Posted on 10/03/2019 7:32:57 PM PDT by fieldmarshaldj
Have Absolutely Had It With Wikipedia's Nonsense & Tyrannical Editors
As someone who has been on Wikipedia for over 12 years, I've attempted on countless occasions to try to make my own contributions to the website. Besides correcting minor errors, my one main specialty was bringing up-to-date information on individual locations, going state by state. Meticulously researching census records, maps, online resources, etc. to try to improve said pages. It's a time-consuming endeavor, but I figure if it's helpful to others, perhaps a kid working on a research project, it's worth it.
Not anymore.
I'm sick to death of the blowback from attempting to "dare" improve the pages of individual communities. It was bad enough several years ago working on the state of Alabama (yeah, working in alphabetical order) only to have one editor summarily delete my contributions despite said research. I later moved on to working on Alaska, which was woefully out-of-date, and had not so much as a single thank you, but a snarky editor/mod who deleted and then made light of my contributions.
Then came this week. I was working on Arizona, and was slammed with a swarm of editors deleting everything I put into the articles, never mind I cited exactly what/where/when and how my research was done. Just removed and warned. I blew up (mildly) at two mods and told them if they wished to be of help, to go over the work/research line by line and locate what kind of "references" would satisfy their appetites. The final straw was trying to locate something as simple as an incorporation date for a particular city. Try as I might, I could not find the date anywhere online. I actually dared email the city manager who promptly replied and provided a pdf copy of the resolution from the '80s. I told her I would put the info on Wikipedia. It was removed THREE times and I was attacked for putting up "unsourced material." The last time was today. I was researching villages that were no longer in existence and had the temerity to change their designation to "ghost towns" and everything swiftly deleted by these same bullies this evening.
Y'know, I have absolutely had it with these power-hungry editor thugs who seem hell-bent on wanting to keep the place free from updated facts and hide behind "references" excuses and claiming "no original research permitted !" The whole damn website is FULL of original research or references to original research. Without it, there'd be no website of facts.
I would love to do this research and pages for another website that doesn't attack/criticize and remove it at the drop of a hat (and mind you, THIS ISN'T POLITICAL !), but I cannot seem to find one. Conservapedia barely exists and I'd have to create a page for every locale (and probably HTML, etc., which I'm not very good with), which would take eons to do. I'm just simply baffled otherwise. But I'm not going to toil one more second for a website that regards my meaningful contributions as a nuisance. Eff Wikipedia.
DJ, are these tyrannical editors paid people or “volunteers”? Look at the lists of “Recent Deaths” on the main page, and you will see the most obscure foreign names that no American would recognize. There is a bias against not only conservatives on WP but on anything that extols America.
Yes, the real motto of WP is “Where no good deed goes unpunished!”
Horrible, and for a while I tried correcting things. But, this is a task particularly suited to you and your deep research. I urge you please don’t quit. I can’t do this any longer trying to keep content up for Wild World of History, but it’s a job that needs to be done.
Mostly, because I post or comment almost every day on Free Republic.
I check the small details, time lines, background, etc. on an entire universe of subjects.
I'm also a big movie guy, and Wiki has excellent film summaries and actor biographies.
I can't recall a single time when someone has called me out for a Wiki-related error.
However, I have also been a heavy reader and news watcher my entire life, so it's not like I'm going to mistake gossip or propaganda or urban myths for factual information.
As to Leftist - what can you read these days that is NOT Leftist? Even basic science has been contaminated.
conservipedia and wikipedia both run the same wiki software, mediawiki. Hence, you can copy and paste anything from one to the other really easily.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki
If you really want to make it easy, learn to export/import.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Export
Import might need to be turned on at conservipedia but if you join and talk to the guy about what you want to add, I don't see why he wouldn't welcome more content.
It's not html, it's wiki markup language known as wikitext.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Wikitext
You should be familiar with it and it should be identical on both systems for all the basic stuff.
Extensions, usually add new wikitext code which is where they might differ, with wikipedia having more bells and whistles installed.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Extensions
The export/import process does put a load on the server so there's a limit on how many pages you can grab at a time. I did a couple of hundred one time and it went fine. I think I had one server timeout but I had access to it and was able to change the timeout time from 60 to 360 seconds.
There are other settings like max post time & size that can increased also. The conservipedia guy might be able to temporarily raise the limits.
Once, years ago, I put in a correction to an article, which was accepted (or at least not rejected)
I have a feeling that, these days, if you are not on a list of “safely left-wing contributors”, then you will get auto-deleted.
Have you previously contributed anything there that would have put you on a list of Trump-supporters/right-wingers?
You said it was a ghost town, but did not accompany that statement with a reference note to a government statement that the population was zero. That might be the issue.
And after a few rejects, they might auto-blackball you.
Yes there is such a thing;
And with the quality of scholarship you describe I think they need you.
It should be the best resource on the net. I wish youd contribute there.
But you give them hits and make them money and not all is true.
“Yes there is such a thing”
Why not an encyclopedia that just seeks the truth, and if the truth is not obvious, explain why?
Attributed opinions would be ok because they would not be the encyclopedia’s opinion. They would be recordings of what opinionated individuals believed.
once you slap a name on a website like that Conserva-, its already being limiting
In a propaganda sense, of course you are correct. But as a matter of philosophy, "OSullivans First Law - "All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing - is correct. Nobody can expect an organization to be permanently moderate. It can start that way, but gravity says it cannot stay that way.The way to understand it, if you arent satisfied with the logic presented in OSullivans First Law, is as follows:
It follows that whatever term you choose to denote neither conservative nor liberal will, sooner or later, be coopted to mean the same as moderate does now.
- The public discourse is conducted via journalism.
- Journalism in America is a cartel. " People of the same trade seldom meet together, as Adam Smith put it, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. And journalists "meet together, virtually, on a continual basis via the wire services (and otherwise as well).
- The conspiracy against the public which is easily observable in the journalism cartel is the fact that it defines words like moderate or centrist or progressive or liberal or - the big one - objective in terms of its own self interest. In the long run the journalism cartel will define any and all such terms to mean nothing other than what best suits the journalism cartel. The distinction between objective and the other terms is only that objective is applied exclusively to members of the cartel - and the other terms are never applied to a member of the cartel.
The term sophist is a perfect example of the phenomenon. Whats wrong with being wise? Nothing - but claiming to be wise leads directly to being a propagandist. To contend with sophists, it was necessary to become modest - and claim only to love wisdom, not to be a possessor of it. Hence, philosophers claim to love wisdom (thereby claiming that wisdom is a thing) without claiming to be wise.
- sophist
- 1542, earlier sophister (c.1380), from L. sophista, sophistes, from Gk. sophistes, from sophizesthai "to become wise or learned," from sophos "wise, clever," of unknown origin. Gk. sophistes came to mean "one who gives intellectual instruction for pay," and, contrasted with "philosopher," it became a term of contempt. Ancient sophists were famous for their clever, specious arguments.
- philosopher
- O.E. philosophe, from L. philosophus, from Gk. philosophos "philosopher," lit. "lover of wisdom," from philos "loving" + sophos "wise, a sage."
"Pythagoras was the first who called himself philosophos, instead of sophos, 'wise man,' since this latter term was suggestive of immodesty." [Klein]
- philosophy
- A fondness or love for wisdom that leads to searches for it; hence, seeking a knowledge of the general principles of elements, powers, examples, and laws that are supported by facts and the existence of rational explanations about practical wisdom and knowledge.
Thus a conservapedia is humble enough to name itself with an identifiable POV. Wikipedia, not so much.
Wiki does not run ads.
All its operating income comes from contributions.
Because it does have a Leftist slant, I have never contributed money to it.
Without Wiki and Google, which is also Leftist, I would never post on Free Republic, because it would take hours to track down or confirm minor details.
After almost 60 years of reading political history and watching news reports, I know what facts look like, and I also know what speculation, hearsay, and propaganda look like.
If I am uncertain of the facts, I don't post or comment.
By the way, at least half of the news articles posted at Free Republic come from - or can be traced to - politically Left publications and news organizations.
I never use it and neither should you...ever.
JoMa
Yeah.
I don’t know if they’re paid. The one a$$hole had my comments to him deleted off his page and he attacked me, a 12-year contributor, a “troll”, and to never post on his talk page again. I’d love 30 seconds with this jackass to knock his soft teeth down his whiny throat.
I don’t think it’s worth my time if I’m having a cluster of 3 editors deleting my work en masse and then high-fiving their actions on for doing so on a talk page. They can go f themselves.
Thanks for the suggestion and helpful hints, though I think is simply too monumental a task to move the stuff over (and then, almost nobody will look at it). I’m not fully mastered on such skills, anyhow.
No, nothing to indicate any leanings. Just mostly census data and short paragraph analysis of its history (i.e. “Anytown first appeared on the 1910 U.S. Census as an incorporated town”). I don’t even have a profile page on there (only the talk for the profile page). I don’t toot my own horn over there, just submit work. Too many there have these ludicrously fancy pages to show how “wonderful” they are. To me, that indicates just how egotistical they are.
When I attempted to explain how I came to the conclusion and references, it was dismissed by said egotistical editors. Only today, did another editor reach out to me in a polite and respectful manner (a first in I don’t know how long) regarding this work. I wrote a long reply to them outlining how the conclusions were drawn (basically asking how to reference work that cannot be explicitly linked to, which I stated was a problem). I’ll see what they say. If they say it’s a no-go, there’s no point to my editing anymore.
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