Wikipedia talk:Be bold

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7HUTJBN VY54URIHEGJNM — Preceding unsigned comment added by 20thtryer (talk • contribs) 21:52, 29 March 2012

Proposed summary for lead re "Don't be offended if reverted"

The last paragraph of the lead has read thus for some time:

Don't get upset if your bold edits get reverted. The early advocate of trial and error followed by observation to gain knowledge, Francis Bacon, said, "For if absurdity be the subject of laughter, doubt you not but great boldness is seldom without some absurdity." Instead of getting upset, read WP:Assume good faith and WP:Civility, and be bold again, but after a reversion of a bold edit, you might want to be bold in an edit on the talk pages so as not to start an edit war.

In this edit [1] I tacked the following on at the end:

Think about it this way: if you don't find one of your edits being reverted now and then, perhaps you're not being bold enough.

If I do say so myself, I think it summarizes, perhaps more succinctly accessbily, Bacon's sentiment. But in the grand tradition, this insertion was reverted [2]. I'd be interested to know what others think. EEng (talk) 00:02, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

I sympathise and agree with you. Your edit was a good one and should not have been reverted. So why was it reverted? Further, why is it that twelve days after your post, nobody can be bothered to come here and justify the reversion? In my view, the board of the Wikimedia Foundation sticks its head in the ground on this contentious issue, and refuses to acknowledge that bloody-minded edit reversions are far too commonplace on Wikipedia. They are not made in good faith. Rather, they are made to maintain the status quo. In my view, based upon my experience of editing Wikipedia since its earliest days, Wikipedia is dominated by groups or cabals of editors that bully and browbeat individuals into complying with the cabal's agenda. This is known quaintly on Wikipedia as consensus.121.222.12.14 (talk) 23:56, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

There are plenty of wikipedia-hater websites and we read them often for fun. You say nothing new and nothing useful for improvement of wikipedia. Yes there are cabals. An you are in one of them. Staszek Lem (talk) 00:48, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

First, the insertion was reverted because it invites revert wars. In wikipedia, if you think you are too bold, then probably your thinking is correct, and you better to talk it out first, thus saving the hassle of reverting and starting the discussion with a taste of bad feeling. Despite the guideline preaches "instead of getting upset", it is in human nature to be upset when somebody reverts your bold and smart improvements. Second, your exegesis on Bacon is disagreed. Staszek Lem (talk) 00:48, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

How does the proposed addition invite revert wars? EEng (talk) 01:25, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

<bump> EEng (talk) 15:55, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

<bump> EEng (talk) 01:22, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

If I don't get any response soon I'm going to go ahead and restore my original edit. EEng (talk) 15:02, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

References

Editors' motivation

They, like all of us, just wish to make Wikipedia as good an encyclopedia as it can possibly be.

This motherhood and apple pie statement says nothing useful. Currently, there is no evidence provided here to support this sentiment. How can any person presume to know what does, or does not, motivate each contributor to include information, or to undo an edit made by another editor? The assumption that humans act in good faith unless there is evidence to the contrary, which underpins the Wikipedia WP:AGF policy, has little evidence to support it. It is simply an assumption that may or may not be correct. In fact, the evidence is that each of has an agenda (which will change depending upon our circumstances) that motivates us to act [1,2]. Our agenda is a function of our bias, which in turn depends upon our desire to maintain or to challenge the status quo [3]. Each of has an agenda at any moment that we choose to act, whether we recognise it as such as or not, and whether or not our agenda is apparent (even to us). Our bias (that underpins our agenda), is also not necessarily fixed - along with our agenda, our bias may change depending on our circumstances, on our experiences and on new information that we have accepted. Nevertheless, at any given time, each of us has a bias. Note, however, that the term bias currently does not appear anywhere in this article. I suggest that this is an omission that needs to be rectified. In conclusion, my view is that recognising in this Wikipedia article that each of us has a bias, would be more useful than blandly stating that we all want to make Wikipedia as good an encyclopaedia as it can possibly be.
1) Kruglanski, Arie W., and Icek Ajzen. Bias and error in human judgment. European Journal of Social Psychology 13.1 (1983): 1-44.
2) Evans, Jonathan St BT. Bias in human reasoning: Causes and consequences. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc, 1989.
3) Samuelson, William, and Richard Zeckhauser. Status quo bias in decision making. Journal of risk and uncertainty 1.1 (1988): 7-59.
121.222.12.14 (talk) 23:34, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Whatever you say and read, colleague, your logic doesn't disprove the quoted quote. Yes, I am not free of my weltanschauung, but I do wish to make a better encyclopedia. And my opponent, a hardliner POV pusher, just as well, wants to make a better one, but in his view. And this is how wikipedia works. Why don't all haters of wikipedia join Citizendium and make it model All-Stars-Expert encyclopedia #4 in google search? But it looks like it is much more fun to whine and pester wikipedia. Staszek Lem (talk) 00:59, 28 April 2015 (UTC)