e. Juniper Networks) didn't think they needed to go in the article? You'd basically need an independent observer to research anything that potentially should be in the article but isn't there, but how many people that aren't getting paid are invested in researching a corporate networking business?
There's absolutely merit to Wikipedia having articles that are written by people paid to write them by their subjects, because a lot of it would otherwise be missing from Wikipedia entirely. But it's also good to know that many articles are not necessarily written by impartial authors.
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Tried to add that the (two) famous classic swedish films "sälskaps resan 1 & 2" were copies of the french Les Bronzés, and remove the "is on DVD for exceptionnally cheap".
Got reverted after like 1 minute.
Tried a bunch of times, complaints to no avail.
Some years later I tried again but you could no longer make changes IIRC.
Just checked, info still missing.
Edit: to all the doubtfully people, here is one reversed edit I aparently did in 2023: https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=S%C3%A4llskapsresan&diff=prev&oldid=53585812 If someone lnows how to search for reversed edits ...
Edit: mer info på svenska: här
Edit: Some say the specialized "swedish" jokes in the film was stolen from a Finnish film mamed Callemoss.
I just checked the articles for "Sällskapsresan" and "French Fried Vacation". The only edit that was reverted (or at least the only edit whose author would've been notified by the revert) changed "Norwegian" to "German" on the former page. I also didn't find "is on DVD for exceptionally cheap" anywhere. None of these articles are protected (i.e. "locked") either. Which article did this happen on?
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It only takes a single incident like this for people to completely loose trust in Wikipedia, granted Wikipedia was already put to an insanely unreasonable standard.
Of course that's not true. A single incident on a massive website like this is not going to force people who actually trusted Wikipedia before to stop trusting it in the future.
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They should recruit more Reddit mods.
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