The Court That Settles Wikipedia Editor Drama
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- čas přidán 20. 05. 2024
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I used to hang around the admin boards as a spectator. I learned two things: it's entertaining as heck, and I have zero interest in ever contributing to that mess.
It gets worse when you learn that the CIA has basically free reign to edit and write smears on anyone's page they want, at least judging by the fact their libel and vandalism goes on uncorrected even to this day.
They have the WP:HAPPYPLACE redirect for it for a reason!
Sometime in the future, I'll remember that Wikipedia disputes exist, and be grateful knowing that there are people out there sacrificing their sanity for the sake of me knowing what the proper word for a box shaped metal container should be.
Like the time they argued over a picture of a cow on the article for Cow Tipping. The picture was captioned "an unsuspecting victim" and those nerds started arguing that maybe the cow had been tipped once before and therefore was not "unsuspecting". They ended up just deleting the image.
It’s like politics, but with constantly-online nerds.
Just the other day I fell down an ArbCom rabbit hole about a guy who made a hobby out of trying to get articles about voice actors he didn’t like deleted, and it turned out he was a failed voice actor himself with a history of alt accounts and a lot of grudges, and after this was exposed and he was banned from Wikipedia, he had a mental breakdown and killed himself.
that went from 0 to 100 real fucking quick
Lmao
...problem solved?
Who didn’t he like?
Who's the guy?
Looking at the discussion page of queen elizabeth II’s Wikipedia page after her death was absolutely hilarious. The drama. The passive aggressiveness. Hundreds of devoted editors who upon waking up to a monarch dead have one thought in their mind - Wikipedia page updating.
We had a whole debate about keeping an article about "The Line", the queue for her funeral that stretched for miles... Was it notable for its own article, or should it be merged into the one on her death. I don't remember what the outcome was, but the minutiae of life are what make it worthwhile.
Bros really were racing to change her pronoun to was/were
@@brianbarker2551 There's apparently a Wikipedia page for "The Queue" - is that it?
@@FoxHoundCReatorFS was is dead
The wikipedia is the source of information for a lot of people. It's most important than a lot of jobs.
I love that one of the “arbiter” as I will refer to them, is named “worm that turned”. Image if members of the Supreme Court had silly names like Justice nematode or justice dinkus
Imagine if the US supreme court was made up of people as reasonable and trustworthy as Wikipedia's arbcom. Improbable, I know.
The following are all current or former arbs:
Barkeep49
CaptainEek
Beeblebrox
Wugapodes
GorillaWarfare
Seraphimblade
The Cunctator
Wizardman
Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry
I think what makes this even funnier is that there have been a few arbs with just completely ordinary people names. So for instance, a recent ex-arb is "Donald Albury". He's just a guy! He's just a guy on the same important internet body as CaptainEek and Beeblebrox!
They are still probably better than the religious nuts currently in the US supreme court lol
There will come a time when your "username" is just as important as your given name.
Then we shall bask in the glory of Supreme Court Justice The Right Honorable XxPussyDestroyer69xX.
@@brianb.6356 Imagine being on a governing internet body with The President of the Galaxy though.
Wikipedia Supreme Court - This would make a great parody sketch if there was still a show with great and funny writers. In fact, if well done it could be a recurring sketch based on topical or weird subjects.
Is anyone paying for their expensive vacations?
Alas monty python years of running were all in the 60's 70's
Imagine what great things they could've done in the last ten years alone
Already is, just looking at the drama that unfolds with every case. Or hell, just look at the whole fiasco regarding Jews in Poland.
CollegeHumor did a "Professor Wikipedia" a while back and it was amazing. Would love to see something similar with this idea!
Should be an SNL skit
My favorite recent Wikipedia edit dispute was when retired MLB umpire Joe West went on Wikipedia and started deleting everything that made him look bad.
😂
We put it back. Mostly.
How very Joe West of Joe West
To be fair Wikipedia has real guidelines for the pages of sports officials, and in my experience most related pages don’t follow them. Generally, the pages are supposed to provide a balanced representation of not just negative things but positive things about their careers, but pretty much every page about sports officials tends to emphasize their errors much more heavily than the stuff they did well.
@@smala017 True. But we have to have sourced material to use.
The proper place to request deletion of unflattering (but sourced) material about oneself is the talk page for the article. There are several ways to get untrue information removed, but wholesale deletion by the subject of the article is frowned upon.
One is not supposed to edit articles when one has a connection to the subject of the article, and this is particularly true of biographies of living persons.
"please dont imprison me in your torture compound" This man has real balls of steel to talk about scientology in a brutally honest way, respect
We're on the way to his place now 😂
not sure they’re really as big of a threat as ppl make them out to be tbh
@@goblingoochgobbler5759 they're a danger to their cult members but that's about all
@@goblingoochgobbler5759 Agreed
@@ryshow9118 In the past fifteen years their influince has wained greatly.
In the prior twenty five it wainedgreatly from their height in the seventies and eighties where they infiltrated the IRS. They are dying. Slowly, too slowly really, and fitfully.
I read something strange in the greager wikimedia universe one time, a long time ago, which seemed like an april fools joke. It was titled something like "Wikipedia's global catastrophe plan" and talked about how they would print multiple copies of every page on wikipedia if the world was ending to preserve human knowledge. I could never find it again, but if it really does exist out there, even as a joke, maybe it would make a good video topic.
Was it this? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Terminal_Event_Management_Policy
My favourite quote from the article:
All contents of the encyclopedia are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. As this license allows distribution of content in any medium, either commercially or non-commercially, copies of articles may be bartered for essentials such as food and water, although "all previous authors of the work must be attributed" in any copy.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Terminal_Event_Management_Policy
Actually, if kinda surprised that in printing they don't add a hash to verify the integrity of the print
@@William190 "While the light of humanity may flicker and die, we go gently into this dark night, comforted in the knowledge that someday Wikipedia shall take its rightful place as part of a consensus-built Galactic Encyclopedia, editable by all sentient beings."
That got deep real fast. Also, it does say that it's a joke, but the talk page is like "wait, seriously? it's not real?"
Oh my god. I never knew that existed. Just read it and it's amazing. 😂
The last quote is gold. XD
Man, I wonder how many Wikipedia articles Ben had to scroll through to make this video!
Huh I had no idea that Ben was still writing these videos
@@links212 Check the video description.
Wow didn't even notice Ben wrote this one. Feels like it's been a while since I've seen one from Ben or Adam.
I mean, probably only 1-2 articles...it's the depths of our policy pages that should have killed him off
At least one
The Arbitration Committee can't tell you what a tin can is or isn't. They have no jurisdiction over content, only conduct. (Also the proposed decision comes after all evidence and analysis has concluded. Before would be silly.)
Having jurisdiction over who *gets to decide what content stands* is effectively deciding what the content is.
Yeah, but they are democratically elected
Banning people who lie is effectively content control. And that is obviously a good thing.
@@x--. Assuming that those people are lying, and that those given authority to edit articles aren't just pushing some ideological narrative that AbCom agrees with.
@@obliviouz The ArbCom can make its decisions based on the conduct of editors. If the editor is repeatedly editing an article, against the consensus of other Wikipedia editors, that would be a conduct issue. If two editors are in a conflict over an article in good faith, that would not be something that ArbCom would rule over.
Using a HAI-video as a source on wikipedia is the ultimate self-reference.
Given that HAI has repeatedly admitted to basically being a repackaging of the list of interesting Wikipedia articles, it's a pretty clear citogenesis risk, yeah.
OR……if he is like “boring-me” he looks up Half as Interesting on Wikipedia and finds out there’s a page about something (or in boring-me’s case someONE) else!!! I excited “I” have a page on Wikipedia!!!! I’m sad that its NOT about “boring-me” but someone else close to my age and appearance, that has a profession doing things I enjoy doing. I feel like he’s my copycat but in all honesty I can’t fault anyone fur feeling I’m the copycat…….. conundrum you heartless wench…….
Wikipedia, now with references to CZcams hit series “That Wikipedia List”
It's called circular reporting, check out the aforementioned Citogenesis, Alan McMasters, and Wikiality.
@@deus_ex_machina_ (yes thats the joke)
I hoped you'd mention the famous edit war on Star Trek: Into Darkness! There was a 40,000 word debate over whether to capitalise the "I" in "Into", and the debate saga now has it's own wikipedia page entry!
It's because Wikipedia firmly believes every word that is not a proper noun in a title needs to be lowercased. They've believed this for their entire existence, every English teacher in the US and UK has vehemently disagreed with them. And this idea's spread to other wikis. There are proper, standardized rules on title capitalization in the English language but Wikipedia chooses to ignore it. It comes out of laziness. Less things capitalized means you spend less time typing page links. So they fight really, really hard to lowercase everything.
@@emma5068 oh no! the debate continues here! What have I done :0
@@emma5068according to google. There is like 4 main title capitalization style. Which one are you referring?
@@emma5068 Except (to continue a debate that I knew of but thankfully avoided at the time) it's not really "Wikipedia" here, merely enough for the guideline to be written. If it had been all the regulars vs just newcomers complaining, the debate would have never hit 40k. Instead it's some proper "inside baseball" dispute, too
@@emma5068 The Manual of Style actually says that prepositions with over 4 letters are capitalized ("Cards _Against_ Humanity", "I Heard It _Through_ the Grapevine") and other prepositions are lowercased unless it's at the start of a title or subtitle. It's not "every" word that's not a proper noun. The manual is a guideline though; editors should generally follow it - not always. It was unclear if "Into Darkness" was a subtitle or not (the film title doesn't have a semicolon), so the manual was discarded, and common usage of the title was applied.
There was a massive edit war yesterday on Pennsylvania's 2020 United States Presidential Election page because of a single map showing Pennsylvania's Catholic Diocese.
I was actually a small part of that! I saw it come up and I was like "what? Why does this mean anything?" and I reverted it. I had no idea it kept on spiraling.
They’re still trying to resolve it right now even
@@blakem2902 wut? wtf is going on in there?
Oh I heard of that yesterday and I was quite confused
Now change the Catholic to Protestant
Sit back and enjoy the spiral
I'm a long time editor and I had one guy so intent on his way of styling the categories on pages that he got banned and made over 40 sock puppet accounts over the course of a year to try to change the articles to how he liked them
I'm always amazed at some of the long term sockpuppet account makers and the exact petty reasons of why they've kept up their over a decade long odysseys. Yes, a lot of them do it because they're super bigoted in some way or another or believe in some pseudoscience nonsense and keep wanting to push that in articles. But there's plenty more that are obsessed with the most inconsequential things.
@@Silverizael Yeah I dont edit any political articles, just car stuff, so most of the persistent editors I see are doing it either because of passion for a particular car, or they've made it their pet project and they want some level of control
@@Silverizael the ones that kill me are the ones that people pay to create articles for them, like a PR firm, they get all bent out of shape when their crypto "entrepreneur" client isn't notable. Here's 40 citations about him, on blogs and PR pages! Oh my son, let's explain notability to you...
@@brianbarker2551 They would be so much better off using that money to get in on some interviews and get stuff written about them in newspapers and such.
Sounds like he should be a Reddit Admin/Mod, they are just as insane
Fun fact, Jimbo lost few days ago all of his advanced permissions (so basically desysopped) in a case where Jimbo accused one of the admins being a paid editor (which is of course against the rules in wikipedia). Since Jimbo didn't really have anything to prove his accusation, he was eventually forced to resign all of the special rights. Since that Arbcom case would have led to a desysop anyway, the full case wasn't needed and the Arbs didn't have to start a full case against the founder of the Wikipedia.
Poor Jimmy. He built a generally very good and useful tool. Now his own creation has been stripped from him 😞
What the fuck is "desysop"?
@@PintoRagazzo Sysop is short for System Operator. Sysopping someone means that you give them sysop privileges. By extension, desysopping someone takes those privileges away.
@@PintoRagazzoDesysop means removal of admin privileges. You often see a lot of Wikipedia jargon but there is a page which explains these jargon
If I was the founder of Wikipedia I'd make sure that I have absolute control over the hosting and the database and then say "whoever tries to desysop me will be desysoped by me".
The only reason I was remotely aware stuff like this existed was when Buzzfeed: Unsolved fans started an editing war over Old Alton Bridge/Goatman's Bridge, also known among as Shane and Ryan's Bridge, after they claimed ownership of it because Goatman was too cowardly to show up after Shane challenged him.
E
"Scientology is a religion about being super chill and normal" hot damn I haven't laughed so hard I cried in a long time
E
It's disappointing that you didn't mention the 40,000 word debate on whether or not the I in "Star Trek Into Darkness" should be capitalised or not.
That's hilarious.
Ah yes, the one that eventually got its own Wikipedia article about it!
When I was younger I learned Wikipedia awards points to editors who provide good content. I would read pro wrestling news daily and update the news to Wikipedia or just update wrong info non stop until I got a high enough score to edit some articles. Then I edited myself as the founder of my small obscure hometown where it sat for like 6 months with some ridiculous story I wrote about fighting vikings or pirates or something.
That doesn't happen? The closest thing to points being awarded are barnstars, which are given when you do a good job editing, but they don't do anything other than show thanks and look nice on talk/user pages.
It's not a score, and should not be treated as such (edit-countitis). It's called an edit count, and if you have more edits, you gain certain privileges.
@@quokka_ytEven then, after a month and 500 edits, you really only get so many privileges. The real only thing xcon gets you that I have noticed is that you get to edit a few more pages and can sign up for reviewer stuff.
@@quokka_ytshould be "edit countmania." The "itis" suffix relates to inflammation.
It sounds like it's treated exactly like a score. If having a higher count allows you different privileges or unlocks certain features that certainly sounds like a basic scoring system.
@@9HighFlyer9 It's 10 edits and 4 days old for confirmed status (basically to confirm you aren't a bot), and you can edit most pages, and get privileges like uploading images.
I have literally never clicked on a video faster than this one, as a veteran Wikipedian you could make a whole channel dedicated to the absurd community drama at ANI alone
AbsCom.
I’ve been editing a few years and have many articles to my name now. I find it’s best to find a niche few spaces nobody else is bothered by and start there
Yo what's your Wikipedia username so I can give you a barnstar?
I agree. The drama at ANI goes on all the time, we recently just see someone got C-banned for multiple personal attacks and telling people to "jog the f*** on" and other offensive comments. I am not going to call names out though but you are going to find it in the recent archives.
@@CJ.1998X.Y.ZI also do that. Created some article with no one else bothering me
I've only edited Wikipedia once, and that's because I saw that they messed up what the cuneiform spelling an ancient king's name actually meant, even though the source they cited had it correct, so went in and fixed it, and didn't even need to find a new source because the source that was already there supported my change.
This is becoming disturbingly common. People will add a statement, provide a cite, and then... you look up the citation source, and... whadooyano, the claim ain't fuckin there. WP:SYN is also rampant.
It would be a real Wikipedia moment if that was some very insignificant king as well😅
Is your edit still up?
If not I could help lol.
Ok so, I know that there is a law saying "The longer an argument on the Internet go on, the more likely that Hitler's going to be mentioned."
But how the fuck does an argument discussing whether you should spell it Aluminum or Aluminium mentions Hitler 17 times?
Only Hitler would ask that question.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
because one guy brought it up once, and everyone shat on him for it
Fun coincidence: the person who came up with that law was later the General Councel of the non-profit behind Wikipedia.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Aluminium/Spelling/Archive_1#raw_Google
Actually, either before or after failing on a specific noticeboard, it's possible to initiate a Request for Comment (RfC), probably the most common practical dispute resolution mechanism on Wikipedia.
Another fun(?) recurring Wikipedia drama is on how exceptionally famous people who die get listed in the “In the News” section of the front page: do they get a full sentence and picture or do they get thrown in the “Recent deaths” line with everyone else. Probably the most fleeting, petty thing that people will get worked up over, and it’s very fun to read.
As an editor for wiktionary, I have to say Wikipedia is way more bureaucratic, but this is a pretty good explanation!
Hearsay! Sentenced to 1 year no keyboard privileges.
@@theenzoferrari458 😂😂😂
Back when I was a random high schooler editing Wikipedia in the early 2000s, I used to be on Wikipedia's mediation committee (MedCom), which was like the step before ArbCom. I had ambitions of joining arbcom, but then got a life and decided against it.
based
I think this is one of the most interesting and weirdly hilarious videos you've ever done
I live every part, including the nerd supreme court. Truth and knowledge are vital.
yeah. honestly they've been on a roll lately with interesting subjects and funny writing.
This among other things is why I believe that Wikipedia should be listed as one of the 7 wonders of the internet.
I honestly believe Wikipedia is one of mankind's highest achievements
I mean... It is...
Right?
@@JeffDvrxunless it’s anything political. Anything that even comes within a country mile of political opinion. I mean from abortion to Covid on down. Wikipedia is one-sided beyond belief. I’ll use it to find out the population of New Zealand, or about giraffes, but there’s zero chance I would take it as a serious source of information about anything that has even the slightest political connotation to it.
@@jasondashneyhow so?
@@Ariceres The fact that it can be edited by anyone makes it not good for anything political. Not sure though why he included COVID (unless he's talking about a certain country denying their involvement in it), but some of the political issues in the site are biased. Never really saw this problem on abortion though, since most of the information stated have their own sources that aren't opinionated as well.
Honestly it is pretty nifty that Wikipedia exists at all.
Huh, I just looked and surprisingly an article of an obscure game I heavily worked on back in the mid-2000s is largely intact as I remember it, even still using screenshots I took. I've not touched editing Wikipedia for well over a decade since it got, well, silly, so I'm shocked my visible mark on the site is still there despite there being edits to the article as recent as this year.
You're lucky it hasn't been deleted just because some dickfer has never heard of it.
Mark my words, Scientology is now going to start a multi-year process to get the Wiki arbitration board stuffed with their goons.
I'd be shocked if they haven't been working on it for years.
@@Brasswatchman Scientologists aren't the most "with it" kind of people. Like most cultists they tend to live insular lives and only react to things once they finally encounter them. Their fearsome reputation comes from being relentless reactionaries, not from being five moves ahead in the game.
@@LividImp This is the reason why they have a really hard time against the 4chans back then. They underestimated their prowess, and only reacted after 4chan (led by Anonymous) waged war against them with a video). And since 4chan is a mass of anonymous people, the Church of Scientology can't focused its attacks on a singular point (thus partially nullifying their strength).
Quite timely as just hours ago I went to Wikipedia's French Mother Sauces video that French Guy Alex tried to correct, and found out they didn't accept Alex' edits and tried to compromise, partly because 1) Even if the English translation of the original French cookbook is flawed, it's the available English text to reference while Alex' reference can't be brought out of the library to be brought to other Wikipedia editors to confirm, and to a lesser extent, 2) Just like with the pronunciation of GIF, so many people have shared the wrong information for so long, that it's hard to say what the English Wikipedia page ought to display, even if it's quite clear on the French one.
Wikipedia is weird. I stand behind all the people who said never to trust the information at face value. (Though, like most good school teachers will tell you, don't cite Wikipedia, cite the sources they cited.)
I had a full and frank discussion with someone about this very topic, and I went to WP expecting to find Alex's changes, and they weren't there! It's hard to win an argument when you have to show someone a whole video series proving your point.
It lays bare the sheer folly of some of the DR process on WP, with people, including admins, acting like they know what the real truth is. This is all against guidelines, but they don't care, they know better, and they're admins, so no one can fuck with them. It's very much a "blue wall" situation.
People who cite Wikipedia are idiots in my opinion. Like even experienced Wikipedia editors don't cite Wikipedia directly (and I know a few from Discord servers).
That actually reminds me of a different video about Wikipedia having inaccurate info for Austria-Hungary's flags for so long, that the perception that the flag was correct was getting used in the Wikipedia discussion
As a Wikipedian, finally the outside world is getting to know the hilarity that is Wikidrama!
I never checked it but boy oh boy am I going to join the madness lol, I was born to be a Wikipedia editor and I never knew it
@Crusader1096. It's pathetic..haven't you got anything better to do?..seriously..get a job/friends...something!😜
Someone should just make a CZcams channel that only talks about Wikipedia drama
Yes!!
My first major edit on Wikipedia was adding the names of the victims of a mass shooting to the page on said shooting. This got reverted and triggered a long discussion on the talk page as to whether the victims’ names should be included on this page or any similar page. So many things got brought up, such as similar pages which did/didn’t include, the rule that you can’t have memorials on Wikipedia (my opinion is that, if done right, it’s not a memorial, just a pertinent part of the story), and the neutrality rule since the shooter’s name and life story is included. Very heated. And probably not helped by the fact that it’s such a difficult topic.
My first edit was adding Chief Keef to the list of famous Kieths and it went down very smoothly. No wikipedia nerd dared to question me on this I guess.
You'd think there'd be a guideline by now of a blanket rule for such pages.
Victims deserve to have their privacy respected and not to have their name blasted everywhere. And wikipedia shouldn't put so much about these attention seeking mass murderers either. The media is largely to blame for the mass shooting culture by the way they cover and obsess about these things. So yeah, you're a horrible person.
That definitely seems problematic due to publishing names of private individuals, and the privacy of victims. There is a reason names of victims aren't widely publicized by those who are not next of kin (where it is genuinely a memorial intent)
That reads like some arguments made at the 2009 Fort Hood Shooting talk page.
There is a struggle between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese on Wikipedia, because there is only one Portuguese language on it but there ate some words that are different on both dialects. So, some articles were changed many times from one dialect to the other
Now you make me wonder if that happens in Spanish. Lmao
Do they not have a template that states "hey, this articles spelling is in {European/Brazilian} Portuguese", the English Wikipedia has one for British/American spelling (and I think for a couple more niche ones like Canadian and Australian spelling)
@@tauiin As a Canadian...since when are there Canadian spellings of anything? We either pick the US spelling or the British spelling. Is it words that Brits don't use at all but clearly should have an "ou" like in colour?
@@WildBluntHickok I'm not sure that there is any specific word that is spelt uniquely in Canadian English compared to other English spelling systems, but generally a spelling system is considered different based on the group of words not because any specific words are spelt uniquely compared to other dialects (e.g. American English might have "X" and "Y" words spelt differently to British English, while Canadian English might spell "Y" like the Americans and "X" like the British, and the Australians would do the opposite and have "Y" spelt like the British and "X" spelt like the Americans etc etc.)
@@WildBluntHickok There's a whole Wikipedia article about Canadian English
It's always nice to come back to this channel after a few months and binge watch hours of new content
This video confirms that Wikipedia is a social media for an entirely different kind of person
Umm... aKtShUaLlY, ☝️🤓
According to "Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not", Wikipedia is not a social media.
Reminds me of the entire Austro-Hungarian Empire flag debacle, how there wasn't one official flag for the entire empire so Wikipedians displayed the naval ensign (I believe?) in the info box and fooled everyone into thinking the ensign was the flag of the empire
Wikipedia may have a few problems with unreliable sources but, I believe, no more so and possibly less than some of the formerly mainstream encyclopaedias.
I like it and find it a very useful reference because it has such a huge knowledge base. There may be one or two articles where I would think twice before accepting the words as fact (like Half as Interesting!), but it has been a great help when researching most topics.
my experience of editing wikipedia goes as follows: I was reading a random article like 15 years ago, I noticed a grammatical error or typo or something and I got annoyed by it because it was really easy to just proofread and see that it was wrong, so I corrected it, submitted my correction and went on with my day. then a few days later, I checked back and saw that the error was there again. "wtf" thought I, and then discovered that my correction had been rejected and the page was reverted back to the one that had the error. "genuinely wtf" I thought, and then decided that I would not touch wikipedia again because why did someone care so much about this fucking typo/grammatical error/whatever??? why did they not want it to be correct? how was *I* the one who had fucked up this random article? why had no one else changed it before? where are these unwritten rules? why are wikipedia editors so cliquey? I just want to proofread wikipedia please I beg you I have proofread in real life before just let me correct your shitty grammar please 😭
Yup. So much lost potential.
Basically my experience with wikipedia too. I was fixing typos until an admin didn't like me fixing one of their typos so they banned me. Annnnd I'm done with wikipedia. You can keep your mistakes.
And did you try to to bring it up on the talk page
@@Ucfahmad no I had no desire to deal with it after that
I'm a frequent editor and I've literally never been reverted on a grammatical correction. And when I do get reverted, 95% they type out an explanation.
Don't get me wrong it's not perfect and there are certainly some arrogant jerks but it shouldn't prevent people from editing when they want to improve something
I thought I'd never see the day, an HAI video over 6 minutes long, let alone two in a row.
As a Wikipedian, I can confirm we have the lamest edit wars, I'm currently involved in an almost, 30000 word discussion involving dozens of editors, on whether to use the term "Mussulman" (Old Persian and Indic term for Muslim), or the newer 'Muslim" on India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran related topics about history, the discussion has been going on for 2 weeks, and 2 users got topic banned, or blocked for incivility or policy violations
Make like the British and make everyone unhappy by using "Mohammedan"
Every Wikipedia video on this channel arose during a discussion whether scrolling Wikipedia counts as working.
Well… there's also the whole "That Wikipedia List" series.
It does serve to remind people that Wikipedia and its editors are not infallible, and that there is no absolute high authority. I always think of when Spongebob asks the mailman who delivers the mailman's mail, but if the mailman's mailman delivers his mail, then who deliver's the mailman's mailman's mail? It's like if Uatu watches the MCU, then who watches the Watcher? Who judges the judge?
So what/who is infallible?
If everything is fallible -why would anyone need reminding of a basic fact of life?
And why did Wiki require special reminding?
@@LENZ5369 me
"Who judges the judge?" -- Clarence Tomas of course, he's incorruptible.
@Caleb's Unremarkable CZcams Channel except God isn't real.
@@calebisthebigdumb people claim that god is the ultimate judge.
I love reading the talk pages of sites and its funny but it stops me from participating, because some are not so nice humans in relations about human to human interaction.
Yeah. The key, I think, is to edit and walk away.... If someone else feels like they own that article it can turn into a time stick real quick. I may have won an effort war with an effective compromise but the emotional toll wasn't worth it.
You make great videos but this one is amazing. Keep up the great work!
What's hilarious is reading the editing wars in the "Talk" section of pseudoscience articles.
It goes both ways too. WP needs to be neutral. Some people think that this means what *they* say. With pseudoscience, all you can really do is provide the claims, and the counter evidence, in a neutral a non-implicational way. But the "TIGERS" on one side will insist you use *their* analysis or *their* wording as it is "correct." WP isn't about judging the topic of the article, but to simply cover what is available information about it, and not make value judgements on that information outside of it's reliability and verifiability.
So even if I agree that the topic is bullshit, it's not my place to write the article to say so. I dealt with this for a *long* time on a supernatural topic article until the self proclaimed arbiters of truth gave up.
If you see a Wikipedia page say "but that's wrong," without attribution, or tautological reason, it shouldn't be there. Some people don't like that.
@@romulusnr You just tried to argue for the "middle ground" fallacy, or the "argument to moderation" fallacy. Either there is strong, rational evidence for a conclusion or there is no not. Tautology also isn't reason; it's a phrasing/framing technique. Reason is based on formal logic or strong measurable evidence. Believing something is "true" and using circular logic and tautology isn't a form of evidence. It's perfectly reasonable for people to call out incorrect information/information lacking in any rational backing. People are not "self-proclaimed arbiters of truth"; they're acknowledging whether or not external tools, like science and formal logic, back up people's statements. Attribution is also an issue because "truth" isn't authoritative or democratic. The only purpose of peer-review is for people to see if there are any flaws in experimentation or reasoning, and to engage in double-blind independent replicative research that either confirms or doesn't confirm claims. Qualitative and Quantitative Value Judgements are fully within the realm of science and logic as well. Science can make conclusive statements about outcomes and effects. It is never rational to jam-pack in all pseudo-science and mislogic claims in articles about a topic unless they're prevalent in the culture and thus need to be addressed.
It’s fair to note that generally, ARBCOM doesn’t take positions on content, just conduct
Yes, and the people who choose the reporters on the news don't take a position on content either.
@@x--. ARBCOM is more like a BAR review committee, they don't care about who you represent just how you represent them.
Yeah, you can be correct on the content and even backed by consensus from the rest of the editing community, but if you acted abusively or violated other rules in the process, it wouldn't be surprising to get some sort of punishment.
Interesting video. As a current clerk for the committee it's interesting to see an outsiders view on this. Some parts were a little wrong, but overall a fair introduction.
What parts would you edit to correct?
Well, this video just made me go down a rabbit hole of admin noticeboards and wikipedia politices. Good job on making this topic actually interesting!
I'm very impressed at the examples you found.
As somebody who used to administer a small-scale Wikia wiki, whoo boy nerd fights can get _intense_ , and I am very much included in that category 😅
I wonder if you could do a video on Wikipedia's long-term abusers, the people who vandalize usually a certain topic for years, and sometimes even decades .
Eh....that's not really a good idea. People on Wikipedia (including me) tend to try to not talk about them on Wikipedia for a good reason: it just gives them the attention they want.
@@blazewolf9912 Yeah, but boing boing seemingly didn't get the memo, so at this point why bother caring whether they want attention anyway?
But in the case shedding light on the problem could make it worse although I think it would make a great video
@@adirangasetlur9108 At the same time, there's only around 120 people who are considered active LTA, and I highly doubt the majority of people, including people who would be be willing to do a bit of vandalism/trolling would even have the time or effort to constantly vandalize Wikipedia for years on end. Though that doesn't mean somebody won't, especially if they have a POV to push.
@@blazewolf9912 or maybe because it gives a bad name to Wikipedia? Always found Wikipedia's self-criticizing article on Wikipedia oddly lacking.
I remember starting a Whykipedia entry. I, having just watched Henry V, started the entry on Salic law.
It now has been edited so much that nothing I wrote remains. But then, my entry was protoformic.
I sometimes edit articles on the czech Wikipedia and sometimes my edits get edited in a way I disagree with. This was very interesting to watch.
All I'm saying is, tin "can" is short for "canister", meaning a round or cylindrical container, typically one made of metal, used for storing such things as food, chemicals, or rolls of film. Therefore, a tin box is OBVIOUSLY not a tin can.
This is so obvious I assume they are just getting trolled.
That said, is a tin box notable like the tin can?
"typically one made of metal"
Tin is indeed a metal.
@@x--. A tin box is just "a tin"
@@mrfamous333 :D
hitler
look I'm contributing
I had no idea Wikipedia literally had its own government system.
Also the fact that a guy named Jimbo is on top is just hilarious.
Despite all of this, I still recommend people take the time to correct information on Wikipedia. It's honestly really easy, and depending on the page you're looking at, it might just go through without any checks ever.
I changed the front page image on the dithering site because there was a mistake left unchanged for nearly 15 years. Besides the massive rabbit hole it led me down, it honestly wasn't that difficult.
Heh, I updated the main image (with one of my own) for the article on the town I used to live in, because the original image was so nondescript. A few years later someone is in the local paper's letters section bitching about why the Wikipedia page has such a shitty image on it. Fucking go take a better picture and change it your fucking self like I did, Karen.
1:42 I used your video on genetically modified Brussels sprouts as a source on my lab report a couple weeks back, you better be a reliable source.
I have actually got into the habit of pronouncing it "Ah-loo-MIN-you-em" so I can piss off BOTH the "Ah-LOO-mi-num AND the "Al-oo-MINI-yum" people at the SAME TIME by essentially saying "Alumin-U-M" and spelling out the last two characters hahaha
Centrists in a nutshell
wow this comes up in my recommended while I'm editing Wikipedia
What do you like to edit on Wikipedia? I got into a Wikipedia edit war once on the Duolingo Wikipedia article
@@littleolliebenjy first of all, stop participating in edit wars. That's how you can like editing Wikipedia.
@@thastayapongsak4422 I like editing on Wikipedia. What about you? I like WWE
@@littleolliebenjy articles on the interstate and US highway systems.
I've now begun the dive into Wikipedia editor drama on the Wikipedia Arbitration Cases page... Thank you HAI for consuming my night
It doesn't get any nerdier. I endorse
if people put as much energy into holding politicians accountable as they do in the classification of a tin can, the world could be a good place
They put plenty of energy into holding politicians on one side accountable, the other...not so much.
@@Locke42485 Something's wrong with your country if there's only 2 sides.
@Half as Interesting according to the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) the correct spelling is *Aluminium*
Aluminum*
@@neoieo5832 aluminium*
@@neoieo5832 Almnm. There, now no-one gets any I's or U's.
@@mattd6085 alumni
@@mattd6085 lol
My teachers back in school: don't use Wikipedia, anyone can edit that info with no proof
Wikipedia: Court's in session.
It's true though, you shouldn't use Wikipedia's text. But you totally should go follow the footnotes and look up the sources that were used to make the page as *those* are reliable.
Wikipedia itself does not consider Wikipedia itself to be a reliable source for Wikipedia content.
Wikipedia also considers itself a peddler of government propaganda (See their page, "Wikipedia is a follower, not a leader"), so that you don't need evidence at all to propagate the narrative but, to dispute it, no evidence is good enough.
Wikipedia is not a source, it is a collection of sources.
@@romulusnr i mean the reason why wikipedia pages shouldnt be cited for other wikipedia pages is to prevent circular sourcing, where two pages can cite each other on anything
but following the sources are a very useful thing to do, even if most of them are archives
@@phoenixnoire2435 and the page that youre talking about doesnt exist
I used to edit pages for local comics and entertainment. But some annoying Wikipedian feel like they own all entertainment threads from a specific network. They revert edits by most editors even if those edits are pretty helpful and add to the page. They just keep on adding unnecessary images of cast members, some aren’t even flattering. They police pages. Uhm, anyone can edit. They’re not even an admin or a mod. They could’ve just made their own mediawiki if they want to police most of the pages. I stopped editing because of that.
You could try talking to them about that in their talk page (in a civil manner). If it escalates, _as a last resort,_ consider going to a page called "Wikipedia: Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents" and follow the instructions there.
@@osmarfreitas8646 I'd rather not go through all that trouble as I wouldn't gain anything from doing so. I'll live it to other Wikipedians. After that, I avoid editing any pages related to a specific local network because I know they're just gonna police everything again anyways. Actually another Wikipedian reached out to me before with the same issue (they wanted me to help or do something) but I didn't wanna bother talking with the one who's policing local entertainment Wiki articles. Before editing anything I check the history to make sure that certain user hasn't edited the article I wanted to contribute to. Also, I figured I'd just edit on Fandom wikis.
If I had a penny for every HAI video about scientology, I'd have 2 pennies, that's not a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice
*also education videos mentioning sexually active popes
I edited a single table on a page about English units of measure which showed the binary (2^n) relationship between different units of volume to add cups (1/2 pint) between pints and Gills (1/4 pint), keep in mind the cup was already included in a list of volume units earlier on the page but wasn't in the table showing the binary relationship between them. I got told that not everybody lives in America, you should abandon the use of anything but milliliters, and that I was probably the closest thing to room temperature intelligence that had ever managed to edit an article on Wikipedia.
Yeah... I got over the idea of ever trying to help real quick.
Hey Sam, good job on this!! Even if a few details were a bit off, you clearly put in a lot of effort to understand a complicated topic, and I appreciate you.
He mentioned Scientology 😮
For the 2nd time
they lack the mojo they used to have.
Their (organizational) death cannot come soon enough though.
Clearly has a death wish.
Is there some kind of omerta on Scientology?
@@marcusdurr1223 Yeah, on pain of... well, lawsuits, harassment campaigns, and (alleged) assassinations at the hands of their intelligence agency, depending how much of a 'threat' you're considered. But they're fading in power, so it's _probably_ safe...
(1:04) THERE IS NO CABAL.
What's funny is that jimbo himself currently has a case against him being considered for arbcom review (its happened before too, like the time that it was revealed he had edited his (future) girlfriends page to remove negative content)
Funny coincidence. I made my first wikipedia edit recently when someone wrote that firgure skater Nobunari Oda wanted to killed buddhist monks like his ancestor oda nobunaga. Same editor also included relevant cited information about Oda's work with the Yoshida brothers. I just removed the bit about monks
It is still technically correct, but that 4 net yes votes at 4:45 is also just a majority. A better example is one where less then a majority voted yes, but most of the others abstained. Like 7 yes votes and 3 no votes with 5 abstaining.
Glad that we got some good information on the inner workings of disputes for your brain
4:45 Sam did you use footage from the Oregon Senate for the Wikipedia community
5:16 but what if that person just creates another account and use another ip to continue editing the page?
They have a system for dealing with that sort of problem. For the most part, it doesn't need to go through the whole process again, and the person can basically be banned on sight as soon as they figure out who it is. If necessary, an editor's IP address can be consulted to determine whether two accounts are probably the same person, but behavioral evidence is often enough (because many of these trolls have very specific mannerisms and topic areas of interest).
Wikipedia has a surprisingly sophisticated process for detecting sockpuppetry.
@@brianb.6356 and meatpuppetry, when the get other people to edit for them.
Just call it a “Tin”
This channel makes me proud for knowing all the stuff like the list of Popes existing
5:40 missed opportunity for Tai Lopez knowledge meme
It’s always nice to remember that Wikipedia is made by actual people, and, sadly, not just generated magically by wiki fairies. (Well, at least not entirely.)
There's a whole administrative process behind Wikipedia. I've most active in AfD, articles for deletion. We try to keep the garbage off the site and actually have rules and guidelines to follow. I've been active there for almost 20 yrs and it's gotten better, we're really trying to build a better mousetrap. For the most part, it works. You always get people that are there to disrupt the process, but we'll keep it running smoothly.
To clarify: Active in Wikipedia for 20 years, I've only been on the AfD for the last year or so. I prefer my privacy so won't post my username on Wikipedia here, but you can figure it out if you look hard enough.
@@brianbarker2551 No one cares, clean up your own swamp, wikipedia is a biased joke.
The best Wikipedia discussion, in my book at least, is the page of my favo(u)rite British economist, Guy Standing.
I love this channel. I'm going to be honest... I think Wendover Productions is INCREDIBLE, but I can't ever get through an entire video because it's.... not entertaining enough? I like these shorter videos with more comedy.
But can it settle the debate over if you mom is extra thick or super thick? Can it decide what songs are better than hit techno anthem "Pump Up the Jam"? It can't be the "Supreme Court" if it can't settle this type of drama...
Wait. You think " pump up the jam" is techno?
@Rami Slicer
Don't bite
If you only edit boring articles, you are unlikely to be opposed - even if you are wrong. But go anywhere near something interesting and everyone wants to put their mark on it.
Yes but as an occasional editor of wikipedia articles that I would never have imagined in my wildest dreams could be controversial, I can assure you there is no topic in the world that nobody feels passionate about.
@@tessjuel True. I think it's the desire for things to be 'just right' and correct the annoying errors that made me join in the first place.
*EDIT* But my point is that there are also many corners of Wikipedia that are under-patrolled because it's a narrow subject few people visit.
@@David_Crayford We have various tools to try and mitigate this issue by having the tools show us all edits made to every single article and highlight which ones may be problematic.
What are these tools that could detect possible problematic edits?
@@iantaakalla8180 There aren't any tools and that's part of it. Anything can turn out to be problematic. Somebody somewhere is bound to be offended if you dare claim that water is wet.
i have a wikipedia enemy. i don’t think he knows he’s my enemy but he is. he’d always get rid of my perfectly valid edits
I created an article on the 2026 formula one season and my question was when is the nantahala Hyperspeedway being built and im not gonna ruin the nature of the nantahala national forest because its a protected area and also federal land thanks alot CGP grey!!!
THE WIKIPEDIA CATHOLIC DIOCESE INCIDENT OF APRIL 11, 2023
This is actually a fairly well-written description, and one of the few that doesn't make fun of Wikipedia. Although you can learn quite a bit from Wikipedia for free, as opposed to whatever sponsors tell you.
seeing beeblebrox from the ceaser salad on that commity is just amazing
I’m curious about Stanley Winer. I love reading cranks
Always salt your water when making pasta!
Always water your pasta when making salt
Always pasta your salt while making water
@@vincenttt8289 Always pasta your salt when making water
No point salting the water when you can just put salt on it when it's cooked. Do you salt the water when you when you make rice?
@@littleolliebenjy As an Italian: AAAAAARGH!
There is a MASSIVE difference between salt in the water or on top.
Do you make bread without salt because you can always add it on top?
And yes, in many parts of the world rice is cooked in salted water.
I don't know why people think Wikipedia can just be edited by anyone. Try it. Seriously, try it. It'll be reverted within the day, if not a few hours.
The one exception is the time I got the Lazarus Syndrome article changed. Where one of the examples was a guy saying, "dad youree not gonna die" and im like "implying that had anything to do with his resuscitation". Took me about a week of re-editing the article and getting it reverted back to the original to where I had this big ass story about fighting unicorn mutants and zombie leprechauns or something ridiculous like that, and then they all had cake and pie.. or something.
I guess by then they had had enough of my crap and just removed the "dad youre not gonna die" line. Which, I was very pleased with and ceased fire.
>"I don't know why people think Wikipedia can just be edited by anyone. Try it. Seriously, try it. It'll be reverted within the day, if not a few hours."
Okay, I tried going to a random article and proofreading it, I made one minor change to match standard English. I'll let you know if it is reverted or not. In addition to that change, just as some people in this thread point out that "aluminum" and "aluminium" are inconsistent spellings, the page also had a word that was used twice on the page, once in the British English spelling and once in the American English spelling. I pointed out the inconsistency on the talk page of that page, without trying to edit it either way.
I'll let you know how the experiment goes, but I doubt the edit I made would be reverted.
Now you HAVE to go into the greate debate on the Austro-Hungarian flag edit wars
You know what, Mr Shark ("hai" in German is "shark"), I had to look at that pope Wikipedia page just last week because I wanted to find a Horrible Histories song...I do not know why I said "you know what".
Once I tried to correct the First Nations name of my hometown, as the name they were using was incorrectly cited from a document from the Hudson's Bay company, an Indian agent. The name they were using actually referred to one of the local tribes. However, because my knowledge was only oral, and the citation they had was written down by some white guy, it was immediately changed back, and I was informed that oral history was not a reliable source, their source from some white guy was. It kind of soured me on ever doing any sort of changes again. I even went out and bothered to get the correct spelling of the name, which is more complicated than you'd think considering that this particular language is one of indigenous North American languages that does not have any written language. So there that Wikipedia page sits with the incorrect information and the wrong name. Oh well. I tried to tell them and they didn't want to know. If they didn't want my correction, I'm not going to bother to go out of my way to correct it further, and get into a massive online argument with some arrogant know-it-all who's confident that because he read some colonial document from 150 years ago that he then knows what's what.
This is exactly the problem with Wikipedia I ran into. They SAY they want anyone to edit but that is a total lie! They want you to learn their whole system and then do an edit.
They should just allow subject matter experts, as you are, to contest content WAY EASILY and either list both or figure it out themselves.
Absolutely annoying that they pushed you out.
This is a huge problem in academia more generally as well. Oral history is seen as less accurate than written history
Yeah. Now think about all the people who come in saying "I KNOW that all inhabitants of Israel are evil" or "I KNOW that if you deny the Prophet Muhammad you're going to hell" or "I KNOW that aliens have appointed me god-dictator of the earth", their justification being "I'm an expert, believe me. Source: trust me bro." Tell me, what would you do if your First Nation name was changed to something deeply racist by a self-appointed "subject matter expert" who Wikipedia freely allowed to edit articles? At the end of the day, you being soured on Wikipedia is better than it descending into chaos.
@@liam6nugget And for good reason: see Telephone Game. *BUT* it's still worth recording and still might tell us valuable things about the past as long as it is given proper context. We should be recording as much oral history as possible.
what first nacion's name?
2014 was basically the death nail of wikipedia's arbitration abilities being anything more then a pathetic joke worthy only of mockery.
How so?
@@J-vr7yy Multiple events in that year that had primary sources and most secondary sources rejected by Wikipedia as valid sources, with the pages on those events being so inaccurate anyone using them for a paper couldn't hope for an E or above even if reading through the linked articles. Also a line of political thinking was changed to be a conspiracy theory that's complete 1984 style "the facts of what happened don't matter" which is ironic since another page was made for the current politically correct name for what the previous one was that's basically just a complete copy-past of the old page because the dullards who run Wikipedia aren't smart enough to notice that the entire justification for changing that page was ironically the very type of nonsense they pretend isn't possible.
When an article is locked from editing, it means it's practically impossible to have a civilized conversation about its subject, and the arbitration committee members need to sleep and eat.