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You are exactly correct, and the purism represented by these Kafkaesque Wikipedians who "drive out fringe editors" will ultimately fail.

Isn't it equally likely that the those who wish the installment of fringe editors will ultimately fail? The universe owes no one justice.

Whatever downvotes you get might have more to do with your tone than your stance.

what I wrote was short, and I wrote what I needed to to express just what I wanted to express, i.e. nothing can eliminated.

Show me, rewrite some piece of what I wrote in your exalted tone that would be better. I want to learn from you. I'm not being sarcastic. I legitimately don't think you are right, and I legitimately don't think you can do it, but you say it can be done. I think you are falsely using "tone" to stand in for "you disagree with me".

But, if you can express what I expressed politely and palatably, please, I REALLY want to know how to do it. Let's teach each other, this site is built on curiosity.

If your tone is better, I will exalt it.

also, maybe read this, it's an interesting take: https://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html

Sure, it's not hard. Notes inline, rewrite after.

English (language not kingdom) Wikipedia has become a party organ* for whatever they call themselves, [note: incoherent to assign partyship here given the footnote lack-of-definition; implies a level of organization you've failed to demonstrate] those people who took over and ruined philosophy, history, sociology, linguistics, anthropology, et al departments of universities [note: strong claim, not backed up or even defined] (get rid of dead white males and anything they ever wrote! [note: hyperbolic, readers who don't agree are now more inclined to assume the rest of the text is also exaggerated]) to allow only deconstructive, post modernist, existentialist, nihilist, anti-western, socialist, personal truth and lived experience [note: buzzword soup, no substance except to readers who already share sentiments]; the same people who are now battering down the gates of science and technology (remember Shut Down Tech day? [note: no, and googling it returns results that are non-obviously connected to your concepts here; clarity would help your message]) because believing there is "the right answer" to a problem is itself problematic, an expression of white privilege [note: I live in academia and have never seen this formulation. if hyperbole, not conducive to persuasion (see above)]. Math should allow many answers depending on the student's truth and lived experience [note: never seen this in any math class, citations would help]. And they shouldn't have to turn in their work "on time", that oppressive white western male notion [note: same as previous]. The same people are are marching in the streets to say that mass murder and terrorism are morally justifiable expressions of yearning for a brighter future [note: references here would help, unless this is israel/palestine partisanship in either direction, in which case it's a distraction].

This is not my personal original research, the "other" cofounder of wikipedia (along with The Outlaw Jimmy Wales [note: much of your audience was not even born when this movie came out, more distractions]) says the same https://nypost.com/2021/07/16/wikipedia-co-founder-says-site...

Wikipedia btw raises tons of money, they are rolling in cash. Why do they keep begging you for more with interstitials? Because they have a number of woke "diversity", "equity", and "inclusion" projects they are dumping your money into[note: unable to find reference to these expenditures in public reporting, either in form 990 or annual report. not clear what things like "project rewrite" cost. if you know, better to cite hard facts]. It has nothing to do with making wikipedia better.

*party organ as in: The Nation, volume 180, number 9, page 173: “Modern armed forces cannot be built without heavy industry,” the People’s Daily, the central organ of the Chinese Communist Party, has remarked pointedly.

rewrite:

English Wikipedia specifically is largely under the control of left-wing participants who are applying their political preferences to editorial and policy decisions. This is a situation which has held in academia for some time[0], and I don't think their decision-making is based on neutrally representing matters or rigorous factual correctness. One of Wikipedia's cofounders left the organization, and has been sounding alarms about the political biases that have overwhelmed the operation of the site[1]. I have reason to believe they're spending Foundation money in furtherance of their political goals[2] instead of pursuing the actual mission of Wikipedia, which is on-record as explicitly targeting neutrality[3]. Many of the politically-driven decisions being made in that organization are detrimental to the operation of the project and they're descended from a worldview with whose priorities I strongly disagree and are detrimental to society at large.

0 - [note: I don't have a reference for this claim but presumably you do; this is where it would go]

1 - https://nypost.com/2021/07/16/wikipedia-co-founder-says-site...

2 - [note: I don't have a reference for this claim but presumably you do; this is where it would go]

3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Purpose Specifically: The goal of a Wikipedia article is to present a neutrally written summary of existing mainstream knowledge in a fair and accurate manner with a straightforward, "just-the-facts style".

end of rewrite

I don't really know anything about Wikipedia politics; the only thing I do know is they are indeed flush with cash, which is the main reason I don't donate. I do know a bit about academia, since that's where I work. My opinions there might be affected by the fact that I work in a discipline which is heavily mathematics-based, rather than in the social fields.

I hope this helps you understand which parts of your message could be compromising your intentions and what people mean when they're talking about tone.

Here's a rewritten first sentence, without endorsement for or against:

English Wikipedia has become a party organ for the ideology of universities' liberal arts departments. It filters for a particular viewpoint: deconstructive, post modernist, existentialist, nihilist, anti-western, socialist. English Wikipedia no longer cares about objective truth, and is more interested in assigning inflammatory labels to opinions outside of its ideology, and purging views that come from the wrong sources, namely dead white males.

Some notes: The clarification about language vs. kingdom is unnecessary. Specifying that philosophy et al are now "ruined" is deliberately argumentative. "personal truth and lived experience" is duplicative of "post modernist". "battering down the gates" is also deliberately argumentative. I do not remember Shut Down Tech day, and so it adds nothing. The footnote on "party organ" doesn't help explain what a party organ is, but instead seems focused on aligning you with the views of The Nation against the CCP.

Your entire first post reads like you're trying to pick a fight, and not trying to explain or convince anyone.

That's pretty good good overall. But it's acceptable to pick a fight here over functional vs imperative programming, undefined behavior vs ...I don't even know what the opposite more intelligent camp is called because the undefined behavior crowd, who I resent, have done such a thorough job of making it sound like a bad thing when it was included for very good practical reasons (e.g. pointers on different architectures were implemented different ways; you had to code for your architecture; you were unlikely to port your code; when you did port it, you ported it; C was actually sort of genius about it). So I've just expressed ideas, and disdain, which is what I wished to say.

People complain about the ugliness of politic, but free politics arises mostly out of democracy, before democracy average people could only express politics during bloody revolutions. So I don't see anything wrong with fighting (with words) about things we care about. The people who keep talking about undefined behavior have an agenda. So did the people who ruined the liberal arts. They were open about wishing to expel the people and ideas that they expelled. I'm not against expulsion, I wish to expel them. But at the same time I bring up the explicit ideological reasons. If you urge conciliation and compromise, great, join me, and put the Western canon back into the curriculum, we don't need to remove post-modern writing, just look at it askance, as any good skeptic should. If you don't want to do that, I don't want to cooperate with you. If writing things in a nice way hides what you want, I want no part of it.

"language not kingdom" was a nit, but as another nit, when I read the orig, my brain had me thinking I was going to be reading about England, so that's what was on my mind. en.wikipedia would have been more understandable to me, and till this moment right now, I never considered that different *.wikis would have different enough sensibilities that Wikimedia's PR machine would make that language distinction in a PR puff piece they planted. I guess they might be saying, "we've kicked retrograde ideas out of en.wikipedia, now we're turning our attention to the others."

Because, having experience with PR, I believe that the original article under consideration here is a PR piece, attempting to push back against the articles and ideas I'm expressing and that i linked to, that en.wikipedia is already ideologically captured by people who in private and sometimes in public talk exactly the way I'm talking, just in the other direction.

I do salute you for writing a nice response, it's possible missed somethings you said, but this is what came to my mind as I replied.

add on: postmodernism vs personal truth and lived experience. Postmoderism started as an art movement, where art has an academic tradition of exploring ideas and moving on, not persuading the middle classes to live that way; being associated with anything middle class is anathema to art. Personal truth and lived experience are much easier, and much more worthy, to ridicule.

> I think you are falsely using "tone" to stand in for "you disagree with me".

For what it's worth, I think Bayart is right. I agree with most of what you wrote above, but didn't like the tone, so I chose not to vote. Like Bayart, I would assume the earlier downvotes were primarily because of the tone, not the content. This doesn't mean that your tone was "wrong", just that it was the likely cause of the downvotes.

They do have far too much money. Donate to the Internet Archive instead. You'll even be helping Wikipedia content because the archive holds readable copies of millions of print books and an absolutely enormous and unparalleled microfilm library (literally multiple shipping containers full of microfilm they scanned) that can be cited and used to verify and crosscheck Wikipedia articles.

How long have you been so passionate about Wikipedia and their funding. Also, how much cash is "rolling in cash" by your estimation? Sounds like you think they have too much? Should we limit how much cash one can roll in - is that something you think you might be in to?

> Also, how much cash is "rolling in cash" by your estimation? Sounds like you think they have too much?

When an organization's primary form of fundraising is pointing at their one useful product and saying "give us money so that we can keep doing this! If we don't have enough money this might go away!" that's fine and moral so long as it's what's required for primarily funding the useful thing in question.

When the above method accounts for 90% of funds raised, but the useful thing people thought they were supporting only accounts for 10% of expenditures, then that means 1) the organization has more money than they need for "useful thing", and 2) it means that people will feel misled and get upset when they find out about this, because they thought they were donating money to "useful thing" but their money actually went to "side project".

Wikipedia's fundraising messaging is blatantly manipulative and misleading compared to the reality of financial risk to the continued existence of the content on wikipedia.org.

Wikipedia is fairly transparent about how they spend the money. Anyone donating can easily check and donate to their liking. Stop making up random 10% etc.

I never understand this obsession that people have with non profit funding. A weird way of counting efficiency by counting how every dollar spend and not really the value produced.

Clearly Wikipedia is one of the most useful things in the world. They would be more "efficient" wrt money most people give to them even if they were to set fire to a large portion of it.

I'm sorry, is your argument really "if measured in terms of dollar per utility, they would be one of the most useful organizations regardless of how much money they set fire to, and therefore no one should complain if they just set money on fire"?

Their having made something useful does not entitle them to be able to set money on fire without objection, nor does it excuse ads implying the useful thing might go away when the reality is that they are asking for money because they would prefer to have more firewood to burn, without affecting the useful thing whatsoever.

>How long have you been so passionate about Wikipedia and..

I expressed clear and open distain but was specific. You are using, I think a sneakier version, a snideness... but if "how long have I" is a serious question, I was editing wikipedia when it barely had any articles. I watched it go from feeble to great to a steady degradation over the last decade; is how long.

It suffers other degradations which are not poitical. Categories of narrow interest get taken over by advocates, such that people of casual interest don't get to see the whole truth or even see what they're looking for; or specialist articles no longer have general salience (for example with regard to specific isotopes or something). Articles about celebrities get scrubbed free of stain. People with weird little fetishes take it upon themselves to insert something like the word "metonymy" everywhere they possibly can. And more, but I've been around, son, I've been around, as a contributor.

and it's a standard technique to give people like me a worklist to go do, but I won't do it. If you think I'm wrong about their funding, and some numbers are in order, you research, publish, and I'll evaluate.