Can you post some examples?
Russian Wikipedia doesn’t have such article. They only have “military conflict in eastern Ukraine” https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%BE%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%83... That article does not list Russia on the right panel under “belligerents” section. Many sections simply tell official Russian version. When it does tell some bits of truth it uses wordings like “allegedly” and “according to Ukrainian side”. The “casualties and losses” section only contains losses on Ukrainian side.
Look at the "reactions in Russia" section. There is not a single positive sentiment expressed there about the situation in Crimea. I guarantee you that this is not representative of the the public opinion in Russia (whether or not you agree with it). All citations are from opposition people nobody has ever heard of. Not a single one from the official media? That's neutral? Really?
If all the people in Crimea are victims and are controlled by evil bad Russia, how come Ukraine turned off their water supply? The one they didn't build. Don't they want those poor oppressed souls to come back into the fold? Where's that reference in the article?
And in the interest of keeping an open mind: here come the downvotes! The people clicking that arrow probably think of themselves as very open minded too.
These sources aren’t exclusively western, e.g. Al Jazeera is based in Qatar.
Another thing, I have some sources outside of the Internets. I personally know a few people who fought the war, and many civilians who fled the war. Their stories match these 600 sources of the English version of Wikipedia.
You might find this interesting:
[1] https://newmediaacademy.ae/ar-digital-creator/#pll_switcher
[2] https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/nas-daily-israel-palestin...
EDIT: The criticism in [2] is objection by the antisemitic BDS movement to NAS’ refusal to demonize Israel and his attempts to bring people together and promote peace and mutual understanding. It is embarrassing to their narrative when Palestinians like NAS point out that the Palestinians who stayed in Israel after its founding became full members of its society, served in its parliament, and that there is no “apartheid”.
But the concept of "handing over" Ukraine really underlines why the rest of the world views Russia as such a threat to world peace.
Ukrainians should decide their own future. It's not Russia's to hand over nor is it America's to take. Sometimes you hear quotes by high ranking Russian military officials and it feels like there is this persistent belief that NATO somehow "stole" Eastern Europe from Russia when the reality was that Eastern Europe fled to NATO to deter Russia after several brutal decades in the Soviet sphere of influence.
Certainly the concept of some countries being good and others being bad is outdated. The West has engaged in more than it's share of evil. But that doesn't justify moral relativism in international affairs. Nor does it allow one country to attempt annexation of another against its will.
Also, it's funny how all the countries suddenly wanting to change things up government-wise just happen to be on the path of major gas pipelines from Russia. Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia. A coincidence, that. Environmentalists also spoke up about the dangers of undersea pipelines with perfect timing (see Nort Stream 2).
And so you have a country whose power structure is literally facing an existential threat. Now, maybe you think that Russian power structure really is better off disappearing into the sunset (and I may even agree with you). But to think it'll do so without a fight is naive.
This thing is bigger than Ukraine. This is a well-orchestrated multi-year operation to change the balance of power in Europe and potentially force a regime change in Russia. Ukrainians have their dreams and admirable spirit, but I think when the dust settles they will be disappointed to find themselves to have been used as pawns in a much bigger game.
It's their country. It's their right to decide whether they want to have gas pipelines there. That this is an existential threat to Russia is kind of a problem of their own making and, quite frankly, not Ukraine's problem. Don't bully 42 million people because you can't solve your own problems.
You do realize what you're advocating for is that Ukraine should be a Russian puppet state?
My opinion is that there is no such thing as 100% self determination, whether for people or for groups of them called countries. We are social creatures and there is no way for us to exist without connections, social norms, etc. A group leaving one sphere of influence will necessarily fall into another one. Puppet or not is a matter of degree of control.
Ukraine's fight for independence is 90% financed by the USA (NPR's number, not mine). Is that really independent? I guess it is for the people already within the US sphere of influence: to them the story is "they are leaving the baddies and we are helping them do it".
To be within the US sphere of influence is self-defined as being free. Is it? Depends on who's making up the definitions I suppose. And now we are back on topic: there's probably no way to write a completely neutral article on a topic like this conflict. The sides can't even agree on what the phrases mean!
I have personally donated thousands of dollars to help Ukraine's fight for independence, and I know people who donated more than me. Just because someone in Ukraine received USD from abroad does not mean USA's financing.
> there's probably no way to write a completely neutral article on a topic like this conflict
In this case, Russians even deny the topic.
In your comments your position is evil but at least somewhat reasonable. You admit there's a war between Russia and Ukraine, and explain how Russian government is stupid enough to think that's a good idea. Despite I don't share that political position I would like to see that info in Wikipedia, it's interesting and relevant.
But Wikipedia's position (which happens to match the official Russian propaganda) is that Russia ain't involved, and Ukraine is fighting a civil war against local rebels. For 7 years and counting.
Russians have started the war, and have been fighting the war from the very beginning in March 2012. That’s not a controversial theory, but a well-established fact with verifiable references all over the internets.
Yet Russian version of Wikipedia seems unaware.
Interesting point to illustrate, why wikipedia's articles are not as good as the scientific ones. Because don't you think, this truth is a matter of perspective?
Because to my understanding, a real war between Ukraine and Russia would look a bit different and would have been over long ago.
There are definitely strong elements of a civil war, despite russias covert and open engagement. And with the US and EU involvment on the pro west Ukrainian side - it is complicated geopolitics. Hard to find simple truths there, when all involved sides are engaged with disinformation and propaganda.
If there are Russian soldiers firing guns and occupying Ukrainian territory then it's not a "matter of perspective"; it's an act of war.
That's up for Ukrainians to decide, not Russia.
From Russia's perspective NATO has been progressively taking over countries that were previously part of Russia's safety buffer.
Ukraine entering talks to join the NATO sphere of influence was one step too far for them. Russia has a major naval base at Sevastopol that threatened to "fall into NATO hands." From their own strategic viewpoint they could never allow this to happen without a fight!
And of course, everyone is the good guy in their own story.
You can't trust wiki when it pertains to politics.
> A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly neutral point of view. Please discuss further on the talk page. (June 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
But going to the talk page shows they still control the page and content on it.
> Dear User Wikidave2009, since June 2017 the well-sourced March 2017 revelations and implications section has been created five times in this page by three different editors like Wiki726, Ours18 and myself, you have deleted it every single time without providing any credible reference to discredit that the sources cited in that section. Your claim that these sources are "fringe" and "dubious" is not wellfounded. Michael Rubin is a leading expert on Iran at the AEI, Darren Tromblay is a veteran intelligence analyst and both the Small Wars Journal and Commentary Magazine are solid and reliable sources. I do realize that you are very dedicated to guarding the NIAC page, however, you're forcing your opinion on this page without any regard for other editors who disagree with you. Please STOP removing content that you don't like, and perhaps find a way to deal with this conflict of interest that is obvious. Alwaysf (talk) 05:29, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
That section is not on the main page. You can see it in the history: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=National_Iranian_...
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-...
Either nobody reads the relatively small Scottish Wikipedia, or (more likely) everyone who complained about it got banned by said admin. And since nobody really reviews bans (why cant the Wikimedia Foundation have someone for it?), then you are generally out of luck.
2A. There was a Wikipedia administrator who created 80 000 pages and redirects related to breasts. Also seemed to have some obsession over some low key political woman.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/dk17c9/wikipedi...
What is more sad in this case, is that every other admin knew very well that thousands of such pages were created, but nobody did anything. This is the usual situation when the clique will never go against one of their own.
It took them an incredible amount of time to do anything with that rogue admin and at the end I think he wasn't even removed from his role and banned, he simply stepped down on his own.
2B. Compare the rogue admin described in point 2A (who created 80 thousand articles and redirects related to breasts) with the typical experience of a new wikipedia user, whose article will be probably speedy deleted immediately after creation. There is a big group of admins who try to speed delete everything - because by default they treat every new user as human trash and every new article as not encyclopedic.
I dont have any statistics,but I assume that after the new article is deleted, most new users will simply give up, because the alternative is to fight versus the admin clique through various "committees" (full of said admins). This time is wasted, because instead of improving the article you go through a trial of tears.
2C. Also very possible is that every edit by a new user is reverted by default. The new user cannot revert it back - since this is an "edit war". I dont feel like searching for examples, but there are admins who have literal counters that show how many things they reverted - and they pride themselves of it.
This basically means thousands of users pushed away of trying to improve wikipedia, just because some sad asshole sits and reverts everything to paddle his stats.
Other admins dont do anything about it, because it is incredibly hard to remove an admin / if they removed that guy, then someone else could go after them.
The Wikimedia foundation simply does not care at all. They just need those millions for various expensive "projects", lunches and so on. A very similar thing happened with Firefox, where the Mozilla foundation is interested in everything, but not their core product.
If you are a new Wikipedia user a very typical situation is that if you create a new article, some admin will "improve" it (generally making it worse) and you cannot revert those changes, or you get banned by the said admin. On some smaller Wikipedia the admins knew each other very well, so they ask their friend to ban you.
I am aware that I dont provide any examples for those + I sound like a "frustrated person".
If you dont believe me, you can make a second account and see how it looks for someone new (using two accounts is against Wikipedia terms of service btw).
Perhaps a good way would be to randomize admin names, so those assholes get banned by their own friends, or reverted by own friends, who like to revert everything.
3. Regarding examples of "fresh" political cases having a lot of problems. You can check the page of Aimee Channelor and constant edit wars related to that person
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Aimee_Challenor
That's the person involved in the reddit scandal in 2021.
If you feel like a detective, you can also try to figure out who are the people who constantly guard and edit the said article.
Btw. I guess I also have to add a disclaimer that I never had anything to do with article from point 3.
1. This is an issue the Wikimedia foundation has been dealing with and working to solve: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Large_s...
2A. The general rule with the Wikipedia is that, if you can make a redirect to something, it’s usually good to do so, even if the redirect uses a term which is not politically correct. Considering the source of the complaint comes from Reddit, Reddit is not a particularly reliable source about matters like this.
2B. As a strict inclusionist sometimes Wikipedia editor, I agree 100% with the general gist that the Wikipedia makes adding new articles too hard. That said, I have with some effort been able to make a new article stay in the Wikipedia fairly recently (late 2019): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ValhallaDSP
It did get tagged for deletion — https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ValhallaDSP&type=... — but the editor who put the tag removed it when I pointed out the subject has been extensively referenced by the music press — https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ValhallaDSP&type=...
2C. Please provide evidence; e.g. diffs where you tried to edit something and all of your edits were reverted. [Citation needed] and all that.
3. The current version https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aimee_Challenor — this version: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aimee_Challenor&o... — has the Reddit scandal and other scandals prominently described in the lead section. Please let us know how the article is not neutral.
For example Wikipedia has a role called CheckUser - what is a person that has special access rights to check IP addresses of all other users. This is mainly used to see if a person doesn't use multiple sock puppet accounts to make various types of abuse (e.g. vote manipulation).
I know a local Wikipedia, where the CheckUser literally refuses to check if admins don't have sock puppet accounts. This means that the admins can literally make any sock puppet they want and always win any vote, including future votes for a new CheckUser.
What can you do about it? Nothing.
Can you write about this to Wikimedia Foundation? Nope. There even isnt any official way to contact them. They basically let local Wikipedia branches run themselves.
2A. You write a lot of text to defend literal garbage. That admin added 80 THOUSAND incredibly low effort redirects related to woman breasts.
"Titty tumors", "Segmental removal of the titties", "Constructions of the booby", "Hypoplastic tits", "Atrophy of the titties"...
Please explain to me how this is any good?
If a new user made such garbage, it would be speed deleted and the user IP banned immediately.
2B. So basically an experienced Wikipedia user still got their article speed deleted, had to fight to get it back.. and then somehow what I wrote is wrong. So to sum up, if you dont like the facts, you ignore the facts? I realy dont understand what is your point here.
3. Again, you seem to miss the point. Someone asked for an example of a political article that was problematic. So I provided an article. You can look at the edit history to see that there were literal wars about everything there.
Also in case of articles about living people, politicians etc. it is often quite clear that said politicians or their aides are the ones who are tasked with guarding the article, editing it.
> Please let us know how the article is not neutral.
Do you represent Wikipedia or Wikipedia foundation in any way?
Why do you demand citations when Wikipedia is discussed? For any other topic, you dont demand them, or dont use them.
I guess you are just some common troll, probably a Wikipedia admin. Joke's on me, since I even bothered to reply.
You can make your substantive points without any of that, and it's also in your interests to do so!
I am demanding citations because you’re making contentious accusations based on half-truths.
This will be my last reply to you; I do not think a productive conversation is possible at this point.
I much prefer the process to what Reddit does, which is, in many subreddits, to quickly ban anyone who goes against the group think of a given subreddit, even if the subreddit is wrong.
In Wikipedia, as a rule of thumb, is that the truth does win out, even if it takes a while to get there. As one example, while Tara Reade’s now-discredited accusation [1] against Joe Biden was all over numerous subreddits and presented as objective fact, [2] the Wikipedia was taking a slower, more measured approach to reporting the accusations which ultimately ended up being far more accurate than what Reddit was doing at the time. [3]
As another case, a lot of noise was made over how horrible the Wikipedia was because Clarice Phelps didn’t have a Wikipedia article. She has one today. [4]
[1] This probably needs a citation. How about https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-74-former-biden-s... or, yeah, since it’s so heavily sourced https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden_sexual_assault_alleg...
[2] For example, https://old.reddit.com/r/WayOfTheBern/comments/it5n91/multip...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Joe_Biden/Archive_10#Tara...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarice_Phelps
[5] Wikipedia has a hard time with allowing articles about cool open source projects and languages. I agree this is really annoying, since it means I have to dig through GitHub, forums like this one, or (for fonts) Google Fonts to find high quality open source programs or content.
[6] Adding footnotes without a reference to the footnote is an old alt.sysadmin.recovery tradition
[1] It seems to have picked up some during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020
Do you think that being better than Reddit is a high bar?
While the post was quite heated and it’s hard to separate facts from expressions of anger, to me he strongly implied the other two haven’t been dealt with or resolved, while, in fact, all the issues are resolved or are being discussed, in Wikipedia’s typical style of discussing things to death (I remember when discussing whether to host pro-pedophile advocacy was a thing on Wikipedia, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Pedophile_movement/Archiv... )
I brought up Reddit because the OP brought up Reddit; I agree they are horribly inaccurate, and if something I read on Reddit makes me angry, I check other sources to make sure I’m not getting worked up over a lie.
EDIT: But perhaps I am wrong or confused. Wouldn’t be the first time. In that case, please clarify what, exactly, was the purpose of your citations that began “Those articles aren’t on the Wikipedia:”.
That poster was being, to say the least, quite disingenuous asking me that question: They were making a direct personal insult against me, and they were stating that I advocated a position that I do not advocate. In other words, they were asking me a “are you still beating your wife?” type of question, and they worded their question as if those redirects are still on the Wikipedia.
Indeed, a point you missed they never stated the redirects went away.
Let’s look at what they actually said: >>>What is more sad in this case, is that every other admin knew very well that thousands of such pages were created, but nobody did anything. This is the usual situation when the clique will never go against one of their own.
It took them an incredible amount of time to do anything with that rogue admin and at the end I think he wasn't even removed from his role and banned, he simply stepped down on his own.<<<
Did this poster state the pages were removed? No, they did not. The poster only stated they they “[did] anything” with the admin, inaccurately stated he wasn’t banned (he was topic banned, which is a pretty serious punishment on the Wikipedia), and the OP never said what happened with the redirects.
A reasonable person reading what the OP wrote would not be given the impression the redirects were removed.
Now, back to me: I merely stated that the Wikipedia is a little more loose about redirects than about articles (“if you can make a redirect to something, it’s usually good to do so, even if the redirect uses a term which is not politically correct”); I agree that the particular redirects the OP incorrectly accused me of supporting go beyond the pale, and are examples of why I said “usually good” and not always good. The Wikipedia community agrees they went beyond the pale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_no...
It would be like if someone asked me “Why is it that pro-pedophile advocacy should be on the Wikipedia?”; it is in no way “disingenuous” to answer “that hasn’t been on the Wikipedia since 2007”, even if they previously pointed out that the Wikipedia did “something” about pedophilia a while ago, and even if I previously said that Wikipedia errs on the side of supporting free speech.
Personally, I think it’s pretty disingenuous to defend someone who was flaming me so hard, @dang had to intervene, and to incorrectly imply they OP said something they never actually said when falsely claiming I was being “disingenuous”. But that’s just my opinion.
Maybe setting a high bar to new edits is not a bad idea. Wikipedia is old, it should settle at least on some of the topics.
I agree about this. If you're worried that your edit might get reverted, the trick is to argue for it on the talk page first, wait for any objections to be raised there, then if no one objects, make the edit marking it as "per talk". At that point, it will be very hard for them to just revert, and if they do so without addressing your comments they're breaking Wikipedia policy themselves.
The trick of it is that there are very high odds that the actual reverter will enter discussion with you; which means you're talking with exactly the right person on exactly the right topic at exactly the right time. O:-)
You can then proceed to figure out what (either of you [2]) are doing wrong, and get something on the page that works.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BOLD,_revert,_discus...
[2] Analogous to unit testing, where the bug could be in the test or in the main program; the problem here could lie with the BOLD editor or with the Reverter, or even both! If you assume good faith[3] and talk it out together, you can go far.
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith
Of course it is, but it's way less unwiki than the alternative (revert wars and wiki blocks)! Being 'BOLD' works very well when you expect your edit to stick; if you have reason to think someone will revert your edit, it's just way better to proactively show good faith by arguing for your edit on the talk page.
Be BOLD, but don't be reckless! Do show good faith, Do also follow all the other policies and guidelines, Do be respectful of others; Do also put a comment on the talk page; Don't start an edit war, and then you definitely won't get blocked!
Wikipedia policies and guidelines are not an optional, pick the ones you like kind of affair. When used together they document optimal processes found over years of experience.
When you follow optimal process and act in a decisive, clear and respectful manner, you'll find that you and your other co-editors can edit more rapidly, effectively and amicably, and you'll even get into less trouble along the way.
Analogously thus with a wiki. One of the things that make a wiki (hawaiian for "quick") work is that it (potentially) has very short feedback loops when editing.
One reason wikipedia is often slower than it can be is because very many people have the "slow but fine" intuition; but less people have/(or used to have) experience with the "coarse but fast correction" regime, and thus lack the intuition that comes with that.
The hostile speed deletions and reverts applied to new users are never happen admins, or members of the clique - even if the quality of things they add is very, very low.
I even wrote above that there are ways to fight it: for example by randomizing the names of users who made the edits. Although Im quite sure that Wikipedia is full of sad people, who will spend a lot of time and effort to still be able to bypass such a system.
What is even more sad, is that in this particular discussions, you have 3 different users who wrote that it happened to them... just look to other replies to the top comment.
Even so Wikipedia is still one of my top 3 sites. I'm doing NLP and I see the Wikipedia corpus used in hundreds of papers. It's useful in many ways.