Comment by tablespoon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tablespoon | Hacker News Reader

> Sometimes that abuse is relatively easy to identify. In 2019, ArbCom disciplined the two editors most involved in this subject area, instituting a topic ban for their “incivility and inflammatory rhetoric.” But what about the more insidious cases when there are no blatant signs of harassment? Wikipedians told me that these “civil” disputes are much more challenging to resolve because of a key jurisdictional issue: ArbCom has authority to decide on user conduct disputes but is not permitted to rule on article content.

Also Wikipedia's toxic culture often refuses to call a spade a spade, and gives some favored problematic editors a long leash to be uncivil, so long as they learn to avoid a few of the most blatant unacceptable behaviors. IMHO, they need to be more consistent and more final with their bans, because a community with a lot of individuals who've been taught how to obscure their misbehavior and/or expertly push it right up to the line is still a shitty community.

This is a problem with any community, right? Regardless of how open it purports to be, if you don't belong to the trusted circle you are at a disadvantage. And you can only belong to that circle if you were there from the beginning or you spend a lot -- and I mean, a lot -- of time making yourself known so that they accept you. Most people don't have that kind of time.

I don't know if this can be avoided.

That is fair, but the problem is that most people do not know that Wikipedia is run by various cliques. Article content does not converge to the "truth". Instead it converges to whatever those who has the most time to waste on Wikipedia believes the truth to be. Take Wikipedia's article on male circumcision. It very much underplays the ethical, moral, and physical issues associated with it because the clique that controls that article see no problem with cutting off unconsenting boys' body parts. People don't know that so when they read that article they think it is "fair" and "objective" which it is not.

Well that’s a wonderful opinion you have there, but sadly, many don’t share it with you.

And those people are child abusers. It's not a bad thing to disagree with child abuse.

Circumcision has a long history because we lacked the medical equipment to resolve phimosis, so everyone had to have it removed earlier. Even today resolving that is much more involved. Of course people don't know this, they're just following their parents religion.

> Article content does not converge to the "truth". Instead it converges to whatever those who has the most time to waste on Wikipedia believes the truth to be.

I'm in agreement with you. The worst problem is that people who have not had to deal with edit wars are not aware of how clique-run Wikipedia is. And yes, cliques depend on a bunch of people with way too much free time on their hands.

I'm just saying that I don't know if there is a solution to cliques within communities. Isn't this a widespread problem beyond Wikipedia?

People trust Wikipedia and that is the problem. Those who write articles and engage in battles of attrition over article content are not idealists doing it for the sake of humanity. Instead they are marketeers getting paid to polish celebrities biographical articles, authors peddling books about the joy of circumcision, people paid by governments to carry out psy-ops, etc. The only reason I took the circumcision article as an example is because - for anyone not born in a country where male circumcision is not common practice - it is obvious that it is not written from a "neutral point of view". Other articles have the same issues too. Except for them I don't know anything about the subject so I'll be fooled by Wikipedia's serious tone and many citations into believing that those articles are neutral and factual.

> Those who write articles and engage in battles of attrition over article content are not idealists doing it for the sake of humanity. Instead they are marketeers getting paid to polish celebrities biographical articles, authors peddling books about the joy of circumcision, people paid by governments to carry out psy-ops, etc.

Or obsessive low-level ideologues, who have little else going on in their lives, pushing some agenda. My impression that's the largest group.

It's a tip of a tongue, but I recall reading somewhere that anarchisistic-run models are prone to corruption in the respect that where the faction with the biggest power can rule it as a de-facto dictator. They suggest that acknowledging the existence of the cliques while turning it into a constitutional-republican model may help alleviate the problem by providing greater oversight or check and balances to their power.

In principle, they should. However, it's been known that ArbCom and the rest lives in thought bubbles which insulate them from getting grasp on what the public opinion might hold against them.

Perhaps this is the silent part that not many people realize, but the one thing is that Jimbo Wales is a believer Ayn Rand's ideas and Wikipedia is founded with heavy inspiration of such an idea. I haven't really read Atlas Shrugged itself but apparently it promotes an idea of epicurean ego-centrism to the detriment of altruism.

This could buttress the argument that Wikipedia's model is flawed from the start because it's DNA is filled with this wrong stuff. The ideology promotes self-centered enjoyment and turn what should be a collegial sanctum with long-term endurance in mind, into a participatory based MMORPG.

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