Hacker News Reader

Comment by fixermark | Hacker News Reader

If I understand correctly, the "Talk" page on Wikipedia also has an archived edit history.

I'm looking at the most recent version [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Super-spreader] and the revisions [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Super-spreade...], and I'm having a hard time seeing the bullying---it looks like an individual defending an edit, another individual defending the revert with explanation of what is missing, and the first individual adding additional data to clarify that the original edit isn't "original research."

Can someone help highlight the bullying for me? Is there a subsection of the Talk history that I'm missing / can Talk history be deleted?

View on HN

You kinda have to put it together, but the other author comes across to me as disingenuous and dismissive. Look at the edit log and the talk page together.

Wikipedian, 4/19: Deletes one new section of the article that he disagrees with. Entire comment is: " (-1,214)‎ . . (→‎Typhoid Mary: not a super-spreader. she was an asymptomatic carrier; super-spreaders are symptomatic)"

Student: 4/19: "There was dispute about whether or not asymptomatic carriers could be considered super-spreaders." Defends her position with un-Wikipedia-esque speech, reverts deletion.

Wikepedian: 4/20 Deletes every single thing the student contributed. (This is where things go off the rails.)

Wikipedian: "Also, I'm not aware of any "dispute as to whether or not asymptomatic carriers should be considered super-spreaders", so perhaps you could also provide a source for that."

The source of the dispute is that he reverted her edit; of course it exists.

The student then comes back with a source to defend that Typhoid Mary is considered a super carrier by serious sources, and gets no response.

Further, if you look at what the editor excised, it was a sincere edit, well-sourced, and deserved at least a modicum of respect for trying to help his pet project.

> Deletes every single thing the student contributed

Yes, this is what I don't understand. I think other commenters here haven't actually realised this is what happened, as well, and aren't seeing the problem.

One thing I find annoying about Wikipedia is that there is basically no owner or point of contact for the content. So, if I have an idea for a change, I can add a comment to the Talk page for the article, but it'll often languish there for months (years) on some pages. I've never gotten a sense of 'community' there, and although I've made 500+ edits and contributed new articles and been a member of a 'WikiProject' I still wouldn't class myself as a 'Wikipedian' nor would I know how to assign that role to someone else.

I've been a Wikipedia editor for ages, and I have noticed this. You can't wait around for other people to reply.

Generally if I'm about to do something potentially controversial, I write a comment on it in the talk thread, and then I go ahead and do it. If others have a problem with it they'll fix it. You kind of have to have a "ask for forgiveness" attitude towards non-active pages.

The wiki way is "bold, revert, discuss".

That is often catastrophic and will get you templates and warnings, and will make it very hard to push through any edits.

If you check the talk page of the student, you will see it's filled with 5+ "warnings" from the Wikipedian. I could see how that could be considered bullying.

> Thing is, on Wikipedia it isn't really up to you to decide something like that. That is considered original research. You need to have an academic, peer-reviewed, medical journal article that makes the claim that they are one and the same. Also, I'm not aware of any "dispute as to whether or not asymptomatic carriers should be considered super-spreaders," so perhaps you could also provide a source for that.

It's kind of subtle, so if your English isn't too good, or maybe you aren't so hot at reading tone over the internet, I can see why you'd miss it, but that response reads as dismissive, snarky and a bit patronizing to me.

It's patronizing, but I wouldn't consider it crossing the line to bullying or abusive. I read it as someone who considers themself to be in a position of experience and authority counseling a newcomer on the rules of the road. Perhaps the "inner voice" that reads that text to me on the page differs from the student's inner voice?

It's hard to discern tone from text on a screen, and easy to attribute meaning to actions that did not carry that intent.

Disclosure: I'm a privileged white male.

Anything that starts with "Thing is" or a similar type of sentence ("In reality", "Here's the deal", "With all due respect", etc.) is condescension. There's no other way to take it. Especially when it's followed up by a "you don't get to make that decision".

And any time you start off by being patronizing you aren't actually trying to advance your argument or teach somebody but rather trying to belittle the other person.

>Disclosure: I'm a privileged white male.

Part of the article explains that women and men communicate differently, I wouldn't enjoy being counseled in that tone.

No one is right or wrong. Just different.

Particularly considering the original author is likely a female based on old talk pages.

I think the problem are the reverts without specific explanations. As far as I see, the student corrected all the specific errors that were pointed out. Reverting an article of someone who put a lot of effort into creating it without giving a clear and specific explanation is frustrating.

Ah, good point. I didn't correlate the times on the edit/reverts on the main page with the Talk page updates.

On the original page, the page "owner" takes 7 edits to revert every single word that was not his/her own - leaving the page the same as their own original.

Note here that this represents the net change from 25 intermediate edits over 7 months: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Super-spreader&di...

Through this action alone, the owner is claiming that literally nothing of the student's work has merit, while their own work remains unquestioned.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com